WINDOWS TO ORTHODOXY

Guy Freeland

St Andrew’s Orthodox Press

Sydney

2013

Text copyright © 2013 remains with Guy Freeland.

All rights reserved. Except for any fair dealing permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book
may be reproduced by any means without prior permission. Inquiries should be made to the publisher.

Cover original artwork: Supplied by St Andrew’s Orthodox Press

Cover design by Astrid Sengkey

Published by:

St Andrew’s Orthodox Press

242 Cleveland Street, Redfern, NSW, 2016

www.standrewsorthodoxpress.com.au

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Author: Freeland, Guy, 1938 –

Title: Windows to Orthodoxy/Guy Freeland.

ISBN: 9780977597475 (paperback)

Subjects: Orthodox Eastern Church.

 Theology, Doctrinal-History.

Liturgics.

Spirituality.

Dewey Number: 230

EBook by EFU Publishing, London

www.empireforever.co.uk
Preface
The thirty-three essays in this volume were originally published in the English language supplement,
The Greek Australian Vema , of the oldest circulating Greek newspaper published outside of Greece,
the Vema. (The nearest English newspaper-speak equivalent to “Vema” would be “Tribune”.)

These thirty-three articles – thirty-three being the traditional number of the years of Our Lord – were
written and published at various times over a period approaching eight years, between December 2001
and October 2009. From June 2006 onwards the articles were published under the banner “Windows to
Orthodoxy”.

Most of the articles have been subjected only to minimal editing. Minor errors have been corrected
and repetitions have been eliminated; though, recognising that many readers will dip into the volume
rather than read straight through, I have not sought to remove all repetition. Many of the original
Vema illustrations have been retained. However, the decision to insert a set of plates into the volume
prompted the hunting down of additional illustrations.

The Vema, now published by St Andrew’s Orthodox Press with the modified title of The Vema of the
Church, is largely distributed through parishes of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia. The
bulk of its readership, consequently, comprises Australian Greek Orthodox house-holds. The
columnist can, therefore, presume at least a basic background knowledge of Orthodoxy. The present
volume, however, can hopefully anticipate a rather wider readership, so a few brief words concerning
Orthodoxy might not go amiss.

The Orthodox Church, the world’s second largest (after the Roman Catholic) is in its origins the
Church of the Eastern Roman Empire, which was centred on the ancient city of Byzantium refounded
by the Emperor Constantine the Great in 330 as Constantinople (and known today as Istanbul).

The canonical Orthodox Church comprises a number of self-governing national Churches, including
those of Russia, Serbia, Romania and Greece, that share a common faith and liturgy and are in
communion with one another and with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. The Patriarch,
unlike the Pope but like the Archbishop of Canterbury within the Anglican Communion, is primus
inter pares (=first amongst equals) within the worldwide college of bishops with whom he is in
communion.

Originally sharing a unity in the Faith, Rome and Constantinople began to drive apart until a formal
schism occurred in 1054. Efforts at reunion have been to no avail and have become much more
difficult since the promulgation of the doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope in 1870. Despite areas
of dispute, the Orthodox Church nevertheless shares much of its doctrine, Church order and liturgical
principles with at least the more traditional Churches of both East (the Coptic, Armenian etc.) and
West (Roman Catholic, Anglican etc.).

The essays in this collection do not follow the chronological order of publication but are arranged, as
far as possible, thematically. The central block of articles, those numbered 9–22, are arranged
sequentially in accordance with the Church Year; as, indeed, they were written with high points of the
liturgical year in mind. First come those bearing a relationship with the Paschal cycle (the seasons and
festivals dependent on the moveable date of Easter) starting with Lent, and then those related to the
cycle of fixed feasts (those falling on the same date each year) through to Christmas.

Fortunately, one of the many things Orthodoxy shares with other of the more traditional Churches of
the East and West is the liturgical year. There are, however, some differences that should be noted.

The Orthodox Church keeps three extended fasting periods in addition to Lent before Easter (Great
Lent): the Fast of the Apostles, from the Monday following the Sunday after Pentecost to the feast of
St Peter and St Paul (June 29); the Dormition Fast, from August 1 to the feast of the Dormition of the
Mother of God (August 15, known as the Assumption in the West), and the Nativity Fast of forty days
before Christmas (the equivalent to western Advent). Great Lent is reckoned as forty days as in the
West though computed differently, starting on a Monday (Clean Monday) not on a Wednesday (Ash
Wednesday) and excluding Holy Week (which is regarded as a separate fast, known as the Fast of
Christ’s Passion).

The feast of Trinity is combined with Pentecost (fifty days after Easter), not kept on the following
Sunday. The Sunday following Pentecost is the feast of All Saints, which the West keeps on November
1. A few Saints Days are assigned to a different date (curiously, sometimes just one day out). The
Church Year begins on September 1, not the First Sunday of Advent (the fourth Sunday before
Christmas).

And that is about it; except for the fact that almost all Orthodox Churches use the Julian calendar
(which is currently thirteen days out with respect to the tropical year of the sun and the civil calendar)
for the dating of Easter. However, while Orthodox Easter usually falls after Western, the festival does
from time to time fall on the same day, as was the case in 2010 and 2011. A number of Orthodox
Churches, including the Russian and Serbian, but not the Greek and Romanian, also use the Julian
calendar for the fixed feasts. This means that although such Churches keep the feast of the
Annunciation, for instance, on March 25 (as in the West) the Julian calendar March 25 (Old Style)
corresponds to April 7 on the civil calendar (New Style), thirteen days later. Yes, the Orthodox Church
is in dire need of calendar reform!

The Church Year is the key to the sequencing of the articles which provide the meat of the sandwich,
but not the slices of bread. The first seven articles are, in a general sense, biblical in character (some
more so than others), with a particular emphasis on, on the one hand, the mystery of Paradise and Fall
and, on the other, the principles of Orthodox biblical hermeneutics (= theory of interpretation of the
Bible).

Article 8 on the labyrinth is the butter on the bread. Although its hermeneutic concern is with a pagan
rather than an Old Testament antetype, it smooths the passage from earlier themes to that of the
Paschal Mystery of Our Lord, which of course lies at the very heart of the liturgical year.

The lower slice, Articles 23-33, comprises a more motley selection, although the leitmotif of the
interplay of time and eternity, which penetrates the entire volume, is balanced in a number of these
articles by an emphasis on the sacredness of place.

The views expressed in these articles are the personal opinion of the author and cannot be assumed to
be official teaching of the Orthodox Church; though, to the best of my knowledge, I have not strayed
into heresy at any point.
This volume would not exist if it were not for two major initiatives of Archbishop Stylianos of
Australia. The first of these was the founding of St Andrew’s Greek Orthodox Theological College in
Sydney (the only fully accredited Orthodox tertiary theological institution in Australasia) in 1986. The
second was his decision to accept the generous gift to the Church of the Vema newspaper by Mr Greg
Gavrielides, and the concomitant establishment of St Andrew’s Orthodox Press as its new publisher,
in 2001. I am profoundly grateful for the personal encouragement I have always received from His
Eminence.

A “thank you” to Dimitri Kepreotes of St Andrew’s Orthodox Press. Our association goes back to
1985 when I taught him as a very young Arts student at the University of New South Wales, and
subsequently as a theology student at St Andrew’s. The task of creating Windows was made less
irksome than it might otherwise have been by the fact that we share the same somewhat offbeat sense
of humour. A “thank you” to Anna and Astrid, of ATF Press who worked on the design and layout, and
to Fr Angelo Alierakis for his assistance with the reproduction of photographs.

I am grateful to the staff of the Vema, Ikaros Kyriacou and Maria Jianni, for their courtesy and
diligence over the ten and a half years of my association with the paper, and also to St Andrew’s
superlative Librarian, Chris Harvey, for his friendship, cheerful assistance with all matters
bibliographical and for never displaying exasperation at my total inability to get a photocopier to do
what I want it to do.

I am indebted to Michael Galovic and Fr Leonidas Ioannou for permission to use icons. Michael, with
whom I have been on friendly terms for many years, is a Serbian Australian painter with a growing
international reputation. Two of the three icons of his reproduced in Windows can also be found in his
multi-award-winning Icons + Art, Honeysett Press. Fr Leonidas, who is of Cypriot extraction, has
recently graduated from St Andrew’s and been ordained to the priesthood.

A big “thank you” of a different kind to my long-suffering wife, Jill. Firstly, as a frequent travelling
companion, and also courier and chauffeur, on many overseas excursions, a number of which were
destined to yield material for eventual Vema articles. Secondly, for acting as an unpaid secretary, in
particular solving numerous computer problems and handling a multitude of emails engendered by the
Vema articles and their transmogrification into book form. And, finally, for enduring periodic
disruptions to her arrangements because, being a congenital procrastinator, yet again I was struggling
to meet a Vema deadline.

Unless otherwise indicated, biblical quotations are taken from The Revised Standard Version and
liturgical from The Divine Liturgy of Our Father Among the Saints John Chrysostom, St Andrew’s
Orthodox Press and Book of Prayers: A Selection for Orthodox Christians, Greek Orthodox
Archdiocese of Australia.

AV = Authorised (King James) Version of the Bible.

SAAS = St Athanasius Academy Septuagint.

BCP = the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

Confusingly, there are two different numberings for the Psalms, those of the Greek Septuagint Old
Testament (LXX), used by Orthodox and (traditionally at least) Roman Catholics, and those of the
Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT), followed in versions of the Old Testament translated from the Hebrew
Bible and adopted by Protestant Churches. In references to Psalms I have cited both numbers. I have
also adopted the convention of not ascribing verse numbers to Septuagint Psalms. So, “Psalm 51:3 (50
LXX)” would indicate Psalm 51, verse 3 in the Masoretic Text, corresponding to Psalm 50 in the
Septuagint.
Guy Freeland
Gordon, New South Wales
Feast of St Justin the Philosopher and Martyr, 2012.
Contents
(With date of original publication in The Greek Australian Vema)

1 Noah and His Flood: History or Fantasy? (September 2003)

2 Christ, the Mystic Mill? (November 2007)

3 Apocalypse Now? (July 2006)

4 Restoring Paradise (August 2006)

5 Is There Such a Thing as Original Sin? (September 2006)

6 Doing the Right Thing by Adam and Eve (October 2006)

7 Are We Bound by Moral Laws? (November 2006)

8 The Labyrinth – a Christian Mandala? (September 2007)

9 Should We Restore the Ancient Catechumenate? (February 2008)

10 Days of the Bridegroom (April 2003)

11 What Is the Paschal Triduum? (March 2007)

12 The Great Mystery of the Cave (April 2008)

13 The Great Sunday (May 2002)

14 The Fear of Death (May 2007)

15 The Saints Go Marching In (June 2008)

16 The Eagle – Divine Bird of the Sun (June 2007)

17 Was St Mary of Magdala the Wife of Christ? (July 2008)

18 Christmas in Winter? (June 2006)

19 Happy New Year – AGAIN! (August 2007)

20 Why Portray Christ as the Sun God? (December 2006)

21 Christ’s Christmas Tree (December 2001)

22 Will the REAL Santa Claus Please Step Forward? (November 2002)

23 The Earthly Heaven (May 2008)

24 Canberra’s Byzantine Secret (September 2009)

25 ‘Let My Prayer Be Set Forth in Thy Sight as the Incense’ (January 2007)

26 Pilgrimage to Patmos: Island of the Apocalypse (July 2007)

27 Pilgrimage to Symi: Island of an Archangel (October 2007)

28 Was it St Brendan Who Discovered America? (August 2008)

29 Should Australia Day be the 26th January? (January 2002)

30 Is Anzac Day Christian? (April 2007)

31 Beware Pulpit Hypnotism! (October 2009)

32 The Great Ball Lightning Event (February 2007)

33 Threescore Years and Ten (March 2008)

Endnote

Plates
Chapter 1. Noah and His Flood: History or Fantasy?
The story of Noah and his Flood is one of the great ‘Ripping Yarns’ of all time. Even children like
myself brought up in humanist or neo-pagan households (the latter in my case) learn the story at their
mother’s apron strings.

Now, an interesting thing is that it is not just children in cultures which have inherited the Old
Testament who have been told the story of the Great Flood but children in very different cultures
going back centuries, perhaps millennia, before ever the biblical version of the yarn was written down.

In fact, over three hundred ancient versions of the story have been collected by scholars. Sure, some of
the details differ from version to version, and Noah might be called Utnapishtim, Atrahasis or
Deucalion, but the essential story line is invariably much the same as that of the biblical narrative
(Genesis 6-9).

Mesopotamian Flood Myths

That there were Mesopotamian myths about a cataclysmic flood and the building of a great boat
stocked with plants and animals by a righteous man forewarned by a god was not known until 1872,
when George Smith announced his discovery of a fragment of the story in cuneiform writing on a clay
tablet.

The story was part of the famous Epic of Gilgamesh. This account is now believed to have been
borrowed from the Sumerian Flood myth, which has also been recovered. Though the earliest known
copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh dates only from the seventh century BC, that of the most extensive
Flood narrative, the Epic of Atrahasis, dates from the seventeenth century BC.

What came as a real shock was not so much that there were pre-biblical tales about apocalyptic floods,
but that many details were so close that there could be no reasonable doubt that Mesopotamian Flood
myths and the biblical story must be connected in some way.

In Genesis, after the Ark had come to rest on a mountain, Noah first released a raven, which flew
around until the waters eventually subsided. He then released a dove, but the dove returned as she
could find nowhere to roost. A week later he released the dove again and this time she returned with
an olive leaf in her beak, indicating that the flood was subsiding. A further week passed and Noah
released the dove for a third time, but on this occasion she did not return.
In the Gilgamesh version, Utnapishtim, the Gilgamesh Noah, released first a dove and then a swallow,
both of which returned having found no trees in which to roost. Finally he released a raven which did
not return. The details are not identical but are so close as to make coincidence extremely improbable.
So with several other components of the biblical story.

Does this mean that the biblical story is simply a reworking, for theological reasons, of Mesopotamian
Flood mythology; or rather two reworkings, as biblical scholars are agreed that the Genesis account is
the combination of the, not entirely compatible, work of two groups of redactors (editors)? Possibly,
but it is also possible that both the Hebrew and the Mesopotamian versions derive from an earlier
common widespread oral tradition of a cataclysmic flood. This tradition might have been reworked in
different times and places, perhaps in response to a recent severe local flood. Various candidates for
this supposed original flood have been proposed, including the eruption of the volcano Santorini.

The Mother of All Floods?

Recent scientific evidence from cores taken from the floor of the Black Sea has, however, led to a very
plausible theory as to the identity of this hypothetical mother of all floods.

In brief, the theory is that as the Eurasian Ice Sheet melted after the last Ice Age a huge freshwater
lake was formed, which has been named the New Euxine Lake, with a drainage outlet to the Sea of
Marmara via the Sakarya River, not the Bosporus as today. The, then fresh water, Sea of Marmara in
its turn drained into the Aegean.

As the flow of glacial melt water declined, evaporation from the lake came to exceed water owing into
the lake and the level dropped below the level of the Sakarya outlet. The lake was now land-locked
and its level continued to drop as rainfall declined. Almost certainly, thriving Neolithic (New Stone
Age) communities would have become established around the remnants of the New Euxine Lake.

But while all of this was occurring, the rising global sea level was putting pressure on the Bosporus
valley, with the result that eventually, c.5600 BC, the sea broke through this natural dam blocking the
greatly diminished New Euxine Lake from the, now salt water, Sea of Marmara. As the Bosporus dam
was swept away, the sea water would have cascaded down into the lake basin hundreds of feet below at
an incredible rate and with enormous force until the level, of what we can now call the Black Sea,
equalled that of the Mediterranean.

The effects on the Neolithic communities would have been catastrophic. All would have been forced
to flee or face drowning as the waters rose over their homes. In these circumstances, some
enterprising patriarch may well have hastily built a mighty boat and stocked it with seeds, plants and
domestic animals so that a new beginning could be made when the inundation finally came to a halt.

There is much in the biblical story which is consistent with such an event. The description of the
Flood doesn’t fit a mere river flood but something altogether more catastrophic. That the Ark
supposedly came to rest in the Ararat Mountains (the Hebrew doesn’t say Mount Ararat) also suggests
a Black Sea flood, as Ararat (or Urartu) is a mountainous region of Armenia at the South East end of
the Black Sea.

Certainly, the Flood myths were believed in Ancient times to have their origin in an actual
cataclysmic flood. Writing around 300 BC, the Babylonian historian, Berossus, reports that remains of
the Ark still existed in Armenia in his day and were used for making amulets. However, none of the
several recent claims that the Ark has been found has been substantiated.

Interpreting the Biblical Story

Clearly, the biblical story of the Flood could be grounded in an actual historical event. But even if the
story does have an origin in fact, there are numerous aspects of the biblical narrative which are clearly
mythopoeic in character. For instance, the reference to the sons of God (divine beings belonging to the
heavenly court) mating with human women (Genesis 6:2) obviously derives from primal myth.

Although some modern biblical scholars have argued that the Flood might have been local rather than
universal, since the Hebrew word translated as Earth also meant country or land, the text clearly refers
to a universal flood, and it has always been so interpreted in the past. In the New Testament, 2 Peter
2:5 also definitely seems to be referring to a worldwide flood.

However, that a flood could have covered the whole Earth, much less up to the mountain tops, can be
ruled out on scientific grounds. Further, the whole story is grounded in a typically primal mythopoeic
flat earth cosmology that was abandoned (contrary to popular belief) by almost all educated people
within the Ecumene (the known world) as early as Hellenistic times.

Then there is the problem of how to pack all the animals into the Ark. There have been many
ingenious, but implausible, attempts to show that by rounding up young rather than mature animals
and the like this could have been possible. But even if all the creatures could have been
accommodated, how on earth could Noah and his band of seven helpers have rounded up animals from
every continent?

Did Noah send his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, off to Australia (which nobody even knew existed or
could exist) to ensnare kangaroos, koalas and goannas, calling in on China on the way home to round
up a couple of giant pandas plus a supply of bamboo shoots on which to feed them?

But now we come to the crux. Does it matter, from an Orthodox theological perspective, whether or
not the biblical Flood narrative is an historical record of an actual event, true in every detail?

The answer is that it matters little whether the story is an inerrant historical record, a legend loosely
based on an actual event, or a work of total fiction spun in order to encode a spiritual or theological
message. What matters is whether the story is Holy Scripture or not, whether or not God speaks to us
through it.

The Bible is in fact an anthology of a large number of books written and edited over a long span of
time. Moreover, there is a large range of different kinds of literary composition: myths, legends,
history, parables, visions, wisdom, liturgical texts, prophecies, poems and canticles, laws, allegories,
apocalypses, gospels, letters and so forth.

Each of these works is, of course, an historical text – just as the works of Homer or the Epic of
Gilgamesh are historical texts – which has a specific historical context within which it was composed
and which needs to be understood in order to determine its literal meaning.

But not all historical texts are historical records, supposedly accurate reports of actual events. There is
historical record in the Bible, but there is a great deal which certainly is not historical record. The
voice of God speaks in Scripture not only through historical record but through literary forms of the
most diverse kinds.

For Orthodox Christians, the whole Bible is interpreted Christocentrically. Christ, the eternal Logos,
speaks through every passage of Scripture.

But to discern the voice of Christ we frequently need to penetrate beneath the level of literal meaning
to expose the underlying spiritual or theological meaning.

This is not to say, though, that correct literal interpretation of Old Testament texts doesn’t frequently
convey important spiritual messages for Christians in and of itself. And it is not to say that we can
ignore the literal meaning and go straight to what is called the sensus plenior, the underlying fuller,
spiritual meaning of Scripture; indeed the Fathers insist that the sensus plenior must be anchored in
the literal meaning of the text. This is the case even given that our understanding of the literal
meaning of the text will change as we come to understand the language and historical context better.
But what it is to say is that to extract the deep Christian meaning of a text we often need to decode the
literal meaning in the light of the revelation in Christ.

Fundamentalists and others who insist, in the teeth of all of the evidence, in reading the Genesis Flood
narrative as an inerrant historical record are, strangely enough, guilty of de-Scripturising the narrative.
What they see as inerrant is not the Logos speaking through the text, but what they believe to be the
reporting of a mighty work of God.

Rather than the Holy Spirit infusing the Word into a humanly composed narrative, on this view divine
inspiration operates to prevent any error in the reporting of what is asserted to be an actual historical
event directly performed by God. The result is not only that literalists frequently find themselves at
odds with archaeological, historical and scientific evidence, not to mention plain common sense, but
that they frequently miss the real theological or spiritual meanings of biblical narratives entirely.
Biblical narratives cease to be Holy Scripture and become mere (albeit for them inerrant) reportage.

But the literalists’ problems don’t end with trying to account for the logistics of the Ark story, nor
with having somehow to square the account with scientific data, they also have a problem concerning
the nature of God.

If the Flood narrative is understood literalistically then we are confronted with a vengeful, wrathful,
merciless and incompetent tyrant of a god who destroys the whole world in a fit of pique, expressing
sorrow for having created humanity and the animals in the first place; even if, at the end of the story,
he does redeem himself to some extent by repenting of his monstrous act of carnage and making a
covenant with humanity and the animals, of which the rainbow is the sign. But how can such a god be
reconciled with the God of love revealed in Christ in the New Testament?

Most biblical scholars believe that the Flood narrative was composed – whether by reworking
Mesopotamian Flood myths or by reworking a Jewish tradition (or, of course, a combination of the
two) – during the Babylonian Exile of the Jews (6th century BC). If this is so, literally (as opposed to
literalistically) interpreted the story was most likely intended as an allegory of the destruction of
Jerusalem and the Temple, the ending of the Davidic line of kings and the exile of the people to
Babylon. In the Ancient world, cataclysmic floods are often used as metaphors or symbols for great
social calamities. Noah and his family would, then, represent the righteous remnant of the Jewish
people.

That the destruction of Jerusalem and the Exile were indeed likened to the destruction of cosmic order
and a return to primordial chaos is confirmed by the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 4:23-26). And here
one must recall that prior to God’s first act of creation, “Let there be light (Genesis 1:3)”, “ The earth
was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God was
moving over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:2)”.

So interpreted, the Flood narrative is an allegory of hope, which tells of God’s loving protection of His
people, despite the appalling calamity which has befallen them. It is an allegory designed to reassure
and bring comfort to the people, as they “lay down and wept” by the waters of Babylon (Psalm 137:1,
136 LXX), that out of the chaos to which their world has been reduced God would create a new order.
It was at this very period of Jewish history, scholars have pointed out, that the Jews ceased to think of
their God, Yahweh, as one amongst many gods, even if the most powerful, and proclaimed Him as the
one and only, omniscient and all-merciful, God.

The Spiritual Meanings of the Genesis Narrative

In order to find the fuller spiritual meaning and significance of the Genesis narrative, we need to see
what the New Testament, the Fathers and the iconographers make of it.

In the New Testament, the story is interpreted as a type; in other words, a figurative foreshadowing of
the Gospel or of the mysteries of the Church.

Noah is seen as a type of prefiguring of Christ and also (see Hebrews 11:7 & 2 Peter 2:5) of the
righteous Christian.

Christ Himself uses the Flood as a type of His own Second Coming (Matthew 24:37-39 & Luke 17:26-
27). And in 1 Peter 3:18-22, the Apostle uses the Flood as a type of Christ’s death and resurrection and
of our redemption through baptism, for in baptism we die to sin in the waters of the font and are raised
up having been clothed with the resurrected Lord.

In early Christian iconography, the image of Noah rising from the Ark is simultaneously a type of
Christ rising from the tomb and of the newly baptised Christian rising from the baptismal waters, born
anew into Christ. The dove with a sprig of olive in her beak (which today has become a universal
symbol for peace) signifies the Second Coming of Christ, the true olive (and, remember, the dove
returned twice to the ark).

The Ark itself is seen by the Fathers and the iconographers as a type of the Church, the Ark of
salvation, and sometimes it is depicted, as in a twelfth century stained glass window in Canterbury
Cathedral, as a church building with masonry arches and columns. Moreover, the nave (Latin navis =
ship), the main body of a church where the faithful stand, symbolises the Ark. Fathers such as Justin,
Irenaeus, Origen and Augustine give allegorical interpretations of almost every detail of the
construction of the Ark and of the Flood narrative.

So, irrespective of its authenticity as literal historical record, Christocentrically interpreted the Flood
narrative becomes a story of God’s love.
It teaches us that we can sacramentally die with Christ, be buried with Him, and be raised up with
Him. We can be redeemed, cleansed and recreated through water and the Spirit and find salvation in
the Ark of the Church. And we can await in hope the Second Coming of our Lord.
Chapter 2. Christ, the Mystic Mill?
On a capital (= the block of stone at the top of a column) in the nave of the exquisite twelfth-century
Abbey Church of St Mary Magdalene, Vézelay in France is a very strange Romanesque carving. At the
top, it depicts Moses pouring grain into the hopper of a watermill to be ground, while, at the bottom,
St Paul collects the resultant our in a sack.

Following medieval convention, the mill is depicted in stylised form and in miniature, while the two
figures are portrayed more or less in their true size and proportions. In reality, medieval watermills
were massive bits of machinery filling a specially constructed mill-house.

On the outside, there would be a huge waterwheel turned by a fast flowing stream or river or by water
flowing into “buckets” on the wheel from above. Often major works were undertaken to store, speed
(the millrace) and control the flow of water.

The Mystical Mill, Capital in St Mary Magdalene, Vézelay

In order to understand the symbolic potential of watermills, one needs to understand that they were the
marvels of technology of their time. In what has been called the Twelfth-Century Industrial
Revolution, spear-headed by the Cistercians (= reformed Benedictine monks), water power was
harnessed not only for grinding grain but also for such tasks as driving bellows and hammers for the
iron industry and saws for the timber industry. Watermill technology remained the miracle of the age
until the invention of the weight-driven mechanical clock late in the thirteenth century.
The message the Mystic Mill seeks to convey is that the deeper spiritual meaning of the Old
Testament is revealed through Christ and nourishes the Church. According to tradition (but not in fact)
the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, was written by Moses. Jews know these books as the
Torah (= the Law).

St Paul is the Apostle who laid down the foundations for the seemly conduct of the life of the infant
Church. It would, however, be a mistake to see Moses as symbolic of the Old Testament law and Paul
as symbolic of the New. Indeed, this reading is hardly likely since it is Paul who taught that while not
all things are expedient all things are lawful for Christians (1 Corinthians 10:23). Any suggestion that
he could be the instigator of a new body of law to replace the Jewish would have reputed remains of
the Apostle spinning in their reliquaries.

Twelfth-century mill at Braine le Château, Belgium. Photo: Pierre.

No, Moses is on our capital as the (obvious) symbol of the entire Old Testament – “all the law and the
prophets (Matthew 22:40)” – and Paul as the symbol of the New. But, you might ask, why Paul rather
than Christ? The answer is that Christ is the Mystic Mill itself. This is corroborated by the fact that the
spokes of the waterwheel form a deliberate cross.

It is by, with, in and through the Incarnate Christ that the Word hidden in the words of the Old
Testament is revealed through His teaching and saving mysteries. The husks hiding the inner grain are
discarded and the grain is ground into the fine flour of the revelation of the Holy Trinity in Christ
Jesus, the substance out of which the risen bread of the doctrine of the Church is baked.

Christocentric Hermeneutics

The hermeneutics (= theory of biblical interpretation, as opposed to exegesis, the practice of

interpretation) of the Orthodox Church is that of Christ Himself as recorded in the Gospels and
expounded and explicated by the New Testament writers and the Fathers of the Church.

Although there are a number of hermeneutic principles essential to a sound understanding of the
Bible, there is one which is arguably the key to Orthodox hermeneutics. This is the principle that the
entire Bible, Old as well as New Testaments, is to be interpreted Christocentrically.
In answer to the Jews, Christ says:
“You search the scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it
is they that bear witness to me …Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; it is
Moses who accuses you … If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote
of me (John 5:39, 45-46, my italics).”

And Christ said to Luke and Cleopas, as He walked with them along the road to Emmaus on the day of
His resurrection:
“O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it
not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And
beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures
the things concerning himself (Luke 24:44-45).”

To discern the Word within the words, the spiritual and theological message of Scripture, frequently
entails penetrating beneath the literal surface of the text (the outer husk). Christ typically taught in
parables, which had to be decoded in order to extract the message encoded in the story. This should
forewarn us that the Word has frequently to be searched out deep within the substance of a biblical
text, particularly in the case of the Old Testament. It is no accident that the Church calls the Old
Testament passages read at Vespers “parables”.

Spiritual insight – in other words, the living Christ dwelling within the heart of the exegete – is
necessary in order to complete the grinding of the grain to extract the fuller meaning of the words. In
fact, the spiritual meaning of Scripture is never totally exhausted. As St Ephrem the Syrian says, we
should never try to drink the fount of Scripture dry.

So, the Mystic Mill is indeed Christ the Word/Logos Himself, the hermeneutic principle of all
hermeneutic principles. He alone is “the way, and the truth, and the life (John 14:6)”.

All Scripture (Latin, scriptura = a writing, a written composition) is composed through human minds
and hands, whether there is a single author (as, for example, with the letters of St Paul) or more than
one (as with the Psalter). There are also “redactors” (editors) of texts. Many books of the Bible,
particularly of the Old Testament, have a complicated redaction history.

A narrative as we have it in our Bible (think Genesis) might have been created out of the fabric of two
or more earlier narratives, whether transmitted through writing or orally, which themselves might be
the product of a lengthy redaction history.

This means that the divine inspiration involved in the composition of Scripture might (think St Paul or
the Evangelists) or might not (think much of the Old Testament) be that of authors per se. In the case
of the Old Testament, it is often the divine inspiration of the person or persons who were responsible
for the final redaction of a received text of Holy Scripture that is of most significance.

But Scripture not only has a human author (or authors) and/or redactor (or redactors) but also a divine
author and that, in the Christian view, means the Logos/Christ. Except in the case of actual words of
Christ recorded in the Gospels, the divine Word is always expressed through the words of inspired
human authors/redactors and is accommodated to the background knowledge, horizons and limitations
of particular times and places.
Moreover, in the case of the Old Testament, since it predates the Incarnation, the grain (the Word) is
always veiled by the husk; that is, encoded within the text. The encoded text has therefore to be
unveiled/decoded through the revelation in Christ. And Christ Himself instructed the Church as to how
it was to separate the grains from the husks and grind them into the fine flour of the Gospel.

Of particular importance, amongst methods for establishing the unity of the Bible and the spiritual
sense of the Old Testament, is typology. Responding to the request for a sign, Christ says:
“An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign; but no sign shall be given to it
except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the
belly of the whale, so will the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of
the earth (Matthew 12:39-40).”

Christ here established a correspondence between His forthcoming crucifixion, descent into hell and
third-day resurrection, the antitype, and the story of Jonah and the whale (Jonah 1 & 2), the type or
antetype. Although type and antitype have quite different content, they share a common structure –
the sacrifice; the descent; the three days and nights; the ascent (resurrection for Christ, regurgitation
onto dry land for Jonah).

Origins and Iconography

Possibly, we need look no further for the inspiration of the Vézelay sculpture than medieval mill
technology, with its seemingly miraculous power to harness the energy stored in water to perform a
whole raft of operations without the aid of human or animal exertion. But it usually turns out that even
obscure-seeming iconography has some grounding in the Bible.

The Old Testament tells how, after Delilah deprived him of his strength by cutting off his hair,
Samson was seized by the Philistines who “gouged out his eyes, and brought him down to Gaza, and
bound him with bronze fetters; and he ground at the mill in the prison (Judges 16:21)”. This is a verse
which seems to have subterranean depths of meaning which might possibly have been typologically
linked with Christ, and hence have something to do with the Mystic Mill.

Samson’s actual mill would have been turned by human muscle, but a stained glass panel from La
Sainte Chapelle in Paris depicts it as a watermill. The window is thirteenth century but an association
of Samson with the Mystic Mill, to which it might possibly point, could well be earlier.

But even if there was a biblical association, it seems plausible that the ultimate inspiration for the
metaphor of the transforming power of the mill derives from a letter of St Ignatius of Antioch
(d.c.107), written to deflect well-wishers from attempting to intervene to prevent his martyrdom:
Let me be thrown to the wild beasts, for through them I shall come to God. I am God’s
wheat, ground by the teeth of the wild beasts so as to be made pure bread.

(Quoted in George Every et al., The Time of the Spirit, SVS Press.)

In its turn, Ignatius’ metaphor might very well have been suggested by a related metaphor in a
prophecy of the Passion of Christ in Isaiah (63:2-6): “Why is thy apparel red, and thy garment like his
that treads in the wine press? (Verse 2)”.
There is in fact another iconographic representation of the Mystic Mill, a roundel of stained glass in
the Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis, near Paris. The original panel was installed c.1140-1144 by the great
Abbot, Suger. Unfortunately, the roundel in place today is a modern reconstruction supposedly based
on Suger’s description and it depicts not a watermill but a handmill turned by St Paul. Suger’s
description of the original, however, seems to refer to a scene close to that of the Vézelay capital.

The roundel is one of a set of five which make up what has been called Suger’s “Anagogic Window”
(anagogy = spiritual, mystical – the anagogic is the most exalted spiritual meaning of Scripture).
Suger’s aim in adorning the Abbey Church was anagogic (he uses the term himself), to lift the soul
from the mundane to the spiritual realm. But the purpose of the iconography of the Anagogic Window
is more specific; to shed light on the nature of the hermeneutic transformation of the Old Testament
into the New.

Ah, but I can hear murmurings. This it proper to depict Christ, even if as the embodiment of the
hermeneutic process, as a watermill? Umberto Eco has written perceptively of strange symbols:
According to the Pseudo-Dionysius, it was appropriate that the things of God should be
symbolised by very dissimilar entities … because it was precisely the incongruity of a
symbol that made it palpable and stimulating … In a symbolic universe … everything
answers to everything else … It was a kind of polyphony of signs and references.

(Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, Yale University Press.)

If Christ can be symbolised as a lion, lamb, eagle or peacock then why not as a wondrous piece of
machinery?

It should be no surprise that the symbol of the Mystic Mill has been redeployed. Even from the twelfth
century, there is a detailed drawing of the machinery of a watermill that has the Theotokos emptying
grain into the hopper. This presumably symbolises the transformation of the nutriment she supplies to
the child in her womb into the flesh of the God-Man, Jesus, “the bread which came down from heaven
(John 6:41)”.
I know of two examples in which the Mystic Mill, still clearly signifying Christ, has been used to
symbolise the late medieval doctrine of transubstantiation.

A painted altarpiece of c.1440 shows the Theotokos, assisted by the Evangelists, pouring flour into a
hopper, while below the Pope and hierarchs collect consecrated wafers. In a fifteenth-century stained
glass window from Nuremberg the Evangelists pour unconsecrated wafers into the mill which emerge
as a loaf, signifying the Body of Christ.

The Mystic Mill undergoes another transformation in a print in a Reformation pamphlet of 1521. This
shows Christ pouring the Evangelists into the hopper of a watermill while Erasmus collects the pure
flour of the Word. Behind, Luther kneads dough to bake the bread of Protestant doctrine. A character,
who is probably the Reformer Zwingli, hands Bibles to the Pope, hierarchs and monks, who refuse
them, while another Reformer, Karsthans, flails the Catholics.

The final twist comes with a Swiss stained glass panel of 1566 which depicts Protestants pouring
Popes, Cardinals and monks into a hopper, who then emerge from their grinding as hideous serpents
and dragons. But this scene is a biting satirical protest at the wars, witch hunts and other horrors
perpetrated by both Catholics and Protestants in the period of the Reformation and Counter-
Reformation, for the Protestants are also depicted as diabolical monsters.

Is there any further mileage in the Mystic Mill? For goodness sake, let’s get back to Vézelay and
Suger!
Chapter 3. Apocalypse Now?
We are living through very dangerous times indeed – September 11, the Bali atrocity, suicide
bombers, appalling violations of international law by so-called liberal democratic governments,
nuclear brinkmanship, global warming brought about through human greed and political expediency,
“wars and rumours of wars”. We are witnessing a proliferation of events, almost any one of which
could trigger a third world war or nuclear holocaust and the end of the last vestiges of civilisation.
Armageddon? Is ____________ [fill in the gap with the leader of your choice] the Antichrist? The
Second Coming?

It is in times like these that people turn to the Book of Daniel, the Revelation of John, the apocalyptic
passages in the Synoptic Gospels, or to seers such as Nostradamus in search of unfolding prophecies
of the end of the world. Predictions as to the time of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ
are the stock in trade of way out evangelical preachers and leaders of strange cults. But this disordered
way of thinking can, like a deep-seated computer virus, infect the minds of mainstream Christians,
including Orthodox.

Prophecy and Apocalypse

First and foremost, apocalypse is in the Bible, particularly in the case of the New Testament, to
remind us that Our Lord’s Second Coming could occur at any time and we must be perpetually
vigilant. So, do not delay repentance even for an hour and live each day as if it were your last. The
soundest advice imaginable.

But while the Scriptures contain apocalyptic reminders of divine judgement they also convey
messages of comfort. Horrors engendered by human sin, as well as natural disasters, will occur, but
whatever happens Christ is there to gather His flock to Himself (Matt 23:37; Lk 13:34).

Although scholars usually distinguish prophecy from apocalypse, the two are very closely related, as
is attested by the existence of strongly apocalyptic passages in prophetic books of the Old Testament,
such as: Isaiah 24-27, Ezekiel 38-39, Joel 3 and Zechariah 12-14. Apocalypse certainly shares many of
its characteristics with prophecy, so let us look at that first.

People often equate prophecy with prediction, thinking of the prophet as a divinely inspired
clairvoyant to whom God grants a blow-by-blow vision of future events. But as St Augustine observes,
prophecy is actually a projection into the future from present realities, not a previewing of
occurrences yet to unfold.

Following the example and teaching of Christ Himself, the Church has always interpreted the
prophecies of the Old Testament as speaking of the Saviour and the Church. For example, the
wonderful “suffering servant songs” of the book of Isaiah (42:1-4; 49:1-6; 50:4-9; 52:13 – 53:12) have
frequently been seen, from early times on, as prophecies of the incarnation and passion of Christ.

But, although many such prophecies simply cry out for a Christological interpretation, the reality is
that they could only have been fully understood as such after the passion of Christ had actually taken
place. Considered within historical context, the prophecies usually related to the prophet’s own times.
In so far as they were predictive, they were predictive of outcomes of the near future, and in many
cases the events in question have been identified. To read a prophecy as a prophecy of Christ thus
involves breaking through the historical crust of the text to reach the living Word.

Apocalypse (the word means “uncovering”) is distinctive in several ways. It purports to reveal hidden
things, accessible only by such means as visions and dreams, and it is eschatological or teleological in
character; that is, it relates to an end state. On the one hand, this might be some immanent catastrophe,
which will destroy the existing order of the world (as did Noah’s Flood), or it might be the end of the
world itself. On the other hand, it might concern realms that lie beyond earthly existence; that is,
heaven or hell. Equally, apocalypse is characterised by its pervasive use of symbols and intensity of
violent and terrifying metaphorical language.

Apocalypse is not meant to be read literally. It engages not with the conscious rational mind so much
as with the subterranean depths of the human subconscious from which many of its images and
symbols typically arise. The purpose of biblical apocalyptic is to jolt us out of our complacency, to
compel us to confront our sin, to bring us to repentance.

It is important to understand that, although New Testament apocalypse is directed towards the end of
time, the Second Coming of Christ and the Judgement are also present realities. Thus the Second
Coming is recalled and made present in the Divine Liturgy as if it were a past event in the life of
Jesus.

This is what is known as realised eschatology. That which was spoken by the prophets (interpreted
Christocentrically), and which is to come, is a present reality anticipated through the mysteries of the
Church. Every time we turn to God in repentance, every time we come in faith to the celebration of the
mysteries, we confront the Judgement and receive God’s forgiveness. Similarly, Christ speaks of the
Kingdom of God as that state of being which is to come, but also as that which is already with and
within us.

So, if you want to know the outcome of the Iraq War, or whether there will be a nuclear holocaust, or
when rising sea levels will submerge your home, biblical prophecy and apocalyptic is not the place to
go. But what of the predictions of astrologers, soothsayers and seers such as Nostradamus? Can we
find guidance here? Let us ponder the extraordinary apocalyptic story of the Dun Cow.

The Prophecy of the Dun Cow

The Dun (= greyish brown) Cow was a monstrous beast of English legend which was eventually slain
by a knight by the name of Guy of Warwick. The story I am about to recount, however, concerns
Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (c.1473-1530) – Archbishop of York, one time Papal aspirant and Henry
VIII’s Lord Chancellor (= chief minister) – and is recorded in a biography of Wolsey by a long-
serving gentleman of his household, George Cavendish (Thomas Wolsey Late Cardinal His Life and
Death, Folio Society).

The event occurred after Wolsey’s dismissal as Chancellor for failing to obtain a Papal annulment of
Henry’s marriage to Katharine of Aragon so that he could marry his popsie, Anne Boleyn. While the
Cardinal was staying at Richmond, now a suburb of London, Cavendish recalls an evening when he
was walking on one side of the garden while Wolsey was walking on the other side saying his
devotions with a chaplain.

Cardinal Thomas Wolsey

Cavendish, in the course of his perambulations, came across a collection of wooden heraldic beasts,
one of which was the Dun Cow. (Presumably, they were designed as garden ornaments to be erected,
as was the fashion, on high columns.) While Cavendish was examining the animals the Cardinal
joined him. Cavendish remarked that he thought that the Dun Cow was the most intricately carved of
the beasts. Wolsey said that there was a prophecy concerning the Dun Cow in the form of a saying,
which he then quoted:
When the cow rideth the bull
Then priest, beware thy skull.

The consequence of Wolsey’s failure in “the King’s Great Matter” was that Henry severed the English
Church’s links with the Papacy so that he could obtain an annulment of his marriage through the
offices of a subservient Archbishop of Canterbury. It was, of course, this action which instigated the
English Reformation and led to the dissolution of the monasteries and the passing of the Act of
Supremacy which made Henry head of the Church. These cataclysmic events resulted in the execution
of many clergy, such as the saintly Bishop of Rochester, John Fisher.

Once these events had unfolded, the interpretation of the verse seemed clear to all. The Dun Cow
signified the King, since the beast was a heraldic emblem of the Earls of Richmond. The King’s
father, Henry VII, had been Earl of Richmond (Richmond in Yorkshire, not the Richmond near
London) at the time that he assumed the Crown.

A bull was depicted in the coat of arms of the Boleyn (originally spelled “Bullen”) family. The
prophecy, therefore, seemed plain: when Henry married Anne many priests would die. In fact, Wolsey
himself only escaped the axe by dying of natural causes on his way to be tried for high treason.

Good reason for dusting off your copy of Nostradamus? Cavendish could have been excused for
proclaiming his extraordinary story a great triumph of popular prophecy. In fact, with great wisdom,
he does the reverse, warning against trying to predict the future by attempting to unravel cryptic
prophecies. You are more likely to harm yourself than to avoid danger by following seers and
soothsayers. Prophecies, he perceptively observes, are often self-fulfilling; belief in them brings about
the very circumstances which guarantees the feared outcome: “Let prophecies alone, in God’s name.
Apply your vocation, and commit the exposition of such dark riddles … to God”, Cavendish declares.

When is a Prophecy not a Prophecy?

Let us consider this so-called “prophecy” a little more closely. Was the saying a prophecy at all before
it was interpreted in terms of the marriage of Henry and Anne and its aftermath? I think not.

Cavendish says that at the time of the incident in the garden neither he nor Wolsey understood the
meaning of the verse. Yet it seems likely that Wolsey did in fact interpret it in terms of his own
predicament – why else would he have quoted the saying as a prophecy? – though he said nothing to
Cavendish of his train of thought.

The Cardinal was convinced that Anne had already poisoned the King’s mind against him. Knowing
the King all too well, and knowing that Henry was consumed with lust for Anne, the Cardinal was in
no doubt that she could further damage him (he called her the King’s “night crow” – no explanation is
necessary!).

Whether or not Wolsey had already interpreted the verse as applying to the union of Henry and Anne
or not, others did so after the events had occurred. But a prophecy was not revealed, a prophecy was
created. This is not exegesis, the unravelling of the prophetic meaning contained in the verse, but an
injection of meaning into the verse, eisegesis. Had the saying not been interpreted this way, sooner or
later someone else would in all likelihood have construed it as a prophecy of a completely different
sequence of events.

What use, as a guide to preventative action, is a prophecy of doom that only becomes a prophecy
during or after the happening supposedly prophesised? No, forget about horoscopes and give your
copy of Nostradamus to a charity book sale. Don’t burn it. Burning books is the sort of thing Henry
VIII was wont to do.
Chapter 4. Restoring Paradise
For the Lord will comfort Zion; he … will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert
like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the
voice of song. (Isaiah 51:3)

In England, all the land surrounding your house would be called “the garden”. In Australia it is called
“the yard”; though there might well be an area or areas given over to trees, lawn, vegie patch or plant
borders and described as “garden”. Between these two conventions, “yard” and “garden”, there is,
however, a world of difference.

Which to have: a garden, some areas of which might reluctantly be sacrificed to utilitarian ends, or a
yard, cheerfully concreted over and almost entirely devoted to drive, carport and barbecue area, with,
perhaps, a swimming pool, tennis court, or parking space for a boat or caravan?

It would be far too simplistic to conclude, however, that Poms have gardens and Aussies yards. Flying
to and from London airports, it is obvious that climate change has precipitated an Australianisation of
the famed English garden. Swimming pools and barbecue areas, almost unknown in English suburbia
until recent years, now punctuate the landscape, and parked boats and caravans are much in evidence.

The alienation of the earth by concrete (not to mention bitumen) has been compounded in recent years
by the building of “Macmansions”. These outrageously large houses, with triple garages and umpteen
bathrooms, eliminate having to make a choice between yard and garden by covering almost the whole
block. Often, there is barely enough space left for a Hill’s hoist or a pocket-handkerchief of grass
where the dog can perform its duty.

Utilitarian versus Aesthetic

Garden versus yard is not really an issue of utilitarian versus aesthetic. Gardens can, and indeed
should, encompass the useful. Vegetable gardens, for example, can be spaces of great beauty, and
garden designers have rediscovered the Ancient Roman practice of aesthetically blending ornamental
plants, formal hedging and pergolas with fruit trees, herbs and vegetables. Even swimming pools and
barbecue areas can aesthetically enhance a garden if they are properly landscaped into a suburban
block.

If we go back to the eighteenth century origins of the English landscape garden, we find that the
driving motivation was to combine the beautifying of the landscape with the productive and economic
use of land. No, yard versus garden is not about the utilitarian versus the aesthetic, but about
conflicting attitudes of mind.

Does one think of one’s block of land as somewhere on which to build a Macmansion or to dedicate
totally to utilitarian purposes? Or, alternatively, does one think of one’s block as a space within which
human labour and love can cooperate with God and nature to create an image of Paradise? Genesis
tells us that God created a garden for the enjoyment of Adam, not a Macmansion for him to rattle
around in.

The Greek word paradeisos, “Paradise”, translated “garden”, would on its own have denoted an
enclosed orchard rather than a garden. However, the Hebrew word “Eden” meant “delight” and
Genesis says that: “out of the ground the Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the
sight and good for food (2:9)”. Thus God was concerned not just with providing Adam with a
superabundance of good tucker but also with a visually pleasing environment (the utilitarian and
aesthetic in equal measure).

God provided a river to water the garden, which divided into four as it owed out of Eden. The garden
was also to be the home of animals, like Adam and Eve vegetarians (the eating of meat was only
permitted after the Flood) and living in peace with one another and with humanity. So Eden would
have been like the Ancient Greek Arcadia which the English landscape gardeners tried to recreate as
parks, conscious of the parallel with the biblical Paradise.

The word “Paradise” was also used by Christ on the cross when He addressed the penitent thief:
“Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise (Lk 23:43)”. Now, Christ was not, of
course, referring to an actual garden. He was using the word “Paradise” as a metaphor, calling to mind
the biblical narrative of the Garden of Eden, to signify the state of blessedness into which the thief
would enter on death.

In all likelihood, Christ chose the metaphor of a garden, a place of peace and tranquillity where
(metaphorically speaking) God walks “in the cool of the day (Gen 3:8)”, in order to bring some
comfort to a man in the extremities of suffering. In fact, other New Testament metaphors exist
alongside that of the garden/Paradise for the world to come, those of the supercelestial heavens and of
the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem. All three images can be found juxtaposed in iconography.

Here we might recall that it was to a garden, the Garden of Gethsemane, that Christ repaired to pray
during the last agonising hours before His crucifixion, and it was in a garden that He was entombed
and rose from the dead. Further, it is not without significance that it was as the gardener that Mary
Magdalene mistook her Saviour on Easter morning.

Paradise Lost

Human beings have desecrated, and continue to desecrate God’s creation. But now, particularly with
global warming, we are beginning to taste some of the just deserts of our sins.

All of us can at least do something about these national and global violations. We can put pressure on
governments; we can give prayerful thought as to how best to cast our vote; we can support
organisations seeking to redress crimes against the creation. But what most of us can do on the world
or even national or State levels is limited.

Where every one of us can make a real difference is in our personal lives. Even if you live in a home
unit, you can conserve water and energy, recycle waste, exercise moral diligence in what you buy, and
decide (if feasible) to travel to work by public transport. And all of us can pray. Orthodox tradition has
always recognised the leaving of as slight an environmental footprint as possible as one aim of the
ascetic life.

But many of us are blessed by being in a position to do something more. I refer to those, like my wife
and I, who have limited control over an area of land. We can actually strive to reclaim (or preserve
and nurture if the land happens to be virgin bush) a little piece of the earth for God.
I say “have control over” because, though we might enjoy freehold title, no Christian can own land.
The earth is God’s and we are but God’s stewards who, for a little while, exercise care of the land and
are answerable to God for our stewardship. That care might be to farm the land efficiently, sustainably
and morally, but for suburbanites it can be to transform degraded or partially degraded land into a
beautiful and productive garden, an icon of Paradise.

Restoring Eden?

In earlier times, major churches had an atrium, a large rectangular courtyard surrounded by a
colonnade through which one walked to reach the doors into the narthex. In the centre was a cantharus
(fountain) at which it was customary to wash before entering the church.

The atrium, as also the monastic cloister that derives from it, symbolises Paradise, both the Garden of
Eden and the Supercelestial Paradise. The atrium would have been a reminder that Paradise lost
through the Fall could be regained. (The atrium should again be recognised as an important
component of a church. Unfortunately, many parishes today seem more interested in constructing a
“Mac Cathedral”, which engulfs all available land, than in creating a garden in which God can walk in
the cool of the day.)

Another important biblical metaphor is that of the wilderness. It was to the wilderness that Adam and
Eve were sent when expelled from Eden. Several Fathers saw a positive aspect to the expulsion.
Before the Fall, their act of disobedience, Adam and Eve had been in a state of innocence, but the
challenge of the wilderness offered a greater blessing attainable by means of virtue.

The Fall thus became the felix culpa, the propitious fault, as a consequence of which a greater Paradise
than Eden could be won through physical and moral struggle. Part of this struggle consists precisely in
the transforming of the wilderness into an image or type of Paradise.

The house that my wife and I bought almost thirty years ago has a sizeable garden (Plate la)
descending down a hillside, with weathered sandstone retaining walls, terraces and tall old trees. The
hillside eventually comes down to a creek below our land. The garden was one of the main reasons we
bought the house. But pressures of work and commuting, and several protracted periods overseas, led
to serious neglect of the garden by myself for over twenty years. It was only with so-called
“retirement” that I turned my attention to the jungle stretching down the hillside.

I had hoped that the garden would simply return to the bush, but in fact it became a forest of
horrendous weeds. A great deal of virtuous hard labour and thought would be required of Adam the
Gardener to convert (with some assistance) this piece of wilderness into an icon of Paradise.

Decisions had to be made. The atrium, the monastic cloister and medieval secular garden had been
enclosed. Besides Paradise, the enclosed garden symbolised the perpetual virginity of the Theotokos,
following the verse of the Song of Solomon (4:12 AV):
A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse;
A spring shut up, a fountain sealed.

But should we create an enclosed garden, or should it be as open to the world as constraints of fencing
demanded? The eighteenth century gardeners had opened up their Arcadian parks to the landscape by
establishing eyecatchers in the far distance and using sunken fences. Neither device was possible for
us, but should we not create a pleasing open front garden for the enjoyment of passers by as well as
ourselves? And should we not seek to harmonise the garden with the neighbourhood? Both
possibilities seemed desirable.

A garden is a microcosm of the world at large. The environmental issues that beset the world also
confront the suburban gardener. Should one use only home-brewed compost and organic fertilisers?
Should one use poisons in the war on noxious weeds? Should one plant only drought resistant, or only
native, species? Should one rip out all lawn? Should one use only collected rain or recycled water?
These are not just practical but also moral decisions.

Take the issue of poisons. Even so-called safe herbicides can harm lizards, frogs, and other wildlife.
But we have a problem with vicious weeds which I felt I could not solve without the assistance of
poisons. So I am using minimal carefully directed herbicide where necessary but never spray ground-
cover weeds, which could affect wildlife.

And yes, fruit-stealing ringtailed possums who wake you up in the middle of the night playing
chasings on the roof, lawn-digging bandicoots, loudly croaking frogs, screeching cockatoos, the
several thousand fruit bats who fly directly over the garden at dusk and first light each day, all are
welcome in our Paradise in the making. I must, however, try to find a way of preventing the
kookaburras from breakfasting on goldfish.

I have made many mistakes and there is still a great deal left undone. I still have not eliminated all the
vicious weeds. I still have not had the planned water tanks installed. But Adam the Gardener is very
slowly becoming wiser and more knowledgeable, and the wilderness is very slowly being transformed
into an image of Paradise. At least, I think it is. And what was the final thing? Oh yes, I do wish
sometimes that we had a swimming pool.
Chapter 5. Is There Such a Thing as Original Sin?
In last month’s Vema I wrote of Paradise, the Garden of Eden, the pleasure park which God prepared
for the sustenance and tranquil enjoyment of newly-created humanity, and in which He Himself could
(metaphorically speaking) take a relaxing stroll in the cool of the day. But the unfortunate mishap that
occurred there, the so-called “Fall”, rated only a mention in passing. It is this little hiccup that we
shall address this month.

The story (Genesis 2:4 - 3:24) is surely familiar to everyone, but a reminder might be helpful. Having
placed him in the garden, God gave Adam just one instruction: “You may freely eat of every tree of
the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat (2:16-17)”.

Simple enough, one would think. But Eve, the wife God had made for Adam from one of his spare
ribs, was persuaded by the serpent (who at that time had legs) to disobey God’s commandment. By
eating the fruit, the serpent assured her, she would become “like God, knowing good and evil (3:5)”.

And so, needless to say, Eve ate the fruit and gave some to Adam, and the silly man munched
mindlessly away. Both then realised that they were naked and hid their shame with an apron of fig
leaves. Innocence had been lost.

Of course, after a breakfast of forbidden fruit, it was the headmaster’s study and punishment all round
(3:5). The serpent was condemned henceforth to slither along on its belly. Eve was condemned to
obedience to her husband and the pains of childbirth. Adam was condemned to a lifetime of toil
working the weed-infested land until he returned to the earth from which he had been created: “you
are dust, and to dust you shall return (3:19)”. (Incidentally, these are the traditional words used in the
West by the priest while imposing ash of the previous year’s palms onto the forehead of the
worshipper on the first day of Lent, Ash Wednesday.)

Finally, came expulsion from the Garden. This was necessary, God tells Adam and Eve, lest they
should eat of the fruit of the tree of life in the centre of the garden, and thus become immortal.

Original Sin
How should this tale be interpreted? Some Fathers of the Church, dubiously claiming St Paul as an
ally, read the Fall as an episode of such catastrophic proportions that it not only brought evil and death
into the world but led to the crucifixion of Christ, since only God incarnate could effect atonement for
so great a sin. The doctrine of original sin was born. It received its classical statement in St Augustine
(354-430).

The Augustinian doctrine in its essentials was endorsed by a Western council at Carthage (411-418)
and declared an article of faith for Roman Catholics by the Council of Trent in 1546. It was also
adopted, in some cases with a slightly different emphasis, by the Protestant reformers. For the sake of
simplicity, I will focus here on Augustine’s development of the doctrine rather than later
ecclesiastical formulations. So, just what is the Augustinian doctrine, and why did Augustine develop
it?

Augustine did not invent the doctrine, he had predecessors, notably Cyprian (d.258) and Ambrose
(c.339-397). As with his predecessors, the starting point for Augustine’s train of thought was the
problem of infant baptism. Augustine believed that infant baptism had been the universal practice of
the Church since Apostolic times. But why does the Church see a necessity to baptise infants before
they could have committed any personal sin? Answer: there had to be some other kind of sin which it
was necessary to salvation to wash away. But what sort of sin could this be?

Like his immediate predecessors, but unlike earlier Fathers, Augustine turns to the story of the
disobedience of Adam and Eve for an answer. According to Genesis, Adam and Eve were expelled
from the garden and they, together with all of their descendants, condemned to a life of toil, pain and
struggle because of their disobedience to the command of God.

Not only do all of us suffer the consequences of the Fall but, Augustine reasons, we have also
inherited the guilt of our first pair of ancestors. It is this original sin, a deep-seated corruption of our
nature which heavily biases us in the direction of evil over good, that infants possess and which must
be cleansed by the waters of the font in order to avoid damnation.

Once the concept of original sin is in place, Augustine and his followers are able to argue that it not
only explains the practice of infant baptism but it resolves another question, that of why the
incarnation and crucifixion of Christ were necessary at all. Answer: By His sacrificial death on the
cross Christ atoned for original sin and redeemed us from the curse of the Fall. Christ’s sacrifice on
our behalf is mediated through the Church by means of baptism. Only by the infusion of supernatural
baptismal grace can we be saved.

Baptism, however, could only wash away the guilt of original sin, Augustine held, not the punishment
incurred as, obviously, the baptised are still prone to sin. For Augustine, the punishment endured by
humanity on account of the Fall was above all that of concupiscence.

Although concupiscence has often been reduced to sexual lust (and Augustine, in the light of his own
early experience, clearly had this principally, though not exclusively, in mind) it actually denotes
inordinate desire or lust in general. Judging by the Augustinian inspired grotesque iconography of
medieval Western churches, concupiscence, or luxuria, was seen as manifesting itself as gluttony and
avarice as well as lasciviousness.

However, for Augustine, sexual passion had a special relevance as he was inclined to believe, though
not without some hesitation, that the soul was transmitted along with the flesh through the act of
sexual intercourse. Even marital intercourse thereby became the instrument for the propagation and
perpetuation of human corruption.

Augustine’s doctrine also supplied a partial answer to a third major puzzle that worried the Fathers,
that of the existence of evil. How can God, who is love, be the creator of evil? Answer: He cannot.
Evil was not created by God but entered the world as a consequence of the disobedience of Adam and
Eve.

Answering such theological conundrums, it is not difficult to see how it was that the dogma of original
sin became a fundamental plank in the dogmatic edifice of both Roman Catholicism and classical
Protestantism.

Is the Doctrine of Original Sin Correct?

No theological chain of argument can lead to a sound conclusion if even one essential
assumption/premise from which it follows is false. The doctrine of original sin, in fact, does depend
on several premises that are clearly faulty. Let me focus on two:

Faulty Premise 1. The account of the Fall in Genesis 2 and 3 is, at least in its essentials, historical
record.

Obviously, if there were no actual individuals called Adam and Eve then there could have been no sin
to be biologically transmitted to future generations. The doctrine in its classical form therefore rests
on the historicity of the narrative of the Fall. But a historicist and literalistic reading of the narrative
cannot be sustained.

Lacking our scientific and historical background knowledge, and our tools of textual analysis, it is not
in the least surprising that Fathers of the Church should have assumed that the Genesis narrative, even
if it contained allegorical elements, was basically historical record. There simply was no serious rival
account of human origins (other than the Epicurean, which for various reasons they would have
dismissed) with which to challenge the Genesis account.

Most biblical scholars now hold that the narrative is a mythopoeic allegory deployed in order to
convey theological and spiritual messages and not actual history. In fact, it is improper to regard the
biological origins of humanity as a theological question; it is an issue for science and archaeology.

Faulty Premise 2. Acts of sin committed by our first ancestors could be biologically transmitted to
future generations.

Why did Augustine and his followers believe that a sin could be biologically inherited? The answer
lies in an ancient theory of generation, known as preformationism, that seems to have been accepted in
one form or another by at least many Fathers of the Church.

This theory has its source in the observation that plants germinate from seeds planted in the soil.
Today we know that seeds are the product of sexual reproduction, but this was not known before the
seventeenth century. (The exception that proves the rule is the date palm, the sexuality of which was
probably known as early as the Babylonians.)
It was believed that the seed, including that of higher animals and human beings, contained packed
within it all the basic parts of the organism that then simply unfold and expand to form the foetus or
seedling. As it seemed impossible that the providing of the preformed embryo/seed could be the joint
work of both Mum and Dad, it was believed that it was supplied by the male alone. The male
“planted” the embryo in the mother and her womb then supplied the nutriment necessary for its
development.

Preformationists further held that the preformed embryos of all future generations were contained
within the first male ancestor of a species at its creation. On this strange view, the corruption of all
future generations could conceivably have occurred as a consequence of Adam’s sin. (Not, observe,
Eve’s sin; though it was Eve who was routinely blamed for the Fall by Fathers.)

In Early Modern times, a variant “ovist” form of preformationism, which sourced the preformed
embryo in Mum rather Dad, developed as a popular alternative to the earlier “spermist” version the
Fathers would have assumed.

Needless to say, preformationism is totally ruled out by modern science. An act of disobedience by
Adam or Eve could not have been transmitted to future generations. Knock out these two premises and
the Augustinian doctrine collapses.

But there is a lot else that is wrong with the concept of original sin. Let me just mention three issues
briefly:

First, there is simply nothing in the Genesis narrative which justifies Augustine’s belief that God had
inflicted concupiscence on Adam and Eve as a punishment, thereby so corrupting humanity that, in the
absence of supernatural grace, men and women were rendered almost powerless to resist choosing evil
over good.

Second, biblical proof-texts quoted to secure the doctrine, such as Paul’s “sin came into the world
through one man …” (Romans 5:12) and “as in Adam all die …”(1 Corinthians 15:22), are open to
quite different (and more plausible) interpretation if one comes to them free from the prior
assumption of original sin.

Third, Augustine’s belief that the necessity for infant baptism was universally accepted can be
challenged. Certainly, there were those, such as Tertullian (c.160–c.220), who thought infant baptism
was undesirable. It is highly likely that infant baptism was known in Apostolic times, but the reason it
was performed was probably the desire of converted parents for the family in its entirety to be
received into the Church (see Acts 16:25-34), not any conception that baptism of infants was essential
to salvation.

Acknowledging that the historicity of certain events, such as the crucifixion, are articles of faith, the
doctrine of original sin should be a terrible warning to theologians not to ground authoritative
theological dogmas or moral injunctions on scientific or historical premises. Such premises are
always liable to rejection as the evidence shifts. To declare a doctrine so based an article of faith is
simply unacceptable. Equally unacceptable is the declaring of moral directives, justified by argument
grounded in such empirical premises, binding on the faithful.

The doctrine remains the official teaching of the Roman Catholic and Anglican (see the Ninth Article
of Religion) Churches and continues to be defended, with some attempts at reformulation, throughout
Western Christianity. On the other hand, although the doctrine has undoubtedly had an influence on
the Orthodox East, it was not accepted by the Eastern Fathers in general, at least in anything like its
Augustinian form.

Discarding the Augustinian doctrine of original sin and its derivatives, however, leaves us with the
task of providing alternative answers to the questions answered (or partially answered) by the
doctrine. It also leaves us with the obligation to explain how the narrative of the Fall in Genesis
should be read. We shall, God willing, have something to say about these matters next month.
Chapter 6. Doing the Right Thing by Adam and Eve
In the last issue of Vema, I attempted to show that the Augustinian doctrine of original sin collapses
because certain premises essential to the argument are simply wrong.

While hopefully we might have cleared away some dead wood, we are still left with the conundrums
for which the doctrine seemingly provided at least partial answers. Why, in St Paul’s words, is it that I
“not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do (Romans 7:19)”? Is infant baptism
essential to wash away innate sin? Why was the incarnation of Christ and His crucifixion necessary?

These are major questions and I am not going to attempt comprehensive answers. Rather, I invite the
reader to join with me in a little gentle rumination on the text of Genesis. First, however, we need to
set down some rules of engagement.

Laying Down Some Rules

Most obviously, we must restrict ourselves to well-attested Orthodox principles of interpretation. One
such principle is that we must commence with the literal meaning of the text. Here, the first task is to
establish exactly what the literary genre of the text is. This it historical record, prophecy, allegory,
just what?

Once we have given our best shot at tying down the literal meaning, we can proceed to search for
deeper spiritual meaning lying beneath the surface of the text; the sensus plenior, the fuller meaning
of Scripture. In determining the sensus plenior, we must interpret the text Christocentrically. Christ is
the Logos, the eternal Word of the Father, and as such is the divine (as opposed to human) author of
Scripture (see, e.g., John 5:39 – 40,46). The Old Testament must be read through the lens of the New,
especially the Gospels.

As we proceed, we must bring our background scientific, archaeological, historical, philological etc.
knowledge along with us. It is a most extraordinary thing that many people, including a good few
misguided Orthodox, think that it is virtuous to deposit their brains outside the church door before
entering. The Fathers of the Church would have been overjoyed had they had access to our vastly
superior background knowledge.

We have been made in the image of God and, whatever else that means, it means that we are logical
sheep – “logical” having the double meaning “of the Logos”, that is of Christ, the Good Shepherd, and
“rational”. God has given us rational minds, if we refuse to use them they will atrophy and we will
become dingbats, illogical sheep in both senses.

While, on the one hand, we should bring our background knowledge along, on the other hand we
should bring along the deep spiritual and theological insights of the Fathers, one of the great treasures
of Orthodoxy. With something old and something new (not the same thing as putting new wine into
old wine skins!), let us see what we can do with Genesis 2:4 – 3:24.

An Alternative Approach

We realise today that the Genesis narrative is beyond historical record, an allegory concerning the
human condition and humanity’s relation to God. Origen (c.185– c.254) did regard the narrative as an
allegory, but the Fathers in general, while they typically observed that much of the language was
anthropomorphic and allegorical, assumed that there was a core of historical fact. For this we cannot
blame them, given the limitations of their background knowledge.

In some cases, particularly in the case of Greek Fathers, this assumption had no serious consequences.
In the case of Augustine (354-430) it did; not only because of his reliance on it as a necessary premise
in his argument for original sin but for another reason. Stressing that Adam and Eve were biologically
the first pair of ancestors led to his treating the narrative as a description of the first moments in a
continuing chain of causally linked events.

It says a great deal for the perspicacity of certain Fathers that they did not read the narrative in this
linear way. As early as the second century, Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons in France and probably a Greek
from Smyrna (c.135-c.202), regarded Paradise as a future state of blessedness to which we are called.
Moreover, that state had already been mystically realised in Christ, the New Adam, in whom the
whole history of humanity was recapitulated.

The purpose of the Paschal Mystery of Our Lord (and hence of baptism) was not, for Irenaeus, to
redeem us from original sin (of which he knows nothing) but to make possible our theosis/deification:
“ The Logos [the Word, i.e. Christ] was made human in order that we might be made God”. These
words were echoed by virtually every Greek Father of the Church. Irenaeus had laid the foundations
for an alternative tradition to that later established by Augustine.

Following our ground rules, let me try to sketch a non-Augustinian way of reading the narrative,
bearing in mind that there can be no such thing as a definitive reading. As we believe that the Logos is
the divine author of Scripture, we can never claim that we have plumbed any passage of Scripture to
its depths or seized the fullness of its meaning.

Reading the Genesis Narrative

With Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa (c.335-394) and others, we should take ourselves as our point of
reference. We live in a fallen world characterised by the struggle for survival, a world of sin and
death, of violence and suffering, and of alienation from God, our fellow human beings and the non-
human creation. And that is how it has always been.

Augustine was at least right in maintaining that there is a deep-seated rottenness in human beings, an
innate disposition which can lead us all too often to choose evil over good. (Some Greek Fathers call
this disposition “original sin” and trace its source to our solidarity with Adam. But a disposition to sin
is not an actual sin.) But is human life today, as throughout history, what God “intends” it to be? (God
obviously cannot actually have intentions, but it is convenient, for present purposes, to use the word.)
Are human beings beyond perfectibility? The answer to both questions is “No”.

The mythopoeic allegory of the Garden of Eden reveals both God’s intention for humanity, and
explains why that intention has been thwarted. The allegory tells us that God created humanity in His
own image and likeness. But as the Fathers teach, while the image cannot be obliterated by sin, the
likeness, the beauty of spiritual perfection, is something that is only achieved through baptism and the
life in Christ. Moreover, its realisation involves ascetic struggle.
According to the Genesis narrative, God’s intention for humanity is plain. We should live in perpetual
communion with Him, and we should desire freely to choose the good, as St Anselm, Archbishop of
Canterbury (c.1033-1109) put it, just because it is the good (a pretty good characterisation of what it
means to enjoy perfect freedom through servitude to Christ).

Paradise, depicted as a state of blessedness in which human beings dwell in harmony not only with
God and their fellow human beings but with the whole creation, is achievable only through the Paschal
Mystery of Christ. Paradise is to come, yet it is already realised in Christ in the Church. But this
Paradise-to-come, but which now is, is not equitable with the primeval state of humanity. Rousseau’s
noble savage never existed.

Before the creation of Eve, within the allegory, Adam exemplifies the fullness and integration of
humanity per se – remember St Paul’s, in Christ there is neither male nor female (Galatians 3:28). For
a fleeting moment, Adam is revealed as archetypal humanity as God intended us to be. But it is an
indistinct foreshadowing of the incarnation, when Christ, the prototype of humanity in all its
perfection, became flesh. Christ is the New Adam who will redeem the Old Adam of Genesis; that is,
each and every one of us because Adam is not an historical person but every human being,
“Everyman”.

It is in this sense, not the Augustinian, that we should understand St Paul when he says “as in Adam all
die … (1 Corinthians 15:22)” and “sin came into the world through one man … (Romans 5:12)”. St
Paul is writing within the allegory in order to make an important theological point, not making
assertions about the historicity of the narrative. Even if he did take it to be basically historical record,
that is irrelevant.

Further, Paul is certainly not asserting that Adam’s sin was inherited. This becomes clear from the full
text of Romans 5:12: “ Therefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin,
and so death spread to all men because all men sinned”. We share in Adam’s sin through our solidarity
with him by virtue of the fact that we also have sinned. St Paul’s interest is in contrasting one man, the
prototype of perfect humanity, Christ, with another single (if non-historical) individual, Adam, the
prototype of fallen humanity. For Paul, Adam “was a type [that is, a negative or reverse type] of the
one who was to come (Romans 5:14)”. So, the fleeting moment of wholeness passes, archetypal
Adam, the representative of every human being, gives up a rib and Eve is created. Man and woman,
beguiled by Satan, eat the fruit. But this is not so much a choice of whether to obey or disobey a moral
injunction as an existential dividing of the ways.

Adam and Eve have the choice of living in communion with God, freely choosing the good because it
is the good, or to go the way of the ego, of making their own wilful choices, for good or for ill,
irrespective of God’s good. In Adam/Everyperson we have, like lost sheep, taken the route that leads
to sin and death - sin being that which severs communion with God, and hence leads to spiritual death.

Rebirth in Christ

But all is not lost, what we cannot do for ourselves, be born again, Christ can do for us. Baptism does
not wash away original sin because original sin, as understood in the Augustinian tradition, does not
exist. Rather, through baptism (and, of course, Augustine is not unaware of this) we appropriate to
ourselves the Paschal Mystery of Our Lord. We sacramentally die with Him, are buried with Him, and
are resurrected with, and clothed in, Him.

As a consequence of this rebirthing all actual personal sin is cleansed. But even adults emerge from
the waters as spiritual infants (and are so depicted in early iconography).

Baptism is the beginning of the life in Christ, but there is a long way still to travel. In the eucharistic
life of the Church, the fruit of the Tree of Life, denied to Adam and Eve, becomes our food in Christ.
As Gregory of Nazianzus (329/330-389) says, “Christ is brought up to the tree and nailed to it – yet by
the Tree of Life He restores us.”

We will still stumble, time and again, but from now on we travel the Way which leads to Paradise by,
with, through and in He who said: “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, no one can come to the
Father but by me (John 14:6)”.
Chapter 7. Are We Bound by Moral Laws?
The answer to the question is “No”. Now, this will almost certainly shock some people. I can hear
cries of: “What of the Ten Commandments?” “What of the Church canons?” “What of the just
fulminations of hierarchs against the sins of wayward flocks?” I can almost hear the cries of “Heresy!
Fetch the faggots, light the fire and be done with this libertarian Pom”. So, before arrows descend
upon me from the skies, let me hasten to explain.

The Gospel Message

Orthodoxy grounds its approach to morality firmly in the teaching of the Gospel. Christ taught not that
the Jewish law was abolished, with His coming, but rather that it was subsumed under, and
reinterpreted through, the New Commandment of love of God and love of one’s neighbour. When the
Pharisee lawyer tested Christ by asking Him the question “Teacher, which is the great commandment
in the law?” Christ replied:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You
shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law
and the prophets (Matthew 22:37-40).”

Love of God and love of one’s neighbour are the two sides of the same coin. If you sincerely love God
then you will also love your neighbour, because your neighbour is in God’s image . If you love your
neighbour then you will love God, because in your neighbour you will see the face of Christ.

In Luke’s account of the New Commandment, the lawyer puts the question to Christ: “And who is my
neighbour?” And Jesus answers him by means of the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37).
Every person with whom we come into contact or are in a position to help is our neighbour. At the
Last Supper Christ says to the Apostles:
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved
you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my
disciples, if you have love for one another (Jn 13:34-35)”.

Christ Himself frequently violated the letter of the law to make the point that the law was given for
the benefit of humanity and should be followed in its spirit rather than letter: “the Sabbath was made
for man, not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27)”.

Christ died to free us from bondage to the law and give us the freedom of sons of light in union with
Him. Christians are bound by the spirit of the law, “interpreted by love”, but not by the letter.
Paradoxically, it is by being yoked to Christ that we become free of the law.

Paul’s Message

For Paul, the Jewish law was a dividing wall which stood between humanity and God, indicting of sin
those in bondage to the law (Ephesians 2:14-16). This partition Christ has broken down. Now
Christians can have a direct personal relationship with God by virtue of being clothed in Christ
through their baptism into His death and resurrection (Galatians 3:27). Christians, as a consequence,
have been freed from the obligations of the law:
“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful.
“All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be enslaved by anything (1 Corinthians
6:12)

The connection between baptism and freedom from the law is clear from the verse immediately before
the one just quoted: “you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of God.”

Now the only law for Christians is the law of love: “Owe no one anything, except to love one another;
for he who loves his neighbour has fulfilled the law (Romans 13:8)”. “So faith, hope, love abide, these
three; but the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13).” But obedience to the over-arching New
Commandment of love does not entail a lesser demand on us than the keeping of the Jewish law
entailed but a greater.

We do not belong to ourselves, we belong to Christ. If we are true followers of Christ, it is not we who
make decisions as to what is right or wrong according to individual reason or inclination, the dictates
of the ego, or to public or even ecclesiastical morality, but Christ who is within us and owns us. Our
moral freedom is a consequence of our enslavement to Christ: “You are not your own; you were
bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)”. And Christ Himself says: “Take my yoke upon you, and
learn from me (Matthew 11:29)”.

But the Mystery is deeper even than this. By freely accepting enslavement to Him, Christ not only
frees us from bondage to the law and enslavement to “the elemental spirits of the universe”, but
bestows on us, if we will but accept it, the ultimate gift , the perfect freedom of sons of God (Galatians
4:3-7).

The person who knows “the mind of the Lord”, Paul says, cannot be judged or instructed by another:
The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has
known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ (1
Corinthians 2:15-16).

The Christian Moral Life

Having fulfilled the Jewish Law, it was certainly not Christ’s will that His disciples should erect a
body of Christian law to replace it. As the Christian matures in the life in Christ, moral rules should be
allowed to fall away and moral action determined by the indwelling Saviour. We are justified not “by
works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ (Galatians 2:16; see also, 16 through 21)”.

The person born again into Christ is Christ’s slave and no one has the right – no Pope, Patriarch or
Council – to intervene in that personal relationship, any more than anyone had the right to intervene
under Roman law in the relationship of master and slave.

For those living in Christ the law has been totally absorbed into the New Commandment of love. The
New Commandment is not, however, a new law added to or replacing the Deuteronomic Law or its
summary, the Ten Commandments. In fact, it is not strictly a moral law at all but, in philosopher-
speak, a meta-ethical law. That is, a directive that tells Christians by what criterion they should make
decisions when confronted by a moral choice.

Is this a recipe for moral anarchy? It is not. For while Christians might enjoy absolute moral freedom
in Christ, they are at the same time members of the Good Shepherd’s fold, the Church. No Christian is
an island.

In the view of Orthodoxy, the Christian life can only be led within the body of Christ. The committed
Orthodox Christian is immersed in and guided by Holy Tradition in its entirety –the Scriptures, the
theological consensus and spiritual wisdom of the Fathers, the dogmatic decisions of the ecumenical
councils, the teaching of the holy icons, the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church. Moreover,
they will give heed to the teaching of those appointed as earthly shepherds of Christ’s flock and to the
counsel of spiritual mothers and fathers.

The moral teaching of the New Testament finds its liturgical expression in doxology, as is the case
with its dogmatic teaching summarised in the Creed. It is interesting to note that at the precise place
that the English Reformer, Archbishop Cranmer, introduced the recitation of the Ten Commandments
into the Prayer Book Communion service, the Orthodox Church, in the Divine Liturgy, normally
chants the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12) as part of the Typica. (Regrettably, in modern Greek usage
antiphons usually replace the Typica.) For Orthodox, the moral exemplar liturgically set before them
is not the proscriptive Ten Commandments of the Old Dispensation but the liberating doxological
Beatitudes of the New.

For Orthodoxy, then, Christian morality is right thought and behaviour learnt through the life in Christ
within the worship of the body of Christ, rather than through subjection to an exterior moral law. The
only law is the law that is no law, the interior law of love. But does our moral freedom in Christ mean
that we can totally dispense with all rules, laws and commandments? Of course not.

Commandments, Civil Laws and Canons

St Paul says that the Jewish law was a schoolmaster (Galatians 3:23-26). By this he means that the
covenant of Sinai and the Deuteronomic law provided a God-given moral education to the Jews. With
the incarnation of Christ, and the proclamation of the New Commandment, there was, however, no
further need of the schoolmaster since Christ Himself was now the moral guide of mature Christians.

The sacrament of baptism is only the start of the full life in Christ. Each one of us has to mature in
Christ. While our personhood develops, and we (hopefully) struggle to conform our lives to the Spirit
of Christ working within us, we need the help and discipline of moral rules. And obviously in the
bringing up of children we need to inculcate in them moral principles such as those of the Ten
Commandments, though this is better done through example than by the imposition of rules.

But, for a Christian, moral rules must always be construed as expedients to help us along the path to
theosis; till that day when we can have no further use of a rule book. Two dangers in particular must
be carefully guarded against in relation to moral rules. Firstly, any notion that one size fits all.
Secondly, any notion that breaking this or that rule is necessarily wrong. The law of love, the New
Commandment, over-rides all rules.
Christians are not bound by rules governing personal morality, but they are not the only kind of rules.
There are civil laws and Church laws, canons. Proper discussion of such laws, however, would require
two further articles.

Suffice it to say here, our obligation to obey civil laws is governed by Christ’s pronouncement,
“Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s
(Matthew 22:21)”. It is only when Caesar, that is the State, usurps that which belongs to God that the
Christian conscience might dictate the disobeying of the law of the land. Thus, early Christians
suffered martyrdom because they refused to offer a pinch of incense to the genius of the, supposedly
divine, emperor. The defining of the line between what belongs to Caesar and what to God is, of
course, by no means always an easy matter.

The primary function of canon law is to secure proper order in the worship and governance of the
Church, the ministry of the clergy, and the regulation of monasteries etc. Canon law thus reflects St
Paul’s constant concern that “all things should be done decently and in order (1 Corinthians 14:40)”.

True there are canons that stray into the domain of personal morality, but the Church has never
understood such canons juridically. Canons do not have the same authority as dogmatic definitions,
being attempts to apply dogmatic teaching to prevailing conditions in accordance with current
knowledge. If conditions or background knowledge change, a canon might become redundant or be in
need of revision (or “renewal”, in the technical language of the canon lawyer).

In any event, canons must always be administered with economy; that is, taking into account
particular circumstances, level of spiritual development, evidence of contrition, or prevailing social
and political conditions, etc. The Church has never construed its body of canon law as a Christian
replacement of the Old Testament law. Moral canons have always been understood therapeutically
rather than legalistically.
Chapter 8. The Labyrinth – a Christian Mandala?
Theseus and the Minotaur

It is difficult to imagine that there can be any reader of Vema, Greek or (like me) Barbarian, who has
not known the story of Theseus and the Minotaur from infancy. But, of course, there is one reader,
because there always is. So, briefly, ignoring the many variants and sticking to the bits that will
concern us …

Minos, King of Crete, set off to Athens to seek redress for the death of his son. While he was away, his
wife, Pasiphae, fell madly in love with a bull. (These things happen even in the best of families.) The
fruit of this union was a monster with the body of a man and the head of a bull, the Minotaur. On his
return, Minos commissioned his architect, Daedalus, to construct a labyrinth, a building with such an
intricate complex of passageways that, once imprisoned in the centre, the Minotaur would never be
able to effect an escape.

The penalty imposed on Athens was a tribute, payable every nine years, of Athenian youths and
maidens. These young people were fed to the Minotaur. Came the year when the lot fell to Theseus,
son of Aegeus King of Athens, to form part of the tribute. Theseus determined to kill the monster, but
how to get back out of the labyrinth?

Minos’ daughter, Ariadne, being a bright girl, solved the problem by giving Theseus a ball of thread
which he could unravel as he penetrated the labyrinth and, having slain the monster, follow back to the
entrance. Job done, and the lads and lassies the Minotaur hadn’t eaten for brekkie released, Theseus
set sail for Athens, stopping often route at Delos to give the first performance of the labyrinthine
geranos, the crane dance.

The Church has always used pre-Christian myths and legends as types (foreshadowings) of episodes in
the life of Our Lord, antitypes, in much the same way that it uses narratives from the Old Testament.
This is possible because it is not the content, the story line, or historicity of the type that matters in
typology but the structural identity and deep underlying spiritual meaning it shares with the antitype.
It requires little imagination to see how Church Fathers could readily take Theseus as a type of Christ
and typologically interpret the myth in a variety of ways.

The most basic interpretation would see Theseus’ journey into the labyrinth and slaying of the
Minotaur as a type of Christ’s descent into Hades, conquest of Satan and release of the imprisoned
souls.

Equally fundamental is the interpretation of the labyrinth as symbolic of the maze of the world, with
its traps, pitfalls, wrong turnings and blind alleys, through which Christ has threaded the pathway to
salvation. As St Gregory of Nyssa puts it:
… the labyrinth of this our life cannot be threaded by the faculties of human nature
unless a person pursues that same path as He [Christ] did who, though once in it, yet got
beyond the difficulties which hemmed Him in.

(The Great Catechism, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5, Eerdmans.)

For Gregory, to follow Christ-Theseus along the pathway through the labyrinth to eternal salvation
necessitates repentance and regeneration through baptism (a sacramental antitype of the Paschal
Mystery of the Lord, which, in its turn, is an antitype of Theseus slaying the Minotaur).

The Fathers construct a polar opposition between the actual labyrinth of life, with its many
bewildering junctions and crossroads and where it is all too easy to end up down a dead end or follow
a one-way street to perdition, and the single pathway to salvation threaded by Christ.

As we shall see, this opposition generated two different representations: those with many diverging
paths, known as multicursal labyrinths, and those, though possessing frequent turnings, with a single
pathway, known as unicursal labyrinths.

The Multicursal Labyrinth

The British archaeologist, Sir Arthur Evans, the excavator of Knossos on Crete, thought that the origin
of the myth might lie in the maze of passageways in the palace. Attention was also drawn to frescoes,
which might connect with the myth, depicting a ritual in which agile nubile young ladies vaulted over
charging bulls. Whether or not the palace was the original labyrinth, there seems no doubt that there
was a building known as the labyrinth in Egypt, an enormous complex of halls and temples threaded
together by a confusing web of passageways.

Without a superimposed threaded pathway, the maze often reveals a sinister aspect, which is
frequently picked up by the Fathers, as by Gregory when he adds to the above quotation:
I apply this figure of a labyrinth to that prison of death that is without an exit and
envelopes the wretched race of humankind.

Medieval Christian depictions of the Cretan labyrinth, as well as Greek and other Ancient visual
representations, seem all to be unicursal. The multicursal maze only came into its own with the
Renaissance and Reformation, in the form of the garden hedge maze. (“Labyrinth” and “maze” are
frequently treated as synonyms, though “labyrinth” is sometimes restricted to unicursal and “maze” to
multicursal devices.)

The best known of these garden hedge mazes is that at Hampton Court Palace near London (1690),
made famous by Jerome K. Jerome in his classic novel Three Men in a Boat (1889).

Although garden mazes were constructed for amusement and exercise – and were popular for
providing hidden trysting-places for lovers – they nevertheless conveyed a moral message.

Traditional Catholic/Orthodox theology stresses the necessity of the doctrine, spiritual counsel and
mysteries of the Church in guiding the Christian along the path threaded by Christ- Theseus to
salvation. Protestant theology stresses the responsibility of each Christian to discover their own path
to salvation, guided only by the direct voice of the Spirit and the Scriptures. The many junctions of
pathways of the maze represented the many moral choices that must be made in working out the way
to salvation.

It is as easy to become totally lost and confused in an intricate hedge maze as it is in the complex of
pathways and blind alleys of life. I well remember getting seriously frustrated trying to get out of the
diabolical hedge maze (1833) at Glendurgan, Cornwall (Plate 2a). Had I not found a hole in the hedge,
I would probably still be imprisoned there today. It is not surprising that Fathers of the Church could
refer to Hell as a labyrinth.

The Church Labyrinth

Pavement labyrinths marked out in mosaic made their appearance in Roman times. These labyrinths
were unicursal and divided into four sections, through which one travelled in sequence, and probably
symbolised the four corners of the world, the four seasons, the four ages of human life, and so forth.
This kind of Ancient labyrinth made its way into the Church. There is a surviving fourth-century
example of this form in the church of San Reparatus in Orléansville, Algeria.

It is undoubtedly from such Roman labyrinths that the classic pattern of the Church labyrinth evolved.
The surviving tile labyrinth (c.1200) extending some 40 feet across the entire width of the nave of
Chartres Cathedral, near Paris, is usually taken as the paradigm of Church labyrinths.

Few remain, but pavement labyrinths were once common (we know the plans of a number now
destroyed) particularly in Gothic cathedrals and large churches in France. The pattern also appears on
walls and in manuscripts and early printed books. A fine medieval example, with accompanying
inscription, is engraved in miniature on a wall of the exonarthex of Lucca Cathedral, near Pisa,
Northern Italy.

While the concepts encompassed within the medieval Church labyrinth might well have originated in
writings of Eastern Fathers of the Church, the Church labyrinth per se seems to have been a Western
development. From the East, I can muster only one example. I have seen a photograph of such a
labyrinth painted on a wall of a Meteora monastery. However, I have also seen an illustration of an
eighteenth-century Russian icon depicting a circular multicursal labyrinth.

Wall labyrinth, Lucca

In England, pavement labyrinths seem not to have been constructed in churches; instead, labyrinths
with closely similar or identical patterns to that of Chartres were cut into turf (Plate 2b). There is as
yet no scientific way of dating turf labyrinths, but there is no real doubt of their medieval origins.
There are few literary references, but one does occur in Shakespeare’s, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

I had actually seen the famous labyrinth of Chartres as a child, but the labyrinth only really entered
my life through an encounter in 1978 with the presumed medieval “Mizmaze” at Breamore,
Hampshire. Today, labyrinths are all the rage and children are kept busy by Sunday school teachers,
and those splendid lady vicars, constructing them in church-yards across the length and breadth of
England. But back in 1978 very few people knew anything about them. I hadn’t even heard of turf
labyrinths until I stumbled across the Breamore Mizmaze.

My Labyrinth was circular and of the Chartres pattern. It had a diameter of some 70 feet with a low
mound at the centre. But what on earth was it? Contemplating the design, I was impressed by its
beautiful intricate geometry and the fact that the pathway inscribed a cross within the circumference
of the labyrinth.

I set off to “tread” (since that is what one does in labyrinths) the grassy pathway to the central mound.
Looking at the pattern from outside, it was the harmony and geometrical elegance, even in a sense
simplicity, of the labyrinth which struck me, but from within simplicity gave way to confusion. One
moment the path took one in very close to the centre, one’s destination (trace the Chartres diagram
with your finger), next moment one was propelled to the periphery.

The meaning of the labyrinth began to dawn on me. Clearly, it was an image of every person’s
pilgrimage through life, with its frequent stumblings and turnings (the Greek word for repentance,
metanoia, means turning around from sin). The spiritual life is punctuated by ecstatic moments when
one feels close to God (= the centre of the labyrinth) but also periods of dryness when one feels
deserted by God (= the periphery). Within the labyrinth one cannot tell how far along the pathway one
has progressed.
The labyrinth teaches that what is demanded of the pilgrim is persistence to follow the path threaded
by Christ- Theseus. If we tread the Way with Christ, as Luke and Cleopas did on the road to Emmaus
(Luke 24:13-35), no harm can overcome us in the multicursal mizmaze of earthly life.

I reached the mount spiritually enriched by my experience. But surveying the whole pattern again, this
time from the centre, another level of meaning was revealed, a cosmic level. If one ignored the
turnings and joined up the sections of pathway, the labyrinth readily transformed into a nest of eleven
concentric rings (try it) forming a diagram of the Ancient geocentric cosmology.

I was standing on the earth (the mound), so the eleven rings could represent the three rings of matter
surrounding earth (= water, air and fire), the seven planets (= the five naked-eye planets plus the sun
and the moon) and the sphere of fixed stars, equated with the primum mobile (= the source of motion
of the cosmos).

So, on one level the labyrinth is a model of the Ancient cosmos, on another the key to the mystery of
every person’s pilgrimage through life. In other words, the labyrinth is what the Buddhists call a
mandala (there seems to be no equivalent Christian term).

So much for my experience of an English turf labyrinth, but let us get back to the pavement labyrinth
in medieval churches. Clearly they could have been understood in all of the ways I have noted. There
is, however, abundant evidence that they were also seen as tributes to the architects of great churches,
since images of architects were sometimes depicted on them, as at Amiens Cathedral, France.

The reason is that the labyrinth represented the Cretan labyrinth and, although two-dimensional, was
thought of as a three-dimensional building. According to the myth, the Cretan labyrinth was the work
of Daedalus, traditionally held to be the greatest of all architects (significantly, a common French
word for a labyrinth is dédale).

Associating the labyrinth with the architect(s) of the church was thus a declaration that their skill was
comparable to that of the greatest architect of Antiquity. Even God, the (metaphorically speaking)
great architect of the cosmos, was sometimes conceived of as a divine Daedalus.

But how were the Church labyrinths actually used? Well certainly they were not, as has been
surmised, traversed on one’s knees as a penitential act or as a substitute for the pilgrimage to
Jerusalem. However, we do have evidence that they were used as the setting for a liturgical dance at
Easter. The only surviving account of the ritual is from Auxerre Cathedral in France.

After Vespers on Monday of Bright Week a large ball, called the pilota, was passed back and forth
between the Dean and canons (= the Cathedral clergy) as the Dean performed a tripudium (= a
religious dance) at the centre of the labyrinth and the canons danced circa daedalum (around the
labyrinth). Probably the canons danced along the pathway rather than just around the circumference of
the labyrinth, but the text is unclear on this point.

While this ceremonial was performed, the Easter Sequence, Victimae Paschali laudes (c.1030), was
sung. (A sequence is a hymn that immediately precedes the Gospel reading at Mass.) The relevance of
the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, as a type of the Paschal Mystery of the Lord, is clear from the
wording of the Sequence, which in translation begins:
Let Christians offer praises to the Paschal victim. / The Lamb has redeemed the sheep:
Christ who was innocent has reconciled sinners to the Father. /Death and life have
fought in a wonderful duel …
C h a p t e r 9. Should We Restore the Ancient
Catechumenate?
Great Lent

By the time readers will have eagerly opened their copy of the Vema the long Christmas-Epiphany
season will have drawn to its close with the Apodõsis (= return/leave-taking) of the feast of the
Presentation/Meeting on February 9. Already, the busy fingers of parish priests and chanters will have
run along the shelf to pull out the Triodion, the volume that contains the services for the Lenten
season and Holy Week.

Great Lent lasts for 40 days in both East and West (though calculated differently) and this is
understood as symbolic of the 40 days of Christ’s Temptation in the Wilderness. And of course it is a
period of preparation for Pascha.

With the beginning of Great Lent on Clean Monday much will happen in church and home. Weekday
Divine Liturgies will disappear (except for the Annunciation on March 25) and will be replaced by the
Liturgy of the Presanctified. The longer Liturgy of St Basil will replace the Liturgy of St John
Chrysostom on Sundays. The beautiful Akathist Hymn to the Theotokos will (in Greek churches) be
chanted on Friday evenings (liturgically, Saturday).

In the homes of more devout Orthodox, meat, eggs, milk products, and (except on the Annunciation
and Palm Sunday) fish will totally disappear from the menu for the duration of Lent and Holy Week.
On most days oil and wine might join the list. And grandma will become even more zealous in
rounding up wayward members of the family for church.

We think of Great Lent as a time for a spot of serious spiritual callisthenics. A time for repentance,
fasting, abstinence and self-denial, for intensifying prayer, attending church more regularly, taking up
charitable causes, breaking naughty habits, and the like. Of course, all of this is very good, but if we
wish to investigate the origins of Lent we must look to baptism and:

The Ancient Catechumenate

Infant baptisms are the norm in the Orthodox Church. But has this always been so?

There has been much debate concerning infant baptism in the early Church. However, the evidence
convincingly points to its having been known since Apostolic times. This being so, there can be no
question as to its legitimacy. However, because a practice is legitimate it does not follow that it is
necessarily desirable as a norm.

There can be little doubt that infant baptism has not always been in the ascendancy. Even a cursory
reading of the baptismal service reveals that the rite is designed for adults and has never been adapted
for infants. This is immediately obvious as the service begins with the office for the making of
catechumens.

The word “catechumen” simply means learner. We meet them not only in the baptismal service but in
the Divine Liturgy, for the first half is known as the Liturgy of the Catechumens. This part of the
Liturgy, which derives from the ancient Synagogue service, concludes with a litany for the
catechumens and their dismissal by the deacon:
Those who are catechumens, go forth. Catechumens, go forth. Those who are
catechumens, go forth.

At this point, the transition to the second half of the Liturgy, the Liturgy of the Faithful, is made as the
deacon continues:
None of the catechumens. Those who are believers, again and again, in peace let us pray
to the Lord.

Since catechumens have for centuries, except in missionary areas, been a rarity, and the ancient
catechumenate as such virtually extinct, the litany for the catechumens and their dismissal is usually
omitted in current Greek use (apart from at the Liturgy of the Presanctified).

The catechumens were those who had heeded the call of Christ and committed themselves to learning
to follow the Christian Way but were not yet fully prepared for baptism. To become a catechumen,
you had to undergo the ceremony for the making of catechumens. This did not make you a full
member of the Church, only the baptised and chrismated were full members, and you could not attend
the Eucharist (the Liturgy of the Faithful) nor receive Communion.

In early times, the Mysteries were (as the word suggests) kept secret, as were the Creed and Lord’s
Prayer. Thus, immediately before the reciting of the Creed the deacon commands the doorkeepers to
close the doors so that no one might stray in during the celebration of the Eucharist. Today, no one is
ejected from the church and it is only the doors of our hearts that we close to extraneous and mundane
thoughts.

Scholars often comment on the lack of information concerning the conduct of the catechumenate, but
instruction obviously primarily came through the Liturgy of the Catechumens itself.

In early times, as today, this consisted of psalmody, readings from the Bible (unfortunately Old
Testament readings dropped out), and the homily/sermon, or more likely a whole string of homilies
since early Christians, like Victorian England, were great “sermon tasters”. (The only correct place to
deliver a homily within the Liturgy is immediately after the Gospel.)

St Hippolytus (c.170 – c.237) speaks of a minimum three-year catechumenate, but it often lasted very
much longer. It was not uncommon for a person to delay baptism, as did Constantine, until shortly
before death.

Catechumens might not have been full members of the Church, but they were regarded as novice or
apprentice Christians and could acquire a considerable reputation for piety and learning. Indeed, it was
not unknown for a catechumen to be elected bishop, as was the case with St Ambrose (c.339-397), the
great Bishop of Milan.

One reason for delaying was the uncertainty of the early Church as to the possibility of the forgiveness
of sins committed after baptism. However, the explanation in many cases would have been that the
catechumen simply didn’t feel ready, or the bishop didn’t think that they were ready, for baptism. In
the case of Constantine, a factor was his desire, which circumstances prevented his fulfilling, to be
baptised in the Jordan.

One must not think that delaying baptism was common only in the case of converts. Whatever was the
situation earlier, by the fourth century it seems that infant baptism was not the norm even with
children of devout Christian parentage.

There was nothing unusual in St Monica’s decision not to have her son, Augustine (354-430),
baptised. However, it was most likely the theology of this self-same son years later which led to a
shift in favour of infant baptism, and, in its turn, this led to the decline of the catechumenate.

The theology in question was, of course, that of original sin (see article 6). Although theological
thought in the East rejected Augustine’s theology of original sin there was clearly often a niggling
doubt, in the absence of definitive dogma, that he might just be right. Better to be safe than sorry.

Sooner or later the catechumen would feel ready to undergo the intense period of preparation required
for baptism. This stretched over a number of weeks before Pascha, since baptism in early times was
normally only administered at the Paschal Vigil during the night following Holy Saturday.
(Regrettably, the Vigil is usually celebrated in current Greek practice early on Saturday morning.)

Catechumens had to request enrolment in this preparation and the Bishop had to agree. Over the first
hurdle, the catechumens were now known as competentes (=applicants), electi (=chosen) or,
particularly as the Paschal Vigil approached, phõtizomenoi (=those about to be illuminated).

This intensive preparation involved regular instruction, fasting and abstinence, and almost daily
scrutinies and exorcisms. Scrutiny and exorcism was designed to drive out all the demons lodged
within you – that is, the bad habits, emotions and patterns of thought. Today, we might prefer
psychiatrist-speak to that of demonology, but the two modes of description are largely
complementary.

Scrutiny and exorcism were two sides of the same coin – one was “scrutinised by exorcism”, as St Leo
the Great put it. The questioning was aimed at digging out spiritual problems (= exposing demons)
and the exorcisms (= psychological shock therapy) were used not only to expel demons but to test
whether they were still active.

Originally, only a very short fast was observed before Pascha. Great Lent was initially simply the
period of preparation of the electi. However, as many people were involved in the preparation of the
candidates, the faithful increasingly felt the desirability of joining in the fasting and spiritual
discipline in solidarity with those preparing for baptism.

The consequence was that by the fourth century Great Lent was coming to be recognised as a period of
fasting and spiritual renewal for the faithful as a whole. Eventually, the catechumenate almost entirely
vanished, as infant baptism became the norm, but Great Lent went on from strength to strength.

During the earlier part of Lent, the instruction of the electi concentrated on moral teaching centred
around precepts drawn from the lives of the Old Testament Patriarchs and the book of Proverbs. This
explains why the Church still reads Genesis and Proverbs during Vespers in Lent. Usually the Creed
was explained clause by clause during the later part of Lent.
Conventions differed as to how much explanation was given of the Mysteries themselves, but in many
places they were only explained after baptism; experience before understanding. The biblical readings
for the Sunday Liturgies from Easter Sunday to Pentecost still reflect the mystagogic instruction given
the neophytes who had received baptism at the Paschal Vigil.

We are blessed in having sets of baptismal homilies by several fourth-century Fathers: St Cyril of
Jerusalem, St Ambrose, St John Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia.

The Night of Initiation

Come the eagerly, but also fearfully, anticipated Paschal Vigil, the awe-inspiring Mysteries of
initiation commenced. Only a thumbnail sketch can, however, be given here.

In the darkness of this Holy night, and knowing little or nothing of what was about to happen, the
photizomenoi were led into the baptistery where they were stripped naked and the whole of their
bodies smeared with oil by the deacons (male or female as appropriate). They were then baptised
(depending on its depth, either by having their head plunged under the water three times or having
water poured over them thrice), anointed with chrism (this was done before baptism in some places),
and clothed in special white garments. Finally, they were led into the body of the church to be greeted
by the Eucharistic community and to receive Holy Communion within the Liturgy.

Baptisteries and fonts differed in design. Plate 3b (which was not intended to be a puzzle picture) is of
the below-ground font in the large ruined eight-sided baptistery of St John the Theologian at Ephesus,
which predates Justinian and Theodora’s rebuilding of the church in the sixth century. Descent into the
font would have been by the steps on the west side, ascent after baptism by those to the east. The
rectangular piscinas were almost certainly for the pedilavium, the sacramental washing of the feet that
formed part of the rite in some areas.

The whole process – enrolment and preparation, the awe-inspiring ritual by which one passed through
the Paschal Mystery of the Lord into the eternal eighth day of the Kingdom of God, the joyful
admission into the Eucharistic community, and the post-baptismal mytagogic revelations – had but
one aim, to bring about a profound and enduring change in the very being of those sacramentally
reborn into the life of the Risen Saviour.

Should the Ancient Catechumenate be Restored?

The only argument for the necessity of infant baptism is that it removes the guilt of original sin, and
that this is an essential condition for salvation. But if the Eastern Fathers as a whole could reject the
Augustinian doctrine of original sin, so much the more should we with our greatly superior scientific
and scholarly background knowledge.

However, this is not to say that there is no case for infant baptism. A sponsor has to speak on behalf of
the infant, yet the grace, the Spirit, that is conveyed through administration of the sacramental signs
has an objective reality. Further, by baptising and chrismating infants they become full members of
the Church (though whether they can be said to be believers in any meaningful sense is a moot point)
and can grow strong in the Lord nourished with the spiritual food of the Eucharist.
But there is a strong counter case. The greatest moment in the life of a Christian should be that in
which they are sacramentally reborn by water and the Spirit through the rite of Christian initiation.
Baptism in infancy means that we almost certainly will have no recollection whatsoever of the event.
Even if someone does have an odd memory of a peculiar bath time that would not be a memory of the
administration of a sacred sign.

An infant has no understanding of what is occurring, can give no assent, can make no commitment.
The Orthodox baptismal service commences with the rite of the making of catechumens, but this is a
meaningless charade as no catechumenate ensues and baptism is administered only minutes later.

In the West, following the Middle Ages, the catechumenate was in effect transferred to an age at
which a child could affirm what their godparents had promised on their behalf at their baptism. This
was effected by instituting a period of instruction culminating in Confirmation (which approximates
Chrismation) and First Communion.

For Catholics, this takes place around seven or eight, Anglicans usually around twelve to fourteen.
This development, however, broke the essential unity of the rite of Christian initiation, on which the
Orthodox Church has always insisted.

A movement in the Catholic Church, favouring restoration of the Catechumenate and the primitive
unity of the rite, culminated in the decision of the Second Vatican Council to initiate the drawing up
of a Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults (RCIA). The basis of the RCIA lies in Patristic sources to
which the Orthodox Church would need to turn.

Obviously, we cannot go back to the so-called disciplina arcani, the practice of secrecy, of the early
Church, but, suitably adapted, the Catechumenate can be restored. With the steadily growing number
of converts and adult baptisms this might be the time to recover a major element of Holy Tradition
that the centuries have left to wither on the vine.

And the thorny question of infant baptism? The Orthodox way is to allow change to occur slowly and
organically rather than by magisterial edict (which is why Orthodox are prone to deny that change has
ever occurred). Why not restore the Catechumenate now but leave the issue of the desirability of
infant baptism to the Holy Spirit to decide in the fullness of time?
Chapter 10. Days of the Bridegroom
In his sublime Paschal homily, read at the end of the Divine Liturgy of Easter Day, St John
Chrysostom invites all to share in the Feast of Feasts; those who have been keeping the fast from the
first hour, but also those who have joined in only at the third, sixth, ninth and even the eleventh hour.

But even if we only join the pilgrimage to Pascha at Palm Sunday, it is not too late to repent and
prepare for the approaching holy days. The Lord invites all to His wedding feast, the last as well as the
first. Holy Week, as we shall reckon it, starts at Vespers on Palm Sunday evening. Vespers is the rite
of passage which draws the dying day to its close and greets the birth of the new day. Like the Jews,
the Orthodox Church starts the new day not from midnight but from sunset.

Holy Week is also known as the Fast of Christ’s Passion. The 40 days of Great Lent end at Vespers on
the evening before the Saturday of Lazarus.

At Vespers on Palm Sunday evening we start a six day fast which closes on Holy Saturday night
(liturgically Easter Sunday). The transition to Holy Week is marked by the hymns sung at Vespers on
Palm Sunday evening:
Passing from one divine Feast to another, from palms and branches let us now make
haste, ye faithful, to the solemn and saving celebration of Christ’s Passion. Let us
behold Him undergo voluntary suffering for our sake ...

(Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware, The Lenten Triodion, Faber & Faber.)

Note that the liturgy calls the commemoration of Christ’s Passion a “feast”. Even in commemorating
the horrendous tortures inflicted on Our Lord the Church never forgets the triumph of the
Resurrection, and it never forgets that it is through His death and Resurrection, the Paschal Mystery,
that Christ procured our Salvation. So let us be joyful in our sorrow as we follow Our Lord on His path
to Golgotha.

Holy Week breaks down into two halves. The first half runs from Vespers on Palm Sunday evening
and ends during Vespers, which is combined with the Divine Liturgy, on Great Thursday evening.
(Most regrettably, this service, commemorating the Last Supper, is often celebrated about 12 hours
earlier than it should be, early on Thursday morning.)

The second half, beginning at Vespers on Thursday evening, is known as the Paschal Triduum, taking
us from the Last Supper to the Resurrection.

The Bridegroom

The first three days of Holy Week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday) are known as the Days of the
Bridegroom and, although of profound spiritual significance even for first-hourers, are of particular
importance for eleventh-hourers. The reason is that these three days recapitulate, in an intensely
concentrated way, the messages of Great Lent which precedes them.

The Days of the Bridegroom, which are days of strict fasting, are an urgent call to repent of the
multitude of our sins and implore Christ’s mercy and healing before the Paschal Mystery which is fast
approaching.

In the days following His Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, and up to the Last Supper, Our Lord
delivered his last public teaching. The Church places particular emphasis in its readings on the long
account given in Matthew 21:18 - 26:19, and it could be helpful to read straight through this section of
the Gospel. Those who do so will immediately appreciate the emphasis placed on the signs of the end
of the age, Christ’s Second Coming, and the Judgement. Although there is also much practical moral
teaching, this is the strongest and most extensive apocalyptic passage to be found in the Gospels,
concentrating on what are called the Four Last Things: death, the Judgement, Heaven and Hell.

Yes, we should repent and reform our lives for the sake of the love of Christ alone, but, unfortunately,
we also need from time to time to be jolted out of our complacency and the comfortable, and often
sinful, ways of our daily lives. But these three days are not by any means all fire and brimstone. They
are days of great hope.

The Days of the Bridegroom are so called from the troparion solemnly sung at Mattins/Orthros on all
three days:
Behold the Bridegroom comes in the middle of the night; and blessed is the servant
whom He shall find watching, but unworthy is he whom He shall find in slothfulness.
Beware, then, O my soul, and be not overcome by sleep, lest thou be given over to death
and shut out from the Kingdom.

(The Lenten Triodion.)

This hymn, which so captures the ethos of these three days, derives from Christ’s parable of the five
wise and five foolish virgins awaiting the arrival of the bridegroom for the wedding feast (Matthew
25:1-13).

The five wise virgins had flasks of oil for the lamps with which they were to greet the Bridegroom at
the door. The five foolish brought no oil, and while they were out trying to buy some the Bridegroom
arrived and the door was closed. They begged him to open the door “saying ‘Lord, Lord, open to us.’
But he replied, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ ” And Christ adds: “Watch therefore, for you
know neither the day nor the hour”.

Christ is, needless to say, the Bridegroom and the meaning of the parable is transparent. However, St
Symeon the New Theologian comments on the symbolism of the lamp. A Christian, he says, is like an
oil lamp. The oil symbolises all one’s religious devotion and good works. The trimmed wick, the soul
readied for receiving the divine flame. The flame, the grace which God alone can provide. Without the
oil the lamp would splutter out; unless the wick be trimmed and reaching out towards Christ, the soul
cannot receive grace. So, if one wishes to be united with the Bride-groom, one must have one’s ask of
oil filled and the wick of one’s lamp well trimmed.

The nuptials of Christ the Bridegroom and His bride the Church, or His union with the soul in the
bridal chamber of the heart of the individual believer, is of course a mystery of unfathomable joy. And
yet, as the Holy Week icon known as the Bridegroom/Nymphios reveals (Plate 4), it is through Christ’s
Passion that this mystic marriage is consummated. The Bridegroom goes to His marriage feast not
bedecked in a wedding garment but wearing the purple robe of mockery over His tortured body and
with a crown of thorns, in place of a bridegroom’s wreath of fragrant blossoms, upon His head.

Each of the Days of the Bridegroom has its own special commemorations. On Monday, we remember
the patriarch Joseph, whose sufferings make him an Old Testament type of Christ, and the story of the
fig tree (Matthew 21:18-22) withered by Christ’s curse because, although resplendent with leaves, it
bore no fruit.

On Tuesday, we remember the parables of the wise and foolish virgins and that of the talents
(Matthew 25:14-30). God gives each one of us our own individual gifts which we must use for the
benefit of others. If we bury our talents we face the same judgement as that of the g tree.

On Wednesday, we commemorate the betrayal of Christ by Judas and the woman who anointed Him
with precious oil (Matthew 26:6-13). Christ Himself connects this supreme act of love and repentance
with His own forthcoming death and burial: “In pouring this ointment on my body she has done it to
prepare me for burial”.

The liturgical texts link this incident with that recounted in Luke 7:37-50, which tells us of a woman
who was a sinner and who wet Christ’s feet with her tears, wiped them with her hair, kissed them and
anointed them with valuable oil. It is perhaps the most moving and vivid image of true repentance in
the whole Bible. The repentance of the woman, whose sins were forgiven by Christ, contrasts with the
wretched death of Judas, who took his own life because he couldn’t trust in God’s forgiveness.

Oil, which is so prominent a theme of the Days of the Bridegroom, is very widely used sacramentally.
It is used in the sacrament of healing, known as Holy Unction or the Service of the Prayer Oil. Blessed
oil is poured into the baptismal waters, and we are anointed with oil before Baptism and with chrism
(oil blended with many different herbs) at Chrismation. Churches, Holy Tables and other sacred
objects are consecrated with chrism. Although this is often omitted, the faithful should be anointed
with oil at Great Vespers. As with the Kings of Ancient Israel, monarchs are consecrated with oil at
their coronation. And when our end comes, prayer oil is often poured over the body at burial.

Why oil? The answer is that anointing with oil is a sign of God’s reaching down and touching and
sealing created matter with the Holy Spirit. Oil which is blessed or consecrated (chrism, in fact, is
consecrated by the Patriarch himself when needed on Holy Thursday and distributed around the world)
becomes a vehicle for the operation of the Holy Spirit.

Holy Unction

On the afternoon or evening of Holy Wednesday, many churches celebrate the service of Holy
Unction. This mystery, described by the Apostle James (James 5:13-16), brings healing of body, mind
and soul, and also effects forgiveness of sins to those who are truly repentant.

Commentators always seem to see the sole significance of the celebrating of the sacrament on Holy
Wednesday (actually, liturgically Holy Thursday as the service is placed following the night service of
Compline) in relation to preparation for the receiving of Holy Communion. Why they should miss its
intimate relationship to the Days of the Bridegroom is a profound mystery.

The celebration of Holy Unction, although the service was not com- posed with its use in Holy Week
in mind, brings to a climax the themes we have been following during the past three days. We have
been warned that if we do not feed our lamps with the oil of repentance and good works our souls
cannot be inflamed with the light of the Holy Spirit. We have wept for our sins and washed the feet of
the Saviour with our tears, beseeching His mercy on us. We have anointed His precious body with the
fragrant oil of love and right worship as we have made ready the bridal chamber of our hearts for the
coming of the divine Bridegroom.

Now, on the eve of the Paschal Triduum, God responds to our repentance and commitment to the
reform of our lives by touching us with oil charged with the Holy Spirit to heal our sickness of body,
mind and soul and grant to us forgiveness of our sins.

As the priest anoints the catechumen in preparation for Holy Baptism, so we are now anointed with
Holy Oil in preparation for the renewal of baptismal grace through the celebration of the Lord’s most
Holy Passion and Resurrection and for the reception of our Paschal Communion. If we are not sick in
body, we most certainly suffer from a disordered mind and deep sickness in our soul. We all need this
sacrament of healing and so the Church now offers it to all, not just to those who are suffering serious
illness.

The seven Gospel and seven Epistle readings at Holy Unction, together with the seven prayers which
accompany them (there is seven of everything because ideally this service should be celebrated by
seven priests), reinforce the teaching of Our Lord on those final days before His Passion. The parable
of the wise and foolish virgins is read as the 5th Gospel and a number of other readings reiterate the
moral teaching of Our Lord during the Days of the Bridegroom.

Take, for instance, the wonderful parable of the Good Samaritan, which forms the 1st Gospel reading
(Luke 10:25-37). After the Priest and the Levite pass by the man who was wounded by robbers, a
despised Samaritan stops and treats his wounds with oil and wine and takes him to an inn. Which of
these men, Christ asks, was neighbour to the man who fell among thieves?

The Good Samaritan is, of course, Christ Himself who binds up our wounds and anoints us with the
Spirit- filled oil of mercy. The Greek word for oil, elaion, is in fact closely related to the word for
mercy, eleēson. Moreover, the title “Christ”/“Christos”, or “Messiah” in Hebrew, means “the anointed
one”. So Christ responds to our constant cry, Kyrie eleēson, Lord have mercy, with the precious oil of
mercy, healing and forgiveness. Who would not want to receive the sacrament of the Prayer Oil at this
Holy time?

The Hymn of Kassiani

The most popular services of the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week are the daily
Mattins offices, known as the Services of the Bridegroom. These are usually sung on the previous
evening. (Mattins is actually a night office, which should end shortly after first light.) Most loved of
all is Mattins of Holy Wednesday as this contains the deeply moving hymn, written in the ninth
century by Kassiani the Nun, which develops the theme of Luke’s woman who was a sinner:
The woman who had fallen into many sins, perceiving Thy divinity, O Lord, fulfilled
the part of a myrrh-bearer; and with lamentations she brought sweet-smelling oil of
myrrh to Thee before Thy burial. ‘Woe is me’, she said, ‘for night surrounds me, dark
and moonless, and stings my lustful passion with the love of sin. Accept the fountain of
my tears, O Thou who drawest down from the clouds the waters of the sea. Incline to
 the groanings of my heart, O Thou who in thy ineffable self-emptying hast bowed down
the heavens. I shall kiss Thy most pure feet and wipe them with the hairs of my head,
those feet whose sound Eve heard at dusk in Paradise, and hid herself for fear ... ’

(The Lenten Triodion)

Besides Orthros, there is a celebration of the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts on each of these days.
This service combines Vespers with the administration of Holy Communion reserved on the previous
Sunday. Although of course an evening service, it is usually celebrated by anticipation during the
morning. The readings are taken from Exodus, Job and Matthew and relate to the themes of the Days
of the Bridegroom.

Thee Presanctified Liturgy, which is celebrated on certain days of Great Lent as well, is a deeply
solemn and moving service which admirably reflects the ethos of this great season of fasting.

May the divine Bridegroom be united with the hearts of each and every one of us during this Holy
Week and throughout our lives!
Chapter 11. What Is the Paschal Triduum?
The Paschal Triduum is the term used for the three-day festival of the Lord’s Passover. It is
overwhelmingly the most important festival of the Church year, that without which none of the others
would make any sense whatsoever.

“Paschal” (Latin, paschalis = of or pertaining to the Passover) is the adjective formed from the
English word “Pasch”, a preferable alternative to the more common “Easter” (Greek and Latin,
Pascha, from the Hebrew Pesah or Pesach = Passover). The variant, “Pascha”, has been creeping into
the English language from Orthodox usage (but the Freeland’s 2001 Macquarie Dictionary only
recognises the word, also spelt “paskha”, as referring to the scrumptious Russian cream cheese
confection eaten with Paschal bread, kulich).

The Latin word triduum (= a space or period of three days) has also been creeping into the English
language, this time from Roman Catholic usage (though it too didn’t make it into our Macquarie
Dictionary).

The Paschal Triduum is the annual commemoration of the Paschal Mystery of the Lord, the mystery
by virtue of which our salvation is procured. Over three days, the Church calls to mind, makes present
and effective (the deeper meaning of the Greek word anamnēsis) the sequence of historical events
commencing with the Last Supper and extending through the Crucifixion and Entombment to reach its
climax with the Lord’s third-day Resurrection.

It is true that these and all the salvific events of the Gospel are made present and effective every time
the Divine Liturgy is celebrated, but there is also a need to focus and meditate upon these events
individually during the course of the Church year. Above all, we need once a year to follow the
awesome and heart-rending events of the Crucifixion and Resurrection of the Lord as they happened,
day by day and hour by hour.

The Jewish Passover

In order to understand the meaning of Christ’s Passover, one needs first to recall its Old Testament
type (= foreshadowing), the Jewish Passover feast. Passover is the festival celebrated at the first full
moon of the Northern Hemisphere spring; that is, on the fifteenth day of the Jewish lunar month
Nisan. (In principle, Easter Sunday is the Sunday following the first full moon of spring, the Paschal
moon. The Passover can, of course, fall on any day of the week.)

The term “Passover” denotes the festival that commences with the eating of the Passover meal, the
Passover Seder, on the evening following the afternoon of 14 Nisan and lasts for either seven days (in
Israel) or eight (in the Jewish Diaspora). The evening of the Seder is, strictly speaking, 15 not 14
Nisan since the Jews, in common with the Orthodox Church, commence the new day at sunset rather
than midnight. (This is a confusing fact that has always to be borne in mind in discussing either the
Jewish or Orthodox calendars.)

According to Exodus (7:14 - 15:21), God sent ten plagues upon the Egyptians because the Pharaoh
refused to release the Israelites from slavery. The last and most terrible scourge was the slaying of the
first born sons of the Egyptians. God commanded the Israelites to sacrifice a male lamb or kid (the
goat, not human, version!) without blemish and smear some of its blood on the doorposts and lintel of
their dwellings in order that the Angel of Death might pass over, and hence spare, them.

Following this final plague, the Pharaoh releases the Israelites who promptly flee Egypt. Pharaoh,
however, changes his mind and sets off in pursuit, catching them up at the Red Sea.

Moses, instructed by God, commands the waters to divide so that the Israelites might cross the sea on
dry land. But when the pursuing Egyptian chariots attempt to follow Moses commands the waters to
return and the Egyptians and their horses are drowned. The Israelites are now able to continue their
long march to the Promised Land of milk and honey.

It is these two events which Passover came to commemorate, so the feast is naturally seen as a festival
of deliverance and hope. At the Passover Seder special foods are eaten, including unleavened bread,
matzos. No leavened food is permitted for the duration of the festival.

In Christ’s day, before its destruction, the Passover lambs were sacrificed in the Temple, one for each
family or group of families, and then roasted whole without breaking a bone and eaten at home at the
Seder. Since the animals had to be sacrificed in the Temple, this part of the Ancient ritual is no longer
performed.

Originally, there were two distinct festivals, Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Scholars
believe that Passover originated in a festival kept by shepherds (and goatherds) at the beginning of
lambing in spring at which the first-born was sacrificed in order to secure the fertility of the flock.

Interestingly, the word pesach also means “skipping” and so originally Pesach might have referred to
a festival at which the shepherds performed a skipping dance at the beginning of lambing. (Just a
thought: how about restoring ceremonial dancing to the liturgy at Pascha?)

The Feast of Unleavened Bread is believed to have originated with settled agrarian farmers celebrating
a festival at which the first sheaf of ripened barley was offered to God in order to secure a good
harvest. The leaven of the previous season would have been cleaned out and unleavened bread eaten
until flour from the harvest was available that could be baked with new leaven.

The two spring festivals were eventually combined and historicised as a commemoration of the
passing over of the dwellings of the Israelites by the Angel of Death and subsequent passing over of
the Red Sea by the people. The “wave” offering of a sheaf of ripe barley was made in the Temple at
Passover and matzos joined the roasted lamb, the matzos commemorating the Israelites leaving Egypt
in such haste that they could take only unleavened dough with them.

The Passover of the Lord

In the Gospel of Mark (8:31, 9:31, 10:33-44) Christ foretells His death and Resurrection after three
days on three occasions prior to His Passion. In Matthew (12:39-40) Jesus likens the three days Jonah
spent in the stomach of the whale to “the three days and three nights” He will spend “in the heart of
the earth”.

Christ died around 3 p.m. on Friday and rose some time during Saturday (Sunday by Jewish
reckoning) night, probably in the early hours of Sunday morning. Give or take a few hours, this gives
us a time span of around 36 not 72 hours (= three days and nights). But what is meant in the Gospels is
not that the Resurrection would occur around 72 hours after His death, but that the period of Christ’s
entombment would be contained within a space of three days and nights, a triduum, counting
inclusively as was the Ancient practice.

The three days and nights are, therefore, Friday (the day of the Last Supper, Agony in the Garden,
Crucifixion and Entombment), Saturday (Descent into Hades), and Sunday (the day of the
Resurrection) as determined by Jewish reckoning; in other words, from sunset Thursday to sunset
Sunday. This is the triduum to which Christ is referring. (But, as we shall see, the span of the liturgical
Paschal Triduum is shorter by around 18 hours.)

According to John, both the Crucifixion and the Last Supper on the previous evening occurred on the
day of Preparation for the Passover (Friday, 14 Nisan, 30 or 33). This means that Christ would have
been Crucified whilst the sacrificing of Paschal lambs was actually taking place in the Temple.

The Passover lamb is an Old Testament type of Christ, of whom John the Baptist/Forerunner said, as
Jesus came to him to be baptised: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
(John 1:29)”. Christ is the sacrificial lamb, free of any blemish of sin, who dies on the Cross without
the breaking of a bone. The very Crucifixion itself is foreshadowed in the blood that was smeared on
the doorposts and lintel, thereby forming the figure of a cross.

Christ was taken down from the Cross and laid in the tomb before sunset, which marked the beginning
of the Sabbath (Saturday) and also the Passover (15 Nisan). As God at the Creation rested on the
Sabbath, the seventh day of the week, so Christ rested bodily in the tomb, but mystically descended
into Hades. Sometime during the following night (Sunday, 16 Nisan) He rose from the dead and
greeted Mary Magdalene around sunrise.

“Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us (1 Corinthians 5:7 AV).” Christ has passed over from life,
through death and the tomb, to new life; death has no dominion over Him. With the Resurrection all
creation is renewed, the age to come is inaugurated.

The Paschal Triduum

Vespers is the service which transports us from one day to the next (and so ideally should be
commenced shortly before sunset). The first service of the Paschal Triduum is, therefore, the office of
Vespers conjoined with the Liturgy of St Basil, the Liturgy of the Last Supper.

Since the 24 hours bounded by the Last Supper and the Entombment are so tightly packed with
incident, the offices of Great Thursday also focus on the events of the evening and night of 14 Nisan.
However, Holy Thursday is not one of the days of the Triduum; though it would be entirely
appropriate to regard it as the Eve of the Triduum.

The Orthodox Church places the termination of the Triduum at the conclusion of the Midnight office
(Mesonyktion/Nocturns) just before the ceremony of the Holy Fire and Paschal Mattins/Orthros. It is
at this precise juncture that the Church changes service books. The Triodion, which has been used
since the Fourth Sunday before Great Lent (the Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee), is replaced by
the Pentekostarion, which will be used through the Sunday of All Saints (the Sunday after Pentecost).
At the point that the celebrant brings forth in the darkened church the light that symbolises the Risen
Christ, a transition is made from the Paschal Triduum to the Paschal season, which will continue
through the Sunday of Pentecost/Trinity Sunday (the Eighth Sunday of Pascha).

No disciple witnessed the actual Resurrection, instead the empty tomb was discovered around sunrise
by the women (the Myrrhbearers). Our annual commemoration of the Lord’s Passover is completed
and we now enter into the joy of the good news of the Resurrection and enjoy a fifty- day foretaste of
the age to come, the eternal Kingdom of God.

It is a matter of regret that the two liturgically most important services of the Paschal Triduum are
usually celebrated (for dubious pastoral reasons) in Greek churches at quite the wrong time. Vespers
and the Liturgy of the Last Supper, which mark the beginning of the Triduum proper, are often begun
before sunrise, around twelve hours before the correct time of celebration.

Similar rough treatment is meted out to the Paschal Vigil Vespers and Liturgy of St Basil, the most
important service of the whole year, which commemorates the actual Resurrection. The Liturgy
usually celebrated after Paschal Matins in the early hours of Sunday morning is not the Vigil Liturgy
but the Liturgy for the First Sunday of Pascha and, as is the case with Orthros, is outside the Paschal
Triduum. Originally, the only Liturgy celebrated was the Vigil Liturgy.

Baptism and the Paschal Triduum

Certainly there is a cosmic dimension to the Paschal Mystery, but it was for us that Christ suffered
one of the most painful methods of execution ever devised by twisted humanity. But the Lord’s
Passover was in vain unless we appropriate it to ourselves, rendering it effective in the transforming
of our lives. Jesus was sinless, it is we who are the sinners, yet it was Christ who died, and died for us,
taking our sins upon Himself that He might raise us up to new life through His Resurrection.

What Christ underwent physically, we undergo sacramentally. In baptism we mystically die with
Christ, are buried with Him and raised up in Him as a new creation (see the Epistle reading for the
Paschal Vigil Liturgy, Romans 6:3-11).

Every time we prayerfully participate in the Divine Liturgy the grace we received through baptism is
restored and renewed. Likewise, every year that we follow the historical path of Our Lord’s Passover
through the Paschal Triduum we reactivate in our lives the mystery of baptism; that is to say, the
Paschal Mystery of the Lord.

The mystagogic identity of the Paschal Triduum and Holy Baptism was underlined in the early Church
by the practice of normally only administering baptism and the related rites of Christian initiation
during the Paschal Vigil service.

The procession of the newly baptised, those who moments before had “put on” the Risen Christ, into
the congregation of the faithful for the Divine Liturgy and Holy Communion was the first and greatest
sign of the Resurrection. The Ancient words (taken from Galatians 3:27) are still chanted at this
pivotal point in the Vigil: “As many of you as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ.
Alleluia”.

It is by virtue of its intrinsically baptismal character that we are able to see most clearly the
connection between the second of the Passover commemorations and the Paschal Triduum. The
passage of the Israelites from Egypt through the Red Sea to freedom and the way to the Promised
Land is an Old Testament type of baptism.

The relevant text, Exodus 13:20 – 15:19, is the sixth Old Testament reading for Vespers of the Paschal
Vigil, but is unfortunately not usually read in Greek churches today. (Neither, for that matter, is the
third reading, Exodus 12:1-11, which relates God’s instructions for the observance of Passover.)

Through baptism we pass from the fallen world to new life in a new land. The wilderness of sin is put
behind us and the gates of Paradise, closed at the Fall, are open before us. We can and will still
stumble as we make our way, but provided we take the Risen Christ into our lives, and constantly
renew baptismal innocence through prayer, repentance, ascetic struggle and the mysteries of the
Church, no power can prevent our entry through the gates. As Christ promised the penitent thief:
“Today you will be with me in Paradise (Luke 23:43)”.

But that day is already with us and can be experienced through the fifty days of the Paschal season
until we reach the last great Paschal festival, Trinity Sunday/Pentecost. Furthermore, every ensuing
Sunday of the year belongs to the Paschal cycle and perpetuates the Lord’s Passover, until it is again
time to celebrate the Holy Triduum.
Chapter 12. The Great Mystery of the Cave
The Sepulchral Cave

Again we come to the celebration of the Lord’s Passover, Pascha. Christ, having taken upon Himself
the sins of the world, is taken down from the Cross and laid in a new tomb. Resting in the sepulchre
during the Sabbath, on the third day Christ rises and around dawn the empty tomb is discovered by the
women, the Myrrhbearers. It is on these events that the whole Christian faith hinges. As St Paul wrote:
“If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins (1 Corinthians 15:17)”.

Photo: Patriarchate of Jerusalem

The tomb of Christ was not a grave dug into the soil but a cave, prepared for his own burial by Joseph
of Arimathea, hewn out of the rock of a low cliff in a garden adjacent to the site of the Crucifixion,
Golgotha.

Apart from the actual walls of the cave itself, Constantine had the site levelled in constructing the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Subsequent developments almost totally encased the tomb within
masonry and marble cladding. Fortunately, we can still experience something of the feel of Golgotha
and the sepulchre from closely similar sites in and around Jerusalem.

But if the sepulchral cave plays a prominent role in the events of Our Lord’s Passover, so is a
significant role played by a cave at His birth.

The Cave of the Nativity

At Christmas we celebrated the wonder of the self-emptying (kenosis) of the Godhead through the
birth of Jesus, the Son and eternal Word of the Father, in a humble cave in Bethlehem two thousand
years ago.

The tradition that the birth did indeed take place in a cave (the cave isn’t mentioned in the Gospels) is
unwavering, and the actual cave itself can be visited today beneath the great basilica built by
Constantine at Bethlehem. There, a star set in the floor marks the place where tradition affirms that
the Saviour was born.

But is the cave just an incidental detail, as many Renaissance artists seemed to think, that can be set
aside in favour of a more painterly setting amongst ancient ruins or a shed in the middle of the
paddock?

The iconography and liturgy of the Orthodox Church certainly does not take such a view but, on the
contrary, attaches great significance to the fact that the birth, as the entombment and Resurrection, did
take place in a cave. The cave is always prominent in Orthodox iconography of the Nativity.

The iconographers see a foreshadowing of the sepulchre in the cave of the Nativity. In icons of the
Nativity, the cave has a distinctly sepulchral appearance and the manger is almost invariably
portrayed in the form of a sarcophagus, while the swaddling bands bound around the child bear de-
liberate resemblance to the shroud, bands and cloths of the entombment. As the liturgy reminds us,
Christ was born in order to die on the Cross and rise from the tomb. Reciprocally, the cave of the
Nativity can be recalled in iconography of the empty tomb (see Plate 6).

Caves, Real and Spectral

The cave actually enters into the story at an even earlier stage. Incorporated into the rear of the house
in Nazareth, in which according to early tradition the Theotokos lived and the Annunciation occurred,
there is a cave. This can still be seen in the modern basilica of the Annunciation, behind the remains
of a pre-Byzantine baptistery. (The building of houses in front of caves, or with a cave as a cellar, was
in fact common in Palestine at the time, as was giving birth in such a cave.)

As if one can never have too many caves, tradition has added other sites to the list. A short distance
from the Church of the Nativity is the so-called Grotto of the Milk, where the Holy Family is said to
have hidden during their flight into Egypt and where drops of Mary’s milk supposedly fell to the
ground.

Then there is the cave at Gethsemane where it is claimed that the Apostles slept during Christ’s Agony
in the Garden. Further up the Mount of Olives, adjacent to the rock from which He is believed to have
ascended, is a cave where Christ is said to have instructed the Apostles.

The Eastern iconographers did not include Mary’s cave in the typical icon of the Annunciation.
However, caves feature in numerous other icons, such as the raising of Lazarus from his sepulchre,
Elijah being fed by a raven outside his cave, the Patmian cave of St John the Theologian, and the cave
of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus. On some icons, St George’s dragon gets a cave as a lair.

The iconographers have added less obvious caverns, such as the modest cave seen beneath the foot of
the Cross. Encompassed by the cave is the skull, sometimes accompanied by piratical cross bones, of
Adam, the representative of all humanity. This follows the tradition that the Cross was erected over
the burial of Adam, conveying the message that Fallen Adam is redeemed by the blood of Christ, the
New Adam. Then, in the Resurrection icon, the iconographers depict Hades as a vast dark, cavernous
abyss, sometimes with unequivocally cave-like details.

Finally, there are icons in which the spectre of the cave, rather than an actual physical cave, insinuates
its mysterious presence. In some icons of the Baptism of Christ, the dark waters of the river Jordan are
sealed in by rocks, thus deliberately creating a spectral cavern. This recalls both the dark cave of the
Nativity, into which the light of Christ shone, and the cave of the entombment, for Baptism is a
sacramental death and rebirth.

A spectral cave is also formed in icons of Pentecost by the space en- closed by the synthronon on
which the Apostles are seated. In the darkness of the cavity, standing in robes stained with the blood
of innocents, is the ruler of the fallen world, King Cosmos, gathering scrolls, symbolising the teaching
of the Apostles and/or the languages of the nations, in a cloth.

Beyond doubt, the cave is a powerful symbol worthy of contemplation; what the depth psychologist,
Carl Jung, would call an archetype of the collective unconscious. “Let us look upon the great mystery
of the cave” invites the Aposticha from Vespers of the Forefeast (December 24) of the Nativity of
Christ. This is an invitation we should accept.

The Palaeolithic Caves

But how to proceed? Aristotle gives some useful advice: “We shall, I think… get the best view of [a]
matter if we look at the natural growth of things from the beginning”. Quite. The deepest meaning of
things is often revealed by beginnings, before history has been allowed to muddy the waters.
Palaeolithic peoples didn’t live deep in caves; only cave entrances and rock overhangs were used for
shelter and communal life. But if European Palaeolithic peoples were not troglodytes, we frequently
find art in the most inaccessible depths of caves, not in entrance areas. (In contrast, Aboriginal
paintings are typically found under rock overhangs, as are those of the Bushman/San people in South
Africa.)

A decade ago, my wife and I investigated Upper Palaeolithic (c.30,000–10,000 BC) art in the caves of
central France. Just how extraordinary are the locations of the “galleries” was impressed upon us in
what was, I think, our first cave, Les Combarelles, near the village of Les Eyzies.

Horse in Lascaux Cave. Photo: Wikipedia

Although today the floors have been lowered, the artists would have had painfully to crawl on their
stomachs through very tight passages in order to reach the walls they adorned with paintings and
engravings. The cave ex- tends for c.296m but the images don’t begin for some 160m.

There are an unusual number of depictions of human beings in Les Combarelles but animals
predominate. These include horses, bears, ibex, asses, lions, bison, reindeer and mammoths. Of all the
animals, the French seem to have a particular fascination with mammouths.

Author with toy woolly mammouth.

There are a few caves which provide a modicum of evidence of ritual activity, but for caves such as
Les Combarelles there is no evidence that Palaeolithic people even penetrated the decorated galleries,
much less engaged in rituals, once the art had been completed. This suggests that the ritual was the act
of creation itself.

There are a number of theories about the meaning of the art, though they are not necessarily
incompatible. One of the stronger is the theory that, like the Bushman paintings in the Drakensberg
Mountains of South Africa, the images record the “otherworld” experiences of shamans in, or
recalling, a state of trance. The fact that certain animals, bison and horses in particular, are so frequent
could suggest that, like the eland antelope of the San, they were of totemic significance.

Another theory, backed by a good deal of evidence, is that the art is not randomly placed. Particular
animals normally appear in the middle of galleries, other kinds in the surrounding area, still others at
the periphery. This suggests that (like an Orthodox church) the galleries give effect to a coherent
cosmology, mythology or theology.

But why did the artists penetrate so deep into cave systems? All of the evidence points to a belief
system centred on the earth itself as the mother of life. The cave would, then, have been seen as the
womb of Mother Earth and the painting and engraving would have been both an act of worship and of
supplication to ensure future fruitfulness of all life. The famous so- called “Venus” figurines might or
might not represent personifications of Mother Earth.

The Cave Continues its Journey

The concept of the earth as the mother of life continues through Judaism and subsequently
Christianity. In Genesis, God commands the earth to bring forth vegetation and the land creatures, and
the waters the aquatic creatures (Genesis 1:11-12, 20-22). The Old Testament patriarchs, kings and
judges were buried in caves, as was Christ and, according to the Jerusalem tradition, the Theotokos.
Still today, we who are earth are buried in the bosom of Mother Earth (Genesis 3:19).

Caves remained places of great religious significance in the Greek and Roman worlds, as Porphyry
(third century AD) observes:
In the most remote periods of antiquity … caves and grottoes were consecrated to gods
before temples were ever thought of – the cave of the Curetes to Zeus in Crete, to
Selene and Lycean Pan in Arcadia, to Dionysus on Naxos, and everywhere Mithras was
known they propitiated this god by means of a cave.

(Quoted by Naomi Miller in Heavenly Caves, George Braziller.)

A cave, the Lupercal, figured prominently in the story of the founding of Rome by Romulus and
Remus in 753 BC. According to legend, the twins were found on the banks of the Tiber by a she-wolf,
who suckled them in the cave until they were discovered by the shepherd, Faustulus.

The cave, dedicated to the god Lupercus, was the focus of a major pagan festival, the Lupercalia, until
it was suppressed by Pope Gelasius I in 494. In January 2007 a cave richly decorated in mosaic and
shells, almost certainly the Lupercal, was discovered deep beneath the palace of Augustus on the
Palatine Hill.

We can hear an echo of the pagan veneration of caves in the Christian catacombs of Rome and
elsewhere and in the enshrining of the relics of saints in chambers beneath the altars of churches.
Chapels have been created in caves associated with saints or built, in the manner of Mithraea, to
resemble caves.

Semi-subterranean chapel, Rhodes

In Cappadocia, mid ninth-century to late eleventh-century churches and chapels replete with
marvellous frescoes, such as the windowless Dark Church, were cut into rock. Something of the
numinous atmosphere of these marvels of the Orthodox world is captured in Western Romanesque
crypt chapels.

And, of course, there are caves at which apparitions are said to have occurred, such as Lourdes (the
Theotokos) and Monte Gargano (the Archangel Michael).

We even find a reminiscence of gardens. These often owe a debt to the springs and fountains of
Ancient nymphaea, shrines to water nymphs. The nest, and most mysterious, that I know is the mid
eighteenth-century grotto, decorated with precious shells and with water cascading through it, in the
garden of Goldney House, now a college of my Alma Mater, the University of Bristol. There is also a
fine grotto in what is arguably the greatest of all eighteenth-century landscape gardens, Stourhead
(Plate 1b).

Unravelling the Mystery

There is an undoubted continuity of thought and experience running through the human history of the
cave. The cave is a space contained within the very flesh, the rock, of Mother Earth but at the same
time is a world apart. It is also an image of the cosmos, its roof mimicking the heavens, its floor the
earth. It is a passageway between our work-a-day world and the “other” world, through whatever
metaphors that is understood, whether metaphors of darkness or of light. It is a place of
transformations.

Caves often have springs rising in them or subterranean rivers or streams running through them, and
sometimes those strange and wondrous growing concretions, stalactites and stalagmites. Palaeolithic
peoples probably saw water rising from the ground as the blood of Mother Earth.

In the myth of Genesis, the life-giving waters of Eden rise from subterranean depths and separate out
into four rivers to water the earth.

Across Christendom, sacred springs and wells are the focus of veneration of the saints with which they
are associated.

The story of the stream that gushed forth when Moses struck the rock with his staff (Numbers 20:2-
13) is frequently illustrated in early Christian iconography as a type of baptism. The rock is Christ
Himself, the stone rejected by the builders which became the cornerstone of the Church (Mark 12:10
etc.). And “Rock Man”, Peter/Petros, is the name Christ gives to Simon, whom He appoints leader of
the Apostles (Matthew 16:13-19).

For Ancient cultures, caves were places for meditation, places of visions and spiritual illumination
where one could dream dreams. In Antiquity, Pythagoras is said to have received enlightenment
during a nine- day sojourn in a cave. In modern times, the great seventeenth-century scientist and
Royal physician, William Harvey (who gave us the pivotal theories of the circulation of the blood and
action of the heart) is said to have retreated into a cave to ponder the mysteries of life.

Perhaps we all need a cave into which we can escape from the pressures of the out-of-joint world
around us and refresh our souls in the silence of eternity. I do.
Chapter 13. The Great Sunday
“The Great Sunday? Now which Sunday would that happen to be?”

“Well, it isn’t a particular Sunday at all.”

“Not a particular Sunday? How can a Sunday not be a Sunday? This sounds as mysterious as an answer
to a Parliamentary question. I think you had better explain.”

“Right-ho, but this is rather mind-bending stuff , so hold on to your seat.”

“I’m holding on tight.”

“Off we go then. When we talk about the Great Sunday we are not talking about ordinary time.”

“By ordinary time you mean astronomical or clock time?”

“Yes. In fact we are not really talking about time at all. However, in terms of ordinary time, the Great
Sunday actually lasts for fifty consecutive days, from Easter Sunday to the Sunday of Pentecost
inclusive.”

“I think I will need another cup of coffee before we go any further.”

“Very well, but please do stop interrupting or it will take fifty days for me to explain.”

“In that case, I promise no more interruptions.”

“Good. Perhaps the place to start is with the concept of eternity. We tend to think of eternity as
infinitely extended time, time which simply goes on and on without an end.”

“Yes, just like an answer to a Parliamentary question.”

“You promised.”

“Oh, very well, get on with it.”

“Eternity, however, is not time at all; it is non-time. To generate time you have to have change. Our
notion of time in fact derives from the motion of the heavenly bodies; although, as St Augustine
pointed out, the motion of a potter’s wheel would, logically speaking, do just as well.

For example, a day is the measure of the interval between one crossing by the sun of the meridian to
the next, at what we call noon. This interval (or rather the mean of all such intervals during the course
of the year) we conventionally divide up into 24 hours, and each hour into 60 minutes, and so forth.
Without the apparent motion of the sun through the sky we would not have days.

Aristotle understood that without change you cannot have time when he defined time as “the number
[that is, measure] of motion with respect to before and after”. Now, since in God there is no motion,
no change –“Jesus Christ”, says Hebrews 13:8, “is the same yesterday and today and for ever” – there
can be no time. God dwells in eternity, in the eternal “now”. God is simply “I AM” (Exodus 3:13-14).”
“I think that I understand, but doesn’t that mean that God is totally static?”

“It might do if it wasn’t the case that there is a dynamism, though one without change or motion,
between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A nexus amoris, an entwining of love.”

“Just as between the three angels in Rublev’s icon of the Trinity?”

“Precisely. Spot on. When you do have something sensible to say you may interrupt now and again.”

“Thank you.”

“Not at all. But to continue, although the Godhead dwells in eternity, the second person of the Trinity,
the Son, became subject to time when He took on flesh from the Virgin Mary two thousand years ago.
God entered human history. As both God and a human being, Christ suffered on the Cross for us, was
buried and rose from the dead on the third day. This is what is called the Paschal Mystery of the Lord.

We are redeemed from sin and death by the sacramental enacting (or making present) of the Paschal
Mystery in baptism. We are signed with the sign of the Cross, we are immersed (buried) in sanctified
water, and we are raised up (resurrected) as a new creation from the font.

Our biological mother provided the womb and uterine water from which we were born according to
the order of nature. The Church, our spiritual mother, provides the mystic uterus and waters from
which we are sacramentally reborn.

Finally, we adopt also the mystery of Pentecost through a second signifying, this time with Holy
Chrism. Pentecost, the Jewish feast Thy days after Passover when the Holy Spirit descended on the
Apostles in the semblance of tongues of re, was in fact the final episode of the Paschal Mystery. It was
the fulfilment of Christ’s promise before the Ascension that He would send the Holy Spirit, the
Comforter, by the operations of which He would be made present sacramentally within the Church
until the end of time. Moreover, Pentecost, the last Great Feast of Pascha, is not only a
commemoration of the events recorded in Acts 2 but also a celebration of the Mystery of the Holy
Trinity.”

“I am still listening, but what has this to do with the Great Sunday?”

“I’ll get to that shortly.”

“Before Christmas, I hope.”

“I will ignore that remark. With Easter Sunday everything changes. Through the Resurrection of
Christ the whole creation is renewed, the Fall is reversed, sins are pardoned, Paradise is regained and
we inherit eternal life. Counted in ordinary time, the Church now passes into a period of fifty days
(Pentēkostē) in which, though still physically in time, we mystically enjoy a foretaste of eternity.

For a week of weeks plus one day, the Sunday of Pentecost/Trinity Sun- day which expresses the unity
of the whole, we enjoy the unwaning light of the Risen Lord, the light of eternity, of the Heavenly
Jerusalem. Since kneeling at prayer and fasting are penitential in character the canons of the
Ecumenical Councils strictly forbid it for the whole 50 days of Pascha, as also on every Sunday of the
year.

This is the Great Sunday. A week of weeks (7 x 7) plus one day (49 + 1 = 50, a Jubilee of days), every
day of which is liturgically a Sunday. In fact, the whole Thy days are but a single timeless Sunday, the
Day of the Lord, the Great Sunday.”

“Oh, so that is the Great Sunday.”

“Yes, and since very early times the Great Sunday, as well as all Sundays occurring throughout the
year, has been thought of as belonging to the Eighth Day, as being outside of ordinary time.”

“The Eighth Day? Now that does sound very mysterious indeed. Surely the week has always had seven
days?”

“Certainly according to time the week does have seven days, but every Sunday we commemorate the
Lord’s Resurrection, since it was on a Sun- day that the Lord rose from the dead.”

“So every Sunday is really a little Pascha?”

“Exactly. And, as I have explained, by virtue of the Resurrection the whole cosmos was mystically
renewed, or, to put it another way, the eternal kingdom of God was made manifest. So, even though we
are still in time, we are able to experience the unwaning light of the eternal Day of the Lord. That is,
the new day, the Eighth Day, the day which symbolises eternity. So Sunday is both the first day of the
week according to time, as it signifies the first of the six days of the Creation, but it is also the eighth
day, the day following the Sabbath that signifies eternity.”

“Interesting. This this why early baptisteries such as the Baptistery of the Orthodox in Ravenna are
eight-sided?”

“Spot on again. Early fonts and baptisteries are usually eight-sided – and sometimes even churches,
such as San Vitale in Ravenna – because it is by baptism that we are reborn into the Eighth Day and
“put on” the Risen Lord. As you can see, baptism is supremely a sacrament of the Lord’s Passover, of
Pascha, and in the early Church the Paschal Vigil was the one time of the year when baptism was
normally administered.

Of course, the Great Sunday is only a foretaste of eternity; ordinary time must reassert itself, the
Church must look to its mission to the world. The reversion to ordinary time is dramatically marked
by the resumption of kneeling at prayer at the earliest possible moment after the end of the great Thy
days. This is during Vespers, since Vespers marks the end of the day and the beginning of the new
day; in this case Monday. The service, usually celebrated immediately after the Liturgy of Pentecost
Sunday, is that commonly known – for good reason! – as the Service of Kneeling.

The Paschal cycle of feasts, however, does not end with Pentecost, since every Sunday of the year is,
as you observed, a Paschal festival.”

“Thank you. This has all been most interesting. However, is what you have told me entirely correct?
You have said that the Great Sunday extends for Thy days from Easter Sunday through Trinity
Sunday/Pentecost. But looking at the Church calendar you so kindly gave me last Christmas, together
with the tartan socks you observe that I am wearing, I see that it lists the day before the feast of the
Ascension as the Leave-taking/Apodosis of Pascha; and isn’t that when we stop singing the Easter
hymn/troparion, “Christ is risen from the dead …” and greeting each other with “Christos
Anestē”/“Christ is Risen”, and all that?

So, according to the calendar, Pascha seems to last not for Thy days, as you claim, but only for thirty-
nine, ending the day before the Ascension. I note that the Ascension is also listed as having a leave-
taking, on the Friday before Pentecost. I think that I am now even more puzzled than when I asked you
to explain the Great Sunday.”

“Well, I’m not surprised. Perhaps I should have just given you the socks and forgotten about the
calendar. However, since you have the calendar with you, you will observe that the Sundays from
Easter Sunday to Pentecost are designated as the Sundays of Pascha. So Easter Sunday is the First
Sunday of Pascha and Pentecost the Eighth. Moreover, you will see that the Wednesday which is 25
days after Easter Sunday, counting inclusively, is the ancient feast of Mid-Pentecost; that is, the mid-
point of the 50 days of Pascha.

It is also relevant that the apolytikion/troparion for the following Sunday, the Sunday of the Samaritan
Woman, begins, as you probably recall: “In the midst of the feast, refresh my thirsting soul with the
owing streams of piety.” This is the same troparion that is used at Mid-Pentecost and the “feast” to
which it refers is, of course, the fifty-day feast of Pascha, the Great Sunday.”

“So we seem to have two totally inconsistent accounts.”

“Yes. What, most unfortunately, occurred was that in the course of time understanding of the true
meaning of the great Thy days of Pascha was largely lost to sight. Ascension and Pentecost/Trinity
came to be thought of as distinct feasts in their own right; that is, as distinct from Pascha. The concept
of there being Twelve Great Feasts, which included the Ascension and Pentecost, tended to promote
the idea of the feasts of the Church Year as like the beads on a rosary or knots on a prayer-rope
(Komboskoinion). In reality, Ascension and Pentecost are high points within the Feast of Feasts,
Pascha, the Great Sunday.

The Church Year is an organic whole and the festivals not only reflect one another but are intricately
entwined in complex ways which defy their separation out into a linear chain or circlet of distinct
beads or knots. The Church Year is, indeed, an image of Christ Himself; as the Latin expression has it,
Annus est Christus, the year is Christ.”

“I like that. So you are saying that the leave-taking of Pascha, thirty-nine days after Easter Sunday,
and also that of the Ascension before Pentecost, is not part of the authentic tradition of the Church but
a consequence of erroneous thinking about the nature of the feasts and amnesia with respect to the true
meaning of the Great Sunday?”

“Quite. It is also interesting to note that exactly the same thing occurred in the Western Church.
However, the Roman Catholic Church, in its reforms following Vatican II, has restored the integrity of
Pascha as a unified festival outside of ordinary time that incorporates Ascension and Pentecost within
its embrace.”

“Shouldn’t the Orthodox Church follow suit?”

“Indeed, it should.”
Chapter 14. The Fear of Death
As the seasons begin to turn and winter approaches, the seasons of the Church Year also turn, for with
the feast of Pentecost the great Paschal season comes to an end.

So, Pentecost is a good point at which to reflect upon the last long seventeen weeks, almost a third of
the year, that have passed since the preparation for Great Lent began on the Sunday of the Publican
and Pharisee. Even ageing gentlemen like myself, who have seen many seasons come and go, cannot
fail to learn something, or gain some fresh insight, from each new experience of the holiest period of
the year. Well, is there anything that might be worth sharing with my long-suffering readers? Perhaps
there is.

The Epistle to the Hebrews

During this holy period one of the greatest of the fixed feasts also falls, the feast of the Annunciation
(which also happens to be Greek National Day). Readers with longer short-term memories than your
columnist will recall that the Annunciation fell this year [2007], on the fifth and last Sunday of Great
Lent. Reading through the passage appointed for the Epistle for the feast, Hebrews 2:11-18 (a reading
also appointed for the Sixth Imperial Hour on Good Friday) two verses leapt off the page and engaged
my attention. The verses (14 & 15) tell us that:
[Christ] partook of … [our human] nature, [so] that through death he might destroy him
who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of
death were subject to lifelong bondage.

This passage is of interest because, if read through the lens of 1 Peter3:18-22, it might be seen to have
reference to Christ’s mystic descent into Hades and release of the spirits imprisoned there; an event
known in the West as the Harrowing of Hell.

But what riveted my attention was not the text’s possible relation to the Harrowing of Hell, but the
anonymous (almost certainly not Paul) writer’s assertion that our enslavement to the power of the
devil was a consequence of the fear of death. It is this, according to the author of Hebrews, which
holds humanity in bondage, and it is from this fear that Christ has released us by His death. But why is
the fear of death of such paramount importance in the eyes of the author?

The Epistle to the Hebrews is directed to ethnic Jews – very possibly to a Jewish Christian community
in Rome that was in serious danger of sliding back into Judaism – and is shot through with references
to the Old Testament and Jewish Temple ritual.

Despite this, the Epistle arguably contains more allusions to Ancient philosophical conceptions,
possibly mediated through Alexandria, than any other book of the New Testament. Most frequent are
allusions, however mediated, to Platonism, but in this emphasis placed upon the fear of death surely
there is reference to a significant theme of philosophical thought in general during the period of the
early Church.

The Fear of Death

We tend to think of Ancient philosophy as being dominated by the divide between Platonism and
Aristotelianism, but in fact later Antiquity was a melting pot of differing schools of philosophy. Along
with classical Platonists and Aristotelians, we find Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics and others. Moreover,
if there was a dominant school it was Stoicism. Although in several regards Stoic and Epicurean
beliefs were similar, a major clash occurred between the two schools. One aspect of this clash
concerned death and the fear of death.

To understand why the Ancient philosophers turned their attention to the fear of death one has only to
call to mind the typically uninviting, and often terrifying, depictions of the afterlife painted by Greek
and Roman mythology. In this life, the appallingly immoral and violent behaviour of the gods and
goddesses might be held at bay by means of sacrifices and worship offered the deities by State ritual.
After death, however, the individual was entirely at the mercy of the arbitrary behaviour of this gang
of divine desperadoes. Arcadian idylls might paint a rosier scenario, but Pagans had good cause to fear
death.

Increasingly, State religion, centred on the Greek and Roman Pantheon, failed to satisfy the religious
needs of the people. To establish a personal relationship with a deity of the Pantheon was next to
impossible. The cults of these cold beings, who were preoccupied with promoting their own egos and
doing in rival deities, not human welfare, degenerated into very little more than civil religion.

In this climate, some turned to philosophy, others to the burgeoning mystery religions. Those who
turned to philosophy for consolation were seeking a good life achieved through the acquisition of
wisdom (“philosophy” literally means love of wisdom). Both Stoics and Epicureans stressed the need
to understand the processes and cycles of the natural world in order to enjoy a tranquil and ordered
life. This led them to study science. However, science was, for both schools, subordinate to ethics, a
means to an end.

The Stoics believed that the way to confront the fear of death was constantly to keep the fact of our
mortality before the mind, to achieve acceptance of the truth that birth and death are facets of the
natural cycles of the universe, the great cosmic scheme of things.

The Epicureans went further, developing a body of scientific theory that differed from that of the
Stoics and Aristotelians. Epicurean science was based on the Ancient Greek atomic theory of
Leucippus and Democritus. According to this position, there is nothing at all in the universe other than
atoms and empty space, the void. Atoms, too small to be visible, were held to be solid and indivisible
bits of matter of differing shapes and sizes.

Everything that exists, even the gods and the human soul/spirit, are composed of interlocking atoms.
Atoms moving through the void collided with other atoms and formed aggregates. Some of these
aggregates combined with other aggregates. By a slow process of evolution – and, yes, the Epicureans
did believe in an evolutionary universe, and even anticipated the Darwinian principle of evolution by
means of natural selection – these aggregates had combined in such ways that eventually living
organisms able to reproduce themselves, including human beings, had come into being.

At death, the atoms of both body and soul/spirit simply disengage from one another and are recycled
through natural processes. There is no immortal soul and no afterlife. The fear of death (as opposed to
the fear of dying, which is quite another matter) is, thus, simply irrational.
There might be such a thing as hell on earth, but no hell (or heaven) beyond the grave. Moreover,
though the Epicureans did not reject the existence of the pagan gods, they held that they were ghost-
like beings prancing around on Mt Olympus and had no control over the governance of the universe or
human affairs. They had no relevance except to poets. With no reason to fear death, we should
concentrate on achieving a tranquil life here and now in harmony with nature.

Epicurean atomic materialism and denial of an afterlife clearly ran counter to Christianity. Some
Christians, however, praised the Epicureans’ attack on the gods. But for the most part Christians
simply ignored Epicureanism. This was unfortunate as Christianity could have gained much from this
remarkable school which anticipated so much of modern science.

But is it possible that the Epicurean critique of the fear of death lies behind our verses from the most
philosophically oriented book of the New Testament? I leave the answer to the New Testament
scholars, but I think it probable that the writer had in mind the kinds of insights that are to be found in
Epicurean writings, such as Lucretius’, De rerum natura (On the Nature of things).

Lucretius on the Fear of Death

For Lucretius, the great Roman philosopher-poet, the fear of death is not only the cause of great
unhappiness but of great evils. There is profound insight in his observation that fear of death, instead
of leading to a confrontation and overcoming of the fear, often leads individuals, however irrational
this might be, to attempt to flee death, to try to eradicate the very thought of it from the mind. This
useless flight can in its turn lead such persons into vice. Living in extremely dangerous and disturbed
times (the first half of the first century BC) it is not surprising that Lucretius sees avarice and lust for
power as particularly pernicious:
[M]en desiring to escape afar [from “the gates of death”] …, driven by false terror,
amass wealth by civil bloodshed and greedily multiply riches, piling murder upon
murder (3.68-71).

(De rerum natura, trans. W.H.D.Rouse, Harvard University Press.)

Equally, it could be said that compulsion to flee death, caused by the fear of death, can lead
individuals to attempt escape by way of a life of debauchery or (a particular curse of our times) the
twilight world of drugs. Needless to say, such lifestyles simply accelerate such unfortunates towards
the very thing they most fear, death.

It is ironic in the extreme that Epicureans were (and still are) slanderously accused of advocating
unbridled hedonism. In fact, they taught (as did their chief critics, the Stoics) that tranquillity of mind
can only be achieved through abstemiousness. Indeed, the father of the school, Epicurus, is said to
have led a life of great frugality. Desire for luxuries should be overcome, Lucretius maintains, since
such cravings are unbounded and so cannot be requited, thus leading to unhappiness.

Somewhat paradoxically, but again I think with considerable insight, Lucretius observes that the fear
of death can actually lead, in the extreme, to suicide:
And often it goes so far, that for fear of death men are seized by hatred of life and of
seeing the light, so that with sorrowing heart they devise their own death, forgetting
 that this fear is the fountain of their cares (3.79-82).

Today, in times as troubled as those of Lucretius, the fear of death has again found a footing in
Western society. Some Orthodox might have been infected with this fear but, fortunately, Orthodox in
general remain unwavering in the certainty that, in the words of the Resurrection Troparion:
Christ is Risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and on those in the tombs
bestowing life.

In conquering death, Christ has also conquered the fear of death, and released those enslaved by that
fear. Orthodox still maintain a strong sense that the saints depicted on the icons are living and
celebrating with us in the one community of the Church. Co ns are still left open and the deceased
farewelled with a kiss. Orthodox still pray for the dead at Liturgies and memorial services simply as
one would for absent members of the family. And there are still monks who refuse medical assistance
and keep their co ns at the ready in their cells. In short, Orthodoxy preserves the traditional Christian
understanding of death as an intrinsic part of life, of life in Christ.

In the world around us, however, death has been sanitised and hidden away. The preservation of
individual human life, to the absolute limits of medical skill, is seen as the ultimate good. Every
device imaginable is deployed to prolong life artificially, sometimes for years after any quality of life
and any hope for a good death (for which Christians used to pray) has been totally extinguished.
Millions of dollars are poured into this senseless, and sometimes extremely cruel, endeavour; millions
of dollars that could be deployed saving countless lives from starvation, epidemics and the ravages of
war.

Death has again become the enemy, the fear of death is again enslaving humanity. The Ancient
Epicureans would not be in the least surprised to learn that modern society is overwhelmed by
individual and State criminality, terrorism and wars, drug abuse, domestic violence, youth suicide or
the rape of the natural world. Such are inevitable and paradoxical consequences of the fear of death.

Human life is precious, indeed all life is precious, it is a gift from God. But biological death is not an
enemy, it is an intrinsic part of life.

The Christian Alternative

Deeply insightful though the Epicureans might have been in their discernment of the fear of death as
the supreme underlying cause of human suffering, few found their solution to the problem satisfying.
Denying an afterlife and de-deifying the gods, the Epicureans fell back on a mystical veneration of
Nature, which almost (but not quite) amounted to pantheism.

But is this enough? Is, for that matter, philosophy enough? I think not. There was, though, another
path to that of the philosophers; the mystery religions, of which Isis and Mithras were the most
prominent. These religions satisfied the human need to believe in God and an afterlife while at the
same time advancing a remedy for the fear of death: salvation through a personal relationship with a
divine saviour. The mystery religions offered their initiates release from sins and from the chains of
cosmic necessity, and guaranteed eternal life.

However, the pagan mysteries are based on myths, not on historical events. They could, as was also
the case with the Old Testament, offer only types and foreshadowings of things to come. The types,
both Pagan and Biblical, were realised, in the fullness of time, by the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery
of Christ. By His death, Christ conquered death in reality.

It is important to bear in mind that “death” in the Bible means far more than physical death. “Death”
also denotes spiritual death, separation or alienation from God. When Adam and Eve are told that they
would die if they ate the forbidden fruit God was speaking of spiritual death. They ate the fruit but
they did not physically die, they were simply expelled from Paradise. This expulsion symbolises
humanity’s separation from God occasioned by disobedience and sin.

But Christ, through the Paschal Mystery, took upon Himself our sins and reopened the gates of
Paradise for all humanity. Through Christ, the wall of separation between God and humanity has been
broken down once and for all. Union with God in Christ can never be taken away from us, not even by
physical death.

By conquering spiritual death, Christ simultaneously drew the sting of physical death. It follows that
with Christ’s conquest of death came also the conquest of the fear of death, the fear that, according to
the Epicureans and it seems the author of Hebrews, is the root cause of vice and despair. Christ, in the
words of our text, has delivered “all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage
[to the devil].”
Chapter 15. The Saints Go Marching In
We are trave’ling in the footsteps
Of those who’ve gone before,
And we’ll all be reunited,
On a new and sunlit shore

Chorus
Oh, when the saints go marching in
Oh, when the saints go marching in
Lord, how I want to be in that number
When the saints go marching in
And when the sun refuse to shine
And when the sun refuse to shine
Lord, how I want to be in that number
When the sun refuse to shine
And when the moon turns red with blood
And when the moon turns red with blood
Lord, how I want to be in that number
When the moon turns red with blood
Oh, when the trumpet sounds its call
Oh, when the trumpet sounds its call
Lord, how I want to be in that number
When the trumpet sounds its call
Some say this world of trouble,
Is the only one we need,
But I’m waiting for that morning,
When the new world is revealed.

(Traditional. American Gospel Hymn.)

The Sunday of All Saints

The Orthodox Church celebrates the feast of All Saints on the Sunday following Pentecost/Trinity
Sunday. In the West, All Saints is celebrated on November 1.

Earlier the Roman Church celebrated the feast on May 13. The reason is that on May 13, 609 Pope
Boniface IV consecrated the pagan temple to all the gods, the Pantheon (which had been given to him
as a gift by the Byzantine Emperor, Phocas) to the Virgin Mary and All the Martyrs. (There is an
unlikely story that for the consecration Boniface had 28 wagonloads of bones of martyrs brought from
the catacombs!)

The change to November 1 in the eighth century seems to derive from the dedication of a chapel in St
Peter’s by Pope Gregory III to all saints, not just the martyrs.
However, there are those who think the change had more to do with a desire to counteract the revels of
the pagan Celtic feast of Samain, the Calends of Winter. If so, it had little long-term success as the
pagan celebration of Halloween (= All Hallows Eve, All Hallows being an old English name for All
Saints) goes from strength to strength. Though today it is small children dressed up as witches and
warlocks demanding “trick or treat” who menace the neighbourhood rather than real-life witches and
warlocks.

The celebration of the feast on the Sunday after Pentecost is recorded as early as St John Chrysostom
as being the practice of the Church of Antioch.

The reason we celebrate All Saints on this Sunday is that following the feast of Pentecost/Trinity, the
eighth and final Sunday (indeed day) of Pascha, the Church returns us from the Paschal anticipation of
eternity we have been enjoying since Easter Sunday to ordinary time.

As, like the Apostles, we prepare ourselves for our apostolic mission to the fallen world, the Church
places before us the example of the saints to encourage and guide us.

On the Sunday of All Saints the Church joyfully commemorates all saints whether known or unknown,
whether past, present or future.

Technically, from the perspective of canon law, a saint is a person for whom a feast day has been
entered onto the Church calendar, the process known as canonisation. The Roman Catholic Church has
a cumbersome centralised system of canonisation, but in the East the process is more flexible and is
undertaken by the various national Churches.

But, there are literally millions of individuals not on the calendar who over the centuries have lived
outstandingly holy lives or have died as martyrs. In fact, the number of Orthodox martyrs of the
twentieth century runs into the millions; more than all previous centuries added together. Each and
every one of these individuals is deserving of a place on the calendar and so, in a more general sense,
can be regarded as a saint.

The feast of All Saints isn’t simply a commemoration of saints long dead but of all the saints
throughout time, from the origins of humanity to the consummation of the age and the Second Coming
of Christ.

There are innumerable living saints, individuals whose burning love of God and of their neighbour
render them every bit as worthy exemplars of the Christian life as the saints on the calendar. And, of
course, there are still Christians suffering imprisonment and torture, even death, as a consequence of
their witness to Christ.

The feast of All Saints does not only commemorate those we would call “Christians”. It
commemorates all those who, whatever their time, place and “religion”, have lived their lives guided
by the light of the Logos (= Christ) within them. For the Logos, through whom all things are created,
has been present in the world and in human hearts since the beginning of time, aeons before the
Incarnation.

Orthodoxy takes a universalistic view of the Church. The Church of the New Testament is historically
continuous with that of the Old. The Old Testament is the New in shadow, the New the Old in its
fulfilment in the God-man, Jesus Christ. Through the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery of the Lord the
whole of time, past, present and future, is rolled up like a scroll into the eternal present of God.

Time and Eternity

There is a strong eschatological (= appertaining to the last things, the final destination) element to the
feast of All Saints. The Church focuses on the consummation of that to which it aspires, the drawing
of all humanity, indeed all creation, back into God from whence it came.

We are all called to be saints, to transcend the barrier of separation between the Church struggling
here on earth, “the Church Militant”, and the Communion of Saints in Heaven, “the Church
Triumphant”.

The Church, on this great feast, therefore commemorates not only all the saints of the past and the
living saints but also those saints yet to be born. She looks towards the completion of the span of
history when time will be no more.

This is why the icon of the feast depicts the Second Coming and Judgement, with the Cosmic Christ in
Majesty seated upon the rainbow in a roundel at the centre. Surrounding Christ, in the outer roundel,
are the angelic host and the different orders of saints. Also in the outer roundel, immediately above
Christ, is the etimasia, the throne of judgement, with Adam and Eve, Everyman and Everywoman,
either side. (The upper register of the icon obviously derives from domical iconography such as that of
the central dome of St Mark’s in Venice.) In the lower register, signifying Earth, are the Penitent
Thief and Abraham with the generations.

The strongly eschatological understanding of the Communion of Saints is captured in the Gospel
hymn associated with the “Dixieland” tradition of New Orleans, “When the Saints Go Marching In”.

Most people are only aware of its secular rendition, in which usually only the chorus is sung
(endlessly!). In fact, it is a deeply spiritual hymn, rich in the metaphorical language of biblical
eschatology, particularly the book of Revelation. The hymn gives vivid expression to the hope that we
all might be “in that number when the Saints go marching in” to the New Jerusalem.

In the New Orleans tradition, the hymn is sung at funerals. It is sung sombrely as a dirge processing to
the interment, while on the return it is sung joyfully in its more familiar “hot” version.

The Cultus of the Martyrs

At this juncture, let us switch texts:

Throughout the world, thy Church, O Christ our God, is adorned with the blood of thy
Martyrs as with purple and ne linen. Through them she cries to thee: send down thy pity
upon thy people, to thy community give peace, and shed on our souls thy great mercy.

(Dismissal Hymn (apolytikion/troparion) for the Sunday of All Saints. A Manual of Eastern Orthodox
Prayers, SPCK.)

The dismissal hymn for All Saints will be familiar to most readers. But have you ever noticed
something odd about it? It commemorates only martyrs, not all the saints. Vast numbers of saints
whose names appear on the calendar did not die a martyr’s death. So what is going on here? We must
turn to history for an answer.

The Church calendar began its development immediately following the Resurrection. Christ rose from
the dead on a Sunday. It was natural, therefore, that Christians should gather for their regular weekly
celebration of the Eucharist on Sunday, the Lord’s Day.

Christ’s death and Resurrection occurred at the time of the Jewish Passover. The descent of the Holy
Spirit on the Apostles occurred at the Jewish feast of Pentecost, 50 days after Passover. The Church
from the beginning in keeping the Jewish feasts of Passover and Pentecost would have understood the
festivals in the light of the saving mysteries of the Lord.

Although confusion was to arise as a consequence of conflicting traditions, the Paschal cycle, which
encompasses not only Pascha but also every Sunday of the year, is of Apostolic origin.
Astronomically, the Paschal cycle is determined not just by the sun, as is the case with our civil
calendar, but by the phases of the moon as well.

So early on the Church knew only one annual cycle of festivals, the Paschal cycle. The origin of the
fixed feast cycle (those festivals kept on the same calendar date each year) lies with the veneration of
the martyrs.
It was the heroic witness of Christians whose bodies were used as torches to illuminate the night by
Nero or who were torn apart by wild beasts in the arena that secured the success of the Church’s
mission to: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation (Mark 16:15)”.

If the mission of the Early Church had not been nourished by the blood of the martyrs (the word
literally means “witness”) the conversion of the Empire might not have occurred. Christianity might
then have gone down in history as just another mystery religion, along with those of Isis, Mithras,
Dionysus and the rest.

In the New Testament the word “saint” is used of all baptised Christians, the Holy people of God. But
with the tortures and hideous deaths of Christians during the persecutions of the first centuries the
denotation shifted.

The word came to be restricted to those who had suffered death for Christ. The “passion” of the martyr
imitated the Passion of Christ. So close to the Saviour, the martyrs were seen as powerful intercessors
on behalf of the faithful.

Local churches started to keep lists of their martyrs, recording the day of their deaths on the civil
calendar. The day of a martyr’s death was called their dies natalis or natale (= birthday), denoting
their translation into Heaven, not their physical birth.

By the second century we find evidence of the development of a definite cultus of the martyrs, at first
purely local. The community would gather at the tomb of a martyr or martyrs on their dies natalis and
there celebrate a ceremonial meal, known as the Refrigerium, in their memory. (The Refrigerium, the
ancestor of the Memorial Service with kollyva that Orthodox still celebrate, was also celebrated by
family and friends for those who had died natural deaths.)

A small building might be constructed over a tomb for the holding of the Refrigerium. Later, in the
fourth century, a basilica might be built over, or beside, a sacred site or tomb of a martyr, providing a
place where pilgrims could gather. Christians had a strong desire to be buried as close to the martyrs
as possible. The whole cluster of graves might then be enclosed within a building, creating a
coemeterium subteglata (= roofed cemetery).

These basilican structures were not designed as churches for the celebration of the Eucharist but for
the veneration of the remains of martyrs, or for the honouring of sacred sites, and the celebration of
the Refrigerium. It would seem that Constantinian basilicas, such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre
in Jerusalem, the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem and St Peter’s, Rome, were in fact originally
buildings of this kind, although all evolved into churches.

The commemoration of the dead and the Eucharistic worship of the Church rapidly combined during
the course of the fourth century and the Eucharist came to be celebrated over the remains of martyrs;
so much so, that it came to be accepted that the Liturgy should be celebrated over relics. (This is still
the case today as relics are enshrined beneath the Holy Table at a church’s consecration and sewn into
the antimension, the cloth on which the Eucharistic offerings are placed.)

Originally local, the cultus of martyrs spread to other communities which added the names to their
own calendars. This dissemination was assisted by the growing practice of dividing and distributing
the mortal remains of martyrs.
Eventually, many renowned martyrs came to be commemorated, usually on their natale, universally.
A fixed feast cycle was in the making. This development opened the door to the creation of feasts of
Our Lord outside of the Paschal cycle and, somewhat later, feasts of the Theotokos.

While all of this was going on, the concept of martyrdom itself was expanding, and went on expanding
and expanding. First it was extended to cover not only those who literally gave their lives but those
who underwent torture, imprisonment and exile for the sake of the Lord; the Confessors.

Then, with the end of bloody persecution in the fourth century and the rise of monasticism, the
concept was extended to cover holy ascetics, whose tears shed for their own sins and those of the
world, it was said, corresponded to the drops of blood shed by the martyrs. The fasting, vigils and
unceasing prayer of those who died to the world came to be thought of as “white” martyrdom, as
opposed to the “red” martyrdom of those who actually shed their blood for Christ.

From then on it was open slather. The concept of martyrdom was extended to cover all those who had
lived outstanding heroic lives of self-sacrifice and struggle in the name of Christ. And, of course, as
we have seen, the Church on the Sunday of All Saints does not commemorate only those whose names
are entered on the calendar. She also honours all who have led their lives guided by the inner light of
the Logos before the Incarnation, all living saints, and those as yet unborn.
Chapter 16. The Eagle –– Divine Bird of the Sun
So once again we have arrived at the winter solstice (June 21) and feast of the Nativity of St John the
Forerunner (June 24), the Northern Hemisphere’s traditional Mid-Summer’s Day, our mid-winter. An
appropriate time, I think, to give some thought to one of the most ubiquitous of all Christian symbols,
the eagle.

The Eagle in Mythology

To the Ancients, the royal eagle, the most exalted of birds, was closely associated with the sun. Flying
higher than any other bird, it was believed that it could fix its gaze upon the sun, the intense light of
which blinds other creatures.

The Ancients also believed that the parent eagle tested each of its young by seeing if they had the
ability to stare into the sun without blinking; if not, then the unworthy eaglet was ejected from the
nest. Flying so high into the heavens that it could scarce be seen by the human eye this bird, alone of
its kind (though in some mythologies the privilege was extended to falcons), could penetrate the realm
of the gods.

In Ancient Pagan iconography, the eagle, the bird of Zeus, is often depicted clasping thunderbolts in
its claws (as does the American emblematic white-headed eagle). The eagle, it was said, by playing
with the thunderbolts brought light and heat down to the earth.

The eagle, symbol of power, courage, vigilance, swiftness, nobility and victory, adorned the standards
of the Roman legions. When a Roman emperor died it was believed that his genius (= spiritual double)
was carried by an eagle back to the sun, from which it had descended at his birth. The custom
developed of releasing a caged eagle from above an emperor’s funeral pyre at the moment that a
centurion ignited the pyre below.

The Apotheosis of Emperor Antoninus Pius, Vatican.

As a consequence of the phenomenon of social diffusion, which in time extends royal or aristocratic
privilege down to ordinary mortals, the eagle became the psychopomp that carried the souls of the
righteous back to the stars from which, according to the tenets of Ancient astral religion, they had
originated. Subsequently, the Archangel Michael, depicted in iconography with eagle’s wings, became
the psychopomp for Christianity.

But of all of the myths of the eagle, the one that resonated most clearly for the Ancient Hebrews, and
later for the Christians, was that of the eagle’s legendary power of regeneration. Flying so close to the
sun, the eagle’s feathers became scorched and its flesh dried out. When it felt the ravages of time
(every ten years, according to some) it would renew its flesh and feathers, and hence its youth, by
plunging thrice into the waters of a spring (or, according to others, the sea).

The Eagle and the Bible

This last myth found its way into the Old Testament in Psalm 102 LXX (103:5 MT), the sixth Psalm at
Mattins and the first of the Typica: “[The Lord] fulfils your desire with good things, your youth will
be renewed as the eagle’s.”

The myth also appears to be reflected in a much-loved text of Isaiah:

Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted; but they who
wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint (40:30-31).

In many of the thirty odd references to the eagle in the Bible, the bird symbolises the swiftness and
sureness of God’s judgement or God’s deliverance. Thus in the message that He commanded Moses
on Mt Sinai to convey to the people the Lord says (Exodus 19:4):
“You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and
brought you to myself.”

On the other hand, in the Apocalypse/Revelation the eagle assumes the role of a messenger of God’s
impending judgement:
Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice, as it flew in midheaven,
“Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth … ” (8:13).

A timely warning for us, as we totter on the brink of self-inflicted global environmental catastrophe.

The crucial text from Jeremiah, which legitimated the eagle as a symbol of Christ Himself and
allowed Christianity to reinterpret and assimilate the ancient myths of the eagle, also concerns divine
judgement:
“Therefore hear the plan which the Lord has made against Edom … Behold, one shall
mount up and fly swiftly like an eagle, and spread his wings against Bozrah, and the
heart of the warriors of Edom shall be in that day like the heart of a woman in her
pangs.” (49:20a, 22.)

The “one” who “shall mount up and fly swiftly like an eagle” was interpreted by the Fathers as a type
of Christ.

The Eagle and the Church

For Christians, the eagle’s power of renewal made the bird (as also the phoenix) an obvious symbol of
the resurrection. The eagle as divine sun bird is also a natural symbol of Christ as Christos Helios.

Again, the myth of the eagle’s periodic renewal clearly has symbolic reference to baptism, since those
to be baptised, charred and dried out by sin, are made new by putting on the Risen Christ through
triple immersion in the life-giving waters of the font.

The eagle as a symbol of Christ as the vanquisher of the powers of evil finds expression in the
depiction, common in Christian iconography, of the eagle attacking a serpent; the serpent, of course,
symbolising Satan.

Besides Christ, the eagle is also deployed as a symbol of the Apostle and Evangelist John. This derives
from the vision of John in Revelation 4 of the four living creatures before the throne of God, one like a
lion, one like an ox (or calf), one with the face of a human being, and one like a flying eagle. (The
vision echoes that of Ezekiel 1, only in Ezekiel’s case each of the four living creatures had four faces;
hence the term “tetramorph”.)

In the course of time, the four living creatures came to symbolise the four Evangelists. Irenaeus
(c.130-c.200), who was the first person to mention an association between the living creatures and the
Gospels, attributes the lion to John and the eagle to Mark. This is why John sometimes receives the
emblem of a lion in Eastern iconography. The more common scheme, however, attributes a human
being to Matthew, the lion to Mark, an ox to Luke and the eagle to John.

These emblems were allotted to the Evangelists in accordance with the form of the commencement of
their respective Gospels. Luke gets the ox because it is a sacrificial animal and Luke’s Gospel begins
with the story of Zechariah serving as a priest in the Temple. Mark acquires the lion because he begins
his Gospel with John the Baptist preaching in the desert, the haunt of the lion. A genealogy introduces
the Gospel of Matthew, so his emblem is the image of a human being (or, more commonly in
iconography, an angel).

Finally, the eagle was chosen as the symbol for John because his Gospel is prefaced by the most
sublime epitome of the theology of the incarnation. Soaring as it were on an eagle’s wings, John gazes
into the blinding light of the sun, a symbol not only of Christ but of the triune Godhead Itself. The
eagle is thus sometimes used as a symbol for theology per se.

Because the eagle lifts the soul to spiritual heights, lecterns supporting the Bible, particularly in
Anglican churches, are often carved or fashioned in the form of an eagle with spread wings.

The double-headed eagle adopted by Byzantine emperors as an imperial emblem – and later by the
Russian tsars and Holy Roman emperors – originally signified the unity of the Eastern and Western
empires, later the union of Church and State. Still clasping the imperial orb and sceptre in its claws,
the double-headed eagle continues to be used as an heraldic emblem by the Church, including the
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia.
Just as the eagle has served as a symbol of emperors and the institutional Church, so has it been
applied to the bishop. In the Russian and some other Orthodox Churches bishops stand during the
liturgy on a small circular rug known as the eagle or orlets (= eaglet). The rug depicts an eagle with
spread wings hovering over a city. At his consecration, in these Churches, a bishop-elect is led onto a
larger version of the eagle rug.

Besides being high priest and shepherd to the flock committed to his care, the bishop is also an
overseer. Instead of the very awkward placement of the bishop’s throne in modern Greek churches,
originally in larger churches the throne was situated in the centre of the upper level of a synthronon (=
semi-circular tiered benches, like a miniature amphitheatre, occupying the central eastern apse behind
the Holy Table). From these heights, like an eagle at its eyrie, the bishop literally oversaw all that was
taking place in the church below.

The city depicted on the eagle rug represents the city or cities over which the bishop has charge, while
the sharp-eyed hovering eagle symbolises the bishop’s pastoral oversight of his diocese.

But a bishop is also called to be a defender of the Orthodox faith and a teacher of his flock; hence the
correct form of address of a bishop, “Master” (the form of address used within the liturgy). The eagle
depicted on the rug clearly relates to the eagle of John the Evangelist. It thus acts as a reminder to the
bishop that he must aspire in his teaching to the lofty heights achieved by the Apostle known as the
“Theologian” and lift the hearts of the faithful from material concerns to heavenly.

The Eagle in the Library

The stained glass eagle window in the Freeland library (Plate 5), which I can just see out of the corner
of my eye, is based on one of the famous fifteenth-century roof bosses in the nave of Norwich
Cathedral, England. (A roof boss is a, normally circular, carving inserted at the junction of ribs of a
stone or wooden vaulted ceiling.)

With its red and gold, the eagle is depicted as a sun bird. The distinctive form of the feathers probably
derives from angel costumes worn by actors in the medieval morality and mystery plays.

This mystic eagle is my personal friend. As if awaking after its nightly roost upon a rainbow, the
symbol of God’s covenant with humanity and the creation, the eagle spreads its wings in greeting to
the rising of the sun, the light of which shines through this NE facing window each morning. The gold
and orange rainbow and sun’s rays are based on another Norwich roof boss, one that portrays the
Cosmic Christ in Majesty seated upon the rainbow at His Second Coming.
Chapter 17. Was St Mary of Magdala the Wife of Christ?
On July 22 we celebrate the feast of “The Holy Myrrhbearer Mary Magdalene, the Equal to the
Apostles”. Few saints have been the focus of greater devotion over the centuries than St Mary of
Magdala. Then, although interest was already considerable, particularly amongst feminist theologians,
she suddenly soared to pop-idol status in 2003 with the publication of Dan Brown’s, The Da Vinci
Code.

But first let us get the facts straight.

St Mary Magdalene in the Gospels

Mary is named from her city of origin, Magdala (modern Migdal) on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.
Mark and Matthew mention her as one of the group of women from Galilee that followed and
ministered to Christ and who witnessed the Crucifixion “from afar”.

Luke also records that the women witnessed the Crucifixion, but he gives no names. However, earlier
in his Gospel he throws light on the nature of this group of women:
Soon afterward [Jesus] went on through cities and villages, preaching … . And the
twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and
infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and
Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward, and Susanna, and many others, who
provided for them out of their means (Luke 8:1-3).

Mark notes that Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James had observed where Christ had been
entombed. All the Gospels state that around dawn on Sunday certain of the women, the Myrrhbearers,
visited the sepulchre but found it empty. However, the Evangelists don’t record exactly the same
names.

Mark has Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome; Luke, Mary Magdalene, Joanna,
mary the Mother of James, and “the other women”; Matthew, Mary Magdalene and the “other Mary”.

At the tomb, according to Mark, the women encounter “a young man” who commands them to tell the
Apostles that Christ has risen, but they fail to do so (Mark 16:5-8). Luke has two men “in dazzling
apparel” and Matthew an angel but, unlike Mark, the women obey their instructions.

Following the discovery of the empty tomb, the addition to Mark (16:9-20) and John both say that the
Risen Lord appeared first to St Mary Magdalene, while Matthew says that He appeared to her and the
“other Mary”. Luke doesn’t mention an appearance to the women.

The prominence given to the Magdalen is obvious. However, it is in the Gospel of John alone that we
find the moving account of Mary’s role in the events of the Crucifixion and Resurrection.

While the Synoptics have the women witnessing the Crucifixion “from afar”, John states that “His
mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Cleopas, and Mary Magdalene” stood with John
himself at the Cross (19:25). At dawn on Easter Sunday, John mentions only Mary Magdalene at the
empty tomb; but the presence of other of the women can be inferred.
According to John, Mary Magdalene hastened to inform Peter and John, and they ran to the sepulchre.
Having seen the empty tomb, the Apostles depart, leaving Mary weeping outside. Looking into the
tomb, she sees two angels who ask her why she is weeping.

Turning round, she sees Jesus, but doesn’t realise it is Him. He asks her why she is weeping and she,
supposing Him to the gardener, enquires as to the whereabouts of the body. Jesus says to her, “Mary”,
and she responds by saying, “Rabboni” (teacher). Jesus then tells her not to hold (or embrace) Him, as
He had not yet ascended to the Father, but to take that message to the Apostles (John 20:14-17). See
Plate 6.

That is all that the Gospels tell us of St Mary of Magdala; the rest is:

Legend, Confusion and Fantasy

The Orthodox Church has not strayed from the Gospel texts. The same is anything but true of the
West.

The principal culprit was Pope Gregory the Great. In a homily, probably preached in 591, St Gregory
identifies Mary Magdalene with Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, who anoints
Christ’s feet with precious ointment and wipes them with her hair (John 12:1-8, read on Palm
Sunday).

Gregory then compounds the confusion by identifying Mary of Bethany with the woman in Luke 7:37-
50 “who was a sinner” and “loved much”, and who wet Jesus’ feet with her tears, wiped them with her
hair, and then anointed them. (Luke’s sinner is the woman commemorated in the Hymn of Kassiani
sung in Holy Week.)

However, this latter incident occurs earlier in Jesus’ ministry and the two acts are different in
character. There is no good reason to think that Luke and John are referring to the same woman or to
the same incident.

In fact, it would be nothing strange if incidents of this kind did occur on more than one occasion. The
washing of the feet of guests was a normal act of hospitality, as was the anointing of their heads with
perfumed oil. Even the wiping of feet with one’s hair would not be particularly remarkable as a
servant’s hair was routinely used as a towel on which to dry one’s hands!

Gregory’s double confusion had devastating consequences for the character of Mary Magdalene, who
now becomes a reformed prostitute (Luke does not say his woman was a prostitute) and a
contemplative (like Mary of Bethany).

From Gregory on, the emphasis in the West was on the Magdalen as the type of the repentant sinner,
with the inevitable consequence that her real role in Christ’s ministry was largely lost to sight. This
emphasis also led to Mary assimilating elements of the life of St Mary of Egypt, which is why she is
frequently portrayed in Western art naked. Commendably, the Catholic Church has now disentangled
the confusions of identity.

The lives of great saints are commonly rich in legend. From the East comes a legend that Mary
conveyed the news of the Resurrection to the Emperor Tiberius. Tiberius says that Jesus could no
more rise from the dead than the egg Mary was holding could turn red; of course, it does just that.
Hence red Easter eggs!

From France comes the legend that Mary Magdalen, together with Mary the wife of Cleopas, Mary the
mother of James (these are known as “ The Three Marys”), Martha and Lazarus, fled Jewish
persecution and fetched up in Provence.

Mary Magdalene is supposed to have spent the last thirty years of her life doing penance (presumably
for sins she never committed!) naked in a cave at La Sainte-Baume (the grotto is still a pilgrimage
site.) A number of churches claim her relics, including the great abbey of La Madeleine, Vézelay. It is
said that if one adds up all the relics they amount to five whole bodies plus numerous spare parts!

With The Da Vinci Code we graduate from legend to pure fantasy in the claim that Christ and Mary
Magdalene were married and bequeathed a Royal line of descendants. Dan Brown’s book is a work of
fiction and, despite its claims, little of it has any factual basis. It is perhaps just possible that Christ
was married (this would cause no particular theological problem) but from everything we know about
Him it would be most unlikely. Certainly Dan Brown produces no evidence that stands up. Let me
state some of the main points.
There is absolutely nothing in the New Testament to suggest that Christ was married.
Nor does any early Christian writer even hint that He might have been.
If He were married, there is absolutely no reason why this should have been kept secret.
It has been argued that Christ must have been married because it would have been un-
Jewish for Him not to have been, particularly given His status as a rabbi. In fact,
celibacy was known and respected amongst the Jews. For example, the esteemed Jewish
sect, the Essenes, practised celibacy. St Paul also was celibate.
The custom was to name women with respect to a male relation. St Mary Magdalene
alone in the New Testament is named with respect to her place of origin. This indicates
that she was not married.
Much has been made of some words in the Gnostic Gospel of Philip (second half of the
third century). The text is badly damaged but it appears to say that Jesus loved Mary
Magdalene more than the other disciples and used often to kiss her “on her …”. At this
point there is a gap. Certainly the word “mouth” would fit, but so would “cheek” or
“forehead”. But even if “mouth” is correct, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the kiss
was sexual. Gnostics kissed as a symbolic act to express the reception of conveyed
secret knowledge (gnōsis). In any case, the text cannot be interpreted as saying that
Jesus was married to Mary.
It is not only Dan Brown, and like-minded conspiracy theorists, but also a vocal group
of historical revisionist biblical scholars who argue that the Gnostic texts constitute
evidence that there were different kinds of Christianity circulating in the first centuries
besides the Apostolic faith. But the truth of the matter is that Gnosticism was
essentially a different religion based on dualistic principles totally antithetical to
Christianity. Moreover, while the four canonical Gospels were all written in the second
half of the first century, the Gnostic Gospels belong to the second and third centuries.
They might be interesting but as testimony to the life of Christ they are valueless. (A
 good read on these issues is Darrell Bock, Breaking the Da Vinci Code, Nelson.)

So, Who Was St Mary Magdalene?

What she was not was the wife or mistress of Christ. Nor was she a notorious sinner, much less a
prostitute. But what she was is both fascinating and important.

Our Lord and His mission were served by a clearly identifiable inner circle of women disciples that
travelled with Him and the Apostles. It was women of this college who witnessed the Crucifixion, the
descent from the Cross and entombment, who were the Myrrhbearers and brought the news of the
empty tomb to the male Apostles. And it was one of them, St Mary Magdalene (probably alone at the
time), who was the first to see the Risen Saviour.

These women were known as the Apostolae Apostolorum, the Apostles of the Apostles. (The Latin is
almost invariably translated as “the Apostles to the Apostles”, despite the fact that Apostolorum is in
the genitive.)

The terms used to describe the functions of these female disciples are highly significant. They were
followers of Christ, the same term used of the Apostles, which implies that they took an active role in
Christ’s mission and were not mere dogsbodies. They also supported Christ; that is, financially and
materially.

But, perhaps most tellingly, they ministered to Christ. The verb used, diakonein, is the root of
diakanos, deacon. When writing of the church patron, Phoebe, in Romans 16:1, St Paul uses the word
diakonos; that is, exactly the same word as is used for male deacons. Despite this, even the magisterial
Revised Standard Version of the Bible translates the word as “deaconess”, thereby suggesting a
subordinate order to that of deacon, and adds insult to injury by appending the dismissive note:
“Deaconess may mean simply “helper”.”

One can easily get the impression from the Synoptic Gospels that the ministry of Jesus was a
somewhat casual affair; that, for instance, He preached sermons because a crowd just happened to
gather. But only a moment’s reflection is needed to realise that there must have been organisation
behind Christ’s missionary journeys. In addition to the college of male Apostles, there was clearly a
second college, a group of women who supported and ministered to Christ and the Apostles.

The account of the ordaining of the seven deacons in Acts 6:1-6 long puzzled me. It seemed odd that
the Apostles would have created an order of ministry alongside of, though subordinate to, their own
without its having a basis in the Gospel. But where in the Gospels are there deacons?

My wife is always telling me that I can never see anything which is right under my nose. This is an
instance. Christ did create a college of deacons, but it was a college of female deacons; disciples and
followers of the Lord, but fulfilling different roles to those of the Twelve. The Apostles in ordaining
seven male deacons were not stepping outside of the tradition of the Gospel.

The creation of a male diaconate did not mean that there was henceforth no place for female deacons.
In fact, there were female deacons into the eleventh century in the East. However, there are very few
references to female deacons in the West and, it seems, none at all before the fifth century.
Female deacons were simply that. They were ordained by the laying on of hands within the altar, using
the same order (except for the substitution of female for male saints’ names) as that used for the
ordination of male deacons. Moreover, they stood immediately behind the male deacons at the Holy
Table during celebration of the Eucharist.

In addition to other functions, they performed tasks which it was considered unseemly for male
deacons to perform, such as assisting women to strip naked and oiling the whole of their bodies before
baptism and administering Holy Communion to sick and infirm women in their homes. A decline in
adult baptisms possibly contributed to the disappearance of women deacons, clearing the way for a
male takeover job.

But, in any event, the Eastern Church had women clergy for the first millennium of its history. Some
readers might very well think – though I couldn’t possibly venture an opinion – that the time is long
overdue for the Church to follow the example of St Nektarios (1846-1920) and recommence the
ordination of women to the diaconate. (St Nektarios did, it must be admitted, get into incredibly hot
water for ordaining two of his nuns as deacons; but then saints do tend to be ahead of their time.)

After that little digression, let me return to St Mary Magdalen. The honour bestowed on Mary by
Christ at His Resurrection, according to John’s Gospel, together with the emphasis the Synoptics
placed on her, points to her being the leader of the women, their “protodeacon” if you like.

According to John, it was the Magdalen alone who conveyed the news of the empty tomb to the
Apostles. For this reason, she alone came in the course of time to enjoy the title Apostola Apostolorum
(Apostle of the Apostles).

That it is St John who gives us the detailed account of the appearance of the Risen Lord to Mary
Magdalene is not surprising if we give credence to the tradition, in the words of Patriarch Modestus of
Jerusalem (d.634), that:
after the death of Our Lord, the mother of God and Mary Magdalen joined John … at
Ephesus. It is there that the myrrhophore ended her apostolic career through her
martyrdom, not wishing to the very end to be separated from John the apostle and the
Virgin.

(Quoted in Susan Haskins, Mary Magdalene: Myth and Metaphor, Harcourt Brace.)

It fits. What is believed to be the actual house in which they lived still exists (see Plate 3a) and her
tomb was for long venerated at Ephesus.

As with the Apostle John, the beloved disciple, there can be no doubt that the Magdalen was
personally very close and very dear to Christ (though not as a wife or mistress!). She occupied a place
of honour amongst the women deacons who ministered to Our Lord. She bears the titles Equal to the
Apostles and Apostola Apostolorum. The liturgy of her feast testifies to her apostolic role as a
preacher of the Gospel. Let us give to it the last word:
After the divine Passion, after the dread Resurrection of the Saviour, thou spreadest the
hallowed word everywhere in thy preaching, and as the Word’s disciple, O glorious
Mary, thou catchest many that were deceived through ignorance.
(Ode 5 of the canon, The Menaion, Holy Transfiguration Monastery.)
Chapter 18. Christmas in Winter?
Have you noticed how common celebrations heralded as “Christmas in Winter” or “Christmas in July”
have become in recent years? Hotels and restaurants, particularly those in the mountains, advertise
mid-winter “Christmas” dinners of roast turkey and flaming plum pudding, accompanied by roaring
log fires and Yuletide jollifications of every kind. This recent development has, of course, come about
as a consequence of the nostalgia Poms like myself, and other North Europeans, feel for the midwinter
celebration of Christmas in our homelands.

The English Christmas was transported to Australia along with the convicts despite the
inappropriateness of heavy roast dinners and Christmas pud in the almost inevitable heat wave that
strikes in late December. Similarly, homes decorated with Christmas trees, artificial icicles and snow,
holly and ivy seem singularly out of place as gum trees are devoured in bushfires and, down on the
beach, surfies brush off blue bottles and dodge sharks in search of their Christmas dinners.

Sure, the Australian mid-winter is undoubtedly a much more sensible time of the year for roast turkey
and plum pudding. And I am first in line when it comes to a good old turkey “nosh-up” before a log
fire come the cold nights of the end of June and July. In recent years the Freeland clan have been
following the trend, with roaring re, holly and ivy, paper hats and all. Gastronomically sound, no
question. But what are we to make of “Christmas in Winter” from an ecclesiastical perspective? Sheer
nonsense? Well, of course it is. But on the other hand …

The Problem

Yes, we do have a real problem. You see, the Fathers of the Church, after a long day struggling with
such knotty conundrums as whether there are two wills in Christ or only one, liked to relax of an
evening after Vespers with a jovial discussion on the issue of whether the Antipodes existed.

Not being Fundamentalists or literalists, the Fathers were sympathetic to the view, which nearly all
educated persons from the Ancient Greeks on accepted, that the earth is spherical. Erase from your
mind the nineteenth century myth that before Columbus set sail and accidentally discovered America
people believed that the earth was a at disk covered by a solid firmament (sky).

If the earth is spherical then there must be a Southern Hemisphere. But was there land in the Southern
Hemisphere and, if there was, were there human beings? Opinions differed, but many thought it very
improbable that descendants of Adam could have got to the Antipodes across a vast ocean which
might be so hot at the equator that the sea would be boiling.

With uncertainty as to whether there was any land at all in the Southern Hemisphere, it is hardly
surprising that the Fathers failed to give any thought to how Antipodeans should, a millennium and a
half down the track, observe the ecclesiastical calendar.

The difficulty, of course, is that our seasons are back to front. Our summer is the Northern
Hemisphere’s winter, our spring the Northern Hemisphere’s autumn. But does it really matter that we
celebrate all of the festivals of the Church at the wrong season of the year?
In the case of Christmas, perhaps it doesn’t matter that much. After all, most biblical scholars believe
that Christ was not in fact born in winter at all. Perhaps we could simply acquire a more seasonally
appropriate a set of customs.

And in the case of the Theophany we are perhaps in a better position than the Northern Hemisphere. It
must be far more pleasant diving for the cross in a hot Australian summer than a freezing European
winter. And the Gospels do not say that John the Baptist had to bore a hole in the ice of the Jordan so
he could baptise Christ, even if that is necessary in order to lower the cross into the Neva at St
Petersburg. (Peter the Great actually caught a chill and died as a result of attending the Great Blessing
of the Waters on the frozen river.)

Easter, together with its dependent feasts and Paschal season, is another matter. Unlike Christmas,
seasonal symbolism is intrinsic to the meaning of the Paschal Mystery of our Lord; that is, His death,
burial, descent into Hades, Resurrection, Ascension, and sending of the Holy Spirit.

The Jewish festivals of Passover (Pascha) and Pentecost were originally agricultural festivals at which
the first offerings of barley and wheat respectively were made in the Temple. The week of weeks
between Passover and Pentecost was the grain harvest and lambing season in which ordinary life was
suspended and a festive atmosphere prevailed. These seven weeks marked the return to fruitfulness of
the earth after the barrenness of winter. The date of Passover and Easter are still determined by the
first full moon of the Northern Hemisphere spring and both are still essentially spring festivals.

The concept of death and resurrection goes back to the dawn of humanity, deriving from the annual
cycle of life on earth, in which one passes from the burst of new life in spring, through summer’s
fruitfulness and the decline of autumn, to the starkness of winter. In early religions, the earth itself
was often seen as the divine Mother and the year marked her progress from birth to youth and
maturity, to old age, and finally death; only to be reborn with spring the following year.

The Paschal Mystery of Christ taps into the rich symbolism of ancient pre-Christian types of death
and rebirth. In being baptised into Christ, we ourselves sacramentally die with Christ, are buried with
him, and are resurrected with Him as we are raised up as a new creation from the womb of the font.

The incarnation and Paschal Mystery of Our Lord are not just of human significance but are of cosmic
import. It is, therefore, of great symbolic importance that the Church Year, during the course of which
all of the saving acts of Christ are successively made present within the liturgy, is intimately tied to
the astronomical and agricultural, or seasonal, years. The loss occasioned by the severance of the
former from the latter two annual cycles is, then, no light matter.

The Solution?

What is to be done? The obvious solution would be to give the ecclesiastical year a 180 degree turn, so
that we would celebrate Easter in our spring and Christmas at our mid-winter. While this definitive
solution ought perhaps to be taken seriously, it won’t be.

So what can we do? There are two possible lines of attack. Firstly, we can search for ways of tying the
symbolism of festivals to the seasons at which they are celebrated in the Southern Hemisphere. In the
case of Easter and the Paschal season this would present a major challenge. But even here there are
possibilities that we could exploit.
The second strategy would be to transfer seasonal customs attaching to a particular festival to a
festival at another season. And this brings me back to the issue of “Christmas in Winter”.

Although the Northern European Christmas customs have acquired Christian symbolic meanings,
many derive from the winter solstice festival of Yule, which signalled the lengthening of the hours of
daylight as the sun commenced its passage back towards mid-summer. If one wants a name for an
Australian mid-winter celebration with Christmas trimmings then “Yulefest” (which is sometimes
used) is infinitely preferable to the ludicrous “Christmas in Winter” or “Christmas in July”.

However, a mid-winter “Yulefest” does not quite solve the problem since Yule is a pagan festival. So
is there a Christian festival to which we can transfer many of the European (and Australian) Christmas
customs? The obvious choice is the feast of the Nativity of John the Forerunner/ Baptist on June 24,
which is the traditional date of the Northern Hemisphere Mid-Summer’s Day, marking the solstice. It
is also the day on which Christmas would be celebrated if we were to give the calendar a 180 degree
turn.

Right across Europe, including Greece and other Orthodox countries, folk customs similar to those of
the winter solstice/Christmas were, and often still are, celebrated on St John’s Day. So St John’s Day
would seem to be the ideal solution. Unfortunately, there is a snag. St John’s Day falls within the Fast
of the Apostles. However, this was not in earlier times always the case.

It is widely, but erroneously, believed that this ancient fast is kept in preparation for the feast of St
Peter and St Paul. In fact, the Fast of the Apostles predates the celebration of the feast of St Peter and
St Paul on June 29, the feast being originally celebrated in the East on December 28. The fast was so
called because it marks the beginning of the ministry of the Apostles to the world following the
descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

The fast was thus a counterbalance to the great Thy days of Pascha. In places in early times it lasted
for forty days. But there was another tradition (specifically mentioned by St Gregory of Tours in the
sixth century) of terminating the fast the day before St John’s Day.

If you are worried about the Fast of the Apostles, you can always make St Peter and St Paul’s Day or
the Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles (June 29 or 30), which are close enough to St John’s Day, the day
for your Yuletide turkey-with-all-the-trimmings nosh-up instead. No possible objection to that!
Chapter 19. Happy New Year –– AGAIN!
September 1 marks the beginning of the Orthodox Church Year. So, Happy New Year to all my
readers!

But, you might very well protest, we celebrated the New Year eight months ago. We attended a parish
New Year ball and the blessing of the Vasilopita. We might even have attended the Divine Liturgy had
we not unfortunately overslept. Yes, we have celebrated the New Year all right, what is all this
nonsense about a second New Year?

Caesar’s New Year

The reality is that January 1 is simply the Civil New Year. The ecclesiastical celebrations, including
the semi-liturgical blessing of the Vasilopita (the Eastern answer to the Western Twelfth Night cake,
now sadly seldom baked), have nothing to do with the Church New Year.

January 1 is certainly an important day liturgically. It is in fact a double festival, both a feast of Our
Lord, in which we commemorate His circumcision on the eighth day after His birth in accordance with
Jewish law (Luke 2:21), and the feast of St Basil the Great, the renowned Cappadocian Father of the
Church.

January 1, the day on which the term of office of the Consuls commenced, became the official New
Year’s Day when, in 45 BC, Julius Caesar reformed the impossibly corrupt Roman Republican
Calendar. The reformed calendar came to be known as the Julian Calendar in his honour. Working
with the Alexandrine astronomer Sosigenes, Caesar brought the traditional calendar dates for the
solstices and the equinoxes back into good alignment with the astronomical events themselves.

The Republican Calendar had taken March 1 as its New Year, which is why the four last months of our
year are labelled the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth months (i.e., September, October, November and
December). Curiously, Venice took March 1 as New Year’s Day until the Serene Republic fell to
Napoleon in 1797.

The Quest for a Christian New Year

The absence of any good Christian ground for adopting January 1 as New Year led many Christian
states to opt for an alternative. An obvious candidate was the Nativity of Christ. Christmas Day also
had the advantage of being a mere eight days from the Caesarean New Year.

A system for numbering the years from the Incarnation had been devised in 525 by the monk
Dionysius Exiguus, in drawing up a new set of tables for determining the date of Easter. The year
designated by the chronology proposed by Dionysius is known as the Year of Grace, annus gratiae, or
the Year of the Lord, annus domini (AD), which is short for annus ab incarnatione domini, the Year
from the Incarnation of the Lord.

Influenced, in particular, by the advocacy of the great scholar and saint, the Venerable Bede of Jarrow
(c.673-735), the adoption of the Year of Grace beginning on Christmas Day became widespread in
Western Europe during the Early Middle Ages.

However, was Christmas the right festival to adopt? Didn’t the Annunciation, the conception of Christ,
mark the beginning of the new era of the Incarnation rather than His birth? If so, shouldn’t March 25
mark the commencement of the Year of Grace? This line of thinking led many states during the
eleventh and twelfth h centuries to adopt the Annunciation as New Year.

In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII instituted a corrected calendar. Julius Caesar’s calendar was too long,
compared with the tropical year of the sun, by approximately one day every 130 years. Thus by the
sixteenth century March 21, the date taken by the Council of Nicaea (325) for calendrical purposes as
the spring equinox, and which was to be used in the determination of the date of Easter, was falling ten
days later on the Julian Calendar than should have been the case. Easter and other festivals were,
alarmingly, beginning to migrate from one season to the next.

Gregory’s commissioners chopped ten days off 1582 and amended the leap year rule to yield the more
accurate calendar known as the Gregorian. That the same time, Caesar’s January 1 New Year was
restored. Although not all states changed back to January 1 at the same time that they switched from
the Julian Calendar, eventually under the sway of the Gregorian reform January 1 became the Civil
New Year universally. (That hasn’t meant, of course, that religious and traditional new years, such as
the Chinese Lunar New Year, have ceased to be celebrated.)

In broad terms, Catholic countries were swift to adopt the Gregorian Calendar, but Protestant much
slower and Orthodox countries slower still, in fact not until the twentieth century. England continued
to keep March 25 as New Year until 1752, when it changed over to the Gregorian Calendar. Scotland,
which will occupy us in the next section, adopted January 1 in 1600.

Hogmanay

When I was growing up in Southern England (and I am not that antique) New Year was not a public
holiday and its celebration was low-key, almost totally eclipsed by Christmas. The, to my mind
regrettable, popularity of today’s wall-to-wall international-airport celebration of New Year – even by
very many Orthodox who have a more meaningful New Year of their own – owes much to the decline
in observance of the Church Year and the influence of the Scottish celebration of Hogmanay. The
story of Hogmanay is a cautionary tale worthy of the telling.

Whereas some Churches that underwent the Reformation, such as the Church of England and the
Church of Sweden, retained much of the traditional Liturgical Year, others almost entirely abandoned
it. Unlike England, which was influenced more by Luther and such homegrown reformers as
Archbishop Cranmer, it was the more austere Calvinism that took root in Scotland, and the keeping of
traditional festivals came under attack.

Particularly strong were the attacks on the celebration of Christmas as it was regarded as a Popish
neo-pagan feast. The result was that the observance of Christmas, which enjoyed a very special place
amongst the annual feasts in Britain, as it does still today in England, was forbidden by the Kirk (= the
Scottish Church) from the seventeenth through to the mid-twentieth century. Consequently, December
25 became an ordinary working day in Scotland.

The Kirk might have succeeded in suppressing Christmas but it couldn’t suppress the urge for a
celebration to bring a bit of joy and warmth into the midst of the bleak northern winter. The result was
that New Year became a substitute for Christmas as a mid-winter festival.

But it was ceremonies deriving from the old pre-Christian celebration of the winter solstice, which
had persisted in some form in many places, that were transferred to what became known as
Hogmanay. (There is no agreement as to what the word actually means.) Today, both January 1 and 2
are public holidays in Scotland, presumably to allow recovery from the excesses of Hogmanay.

So the net result of the Kirk’s virulent attack on the observance of Christmas was that a wave of pagan
ceremonies poured in to fill the vacuum, attaching themselves to New Year. These ceremonies
included lighting huge bon res, rolling barrels of flaming tar down hills and tossing flaming torches
around. At Stonehaven in Northern Scotland, enormous balls of fire attached to metal poles are still, I
gather, borne up the High Street at Hogmanay. The great rework displays on Sydney Harbour and
elsewhere are descendants of such pagan revels.

The Hogmanay celebrations also included dressing up in animal skins and burning cattle hides, as the
stench this occasioned was believed to drive off evil spirits. Such ceremonies as these have now all
but died out, but apparently a ritual is still performed on the Isle of Lewis by young boys in which the
leaders of the revels clothe themselves in a sheep’s skin.

But now we need to backtrack to Late Antiquity to consider:

The Indiction

Under Diocletian, a mean and nasty sort of year hit the Roman world, a tax year. At the end of each
agricultural year, all levies (in grain, wine, clothing or whatever) due to the State in the forthcoming
year were assessed. The indictio told each person liable exactly what they were up for. As the
agricultural year ended with the ingathering of the harvests in autumn, September 1 was chosen as the
beginning of the indiction. From 287 the indiction was counted in cycles of three years.

Constantine the Great adopted the indiction as the administrative year for the Empire and the Church
followed suit. In the East, September 1 also became the beginning of the liturgical year, which is why
the Menaion (the work which details the services for the fixed feasts month by month) commences
with September. In the West, however, although the indiction was adopted, the First Sunday of Advent
(the fourth Sunday before Christmas) was appointed as the start of the liturgical year.

From 312 the indictions were counted in cycles of fifteen years and the number of the current year of
the indiction (1st, 2nd, 3rd…15th) was often used in dating documents.

But, from a Christian perspective, is September 1 any more meaningful as New Year than January 1?
Well, yes it is, and the reason is the Jewish New Year:

Rosh Hashanah

The two-day Jewish New Year or Festival of Trumpets, Rosh Hashanah, begins on the first of the lunar
month, Tishrei (Leviticus 23:23-25, Numbers 29:1-6). From this feast are calculated calendar years
and sabbatical years (every seventh year when the land is rested, the fields left fallow and harvests not
gathered), and Jubilees (every 50th year, when slaves who were Jewish were freed). Jewish legend
tells us that it was on Tishrei 1 that God completed the Creation.

In actual fact, Judaism keeps a second New Year, the first of the lunar month Nisan, which marks the
start of the Northern Hemisphere spring. It is at the full moon of Nisan that Passover is kept. However,
it is the more ancient Rosh Hashanah that concerns us here.

Unlike the Jewish, the Julian and Gregorian calendars have schematic months, months that are not
determined by the cycle of the phases of the moon. However, the schematic month that most closely
equates with Tishrei is September; so the Beginning of the Indiction equates with the Jewish New
Year, even if the two do not exactly coincide.

In placing the New Year in the Northern Hemisphere autumn, at the close of the agricultural year, the
Jews were following early Mesopotamian practice. New Year was a feast for giving thanks for the
Creation and for the fruits of the earth that had been harvested. Equally it was the time to ask
God’s/the gods’ blessing on the new agricultural year ahead.

As a consequence of the correspondence between Tishrei 1 and September 1 the liturgy for the
Beginning of the Indiction is able to draw on Old Testament texts and teaching that reflect themes of
the Jewish New Year.

The Liturgy

The Liturgy Gospel reading appointed for the Beginning of the Indiction is Luke 4:16-22, which tells
of Christ, at the beginning of His ministry, reading and preaching on a text from Isaiah in the
Synagogue in Nazareth on the Sabbath. The likely passage Jesus read was (or included) Isaiah 61:1-10,
which forms the first reading at Vespers, but Luke actually combines and adapts Isaiah 61:1, 2 and
58:6.
… there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found
the place where it is written, “ The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has
anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the
captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” And he closed the book, and … began to
say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

There is a tradition that Christ’s sermon in the Synagogue at Nazareth was preached at Rosh
Hashanah. Whether this is so or not (no passage from Isaiah appears in the Synagogue lectionary for
Rosh Hashanah), Isaiah 61:1-10 is peculiarly appropriate both to Rosh Hashanah and the
commencement of Jesus’ ministry.

From the lips of the Word (Christ), “the acceptable year of the Lord” takes on a much more profound
meaning than just a reference to the forthcoming year. The Gospel reading appointed for Mattins,
Luke 24:112 (also the fourth of the cycle of Resurrection Gospel readings appointed for Sunday
Mattins) was obviously partly chosen because of its opening words, “But on the first day of the week,
at early dawn … ”. Clearly, we are invited to see a parallel between the beginning of the week, the
Lord’s Day, and the beginning of the year.
But there is a deeper reason why a Resurrection Gospel is so appropriate to the feast. Christ’s
resurrection inaugurated a new creation and a new age. The Old Testament New Year was but a
foreshadowing of the new age to come. The “scripture has been fulfilled” (Luke 4:21) and time has
been swept up into eternity, the eighth day, the Day of the Lord. The eternal kingdom of God to come
is already with us. In Christ, time has been vanquished.

The third reading appointed for Vespers, Wisdom 4:7-15, makes the point that it is not longevity that
matters but quality and righteousness of life; a message which badly needs to be conveyed to today’s
world (see Article 14). It is not time and a mentality centred on the flesh which matters but eternity
(which is a present reality not just something projected into the future) and the phronema of the Spirit
(see Romans 8:6).

With its emphasis on the Creation, the land and the agricultural year, it is not surprising that in 1989
the Ecumenical Patriarch Demetrios I chose September 1 as a day of special prayer and supplication
for the environment. The Patriarch, conscious of the contribution that Orthodox tradition might make
to the amelioration of the global crisis, was concerned to engage the Church in the environmental
movement. The work that he initiated has been energetically pursued by his successor, the present
Patriarch, Bartholomaios I.

The second Vespers reading for the Beginning of the Indiction, Leviticus 26:3-12, 14-17, 19-20, 22-
24, 33, 40-42 (the verses differ slightly in different lectionaries), is particularly relevant to the
environmental crisis. It contrasts the blessings that flow from obedience to God’s commands and a
right attitude to the environment with the dire consequences that result from ungodly attitudes and
actions.

I can think of a few people who urgently need to dust off the family Bible and read Leviticus 26.
Chapter 20. Why Portray Christ as the Sun God?
Christ the Sun god? The very idea! Has your columnist been practising strange Mithraic rites? Has he
finally succumbed to Alzheimer’s or been wandering around under a full moon again? Before you tear
off a brisk letter of protest to the Editor, let me delay no longer in assuring you that Christ is not a Sun
god, but was portrayed in Early Christian times as the Sun god, Helios or (in Latin) Sol.

Christos Helios

Deep under St Peter’s in Rome, below the floor level of the Constantinian basilica whose foundations
lie beneath the present building, are to be found the remains of the graveyard on the Vatican Hill
where St Peter was crucified, according to tradition upside down. Amongst the tombs is one of special
interest, that known to archaeologists as Mausoleum M (of the Julii) or to most other people as the
Chapel of the Fisherman.

Of Pagan origin, the tomb was converted to Christian use. On its vaulted ceiling is an extensive third-
century Christian mosaic depicting Christ as the Sun god driving the chariot of the Sun across the sky.
Two white horses rear up in front of the charioteer, who holds an orb (a symbol of the cosmos and of
kingship) in his left hand. Unfortunately the mosaic is damaged, but, judging from the angle of the
arm, Christ is almost certainly giving a blessing with His missing right hand.

Drawing J. Weiner

There is not the slightest doubt that the mosaic is Christian. The scene is placed within an octagonal
space created by stems of the grape vine that forms the background of the mosaic. The vine is
symbolic of Christ – “I am the true vine and my Father is the vinedresser” (John 15:1) – and, of
course, of the Eucharist. The eight-sided frame to the scene is symbolic of the Eighth Day, the Lord’s
Day, Sunday, the day of the Resurrection and the new creation in Christ, the day that signifies eternity.
Rays emanating from the golden disk of the Sun, which creates a halo around the head of the
charioteer, form the figure of a cross.

Any remaining doubts are set to rest by the existence of other scenes in the mosaic typical of early
Christian iconography: Jonah and the whale, which Christ interprets (Matthew 12:40-41) as a type of
His forthcoming passion and resurrection; the Good Shepherd carrying the lost sheep (John 10:14,
Matthew 18:12); an angel hooking a fish. This last scene, which gives the tomb its popular name, is
similar to many other fishing scenes in early Christian art. Such scenes probably derive from Christ’s
words to the Apostles, “I will make you become fishers of men” (Mark 1:17).

Portraying Christ as the pagan Sun god might seem strange, but the fact is that myths can legitimately
be used as types (= foreshadowings) of New Testament narratives (antitypes) in precisely the same
way as Old Testament narratives. Mythological scenes that would have been understood typologically,
such as Orpheus charming the animals (= Christ subduing the passions), were particularly popular in
early Byzantine times as church floor mosaics.

Converts from Paganism would be far more familiar with pagan mythology than with the Old
Testament, and doubtless were helped by being able to see structural parallels between familiar myths
and Gospel narratives or the mysteries of the Church. Further, in an age of persecution, mythological
scenes with a double meaning would not have attracted the suspicions of the authorities.

There are a number of New Testament linkages between Christ and the Sun. In Matthew’s account of
the transfiguration, Christ’s face is said to have “shone like the sun, and his garments became white as
light” (17:2). Similarly, in the vision of the Son of Man in Revelation, Christ’s face is described as
being “like the sun shining in full strength” (1:16), and His eyes “like a flame of fire” (1:14).

Then there is the “woman clothed with the sun” in Revelation 12:1-6. Although, literally understood,
the woman signified the Church, she came to be understood as referring to the Theotokos, and the Sun
with which she was clothed was taken as referring to Christ, whom she bore.

One of the more common titles of Christ is that of the Sun of Righteousness. This derives from the
prophecy of the Day of the Lord in Malachi 3 and 4:
For behold, the day comes burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all the evil
doers will be stubble … But for you who fear my name the sun of righteousness shall
rise, with healing in its wings (4:1-2).

This passage was understood to be a prophecy of the coming of Christ. Christ declared Himself to be
the light of the world (John 8:12). He is the radiance or reflection of the glory of the Father (Hebrews
1:3).

In iconography, Christ as foreshadowed by the Old Testament prophets is portrayed as a youth, Christ
Emmanuel, whether as a freestanding figure or in association with the Theotokos. In fact, in images of
the Theotokos and child, the child is not depicted as a baby, as He is in Renaissance paintings, but as a
young person, Christ Emmanuel.

Christ Emmanuel frequently appears, often in gold and/or orange garments and with His head
surrounded by a large golden halo, within a roundel which might have sun’s rays streaming out from
it. In other words, the iconograhic Christ Emmanuel is a version of Christos Helios.

The representation of Christ Emmanuel in a roundel is often seen combined with the image of the
Theotokos. This is the icon known as the Virgin/ Theotokos of the Sign. Here the Sun of
Righteousness is depicted in a roundel, which also signifies the womb, against the celestial purple or
blue of the maphorion (veil) of His mother with its three traditional stars. The Great Megalynarion of
the Theotokos beautifully expresses the meaning of this icon (Plate 7):
In you, O favoured one, rejoices all creation, … from you God became incarnate, and
our God who existed before the ages became a child for us. For he made your womb a
throne, made it wider than the heavens.

It comes as no surprise that, in addition to the metaphor of the Sun, the liturgy is replete with
metaphors of light and re. An extract from the prayer of the Great Blessing of the Waters at the
Theophany will have to serve as a representative example:
Today the Sun that never sets [i.e., Christ] has risen and the world is filled with
splendour by the light of the Lord … Today Paradise has been opened to men and the
Sun of Righteousness shines down upon us … Today the blinding mist of the world is
dispersed by the Epiphany of our God … The waters saw Thee, O God, the waters saw
Thee and were afraid. The Jordan turned back, seeing the fire of the Godhead
descending bodily and entering its stream.

(Mother Mary and Archimandrite Kallistos Ware, The Festal Menaion, Faber.)

But there is solider evidence that the Vatican mosaic does indeed depict Christ as Helios/Sol. Clement
of Alexandria declares Christ to be the “Sun of Resurrection”, the “one begotten before the morning
star, who gives life with his own rays”. (Since the planet Venus, as a morning “star”, rises on the
eastern horizon shortly before sunrise, it has often been taken as symbolic of the Theotokos.)

Clement goes further, actually describing Christ as a charioteer who brings eternal life with the dawn
as He begins His ascent through the heavens in the chariot of the Sun:
[H]e who rides over all creation is the ‘Sun of Righteousness’ who … has changed
sunset into sunrise, and crucified death into life.

(Quoted in R. M. Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, Routledge.)

The pagans identified their Sun god, Helios/Sol, with the physical Sun, but for Christians the physical
Sun is simply a symbol or metaphor for the Spiritual Sun, Christ, who as Pantocrator governs the
whole universe from the centre of the spiritual supercelestial and supersensible heavens. (This is why
the image of the Pantocrator is usually placed in the centre of the dome of an Orthodox church.)

Light Comes from the East

The Scriptures and the liturgy aside, it was natural for Christians to associate the rising of the sun on
the eastern horizon with the Resurrection of Christ. Further, it was believed that Christ would appear
in the East at His Second Coming. According to Genesis the Garden of Eden was situated in the East,
and so Christians symbolically placed the celestial Paradise in the East also.

For these reasons, early Christians prayed facing East and were also buried facing East, so as to be
ready to greet the risen Christ at the resurrection of the dead. Not surprisingly, churches were usually
oriented to the East (and should be today where at all possible).
The Resurrection had occurred on the first day of the Jewish week, which commemorated the first day
of the creation of Genesis. This led the Church from the beginning to adopt the first day of the week,
rather than the last, the Sabbath, as the Lord’s Day (Revelation 1:10). On this day the local Christian
community met for the regular celebration of the Eucharist and a common meal (the agape). This day
also happened to be the day of the week the pagans dedicated to Sol/Helios, Sunday. This coincidence
established a firm link between the Sun and the Lord’s Day, the day of the new creation, the Eighth
Day.

But another reason has been widely advanced as to why a strong association came to be established
between Christ and the Sun. This is that the Church in the fourth-century chose December 25 as the
feast of Christ’s Nativity in order to counteract the pagan festivities associated with the winter
solstice, observed on the Julian calendar on this day. Nice theory, but is it correct?

Why Celebrate Christmas on December 25?

Although the actual history is very confusing and complicated, the gist of the story goes something
like this. The birth of Christ had originally been commemorated along with the visit of the Magi, the
baptism of Christ, and Christ’s first miracle at Cana in Galilee on January 6, the feast of Epiphany.
These biblical events were seen as theophanic, as manifestations of God incarnate. Then in the fourth
century a new feast was created on December 25 to celebrate the birth of Christ.

In the East, commemoration of the visit of the Magi was also transferred, but in the West it became
the principal event commemorated at Epiphany, being seen as Christ’s manifestation to the Gentiles.
In the East, the Epiphany (or Theophany) became the feast of the baptism of Christ. The Armenian
Church never did adopt the feast of Christmas on December 25, and to this day continues to
commemorate the birth of Christ on January 6.

The theory is that the Church promoted the Nativity of the Sun of Righteousness (natalis solis
iustitiae) in opposition to the pagan feast of the Nativity of the Unconquered Sun (natalis solis invicti)
and of the Sun god, Mithras, which was also kept on December 25.

The pagan solar feast had been instituted by the emperor Aurelian on 25th December 274 in order to
promote a monotheistic cult of the Sun with the intention of unifying all existing cults (shades of
Akhnaton). As such, the festival of the Nativity of the Unconquered Sun, the theory runs, would have
been seen as particularly pernicious by the Church.

The trouble is, there appears to be no concrete evidence to support this theory. And, indeed, at least as
early as 243, thirty-one years before Aurelian’s creation of the festival of the Unconquered Sun, a
direct connection had been made between the Malachi prophecy and the nativity of Christ. So, why
was December 25 chosen?

In early times, there were two particularly widely canvassed dates for when the Crucifixion might
have occurred, March 25 and April 6. But there was also a tradition that the conception of Christ, the
Annunciation, occurred on the same day of the year as the Crucifixion.

Allowing for gestation, the birth of Christ would have occurred nine months after His conception, on
either December 25 or January 6. The commemoration of the birth of Christ on January 6 was in
harmony with April 6. The zeitgeist, however, moved in favour of March 25. Part of the argument in
favour of March 25 for the conception was that it was the conventional date of the spring (we are
talking about the Northern Hemisphere, of course) equinox, the beginning of the astronomical year.
Surely the Word would have become flesh at the spring equinox.

But there was another reason for favouring the 25th of March. This was that it was believed (following
the apocryphal Book of James) that the annunciation to Zechariah – John the Baptist’s dad – occurred
on the Jewish Day of Atonement, which falls around the time of the autumn equinox. The
conventional date for the equinox was September 24.

So, following the traditional Roman date for the solstices and equinoxes, Conception of John on the
autumn equinox, September 24 (though in the East the feast is celebrated on the 23rd); Nativity of
John nine months later on the summer solstice, June 24; the Annunciation on the spring equinox,
March 25, and the Nativity of Christ (who, according to Luke 1:26, was conceived six months after
John) on the winter solstice, December 25. Voilà!

The spiritual/liturgical year of the Sun of Righteousness, and of His Forerunner, John, is brought into
perfect accord with the tropical (= seasonal) year of the physical Sun. It all fits together; and so it
should! Christmas in its origins is no pagan feast in disguise, though regrettably much energy has been
expended in recent times in paganising it.
Chapter 21. Christ’s Christmas Tree
It is the feast of The Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple that always marks for me the
countdown to Christmas. Come November 21, it is time to search for last year’s Christmas card list
and think about Christmas shopping. And, most important of all, it is time to remember where I stored
away the Christmas tree decorations.

Now, having been born and bred in God’s own country, Christmas trees have a special place in my
heart. (And woe betide anyone who suggests that it is only a legend that Christ visited Britain as a
child with St Joseph of Arimathea and walked on “England’s mountains green”.) Every year a sizable
fir tree is manoeuvred into the Freeland lounge room. No fibreglass or plastic monstrosities, thank you
very much.

Then comes the festooning of the tree with lights and metres of tinsel, and the loading of its branches
with ornaments. Over the years, I have rounded up decorations from the four corners of the earth.
There are wooden ones from Scandinavia (though unfortunately the snowman got chewed up by one of
the dogs the year before last), brass ones from India, glass ones from Venice (which I discovered,
when I got them back to Oz, had been made in Taiwan) and numerous others.

For years, I could fool myself that this annual ritual was for the benefit of our two children. But these
days we are “empty nesters” and grandchildren seem to have gone out of fashion. Nevertheless, this
year the ritual of the Christmas tree will again be solemnly consummated and I might even find
another interesting bauble to add to the collection. To honour Our Lord’s birth and to give joy to
others? Certainly, but the Christmas tree is also there for me.

Now, there are hard people who would say that Christmas trees are part and parcel of the commercial
tawdry – along with shopping-arcade Santas, gnomes and red-nosed reindeers – which have spread to
every nook and cranny of the earth where the Coca-Cola sign is to be found. But are they? Not to me
they are not.

Every year, when no one is about, I sneak into our lounge room at night, switch off the room lights and
stand spellbound at the beauty of the Christmas tree, each of its coloured lights reflected tenfold by
the glass and brass ornaments and gold and silver tinsel. Yes, of course there is nostalgia in this –
buckets of it, and to spare – as I revisit the sheer wonder of the English Christmases and Christmas
trees of my childhood.

The ice and the snow of “bleak midwinter”; my grandfather’s old house, where great lengths of tree
trunk blazed in a replace so big that you could sit on benches in the replace itself and watch the smoke
winding up to the star-lit heavens above; my mother standing on a chair putting berry-laden holly
behind all the pictures or hanging the bunch of mistletoe in the hall; the huge chickens or goose and
the flaming Christmas pudding, chock-a-block with silver trinkets and coins to be found; the early
waking to see what Father Christmas had left for me in the stocking at the end of my bed. Yes,
nostalgia, a celebration of my Englishness, a conjuring up, despite the 30 degree heat, of that
extraordinary spirit of Christmas into which only those brought up in Northern Europe can fully enter.

Just nostalgia and gooey sentimentality? No, I think not. My annual contemplation of the Christmas
tree is also a religious experience. The Christmas tree is an image of the cosmos, the whole of God’s
creation. The lights and glass balls recall the beauty of the heavenly bodies, the branches laden with
ornaments the richness and fruitfulness of the earth. I have coloured glass bells on the top of my tree,
which remind me of the song of the angels and the joy of the shepherds on that first Christmas night.
Others have an angel or the star of Bethlehem.

As the Fathers of the Church teach us, contemplation of the wonders of creation and the exercise of
human reason alone can reveal the one true God, creator of heaven and earth. This is “natural
revelation”, which opened up a pathway to authentic religion for all of humanity before ever the
Jewish law was delivered. Indeed, as I did not have a Christian upbringing - and so the Christ child
played little part in my childhood Christmases (perhaps I should write ‘Christmisses’) - it was natural
religion almost alone which was the schoolmistress of my tenderest years.

In very many cultures the tree is a symbol of the universe. Its trunk is the axis mundi, the axis passing
through the poles around which the heavenly bodies appear to revolve once a day. From this
conception derives that of the Tree of Life in the centre of Paradise of Genesis. It is the tree which is
always green (“evergreen”), an emblem of eternity, the symbol of Paradise regained, the tree which
provided, according to one legend, the wood of the Cross.

But then, “when the fullness of the time was come (Gal 4:4)”, Christ Emmanuel, the Saviour foreseen
by the prophets, was born in a cave (another symbol of the cosmos) in Bethlehem. And there, adorned
to greet the infant Jesus on Christmas Day, is my, and everyone else’s, Christmas tree.

The origin of the Christmas tree is something of a mystery, but the modern tree seems to come
primarily from Germany. There is a legend that the reformer Martin Luther was overcome with awe
on beholding, when out at night, the bright stars twinkling through the branches of the stately fir trees
along his path. This inspired him to attach candles to a tree to delight his small children come
Christmas Day.

I suspect that the Christmas tree has in fact been invented and reinvented many times over, as it is a
natural development from the decorating of houses and churches with greenery around Christmas
time. The modern tree, however, only became widely popular in England following its introduction
into the Royal household in 1841 by Queen Victoria’s German consort, Prince Albert. With Royal
approval, the tree rapidly spread to Australia and wherever the map was painted pink.

But all of this is about the West. Does the tree belong to the East as well as to the West? Or has it only
recently spread into Orthodox lands on the crest of the tsunami of American consumerism, along with
red-suited Santa Clauses and jingling sledges? In short, is a Christmas tree entirely kosher in an
Orthodox lounge room?

Well, for a start the symbolic use of greenery is certainly known in the East. For example, bowers of
greenery are often erected to enshrine the font or other vessel used outside the church for the Great
Blessing of the Waters at the Theophany. In Russia and elsewhere, the churches are bedecked with
greenery for the feast of Pentecost. And, of course, there is the decorating of the church with palm
fronds, and in some places other greenery, on Palm Sunday.

But Christmas trees? Well, certainly they are to be found aplenty in nineteenth-century Russia.
Indeed, the great writer, Dostoevsky, wrote a beautiful short story called “The Heavenly Christmas
Tree”. This tells of a little pauper boy who wanders the streets of St Petersburg alone on Christmas
Eve. Eventually, weak and exhausted, he falls asleep on a woodstack.

A mysterious figure, later revealed as Christ, appears, hugs him and says “Come to my Christmas tree,
little one”. And there is his mother, and lots of small children playing around a shining Christmas tree.
He learns that Christ always has a tree on this day for all the children that do not have a tree of their
own. Some of the children had died in the baskets in which they had been abandoned on the doorsteps
of well-to-do folk. Others had died at their starving mothers’ breasts. The story ends, of course, when
the boy himself is found next morning frozen to death. They send for his mother, only to find that she
too had died, shortly before her child.

If Christmas trees were not a traditional part of the Greek Christmas, there is a curious foreshadowing
of the Christmas tree as the Tree of Life in a widespread folk belief about Greece’s own home-grown
gnomes, the kallikantzaroi. These mythical creatures spend the year in the bowels of the earth hacking
away with axes at the cosmic tree which supports the world. Before they can quite finish the job,
however, Christ is born at Christmas and the cosmic tree (the axis mundi) is regenerated. The
frustrated kallikantzaroi emerge from the earth and wreak havoc during the twelve days till Epiphany,
when they flee back into the earth again at the approach of the priest making his rounds with holy
water bucket and bunch of sweet basil. The creation of a Greek Christmas tree was clearly an event
waiting to happen.

But can we trace the decorated and illuminated tree back into early Byzantine times? Recently, I came
across a description of two extraordinary bronze trees in the monastery church of Mor Gabriyel, in
Turabdin, Eastern Turkey, built by the Byzantine Emperor Anastasios in 512. Although the trees no
longer exist, the places where they stood can still be seen.

The trees were 8m high and each was adorned with 180 small lanterns and 50 silver chains on which
hung gold, silver and bronze ornaments birds and other animals, crowns, bells, crosses, eggs and
wheels. Given the dedication of the church, these cosmic trees of life seem very likely to have had an
association with Christmas. They were indeed to all the world like modern Christmas trees, though
much more splendid than anyone could hope to see today.

So, if any visitor should in the future raise an eyebrow at the Freeland Christmas tree, I shall tell them
of Christ’s Christmas tree and those bronze trees of the Emperor Anastasios. And that will be telling
them.
Chapter 22. Will the REAL Santa Claus Please Step
Forward?
Any reader who has a recollection of a piece that I wrote for Vema on Christmas trees will know that I
suffer from a quite nauseatingly sentimental attachment to the English Christmases of my childhood.

Now, Santa Claus played a most important part in the rituals of my non-Christian upbringing. For
English children Christmas Day is the ONE day of the year. Shortly before the great day, my mother
and I would compose a letter to Santa listing the toys that I hoped he would slither down the chimney
to deliver on Christmas night. The letter was then put up the chimney for express “elf delivery” to
Lapland.

Come bedtime on Christmas Eve, a slice or two of mince pie and a glass of ginger beer (my favourite
drink) would be placed in my room for Santa’s refreshment and one of my mother’s stockings hung at
the end of my bed for him to fill. The curious thing is that I swallowed this highly improbable story
hook, line and sinker. That is until the year that my father, on Santa duty, inadvertently left the empty
stocking behind after delivering the stocking my mother, off -stage, had filled to bursting.

The official story is that Santa Claus is an American remake of that enormously popular saint in both
East and West, Nicholas Thaumaturgus (= wonder-worker), an early bishop of Myra in Lycia (he was
probably born at Patara, Lycia around 270, the year of his death is in dispute). The story goes that
“Santa Claus” is a corruption of the Dutch dialect “Sinte Klaas” (= St Nicholas), the cultus of the saint
having been introduced into New York by Dutch settlers. In Holland, as in many other parts of
Western Europe, St Nicholas’s Day, December 6, is a major feast.

The simplistic view that Santa is no more than an American St Nicholas is, however, highly dubious.
It is often said that St Nicholas’s Day celebrations were transferred to Christmas Day as the two feasts
were so close together. But as a child I could have told you that by December 6 there were still an
awful lot of days to go till Christmas (19 in fact).

Unlike the Dutchman who plays the part of St Nicholas, Santa isn’t dressed up in full episcopal
vestments but in red fur-trimmed suit and bedcap, and great black snow boots. And what about the
diving down chimneys, the elves, the reindeer and all that “Ho-Ho-Ho”ing? St Nicholas lived on the
Mediterranean coast of Anatolia (modern Turkey) not in Lapland or on the North Pole. And I have
never heard a bishop say “Ho-Ho-Ho”.

No, what has happened is that St Nicholas has been conflated with quite a different character, and that
is the English medieval Father Christmas. This gentleman did make his rounds at Christmas, bringing
(admittedly, just like the Dutch St Nicholas) treats for the good children and a rod to lay about the rear
end of naughty children. (Fortunately, that latter bit of the ritual had dropped out by the time of my
childhood.)

The medieval Father Christmas seemingly originated not with the tales of St Nicholas but with pagan
personification deities of frost and winter and with the Norse god Odin (known as Woden in England),
who was much given to doing St Nicholasy kinds of things during Yuletide, which reaches its climax
at the Winter Solstice (the traditional date for which on the Julian calendar was December 25). The
elves and the night flying, which were added centuries later in America, can only derive from Nordic
mythology (despite the fact that Odin preferred an eight-legged horse to a reindeer-driven sledge to
surf the clouds of the winter skies).

So Santa is clearly a composite character, who owes his origins to Norse mythology, to the medieval
European (part pagan, part Christian) Father Christmas, to St Nicholas of Myra (from whom he gets
his name), and to the heated imaginations of the nineteenth-century American writers, Washington
Irving and Clement Moore (who, believe it or not, was a theologian), and cartoonist, Thomas Nast.

All that was left was for Coca-Cola advertisements to standardise the iconography of Santa and to
send him on his way to the four corners of the earth. And it was this American Santa who beamed
down our chimney to fill my stocking and eat whatever of the mince pie I had generously left for him.

But who is the REAL Father Christmas? Well, there is only one real person in all of this, St Nicholas,
the true Flesh and blood bishop of Myra. But how much of the greatly loved saint is there in the
American Santa?

Well, forget the North Pole, reindeer, toy-making elves, the red trousers and the Odin-like attributes,
and there really is more than just a smidgen of the Christian saint in Santa Claus. Santa, like St
Nicholas, is a venerable and benevolent figure who exudes the spirit of Christmas.

Modern statue of St Nicholas, alias Santa Claus, outside the Church of St Nicholas,
Demre (Myra), Turkey.

Like the real saint, he has a special love and care for children. Even the stocking I used to hang at the
bottom of my bed for Santa to fill has its ultimate source in the story of how St Nicholas threw bags of
gold through the window of a poor man’s house to provide dowries so that his three daughters could
marry and not be condemned to a life of prostitution.

St Nicholas elicits very widespread devotion as an intercessor on behalf of many different groups,
from pawnbrokers to seamen, and even nations. In the liturgy of the Church, however, he serves a
slightly different primary role. In the weekly cycle, Thursday is dedicated to the memory of the Holy
Apostles and to their canonised successors. But of all the bishops revered as saints, the Church has
chosen Nicholas to be their sole representative.

The Church celebrates St Nicholas as the ideal shepherd of the flock of Christ. Nicholas’s wise
guidance and spiritual protection of the logical sheep committed to his charge, and his compassionate
care for the needs of the poor, of children, of victims of injustice, of prisoners, of travellers, and those
in any distress, provides a pattern for bishops in every age to follow in the fulfilment of their High
Priestly ministry.

Ah, but the cynic will say, how real is St Nicholas himself? Well, certainly we are short on hard
historical facts. As with many other saints – George and Barbara, for example – the stories of the life
of St Nicholas were mythologised at an early date. To complicate matters, the story of our St Nicholas
seems to have been partly confused with that of his namesake, St Nicholas of Sion. Worse still, as St
Nicholas of Myra died on the feast of Poseidon, 6th December, he seems to have acquired some of the
attributes of the pagan god of the sea. But what these mythologised miracles and events do bear
witness to is an intense devotion to the historical person who lies behind the legend.

“Lives” of saints typically contain much which relates more to the cultus of the living saint in
Paradise – with whom the faithful enjoy communion through private prayer, the liturgy and the
veneration of icons, and whose intercessions they invoke in times of need or crisis - than to authentic
historical record. To understand the nature of the mythologised stories, one needs, therefore, to
understand the nature of the cultus.

This said, we can discern the historical St Nicholas behind the largely fantastic “Life” by several
means, including disentangling and demythologising the legend, and investigating his relics and the
places with which he was associated in life. Certainly, the saint became very real for me a couple of
years ago when I visited Lycia.

The church at Myra (modern Demre) bears witness to the importance of the cultus of Nicholas. For
centuries, the mortal remains of Nicholas lay at peace in the church, but in 1087 the bones were stolen
and taken to Bari in Southern Italy, where they remain to this day. They still exude a miracle-working
fluid called myron, which is pumped up from the tomb. It is claimed that some fragments of bone
were left behind in 1087, and I saw several reputed pieces in the museum at Antalya. Relics have even
found their way to New York, where a Greek church dedicated to St Nicholas adjacent to the World
Trade Centre was left in ruins by the September 11 terrorist attack.

What, however, made an even deeper impression than Myra was Gemiler (or St Nicholas) Island off
the rocky Lycian coast. This small Turkish island, which is uninhabited and in ruins, had in early
Byzantine times a thriving population which catered for the numerous pilgrims who came to venerate
St Nicholas. The nature of his connection with the island is not known, but possibly he died there or
lived there at some time as a hermit.

There are four churches, all probably dating to the late fifth to early sixth century and all probably
dedicated to Nicholas. Church 2 still has its elegant Byzantine apse intact and remnants of a fresco of
St Nicholas outside the north door.
More remarkable, however, is a pair of churches, one high up on the side of the steep hill which
dominates the island and one down the bottom. What is possibly unique is that the churches are linked
by a corridor, with open arches either side, which climbs for around 350m up the hillside. This clearly
constituted a sacred way for the movement of large numbers of pilgrims in all weathers.

Scrambling over fallen masonry, it was impossible not to feel the presence of the saint, who must have
had a major cultus as early as the fifth century. Yes, there is a REAL Santa Claus.

Byzantine apse of Church 2, Gemiler (St Nicholas) Island, Lycia, Turkey.

I must regrettably conclude on a sour note. The upper church on Gemiler Island was fairly recently
excavated by a Japanese archaeological team (no joking!) which discovered a beautiful Byzantine
floor mosaic. But if you want to see the mosaic, you had best look around Melbourne or Sydney,
because it was stolen by a group of Australians who had obtained permission to camp overnight on the
island. Yes, there are occasions when travelling that I find it politic to wave my United Kingdom
passport around!
Chapter 23. The Earthly Heaven
Let us who mystically represent the Cherubim, and who sing the thrice-holy hymn to the
life-giving Trinity, now lay aside all earthly care, that we may receive the King of all;
invisibly attended by the angelic orders.

(The Cherubic Hymn.)

So we sing at the Great Entrance of every celebration of the Divine Liturgy, except the Liturgy of the
Last Supper on Holy Thursday (liturgically, Holy Friday) and the Paschal Vigil Liturgy. Our worship
is at one with the unceasing worship of the celestial choirs. This mystic unification of Earth and
Heaven is given concrete expression in the Byzantine church/temple.

The Domus Ecclesiae

Before Constantine, churches existed only in a few isolated places. Nearly all Christians worshipped
in an ordinary house adapted for liturgical use, a domus ecclesiae (= house church). The very first
Eucharist, the Last Supper, was itself celebrated in the upper room of a house that can still be visited
today.

With the freedom of the Church, house churches were frequently demolished and replaced by a
purpose-built church. The locations of the house churches, also known as tituli, still largely define the
parishes of the City of Rome and, interestingly, the Liturgy uses the word house (oikos) in preference
to church/temple.

In 1971, I was attached to a university in Southern England. The Orthodox chaplain, who was both a
university lecturer and priest of the Moscow Patriarchate, lived out in the countryside and served
Orthodox from the surrounding district.

Out in his rural retreat, this priest used to celebrate the Divine Liturgy by simply spreading an
antimension (a cloth into which relics of saints are sewn) over his study desk, where on weekdays he
wrote articles and marked student assignments. A couple of icons would be propped up, and that was
it.

Of course, vestments, incense and candles were used and rich Russian voices sang the Liturgy. After
the Liturgy the tiny congregation would repair to the kitchen for brunch. These celebrations captured
for me the feel of what those early Liturgies in a domus ecclesiae would have been like, right down to
the “love feast”, the agape, which would have followed the Liturgy.

We even attended midnight Paschal Mattins and Liturgy in that domus ecclesiae deep in the Sussex
countryside. That Easter Sunday it happened to be my daughter’s second birthday, so the Paschal
breakfast which followed the Liturgy doubled as a Birthday party.

One thing that strongly impressed me from my very first contacts with Orthodoxy as an undergraduate
was its strong domestic ethos; but those desk-top Liturgies transported me right back to the primitive
roots of the liturgical life of the Church.

We were not celebrating in a church but, for as long as the Liturgy lasted, that study was transformed
into a church. That is, into an image of the transfigured cosmos in which the wall of partition between
earth and heaven was broken down and the hidden intrinsic unity of all things in God was mystically,
but truly, manifested. For a little while, ordinary astronomical time stood in suspense, swept up into
the eternal now of the Kingdom of God.

In fact, not even that academic study was needed. Were the Liturgy celebrated in the paddock beside
the house, where the children’s horse lived, still the space would be transformed into a temple. (The
words “temple” and “church” are approximate synonyms.)

The Cosmic Temple

It is not only Christians who have constructed temples. The Jews had the Temple in Jerusalem, the
house of God, and before that the tent housing the Ark of the Covenant, the Tabernacle, which they
transported from place to place. The Ancient Greeks and Romans also, of course, had temples,
architecturally beautiful houses for the cult images of their deities.

But before ever human beings built temples, there were temples without walls where the people
gathered to offer sacrifices and worship. Thus in the Old Testament we read of the pagan “high
places” on mountains and hills. That the Jews themselves in earliest times had open-air temples is
clear from the account of the dream in which Jacob saw angels ascending and descending. On waking,
Jacob declared:
“Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it. … How awesome is this place!
This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven (Genesis 28:16-
17).”

And with the stone that he had used as a pillow he set up an altar and consecrated it by pouring oil
over it (the Church today still consecrates Holy Tables and churches by anointing them with chrism).

So Jacob’s “house of God” was not a building or even a tent but simply a conceptual temple revealed
through a dream; a sacred place where the heavens bent down and touched the earth, the gate of
heaven. To fix this revelation in the place of that revelation, Jacob set up an altar.

Underlying such open-air temples is the conception of the cosmos itself as a temple. Under this
conception God is not contained, imprisoned so-to-speak, within a building.

To understand these temples-without-walls, it is helpful to consider the Ancient temple of the augurs.
Augurs were pagan priests who had the duty of seeking out and interpreting signs or portents in order
to foresee future events or determine the most favourable course of action. The augur’s temple was a
ritually created conceptual space within which portents could be observed.

The Ancients believed that there were exact correspondences between the macrocosm, the heavens,
and the microcosm, the earth, particularly the human person. The heavens, it was believed, could be
mapped onto the earth through ritual, thus achieving a unification of the two realms. Secrets known to
the gods could by this means be revealed through signs.

The augur created his temple by mapping the heavens in the form of a diagram on the surface of the
earth. First, he would trace out the most basic astronomical alignments, the E-W and N-S axes, with
his staff. Then he would inscribe a boundary around the axes thus creating a space divided into four
quarters. (This procedure is still basically how the foundations for a church should be marked out.)
Each of these four quarters was called a templum.

He would then relate the boundaries of the templa, each of which would have had astrological
associations, to the surrounding countryside, so that the terrain would be divided into the four bounded
quarters represented in the diagram.

In the next stage he would examine his surroundings, quarter by quarter, noting features which could
be of potential oracular significance. This done, he could unify the templa into a single templum and
pronounce the legem dixit, the formal statement of the question to be answered.

Finally, came the wait for signs (such as the flight pattern of birds) and then their interpretation in
accordance with established principles.

Both the Jewish Temple and pagan temples were houses for God/the gods. Christianity, however,
dispensed with the notion that sacrifices and ritual worship could only be offered at a temple. God can
be worshipped anywhere, the Eucharist can be celebrated in any place. A church is simply a building
designed for the celebration of the Liturgy and other services.

The Jewish Temple and its priesthood came under attack by Christians from the beginning. In the
sermon which led to his martyrdom, St Stephen argued that, while Moses had been commanded by
God to construct the Tabernacle, the building of the Temple was contrary to the will of God (Acts
7:47-50):
It was Solomon who built a house for [God]. Yet the Most High does not dwell in
houses made with hands; as the prophet says, “Heaven is my throne, and earth my
footstool. What house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my
rest? Did not my hand make all these things? [Isaiah 66:1-2]”

The Temple of God is the cosmos itself; God cannot be contained within a building. The writer of
Hebrews (8 & 9) also looks to the Tabernacle as a type of the Christian place of worship, not the
Temple.

The Earthly Heaven

Christians might speak of a church as “God’s house”, but clearly the expression has quite a different
meaning than it does when applied to a pagan temple or the Jewish Temple. A Christian church/temple
is built and adorned to the glory of God but is not fashioned as a vessel in which God can be bottled
and where alone sacrificial worship is to be offered.

God is everywhere and fills all things, and therefore can be worshipped anywhere. Great care must,
therefore, be exercised in interpreting such famous descriptions of the Christian temple as that of St
Germanus (the quotation gives us our title):
The church is an earthly heaven in which the super-celestial God dwells and walks
about.

(St Germanus of Constantinople on the Divine Liturgy, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press.)

Germanus does not mean that a church is a place where we can contain God; the cosmos (and every
human being) is God’s dwelling place. The church, however, is (like the augur’s temple) an image of
the cosmic temple, and hence can be described as an “earthly heaven”.

There is an allusion in the quotation to Genesis 3:8, which tells how Adam and Eve “heard the sound
of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day”. The Fathers identify “the Lord” as the
Logos, Christ. However, Germanus refers to the earthly Paradise, Eden, only as the type of the
heavenly Paradise to which we aspire, and the heavenly Paradise equates with the supercelestial
(equally “supersensible”) heavens.

For Germanus, the church is an earthly heaven because it is in the church that we celebrate the
Liturgy, that our worship becomes at one with that of the angels before the throne of God in the
supercelestial heavens/heavenly Paradise. And it is in the Liturgy that Christ becomes present and
moves amongst us.

The apparent duality of the two realms, heaven and earth, is dissolved and we get a glimpse from our
cleft in the rock of the underlying reality, the unity of all things in God.

With the development of church architecture and iconography it became possible to freeze in concrete
form what is expressed through poetry, music and ceremonial in the Liturgy.

The Byzantine Temple

Byzantine churches range in size from vast cathedrals such as the eleventh-century St Mark’s, Venice
to small single-domed churches, such as the delightful fourteenth century (?) St Nicholas Foundoukli
on Rhodes (Plate 8a). But whatever the size and grandeur, the unification of heaven and earth is
achieved by the same means: sacred geometry, deployment of architectural space, and iconography.

In sacred geometry, the circle/sphere represents the eternal supercelestial heavens. Circles and spheres
have no corners, beginnings or endings and all points on the circumference/surface are equidistant
from the centre. Moreover, we experience the heavens as a hemisphere arching over the earth. On the
other hand, the square symbolises the earth and time. As in the augur’s temple, it signifies the four
quarters of the earth.

The octagon is also considered important as it represents the Eighth Day, Sunday, the day of the
Lord’s Resurrection, signifying the eternal Kingdom of God. In addition to these geometric figures,
Byzantine architects sought to fill the volume of the temple with a three-dimensional cross.

In its simplest geometric form, the Byzantine church comprises an equal-armed three-dimensional
cross, the Greek Cross, with a central hemispherical dome supported by four columns or piers which
form the central square of the cross.
These features can be observed in the exterior of St Nicholas (though it is slightly extended to the east
by an apse) and can readily be traced in the plan of St Mark’s (though the church has many additional
domes).

St Mark’s, formally the palace chapel of the Doges of Venice, is known to have been modelled on the
Apostoleion in Constantinople, built by Justinian but destroyed in 1459. Most larger Byzantine
churches enclose the three-dimensional cross within an outer square. However, in the case of St
Mark’s, the cross is not enclosed, although the narthex and baptistery are wrapped around the western
end of the church. (The plan should make this clear.) The octagon is not so obvious, but can be traced
by inscribing straight lines across the corners of the square.

The division of the church into three liturgical spaces effects the same symbolic unification of heaven
and earth: the sanctuary, within which the Holy Mysteries are consummated, signifies heaven and
eternity; the nave, where the people stand, signifies the earth and time. Originally, the sanctuary
penetrated into the space of the nave - being separated from it only by a low wall – signifying the
transfiguration of the faithful, and indeed the whole creation, by the Liturgy. Needless to say, this
powerful symbolism is destroyed by cutting the nave off from the sanctuary with a solid icon screen.
The third space, the narthex or porch, is not a true part of the body of the church but symbolically
marks the boundary between the fallen world outside and Paradise being restored, signified by the
nave.

The church is thus an image of the cosmic temple, but it is also an image of the human person, the
microcosm in the strict sense. It thus mediates between the macrocosm and microcosm; in other
words, it can be said to be a mesocosm.

Not only does the sanctuary signify the mind/soul and the nave the body, the Byzantine temple is built
to human proportions. This is more readily experienced in a small church such as St Nicholas
Foundoukli.

Since Christ is the prototype and perfection of humanity, the church, structured around a three-
dimensional cross, is an image of Christ.

Over the central doorway from the narthex into the nave an icon of the head and shoulders of Christ is
often placed. Walking through the doorway, we symbolically enter into the body of Christ.

Finally, the iconography completes the symbolic unification of heaven and earth, with Christ
Pantocrator depicted at the apex of the central dome (see Plate 8b of the twelfth-century Martorana in
Palermo, Sicily).

(Though in some churches, such as St Mark’s, the Pantocrator, rather than the more common image of
the Theotokos, is placed in the eastern apse and the Ascension in the central dome.)

Angels, the heavenly liturgy, and symbols of the supercelestial heavens and the heavenly Paradise
typically appear on the upper vaulting, festival icons follow on the next level down, and saints, who
join with the angels and us in the celebration of the Liturgy, appear on the walls. Sometimes Old
Testament icons, as at St Mark’s, adorn the narthex.

But while the singing will end, and the priest and people depart, the temple, an “earthly heaven in
which the super-celestial God dwells and walks about”, perpetuates the celebration of the Mysteries
through iconography and architecture for anyone who, at any time, prayerfully enters into its stillness.
Chapter 24. Canberra’s Byzantine Secret
Which is the greater mystery, that one of the nest surviving Byzantine church floor mosaics resides in
the Australian War Memorial (AWM) in Canberra or that, by my casual sampling, only 3-4% of
Australian Greek Orthodox know that it does? Yet there it is, the Shellal Mosaic, for all to see for the
price of a “gold coin” donation at the door.

Byzantine Floor Mosaics

Think Byzantine mosaics and you probably think of acres of golden tesserae shimmering in shafts of
light on domes, apses, vaulting and walls of such mighty churches as Hagia Sophia in Constantinople,
Hosios Loukas in mainland Greece, the Nea Moni on Chios, San Marco in Venice, or the great
churches of Ravenna or Sicily. But did visions of floor mosaics flash across your interior TV screen?
Probably not. For floor mosaics one needs to go to the remains of small Byzantine churches, not
famous whoppers.

True, mosaics are sometimes to be found on the floors of great churches, but usually marble paving
was used, sometimes with the marble segments arranged in cosmological geometrical patterns. In a
small church, a mosaic pavement could effect an impact which would be lost in the expanses of some
great cathedral or monastic katholikon.

An extraordinary number of, largely Byzantine-era, floor mosaics have been found in Palestine and
Jordan. The patterns and figurative motifs of these mosaics have Hellenistic roots, but the mosaics
that concern us date from the early third century through the eighth, long after the Muslim conquests
of the seventh century.

Though rich in geometric patterning, the three mosaics of what is possibly the earliest purpose-built
church yet found anywhere, that at Megiddo in Israel, which dates to the early third century, contain
only one figurative component. This is a roundel depicting two fish. As most readers will know, the
fish is a symbol of Christ, the reason being that the initial letters of the title, ’Ιησους Χριστός Θεου
Υίου Σωτήρ (Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour) spell out the Greek word for fish, ίχθύς .

While a number of the early mosaics are geometric, an impressive number of figurative mosaics have
been found, not only in the remains of churches but also synagogues and secular buildings. Their
presence in synagogues might seem surprising, but, even if attitudes hardened later, during our period
many rabbis (as Orthodox today) interpreted the Second Commandment as a prohibition on idols not
the depiction of human beings and other living creatures as such.

The themes of the Christian church pavements of the Palestine and Transjordan region give expression
to the understanding of the nave as symbolic of the earth and creation, or the earthly Paradise, while
the sanctuary symbolises heaven.

Thus in a number of churches there are scenes of the Nile. In the transepts of the church on the
traditional site of Christ’s miracle of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes at Tabgha above the
Sea of Galilee are charming Nilotic scenes, dating to the second half of the fifth century, with plants,
birds and even a Nilometer (used for measuring the height of the river). Where the Holy Table stood
are two fish flanking a basket of bread, recalling the miracle (John 6:1-14 & parallels) and probably
explaining why there are two fish at Megiddo. The miracle has always been understood to have a
eucharistic meaning.

The Ancient Egyptians believed that the new life which could be seen arising from hillocks of mud in
the midst of the Nile, as the waters of the annual inundation receded, was an echo of the original
creation. The mosaicists could well have seen in these Nilotic scenes a metaphor for the Creation
according to Genesis.

Very common are what are known as inhabited vine-trellis and acanthus-scroll mosaic patterns. These
comprise various motifs or scenes set in medallions formed by tendrils of vine or acanthus leaves:
birds, animals, scenes of everyday life, particularly agricultural tasks, and objects such as amphorae
and baskets of fruit.

Yet a third common theme is the stylised depiction of cities and other sites. Unique is the famous
mosaic map at Madaba dating to around the 560s. Originally around 5m longer than today, the map
probably covered the whole Old and New Testament worlds. Greatest detail is offered Jerusalem,
while other pilgrimage sites are highlighted and in some instances accompanied by biblical
quotations. In short, the map is an exercise in sacred cosmography, identifying the episodes of
salvation history with their terrestrial locations.

All three of these common themes of nave mosaics are combined in the remarkable eighth-century
pavement of the Church of St Stephen at Kastron Mefaa (Umm al-Rasas). This comprises an inhabited
vine-trellis bounded by a Nilotic frieze interspersed with depictions of Egyptian cities. On the north
and south sides of an outer border there are depictions of further sites, 8 each from Palestine and
Transjordan. The Palestinian sites were all important episcopal cities, while those of Transjordan
include Madaba and Kastron Mefaa itself.

The Extraordinary Tale of the Shellal Mosaic

During the First World War, British and Empire forces were engaged in driving the Turks out of
Palestine. On April 17, 1917, in the course of the Second Battle of Gaza, troops of the Australian and
New Zealand Mounted Division were sent to set up a signal station on a small hill at Shellal, near
Gaza. On the top of the hill, where the enemy had established a machine-gun position, they discovered
the remains of a mosaic. Fortunately, they informed an Anglican chaplain who, realising the
significance of the mosaic, was able to arrange its removal to Egypt.

What the diggers had discovered was the pavement of the nave of a small sixth-century Byzantine
church. Although damaged by erosion and by the Turks having dug two trenches through it, around
half of the mosaic was intact. Soldiers being soldiers, some portions were subsequently souvenired,
but fortunately not before an excellent drawing of the pavement was made. Originally measuring 8.23
X 5.49m, the mosaic is of the finest quality.

No other remains of the church were found except for the base of a column. However, we can be
reasonably sure that the church was a basilica with a central nave bounded by an aisle each side. The
mosaic can be assumed to have covered the entire area of the nave up to the low ornamental wall
which would have separated the nave from the sanctuary area, within which the Holy Table would
have stood (this was centuries before Orthodox churches acquired an icon screen.)

As is usual with such mosaics, there were inscriptions at the west and east ends. Little of the western
inscription survives, but the eastern inscription is largely intact and can be reconstructed as follows:
This temple with rich mosaics did decorate our most holy bishop [name missing] and
the most pious George, priest and sacristan [paramonarius] in the year 622 according to
the era of Gaza, in the tenth year of the indiction.

622 of the era of Gaza corresponds to 561/2, at the end of the reign of Justinian (d.565). A human
burial uncovered beneath the inscription was shipped to Australia and the remains reinterred at St
Anne’s Anglican Church, Strathfield. They might or might not be the remains of the “most pious
George” (though definitely not of St George!)

After the war a dastardly move was made to have the mosaic transported to London. Following strong
protest from the Australian Government, however, the scheme was abandoned and the mosaic shipped
to Australia. It now resides in the AWM mounted on a wall.

The Mosaic and its Symbolism

The mosaic (see detail, Plate 9) is of the vine-trellis form comprising 9 rows and 5 columns of
medallions, which would have made a total of 45 roundels when the mosaic was complete. The top
three rows are now almost entirely missing.

The trellis is bounded by a meander/Greek key pattern interspersed by small squares (see bottom,
Plate 9). The meander, which is of the swastika form, accentuates the cross in each of its segments.

The vine is remarkable in that it not only has bunches of grapes suspended from it but what seem to be
heads of grain (see the birdcage medallion) thereby denoting the bread of the Eucharist as well as the
wine. (However, it is just possible that what are depicted are two different varieties of grape).

Issuing from an amphora, the vine symbolises both Christ – “I am the true vine” (John 15:1) – and the
Tree of Life. Obviously, we should understand the amphora as containing the water of life which
sustains all creation. Similarly, the water symbolises the Holy Spirit, “the giver of life”, and the
sanctified water of the baptismal font. This is confirmed by the small cross above the amphora.

In the medallions of the central column, which follow the E-W axis of the church, can be seen (from
bottom to top): the amphora; a pannier (a basket designed for a pack animal) containing fruit
(probably apples) at which two birds are pecking; a basket of fruit; a chalice (presumably for wine); a
bird in a cage, and another basket.

The bird in the cage, found also in non-Christian mosaics, usually symbolises the human soul
imprisoned within the body yearning for release, but here could perhaps symbolise the catechumen
desiring to be released from the prison of sin by baptism. The other central medallions signify the
richness of God’s bounty and probably also the Eucharist.

The pairs of medallions either side of the central column contain birds and other animals facing
inwards. In the bottom row is a pair of peacocks. It was believed that the flesh of the peacock did not
putrefy, and hence that the bird signified immortality. In a Christian context, the peacock symbolised
Christ, whose crucified body did not corrupt but was raised up on the third day.

Above the tail of the intact peacock is a partridge. Partridges had a very bad reputation and could be
used as a symbol for the Devil, in contrast to the peacock/Christ. According to Jeremiah 17:7 SAAS:
“A partridge coos and collects eggs she did not lay. So is a man who obtains his wealth,
but not with judgment … ”

So the bird symbolises deceit, and hence the Deceiver, Satan.

In the second row are a ram and ewe, and a billy-goat. In the third row are opposing pheasants, and a
purple coot (symbolic of chastity and piety).

The fourth row has a lion and tigress. The lion can be either a positive or negative symbol. It can
symbolise Christ, as the Lion of Judah, but also the Devil (1 Peter 5:8). As the tigress has a decidedly
menacing appearance, it seems likely that the opposing lion is Christ, good opposing evil.

In the fifth row are opposing flamingos and a guinea-fowl (symbolic of mourning). The sixth row has
a hound chasing a hare on the north side partly depicted while on the heavily souvenired south a dog
chased a gazelle. Scenes of the hunt or chase are common in Christian mosaics which usually
represent the individual fleeing temptation and seeking the waters of life and might well have their
source in the Psalms:
As the deer longs for the springs of waters, So my soul longs for You, O God. (Psalm
41[42:1MT] SAAS.)

However, the hare being chased by the hound could have the reverse meaning, evil being chased off by
good, since dogs symbolised faithfulness but hares, in negative mode, lust.

It would be a mistake to ascribe a single over-arching meaning to the pavement other than that the
creatures surrounded with tendrils of the Tree of Life clearly constitute an image of the Garden of
Eden/Paradise; of Paradise lost through the Fall being restored through the Mysteries celebrated in the
altar.

A passage which probably influenced the mosaicists is that of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel. The
King dreamt that:
… in the midst of the earth there was a very tall tree … Its height reached to heaven,
and its extent to the ends of all the earth. Its leaves were beautiful and its fruit abundant
 … The wild animals lived beneath it, and the birds of heaven dwelled in its branches.
All flesh was fed from it (4:10b-12 SAAS).

All the animals and birds probably had a moral meaning. A theme of the battle of the virtues and vices
(think Christ’s Parable of the Sheep and the Goats) could possibly have determined the selection and
placement of the creatures; although, overall, the pavement could, in positive mode, simultaneously
have represented the peaceable kingdom foretold by the prophet Isaiah.

Many of the squares within the border are missing. It is likely that the top of the head seen at the
bottom is that of a donor. On the north side is a pomegranate. The pomegranate (not illustrated) has a
complicated mythological symbolism. Most importantly, as the emblem of Persephone who returns
from Hades in the spring, the fruit is seen as symbolic of the Resurrection of Christ.

In squares at the top, below the inscription (not illustrated), are a bowl of bread and a fish which has
been divided in the middle. These motifs are eucharistic. Not only is the fish symbolic of Christ, but
the fact that it is severed recalls Christ’s words: “Take eat, this is my body, which is broken for you
for the remission of sins.”

The Shellal mosaic, both in its form and content, is so similar to a number of other church and
synagogue mosaics of the region, most notably that of the contemporaneous Ma‘on-Nirim synagogue,
that scholars have concluded that a school of mosaicists was active in Gaza at the time. Many of the
motifs found within the medallions seem, however, to have persisted from Egyptian through to
modern times.
Chapter 25. ‘‘Let My Prayer Be Set Forth in Thy Sight as
the Incense’’
St James the Greater

The most popular pilgrimage destination of the Western Middle Ages, after Jerusalem and Rome, was
the shrine of St James the Greater at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, at the north western
extremity of Spain. Indeed, Cape Finisterre (Latin, Finis Terrae = the end of the earth), the most
westerly point of the European mainland, is only a short distance from Compostela.

Before Columbus put the Americas on the map in 1452 (the year before Constantinople fell) Galicia
was the end of the known world, the Ecumene. There the horizon between land and sea marked the
mystic boundary between Earth and Heaven.

At the heart of this bleak province, notorious for its wet and uncertain weather (when we were there an
incredibly violent Sydney-style hail storm descended out of a completely clear blue sky in a matter of
seconds), lies the great basilica where the mortal remains of the Apostle repose. (Get you behind me
you sceptical historians, tradition has you miserable lot beaten every time!).

St James (Sant’ Iago in Spanish) the Greater is the brother of St John the Divine/Evangelist, as
distinguished from the other James named as one of the Twelve Apostles, James the Son of Alphaeus,
James the Less.

Actually, there is a third James mentioned in the New Testament, James the Lord’s Brother, who some
think is the same person as James the Less (in which case, “brother” = cousin). Eastern tradition,
however, regards them as separate individuals, with James the Lord’s Brother a son of Joseph by an
earlier marriage. (According to the Gospel, Joseph was not, of course, the biological father of Christ.)

However, our James is, along with John, a son of Zebedee. For some reason, Christ nicknamed the
brothers Boanerges, Sons of Thunder – and there was certainly thunder the day my wife and I were in
Santiago! How the bones of Sant’ Iago got to Galicia is a matter of legend (according to Acts 12:1-2,
St James was beheaded in Jerusalem by King Herod Agrippa I, c.44).

There is, however, no doubt that the Spanish cultus of St James began when Theodomir, Bishop of Iria
Flavia (the capital of Roman Galicia), certified remains found in the early ninth century as those of
the Apostle.

The tradition that the Twelve Apostles had divided the Ecumene up between them, with St James
being allotted Spain, is in fact much earlier, tracing back at least to late sixth-century Byzantium and
to St Isidore of Seville (560-636).

A Great Bottle of Smoke

One of the great liturgical Wonders of the World is the mighty thurible (= incense-burner, censer)
swung before the shrine of St James in the basilica of Santiago de Compostela (Plate 10). I had long
wished to see the great Romanesque cathedral with its unique and “awesome” engine of devotion,
popularly known as the Botafumeiro (= bottle of smoke).

The traditional medieval way to travel to Compostela is along one of four routes from French towns or
cities: Arles (where Italian pilgrims gathered), left Puy, Vézelay (where German and central European
pilgrims assembled) and Paris (a convenient starting point for British pilgrims). Eventually, these
routes join up and cross Northern Spain.

Some years ago my wife and I decided to investigate these medieval pilgrim routes (by car, not on
foot) with the intention of ending up at Compostela. The Freelands’ problem, however, is that they can
never tear themselves away from France, and so we were barely across the Pyrenees when we ran out
of time.

A few years later, we did get to Santiago de Compostela, but this time from a liner bound for
Southampton that stopped for a day at Vigo, a port close to Compostela. So, instead of arriving at the
shrine of St James exhausted but morally uplifted after weeks on the pilgrim trail, we were
shamefacedly deposited in the bus park a couple of hundred metres from the basilica.

We certainly would not have qualified for the Compostellana, the official ecclesiastical certificate
declaring that you are a bona fide pilgrim and entitled to three days’ worth of free meals. That
requires walking, or riding a bike or a horse, for at least 100 kilometres. Still, our journey was a
pilgrimage of sorts and like those who only join the fast of Great Lent at the eleventh hour, of whom
St John Chrysostom speaks in his Paschal sermon, we received the blessing of the Apostle along with
the first-hourers.

We had been told that incensing with the Botafumeiro took place only on major feast days. But it was
not a major feast. However, it so happened that our visit was during Western Easter (that is Bright)
Week and, by attending the midday pilgrim Mass, we were able to witness the extraordinary liturgical
ceremony that one guidebook aptly describes as “a spectacle of unforgettable power”.

Incensing with the Botafumeiro traces back at least to the fourteenth century, although the actual
thurible has been replaced several times. The enormous censer used today is, however, smaller than
the 6 foot (1.83m) high solid silver one looted by Napoleon’s troops in 1801.

Beneath the dome at the centre of the Cathedral is an ingenious pulley system from which two ropes
descend. The Botafumeiro is carefully attached to one rope, the other is used to swing it. This is an
operation that requires the labour of a team of seven or eight traditionally attired thurifers.

T h e Botafumeiro having been prepared and blessed, the thurifers haul on the rope. At first the
Botafumeiro moves jerkingly only a short distance, then with some mighty heaves it is sent flying in a
rapidly expanding arc that eventually extends almost the entire width of the transepts (70m) and
almost up to the vault, nearly 30m above the floor.

We were seated almost directly under the Botafumeiro’s path as it hurtled through the air like a
flaming meteor, leaving clouds of incense in its wake. Was it a comfort to be told that the Botafumeiro
had only come adrift from its moorings twice? Perhaps, but I had a nasty suspicion that the last time
was some centuries back and the third mishap was overdue.

But slowly the length of the arc of this mighty pendulum decreased until the head thurifer was able to
grab the Botafumeiro and bring it to a standstill with a pirouette and a discrete bow to the applause of
the congregation.

While some believe that the Botafumeiro was devised as a dramatic way of honouring the Apostle,
many others surmise that its purpose was to purify the air from the odour of the hundreds of pilgrims
who were given to sleeping in the Cathedral. This latter theory has its sceptics who point out that the
medieval pilgrims bathed and changed their clothes before entering the city. In fact, these two theories
are not contradictory. Liturgical ceremonies nearly always have both a practical and a symbolic
meaning, and the practical need not of necessity predate the symbolic.

The Symbolism of Incense

Incense, which is made from gum-resin of certain trees and usually blended with aromatic plant oils,
has been used by nearly all cultures both for domestic and religious purposes.

In Jewish ritual, incense was burned as a sacrificial offering on the golden altar of the Temple twice a
day (Exodus 30:1-10) by rostered priests. The annunciation of the birth of John the Forerunner/Baptist
by the Archangel Gabriel standing at the right of the altar of incense occurred when his father, the
priest Zechariah, was making this ritual offering (Luke 1:5-23).

Offerings of incense were made in Jewish ritual on other occasions. Pure frankincense (gum-resin
from trees of the genus Boswellia) was prescribed to accompany the grain offering in the Temple.
Frankincense was, of course, one of the symbolic gifts presented to the infant Christ by the Magi.

On Sinai, God spoke to Moses through the cloud that covered the mountain (Exodus 24: 15-18).
Similarly, at the Transfiguration Peter and the brothers James and John saw Christ transfigured in
light but the voice of the Father spoke through the “bright cloud” which “overshadowed them”
(Matthew 17:1-8).

So, on the Day of Atonement, the one day of the year that he entered the Holy of Holies, the High
Priest covered the mercy seat with a cloud of incense lest he die in confronting God’s glory (Leviticus
16:12-13). (The mercy seat was the cover of the Ark of the Covenant, which was regarded as the
footstool of God’s throne and hence the place of the High Priest’s encounter with God.)

Orthodox often assert that incense has been used by the Church from the beginning, but this is far
from certain. References to incense in relation to the heavenly worship in Revelation 5:8 and 8:3
might or might not reflect liturgical use of incense. But from then on no mention of liturgical use is
known before the fifth century.

Incense might have been burned in bowls in some churches – the four living creatures and the twenty-
four elders in Revelation 5:8 hold golden bowls of incense – but the incensations in the liturgy with
which we are familiar probably originated in the late fourth to early fifth century period. It is likely
that they developed from the practice of incensing during processions in front of dignitaries, whether
ecclesiastical or secular, as a mark of honour and a way of cleansing the air of noxious odours.

The Holy Table, the Gospels and the Eucharistic offerings are incensed in honour of Christ. The clergy
and the faithful, as well as the icons, are also honoured with incense as human beings are made in the
image of God. But above all, incense symbolises prayer.
Both Revelation texts equate the rising incense smoke with prayers ascending to the throne of God. At
Vespers, the church and people are censed as Psalms 140 and 141 LXX are chanted, the key verse
being:
Let my prayer come before you as incense, the lifting up of my hands as an evening
sacrifice (140 [141:2 MT]).

(Book of Prayers, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia.)

While the incense symbolises our prayer, it also symbolises God’s presence in our midst. As our
prayer ascends with the incense, we ask God to send down the Holy Spirit on us.

Obviously, incense contributes to the atmosphere of mystery and awe surrounding the liturgy, and its
use certainly carries with it Jewish sacrificial symbolism. Nevertheless, incense tends to be seen as an
accompaniment to the Eucharistic sacrifice or the sacrifice of prayer rather than as a sacrificial
offering in its own right.

Incensing also constitutes a symbolic purification of church and people. As our prayer of repentance
for our sins ascends to God, so the sweet-smelling incense of God’s cleansing grace fills the church.
While incensing the altar, the icons and the people before the Great Entrance, the priest secretly
recites the great penitential prayer of the Church, Psalm 50 [51MT]. This is the time for the faithful to
recall their own sins and ask God’s forgiveness.

The thurible has not escaped symbolic interpretation. The censer itself has been seen as symbolic of
the humanity of Christ and the fire within it of His divinity, while the incense smoke has been
understood as symbolic of the Holy Spirit.

Not only do Orthodox use incense liturgically but also as a natural enhancement of private prayer.
Indeed, the homes of devout Orthodox families, blessed with the presence of icons, the murmur of
prayer and pervaded with the fragrance of incense, are truly little churches. Such homes are made in
the image of the parish church and are served by pious Christians sealed with the Holy Chrism of the
priesthood of the believer, as the parish church is served by those separated out by ordination to
exercise the sacred ministry.
C h a p t e r 26. Pilgrimage to Patmos: Island of the
Apocalypse
Shortly after midnight, Monday May 7 [2007], the Eve of the feast of St John the Theologian

My wife and I have just disembarked from the night ferry that has brought us from Rhodes to the holy
island of Patmos. “Yes, yes,” we had been told, “there will be plenty of taxis meeting the ferry.” Of
course, not a taxi to be seen on the windswept quay.

The only other people on the quay are another pair of abandoned waifs. Yes, there was one taxi when
the ferry arrived but this had taken a group off some time ago. The driver said he would return. But
where is he?

Eventually, the taxi driver does return and scoops up our fellow wayfarers. He will return for us.

Now we are quite alone. I think of John the Evangelist arriving as an exile on this small barren rocky
Dodecanese island. Perhaps he too was unceremoniously dumped onto a deserted quay in the dead of
night without a donkey in sight to take him up the mountainous hill to the shelter of a cave. My mind
is beginning to wander.

Well after 1 a.m.

The taxi driver does return – Alleluia! – and drives us to our hotel perched on top of a cliff several
kilometres out of Patmos’ charming little port of Skala. Fortunately, we had phoned ahead and a
young man is still up and waiting for us. We head for the stairs. “No, no, not that way – outside,
outside.” He leads us out into the night and down endless tortuous steps cut into the cliff face. Good
gracious! Are we going to spend what is left of the night in a cave?

Eventually, we arrive at a door and our intrepid guide leads us into a room. Almost all of the furniture
is made of concrete, the bed a concrete slab with a mattress on it. We collapse onto the bed (which is
in fact surprisingly comfortable) and enter into the untroubled sleep of the just.

Around 7.30 a.m.

The first glimmerings of waking. There is a sound of uttering wings around my head. I can even feel
little ripples of air on my face. Surely it must be an angel! Had I, for some extraordinary reason, been
chosen to receive a new apocalyptic vision? My eyes open. Our little whitewashed cell is bathed in
light and, lo and behold, there is a sparrow that, all unbeknown, has spent the night with us.

I open the doors onto the veranda, releasing our feathered friend, and survey the scene. The view is of
the sort for which people have killed. At the bottom of the cliff immediately below is a picturesque
little chapel at the water’s edge of a bay. The iridescent blue Aegean beneath a cloudless sky is as
calm as the sea of crystal before the throne of God. Steep cliffs rise on the opposite shore and a
sweeping sandy beach skirts the centre of the bay.

The contrast with the night before could not be greater. And yet, some aspect of the mystery of this
holy place was revealed in the darkness of the night that is lost in the Paschal brightness (it is Monday
of the Week of the Samaritan Woman) of this Patmos May morning.

We take our time and then order a taxi into Skala – no problem this morning. Above Skala looms the
mountainous hill capped by the great fortress monastery of St John the Theologian, undoubtedly one
of the greatest monasteries of the Orthodox world. The Monastery was founded in 1088 following the
grant by Emperor Alexios I Comnenos of the, then deserted, island to St Christodoulos in exchange for
land owned by the Saint. Today, there are around 30 monks.

Surrounding the grim fortifications is a coronet of small whitewashed houses of the quaint village of
Chora. Further down the hill are the famed Patmias Theological School, founded in 1713, and the so-
called “Apocalypse”, the complex of buildings which incorporate the Cave of the Apocalypse (Plate
11a).

It doesn’t take us long to acquire a set of wheels and we head off up the hill to the Apocalypse. The
Cave of the Apocalypse is where Patmian tradition says the Apostle and Evangelist John the son of
Zebedee and a brother of James, alone of the Apostles known as “the Theologian”, received the vision
recorded in the last book of the New Testament, Revelation/the Apocalypse.

Steep steps descend down from the entrance hall to a small chapel dedicated to St Anne that opens up
into the cave proper. Here, it is said, John the Theologian had his vision. The roof of what the
Guidebook describes as “the God-carved cave” is divided into three sections by a cleft – surely a
signature of the Holy Trinity! It was through this cleft, we are also told, that God spoke to John with a
voice “like the sound of many waters” (Revelation 1:15).

Down close to the floor there is a “halo” of silver surrounding a small cavity in the rock wall where,
the Guidebook assures us, the head of the Apostle rested when he had his momentous vision. A second
halo of silver surrounds a smaller cavity that John supposedly used to lever himself up from his rock
bed. Finally, higher up the wall is a rock ledge on which (of course) Prochoros, the Apostle’s disciple,
wrote down John’s words. What more proof could the pilgrim require? Hm.

Well, Patmos is certainly not the place to reveal niggles of doubt. However, there is no denying the
awe-inspiring atmosphere. It is a place, if ever, where “old men shall dream dreams, and … young
men shall see visions (Joel 2:28)”.

Around 1 p.m.

Time to round up a spot of lunch and meditate on my visit to the cave.

Unfortunately, the fact is that there is a real problem about the authorship of Revelation. One has only
to compare the Gospel of John with Revelation for strong doubts to surface as to whether they could
be by the same person. The language, literary style and patterns of thought are totally different.
Further, it really beggars belief that the disciple beloved of Christ could have written (or dictated)
Revelation without betraying, even indirectly, his intimate friendship with the Saviour.

Analysis of the text of the Apocalypse by scholars has now all but closed the issue. Perhaps most
convincing are studies of the vocabulary. Authors use simple basic words with relative frequencies
that vary very little over a lifetime, even if changes occur in literary style. If one compares two
reasonably long texts and finds that the frequency of use of basic vocabulary is wildly different one
can conclude that the texts are almost certainly not by the same author.

The relative frequency of basic vocabulary of Revelation and the Gospel have proved to be massively
different.

Ah, but, you might say, Orthodoxy is the Church of tradition, and surely one should put tradition
before the quibbles of modern scholars. (I confess that I have myself on occasion observed to students
that tradition often wins out in the end.) But the problem in this case is that tradition is divided.

Many Fathers from Irenaeus (c.130-c.200) on assume that John the Evangelist is the author of
Revelation, but Eusebius (c.260-c.340), the Church historian, says that opinion was evenly divided on
the issue. He quotes a very long extract from a work of Dionysius (“the Great”) of Alexandria
(d.c.264) in which the Father effects a complete demolition job on the belief that Revelation was
authored by the same person as the Gospel of John and 1 John.

Dionysius says that he believes that there were two Johns at Ephesus, where the Apostle is known to
have lived and died, and that the tombs of both were said to be there. Revelation could, then, be the
work of this second John. Papias (c.60-130) records the existence of the two tombs and informs us that
this second John was known as John the Presbyter.

While tradition is rock solid on the attribution of the Gospel and 1 John to the Apostle (some modern
scholars are up the creek on this one), there were widespread doubts as to whether he wrote 2 and 3
John. The author of these two epistles identifies himself not as the Apostle but as “the Presbyter” (=
elder). So it seems quite possible that 2 and 3 John and Revelation are by the Presbyter.

Although on Patmos one is told that it is the vision recorded in Revelation that Prochoros wrote down
on that rock ledge, the author of the fifth century apocryphal Acts of John, the source of the story, has
John dictating the Gospel. Later, iconographers have followed the Acts, depicting Prochoros in the
cave taking down the Gospel, not Revelation.

But where does this leave the tradition that John the Theologian was exiled on Patmos? Were both
Johns exiled on the island? Was it John the Presbyter who was exiled there and had the vision?
Eusebius, who is inclined to reject the attribution of Revelation to the Apostle, nevertheless asserts
that there was “ample evidence” that the Beloved Disciple was exiled on Patmos. And indeed tradition
does seem firm on this point.

If we accept that the Apostle was exiled on Patmos, perhaps even wrote part of the Gospel there, what
does this say about Revelation? Personally, I am convinced that, although it is a highly contrived
literary construction with much added material, the book really does record actual visionary
experience.

But is the author (quite likely the Presbyter), while seemingly attributing the book to the Apostle, in
fact elaborating on an experience he himself had, possibly at Ephesus? Perhaps. After all
pseudonymous works, particularly apocalyptic works, were common in Antiquity. But there is no
suggestion, other than the one reference to the Patmos exile (Revelation 1:9), that the writer really is
attributing the work to the Apostle.
Another “perhaps” occurs to me. Perhaps the Presbyter had heard the Apostle speak of a vision that he
had had while on Patmos. And perhaps it is this vision which the Presbyter uses as a base for an
apocalyptic work entirely of his own composition.

The reference to Patmos might, then, be more an acknowledgment of the Presbyter’s source of
inspiration than a serious attempt to present the Apostle as the author. Who knows? As Winston
Churchill said of Soviet Russia, Revelation “is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. An
inevitable conclusion to any meditation on the book.

Around 7.40 a.m., Tuesday May 8, the feast of St John the Theologian

I make the steep climb up through the narrow traffic-free streets of Chora to the Monastery. Three
cruise ships are in port and the souvenir shops are already opening up in expectation of a great
morning ahead.

The author on the roof of the monastery.

Eventually, with seriously depleted “puff”, I arrive and pass through the portal, where monks in days
gone by used to hurl down rocks and empty vats of boiling oil on pirates and other unwelcome guests.

The church is not anything like as crowded as I had anticipated. May 8 is one of the great days of the
year at the Monastery, and it is the patronal festival of our beautiful little chapel of St John the
Theologian at St Andrew’s Theological College. However, the monastery keeps the other feast of St
John on the Eastern calendar, September 26, as its panigyris.

The choir of the twelfth century domed cross-in-square Katholikon is ablaze with a myriad candles
which irradiate the vivid colours of the (largely early seventeenth century) murals and the Russian
icons on the intricately carved and gilded iconostasis, two of them gifts from Catherine the Great.

Two enormous circular trays of kollyva, decorated with a striking geometrical pattern, rest on small
tables either side of the screen. The church has that extraordinary feeling of love and warmth which
typifies churches dedicated to the Beloved Disciple.

Somehow, I find myself propped up right next to the mayor and a venerable white-bearded monk on
psaltes-duty. There is time before the Divine Liturgy begins to let the chanting of the psalmody and
the ambient iconography percolate into my being.

The Liturgy is splendidly concelebrated by many priests. Being a creature of cathedrals and parish
churches, there are details of monastic usage that catch my attention. For example, during the singing
of the Gospel the two chanters strike up-turned brass bowls with small hammers to a distinctive
rhythm that enhances the reading and the sense that Christ is indeed present and speaking to us.

To pass from the sublime to the trivial, never having witnessed the procedure, I have sometimes
wondered how one extinguishes candles on high chandeliers. Now I know. You get a monk to come in
with a feather duster attached to the end of a long pole and gently fan the flames to extinction. Simple.

My niggles about the Patmian tradition of yesterday give way this morning to the absolute certainty of
the presence of the Beloved Disciple concelebrating with us on this perfect morning of his May feast.

Leaving the courtyard, complete with a Woolworths-sized bag of kollyva, I stop to peer over the
battlements at the breathtaking view. But I can see tourists from the cruise ships ascending the
mountain en masse. I will leave inspection of the iconography and museum till tomorrow.

Around 9.30 a.m., Wednesday May 9

The cruise ships have left and very few of the souvenir shops have bothered to open. Apart from the
friendly monks, my wife and I have the Monastery almost to ourselves as we navigate through its
narrow passageways. The interior of the Monastery is in sharp contrast to the massive grim
fortifications of the exterior. It has a very welcoming and domestic feel.

The much photographed courtyard (Plate 11b) has an arcade of massive arches. The arches are
supported by an assortment of ancient columns and capitals, some taken from the fifth to sixth-
century Christian basilica dedicated to John the Theologian, which occupied the site before St
Christodoulos commenced construction of the Monastery, or even the temple of Artemis, the original
hilltop shrine.

We enter the exonarthex of the Katholikon on the east side of the courtyard. It is adorned with
seventeenth to eighteenth-century murals, including a cycle of the miracles of St John. In the
esonarthex is a precious icon of John, possibly dating from the twelfth century but heavily over
painted. The largely seventeenth-century murals are dark and difficult to identify. Off the esonarthex
is the chapel of St Christodoulos where the founder’s remains rest in a silver-covered shrine.

We do not spend long in the choir but pass on into the adjoining Chapel of the Theotokos. Here we
linger to examine the outstanding twelfth century frescos discovered, beneath overlying murals of
1745, following the Santorini earthquakes of 1956. Apart from some damaged areas, the frescos
completely cover the walls and barrel-vault of the chapel.

On the east wall is a striking Hospitality of Abraham (= OT Trinity) with the enthroned Theotokos and
Child below. A number of the icons depict Sunday Gospel readings and there are many images of
saints, the most unusual of which is a set of nine Patriarchs of Jerusalem. There are more medieval
frescos in the Refectory, but unfortunately it is closed. We therefore make our way to the Museum.

The building of the Museum is another blessing which grew out of the damage caused by the 1956
Santorini earthquakes. The New Vestry (as the Museum is called) was opened by the Ecumenical
Patriarch Demetrios I during the celebrations in 1988 marking the 900th Anniversary of the
Monastery’s foundation.

An enormous wealth of priceless artefacts – manuscripts, early printed books, vestments and sacred
vessels, icons, church furnishings, and much else – is excellently displayed and described. This is
beyond doubt one of the most important Orthodox collections anywhere. I will restrict myself to
mentioning just four representative items.

The Monastery has from the time of St Christodoulos stressed the importance of scholarship. The
Saint himself commenced the Library collection, which now contains, in addition to a large collection
of printed books, over 1000 manuscripts. My first item is the Library’s oldest work.
Item 1. Two of the 33 sheets of the Codex Porphyrius of the Gospel of Mark owned by
the Monastery. The letters are written in silver and gold on purple vellum. It is believed
to be the work of Emperor Theodosios II (408-450).
Item 2. The Monastery’s foundation charter, a chrysobull (= golden bull) of 1088
signed by Emperor Alexios I Comnenos, granting the island to St Christodoulos.
Item 3. An icon of Christ, known as “The Bridegroom (Nymphios) of the Church” or
“Ecce Homo” (Behold, the Man) attributed to El Greco (Domenicus Theotokopulos) of
c.1500. It is this icon which is venerated at the famous Patmos Great Thursday
liturgical drama of the Washing of the Feet.
Item 4. The mitre of Ecumenical Patriarch Kyprianos (1708/91713/14), known as “the
good diamond crown”. It is decorated with over 200 precious jewels.

Reluctantly, we descend the long winding road past the Apocalypse to the quay for the last time, there
to board a ferry for Kos.
Chapter 27. Pilgrimage to Symi: Island of an Archangel
Around 5.30 p.m., Sunday May 13 [2007]

The catamaran approaches the small island of Symi. The little port (Plate 12a) looks enchanting as the
late afternoon sun illuminates the tiers of ochre and pastel-coloured houses – interspersed with the
domes and belltowers of churches – climbing up the mountainous hill encircling the waterfront.

After our little drama in obtaining a taxi at Patmos a week ago, we had made diligent enquiries. “Oh
no, you will have no trouble at Symi.” Of course we should have known it, not a single taxi turns out
to meet the catamaran.

We are told to walk round to the taxi stand on the far extremity of the waterfront. The local ladies
waiting at the stand have resigned looks on their faces. We join them and contemplate the view. Time
passes. It is getting more and more like Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot . We must do
something.

The family-run hotel a Symiot friend had booked for us back in Sydney is not in the lower town of
Yialos but in the upper town of Chorio. We are close to the Kali Strata, the quaint stepped “street” that
climbs the hill to Chorio. The guidebook reckons there are 357 steps.

Our hotel seems to be on a level about three-quarters of the way up. But my wife has a serious
problem walking and that’s more steps than I would cheerfully tackle. We are going to need a car so
should we hire one now?

We appeal for help to a very nice young lady – come to think of it, all Dodecanese young ladies are
very nice – in a nearby tourist shop.

“It’s no good waiting for a taxi, the drivers will have gone home for their evening meal. It’s Sunday.
In any case, the taxis only come out when there are tourists around.”

But we are tourists! Never mind. She makes a telephone call and in a few minutes a taxi comes and
rescues us. We feel guilty about the ladies. We appeal to the taxi driver to go back for them.

It is a very long route round by car. As we enter the labyrinth of little streets of the old town we thank
God that we didn’t hire a car. The streets are incredibly narrow and it would have been a nightmare
trying to locate the hotel. But at last we are in our hotel room and open the door onto the veranda. The
view down the hillside to the harbour is fantastic.

8.30ish, Monday Morning May 14

We go down to breakfast. An elderly guest is already hard at work on his boiled egg and yoghurt and
honey. He tells us that he always takes his annual holiday in the Dodecanese. Symi, he assures us, is
its jewel.

Heritage listed, unlike Kos and Rhodes the island hasn’t been disfigured by tourist development and
retains a charming architectural homogeneity.
The two or three story houses are mainly nineteenth century and combine an imported classical style
with local detail. They reflect the fact that Symi had in the past grown wealthy on shipbuilding and
sponge diving.

With depletion of the forests, modern shipbuilding, and exhaustion of the sponges, Symi fell on very
hard times in the twentieth century and the population was decimated by emigration, while houses
were left derelict.

During the last couple of decades, however, Symi has been reborn in the wake of a Dodecanese tourist
bonanza, and many Symiots (no, not Symians), including younger people born overseas, have returned.
Today most of the derelict houses have been restored.

After breakfast, we set off to catch Symi’s bus to take us down to Yialos. As we walk, our attention is
caught by the melodic sound of tinkling bells, like the bells of the goats above our hotel on Patmos.

We turn the corner and there is the troupe of donkeys that bring supplies up to Chorio. Perhaps we
could hire a couple of donkeys instead of a car, they would be easier to park. Well, perhaps not. A car
it is.

Now mobile, we set out to traverse the island. What has brought us to Symi is not primarily the
charms of Symi town, but the monastery of Panormitis on the far extremity of the island. I am anxious
to visit the monastery because, ever since its foundation in 1969, the Archangel Michael (Taxiarchis
Michael) at Crows Nest in Sydney has been my parish church.

Many Symiots settled on Sydney’s North Shore, so when the time came to create a parish and build a
church the local Greek community decided that the church should be dedicated to the Archangel
Michael of Panormitis. Although there are other major centres of devotion to the Archangel, such as
Mantamados on Lesbos, Panormitis draws pilgrims from across Greece and beyond.

The Angels

Belief in angels is all but universal and there are many references to them in the Bible. Their existence
is a dogma of the Church, and we affirm that belief every time we recite in the Creed, “I believe in …
all things visible and invisible”, since “invisible” denotes the angels. But exactly what are angels?

The Church declares angels to be “bodiless powers”. They are, however, created. The Western
tradition regards them as pure spiritual intelligences. The East, while leaving their exact nature open,
has tended to see them as non-corporeal but nevertheless physical beings. Thus, some Fathers
speculated that they might be composed of a subtle fiery or ethereal substance.

On the rare occasions angels are actually seen this is almost certainly effected by internal interaction
with the brain rather than by sensory input. The Archangel Raphael says to Tobius and his father that
he only seemed to eat and drink before them, but in reality they “were seeing a vision” (see Tobit
12:19).

Amongst the angels, Michael the Archangel occupies a special position. The Archangels play a crucial
role as the captains of the heavenly host, but it is Michael who is their leader.

There are three Archangels mentioned by name in the Greek Bible: Michael, Gabriel and Raphael.
Tobit 12:15 gives the number of Archangels as seven. The names for the remaining four are Uriel,
Salaphiel, Jegudiel and Barachiel.

We learn from the Old Testament that Michael was the guardian of the Jewish nation. With the
Incarnation, he becomes the guardian of the Church. The Archangel is also the principal psychopomp
who leads the souls of the dead to God. Iconographically, he is often depicted weighing souls at the
Judgement.

The principal feast of the Archangel is that of the “Synaxis of the Archangel Michael and the other
Bodiless Powers” on November 8. In the West, the feast is traditionally known (in English) as
Michaelmas and is celebrated on September 29.

Devotion to the Archangel is certainly early, but there is de nite evidence of a major cultus (=
devotion – don’t confuse “cultus” with “cults”!) from the fourth century on. Possibly, the cultus arose
in the first century at Chonai in Phrygia.

Revelation/Apocalypse 12:7-9 tells of the mighty war in heaven at which Michael and his angels
defeated the dragon/Satan and cast him and his angels down to earth. This provides a reason why so
many sites associated with Michael in both East and West are on mountains, as is the case with
Chonai, or on the tops of hills. These include such spectacular Western sites as Monte Gargano in
Italy, Mont-Saint-Michel in France, St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall and Skellig Michael in Ireland.

But in the East the Archangel is also associated, again as at Chonai, with healing springs, and with the
protection of sailors. This latter aspect of the cultus, which is particularly relevant to Panormitis,
probably originated around Byzantium. But it is time to get back to our trip to the monastery.
Around 10 a.m.

An excellent newly-constructed road takes us along the mountainous spine of the island. Our first
glimpse of Panormitis from the heights is spectacular. A more beautiful site would be difficult to
imagine.

The monastery lies strung out along the shore of an oval-shaped bay with a single narrow entrance.
The narrowness of the entrance makes all the more remarkable the repeated miraculous washing up on
the shore of messages placed in bottles (many preserved in the monastery) cast into the sea by sailors
around the world.

We drive down. The entrance to the monastery is through an arch under a spectacular Baroque-cum-
Rococo bell-tower, built between 1905 and 1911.

The monastery has extensive wings with cells to accommodate the hoards of pilgrims that come for
t h e panigyris on November 8 and other major feasts, but the monastic enclosure proper is quite
compact. The courtyard, with the Katholikon at its centre, is truly delightful (Plate 12b).

Floors with black and white pebble designs are very much a feature of the Dodecanese Islands, but the
pavement of this courtyard is outstanding. The design in front of the Katholikon takes the form of a
pattern of waves, which, if seen from the right angle, becomes three-dimensional. I can see in my
mind’s eye bottles drifting in on the waves through the Katholikon door to fetch up at the foot of the
icon of the Archangel so that he can attend to any requests they contain.

Legend has it that the origins of the monastery lie in the miraculous discovery of an icon of the
Archangel. The existence of reused Antique columns and capitals point to an early Byzantine church
or even earlier pagan temple, but little seems to be known for certain about the monastery prior to its
rebuilding between 1777 and 1783.
The Katholikon is bright with notable restored iconography dating from the late eighteenth century.
Dozens of hanging oil lamps, the offerings of Symiots from around the world, adorn the space. The
iconostasis, as intricately carved as any I have seen, also dates to the late eighteenth century. But it is
the large miracle-working icon of the Archangel that seems to fill the Katholikon with its presence.

This is one icon that tests the limits of photography; the camera seemingly overwhelmed by the
contrast between the dazzling gilded cover and the underlying paint. Although the eye can handle what
the camera cannot, there is really no way through which I can convey the force of the pure energy that
emanates from this icon, which is at once majestic and awesome, and gentle and compassionate.

It is indeed an icon through which miracles are to be anticipated. One of the most remarkable is the
restoration of sight of a six year old blind boy from Leros on the feast of the Archangel, November 8,
1960.

A young Symiot, while sleeping after attending the Vigil, had a dream in which the Archangel
instructed him to go into the church where he would find a blind child. He was to take him into his
arms and lift him up to the level of the Archangel’s face on the icon. He did so and the boy’s sight was
miraculously restored.

The monastery boasts two small museums, one ecclesiastical, the other of folk art. Do we go round the
museums now or after we have rustled up a spot of lunch? Lunch wins. Fatal mistake. By the time we
have finished our picnic the monastery has sunk into the peaceful oblivion of the siesta. We have
already resolved to return for Vespers tomorrow; perhaps the museums will be open then (they
weren’t).

Mid-Afternoon, Tuesday May 15

Much of our morning has been spent finalising complicated travel arrangements as tomorrow evening
we fly from Rhodes back to London. An early lunch and the indulgence of a monastic siesta to prepare
us for the rigours of tomorrow and at last we are on the road to Panormitis for Vespers.

There are many very small settlements and monasteries scattered over the island, signs to which we
pass on our way. In all, there are nine monastic churches dedicated to the Archangel Michael and it is
these that, the Symiots maintain, secure the stability of the island.

Shortly, we are back at Panormitis, but the monastery has yet to rouse itself from the siesta. We
mosey around a bit and then settle ourselves in the shade of a tree and watch activity on the
waterfront.

Almost time for Vespers, so we go back to the courtyard, only to discover we have been told the
wrong time and have another hour to wait. Eventually, a few people come in and join us, but I am
beginning to doze off.

Suddenly a hearty “Christos Anesti” in my left ear jerks me back into consciousness. A lone priest has
arrived to celebrate Vespers. Unlike Patmos, there is no community of monks at Panormitis today and
a lay committee runs the monastery.

It is the Eve of the Apodosis of Pascha. “Apodosis” is usually translated “leave-taking” but literally
means “return”. Following major feasts there is a period known as the “afterfeast”. On the final day of
the afterfeast (they vary in length) most of the service for the feast day itself is repeated, hence it is
called the “return” of the feast. So Vespers this evening will be very special as once again the sublime
chants of Pascha will be heard.

What can I say of the service? As the philosopher Wittgenstein observed, “Whereof we cannot speak,
thereof we must be silent.” But what a wondrous doxology for the last evening of our excursion.

Filled with Paschal joy, we leave this beautiful, numinous place where so many pilgrims have come
down the centuries to seek the aid of the Archangel or to receive his blessing.

8 a.m., Wednesday May 16, the Apodosis of Pascha

Our last breakfast. After, we chat to our friendly host and hostess who lived in Sydney for many years,
still have family there and return frequently. We finish packing, return the car and wait for the
catamaran. Here it comes, dead on time at the stroke of 10. But where are our tickets? They won’t let
us on without them and the boat has a turn around time of just five minutes.

It seems we have no option but to open our case at the top of the gangway, clothes flying everywhere.
No luck. But now the gangway has been raised behind us and the catamaran is moving. Surely they
won’t throw us overboard? An officer reluctantly lets us into the saloon. We collapse onto a couple of
seats and continue the search. Eventually we find the tickets.

With a start like that, what awaits us at our destination? Surprisingly, everything goes like clockwork
in Rhodes; but it is a different story when we get to London. By the time we get clear of Gatwick
airport it is dark, pelting with rain and, yes, we can’t find our hotel. But you don’t want to hear about
that.
Chapter 28. Was it St Brendan Who Discovered America?
Pilgrimage to Skellig Michael

From my perch along the gunwale of a fishing boat I look out across a gently heaving Atlantic Ocean
towards the soaring needle-sharp pinnacles of two rocks on the very Western limits of Europe: Skellig
Michael and Small Skellig. Two red sandstone and slate islets 12km off a small island (Valentia), off
a remote peninsula (Kerry) of a much larger island (Ireland), off my own even larger island (Great
Britain), off continental Europe. Beyond, there is nothing but the Atlantic. It was from Valentia Island
that the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable was laid in 1858 to Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, the
shortest distance between the two continents.

Receding behind our wake is Western Europe. All that attached us to the world we have known from
birth is severed. Now we are totally in the presence of God alone and totally dependent on God alone.
Or so it would have seemed to the Irish Celtic monks who, probably as early as the sixth century,
rowed out from the rugged Kelly coast in their leather covered boats to build a monastery on the most
isolated and inhospitable place they knew, Skellig Michael.

St Brendan’s Well, Valentia Island. Said to have been used by St Brendan to baptize
converts.

We first approach Small Skellig. Some passengers spot dolphins. The skipper says ominously that
dolphins are only seen in this area before a storm. We anxiously inspect the sky. It seems clear
enough, but the weather in Western Ireland can change dramatically in a very few minutes, as I
discovered next day when I got drenched by a sudden violent squall.

We circle Small Skellig. The 6.5 hectare rock is white with many of the approaching 30 000 pairs of
gannets which nest here, the world’s second largest colony. All around us gannets are dive-bombing
vertically into the ocean; fortunately, they are aiming for fish not us.

Now it is the turn of Small Skellig’s precipitous neighbour, the 18 hectare Skellig Michael (Plate 14a).
On its twin-pinnacled heights (the highest is 218m) the Archangel Michael is said to have appeared in
ancient times, as he did on those two other remarkable sea-girt mounts, Mont-St-Michel, France and
St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall.
But these two latter mounts are tied-islands easily accessed on dry land at low tide. Skellig Michael
could only have been reached in the warmer months; during winter the monks would not only have
been cut off from human contact and supplies but would have been subjected to frequent storms. (In
1951, a wave badly damaged a lighthouse 53m up the cliff.)

The skipper takes us in close and circumnavigates the crag. A great winding flight of approximately
600 rough-hewn steps comes into view, climbing precipitously 182m up the near-perpendicular cli to
the monastery site on a small plateau.

I can see almost nothing of the monastery itself apart from its situation, and we are not landing. I have
mixed feelings about this – could I realistically have climbed those 600 uneven steps? It would have
been the descent which might have sent me tumbling to my doom.

But how did a handful of monks ever succeed in constructing those steps – there are 2300 altogether
on the island – not to mention their primitive monastery? It would have taken a faith and fortitude that
defies modern comprehension.

Well, I won’t be climbing the stairway to heaven, at least not today, but I know what I will miss from
a superb film we saw back at the visitor centre yesterday.

The monastery consists of six stone “beehive” huts, which were the monks’ cells. They have a roughly
rectangular base but a domed corbelled roof. There are two chapels in the form of an up-turned boat,
the larger being a mere 3.6 x 2.4 x 3m.

In form, the chapels are identical to the larger Gallarus Oratory (see photo) which I was to visit (along
with some beehive huts) the next day.

These chapels have a door at the west end and a single small window at the east above where a stone
altar would have been placed.

The boat-shaped form (which, of course, is symbolic of the Ark, in its turn a symbol of the Church) is
ideal for draining off rainwater. It was at the famous Gallarus Oratory (which could be as early as the
sixth century) that I encountered my squall. But, whilst I got soaked to the skin, the interior of the
chapel remained as dry as a bone.
 Gallarus Oratory

One can but wonder at the faith and austere asceticism of the monks of Skellig Michael, but as we
chug our way back to Valentia my thoughts turn to even more extraordinary acts of piety.

The Skellig monks had a specific destination, but there were monks who made the ultimate act of
renunciation of the world. Proclaiming their total faith in God’s providence, they cast off their boats
without rudder or oars and allowed the winds and currents to carry them wheresoever God willed. In
the reign of King Alfred (849-899) three such Irish monks are said to have landed on the north coast of
Cornwall.

This was peregrinari pro Christo , to voyage for Christ, to allow the elements to take you to what the
monks called the place of their resurrection. When you finally reached that destination you would
know that that was where God had ordained that you should work, fast, pray and finally rest in the
Lord until the day of resurrection.

The sea is relatively calm but seems to be alive, breathing in synchrony with deep swells. Each of the
dark headlands along the Kerry coast is capped with a distinct crown of snow-white cloud as if it were
an island. The air seems to have a silvery quality, beneath a pale blue sky flecked with wisps of white
cloud. It is ethereal. It is as if our surroundings are a translucent film through which we are peering
into an unseen, but powerfully felt, supersensible realm.

There is no longer any mystery as to how the monks found God in the waters of the deep. What the
desert was to the Desert Fathers, whom they sought to emulate, the sea was to the Celtic monks. It was
their desert.

There is, however, one monk in particular whose tracks I am keen to follow, not across the Atlantic
but just along the coast of South Western Ireland and up the Shannon river, for this is the land where
he was born and died. The monk in question is St Brendan of Clonfert, more commonly known as St
Brendan the Navigator or Voyager.

St Brendan was born in the 480s near Tralee, County Kerry, and died at the monastery of his sister,
Briga, at Annaghdown probably in or around 577. He was buried at the monastery of Clonfert, which
he had founded on his travels up the Shannon, and is said to lie somewhere within the walls of the
Romanesque cathedral erected on the site (which I was able to visit).

There is no doubt that he was indeed a great navigator. There is evidence of a number of voyages: up
the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland to the Faroes and even Iceland, and to Wales and Brittany.
Michael Galovic’s icon of St Brendan captures beautifully the steely qualities of the great seafaring
Celtic abbots (Plate 13).

St Brendan is venerated as one of the “Twelve Apostles of Ireland”, but his worldwide fame derives
from a remarkable medieval work which many believe records a voyage to America. The work,
probably a reworking of a much older version, possibly dates to around 800. This ancient text is the:

Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis

The Voyage of St Brendan the Abbot (there is a Pelican edition and also one published by Colin
Smythe) tells the story of how Brendan, having built a wooden-framed boat clad with oak-tanned ox
hides, set out on a voyage of pilgrimage to the legendary Promised Land of the Saints with seventeen
monks. According to tradition, he sailed from Brandon Creek on the Dingle Peninsula (Plate 14b –
“Brandon” is an old spelling of “Brendan”). He eventually reaches his destination and returns to
Ireland to die.

The Navigatio is, however, anything but a modern travelogue as all sorts of wondrous events occur.
They encounter crystal columns, fiery mountains, miraculous springs, talking birds and the mythical
Gryphon, and even have a chat with Judas Iscariot.

The best known incident is when the monks mistake the mighty fish, Jasconius, for an island and are
only disabused when the “island” suddenly dives after they light a fire for their cooking pot on his
back.

It quickly becomes clear that, as for instance with Dante’s Divine Comedy and parts of the Old
Testament, the Navigatio is a carefully crafted allegory which conveys moral, spiritual and theological
messages. The wonders are signs that, in one way or another, relate to stations of the Church Year,
particularly the Paschal Triduum.

The $60 000 question, however, is that of whether the allegory could have been constructed over
recollections of an actual voyage of the great navigator saint, or perhaps a number of voyages of Irish
monks. And was the Promised Land what we call America?

There have been a number of attempts to demythologise the Navigatio, but solid evidence that Irish
monks could have “discovered” America a millennium before Columbus and centuries before the
Vikings had to await the attention of the intrepid maritime explorer, Tim Severin.

Severin, inspired by his wife’s conviction that, despite its wondrous embellishments, the Navigatio
was a description of an actual voyage, set about investigating the possibility of recreating it.

Examining the prevailing winds and currents, Severin realised that the voyage could have been
achieved by means of the “Stepping Stone” route up the West coast of Ireland to the Hebrides, thence
on to the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland and eventually Newfoundland, Canada.

But if the winds, currents and stopping off places were right could the journey have been done in a
leather-clad boat? The solution was plain. Build such a boat and see if it would take you and an
equally crazy crew to America.

So it was off to a boatyard to construct a leather boat, following the detailed description in the
Navigatio. Boat built, ready to sail on Brandon Creek, blessed by the Bishop of Kerry and it was all
aboard for America. Departure had been set for May 16, 1976, St Brendan’s Day, but was delayed by
bad weather for 24 hours.

The boat itself we were able to inspect – in an understandably battered condition (and without the red
Celtic Crosses which adorned the original sails) – in its retirement home at Craggaunowen.

Needless to say, the voyage was successful and landfall made at Newfoundland. As they hopped from
stepping stone to stepping stone, Severin was able to match descriptions in the Navigatio with actual
places.

So did St Brendan “discover” America? You bet!

Celtomania

Celtomania, particularly in its Irish manifestation, has been sweeping the world in recent years:
traditional Irish songs and pop music, Irish dancing, Irish poetry, Celtic art and decoration. And every
airport has its Irish pub with Guinness on tap. But along with everything else comes Irish religion,
both in its pagan Druidic and its Celtic (not Roman) Christian forms.

The great age of Celtic Christianity was from c.400–c.1000, when Celtic monks, particularly in
Ireland, kept the light of Christianity and Ancient learning glowing during the centuries of darkness
following the withdrawal of the Roman legions from Western Europe. If you wanted to find a scholar
who knew Greek you would probably have had to go to Ireland.

It is a myth that the Celtic Christians of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Brittany were cut off
from Rome and Constantinople. Latin was their liturgical language and it is even likely that the
Communion wine the early monks of Skellig Michael used was imported from Byzantium.

However, geographical remoteness, and the fact that the Romans never colonised Ireland or some
other Celtic areas, did result in the development of a form of Christianity which contrasted in certain
respects with that of the Roman Church. Celtic Christianity did, indeed, in significant ways have more
in common with Coptic Egypt and the Orthodox East.

Why is it that so many people have been caught up in Celtomania? A great deal of romantic delusion
surrounds Celtic Christianity but there are definite features which appeal to our times. Let me list
three:

First, Celtic Christianity was decentralised in comparison with Rome. It was organised around
monasteries ruled by powerful abbots and abbesses. Sometimes the offices of Abbot and Bishop were
combined, sometimes the Bishop resided in a monastery that was under the rule of its Abbot or
Abbess. A diocesan/parochial structure and the Roman monastic orders were only imposed/adopted
under Anglo-Norman pressure during the eleventh century.

Two, there have been few cultures which have granted greater equality to the sexes than the Celts.
From the time of St Brigid of Kildare (probably, 453-523), Ireland’s second patron saint after St
Patrick, abbesses exercised the same ecclesiastical and secular authority as an abbot, often governing
mixed monasteries of male and female (even married) religious. (A highly contentious issue, but there
are early documents which state that episcopal orders were conferred on St Brigid, who very possibly
had been a Druidic High Priest before her conversion.)

Third, Celtic poetry, hymns, art and theology reveal an extraordinary affinity with the natural world.
The simple, severely ascetic lives of the Celtic monks and nuns living in loving harmony with plants
and animals, seeing God in the whole creation and leaving the slenderest of ecological footprints on
the earth has strong appeal for an environmentally sensitive generation.

Remarkably, it would seem that Celtomania has its uses for Orthodox clergy struggling to bring the
younger generation of those brought up under communism back to the faith of their ancestors.
Recently, I read a report of a conference paper given by a priest from the far east of Russia who had
been exploiting Russian Celtomania – I had no idea that there was such a phenomenon! – to ignite an
interest in young people in their own saints and Christian heritage.

This resonated strongly with me because it was the discovery of the Celtic saints (of Cornwall rather
than Ireland) which had played a pivotal role in my becoming an Orthodox from a Godless (but
benign) upbringing. And here was a Russian hieromonk appealing to Celtic Christianity and its saints
– with their profoundly Trinitarian theology, Orthodox-like spirituality, environmental sensitivity and
concern for communal welfare – to lead those brought up in an atheist state back to the Orthodoxy of
their Motherland!

Glory be to you, O God!

Chapter 29. Should Australia Day Be the 26th January?
Bit of a silly question really. January 26 would have to be almost the least suitable day of the year on
which to celebrate Australia Day. Why?

Well, let us be clear as to what January 26 commemorates. It does not commemorate some such great
and noble human achievement as Captain Cook’s “discovery” and mapping of the east coast of Oz.
What it does commemorate is the raising of the British flag by Captain Arthur Phillip on his arrival at
Port Jackson (Sydney) with the first consignment of convicts in 1788.

True, the majority of convicts were fairly harmless individuals shipped across the ocean blue for
nothing worse than petty theft. True also that their number included a small percentage of political
prisoners. But the fact of the matter is that a significant minority of convicts were characters you
would definitely not wish to meet down a back alley on a dark night, and a fair number of these had to
be transported from the mainland to the hell holes of Norfolk Island or Port Arthur because they
committed further crimes after their arrival.

The convict origins of British settlement is, however, not a principal reason why 26 January is such a
silly date to choose for Australia Day. After all, there is something positively endearing about a nation
maverick (perhaps even mature) enough to choose a catastrophic military defeat and the setting up of
a convict settlement as the two great historical events worthy of annual national commemoration. No,
the real problems lie elsewhere.

As Geoffrey Blainey pointed out recently at a National Press Club luncheon, the 26th January is really
the day that marks the foundation of Sydney. Neither South Australia nor Western Australia were
settled from Sydney, these colonies had independent origins and hence can hardly relate
wholeheartedly to the events of 26 January, 1788. Both, indeed, celebrate their own foundation days,
SA on 28 December and WA on 1 June. Convicts were never transported to South Australia at all, so
making the foundation of a penal colony their national day must be something of an insult.

As Blainey observed, there is a problem even in the case of Victoria. The traditional rivalry between
Sydney and Melbourne makes it difficult for Melburnians to enter into the spirit of a day which first
and foremost marks the foundation of their great competitor. There is reason for NSW to keep 26
January as a public holiday (it could be called Sydney or First Fleet Day), and whoop it up on Sydney
Harbour, but there is little reason for other States to observe the day.

An even more serious objection is that for Aborigines 26 January is White Invasion Day, the day
which marks the often violent usurpation of their land and the destruction of their culture, and hence is
a day for mourning rather than rejoicing.

Yet another problem with January 26 is the very British nature of the historical event commemorated.
Part of the meaning of Australia Day clearly involves honouring the Nation’s institutions, and these,
notably the common law and Westminster system of government, indisputably derive from Britain.
But this is only one aspect of the idea of Australia Day.

Australia Day is, or rather should be, a warts and all celebration of the land, its prehistory and history,
and its indigenous and settler peoples, their faiths and cultures. The Union Jack is hardly a symbol
which can encompass all, or even most, of what Australia Day should be about.

No, the long and the short of it is that 26 January is not the best day to celebrate Australian
Nationhood! I am far from being a lone voice in advocating a change of date. The problem, however,
is finding a generally acceptable alternative.

Alternative Dates for Australia Day

There are those who feel that Anzac Day has virtually become the de facto national day, and that the
simplest course would be to recognise it as such. Gallipoli, which lies at the heart of the cultus of
Anzac, does indeed provide a foundation myth (and myth in this sense does not imply nonhistorical)
for the recently effected (that is, recently in 1915) federation of the Australian colonies. And Anzac
Day does celebrate the distinctive virtues of Australians which were revealed to the world on the
battle fields of World War 1.

But, for a vast number of Australians, Anzac Day is a day to mourn relations and friends who died in
war. As long as this remains the case, the solemn commemorative dimension of Anzac Day could, as
the RSL fears, be compromised were the day to be designated Australia Day.

January 1, favoured by some, marks the inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901.
However, the commemoration of Federation and a celebration of Australia as such are not the same
thing. And, in any case, the day has long been taken over by New Year’s revels (doubtless a
consequence of the large number of haggis-eating, Hogmanay-celebrating Scots who settled in Oz).

Another date which has been suggested is May 9. This is the day the first Federal Parliament was
opened in Melbourne in 1901, and that Old Parliament House in Canberra was opened in 1927 and the
new Parliament House in 1988 (the bicentennial year of the first settlement in Sydney). But this day
commemorates Federal Parliaments not Australia as such.

No, we need to look for an entirely new date. However, it is important that the date is not simply
arbitrary. It is also desirable that it be close enough to the present date to allow easy transfer of events
which currently occur on Australia Day.

Let’s Make February 2 Australia Day

Now, I have a suggestion to make, that Australia Day be held on February 2. This day is already a
major Christian festival, the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple, also known in the East as the
Meeting (Hypapante) of Our Lord. For Orthodox, this is one of the Twelve Great Feasts. It is also a
major feast for Roman Catholics and Anglicans. In Catholic, and some Anglican, churches on this day
candles are solemnly blessed and a procession is made into or around the church for the Eucharist
bearing the lighted candles. For this reason, the feast also enjoys the lovely title, Candlemas.

Apart from the fact that it falls just one week after January 26, there are several reasons why February
2 would be a highly suitable date for Australia Day. Let me mention two.

First, in the ecclesiastical calendar the Presentation is the feast which draws the Christmas-Epiphany
season (which for Orthodox begins on 15November) to a close. This is of special significance in
Australia as the period from Christmas to the end of January is the annual holiday season. Indeed,
Australia Day has naturally become a day for celebrating the end of the summer holidays. Thus, if the
Presentation became Australia Day, the conclusion of the Church festive season and that of the secular
holiday season would pleasingly converge.

A second reason the day would be suitable is because of the symbolism of light (though in Orthodoxy
it is the Theophany which is called the Feast of Lights). It was the phrase, “a light to lighten the
Gentiles” in Simeon’s hymn, as he took the Christ child into his arms, which suggested the beautiful
candle ceremonies of the Western Church.

There are many things which make Australia unique, from its Aboriginal culture to kangaroos and the
Red Centre. But there is no more universal and distinctive a feature of Australia than the quality of the
light the sun streams out upon land and water. Australia’s light is unique.

The extraordinary purity and intensity of the light is the main reason Australia has produced so many
outstanding painters. Moreover, while the most distinctive season in other lands might be the
miraculous greening of Spring (as in Northern Europe), or Autumn (the Fall of North America), or
even the snow and frosts of winter (as in Russia), in Australia it is the Summer.

The Summer symbols of Oz are legion and paramount – the beach, the surf and surfies, yacht races,
the backyard barbie, and even bushfires and shark attacks. All the capitals are sun and water cities;
even the one inland capital, Canberra, is built around a lake with beaches (though surfies might not
call them that).

Of course, although the majority of Australians are Christian, Australia is a secular state and Australia
Day needs ceremonies and events in which everyone can participate. The symbolism of light inherent
in the Christian festival in both East and West can, however, easily be extended into secular
celebrations, from surf carnivals to candle-lit processions and fireworks displays.

February 2 as Australia Day would also open up interesting ecumenical vistas. The Presentation is a
major feast for all traditional Christian Churches. But as Islam, a rapidly growing faith in Australia,
reveres Christ as a prophet and even teaches the virgin birth, and as the feast emphasises the Jewish
foundations of Christianity, possibilities would seem to exist for developing February 2 as a day for
drawing together all the faiths of Australia, including the indigenous, and celebrating what we hold in
common as children of God and dwellers in this extraordinary land. (It is a serious error to maintain,
as some Orthodox unfortunately do, that ecumenism should be restricted to the mainstream Christian
denominations.)

Yes, let us move Australia Day to February 2!

Chapter 30. Is Anzac Day Christian?
Gallipoli

Shortly before 4.30 a.m. on St Mark’s Day, Sunday April 25, 1915, the first landings of troops of the
Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, the Anzacs (also known as “diggers”), commenced on the
Gallipoli Peninsula. In the gloom of first light, boatloads of Anzacs were landed onto an impossibly
narrow beach beneath towering heights defended by Turkish soldiers. Hardly surprisingly, the Turks
greeted their unwelcome guests with a hail of bullets.

The Anzacs were disgorged onto a beach, now officially named Anzac Cove, over a kilometre further
north than the intended safer landing place. The blood bath, which was to be almost instantaneously
woven into a foundation myth for the federation of six British colonies as the Commonwealth of
Australia a mere fourteen years earlier (1901), had begun. It was Australia’s baptism of fire.

When Turkey became an ally of Germany during the First World War (1914-1918) she could hardly
have anticipated an invasion. The scheme was dreamed up by Winston Churchill, the minister
responsible for the British navy, to knock Turkey out of the war, take pressure off the Western Front,
and open up a route through the Dardenelles to the Black Sea and beleaguered Russia, an ally of
Britain and France. The hope was that a naval operation would be all that was necessary, but this
failed dismally. There was no option but to mount a land operation.

Although Australia at the time was entirely self-governing with respect to internal affairs, she thought
of Britain as the Mother Country and was subject to British foreign policy. Britain’s declaration of
war on Germany in 1914 meant that Australia was also at war. Australia, in conjunction with New
Zealand, immediately formed an expeditionary force that was dispatched to Egypt for training before
being sent, everyone presumed, to France. Instead of the Western Front, the Anzacs found themselves
clambering ashore onto a Turkish beach on St Mark’s Day.

No visitor to Gallipoli today can fail to be deeply moved by the poignant contrast between the pure
beauty of the place, with its subtle colours, delicate wild flowers and seductive bird song, and the row
upon row of white tombstones encountered at every turn. In 1915, this paradisal place was pure and
simply Hell on earth.

The Herculean courage with which the Anzacs fought the doomed campaign brought Australia and
New Zealand, with their minute populations, onto the centre of the world stage. The cost in lives was
terrible: 8 709 Australians and 2 701 New Zealanders (compared with 21 255 British, around 10 000
French and 86 692 Turks). Worse carnage and comparable heroism was to follow for the Anzacs on
the Western Front, where 46 000 Australians died, but it was Gallipoli which was to provide the
foundation myth for newly-federated Australia.

Anzac Day was no invention of opportunistic and jingoistic politicians, but a spontaneous response to
Gallipoli. Folklore surrounding the events of the militarily disastrous campaign began almost
immediately and on April 25 of the following year the first Anzac Day commemorations were held.

But it was not just in the Antipodes that the Anzacs were honoured on that first Anzac Day. Two
thousand Anzacs marched through dense crowds in London to Westminster Abbey for a service
attended by the King and Queen. It was the only parade of its kind held in Britain during the course of
the war.

In succeeding years, Anzac Day developed into the festival we know today, characterised by dawn
services – often, as in Sydney, commencing around the time of the Gallipoli landings – marches
through the streets, and reunions of service men and women.

In the years between the two World Wars, war memorials were erected across Australia and New
Zealand. These ranged from simple stone structures, often of a digger on a pedestal, to a large temple-
like shrine, such as those in Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane.

The Armistice which ended World War I mystically took effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh
day of the eleventh month, 1918. The tradition developed of observing two minutes silence at 11 a.m.
on November 11, now known as Remembrance Day.

Remembrance Day is observed in Australia on November 11 with parades and services at Anzac
memorials, but is a low-key event in comparison with Anzac Day. (Intriguingly, November 11 is the
date of two other significant events in Australian history: the hanging of the bushranger, Ned Kelly, a
figure of great mythological significance, in 1880, and the dismissal of the Whitlam Government in
1975.)

Anzac Day is of course unique to Australia and New Zealand. In England, where I lived until I was 26,
the commemoration of the fallen of World War I and subsequent wars was observed at church services
on the Sunday nearest November 11, Remembrance Sunday.

Everyone wore the traditional artificial red poppy, recalling the poppies that sprang up on the blood-
soaked battlefields of France and Belgium, and wreathes of artificial poppies were laid at war
memorials. Most often, unlike Australia, the memorials took the form of a cross. In short,
commemoration of the war dead was a Christian observance at which clergy frequently presided.

Just how different Australia is never really struck me until 1981 when I visited the country’s greatest
memorial, the Australian War Memorial (AWM) in Canberra, a building of which I had almost no
prior knowledge.

The Shudder in the Temple

Approaching the Memorial on foot, the architecture seemed thoroughly Christian. The building clearly
formed a Latin cross like a Western church and at the crossing of the arms was a Byzantine dome.
Entering, I passed into the open courtyard, with its rectangular pool. On the upper level were cloisters,
another Christian touch, protecting the Roll of Honour listing the 102,601 Australian war dead from
the Sudan Campaign of 1885 to the Vietnam War of 1962-1972.

Making my way to the heart of the Memorial, the Hall of Memory, I noted that its geometry and
architecture were indeed Byzantine: in plan, a circle (formed by the dome) set within a square and the
equal-armed Greek cross (Plate 15).

My Christian expectations intact, I entered the Hall. In those days, there was no tomb of an Unknown
Soldier on which to fix one’s attention (he was entombed on the 75th Anniversary of the Armistice,
Remembrance Day, 1993). Instead, there was a massive 5.5m bronze statue of a digger with a
synthetic green patina standing on a 3m pedestal.

As my eye roamed from the digger to the great mosaic covering the walls and dome and the three
large stained glass windows I became increasingly unsettled. And then my expectations suddenly blew
to bits, and I shuddered. I was not standing in a Christian shrine, but in a temple of some yet to be
identified religion. But what was this religion? I set about finding out.

The clue to its identity was given by the symbolism of the windows. Each of the three windows has
five lights and in each light there is an image of an Australian serviceperson in WW1 uniform
accompanied by a wealth of symbols. Each of the 15 figures represents a specific quality said to
exemplify the character of the Anzacs, and Australian youth generally. The 15 qualities are: Resource,
Candour, Devotion (symbolised by the lone woman, a nurse), Curiosity, Independence, Comradeship,
Ancestry (= Tradition), Patriotism, Chivalry, Loyalty, Coolness, Control, Audacity, Endurance,
Decision.

While some of these qualities might be valued, as a totality they stand in sharp contrast to the virtues
extolled by Christianity. The three so-called “theological” virtues, for example, are Faith, Hope and
Charity/Love, the four “cardinal”, Prudence, Justice, Fortitude and Temperance.

Others, such as Chastity and Humility, should be added. As Christ and St Paul teach, the greatest of all
virtues is love, love of God and love of one’s neighbour.

The nature of the Memorial’s religion was beginning to define itself.

Christianity is a personal religion that seeks to establish a direct relationship between the individual
and God within the body of Christ, the Church. The virtues extolled by the Hall of Memory windows,
in contrast, were those which make for a dutiful citizen or service man or woman. Clearly this was not
a personal but a civil religion which sought to bond the individual as citizen or warrior to the State
under God (or whatever one takes to be the transcendental order).

The United States’ self-characterisation as “One Nation Under God” immediately came to mind. I had
never, consciously at least, heard the term “civil religion”, but it did occur to me that “civil” might be
an appropriate adjective to qualify my newly-discovered religion. Later I found (as I anticipated) that
civil religion was recognised as a distinctive form of religion.

After my disclosure experience in the Hall of Memory, I toured the museum galleries and then set
about re-appraising my experience. The Memorial, its setting and layout, strongly reminded me of
Ancient Greek sanctuaries, such as Delphi that I had visited some years earlier.

It was all there: the sacred way, Anzac Parade; the sacred mountain, Mount Ainslie, framed by the
Memorial; the sacred pool, the pool of reflection, into which visitors cast coins as pagan pilgrims cast
votive offerings at Ancient sanctuaries; the sacred tree , the Lone Pine, grown from seed taken from
the Aleppo Pine at the site of the Anzac’s most memorable battle of the Gallipoli campaign; the altar,
the Stone of Remembrance, like Pagan altars situated in front of the “temple”; the cella or sanctuary
of the temple proper, the Hall of Memory; the cult image of the god, the colossal green digger; the
spoils of war and the treasuries, the Roll of Honour, the museum galleries, with their war relics and
works of art, and the war diaries and photographic collections in the Research Centre.
Moreover, the Memorial was placed on one of the two principal axes of Walter Burley Griffin’s plan
for Canberra, the land axis, which runs cross country from Mount Ainslie to Mount Bimberi and ties
the Memorial to both Parliament House and Old Parliament House. The symbolism is powerful: the
blood of the Anzacs consecrating the Parliament and people of the newly-created Commonwealth of
Australia.

Is Anzac Day Christian?

The short answer is “no”. Let me explain.

Australia is a secular state with no established Church or even religion. In 1914, Australia was
dominated by the large British Christian denominations. Bitter antagonism existed – and continued to
exist until after WW2 – particularly between the (predominantly Irish) Roman Catholic minority
(about 23% of the population) and the Protestant majority.

With the outbreak of war, the Protestant clergy defended an extraordinary theology in which the war
was welcomed as redemptive. Thus one Anglican Archbishop actually prayed that God delay peace
until His redemptive purpose be brought to fruition! The Catholic hierarchy in general supported the
war politically but without subscribing to the Protestant theology.

As a result of their experiences, a great many Anzacs, particularly Protestants, lost their faith in a
personal God altogether. The diggers also turned away in disgust from sectarianism and the diabolical
theology of war preached by many clergy.

For these reasons, returned servicemen in general were anxious to keep clergy well away from
decisions concerning the design and iconography of war memorials or the conduct of Anzac
commemorations. In fact under Catholic canon law it was impossible for Catholics to take part in any
form of ecumenical worship. This alone, necessitated that Anzac commemorations must be civil in
character.

Anzac memorials are thus usually totally, or largely, devoid of Christian symbolism – looking rather
to Ancient Greece and Rome for inspiration – and Anzac services are not as a rule conducted by clergy
(though they sometimes participate) and are typically free of reference to Christ or distinctively
Christian theological concepts.

Civil religious liturgy has to be one in which the whole nation, whatever the faith of individuals, can
participate. As a consequence, civil theology is inevitably open-ended and reductive in character. Not
surprisingly, civil religion tends to develop in countries, such as the USA and Japan, which are
religiously pluralistic. Without an established personal faith on which to rely, countries often look to
civil religion to sanctify the institutions of State.

Australia is religiously pluralistic (much more so today than in 1915). While it cannot be said that
Australia has a civil religion comparable to that of the US (where it is written into the Constitution) it
does have a civil religious cultus, centred on Gallipoli, which has been going from strength to strength
over the last couple of decades.

During the Vietnam War era, the cultus of Anzac was mistakenly seen in certain circles as militaristic
and protests occurred on Anzac Day. But in its theology it is anti-war. It keeps alive the memory of
the horrors of war in order to promote the cause of peace. There is nothing triumphalist or jingoistic
about the cultus. Indeed, it is of paramount importance that the Gallipoli campaign was a major
military defeat. If this were not the case, it could never have become the basis for an Australian civil
theology.

The cultus of Anzac also encourages a respect for, and reconciliation with, former enemies. At the top
of Anzac Parade, opposite the Hellenic Memorial, is a memorial to Kemal Atatürk, hero of Gallipoli
and Father of the modern secular Turkish State. The symbolic significance of this memorial, which
enshrines a quantity of soil from Anzac Cove, could not be clearer. Today, ex-service men and women
of many ethnic backgrounds, friend and foe alike, march as one on Anzac Day as an expression of the
unity of all humanity for which Orthodox incessantly pray.

While not intrinsically Christian, the cultus of Anzac has emerged from a Christian culture. In my
view, there is nothing about Anzac Day that should be of concern to an Orthodox. On the contrary, it is
an opportunity for Orthodox to join with non-Orthodox in a common commemoration of those who
died, or simply were prepared to die, for others.

(War memorials in Australia often list all who served, nor just those who fell.) As Christ Himself
said:
“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (John
15:13.)

So celebrate Anzac Day with a clear conscience, and do not fail to bake a batch of Anzac biscuits for
the occasion. (I can already smell them baking in the Freeland oven.)
Chapter 31. Beware Pulpit Hypnotism!
“Billy Graham Down Under”

Some readers might have seen the excellent documentary with this title on the ABC TV religious a
airs program, Compass, earlier in the year [2009]. The program was centred on the celebrated
American Baptist evangelist’s “Crusade” to Australia Thy years ago, in 1959. The Crusade mustered
enormous crowds in Sydney and Melbourne. Over the four week period Billy Graham was in
Melbourne, 714 000 people are said to have heard him preach.

Now, I have never attended a Billy Graham meeting. The first Crusade was five and a half years
before I arrived in Oz and I wasn’t interested in hearing him on his return in ’79, and don’t even recall
seeing any film footage of his actual preaching. The footage on the Compass documentary, though,
had me riveted.

Billy Graham in 1959, as presented by Compass, was a tall, handsome, quietly spoken man with
penetrating eyes and “movie star” appearance in the prime of his life. He was clearly exactly what
every American male would have wished to be (or thought they were). His presence on the rostrum
was magnetic and he held the vast congregations he addressed spellbound. The message was urgent,
clear and uncomplicated, his voice perfectly modulated, his timing impeccable, his gestures dramatic.
At the end of his sermons, he called for people to come forward to the centre of the arena and pledge
their lives to Jesus as their personal Saviour there and then; thousands did so.

As the footage moved from Graham’s sermons and the responsiveness of the crowds, to shots of those
coming forward I was in no doubt at all as to what it was that I was witnessing. I have never been to a
“revivalist” meeting or attended a Pentecostal service, but I had seen the phenomena I was now seeing
before, and I knew in the instant where that was.

When I was a research student in Bristol, in Southern England, at the beginning of the ’60s, a well-
known stage hypnotist came to town and I, my wife-to-be, Jill, and a close friend (who later was
awarded a personal chair in experimental psychology at a prestigious university and tragically died
young of leukaemia) went along “to observe”. The performance consisted in getting small groups on
stage and hypnotising them. The hypnotist then got them to entertain the audience by obeying his
commands to perform highly undignified and “amusing” acts.

Thus he might tell a group (I don’t recall the actual detail) that they were chicken and the farmer’s
wife had just put down a tray of corn for them. So the group would all rush forward and start pecking
at the imaginary grain. Next, he might say that a fox was creeping up on them, so they would promptly
scatter in panic madly flapping their arms like wings and squawking.

As his pièce de résistance the performer attempted to hypnotise the entire audience. He didn’t succeed
with either Jill or myself (and many others) but, blow me down, my friend, sitting in the very next
seat, did become hypnotised!

It is crystal clear, on the evidence of the Compass footage, that a significant portion (but by no means
all) of those who came forward at Billy Graham’s urging were in fact hypnotised. This was borne out
by interviews. The historian, Judith Smart, recalled: “I felt like it was an automatic response … I felt
compelled, I had to do it.” Another lady said: “I just felt like I was drawn on a string, I just had to go.”
The Presbyterian minister, Max Fox, noted how calm the people coming forward were, which is
precisely what one would expect, despite the emotionally charged atmosphere, if many were obeying
hypnotic suggestion.

The Crusades were finely crafted with expectations fuelled by publicity and a carefully orchestrated
build up to Billy Graham’s actual address. Music played a significant mood-inducing role.
Apparently, the invariant practice was to sing the popular and highly repetitious, indeed one could say
“hypnotic”, hymn “How Great Thou Art” immediately before Billy Graham preached:
(Chorus)
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art.
Then sings my soul, My Saviour God, to Thee,
How great Thou art, How great Thou art!

You see what I mean? But please don’t get me wrong. I am not for a moment saying that Dr Graham
deliberately set out to hypnotise his congregation. Nor am I saying that there was anything
unwholesome about his message. Neither am I saying that the Crusade failed to bring thousands of
individuals to Christ, nor that it did not have, at least in the short term, beneficial social consequences.
I am just saying that I think that Graham was as a matter of fact using hypnotic techniques which were
effective for a not insignificant number of those who came forward.

Battle for the Mind

In 1957, a fascinating and important work by William Sargant appeared, Battle for the Mind: A
Physiology of Conversion and Brain-Washing.

Sargant tells of his experiences as a psychiatrist working with troops very badly traumatised by battle
experience during World War 2 (what was called “shell shock” in WW1 and post-traumatic stress
syndrome today). He and his colleagues used physical means to bring about abreaction in their
patients (that is, the release of pent-up emotional trauma) by inducing a state of intense emotional
excitement.

At first they used sedatives, but then found that more excitatory applications, such as ether and
methedrine, were more successful. Initially, they used the drugs in order to get the patient to relive the
horrific experiences which were the cause of the trauma, but later discovered that some other
traumatic or anger-inducing event worked just as well, and sometimes better. It was simply the
intensity of the excitation that effected the abreactive release, anger and fear being the key emotions.

Sargant tells of how he visited his father towards the end of the war and happened to take a volume of
the Journal of the great eighteenth-century evangelist, John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, off the
shelf. He was astounded to read that Wesley’s preaching frequently brought about reactions virtually
identical to those of his patients.

Wesley built up a vivid picture of the Hell fire and eternal damnation which faced the sinners before
him if they did not immediately abandon their wicked ways, accept God’s forgiveness and henceforth
take up their cross and follow Christ. Through faith in Christ alone could salvation be achieved.

People were terror-stricken. Many would weep uncontrollably, convulse, stream with sweat, cry out
and, not infrequently, collapse and become unconscious. Some people even started behaving like frogs
or dogs, hopping around or barking away. On recovering, individuals would be at peace and feel
cleansed and that their old sinful patterns of thought and behaviour had lost their hold. They were now
totally receptive to Wesley’s message and many did henceforth live exemplary lives.

Wesley’s preaching was brilliantly attacked in a famous print by the great painter and engraver,
William Hogarth, in 1762: “A Medley – Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism”. Hogarth’s print,
which attacks superstition, irrationality and “enthusiasm” (a term used of religious excess or hysteria),
depicts Wesley preaching and the emotional frenzy and abreactive crises of his terror-stricken
congregation.

What Sargant showed was that a raft of psychological techniques, ranging from psychiatric use of
excitatory drugs and shock therapy, via hypnosis and “Hell fire” preaching, to torture of prisoners
undergoing brain-washing, brought about almost identical outcomes. Following the great Russian
scientist, Pavlov, Sargant identifies this state as transmarginal inhibition. In this state, individuals
become highly suggestible and hence extremely vulnerable to acceptance of the message conveyed by
the psychiatrist, preacher, interrogator or washer of brains.

I was deeply influenced by Sargant’s book when it came out and it was a major reason why I decided
to do my first year psychology experimental project, submitted in 1958, on suggestibility and
religious belief. The project didn’t produce much in the way of results, but what I learnt (I was using
measurable physical responses to suggestion) was just how extremely vulnerable to suggestion human
beings are. Around the time of the stage hypnotist’s performance, I undertook a further piece of
research on suggestibility in conjunction with a fellow research student working on pain thresholds.

So, having established my (sadly dated) credentials let me come to my dire warning. Beware of your
suggestibility!

Unfortunately, most people seem to think that it is those with psychotic, compulsive and other
psychiatric conditions who are most likely to be highly suggestible, not the “normal” population. The
reverse is the case. People with psychoses and chronic compulsive conditions and the like (but not
Sargant’s traumatised troops) tend to be highly resistant to suggestion.

It is the normal, sociable individual who is likely to be highly suggestible (though there are
considerable individual differences). As Sargant notes, suggestibility probably has survival value,
since it aids social cohesion and cooperation.

But, of course, suggestibility can be exploited for ill as well as good. Wesley’s and Billy Graham’s
preaching techniques proceeded from the most laudable of objectives. It is a rather different story with
demagogues such as Adolf Hitler and rabble-raising jingoistic and populist politicians (and, I fear, a
minority of Christian preachers) who deploy the same range of powerful manipulative psychological
techniques to heighten suggestibility to its maximum with nefarious intention.

Unless ordinary people can be brought to understand just how susceptible they are to suggestion,
particularly when exposed to manipulative techniques like those used by Hitler and brilliantly
captured by Leni Riefenstahl’s film, Triumph of the Will (1934), then I am afraid that the horrors of
the twentieth century will be repeated with exponentially growing intensity until we exterminate
human life on the planet and give the cockroaches their chance. And, yes, I do know that inducing
apocalyptic terror is a favourite technique in the battle for the mind!

But where, you might well be asking, does Orthodoxy stand in relation to all of this?

Orthodoxy, Conversion and “Enthusiasm”

Orthodoxy eschews the whipping up of highly charged emotional states as a means of conversion or
pattern of worship. Orthodox worship is liturgical, restrained and recollected. Its orientation is, to use
the technical term, anagogic. That is, it is directed towards lifting the worshipper up from the purely
earthly world to the spiritual. Both in liturgy and in the realm of individual spirituality Orthodoxy
recalls the story of the Prophet Elias (Elijah), for whom the Lord was not in the wind, the earthquake,
the fire but in the small voice (the Septuagint has “gentle breeze”) which followed (1 Kings [3
Kingdoms] 19:11-12).

Although they use various terms, and draw boundaries in slightly differing ways, the Church Fathers
in general distinguish three major parts or aspects to the human person. Following a fairly common
convention, I shall call these “body”, “rational mind” and “spiritual intellect” respectively. The
powerful emotional abreactive responses released through radical “evangelical” or charismatic forms
of worship belong to the bodily rather than the spiritual or rational aspects of a person. The extreme
states elicited by such religious practices are thus somatic in nature and not manifestations of the Holy
Spirit per se.

However, Orthodoxy teaches that the spiritual intellect, rational mind and body interpenetrate; the
human person is a psychophysical whole. This means that the possibility exists that extreme physical
reactions to evangelical preaching might on occasion be initiated by the Holy Spirit. Moreover,
although abreactive episodes typically occur within the context of highly-charged communal
gatherings, whether religious or secular (think “Beatle mania”), they can also occur seemingly
spontaneously outside of social situations (think St Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus): “The
wind [Spirit] flows where it will (John 3: 8)”.

Of course, induced abreaction can unravel emotional knots and their attendant behavioural
ramifications and hence leave the emotionally exhausted and “cleansed” worshipper open to the
message of the Gospel and the prospect of a redirected life.

However, that said, the Orthodox Church, in the first place, regards these “revivalistic” methods as
inherently dangerous. They rely on the vastly heightened suggestibility of highly vulnerable
individuals to convey the Christian message. The preacher’s message is implanted through suggestion,
whether the recipient is in a hypnotic state or not, and rational conviction is bypassed. Since the
message itself needs to be conveyed in haste it is inevitably reduced to highly simplified terms.
Salvation/conversion in such circumstances needs to be instant.

Although there is no necessary connection between fundamentalism/ biblical historicism and

literalism, and “evangelical”/charismatic forms of worship, the two frequently go together. The
message that God has spoken through the Bible, every word of which is literally true, is an easy one to
convey in a few words. There is certainly no room here to explain the intricacies of the biblical
hermeneutics (= theory of biblical interpretation) of the Fathers of the Church!

Simplistic theology tends to be coupled with a strong emotional bonding with the converting
evangelist (what psychoanalysts call “transference”) who then personally can become the only
authentic interpreter of the Word of God. The cult of personality that surrounds leading pastors/
evangelists (as it does political demagogues) is indeed something which is starting to worry some
charismatics and the like themselves.

In the second place, the Orthodox Church rejects the equation of worship and the workings of the Holy
Spirit with emotional experience: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit
and truth (John 4:24)”. “Spirit” does not denote the emotions.

Of course, the body with its emotions is involved in worship but the emotions must be brought under
the control of the highest part of our nature, the spiritual intellect, mediated via the rational mind. To
allow, much less induce through psychological techniques, the emotions to “all hang out” is
antithetical to the contemplative character of the Orthodox liturgical tradition. Emotional release is
not something which should be artificially induced through psychological techniques but be a
consequence of the examined life, the cleansing tears of repentance.
At this point, the reader might be wondering whether Orthodoxy has always eschewed the
psychological mechanics of “conversion”. The odd “Hell fire” sermon and obvious “enthusiastic”
event aside, didn’t the early practices of the preparation of those seeking baptism, and more so the
“awe-inspiring” rites of initiation, involve the kinds of manipulative techniques associated with
revivalist and charismatic worship?

Yes, but there is a very big difference. And the difference is that the “awe-inspiring” rites of initiation
(comprising Baptism, Chrismation and Communion) were only celebrated for adults after years (often
a minimum of three) in the catechumenate. During this time the catechumen (= learner) became
familiar with the Scriptures and the teaching of the Church and rationally came to the conviction of
the truth of the Christian faith.

Conversion was normally a slow deliberative, intellectual and prayerful process; being born again
through the dramatic sacramental rites of initiation was the freely elected abreactive culmination of
the long drawn out process during which a catechumen might become very learned in the faith and be
widely esteemed for their piety. So much so, in fact, that it was possible, as was the case with St
Ambrose, for a catechumen to be elected bishop. Orthodox worship and living involves engagement of
the whole person, certainly body with its emotions, but equally the rational/ cognitive mind and the
spiritual intellect.
Chapter 32. The Great Ball Lightning Event
Introductory Note

Reprinted below is the second half of an article which described an extraordinary event that occurred
at St Andrew’s Greek Orthodox Theological College in Sydney in 2004. The first half of the article
gave an account of the College’s MA in Theological Studies, but this account is now hopelessly out of
date and it was decided not to reprint it here. However, the reader not familiar with the activities of
the College will require to know something of the background against which the Great Ball Lightning
Event occurred.

The College, which celebrated its 25th Anniversary last year [2011], was founded primarily as a
tertiary level theological college, with residential accommodation, for the training of seminarians for
the priesthood or other service within the Church. A decision was made in principle to admit women
at the postgraduate level some years earlier, but it was not until 2004 that the College introduced a
Master of Arts program in Theological Studies for university graduates in any discipline other than
theology. The degree was, and still is, open to females as well as males, to old as well as young and to
non-Orthodox as well as Orthodox.

The College decided to teach the new units at the Masters level in “intensive mode”. This meant that
students were required to attend lectures, seminars and tutorials nine-to- five at the College for five
consecutive days. They then went off home to complete the required assignments. The practice was to
hold intensives for two units back to back over a fortnight during vacations in January and July.

During these weeks, students were immersed in the same authentically Orthodox ethos of prayer,
worship, fellowship, study, reflection and discussion as are our male seminarian students who are with
us for much of the year. Every day started with a short service in English in the College’s beautiful
little chapel dedicated to St John the Evangelist and Theologian or, on feast days, the Divine Liturgy
in the adjacent Cathedral of the Annunciation of the Theotokos. In the earlier years, there was also a
short evening service in the chapel, as is still the practice during term time.

In January 2011, moving with the zeitgeist, the College changed over to distance education for the
delivery of its basic Masters units. Attendance at residential schools is still required, but these have
been reduced from the five days of the old intensives.

The event described in this article occurred during the second week of our first pair of intensives. I
was invariably conscious of the presence of the Holy Spirit during the special weeks of our Masters
intensives, but it is the workings of the Holy Spirit at that intensive in January 2004, for which I acted
as coordinator, that is most deeply etched in my memory.

Wherever the Holy Spirit is present in power strange things tend to happen and they happened that
week, but the strangest happening of all was the Great Ball Lightning Event, one so strange that I got
the witnesses to record their experiences in writing at the time. The visitation occurred in the
College’s well-stocked Library, a place for students not only to browse amongst the shelves, round up
material for assignments or to do a little private study but also a place to interact with lecturers and
fellow students, not to mention our inimitable, super-helpful and super-efficient librarian, Chris
Harvey.
Ball Lightning Visits the Library

The event occurred on Thursday, January 22 shortly before 7.30 PM, though no one recorded the exact
time. I left shortly after evening chapel but some of the students stayed on to work in the library. Chris
Harvey and three students, one a presbytera – let us call them Faith, Hope and Presbytera Charity -
were still in the library when the visitation occurred.

The library is situated at the first floor level up external stairs from a courtyard. As one passes through
the door at the top of the steps, one enters an open area with the Librarian’s desk a short distance
across to one’s left. Ahead is a small round table and chairs behind which is the wall of the
photocopying room. Today this wall is covered by a bookcase, but in 2004 it was blank save for an
icon of St Andrew with a shiny metal cover (Plate 16).

That evening there was a violent storm directly over St Andrew’s, with thunder, lightning and rain.
When the storm appeared to have died down, Chris turned off the air conditioning, opened the library
door to let the cooling breeze in, and returned to his desk.

Faith could not see the entrance area at all as she was at the rear of the library. For Chris, at his desk,
the library door was ahead and to his right. From this vantage point, he had a perfect view of any one
(or any thing!) passing through the door into the library (that is the way he likes it).

Hope had just left the photocopying room and taken a couple of steps in the direction of the door.
From her position she would have seen anything coming through the door almost head on. Presbytera
Charity was seated at the round table with her back to the door, facing the icon of St Andrew. The
scene was set.

There was a deafening crack and a ball of incandescent blue light shot through the open door 5-6 feet
above the floor. It travelled about 10 feet into the entrance area to just behind the head of the
Presbytera and then abruptly vanished.

Chris, viewing the phenomenon from the side, experienced it as a line of light that resolved itself as a
sphere just before disappearing. Hope, seeing it head on, saw it as a “brilliant blue ball of light”
framed by the doorway. Faith was unable to see the phenomenon but she heard a very loud noise
which sounded like an explosion.

Presbytera Charity had her back to the door but incredibly saw the ball of light reflected in the metal
cover of the icon. It was, she said, “as if the icon had caught the thunder”.

Immediately following the event it was discovered that both of the library’s computers were out of
action (next day it was found that most phones and computers in the Archdiocesan offices were dead).
A smell of burning was coming from outside the door, where the shattered witnesses believed
lightning had struck. “We had a look outside for scorch marks,” Hope wrote, “but couldn’t find
anything and [Presbytera Charity] furiously continued her prayer knots.” And then it started to rain
again.

What is Ball Lightning?

There seems no doubt that a sphere of ball lightning entered the library, immediately following a
lightning strike outside. Ball lightning is a rare and bizarre meteorological phenomenon that seems to
defy the laws of physics. Indeed, most scientists were sceptical that such a phenomenon could occur.
That is, until a group of scientists flying to Washington one stormy night in 1963 witnessed it for
themselves. Emerging through the wall of the pilot’s cabin, a blue sphere of light, about 20 cm in
diameter, drifted down the aisle of the passenger cabin and disappeared through the rear of the plane.

Ball lightning normally forms following a lightning strike and is usually experienced as a solid-
looking incandescent sphere of light of c.15 cm in diameter, which is about the diameter estimated by
Chris. It can, however, be much larger or smaller. It might be of any colour but blue is common.

It can pass through solid structures but likes exploring open and enclosed spaces. It has been known to
enter by one door of a house, drift around from room to room, and leave by another door!

It seems that it can last anything up to five minutes and often disappears with a loud bang. This might
well have happened with St Andrew’s ball as Faith reported an explosive noise which she was certain
came from within the library itself.

Several scientific theories have been proposed but none appears to account for all of the phenomena.
Inevitably, some lunatics have suggested lightning balls are aliens trying to collect human DNA.

Ball lightning does not have the reputation for being particularly dangerous but it does have at least
one fatality to its credit; as it happens, the first recorded instance of the phenomenon. In 1754, a Dr
Richmann of St Petersburg decided to repeat Benjamin Franklin’s famous experiment on lightning. As
he did so, a large sphere of ball lightning suddenly manifested itself, struck him on the head and killed
him.

Was Presbytera Charity in serious danger of meeting the same fate? Did our patron, St Andrew,
intervene and draw the lightning into his icon? Did a miracle occur that stormy evening?

If by “miracle” one means an event which violates the laws of nature, then great scepticism is called
for. Orthodoxy has been averse to ascribing phenomena to the supernatural, preferring to restrict the
denotation of “supernatural” to the supercelestial, supersensible eternal domain. There is not the
slightest reason to suppose that the St Andrew’s event was beyond the limits of scientific explanation.

An extraordinary occurrence, a wonder? Certainly. A sign? Possibly. (But isn’t a sign an event to
which we ascribe meaning?) Strange coincidence? Of course.

Coincidences belong to the realm of natural (scientifically explicable, at least in principle)

phenomena. But many events which people are given to calling “miracles” are in fact wondrous
coincidences. As William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, noted: “When I pray, coincidences
happen – when I don’t, they don’t!” Indeed, the Holy Spirit acts mysteriously through the silence of
prayer.

Readers interested in the MA program, or other offerings of St Andrew’s, should contact the College
Registrar for a Handbook and other information:

Registrar, St Andrew’s Greek Orthodox Theological College, 242 Cleveland Street, Redfern, NSW
2016, Australia (Tel.: 61 2 9549 3100, Fax 61 2 9549 3151, Email: registrar@sagotc.edu.au.
Information is also available on the College’s website, from where it can be downloaded:
www.sagotc.edu.au).
Chapter 33. Threescore Years and Ten
The days of our age are threescore years
and ten; and though men be so strong that
they come to fourscore years : yet is their
strength then but labour and sorrow; so
soon passeth it away, and we are gone.

(Psalm 90:10 [89 LXX] BCP.)

The Psalmist

Those of you who are regular readers of my Vema articles might well have been wondering about your
columnist. A certain preoccupation with mortality, you might be thinking, is evident in his
ruminations. In May last year [2007] he even wrote an article on the fear of death, hardly a topical
topic.

Well, now it is time for the emperor, metaphorically speaking of course, to strip down to his birthday
suit and reveal all, for on March 27 he will, God willing, turn 70. There you have it. The secret is out.

No one with even the slimmest acquaintanceship with the Book of Psalms can attain their seventieth
birthday without calling to mind that haunting verse of Psalm 89, traditionally said to have been
composed by Moses. (The Psalm is normally read at the First Hour, Prime.) The message is clear,
threescore years and ten, that is 70, is, in the Psalmist’s view, the natural span of human life.

Some, by reason of their strength, might live on until 80 (or today increasingly 90 or 100). But, asks
the Psalmist, why should we court the pains, infirmities and dementia of old age? Why should we
channel all of our dwindling strength into just staying alive?

Suffering can be redemptive, but often it is not and there is no good reason why we should embrace it
as a good in itself. Christ died on the Cross for us. He did not command us to take up His Cross – the
blows, flagellation, the nails, the excruciating pain of slow suffocation – but to take up our cross,
whatever burdens life hands to us, and follow Him (Matthew 16:24).

But mortality is our lot and the cycle of our life will relentlessly grind to its close. The brevity and
tenuousness of human life is even more pointed in the Greek Septuagint version of Psalm 89 than in
that of St Jerome’s Latin Vulgate from which the Anglican Prayer Book version quoted above derives:
For all our days are wasted, and we have passed away in your wrath. Our years are as
fragile as a spider’s web. The sum of our days is seventy years.

(J.M. de Vinck & L.C. Contos, The Psalms Translated from the Greek Septuagint, Alleluia Press.)

However, enough of all this! How liberating a seventieth birthday should be! Now begins the Indian
Summer of one’s life for however long God wills it to last. My birthday resolution will be to greet
every new awakening as a miracle, a special blessing, a day added as a totally undeserved gift from
God beyond the Psalmist’s threescore years and ten.
Shame I have never been known to keep a resolution.

But why does the Psalmist pick on 70? Surely not because his research has shown him that (excluding
infant death and unfortunate accidents) the mean, mode or median death of a human being is 70 years.
Nor could he have been asserting that some morbidity naturally occurs just when a person reaches
threescore years and ten.

No, the number 70 was chosen because of the character and meaning of the numbers 7 and10, the
multiplication of which yields 70, according to biblical symbolism and the ancient science of number.

The Ancient Science of Number

For us today, numbers are purely abstract. We might learn the names we give to numbers, “one”,
“two”, “three”, “four” … , and the basic operations of arithmetic, by counting jelly beans with mum or
manipulating rods or sliding beads around on an abacus at school (if that is what still happens) but we
quickly learn that numerals are pure abstractions which can be manipulated in accordance with rules
of addition, subtraction, division and multiplication, without reference to anything concrete at all. The
status of the number sequence has nothing to do with the way we learn about numbers.

However, none of this impedes our ability to use numbers symbolically. Certain numbers have strong
Christian meanings. When the bishop blesses his flock with two- and three-branched candlesticks we
know that they symbolically represent the two natures in Christ (divine and human) and the Holy
Trinity (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) respectively.

There are twelve Great Feasts because there were twelve Apostles, and the primary reason that there
were twelve Apostles was because there were twelve tribes of Israel. And if the priest blesses five
loaves, with a five-branched candlestick behind them, we might know that this symbolises the five
loaves that Christ multiplied at the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand (Matthew 14:13-21 and
parallels).

The use of numbers as symbols, however, does not mean that the numbers themselves become
anything more than abstractions. Three is the symbolic number of the Trinity simply because there are
three persons/hypostases of the Holy Trinity.

Of course Ancient mathematicians could manipulate numbers treated as pure abstractions, arithmetic
is a very early science. But for the Ancient world, and that includes the Fathers of the Church,
numbers were far more than just abstractions.

In fact, there was an entire discipline which investigated the deeper properties and meanings of
number, in terms of which numbers were thought of as principles or essences underlying and
governing everything in the created world. In other words, numbers were the key to unlock (or at least
try to unlock) the logoi (= reasons) in the “mind” of God and the secrets of creation.

God, says the Wisdom of Solomon (11:20b), has “arranged all things by measure and number and
weight.” Moreover, God gives precise instructions in the Pentateuch for the dimensions of Noah’s Ark
and for the Tabernacle.

The discipline in question has usually been regarded as a branch of Ancient and medieval arithmetic,
but is better thought of as a distinct mathematical discipline, arithmology. Arithmetic is then to be
understood as the science of numerical computation but arithmology as that of the nature and
attributes of numbers per se.

Arithmology has its origins in early Mesopotamian thought but more so in Pythagoreanism. It was
developed further in Late Antiquity by Neopythagorean philosophers and had a considerable impact
on theology. In fact, St Photios the Great, Patriarch of Constantinople (c.810-c.893), has been seen by
some scholars as a latter day Christian Neopythagorean.

The following passage from a profoundly influential work of Nicomachus of Gerasa, a pagan
Neopythagorean who flourished around 100, brilliantly encapsulates the nature and objectives of
Ancient arithmology:
All that has by nature with systematic method been arranged in the universe seems …
to have been determined and ordered in accordance with number, by the forethought
and the mind of him that created all things; for the pattern was fixed … by the
domination of number pre-existent in the mind of the world-creating God, number
conceptual only and immaterial in every way, but at the same time the true and eternal
essence, so that with reference to it … should be created all these things, time, motion,
the heavens, the stars, all sorts of revolutions. It must be, then, that scientific number,
being set over such things as these, should be harmoniously constituted in accordance
with itself; not by any other but itself.

(Quoted in Vincent Hopper’s, Medieval Number Symbolism, Dover. A seminal work from which I have
drawn liberally.)

From this quotation it is not difficult to see why and how arithmology had a strong influence on
Fathers of the Church such as St Gregory of Nyssa. It assisted them in distancing themselves from
literalistic creationist views and directed them towards a dynamic, indeed sometimes evolutionist (as
in the case of Gregory), view of the origins and unfolding of the cosmos.

In the fullness of time, it influenced the development of the late medieval mathematical physics that
was destined to provide a very major component of the foundations of the new science of the
seventeenth century scientific revolution and the modern world. Indeed, it would not be untrue to say
that modern cosmology is still at base Neopythagorean.

The statement “The universe is the way it is because at its beginning the numbers were such as to
make it the way it is”, which would be endorsed (though doubtless with some protest at the crudity of
my wording) by modern cosmologists, links modern thought with that of Ancient Neopythagoreanism,
and also early Christian theology and allegorical exegesis of the Bible.

But we must be getting back to threescore years and ten.

The Numbers 7 and 10

7 is a very sacred number. But how did it become such? The most frequent answers are either that it is
because 7 is the number of the days of the Creation according to Genesis or because there were 7
planets according to Ancient astronomy.
However, there is no doubt that 7 was a sacred number long before Genesis was composed or all of the
7 planets recognised. The original sacred 7 probably derives from the 7 visible stars of two
constellations (which came first is anyone’s guess).

To the Babylonians, from whom the Old Testament liberally borrows, the 7 stars of the Pleiades were
sacred because for 40 days each year they are absent from the night sky, a period which happened to
coincide with the rainy season when devastating floods could occur. The reappearance of the stars
(their heliacal risings) marked the return to fine weather and a restored and fruitful earth. Note that
this phenomenon also gives us another sacred number of the Bible, 40.

Both the 7 and the 40 had negative and positive connotations – negative, the disappearance of the
Pleiades and the season of troubles and dearth; the positive, the heliacal risings of the 7 stars marking
the renewal of the earth. (Compare the 40 days of rain of the Noachian Flood and the restoration of the
earth after the deluge, and the 40 days of Great Lent followed by Holy Week and the 40 days between
Easter Sunday and the Ascension.)

The other 7 star constellation of very early importance was Ursa Major, the Great Bear. This is the
Northern Hemisphere equivalent of our Southern Cross and invaluable to pre-modern navigators.
Unlike other constellations, such as the Pleiades and Orion, Ursa Major doesn’t rise and set.

Always visible in the night sky of northerly latitudes wheeling around the North Celestial Pole,
completing a circle each day, the Great Bear was seen as a governor of the heavens and of time. There
is tantalising evidence for a very widespread bear-centred cultus or religion possibly dating right back
to the Palaeolithic (= Old Stone Age).

From the primitive 7s, 7s proliferated everywhere. Thus, for instance, we find (in jumbled order): 7
heavens, 7 days of the week, the seven-branched candlestick of Judaism (the Menorah), 7 sages, 7
wonders of the world, 7 sacraments, 7 gifts of the Holy Spirit, 7 seas, the 7 pillars of Wisdom, the 7
Churches of the Apocalypse, the 7 penitential Psalms. Even Sir Isaac Newton thought that there must
be 7 colours of the spectrum/ rainbow, so included the problematic indigo.

Absolutely fundamental to arithmological thinking is the Pythagorean correspondence between

number and geometry. 1 can be represented only as a point, and a point has no parts, magnitude or
extension. Two points can, however, be joined by a straight line; so 2 gives us extension. 3 gives us
the first plane figure, the triangle, and triangles (unlike a point or a straight line) enclose space. This is
why Plato says that surfaces are comprised of triangles. But a world inhabited only by plane figures is
Abbot’s Flatland, a world that has surface but no third dimension.

To generate concrete objects, one needs geometric solids. So we need a fourth point placed
immediately over a triangle. Join that point to the three points of the triangle and you get a pyramid.
Given that the four faces are identical equilateral triangles, the figure will be a tetrahedron, the first of
the five regular solids.

From the regular solids the entities of the created world are generated. Plato equates each of the
regular solids with one of the four elements, re, earth, air and water, plus the quintessence out of
which the heavens are composed. Since geometry is generated from number, numbers are clearly more
than abstractions, they are causal principles, essences or logoi.
In Augustinian Neoplatonism 7 is sacred principally because it is the product of the addition of 3, the
number of the Trinity, and 4, the number of the earth. (The sacredness of the number 4 is also
extremely ancient and almost certainly derives, long before Pythagoras (sixth century BC), from the
division of the earth into 4 quarters following upon recognition of the 4 cardinal points.)

There is a great deal more to be said about 7 but we need to move on to 10 and be brief. Here we
should turn immediately to arithmology.

In arithmology, 10 is the number of completion and plenitude because from 10 on the integers simply
repeat –11, 12, 13, 14 … . The decad was thus regarded as sacred as were its multiples. So, 7 X 10 =
70. There you have it. The natural span of human life is seven decades. Bingo!
Endnote – My Path to Orthodoxy

My parents did not believe in bringing up children in any religious faith; so they didn’t! However, I
was baptised as a baby to please my grandfather, who was a Congregationalist deacon. My mother,
though a very learned woman, was into what she called the “occult sciences” and was probably best
described as a “neo-pagan”. How she managed to reconcile all of this with her scientific education
(she had two science degrees) I have never worked out.

At four, I became an atheist one morning as my mother was spring cleaning (she usually was) when
she failed to give a logical answer to the question, “Who made God?”. This incident was probably one
of the reasons why I read philosophy.

I had a low-key mystical experience when I was eleven, following a terrifying incident in which I
thought I was going blind, and thereafter believed in the Holy Spirit. Belief in Christ, however, came
slowly. In fact, I learned almost nothing of Christianity until I went to a “Broad Church” Anglican
school when I was thirteen. There the Anglican liturgy and the ambience (the school occupied
monastic buildings dating from 1130) began to seep into me.

I don’t know when I became a Christian as belief fluctuated week by week. However, by my late teens
I had moved on to examining the different traditions. For a while, I was attracted to the Quakers, with
their strong emphasis on the Holy Spirit. Rome I rejected very quickly, both on doctrinal grounds and
because I found the ethos of the Church, in those pre-Vatican II days, most unappealing. I looked into
my grandfather’s Congregationalism and attended a Congregational church regularly for a while
during my first year at university in Bristol. However, I really knew that I wasn’t a Protestant.

Back at school one of our masters had taken a party to High Mass at the local Anglo-Catholic church.
The ceremonial and aura of mystery appealed to me greatly. After rejecting the RC and Protestant
paths, I tried hard to become an Anglican in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. Although unconfirmed, I
thought seriously about the priesthood and even got as far as an interview with the Examining
Chaplain to the Bishop of Bristol.

But in the meantime two decisive events had happened. The first was that I encountered Orthodoxy for
the first time through the Bristol chapter of the ecumenical Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius,
which used to organise an Orthodox Liturgy in English each term. The Liturgy had an immediate and
very strong impact on me. The second event was that in 1960 I was introduced to Cornwall by my
future wife, Jill, whose mother lived in Rick Stein territory near Padstow. There I found the Celtic
saints; or rather, they found me. Orthodoxy, I discovered, was not just some attractive exotic Eastern
form of Christianity but was part of the heritage of the Christianity of my own island, even if its Celtic
Christian hierarchy had been extinct for a millennium.

Came the meeting with the Examining Chaplain in an elegant Georgian house near the university. As I
arrived he rode up the hill in Oxbridge style on his bike, whipped off his bicycle clips and ushered me
through the door. We spoke for about ten minutes. He then looked at me and said: “You will never
become an Anglican. You want certainty and Anglicanism cannot give you that. Both Roman
Catholicism and Orthodoxy, in a different way, offer certainty. You will become an Orthodox.”

He got up, snapped his bicycle clips back on, ushered me out through the door, rode expertly down the
hill at speed and left me totally sandbagged, and very miffed, standing on the pavement. But, of
course, he was right. Never was an Examining Chaplain better chosen by his Bishop. I now knew two
things. I would never become a member of the Church of England and I would not become a priest.

I was still not quite home and hosed, however. I still had some doctrinal matters to sort out. Then
came the third event; the book I needed to read fell from the heavens (or rather, I picked it up at the
bookstall at a meeting of the Fellowship of St Alban and St Sergius). It was Vladimir Lossky’s, The
Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. A difficult book, it took me ages to wade through it but the
apophatic theology it developed cleared away my dogmatic problems.

On Pentecost Sunday, 1962, I was received into the Orthodox Church by a small Polish Orthodox
community, at that time under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch, which had the only
Orthodox priest resident in Bristol. And I took the name of the Celtic Apostle to the Cornish, St Petroc
(sixth century). I was home.

Finally, by way of a colophon, Jill and I were married, by the Archimandrite who had received me into
Orthodoxy, in the beautiful Anglican parish church of St Petroc Minor of Nansfounteyn, Little
Petherick, Cornwall, which we had borrowed, in July 1963.

(Reprinted from Phronema, 23, 2008.)

Plates
(Photos are by the author, unless otherwise indicated.)
Plate 1a The Freelands’ “Secret” Garden, Gordon, NSW.
Plate 1b View across the lake from the Grotto, Stourhead, Wiltshire, England.
Plate 2a Hedge maze, Glendurgan, Cornwall, U.K.
Plate 2b Turf labyrinth, Wing, Rutland, England.
Plate 3a The House of Mary, near Ephesus, Turkey.
Plate 3b The font, St John the Theologian, Ephesus, Turkey.
Plate 4 Christ the Bridegroom, Church of St Anna, Gold Coast, Queensland, written by Leonidas
Ioannou. Photo: L. Ioannou.
Plate 5 The Freelands’ Eagle window, Gordon, NSW.
Plate 6 Noli Me Tangere (=“Do Not Touch Me”) Icon of Christ and St Mary Magdalene, in
private possession, written by Michael Galovic. Photo: M. Galovic.
Plate 7 The Virgin of the Sign, written by Michael Galovic. Photo: M. Galovic.
Plate 8a St Nicholas Foundoukli, Rhodes, Greece.
Plate 8b The Martorana, Palermo, Sicily.
Plate 9 Shellal Mosaic (detail), Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
Plate 10 The Botafumeiro, Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain.
Plate 11a The Apocalypse, Patmos, Greece.
Plate 11b Courtyard of the monastery of St John the Theologian, Patmos, Greece.
Plate 12a The port of Symi, Greece.
Plate 12b Courtyard of the monastery of the Archangel Michael, Panormitis, Symi, Greece.
Plate 13 St Brendan the Navigator, in private possession, written by Michael Galovic. Photo: M.
Galovic.
Plate 14a Skellig Michael, County Kerry, Ireland.
Plate 14b Brandon Creek, Dingle Peninsular, County Kerry, Ireland.
Plate 15 Courtyard and Hall of Memory, Australian War Memorial, Canberra in the early ’80s.
Plate 16 The Great Ball Lightning Event icon of St Andrew, at St Andrew’s Greek Orthodox
Theological College, Sydney. The icon was presented to the College by the Ecumenical Patriarch
Bartholomew I, on his visit in November 1996. Photo: SAGOTC.
 Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Noah and His Flood: History or Fantasy?
Chapter 2. Christ, the Mystic Mill?
Chapter 3. Apocalypse Now?
Chapter 4. Restoring Paradise
Chapter 5. Is There Such a Thing as Original Sin?
Chapter 6. Doing the Right Thing by Adam and Eve
Chapter 7. Are We Bound by Moral Laws?
Chapter 8. The Labyrinth – a Christian Mandala?
Chapter 9. Should We Restore the Ancient Catechumenate?
Chapter 10. Days of the Bridegroom
Chapter 11. What Is the Paschal Triduum?
Chapter 12. The Great Mystery of the Cave
Chapter 13. The Great Sunday
Chapter 14. The Fear of Death
Chapter 15. The Saints Go Marching In
Chapter 16. The Eagle –– Divine Bird of the Sun
Chapter 17. Was St Mary of Magdala the Wife of Christ?
Chapter 18. Christmas in Winter?
Chapter 19. Happy New Year –– AGAIN!
Chapter 20. Why Portray Christ as the Sun God?
Chapter 21. Christ’s Christmas Tree
Chapter 22. Will the REAL Santa Claus Please Step Forward?
Chapter 23. The Earthly Heaven
Chapter 24. Canberra’s Byzantine Secret
Chapter 25. ‘‘Let My Prayer Be Set Forth in Thy Sight as the Incense’’
Chapter 26. Pilgrimage to Patmos: Island of the Apocalypse
Chapter 27. Pilgrimage to Symi: Island of an Archangel
Chapter 28. Was it St Brendan Who Discovered America?
Chapter 29. Should Australia Day Be the 26th January?
Chapter 30. Is Anzac Day Christian?
Chapter 31. Beware Pulpit Hypnotism!
Chapter 32. The Great Ball Lightning Event
Chapter 33. Threescore Years and Ten