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Sretensky Monastery choir sings Ps 33/34: I shall bless the Lord at all times,
His praise will always be
on my lips...
Hello. I'm Sr. Vassa,
and I'll be having my coffee right now, before going to work here
In Vienna, in Austria. Gratefully,
I can inform you that we will not be disturbed by construction noises today,
as we were during last week's show, as my zillions and zillions of viewers
may remember.
Our lawyers were able to put an end to the construction -
because of a violation of zoning regulations, actually.
Yes, they are clever that way. But it wasn't easy,
and the police had to be involved, as well as my own security detail,
and our make-up artist was kidnapped, - we had to pay a ransom...
and the whole thing was a huge mess, but the main thing is,
it's over now, and we can get on with our show.
If you haven't been watching the show, by the way,
then you should realize that
practically everybody else has been, so we do hope
you will be joining us from now on,
here in Vienna.
(Billy Joel sings: "When will you realize -
Vienna waits for you...")
It is the 4th week in October,
and today we will be reflecting on the lives
of the martyrs Marcian and Martyrius,
celebrated on October 25.
Saints Marcian and Martyrius
were put to death for their faith
by heretics called Arians in Constantinople
in the mid 4th century. I will explain who the "Arians" were in just a minute.
St. Marcian was a reader, and St. Martyrius
was a subdeacon. Both of them worked in the office
of the Bishop of Constantinople named Paul,
the Confessor. They worked as
"notaries" or secretaries. This bishop
was first exiled, and then murdered, by the Arians,
because he himself was not an ***. After that,
the heretics tried to lure the Saints Marcian and Martyrius
into their own camp, offering them money, then offering to make them bishops,
and when all that didn't work, they eventually tortured them and
put them to death
in the year 355 in Constantinople.
This all happened during the reign of the Christian Emperor Constantius,
who was one of the sons of the first Christian Emperor
Constantine the Great. Constantius
was very interested in religious matters,
and particularly in the main theological
question of his time, which was not yet resolved
in the hearts and minds of the bishops of the Christian East.
And that question was: What was
the exact relationship of the Son of God,
Jesus Christ, to God the Father?
Is Christ, they asked themselves,
- God, - as much as God the Father is God?
Or is Christ a sort of sub-god,
created by God the Father
for a special purpose? Or was Jesus, perhaps,
they asked themselves, born as a simple man,
and then became a god, because of his extra-special
virtues? Actually, the Church had already answered these questions
at a Council in Nicaea, not far from Constantinople,
in the year 325, during the reign of
Constantius's father, the famous Constantine the Great.
This council discussed
and rejected the teaching of the Alexandrian priest, Arius,
who taught that the Son of God, Jesus Christ,
was inferior to the Father, and was created
in time. The council
proclaimed with all clarity
that Jesus Christ is God, "of one substance"
with the Father, or, in Greek, "homoousios"
with the Father. Now, although the council
did proclaim this faith, the very clear formulation
or proclamation of the divinity of Christ
did not sit well with the majority of the bishops of the East,
- even those who had signed the decree of the council.
Now they did sign the decree, mainly because
the Emperor Constantine supported it, - and he supported it with military force, -
exiling those who disagreed and ordering their books to be burned
and forbidding to read them, and so on. However, like I said,
the majority of the bishops did not quite agree with this formulation.
Why not? Because the word "homoousios,"
"of one substance," was a novelty,
you see; it was not traditional. And
the bishops were very traditional.
This word was not in the Bible, and
had a dubious history in Christian theology.
The bishops also feared that
this word introduced a sort of polytheism
or paganism into Christianity, because it seemed to suggest
that there were two gods, and not one. So it was the fear of the new
that motivated the Christian bishops of the East, -
the majority of them, - and also the Christian emperors,
to gradually back away from the strong and clear word
"homoousios," "of one substance," and to
attempt to substitute it with other,
more ambiguous, heretical formulations, by the time of Sts. Marcian and Martyrius.
But people like these two saints, as well as
their boss, Bishop Paul the Confessor,
did not agree with these watered-down formulations, and hence
they were put to death.
So, we will talk a bit more now about this phenomenon of "the fear of the new,"
and also about heresy, in the 4th century.
(Billy Joel sings: "Some people stay
far away from the door, if there's a chance
of it opening up,
they hear a voice in the hall outside, and hope that it just passes by...")
There was actually nothing new
about this fear of the new in the 4th century,
which is very human, really. The new is less known
than the old and familiar, and is hence somewhat unpredictable,
and threatens our sense of security and order,
which we tend to feel with the old and familiar.
As C. S. Lewis noted, "Newtonian
atomism was much more the sort of thing we expected
(and desired) than Quantum physics." Even before the era
of the Christian Emperors that we have been talking about today,
pagan Roman society of earlier times
was staunchly traditionalist, attached to
outer forms, even after they had outlived their meaning.
But people like Marcian and Martyrius
were not afraid of the new. They embraced the new language
of the Nicene Council, because the old had become insufficient
to reach the hearts and minds of the people of their time,
- even of the majority of the bishops of the East.
What was new in a bad way, in the Christian Empire,
however, was governmental persecution
of religious dissent and heresy. The pagan Roman authorities
of earlier times, as you may remember, did persecute Christians
who refused to perform the outer motions of the pagan rituals.
But the Romans did not care what people actually thought
or believed about God. In contrast to the
pagan authorities, however, the Christian ones did care,
- and used force against those who disagreed with them
in theological issues. A few great fathers
of that time, - not too many, unfortunately - like St. Athanasius,
the hero or even superhero of the 4th century,
and champion of the Nicene faith - I know, I know...
Calm down now, - it's always exciting to talk about Athanasius -
he admonished the Christian emperor and reminded him
that faith in Christ is a matter of free choice.
In this context St. Athanasius quotes the words of the Lord Himself (Mt 16:24):
"Whoever WANTS to be My disciple,
let them deny themselves and take up their cross,
and follow Me," which reminds us today
of the simple and liberating fact
that if we choose to follow Christ, we do so
because we want to.
Well, that's it for today. Saints Marcian and Martyrius,
ladies and gentlemen!
Thank you.
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