My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and the Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.

SOME ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN BELIEFS AND THEIR BIBLICAL FOUNDATION (Part III)

What do Orthodox Christians believe about liturgy?

Biblically and historically, true worship has consistently been liturgical. "Spontaneous" worship is an innovation of the last century or so.

Liturgical worship, written prayers (the Psalms), and feast days were the norm throughout the history of Israel (see Exodus 23:14-19; 24:1, 2).
The worship of heaven is liturgical (Isaiah 6:1-9; Hebrews 8:1-3; Revelation (Apocalypse) 4).
The foundations of liturgical worship in the Church are apparent in the New Testament. The most oft-repeated prayer of the Church is there (Matthew 6:9-13). The words we say at baptism are there (Matthew 28:19). The words spoken at Holy Communion are there, with Saint Paul repeating Jesus' words (1 Corinthians 11:23-26). Further, the believers in Acts 13:2 about A.D. 49, were seen in a liturgical service to the Lord: "as they ministered [Greek: leitourgouaton, the root word for "liturgy"] to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said..." Note, too, in this passage that the Holy Spirit speaks to us during liturgical worship. Thus praise to God must never become dead form, but rather living worship, "in spirit and truth" (John 4:23, 24).
Some Protestant groups have reacted against Rome by dismissing liturgical worship (though everyone has patterned worship, "spontaneous" or not!). But the Holy Bible and Church history are clear: liturgical worship is the norm for the people of God. Documents like the Didache (A.D. 70) and the writings of Saint Justin Martyr (A.D. 150) and Hippolytos (early 200s) all show that the worship of the early Church was, without exception, liturgical.

Our image, according to our likeness" (Genesis 1:26). Note the plurality of Persons in the Godhead. Thus from before all ages, God the Son--also called in Holy Scripture the Logos/Word of God--reigned with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. This explains why the Gospels teach that God the Son, Jesus Christ, came to reveal the Father to us, and to send to us the Comforter, the Holy Spirit.

Throughout the history of ancient Israel, the Prophets foretold the coming of One Who would be the Messiah of Israel, the Anointed One. They predicted He would be born in Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2), that a sign of His coming would be that a virgin would conceive Him (Isaiah 7:14), and that He would suffer and die for the sins of the people (Isaiah 53:5, 6). There are some three hundred references to His coming in the Old Testament Scripture, all penned hundreds of years before He came.

Then, just as promised, in the fullness of time the Angel appeared to a godly young Jewish virgin named Mary, and announced to her that she would bear a Son. "You shall call His name Jesus," the Angel said, "for He will save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Thus, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the humanity of Jesus Christ was formed. The Son of God became everything we are--except for sin--in order that we might become the recipients of everything He is. As Saint John writes, "The Logos/Word became flesh and dwelt among us" (John 1:14). God became man to reveal Himself to us.

Most of us ask ourselves at one time or another, "Does anyone else in all the world understand me?" The Incarnation--the "enfleshment"--of the Son of God answers that question once and for all--with a resounding yes! Because Jesus Christ is fully God, He knows all things--even the number of the hairs on our heads (Luke 12:7). He created us. And because He is fully man, He is acquainted firsthand with our weaknesses, our disappointments, our sufferings. He knows about rejection, loneliness, hunger, and death because He went through them. Isaiah the Prophet wrote of Him, "Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows" (Isaiah 53:4).

Taking His flesh from His Holy Mother Mary, Jesus experienced birth and growth like all of us. In His early years He knew both servitude and apprenticeship to His earthly father, Joseph, in his trade of carpentry. And He knew the higher the priority of obedience and submission to His Heavenly Father on one occasion staying behind in the Temple to be about His Father's business instead of accompanying Mary and Joseph back home from a trip to Jerusalem.

He went through the adolescent years--he experienced what it was like to be thirteen, fifteen--and faced head-on the opportunities for loss of temper, moral compromise, dishonesty, and rebellion present in His day. He knows about human frailty because He was tempted in every way we are, yet He never succumbed to sin.

At the age of thirty, He was baptized by Saint John the Baptist in the Jordan River. In so doing so, He not only began His own public ministry, but also forever set apart water as the means of beginning our new life in Christ through the Holy Spirit. This is why the Church, His followers here on earth, has baptized her converts in "water and the spirit" (John 3:5). Baptism is that God-given rite of passage into the Kingdom of God whose mystic power to change us surpassed all human reason.

Throughout His three-year public ministry, Jesus Christ worked countless miracles. He healed the sick, He brought sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and help to the helpless. He stilled a storm, cast out demons, and raised the dead. All these miracles established the presence of God's Kingdom and further affirmed that He was God. Those who knew Him but a short time said, "He has done all things well" (Mark 7:37). And when pressed on specifics, even His enemies could find no fault in Him (John 19:4, 6). The daily routines of entire towns and villages were cancelled or changed when He visited. Everything, it became apparent, was subject to Him.

After three years of His ministry the Jewish religious establishment could stand no more of Him. Because He was God and said so, calls for Jesus' death began to mount. Some of His followers saw the implications and fell away. Even the disciples whom He hand-picked faltered, one of them denying Him three times. Finally, the religious and civil authorities teamed up against Him, put Him through a sham of a trial, and crucified Him as a common criminal between two thieves. In a few hours, He was dead. No one yet understood that He had died for the entire world, carrying our sins and transgressions with Him into the grave.

Then came the culmination, the most powerful and supernatural event of all history. Three days after dying, Christ was alive again, for He cancelled out its power: and to those who are joined to Him, His promises is, 'because I live, you will live also" (John 13:19). He had forever trampled down our greatest enemy, death, by his own death. And in His Resurrection He bestows life on the living as well as upon those long dead.

For forty days after His Resurrection, Jesus opened the Holy Scripture to the eyes of His disciples, teaching them about His Everlasting Kingdom, and commissioning them to take the gospel to the whole world. He instructed them to build His Church, the expression of His Kingdom on the earth, and fulfilled for them His promise of the Holy Spirit to accomplish the task.

To be sure, the one thing Jesus Christ left behind in this world IS His Church. The Holy Scripture describes that Church as an assembly of His people, a new nation, a royal priesthood, a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. Because those who make up His Church share in His Resurrection, they are called the Body of Christ, and He Himself is head.

At the end of His forty days of teaching, while His disciples stood by as witnesses, Jesus Christ ascended in his glorified body into Heaven. He reigns at the right hand of His Father. As our Heavenly Bishop, He is Lord of His Church. In Him, Saint Paul writes, all things "consist" or are held together (Col. 1:17).

One day Jesus Christ will return to earth (His Second Coming) to confront the living and the dead. All humanity will appear before His awesome and dread judgment seat. The righteous will inherit eternal life; the wicked (evil), everlasting darkness (damnation). The Kingdom of God will be established in its fullness, and Christ will reign, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, forever. (Source: Orthodox Study Bible)

(To be continued)

__________________________

"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!" -- Saint John Chrysostom

+++

With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia (Ministry)
The sinner and unworthy servant of God

+Father George