11. The Passions

The manifestation of death on the human person: Becoming Like Animals and Struggle with the Passions

Note from Fr. Symeon:

Our first parents, Adam and Eve, naturally followed the will of God. Although they possessed free will, choosing to not follow the Divine Will was completely against their nature as human beings created in God’s Image. After the first sin, the soul became afflicted with passions. The passions may be seen as unnatural inclination to be eradicated, like a tumor. The passions may also be seen as corruptions of the natural movements of the soul which must be transformed and healed. Either way, being free from the influence passions is called dispassion.

The word passion may also be applied specifically to one who has become “enslaved to a passions” or “has a passion,” what may be understood as an addiction. If a person continues to follow a passion that leads to sin, then falling into that particular sin when faced with the temptation becomes the seemingly natural, default response. The stages of sin that lead to passion may be defined as provocation through the thoughts (initial temptation), joining (entertaining the temptation in the thoughts), assent (agreeing with the evil thought by deciding to commit the sin), captivity (the person allows the tempting thought to control his actions), action (the sin, already committed in the mind, is committed with the body), passion.

See the glossary in the Philakalia(London: Faber and Faber, 1984) , The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John Climacus, the glossary of A Night in the Desert of the Holy Mountain (Birth of the Theotokos Monastery, 1991) by Met. Hierotheos, and chapters 9-10 in The Mountain of Silence: A Search for Orthodox Spirituality (New York, NY: Doubleday, 2001) by Kyriacos Markides.

Selections from St. Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on Paradise:

“David wept for Adam

at how he fell

from that royal abode

to the abode of wild animals.

Because he went astray through a beast

he became like the beasts:

He ate, together with them

as a result of the curse,

grass and roots,

and he died, becoming their peer.

Blessed is He who set him apart

from the wild animals again.” (Hymn XIII.5)

St. Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on Paradise, trans. by Sebastian Brock (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990), 170.

Selections from St. Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on Paradise:

“In His justice He gave
abundant comfort to the animals;
they do not feel shame for adultery,
nor guilt for stealing;
without being ashamed
they pursue every comfort they encounter,
for they are above
care and shame;
the satisfaction of their desires
is sufficient to please them.
Because they have no resurrection,
neither are they subject to blame.

The fool, who is unwilling to realize
his honorable state
prefers to become just an animal,
rather than a man,
so that, without incurring judgment,
he may serve naught but his lusts.
But had there been sown in animals
just a little
of the sense of discernment,
then long ago would the wild asses have lamented
and wept at their not
having been human.” (Hymn XII, 19-20)

St. Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on Paradise, trans. by Sebastian Brock (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1990), 167-168.

Selections from St. Basil the Great, “On the Origin of Humanity”:

“’And let them rule the wild beasts.’ You rule every wild beasts. So, you say, what beasts do I have in myself? Indeed you have thousands, and a great crowd of beats in yourself. And do not consider this statement to be an outrage. Anger is a little beasts when it barks in the heart. Is it not wilder than every dog? Is not the deceit lucking in a deceitful soul harder to tame than every lurking bear? Is not hypocrisy a beast? Is not one sharp in insults a scorpion? Is not one who in hiding strikes out in revenge more dangerous than a viper? Is the greedy person not a rapacious wolf? What kind of beast is not in us? Is not the one mad for women a raging horse? For Scripture says, ‘They have become horses mad for women, each neighing toward his neighbor’s wife’ [Jer. 5.8]. It does not say he spoke to woman, but he neighed. It transferred him to that nature of those without reason, because of passion with which he associated himself. Therefore there are many beasts within us.

Have you truly become ruler of beasts if you rule those outside but leave those within ungoverned? Will you rule truly in ruling the lion by your reason and despising its roar, but gnashing your teeth and emitting inarticulate sounds as the anger within all at once strives to attack? What is more dangerous than this, when a human being is ruled by passion, when anger pushes reason aside, not consenting to remain within, and takes upon itself governance of the soul?

You are indeed created ruler, ruler of passions, ruler of beasts, ruler of creeping things, ruler of winged creatures. Do not have airy thoughts, nor be light and unstable in mind. You were appointed to rule winged things. You are out of place if you strike down external flying things, yourself being light and lofty. Do not be filled with smoke, do not be flighty, do not think things greater than human nature; when complimented, do not go above nature, do not glorify yourself, do not consider yourself to be something great. For thus you will be an unstable winged creature, carried about this way and that by an unsteady nature.

Rule the thoughts in yourself, that you may become ruler of all beings. Thus the rule we have been given over animals trains us to rule the things belonging to ourselves. For it is misplaced to be governed at home and govern natures, to be ruled within by prostitute and be mayor of the city by public consent. It is necessary that household affairs be managed well and that good order within be arranged, and thus to received authority over others. Since the word of Scripture will be turned back at you by those you rule if your household affairs are disorderly and disorganized, namely ‘Physician, heal yourself’ [Lk. 4.23], let us heal ourselves first.”

St Basil the Great, First Homily: “On the Origin of Humanity, Discourse 1: On That Which Is According to the Image,” section 19, On the Human Condition, trans. by Nonna Verna Harrison, Popular Patristics Series (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 2005), 46-47.

Selections from St. Maximos the Confessor, “The Four Hundred Chapters on Love”:

“It is not food which is evil but gluttony, not the begetting of children but fornication, not possessions but greed, not reputation but vainglory. And if this is so, there is nothing evil in creatures except misuse, which stems from the mind’s negligence in its natural cultivation.”

“Self-love is the passionate and irrational affection for the body, to which is opposed love and self-mastery. The one who has self-love has all the passions.”

St. Maximus the Confessor, “The Four Hundred Chapters on Love,”cent. 3 chs. 4, 8, Selected Writings, trans. by George Berthold, The Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, NY: Paulist Press, 1985), 62, 68.

12. What Will I Do?

Selection from Elder Sophrony, “The Imagination and the Ascetic Struggle against its Various Aspects”:

“Christian life is a harmony between two wills, the Divine and the human. God can appear to all men, whatever their course, at every moment in time and in all places. But, Himself beyond constraint, He never invades the freedom of man, His image, and if the creature uses his freedom to turn inwards in self-love, or to regard himself as the uncreated divine principle, the door will be closed to the action of Divine grace, whatever heights of contemplation may be reached.”

Archimandrite Sophrony, St. Silouan the Athonite, trans. by Rosemary Edmons (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1991), 163.

Priest Symeon Kees, The Problem and Healing of the Human Will:

“As Christ has two wills, human and divine, that are not in opposition (since the perfect human will is always in harmony with the Divine Will), neither should our human will be opposed by unnatural, unhealthy considerations about what to do in our minds that can cause us to choose to commit sinful actions.[1] In our fallen state, we are afflicted with a defect in the will so, unlike Adam before the Fall, we do not naturally know what is good for us and naturally do what is good for us in harmony with God’s will. (Since God is the source of Life, then remaining in the stream of the Divine Will means remaining on the Way that leads to Life.) This defect in the fallen human will is called the gnomie.

The therapy required for healing the gnomie and restoring the human will to its natural state is asceticism: Like physical therapy, the healing of an aspect of the person requires exercising that which is in the process of healing. St. Maximos wrote,

Asceticism, and the toils that go with it, was devised simply in order to ward off deception, which established itself through sensory perception. It is not [as if] the virtues have been newly introduced from outside, for they inhere in us from creation, as hath already been said. Therefore, when deception is completely expelled, the soul immediately exhibits the splendour of its natural virtue.[2]

St. Maximos explained that the unnatural ways of thinking, feeling, and acting are eliminated through our experience of the Orthodox life. To use a medical analogy, good health is restored when its opposite, sickness, is eliminated. St. Maximos noted several natural positives that emerge when its negative opposite is removed: A person who is not foolish is intelligent. One who is not a coward is brave. A man who is not intemperate is temperate.[3] He who is not unrighteous is righteous. ‘Reason, in a natural state, is prudence; the faculty of judgment, in a natural state, is justice; anger, is courage; desire, temperance.’ St. Maximos summarized his point by stating that ‘with the removal of things that are contrary to nature only the things proper to nature are manifest. Just as when rust is removed the natural clarity and glint of iron [is manifest].’[4]

If humans were guided by the natural will, we could freely choose among all the options in life that lead to good (and, therefore, to God Himself) without the possibility of sinning. We would not have to make moral choices between good and evil, since we would be inclined to do the good naturally.[5] We would only have to choose among the various good options in life without consideration of evil ones. Since each of us has a gnomic will, though, we have to personally choose to do good and reject the evil that harms the soul. Through the life of the Church, however, we can truly know the good and experience the healing of the personal will so that we act according to both the natural will and the divine Will in true human freedom.”

This section is primarily derived from a presentation by Priest Symeon Kees, “The Human Will & the Spiritual Life,” 2007. Quotes from St. Maximos the Confessor, The Disputation with Pyrrhus of Our Father Among the Saints Maximus the Confessor, trans. by Joseph P. Farrell (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, n.d.), xxxix, 33-34, 221.

[1] Disputation with Pyrrhus, xxxiv.

[2] Disputation with Pyrrhus, 33.

[3] Disputation with Pyrrhus, 33-34.

[4] Disputation with Pyrrhus, 34.

[5] Disputation with Pyrrhus, 221.

13. Our Summary Diagnosis

14. The Holy Incarnation

Holy Scripture: John 1.1-5, 10-14, Luke 2.1-20; Matthew 1.18-12

Selection from the Holy Gospel According to St. John:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it…. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.”

Holy Gospel According to John 1.1-5, 10-14 (RSV)

Selection from St. Ignatius of Antioch, “Letter to the Ephesians”

“There is only one Physician,
who is both flesh and spirit,
born and unborn,
God in man,
true life in death,
both from Mary and from God,
first subject to suffering

and then beyond it,
Jesus Christ our Lord.”

St. Ignatius, “Letter to the Ephesians,” The Apostolic Fathers, ed. by Jack N. Sparks, (Minneapolis, MN: Light and Life, 1978), 79-80.

Selection from St. Athanasius the Great, On the Incarnation:

“The Word was not hedged in by His body, nor did His presence in the body prevent His being present elsewhere as well. When He moved His body He did not cease also to direct the universe by His Mind and might. No. The marvelous truth is, that being the Word, so far from being Himself contained by anything, He actually contained all things Himself. In creation He is present everywhere, yet is distinct in being from it; ordering, directing, giving life to all, containing all, yet is He Himself the Uncontained, existing solely in His Father…. Existing in a human body, to which He Himself gives life, He is still Source of life to all the universe, present in every part of it, yet outside the whole….”

St. Athanasius the Great, On the Incarnation (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press), 1998), 45.

Selection from St. Athanasius the Great, On the Incarnation:

“Some may then ask, why did He not manifest Himself by means of other and nobler parts of creation, and use some nobler instrument, such as sun or moon or stars or fire or air, instead of mere man? The answer is this. The Lord did not come to make a display. He came to heal and to teach suffering men. For one who wanted to make a display the thing would have been just to appear and dazzle the beholder. But for Him Who came to heal and to teach the way was not merely to dwell here, but to put Himself at the disposal of those who need Him….”

St. Athanasius the Great, On the Incarnation (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press), 1998), 78.

Selection from St. Athanasius the Great, On the Incarnation:

“What, then, was God to do? What else could He possibly do, being God, but renew His image in mankind, so that through it men might once more come to know Him? And how could this be done save be the coming of the very Image Himself, our Saviour Jesus Christ? Men could not have done it, for they are only made after [or according to] the Image; nor could angels have done it, for they are not the images of God. The Word of God came in His own Person, because it was He alone, the Image of the Father, Who could recreate man made after the Image.

In order to effect this re-creation, however, He had first to do away with death and corruption. Therefore He assumed a human body, in order that in it death might once for all be destroyed, and that men might be renewed according to the Image.”

St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, section 13, trans. by a religious of C.S.M.V. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), 40-41.

Selection from St. Athanasius the Great, On the Incarnation:

“As then, he who desires to see God Who by nature is invisible and not to be beheld, may yet perceive and know Him through His works, so too let him who does not see Christ with his understanding at least consider Him in His bodily works and test whether they be of man or God. If they be of man, then let him scoff; but if they be of God, let him not mock at things which are no fit subject for scorn, but rather let him recognise the fact and marvel that things divine have been revealed to us by such humble means, that through death deathlessness has been made known to us, and through the Incarnation of the Word the Mind whence all things proceed has been declared, and its Agent and Ordainer, the Word of God Himself. He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God.”

“In short, such and so many are the Saviour’s achievements that follow from His Incarnation, that to try to number them is like gazing at the open sea and trying to count the waves. One cannot see all the waves with one’s eyes, for when one tries to do so those that are following on baffle one’s senses. Even so, when one wants to take in all the achievements of Christ in the body, one cannot do so, even by reckoning them up, for the things that transcend one’s thought are always more than those one thinks that one has grasped.”

St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, section 54, trans. by a religious of C.S.M.V. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), 92-93.

Selection from St. Cyril of Jerusalem, “Catechetical Lectures,” Lecture XII:

“Hearers of the Holy Gospels, let us listen to John the Divine. For he who said, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God , went on to say, and the Word was made flesh. For neither is it holy to worship the mere man, nor religious to say that He is God only without the Manhood. For if Christ is God, as indeed He is, but took not human nature upon Him, we are strangers to salvation. Let us then worship Him as God, but believe that He also was made Man. For neither is there any profit in calling Him man without Godhead nor any salvation in refusing to confess the Manhood together with the Godhead. Let us confess the presence of Him who is both King and Physician. For Jesus the King when about to become our Physician, girded Himself with the linen of humanity, and healed that which was sick. The perfect Teacher of babes became a babe among babes, that He might give wisdom to the foolish. The Bread of heaven came down on earth that He might feed the hungry.”

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, “Catechetical Lectures,” Lecture XII, NPNF, Vol. 7, Second Series, p. 72.

Selection from St. Gregory the Theologian, “To Cledonius the Priest Against Apollinarius”:

“If anyone has put his trust in Him as a Man without a human mind, he is really bereft of man, and quite unworthy of salvation. For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved. If only half Adam fell, then that which Christ assumes and saves may be half also; but if the whole of his nature fell, it must be united to the whole nature of Him that was begotten, and so be saved as a whole…. Keep then the whole man, and mingle Godhead therewith, that you may benefit me in my completeness.”

* Note: In this passage, St. Gregory is defending the Orthodox Faith against the heretical opinion of Apollinarius that Christ did not take on a human mind when he became human. St. Gregory notes that Christ healed our whole human nature by taking on our whole human nature in the womb of the Virgin, joining our entire human nature to His Divine nature. Through Christ, the whole person, body and soul, may be healed and transformed.

St. Gregory the Theologian, “To Cledonius the Priest Against Apollinarius,” NPNF, Second Series, Vol. 7, p. 440.

St. Gregory the Theologian, Oration XXXVIII, “On the Theophany, or Birthday of Christ”:

“Christ is born, glorify ye Him. Christ from heaven, go ye out to meet Him. Christ on earth; be ye exalted. Sing unto the Lord all the whole earth; and that I may join both in one word, Let theheavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad, for Him Who is of heaven and then of earth. Christ in the flesh, rejoice with trembling and with joy; with trembling because of your sins, with joy because of your hope. Christ of a Virgin; O ye Matrons live as Virgins, that ye may be Mothers of Christ. Who doth not worship Him That is from the beginning? Who doth not glorify Him That is the Last?”

“For God was manifested to man by birth. On the one hand Being, and eternally Being, of the Eternal Being, above cause and word, for there was no word before The Word; and on the other hand for our sakes also Becoming, that He Who gives us our being might also give us our Well-being, or rather might restore us by His Incarnation, when we had by wickedness fallen from wellbeing. The name Theophany is given to it in reference to the Manifestation, and that of Birthday in respect of His Birth.
This is our present Festival; it is this which we are celebrating to-day, the Coming of God to Man, that we might go forth, or rather (for this is the more proper expression) that we might go back to God–that putting off the old man, we might put on the New; and that as we died in Adam, so we might live in Christ, being born with Christ and crucified with Him and buried with Him and rising with Him. For I must undergo the beautiful conversion, and as the painful succeeded the more blissful, so must the more blissful come out of the painful. For where sin abounded Grace did much more abound; and if a taste condemned us, how much more doth the Passion of Christ justify us? Therefore let us keep the Feast, not after the manner of a heathen festival, but after a godly sort; not after the way of the world, but in a fashion above the world; not as our own but as belonging to Him Who is ours, or rather as our Master’s; not as of weakness, but as of healing; not as of creation, but of re-creation.”

St. Gregory the Theologian, Oration XXXVIII, “On the Theophany, or Birthday of Christ,” NPNF, Second Series, Vo. 7.

Selection from “The Definition of Faith of the Council of Chalcedon” held in AD 451:

“Following the holy Fathers we teach with one voice that the Son [of God] and our Lord Jesus Christ is to be confessed as one and the same [Person], that he is perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood, very God and very man, of a reasonable soul and [human] body consisting, consubstantial with the Father as touching his Godhead, and consubstantial with us as touching his manhood; made in all things like unto us, sin only excepted; begotten of his Father before the worlds according to his Godhead; but in these last days for us men and for our salvation born [into the world] of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God according to his manhood. This one and the same Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son [of God] must be confessed to be in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably [united], and that without the distinction of natures being taken away by such union, but rather the peculiar property of each nature being preserved and being united in one Person and subsistence, not separated or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son and only-begotten, God the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Prophets of old time have spoken concerning him, and as the Lord Jesus Christ hath taught us, and as the Creed of the Fathers hath delivered to us.”

Selection from St. John Damascene, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, summarizing the story of salvation:

Man, then, was thus snared by the assault of the arch-fiend, and broke his Creator’s command, and was stripped of grace and put off his confidence with God, and covered himself with the asperities of a toilsome life (for this is the meaning of the fig-leaves); and was clothed about with death, that is, mortality and the grossness of flesh (for this is what the garment of skins signifies); and was banished from Paradise by God’s just judgment, and condemned to death, and made subject to corruption. Yet, notwithstanding all this, in His pity, God, Who gave him his being, and Who in His graciousness bestowed on him a life of happiness, did not disregard man. But He first trained him in many ways and called him back, by groans and trembling, by the deluge of water, and the utter destruction of almost the whole race, by confusion and diversity of tongues, by the rule of angels, by the burning of cities, by figurative manifestations of God, by wars and victories and defeats, by signs and wonders, by manifold faculties, by the law and the prophets: for by all these means God earnestly strove to emancipate man from the wide-spread and enslaving bonds of sin, which had made life such a mass of iniquity, and to effect man’s return to a life of happiness. For it was sin that brought death like a wild and savage beast into the world to the ruin of the human life. But it behoved the Redeemer to be without sin, and not made liable through sin to death, and further, that His nature should be strengthened and renewed, and trained by labour and taught the way of virtue which leads away from corruption to the life eternal and, in the end, is revealed the mighty ocean of love to man that is about Him. For the very Creator and Lord Himself undertakes a struggle in behalf of the work of His own hands, and learns by toil to become Master. And since the enemy snares man by the hope of Godhead, he himself is snared in turn by the screen of flesh, and so are shown at once the goodness and wisdom, the justice and might of God. God’s goodness is revealed in that He did not disregard the frailty of His own handiwork, but was moved with compassion for him in his fall, and stretched forth His hand to him: and His justice in that when man was overcome He did not make another victorious over the tyrant, nor did He snatch man by might from death, but in His goodness and justice He made him, who had become through his sins the slave of death, himself once more conqueror and rescued like by like, most difficult though it seemed: and His wisdom is seen in His devising the most fitting solution of the difficulty. For by the good pleasure of our God and Father, the Only-begotten Son and Word of God and God, Who is in the bosom of the God and Father, of like essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit, Who was before the ages, Who is without beginning and was in the beginning, Who is in the presence of the God and Father, and is God and made in the form of God, bent the heavens and descended to earth: that is to say, He humbled without humiliation His lofty station which yet could not be humbled, and condescends to His servants, with a condescension ineffable and incomprehensible: (for that is what the descent signifies). And God being perfect becomes perfect man, and brings to perfection the newest of all new things, the only new thing under the Sun, through which the boundless might of God is manifested. For what greater thing is there, than that God should become Man? And the Word became flesh without being changed, of the Holy Spirit, and Mary the holy and ever-virgin one, the mother of God. And He acts as mediator between God and man, He the only lover of man conceived in the Virgin’s chaste womb without will or desire, or any connection with man or pleasurable generation, but through the Holy Spirit and the first offspring of Adam. And He becomes obedient to the Father Who is like unto us, and finds a remedy for our disobedience in what He had assumed from us, and became a pattern of obedience to us without which it is not possible to obtain salvation.”[1]

St. John Damascene, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, Bk. III, Ch. 1, NPNF, Second Series, Vol. 9.

[1] Telling the story of salvation is at the heart of Apostolic preaching, as evident in the Acts of the Apostles. See also St. Symeon the New Theologian, “Tenth Ethical Discourse” and St. Irenaeus, On the Apostolic Preaching.

Selection from St. Gregory Palamas, On Christmas:

“For He who produced all earthly and heavenly things out of non-being, when He saw that His rational creatures were brought to nothing because of their desire for something greater (cf. Gen. 3:5), bestowed upon them Himself, than whom nothing is greater, and to whom nothing is equal or comes near to being equal, and offered Himself to be partaken of by those who so wished, in order that from that time forward we might exercise our desire for something better without risk, although in the beginning we fell into the ultimate danger on that account (cf. 1 Cor. 15:26), and in order that each of us, in desiring to become God, might not only be blameless, but also attain to our longing. In a mysterious way, He abolished that pretext for the original fall, which was the superiority and inferiority observable in beings and the resulting envy and treachery, as also the disputes, both open and concealed, which this caused. Because the author of evil did not want to be lower than any of the angels, but to be equal in excellence to the Creator Himself, he was the first to suffer the terrible fall before anyone else. Smitten by envy, he deceitfully attacked Adam and dragged him down to the abyss of Hades by means of the same desire. By so doing, he made Adam’s fall difficult to reverse, and it required God’s extraordinary presence, which has now been accomplished, to restore him.”

“The very Word of God from God emptied Himself in an indescribable way, came down from on high to the lowest state of man’s nature, and indissolubly linked it with Himself, and in humbling Himself and becoming poor like us, He raised on high the things below, or rather, He gathered both things into one, mingling humanity with divinity, and by so doing He taught everyone that humility is the road which leads upwards, setting forth today Himself as an example before men and holy angels alike.”

St. Gregory Palamas, “On Christmas,” The Saving Work of Christ: Sermons by Saint Gregory Palamas, Ed. by Christopher Veniamin (Waymart, PA:Mount Thabor Publishing, 2008), 3-4.

Troparion for the Forefeast of the Holy Nativity of Jesus Christ:

“Make ready, O Bethlehem for Eden hath been opened for all. Prepare, O Ephratha, for the Tree of Life hath blossomed forth in the cave from the Virgin. For her womb didst appear as a spiritual paradise in which is planted the divine Plant, whereof eating we shall live and not die as Adam. Christ shall be born, raising the image that fell of old.”

Troparion of the Nativity of Jesus Christ:

Thy Nativity, O Christ our God, has shone to the world the Light of wisdom! For by it, those who worshipped the stars, were taught by a Star to adore Thee, the Sun of Righteousness, and to know Thee, the Orient from on High. O Lord, glory to Thee!

Kontakion of the Nativity of Jesus Christ:

Today the Virgin gives birth to the Transcendent One, and the earth offers a cave to the Unapproachable One! Angels with shepherds glorify Him! The wise men journey with a star! Since for our sake the Eternal God was born as a Little Child!

Megalynarion of the Nativity of Jesus Christ:

“O my soul, magnify her who is more honorable
and who is more glorious than the heavenly hosts.
A mystery, I behold, which is strange and wondrous.
The cave is heaven and the Virgin is the throne of the Cherubim.
In the confines of the manger is laid the infinite Christ, our God,
whom we praise and magnify.”

Note from Father Symeon:

Without any change to His divine nature, Christ took on our human nature. From the moment of His Conception, Christ healed our human nature and deified it. In other words, by joining His divine nature to our human nature, Christ restored our human nature to the health of our first ancestors before they fell into death and, beyond that, attained for us what Adam and Eve never reached because of their disobedience: Perfection. Christ is the New Adam born of the New Eve. The old Adam caused death and chaos, but the New Adam brought Life and Peace. As the Divine Physician, Christ healed our human nature as Physician and Medicine. He has re-opened the Way to Paradise and to the Tree of Life so that we can live forever as healed human beings “like God.” Christ has also taught us the practical Way of Life that leads us to the fulness of our potential. You must choose to follow Christ’s Way yourself in order to personally participate in what Christ has already accomplished for our human nature.

15. The Holy Theophany

Holy Scripture: Matthew 3.13-17

Troparion for the Feast of Theophany:

“When Thou, O Lord, wast baptized in the Jordan, worship of the Trinity wast made manifest; for the voice of the Father bore witness to Thee, calling Thee His beloved Son. And the Spirit in the form of a dove confirmed the truth of His word. O Christ our God, Who hath appeared and enlightened the world, glory to Thee.”

16. Christ Heals the Sick

Holy Scripture: Luke 4.14-44

Selection from St. Cyril of Jerusalem, “Catechetical Lectures,” Lecture X:

“Jesus then means according to the Hebrew “Saviour,” but in the Greek tongue “The Healer;” since He is physician of souls and bodies, curer of spirits, curing the blind in body, and leading minds into light, healing the visibly lame, and guiding sinners’ steps to repentance, saying to the palsied, Sin no more, and, Take up thy bed and walk. For since the body was palsied for the sin of the soul, He ministered first to the soul that He might extend the healing to the body. If, therefore, any one is suffering in soul from sins, there is the Physician for him: and if any one here is of little faith, let him say to Him, Help Thou mine unbelief. If any is encompassed also with bodily ailments, let him not be faithless, but let him draw nigh; for to such diseases also Jesus ministers, and let him learn that Jesus is the Christ.”

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, “Catechetical Lectures,” Lecture X, NPNF, Vol. 7, Second Series, p. 61.

17. The Holy Transfiguration

Holy Scripture: Matthew 17.1-9; 1 Peter 1.1-18

Selection from St. Gregory Palamas, On the Transfiguration I”:

“Given that He was transfigured the Lord shone and displayed glory, splendor and light, and will come again as He was seen by His disciples on the mountain, does this mean He somehow took this light to Himself, and will have for ever something He did not have before? Perish the blasphemous thought!… He possessed the splendour of the divine nature hidden under His flesh. The light, then, is the light of the Godhead, and it is uncreated. According to the theologians, when Christ was transfigured He neither received anything different, nor was changed into anything different, but was revealed to His disciples as He was, opening their eyes and giving sight to the blind. Take note that eyes with natural vision are blind to that light. It is invisible, and those who behold it do so not simply with their bodily eyes, but with eyes transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

St. Gregory Palamas, “On the Transfiguration I,” The Saving Work of Christ, ed. by Christopher Veniamin (South Canaan, PA: Mount Thabor Publishing, 2008, 46.

Selection from St. Gregory Palamas, On the Transfiguration II”:

“Both Christ’s venerable body and His clothes were radiant with the same light, but not equally so. His face shone like the sun, but His clothes became bright through contact with His body, and in this way He showed us what those robes of glory will be like, which those who are near God will wear in the age to come, and what those garments of sinlessness were like, which Adam took off because of his transgression, appearing naked and ashamed (cf. Gen. 3:10). “The fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering,” says the divine Luke, regarding everything that happened as beyond comparison (Luke 9:29)….”

“Not only angels, but the saints among men are partakers in this glory and kingdom. But whereas the Father and Son with the divine Spirit have this glory and kingdom by nature, holy angels and men have them by grace, receiving radiance from that source.”

St. Gregory Palamas, “On the Transfiguration II,” The Saving Work of Christ, ed. by Christopher Veniamin (South Canaan, PA: Mount Thabor Publishing, 2008), 50, 54.

18. The Crucifixion of Christ

Holy Scripture: Matthew 27.32-66; John 19.16-42

Selection from Orthros on Holy Friday:

“Today He is suspended on a Tree

who suspended the earth over the waters.

A crown of thorns was placed on the head

of the King of angels.

He who wore a false purple robe

covered the heavens with clouds.

He was smitten who, in the Jordan, delivered Adam.

The Groom of the Church was fastened with nails

and the Son of the Virgin was pierced with a spear.

Thy suffering we adore, O Christ.

Make us to behold thy glorious Resurrection.”

Sung at the service of Orthros (Morning Prayer) on Holy Friday. “Orthros on Holy Friday (The Twelve Passion Gospels),” The Services of Great and Holy Week and Pascha (Englewood, NJ: Antiochian Archdiocese, 2006), p. 449.

Selection from the Festal Menaion, Service for the “Universal Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross:

“Hail! guide of the blind, physician of the sick and resurrection of all the dead. O precious Cross, thou hast lifted us up when we were fallen into mortality. Through thee corruption has been destroyed, and incorruption has flowered forth; we mortal men are made divine and the devil is utterly cast down…. We exalt Him who was lifted high upon thee, and we venerate thee, plenteously drawing forth from thee great mercy.”

The Festal Menaion, “Universal Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross,” trans. by Mother Mary and His Grace, Bishop KALLISTOS (Ware) (St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1998), 140.

** Note: The priest blesses people and things with his right hand, the fingers An Orthodox believer makes the Sign of the Cross, especially at the invocation of the Holy Trinity, with three fingers of the right hand together in honor of the Holy Trinity and two fingers folded in remembrance that Christ possesses two nature: divine nature and human nature. The sign is made downward and from right to left.

19. The Holy Resurrection of Jesus Christ

Holy Scripture: Matthew 28.1-15; Luke 24.1-49; John 20.1-18

Troparion of the Resurrection:

“Christ is Risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!”

Selection from St. John Chrysostom, “Paschal Homily”:

“He that was taken by death has annihilated it! He descended into hades and took hades captive! He embittered it when it tasted his flesh! And anticipating this Isaiah exclaimed, “Hades was embittered when it encountered thee in the lower regions.” It was embittered, for it was abolished! It was embittered, for it was mocked! It was embittered, for it was purged! It was embittered, for it was despoiled! It was embittered, for it was bound in chains!

It took a body, and face to face met God! It took earth and encountered heaven! It took what it was but crumbled before what it had not seen! “O death where is thy sting! O Hades, where is thy victory?”

Christ is risen, and you are overthrown! Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen! Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice! Christ is risen, and life reigns!”

“The Paschal Homily of our Father Among the Saints, John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople,” The Services of Great and Holy Week and Pascha (Englewood, NJ: Antiochian Archdiocese, 2006), p. 787-788.

20. The Holy Ascension & Future Return

Holy Scripture: Luke 24-50-52; Acts 1.1-11

Selection from St. Gregory Palamas, “On the Ascension of Christ”:

“Neither an angel nor a man, but the incarnate Lord Himself came and saved us, being made like us for our sake while remaining unchanged as God. In the same way as He came down, without changing place but condescending to us, so He returns once more, without moving as God, but enthroning on high our human nature which He had assumed. It was truly right that the first begotten human nature from the dead (Rev. 1:5) should be presented there to God, as firstfruits from the first crop of the whole race of men.”

St. Gregory Palamas, “On the Ascension of Christ I,” The Saving Work of Christ: Sermons by St. Gregory Palamas, ed. by Christopher Veniamin (Waymart, PA: Mount Thabor Press, 2008),113.

Holy Scripture:

The Return of Christ & Resurrection of the Dead Acts 1.9-11; 1 Thess. 4.13-5.11;1 Cor. 15

The Last Judgment Mat.35.31-46; Rev. 20.11-15

The Eternal Heavenly Kingdom Rev. 22-21

Selection from St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies:

“And to as many as continue in their love towards God, does He grant communion with Him. But communion with God is life and light, and the enjoyment of all the benefits which He has in store. But on as many as, according to their own choice, depart from God, He inflicts that separation from Himself which they have chosen of their own accord. But separation from God is death, and separation from light is darkness; and separation from God consists in the loss of all the benefits which He has in store. Those, therefore, who cast away by apostasy these forementioned things, being in fact destitute of all good, do experience every kind of punishment. God, however, does not punish them immediately of Himself, but that punishment falls upon them because they are destitute of all that is good. Now, good things are eternal and without end with God, and therefore the loss of these is also eternal and never-ending. It is in this matter just as occurs in the case of a flood of light: those who have blinded themselves, or have been blinded by others, are for ever deprived of the enjoyment of light. It is not, [however], that the light has inflicted upon them the penalty of blindness, but it is that the blindness itself has brought calamity upon them: and therefore the Lord declared, “He that believeth in Me is not condemned,” that is, is not separated from God, for he is united to God through faith. On the other hand, He says, ‘He that believeth not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God;’ that is, he separated himself from God of his own accord. ‘For this is the condemnation, that light is come into this world, and men have loved darkness rather than light. For every one who doeth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that he has wrought them in God.’

St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, Bk. 5, Ch. 27, ANF, Vol. 1; Fr. A. James Bernstein, Heaven & Hell: The Divine Fire of God’s Love (Ben Lomond, CA: Conciliar Media Ministries, 2009), 6.

Selection from St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily Twenty-Eight:

“I also maintain that those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love. Nay, what is so bitter and vehement as the torment of love? I mean that those who have become conscious that they have sinned against love suffer greater torment from this than from any fear of punishment. For the sorrow caused in the heart by sin against love is more poignant than any torment. It would be improper for a man to think that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of God. Love is the offspring of knowledge of the truth which, as is commonly confessed, is given to all. The power of love works in two ways: it torments sinners, even as happens here when a friend suffers from a friend; but it becomes a source of joy for those who have observed its duties. Thus I say that this is the torment of Gehenna: bitter regret. But love inebriates the souls of the sons of Heaven by its delectability”

St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily Twenty-Eight: “On the Vision of the Nature of Incorporeal Beings, in Questions and Answers” (Boston, MA: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1984), 141.