The center of Orthodox piety

I have been thinking about Orthodox basics lately. My mind has roamed from liturgics through catechism through living out the Orthodox Christian life in a practical way (orthopraxy) through Holy Scripture, the Ecumenical Councils, and Holy Tradition (orthodoxy). In fact, I began to realize that my mind has not really been roaming through basics as much as it has simply been flittering about without focus or direction.

What are Orthodox basics? I decided to reword that question in my mind to ask myself, “What is our most basic Orthodox stance?” Once I asked the question that way, I found that the answer was easy. Let me quote from one of the webpages of the OCA (Orthodox Church in America) about the Church Year.

. . . the real liturgical center of the annual cycle of Orthodox worship is the feast of the Resurrection of Christ. All elements of Orthodox liturgical piety point to and flow from Easter, the celebration of the New Christian Passover.

I can simplify that to say that everything we do or think or say in Orthodoxy points to Our Lord Jesus Christ. I live in the Deep South of the USA. Here it is common to hear people talking about, “Jesus.” You can hear preachers on the radio talking about, “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” And, they are right; we Orthodox would agree with them! Mind you, we would not bandy about Our Lord’s name quite as freely, nor would we agree with much of their theology. But, on this we would agree. We are all about Jesus, his Incarnation and his Resurrection. We are, indeed, “Jesus People” and we constantly point to Pascha and the great victory that Our Lord Jesus Christ won over the powers of darkness, over the world, the flesh, and the devil. When we talk about being faithful to deliver what we have received (Holy Tradition), we remember that Saint Paul wrote, “For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.’” Just like the Jews were/are the people of the Passover, so are we the People of Pascha, the people of the Resurrection. And the One who resurrected is Jesus Christ, Our Lord. That is our most basic center.

Every feast in the Orthodox Church, major or minor, points to and flows from the Feast of the Resurrection of Christ. By the way, that also explains why the saints on our icons are pictured in glory and never in suffering. They are pictures in their resurrection glory because even our icons point to Pascha and the Resurrection. So, when the Church celebrates the Feast of the Nativity of Mary the Theotokos, she is celebrating the feast of the birth of the one who gave birth to HE WHO RESURRECTED FROM THE DEAD. And, when she celebrates the minor feast of a saint, she is celebrating the life of one who lived their life IN THE HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION. The hymnody within each of the major and minor feasts always points to Pascha and the Resurrection, and when the intercession of a saint is requested it is because the HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION IS SO SURE that we can know that the saint is in the presence of Our Lord.

Imagine a galaxy with its myriads of planets rotating about its center. Now imagine that galaxy as a picture of the Church both here and in Resurrection glory. Imagine that at the center there is a person, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and you will have a picture in your mind of our most basic Orthodoxy. At this point, you might ask me that you thought that we are Trinitarian, and so we are. We are deeply Trinitarian to the point that we sign ourselves with the Cross in patterns of three; the troparia of feasts are often repeated three times; we bow before the throne as we sing the Thrice-Holy Hymn. But, look at our Divine Liturgy, most particularly at the doxologies that the bishop (or priest) chants at the end of our prayers and you will see how often they praise the Trinity THROUGH Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is not surprising, since Our Lord himself said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).

Finally, in the 15th Homily of Saint John Chrysostom on the First Epistle of Saint Paul to Saint Timothy, Chrysostom imagines Christ speaking to us in these words:

“But what shall I say? It is not in this way only that I have shown my love to you, but also by what I have suffered. For you I was spit upon, I was scourged. I emptied myself of glory, I left my Father and came to you, who hate me, and turn from me, and are loath to hear my name. I pursued you, I ran after you, that I might overtake you. I united and joined you to myself, “eat me, drink me,” I said. In heaven above I hold you, and on earth below I embrace you. Is it not enough for you that I have your pledge of salvation in heaven? Does this not satisfy your desire? I again descended on earth (through the Eucharist): I not only am mingled with you, I am entwined in you. I am eaten, broken into tiny particles, that the fusion, intermingling, and union may be more complete. Things united remain yet (sometimes) in their own limits, but I am interwoven with you. I would have nothing separating us. I will that we both be one”.

Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the Feast (1 Corinthians 5:7-8).