1. Essays & Reflections: "Simone Weil and Homer: A Reflection on Her Essay, 'The Iliad, or the Poem of Force'" by David Beardsley
The New Moot, an EDI thinking-reading-writing group here in Wichita, recently read Simone Weil’s essay on the Iliad. I’ll post a few of our essays next week. But for today, on this western Good Friday, Beardsley’s reflection on the Iliad and the Odyssey is fitting. He suggests that both poems work together to offer "a complete quest myth" in which the ego journeys outward toward glory and force and then returns to conquer "not the ‘enemy,’ but oneself." He next observes the invocation of the Odyssey by Plotinus in his work The Enneads:
For Odysseus is surely a parable to us when he commands the flight from the sorceries of Circe or Calypso – not content to linger for all the pleasure offered to his eyes and all the delight of sense filling his days. … This is not a journey for the feet; … you must close the eyes and call instead upon another vision which is to be waked within you, a vision, the birth-right of all, which few turn to use. ~The Enneads
1.6.8
Beardsley concludes:
This inner vision leads ultimately to the opposite of force. We become instead drunk on universal love; … It is a lesson that needs to be learned over and over, until we realize that nothing can be resolved by the use of force.
2. Essays & Reflections: "The Suffering of the Impassible God" by Jeff Reimer
On this Holy Friday we worship the Son of God, He who hung the earth upon the waters and today hangs upon the cross. This poses an important theological question: Does God suffer? In his review essay of Paul Gavrilyuk’s book The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought, Reimer answers:
Well, yes and no. Literally. Cyril of Alexandria, who articulated the doctrine in its most fleshed out form, used the formula "the impassible God suffered" in Jesus Christ as his theological crux in his debates with the Nestorians. Any attempt to resolve this paradox ultimately results in heresy.
The answer beyond that is that Jesus Christ suffered in His human nature, but not in His divine nature. His divine nature was involved in the sufferings of Jesus, because Jesus’s human and divine natures were, after all, inseparably joined. But in suffering, Jesus did not merely identify with human suffering but overcame it through His divinity. A God who merely identifies with human suffering isn’t capable of saving us from it.
3. Essays & Reflections: "God’s Impassible Suffering in the Flesh" by Paul L. Gavrilyuk
Gavrilyuk opens with a beautiful Orthodox hymn for Good Friday:
Today He who hung the earth upon the waters is hung upon the cross.
He who is king of the angels is arrayed in a crown of thorns.
He who wraps the heaven in clouds is wrapped in the purple mockery.
He who in Jordan set Adam free receives blows upon His face.
The bridegroom of the Church is transfixed with nails.
After observing that this "hymn draws a sharp and deliberate contrast between the divine subject, identified as the Creator of the world, and the characteristically human experience of humiliation, mockery, crucifixion, and death that the subject is made to endure," Gavrilyuk notes that the same point is emphasized throughout the Lenten Triodion
(the Orthodox Church’s service book for Lent), as it also is in the Apostolic Constitutions, in Church Fathers like St. Melito of Sardis and St. Ephraim the Syrian, and in the famous Vexilla Regis
(commonly sung in the Roman Catholic Church on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross and during Lent). Gavrilyuk finds a point of unity for all Christians in our liturgical reflections on the suffering and death of God in the incarnation:
Both Vexilla Regis and Byzantine hymns heighten the drama of Christ’s death by reminding worshippers that the Crucified One is God incarnate, and that by enduring death He has paradoxically abolished death. Other notable parallels may be found in the libretto of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and in Charles Wesley’ hymn "O Love Divine What Hast Thou Done!" It is remarkable that despite their considerable cultural and theological differences, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and Methodists pray with a united voice, especially when they lift up their eyes to the Crucified God. Even if today the theologians may disagree on how to understand God’s in suffering, the prospect of unity is open in the Church’s lex orandi.
4. (More) Books: Does God Suffer?
by Thomas G. Weinandy
5. Poetry: Three Poems for Good Friday
Click here for "The Everlasting Mercy" by John Masefield, "The Dream of the Rood" (8th century Anglo-Saxon poem), and "Good Friday" by Christina Rossetti.
6. Bible:
Is. 66:10-24, Gen. 49:33-50:26, Prov. 31:8-31.
Online here.
7. Liturgy:
A Guide to Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion
8. Word from the Fathers:
"What Was This Sight?" by St Ignatius Brianchaninov
What was this sight, which brought the onlookers to total bewilderment? What was this sight, which sealed the lips of the onlookers with silence, and yet struck their souls? They came as to a spectacle, just to satisfy their curiosity; they left the scene beating their breasts, carrying away a horrifying astonishment… What was this sight?
Not only did people look at this sight—the angels of God also looked upon it with terror and the deepest awe; their attention was no longer drawn to heavenly objects—their gaze was turned and riveted to the scene unfolding on the earth. The sun saw something it had never seen before, and, unable to bear what it saw, hid its rays like a man shutting his eyes against an unbearable sight; it cloaked itself in deep darkness, expressing with this dark cloak a sorrow so bitter—as bitter as death. The earth quaked and trembled beneath the event taking place upon it. The Old Testament Church rent its magnificent veil—that is how those experiencing an irrevocable calamity rack themselves, not sparing their most precious garments. All those who came to this sight, beholding the things which were done, smote their breasts, and returned (Lk. 23:48)… What was this sight?
It was the sight we now commemorate in the present Church service, and behold in the sacred Image before our eyes. The sight was the Son of God, Who came down from the heavens, became man for the salvation of the human race, and was mocked and scourged by men.
May my brothers and sisters in the West have a blessed Good Friday and Saturday and a joyful celebration of our Lord’s third-day resurrection in your homes this weekend, and may my eastern brothers and sisters rejoice in Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday as we complete our preparations for Holy Week.
In Christ,
Erin "John" Doom
P.S. According to Giulio Fanti, teacher of mechanical and thermal measurements at the University of Padua, "This statue is the three-dimensional representation in actual size of the Man of the Shroud, created following the precise measurements taken from the cloth in which the body of Christ was wrapped after the crucifixion."
See the 3-D statue here.
And tomorrow at 10 am (Central Standard Time in the U.S.), Christians are "invited to pray virtually before the Turin Shroud on Holy Saturday as the world struggles to contain the coronavirus pandemic, Church officials have said. // The Shroud, which bears the image of a crucified man and has been venerated for centuries as Christ’s burial cloth, will be displayed via livestream at 5pm local time April 11."
Learn more here.
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