Believing His Passion was Voluntary
The month of August has arrived. While the summer days of 2022 seemed slow to arrive in the Central Atlantic region, now we all have experienced the heat of July, and this first week of August has not seemed unlike the August days I know for this region. Most family vacations have either happened or are happening. Lazy days of summer are turning to the realization that the expectations of another school year (as teacher or student) hang like the dewy haze of the August morning. The seasons of life continue.
As followers of Jesus Christ, confessing Him to be Lord and Savior in an Orthodox manner, August brings days of preparation through self-denial. We are preparing to remember and confess that Mary is truly the “Mother of God,” affirming what is Christological and not Mariological alone. We know her to be born from the love and normal conception of parents (known in Holy Tradition as Joachim and Anna). She possessed our entire humanity, the fallen part as well. By her saying “so be it” to God through the visitation of the messenger, Gabriel, she participated in our salvation by being the daughter of Eve in whom the fullness of Divinity was knit to the fullness of our humanity. By The One who she bore bearing our flesh, our humanity bears the potential for being born into the New Life that is of Christ through Holy Baptism. She died and joined her son and God, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the resurrection that we all hope for and await to be accomplished in God’s time.
This feast of Mary, her death, or as has come to be known by the way we now see death, “falling asleep,” Dormition, occurs on August 15. It is prepared by fourteen days of self denial through fasting, most of those days taking on a vegan discipline.
Within those days and amidst the laziness of summer, or amidst the scurry for school cloths and supplies, or while the last chance for a vacation is captured, a Great Feast of the Lord occurs. It falls on the 6th day of August, and it is the Feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh. The day is the least observed by many Christians. It is a date, however, that is shared among the Christian traditions and not only the Orthodox. It is based on the accounts from the Holy Evangelists. It bears a link to the lunar calendar and the natural seasons of the year that is called “First Fruits.” In villages the revelry associated with the blessing of the grapes harvested for the new vintage will seem to overshadow the glory of the splendor of the not created Light that was manifest and shown forth from the body and raiment of Christ. The disciples Peter, James, and John, beheld this manifestation of the Trinity as their Master was transfigured before them.
This event stands with the other Theophanies or manifestations of the Holy Trinity within the Gospel narratives. Such manifectation brought witnessess of this teaching to understand the Theanthropos [God-man], as the manifestation of the Word of God in the flesh, Jesus Christ. These events emboldened normative Christology to defend the understanding and profession of the incarnate Christ bearing Divine and human natures within a singular person. This confession took its place among other stories that already anticipated such a manifestation. Reading The Apology of St. Justin the Philosopher, or comparative treatises from Irenaeus of Lyons, or Athanasius of Alexandria, will provide context for the normative understanding of such previous yearnings for deliverance from the bonds of death, eternal separation from God, the wages of sin. Such yearning is fulfilled in the Christ.
In addition, those who witnessed this manifestation of power and authority beyond explanation were given the basis upon which to contemplate His arrest, the scourging, the sentencing before Pilate to death, His Crucifixion, His Burial, and His Resurrection. As Theanthropos, both the humanity and divinity of Christ endured these things, even to death. For some, it remains impossible to adopt or be subject to belief that would accept this degree of divine condescension. Nevertheless, this is what the Church subject to the Holy Councils believes and preserves. The Christ before Pilate, the “suffering servant,” was the same one transfigured in glory on Mt. Tabor. the Orthodox Faith affirms that the divine nature and human nature accomplishes a voluntary suffering, a pouring out of Himself through this suffering. This is an affirmation of both the degree to which He was not subject to Pilate, but subjected Himself to the suffering that Pilate was empowered to inflict.
The God poured out for us in such a way provides us with the example for how we might pour out ourselves when confronted with the allurement of our senses and self importance. Like Eve with Adam, we can also choose our own way to be like God (the offer made by satan), and fall short in miserable failure. Or, we can choose to be obedient to the command to be like God, emulating His likeness, not our fallen self serving passions. God has chosen voluntarily to suffer for our sake. His disciples knew this by witnessing His glory radiant from a transfigured body, and witnessing the manifestation of the Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity.
Remembering this event, participating in it through remembrance, we are reminded of the teaching of the Trinity, and the teaching of the two natures of the Son of God incarnate. We also are confronted with the teaching that the incarnate God-man is an example of the self-emptying, poured out offering that is possible when the human will chooses to be subject to the divine will. This is something that must be worked out in us, creatures of flesh bearing the image and attaining to the likeness of God, the Creator. Our flesh, our humanity, must also voluntarily be subject to His divinity, Whose image we bear, so that we might be born into new life, the fullness of the divine intention.
