“Peace on earth to men of (God’s) good will”

I recently read this exchange in an interview with Metropolitan Hierotheos of Navpaktos, Greece, a disciple of the late Fr. John Romanides and one of the most important Orthodox figures of our time:

 

Question: What does the hymn that was chanted by the Angels at the time of the birth mean: "Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace to men of good pleasure"? What "peace" (ειρήνη) did the Angels mean here, and what does the word "good pleasure" (ευδοκία) mean?

Answer: The peace of which the angels sang at the birth of Christ is the union of the divine and human nature in the Person of Christ. Christ assumed human nature in His Person and deified it, by which all of human nature was brought peace from the consequences of the fall, and in this way every person was given the opportunity to participate in this peace, by living within the Church, with her sacramental and ascetic life. The Church is the "place" in which man experiences the love and peace of God.

The word good pleasure, according to Saint Nikodemos the Hagiorite, who used various patristic texts, such as Saint Maximus the Confessor, Saint John of Damascus and Saint Gregory Palamas, means that the reception of human nature by Christ was the original/prior will of God for the deification of humanity (according to the will of His good pleasure). The deification of man could not take place if there was not a hypostatic union of the divine and human natures, the uncreated and the created natures. However, the law through Moses, the words of the Prophets, etc. were imperfect (according to the will of concession) due to the fall, but were perfected through the incarnation of Christ. This is the difference between the will "according to good pleasure" (κατ' ευδοκίαν) and "according to concession" (κατά παραχώρησιν). The incarnation of Christ was the original plan of God, His good pleasure. What was introduced after the fall of Adam, was the Cross and death.

Let me break this down in plain English. God had a Plan A which was spoiled, and so He had to introduce a Plan B. This teaches us that God adapts His will to our actions.

Think of the Prophet Jonah. God told Jonah to tell the people of Nineveh that He was going to destroy their city: “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” (Jonah 3:4). This was Plan A. But then the Ninevites did something which led God to change His plan: they repented! Could God still have destroyed their city? Of course. He could do whatever He wanted. But He chose to respond to their repentance with His mercy. This was Plan B for the Ninevites. Now this made Jonah furious. “How dare God change His mind! (… and make me look like a fool!)” But change His mind He did. Don’t let anyone tell you that God never changes His mind. To claim otherwise is to make God smaller than He is. God is big enough to adapt to our choices, whether good or bad.

            This is a specific example of God introducing a Plan B that just affected a particular time and place, but at Nativity we focus on God’s plan for all of mankind. In the beginning, God had a Plan A for Adam and Eve. If they had been obedient, God would have become man and mankind would have been deified directly. But because Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they broke their relationship with Him and the world became damaged. This ancestral sin became compounded by all of the disobedience and passions of Adam and Eve’s descendents to this day. We are born into a corrupted world where it is easier to sin than not. (This is very different from Western Christianity’s notion of “original sin”, that is, the false teaching that we are born guilty of Adam and Eve’s sin.) So God came up with Plan B: He would not only become man, but because of our fallen nature and fallen world, He would die and rise again, so that we can die and rise with Him.

            Metropolitan Hierotheos is explaining that the Holy Fathers call God’s Plan A His will “according to good pleasure”, and Plan B is His will “according to concession”.

            It is interesting that the Gospel passage that is often translated “Peace on earth, goodwill toward men” sometimes appears as “Peace on earth to men of good will” (Luke 2:14). The Greek manuscripts that have come down to us put this two different ways. This used to confuse me because they seemed to be two very different things: Are the angels saying that God is wishing us well (“goodwill toward men”)? Or was their message that God’s peace is only for those whose will is good (“to men of good will”)? Our culture hears in these words nothing more than God having a warm, fuzzy feeling toward mankind. But Metropolitan Hierotheos teaches us that the Holy Fathers have always seen something much more profound at work here.

            The angels’ message to the shepherds that night was that Christ’s birth was the fulfillment of God’s original plan from all eternity: His Plan A. The moment of Christ’s birth can even be said to be more momentous than His Resurrection, because Christ had to die and rise only as a result of Plan B. It was not God’s original intention for Christ to die and rise again, but was always His plan to become man.

            The expression “to men of good will” is only confusing if we misinterpret it to mean our own good will. In fact, it has to do with God’s good will, meaning His Plan A. This is the only way that the two different wordings can both be found in Greek manuscripts without contradicting each other. “Good will toward men”, then, means that God is now finally bringing His great plan to pass. And “to men of good will” means to those whose will coincides with God’s great plan. When the Holy Fathers explain it this way, there is no conflict between the two alternate readings.

            God loves us so much that even while we were still in our sins, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). But the message of Nativity is that even above and beyond this, there is God’s original plan from all eternity: for God to become human that we might become divine. This is His Plan A for us and for all mankind. We must bring our will in line with God’s will in order for this to come to pass. Let this be our prayer this Nativity!

Christ is Born: Transcendent – Unapproachable – Pre-eternal!

St. Romanus the Melodist lived in the sixth century. He was born in Emesa – now known as Homs – in Syria. Today we know this city mainly from news reports about the civil war in Syria, but in Romanus’ day it was one of the most important centers of Christianity in the world. St. John the Baptist’s head was found there and kept there for many years. Romanus was ordained a deacon in Beirut and moved to Constantinople. One Christmas Eve, he was assigned to read the kathisma at the All-Night Vigil. He read so poorly that someone had to step in and finish for him. Feeling humiliated, he took a nap in the choir stalls and had a vision of the Mother of God. She handed him a scroll and told him to eat it. When he woke up, the patriarch gave him his blessing to chant from the ambon. Romanus opened his mouth and out came the now-famous Kontakion of the Nativity, “Today the Virgin giveth birth”.

            But what is a “kontakion”? Every Divine Liturgy after the entrance with the Gospel, we sing a number of hymns called troparia and kontakia. Nowadays we think of a kontakion as a short hymn about Christ or a saint or feast. In fact, a kontakion was originally a long hymn of many verses, about the same length as what we would call an akathist today. A kontakion is actually a sermon set to verse. What we now call a kontakion was originally just the introductory verse to a much longer work. Reducing a kontakion to just its introductory verse is like reducing the Akathist to the Theotokos to just “Champion Leader”.

            So when St. Romanus first recited the Nativity Kontakion, it was much longer than just “Today the Virgin”. That short hymn was actually followed by the kontakion itself which numbered twenty-four verses of ten lines each – with meter and rhyme! I have heard some converts complain that Orthodoxy doesn’t have many Christmas hymns. The truth is that we do, but we’ve just forgotten them! The entire Nativity Kontakion used to be sung at the imperial banquet every year until the twelfth century. Someone should revive St. Romanus’ full kontakia, and not just the ones for Nativity; he composed over a thousand, and we still have 85 of them today.

            Let’s look at the words of the small bit that most of us do know:

Today the Virgin giveth birth to Him Who is transcendent in essence,

And the earth offereth a cave to Him Who is unapproachable.

Angels with shepherds give glory.

With a star the Magi do journey,

For our sake a young child is born, Who is pre-eternal God.

Each of the following twenty-four verses would end by repeating this last line, so by the end of this “sermon in verse”, there would be no doubt as to who Christ really is! “A young child! God before the ages!”

            The phrase “Him Who is transcendent in essence” is just one word in the Greek. In English it would be something like “the Beyond-being”. Latin would say “super-substantial”. The idea is that Christ is beyond everything that exists. After all, He is not a creature; He is the Creator! He is God Himself, and this is the point that St. Romanus is trying drive home: that in the world’s eyes this is just a little baby, but we know that He is actually God Himself. St. Gregory Palamas even says that God is “the God beyond God,” the “Super-God”, if you will. That is how St. Gregory puts it in the Greek. This means that Christ as God is beyond any limited conception of God that we puny humans might come up with. Any time we are tempted to think that God is not able to do something seemingly impossible – like make us into saints – we are limiting God. Or when we ask “Why did God do this bad thing?” when, of course, He did no such thing, we are creating an image of a puny God. That is when we have to remind ourselves that He is the “God beyond God”. St. Paul tells the Thessalonians “we would have come unto you once and again, but Satan hindered us” (I Thess. 2:18). When we read this passage the other day, Matushka pointed out to me that many Christians today would say “God stopped me” from doing this or that, but St. Paul teaches us that Satan is the one who stands in our way, not God. When we forget this, we forget Who God really is: the God beyond God, and Christ is this God: “A young child! God before the ages!”

            St. Romanus also describes Christ as “unapproachable”. This does not mean inaccessible! St. Paul says, “Through Christ we have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Eph. 2:18). This means that Christ ushers us into the presence of God the Father. Through Christ we have the opportunity to be closer to God than to anyone else! So what, then, does St. Romanus mean by unapproachable? It simply means that nothing can compare to God. It is the same idea as the “God beyond God”. The Holy Fathers tell us that God’s essence is so far beyond us that we cannot really say Who or what He is; the best we can do is say what He is not. This is why we use so many negative terms to describe Him: invisible, infinite, uncreated, etc. So no description can come close to Who God really is. This is what “unapproachable” means. No words can approach His essence. But this does not mean that we cannot approach Him! We can and must.

            Finally, St. Romanus describes the newborn Christ as having existed “before the ages”. The made-up word “pre-eternal” is not a good way to render this expression and actually ends up being meaningless. The ancients never spoke about anything being “before eternity”. In the Greek worldview, ages are not units of time as we use the word today. For examples, we speak of “the Middle Ages”. But in Plato’s day the word actually meant a world independent of other worlds. For example, he speaks of the world of forms which lies behind the world of matter. (Christianity rejects Plato’s theory. We only mention this to illustrate how the word “age” was used back then.) Clearly, Plato is talking about two realms, not two periods of time. The Greek word for age was used to translate a Hebrew word which likewise means world or even universe. A common Hebrew expression for God is “Master of the World”. To say “Master of the Age” would just be wrong. So Christ is “the God before the worlds”, that is, before creation.

            In the Advent season we are surrounded by Western imagery depicting Christ as a cute, chubby baby. The danger is that this evokes the wrong response from us. Proper iconography always depicts Him in a serious way. Even as an infant, his proportions are that of a grown man. This is to teach us that even as a newborn, He was God. Our response to beholding the Christ-child should not be pity or condescension. (For the same reason, Christ on the cross should not be depicted as weak and defeated, as He is in the West.)

            So let us remember who Christ truly is: the God beyond God, the one to Whom nothing can compare, the young child: God before all worlds!

A Very Brief History of Orthodoxy in Guatemala

            The first Orthodox community in Guatemala was started by Mother Inés (Ayau), the founder and abbess of Holy Trinity Monastery in Guatemala. Mother Inés comes from a prominent Guatemalan family. Her father, Manuel Ayau, was a congressman, businessman, author, and founder of an important university. Her ancestor Rafael Ayau founded the first orphanage in Guatemala City in 1857. The orphanage was taken over by the government in the 1970’s, but given back to the Ayau family in the person of Mother Inés in 1996. Their monastic community, Holy Trinity, consists of three nuns, all former Roman Catholics. They were received into Orthodoxy by Metropolitan Antonio of the Antiochian Archdiocese of Mexico and Central America. On the grounds of the orphanage there is a church. Most of the parishioners are the orphans themselves, but there are also Orthodox expatriates in the city who attend services there.

            If anyone is even aware of Orthodoxy in Guatemala it is usually because of Mother Inés and the orphanage. However, word is only now getting out about one of the greatest miracles of our time: the historic conversion of a staggering number of 150,000 Guatemalans to Orthodoxy. This group was received by Metropolitan Athenagoras of the Greek Archdiocese of Mexico and Central America. So the nuns are in one jurisdiction, while the vast majority of Orthodox in the country are in another, and they cooperate. But we cannot overstate how huge and historic this recent reception of converts is. We hope to help the Orthodox in North America understand that there is far more going on in Guatemala than the orphanage. There are now suddenly 338 parishes all over the country and even over the border into Mexico. To put this in perspective, Ohio is about the same size as Guatemala, in terms of both area and population, and there are about 80 Orthodox parishes in that state, so the Guatemalan Church is already 3-4 times greater than the Orthodox population of Ohio.

            So who are these 150,000 people and how did they become Orthodox? This was achieved by a very special man, Archimandrite Andres Girón. Fr. Andres is Guatemalan and used to be a Roman Catholic priest. He has always had a heart for the poor and dispossessed in his country. The poor in Guatemala, who are mostly indigenous Maya people, have benefited greatly from Fr. Andres’ struggles to get them legal title to their land. They love him and are very loyal to him. The Roman Catholic hierarchy in Guatemala was opposed to Fr. Andres’ ministry, so about twenty years ago he left them. Not understanding how Orthodox jurisdictions operate, he ended up in a non-canonical jurisdiction based in the US, mainly because he had met someone from this group in Guatemala. Eventually Fr. Andres realized that he had to bring his people into canonical Orthodoxy. In 2010 the “Guatemalan Orthodox Catholic Church” was received by the Greek Archdiocese of Mexico and Central America. Inexplicably, the news of this historic event is only now reaching the ears the Orthodox faithful outside of Guatemala.

            Being indigenous Maya, most of the Orthodox in Guatemala speak a language other than Spanish as their mother tongue, so one of the pressing needs is to translate the Divine Liturgy into the numerous Mayan languages spoken by the faithful. For now, services are chanted in Spanish, but many Orthodox do not understand Spanish well, if at all.

            Even more urgent, though, is the need to train more clergy. There are only eight priests to serve their 338 parishes. One priest we know has to minister to fifty parishes by himself. The church also has lay leaders who lead services when a priest is not around, which is most of the time. If more priests are not trained and ordained soon, the people may get discouraged in the new Orthodox faith.

            Fr. Peter will be working to meet these two needs by teaching at the new Sts. Peter and Paul Seminary in Huehuetenango, which is currently being built, and by training and overseeing indigenous translation teams for the seven or more Maya languages spoken among the Guatemalan Orthodox. These languages are not related to Spanish, and are distinct from each other. In fact, the languages each have local dialects, so the language situation is complicated.

            Please pray for the new Guatemalan Orthodox Church, and remember the Jacksons in your prayers as they prepare to move to Guatemala to join this historic ministry.

What is God doing in Guatemala?

I was recently reading about St. Nicholas of Japan, one of the great Orthodox missionary saints of recent times. By the time he reposed, the Japanese Orthodox Church numbered 30,000 faithful. What an astounding figure! Of all the Orthodox missionary efforts around the world today, what could even come close to that?

Well…

It turns out that in 2010, a group of 150,000 Guatemalans were received into canonical Orthodoxy by the Greek Archdiocese of Mexico and Central America. This is already five times the size of the Japanese Church! This group has over 300 parishes, but only eight priests, so it is no surprise that their most pressing need is to train more clergy.

This is one of the greatest mass conversions in history, and it is probably the greatest ministry challenge facing the Orthodox Church today. We all share the responsibility for helping this infant Church learn to crawl and to walk. By this I mean that they need to learn Orthodox doctrine and practice, and clergy need to be raised up among their own people to minister to this enormous flock. At present, they identify as Orthodox, and they know that they are no longer Roman Catholic, but they do not yet clearly understand what Orthodoxy is. Most of the faithful are indigenous Maya people whose first language is not Spanish, but one of a number of Maya languages which predate the arrival of the Europeans.

Matushka Styliana and I recently took a two-week trip to Guatemala to see the Church firsthand. Every day the Lord gave us little signs to show us that this is where He wants us. We used to be missionaries in Colombia, where I translated the New Testament into an indigenous language. So we know what it’s like to live among native peoples in Latin America. On this trip to Guatemala we spent time at the site of the Sts. Peter and Paul Seminary, which is currently under construction. This is where we plan to make our home.

I will have two ministries there. First, I will be teaching at the new seminary. We will be educating new seminarians right out of high school, but also “retooling” the clergy they already have. We were blessed to meet six of these eight priests, and we were impressed by all of them. They are mature, godly men who are selflessly serving the Church. However, their knowledge of Orthodox theology, history, and tradition is limited. My encounters with them showed me that they have lots of questions and are eager to learn and open to being instructed. One priest we met is responsible for fifty parishes! The need for new clergy is urgent.

Second, I will be training and overseeing teams of translators for the various indigenous languages spoken among these Orthodox Maya people. In our brief visit I met Orthodox who spoke Mam, Chuj, Q’eq’chi, Popti, K’iche’, Tzutujil, and Kaqchikel. These are all completely different languages! The Maya who do understand Spanish only know it as a second language that they learned in school. (Remember your high school Spanish…?), but at home they speak one of the Maya languages. So the Orthodox Maya are eager to have things like the Divine Liturgy translated into their own languages so that they can really understand what is going on. In the meantime, services are all in Spanish. Other services will eventually have to be translated, too, as well as prayer books and pamphlets explaining various aspects of our faith and traditions.

Please join us in praying for the new Guatemalan Orthodox Church. We will not be able to do this work without your prayers and support. The challenges are daunting, but we know that this is God’s will. And with your regular, pledged support, you can be a part of this historic moment in Christ’s Church! Please visit our profile page at www.ocmc.org/TheJacksonFamily and our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/jacksonsorthodoxguatemala .

God bless you!