Mysteries of the Christian East
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Mysteries of the Christian East Literature, History, Music, Theology, Art, and Spirituality Selected and Edited by James S. Cutsinger O strange Orthodox Church, so poor and so weak, with neither the organization nor the culture of the West, staying afloat as if by a miracle through so many trials, tribulations, and struggles; a Church of contrasts, so traditional and yet at the same time so free, so archaic and yet so alive, so ritualistic and yet so personally mystical; a Church where the priceless pearl of the Gospel is carefully safeguarded—yet often beneath a layer of dust; a Church which in shadows and silence maintains above all the eternal values of purity, poverty, asceticism, humility, and forgiveness. Lev Gillet The Church is an institution, but she is also a mystery, and it is mystery that gives meaning and life to institution. Alexander Schmemann The Orthodox taste, the Orthodox temper, is felt, but it is not subject to arithmetical calculation. Orthodoxy is shown, not proved. That is why there is only one way to understand Orthodoxy: through direct experience. One hears that, in foreign lands, people are now learning how to swim, lying on the floor with the aid of equipment. In the same way, one can become a Catholic or a Protestant by reading books in one’s study. But to become Orthodox it is necessary to immerse oneself in the very element of Orthodoxy. There is no other way. Pavel Florensky A. MYSTÉRION What our habit has obtained for us appears a somewhat meager view of mystery. And Latinate equivalents have fared no better tendering the palpable proximity of dense noetic pressure. More familiar, glib, and gnostic verbiage aside, the loss the body suffers when sacrament is pared into a tidy picture postcard of absent circumstance starves the matter to a moot result. Mystérion is of a piece, enormous enough to span the reach of what we see and what we don’t. The problem at the heart of metaphor is how neatly it breaks down to this and that. Imagine one that held entirely across the play of image and its likenesses. Mystérion is never elsewhere, ever looms, indivisible and here, and compasses a journey one assumes as it is tendered on a spoon. Receiving it, you apprehend how near the Holy bides. You cannot know how far. Contents 1 Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Brothers Get Acquainted”, “Rebellion”, “The Grand Inquisitor” (from The Brothers Karamazov) 1 2 John Anthony McGuckin, “A Brief History” 38 3 Vladimir Lossky, “Theology and Mysticism in the Eastern Church” 70 4 Maximos Constas, “Revelation as Concealment: The Theology of the Icon Screen” 94 5 “A Patristic Miscellany” 113 6 John Anthony McGuckin, “The Mysteries” 135 7 Paul Evdokimov, “Liturgy and Eucharist I” 156 8 Paul Evdokimov, “Liturgy and Eucharist II” 172 9 James S. Cutsinger, “The Yoga of Hesychasm” 190 10 Sergius Bulgakov, “Relics and Incorruption” 204 11 Constantine Cavarnos, “Byzantine Chant” 228 12 Pavel Florensky, “The Light of Truth” 247 13 Alexander Golitzin, “Why Monks?” 271 14 David Bentley Hart, “Salvation as Recapitulation” 308 15 Leonid Ouspensky, “Revealing the Image, Creating the Likeness” 319 16 Maximos Constas, “Icons and Provocations” 340 17 Dumitru Staniloae, “Experiential Apophaticism” 361 18 “A Miscellany of Memoirs and Metaphysical Musings” 376 Appendix The Trisagion Prayers 399 The Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom 401 The Rules of Fasting 426 Poems A Mystérion iii B Possible Answers to Prayer 37 C Three Descents 67 D Nous 93 E Hidden City 112 F Apokatastasis 134 G Draw Near 155 H Eremite 171 I Loves 186 J Hesychastérion 203 K Memento 226 L Bad Theology (A Quiz) 246 M Metánoia 270 N Embalming 307 O A Word 318 P Icons 339 Q Two Icons 358 R Having Descended to the Heart 375 S Formal Brief (The Name) 397 T Somnambulant 425 U Late Habit 429 Scott Cairns (1961- ), the Catherine Paine Middlebush Chair in English at the University of Missouri, is the author of eight collections of poetry, including The Theology of Doubt, The Translation of Babel, and Philokalia, as well as a spiritual memoir, Short Trip to the Edge, recounting his many pilgrimages to the Holy Mountain of Athos. All of the poems in this Reader have been selected from his Slow Pilgrim: The Collected Poems. 1 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky Part Two, Book Five Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-81) was a novelist, journalist, essayist, and philosopher. Often ranked among the best books of all time, The Brothers Karamazov is his last, and arguably greatest, work. The brothers of the story are Ivan, Dmitri, and Alyosha, representing respectively the head, the hand, and the heart of man. In the following selection, Ivan, the intellectual of the family and an all-but-atheist, converses with his younger brother Alyosha, a disciple of the abbot Zossima, whom Dostoevsky modeled after his own spiritual father, one of the best known of the nineteenth-century Russian startsi, the elder Ambrose of the famous Optina Monastery. ________________________________________________________________________ Chapter III “The Brothers Get Acquainted” “But what does it matter to us?” laughed Ivan. “We’ve time enough for our talk, for what brought us here. Why do you look so surprised? Answer: why have we met here? To talk of my love for Katerina Ivanovna? of the old man and Dmitri? of foreign travel? of the fatal position of Russia? of the Emperor Napoleon? Is that it? “No.” “Then you know what for. It’s different for other people; but we in our green youth have to settle the eternal questions first of all. That’s what we care about. The young in Russia talk of nothing but the eternal questions now. Just when the old folks are all taken up with practical questions. Why have you been looking at me in expectation for the last three months? To ask me, ‘What do you believe, or don’t you believe at all?’ That’s what your eyes have been meaning for these three months, haven’t they?” “Perhaps so,” smiled Alyosha. “You are not laughing at me, now, Ivan?” “Me laughing! I don’t want to wound my little brother, who has been watching me with such expectation for three months. Alyosha, look straight at me! Of course, I am just such a little boy as you are, only not a monastic novice. And what have Russian boys been doing up till now, some of them, I mean? In this stinking 1 tavern, for instance, here, they meet and sit down in a corner. They’ve never met in their lives before and, when they go out of the tavern, they won’t meet again for forty years. And what do they talk about in that momentary halt in the tavern? Of the eternal questions, of the existence of God and immortality. And those who do not believe in God talk of socialism or anarchism, of the transformation of all humanity on a new pattern, so that it all comes to the same, they’re the same questions turned inside out. And masses, masses of the most original Russian boys do nothing but talk of the eternal questions! Isn’t it so?” “Yes, for real Russians the questions of God’s existence and of immortality, or, as you say, the same questions turned inside out, come first and foremost, of course, and so they should,” said Alyosha, still watching his brother with the same gentle and inquiring smile. “Well, Alyosha, it’s sometimes very unwise to be a Russian at all, but anything stupider than the way Russian boys spend their time one can hardly imagine. But there’s one Russian boy called Alyosha I am awfully fond of.” “How nicely you put that in!” Alyosha laughed suddenly. “Well, tell me where to begin, give your orders. The existence of God, eh?” “Begin where you like. You declared yesterday at father’s that there was no God.” Alyosha looked searchingly at his brother. “I said that yesterday at dinner on purpose to tease you, and I saw your eyes glow. But now I’ve no objection to discussing with you, and I say so very seriously. I want to be friends with you, Alyosha, for I have no friends and want to try it. Well, only fancy, perhaps I too accept God,” laughed Ivan; “that’s a surprise for you, isn’t it?” “Yes of course, if you are not joking now.” “Joking? I was told at the elder’s yesterday that I was joking. You know, dear boy, there was an old sinner in the eighteenth century who declared that, if there were no God, he would have to be invented. S’il n’existait pas Dieu, il faudrait l’inventer. And man has actually invented God. And what’s strange, what would be marvelous, is not that God should really exist; the marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage, vicious beast as 2 man. So holy it is, so touching, so wise and so great a credit it does to man. As for me, I’ve long resolved not to think whether man created God or God man. And I won’t go through all the axioms laid down by Russian boys on that subject, all derived from European hypotheses; for what’s a hypothesis there, is an axiom with the Russian boy, and not only with the boys but with their teachers too, for our Russian professors are often just the same boys themselves. And so I omit all the hypotheses.