The Protecting Veil of the Theotokos
October 1
in the Orthodox Church is the festival of the Protection or the Protecting Veil
of the Theotokos, of the Mother of God. This festival is very beloved by
Orthodox Christians of the Slavic traditions. It’s kind of a minor festival in
the churches of the East and in the Church of Byzantine tradition; in fact,
it’s actually transferred to the 28th of October and is not celebrated on the
first. The festival on the first of October in the Orthodox calendar generally,
for the entire Church, is the feast of the very famous hymnographer, the deacon
Romanos, the Meloder, the Melodious, or the Sweet-singer, depending how you
translate that title of his.
But
Romanos lived in the sixth or the seventh century, and he is well known because
of his life and his writing of the kontakion for the feast of Christmas, the
Nativity of Christ. A kontakion, which means a roll, is one of the main hymns
of Orthodox liturgical worship. Romanos wrote that very famous kontakion as a
young deacon, and he became a very famous hymnographer in the Church. So this
was the day of Romanos, but also happened to be the day of Ananias, one of the
Seventy Apostles in the early Church.
In any
case, this is what the story is. It is that in the tenth century, in the church
of the Blachernae in Constantinople, there was a festival service, and it was a
time of invasion and so on, difficulty for the Byzantine empire. In fact, the
invading people, ironically, may have been Slavs, who now celebrate this
festival with great solemnity. In any case, there was this festal service on
the first of October, the feast of the holy hymnographer Romanos, and in the
church on that day, according to the Life of St. Andrew the Fool-for-Christ,
who’s a canonized saint in the Orthodox tradition, he was in the church also
with a friend of his, Epiphanios, a friend of his who’s also numbered among the
saints.
And the
story goes that, while they were praying and keeping vigil in the church at
this particular moment of peril, Andrew had this vision of Christ’s mother, Mary,
praying in the church and covering the church with her veil and protecting the
people—that’s where you get the title “protection”—but with her were John the
Baptist and John the Evangelist, and, in fact, all of the ranks of the prophets
and apostles and bishops and saints were seen. The revelation was that the
Theotokos was interceding and praying with all of the saints for the Church on
earth.
In the
icon of this feast, that’s what you will see. If you see an icon of the
Protection of the Theotokos or the Protecting Veil, there will be this huge
assembly of the saints—all of the saints: prophets, apostles, martyrs, bishops,
monastics—with Mary, Christ’s mother, in the center, and they’re interceding
for the Church on earth. In the icon of the Protection, because it was the day
of St. Romanos the Hymnographer, he will be pictured also in the
church—although it’s not historically accurate; it’s anachronistic; he lived a
couple hundred years earlier—but he’s put in the middle of the church in the
position of the ambon where the deacon would be praying and singing the hymns
of the Church, so there’s a connection of this singing and praying within the
church with the communion of all of the saints who are glorified with Christ
and who were faithful to him on earth.
What the
end result is, so to speak, is that this is a great festival of the fact that
the heavenly Church, the assembly of all the saints, led by Christ’s mother,
Mary, are constantly present, interceding for us, praying with us, connected to
us, and that when we go to church and when we celebrate the liturgical offices
of the Church and constitute the Church on earth, gathered by God himself and
Christ himself, by the power of the Holy Spirit, then we enter into this
glorification of the angels. Of course, the angels are on the icon, too, with
all of the holy people. We are in communion with them, they are in communion
with us, and together we constitute the Ekklesia, the great Assembly, the
Church of the New Covenant.
It is a
principle of Orthodox spiritual tradition. It is a kind of a norm. I would
almost say it’s kind of a law, a rule, that what we experience in church, what
we do when we go to church, is supposed to be actualized every moment of our
life, with every breath that we take. It’s in the Church that the grace and the
vision and the truth of God, the very presence of God is given to us. You might
use the adverb “objectively.” You go there and God is there, because the
Liturgy is where God acts, where God is showing himself as the head of the
Church in his officially gathered people. Of course, for Orthodox, that means a
gathering headed by a bishop or by a presbyter assigned by the bishop, where it
is not simply a gathering of people or people coming to pray or a prayer
service, but it’s actually the constitution of the Church of Christ on earth in
space and time where the Church of God, worshiping God, glorifying God,
communing with God through Christ, risen and glorified, actually experiences
this communion of the age to come, together with Christ’s mother, Mary, and all
of the saints.
So the
rule would be, so to speak, that we should actualize the gifts given to us in
church and as Church in every day, every moment of our life: every day of our
life, every second of every minute of every hour of every day of our life. That
means, first of all, that we assemble as Church; we gather as Church. That
means that we have to always be aware, as the early Christian saying goes, that
“one Christian is no Christian.” Christianity is not a matter of individuals
accepting Jesus as their personal Savior. It’s not an individual matter at all;
it’s a matter of community. It’s a covenanted community. It’s the New
Testament. It’s the New Covenant, the New Covenant in Christ’s blood. It’s a
gathering of people, the faithful people who keep the faith truly and properly,
the faith once and for all delivered to the saints, and who accept the Gospel
as the Gospel is actually given, which is God’s Gospel, not the gospel
according to men, as St. Paul said in Galatians.
So the
first thing that we remember is that we are members, one of another. We are
members of Christ, constituting his body, which is the Church. We’re not alone.
And we should never feel lonely. A Christian should never be lonely. If we feel
lonely, it means that we forget that we’re members of the people of God, that
we’re fellow citizens with the saints, as it says in the Ephesian letter in the
New Testament, that we have access to God through the Son of God, Jesus, raised
and glorified by the power of the Holy Spirit that is in all of the saints of
all times and all places. And we’re a member—each one of us is a member of that
community. We are all members of Christ’s body, so we gather as Church.
Sometimes
people say, “Well, I can pray in a field. I can pray in my heart.” Well, that’s
true, and Jesus said, “When you pray, go in a room, shut the door, and pray,”
but the people of God also gather as Church. There’s the Qahal Yahweh, the
assembly of God. Then when we come to church, we remember and pray for everyone
and everything, and that’s what we should be doing all the time. When we go to
church, we sing the psalms, and David—the psalm should be on our lips from
morning to night every day of our life. When we go to the church, we follow the
Gospel of God into the Holy Place. We hear Christ, our one Teacher, our one
Master, teaching us from heaven, through the words of the holy Gospels, the
holy Scripture. When we’re in church, that’s what we do.
So we
should be hearing the word of God and the words of God, and following the word
of God and trying to complete the word of God every moment of our life. In
church we make intercessions for the world, for the sick, for the suffering,
for the departed. That should be a consciousness of ours all the time. In the
church we offer ourselves to God the Father, through Jesus Christ, our Great
High Priest, who is himself the offering, the broken body, the spilled blood,
and we should be doing that every minute of our life, offering our bodies to
God as a living sacrifice which is our logikē latreia, our spiritual,
reasonable worship, which is what the Divine Liturgy of the Church is.
Then we
remember all of the saving acts of God, and then we invoke the Holy Spirit upon
ourselves and upon our bread and wine that we offer, our sacrifice, sacrificing
not just bread and wine, but our own bodies, our own blood with Christ. Then we
remember the Theotokos and of all the saints at every Liturgy, and all the
angels, and we pray with the angels and we image the angels. This should be a
presence of our life all the time.
Then, of
course, in church we have communion with God: Holy Communion. And we should be
living in holy communion with the Father, through the Son, from the Spirit,
every minute of our life. When we’re at the Liturgy, we’re sent back out. We’re
sent out with the Great Commission: to bear witness, to evangelize, to preach
the word of God, to bear witness by our deeds. And that’s what we should be
doing every minute of our life.
So when
we go to church, the faith is revealed to us. God’s kingdom is revealed to us.
It’s given to our experience. This is, in fact, what we’re celebrating on this
festival day, the first day of October, in the festival of the Protecting Veil
of the Mother of God. The historical origin may have been the vision of the
Fool-for-Christ, Andrew, in the Blachernae palace church in Constantinople in
the tenth century, but the vision that he had on that day is an abiding vision
of Christians at all times. It’s the reality of the Church itself from the very
beginning of the New Covenant on the day of Pentecost. This is what the Church
is, and this is what we celebrate today.
Now, it’s
very interesting also, very pertinent, very instructive, that the epistle
reading on this particular festival is the first six verses of the ninth
chapter of the letter to the Hebrews. The gospel reading is the one that we
often hear on festivals of Mary, the mother of God. The gospel is about Martha
and Mary: Martha who is anxious about many things and her sister, Mary, sitting
at the feet of Jesus, and Jesus saying to Martha, “Martha, Martha, you are
troubled, anxious about many things. Mary has chosen the better part; it will
not be taken from her.” So we’re taught in that gospel that we are to
contemplate the word of God. We are to do our activities, but the greater part
is to contemplate Christ, to sit at his feet.
Then in
that same gospel reading, you have the voice of the woman in the crowd that
says to Jesus—she shouts to Jesus—“Blessed is the womb that bore you and the
breasts that nourished you,” and Jesus answers, “Yea, rather”—more than that,
so to speak, the real point is—“blessed are they who hear the word of God and
keep it,” because Mary heard the word of God and she kept it. She even gave
birth to the Word of God in the flesh. The Logos was incarnate through Mary. So
she is blessed because she hears the word of God and she keeps it. So that’s
the gospel, but the epistle reading on this festival is from the letter to the
Hebrews.
Now,
generally speaking, the letter to the Hebrews is considered to be a Pauline
letter. It’s called even the epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews, although
authorship—exact authorship—was already debated in the earliest Church. Really
in the early Church already, some folks thought even that perhaps the actual
person who crafted this letter, who actually wrote it by hand, was Apollos, St.
Paul’s disciple, who gave the teaching of Paul in this epistle, concerning the
temple, concerning how Christians relate to temple worship, because there is no
more temple. The temple is destroyed, but also the Messiah has come. It’s
interesting, by the way, that there was a Jewish apocalyptic tradition that
said when the Messiah would come, the first act that he would do would be to
destroy the temple, because you don’t need the temple when the Messiah is here;
everything is now fulfilled.
Well, as
a matter of fact, there was no temple. It was destroyed by the Romans. So the
question also arose: The Jews who believed in Jesus believed that he was the Son
of God, believed that he was the Messiah—how do they worship? How do they
worship, and how do they worship vis-à-vis the temple worship? What is the
priesthood? What are the sacrifices? How is it to be done? How is it to be
understood, first? And then, how is it to be done? In that sense, the letter to
the Hebrews is probably the most liturgical book of the New Testament writings,
although the Apocalypse is definitely also a liturgical book, and it goes
together. In fact, if anyone wants to have insight into ancient Christian
worship, the earliest Christian worship, they have to read and study and
understand the letter to the Hebrews and the book of Revelation, the
Apocalypse.
But what
does the letter to the Hebrews tell us? It tells us that Jesus, the Son of God,
the exact Image of the Father, the Radiance of his Person, through whom God has
spoken to us in these very last days, that he is the Great High Priest, and he
offers himself as the Victim, once for all, to the Father, and he takes his own
blood and offers it into the holy of holies, the one not made by hands, the one
in the heavens, the true and real one, the sanctuary of sanctuaries, which is
the very presence of God, and he enters in there on our behalf, and he takes us
with him into that holy place, where he offers his body broken and his blood
shed, and we have to follow him there and enter, having our bodies broken, our
blood shed, together in and with him, and we offer ourselves as living
sacrifices to God, which is our logikē latreia, our spiritual or reasonable
worship.
That
expression is used three times in the Divine Liturgy at the Eucharistic prayer:
“reasonable worship” or “spiritual worship.” It comes from the first verse of
the twelfth chapter of the letter to the Romans, where St. Paul says, “I appeal
to you, brothers, to offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, pure and
holy, acceptable, pleasing to God, which is our logikē latreia, which is our
spiritual worship.”
So we
have an entirely new worship in the New Covenant, one Great High Priest,
Christ, offering himself on behalf of all and for all; we, offering him and
ourselves in and with him to the Father; he offering us, together; the Holy
Spirit coming upon us, and we celebrate this marvelous, celestial, divine
Liturgy, the Liturgy that is divine. It’s godly, it’s celestial, it’s heavenly,
it’s cosmic, it’s in the created order. This is what Christians do when we
worship. This is what we do, especially in the Divine Liturgy, where you hear
the word of God, sing the psalms, hear the word of God, intercede for the
world, and offer yourself with Christ to God for holy Communion, and to receive
holy Communion and Jesus as the Lamb of God. 38 times in the Apocalypse, Jesus
is called the Lamb of God.
Well, the
letter to the Hebrews tells us that we’re no longer offering blood of goats and
lambs and bulls and so on, but we have the blood of the Son of God himself, and
he offered himself on our behalf, and we offer ourselves with him. So this is
why you have this reading on this particular festival of the Protecting Veil of
the Theotokos, when the Church on earth celebrates the fact, the reality, that
we are gathered together in the holy of holies of heaven with Christ our Lord
who is risen and glorified and with his mother and the prophets and all the
righteous of the Old Covenant and John the Baptist and all the angels and all
the martyrs and all the bishops and all those who have departed this
life—that’s what we experience when we go to church, and that has to be our
abiding, perpetual experience as Christians every minute of our life, with
every breath that we breathe.
So here
is the reading. It begins like this, ninth chapter, letter to the Hebrews:
Now even the first covenant had regulations
for worship and an earthly sanctuary.
I think
that that sentence is interesting, because it says, “Even the first covenant
had regulations for worship and an earthly sanctuary,” so what the author, St.
Paul and Apollos or the Holy Spirit who inspired this letter to the Hebrews as
a canonical, truly dependable holy Scripture for Christians… It says, “Even the
first covenant,” which means we also have regulations for worship as
Christians. We have regulations, too. We don’t just make it up as we go along.
We’re not at the mercy of ministers or priests who make up services for us. The
services are given by God. The worship is given by God. It’s revealed by God in
the Bible. It’s not how we like to worship; that’s beside the point. It’s how
God is commanding us to worship, or how we enter into the risen Christ to
worship God by the Holy Spirit. That’s what’s important. Certainly, that’s what
was important in ancient Christianity. In fact, it wasn’t even “important”; it
was everything. They had no other concept of how worship by Christians might
possibly be. They certainly didn’t think that Christian worship was
entertainment or, one Russian once said, “the combination of a lecture and a
concert.” Well, it’s not a concert and a lecture; it’s divine worship, inspired
by God, beginning in Moses and the tabernacle and continuing in the final
covenant community in the Messiah of Israel.
So the
epistle begins: “Even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an
earthly sanctuary.” It said:
For a tent (or in Greek it could be
“tabernacle” or “skēnē,” the tent, the place where God was tenting himself was
with them, there was a tent) prepared (and then it says), the outer one, in
which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the Presence (or the
presentation of the loaves of bread); and that was called the holy place (the
sanctuary). Then behind the second curtain stood another tent (another
tabernacle), called the holy of holies, and in the holiest place (the holy of
holies, that means the holiest), they have the golden ark of the incense, they
have the ark of the covenant, covered on all sides with gold, which contained a
golden urn holding the manna (that was the bread that came from heaven that the
people ate in the wilderness), and Aaron’s rod that budded (that’s also
connected to the exodus from Egypt, Aaron’s rod), and the tables [sic] of the
covenant (the [tablets] of the law that were given to Moses that was kept in
there; then it said); above it (and over this table, in this holiest place,
where you had an offering of incense) there were the cherubim of glory
overshadowing the mercy seat. (Then it says:) Of these things we cannot now
speak in detail.
Then it
continues:
These preparations having thus been made, the
priests go continually into the outer tent (that’s the holy place) for their
ritual duties; but into the second only the high priest goes, and he only once
a year, not without taking blood which he offers for himself and for the errors
(or the ignorances) of the people.
And
that’s the ending of the reading. Now, when Christians hear this, when we
Christians hear this, what are we taught? What is the letter to the Hebrews and
the entire New Testament and the entire Bible? What is it teaching us? It is
teaching us this, that this was the earthly sanctuary, but there is the
heavenly sanctuary. There is the holy of holies which is going into the
presence of God Almighty himself, the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ. And
then it is telling us that Jesus, the Great High Priest, the only Great High
Priest, he enters into that holy of holies on our behalf, and he doesn’t just
do it once a year. He’s done it once and for all and so now it’s perpetual. He
is there continuously, offering and even, the letter to the Hebrews says,
mediating and interceding on our behalf before God the Father.
But the
amazing thing is, also, that the teaching of the New Testament is: Jesus, as
the Great High Priest who enters into the holy of holies—the heavenly one, the
divine one, not made by human hands—he takes all of his people with him in
there. The high priest in the old covenant went in by himself. Even the other
priests didn’t go in, and the people stood outside. But in Christ everybody enters.
Everybody. As St. Paul writes to [the] Galatians, not only free Jewish males or
priests or high priests, but everybody: female, Gentile, slaves, everyone who’s
baptized into Christ, everyone who enters into the priesthood of Christ, the
kingship of Christ, anointed with the Holy Spirit of Christ, becoming christs
themselves (with a little “c”), by grace, they all enter into that holy of
holies together with him. They go in there with him, into the very presence of
God to offer their spiritual worship in the New Covenant, in the final
covenant.
When the
ancient Christians finally became free and were able to build their own church
temples, that’s how they patterned it, and if you go into an Orthodox church to
this day, you will see that there’s the holy place, the nave of the church,
then there is the holy of holies, and the priest who is ordained to present
Christ to the congregation as the head of the community, he enters in there in
glory, vested with vestments, and then, behind the veil, it’s actually built
and set up just like the Bible says. You have a cubic altar, you have the
seven-branched candles on it, just like it was in the law of Moses, you have
the images of the cherubim and seraphim over the altar table. Then you have the
New Covenanted realities—the truth, as it says [in] the letter to the Hebrews.
It says the Old Covenant was a shadow, a skia; the New Covenant is the reality,
the final reality.
So when
you go into the ancient Christian church, you go into the Orthodox church,
behind that veil at that altar table, we still have the altar of incense. We
still are offering the incense in there, according to the Scripture. Then we
don’t have the ark of the covenant, [in] gold, with manna inside. We have in
our altar table, actually, a vessel that sometimes is built like a Christian
church building, and it’s called a tabernacle. It’s called the place where we
keep inside not the manna, but the reserve sacrament of the Body and Blood of
Christ. We have the consecrated Bread which is the Body of Christ intincted
with the Wine, kept on the altar table. So we have not the manna; we have the
Bread of Life. Jesus said, “Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness; they’re
dead. I am the Bread of Life. I am the living Bread.” So we have that living
Bread; a remnant of that living Bread is kept on the table within the holy of
holies.
Then
instead of Aaron’s rod, we have the cross of Christ, the hand cross of Christ
with which the priest always carries and blesses the people. That’s not Aaron’s
rod; that’s God’s weapon of victory. That’s the tree of life. So we have the
hand cross, the cross with which the people are blessed, in place of Aaron’s
rod that budded, because our cross really budded with everlasting life. The
body and blood of Christ on the cross breaks through death, is raised from the
dead. So we have the cross on the altar.
Then we
don’t have the [tablets] of the Law, the [tablets] of the Old Covenant. We have
the gospel book, and it’s not the Bible. It’s not even the whole New Testament.
It’s the four gospels, because our Law is Christ. We follow the law of Christ.
He is the incarnate Word. So on our table, we have the gospel, the cross, and
the holy Communion. That’s the New Covenant altar, and we also have the candles
and we have the cherubim there, painted or with frescoes and so on, just like
the Bible tells us.
Then this
reading says that over all of this the cherubim are in glory, and it’s
overshadowed by what is called the “mercy seat” in English, “hilastērion” in
Greek. Hilastērion; it’s called “mercy seat.” And if you know the Bible, the
mercy seat was over the altar in the Old Testament, in the tabernacle in the
temple of Jerusalem, and it was empty. There was a space there; there was
nothing there, because God was invisible. And that was the place where God
spoke to Moses. That is the place where Moses heard the word of God, and from
there he spoke to the people of God. It’s very interesting to note again that
the people didn’t go in there. Only Moses went in there, and he went by himself,
and they had to stand outside. They had to wait for him to come out and tell
them. They did not have access to that holy place and to that mercy seat, and
they did not hear directly the word of God.
But that
mercy seat in Greek is “hilastērion,” and if you look up “hilastērion” in a
biblical Greek dictionary, it will define “hilastērion” as the place where
mercy is given, the place where mercy is known, the place where the people of
God experience the expiatory—if I said that word right—where the expiation…
because “hilasmos” means “expiation” or “redemption.” That’s where they
actually, you might just simply say, that’s where you fully experience the
saving activity of God. The dictionary actually says “hilastērion” means “the
means by which sins are forgiven” or “the place where the sins are forgiven,
the place where you receive redemption, the place where expiation occurs.”
That’s what that is.
Now,
interestingly enough, over the altar table in the holy of holies in ancient
Christian churches, from the very beginning there was always an icon or a
fresco put of the mother of God, of Christ’s mother, Mary, and she’s there,
seated, like a mercy seat, and on her lap is Christ himself, the incarnate Word
of God. Or sometimes she’s in a position of prayer, like an orans, and inside
her, in her womb, so to speak, in her stomach, is this presence of Christ
himself, the Word of God.
What this
tells us is that, in the Christian worship, we have our sacrifice which is the
Blood of Christ, and we go into that holy of holies, and we have our gospel and
our cross and our Communion there, and over it, the mercy seat is the Theotokos
herself. It’s interesting that in the Akathistos hymn, the very famous
Akathistos hymn to the mother of God in the Eastern Church—which may indeed
have been written by this Romanos himself, the same one who wrote the
kontakion—that he called one of the titles of Mary is “the living hilastērion,”
the animated mercy seat, the warm—actually, the word is “warm”—“the warm one.”
It’s not dead, it’s not cold: the living, the warm, the active propitiatory
place is Mary herself now, because Christ comes from her. He is enthroned on
her. She is the one who bears him to us and brings him to us when he is born
into the world.
It’s very
interesting also that on this festival of the Protection of the Mother of
God—where she’s there as the mercy seat, she’s there with all the angels and
saints over the sanctuary, the holy of holies—it’s very interesting that the
main kontakion, the hymn of the day for this festival, actually literally
patterns the kontakion of the feast of the Birth of Christ, the kontakion of
Christmas, and this is how it is paralleled.
On
Christmas, the faithful Christians sing in the Orthodox Church in the
kontakion:
Today the Virgin gives birth to the
Transcendent One.
On this
festival of the Protecting Veil of the Theotokos in the heavenly Church, the
first line is:
Today the Virgin stands in the middle of the
Church, in the midst of the Church.
In the
Nativity hymn, the second verse is:
And the earth offers a cave to the
Unapproachable One.
The
second verse on this festival is:
And with choirs of saints she (Mary)
invisibly prays to God for us.
But it
wasn’t so invisibly because Andrew, the Fool-for-Christ, saw her—with the eyes
of the spirit, of course—but we know that she’s there all the time, praying to
God for us and with us. The third verse of the Christmas hymn says:
Angels with shepherds glorify him.
The third
verse of the festival of the Protection says:
Angels and bishops worship him (Christ God).
The
fourth verse says:
The wise men journey with the star.
On this
festival, it says:
Apostles and prophets rejoice together.
Then on
Christmas this little hymn ends:
Since for our sake the eternal God was born
as a little Child.
In the
last verse of this festival it says:
Since for our sake she (Christ’s mother)
prays to the eternal God.
And we
pray to the eternal God together with her. So if we heard the Nativity hymn all
together, it would go like this:
Today the Virgin gives birth to the
Transcendent One, and the earth offers a cave to the Unapproachable One. Angels
with shepherds glorify him; the wise men journey with the star, since for our
sake the eternal God was born as a little Child.
On this
festival of the Protection of the Mother of God, what we sang was:
Today the Virgin stands in the middle of the
Church, and with choirs of saints she prays to God for us. Angels and bishops
worship; apostles and prophets rejoice together, since for our sake, she prays
to the eternal God.
So this
is why we have the ninth chapter of the letter to the Hebrews as the epistle
reading for this festival.
One more
thing: the letter to the Hebrews not only compares the Old Covenant worship in
the temple to the divine worship of Christ in the holy of holies in the
presence of God, but it even compares Moses going to Mount Sinai to get the
[tablets] of the Law. It compares Moses entering into that cloud, into the
presence of God on Sinai, to receive the [tablets] of the Law; it compares that
to what we Christians experience when we go to church, when we enter into the
spiritual reality of the communion of the Church and the holy of holies beyond
this world that we already experience through the Holy Spirit in Christian
liturgical worship.
So for
that you’ve got to read the twelfth chapter of the letter to the Hebrews. This
is what the twelfth chapter says. I’m going to read it in some detail for you.
It begins:
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so
great a cloud of witnesses…
And the
great cloud of witness[es] that we’re surrounded by is the Theotokos, apostles,
martyrs, saints, bishops, holy ones, all of those righteous holy people who are
together with Christ and glorified with him—the saints. So it says if we enter
into that great cloud of witnesses,
...let us also lay aside every weight and sin
which clings so closely. Let us run with perseverance the race that is set
before us, looking to Jesus, the archēgon and teleotēs (the pioneer, the
forerunner, and the perfecter, accomplisher) of our faith, who, for the joy
that was set before him, endured the cross, despised the shame, and is seated
at the right hand of the throne of God.
Then the
author encourages us not to grow weary, not to be faint-hearted. In our
struggle against sin, we have not yet resisted to the point of shedding our
blood, he says, and we have to endure, because God is treating us as sons, and
the sons are disciplined and the sons have to suffer together with his Son,
Jesus, and we’re not illegitimate children—there’s another word for that in
English—but we are actually sons of God in Christ.
Then he
tells us to lift up our drooping hands and strengthen our weak knees and strive
for that holiness with God and make sure there’s no roots of bitterness among
us, and so on. Then here’s what we want to hear, most important. He says:
For you Christians have not come to what may
be touched, like Moses did, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest
and the sound of a trumpet and a Voice whose words made the hearers beg that no
further messages would be spoken to them, for they could not endure the order
that was given: “If even a beast, an animal, touches the mountain, he shall
die; he shall be stoned.” Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said,
“I tremble with fear.”
That’s
what’s described in the Bible at Mt. Sinai, the Old Covenant. Then the letter
continues:
But you have come to Mt. Zion...
Not
Sinai, but Zion.
...and to the city of the living God, the
heavenly Jerusalem…
Not the
Jerusalem that’s some point on a map. Then it continues:
...and to innumerable angels in festal
gathering…
So all
the angels are there with us. And then it says, in the RSV:
...and to the assembly of the firstborn who
are enrolled in heaven.
That
term, “assembly,” in Greek is “ekklēsia, the Church”: You have come to the
Church of the firstborn, and the firstborn of all creation is Christ, who is
also the firstborn of the dead. And we are the Church of the firstborn. We are
enrolled in heaven. The assembly, a great number of people; not just Jesus
alone, but all those who are with him, this great assembly, the Church of
Christ himself. Then it says:
...to a Judge who is God of all…
But we
know that that God of all has given the power and authority to execute judgment
to his Son, Jesus, who is the Judge of the heaven and earth, and he will come
to judge the heaven and the earth. And then it continues:
...and to the spirits of the righteous people
made perfect…
Any
Eastern Orthodox knows that’s a line in the funeral service. We pray that when
a person dies, they will be “with the spirits of the righteous made perfect in
heaven with God.” So “the spirits of the righteous,” it means all the saints.
All the saints: all those who are made righteous by faith and grace, beginning
with Christ’s mother, Mary. Then it says:
...and to Jesus, the Mediator of the New
Covenant, and to the sprinkled Blood that speaks more graciously than the blood
of Abel.
And we
might add, than the blood of any cow and lamb and goat or bull that was ever
sacrificed in the Old Covenant, because that sprinkled blood is the blood of
the Son of God himself. So then the letter continues:
See, therefore, that you do not refuse him
who is speaking, for if they did not escape, when they refused him who warned
them on earth (in the Old Covenant, through Moses), much less shall we escape
if we reject him who warns us from heaven (that is, Christ himself, the risen
Lord). His voice then shook the earth (in the Old Testament), but now he has
promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.”
This phrase, “yet once more,” indicates the removal of what is shaken, as of
what has been made, in order that what cannot be shaken may remain.
And what
cannot be shaken is the kingdom of God. And the whole universe has become the
kingdom of God. That’s why in the Orthodox Church on Saturday night, every
Saturday of the year, when we enter the Lord’s day at the end of [the] Sabbath,
we say:
The Lord is king. He is robed in majesty; he
is girded with strength. He established the universe, his kingdom, which can
never be shaken, which cannot be moved.
So we say
this “yet once more” indicates the removal of what is shaken, as of what has
been created, in order [that] what cannot be shaken may remain, namely, the new
heaven and new earth that has been redeemed. Then it ends:
Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a
kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable
worship...
Let us be
acceptable worshipers, it says, or acceptably worshiping.
...with reverence and awe, with fear and
trembling. (Then it ends:) For our God is a consuming fire.
So this
is what we celebrate, [what] the Church celebrates on the festival of the
Protecting Veil of the Theotokos. The [accent] in the service is on the
Theotokos and her intercession, but it’s not just her. It’s the whole assembly
of the righteous. It’s all of the holy ones. It’s all of the saints, in the
very presence of God. And that’s what we enter into when we go to church, and
that’s what the Church is. It’s the abiding experience of living in the kingdom
to come, already now. In Christ, with Christ. Our life’s hidden with God in
Christ, as St. Paul says. Before the throne of God himself in Jesus, on the
right hand of the Father, with him and in him, with his mother, Mary, and with
all of the prophets and apostles and martyrs and all of the holy people through
the ages.
So this
is how ancient Christians begin the month of October. The first day of October
is this great celebration of the Church as the assembly, the great cloud of
witnesses, the uniting of heaven and earth, of those already departed this life
in the glorious presence of Christ, raised and glorified with him, already now
in him, and we still on earth in the Church and as the Church, entering into
that reality in the sacramental life of the Church by the power of God through
the indwelling of the Holy Spirit among us, being the Body of Christ on earth.
This is
the Christian faith, and this is what we celebrate, and this is a marvelous,
magnificent celebration, vision, and experience itself of this divine reality,
the reality which is, indeed, the Christian faith, the experience of the
fulfillment of the Gospel in Jesus Christ raised and glorified, and we,
together with him, with his mother and all of the saints.
Source: http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/hopko/the_protecting_veil_of_the_holy_theotokos
