The Holy Priest-Martyr Simeon, Relative of the Lord; Our Venerable Father Stephen, Bishop of Volodymyr in Volhynia (1094)
Abstinence from meat and foods that contain meat.
Read
Acts 10:44-11:10; John 8:21-30
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
Our Lord in today’s Gospel speaks in a way not understood by the Pharisees. He appears to speak in riddles, in a way that is perhaps mysterious, and the Pharisees are confused. Throughout John’s Gospel Our Lord speaks in ways that often mystify His hearers, whether they be the apostles or the leaders of the Jewish people. His hearers often seek clarification or question Him outright as to who He is, where He is from, and what is His mission. The confusion comes in that He is speaking about things to come and things that are eternal and seemingly outside of the day-to-day experience of those with whom he is engaging. It is only after His Holy and Glorious Resurrection that things become clear to us. We have the benefit of living in the Resurrection and having experienced the Resurrected Lord, and so we are able to more clearly understand Our Lord’s words, yet there is still mystery within them: “When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority but speak thus as the Father taught me.”
In its most profound essence we are not able to comprehend Christ’s relationship to the Father and by extension to the Holy Spirit; the Most Holy Trinity is in its essence a mystery. But in saying it is a mystery this does not mean something that is entirely hidden or unknowable to us. As the baptized we are called to enter into the mystical reality that is the Trinity. Many of us will be familiar with the famous icon of the Most Holy Trinity by the 15th century Russian iconographer Andrei Rublev in which the Godhead is depicted as the three angels whom Abraham encounters as men in Genesis 18. Front and centre in the icon is a space into which we are beckoned by the three persons of the Trinity, to partake in the Trinitarian life. We can never fully know God since God is God and we are His creatures, but it is through Christ and His Incarnation and His Resurrection that we become joined to God and restored to Him. It is through the gifts of the Holy Spirit and through the imprint of God upon the created world that we experience God in our life of faith. Our Christian faith is one of revelation, God with us. During this paschal season let us pray earnestly that God will continue to reveal Himself to us so that we might come ever more fully into communion with Him.