Month: December 2018

The Church as Tension between the Old and New Worlds

It is not obvious indeed that man—inspire of all presumed radical changes in his ideas and worldview—remains essentially the same? He faces the same problems, is challenged with the same eternal mysteries: those of birth and death, of suffering, joy, love, loneliness, and above all, of the ultimate meaning of his life. Philosophers may have changed their terminology; in fact they debate the same questions. Science may have radically altered the external conditions of life; but it remains helpless—and today more than ever—in solving the ultimate questions of man’s existence. And this essential “sameness” of man is nowhere better revealed than in his recurring “returns” to religiosity and credulity, which today include witchcraft, magic, orientalist of all shades, mysticism of all brands, and primitivism of all flavors.

The tragedy, then, is not that the Church has failed to “understand” the wired and to follow it in all its pseudo-metamorphoses. Rather, the tragedy lies in this: that she followed the world too much, adopting for the explanation of her faith philosophies and though forms alien to it, polluting her piety with the old, pre-christian dichotomy of the “natural” verses the “supernatural” and her worship with either legalistic or magical connotations, abandoning above all that which stood at the very heart of the early Christian faith: the experience of the Church herself as tension between the old and the new, between “this world” and the “world to come,” as the presence “in the midst of us,” and thus the anticipation, of the Kingdom of God.

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 150-151

The Difference between the Early Church and Today

The fact is that while the early Church understood herself as militia Christi, as the people of God mobilized to fight the Enemy, the modern Christian prefers to identify himself and his faith in terms of therapeutics, to see himself not as a warrior recruited for a long war but as a patient in a clinic.

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 125

Christ’s Risen Life is Given to Us in the Church through Baptism

The fruit of Baptism, its true fulfillment, is a new life; not simply a better, more moral or even more pious life, but a life ontologically different from the “old” one. And this difference, the very content of this “newness,” is that it is life with Christ: “…if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him” (Rom 6:8). It is His Risen Life “unto God” that is given to us and becomes our life and our resurrection. But his Life in us, our life in Him is precisely the Church, for she has no other being, no other purpose and no other life but to be Christ in us and we in Christ.”

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 120

The Eucharist is the Visible Unity of Christ

The Eucharist, before it is or can be anything else, is thus gathering or, better to say, the Church herself as unity in Christ. And this gathering is sacramental because it reveals, makes visible and “real,” the invisible unity in Christ, His presence among those who believe in Him, love Him and in Him love one another.

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 118

Christ is Not Just the Divine King but the Human King

We often forget that Christ’s title as King—the title which He affirms when He makes His triumphant entrance into Jerusalem and is greeted as “the King that comes in the name of the Lord,” the title which He accepts when He stands before Pilate: “thou sayest that I am a king” (John 18:37)—is His human, and not only divine title. He is the King, and He manifests Himself as King because He is the New Adam, the Perfect Man—because He restores in Himself human nature in its ineffable glory and power.

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 83

We Receive What Christ is in Our Baptism

…we receive this personal gift of Christ’s own Spirit not only because we are Christ’s by faith and love, but because this faith and love have made us desire His life, to be in Him, and because in Baptism, having been baptized into Christ, we have put on Christ. Christ is the Anointed and we receive His anointment; Christ is the Son and we are adopted as sons; Christ has the Spirit as His Life in Himself and we are given participation in His Life.

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 79

The Church is Life because She is Christ’s Life

It is personal faith in Christ which brings the catechumen to the Church; it is the Church that will instruct him in and bestow upon him Christ’s faith by which she lives. Our faith in Christ, Christ’s faith in us: the one is the fulfillment of the other, is given to us so that we may have the other. But when we speak of the Church’s faith—the one by which she lives, which truly is her very life—we speak of the presence in her of Christ’s faith, of Him Himself as perfect faith, perfect love, perfect desire. And the Church is life because she is Christ’s life in us, because she believes that which He believes, loves that which He loves, desires that which He desires. And He is not only the “object” of her faith, but the “subject” of her entire life.

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 68

On Believers Baptism

Here one objection can be foreseen. How, one may ask, can all this be applied to infant Baptism, to children who obviously have neither personal and conscious faith nor personal “desire”? In fact this is a “helpful” objection, for it is by answering it that we may grasp the ultimate meaning and depth of the Sacrament of Baptism. First of all, the question ought not to be liked to children alone but indeed extend to every Baptism. If what we have just said about faith and desire were understood as implying that the reality and the efficacy of Baptism depends on personal faith, is contingent upon the conscious desire of the individual, then the “validity” of each Baptism, be it infant or adult, should be questioned. For to whom is it given to measure faith, to pass judgment on the degree of “comprehension” and “desire” in it?

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 67

To Believe in Him without Doing His Will is Not to Believe in Him at All

To believe in Him and not to believe in what He believed, not to love what He loved and not to desire what He desired, is not to believe in Him. To separate Him from the “content” of His life, to expect miracles and help from Him without doing what He did, and finally to call Him “Lord” and worship Him without fulfilling the will of His Father, is not to believe in Him. We are saved not because we believe in His “supernatural” power—such faith He does not want from us—but because we accept with our whole being and make ours the desire that fills His life, which is His life and ultimately makes Him descend into death and abolish it.

Alexander Schmemann
Of Water and Spirit
pg. 65