An extract from the intervention of His Beatitude to the Vatican Council on November 18, 1963, criticizing the text for Christian Unity in the chapter “On Ecumenism.”
[The Greek Melkite Church at the Council, Eparchy of Newton, Sophia Press, 2014. p 336]
Ecumenism is an effort for the gathering together of the whole Christian family, that is to say, the consolidation of all those who have been baptized in Christ. It is thus a strictly intimate family affair. Non-Christian are thus not involved. One cannot see what the Jews are going to do in Christian ecumenism, and why they have been introduced to it.
…the Eastern patriarchs have particularly insisted on the undesirability of a special mention of the Jews… The consequences of such an interpretation would be serious for the Christian minority in the said [middle eastern] countries.
In other words, inviting those who trivialize or deny the fundamental work of Christ into ecumenical consideration, will obliterate Christianity.
“Whenever anyone came my way, who had been a follower of my seniors, I would ask for the accounts of our seniors: What did Andrew or Peter say? Or Phillip or Thomas or James or John, or Matthew, or any of the Lord’s disciples? I also asked: What did Aristion and John the Presbyter, disciples of the Lord say? For, as I see it, it is not so much from books as from the living and permanent voice that I must draw profit.”
Saint Papias, quote from Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, Book 3, Chapter 39 3rd Century
You became illustrious by your defense of the True Faith. You abolished all doctrinal error and stood victorious in your fight. By your devotion, you brought wealth and glory to the Church. Therefore you were judged worthy to find Christ God who grants us His great Mercy.
A reminder that Christianity existed before Bible only christian philosophies. Before the printing press. Before widespread literacy of the 20th Century.
“May the life of Mary, who gave birth to God, be for all of you as instructive as if it were written down. Come to know yourselves in her and carry out the good works that you have neglected in the past.”
A prophecy from the last book of the old order, on the prophet’s feast day:
Malachy 1:10 I have no pleasure in you, says the Lord Omnipotent, and I will not accept sacrifice at your hands. For from the rising of the sun, unto the going down, My name is glorified among the Gentiles, and in every place incense is offered to My name, and a pure sacrifice; for great is My name among the Gentiles, said the Lord Omnipotent.”
A reminder to all that the books of the Old and New Testament were chosen based on their use in the Divine Liturgy in the 3-4th Century. For those that are “Bible only” philosophers, therein lies your only link to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Later, certain books were dropped to meet the philosophical “needs” of neo-christians. And if you are Jewish, consider how you are supposed to celebrate Hanukkah, but the book wherein the story comes from, the Book of Macabbies, was dropped by Jews and neo-christians centuries ago. Only Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Bibles tell the story of the Jewish Hanukkah.
On the Feast day of the Holy Innocents, we can invoke this prayer for the aborted. And in our time, those innocent that die in war, especially in the genocide of Gaza.
Prayer for an Aborted Child
Most Merciful Lord, the Giver of Life; we entreat You, look with compassion and tender mercy upon Your children who have been condemned to death by abortion and genocide. You, who said, “Suffer the little children to come to me and forbid them not, for such is the Kingdom of Heaven,” do now we humbly pray, grant the inheritance of Your Kingdom to the multitude of innocents who have perished in their mother’s wombs by the unjust judgement of men. We beseech you to soften the hearts of people who seek to destroy Your little ones. Pour out upon them Your Divine grace that they may be convicted in their hearts and turn from their evil ways to embrace the True Faith. Upon those that have committed this cruelty: render not unto them according to their deeds, but rather have mercy on them. Pierce their hearts with compunction and make their eyes stream with tears of repentance, joining their weeping with that of Rachel and her beloved children. For You are a merciful God, the Giver of Life and the Lover of Mankind, and to You we render glory, with Your eternal Father and Holy Spirit, now and always and forever and ever.
1 Corinthians 15 3 For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8 and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
Examine this text. Paul had spent part of his ministry exhorting his brethren on Christ the King but was realizing he was meant to become apostle to the Gentiles instead (Acts 13:46). In the above passage, we see a clearer distinction of a third James, as we discuss in a prior blog post, and contrary to the belief in the Latin tradition. In this narrative of the sequence of the Risen Lord appearing to many, there is His appearance first to the 12, that we know includes James the son of Zebedee and James (the Lesser) the son of Alphaeus (Luke 6:12-14). Paul then clearly makes mention of another James before ending with himself. Why would this distinction be made if this were not truly a third James who he also calls “the Lord’s brother” (Galatians 1:19)? And if the James he mentions in 1 Corinthians 15:7 is one of the 12, why is he not specifying which one? There IS a third James. This James in the eastern tradition is called James the Just and was martyred by being thrown from the temple before its destruction in 70 AD. He is the half-first-born brother of Jesus from Joseph before he became a widow.
This is not a matter necessary for salvation. Christians do not have to believe either way. But let us examine why this could be important. As explained earlier (1,2,3,4), there is a symmetry from the transgression of the 8th commandment that lead to the lineage of the Messiah through Isaac’s son Jacob, his and his mother Rebecca’s deception to steal the first-born birth right, and the new Jacob the father of Joseph (Matthew 1 genealogy). There is an undoing here of the temporal effect of this sin, even though it produced the Messiah (Remember the words of our Lord in Luke 8:17-“For all that is secret will eventually be brought into the open, and everything that is concealed will be brought to light and made known to all.” May God have mercy on us all!). This undoing became the crowning of James the Just from the genealogy, the first born of Joseph, to become the first Bishop of Jerusalem. It is the replacement of the reign of lineage of the people of God but with an Apostolic continuity sealed with blood of the Messiah. Could this be related to Paul’s realization that he was called to be the Apostle of the Gentiles and had to abandon his zeal to evangelize his people who he loved so much? This former disciple of Gamaliel would have been a reasonable candidate for Bishop of Jerusalem. Here the eastern apostolic churches originated and evolved in the east, separate from the traditions in Rome. They are the apostolic continuity of the genealogy, keeping the ancestral prophets and patriarchs in the Liturgical calendar.
We have then in the eastern apostolic traditions a type of familial order at work from this perspective that has nothing to do with denying the primacy of the See of Peter, the Holder of the Keys. We have apostolic succession but with a national or regional character. These apostolic traditions were granted an autonomy in propagating their own apostolic lineage at the Council of Nicea while defending the faith and morality. Recall that after the persecutions under the Roman Emperor Diocletian ended, all the apostolic churches emerged intact. There was no direct interventions from the Pope during the period. Administrative jurisdiction from the Bishop of Rome is unnatural in this scheme.
Think of the Roman Church as a large tree with new trees emerging around it from dropped seed. These are the eastern churches. This is the Spirit at work in the Book of Acts. All are unified by the same Spirit, Sacraments, and Love for the Theotokos. Similar to how each organic family is a domestic church. How unnatural it is then for the Holy See to demand administrative jurisdiction over all the apostolic churches. To return the apostolic administrative independence would not have altered God’s work in the Latin Church since the complete schism at the turn of the first millennium. Look at our world. The middle east could soon have no Sacramental presence, something that never happened under Moslem rule. This clinging to administrative authority is even replacing the faith, ethics and morals. Even attacking the Latin tradition itself.
Making the sign of the the Cross over your head with the Cross, say:
Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered; and let those who hate Him flee before His Presence. As smoke vanishes, so let them vanish; and as wax melts before the fire, so let the demons perish before the presence of those who love God and who sign themselves with the sign of the Cross and say in gladness: Hail, most precious and life-giving Cross, for You drive away the demons by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ who was crucified on You and who went down to Hell and trampled on the power of the devil and gave us You, His Venerable Cross, for driving away all enemies. O Most precious and life-giving Cross of the Lord, help me, with our Holy Lady, the Virgin Mother of God and with all the Saints throughout the ages. Amen
We realize,” said Philomena, ” that we are before God as so many vases of honor; some larger, some smaller. The vases of our soul expand according to our desire to love God during our life on earth. As soon as we are brought into the presence of God, each vase is filled to the brim with knowledge and love of Him.
This plenitude is what is called essential glory and this, through all eternity, cannot be enlarged or diminished. God Himself can put in the hearts of the faithful to pray to Him through His Saints; and then grace descends from Him like crystal-clear water, falling on our vases. Being already full, they [the saints] cannot contain it, wherefore the water splashes from them, falling upon earth enriching you who are yet pilgrims. This is the glory which is called accidental glory, which can increase or diminish. But in either case, we lose nothing. Always, we give glory to God.’
St. Philomena can be thought of a saint in a time capsule. And may give you inspiration how to live your life.
“I adjure you by God, most venerable fathers, how can we proclaim and publish and practice a constitution established in this manner? How can we defend it before the dissidents and present it to the Catholics? Let them [Orthodox] not accuse us of despising holy antiquity and let them not despise us as contradictors of the councils and canons. What will we say to those who give extreme respect to the councils, which took place in the east? How can Catholics persevere in the faith and how can the separated return when they see in this constitution the destruction of their autonomy and the loss of dignity and rights for their patriarchal sees? Unity consists in the fact that bishops are united in faith and love with their patriarch, the patriarchs among themselves and above all with the Roman patriarch. According to divine right, one of them, the Roman pontiff, is the prince of the others; according to canonical right there are five princes of the Church and successors of the Apostles. The Eastern Church attributes to the pope the highest and most complete power, but in a manner that the fullness of his power be in harmony with the rights of the patriarchal sees…The definition in canon 3, chapter 3, entirely destroys the foundations of the Greek Church and drags it to its ruin and to its complete dissolution. Our conscience refuses to accept this constitution because, for eighteen centuries, that is, from the origins of Christianity until today, this Church has been organized and ruled according to a law which is proper and conforms to nature, according to a special discipline, according to usages and ancient customs going back to the apostles; new definitions of this kind renew troubles, create difficulties and put obstacles which harm the salvation of souls.”
Melkite Catholic Patriarch Gregory II Yousef Sayour before the General Assembly of Vatican I concerning the declaration of papal infallibility. 1870. [1]
Now, 150 years later, that insistence for an unnatural papal authority over the natural canonical right codified soon after Pentecost, has come to turn on traditions even within the Latin Rite itself, where that unnatural right was defined. And in another example of how the arrogance of pride degrades, and degrades endlessly, that “authority” seems to take on morality itself.
[1] Steward of the Mysteries, Bishop Nicholas Samra, Sophia Press. West Roxbury, Massachusetts, 2010. pp 89-90.
