The Mystery of Chrismation
This Sunday, December 22nd, my fiance and I are going to be Chrismated into the Orthodox faith. The following explanation of Chrismation may be helpful for those of you not familiar with this ancient practice
The following is found on the title page of the Chrismation service booklet used by St. Paul's.
The mystery or sacrament of chrismation is anchored in the events of Jesus' baptism (Matthew 3:13-17) and the outpourning of the Spirit on the disciples at Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4). There is both an intrinsic unity and a very real distinction between the mysteries of baptism and chrismation. Chrismation is not so much a second sacrament as it is the fulfillment of baptism. If baptism is our personal participation in the death and resurrection of Christ, chrismation is our personal participation in Pentecost, making us partakers of the Spirit. Just as Pascha without Pentecost is incomplete, so baptism without chrismation is incomplete.Chrismation causes a mysterious, new and hidden life to flow in us. This anointing imparts to us the energies and gifts of the Holy Spirit (Isaiah 11:2-3; Galatians 5:22). Chrismation is called "the seal" and as each catechumen is anointed with chrism the priest proclaims, "the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit!" to which the congregation responds "Amen!" The neophyte receives the Holy Spirit as the source, pledge and seal of unending life. Anointed with the oils of chrism, we are marked forever as sheep of Christ's flock. We belong to Him and to His body, the Church. In the Orthodox Church, the sacrament of chrismation is always done together with baptism. However, over the centuries, the oil of chrism has also been used as a sacrament of reconcilliation. People who come to the fullness of Orthodoxy from other Christian groups that confess a trinitarian faith-- Roman Catholic and Protestant-- are normally received into the Church through this sacramental anointing.
The chrism that is used for anointing is a mixture of olive oil, balsam, wine and some 40 aromatic substances, symbolizing the fullness of grace, the sweetness of the yoke of Christ and the many and diverse gifts of the Holy Spirit. This oil of chrism is also sometimes called myron or myrrh.
By ancient custom, the responsibility for preparing and consecrating the oil of chrism belongs to the bishops of the Church as a symbol that the Holy Spirit was originally given through the apostles of Christ and their successors, the bishops. In our case, the oil of chrism is prepared and consecrated on Great and Holy Thursday by the bishops of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople.
After chrismation, the newly sealed Orthodox Christian is tonsured. The tonsure, which is the cutting of hair from the head, is the sign that the whole person is offered to God, hair being a symbol of strength in the Scriptures (Judges 16:17).
Postponed Desires For Our Benefit
7To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. 8Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. 9But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. 10That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. ~~ II Corinthians 12:7-10"Paul begged that the flesh's thorn be removed from him, but he was not heard by the Lord. The devil prayed that he might strike Job with the harshest of disasters, and we know that this was subsequently granted him. But Paul was denied the fulfillment of his prayer for his glory, whereas the devil was granted his for the devil's pain. Thus it is often an advantage not to be heard even though postponement of our desires depresses us." ~~ Cassiodorus. From the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture VII.
14 day countdown
Two weeks from today Katherine and I will be married. Wow.
You're prayers are welcomed with gratitude.
Ignatius (A.D. 30-107; disciple of the St. John; Bishop of Antioch) On Bishops and Church Unity
I have therefore taken upon me first to exhort you that ye would all run together in accordance with the will of God. For even Jesus Christ, our inseparable life, is the [manifested] will of the Father; as also bishops, settled everywhere to the utmost bounds [of the earth], are so by the will of Jesus Christ.Part of me wants to give some commentary. Yet, part of me thinks that there is no commentary needed, at least from an Orthodox perspective.Wherefore it is fitting that ye should run together in accordance with the will of your bishop, which thing also ye do. For your justly renowned presbytery, worthy of God, is fitted as exactly to the bishop as the strings are to the harp. Therefore in your concord and harmonious love, Jesus Christ is sung. And do ye, man by man, become a choir, that being harmonious in love, and taking up the song of God in unison, ye may with one voice sing to the Father through Jesus Christ, so that He may both hear you, and perceive by your works that ye are indeed the members of His Son. It is profitable, therefore, that you should live in an unblameable unity, that thus ye may always enjoy communion with God.
For if I in this brief space of time, have enjoyed such fellowship with your bishop-I mean not of a mere human, but of a spiritual nature-how much more do I reckon you happy who are so joined to him as the Church is to Jesus Christ, and as Jesus Christ is to the Father, that so all things may agree in unity! Let no man deceive himself: if any one be not within the altar, he is deprived of the bread of God. For if the prayer of one or two possesses such power, how much more that of the bishop and the whole Church! He, therefore, that does not assemble with the Church, has even by this manifested his pride, and condemned himself. For it is written, "God resisteth the proud." Let us be careful, then, not to set ourselves in opposition to the bishop, in order that we may be subject to God.
Now the more any one sees the bishop keeping silence, the more ought he to revere him. For we ought to receive every one whom the Master of the house sends to be over His household, as we would do Him that sent him. It is manifest, therefore, that we should look upon the bishop even as we would upon the Lord Himself. And indeed Onesimus himself greatly commends your good order in God, that ye all live according to the truth, and that no sect has any dwelling-place among you. Nor, indeed, do ye hearken to any one rather than to Jesus Christ speaking in truth.
~~~ Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians (shorter version)
Apostolic Tradition
Words worth reading on apostolic tradition. Consider Pelikan:
Unlike the Gnostic tradtion, however, this apostolic tradition had been preserved publicly in the churches that stood in succession with the apostles.... or as Origen put it: "the doctrine of the church , transmitted in orderly succession from the apostles and remaining in the church to the present day" together with the proper interpretation of the Old Testament and the proper canon of the New Testament, this tradition of the church was a decisive criterion of apostolic continuity for the determination of doctrine in the church catholic.Read on...
So palpable was this apostolic tradition that even if the apostles had not left behind the Scriptures to serve as normative evidence of their doctrine, the church would still be in a position to follow "the structure of the tradition which they handed on to those to whom they committed the churches." this was, in fact, what the church was doing in those barbarian territories where believers did not have access to the written deposit, but still carefully guarded the ancient tradition of the apostles, summarized in the creed-- or at least in a very creedlike statement of the content of apostolic tradition.Praise God for preserving His Church.