Tag Archives: salvation

Charismatic Gifts? Healing and Prophecy

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In this manuscript illumination, Miriam leads the women singing in joy on the shore of the Red Sea after God’s victory over the Egyptians. There are seven women prophets of Israel — Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Esther, and Huldah. These women were inspired by God to tell the Truth, especially when no one wanted to hear it.


There are allotments of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are allotments of services, but the same Lord; and there are allotments of activities, but the same God who works all things in all…. to [some], gifts of healings in the one Spirit… to another prophecy…. One and the same Spirit activates all of these, allotting to each one, as he wills, his or her own gifts. (1 Cor. 12:4-11)

The Apostle Paul is concerned with divisions among the members of the parish in Corinth, especially those who said that certain roles in the community or certain spiritual gifts were more important or more valuable than others. He stresses that all spiritual gifts are given by the same Spirit. All are equally valuable, equally important.

Gifts of healing were a major focus of the residents of Corinth. There was an important sanctuary of Asklepios, the Greek god of healing, in Corinth; he was one of the most popular gods in the ancient world and his shrine at Corinth brought many visitors, hoping to be healed, to the city. People hoping to be healed would usually sleep in the god’s shrine, hoping for a miracle or a dream that would tell them how to be healed. Ritual baths were important at the shrine as well. St. Paul tells the Corinthian Christians that all healing is given by the one Spirit of God and the ritual bath of baptism is the true source of authentic spiritual health-salvation. He wants them to realize that Christ and the Spirit of God–not Asklepios–were the true healers.

Prophets and prophecy are often misunderstood as simply being able to foretell the future. Real prophets were keen observers of people and the world. They were skilled preachers and poets. They were focused on God. Because a prophet was all of these–a skilled preacher, a keen observer, focused on God–they were able to speak the Truth when no one wanted to hear it and to describe what would happen if they continued to deny the Truth and the Reality that they were trying to escape. Prophets were also able to describe what God would do because God was faithful and had made certain promises to his people. A prophet might not always realize how True everything they said was–just as a poet says more than they realize in a poem. The prophets in the Corinthian parish were preachers and teachers who were supposed to build up the community, not tear it down and create divisions.

St. Paul and early Christian preachers were eager to remind people that these gifts were given to both men and women, the old and the young. The record of the Acts of the Apostles described how these gifts were manifest among the early Christians in various places. The most important gift, given to all Christians, is the Holy Spirit himself.

Not everyone has all of these gifts –some have one, and others have another. But we all have the the Gift who is himself the one who gives these other gifts; that is to say, the Holy Spirit.

St. Agustine of Hippo, On the Trinity 15.

Harvest and Winepress

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Detail of a miniature showing the Last Judgement from the “Queen Mary Apocalypse”, early 1300s (Royal MS 19 B XV, f. 40r).

Then I looked, and … another angel came out of the Temple and called in a loud voice… “Put in your sickle and harvest for the hour of the harvest has come, for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe. (Apocalypse 14:14-15)

In much of the New Testament (Matthew 13) or the Old Testament prophets (Isaiah 17, Jeremiah 51, Joel 3), the images or parables about the harvest use the image of “harvest” as a way to talk about the Last Judgment, the End of Days. Often, the idea of harvest includes the idea of condemnation: the wicked will be harvested and condemned to their eternal punishment. But in the Apocalypse, the idea of harvest is about salvation rather than condemnation. The righteous are ripe–they have withstood the test of persecution–and they are harvested in the Apocalypse, not the wicked; the righteous are harvested and gathered before the Throne of God as crops are gathered into a barn for safekeeping.

But after the righteous are harvested, the wicked are gathered into the divine winepress. The “great winepress of God’s wrath” (Apoc. 14:19) is outside the heavenly city, just as the Cross was erected outside the walls of Jerusalem. The winepress grinds up those flung into it and their blood pours out as the grape juice flows from a winepress on earth, ready to be made into wine. Christ is flung into the divine winepress on the Cross and his blood pours out into the chalice of the Eucharist; in the Apocalypse, the wicked are thrown into the divine winepress which is outside the city–outside the Church–and they are trodden as grapes are trodden. But they do not emerge from the winepress victorious, as the martyrs do. The wicked are destroyed in the winepress because they choose to align themselves with the dragon–all the powers that oppose God and the Lamb.

Harvest and winepress. Bread and wine. How we choose to prepare for (1 Cor. 11) or respond to these experiences results in our salvation or condemnation. Often in ways that we do not expect.

Mother of God as Fortress and Incense

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This icon, similar to the icon in Rome of the Mother of God known as “Health/Salvation of the Roman People,” illustrates the Song of Songs 4:4, which reads, “Like the Tower of David is your neck … a thousand shields hang upon it, all arrows of the mighty.”

“Who is she that goes up from the desert, as a pillar of smoke of aromatic spices–of myrrh and frankincense and all the perfumer’s powders?” (Song of Songs 3:6)

The friends of the groom are surprised by what they see, St. Gregory of Nyssa tells us. They know she is beautiful more splendid than gold or silver. But now they see her ascending and are struck with amazement and compare her beauty and virtue to not just a simple, single variety of incense but to a mixture of frankincense and myrrh together.

“One aspect of their praise is derived from the association of these two perfumes: myrrh is used for burying the dead and frankincense is used in divine worship…. a person must first become myrrh before being dedicated to the worship of God. That is, a person must be buried with Christ who assumed death for our sake and must mortify themselves with the myrrh–understood as repentance–which was used in the Lord’s burial.” (St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Song of Songs)

A person must embrace ongoing self-examination and repentance; only then is it possible to then possible to enter the presence of God as the frankincense which is offered by the angels before the throne of God (Rev. 8:4).

Another of the spices used by perfumers was cinnamon. It was thought to have several remarkable properties, such as stopping putrefaction or infection and would cause a sleeping person to answer questions truthfully. So the application of “spiritual cinnamon” would stop anger, induce honest/truthful self-examination, and calm the anxious.

Myrrh and cinnamon were therefore metaphors for attitudes and practices that would protect a person from sin. In the Song, the bride–who was a type of the Mother of God–was not only myrrh and cinnamon but a protective fortress as well. The bride–in patristic sermons, the Mother of God–is a fortress with shields hanging from the battlements. The walls of the fortress are impervious to spears. The early fathers took this to mean that the prayers of the Mother of God could protect Christians from the darts and arrows of temptation. The fortress could also be seen as the Church herself, steadfast and immoveable on the rock of faith.

There were 18th century icons to illustrate this idea of the Mother of God as fortress; the inscription at the top of these icons was commonly:

“Like the Tower of David is your neck, built on courses of stone; a thousand shields hang upon it, all arrows of the mighty.” (Song of Songs 4:4)

In the example of this kind of icon seen above, the two saints appearing at the sides are additions generally not found in other versions.  They are the Martyr Adrian and the Martyr Natalia.  Some examples have instead the military saints such Alexander Nevsky at left, and George at right, but many have no saints added to the main image.

Much thanks to the Icons and Their Interpretation blog for information about this icon.