Category Archives: Early Church

Nazis Pervert the Swastika

Posted on by
Reply

Various depictions of the swastika, a sign of life and health, which was adopted by the Nazis in 1935. The swastika is now seen by most as the infamous emblem of the most pernicious evil in human history.

The swastika, an ancient symbol of life and health, was adopted by the Nazi regime as their official logo on September 16, 1935. The symbol is now seen by most people as exclusively the emblem of the most wicked political system ever devised.

The swastika–the name swastika comes from Sanskrit word swastik, which means ‘conducive to well being’ or ‘auspicious’–is an icon which is widely found in human history. In northern Europe it has also been called a sun-wheel. A swastika generally takes the form of a cross, the arms of which are of equal length and perpendicular to the adjacent arms, each bent midway at a right angle. The earliest known swastika is from 10,000 BC found in the Ukraine. (It was engraved on wooden monuments built near the final resting places of fallen Slavs to represent eternal life.)

In several major religions, the swastika symbolizes lightning bolts, representing the thunder god and the king of the gods, such as Indra in Vedic Hinduism, Zeus in the ancient Greek religion, Jupiter in the ancient Roman religion, and Thor in the ancient Germanic religion.

Some say the swastika represents the north pole, and the rotational movement around the center or axis of the world. It also represents the Sun as a reflected function of the north pole. It is a symbol of life, of the life-creating role of the supreme principle of the universe, the absolute God, in relation to the cosmic order. Medieval Christians used it a way to depict the life-giving power of the True Cross on which Jesus was crucified and destroyed Death.

The Nazis’ principal symbol was first the hakenkreuz, “hooked-cross” (which resembles the Swastika) which the newly established Nazi Party formally adopted in 1920. The emblem was a black swastika (hooks branching clockwise) rotated 45 degrees on a white circle on a red background. This insignia was used on the party’s flag, badge, and armband and became the flag of Germany in 1935.

Deposition of the Sash of the Mother of God & The Visitation

Posted on by
2

A 17th-century Russian icon of the Deposition of the Sash of the Mother of God.

July 2 has long been a feast day of the Mother of God in both the Eastern and Western Churches although the feasts each had a somewhat different emphasis.

According to legend, the Mother of God died and was buried by the apostles in a tomb in Jerusalem. Three days later, Thomas the Apostle, who had been delayed and unable to attend the funeral, arrived and asked to have one last look at the Virgin Mary. When he and the other apostles arrived at Mary’s Tomb, they found that her body was missing. According to some accounts, the Virgin Mary appeared at that time and gave her belt (also called sash or cincture) to the Apostle Thomas. Another version of the story recounts how the Mother of God gave her sash to one of the women tending her as she was dying and the sash was passed down in that woman’s family from generation to generation.

Traditionally, the sash was reportedly made by the Virgin Mary herself, out of camel hair. Whether it was given to St. Thomas or the woman tending the dying Virgin, the sash was kept at Jerusalem for many years. It was brought to Constantinople in the 5th century, together with the robe of the Virgin Mary. The robe and the sash were both deposited in the Church of St. Mary at Blachernae. The sash was embroidered with gold thread by the Empress Zoe, the wife of Emperor Leo VI, in gratitude for a miraculous cure. The anniversary of this deposition of the sash of the Mother of God at Blachernae is celebrated every year by the Orthodox Church on July 2.

Later, the Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos (1347–1355) donated the sash to the monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos, where it remains to this day. (I was given a relic of the sash on Mt. Athos by a good friend of mine; I highly prize it. I have also been given a small stone from Golgotha by a parishioner and a small stone from the tomb of the Mother of God in Jerusalem as an ordination gift.)

July 2 was the traditional date for the Western Church to celebrate the Visitation of the Mother of God and St. Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist (Luke 1:39-57). Feeling the presence of his Christ in the womb of Mary, John, in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, jumped with excitement. Elizabeth greeted her cousin Mary as “the Mother of my Lord,” realizing that the baby was not just kicking in her womb for no reason. (Many western Christians moved the Visitation feast to May 31 in 1969.) Keeping the Visitation on July 2, however, strikes me as a fitting way to promote unity between Eastern and Western Christians and to foster goodwill among the adherents of a common, “mere” Christianity.

Read more about the Visitation here and here. You can read more about the Deposition here. See Mere Christianity here.

A contemporary icon depicting the Mother of God giving her sash to St. Thomas the Apostle after her Dormition (Assumption).

Corpus Christi: Wafer vs. Bread

Posted on by
Reply

Contemporary hosts made for Holy Communion are often whole wheat and do not appear as glistening white as wafers produced with white flour.

Wafers have been used for Holy Communion by Western Christians since the late 1200s. Before that, unleavened bread–made without yeast–was used. (Western Christians adopted the use of bread without yeast in imitation of the matzah–unleavened bread–used at Passover and the Last Supper in the Gospels. The matzah was not like the crackers now sold in grocery stores; matzah and the unleavened bread used by Western Christians was more like tortilla or gyro bread.) Eastern Christians have always used bread made with yeast.

I remember in the 1970s how people joked, “It takes more faith to believe that a wafer is bread than it does to believe that it becomes the Body of Christ!” This was because the wafers do not look like anything most people think of when you ask them what bread looks like. It turns out this is because wafers are NOT technically bread at all! Both are baked goods made with flour but they are not the same just as cake and crackers are also baked goods made from flour but are not bread. Bread, by definition, is made from dough and must be kneaded and formed by hand; wafer is made from batter and is never touched until after it is baked. The first reference to Western Christians using wafers instead of bread are from the late 1200s and many people objected precisely that wafers were “not real bread.”

People also objected that the wafers were not made by monks as priests as the unleavened bread used at Mass had been. People did not think that layfolk–even nuns–should be baking the bread used for Holy Communion. (It did become common later for nuns to make wafers for churches to buy and this was a way for nuns to support themselves. Since the 1960s, making wafers for Holy Communion has become a big business that you can read about here.)

It is unclear how rapidly wafer-use spread among Western Christians but they became used uniformly across Europe by the late 1600s. Why did wafers become so popular? One reason might be that wafers did not spoil as quickly as real bread, even if it was made without yeast; this made it easier to keep the Blessed Sacrament reserved. Also, some people thought the bread or wafer used for Communion should be glistening white and it is easier to control the color of wafers than bread. Some people thought that the wafers never being touched until after they were baked was emblematic of Christ’s birth from the Virgin Mary; these people favored the use of wafers rather than bread that was touched as it was kneaded and formed.

It became standard to make a large wafer for the priest to elevate for people to reverence at the Elevation and just before Communion; the wafers that would be consumed by the layfolk were much smaller discs that were coin-sized. Preachers suggested that the coin-size wafers should remind people that God was like a vineyard owner who could hire people all day long and would pay all the workers the same coin at the end of the day (Matthew 20:1-16).

Want to know more? There are three books about the different kinds of bread used for Holy Communion:

1. Fractio Panis by Barry Craig (Germany, 2011).
2. Bread and the Liturgy: The Symbolism of Early Christian and Byzantine Bread Stamps by George Galavaris (Wisconsin, 1970).
3. The Bread of the Eucharist: Early Christian Eucharist and the Azyme Controversy, by Edward Martin (Rome, 1970).

The elevation of the Host in a contemporary celebration of the Solemn Mass by Dominican religious.