Tag Archives: prayer

We Have Heard With Our Ears

Posted on by
Reply
  • The proclamation of the Epistle on St. Luke’s day (photo by Kate Stronk)
  • St. James proclaims the decision of the apostolic council
  • Moses receives the Word to proclaim to the judges of Israel

When Moses went and told the people all the Lord’s words and laws, they responded with one voice, “Everything the Lord has said we will do.” Moses then wrote down everything the Lord had said. (Exodus 24:3-4)

Nowadays most Americans think their experience of God should be intellectual and cerebral. They expect to encounter God by reading or in a text. They discount the importance of their bodies when experiencing the divine. They often think that they cannot experience God except in their minds. Many are sure that what they think is more important than what they do.

Throughout the Bible, however, people do not encounter God by reading but by their hearing or with their eyes. Exodus 24 describes how the 70 leaders and judges of the Israelite clans gathered at Mt. Sinai heard Moses proclaim the covenant and commandments long before they were written down. On the foothills of Mt. Sinai, these 70 judges saw the same thing St. John saw in the Book of Revelation: the Lord enthroned in glory on a sapphire pavement brighter and more pure than the sky. They glimpsed eternity.

Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” He is that divine Word. It is by hearing that we encounter the Word made flesh and his words. Jesus told the apostles, “Many prophets longed to see what you see.” The apostles saw the Word made flesh. During the pandemic, we learned again about how important it is—that it is possible—to receive Holy Communion with our eyes when we cannot receive the Sacred Host in our mouths. 

We turn to God so that we can hear him. We open our eyes so that we can see him. In Psalm 40, King David says, “You have given me ears to hear you.” The epistle to the Hebrews quotes this, understanding Christ as the one whose ears hear what the Father says. The prophet Isaiah picks up on this theme as well, speaking for the Messiah: “The Lord God wakens my ear to hear as the learned” (Isaiah 50). What we hear, what we listen to you shapes and forms us in fundamental ways. Who we listen to reveals who we are and who we want to be.

The Word was meant to be heard, not read. This was due, in part, to widespread illiteracy and the difficulty of having books easily accessible. But even when more people can read and books are available, the Word is still meant to be heard. The Word is meant to be experienced viscerally, in our guts not just in our heads. Even when we pray —by ourselves in our rooms—the words of our prayer should be heard and not just recited in our heads; all the spiritual guides have always taught that we should move our lips and feel our breath forming the words of our prayer even if we cannot hear them. We pray with our whole bodies, not just our heads. Never just with our heads.

Listening to the Word of God, experiencing the divine with our ears forms us to be the Body we want to be. We want to hear the Word of God and keep it. We want to hear the Word of God and become that word ourselves. We need to practice listening on a daily basis and cut through the inner static or feedback we all have in our heads. Slowly reading a psalm every day helps us do this. Sitting quietly for a few minutes and saying the Jesus Prayer, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me” (Luke 18:38) can help us do this. 

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (Revelation 3:20).

A Woman Should Cover Her Head Because of the Angels

Posted on by
2
Angels are depicted with red boots indicating their role as messengers of the heavenly court; red boots were worn by officials associated with the Byzantine imperial system and imperial messengers on imperial business were often identified by their red boots. So the angels, delivering messages from God to humans, were identified in icons as messengers of the King of heaven by their red boots as well.


For if a woman does not cover her head, let her hair be cut; if, however, it is shameful for a woman to cut her hair or shave it off, it is better to keep her head covered…. A woman should keep her head covered because of the angels. (1 Cor. 11:6, 10)

This passage is one of the most difficult in the New Testament for modern readers to understand. St. Paul talks about women keeping silent and their heads covered all because of the angels. How can the apostle who wrote these words also have written that in Christ there is neither rich nor poor, slave or free, male or female? What is he talking about in this passage?

Hairstyles were important in 1st century Greco-Roman culture. Elite women and men spent a lot of time and money to have their hair done “properly” and even the wives of the emperors could be criticized for having an incorrect hairstyle. Men were expected to have hairstyles that were very different from women; women were expected to wear hairstyles that made it easy to see that they were not men. So the easiest and most basic way to do that was for men to cut their hair short and women to keep their hair long; a woman who cut her hair short might as well shave it all off. Philosophers spent a lot of time and ink writing about proper, appropriate hairstyles.

St. Paul wants the Christian men and women in Corinth to be recognizable as men and women. The scandal of the Cross and Resurrection should be the only hurdle making it difficult for non-Christians to embrace the Faith; upending social norms should not be a reason for non-believers to reject the Faith. But what do the angels have to do with this?

Praying and prophesying involve exposing the worshipper to the power and influence of powerful spiritual entities. Some of these are good. Some are evil. Wearing their hair like a “proper” woman was a talisman against the evil spirits that might try to deceive a woman who was praying or prophesying or interpreting Scripture (a sub-genre of prophesy). Keeping their hair long and properly coiffed was a way to protect the Christian women of Corinth, allowing only the good angels to speak to them or inspire their words.

Perhaps one reason modern readers have difficulty with this passage is because we don’t take prophesying and angels seriously any more. Understanding preaching and interpretation of scripture as acts of prophesying and acknowledging the reality, importance, and power of the angels go a long way to make a difficult passage comprehensible and not as a misogynistic rant.

Conjugal Debts

Posted on by
Reply
The Church, the Bride of Christ, is born from his side when the blood and water pour forth from the lance-wound in his side, just as Eve was born from the side of Adam. As bride and groom, the Church and Christ can be said to owe each other a “conjugal debt” that is “paid” in the Eucharist. “Do you understand, then, how Christ has united his bride to himself and what food he gives us all to eat? By one and the same food we are both brought into being and nourished. As a woman nourishes her child with her own blood and milk, so does Christ unceasingly nourish with his own blood those to whom he himself has given life.” (St. John Chrysostom)

Let a man give to his wife what he owes her; similarly, a wife to her husband. A wife does not have authority over her body, her husband does; likewise, a husband does not have authority over his own body, his wife does. Do not deprive one another …. (1 Cor. 7:4-5)

Evidently the Corinthians had written a series of questions to St. Paul, some of them about marriage. In response, St. Paul writes a short treatise On Marriage in chapter 7 of First Corinthians. It was common for philosophers and later Christian theologians to write essays about the good and bad qualities of marriage; St. Augustine wrote an especially famous essay On the Good [Aspects] of Marriage.

Jewish tracts about marriage and pagan philosophers writing about marriage agree about the power of sexuality. St. Paul concurs with these ideas. The sexual relationship is at the heart of the marital relationship and the sexual availability each spouse owes the other came to be known as the “conjugal debt.” St. Paul writes that the spouses could agree to deny each other for short periods, so as to be better able to focus on prayer, but should never stay away from each other for long.

What is a “short” period? What is a “long” time? Jewish practice expected a married couple to abstain for one or two weeks each month because of the wife’s menstrual cycle. Soldiers and priests were expected to abstain during their times of active service–partly because they weren’t at home. Scholars of the Torah could abstain for a month but not longer; this meant they could not go away to distant libraries for months at a time. Ordinary workmen were not allowed to abstain for more than a week; this meant they had to come home every week if they had a job that required them to live away from home.

Early Christians expected that married couples who were fasting would also abstain from sexual activity; some manuscripts of First Corinthians read that couples should only abstain in order to engage in “prayer and fasting.” There were two fasting days each week and anyone receiving Holy Communion was expected to fast the night before as well. Converts preparing for baptism were expected to fast for three days. (This pre-baptismal fast is what became Holy Week and then Lent.)

St. Paul was not married. It was unusual for a Jewish man to not be married so a few people think he might have been a widower without children. Whether he had been married as a younger man or not, he urged the Corinthians to remain as they were when they converted: married or single or widowed. Stability of life–itself an important monastic virtue in the 6th century–was important to St. Paul. Such stability involved a stable homelife which included a stable reliance on the “payment” of the “conjugal debt.”