Sanctity: A reflection on the images in our Holy Wisdom Temple
By Brother Luke
Christ is in our midst! How many times we proclaim this truth to each other in worship services and in our daily lives! The season of lights, which stretches from Christmas to the Feast of the Encounter on February 2, is a period the church gives to us to remind us of the Incarnation: that God became one of us in the person of Jesus Christ to share in our human condition and thereby sanctify it. Great Compline of Christmas and Theophany are distinctive for the use of Isaiah’s prophecy that proclaims: “God is with us.” Is God with us only in some mystical, theoretical way, or is God with us in very tangible and human ways as well? The Incarnation seems to point unmistakably to the human dimension. We can find sanctity in the human condition and in human beings. So, one might say, to understand the expressions “God is with us” and “Christ is in our midst,” we need to look around us, to look into the eye of our neighbor, to find God.
A visitor to New Skete Monastery who enters our Holy Wisdom Temple for services will notice a procession of saints on the upper walls as well as on the icon above the synthronon. We also have individual icons of saints hanging in various locations in the church. One might well wonder why we chose these particular individuals to depict on the walls of our worship space. Each one has a story to tell, which is part of the larger story of salvation. The story is the human face of God, not just in the likeness of Christ, but God reflected in the face of every human being created by God. “Love your neighbor” is not just a command but a rule of life. I must love my neighbor because my neighbor is a child of God, loved by God, and reflecting the sanctity of God. If I am looking for sanctity, I must look to my neighbor.
The command to “love your neighbor” is not couched with caveats—love your neighbor if your neighbor is Orthodox, or of the same race as you are, or the same age or social standing—and the list of limits is infinite. Love your neighbor is open-ended. No litmus tests are to be performed first. We cannot say, my neighbor just doesn’t measure up. We cannot say, I love my neighbor, and then not treat that neighbor with respect. The Good Samaritan was an outsider who fulfilled the law the law-abiders were loath to fulfill. Christ ate with tax collectors and prostitutes, and he was criticized for it. Still he proclaimed, “What you do for the least of these, you do for me.” If God is in my neighbor, then so is the possibility of sanctity.
When we, as Christians, consider images of sanctity, images of individuals whose lives point to God, do we put blinders on and look only for the “insiders”? Is that what Christ did? Or do we look around us, as Americans living the Orthodox faith in a non-Orthodox land, and teach ourselves and our children that sanctity can be found in all people, and the examples of such sanctity that sear the image of holiness into our consciousness may in fact come from unexpected sources. It may be a heroine and martyr of the distant past like St. Cecilia, or someone from the recent past like Mother Elizabeth of Moscow killed by the Soviets, or Mother Maria Skobstova of Paris killed by the Nazis. We may recognize holiness in those who devoted their lives to helping the poor like Mother Theresa of Calcutta or Dorothy Day, or in one who spoke out against the rich and powerful on behalf of the poor and was banished and ultimately died because of that, such as St. John Chrysostom. We also find sanctity in modern martyrs of prejudice such as two individuals of Jewish background who committed themselves to Christ and still died because of their faith and their race, such as St. Benedicta (Edith Stein), killed by the Nazis, and Fr. Alexander Men, axed to death on his way to church in 1990. Then there is Maximos the Greek, a refugee from Constantinople who fled to Florence, became a Dominican, and then returned to Orthodoxy and was invited to Russia to help in liturgical reform, for which he was ultimately imprisoned. Or what of St. Nektarios, who died in 1920 and was the last Orthodox hierarch to have the courage to ordain a woman deacon? Does anyone doubt that these saintly individuals stand side by side in heaven, where God sees no division between his children? They remind us that holiness is not to be found exclusively in the comfortable safety of the familiar, but in those who challenged the status quo of the status seekers, who spoke the uncomfortable truth in the face of criticism and death, who lived the gospel message and, for many, paid the ultimate price, as did Christ. As we enter into the week of Christ’s Saving Passion, when he offered forgiveness to his executioners, entry into paradise to the thief, and the unspeakable joy of resurrection to all humanity, may these models of sanctity help focus our minds and hearts ever more firmly on the message of Christ: love your neighbor.
Christ is in our midst. Christ is in our neighbor as well! He is and always will be!
Christ is in our midst! How many times we proclaim this truth to each other in worship services and in our daily lives! The season of lights, which stretches from Christmas to the Feast of the Encounter on February 2, is a period the church gives to us to remind us of the Incarnation: that God became one of us in the person of Jesus Christ to share in our human condition and thereby sanctify it. Great Compline of Christmas and Theophany are distinctive for the use of Isaiah’s prophecy that proclaims: “God is with us.” Is God with us only in some mystical, theoretical way, or is God with us in very tangible and human ways as well? The Incarnation seems to point unmistakably to the human dimension. We can find sanctity in the human condition and in human beings. So, one might say, to understand the expressions “God is with us” and “Christ is in our midst,” we need to look around us, to look into the eye of our neighbor, to find God.
A visitor to New Skete Monastery who enters our Holy Wisdom Temple for services will notice a procession of saints on the upper walls as well as on the icon above the synthronon. We also have individual icons of saints hanging in various locations in the church. One might well wonder why we chose these particular individuals to depict on the walls of our worship space. Each one has a story to tell, which is part of the larger story of salvation. The story is the human face of God, not just in the likeness of Christ, but God reflected in the face of every human being created by God. “Love your neighbor” is not just a command but a rule of life. I must love my neighbor because my neighbor is a child of God, loved by God, and reflecting the sanctity of God. If I am looking for sanctity, I must look to my neighbor.
The command to “love your neighbor” is not couched with caveats—love your neighbor if your neighbor is Orthodox, or of the same race as you are, or the same age or social standing—and the list of limits is infinite. Love your neighbor is open-ended. No litmus tests are to be performed first. We cannot say, my neighbor just doesn’t measure up. We cannot say, I love my neighbor, and then not treat that neighbor with respect. The Good Samaritan was an outsider who fulfilled the law the law-abiders were loath to fulfill. Christ ate with tax collectors and prostitutes, and he was criticized for it. Still he proclaimed, “What you do for the least of these, you do for me.” If God is in my neighbor, then so is the possibility of sanctity.
When we, as Christians, consider images of sanctity, images of individuals whose lives point to God, do we put blinders on and look only for the “insiders”? Is that what Christ did? Or do we look around us, as Americans living the Orthodox faith in a non-Orthodox land, and teach ourselves and our children that sanctity can be found in all people, and the examples of such sanctity that sear the image of holiness into our consciousness may in fact come from unexpected sources. It may be a heroine and martyr of the distant past like St. Cecilia, or someone from the recent past like Mother Elizabeth of Moscow killed by the Soviets, or Mother Maria Skobstova of Paris killed by the Nazis. We may recognize holiness in those who devoted their lives to helping the poor like Mother Theresa of Calcutta or Dorothy Day, or in one who spoke out against the rich and powerful on behalf of the poor and was banished and ultimately died because of that, such as St. John Chrysostom. We also find sanctity in modern martyrs of prejudice such as two individuals of Jewish background who committed themselves to Christ and still died because of their faith and their race, such as St. Benedicta (Edith Stein), killed by the Nazis, and Fr. Alexander Men, axed to death on his way to church in 1990. Then there is Maximos the Greek, a refugee from Constantinople who fled to Florence, became a Dominican, and then returned to Orthodoxy and was invited to Russia to help in liturgical reform, for which he was ultimately imprisoned. Or what of St. Nektarios, who died in 1920 and was the last Orthodox hierarch to have the courage to ordain a woman deacon? Does anyone doubt that these saintly individuals stand side by side in heaven, where God sees no division between his children? They remind us that holiness is not to be found exclusively in the comfortable safety of the familiar, but in those who challenged the status quo of the status seekers, who spoke the uncomfortable truth in the face of criticism and death, who lived the gospel message and, for many, paid the ultimate price, as did Christ. As we enter into the week of Christ’s Saving Passion, when he offered forgiveness to his executioners, entry into paradise to the thief, and the unspeakable joy of resurrection to all humanity, may these models of sanctity help focus our minds and hearts ever more firmly on the message of Christ: love your neighbor.
Christ is in our midst. Christ is in our neighbor as well! He is and always will be!
