Reflections

  • Day 3 – The Went Up Into the Upper Room

    ByJobin

    Day 3: Ascension to Pentecost Reflections for the Days of Waiting
    “The Church is not a society of the perfect. She is a community of those who wait together for the perfection that only the Spirit can bring.”
    — Metropolitan Paulos Mar Gregorios
    A reflection on Acts 1:13-15, the Upper Room community of one hundred and twenty, and what the Indian Orthodox and Syriac patristic tradition teaches us about gathered, communal waiting as the context in which the Spirit chooses to work. From the Oriental Orthodox blog Seeking Theosis, rooted in the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church and the Syriac patristic tradition.

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    Day 2 – They Returned with Great Joy

    ByJobin

    Day 2 of our Ascension to Pentecost series is now on the blog, and today I have been sitting with one of the strangest verses in Luke’s Gospel.

    After the Ascension, the disciples walked back to Jerusalem with great joy. Not after receiving explanations. Not after things had settled into clarity. With great joy, in the middle of the unknown, carrying nothing but a promise and a direction.

    Ephrem the Syrian teaches us that the hidden God humbles the one who tries to investigate, but magnifies the one who simply worships. The disciples had learned, through three years of following, to be the second kind of person. And that is what produced their joy.

    Today’s reflection asks us: what would it look like to return to our own Upper Room with that same quality of trust? Not waiting for feelings of certainty to arrive before we pray, before we gather, before we show up?

    The oil lamp does not wait until it feels ready. It simply burns.

    Come, Holy Spirit! Come!

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    Day 1 – The Cloud Received Him

    ByJobin

    We begin today nine days of waiting, from the Ascension to Pentecost, and Seeking Theosis will be posting a short reflection for each of these days drawn from our Syriac Fathers and the liturgical tradition of our Church.

    Today’s reflection centres on a beautiful image from Jacob of Serugh: that when Christ ascended, He did not leave our humanity behind. He carried it with Him, wounds and all, to the right hand of the Father. The glorified Body that sits at the throne of the Majesty on high is still marked with the nails and the spear. Not as blemishes, but as glory.

    “He did not leave behind what He had taken from us.”

    That is the ground of our hope as we wait for the fire of Pentecost.

    You can read the full reflection here.

    Let us keep these nine days in prayer together.

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    The Feast of the Ascension

    ByJobin

    The Feast of the Ascension | Stop Gazing, Start Going – Acts 1:1-11

    The disciples stared at the sky. Of course they did. Their Lord had just ascended. Their eyes followed Him. The sky was the last place they saw Him.

    Two angels: “Why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus will come back the same way He went.”

    The question is a redirection. The looking up must give way to the going out.

    St. John Chrysostom: Mark 16:20 is the charter of the Church. “They went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word through the accompanying signs.” Going. Preaching. Co-operation. Confirmation. The four elements of the Church’s existence.

    The King is on the throne. Stop gazing. Start going.

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

  • Fifth Sunday After the Resurrection – He Set His Face Toward Jerusalem

    ByJobin

    Fifth Sunday After the Resurrection – He Set His Face Toward Jerusalem | Luke 9:51-62

    Three would-be followers. Three costs.

    “I will follow You wherever.” Christ: foxes have holes; the Son of Man does not. The cost: no home.

    “Let me first bury my father.” Christ: let the dead bury their dead. The cost: no delay.

    “Let me first say goodbye.” Christ: no one at the plough who looks back is fit for the kingdom. The cost: no backward glance.

    St. Cyril: one teaching in three movements. The cost. The urgency. The direction. Forward.

    The Ascension is ahead. The face is set. The plough is moving.

    What are we looking back at?

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

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    Third Sunday After Resurrection – New Wine, New Wineskins: St. Mark 2:13-22

    ByJobin

    Third Sunday After the Resurrection – New Wine, New Wineskins:Mark 2:13-22

    The resurrection is new wine. It demands new containers.

    The old categories of who belongs and who does not. The old assumptions about how God works and who God calls. The old frameworks that held the old wine perfectly but cannot hold what God is doing now.

    St. Ephrem: the wine of the resurrection is still fermenting. The Church must keep stretching. The moment it says “we have expanded enough, included enough, grown enough,” the wineskin hardens. And the wine will burst it.

    Three weeks after Pascha, the wine is still expanding. Is your wineskin still stretching?

    For our journey today:
    – Look at who Christ is calling
    – Sit at the mixed table
    – Stretch the wineskin

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

  • Second Sunday After the Resurrection – Come and Have Breakfast

    ByJobin

    Second Sunday After the Resurrection: The Shore, the Net, and the Charcoal Fire: John 21:1-14.

    All night: nothing. Professional fishermen on their home water. Every cast. Every adjustment. Zero fish.

    One instruction from a stranger on the shore: “Cast on the right side.” And the net was too full to pull in. 153 large fish. The net did not break.

    St. Ephrem: the night of human effort without divine direction is always empty. The morning of divine direction changes everything. Same lake. Same boat. Same net. Different result. Because the voice spoke.

    The fast is over. The ordinary is back. And sometimes the night produces nothing. But the voice from the shore is still speaking. Cast on the right side.

    For our journey today:
    – Cast on the right side
    – Come to the fire
    – find Him in the ordinary

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

  • Sunday After the Resurrection – New Sunday

    ByJobin

    New Sunday – The Locked Room, the Wounds & the Greater Blessing: John 20:19-29

    Thomas saw and believed. That was the faith of the first generation. The faith that had the luxury of touching the wounds.

    Christ said: there is a greater blessing. For those who believe without seeing. Without touching. Without being in the locked room.

    You.

    You have received the testimony through Scripture. Through the Qurbana. Through the community. Through the Spirit who prays in you. Through forty-nine days of fasting and the Hevoro Days that followed.

    And you have believed. Without seeing. Without touching.

    St. Macarius: the not-seeing faith is the higher faith. Because it trusts the Person rather than the evidence.

    Blessed are you.

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

  • Hevoro Friday – Fifth Day of Brightness

    ByJobin

    Hevoro Friday – Fifth Day of Brightness – The Harrowing of Hades – 1 Peter 3:17-22

    The Oriental Orthodox icon of the Resurrection shows Christ standing on the broken gates of Hades. His hands grasp the wrists of Adam and Eve. He is lifting them out of their tombs. The personification of Death is beneath His feet. Defeated.

    Behind Adam and Eve, the patriarchs and prophets are visible. David. Solomon. John the
    Baptist. The righteous of every generation since Adam. They had been waiting. Centuries upon centuries. And now they are coming out.

    The Second Adam grasping the first Adam. Reversing the Fall by undoing it from the inside. Death has been entered and emptied.

    This is what Christ was doing on Holy Saturday.

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis

  • Hevoro Thursday – Fourth Day of Brightness

    ByJobin

    *Hevoro Thursday – Fourth Day of Brightness* – 1 John 4:19-5:15 – _He First Loved Us_

    The entire Lenten series in one sentence. Every reflection. Every passage. Every healing. Every Cross. Every empty tomb. All of it was love. And all of it was first.

    Day 28: Christ found the bent woman without being asked. Day 36: Christ invited Himself to Zacchaeus’s table. Day 41: Christ came to Lazarus’s tomb on His own initiative. Day 50: Christ stood behind Mary in the garden before she turned around. Hevoro Monday: Christ joined the Emmaus disciples before they knew who He was.

    The love went first. Always first. And because it went first, we can love. The brother. The community. The world.

    John does not soften this. If you say you love God and hate your brother, you are a liar.

    The brother you can see is the examination. Not the feeling in your heart during prayer. Not the tears during the Qurbana. Not the discipline of the fast. The brother.

    St. John Chrysostom: the love that goes up to God must also go out to the brother. Otherwise it is not love. It is religious performance.

    The Lenten fast was vertical. Between you and God. The Hevoro Days are revealing the horizontal. Between you and the brother. The love of God needs both dimensions. Like the Cross.

    Full reflection at Seeking Theosis