On the Holy Mysteries. #

Bishop Mikhail (Semyonov)

The question of the Mysteries (Sacraments) is the most essential in the dispute between sectarianism and the Church worldview.

“The Mysteries,” they say, “are superstition, sorcery, magic, harmful witchcraft” (Tolstoy). “Some sort of external act of incantation is performed, terrifying formulaic spells are recited, and some kind of superstitious folk-healer actions are carried out, like anointing with oil—and as a result, as though some mechanical force, grace is infused, sins are forgiven, and so on. But in what way,” they ask, “do these actions differ from pagan invocations of the gods or our native incantations?”

It must be said that such objections are made not only by sectarians, Tolstoyans, or shtundists (evangelical Protestants), but sometimes even by people who belong to the Church. And we would like to pause and examine this matter more attentively.

First of all, how accurately do these objections reflect the essence of the Church’s teaching on the Mysteries?

Completely inaccurately.

According to the conception of L. N. Tolstoy and the sectarians, the Church preserves the grace of the Mysteries like some kind of elixir of life in a little box and dispenses it in measured doses to those who desire it. Clearly, such an understanding of the Mysteries is founded on nothing.

The Church has never taught, and does not teach, that the Mysteries are something external to the personal and inner spiritual life of the believer—as if they were the transmission of an external power acting independently of the will of man, like a doctor’s prescribed medicine for an illness.

The entire sectarian teaching on the Mysteries is based, on the one hand, on an unwillingness to delve into the depths of the Church’s spiritual life, and on the other, on a simplistic misunderstanding of the teaching on the Mysteries—even from an external perspective.

Sectarianism claims to expose the “falsehood” of what it alleges is the Church’s teaching on the Mysteries, but in reality, it is criticizing an outdated Roman Catholic doctrine.

Indeed, in Catholicism, the teaching on the Mysteries sometimes takes on a mechanical-magical character.

Catholicism is inclined to think that a Mystery, when performed externally upon a person, necessarily accomplishes its saving effect upon the soul of the sinner.

It is inclined to think that the Church can, in fact, take a portion of grace—as if from a box—and distribute it to Christians.

For example, by virtue of the surplus merits of the saints and of Christ, the Church may remit sins by an external act of absolution, and so forth. With regard to the transmission of grace, it openly professes the so-called opus operatum—the idea that a Mystery is fully accomplished by the formal act of its performance—that is, by its external “action.”

If an absolution of sins is read aloud or “sent by mail,” then the sins are forgiven.

If a person is baptized, it means he is transformed by a magical act into a saint and cleansed, regardless of his personal participation in the Mystery.

But Catholicism is Catholicism.

Having driven the people out of the Church, having assigned the role of grace-bearer exclusively to the infallible priesthood, it naturally had to begin presenting the Mystery as a distribution—or even sale—of grace by the clergy to the laity, who are treated merely as passive material to be acted upon by the Church.

The Russian State Church came close to the same kind of Catholic teaching, having likewise separated the teaching Church—that is, the hierarchy—from the whole Church, and, consequently, having likewise lost the communal Church life—the spiritual element of the Church’s corporate prayer, which is what performs the Mystery.

As for the teaching of the true Church—that is, the teaching of the Holy Fathers—it is far removed from such a mechanically lifeless understanding of the Mysteries.

On the contrary, this teaching is profound yet clear, mysterious yet intelligible and reasonable.

This entire teaching offers a revealed description of the mysterious transformations in the human soul, carried out by the human will in union with the will of God.

“A Mystery is not an external magical act, not a coercive gift, not an indulgence granted by the Church. It is an act accomplished within the human will, an event within the human soul”—this is what a Mystery is according to the teaching of the Church of Christ.

The essence of a Mystery can be expressed thus: A Mystery is a mysterious act of inner turning in the soul of man, a rebirth, accomplished at the moment of encounter between a soul seeking salvation and rebirth, and the assisting grace of the Lord.

We believe and maintain that there is nothing obscure in the following propositions of this faith:

Beyond man, there exist higher spiritual beings: the saints, and God.

Let us suppose that sectarians do not accept the veneration of saints in the sense we do—but even they acknowledge that there are people who are “enlightened,” illumined, higher, with purified and strong souls.

We are necessarily compelled to admit that all these people can approach the soul of a sinner in spirit, can affect it through their prayer, can evoke within it certain moods, and so on.

Likewise, any serious understanding of the essence of Christian life demands that we recognize the constant prayerful influence of every Christian soul upon every other Christian soul, and the influence of the entire Church in its fullness upon each individual.

To understand the Church as the communion of believers, as the “great body” bound together in faith and love in Christ, is unthinkable without acknowledging this mystical act of soul influencing soul. Even psychology, which in recent times has devoted much attention to the mystery of the soul’s action upon the soul, would not deny such influence.

But the prayer of the Church—both of the Church on earth and the Church in heaven—is already one-third of the Mystery, a significant part of it. The Mystery, in this respect, is the holy stirring, the inner transformation of the soul under the prayerful influence of the Church—that is, of the living and the departed Christians.

Therefore, the first third of that great and mysterious thing we call a Mystery is neither obscure nor absurd.

The second part is the process accomplished in the soul of the one who approaches the Mystery—by his personal faith and initiative, and through the influence and discipline of the Church.

Objections to the Mysteries are based on the assumption that a Mystery is, for the soul, an external act.

“A ticket is handed out for receiving grace, and then grace is obtained by weight and measure.”

In reality, according to the teaching of the Church, the communication of grace, the completion of the final mystical act of the Mystery, rests upon a great inner work within the soul.

The Holy Fathers called the Mysteries a kind of trial, an examination of conscience.

“The Holy Spirit tests the soul; He does not cast pearls before swine. If you are a hypocrite, then people may baptize you now, but the Spirit will not baptize. But if you come in faith, then people serve the visible rites, and the Holy Spirit gives the invisible. You come at that one single hour to a great trial, to a great conscription for battle. If you squander that hour, the harm is irreparable. But if you are found worthy of grace—your soul shall be illumined, you shall receive a strength you never had before; you shall receive weapons dreadful to the demons. And if you do not discard those weapons but preserve the seal, then the demon shall not approach you” (St. Cyril, Catechetical Lectures, XVII, 36).

Do you see? “If you are found worthy of grace,” says the holy father—meaning, it is possible not to be found worthy.

The Holy Fathers speak even more sharply than this. Yes—since a Mystery is not a magical transformation in the soul, nor an act external to it, the Mystery cannot be accomplished apart from the will and awareness of the person.

This testing of the soul, called a Mystery, demands the full participation of the soul in the Mystery.

Above all, there must be the seeking of God, His help, a desire for God, and a determination to go to Him.

For only when you first stretch out your hand to Him will He extend His right hand to raise you up (St. Ephraim the Syrian, Homily 84, vol. IV, p. 41). This resolve to receive the aid of grace necessarily presupposes, of course, that even in the very moment of grace’s action, a person does not remain idle, does not merely feel his salvation, but rather cooperates with the grace working in him.

Every good that takes place in a person—every moral development, every inner transformation of his soul—must necessarily occur not apart from his awareness and freedom, so that it is not someone else but “the person himself who changes himself, becoming new out of the old” (St. Gregory of Nyssa). Salvation cannot be some sort of external juridical or physical event, but must by necessity be a moral act; and as such, it necessarily presupposes as its most essential condition and law that the person himself carries out this act, though with the help of grace. Grace, although it acts, although it accomplishes all things, nevertheless operates strictly within the bounds of freedom and consciousness. This is a foundational principle of the ancient Orthodox faith, and one must not forget it if one wishes to understand the teaching of the ancient Orthodox Church on the very manner of human salvation.

“It is necessary, I think,” says St. Gregory, speaking of one of the Mysteries—of the Mystery of Baptism—“to pay attention to what follows, and what many of those who approach grace neglect, thereby deceiving themselves and considering themselves reborn when they have not truly become such. For the transformation of our life that is worked by rebirth will not be a real transformation if we remain in the same state as before. If one remains in the same condition, I do not see how it can be said that he has become something new, when not a single distinguishing mark has changed within him. For it is obvious to everyone that the saving rebirth is received for the renewal and transmutation of our nature. But humanity, in and of itself, is not changed by Baptism: not the mind, nor understanding, nor the cognitive faculty, nor anything else that properly serves as a distinguishing characteristic of human nature is transformed; indeed, such a transformation would be for the worse if any of these defining properties of human nature were altered. So then, if the birth from above is a recreation of the human being, and yet does not allow for a change in essence, it is necessary to consider in what the transformation wrought by the grace of rebirth consists. Clearly, with the erasure of evil traits in our nature, a transition to something better occurs. But if the washing has benefited the body, while the soul has not cast off its passionate impurities—on the contrary, if the life after the sacrament resembles the life before—then, though it may sound harsh, I will say it nonetheless and not take it back: for such people, the water remains simply water” (Catechetical Orations, Homily 40).

“One who is being changed,” says the saint, “must continually be reborn: in a mutable nature, one will not find anything entirely constant in himself. But to be born is not dependent on the decision of another, as with physical birth—it happens according to one’s own will; and we, in a certain sense, become the fathers of ourselves, giving birth to ourselves as we wish to be, and by our own will forming ourselves in whatever gender we desire—male or female—according to the lessons of virtue or vice.”

But let this suffice for now on the conditions of the Mystery. We shall return to them again when speaking about certain individual Mysteries.

The matter is clear: a Mystery is, first of all, a human process of spiritual transformation—an act of self-healing.

“For this is what the Heavenly Physician desires: that each person heal himself with his own tears and be saved, not passively undergo salvation. Before approaching grace, a person must first voluntarily remove from himself all that is sinful, must destroy within himself the foundation of sin, so that grace may plant in him the foundation of a new life. Repentance cleanses the loosened joints of the former condition before grace, mingling with the mind, transforms the lead into gold” (Ephraim the Syrian, Homily 99, 1848 ed., vol. VI, p. 175).

“But still,” say the sectarians, “then salvation is accomplished by a miracle, by a spiritual visitation—lead is turned into gold. This we cannot accept. We accept the human side of the Mystery—we even perform some Mysteries as ceremonies ourselves. But this alchemical operation of turning lead into gold we cannot accept.”

But tell me—do you not accept the renewal of the spirit through the touch of the Spirit of God?

For in essence, the mystical side of the Mysteries comes down to this: that the Lord Christ unites Himself with the human soul, grafts it to Himself as a branch to the vine, and pours His own power into the “arteries and veins” of the soul. “The Infinite and Incorporeal Creator, in His infinite goodness, becomes as it were bodily; the Great and Superessential One, so to speak, humbles Himself to unite with His rational creatures—that is, with the souls of the saints—that they may partake of the immortal life of His Divinity. Just as this body, in its essence, is a coarse body, but the soul, which was a subtle body, has clothed and enveloped itself in the members of this body, has entered the bodily eye by which it sees, the ear by which it hears, has entered all the members of the body and united itself with them, and through them performs all the necessary acts of life—so also the ineffable and incomprehensible grace, humbling itself, as it were, becomes flesh, penetrates and envelops faithful and loving souls, and becomes one spirit with them, as Paul says: soul, so to speak, into soul, and being into being, so that such a soul shall live in the Divinity, attain immortal life, and enjoy incorruptible bliss and inexpressible glory. For such a soul, the Lord becomes, when He wills, a fire, consuming all that is evil and foreign within; at times, ineffable repose; at other times, joy and peace, warming and enveloping it” (St. Macarius the Great).

This union with Christ—this you reject? And yet which of the sectarians does not believe in this holy mystery of renewal by Christ? The essence of Pashkovism, mystical Shtundism, and Baptism lies precisely in their belief in this contact of the Lord with the soul.

Even Tolstoy cannot deny this contact.

We say: Grace descends in the Mystery from heaven. But what calls it down from heaven? Mere incantations, theurgies? Are the priest’s prayers playing the role of these incantations? No! Grace is given in the Mystery only along with these prayers from God, for the sake of the spiritual disposition present in the believer, in the priest, and in the Church. Elisha received grace from Elijah through the prophet’s mantle, but, of course, the grace was not in the mantle itself—the grace descended upon him from heaven together with the mantle, which served merely as the outward symbol of that grace.

Here the Divine Spirit unites with the human spirit, and a new creation is the result of this union. God comes where He is called by the Church.

And this “coming of God” is not only possible, but necessary—if indeed God is a living power, creating the life of the world. Of course, it is difficult to claim that the communication of grace is entirely comprehensible or clear. It is a Mystery. But to acknowledge the communication of grace, as we have already said, is entirely possible for one who acknowledges the existence of a personal God and the possibility of that God acting upon the living human soul.

And such influence—as we have already said—is even admitted by sectarians.

Even Lev Nikolaevich [Tolstoy], at least in his later years, acknowledged the existence of a Living God, dwelling above the world, and admitted that this Living God could enter into communion with the living human soul and impart to it His power (cf. his Thoughts on God, and our book The Church and the Lilies).

“To whom shall I turn,” writes Lev Nikolaevich in Thoughts on God, “to men? They do not believe what they say—they are tormented by fear before death, by fear of themselves and of Thee, O Lord, Whom they do not wish to name. To God?” And he turns to God, “to that Living God in Whom,” by his own words, “the Orthodox believe.”

It goes without saying that if one may turn to Him for help, then He must also be able to bestow gifts of His power—must He not?

And if He can bestow them, then ought He not bestow this power when the soul of a person, lifted by the influence of the Church, reaches such a height, such a degree of intensity, that heaven itself settles in the soul, and grace is “pressed upon” the soul with power, as upon dry land thirsting for rain?

But to admit this last point is to admit the entire divine and mysterious essence of the Mysteries. Sectarians simply do not want to admit the Church’s participation in the acts of mystical communion with Christ. In their view, each person may enter into union with the Lord only as an isolated individual.

But this is a clear and grievous delusion, one that overturns Golgotha, denies the Cross of Christ, and destroys the Lord’s work.

The Gospel of John (especially chapter 17) leaves no doubt that only in the union of souls, in shared salvation, in fusion and in the one Body of Christ—the Church—is Christ revealed, and only through shared love does He enter into each individual soul.

What is not yet clear will become clearer when we begin to speak of the individual Mysteries.