DYNAMIS!
A publication of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral
Wichita, KS

St. Mark 8:11-21   (1/21)   For Mon of the 35th Week after Pentecost (Mon of the 30th Week)

 

Union and Reason:  St. Mark 8:11-21, especially vs. 15-17: “...He charged them, saying, ‘Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.’  And they reasoned among themselves, saying, ‘It is because we have no bread.’  But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them, ‘Why do you reason because you have no bread?  Do you not yet perceive nor understand?  Is your heart still hardened?’” Remember: the Lord Jesus spent three years preaching, enlisting disciples, training them, teaching widely, casting out demons, healing, and answering the charges of the Scribes and Pharisees.  Also remember: the record of that time is severely condensed in the Gospel - ten chapters in St. Mark and then the Passion narrative begins.  The Lord coped with two processes in those years, both of which appear in the present passage: with the Pharisees He was responding to their growing opposition, manifest in disputing, testing, and seeking (vs.11);  with the Disciples He was overcoming the hardness of their hearts, manifest in their failure to perceive, understand, and remember (vss.17,18).  Both of these processes concern faith.

St. Maximos the Confessor says that “faith is knowledge that cannot be rationally demonstrated.  If such knowledge cannot be rationally demonstrated, then faith is a supranatural relationship through which, in an unknowable and so undemonstrable manner, we are united with God in a union which is beyond intellection.”   Intellection here refers to apprehension within the deep center of the heart.  Do, you see?  The Lord’s efforts at overcoming the hardness of His disciples’ hearts aimed at a relationship with His disciples that would end their attempts to perceive, understand, and remember and would unite them to Him “beyond reasoning and intellection.”  If this seems difficult to grasp, remember how candidates are examined at Baptism.

What is the question put to a catechumen?  “Do you perceive, understand, remember?”  Not at all!  It is, “Dost thou unite thyself unto Christ?”  One cannot say wholly, “I believe in Him as King and God” or “I bow down before the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit: the Trinity, one in Essence and undivided” by reasoning with the mind or even by understanding within the heart, but by reaching out, taking hold of Him, grasping His hand - uniting with Him.

The Scribes and Pharisees were far from this final step of uniting themselves unto Christ. Indissoluble union with the Lord Jesus did not even happen to the disciples until He came to them after His Resurrection.  The living Lord had to approach them, and then, “after the Lord had spoken to them,...they went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them...” (Mk. 16:19,20).  The Pharisees were doubly prevented from union with Christ because they saw only a man assuming God’s role (Mk. 2:5-7), a teacher of the Faith consorting with sinners (Mk. 2:15-17), and a professed Jew flaunting the Law (Mk. 3:2-6).  What else could they do but “...dispute with Him, seeking from Him a sign from heaven, testing Him” (Mk. 8:11)?

You cannot attain to a living, vital and working faith in Jesus Christ as King and God by seeing Him remove a fever (Mk. 1:30-31), watching a man be forgiven and healed (Mk. 2:11-12), experiencing a storm obey Him (Mk. 4:39), or seeing crowds fed with insufficient means (Mk. 8:19-20).  It is not possible!  Listen to Him: “Assuredly, I say to you, no sign shall be given to this generation” (Mk.8:12).  No, you must meet Him and go far beyond where your reasoning allows, on beyond the timidity of your soul, outside what your darkened and hardened heart can know - way out there, you have to take hold of Him, unite in “a supranatural relationship” in which He unites you to Himself.  There is no explaining this, no demonstrating it.  You reach out and He unites.  “How is it you do not understand” (Mk. 8:21)?  Union is God’s gift beyond reason.

Sweetest Jesus Christ, long-suffering, Jesus, heal the wounds of my soul, Jesus, and make sweet my heart, O Greatly-Merciful One, that being saved by Thee, I may magnify Thee.

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