DYNAMIS!
A publication of St. George Orthodox Christian Cathedral
Wichita, KS
St. Mark 9:10-16 (1/24)For Thurs of the
35th Week after Pentecost (Thurs of the 30th Week)
New
Ground: St. Mark 9:10-16, especially vs. 10: “So
they kept [His] word to themselves, questioning what the rising from the dead
meant.” Being a
Christian believer, you are placed in “the learning curve of
discipleship,” as the example of the Disciples in today’s Gospel
illustrates. All through His time
with the first Disciples, the Lord Jesus introduced amazing, new revelations
for them to absorb concerning Himself and the destiny
of mankind. They were being led
into the heart of the complex, ineffable Mystery of Christ (Eph. 3:4) - the
ground of the True Faith.
The
Lord, for His part, firmly established all the basics of the new and true Faith
for all men in the hearts of His future Apostles, a Gospel He Himself was
accomplishing. Only God could have
achieved what the Lord Jesus did in the three brief years with those
“most wise fishermen.”
We now know that the fulfillment of His work was carried on through the
Twelve, and, in turn, through those who were formed by them, working with the
Holy Spirit, breaking new ground.
Subsequently,
the Fathers of the Church refined the statement of the Apostles’ message
in greater and greater precision, with no substantial change to the basic
Apostolic Message, defeating a series of substantive threats against the
Truth. Assaults came not merely from
false thinking, but worse, from heretics militantly obsessed by delusions and
wrong ideas.
We have
noted that the flow of the Gospel of St. Mark, from the beginning through St.
Peter’s confession (vss. 1:1-8:29), reached a
divide created by the introduction of a dominating, new theme - the Lord
Jesus’ Passion. Actually, the
new theme from the divide at Mk. 8:31 includes the
message of Resurrection as well.
The Disciples received not just a new, strenuous Gospel, but the
ineffable, triumphant, and hope-filled word - “rising from the
dead.”
Like the
rest of the Lord Jesus’ teachings, Resurrection provided a substantial,
new, and powerful ground for faith in Him.
The introduction of the forthcoming Resurrection completes the
Lord’s three-pronged revelation of Incarnation, Passion, and
Resurrection, the wonder of the Gospel of the glorious “(...mystery of
Christ), which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men...”
(Eph. 3:4-5). Do not simply read
what the disciples learned. Rather,
enter into “the learning curve” of Apostolic
faith for yourself, above all applying the Gospel truths in your life.
First,
celebrate the Incarnation that infuses the Passion of the Lord Jesus in the
flesh and of His bodily Resurrection with saving power for all mankind. Precisely because Christ took every
aspect of humanity on Himself, we have a firm ground of hope that our entire
nature will be restored, body, soul, and spirit. The Fathers upheld this Apostolic truth that God the Word became Man, which led them
to assert that men may become by grace all that God is by nature.
Therefore,
when the Lord Jesus prompts the Disciples to question the meaning of the words
“rising from the dead,” He is likewise urging us to consider all
that may be accomplished in us through the illumination of the Holy Spirit. As He gave the Apostles a mandate to
become deified, be sure that His mandate extends to us as well, undergirding our struggle for theosis.
The
Resurrection and Incarnation also connect us to the saving message of the Cross
and Passion. As
Death
hath been spoiled. Christ God is risen, granting the world the Great Mercy.
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