ÿþ<HEAD> <meta name="description" content="Homilies and scholarly articles of a Byzantine Catholic Priest."> <meta name="keywords" content="Catholic, Byzantine, Orthodox, Religion, Pope, Homilies, Sermons, Bible, Orthdox, Orthodoxy, Catholicism, OTR, Radio"> <TITLE>Byzantine Catholic Priest: Homilies according to the Byzantine Calendar</TITLE> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="linkicon.ico"> <BODY BACKGROUND="back.jpg" TEXT=#000000 LINK=#7c6262 VLINK=#7c6262 alink=#7c6262> <FONT FACE="Maiandra GD"> <STYLE TYPE="text/css"> <!-- /* $WEFT -- Created by: Michael Venditti (admin@fathervenditti.com) on 7/20/2016 -- */ @font-face { font-family: Maiandra GD; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; src: url(MAIANDR2.eot); } @font-face { font-family: Maiandra GD; font-style: oblique; font-weight: normal; src: url(MAIANDR3.eot); } --> </STYLE> </HEAD> <p align=center><img src="header.jpg"> <table align=center border=0 cellpadding=10 cellspacing=0 rules=none width=95% cols=2> <tr> <td valign=top width=20%><p align=right><font face="Maiandra GD" color=#7c6262 size=+1>Wrestling the Rogues and the Mountebanks.<p align=right>2 Timothy: 3:10-15;<br>Luke 18:10-14.<p align=right>The First Sunday of the Triodion, called The Sunday of the Publican & the Pharisee.<p align=right><small>The <i>Otdanije</i> or "Leave-Taking" of the Encounter.*<p align=right>The Holy Martyr Nicephor.</small></font><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><font face="Maiandra GD" color=#7c6262 size=-1><p align=right>Return to <a href="index.htm">ByzantineCatholicPriest.com</a>.</font></td> <td align=right valign=middle width-80%><font face="Maiandra GD"><p align=justify>12:05 PM 2/9/2014  <blockquote><p align=justify>And indeed, all those who are resolved to live a holy life in Christ Jesus will meet with persecution; while the rogues and the mountebanks go on from bad to worse, at once impostors and dupes. It is for thee to hold fast by the doctrine handed on to thee, the charge committed to thee; thou knowest well, from whom that tradition came; thou canst remember the holy learning thou hast been taught from childhood upwards. This will train thee up for salvation, through the faith which rests in Christ Jesus (2 Tim. 12-15).</blockquote> <p align=justify>The Blessed Apostle Paul to Timothy in today's Apostolic reading. <br>&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;I wrestled a long time with what I wanted to do in preaching for this year's Triodion. It's not a part of our tradition that corresponds to anything in the Latin Church, so it's easily neglected, but that wasn't always the case. Prior to the post-conciliar reforms of the 1970s, the Latin Church observed a season called Septuagesima, which was a direct descendent of the Triodion, although the scripture lessons used were different. <img src="publican-and-pharisee2.jpg" align=right hspace=15 vspace=5>In English speaking countries it was sometimes called  Shrovetide because it began on this day, which was called Septuagesima Sunday, and ended on the day before Ash Wednesday, which was often called  Shrove Tuesday. It continues, ironically enough, in some of the Protestant churches, particularly the more traditional brands of the Anglican and Lutheran communions; the point being that the Triodion is not just another of those esoteric and exotic Constantinopolitan adornments that we like to parade in front of others as if to say,  Ooo..., look how different and mysterious we are! ; it has a long-standing history in almost every Christian community that has a serious liturgical tradition. <br>&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;Of course, the history of it is not nearly as important as the spiritual lessons it teaches. Last year, you might remember, we took a rather basic approach to the whole thing: on this Sunday I gave you a brief overview of the concept of it; then, in the weeks that followed, we looked at the very straight forward and simple Gospel lessons of the season and how prudently they help to ease us into both a spirit and practice of mortification during the Great Fast. The Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee shows us the efficaciousness of confessing our sins; the Sunday of the Prodigal Son shows us the willingness of God to forgive no matter what; and, just in case there s somebody out there who isn t getting the message, the Sunday of Meatfare presents to us our Lord's own vivid mental picture of Hell and the final judgment. The last two weeks Meatfare and Cheesefare go so far as to put before us two very concrete targets for our fasting, linking them to our Lord's own fasting for forty days in the desert, reminding us that it's not just symbolic or conceptual: Jesus didn t sit down and think about what it would be like to fast for forty days in the desert, and then contemplate how that might change him; he actually went there and actually fasted. If my Lent ends up consisting of  I ll give up desserts, I ll cut an hour of my TV time, I ll say an extra ten minutes of prayers each night... , that s wonderful; but it s not Lent, because it s all just symbolic. A symbol whether it be a picture or a word or a symbolic act no matter how meaningful it may be, is still just a ghost. If it has no substance, it cannot change me concretely. But if my Lent is not just a symbol if it is something which I allow to completely reorient my life, turning me away from the things of this world toward the things of God to the extent that my state if life permits then, over the course of a lifetime of Lents, it can make the difference between heaven and hell. And that at the risk of sounding frivolously tempered is not insignificant. <br>&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;All of that, as I said, we've done, and not just once. Whether it helped you in any way or even if you remember any of it is your own affair; I can't reach into your brain or your heart and manipulate you in a particular spiritual direction; perhaps, from my place in Purgatory, I'll have a bit more influence over you. But the Triodion doesn't just give us these familiar Gospel lessons; it also gives us the man whom I have now nicknamed  the Gift that keeps on giving, the Blessed Apostle Paul. It's hard to believe, but we started with him back in November at the beginning of Philips Fast, and he's walked with us right through to today, with only a brief detour at Christmastime and last week for our friend, Zacchaeus. <br>&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;Now, I'm not totally oblivious to what's going on around me though I know I often appear that way and I do notice your eyes glossing over whenever I start babbling in Greek; but, our good friend, Msgr. Knox, in attempting to decipher the passage that makes up today's Apostolic reading, pulls out of his bag of tricks a phrase of Victorian English that's absolutely striking:  ...all those who are resolved to live a holy life in Christ Jesus will meet with persecution; while the rogues and the mountebanks go on from bad to worse... (3:12&13). If you ever get the chance to read any of Ronald Knox's non-religious works, particularly his <i>Essays in Satire</i> or any of his detective stories one of which was a Sherlock Holmes adventure, by the way you will immediately notice his dry sense of humor; and, I have this mental picture of him sitting down to translate Second Timothy and laughing out loud to himself when he writes this phrase about how  ...the rogues and the mountebanks go on from bad to worse.... <img src="timothy.jpg" align=left hspace=15 vspace=5>The phrase he's translating is <font face="System"> ¿½·Á¿v ´r ½¸ÁÉÀ¿¹ º±v ³Ì·ÄµÂ</font>, which the Latin Vulgate which was the text that Knox always looked at first before turning to the Greek renders as <i>mali autem homines et seductores,</i> which literally translates into  evil men and tempters ; not a bad translation, but not nearly as colorful as  rogues and mountebanks. <small>[So, today you've had four languages so far, English and Slavonic for the first part of the Liturgy, now Greek and Latin, so you owe me four times the regular collection...but you can take a couple of bucks off since two of them are dead.]</small> The word he's wrestling with, which he renders into that totally foreign-sounding Victorian term,  mountebank, comes from the Greek root word <font face="System">³Ì·Ä¿Â</font>, which, like so many Greek words, can have more than one meaning: in a polite conversation it would mean  a magician, but if you were trying to insult someone or talk about someone behind his back, it would mean  a charlatan, someone who engages in slight of hand, not to entertain you, but to deceive you with malicious intent, usually because he wants to steal something from you. St. Paul actually makes it very clear what he means, because he goes on to further identify these people as both  impostors and dupes ; impostors in that they are clearly trying to lie to Timothy and convince him that they are on his side, and dupes because their lies are futile: as the Apostle says in the very next verse, Timothy has been trained in the Hebrew Scriptures since childhood and in the true Faith of Jesus Christ by Paul himself, and therefore cannot be deceived. <br>&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;But, for the reasons that we've been talking about together these last three weeks, Timothy needs to be reminded of this obvious fact, and not without justifiable reason. Paul, remember, left Timothy in Ephesus alone, in a town he didn't know, to shepherd a Church of people he had never met; and, you'll remember, I'm sure, that it was a Church with a lot of problems. Timothy's situation is not unlike that faced by every priest several times in his life: the bishop tells him to pull up stakes and move to someplace he's never been, to be the pastor of people he doesn't know, with no idea what he's going to find there or if anyone there even wants him. But he goes because he's a priest and that's his job. <br>&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;But the lesson here isn't just for priests: there is not a single person in this room who is not required, on a regular basis, to do things he or she does not want to do because of responsibilities owed to others; it is the most common experience of human beings on this earth next to breathing. How we respond to it determines whether we are able to live out our life on this earth happily, or whether our time here is a sojourn of torment. <br>&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;I don't think Paul was worried that Timothy was going to bail out of Ephesus and run away he might have been, I don't know but he certainly knew that Timothy was depressed. He was so young, and the people who had been running the Church in Ephesus had been there so much longer than him. He was smart enough to know that they were pulling the wool over his eyes about certain things, but he didn't quite know what to do about it. And Paul, God bless him, does what he does in every single situation like this: he doesn't give Timothy practical advice; say this to this guy, and that to those people, and handle that this way instead, he calls Timothy back to what our Lord told Martha was  the one thing necessary : his personal relationship to our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ, reminding him that suffering persecution is what happens to anyone who sincerely follows our Lord: <blockquote><p align=justify> ...all those who are resolved to live a holy life in Christ Jesus will meet with persecution; while the rogues and the mountebanks go on from bad to worse, at once impostors and dupes. It is for thee to hold fast by the doctrine handed on to thee, the charge committed to thee; thou knowest well, from whom that tradition came; thou canst remember the holy learning thou hast been taught from childhood upwards. This will train thee up for salvation, through the faith which rests in Christ Jesus. </blockquote> <p align=justify>&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;&emsp;So, we can make this the launching pad for our Triodion this year and, God willing, chart a straight course toward the Great Fast; and, we'll do our best to continue along these lines next week. </font> <p align=center><img src="signature.jpg"> <blockquote><font face="Maiandra GD" color=#7c6262><p align=justify>* In the Byzantine Tradition, particularly in the Slavonic usage, major Holy Days are followed by a postfestive period, the last day of which is called the <i>Otdanije,</i> which means "leave-taking." With the exception of the Scripture lessons, which remain unaffected, the liturgical services on the day of leave-taking mirror exactly those of the feast itself, almost as if the feast is being celebrated again. When such a day falls on a Sunday, as it does today, the liturgical texts of the feast are still used, but are added to those of the Sunday.</blockquote> </tr> </table>