BCP: Suicidal synod versus true Christianity
October 10, 2023
In October 2023 the synod is taking place in Vatican which is a suicide of Christianity. What is a true Christianity and baptism that makes us Christians – God’s children? “Whoever believes and is baptized is saved.” (Mk 16:16)
The Holy Scripture testifies that through baptism we partake in Christ’s death and His resurrection (comp. Rom 6:3-5). We are in the midst of profound truths revealed by God, which relate to our salvation. To great extent, our mind is veiled to their understanding. The Bible discloses to us a spiritual dimension and the key to it is biblical faith. God’s omnipotence works by such faith. There is, however, a different faith, a false one, which connects an individual with spiritual beings called demons. Those manifest themselves through magic, divination, spiritism, various Hindu and Buddhist meditations and through various forms of occultism and superstition. This pseudo faith is a sin against the first commandment of the Decalogue. Pseudo faith is linked also with idolatry and so-called negative energies. In fact, it is a worship of a false spirituality, therefore demons.
Biblical faith unites us with Jesus. If we accept Christ, He is in us. Everything that has happened to Jesus Christ, our Savior, is spiritually happening to us. When Lord Jesus died, we died with Him (Rom 6:8) and when He rose up, we were raised up with Him (Col 2:12). Dying with Him means that we have partaken in His saving death. The power of His death works in us through faith and overcomes the sin, which causes spiritual death.
How are we to understand the mystery that we were raised up with Him?
Let us recognize that the spiritual essence of a human being is an immortal spirit, which is so-to-say dressed up in the earthly shell of a human body. That will become dust after our death. Our spirit, however, is not subject to death. In the spirit we have been created to God’s image. Our goal is an eternal life and never-ending happiness in God.
An interior dissonance in the spirit is a sad legacy of our first parents. It is manifested through egoism and spiritual blindness – pride. It breeds various forms of evil, immoral perversion, tyranny, crime, wars… This internal disharmony is called original sin, deposit of evil… It is a spiritual infection, which penetrates even a human body. It is a mystery to a human mind, but by divine revelation we understand that an evil spiritual being is behind this spiritual infection. The deposit of evil in one’s soul manifests itself as a rebellion towards God, rejecting the truth and justice in interpersonal relationships.
In order to liberate us from this sad inheritance from our first parents, God assumed human nature. He became a man out of love for us so we could become children of God, so we could assume God’s nature.
What is baptism? It is a spiritual rebirth. The person is immersed in the water or the water is poured on their head. All while proclaiming the name of the Triune God. What happens on a spiritual level? God Himself invites a baptized person to partake in His Divine life. The soul of the baptized person is united with Christ as a branch on the vine. Through Him, it receives everything, which is united with Christ. The baptized person is baptized into the death of Christ (Rom 6:3) and at the same time, he receives a new life of risen Christ.
During our earthly pilgrimage, we are to follow our conscience, which is integrated with God’s commandments, so that the divine life, given to us in baptism, is developed in the soul. An effective means against the enslaving power of egoism is the radical principle expressed in the motto: “Deny yourself” (your self-destructive ego). This self-denial or even overcoming of suffering, both physical and mental, motivated by faith, bears a positive fruit that transcends even the dimension of time. Biblical terminology refers to such self-denial as co-crucifixion with Christ (Rom 6:6). Through entering into this mystery of faith, we are spiritually transformed into Christ. The Apostle Paul says: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal 2:20)
In baptism, God also put His Spirit into us. If we seek the truth, He gives us divine inspiration to know the Source of truth, which is God Himself. He also reveals to us the mystery of evil and its tragic consequences. If we have true and biblical self-criticism, which the Gospel refers to as metanoia, and we open ourselves to God, a deep change takes place inside us, which is also manifested on the outside. An example is the apostles on the day of Pentecost. In addition to extraordinary phenomena, there was also a change in their character. The fearful apostles became courageous men who, in the power of the Spirit, proclaimed eternal truths and then suffered martyrdom for their sake.
How to maintain the inner union of our spirit with God? This happens especially in interior prayer. God is not only in eternity, but through baptism also in the depths of our heart. The God-given Spirit guides us through the word of knowledge into the mystery of the divine life. In interior prayer, we become partakers in the mysteries revealed by God.
How does baptism bring us into union with the saving work of the Son of God, who died and rose from the dead for us? To use an illustrative example, let us imagine a small piece of paper and a book. If I put the paper in the book and then throw the book into the fire, the same fate befalls the paper. Everything that happens to the book happens to the paper. The book cannot be in the fire without the paper because the paper is inside it. This simple analogy points to the profound truth that if we are in Christ everything that happened to Christ applies to us. When the Lord Jesus, our Savior, died in our place, we died with Him. This is a spiritual reality that applies even though we were not physically alive then. When He rose from the dead, we were raised up with Him.
By analogy, the following is applied to us and our forefather Adam: he sinned and his sin brought death to us too. There is natural genetics, but we can say that spiritual genetics also works in a similar way.
There is a dimension of time and there is a dimension of eternity. Our spirit is immortal; therefore the evil we have committed in time would remain for all eternity. We cannot get rid of it ourselves. The eternal God became man because He alone can free us from the consequences of the evil we have done. The condition is our faith in Christ. If we walk in the light (of faith) … the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin. (1Jn 1:7) What Jesus did for our salvation in time remains in the dimension of eternity. At the time in which he lives, man must accept for himself by faith what Jesus did in the past. This then lasts for all eternity. Jesus being God passed from time to eternity. If I unite to Him by faith, the power of His redeeming death liberates me, and His divine life in me grows and becomes strong.
We are like God in our spiritual nature. He is our Father, our Creator. Our spirit is not subject to death. At the end of time, God will raise our body from the dust, but at the same time it will also be transformed and become spiritual, that is, it will no longer be subject to physical laws. It will be like Christ’s resurrected, glorified body. Those who will be raised to fullness of life, i.e. with a transformed body, will be raised because they were raised together with Christ through faith. During their lives, they received Jesus as their Savior, who died and rose from the dead for their sake. Anyone who does not receive Jesus does not share in Christ’s, and thus also in their own resurrection to life. Therefore, those who will be saved will be saved because they received by faith the Savior who died for them and they died together with Him to sin, the devil and eternal death.
This truth, received by us in baptism, should be experienced especially in interior prayer on the night from Saturday to Sunday, when we remember Christ’s resurrection.
The Apostle tells us: “If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” (Rom 8:11)
It is said here that the Spirit of God who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will give us life already here on earth. We will be alive to God in Jesus Christ our Lord, and physical death will only be a passing over to a happy eternity. In the end, even the shell of our body, turned into dust, will be resurrected by the almighty power of God.
What have you received through baptism? The new life of Christ! You are a child of God, a son of God, a daughter of God.
+Elijah
Patriarch of the Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate
+ Methodius OSBMr + Timothy OSBMr
Secretary Bishops
Download: BCP: Suicidal synod versus true Christianity (10/10/2023)
