The Orthodox Schism: a Few Comments

Alright, here's a brief explanation and a few comments on the Orthodox Schism, which I'll give in two sections: (1) the immediate crisis, and (2) a little bit of the deeper historical and ecclesiastical background as I see it.

The Scenario

The immediate crisis can be most easily understood by looking at things from a very basic standpoint of ecclesiastical entities and numbers. Since math is hard and exact numbers impossible to come by, these will be by design very approximate and drawn from readily-available-through-googling sources.

The Russian Orthodox Church is numerically the largest Orthodox church in the world; by usual estimates, about half of the three hundred million Eastern Orthodox in the world are under the direct jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Moscow. It is this, rather than any ecclesiastical claim to primacy, that makes Moscow one of the most important centers of world Orthodoxy, with a great deal of sway even other Patriarchates.

The modern ROC encompasses not only the modern nation of Russia, but also the Orthodox believers in (most) former Soviet nations. One of these, by far the most important, is Ukraine.

Ukraine, like Russia, is an extraordinarily large and populous country, with about thirty million nominal Orthodox believers and a very large number of parishes, monasteries, and other ecclesiastical holdings. It is also, by most estimates, a rather more religious society than Russia, where the vast majority of the populace are nominal members of the ROC, but where actual Church attendance is the lowest of any European country (consistently under 10%, and closer to 1-2% in major cities). It is this basic issue of numbers and parishes, more than anything else, that makes the question of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church so important for Moscow. As matters stand now, roughly half of the parishes of the ROC are in Ukraine rather than Russia; and this does not including the many parishes that have left Moscow and joined other Orthodox groups in the last thirty years.

The question of Ukrainian autocephaly, then, is not at all a distant or theoretical one for the Moscow Patriarchate. Giving up Ukraine means giving up a very large proportion of believers and institutions, and all that goes with them--including a great deal of Moscow's status in the Orthodox world generally. A fully united, autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church would be, immediately, the second largest Orthodox jurisdiction in the world, and a strong counterweight to Moscow. This is something that Moscow has shown itself entirely unwilling to accept.

The Patriarchate of Constantinople, on the other hand, directly presides over, in Turkey itself where it is located, one of the tiniest flocks in the world (perhaps 5,000), though it also has jurisdiction over many ethnic Greeks worldwide and most Orthodox in America and the West. Still, even with this, its numbers are a tiny fraction of Orthodox in the world (perhaps 6 million): its status in the world of Orthodoxy comes far more from the fact that it is universally regarded as the First See of all the Orthodox patriarchates and the "center" of Orthodoxy as a whole. What this means is not always very clear, but since the Eastern Orthodox churches are all descendants of the Church of the Byzantine Empire, and since Constantinople was, of course, the absolute center of that Empire and of the Church attached to it, that fact alone carries with it a great deal of prestige and influence.

The Patriarchate of Constantinople wishes to grant autocephaly to Ukraine, as it has to many other Churches formerly subject to it (including Moscow itself). Autocephaly, "having one's own head," means that the Church in question is self-governing, typically led by a Patriarch who has jurisdiction over the Church and all its dioceses and ordains its bishops.

Part of the issue is that there is no clear procedure or structural principle underlying "autocephaly" or its granting. The Byzantine Empire was an extraordinarily centralized society where Church and State were deeply entwined, with both centered around Constantinople and the office of the Emperor, who possessed religious as well as political authority. After the fall of the Byzantine Empire, however, and later with the rise of modern nationalism, Byzantine Christians became politically and ecclesiastically "balkanized," gradually divided among multiple competing political and religious structures. The practice of "autocephaly" that has become the norm in modern Orthodoxy is little more than the regularized practice of Orthodox groups, largely for political reasons, breaking off from the Constantinopolitan center and managing their own affairs instead, generally with at least nominal (even if effectively coerced) consent from Constantinople itself.

The immediate impetus for Constantinople's move in Ukraine, though, is not so much ecclesiastical order (there are nation-states whose Churches are not autocephalous, and nation-states that are) as the desire to resolve a long-standing crisis and schism in Ukrainian Orthodoxy itself.

When the Soviet Union fell and Ukraine became for the first time in modern history an independent nation, a request was made to Moscow that the Orthodox in Ukraine be immediately granted autocephaly. The request was predictably denied, but in an equally predictable response, a large group of Orthodox clergy and believers in Ukraine broke off anyway and elected their own Patriarch, Filaret Denysenko. It is very difficult (at least for me) to tell precisely how many members this Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, as it is known, has, but some polls have shown its number of self-declared members to be actually larger than the ROC in Ukraine (though the ROC has many more parishes in Ukraine, and the numbers are muddied due to the large number of Orthodox in Ukraine who had no explicitly declared allegiance at all and who probably attend, if at all, ROC parishes), and has grown in recent years due to the military conflict between Ukraine and Russia. For the last thirty years, it has, however, not been recognized by, and not in communion with, any other Orthodox Church outside of Ukraine. There is also, confusingly, a third Orthodox jurisdiction also in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church, which has its roots in independent resistance among the Orthodox to Russian rule, but in the more immediate past is largely the result of distrust and hostility towards Patriarch Filaret, who had been a prominent Russian Orthodox bishop under the Soviet Union and thus is a man with strong past ties to the KGB and the Russian government. The UAOC is not in communion with any other group, including the Kyiv Patriarchate. Taken together, then, these two jurisdictions represent, both within Ukraine and for world Orthodoxy as a whole, a sizeable proportion of believers, parishes, and clergy separated from and not in communion with the rest of the Orthodox world.

Constantinople's solution to this problem is, in the abstract, relatively obvious: to officially grant Ukraine autocephaly, thus reuniting all three Orthodox groups in Ukraine into a single Church with a single Patriarch, in communion with the rest of the Orthodox world.

In reality, of course, this solution is far from simple, predominantly because Moscow (for the reasons discussed above) will never accept it, but also because of internal divisions within Ukrainian society that make reconciliation between pro-Russian and pro-nationalist factions (for obvious reasons associated strongly with the ROC and the two independent jurisdictions, respectively) very difficult. This is the basic situation leading up the events of the past few weeks and months.

The events themselves have proceeded fairly straightforwardly, though how they will proceed in the future is very open to question. Constantinople has proceeded quickly towards the process of granting the UOC autocephaly, declaring their intentions, sending exarchs to Ukraine to negotiate with the independent jurisdictions (the ROC naturally ignored them), and finally, in recent days, unilaterally declaring all the members and clergy of the UOC-Kyiv Patriarchate and the UAOC to be in communion with Constantinople and canonically regular. In the near future, one would expect, they will officially grant Ukraine autocephaly, and the Ukrainians who accept this will elect a single Patriarch (who may or may not be Filaret, as discussed above).

Moscow, on the other hand, has responded to this first with belligerent rhetoric, then with increasingly extreme canonical and ecclesiastical moves. Members of the ROC, including most prominently Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, the ROC's official head of external relations, have referred to the conflict as a "war," have threatened not only to break communion with Constantinople, but also to permanently dethrone Constantinople from its position as the First See of Orthodoxy, and have compared the forthcoming schism to that between the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy as "the largest schism in a thousand years."

Following the sending of exarchs, the ROC officially "suspended relations" with Constantinople, a step that has been taken only once in recent history, when Constantinople granted autocephaly to the tiny, formerly Soviet nation of Estonia (with little over a million inhabitants in total) in the early '90s. At that time, however, the ROC and Constantinople fairly quickly came to terms and agreed to a solution that would allow two independent jurisdictions in the nation, one under the ROC, and one independent.

Following Constantinople's rehabilitation of Filaret and the UAOC, however, Moscow has in recent days taken the more drastic step of totally breaking communion and all clerical relations with Constantinople. This means not only that the Patriarch of Constantinople will no longer be prayed for in the Liturgy along with the other Orthodox Patriarchs, but also that all faithful of the ROC are forbidden to receive communion in Churches under the jurisdiction of Constantinople, and vice versa. In the past few days, officials of the Moscow Patriarchate have forbidden their faithful from receiving communion at any Churches ecclesiastically subject to Constantinople, even on Mount Athos, the world center of Orthodox monasticism--they have also publicly declared that the position of Primate in Orthodoxy, formerly held by Constantinople, simply no longer exists.

The question at this point is what happens next, on multiple levels. Constantinople has shown no signs of slowing their process, and in the near future they will likely finally and officially grant autocephaly to Ukraine; this will in turn likely trigger a response from Moscow, which may go so far as a formal act of excommunication or anathematization directed at the Constantinople Patriarchate.

On the ground, in Ukraine, the question is to what degree the granting of autocephaly actually unites the various Church groups involved. At minimum, the UAOC and the UOC of the Kyiv Patriarchate will be united with one another and with Constantinople. The ROC in Ukraine will also certainly continue to be out of communion with them, and will now no longer be in communion with Constantinople as well. The ROC in Ukraine, however, may, and almost certainly will, lose parishes and faithful to the new independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church. This process, though, has the strong potential to lead to judicial conflicts and even open violence, as faithful and clergy of different factions vie for individual parishes and all that goes with them. In the long run, this process may, or may not, lead to a decisive victory for one side or another; but in all likelihood both groups will continue to exist for the foreseeable future.

Outside of Ukraine, though, the situation is even more incalculable. The fact of the ROC being out of communion and actively hostile to Constantinople is in itself, by sheer force of numbers, significant; it means that the most sizeable group of Orthodox in the world no longer consider Constantinople to be the Primatial See of Orthodoxy and no longer participate in any of the common structures or projects spearheaded by Constantinople--which are, essentially, all of the common structures and projects that exist within Orthodoxy. Whatever Constantinople does apart from the ROC will be, by that fact alone, dramatically less significant, less prestigious, and less effective.

The real question, however, is how the other autocephalous Churches of world Orthodoxy choose to respond to this state of affairs, which presents them with an immediate and highly fraught puzzle. Within Ukraine itself, these Churches will be forced to decide which of the two jurisdictions to be in communion with; and outside of Ukraine, they will have to decide what, if any, steps to take in response to Moscow and Constantinople's breach in communion.

The most likely step for all these Churches, at least in the short term, is, paradoxically, simply to do nothing. It is far from unprecedented within Orthodoxy for a Church to be simultaneously in communion with multiple Churches that are not in communion with each other. There is, in fact, such a situation going on right now; the Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem, the two most important Middle Eastern Orthodox Churches, have not been in communion with each other over a jurisdictional dispute for a number of years. No other autocephalous Church, so far as I know, has made any move in response to this; they have simply continued to simultaneously relate to and be in communion with both.

Of course, with Constantinople and Moscow, the issue is not nearly so simple. Jerusalem and Antioch are poor, marginal, and persecuted; both Constantinople and Moscow have strong ties of direct and indirect influence extending all across the world of modern-day Orthodoxy. It is practically impossible for any autocephalous Church to simply ignore either one, let alone both.

Leading up to this break, Moscow, at least, has been actively seeking support from other Patriarchates; by my count, the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Jerusalem, Serbia, and Bulgaria have all been brought to make strong statements of support for the ROC in Ukraine and against Constantinople's actions in recent weeks. The Orthodox Church in America, which has close ties to the ROC but is nominally autocephalous (an autocephaly granted by Moscow, and thus not recognized by Constantinople), has simply stated that they would not break communion with Constantinople. The Patriarch of Antioch has pointedly refused to endorse either side, but has bitterly complained about the divisions in the Church and the lack of attention shown to his own conflict with Jerusalem.

We are, really, in uncharted waters here. There are any number of theoretical ways this situation could resolve itself, but much depends on the precise actions and reactions of the parties involved. What is very close to certain is that neither side will, at this point, back down in their immediate conflict with one another: Constantinople will officially grant autocephaly to Ukraine, and Moscow will continue to try to cut itself loose from Constantinople.

Other autocephalous jurisdictions will try to mediate this conflict, but there is not really anyone in the Orthodox world with any significant amount of sway with either Patriarchate. A Council could be called, but it is extremely unlikely Moscow would ever attend such a meeting. Only a few years ago, Constantinople tried to summon a Pan-Orthodox Council in Crete, but was stymied by Moscow's unilateral refusal to attend (ostensibly for doctrinal and organizational issues)--a fact that ipso facto rendered the Council a dead letter. It does not seem likely Moscow would ever attend a Council where it actually had something to lose; and there is no longer an Orthodox Emperor to force them or anyone else to do so.

An Estonia-like solution is, of course, still very much possible; an agreement whereby both jurisdictions are allowed to exist in Ukraine simultaneously in communion with one another and with the rest of Orthodoxy. With every day that goes by, this becomes less and less likely, but it is still an obvious solution and can never be discounted. This resolution would presumably lead to at least a healing of the immediate Schism, though it would not bring an end to the deeper issues bringing Moscow and Constantinople into conflict. The status quo would be maintained, in other words, but not reconciled.

If the Schism continues and escalates to the point of open excommunication, whatever the other autocephalous Churches do, this would de facto lead to a situation where world Orthodoxy, over time, becomes more and more separated out into two clearly divided, hostile, competing institutions. Other autocephalous Churches could, in all probability would, be drawn into it and break communion with one side or the other. Or, if all of them maintain an ostensible neutrality, the labyrinthine, schizophrenic dimensions of modern Orthodoxy would be greatly increased. Either way, the ability for Orthodoxy to operate in any univocal or united way, or to ever join in on any common projects or statements, would be effectively neutralized.

In the long run, of course, regardless of what happens in the near future, one side or the other could "win out" in such a way as to render the other side impotent and of far less significance in Orthodox affairs. This does not seem particularly likely to me, but both sides have partisans who strongly believe in these scenarios, so they should not be entirely discounted.

The scenario by which Constantinople "wins" is fairly straightforward, and generally involves less "total war": due to on-the-ground conditions, the united Ukrainian Orthodox Church rapidly absorbs the ROC in Ukraine, and becomes too large and successful for any other Orthodox Church, including Moscow, to not to be in communion with. After the other autocephalous Churches gradually accept it as an equal and partner, Moscow is forced to accede, and the UOC thus takes its place in the pantheon of autocephalous Churches as a strong counterweight to Moscow's supremacy; and in the long run, a smaller, chastened, and more humble Moscow becomes a more reliable and less independent part of Orthodoxy under the authority of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

The scenario whereby Moscow wins is also fairly straightforward, but rather more brutal: Constantinople has very few Orthodox believers under its direct jurisdiction, relying for its position and authority on soft power and prestige. If Moscow can successfully use its clout, which includes at least potentially the entire political and diplomatic power of the Russian state, abundant monetary funds, and numerous believers scattered throughout the world, to persuade other autocephalous Churches to join it in breaking from or even excommunicating Constantinople, at a certain point, Constantinople would simply become a tiny, poor, and insignificant Church, and a threat to no one. At this point, it would matter very little what they did or decided on any question; Moscow would be free to operate however they wished, whether, in the long run, they returned to communion with Constantinople or not. Moscow could even, depending on the situation, take the most drastic step of all: claim for themselves the Primacy ostensibly vacated by Constantinople.

As I said, I do not think either of these scenarios particularly likely, though they each have something to commend them.

Historical/Ecclesiastical Background

The difficulty with Orthodoxy as a modern phenomenon is always that it has never had a fixed Church order or ecclesiology. The Church of the Byzantine Empire had two institutional sources of unity at the highest, universal level, both of which modern Orthodoxy has no access to: the office of the Emperor, and the office of the Pope.

While it initially contained multiple Patriarchates with some degree of independence, following the Muslim conquests, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch were all lost to the Empire, while Rome and the Latin Church became gradually estranged from Byzantium first politically and later religiously; this led, in the long run, to an almost total ecclesiastical hegemony of Constantinople in the Empire.

Constantinople's status even as a Patriarchate, however, had been heavily disputed, to say the least. Prior to Constantine, there had been three Apostolic Sees generally recognized: Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, all of which had personal ties to the Apostle Peter. Rome was, of course, the acknowledge Primate, as the See where Peter and Paul had shed their blood. Byzantium, on the other hand, was a minor city politically and ecclesiastically, with no even legendary ties to Peter or any other Apostles.

After Constantine re-founded Byzantium as his new capital, Constantinople or New Rome, the vastly increased political importance quickly translated into greater ecclesiastical importance as well. During the late 4th and 5th centuries, clerics of Alexandria and Antioch competed over and against Constantinople and to maintain their own primacy in the East, a conflict that led eventually to the estrangement of significant numbers of their followers from the Empire and the Imperial Church. Finally, at the Council of Calchedon, the assembled clergy, absent the Roman legates, passed a canon declaring that Constantinople, because it was the Imperial City, ought to be the second See in the Church after Rome. Pope Leo the Great, however, reacted angrily to this appeal to politics in Church order, and publicly annulled the canon, since Constantinople was neither an Apostolic See, nor could it possibly take precedence over the older Apostolic Churches of Alexandria and Antioch.

Still, in the long run, the close ties between Church and State in the Byzantine Empire, where the Emperor held ultimate sway in both spheres, made Constantinople's religious hegemony simply a fact of life, one that received little official legitimation for centuries, but which became more and more official over time and especially as Rome's role in the Byzantine Empire, for many centuries (particularly those of the so-called Byzantine Papacy) powerful and decisive, gradually waned.

When the Byzantine Empire fell, however, the believers and Church structures that had once been a part of it were brought into a state of disarray. Nations and ethnic groups were forced to fend for themselves, which they did in different ways. Some (the large proportion of Antiochenes who now form the Melchite Church, the majority of the Kyivan Rus who now make up the Ruthenian and Ukrainian Greek Catholic Churches, etc) re-entered Communion with Rome and became a part of the modern, post-Reformation Catholic world of multiple sui iuris Churches under the ultimate governance of the Pope; others remained in communion with Constantinople while learning to manage their own affairs, leading to the existence of "autocephalous" Orthodox Churches in the modern sense.

The Church of Moscow, however, adopted a rather more aggressive strategy, forging extremely close ties to the expansionist Muscovite Empire. Its "autocephaly" was gained essentially by force, including an incident where the Patriarch of Constantinople--who had traveled to Moscow to raise funds, since the Ottoman Empire maintained the Patriarchate only on the basis of compulsory extortion and simony--was held captive in Russia until he agreed to grant the Bishop of Moscow the title of "Patriarch." Along with this aggression in Church matters came the ideology of "Third Rome," which held that, just as Constantinople had been the First See in the Church not due to any Apostolic pedigree, but solely due to its role as the capital of the Orthodox Empire, so too, Moscow, the capitol of the Orthodox Russian Empire, had now inherited that same primacy. As Moscow and the Russian Empire expanded politically, so too did the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church, leading to many churches that had been formerly been subject directly to Constantinople now becoming subject instead to Moscow.

When the Russian Empire modernized under Peter the Great, so, too, was the Russian Orthodox Church modernized; in 1721, the Patriarchate of Moscow was actually abolished, replaced by a Synod subject to the Czar, and not reinstituted until 1917, in the throes of the Russian Revolution. The ROC, however, was soon, under the Soviets, officially abolished--and it was not until 1943, when Stalin made the decision, to benefit nationalistic sentiment against the Nazis, to revive and sanction Russian Orthodoxy, that the Patriarchate was officially restored once again. Under Stalin and his successors, however, the ROC was thoroughly penetrated and largely controlled by the KGB, even as it was marginalized and downplayed by the officially atheistic state. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of Vladmir Putin, however, the ROC has re-forged its close ties to the Russian State, receiving a great deal of support and approbation from Putin, and in return endorsing his policies and political affairs.

Constantinople, on the other hand, suffered after the fall of the Empire through centuries of repressive Ottoman rule--until the rise of the modern Turkish state following World War One, which paradoxically butchered its followers and drove them out of the country, reducing it to a tiny fraction of its former numbers, while at the same time by its official secularism giving it, for the first time in centuries, almost total freedom to operate independently on the global stage. This, for the most part, seems to be Patriarch Bartholomew's vision: of a restored Orthodox Church separate from, liberated from, the State and now operating in a unified way under the strong, independent leadership of Constantinople.

If this break is happening now, then, it is in large part because these two institutions are both in positions of relative strength--and also because their basic visions for the structure and order of Orthodoxy as a global institution are radically in conflict. Moscow, in a sense, is the less ambitious one; it wishes to ratify a Church order tied to political structures, and in particular to the ethnic-national Orthodox Empire embodied in the contemporary Imperialism of the Russian State, which sees all of its former holdings, whether nominally independent or not, as part of its sphere of influence and consequently under its spiritual and jurisdictional sway. Patriarch Bartholomew, on the other hand, ambitiously wishes to forge a modern Orthodox Church that exists as a universal institution independent of national, ethnic, and political divisions, ruled by a strong independent Primate whose status comes, not from current Imperial sway, but from past tradition, and divided in an orderly fashion into autocephalous Churches whose boundaries are dictated by those of nation-states.

The two groups also have more intellectual debates and alignments, the largest of which is how Orthodoxy ought to relate to other Christian groups--in particular the Catholic Church. Patriarch Bartholomew is famously ecumenical, and is personally close friends with Pope Francis, with whom he as cooperated on a vast number of projects. The Patriarch of Moscow, however, is generally opposed to rapproachment with other Christian groups; though he was finally brought to meet with the Pope for the first time in history in recent years, the ROC has always been the main foot-dragger and obstacle to cooperation between the Catholic Church and Orthodoxy.

Over Ukraine, the issue is also one of jurisdiction. Kyiv was formerly under the direct jurisdiction of Constantinople, which was eventually forced, by the political realities, to allow Moscow to ordain its bishops. Moscow thus claims Constantinople has no right to grant Ukraine autocephaly, since it is its own canonical territory. Constantinople, for its part, claims the exclusive right, as Primate, to grant autocephaly; it has, in the past, refused to recognize Moscow's attempts to grant its subject Churches this status. It also claims that Ukraine, regardless of the changes brought about by conquest or the grant in question, is properly its own canonical territory--and thus Moscow has absolutely no right to jurisdiction over it.

This is not an easy dispute to resolve, on any level. Constantinople's claim to a strong primacy independent of any Orthodox Empire is at least historically an innovation; Moscow's claim to absolute jurisdiction over the Church of another nation-state due to past Imperial rule is at base ruthlessly political: but the far deeper issue underlying both these stances and the conflict as a whole is that there is, in fact, no clear way to resolve any of these disputes, neither in terms of Church structure nor in terms of canonical jurisdiction, within the institutions and traditions of Orthodoxy as it has existed since the Fall of the Byzantine Empire.

The resolution of this dispute, then, depends in reality not on any intra-Orthodox ecclesiastical principle, but simply and solely on the will of the parties involved, as well as the chaotic conditions and fortunes of politics and history.

As a Catholic, all I can say is that we ought to pray, whatever Christian group we may belong to, for all those believers who are caught up in the middle of this fiasco: and trust, ultimately, in Christ, who loves his Church, and will unite all those who belong to him, finally and forever, in the Kingdom of his Father. 

Vagueness and Compassion

It's a mistake to see vagueness and compassion as equivalent. They're not. As our society shows quite well, vagueness breeds bigotry as surely as a carcass flies.

The problem with relativism in practice is that when people stop absolutizing absolute things, they instead just absolutize themselves. In the absence of universal standards & authorities personal likes and dislikes become absolute. And by the standards of the absolutized individual personality, no one is deserving of mercy and compassion. You did *that*? I can't imagine doing that. You don't know *that*? I can't image not knowing that. The people my feelings tell me to love I will love, and the people my feelings tell me to hate I will hate: Amen, so be it. Those I like are justified, those I dislike are cast into the outer darkness, where is wailing and gnashing of teeth--how could it be otherwise?

No one has ever had to be taught to not understand another person, no one has ever had to be taught to be indifferent to another person, no one has ever had to be taught to dislike another person--it's loving and compassion that has to be laboriously drilled into people by authority and reason and dramatic leaps of faith. Take away that authority and that reason and that faith, and you infallibly get hatred.

I'm not sure there has ever been a group of people as collectively pitiless and devoid of compassion as modern Americans--and it is for this, first and foremost, that we will be judged. And we, most of us, most of the time, are pitiless and merciless not because we have any reason to be, but because we don't have any reason not to be. We have only ourselves--a God not of mercy, but wrath.

Technology & Madness

Most of the problems in our day and age are based on the utterly nonsensical idea that the "progress" of technology is some kind of natural force or trajectory implying a moral imperative to accept and make use of every form of technology possible. Can we make cellphones? Then we all must get cellphones, and use them. Can we make an atom bomb? Then we must make one, and use it. Can we make biological weapons? Torture devices and techniques? Elaborate data-collection algorithms? Sex robots?

Technology is nothing but the extension and partial reification of the human will, the will, ultimately, of some person or persons. The idea of a "morally neutral" technology is thus not just wrong, but self-contradictory. All technology is, by its very nature, ethical, since it is, again, a reification & extension of the choices of the human will, and since ethics is nothing other than the science of understanding and judging the choices of the human will. There is no other conceivable way to judge or even understand technology *except* ethically. And if you judge technology ethically, it must be possible to judge it negatively; to decide that this particular technology is, as an extension and reification of human choices, bad and ethically inadmissable.

If we cannot do this, then we are in a very fundamental and inescapable way simply insane, as insane as we would be if we simply refused to judge or even understand any human action, including our own. If our society cannot do this, then it is simply a very large and technologically advanced insane asylum.

I Went to Wal-Mart

I went to Wal-Mart today, with the goal of buying a pair of earbuds and a bottle of lemon-juice.

Wal-Mart is, in its essence, a deeply unpleasant thing for a human being to come into contact with; huge space unbounded by any human scale, order, or decoration, white ceilings and omnipresent flourescent lights, like an asylum or prison, looking down upon every type of evanescent merchandise capable of being manufactured by slaves in Malaysia and China, piled haphazardly on shelves or lying forgotten on the floor, everywhere surmounted by careless images and placards declaring low prices, and everywhere ignored by the underpaid, bored employees wandering vaguely about like inmates in purgatory, never busy, but never available for help or conversation either.

At the height of its power, when it advanced by leaps and bounds from coast to coast and across the sea, singlehandedly gobbling up and annihilating the economies of entire towns and regions, Wal-Mart was, no doubt, a terrifying thing; now, though, the institution has fallen on harder times, and evokes pity more than terror. Faced with competition from Amazon and other online retailers, the company is closing stores at a terrible rate; and even the open stores are often understocked. As I walked gaily through the electronics section, searching for my desideratum, at least half the shelves I passed were simply empty, with no sign of what was supposed to go on them. There were not too many customers, either, for such a day, and those that were there were poorer, older, minorities. The wealthier customers, I knew, were no doubt shopping at the newer, cleaner Target down the road--Target, that so well exemplifies the preferred consumerism of the middle class American of today, no less oppressive, no less ugly, no less fundamentally alienated an institution and an experience than Wal-Mart, but nonetheless painted red and ostentatiously supportive of LGBTQ rights.

I, however, was not shopping at Target and basking in the barest suggestion of an aesthetic and a social consciousness; I was walking through a Wal-Mart visibly in decline, and musing on time and decay and the beauty that is found it. That day, I found Wal-Mart, for the first time, lovely.

This really should not seem so strange; for things much more fundamentally ugly and evil than Wal-Mart have been rendered beautiful and nostalgic by the passage of time. Some have been rendered so fundamentally harmless and frivolous that they have become, not even poetry, but Internet and convention aesthetics. Thousands of "steampunk" enthusiasts every year elaborately dress up in and criticize clothing based on the deliberately ugly and practical garb of British industrialists and colonial administrators of the 19th century, rulers of the world's first capitalist Empire. The very appearances of the machines to which men were chained, and by which they were chewed up and worn out by the tens of thousands, the machines for whose sake boys of 10 were given stiff drinks of whiskey at the beginning of each workday, to dull the pain, have become, for most people, little more than a quaint aesthetic of a bygone age.

This kind of nostalgism, this kind of romanticization of the past, however objectionable some of its results may be, represents, in itself, a fundamentally sound instinct of humanity. It is hard to really appreciate a tiger while it is alive and threatening to eat you; for real aesthetic appreciation, for real poetic inspiration, it is better to wait until the beast has been turned into a rug, and then weep over it. The Antebellum South was, in most ways that matter, a fundamentally wicked society, that deserved to be smashed into powder; it was only once it was gone with the wind that it could be a romantic temple of vanished beauty. No one would really want to see the Colosseum when it was actually the Colosseum, a vulgar monument to spectacle in service to an overpowering state; now, though, centuries of rain have washed it clean of its bloodstains, and left nothing but the quiet majesty of stone.

These were the things I thought of in Wal-Mart today, and this is what I felt; Wal-Mart, the white walls and the vast, cavernous space and the empty shelves and the bored employees, fading away into the night, a sign and emblem of the whole society in which it thrived, the American Empire of cheap merchandise stacked haphazardly on shelves and then thrown away and endless armies of men bound to machines producing garbage. It all seemed, suddenly and overwhelmingly, as ephemeral and as sad and as beautiful as anything I had ever seen: seemed, indeed, already vanished from the earth, and in that vanishing to be lovely, like the monuments of Rome and Athens and the British Empire before it.

I drove out of the vast parking lot, ugly asphalt and careless yellow lines, and onto the freeway that already seemed to be falling to pieces around me. I wondered: what would we do with these vast, overwhelming buildings, these vast empty spaces, once all this had passed away? The Catholics of Rome had, with unerring common sense, turned the Pantheon into a Church, and put a statue of St. Peter atop the Column of Trajan. Perhaps, I thought, one day this huge, bare white cavern would be re-consecrated as a Cathedral, like the Parthenon; and I remembered, not without amusement, that in California the Crystal Cathedral, that great monument to the excesses of capitalist religiousity, had already been bought from its bankrupt owners and turned into a real Cathedral of the Catholic Church. I laughed at this, and in my heart I entirely approved it. Yes; just like Rome, the glories of this faded civilization should belong to God and his Church. Perhaps one day we would put statues of St. Peter or the Virgin on top of the shells left by abandoned McDonalds.

These thoughts were not entirely undirected; for I was driving to a little Adoration chapel at a Catholic Church, not far away, where I found a little room, smaller than that in which I am now sitting, in which there were a few middle-aged people and statues of Joseph and Mary and a few candles and God Almighty under the appearance of a piece of bread. And sitting in this room, reflecting on what I had just seen and done, I realized rather abruptly what it is that divides me, and has always divided me, from so many other people, from so many Catholics of past generations and my own: that for me, it was simply obvious that Wal-Mart, and the great Empire and society it represented, was fading away and falling into ruin before my eyes, and the Church was permanent and would outlast it--and for them it was not.

This, I reflected, was not at all due simply to lack of faith on the part of such people; for they lived at times when America and the American Empire of economic power and cultural production and military might seemed natural and large and permanent as the world itself, while the Church seemed ever smaller and older and destined to vanish like the mists at dawn, while I lived at a time when everyone, even the most piously American and secular, despaired of the future of the American Empire, and recognized the signs of its dissolution.

I realized that while for me, the overwhelming vision was of the world fading and falling into ruins and the Church remaining strong and upright, for so many Catholics, for so many Catholics far better and more faithful and holier than I, the vision, the overwhelming vision which they could not help but see, with and against which they fought all their lives, was of the Church falling into ruins and vanishing beyond recovery, and above her the world looming ever more permanent and powerful and unquestionable. I realized how much of the work and efforts and ideologies of both progressive and conservative Catholics over the past one hundred years and more had really been, at its base, responses to this vision: some good, some evil, and some merely foolish. I realized, too, that there was another vision which I lacked as well, one that possesses and frightens and drives many people not so much older than me, or even younger, to do and say and fight many things: a vision of growing up in a Church already little more than ruins, beautiful but obsolete and forgotten. I realized that I lacked this vision, too, that I have never for even one instant felt the Church to be in ruins, never felt the Church to be weak and failing or already failed, never in any real sense feared for the Church, its present, or its future. I realized that this is really what divides me from many Catholics far better and holier than I, and that this is no glory to me.

Sitting in that Chapel, though, I tried, for a little while, to see my surroundings in the light of these visions, thinking in a new light of the oldness of the few assigned adorers, the smallness and shabbiness of the room, the apostasy of so many young people from the Faith, the overwhelming force of the world in so many forms over and against human souls and the Church. As I came out from the Chapel, I got in my car, and drove through a tunnel, and when I came out there was a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market where there had not been one before, and I saw, for a moment, how all this could still seem powerful, inevitable, could still seem to have a future, while the Church did not.

As soon as I saw that, though, even as I saw it, I saw also very clearly that, in the end, these fortunes of history made no difference at all; that both while waxing and waning, Wal-Mart was nothing but an empty shell, ugly and meaningless and powerless and without a future, while in that little Chapel there was God himself, in the form of a weak and vanishing bit of bread, and souls whose virtue and fidelity were glorious and unconquerable even through the age and fading strength of their bodies.

When I saw this, I saw simply the world, in which God was made Incarnate; a world both of passing things, and of eternal things, of time and decay and resurrection.

Even when the Colosseum was full of gladiators and revelers, it was still empty; even when the Plantation House was full of ladies in gowns and the fields of groaning slaves, it was still an ugly and meaningless sham; and even when the Church has been at its weakest and most corrupt, in every place and time where it has seemed to fade away beneath the triumphant forces of this world, it has been strong with the strength of the Cross, and glorious with the glory of God, and possessed of an eternal future.

I came away from this experience, then, both saddened and comforted. I do not know whether America will endure for a year or a decade; but it will not endure. I do not know whether the Church in this place or time will conquer, or be conquered; but it will live forever. That is, really, all I need to know.

Anyway, I did get the earbuds and the lemon juice, and that was nice too.

Vignettes of Conversion

Today marks the 7th anniversary of my Confirmation and acceptance into the full communion of the Catholic Church. I've been planning to write something about it for a while, but found myself hitting the same wall that is always hit in such matters: the difficulty of writing about oneself.

People don't like to write about themselves as they actually are, for the same reason they don't like to hear their own voices on tape: which is one reason why most of the time, writing about oneself consists mostly of fairly elaborate methods of evading the topic, or else even more elaborate constructions of "brands" and fictionalized versions of the self. To avoid this, I finally decided to describe the process of life and of conversion more as it actually happened: that is, in small moments, in little broken-up narratives, and, as much as possible, using words I wrote during the times in question, intended not for public consumption, but for my own purposes, and mostly addressed to God. We'll see. What follows, then, may or may not add up to a consistent narrative, or a good story, or anything of the sort. I have tried to make it as true as possible, though no doubt I have failed at that, too.

Wake Up

My first memory, so far as I can reasonably tell, is of singing songs in church: the church I grew up in, that is, which for a long while bore the name of Reformed Heritage Presbyterian Church and which for most of the time I was in it consisted of less than a hundred persons. It is thanks to my membership in this church that I was baptized as an infant, and so began the life of grace.

I have many memories of God as a small child, though most are not very explicit; but they are all memories of presence and love, a presence and love I was never to entirely forget.

Pope St. Martin I, Epistola XV

The feast day of Pope St. Martin I, the last Pope to be honored as a martyr by the Catholic Church, was a few days ago. He was deposed and martyred by the Byzantine Emperor Constans II for his opposition to the Monothelite heresy. In honor of that day, here is a quick translation of a letter (XV in Migne) from the early days of his imprisonment, before he reached Constantinople, describing the events of his arrest. 

Martin to Theodore: Your dear love wished to know in what way I was snatched from the See of Saint Peter the Apostle, like a single solitary sparrow from a building. And I wonder that you wished to inquire about this, since Our Lord spoke beforehand about wretched times to his disciples: ‘For in those days there will be tribulation such as has not been from the beginning of the world even til now; and unless those days were shortened, all flesh would not be able to endure. But the one who perseveres until the end will be saved.’ (Matt 24:22). For also Saint Paul according to the grace of the Spirit given to him announced beforehand those days to Timothy his disciple: ‘In the last days men will fall from the Faith, and will turn their hearing away from the truth, loving themselves, avaricious, etc,” (1 Tim 4:1, 3:4). And believe me, my very longed-for son, since our Lord predicted the coming of Antichrist, we must see no other time except clearly this one, in which are the beginnings of sorrows.

And it seemed necessary to me to speak briefly, before judgment prevails in the whole world and I come to the end of the race, since I have judged that this is expedient for me, and in this, although others are preparing evils for me, I will exalt rather than weep. And so, that you may know how I was taken and led away from the Roman city, you will hear nothing false about what has happened. I knew everything which they were planning beforehand through that whole time, and at my own expense with my whole body of clergy I was staying privately in the Church of Our Savior Jesus Christ, which is named ‘Constantinian,’ which was constructed and founded first in the whole world by the Emperor Constantine of blessed memory, and is near the episcopal residence. There we all were resting separately on the Sabbath day, when Calliopas, with the army of Ravenna and Theodore the chamberlain, entered the city. Therefore I sent to meet him certain men from among the clergy: when these were received in the palace, he thought that I also was with them. But when he had asked them, and had not found me, he said to the leading men of the clergy: ‘We wanted to do homage to him; but tomorrow, which is the Lord’s Day, we will meet him, and will salute him, because we did not succeed today.’ Furthermore, when on the Lord’s Day he sent gifts to us in that holy Church of God, that man, because he suspected that a great crowd had come together there because of the day, announced: ‘We are very fatigued by the journey, and are not able to meet with you today, but tomorrow we will certainly meet with you, and will pay homage to your Holiness.’ But I myself had been severely ill from the month of October all the way to that time, that is, all the way to the sixteenth from the Kalends of July. Therefore on Monday in the morning he sent his Chartularius, and some men from his retinue, saying: ‘You have prepared arms, and are keeping armed men inside, and have collected many stones for fighting; and this is not necessary, nor should you allow something like this to happen.’ And when I had listened to these things in their presence, I judged it good not to make them certain myself but to send them to wander at will through the whole episcopal residence, so that if they had seen any weapons or a stone, they themselves might bear witness. But when they had gone, and found nothing, I told them that never at any time had it been otherwise, but they were always attacking us with lies and false accusations, since even they confessed that at the arrival of the infamous Olympius, a certain vain man, he had been able to drive me away with arms. I then was keeping my little bed, in which I was lying, before the altar of the Church; and when noon was not yet past, behold an army came with them into the Church, all armored and holding their lances and swords, and their bows made ready with their shields: and there were done there things which should not be spoken. For just as in the wintertime leaves struck by a strong wind fall from the trees, so the candles of the Holy Church were being struck with arms, and cut down were falling to the pavement. And a sound was heard in that Church, like some horrible thunder, from the striking of their arms, from the multitude of candles broken by them. And while they were entering in crowds, a message was given by Calliopa to the Priests and Deacons, in which was contained my humility's deposition, because, they said, I had taken the episcopacy irregularly and against the law, and was not worthy to be installed in the Apostolic See, but it would be transmitted to the Royal City when a bishop had been substituted in my place. This has not yet happened, and I hope that it will never happen, because in my absence the Archdeacon and Archpriest and Primicerius keep the place of the Pontiff. Even while, then, these things are happening, since they have been done about the Faith, I have made them clear to you. But indeed we were not prepared to fight, since I have judged it better to die a thousand times than to allow the blood of even one person, anyone, be shed onto the earth. War, indeed, is waged, even without danger, with not a few evil things done which do not please God. Thus at the same hour I gave myself over to obeying the Emperor and not resisting. Furthermore (that I may speak the truth), although certain men from the clergy were shouting to me not to do this, I gave my ear to none of them, so that men would not be killed. But I said to them: ‘Let some from the clergy come with me, who are necessary for me, bishops, priests, and deacons, and whoever seems good to me.’ Callopias responded: ‘However many want to come, let them come. We lay a necessity on no one.’ I responded: ‘The clergy is in my power.’ But certain men from the priests, shouting, were saying: ‘We live with him, and we die with him.’ After these things Calliopas began to say, and those who were with him: ‘Come with us to the Palace.’ Nor did I refuse to do this, but I went with them to the palace on the same Monday. And on Tuesday the whole clergy came to me, and there were many who had prepared to sail with me, who then had put their property on those things which are called levamenta [small boats]; and also some others, clergy and laity, were preparing and were hurrying to come to us. Then on the same night, which dawned on Wednesday, the thirteenth from the Kalends of July, about the sixth, as it were, hour of the night, they took me from the palace, thrusting aside all those who were with me in the palace, and also the various things which were necessary for me on the road and here, and they led us from the city with nothing but six servants and one drinking-vessel; and when they had put us into one of those boats which are called levamenta, about the fourth hour of the day, more or less, we came to the port. In that hour in which we went out from the city of Rome, the gates were immediately bolted, and they also guarded them, and remained there, lest anyone should go out of the city and come to us in the port, until we had sailed from there. For this reason it was necessary that we send away from the port the property of all those who had put their property into the levamenta, and then depart on the same day. And we came to Mesena on the Kalends of July, where there was a ship, which is my prison. But not only in Mesena, but also in Calabria; and not only in Calabria, which is subject to the great city of the Romans, but also on very many islands, on which our sins have impeded us for three months, I have obtained no compassion, except only on the island of Naxos, because I spent a year there, I merited to bathe two or three times, and in the city I stayed in a certain inn. And behold it is now the forty-seventh day since I have merited to wet myself with hot or cold water, and I have wasted away and have been cold all over, because the flowing of my stomach both on the ship and on land has given me no rest even to the present hour; and even in the very hour of my necessity, when I am about to eat, I am shaken in my whole body, I do not have those things which are necessary to enjoy for the comforting of nature, because what I have disgusts me to receive, since it causes me nausea within. But I believe in the power of God who sees all things, that when I will be led out from the present life, these things will be required of those who persecute me, so that at least in this way they may be led to repentance, and converted from their iniquity. [Signature] May God keep you unharmed, most sweet son.

Lenten Meditation #7: The Joy of Christ Jesus Upon the Cross

"And now you yourself glorify me, Father, with yourself, in the glory which I had, with you, before the world existed." (John 17:5)

"And at the ninth hour, Jesus cried out in a loud voice: 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?' Which, translated, means: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'" (Mark 15:34)

The mystery of the Christian Faith is the Paschal mystery, the mystery of the death and resurrection of God. This mystery itself contains many mysteries, mysteries concerned with the nature of God and of man, of Incarnation and redemption and sin and death and justice and suffering. Indeed, there is, in a true sense, nothing either of earth or of heaven that is not contained in this one mystery. When we eat the Body of the Lord, and drink his Blood, we make ourselves a participant in the union of all of God with all of creation: and this is the purpose of our existence, of all our lives, and all our desires, thoughts, words, and deeds.

Here, though, is one small part of this mystery that has for many years been perhaps the central object of my meditation: the joy of Christ Jesus upon the Cross.

On the Cross, Jesus knew and tasted all the sin and suffering and evil of all mankind, from the beginning of time to the end of it. On the Cross, Jesus knew and tasted betrayal by those closest to him, including all of us, the mockery of his enemies, who we are and have been, and the loss of his only beloved. On the Cross, Jesus knew and tasted abandonment by God, the subjection of his body and soul to suffering and helplessness and torment without any consolation.

Still, on the Cross, Jesus remained God, remained united to God in an unbreakable bond, the bond of the hypostatic union and of the Most Holy Trinity.

Many saints and doctors of the Church have taught that, because of the hypostatic union, Jesus knew and saw God not only in his divinity, but in his humanity as well; that is, that he experienced in his earthly life, from the moment of conception to the moment of death, the Beatific Vision of the essence of God that all of us, by the grace of God, will experience only in heaven. While all men know God only by Faith, that is, the man Jesus knew him by sight, as completely and as intimately as it is possible for the created to know the uncreated. He was Son, and knew his Father not only in his eternal divinity, but in his chosen humanity as well.

It is in this divine sight that Christ Jesus on this earth preached and healed, prayed and lived and suffered, rejoiced and wept, for the love of his Father and of us all. It is in this divine sight, likewise, that he suffered and died.

This, though, is a question that has vexed many doctors and many saints: how is it that Christ Jesus could, while seeing the essence of God, suffer all that he suffered in the Cross? How could Christ Jesus, while seeing the essence of God, experience abandonment by God? Perhaps, we must say, the suffering must have been lessened, or else the vision must have been lost.

Nevertheless, the greatest doctors and mystics of the Church have affirmed both, without contradiction: that Christ Jesus on the Cross saw God, experienced what we feebly call Heaven, the ineffable and eternal union with God--and that Christ Jesus on the Cross saw only death and torment, betrayal and abandonment, by man and by God. Saint Therese of Liseux, in her last days of torment, spoke of this mystery; so, too, did St. Edith Stein, in the last days before her martyrdom. Both affirmed the double mystery of Christ Jesus' union and abandonment upon the Cross; and so too have many others.

The key to this mystery, I am convinced, lies in the teachings of the mystics and theologians, concerning the transcendence and ineffability of the essence of God. As St. John of the Cross teaches, the essence of God which we know in heaven, and in the merest shadows even on earth, in itself cannot be seen or heard, tasted or touched; in itself, it infinitely transcends every capacity of the body, mind, and soul, made, as they are, for the knowledge of creatures; in itself, it bears no proportion to, and no resemblance to, any created thing or any created experience. It is for this reason that knowledge of God and union with him so often comes to us not as light but as darkness, a darkness into which we are plunged, blinding us and removing us far from all pleasure and pain, all sight and hearing and all understanding. To know God as he is is to transcend all things, to be taken entirely away from all things.

Still, in heaven, we will see not only the essence of God, but also his glory, and show that glory in ourselves; that is, we will see not only God himself, but the effects he has on creatures, the participation of creatures in him. This may be expressed, however feebly, by images of joy and light, of power and honor and wisdom. In the last day, we will be raised from the dead, and all creation will be remade in him, transformed into a most perfect participation in his supernatural grace and love. All the saints will be united in a single bond of charity, of mutual love and honor. None of this is God, but it is his glory.

Likewise, even on this earth, the knowledge of God often brings us peace, light, joy, healing, reconciliation, and many other good things--even, perhaps, experiences of God that transcend our nature. On earth, too, we know and see the glory of God.

Still, none of this is, in itself, the essence of God; none of it is what we seek. The sight of the essence of God is not itself joy, or peace, or healing, or light, or any of these things; it is something far greater, and far more good, than any of them. In Christ Jesus, this knowledge of God frequently overflowed in him, to bring joy, to bring peace, to bring healing, to show forth the glory of God made flesh; but all this glory could be taken away, and he would still remain God.

So it was, then, on the Cross; Christ Jesus did experience abandonment by God, not because he ceased to see God, but because that sight ceased to bring anything at all except itself. As St. Edith Stein expressed it, all sensible joy of the indestructible union was taken away, so that he saw and felt and experienced nothing but the absence of God. In himself, he knew truly all our suffering, all our sin, all our fear and pain and torment and betrayal and abandonment; and the sight of God's essence did not lessen this, but rather increased it. The one who knew God, the Son of God, God in human flesh, was abandoned by him totally to suffering and torment and death. He drank our cup to the dregs.

Still, there is one other thing that must be remembered, through all of this; that in the Cross of Christ, God was glorified far more perfectly than at any other time in the life of the Christ. In St. John's Gospel, in fact, the hour of the crucifixion is frequently expressed not as the hour of abandonment, but as the hour in which the Father glorifies the Son. How is this possible?

Deus caritas est: God is love, and we are all saved, not through pleasure or pain, not through joy or anguish, not through consolation or abandonment, but solely and only through love. The love of God that dwells within us is the Holy Spirit, God himself; and this love is glorified in all that we do and say and experience that is from that love and for it. As St. Theresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross both teach, as every mystic and doctor of the Church has taught, it is not any mystical experience that makes us holy, not even a mystical experience of the darkness of God: it is simply and solely the love of God that dwells in us, and works itself out through us.

If we understand this, we understand why the Cross of Christ was not only abandonment by God, but far more his glorification: for in it, and through it, the love of God has been revealed in all its fullness, has flowed out in all its fullness into the whole world, and into our hearts. Christ Jesus was abandoned by God, and suffered all things; yet this is, in truth, for those with eyes to see, the greatest glory of God and of Man: that God should, as Man, suffer abandonment by himself, that God should, as Man, die in torments and in agony, for the sake of his love.

Christ Jesus came into the world to reveal to us God as love; and this he did upon the Cross. On the Cross, the Son was, truly, glorified by the Father with the very same love which he has known in eternity, the divine love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, three persons in one God.

In all our life on this earth, then, in both joy and suffering, consolation and abandonment, let us never fail to remember that Christ Jesus upon the Cross saw the Face of God, and revealed it to us; that he knew the essence of God, and was abandoned by God, and so glorified him.

There is no greater joy than the joy of Christ Jesus on the Cross.

Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, grant us, we pray, a true participation in that divine and eternal love which you glorified upon the Cross, so that in all our deeds, words, thoughts, joys, and sufferings, we may likewise, in you, glorify God. Grant that in all our experiences of abandonment by God, we may likewise possess him and glorify him, as you did; and grant that as we have suffered with you on the Cross, we may experience with you forever the joy of the Resurrection.

Amen.