Assumption of the Virgin Mary - Pawtucket, RI : 2026-09-27 Bulletin

Fr. George Parsenios (HCHC ’96)

The power of the Gospel lies in the fact that Jesus welcomes everyone to a new way of life, but then requires everyone to change. No one can squeeze the eternal message of Christ into their own narrow way of thinking. For example, some people are attracted to the ethical standards and the moral purity that the Gospel requires, but they might imagine that they are the “good” people who can scorn and revile the “bad” sinners. These “good” people have forgotten that Jesus also says in Matthew 9:13, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” On the other extreme are the people who reject entirely the ethical and ritual norms of the Church which they label as “the rules of men.” Wherever the Church has a boundary between believers and unbelievers to protect Church discipline, these people imagine that such boundaries should be erased. Jesus, after all, told us to love our neighbors. This more permissive group needs to hear today’s epistle reading, where St. Paul lists a series of Old Testament passages that call the people of Israel to shun the sinful lives of their pagan neighbors: “Therefore…be separate from them, says the Lord.” St. Paul ends the passage by saying, “Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit.” The moral rules of the Church, therefore, are not made by men but by God. A worldly way of thinking might focus only on purity or only on mercy, but Christians are called to a higher way of thinking. Our separation from worldly sin is multifaceted. In the most obvious sense, we are to shun all acts of impurity and unholiness. But, at a higher level of thinking, we are also to shun the worldly self-righteousness that comes from living a holy life. Everyone is welcome in the Church, but everyone has to change.

Fr. George Parsenios is Professor of New Testament at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. www.hchc.edu

Fr. George Parsenios (HCHC ’96)

The mystical theology of the Orthodox Church is often described as “apophatic.” By analyzing of this word, we can better comprehend the theological orientation that it describes. The English word “apophatic” comes from two Greek words: apo, which means “away from,” and phasis, which means “utterance” or “statement.” If a phasis is a positive statement, then an apophasis is the negation of a statement, a denial. When we follow the path of “apophatic theology,” we define God not by saying what he is, but what he is not. This is in direct opposition to heretics like Eunomius in the 4^th century AD, who insisted that human beings can both comprehend and define the nature of God. The negative way of apophatic theology describes God, therefore, by saying that God does not die, God does not sin, God is not contained by time or space. We can, of course, say positive things about what God has revealed to us, as we do in the Nicene Creed. But, as we draw closer to God by living holy lives, we enter into a mystical connection that transcends all human knowledge and is impossible to describe in words. It is an apophatic experience.

Fr. George Parsenios is Professor of New Testament at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. www.hchc.edu