Christ took captivity captive
The epistle today uses a verse from Psalm 67 as the comprehensive description of all of salvation history, as well as of the Divine and Holy Liturgy. The verse is “he ascended on high; he took captivity captive and gave gifts to men.” The holy Apostle Paul uses the verse to describe the way in which Christ descended to us (and went down into the lowest regions of death), and then ascended into heaven, taking with Him all those that death had held captive. Death itself became His captive, when He ascended to Heaven to take His seat at God’s right hand. When he departed from us in His Ascension, he gave us a blessing, a guarantee of His help and grace in our struggles and trials, as we strive to acquire virtue. The content of this blessing is the guarantee of His continuing presence among us through His Mysteries, the holy sacraments of the Church, which give us a foretaste of the things to come. In Him, we are already inhabitants of the Heavenly Places, of God’s Kingdom, but not fully, just as we have died to this world, although not completely.
The celebration of the Holy Liturgy in Heaven
The question we should ask ourselves is “Where are we?” It is true that we are in the church, but what does that mean? If we reflect upon the meaning and content of the history of our Church, what we find is that the truth, the reality, of the Mysteries of Christ was never seriously doubted until the sixteenth century—over fifteen centuries after the Lord Jesus brought the Church into being. Every generation of Christians for fifteen centuries believed that they were in the literal presence of their Lord, God and Saviour, when they celebrated the Divine Liturgy. Where is our Lord, God and Saviour? Is He not in Heaven? In other words, they believed that they were in Heaven during the celebration of the sacred Mysteries, because the Real Presence of God in those Mysteries brought earth to Heaven, and Heaven to earth, for Paradise is where God is.
Spiritual things—a scam?
Recently, I read that a society of American atheists took out advertisements and billboards during the holiday season, which proclaimed the following message concerning the world’s religions: “You know their all scams.” Well, what about our faith? Is philosophy a scam? Is virtue a scam? Is the love of our neighbours and enemies a scam? Is every thought of every human being that transcends material things and corporal pleasure a scam?
From where have we learned the most sublime and beautiful things in life
Yet, if virtue is not a scam, but God is, then who or what is it that has taught us concerning the value and excellence of virtue? Have we learned excellence greater than our own from the things that are below us, from rocks and trees, and cats and dogs, or from the material things that we ourselves have fashioned? Perhaps we have learned the sublimity of justice, for example, from our Lexus? Nonsense. There is an old Latin proverb, “Nemo dat quod non habet,” “No one gives what he does not have.” This is a simple truth that we can know for certain from experience. An aspiration, a perfection that is greater than we are, cannot come from us. It can only come from what is greater. The Lord Himself bears witness to this great truth when he tells those who came to Him: You are from beneath, I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. Therefore I said to you, that you shall die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I AM, you shall die in your sins.” We cannot learn from this world concerning the things that are greater than this world. We cannot learn about virtue and imperishable life from corruption and death.
What is the great aspiration or inspiration that this world can offer us? What perfection can we learn from it? None, in any sense, for if our life is limited to this world, then all of the greatest things in human life have no meaning. Virtue, sacrifice, and perseverance are without meaning and void, if our life in this world is the sum total of human life.
An alliance with things above: We live with our hearts in Heaven
In Christ’s Mysteries, particularly in the celebration of the Holy Liturgy, we already live in Heaven, as we stand in the literal, true Presence of Our Lord and God. We stand in His Presence, because we have made our alliance with the things above. In Christ, we have realized the deepest aspirations of our hearts. We want to be perfect. We will not be satisfied with nice things and a million dollars in the bank, because we recognize in these things the same death and corruption that infects the rest of this earthly life. Our alliance is with the One Who has taken captivity captive—the One in Whom Death is meaningless, and the permanent things that satisfy our longing are present and available. In Him we are already seated with the Father in Heaven, even as we strive to acquire the treasure of virtue here on the earth.
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