the revised text of a talk given at the summer conference of the Fellowship, 3 August 2001

Petru Tuţea

The words 'pilgrim' and 'pilgrimage' are deeply evocative; yet they are used in Scripture on only a very few occasions. In the translation of the Bible that remains normative for most English-speaking Christians, whether Orthodox or non-Orthodox - the Authorised Version or King James Bible - the words appear in only five places:

Genesis 47:9:  words of Jacob to Pharaoh): 'The years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years.'

(2) Exodus 6:4:  (words of God to Moses): 'I have also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage.'

(3) Psalm 118 [119]:54:  'Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.'

(4) Hebrews 11:13 (on the righteous men and women of the Old Testament): 'These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off… and [they] confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.'

(5) 1 Peter 2:11:  'I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims….'

Now if we take a modern version of the Bible - for example, the New Revised Standard Version - an interesting fact emerges. In none of these five passages are the words 'pilgrim' or 'pilgrimage' employed:

In Genesis 47:9, 'the years of my 'pilgrimage' becomes 'the years of my earthly sojourn'.

In Exodus 6:4, 'the land of their 'pilgrimage' becomes 'the land in which they resided as aliens'.

In Psalm 118 [119]:54, 'in the hills of my 'pilgrimage' becomes 'wherever I make my home'.

In Hebrews 11:13, 'strangers and pilgrims' becomes 'strangers and foreigners'.

In 1 Peter 2:11, 'strangers and 'pilgrims' becomes 'aliens and exiles'.

This brief comparison might lead us to reflect on the respective merits of 'traditional' and 'contemporary' translations of the Bible; that, however, is not my present theme. What the comparison does bring to our attention is the fact that none of these five passages is concerned with 'pilgrimage' in the narrower sense of the word - in the sense, that is to say, of a journey through geographical space, undertaken for a limited period of time, in order to visit a shrine or sanctuary. On the contrary, all five passages use 'pilgrimage' or 'pilgrim' in a broader way to designate the journey of our earthly life in its totality.

In modern Greek, the normal word for a pilgrim is proskynetes (meaning literally a 'worshipper'), while the term for a pilgrimage, meaning both the journey and the place of pilgrimage itself, is proskynema. But these are not the words employed in our five Biblical passages. In the three Old Testament passages, the Greek Septuagint employs paroikia or the equivalent root paroikeo; in the two New Testament passages the word employed is parepidemos. Now the literal meaning of paroikos or parepidemos is stranger, alien or exile, someone living in a place that is not his or her home. That presumably is why the New RSV avoids the words 'pilgrimage' and 'pilgrim', offering what its translators consider to be a more exact rendering.

Even if the Bible does not use the terms 'pilgrimage' or 'pilgrim' in the narrower sense of a visit to some religious centre, the practice of journeying to a holy place as an act of devotion is certainly to be found in both the Old and New Testaments. In particular, it was the practice for devout Jews to go on pilgrimage for the feast of the Passover (see Deuteronomy 16:5-8), an observance that was faithfully followed by Mary and Joseph (see the story of Jesus when twelve years old: Luke 2:41). The 'Psalms of Degrees' or 'Songs of Ascents' - Psalms 119 [120]-133 [134], read in Lent at the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts - are precisely verses written for use by pilgrims as they journeyed upwards to the Holy City of Jerusalem, set high in the hill-country: 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my hill' (Psalm 120 [121]:1).

Let us return to the meaning of the words 'pilgrim' and 'pilgrimage', as used by the Authorised Version in the five passages that we have quoted. For myself, I find employment of these two words to be very precious and I would not lightly abandon them; for they tell us something fundamental about our human situation.

First, in calling earthly existence a pilgrimage, we are affirming that our life is best seen as a journey. We are not sitting still; we are travellers.¹ Human life is to be understood in dynamic terms; it signifies movement, direction, purpose, vocation, exploration. Human life is a way.

Second, when it is said that we are 'strangers and pilgrims', this means that our life-journey, understood as a pilgrimage, is to be viewed in an eschatological perspective. Our true home is not the fallen world that we see around us. Here we are exiles and aliens; our true home is the Kingdom of heaven. As pilgrims, then, we are on a journey that leads out of this present age into the age to come. Our pilgrimage extends beyond space into infinity, beyond time into eternity.

Interpreting our human life in this way as an eschatological pilgrimage, we may take as our paradigm the figure of Abraham. While dwelling in the familiar surroundings of his ancestral home, Ur of the Chaldees, he is suddenly told by God: 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house' (Genesis 12:1). So he leaves home, uncertain of his final destination, conscious only of the need to obey God: 'By faith Abraham… went out, not knowing whither he went' (Hebrews 11:8). So we too, as life-pilgrims, are committed to an unceasing exodus. Obedient to the divine command, 'Go out', we abandon our familiar surroundings. We cannot at this moment clearly envisage our ultimate destination; all we can do is to affirm that we 'seek a country' (Hebrews 11:14).

Turning now from the broader to the narrower sense of pilgrimage, let us recall a story told by Evelyn Underhill. A traveller who had lately paid her first visit to Iona was asked by an old Highland gardener where she had been. When she told him, he remarked: 'Iona is a very thin place.' She asked him what he meant, and he answered: 'There's not much between Iona and the Lord.'²

This can help us to appreciate the spiritual meaning of a pilgrimage. From one point of view, it is true to say that all places are holy. The entire universe, as God's handiwork, is 'altogether good and beautiful' (Genesis 1:31), and the Creator is everywhere present in it: 'Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory'. If only we had eyes of faith to see, we would realise that the cosmos is one vast burning bush, permeated yet not consumed by the uncreated fire of the divine energies. The world in its totality is a sacrament of God's presence. The gate of heaven is everywhere, and Jacob's ladder rises up exactly from the very place where I am standing here and now.

Yet, having affirmed that all places are holy, we must then go on to say that some places are holy. The world in its totality is a sacrament, but there are at the same time certain points in space which act as sacraments in a special and distinctive way. There are particular spots which act to a pre-eminent degree as a focus of the divine presence, as a burning-glass concentrating the rays of the spiritual Sun. There are 'thin places' where the wall of partition dividing this world from the next becomes so exiguous as to be all but transparent.

These 'thin places' full of grace, include Jerusalem, Sinai, Patmos, Mount Athos. In the west an outstanding example is Rome (curiously neglected by Orthodox pilgrims: yet is it not the city where the two chief apostles Peter and Paul suffered martyrdom?). In the British Isles there are most notably Iona, Lindisfarne and St David's, and also England's Nazareth, the Marian shrine of Walsingham, where fortunately there has been an Orthodox involvement since the 1930s. In the New World there is Spruce Island in Alaska, where St Herman lived in seclusion and unceasing prayer.

I can vividly remember my visit to this last place in August 1998. I was taken across rough seas in a motor launch belonging to the coastguards (the local Orthodox bishop, who set out at the same time in a less seaworthy craft, was nearly drowned). Landing on the island, I made my way alone towards St Herman's cell through the lofty fir-trees festooned with hanging lichen. So thickly did they grow that beneath them it was no more than twilight. The silence was intense. But there was no danger of losing the way, for the path was marked by icons attached to the tree trunks. Never before or since have I had such an overwhelming sense of being in a holy forest.

All who have journeyed as pilgrims will be able to recall similar moments of numinous encounter. For it is the often-repeated experience of Christians³ through the age that to travel with expectant faith to a chosen spiritual destination can indeed prove an occasion of decisive blessing, a time of disclosure and transfiguration. Needless to say, when as returning pilgrims we arrive back in our homes, we shall still find the same problems awaiting us. But by virtue of our pilgrimage we shall be enabled to look at them with new eyes. The Pilgrim Lord will say to us: 'Behold, I make all things new' (Revelation 21:5).

Extending the words of the Romanian Orthodox dissident Petru Tuţea, we may say: What a wilderness space would be, were it not punctuated by shrines and places of pilgrimage. Through pilgrimage we are enabled to experience space not as a desert but as something sacred. Yet what in fact do we mean by 'sacred space'? Clearly different people experience space in varying ways. I reflected on this at the marvellous Vermeer exhibition which I saw recently in the National Gallery. In pictures showing the interior of Protestant Churches, so I noted, the men kept their hats on their heads, even during service time; but in a picture showing the interior of a Catholic church, the men had their heads uncovered. Clearly the Roman Catholics felt that church to be a sacred space in a way that the Calvinists did not.⁴

To appreciate the nature of scared space, we need also to ask what is meant by sacred time; for in our human experience, dwelling as we do in a space-time continuum, the two can never be separated in our thinking.

A first point, in our Christian thinking about time and space, is to distinguish between two basic levels: the abstract and neutral, on the one hand; and the personal and sacred, on the other. Abstract time is what the Greeks called chronos, whereas personal time is kairos - time, that is to say, as measured by the clock and the calendar - is a kind of container' in which events occur; it is impersonal, in the sense that it is the same for everyone. Personal time, on the other hand - time that has been internalised, living time - means time experienced as kairos, time as the decisive moment, the moment of opportunity and action. It is not governed by the ticking of the pendulum, but is punctuated by instants of disclosure and insight. It is not the same for everyone; for it is not a fixed grid imposed on us from without, but it is a self-expression of our personhood, something that we each create from within our own self.

To illustrate the nature of personal time, let me recall my life as a deacon in the Monastery of St John the Theologian, Patmos, during 1965-6. On Saturday afternoon the Abbot sometimes called me and said: 'Tomorrow I shall be celebrating the Liturgy in the village; you will come with me to serve as deacon.' Naturally I asked when we were going to set out from the monastery. Never did he give me a precise answer in terms of clock time. 'We won't be leaving too early,' he would reply, 'but it won’t be too late either. We'll go when we're ready.' I found this response baffling; how could I be sure that I was waiting for him in the courtyard at the right moment? But he was not being deliberately evasive; he simply did not think, as I did, in terms of clock time.

At first I felt about him and the others in the monastery, 'These people have no sense of time.' Gradually I appreciated that I was wrong. It was not that they lacked a sense of time; but their sense of time was different from my own. Indeed, after some months I came to discern, within a margin of five or ten minutes, exactly when the Abbot would leave for the Liturgy, even though the time varied from Sunday to Sunday. That shows how personal time, even though created by each of us from within, need not necessarily be divisively individualistic. On the contrary, it can be shared, provided people are living together with a strong sense of interpersonal community.

Let me give another example of how time is personal. One day in the early 1960s, when I was staying at the Monastery of St John the Baptist in Tolleshunt Knights, Fr Sophrony was asked by an earnest English convert (not me!) who always arrived early for the services, 'Father, when will the Liturgy begin tomorrow?' He replied, 'The Liturgy will start at ten o-clock.' Then he turned to a Greek lady who usually arrived late, and he said, 'The Liturgy will start at seven o'clock.'

The distinction that we have been making between abstract time and personal time applies also to space. Abstract space - space as calculated by the ruler, the tape measure, the theodolite, the telescope - is likewise a kind of 'container' or receptacle in when objects are juxtaposed. Impersonal in its character, it is in principle the same for everyone, a fixed grid imposed on us from the outside. But personal space, the space which we each create from within our own self, is by no means the same for everyone. As Emmanuel Swedenborg remarks, the path along which we journey is rendered shorter or longer, depending on the intensity of our desire. Personal space is therefore measured, not by miles or kilometres, but by experiences of relationship and encounter. What matters in personal space, as in personal time, is not quantity but quality.

Now pilgrimage is precisely an experience of time and space as personal, and the more we put our whole heart into the pilgrimage, the more sharply personal do the time and space of the pilgrimage become. This was much more apparent to pilgrims in earlier ages than it is to us today. We are whisked off to our destination by car, train or plane. But in earlier ages a pilgrimage involved months or even years of travel, often including a journey of hundreds of miles on foot. To appreciate what pilgrimage used to mean, read the classic account in Stephen Graham's With the Russian Pilgrims to Jerusalem, published in 1913. In the past a pilgrimage involved deprivation and sacrifice; it was a podvig, an ascetic feat. We can do everything in relative comfort and at high speed. The loss is ours. Because pilgrims in the past were willing to struggle and suffer, they entered deeply into the personal dimension of time and space. With all our modern 'convenience', too often we remain merely on the surface.

One way in which we can counteract this, at any rate to a limited extent, is to ensure that once we arrive at our destination we, so far as possible, go on foot. If we go to Iona, for example, let us set aside one or two days to walk from one end of the island to the other, part of the time (if we so wish) in company with others, but part of the time alone and in silence, with only the seals and the gulls for company. Let us do the same on Patmos, wandering along the rocky shores from one whitewashed chapel to another. What does it matter if the wind blows cold and the rain falls, or if the sun blazes down with a relentless glare? The true pilgrim pays little attention to that!

I count it a singular blessing that I was able to visit the Holy Mountain of Athos first of all in autumn 1961, and again in autumn 1962, at a time when there were no roads for vehicles, no buses, no jeeps or tractors. Today the Garden of the Panagia is desecrated with petrol fumes; then it was altogether different. As a pilgrim, either one travelled from monastery to monastery by the little motorboats that plied along the coast (but in the equinoctial gales most of these had been cancelled); or else one hired a mule (but that was far too expensive for a student like myself); or else one walked. I walked. At times it was hard work, for the ancient mule tracks of Athos are steep and stony. I lost my way, skipped into ravines, fell backwards into a thorn bush and twisted my ankle. But by walking alone - meeting only the occasional monk, not to mention an alarming number of snakes, and at one point a family of wild boar - I was able to experience Mount Athos as a centre in sacred space, in a way that otherwise I could not possibly have done. I was able to feel, in the words of the Russian Athonite hermit Fr Nikon, 'Here every stone breathes prayers.'

Pursuing the distinction between time/space as abstract and neutral, and time/space as personal and sacred, let us look at a concept often used by anthropologists when studying so-called 'primitive' peoples, a concept found also in Orthodox liturgical theology. This is the notion of 'condensed' time. Through ritual celebration, that is to say, the past and the future become 'condensed' and gathered into the present moment, and the present moment in its turn is experienced as opening out upon eternity. We do not feel that we are commemorating events that happened long ago and far away, but these events are rendered immediately present to us. Remembrance becomes reality, and the moments of salvation history become occurrences in our own personal story. We participate directly in the events that liturgically we re-enact.

In this way for the Jewish worshipper the annual celebration of the Passover does not merely recall the Exodus as an event in past history, but it 're-presents' the Exodus, makes the Exodus present and contemporary, so that each can say in her or his heart: 'This very night I too am setting out from Egypt.' The same is true of the celebration of the Eucharist in Christian worship. As Fr Georges Florovsky says, 'Christ himself is actually present…. In the strong words of St John Chrysostom, each Eucharistic celebration is actually the Last Supper itself, in its full reality, without any diminution. "This table is the same as that and has nothing less."⁵ By virtue of this understanding of sacred or 'condensed' time, in the annual cycle of the Church's Year repeatedly we use the word Today: 'Today he who holds the whole creation in the hollow of his hand is born of the Virgin'; 'Today the Master hastens towards baptism'; 'Today Christ enters the Holy City'; 'Today he who hung the earth upon the waters is hung upon the Cross.' All that the Saviour underwent or enacted - his birth, baptism, death and resurrection - these are all to be experienced here and now, 'today', by me.⁶

If we think in terms of liturgical or 'condensed' time, then we may think equally in terms of liturgical or 'condensed' space. There are points in space where the events of the past are 'condensed' and recapitulated, in such a way that they are rendered immediately present. These points lift us out of space/time, as normally experienced in our daily life, and they transpose us to the level where time intersects with eternity, where space is embraced by the divine omnipresence. For some sense of what this signifies, we may read the Four Quartets of T.S. Eliot, especially 'Little Gidding'. All this is highly relevant to the theology of pilgrimage. As pilgrims we enter, by God's grace, into a different experience of time and space. The journey that we undertake to our chosen shrine and the prayer that we offer on arrival initiate us into a time and space that have been 'condensed', enlarged and transfigured. Through our act of pilgrimage we are enabled to affirm with a forcefulness that would otherwise be far beyond our capacity: Now, here, at this moment, in this place, today, for me. When I go on pilgrimage, Christ's story and the story of the saints suddenly become my story. 'Were you there?' asks the familiar hymn; and the pilgrim answers Yes.

Even today, then, despite all the facilities that we enjoy for quick and easy travel, a pilgrimage should still involve some degree of ascetic effort, of risk and sacrifice. It should be an adventure, a rediscovery of what it means to be free. As pilgrims we leave for a time the restrictions of our home and our work, and like Abraham we set off into the unknown - and that means into freedom. But if a pilgrimage involves risk and adventure, it should also be fun. Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims enjoyed themselves, and so should we. It is a sound instinct that leads Greeks to combine together the pilgrimage and the picnic. 'I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord' (Psalm 121 [122]:1) says the Psalmist; and we too should be glad as we journey on pilgrimage.

We cannot understand what is distinctive about the Eastern approach to Christianity if we do not know the history of Christianity.

Whether we start with the music of Bach or a Mozart Mass or with Orthodox liturgical music, without the background to know what it is about, we are in danger of building on very insubstantial foundations, or on no foundations at all, and the building falls down. So although we can start with things like the icons, the music, the culture, we need to find a way to explain to people what lies beneath the culture.

This is especially true of icons. When I show people round our Orthodox church in Oxford, I always tell them that there are four reasons behind the icon.

First of all the icon shows us that Christians say 'the world of matter is a good world.' We use the material world to pray to God. We use bread, wine, oil, water… and also paint and wood. Some religions say the material world is an illusion or an evil thing. Christianity says, No, it is real and good, though fallen.

Secondly, the icon is for teaching. There is a Chinese proverb: 'One picture is worth a thousand words'. I usually take the example of the Mother of God and the Christ-Child. The Christ-Child has the face of an adult, because he is God and has God's knowledge. He is the size of a baby because he is newly born. Christ is dressed in the colours of flesh and blood, blue and red. He has a cross in His halo with the letters `O WN (in Greek, 'He who is'), the name of God.

When I have explained all this, I have taken five minutes, but they can see it at once when they look at the picture. And of course a picture is useful for teaching people who cannot read, either because they are too young, or because they have never been educated.

Thirdly, I tell them that the icon is a door, a window. We meet the person in the icon which we face. And this is something understood in our modern culture because everybody knows about photographs. When I came here, you showed me some photographs: 'This is my wife, these are my children, this is my bishop', and I understand that you were not talking about a piece of paper but about the person in the picture, and I am encountering the person in that way. We feel the power of the image in the photograph. I say to them: 'Perhaps you do not think you do that, but imagine this: Think of a photograph of someone very special to you. Now imagine that one day you come to look at that photograph and you find that somebody has poked holes in the eyes with a drawing-pin. Then you are upset, because the dishonour shown to the image is shown to the prototype. We live in a negative age, but in this way we can understand why the Orthodox show love and respect to the icons. They are like the photographs of our friends and our family.'

So we can approach icons from a natural perspective, which a modern person can understand, but when I come to my fourth point, I rely on explaining a little bit about Orthodox Christian faith, because many Christians, including Protestants, use pictures for teaching. Some Christians understand the concept of the icon as a window, or a door, the place where we meet the Saints, but only the Orthodox say we must have icons to teach the Christian faith fully.

To understand why this is, we turn to the icon of Christ: 'Christians believe that the world, as made by God, was good but became bad and God himself came to put the world right. But the world could only be put right from the inside. So Jesus Christ is truly and completely God and truly and completely human. If he is truly and completely human, we can make a picture of him, just as we can make a picture of me, of you, a photograph. If we say we will not make a picture of Christ, we are saying by implication that he is not truly human.

All the other icons of the saints depend on the icon of Christ, because he came to put the world right and they are the ones who have accepted what he has done and his life. They live so close to God that his light shines through them, which is why in an Orthodox icon the halo always surrounds the face and does not sit on top of the head.

If he is not God, he cannot do this: if he is not human we cannot share in his holiness. So the icon is a guarantee of true Christian teaching, but in order to understand that point, we have to explain what the Christian teaching is.

To approach icons, then, without telling the Christian teaching, is to give only half the story.

A Fellowship member describes

some linguistic difficulties with theological implications

and makes a personal plea for reform

'I think we should use words with particular care, since Christ himself is the eternal Word,' observed Nadejda Gorodetsky, author of the Humiliated Christ in Modern Russian Thought and Saint Tikhon of Zadonsk.

A Quaker group with a particular interest in spiritual healing once asked me to speak on this topic from an Orthodox perspective. I approached the topic through miraculous icons. As I began to write the paper I realised that words commonly used by Orthodox would often have quite different associations for Quakers, so it was necessary to search out others which - so far as possible - accurately reflect both traditions, and to use these as an introduction to words such as 'icon'. It also seemed relevant to consider whether there might be areas shared by Quakers and Orthodox which are normally overlooked.

I introduced the subject of icons by pointing out that we nearly all have treasured photographs and pictures of people we especially love and admire. I showed an icon of St Peter, explaining that some paintings - icons - acquire miraculous powers. This concept was accepted without difficulty, since both Orthodox and Quakers make less distinction between the spiritual and the secular than do most denominations; they also both allow space for the 'validity' of the non-rational, without confusing this with the irrational, and they shun over-rigid religious definitions.

The number of British people who have acquired some background knowledge of Orthodoxy has vastly increased over the last thirty years or so. This has come about through a greatly increased readership of the Russian classics of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, through university exchanges, through television and cinema - who is likely to forget the film of Doctor Zhivago? Yet, when reading biographies and recently-published novels in translation, it is sad to find that western terminology is often used as a substitute for that normally used by Orthodox. We read: 'The next day was the Feast of the Assumption, so Andrei attended Mass', whereas the words which would come naturally to an Orthodox would be: 'The next day was the Feast of the Dormition, and Andrei went to the Liturgy'.

Anglicanism is the established Church in England, and was also the first to show ecumenical friendliness and generosity towards the Orthodox, and this has led to many verbal borrowings. Those Anglicans who show a marked continuing sympathy towards Orthodoxy are usually Anglo-Catholics, or at least have tendencies in that direction. (These need to be differentiated from those who convert to Orthodoxy, and who come from a wide variety of backgrounds.) I feel that because of this Orthodox with non-British roots often tend to form a rather misleading picture of the totality of Anglicanism in Britain. And those who choose to explore British spirituality somewhat further become deeply puzzled: 'Never I understand why so many English people do not like Mother of God,' remarked the late Nicolas Zernov (an ecumenical leader given to asking highly personal questions over matters of belief, and who was not noted for the accuracy of his English usage!) The antipathy is of course not towards Mary herself, but to the veneration of Mary, which is often repudiated by Protestants.

The causes of the Reformation in England were as much political as religious, and fears and rumours that we would be invaded by the Catholic armies of France and Spain lingered over the next couple of centuries or so. Anglican attitudes and associations have been formed as much by oral tradition (in families and local communities) as by formal teaching or logical discussion. My parents were both grandchildren of Anglican clergy, and themselves kept their children from attending our village church because the consecrated elements were reserved there, and because the vicar wore vestments to celebrate the Eucharist.

The belief that there is an undefined state between death and the Last Judgement, where the dead are greatly in need of our prayers, plays a major part in the inner tradition of Orthodoxy. It is widely held to be a state of purification and growth, but it has never been officially defined as such, nor even given a name in general Orthodox usage, and it has no 'official' equivalent in western Christian doctrine. Many Protestants hold that we should not pray for the dead, since God's judgement has already taken place.

A major difference between Orthodox and Protestant tradition concerns prayers for the dead. At present life after death is itself a difficult concept for a significant number of Anglicans, but this is only a recent development. Forty years ago the majority would have said that we are judged after death and go immediately to heaven or hell. The main alternative view, held by many Anglo-Catholics, is that of Purgatory, more or less in its Roman Catholic form, but which differs from the Orthodox position.

The Anglican Church has its funeral services, which are sometimes incorporated into a requiem Eucharist. In those churches where there is a remembrance of the departed, this takes the form of praying for them at the Eucharist. An Anglican memorial service, however, often held a few weeks after the funeral, is essentially a service of thanksgiving and of recollection of the earthly life of the dead person, rather than one of prayer for the soul which has now entered eternity: it is not the liturgical equivalent of an Orthodox memorial service (mnemosynon, panikhida).

Finally, relations with non-Orthodox relatives don't improve if you have arranged to spend Easter Sunday with them, but not ensured that you are referring to the same dates, and only discover this at the last moment. There seems to be a case for reserving 'Easter' for the western Feast', and referring to Orthodox Easter as 'Pascha', a word ultimately derived from the Hebrew pesach, and which has an honourable history in both Greek and Russian.

Lord Jesus, before you were called Jesus you were the eternal Son, and the Logos who created everything.

It is your love for us which demanded a new name, which has our sound, and syllables which we can utter. Thus you were called Jesus to be close to us in our language, and to take a personal name which can be used by us as a sign of your love.

You came to us in human form, the same one which you contemplated when you created us. You created our tongue, which you would take; and you created our hands which you would stretch out for us, to welcome us and to take our death in the nails of the Cross.

You gave us your feet and your knees, the same ones that you contemplated when you were in glory; the same knees which will kneel to the Father to teach us how to love him; the same feet which will be anointed by the Holy Spirit to pave our way to true prayer.

The angel told Mary that name which the Holy Spirit inspired, and utters in us when we say 'Jesus is Lord'. It was used in days of old before you were made man so that angels and humans might become accustomed to hearing it.

Now I look at your eternal glory and am amazed at your goodness, for you came to our form and body, and took what belongs to us that you may give us what belongs to you.

You took our will to make it one with your divine will, not one in number but one in harmony. We all have one will, but our will is divided, and thus became multiple. But you took our will to restore it to unity with the Father in the Holy Spirit.

You came to our humanity and took this vital power to harmonise it with the vital power of your divinity.

Your eternal divine qualities are now in our flesh, so that our temporal attributes may be changed, not into what is divine, but into what is human-divine. What is eternal in you was not changed to what is earthly and temporal because you came to rescue the whole creation. In you, the divine was united to the human so that the sun, the moon, the planets and the whole cosmos may participate in the goal which was lost through the first Adam and is now healed by you - our new and second Adam.

You are One Lord, but united two worlds: heaven and earth.

You are the Only Son, who can bring many children to the Father.

You are born from the Father by the creative labour of divine love, which is not painful but joyful. This joy you brought to our nature, and by becoming human you made us participate in your joyful birth.

I contemplate your birth from the Virgin and see three mysteries:

the mystery of our new foundation

the divine mystery of your Sonship which is completely foreign to our created nature

the mystery of the union of opposites and of things which are completely different: our humanity and your divinity.

We humans only resemble you because we were created according to your image. But now you have brought this image to its perfect form of existence.

You are the true image of the Father. Our sins made us like shadows of this image because we were created out of nothing.

At the abyss of non-being we stood, frail, caught between being and non-being, but you came to give us a new origin and an eternal destiny. You came to make the two one in you. You united our being which belongs to the abyss of non-being (which is our origin) with your origin, and opened up for us once more participation in your true image.

Look, Lord, and see in your goodness how we who were created out of nothing are now in the Godhead, and only through you.

Our destiny in you is eternal Sonship, which is yours by nature, and now is ours by grace.

You united the two births, the one from the Father with the one from the Virgin, and made the second stable, firm, eternal through the first. The second birth was from the Holy Spirit, not because you despise marriage, but because marriage gave many children of the flesh to the grave. Being born from what is below does not allow us to ascend to what is high. The flesh does not belong to heaven; it is from the dust of this earth. In you the flesh received what is heavenly, after being born and united to your divine person through the Cross and the grave.

Lord Jesus, this mystery of the transformation of the lower through the humility of the higher is beyond our words, because what is low cannot transform itself; it is bound to its limits. The lower cannot love except in a lower form. It cannot give except what is low. The slave does not possess, but is possessed by his nature.

Here we see you putting on what belongs to us slaves, to transform it to the highest form, which is your life and being.

You took what belongs to us to establish it in what belongs to you, and to preserve it in your power and faithfulness. What was mortal is now in you and is made one with your being, your life, your love, your glory, and became immortal in you. What was corruptible is now incorruptible. What was weak is now strong. What was earthly is now glorified in you - is become earth-heavenly.

Lord, you became our prayer, our priest, our altar, our eternal Liturgy, our icon, our incense, our confession, our joy, our absolution, our life and our resurrection.

Anastasia HEATH is Joint Parish Secretary of the Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity and the Annunciation, Oxford. She is an Oxford graduate, and also studied at St Christopher's (Theological) College, Blackheath for two years. She worked as a freelance tutor until ill-health forced her into early retirement, and she now does occasional editorial work.

Father IAN Graham is priest of the Greek Orthodox Community of the Holy Trinity, Oxford.

Bishop KALLISTOS of Diokleia is Founder Chairman of our Fellowship. He recently retired from his post as Spalding Lecturer in Eastern Orthodox Studies and Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. His best known books are The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way. His Collected Works are being published by St Vladimir's Seminary Press.