Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

The Visible and Invisible Church - Lazar Puhao

Archishop Lazar Puhalo on the Visible and Invisible Church

QUESTION: In Western church tradition, there is a concept of the visible and invisible church, however we define that. Is there such a concept in Eastern Christianity?

RESPONSE: There is, but there is not such a sharp dichotomy in the East since the visible and invisible church are intimately connected. What the West would call the invisible church, the East “the noetic altar in the heavens” with a noetic projection on earth. So, the invisible permeates the visible.

QUESTION: And what constitutes the visible church?

RESPONSE: Sometimes we make the mistaken of trying to look for a physical definition rather than a spiritual definition. And sometimes we carry ‘spiritual’ a little too far and make it meaningless.

But the church on earth—“the catholic church”—is where catholic means “gathered together,” where everyone gathers or is gathered. I would call the church “the harvester of the earth,” because you make the church present and call everyone into it.

The minute you are baptized and chrismated, you become part of the royal priesthood, and you become part of THE Church—not the visible church but THE Church, visible and invisible, all united together.

It’s very important to remember that if one listens to the divine liturgy carefully, you can see this osmosis, this penetration of the heavenly into the earthly. The moment we enter the temple—we gather as a kind of visible kingdom of God. When we have what we call “the entrance,” most people miss it, but we say, “Blessed is the entrance of thy holy ones—the angels—because in the priest’s prayers, the angels are entering with us. And in the great anthem of the people of God, as I call it, “the Cherubic Hymn,” we sing,

“Let us who mystically represent the Cherubim and sing the thrice-holy hymn to the life-giving Trinity, lay aside all worldly cares, that we may receive the King of all, invisibly upborne [escorted] by angelic hosts. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”

In other words, the angelic hosts are celebrating together with us—so the unseen is totally penetrating the seen and what is unseen is now seen.

And to make it more definitive, we see it in types and symbols. The types and symbols are very powerful. In the liturgy itself, inside “the gates of paradise,” when the priests start to cense the gifts, they pray,

“Having received them upon Thy holy, most heavenly, and noetic altar as an odor of spiritual fragrance, send down upon us in return the divine grace and the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

We must always see the penetration of the Holy Spirit as the union of the visible and invisible church, because they are not two distinct entities. The visible is for the sake of our weakness, but the invisible is always present—as long as we understand there is no dichotomy, we can say that the church here on earth is the visible aspect of the heavenly church.

But again, as a farmer, I often think of the church as the harvester of the crop, as long as there’s a harvest to be had,… so “lift up your eyes, the fields are ripe for the harvest.”    

Beyond Chicken Little Narratives - Luke Schulz

I remember growing up with the narrative of Chicken Little, and it seems to me to be the mainstream narrative adopted by both left and right. The sky is falling because of climate change! The sky is falling because authoritarians are in power! The sky is falling because other people are rich! The sky is falling because those people think differently! The sky is falling because these are the end times! If you truly believe that "the sky is falling", you will be fed plenty of fodder to confirm your biases. And if those spinning narratives can catch you in their web, they will continue to feed on your anxious attention.

 

How you see politics, and everything else, depends on narratives. What is the story you see playing out in the world? Where did that narrative come from? Many of us are intellectually lazy, or ignorant, and so we allow narratives to be fed to us through established channels and corporate media ON BOTH SIDES. But we need to realize that these stories are curated to produce the most angst and thus demand the most attention. It is a business model and a political ploy, designed to capture you and arrest your faculties of investigation. The left is not a mass of evil Communists and the right is not a mob of psychotic Nazis. Have some nuance!

Here's a narrative for you: DEMOCRACY IS WORKING.

 

Across the West, after decades of influence, the left has done a piss poor job representing its proclaimed values and constituents, and a lot of people don't buy the narrative anymore. They didn't become enamoured with the far-right or dictators, they just want something different, because the status quo, the prevailing narrative, seems to have failed them. The only alternative to "same-old" at the moment is the populist right, and until the left re-examines itself and figures out how to better represent and legislate on the values and concerns of its constituents, the populist right will be popular.

 

In democracies, parties must calculate the desires of the population, and deliver on them. If you stray too far from that, the people vote you out. This is how democracy works, and until the left gets new accountants, they leave the populist path to victory open for the right to capitalize on. And they will, until inevitably, the roles reverse. Come back to the public with a better platform and everything will be a-ok.

 

Democracy is simply working as it does. Our problems are not caused by liberal or conservative voters. Our solutions lie ever in new offerings going forward. We will pull through this era. No war has been lost, the sky is not falling, and giving in to panic or anxiety only makes you vulnerable to the false narratives of predators wearing all stripes, who will use their influence to get you to point the finger at your neighbour instead of them.

 

Peace and Love!

Addison Hart's "Confessions of the Antichrist" - Review by Bradley Jersak

After thoroughly enjoying "Patapsco Spirits: Eleven Ghost Stories", Addison Hart's marvellous collection of short ghost stories (it was my top fiction choice for 2024), I immediately raced to see what other books he had to offer. It turns out, quite a few (click here for his Goodreads list). Since I'm neck-deep in a stack of non-fiction works right now, I wanted another taste of his story-telling, so I used my remaining Christmas cash to pick up his novel, Confessions of the Antichrist.

Full disclosure, if I didn't already follow Hart's treasury of thought on Substack ("The Pragmatic Mystic") and hadn't known he's an elder brother to DBH (perhaps Mycroft to David's Sherlock?), I may have wrongly assumed from the title that Confessions was another fan fiction instalment of the Left Behind literary debacle. I'm glad I knew better! For while this short novel is very readable and moves quickly, it also boasts some wonderfully creative premises that left me pondering (as his ghost stories had in my essay here).

I'm wary of spoilers, and would even recommend avoiding the Amazon summary. So rather than offering an overview of the plot, I can hint at it by suggesting some pre-reading thought experiments to tempt you into Hart's treatment.

• Given the apostle Paul's claims in the Christ hymns of Philippians 2 and Colossians 1--that all things visible and invisible are "reconciled by his blood" and that every tongue in heaven and on earth and under the earth will confess (joyfully) the Lordship of Jesus--is it possible that even the devil (whatever that is) could yet repent and be saved? (an ancient debate, actually).
• If we were to image the devil seeing the error of its ways and trying to make amends, what would that look like? Would those amends look like a realignment with the fallen spirit's original design, or would the corruption of character continue to be manifest in his course corrections?
• If the devil were to prepare an Antichrist for the role, what type of man would he be? When or how would he discover his role? How would he be revealed to the world? Would the classical Antichrist of Christian imagination be his inevitable destiny or would God offers exit ramps? Could he or would he take them?
• Would the church recognize the Antichrist when he appeared? If they were to discover his identity, how would they respond and relate to him? Who would resist him? Who would bargain with him? And how do we keep doing so again and again in the realpolitik of our world. 
• And where does Jesus come into any of these questions? Is God the divine architect of a predestined outcome, or a passive observer in a cosmic dualism, or how would he participate in this plot as the Shepherd of humankind?       

The way Addison plays with these questions is well worth enjoying. The book has previously compared the book to a meeting of Through the Looking-Glass and The Divine Comedy. Yes, or I might suggest that it's the lovechild of The Grand Inquisitor and The Screwtape Letters because its relevance is a serious exploration in the nature of temptation and how we in 'the real world' regularly succumb to it in the name of our best ideas, which are precisely what got us into the current mess.

P.S. A few minor asides: I appreciated the very short chapters. It allowed me to snack on the book between tasks or at the end of the day and kept the book moving.

And I would also recommend pausing to look up Hart's incidental references to books, authors, history (historical figures, the Etruscans, etc.), and artworks (Goya)--worthy of pausing for sure.

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Shadia Drury's "Chauvinism of the West" - Review by Ron Dart

Shadia Drury, Chauvinism of the West: The Case of American Exceptionalism (Palgrave MacMillan, 2024)                              

Each year a few fine and must-read books are published (others not worth more than a passing glance), but there can be little doubt that Shadia Drury’s Chauvinism of the West is a ten-bell book. There is much packed into this historic read of the West and its impact on the notion and ideology of American exceptionalism—the origins, history and contemporary reality of American politics, foreign policy and global politics are parsed and exposed well and wisely.

Chauvinism of the West is divided into 6 compact, probing and arrow hitting bull’s eye well chapters: 1) The Roots of American Exceptionalism, 2) Manifest Destiny Goes Global, 3) What’s Wrong with Spreading Democracy, 4) Neoconservative Realism, 5) Fascist Elements in Neoconservative Realism and 6) The Political Theology of the West. Each of the paced well and tightly argued chapters are divided into smaller sections that hold the reader as Shadia’s argument unfolds and develops. The almost 50 pages of the “Annotated Bibliography” convert the at odds book with the orthodox way of viewing America into a spacious library that highlights further reading for those interested in following the pathway and trail that Shadia organized and constructed.

The cover of Chauvinism of the West speaks its own evocative and convincing message, metaphor of Statue of Liberty falling into the sea, foaming waves soon to bury and drown it, city in the distance soon to suffer the same fate.