An Outpouring of God's Glory

There have been many ways that Christian thought has developed over the years regarding how we articulate things, and our theological understanding of aspects of the faith. Not only would it be absurd to attempt to make a list of the different traditional understandings of different parts of our faith with how many there are, but I would do a poor job of it as the small man that I am so I will not attempt to do it even to a fraction. Rather, I will speak on just one, which pours out into other understandings of theology and so I find it incredibly interesting and appealing as a theological understanding.

I have mentioned this some in my other writing, and I will repeat it again here to be clear for any readers, I am an Eastern Catholic, specifically a Byzantine Catholic, and more specifically a member of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Still Catholic, yes, but with an Eastern spirituality and theological expression. Sometimes you may hear me misspeak by referring to something as "the Eastern expression" of a thing when I should really be saying "an Eastern expression" of a thing. There are several traditions in the East which come to their own perspectives, and the Byzantine is just one of them, though it is the largest as far as number of members go.

Now before going into an Eastern understanding of God - and by no means the understanding of Byzantine Catholics, just one way which is used to articulate theology - I will explain the Western understanding of God acting upon His creation as it is likely a mostly Western audience that will read this. The understanding in question: the very nature of God - and one in a sense opposed to a Thomistic (Thomist, meaning a follower of the formulas and philosophies of Thomas Aquinas) understanding. Please pardon my crude and blunt explanation of a Thomist articulation. For Thomas, God resides outside of time and remains perfectly content before He made all of creation. God is love, He is relationship, and He was - and is - never in need of anyone else because He is perfect and lacks nothing; but, He decided to reach out from Himself and create from nothing, everything. And in that everything He made us in His image and likeness.

An Eastern understanding of God and His relationship with creation is mostly the same, with one key difference in the expression of God's act. Articulating this in human language is difficult, and I am far less worthy to speak on this than the great theologians of the past, but I will explain this as best as I can. Rather than God reaching out and creating all things, an explanation in the East is that God outpoured Himself and creation came to be. In a sense - and allow me to articulate this more in a moment - God couldn't help but create the world and everything else. Not in the sense that God felt incomplete and needed to fill a void, or that God has a weakened will and so succumbed to creating all that we know. No, it is more like a good marriage that is so filled with love that they grow their family by having more children. In theory the husband and wife could go on without creating any children and still be fulfilled, but their desire is to pour out that love, to create that which their love could be poured into and which can receive their love, and that which has the opportunity to reciprocate their love. An Eastern understanding of God and His relationship to His creation is that it came from an outpouring of love, He couldn't help but make everything because He wants to share His love.

Now I will share one of the examples in Scripture where some of those in the East find evidence of this theological understanding. In Luke 8:43-48 we find the story of the woman hemorrhaging, a woman afflicted for many years with bleeding and constantly made "ritually unclean" and therefore was often ostracized by her community. She learns that Jesus is near, and she makes her way through the crowd to get near Him. Likely due to shame and embarrassment she does not cry out to Him, but thinks instead that if she just touches the edge of His clothing that she will be healed of her affliction, and so perhaps be healed and remain unseen to avoid embarrassment. Next is what I really wish to dive into.

The woman touches Jesus, and this causes Him to halt in the middle of the street. "Who touched me?" He asks, and His disciples rightly point out that He is at the center of a multitude of people, shouting and pressing in on Him. What kind of question is He asking? Literally everyone is trying to touch Him right now, or are currently touching Him. He then says in verse 46:

Somebody has touched me: for I perceive that power has gone out of me.

Here is the difference with the East and West. Typical Western understanding - but by no means the understanding of the West as a whole - is that God "sends" Himself out - that is what He did with creation, that is what the Father did to the Son with the Incarnation - it is God "reaching out" into the world and everything else. In the East, God's love is like dammed up water, which is just waiting for the opportunity to find a space to fill - He is looking for a space which is empty and to be welcomed into that place, and once He is asked to fill the place then He pours Himself in.

"Wait a minute," you may say, "I'm Western and that sounds like something I believe. Why are you claiming this is an Eastern thing?" I am not saying that this an idea created by the East, moreso do I state that this is a favored position of theology by many in the East as the Thomistic position is favorited by many in the West. But also do understand, these are not exclusive to each other. It is not as if God is either "actively" or "passively" pouring out His graces, because it is both. We are using limited human language to identify a divine reality, and so we will fall short. In a sense the Western idea is that God actively seeks us out and gives us His graces, and the Eastern idea is that He's always there and waiting for us to open ourselves up to have graces poured into us - but again, this is not to say this is the Western and the Eastern view, but that this is what is typically emphasized.

Now, to return to the woman in the story. An Eastern interpretation of the text is that the woman desired God and His healing power, and when she touched the Lord the void in her, the place which held the pain from her many years of suffering, became filled by Christ's outpouring of grace. He did not need to choose to let His power out necessarily, because He is always desiring to give it, and because the woman provided Him an opportunity to pour out this grace and healing it was then natural for His power to flow out into her. God is like an ever-flowing river that He does not wish to hold back, and the woman received the flow of love from God when she reached out to Him in this act of faith.

The combination of the woman's absolute faith - not a hope that God would do something, but faith that He would - and her surrender to God's will is what allowed her to received God's mercy. She knew God could heal her, but that would not have been enough. She said "If I but touch His clothing I will be healed." She knew God would heal her, and so she crawled her way to our Lord and received that which He already wanted to give to her.

I find this story beautiful. And I wish to emphasize again, that this is not an understanding exclusive to the East, it's just a more normative understanding in the East because of their typical perspective on how God gives His graces to us. I think it is a wonderful example of how God wishes to give us all which we are in need of for healing, we just need to truly surrender to Him. Of course, we may not be healed of all things at once, but God does wish for us to be healed, and we will be healed when God determines it is proper.

We are not done with this article yet. Now comes my real motivation for writing this article, a piece of Scripture that I have been wrestling with for many months - not because it is difficult to reconcile with, but because it seems so throwaway and I can find no ancient commentaries on the passage. The passage I am referring to is Matthew 27:52-53. Let me paint you a picture of the context of the passage, and then show you the verses. I feel this will be helpful for you to know the context, and it's one you will absolutely be familiar with.

Christ has just been crucified. This is the second to last chapter in the Gospel of Matthew, and much of this chapter has been filled with the Temple leaders accusing Jesus and then it goes to the crucifixion. In verse 50 we see Christ yielding His spirit, and dies at that moment. In verse 51 we see the veil of the Temple being torn, and the earth shook, and if you look back at verse 45 you see that an eclipse of the sun darkened the earth until Christ died. Incredibly frightening things happened during the crucifixion and death of Christ. But then there are two peculiar verses that almost seem snuck in there, and seem to be ignored by so many.

52 And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints that slept arose, 53 And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

A few months ago I stumbled upon these verses once while flipping through Scripture in a new Bible I had purchased. When I saw these in isolation from the other verses it helped me realize how wild they were. Rather than breezing along and letting the words enter one ear and exit the other, I ruminated on them, and came up with nothing. Obviously I've read these verses before, since I've read through the Gospel of Matthew more than a few times. But, as I said, this is the first time I'd read these verses in isolation from the others around it.

Look with me for a moment at this part of Matthew. In verse 52 we see that those who died and in the friendship of God were resurrected alongside Christ. What makes this passage difficult to read, in my eyes, is that it is telling of something that is really relevant after the resurrection of our Lord, but for some reason is "snuck in" here during the Crucifixion. It could be, based on how the Church separated the sentence into two different verses, that 52 takes place when Christ dies, and 53 takes place at a separate time after the resurrection. So perhaps at the death of Christ these saints were raised, then they walked with Him and on their own in the holy city of Jerusalem after His resurrection. Or, perhaps both verse 52 and 53 take place after the resurrection of the Lord - but for either explanation of the passage it still feels so strange that these verses are included in the telling of the crucifixion, rather than the resurrection of our Lord. And, apparently, the Church Fathers don't have much to say on this matter.

Interesting thing to note here is something that has been said many times by many others, but it is in the sacrifice of Christ, in His crucifixion that we have been saved, and it is in His resurrection that He proves once and for all that He is who He says He is. The resurrection is "not important" in the sense that it's not required for our salvation. But, it is important because we are weak humans, and we often need proof, and so God proved Himself by bringing Himself back from the dead with His own power. In His resurrection he shows that the body is a good thing, and in the resurrection of others in verse 52 we see the evidence that we will have our bodies after the resurrection, because our bodies are good.

I digress. Back to the verses, the saints who were buried around and in the city of Jerusalem were resurrected at Christ's death - what's more, not just the spirits of the saints, but their bodies as well. Then, after Christ's resurrection, just as Christ appeared to many, so did these resurrected saints wander into the holy city and appear before many. I have to imagine that people encountered holy men from the stories of the Old Testament in the streets while doing their everyday work, and bumped into long-dead family and friends in their homes and at the Temple. I also have to imagine that this was a very off-putting experience.

Now, what is my purpose for bringing up these two verses in Matthew, and what does it have to do with the theme of this article? It has everything to do with how we understand God, that we see Him as desiring to pour out His love unto us all. I believe the passage makes more sense when you have in mind the idea that God is just waiting for an opportunity to give graces to people, and that His love infects all those it comes near. Think of the resurrection as being an overflow event, where the Father's will was poured out onto the Son as He sacrificed Himself for us, and poured out so much because God cannot be contained that He caused the resurrection of those others destined to be with Him. He couldn't help but share in the glory of the moment. God is overflowing in His desire to bestow His abundance of graces upon us, and this is just one of the moments in Scripture where we see Him able to act it out.

Some closing thoughts. As mentioned already, this perspective on how God operates in the world is not exclusive to the East, and does not truly oppose the Thomistic explanation of God's interaction with creation. I myself appreciate this Eastern understanding of how God works and find it a beautiful way to try to comprehend God. There are likely another dozen ways that you could use to explain how God works among us, and there would likely be some degree of truth in those other explanations. Why I prefer this explanation of the Lord is because it very much emphasizes how He is love, because love is something that overflows and desires to be shared. Of course this explanation is not superior to others, this is just one way to explain God's works, but I prefer it best. How wonderful it is to think on this, that God didn't need us but He so greatly desired to give out His love that we were brought into being, just for the sake of Him wanting us to be.

Written for VME Catholic, by Ethan Hall