Patrick Comerford
The Season of Advent – and the real countdown to Christmas – began on Sunday with the First Sunday of Advent (1 December 2024).
Before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, to reflect, to pray and to read in these ways:
1, today’s Gospel reading;
2, a short reflection;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;
4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.
Matthew 7: 21, 24-27 (NRSVA):
[Jesus said:] 21 ‘Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord”, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father in heaven.
24 ‘Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. 25 The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. 26 And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell – and great was its fall!’
Today’s reflection:
During visits to Athens, I never fail to be impressed by the overpowering majesty of the Acropolis and the rock on which it is built.
Later in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, Christ uses the word πητρα (petra), meaning a giant rock, again when he says to the Apostle Peter: ‘I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it’ (Matthew 16: 18).
Other words for rocks in Greek at the time include the word λιθος (lithos), used for a small rock, a stone, or even a pebble – it is the Greek word that gives us words like lithograph and megalithic, meaning Great Stone Age – and πάγος (pagos), which in Ancient Greek, means ‘big piece of rock.’
The last word probably explains the name of the Areopagos in Athens, the prominent outcrop of rock immediately north-west of the Acropolis. Its English name is the composite form of the Greek name, Ἄρειος Πάγος (Areios Págos, ‘Rock of Ares’).
In classical Athens, this functioned as the court for trying deliberate homicide. It was said Ares was put on trial here by the gods for the murder of Halirrhothios, the son of Poseidon. The gods supposedly accepted his defence of justifiable deicide on the grounds that he was defending his daughter Alcippe from unwanted advances.
A temple dedicated to the Erinyes stood at the foot of this rocky outcrop, and murderers sought shelter to escape the consequences of their actions.
Before the 5th century BCE, the Areopagos was the council of elders of Athens, similar to the Roman Senate. But in 462 BCE, Ephialtes put through reforms that deprived the Areopagos of almost all its functions except that of a murder tribunal. The centre of decision-making shifted to the ecclesia or ekklesia (ἐκκλησία), the principal assembly of the democracy of ancient Athens which met at the Theatre of Dionysus from about 300 BCE.
In the play The Eumenides (458 BCE) by Aeschylus, the Areopagos is the site of the trial of Orestes for killing his mother Clytemnestra and her lover (Aegisthus).
Phryne, the hetaerae or courtesan famed for her beauty, appeared before the Areopagos in the 4th century BCE, accused of profaning the Eleusinian mysteries. One story says she was acquitted when she let her cloak drop, impressing the judges with her physical beauty.
The Areopagos continued to function in Roman times, and the Romans referred to the rocky outcrop as Mars Hill, identifying Ares with Mars, the Roman god of war.
Here too was the Athenian altar to the Unknown God, where the Apostle Paul delivered his speech below the Acropolis in which he says:
22 ‘Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23 For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. 26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him – though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28 For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For we too are his offspring.’
29 Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. 30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.’(Acts 17: 22-31)
This is the most dramatic and fullest reported sermon or speech in the missionary career of the Apostle Paul. Saint Paul is quoting the Cretan philosopher Epimenides, but the location of his speech has important cultural contexts, including justice, deicide and the hidden God.
After his sermon, a number of people in Athens became followers of Saint Paul. They include a woman named Damaris, and Dionysius the Areopagite (Διονύσιος ὁ Ἀρεωπαγίτης), a judge at the court of the Areopagos who is said to have become the first Bishop of Athens. The street that runs along the southern slope of the Acropolis is Dionysiou Areopagitou. There I have had breakfast before climbing the Acropolis.
Tertullian asked rhetorically, ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’ (De praescriptione, vii), meaning ‘What has Greek thinking to do with Christianity, or philosophy with theology?’ But Tertullian was strongly influenced by Stoic philosophy, and without that approach he might never have posed his question. His thinking was founded on the two mighty rocks of both philosophy and theology.
But despite all this, do I have the simple but rock-solid faith of Saint Peter, summarised in his simple, direct statement: ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God’ (Matthew 16: 16).
Today’s Prayers (Thursday 5 December 2024):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church’, the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Hope – Advent’. This theme was introduced on Sunday with Reflections by Esmeralda Pato, the Anglican Church of Southern Africa Representative and Chair of USPG’s Communion-Wide Advisory Group.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (Thursday 5 December 2024) invites us to pray:
Lord, help us turn from greed and selfishness. Inspire us to be generous, seeking the good of others over personal gain. May we value people over possessions and live with contentment in you.
The Collect:
Almighty God,
Give us grace to cast away the works of darkness
and to put on the armour of light
now in the time of this mortal life,
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility;
that on the last day,
when he shall come again in his glorious majesty
to judge the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
O Lord our God,
make us watchful and keep us faithful
as we await the coming of your Son our Lord;
that, when he shall appear,
he may not find us sleeping in sin
but active in his service
and joyful in his praise;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Additional Collect:
Almighty God,
as your kingdom dawns,
turn us from the darkness of sin
to the light of holiness,
that we may be ready to meet you
in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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