Journey Back to Eden.pdf - St Mark Coptic Orthodox Church Chicago

A TIME OF CELEBRATION 109and Resurrection. This is fitting, after all, Abuna Elia said, becausePaul didn’t know Jesus in Galilee; he didn’t participate in theearthly ministry of Jesus. He met Jesus in the Resurrection on theroad to Damascus, and in that meeting he was persuaded of his life,his message, and his lordship. So this is the message he continuallyreinforces: a summation of Christ in his Paschal work.St. Paul calls the Paschal work of Jesus “God’s secret plan,”hidden through all ages, but now revealed in Christ. He calls it “ahidden wisdom or mystery,” the meaning of which is now madeclear in the suffering of Jesus and his glory. Abuna Elia said, “ForPaul, the self-emptying work of Christ Jesus, his suffering, hiskenotic work is, in fact, our rest. It is the work of God in which werest. It is the life of grace anticipated by the Sabbath rest in the OldTestament. This grace elicits from us the act of faith by which werest in the Paschal work of Christ.”This was a good summation of St. Paul, I thought, and AbunaElia tied it nicely to St. John. He said it was natural for John toadopt the insight of Paul and develop it further, seeing in the ageoldplan of the Paschal Mystery revealed in Christ a revelation of atimeless pattern in God himself. God would not reveal somethingthat was incongruent with himself. Since Christ Jesus is his highestrevelation, we have the right to believe that it is a revelation thatwas intentional, a revelation of God himself. This age-old plan ofGod is a laying bare of a pattern of love in God. The Word, theLogos, was made flesh. For John, the secret wisdom of the Father,this Word which was learned in eternity, the Son obeyed and imitated.The mysterious wisdom of the Father was a self-emptyinglove, so there’s a relationship between the Father and the Son, asimilarity in imitation. What the Son was learning through all eternity,he came as man to teach us from the Cross.So it makes great sense, then, that in the Book of Revelationthe Lamb of God who was slain not only bears forever the marksof his slaughter; he is also the Lamb who was slain from the foundationof the world. Long before the Paschal Mystery was actuallyaccomplished on the Mount of Calvary, the Paschal Mystery wasenfolded into the Trinity and ascribed to the Person of the Sonwho learned this from his Father.I think that Abuna Elia has been profoundly engaged with thePaschal Mysteries in his own life as a desert monk. He has had occasionto contemplate them both in terms of his own journey in