As a child I would imagine that Eden was a lush, verdant garden nestled away somewhere, like a secret garden or a glade in an overgrown jungle or forest. This depiction was more than likely influenced by the “lost city” tales of books and shows. All we had to do was find it! It must exist somewhere, if we were to take the opening chapters of Genesis seriously (literally). Much to the chagrin of fans of Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Rice Burroughs, the Garden of Eden was not some lost city of our progenitors just waiting to be rediscovered in a jungle or unearthed in the desert, like Göbekli Tepe.
In the ancient world deities often presided on mountains or in gardens. In Genesis we get a description of the Garden. A river flows out of Eden, it then divides into four rivers that water the earth. Rivers flow down. This notion that ancient paradise was on a mountain, or itself was a mountain, has deep roots in our tradition. St. Ephrem’s Hymns on Paradise and St. Gregory of Nyssa’s The Life of Moses are good places to start if one wants to get a patristic grasp of this symbolic structure. Also, check out Jonathan Pageau’s impeccable work on this subject. Understanding this ancient cosmological order–i.e. Paradise is a mountain–sharply brings new meaning to the story of the Tower of Babel, the giving of the Law to Moses, the Transfiguration, and many prevailing themes in Scripture.
One of the dominant themes of this blog is the idea of the Church as the City on the Hill, the light that shines out and draws all people to her. The Church is the Body of Christ in the world, the fullness of things to come. The Church is this eschatological reality in the here and now. This means that the Kingdom of God, Paradise renewed, is found within the Church.
To the detriment of society and culture, modernity has immanentized the cosmos, it has flattened it to the point of utter meaninglessness. We are all products of this flattened world. This means that we perceive a world that has been reduced by science to materiality. It is imperative that the Church recover this ancient cosmology if she wants to better live within the mystery of Tradition. The Divine Liturgy is an ascent. Contrary to the notion of ascent, we often hear that Heaven “descends” during the Liturgy, however, it is really both an ascent and descent. The Liturgy is this ascent up the mountain to arrive at Paradise. During the Anaphora, the celebrant lifts up the Bread and Wine, and then he returns them to the Altar, this is then followed by invocation to the Holy Spirit. The Church stands prayerfully atop the mountain in Eden, and the Holy descends. Paradise is where Heaven meets Earth. In another way, Paradise is where and when the Divine fills and transforms the material so humanity can commune with God Himself.
What does this have to do with mission?
Humanity is in the perpetual act of constructing ziggurats, both literally and figuratively. The Tower of Babel was an attempt at an artificial mountain with the sole purpose of reaching the heavens and capturing God. This was an ancient attempt at recreating Eden. Humans continue to do this, we want to ascend to the uppermost heights. We never succeed; nevertheless, this won’t stop us from trying. Take the story of Sisyphus as told by Homer and referenced by Ovid. Sisyphus was doomed in Hades forever to roll a cumbersome boulder up a hill for it to repeatedly succumb to gravity. Nearer our own time, Camus writes on the absurdity of this. Myth understood as repeating patterns provides meaning for us today. Camus’ interpretation describes the plight of modern humanity. We are trapped within the hellish chaos of contemporary life with enough delusion that our feeble attempts to ascend with our burdens will be possible. If we try hard enough. If we adopt the latest ideology. If we act morally enough….
It will always be nothing more than this
At then end of Purgatorio we see that Dante had to ascend the mountain of Purgatory to arrive at the plateau of Paradise, which is consonant with ancient cosmology. Dante had to ascend and had to be purified before continuing his ascent into the Heavenly Realms. Contrast Dante’s ascent with Sisyphus’. The former had guides the entire way. Virgil led him down through Hell and up the mountain of Purgatory, with help from others, and Beatrice led him through the heavenly realms. The latter was attempting the arduous work alone.
This is where the Church comes in. Our mission is to travel down and guide those back up. The boulder must become less in order to make the ascent. It should not sound scandalous to Orthodox Christians that this life is meant to be a purgative process. The image in the Divine Comedy of Purgatory as a mountain with Eden at the top is not foreign to our Tradition. If you struggle with this idea, read the Fathers mentioned in this post…and if you still struggle with this idea, just substitute the mountain for a ladder (I do believe there is an icon with this…). To flip this around, we are all Sisyphus as well. And we all have a spiritual guide–our spiritual father and the Church as a whole. The things of this world–the articles of death, the things that weigh us down–will inevitably need to be purified. St. Gregory of Nyssa writes about the ascent saying we all must be washed soul and body. Moreover, he says that our soiled garments are “the outward pursuits of life”. These outward pursuits are our own Tower of Babel.
Instead of Sisyphus and his rock, Church mission should look like this:
Needless to say, that it is not appropriate to equate Dante’s vision of Purgatory with the Orthodox Church’s soteriology. However, the pre-Vatican Councils Roman Catholicism shared more with Orthodoxy then it does with the modern iteration of Catholicism. Rod Dreher wrote about this. The Church does understand that one must undergo spiritual purification. Wherever you stand regarding the relationship between the Eastern and Western Churches, our Tradition stresses the role of the spiritual father. The guide. The Church is the Ark of Salvation. We are guided by our forefathers in the faith. This is one role of the Church, to carry each others’ burdens and to meet the people wherever they are. We are saved together and condemned alone.
