Prof. Dr. Gheorghe Butuc held the conference

“The Great Lent - from the Closed Heaven to the Open Heaven”

for the faithful of the Romanian Orthodox Diocese of Canada

Lent Conferences Series - Through the doors of repentance to the joy of the Resurrection organized by the Romanian Orthodox Diocese of Canada with the blessing of His Grace Bishop Ioan Casian continued on the second Sunday of Lent with Prof. Dr. Gheorghe Butuc from St. Andrew's Theological Seminary in Galati. He held the conference entitled The Great Lent - the School of Repentance from the Closed Heaven to the Open Heaven.

Heaven and hell - two choices, two attitudes toward God:

“Heaven is the final destination of human existence, the person being built for Heaven. Beyond their real existence, in this life Heaven and hell are also two human choices in the relationship with God. If Heaven is man's loving relationship towards God, hell is his opposite, the way out of this relationship. Heaven is a fenced garden in the middle of the desert of this life in which humans enjoy and receive blessings. The purpose of creation was to make the whole earth a garden of Paradise so that all would be united. Therefore, as long as man remains in the blessing and relationship with God, in this project of God, he remains in Heaven. Man is created in the image of God to advance in his likeness. That is why man is the peak of creation and the replica of God in the created version. The path from the image to the resemblance of God was not followed by the forefathers Adam and Eve who entered into a dialogue with the serpent. Therefore, closing the doors of the relationship with God meant closing the doors of Heaven because of man not because of God. Evil does not stop at a simple dialogue with the serpent, but gains ground, becoming a city and civilization, mentality and law. Lamech, living in the seventh generation after Adam, boasted of his crimes. Giants are only flesh. This aspect of the body shows us that they have lost the second dimension of man originally formed by God, the soul. In Heaven, on the contrary, Adam is first soul or spirit, and the body is secondary.”

The Genealogy of Redemption

“As the civilization of evil expands, God begins a genealogy of redemption, which consists in a permanent salvation of life from the darkness of death. There is a great similarity between the symbols of salvation present in the Bible. Noah's ark, through which mankind is saved, is like a floating temple or ark. The ark is made of the same type of wood used for the Temple. Moses is then saved in a basket on the waters of the Nile. The Church is often compared to a ship on the waves of the world.

In this genealogy of redemption, we witness the appearance of the new Adam (Christ) and the new Eve (Mother of God). If the tower of Babel is the symbol of the civilization of evil in search of a construction without a relationship with God, Abraham is the answer to the divine plan of redemption. Abraham is the one who believes in God and lives in relationship with Him. The Mother of God is a new Abraham, because of her unceasing relationship with God. But in Christ we have more, because He teaches us how to live in a relationship with God. Christ is not only God incarnate, but He also teaches us what has been given to man. He comes to our fallen life and shows us how to rise from the dead.”

The Cross, Fasting and the Resurrection

“The cross is not a moment of weakness of Christ or of God, but the key to the reopening of Heaven, the door through which the transition from God to man and from man to God is made. Through the Cross begins a new path in human history, from the old man to the new man and from the closed to the open Heaven. Human history can be seen as the journey from Closed Heaven to the City as Garden (of Paradise), in which the Good becomes civilization.

Life is a tension between the old and the new Adam, between our biology and our redemption.

Through Baptism we begin this transition from our biology and the old Adam to the new Adam. The new life, the spiritual life, is a real university where we learn how to become the new man. The school of repentance and fasting first helps us to reach a deep understanding of the cause of the fall. The finding of this cause is the finding of the Truth which brings a twist of the heart, a metanoia, from which man is no longer inclined to fall.

The structure of the Great Lent is symmetrical around the Sunday of the Cross. On the one hand, from the Sunday of Adam’s expulsion from Heaven (closed heaven) to the Sunday of the Cross we have the Sunday of Orthodoxy and its extension on the Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas, therefore a summary of the truth of faith. After the Sunday of the Cross, we have Sundays of St. John of the Ladder and of St. Mary of Egypt, two models of redemption and holiness. Fasting is a spiritual journey with a roadmap, and the Triodion, a book that shows us the man who is uprooted from evil. Fasting is not just a diet, but a liturgical and priestly act, a mystagogy in which we are initiated. It is a feast of the mind, prayer, and reading of the Bible, for one who eats the words of Scripture reaches the true feast. The Church gives us Scripture to teach the Truth and the Resurrection. We travel with the Bible fasting to fill ourselves with Scripture. We mourn with Adam our fall, our bad actions with Cain, Lamech, and David, and learn the redemption with Abraham and David. On the day of the Resurrection, God introduces us to the new Adam, out of the love of Christ. Only by knowing the Resurrection we can repent. Easter is symmetrical between the fifty days of Great Lent and the Cross and the fifty days from Pascha until Pentecost. The Cross and the Resurrection are two faces of the same reality to which the Church invites us to become first a person fasting and then to become a person resurrected.”

The conference ended with a series of questions - answers related to the topic presented.

(notes by Rev. Fr. Dragoș Giulea, PhD)