Pesher – St. Mary the Virgin

The Cambrian Pesher*

Day of St. Mary the Virgin (August 15th), 2020

The Church of the New Earth

And hidden from the prince of this world were the virginity of Mary and her childbearing and likewise the death of the Lord – three mysteries to be cried aloud – the which were wrought in the silence of God.
Ignatius to the Ephesians

But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

Paul, 1 Corinthians 2:7,8

Beloved Friends:

We cannot escape the reality of a secret tradition within Christianity. The Old and New Testaments and the writings of the early Fathers all attest to its existence. It can be known from mastering these writings, but it is not easy. The “mysteries of the kingdom” are taught in parable (Matthew 13:11) and in sacrament (John 13:7). Others are learned in the life experience of practicing the Torah (i.e. biblical casuistry): Isaiah 8:20 and Deuteronomy 29:29, as says also the Apostle:

But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
Hebrews 5:14

Long and analytical contemplation is necessary before it can be known and understood. Most people do not have the patience or the interest to pay the price for this kind of knowledge.

Why has God done this? I can find three reasons: first, to protect the truth from “the swine” who, as the Lord said, trample our “pearls” underfoot, then “turn again to rend you” (Matthew 7:6). These are the covenant breakers who use truth perversely to harm people, especially its teachers. Second, truth is hidden to protect the identity of the Elect as alluded by St. Ignatius in the quote above (notice he said “her childbearing,” more below) , and third, to equip the Elect in their work of building the Kingdom of God.

The secret or esoteric tradition does not have to do with the plan of salvation. God has made that path very clear so that even “fools shall not err therein” (Isaiah 35:8). In contrast, the esoteric tradition has to do with dominion, the righteous rule of God’s creation. The secret workings of God’ providence are designed to further His Kingdom in this world. There is a difference between the two: salvation pertains to God’s mercy upon us all who have been made in His image and have been damaged by sin; dominion pertains to election and has to do with those of us who have been salvaged and can be useful in securing God’s will “on earth as it is in heaven.”

Surviving the End of the World

Our Peshers have been discussing the conflagration to come in “the day of God”, perhaps as early as 26 years from now. As we get closer, there are many ministries capable of spreading the Gospel of salvation. But what of the Gospel of the kingdom? That is why we will try to expound on the esoteric tradition of the Church to equip those who might have a future after the day of God.

We do not pretend to know who will survive this pending conflagration or “solar nova” as expected of some by 2046 AD. We do not know if anyone will survive. It might really be the end of the world. But if it is survived by anyone, it will be by God’s grace. God promises “a thousand generations” to the covenant keepers in the Decalogue (Exodus 20:6). We have reason to hope that someone will survive it. There is a strong sentiment among the Apostles and the early Fathers for a future Millennium of Peace (Revelation 20) which has yet to occur, which in Isaiah is likened to a “new heaven and a new earth”:

“For as the new heaven and the new earth which I make, remaineth before me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name be;” (Isaiah 66:22) and again, “Thus saith the Lord that created the heaven, it is He who prepared the earth and created it, He determined it; He created it not in vain, but formed it to be inhabited.” (Isaiah 45:18)
For in reality God did not establish the universe in vain or to no purpose but destruction, as those weak-minded men say, but to exist, and be inhabited, and continue. Wherefore the earth and the heaven must exist again after the conflagration and shaking of all things . . . For not “the world” but “the fashion of this world” passeth away (1 Corinthians 7:31).

Methodius, “On the Resurrection”,
Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. 6 (Schaff) p. 366
(emphasis & references added)

Notice that Methodius – an ante (before) Nicene Father, not anti (against) Nicene Father – speaks directly to the question of the great conflagration identified by Peter and others. He was convinced that God’s plan for creation will not to be defeated by sin and rebellion, but that the Creator’s purpose will prevail.

Notice also that he quotes the Messianic prophecy in Isaiah 66 in which he identifies that “the name” and “seed” of the Messiah will be preserved to dwell in this “new heaven and new earth.” We know this is a Messianic prophecy because it contains a direct prophecy of the Virgin Mary:

Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child. Who hath heard such a thing? who hath seen such things? Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed she brought forth her children.

Isaiah 66:7, 8

In the “Vision of the Woman Clothed with the Sun” in Revelations chapter 12, the Apostle finds the fulfillment of this prophecy in Mary as the personification of Zion:

And she being with child cried travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered . . . And she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron: and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne . . . And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed . . . (v. 2, 5, 17).

It matters that this is a Messianic prophecy because if it is not, then God is merely speaking to the remnant of Israel on the question of national restoration. It should be remembered that most of the early Fathers by the 3rd and 4th Centuries came to look upon such prophecies allegorically. And modern dispensationalist commentators think they see a fulfillment in the nation state of Israel when it was founded in 1948. They do not think this is a Messianic prophecy at all.

In other words the Fathers came to believe that the “seed of the woman” (Genesis 3:15) was literal as applied to Christ but symbolic as applied to Christians. It is not an actual physical reality but symbolic of those who become Christians through the sacramental process of the Church, i.e. baptized believers. They did not believe that the “seed” were her descendants in a literal sense and that somehow, through lineage, Christians are supposed to become her physical offspring. Partly, this was taught to deny that Mary had any more children, thus preserving her virginity, and partly to deny that there was a sacred lineage which might have had the right to the episcopal thrones of the churches. As we mentioned in the last Pesher, there was an early movement to make Christianity a department of state run by the Imperial bureaucracy.

However as the above texts require in their grammatical construction, Mary’s childbearing was not singular but produced “a remnant,” “a seed,” which corresponds with Isaiah’s “nation” (goy/ethnos). We know that she, as the symbolic representation of Zion, gave birth to Jesus because the text describes her as wearing a crown of Twelve Stars representing the Twelve Tribes of Israel. So this woman in Revelation 12 is both Zion or “the Jerusalem from above” (Galatians 4:26, cf. Hebrews 12:22) and the very mother of the Messianic race. These descendants were known as the “Desposyni” to the earliest Church historians, for example:

Of the family of the Lord there were still living the grandchildren of Jude, who is said to have been the Lord’s brother according to the flesh [in the time of Domitian] . . . But when they were released they ruled the churches, because they were witnesses and were also relatives of the Lord. (Hegesippus as quoted by Eusebius, Book III Chapter XX)

Of these were the above-mentioned persons, called desposyni, on account of their affinity to the family of our Savior (Julius Africanus as quoted by Eusebius in Ecclesiastical History, Chapter 7.

There is much to say about this [the Desposyni] but since I have arrived at the topic of why those who believed in Christ were called Jessaeans before being called Christians . . . they were called Jessaeans because they stemmed from Jesus, being disciples of his, or because of the meaning of the Lord’s name. For “Jesus” in Hebrew means “healer” or “physician” and “savior.”

Epiphanius, Panarion 29.5.4
(emphasis added)

Epiphanius was a post-Nicene Father who was further removed from the origins of Christianity and was unsure about why the Christians were first called, “Jesusians.” What is startling about his statement is the notion that they might have “stemmed from Jesus,” which is a term we usually associate with that of lineage rather than affiliation, which would be the case of the disciples as he tries to make it. Elsewhere, he refers to Jesus as “stemmed from Jesse,” the father of David, which is a term referring to natural descent. So why he would use the term here and then try to apply it to the meaning of discipleship suggests obfuscation on his part.

The Great Esoteric Doctrine

Can anyone now say otherwise than that the Bride is the undefiled flesh of the Lord, for the sake of which He left the Father and came down here, and was joined to it, and, being incarnate, dwelt in it?
Methodius, “Banquet of the Ten Virgins,” ANF vol. 6 p. 334

This is perhaps the great secret teaching of the Early Church: that the very flesh of Christ is His Bride. Just as Eve, the bride of the First Man, was drawn from his body – and was “flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone” – so Christ drew His flesh from Mary, His mother. As far as we know, there was no other source for the chromosomes that made the flesh of Christ. It worked in the reverse, as Adam gave to Eve her flesh as both father and bridegroom; so Mary gave her flesh to the Messiah to provide for Him His humanity and His Bride:

And as the Books and the Apostles plainly declare that the Church existeth not now for the first time, but hath been from the beginning: for she was spiritual, as our Jesus also was spiritual, but was manifested in the last days that He might save us. Now the Church, being spiritual, was manifested in the flesh of Christ . . . for this flesh is the counterpart and copy of the spirit . . .

“An Ancient Homily,” Chapter 14,
Apostolic Fathers, Lightfoot p. 50

This Ancient Homily is anonymous but translated by Lightfoot because he believed it came from the Apostolic Fathers, the era immediately following the Apostles and the close of the Canon of Scripture. It comes from a time when the Church had not yet been corrupted by the Gnostic heresy and its depreciation of the value of the flesh in God’s plan for creation.

For these Church Fathers, Mary was the Church in the flesh, Zion and New Jerusalem. By imparting her flesh to Christ, she made it possible for the Incarnate Son of God to propagate that flesh in the Church:

If our Lord’s flesh is the Bride, the true Church, then it is not enough to become Christ’s according to the spirit only. We do not become the Bride until we are perfected by becoming His flesh as well as His spirit. . . The Bride is His flesh, not the Church. The Church must first become His flesh before it can become His Bride, as says the Apostle, when “The wife hath made herself ready.”

Hierogamy & the Married Messiah, Textbook Edition,
Stivers (2004) p. 198

How was this done? The Imperial churches said that the flesh of Christ is propagated in the Mass. The Grail Church in contrast says that it is propagated in a sacred lineage. Christ united Himself to womankind in the henosis and produced an offspring, a seed in the earth. Need these be exclusive of the other? Could both be true?

Grail theology will further argue that the Ecumenical Creeds require that all Messianic prophecies be fulfilled by Christ in both His human and His Divine natures. This is the meaning of the Incarnation: that everything true of Christ’s Divine nature was also true in the human counterpart of His flesh. If it was important enough to be noted in prophecy or the Torah, then it was necessary for it to be manifested in the Incarnation:

If anyone shall divide between two persons or subsistences those expressions which are contained in the Evangelical and Apostolical writings, or which have been said concerning Christ by the Saints, or by himself, and shall apply some to him as to a man separate from the Word of God, and shall apply others to the only Word of God in the Father, on the ground that they are fit to be applied to God: let him be anathema. [from the Council of Ephesus, the Fourth Anathema]

This anathema was aimed at attacks against the two great Alexandrian theologians, Athanasius and Cyril, and against the attacks on the councils from Nicaea to Ephesus, because of their approval of the doctrine of Economic Appropriation. This doctrine affirmed the two natures in true union without confusion. It forbade the ascription of certain acts to Christ’s humanity and others to His deity, for such an ascription would assume an alternating consciousness and no true union. In that true union, “we must economically ascribe to Him, God the Word, all the human names and human expressions used of that Man in the New Testament, in order to guard against our being led, as were the Nestorians, to worship a mere creature, contrary to Matt. vi.,10.”

The Foundations of Social Order, Studies in the Creeds & Councils of the Early Church, R. J. Rushdoony, (Thoburn Press, 1978) p. 50

A married Jesus fathering children seems to be an impious proposition for a Christianity dominated by the Gnostic heresy that believes fleshly things are sinful. Let another Apostolic Father correct that misconception:

Among the other[truths] proclaimed by the apostle, there is also this one, “That flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” [1Cor.15:30]. This is [the passage] which is adduced by all the hertics in support of their folly, with an attempt to annoy us, and to point out that the handiwork of God is not saved. . . If however, we must speak strictly, [we would say that] the flesh does not inherit, but is inherited; as also the Lord declares, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth by inheritance” [Matthew 5:5]; as if in the [future] kingdom, the earth, from whence exists the substance of our flesh, is to be possessed by inheritance. This is the reason for His wishing the temple (i.e. the flesh) to be clean, that the Spirit of God may take delight therein, as a bridegroom with a bride. As, therefore, the bride cannot [be said] to wed, but to be wedded, when the bridegroom comes and takes her, so also the flesh cannot by itself possess the kingdom of God by inheritance; but it can be taken for an inheritance into the kingdom of God. For a living person inherits the goods of the deceased; and it is one thing to inherit, another to be inherited.

Irenaeus Against Heresies,
Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. I (Schaff) p. 534-535
(bracketed words provided by translator)

By His Resurrection and Ascension, Christ has taken redeemed flesh into heaven. He has also imparted this redeemed flesh to the world in a sacred lineage to restore God’s Kingdom and in the course of time, cause it to be inherited by Him as His Bride:

Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish . . . For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.
This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

Ephesians 5:25-32

The Day of the Virgin Mary

The Church honors the Virgin in three separate annual feasts: The Annunciation (March 25th), The Visitation (May 31st), and Saint Mary the Virgin (August 15th).

Today has been designated as the festal day of the Sacred Virgin Mary. It has a separate feast day so as not to be lost in the festivities of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. There is much to be learned from her life message, but certainly, in the light of what has been said above, it is important to remember her humility and earnest desire to do the will of God. For when the angel laid out her destiny, she did not despair or rebel, but rather said: “Behold, the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38).

And so, the new creation began.

A servant of Jesus,
James

Collect for the Day
O God, who hast taken to thyself the blessed Virgin Mary, mother of thy incarnate Son: Grant that we, who have been redeemed by his blood, may share with her the glory of thine eternal kingdom; through the same thy son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

*Cambrian Pesher is the pastoral epistle of the Cambrian Episcopal Church of the Grail, a fellowship and abbey adhering to a spiritual tradition from ancient Wales. We use the Authorized Version of the Bible (King James Version) as our default translation and the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopalian Church for liturgical guidance. We are not an affiliate of any denomination.
Copyright is reserved to the Cambrian Episcopal Church of the Grail, 2020