His Grace Bishop Maxim of Western America attended the 2008 Diocesan Parish Life Conference
BISHOP MAXIM KEYNOTE SPEAKER AT PARISH LIFE CONFERENCE OF THE ANTIOCHIAN DIOCESE OF LOS ANGELES AND THE WEST
Los Angeles, Ca
- Per invitation of His Grace Bishop Joseph, Bishop of Los Angeles and the West
of the Antiochian Archdiocese, His Grace Bishop Maxim of Western
America attended the 2008 Diocesan Parish Life Conference held in Los
Angeles from July
2-6, 2008. Bishop Maxim served as keynote speaker for the diocesan conference, delivering
a lecture during the course of three days. On the first day the bishop's talk
was entitled - "Martyrdom: An Orthodox View of Marriage".
In the bishop's talk on the second and third day, entitled "Communion and
Otherness in Marriage" he attempted to see how otherness and communion
relate to marriage. He eloquently showed how and why marriage is a sort of
communion where respective differences (uniqueness and personality) are affirmed
through a relationship. That is, instead of considering marriage as a threat to
otherness, he examined how it generates otherness. The various sections of this
presentation tackle the subject of male and female in different ways. In the
first sections bishop Maxim looked at the Biblical background and the Gospel
perspective of marriage as a mystery of encountering two 'others' (male and
female). This should be seen within a theological perspective, which entails an
ecclesial and Eucharistic view of the subject. The Orthodox Church has a strong
'personalistic' perspective, which was developed in the Patristic period. With
the help of the Trinitarian theology of the Greek Fathers (particularly the
Cappadocians) and their ontological perspective, he gained a clearer theological
perspective of the Biblical and Gospel perspectives on marriage and
otherness.
In further sections the bishop was able to put the whole subject in the light
of the ascetical ethos and the mysteries of the Church. Here, the Church is
seen as something that cultivates uniqueness through a Eucharistic and 'erotic'
mode of existence, as seen at D. Areopagite and St Maxim. Since Christ is the
unique Other in and through whom all other beings are ontologically loved and
existentially sustained, our particular hypostases (persons) are not absorbed
into an abstract idea or deity, but rather healed and transfigured in an
intimate relationship with God.
In the final sections, he discusses the Feministic perspective (Women's rights
and Feminism); the Sociological perspective; and Contemporary issues (abortion,
homosexuality, in vitro fertilization, addiction, the role of the spouse,
depression, etc.) in which he makes some observations regarding male and female
in contemporary society. He ends with the Eschatological perspective in order
to demonstrate that marital communion is inextricably tied to otherness, and
that this union is crucially important for understanding marriage in an
ecclesiological way.
Source: www.serborth.org