The Abandoned Mind

Humility Incarnate

2011-12-18T13:21:00.000-08:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.That tremendous list of names which was just read is St. Matthew’s genealogy of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is read each year on the Sunday before the Nativity of Christ to remind us that the Son of God did not simply drop out of heaven in human form to pass among us as a visitor, but truly became man, assuming our nature and everything that goes with it, including a complete and even somewhat checkered family tree. The message this genealogy brings is not only that Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham, the rightful heir of the throne of David, but even more wonderful, that He has condescended in great humility to join our race and unite Himself to each and every one of us, eternally.I don’t suppose the human mind can quite grasp the humility of such an action. It is perhaps best summed up by the words of the following hymn: “With mystic apprehension of the divine commandment, the bodiless angel quickly appeared in the house of Joseph and said to the unwed Maiden: Lo, He who in His descent didst bow the heavens is housed unchanged and whole in thee; as I behold Him in thy womb, taking on the form of a servant, I marvel and cry out to thee, Hail, O Bride without bridegroom!”Even the archangel Gabriel is portrayed as being “mystically apprehensive” by the unimaginable thing he is witnessing take place, and almost unable to speak for wonder over it. The great King of kings, the eternal God, has taken on the form of a lowly creature of dust, and shares one nature with those who willfully transgressed His laws and dishonored the glory of His image and despised and killed the holy prophets He sent to correct them. Even the heavens are bowed and nearly shattered at the passage of the Holy One through their midst. Mountains quake before Him and seas are parted at His presence, and yet the uncontainable God is contained within the womb of a young maiden. O wonder of wonders! O incomprehensible mystery! O depths of divine compassion and humility!Furthermore, when the King comes, is He received in a royal palace and carefully attended to by servants befitting His majesty? Not at all. Instead, He is born in a cave and laid in a manger, surrounded by oxen and donkeys. His royal bed is not feathers but hay; His kingly vesture not silk but swaddling cloths. He enters into His world under the most rude and humble of circumstances, and comes meekly and without complaint to be greeted only by Joseph and Mary.Any wealthy or great persons who came to Bethlehem that night surely had no problem gaining rooms at the inn. Important people and those with means always seem to find a way to obtain the best. It’s always been that way, but in our day it seems that even those of us who are neither rich nor important still expect to be treated as if we were. We feel entitled to receive a level of comfort in life and can become quite upset when situations fall below our standards, or people fail to rise to our expectations. We have a long way to go to learn the humility of God in order to be content to receive less than we think we deserve or to be more gracious to those around us. How often we forget that we are but dust, and forgetting this important fact become quick to complain or take offense? Would it not be better for us to imitate Christ to willingly accept less and be patient, kind, and forgiving with all?Doubtless as Christ lay in his little cave not far from the inn, many important people walked past Him on their way to their rooms, unaware of the glory that was just a few feet away. He was hidden from them for one particular reason, namely that they would have had to bow down to enter into His cave, and the haughty do not do such things easily. The shepherds who kept watch at night and who heard the angelic choir singing His praises, these were simple men and not too proud to dirty their knees crawling into the cave, and thus could enter in to behold the God hidden from those “greater men” who passed by.What this tells us is that the humility of God, though utterly beyond the comprehension of men and of angels, must at some greatly inferior level still be imitated by us, if we are to not pass by our Savior unknowingly but truly find and glorify Him.Everything in this world militates against such humility, and this is especially so in our country. Even in this sluggish economy, we still enjoy a level of comfort and convenience unprecedented in human history. We have access to a remarkable quality of life and health and recreation and varieties of experiences and foods and pleasures. And once our souls have experienced these delightful things, they do not surrender them easily. Unless the Church compels us to enter into a period of fasting, we would never think of abandoning our tasty foods to live on a miserable diet of rice and beans and pasta. Yet many people on this planet still do not eat even that well. Our “fasting” periods would be considered feasting periods by people in many third world countries. And here’s the thing: how can we possibly enjoy so many benefits and luxuries and conveniences and not have these deeply affect our souls? It doesn’t matter that these things are the norm in our culture, they have never really been the norm for humanity, and they can easily render our souls slothful and inattentive to spiritual things, as well as utterly spoiled and unwilling to struggle.Even now, during a season in which the Church asks us to simplify our lives and diets and be faithful in our prayers and remember the poor with almsgiving and just generally humble ourselves in preparation for the Nativity of our Savior, we may be so caught up in the Christmas blur of consumerism and travel and home decorating and family and parties that we are simply too busy to pay attention to spiritual things. Should we not stop to ask ourselves if we might be the ones passing by the glory in the cave by being too focused on nearly everything other than Jesus Christ?Once again, the humility that Christ demonstrates by assuming our lowly humanity in order to raise us to glory with Himself is both incredible and unimaginable. So also is our own lack of humility, as evidenced by the fact that we might pay so little attention to our Lord, or show so little gratitude or devotion to Him in return. It’s not that we are a bad people, but we may be a people simply lacking in Christian humility.If we are a people used to having what we want, doing things our way, and enjoying the good things that life brings us--in other words, just your average, 21st-century Americans--how does any of this train us to become humble people? We all know how difficult it is for us to pray regularly and faithfully, to pay attention during prayers or during the services, to pay tithes and alms, and to just generally show mercy, kindness, and forgiveness to others. Is it possible that this difficulty is caused by a lack of humility within us? If we were a more humble people, would we find it more natural to pray attentively and with warmth, to give generously to others, and to forgive freely as we ourselves have been forgiven? I think so. The divine humility initiated our salvation, as the Son who existed as God made Himself of no reputation, took the form of a bondservant, and came in the likeness of men. He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross for our sake and for our salvation. If our salvation began with the humility of the Son of God, it surely can only find a place in us if we humble ourselves before Him and put to death our pride.We strike a blow against pride every time we force ourselves to stand before our icons and pray whenever we don’t feel like it, or come to church when we’d rather not. Whenever we go against our fallen will to pay a tithe or give generous alms, to volunteer for service, to turn away from a temptation or a besetting sin, to struggle against a fleshly passion, to obey the word of God, to forgive an insult, or to right a wrong we’ve done to another--whenever we compel ourselves to do any of these good things, we strike another blow against pride and make a petition to God to grant us the divine gift of humility.I pray we would never forget the great humility that our Lord eternally reveals through His incarnation. May we not be too proud to follow His example and find our salvation in Him!+To the glory of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Inconvenienced by Jesus

2011-09-25T13:36:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen. From our gospel lesson on this First Sunday of Luke, we heard the story of a miraculous catch that brought the fishermen to faith in Christ. Occurring very early in our Lord’s ministry, this is the miracle that might not have happened if Simon Peter hadn’t been so tolerant of Jesus’ demands. As we heard, the fishermen had returned from a long and fruitless night of work and were finishing up the task of washing and stowing their nets prior to going home, when Jesus approached, asking to use one of their boats as a platform from which to preach to the multitude which had gathered there. These men were no doubt exhausted and really looking forward to a hot meal and a warm bed, but their interest in hearing the Rabbi speak on this day was greater than their love of sleep, and so they welcomed Him aboard and put out a small distance from the shore. When Jesus had finished speaking, He turned to the bone-weary fishermen and said, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch”. I almost can’t imagine a worse suggestion to make at such a time! These poor men had already bent over backwards to accommodate Jesus, and now instead of simply thanking them and letting them go home as they desired, He was seemingly asking to go on a fishing adventure for His amusement. In his fatigue, Simon Peter blurted out, “Master, we toiled all night and caught nothing!” He quickly regained his composure however, and in a more measured tone concluded, “At Thy word I will let down the nets.” He did the right thing, but you can tell he wasn’t very happy about it! Jesus appeared to have no idea how greatly He was inconveniencing His hosts or imposing upon their good will. If He had wanted to go fishing, couldn’t He have shown up the night before, or at the very least arrived before they had washed and put away their nets for the day? The fishermen had been kind enough to allow Him the use of their boat, but now it seemed as if He was only wanting to waste their time and energy. How many of us would have tolerated such a pushy request? I think we are a very gracious people for the most part, but we are also a people with rules. We really don’t like to be prevailed upon, or taken advantage of, and we’re very sensitive to demands on our time. It’s quite possible that we might have gently asked this Rabbi to be reasonable and come back later in the evening when we would be happy to take Him fishing. Wouldn’t that have been a good compromise? By politely offering this, we would have protected ourselves from any further imposition, and at the same time, entirely missed the miracle that would have changed the course of our lives! What a price to pay for refusing to be inconvenienced by Jesus! Many years ago I had the good fortune to spend considerable time with an elderly English monk by the name of Fr. Lazarus Moore [OBM]. During one of our many conversations which he was kind enough to endure, I put forth the following question: “Father, how can we know the will of God in our lives?” I suppose I had an idea that some basic foreknowledge of God’s will was necessary in order for us to follow it. The answer that Fr. Lazarus provided indicated that such foreknowledge is very seldom needed, provided we are willing to follow a simple guideline. He told me, “When we were in the monastery, they gave us a little rule: whenever somebody asks you to do something for them, make every effort to do it even if you don’t want to, for in this way we often find ourselves doing God’s will instead of our own.” What a brilliant little rule! How do we know the will of God in our lives? Very often we don’t in great detail, for at least two reasons. One is that we may lack the purity of soul and discernment of spirit to have that proverbial “direct line with God” that one might need for such information. Another major reason is that God simply doesn’t tell us His will ahead of time in every situation. Here’s the thing: He actually withholds this information out of mercy toward us. Consider our gospel lesson for example. Would it have been better for Jesus to tell the fishermen who He was and what He was about to do before making His unusual request? “Look, I am the Son of God, having dominion over the heavens and the earth, and you must obey Me, for I will cause the fishes to rush into your nets in vast numbers.” Such information--though perfectly true--would have been very unkind of our Lord to reveal. It would have changed the situation from one of persuasion to one of coercion, effectively forcing the fishermen to do His will without allowing them the freedom to make their own decision on the basis of their own good will. God never forces His will on us, which is exactly what He would be doing if He revealed it in lavish detail every day. Instead, He allows us the freedom to discover His will through our being open to the people and situations that He brings into our lives daily. God does not want slaves whose only choice is to obey Him or incur His wrath. He wants us to become a people of open hearts, willing to love and to serve and to go that extra mile with others, even when it is inconvenient for us to do so. Make no mistake, it is often inconvenient to love and to serve and to be open to the many unplanned and unexpected things that come our way. This is where the conflict with our own personal “rules” is frequently encountered. We do like our day to go a certain predictable way, and we dislike interruptions to our routine or unusual demands by others. As such, we are not generally very open to the will of God intruding into our lives. We like order--I’m afraid mostly our order--and aren’t keen on anything that threatens this. What I’m suggesting here is that anyone who would follow Christ simply cannot afford to live this way. If we insist on life going according to our rules, we will always miss the will of God and the many little miracles that might change the course of our lives, directing them toward heaven. It would be good for us to adopt the prayer of Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow which says in part, “O Lord, grant me to great the coming day in peace. […] Bless my dealings with all who surround me. Teach me to treat all that comes to me throughout the day with peace of soul and with firm conviction that thy will governs all. In all my deeds and words guide my thoughts and feelings. In unforeseen events let me not forget that all are sent by thee.” There is a bit more but this gives us the general idea. The good archbishop reminds us that the will of God is revealed to us every day, but seldom forcefully or directly as if on tablets of stone. More often it is gently revealed through the people and the situations that God allows the day to bring. If our eyes are closed to this revelation, our hearts will likewise be closed to the will of God. We will never see the presence of Christ in any difficult person or inconvenient situation. We will only see the difficulty, and will fight against it. This is where the brilliance of Fr. Lazarus’ little monastic rule shines through. Whenever someone asks you to do something for them (And we might add, whenever some circumstance or burden is placed upon you) make every effort to do it or see it through even if you don’t want to, for in this way we often find ourselves doing God’s will instead of our own. Notice that this little rule doesn’t require us to possess the insight of a saint, just an open mind and heart, and a willingness to comply more than complain. This is hard enough for us, but no one ever said that being a disciple of Christ would be easy. It is assumed that we must wrestle with our own will a bit in order to follow Christ actively. If we look through the scriptures we can easily find countless examples of people--from Abraham to Moses to Jonah to Simon Peter himself--who discovered the will of God only by doing what they did not want to do. Why should it be any different for us? Is our life more precious, our routine more sacred that we simply can’t afford to be inconvenienced by Jesus? I would suggest that we can’t afford not to be! This life is simply too short for us to focus all of our attention and energy onto it. We must serve our God while we can that we might find life everlasting in Him. +To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Take Up Your Cross

2011-09-19T06:56:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.On the Orthodox Church calendar, today is the Sunday after the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. From St. Mark’s gospel we heard the familiar call of our Lord, “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me”. St. Luke’s account adds the word “daily” to indicate that this action of self-denial and of taking up our cross to closely follow after Christ requires our constant attention and devotion. It doesn’t take a saint to realize that our abiding unchristian impulse is to have our own way in all things, to impose our will on people and situations, and to become angry or frustrated when things don’t go exactly as we want them to. This fallen self-will is what we must crucify in order to follow Christ, and it is truly a difficult, daily task.The way of the cross, of following Christ through voluntary self-denial, is indeed such a difficult way that very few people who call themselves “Christian” actually live it. Entire denominations have been built on the foundation of human self-will, offering the freedom to choose your own doctrine, morality, and whatever else you may prefer. Orthodoxy does not permit this of course, so the most common human response to it is nominalism. We have the true faith; we may not necessarily live it. In one sense this is no better than being a follower of your own do-it-yourself religion, for we can feel that we are completely within the will of God even while we are having nothing to do with Him whatsoever. The more comfortable we are with our daily life and the choices we make, the more comfortable we are with our Christianity, the less likely it is that we are actually living as Orthodox Christian believers and taking up our cross to follow Christ. Comfort and the Cross do not go hand-in-hand and are in fact mutually exclusive.As fallen human beings, we quite naturally want to have our own way. We prefer being in our comfort-zone, doing what we like, and most especially defending our will and our choices against all who might oppose them. Self-will is the source of all human conflict in the world and certainly in the church as well. We recognize this, but are so adept at justifying our own positions that we almost always feel it is the other person who is at fault and behaving in an unchristian manner. If only those other people wouldn’t be so stubborn and see the wisdom of our opinions about how things should be run around here! The conflicts suffered by the willful are endless. Yet how often do we see that the cure for this is to stop being willful? Rather than challenging ourselves to take up our cross and crucify our self-will at the first sign of conflict with others, isn’t it true that we will try to battle our way through to victory, or failing at this, will settle into a kind of passive-aggressive quiet resentment? Perhaps we think that our cold and stoney silence is a “Christian” response. Our lack of Christian spirit is exposed however the very next moment the matter is brought before us and the conflict resumes again.The New Testament epistles are filled with passages on Christian unity, since the apostles knew that if the Church cannot find peace, what hope has the world? The advice they give is for each of us to adopt the mind of Christ and set aside our own will to do what is best for others. We cheerfully agree with this rule, but often insist that our will is the absolute best for others. We might even hear ourselves saying, “I’m only thinking of what is best. I’m not just trying to have my own way here”. Yet if that were true, why do we often feel such resentment when our ideas aren’t followed? Why do we feel wounded or withdraw our support when things don’t go the way we want them to?We should take to heart the words of St. Paul to the Philippians by which he said, “Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.” Is this not the way of Christ? Don’t those words fill your heart with a sense of peace? Don’t they reflect the other-worldliness that characterizes true Christianity, rather than the strident, have-my-own-way-at-any-cost attitude that so characterizes life in this world?In the effort to take up our own cross daily to follow Christ, we should at the very least resist the urge to impose our will on others, and fight any inclination to withdraw ourselves from them when we don’t get what we want. We should strive to see every conflict in life not as a contest of wills, but as an opportunity from God to crucify our own self-will in Christian meekness. We should also remember that the cross we are asked to bear is personalized for each of us alone. I cannot resolve my conflicts with others by expecting them to ascend my cross while I continue to do as I please. I must voluntarily crucify myself. I must change, I must repent of that which causes conflict between myself and others. Only when I am firmly nailed to my own cross will the world know peace.Until we accept this truth, we will constantly repeat the error of trying to make life better by changing the actions and attitudes of the people around us. This will never succeed. You and I must accept the responsibility for our own repentance. The saints teach us that when we finally see ourselves as the source of all conflict, of all troubles, of all suffering and sorrow in others, then we are presented with the opportunity to change all that by changing ourselves. As long as our focus is on changing others, we only increase their suffering and contribute nothing to the redemption of the world. When we begin to change ourselves, we bring the presence and peace of Christ into the world.It is said that the Elder Paisios was asked his opinion about a certain war that was being waged at the time. The Elder hung his head in sorrow and replied, “It is my fault”. A startled visitor exclaimed, “What? How can you say that this distant war is your fault?” The Elder quickly responded with all sincerity, “If only I were more holy, perhaps this war would not have been fought”. This was a common attitude among the saints, who saw all human conflict as being rooted in their own sins. How different this is from the view of the unenlightened, who see all conflict as being the fault of others and never as their own. Perhaps we can see from this what we need to do to bring Christ into our world.Whether we are speaking of our place of work, our families, our neighborhood, our parish, or the wide-world itself--and whether they know it or not--everyone is waiting for us to take up our cross and follow Christ. If you’re counting on anyone else to make your world a better place while your cross remains unoccupied, you have a false hope and are actually doing harm to your neighbor. Peace in our families, in our church, in our lives, and in our world actually begins with us choosing the way of the cross and the voluntary canceling out of our self-will that it demands.You’ll notice that our Lord did not say, “If any man would come after Me, let him assert himself, stand up to others, fight for his rights, and follow Me”. Such actions, while very common in our society, do not represent the way of Christ. We must stop forcing our will upon life, God, and the people around us. We must die to ourselves in order to become alive in Christ. “He who loses his life for My sake shall find it”. If we choose the path of self-cancelation, God does not leave us canceled out, but raises us up to life everlasting. This is the mystery of the Cross and the path of true life.+To the glory of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Difficulty of Devotion

2011-08-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

At first glance, our two scripture lessons this morning [Corinthians 4:9-16, Matthew 17:14-23] seem to have only the slightest connection. From the epistle we heard the pleas of a spiritual father, the great apostle Paul, beseeching his spiritual children in Corinth to lay aside their smug and comfortable lifestyle to become imitators of him even as he, in his voluntary privation and suffering, was an imitator of Christ. In our gospel lesson we see another father, this time pleading with the apostles to heal his demon-possessed son. As it turned out, they were stymied in their attempts and could do nothing for the boy because of a lack of faith on both their part and that of the father himself. Our Lord stepped in to correct the father’s faith and healed his son with a word, and later took His apostles to school on the need to enliven spiritual labors with faith, prayer and fasting.

If we look closer at these two passages, we may find a connection that runs deeper than just two fathers urgently seeking to help their children. I believe these passages combine to speak to us of our need to engage and live out the Christian life to the fullest degree possible, while revealing the difficulties we face whenever we make such an effort.

I think if we were to take a poll, most of us would admit that we feel the need to live a “better” Christian life. We might claim a need to pray more, to improve and deepen our understanding of the faith, to be more repentant and less excusing of our sins, and to be generally more focused on Christ than on ourselves every hour of the day. But if we admit this, why do we find it so hard to act on it? Why is it so hard for us to pray, be devoted to Christ, or forsake our sins? When we come to the priests with our sins and the hope that they can heal us, do we find their ministrations to be as powerless as the apostles in this morning’s gospel lesson and our various demons still clinging to us even after confession? Why is it so hard for us to be healed? Could it be that our desire for healing simply isn’t as great as our desire for so many other things in this life?

What in the world could possibly render us so weak-willed that we would not desire and work for our salvation more than any other thing? Well, the world is a pretty big place and filled with many things that fallen people will tend to love more than God. In addition to this, each of us carries about an entire world within himself, filled with thoughts and inclinations and passionate habits that constantly thwart and grieve the Holy Spirit of God. We are not a simple people by any means, focused only on the kingdom of heaven. We tend to be a people divided in our interests and a little too devoted to the middle-class ethos of living a comfortable life.

Be assured I’m not picking on us. It seems to me this was the exact same problem St. Paul faced with the believers at Corinth. In the passage we read today he seems to start out praising the Corinthians, telling them that they were wise, they were strong, they were held in high honor among men. How nice! Who among us wouldn’t want to hear ourselves described in this way? Soon however we realize that Paul wasn’t giving them praise but was revealing their fundamental problem. It was because they so valued good standing in the world that they had so little to do with Christ. Paul contrasted the noble and happy Corinthians with himself, telling them, “To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are ill-clad and buffeted and homeless”. St. Paul was hardly a poster-child for the modern prosperity gospel! On top of this he revealed to the Corinthians a very different attitude than the one commonly held by those in love with this world. He reminded them, “When [we are] reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we try to conciliate; we have become, and are now, as the refuse of the world, the off-scouring of all things”. In other words, Paul had adopted the mind of Christ, living out the true gospel in such a way that worldly comfort and good treatment by men meant little to him, but seeking the kingdom of God meant everything.

We may have more in common with the Corinthians than with their devout spiritual father. We love taking comfort wherever we can find it, surrounding ourselves if at all possible with nice things, lovely experiences, good friends and pleasant social activities. We almost never question whether all this pleasure-taking is beneficial to our souls, or whether it is in fact harmful to them in the long run. The middle-class suburban lifestyle to which many aspire hardly equips a person for any rigorous self-denial in the Christian life. More often it subverts the Christian life to its rules, judging Christianity to be good if it adds to or accommodates our pleasure, but a thing to be avoided if it makes any demands we don’t wish to fulfill.

Comfort and pleasure are so important to us that we rarely think of anything else. This not only manifests itself in the lifestyle choices we make, but in our basic daily attitudes. If someone hurts us, we hate them. If someone has it better in life than we do, we envy them. If our health or financial well-being are jeopardized, we resent God for allowing it to happen. If anyone offends us in even the most minor way, God help them and the horse they rode in on because we’ll do everything in our power to avenge our pride, or failing that, will be snippy and judgmental for years to come. All of these responses are ultimately rooted in our love of comfort and pleasure, because we want to fully enjoy our present lives in this world and are unwilling to endure anything that might lessen that enjoyment in the slightest degree.

Is it any wonder then that we find it so difficult to follow the way of Christ? It isn’t that comfort and pleasure are inherently sinful; it’s just that we become so addicted to them that we can’t tolerate anything less. Thus self-denial in any form becomes repugnant to us. Prayer and fasting sound good in theory, but since they reward us with no immediate pleasure, and actually detract from our pleasure, they are habitually set aside. If our sins produce even the most fleeting delight we will keep milking them for all they’re worth. If tithing faithfully conflicts with our having what other people have, can anyone seriously expect us to settle for less? And if there is a need for faithful volunteers in the parish to vacuum carpets and clean toilets, do we forsake such chores because we are “too busy” to sacrifice our valuable time merely to serve others?

It is so difficult for us to say no to ourselves and deny ourselves any immediate gratification for the sake of God’s eternal kingdom. This is why some sins, like some demons, do not come out of us easily. A life that is almost completely self-absorbed is the most difficult thing to change because it requires us to go against our instinct to please ourselves and do only what we like to do. What selfish person is willing to take upon himself the mind of Christ and say, “I will empty myself, I will settle for less than I deserve, I will become the servant of all”?

With the help of the Holy Spirit who indwells us, such radical change is possible, but only when we are willing to start paying the price. Are we willing to do what we don’t like to do if all it does is bring us closer to God? Will we come to confession with a renewed desire for change and to actually follow our father-confessor’s counsel? What good does it do to listen to our priest, only to continue to live as we please? Will we strive to be more faithful in prayer and fasting and repentance, even though these things are a struggle for us? Will we invest more in our parish in terms of time, service and money rather than being content to let a handful of faithful people carry the burden alone? These are not fun things, but necessary things. No good parent wishes to raise spoiled, self-indulgent children who can think of no one but themselves. The same is true for our Heavenly Father, who has given us works to do that we might mature into useful, productive Christian people.

My brothers and sisters, I ask your forgiveness, since I too am a selfish person. Let us not be content to remain as we are. God would set us free from every spiritual force that oppresses us and most especially from enslavement to our own desires. Let us engage the life of devotion to Christ in an ever-increasing way each day. If we give our Christianity the attention it deserves, all of life can become a movement away from preoccupation with the self toward a true communion with one another and the God who loves us.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

A Wedding Homily

2011-07-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Unless one has been hiding under a particularly remote rock the past few years, he is surely aware of the growing push in our society to reinvent marriage in ways unrecognizable to traditional Christianity. While this trend might seem to have come “out of nowhere,” it is in fact rooted in the deeper confusion and misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of marriage that has gripped our country for at least half a century. Once widely acknowledged to be an authentic sacrament solemnly administered by a church body and deriving both an eternal and salvific purpose from the God who ordained and blessed it, marriage is more commonly seen today as a private legal agreement between any two persons, deriving its legitimacy from the state, and existing solely for the mutual if temporal pleasure of the couple involved.

Increasingly fuzzy in the American consciousness is any awareness of marriage as the God-effected union of one man and one woman for the purpose of their mutual salvation. Such a view seems very nearly pretentious and even excessively religious to a culture given over to secular pragmatism. In a word, marriage is seldom any longer regarded as being holy. It is less and less understood as being integral to God’s sacred plan for humanity reflected in the very reason He created us as male and female in the first place.

The Eastern Orthodox Church has long held to the traditional Christian understanding of marriage revealed first and in part in the Genesis story of Adam and Eve. According to this, Woman was taken from the side of Man and fashioned by God to be his helpmate, his co-laborer, his wife. Being literally of the same flesh and bone, yet possessing differences complimentary to one another, the Man and the Woman were meant to operate in complete harmony as a reflection of the unity shared by the three Divine Persons of the Godhead. Between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit there exists no conflict of will, no battle for dominance, no petty struggle to be identified or appreciated independently of the other. There exists only the perfect communion of love, and a blessed oneness of purpose and intent and action.

This is how the Man and the Woman were intended by God to live. As we may know, that budding harmony was tragically interrupted when the Woman exercised her own will quite independently of her husband to heed the Serpent and eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Man exercised his will independently of God to follow suit. The result was that the harmony and communion that once existed between mankind and God was broken, and of particular interest to us today, the harmony and communion that once existed between the Man and the Woman was also shattered. No longer sharing one will and purpose between themselves or with God, men and women have struggled greatly and often against one another in this fallen and broken world we have inherited.

I say that this is of particular interest to us, because today we are asking for the grace and mercy of God to mend this universal conflict in a small way and with one couple by bringing together and uniting M. and S. in Holy Matrimony. Did you know that the word matrimony is derived originally from the Latin word for mother? This shows that marriage was once seen as an institution for the nurturing and protection of motherhood and child-rearing. It is precisely this definition that is under great assault by certain factions within our society today, but as you might discern from the prayers we have offered during the Orthodox wedding service, it is very much the one we still hold. Everything about this service expresses our deepest beliefs regarding marriage, the roles and duties of the man and the woman within it, the significance of procreation and the rearing of children, and the relationship of the family to the kingdom of heaven and to salvation itself.

As you can see, M. and S. stand before us wearing crowns placed upon their heads by the priest. This not only signifies that they have been granted the blessing and authority of God to reign as king and queen within their newly-established household, but speaks also of the crowns of glory they will receive from Christ Himself should they fulfill their duties faithfully and with honor. In the Orthodox view, marriage is very much rooted in the pursuit of heaven and the working out of eternal salvation. The man and his wife are each expected to defeat his or her own divisive self-will, and together express and live out the will and purpose of God. They are instructed in moments of conflict to not blame or revile or make efforts to change the other, but to each discover within themselves what must be changed for the sake of harmony. They are to see marriage as a daily opportunity for repentance and the self-correction needed to better reflect Christ within themselves. They are told to exercise authority over themselves and their children as God exercises His authority over creation; not with oppression and domination and self-interest, but with love and nurturing and actions of self-giving for the good of the whole (“For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son”).

Christian marriage in every way reflects the unity of the Godhead, as well as the union of God and man expressed in the communion between Christ and His Body, the Church. Indeed, in the lesson from Ephesians 5 we just heard read, the husband is commanded to love his wife in the same manner as Christ loves His Church, sacrificing himself for her with an eye toward the day when he shall present her to God holy and without blemish. The wife in turn is commanded to obey her husband and submit to him as the Church does to Christ, an arrangement that does not lead to subjugation or enslavement, but to human freedom in the highest sense.

Properly understood, Christian marriage is absolutely integral to God’s plan to save humanity. It becomes the means whereby husband and wife confront and defeat every selfish sin within themselves to become one with each other and one with Christ.

M. and S. have only just now been joined in this salvific union. The great adventure which is the pursuit of their mutual salvation still lies before them. They scarcely know what they are in for! But with the help of God and the support of their parish community they will over time cease to be merely two individuals to become one new creation united in the perfect communion of love and finding heaven as their true and final home. This is the noble and exalted view of holy marriage still held by the Eastern Orthodox Church and the one that from this day forth, M. and S. will have the joy of living out and making real in their new household.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Palm Sunday

2011-04-21T14:01:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Today is Palm Sunday, also known as the Sunday of the Triumphal Entry of our Lord into Jerusalem. On this day, Jesus Christ rode into the city to receive the accolades of a vast multitude of people who greeted Him as the long-promised Messiah of Israel. The prophet Zechariah had foreseen this event centuries earlier, writing: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O Daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, [even] a colt, the foal of a donkey.” [Zech. 9:9] Everything was unfolding exactly as the prophet had foretold, and the people seemed ecstatic to receive the King of Israel into their midst, giving every reason to think that Christ’s hour of glory in the midst of His people had finally come.

But as we know, this crowd’s love for their King was not to last. A mere five days later, many of these same people would be gathered outside the Praetorium on a bitterly cold evening shouting “Crucify Him!” and threatening a riot if Pontius Pilate did not hand Jesus over to the executioners. How is it that the people went from an ecstatic adoration to a murderous rage in less than a week? I guess you could say that Jesus wasn’t the Messiah they were expecting.

To give a bit of background, all these people had come to Jerusalem, not to see Jesus, but to celebrate the feast of Passover. According to the historian Josephus, it was not uncommon for the population of the city to swell from its normal 12,000 or so to nearly three million each year, as Jews from all over the world came to Jerusalem for this feast. For many of those people it was likely that Passover had become less of a religious holiday and more of a national one, something like our own 4th of July celebration. It was a time for Jews living abroad to come home and celebrate their ancient deliverance from Egypt, and to speak of the coming Messiah who most believed would appear very soon to break the yoke of the Roman Empire which ruled over them at that time. There was much Messianic fervor in the air as the people longed, not for someone who would save them from their sins, but for one who would rise up as a great political hero to mount a rebellion against their oppressors and lead Jewish armies to victory over the Romans and all the nations. When the visiting crowd heard that this Jesus had raised a man named Lazarus from the dead, it thought “Surely such a powerful miracle-worker must be the one sent by God to deliver us!” Thus they hastily cut down palm leaves and rushed out to greet Him as a the conquering king they hoped He would become.

Had He wanted to, Jesus could have easily become this king the Jews so wanted. The Romans and all nations would have fallen helplessly before His divine power and Christ could have forced His rule into every corner of the earth from His throne in Solomon’s Temple, if that had been His desire. However, Jesus did not come to establish an earthly kingdom relying on force and might, but a heavenly kingdom built upon peace and man’s voluntary restoration to God. His intent was not to be the warrior-king, waving a sword and riding boldly into battle. Instead, He would become the Suffering Servant, raising His cross and marching meekly up to Golgotha to meet His destiny. This was clearly not the Messiah the Jews were expecting. Furthermore, when Jesus allowed Himself to be arrested and humiliated by the despised Romans, it became abundantly clear to them that this was not the hero who had come to restore the national pride of Israel. If anything, He had become a national embarrassment to them. As the soldiers mocked Him and rudely exclaimed, “Hail, King of the Jews!” the Jews themselves felt insulted and humiliated and sought to distance themselves from Jesus, saying: “We have no king but Caesar!” Because of their pride and ignorance of God’s plan, the Jewish people found themselves rejecting their Messiah as an impostor and hardening their hearts against Him. Because of this, they cast aside the Son of God who had come to save them from the curse of sin.

I wanted us to reflect on these things today not to disparage the ancient Jews, but as always, to aid us in our own repentance and the pursuit of our salvation. The first thing we should note is just how quickly human disposition toward God can change. Isn’t that true? As long as life is humming along well according to our plans, we are happy to praise God and live our little Christian lives. But when unpleasant change comes and we are faced with disappointments, trials, or challenges, we can often find ourselves doubting the goodness of God and His mercy toward us. Perhaps we don’t start screaming for His crucifixion, but we may begin to distance ourselves from God in our hearts, and blame or question Him or otherwise hold Him responsible for making things happen that we don’t like. Like the ancient Jews, our problem here may also be that we too quickly forget the basic spiritual undercurrent to this life and pin our happiness entirely on temporal, passing things that by nature cannot endure.

How quickly we forget that we are a fallen and broken people living in a fallen and broken world. God allows us to live under these circumstance with all the struggles, temptations, pains, and sorrows inherent to it, in order that we might not mistake this life for paradise and be content with it. From God’s point of view, this brief life is given as a time for us to prepare our souls and make ourselves ready for the true and everlasting life to be revealed. His whole focus is therefore on that life to come. Our whole focus on the other hand is often limited to this life alone, and this is why we are tormented when our hopes and dreams don’t come true, and the paradise we seek to make for ourselves here and now never comes to fruition. We may spend many years trying to find happiness here only to find it all taken away in a moment.

At such times it is easier to blame God than to correct our own thoughts and reevaluate our whole perspective. It would be far better to ask ourselves what were we thinking in the first place. Did we forget that our flesh is growing weaker day-by-day? Did we imagine that if we had enough money, health, love, or good times that we would live forever in that state and never die? Have we found despair because our biggest dreams in life were never about being pure in heart and knowing God, but about having the ideal family, the nice home, and a financially-secure retirement? If we are driven throughout life by the wrong desires, can we not see that God’s gentle correction--even if unpleasant now--is for our eternal benefit?

When sorrows come, as they absolutely must to a fallen people living in a fallen world, can we see that these are given as a chance for us to return to God and place our hope in Him alone? Also, don’t we understand that the degree of bliss we will enjoy in heaven is directly proportional to the degree of suffering we endure now with faith? Jesus taught--and the lives of all the saints and martyrs confirm--that we should rejoice when sorrows befall us now, for great is our reward in heaven. Suffering is not a punishment, but a gift of life from the God of life. If we seek only to enjoy unspotted happiness here, we shall not enjoy a life of blessedness there, and that is an unchangable fact.

The Jews living under Roman oppression sought only one thing, freedom from that oppression to live as they pleased. When Christ did not seem to provide them that, they turned against Him. We are living under the oppression of sin and death and all the sufferings these bring to us and we likewise want them all to go away. If they do not, perhaps we fall into the error of the Jews and reject Jesus ourselves. God could make our sorrows go away, just as Jesus could have been the earthly king that the Jews wanted. But this would not bring salvation. How much better it is for us to accept our struggles, our weakness and pain, and bring the Suffering Servant Jesus Christ that much more into our hearts and lives. In this way we will find peace no matter what befalls us, and the joy of Pascha and our own personal resurrection with Christ will be that much greater in all of us.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

St. John Climacus Sunday

2011-04-05T15:33:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

On this Fourth Sunday of Great Lent, the Orthodox Church commemorates St. John Climacus, who was a 6th-century monastic, bishop, and true saint who is best known for his book “The Ladder of Divine Ascent”. This book was originally intended for those involved in monastic endeavors, but over the years was found to be useful for all serious Christians who sought to subdue the sinful passions and purify their love for Jesus Christ. Each of its 30 chapters--called “steps”--encourage the reader to increasingly put away the love of earthly things and continue in an upward climb, as if rung by rung, progressing in both virtue and the love of God, toward a state of spiritual perfection in Christ.

Sadly, these things seem to describe the Christianity of a distant, bygone era. Today’s Christians do not seem terribly concerned with subduing their sinful passions or attaining virtue and the perfection of love in Christ. On the one hand are the people who insist that God already sees them as perfect because of their faith in Jesus. These deem any effort to progress in holiness as an attempt to “add to” the righteousness of Christ and equate it to the foolishness of the Galatians. On the other hand are the weary Orthodox and perhaps other traditional Christians who may have taken a few weak stabs at correcting themselves but have been overwhelmed by the enormity of the task or the coldness of their hearts toward God. We can easily surrender to a kind of laissez-faire Orthodoxy, which is nothing more than a beaten-down, discouraged cynicism that we can do no better to improve our response to God’s transforming love.

Compared to the Christianity of long ago, we are living in a time of great spiritual darkness and faintheartedness that often makes even the smallest spiritual effort seem incredibly difficult to us. Things as simple as keeping our little rule of prayer can often overwhelm us and seem infinitely beyond our meager abilities. We don’t know a great deal about being strict with ourselves or of forcing ourselves to do the things that are hard. We loathe spiritual struggle and much too quickly accept the notion that a kind of spiritual mediocrity is the best we can ever hope for in our lives.

But St. John Climacus understood that man was created for much higher and greater things. We are created to work together with God, in synergy, uniting our will and action to His grace and divine energies to accomplish what we by ourselves alone could never do. There are many places in Scripture where we are specifically told to cooperate with God in this way and to labor diligently and daily to eliminate sin from our lives and progress toward Christian perfection.

One such place can be found in II Peter chapter one, in a passage that sounds remarkably like a ladder of divine ascent itself. Having just reminded us of our high calling in Christ and the things available to us by His divine power, the apostle continues: “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall: for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” [2 Peter 1:4-11]

Notice how St. Peter makes it plain that those who remain barren and unfruitful, though they were purged from their previous sins, are not guaranteed salvation as if by “faith alone”. Cooperation with God in the cultivation of the Christian virtues is necessary to make our calling and election sure and for entrance into the kingdom to be granted unto us.

The subduing of our many earthly passions and the formation of one focused passion for God, along with the growth in virtue that this brings, is the biblical characterization of the true Christian life. As Orthodox Christians, we must seek to embrace what the Scriptures teach and our Holy Tradition echoes concerning the Christian life, which is one of divine ascent from the fallen state in which we now exist to the exalted state God intends for us.

I think it is important to remember on this Sunday of St. John Climacus that the Church is not suggesting we should all live as monks. You don’t even need to read the Ladder of Divine Ascent if you don’t wish to. But what we do need is to live as Christians, and in so doing, to constantly push ourselves to reach for more of Christ in our lives, setting our affection on heaven above, not on the things of this world.

Beloved, I know that we can get tired and discouraged. By this point in Great Lent, we often feel very tired and discouraged. Perhaps we have seen more setbacks and failures than progress, and feel that our lent has been--to borrow a lyric from the Moody Blues--”another day’s useless energy spent”. But then again, perhaps we haven’t honestly given lent the full effort it deserves. We may have found it too easy to fall back into old habits: skipping lenten services or dragging in late on Sundays, praying sporadically, fasting incompletely, always keeping God at arm’s length, and making little sustained effort to draw near to Him during this time. We may protest that Orthodoxy is too demanding or sets the bar too high for “ordinary folks” like us. But maybe we’ve simply made ourselves out to be a little too ordinary and have forgotten our high calling in Christ Jesus. God is offering us something of unspeakable value--truly the offer of a lifetime--yet we may be too wedded to the ordinary to accept.

This is why remembering St. John Climacus and his Ladder of Divine Ascent is beneficial, even for those who’ve never read it and never will. At least when we hear of it in church, it serves as a reminder that our lives are not meant to remain mired in the ordinary. We are called to continually urge our souls upward, despite their great reluctance, and experience the joy of their union with our Sweetest Lord Jesus. This is the purpose of Great Lent. May we seize the precious few days that remain to continue our ascent to glorious Pascha and the bliss that awaits beyond!

+To the glory of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!

2011-01-09T11:00:00.000-08:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Thirty-five years ago, when I read this morning’s excerpt from Matthew [4:12-17] for the very first time, I distinctly remember feeling a bit let down by it. In the previous chapter, I had encountered the exciting character of John the Baptist, who dressed like a wild caveman and went about exhorting and rebuking the people and preaching: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” Now, as I read about the Lord Jesus Christ poised to begin His public ministry, I knew things were really going to ramp up. Here was the greatest preacher in history about to take the world stage, and His very first message to that waiting world was going to be: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!”

Really?

I expected Him to open with something a little more original than that. But my major disappointment with His preaching debut was that He didn’t say so much as a single word about our need to accept Him as personal Lord and Savior and to start reading the bible. I couldn’t see any value in His talking about heaven if He wasn’t going to tell people what it would take to get there! In short, I felt that He had stumbled out of the gate and muffed His first opportunity to make a clear presentation of the message of salvation.

It took a few more years for me to comprehend that Jesus preached the gospel just fine, thank you very much. It was yours truly who had a few wires loose.

First off, I had failed to notice in this passage that Jesus wasn’t talking about heaven, He was talking about the kingdom of heaven. In fact, Jesus never really spoke of heaven in an abstract way as people often do today. He most often referred to heaven as a kingdom, implying that it was a realm where the rule and order and life of God was experienced, rather than the rebellion, confusion, and death common to this fallen world. I did know that one day Jesus would reign as king from heaven, but quite honestly, I never gave it that much thought. To me, heaven was the pleasant if somewhat airy-fairy promise of eternal bliss awaiting all true believers in the life to come. Beyond that, heaven didn’t seem to have much to do with this life except to serve as an incentive to get people to accept Christ, and frankly, the fear of hell worked better in that regard. For some reason, more people seem attuned to the idea of receiving eternal punishment from God than eternal reward.

But when it came to this idea of the kingdom of heaven being truly at hand, as if it were just moments away from being established upon the earth, I could not grasp this at all. Where was this kingdom of heaven if that were true? Some people taught that the reign of Christ was to be experienced in the here-and-now by the application of biblical principles to our lives. This sounded good but I was always painfully aware that we all read and interpreted our bibles differently. I couldn’t see how Jesus could be an effectual king if we were the ones making all the rules. Later I also realized that if the bible was to represent the reign of Christ in this world, He would have to wait an additional 1400 years for the printing press to be invented to really kickstart His kingdom. This was stretching the meaning of the words “at hand” pretty thin!

One final thought that occurred to me--the most disturbing one of all--was that whenever Christ was to be enthroned as absolute monarch of His kingdom, what if we didn’t like it? Even as an Evangelical Christian myself, I was ashamed of all the pride and egotism prevalent in our movement. We claimed to be a people obedient to the bible, but in practice we made the bible obedient to ourselves. While staunchly defending the inerrancy and supremacy of the bible, we twisted and abused the scriptures to support our pet doctrines and beliefs. I began to suspect that our strident insistence on the authority of the bible was nothing more than a thinly-disguised defense of our own authority and independence. Clearly, we were a people who liked to be in charge.

How would we fare in the kingdom of heaven where our opinions no longer mattered and the rules were not ours to make up? How would we handle it when we were no longer calling the shots, because a King was made to rule over us with absolute authority? We all imagined that we would enjoy it of course, but how could we possibly know that when there was nothing in the evangelical Christian experience to help prepare us for this? We were learning how to be rulers, not the ruled. We thought our souls were prepared for heaven, but there was no way to know if they were being properly prepared for the kingdom of heaven.

When Christ said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” He was speaking the literal truth. Ten days after His ascension into heaven to be seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high, He sent the Holy Spirit to establish His Church, the outpost of the kingdom of heaven on earth, and the beginning of His eternal reign over the new creation.

As an Evangelical, “church” was one more thing that meant very little to me, because here again was something we had reinvented to support our independence. To an Evangelical, church is not the intersection of heaven and earth, the place where a foretaste of the kingdom of heaven is experienced that men might wrestle with the rule and authority of Christ, hopefully to submit. No, church is portrayed as “the great, invisible body of all true believers, regardless of denomination,” a most unbiblical definition, to say the least. We had stripped “church” of all authority and tradition, because these posed a threat to our own authority and traditions. Like the bible, like heaven, and perhaps even like God Himself, we had reinvented church to support our experiences and preferences.

It may seem that I have painted a fairly bleak picture of my Evangelical past, but in truth I am speaking of humanity itself. Mankind is fallen and broken and spiritually darkened and rebellious. For this reason no one accepts the reign of Christ easily. It is the same for Orthodox Christians as everyone else. This is why Jesus graciously established His Church upon the earth. The Church is man’s first encounter with the kingdom of heaven, the place where we can wrestle with God’s claim of absolute authority over us and learn to put to death our rebellious traits. Besides introducing me to Christ, which was a very good thing, the other benefit I derived from my Evangelical years was the lesson that we simply can’t be trusted to make our own rules. When we are in charge of deciding what is truth, we inevitably reduce it to fit what we want.

This is a lesson we must not forget as Orthodox Christian believers. The Holy Tradition of faith and life we have inherited in the Church is not ours to lay aside as we please. It is not up to us to make the rules, if we want to prepare ourselves for the kingdom of heaven. We do like to have our own way and do tend to feel that Orthodoxy is awfully demanding. I think we should see that the very thing we are struggling with is our acceptance of the reign of Christ in our lives. This is normal for a fallen and broken people, but Christ must win this struggle if His Church is to be of any eternal value to us. Now is the time for us to bring ourselves under the reign of Jesus Christ, lest we discover too late that we want nothing to do with it.

Our gracious Lord told us what to do and why we should do it when He said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” The Church is revealed as the beginning of the kingdom of heaven on earth, mankind’s introduction to the reign of Christ, given that we might find peace with God and eternal life when His kingdom comes in fullness at Christ’s second appearing. What a great gift His Church is to our fallen race! Let us not excuse ourselves from the struggle or make things too easy on ourselves in a time that is meant for us to submit to our King, Jesus Christ.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Repentance

2011-01-03T11:07:00.000-08:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

In the year 1949, British author George Orwell imagined a totalitarian regime in the near future of 1984 which controlled the populace largely through the manipulation of words. In Orwell’s novel, the government had successfully imposed a heavily-altered version of the English language called “Newspeak” in which the original meanings of any words which might prove troubling to the goals of the regime were stripped and replaced with new definitions that encouraged conformity with those goals. Orwell wisely grasped that any political power that can somehow control what words mean will gain complete control over the thoughts and actions of those who use them.

In our culture, we needn’t look long to find words that have been redefined to bring power to the groups behind the changes. One victim of this trend is the word “discrimination”. Younger people, trained to regard discrimination negatively, may not realize that it was once considered a very good thing to be a discriminating person. It implied that one had cultivated a higher level of wisdom and discernment, as well as the ability to distinguish between the good and the bad in life. In more recent times the word has been altered for use as an accusation of bigotry, racism, or homophobia against any who oppose certain political agendas. The word has been stripped of its original meaning and redefined to become a nasty label used to coerce and intimidate all so-called enemies of “Progress”.

What is interesting about this is that by losing the traditional meaning of the word discrimination, our society seems close to losing the actual practice of it as well. We are becoming a people who no longer prize true wisdom and godly discernment, and we increasingly struggle to distinguish between good and bad or even basic right and wrong in life. (Is it wrong for men to marry other men? No, we mustn’t ask that. We mustn’t discriminate!) By losing an important word from our vocabulary, is it possible we’ve nearly lost the very essence of what that word describes in the human experience?

If you’re wondering where I’m headed with this, there is another word--commonly used by Christians and featured prominently in our gospel lesson this morning--that is also in danger of being lost, both in meaning and in practice. That word is repentance.

From Mark’s gospel we heard that the Forerunner came preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. In Acts 2, Peter also exclaimed to the multitude, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins”. Throughout the scriptures, baptism, repentance, and the forgiveness of sins are linked inseparably together. This is because, at least in the traditional understanding of things, baptism is the new birth of water and the Spirit which both washes and renews and begins a new life, the goal of which is to allow the spiritual healing of the believer through the gradual formation of Christ in him, who is Himself the image of perfect humanity, united and filled with God. It is the Holy Spirit who forms Christ in us, but we must cooperate with the Spirit’s work on a daily basis. This cooperation is what we call repentance, which is the the chief action and characteristic of the Christian life. Repentance is our daily, God-given opportunity to participate in all that He has made available in this new life for our transformation and spiritual healing.

We should note that baptism without an ongoing repentance, does very little good. It is like being born, but never growing up. From the moment of our new birth in Christ we are expected to enter into this life of repentance, a life of continuous movement toward God, that allows us to mature into the fullness of the stature of Christ. Repentance therefore is a very positive action, being the daily movement of the believer toward God, with God Himself helping us every step of the way.

But there are many Christians today who see repentance in a different way. For some, repentance is the rather negative, guilt-riddled action of constantly apologizing to God for the sins they endlessly commit. To add to this, many are taught that they have something called a sin nature which compels them to sin, meaning they can never truly stop sinning or find change. This is a false teaching, but one so ingrained in the thinking of many believers that they simply give up on resisting sin to claim that Christ forgives all.

It is not true that we have a sin nature. We have a human nature that is fallen. There’s a big difference between the two! Because our nature is fallen, we have acquired an unnatural propensity or inclination toward sin that is quite strong. But this propensity is contrary to our human nature and not integral to it. The holy fathers even taught that it is entirely against our nature to sin, and this is why sin brings such disastrous consequences to us. People are confusing propensity with nature and thus are being led to believe that they have no choice but to sin, when this is simply not true.

There is a popular Christian radio program called People to People that even goes so far as to insist that since we have a sin nature that compels us to sin, it is foolish for Christians to continually tell God they’re sorry or ask for His forgiveness. Their contention is that the Christian has already received forgiveness for all sins past, present, and future, so he should just forget about sin and repentance and enjoy the love and acceptance of Christ. It sounds almost too good to be true, doesn’t it?

Besides the fact that our not having a sin nature negates that whole premise and makes us once against responsible for our actions, the other major flaw in that teaching is the idea that sin is nothing more than a legal infraction already paid for, rather than a terribly destructive force that breaks our communion with God and ruins human lives. If sin is ignored because of some doctrinal gimmick designed to us feel better, the results can only be disastrous.

There are many strange ideas about repentance, as the word seems to mean different things to different people. But there is only one true meaning to the word, and we must not lose that, lest we also lose the practice and the power of repentance itself. There is no avoiding the fact that repentance is difficult. True repentance allows for no shortcuts or clever gimmicks. It requires that we cooperate with God to wrestle violently against our strong propensity to sin in order that Christ might be formed in us by the power and operation of the Holy Spirit. Repentance is long, hard, and often discouraging work, but it is never our work alone. God is with us to help us every step of the way. Let us not shrink back from the work God calls us--even graciously allows us--to do. Let us embrace continual repentance as the core of our Orthodox Christian life, and by it, draw ever nearer to our God.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Good Teacher

2010-12-11T09:06:00.000-08:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

From our gospel lesson this morning [Luke 18:18-27] we heard that a man approached Jesus with a question: “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” On the surface, this might seem like a wonderful question right at the heart of the Christian message. However, things are not always as they first appear to be. We know that throughout the three years of our Lord’s ministry, many people approached Jesus with requests of one sort or another, but they nearly all pertained to earthly needs: “Lord, grant me my sight,” “Lord, heal my daughter,” “Lord, tell my brother to divide our inheritance with me”. Jesus saw it all, from the plaintive cries of truly hurting people, to the selfish desires of the utterly clueless. By comparison to these, it might seem that the young man in today’s lesson really had his act together. Nevertheless, if we dig a little deeper into the story we find that this man too had some serious misunderstandings regarding the person of Jesus Christ and His message concerning the kingdom of God. This accounts for the rather curious responses which our Lord gave to him, which were intended to help the man connect the dots and come closer to the truth.

The man first greeted our Lord saying, “Good Teacher”. Immediately Jesus asked him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God”. The heretics who deny Christ’s divinity love to twist this verse to make Jesus say, “Don’t call Me good. Only God is good and I am not God”. But of course that’s nowhere near what He actually said. Jesus did not say “Don’t call Me good” but instead asked the young man to consider, “Why do you call Me good?”

The goodness of Jesus was obvious to all. Repentant sinners saw His goodness and were attracted to Him. Even His enemies could find no fault in Him. Jesus’ goodness was equal to that of His Father’s. So also was His love, His holiness, His wisdom, and His power. What Jesus sought here was to make this man stop and think about what the source of this undeniable goodness might possibly be. “If you call Me good, and only God is good, then Who do you say that I am?”

The young man did not quite figure it all out at that moment. But if he was to keep the commandment that Jesus gave to him--sell all that you possess, distribute to the poor, and come, follow Me--he would soon need to put it all together in his heart. No mere rabbi had the authority to ask of this man what Jesus had dared to ask. If this young man was to come around to obedience, he would have to come first to the realization that this Jesus could only be the Son of God who comes forth from the bosom of the Father. If Jesus were truly that, then obedience to Him would be the only acceptable option. I would hope this is our conclusion as well.

Why did Jesus tell this man to sell all that he possessed and distribute to the poor in order to have treasure in heaven? It is because the young man had a false concept of the kingdom of heaven. The rich naturally want to live forever. This is why they plan carefully for their retirement, stay fit in the gym, and even have plastic surgery or take medications to continue the illusion of youth and vigor for as long as possible. For those who are poor or who have suffered much in this life, the promise of comfort in the life to come is most appealing. But the rich only want to continue enjoying the good things of this life forever. Notice that the young man did not ask, “How can I enter the kingdom of heaven?” or even, “How can I be saved?” but only, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” To a rich young man who had inherited everything else he enjoyed, the thought of sealing this forever by adding eternal life seemed to him like icing on the cake. Although he was not fully aware of this, he very much wanted heaven on his terms, which is a persistent human problem even to this day.

Jesus had to show this man that such selfish motives would not bring him into the kingdom. He also had to show him that the kingdom was not about earthly riches or pleasures extended forever, but about love and mercy, and the transformation necessary for those who lack such love and mercy. These concepts were likely beyond the capacity of this man to understand just then, so Jesus put it to him in a way that perhaps he could understand.

The young man was a lover of money, so Jesus told him that if he distributed his goods to the poor, he would gain treasure in heaven. This brought to the table two vital Christian concepts that should never be neglected. The first is that the life we prepare for ourselves in the kingdom of heaven is of far greater importance than any life we make on earth. The second is that whatever wealth we might now possess is not given by God for our own exclusive enjoyment, but also to share with those in need. The uncertainty of financial well-being in this life and the reality of death should be enough to convince us that we can truly possess nothing for very long. The money we have should be used to maintain a house of worship and to care for the poor, and then to meet our own needs. If we live in this order, we will not only loosen our white-knuckle grip on the fleeting things of this life, but will grow in the love and mercy that is found in God.

This is important to all of us. Often when confronting this lesson in the gospel we like to distance ourselves from it a bit by saying that the Lord didn’t give this commandment to sell all and give to the poor to every potential disciple, but only to this man. We then say it that must have been necessary to this man because he was especially rich or greedy or worldly-minded. We conclude by comforting ourselves that as long as we drop a dollar in the tithe box now and then and bring a few canned goods to the monthly collection for the poor, we fulfilling our religious obligations.

We should ask ourselves if this explanation isn’t just a little too convenient. If our desire is to hang on to what we have in this world but still be rewarded with heaven, how do we differ in any substantial way from this man? We want to keep all that we have and enjoy even more; so did he. We are fearful of giving generously and suffering want; so was he. We tend to care more about what we have than what our neighbor doesn’t have; so did he. The difference between us is what, exactly? It may be that, like this man, we also want heaven on our terms.

Some of us are facing real financial struggles in our lives to the point that we may not have much to spare. When we experience such difficulties, it is important to see that even these are from the hand of God for our salvation and to form in us a love of the kingdom to come. If in the midst of poverty we can still force the habit of regularly giving even a little bit with faith and love, we make the declaration that we will not allow circumstances to dictate our obedience to Christ. This is incredibly important, because we can just as easily form the habit of blaming God for our misfortune, and grasping at every penny as if our life and well-being depended on it. If we choose the former, we will grow in faith, in thanksgiving, and in the blessings of God. If we choose the latter, we will shut trust and confidence in God completely out of our lives.

And just as we have some who cannot give much, we also have many others who could give more, but do not because of financial priorities that do not place the kingdom of heaven first. Jesus taught that where your treasure is, there your heart will be also [Matthew 6:21]. This is an inescapable fact of life. If we do not place the kingdom first in our finances, it will not be first in our hearts no matter how devout we imagine ourselves to be. Giving is irrevocably connected to our devotion to God and our growth toward becoming people of the kingdom. This is not something that we can set aside or place on our own terms.

Perhaps we are not called to give all that we possess, but we are all called to give. We need to learn to place the kingdom of God first and be faithful stewards of whatever He has entrusted to us. Furthermore, our giving should always be more faith-based than strictly budget-based. When the budget comes first, we will never find the means to give. If we allow faith to lead even in small, faithful steps, we will find that these steps are leading us toward God and toward becoming rich in His kingdom. Giving can seem to us to be such an intensely personal subject, but in fact it is fundamental to the gospel and our Christian faith, and is something that all of us should be participating in as faithfully as possible. May our gracious Lord guide us in this most important Christian duty and lead us all toward becoming cheerful givers, that we might gain treasure in the kingdom of heaven.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The War for Souls

2010-10-27T16:12:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

In this morning’s gospel lesson from Luke [8:11-18], our Lord Jesus traveled by boat to the region of the Gadarenes [Gergesenes] whereupon disembarking, He encountered a man possessed by many demons. It was by no means unusual for Christ to encounter demon-possessed people during His ministry, or even people possessed by multiple demons, as in the case of Mary Magdalene from whom He cast out seven demons. But the man who called himself “Legion” was certainly out of the ordinary, due to the vast multitude of demons that had taken possession of him. In the Roman army a legion could consist of anywhere from 4200 to 5000 men. We don’t know how many demons this poor man had, but clearly his was a terribly extreme case.

The thing that has always struck me about this passage is that when Jesus asked the man his name, he replied, “My name is Legion”. The point is that the demons had so completely stripped this man of his self-identity that he no longer knew his own name. This is precisely how the demons operate. There goal is to persuade people to forfeit their humanity a piece at a time until they can gain control to overwrite the image of God in men with their own foul and wicked image.

The various exorcism movies that Hollywood has produced would have us believe that demons just randomly take over innocent people for no particular reason, but this is seldom the case in real life. Most often the people who wind up controlled by demons are those who have in some way cooperated with them, opening the doors to darkness and possession themselves. Man is made to grow and change, but sometimes the change we might make is toward evil.

We often forget what a marvelous creation the human being is. We so seldom think of ourselves this way, but we truly are the masterpiece, the crowning achievement of all God’s creative actions. “More honorable than the cherubim, and more glorious beyond compare than the seraphim” describes not just our Most Holy Lady Theotokos now, but potentially all human beings who advance in the divine glorification our Creator has made available to us. Of all His creatures, man alone is endowed with the capacity for unlimited growth and change in order that we might continue through all time and eternity to become by grace what God is by nature. We sometimes might imagine that our one and only period of growth takes place when we are children, so that by the time we reach the ripe old age of 25 or whatever we more or less fossilize, making further change impossible. What utter nonsense!

Let us remember that God made us out of clay, not stone, and clay is infinitely moldable and changeable, until it is hardened by fire. My point is that as long as we have life, we have the capacity to grow toward God and become everything our Creator intended for us to be, if we so choose. The flip side to change and choice is that we can also move away from God, indulging the passions of the fallen flesh to become darker and more evil, essentially inviting the demonic spirits to have much greater influence in our life and perhaps even dominate it, as we saw with the man in our gospel lesson. The choice is ours.

Many times our choices are influenced by the company we keep and the culture we look to for guidance. The region of the Gadarenes was known for being populated by notoriously non-observant Jews that shared the area with pagan Gentiles who routinely engaged in animal sacrifices to demons. The fact that we find Jewish herdsmen raising swine, and an entire community that came out to beg Jesus to leave after He had healed the demoniac, indicates that these people had drifted pretty far from their ancestral religion. The man who called himself Legion had almost certainly derived his moral compass from this corrupted culture in which he lived. The resulting bad choices he would have made are very likely what allowed him to fall under the influence of demons, leading to his possession.

This is of particular importance to us since the society in which we live has also grown to become exceedingly corrupt. Sexual immorality, drug use, and human sacrifice--once the dark and forbidden stuff of satanic rituals--is now being repackaged and sold to the general population as hooking up, getting high, and family planning. People who are informed by that culture instead of the culture of the Church often make terrible decisions that bring great loss and suffering to themselves and to others. Many people who were promised the good life of pleasure and freedom by our society are in fact opening the doors to hell in their lives to find only depression, devastation, and further brokenness. Like the man who called himself Legion, many people are winding up naked--that is to say, stripped of spiritual grace and beauty--and dwelling among the tombs--that is to say, living with the dead, their fellow pleasure-seekers--and unable to find any real joy or meaning in life. People are literally losing their humanity and no longer have any idea of what they themselves were created to be: children of God, destined for holiness and eternal life rather than sin and spiritual death.

Each of us needs to recalibrate our own moral compass by the life and teachings of the Church, and learn to recognize and reject the demonic influences pervading the popular culture of today. Unlike the Holy Spirit, Who is meek, and Who graciously invites our cooperation with God to grow in holiness, the demons are cruel, and forcefully impose their will upon us, assaulting us with evil suggestions from our youth up, crafting the destructive values and worldview they want us to hold, and actively forming an atmosphere of godlessness in society that is increasingly hostile to Christian faith and morality.

With all that being true, we might wonder why God permits the demons to exist. Why doesn’t He simply gather them all up now and cast them into the abyss so they can no longer torment us? Our Holy Fathers have given us a very clear answer to this question: God allows the demons to exist for our salvation.

Let’s be honest: we are a fallen and broken people who don’t come to our Heavenly Father quite as often or quite as fervently as we should. We may keep the fasts, come to the services, and do all the things the Church tells us to do, but at the same time can lose sight of the fact that the Christian life is not about meeting God’s expectations, but about meeting God! The purpose of our prayers and everything else the Holy Spirit enables us to do is that we might come into the knowledge of God and be united with Him in everlasting communion. As strange as it seems, God can even use the evil demons to accomplish this goal in our lives. As they are allowed to torment us and accuse us and throw their many temptations in our path, the sorrows they cause can actually drive us, finally and desperately, to turn to God with much greater fervency. The Elder Paisios of Mt. Athos once said that without the devil to tempt us, we would think ourselves to be saints already and would never call upon the Lord to save us. The demons can melt away our complacency, teaching us that all is not well with this world, and help us to at last seek heaven as our only true and abiding home. So yes, even the demons have a purpose in God’s good and benevolent plan.

It is not our job to defeat the demons; Christ has already accomplished this for us. Our job is to resist them, to break free from their influence, and to flee unto God for salvation. God’s desire is to clothe us in His grace, and restore us to our right mind and full humanity, as He did for the demoniac in today’s gospel lesson. The choice for this is ours to make daily. I pray that we will always make it wisely.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

A Golden Beginning to Love

2010-10-27T16:08:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

In today’s gospel lesson (Luke 6:31-36) our Lord declared “And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise”. We are perhaps more familiar with the wording, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. As far as rules of conduct go, this one is golden. It gives us a shining yardstick for measuring our thoughts and actions toward others in such a way that can help lead toward the formation of a more perfect love within us.

The ancient rabbis had a similar rule, only theirs was expressed in the negative. They taught, “whatever you don’t want men to do to you, do not do to them”. This was a very good rule, but Christ turned it around and made it into something far better. Not only should we not do to men the bad things we would not want done to us, but we should now proactively do for men the good things we might wish them to do for us.

As much improved as Christ’s version of this “golden rule” is, we might note that it still does not quite embody the absolute perfection of love. In fact, it is rather a large step down from that. The one who has become perfected in love has become like God in that his every thought and action toward others is formed by love and becomes an expression of love, just as we see in God Himself. Such a one needs no outer rule of any sort to guide him, for the perfect rule of love already guides his heart in all things, and is manifested in all his words and deeds.

But what about us? I would dare say that most of us are not perfected in love just yet. Probably too much of the time we are still guided by our fallen and perverse self-love, and think and act toward others out of selfish instincts rather than out of the utter selflessness that is the essence of God’s love. How miserably and regrettably we can act toward others every day of our lives! And yet, it is to such imperfect and often unloving people as ourselves that our Lord has mercifully offered this little rule to guide us toward something much higher.

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Doesn’t the very wording suggest that even this greatly improved rule is still meant for people who are basically rooted in selfishness? In our current state, we might not even know how to love, but each and every one of us certainly does know how we like to be treated by others! The golden rule seemingly capitalizes on this terrible “me first” orientation, teaching us to turn it around and use it to begin putting others first in our lives.

We might say that the golden rule represents a divine recognition of our brokenness and a remarkable concession to our weakness, coming all the way down to our level and showing us great mercy, while at the same time offering us a tangible path that can lead us ever upward toward the higher levels of healing and perfection and love.

If our Lord had merely said to us, “Love everybody perfectly,” our boat would be sunk before we left the dock. There’s no question that He wants us to become perfect in love, but how do we grow from being what we are to what we need to become? This is how. In the midst of coming to church, saying your prayers, going to confession to correct yourself, tithing, and fasting, and all else that you are called to do, add this little rule and begin treating others as you would wish to be treated. Start taking little, baby steps toward a better way. It is not perfect; it is not even quite love, really. But it is infinitely better than treating people selfishly as we often do. It may even represent the very best that we can do right now in our present condition. If we will start with this, God will help us, and will even begin forming His love within us. God gives His gifts to those who demonstrate that they want them. If we want love, we must press toward that love in our lives in any way that we can.

In the ’60’s there was a pop song that declared, “What the world needs now is love, sweet love; that’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.” Well love is fine, but just imagine how much better our world would be if everyone in it did nothing more than to simply follow the golden rule of treating others as they themselves would be treated. Maybe that wouldn’t be perfect “love, sweet love” but it would still bring an amazing transformation to this world of ours, perhaps making love a much greater possibility.

Imagine nations no longer exploiting one another or governments their own people. Imagine Big Business with a genuine social conscious, or world religions that didn’t wage “holy wars” against one another. It is almost inconceivable to us how great the results from these changes could be. Perhaps we should simplify that dream a bit and merely imagine what it might be like if ordinary people began treating one another with the kindness they would like to receive. What if everyone worked in their communities or at their jobs with a sincere desire to promote the greatest good for all? No one would ever have to go hungry or live in gang and drug infested ghettos or hate their jobs! What if people drove on our roads and freeways with regard for others? We would have no further need of horns or middle fingers! What if men and women no longer dehumanized and exploited one another for personal or sexual gratification, but learned to treat each other with dignity? Priests would be working full time performing marriages and baptisms, and divorce attorneys and abortion doctors would have to seek new employment!

Let’s narrow it down even more. What if all of us in this parish truly looked out for one another, caring for one another's needs and the needs of everyone who walked through our doors? No person would ever go neglected and each of us would have rich purpose and a sense of genuine ministry in our lives! So often people feel as if their lives have no meaning, but that is because they are so wrapped up in themselves that they fail to see that service to others is the very thing that gives our lives purpose. What if we decided to stop judging, or gossiping, or focusing on other's imperfections simply because we have enough of our own? Perhaps we would finally be free to find the beauty in others and begin to beautify our own souls as well! What if we all supported our parish and its ministry with prayers and financial offerings, with punctual attendance, and with a cheerful pitching in to help with all our activities? We might find faith and an understanding that it is truly more blessed to give than to receive! What if we made all of our personal or family decisions with the needs of our parish community in mind? We would always choose that which is godly and morally pure, that which would build up our community and make it stronger, and we would never act as selfish “individuals” whose only goal in life is to please themselves.

As you can see, these things might not be perfect Christian love, but they certainly have the potential to advance us far beyond the personal hell of self-absorption. The more we care for ourselves alone, the more abstract and distant Christianity seems and the love of God becomes. We cannot love Christ if we do not love one another. Yet we often have so very little love for one another compared to the love we have for ourselves. Thus the good Christ gently intrudes into our lives with the suggestion that we begin to treat one another at least as well as we ourselves would like to be treated. It’s a remarkable thought, yet one that’s at least within our meager capabilities even now. It’s like love with training wheels, for those of us who need a little help. What a great mercy God has shown us! Let us take it, act on it, and follow the path toward a more perfect love.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

2010-09-13T09:12:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Tomorrow night at 7pm we will celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, which is one of the twelve Major Feasts of our Orthodox liturgical year. This Feast recalls two historical events connected with the Cross of our Lord. The first is the Finding of the Cross from where it lay buried on Golgotha by St. Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, in the year 326. The second is the gloriously celebrated Return of the Cross to the Christian faithful in the year 628 after it had been stolen and carried away by the Persians in an earlier raid on Jerusalem. Stained with the Precious Blood of our Savior Jesus Christ, the Cross became the most important and revered relic of Christendom and a source of healing and consolation to all who venerated it.

Tomorrow’s feast is not about history only, however. If it were a strictly human celebration, then perhaps that’s all it could be. But the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, like all of our Orthodox feasts, is a divine celebration and is thus primarily mystical in nature, being infused with the life-giving grace of God that is not bound by time or place. The simple gilded cross that the priest will carry aloft on a tray of basil during the procession tomorrow will become for us the very Cross upon which our Lord voluntarily yielded up his life for our salvation.

In the Orthodox experience, divine symbols become bearers of the grace inherent in the objects they portray. The bread and wine of communion--physical symbols of Christ’s broken Body and shed Blood--become for us the actual immaculate Body and precious Blood of our Lord, imparting to us His very life. In the same way, the cross of blessing that we venerate, or for that matter, the cross you may wear about your neck, or the sign of the cross you trace over your body, contains by God’s grace the supernatural power of the actual Cross of Christ upon which the powers of the devil were broken and all of mankind was set free from death and slavery.

Many years ago Fr. Jon Braun addressed a small group of Evangelicals who were slowly moving toward a more historic understanding of the Christian faith, during which held up a little wooden cross. “This is the Cross upon which Jesus died for our salvation,” he announced. Giving us a moment to let that statement sink in, he then went on to describe a concept entirely foreign to Western thinking but which nevertheless is found at the very heart of Orthodox teaching. In modern Western thought, symbol and reality are two entirely different things which can never be one and the same. A thing can either be symbolic or it can be actual, but it can never be both according to Western ideas. Thus many Western Christians will contend that if the bread and wine of communion are symbols of Christ’s Body and Blood, they can never be Christ’s actual Body and Blood. Fr. Jon challenged us to accept that Western thinking has gone very wrong on this matter. In the older Christian understanding, he told us, divine symbols were seen as very much containing the power and grace of the realities they portray.

If we think it through we might realize that this has always been the case in God’s dealings with His people. The Passover Lamb that was slain in Egypt, whose blood was then traced on the doorways of the homes of the Israelites in the points of a cross, were symbols of the Lamb of God who would shed His Blood to deliver us from death. These were symbols yes, but symbols which also saved the Israelites from the angel of death that took the lives of the Egyptians’ first-born. The altar in the Temple in Jerusalem was a symbol of the Cross of Christ; the sacrifices offered upon it, symbols of Christ Himself. According to the book of Hebrews, these symbols were still effective to secure at least the temporary forgiveness of sins for those who used them, pointing at the same time toward the more perfect forgiveness that would come with the appearing of Jesus Christ.

If Old Testament symbols could contain a measure of the power of things yet revealed, how much more should New Testament symbols contain the power of things now fully revealed? Old Testament shadows have given way to New Testament realities, but a major part of that new reality is that the Son of God has taken our human flesh, thereby forever joining His divinity to our material world. Thus sanctified material symbols become infused with divine life and power to become vehicles of the same grace by which God will one day redeem and transform all matter in creation. Holy oil, holy water, holy bread and wine, are all symbols containing within themselves by God’s action the power of that which they reveal to us. So it is with the symbol of the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Demons still tremble even at the symbol of the Cross of our Lord. When you wear a cross around your neck--not thoughtlessly as a mere piece of jewelry, but purposefully as a symbol of divine power--you wear a protection against the forces of darkness. When you trace the Sign of the Cross over yourself with pious regard, you put evil thoughts and temptations to flight and gain a moment of victory in the spiritual war. When you venerate the Cross of Blessing at church or bow down before the Cross carried in procession, you are worshipping the One who was crucified upon it and glorifying His holy resurrection by which we are granted life.

Some people may regard this as superstition. Such folks are ignorant of the power of the Cross that nearly 2000 years of Christian experience bears witness to. Nevertheless they may be right about one thing: for the Cross to wield its greatest power in our lives, we must never regard it as some sort of magic talisman. The Cross must be more than a mystical object to us; it must come to define the very way that we live our lives in Christ.

St. Paul once wrote, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, the the glory of God the Father”. [Philippians 2:5-11]

Here the noble Paul reminds us of the incredible sacrifice the Son of God willingly made in setting aside the form of God to be found forever in the form of man, the creature of His own making. The heavenly hosts were struck with fear and wonder at the sight! But this was not the end of His humility. He went so far as to become the lowliest servant of man, and even farther, to die upon the Cross in the most painful and humiliating manner in order to take away the death and humiliation that we had brought upon ourselves by forsaking God to obey the devil.

The apostle beseeches us to follow the example of Jesus that we might also have a share in His glory, but we rarely do. Jesus submitted to His Father’s will in all things; we wrestle with the Father continually to assert our own will. Jesus became the servant of all; we look out for ourselves and expect others to care for their own needs. Jesus was gentle and meek; we are strong-willed and quarrelsome. We are filled with such self-importance and pride, it would seem that God is nearly asking a greater thing of us to humble ourselves than He asked of His own divine Son.

During tomorrow night’s feast, the Cross, the symbol of God’s immeasurable love and unimaginable humility will be presented to us, and we proud creatures will be asked to bow down reverently before it. Let us not allow this to be an action of hypocrisy, feigning a humility of our own when perhaps we are still resisting God in our hearts. Let us decide right then and there to better our way of life by submitting to God and truly humbling ourselves to turn from sin and to love and serve one another as Jesus taught us to. The Cross can bring us great spiritual healing and eternal life if we will take it up as the symbol of our own chosen way of life. This is the greatest power of all that the Cross can manifest in us, and it is ours if we will allow it to be so.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Loving God to Death

2010-08-30T10:25:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Today the Holy Orthodox Church celebrates the Feast of the Beheading of the Glorious Forerunner and Baptist John. Two weeks ago we celebrated the Feast of the Dormition (or the “Falling-Asleep”) of our Most Holy Lady Theotokos. Besides these are the commemorations of the many daily saints on our Church calendar, most of whom were either ascetics or holy martyrs themselves. Anyone not familiar with the deep meaning behind these feasts and our nearly daily remembrances of those who in one way or another laid down their lives for Christ, might be led to conclude that we Orthodox have a rather bizarre notion of celebration, and perhaps along with that, a strange preoccupation with death.

Our interest however is not with death, but with life. The testimony left by all those who laid down their earthly lives for Christ--whether by choosing the narrow and difficult way of rigorous self-denial, or by voluntarily accepting the martyr’s crown--is that they were seeking life; a life more abundant and more joyous than any life known on earth. Each one of these people could have maintained the status quo of their day. They could have sought the comfort of family, money, pleasure, and long life. No one compelled them to gain such a love for Christ that they would willingly forfeit all normal expectations in this world to seek Him alone. Nevertheless they did indeed gain such a love, making any life that did not place Him first seem simply unbearable to them.

Is it possible for us to gain such a love for Christ? St. Paul prophesied that in the last days men would love only themselves, their money, and their pleasures and would entirely forget the love of God. How can we move from loving all things of this world to loving God alone?

How does any one person fall in love with another? Did any of you fall in love with your significant other by never spending time with them or conversing with them, never warmly reflecting on their love for you with a certain thankfulness, never thinking of what was important to them or making whatever changes were needed in your life to bring you closer to them? Of course not. That all takes place after marriage. (Just kidding!) My point is, your love didn’t just happen; it took work and it still takes work. So how can we expect to love God if we don’t work at it?

Do we spend time each day conversing with God in prayer? Do we reflect on His love and care for us with thanksgiving? Do we consider what is important to Him and correct our lives to draw near to Him? Do we treat God as someone we truly want to know and love, or are we put off from this work, convinced that it’s too hard, too demanding, or that our faith is too small?

Exactly how much faith do we need to love God? Whenever we hear the lives of the saints read in Church, we are partly inspired and partly discouraged. We know that their examples prove what is possible when ordinary men and women seek God. But immediately that little voice plays in our heads saying, “Oh, but you’ll never be like that! You’re too wedded to your comforts, too stuck in your ways to love God like they did!” That voice is not from God, for God would never discourage us from taking even the smallest step toward Himself. He always beckons us to move forward with whatever little measure of faith we might now possess, which is also God’s gift to us.

It may not be faith that we lack, but perhaps diligence. Hebrews 11:6 tells us, “...without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” Do you believe that God exists? I would hope so! Do you believe that God rewards those who seek Him? Yes, we know that God is good and rewards entirely out-of-proportion all people who make even the slightest move toward Him. So what is missing except “those who diligently seek Him”?

I suppose very few of us would say that we seek God diligently every day. We may be too busy, too disheartened, or too preoccupied to invest that amount of time with God. Sometimes we are so restless we can’t bear to sit down long enough to read our bibles or spend some time in quiet prayer and reflection. Perhaps we’ve even given up on seeking God because it seems we can’t find Him when we’ve tried. Yet can any friendship be cultivated by such weak and sporadic efforts? Can love grow where there is no constant effort made to draw near to the other; where there is no seeking, no longing, no desire?

I believe that every human being is created not only with the capacity to share in God’s love, but also with the desire to do so. It is this desire however that is often twisted and misdirected by sin, so that we wind up seeking the fulfillment and consolation of that love we were created share in everything but God. We are forever seeking contentment and purpose in life, but it rarely seems to occur to us that this haunting sense of emptiness, this deeply rooted craving for something, is in reality the heart’s desperate longing for God. No wonder the heart is left unsatisfied and bereaved when the joy we try to offer it is never God Himself. As Augustine wrote in his Confessions, “Almighty God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”

Some part of us knows that this is true, yet we find it so hard to deny our heart its many other desires. Given the choice, nearly any child will choose candy over real food. A good parent allows such treats only sparingly, wanting his child to have proper nutrition. When it comes to our hearts, we are dreadful parents, feeding them an endless diet of “junk food”--the sweet pleasures of this life--rather than disciplining them to take pleasure in God. It is hard for the heart to love God when it is fat on other things. The saints saw the need to deny themselves much of this world’s sweetness so that their hearts would become hungry for God alone.

To deny ourselves many pleasures only to gain God seems insane to those who are perishing. However, the saints reveal to us that to settle for contentment now rather than to strive for God is not only the deepest insanity, but the ultimate form of self-destruction. The saints died to this world, but they found everlasting life in God. We remember their examples daily and at special feasts such as today’s commemoration of the beheading of the Baptist, not because we are preoccupied with death, but because we long for the same life they gained from their heroic efforts.

Can we venture to be a bit more heroic in our own lives? Can we cut back on the junk food we feed our souls, the comforts and pleasures of life we normally put first, so that we might increase our hunger for God? We are weak, but must our weakness always be the excuse for not loving God as much as we could? Can we challenge ourselves to redirect some of our time, our money, and our energies toward that which is eternal? Are our dreams for this life so great that we cannot possibly dream of heaven too?

It is true that we live in dark and perilous times. Whereas the saints of old saw the need to take upon themselves poverty and every struggle to gain the love of Christ in their hearts, today’s pampered Christians think everything should be handed to them. They feel entitled to enjoy all the best this world has to offer and be granted salvation too! Have they really outsmarted the saints, or only themselves? I pray that we would never be so wise in our own eyes, but along with the saints might humble ourselves to accept less in this world that we might gain the fullness of the world to come. Let us not fear the death of self-denial, but through it become seekers of true and everlasting life!

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Dormition of our Most Holy Lady Theotokos

2010-08-15T13:40:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Today after a two-week fast of preparation, we gather together to celebrate the Feast of the Dormition of our Most Holy Lady Theotokos. For the benefit of those who may not be familiar with these terms, the word dormition refers to the “falling asleep” of a saint, a phrase frequently used in the New Testament to describe the death of a holy one. Theotokos which means “God-bearer” is the term most often used by the Orthodox to describe the Virgin Mary, who gave birth to the Son of God in His humanity. Thus today’s Feast commemorates the death of Jesus’ mother, together with the historic events that holy Christian tradition tells us happened just before and after, and the rich, spiritual meaning these hold for all believers in Jesus Christ today.

When we speak of the departed saints “falling asleep,” this does not imply a belief that their souls lose consciousness or fall into a kind of slumber after death. The term seems to be a figurative one, referring to the holy body of the departed, rather than to the soul. At the departure of the soul, the body appears to “fall asleep” to await its reawakening when it is reunited with the soul at the Lord’s second advent. Referring to death in this way promotes the fundamental and glorious Christian belief that death has been soundly defeated by Christ and can no longer be considered a permanent condition even in the physical sense, but something more like a “nap” from which the saint’s body will one day arise.

And speaking of the physical, in contemporary Christendom outside of Holy Orthodoxy a belief has emerged that the body of a departed believer should not be regarded with any particular reverence. Even in many so-called “Christian” funerals these days it is implied or even outright declared that the dead body of the believer is little more than a discarded “shell” that once housed the so-called true person of the soul, but now is no more important than an old suit of clothes you might cast off and burn with the rubbish. This view is not informed by the scriptures or any Christian teaching, but reflects ancient pagan beliefs that despised the material aspect of our human nature as grossly inferior to the intellectual or spiritual aspects.

Because of this view that the body is unimportant after death, cremation was commonly used by the pagans to deal with the “problem” of body disposal. Orthodox Christianity so rejects this practice and the pagan ideas behind it, that the Church will not even allow an Orthodox funeral to be performed when cremation has been opted for. Orthodox Christianity does not denigrate the material as somehow less pure than the spiritual (Both aspects of our humanity were created by God and declared to be “very good” by Him). Furthermore, it sees the body as an integral part of the complete human being, even after death. This belief derives from the fact that Christ rose from the dead in bodily form, and not merely as a spirit alone. If the body were unimportant to our complete humanity or something to be discarded and left behind for the perfection of heaven, Christ’s humanity would not have been raised, glorified, and taken up into heaven to sit down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. Christ’s bodily resurrection and ascent in glory demonstrates what God intends for each of us, regardless of the time that may pass between the hour of our death and our final resurrection. We shall all be raised, our bodies restored and glorified at their rejoining with our souls, and shall be made to ascend into heaven with Christ, joining Him in His humanity for all eternity.

For this reason, Christians have traditionally gone against the prevailing pagan practices to instead treat the bodies of their departed with deep respect; washing and anointing their bodies and burying them lovingly and with many prayers, putting them to rest in their graves to await their final reunion with their departed souls in heaven. This isn’t soggy sentimentality, but a profound theological understanding of God’s plan for humanity, and the reason “To bury the dead” is considered one of the seven chief corporate acts of mercy in the Orthodox Church.

How do we really know that Christians, after their departure from this life, will one day be bodily resurrected, glorified, and taken up into heaven as Christ was? Do we have any record of this happening to a strictly human saint that we might have hope of the same? Indeed we do, for this is precisely what we are celebrating in today’s Feast.

According to the tradition of the Church, after her Son’s ascension into heaven, Mary lived the rest of her life in Jerusalem in the house of John, in whose care our Lord had placed His mother with the charge to care for her as if she was his very own. When in time it was revealed to Mary that her hour of death was drawing near, she asked to see all of her Son’s beloved original disciples one last time. These men were dispersed to the far corners of the known world, preaching the gospel. Exactly as Philip had once been taken up by the Holy Spirit and transported to another place after baptizing the Ethiopian eunuch, God was please to catch up each of the disciples from their respective locations and bring them to the bedside of Mary. Only Thomas, reviled by some as “The Doubter” but whose inspired confession of faith in the risen Christ, “My Lord and My God!” revealed the very heart of Christian truth, was excluded from this miraculous reunion for a divine purpose that would soon be revealed.

The other disciples gathered at Mary’s bedside and received a final blessing from her. When she reposed, they placed her holy body in a tomb, glorifying God that they had been allowed to be with her one last time. Three days later Thomas arrived, and asked his fellow disciples to accompany him to the tomb of Mary that he might see her body and pay his respects. When the tomb was opened, the body of Mary was found to be gone, with nothing but the sweet aroma of myrrh left remaining. As the apostles exited the tomb in awe, they all together beheld a vision of Mary being received into heaven by the Lord Jesus Christ to take an honored place beside her beloved Son. The apostles understood from this that the Lord had permitted these things to happen to His mother as an example and foretaste of what awaits all true believers, all those “who hear the word of God and keep it.” Their preaching of the certainty of our hope of resurrection and eternal life in Christ became all the more fervent after this.

Throughout Christian history there have been many extreme opinions about Mary. Some have exalted her so highly as to nearly make her out to be a “fourth person” of the divine Godhead. Others have so minimized her as to barely acknowledge her role in the incarnation of Christ or as a person of any importance to God beyond that. The Orthodox Church sees Mary in a more balanced way: as a merely human being like us, but also as a truly holy person with whom God was well-pleased. In her blessed death, together with her bodily resurrection and glorification and assumption into heaven, the Church sees a beautiful expression of God’s love for His saints. What happened to her is promised to one day happen to every one of those who strive during their lifetimes to love God. If we will remember God during our life, and love and serve Him to the best of our ability now, He will by no means forget us at the hour of our death. We can know this, because God was pleased to reveal it to the Church through Mary the Theotokos.

Every day we must stir ourselves up to love God, to seek Him in prayer, to serve Him in purity of heart and body. Sometimes we feel discouraged over what seems like such an endless and impossible effort. But we must remember that God is at work in us, both to work and to will for His good pleasure. Our task is the smaller one really. We must simply aim not to grieve the Holy Spirit of God, but to cooperate in His work, and allow the life and holiness of God to be formed in us. It is God who makes people holy, not we ourselves. Isn’t that refreshing, good news? If we will abide in Christ, Christ will abide in us, making us holy and abundant in every spiritual fruit.

From the example of the Dormition of our Most Holy Lady Theotokos, we can see that such holiness is the only thing that truly abides. “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His holy ones.” When the time comes for us each to fall asleep in Christ, the love of God will awaken us, and we will understand then that all our striving was not in vain. Is this not worth any struggle we may face in our present lives? Let us not lose sight of this, but labor all the more and with renewed hope as the day of our salvation draws near.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

In God's Hands

2010-07-25T18:45:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Our gospel lesson [Matthew 14:22-34] today tells the story of one of the more unusual events in Jesus’ life and ministry: His walk across the raging sea of Galilee to bring salvation and comfort to His disciples in their battered boat.

Matthew tells us that while the weather was still calm, Jesus made His disciples get into the boat and go without Him to the other side of the sea. The Greek verb used here suggests that Jesus made more than a simple request. He constrained His disciples to get into the boat and leave without Him. With great reluctance the fishermen parted company with Jesus, while He Himself went up to a mountain alone to pray. When evening came, a sudden storm blew up, the wind and the waves arose against the boat, and the men struggled greatly to keep from sinking.

Let us pause at this point to ask a very important question. Was this just an amazing coincidence? Did it just happen that the one time in three years that Jesus decided to take a night off and leave His disciples on their own would turn out to be the very night that they were all nearly killed? Was that just dumb, rotten luck? Hopefully we realize that luck had nothing to do with it, and that God’s will governs all. Was it therefore the will of God that the disciples would have to face this terror seemingly alone until Jesus saved them by the miracle of walking on the water and calming the sea? Absolutely it was, and we even have scriptural evidence to support this.

From Psalm 107, beginning with verse 23 we read, “Those who go down to the sea in ships, who do business on great waters, they see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep. For He commands and raises the stormy wind, which lifts up the waves of the sea.They mount up to the heavens, they go down again to the depths, their soul melts because of trouble. They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits’ end. Then they cry out to the Lord in their trouble, and He brings them out of their distresses. He calms the storm, to that its waves are still. Then they are glad because they are quiet; so He guides them to their desired haven”. [Vss. 23-30]

I cannot imagine a more clear and exact prophetic foretelling of this event. Not only does it describe what happened perfectly, but the imagery here of the boat rising up to the heavens and plunging down again to the depths, with the terrified sailors aboard staggering to and fro like drunken men is vivid enough to almost make us feel--gulp!--a little green ourselves! It certainly helps us understand a bit better what the disciples went through when this frightening incident befell them.

But there’s one verse in this psalm that might disturb some people. Did you catch it? It’s the one which said that the Lord “commands and raises up the stormy wind, which lifts the waves of the sea”. These words might seem to suggest that Jesus stayed behind to cause the storm that He would later rescue His disciples from. If that’s the case, it sounds a bit like the stories we sometimes hear of a demented firefighter who commits arson on a building just so he can later be seen as a hero for rescuing the tenants. That’s certainly not right or laudable. Is this what Jesus did?

I don’t think so. We always need to be very careful in our interpretation of any prophecy, and certainly very careful in any judgment we might attempt to make concerning the inscrutable will and purpose of God. The truth is we don’t really know what Jesus was praying for on that mountain. Perhaps in His divine wisdom He already knew that this storm would arise and be far more terrible and deadly, and thus prayed for it to be lessened that His disciples would not perish in the sea before His arrival. Perhaps He prayed that they would be protected from the devil during this perilous time. It is likely He also prayed that they might have the strength and courage to endure this hour and to benefit from it spiritually, rather than to simply lose their minds in terror. In my opinion, our Lord was not up on that mountain plotting mischief against His own disciples, but was praying that they might be preserved through this trail they were about to face, and that they would gain from it.

From our perspective we can easily see that the disciples did benefit greatly from this event. Matthew tells us that those who were in the boat fell down and worshiped Jesus, finally understanding through this miracle that He is the Son of God incarnate. Their gain is also our gain, for while the world often mocks the story of Jesus walking on the water as a kind of fairy tale, we understand it as further proof of His divinity which helps us to also trust in Him during our trials in life.

Trials and sufferings and sorrows are the terrible consequences of the sins that we humans have brought into our world. They are a fact of life in this fallen cosmos, and will not cease until the cosmos itself is renewed. Sometimes when we find ourselves in the midst of our own most terrible and frightening moments, it can seem as if the Lord is nowhere to be found and that we are left alone. Perhaps the disciples thought this, too. Thankfully, this is not the truth.

A major point of this gospel lesson is that we are never alone, never forgotten by Jesus, and that He is well aware of all that befalls us in life. The disciples mistakenly thought they were alone, but they were not. Jesus was aware of them and was praying for them, and at the right moment He came to them, bringing salvation and a greater faith than they had ever known before. He came to them even though it was not humanly possible to do so. What man cannot do, the Son of God can do and will do, because He holds us all in the palm of His divine hand.

So let me pause again to ask a few more very important questions. When the storms of life strike you, is that just dumb, rotten luck? Are you tempted at such times to feel that God has left you alone to be tossed about in the turbulent seas while He must be off on some heavenly mountain somewhere doing...well, God knows what? Is it hard for you to see that your suffering can possibly be allowed by a merciful God? Do you at times feel forgotten, neglected, or perhaps even punished by God?

In whatever sufferings we are called to face, we must understand that the good and perfect will of God governs them all. This does not mean that God is the cause of our sufferings. He is not the arson who sets the fire in order to look like the hero when He saves us. We are the ones who have set fire to our world; the fire of sin and rebellion and death. Though God is never the cause of our sufferings, He will at various times permit them to come into our lives. But His redemptive power is such that He can use even our sufferings to accomplish that which is necessary for our salvation.

God also mercifully reduces our sufferings to a level we can endure. The fishermen might well have been killed in the sea, but our Lord did not allow that to happen. This world is a very dangerous place, filled with enough wars and disasters to potentially extinguish all nations a hundred times over. But God does not allow this to happen. I believe that God also intervenes with the same mercy in our personal lives as well, to lessen the harsh sufferings that we might otherwise encounter. People often question how a good God can allow bad things to happen. Can we possibly imagine how much worse such things might actually be if God did not care for each of us and reduce our trials to a level that do not destroy us, but lead us rather to faith and eternal life?

The reality is that we cannot avoid trials and suffering for long in this world, but God is always right there with us to accomplish an infinitely greater good in our lives. Sometimes He delivers us from all suffering; sometimes He delivers us through our sufferings. But in the end, His purpose is always to accomplish what is the absolute, eternal best for us. We must each come to a personal acceptance of this, lest God’s merciful and redemptive work be utterly lost upon us and we remain broken and angry like those who reject God. Our Lord is with us in the midst of every storm in life, and if we keep the remembrance of His goodness always before us, He will bring us in the end to His quiet and peaceful haven.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Good Friends

2010-07-05T09:34:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

From today’s gospel lesson [Matthew 9:1-8] we heard the story of a paralytic who was brought to Christ by his very good friends. Carrying the paralyzed man on a pallet, they arrived only to find that their effort seemed wasted. The crowd that had gathered to hear Jesus speak was so immense it spilled out of the house to fill the whole surrounding area, making it impossible to draw near to the Merciful Healer of souls and bodies.

Most people would have felt defeated at this point and given up any hope of bringing their friend to Jesus that day. Perhaps they even heard a little voice in their heads that told them, “Come back tomorrow, or some other time. There will always be another day to bring your friend to Christ”. Sadly, we know that voice very well, for it whispers suggestions in our heads daily: “Are you really going to pray right now? Don’t you have other things to do first? You can come back later to pray. Are you seriously driving to vespers tonight through all that traffic? Wouldn’t your time be better spent if you stayed home to catch up on your work? There will always be another vespers.” Yes, that little voice in our heads assures us there will always be another time to pray, another service to attend, another opportunity to come to Christ some day. It is of course a demonic voice, but one we are so accustomed to hearing that we follow it almost before it speaks, making the demons’ job at times too easy.

Fortunately for the paralytic, these men were long on determination and short on discouragement. Forgetting the obstacles to focus on the goal, they soon hit upon the solution of making their way, perhaps from housetop to housetop from somewhere down the street, to the roof of the very house where Jesus was. Upon reaching that roof, they tore a gaping hole in it to gently lower their friend on his pallet to a spot right beside the Lord.

Now if that wasn’t unusual enough, what happened next was the kicker. Normally Jesus would engage in a bit of conversation with those who came to Him for healing, but that didn’t happen here at all. Without a single word from anyone, Jesus immediately turned to the paralytic and said to him, “My son, your sins are forgiven”. The scribes who saw this thought Jesus was blaspheming, since no one can forgive sins but God alone. No one can heal paralytics but God alone either, and so Jesus raised the man up as a testimony to all. But let’s not miss the point of why Jesus healed the man so quickly.

What two things always moved Jesus to quick action? One is good faith, and especially good faith on behalf of others. Remember how Jesus praised the Roman centurion who asked Jesus to heal his servant? Remember how He celebrated the faith of the Canaanite woman who sought the healing of her demon-possessed daughter? Jesus was always moved by strong and persistent faith on behalf of others. The other thing that always moved Him was human helplessness. Though He is the King of Glory, Jesus identifies with the weak and the helpless of this world and always sees Himself in them. He looked down at the paralytic and saw His own image reflected back in a mirror, not of polished metal, but of broken flesh.

Perhaps more than anything, Jesus wants us to gain this same mindset. He wants us to see ourselves and indeed Himself in one another and in all men. This mindset can transform all of our actions in life from being essentially self-centered to being Christ-centered and humanity-centered.

What does it really matter if you are too busy to pray most days? Do you have an idea that it only affects you; that maybe you won’t be as “spiritual” as some others but you’re OK with that? What about the people that you’re not praying for in that case? What about the sick who are lying alone and troubled in their beds? Who will pray for their recovery or that they might not be overcome by fear? What about those who are struggling with temptation and whose very souls may be in the clutches of the devil? Who will deliver them in their hour of need? What about your neighbors’ or co-workers’ well-being or salvation? Who prays for them? What about each other and the families and faithful in this holy community? Shouldn’t we all be committed to praying for one another and for our mutual growth in love, faith, and spiritual understanding?

There are so many people both living and departed who could benefit from our faithful prayers and who indeed do benefit when we remember to pray for them. My point here is not to make us feel guilty, but to raise our understanding concerning our spiritual efforts. These efforts are never just for us, or for our individual, private benefit alone. Whenever we pray for someone else, even with whatever weak and miserable little prayers we offer, we are bringing that person before the throne of the living God, whose power and mercy is infinite. Through our prayers we are literally carrying people to Christ like the good friends carried the paralytic.

This pattern of serving others through our own spiritual efforts is also manifested when we make a habit of being good church-goers. Do you think that coming to church or not only affects yourself? What about the faith and hope you impart to others when they see that being a faithful and supportive member of this holy community and coming together to worship God is important to you? Should you decide to sleep in on Sunday and come to liturgy at your convenience, you’re doing that for yourself. If we skip the weeknight services, don’t support parish activities, and leave financial stewardship to others, we’re acting as if there was not another person in the world who mattered. But when you make the effort to arise early and come to matins like it was important, attend all the services faithfully, and engage yourself in supporting this parish at every level, you’re not just doing this for yourself, but for the faith and encouragement of your brothers and sisters as well.

This is exactly what the scriptures repeatedly command us to do, to be faithful and build one another up in the parish family. And remember that those were written at a time when coming to church ran the risk of arrest and martyrdom. In an age in which heavy traffic or busy schedules or a good ballgame can be enough to keep many Christians from church, a different level of martyrdom is required. In this case, not a martyrdom of blood--which we would never have the faith or courage to offer anyway--but a martyrdom of simply putting the needs of others ahead of our own, of loving people more than we love ourselves.

The next time you hear that little voice suggest to you that you’re too busy to pray, ask yourself, “Does that mean I am too busy to love those who need my prayers?” When you once again hit that snooze alarm on Sunday morning, ask, “Shall I not arise and support my brethren who are faithfully making their way to church right now?” From little self-sacrifices like these--which really don’t cost us all that much though they often are difficult to do because of our self-love--we can grow steadily toward the Christian mindset found in Jesus of identifying with all men and serving all men.

This is what makes all the difference in our spiritual efforts: seeing that we must do them not just for ourselves alone, but for others. Guided by this, even our simplest efforts can become a means of bringing others to Christ. We must never do things only for ourselves, but always with others in mind. This is what can make us good friends to one another and to all mankind, like the good men in our gospel lesson today.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Where Your Treasure Is...

2010-06-13T11:00:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Today’s gospel lesson [Matthew 6:22-33] is a short excerpt from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, containing three segments which combine to form one of our Lord’s most pointed messages on the subject of sacrificial Christian giving.

Most of us understand--at least in theory--that Christians are supposed to be givers, and not givers only, but generous and cheerful givers. The first in order of importance is our giving to God in the form of a tithe or first-fruits offering. Normally this is given to the church for use in the construction and maintenance of our place of worship, for support of the clergy, and for caring for many families and funding the many works of mercy the parish performs on your behalf. This offering, taken from the very top of our income, is our personal acknowledgment that all things come to us from God, and is thus a very concrete act of worship on our part. If you do not happen to believe that God is your provider, but rather that every dollar in your wallet is there by your own sweat and blood, then you will see no need to worship God by offering back a gift of thanks to Him. Similarly, if you see your Christianity as primarily individualistic in nature, rather than as something tied to a holy community, you will be less likely to invest in that community and share with it the resources that God has entrusted to you. Almsgiving is another form of Christian giving, also tied to the idea of humanity itself as the larger community for which we are also responsible before God.

The New Testament scriptures are filled with references to Christian giving, as is indeed all church history down through the ages. With all this giving, we might suppose that Christians have always been rich, but this is hardly the case. Quite often churches have been built and furnished, and the poor, sick, and needy cared for by sacrificial giving on the part of the faithful. If we remember the example of the God-praised widow who put all she had to live on in the Temple treasury, we realize that even poverty is no excuse for not giving at least in some measure, for all are expected to worship God, to contribute to the Church, and to care for the poor as they are able.

In the verses just prior to this morning’s section of the gospel, our Lord instructed us to not lay up for ourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in to steal, but to lay up treasures in heaven where their value is everlasting. As always, Jesus is after something much more important than our money by telling us this; He is after our hearts. “For where your treasure is,” He said, “there your heart will be also.”

Your heart lives where your money does. This is the teaching of Christ and there is no clever, human way around the truth of it. If every cent of our hard-earned money goes back into the things of this world--no matter how vital or important those things might be--our hearts will always be attached to them, our hopes will always be that we have enough of them, and our minds will never rise above concern for them. If however we invest first and even sacrificially in the kingdom of heaven, our hearts and minds will gradually be freed from their enslavement to the things of this world to set themselves on the things above. This basic Christian teaching sets the stage for what follows next in the Sermon.

Immediately, Christ began to speak of the eye as the lamp of the body. The eye is of course the organ of seeing through which, by means of light, we perceive the world around us. Jesus is using the eye to symbolize our overall perception of reality, telling us that if our perception is darkened--or in other words, not illumined and informed by the light of Christian revelation--then our whole body, all of our thoughts and our entire manner of living, will be full of darkness.

Why did He say this right after telling us not to lay up for ourselves treasures on earth? Most likely because He understood that people would not grasp the importance of laying up treasure in heaven rather than on earth. In effect, He is telling us, “I know you don’t understand; I know you think I am wrong. But you need to have your eye enlightened by the Holy Spirit to see that what I am telling you is truth and life.”

This is important to bear in mind because what Jesus has to say next is even more difficult. He tells us that we cannot serve two masters; we cannot serve God and mammon.

Mammon does not refer to money, but rather to greed. Here, Christ personifies greed as if it were a false and idolatrous god at whose altar people willingly sacrifice even the well-being of others for the sake of their own financial gain. Clearly no Christian could live this way, for the gospel commands us to put the needs of others ahead of our own, and to be givers, not hoarders. Yet--humbly asking your forgiveness--I must point out a very serious fact concerning this. If we do not tithe or pledge or otherwise give sacrificially to support the very real financial needs of our holy community and the poor in our midst, we are exactly guilty of putting our own needs first at the cost of others. In such a case, Christ--who never shies away from revealing the truth that can save us--boldly tells us that our eyes are dark, our hearts are set on earth instead of in heaven, and we are worshiping the wrong god.

These are tough things to consider, and uncomfortable. Few things make people more defensive than the subject of money. Yet considering the unequivocal language and powerful imagery that Christ uses here, we would do well to take very seriously what He has to say and search to see to what degree it might apply to us.

I know that there are people in our community who are suffering financially and cannot make a regular tithe. Some have even received help from the parish as we are able to give it. But at the same time, we have many more families and individuals who are in a position to make more generous and regular offerings, but simply do not. Typically our parish finances are contributed by a small minority of families who give sacrificially from their own limited means to provide a place of worship for the rest of us. Many of these families are no better off than the rest of us, but their priorities are different, and they have learned that tithing is not simply a matter of personal piety, but of corporate responsibility in the household of God.

I realize that no one thinks they can afford to tithe. Many quite sensibly fear that they will not have enough for themselves if they tithe to God. Jesus also addressed this fear in the last part of our gospel lesson when He said, “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” After showing how God cares abundantly even for the flowers and the birds, Jesus concluded, “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things [i.e. your material needs] shall be added to you”.

Some of us frankly doubt the truth of this. Though we seldom see our fellow parishioners walking around hungry, thirsty, and naked because they gave their tithe and God forgot them, we still want more proof, in black-and-white, that God is going to meet our needs if we tithe. Perhaps we might even admit that we lack enough faith to believe it can be done. But isn’t that the same as saying that our hope for well-being really is tied to our money, and that mammon is the only god that we can truly and deeply trust?

I won’t say to you that tithing is easy. Often it does involve some level of personal sacrifice and perhaps even struggle. But what makes us think that we can be Christians in this fallen world without sacrifice and without struggle? What an insult to the holy saints and martyrs! Sacrifice and struggle are often required of us by God in order to form a greater faith and enlightenment and a more heavenly direction in our lives.

Have you ever considered that the tithe offering is meant to be a bit of a sacrifice? It’s intended to change our whole perspective about money and lead us toward trust in God. Does that sound like an easy operation? If we put tithing off until some time that we imagine it will be more affordable and painless, aren’t we rather missing the whole point? As I mentioned at the beginning, Jesus is not after our money, but after that which is of much greater value to Him: our hearts. He knows well what we so often fail to grasp, that our hearts live where our money does. “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” We cannot undo this truth. If we wait to tithe, we are only extending the time that our hearts are wedded to this world rather than to heaven. If we begin to tithe, even at a tiny level with our father-confessor’s blessing to eventually work up to a full tithe, then we are investing our hearts into our parish and into the kingdom of God, which is exactly what Christ tells us we need to do.

Sacrificial giving has always been the foundation of Christian spirituality. Before the early Christians became saints and martyrs, they first became givers, laying their goods at the Apostles’ feet. I know of no better way for us to free our own hearts from bondage to this world and to set them firmly on the path leading to the kingdom of heaven.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Fallen Thoughts, Fallen Feelings

2010-06-07T08:36:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

From today’s gospel lesson [Matthew 4:18-23], we heard the account of our Lord calling four fishermen from Galilee to become His disciples. The men eagerly responded to His call, leaving their nets behind to become followers of Jesus. At the end of that period, on the day of His ascension into heaven, Jesus gathered His closest disciples and charged them to carry His call around the world, saying to them: “Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you”. Ten days later, on that great feast of Pentecost that saw the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church, Peter exhorted the crowd to repent and be baptized to receive the promise of the kingdom of heaven. “For the promise,” he declared, “is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call”.

From these few examples we can see that Christianity begins for each of us as a call from Jesus Christ to become His disciple. Notice that the call is not to become believers, but to become disciples. By definition, a disciple is one who follows, who obeys, who submits to the master’s teaching and way of life and imitates it. There are many who claim to believe in Jesus, but do not follow Him. To them, Jesus warned, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven” [Matthew 7:21]. It is the will of the Father that we become true followers of Jesus Christ, observing all that He commanded.

To that end, a Christian disciple must lay aside and forsake all personal obstacles to obedience. The fishermen gave us a spiritual symbol of this when they abandoned their nets at Christ’s call to follow Him. In their case they clearly could not have followed Jesus all about the Holy Land to become witnesses of all that He said and did unless they left their occupations, their families, and all else behind during that time. Christ does not usually ask the exact same thing of us, but He does ask of us something rather more difficult. He asks us to abandon our love and devotion to all that stands in opposition to God and which hinders us from following Him.

This would include our love of sin and of all uncleanness which drives purity and holiness from our lives. It includes our love of pleasure and comfort which begs us to go easy on ourselves and forsake the bearing of our cross along the difficult way of salvation. And just as importantly--though often overlooked by us--it includes the love of our own fallen thoughts and feelings, which we mostly always obey without question, though they nearly always lead us away from God.

Every human being has thoughts and feelings, but the Christian disciple is called to submit even these to the Lordship of Christ. This is not easy for us. We don’t live in a monastery where we might expect daily life to be structured and shaped by the Holy Tradition of the Church to draw us to God as much as possible. We live in our own lives, in a world that is shaped by many forces that are in opposition to God; a world which has in turn shaped us and influenced far too many of our ideas about life and how it should be lived. This is the universal human problem and part of the reason St. Paul wrote: “Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God” [Romans 12:2].

Notice that the blessed St. Paul says that our minds are in need of transformation. Until such a holy transformation begins to take place in us, would this not suggest that most of our own thoughts are in error? This certainly means trouble for us because we are deeply conditioned to uncritically listening to our thoughts and to trusting absolutely our inner feelings. No one is more aware of this than the father-confessor, for he not only witnesses his own internal struggle to be transformed to the mind of Christ, but he often sees those he cares for set aside the instruction or penance he prescribes in the holy sacrament of confession, to continue to follow their own thoughts and feelings in all things. In the medical world this would be called “non-compliance” and every doctor has patients who--perhaps out of willfulness, perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of denial of their condition--refuse to follow the instructions he gives or take the medicine he prescribes. If we allow our own thoughts and feelings to make us medically non-compliant, nothing worse can happen to us than to die sooner. However, if we are non-compliant to the will of God, the Holy Tradition of our Church, and the penance and counsel of our father-confessor, we may suffer eternal death.

This is why the call of Christ is to set aside all obstacles to following Him, including our own misguided thoughts and feelings. Some might call this mind-control, but my mind is frankly in need of being controlled by the good and perfect and acceptable will of God, isn’t yours? My feelings also need to be controlled by something higher than my own self-love, which always makes lame excuses for not obeying God. If I am told to pray, I am too busy. If I am told to fast, I am too hungry. If I am told to make tithes and offerings, I am too poor. If I am told to come to church, I am too tired. If I am told to forgive, I am too deeply hurt. If I am told to regard others as more important than myself and to place their needs above my own, I am too inconvenienced. If I am told to read the gospels or other holy books to awaken my spirit to God, I am too bored. If I am told to be mindful of God and cautiously watchful over my thoughts and feelings, I am too used to obeying them, and too forgetful of my need to be inwardly transformed.

Ultimately, when we follow our own thoughts and feelings and the path in life they dictate to us, we are still followers, but no longer followers of Christ. Instead we are followers of the prince of darkness who rules over those in bondage to their own flesh. Freedom comes when begin not to trust and rely on ourselves as much, when we even learn to mistrust our thoughts and oppose our feelings and set them aside whenever they conflict with the will and guidance of God.

Let’s be honest; this is not an easy thing for us. Even if we are 100% convinced that this is the teaching of the Church--even if our own hard-won experience has demonstrated to us time and again that our thoughts and feelings are fallen like the rest of us and cannot be trusted--what do we tend to do? We tend to lay all this aside the very instant some thought or feeling suggests that we should follow it instead of Christ, His Church, or our spiritual father.

We need to understand that we have a choice. God has called us to become disciples of Christ, and the call of God is not without power. His call is accompanied by the new birth of baptism and the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit. By these great spiritual operations, God has granted us the entirely new option of following Christ in obedience. Read Romans 8 and understand that we now have the freedom to walk not according to the flesh--including the fallen thoughts and feelings of the flesh--but according to the Spirit of God who brings light and life and transformation.

The habit of following our own thoughts and feelings--of being led by them instead of by God--is deeply ingrained in us. And breaking any bad habit is undeniably hard. But by the grace of God the choice is ours whether to be led by fallen things, or to be led by Christ. The one will keep us forever confused and ensnared by sin; the Other will grant freedom and the eventual fulfillment of the promise of the kingdom of heaven. It is this Other, Jesus Christ Himself, who we must follow.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council

2010-05-18T10:46:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Today the Orthodox Church commemorates the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council. This council was convened by the emperor Constantine in 325 to put forth an official response to the Arian heresy, a new teaching which brazenly denied both the eternal deity of the Son of God and traditional Christian belief in the Holy Trinity. The council condemned the teachings of Arius, and put forth most of what we now know as the Nicene Creed, the balance being completed by a second council held 56 years later. We owe a great debt of thanks to these 318 Holy Fathers who labored so courageously to defend the apostolic faith and articulate it with such great precision. Their Spirit-guided efforts literally saved Christianity from extinction at its most vulnerable time.

Today, many people would take great exception to that statement. There are of course still heretics who insist that Arius was right and that the Council of Nicaea corrupted Christianity by “inventing” the doctrines of the Trinity and the deity of Christ. According to this fable, Constantine (who is always portrayed as a villain) saw the Arian controversy as an opportunity to seize control of the Church and further his own power. As the story goes, Constantine decided the best way to accomplish this was to elevate Jesus to the status of a God. The bishops of the Church--reduced to being shrewd minions of the emperor by this tale--allegedly recognized that this change would assure them a multitude of obedient followers and thus eagerly came onboard with his plan. Thus, with apparently little more than a wink and a nod the old “simple” Jesus was thrown out, and the new, Almighty Jesus became the latest God of the Holy Roman Empire.

To believe this fable, one not only has to ignore all the readily-available historical documents that describe the actual workings of the First Ecumenical Council, all the scriptures which clearly point to the deity of Christ, and all the writings of the second and third century Church Fathers who also upheld Jesus as God and presented teachings concerning the Triune Godhead, but one must additionally ignore--or in fact, impugn--the character of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea themselves. To say the least, these men were not the types to cave in to pressure from any emperor, under any threat or promise.

The Holy Fathers who were present at the First Council of Nicaea were mostly all survivors of the persecutions of Diocletian and Galarius, the last Roman emperors to act as persecutors of Christians before the Edict of Milan put an official end to this policy in 313. These Fathers had known little more than persecution for their faith in the Son of God their entire lives, as had many Christians for generations before them. Many of the Holy Fathers who attended the council were Confessors, men who had been severely tortured but who had steadfastly refused to deny Christ as Lord. Some had eyes gouged out by red-hot irons, some had stumps where limbs had been chopped off. Quite a few of them came to Nicaea suspecting that the new emperor Constantine was gathering them together for a mass execution. Yet they came anyway, bravely facing potential martyrdom for the sake of Christ.

To their great surprise, Constantine greeted them with reverence, kissing their holy wounds and bowing down before them. Whatever else may be said about Constantine, he was a man who honored courage and held suffering Christians in high regard.

Are we to believe that these men who had endured so much rather than deny Christ and had already secured great eternal rewards from their sufferings, would--at the prospect of mere temporal power--throw everything away so readily to accept a new Jesus? If the deity of Christ and the doctrine of the Holy Trinity were “invented” at Nicea as the heretics claim, can we imagine that these saintly Holy Confessors just rolled over and accepted this presumably blasphemous change without a single objection? Furthermore, if they had not always believed that Jesus was the eternal Son of the Father, then why did they suffer for Him in the first place? Only those who believed that Jesus is the true God would have refused to offer incense to the false gods of ancient Rome. The tale the heretics tell to support their false beliefs simply makes no sense.

We might expect the heretics to invent such false stories. What is somewhat surprising and very disappointing is that so many of our contemporary Christian brethren, particularly those of the Evangelical tradition, also seem to have developed a false mythology concerning Constantine, the First Ecumenical Council, and our Holy Fathers. You would think that all Christians today who share a common belief in the Holy Trinity and in the deity of Christ would realize what thanks we owe to these men who preserved these beliefs for us. Sadly, this is not always the case.

Although it is historically inaccurate to do so, many Evangelicals mark the Constantine era as the beginning of Roman Catholicism, and thus regard with deep suspicion all church development between the 4th and 15th centuries. Although Rome had always been geographically and linguistically removed from the other Patriarchates of Christendom, it really didn’t become the separate entity we know today until many centuries later. But Evangelicals have a tendency to see the cathedrals, the complex liturgies, the ornate vestments, the altars and iconography and other things which flourished so visibly after this time and label them as “catholic innovations” that were supposedly unknown to the early Church.

However, a true reading of church history shows that Christianity was liturgical and sacramental from its very beginning. Archeological finds have supported this, having uncovered Christian altars and iconography in the ancient catacombs! What we see during and after the Constantine period is Christianity emerging from its underground hiding places and beginning to express itself in beauty in the world above. These developments do not represent a change of belief, but a flowering of belief. The beautiful cathedrals and such that followed the end of the persecutions represent the Christian spirit attempting to manifest the splendor and glory of the kingdom of heaven as best in can in this fallen world.

Not truly understanding the theology of ancient Christendom, and thus not recognizing these developments as genuine expressions of that theology, many Evangelicals see these things only as departures from the early Church, and tend to blame them on Constantine (who seemingly can’t escape being made a villain!).

But in addition to this, the Sola Scriptura inclinations of Evangelicals often lead them to insist that no church and no group of men could possible save the Christian faith. In their view, only a clear reading of the bible could do that. The historical reality however is that God did use a Roman emperor, as well as bishops, priests, and deacons of the Church to save the faith during this time. As St. Paul had charged the elders at Ephesus to watch over the flock and defend it from the savage wolves who would arise from their own midst, so the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council rose up to defend against the presbyter Arius and his false teachings, which by the way he based on his own private reading of the scriptures in disregard to the faith of his Christian forefathers.

Clearly there is a great deal of confusion and misinformation in circulation today about this council and the men who formed it. But what should we learn from our own commemoration of the Holy Fathers? At the very least, we should understand that our actions in life as the people of God have true meaning and purpose before Him, and often very long-lasting consequences to others. God did use holy men, their deeply-formed beliefs, and the bold actions they took, to save the faith for those who followed, just as He has used holy men and women in every generation to perpetuate the Christian faith and cause it to stand strong in a world so openly hostile to it.

So now it is our turn. From these examples we must understand that the pursuit of purity and holiness in our own lives is of first and vital importance if we desire to be of use to God in our generation, and of benefit to any generations which may follow. In this age of deep spiritual darkness and manifold temptations, holiness seems almost impossible. We seem to be living in those last, terrible days in which even simple faith in God is something of a miracle of grace. But let us not lose hope, remembering that it doesn’t take very much light to illumine a truly darkened room; even the tiniest candle can provide enough light for men to find their way. We must use whatever faith we have to resist the sins which so easily entangle us, and pursue purity and an increase of the Holy Spirit within us. We may never gain the holy wisdom to write creeds that will guide millions into a true knowledge of God, but we just might gain enough to guide our own children and grandchildren and godchildren toward the safe haven of salvation in God’s Church. Perhaps that will be our legacy, if we will allow it to be.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Good Struggle

2010-05-03T07:25:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.
“Christ is Risen!”

Let’s imagine that we have been asked to fill out a survey evaluating our Orthodox Christian experience. The first question might be, Are you satisfied that your church provides you with the necessary environment and the spiritual tools needed to grow in your knowledge of God and in your communion with Him? I assume that most of us would respond positively, perhaps adding that Orthodoxy has exceeded our expectations in this regard, providing every imaginable means needed to cleanse us from all unrighteousness and help us draw near to God.

The next question might be, If yes, have you seen evidence that your fellow parishioners are benefiting spiritually from these things? Again, many of us would answer yes, adding that we have seen many people from a variety of backgrounds come together to discover a life of dignity and purpose in Christ. We have seen people find the peace that comes from knowing that God is in their lives, giving meaning to even the simplest actions, sanctifying their lives as they go about loving and serving others in humility, and quietly renewing their repentance each and every day.

The final question might be, Have you personally benefited and grown spiritually from your church experience? Here is where we might choke a bit on our answer, responding perhaps that Orthodoxy has certainly helped us to learn a great deal about ourselves--very little of it flattering I’m afraid--and feel that we at least know what we need to do, even if we don’t always find ourselves doing it as often as we should. None of us could say that the light we have been given is insufficient for illumination or the grace we have been granted is in any way lacking. We might simply have to conclude that with all the magnificent and gracious gifts God has bestowed upon us within His Holy Church, the only limiting factor in our own personal spiritual growth has turned out to be ourselves.

Not every person is so lucky, you know. We might remember what attracted us to Orthodoxy in the first place. Many of us were living in what author Matthew Gallatin has called a land of dry wells, thirsting for more of God but limited by the rational, man-made theology that characterizes much of modern Western Christendom. We wanted more than just abstract bible studies, light and frothy worship, or an approach to God that was largely cerebral and doctrinally-oriented.

When you get right down to it, we wanted to experience what Jesus had promised the woman at the well in today’s gospel lesson: the Living Water of the Holy Spirit, springing up within us unto eternal life. Like this woman, we likely had no idea in the world what that meant, but it sure sounded better to us than what we already had. Many of us felt spiritually dry and frustrated. We kept coming back to our respective church “wells” time and again, only to leave less refreshed each time. We knew there had to be a place where God’s water flowed, where souls are washed and renewed, and life is found in abundance. Like the woman at the well--who later would become known as St. Photini, Equal-to-the-Apostles--we said to the Lord, “Give me this Living Water, that I may not thirst, or come here to draw”. Like St. Photini, we were not quite prepared for what came next.

Our Lord knew that this woman was not yet ready to receive the Holy Spirit. She had certain, shall we say, “impediments” in her life that needed to first be addressed.

“Go, fetch your husband, and come back,” our Lord instructed her. “Uh, well, I have no husband,” she replied elusively. “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in this you have spoken truly,” our Lord exclaimed. Now Jesus certainly did not say this to shame the woman, but to show her that God is aware of every sinful obstacle that we place in our own path toward Him. We don’t know why this woman had gone through five husbands up to this point; perhaps they had all died of thirst while she was chatting away at the well every day! What we do know is that she was living immorally with a man she was not married to, and what Jewish stranger could possibly know this, unless He was the Christ?

Photini at first felt that her Samaritan religion was every bit as good as that of the Jews. But when Jesus showed her the possibility of something far better, she received the news with much enthusiasm. Then our Lord revealed her sins to her, to demonstrate that repentance is necessary before one can become a fountain of the Holy Spirit. Do we see any similarity between this and what has happened in our own lives?

How God must lament the spiritual blindness of men; the fact that we can live with such a high degree of sinfulness in our lives, and yet see no reason why this should prevent us from enjoying the fullness of God’s life and blessings. He must reveal our sins to us--in whatever degree it takes for us to get the message--in order that we might understand that the whole effort of our Christian life is to be cleansed of these sins to simultaneously allow the pure water of the Holy Spirit to flow forth within us, unpolluted.

Coming into Orthodoxy with much enthusiasm and spiritual thirst, and upon encountering the next vital and truly grace-filled step--the step which reveals our deeply-rooted sins--many of us were stopped cold by profound discouragement. Most of us find ourselves at a point in which, quite honestly, every day is a struggle to say our prayers, to come to church, to wrestle against our besetting sins and many temptations, and to keep our hope in God.

But we must ask ourselves: what were we expecting to happen? Did we imagine that we could blithely skip along God’s path to holiness without struggle? Having once been inspired by the stories of the saints and holy martyrs--like Photini herself in her later years--to believe that Orthodoxy represented authentic Christianity, did we think that we could gain the same grace as they without a share in their sufferings? Everything in this fallen world struggles to be born, to grow, to survive. God allows this as an illustration that life is not easy, and the spiritual life even less so. In many nations across the planet to this very day, multiple tens of thousands of Christians are still being persecuted and put to death each year. Yet we Americans seem to think we have a sacred right to an easy life, and an even easier Christianity.

Our experience of Orthodox Christianity might not be what we expected, but it has turned out to be exactly what God intended for us all along. In a religion that is defined by our God suffering and dying in the flesh for our salvation, we might fairly well expect that there will take place some struggle, some suffering, some dying in our own lives before we shall be raised triumphantly with Christ. Therefore, let us not be overly dismayed at the difficulties we encounter in our Christian life. Let us accept them as proof that we are on the genuine path to a real salvation, and continue to work out this same, great salvation with fear and trembling, knowing that it is God who is at work in us, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

EPILOGUE:

Those of us who are fans of the TV show Lost will remember an episode entitled “The Moth” in which one character, Locke (a fifty-something, wilderness survival-type guy who owns a lot of knives), was trying to help a young rock musician named Charlie to overcome his addiction to heroin. Locke had Charlie’s last bit of heroin, his “stash” as Charlie called it, in his possession. Charlie wanted it desperately but Locke told him, “If you come back to me and ask for it three times, I’ll give it to you”. Charlie asked for it immediately, to which Locke replied, “That’s once. Go away now, but come back twice more and it’s yours”.

Charlie went away, realizing that he could have his heroin, but that Locke was offering him a chance to save his soul. However, driven to near insanity by his addiction, he came back to ask for it a second time. “That’s twice,” Locke said grimly, then decided it was time to take Charlie to school. He walked him over to a tree and pointed out a cocoon hanging from it. “What do you think is in there?,” he asked. “Humph, I dunno; a butterfly?,” Charlie replied. “Oh no!,” Locke beamed, “It’s much more beautiful; it’s a moth!” Seeing the blank look on Charlie’s face, Locke continued, “It’s ironic: butterflies get all the attention because they’re pretty, but moths spin silk; they’re faster, stronger.” Charlie was unimpressed, yet Locke continued: “Right now the little insect inside this is struggling to free himself. He’ll expend all his energy to break out of that cocoon”. Locke raised his pocketknife to the cocoon and said, “Now I could help him. I could take the point of my knife and carefully open up the cocoon and the moth would be free”. Looking sideways at Charlie, Locke added, “But the moth wouldn’t live for long; he’d be too weak. You see, Charlie,” Locke concluded, “Struggle is nature’s way of making its creatures strong enough to survive. Now you’ve asked for your heroin twice; once more and it’s yours.” Finally understanding what Locke was teaching him, Charlie went away to continue his own terrible struggle. Returning at last a third time, he received the heroin from Locke and threw it into the campfire to destroy it, much to his mentor’s delight.

This little story has obvious spiritual implications. If we hope to survive in this life as Christians, we have to expect struggle, and not be dismayed when things seem so awfully hard. Our struggles are not a sign that God is uncaring, or that we are any worse than other Christians. Rather, they mean that God is strengthening us to survive in this fallen world and end with a faith that can endure even in the hour of our death.

Countless saints and martyrs have shown us one undeniable bottom line: no matter what we must endure, no matter how much pain we must suffer, it is worth every bit of it and infinitely more, for the great blessings God will reveal in the end. Let us choose to endure all not with complaining, but with thanksgiving, and unshakable hope in our Redeemer.

Illuminated by the Holy Spirit, All-Glorious One,
from Christ the Savior you drank the water of salvation.
With open hand you give it to those who thirst.
Great-Martyr Photini, Equal-to-the-Apostles,
pray to Christ for the salvation of our souls.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

St. Thomas Sunday

2010-04-13T14:01:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

“Christ is Risen!”

Today is the Sunday of St. Thomas. As we know, in the evening of that glorious Day that Jesus arose from the dead, He appeared to His disciples in the locked room, but Thomas was not among them. Today, one week later, our Lord again appeared to His disciples and this time Thomas was present to see the risen Christ with his own eyes and to touch His holy wounds with trembling fingers.

We are not told why Thomas was absent on that first Pascha, but we can reasonably assume that he was devastated by the Lord’s death and felt that the dream of a Messianic kingdom was finished. Thomas was likely in the beginning stages of the spiritual disease known as despair and no longer saw any use in gathering with his former companions. Even when the others found Thomas and joyously reported the Lord’s resurrection, he still would not believe. People who suffer from despair often have a hard time listening to others. They are so wrapped up in their own sorrow and the cloud of false ideas that led them there, that even words of genuine encouragement from others sound hollow and fail to reach them. Despair can very easily lead to death of the soul, as any person who refuses to be consoled and take hope in God will descend into an abyss of spiritual darkness, where the demons hold sway over those that dwell there.

Fortunately, such a fate did not befall Thomas. Thomas disbelieved, but his disbelief was of a simple nature, not stubborn, not attached to other sins. It is what the Church has called a “beautiful unbelief” because rather than completely permeating the man and filling him with evil, it was more like a veil that once lifted revealed the deep and profound belief and spiritual insight underneath.

Listen to the words of one of the hymns from this weekend: “As the Disciples were being doubtful, the Savior, after eight days, came to where they were gathered and granted them peace. Then He cried unto Thomas, Come, O Apostle, and probe the two palms which were pierced by the nails. O the delicacy of the beautiful unbelief of Thomas, as coming with the heart of an unbeliever to knowledge, he called out with fear, My Lord and my God, Glory to Thee.”

“Beautiful” and “Unbelief” are two words we don’t normally associate with one another, but there may be no better way to describe what we see in St. Thomas than with this odd amalgam. It is true he did not believe the glorious report of the Lord’s resurrection. But it is likely that he very much wanted to believe, which is why he found himself once again with his companions. And when at last he saw the Lord with his own eyes, he not only believed, but showed a great depth of faith and spiritual understanding with that wonderful proclamation, “My Lord and my God!”

Seeing the beautiful unbelief of Thomas, we should note that there also exists in many hearts what must be called an ugly unbelief. This is an unbelief that facts have nothing to do with, and therefore that truth cannot correct. It is a willful disbelief, motivated by the desire to rebel against God and cast off His commandments and to live a life guided solely by the sinful passions.

Every year at Christmas and Easter, national magazines like Time and Newsweek publish their usual cover stories following a general theme of “Why no one should believe in Jesus,” and featuring the latest popular book or movie or what-have-you that challenges the traditional views of Jesus’ birth or resurrection, or regurgitates the same old and tired claims that the evil Christian Church simply made up stories of Jesus’ divinity to gain control of the mindless faithful. I’m quite sure the people who publish this nonsense could care less about spiritual matters. They continue to put these materials out every year because there is a market for religious doubt and because ugly unbelief sells. Many people want to hear that Christianity is a fraud so that they can continue to ignore that still, small voice inside of them that suggests otherwise. I have a certain sympathy for such poor souls, for I recognize that in even the best of us there can remain a trace of such unbelief and doubt, perhaps merely waiting for an opportunity to surface.

Maybe you have noticed that in this week following Pascha it has been much harder for you to be faithful in your prayers and spiritual devotion. It seems that when the structure and disciplines of Great Lent and Holy Week are removed and we are left to our own devices, we very quickly revert to a state of sloth and spiritual indifference. Could we call this our own ugly unbelief? It is depressing to see this in ourselves, for we always expect to make some sort of “progress” during lent, but apparently discover that we have not. This is such a common experience that I have given it a name, calling it the “Post-Pascha Blues”. But this does not automatically mean that we have not made progress. Perhaps it only means that our progress has taken a different form than we expected.

Many people have peculiar ideas about spirituality. Quite a few seem to think that spirituality should manifest itself as “inner peace” or the gaining of a profound wisdom that amazes the masses. Very seldom do people associate “humility” with spiritual progress. People seem to favor spiritual characteristics that are enviable, that make them stand out from the crowd and give them an air of great accomplishment. Few people envy the meek and humble man. Perhaps when we converted to Orthodoxy, we too had ideas of quickly becoming so spiritual that our dubious Evangelical friends would fall down and repent before our wonderfulness. What a shock we felt when, instead of quickly advancing to a lofty state of grace, we only discovered how pathetically weak and sinful we truly are!

Very likely we took this as a sign of failure, either of ourselves or of Orthodoxy. But was it a failure, or was it simply Orthodoxy doing what it is supposed to do in us? May I suggest that it is the latter? Before Orthodoxy can make us spiritual, it must first make us humble.

Understand that God does not grant any visible spirituality until we have first gained a degree of humility. Beloved, this shows how much God loves us. He knows that if we are still bound by pride, any spiritual gain we become aware of will immediately be trumpeted by us as our own marvelous accomplishment, and our wicked pride will only grow worse. As painful as it must be for God--and certainly is for us--He must convince us first of just how broken we are, in order that any virtue we might finally receive from His hand will be accepted as a gift of which we are entirely unworthy. Salvation is of faith, not of works, lest any man should boast. This does not mean that we do not work, but that the aim of the work we do is to gain faith in God over faith in ourselves (“Lest any man should boast”). Another word for faith in God over faith in ourselves is humility.

Thus, when we step away from the lenten disciplines and watch ourselves fall immediately on our faces, this is a great mercy from God. It shows us that even prayer and prostrations, fasting and almsgiving, and dragging ourselves through endless services to the point of exhaustion--all the things that we often imagine will make us spiritual--do not make us spiritual in and of themselves. If they could, then what need would we have of God? Instead what these things do is form in us a humility that we cannot gain by any other method. You don’t learn humility from a book. You learn it from the struggle, from the effort to come to God, only to time and again find yourself coming up short and empty. Only then when grace is given, when virtue is formed in us by God, do we realize that it cannot possibly be of ourselves or of our efforts, but of God alone. Thus holiness can begin to formed in us without human pride to puff us up and steal away the gifts of God.

And so beloved, do not be depressed if this week has not gone so well for you. Rejoice, knowing that you just might be a step closer to humility. Return to your prayers, return to the confessional, return to the services of the Church, and make it your goal in all these things to depend much more upon your Lord and your God. Then your lent will have been a great success and you will have made progress of a sort that you might not have expected, but which God knew you needed.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

St. Mary of Egypt

2010-03-21T13:30:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Today is the fifth Sunday of Great Lent, dedicated to the remembrance of our Holy Mother Mary of Egypt. Mary’s story is certainly one of extremes. As a young woman she lived a life of horrible promiscuity. When a mystical encounter with an icon of the Theotokos brought her to understand the evil of her choices, she entered into a life of repentance that was equal in its extremity to the sins of her former life. Leaving all human company behind, she fled into the desert to survive in complete solitude for 48 years. Only after this time did she finally see another person, the priest Zosimas of Palestine, who discovered her while on a lenten pilgrimage into that same desert. Zosimas was amazed at the sight of this spiritual athlete, and even more amazed as she related her life story. Had it not been for this divinely-guided meeting, we would never have known of Mary, and would not have this incredible example of Christian repentance which the Church puts before us each lent.

Unfortunately, Mary’s former life of immorality, once seen as so shocking, has become rather more common in our society. We’re always hearing that America is “Victorian” and “repressed” in its attitudes toward sex, but it’s hard to imagine how anything could be further from the truth. We’ve become a culture obsessed with sex in even the most unnatural forms, and are on the verge of making Sodom and Gomorrah seem like a moral paradise by comparison. Mankind has always had a tendency to pervert sexuality, but I’m of the opinion that our culture took a sharp turn in this direction in the early 1960’s with the advent of the birth-control pill. Perhaps more than anything else, this one invention changed the way that Americans began to have sex, and changed our fundamental attitudes toward sex as well. These changes have had an incredibly negative impact on our culture.

Once upon a time, sexual activity tended to result in the production of noisy little things called babies believe it or not, and thus it not only served society better if sex were restricted to marriage, but married couples themselves tended to practice it more carefully, less frequently, and with a very wholesome understanding and acceptance that children would eventually result from the practice. Sex was completely linked with baby-making in the minds of most people, but the advent of “The Pill” quickly began to change all that.

With such a reliable and easy-to-use contraceptive at their disposal, married couples could now engage in much more frequent and casual sex without any concern of pregnancy. For the first time, people actually began to expect sex not to produce children! The sexual act very quickly became disassociated from procreation to become more a matter of recreation. Almost immediately, we lost any sense of sex as a sacred action connected with God’s blessing of the marital union, and reduced it to a function of mere pleasure-taking.

As soon as this change in perspective began to occur, the national divorce rate also started to rise alarmingly. There are many reasons for this, but one of these surely must be that as couples began to see the sexual union less as a matter of procreation--a view which automatically orients toward commitment and sacrifice for the benefit of family--and chose to see it in terms of personal gratification and fulfillment--an essentially self-centered perspective--it became easy to apply this latter, selfish standard to every aspect of the relationship and find it wanting in some way or another. We began to be more concerned with having our own needs met than with meeting the needs of our spouses or families and this became our undoing.

An increasing number of couples began to forego marriage entirely, as the sexual union no longer carried an implication of children or commitment, but the simple enjoying of a partner. Couples cohabiting without the benefit of marriage--a relationship that society once termed “living in sin”--became more accepted and today might even be the norm. [Perhaps some will remember that as recently as the mid-1970’s, many landlords still refused to rent apartments to unmarried couples on a moral basis. Such a thing seems almost unbelievable today!]

With procreation psychologically detached from sex, pregnancy began to be viewed as an “accident” and abortion moved from the back alleys to become a legal and lucrative industry. Jesus has warned that in the last days, most people’s love would grow cold, even to the point that mothers would lose a natural love for their own children. We suspect we are in those days when a living, healthy baby in the womb is often described as an “unwanted pregnancy” and the heartless murder of it, “a woman’s right to choose”.

Our linking of sex to pleasure exclusively has led to a change in attitudes toward explicit pornography, prostitution, and masturbation as well. Once seen as vile and shameful, these are now promoted as healthy outlets. Promiscuity itself has become more culturally accepted, leading to the invention of a myth called “safe sex;” a term that concerns itself only with any physical repercussions, and never with the emotional or spiritual ones.

With pleasure-taking now understood as the primary purpose of a sexual encounter, it no longer seems to matter if the couple is even of the opposite sex. The growing acceptance of homosexuality and the rapid move toward same-sex unions is merely the latest logical and predictable manifestation of the redefining of sex as pleasure over procreation that all began with the broad acceptance and use of easy contraceptives within otherwise traditional marriages not so very long ago.

Now this might sound as if I’m preaching against the use of contraceptives but please understand that this is not my point. There are many methods which of course should never be used because they can cause spontaneous abortions or lead to health or long-term fertility problems. But there are other methods which can be approved for limited use if a couple has a proper understanding of what the Church teaches concerning the sacrament of marriage. Couples considering birth-control methods should seek the guidance of their father-confessor and not rely solely on opinions or teachings of others on the matter.

My true purpose for giving this admittedly simplified history was to show that our society’s rampant sexual confusion and immorality didn’t just appear out of nowhere one day last week. It is rooted in the gradual distortion of our understanding of the purpose of sex itself; a distortion that modern reproductive science, unleashed within an amoral secular culture, certainly helped to accelerate. The result is that our society’s distorted views on sex have affected us all, some of us adversely. Many of us need a miracle akin to Mother Mary’s of Egypt to set us back on a path of healing.

When it was revealed to Mary that her impurity had separated her from God, she undertook an extreme repentance to correct her life. Our repentance may not involve desert wandering, but in the eyes of the world, the actions we must take for our own recovery might seem nearly as extreme. It comes down to the fact that we need to learn to take sex seriously once again, recognizing it as a sacred action which God has blessed for marriage alone.

All single people and unmarried couples must practice absolute and total celibacy, without exception. Dating couples need to enter into covered relationships and strictly follow the rules given to them by their priest to preserve their purity. Married people must be monogamous and work harmoniously together for their mutual salvation. If they are using contraceptives, they must make certain that they are using acceptable types and in a manner that is not to simply maintain a double-income, no-kids lifestyle indefinitely. We should also say that any people troubled by a same-sex attraction must not follow this impulse, but learn how to live in purity through the sacrament of confession. All of us must labor to be chaste in thought and deed, avoiding pornography, indecent entertainment, and every unclean action done in secret. We must resist the secular notion that we have some inherent “right” to give in to our passions and indulge in whatever form of sexual pleasure-taking we enjoy. This is not what God created us for.

In today’s world, such steps might seem nearly as extreme as desert monasticism. But our culture has become hostile to sexual purity and we must oppose this trend in our hearts and in our lives. In essence, we must take sex back from a culture that has utterly trivialized it and learn to regard it as something sacred once again. Since sexuality is integral to our humanity as God created it, any perversion of our sexual practices or attitudes leads invariably to the deconstruction of our humanity itself. This is exactly what we are witnessing taking place in our society, and perhaps in our lives as well.

Through the prayers of our righteous Mother Mary and of all the saints, may God help us to reverse this trend and find healing through a diligent and careful repentance.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Prodigal Son

2010-01-31T12:00:00.000-08:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Today we continue our pre-lenten preparations with the story of the Prodigal Son [Luke 15:11-32]. In this story, a selfish young man grew weary of waiting for his father to die on order to gain his inheritance, and so demanded that the old man divide the family’s wealth with him at once. Despite the impudence of this request, the kind and patient father granted it to his son, who then took the money and fled his father’s house to occupy himself in a far country with what is graciously described as “loose living”. We can assume this means that he involved himself in activities that were both immoral and personally degrading; things that he had apparently lusted after for some time, but had been unable to satisfy in the godly environment of his father’s house.

Pursuing this new and wicked life, the young man soon squandered all the wealth that his father had given to him and found himself working for a foreign pig farmer, so destitute and hungry that his mouth watered for the disgusting slop he fed the hogs. The Hebrews regarded swine as unclean animals, and the fact that this once wealthy young man had been reduced to becoming a servant of pigs would have been recognized as a sign of his complete and utter degradation. The whole story up to this point portrays very well the spiritual reality that those who give themselves over to sin not only lose the wealth of God’s grace once entrusted to them, but become enslaved to the foul and unclean spirits behind those sins.

Such was the condition in which the Prodigal Son at last found himself. But though he had willfully rejected every good thing he had known from his youth, and had emptied himself of every visible trace of dignity and spiritual beauty as the result, the mercy of God had not yet abandoned him. There, in the midst of his abasement, God awakened him, and he came to his senses. Thinking back to the life he had once known in his father’s house, it occurred to him that even the servants there enjoyed a better situation than he was in at the moment. Perhaps if he could muster up enough contrition and the right words--with maybe a tear or two thrown in for good effect--he could convince his father to take him back and give him food.

Thus the Prodigal began his journey back to his father’s house, all the while rehearsing his “confession”. With pious-sounding words he would tell him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and am not worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired servants”. Surely such a beautiful speech would tug his father’s heartstrings and move the old man to compassion.

Perhaps we can see that at this point in his life--even after all he had been through--the Prodigal Son was still terribly self-centered. It was all about him! He seemed oblivious to the pain he had caused his father, and scarcely concerned for the great inheritance he had so carelessly thrown away. He only cared about himself and about having the consequences of his sins taken away. He was hungry and miserable and wanted his father to make it all better.

This is not a story of a deep and mature repentance such as that shown by St. Mary of Egypt for example. But when you think about it, our repentance is often far from perfect as well, and not unlike that of the Prodigal Son. Are there not times when we come to confession with a rehearsed speech designed to cautiously reveal a few of our more excusable sins, without really opening up and exposing to God the deep and painful ugliness of our souls so in need of healing? Like the Prodigal, we may not be fully aware of our own inner darkness or the value of our lost inheritance, the spiritual beauty granted to us by God but squandered by a lifetime of selfish sins. And do we not sometimes come to confession only to gain what we want out of it, a release from those nagging feelings of guilt, and a quick spiritual band-aid to assure us that everything is going to be “all better”?

We need to understand that this is not repentance, but it is at least a beginning. It represents a movement back toward God--clumsy and imperfect perhaps--but one that at least returns us to our Father, where we can begin the true work of repentance.

What is the difference between confession and repentance? Confession reestablishes the communion with God that we have broken by our sins. Even on a strictly human level, confession is often needed to reestablish broken relationships. What if the Prodigal had taken a back-road to his father’s house and hopped the fence to avoid facing his father at the gate? Would we not think that he was a coward seeking to take the easy way out? The same is true for those who avoid the confessional or come at best only once a year by obligation. In that case are we not trying to live in our Father’s house without rebuilding the relationship that we have broken with Him? The sacrament of confession is also the place where we receive grace from God to take on the hard work of actually changing our lives once we are brought back into communion with Him.

To illustrate this difference, let us consider what life must have been like for the Prodigal Son after he returned to his father’s house. Would it not make sense that he spent the rest of his days working very, very hard to help his family recover some of the wealth he had caused them to lose? Along the way, he would learn to stop thinking only of himself, and put the needs and interests of others ahead of his own. He would also have to work very hard for years to combat the lusts in his heart for the “loose living” that had taken him away from his father, and struggle often to purge himself of the memories of the sins in which he had so wantonly engaged. He was damaged goods, and it would take time and effort for him to repair that damage and regain a pure heart. He would also need to discover a new love and respect for his father and learn from him, valuing him as wise and selfless man, and a person worthy of imitation. These kinds of things would represent a good and maturing repentance, gradually transforming the Prodigal from being a thoughtless young punk into a good and loving man, much like his own father.

And so we see that both confession and repentance are needed in our lives to continually renew our communion with God and to make us partakers of His divine life and love.

As painful as deep and therapeutic confessions may be, and as hard as the daily work of repentance truly is, we are not alone in this work, struggling as it were to regain God’s favor from a distance. The story of the Prodigal Son shows that God eagerly receives us back even at our worst, and grants us every blessing to enable us to resume our life as members of His family once again. Before the Prodigal even reached his home, while he was still afar off, his father saw him and joyously rushed to meet him on the road, showering the undeserving one with gifts and love, and ordering a great feast and celebration to be made in his honor.

See how good God is toward us sinners! Sometimes we stand in His House bored and ungrateful, sometimes wavering in faith, sometimes dreaming of that far country with its lure of an easier existence. But here in this place God bathes us in His love, clothes us in a robe of light, and feeds us at His Great Banquet. No matter how spiritually blind or sick we may be, God’s love is given to us, and is greatly needed by us. Can we see how deeply damaging it would be to our souls for us to turn away from this love of God in even the smallest way? Let us faithfully guard our hearts, labor hard at our repentance, and grow as members of God’s Household.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Repentance of Zacchaeus

2010-01-18T09:43:00.000-08:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

This morning, with the reading of the story of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10), we begin our period of pre-lenten preparation which this year will run for four weeks until the start of Great Lent on February 15th. As always during this time, the Sunday gospel lessons will present us with selected themes pertaining to the major action of Great Lent, which is the action of repentance.

Many people misunderstand repentance. Some describe it as a feeling of regret for wrongs committed, others as the effort to put an end to those wrongs. Still others see it as an attempt to gain the forgiveness of God through religious means. None of these explanations offers an adequate description of the fuller meaning of repentance. They are like trying to describe the experience of flying in a luxury private jet as “not walking”. That may be partly true, but it hardly gives us the full understanding we might be after.

Repentance is better described as a turning away from death to embark upon the path leading to the fullness of life in the kingdom of God. It is primarily a positive action, and a lifelong one. Another way to describe repentance is to simply call it “the Christian life”. The Christian life certainly involves the steady and continuous putting to death of the deeds of the flesh, but also includes our active sharing in the life of God in Christ, a sharing which brings about our gradual transformation from glory to glory by the effects of His divine and spiritual life within us. Repentance must not be thought of only as a negative action, or an occasional one. It must be seen as a continuous, positive movement toward God, leading us toward the glorification of our humanity.

With that description in mind, we can see that calling Great Lent a special time of repentance is a bit of a concession to our weakness. For the Christian, all of life should involve this positive action of repentance, this steady progression toward God. But as we all know so well, we often slip comfortably back into our old ways of doing things, and do not focus as sharply as we should on the pursuit of God. Lent is therefore presented to us each year as the opportunity to renew our zeal, redouble our efforts, and enter more fervently into the Christian life. Our pre-lenten gospels lessons help us to prepare for this effort by presenting us with great stories of repentance from the holy scriptures. Today it’s the story of Zacchaeus, the little man who quite literally “rose above the crowd” in his great desire to see the Lord Jesus.

The streets of Jericho that day were filled with many curious onlookers who had turned out to catch a glimpse of this famous Jesus of Nazareth as He passed by. And pass them by He did, for the Lord has little interest in satisfying the needs of the merely curious. Those who had come out for nothing more than a moment’s entertainment however soon found it in the person of Zacchaeus, a wealthy and much-despised tax collector for the Roman government, who bolted ahead in all his fine and expensive apparel and scrambled up into the limbs of a sycamore tree because he was too short to see over the heads of the crowd.

No doubt those who witnessed this event were put somewhere between laughter and derision at the sight. But if Zacchaeus felt any shame over his loss of dignity, he neither showed it, nor did he allow it to keep him from what he sought. With a sudden and deep desire that perhaps he himself did not anticipate, Zacchaeus wanted with all his heart to see the Lord, and would let nothing stand in his way. Because Zacchaeus’ desire was genuine, the Lord took special notice of him, and soon entered into his household, bringing salvation to all who dwelt there.

The first lesson we can take from this story is the importance of desire in the heart of any who would draw near to Jesus. This is especially important as we anticipate the holy and saving season of Great Lent. People often characterize lent as a time of “giving things up” and of course our flesh resists that practice greatly. With all the extra services of prayer, together with the fasting and almsgiving that lent demands, we are indeed asked to give up more of our time, certain foods and drink we love, and more of our money as well. But like repentance itself, we must begin to think of Great Lent as a positive action, and look to all the wonderful things we stand to gain from it.

Lent offers us the opportunity to quiet our flesh a bit, together with that unreasoning desire for the things of this fallen world that our flesh can’t seem to shake. It offers us a much closer communion with God and a greater awareness of His presence in our lives. It helps weaken our addiction to this world a bit more, as begin to see ourselves truly as members of the kingdom of heaven. Fueled by our desire for the good things of God and our expectation that He will supply them, Great Lent can be a time of bringing the grace and healing of God into our lives and households in order that we might remember how life can be lived more consistently if we so desire and choose.

Besides the need for this true desire for God in the Christian’s heart, the story of Zacchaeus also shows us what proper repentance looks like and how important this is. As the Lord sat at table in the tax-collector’s house, the crowd outside complained that Jesus had gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner. Perhaps aware of this, and painfully aware of the truth of it, Zacchaeus exclaimed, “Behold Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold!” Please notice that it was only after Zacchaeus made this pledge of repentance that Jesus declared to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man also is a son of Abraham”.

There is no need to enter into the whole “faith vs. good works” debate that has so occupied Protestant/Catholic debate over the last 500 years. It is sufficient to demonstrate here that in the gospel Jesus preached, both faith and works were necessary to establish one as a child of Abraham and an inheritor of the promise of salvation. What if Zacchaeus had not made his pledge of repentance? What if he had merely enjoyed the Lord’s brief presence only to continue on with his life as before? Do we imagine that Jesus would have made the same joyous proclamation of salvation to such an unrepentant man?

Great Lent focuses our attention on repentance as a reminder that in the Christian life, faith without works is dead. It is also useful to observe that repentance seldom looks exactly the same for any two Christians. For one it was surrendering half his goods to the poor; for another it was “sell all that you possess and give to the poor”. Our needed repentance depends on whatever exists in our lives that we love more than God, and whatever it is that keeps us from following Christ with a good faith and a pure heart. Whatever our individual needs may be, Great Lent helps us find them and put them first in our lives once again. It can be a time of tremendous spiritual renewal and growth for us. May God help us to pursue it this year with all our hearts.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Sunday After the Nativity of Christ

2009-12-27T11:00:00.000-08:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

"Christ is born!”

Today we have come to the Sunday after the Nativity of Christ and the commemoration of the Proto-martyr Stephen. The word proto means “first,” and has been connected to St. Stephen as the first recorded martyr of the Church era. Although he is the first official Christian martyr, St. Stephen is far from being the very first person to die for Jesus Christ. As we heard from our gospel lesson from St. Matthew’s account (Matt. 2:13-23), that terrible distinction is shared by the estimated 14,000 innocent young boys--two years of age and under--who were slaughtered by King Herod in his mad search to find the Christ Child.

I have a friend who claims to be an atheist. He’s a good person, as all my friends tend to be, but he has it stuck in his head that a truly good and merciful God would not allow human suffering to exist in the world. Imagine how he might react to a story like this from the gospel! (“14,000 children dead? How could a good God allow that?”). People often look at tragedy as a sign that something must be wrong with God. They seldom seem willing to consider the problem from the other side, namely that something just might be terribly wrong with us human beings and with the world as we have made it.

The Holy Scriptures tell us that God created the world as a Paradise, void of suffering and death. Man was created in perfect communion with God, Who was also the source of our life and peace and blessing. These same ancient writings also record the dark story of mankind’s rejection of God, how we broke communion with our Life-giver, to bring death and every terror into our world, completely altering and effectively destroying what God meant for us to experience. This world, as we know it today, bears little resemblance to the world as God originally made it. Our Creator never intended for His creation to be filled with the many evils that we see and experience today, and perhaps inflict upon others. It is we human beings who have made our world what it is. And what we have done, cannot be undone by us. The broken vase cannot be repaired by the careless hand which broke it; only by the Master’s hand which first created it in its beauty and perfection.

All people have a sense that something is wrong with this world, but most don’t seem to understand that the world itself is fallen and that the sins of man are responsible for making it that way. Instead, people blame God for apparently creating an “imperfect” world. Many, like my atheist friend, assume that if God is truly loving, nothing bad should ever happen to people--at least not to so-called “good” people. In their minds, God should remove all suffering from the human experience and allow us to at least pretend that we are still living in a kind of Paradise.

But if God did so, it would not address the deeper problems of our brokenness. It would not restore our communion with God, with one another, with creation itself; it would not cure the consequences of our sins or undo the power of death. It would not redeem our fallen world. Such an action on God’s part would be like medicating a curable patient to mask his pain, without operating to remove the fatal disease which is slowly yet certainly taking his life. Because God is good and the lover of mankind, He allows the terrible symptoms of our disease to be felt and experienced by us in order that we might come to our senses and turn back to Him to find our healing and restoration to full communion and everlasting life.

In the Nicene Creed we recite together every Sunday, there are two tiny little words, so easy to overlook, which nevertheless contain the answer to all human pain and misery. Those words are found in the section which tells us that Jesus Christ was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried. Perhaps unexpectedly, those two, all-important words are “and suffered”. Why did our Ecumenical Fathers consider it so important to tell us that Jesus suffered at His crucifixion? We might think, “Well, yeah, I suppose crucifixion is painful, so Jesus probably did suffer. But come on, He only suffered for three hours; my suffering has gone on my entire life. There’s really no comparison.” And we would be right to say there’s no comparison. But once again, we have looked at the problem from the wrong perspective.

You or I possess only a human, and thus a limited, capacity for suffering. A single human being can only suffer so much, even over an entire lifetime. But Jesus Christ is divine, and thus possesses a divine capacity for suffering in Himself, which is entirely without limit. Jesus therefore, in His crucifixion, took upon Himself the sufferings of the entire world and of all human beings who ever did or who ever will live. In those three short hours, He took all the sufferings of our entire race upon Himself in order to redeem those sufferings and turn them from a meaningless horror into the path to our salvation.

He bore our sufferings upon the Cross. What does this mean except that every tear ever shed has been shared by Him, every injustice, cruelty, or pain suffered by anyone, anywhere has been borne by Him, and every bitter, fearful, or lonely moment of our human existence has been conquered by Him and transformed into a grace-filled encounter with the power of God to help us overcome this fallen world and persevere with Him unto glorification in the world yet to be revealed. Although the world we have made is still a dark and terrible place, our suffering goes no longer unanswered, and we are no more alone. No single drop of blood falls without a God who takes note of it and redeems it to make it into yet another stepping stone into heaven. Jesus Christ, by His divine suffering, has made our sufferings into an open door to Paradise once again.

Think of it this way: If suffering and death are the two inescapable realities of this fallen world, then what could a good God do except to remake suffering and death into the very means of man’s salvation? Suffering and death still retain their outward forms, but they both have been changed dramatically by the power of God. Suffering, instead of merely wearing us down, now has the capacity to unite us to Christ, who redeemed all our sufferings upon His Cross. And death, instead of being the end of all things, now transports us into the glorious presence of Christ in heaven, where there is no longer any suffering, nor tears, nor sorrow.

As long as this world remains fallen, suffering and death will also remain. But they have lost their teeth. Their effects have now been rendered temporary, while their benefits have become eternal. This is the good news that all the saints and confessors and holy martyrs understood so well. They joyously endured the most dreadful sufferings to become one with their suffering Savior. And they happily laid down their lives for one brief moment in time, in order to take them up again forever and ever.

Could this be why we commemorate the martyrdom of St. Stephen and the slaughter of the 14,000 Holy Innocents a mere two days after our celebration of the Nativity of Christ? These horrible stories seem way out of step with the spirit of Christmas cheer. Yet the truth is that they--and every other tragic story in human history--have everything to do with why the Son of God took flesh and joined Himself to our race. It was impossible for us to escape the forces of suffering and death in this world as we have made it, so He entered into our world and changed these forces from within. He took away their power to destroy and equipped them with the power to save. They will still catch and overtake us eventually. But if we place our hope in God, we will find that their bitterness has been replaced by a gentle sweetness and a spiritual joy beyond all measure.

One day all suffering and death will be removed and God will completely restore all creation to beauty, along with all those who love Him and desire their salvation. In the meantime, in this our present time, life is still marred by the forces we have brought into it. But our good God has seen fit to impart even to those forces the power of redemption. Even in the shadow of suffering and death, we celebrate His mercy and kindness toward us sinners. Christ is born! Glorify Him!

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Genealogy Sunday

2009-12-20T22:23:00.000-08:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Today is the Sunday before the Nativity of Christ, the day known as “Genealogy Sunday”. I did a little research into this and as it turns out, the word genealogy has nothing to do with the study of genies. Instead, it’s based on a couple of hifalutin Greek words that together pertain to the study of one’s ancestry or family tree. Apparently you can learn a great deal about a person from such a study, and the genealogy of Christ is no exception. His genealogy reveals to us the mercy, humility, and incredible love of the Son of God for mankind.

There are two genealogies of Christ recorded for us in the gospels; the other can be found in St. Luke’s account. Matthew traces Christ’s lineage back to Abraham, demonstrating that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s promise to that holy patriarch that from his seed would arise One in whom all the families of the earth would be blessed. St. Luke, the historian, goes even further, tracing Christ’s ancestry all the way back to Adam. By this he shows that Jesus is the Last Adam, the One who comes to undo the disobedience of the First Adam, together with the consequences of death, brokenness, and alienation from God that our First Parents brought upon themselves, their world, and all of us their children, according to the flesh.

Both genealogies combine to reveal a God who would not abandon us in our misery, but rescued us from it in the only way possible: by entering into it Himself. The greatest proclamation of Genealogy Sunday is that our God did not save us from the sanitary, comfortable distance of heaven, but instead voluntarily assumed our humanity and leapt right into the cesspool we had made of our world, in order to clean our mess and bring us healing unto eternal life.

If we were to take the time to research all of the names that the deacon just read to us, we would discover an amazingly human collection of people, replete with all the glories and failings you might expect from such a group. Christ’s family tree includes a mix of holy people along with some who were exceedingly evil. Many were kings, and of these, some faithfully worshipped the God of Israel, while others led the people into the worship of false gods and idols. The wicked Ahaz went so far as to sacrifice his own son on a pagan altar. Even some of the best, like David and Solomon, were not without their glaring faults. And Ruth was a gentile!

While the old saying is that you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your relatives, in this case we understand that God did indeed choose each and every branch of Christ’s family tree to include both the best and and the worst examples of humanity. Surely this was done in order to give us hope. Christ allowed Himself to be physically identified not only with the saints and lovers of God, but also with the ignorant, the wayward, and yes, even the wicked. And this great and colorful line of humanity culminates in a young girl, Mary, the daughter of the righteous Joachim and Anna, from whom the Son of God took our human nature, joining Himself to our race, and was born.

Most Americans take little notice of saints, but there have been a few--like Mother Teresa of Calcutta or Father Damian of Molokai--that have risen to gain the attention even of the most secular of folks. Perhaps that is because these two examples were very incarnational in their ministry. Such as these did not serve from beautiful, luxurious suites in Manhattan, but literally entered into the terrible worlds of those who were suffering and joined themselves to them. Even non-believers recognize that there is something more genuine--dare we say, even more Christian--about such sacrificial, “hands-on” types of ministries, over those that simply preach inspiring, soothing words to others from the comfort of pulpits and studios.

As St. Matthew noted for us, the heart of the Christian good news is summed up in one of the prophetic names given to Jesus, Immanuel, which means, “God is with us”. The news would not be so joyful if it only meant that God is with us in spirit, that God was only watching us “From a Distance,” as the once-popular song by Julie Gold proclaimed. No, the Christian good news is that God is with us in the most intimate way possible. He has joined Himself to our race, become one of us, and allows each of us to become partakers of His divinized human nature if we will have it.

Most people remain tragically oblivious to this great news and live their lives as if it never happened. Even a surprising number of Christians today struggle with the idea of calling Mary the Theotokos or bearer of God, because they cannot bring themselves to accept the bold and startling truth of the incarnation. Over the years, several misguided believers have shared with me their thoughts that God must have created a fertilized ovum, separate and complete, to implant in the womb of Mary, making her in effect the “surrogate mother of God” rather than the one from whom the Son of God accepted humanity to genuinely become one of us. If what they say is true, we are still lost, for what is not assumed cannot be saved. Yet some persist in this outrageous belief because it is so difficult for them to imagine that the pure and eternal, spiritual God would stoop so low as to assume our human flesh so completely.

Despite human misgivings, that is exactly what the Son of God has done, and not just for thirty-three years, but for all of eternity. God is with us, joining Himself to us, joining us to Him.

I once heard an old preacher say with great sarcasm that if you’re going to “go along with the Catholics” and start calling Mary “the Mother of God” then you’re going to have to call Joachim and Anna the grandparents of God, and continue all the way back to calling King David the Great-great-great-(and so on)-grandfather of God, “And pretty soon,” he laughed, “You’re gonna have to say that Jesus is related to everybody!” He thought this was a great joke, and his congregation laughed along with him. Imagine Jesus being actually related to men; how preposterous!

But isn’t the whole point of the genealogies in the gospels to show us that the Son of God has entered into our race and become one with the family of man? He shares a common humanity now with all people, and we who are called by His Name share an even greater joining with Him by virtue of the new birth of water and the Spirit at Holy Baptism.

This is what we contemplate on this Genealogy Sunday, by way of readying ourselves for the joyous celebration of the Nativity of our Great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. God is with us! We are not alone in the physical or emotional sufferings that seek to cripple and destroy us. We are not without powerful help in our struggle to overcome the passions and sins that disease our life and darken our souls. We have not been abandoned or left without any hope of drawing near to God in all our misery. God is with us to help us and to deliver us from death. Though it is often so hard even for Christians to accept this great truth, the Son of God has joined Himself to us and has become our Brother. Christ is born, and we are saved by His great mercy, humility, and incredible love. All praise to Immanuel; God is with us!

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Hypocrisy

2009-12-08T11:39:00.000-08:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

In this morning’s gospel account [Luke 13:10-17] we read that our Lord miraculously healed a woman on the Sabbath, only to be publicly rebuked for His merciful act by an angry synagogue official. There is a saying that no good deed goes unpunished, and this story would seem to support that cynical observation. In the end however it was the synagogue official who got spanked, and rightly so, for he was guilty of what is very likely the worst and least forgivable sin of a religious person: the sin of hypocrisy.

The word hypocrisy is said to date back to the days of ancient Greek theater in which the actors wore masks to portray their various characters. It implies the putting on of a “false face” or of pretending to be what one is not. Unfortunately, hypocrisy is not always so intentional nor obvious to the person guilty of it. There can also be what we might call a latent hypocrisy, a hidden hypocrisy in which the person feels that they are the genuine article, but their attitudes and actions eventually betray that they are not. This would be the worst kind of hypocrisy because the person himself doesn’t see it, and may even blindly deny it when it is revealed in him.

This was the sort of hypocrisy of the synagogue official in our story. I’m sure he was a very religious man who felt he was quite sincere in his practice. Nevertheless, Jesus labeled him a hypocrite, because the man had forgotten the very purpose of his religion and practice, namely to love God and his neighbor as himself. The man was so focused on the outward observance of the Law, that he neglected entirely the inward action of the Law, which was to lead one toward love and compassion.

The story begins with Jesus teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. The New Testament records more than ten occasions on which Jesus’ ministry took place within the synagogue. The synagogue was a natural place to find Jesus, not simply because it was a convenient spot to teach, but because Jesus, as a pious and observant Jewish man, would have always been in the synagogue on the Sabbath, or in the Temple during every major Jewish feast. He did so not out of legalism or blind obedience to His religion, but because He genuinely loved God and must always be in His Father’s House, going about His Father’s business.

To put it in our terms, Jesus would never have missed Matins, would never have made a habit of slipping in late to the Divine Liturgy, and would certainly have been present at every Feast and service of the Church. The Orthodox Church needs more people like Jesus. Or to put it another way, we need more Orthodox Christians who are willing to become Christ-like in their love for God and in their devotion to Him in worship.

On this particular day a woman was present who had an infirmity that had left her terribly crippled and bent over for eighteen long years. Jesus released her from her infirmity, laying hands on her and straightening her body to restore her to complete health. The dear lady glorified God immediately. But the ruler of the synagogue became furious because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath.

Not having the courage to face Jesus, the ruler instead turned toward the people and exclaimed, “There are six days on which men ought to work: therefore come and be healed on them, and not on the Sabbath day”. Could he have possibly said anything more stupid? Blinded by a heartless legalism, and most likely by a deep envy of Jesus as well, the ruler could not praise God for what he had just witnessed. Instead he could only complain that the miracle had not been done on the proper day of the week.

How many miraculous healings had this man seen over the course of his life? I’m going to guess that this was probably the very first. Yet he could not glorify God, he could not even face Jesus or thank Him, but could only quibble over what he saw as a breaking of the rules. Jesus pointed out that any man will untie his animal on the Sabbath and lead it away to water and refresh it, and therefore it was right for this woman to have been released and refreshed on the Sabbath day. This made perfect sense, but the logic was lost on the synagogue official because he did not possess even the most basic compassion or wisdom to rejoice that this daughter of Abraham had been set free from Satan’s captivity.

What would make his sin even worse is the possibility that he had known this woman and had witnessed her suffering for so many years. Being badly crippled as she was, it is not likely that she could have traveled far to find Jesus, which would indicate that she may have been from this particular synagogue. Everyone rejoiced to see this woman healed, save the one man who lacked the love that his religion was supposed to impart to him. Thus he truly was a hypocrite, and was more bound by Satan than the woman had ever been.

If we wish to draw a lesson from this story, it would be that we must guard ourselves against hypocrisy by allowing our religion to bear the fruit of love and compassion in our lives.

It is a dreadful thing to be a Christian hypocrite. Bad enough are those who are knowingly negligent of their faith: who habitually ignore the fasts of the Church, forsake prayers night and day, actively engage in sinful thoughts and actions, or neglect to support the parish both financially and with faithful, punctual, and joyful attendance. But perhaps even worse is the situation of those who seem faithful in their religious practice, but who also are utterly lacking in Christian love. Sometimes these folks are easy to spot. They may be the loudmouths on the parish council or in the choir, who don’t care what discord they sow as long as their voices are heard and their opinions are accorded proper reverence. Often however, there is more subtlety present. People without love may be very religious outwardly, but inside are quick to judge others, painfully long at holding grudges, and very slow to offer any genuine help or prayers for those in need. Such people will often present themselves as very committed Orthodox believers, perhaps even as true pillars of their community. Yet they are more like rotting timbers, only waiting to let go and bring the roof down on many.

We are all fallen and broken people living in a fallen and broken world. We don’t need to look around to imagine who these descriptions might fit. We need only to look within ourselves to see if our Orthodoxy is progressively leading us to love God and our neighbor as ourselves. It seems incredible that the synagogue official in our story could be so void of love that he would blindly criticize Christ rather than rejoice with the woman who was healed. And yet, when we lack love in our own hearts, isn’t it true that we can be capable of incredible blindness, coldness, and perhaps even stark cruelty toward others?

It is good for us to learn from such sacred stories as this one. They are given for our salvation and to guard us against many terrible sins including religious hypocrisy. May God help us all to seek sincere love with a pure and humble heart.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Good Teacher

2009-12-05T13:58:00.000-08:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

From our gospel lesson this morning [Luke 18:18-27] we heard that a certain young ruler came to our Lord and asked, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” This was one of the better questions that anyone had ever asked of Jesus, and we get the impression that it was a very sincere one as well. While the scribes and Pharisees often questioned Jesus and even at times tried to flatter Him in their efforts to trip Him up or expose errors in His teaching, this man genuinely considered Jesus to be the Good Teacher who held the answers to eternal life. Though he was a wealthy ruler, we learn from Mark’s parallel account that he ran out to meet Jesus on the road and knelt before Him in the dust. No Pharisee ever did that! Over the course of his young life this man had done everything he knew to please God but somehow felt that something was lacking, and equally felt that this Jesus could tell him what that was.

Jesus also saw something special in this man. Mark’s account tells us that Jesus looked upon him and loved him. We are told also that Jesus invited him to become His disciple and to join His closest followers. Obviously this man had great potential and, but for one remaining thing, was very close to the kingdom of heaven.

The young man told Jesus that he had kept all the commandments of God from his youth. Our Lord did not dispute this or regard it as a boast, for likely it was true. However, even if the man had kept all the commandments perfectly, he still had not been perfected by them, because a vital component was missing. Jesus pointed him toward the one thing he still lacked. “Sell all that you possess and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven,” He instructed him. What was the purpose of this severe commandment? It was to give the man what he lacked: not just treasure in heaven, but love for others above himself.

Love was the missing element in this man’s life. Elsewhere Jesus taught that the fulfillment of all the commandments of the Law is to love God and your neighbor as yourself. The man had kept the commandments of the Law, but in a rather abstract and external way, as if they were only for the purpose of making him clinically righteous, rather than leading him into the communion of love. We might say that it didn’t yet “click” with this man that the commandments were all about loving God and loving one’s fellow man. This is what Jesus sought to make right.

Unfortunately, the one remaining thing this man needed to fulfill all his good efforts and make him a true follower of Christ was the one thing he was most reluctant to surrender. He was very rich, and quite naturally loved everything that his wealth provided him. How could he be expected to give all that up on the word of one rabbi, even such a great rabbi as this? Jesus perceived this, and that is why He gave this man a little something extra to think about.

“Why do you call Me good? No one is good but God alone.” As we know, Jesus did not generally walk around telling people, “I am God; obey Me”. Such an action would not only have been contrary to the divine humility, but also would have been a rather forceful violation of human free-will. John wrote that no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. This means that the deity of Christ is less a doctrinal proclamation than a spiritual revelation. One cannot evaluate Jesus and His teachings solely on an intellectual basis alone, as the heretics mostly do and thus fall into error. What is required is for a man to first find his heart and then open it to the Spirit of God, that he might begin to perceive the hidden reality that all the external evidence points toward.

The young man had called Jesus “good” and this was certainly true. Everyone could see the goodness of Jesus. Sinners saw it and were drawn toward Him. His enemies saw it and felt threatened by Him. His goodness was undeniable, and was the very thing that caused this man to seek Him out in the first place, that he might learn from Him the way to heaven.

“Why do you call Me good? What is the source of My inherent goodness? What makes you see Me as the good authority on the kingdom of heaven and life everlasting?” These questions were not a denial of His divinity, but a bold affirmation of it to one who was so close to grasping it. It is as if Jesus told him, “Think man; do the math. If no one is good but God, then Who do you say that I AM?”

This man could not immediately put the pieces together. Or perhaps he did, which made his sorrow even greater. If this Jesus truly was the Son of God in the flesh, then there was no longer any excuse not to obey Him. He must be followed and His word must be kept. Nevertheless, the man went away sad, because he feared giving up so much.

We have all come so far in our efforts to follow Jesus. But is there anything remaining in our lives that holds us back from perfecting our love and obedience to Him? Is there anything we refuse to surrender in order to submit ourselves entirely to Christ? Are we reluctant to freely offer our tithes and alms to God, thus putting our needs ahead of the needs of others? Do we refuse to quit immoral thoughts, relationships, or the demonic lure of pornography? Are we unwilling to quit the emotional manipulation of others in our efforts to make them behave in ways we feel they should? Do we hang on to anger and resentments as if being hurt was our right, and resist the dying to self that forgiveness seems to require? Do we refuse to give thanks to God in all things, feeling that we have certainly deserved better? Is there anything we will not submit to our father-confessor merely because we are unwilling to repent and take his counsel and penance to better our way of life? Simply put, is there anything that keeps us from the pure love of God and from making our repentance as complete as we possible can?

This is what we should consider as we read this gospel story of a man who walked away from Jesus sad because he was unwilling to take that last small step toward the perfection of love. Jesus was also made sad when he saw the man’s reaction, for He witnessed a man who was so close turn away from Him. “How hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God!” He exclaimed, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” It is possible He was not speaking only of material wealth here. Our treasured sins are a kind of wealth as well, for they give us a sense of independence and self-reliance as intoxicating as the delusion of wealth itself. When I resist God I feel strangely powerful, for a moment. When I set aside His commandments I feel deliriously like the master of my own life, for awhile. When I disobey God’s Church I feel like I am greater than that Church and all those saints who gave up their lives for it. They died, but I live, and I am rich!

Lord have mercy! Those feelings are just the vain imaginings of a darkened soul. They are not true. I am of all men most to be pitied, for I resist the self-death that can grant me everlasting life, and reject the hatred of sin that can lead me toward the perfection of love.

This story of the rich man is a very personal one, revealing the folly of closing our eyes to the goodness of Jesus, and of withdrawing from Him in fear of what our total obedience might cost us. If we had been there, our impulse might have been to stop the rich man and reason with him, yet we just as often need someone to reason with us and turn us back to Christ. How many times do we walk away from Jesus to preserve treasures of far less value? Of course any treasure which keeps us from fully loving God or our neighbor as ourselves is a false treasure and needs to be abandoned. May God help us to inventory the storeroom of our souls and without fear rid ourselves of everything that stands between us and the perfection of love in Jesus Christ.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Rich Man and Lazarus

2009-11-01T11:00:00.000-08:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Today our epistle and gospel lessons [1 Corinthians 12:27-13:8; Luke 16:19-31] combine to reveal the preeminent importance of love, not only in this life, but in the life to come.

The very heart of the Christian revelation and the core truth that gives meaning to all the rest, is that God is love. This was best summed up by the holy apostle and theologian John, and indicates to us that every action of God toward creation is motivated by love and is an expression of His love. God acts in no other way except in love, because God is love.

By the love of God, the invisible hosts of heaven are spoken into existence, as is the material world, full of beauty and harmony. Man is created in the image of God to share eternally in the communion of love with his Creator. Love is the single greatest force of all, infinitely greater than even the forces of sin and death which man introduced into the world by his prideful turning away from God’s love. Indeed as love is the source of all life, the turning away from love is the cause of all death, both temporal and eternal. Out of love, God even allows mankind and all the material world to experience death and suffering as the natural consequences of that turning away from love, in the hope that man will turn back and find life once again.

In his pastoral letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul sought to remind the often struggling Christians there of the preeminence of love. We’re all familiar with 1 Corinthians 13 because it is read at nearly every wedding we’ve ever attended. But the message that without love we are nothing should not be restricted to newlyweds only. We all need to remember that love is the most important pursuit of a person’s life; that love is patient and kind, not jealous or boastful, not arrogant or rude. Oh, how our lives and our relationships with others could be bettered if we remembered that love does not insist on its own way, is not irritable or resentful, and does not rejoice over evil, but over what is good. How we need to choose the love of God in our lives that we might bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things. How we need a love that does not end, further, that does not weary of doing what is good, that never tires of seeking truth, beauty, and goodness.

St. Justin Martyr, in describing the early Church, wrote to his pagan audience that Christians were characterized by their sacrificial love for one another. If some were hungry, others would go hungry, in order to supply their own food to those who were in need. What a contrast this is with the rich man in today’s gospel lesson. This man had more than enough food available to him. He could have easily sent a measly ration of bread and olives to poor Lazarus at his gate each day without missing a single calorie from his own sumptuous meals. Yet he did not possess even this much love or concern for his humble brother. Out of love, God send poor Lazarus to the gate of the rich man that the latter might discover compassion, and acting upon it, find his salvation. But the rich man refused this kindness of God, and hardened his heart against his needy brother, remaining indifferent to him.

This self-centered attitude, this concern only for himself and his own, imprinted itself indelibly on the rich man’s soul, and became his orientation even after death. Finding himself in torment, he called out to Father Abraham to cast Lazarus out of Paradise that the poor man might attend to his needs as a servant, now that he was suffering in Hades. There’s a considerate fellow for you! “I wouldn’t lift a finger to help Lazarus, even when it would cost me nothing. But now send him into these flames with me that he might dip his finger in water and cool my tongue”.

Father Abraham responded that he could not do that, since Lazarus was now being comforted for his sufferings in life, while the rich man was suffering for his stubborn refusal to share his comforts. In addition to this, Abraham noted that “a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us”.

What is this great chasm, and who fixed it in place? Some, who see Hades and Paradise as literal, geographical locations, assume that God fixed the chasm to prevent sinners from escaping His eternal wrath. But Orthodox saints have tended to take a different view. They have tended to see Hades and Paradise, and for that matter, heaven and hell, less as literal places than as states or conditions of the soul. This view is informed by what they understood as the one constant in the universe, the love of God.

If God is love, and His only action toward mankind is love, then the torment of Hades can only be the love of God refused by those who despise it. Have you ever been loved by someone you just didn’t love, and found their attention annoying, even harassing? Imagine that feeling amplified infinitely if the love you reject is God’s. Think of Satan, whom God still loves, yet his rejection of God’s love is so complete and thorough, that to even be reminded of it torments every fiber of his wicked being.

The flames of Hades in this parable cannot be material fire, for the rich man did not possess a material body to experience physical pain. It is the souls of those in Hades which experience torment. And that torment is the love of God which burns them like fire, as they still stubbornly reject it. Even after the resurrection, when all souls are reunited to their bodies once again, the “lake of fire” spoken of by Jesus cannot possibly be a literal place, for this would mean that God has specifically created a dark and hideous chamber where He can cease to act out of love, and show nothing but endless, sadistic malice.

It is man who is capable of both love and cruelty simultaneously, not God. Medieval concepts of hell as a literal place of eternal wrath do not tell us the truth about God. They are inconsistent with the revelation of God as love, yet they have crept into contemporary Christendom and have become a part of the way that many people understand God.

If anyone insists on taking a literal view of Hades and hell as actual places that God has created to torment sinners, then he must answer a difficult question. Would not a sinner, awaking from the delusion of this life and finding himself in Hades, become sincerely repentant and beg God for mercy? Are we to expect that God would only shrug at this and reply, “Go cry, deep fry; you had your chance”? Isn’t this kind of callous indifference exactly what destroyed the rich man, and yet we imagine God is capable of the same sin?

On the other hand, if Hades and hell are states or conditions of the soul which cause a person to remain unrepentant and defiant of God’s love, then can’t we see that it is not God who is hard-hearted, but the sinner himself?

Returning to our gospel lesson, we can see that the rich man remained unrepentant even in torment. Some might argue that he showed a smidgen of love by wanting Lazarus to be sent to his brothers to warn them. But once again what he demonstrates is that he was only concerned for his own. What about his countrymen, what about the rest of Israel? Could the rich man show no concern for them? God in truth did show concern for these and for all the world, by not only raising another Lazarus from the dead, but even His own Son. Yet as Abraham gravely predicted, even this proof was rejected by many, and is still rejected today.

Our Orthodox saints teach that not only are heaven and hell states of the soul, but they are states that each person is living in right now. Each of us is living either in a progression toward full communion with God’s love, or in an utter rejection of it. Each of us is experiencing either the renunciation of self-love and the freedom to love and give of ourselves to others, or we are becoming more selfish, more sinful, more alienated from the love of God.

God is not to be blamed for any who may find themselves in hell, for even there, the love of God is to be found. Hell is not a place of God’s absence as some teach, for this would mean that God is not omnipresent, and therefore not truly God. God is “everywhere present and fillest all things,” even hell. As always the question is, will we respond favorably to God’s love and make ourselves into a true reflection of it, or will we make ourselves into the opposite of His love, and despise Him for all eternity? May God help us to take our lives in the right direction.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

If Pigs Fly, Would That be "Swine Flew"?

2009-10-25T14:49:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Today our gospel lesson from St. Luke’s account [8:26-39] describes the healing of a man possessed by many demons. How many times have we heard this story read over the years? A lot, to be sure. We might wonder why this passage, or others very similar to it, are placed before us by the Church so often and so regularly. Be assured that we are not reading about graveyards and demons because it is the week before Halloween. As always, the Church puts these scriptural stories before us because they are needful to our salvation. There are details of great importance in this text that we need to pay close attention to, lest we succumb to things far scarier than ghosts and goblins.

The story opens with Jesus arriving at the country of the Gergesenes (sometimes referred to as the Gadarenes). This was a region truly on the outskirts of Jewish civilization at that time. Located along the Eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, it was largely a Gentile region with a small Jewish population. Christ obviously came to preach to the Jews there, since His ministry was mainly to the children of the house of Israel. What He found when He arrived in this region however was a Jewish people quite out of touch with their religious heritage, and heavily compromised by their close association with the Gentiles. The people there were raising pigs. Although today we appreciate pork as “the other white meat,” both lean and delicious, to observant Jews, pigs were unclean animals with which they were forbidden to have contact. Obviously, the Jews living in the Gergesenes felt that the economic benefits of raising pigs to sell to the Gentiles far outweighed any silly little religious rules against such things. Forget pleasing God; there was money to be made!

This could be our first clue as to why this passage is important to us and to our salvation. Of all the reasons that may cause a person to compromise his faith and obedience to God, the love of money is right up there at the top. To make their fortunes, some people are willing to to anything they think they can get away with, even if it brings harm to others, including swindling seniors out of their retirement investments, or selling drugs or pornography. Others choose the more legal route of grossly overcharging clients for goods or services rendered. But even if we don’t engage in any of these practices, there are other ways for us to put the love of money above the love of God.

The most common way is to neglect the poor. Jesus tells us that if you have two cloaks, give one to the brother who has none. He doesn’t say that this would simply be a nice idea. He says in no uncertain terms, do it. How often do we obey that commandment? Most of us have more clothes in our closets than we can comfortably wear at one time. Do we ever think that we have too much; that we should share with those who have less? Maybe we think, “Hey, I earned my cloaks; I deserve them. Why should I give one of my cloaks to the bum who spent his all money on wine?” Well, maybe because that bum is your brother; more importantly, he is Jesus, and he is cold. Is that not a good enough reason?

Another way for us to put the love of money above the love of God is to neglect the temple of God. I’m sure you remember the story of the widow’s two mites. Jesus and His disciples were present in the Temple when the rich folks were making their offerings. Along came a poor widow who contributed two mites, the smallest coins. Jesus alerted His disciples and told them that this poor widow had contributed more than all of the others combined, for while the rich gave of their excess, she sacrificially offered all that she had to live on. But that’s just the beginning of the story. As they walked around the Temple, some spoke of the great adornment of the place, with all its gold and precious stones. Jesus immediately informed them that all they were looking at would soon be cast down, foretelling the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70AD.

Now think about this for a moment. Jesus had just praised a woman for sacrificing all that she had for a Temple that He knew would be destroyed in just a few decades. Wasn’t this unfair of Him? Shouldn’t He have rushed in to stop her saying, “Look I appreciate your good intentions, but save your money; this place won’t be here much longer”? Absolutely not! Jesus taught through this that the faith relationship of the person to God, and the willingness of a person to make sacrifice, is what matters more than any earthly concern. The widow received praise from God for her action, and eternal life for her faith. This was of far more value than any personal suffering her sacrifice certainly caused her.

Often we lack this kind of faith when it comes to our giving. Smitten by the fear that we might not be left with enough, we sometimes withhold our tithe from the parish and rely on our brothers and sisters to keep the doors open and the lights on. Either by making full tithes, or smaller “widow’s mite” offerings as they are able, many of our dear friends are seeking to honor God and to keep the parish going by paying the bills and contributing to the alms fund we use to help the needy, both within our own parish and outside as well. It is wrong to leave this work to others only. Each of us needs to step up to the plate and take upon ourselves the responsibility of making sacrificial offerings to God.

We often forget the importance of making tithes and offerings to God when we are so focused on our own financial woes in this dreadful economy. Forgetting these things, we become slightly less Christian, even slightly less human, and become hoarders rather than givers, selfish rather than selfless.

Becoming less human is exactly what today’s gospel lesson is all about. The man possessed by the legion of demons likely had turned his heart away from God long before the demons gained domination over him. Due to his close proximity to the swine, and their mention in the story, it is not a stretch to assume that he had once been among the Jewish men who had conveniently set aside their faith to make their living as pig-farmers. This compromise, combined with all his other passions, likely opened him up to further demonic persuasion, and to eventual possession.

As we know, Christ intervened in his life, bringing healing and restoration. But following this, all the other people from the village came out and begged Jesus to depart from them. They did not want to deal with the holiness and high standard of godly living that He came to impart to them. “Go away; leave us with our demons and the filth we choose,” they begged of Him. And the most frightening part of all--more scary than any Halloween story--is that He heeded them, and departed from them exactly as they had asked. If we honestly want nothing to do with Jesus and His difficult demands on our lives, He will respect that choice and leave us. What He leaves us to is a hell of our own making. A torment in which we will never receive what we want. Even our swine will run off and drown themselves and leave our desires unfulfilled. Only by listening to Jesus and making the decision to obey Him will we find lasting satisfaction and contentment in everything that is eternally good.

Perhaps this is the meaning behind our gospel lesson this morning. May God help us to find the courage to overcome our own fears, both financial and otherwise, and to gladly invite Jesus into our village, into our parish, our homes, and our lives, in order that He might bring restoration and healing to us all.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

A Heavenly Family

2009-10-19T09:15:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Our gospel lesson this morning [Luke 10:16-21] gives us a brief account of the seventy men whom our Lord Jesus Christ personally hand-picked, spiritually-empowered, and sent out as apostles to preach the word, to cast out spirits, and to bring healing to all. (The word apostle means one who is sent) This passage holds a special significance for our parish, because our patron saint, Barnabas, was among these very special men chosen by our Lord.

According to the kontakion we sing in his memory, Barnabas was first among the Seventy, meaning that he was preeminent among them, being a good man and full of the Holy Spirit. As our hymn tells us, he was found worthy to accompany the great St. Paul on his missionary journeys, and through his wise preaching, brought many to to the knowledge of Jesus Christ as Savior. Barnabas also spent more than a year in the city of Antioch, teaching the church by word and example, and together with Paul, laid the solid and lasting foundation which we still enjoy today as present-day members of the Church of Antioch.

Have you ever considered that in addition to whoever else in the world St. Barnabas prays for, he surely intercedes continually for our parish and for each of us, his spiritual children? No doubt his pastoral concerns include that we would grow strong in faith and love and spiritual understanding, and also that we might be found fruitful in the good works which glorify our Lord Jesus Christ. We should never forget this connection we share with this missionary-apostle who still labors from heaven to draw many into the knowledge of Christ. This parish will not always have the same hierarchs, the same priests and clergy serving it, but it will always have St. Barnabas to watch over it, to guide and protect it, and I think to imprint upon it his special qualities of encouragement and love.

As we ponder these things, it is good to bear in mind that we give glory to God and honor to our patron saint when we show the same concern for our parish community that they do. We must never forget that the local parish is far more than a group of reasonably nice folks who get together occasionally for religious services and coffee. The parish is truly a holy community, a dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit who gives life to all who are united to Christ within it. It is a heavenly family whose Father is God, and rightly therefore are we called brothers and sisters in the Lord. Our membership here is not by chance or accident, but by the good will and choice of God, who hand-picked each of us and brought us to this place as living stones to be fitted together as a holy temple, as one Body which is Christ, that we may find our common salvation in Him.

If I understand the New Testament scriptures correctly, salvation is a corporate experience, meaning that it takes place for us in the context of the Body, and specifically, in the local parish to which we have been called. We like to say that the Church is the normal means that God has provided to save mankind. This does not imply that God cannot save the thief on the cross or those vast numbers of people who, either by ignorance or ideology, reside outside the communion of the Church. It merely means that God, who is not the author of confusion, has established an outpost of sanity in a fallen and quite insane world, a place where truth is taught in fullness and everything necessary for man’s illumination, salvation, and glorification can be found.

This is often a difficult concept for Americans to grasp. Although we are still a mostly church-going nation (or at least claim to be whenever religious polls are taken), we have largely redefined “church” to make it a place of fellowship and study, rather than the place where salvation is encountered, worked out, and experienced. As a result, Americans see church as optional. You can fellowship with your Christian buddies on the golf course and you can study your bible at home, so why bother with church? What we’ve done is to remake church in our image and according to our preferences. What we’ve lost is the traditional Christian understanding of the Church as the household of God, the pillar and foundation of the Truth, the place where God forms us together into the fullness of the stature of Christ. We Americans have forgotten the central role of Church in God’s plan of salvation.

This affects every one of us. Constantly each of us faces the struggle to overcome our individualistic leanings and to remind ourselves that the parish is central to our communion with God. In old Russia and Greece, villages were built around the Church as a reminder that the parish was central to the life of the people. In America, our towns are built around shopping malls and soccer fields, with churches found along the edges of communities. We can only guess what that reveals about us.

Our daily priorities reflect whether or not the parish (and thereby God) is central to our lives. Do we pray, and teach our children to pray, and instruct them in the Orthodox faith by word and by personal example? Do we make the motto “Church First” a hallmark of our family life, by attendance, by financial support, by service, by concern for the well-being of all, and by living righteous, holy lives for the benefit of our brothers and sisters in Christ? When we pray, do we take upon ourselves the needs of others in the parish and pray for them as if they were our own needs? Do we ask for the intercessions and help of St. Barnabas and share the same love for his parish that he holds for us within his heart? If not, then this is exactly what we should be doing in order to please God by resisting our fallen and self-centered approach to life.

I don’t think there’s anything more difficult, and at the same time more rewarding, than serving one’s parish. God designed it that way you know, because it’s exactly what we need to prepare each of us for the community of heaven. It’s hard to deny ourselves our “independent lives” and live to serve others. When we make out the family budget and decide where to allot each precious dollar, it’s hard to think “Church First” and write that tithe check to honor God and help our community. When the parish needs volunteers, it’s hard to commit to driving all the way back to church to clean toilets or set up tables for some event. When we are offended or have a conflict with someone in the parish, it’s hard to think of the other person as more important than ourselves and make the choice to serve him or her in love. It’s hard to accept the sometimes unpleasant circumstances in our lives as being allowed by God that we might learn humility and patient trust in Him. In times of temptation, it’s hard to remember that we actually owe right living and holiness to one another, and thus must deny ourselves indulgence in sin. It’s hard to come to confession and be reconciled to the community, especially if “community” is something we don’t often concern ourselves with. It’s hard not to think of ourselves as the center of our own existence and fight the selfish desires that emanate from that fallen and bitter orientation.

The very fact that these things are hard demonstrates the direct bearing they have on our salvation. And where else but in the parish do we shine the light on these fallen traits in ourselves, and thereby discover our fundamental need of repentance?

I’m sure you know as well as I do that when we humans face things that are hard, we have a tendency to avoid them, or rationalize our way around them. We don’t always have the presence of mind or the determination in our hearts to see these challenges as coming from God for our salvation. In this way, life’s many opportunities to trust God and draw near to Him can pass us by. These things are easy to neglect and yet it’s parish life and the intercessions of our patron saint that keep them before us and graciously give us always one more opportunity for repentance and change. God loves us very much, and so does St. Barnabas, and they do everything to help us. Let us learn to unite ourselves to that great and abiding love, and take on the challenges that will join us to one another in gaining the glorious salvation that takes place within this holy community.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council

2009-10-11T14:38:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Today the Orthodox Church commemorates the Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, who met together in the year 787 to defend and describe the proper use and veneration of the Holy Icons (Images).

Icons have been a part of the Christian experience since apostolic times. St. Luke is in fact credited with being Christendom’s very first iconographer. According to ancient tradition, he crafted an image of the Theotokos and Christ-child that was blessed by her, and later used as the basis for the “Vladimir Mother of God” icon which is still very popular today. Images and various Christian symbols adorned the catacombs of the first centuries, and later the churches of the Constantine-period and far beyond.

Yet despite such early and widespread use and endorsement, there has always been a small percentage of people in every generation who stubbornly opposed the use of holy images within the Church. There are many such people even today in the Christian traditions outside of Orthodoxy. Such people invariably resort to the Old Testament to argue that Christian icons are a form of “graven image” expressly forbidden by the Second Commandment. Despite the fact that the Old Testament lawfully included profuse imagery--including the brass serpent Moses held aloft to symbolize Christ crucified, the architecture of the earthly Temple which was modeled after its antitype in heaven, and the golden cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant--for some reason Christian icons are singled out by some as “violations of scriptural commandments” and those of us who use them are uncharitably branded as “foolish idolators” who blindly follow “the teachings of men” rather than the pure word of God. I’m sure we have all heard such accusations.

While being in full agreement that icons should never be worshipped, the Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council defended the proper use of them within the Church on the basis that through the incarnation of the Son of God, the invisible and immaterial God added to His existence a visible and material human nature which could now rightfully be depicted by human art. In short, Christian Iconography exists solely because of the incarnation of Christ! This is why attempts to use the impartial revelation of the Old Testament to argue against the fuller revelation demonstrated in New Testament iconography is mistaken and invalid.

Icons prove that God became man, bringing glorification to humanity. The Christ-figure portrayed in the icons is not a ghost or an illusion, nor merely an ordinary man. He is the God-man Jesus Christ, the Blessed Second Person of the Holy Trinity, truly incarnate and divinely glorified in the flesh for our sakes and for our salvation.

The Holy Fathers taught that icons are not merely useful to the Church, but in fact essential to preserving the full understanding of the incarnation and our glorious salvation against the many heresies that continually assail these beliefs. The icons not only depict God incarnate, but they also show the saints deified by their union with Christ as partakers of the divine nature, which indeed is both the promise and potential shared by all of us who are joined to the glorified humanity of Christ through the new birth of water and the Spirit in Holy Baptism.

The spirit of error denies the essential importance of iconography, claiming that Christian truth can be preserved by words alone. That’s simply false. The Holy Images convey truth on a different level than written or spoken words, and at the same time combine with them to present truth in a more full and complete way. Interestingly enough, most heretics who deny the deity of Christ are perfectly content to use the Church’s bible to teach their falsehoods. But they do not use the Church’s icons. There is something a bit too “divine” in the portrayal of the Theotokos and her Child, in the image of Christ glorified, or in the images of the saints filled with God. Such an unmistakable sense of divine presence and holiness which the icons convey does not lend itself well to the empty teachings of those who deny the deity of Jesus Christ, and for this reason the heretics condemn icons and refuse to have them in their buildings. The paint and wood of icons do “make real” the incarnation in a way that the paper and ink of books alone cannot.

The Holy Fathers defined exactly how icons should be used by the faithful. Forbidding the worship of them, the Fathers taught that honor or veneration should be offered through them to the saints they depict, and by this action, adoration and worship offered to God alone, who by His divine condescension took our flesh to make sainthood possible. I have heard people say that it is wrong to venerate the saints because such practice supposedly detracts from the glory that should be given to God. This makes no sense. If you praise a piece of art for its beauty, are you not giving honor to the artist who created it? When we give honor to the saints who were pleasing to God, we give glory and worship to the very God whose transforming grace made them saints. Those who portray God as envious of the honor given to His saints are misguided and have an incomplete and distorted view of God. “I am the LORD, and My glory I shall not share with another!” thunders their God from the pages of the Old Testament [Isaiah 42:8]. In contrast, Jesus prayed to His Father concerning His saints, “And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one” [John 17:22, emphasis added].

To refuse honor to the saints is to deny the incarnation of the Son of God and our blessed union with Him, by which He is pleased to share His glory with men. It is a denial of the very means of our salvation and the humility of God in the sharing of His life and glory with us. It is an action not rooted in love, but in the vain imaginings of men who esteem their opinions as possessing greater weight than the teachings of the Church. As we heard in our epistle lesson this morning from Titus 3, such men are sinful, subverted, and self-condemned and are sternly admonished by the Church to repent.

To Orthodox Christians, a church building adorned with icons is as meet and right as the walls of a healthy, happy home adorned with the photographs of many loved ones. The icons remind us of our larger family, and of the common inheritance we share with them all. They make this a warm home, bright and welcoming to all who enter under its roof. Though we were once strangers to God, we have been made a family with all the saints in every generation and with one another by the love of our heavenly Father and His kindness toward us. It is of the greatest importance therefore that we show this same love and kindness toward others, and especially toward those who are so convinced that we are wrong.

The Holy Icons vividly demonstrate the love of God. They leave no question that God has done everything divinely possible to raise man up to a position of great dignity and holiness. Perhaps the best thing we an do for modern day critics of the Holy Icons is to become ourselves living icons of God’s love and kindness. As they harshly demand of us biblical justification for our practices, and in many cases shut their minds to our answers, what more can we do but to show them the love of our Father and be kind to them as He Himself is kind to all? It is not our obligation to convince people, but to love them as God does, and thus become true and living icons of our Lord Jesus Christ. May this be the path we choose.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Two Mysteries

2009-07-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

In our gospel lesson this morning [Matthew 9:27-35] we heard that our Lord Jesus Christ opened the eyes of two blind men and cast out a demon from a man who could not speak. The passage goes on to describe how Christ travelled to all the cities and villages, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.

Miracles of physical healing and deliverance from spiritual oppression often accompanied the preaching of gospel of the kingdom as a sign that the salvation of God has come to reverse the consequences of the fall and release mankind from the wretched tyranny of sin, death, and the devil.

In passages like this and in our epistle lesson this morning [1 Timothy 3:13-4:5], we witness the conflict that continually rages between the kingdom of heaven and the domain of darkness. One aims to bring healing and freedom to man, the other to cripple and enslave him forever. At work in this conflict are two mysteries which we shall examine today; one good, one evil. Both of these mysteries are actively present in the world, and sometimes even in our own thoughts and choices. We need to be aware of their presence and learn to incline ourselves toward the good, that we might find God’s freedom rather than the devil’s enslavement.

The first mystery we encounter is actually named by St. Paul in today’s epistle. He calls it the mystery of godliness. What is the mystery of godliness? I believe it refers to the ineffable manner in which God brings His divine life into the world so that we might find healing and salvation.

Many people don’t see godliness as a mystery. They see it either as the natural result of following the laws of their religion to the letter, or else as a kind of legal status bestowed upon those of approved belief. But for St. Paul, true godliness could only come from the mystery that is God Himself. Quoting an ancient creed of the apostolic-era Church, he wrote: “God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory”.

What is it that Paul is speaking of here? He is speaking of the mystery of the incarnation of Christ and all that is accomplished for us in His glorified humanity. For the early Church, the incarnation was central to the message of godliness and salvation. That message was not simply that God assumed a body to slay upon the cross, but that He took our humanity and added it to Himself to infuse our nature with His divinity and holiness. This is the same message that the Orthodox Church lives and proclaims today.

But there is more to this. If we accept that this quotation came from a creed of the early Church, we can perhaps understand that it was most likely from a baptismal creed, a confession of faith which was made as the candidate stood ready to be received into the Church through the “new birth” of water and the Spirit into union with Christ. This is truly a great mystery! Only God can understand how baptism unites us to Christ, how it makes us members of His Holy Body the Church, how together with the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit it makes His divine life and energies available to us for the transformation which leads to salvation. Indeed only God can understand the mystery of godliness. Thankfully, this mystery does not require our understanding in order for us to participate in it, only our faith and our desire to draw near to God.

Unfortunately, in this modern age men seek rational explanations for everything, and attempt to subject even the mysteries of God to the limitations of the human intellect. Such attempts invariably strip the mysteries of all power, and leave men with only empty symbols which cannot lead to the fullness of truth and the deepest experience of sanctifying godliness.

Behind these actions is yet another mystery. In his epistle to Timothy, Paul went on to say that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and the doctrines of devils. Elsewhere, in his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, St. Paul described something he called the mystery of iniquity, which he linked directly to the antichrist and his foul teachings. St. John wrote that the spirit of antichrist is already in the world and working to lead many astray.

This seductive spirit of antichrist seeks to draw all men away from truth and the mystery of godliness to enslave them by deception. It never operates entirely alone, but relies on man’s own spiritual pride to coax him into setting aside the Holy Tradition of the Church in favor of something he sees as better. For some, this temptation comes in the form of Sola Scriptura, the alluring promise that with my bible alone I can gain all wisdom and declare my independence from the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. But while we Orthodox may reject this false use of the bible, we may still fall victim to a seductive spirit of pride and of raising our opinions above the life and faith of our holy Orthodoxy.

Let me give some examples. It concerns me deeply whenever I see Orthodox believers who are indifferent to the life of the Church, who come to the services infrequently and only at their own convenience, who seldom give attention to their Orthodox life outside of Church; who disregard their prayers, the fasting, the sanctified giving and support of their parish, and ignore the holy confessional with its life-giving penance. It worries me whenever Orthodox people act as their own spiritual guides, following their own thoughts and ideas in regard to their life, without any consultation with a priest or elder. I am troubled when people make major decisions which change the course of their lives without so much as seeking the blessing of their priest, let alone his counsel.

It’s certainly true that it takes time, humility, and attentiveness on our part to allow the Holy Spirit to form in us an Orthodox ethos or mindset, leading to our becoming truly Orthodox in our thinking and manner of life. It should in fact be our goal to allow this spiritual formation to take place in us through our obedience to the life of the Church and submission to the Spirit of God. But if we allow our own willfulness and human pride to impede this formation, if we live Orthodoxy entirely on our own terms, doing as we please, are we not setting ourselves above the Church and even God Himself, seeking to rule our own lives rather than seeking the rule of God?

My brothers and sisters, this is the spirit of the antichrist. We may claim to love the Church, but if we behave with a casual indifference toward its sacred life, does this not reveal an independent and proud spirit within us that is in opposition to God? Do we wish to follow the Spirit of humility leading to godliness, or only the spirit of self-worship leading to iniquity?

Let us remember that God has called us to a holy life, which we must approach with reverence and a voluntary self-emptying of willfulness and stubborn disobedience. St. Anthony of the Desert taught that by humility, man can avoid all the snares of the enemy. This is the path which can save us from the antichrist and from the mystery of iniquity which will take so many unwary people captive in these last days. Great is the mystery of godliness through which we are saved! May God grant us the humility to live as truly faithful and obedient Orthodox Christian believers.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sunday of All Saints

2009-06-15T11:26:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen.

Today is the Sunday of All Saints. On this day the Church celebrates not just two or three or a handful of saints, but literally all the saints in every generation, including our own. On this First Sunday after Pentecost, we commemorate all the saints to remind us that the Holy Spirit has come for the purpose of making sainthood possible. A more personal way to say this is to say that because the Holy Spirit has descended and now dwells within the Church, each of us has access to being cleansed, sanctified, glorified and numbered with all the saints who have ever walked with God. On this Sunday we don’t simply remember the saints gone before us; we remember that we also are called to become saints or holy ones of God! It is a gracious and highly-exalted calling, representing our opportunity to enter today into the eternal communion of God’s life and love and to be transformed by it from endless shame to everlasting glory.

There are a few things about this we must be certain to understand right off the start. First, that the Holy Spirit has come to make us holy. That is His purpose and His work, and He accomplishes it well. He initiates it, He enlivens it, and He perfects it according to the will of the Father. We do not make ourselves holy; it is the Spirit’s work, thank God! Second, as the Spirit is truly holy, so He makes God’s saints truly holy. There is no such thing as “positional righteousness” except in the imaginations of men who have separated themselves from Orthodox teaching. God’s work is real. His transformation of fallen humanity is real. The holiness He imparts to His people is also real. The lives of the many saints throughout the Church era demonstrate this fact reliably and incontrovertibly. And finally, although sainthood is the work of the Holy Spirit and very real, it is also fundamentally a calling, meaning that it is something we must respond to. God calls, but we must answer. Sainthood will not happen in us automatically. We must give our willing consent to the process and enter into it actively.

When each of us was chrismated, God granted us the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit. No one has been denied this precious deposit. From that moment forward we were meant to live by the Holy Spirit, or in other words to follow His guidance into the life of the Church, and by so doing, allow His presence and operation in our lives to become an ever-increasing reality. This process is what some have referred to as acquiring the Holy Spirit.

Addressing this very subject, St. Seraphim of Sarov wrote: “Prayer, fasting, vigil and all other Christian activities, however good they may be in themselves, do not constitute the aim of our Christian life, although they serve as an indispensable means of reaching this end. The true aim of our Christian life consists in the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God.”

“The acquisition of the Holy Spirit” is the fundamental action of the Christian life, and involves submission to the Spirit in order to cooperate fully with His sanctifying work. One who is filled with the Spirit is one who has learned to set aside his own fallen will in order to will and to do what God wills and does.

This is what I like to call “The Gethsemane Factor”. You’ll recall that prior to His arrest, false trial, and crucifixion, our Lord prayed in the garden of Gethsemane with great agony that He might be spared the events awaiting Him, but concluded each request with the words, “Yet not My will, but Thine be done”. This He did for our sakes, to show us how we must live. Our Lord knew He would have to endure these things for our salvation, yet He wanted to teach us how absolutely necessary it is for those who would follow God to submit their own human will to the good and perfect will of God.

This is not to say that our Lord’s agony was an act, or somehow not real. In a mystery both terrible yet beautiful to behold, the God-man Jesus Christ genuinely struggled to bring His human will into full conformity with His divine will to accomplish the great and fearful work He had come to earth to do.

Is it any surprise then that our number one struggle in this life is to bring our own human will into conformity with the will of God? Come to think of it, that might indeed be a surprise to many Christians, for far too many never give a thought to accomplishing the will of God in their lives, and even routinely excuse themselves whenever they choose do that which is in direct opposition to His will.

Here’s something I want you to remember: a willful person can never accomplish the will of God. Human willfulness is always in opposition to the Holy Spirit, and only the one who has learned to crucify his willfulness and submit to God’s will can begin to acquire the Spirit of God.

What do I mean by willfulness? I’m not talking about free will in and of itself, for this is God’s gift to us that we might choose love. Only a person with a free and unconstrained will can freely choose to love his God and his neighbor as himself. It is a free will choice to enter into the communion of God’s love and be transformed by it. But willfulness, at least according to my definition, implies a certain loss of freedom, the misuse and distortion of free will, for it is the habitual and slavish devotion only to the self, to one’s own stubborn desires, passions, and fallen inclinations. It is the natural state of one who has not yet received the Holy Spirit, according to St. Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. And after the Spirit is given, the struggle against willfulness to gain the fulness of the Spirit is the major work of the Christian life.

Because of this, so much of the life of the Church engages us in a direct assault upon our stubborn willfulness. We are given a structured worship, authored in antiquity by the Holy Spirit, instead of a contemporary, made-up service that we mislabel as “spirit-led”. We are given a rule of prayer to guide us, rather than letting us entirely make up our own prayers or not pray at all. We are given a Church calendar with seasons of fasting, seasons of penance, and seasons of celebration to sanctify our time and set the boundaries of our life. We are given the confessional to remind us that we do not answer to ourselves alone, but to God, to the the community of the faithful, and to the counsel and guidance of a father-confessor. Many Orthodox Christians fail here, for they either resist confession, or they treat the penance they are prescribed as little more than “advice” which they can take or leave as they please. That’s willfulness!

Everything that God has provided in the life of the Church, everything we are called to do as Orthodox Christians, has as its goal the crucifixion of our fallen self-will and the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. This is why many Orthodox Christians do not live the Orthodox life in fulness, for they are not yet ready to overcome their willfulness and submit themselves to the Spirit’s leading.

I think it is vital to develop an awareness of this, and to keep it before ourselves continually, for we face little conflicts between our willfulness and the Spirit’s leading daily. Shall I say my prayers today, or make excuses for myself? Shall I fast, or eat what I want? Shall I come to the service, or stay home and relax? Shall I be kind today, or treat people badly? Shall I be pure, or give in to my lusts? Shall I go to confession, or keep my little secrets? Shall I obey my penance, or lay it aside to do as I please? Constantly our willfulness challenges the will of God, but do we even recognize that this is taking place? Do we realize that every decision is the choice to either obey God and acquire the Holy Spirit, or to willfully resist Him, grieve the Spirit, and gain nothing? Do we ever consider The Gethsemane Factor in our daily lives and enter into that agonizing struggle to declare, “Not my will, but Thine be done”?

Today we are reminded that we are called to be saints, and nothing less than saints. The Holy Spirit awaits our response. We must crucify our willfulness and submit to the work that the Spirit does in our midst, in our Church, in God’s kingdom. It is God’s work, my beloved. Our work is only this: to give our willing consent, to say “Yes” to the Spirit’s leading, and put to death our stubborn opposition. May God remind us and lead us in this daily.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council

2009-05-31T11:00:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Today the Holy Orthodox Church commemorates the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council. This was the council which condemned the Arian heresy that claimed Jesus was a created being who only later was glorified by God. The council upheld the tradition of the apostles regarding the eternal divinity and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. We remember the Spirit-led work of these Holy Fathers on this Sunday, right between the feasts of Ascension and Pentecost, because this timing helps us remember the promise made to the Church by her Lord. Jesus told His followers that He would not leave them as orphans after His ascension, but would send the Holy Spirit who would guide His Church into all the truth. The Spirit came at Pentecost, and remains with the Church to this day. Through the Holy Spirit, the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council aggressively defended the truth and quite literally saved the Christian faith at a time when the whole world was filled with the darkness of error and deceit. Our commemoration of the Holy Fathers of Nicea is therefore just as much a commemoration of the work of the Holy Spirit Himself, and a grateful recognition that He labors in synergy with holy men to uphold the truth of God and bear witness to the apostolic faith in every generation.

We can see an early example of the Holy Spirit working together with holy men this way in Acts chapter 15. There the Spirit is invisibly present in the council of Jerusalem, during which the apostles had to decide on the difficult matter of what to do with Gentile converts to Christianity. At last, in a letter sent to the Gentiles abroad the council declared its decision with the words, “For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us…” [Acts 15:28] With these words, the council of apostles and holy hierarchs was not trying to bolster its position or authority, but was simply recognizing that the Holy Spirit aided the Church in times like this, as the Guide into all the truth that Jesus had promised. This set the precedent that every successive authentic Church council would follow.

There have been seven ecumenical councils--meaning, councils whose decisions have been accepted by the entire Church, universally and throughout time--which were convened whenever any heresy endangered the purity of the Orthodox faith. Through all these councils, it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us--meaning our Holy Fathers in every age--to articulate, clarify, and advance the Christian faith delivered once for all at that first Pentecost so long ago.

In our day, far too many believers ignore these historic and Spirit-led councils with the claim that “All I need is my Bible and the Spirit to lead me into all the truth.” How delightfully ego-centric! Such people make the HUGE assumption that there would even be bibles in existence today or any recognizable semblance of Christian faith to adopt had not these councils acted as they did to preserve the truth. “But God would have found some way to preserve His truth!” they might protest. And yes, He did find a way, and this was it: the Holy Spirit, working together with holy men, in His holy Church.

People have a hard time accepting what God actually did in history, preferring to substitute their own ideas of what He should have done. Perhaps this is because if they acknowledge what God actually did, that would mean that there is a higher authority than themselves; a Church to which we are accountable rather than vice-versa. When man is in a state of delusion, he imagines that the Church which Christ established, His very Body, which He promised the gates of hades would never prevail against, to which He granted the Holy Spirit to abide in it and to lead its faithful into all the truth, is somehow fundamentally less reliable than me with my bible. This is what Arius believed, and we see where that belief got him. And yes, it is delusional. God’s plan is and always has been centered on His Church.

Did you know that the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council are even alluded to prophetically in the Old Testament? In Genesis 14 we read of the foreign kings waging war and taking Abram’s brother, Lot, captive. Verse 14 tells us, "And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan." There Abram defeated the kings and set his brother free. Three hundred eighteen is also the exact number of Holy Fathers who were present at the council of Nicea. These were servants of God, raised in His own House (the Church) and armed with the knowledge of Truth, who fought against the Arians that had taken many souls captive with their foreign and corrupt teaching, and defeated them to bring freedom. The Church has recognized that this Old Testament story gained a New Testament fulfillment in the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council. This leads us to the understanding that it is not only Christ who fulfills Old Testament prophesies, but sometimes even His Church and His saints alike, because all are one in divine life and mission.

In our reading from Acts this morning, the prophecy continued with St. Paul warning the Ephesian elders to guard the flock and care for the Church of God which He had entrusted to them, for “from among your own selves will arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them” [Acts 20:30]. Arius was such a man, a presbyter of the Church, whose perverted teachings nearly overthrew Christianity until the servants of God prevailed against it.

In our gospel lesson from John 17, Jesus told us what the stakes are. He said, “And this is eternal life, that they know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent”. Eternal life hinges on true knowledge of the only true God, which the heretics pervert in their efforts to lead many astray. This knowledge is never merely theoretical, cerebral, or abstract; it is experiential, spiritual, and actively saving. Neither is this knowledge relative to what we choose to believe about God. Rather, the true knowledge of God is wedded to the Church, comes forth from the Church, and is fully known only within the Church. We come to know God not by reading about Him but by living in union with Him in His Church. The knowledge of God is not words and doctrines alone but life and communion.

It was this very life which they possessed that allowed the Holy Fathers to recognize the error of Arius when they encountered it. It wasn’t just that Arius was teaching something new; he was teaching something lifeless. It was a false teaching that did not unite its adherents to Jesus Christ, that did not lead to the true knowledge of God, that did not impart the grace and salvation of God. For this reason it had to be condemned. And all who do not confess the Symbol of Faith which came forth from the Council of Nicea also risk the condemnation of alienation from the true knowledge of God and from eternal life.

My brothers and sisters, we do not pronounce that judgement ourselves. We love all men and reserve for them the same hope of salvation that we hold for ourselves, regardless of their church affiliation or their beliefs. Yet we do not regard all churches or beliefs as equal before God. There is one true Church and one true life and communion within that Church. It is this Orthodox Church to which we must be faithful, even while we pray for the peace of the whole world and the salvation of all men. We are not called to judge but to witness, showing forth the light of God’s life in love to the fallen and broken world around us. Our witness must not consist of empty words or of dogmas we have not bothered to live, but of lives that have found their way into communion with God and are undergoing the transformation of love. This is what people want to see and what we can show them, for the Holy Spirit is still dwells with the Church, and still works with holy people to bear witness in a fallen and broken world. May God grant us to be that people.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Blind Man

2009-05-28T11:05:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

“Christ is Risen!”

This morning’s gospel lesson [John 9:1-38] centers on the man born blind who is miraculously healed by our Lord Jesus Christ. This is truly a wonderful story, but I’m going to skip over most of it today and focus on just one little excerpt. I want us to take a closer look at the question that the disciples posed to Christ at the very beginning of this passage. They asked Him, “Lord, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Clearly this was an uninformed question. It was asked at an early point in the disciple’s walk with Christ when their knowledge of God was still fairly underdeveloped, and thus it reflects a fairly primitive understanding of God. In essence, their assumption was that if something bad happened to someone it must be a sign of God’s judgment. It’s really not unlike how most of the world seems to think. Whenever there is an earthquake or tsunami or other human tragedy, immediately people start making accusations that God is mean and punishing people. People often impose their ideas and concepts on God, and most often these ideas are false and don’t describe the true God.

Obviously the disciples were mistaken about God and it led them to form false conclusions regarding His actions and purpose. Which one of us hasn’t done that as well? Sometimes we’ve misrepresented God to others; sometimes to ourselves. In either case in may have been quite awhile before we learned that we were mistaken about God and had wrong ideas. The important thing is to always be open to learning the truth about Him so that we won’t stay trapped in a prison of our own ignorance.

Something else to notice here is that the disciples, by misunderstanding God, also limited Him to just the few possibilities their minds could conceive. “Who sinned Lord, this man or his parents?” Well, neither actually. There is a third and somewhat grander alternative you missed, O Disciples. This man was born blind that the works of God might be manifested in him, that his eyes and the eyes of millions more would be opened to eternal life.

How much bigger is the real God than the often puny little “god” we might conjure up in our minds? God’s works are powerful and expansive and we nearly always underestimate them. How many times have we limited God to just the handful of possibilities that we imagined? “Lord, if I don’t marry this person, or get that job, or live in this neighborhood, or go to that school, my life will just be miserable!” Many times we place before God the only possibilities that we see (or perhaps the only ones that we secretly want), and demand that He come through for us. But by doing this, aren’t we shutting the door to His sovereign and almighty will, and more or less refusing to let God be God and reveal what He wants for us? Can we say that we really want to know God’s will, or for that matter, God Himself, if we do this?

But let’s return to this idea the disciples had that the young man’s blindness was a judgment for sins somebody committed. They were wrong, obviously, and had a lot of growth ahead before they could begin to comprehend that God acts out of love and mercy, not wrath and cursing. And it’s true that we too sometimes have mixed-up ideas about God until we grow to know Him as He truly is.

For example, for some people God is a projection of their unique psychology, perhaps a harsh and loveless figure, who is enraged at their every failure and dismissive of every attempt to please Him. Is this the true God, or one that’s been manufactured out of the deep fears and insecurities of the person himself? Other people see God as little more than an extension of their political or social views. They wrap Him in the flag of their country or the colors of their political party; He becomes a capitalist, a socialist, or the queen of the gay pride parade. God becomes what they want Him to be, reflecting the passions, bigotries, or even the immorality of the people themselves. Each of these “gods” is really just a projection of one’s own ego, together with whatever delusions are thrown into the mix.

To a greater or lesser degree we all do this and probably have attached ideas to God that may not be true. This was the case with the disciples. The God of judgment who would blind a baby to punish someone for unknown sins was not the true God, but it was the only “god” these men knew until Jesus revealed to them the Father and showed them the way to know Him in truth.

And the wonderful thing about this story is, that from there they grew into that true knowledge of God and became authentic and living reflections of Him. Let’s consider for a moment the writer of this gospel, St. John. He and his brother James were once known as the sons of thunder because they became so enraged at a Samaritan village that would not receive Christ, they actually asked the Lord for permission to call down fire from heaven to destroy the entire place and all the people in it! Years later this same man would be known by a far loftier nickname, the “Disciple of Love”.

How is it that John went from being a homicidal hothead who wanted to nuke an entire village to cinders, to becoming the serene and peaceful elder who wrote so beautifully of the love of God in his later epistles? The answer is that he left behind the false god of his youthful imagination and came to know the true and living God. In the process, his very life became a genuine reflection of this one true God and of His infinite love for mankind.

Here is an interesting thought for us to ponder. It seems that we can either create a god who is just a reflection of ourselves, or we can embrace the true God who created us, and become a living reflection of Him. So we have a choice: follow the god of our imagination, or come to know our Father who art in heaven.

Which would we rather do? If your answer is to know the true God and become a reflection of Him, then we can do this by fully embracing the life of the Church. From the worship services to the prayers we do together and at home, to being regularly exposed to the scriptures, the teachings of the fathers and the lives of the saints; from our participation in the grace of the sacraments and especially the confessional, along with obedience to the practical guidance of a spiritual father, to everything else that comprises the life of the Church, these things work together to reveal the Father to us, and to form and transform us into the true knowledge of God our Savior.

This is what they were designed by God to do. And we cannot pick and choose among these things, but must take them all together as an integrated whole. A person who wants to know God cannot be willful, deciding for himself what he needs to accomplish that goal and rejecting whatever he dislikes. If you like reading the bible but hate going to confession and rarely do it, well, good luck with that! Chances are your stubbornness is not going to help you know God in the way that you could. We can’t make up our own god and we can’t make up our own rules, if knowing the one true God is our goal in life.

And I hope that this is the major goal in life for all of us. That’s why we’re here in the Orthodox Church; there is no other reason. May we not lose sight of that.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Paralytic

2009-05-28T11:00:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

“Christ is risen!”

Today’s gospel lesson [John 5:1-15] centers on our Lord’s healing of the paralyzed man beside the pool at the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem. I’d like to take two approaches in examining this story. First we’ll consider the spiritual meaning of the Sheep Gate pool and the miracles of healing once associated with it. This pool has far more significance to us than we may realize. Secondly we’ll take a closer look at the paralyzed man himself to see if there is something in his character that we might want to emulate. Can we identify some characteristic that made him, let’s say, more “receptive” to the grace of God, and can we adopt this to our own benefit?

So let us begin with the Sheep Gate pool. This was the spot where the sheep who were bound for sacrifice in the Temple were ritualistically washed. It was a filthy and unpleasant place to be and the only reason people were found there was because of an invisible angel who would come at certain seasons to stir up the waters and infuse them with healing power. John tells us that the first person to step into the pool after the stirring of the water would be healed of whatever disease he had. For this reason, great numbers of invalids, the blind, the lame, and the paralyzed would gather at those times in hopes of winning the liquid lottery and going home healed.

The Sheep Pool was a type of the baptismal font. Even long before these miracles of healing began to take place, the washing of the sheep who were bound for sacrifice in the Temple pointed to a fulfillment in Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, who one day would also pass through waters before His voluntary sacrifice upon the cross. Christ appeared and was baptized in the Jordan, this time not for His cleansing, but for ours. He hallowed the streams of the Jordan, making the waters of the baptismal font the means of our purification and cleansing from all sin.

As the time of Christ’s appearing drew near, God intensified the prophetic revelation, introducing a new element into the picture by sending divine power into the Sheep Pool, manifesting in miracles of physical healing. The intent of this action was to prepare the Jews to embrace Christian baptism as something much more than just a ritualistic cleansing, but as the mystical new birth of water and the Spirit, during which the Holy Spirit Himself descends into the font to make it the fountain of incorruption, the remedy of infirmities, the laver of regeneration, initiating the healing of soul and of body by uniting the baptismal candidate to the life-giving and glorified humanity of Christ.

We see what great mercy God showed to the Jews by patiently manifesting these signs to them, in an effort to lead them to Christ! Even the afflictions of the people beside the pool represent the many spiritual illnesses which Christian baptism heals. It heals the blind, whose spiritual eyes are darkened so that they cannot distinguish good from evil, the lame, who neither practice virtue nor make any spiritual progress, and the utterly paralyzed, who are in complete despair because of their inability to accomplish anything good.

When the fullness of time had come and the Son of God finally appeared among men, He came deliberately to the Sheep Pool and healed the man with the worst affliction present. He did this to demonstrate that He was the true Lamb of God “who taketh away the sins of the world,” bringing complete salvation to humanity. But He also picked this particular man to heal, in order to reveal the good spirit within him as an example to us.

Our Lord approached the man who had been paralyzed for 38 years and had been lying beside the pool for perhaps as long a time and asked him, “Do you want to be healed?” Today we would consider that to be, what we might call, a stupid question. I mean, what’s the man supposed to say: “No thank you; I’m just here working on my tan”? It might be hard for us to imagine not feeling frustrated or offended by such a question. But here we get some real insights into the character of this man.

First, we see that through his sufferings he had learned to be patient and to not lose hope. Is that even possible? To our way of thinking if a person suffers, and especially if he suffers for a very long time, he is supposed to become angry and cynical, right? And this guy had suffered terribly. Time after time the waters were stirred up by the angel, and each time some other person, less needy than he, vaulted into the pool ahead of him. No one took pity on him or would help him, but everyone shoved him back to put themselves first. Over the years he was repeatedly exposed to the selfish worst that humanity can display, but he didn’t allow it to darken his soul. He rose above it all by keeping a steadfast hope in God and remaining pure in heart and simple in thought.

When Jesus came to him and asked if he wanted to be healed, it was the man’s hope that answered, saying, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the water”. No doubt he had prayed many years for God to send someone to help him, and he thought perhaps that Jesus was the answer to his prayer. Boy, was he ever right! And what a beautiful soul this man had formed within himself by this time. He was not beaten down, discouraged, and resentful, but full of expectation to see his prayers answered and the mercy of God finally revealed.

Do we recognize that the difficulties we face in our own lives can either destroy us or turn us into beautiful souls as well? When we are faced with struggles, do we allow ourselves to become angry and resentful, to question or blame God, or complain “Why me?” as if somehow we deserved a trouble-free life? Maybe we do at first, but we can learn to adopt a better response. We can learn to accept that there is no salvation without bearing our cross, or without facing struggle of some kind and of some duration in our lives. We’d rather not suffer, but when we see that we can endure it with patience and with hope, trusting in God to use it to purify and perfect us, then our struggles and sufferings truly become the means of our salvation and lift us up rather than wear us down. This is true whether our struggles are physical, emotional, or spiritual in nature.

Struggles, difficulties, and suffering appear and will continue to appear in our lives. There’s little we can do to prevent that from happening. But we can choose whether we will allow these things to bring us to God or turn us against Him; to instill in us hope, or to crush us entirely. I’m sure we’ve known people whose problems have only made them more joyful and confident in God, and others who became grim and darkened and now want very little to do with Him. And the choice between those two states is ours as well.

May we follow the good example of the paralytic and allow a simple, pure, and steadfast trust in God to grant us beautiful souls and life eternal.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Myrrh-Bearing Women

2009-05-28T10:55:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Christ is Risen!

Today we commemorate the Myrrh-Bearing Women, those brave disciples of Christ who defied all danger, coming to His tomb to anoint His precious body for burial according to the custom of the Jews. On this day we also remember Ss. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus who also showed great courage in asking Pilate for the body of Christ, that they might take Him down, wrap Him in linen place Him in the tomb. The actions of all these people were taken at great personal risk to themselves, as the enemies of God still burned in their hatred of Jesus Christ and would have gladly killed any of His followers. But these actions were motivated by love and the desire to do what was right for the Lord. And such love conquers all.

A cynical person might have wondered, “What is the use of taking such a foolish risk? Jesus is dead, the situation is hopeless; why risk facing death yourself?” The devil often tempts us to look upon situations as being without hope of redemption, and our actions as being fruitless and lacking purpose. When faced with difficult or dismal situations in our own lives, we are often tempted to think that things will never get any better, that all hope is dead and gone, and that perhaps the very best thing that we can do is to cut our losses and bail out. How easily we forget that Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life! Where there is life, and especially the resurrection life of Christ, there is always hope, and nothing is beyond redemption.

This is the lesson that the Myrrh-Bearing Women learned when they came to Christ’s empty tomb very early in the morning on the first day of the week. They were filled with sorrow, but motivated by love. Then they beheld the angel sitting in the tomb who said to them “…You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His disciples—and Peter—that He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him, as He said to you.” What a joyous message! And at that moment the world changed forever! Never again would anyone be entirely without hope, no matter what the situation or what the devil might say otherwise. Christ is risen, and those who were dead in the tombs are set free! Christ is risen, and the power of the devil is destroyed! Christ is risen, and never again can anyone say “I am hopeless”. For Christ is risen to grant newness of life and the hope of resurrection to glory.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

There is even more here to give us hope. We note that the angel said to the women, “Go, tell His disciples—and Peter [that Christ is risen from the dead].” He mentioned Peter separately and not as one of the Lord’s disciples because Peter had hotly denied knowing Christ and refused to be associated with Him. And then the rooster crowed and he remembered Christ’s words, “Before the cock crows, you shall deny Me three times” and Peter went out and wept bitterly. We can hardly imagine the depths of sorrow that Peter felt at that hour, and the crushing burden of guilt that he felt. Though perhaps we can. Perhaps we have had such dark hours in our own lives and know something of what he went through. The loneliness of a sinner who feels cut off from God is unbearable. But the wonderful news here is that Christ did not leave him in that terrible state, utterly without hope. The angel came with a divine message of love and redemption: “Go and tell Peter that Christ will meet him as He said”. Peter’s tears of repentance did not go unnoticed by the God of love, and when Jesus met him, three times he asked him, “Peter, do you love Me?” Three times Peter replied, “Lord, You know that I love You.” And thus his thrice-denial was washed away by his thrice-affirmation of love, and the infinite mercy of Jesus Christ. What a beautiful and intimate story, and how encouraging it is to us who perhaps have also denied Christ or felt distant from Him in those darker moments of our own lives. Earth has no sorrow that heaven can not heal, and no situation of ours is beyond redemption if we put our trust in God.

Let us contrast this story with one of another former disciple, Judas Iscariot. Judas also turned away from Christ, betraying Him for thirty pieces of silver. He did not know that his betrayal would result in the death of Jesus, and we he found out what the Jews intended to do, he went back to return the silver and try to make it right. But it was too late. The Jews told him to take care of the problem himself. And so he went out and hanged himself.

I floated this idea once before--it’s kind of interesting to think about--that what if, instead of listening to the voice of the devil who prompted him to commit suicide, miserable Judas had crawled back a few days later to throw himself at the feet of the risen Jesus. Dare we imagine that Christ would have forgiven him as He forgave Peter, and—as strange as it may sound to our ears—that today we would speak of a “St. Judas” as the one who betrayed Him but was later restored in mercy? It’s just speculation and therefore of little value. But we can say for certain that that by taking matters into his own hands, by acting so severely out of anger and hopelessness, that Judas removed himself from all possibility of redemption and left us with a very sad tale to contrast with Peter’s beautiful story.

There is a lesson in here for us. Be very careful which voice you listen to, and who you allow to be your guide in times of sorrow. The voice which says to you “Not even God can help you now” prompting you to take desperate actions, is not the voice you should listen to. It is the voice of the devil, full of hatred and venom, He wants you to forget of the love and power of Christ, and turn away from Him that you might share the devil’s own fate. Instead, we must always listen to the angelic voice of sweetness which says, “Christ is risen! Go and meet Him and fall down before Him. He will grant you redemption and healing, and ease your terrible burden.”

My brothers and sisters, Christ is risen and we must never forget this, or allow this glorious message to be taken from us. We have hope, a hope that will not disappoint, a hope that brings light and life and the promise of all things being made new. Let us love one another and allow that love to conquer all and motivate us in every action toward one another and all those around us.

Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen! Let us adore His third-day resurrection!

+To the glory of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Triumphal Entry of our Lord into Jerusalem

2009-05-28T10:51:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Today is the Sunday of the Triumphal Entry of our Lord into Jerusalem, also known as Palm Sunday. With Great Lent ’09 now officially done and gone, we the faithful have been granted the opportunity to join with our Lord in the remarkable journey of Holy Week; a journey that has in fact already begun and is now taking us from the decay and stench of Lazarus’ tomb to the life-giving and myrrh-scented empty tomb of our risen Savior.

What exactly do I mean by saying we can join with our Lord on the journey of Holy Week? Do I mean this in a sort of figurative way, as if to say that if we come to all the services and pay really close attention, we’ll almost feel as if we were really there and will have such a warm and inspiring experience? Surely I must mean that we only symbolically join with our Lord. Actually, no. Our union with Christ is not merely figurative or symbolic. It is a real union, and furthermore, it is a mystical union. What this means is that through the action and operation of the Holy Spirit, we are joined with Christ in ways far beyond human understanding, to participate with Him in everything He accomplished for our salvation, including His death, burial, and resurrection from the dead.

Western man has decided that he has a problem with such things, you know. Over the centuries since the so-called Enlightenment period, we have pompously come to declare our rational minds as our greatest and highest faculty, and the only one through which we now seek to understand and interact with all that we imagine to exist in the universe. Before that time we at least acknowledged that there were also things unknowable to the mind alone, including the mystical energies and actions coming forth from God which were beyond the ability of man to comprehend, though we could certainly experience them, participate in them, and benefit from them through the faculty of faith. But over time, as Western man elevated his reason to the exclusion of every other means of experiencing reality, his faith degraded, became itself rational and limited to human reason, and he lost his ability to commune with God on the mystical level.

Our journey during Holy Week is exactly such a mystical communion with Jesus Christ through the holy services of the Church. We are truly united to Christ on a level beyond intellectual knowing, in order that we might join with Him through the Triumphal Entry, the rebuking of the hypocritical religious leaders, the Mystical Supper with His disciples and the Upper Room teaching, the agony of Gethsemane, the betrayal of Judas and the denial of Peter, the arrest and unlawful trial, the scourging and mocking, the terrible march to Golgotha, the crucifixion, death, burial, and glorious third-day resurrection.

In summary, we don’t just observe Holy Week, we enter into Holy Week and participate in all the events of our salvation, by virtue of the fact that we are mystically united to Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. As you take a moment to reflect on this and consider it, I would ask one simple question: Can you think of any better way to spend the next seven days of your life?

It’s really no wonder that we require forty days of fasting and prayer and spiritual attentiveness to ready ourselves for this remarkable and saving journey of Holy Week. In fact, we might wonder if forty days was really quite enough for us! Or more to the point, we might wonder if we spent those forty days as wisely as we might have, to gain from them as much as we should have. Chances are the honest answer to that is no, we really didn’t. But by the grace of God we still may have gained more than we realize.

We often begin Lent with high hopes, don’t we? We might decide, “This year I’m going to really make the effort to keep the full fast, and as a matter of fact, I’m even going to lose a few extra pounds! I’m going to be faithful in my prayers, remember the poor, come to all the services, and stay focused 100% on my repentance”. And these all are fine goals, even if we do fall somewhat short of realizing them. Quite often it seems like the wheels fall off our cart sometime just after the first week of Lent and how we struggle to get them back on and make the sort of progress we had hoped for!

In fact, by the time those forty days are over, we may find ourselves feeling pretty worn out, beaten down, and perhaps even defeated. At the end of Lent, instead of feeling spiritually renewed, we might actually feel fairly dry and lifeless, kind of dead really, and wondering if--after all is said and done--we are simply miserable and hopeless.

And this is why, at exactly this point, our Mother the Church has us gather together at the tomb of Lazarus. At the end of our Lenten struggle, with the sting of defeat still fresh in our minds, that tomb is opened and our nostrils are assaulted with the stench of human corruption. Therein lies poor Lazarus, rotting away, and seemingly beyond all hope of redemption. All of a sudden we realize, that is us! There we lie, all bones and rot, defeated by our enemy Death, and fading away to nothingness! But then a voice is heard unexpectedly, that with clarity and beauty cries out, “Lazarus, come forth!” And suddenly corruption is reversed and flesh is restored. The heartbeat returns and the lungs fill with air. Slowly, the eyes are opened, the body sits upright, and Lazarus is raised from the dead!

Yes, Lazarus is raised as a symbol of the universal resurrection, but for us, the timing couldn’t be better. Seeing the power of God manifested in what is certainly the most hopeless of human situations, we realize that we need not be utterly dismayed by our failures, though they may be as numberless as the stars of heaven. At the raising of Lazarus we take new and unexpected hope. God is able to give life even to the lifeless, and to raise with Him even those who seem to be dead in their trespasses and sins.

In the book Gifts of the Desert by Kyriacos Markides, the author recounts a conversation with Bishop Maximos in which the elder described the Church, the Ecclesia, as a hospital in which the reality of healing from the effects of sin takes place. He says, “It is indeed a hospital. As in the case of an ordinary hospital, in the Ecclesia we can meet doctors, nurses, recovering patients, sick people, and very sick people. Sometimes we can even find corpses”. “Do corpses have a chance?” one of his listeners asked. “Naturally they do,” replied Maximos. “Doesn’t the Ecclesia call Christ the Giver of Life? In whatever category we may belong within this spiritual hospital, we always have the hope and the possibility to achieve our own resurrection and the restoration of our spiritual health.”

What a great message this is to us who so often are overcome with sadness at our continual failure before God! Our efforts, our struggles are so important to our salvation, but they are never enough to win the prize and always fall short, even in the lives of the greatest of saints. It is Christ who gives life to the faithful, to those who desire life, who persevere in seeking Him until the end. Christ is the Lover of mankind and the Giver of Life, and He alone is our hope.

And so you see, my brothers and sisters, that even if you come to the end of Lent feeling beaten or deeply disappointed over your failings, your weakness in pursuing the things of God, you are still not beyond the power of God to raise you and to give you life. The good Christ comes to us, and finding us dead in our tomb, resuscitates us together with Lazarus that we might not be left behind or miss this glorious journey of Holy Week.

As we continue this journey together, let us see it as our opportunity for progression from death to life. Throughout this week, the Church will be incrementally filled with the symbols of Christ’s victory, together with the sweet smells of flowers, rose water, bay leaves, and incense, and will go from the darkness of the Bridegroom services to the brilliant light of Pascha. May the same transformation take place in our souls as well, lifting us out of sorrow to the place of joy without measure.

+To the glory of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

St. John Climacus

2009-03-29T15:35:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

On this Fourth Sunday of Great Lent, the Orthodox Church commemorates St. John Climacus, the author of “The Ladder of Divine Ascent” which is a book featuring a series of short sermons on achieving perfection in the Christian life.

St. John was born in Sinai in the 6th century and was tonsured as a monk somewhere between the ages of 16 to 20. At the age of 35 he left the cenobitic or communal form of monasticism to become a hermit for 40 years. It was during this time that he received the grace of continual prayer and the gift of tears. Fellow monks began to seek him out in great numbers for guidance in the spiritual life until he became so popular that he was accused of making a mockery of the eremitic lifestyle. He responded to this in humility by renewing his silence and refusing to see any visitors. After about a year of this, those who had harshly accused him repented and pleaded with him to resume his work of guiding others.

Soon after this, he was appointed the Abbot of the monastery at Mt. Sinai, built on the very spot were Moses encountered God in the Burning Bush. It is said that on the day that St. John was installed as the new Abbot, Moses himself appeared, giving commands to those who served at the holy altar!

The Ladder of Divine Ascent was written primarily for those involved in monastic endeavors, but over the years it was found to be a book useful to all serious Christians who sought to subdue the sinful passions and purify their love for Christ. Each of its 30 chapters encourage the reader to put away the love of earthly things and continue an upward climb, step by step in the acquisition of virtue, progressing toward a state of spiritual perfection in Christ.

Sadly, the things we are speaking of here represent what we must almost describe as the Christianity of a distant, bygone era. Today’s Christians are not generally concerned with the subjugation of their sinful passions or the pursuit of virtue in Christ. Part of this may be due to the fact that many Christians think that their salvation is already a done deal and thus they see no need to overcome sin and gain virtue. But even most Orthodox Christians today seem to struggle with the idea of actually gaining victory over their passions and growing in virtue, as if such things were impossible for us.

We live in an age of great spiritual darkness and faintheartedness that often makes even the smallest spiritual effort seem incredibly difficult to us. Things as simple as keeping our little rule of prayer can often overwhelm us and seem infinitely beyond our meager abilities. We don’t know a great deal about being strict with ourselves or of forcing ourselves to do the things that are hard. We fear spiritual struggle and much too quickly accept the notion that a kind of spiritual mediocrity is the best we can ever hope for in our lives.

But St. John Climacus understood that man was created for much higher and greater things. We are created to work together with God, in synergy, uniting our will and action to His grace and divine energies to accomplish what we by ourselves alone could never do. There are many places in Scripture where we are specifically told to cooperate with God in this way and to labor diligently and daily to eliminate sin from our lives and progress toward Christian perfection.

One such place can be found in II Peter, chapter one, in a passage that sounds remarkably like a ladder of divine ascent itself. Having just reminded his readers of our high calling in Christ and the things given to us by His divine power, the apostle continues: “Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall: for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” [2 Peter 1:4-11]

Notice how St. Peter makes it plain that those who remain barren and unfruitful, though they were purged from their previous sins, are not guaranteed salvation as if by “faith alone”. Cooperation with God in the cultivation of the Christian virtues is necessary to make our calling and election sure and for entrance into the kingdom to be granted unto us.

The subduing of our many earthly passions and the uniting of them into one focused passion for God, together with growth in virtue, is the biblical and Orthodox characterization of the true Christian life. As Orthodox Christians, we must seek to embrace what the Scriptures teach and our Holy Tradition echoes concerning the Christian life as one of divine ascent from the state we exist in now to the one God desires for us. In commemorating St. John Climacus and remembering his Ladder of Divine Ascent on this day, the Church is not suggesting that we are all called to live as monks. But it is reminding us that we are all called to live as Christians, and therefore to set our affection on things above, not on the things of this world.

In our heart of hearts we know whether we are learning to love the things of God or whether we are still slavishly attached to the things of this world. We know whether we are cooperating with the saving grace of God in our lives and are working together with Him, or else are resisting. While progress is often difficult to measure, we at least still know whether we are consistently making a sincere effort in good faith, or are giving in to sloth and are making excuses for a careless attitude toward our holy upward calling in Christ Jesus.

Beloved, we are designed to ascend to the heights of heaven and to share in the holiness of Christ in glory. This is what this Sunday of St. John Climacus reminds us of, here in the midst of our Lenten pursuits. I’ll close with the Troparion written to his memory: “Thou hast set up a holy ladder by thy words and hast shone forth as a teacher of monks; thou dost lead us, O John, from the purification that comes from discipline to the light of the Divine Vision. O righteous father, pray to Christ our God to grant us His great mercy.”

+To the glory of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Sunday of Orthodoxy

2009-03-08T14:30:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Today is the Sunday of Orthodoxy, a day on which we commemorate the triumph of the Christian faith over the iconoclasts of the eighth century.

In those days there arose a serious and vicious attack against the doctrine of the incarnation of Christ, which took the devious “back door” approach of an assault upon the holy icons of the Church. Claiming that the icons were equal to idols condemned by the Second Commandment of God in Exodus 20, the iconoclasts (literally, “icon-smashers”) destroyed vast numbers of ancient and holy icons in the churches and persecuted or martyred many thousands of Orthodox defenders of icons. The Seventh Ecumenical Council was convened in 787AD to put forth the traditional Orthodox belief which upheld the proper veneration of icons and anathematized those who vilely accused the holy images of being idols.

The iconoclasts were heavily influenced by a number of factors external to Christianity including among them Gnosticism, which was a very early heresy that denied the incarnation of Christ. The Gnostics held to a pagan belief known as “dualism” which asserts that the material world is evil and beyond redemption, and the only way for man to be saved is to “free himself” from his material shell and become purely spirit. This of course stands in total opposition to the Christian revelation, which proclaims that the material world is not evil, only fallen, and that mankind and all of creation is raised up and restored by being joined to God through the incarnation of Christ.

The apostles fought Gnosticism fiercely. St. John wrote against the Gnostic denial by saying, “By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God. And this is the spirit of the Antichrist…” (1 John 4:2-3) Lest anyone fail to understand the reality of the incarnation, St. Paul wrote clearly, “In Him [Jesus Christ] dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9)

The apostles were unabashedly incarnational in their faith and understood that God had joined Himself to man in order that man might be filled with God, ever progressing toward “God-likeness”, being “partakers of the divine nature” as St. Peter wrote. And it is this very thing that the holy icons of the Church portray so well. They show Jesus Christ as having come in the flesh, not merely “appearing” as a man, but literally becoming a man, by adding a true and complete human nature to Himself. They depict His holy ones, the saints, as being human beings filled with God and transformed from their fallen state to a new and higher state through their union with the divine in Christ. What the apostles knew, and the holy icons portray perfectly, is that the joining of humanity to deity in the person of the Son of God, fills man with the energies of His divine nature, restoring the image of God in us, healing the sickness of sin, and leading us to glorification.

This profound understanding of the incarnation with all its salvific ramifications has been greatly watered-down in contemporary Christian theology. Many of today’s Christians have little concept of the incarnation other than the notion that Jesus took flesh in order to die for us upon the cross. The fuller meaning of His incarnation, including the essential Christian concept of theosis so boldly described by St. Athanasius with the words, “God became man so that man might become God,” seems strange and even unchristian to many believers today. They see salvation not so much as the restoration and glorification of humanity in Christ, but mostly as God forgiving our sins in order to save us from His own wrath. They depict grace as an “attitude” of God toward man, rather than as the transformational power given to man through Christ. They see Christian transformation itself as largely a mental process focused on gaining bible knowledge and “right thinking” which allegedly leads to a knowledge of God. This is not unlike what the Gnostics themselves believed, for they also focused on knowledge as the only true path to God.

To put it bluntly, the traditional, Orthodox Christian understanding of the incarnation of Christ is a little too “carnal” for the theological tastes of many modern believers, unknowingly influenced by Gnosticism. In their minds it makes God a little too “intimate” with humanity. It also by extension makes the highly incarnational sacraments of the Eucharist and Christian baptism a bit too “real”. Many Christians prefer to spiritualize these things and reduce them to being symbolic only, lacking any material content. My friends, this is Gnosticism, alive and well, and finding a welcome home in much of contemporary Christian theology.

It’s not surprising therefore that we Orthodox Christians often take a little heat from some of our brethren outside of Eastern Orthodoxy for our use of icons. We are falsely accused of “worshipping” icons and often hear the same tired arguments that the original iconoclasts used, namely that any use of icons is a violation of God’s commandments. Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, as the saying goes.

Orthodox Christians do not “worship” icons, nor the saints that they depict. We venerate or give honor to the saints by kissing their images as one might affectionately kiss the treasured photograph of any loved one. Icons therefore not only portray profound divine truths concerning our salvation, but they are also tremendously important to us on the human level, connecting us with Christ and His saints in ways that words and concepts alone cannot accomplish with such satisfaction. Have you noticed that when people are forced to abandon their homes in times of sudden disaster, the two things they most desire to take with them are their financial records and their family photo albums? All those images are so important to the process of connecting us to our family and of reminding us who we are. Icons fulfill a similar human need. Beyond teaching us vital Christian theology, they connect us in real ways to our heavenly family, while definitely reminding us of who we are and of our holy calling in Christ.

This is the fundamental failure of Gnosticism. At its heart it is a denial of that which is human. It focuses on the renewal of the intellect as the only “savable” part of man, and abandons the rest of our humanity as useless. Any contemporary Christian teaching which also focuses exclusively on the “spiritual” aspects of man, while marginalizing or despising the material aspects of our humanity or our salvation, has also failed to embrace true Christianity.

This is why the Seventh Ecumenical council of the Orthodox Church chose to include in its synodikon or “statement of faith” regarding the holy icons a series of anathemas concerning all those who reject the proper Christian use of icons. Most parishes today do not include the anathemas in the synodikon for fear of offending non-Orthodox visitors. But properly understood, these anathemas are not intended as abusive judgments of other believers, but as sincere warnings to them. They state that those who reject the Christian use of icons, or who equate icons with idols, or icon-veneration with idol-worship, stand accursed. When we see that the rejection of icons is rooted in Gnostic thought and leads to the watering-down of Christian theology, these warnings ring true and can be seen as expressions of concern for others, much like a highway sign reading, “Bridge out ahead! Turn back immediately!” The Church is not in the business of putting curses on people, but of saving them. And this is the true purpose of the anathemas; to warn, to direct toward repentance, to save from error.

There is much error pervading Christendom today. When so many of our friends argue against the holy icons, unaware that by so doing they are attacking historic Christianity and aligning themselves with eighth-century heretics, things have definitely gone bad. This is yet another reason why we must keep the traditional use of icons alive in our generation, and fill our churches, our homes, and our lives with these blessed images, properly understood and properly and faithfully used.

+To the glory of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Prodigal Son

2009-02-15T17:57:00.000-08:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Continuing our pre-lenten preparations, we come today to the story of the Prodigal Son. Many people consider this their favorite gospel lesson, because it reveals the great compassion and forgiveness of God the Father toward all straying people who repent and return to His love.

In his classic book, Great Lent, Journey to Pascha, Fr. Alexander Schmemann (OBM) described this parable as the story of man’s return from exile. In that sense, the Prodigal Son represents both mankind in general and each of us individually. As a race, mankind has certainly left God and found itself in exile in a far country, a fallen condition, distant and removed from communion with God, and broken and defiled because of it. Individually speaking, the hope is that each of us will “come to our senses” as the Prodigal did, awaken to whatever dismal state we may find ourselves in, and make our own return to God through repentance.

In both cases, the “far country” spoken of in the parable is not a matter of geographical distance, but of spiritual distance. A person need not be far from the Church to be a prodigal; he can equally be a professing Christian in apparent good standing, faithfully attending services each Sunday, and yet still be distant and removed from God in his heart. It is in fact this latter description that we should pay closer attention to, for there is a greater chance it could describe us.

I’m certain that the majority of us here this morning are people of good intent, who come to church because we genuinely want to, and have within us some urge to seek God. At the same time, because the work of repentance is so difficult and our resolve is often so weak, it may be that we soon find ourselves in a comfortable routine of minimal repentance, minimal participation, and minimal communion with our Heavenly Father...and fairly content with that. In such a case, we too may be living in exile, in a “far country” representing the distance we keep from God in our daily lives.

Perhaps we can’t exactly say that zeal for our Father’s house consumes us, or even singes us. At best it warms us somewhat. And I suppose that’s better than being completely cold toward God. But while most of us feel that we could certainly be more faithful in seeking God, at the same time there seems to be a kind of spiritual sleepiness that keeps us from embracing the Christian life as diligently and faithfully as we might wish. And this often leaves us--when we dare to think about it--feeling pretty bad about ourselves.

We essentially have two ways of dealing with this. The first is to just get used to feeling bad, and live with assumption that a nagging sense of guilt just goes along with being a Christian. Guilt in fact may be such a long-time companion for many of us that we can barely imagine living without it. But if you’ve lived with this, you know what a bad companion guilt is, and what a terrible motivator it is in getting us to live for God. Actually, guilt usually sends us in the opposite direction, doesn’t it? We feel that we can never do enough to please God and so we just sort of give up on being zealous Christians, and settle in at a comfortable distance from God. We can see this as the best that we can hope for, or perhaps as the best that we deserve.

But I’d like to suggest that there is another way.

Something I find interesting about today’s parable is that there is absolutely no mention of the Prodigal Son feeling guilty over his sins. When he “comes to his senses” amongst the swine and begins to realize he must return to his father’s house, guilt doesn’t appear to be his primary motivator. He didn’t say, “Oh my goodness, what have I done? I have squandered my beautiful inheritance and lost all that my father bestowed upon me! Dear me, my self-esteem is really low right now!” No, he didn’t say that and it’s a very good thing he did not, for in that case he probably wouldn’t have found any desire to return home. So what brought him back? Very simply, he was starving to death and knew that his good and kind father would feed him and restore him to life.

That’s it! That’s all there was to it! It may not sound very noble, but true repentance rarely is. The repentant person is generally one who has run out of pride and excuses and has finally come to the painful awareness that he must return to God or die. What ultimately brings us back to God and awakens faithfulness within us is not guilt, but the realization that we are dead without God, and cannot live another day without His mercy.

I suppose we all think that we already know this. After all, we are mature Christians, most of us, and quite wise. But is it possible that we may not quite be the tree-full of owls that we imagine ourselves to be, and in fact are focusing more on our own piety and faithfulness than on the mercy of our Heavenly Father? If so, we will never find joy in the Christian life.

In the parable, our Lord Jesus described the Prodigal as “coming to his senses”. This implies a kind of awakening; a flash of clear thought invading a confused and darkened mind not used to such light, but recognizing it immediately as truth. This awakening not only allowed him to finally see his terrible condition, but also and perhaps for the very first time in his life, to see how important his father and his father’s house was to his survival.

It could be that we very much need this same kind of awakening. Without it, the spiritual helps of Orthodoxy become so many “chores” that we leave undone, and feel guilty because of it. For example, we might focus on how hard it is to keep our rule of prayer and feel bad that we aren’t more “spiritual,” instead of seeing what that rule itself is trying to show us, namely that we are a broken and spiritually-dysfunctional people so in need of the mercy of God to transform us. The very fact that it’s so hard for us to keep a simple rule of prayer should demonstrate to us how removed we are from God and how much we need His life!

In the Psalms we often see the writers depicting themselves as broken and powerless, and surrounded by many enemies to boot! Their prayer was never “religious,” but a direct and fervent plea: “God save me! God deliver me from those that seek after my life! God hasten to my salvation!” In the gospels we often see the same thing. The blind man didn’t make some pious prayer, but fervently cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” The Canaanite Woman, despite her utter alienation from the God of the Jews, begged Jesus to have mercy on her and her demon-possessed daughter.

When we see that our souls are sleepy and cannot persist in any sort of spiritual discipline, when our minds wander about in prayer or at church, when we are attacked by evil thoughts and temptations of every kind, this is not the time to be self-absorbed and feel guilty over our bad condition; this is the time to cry out to God and say, “Save me O Lord! Be merciful to me the work of Thy hands! Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me!”

I’m not saying we need to become more emotional, maybe just more real. We need to ask God to awaken us to reality, so that when we stand before Him in prayer, when we undertake the spiritual disciplines of Lent, when we make the extra effort to come to the lenten services or whatever God has put before us to do, we will do so with one simple desire: that God would save us, that He would deliver us from our enemies, that He would restore us to life.

Let me offer one final reflection here in conclusion. It’s possible that Orthodoxy took many of us by surprise. When we first entered the Church, we may have had visions of becoming holy people pretty quickly, but found in just a short while that we only seemed to get worse. The spiritual disciplines of Orthodoxy, which at first seemed so wonderful, soon became impossibly difficult and we may have begun to wonder if Orthodoxy was right for us.

May I suggest to you that Orthodoxy was only doing in us what it was designed by God to do. It knocks down pride and false spirituality, and shows us our true human condition. This is a painful and difficult process but a necessary one, for only sinners come to God; the prideful, the vain-religious, the self-righteous never do. The people who become truly holy in the Church are the ones who first suffer the agony of seeing themselves as deeply sinful and in need of God’s mercy. Only then do we come to our senses, leave the swine-pen, and begin our return to God.

The bottom line is that we need our Heavenly Father. He is the reason for all that we do, and the reward of all that we seek. May He mercifully awaken each of us to this truth.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Woman of "Canine"

2009-02-01T11:00:00.000-08:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

As we continue our pre-lenten preparation, today’s gospel lesson focuses on the faith of the Canaanite woman as described in Matthew 15, verses 21-28. This is a story that some people find rather disturbing because they have a hard time understanding why our Lord made such a harsh statement to the woman who came to Him seeking the healing of her severely demon-possessed daughter. As we heard, Christ actually referred to the woman as a “dog” in saying that it was not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs. The “children” of which He spoke were of course the children of Israel, to whom He had come to bring the “bread” of salvation and the mercy of God. But why would He be so rude as to call this woman of Canaan a dog?

It is a sad truth that the Jews of Christ’s time customarily referred to the Gentile pagans as “dogs” because they had come to view them as unworthy of the grace and calling of God that had historically been bestowed upon themselves. This is of course a very common human problem. People of any given race or nationality or religion or even political affiliation may regard themselves as superior in one way or another to all others, and thus can readily justify mean, outrageous, or even cruel treatment of all who are seen as inferior.

I don’t believe that Jesus was simply perpetuating ancient Jewish bigotry here, but was in fact making a strong and necessary move to end it. Remember that it was His own disciples who had been asking Him to send this woman away because of her race, and the fact that she had been pestering them for help. Our Lord was possibly saddened by their closed-mindedness and lack of compassion, and so responded to the woman with exactly the same rude attitude that they were demonstrating. It makes me wonder if He didn’t actually embarrass them by doing this.

By calling this woman a dog right to her face and in front of all His disciples--a woman that He was just seconds away from praising for her great and exemplary faith--Christ was exposing the shameful, triumphalistic attitude they held in their hearts. It is a fact that Christ’s disciples would one day finally learn that the gospel is for all peoples, and not just for the Jews alone. But this was a tough concept for them to get their minds around, and needed a tough cure. We see perhaps the very beginning of that cure being applied here.

Strangely enough, the woman did not seem fazed by this insult. I imagine there are at least three reasons for this. First, it’s quite possible she had expected this sort of treatment from the Jews and had girded herself to face it. That demonstrates both remarkable humility and great determination on her part. Second, it is likely that the love of Christ was so obvious and apparent that the woman simply could not take His comment badly. Have you ever had someone who loved you very much say something that was hard to take, but because they loved you, it softened the blow? In this case, as repulsive as the words might have been, the love of Christ was so great that she was still drawn to Him in hope. She even adopted the insult, likening herself and her fellow Gentiles to the little puppies that gratefully lick up the crumbs that fall from their master’s table. I’m betting that the disciples were utterly astonished at the wisdom of her comeback, and when Christ joyously granted her request, there was not a peep of complaint out of any one of them. This woman had flat-out taken them to school and they knew it.

But I said that there were three reasons why the woman would not let herself be put off by Christ’s initial response and the third is really the main and most important reason. She desperately needed the mercy of Christ to heal her daughter, and because of this, she would not stop asking and pleading her case until she received her answer.

This is exactly the same way that Christ taught us to approach God with our needs. He told us to keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. Everyone who asks, receives. He who seeks, shall find. And to the one who keeps knocking, the door shall be opened. In other words, perseverance and persistence is needed in our prayers and in our requests to God. But we often lack this kind of determination and stick-to-it-tiveness. We may be reluctant to bring our prayers to God at all, and when we don’t receive an immediate and gratifying answer, we tend to lose heart and give up quickly. We might lack the faith and simple obedience to Christ that even this Canaanite woman showed. Now who’s taking who to school?

In addition to this, we often create artificial barriers between ourselves and our God. The scriptures tell us that God has broken down the dividing wall between us and Him, but we have a tendency to re-stack old bricks and lay new walls between us. We tell ourselves for example that we are not worthy of God’s mercy, and therefore it’s no wonder that He doesn’t listen to our prayers or heed our requests. It’s ironic that we might be so weak and feint of heart to believe in what God will do for us, but we have more than enough brass to decide what God won’t do for us. Isn’t that strange?

If ever there was a person who had reason to believe that Jesus would deny her request it was the Canaanite woman. She was after all a pagan, whose people historically worshipped such false gods as Baal and El, together with a bewildering array of many other household gods and goddesses. These are not exactly the best religious credentials to bring to the Jewish Messiah. Yet she boldly drew near to Jesus because she had heard of His great love and compassion for all, and was willing to put her complete trust in Him.

What can this teach us?

The story of the Canaanite woman can be described as a story of faith overcoming all human obstacles to gain its reward from Jesus Christ. Can we be so bold as to say in fact that any obstacles between ourselves and God are indeed human obstacles that we ourselves have placed there? Our lack of faith, our sense of guilt over our sins, our spiritual sloth or indifference, our unwillingness to change what needs to be changed in our lives, are all walls that we have built and must take down once again.

I think the most important thing that this story tells us is that it isn’t all about us and our limitations; it’s all about Jesus and His limitless mercy and love. As we prepare ourselves for Great Lent, we must do something that may prove to be incredibly difficult and uncomfortable for us: we must turn our attention away from ourselves for a few terrible weeks and place it upon God. Had the Canaanite woman focused on herself and all the good reasons why Jesus might likely deny her, she would never have found the courage to leave home to gain salvation and the healing of her daughter. It is the same for us. We can stay locked in our own misery, counting all the reasons why God shouldn’t help us, or we can dare to place our hope on Him, believing that He is both willing and able to help us. Will we choose hope or misery?

Yes, it’s really all about Jesus. Great Lent is a spiritual journey, a sort of Orthodox “walkabout” if you will. But it is no ego-centric, “new-agey” journey of self-discovery. Most of us have already discovered ourselves, and likely did not care for what we found. Lent, by contrast, is a journey to discover Jesus, and in discovering Him, finding our True Hope and the Savior of our souls. This is a journey well worth taking, and may God direct us in following it.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Zacchaeus Sunday

2009-01-25T11:17:00.000-08:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Anyone who’s been an Orthodox Christian for more than a year knows that the Sunday of Zacchaeus can only mean one thing: that Great Lent is rolling around once again, and we are at the beginning of our preparations for it. This year, Lent begins on March 2nd. Our fasting begins one week before, and our Sunday gospel lessons over the next month will also point us toward Lent with different themes to help us ready ourselves for this holy and saving season.

The purpose of Great Lent of course is to help prepare us for that great Feast of feasts, the highest and holiest day of the Christian year, Great and Holy Pascha, the celebration of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, which we also celebrate as the resurrection of all the faithful who are united unto Him through faith and the new birth of water and the Spirit.

And speaking of faith, Pascha demands plenty of it. Not so much to believe in the resurrection of Christ, for there is more than ample proof of this in the history of the Church and the world itself. If Christ had not been raised from the dead, the previously defeated and disillusioned apostles would never have found reason to spread the good news to the ends of the earth, enduring persecution and martyrdom joyously for the sake of truth. Indeed, there would have been no “good news” to spread! And what group of men would be so willing to suffer and die for a known lie if the resurrection had simply been made up by them? Had not Christ been truly raised, promising resurrection to life eternal in His kingdom to all who follow Him, there would have been no Church, no transformation of the Roman empire, and no saints or holy martyrs such as we see by the millions.

No, the difficulty of Pascha is not to believe in the resurrection of Christ as an historical reality, but rather, to believe in it as a personal reality. The difficulty is to believe that we ourselves can be raised with Christ to newness of life, both in this world, and in the world to come.

And why is that so difficult for us? Is it not because we are bound to this world as it is, to our flesh and its fallen desires? We are in this world, and all too often of this world, and are guilty of loving this world more than God. The simple things that the Church asks us to do to enter into communion with God--to pray, to fast, to come to the services, to tithe and give alms, to purify ourselves from fleshly lusts and passions and attain the enlightenment of our souls, to commend ourselves and one another and all our life unto Christ our God--these things often take a backseat to other interests, other loves, other desires. We often say, “I’m too busy to [Fill in the blank: say my prayers, go to church tonight, read my bible, visit this person, help that brother or sister],” but what we mean is, “I don’t have the desire to do those things right now. There is something else I desire more at this moment, at this stage, at this opportunity”.

It is in fact these misdirected desires that make it so hard for us to see ourselves as anything other than the perpetual fulfiller of them. We work so hard our entire lives to have the nice career, the nice house, the nice car, the nice family with every material need met, the nice nest egg, the nice retirement. We so seldom ask ourselves what it is all for or to where it is all leading us. We are like the grimy little guy shoveling coal faster and faster into the insatiable fire of the engine that is speeding toward a destination unknown to him and to which he may not even wish to go.

Spurred on by our desires and the irrational instinct to fulfill them, we become a people no longer in control of our own lives, but enslaved to impulses we never question, but only obey.

Isn’t it true that we sometimes feel as if our lives are simply out of control? Do we sometimes seem that we are on a path that we didn’t choose, or are trapped by events we didn’t foresee or wish for? Do we sometimes regret that we didn’t follow God more closely, or choose His ways more consistently over our own ways? When you look back on your life, especially as a Christian, you probably have a mix of both regrets and joys. Have you noticed that everything you now see as a regret was at one time born of your own willfulness and your own insistence on fulfilling your desire no matter what? By contrast, every joy came from those moments when you crucified your desire and set aside willfulness to humbly accomplish God’s will or whatever was best for others. When we follow our fallen desires they inevitably lead to emptiness and sorrow. But when our desire is to follow Christ and obey Him, joy and life eternal is always the result.

The theme of Zacchaeus Sunday is the theme of desire for God. Little Zacchaeus so wanted to see Jesus Christ that he laid aside his dignity to scramble up a sycamore tree to gaze upon Him. When Jesus saw this desire in the little man’s heart, and knew that it was so different from every other desire he had ever held, He called Him down and entered into his house, bringing salvation. Zacchaeus discovered the true desire of men’s hearts that day. As the composer Bach called it, “Jesus, the Joy of Man’s Desiring”. Oh, we have so many desires, but only one of these leads us to true and everlasting joy, the desire for Jesus Christ.

Filled with the Joy that eclipses every other and shows them to be lacking, Zacchaeus pledged half his possessions to the poor and the four-fold repayment of all those he had defrauded by false taxation. For a man who had so loved money, this was a remarkable, even miraculous, change of heart. But having found Jesus, Zacchaeus knew that no other love could ever satisfy him, nor could any other desire bring him such contentment. This is the love and desire that needs to be born in our hearts, that Jesus might also enter in to us, bringing salvation.

And this is why we need Great Lent. We normally approach Lent with dread, because it compels us to do things which are against our present desires. There are services nearly every night of the week, which challenge our desire to stay at home after work and relax. There is the most intense and unrelenting fasting of the church year. We are called to be more faithful in our giving, especially of alms and works of mercy. Lent also directs us inward toward more consistent prayer and repentance, an effort that is always a struggle for us because we don’t generally like what we find within ourselves and prefer to live externally. In a word, Lent is hard, because it seems to call upon us to exercise a love for God that we may not yet fully possess.

But that is why we need Great Lent. Lent is not for the super-devout; it is for ordinary sinners like us. It does not assume that we have a great love for God, but only assumes we have at least some small desire to love God. Lent gives us, not what we want, but what we need. It helps us break the habit of willfulness and the stubborn pursuit of our misdirected desires, to embrace God’s way and God’s will over our own. Lent leads us to find freedom from the endless pursuit of many desires to discover the one true desire of man’s heart.

With so much at stake in a culture hostile to our faith and to our way of life, let us pledge to keep Lent faithfully this year. Let us fill our church at the times of prayer and let us lead our families in observing Lent at home. And may God light in us that flame of desire for Jesus Christ that will help us at the end of Lent to joyously celebrate our resurrection with Him at Great and Holy Pascha.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Was No One Found to Give Glory to God?

2009-01-18T11:00:00.000-08:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

In our gospel lesson this morning [Luke 17:12-19] we heard that as our Lord entered into a certain village, He was met there by ten lepers who stood afar off, beseeching Him for healing. For the ancients, leprosy was a frightful disease. It manifests itself as white patches on the skin, often with running sores, and the loss of parts of the body which become necrotic. A leper was considered “unclean” by the Jews and disenfranchised from the community, lest the disease be spread. A leprous Jew could never enter the Temple, nor even come near to any other person. He was truly an exile among his own people.

To the Church Fathers, leprosy represented a deeper spiritual meaning. It is a metaphor for our sins, which make us unclean and separate us from communion with God.

The lepers stood afar off, in accordance with the Law, but cried out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Seeing these lepers, Jesus simply instructed them to go show themselves to the priests. And it came to pass, as they went, they were cleansed. Notice that He commanded the men to go to the priests before they were actually healed and while their flesh was still filled with the disease. The only reason for a leper to go to the priests was to reveal that he had already been healed, and to have this healing properly verified according to the detailed commandments prescribed in Leviticus 14. Our Lord’s command to them was therefore most unusual, to say the least.

What must have been in the minds of these miserable people as they walked away from the Lord? Did some dare imagine they might still receive healing? Did others merely assume that the prophet Jesus wanted nothing to do with them and for this reason sent them away? Were they disappointed with His response or feel that they should have received better treatment? We may never know, but these are certainly human thoughts and reactions, aren’t they? Nevertheless, as the lepers made their way to the priests, they soon discovered--perhaps with considerable amazement--that they had been healed. What happened next is the focal point of this entire lesson.

Finding themselves healed, nine of the former lepers continued on to the priests, while one of them, a Samaritan, ran back to Jesus to praise God and thank Him for his healing. Seeing this, Jesus said to those around him, “And what of the nine? Was no one found to give glory to God except this foreigner?” Clearly, Jesus was speaking to the Jews around Him, and to us who read this story, of the grievous sin of thanklessness.

The most basic and essential function of man is to adore his Creator and to offer Him thanks continually. Failure to do so causes man to forget that he is God’s creation, uniquely made in God’s own image with a profoundly exalted and heavenly calling, and turns him away from this toward a meaningless existence as a creature of flesh only. Thanklessness in the face of God’s mercies was the sin of the ancient Israelites over and over, it was the sin of the Jews at Christ’s time (which prevented them from recognizing Him as the promised Messiah), and it is certainly the sin that most plagues us Christians today as well.

Every other sin that we commit proceeds from our lack of thanksgiving to God. When we neglect prayer, when we skip Orthros or other services of the Church because they’re just “inconvenient” to us, when we don’t prioritize our finances to pay our tithes to the parish or give alms to the poor, when we are utterly fixated on our earthly existence and mostly forget God in the pursuit of our endless wants and needs, when we forsake the purification of our hearts to instead indulge in unclean desires and actions, when we quarrel with others or gossip or lie, when we are constantly critical of people or complaining of situations, when we are miserable over our lot in life and feel that God has abandoned us, cannot all these sins be traced back to the root of thanklessness and the spiritual blindness and alienation from God that it causes?

When I take confessions from those who are so troubled by many concerns in life, I often counsel them to begin practicing thanksgiving. This is not an easy thing to do, and it is often the last thing a person wants to instructed in, for we tend to be so miserable in our sufferings and perhaps cannot even conceive of being otherwise. Nevertheless, I might tell them that as you are on your way and chance to notice a pretty flower growing along the sidewalk, remember that God put that there for you to enjoy. And as you reflect on that tiny gift given to you by the Almighty Creator who orders the entire universe and all that it contains, try to open your eyes and see the nearness of your God and His love for you in even the smallest details. There’s an old saying that if God seems far away, which one of you moved? God is very near to us at all times, but we in our lack of simple thanksgiving so often fail to see this, despite all the evidence that surrounds us daily.

How many a parent has been in an argument with a teen-aged child and remarked, “You know, you should be more thankful for what you have,” only to be met with rolling eyes and the sarcastic response, “Oh, right! Thankful that you won’t let me do anything and that you’re ruining my entire life?” Well, we act just like that poor, distressed teenager sometimes, being self-centered, focused only on what we are being denied instead of all the good things already given to us, and neglectful of thanksgiving.

I’ve sometimes wondered if people have listened to my little flower story and left the confessional thinking “What a silly priest!”. But did not our Lord also instruct those enslaved by worldly concerns and anxiety to behold the lilies of the field, or the tiny birds that God lovingly feeds, and to learn from these of His care for all living things? We may indeed be fallen and broken people living in a fallen and broken world, but that world is still filled with the love of God, everywhere present, but perhaps concealed from all but the thankful.

In reflecting on our gospel lesson, we might be tempted to think that while it was nice for the Samaritan to give thanks to God, the nine Jews are also to be praised for their obedience if nothing else, in continuing on to the priests as Christ instructed. Yet from our Lord’s reaction we can determine that their motives were not pure. In hastening on to the priests to fulfill the legal requirements, they only wanted to return as quickly as possible to an ordinary life, and to put all memory of this behind them. Perhaps some of these were even among those who later called out for Christ’s crucifixion. That might seem nearly impossible, but remember that a thankless man is a man who is most of all blind to God and cannot see His ways.

No, it wasn’t merely “nice” of the Samaritan to give thanks to God. By his action of thanksgiving he received, not just the healing of his body, but the blessing of Jesus and the healing of his soul as well. Let us also seek such blessing and healing in our lives, by learning through practice to give thanks to God in all things.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Celebrate with Attentiveness

2008-12-28T15:56:00.000-08:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

“Christ is Born! Glorify Him!”

Today is the Sunday after the Nativity of Christ, and our gospel lesson this morning [Matthew 2:13-23] recounts an event which took place within two years after our Lord’s birth. The event is King Herod’s frantic search for the Child prophesied from ancient times to become the Shepherd and Ruler of Israel. Herod, being of evil intent, did not seek the new-born Christ in order to worship Him, but to put Him to death, thus eliminating any threat to his own kingdom and rule. In a very real sense, Herod portrays the devil, who also feared that the appearance of Christ signified the end of his tyranny as “the prince of darkness” and as “the ruler of the darkness of this age”. Herod also portrays all men who would drive Christ out from their hearts, rather than allow Him to take His rightful seat as King.

After finding the Christ, the wise men were warned in a dream of Herod’s treachery, and thus returned to their own country without reporting back to him. It is at this point that our gospel lesson picks up the story. When Herod discovered he had been tricked by the wise men, in a rage he ordered the slaughter of all male infants two years of age and under in Bethlehem and in all the surrounding area, in an effort to kill the Christ. Some 14,000 “Holy Innocents,” as they have come to be known by Christians, were slaughtered during this campaign. The Church has always regarded these children as saints and martyrs, glorified in heaven, and indeed the very first of untold millions of saints who would be put to death for Christ’s sake over the next 2000 years.

Today we find ourselves in the midst of one of the great festive periods of the Church. Having fasted for forty days and having celebrated the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ only three days ago, we now suspend all fasting until January 5th and enjoy the traditional “Twelve Days of Christmas” until the Feast of Holy Theophany on January 6th. On the first Sunday of this wonderful time of feasting and celebration and of greeting one another with the joyous words, “Christ is born! Glorify Him!,” we read this most terrible and shocking story of the brutal murder of those beautiful and innocent baby boys who died because of a hatred for Christ held by the powers and rulers of this world.

We might be tempted to think that this depressing reading simply doesn’t belong with the festivity of the Christmas season. But there is no mistake; it is here for a reason. Our Mother the Church wants us to understand a very important reality, namely that this fallen world hates Jesus Christ and all those even remotely associated with Him. The devil incited violence against these children simply because they were the same age as Jesus and were born in roughly the same region. How much more must his hatred burn against those of us who are actually called by His name and seek to follow Him in truth! Herod’s outrageous action against these “holy innocents” was only the beginning of the long and bloody war against God’s saints that continued in the early Church and will continue until the return of Christ Himself at the end of the age.

It’s as if, by placing this reading in the midst of our Christmas holidays, the Church is telling us, “Go ahead, children, celebrate the birth of your Savior and rejoice in the glad tidings of great joy. But do not let your celebration lead you to carelessness. Remember that you are aliens and sojourners in a land that is hostile to your faith. Be attentive and on your guard, lest in folly you follow after this world in rejecting your Lord”.

You see, this is where the danger lies for us. We understand celebrating. We enjoy it quite a bit. We like to eat whatever we want and kind of let slip a bit in our discipline and self-control. In fact, it is the whole concept of discipline and self-control that we have a problem with, if the truth be told, and especially spiritual discipline and ascetic self-control. We know that prayer and fasting, church attendance and tithing, bible-reading and attentiveness to our repentance and to our spiritual life are all good for us, but they are also hard for us and are things that we more or less have to force ourselves to do. These things are always a struggle for us, and I’m not sure if the struggle really ever get any easier. But the mature Christian is one who has come to realize that they are simply necessary for the health of his soul, and must be attended to, no matter how great the struggle.

I’m sure we realize that if we simply lived as we pleased, we would tend to live for pleasure and not for spiritual gain. We would make certain that we were well taken care of physically, but neglect the formation of an interior life with God, and allow our souls to atrophy. Perhaps we would even continue to be Orthodox on the outside, filling our beautiful churches on Sundays and enjoying the company of good friends at coffee-hour, while allowing ourselves to remain completely empty on the inside and strangers to God.

Yes we live in a that is world hostile to our faith. But that hostility does not always come from the outside, in the form of persecution. It often has come that way for the Church, and it certainly will come that way again before the scroll of time is rolled up. But just as often the enemies of Christ are found within the Church and even within ourselves, in our neglect and indifference, in our spiritual sloth, and in our reluctance to fully embrace Jesus Christ and form a place for Him to dwell within our hearts as King.

In putting this shocking reading right at the beginning of the Christmas season, it would seem that our Mother would remind us to enjoy ourselves, but not to take too much ease. We can celebrate Christ’s birth with great joy, but at the same time we must be attentive to the ongoing work of preparing our souls to meet and receive Him.

Thus while we sing, “Christ is born. Glorify Him!” and the Church clothed in radiant purity cries in joy, “…The Truth has come! God is made manifest! He is born of the Virgin, enlightening those who sit in darkness, for the salvation of the world!” let us not forget that our work is far from done and over. We must still pay attention to our souls and fight even our own inner hostility toward the light of Christ and our reluctance to give ourselves wholly and completely to Him. We must always labor to make a fitting place within our souls for Christ to dwell, that from there He may reign as true Lord and King of all creation, beginning with us.

+To the glory of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!

2008-12-23T11:59:00.000-08:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Today is the Sunday before the Nativity of Christ, also known as the Sunday of Genealogy. The long list of names which were just read from the first chapter of St. Matthew’s gospel trace the lineage of our Lord back to the patriarch Abraham, to demonstrate that Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of God’s promise to him that from his seed would be born One through whom all the peoples and nations of the world would be blessed.

The genealogy of Christ is a very interesting list, comprised of both saints and sinners, kings and harlots, Jews and even a Gentile or two. There’s an old saying that you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family. That doesn’t hold true here, however. God certainly chose each and every member of Christ’s family tree, and He included all manner of people, both good and bad, to give us ordinary folks great hope.

None of the people on this list were quite what we might call “perfect,” not even the great king David, whose infamous tryst with another man’s wife and his subsequent arraignment of the man’s death to hide her pregnancy constituted a definite black spot on his career. Yet his later confession to Nathan the prophet and the heartfelt repentance that followed, renewed his communion with the all-merciful God and secured his position as an Old Testament saint.

Those of us today who are in the Church seeking salvation may indeed have a few blemishes in our own lives. Yet we draw hope from the many examples of people, both in this list and throughout the history of the Church, who picked themselves back up from their personal falls and failings and steadfastly continued their repentance to find life eternal in the kingdom of God.

When our Lord Jesus began His earthly ministry, the earliest message He preached was, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” When I first read this verse as a new Christian, I really didn’t understand what Jesus meant by these words. To begin, my understanding of repentance was very incomplete. I tended to think of repentance as a kind of apology; something you did after you sinned to ask God’s forgiveness. Apparently, many Christians view repentance in this way, and some in the so-called “grace movement” even insist that it is unnecessary for the believer to repent more than once. By their logic, all your sins--past, present and future--have already been forgiven once you have accepted Christ, and so it is both useless and wrong to ask God to continually forgive you when He has already forgiven all your sins through the Cross of Christ.

The error of this view is that it only identifies sins as offenses to God, and not as wounds to us. Sin is not merely a debt needing payment, but a spiritual condition of sickness and injury that requires healing. In fact, the Greek word translated as “salvation” throughout the New Testament literally refers to being healed or made whole and healthy. Salvation is not simply a one-time, courtroom proclamation removing only the penalty of sin, but an ongoing therapeutic action and process that gradually removes the cancer of sin itself and brings healing to our humanity.

In light of this more biblical view of salvation, we can better understand repentance as representing our choice to participate with God in the healing of our souls and bodies. The major Greek word for repentance is metanoia which implies a reversal of orientation in the noetic faculty within man. Much more than a mere apology, repentance is the redirecting of the nous--the spiritual heart of man--away from sin and death, toward God, the Giver of Life. By definition therefore, repentance must be continuous; we must perpetually choose to die to our sins and passions and turn toward God to find the life and healing that is true salvation.

The other thing that I didn’t understand about Jesus’ words, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” was what exactly He meant by the phrase “at hand”. That seemed to imply a sort of immediacy, as if the kingdom of heaven was right there or was about to be. I didn’t see how that was possible, since at the time I tended to think of the kingdom of heaven as a distant reality, the eventual reward of the saved, but nothing that had to do with our present lives.

Of course, since the vast majority of Jesus’ teachings centered on the kingdom of heaven, my view meant that most of what He had to say was of little value to me. After all, if I believed that I was already saved and going to the kingdom of heaven, then why did I need to keep hearing about it? It was obviously preaching intended for the ears of others; those not yet saved.

What was missing from my early understanding of these things was the Church. Yes, the kingdom of heaven will be revealed in fullness at the end of the age when Christ returns visibly. But as Jesus taught and the fathers have affirmed, the kingdom of God has already been established on earth with power at the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, and the founding of the Church.

The kingdom of heaven truly was the focal point in all of Jesus’ teaching and preaching. How strange this would be if He did not think that men and women could live in that kingdom now! In the Sermon on the Mount He introduced a new set of values to mankind that are very other-worldly in nature. He taught us not to celebrate worldly wealth, well-being, and the praise of men, but instead embrace self-emptying, the mourning of sins, and the patient enduring of persecution for righteousness’ sake as signs that one is truly living in the kingdom that “is not of this world” and does not depend upon this world. In His many instructions He taught how we could begin to live in the kingdom of heaven without delay by forsaking the deceitful pleasures of the flesh and imitating Him in meekness, humility, and devotion to God. His parables often spoke of people who made great discoveries--a treasure hidden in a field, a pearl of great price, a lost coin, a father’s house once despised but now valued as a place of salvation--to speak of the Church and the kingdom of heaven as the greatest treasure a person can find on this poor planet of ours.

My brothers and sisters, above all else, Jesus taught that God loves us and has established His kingdom on earth that we might enter in now and begin to live that life of repentance and salvation that brings the greatest joy, both in the present age, and in the age to come. Because of His goodness, let us not be indecisive, standing on the threshold with one foot in the Church and the other still in the world. Let us come all the way into His house and embrace the life of His kingdom. Let us not be unworthy partakers at His table because while we dine here, we secretly crave the bitter morsels of sin, though they poison our souls and leave us sick and empty. Neither let us be slothful, unwilling to be faithful in the labor of repentance because it seems boring to us or too hard.

In both the genealogy of Christ and in the lives of our precious saints we have so many examples of people who found their way into the eternal kingdom because they chose to turn their backs on this fallen world with all its deceitful enticements, and sought the kingdom of God and His righteousness above all else. We too can choose to do this, and must choose it. Or to put it another way, we can choose daily to truly repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Expect the Unexpected

2008-11-11T17:07:00.000-08:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

This morning’s gospel lesson (Luke 8:41-56) presents two very different people. The first is a wealthy and prestigious ruler of the synagogue, apparently so well-known at the time that St. Luke mentions him by name. His daughter lay at home dying. The second is a penniless and unnamed woman who for twelve long years had been stricken with a type of disease causing a continual flow of blood. This symptom would have rendered her “unclean” according to the laws of Judaism, making her an outcast from among her own people. What a contrast between these two! The ruler would have always taken the most prominent and honored place in the synagogue every Sabbath. The woman wouldn’t have even been allowed through the door. But both people were brought together by their mutual need for the mercy of Jesus Christ.

Jairus, the ruler, came to Christ and bowed down before Him. While this appears to have been a very pious act, it is likely that piety had nothing to do with it. As a synagogue official, well-versed in the law and the prophets, he should have long ago recognized Jesus as the promised Messiah, declared Him to the people, and come bowing down before Him in rightful worship. But there is no mention of him doing this. He only came to Jesus when he needed something, and his prostration before Him was not that of a man worshipping the Son of God, but only of a man beseeching the favor of a miracle-working prophet. Yet our gracious Lord agreed to help him, because He shows compassion to all who turn to Him, despite the imperfections of their faith. He also knew that events would soon happen that would increase the faith of many.

As Christ accompanied Jairus toward his home, a great throng of people pressed in all about them. The woman with the issue of blood saw this as her opportunity. What she did next was very wrong, for being ceremonially unclean, she was not allowed to touch anyone. Yet she forced her way through the crowd, brushing against many unsuspecting people, to finally take hold of the Lord’s garment. It was a desperate action, and one that was entirely unnecessary. He she simply cried out to Jesus from afar, He certainly would have helped her. But she did not understand the depths of our Lord’s compassion, and allowed shame and fear to keep her from doing the proper thing. Although there was no doubt in her mind that a touch from Jesus would heal her, it is clear that she still did not know Jesus Himself, or the measure of His divine love for us fallen people.

As the story finished out, we saw that the woman succeeded in touching the Lord’s holy garment, and immediately felt herself healed. At this point, Jesus feigns not knowing who touched Him in order to draw the woman out of the crowd. He further revealed Himself to all who would believe by saying, “I felt power go forth from Me”. We know that many of the great prophets worked tremendous wonders and miracles, but none would ever have claimed that the power to do so came forth from themselves. Only God--in this case, the Son of God incarnate--could make the claim that the power to heal and give life comes forth from His very own being. No wonder the woman fell down before Him with much trembling after hearing Him say this! But the merciful Jesus tenderly called her “daughter,” thus reinstating her into the synagogue, and blessed her, sending her on her way in peace and in complete health.

I wonder what was going through the mind of Jairus by this time, and if he was beginning to realize who this Jesus was. Perhaps the devil thought so, for people were immediately sent from Jairus’ home to tell him that his daughter had died. “Don’t trouble the Master any longer; there’s nothing He can do for you. Leave this Jesus and walk away, for your daughter is dead.”

Do we see how our wicked enemy is right there to bring fear and troubling whenever we look toward Christ? “Fear not,” Jesus immediately said to Jairus, “Only believe, and she shall be made whole”. What a choice this man faced! Give in to the fear of the situation, which certainly seemed reasonable at the time, or believe that this Jesus could do what was necessary, even when things appeared utterly hopeless. We might even say it was an unfair choice; an impossible choice! But Jesus was right there with Jairus to comfort him and to prepare him to witness what great things God can do for those who believe.

As we reflect on this gospel lesson, we see two very different people with entirely different situations, who both believed in Jesus enough to at least think that He could help them. But that’s really as far as their faith went. They saw their immediate problems and wanted Jesus to make them better. They weren’t thinking about salvation; it never crossed their minds that their trials were bringing them closer to the kingdom of God in mystical ways guided by His grace. They weren’t seeking the enlightenment from Jesus Christ that would lead them to eternal life. But that’s exactly what they got! Wanting help from our Lord, they got the help they truly needed, not just the help they thought they needed.

I suppose there’s a lesson in there for us. Like these two, maybe God has more for us that we imagine. Should we raise our expectations toward Him a little higher? For example, how about if we stood before God each day in prayer, bringing just a tiny bit of enthusiasm to our work? Not too much, you know, there’s no need to go overboard, but just enough to imagine that God actually wants us to pray to Him, that He really listens to us, and that He truly answers all our prayers in ways both seen and unseen, both temporal and eternal. What if we did that? What if we prayed like it meant something? What if we prayed like we had faith in God? It’s just a simple little adjustment of our expectations. But what great change it could bring to our lives!

That’s just one example. There are many ways in which we could raise our expectations toward God and come to Him with eyes of faith, rather than eyes that only see our own misery and complaints. The story of these two people is by no means unique in the gospels. Always when people came to Jesus they got more than they expected from Him. Should we expect any less, or imagine that we’ve got Him all figured out? May God help us to truly expect more from Christ ourselves, and to come to Him to find healing, enlightenment, and life eternal in His kingdom.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

A Wedding Homily

2008-10-27T10:04:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

On behalf of S. and E., it is my privilege to welcome all of you to their wedding and to our home parish of St. Barnabas Orthodox Church! With so many friends and family members joining us today, it’s quite possible that this is the first Eastern Orthodox wedding that some of you have attended. In the front of the service booklet there are explanations of many of the things you see here, but I thought I might take a brief moment to describe the underlying meaning of marriage from our point of view.

Perhaps the first thing you notice about an Orthodox wedding is that it is very traditional. Our couples don’t write their own personalized ceremonies, they are always married in the church by the priest, and they don’t even exchange vows. The point of this is not to stifle individual creativity, but to emphasize that this is a holy sacrament of the Church, which is principally the work of God and not of the couple themselves. What this means is that it is God Himself who brings the man and the woman together and joins them in a sacred and mystical union by His grace.

This is an important distinction, for when difficulties occasionally arise, as they do in all marriages, it is good for the couple to look back upon the sure and certain foundation that God established when He joined them in marriage. At such times they will remember that they began their union by the hand of God, and must continue it with the help of God.

Eastern Orthodoxy further builds upon this idea to define marriage itself as the union brought about by God of a man and a woman for the purpose of their mutual salvation. When we consider the process that needs to take place over the years in the lives of married people, this definition is not so difficult to understand.

In a marriage, God brings together two very different people, each with their own personal mix of sins and individual willfulness. This invariably produces conflict, or what we might affectionately refer to as “marital discord”. This is not in-and-of-itself a bad thing. If it is handled correctly by the couple, such conflict can actually lead to real growth in love, patience, and understanding between the two. For this growth to take place, a fundamental shift in the way we fallen human beings tend to deal with one another must first begin to occur.

In short, there needs to be a move away from an ego-centric existence characterized by the exaggerated love of self, to one centered on Christ and the love of others. Our Lord Jesus pointed the way to this in the commandment He gave for us to love one another as He has loved us, that is to say, with a love that is self-sacrificial and puts the genuine needs of others first. This is the way God loves us, but we broken human beings have to learn this kind of love, for otherwise we tend to put ourselves and our needs (whether real or imagined) far ahead of everyone else, and many times at the expense of those around us.

It’s been said that America is a consumer society and this is true. Unfortunately we are not only consumers of goods and services, but often of people as well. We tend to get into relationships for what we think we can get out of them. We seek companionship, romance, security, fun; we have a whole list of what we feel are our personal needs. And if it should turn out that the other person doesn’t quite meet our exact needs, we may drop them like an empty Starbucks’ cup and move on to someone else.

This self-serving approach to others makes us into the exact opposite of God and His self-giving love. No one can be saved who does not renounce this terrible love of self, to embrace God’s love and the genuine love of others. By learning to give instead of take, to serve instead of being served, a married couple move into the communion of God’s love and reflect the presence of Jesus Christ in their lives. By this they are transformed by grace and find their salvation together. Thus we see that marriage truly can be redemptive for the couple that is committed to this effort.

Another thing that’s a little different about Orthodox weddings is the fact that there is no “until death do we part” bit in our ceremony. This is because we do not see marriage as merely an earthly contract to be terminated when one or the other spouse dies. The marital union begun by God is an eternal union. Though the nature of marriage, like that of our bodies themselves, will be changed when we are raised and glorified in heaven, the union itself will not pass away, but will only be perfected in the kingdom to come.

This is a wonderful thing, and underscores once again the importance of what is happening here today. S. and E. are beginning, not just the journey of a lifetime, but one that will carry them into eternity. The crowns they now wear symbolize not only that they are proclaimed as king and queen of a new family, entrusted by God with the authority to rule their household in faith and love and harmony with Christ, but also prefigure the crowns of glory and honor God will bestow upon them when they fulfill their journey together in the kingdom of heaven.

This is why we take such a traditional and serious approach to marriage in the Orthodox Church. We see it as a gift from God to us fallen people for our salvation, and yet another sign of His merciful love for us.

For this we give all glory +to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Widow of Nain

2008-10-19T11:00:00.000-07:00

+In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.

Today’s Lesson, from the 7th chapter of St. Luke’s gospel (Luke 7:11-16), tells of Jesus raising from the dead the only son of a widow. There are three approaches I would like to take in examining this story. The first will be to look at what literally happened and to consider it in connection with another healing that is recorded earlier in chapter 7. The second will be to a reflect on a spiritual interpretation of what the elements of the story also mean to us, as suggested by one of the saints of our Church. And in the third point, to address the concerns of any skeptics or doubters, we will consider why we should believe in such miracles at all.

And so if we go back just a bit in St. Luke’s narrative, we find the story of the healing of a centurion’s dying servant. You may recall that on behalf of this centurion, the elders of the Jews came to Jesus and besought Him to heal the servant, saying that his master was an honorable man who loved the Jewish people and had even built for them a synagogue. Jesus consented to go with them, but before reaching the house, the centurion sent word saying that he was not worthy for the Lord to enter under his roof, but if Jesus would only say the word, he knew his servant would be healed. Jesus marveled at his exemplary faith and healed the servant instantly.

As great a sign as this was of our Lord’s mercy and divine power, there would be those who would doubt it as a lucky coincidence, as if the servant would have recovered anyway. To disprove such speculation, the Lord then performed a miracle which would not be so easy to deny.

Seeing the funeral procession, He stopped it and touched the funeral bier, saying, “Young man, I say to thee, arise”. At once the dead man sat up and began to speak. Fear came upon everyone who witnessed this and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet is risen up among us!”

Please notice the extremely important detail that Jesus did not raise this man by His voice alone, but also by touching the funeral bier upon which the dead man lay. This was to draw our attention to His incarnation, by which His very flesh has become life-giving. Because God the Word who gives life to all things became flesh, His flesh is likewise life-creating, and takes away death and corruption. In John 6, Jesus taught this very same truth, saying that those who eat His Flesh and drink His Blood gain life everlasting.

Notice also that He did not even touch the man directly, but only the funeral bier. This also was a demonstration that objects can be sanctified by His life-giving power to transmit grace and healing. It recalls the story of the woman with the issue of blood, who straightaway received healing when she touched only the hem of His garment.

Now we must ask ourselves, can coffins raise the dead or tunics heal incurable diseases? They can if they’ve been sanctified by our Lord’s life-giving touch! Why is this important for us to know? Because God’s glorious salvation is not a “spiritual” salvation only, but a spiritual/physical salvation. God saves not only fallen souls, but fallen bodies and even the fallen world itself. If the entire world fell through the action of the first Adam, then the action of the Second Adam from above could do no less than to effect the complete redemption of that world and all it contains, to set it back on its original path to glory.

This is the full implication of the incarnation, and though we do not yet see the complete fulfillment of it, we clearly see its beginning in the glorification of the bodies of the saints, and in many cases their relics and images, in the bread and wine of communion, in holy water and holy oil and in many other manifestations. All of these things are in keeping with the scriptural revelation as we can see in the healings which took place through blessed objects, including even such lowly things as the handkerchiefs which were carried away from the apostles’ bodies to heal the sick.

Further reflecting on the spiritual meaning of this story, the Blessed Theophylact wrote in his commentary that the widow can be said to represent the soul which has lost its husband, the Word of God. The son of that widow portrays the mind which is dead and is being carried outside of the city, that is, outside of the heavenly Jerusalem which is the city of the living. And so when the soul of man is separated from the Word of God, the mind of man becomes dead. The funeral bier which the Lord touched represents the body of man which, when touched by grace, gives life also to the mind and raises it back up. The young man sits up and begins to speak, which represents the mind now restored by grace to proclaim the truth of the gospel. The mind which is dead cannot speak the truth of God nor even comprehend it, for it is dark and lifeless. Thus we see that in every action of our Lord Jesus Christ, there is not only an immediate result, but a profound spiritual meaning as well.

And speaking of darkened minds which cannot comprehend the truth, we know that there have been many skeptics over the years who have sought to dispute and discredit the miracles of Christ. Invariably the claim is that the historical Jesus was just an ordinary man who generations later was deified by corrupt church leaders who sought to secure their own power by making Jesus into a god. Quite often you’ll see TV documentaries that are devoted to this theme trying desperately to explode the “myths” of Jesus’ virgin-birth, His miracles, and His holy third-day resurrection. None of this is based on any legitimate scholarship, but is only an attempt to cast doubt on Jesus, the scriptures, and the Church to dispel moral accountability to the same. The agenda is so transparent as to almost be laughable, if it weren’t so deeply tragic.

True scholarship continues to establish the gospels as genuine first-century documents, and the earliest writings of the Church Fathers bear witness to this, as well as offer overwhelming evidence of belief in Jesus as God incarnate. But I think even if such proof were not available to us, the gospels themselves are written in such a straightforward and unassuming way as to demonstrate that they couldn’t possibly be later forgeries.

Take for example the simple, almost journalistic manner in which St. Luke describes the raising of this dead man, without embellishment or commentary. He even reports that the crowds mistakenly announced Jesus as “a great prophet” without a clue to His divinity. It seems to me that if the gospels had been later altered to change the story, those doing the work would have been careful to correct such errors and would consistently emphasize what they wanted you to believe. I think today they call that sort of thing “spin”.

But the gospels are entirely free from spin. They merely report what happened and allow the reader to form to his own conclusions. Considering how many false conclusions about Jesus have been formed by casual readers of the gospels, it is very difficult to accept that “corrupt church leaders” changed the texts, for certainly they would have done a more complete and convincing job of it.

And so we find that the miracles of Christ are entirely believable, not only because of the simplicity of the gospels, not only because of the witness of the early saints, but also we might add, because many more such miracles have occurred in the lives of the saints ever since, just as Jesus promised would happen. What we see in this story is consistent with the life and experience of the Church throughout the ages, and our theology is based upon this very foundation. True theology is always based on the Church’s experience of the life of God revealed through her saints. May this be the theology that always guides us to experience the fulness of that same life ourselves.

+To the glory of God the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This happy, happy life

2008-09-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

One of the things I often say is that Orthodoxy is best understood as a way of life. My point is to emphasize that our faith is a 24/7 commitment. In secular America, it is often challenging to embrace one’s faith in those terms. Religion tends to be marginalized even by the religious themselves, with many people being quite content to experience a Sunday-only encounter with their faith. What such people do during the remaining six days of the week is usually to return to whatever other way of life they find most compelling.

In America, there are many such competing ways of life. Consumerism is a major one. Blindly following the American dream, many Christians take on a frightening level of debt, and thus have no money left to worship God with a tithe. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”. If all one’s treasure goes to paying for possessions, is that not also where his heart lives, or was Jesus mistaken? Many people will also put the utilitarian ethic of working hard and accomplishing things ahead of seemingly less productive efforts like prayer and spiritual formation. That’s why there’s often so much “ministry” in churches today but so little spirituality. In the realm of sexuality, people have nearly lost the concept of worshipping God with their mortal bodies, and have eagerly put gratification and pleasure first. In fact, for most people the general pursuit of earthly happiness is the number one priority in their lives.

As a sad indicator of this trend, the top-selling “Christian” authors today have become millionaires by preaching a false gospel of “happiness”. The message is that God wants you to be happy, and since most Christians with a materialistic focus haven’t found happiness, this message is alluring. But where in the bible do we read that God’s priority is for you to be happy with this life? The bible does speak of happiness of course. In the Beatitudes we find a Greek word used repeatedly that is usually translated as “blessed” but can also mean “happy”. But the happiness we are promised comes only when we die to this world. The Beatitudes don’t say, “Happy is he who has learned to like himself” or that happiness comes from finding “The 7 steps to living at your fullest potential”. These are both themes from two of these authors I alluded to. In reality however, the Beatitudes teach that those who mourn in this life will find comfort in the life to come. They teach that those who are poor in spirit, who are meek, who deny themselves to gain purity of heart, who are persecuted for Christ’s sake will find happiness in the kingdom of heaven.

Unlike the deafening drumbeat of this world, which pounds into our brains the continual message of taking pleasure and finding happiness now, the gospel quietly calls us to embrace suffering, disappointment and apparent defeat now, in order to emerge as true victors when Christ is revealed in His glory.

This is a hard message, and one we do not willingly accept. We might think that we do, and if this were merely a question on a classroom test, I’m sure we would all give the right answer. But the real classroom is life itself, the test is conducted daily, and what we really believe is revealed by the choices we make and the attitudes we live by.

I think the Beatitudes and the rest of the gospels are something we should all read often. How can we resist the powerful tide of this world if we are not immersed in the reading of the gospels and the constant self-correction they call us to? How can we avoid being conformed to this world, or be transformed by the renewing of our minds, if our minds so seldom have anything in them other than our hopes and dreams and expectations for happiness in this life? If we do not confront ourselves with the sometimes harsh and uncomfortable message of the gospel, then we will just go with the flow of the values of the world around us.

I would remind us that only dead fish go with the flow. The living ones constantly struggle to move in an upstream direction.

In our epistle lesson this morning [2 Corinthians 4:6-15], St. Paul addressed this same issue with the church in Corinth. The Corinthians had made remarkable progress from paganism, but still had some lingering problems. They were unwilling to deal with moral failures in their church, and overall they seemed to have a difficult time making the transition from being people of this world to people of the world to come. Paul spoke to them candidly about his own difficulties; of his being troubled on every side, perplexed, persecuted and cast down, of always bearing in his body the dying of the Lord Jesus. He said these things to the relatively comfortable Corinthians not to shame them, but to remind them that life, properly lived, is a battle. Living for Christ is hard and demands many sacrifices.

What a contrast this is to the message of the popular preachers today! These folks sell millions of books because they’ve tapped into what people want to hear, and present it as “spiritual wisdom” when it is in fact the wisdom of the devil, who would like nothing better than to keep all Christians earthbound and worldly-minded. We’d all like to hear that we can have our cake and eat it too; that we can have our salvation, sure, but that we can also enjoy a life free from struggle and pain (once we've bought the right books and adopted the right "principles"), a life without poor self-esteem, and without sacrificing pleasure and material wealth. The soundtrack may as well be from Queen’s popular song, “I want it all (and I want it now!)”.

But this is not the gospel, no matter how appealing the message. Whenever the difficult work of repentance and the taking up of one’s own cross is left out of the preaching, the true gospel is not being presented.

Orthodoxy is true Christianity because it incorporates everything needed for man’s salvation. We don’t teach you the “principles” you supposedly need to “set your mind free and start enjoying your life”. We teach that you need a mind transformed, a heart made pure, a body disciplined by prayer and fasting. We teach a going against the pleasure-seeking principle that we all naturally love and to mistrust the comforts of this world as deceptive. Orthodoxy is just downright “other-worldly” because at its heart it calls us to die to this lost world lest we be lost with it, and discover heaven as our only true home.

This is a hard message, and one that will never sell a lot of books. This is also why I suspect that Orthodoxy will never be a wildly popular religion in America. I could be wrong, and I actually hope that I am. But a religion that teaches that the rules of happiness we have all clung to since childhood are fundamentally wrong because they only focus on this life, a religion that teaches that true happiness is found in the path of imitating Christ’s self-denial and voluntary self-emptying with an eye toward the life to come, is bound to wage an uphill battle against so many competing and more appealing ways of life.

But this religion, this Orthodoxy, just happens to be the best and truest way of life. We need not be saints to live this life, but if we do live it, chances are very good that it will help us to become saints. May this be our way.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.