Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church

 

Hebrews 6:13-20; Mark 9:17-31

             If we have embraced the spiritual practices of Lent with any level of integrity for the last few weeks, the weakness of our faith has surely become apparent to us.  Our minds wander when we pray and so much else seems more important than being fully present before the Lord, both in the services of the Church and in our daily prayers at home.   We often make excuses not to fast to the best of our ability and, regardless of what we eat and drink, routinely indulge our self-centered desires for pleasure.  We justify being stingy in sharing our resources and attention with our neighbors, especially when we fear that doing so will compromise our illusions of self-sufficiency and comfort.  By this point in Lent, we have all gained insight into how we have failed to entrust ourselves fully to Christ for healing to the point that we can say with the brokenhearted father in today’s gospel reading, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”

In kneeling before the Lord and struggling to believe that Christ could deliver his son from a life-threatening condition, the father revealed the true condition of his soul.  He was bitterly disappointed that the disciples had not been able to help and did not fully trust that the Savior could do anything more.   Nonetheless, he could muster enough faith to offer the young man to Christ for healing, even as he pleaded for Him to “help my unbelief!”  That humble, heartfelt plea was sufficient for his son to receive the Lord’s merciful healing. Despite his doubts, that blessed man still had enough faith to receive healing for his son.  He entrusted himself and his beloved child to Christ as best he could, despite his imperfect faith.

The word given by God to St. Silouan the Athonite applies to him as much as it does to us: “Keep your mind in hell and do not despair.”   On the one hand, we must not fool ourselves with an illusory, superficial spirituality that distracts us from experiencing the true state of our souls before God.  Instead, we must know from our hearts how far we are from fully embracing our Lord’s gracious healing and entrusting ourselves and all our earthly cares to Him.  On the other hand, even as we confront the grave tension between the infinite holiness of God and our corruption, we must refuse to despair by accepting the lie that there is no hope for us, our loved ones, and our world in the mercy of the Lord.  Far better is the way of the father in today’s gospel lesson, for he confessed the weakness of his faith even as he paradoxically showed great faith in asking for Christ to save his son.  

He provides us a much better example of honest faith than did the disciples, for they lacked the spiritual strength to deliver the young man from the demon.  The Savior told them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.”  He said that because they were spiritual weaklings who had neglected the most basic spiritual practices for opening themselves to receive Christ’s healing strength. Not one of them got the point when the Lord said, “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and after He is killed, He will rise on the third day.”  At this point, they had a superficial faith focused on acquiring earthly power for themselves, not on commending themselves to the God-Man Whose Kingdom remains not of this world.  It was only after the horror of the Cross, the complete shock of the empty tomb, and the appearance and teaching of the Risen Lord that they acquired the faith necessary for them truly to believe.

The deliverance of the young man certainly did not come easily, for the demon convulsed him and most of the bystanders thought that he was dead.  That is an interesting detail, for we often naively assume that Christ’s healing comes with only sweetness and light when, in reality, embracing His healing can seem impossibly difficult.  That is especially the case for finding the strength to resist the temptation to gratify passions that have taken deep root in our souls.  Wrestling seriously with our besetting sins is a battle that causes us to die to so many illusions about ourselves. 

 As we continue the Lenten journey this year, let us persist in the inner struggle necessary to intensify our prayers, to deny ourselves, and to give generously to our neighbors as we take the small steps that we presently have the strength to take in reorienting our lives to toward the Lord.   When the battle even to take those small steps reveals our weaknesses and seems like a lost cause, that is not the time to give up, but instead to obey the command: “Keep your mind in hell and do not despair.”  It is only by doing so that we may gain the spiritual clarity necessary to cry out from the depths of our hearts, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”  Indeed, it is really the only time in which we can begin to see the state of our souls clearly, which is necessary in order for us to follow our Lord to His Cross and empty tomb through humble confession and repentance of our sins. In the remaining weeks of the Fast, let us refuse to be distracted by anything that would keep us from entering as fully as possible into the holy mystery of our salvation, for “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and after He is killed, He will rise on the third day.” 

 

 

 

 

The Adoration of the Holy Cross: Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent in the Orthodox Church

 

Hebrews 4:14-5:6; Mark 8:34-9:1

            We do not have to look very closely at dominant trends in our culture today for signs that many people are offering their lives for the service of false gods, regardless of how they identify themselves religiously.  The evidence of their idolatry is not primarily in where they congregate to worship, but in how they seek first the things of this world, such as possessions, power, and pleasure, and in how they hate and condemn those whom they perceive to stand in the way of their acquiring them.  That was the mindsight of the corrupt religious leaders who called for the Lord’s crucifixion because they perceived Him as a threat to their self-centered agendas.  It was also the perspective of the Romans who believed that worshiping their many gods protected their empire.  By having “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin on the Cross, Pontius Pilate did not miss the opportunity to let everyone know what happened to those suspected of challenging Roman rule.  (Jn. 19:20) 

         On this Sunday of the Adoration of the Holy Cross, right in the middle of Lent, we do the complete opposite of making success in this world, however defined, our highest goal.  Today we venerate the Cross on which Jesus Christ offered Himself for the salvation of the world.  Through His crucifixion, the New Adam entered fully into the misery and wretchedness of the first Adam to the point of death in order to liberate us from slavery to its corrupting power and make us participants in eternal life through His glorious resurrection on the third day.  The Cross is truly the Tree of Life through which we return to the blessedness of Paradise.

             As our epistle reading states, our crucified and risen Lord is the “great High Priest” Who ministers in the heavenly temple, where He intercedes for us eternally.   In order to enter into His salvation, we must take up our own crosses as we refuse to make any earthly goal our highest good.  Denying ourselves means putting faithfulness to Him before anything else, including indulging personal inclinations and desires that hold us back from fulfilling our high calling.    Even as common bread and wine are fulfilled as our Lord’s Body and Blood when offered in the Divine Liturgy, we too are transformed when we unite ourselves to the High Priestly offering of the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.   If we refuse to do so, we will shut ourselves out of the blessedness of His Kingdom, both as a present reality and as a future hope.

             We must not adore the Cross only in religious services, but daily as we take up our crosses in order to love God with every ounce of our being and our neighbors as ourselves.  The disciplines of Lent help us gain the strength to do precisely that as we take intentional steps to die to that which keeps us comfortably enslaved to the self-centered ways of the first Adam.  By devoting ourselves to prayer, we open our hearts to the Savior and learn experientially that our life is in Him.  By refusing to gratify our desires for the richest and most sustaining foods, we open ourselves in humility to receive His strength for resisting deeply ingrained habits of self-indulgence.    When we share our time, energy, and resources with others, we become more like Christ in offering ourselves for the good of our neighbors.  These are the most basic disciplines of the Christian life, and we all need to practice them in order to gain the spiritual health necessary to take up our crosses, especially in relation to the great challenges of our lives.  

 If we refuse to deny ourselves even in small ways this Lent, then we will become even more accustomed to serving ourselves instead of God and neighbor.  Doing so will reveal that we are ashamed of our Lord and His Cross, and prefer to offer our lives to other gods, especially ourselves.  Even if we continue down that path to the point that we somehow gain the whole world, we will risk losing our souls by committing idolatry every bit as much as those who condemned Christ because He stood in the way of fulfilling their passionate desires for power. Indeed, we will be even more guilty because we know that His Cross is not a sign of ultimate defeat to be repudiated, but “a weapon of peace and a trophy invincible” to be honored.     

 There is perhaps nothing worse than distorting our calling as Christians to the point that the Cross becomes merely an empty symbol that we use to achieve our desire for any earthly goal, no matter how appealing or noble.  If we do not actually take up our crosses and deny ourselves out of love for God and neighbor, then we will condemn only ourselves when we use the Cross idolatrously to justify getting whatever we want personally for ourselves or the factions, nations, or other groups to which we have given our hearts.  Whenever we recognize that we are coming anywhere close to using the way of Christ to seek the things of this world as ends in themselves, we must call for the Lord’s mercy from the depths of our souls as we struggle to embody St. Paul’s teaching that “those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” (Gal. 5:24)

 We adore the Holy Cross today because it is ultimately a sign of the blessed eternal life that the Savior has brought to the world through His victory over the corrupting power of sin and death.  As we continue our Lenten journey, let us offer every dimension of our lives to Him for healing as we take up our own crosses.  Whether in Lent or any other time, that is the only way to enter into Paradise through our great High Priest, Who offered Himself fully upon the Cross for our salvation.

 

Homily for the Second Sunday of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church

 

Hebrews 1:10-2:3; Mark 2:1-12

                       We will misunderstand these blessed weeks of Lent if we assume that they are about helping us to have clearer ideas or deeper feelings about our Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection.  We will be even more confused if we think that our intensified prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and repentance somehow earn God’s forgiveness or make us better than other people.  Quite the contrary, Lenten disciples are simply opportunities to open our souls to the gracious healing of our Lord so that we may share more fully in His life.  That is another way of saying that the point of Lent is to grow in our knowledge of God through true spiritual experience and encounter.   

On this second Sunday of the Great Fast, we commemorate St. Gregory Palamas, who defended the experience of monks who, in the stillness of prayer from their hearts, saw the Uncreated Light of God.  The eyes of their souls were cleansed and illumined such that they beheld the divine glory as the Apostles did at the Transfiguration of the Lord on Mount Tabor.  St. Gregory taught that to know God is to participate in His gracious divine energies as we are transformed in holiness in every aspect of our existence.  He proclaimed that our calling is to know and experience God through true spiritual union with Him that sanctifies every dimension of the human person.  To do so is to encounter the great “I AM” of the Burning Bush from the depths of our souls in a way that illumines us entirely. (Ex. 3:14) It is to shine brilliantly in holiness like an iron left in the fire of the divine glory.

In today’s gospel reading, Christ healed a paralyzed man, enabling him to stand up, carry his bed, and walk home as a sign of the Savior’s divine authority to forgive sins. In doing so, He restored not only a body to health but a whole person who faced all the practical challenges of daily life in the world as we know it.  Though Palamas focused primarily on the hesychasm of monks, he also taught that “those who live in the world…must force themselves to use the things of this world in conformity with the commandments of God.”[1]  When we mindfully embrace the struggle to purify our hearts so that we may live according to love of God and neighbor, which are the greatest of the commandments, and not according to our self-centered desires, we come to know and experience Christ from the depths of our souls more fully.  We pray, fast, give, forgive, and confess and repent of our sins during Lent so that we may open our hearts, and every aspect of our lives, as fully as possible to the purifying healing of our Lord’s gracious divine energies.      

His healing is open to all, regardless of age, sex, marital status, social standing, or any other characteristic.  Christ sent the formerly paralyzed man home to resume a conventional life. Since the Savior is both fully divine and fully human, literally every aspect of our human existence may become radiant with the divine glory, if we will only offer ourselves to Him for healing and hold nothing back.  Doing so requires a great struggle and constant vigilance against the blindness and weakness that our passions so easily bring upon us.  The disciplines of Lent help us to embrace the struggle to open the eyes of our souls to behold the glory of the Lord, to know Him from the depths of our hearts.     

While no particular use of the Jesus Prayer is required of us, we must all call mindfully for the Lord’s healing mercy each day in order to receive His liberation from slavery to the paralysis of sin.  Prayer is not about pondering ideas, cultivating emotions, or mouthing words, but about being fully present to God from the depths of our souls.  Doing so is absolutely necessary to know Christ and become more like Him in holiness.  It is the essential foundation for accepting Christ’s healing and gaining the strength to make whatever challenges we face points of entrance into the life of the Kingdom of the Heaven. In order to know the Lord, we simply must ground our lives in prayer.   

Lent does not call us merely to think or have feelings about our Lord’s Cross and resurrection.  This season invites us to grow in our personal knowledge and experience of the Savior Who offered Himself on the Cross and rose in glory on the third day for our salvation.   Its disciplines strengthen us for the life of holiness possible only for those who share in Christ’s restoration and fulfillment of the human person in the divine image and likeness.  Whenever we pray, fast, serve others with humility, and confess and repent of our sins, we open ourselves to receive the light of the Lord and become more like Him.  These are not practices only for those who live in what we imagine to be ideal circumstances, but are necessary for all who remain weak before their passions with spiritual vision darkened by sin.  No circumstance of our lives excuses us in any way from answering the calling to become radiant with the divine energies of our Lord as we rise up from our beds of weakness and move forward in a life of holiness.  That is the calling of the God-Man to us all. 

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers records that God revealed to Saint Antony the Great of Egypt that “there was one who was his equal in the city. He was a doctor by profession and whatever he had beyond his needs he gave to the poor, and every day he sang the Sanctus with the angels.”  The example of that righteous man shows that the only limits to our participation in the life of Christ are those that we choose to impose on ourselves.  As we continue our Lenten journey, let us make the circumstances of our lives, whatever they may be, points of entrance into the blessed life of our Lord.  Let us know Him as God from the depths of our hearts as we come to   shine brightly with the divine glory by grace.  That is not a matter of rational speculation, historical remembrance, or cultivation of emotions about the Savior’s Cross and empty tomb, but of lifting up our hearts and entering into the joy of the One Who destroyed the power of sin and death by His glorious resurrection on the third day.

 

---

[1] The Triads, II.ii.5.

Homily for the First Sunday of Lent (The Sunday of Orthodoxy) in the Orthodox Church

 

Hebrews 11:24-26, 32-40; John 1:43-51

 On this first Sunday of Great Lent, we commemorate the restoration of icons centuries ago in the Byzantine Empire.  They were banned due to a misguided fear of idolatry, but restored as a proclamation of how Christ calls us to participate in His salvation in every dimension of our existence.  The icons convey the incarnation of the God-Man, Who had to be fully human with a real human body in order to be born, live in this world, die, rise from the grave, and ascend into heaven.  Were any aspect of His humanity an illusion, we could not become “partakers of the divine nature” through Him.  Icons of the Theotokos and the Saints display our calling to become radiant with holiness by uniting ourselves to Christ as whole persons, which includes how we use food, drink, money, sex, natural resources, and every other dimension of the creation.

Today’s commemoration reminds us that our Lenten journey is not an escapist distraction from life in our bodies or in our world.  Quite the opposite, the icons call us to embrace our struggle to find healing for every dimension of our personal and collective brokenness in the brilliant light of the Lord. The God-Man shares His salvation of the human person with us so that even our deepest struggles may become points of entrance into the blessedness of His Kingdom.  During this season of Lent, we must pray, fast, give, forgive, and confess and repent of the ways in which we have refused to embrace our calling to become ever more beautiful living icons of Christ, which is necessary for us to gain the spirituality clarity to see that every human person bears the divine image as much as we do.  If we are approaching this season with integrity, the ways in which we have fallen short of our high calling will quickly become apparent to us.  The more we struggle against our slavery to self-centered desires, the more apparent their hold upon us will become.  If you have been surprised during the first week of the Great Fast how your passions have reared their ugly heads, you are certainly not alone.  Indeed, that is likely a sign that your Lenten journey is off to a good start.    

We must not despair when we catch a glimpse of our brokenness, however, because our goal is not mere psychological adjustment, moral progress, or any type of success according to conventional standards.  It is, instead, as the Savior said to Nathanael, to “see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”  As those who bear the divine image and likeness, our calling as human persons is nothing less than sharing fully in the eternal life of the God-Man.  Though doing so is truly an eternal goal, we participate already in a foretaste of such blessedness when we open our hearts to His healing through repentance.     

Even as the icons proclaim the truth of our Lord’s incarnation using materials like paint and wood, they call us to manifest His holiness in our own bodies.  They remind us to make our daily physical actions tangible signs of Christ’s salvation.  In fasting, we limit our self-indulgence in food in order to gain strength to purify and redirect our desires toward God and away from gratifying bodily pleasures.  In almsgiving, we limit our trust in possessions in order to grow in love for our neighbors, in whom we encounter the Lord.  In prayer, we limit our obsession with our thoughts and usual distractions to become more fully present to God as we open our hearts to Him.  As experience teaches, even our smallest efforts to practice disciplines that open our hearts to receive Christ’s healing mercy reveal that there is much within us that would rather remain in the darkness of corruption.

Nonetheless, we must remember that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit and called to become radiant with the glory of our Lord’s resurrection.  Literally no aspect of our humanity is excluded from the vocation to shine with God’s gracious divine energies.   No matter how difficult the struggle with our passions may be, we must not become practical iconoclasts by refusing the calling to become more beautiful living icons of Christ in any aspect of our existence.  Instead, we must open even the dark, ugly, and distorted dimensions of our lives to the healing light of Christ as we call out for His mercy from the depths of our hearts.

The Savior entered fully into death through His Cross in order to overcome the corruption of the first Adam.  He rose and ascended in glory in order to make us radiant with His holiness.  As we celebrate the historical restoration of icons today, let us continue the Lenten journey in ways that will enable us to become more beautiful living icons of God, for that is what it means to become truly human.  The disciplines of this season are simply opportunities to do precisely that as we become by His grace those who will “see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”

 

 

 

Homily for the Sunday of Forgiveness in the Orthodox Church

 

Romans 13:11-14:4; Matthew 6:14-21

             On the last several Sundays, our gospel readings have challenged us to return home from our self-imposed exile.  Zacchaeus gave more than justice required to the poor and those whom he had exploited from his ill-gotten gains, and was restored as a son of Abraham.  By her persistence and humility, the Canaanite woman received the deliverance of her daughter as a sign that Christ calls all people to return home to Him in faith.  The publican returned to his spiritual home by humbly calling for the Lord’s mercy, even as the Pharisee exiled himself by his pride.  The prodigal son took the long journey home after coming to his senses about the misery of being in exile from the father whom he had abandoned. We recalled last Sunday that the ultimate standard of judgment for entering into our true home of eternal blessedness is whether the Savior’s restoration and fulfillment of the human person in the divine image and likeness has permeated our lives and character.  Today’s gospel reading reminds us to embrace forgiveness, fasting, and almsgiving in ways that direct us back to the Paradise from which Adam and Eve were cast out when they stripped themselves naked of the divine glory and entered into an existence so tragically enslaved to the fear of death that their son Cain murdered his brother Abel.  Within a few generations, their descendant Lamech proclaimed that he would avenge anyone who wronged him seventy-seven fold. (Gen. 4: 24)   We do not have to look very closely at our world, our personal relationships, and our own hearts to see how we have followed in their path of corruption as we stubbornly persist in exiling ourselves from the eternal blessedness which God offers to us all.  

          The season of Lent calls us to take steps, no matter how small and faltering they may be, along the path back to Paradise.  As the Lord offered up Himself on the Cross, He said to the penitent thief, “Truly I tell you, you will be with me today in Paradise.” (Lk. 23:43) Hades and the grave could not contain the Savior Who entered fully into death, for He is not merely human but also God.  The icon of Christ’s resurrection portrays Him lifting up Adam and Eve from their tombs.  The joy of His empty tomb places all our wanderings and sorrows in light of hope for “the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” 

             Our first parents refused to fulfill their calling to become like God in holiness and instead distorted themselves and the entire creation.  We participate in the Savior’s restoration of the human person in the divine image and likeness when we receive the garment of light in baptism as we rise up with Him into the new life of holiness for which He created us. Christ covers our nakedness and restores us to the dignity of beloved children of the Father who may know the joy of Paradise even now. Upon being baptized and then filled with the Holy Spirit in chrismation, we receive the Eucharist as participants in the Heavenly Banquet.  In every celebration of the Divine Liturgy, we return mystically to our true home. 

  Doing so reveals that our calling is nothing less than to become perfect as our Father in Heaven is perfect. Because He is infinitely holy, we must never think that we have reached that goal.  So much of the corruption of the old Adam remains within us, for we do not live daily as those clothed with a robe of light, but prefer the pain and weaknesses of choosing our own will over God’s.  We typically prefer to live according to our passions in ways that direct us back to exile, not to our true home of the blessedness of the Kingdom of Heaven.

             That is why we must all approach Lent with a deep awareness of how we far we are from sharing fully in the New Adam’s completion of our vocation to become like God in holiness.  The only way to escape our self-imposed exile is to take intentional steps to share more fully in the life of the One Who has opened up Paradise through His glorious resurrection.  As St. Paul taught, we must “put on the armor of light” and “make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”  That means mindfully investing our energy, time, and attention in ways that strengthen us spiritually as we conform our character more fully to Christ’s. It means refusing to invest our energy, time, and attention in whatever weakens us spiritually and makes us less like Him.  Lent calls us to give ourselves so fully to prayer, fasting, generosity, and other spiritual disciplines that we will have nothing left for “the works of darkness” that fuel our passions and bring only despair.

             A holy Lent is not about going through the motions of religion in order to gain the praise of others or even of ourselves; such vain hypocrisy will never help us gain the spiritual strength necessary to love and forgive our enemies. The same Lord Who said from the Cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” tells us that we must forgive others their offenses against us if we want the Father to forgive our sins.  (Lk. 23:34) Refusing to forgive others is a sign that we are not pursuing the journey home from exile.  If His merciful love is not becoming characteristic of us, then we are not orienting our lives toward Paradise.  Forgiveness is certainly a difficult struggle that will open our eyes to how strong our inclinations are to remain estranged from God and neighbor.  If we refuse even to crawl slowly along its path, we will know only the  misery of slavery to our own desires and refuse to enter into the eternal joy of the resurrection.   

             Precisely because it is so hard to forgive as we hope to be forgiven, we need spiritual disciplines like fasting, prayer, and almsgiving to direct us to our true fulfillment in God.  Our first parents’ self-centered refusal to restrain their desire for food enslaved them to death and corruption.  We have tragically reproduced their spiritual and personal brokenness from generation to generation.  Struggling to abstain from satisfying ourselves with rich food during Lent will help us see more clearly how far we are from Paradise due to our addiction to gratifying our self-centered desires.  It should also help us grow in patience and humility in relation to neighbors who have treated us according to their passions.  Humility fuels forgiveness, but pride makes forgiveness impossible by blinding us to the truth about our souls. In Forgiveness Vespers, we ask for and extend forgiveness to one another personally. Since we are members together of the Body of Christ, we weaken one another whenever we refuse to embrace the Lord’s healing.  We do not have to give obvious offense in order to do that, which is why we must all learn to see that pride invariably weakens our ability to share in a communion of love with our neighbors. It is precisely our pride that keeps us in exile from God and one another.   

             Even as we stand on the threshold of beginning the Lenten journey that leads us back to our true home, we must be prepared for our passions to fight back mightily when we wrestle with them.  Pursuing spiritual disciplines brings our weaknesses to the surface, often leading to anger at others as a way of distracting us from reckoning with our own sins.  As St. John Chrysostom asked, “What good is it if we abstain from birds and fishes, but bite and devour our brothers and sisters?”  We must mindfully struggle to keep our mouths shut whenever we are tempted to criticize or condemn one another this Lent.  Whenever we fall prey to our passions, we must ask forgiveness of those we have offended and get back on the path to Paradise with renewed commitment.  No matter how many times we wander from the narrow way, we must return to it.

             Lent calls us to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”  We must do so in order to return to Paradise through His Passion.  When we set out to pray, fast, give, and forgive with integrity, we will learn quickly how much we still share in the corruption of the old Adam.  That should help us see how ridiculous it is not to extend to others the same mercy that we ask for ourselves.  If we refuse to do so, we risk shutting ourselves out of Paradise.  In preparation for the struggles of the coming weeks, let us humble ourselves and forgive one another so that we may acquire the spiritual strength to “cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.”  Let us begin our Lenten journey with the joyful hope that “now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.  The night is far spent, the day is at hand.”  May every step of the journey lead us further away from exile and closer to our true home, the Paradise that our Lord has opened to us through His glorious resurrection on the third day.   

 

 

Homily for the Sunday of the Prodigal Son in the Orthodox Church

 

Luke 15:11-32

            The themes of exile and return are prominent throughout the entire narrative of the Bible.  Adam and Eve were cast out of Paradise.  The Hebrews were enslaved in Egypt until Moses led them back to the Promised Land.  The kingdoms of Israel and Judah went into exile in Assyria and Babylon, respectively, with only Judah returning home.  The Jews endured a kind of exile when the Romans occupied their land and longed for restoration through a new King David.  Our Lord provided the true restoration of a kingdom not of this world, leading all with faith in Him back to Paradise through His Cross and glorious resurrection.  The canon of the New Testament concludes with the Revelation or Apocalypse, which portrays the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, the joyful fulfillment of all things in Him. 

 As we continue preparing for our Lenten journey, the Parable of the Prodigal Son reminds us that true repentance is a matter of returning home from self-imposed exile.  It shows us who God is and how we have all chosen to turn away from a loving relationship with Him due to our insistence on serving our own self-centered and foolish desires, no matter how miserable and weak they have made us.  The parable calls us never to fall into despair, no matter how depraved we have become, because we remain the beloved sons and daughters of a Father Who wants nothing more than for us to return from exile and embrace our true relationship with Him.

The younger son had done his best to reject his father completely, for he had treated him simply as a source of money for funding a decadent way of life that gratified his passions.  He did not relate to his father as a beloved person, but only as the source of his inheritance. That was essentially the same as wishing that his father was dead; it was the very worst insult that he could have given the old man.  The prodigal son rejected his identity as a beloved son so that he could live as an isolated individual who was free to indulge his passions in any way that he saw fit with no responsibilities toward anyone.  Once he burned through the cash, however, he faced the harsh realities of being a stranger in a strange land during a famine.  He sunk so low that he envied the food of the pigs he tended.  The Jews considered pigs unclean and this scene shows that he had repudiated not only his father, but all the blessings promised to the children of Abraham.     

In the midst of his misery, the young man finally came to himself and realized that he would be better off as a lowly servant in his father’s house, where there was bread to spare, than in some Gentile’s pig pen starving to death.  He recognized how he had broken his relationship with his father and no longer had any claim to be his son.  Reality had slapped him in the face to the point that he gained a new level of spiritual clarity, for he understood the shameful gravity of what he had done.  Then he began the long journey home in humility.  

That is when the young man got the greatest shock of his life.  In ways that contracted all the customs and sensibilities of that culture, the father ran out to hug and kiss the son who had so gravely insulted him.  The old man must have scanned the horizon every day in hope of his son’s return. Despite the son’s despicable behavior, the father did not view or treat him according to what he deserved.  He did not even consider receiving him as a servant, but said, “‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’” The party began, but the older son was offended by the injustice of the celebration, as he claimed to have always obeyed his father and was never given a party.  This fellow missed the point of the father’s joy, for “It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.”  He had returned from exile to the Promised Land and been restored as a descendant of Abraham.  It was simply obvious to the father that this was a time to celebrate. 

           The parable reminds us that our return from exile to the joy of our Lord’s Kingdom is not a reward for good behavior.  We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. (Rom. 3:23) Each of us is the prodigal son, for like him we have chosen to repudiate our identity as the children of God in order to live as anonymous, isolated individuals according to our own desires.  It does not matter what we have put before God, for if we have put love for anything before Him then we have rejected our vocation to know the great joy of becoming like our Lord in holiness. The passing pleasures the prodigal son sought were base and brought him into obvious misery, even as our first parents’ unrestrained desire for the forbidden fruit resulted in their expulsion from Paradise into our world of corruption.  His behavior was obviously shameful, but our habitual sins are equally dangerous, if not more so, due to their subtlety in turning us away from our calling to share more fully in the life of Christ.  That is especially the case if we distort the spiritual disciplines of Lent into opportunities to become more like the older brother in slavery to vainglory and self-righteous judgment by wanting a reward for our apparent virtues and condemning our neighbors for their failings.  He refused to enter into the celebration of the return from exile of a beloved child of God.  He referred to the prodigal as “this son of yours,” for he had become blind to his calling to love him as a brother.   We can easily do the same thing to our neighbors, thus shutting ourselves out of the joy of the Kingdom where, thanks be to God, none of us hopes to get what we deserve. 

 The father restored the prodigal son by clothing him in a fine robe, shoes, and a ring.    The young man had surely been half-naked in stinking, filthy rags during his journey home.  Adam and Eve had stripped themselves naked of the divine glory when they put gratifying their own desires before obedience to God.  In baptism, we receive the robe of light they rejected as we put on Christ like a garment, but still we refuse to live each day as those who have been restored to such great dignity as the beloved children of God.  The father had the fatted calf slain for a great celebration.  Like the confused Gentile converts of Corinth whom St. Paul had to remind about the holiness of their bodies, we must remember that “Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.  Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” (1 Cor. 5: 7-8) In the banquet of the Eucharist, we already participate mystically in the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, being nourished by His own Body and Blood.  Yet we all fall short of our calling to live each day in communion with Christ as members of His own Body, the Church.  Like the prodigal son, we so often think, speak, and act as isolated, anonymous individuals enslaved to the self-centered desires that have taken our hearts captive.  No matter how appealing or noble we find the objects of our desires to be, we obscure the distinctive beauty of our souls when we act more like bundles of inflamed passion than as beloved children of our Father.   

 As we prepare to follow our Lord back to Paradise through to His Cross and empty tomb, we must recognize like the prodigal son that we have exiled ourselves and then begin the long journey home.  Like him, we must not allow the fear of rejection to deter us.  Like the father in the parable, God is not a vengeful tyrant set on retribution.  “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8) and constantly reaches out to us, calling us to accept restoration as His sons and daughters. All He asks is that we repent by reorienting the course of our lives toward the blessedness of His Heavenly Kingdom.  With King David, we must pray, “Do not remember the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions; according to Your mercy remember me, for Your goodness’ sake, O Lord.” (Ps. 24) “A contrite and humble heart, O God, You will not despise.” (Ps. 50) We must mindfully refuse to allow the hurt pride called shame keep us from returning to our true home. Now is the time to leave behind the filth and misery of the pig pen and to enter by grace into the joy of a heavenly banquet that none of us deserves.   Now is the time to end our self-imposed exile and direct our steps to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb, our true home.

 

            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“God Resists the Proud, But Gives Grace to the Humble”: Homily for the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican in the Orthodox Church

 

2 Timothy 3:10-15; Luke 18:10-14

 

Today we begin the Lenten Triodion, the three-week period of preparation for the spiritual journey that prepares us to follow Christ to His Cross and victory over death at Pascha. The first step in our preparation is to remember that “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” (Jas. 4:6) Today the Church reminds us of how easy it is to distort the spiritual disciplines of Lent in a fashion that makes them nothing but hindrances to the healing of our souls.  Today we are warned that it is entirely possible to distort prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and other spiritual disciplines according to our own pride such that these tools of salvation become nothing but instruments for rejecting the healing mercy of the Savior. 

 Contrary to what we would like to believe, embracing these practices with integrity is not a way to impress God, ourselves, or our neighbors.  It is not a way of accomplishing anything at all by conventional human standards.  Pursuing spiritual disciplines does not in any way justify us in having any negative opinion whatsoever about anyone else.  Far from exalting ourselves, our most feeble attempts at purifying the desires of our hearts will quickly reveal the weakness of our souls. At the very least, they will bring to the surface how disinclined we are to be fully present to God, how addicted we are to satisfying our various appetites, and how much more we care for our own possessions and comfort than for the wellbeing of our neighbors.  We will then face the choice of how to respond to these challenging revelations.  If we want to pursue Lent for the healing of our souls, we must refuse to fall prey to the common temptation to turn our disciplines into ways of blinding ourselves from the truth about where stand before the Lord, as did the Pharisee in today’s gospel reading. 

 The Pharisees were experts in the Old Testament law, which they interpreted very strictly in terms of outward behavior.  The Pharisee was correct to fast, tithe, pray, and live a morally upright life.  The problem is that he did so in ways that served his pride to the point of grave spiritual blindness. Instead of pursuing these disciplines in humility so that he would gain the spiritual clarity to see himself truthfully before God, he used them as justification to condemn a neighbor.  Doing so revealed only his own sinfulness.  We can easily fall into the same trap this Lent, for there is a strong temptation to ignore the brokenness of our own souls as we obsess about the apparent failings of others.  As those who confess that we are each “the chief of sinners” before receiving Communion, we must focus on our own need for the Lord’s healing mercy and refuse to become the self-appointed judges of our neighbors. When we embrace such proud delusions, it becomes impossible for us to follow our Lord to His Passion in a true spiritual sense. Doing so amounts to refusing to receive His grace, for we will then be so full of pride that we will imagine we have already reached the heights of holiness by our own accomplishments.   Even as we think that we are models of righteousness, we will worship only ourselves as we deny our need for the Savior’s victory over death.  Like the Pharisee, we will use the word “God,” but in reality we will pray only to ourselves as we wander ever deeper into spiritual blindness. 

 The more we devote ourselves to spiritual disciplines, the greater the temptation will likely be to focus on the apparent failings of others in order to distract ourselves from the struggle to become fully present to God, stripped naked of all our pretensions and usual efforts of self-justification.  We need profound humility to become fully present to the One Who is “Holy, Holy, Holy” as we “lay aside all earthly cares” to focus on the one thing needful.  When even a glimmer of the brilliant light of the Divine Glory begins to shine through the eyes of our souls, the darkness within us becomes obvious. The temptation is strong to shift our attention to whatever we think will hide us from that kind of spiritual vulnerability. 

 The Publican was an easy target for the Pharisee, for tax collectors were Jews who collected money from their own people to fund the Roman army of occupation.  Like Zacchaeus, they collected more than was required and lived off the difference. The Pharisee believed that he was justified in looking down on someone who was both a traitor and a thief, even as we typically think that we are justified in condemning those we love to hate.   Ironically, this tax collector would not have denied the charge. He knew he was a wretched sinner, and his only apparent virtue was that he knew he had none.  Standing off by himself in the temple, the man would “not even lift up his eyes to Heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner.’”

            Despite his miserable way of life, the tax collector somehow mustered the spiritual strength to do something the Pharisee could not:  He exposed his soul to the blinding light of God from the depths of his heart without trying to distract himself from the truth.  Christ said that the Publican, not the Pharisee, went home justified that day.  That was not because he had done more good deeds, obeyed more laws, or been more conventionally religious or moral, but because he had the humility to encounter God honestly as the sinner that he was.  Such humility is absolutely essential for opening our souls to the healing mercy of Christ.   Without it, pride will destroy the virtue of everything that we do and plunge us into even greater spiritual darkness and delusion.  But with it, there is hope for us all to receive the healing mercy of the Lord.

There is surely no greater sign of the folly of exalting ourselves and condemning others in the name of religion than the Passion of Christ.  Highly religious people like Pharisees and chief priests rejected Him and called for His crucifixion because they had blinded themselves spiritually with their pride and lust for power.  It was not the tax collectors and other public sinners who wanted Him dead, but those who were so self-righteous that they could accept only a Messiah who confirmed that they were deserving of glory and praise.  They defined themselves as holy over against “the sinners,” even though they were the guiltiest of all due to their pride.  Had they come to recognize that and cry out to the Lord from the depths of their hearts for mercy like the publican, they surely would have received it.

There is no clearer warning to us about the dangers of pride corrupting our Lenten disciplines than today’s gospel reading.  The point is not, of course, that we should all become public criminals, but that we must use our ascetical practices to grow in our humility as those who know only our need for the healing mercy of the One Who offered Himself fully on the Cross and rose in glory for our salvation.  Whenever we catch ourselves thinking that at least we are better than that person or group of people, we must focus our minds on the words of the Jesus Prayer or otherwise call out to the Lord from our hearts “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”  If we have identified some earthly agenda with God’s Kingdom such that we exalt ourselves in our own minds over adherents of competing agendas, we must likewise fall on our faces in humility. We must embrace such spiritual clarity not only with our rational minds, but also with our hearts this Lent. As the Savior said, “He who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”  Now is the time to prepare for a spiritually beneficial Lent that will help us grow in the humility necessary to see ourselves clearly as we reorient our lives toward the great joy of Pascha, for “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”