Homily on the Holy, Glorious Apostles Peter and Paul in the Orthodox Church

 

2 Corinthians 11:21-12:9; Matthew 16:13-19

All of us have our quirks of personality, habits of speaking and acting, and strengths and weaknesses of character.  By living and working in close contact with others, we learn that we are not self-sufficient, which is a good thing.  From the struggles of sharing a common life we learn how much we need the companionship and gifts of neighbors for our own personal growth and the flourishing of our families and other communities, including the Church.  And contrary to what we often think, our weaknesses do not exclude us from sharing more fully in the life of Christ; instead, they provide opportunities for us to embrace more fully His gracious strength.

Today we celebrate two of the most glorious Saints of the Christian faith.  They are both pillars of the Church, apostles, and martyrs whose unique personalities and experiences have made decisive and permanent contributions to the Body of Christ.  Saint Peter was the head disciple whose confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” is the rock on which Christ, our true foundation, has built His Church.    The gospels describe Peter’s presence at so many crucial moments in the ministry of the Lord, including at His arrest when Peter, who had earlier said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” and had vowed never to abandon Him, denied Him three times.  Then the risen Lord restored Peter by asking him three times if he loved Him and giving him the command to feed His sheep as a shepherd of the flock of Christians.  In the Acts of the Apostles, we see Peter boldly proclaiming the good news, performing miracles, and playing a key role in welcoming Gentiles into the Church.   After serving as the first bishop of Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians, then he went to serve in Rome.  Peter was crucified there upside down for his faith in Jesus Christ, for he considered himself unworthy to die in the same way as His Savior.

        That St. Paul plays a glorious role in the formation of the faith is obvious to anyone who knows the New Testament, for he wrote so much of it.   He traveled for decades founding and supporting churches, especially among Gentiles.  Paul had been a strict Pharisee who had persecuted Christians.  But on the road to Damascus, the risen Lord appeared to Him in a blinding light and called him to repentance and the shocking ministry of bringing Gentiles into the Body of Christ through faith and baptism, not circumcision and obedience to the Old Testament law.  Perhaps more than anyone else, Paul made clear that the Church is not a sect of Judaism for people of a particular ethnic and religious heritage, for Christ’s gospel is  good news for all people, regardless of their ancestry. 

        As today’s epistle passage reminds us, St. Paul’s ministry was not easy by any stretch of the imagination.  He was beaten, imprisoned, humiliated, and ultimately martyred in Rome for his faith in Jesus Christ.  He knew both the heights of spiritual ecstasy and the chronic challenge of a “thorn in the flesh” that God did not remove, despite his three-fold request.  Whatever that thorn may have been, Paul learned through his sufferings the sufficiency of God’s strength for him.  God’s “strength is made perfect in (Paul’s) weakness.“  As the apostle said of himself, “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

        When we study the lives of these two great Saints, we see people with particular personalities who were not rich, famous, or at peace by worldly standards.  These were real human beings who famously fell short, repented, grew over time in their understanding, and faced such opposition that both suffered capital punishment at the hands of the pagan Romans.  They gained no worldly advantages by their faithful ministry, but their selfless service strengthened the Church in ways too numerous to count.  We are here today as Orthodox Christians because of what God did through them and countless other lesser-known apostles, martyrs, and evangelists across the ages.

         To commemorate the feast day of Saints Peter and Paul with integrity, we must go beyond praising them with our words.  We must become like them in a way appropriate to our callings and circumstances.  For just as God used an impulsive fisherman and a zealous Pharisee to His glory, He intends to do likewise with each of us.  As St. Peter wrote, “you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”  (1 Pet. 2:9) As St. Paul wrote, we have become “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone…” (Eph. 2:19-20)

        Each generation is like a new story added to the building or a new branch growing on a tree.  Our life in Christ springs from the living history of what the Holy Spirit has done across the centuries in the life of the Church.  The Spirit empowers us to manifest faithfulness as unique persons called to grow in the divine likeness in our present circumstances.  Just as a fisherman and a Pharisee became radiant with holiness through their repentance and steadfast dedication to Christ, the same may be true of us.

We may think, however, that we are simply too weak and sinful to achieve such spiritual heights.  Remember, however, that Peter denied Christ three times at His arrest and Paul had persecuted Christians to the point of death.  If they can repent, follow Jesus Christ faithfully, and play such exemplary roles in the life of the Church, who are we to excuse ourselves from humbling accepting whatever calling God has for us in our families, our parish, our work, or any area of our lives? 

Today we face obstacles much smaller than those encountered by Saints Peter and Paul.   Nonetheless, our common and subtle temptations reveal our weaknesses because they overcome us so easily.  It does not take much to inflame passions that corrupt us spiritually and tempt our neighbors to stumble. That is why we must refuse to make such brokenness an excuse for despair and instead use it to fuel our humble trust in the One Whose “power is made perfect in weakness.” 

St. Paul found God’s strength precisely in his weakness, in his infirmities that opened his life to the gracious power of God after he had persecuted the Body of Christ and abandoned the self-righteous legalism of the Pharisees. St. Peter surely experienced tremendous weakness when the Lord said to him “Get behind me, Satan” and when he realized what he had done in denying Him three times.   

        When we realize how we have fallen prey to our weaknesses, we are in the perfect place to follow in the way of the fisherman and the Pharisee who in humble repentance found the divine strength that makes up what is lacking, heals infirmities, and even conquers sin and death.   Let us not use a false sense of humility to excuse ourselves from true discipleship as we celebrate the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul.  Instead, let us follow their example as the unique people we are, with all our strengths, failings, and peculiarities, for from the very beginning of the faith, that is the only way that anyone has come to shine brightly with holiness. That is the only way that we will learn that we are not self-sufficient individuals but persons called to participate by grace in the eternal life of the Triune God.         

Homily for the Third Sunday After Pentecost & Third Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

 

Romans 5:1-10; Matthew 6:22-33

 

Have you ever noticed that people can look at the same thing and see something entirely different?  Some see beauty while others behold ugliness.  Some recognize virtue and others perceive corruption.  Some are fascinated and others are simply bored.   The difference is not in what they are looking at but in the eye of the beholder.  If that is true in everyday matters, how much more is it true in what it means to know and experience God with the eye of the soul.  

Christ said that “The eye is the lamp of the body.  So, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness.  If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”  Christ is the light of the world, and to know Him means to share in His life so fully that we become radiant with His gracious divine energies from the depths of our souls.  The eyes of our hearts must become fully transparent to Him in order for us to fulfill our calling:  “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matt. 5:14-16)

The eyes of our souls must be clear, focused, and full of the light of Christ for us to see anything in the world truthfully.  For example, all our earthly goods and resources are blessings from God to be offered back to Him for the accomplishment of His gracious purposes, especially to care for “the least of these” with whom Christ identified Himself.  Gaining the spiritual clarity to see them as such is necessary for obeying His teaching that “You cannot serve God and mammon.”  The eyes of our souls must be cleansed for us to avoid the common failing of making money and possessions our false gods.  Those who entrust themselves to them inevitably face temptations toward worry, fear, and resentment.  They can all vanish in an instant, and everyone else is a potential threat to them.  As the Lord taught, “the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.  But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.” 

The spiritual disciplines of the Apostles Fast call us to clarify our spiritual vision and gain the strength to see all the blessings of this life truthfully and not according to our passions.   Our first step is to lift up our hearts to God in prayer each day.   To become receptive to the healing light of our Lord, we must persistently open the darkened eyes of our souls to Him.  The point is not how we feel when we pray, how many prayers we say, or how long we stand before our icons.   We all need to open our hearts to Him as best we can as we focus our minds on the words of the Jesus Prayer, the Trisagion Prayers, the Psalms, or whatever simple order of prayer we are using.  Short prayers with focus and humility are better than long ones with distraction and pride. (Remember the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican.) A short rule of prayer followed consistently is far better than an elaborate one rarely used. If we want healing from the blindness and anxiety of entrusting ourselves to the things of this world, we must focus our darkened spiritual eyes on the light of Christ each day of our lives.

Fasting helps to cleanse our spiritual vision because what we do with our bodies impacts our souls.   When we refuse to indulge ourselves with the richest foods, we gain strength for resisting other temptations to gratify ourselves with money, power, possessions, or pleasure.  Fasting is a tool for learning to see our appetites for what they are and to know experientially that serving ourselves is not the path to peace.  The more enslaved we are to our passions, the more worry, fear, and anger we will have when they are not satisfied.  We must embrace the struggle to pray and fast in order to become humbly receptive to the brilliant light of Christ, Who illumines even the darkest dimensions of the human person in the world as we know it.

 Almsgiving is fueled by prayer, for the gracious mercy of the Lord becomes characteristic of those who unite themselves to Him from their hearts.  Fasting heals the self-centered desires that hinder us from seeing and serving Christ in our suffering neighbors.  Those who fast with integrity will spend less money and time on their own meals, thus freeing up resources to bless others.  Giving generously to the needy and in support of the ministries of the Church helps to heal us from the passion of worshiping blindly at the altars of money and possessions.   It teaches us that the material blessings of creation are not ends in themselves but gifts to be offered back to God, like the bread and wine of the Eucharist.  “Thine own of Thine own, we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all.”      

When we seek to open our darkened spiritual eyes to the brilliant light of Christ through prayer, fasting, and merciful generosity, we will have to struggle mightily with the darkness that remains in us, as well as with so much in our culture that encourages us to find the meaning of our lives in possessions, power, and pleasure.  Looking to the examples of the apostles, however, we must not despair.  Saint Paul endured great hardships of many kinds and ultimately died as a martyr. He gained the spiritual clarity to write that, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.”

           Saint Paul knew that the only way to make such struggles points of entrance to the blessedness of the Kingdom was to endure them with faithfulness, no matter the cost.  He did not do so merely by his own willpower, but “because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.” As St. Paul taught, “Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Through Him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God.”  The Savior did not come to help us become better adjusted to the darkness of our hearts or of the fallen world.  He comes to make us radiant with the eternal light of Heaven by grace.  He calls us to become so receptive to the healing presence of the Holy Spirit that we behold His glory and see all the joys and struggles of this life as they truly are before Him.  Christ calls us to share so fully in His life that we seek first His kingdom with the humble trust that overcomes anxiety about literally anything.  Remember that when He said, “Do not be anxious about your life,” He was addressing His disciples as fellow Jews living under Roman occupation who would literally suffer and die for Him. By His glorious resurrection, the Savior has conquered even the dark pit of the grave and liberated us from slavery to the fear of death.                                                                                                                        

Today none of us has perfect spiritual clarity and we often find ourselves anxious about very small things.  That is why we must do what we can today to open the eyes of our souls to Christ through prayer, fasting, and generosity.  That is how we will grow in our ability to resist the temptation to entrust ourselves to any of the false gods of this world.   The daily circumstances of our lives all provide countless opportunities to become more receptive to the brilliant light of the Lord.  If we will use them for our salvation, and humbly repent whenever we have not, then the light of Christ will illumine us as we unite ourselves evermore fully to Him.    That is how we may all learn to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness” in a world that remains so full of darkness and presents so many temptations to idolatry and fear.  He is the light that we all need to see ourselves and our world clearly as we come to share more fully by grace in His healing and restoration of the human person in the image and likeness of God.   

 

Homily for the Sunday of All Saints in the Orthodox Church

 

Hebrews 11:33-12:2; Matthew 10:32-33, 37-38; 19:27-30

           

The word “saint” simply means “holy.”  On this first Sunday after Pentecost, we commemorate all those who are so filled with the Holy Spirit that they shine brightly with holiness in the heavenly kingdom.  They bear witness to the meaning of Pentecost, for it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that people fulfill their calling to become like God in holiness. When our risen and ascended Lord sent the Holy Spirit upon His followers, He fulfilled the prophecy spoken by Jeremiah: “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” (Jer. 31:33-34) The saints show us that we all may embrace personally the transformation and healing of the Holy Spirit, for the “living water” of the Spirit flows in and through them as a sign of the salvation of the world. (Jn. 7:38) That is how they have become, as St. Paul wrote, “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.” (Rom. 8:16)

We do not know the names of all the saints, but God certainly knows all who have entered into the blessedness of the heavenly kingdom.  As members together with them of the same Body of Christ, we ask for their prayers as we strive to follow their example of faithful witness to the Lord.  The root meaning of the word “martyr” is “witness,” and from the stoning of St. Stephen the Protomartyr to the present day those who have refused to deny Christ even to the point of death have provided powerful testimony to the Savior Who has liberated them from the fear of the grave.  Their shining example inspires us to take up our crosses in following our Lord as we seek first the Kingdom of God in the circumstances of our lives.

Christ said, “Everyone who acknowledges Me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father Who is in heaven; but whoever denies Me before men, I also will deny before My Father Who is in heaven.” As the varied lives of the saints across the ages demonstrate, there are many ways of showing our faithfulness to Him, even as there are many ways of denying Him.  The saints are the “great…cloud of witnesses” who strengthen us by their examples and prayers in “looking to Jesus the Author and Perfecter of our faith.”  They inspire us to “run with patience the race that is set before us…”

Sainthood and martyrdom are not reserved only for those who refuse to renounce Christ under threat of physical death.  They are our common calling to die to slavery to our passions as we became “partakers of the divine nature” by our personal receptivity to the healing divine energies of the Lord.  Like all the saints, we must acquire the spiritual clarity to say truthfully with Saint Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20) Regardless of whether we are called literally to shed our blood for Christ, we must all become living martyrs who refuse to allow love for anything or anyone to come before loyalty to our Lord.  Doing so requires enduring the inevitable tension that results from struggling to purify the desires of our hearts, which is necessary to take up our crosses.  We will suffer, not because God wants us to be miserable in any way, but because it is so difficult to turn away from the deeply ingrained habits of self-indulgence that have marred the beauty of our souls.  To take up our crosses is to respond faithfully to the challenges that are right before us today.  To acknowledge the Savior in this world requires making the offering of our lives that is necessary for our healing in our current circumstances.  The path to salvation is never an escape from reality but brings healing for the diseases of our souls that we would prefer to ignore. Those who are truly taking up their crosses do the hard work of learning to “seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.”  (Matt. 6:33) 

Holiness is not a reward for people who have never sinned, even as health is not a reward for people who have never been sick.  The popular image of the ideal religious person as a self-righteous legalist who condemns others has nothing to do with acquiring true spiritual health.  As St. John wrote in his epistle, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 Jn. 1:8-9) True saints are people like King David (who had committed murder and adultery), St. Peter (the head disciple who had denied His Lord three times), and St. Mary of Egypt (who had endured a horribly depraved life as a sex addict).  They all found healing through repentance as they pursued the difficult struggle to reorient the desires of their hearts toward God and to live accordingly.  Likewise, St. Paul, formerly a persecutor of Christians who referred to himself as the chief of sinners, wrote that the Lord showed him mercy “as a pattern to those who are going to believe on Him for everlasting life.”  (1 Tim. 1:16)  

That such broken people became glorious saints is not an exception to the rule, but the norm.  We will never find healing for our souls by convincing ourselves that we have somehow already fulfilled the Lord’s command to “be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matt. 5:48) Neither will we will share in the holiness of God by accepting the lie that anything we have ever said, thought, or done makes it impossible for us to be transformed by the Lord’s healing mercy.  St. Photini, the Samaritan woman at the well, and St. Zacchaeus, the corrupt tax-collector, were lost causes according to the religious and moral standards of first-century Palestine, but they received Christ in humility in ways that transformed them into glorious examples of holiness.     

 They remind us that everyone who shares in the blessed life of the Savior does so through their participation in His grace, not as a reward for obeying laws.  Our reading from Hebrews teaches that the righteous of the Old Testament, “though well attested by their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had foreseen something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.”  It is simply impossible to become like God in holiness apart from sharing in Jesus Christ’s gracious healing and fulfillment of the human person.  He enables both those who may appear to have never done anything wrong and those who may appear never to have done anything right to become His saints. We follow their examples by embracing the struggle to entrust ourselves so fully to Him that we become living icons of His salvation.   That is the only way that anyone becomes a “partaker of the divine nature” by grace.

 Looking to the example of all those who have entered into the holiness of God, “since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfection of our faith.”  Let us take up our crosses as we acknowledge and serve Him each day of our lives, which will be shown in how we treat our neighbors, especially those we find it hardest to love. That is how we may all become living martyrs who bear witness to the active presence of the Holy Spirit, sent by the risen and ascended Lord, for the salvation of the world. Our calling is not to religious legalism or self-righteousness but simply to receive the healing of our souls in humility. That is how we may bear witness to the Lord’s  fulfillment of the human person in the divine likeness along with all those who have entered into the holiness of God.  That is the calling of each and every one of us.  That is what it means to become a saint.  

 

Homily for the Great Feast of Pentecost in the Orthodox Church

Acts 2:1-11; John 7:37-52; 8:12 

Today we celebrate the Great Feast of Pentecost at which the Holy Spirit descends upon the Apostles as they are gathered together in obedience to the command of the risen Lord.  The same divine breath which first gave us life from the dust of the earth now comes as a mighty, rushing wind.  The divine glory beheld by Moses in the burning bush now rests upon each one personally as flames of fire.   The divided speech of the tower of Babel is now overcome by the miracle of speaking in different languages as a sign that all peoples are invited to share in the life of the Lord.  This great Feast manifests the fulfillment of God’s gracious promises for the entire world and every human person in the Body of Christ, the Church. Today we celebrate the restoration of our true unity in God through the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter sent by the risen and ascended Savior Who is seated at the right hand of the Father in heavenly glory. 

The sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit empowers the Church to become a living icon of the common life of humanity in which all the divisions of our fallen world may be healed.  He enables us to become persons in communion who are united organically as members of the one Body of Christ, no longer isolated individuals obsessively choosing sides over against one another.  The Persons of the Holy Trinity share a common life of love, unity, and holiness; by the power of the Holy Spirit manifested at Pentecost, we participate by grace in Their eternal communion.  Our journey to theosis is a matter of becoming so united with God that we become radiant with the divine energies in every dimension of our being, like an iron left in the fire of holy glory.

As those who bear the divine image and likeness, we become both more truly human and more like God as we find healing from the passions that divide and separate us and instead embrace our common life together as distinctive persons. That is why St. Paul wrote, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Gal. 5:22-23) That is why St. Silouan the Athonite taught, “One can only love one’s enemies through the grace of the Holy Spirit.” And “He who does not love his enemies, does not have God’s grace.”[1]

The Lord said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.’”  He uses the image of living water to describe what it means to be filled with the Holy Spirit, even as He did with St. Photini, the Samaritan woman at the well.  Our risen and ascended Lord did not send theological ideas, moral instructions, or spiritual practices to His followers.  After His Ascension, the Savior sent the Holy Spirit to quench the deep thirst, the primal longing, of all the broken, confused, and alienated people of the world for sharing personally in the eternal life of God. Nothing else can truly satisfy us as those who bear the divine image and likeness.  So much of our pain and misery stems from obsessively seeking fulfillment in created things that can never provide it.  Doing so only enslaves us further to our passions and separates us from one another. It leads to bitter disappointment time and time again.

Wind, fire, and water are powerful realities that escape our control. At Pentecost they convey the profound mystery of what it means to be drawn into the divine life in ways that transcend the best rational definitions:  As living members of the Body of Christ, we may truly know and experience God from the depths of our hearts and in our common life as did the Apostles.

 We will celebrate this great Feast with integrity by mindfully becoming as receptive as possible to the sanctifying presence of the Holy Spirit.   Doing so requires embracing the struggle to live faithfully each day through the spiritual strength that we gain from participating in the sacramental and ascetical life of the Church.  The Holy Spirit came upon Christ’s followers as they were gathered together in obedience to the Lord’s command, and we must never fool ourselves into thinking that the spiritual life is an individualistic endeavor that caters to our passions and preferences.  Pentecost calls us to find healing from the pride that divided the tongues of humanity in the first place and to gain the humility to find our true personhood as members together of the Body of Christ, where the distinctive beauty of our souls will shine brightly as we partake of the same living water as did the Apostles.  

Pentecost calls us to become so receptive to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit that we overflow with His living water, becoming channels of blessing that enable our neighbors and world to flourish with the peace, joy, and holiness of God’s Kingdom.  As the Savior said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.’” We will know such blessedness by being filled to overflowing with eternal life in the Body of Christ, the Church.   We will grow in receptivity to the Holy Spirit by kneeling in prayer and living in humility as we forgive our enemies, share our resources with the needy, and mindfully take up the daily struggle to purify our hearts of all that would keep us enslaved to self-centered desire as isolated individuals.  Those truly enlivened by the Holy Spirit will refuse to define themselves or anyone else according to the categories of our world of corruption, for He continues to heal such divisions.  Pentecost is the reverse of the divisions of the Tower of Babel for this great Feast shows that language, culture, and nationality are spiritually irrelevant for those who share by grace in the life of God.

At Pentecost, we are empowered to experience our true unity in Christ as “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light…” (1 Pet. 2:9) That is what it means to be illumined by the One Who said, “I am the light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Our calling is nothing less than to overflow with the gracious divine energies poured out abundantly for the salvation of the world at Pentecost and to live accordingly each day of our lives.

 

---

[1] See Jean-Claude Larchet, “On the Love of Enemies According to Saint Silouan,” https://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2020/10/on-love-of-enemies-according-to-saint.html

 

Homily for the Sunday of the After-feast of the Ascension with Commemoration of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council in the Orthodox Church

 

Acts 20:16-18, 28-36; John 17:1-13

            The passage most quoted in the New Testament from the Old Testament is Psalm 109:1  (110): “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand, until I make Your enemies the footstool of Your feet.’” Forty days after His resurrection, our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ ascended in glory into heaven and sat at the right hand of God the Father.  He did so as One Who is fully divine and fully human, One Person with two natures. He ascended with His glorified, resurrected body, which still bore the wounds of His crucifixion.  Our Lord’s Ascension manifests our calling to participate by grace in the eternal life of the Holy Trinity and share in His fulfillment of the human person in God’s image and likeness.   His Ascension enables us to experience such blessedness even now by uniting ourselves to Him even as we live and breathe in the world as we know it.

We also commemorate today the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea, which met 1,701 years ago in AD 325.  They rejected the teaching of Arius that Jesus Christ was not truly divine, but a lesser god created by the Father.  The Council declared, as we confess to this day in the Nicene Creed, that our Savior is “the Son of God, the only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all worlds. Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, of one essence with the Father, by Whom all things were made.”  The Fathers of Nicaea saw clearly that the One Who brings us into the eternal life of God must Himself be eternal and divine.  No mere creature could ever enable us to become radiant with the gracious divine energies as participants in heavenly glory.    

Had Christ been simply a great religious teacher, He could not have conquered death or brought us up to heaven through His Ascension. Those who claim to admire the Savior today as merely an excellent human being actually reject Him, for they deny the true identity of the God-Man Who unites humanity and divinity in Himself.  Only He could say to the Father, “Glorify Me in Your own presence with the glory which I had with You before the world was made.”  Only He can bring those made of the dust of the Earth into the eternal life of the Holy Trinity.   

            The divine brilliance of Christ’s Ascension is entirely different from the illusion of trying to raise ourselves up according to the standards of a world that remains estranged from the blessedness of the heavenly Kingdom.  We so easily give in to the temptation to define and entrust ourselves to the passing standards and agendas of this world that can never heal our souls.  The more that we give our hearts to even the noblest human endeavors as ends in themselves, the more enslaved we become to false hopes that distract us from embracing our true fulfillment in God.   Since we bear God’s image and likeness, to ground our lives in anything other than Him will lead ultimately only to worry, sorrow, and disappointment.

            Doing so will make us blind to the glory of our ascended Lord, Who went up to heaven only after dying on the Cross, being buried in a tomb, and enduring the ultimate descent to Hades.  He rose from the dead because He had humbled Himself to the point of accepting rejection, torture, and crucifixion as a blasphemer and a traitor purely out of selfless love and compassion for His broken and suffering children, who had enslaved themselves to the fear of death through sin. 

Christ endured all this as the eternal Son of God Who spoke the universe into existence. The unfathomable humility and lovingkindness of the Savior contradicts the idolatry of those who assume God must be just like them in their hatred and cruel vengeance against their enemies.  If we dare to identify ourselves with Christ, we must open the eyes of our souls to the light of His heavenly glory and refuse to live as those who wander in spiritual blindness in a world marred by the sorrowful brokenness of the children of Adam and Eve.

By rising into heavenly glory as the God-Man, Christ has shown us what it means to become truly human in the divine image and likeness. The great contrast between the heights of heaven and the mundane realities of our lives is obvious. That is not because we are ordinary people with ordinary problems and temptations.   It is because we have not united ourselves to Christ to the point that every aspect of our life in this world has become a brilliant icon of His salvation.  There is so much in each of us that has not yet ascended in holiness with our Lord.          

We must use that recognition not as an excuse but instead as a reminder to be vigilant against the temptation to think that the circumstances of our lives somehow make it impossible for us to become radiant with His holiness.  As Christ said, “the kingdom of God is within you.” (Lk. 17:21) Whenever we forgive someone who wronged us, ask forgiveness of those we have wronged, show mercy to the poor and needy, put someone else’s needs before our own, or resist temptation in any way, we are participating already in the heavenly reign. We have certainly not fulfilled our calling to become perfect as our heavenly Father, but we are truly becoming more like Christ in holiness as we take even small and imperfect steps to conform our character to His.  That is how we may ascend into heavenly glory even as we live and breathe in this world.

We must, therefore, remain on guard against all the fantasies and obsessions that distract us from true faithfulness in the present circumstances of our lives.  In our families, friendships, and workplaces, and also in our parish, we must humble ourselves by serving our neighbors.   We must refuse to allow thoughts that fuel our passions to take root in our hearts, for they will make it impossible to become like Christ in self-emptying love. The only way to ascend with Christ is to unite ourselves to Him in humble faith and obedience.  Christ prayed to the Father that His followers “may be one, even as We are one.”  Contrary to popular opinion, it is not possible to pursue the Christian life as an isolated individual on the basis of emotion, beliefs, ideas, morality, politics, or anything else.  The Church is Christ’s Body and we are members of Him together.  He is the Vine and we are the branches.  The Lord ascended with His Body and we will too as we serve Him together in His Body, the Church, by doing what needs to be done for the healing of our souls, the flourishing of our small parish, and the good of our neighbors. 

We must not be distracted from living faithfully in the present by fantasizing about how much better we imagine our path would be if we lived elsewhere or had different callings in life.  We must not live in the past or in the future but simply focus on uniting ourselves to Christ in holiness as we actually are in this world.  Our best opportunities for healing and transformation may well be in the dimensions of our lives that we are strongly tempted to escape for the sake of a delusional spirituality.

Today we continue to celebrate that the Lord has ascended and brought our humanity into heavenly glory.   Now we must go up together with Him each day of our lives as we come to share more fully in the salvation that only the God-Man could bring.  Even as we live and breathe in this world, with all of its frustrations and disappointments, let us rise up with Christ in holiness, for that is what it means to become truly human in the image and likeness of God.   

 

Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Pascha: Sunday of the Blind Man in the Orthodox Church

 

 2 Cor. 4:6-15; John 9:1-38

 

 Christ is Risen! Indeed, He is Risen!

 

On this last Sunday of Pascha, we celebrate that the Risen Lord has brought us from the spiritual darkness of sin and death into the brilliant light of His heavenly Kingdom.  Even as Christ restored sight to the man born blind in today’s gospel reading, He illumines our darkened souls.  That is how He enables us to know and experience Him as “partakers of the divine nature” by grace. 

Before the God-Man’s healing of our corrupt humanity, grave spiritual blindness was the common lot of the children of the first Adam, who were enslaved to the fear of death as the wages of sin. When the Lord spat on the ground to make clay for the man’s eyes in today’s gospel reading, He showed that His healing is an extension of His incarnation in which He enters fully into our humanity as those made from the dust of the earth.  The blind man regained his sight after washing in the pool of Siloam, which is an image of baptism, which illumines us and restores our spiritual sight.  The man did not really know Who the Lord was when he first encountered Him, thinking that He was merely a prophet.  After the restoration of his sight, the Savior revealed Himself as the Son of God; then the eyes of the man’s soul were illumined to know Christ in His divine glory. “He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshiped Him.”

The good news of Christ’s resurrection is even more extraordinary than the unprecedented restoration of sight to the man blind from birth, and it is not simply a religious teaching or a point of history.  Through His victory over the corrupting powers of sin and death, He opens the eyes of our souls, enabling us to know, experience, and be united with Him from the depths of our hearts by grace.   In order truly to confess His resurrection, we must become participants in the eternal life that He has brought to the world. We must become radiant with the light that shines from the empty tomb and illumines even the darkest corners of our lives.   

When Christ was asked whose sin was responsible for the man being born blind, He answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.”  The Savior rejected the common assumption that such a terrible malady must be a punishment for a particular sin.  We simply do not know why many things happen in this life, but we may always respond to even the worst circumstances in ways that open our hearts more fully to the light of Christ. The Risen Lord has illumined even the tomb itself, making it an entrance into eternal life.  Our participation by grace in the joy of His resurrection is not a reward for morality, legality, or religiosity; it is no more a matter of getting what we, as opposed to others, deserve than was the healing of the blind man.  We stand in need not of justice, but of the infinite healing mercy that enables us to behold the glory of God.  If our spiritual blindness is being healed, then we will become radiant with the light of His mercy, providing a sign of hope to our neighbors in our darkened world.        

  To gain the spiritual clarity to do that, we must shut our eyes to all that would keep us stumbling in the darkness of sin and enslaved to the fear of death.  Because the eyes of our souls are not yet fully transparent to the light of the Lord, none of us has perfect spiritual vision.  We do not yet see or know God, our neighbors, or ourselves clearly, but in ways that are deeply distorted by our passions.  That is why we must struggle to become fully receptive to the brilliant divine energies of our Lord through the healing found in the sacramental and ascetical life of the Church.   As those who were born spiritually blind and have been illumined through the washing of baptism and the anointing of chrismation, we must remain vigilant against the persistent temptation to fall back into the comfortable ways of corruption.  There is so much within us that would prefer to hide in the darkness rather than to be illumined in God. The more that we are fully present to the Lord from the depths of our hearts, the more we will know Him and ourselves. That is why we must pray daily, fast and confess regularly, serve our neighbors (especially those we find it hard to love) at every opportunity, and refuse to worship the false gods of this world (especially those we find most appealing).  That is also why we must guard our eyes from entertainment, media, and anything else that would inflame our passions and keep us enslaved to the darkness of sin. 

The blind man did not respond to Christ’s instructions with questions and reservations driven by fear or anxiety about the future course of his life.  He simply obeyed, washed, saw, and then moved forward to encounter challenges he could never have anticipated.  His example reminds us to cultivate the spiritual simplicity of obedience.  If we want healing, we must not allow anything to distract us from attending to our one essential calling of opening the eyes of our souls to the brilliant light of Christ.  Doing so is not simply a one-time experience but requires persisting in the eternal journey of becoming radiant with the divine energies of our Lord as we become more like Him in holiness. None of us can ever say that we have completed this infinite calling.  The Savior has conquered even death itself to illumine every dimension of our darkened souls with the light of heavenly glory.  The more receptive we are to His light, the more we will be aware of the darkness that remains with us.  That is not a moment to be discouraged or paralyzed by fear but instead simply to obey Christ in humility as best we can, as did the man born blind.

As we conclude this season of Pascha, we must mindfully resist the temptation to allow the blindness of a world still enslaved to the fear of death to obscure our spiritual vision.  Those who criticized Christ for daring to heal on the Sabbath were so concerned with using religion to serve their desires for position and power that they refused to open their eyes to the Light of the world. We must be on guard against the subtle temptation to identify ourselves with the Savior while welcoming darkness into our souls every bit as much as they did.  We may still mouth words about His resurrection and call ourselves Christians as we wander further into the dark night of entrusting ourselves to the false gods of this world.  If we are making money, possessions, physical appearance, food, drink, sex, the approval of others, or anything else to which we have a passionate attachment the driving purpose of our lives, then we are living as though Christ were still in the grave.  If we condemn any set of our neighbors and hope fundamentally in some arrangement of earthly success that promises to raise us up above those we love to hate, then we are shutting the eyes of our souls to the brilliant light of the Lord, regardless of how religious or moral we may claim to be.

Our Lord died as the innocent victim of violence at the hands of corrupt religious and political leaders, and He calls us to become living witnesses of His victory over even Hades and the tomb in the world as we know it with all its depravity and disappointment.   Nothing can keep us from doing so other than our own stubborn choice to persist in spiritual blindness.  As we prepare to bid farewell to the season of Pascha this year, let us persist in the struggle to enter as fully as possible into the new day of the Savior’s resurrection as we turn away from darkness in all its forms and embrace the Light of the world from the depths of our hearts. Let us redirect the energy and attention that we so commonly invest in gratifying our passions to repudiating the darkness as we open the eyes of our souls as fully as possible to the brilliant light of Christ.  Let us become radiant with the Light Who shines brightly from the empty tomb, always keeping the joy of Pascha in our hearts. For that is what it means to live each day as those who are being illumined by the One Whose rose in glory for our salvation, for Christ is Risen!      

 

Homily for the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman in the Orthodox Church

 

Acts 11:19-30; John 4:5-42

Christ is Risen!  Indeed, He is Risen!

The good news of our Lord’s resurrection challenges our deepest assumptions about ourselves and about life in this world as we know it.  Since the God-Man has entered fully into death and conquered it, making even the grave an entrance into eternal life, reality is radically different from what we typically assume.  If death is not a complete loss from which we need constant distraction to avoid being overcome by despair, then the basis for anxiety and misery driven by fear of the grave has been destroyed.  Life is no longer a zero-sum struggle of this group over against that for power and status.  It is no longer an endless competition between people trying to prove that they are more virtuous than others. By leading us back to Paradise through His resurrection, the Savior has destroyed the foundations of the enmity and resentment that first appeared when Cain murdered his brother Abel.  The brilliant light of the empty tomb reveals the blindness of those who insist on wandering in such darkness. 

Today we commemorate how our Lord’s salvation extended to someone who was on the wrong side of many such divisions in first-century Palestine:  a Samaritan woman who became the Great MartyrPhotini.  In that time and place, no one would have assumed that she could become a great evangelist of the Messiah’s salvation.  Most obviously, she was a Samaritan.  The Jews viewed the Samaritans as heretics who had corrupted the faith and heritage of Israel, and they had nothing at all to do with them.  As well, Photini’s conversation with the Savior reveals that she had had five husbands and was then with a man to whom she was not married.  We do not know the reasons for the brokenness of her marital life, but she surely had known great personal trauma.  Perhaps she went to the well at noon to avoid encountering other women in her community who wanted nothing to do with the likes of her.  Moreover, a Jewish man would not strike up a conversation with a woman in public and certainly would not ask a Samaritan woman for a drink of water.  This scene is deeply shocking and scandalous according to the religious and cultural sensibilities of the day.   

            How interesting, then, that the Lord’s talk with Photini is His longest conversation in any of the gospels. In it she showed far greater spiritual understanding than had the Pharisee Nicodemus, a man and a law-abiding Jew, in his conversation with Christ in the previous chapter of the gospel according to St. John.  Photini also showed great humility in making no excuses about the most painful details of her life.  When the Lord told her that He knew about her five former husbands and current relationship, she said, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet” and then continued the conversation.  She did not become defensive or leave due to hurt pride or embarrassment.  Instead, she accepted the hard truths about herself as her eyes were opened to behold the light of Christ. She refused to give in to the temptation to think that because she was a woman, a sinner, and a Samaritan that she could not or should not open her heart to the good news brought by the unusual Jewish man who spoke to her not as a hated foreigner but as a beloved daughter. Photini was so deeply transformed by this encounter with Christ that she even preached to her fellow Samaritans, which must have taken tremendous courage, for her neighbors did not think of her as a spiritual teacher.  Photini found such joy in receiving the Lord’s mercy that she become an evangelist and ultimately a martyr together with her sons and sisters.  

            It is impossible to tell the story of our Lord’s resurrection without highlighting the uniquely blessed role of the women who were the very first witnesses of the empty tomb.  Mary Magdalene was the first preacher of the resurrection, for she proclaimed the good news to the apostles.  Likewise, Photini bore witness to her neighbors about this unusual Jewish Messiah so powerfully that many Samaritans believed and the Lord actually stayed with them for two days. The Church honors both Mary Magdalene and Photini as being “equal to the apostles” in proclaiming the good news.

            Christ calls us all to follow the same basic path back to Paradise.   As St. Paul taught, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  (Gal. 3:28) He rose in victory over all the corrupting influences of sin, including the domination, strife, and sorrow that so often characterize the relationship between men and women. In Him, the spiritual status of the sexes is the same; the differences between men and women concern the body, not the soul.  Male or female, the saints are examples of how to share fully in the life of our Savior.  Absolutely nothing in the biological differences between males and females excludes or excuses anyone from responding to the calling to become radiant with the divine energies as a living icon of God, for we all bear His image equally. We must not allow differences in the roles fulfilled by the sexes in any time or place, or in the life of the Church, to obscure that fundamental truth.  Even as that is true of the God-given distinction between male and female, we must be on guard against the temptation to allow divisions of any kind between groups of people to determine whether we treat each person as a living icon of Christ who is called to enter into the joy of His resurrection.  The differences between races, ethnicities, and other groupings that seem so important in our world of corruption have no spiritual significance in our Lord’s Kingdom.  In the brilliant light of the resurrection, we should not define ourselves or anyone else in light of them. 

There was no small controversy in the early Church about whether Gentiles could become Christians without first becoming Jews. Today’s reading from Acts describes the establishment of the first Gentile church in Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians.  Especially as Antiochian Orthodox Christians, we know that our faith is not the property or servant of any nation, ethnic group, or ideological faction.  Christ’s Kingdom subverts the categories of our fallen world and calls into question our assumptions about who “we” are in relation to “them.” He died and rose up in order to fulfill His gracious purposes for all He created to become like God in holiness as “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  There is no ethnic, national, or political test for sharing in His life.  He empowered a Samaritan woman with a broken personal history to become a powerful evangelist and martyr.  He has drawn Gentiles into His Body, the Church, in fulfillment of the ancient promises to Abraham for the salvation of all peoples through faith.  His great victory over sin and death destroys the basis of judging the spiritual prospects of anyone according to the conventional standards of this world.  In order to enter into the joy of Christ’s resurrection, we must refuse to think, speak, and act as though we were still held captive to the fear of death, which is at the root of our pathetic inclination to view and treat people, no matter who they are, according to worldly divisions that contradict to the good news of our salvation.

            Christ said, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:32) No one other than the Savior would have looked at Photini and seen a future saint who would shine with the light of holiness. Her transformation shows that there is hope for us all in the mercy of Christ.  Nothing but our own pride can keep us from humbly opening our souls to the Lord for healing, as she did.  Even as we must entrust ourselves to the Lord’s mercy as “the chief of sinners,” we must not view anyone else as a lost cause before God.  Christ warned the self-righteous religious leaders who rejected Him, “Tax-collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom of God before you.” (Matt. 21:31) Even as we pray for the Lord’s mercy on our sick souls, we must pray for His blessings for our neighbors, especially those we are inclined to view as lost causes.    If our Risen Lord can make a great saint out of the Samaritan woman at the well, there is hope for literally every person to be set free from the enslaving ravages of sin.  Who are we to place limits on the saving power of the One Who conquered death for the salvation of the world?  Trying to do so shows that we have failed to appreciate the radically good news of the resurrection, which enables all to be restored as fully human persons in the image and likeness of God.   

St. Photini’s example invites us to follow her into the life of a Kingdom not constrained by the corruptions of our fallen world.  She was an unlikely evangelist in her time and place but had such courageous and steadfast faith that she did not allow anything to stop or distract her.  Let us embrace the joy of the resurrection so profoundly that, like her, we bear witness to the Lord Who shares His victory over death with even the most unlikely strangers, outcasts, and sinners. Regardless of our own history of personal brokenness or where we stand according to any social divisions, He calls us all to the blessedness of Paradise.  Like St. Photini, let us respond to Him accordingly, for “Christ is Risen!”