1 Corinthians 12:27-13:8; Matthew
8:28-9:1
It is understandable why many
people are tempted to think that the quality of their lives boils down to how
much money they have. The necessities of
life are not free, and we have to be good stewards of our resources in order to
care for ourselves and our families. Too often, however, this truth is taken
out of context and securing our livelihood becomes a false god. Far more important, of course, is the need to
be good stewards of our spiritual health, for no one else can unite us more
fully to Christ through prayer, fasting, generosity to the needy, and vigilance
over the thoughts of our hearts. We ourselves have to cooperate with the Lord
for our salvation.
Unlike
matters concerning money and what it can buy, however, we never purchase God’s
mercy. We are never partners in a
contract with the Lord such that He owes us this amount of grace for that good
deed. No, the healing of our souls comes
from Christ’s gracious sharing of Himself with us. Of course, we must open ourselves to receive
Him through humble, faithful obedience, but we are never customers to whom something
is owed when we stand before the Lord.
On
Friday, the Church celebrated the feast day of Sts. Peter and Paul, for which
we prepared through the Apostles Fast. When
the Lord sent out the twelve Apostles, He said to them, “Heal the sick,
raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying,
give without pay." (Matt. 10:8) Contrary to those who would distort Christian
faith and ministry into a means of gaining worldly power and wealth, the
Apostles are living icons of the selfless mercy of Christ, Who offered Himself
freely for the salvation of the world.
He came to heal and restore every human person whom He created in His
image and likeness. The One Who conquered
death for our sake through His glorious resurrection on the third day also healed
the sick and gave sight to the blind.
Purely out of love for His suffering children, Christ blessed wretched,
suffering humanity by restoring us both spiritually and physically.
That
is precisely what the Savior did for the two demon-possessed men in today’s
gospel lesson. They had lived a
miserable life in the tombs and no one would come near them out of fear. As Gentiles, they had no claim on the
ministry of the Jewish Messiah.
Nonetheless, He had mercy on them, casting out their demons and
restoring them to a recognizably human existence. Obviously, there was no way that these two
men could have earned or deserved what the Lord did for them. The change in them was so real and shocking that
the people of the area actually asked Christ to leave as a result.
This
kind of gracious ministry that transforms people’s lives continued in the work
of the Apostles and has extended even to the present day in the life of the
Church, the Body of Christ. The Holy
Spirit continues to empower Christians to manifest the divine love as described
in today’s epistle reading: “Love is
patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or
rude. Love does not insist on its own
way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but
rejoices in the right. Love bears all
things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”
Contrary
to much popular opinion, Christ-like love is not merely a matter of feeling or
emotion, but of selfless commitment for the sake of a neighbor. It requires offering ourselves to other
people in ways that manifest how the Savior offered Himself for us. It is a quality of a relationship in which
persons grow in union both with the Lord and with one another. By sharing His life with us, Christ enables us
to become truly human by becoming more like Him in holiness. He shares a common
life with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and those who are members of His Body
are also members of one another united in love.
Even as He came to save all who bear His image and likeness, He calls us
to display His love in a way that invites all to embrace the fullness of their
healing in Him.
That
is precisely what Saints Comas and Damien did in the third century as holy
unmercenary healers. They were physicians
and brothers from a rich family who gave away their wealth and devoted
themselves to healing both human beings and livestock. God enabled them to work miracles, and they
refused payment for their services, asking only for their patients to have
faith in Christ. Ultimately martyred in
Rome, these saints provide a powerful example of what it means to embody selflessly
the Lord’s love for suffering humanity.
Such
ministries have continued throughout the life of the Church. For example, Sts. Mother Maria Skobtsova, Fr.
Dmitri Klepinin, and their companions literally laid down their lives in
Nazi-occupied France to protect Jews from the Holocaust. They died for Christ in concentration camps
because they disobeyed unjust laws in order to love and serve Him in their
neighbors. Before World War II, St.
Maria had sacrificed greatly to organize an extensive series of ministries to serve
impoverished people in Paris who lacked the basic necessities of life.
Like
Sts. Peter and Paul and the other Apostles, these saints did not expect or
receive earthly glory for their ministries.
Instead, they all died as martyrs who were never considered successful
by conventional standards. Even as the
Lord’s Cross appears foolish from the perspective of the world, so did their
lives and deaths. We must learn from
their righteous examples not to worry about whether the way of genuine
Christ-like love for our neighbors wins the praise of others or helps us
succeed according to the standards of our culture. Like them, we must learn that serving Jesus
Christ is not a path to glory in the kingdoms of this world, but instead is how
we may open ourselves to the blessedness of the Kingdom of God. We will not enter that Kingdom according to
what we think we deserve or what we think God owes us, but by the same divine
mercy that we must embody as channels of blessing to our suffering brothers and
sisters.
Remember
that, after Christ delivered the Gaderene demoniacs, the neighbors were so terrified
that they asked him to leave their region.
We may have similar experiences when, like Him, we show outrageous mercy
to hated foreigners, scandalous sinners, and chronically needy people whom we are
tempted to despise or at least ignore. We
may have similar experiences when, like Sts. Cosmas and Damien, we do not order
our lives around making money, but instead around the demands of loving others
without expecting anything in return. We
may have similar experiences when, like Sts. Maria Skobtsova and Fr. Daniel
Klepinin, we extend the love of Christ outside the four walls of the Church to serve
vulnerable people, regardless of nationality, politics, religion, or anything
else.
As
those who call upon the mercy of the Lord for ourselves, we have an obligation
to show that same mercy to others. If we
are united with the Savior, His gracious life must become evident in our lives. He did not come to give us what we deserve,
but to unite us to Himself in love by His grace. If we are to have any part in the Savior, we
must become living icons of His undeserved mercy for the healing and
transformation of all He came to save.
That is how we, too, may become fully human in God’s image and likeness.
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