Galatians 2: 16-20; Luke 12:16-21
Joachim and Anna had a long and difficult
period of preparation to become parents, as they had been unable to have
children for decades until God miraculously blessed them in old age to
conceive. They knew that their daughter
was a blessing not simply for the happiness of their family, but for playing
her part in fulfilling God’s purposes for the salvation of the world. Their patient
faithfulness throughout their years of barrenness helped them gain the
spiritual clarity to offer her to the Lord.
They knew that their marriage and family life were not simply about fulfilling
their desires, but were blessings to be given back to God for the fulfillment
of much higher purposes. They
foreshadowed the proclamation in the Divine Liturgy: “Thine Own of Thine Own,
we offer unto Thee on behalf of all and for all.”
Joachim, Anna, and the Theotokos are the
complete opposites of the rich man in today’s gospel reading. His only concern was to eat, drink, and enjoy
himself because he had become so wealthy.
He was addicted to earthly pleasure, power, and success, and saw the
meaning and purpose of his life only in those terms. When God required his soul, however, the
man’s true poverty was revealed, for the possessions and accomplishments of
this life inevitably pass away and cannot save us. As we read in the Psalms (48/49), “Do not
become afraid when one becomes rich, when the glory of his house
increases. For when he dies, he will
carry nothing away; his glory will not go down after him.”
This man’s horizons extended no further than his
dreams of the large barns he planned to build in order to hold his crops. Before the ultimate judgment of God, he was
revealed to be a fool who had wasted his life on what could never truly heal or
fulfill one who bore the divine image and likeness. He had laid up treasure for himself, but was
not rich toward God in any way. The problem was not simply that the man had
possessions, but that he had made them his god, which is another way of saying
that he worshipped only himself and surely was not concerned about the needs of
his neighbors. His barns were a temple of
the greed to which he had offered his entire existence in a vain effort to satisfy
his self-centered desires.
In stark contrast, the Theotokos followed the
righteous example of her parents. She
was prepared by a life of holiness to agree freely to become our Lord’s mother,
even though she was an unmarried virgin who did not understand how such a thing
could happen. When she said, “Behold the
handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word,” this young
Palestinian Jewish girl bravely made a whole, complete offering of her life to
God. She did not ask what was in it for
her in terms of money, power, or any kind of earthly success. She was not enslaved in any way to the
worship of any of the false gods of this world. Unlike the rich fool in the
parable, she was not blinded by passion and had the purity of soul to put
receptivity and obedience to the Lord before all else.
The world is full of tragic circumstances
today that are caused by people who are so blinded by their self-centered
desires that they think nothing is more important than doing whatever it takes
to gratify their lust for possessions, power, and pleasure. But even if they succeed in gaining dominion
over the whole world, they will lose their souls because they have offered
themselves to idols which lack the power to heal people from the ravages of sin,
let alone to raise anyone up from the tomb. Those who serve such false gods, which are
merely projections of their own self-centered desires, inevitably lack peace
within their souls and act in ways that are contrary to God’s gracious purposes
for those who bear the divine image and likeness. No
matter what form our particular temptations take, we impoverish our souls when
we indulge in self-centeredness to the point that we cannot even imagine following
in the way of the Theotokos as God’s holy temple.
The healing alternative to such corruption is
not any form of simplistic legalism, which inevitably leads people to frustration,
despair, and even cynicism about pursuing a life pleasing to God. If we try to make ourselves righteous simply
by our own willpower and obedience to a code of conduct, we will experience only
our own weakness and guilt before our passions.
No wonder that many scoff at the possibility of pursuing righteousness and
instead decide to indulge their passions in the false belief that that is
really the only possible way to live as a human being in this world.
St. Paul identified the only way that we can avoid
falling into such despair when he wrote that we are “not justified by
works of the Law but through faith in Jesus Christ.” The point is not to seek some form of illusory
religious or moral perfection that makes us superior to our neighbors, but to recognize
that we need restoration and healing beyond what even obedience to the
strictest code of behavior could ever achieve.
This is possible when turn away from obsession with self-justification
and instead gain the spiritual clarity to say with the Apostle “it is no longer
I who live, but Christ Who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I
live by faith in the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.” In order for that to happen, we must look the
folly of justifying ourselves by our own accomplishments squarely in the face
and, instead of falling into cynicism, entrust ourselves in humility to the One
Who shares His eternal life with us, having conquered even death itself and made
it possible for us to become like Him in holiness by grace.
We are now in
the Nativity Fast, the 40-day period during which we prepare to celebrate the
birth of the Savior at Christmas. The
weeks of Advent call us to wrestle with the passions that threaten to make us so
much like the rich fool that we become blind to the healing and restoration brought
by our Lord. Far from obsessing about earthly
cares and indulging in the richest and most satisfying foods, this is a season
for fasting, confessing and repenting of our sins, giving generously to the
needy, and intensifying our prayers. It
is a time for preparing to open our hearts to receive Christ more fully into
our lives at His Nativity.
The Theotokos entered the Temple, living there
for years in preparation to become the Son of God’s Living Temple through whom He
took on flesh. The Nativity Fast provides us blessed opportunities to become
more like that obscure Palestinian Jewish girl who said “Yes!” to God definitively
and without reservation of any kind. It
calls us to become more like Joachim and Anna in the patient trust in God that
enabled them to offer their long-awaited daughter to Him. They show us how to enter the Temple by
embracing the difficult struggle of learning to offer ourselves and all our
blessings fully to the Lord. Like it or not, our lives are temples to one thing
or another, for we will offer our time, energy, attention, and resources to
something or someone. Instead of becoming
fools who give our lives to that which cannot satisfy or save us, let us follow
in the way of the Theotokos and her holy parents. Their choices were of crucial importance for
their own salvation and for that of the entire world. As hard as it is to believe, the same thing
is true of us. So let us mindfully
reject all distractions from focusing on “the one thing needful” of hearing and
obeying the Word of God, Who is born for our salvation at Christmas. Now is the time to prepare to follow the
Theotokos in becoming His holy temple even as we live and breathe in this
world.
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