Homily for the First Sunday of Great Lent (Sunday of Orthodoxy) & The Holy and Great Forty Martyrs of Sebastia in the Orthodox Church

 

Hebrews 12:1-10; 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.

Our Lenten journey, and our entire Chrisitan vocation, is not an escapist distraction from living faithfully in our bodies or in our world.  Quite the opposite, the icons call us to embrace the struggle to find healing for every dimension of our personal and collective brokenness.  The God-Man makes us participants in His salvation such 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.  Embracing this struggle is necessary for us to gain the spiritual clarity to see that every human person bears the divine image as much as we do.  If we are approaching this season with any measure of 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 obvious 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, 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 not the kind of pagan virtue rejected by the Holy Forty Martyrs of Sebastia, whom we commemorate this day.  As first-rate Roman soldiers who were also Christians, they refused to worship the gods of Rome, even though that meant standing in a freezing lake all night and then having their legs broken as they departed this life.  They refused to place earthly glory, political favor, and even life itself in this world before obedience to the command given in today’s epistle reading:    “[L]et us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus: the Pioneer and Perfecter of our faith, Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”  They did not wear earthly crowns but were instead crowned as martyrs who experienced what the Savior promised to Nathanael in today’s gospel reading: “[Y]ou will 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 is to die to all that would keep us from 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 follow the martyrs’ example of refusing to worship the false gods of this world and instead take up our crosses as we reorient the desires of our hearts and our bodily actions toward the new day of His Kingdom.      

Even as the icons proclaim the truth of our Lord’s incarnation through 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 anyone who fasts, gives, and prays with integrity, even our smallest efforts to practice these disciplines 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, regardless of what it may be.  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 more we are aware of the darkness of our souls, the more we must persist in lifting up our hearts to receive His light.

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. He has made the Holy Forty Martyrs of Sebastia and all the Saints participants in the new day of His Kingdom.    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.  Let us refuse to worship at the pagan altars of pride, power, and pleasure, no matter how attractively they are marketed to us today or how noble they may seem.  Instead, let us humbly embrace the disciplines of this season as ways to prepare to “see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”  We must live accordingly each day of our lives, if we are to “lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely; and…run with perseverance the race that is set before us…”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great Lent Calls Us Back to Paradise : Homily for the Sunday of Forgiveness (Cheese Fare) in the Orthodox Church

 

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

             The gospel readings from the last few Sundays have called us all to return home from our self-imposed exile.  Zacchaeus was restored as a son of Abraham when he gave more than justice required from his ill-gotten gains to the poor and those whom he had exploited.  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 that stemmed from abandoning his father.  Last Sunday we heard that the ultimate standard of judgment for entering into our true home of eternal blessedness is whether we have become living icons of the Savior’s merciful lovingkindness.  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  their path of corruption as we stubbornly persist in exiling ourselves from the eternal blessedness which God intends for 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 and 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 the misery of 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 fulfillment 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 taking 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 take the first small step of wanting to gain the strength to forgive those who have wronged us, we will know only the misery of slavery to our own desires and separate ourselves from 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 recognition that “now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.  The night is far spent, the day is at hand.”  May every step of our journey of repentance 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 Last Judgment (Meat Fare) in the Orthodox Church

 

1 Corinthians 8:8-9:2; Matthew 25:31-46

             In case you have somehow not noticed, Great Lent begins a week from tomorrow.  On this Sunday of the Last Judgment, the Church reminds us that the point of the upcoming season of repentance is not the keeping of religious rules or the performance of any form of piety as an end in itself.  Our vocation in Lent is, instead, to open our souls to the healing mercy of the Lord so that we may enter more fully into His victory over sin and death at Pascha.  The ultimate test of whether we will do so this Lent is not simply a matter of how strictly we fast, how many services we attend, or how much money we give to the poor.  It is, instead, whether we will unite ourselves to Christ such that His love permeates every dimension of our character to the point that we treat our neighbors as He treats us.  At a deep level, that is what repentance is all about. As today’s gospel lesson reveals, every encounter with those who bear God’s image is an encounter with Christ that anticipates our ultimate judgment, which will reveal whether we have become living icons of His healing and restoration of the human person.  

            As we begin the last week before Great Lent, the Savior teaches us that how we relate to our neighbors, especially those we are inclined to overlook, disregard, and even despise due to their weakness and suffering, is the great test of our souls.    How we treat the hungry and thirsty, the stranger and the naked, the sick and the prisoner, manifests whether we are gaining the spiritual health to love as Christ has loved us.  How we relate to our suffering and inconvenient neighbors, whoever they are, is how we relate to our Lord.  We must not rest content with a culturally accommodated faith that congratulates us for being concerned almost exclusively with the wellbeing of our family, friends, and others with whom we identify for some reason.  We are Gentile Christians, strangers and foreigners to the heritage of Israel who have now been grafted in by grace and become heirs to the fulfillment of the promises to Abraham through faith in the Savior.  We will condemn only ourselves if we refuse to share the undeserved lovingkindness that we have received with the strangers and foreigners of our day, including those we may be tempted to view as our enemies.  We will repudiate the love of our Lord and show that we want no part in His salvation if we persist in finding excuses to justify our neglect of anyone who experiences the bodily sufferings of those with whom Christ identified Himself as “the least of these.”   

            Whether in Lent or any other time of the year, we must reject the temptation of trying to impress God by doing good deeds of any kind.  Instead of serving our pride by obsessively trying to justify ourselves through religious legalism, our calling is humbly to take the small and imperfect steps that we currently have the strength to take in conveying His selfless love to other people.  The point is not to measure ourselves according to an impersonal standard of perfection, but to grow in conforming our character to His as we serve those who need our help.  Doing so is an essential dimension of being able to say truthfully, “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” (Gal. 2:20)

            On this last day for consuming meat until Pascha, we must also resist the temptation to obsess about whether we will be able to follow all the Church’s canons about fasting in Lent.  Such canons are guidelines that we embrace for the healing of our souls with the guidance of a spiritual father.  They are not objective impersonal laws from a book that everyone must obey in the same way.  Today we read St. Paul’s teaching that the key issue in the question of whether to eat meat that had been sacrificed in pagan temples in first-century Corinth was how doing so impacted others, for “food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. Only take care, lest this liberty of yours somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.”  To cause another to fall back into paganism would be to “sin against Christ.”  His words show that what is truly at stake in fasting is not a mere change in diet or the fulfillment of a law for its own sake, but learning to relate to food in ways that help us acquire the spiritual strength to love and serve our neighbors.  By abstaining from the richest and most satisfying dishes to the best of our ability, we gain strength to reorient our desires from self-gratification toward blessing others.  Eating a humble diet frees up resources to give to the needy in whom we encounter Christ.  Lenten foods should be simple and keep well for future meals, thus freeing up time and energy for prayer, spiritual reading, and serving our neighbors.  Even the smallest steps in fasting can help us gain a measure of freedom from slavery to our passions as we learn that we really can live without satisfying every desire for pleasure.   Especially if we are new to this practice, it is important to begin with the very small steps that we can actually take in a spiritually healthy way. Trying to do more than we really can do at this point in our journey is invariably counterproductive and discouraging.  As people with responsibilities in our families, at work, at school, and in relation to our needy neighbors, we must not deprive ourselves of nourishment to the point that we lack the energy necessary to act as good stewards of our talents every day.   

The spiritual discipline of fasting is simply a tool for shifting the focus away from ourselves and toward the Lord and our brothers and sisters in whom we encounter Him each day.  If we distort fasting into a private religious accomplishment to prove how holy we are to ourselves or anyone else, we would do better not to fast at all.  That is the vain effort of trying to serve ourselves instead of God and those who bear His image and likeness.  In Lent, our focus must be set squarely on Christ and His living icons, not on us.  The fundamental calling of the Christian life is to become like our Lord, Who offered Himself up for the salvation of the world purely out of love.  If we are truly in communion with Him, then we too must offer up ourselves for our neighbors. And as He taught in the parable of the Good Samaritan, there are no limits on what it means to be a neighbor to anyone who is in need, regardless of nationality, religion, or anything else.  

The particular form of our self-offering will vary according to the needs of the people we encounter and our gifts, callings, and life circumstances.  Discerning how to live faithfully is not a matter of cold-blooded rational calculation or meeting objective standards, but of being so conformed to Christ that we become a “living sacrifice” (Rom. 12:1) such that the Savior’s healing of fallen humanity becomes present, active, and effective in us.  Instead of defining ourselves over against one another in an endless cycle of competition and grievance in a pathetic effort to distract ourselves from the inevitability of the grave, we must grow as persons in communion with Christ and all those who bear His image and likeness.  His eternal life will truly become ours as we unite ourselves more fully to His great Self-Offering on the Cross for the salvation of the world.  The more we acquire the character of those liberated from slavery to the fear of death, the greater our freedom will be from the passions that blind us from seeing and serving Christ in every neighbor.

            Whenever we encounter the Lord in a suffering person who needs our care, there is inevitably a kind of judgment that reveals who we truly are. That is the case when we see His living icons suffering today as the victims of natural disasters, wars, and other catastrophes around the world. It is the case when those who bear His image are sick, lonely, hungry, imprisoned, or in any other circumstance in which they need our friendship, care, and support.  Since we are not yet those who respond generously to everyone without a second thought, we must mindfully struggle against our self-centeredness and indifference to the sufferings of others.  In order to do that, we must not shut the eyes of our souls to the brilliant light of Christ when the darkness within us becomes all the more apparent.  We must respond to what every judgment of our souls reveals by taking the steps we can to open and offer our hearts to Christ more fully so that we will become more beautiful living icons of His restoration and fulfillment of the human person in the divine image and likeness.  In order to do that, we must persistently refuse to fuel our passions with self-indulgence as we fast as best we can and humble ourselves while calling out for the Lord’s healing mercy from the depths of our hearts.

            Be prepared this Lent.  Fasting is a wonderful teacher of humility, for it is such a hard struggle for most of us to disappoint our stomachs and tastebuds even in very small ways. Serving our suffering neighbors is also a wonderful teacher of humility, for most of us are experts in coming up with excuses for disregarding them.  When these disciplines reveal our weakness, we must not despair, but instead call on the mercy of the Lord from the depths of our hearts and then take the next small steps that we have the strength to take on the blessed path to the Kingdom.   If we will do so throughout the remaining time of our life and persist in returning to the path whenever we stray from it, then we will have good hope of being among those quite surprised to hear at the Last Judgment, “’Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’”  Like the people on His right hand in the parable, that will not be because we have calculated rationally how to earn a prize or met some objective legal standard.  Instead, it will be because the self-emptying love and gracious mercy of Christ have permeated our souls and become constitutive of our character.  Every day of Lent, and every day of our lives, let us live accordingly, for “‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’”  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Homily for the Presentation (Meeting) of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Temple in the Orthodox Church

 

 Hebrews 7:7-17; Luke 2:22-40

Today we celebrate a great feast of the Church that speaks directly to the spiritual challenges that we all face on a daily basis.  For today we celebrate the Presentation of Christ, forty days after His birth, in the Temple in Jerusalem.  The Theotokos and St. Joseph bring the young Savior there in compliance with the Old Testament law, making the offering of a poor family, a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons.  By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the old man St. Simeon proclaims that this Child is the salvation “of all peoples, a light to enlighten the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel.”  The aged prophetess St. Anna also recognizes Him as the fulfillment of God’s promises.

            Our epistle reading from Hebrews reminds us that the One brought into the Temple this day is the Great High Priest Who offers Himself on the Cross and destroys the power of sin and death through His glorious resurrection.  Christ does so in order that we may enter into the Heavenly Temple and participate by grace in the eternal communion of the Holy Trinity.  The priesthood and sacrifices of the Old Testament foreshadowed Christ’s fulfillment of them.   The Savior’s offering and priesthood are eternal, for He intercedes for us at the right hand of the Father. There is no question, then, that the Christian life is not about achieving any earthly goal on its own terms but about entering into the blessedness of the Heavenly Kingdom, both as a present reality and a future hope.   

            Every day of our lives, in all that we think, say, and do, we have the opportunity to join ourselves more fully to Christ as the Great High Priest.  He will bless and heal every dimension of who we are in this world as we offer ourselves to Him in holiness.  He offered Himself fully, without reservation of any kind, and the only limits to His restoration of our souls, even in the world as we know it, are those that we stubbornly insist upon maintaining.  Christ calls us to present ourselves to Him fully, without reservation of any kind, as we enter into the Heavenly Temple through communion with Him.  All that we must leave behind is what cannot be blessed for our salvation, what cannot be united to the Savior in holiness.  In other words, all that we must leave behind are our sins.

We have surely all accepted lies of one kind or another about who we really are.  It is so easy to define ourselves by our disordered desires, by sins we fall into time and time again, or by worldly categories that simply inflame our passions and serve only earthly kingdoms of one kind or another.  It is so tempting to think that whatever wins the praise of others, gratifies some desire, or does not call us into question must somehow be right.  Instead of trying to make a false god in our own image, Christ calls us to embrace the hard truth that we will become more truly ourselves by becoming more like Him.  He offered up Himself to the point of death on the Cross in order to conquer the power of death, the wages of sin.  The more we offer ourselves to Him by dying to the power of sin in our lives through ongoing repentance, the more we will become our true selves in His image and likeness.     

            We must not limit our celebration of Christ’s Presentation in the Temple merely to remembrance of an event long ago, for we commemorate the feasts of the Church by entering into the eternal reality we celebrate in them.  We cannot truly celebrate this feast without uniting ourselves more fully to the Lamb of God Who is also our Great High Priest.  Our celebration must extend beyond this service to how we live each day, especially in offering ourselves more fully to Him for greater participation even now in the life of the Kingdom of heaven.  As with just about anything else, doing so is a process, a journey of reorienting our lives to God that does not find completion in an instant.

            The Theotokos prepared to become the Living Temple of the Lord in a unique way by literally growing up in the Temple in Jerusalem.  By devoting herself to prayer and purity for years, she gained the spiritual clarity to say “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” in response to the shocking message of the Archangel Gabriel that she was to become the Virgin Mother of the Savior.  Saint Joseph initially did not want to accept the inconvenient calling to become the guardian of the teenage Mary, but his many decades of faithfulness gave him the strength to accept this unusual vocation in old age, and even to risk his life in leading the family as refugees to Egypt in order to escape the murderous plot of Herod. 

            When the Theotokos and Saint Joseph brought the infant Jesus to the temple forty days after His birth, Saint Simeon recognized Christ and proclaimed “Lord, now lettest thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to Thy people Israel.”  Simeon was an old and righteous man, and the Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah.  He certainly had not acquired the spiritual strength to do so by accident, but through a long life of faith and faithfulness.  The same is true of the elderly prophetess Anna, a widow in her eighties who “did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day.”

            Those who brought the young Savior to the Temple in obedience to the Old Testament law and those who recognized Him there were all people who had offered their lives to God time and time again.  They were of different sexes, ages, and backgrounds, which shows that it is not the outward circumstances of our lives that determines where we stand before the Lord.  All may enter into the Heavenly Temple through Our Great High Priest, for in Him such differences become spiritually unimportant.  What is crucial is that we open ourselves to become more fully who we are in Him as those who bear the divine image and likeness.

            The struggle to do so is never ending.  Surely, the journeys of the Theotokos and Saints Joseph, Simeon, and Anna did not go as any of them had expected.  They all faced challenges and sorrows.  As Simeon said to the Theotokos, “a sword will pierce through your own soul also,” for she would see her Son rejected and crucified.  Of course, the particulars of our challenges are different from those of these great saints, but we must use them in the same way.  Namely, we must embrace them as opportunities to offer even the weakest and most painful dimensions of our lives to Christ for healing and transformation.  That does not mean that all our problems will go away or that we will always feel as though we are making progress, but that they present the greatest opportunities we have for entering more fully into the Heavenly Temple through our Great High Priest.

When we unite ourselves to Him as best we can as we struggle against temptation and wrestle with our passions, we will come to know both our own weakness and His gracious strength more fully.  By doing so, we will gain the spiritual clarity to reject superficial distortions of Christianity focused on emotion, worldly success of any kind, or the condemnation and hatred of any person or group.  Since He is “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to Thy people Israel,” His salvation not limited in any way by the idolatrous divisions that we find so appealing in defining ourselves over against neighbors who are living icons of God. Our Savior has triumphed through His Cross and empty tomb due to His unfathomable love for all who bear the divine image and likeness. Every time that we offer ourselves to Him in obedience, we enter more fully into His great victory over sin and death.  Let us celebrate His presentation today by using all our struggles for our salvation as we unite ourselves in holiness to our Great High Priest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

Repentance Requires Our Free Cooperation with the Merciful Grace of God: Homily for the Fifteenth Sunday of Luke (“Zacchaeus”) in the Orthodox Church

 

Luke 19:1-10 

What does true repentance look like?  Whenever we are tempted to think that it has to do only with how we feel and not with how we act, we should remember the story of Zacchaeus.     As a Jew who had become rich collecting taxes from his own people for the occupying Romans, Zacchaeus was both a traitor and a thief who collected even more than was required in order to live in luxury. No one in that time and place would have thought that such a person would ever change.  He was considered the complete opposite of a righteous person, and no observant Jew would have had anything at all to do with him. 

  We do not know why Zacchaeus wanted to see the Savior as He passed by.  He was a short little fellow who could not see over the crowd, so he climbed a sycamore tree in order to get a better view.  That must have looked very strange:  a hated tax-collector up in a tree so that he could see a passing rabbi.  Even more surprising was the Lord’s response when He saw him: “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house.”  The Savior actually invited Himself to Zacchaeus’ home, where the tax-collector received Him joyfully. 

             This outrageous scene shocked people, for no Jew with any integrity, and especially not the Messiah, would be a guest in the home of such a traitor and thief.  He risked identifying Himself with Zacchaeus’s corruption by going into his house and eating with him.  But before the Savior could say anything to the critics, the tax collector did something unbelievable.  He actually repented.  He confessed the truth about himself as a criminal exploiter of his neighbors and pledged to give half of his possessions to the poor and to restore restore four-fold what he had stolen from others.  He committed himself to do more than justice required in making right the wrongs he had committed.   In that astounding moment, this notorious sinner did what was necessary to reorient his life away from greedy self-centeredness and toward selfless generosity to his neighbors.  As a sign of His great mercy, Jesus Christ accepted Zacchaeus’ sincere repentance, proclaiming that salvation has come to this son of Abraham, for He came to seek and to save the lost.

           The importance of cooperation or synergy between the human person and God shines through this memorable story.  We do not know Zacchaeus’s reasons for wanting to see Christ so much that he climbed up a tree, but in the process of doing so he opened his soul at least a bit to receive the healing divine energies of the Lord. He did not have to condemn Zacchaeus, who surely already knew how corrupt he was.  When people complained that Christ had associated Himself with such a sinner, He did not argue with them, but instead let Zacchaeus respond by doing what was necessary to receive the healing of his soul.  The Lord did not force Zacchaeus to do anything at all, for he responded in freedom when he encountered the gracious presence of the Savior.

 Zacchaeus was so transformed by the mercy of Christ that he became an epiphany, a living icon of the restoration of the human person in God’s image and likeness.  This formerly corrupt and money-hungry man resolved to share with his neighbors a measure of the grace that he had received, for he gave half of what he owned to the poor and restored all that he had stolen four-fold.  In response to the gracious blessing he had received from Christ, he bore witness to the healing of his soul by blessing others.  He did not simply feel sorry about his sins, but acted in a way that showed he was reorienting His life away from the love of money and toward the love of God and neighbor. He was learning to obey the greatest of the commandments.  For as Christ taught, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength…[and] You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mk. 12: 30-31)

           Zacchaeus provides a wonderful example of repentance because he freely united himself to Christ by taking practical steps beyond any measure of justice.  In doing so, he was transformed by the merciful generosity of the Lord, like an iron left in the fire of the divine glory.  His transformation was not a reward for what he had earned in any way, for he did not ask for or receive from Christ what he deserved.  The healing that the Savior brings us all is never a matter of getting what we deserve, but instead manifests the boundless mercy and grace of the Lord Who conquered death itself in order to make us participants in His eternal life.  Zacchaeus’s example shows us that the more fully we know the gravity of our sins and the sickness of our souls, the better position we are in to cooperate with our Lord’s abundant mercy and to convey that same mercy to others.

             In the prayers before receiving Communion, we confess that we are each the chief of sinners.  That does not mean that we have broken more laws than Zacchaeus did, but that the light of Christ has illumined the eyes of our souls such that we can catch at least a glimpse of the truth about ourselves. We never know the hearts and souls of other people and must never even attempt to judge anyone else as though we were God.  The only true statements we can make about the state of someone’s soul are those that we make about ourselves when we receive the grace to see ourselves clearly   We do not know our sins fully, but when we know the sorrow of falling short of the infinite goal of becoming like God in holiness, then we can confess our brokenness and call out for the Lord’s mercy as we take concrete steps to redirect our lives toward Him. That is why we must all make regular use of the holy mystery of Confession.  We receive the Lord’s gracious strength for healing as we confront the hard truth about our sick souls.   We must do so in order to receive His Body and Blood for the forgiveness of our sins and life everlasting.  Doing so is not optional, but a free choice that is absolutely necessary in order for us to be transformed by personal encounter with the Lord as Zacchaeus was.   

             Saint James stated the matter clearly: “Faith without works is dead.” (Jas. 2:26) To repent is not merely to feel sorry for our sins, but to turn away from them and toward Christ so that we may receive the Lord’s gracious divine energies for our healing and transformation.  That is what Zacchaeus did in response to the initiative of the Savior in coming to His house.  Given the importance of hospitality in that culture, Zacchaeus surely shared a meal with Christ, which in that time and place was understood to establish a close personal bond between them.  When we receive the Eucharist, our Lord’s gracious initiative makes us “one flesh” with Him through our communion in His Body and Blood.  If we are truly in communion with Christ, then His life will shine through ours.  Even more than Zacchaeus, we will then share with our neighbors the gracious mercy that we have received in practical, tangible ways that go beyond any standard of justice.  Even more than Zacchaeus, we will rejoice that salvation has come to our house and extend God’s blessings to others.   

            No matter how tempted to despair we may be today about ever finding healing for our personal brokenness, the transformation of Zacchaeus provides a sign of hope for the fulfillment of the Lord’s gracious purposes for each of us.  This memorable little man shows us how to respond in freedom to the One Who “came to seek and to save the lost,” which includes us all.  If the Savior’s healing extended even to someone like Zacchaeus, a notorious traitor and a thief, then there is hope even for you and me as the chief of sinners. All that we must do is to take the steps we presently have the strength to take in reorienting our lives according to the love of God and neighbor as we confess our failings and call on His mercy.  If we stay on this path, refusing to deviate from it and getting back on it whenever we stumble, then salvation will come to our houses as we share the great blessing we have received with others.  For we are also sons and daughters of Abraham by faith in Jesus Christ, Who says to each of us, “I must stay at your house today.”  Like Zacchaeus, let us chose to receive Him joyfully for the healing of our souls.   

 

  

 

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Acquiring the Spiritual Clarity of the Samaritan Leper: Homily for the Twenty-ninth Sunday After Pentecost & Twelfth Sunday of Luke with Commemoration of Venerable Makarios the Great of Egypt, the Anchorite in the Orthodox Church

Colossians 3:4-11; Luke 17:12-19

        During the season of Christmas, we celebrated the Nativity in the flesh of the Savior.  Born as truly one of us, He is the New Adam Who restores and fulfills us as living icons of God.  During the season of Theophany, we celebrated the revelation of His divinity as a Person of the Holy Trinity at His baptism, where the voice of the Father identified Him as the Son and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove.  Christ has appeared in the waters of the Jordan, blessing the entire creation, enabling all things to become radiant with the divine glory.  When we put Him on like a garment in baptism, we participate in the sanctification that He has brought to the world as we regain the “robe of light” lost by our first parents. 

            We must never think of our Lord’s birth or baptism, or of our own baptism, as somehow the end of the story.  Saint Paul wrote that, “when Christ, Who is our life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”  As we confess in the Nicene Creed, there is a future dimension of Christ’s appearance, for He “will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, Whose kingdom will have no end.”  We “look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”  When Christ returns in brilliant glory, the true state of our souls will be revealed.  The Last Judgment will be the ultimate epiphany or manifestation of whether we have embraced His healing and become radiant with His gracious divine energies.  It will be impossible to hide or obscure on that day whether we are full of darkness or light.  

            To shine eternally with the light of Christ requires that we undertake the daily struggle to purify and reorient the desires of our hearts toward fulfillment in God and away from slavery to our passions.  The Colossians to whom Paul wrote were mostly Gentile converts who needed to be reminded that they had repudiated corrupt pagan practices and put on Christ in baptism.  That is why Paul told them to “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”  It is contradictory to unite ourselves to Christ and then to refuse to conform our character to His.  In order to gain spiritual health, we must mindfully reject all that keeps us from becoming living epiphanies of our Lord’s salvation. As Paul notes, “anger, wrath, malice, slander…foul talk” and lying should have no place in our lives, for in baptism we have “put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator.”  We must vigilantly turn away from the darkness and remain focused on receiving the light.

    As those who live in hope for the coming of the Kingdom, we must struggle every day of our lives to enter more fully into Christ’s restoration and fulfillment of the human person in the image and likeness of God.  There is no other way to appear with Him in glory, whether today or when His Kingdom comes in its fullness.  And the merely human distinctions that we so often celebrate due to our passions and insecurities have nothing at all to do with sharing in the life of our Lord, for as Paul wrote, “Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all, and in all.” 

    Today’s gospel reading provides a shocking example of this truth, for the Lord’s healing mercy extended even to a Samaritan with leprosy.  Among the ten lepers the Lord healed, the only one who returned to thank Him was a hated Samaritan, someone considered a despised heretic by the Jews.  After the man fell down before Him in gratitude, the Lord said, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”  Our Lord’s gracious interaction with this man shows that His healing mercy extended even to those conventionally understood to be sinners and enemies.  The Lord’s love for humanity transcends all the petty divisions of the fallen world, and we must not pretend that His benevolence somehow does not extend even to those we consider our worst enemies.  There is simply no way to become a living epiphany of His salvation if we persist in remaining more attached to our own grievances and prejudices than to the boundless love of our Lord, before Whom we are all “the chief of sinners.”     

    The Savior praised the faith of a Roman centurion, who was an officer of the Roman army that occupied Israel.  By any conventional standard, that man was His enemy.  (Lk 7:9) The people of Nazareth tried to throw Christ off a cliff when He reminded them that God had at times blessed Gentiles through the ministry of great Hebrew prophets and had not helped Jews.  (Lk 4:29) He shocked everyone by talking with St. Photini, the Samaritan woman at the well, and then spending a few days in her village.  (Jn 4:40) The list could go on, but the point is obvious that our Lord’s love for broken, suffering humanity extends literally to all who bear the divine image and likeness.  He was born and baptized in order to bring all people into the Holy Trinity’s eternal communion of love.  It is only “the old nature” of corruption that would keep us so enslaved to hatred, division, and vengeance that we would imagine that those we consider our enemies are any less called to become brilliant epiphanies of His salvation than we are.   

        One of the great virtues of the Samaritan leper is that he did not allow fear about the hatred of others toward him to keep him from remaining focused on finding healing and expressing gratitude.  Together with a group of Jewish lepers, he called out “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” He obeyed the Lord’s command to head toward the temple in Jerusalem to show himself to the priests.  No one at the time would have expected a Samaritan leper to receive anything but rejection and condemnation from the Messiah and other Jewish religious authorities.  When he realized that he had been healed, he did not immediately head back to Samaria to his own people, for “he [alone] turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and…fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving Him thanks.”  He did not allow fear of rejection to keep him from showing gratitude for this life-changing miracle.  Christ, of course, did not condemn him in any way, but said “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”  The Samaritan shows us the importance of finding healing from our fear of criticism and our love of praise from other people.  He did not allow concern for what others thought or said about him to keep him from calling for the Lord’s mercy, obeying His command, or giving thanks.   

          A fellow monk once asked St. Makarios the Great of Egypt, one of the great Desert Fathers from the fourth century, how he could be saved.  Abba Makarios told him to go the cemetery and abuse the dead. So he insulted them and threw stones at their graves.  When the monk returned, Makarios asked what the dead said in response.  He reported that they said nothing.  Then he told the monk to go to the cemetery and praise the dead, which he did.  When asked by Makarios what they said in response, the monk reported that they said nothing.  “Then Abba Makarios said to him, ‘You know how you insulted them and they did not reply, and how you praised them and they did not speak; so you too if you wish to be saved must do the same and become a dead man. Like the dead, take no account of either the scorn of men or their praises, and you can be saved.’”[1]

         If we want to open our darkened souls to the healing light of Christ, we must gain the spiritual clarity of the Samaritan leper.  He was so focused on receiving the healing mercy of the Lord that he died to concern about what others thought or said about him. In order to become living epiphanies of His salvation, we must find healing from the obsessive desire to ground the meaning and purpose of our lives in the attitudes, words, and actions of other people, which can be a very subtle temptation.  Like the Samaritan, we must refuse to allow worry about the opinions of others to keep us from focusing our energies on calling for the Lord’s mercy, obeying His command, and giving thanks for His blessings.  Doing so is necessary to “Put to death…what is earthly in you” and to live as those who “have put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator.”  In order to “appear with [Christ] in glory,” we must not allow anything to keep us from uniting ourselves to Him with the humble faith of the Samaritan.

    

---

[1] As cited in “Orthodox Road:  Rediscovering the Beauty of Ancient Christianity.” https://www.orthodoxroad.com/a-lesson-from-the-dead

 

“The People Who Sat in Darkness Have Seen a Great Light”: Homily for the Sunday After Theophany (Epiphany) in the Orthodox Christian Church

 

Ephesians 4:7-13; Matthew 4:12-17

          In this season we celebrate the great feast of Theophany, of Christ’s baptism when the voice of the Father identified Him as the Son of God and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in the form of a dove. Epiphany reveals that the Savior Who appears from the waters of the Jordan to illumine our world of darkness is the God-Man, a Person of the Holy Trinity.  He is baptized to restore us, and the creation itself, to the ancient glory for which we were created.  He comes to make all who wandered in the blindness of sin and death radiant with the brilliant light of holiness.

        Tragically, our first parents turned away from their high calling and ushered in the realm of corruption that we know all too well, both in the brokenness of our own hearts and in our relationships with one another.  God gave Adam and Eve garments of skin when they left Paradise after they chose to serve their own self-centeredness instead of Him.  Through their disobedience, they had become aware that they were naked and were cast into the world as we know it. They tried to become human apart from God, Who made them in His image, and their nakedness showed that they had repudiated their vocation to become like Him in holiness.  Having stripped themselves of their original glory, they were reduced to mortal flesh and destined for slavery to their passions and to the grave.   Because of them, the creation itself was “subjected to futility…” (Rom. 8:20)  We have all followed in their way of proud self-centeredness, which inevitably leads to spiritual blindness and despair.

        As we prepared for Theophany, we heard this hymn: “Make ready, O Zebulon, and prepare, O Nephtali, and you, River Jordan, cease your flow and receive with joy the Master coming to be baptized. And you, Adam, rejoice with the first mother, and hide not yourselves as you did of old in paradise; for having seen you naked, He appeared to clothe you with the first robe. Yea, Christ has appeared desiring to renew the whole creation.”   If it seems strange to think of Christ being baptized in order to clothe Adam and Eve, remember St. Paul’s teaching that “as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”  (Gal. 3:27)   In baptism, Jesus Christ clothes us with a garment of light, restoring us to our original vocation to become like God in holiness.  He delivers us from the nakedness and vulnerability of slavery to our own passions and to the fear of the grave.  Through His and our baptism, He makes us participants in His restoration and fulfillment of the human person. He is baptized in order to save Adam and Eve, all their descendants, and the entire creation, fulfilling the glorious purposes for which He breathed life into us in the first place.

        Our lives after baptism are not, however, without pain, disease, death, and other sorrows.  The more we are illumined by His light, the more clearly we will see the darkness that remains within us.  In contrast with the divine glory of the appearance of our Lord, the darkness of sin becomes all the more apparent.  In the aftermath of Christ’s birth, Herod the Great had all the young boys in the region of Bethlehem murdered. Today’s gospel reading refers to the Forerunner’s arrest by Herod Antipas for prophetically denouncing the king’s immorality.  After the one who baptized Him was arrested, the Lord went to “Galilee of the Gentiles” to begin His public ministry in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy that “’the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.’” (Matt. 4:15-16)

        The Jews who suffered under the oppression of the Romans and their client kings knew all too well about darkness, death, and crushed hopes.   Their homeland was controlled by foreigners who worshiped other gods and exploited the people.  Understandably, the dominant expectation among the Jews was for a Messiah like King David to defeat their enemies and establish a reign of national righteousness.  Jesus Christ, however, rejected the temptation to become an earthly king throughout His ministry, from His testing by Satan in the desert to His crucifixion.  He repudiated the idolatrous attempt to identify the heavenly reign with any version of politics or religion as usual in our world of corruption, for they can not help us attain the purity of heart necessary to see God.   Even though the Savior did not seek earthly power, the powerful still viewed Him as such a threat that a wicked king tried to kill him as a small child and the Roman Empire crucified Him at the request of corrupt religious leaders.  He rose in glory over the very worst that those whose hearts were full of darkness could do to their enemies.  Our true hope is in Him, not in any of the false gods that tempt us today to seek first something other than His kingdom.

        We are baptized into Christ’s death in order to rise up with Him into a life of holiness in which we regain the robe of light rejected by our first parents. In every aspect of our lives, we must become radiant with the divine glory shared with us by the New Adam.  In order to do so, we must find healing for the passions that have darkened our hearts and distorted our relationships even with those we love most in this life.  It does not matter whether we are at home, work, school, or other settings, we must reject the temptation to become blinded by pride, lust, hatred, anger, resentment, or the desire to dominate others.  If we have put on Christ in baptism, we must become living icons of His salvation and peace in every thought, word, and deed.

        For that to happen, we must be on guard for all the ways in which we have become accustomed to “the region and shadow of death.”  That requires struggling mindfully each day to obey the Lord’s command: “Repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”  Because the Savior has hallowed the water and the entire creation through His baptism, we must remember that nothing in our life and world is intrinsically evil or profane.  No dimension of God’s good creation requires us to return to the nakedness of passion in any way.  Theophany reveals that we are always on holy ground and must speak, act, and think as those who wear a garment of light.  Though we fall short of fulfilling that goal each day, we must constantly strive to turn away from corruption and embrace our high calling “until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.”  That is His gracious will for us all.

        If we are to discern how to fulfill our vocation to bear witness to our Lord in the midst of a world still enslaved to the fear of death, we must focus on opening even the darkest corners of our own souls to the brilliant healing light of Christ.  Doing so requires resisting the temptation to pretend that we know the hearts of others and are in a position to judge them, for that is simply a distraction from doing “the one thing needful” of hearing and obeying the Word of God from the depths of our hearts.  Doing so requires constant vigilance against allowing self-centered desire to corrupt our souls and distort our vision of ourselves, our neighbors, and our world.  Doing so requires turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, and treating others as we would have them treat us, especially when we think we are justified in responding in kind to those we consider our enemies.    Doing so requires turning away from whatever fuels our passions so that we may build peaceable relationships even with those we find it hardest to love.  As we celebrate Theophany in “the region and shadow of death,” let us focus mindfully on living each day as those who have died to sin and risen up into a new life of holiness through the Lord Who has baptized by John in the Jordan for our salvation.  Anything else is a distraction from embracing the full meaning and purpose of our baptism as those who now wear a garment of light and are called to become living epiphanies of the salvation of the world each day of our lives in every thought, word, and deed.