Homily for Palm Sunday in the Orthodox Church

 

Philippians 4:4-9; John 12:1-18

The Desert Father Saint Antony the Great once tested a group of monks by asking them, beginning with the youngest, the meaning of a certain passage of Scripture.  In response to their answers, he said, “You have not understood it.”  Finally, he asked Abba Joseph, who said, “I do not know.”  Then Abba Antony said, “Indeed Abba Joseph has found the way, for he has said: ‘I do not know.’”[1] As we celebrate our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, we must resist the temptation to think that we understand the full meaning of this extraordinary day that begins the week in which the God-Man will enter into the dark and disorienting despair of death and then rise gloriously in triumph.  Before the Passion of the Lord, we must all have the humility to say, “I do not know.”   

We can certainly all understand the crowds on Palm Sunday welcoming their anticipated liberator from the oppressive rule of foreigners as they cheered, “Hosanna! Blessed is He Who comes in the Name of the Lord, the King of Israel!”  Throughout His earthly ministry, the Savior faced and rejected the temptation to become an earthly ruler out to take vengeance on His enemies. When, by the end of the week, it had become clear that He was not going to settle the score with the Romans, the crowds called so boisterously for His death that even Pilate, the Roman governor, went along with their desires.  In tragic irony, it was in the aftermath of the Lord’s raising of Lazarus from the dead after four days, by which He showed that He is “the resurrection and the life,” that the chief priests and Pharisees decided that they had to destroy Him.  “Crucify Him!  Crucify Him!” they said cynically to Pilate, for “We have no king but Caesar!” 

Every generation includes some so obsessed with dominating others that they recognize no truth beyond whatever serves their lust for power.  Perhaps we are not shocked by villains who take the lives of those who oppose them, but it is more difficult to accept how the Savior’s own disciples betrayed, denied, and abandoned Him.  As their rabbi and friend, He withheld nothing from them, explaining the parables and performing many miracles in their presence.  He served them in humility, stooping down to wash their feet and patiently teaching them by word and deed.  But they too abandoned their Lord when they saw that, instead of conquering the Romans, He would be killed by them.     

Were Jesus Christ merely a religious teacher of good character, His public torture and execution after being betrayed, denied, and abandoned by those closest to Him would be terribly tragic, but life is full of such tragedies.  Since He is the Eternal Word of God Who spoke the universe into existence, however, His Passion is simply incomprehensible.  The Lord Who said that His Name is “I AM” when He spoke to Moses through the burning bush “emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant…He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  (Phil. 2:7-8) Who can claim to understand such mystery?  The only begotten Son of the Father offered Himself in free obedience on the Cross, the Tree of Life, to disappear into the pit, the opaque abyss of death, as fully as any other human who has departed this life. His cry from the Cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” shows that He experienced the depths of human helplessness and horror.  He felt as alienated and abandoned as any victim of sadistic abuse, as anyone rejected and abandoned by those He loved most, as anyone struggling to breathe His last in the midst of unbearable physical and psychological pain. 

 Our Savior experienced all of that as the God-Man.  In ways that we must not imagine that we can even begin to comprehend, the fully divine Son of God suffered, died, was buried, and descended into Hades, the shadowy place of the dead.   Only One Who is truly human could do that.  Since He is also fully divine, we dare to confess the unfathomable mystery of a Person of the Holy Trinity freely experiencing the negation, weakness, despair, abandonment, and suffering that is our common lot in this world of corruption.  Our Savior, the God-Man Jesus Christ, is the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.  He is the Lord Who reigns from the Cross.  His death does not change the eternal nature of God but manifests divine sacrificial love beyond all human understanding.  “For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16) The Son does not pay a ransom or debt to appease the Father’s anger or sense of justice but freely offers up Himself to the Holy Trinity (including Himself) out of love for the salvation of the world.  His sacrifice is not that of a mere human satisfying a religious or legal obligation, but of the God-Man who walks with us “through the valley of the shadow of death.”  Because of His Cross, we know He is with us when we cry, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”  Because His suffering love extends even into the darkest corners of the loss and despair suffered by even the most wretched of His children, we may say with the Psalmist, “If I should descend into Hades, You would be there.” (Ps. 138:8)   

  Today we commemorate the triumphal entry into Jerusalem of the Savior Who emptied Himself in sacrificial love for our salvation beyond all human comprehension.  Even as we entrust ourselves to Him, we must have the humility to say “I do not know” in recognition that the deep mystery of His Passion is infinitely beyond our understanding. He does not conquer the corrupting power of sin and death with brute force, but by selfless love that knows no bounds and extends even to those who betrayed, denied, abandoned, tortured, and crucified Him.  And He does so as One Who is fully human and fully divine.   He reveals Who God is, for He is God.  The divine nature is completely beyond our comprehension, but the God-Man has graciously shared His life of infinite love with us.  We know Him not by even the best words, thoughts, or feelings, but by opening the eyes of our souls to behold His glory, the glory of One Who died on the Cross because He loves us and refused to abandon us to the corruption and decay of the tomb.  

Holy Week is a time for entering personally into the deep mystery of the love of our Lord, of the great “I AM” Who remains infinitely beyond our full comprehension.  Today He rides into Jerusalem on a humble donkey as the crowds welcome Him as a conquering hero.  But they do not really know what they are doing or what kind of Savior He is.  As we begin this Holy Week, let us have the humility to recognize that we are not that different from them.  We too tend to reject or at least ignore Christ when His Cross does not serve our agendas and preferences.   We too have our preconceived notions about what kind of Savior we want and what earthly goals we want Him to accomplish.  We too cannot make sense of a Lord Whose Kingdom comes through what appears to be complete and shameful failure according to any conventional standard.

That is precisely why we need to pray and fast in stunned silence this week as we follow the Lamb of God to His great Self-Offering for the salvation of the world.  Let us resist the temptation to assume that we have His Passion all figured out.  Instead, like Abba Joseph, we should say, “I do not know” before the deep mystery of His unfathomable love.  Let us lay aside our earthly cares and refuse to be distracted this week from anything that would keep us from following the advice of St. Paul: “The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your petitions be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”    

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[1] St. Antony the Great, as cited in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Benedicta Ward, trans., (Cistercian Publications, 1975): pg. 4, para. 17.

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Great Lent with Commemoration of our Righteous Mother Mary of Egypt in the Orthodox Church

 

Hebrews 9:11-14; Mark 10:32-45

            The more clearly that we see our personal brokenness, the more tempted we may be to think that there is simply no point in trying to reorient our lives toward the Lord. Perhaps we are simply too far gone to come to our senses and find our way home like the prodigal son, we may think.  Perhaps no amount of repentance could ever enable us to receive God’s healing mercy. On this last Sunday of Great Lent, the Church calls us to put such foolish and prideful notions out of our minds as we celebrate how our Righteous Mother Mary of Egypt became a glorious saint, despite her previously wretched way of life.  In her brutally honest account of her youth, St. Mary describes how she had from the age of twelve endured the miserable existence of a sex addict.  She had refused money for her innumerable encounters with men and said that she “had an insatiable desire and an irrepressible passion for lying in filth. This was life to me. Every kind of abuse of nature I regarded as life.”  Though we do not know why she left her parents’ home at a young age, she may well have been a victim of sexual abuse.  She confessed forcing herself on “youths even against their own will” as she sailed to Jerusalem and said that she was actually “hunting for youths” on the streets on the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross when she followed the crowds to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. 

When an invisible force prevented Mary from entering the Church in order to venerate the Cross, her eyes were opened to her wretchedness and she pleaded for the help of the Theotokos in finding salvation.  Thus began her almost 50 years of intense ascetical struggle in the desert.  By the time Father Zosima stumbled upon her, Mary had become so radiant with holiness that she walked on water, rose above the ground in prayer, was clairvoyant, and knew the Scriptures, even though she had never read them.  Pride and self-centeredness had no place in her soul, as she was aware only of her sinfulness and ongoing need for the Lord’s mercy.  Mary was not focused on achieving any earthly goal, but instead on doing whatever was necessary for her to find healing and restoration as a beloved daughter of the Lord, a living icon of Christ. 

So much religion in our world today is merely a smattering of pious platitudes intended to help people feel better about indulging their passions, including the desire to dominate and condemn people they fear or resent. That is not a new problem, for our Lord’s disciples betrayed, denied, and abandoned Him because they finally realized that He was not going to become a conventional political ruler who would satisfy their desires for earthly glory with victory over the Roman Empire.  As today’s gospel reading shows, even as the Savior predicted His Passion, the disciples James and John were jockeying for position by asking for places of prominence when He came into power.  They had no idea what they were asking, of course, for the path to our Lord’s Kingdom requires taking up our crosses in union with His great Self-Offering. Doing so has nothing to do with gaining power over anyone in this world but requires persistent, humble obedience whereby we open ourselves to receive the healing divine mercy of the Lord.  Through the struggle of reorienting ourselves to the blessedness of a Kingdom not of this world, we will learn not to entrust our hearts to the false gods of our passions and will instead gain the strength to manifest Christ’s merciful, selfless love for our neighbors, regardless of who they are.  As He said, “For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

The weeks of Lent teach us that prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and other spiritual disciplines are not tools to help us achieve an earthly goal.  Instead, they are simply ways of offering our lives to the Lord for healing.  Our great difficulty in embracing them shows how far we are from fulfilling our calling to become like God in holiness.  To recognize that truth and still persist in repentance will inevitably require suffering because we must then experience the inevitable tension between the corruption and weakness of our souls and the blessedness and strength to which the Lord calls us.  Such suffering is not a punishment but simply the consequence of enduring the struggle to accept personally our restoration through Christ as His beautiful living icons. 

St. Mary of Egypt did not allow the hurt pride called shame to keep her from facing the truth about her spiritual state or from taking up her cross in the way that was necessary for her salvation.  She did not accept the lie that she simply needed to accept and act on her inclinations, habits, and compulsions in order to be true to herself.  She did not distract herself from confronting her sins by condemning others or trying to distort religion in order to gain anything in this world.    Instead, she had the humble courage to entrust herself fully to the ministry of the “High Priest of the good things to come…[Who] through His own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having found eternal redemption.”  Her example shows that absolutely nothing we have done, said, or thought makes it impossible for us to find the healing of our souls through Him.  St. Mary of Egypt is a shining example of hope for us all.

Like her, we must confront truthfully how we have corrupted ourselves in order to open our hearts to Christ for His healing.  His own disciples betrayed, denied, and abandoned Him because they wanted a Messiah Who would serve their desires for earthly power and glory.  As Christ said, “the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, and deliver Him to the Gentiles.  And they will mock Him, and scourge Him, and spit upon Him, and kill Him; and after three days He will rise.”  Acquiring the spiritual health to serve such a Lord does not come easily to people like us who are so weakened spiritually by slavery to our passions.  That is why we all need the holy mystery of Confession in Lent in order to gain the strength necessary to follow our Lord to His Cross and empty tomb.  Doing so has nothing to do with glorifying ourselves or achieving any earthly goal.  It does have everything to do with acquiring the persistent, humble obedience shown by St. Mary of Egypt.  Like her, we must refuse to let anything, including our own hurt pride, keep us from confronting our personal brokenness with brutal honesty as we take up our own crosses in faithfulness to the Savior Who offered up Himself for the salvation of the world. He alone is our hope for healing from the ravages of sin and the Victor over death.

 

       

 

 

 

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Great Lent with Commemoration of Saint John Climacus, Author of “The Ladder,” in the Orthodox Church

 

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

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

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

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

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

The deliverance of the young man did not come easily, for the demon convulsed him and most of the bystanders thought that he was dead.  It can seem impossibly difficult for us to embrace Christ’s healing, for in order to do so we must die to the power of passions that have taken such deep root in our souls that they have become second nature. Our life in Christ invariably requires denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, and following Him.   There is no other way truly to share in the life of our crucified and risen Lord.  

Today we commemorate St. John Climacus, a monk from the seventh century who wrote The Ladder of Divine Ascent, a spiritual classic that is said to be the second most read book in Orthodoxy after the Bible.  Written as a guide to other monks, the book presents the necessary steps for following the upward path to the Kingdom.  There is one passage in which St. John advises people “who are married and living amid public cares” to pursue this goal in the following way:

Do whatever good you may.  Speak evil of no one.  Rob no one.  Tell no lie.  Despise no one and carry no hate. Do not separate yourself from the church assemblies.  Show compassion to the needy.  Do not be a cause of scandal to anyone.  Stay away from the bed of another, and be satisfied with what your own wives can provide you.  If you do this, you will not be far from the kingdom of heaven.[1]

 The father in today’s gospel lesson obviously had a family and lived a conventional life in the world.  It was precisely through those circumstances that he was able to gain the spiritual clarity necessary to cry out “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” such that his son was healed.  Remember that the path to the healing of our souls is open to us all, regardless of our marital status, family responsibilities, and work.  Regardless of the circumstances of our lives, let us continue the Lenten journey by embracing the daily struggle necessary to intensify our prayers, to deny ourselves, and to give generously to our neighbors as we take the small steps that we presently have the strength to take in reorienting our lives to toward the Lord.   When the battle even to take those small steps reveals our weaknesses and seems like a lost cause, that is when we must obey the command: “Keep your mind in hell and do not despair.”  It is only by doing so that we may gain the spiritual clarity necessary to cry out from the depths of our hearts, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”  Indeed, it is really the only time in which we can begin to see the state of our souls clearly, which is necessary in order for us to follow our Lord to His Cross and empty tomb through humble confession and repentance of our sins. In the remaining weeks of the Fast, let us refuse to be distracted by anything that would keep us from entering as fully as possible into the holy mystery of our salvation, for “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and after He is killed, He will rise on the third day.” 

 

 

 

 

           

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[1] St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Paulist Press, 1982: 78.

Homily for the Third Sunday of Great Lent with Veneration of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross in the Orthodox Church

 

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

            Today we venerate the precious and lifegiving Cross upon which Christ offered Himself for the salvation of the world purely out of love for those enslaved to the fear of death, which He conquered through His glorious resurrection on the third day.  Contrary to popular opinion, the Cross is not the sign of a civil religion that grants spiritual sanction to any power structure of this world. Neither is it a magical good luck charm that makes all our problems go away or gives us what we want on our own terms.  It is certainly not a means of escape from the daily struggles of living faithfully or a way of demonstrating our superiority over any person or group.   In fact, the Cross of Christ is the complete opposite of such distortions, for it stands in radical judgment of those who would attempt to use religion to help them seek first the things of this world, such as power, pleasure, and possessions.  That was the mindsight of the corrupt religious leaders who called for the Lord’s crucifixion because they perceived Him as a threat to their self-centered agendas.  It was also the perspective of the Romans who believed that worshiping their many gods protected their empire.  By having “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin on the Cross, Pontius Pilate did not miss the opportunity to let everyone know what happened to those suspected of challenging Roman rule.  (Jn. 19:20) Those who place loyalty to empires, nations, or other earthly projects before faithfulness to Christ will end up rejecting Him as surely as those who nailed Him to the Cross. As He said, “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”

 

On this Sunday of the Adoration of the Holy Cross, right in the middle of Lent, we do the complete opposite of making any type of success in this world our highest goal.  Today we venerate the Cross on which Jesus Christ offered Himself for the salvation of the world.  Through His crucifixion, the New Adam entered fully into the misery and wretchedness of the first Adam to the point of death in order to liberate us from slavery to its corrupting power and make us participants in eternal life.  The Cross is truly the Tree of Life through which we return to the blessedness of Paradise.  It is “a weapon of peace and a trophy invincible” that even the high and mighty of this world cannot defeat.

 

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

 

            We must not adore the Cross only in religious services, but daily as we take up our crosses in order to love God with every ounce of our being and our neighbors as ourselves.  The disciplines of Lent help us gain the strength to do precisely that as we take intentional steps to die to that which keeps us comfortably enslaved to the self-centered ways of the first Adam.  By devoting ourselves to prayer, we open our hearts to the Savior and learn experientially that our life is in Him.  By refusing to gratify our desires for the richest and most sustaining foods, we open ourselves in humility to receive His strength for resisting deeply ingrained habits of self-indulgence.    When we share our time, energy, and resources with others, we become more like Christ in offering ourselves for the good of our neighbors.  When we forgive our enemies and welcome the stranger, we bear witness to the merciful lovingkindness of our Lord.  These are the most basic disciplines of the Christian life, and we all must practice them in order to gain the spiritual health necessary to take up our crosses, especially in response to the deep challenges of our lives and the appealing temptations to apostasy and paganism that are all around us today, including distortions of Christianity that have no place for a Lord Who reigns from a Cross and an empty tomb.  

 

If we refuse to deny ourselves even in small ways this Lent, then we will demonstrate where our true loyalties lie and become even more accustomed to serving ourselves instead of God and neighbor.  Doing so will reveal that we are ashamed of our Lord and His Cross, and prefer to offer our lives to other gods, especially ourselves.  Even if we continue down that path to the point that we somehow gain the whole world, we will risk losing our souls by committing idolatry every bit as much as those who condemned Christ because He stood in the way of fulfilling their passionate desires for earthly power and glory. Indeed, we will be even more guilty because we know that His Cross is not a sign of ultimate defeat to be repudiated, but of nothing less than the salvation of the world.

 

There is perhaps nothing worse than distorting our calling as Christians to the point that the Cross becomes merely an empty symbol that we use to satisfy our lust for any earthly or self-centered goal, no matter how popular or appealing.  If we do not actually take up our crosses and deny ourselves out of love for God and neighbor, then our lives will bear witness that our true lord is someone or something other than Jesus Christ.  St. Paul taught that “those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” (Gal. 5:24) If we are not embracing the struggle to do so, then we must humbly call for the Lord’s mercy from the depths of our souls as we learn to take the steps necessary to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Him.  There is simply no other way to enter into the joy of His Kingdom.

 

Whether in the first century or today, salvation has not come to the world through self-centered addiction to the pursuit of power, possessions, and pleasure.  It does not come through the achievements of the wealthy, powerful, and popular people of the world.  The same kind of spiritual depravity that drove religious and political leaders to crucify Him is still very much with us.  When we live as those who are ashamed of the way of the Cross, we show that we are not that much different from them.  As we continue our Lenten journey, let us confess how we have fallen short of fulfilling the high calling that is ours in Christ and learn to offer every dimension of our lives to Him for healing as we take up our own crosses.  Whether in Lent or any other time, that is the only way to enter into Paradise through our great High Priest, Who offered Himself fully upon the Cross for the salvation of the world purely out of love. 

 

   

 

           

             

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Homily for the Second Sunday of Great Lent with Commemoration of St. Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica, in the Orthodox Church

 

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

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

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

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

His healing is open to all in every time, place, and circumstance of the world as we know it.  Christ sent the formerly paralyzed man home to resume a conventional life in a land occupied by a foreign military power and ruled by tyrants in which the weak were routinely crushed by the powerful. That is precisely the setting in which the God-Man lived, died, and rose from the dead in order to make us participants in His divine glory.  In order to embrace our true identity today in the same world of corruption, we must offer ourselves for healing as we mindfully refuse to worship at the perennial pagan altars of pride, power, and pleasure.  Doing so requires constant vigilance and struggle against falling back into the spiritual blindness and weakness that our passions so easily bring upon us.  Even small steps to embrace the disciplines of Lent will help us to open the eyes of our souls to behold the glory of the Lord.       

Even the tiniest advance in spiritual clarity should inspire us to call mindfully for the Lord’s healing mercy each day in order to grow in our liberation from slavery to the paralysis of sin.  Prayer is not about pondering ideas, cultivating emotions, or merely mouthing words, but requires being fully present to God from the depths of our souls.  We must intentionally devote time and energy to doing so, if we want to gain His healing and strength so that we may rise up from our beds of spiritual paralysis and move forward on the journey to the heavenly kingdom amidst the challenges that we face.     

Contrary to what we may like to think, this is not a calling only for those who we imagine have no great struggles.  Remember that Christ came to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.  He was a physician to the sick and blessed the poor and needy.  He cast demons out of the possessed, raised the dead, and showed mercy to those considered notorious sinners and hated foreigners. It was not those who were perfectly at ease according to the standards of the fallen world who received Him with joy, but those with broken hearts who knew their own weakness.  We must never accept the lie that any difficult circumstance of our lives somehow excuses us from answering the calling to mindfully unite ourselves to Christ from the depths of our hearts.  Indeed, it is precisely such struggles which should inspire us all the more to call out in humility for His mercy. 

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

 

 

 

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

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.’”