Saturday, October 25, 2025

Homily for the Great Martyr Demetrios the Myrrh-Streaming & the Sixth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church



Timothy 2:1-10; Luke 8:26-39

 

            St. Irenaeus wrote that “The glory of God is a man fully alive, and the life of man consists in beholding God” (Adv. haer. 4.20.7).”  To be a human person is to bear the image of God with the calling to become more like Him in holiness.  The more we do so, the more we become our true selves.  The God-Man Jesus Christ came to restore and fulfill us as living icons of God.  He enables us to become truly human as we grow in union with Him, the Second Adam.  As St. Paul wrote, “For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.”  (2 Cor. 1:20)

            If we need a clear example of how the Lord has extended the ancient promises to Abraham to all people to restore the beauty of our darkened souls, we need look no further than today’s gospel reading about a man so miserable that he was barely recognizable as a human person.  He had no illusions about himself, for he was so filled with demons that he called himself “Legion.” (A legion was a large unit of the Roman army made up of 5,000 soldiers.) His personality had disintegrated due to the overwhelming power of the forces of evil in his life.  That is shown by the fact that he was naked, like Adam and Eve who had stripped themselves of the divine glory and were cast out of Paradise into our world of corruption.  He lived among the tombs, and death is “the wages of sin” that came into the world as a consequence of our first parents’ refusal to fulfill their calling to become like God in holiness.  This naked man living in the cemetery was so terrifying to others that they tried unsuccessfully to restrain him with chains.  People understandably feared that he would do to them what Cain had done to Abel.  But when this fellow broke free, he would run off to the desert by himself, alone with his demons.  The Gadarene demoniac provides a vivid icon of the pathetic suffering of humanity enslaved to death, stripped naked of the divine glory, and isolated in fear.  His wretched condition manifests the tragic disintegration of the human person that the Savior came to heal.   

            Evil was so firmly rooted in this man’s soul that his reaction to the Lord’s command for the demons to depart is shocking: “What have you to do with me?...I ask you, do not torment me.”  He had abandoned hope for healing and perceived Christ’s promise of deliverance simply as even further torment.  By telling the Lord that his name was Legion, he acknowledged that the line between the many demons and his own identity had been blurred.  He had lost his sense of self to the point that it was not clear where he ended and the demons began.  The Savior then cast the demons into the herd of pigs, which ran into the lake and drowned.  In the Old Testament context, pigs were unclean, and here the forces of evil lead even them to destruction. 

            Perhaps there is no clearer image of how evil debases our personhood than the plight of this miserable man.    He is an icon of our brokenness and represents us all.  He did not ask Christ to deliver him, even as we did not take the initiative in the Savior’s coming to the world.   The corrupting forces of evil were so powerful in this man’s life that he had lost all awareness of being a person in God’s image and likeness.  We can also become so consumed by our inflamed passions that we simply ignore that we are living icons of God.  When that happens, we would rather that Christ leave us alone to wallow in the mire of our sins than to heal us.  We can easily become overwhelmed with fear that His salvation will simply torment us, for sometimes we cannot even imagine living without the corruption that has become so familiar.  

            After the spectacular drowning of the swine, the man in question was “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”  The one who had not been recognizably human returned to being his true self.  That was a very upsetting scene to the people of that region and they asked Christ to leave out of fear at what had happened.  We may find their reaction hard to understand.  What could be so terrifying about this man returning to a normal life?  Unfortunately, we all tend to get used to whatever we get used to.  What we have experienced routinely in ourselves or from others, no matter how depraved, becomes normal to us.  The scary man in the tombs was afraid when Christ came to set him free, but his neighbors seemed even more disturbed when they saw that he had been liberated.  

            It should not be surprising that the man formerly possessed by demons and still feared by his neighbors did not want to stay in his hometown after the Lord restored him.  He begged to go with Christ, Who responded, “Return to your home, and declare all that God has done for you.”  That must have been a difficult commandment for him to obey.  Who would not be embarrassed and afraid to live in a town where everyone knew about the wretched and miserable existence he had experienced?  It would have been much easier to have left all that behind and start over as a traveling disciple of the One who had set him free.

            But that was not what Christ wanted the man to do.  Perhaps that was because the Lord knew that the best sign of His transforming power was a living person who had been restored from the worst forms of depravity and corruption.   There could not be a better witness to the salvation that the God-Man has brought to the world than a person who so obviously moved from death to life.  Such a radical change is a brilliant sign of Christ’s resurrection, for He makes us participants in His victory over death by breaking the destructive hold of the power of sin in our lives.   

            Today we commemorate the Great Martyr Demetrios the Myrrh-Streaming, an accomplished military leader who refused to worship the false gods of the Roman Empire and boldly proclaimed Christ.  After his arrest for being a Christian, he was slain at the command of Emperor Maximian when the young Christian Nestor, whom Demetrios had blessed, slew the giant Lyaeus in the gladiatorial games with the plea “God of Demetrios, help me!”  The emperor then had Nestor killed also. St. Demetrios’ relics continue to exude myrrh as a sign of God’s blessing and healing through the intercessions of this great martyr.

            St. Paul instructed St. Timothy to “Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.”  The discipline and self-sacrifice of military members to this day requires accepting the possibility of suffering even to the point of death.  Many who survive combat physically endure spiritual, psychological, and physical wounds for the rest of their lives. The witness of model soldiers like St. Demetrios to the lordship of Christ required a deep level of suffering, for he willingly accepted the humiliation of losing his exalted status in Rome and being arrested and killed at the command of his emperor.  He is not a saint because of his military prowess but because, despite the grave dangers to the soul of shedding the blood of others, he gained the spiritual strength to make the ultimate witness of shedding his own blood. The many military martyrs of the early Church embodied the soldierly virtues of courage, discipline, obedience, and self-sacrifice when they laid down their lives out of loyalty to a Kingdom that stands in judgment over even the most laudable realms of this world.  Empires, nations, and their rulers can never heal our souls or raise the dead, but they can easily tempt us to the paganism of making them our highest good.    

If we are to follow the blessed example of St. Demetrios, we must refuse to entangle ourselves in anything, including the worship of earthly realms, that hinders us from becoming like the man formerly possessed by demons who sat “at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”  He was also surely a good soldier of the Lord.  Doing so requires the discipline of enduring the suffering necessary to turn away from gratifying passions that have become second nature to us.  We may be terrified of doing so, fearing what it means to live without sins that have become part of our character. We may have become comfortable losing our true selves in the face of our temptations.  Nonetheless, we must cultivate the courage of the man who, though he wanted to follow Christ into places where no one knew him, obeyed the command to “Return to your home, and declare all that God has done for you.”  Embracing Christ’s healing of our souls is not a matter of satisfying our preferences but of steadfastly enduring the tension and struggle that are necessary to become the evermore beautiful living icons of God that He created us to be.  Doing so requires engaging the battle every day to become fully alive and behold the glory of God.  That is simply what it means to be “a good soldier of Christ Jesus” as we fulfill our vocation to become like Him in holiness, no matter the cost.  



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Saturday, October 18, 2025

Homily for Saint Luke and the Widow of Nain in the Orthodox Church



 Luke 7:11-16

Yesterday was the feast day of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke, the patron saint of our parish.  As the author of both a gospel and Acts, St. Luke wrote more of the New Testament than anyone else. He was also the first iconographer.   Luke was a Gentile and emphasized that those who responded best to the Lord were often those least expected to.  He is the only evangelist to record the parables of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and the Pharisee and the Publican.  He reports that St. Zacharias, an aged priest who should have known better, doubted the word of the Archangel Gabriel that he and St. Elizabeth would conceive a child, St. John the Forerunner, despite their barrenness and old age.  In other words, he and his wife would be blessed as were Abraham and Sarah, whose story he surely knew quite well.  Then Luke tells us of the Theotokos’ humble acceptance of the Archangel’s astonishing announcement that she would be the virgin mother of the Savior: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord.  Let it be to me according to your word.” (Lk. 1:5-38) Who would have expected that a young virgin girl would have responded better to this incredible news than an old priest had to a continuation of what God had done at the foundation of the house of Israel? 

St. Luke was a physician, which may be part of the reason that he records the meeting of the Theotokos and St. Elizabeth during their pregnancies, when John leaped in the womb in miraculous recognition of the presence of the Lord.  Elizabeth was then filled with the Holy Spirit and proclaimed, “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”  In response, the Theotokos speaks the Magnificat: “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.  For He has regarded the lowly estate of His maidservant; for behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed.” (Lk. 1:39-48) Luke describes the interaction of two pregnant women, both in unlikely circumstances, who literally embody how God’s salvation is coming into the world.  They embrace their roles at the very center of the story in ways that challenged dominant assumptions about the relative unimportance of women in that time and place.

St. Luke writes that the Theotokos’ song of praise continues with bold prophetic speech about God’s reversal of the standards of our corrupt world: “He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.  He has put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted the lowly.  He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich He has sent away empty.” (Lk. 51-53)  It is no surprise, then, that Luke alone records the Savior saying: “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.  Woe to you who are full, for you shall hunger.  Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep.  Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets.”  (Lk. 6:24-26) The gospel according to St. Luke portrays the Kingdom of our Lord in ways that challenged dominant assumptions about power, wealth, and fame in this world as a sign of God’s favor and a reward for virtue.  Indeed, Christ teaches that they are often the complete opposite.    

In St. Luke’s description of the beginning of Christ’s public ministry, He fulfills this prophecy from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, and to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” (Lk.4:18-19)  We would have to be spiritually dense not to comprehend that the Lord came to share His gracious mercy with those in great need in every dimension of their personhood as living icons of God.  We will fool only ourselves if we assume that malnourishment, homelessness, disease, trauma, imprisonment, and injustice are spiritually irrelevant.  Were that the case, why would the Savior teach that however we treat “the least of these” is how we treat Him?   St. Luke interprets our Lord’s ministry in a way that highlights how His salvation is a blessing especially for those who are weak and suffering in this world.  If we are truly uniting ourselves to Christ in faith and faithfulness, we must manifest His love in practical, tangible ways to our neighbors who are in need.  If we refuse to do so, we risk falling into an illusory spirituality that has little to do with how salvation has come into the world through the God-Man, born of a woman.

St. Luke knew that our Lord’s Kingdom is not only a future hope, but also a present reality, for as He reports Christ saying, “the kingdom of God is within you.” (Lk 17:21)   Remember how the Lord responded to the question of whether He was the Messiah: “Go and tell John the things you have seen and heard: that the blind see, the lame walk, the   lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them.” (Lk. 7:22) Those are the words of the New Adam who came to heal all the infirmities of His suffering sons and daughters. Today’s reading from the gospel according to St. Luke comes right before that passage.  The widow of Nain was having the worst day of her life and had no reason to hope for a blessed or even tolerable future, for in that setting a widow who had lost her only son was in a very precarious state.  Poverty, neglect, and abuse would threaten her daily; she would have been vulnerable and alone.  When contrary to all expectations the Lord raised her son, He transformed her deep mourning into great joy. He restored life itself both to the young man and to his mother.

The Lord’s great act of compassion for this woman manifests our salvation and provides a sign of hope in even the darkest moments of our lives in our fallen world.  We weep and mourn not only for loved ones whom we see no more, but also for the brokenness and disintegration that we know all too well in our own souls, the lives of our loved ones, and the world around us.   Death, destruction, and decay in all their forms are the consequences of our personal and collective refusal to fulfill our vocation to live as those created in the image of God by becoming like Him in holiness.  We weep with the widow of Nain not only for losing loved ones, but also for losing what it means to be a human person as a living icon of God in a world that seems so far from transformation into the Kingdom of our Lord.

           The good news of the Gospel, especially as interpreted by St. Luke, is that the compassion of the Lord extends especially to those who endure the most tragic circumstances and the most profound sorrows.  Purely out of love for His suffering children, the Father sent the Son to heal and liberate us from slavery to the fear of death through His Cross and glorious resurrection. The Savior touched the funeral bier and the dead man arose.  Christ’s compassion for us is so profound that He not only touched death, but entered fully into it, into a tomb, and into Hades, because He refused to leave us to self-destruction.   He went into the abyss and experienced the terror of the black night of the pit.  The Theotokos wept bitterly at His public torture and execution, not unlike mothers today who weep at the loss of their children.  When He rose victorious over death in all its forms, He provided the only true basis of hope that the despair of the grave will not have the last word on the living icons of God. 

            The widow of Nain wept bitterly out of grief for the loss of her son.  Christ wept at the tomb of his friend St. Lazarus, not only for him, but for us all who are wedded to death as the children of Adam and Eve, who were cast out of Paradise into this world of corruption.  We weep with broken hearts out of love for those whose suffering is beyond our ability to ease, those who are no longer with us in this life, and those from whom we have become otherwise estranged due to our common brokenness.  We must learn to weep for ourselves as those who have caught a glimpse of the eternal blessedness for which we came into being and who know how far we are from entering fully into the joy of the Lord.  The corruption that separates us from God and from one another takes many forms and the same is true of our healing and restoration.  The particular paths that we must follow in order to embrace Christ’s victory over death as distinctive persons will certainly vary.  But they must all be routes for gaining the spiritual clarity to learn to mourn our sins and take the steps that are best for our healing and restoration as whole persons in the world as we know it.  If we refuse to take those steps and simply wait passively to ascend someday into heavenly peace, we will only weaken ourselves even further as we refuse to do what is necessary to lift up our hearts to receive the Lord’s healing today.  There is no way around the truth that we must do the hard work of taking up our crosses and following Him, especially in the service of our suffering neighbors in whom He is present, if we want to share in His blessed life.  For as St. Luke saw so clearly, His Kingdom stands in stark contradiction to the corrupt ways of our fallen world.  The same must be true of us.   

             


Saturday, October 11, 2025

Homily for the Sunday of Holy Fathers of Seventh Ecumenical Council & Fourth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 


Titus 3:8-15; Luke 8:5-15

 

There is so much about our culture today that keeps us constantly in a hurry and distracts us from giving the time and focus that are necessary to flourish as the persons God created us to become.  We want answers for the deep struggles of our lives with the speed of looking something up on the internet.  We have lost respect for the many years of preparation that it takes to develop expertise in so many areas of life.  The same is true of our disregard for the pursuit of wisdom, which typically comes through the long experience of a life well lived.  We must be on guard against becoming so accustomed to accepting quick, easy, and superficial answers that we lack the patience necessary to bear good fruit for the Kingdom of God.

 

That is why we all need to concentrate our attention today on commemorating the 367 Holy Fathers of the 7th Ecumenical Council, which met in Nicaea in 787.  The council rejected the false teaching that to honor icons is to commit idolatry, for it distinguished between the worship that is due to God alone and the veneration that is appropriate for images of Christ, the Theotokos, and the Saints.  The council’s teaching highlighted the importance of the Savior’s incarnation, for only a truly human Savior with a physical body could restore us to the dignity and beauty of the living icons of God in every dimension of our existence.

 

We can be sure that these matters are not trending on social media or the focus of influencers who shape popular opinion today.  Perhaps we should take that as a reminder that our faith stands in severe tension with the unserious culture in which we live. The 7th Ecumenical Council addressed matters that strike at the very heart of how we embrace our fundamental vocation to become like God in holiness in a world that so desperately needs the peace of Christ.  Too often, however, we think that iconography simply has to do with wood and paint and is unrelated to the question of whether we are becoming more like Christ and gaining the strength to seek first His Kingdom in the midst of our world of corruption.  The icons are not merely religious art, but reminders that to become a truly human person is to become like Jesus Christ, Who refused to accommodate His ministry to what was popular and easy in first-century Palestine.   That is why those who worshipped only the fulfillment of their desires in this world rejected and condemned Him.  After bearing their abuse with patience to the point of death, He rose in glory on the third day.  

 

Today’s gospel reading addresses what it means to become a beautiful living icon of Christ with different imagery.  In an agricultural society, Christ used the parable of the sower to call His disciples to become like plants that grew from the seed that “fell into good soil and grew, and yielded a hundredfold.”  He wanted them to become “those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience.”  Not all who hear the Word of God will do so, even as not all seeds will grow to fruition.   Some never even believe, while others make a good start and then fall away due to temptation or “are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.” 

 

We do not have to be experienced farmers or gardeners to see that this parable calls us to fulfill our potential as those who bear the image of God.  Our vocation is to become more beautiful living icons of the Savior, but we diminish and distort ourselves when we refuse to become who God created us to be.  Plants must grow and flourish as the kinds of plants that they are in order to become healthy and bear fruit.  Farmers must care for them accordingly.  The sun, soil, moisture, and nutrients must be appropriate for that particular type of plant in order for them to flourish.  In order for us to bear good fruit for the Kingdom, we must attend to the health of our souls with the patience and focus of a careful farmer or gardener.  We must do so in order to become more fully who we are as living icons of Christ.  If, to the contrary, we become impatient and distracted for whatever reason, we will not persist and will become unable to bear good fruit for the Kingdom.   

 

In today’s epistle lesson, St. Paul urged St. Titus to tell the people to focus on doing good deeds and helping others in great need.  He wanted them to avoid foolish arguments and divisions, “for they are unprofitable and vain.”  St. Paul did not want the people to waste their time and energy on matters that would simply inflame their passions and hinder them from attaining spiritual health and maturity.  He called them to care for their spiritual wellbeing with the conscientiousness of farmers who are single-mindedly dedicated to bringing in a bumper crop.  If they let down their guard to the point of being so consumed by pointless controversies that they ignored basic disciplines like loving and serving their neighbors, they would risk dying spiritually like a neglected plant overtaken by weeds. 

 

If we are to become “those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience,” we must refuse to allow distorted desires of whatever kind to take root in our hearts and minds, regardless of what is happening in our world, our nation, or our families.  We must do the hard, daily work of learning to trust and hope in the Lord as we mindfully turn away from fueling our passions and instead invest ourselves in serving the living icons of Christ who are our neighbors in practical, tangible ways. In order to bear good fruit for the Kingdom, we must refuse to allow anything to distract us from sharing more fully in His blessed eternal life.  Unless we struggle mindfully against these temptations, they will easily choke the life out of our souls. Because our risen Lord has conquered even the grave through His glorious resurrection on the third day, we must refuse to become enslaved to our passions, which are all rooted in the fear of death, and instead focus on becoming more beautiful icons of the Savior. That is the only way to know true peace in this world.

 

Contrary to the immediate gratification that we have come to expect in so many areas of life, to mature to the point that we bear fruit a hundredfold for the Kingdom will take time. It will take the patience not only of the passage of time but more importantly of repentance when we find ourselves distracted and weakened by our passions and fall short of our calling time and time again.  Instead of abandoning the Christian life when we do not get the results that we want on our own timetable, we must accept the truth about ourselves with humility and redouble our efforts to focus on “the one thing needful” of hearing and obeying the Word of God. (Lk 10:42)  We must ground our daily lives in prayer, fasting, and generosity toward our neighbors in order to gain the spiritual strength necessary to persevere and refuse to fall into despair.  Following St. Paul’s advice, we must also take a close look at our lives to see if we are wasting our time, energy, and attention on “foolish disputes” that simply inflame our passions and distract us from patiently finding the healing of our souls. It is so easy to be “choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life” to the point that we never mature and bear good fruit.  With the patient endurance of a careful farmer, let us tend the garden of our souls each day and refuse to be discouraged by our failures or the appealing distractions that are all around us.  That is the only way to fulfill our vocation to become beautiful living icons of Christ, the fully divine and fully human Savior Who has brought life to the world.

 

 

 

 

Saturday, October 4, 2025

The Countercultural Struggle of Loving our Enemies: Homily for the Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost & Second Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 


2 Cor.  6:16-7:1; Luke 6:31-36

 

We live in a time in which many people think that it is somehow virtuous to hate, condemn, and wish the very worst for people they consider their enemies for whatever reason.  Since every human person is a living icon of God, there is nothing more dangerous to our souls than to embrace such wickedness in our hearts. The Lord said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matt. 5:8) There is perhaps no greater test of the purity of our hearts than whether we respond with love and forgiveness to those who have wronged us, as He did to those who crucified Him, saying “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” (Lk. 23:34)   As Orthodox Christians, our calling is nothing less than to embody the mercy of God from the very depths of our being. That sublime vocation goes well beyond being an outwardly religious or moral person who feels justified in determining who deserves our good will, care, and forgiveness.  As those who share in the life of God by grace as “partakers of the divine nature,” we must love all our neighbors as He has loved us. 

 

In today’s gospel reading, the Lord spoke words that have always been hard to hear: “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish.  Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”  In this passage from the gospel according to St. Luke, Christ does not rest content with calling His followers to limit their vengeance to “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” even though that Old Testament principle had placed needed restraint on vengeance. (Matt. 5:38) He did not affirm the common attitude of the time, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy,” an attitude that unfortunately remains with us today in so many ways, including religion, politics, and ethnicity.   (Matt. 5:43) Instead, the Savior calls His followers to be in communion with Him from the depths of our hearts to the point that we embody the divine mercy, loving our enemies like God, Who cares even for “the ungrateful and selfish.”  That means that He cares even for people like me and you.

 

To become a person so radiant with the love of Christ that we convey His love even to people we do not like and who do not like us obviously requires much more than the culturally accommodated religiosity that is all around us.  To love our enemies as He loves us requires our deep spiritual transformation and healing as living icons of God.  We must not, then, rest content with confessing Orthodox dogma, coming to Church, devoting ourselves to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, and avoiding the most obvious forms of sin in our outward behavior.  These endeavors are all virtuous and we must not neglect or diminish them in any way.  We must remember, however, that they provide the foundation and structure of our life in Christ.  It is through them that we open ourselves to receive the strength that we need to take up the difficult struggle each day to reject the habits of thought, word, and deed that so easily lead us to treat our neighbors according to our passions and not according to the mercy of the Lord.  We must do the hard work of actually engaging the battle to live faithfully each day. If we do not and persist in refusing to love others as Christ has loved us, we will weaken ourselves spiritually to the point that we will find it simply impossible to love God, for “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” (1Jn. 4:20)   

 

St. Silouan the Athonite provides good advice on how to grow in love for those who offend us:  

I beseech you, put this to the test.  When a man affronts you or brings dishonor on your head, or takes what is yours, or persecutes the Church, pray to the Lord, saying: “O Lord, we are all Thy creatures.  Have pity on Thy servants, and turn their hearts to repentance,” and you will be aware of grace in your soul.  To begin with constrain your heart to love enemies, and the Lord, seeing your good will, will help you in all things, and experience itself will show you the way.  But the man who thinks with malice of his enemies has not God’s love within him, and does not know God.[1]

 

            It would be hard to overstate how radically countercultural such an approach is in light of the incessant calls to grievance, vengeance, and division that bombard us.  So many people proudly proclaim today that to be true to ourselves means to celebrate and inflame our passions, especially when that leads to the perverse pleasure of exalting ourselves and demonizing others.  St. Paul’s plea to the confused Gentile Christians of Corinth is surely one that we need to hear: “Brethren, we are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will live in them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.  Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them,’ says the Lord, ‘and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.’” Note that the Apostle addresses Gentile converts who had fallen back into many forms of corruption as “the temple of the living God.”  They were not simply people living in a given time and place with a certain set of temptations and weaknesses but truly the Body of Christ by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.  He applies instructions from the Old Testament on the importance of God’s children separating themselves from worldly corruption to them as he admonishes them to embrace the calling to live faithfully as who they had become in Christ.

 

Like the confused, divided, and compromised Christians of Corinth, we must refuse to engage in popular cultural practices that so easily corrupt our faithfulness to the Lord as living members of His Body, the Church.  We are “the temple of the living God” in which all the divisions fueled by fear, resentment, and the refusal to forgive may be overcome.  Like the Corinthians, however, we so easily fall back into the old ways of sin when we refuse to keep a close watch on the thoughts of our hearts and to reject those that keep us from seeing anyone as a neighbor who bears God’s image just as we do. Obvious and subtle temptations are all around us to refuse to treat at least some of our neighbors as we would like them to treat us.  We may not worship in the pagan temples of Corinth, but the spiritual gravity is the same when we give ourselves to the false gods of our passions that blind us to what it means to live as "sons of the Most High; for He is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish.  Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” 

 

Like it or not, the true state of our souls is revealed by how we treat those we find it hardest to love. That is why we must be on guard against obsessing about the failings of people who have wronged us and cultivating fear and anger toward those who are on the other side of any division or argument. We must remember that we are each “the chief of sinners” and share in the life of Christ by His grace, not according to our personal accomplishments or opinions.  As with the rest of the Christian life, the challenge is not to see and treat others in light of our passions but as God sees and treats us all according to His love.  That being the case, we must take up the struggle in thought, word, and deed each day of our lives to “cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.”

 



[1] Archimandrite Sophrony, Saint Silouan the Athonite, 377.