Ephesians 2:14-22;
Luke 12:16-21
Having begun the Nativity Fast on November 15
in preparation to welcome the Savior at Christmas, today we continue
celebrating the Feast of the Entrance of the Most Holy Theotokos into the
Temple. Her elderly parents Joachim and Anna offered Mary to God by taking her
to live in the Temple in Jerusalem as a young girl, where she grew up in prayer
and purity as she prepared to become the Living Temple of the Lord in a unique and
extraordinary way as His Virgin Mother.
This feast directs us to the good news of Christmas, as it is the first
step in Mary’s life in becoming the Theotokos who gave birth to the Son of God
for our salvation. She is the epitome of
our cooperation or synergy with God, for she freely chose to say “Yes” to the
Lord with every ounce of her being.
Joachim and Anna had a long and difficult
period of preparation to become parents, as they had been unable to have
children for decades until God miraculously blessed them in old age to
conceive. They knew that their daughter
was a blessing not simply for the happiness of their family, but for playing
her part in fulfilling God’s purposes for the salvation of the world. Their patient
faithfulness throughout their years of barrenness helped them gain the
spiritual clarity to offer her to the Lord.
They knew that their marriage and family life were blessings to be given
back to God for the fulfillment of much higher purposes. They foreshadowed the proclamation in the
Divine Liturgy: “Thine Own of Thine Own, we offer unto Thee on behalf of all
and for all.”
Joachim, Anna, and the Theotokos are the
complete opposites of the rich man in today’s gospel lesson who exemplifies the
way of life that is so appealing and popular in our world of corruption. His only concern was to eat, drink, and enjoy
himself because he had become so wealthy.
He was addicted to earthly pleasure, power, and success, and saw the
meaning and purpose of his life only in those terms. When God required his soul, however, the
man’s true poverty was revealed, for the possessions and accomplishments of
this life inevitably pass away and cannot save us. As we read in the Psalms (48/49), “Do not
become afraid when one becomes rich, when the glory of his house
increases. For when he dies, he will
carry nothing away; his glory will not go down after him.”
This man’s horizons extended no further than his
dreams of the large barns he planned to build in order to hold his crops. Before the ultimate judgment of God, he was
revealed to be a fool who had wasted his life on what could never truly heal or
fulfill one who bore the divine image and likeness. He had laid up treasure for himself, but was
not rich toward God in any way. The problem was not simply that the man had
possessions, but that he had made them his god, which is another way of saying
that he worshipped only himself and surely was not concerned about the needs of
his neighbors. His barns were a temple of
the greed to which he had offered his entire existence in a vain effort to satisfy
his self-centered desires.
In stark contrast, the Theotokos followed the
righteous example of her parents. She
was prepared by a life of holiness to agree freely to become our Lord’s mother,
even though she was an unmarried virgin who did not understand how such a thing
could happen. When she said, “Behold the
handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word,” this young
Palestinian Jewish girl bravely made a whole, complete offering of her life to
God. She did not ask what was in it for
her in terms of money, power, or any kind of earthly success. She was not enslaved in any way to the
worship of any of the false gods of this world. Unlike the rich fool in the
parable, she was not blinded by passion and had the purity of soul to put
receptivity and obedience to the Lord before all else. That is how she became
the Living Temple of the Lord and the greatest example of what it means to
unite ourselves to Christ in holiness.
The world is full of tragic circumstances
today that are caused by people who are so blinded by their self-centered
desires that they think nothing is more important than doing whatever it takes
to gratify their lust for possessions, power, and pleasure. But even if they succeed in gaining dominion
over the whole world, they will lose their souls because they have offered
themselves to idols which lack the power to heal people from the ravages of sin,
let alone to raise anyone up from the tomb. Doing so will inevitably impoverish us
spiritually, for it is the complete opposite of following in the way of the
Theotokos as God’s holy temple. There
will be no true peace in our souls or in our relationships with other people if
we wander in such spiritual blindness. To indulge in self-centeredness will
make us isolated individuals who view others either as enemies to be feared and
conquered or as pawns to be manipulated.
Nothing could be further from the way of true personal union with the
Lord exemplified by the Theotokos and in the ongoing life of the Body of
Christ.
St. Paul wrote to the Ephesians that “Christ
is our peace” Who “has broken down the dividing wall of hostility” between Jews
and Gentiles, making “in Himself one new man in place of the two, so making
peace,” reconciling “us both to God in one body through the Cross, thereby
bringing the hostility to an end.” That
is why the Apostle told Gentile Christians that “you are no longer strangers
and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the
household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in Whom the whole structure is
joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord…” That is something
that the self-centeredness of the rich fool could never accomplish, for making success
in the world our highest goal inevitably perpetuates division and resentment. We will never become persons united in a
communion of love with God and with our neighbors if we refuse to embrace the peace
and reconciliation brought to the world by Christ, in Whom “There is neither
Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor
female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28)
The Nativity
Fast calls us to wrestle with the passions that keep us from becoming “rich
toward God.” Even small steps in restraining our appetites and investing
ourselves in prayer and generosity help to direct our hearts and lives in the
way of the Theotokos as living temples of the Lord. They help to heal us from the paralysis of self-centeredness
so that we may gain the strength to embrace our identity as members together of
the Body of Christ, in Whom the petty divisions and resentments of this world
may be overcome.
The Theotokos
entered the Temple, living there for years in preparation to become the Son of
God’s Living Temple through whom He took on flesh. The Nativity Fast provides
us blessed opportunities to become more like that obscure Palestinian Jewish
girl who said “Yes” to God definitively and without reservation of any
kind. It calls us to become more like
Joachim and Anna in the patient trust in God that enabled them to offer their
long-awaited daughter to Him. They show
us how to enter the Temple by embracing the difficult struggle of learning to
offer ourselves and all our blessings fully to the Lord. Like it or not, our
lives are temples to one thing or another, for we will offer our time, energy,
attention, and resources to something or someone. Instead of becoming fools who give our lives
to that which cannot satisfy or save us, we must follow in the way of the
Theotokos and her holy parents. Their
choices were of crucial importance for their own salvation and for that of the
entire world. As hard as it is to
believe, the same thing is true of us. Now
is the time to mindfully reject our self-imposed distractions from focusing on
“the one thing needful” of hearing and obeying the Word of God, Who is born for
our salvation at Christmas. Now is the
time to prepare to follow the Theotokos in becoming His holy temples, for that
is the only way to become “rich toward God.”
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