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

 

Whenever we catch a glimpse of our personal brokenness and weakness, we may experience a temptation to think that there is no hope for us to find healing and strength, regardless of what we do.  We may easily accept that we are simply too far gone to ever come to our senses and find our way home like the prodigal son.  We may believe that no amount of repentance could ever enable us to be restored as God’s beloved sons and daughters. On this last Sunday of Great Lent, the Church calls us to refuse to be distracted by such foolish and prideful notions as we celebrate our Righteous Mother Mary of Egypt, who 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 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 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 and sentiments intended to help people feel better about indulging their passions, whatever they may be.  This is hardly a new problem, for our Lord’s disciples betrayed, denied, and abandoned Him when 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 what they thought would be earthly 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 ruling 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 learn not to entrust our hearts to the false gods of our passions and 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 struggles of Lent teach us that prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and other spiritual disciplines are not tools to help us achieve any earthly goal.  Instead, they help us to see more clearly where we stand in relation to God so that we will be able to offer ourselves more fully to receive His healing.  Our great difficulty in doing so shows how far we are from becoming like God in holiness.  To recognize that truth and still persist in repentance requires suffering because of the inevitable tension between the corruption and weakness of our souls and the blessedness and strength to which the Lord calls us.  It is not a punishment but simply the consequence of enduring the struggle necessary to become a beautiful living icon of the Savior. 

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 difficult way that was necessary for her healing.  She did not accept the lie that she should embrace and act on her inclinations, habits, and compulsions to be true to herself.  She did not distract herself from confronting her sins by condemning others or trying to use religion as a tool 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 strength to serve such a Lord does not come easily to people like us who are so weakened by slavery to our passions.  That is why we need the holy mystery of Confession in Lent to gain the strength necessary to follow our Lord to His Cross and empty tomb.  It is only through humble repentance that we may acquire the persistent 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. Not one of us is too far gone to embrace the healing mercy of the One Who rose victorious over death itself on the third day.    

 

             

 

 

Homily for the Third Sunday of Great Lent: 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.  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.  It is certainly not a way of demonstrating our superiority over any person or group.   The Cross of Christ is the 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 attempt to use God to gain earthly power.  It was also the perspective of the Romans who believed that worshiping their many gods protected their rule.  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 authority.  (Jn. 19:20) Those who place loyalty to empires, nations, or other earthly projects before faithfulness to Christ inevitably 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 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 to liberate us from slavery to its corrupting power and make us participants in eternal life.  The Cross is 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.   To enter into His salvation, we must take up our own crosses as we refuse to make any earthly goal the deepest desire of our hearts. Denying ourselves means putting faithfulness to Him before anything else, including indulging weaknesses 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 embrace the struggle 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 to love God with every ounce of our being and our neighbors as ourselves.  The disciplines of Lent present opportunities to gain the strength to so as we take small steps to die to that which keeps us enslaved to the self-centered ways of the first Adam.  In prayer, we open our hearts to the Savior and learn experientially that our life is in Him.  In fasting from the richest and most sustaining foods, we open ourselves in humility to receive His strength for resisting deeply ingrained habits of self-indulgence. In sharing our time, attention, and resources with others, we follow Christ in offering ourselves for the good of our neighbors.  In forgiving our enemies and welcoming the stranger, we participate in the merciful lovingkindness of our Lord.  These are the most basic disciplines of the Christian life, and they are necessary to help us gain the spiritual strength 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.   We must remain constantly on guard against popular  distortions of Christianity that place their trust in the fallen powers of this world and have no place for a Lord Who loved and forgave His enemies and reigns from a Cross and an empty tomb.

 

If we refuse to deny ourselves even in small ways this Lent, 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 to 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. We will then be even more guilty than they were because we know that His Cross is 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 do the hard work of actually taking up our crosses and denying 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) When we realize how far we are from fulfilling that goal, we must humbly call for the Lord’s mercy from the depths of our souls as we struggle to take even small steps in denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, and following 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 the pursuit of power, possessions, and pleasure.  It does not come through the achievements of the powerful and popular people who seek first the kingdoms of this world.  The same kind of spiritual depravity that drove religious and political leaders to crucify Christ is still very much with us.  When we show that we are ashamed of the way of the Cross by refusing to embrace the daily struggle to take up our own, we demonstrate 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 and learn to offer every dimension of our lives to the Savior 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.  That is what His Cross is all about.   

 

   

 

           

             

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Homily for the Second Sunday of Great Lent with Commemoration of Saint 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 disciplines are simply opportunities to open ourselves in humility 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.  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, to the purifying healing of our Lord’s gracious divine energies. That is how we may truly participate in the joy of His resurrection even as we live in a world still enslaved to the fear of death.       

The Savior’s 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 mighty. That is 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 share in His life in a world that remains full of hatred, bloodshed, and corruption, we must intentionally offer ourselves for healing as we mindfully refuse to worship at the perennial pagan altars of pride, power, and pleasure in all their malign forms.  Doing so requires constant vigilance and struggle against falling back into the spiritual blindness and weakness that our passions so easily bring upon us.  A few minutes of daily prayer, modest restraints on the desires of our stomachs, and small gestures of generosity, when done in humility on a regular basis, open us to receive the grace to participate more fully in His restoration and fulfillment of the human person in the divine image and likeness.         

Since even such small steps will quickly reveal our abiding weaknesses, they teach 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 to rise up from our beds of spiritual paralysis and move forward on the journey to the heavenly kingdom.      

This is not a calling only for those who are great examples of holiness.  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 enemies and 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 and misery.  No difficult circumstance or challenge of our lives excuses us from answering the calling to unite ourselves to Christ from the depths of our hearts each moment.  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 reminds us that the only limits to our participation in the life of Christ are those that we 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.  We will do so not through rational speculation, historical remembrance, or cultivation of emotions about the Savior’s Cross and empty tomb, but by embracing the daily struggle to lift up our hearts in prayer and to live faithfully so that we may enter into the joy of the One Who has destroyed the power of sin and death by His glorious resurrection on the third day.  It is only by truly participating in His life that we may gain the strength to take up our beds and walk to our true home.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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