Homily for the Sunday of the After-feast of the Ascension with Commemoration of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council in the Orthodox Church

 

Acts 20:16-18, 28-36; John 17:1-13

            The passage most quoted in the New Testament from the Old Testament is Psalm 109:1  (110): “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at My right hand, until I make Your enemies the footstool of Your feet.’” Forty days after His resurrection, our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ ascended in glory into heaven and sat at the right hand of God the Father.  He did so as One Who is fully divine and fully human, One Person with two natures. He ascended with His glorified, resurrected body, which still bore the wounds of His crucifixion.  Our Lord’s Ascension manifests our calling to participate by grace in the eternal life of the Holy Trinity and share in His fulfillment of the human person in God’s image and likeness.   His Ascension enables us to experience such blessedness even now by uniting ourselves to Him even as we live and breathe in the world as we know it.

We also commemorate today the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea, which met 1,701 years ago in AD 325.  They rejected the teaching of Arius that Jesus Christ was not truly divine, but a lesser god created by the Father.  The Council declared, as we confess to this day in the Nicene Creed, that our Savior is “the Son of God, the only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all worlds. Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, of one essence with the Father, by Whom all things were made.”  The Fathers of Nicaea saw clearly that the One Who brings us into the eternal life of God must Himself be eternal and divine.  No mere creature could ever enable us to become radiant with the gracious divine energies as participants in heavenly glory.    

Had Christ been simply a great religious teacher, He could not have conquered death or brought us up to heaven through His Ascension. Those who claim to admire the Savior today as merely an excellent human being actually reject Him, for they deny the true identity of the God-Man Who unites humanity and divinity in Himself.  Only He could say to the Father, “Glorify Me in Your own presence with the glory which I had with You before the world was made.”  Only He can bring those made of the dust of the Earth into the eternal life of the Holy Trinity.   

            The divine brilliance of Christ’s Ascension is entirely different from the illusion of trying to raise ourselves up according to the standards of a world that remains estranged from the blessedness of the heavenly Kingdom.  We so easily give in to the temptation to define and entrust ourselves to the passing standards and agendas of this world that can never heal our souls.  The more that we give our hearts to even the noblest human endeavors as ends in themselves, the more enslaved we become to false hopes that distract us from embracing our true fulfillment in God.   Since we bear God’s image and likeness, to ground our lives in anything other than Him will lead ultimately only to worry, sorrow, and disappointment.

            Doing so will make us blind to the glory of our ascended Lord, Who went up to heaven only after dying on the Cross, being buried in a tomb, and enduring the ultimate descent to Hades.  He rose from the dead because He had humbled Himself to the point of accepting rejection, torture, and crucifixion as a blasphemer and a traitor purely out of selfless love and compassion for His broken and suffering children, who had enslaved themselves to the fear of death through sin. 

Christ endured all this as the eternal Son of God Who spoke the universe into existence. The unfathomable humility and lovingkindness of the Savior contradicts the idolatry of those who assume God must be just like them in their hatred and cruel vengeance against their enemies.  If we dare to identify ourselves with Christ, we must open the eyes of our souls to the light of His heavenly glory and refuse to live as those who wander in spiritual blindness in a world marred by the sorrowful brokenness of the children of Adam and Eve.

By rising into heavenly glory as the God-Man, Christ has shown us what it means to become truly human in the divine image and likeness. The great contrast between the heights of heaven and the mundane realities of our lives is obvious. That is not because we are ordinary people with ordinary problems and temptations.   It is because we have not united ourselves to Christ to the point that every aspect of our life in this world has become a brilliant icon of His salvation.  There is so much in each of us that has not yet ascended in holiness with our Lord.          

We must use that recognition not as an excuse but instead as a reminder to be vigilant against the temptation to think that the circumstances of our lives somehow make it impossible for us to become radiant with His holiness.  As Christ said, “the kingdom of God is within you.” (Lk. 17:21) Whenever we forgive someone who wronged us, ask forgiveness of those we have wronged, show mercy to the poor and needy, put someone else’s needs before our own, or resist temptation in any way, we are participating already in the heavenly reign. We have certainly not fulfilled our calling to become perfect as our heavenly Father, but we are truly becoming more like Christ in holiness as we take even small and imperfect steps to conform our character to His.  That is how we may ascend into heavenly glory even as we live and breathe in this world.

We must, therefore, remain on guard against all the fantasies and obsessions that distract us from true faithfulness in the present circumstances of our lives.  In our families, friendships, and workplaces, and also in our parish, we must humble ourselves by serving our neighbors.   We must refuse to allow thoughts that fuel our passions to take root in our hearts, for they will make it impossible to become like Christ in self-emptying love. The only way to ascend with Christ is to unite ourselves to Him in humble faith and obedience.  Christ prayed to the Father that His followers “may be one, even as We are one.”  Contrary to popular opinion, it is not possible to pursue the Christian life as an isolated individual on the basis of emotion, beliefs, ideas, morality, politics, or anything else.  The Church is Christ’s Body and we are members of Him together.  He is the Vine and we are the branches.  The Lord ascended with His Body and we will too as we serve Him together in His Body, the Church, by doing what needs to be done for the healing of our souls, the flourishing of our small parish, and the good of our neighbors. 

We must not be distracted from living faithfully in the present by fantasizing about how much better we imagine our path would be if we lived elsewhere or had different callings in life.  We must not live in the past or in the future but simply focus on uniting ourselves to Christ in holiness as we actually are in this world.  Our best opportunities for healing and transformation may well be in the dimensions of our lives that we are strongly tempted to escape for the sake of a delusional spirituality.

Today we continue to celebrate that the Lord has ascended and brought our humanity into heavenly glory.   Now we must go up together with Him each day of our lives as we come to share more fully in the salvation that only the God-Man could bring.  Even as we live and breathe in this world, with all of its frustrations and disappointments, let us rise up with Christ in holiness, for that is what it means to become truly human in the image and likeness of God.   

 

Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Pascha: Sunday of the Blind Man in the Orthodox Church

 

 2 Cor. 4:6-15; John 9:1-38

 

 Christ is Risen! Indeed, He is Risen!

 

On this last Sunday of Pascha, we celebrate that the Risen Lord has brought us from the spiritual darkness of sin and death into the brilliant light of His heavenly Kingdom.  Even as Christ restored sight to the man born blind in today’s gospel reading, He illumines our darkened souls.  That is how He enables us to know and experience Him as “partakers of the divine nature” by grace. 

Before the God-Man’s healing of our corrupt humanity, grave spiritual blindness was the common lot of the children of the first Adam, who were enslaved to the fear of death as the wages of sin. When the Lord spat on the ground to make clay for the man’s eyes in today’s gospel reading, He showed that His healing is an extension of His incarnation in which He enters fully into our humanity as those made from the dust of the earth.  The blind man regained his sight after washing in the pool of Siloam, which is an image of baptism, which illumines us and restores our spiritual sight.  The man did not really know Who the Lord was when he first encountered Him, thinking that He was merely a prophet.  After the restoration of his sight, the Savior revealed Himself as the Son of God; then the eyes of the man’s soul were illumined to know Christ in His divine glory. “He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshiped Him.”

The good news of Christ’s resurrection is even more extraordinary than the unprecedented restoration of sight to the man blind from birth, and it is not simply a religious teaching or a point of history.  Through His victory over the corrupting powers of sin and death, He opens the eyes of our souls, enabling us to know, experience, and be united with Him from the depths of our hearts by grace.   In order truly to confess His resurrection, we must become participants in the eternal life that He has brought to the world. We must become radiant with the light that shines from the empty tomb and illumines even the darkest corners of our lives.   

When Christ was asked whose sin was responsible for the man being born blind, He answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.”  The Savior rejected the common assumption that such a terrible malady must be a punishment for a particular sin.  We simply do not know why many things happen in this life, but we may always respond to even the worst circumstances in ways that open our hearts more fully to the light of Christ. The Risen Lord has illumined even the tomb itself, making it an entrance into eternal life.  Our participation by grace in the joy of His resurrection is not a reward for morality, legality, or religiosity; it is no more a matter of getting what we, as opposed to others, deserve than was the healing of the blind man.  We stand in need not of justice, but of the infinite healing mercy that enables us to behold the glory of God.  If our spiritual blindness is being healed, then we will become radiant with the light of His mercy, providing a sign of hope to our neighbors in our darkened world.        

  To gain the spiritual clarity to do that, we must shut our eyes to all that would keep us stumbling in the darkness of sin and enslaved to the fear of death.  Because the eyes of our souls are not yet fully transparent to the light of the Lord, none of us has perfect spiritual vision.  We do not yet see or know God, our neighbors, or ourselves clearly, but in ways that are deeply distorted by our passions.  That is why we must struggle to become fully receptive to the brilliant divine energies of our Lord through the healing found in the sacramental and ascetical life of the Church.   As those who were born spiritually blind and have been illumined through the washing of baptism and the anointing of chrismation, we must remain vigilant against the persistent temptation to fall back into the comfortable ways of corruption.  There is so much within us that would prefer to hide in the darkness rather than to be illumined in God. The more that we are fully present to the Lord from the depths of our hearts, the more we will know Him and ourselves. That is why we must pray daily, fast and confess regularly, serve our neighbors (especially those we find it hard to love) at every opportunity, and refuse to worship the false gods of this world (especially those we find most appealing).  That is also why we must guard our eyes from entertainment, media, and anything else that would inflame our passions and keep us enslaved to the darkness of sin. 

The blind man did not respond to Christ’s instructions with questions and reservations driven by fear or anxiety about the future course of his life.  He simply obeyed, washed, saw, and then moved forward to encounter challenges he could never have anticipated.  His example reminds us to cultivate the spiritual simplicity of obedience.  If we want healing, we must not allow anything to distract us from attending to our one essential calling of opening the eyes of our souls to the brilliant light of Christ.  Doing so is not simply a one-time experience but requires persisting in the eternal journey of becoming radiant with the divine energies of our Lord as we become more like Him in holiness. None of us can ever say that we have completed this infinite calling.  The Savior has conquered even death itself to illumine every dimension of our darkened souls with the light of heavenly glory.  The more receptive we are to His light, the more we will be aware of the darkness that remains with us.  That is not a moment to be discouraged or paralyzed by fear but instead simply to obey Christ in humility as best we can, as did the man born blind.

As we conclude this season of Pascha, we must mindfully resist the temptation to allow the blindness of a world still enslaved to the fear of death to obscure our spiritual vision.  Those who criticized Christ for daring to heal on the Sabbath were so concerned with using religion to serve their desires for position and power that they refused to open their eyes to the Light of the world. We must be on guard against the subtle temptation to identify ourselves with the Savior while welcoming darkness into our souls every bit as much as they did.  We may still mouth words about His resurrection and call ourselves Christians as we wander further into the dark night of entrusting ourselves to the false gods of this world.  If we are making money, possessions, physical appearance, food, drink, sex, the approval of others, or anything else to which we have a passionate attachment the driving purpose of our lives, then we are living as though Christ were still in the grave.  If we condemn any set of our neighbors and hope fundamentally in some arrangement of earthly success that promises to raise us up above those we love to hate, then we are shutting the eyes of our souls to the brilliant light of the Lord, regardless of how religious or moral we may claim to be.

Our Lord died as the innocent victim of violence at the hands of corrupt religious and political leaders, and He calls us to become living witnesses of His victory over even Hades and the tomb in the world as we know it with all its depravity and disappointment.   Nothing can keep us from doing so other than our own stubborn choice to persist in spiritual blindness.  As we prepare to bid farewell to the season of Pascha this year, let us persist in the struggle to enter as fully as possible into the new day of the Savior’s resurrection as we turn away from darkness in all its forms and embrace the Light of the world from the depths of our hearts. Let us redirect the energy and attention that we so commonly invest in gratifying our passions to repudiating the darkness as we open the eyes of our souls as fully as possible to the brilliant light of Christ.  Let us become radiant with the Light Who shines brightly from the empty tomb, always keeping the joy of Pascha in our hearts. For that is what it means to live each day as those who are being illumined by the One Whose rose in glory for our salvation, for Christ is Risen!      

 

Homily for the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman in the Orthodox Church

 

Acts 11:19-30; John 4:5-42

Christ is Risen!  Indeed, He is Risen!

The good news of our Lord’s resurrection challenges our deepest assumptions about ourselves and about life in this world as we know it.  Since the God-Man has entered fully into death and conquered it, making even the grave an entrance into eternal life, reality is radically different from what we typically assume.  If death is not a complete loss from which we need constant distraction to avoid being overcome by despair, then the basis for anxiety and misery driven by fear of the grave has been destroyed.  Life is no longer a zero-sum struggle of this group over against that for power and status.  It is no longer an endless competition between people trying to prove that they are more virtuous than others. By leading us back to Paradise through His resurrection, the Savior has destroyed the foundations of the enmity and resentment that first appeared when Cain murdered his brother Abel.  The brilliant light of the empty tomb reveals the blindness of those who insist on wandering in such darkness. 

Today we commemorate how our Lord’s salvation extended to someone who was on the wrong side of many such divisions in first-century Palestine:  a Samaritan woman who became the Great MartyrPhotini.  In that time and place, no one would have assumed that she could become a great evangelist of the Messiah’s salvation.  Most obviously, she was a Samaritan.  The Jews viewed the Samaritans as heretics who had corrupted the faith and heritage of Israel, and they had nothing at all to do with them.  As well, Photini’s conversation with the Savior reveals that she had had five husbands and was then with a man to whom she was not married.  We do not know the reasons for the brokenness of her marital life, but she surely had known great personal trauma.  Perhaps she went to the well at noon to avoid encountering other women in her community who wanted nothing to do with the likes of her.  Moreover, a Jewish man would not strike up a conversation with a woman in public and certainly would not ask a Samaritan woman for a drink of water.  This scene is deeply shocking and scandalous according to the religious and cultural sensibilities of the day.   

            How interesting, then, that the Lord’s talk with Photini is His longest conversation in any of the gospels. In it she showed far greater spiritual understanding than had the Pharisee Nicodemus, a man and a law-abiding Jew, in his conversation with Christ in the previous chapter of the gospel according to St. John.  Photini also showed great humility in making no excuses about the most painful details of her life.  When the Lord told her that He knew about her five former husbands and current relationship, she said, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet” and then continued the conversation.  She did not become defensive or leave due to hurt pride or embarrassment.  Instead, she accepted the hard truths about herself as her eyes were opened to behold the light of Christ. She refused to give in to the temptation to think that because she was a woman, a sinner, and a Samaritan that she could not or should not open her heart to the good news brought by the unusual Jewish man who spoke to her not as a hated foreigner but as a beloved daughter. Photini was so deeply transformed by this encounter with Christ that she even preached to her fellow Samaritans, which must have taken tremendous courage, for her neighbors did not think of her as a spiritual teacher.  Photini found such joy in receiving the Lord’s mercy that she become an evangelist and ultimately a martyr together with her sons and sisters.  

            It is impossible to tell the story of our Lord’s resurrection without highlighting the uniquely blessed role of the women who were the very first witnesses of the empty tomb.  Mary Magdalene was the first preacher of the resurrection, for she proclaimed the good news to the apostles.  Likewise, Photini bore witness to her neighbors about this unusual Jewish Messiah so powerfully that many Samaritans believed and the Lord actually stayed with them for two days. The Church honors both Mary Magdalene and Photini as being “equal to the apostles” in proclaiming the good news.

            Christ calls us all to follow the same basic path back to Paradise.   As St. Paul taught, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  (Gal. 3:28) He rose in victory over all the corrupting influences of sin, including the domination, strife, and sorrow that so often characterize the relationship between men and women. In Him, the spiritual status of the sexes is the same; the differences between men and women concern the body, not the soul.  Male or female, the saints are examples of how to share fully in the life of our Savior.  Absolutely nothing in the biological differences between males and females excludes or excuses anyone from responding to the calling to become radiant with the divine energies as a living icon of God, for we all bear His image equally. We must not allow differences in the roles fulfilled by the sexes in any time or place, or in the life of the Church, to obscure that fundamental truth.  Even as that is true of the God-given distinction between male and female, we must be on guard against the temptation to allow divisions of any kind between groups of people to determine whether we treat each person as a living icon of Christ who is called to enter into the joy of His resurrection.  The differences between races, ethnicities, and other groupings that seem so important in our world of corruption have no spiritual significance in our Lord’s Kingdom.  In the brilliant light of the resurrection, we should not define ourselves or anyone else in light of them. 

There was no small controversy in the early Church about whether Gentiles could become Christians without first becoming Jews. Today’s reading from Acts describes the establishment of the first Gentile church in Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians.  Especially as Antiochian Orthodox Christians, we know that our faith is not the property or servant of any nation, ethnic group, or ideological faction.  Christ’s Kingdom subverts the categories of our fallen world and calls into question our assumptions about who “we” are in relation to “them.” He died and rose up in order to fulfill His gracious purposes for all He created to become like God in holiness as “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  There is no ethnic, national, or political test for sharing in His life.  He empowered a Samaritan woman with a broken personal history to become a powerful evangelist and martyr.  He has drawn Gentiles into His Body, the Church, in fulfillment of the ancient promises to Abraham for the salvation of all peoples through faith.  His great victory over sin and death destroys the basis of judging the spiritual prospects of anyone according to the conventional standards of this world.  In order to enter into the joy of Christ’s resurrection, we must refuse to think, speak, and act as though we were still held captive to the fear of death, which is at the root of our pathetic inclination to view and treat people, no matter who they are, according to worldly divisions that contradict to the good news of our salvation.

            Christ said, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:32) No one other than the Savior would have looked at Photini and seen a future saint who would shine with the light of holiness. Her transformation shows that there is hope for us all in the mercy of Christ.  Nothing but our own pride can keep us from humbly opening our souls to the Lord for healing, as she did.  Even as we must entrust ourselves to the Lord’s mercy as “the chief of sinners,” we must not view anyone else as a lost cause before God.  Christ warned the self-righteous religious leaders who rejected Him, “Tax-collectors and prostitutes are entering the Kingdom of God before you.” (Matt. 21:31) Even as we pray for the Lord’s mercy on our sick souls, we must pray for His blessings for our neighbors, especially those we are inclined to view as lost causes.    If our Risen Lord can make a great saint out of the Samaritan woman at the well, there is hope for literally every person to be set free from the enslaving ravages of sin.  Who are we to place limits on the saving power of the One Who conquered death for the salvation of the world?  Trying to do so shows that we have failed to appreciate the radically good news of the resurrection, which enables all to be restored as fully human persons in the image and likeness of God.   

St. Photini’s example invites us to follow her into the life of a Kingdom not constrained by the corruptions of our fallen world.  She was an unlikely evangelist in her time and place but had such courageous and steadfast faith that she did not allow anything to stop or distract her.  Let us embrace the joy of the resurrection so profoundly that, like her, we bear witness to the Lord Who shares His victory over death with even the most unlikely strangers, outcasts, and sinners. Regardless of our own history of personal brokenness or where we stand according to any social divisions, He calls us all to the blessedness of Paradise.  Like St. Photini, let us respond to Him accordingly, for “Christ is Risen!”