Homily on the Holy, Glorious Apostles Peter and Paul in the Orthodox Church

 

2 Corinthians 11:21-12:9; Matthew 16:13-19

All of us have our quirks of personality, habits of speaking and acting, and strengths and weaknesses of character.  By living and working in close contact with others, we learn that we are not self-sufficient, which is a good thing.  From the struggles of sharing a common life we learn how much we need the companionship and gifts of neighbors for our own personal growth and the flourishing of our families and other communities, including the Church.  And contrary to what we often think, our weaknesses do not exclude us from sharing more fully in the life of Christ; instead, they provide opportunities for us to embrace more fully His gracious strength.

Today we celebrate two of the most glorious Saints of the Christian faith.  They are both pillars of the Church, apostles, and martyrs whose unique personalities and experiences have made decisive and permanent contributions to the Body of Christ.  Saint Peter was the head disciple whose confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” is the rock on which Christ, our true foundation, has built His Church.    The gospels describe Peter’s presence at so many crucial moments in the ministry of the Lord, including at His arrest when Peter, who had earlier said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” and had vowed never to abandon Him, denied Him three times.  Then the risen Lord restored Peter by asking him three times if he loved Him and giving him the command to feed His sheep as a shepherd of the flock of Christians.  In the Acts of the Apostles, we see Peter boldly proclaiming the good news, performing miracles, and playing a key role in welcoming Gentiles into the Church.   After serving as the first bishop of Antioch, where the disciples were first called Christians, then he went to serve in Rome.  Peter was crucified there upside down for his faith in Jesus Christ, for he considered himself unworthy to die in the same way as His Savior.

        That St. Paul plays a glorious role in the formation of the faith is obvious to anyone who knows the New Testament, for he wrote so much of it.   He traveled for decades founding and supporting churches, especially among Gentiles.  Paul had been a strict Pharisee who had persecuted Christians.  But on the road to Damascus, the risen Lord appeared to Him in a blinding light and called him to repentance and the shocking ministry of bringing Gentiles into the Body of Christ through faith and baptism, not circumcision and obedience to the Old Testament law.  Perhaps more than anyone else, Paul made clear that the Church is not a sect of Judaism for people of a particular ethnic and religious heritage, for Christ’s gospel is  good news for all people, regardless of their ancestry. 

        As today’s epistle passage reminds us, St. Paul’s ministry was not easy by any stretch of the imagination.  He was beaten, imprisoned, humiliated, and ultimately martyred in Rome for his faith in Jesus Christ.  He knew both the heights of spiritual ecstasy and the chronic challenge of a “thorn in the flesh” that God did not remove, despite his three-fold request.  Whatever that thorn may have been, Paul learned through his sufferings the sufficiency of God’s strength for him.  God’s “strength is made perfect in (Paul’s) weakness.“  As the apostle said of himself, “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

        When we study the lives of these two great Saints, we see people with particular personalities who were not rich, famous, or at peace by worldly standards.  These were real human beings who famously fell short, repented, grew over time in their understanding, and faced such opposition that both suffered capital punishment at the hands of the pagan Romans.  They gained no worldly advantages by their faithful ministry, but their selfless service strengthened the Church in ways too numerous to count.  We are here today as Orthodox Christians because of what God did through them and countless other lesser-known apostles, martyrs, and evangelists across the ages.

         To commemorate the feast day of Saints Peter and Paul with integrity, we must go beyond praising them with our words.  We must become like them in a way appropriate to our callings and circumstances.  For just as God used an impulsive fisherman and a zealous Pharisee to His glory, He intends to do likewise with each of us.  As St. Peter wrote, “you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”  (1 Pet. 2:9) As St. Paul wrote, we have become “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone…” (Eph. 2:19-20)

        Each generation is like a new story added to the building or a new branch growing on a tree.  Our life in Christ springs from the living history of what the Holy Spirit has done across the centuries in the life of the Church.  The Spirit empowers us to manifest faithfulness as unique persons called to grow in the divine likeness in our present circumstances.  Just as a fisherman and a Pharisee became radiant with holiness through their repentance and steadfast dedication to Christ, the same may be true of us.

We may think, however, that we are simply too weak and sinful to achieve such spiritual heights.  Remember, however, that Peter denied Christ three times at His arrest and Paul had persecuted Christians to the point of death.  If they can repent, follow Jesus Christ faithfully, and play such exemplary roles in the life of the Church, who are we to excuse ourselves from humbly accepting whatever calling God has for us in our families, our parish, our work, or any area of our lives? 

Today we face obstacles much smaller than those encountered by Saints Peter and Paul.   Nonetheless, our common and subtle temptations reveal our weaknesses because they overcome us so easily.  It does not take much to inflame passions that corrupt us spiritually and tempt our neighbors to stumble. That is why we must refuse to make such brokenness an excuse for despair and instead use it to fuel our humble trust in the One Whose “power is made perfect in weakness.” 

St. Paul found God’s strength precisely in his weakness, in his infirmities that opened his life to the gracious power of God after he had persecuted the Body of Christ and abandoned the self-righteous legalism of the Pharisees. St. Peter surely experienced tremendous weakness when the Lord said to him “Get behind me, Satan” and when he realized what he had done in denying Him three times.   

        When we realize how we have fallen prey to our weaknesses, we are in the perfect place to follow in the way of the fisherman and the Pharisee who in humble repentance found the divine strength that makes up what is lacking, heals infirmities, and even conquers sin and death.   Let us not use a false sense of humility to excuse ourselves from true discipleship as we celebrate the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul.  Instead, let us follow their example as the unique people we are, with all our strengths, failings, and peculiarities, for from the very beginning of the faith, that is the only way that anyone has come to shine brightly with holiness. That is the only way that we will learn that we are not self-sufficient individuals but persons called to participate by grace in the eternal life of the Triune God.         

Homily for the Third Sunday After Pentecost & Third Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

 

Romans 5:1-10; Matthew 6:22-33

 

Have you ever noticed that people can look at the same thing and see something entirely different?  Some see beauty while others behold ugliness.  Some recognize virtue and others perceive corruption.  Some are fascinated and others are simply bored.   The difference is not in what they are looking at but in the eye of the beholder.  If that is true in everyday matters, how much more is it true in what it means to know and experience God with the eye of the soul.  

Christ said that “The eye is the lamp of the body.  So, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is evil, your whole body will be full of darkness.  If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”  Christ is the light of the world, and to know Him means to share in His life so fully that we become radiant with His gracious divine energies from the depths of our souls.  The eyes of our hearts must become fully transparent to Him in order for us to fulfill our calling:  “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” (Matt. 5:14-16)

The eyes of our souls must be clear, focused, and full of the light of Christ for us to see anything in the world truthfully.  For example, all our earthly goods and resources are blessings from God to be offered back to Him for the accomplishment of His gracious purposes, especially to care for “the least of these” with whom Christ identified Himself.  Gaining the spiritual clarity to see them as such is necessary for obeying His teaching that “You cannot serve God and mammon.”  The eyes of our souls must be cleansed for us to avoid the common failing of making money and possessions our false gods.  Those who entrust themselves to them inevitably face temptations toward worry, fear, and resentment.  They can all vanish in an instant, and everyone else is a potential threat to them.  As the Lord taught, “the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.  But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.” 

The spiritual disciplines of the Apostles Fast call us to clarify our spiritual vision and gain the strength to see all the blessings of this life truthfully and not according to our passions.   Our first step is to lift up our hearts to God in prayer each day.   To become receptive to the healing light of our Lord, we must persistently open the darkened eyes of our souls to Him.  The point is not how we feel when we pray, how many prayers we say, or how long we stand before our icons.   We all need to open our hearts to Him as best we can as we focus our minds on the words of the Jesus Prayer, the Trisagion Prayers, the Psalms, or whatever simple order of prayer we are using.  Short prayers with focus and humility are better than long ones with distraction and pride. (Remember the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican.) A short rule of prayer followed consistently is far better than an elaborate one rarely used. If we want healing from the blindness and anxiety of entrusting ourselves to the things of this world, we must focus our darkened spiritual eyes on the light of Christ each day of our lives.

Fasting helps to cleanse our spiritual vision because what we do with our bodies impacts our souls.   When we refuse to indulge ourselves with the richest foods, we gain strength for resisting other temptations to gratify ourselves with money, power, possessions, or pleasure.  Fasting is a tool for learning to see our appetites for what they are and to know experientially that serving ourselves is not the path to peace.  The more enslaved we are to our passions, the more worry, fear, and anger we will have when they are not satisfied.  We must embrace the struggle to pray and fast in order to become humbly receptive to the brilliant light of Christ, Who illumines even the darkest dimensions of the human person in the world as we know it.

 Almsgiving is fueled by prayer, for the gracious mercy of the Lord becomes characteristic of those who unite themselves to Him from their hearts.  Fasting heals the self-centered desires that hinder us from seeing and serving Christ in our suffering neighbors.  Those who fast with integrity will spend less money and time on their own meals, thus freeing up resources to bless others.  Giving generously to the needy and in support of the ministries of the Church helps to heal us from the passion of worshiping blindly at the altars of money and possessions.   It teaches us that the material blessings of creation are not ends in themselves but gifts to be offered back to God, like the bread and wine of the Eucharist.  “Thine own of Thine own, we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all.”      

When we seek to open our darkened spiritual eyes to the brilliant light of Christ through prayer, fasting, and merciful generosity, we will have to struggle mightily with the darkness that remains in us, as well as with so much in our culture that encourages us to find the meaning of our lives in possessions, power, and pleasure.  Looking to the examples of the apostles, however, we must not despair.  Saint Paul endured great hardships of many kinds and ultimately died as a martyr. He gained the spiritual clarity to write that, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.”

           Saint Paul knew that the only way to make such struggles points of entrance to the blessedness of the Kingdom was to endure them with faithfulness, no matter the cost.  He did not do so merely by his own willpower, but “because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.” As St. Paul taught, “Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.  Through Him we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God.”  The Savior did not come to help us become better adjusted to the darkness of our hearts or of the fallen world.  He comes to make us radiant with the eternal light of Heaven by grace.  He calls us to become so receptive to the healing presence of the Holy Spirit that we behold His glory and see all the joys and struggles of this life as they truly are before Him.  Christ calls us to share so fully in His life that we seek first His kingdom with the humble trust that overcomes anxiety about literally anything.  Remember that when He said, “Do not be anxious about your life,” He was addressing His disciples as fellow Jews living under Roman occupation who would literally suffer and die for Him. By His glorious resurrection, the Savior has conquered even the dark pit of the grave and liberated us from slavery to the fear of death.                                                                                                                        

Today none of us has perfect spiritual clarity and we often find ourselves anxious about very small things.  That is why we must do what we can today to open the eyes of our souls to Christ through prayer, fasting, and generosity.  That is how we will grow in our ability to resist the temptation to entrust ourselves to any of the false gods of this world.   The daily circumstances of our lives all provide countless opportunities to become more receptive to the brilliant light of the Lord.  If we will use them for our salvation, and humbly repent whenever we have not, then the light of Christ will illumine us as we unite ourselves evermore fully to Him.    That is how we may all learn to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness” in a world that remains so full of darkness and presents so many temptations to idolatry and fear.  He is the light that we all need to see ourselves and our world clearly as we come to share more fully by grace in His healing and restoration of the human person in the image and likeness of God.   

 

Homily for the Sunday of All Saints in the Orthodox Church

 

Hebrews 11:33-12:2; Matthew 10:32-33, 37-38; 19:27-30

           

The word “saint” simply means “holy.”  On this first Sunday after Pentecost, we commemorate all those who are so filled with the Holy Spirit that they shine brightly with holiness in the heavenly kingdom.  They bear witness to the meaning of Pentecost, for it is by the power of the Holy Spirit that people fulfill their calling to become like God in holiness. When our risen and ascended Lord sent the Holy Spirit upon His followers, He fulfilled the prophecy spoken by Jeremiah: “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” (Jer. 31:33-34) The saints show us that we all may embrace personally the transformation and healing of the Holy Spirit, for the “living water” of the Spirit flows in and through them as a sign of the salvation of the world. (Jn. 7:38) That is how they have become, as St. Paul wrote, “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together.” (Rom. 8:16)

We do not know the names of all the saints, but God certainly knows all who have entered into the blessedness of the heavenly kingdom.  As members together with them of the same Body of Christ, we ask for their prayers as we strive to follow their example of faithful witness to the Lord.  The root meaning of the word “martyr” is “witness,” and from the stoning of St. Stephen the Protomartyr to the present day those who have refused to deny Christ even to the point of death have provided powerful testimony to the Savior Who has liberated them from the fear of the grave.  Their shining example inspires us to take up our crosses in following our Lord as we seek first the Kingdom of God in the circumstances of our lives.

Christ said, “Everyone who acknowledges Me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father Who is in heaven; but whoever denies Me before men, I also will deny before My Father Who is in heaven.” As the varied lives of the saints across the ages demonstrate, there are many ways of showing our faithfulness to Him, even as there are many ways of denying Him.  The saints are the “great…cloud of witnesses” who strengthen us by their examples and prayers in “looking to Jesus the Author and Perfecter of our faith.”  They inspire us to “run with patience the race that is set before us…”

Sainthood and martyrdom are not reserved only for those who refuse to renounce Christ under threat of physical death.  They are our common calling to die to slavery to our passions as we became “partakers of the divine nature” by our personal receptivity to the healing divine energies of the Lord.  Like all the saints, we must acquire the spiritual clarity to say truthfully with Saint Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20) Regardless of whether we are called literally to shed our blood for Christ, we must all become living martyrs who refuse to allow love for anything or anyone to come before loyalty to our Lord.  Doing so requires enduring the inevitable tension that results from struggling to purify the desires of our hearts, which is necessary to take up our crosses.  We will suffer, not because God wants us to be miserable in any way, but because it is so difficult to turn away from the deeply ingrained habits of self-indulgence that have marred the beauty of our souls.  To take up our crosses is to respond faithfully to the challenges that are right before us today.  To acknowledge the Savior in this world requires making the offering of our lives that is necessary for our healing in our current circumstances.  The path to salvation is never an escape from reality but brings healing for the diseases of our souls that we would prefer to ignore. Those who are truly taking up their crosses do the hard work of learning to “seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.”  (Matt. 6:33) 

Holiness is not a reward for people who have never sinned, even as health is not a reward for people who have never been sick.  The popular image of the ideal religious person as a self-righteous legalist who condemns others has nothing to do with acquiring true spiritual health.  As St. John wrote in his epistle, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 Jn. 1:8-9) True saints are people like King David (who had committed murder and adultery), St. Peter (the head disciple who had denied His Lord three times), and St. Mary of Egypt (who had endured a horribly depraved life as a sex addict).  They all found healing through repentance as they pursued the difficult struggle to reorient the desires of their hearts toward God and to live accordingly.  Likewise, St. Paul, formerly a persecutor of Christians who referred to himself as the chief of sinners, wrote that the Lord showed him mercy “as a pattern to those who are going to believe on Him for everlasting life.”  (1 Tim. 1:16)  

That such broken people became glorious saints is not an exception to the rule, but the norm.  We will never find healing for our souls by convincing ourselves that we have somehow already fulfilled the Lord’s command to “be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matt. 5:48) Neither will we will share in the holiness of God by accepting the lie that anything we have ever said, thought, or done makes it impossible for us to be transformed by the Lord’s healing mercy.  St. Photini, the Samaritan woman at the well, and St. Zacchaeus, the corrupt tax-collector, were lost causes according to the religious and moral standards of first-century Palestine, but they received Christ in humility in ways that transformed them into glorious examples of holiness.     

 They remind us that everyone who shares in the blessed life of the Savior does so through their participation in His grace, not as a reward for obeying laws.  Our reading from Hebrews teaches that the righteous of the Old Testament, “though well attested by their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had foreseen something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.”  It is simply impossible to become like God in holiness apart from sharing in Jesus Christ’s gracious healing and fulfillment of the human person.  He enables both those who may appear to have never done anything wrong and those who may appear never to have done anything right to become His saints. We follow their examples by embracing the struggle to entrust ourselves so fully to Him that we become living icons of His salvation.   That is the only way that anyone becomes a “partaker of the divine nature” by grace.

 Looking to the example of all those who have entered into the holiness of God, “since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfection of our faith.”  Let us take up our crosses as we acknowledge and serve Him each day of our lives, which will be shown in how we treat our neighbors, especially those we find it hardest to love. That is how we may all become living martyrs who bear witness to the active presence of the Holy Spirit, sent by the risen and ascended Lord, for the salvation of the world. Our calling is not to religious legalism or self-righteousness but simply to receive the healing of our souls in humility. That is how we may bear witness to the Lord’s  fulfillment of the human person in the divine likeness along with all those who have entered into the holiness of God.  That is the calling of each and every one of us.  That is what it means to become a saint.