Homily for the Eleventh Sunday of Matthew and After-feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos in the Orthodox Church

 

Matthew 18:23-35

Today we continue to celebrate the Dormition of the Theotokos, the “falling asleep” of our Lord’s virgin mother, who was the first to receive Christ into her life and the first to follow Him into the Kingdom of heaven as a whole, embodied person.  The Savior was born into our world as the God-Man through her receptivity and obedience.  She was born into the fullness of eternal life through her Son, the Victor over death.  Her glorious example inspires us to embrace our calling to become like God in holiness in every dimension of our personhood. 

The Theotokos is as fully human according to nature as the rest of us, and she has become the epitome of holiness by uniting herself without reservation to the Lord.  She became the living Temple of God, the Ark of the New Covenant, when she freely accepted her unique vocation as His virgin mother who contained the eternal Son of God in her womb.  She points us to her Son by her blessed example and her constant prayers that the water of our lives may be transformed into the wine of the Messianic Banquet.   

Even as we celebrate the Theotokos’ translation to the heavens, we confront a difficult truth in today’s gospel reading about what it means to become fully receptive to her Son.  The first servant begged for more time to pay an unbelievably large debt and his master responded with shocking mercy, forgiving the debt completely. But instead of sharing the mercy that he had received with a fellow servant who owed him much less, the man refused to show any compassion.  He had the second servant put into prison until he could pay the full amount.  When the master heard what had happened, he had the first servant put in jail until he could repay the massive amount he owed.  Christ concludes the parable with these chilling words: “So also My heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”

This parable presents an uncomfortable truth: How we treat those who are in our debt or who have wronged us reveals the true state of our souls.  If we have embraced the Lord’s mercy, then His gracious divine energies must permeate our lives.  He said, “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.”  To become radiant with mercy to the point we do not limit our love only to people who treat us well is necessary to obey Christ’s commandment: “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt. 5: 44-48)

If we dare to call upon God’s forgiveness for our sins, we will condemn ourselves as hypocrites if we refuse to forgive others.  He is infinitely holy and we are each the chief of sinners against the Father Who sent His Son for the salvation of the world. (Jn. 3:17)   As those who ask for mercy beyond what we could possibly deserve, how could we ever be justified in refusing to forgive someone else?   The God-Man enables us to become like Him in holiness, and He forgave even those who rejected, betrayed, and killed Him.  Since Christ has identified Himself with even the lowliest people, how we treat those who have offended us is how we treat our Lord.  Everyone is a living icon of God. As St. John wrote, “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.”   (1 Jn 4:20) When we refuse to forgive others, we show not only a lack of love for them, but also for the Savior.

Despite our best intentions, forgiveness of those who have wronged us deeply rarely comes quickly or easily.  Forgiveness is not simply a matter of what we say or how we act, but roots in our hearts, even as murder roots in anger and adultery roots in lust.  Christ calls us to share in His life so fully that we acquire the purity of heart that comes from the healing of the corruption that darkens our spiritual vision.    A necessary step in embracing that healing is to mindfully turn away from obsessing about the wrongs of others. We gain the strength to do so by opening our hearts to the healing power of the Holy Spirit. St. Paul wrote, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Gal. 5:22-23) As St. Silouan the Athonite taught, “One can only love one’s enemies through the grace of the Holy Spirit.” And “He who does not love his enemies, does not have God’s grace.”

How we respond to those who have wronged us reveals the true state of our souls in a way that goes beyond the simplistic distortions of the Christian faith that are so popular in our culture.  Regardless of our opinions about anything, how moral our outward behavior may be, or what warm feelings we may have about Christ, if we are so enslaved to the passions of pride and anger that we hate, condemn, and refuse to forgive anyone, then we reject our Lord because we refuse to embrace His gracious healing to the point that we conform our character to His.  We so easily become blind to the image of God in those we resent due to our own passions.  Doing so is nothing less than repeating Cain’s murder of Abel in our hearts.   Apart from the healing power of the Holy Spirit, there is simply no escape from slavery to an endless cycle of retribution that leads only to the grave.  We do not have to look very closely at our world today to see the tragic results of living that way. 

The Savior endured the full consequences of such depravity in His crucifixion and death to lead us from the grave to the glory of the heavenly kingdom through His resurrection on the third day.  He abides in our hearts through the Holy Spirit through Whom we are able to cry out to God “Abba, Father,” for we are not slaves, but beloved children of God, heirs to all the promises to Abraham through faith in Christ. (Gal. 4:6) In order to receive His healing strength, we must open ourselves as fully as possible to the power of the Holy Spirit.   He is “everywhere present and fills all things” and we have received Him personally in the holy mystery of Chrismation.  In order to acquire the fruits of the Spirit, we must actively cooperate with God’s grace by struggling to grow in humility, which means learning to see ourselves as we truly are.  That is what the first servant in today’s parable obviously lacked.  When we know in our hearts that we are the chief of sinners and recognize that our very existence and all our blessings are dependent upon the undeserved mercy of the Lord, then we will no longer be driven to condemn anyone else.

The path to the healing of our souls does not run through self-righteous legalism or attempts to use God to raise ourselves up over anyone else for any reason.  The Theotokos, who humbly said “Yes!” to God with every ounce of her being, shows us a completely different path.  She condemned no one, not even those who crucified her Son, for she was so united with Him in love that there was no place in her soul for hatred.   We will acquire the spiritual health to forgive from our hearts those who have wronged us when, like her, we become so receptive and obedient to the Lord that we recognize the folly of focusing on anything other than the one thing needful of hearing and obeying the Word of God.  More than anyone else, the Theotokos shows us how to gain the strength necessary to live as those who are “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.  Let us follow her glorious example, for she embodies the path to the Kingdom of Heaven.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Homily for the Tenth Sunday After Pentecost, the Tenth Sunday of Matthew, and the After-feast of the Transfiguration of Christ in the Orthodox Church

 

1 Corinthians 4:9-16; Matthew 17:14-23

 

            We are presently in an especially rich period of the life of the Church, as we continue to celebrate our Lord’s Transfiguration on Mount Tabor and prepare for the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos.  The spiritual eyes of Peter, James, and John were opened to behold the brilliant divine glory of the Lord as they saw Him speaking with Moses and Elijah.  Then from a bright cloud the voice of the Father proclaimed, “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!” (Matt. 17:5). This miraculous vision occurred to enable the disciples, at Christ’s crucifixion, to remember that His “suffering was voluntary” so that they “could declare to all the world that Thou art truly the effulgent Splendor of the Father.”

 

            In His Transfiguration, it is revealed that the Savior is the God-Man, fully divine even as He is fully human.  He enables us to become transfigured in holiness by sharing personally in His gracious divine energies.  That is possible because of His incarnation, which required the free response of the woman called to become His virgin mother.  During the Dormition Fast, we humble ourselves as we celebrate how Mary was transfigured in holiness as the Theotokos, the Living Temple of the Lord, who at her “falling asleep” became the first to follow Him as a whole, embodied person into the Kingdom of Heaven.  She points us to her Son as the greatest example of receptivity and devotion to the Savior.

 

            Even as the Transfiguration was to prepare the disciples for the Lord’s crucifixion, the life of the Theotokos has a deep connection to the Cross.   As St. Symeon said to her at the presentation of the 40-day old Christ in the Temple, “a sword will pierce through your own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” (Lk. 2:35) We cannot begin to imagine the pain that she experienced as she saw her Son and God rejected and crucified before her own eyes.  Nonetheless, she never abandoned Him and surely no one rejoiced at His resurrection as did His virgin mother. 

 

            The hard truth is that being transfigured in holiness requires taking up our crosses and enduring the struggle and pain that are necessary for the healing of our souls.  Since we are not isolated individuals but members together of Christ’s Body, the Church, it is not surprising that our spiritual health requires offering ourselves for the wellbeing of our neighbors.   That is especially the case for parents who have both a uniquely deep bond with their children and a unique responsibility to put their interests before their own.    

 

The father of the epileptic boy in today’s gospel reading stands out as a shining example of what it means to lift up our broken hearts for our loved ones in humility. The poor man sorrowed over the sufferings of his son, whose seizures put his life at risk by causing him to fall into both fire and water.  This encounter is reported by St. Matthew immediately after Peter, James, and John had beheld the divine glory of the Lord at His Transfiguration.  The man had asked the disciples to heal him, but they lacked the strength to do so.  The Lord spoke sternly about the spiritual weakness of those who followed Him most closely: “O faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.”  Then He healed the young man.  The disciples, being unaware of why they were unable to help in this situation, asked the Lord about it.  His response must have been hard to hear: “Because you have no faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you. This kind never comes out except by prayer and fasting.”

 

            As hard as it is for us to understand, the attachment the disciples—including those who had beheld His Transfiguration-- had to Christ at this point was not true faith in Him.  Since the Savior said that “This kind never comes out except by prayer and fasting,” they must have lacked even the most basic spiritual disciplines.  The passage ends with Christ foretelling His Passion: “The Son of man is to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him, and He will rise on the third day.”  All the gospels indicate that the disciples did not expect the Messiah to die and rise from the grave. They shared the dominant hope for a military champion to defeat the Roman forces of occupation and set up an earthly kingdom, in which they expected to have places of prominence.  Remember that the Lord said, “Get behind me, Satan!” to Peter, the head disciple, when he rejected the prediction of His cross and empty tomb. (Mk. 8:33) The hearts of the disciples would have to be broken through their denial and abandonment of the Savior Who went to the Cross for them finally to become receptive to a Messiah very different from what they had expected.

 

            St. Paul dealt with similar misunderstandings in the church at Corinth where some had built themselves up in their own minds in stark contrast to the humble obedience characteristic of true apostles.  Paul wrote that true apostles are fools for Christ, weak, held in disrepute, hungry, thirsty, homeless, and persecuted.  They were obviously not out for praise, glory, or self-satisfaction, but manifested in their sufferings the true way of the Lord as they blessed and forgave their tormentors.  That is why Paul could say with integrity, “be imitators of me.”  By enduring the pain and struggle of a heart broken for love of Christ and His Body, the Church, he had been transfigured in holiness.

 

The heart of the father in today’s gospel lesson had already been broken by his recognition that he could not heal or protect his son from seizures that could cause his death.  Years of caring for the boy had revealed his own weaknesses and limitations.  The common hopes of parents to see their family lines thrive in future generations rang hollow for him now.  He struggled to think that he could keep his son from dying an untimely death and he was disappointed yet again when the disciples could not heal him.  In St. Mark’s account of this encounter, we learn that the “father cried out and said with tears, ‘Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!’ in response to the Savior’s words ‘If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.’ (Mk. 9:23-24) In the midst of this man’s brokenness and pain, he knew that his faith was far from perfect.  He had acquired the humility to see his weakness clearly. His heart would never be healed by pretending he was something he was not.  He cried honestly to the Lord from the depths of his soul and the Lord heard his plea and healed his son.

 

            As King David wrote in Psalm 50, “a contrite and humble heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise.” Our hearts will become contrite and humble when we confront how we have marred the beauty of our souls and refused to fulfill our calling to become like God in holiness.  St. Mark the Ascetic wrote that “Remembrance of God is pain of the heart endured in the spirit of devotion.”  We will experience pain in our hearts when we struggle to open our deepest struggles and the darkest crevices of our souls to the healing light of Christ. We will then know the infinite distance between the brilliant holiness to which we are called and the dark corruption that festers within us. Doing so requires mindfully dying daily to the slavery of our passions and reorienting the desires of our hearts for true fulfillment in God.  Especially in this season, we must pray, fast, serve our neighbors sacrificially, and otherwise do all that we have the strength to do in taking up our crosses if we are to become transfigured in holiness like the Theotokos and follow her into the eternal joy of the Kingdom of Heaven. She did not shy away from taking up her uniquely heavy cross.  Let us follow her blessed example in gaining the strength to become totally receptive and obedient to the Lord, despite the cost, for that is how we may all come to shine resplendently with the divine glory.  That is how we may share even now in the eternal life of the God-Man Whose “face shone like the sun” and Whose “clothes became as white as the light” on Mount Tabor as the voice of the Father proclaimed, “This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased. Hear Him!”

 

             

 

How Not to Sink Like a Stone in the Raging Seas of our Passions: Homily for the Ninth Sunday After Pentecost & Ninth Sunday of Matthew in the Orthodox Church

 

1 Corinthians 3:9-17: Matthew 14:22-34

 

It is easy for us today to become so focused on our worries, fears, and problems that we start to sink into a deep sea of despair.  We endure almost constant bombardment with images and messages that call us to judge ourselves and others according to cultural standards of success, such as wealth, beauty, and popularity.  No matter how successful we may be in pursuing such goals, those who bear the image and likeness of God will never find true satisfaction in them.   To make them the foundation of our wellbeing is a recipe for disaster, for they cannot heal the soul and can all disappear in an instant.  If our horizons extend no further than that, we will never become transfigured in holiness by the gracious energies of the New Adam.  Instead, we will sink like stones in a sea of despair.

 

 St. Peter began to do precisely that when he turned his focus away from the Lord to fixate on the wind and the waves.  By his own nature, there was simply no way that Peter could have avoided drowning, but he called out “Lord, save me!”  That is precisely what the Savior did by reaching out to Peter and rescuing him as He said, “O man of little faith, why did you doubt?”  The stress of the storm revealed the weakness of Peter’s faith, which is not surprising because he had gotten himself into this situation by foolishly putting Christ to the test, saying “Lord, if it is You, bid me come to You on the water.”   By his impulsiveness and lack of humble trust, Peter literally got himself in well over his head. He had to learn the hard way that he had no foundation, no basis for life itself, other than Jesus Christ.  If left to his own devices, he would have sunk like a stone into a watery grave.   

 

That is a destination completely different from the one to which our Lord calls us. The God-Man came to do nothing less than to transfigure us in holiness with His gracious divine energies as the uniquely blessed persons He created us to become.  The Savior called His disciples to “be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect.”  (Matt. 5:48) He cited the Psalms: “You are gods, and all of you are children of the Most High.” (Psalm 82:6; Jn. 10:34) While we remain human beings by nature, Christ enables us to become like Him by our personal participation in His grace. That is why theosis is an eternal process, for God’s holiness is truly infinite.  Contrary to the self-centered individualism celebrated by our culture, Christ calls us to become persons united in humble love with Him, our fellow members of His Body, the Church, and our neighbors.   We become more beautiful living icons of God not in self-centered isolation or by defining ourselves as enemies over against anyone else but by growing in communion with Him and all who bear His image and likeness. 

 

The contrast between seeking fulfillment according to our passions and our Lord’s salvation is starker than the difference between night and day.  It is truly the difference been death and life, between sinking to the bottom of a dark sea and becoming resplendent with the radiant glory of God. Our Lord has conquered death, Hades, and the tomb in His glorious resurrection on the third day.  His divine glory has flooded even the darkest abyss, even the most tragic and painful pits of despair into which we can fall.  He has liberated us from slavery to the fear of death as the God-Man Who shares His eternal life with weak, fearful, anxious, and confused people like us.  When we call out to Him with faith from the depths of our hearts, as Peter did when he began to sink, His healing light will illumine our darkened souls.   

 

As St. Paul taught, “no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”  No one and nothing else can have that place in our lives, for to ground our existence elsewhere is to commit idolatry.  No matter how virtuous or appealing any project or ideal of this world may appear, it cannot keep us from sinking under the weight of our own sins.  The darkness roots so deeply within us all, both personally and collectively, and nothing but the brilliant glory of the Lord can overcome it.  Whether we know it or not, we inevitably sink like stones into the abyss whenever we make the foundation of our lives anything or anyone else than the One Who has conquered death itself.  All good things have their place in God’s creation and we should despise none of them, but they lack the ability to transfigure us in the holiness of the New Adam.     

 

As St. Paul teaches, we are by no means self-made, self-sustaining, or self-defining.   Instead, “we are God’s fellow workers…God’s field, God’s building…God’s temple… God’s Spirit dwells in you.”  As members of His own Body, the Church, we are His living temple by the power of the Holy Spirit.  A temple is a place of sacrifice, and we must offer ourselves to Him, not to our vain imaginings about what can achieve, possess, or become by our willpower, intelligence, or other personal characteristics.   To avoid sinking like stones amidst the raging seas of our passions, we must mindfully ground ourselves on the God-Man.   If instead we surrender to our self-centered temptations, we will become just like Peter in being so focused on the wind and waves of worry and fear that we will turn our focus away from Christ.

 

Let us, then, refuse to entrust the meaning and purpose of our lives to anything or anyone other than the Lord.  There is no way to do that without cultivating the habits of daily prayer and mindful protection of our hearts from embracing thoughts that fuel our passions.  It is not a sin for any thought to pop into our minds, but we must not welcome tempting thoughts into our hearts. We must be spiritually alert to discern which thoughts have no place in God’s temple and will only lead us away from grounding ourselves on our one true foundation.  The next time that we become distracted from doing so and start sinking in the winds and waves of our passions, we must refocus our attention on Him, as Peter did when he cried out, “Lord, save me!”  He alone can raise us up. We must never pretend that we are so strong spiritually that we can put off being mindful until we face a great crisis.  None of us is strong enough for that, and it is usually the case that subtle temptations are the most dangerous because we often do not recognize them.    We must attend to the health of our souls every day of our lives as we persist in the struggle to focus on “the one thing needful” of hearing and obeying the Word of God.

 

That is why we should all take a close look at ourselves this Dormition Fast and identify the habits of thought, word, and deed that keep us so distracted, confused, and weak that we easily sink under their weight. We need to build new habits to replace them, such as limiting our exposure to images, messages, and media that lead us to define ourselves, our hopes, and our fears in light of the passing things of this world.  We should begin and end each day firmly grounded in prayer and make frequent use of the Jesus Prayer when tempting thoughts, desires, and circumstances arise. We should take Confession on a regular basis so that we are delivered from bearing the weight of our sins. Instead of obsessing about matters beyond our control and what might happen in the future, we should devote ourselves to Christ in the present, both in our prayers and in serving our neighbors. 

 

            The path to transfiguration in holiness is open to us all and exemplified most fully by the Theotokos, the woman who was the first receive Christ as His virgin mother and then to follow Him as a whole, embodied person into the heavenly kingdom upon her death.  As we fast and ask for her prayers in this season, let us entrust ourselves so fully to her Son that we may join her in saying with every ounce of our being, “Behold the servant of the Lord.  Let it be to me according to your word.”  If we remain so grounded on our one true foundation, we will never drown in the sea of despair.