Galatians 6:11-18; Luke 18:18-27
Today
we continue to celebrate the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, where
she grew up in preparation to become the Living Temple as the Virgin Mother of
the God-Man, our Lord Jesus Christ. As
we sing in celebration of this feast, “Today the Virgin is the foreshadowing of
the pleasure of God, and the beginning of the preaching of the salvation of
mankind. Thou hast appeared in the Temple of God openly and hast gone before,
preaching Christ to all.” For the
eternal Son of God to become truly one of us for our salvation, He had to have
a mother who gained the spiritual strength to say “Yes” to God with every ounce
of her being. As one so fully receptive to the Lord and
organically united with Him, “she is truly the heavenly tabernacle.” This feast obviously points us to Christmas,
the Nativity in the flesh of our Savior, Who makes it possible for us to become
“partakers of the divine nature” by grace.
In Him, we may all become His holy living temples, for through the Holy
Spirit Christ dwells in our hearts, enabling us to become radiant with the
divine energies in every aspect of our lives as whole embodied persons. The
blessed example of the Theotokos, who entered the Temple in Jerusalem in order
to prepare to become the Living Temple, shows us what the season of the
Nativity Fast is about, for we must all take up the struggle to prepare in
order to receive Christ more fully into our lives at Christmas.
There is
much in our world today that would distract us from focusing on doing so this
time of year. People in our culture have
some awareness that Christmas commemorates the birth of Christ, but it is
tragic that the extraordinarily good news of the Incarnation of the God-Man is
so often reduced to a cultural and commercial celebration that has almost nothing
to do with sharing personally in the healing that the Savior has brought to the
world. In order to enter into the great
joy of the Lord’s birth, we must pray, fast, give generously to our needy
neighbors, and confess and repent of our sins in order to gain the spiritual
clarity necessary to unite ourselves to Him in holiness as His living temples.
Such spiritual disciplines are not legalistic religious requirements that somehow
make us worthy of Christ. They are,
instead, ways of learning to seek first the heavenly kingdom, opportunities to
redirect and purify the desires of our hearts for true fulfillment in God so
that, like the Theotokos, we will receive Him fully and without
reservation.
Today’s gospel reading provides us with a warning
against subtle distortions of what it means to do so with integrity. The rich man approached Christ not as the Son
of God, but as merely a teacher of the Old Testament law, which he thought that
he had obeyed perfectly from his youth. In
response to his question about how to find eternal life, the Lord challenged
the man to confront his spiritual weakness by saying, “Sell all that you
have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and
come, follow Me.” This was a command that
He knew he lacked the spiritual strength to obey, for the man was enslaved to
the love of money and the comfort and power that it brings. Upon
hearing this command, the rich man did not receive Christ joyfully, but “was
sad at this word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.” (Mk. 10:22)
The Savior then
shocked everyone by saying, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter
the kingdom of God! For it is easier for
a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom
of God.” The common assumption then was
that wealth was God’s reward for those who were righteous. Since the man was one
of very few rich people in that time and place, he and his neighbors surely assumed
that his possessions were due to his exemplary behavior. Their true spiritual significance in his life
was very different, of course, for he had come to love his wealth more than God
and neighbor and, thus, obviously had failed to fulfill the greatest of the commandments.
As St. Basil the Great wrote of the rich young ruler, “Those who love their
neighbors as themselves possess nothing more than their neighbor; yet surely,
you seem to have great possessions! How
else can this be, but that you have preferred your own enjoyment to the consolation
of the many…For the more you abound in wealth, the more you lack in love.”[1] Even though this fellow departed in sadness,
the Lord did not condemn the man, but concluded with the statement: “What is
impossible with men is possible with God.”
In other words, there remains hope for those who come to see clearly where
they stand before the Lord and humbly call out for mercy as they become His
holy temples by grace.
If we want to
prepare to welcome the Savior into our lives and world more fully this
Christmas, then we must find healing for our love of our money and possessions
by generosity toward our needy neighbors.
We must also be on guard against the temptation of spiritual pride and
self-righteousness. Perhaps we imagine
that being Orthodox justifies us in condemning people of other faiths or those
whose behavior apparently does not conform to Christian standards. When we face
such temptations, we must remember the Lord’s words: “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be
required; and from one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be
demanded.” (Lk. 12:48) Since we confess that we have received the
fullness of God’s truth, we are held accountable to the highest standards and
obviously have no business condemning anyone else. As the Lord also said, “Do not judge,
or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will
be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Matt.
7:1-2) And if that is not a sufficient warning of how we put our souls at risk by
judging others, remember how Christ interpreted the commandments against murder
and adultery in the Sermon on the Mount. He said that anger and insult make us
guilty of murder and that lust makes us guilty of adultery. He calls us to nothing less than the purity
of heart necessary to see God. (Matt. 5:8,
21-22, 27-28) Which of us can claim to have achieved that?
Before such
standards, we must learn to say with St. Paul, “far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.” Against those who insisted on the outward legalistic
requirement of circumcision for Gentile converts, the Apostle taught that “neither
circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.” That is precisely what Christ taught the rich
young ruler by challenging him to confront his need for gracious healing beyond
what he could acquire by legal observance. Even the most exemplary forms of behavior cannot
deliver us from slavery to the fear of death or make us participants by grace
in the eternal life of our Lord. But what
is not possible for us by our own power is possible in the God-Man Who is born at
Christmas to make us His holy living temples. Now is the time to prepare to
receive Him for our salvation at His Nativity as did the Theotokos, who entered
into the Temple in order to prepare to become so fully receptive and obedient
to Him that she gained the spiritual strength to say “Yes” to God with every ounce
of her being. That is how she became “truly
the heavenly tabernacle.” Our calling is to follow her blessed example so that
we also may become radiant with holiness as a “new creation” in the God-Man
born for our salvation at Christmas.
[1]
Basil the Great, “To the Rich,” as quoted in Andrew Geleris, Money and
Salvation (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2022), 54.
