Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Great Lent in the Orthodox Church

 

Hebrews 6:13-20; Mark 9:17-31

             If we have embraced the spiritual practices of Lent with any level of integrity for the last few weeks, the weakness of our faith has surely become apparent to us.  Our minds wander when we pray and so much else seems more important than being fully present before the Lord, both in the services of the Church and in our daily prayers at home.   We often make excuses not to fast to the best of our ability and, regardless of what we eat and drink, routinely indulge our self-centered desires for pleasure.  We justify being stingy in sharing our resources and attention with our neighbors, especially when we fear that doing so will compromise our illusions of self-sufficiency and comfort.  By this point in Lent, we have all gained insight into how we have failed to entrust ourselves fully to Christ for healing to the point that we can say with the brokenhearted father in today’s gospel reading, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”

In kneeling before the Lord and struggling to believe that Christ could deliver his son from a life-threatening condition, the father revealed the true condition of his soul.  He was bitterly disappointed that the disciples had not been able to help and did not fully trust that the Savior could do anything more.   Nonetheless, he could muster enough faith to offer the young man to Christ for healing, even as he pleaded for Him to “help my unbelief!”  That humble, heartfelt plea was sufficient for his son to receive the Lord’s merciful healing. Despite his doubts, that blessed man still had enough faith to receive healing for his son.  He entrusted himself and his beloved child to Christ as best he could, despite his imperfect faith.

The word given by God to St. Silouan the Athonite applies to him as much as it does to us: “Keep your mind in hell and do not despair.”   On the one hand, we must not fool ourselves with an illusory, superficial spirituality that distracts us from experiencing the true state of our souls before God.  Instead, we must know from our hearts how far we are from fully embracing our Lord’s gracious healing and entrusting ourselves and all our earthly cares to Him.  On the other hand, even as we confront the grave tension between the infinite holiness of God and our corruption, we must refuse to despair by accepting the lie that there is no hope for us, our loved ones, and our world in the mercy of the Lord.  Far better is the way of the father in today’s gospel lesson, for he confessed the weakness of his faith even as he paradoxically showed great faith in asking for Christ to save his son.  

He provides us a much better example of honest faith than did the disciples, for they lacked the spiritual strength to deliver the young man from the demon.  The Savior told them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting.”  He said that because they were spiritual weaklings who had neglected the most basic spiritual practices for opening themselves to receive Christ’s healing strength. Not one of them got the point when the Lord said, “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and after He is killed, He will rise on the third day.”  At this point, they had a superficial faith focused on acquiring earthly power for themselves, not on commending themselves to the God-Man Whose Kingdom remains not of this world.  It was only after the horror of the Cross, the complete shock of the empty tomb, and the appearance and teaching of the Risen Lord that they acquired the faith necessary for them truly to believe.

The deliverance of the young man certainly did not come easily, for the demon convulsed him and most of the bystanders thought that he was dead.  That is an interesting detail, for we often naively assume that Christ’s healing comes with only sweetness and light when, in reality, embracing His healing can seem impossibly difficult.  That is especially the case for finding the strength to resist the temptation to gratify passions that have taken deep root in our souls.  Wrestling seriously with our besetting sins is a battle that causes us to die to so many illusions about ourselves. 

 As we continue the Lenten journey this year, let us persist in the inner struggle necessary to intensify our prayers, to deny ourselves, and to give generously to our neighbors as we take the small steps that we presently have the strength to take in reorienting our lives to toward the Lord.   When the battle even to take those small steps reveals our weaknesses and seems like a lost cause, that is not the time to give up, but instead to obey the command: “Keep your mind in hell and do not despair.”  It is only by doing so that we may gain the spiritual clarity necessary to cry out from the depths of our hearts, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”  Indeed, it is really the only time in which we can begin to see the state of our souls clearly, which is necessary in order for us to follow our Lord to His Cross and empty tomb through humble confession and repentance of our sins. In the remaining weeks of the Fast, let us refuse to be distracted by anything that would keep us from entering as fully as possible into the holy mystery of our salvation, for “The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him; and after He is killed, He will rise on the third day.”