Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Great Lent with Commemoration of our Righteous Mother Mary of Egypt in the Orthodox Church

 

Hebrews 9:11-14; Mark 10:32-45

            The more clearly that we see our personal brokenness, the more tempted we may be to think that there is simply no point in trying to reorient our lives toward the Lord. Perhaps we are simply too far gone to come to our senses and find our way home like the prodigal son, we may think.  Perhaps no amount of repentance could ever enable us to receive God’s healing mercy. On this last Sunday of Great Lent, the Church calls us to put such foolish and prideful notions out of our minds as we celebrate how our Righteous Mother Mary of Egypt became a glorious saint, despite her previously wretched way of life.  In her brutally honest account of her youth, St. Mary describes how she had from the age of twelve endured the miserable existence of a sex addict.  She had refused money for her innumerable encounters with men and said that she “had an insatiable desire and an irrepressible passion for lying in filth. This was life to me. Every kind of abuse of nature I regarded as life.”  Though we do not know why she left her parents’ home at a young age, she may well have been a victim of sexual abuse.  She confessed forcing herself on “youths even against their own will” as she sailed to Jerusalem and said that she was actually “hunting for youths” on the streets on the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross when she followed the crowds to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. 

When an invisible force prevented Mary from entering the Church in order to venerate the Cross, her eyes were opened to her wretchedness and she pleaded for the help of the Theotokos in finding salvation.  Thus began her almost 50 years of intense ascetical struggle in the desert.  By the time Father Zosima stumbled upon her, Mary had become so radiant with holiness that she walked on water, rose above the ground in prayer, was clairvoyant, and knew the Scriptures, even though she had never read them.  Pride and self-centeredness had no place in her soul, as she was aware only of her sinfulness and ongoing need for the Lord’s mercy.  Mary was not focused on achieving any earthly goal, but instead on doing whatever was necessary for her to find healing and restoration as a beloved daughter of the Lord, a living icon of Christ. 

So much religion in our world today is merely a smattering of pious platitudes intended to help people feel better about indulging their passions, including the desire to dominate and condemn people they fear or resent. That is not a new problem, for our Lord’s disciples betrayed, denied, and abandoned Him because they finally realized that He was not going to become a conventional political ruler who would satisfy their desires for earthly glory with victory over the Roman Empire.  As today’s gospel reading shows, even as the Savior predicted His Passion, the disciples James and John were jockeying for position by asking for places of prominence when He came into power.  They had no idea what they were asking, of course, for the path to our Lord’s Kingdom requires taking up our crosses in union with His great Self-Offering. Doing so has nothing to do with gaining power over anyone in this world but requires persistent, humble obedience whereby we open ourselves to receive the healing divine mercy of the Lord.  Through the struggle of reorienting ourselves to the blessedness of a Kingdom not of this world, we will learn not to entrust our hearts to the false gods of our passions and will instead gain the strength to manifest Christ’s merciful, selfless love for our neighbors, regardless of who they are.  As He said, “For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”

The weeks of Lent teach us that prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and other spiritual disciplines are not tools to help us achieve an earthly goal.  Instead, they are simply ways of offering our lives to the Lord for healing.  Our great difficulty in embracing them shows how far we are from fulfilling our calling to become like God in holiness.  To recognize that truth and still persist in repentance will inevitably require suffering because we must then experience the inevitable tension between the corruption and weakness of our souls and the blessedness and strength to which the Lord calls us.  Such suffering is not a punishment but simply the consequence of enduring the struggle to accept personally our restoration through Christ as His beautiful living icons. 

St. Mary of Egypt did not allow the hurt pride called shame to keep her from facing the truth about her spiritual state or from taking up her cross in the way that was necessary for her salvation.  She did not accept the lie that she simply needed to accept and act on her inclinations, habits, and compulsions in order to be true to herself.  She did not distract herself from confronting her sins by condemning others or trying to distort religion in order to gain anything in this world.    Instead, she had the humble courage to entrust herself fully to the ministry of the “High Priest of the good things to come…[Who] through His own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having found eternal redemption.”  Her example shows that absolutely nothing we have done, said, or thought makes it impossible for us to find the healing of our souls through Him.  St. Mary of Egypt is a shining example of hope for us all.

Like her, we must confront truthfully how we have corrupted ourselves in order to open our hearts to Christ for His healing.  His own disciples betrayed, denied, and abandoned Him because they wanted a Messiah Who would serve their desires for earthly power and glory.  As Christ said, “the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, and deliver Him to the Gentiles.  And they will mock Him, and scourge Him, and spit upon Him, and kill Him; and after three days He will rise.”  Acquiring the spiritual health to serve such a Lord does not come easily to people like us who are so weakened spiritually by slavery to our passions.  That is why we all need the holy mystery of Confession in Lent in order to gain the strength necessary to follow our Lord to His Cross and empty tomb.  Doing so has nothing to do with glorifying ourselves or achieving any earthly goal.  It does have everything to do with acquiring the persistent, humble obedience shown by St. Mary of Egypt.  Like her, we must refuse to let anything, including our own hurt pride, keep us from confronting our personal brokenness with brutal honesty as we take up our own crosses in faithfulness to the Savior Who offered up Himself for the salvation of the world. He alone is our hope for healing from the ravages of sin and the Victor over death.

 

       

 

 

 

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Great Lent with Commemoration of Saint John Climacus, Author of “The Ladder,” 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, 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 dreams of self-sufficiency and comfort.  By this point in Lent, we have all gained insight into how we have failed to entrust ourselves to Christ 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 honest, humble, heartfelt plea was sufficient for his son to receive the Lord’s merciful healing. Despite his doubts, the father 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 blocks us from experiencing the true state of our souls before God.  We must not lie to ourselves or make excuses for our failings. 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 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 neighbors 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 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 healing and 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 and vengeance against their enemies, not on entrusting 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 truly to believe. 

The deliverance of the young man did not come easily, for the demon convulsed him and most of the bystanders thought that he was dead.  It can seem impossibly difficult for us to embrace Christ’s healing, for in order to do so we must die to the power of passions that have taken such deep root in our souls that they have become second nature. Our life in Christ invariably requires denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, and following Him.   There is no other way truly to share in the life of our crucified and risen Lord.  

Today we commemorate St. John Climacus, a monk from the seventh century who wrote The Ladder of Divine Ascent, a spiritual classic that is said to be the second most read book in Orthodoxy after the Bible.  Written as a guide to other monks, the book presents the necessary steps for following the upward path to the Kingdom.  There is one passage in which St. John advises people “who are married and living amid public cares” to pursue this goal in the following way:

Do whatever good you may.  Speak evil of no one.  Rob no one.  Tell no lie.  Despise no one and carry no hate. Do not separate yourself from the church assemblies.  Show compassion to the needy.  Do not be a cause of scandal to anyone.  Stay away from the bed of another, and be satisfied with what your own wives can provide you.  If you do this, you will not be far from the kingdom of heaven.[1]

 The father in today’s gospel lesson obviously had a family and lived a conventional life in the world.  It was precisely through those circumstances that he was able to gain the spiritual clarity necessary to cry out “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” such that his son was healed.  Remember that the path to the healing of our souls is open to us all, regardless of our marital status, family responsibilities, and work.  Regardless of the circumstances of our lives, let us continue the Lenten journey by embracing the daily 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 when we must 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.” 

 

 

 

 

           

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[1] St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Paulist Press, 1982: 78.

Homily for the Third Sunday of Great Lent with Veneration of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross in the Orthodox Church

 

Hebrews 4:14-5:6; Mark 8:34-9:1

            Today we venerate the precious and lifegiving Cross upon which Christ offered Himself for the salvation of the world purely out of love for those enslaved to the fear of death, which He conquered through His glorious resurrection on the third day.  Contrary to popular opinion, the Cross is not the sign of a civil religion that grants spiritual sanction to any power structure of this world. Neither is it a magical good luck charm that makes all our problems go away or gives us what we want on our own terms.  It is certainly not a means of escape from the daily struggles of living faithfully or a way of demonstrating our superiority over any person or group.   In fact, the Cross of Christ is the complete opposite of such distortions, for it stands in radical judgment of those who would attempt to use religion to help them seek first the things of this world, such as power, pleasure, and possessions.  That was the mindsight of the corrupt religious leaders who called for the Lord’s crucifixion because they perceived Him as a threat to their self-centered agendas.  It was also the perspective of the Romans who believed that worshiping their many gods protected their empire.  By having “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin on the Cross, Pontius Pilate did not miss the opportunity to let everyone know what happened to those suspected of challenging Roman rule.  (Jn. 19:20) Those who place loyalty to empires, nations, or other earthly projects before faithfulness to Christ will end up rejecting Him as surely as those who nailed Him to the Cross. As He said, “For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”

 

On this Sunday of the Adoration of the Holy Cross, right in the middle of Lent, we do the complete opposite of making any type of success in this world our highest goal.  Today we venerate the Cross on which Jesus Christ offered Himself for the salvation of the world.  Through His crucifixion, the New Adam entered fully into the misery and wretchedness of the first Adam to the point of death in order to liberate us from slavery to its corrupting power and make us participants in eternal life.  The Cross is truly the Tree of Life through which we return to the blessedness of Paradise.  It is “a weapon of peace and a trophy invincible” that even the high and mighty of this world cannot defeat.

 

            As our epistle reading states, our crucified and risen Lord is the “great High Priest” Who ministers in the heavenly temple, where He intercedes for us eternally.   In order to enter into His salvation, we must take up our own crosses as we refuse to make any earthly goal our highest good.  Denying ourselves means putting faithfulness to Him before anything else, including indulging personal inclinations and desires that hold us back from fulfilling our high calling.    Even as common bread and wine are fulfilled as our Lord’s Body and Blood when offered in the Divine Liturgy, we too are transformed when we unite ourselves to the High Priestly offering of the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.   If we refuse to do so, we will shut ourselves out of the blessedness of His Kingdom, both as a present reality and as a future hope.

 

            We must not adore the Cross only in religious services, but daily as we take up our crosses in order to love God with every ounce of our being and our neighbors as ourselves.  The disciplines of Lent help us gain the strength to do precisely that as we take intentional steps to die to that which keeps us comfortably enslaved to the self-centered ways of the first Adam.  By devoting ourselves to prayer, we open our hearts to the Savior and learn experientially that our life is in Him.  By refusing to gratify our desires for the richest and most sustaining foods, we open ourselves in humility to receive His strength for resisting deeply ingrained habits of self-indulgence.    When we share our time, energy, and resources with others, we become more like Christ in offering ourselves for the good of our neighbors.  When we forgive our enemies and welcome the stranger, we bear witness to the merciful lovingkindness of our Lord.  These are the most basic disciplines of the Christian life, and we all must practice them in order to gain the spiritual health necessary to take up our crosses, especially in response to the deep challenges of our lives and the appealing temptations to apostasy and paganism that are all around us today, including distortions of Christianity that have no place for a Lord Who reigns from a Cross and an empty tomb.  

 

If we refuse to deny ourselves even in small ways this Lent, then we will demonstrate where our true loyalties lie and become even more accustomed to serving ourselves instead of God and neighbor.  Doing so will reveal that we are ashamed of our Lord and His Cross, and prefer to offer our lives to other gods, especially ourselves.  Even if we continue down that path to the point that we somehow gain the whole world, we will risk losing our souls by committing idolatry every bit as much as those who condemned Christ because He stood in the way of fulfilling their passionate desires for earthly power and glory. Indeed, we will be even more guilty because we know that His Cross is not a sign of ultimate defeat to be repudiated, but of nothing less than the salvation of the world.

 

There is perhaps nothing worse than distorting our calling as Christians to the point that the Cross becomes merely an empty symbol that we use to satisfy our lust for any earthly or self-centered goal, no matter how popular or appealing.  If we do not actually take up our crosses and deny ourselves out of love for God and neighbor, then our lives will bear witness that our true lord is someone or something other than Jesus Christ.  St. Paul taught that “those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” (Gal. 5:24) If we are not embracing the struggle to do so, then we must humbly call for the Lord’s mercy from the depths of our souls as we learn to take the steps necessary to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Him.  There is simply no other way to enter into the joy of His Kingdom.

 

Whether in the first century or today, salvation has not come to the world through self-centered addiction to the pursuit of power, possessions, and pleasure.  It does not come through the achievements of the wealthy, powerful, and popular people of the world.  The same kind of spiritual depravity that drove religious and political leaders to crucify Him is still very much with us.  When we live as those who are ashamed of the way of the Cross, we show that we are not that much different from them.  As we continue our Lenten journey, let us confess how we have fallen short of fulfilling the high calling that is ours in Christ and learn to offer every dimension of our lives to Him for healing as we take up our own crosses.  Whether in Lent or any other time, that is the only way to enter into Paradise through our great High Priest, Who offered Himself fully upon the Cross for the salvation of the world purely out of love. 

 

   

 

           

             

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Homily for the Second Sunday of Great Lent with Commemoration of St. Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica, in the Orthodox Church

 

Hebrews 1:10-2:3; Mark 2:1-12

            We will misunderstand these blessed weeks of Lent if we assume that they are intended to help us have clearer ideas or deeper feelings about our Lord’s crucifixion and resurrection.  We will be even more confused if we think that our intensified prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and repentance somehow earn God’s forgiveness or make us better than other people.  Quite the contrary, Lenten disciples are simply opportunities to open ourselves as embodied persons to the gracious healing of the Lord so that we may share more fully in His life.  That is another way of saying that the point of Lent is to grow in our personal knowledge of God through true spiritual experience, encounter, and transformation.    

On this second Sunday of the Great Fast, we commemorate St. Gregory Palamas, who defended the experience of monks who, in the stillness of prayer from their hearts, saw the Uncreated Light of God.  The eyes of their souls were cleansed and illumined such that they beheld the divine glory as the Apostles did at the Transfiguration of the Lord on Mount Tabor.  St. Gregory taught that to know God is to participate in His gracious divine energies as we are transformed in holiness in every aspect of our existence.  He proclaimed that our calling is to know and experience God through true spiritual union with Him that sanctifies every dimension of the human person.  To do so is to encounter the great “I AM” of the Burning Bush from the depths of our souls in a way that illumines us entirely. (Ex. 3:14) It is to shine brilliantly in holiness like an iron left in the fire of the divine glory.

In today’s gospel reading, Christ healed a paralyzed man, enabling him to stand up, carry his bed, and walk home as a sign of the Savior’s divine authority to forgive sins. In doing so, He restored not only a body to health but a whole person who faced all the practical challenges of daily life in the world as we know it.  Though Palamas focused primarily on the hesychasm of monks, he also taught that “those who live in the world…must force themselves to use the things of this world in conformity with the commandments of God.”[1]  When we mindfully embrace the struggle to purify our hearts so that we may live according to love of God and neighbor, which are the greatest of the commandments, and not according to our self-centered desires, we know and experience Christ from the depths of our souls more fully.  We pray, fast, give, forgive, and confess and repent of our sins during Lent so that we may open our hearts, and every aspect of our lives, as fully as possible to the purifying healing of our Lord’s gracious divine energies.      

His healing is open to all in every time, place, and circumstance of the world as we know it.  Christ sent the formerly paralyzed man home to resume a conventional life in a land occupied by a foreign military power and ruled by tyrants in which the weak were routinely crushed by the powerful. That is precisely the setting in which the God-Man lived, died, and rose from the dead in order to make us participants in His divine glory.  In order to embrace our true identity today in the same world of corruption, we must offer ourselves for healing as we mindfully refuse to worship at the perennial pagan altars of pride, power, and pleasure.  Doing so requires constant vigilance and struggle against falling back into the spiritual blindness and weakness that our passions so easily bring upon us.  Even small steps to embrace the disciplines of Lent will help us to open the eyes of our souls to behold the glory of the Lord.       

Even the tiniest advance in spiritual clarity should inspire us to call mindfully for the Lord’s healing mercy each day in order to grow in our liberation from slavery to the paralysis of sin.  Prayer is not about pondering ideas, cultivating emotions, or merely mouthing words, but requires being fully present to God from the depths of our souls.  We must intentionally devote time and energy to doing so, if we want to gain His healing and strength so that we may rise up from our beds of spiritual paralysis and move forward on the journey to the heavenly kingdom amidst the challenges that we face.     

Contrary to what we may like to think, this is not a calling only for those who we imagine have no great struggles.  Remember that Christ came to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance.  He was a physician to the sick and blessed the poor and needy.  He cast demons out of the possessed, raised the dead, and showed mercy to those considered notorious sinners and hated foreigners. It was not those who were perfectly at ease according to the standards of the fallen world who received Him with joy, but those with broken hearts who knew their own weakness.  We must never accept the lie that any difficult circumstance of our lives somehow excuses us from answering the calling to mindfully unite ourselves to Christ from the depths of our hearts.  Indeed, it is precisely such struggles which should inspire us all the more to call out in humility for His mercy. 

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers records that God revealed to Saint Antony the Great of Egypt that “there was one who was his equal in the city. He was a doctor by profession and whatever he had beyond his needs he gave to the poor, and every day he sang the Sanctus with the angels.”  This example of someone living and working in the world should remind us that the only limits to our participation in the life of Christ are those that we choose to impose on ourselves.  As we continue our Lenten journey, let us make the circumstances of our lives, whatever they may be, points of entrance into the blessed life of our Lord.  Let us know Him as God from the depths of our hearts as we come to shine brightly with the divine glory by grace.  That is not a matter of rational speculation, historical remembrance, or cultivation of emotions about the Savior’s Cross and empty tomb, but of lifting up our hearts in prayer and living faithfully so that we may enter into the joy of the One Who destroyed the power of sin and death by His glorious resurrection on the third day.  That is how we too may gain the strength to take up our beds and walk home.

 

 

 

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[1] The Triads, II.ii.5.