Becoming a Human Person Fully Alive to the Glory of God: Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

Luke 8:26-39

             St. Irenaeus wrote that “The glory of God is a man fully alive, and the life of man consists in beholding God” (Adv. haer. 4.20.7).”  To be a human person is to bear the image of God with the calling to become more like Him in holiness.  The more we do so, the more we become our true selves.  The God-Man Jesus Christ came to restore and fulfill us as living icons of God.  He enables us to become truly human as we participate personally in Him as the Second Adam.  As St. Paul wrote, “For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.”  (2 Cor. 1:20)

            If we need a clear example of how the Lord has extended the ancient promises to Abraham to all people in order to restore the beauty of our darkened souls, we need look no further than today’s Gospel reading about a man so miserable that he was barely recognizable as a human person.  He had no illusions about himself, for he was so filled with demons that he called himself “Legion.”  His personality had disintegrated due to the overwhelming power of the forces of evil in his life.  That is shown by the fact that he was naked, like Adam and Eve who stripped themselves of the divine glory and were cast out of Paradise into our world of corruption.  He lived among the tombs, and death is “the wages of sin” that came into the world as a consequence of our first parents’ refusal to fulfill their calling to become like God in holiness.  This naked man living in the cemetery was so terrifying to others that they tried unsuccessfully to restrain him with chains.  People understandably feared that he would do to them what Cain had done to Abel.  But when this fellow broke free, he would run off to the desert by himself, alone with his demons.  The Gadarene demoniac provides a vivid icon of the pathetic suffering of humanity enslaved to death, stripped naked of the divine glory, and isolated in fear.  His wretched condition manifests the tragic disintegration of the human person that the Savior came to heal.   

            Evil was so firmly rooted in this man’s soul that his reaction to the Lord’s command for the demons to depart is shocking: “What have you to do with me?...I ask you, do not torment me.”  He had understandably abandoned hope for healing and perceived Christ’s promise of deliverance simply as even further torment.  By telling the Lord that his name was Legion, he acknowledged that the line between the demons and his own identity had been blurred.  He was in such bad shape that it was not clear where he ended and where the demons began.  The Savior then cast the demons into the herd of pigs, which ran into the lake and drowned.  In the Old Testament context, pigs were unclean, and here the forces of evil lead even them to destruction. 

            Perhaps there is no clearer image of how evil debases our humanity than the plight of this miserable man.    He is an icon of our brokenness and represents us all in many ways.  He did not ask Christ to deliver him, even as we did not take the initiative in the Savior’s coming to the world.   The corrupting forces of evil were so powerful in this man’s life that he had lost all awareness of being a person in God’s image and likeness.  We can also become so distorted by self-centered desire that we lose all sense of being a living icon of God.  When that happens, we would rather that Christ leave us alone to serve our passions than to set us free from them.  We can easily become overwhelmed with fear that His healing mercy will simply torment us, being so spiritually blind that we cannot even imagine a life without the corruption with which we have come to identify ourselves.  

            After the spectacular drowning of the swine, the man in question was “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”  The one who had not been recognizably human returned to being his true self.  That was a very upsetting scene to the people of that region, however.  They actually asked Christ to leave out of fear at what had happened.  We may find their reaction hard to understand.  What could be so terrifying about this man returning to a normal life?  Unfortunately, we all tend to get used to whatever we get used to.  What we have experienced routinely in ourselves or from others, no matter how depraved, becomes normal to us.  The scary man in the tombs was afraid when Christ came to set him free, but his neighbors seemed even more disturbed when they saw that he had been liberated.

            It should not be surprising that the man formerly possessed by demons and still feared by his neighbors did not want to stay in his hometown after the Lord restored him.  He begged to go with Christ, Who responded, “Return to your home, and declare all that God has done for you.”  That must have been a difficult commandment for him to obey.  Who would not be embarrassed and afraid to live in a town where everyone knew about the wretched and miserable existence he had experienced?  It would have been much easier to have left all that behind and start over as a traveling disciple of the One who had set him free.

            But that was not what Christ wanted the man to do.  Perhaps that was because the Lord knew that the best sign of His transforming power was a living person who had been restored from the worst forms of depravity and corruption as a sign of the glory of God.   There could not be a better witness of the salvation that the God-Man has brought to the world.  When someone moves from slavery to personal decay to the glorious freedom of the children of God, that person has moved from death to life.  That person has become his or her true self as one who bears the divine image and likeness.  Such a radical change is a brilliant sign of the truth of Christ’s resurrection, for He makes us participants in His victory over death by breaking the destructive hold of the power of sin in our lives.   

The presence of the pigs in this story reminds us that the man to whom Christ restored his humanity was a Gentile. The Savior has fulfilled God’s promises to the children of Abraham such that all with faith in Him are “Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Gal. 3:29) His Kingdom is not a nation-state, is not defined according to ethnicity or cultural heritage, and knows no geographical boundaries.  The Messiah repudiated the temptation to set up such an order, for His reign is the complete opposite of earthly powers so enslaved to the fear of death that they have become blind  to how their enemies bear the image of God every bit as much as they do.  People will never find the healing of their humanity by refusing to turn the other cheek and go the extra mile in order to break cycles of retribution and violence which have become second nature in our world of corruption.  No one will become more truly human by continuing to pour fuel on the fires that consume the lives of the living icons of God, regardless of their religion, nationality, or politics.   Those who do so degrade themselves and become more and more like the wretched man overcome with evil who lived naked in the tombs, a terror to himself and everyone else.

We must not reject Christ’s healing out of fear that He will only torment us.  Sin only has the power in our lives that we allow it to have, and we must all embrace the eternal journey of opening ourselves fully to the Savior’s restoration of our humanity.  Since we all bear God’s image and likeness, the path to such blessedness is open to us all if we will take the small steps of which we are capable each day through prayer, fasting, almsgiving, forgiveness, repentance, and the other basic spiritual disciplines of the Christian life.  We must cultivate the mindfulness that is necessary to resist the personal disintegration that comes from identifying ourselves with our passions.   That is not easy because often nothing is more appealing in the moment that wallowing in pride, anger, lust, resentment, and other distorted desires to the point that we have more in common with pigs at a trough than with the man after his deliverance, when he sat “at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.” 

  When we experience temptations, we must make them opportunities to embrace Christ’s healing of our corrupt humanity through His victory over death. We must die to sin in order to rise up with Him in holiness.  We must crucify the distortions of our souls that have become second nature to us.  When the struggle is hard and we cannot imagine being set free, we must remember the difference between a person disintegrated by the power of evil and one gloriously restored as a living icon of God.  That is precisely what is at stake whenever we face the choice between welcoming Christ’s healing presence in our lives or hiding from Him in fear as we cling to our passions.  May God grant us all the spiritual clarity to become fully alive and radiant with the divine glory.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bearing the Good Fruits of Peace for the Living Icons of God: Homily for the Sunday of Holy Fathers of Seventh Ecumenical Council & Fourth Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

                                                Titus 3:8-15; Luke 8:5-15

         In the midst of the ongoing tragedy unfolding in the Holy Land, we must attend to the wisdom of our father in Christ, His Beatitude Patriarch John X of Antioch, who stated this week that “Peace does not come from the bodies of children, killed people, innocent people, and women. Peace comes when the decision-makers in this world realize that our people have dignity, as all the peoples of the world. We are not advocates of war, we reject violence and killing, and we are seekers of peace…” He writes that we pray “for peace in the entire world, for stability, and for the repose of the souls of those who have passed away. We pray that the wounds of the sick be soothed and they might recover, for the wounds of every hurting person, every bereaved mother, every brother, and every sister, for everyone’s wounds. We ask the Lord to protect us and grant us peace…”[1]

             His Beatitude’s words resonate so strongly with the many petitions for peace in the Divine Liturgy, such as our prayers “for the peace of whole world…and the union of all.”  We pray for “peaceful times,” “the sick and the suffering, for captives and their salvation,” and also for “deliverance from all tribulation, wrath, danger, and necessity…”  These and so many other petitions show that as we enter mystically into the blessedness of our Lord’s Kingdom in the Liturgy, we must not think that God’s peace is reserved entirely for the eschatological future.  We pray for reconciliation and blessing for all the living icons of God today, in the world as we know it, as a sign, no matter how dim, of the fulfillment of His gracious purposes for all who bear the divine image and likeness.   

             To pray for peace in this way does not require us to become naïve or idealistic about how deeply the brokenness of the human person extends within our hearts or how it impacts our relationships with other people.  It does not demand that we pretend that Cain’s murder of his brother Abel is not repeated daily.  It does, however, require us to gain the spiritual clarity to see that, regardless of nationality, politics, or anything else, every human person remains a living icon of God and a neighbor to be loved. How we treat those we are least inclined to recognize as neighbors and most inclined to view as our enemies is precisely how we treat our Lord. (Matt. 25: 31-46) Nothing reveals the true state of our souls more than that.   

         Even as we mourn the horrible suffering of people in the Holy Land, today we commemorate the 367 Holy Fathers of the 7th Ecumenical Council, which met in Nicaea in 787.  The council rejected the false teaching that to honor icons is to commit idolatry, for it distinguished between the worship that is due to God alone and the veneration that is appropriate for images of Christ, the Theotokos, and the Saints.  The council’s teaching highlighted the importance of the Savior’s incarnation, for only a truly human Savior with a physical body could restore us to the dignity and beauty of the living icons of God.    

         The 7th Ecumenical Council addressed matters that strike at the very heart of how we embrace our fundamental vocation to become like God in holiness in a world of hatred and violence that so desperately needs the peace of Christ.  Too often, however, we think that iconography simply has to do with wood and paint, and is unrelated to the question of whether we are becoming more like Christ and gaining the strength to love our enemies as He loves us.   The icons are not merely religious art, but reminders that to become a truly human person is to become like Jesus Christ, who, according to St. Paul, “is our peace… and has broken down the middle wall of separation” so that “He might reconcile…both [Jew and Gentile] to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity.” (Eph. 2:14-16) The more that we become like our Lord, Who worked this reconciliation, the less we will see anyone through the darkened lenses of those who demand “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.”  Instead, we will become more like the Savior, Who closely associated love of enemies with fulfilling the commandment to “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt. 5:48)  

         Today’s gospel reading addresses these same questions with different imagery.  Christ used the parable of the sower to call His disciples to become like plants that grew from the seed that “fell into good soil and grew, and yielded a hundredfold.”  He wanted them to become “those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience.”  Not all who hear the Word of God will do so, even as not all seeds will grow to fruition.   Some never even believe, while others make a good start and then fall away due to temptation or “are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.” 

         This parable warns us about what happens when we fail to fulfill our potential as those who bear the image of God.  Our vocation is to become more beautiful living icons of the Savior, but we diminish and distort ourselves when we refuse to become who God created us to be.  Plants must grow and flourish as the kinds of plants that they are in order to become healthy and bear fruit.  Farmers must care for them accordingly.  The sun, soil, moisture, and nutrients must be appropriate for that particular type of plant in order for them to flourish.  In order for us to bear good fruit for the Kingdom, we must attend to the health of our souls with the conscientiousness of a careful farmer or gardener.  We must do so in order to become more fully who we are as living icons of Christ.  If, to the contrary, we become obsessed with the worldly political agendas that He repudiated and a desire for vengeance against our enemies, we will never bear good fruit for the Kingdom.   

         In today’s epistle lesson, St. Paul urged St. Titus to tell the people to focus on doing good deeds and helping others in great need.  He wanted them to avoid foolish arguments and divisions, “for they are unprofitable and vain.”  St. Paul did not want the people to waste their time and energy on matters that would simply inflame their passions and hinder them from attaining spiritual health and maturity.  He called them to care for their spiritual wellbeing with the conscientiousness of farmers who are single-mindedly dedicated to bringing in a bumper crop.  If they let down their guard to the point of being so consumed by pointless controversies that they ignored basic disciplines like loving and serving their neighbors, they would risk dying spiritually like a neglected plant overtaken by weeds. 

         If we are to become “those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience,” we must refuse to allow hatred, vengeance, and obsession with worldly agendas to take root in our hearts and minds.  We must do the hard, daily work of denying ourselves and serving others, especially those whom the world encourages us to view as our enemies.  In order to bear good fruit for the Kingdom, we must refuse to focus on anything that will distract us from becoming more beautiful icons of Christ, Who loved and forgave even those who crucified Him.  Unless we struggle mindfully against this temptation, we can easily become obsessed with defining ourselves and our neighbors according to the standards of our world of corruption, which is driven by the fear of death.  Because our risen Lord has conquered even the grave through His glorious resurrection on the third day, we must refuse to become enslaved by such fears and must never allow anything to distract us from becoming more beautiful icons of His love, mercy, and reconciliation.  The Savior Himself refused to define His Kingdom in popular nationalistic terms against the Romans, the Gentiles, and the Samaritans, or in legalistic terms against those considered hopeless sinners by the religious establishment.   He came to restore everyone to the beauty of the living icons of God.  In Him, “there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.” (Col. 3:11)

         He alone is our peace and the peace of the entire world.  If we are truly becoming participants in His life, then we must refuse to define ourselves or anyone else according to divisive worldly agendas driven by the fear of death.  We must grow in His likeness as we pray for all who suffer and for an end to violence and oppression in all their forms, and as we give generously to meet the urgent needs of our neighbors in the Holy Land and around the world.  We must remember Whose icons we all are and refuse to live as though anything or anyone other than the God-Man were the true measure of our lives.  That is ultimately why we have icons in the Orthodox Church, for they proclaim who Jesus Christ is and who He enables every human person to become.   It is not by hating and killing people that the Savior’s peace comes, but by the love, forgiveness, and reconciliation that He has brought to the world through His Cross and empty tomb.  As the Lord said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

 

 

 

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[1] https://www.antiochian.org/regulararticle/1783

We Must Learn to Mourn and Rejoice with the Widow of Nain: Homily for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost & Third Sunday of Luke with Commemoration of Our Righteous Mother Pelagia the Penitent of Antioch in the Orthodox Church

 

2 Corinthians 9:6-11; Luke 7:11-16

            I am sure that many people today reject or have no interest in the Christian faith because they have not seen in others the healing of the human person brought by Jesus Christ.  Perhaps they have heard Christians speaking primarily about morality, politics, emotion, or a view of salvation that has nothing to do with the realities of life in the world as we know it.  Or they may have seen many examples of hypocrisy on the part of those who identify themselves with the Lord, but who live their lives in opposition to His teachings even as they look for opportunities to condemn their neighbors.  Regardless, many today have concluded that there is nothing in the Christian life worthy of their devotion.

            Today’s gospel reading provides a different and powerful image of Christ’s salvation in the midst of the tragic realities of life and death.  The widow of Nain was having the worst day of her life and had no reason to hope for a blessed or even tolerable future, for in that time and place a widow who had lost her only son was in a very precarious state.  Poverty, neglect, and abuse would threaten her daily; she would have been vulnerable and alone.  When contrary to all expectations the Lord raised her son, He transformed her deep mourning into great joy. He restored life both to the young man and to his mother.

The Lord’s great act of compassion for this woman manifests our salvation and provides a sign of hope in even the darkest moments of our lives.  We weep and mourn not only for loved ones whom we see no more, but also for the brokenness and disintegration that we know all too well in our own souls, the lives of our loved ones, and the world around us.   Death, destruction, and decay in all their forms are the consequences of our personal and collective refusal to fulfill our vocation to live as those created in the image of God by becoming like Him in holiness.  We weep with the widow of Nain not only for losing loved ones, but also for losing what it means to be a human person as a living icon of God. 

           The good news of the Gospel is that the compassion of the Lord extends even to those who endure the most tragic and miserable circumstances and the most profound sorrows.  Purely out of love for His suffering children, the Father sent the Son to heal and liberate us from slavery to the fear of death through His Cross and glorious resurrection. The Savior touched the funeral bier and the dead man arose.  Christ’s compassion for us is so profound that He not only touched death, but entered fully into it, into a tomb, and into Hades, because He refused to leave us to self-destruction.   He went into the abyss and experienced the terror of the black night of the pit.  The Theotokos wept bitterly at His public torture and execution.  When He rose victorious over death in all its forms, He provided the only true basis of hope that the despair of the grave will not have the last word on the living icons of God.  His Mother and the other Myrrh-Bearing Women were the very first to receive this unbelievably good news.    

            Death is not only a physical reality, but also a spiritual one.  It is possible to have physical health, material possessions, high social standing, and innumerable other blessings while being enslaved to self-centered desire to the point of spiritual death.  Thankfully, Christ said that He “came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”  (Luke 5:32) Today we commemorate our Righteous Mother Pelagia the Penitent of Antioch.  She was a beautiful woman from a pagan family who became quite wealthy as a prostitute. Having heard part of a sermon on divine judgment as she passed by a church, she was overcome by remorse for her way of life, repented, and was baptized.  She then gave away all her wealth to the poor, went to Jerusalem, and undertook the great ascetical labor of living alone in a cave as the Monk Pelagius, devoting herself to fasting, prayer, and all-night vigils.  That she was a woman was discovered only when her body was prepared for burial. 

             Saint Pelagia is not alone as a woman whose ascetical repentance led her to become a monk.  For example, Saint Theodora of Alexandria pursued a similar path after falling into adultery.  She did not want to be found by her husband in a community of nuns and, as the Monk Theodore, was known in the monastery for her strict spiritual discipline and piety.  After being accused of fathering a child, she was cast out of her community for seven years as she cared for him and then was allowed to return.  Upon her death, her fellow monks who learned the truth about her mourned for how they had falsely judged her.     

            The paths that these great saints trod were unusual and surely hard for people of our time and place to understand.  They took the identity of male monastics not out of a rejection or denigration of how God had created them as persons of female biological sex, but in order to embrace in their particular circumstances the type of asceticism that they needed for the healing of their souls in light of the spiritual maladies that they had suffered as unique persons due to their sins.  The Church certainly does not impose their vocations on anyone, for as free persons we must all discern the path to the Kingdom that is best for us with the guidance, but never the compulsion, of our spiritual father or mother.  For example, we also commemorate today St. Thais of Egypt, who repented of her debauchery by burning all of her riches in the city square and then spending three years in seclusion as she prayed for the Lord’s mercy.  She did not take on the identity of a male monastic.  “From the moment I entered into the cell,” said St. Thais to St. Paphnutius before her death, “all my sins constantly were before my eyes, and I wept when I remembered them.” St. Paphnutius replied, “It is for your tears, and not for the austerity of your seclusion, that the Lord has granted you mercy.”[1] 

            The widow of Nain wept bitterly out of grief for the loss of her son.  Christ wept at the tomb of his friend St. Lazarus, not only for him, but for us all who are wedded to death as the children of Adam and Eve who were cast out of Paradise into this world of corruption.  We weep with broken hearts out of love for those whose suffering is beyond our ability to ease, those who are no longer with us in this life, and those from whom we have become otherwise estranged. The corruption that separates us from God and from one another takes many forms and the same is true of our healing and restoration.  The particular paths that we must follow in order to embrace Christ’s victory over death as distinctive persons will certainly vary.  But they must all be routes for gaining the spiritual clarity to learn to mourn our sins and take the steps that are best for our healing and restoration.  We must learn to weep for ourselves as those who have caught a glimpse of the eternal blessedness for which we came into being and who know how far we are from entering fully into the joy of the Lord. 

            St. Paul wrote that “he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.”  That is true not only in terms of almsgiving, but also in terms of how deeply we invest ourselves in what is necessary for the healing of our souls.  Many people today surely do not take the Christian faith seriously because they have not encountered people who do precisely that.  In ways appropriate to our own circumstances, let us take Saints Pelagia, Theodora, and Thais as examples of those who fulfilled in their own lives the teaching of our Lord: “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”  (Matt. 5:4) The widow of Nain provides us all a sign of the hope that is ours in Christ.  Through our humble repentance, may we open ourselves to receive the joy that overcomes both the dark night of our spiritual blindness and even of the grave.        

               

 

   

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[1] http://ww1.antiochian.org/node/16761

The Greatest Test of our Souls is Whether We Love our Enemies: Homily for the Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost and the Second Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

2 Cor. 6:16-7:1; Luke 6:31-36

    One of the great challenges that many of us face in embracing Orthodox Christianity is getting over some form of religious legalism, which is the belief that how we relate to God is primarily a matter of obeying rules that govern how we behave. Of course, how we treat people every day is a vital dimension of faithfulness to Christ, Who intensified the requirements of the Old Testament commandments, for example, against murder and adultery in the Sermon on the Mount. He did so, however, not by lengthening the list of bad things that good people should not do. Instead, He went to the very heart of the matter: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matt. 5:8)

    The laws of the Old Testament were necessary to make clear to the Hebrew people the basics of how they were to act as those in a covenantal relation with God. Jesus Christ is not simply a religious teacher, but truly the God-Man in Whom the ancient promises, laws, and prophecies are fulfilled. He is a Person in Whose life we share as those who are in communion with Him as living members of His Body, the Church. The Church is the bride of Christ and we must live as those in a “one flesh” union with Him in which we become “partakers of the divine nature” by grace.

    It is only in this context that we can understand our Lord’s teaching in today’s gospel teaching: “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” In this passage from the gospel according to Luke, Christ does not rest content with calling His followers to limit their vengeance to “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” even though that Old Testament principle had placed needed restraint on vengeance. (Matt. 5:38) He did not affirm the common attitude of the time, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy,” an attitude that unfortunately remains with us today in so many ways. (Matt. 5:43) Instead, the Savior called His followers to be united with Him from the depths of their hearts to the point that they embodied the divine mercy, loving their enemies like God, Who cares for “the ungrateful and the selfish.”

    To become a person so radiant with the love of Christ that we convey His love even to people we do not like and who do not like us is obviously not a matter of meeting a basic legal standard of outward behavior. To love our enemies as He loves us requires our deep spiritual transformation and healing as living icons of God. It is not enough to be kind to our friends, to those we think will return our good will, or to those with whom we have something in common according to conventional social standards. It is not enough simply to restrain ourselves from abusing our enemies or even to go through the motions of being decent toward them. No, we must become brilliant with the gracious divine energies to the point that we convey the merciful love of Christ to everyone.

    If we approach this sublime calling merely as a matter of obeying a religious law, we will either fall into despair or delusion about our ability to fulfill it. The vocation to become like God in mercy and holiness is obviously something we cannot accomplish by willpower or behavior modification alone. And if we think we have already done so, then we have become blinded by spiritual pride to the point that we do not see ourselves clearly at all. The fact that we seem inevitably to fall short of loving our neighbors, and especially our enemies, as ourselves indicates that we have a truly eternal vocation that we should never think that we have completed. The struggle that we all have in treating other people, especially our enemies, as we would like to be treated, reveals that we have not yet embraced fully the Lord’s gracious healing of our souls. St. Silouan the Athonite saw the love of enemies as a clear sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. He taught that when the soul “grows humble, the Lord gives her His grace, and then she prays for her enemies as for herself, and sheds scalding tears for the whole world.” These words reveal our need for ongoing repentance as we turn away from fueling the passions that make it so appealing to condemn others and turn humbly toward cooperating with the Lord’s gracious healing of our souls. That is the only way for us to share so fully in the life of Christ that we embody His boundless mercy.

    Today’s epistle reading reinforces the profundity of this spiritual calling, for St. Paul addresses the terribly confused and compromised Gentile Christian of Corinth as “the temple of the living God.” The Corinthians were largely converts from paganism who had to be corrected at every turn from their tendency to fall back into their pagan ways of worshiping false gods and engaging in gross sexual immorality. St. Paul quotes Hebrew prophets who admonished the Jews to be entirely separate from the corrupt ways of other peoples. What is so shocking is that he applied that instruction to the Gentile Christians of Corinth. Those who had been hated enemies for their immorality and paganism are now themselves “the temple of the living God” in Jesus Christ. They are His people, His sons and daughters, to whom the promises of Abraham have been extended through faith. Because of this great dignity, St. Paul tells them to be clean “from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.”

    While the apostle did provide them with clear instructions on how to live as Christians, Paul was anything but a legalist who thought that the following a code of behavior had the power to heal the soul. As he wrote to the Ephesians, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Eph. 2:8-10) Neither Jew nor Gentile could earn salvation by their own merit, but by embracing the gracious healing of the soul through faith in Christ. Such gracious healing is not passive or abstract but participatory and transformative, for we are all fellow workers with God who must “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” (Philipp. 2:12-13)

    If we are to find the healing of our souls, we must struggle to do what we can each day to treat those we are most inclined to disregard and condemn as we would like them to treat us. We must take every opportunity to convey the mercy we have received from Christ to our neighbors, especially those we consider our enemies. When we fail to do so, we must use our weakness to fuel our humility before the Lord and our sense of unworthiness to judge anyone else. We must pray, fast, give to the needy, and mindfully reject the nonsense in our own minds, and in all factions of our culture today, that would encourage us to treat anyone as anything less than a living icon of God. As hard as it is to accept, whether we are sharing in the life of Christ is most clearly revealed in how we treat those we find it hardest to love. This is not a matter of legalism, but of whether we are acquiring the purity of heart necessary to see God, especially as He is present to us each day of our lives in those we are least inclined to see as beloved neighbors. That is the ultimate test of whether we are making “holiness perfect in the fear of God.”

The Patient Obedience of Letting Down our Nets: Homily for the First Sunday of Luke in the Orthodox Church

 

Luke 5:1-11

           

Many people today scroll quickly through the many options they have in choosing how to identify themselves and live their lives.  It easier than ever before to try out all kinds of choices and to disregard those that we do not find immediately appealing or fulfilling.  Not only has our society formed us as consumers who want our immediate preferences satisfied, the digital age has made it even easier to flit from this to that whenever we experience just a hint of boredom, frustration, or disappointment. In such a culture, we are all at risk of forming habits that compromise our faithfulness to the way of Christ, which requires steadfast commitment and ongoing struggle as we persist in taking up our crosses each day of our lives. 

 The Church directs our attention today to two saints who provide powerful examples of what patient, selfless commitment to the Lord looks like.  St. Thekla is remembered as a Great Martyr and has the title of “Equal to the Apostles” because she accompanied St. Paul in founding churches and brought many to Christ through her teaching and example.  Converted at the age of eighteen by St. Paul’s preaching, she is remembered as the first female martyr because of her faithfulness throughout many extraordinary sufferings, ranging from rejection by her family to trials of fire, wild beasts, and physical assault.  The Lord delivered her from them all, and she lived her last years in prayer and solitude, peacefully completing her earthly journey at the age of 90.      

 We also remember today St. Silouan, a monk on Mt. Athos.   He had received the gift of unceasing prayer and knew great spiritual peace, but then endured fifteen years of deep spiritual struggle which prepared him to receive the Lord’s teaching: “Keep your mind in hell and do not despair.”  For the next fifteen years, he did precisely that, confronting and experiencing the brokenness and sickness of his soul that separated him from sharing fully in the life of Christ. Only then did he find healing for his passions.   

 Both of these saints are shining examples of humble persistence in faithfulness to the Lord, regardless of the personal challenges and sufferings involved.  Both could have easily abandoned their callings when the going got rough and did not gratify their passions or preferences.  No one forced St. Thekla to refuse to renounce Christ in the face of lethal persecution.  No one forced St. Silouan to undergo such bitter spiritual struggles.  But when such trials came, both saints kept taking up their crosses for decades and trusting that the Savior would not abandon them. They both endured so much in order to place loyalty to Christ above all else. 

 In this regard, they have something in common with Sts. Peter, James, and John in today’s gospel reading.  They were professional fishermen who had worked all night and caught nothing.  They knew from experience that it made sense to wash their nets, go home, and try again tomorrow.  But the Lord said, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”  Peter’s answer showed his frustration: “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!  But at Your word I will let down the nets.”  When they did so, they caught so many fish that their nets broke and their boats began to sink.  This unlikely and amazing scene helped Peter catch a glimpse of the state of his soul, for he said to Christ, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”  The Savior responded, “Do not be afraid; henceforth you will be catching men.” Then Peter, James, and John left their boats and nets behind as they became His disciples.

             Peter was the head disciple, but he struggled mightily in faith.  He denied the Lord three times before His crucifixion and then ran away in fear.  He had earlier heard the stinging rebuke, “Get behind me, Satan!,” when he had rejected the message that Christ would be killed and rise from the dead. After His resurrection, the Lord restored Peter by asking him three times if he loved Him and commanding him to “feed My sheep” in fulfilling his ministry. (Jn. 21: 15-17) Peter became the first bishop of the Church in Antioch and in Rome, where he made the ultimate witness for the Savior as a martyr.  At many points in his discipleship, he must have been as frustrated as a fisherman who had worked all night and caught nothing.  He was obviously tempted to do something other than following a Lord Who was lifted up upon the Cross.  But despite his many struggles, Peter kept letting down his nets and finding that the Lord continued to call and work through him, despite his imperfections and failings.  That is how he also became a great saint.    

             If want to pursue the Christian life with integrity, then we must follow the example of Sts. Peter, Thekla, and Silouan in persistently obeying our Lord’s command.  We must “let down our nets” in obedience by doing that which will open our souls to receive His healing mercy. That is not something to be tried once and then abandoned if we do not get the results that we want.  That is not something to refuse to do because it would be easier in the moment to do whatever we would prefer instead.  It is, however, something which must become a settled habit in our lives, a stable dimension of our character, as those who dare to identify ourselves as followers of Christ.

           We must be prepared, however, for our faltering steps of obedience to open the eyes of our souls to the truth about where we stand before Him.  After letting down his nets and catching that great haul of fish, Peter gained the spiritual clarity to know his unworthiness: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”  His reaction bears some similarity to St. Silouan’s teaching: “Keep your mind in hell and do not despair.”  When we attempt even the smallest act of obedience, we open our darkened souls to behold the brilliant light of Christ.  The darkness in our hearts will then become all the more evident to us. Instead of being discouraged that we are more aware of our spiritual weakness, we must then call all the more for the Lord’s mercy as we struggle to remain on the path to the Kingdom. 

 We all have the experience of falling into our familiar sins again and again.  Instead of being disheartened to the point that we no longer struggle against them or despair of ever finding healing, or even give up completely on the Christian life, we must keep letting down our nets in obedience as we mindfully seek to redirect the desires of our hearts toward God.  Instead of despairing that there is no hope, we must humbly accept the truth about our spiritual state that is revealed by our weakness before our besetting sins.  While making no excuses for ourselves, we must trust that our ongoing battles are necessary for us to receive Christ’s healing.  We may not be in an arena with wild animals like St. Thekla, but we all face the arena of our passions, which are every bit as fierce.  St. Silouan wrestled spiritually for decades and never gave up.  We must do the same as we experience in our hearts the tension between our current brokenness and the holiness to which the Savior calls us.

 Looking to the example of the great saints we commemorate today, as well as to the model of those holy fishermen, let us repudiate the superficial, self-centered tendencies celebrated by our culture and undertake the daily struggle of obedience to Christ.  That means letting down our nets in obedience at every opportunity as we cry out for His merciful healing of our souls.  That is the holy habit that we must all cultivate if we want to become worthy disciples of the Savior.

 

 

   

 

           

THE ORTHODOX CHURCH, JUST-WAR THEORY, AND THE INVASION OF UKRAINE

 The centrality of peace to the worship and spiritual vision of Eastern Orthodox Christianity magnifies the tragedy of the invasion of Ukraine.  Petitions for peace abound in Orthodox services, including for deliverance from “the sword, foreign invasion, and civil war.” The Church prays regularly for “the peace of the whole world,” as well as for the liberation of captives and for people “in exile, in harsh labor, and…in every kind of affliction, necessity, or distress.”  Every Sunday service includes a petition for God to grant peace “to all civil authorities, to our armed forces, and to all Your people.” 

Going to war may be tragically necessary at times to defend one’s neighbors and society against invasion or other forms of unwarranted assault, and the church does not prohibit laypeople from taking up arms in obedience to lawful authorities. Some Orthodox saints were soldiers, but their military prowess did not make them examples of holiness.  Many served in the pagan Roman Empire and accepted torture and execution rather than worship other gods.  A fourth-century church rule recommends that soldiers who kill in war abstain from receiving communion for three years.  It serves as a reminder that taking life under any circumstances falls short of the peaceable way of Jesus Christ. 

The Byzantine Empire and Czarist Russia went to war many times with the blessing of the Church’s leaders.  Nonetheless, Orthodoxy does not have a crusade or holy war ethic and cautions that shedding blood always risks grave spiritual and moral harm to those involved. The absence of an explicit just-war theory in Eastern Christianity is a sign that waging war inevitably results in killing persons who bear God’s image and is never unambiguously good. Even high levels of moral and legal restraint fail to prevent the barbarity of organized mass slaughter.  

The Assembly of Bishops of the Orthodox jurisdictions of the United States issued a statement on the invasion of Ukraine which, while not invoking the categories of just-war theory, resonates with them. The bishops pray that “peace and justice may be restored” in Ukraine and urge “all parties and all people to refrain from further aggression, withdraw…all weapons and troops from sovereign lands, and…to pursue de-escalation and the restoration of peace through dialogue and mutual respect.” Dialogue between law-abiding nations, not ongoing aggression, is the way to peace. The bishops urge authorities to take practical steps to end the conflict.  They avoid pious platitudes even as they call for an end to the war as a sign of the peace for which the church prays.

While warring nations have often distorted just-war theory in order to obscure their violations of human rights and moral standards, its categories provide a needed language for criticizing wars of aggression fought for illusory reasons. They help to describe the illegality of morally depraved acts, such as the indiscriminate destruction of population centers or the use of rape as a means of terror. The categories of just-war theory clarify how rulers, armies, and particular soldiers fall short of basic levels of ethical restraint in the conduct of warfare. They provide resources for calling nations to avoid the worst abuses of the use of force. Even the best observance of such standards will not come close to enacting the perfect peace for which Orthodox Christians pray or heal persons broken by tragic wounds of violence. Nonetheless, those concerned with the wellbeing of their neighbors should appreciate them as tools for urging worldly powers not to wage war in a fashion contrary to the accepted standards of the international community. 

While it would be naïve to think that arguments from religious leaders will stop unnecessary and barbaric wars from occurring, those who pray for peace have an obligation to state clearly the ways in which such wars are morally unacceptable. The standards for a just war provide imperfect points of contact between Orthodoxy’s vision of peace and the broken realities of the world as we know it. Until the perfect peace of God’s kingdom comes, they will remain tragically necessary for calling nations to avoid the most depraved forms of organized mass slaughter, which is what war remains.  

This article was supported by Fr. Philip's participation as Senior Fellow in the “Orthodoxy and Human Rights” project, sponsored by Fordham University’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center, and generously funded by the Henry Luce Foundation and Leadership 100.  It was originally published here:  The Orthodox Church, Just-War Theory, and the Invasion of Ukraine | Spirit Of Abilene

CHRISTIAN POLITICAL ACTIVISM AND DISCIPLESHIP TO JESUS ARE VERY DIFFERENT UNDERTAKINGS

          Those who promote Christian political agendas must take care in order to avoid damaging their souls and distorting their witness to Jesus Christ. The practices and virtues associated with the quest for earthly power, even for the best of ends, are hardly those of the Beatitudes.  Christ called his followers to acquire purity of heart and love their enemies.  He instructed them not to rest content with a code of moral behavior, but to find healing from the disordered desires at the root of evils as grave as murder and adultery. 

          People find strength to pursue the life of discipleship through their participation in churches, families, and other groupings that form them to fulfill callings inevitably at odds with dominant social trends in one way or another. Doing so requires the deep personal struggle of taking up the cross in relation to our own weaknesses and temptations.  

          To focus on gaining political power in order to enact legal codes that regulate the behavior of fellow citizens is a very different undertaking.  It is a project that the Lord and the twelve disciples did not pursue.  To identify the way of Christ as mere obedience to legally imposed norms is to take discipleship out of its necessary context, watering it down to the type of outward observance advocated by the Pharisees whom he so strongly criticized.  When purity of heart, love for enemies, and freedom from anger are displaced by the need to do whatever it takes to coerce others through political force, the way of the hypocritical Pharisee threatens to supplant the way of the Savior who called for turning the other cheek.  While governments can and must impose regulations on the behavior of people by force, they cannot heal the soul.    

          Christ taught that his followers are to be a city on a hill, brilliantly lit and drawing others to the blessedness of God’s reign.  The genuine political witness of Christians requires that their communities, personal lives, and public statements convey the teaching and character of their Lord, especially in relation to those they consider their enemies and to “the least of these,” such as prisoners, the homeless, and immigrants.  Actions and words which give the impression that Christianity is chiefly about conventional political support of or opposition to this or that agenda risk distorting the proclamation of the gospel into just another slogan for “our side” to win its battle against rivals for earthly power. 

          Before making pronouncements condemning others, Christians should remember what Christ said about taking the plank out of one’s own eye before attempting to take the speck out of someone else’s.  Those whose horizons extend no further than the next election or battle in a culture war will never think in such terms, but those who claim to follow a Lord whose kingdom is not of this world must do so in order to have even a mustard seed’s worth of spiritual integrity.  

          Christians may certainly enter into the political fray toward the end of promoting public policies that do better rather than worse in serving the common good of their neighbors and promoting the peace of the world, but they must do so self-critically and with a chastened sense of realism. The points of tension between the purity of heart, love for enemies, and repudiation of anger that the Lord taught and the inevitable corruptions of politics are glaring.  It is hard to see how there can be any unambiguously Christian political agenda, for even the best arrangements of competing interests in the world as we know it fall short of the blessed reign proclaimed by Christ and are sustained by practices that contradict his teachings in one way or another.  

          Strong doses of realism and repentance are necessary to help activists, and even average voters, keep their eyes on the prize of their ultimate allegiance to a Lord with a very different agenda. At the very least, those who devote their time and energy to electoral politics must guard their hearts from passions that threaten to compromise both their personal spiritual integrity and their public witness to the Savior who rejected the temptation to become an earthly ruler.  Otherwise, they risk becoming the kind of people Christ so strongly criticized:  self-righteous hypocrites for whom religion is primarily a tool to gain power over others.  Regardless of how noble any political goal may be, it is not worth damaging one’s spiritual health and distorting the public witness of the Christian faith.  

Originally posted on the Spirit of Abilene blog:  https://spiritofabilene.com/2023/07/29/christian-political-activism-and-discipleship-to-jesus-are-very-different-undertakings.