Homily for the Sunday of the Blind Man in the Orthodox Church

 

 Acts 16:16-34; John 9:1-38

  Christ is Risen!

 On this last Sunday of Pascha, we celebrate that the Risen Lord has brought us from the spiritual darkness of sin and death into the brilliant light of His heavenly Kingdom.  Even as Christ restored sight to the man born blind in today’s gospel reading, He illumines our darkened souls.  That is how the Lord enables us to know and experience Him as “partakers of the divine nature” by grace. 

Before the God-Man’s healing of our corrupt humanity, grave spiritual blindness was the common lot of the children of the first Adam, who were enslaved to the fear of death as the wages of sin. When the Lord spat on the ground to make clay for the man’s eyes in today’s gospel reading, He showed that His healing is an extension of His incarnation in which He has entered fully into our humanity as those made from the dust of the earth.  The blind man regained his sight after washing in the pool of Siloam, which is an image of baptism, which illumines us and restores our spiritual sight.  The man did not really know Who the Lord was when he first encountered Him, thinking that He was merely a prophet.  After the restoration of his sight, the Savior revealed Himself as the Son of God; then the eyes of the man’s soul were illumined to know Christ in His divine glory. “He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’ And he worshiped Him.”

In today’s reading from Acts, there is another man who knew darkness all too well.  The Roman jailer was ready to kill himself when an earthquake opened the doors of the prison and broke the chains of the prisoners.  Knowing that he would be executed for failing to keep the prison secure, he was about to take his own life with his sword.  He was in the pit of despair when St. Paul assured him that the prisoners had not escaped.  Then “the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas, and brought them out and said, ‘Men, what must I do to be saved?’’’ Through this extraordinary experience, the man became aware of his spiritual blindness.  The apostles responded, “‘Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.’”  Then the jailer was baptized along with his whole family. After washing the apostles’ wounds, the man took them to his home and served them food.  He “rejoiced with all his household that he had believed in God.”  Like the blind man in the gospel reading, the jailer gained the vision to know Christ in His divine glory.

To say that these men were shocked and disoriented would be an understatement. The good news that “Christ is Risen!” is even more extraordinary than a man blind from birth gaining his sight or a jailer finding that his prisoners are secure after an earthquake. The Savior’s resurrection is not simply a religious teaching or point of history.  The blind man had thought that Christ was a prophet who had worked a great miracle of healing.  The jailer was a pagan Roman and there is no telling what he knew about the Lord before asking Paul and Silas what he had to do in order to be saved.  The Lord changed their lives radically and in ways that they could neither predict nor control. He will do the same for us when the eyes of our souls become radiant with the brilliant light of His resurrection.      

When Christ was asked whose sin was responsible for the man being born blind, He answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him.”   Becoming the self-appointed judges of others, even those who commit the most heinous deeds, will only darken further our spiritual vision.  The Risen Lord has illumined even the tomb itself, making it an entrance into eternal life.  Our participation by grace in the joy of His resurrection is not a reward for morality, legality, or religiosity; it is no more a matter of getting what we deserve than was the healing of the blind man or the deliverance of the jailer.  We stand in need not of greater justice, but of infinite healing mercy.  If we are truly sharing in the life of Christ, the light of His mercy will shine brightly through us, providing a sign of hope in our darkened world.        

  In order to gain the spiritual clarity to do that, we must mindfully turn away from all that would keep us in the dark and enslaved to sin and the fear of death.  Because the eyes of our souls are not yet fully transparent to the light of the Lord, our spiritual vision is distorted.  We do not yet see or know God, our neighbors, or ourselves clearly, but in ways that are deeply corrupted by our passions.  That is why we must struggle to become fully receptive to the brilliant divine energies of our Lord through the healing found in the sacramental and ascetical life of the Church.   As those who were born spiritually blind and have been illumined through the washing of baptism and the anointing of chrismation, we must remain vigilant against the persistent temptation to fall back into the comfortable ways of corruption.  There is so much within us that would prefer to hide in the darkness rather than to be illumined in God.   That is why we must pray daily, fast and confess regularly, serve our neighbors (especially those we find it hard to love) at every opportunity, and refuse to worship any of the false gods of this world (especially those we find most appealing).

Note that the blind man did not respond to Christ’s instructions with questions and reservations driven by anxiety about the future course of his life.  He simply obeyed, washed, saw, and then moved forward to encounter challenges he could never have anticipated.  The jailer, terrified to the point of taking his own life, simply asked how to be saved once he realized that the captives had not escaped.  Their examples remind us not to allow anything to distract us from attending to our one essential calling of opening the eyes of our souls to the brilliant light of Christ.  The question of the jailer, “Men, what must I do to be saved?” is not a one-time question with an easy answer, but concerns the eternal journey of becoming radiant with the divine energies of our Lord as we become more like Him in holiness. The Savior has conquered death in order to illumine every dimension of our darkened souls with the light of heavenly glory.  We must offer every aspect of our existence to Him for healing and transformation, no matter how great the personal struggles we may face in doing so. 

As we conclude this season of Pascha, we must mindfully resist the constant temptation to live as those obsessed with the fear of death.  Such fear is at the root of the conventional wisdom that encourages us to hate and condemn those we perceive as threats to our vain hopes for gaining whatever we prize most in the world; doing so, of course, inevitably leads to losing our souls.  Above all, we must never distort the way of Christ into an idolatrous cult that worships at the altar of any earthly kingdom, faction, or agenda—regardless of what religious, moral, or cultural label it bears.  There is no surer path to darkening our souls than embracing the spiritual blindness of serving the false gods of this world, even as we think we are being righteous.  The Savior’s kingdom remains not of this world.  His Cross alone is “a weapon of peace and a trophy invincible.”   

Our Lord, Who died as the innocent victim of violence at the hands of corrupt religious and political leaders, calls us to become living witnesses of His victory over even Hades and the tomb in the world as we know it.  Nothing can keep us from doing so as we become radiant with holy glory other than our own choice to persist in blindness.  As we prepare to bid farewell to the season of Pascha this year, let us persist in the struggle to enter as fully as possible into the new day of the Savior’s resurrection as we turn away from darkness in all its forms and embrace the Light of the world from the depths of our hearts. Let us live accordingly in a world that so desperately needs the healing that shines from the empty tomb, for Christ is Risen!       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Homily for the Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearing Women, Pious Joseph of Arimathaea, & Righteous Nicodemus in the Orthodox Church

  

Acts 6:1-7; Mark 15: 43-16:8

           Christ is Risen!

             As we continue to celebrate our Lord’s glorious resurrection on the third day and victory over Hades and the tomb, we have to admit that all too often we live as though death still reigned.  We do so especially when we obsess about how weak, broken, and vulnerable we are, especially in light of the grave.  In order to distract ourselves from the resulting fear and anxiety, we often build ourselves up in our own minds, put others down in so many ways, and think of life as a battle against anyone or anything that threatens to expose the truth about our being made from the dust of the earth, to which we will return.   We ignore that sobering recognition by trying to maintain illusions of power and self-sufficiency over against other people, our own weaknesses, and the harsh realities of life.  Doing so fuels anger, resentment, and condemnation of those we perceive as our enemies and rivals.  It also prevents us from seeing clearly where we stand in relation both to God and to our neighbors.    

            Today we commemorate people who refused to live as individuals obsessed with illusions of self-protection in the midst of terrible sorrow and the loss of all hope, but who instead became persons united to Christ in a communion of love and selfless service. With broken hearts and in deep shock and grief, the Theotokos, Mary Magdalen, two other Mary’s, Johanna, Salome, Martha, Susanna, and others whose names we do not know went early in the morning to the Lord’s tomb in order to anoint Him for burial.  They had seen Him die a horrific public death and expected to find His disfigured body lying in the grave.  By somehow acquiring the strength not to become paralyzed by fear, anger, or despair, they did what they could to perform one last act of selfless loving service for the Savior.  That is how the Myrrh-Bearing Women became the first witnesses of the empty tomb as they received the good news of His resurrection from the angel. 

             We also remember today Joseph of Arimathea, who bravely asked Pilate for the dead body of the Lord and took Him down from the Cross with his own hands.  Imagine how difficult that must have been for him.  Nicodemus, the Pharisee who had previously not understood Christ at all, helped Joseph bury Him.  These were both prominent Jewish men who risked a great deal by associating themselves with One Who had been rejected by their own religious leaders as a blasphemer and crucified by the Romans as a traitor. Like the women, they overcame their fears to show self-emptying love for the Savior in the only ways still available to them.   

            In contrast, the disciples acted more like cowards in this moment of crisis.  Peter, the head disciple, had denied Christ three times.  John was the only one of the twelve to stand at the foot the Cross, for the others had run away in fear.  They were more focused on saving their own skins than on faithfully serving their Lord. The Myrrh-Bearing Women, along with Sts. Joseph and Nicodemus, certainly knew bitter grief and disappointment every bit as much as the disciples.  They all saw the Lord’s crucifixion as a complete disaster and their hopes for Him, and for whatever they hoped to gain through Him, were completely destroyed.  Nonetheless, how they acted during this terrible tragedy revealed that they had become persons truly united to Christ in self-emptying love. They transcended the anxieties and fears of individuals concerned only with themselves in order to do the difficult and dangerous tasks necessary to give their departed Lord and friend a decent burial, which was the only way left for them to love and serve Him.  That is how they accepted the risks inherent in being identified even further with One Who had just been crucified as a blasphemer and a traitor.    

             What they did was not the result of calculation about what was in it for them.  Had they not, even before His resurrection, already begun to unite themselves to Christ in selfless devotion, the women would not have had the spiritual strength to be in the position to see the Lord’s empty tomb and to hear from the angel the good news of His resurrection.  That news was shocking to the point of absurdity, as shown by their reaction, for “they went out quickly and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”  To see and hear what they did was not to receive confirmation that they had somehow been right all along, for they had no expectation of His resurrection and went to the tomb in order to anoint a dead body.  To see and hear what they did was not a result of using religion to help them get what they wanted in this world. Their eyes were opened to behold the joy of the resurrection because they were so closely united to Christ in love that they had overcome the fear of death that so easily turns people away from following a Lord Who calls His disciples to take up their crosses. To see and hear what they did was to encounter God from the depths of their souls in a way that called their deepest assumptions about life, death, and themselves into question.  Even when all seemed lost and there was literally nothing left to do but anoint His dead body, the Myrrh-Bearing Women acted not as self-interested isolated individuals but as persons radiant with Christ’s selfless love, for that is who they had become.     

 The devotion of the Myrrh-Bearers, Joseph, and Nicodemus shows us what true faith looks like, and it has nothing to do with figuring out how to use God to help us get what we want on our own terms in a pathetic attempt to distract ourselves from the fear of death. Instead, we must unite ourselves to Him in self-emptying love if we are to acquire the spiritual strength to embrace the good news of His resurrection from the depths of our souls.  That is the only way to enter into the joy of Pascha as persons who find their life in Him together as members of His Body, the Church, with all of the struggles and difficulties that doing so entails.  Todays’ reading from Acts describes how the Church flourished when the first deacons, or servants, took on the task of meeting the practical needs of distributing food to widows in a context of ethnic division.  By offering our time and energy to attend to the mundane matters necessary for the wellbeing of the Church, we grow in love for Him in His Body as we serve one another, even as He has served us.  We grow out of our illusions of self-sufficiency and self-importance when we embrace the calling to serve even in the unremarkable ways available through our small parish.  No needed opportunity for serving our Lord is beneath any of us and it is by embracing the most humble forms of service that we become more like the Savior who came not to be served, but to serve. As the Lord taught, “he who is greatest among you shall be your servant.  And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”  (Matt. 23:11)    

  Like the Myrrh-Bearing Women and Sts. Joseph and Nicodemus, we will not enter into the joy of the Lord’s resurrection by carefully calculating what is in it for us when we do this or that out of love for the Body of the Savior.  We must not obsess about how we would like to serve Him in His Church, what we think we are good at, or what we dare to presume that we deserve.  Instead, we must simply do what needs to be done out of selfless love, no matter how hard we find that to be.   That is how those blessed and righteous women put themselves in the uniquely glorious position to hear the unbelievably good news of the angel.  And that is how, by the grace of the One Who conquered death through His glorious resurrection on the third day, we too may embrace the wonderful news of this season, which destroys the fear of the grave that is at the root of so much of our worry, fear, and misery, for “Christ is Risen!”

 

 

 

 

Homily for the Sunday of St. Thomas the Apostle in the Orthodox Church

 

Acts 5:12-20; John 20:19-31

 Christ is Risen!  Indeed, He is Risen!

             Today we continue to celebrate the most fundamental and joyful proclamation of our faith:  Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!  He is our Pascha, our Passover, from death to life, for Hades and the grave could not contain the God-Man Who shares with us His victory over corruption and decay in all their forms.  In a world enslaved to the fear of the grave, He has illumined even the dark night of the tomb with the brilliant light of heavenly glory.  As Christ said to Martha before He raised Lazarus, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” (John 11:25) Because death did not have the last word on our Lord, it will not, by His grace, have the last word on us or on any who call upon His Name.

             When the Savior rose from the dead, He did so as a whole Person Whose glorified body still bore the physical wounds of His crucifixion.  He was born, lived, and died with flesh and blood every bit as much as we do.  Thomas doubted the news of the resurrection because he was not present when the Risen Lord first appeared to the disciples.  He said that he would not believe unless he saw and touched the marks of His torture and death.  When Christ appeared again eight days later, He told Thomas to do precisely that.  Thomas responded by recognizing Him as “My Lord and my God!”

             This encounter demonstrates how essential Christ’s bodily resurrection is for our faith.  Simply put, there would be no Christianity and no Church without it.  The Savior died through a public form of capital punishment on the Cross at the hands of Roman soldiers who knew their grim trade all too well.  It was literally just another day’s work for them when they broke the legs of the two thieves in order to get them to die more quickly. They did not break the Lord’s legs, however, for those seasoned professional killers knew that He was already dead.  The Roman Cross had apparently made its point yet again about what happened to anyone perceived as a threat to the Empire.  It is hardly surprising that the disciples had fled in fear at the Lord’s arrest with Peter denying Him three times, for they had no expectation of His resurrection.  They had wanted a military Messiah to crush the Romans and establish an earthly kingdom, not a Savior Whose great victory would come through public torture and execution by a Gentile army of occupation. Of course, it would be absurd to think that those who had denied and abandoned their Crucified Lord would have later made up a story about His resurrection and then died as martyrs for Him.  The women disciples, who showed greater love and courage by going to the tomb in order to anoint Christ’s dead body when all seemed lost, obviously had not anticipated His resurrection either. 

      St. Paul taught, “[I]f Christ has not been raised, our preaching is worthless, and so is your faith.” (1 Cor. 15:14)  The Savior proclaimed His divinity by forgiving sins and saying that He and the Father are one (John 10:30) and that “before Abraham was, I am.” (John 8:58)  The high priest asked Him at His arrest, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?” Christ responded, “I am. And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” (Mark 14: 61-62)   If One Who had claimed to be God was wrong in predicting His resurrection and had simply decayed in the tomb like anyone else, there would be no reason for anyone to remember Jesus Christ today as anything but a failed Messiah with grandiose delusions.    

            Orthodox Christian faith is not grounded in sentimental memories or warm feelings about an inspiring personality who lived a long time ago, but in the joyful proclamation that “Christ is Risen!” in victory over death as a whole Person.  His bodily resurrection is our hope for “the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come,” as we confess in the Nicene Creed.  To quote Saint Paul again, “[I]if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Cor. 15: 17-19) If Christ did not rise from the dead as an embodied Person, then St. Paul and all the martyrs wasted their lives for nothing.  Remember that he became a Christian only after the Risen Lord miraculously appeared to Him in blinding light on the road to Damascus   Apart from the reality of the Savior’s resurrection, the conversion of St. Paul from a persecuting Pharisee to the apostle to the Gentiles makes no sense at all. 

            St. Thomas believed only when he touched the wounds of the Risen Savior’s glorified body.  In our reading from Acts, the apostles healed the suffering bodies of many sick people.  The Lord’s resurrection reveals the great dignity of the human body, which is destined for heavenly glory. Salvation is not an escape from the physical dimensions of our lives, but requires our purification and fulfillment as whole persons united to Christ. True faith in the Savior demands that we offer every aspect of our existence to Him for healing and transformation, holding nothing back.  Even as He healed the sick and fed the hungry, the most obvious practices of faithfulness involve caring for people in their bodily weaknesses and infirmities.  By showing tangible signs of mercy for our neighbors, we also touch the wounds of Christ, for He is present to us in everyone in need. In light of His resurrection, the bodily sufferings and struggles of others appear not as irrelevant distractions, but as invitations to manifest a foretaste of “the life of the world to come.” Regardless of any context or circumstance, to refuse to abandon our neighbors in their bodily sufferings and to provide whatever care we can provides a sign of God’s gracious purposes for all who bear His image and likeness.  If we refuse to do so, then we live as though He had not conquered the tomb.  Because “Christ is Risen!,” we must show our neighbors the care due those who are called to heavenly glory.

            In order to follow our Risen Lord into the joy of the resurrection, we must also open our deepest personal struggles and wounds to Him for healing.  The problem is not that we have bodies, but that we have allowed the fear of death to fuel our passions in ways that corrupt every dimension of who we are in this world.  Because God creates and saves us as whole persons, we must embrace the Savior’s victory over death by living as those who are in a “one flesh” communion with Him in every dimension of our existence.   We are living members of His Body, the Church, and nourished by His Body and Blood in the Eucharist.  We must live accordingly with our bodies every day of our lives, for Christ’s resurrection has glorified the human body and calls us to holiness.  All our relationships, actions, and desires must be healed and reoriented to the Kingdom in order for us to enter into the joy of our Lord’s resurrection as whole persons.  That is not a disembodied or abstract vocation, but a tangible and practical calling.   

            Because “Christ is Risen!,” we must not use the fact that we have bodies as an excuse to remain enslaved to corruption in any form.  We fall into hatred, greed, sloth, gluttony, drunkenness, lust, vanity, and other sins not because we are flesh and blood, but because we have refused to enter fully into the joy of the resurrection of Christ.  The season of Pascha calls us all to embrace our Risen Lord as the restoration and fulfillment of every dimension of our personhood.  We cannot become truly human apart from Him, for only He has conquered the fear of death that is at the root of our corruption.  We must unite ourselves to Christ in joyful obedience, even as we remain flesh and blood in this world. Then we may say with St. Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20) The struggle to do so is ultimately one of joy as we enter more fully into the gloriously good news of this radiant season of Pascha.  It is a struggle that we must all undertake if we are to respond like St. Thomas to the God-Man Whom death could not destroy, for “Christ is Risen!”

 

 

Homily for the Feast of Palm Sunday in the Orthodox Church

 

Philippians 4:4-9; John 12:1-18

         The Desert Father Saint Antony the Great once tested a group of monks by asking them, beginning with the youngest, the meaning of a certain passage of Scripture.  In response to their answers, he said, “You have not understood it.”  Finally, he asked Abba Joseph, who said, “I do not know.”  Then Abba Antony said, “Indeed Abba Joseph has found the way, for he has said: ‘I do not know.’”[1] As we celebrate our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, we must all resist the temptation to think that we understand fully the meaning of this extraordinary day that begins the week in which the God-Man will enter into the dark and disorienting despair of death and then rise gloriously in triumph.  Before the Passion of the Lord, we must all have the humility to say, “I do not know.”   

We can certainly all understand the crowds on Palm Sunday welcoming their anticipated liberator from the oppressive rule of foreigners as they cheered, “Hosanna! Blessed is He Who comes in the Name of the Lord, the King of Israel!”  Throughout His earthly ministry, the Savior faced and rejected the temptation to become an earthly ruler. But when, by the end of the week, it had become clear that He was not going to settle the score with the Romans, the crowds called so boisterously for His death that Pilate went along with their desires.  Ironically, it was in the aftermath of the Lord’s raising of Lazarus from the dead after four days, by which He showed that He is “the resurrection and the life,” that the chief priests and Pharisees decided that they had to destroy Him.  “Crucify Him!  Crucify Him!” they said to Pilate, for “We have no king but Caesar!” 

Perhaps we can understand religious leaders so obsessed with gaining earthly power that they would commit such blasphemy and call for the murder of someone they perceived as a threat, but it is more difficult to accept how the Savior’s own disciples betrayed, denied, and abandoned Him.  As their rabbi and friend, He withheld nothing from them, explaining the parables and performing many miracles in their presence.  He served them in humility, stooping down to wash their feet and patiently teaching them by word and deed.  But they too abandoned their Lord when they saw that, instead of conquering the Romans, He was apparently going to be destroyed by them.   

Were Jesus Christ merely a religious teacher of good character, His death after being betrayed, denied, and abandoned by those closest to Him would be terribly tragic, but life is full of such tragedies.  Since He is the Eternal Word of God Who spoke the universe into existence, however, His Passion is simply incomprehensible.  The Lord Who said that His Name is “I AM” when He spoke to Moses through the burning bush “emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant…He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”  (Phil. 2:7-8) Who can claim to understand such mystery?  The only begotten Son of the Father offered Himself in free obedience on the Cross, the Tree of Life, to disappear into the pit, the opaque abyss of death, as fully as any other human who has departed this life. His cry from the Cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” shows that He experienced the depths of human helplessness and horror.  He felt as alienated and abandoned as any victim of torture and brutal execution, as anyone rejected and abandoned by those He loved most, as anyone struggling to breathe His last in the midst of unbearable physical and psychological pain. 

 Our Savior experienced all of that as the God-Man.  In ways that we must not imagine that we can even begin to comprehend, the fully divine Son of God suffered, died, was buried, and descended into Hades, the shadowy place of the dead.   He was able to do so because He is also fully human.  Since He is also fully divine, we dare to confess the unfathomable mystery of a Person of the Holy Trinity freely experiencing the negation, weakness, despair, abandonment, and suffering that is our common lot in this world of corruption.  Our Savior, the God-Man Jesus Christ, is the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world.  He is the Lord Who reigns from the Cross.    His death does not change the eternal nature of God, of course, but reveals that sacrificial love beyond all human understanding is characteristic of God.  “For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:16) The Son does not pay a ransom or debt to appease the Father’s anger or sense of justice, but freely offers up Himself to the Holy Trinity (including Himself) out of love for the salvation of the world.  His sacrifice is not that of a mere human satisfying a religious or legal obligation, but of the God-Man who walks with us “through the valley of the shadow of death.”  Because of His Cross, we trust He is with us when we cry, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”  Because His suffering love extends even into the darkest corners of the loss and despair suffered by even the most wretched of His children, we may say with the Psalmist, “If I should descend into Hades, You would be there.” (Ps. 138:8)   

  Today we commemorate the triumphal entry into Jerusalem of the Savior Who emptied Himself in sacrificial love for our salvation beyond all human understanding and definition.  Even as we entrust ourselves to Him, we must have the humility to say “I do not know” in recognition that the deep mystery of His Passion is infinitely beyond our understanding. He does not conquer the corrupting power of sin and death with ideas, arguments, or brute force, but by selfless love that knows no bounds and extends even to those who betrayed, denied, abandoned, tortured, and crucified Him.  And He does so as One Who is fully human and fully divine.   He reveals Who God is, for He is God.  The divine nature is completely beyond our comprehension, but the God-Man has graciously shared His life of infinite love with us.  We know Him not by even the best words, thoughts, or feelings, but by opening the eyes of our souls to behold His glory, the glory of One Who died on the Cross because He loves us and refused to abandon us to the corruption and decay of the tomb.  

Holy Week is not a time for rational theological speculation and argument; neither is it a time to try to make ourselves feel a certain way.   It is, instead, a time for entering into the deep mystery of the love of our Lord, of the great “I AM” Who remains infinitely beyond our full comprehension.  Today He rides into Jerusalem on a humble donkey as the crowds welcome Him as a conquering hero.  But they do not really know what they are doing or what kind of Savior He is.  As we begin this Holy Week, let us have the humility to recognize that we are not that much different from them.  We too are quick to reject or at least ignore Christ when His Cross does not serve our agendas and preferences.   We too have our preconceived notions about what kind of Savior we want and how He should fit into our lives.  We too cannot make sense of a Lord Whose Kingdom comes through what appears to be complete and shameful failure according to any conventional standard.

That is precisely why we need to stand and kneel in stunned silence this week as we follow the Lamb of God to His great Self-Offering for the salvation of the world.  Let us resist the temptation to assume that we have His Passion all figured out.  Instead, like Abba Joseph, we should say, “I do not know” before the deep mystery of His unfathomable love.  Let us lay aside our earthly cares and distractions this week, so that we may follow the advice of St. Paul, who wrote, “The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your petitions be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”    

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[1] St. Antony the Great, as cited in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Benedicta Ward, trans., (Cistercian Publications, 1975): pg. 4, para. 17.

Saint Mary of Egypt: Homily for the 5th Sunday of Lent in the Orthodox Church

 

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

          It is easy to fall prey to the temptation of thinking that there is simply no point in trying to reorient our lives toward the Lord because of how profoundly we have weakened and defiled ourselves through sin.  Perhaps we—alone among all people-- are simply too far gone to find our way home like the prodigal son, we may think.  Maybe no amount of repentance would be sufficient for 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, 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.  

We live in an age of superficial religion in which many are more concerned with using their faith to advance earthly agendas of various kinds than with finding the healing of their souls through the difficult journey of persistent repentance.  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 in the 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 this world, but will instead gain the strength to manifest  Christ’s selfless love for our neighbors.   “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 Him to do with as is best according to His love for us.  Our great difficulty in embracing them reveals 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 embrace the inevitable tension between the current sick state of our souls and the divine blessedness that is our calling.  Such suffering is not a punishment, but a natural consequence of enduring the struggle to accept personally our restoration through Christ as His beloved sons and daughters, as His beautiful living icons. 

Thanks be to God, 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 in order to be true to herself.  Neither did she try to distract herself from them by serving the vain illusions of earthly kingdoms.  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.

We must, however, like her confront truthfully how we have sinned in order to open our hearts to Christ for His healing.  We must all do that during this season of Lent in the holy mystery of Confession so that we will gain the spiritual strength and clarity to follow our Lord to His Cross and empty tomb.  His own disciples betrayed, denied, and abandoned Him because they wanted a Messiah Who would serve their agendas.  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 Him is no small matter and will not happened instantaneously.  It has nothing to do with glorifying ourselves or achieving any earthly goal.  It does, however, have everything to do with the persistent, humble obedience shown by St. Mary of Egypt.  Like her, let us refuse to let anything 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 on the Cross for the salvation of the world. He alone is our hope and the Victor over death.

 

       

 

 

 

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.” 

 

 

 

 

The Adoration of the Holy Cross: Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent in the Orthodox Church

 

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

            We do not have to look very closely at dominant trends in our culture today for signs that many people are offering their lives for the service of false gods, regardless of how they identify themselves religiously.  The evidence of their idolatry is not primarily in where they congregate to worship, but in how they seek first the things of this world, such as possessions, power, and pleasure, and in how they hate and condemn those whom they perceive to stand in the way of their acquiring them.  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) 

         On this Sunday of the Adoration of the Holy Cross, right in the middle of Lent, we do the complete opposite of making success in this world, however defined, 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 through His glorious resurrection on the third day.  The Cross is truly the Tree of Life through which we return to the blessedness of Paradise.

             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.  These are the most basic disciplines of the Christian life, and we all need to practice them in order to gain the spiritual health necessary to take up our crosses, especially in relation to the great challenges of our lives.  

 If we refuse to deny ourselves even in small ways this Lent, then we will 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 power. Indeed, we will be even more guilty because we know that His Cross is not a sign of ultimate defeat to be repudiated, but “a weapon of peace and a trophy invincible” to be honored.     

 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 achieve our desire for any earthly goal, no matter how appealing or noble.  If we do not actually take up our crosses and deny ourselves out of love for God and neighbor, then we will condemn only ourselves when we use the Cross idolatrously to justify getting whatever we want personally for ourselves or the factions, nations, or other groups to which we have given our hearts.  Whenever we recognize that we are coming anywhere close to using the way of Christ to seek the things of this world as ends in themselves, we must call for the Lord’s mercy from the depths of our souls as we struggle to embody St. Paul’s teaching that “those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” (Gal. 5:24)

 We adore the Holy Cross today because it is ultimately a sign of the blessed eternal life that the Savior has brought to the world through His victory over the corrupting power of sin and death.  As we continue our Lenten journey, let us 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 our salvation.