priestmatthewjackson

Feast of the Nativity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ

2011-12-27T11:55:00.000-06:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Christ is born! Glorify Him!

I think most preachers feel about the same way on our Lord’s Nativity – between the Fast, and all of the services, and the readings, and the homilies of the last weeks, what’s really left to say?

We know the historical significance of the event that we celebrate today – the Nativity is really an extension of the Feast of the Annunciation. At the Annunciation, our humble God took on flesh and became man – and today, we celebrate the birth of the God-man into the world. From that point in time on, Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, is a unique union of God and man, of the mortal and the immortal, of the created and the uncreated. Right now, joined eternally to the Holy Trinity, seated at the right hand of the God and Father, is our Saviour Jesus Christ – God before all ages, eternally existing, and man, Son of the Virgin, with a resurrected and deified body joined forever with the Holy Trinity.

God’s love for us, taking His creation so intimately to Himself, is unfathomable for our human minds. And so what is our response, what is our thanksgiving for the grace and mercy of God? I’d like us to hear some of the beautiful language that the Father’s of the Church use when talking about our life in Christ. Because our thanksgiving to God is not completed with our lips (hymns, prayers, praises) but is made truly complete when we offer to Him our lives to be transformed into His image.

All of the events of the life of Christ are to be manifest in our lives as well. As the Virgin conceived God in the flesh in her womb and was truly the Theotokos – the bearer of God – we also are to carry in our bodies the very presence and image of Christ. St. Maximos writes, “The divine Word, Who once for all was born in the flesh, always in His compassion desires to be born in Spirit in those who desire Him. He becomes an infant and moulds Himself in [us] through the virtues.” We are all called to be Theotokos – the bearers of God, of Christ – both for our transformation and for the salvation of the world. That statement which sounds cliché – you may be the only God that some people ever see – in our understanding this is very true. The image of God which I bear may be the only contact some people will ever have with the real and living God – this is why we are all called to be Theotokos.

And as the Virgin, on the Feast we celebrate today, brought into the world the Christ, the Saviour, so too our lives are to give birth to Christ into the world. We’re not only to bear Him, but to give birth to Him daily in this fallen and sinful world that needs His love and salvation so desperately. Metropolitan Hierotheos, writing on this mystery of our personal participation in the Nativity of Christ, says “we live the Nativity of Christ when we have lived our own rebirth. This is the most fundamental message and meaning of the feast of Christmas…we live Christ’s incarnation personally in our life…[and] we experience the birth of the God-Man Christ through the sacramental and ascetical life that we live, following the Lord’s precepts, the commandments of God…Christ is conceived within us through faith, and he is carried in the womb and born through virtues.”

We give birth to Christ, we give life to Christ in the visible world today, by our lives. We are called Christian – little Christ – and by striving to live up to that name, we present Christ fresh and new, yet timeless and eternal, we present Him to the world every day. This is a very profound and beautiful way to express our life in Christ, our personal participation in His Incarnation and His holy Birth into the World some 2000+ years ago.

May we all carry Christ within us, and may we all give birth to Him in our lives, being transformed into His image, and sharing His love with the whole world.

Christ is born! Glorify Him!

Sunday before the Nativity of Christ

2011-12-18T13:03:00.000-06:00

Matthew 1:1-25

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

This morning’s Gospel reading causes multiple reactions among people, especially the fact that we read the first 17 verses of Matthew’s Gospel and don’t simply have the entire focus on Matthew’s account of the Virgin Birth of Christ. This chapter is all St. Matthew says about our Lord’s birth – the next chapter of his Gospel begins with the wise men coming from the East to worship Him.

St. Matthew spells out the lineage of our Lord according to the flesh for two reasons. The first reason is his specific audience at the time he wrote his Gospel – St. Matthew is writing his Gospel to the Jews, specifically the Jews who have not accepted Christ as the Messiah. We see consistently throughout this Gospel that St. Matthew draws the parallel between Christ and promised Messiah – he shows the unbelieving Jews of his time that this Jesus of Nazareth fulfills the prophecies and is the Messiah of Israel. The Messiah was to be of the line of David, the greatest of the kings of Israel – so St. Matthew begins his Gospel at the beginning, demonstrating that Jesus was of the line of David, as had been foretold.

The second reason we have this genealogy ties into the second part of the reading, and is what we might think of as the “theological” reason which remains incredibly important for all of mankind today. Jesus Christ, the Son and Word of God, became man, and He became man as a Jew. God becoming man is what this Nativity season is all about – this is the event that we’re preparing ourselves to celebrate next Sunday at the Feast of the Nativity. God became man. And He became fully and completely human, taking on and identifying completely with our human condition, in all way like us, with the singular exception of sin.

This genealogy reveals the Truth that God is becoming one of us, taking on our history and our humanity. It’s very interesting to see that St. Matthew doesn’t sanitize our Lord ancestry – the list of forebearers of the Lord includes the righteous and kings and Jews, and it also includes sinners and murders and Gentiles. As we all are, Christ was from a line of real and normal human beings, and we see that reflected in the lives of the people we see in His earthly lineage. So St. Matthew shows us from where Christ the Messiah was descended (according to the flesh), and then he moves immediately to show us the specifics – how our Lord was born.

The conception of Jesus in the womb of the Virgin Mary is a singular event in all of history, and I'd like us to ponder it for a few moments this morning – never before and never after will such a thing take place again. The story we all know: Mary was engaged to Joseph [Mary being a young girl, and Joseph being an elderly widower in the community], and before they were married she was found to be pregnant, to be with child of the Holy Spirit.

St. Matthew doesn’t tell us exactly how that happened, but I think it’s worth dipping into the Gospel of St. Luke [we actually don’t read this account at Liturgy, so it’s nice to have a chance to hear it here this morning], where also in the first chapter we read: “…the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph…the virgin’s name was Mary. And having come in, the angel said to her, ‘Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!’ But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this was. Then the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.’ Then Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I do not know a man?’ And the angel answered and said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God’…then Mary said, ‘Behold, the maidservant of the Lord! Let is be to me according to your word.’ And the angel departed from her.” (Luke 1:26-35, 38)

This scene is of critical importance to our understanding of Who Christ is – the Holy One, He is the Son and Word of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. And out of God’s great love for man, He was incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos [bearer of God], and He became man.

We also must be sure that we properly understand this phrase ‘God became man’ – the body of Christ was not a phantasmal body, Christ did not co-opt the body of an already existing man, the body of Christ is His holy body. The body of Christ was created in the womb of the Virgin to be the very body of God in the flesh. In fact, this body is His for all of eternity, as we see at His Holy Resurrection and Ascension – the resurrected body of Christ is joined to the Holy Trinity, and seated at the right hand of God forever. This is the love of God for us.

He took on all that we are, with the exception of sin – St. Gregory the Theologian writes that “what is not assumed cannot be healed.” In other words, God became all that we are, to offer us healing and salvation. Seated at the right hand of the Father is the One who understands us in all of our complexities, in all of our fallen-ness, in all of our pain and shame, in all of our struggles – Christ lived it all with us, that He might demonstrate for us the degree of God’s love for us, and offer us salvation.

As we spend this last week of our Nativity Fast, preparing ourselves to welcome Christ at His Holy Birth next Sunday, ponder on these things. On God’s immense love for us – He left the heavens, the God of all, the Creator of all, the Sustainer of all; He left that and became like us, bearing the burdens of life in the flesh. He didn’t have to do that for any reason – He did it in His love for us, to reveal Himself to man, and to offer us salvation. As we sing at Pascha – Who is so great a God as our God? Our God is the God who works wonders.

Glory to the incarnate Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Faith and Works and Salvation (Galatians 2:6-20)

2011-11-06T15:36:00.000-06:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

I would like for us to look this morning at St. Paul’s words to the Galatians, and for us to think about this topic of faith and works, and their relationship to our salvation. This is not really a contentious topic in the Orthodox Church – the Fathers have opened the Scriptures for us so that we can understand and live the right relationship of faith and of works. But this is a highly contentious topic among Western, non-Orthodox, Christians – so I’d like us to look at it with several things in mind.

Firstly, many of us are converts from Western Christianity, so we may be carrying around some baggage from those years that we’d do well to address. Also, we live in the West, therefore we might be influenced by discussions that go on around us without our even realizing it. So I’d like to do a few things – 1) lay out in very general terms the Western debate over faith and works, 2) two things happen here simultaneously – we see why this debate is flawed by positively learning what the Church has to say.

I. The Western Debate
Generally speaking, there’s a great fear on both sides of this debate about faith and works. On one side, you will hear Biblical quotations about man being saved by faith. This side generally does not want to talk about works at all – adding works into any discussion about salvation makes them think Pelagianism (heresy that says we are saved solely by our works, apart from the help of God). So from this perspective, all man needs to have for salvation is a belief in God, regardless of his actions.

On the other side (works side) is something that sounds a bit more like Pelagianism. Of course, Biblical verses are quoted about works, like “faith without works is dead.” But instead of coming to a balanced position, this side tends to the opposite extreme – for example you might hear about man’s good works being weighed against his sins, or man having to do good works to counteract his sins. Faith is certainly discussed here, but faith seems to be mostly the umbrella under which our actions are committed – everything is done under the watch of God, but salvation will ultimately be determined by works.

So in a general way, this is the Western debate over faith and works (certainly there are more nuanced positions, but these are the major 2 categories - faith and works are not balanced, but one always 'outweighs' the other).

II. The Biblical-Patristic Tradition
At the very forefront of our looking at faith and works, we can sense a huge Biblical issue – in the above mentioned debate, both ‘sides’ quote the Bible. There are verses talking about faith, verses talking about works, and places like our Epistle reading this morning, that talk about both faith and works. The Bible cannot and does not contradict herself – if there seem to be conflicts between passages, there’s a level of understanding that we’ve missed. This is why, as Orthodox, we try not to get into these discussions where each side is quoting various verses to defend a particular position – that’s like saying, “well your verse says that, and my verse says this.” But you can’t do that - if the position is not in accord with the witness of the Scriptures in their entirety, then verses are being misunderstood. This is one reason the Patristic Tradition of the Church is so vital – the Saints of God help us gain insight into the Scriptures by their writings and their lives. The Scriptures are understood and explained in the Body of Christ, Church. If we don’t understand something, there’s a place to go look to help us gain understanding.

So now, I’d like us to hear what the Orthodox Christian Church has to say about faith and works and salvation, using this morning’s representative Epistle reading. St Paul writes: “…a man is not justified by the works of the law [Old Testament law] but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law…but if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves are found sinners, is Christ therefore the minister of sin? Certainly not!...I have been crucified with Christ; 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 Christ…”

St Paul says nothing of a dichotomy between faith and works, rather it sounds very clear that both faith and works are present in the life of a person who is being transformed in Christ. The life he lives is through faith in Christ.

So I’d like us to end by hearing St. John Chrysostom comment briefly on this very Epistle reading, looking to the Saints to make sure we have the proper understanding: He beings by saying that faith in Christ has replaced the works of the law for the believer, and he continues “For a man cannot live to God, otherwise than by dying to sin; and as Christ suffered a bodily death, so does Paul a death to sin…if thou remainest dead to sin, thou livest to God, but if thou let [sin] live again, thou art the ruin of thy new life…”

In other words, our faith in Christ is our salvation; but a true faith in Christ includes our death to sin, a constant struggle against sin and for the works of the New Covenant (virtues) – a saving faith transforms the life of the believer into a man struggling to put on Christ, and to abandon sin. Our faith and our works go hand in hand, as we read in many places in the New Testament [faith without works is dead – therefore a living faith is accompanied by the works of Christ], and as St. John Chrysostom and all the Saints testify to in both their lives and their writings.

May we then, empowered by the grace of the Holy Spirit, struggle to die to the old man, and to put on Christ.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

BOOK REVIEW - Elder Anthimos of Saint Anne's: The Wise and God-bearing Contemporary Father of Athos

2011-10-31T12:13:00.000-05:00

I am very happy to have been asked to review the newly published book Elder Anthimos of St Anne's by Dr Charalambos Bousias. God has graciously granted our generation a number of godly and heavenly men - Elder Joseph the Hesychast, Elder Paisios, Elder Porphyrios, Elder Sophrony, and others. The godly Elder Anthimos joins his voice to that very choir of heavenly saints.

This book reminds me of the other books I have read about modern Athonite Elders. It allows us a peek into their God-pleasing lives - a glimpse of the Heavenly Kingdom. Elder Anthimos is truly a wise and God-bearing contemporary Father of Athos, as the book title conveys.

He left the world to cling only to our Saviour at the Holy Skete of St Anne. Life there was physically difficult, yet the Elder's obedience and fervor for Christ led him ever deeper into the mystery of life in Christ. He was ordained priest after only 6 years on the Mountain, and served as a sacred Spiritual Father for many both on and off the Holy Mountain. Because he was an initiate into the Mysteries of the Christian life, he was able to guide souls to the haven of salvation in Christ.

Learning of his life is very edifying, and this book is blessed in that it conveys to us that life.

But this book does much more. The contents include the Elder's biography, various quotes of his teachings, signs and wonders, excerpts from his letters, and various articles written about the Holy Elder. It gives us a wonderful vision and word from the Elder.

Unlike any other book I've encountered in English translation, this book also includes texts for the services dedicated to the Elder (Vespers, Matins, Supplicatory Canon). Now, after we read of this Holy Elder and develop a love and a veneration for his life in Christ, we can also sing his praises and beg for his prayers for us at the throne of Almighty God.

Holy Father Anthimos, pray to the merciful God that our souls may be saved!

This book may be purchased directly from the publisher, Orthodox Logos Publishing:

Soft Cover

Hard Cover

20th Sunday after Pentecost - Healing of the Gadarine Demoniac (Luke 8:26-39)

2011-10-30T13:46:00.000-05:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

Today we hear in the Gospel reading a miracle of our Lord’s which is very familiar to most people – the healing of the Gadarine demonic. This was a man possessed by a legion of demons – he was totally consumed by the demons that possessed him. They controlled his every move and action. He lived among the tombs, in the cemetery, with no house, no clothes, when the people tried to contain him and help him, he broke the shackles and ran away. He demonstrates some traits that we would definitely identify as not human.

With Christ’s miracle this morning, we see the power of God on display for all to see. The demons recognize Him as He approaches, and they fear Him. When He commands them to come out of the man, they beg not to be sent into the abyss, not to be punished before the time (before the end of the age when Satan and all of his followers are to be sent into everlasting punishment). The demons ask permission of the Lord to enter into a nearby herd of pigs. It is with the herd as it had been with the man – we see the destructive power and the evil of the demons – the herd immediately rushes down the cliff and drowns in the lake below them.

The Gadarene people’s reaction to this miracle is worth noting – they aren’t happy for the healed man, they aren’t happy to see the overwhelming power of our God – they are scared, they are angry for the loss of their herd, and they ask Christ to leave their city.
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This miracle of our Lord’s very much parallels our own struggle in the spiritual life, our own struggles for sanctity in Christ. Just as the demons consumed the life of the man they possessed, our passions consume us and entirely take over the course of our lives. And it should be remembered that the demons are ever active in our lives today, tempting us and always trying to lead us away from Christ. If you look at our lives sometimes, we do act mad, possessed – especially when compared to the life Christ has called us to live.

We live in an age perplexed, where sinful activities are seen as normal, and to behave in any other way is perceived as crazy. There is a saying from the Desert Fathers which goes something like, the Elder says that there will come a time when the people of the world are crazy, and they will point to those who are normal and say, what is wrong with you, you are not like us. This is very much the way the world is today – people are filled with their passions their sins and if we try to overcome our own sins and passions then we are considered to be crazy.

There is another relevant quote by Elder Joseph the Hesychast I’d like us to hear here as well - [Our spiritual situation today] is similar to what happened in the days of idolatry. Back then, if you reviled the idols, they would stone you or put you to a miserable death. Now in our times, every passion has taken the place of an idol. And if you reprove or criticize the passion that you see overcoming each person, they all shout, "Stone him, because he has reviled our gods!"

So this is the situation that we deal with today – a world, including US, consumed with passions, possessed by sin. Christ has come into the world to offer us healing, wholeness, just as dramatic as the healing of Legion – He wants to loose us of our sins and our passions and to seat us, clothed in the garments of righteousness, at the right hand of the Father.

This being loosed from sin and passions is what we know in the Orthodox Church as following the ascetic life of Christ – following His commandments, seeking Him at all times and in all things, preparing ourselves to meet Him through our fasting, prayer, spiritual reading, almsgiving. Just as with the miracle this morning, we are healed only by Christ – He does the healing, which we also cooperate with through our own lives and struggles. Just as the Legion feared Him, so also the demons that assail us also fear Him. As we draw closer to Christ, we become more sane – but the people around us often react similarly to the Gadarenes – they don’t understand what we’re doing.

Aligning ourselves with Christ alienates us from the world – for this reason our desire for Christ has to be a burning desire, salvation must the deepest desire of our soul, we must be willing to sacrifice for Christ – because once we choose Him we become enemies of the way of the world. As we’re healed, we can join the man from today’s Gospel in proclaiming all of the things God has done for us – as St. Paul said in the Epistle, we are taught by God as we’re cleansed of our passions and draw closer to Him.
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This is the 1st stage of the spiritual life – casting out the demons and being healed of our passions is simply the 1st step. God has so much more in store for us, revelations and experiences that our still unclean minds can barely grasp, things like we see in the lives of the Saints. I encourage you not to view this casting off of sin as the fullness of life in Christ – we’re meant for so much more. We’re created to share in the very life of God – to be deified even in this life – to grow, there’s nothing static about God or our salvation, to grow in God from glory to glory unto all the ages.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

St. Tikhon of Moscow, Apostle to America

2011-10-10T09:54:00.000-05:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

Today we commemorate the feast of St. Tikhon, Apostle to America, and later Patriarch of Moscow. I was incredibly privileged, during seminary, to study at St. Tikhon’s (named for today’s saint), and to worship in the monastery church of St. Tikhon, founded by St Tikhon of America and Russia (and to serve on the altar consecrated by St Raphael of Brooklyn). And every time we entered the monastery Church, we were able to venerate the relics of St. Tikhon.

I’m always excited to have the opportunity to preach about the saints, and this is why. In the Church, we know the Holy Spirit is living and active – our goal in the Church, as St Seraphim of Sarov said, is to acquire the Holy Spirit. Our aim is to be filled with the grace of God, to be Christians – little Christs. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me – this is our goal – we are all called to be saints. As Metropolitan Hierotheos writes, we could say that the goal of the Church is to produce relics; in other words, to help us become saints. And today we get to hear about one of these men of God – and as we hear of his life and his struggles, may he stand out for us as an example of what we’re called to be, and also as a source of inspiration as we struggle in our daily lives to be like Christ.

As we heard in the second Gospel reading from St. John, St. Tikhon was the good shepherd, guarding the flock entrusted to him by God, and reaching out to bring others into the fold. St. Tikhon exhibited a particular love for Christ and His Church from childhood – his father was a priest, and he went to the seminary from ages 13-18. Upon graduating he became an instructor of theology at the seminary. He took monastic vows at age 26, very consciously dedicating the remainder of his life to serving Christ. At the very early age of 32, he was consecrated bishop, and began his episcopal work as an assistant bishop in Russia. The very next year 1898 (age 33), he was transferred to the American diocese [of course still in the Russian Church, but in North America physically] of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska.

St Tikhon labored with love during his tenure in America, and many of his accomplishments are well known to the Orthodox in America. He had in his mind, and in his heart, that the Orthodox Church possessed the fullness of the Christian faith (of Truth), and this faith needed to be made available to all the people of North America. He changed the name of the diocese to “the Aleutian Islands and North America” to reflect that. St Tikhon traveled widely and constantly, from coast to coast, visiting existing parish communities and constantly establishing new Churches for the spreading of the Faith. Once the American diocese was elevated to an Archdiocese, St Tikhon was elected as the Archbishop, and his two assistant bishops were St Innocent and St Raphael. We can see very clearly that the Lord took great care in planting the Church here in North America – three saints overseeing the growth and development of the Church in her early years. St Tikhon’s vision for America was one Orthodox Church, made up of all different ethnic peoples and converts, worshipping God and calling others to the faith. He was a true missionary, an Apostle to America.

After 9 years in America, St Tikhon was called back to Russia and was made bishop in several other diocese over the course of the next 10 years. He was especially loved by his people for his kindness, his love for them, his generosity to the needy [frequently giving from his own money and the Church stores in order to care for the poor], and his wisdom in dealing with all matters. On November 5, 1917, St Tikhon was elected to be the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. St Tikhon realized that his pastorship would be one filled with enormous difficulties – the Communists had already seized the government in Russia, and he foresaw that the Church was about to be under terrible strain and persecution.

St Tikhon didn’t change when he became Patriarch, the title didn’t go to his head, he continued to be an image of humility – he continued to be filled with love for both Christ and his flock, and all times kept the safety and salvation of the people in his mind as he walked a very difficult path lined with inner church squabbles, dealing with an aggressive government, and even dealing with heresy and schism in the Russian Church. From all corners of Russia, St Tikhon heard of Church property being confiscated, clergy/monastics/laity being harshly persecuted and even killed, icons and relics and holy things being stolen and desecrated. Instead of becoming angry or embittered, St Tikhon stood in the midst of this storm as an example for the people, always calling them to fulfill the commandments of Christ, and to care for their spiritual (and earthly) life through prayer and repentance – he kept the focus on Christ, and not on the work of the evil one. He ordered the clergy to stay out of political matters (we’re about the Kingdom of God, not earthly kingdoms). He was imprisoned for 14 months for telling the clergy not to turn over sacred items to the authorities – he viewed this confiscation as sacrilege, the government viewed his memo as sabotage.

St Tikhon devoted himself entirely to the cause of Christ, and called on the clergy to do the same - "Devote all your energy to preaching the word of God and the truth of Christ, especially today, when unbelief and atheism are audaciously attacking the Church of Christ. May the God of peace and love be with all of you!" All of his struggles for the Church and personally were physically exhausting for St Tikhon, and he checked himself to a hospital for rest and care – but he always left on Sundays and Feast days to serve the holy services. On March 25, 1925, he served his final Liturgy (Feast of the Annunciation), and two days later he reposed in the Lord.

St Tikhon’s life is a clear example of how Christians, and Christian pastors, are to be. His dedication was to Christ – shepherding the flock, and calling others to the Lord – he never wavered in the face of incredible difficulty and temptation, and for his life in Christ he is celebrated today as one of the many Saints of the Orthodox Church.

I’ll end with an exhortation St Tikhons gave his flock in a homily on the Sunday of Orthodoxy in 1903:
"Holding to the Orthodox Faith as to something holy, longing for it with all their hearts and prizing it above all, Orthodox people ought...to endeavor to spread it among people of other creeds. Christ the Saviour has said that neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house (Matt. 5:15) The light of Orthodoxy was not lit to shine only on a small number of men. The Orthodox Church is universal; it remembers the words of its Founder: Go ye unto all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15) ..We ought to share our spiritual wealth, our truth, light, and joy with others who are deprived of these blessings, but often are seeking them and thirsting for them...but who is to work for the spread of the Orthodox Faith for the increase of the children of the Orthodox Church? Pastors and missionaries, you answer. You are right; but are they to be alone? St. Paul wisely compares the Church of Christ to a body, and the life of a body is shared by all the members. So it ought to be in the life of the Church also...The spread of Christ's faith ought to be near and precious to the heart of every Christian. In this work every member of the Church ought to take a lively and heartfelt interest..."

Holy Father Tikhon, pray to God for us!
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

We're called to love whom? (Luke 6:31-36)

2011-10-02T13:41:00.001-05:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

In this morning’s Gospel reading, we hear these words from the mouth of the Lord – “love your enemies…as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise” (vv 35, 31). A few verses before this reading, in the same section of teaching, our Lord similarly says – “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who use you” (Luke 6:27-28).

The thing that separates us from the world, according to the words of Christ (John 13:35), is love. “By this will you be known…love…” Nowhere else will you find this teaching, to love your enemies. [Caveat – I have actually seen it mentioned by the current Dali Lama, but in an entirely different context and with an entirely different goal – he says forgive your enemies because it makes you happy, it’s better for you to forgive than to harbor resentment] We would be quick to point out that it’s not simply a teaching or a moral dictate or a selfish endeavor, love is the way of life of the Christian, so love of everyone – even enemies – flows naturally from that. St. Silouan the Athonite says that since the Kingdom of God lies within us, we have no enemies because there is neither friend nor foe in Christ, all are loved as one.

Today, when we hear these words, we can have these theological thoughts and understand what is meant and why, but it’s much harder for us to actually put these words into actions, especially this notion of loving our enemies. Firstly, many of us simply don’t think that we have any enemies. We aren’t at war with anyone, there aren’t any family feuds going on, there’s nothing that would obviously point to a particular person and have us label them “enemy.” And secondly, when we do identify someone as “enemy,” somehow we have a dis-connect between Christ’s words and our actions. We can feel Christian and justified, while hating our enemy. So I’d like us to consider these two points more in depth for a few moments.

Who are our enemies?
Obviously, if we’re in some type of argument or direct conflict with someone, we can identify them as our enemy. Less obviously, the Father’s tell us that when someone has hurt us or wronged us or offended us in some way, we typically react to them as we would to an enemy, and the Father’s call this ‘remembrance of wrongs.’ For most of us, loving our enemies takes us directly into overcoming our remembrance of wrongs. This phrase - remembrance of wrongs – essentially means that we remember the hurtful things people have done to us, and these remembrances continue to cause us distress [we still feel passion, we still sin in remembering] and continue to interfere with our lives and our relationships (especially with the person we’re holding a grudge against). Our remembrance of the wrongs of others makes them to be our enemy, in our minds at least. These are the enemies that most of us face, and are called to love.

St. John Climacus dedicates an entire step (#9) in The Ladder of Divine Ascent to this issue. Of this sin, St. John writes – “[it is] the consummation of anger, the keeper of sins, hatred of righteousness, ruin of virtues, poison of the soul, worm of the mind, shame of prayer, cessation of supplication, estrangement of love, a nail stuck in the soul, pleasure-less feeling cherished in the sweetness of bitterness, continuous sin, unsleeping transgression, hourly malice” (9:12). As you can clearly hear, remembrance of wrongs harms us, destroys our soul – the enemy often doesn’t even know that we’re upset – we hang on to our remembrance and we destroy ourselves.

St. Silouan phrases it a slightly different way – the enemy are those people we reject for whatever reason [that helps us open a whole new level of thinking about who we hold as enemies, we reject people for all kinds of reasons all the time…] – but remembering the earlier quote, none are rejected by Christ, all are loved. St. Silouan even reminds us here that the flames of hell are the love of God to those who continue to reject Him; God is “everywhere present and filling all things.” So our Lord calls us to love our enemies, in other words, to have no enemies, to be at peace with everyone, to reject no one.

So what do we do with this?
Firstly, we take a personal inventory – remembering all of the various things that place us at enmity with people, we analyze our lives and we force ourselves (with God’s grace) to admit the people that we have set up in our lives/minds as our enemies.

Secondly, if there’s anything we can do to remedy particular situations, we do that. We offer apologies, we ask forgiveness, we forgive others – we do what we can to truly be at peace with those people that until now we’ve viewed as our enemies.

And finally, we pray. We pray to see ourselves as God sees us (once we see clearly our own faults, we’re much less likely to judge others), and we pray daily for our enemies, that God bless them and that His will be done in their lives. The Fathers tell us that it’s very hard to continue to hold bad feelings for someone if we’re praying for them sincerely every day.

AND moving forward, we must remain diligent so that we don’t continue to set people up as our enemies – don’t reject people, don’t judge people, forgive, apologize, do those things that keeps our relationships filled with the primary characteristic of the Christian – LOVE.

We’ll end with a final quote from St. John Climacus, giving us a glimpse of how completely God can heal us from the remembrance of wrongs, what total health looks like: “You will know that you have completely freed yourself of this rot, not when you pray for the person who has offended you, nor when you exchange presents with him, nor when you invite him to your table, but only when, on hearing that he has fallen into spiritual or bodily misfortune, you suffer and weep for him as for yourself” [9:12].

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Meditation Day 10 - Life in the World - Step 1:21

2011-08-11T09:35:00.000-05:00

Some people living carelessly in the world have asked me: ‘We have wives and are beset with social cares, and how can we lead the solitary life?’ I replied to them: ‘Do all the good you can; do not speak evil of anyone; do not steal from anyone; do not lie to anyone; do not be arrogant towards anyone; do not hate anyone; do not be absent from the divine services; be compassionate to the needy; do not offend anyone; do not wreck another man’s domestic happiness, and be content with what your own wives can give you. If you behave in this way, you will not be far from the Kingdom of Heaven.’ (Step 1:21)

There really is not very much to flesh out of this particular step – St. John directly addresses the question of how we practically apply the things he is saying to our lives in the world. If we are living in this way, which is a reflection of the Gospels and the life of Christ, then we are truly living a life that is pleasing to God. Read this step several times today, and consider your own life in the terms St. John presents – how do our lives compare?

Scripture verse for thought today – “And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” (John 3:19)

Homily on the One-ness of the Church

2011-08-07T12:58:00.000-05:00

1 Corinthians 1:10-18; Matthew 14:14-22

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

In our Epistle reading this morning, St. Paul touches on a very significant aspect of the life of the Christian Church—Her unity, Her One-ness. St. Paul is addressing a specific issue in the Church in Corinth, an issue that seems kind of silly to us perhaps. The members of the Church are vying for position based on who administered their baptism; as if baptism by Paul would somehow be “better” than a baptism by someone else. St. Paul immediately shows them how insignificant this debate is, and he beseeches them that “there be no divisions,” but that the Church would be “perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (v. 10). He then goes on to explain that the Church must be one and undivided because Christ is one, there is no division in Christ (v. 13). Only Christ died for mankind, and all members of the Church are baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity, per the command of Christ.

So the local community in Corinth must be one—of one mind, undivided—because Christ is one, and His Church (His Body) is one. This is the number for the Fathers—one. Everything is one, united, undivided. One Christ, one Church. The Orthodox Church takes a lot of criticism for this stance, that there is only One Church, only one Body of Christ. But this is clearly the teaching of the earliest Christians, and it’s the teaching of the Scriptures. The existence of many Christian groups that we see today is the way of the world—everyone doing what they want to do and saying that everyone can be right. St. Paul addresses this directly—“the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (v. 18)

Our only choice is to proclaim the Truth as it’s been passed on to us by the Saints. In the Creed we profess One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. When we say One Church, the single Body of Christ, what exactly are we expressing? I’ll steal from Met. HIEROTHEOS’ book The Mind of the Orthodox Church for our answer.

He begins by logically stating that since Christ is one, there can only be one Church. A head can only have one body, not many. The Church is the Divine-human Body of the Godman Jesus Christ. He goes on to write, “In speaking of the oneness of the Church we have two basic things in view. One is that in spite of the plurality of the members, there is one body, and secondly, that [the Church] is the unique place of man’s salvation” (p. 52).

Notice, in the vision of the Orthodox Church he doesn’t even feel the need to address the fact that there is only one Body which can call itself the Church. For the first point—no matter how many local Orthodox Churches exists, no matter how many members are part of those Churches, there is only One Church. Christ shows us this with the image of the shepherd and his flock—the many sheep follow the one shepherd, but the many sheep make up one flock. The many do not negate the reality of the one. We also see this perfectly illustrated in the Eucharist—we all receive communion, but we all receive the one Christ. The Fathers say that Christ is indivisibly divided among the faithful; we all partake of the one Christ. The unity of the Church is internal, it comes from the relationship of the Body with Christ, and the relationship of individual people with Christ that makes them to be members of the Church.

The other point that Met. HIEROTHEOS makes is that the Church is the place of man’s salvation. Now, this doesn’t mean that all of humanity isn’t offered salvation; everyone is offered the chance to be joined with Christ. There are seeds of the truth all around, but all of these seeds are joined together and offered to us in the Church. The Church is given to mankind as the ideal place for our relationship with Christ to develop. The Church maintains all of the revelations of God to man—the law, the prophets, Christ, the Apostles, all of the Saints—everything revealed by God to humanity for our salvation is preserved and taught in the Church. People who are not joined to the Church don’t detract from the unity of the Church—they are separated from the Church. This is the same reason that the Orthodox Church doesn’t speak of re-uniting separate Churches—the Church is one, has existed continuously since the day of Pentecost, and we find ourselves either in that Body, or separate from that Body. The gates of hell, the Scriptures promise, will not prevail against the Church (Matthew 16:18).

With such a vision of the Church, what a silly thing it is to be arguing about who was baptized by whom. Every local parish, ourselves included, we have to watch out for these types of temptations that can cause arguments and separations within the manifestation of the Body of Christ here in McComb. The vision of the Christian Church that we have to present here is of unity, of singularity, and as St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment, with no division.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord

2011-08-06T16:10:00.000-05:00

2 Peter 1:10-19; Matthew 17:1-9

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

Today we celebrate a great Feast of our Lord, the Feast of the Uncreated Light, the Feast of the Transfiguration of our Jesus. Today our Lord clearly reveals His divinity to the Apostles Peter, James, and John, and this revelation comes in the form of an indescribable light surrounding Him on the summit of Mt Tabor. It’s not uncommon for our Lord to reveal Himself as light both in the Scriptures and in the lives of the Saints – we can think immediately of Abraham, Moses, Paul, St. Seraphim of Sarov, and so many others. When human kind comes into direct contact with divinity, it seems that Light is the only way we have to speak about our experience.

The Apostles experience the glory of the Godman today on Mt Tabor - this glory identified as a bright cloud in this morning’s reading. When we read of these experiences, and of so many Elders and theologians today writing about the Uncreated Light, it can be a confusing and daunting thing to try and comprehend and to even think about ourselves possibly experiencing.

So this morning I’d like to read a small excerpt that brings this notion of God as light into the everyday for us.

Excerpt from A Night in the Desert of the Holy Mountain by Metropolitan HIEROTHEOS of Nafpaktos (pp 130-131)
[Speaking about this (God as light)] “we can say that there is spiritual light and light that man sees with his physical eyes, after they have been transformed and strengthened to see it. Spiritual light is the commandments, and he who keeps them receives it. ‘Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.’ The commandments of Christ are ‘words of eternal life’ and not moralistic external precepts. Virtues, as well, which are conceived in our effort to carry out the commandments of Christ, are torches. Faith is light as well as hope and love. God is the true light and ‘the light of the world’ (John 8:12)...’God is love,’ which is why we say that love is the brightest light of all the virtues. Repentance, too, is light, which shines on the soul of man and guides him to the pool of the second baptism, where the eyes are cleansed from spiritual cataracts. All Christians who fight the good fight enjoy this light…”

We all have the opportunity to participate in the Light of Mount Tabor, it’s not a thing meant to be foreign to us – we can all have the mercy and love of God flood over us, and to live in this light. “The Kingdom of God is within you,” our Lord says, and truly we can experience this through the Light of God coming to dwell in us. In fact, every revelation of Christ is not done simply to establish Him as Truth, but also acts as an invitation for us to also experience these same revelations. Christ is present in His words, in His commandments, in the Virtues, in the Sacraments, and as we align ourselves with these things of Christ we also align ourselves with His life, we become like Him, and He makes His abode in us.

Glory to our God for revealing Himself as He truly is to His Apostles so that they might believe and also hand the Truth on to us, and glory to Him for continuing to reveal Himself to His beloved, for our strengthening and salvation.

Glory to the Transfigured Lord! Glory forever!

Meditation Day 9 - Excuses - Step 1:19

2011-08-05T09:02:00.000-05:00

Let no one, by appealing to the weight and multitude of his sins, say that he is unworthy of the monastic vow, and for love of pleasure disparage himself, excusing himself with excuses in his sins. Where there is much corruption, considerable treatment is needed to draw out all the impurity. The healthy do not go to a hospital. (Step 1:19)

Here we see a struggle that is very common for those of us living the Christian life: because of our ‘addiction’ to sin, we find ourselves making excuses in order to indulge in the pleasures we desire. How many times have we thought something like, “well, I’m a sinner anyway, this one more time won’t matter.” When we move St. John’s point out of the monastic context [where it is obviously incredibly valuable] and into our lives in the world, his words pierce to the heart. As he says, the sick are those in need of the hospital. We are sick in our sin; our sins keep us from being truly human as God has created us to be. The human person does not function properly on any level because of the abundance of sin. Everything in the Church calls us to struggle unrelentingly against our sin – every time we turn from even the smallest sin, a great victory is won. Elder Joseph the Hesychast has a wonderful quote about this that we can keep in mind – “”In whatever battle a person has been defeated once—even if a hundred years pass—as soon as he encounters that same temptation that had defeated him, he is overpowered once again…in every battle with the enemy, you must emerge victorious. Either die in the struggle, or win with God. There is no other road.” Let us then struggle to make no excuses for our sins, and to give all in the quest for Godliness that we possibly have.

Scripture verse for thought today – “Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound…what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid! How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” (Romans 5:20, 6:1-6:2, and if you have time, all of Romans 6 speaks beautifully on this struggle against sin and for righteousness)

Meditation Day 8 - The Commandments - Step 1:16

2011-08-02T09:04:00.001-05:00

In the very beginning of our renunciation, it is certainly with labour and grief that we practice the virtues. But when we have made progress in them, we no longer feel sorrow, or we feel little sorrow. But as soon as our mortal mind is consumed and mastered by our zeal, we practice them with all joy and eagerness, with love and with divine fire. (Step 1:16)

In the Christian life, our struggle on this earth is to part ways with our sin and to follow the commandments of Christ. The commandments of the Saviour are not simply laws for us to navigate – the commandments flow from the very life of God. Following the commandments makes us to be like Christ; we are being reformed in His image. The virtues are those things that the commandments call us to be – love, mercy, forgiveness, charity, etc. St. John offers us comfort by assuring us that the initial following of the commandments is very difficult. This is a universal truth that we all should know. As we grow in Christ, the struggle becomes less, and eventually we follow the commandments out of our love for Christ. Let us daily engage in the struggle to be like Christ, knowing both that this is the only way to be truly human (in God’s image), and that God will bless and ease the struggles of those who are faithful.

Scripture verse for thought today – “If you love Me, keep my commandments.” (John 14:15)

Meditation Day 7 - Regaining our Lost Fervour - Step 1:12

2011-08-01T10:19:00.000-05:00

When the soul betrays itself and loses the blessed and longed-for fervour, let it carefully investigate the reason for losing it. And let it arm itself with all its longing and zeal against whatever has caused this. For the former fervour can return only through the same door through which it was lost. (Step 1:12)

St. John looks briefly at a state which all Christians struggle with in their walk with Christ – a diminishing of their fervour for God. This basically describes those times when our desire to please our Saviour has slacked, or even almost gone away completely. We often describe these times as feeling distant from God, and during these periods we find it increasingly harder to struggle spiritually. It’s not uncommon for us to lose interest in God altogether when our zeal has gone away. St. John says the fault for this lies in ‘the soul betray[ing] herself,’ in other words, we have failed or sinned in some way. The prescription here is straightforward – we’re told to carefully investigate our fall and to arm ourselves against this particular reason. The only way to regain our fervour, St. John writes, is the same way we lost it. We must grow the virtue that is counter to the reason for our fall in order to overcome the reason for our fall and to regain our relationship with Christ. As we intentionally enter this struggle, our Lord sees our desire and our effort and He meets us with His grace and restores our fervour for Him.

Scripture verse for thought today – “Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee.” (Psalm 75:25)

Meditation Day 6 - Step 1:11

2011-07-29T17:52:00.000-05:00

To lag in the fight at the very outset of the struggle and thereby to furnish a token of our coming slaughter is a very hateful and dangerous thing. A firm beginning will certainly be useful for us when we later grow slack. A soul that is strong at first, but then relaxes, is spurred on by the memory of its former zeal. And in this way new wings are often obtained. (Step 1:11)

There are several ways that this particular step could be read, each edifying in its various situation. St. John is originally writing this to monastics – he is encouraging them to make a good beginning to their monastic life, a beginning that will continue to support them as they struggle in the monastery. Today in the Orthodox Church, this step would be read on the very first day of Great Lent – encouraging all of us to make a good beginning to the Fast – to begin the Fast in the proper spirit (love and repentance), doing our best to follow the Fast and to align our lives with Christ and to prepare for the Feast of Holy Pascha. This step is also a step that we should begin with every single day – starting each day with a firm beginning, to strengthen us for the coming temptations and struggles of the day. The Fathers tell us to begin each day in prayer, offering God our repentance and praying for His Grace to guide us through the day. When we begin each day with God, asking His blessing for our day and placing ourselves intentionally under His protection, we receive that firm beginning that helps us in our walk for the remainder of the day.

A wonderful prayer to begin the day - Prayer of the Optina Elders

O Lord, grant that I may greet the coming day in peace. Help me to rely upon Thy holy will at every moment. In every hour of the day, reveal Thy will to me. Bless my association with all who surround me. Teach me to treat whatever may happen this day with peace of soul and with firm conviction that Thy will governs all. In all my deeds and words, guide my thoughts and feelings. In unforeseen events, let me not forget that all are sent by Thee. Teach me to act firmly and wisely, without embittering or embarrassing others. Give me the strength to bear the fatigue of the coming day with all that it shall bring. Direct my will. Teach me to pray. Pray Thyself in me. Amen.

Scripture verse for thought today – “He giveth power to the faint; and to them who have no might He increaseth strength.” (Isaiah 40:29)

2011-07-27T14:39:00.000-05:00

"According to the Fathers of the Church, for someone to be physically [or psychiatrically] ill and to praise God is a sign of spiritual health. The ascetic Fathers stress many aspects of this subject. According to St. Diadochos of Photiki, patience in life's trials and thanksgiving for misfortunes is a second form of martyrdom. Then illness will be reckoned by God as martyrdom and the sick person will receive a martyr's crown, according to Christ's words, "He that endureth to the end shall be saved" (Matthew 10:22).

From The Science of Spiritual Medicine by Metropolitan Hierotheos, 2010, p 101

Homily on Romans 12:6-14

2011-07-25T10:46:00.000-05:00

This homily was given at St. Anthony the Great Orthodox Church in San Antonio, TX, on 7-24-2011

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

This morning I would like us to look at the Epistle reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. The reading is basically in two parts: the first part encouraging us to use the gifts that God has given us (vv 6-8), and the second part (vv 9-14) giving us an image of what the Christian life should actually look like. I’d like us to spend a few moments looking at each of these two parts.

Concerning the gifts of the Spirit – the Scriptures are very clear that every member of the Body of Christ, every member of the Church, is given spiritual gifts to be used in conjunction with everyone else’s gifts, all of these making up the Body of Christ. There is a certain temptation in the Church to think that perhaps the bishops and the priests should do the ‘work’ of the Church, or maybe even to include the parish council or the sisterhood in that group. To basically live as though only a select few members of the Body have gifts, and the rest of us are ‘just members of the Body.’ But St. Paul is very clear this morning that each of us has a spiritual gift (at least one), given to us by the Holy Spirit, and we’re called to use this gift within the Body of Christ. I heard Fr. Hopko say one time that one of the primary functions of the priest in the community is to help people figure out what our spiritual gifts may be, and then to facilitate the members in using those gifts within the Church. St. Paul gives us several examples of spiritual gifts in this morning’s Epistle reading – prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation (encouragement), ruling (leading), charity - and in other places he lists additional gifts like mercy, wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, working miracles. These gifts are present in every parish community for the building up of the Body of Christ, and equally important, for the sharing of the Faith with people outside of the Church.

Now I’d like to move on to the second part of today’s reading, where St. Paul gives us an image of what the Christian life should look like. And you know, these two parts of this Epistle are not unrelated – to really see what God has given us (gifts), and to truly be a properly functioning member of the Body of Christ, we have to be living a Christian life. The brief description that St. Paul gives us is not earth-shattering, it’s the same thing we hear throughout the Gospels. “Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good. Be kindly affected to one another…not slothful…serving the Lord…rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing instant in prayer…” The concepts are very familiar to us, but as St. Paul says in another place, we can find it very difficult to do the things that we know are the right things to do. It’s important for us to remember that it will be virtually impossible to share Christ with the world if we’re not struggling to live the life that Christ has called us to.

He has called us to be like Him – this is the central movement of our life here on earth – a movement away from sin and self-centeredness, towards love and Christ-likeness. All of the virtues St. Paul calls us to in the Epistle reading are virtues that flow from the life of Christ: love (this is the central commandment, love God and love our fellow man), prayer, mercy, hospitality, blessing. As we embody these virtues, we align our lives with the life of Christ – we become, as the Scripture says, like unto Him. Our faith is not a moral structure giving us rules to live by – our Faith is life in Christ. The virtues to which we’re called make us to be like Christ – we live as Him so that we can be with Him. There’s a synergy – He gives us the grace to follow Him, as struggle to follow Him we become more like Him, and He pours out His grace on us all the more as we continue the struggle.

So as we prepare now to receive the life-giving mysteries of Christ, let us daily continue the struggle to keep the grace that our Lord gives us and to struggle to align our lives ever more with His, that He then can work through us for our salvation and the salvation of the world.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Meditation Day 5 - Step 1:10

2011-07-23T15:58:00.000-05:00

Those who enter this contest must renounce all things, despise all things, deride all things, and shake off all things, that they may lay a firm foundation. A good foundation of three layers and three pillars is innocence, fasting, and temperance. Let all babes in Christ begin with these virtues, taking as their model the natural babes. For you never find in them anything sly or deceitful. They have no insatiable appetite, no insatiable stomach, no body on fire, or raging like a beast; but perhaps as they grow, in proportion as they take more food, their natural passions also increase. (Step 1:10)

Today’s reading reminds us very much of yesterday’s reading again. In order to truly follow Christ, we are to despise all things earthly (see today’s Scripture verse). This does not mean that we actually hate the created world and our families, but rather our love for God is to be so great that our regard for all other things pales by comparison. “Laying aside all earthly cares” (from the Cherubic Hymn) is what gives us a firm foundation in Christ. Trying to build a spiritual life on anything but that would be building a house on sand.

St. John then urges us to build our foundation with innocence, fasting, and temperance, comparing the life we should lead with the life of young babies. Many of the Father’s will bring the focus, as does St. John in this reading, down to fasting. We are psychosomatic beings – we are made of a soul and a body, and the things that affect one will also affect the other. The food we eat, both its type and the quantity, will also affect our soul and the way the passions in us operate. This is why we typically fast from animal products and alcohol – animal products tend to stir up our passions, and alcohol tends to dull our attentiveness and make us more susceptible to temptation. One of the disciplines that we all need to embrace and practice is the fasting of the Church – the fasts are set forth to help us overcome our fallen humanity and to help us focus every more clearly on our Lord.

Scriptures verse for thought today – “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brother and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.” Luke 14:26-27

Meditation Day 4 - Step 1:9

2011-07-19T08:24:00.000-05:00

All who enter upon the good fight, which is hard and close, but also easy, must realize that they must leap into the fire, if they really expect the celestial fire to dwell in them. But, let everyone examine himself, and let him drink the cup of it with its bitter herbs, and let him drink the cup of it with its tears, lest his service lead to his own judgment. (Step 1:9)*

St. John is echoing here the clear teachings of the Scripture – both on the fight, and on the cup. In order to follow Christ, to fight ‘the good fight,’ we must wholeheartedly give ourselves to Christ and to the struggle to follow the commandments. We must be willing to hate everything earthly (Luke 14:26) for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. The ‘fight,’ then, to follow Him is both hard and easy - easy because the Grace of God strengthens us, hard because our fallen humanity struggles against following Christ. Following Christ is the most difficult, and most counter- cultural, life that man could possibly have. Virtually everything that Christ calls us to is hated by the world – and this is the life that we must throw ourselves into if we expect the Spirit of God to dwell within us.

The cup can be bitter – Christ prayed in the Garden to let the cup pass from Him, but then ended by saying, “Not my will, but Thine” (Luke 22:42). Christ paints the picture very clearly for us: “take up [your] cross daily, and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). Following Christ is a cross because in order to follow Him we must put to death our own will, our own sins, and our own passions. We must put off the old man and put on the new (Colossians 3:9-10). May our Lord Jesus Christ pour out His grace upon us so that we may follow Him wherever He may lead us, from the depths of hell to the gates of the Kingdom.

Scripture verse for thought today: “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God“ (Hebrews 12:1-2).

*All quotes are taken from The Ladder of Divine Ascent by Saint John Climacus, Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston: 2001.

Meditation Day 3 - Dispassion - Step 1:6

2011-07-18T11:13:00.000-05:00

The man who has withdrawn from the world in order to shake off his own burden of sins should imitate those who sit outside the city among the tombs, and should not cease from his hot and fiery streams of tears and voiceless heartfelt groanings until he, too, sees that Jesus has come to him and rolled away the stone of hardness from his heart, and loosed Lazarus, that is to say, our mind, from the bands of sin, and ordered His attendant angels: Loose him from passions, and let him go to blessed dispassion. Otherwise he will have gained nothing. (Step 1:6)*

Dispassion is a word very often misunderstood by readers of ascetic literature. We often picture a person devoid of emotions, with no capacity for passion. This is not what God has created us to be – we’re not stoics. Dispassion means that we are not controlled by our sinful passions, but rather we remain in control of ourselves, through Christ, in the face of all temptation. A dispassionate person will see a temptation coming and be able to remain unperturbed by it. For instance, we might recognize that a situation has the potential to make us angry, and if we were dispassionate we would be able to push aside the sin of anger and engage the situation in a virtuous and constructive way.

The repentance St. John mentions in today’s reading, along with everything we receive from the Fathers and the Scriptures and Saints, all of this leads us to dispassion. If we follow the commandments of our Lord, we are being re-formed in His image. Christ faced temptation, but He never once gave in to sin. Let us continually petition our Saviour for this steadfastness of faith and grace, and for the strength to endure daily the temptations that teach us to be like Him.

Scripture verse thought for today – “No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62)

*All quotes are taken from The Ladder of Divine Ascent by Saint John Climacus, Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston: 2001.

Meditation Day 2

2011-07-17T12:53:00.000-05:00

All who have willingly left the things of the world, have certainly done so for the sake of the future Kingdom, or because of the multitude of their sins, or for love of God. If they were not moved for any of these reasons, their withdrawal from the world was unreasonable. But God who sets our contests waits to see what the end of our course will be. (Step 1:5)*

St. John refers, in the first step of The Ladder, to people who have literally left the world to pursue the monastic life. Those of us living in the world are in a slightly different circumstance, but the same mindset applies to us: we’re to renounce the way of the world, and cling to Christ. The way of the world is a path of self-will, sin, and death. In Christ, these mindsets are replaced by God’s will, virtue, and life eternal. St. John tells us that there are three good reasons for choosing Christ over the world – for the Kingdom of Heaven, to repent for our sins, and because of our love of God. For most of us, the path looks like this – we begin by thinking of our eternal soul (repentance), which grows into a desire to do the will of God (the Heavenly Kingdom), and the pinnacle being purely our desire for God (love). Our life in God is never static; we should be forever growing closer to Him, increasing in faith and in love.

Scripture verse for thought today – “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” (1 John 4:16)

*All quotes are taken from The Ladder of Divine Ascent by Saint John Climacus, Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston: 2001.

Patience

2011-07-16T23:08:00.000-05:00

"...on the third day, when all this torture and pain ended, I experienced a joy inside me, like enlightenment from God, who revealed His great and immeasurable love towards me by giving me this ulcer on my leg. I could not stop thanking Him, praising, glorifying and showing appreciation to Him for giving me this wound. For He indeed gave me this wound on my leg out of His great love for me. I could not get enough; night and day I was filled with joy and praise: 'Your great love was revealed in this. How could I ever praise You, how could I ever thank You, how could I glorify You enough? O Lord, without beginning, Eternal, without end, You love me, a pitiful and filthy being? What did You see in me? I praise the Glory, I praise the Mercy, the Compassion,' I kept saying at the time. I cannot say such words now the way I used to then. This went on for three days. After that it stopped.

Thus, good are the sorrows, good are the troubles, good are the afflictions; God knows very well why He grants us these things. For through these we approach God. 'O Lord, in distress we sought you' (Is. 26:16). With them we draw nearer to Him. And what happens when God takes the sorrow from us? 'He who runsfrom temptation which is for his profit, runs from eternal life,' it says in the patristic texts. And this is exactly how it is.

This is the reason why man should never be in despair, should never become despondent because of a disappointment. For you do not know what God's will is. When you recognize God's will you are patient. But God's will might not always be sweet; it might be bitter as well, it might well be bitter. 'Am I not to drink this cup?' He says.

'Am I not to drink this cup, Peter?' He asks.

'I will drink this cup,' He replied and called him Satan. 'Away with you, Satan, am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?' (Jn 18:11). This is exactly how it is. But we should never forget that through the Cross came the Resurrection. 'For behold, through the Cross joy has come to all the world.'"

~Elder Ephraim of Katounakia (d 1998)

Meditation Day 1

2011-07-16T13:03:00.000-05:00

Our God and King is good, transcendently good and all-good (it is best to begin with God in writing to the servants of God). Of the rational beings created by Him and honoured with the dignity of free-will, some are His friends, others are His true servants, some are worthless, some are completely estranged from god, and others, though feeble creatures, are His opponents. By friends of God, dear and holy father, we simple people mean, properly speaking, those noetic and incorporeal beings which surround God. By true servants of God we mean all those who tirelessly and unremittingly do and have done His will. By worthless servants we mean those who think of themselves as having been granted baptism, but have not faithfully kept the vows they made to God. By those estranged from God and alienated from Him, we mean those who are unbelievers or heretics. Finally, the enemies of God are those who have not only evaded and rejected the Lord’s commandment themselves, but who also wage bitter war on those who are fulfilling it. (Step 1:1)*

We begin with a meditation on our all-holy and magnificent God. Today, St. John reminds us that all living persons, all created beings, are in some sort of relationship with God. Nothing exists outside of its relationship to God; His presence allows all created things to exist. Our concern is: what type of relationship do I have with my Creator and God? Am I a true servant – do I seek at all times, in all places, in all things, to serve my Lord? Am I a worthless servant – being a Christian, but not diligently striving to follow Christ’s commandments? Or am I among those who are alienated from God and His enemies?

Every day we will sin; we will fail in our walk with Christ. But every day we’re also called to repent and return to the narrow path. This is the nature of the Christian life: falling and repenting, falling and getting up again. As you travel through your day today, try to watch your thoughts and your actions – pray that our Lord enables you to see yourself as He sees you. Being able to see ourselves as we truly are is an important step in the Christian life. It enables us to fight against our temptations and to make the corrections to our lives that will number us among those who are the true servants of Jesus Christ.

Scripture verse for thought today - “If ye love me, keep My commandments.” (John 14:15)

*All quotes are taken from The Ladder of Divine Ascent by Saint John Climacus, Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston: 2001.

Introduction to "365 Meditations from The Ladder of Divine Ascent"

2011-07-15T17:08:00.000-05:00

Beginning today, I will be regularly posting daily meditations from St. John Climacus' book The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Below is something of an introduction to these meditations, the first of which will be posted tomorrow. I may not post every day, but I hope to post almost daily.

Introduction

The idea for this particular series of devotionals came to me during Lent of 2011, while I was in the process of teaching an adult Sunday School series on The Ladder. It quickly became apparent that 6 30 minute classes would not even scratch the surface of the riches found in the text. The Ladder of Divine Ascent ranks second only to the Holy Scriptures in its influence in the Christian world, especially within in the Orthodox Christian Church. For this reason, a book of practical meditations for those of us living in the world seemed like a worthy undertaking.

St. John truly lays out for us the science of the Christian life – if you follow the commandments of Christ, it always works. Wholeheartedly following Christ will always heal us of our brokenness, and will always lead us to life in the Kingdom of God. St. John moves us slowly from our first desires to abandon sin and cleave to God, through the struggles for obedience and repentance, into the discerning of demonic influences in our lives, all the way to the celebratory life in Christ. The Ladder is a textbook for those of us who truly desire to follow after Christ.

A few words about the reading of Orthodox ascetic literature: it can be difficult for those of us living in the world in the 21st century to pick up the books “born of the desert” and understand how they apply to our lives. We can even be tempted (and some have even taught) to think that this literature is not applicable to us. This is far from the truth – there is only one Gospel, only one set of commandments, and they apply to us all equally. The only difference is circumstance. My separation from the world may take on a different appearance than that of a monastic, for instance, but we are both called to be in the world but not of the world (e.g. John 17:11, 16). We must possess some measure of discernment in order to digest the words of the Fathers, and then to see how they apply to our specific circumstance in life.

I pray that these meditations will make the words of St. John accessible to us all, and that we will be aided by his prayers to the Heavenly Kingdom.

A word on Prayer...

2011-07-14T12:50:00.000-05:00

"The best prayer is the one you say with your own words. Reading a prayer is not enough. For example, before receiving Holy Communion we read the Service of Preparation for Holy Communion, 'From lips tainted and defiled, from heart unclean and loathsome...', sometimes without even understanding the words. You yourself should pray with your own words. Then you will understand what you are saying to God. This prayer has great power; great power indeed!"

-Elder Ephraim of Katounakia

Vaccines and Pro-Life

2011-07-10T23:45:00.000-05:00

"The impact of the finding that many vaccines are derived from aborted fetal cell lines is potentially enormous, given the great number of people who define themselves as Pro Life...I would anticipate that many of the people who object to use of aborted fetal tissues for scientific research are going to be shocked and outraged when they learn that their children have been secretly injected with vaccines containing DNA, proteins, or related cellular debris from cell cultures derived from aborted human fetuses."

Perhaps I am a bit behind, but this article - One of the Most Inexcusable Vaccine Revelations of All... - was filled with information that I was totally ignorant of before I read the article. The revelations are sickening - vaccines being grown in cell cultures that came from murdered human children.

The stance of the Orthodox Church towards abortion is very clear. I would encourage people to go and read this article - and take the time to read the entire thing (there is a short part at the beginning, but keep scrolling and the vast majority of the information is a bit below that).

**This posting in no way endorses the particular site the article came from nor the views endorsed there - the post exists to get this information about the vaccines in the US out there to the public.

Freedom and Slavery

2011-07-09T22:44:00.000-05:00

FREEDOM AND SLAVERY

Be both a servant, and free: a servant in that you are subject to God, but free in that you are not enslaved to anything – either to empty praise or to any of the passions.

Release your soul from the bonds of sin; abide in liberty, for Christ has liberated you; acquire the freedom of the New World during this temporal life of yours. Do not be enslaved to love of money or to the praise resulting from pleasing people.

Do not lay down a law for yourself, otherwise you may become enslaved to these laws of yours. Be a free person, one who is in a position to do what he likes. Do not become like those who have their own law, and are unable to turn aside from it, either out of fear in their own minds, or because of the wish to please others; in this way they have enslaved themselves to the coercion of their law, with their necks yoked to their own law, seeing that they have decreed for themselves their own special law – just when Christ had released them from the yoke of the Law!

Do not make hard and fast decisions over anything in the future, for you are a created being and your will is subject to changes. Decide in whatever matters you have to reach a decision, but without fixing in your mind that you will not be moved to other things. For it is not by small changes in what you eat that your faithfulness is altered: your service to the Lord of all is performed in the mind, in your inner person; that is where the ministry to Christ takes place.

St. John the Solitary, Letter to Hesychias (Quoted from
http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/

3rd Sunday after Pentecost

2011-07-04T10:18:00.000-05:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

Our Gospel reading this morning ended with these words from our Lord – “seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things [all the things we need for our life and for our salvation] shall be added unto you.” This is why we have the Church, the Body of Christ in the world, to help us seek the Kingdom of God. Going back to the beginning of the Gospel reading, we hear that if the eye is dark then the whole body is in darkness and how great is that darkness. Apart from Christ, there is only darkness – fallen man is perpetually in a state of darkness and sin and death. The solution for this is the Incarnation of Christ – God becoming man – Christ comes for our healing, to remove the veil of darkness from our eyes and our soul and to offer us communion with God – this communion, this relationship, is our light and our life and our salvation.

The Church – the Body of Christ – this is hospital where we come to be healed. This is where we meet Christ face to face. It’s very important for us to know that the Church is not about religion or dogma or canon law or rites and rituals – it is a place of healing, healing the rift between God and man caused by our sins. I recently read where a Bishop of Cyprus said that theology should not be taught in the school of Liberal Arts with philosophy, but should be taught with medicine because our faith in Christ is about wholeness and complete healing of the person in God – if we think about the Church is any other way it simply becomes another worldly institution.

This way of thinking dramatically affects how we live and how we interact with the Church:
-services aren’t rites we prepare for, but a continuation of our daily communion with God (Kingdom of God is within you), services become a place where God’s grace overflows and overshadows us;
-our daily prayers aren’t simply a duty, but part of our communion and our healing in Christ;
-fasting/repentance/confession, we don’t do these things because the Church says so, but to enable us to empty our own will and our sins and to surrender ourselves to the love of God.

This vision of the Church as the hospital, as the place of healing for our souls, helps take us into a very Biblical way of life – Christ is our life, according to the Scriptures He’s all we have, and He’s all we need. We should be seeking after the healing of our soul [salvation] even more aggressively than we seek after bodily remedies when we’re ill. When I have a headache I take an Advil; do I turn to God when the illnesses of my soul come to the surface? This is what we’re talking about – healing the illness of our soul – these failings/sins are listed in various places in the Scriptures (anger, jealously, lust) And how do we see if we’re being healed? Do we exhibit the fruits of the Spirit (ex Gal 5:22) – these are the signs we’re being healed. Ultimate healing, of course, is when ‘it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me’ – when we are the living image of Christ in the world.

The Church is given to mankind by Christ, and the Church gives us the therapeutic method for the healing that we seek. This method is very simple – the Church is here to assist us in following the commandments of Christ in our lives. His words are our prescriptions, following the commandments of Christ leads us to perfect spiritual health. The Fathers even say that this method is scientific – for example, St. Basil the Great says that the spiritual life is the science of sciences. If you follow Christ with all your heart, you will be healed – it ‘works’ every time. The Saints stand for us as the witnesses of this, they followed Christ, and they were healed. We’ve really focused on the Saints lately, with Pentecost and the Sunday of All Saints and then the Sunday of All Saints of America. These men and women are the proof that the prescriptions (commandments) given to us by Christ are healing and life-giving.

There’s a wonderful little story in the Gerontikon, where at the end of the story the Elder reminds his disciples that our life here on the earth is a blip, insignificant historically or in relation to time – but what we do with our time here will impact us for all of eternity.

As we stand here in the hospital, preparing now to lay aside all earthly cares in order to receive the King of All, I would encourage us to very seriously examine how we’re interacting with all of the wonderful things offered to us by Christ in His Holy Church for our salvation – our time here is short, let’s make sure that we’re using it in the best way we possibly can.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Bookstore

2011-06-02T00:56:00.001-05:00

UPDATE - shipping calculations have been fixed on our bookstore website.

If you have linked to my new online bookstore from this site you may have noticed that our shipping calculator is terribly messed up - please forgive me - I will have it fixed shortly, and post a notice of its repair.

Sunday of the Samaritan Woman

2011-05-24T13:32:00.000-05:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!

On the Sundays between Pascha and Pentecost we read several of the miracles of our Lord from the Gospel according to St. John the Theologian. As we anxiously await the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, we’re reminded in these readings of the awesome power of God—a power bestowed on the Christian through the Holy Spirit. So today we hear the account of Christ’s life changing conversation with Photini, the Samaritan woman, at the Patriarch Jacob’s Well.

I’d like us to consider for a moment one aspect of the story that often we struggle to accept in our own lives, and therefore struggle to make known to others. The all-encompassing forgiveness offered to mankind in the person of Jesus Christ.

We all want to be forgiven, we all want to be reconciled with God. But acceptance of that forgiveness is something that most people today really struggle with. In our reading of this encounter, we probably all identify ourselves in some way with the Samaritan Woman. Sinners, those who have fallen from grace, separated ourselves from God. And Christ is there, offering her, and us, forgiveness. Offering a new life.

He doesn’t condemn. He doesn’t deride or scoff because of the enormity of our sin. But He does require honesty. An honest confession of the sins of our past. Photini’s confession is a painful one—constant failed relationships, infidelity and adultery. Her past is humiliating and her sins were thought of as some of the worst sins that a person could commit. Christ requires that she be honest, and then He offers her a new life. In fact, He reveals to her that He is the Messiah. This happens almost nowhere else in the Gospels—but our Lord knows that this Samaritan woman is ready to change. She’s ready to meet Christ as Saviour and to be healed.

And immediately she accepts His word and is healed. Her first action is to run into her village and bring others to see. What a beautiful statement her fellow villagers make at the end of the Gospel reading—now we believe not because of what you said, but we have heard Him and know that He is the Saviour of the world.

Accepting the forgiveness of Christ is necessary for our healing as Christians. So often we come to the Church, and we believe, and we strive for perfection in the Christian life, but we struggle with accepting forgiveness. This is both a psychological and spiritual struggle that our modern era is plagued with – this ability to wholeheartedly accept forgiveness. Sometimes we’re not willing to face our sins with the honesty that Christ requires. Sometimes it’s easier to think that we need to suffer punishment for our sins. Sometimes we feel that we aren’t worthy of forgiveness.

But the Father’s of the Church tell us that all these temptations come from pride. We like to think that we’re special, in that the sins we struggle with are unlike the sins of others. But that simply isn’t true. There’s nothing new under the sun. In fact, from Christ’s perspective, the breaking of one commandment, He said, is breaking them all.

To come wholly to Christ, to be completely transformed like St. Paul (where it is not longer I who live, but Christ lives in me), we come in humility. Willing to bare the deepest wounds of our souls and receive the balm of forgiveness. Willing to see that we’re just another wretched sinner, and only in the light of Christ do we become the unique persons that He has created us to be. Willing to be forgiven, and willing to be changed.

Accepting forgiveness isn’t easy—it requires repentance, which requires death. Death to our own ways and to our own will, in order to be re-born in the image of Christ. It is only in our weakness and brokenness, when we come to God asking forgiveness and humbling ourselves to accept it, only in this weakness can the grace of God begin to work and Christ can bring forth His image in us.

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!

BOOKSTORE OPENING!

2011-05-12T11:34:00.000-05:00

My wife and I have now officially opened our new online Orthodox Christian bookstore, Metamorphosis Bookseller.

We are specializing in hard to find (and typically very expensive) Orthodox Christian books imported from Greece. For the time being, all of our books are in English.

Stop by and check out our current inventory - we will add additional titles at various times, so come and visit regularly!

Sunday of Saint Thomas

2011-05-01T13:02:00.000-05:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!

This morning we hear the Gospel recounting two of the appearances of our Lord to His disciples and Apostles. On the first visit, 10 of the Apostles are present – Judas being dead, and Thomas not being with the other disciples. Notice that as Christ appears His Apostles, He blesses them, and then immediately the Gospel says that He showed them His hands and His sides, and then they recognize Him as Jesus and are glad. I think it’s important to point this out because of what later happens with St. Thomas, and the way the Father’s talk about this scene with St. Thomas – it’s different than the way we often think of it.

So after this appearance of Christ to the Apostles, St. Thomas returns to their hideout at some point and the 10 share with him that they’ve seen the Lord. St. Thomas immediately replies, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” 8 days later, the Gospel tells us, Jesus appeared to the Apostles again, and Thomas was with them. And the beginning of our Lord’s visit is perfectly parallel to the beginning of His first visit – He blesses them, and then He shows to Thomas His hands and His side. And as we know, Thomas believed, and then uttered one of the most profound statements in all of the Gospels – calling Christ “my Lord and my God.”

So, I’d like us to think a few more minutes on the scene where the Apostles tell Thomas about the first visitation of the Lord. It’s from this statement of Thomas’ that he will not believe without seeing with his own eyes that St. Thomas is widely known in the West as Doubting Thomas. I grew up with a particular disdain for Thomas that he struggled to believe. But this is not the mentality of the Orthodox Church – Thomas is set up for us today as an example of faith and belief, an image of what most of our lives are like.

This is the Sunday of St. Thomas – and the icons of this Sunday typically show St. Thomas reaching for Christ (we don’t really know if he touched the wounds or not – some people say he did and others that he didn’t) and Christ gesturing at His hands and His sides. And the icon is not titled “Doubting Thomas” but rather “The belief of St. Thomas.” The Fathers will call the doubt of Thomas a blessed doubt – he didn’t doubt because he didn’t want to believe, he doubted because he wanted desperately to believe but he was weak. His doubting led to his belief – he didn’t abandon the other Apostles and think they were crazy, he stayed around and waited for the Lord to appear again.

He wanted to believe. It reminds us of the father of the epileptic boy – “Lord, I believe, help Thou my unbelief.” And this is a prayer that most if not all of us could pray on a very regular basis. We have faith and we want to believe, but we’re also weak and tempted by doubt.

In two places, this morning, the Gospel gives us great hope and shows us how God deals with our doubt. At the first appearance of Christ to the Apostles, He immediately shows them Him hands and His side – He doesn’t come and demand blind belief, He shows them who His is. He knows they’ll be tempted by doubt, and He attempts to stop unbelief before it ever appears. And then with St. Thomas, our Lord knows that Thomas doubts, so He comes and offers him the chance to believe [and remember, by doing for Thomas exactly what he’d done for the other Apostles].

God doesn’t condemn us for our doubts and our struggles in faith; He understands that these temptations are a part of this fallen world. So He gives us innumerable opportunities for belief, if only we have the eyes to see them. What could these signs look like? St. Paul says that all of nature and the created world testify of God, our existence, the perfect balance of the natural world, the birth of a baby, Holy Communion . If we’re moving through life with this attitude of “help my unbelief” – then on occasion we’ll see the things happening around us with the eyes of faith, and our faith will be strengthened, and our doubt dispelled.

As we continue in the celebration of this Paschal season, giving thanks for the gift of the Risen Christ – lets us also give thanks that the creator of all things doesn’t despise us for our struggles, but reaches down to us constantly, revealing Himself to us, and offering us salvation.

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!

CHRIST IS RISEN! INDEED HE IS RISEN!

2011-04-23T21:08:00.000-05:00

The Catechetical Homily of St. John Chrysostom on Holy Pascha

If any man be devout and love God, let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast. If any man be a wise servant, let him rejoicing enter into the joy of his Lord. If any have labored long in fasting, let him now receive his recompense. If any have wrought from the first hour, let him today receive his just reward. If any have come at the third hour, let him with thankfulness keep the feast. If any have arrived at the sixth hour, let him have no misgivings; because he shall in nowise be deprived therefor. If any have delayed until the ninth hour, let him draw near, fearing nothing. If any have tarried even until the eleventh hour, let him, also, be not alarmed at his tardiness; for the Lord, who is jealous of his honor, will accept the last even as the first; he gives rest unto him who comes at the eleventh hour, even as unto him who has wrought from the first hour.

And he shows mercy upon the last, and cares for the first; and to the one he gives, and upon the other he bestows gifts. And he both accepts the deeds, and welcomes the intention, and honors the acts and praises the offering. Wherefore, enter you all into the joy of your Lord; and receive your reward, both the first, and likewise the second. You rich and poor together, hold high festival. You sober and you heedless, honor the day. Rejoice today, both you who have fasted and you who have disregarded the fast. The table is full-laden; feast ye all sumptuously. The calf is fatted; let no one go hungry away.

Enjoy ye all the feast of faith: Receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness. let no one bewail his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed. Let no one weep for his iniquities, for pardon has shown forth from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Savior's death has set us free. He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it. By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive. He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh. And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry: Hell, said he, was embittered, when it encountered Thee in the lower regions. It was embittered, for it was abolished. It was embittered, for it was mocked. It was embittered, for it was slain. It was embittered, for it was overthrown. It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains. It took a body, and met God face to face. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.

O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory? Christ is risen, and you are overthrown. Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen. Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice. Christ is risen, and life reigns. Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave. For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. To Him be glory and dominion unto ages of ages. Amen.

Shroud Vespers Homily - Holy Friday

2011-04-22T13:56:00.000-05:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is here, in our midst! He is and ever shall be!

This service, the service tonight [Lamentations before the Tomb of Christ], and the service tomorrow morning [Holy Saturday Vesperal Liturgy] are the essence of joyful morning in the Christian Church. The Father’s tell us that the Christian life is to be one of joyful morning – mourning over our sins and the separation from God that comes of our sins, and joy in the grace, mercy, forgiveness, and salvation that comes to us in Christ.

Today, we’re filled with a mix of joy and sorrow – the height of the sorrow is really today, and tomorrow we begin to glimpse more fully the joy, but both are present for us even now. Joy, of course, because our Lord had to endure the Cross in order to rise again on the third day and deify human flesh and seat it at the right hand of the Father. And we glimpse that joy even now, with our Lord lying in the tomb. But our hearts are filled with sorrow, and this sorrow is something we should meditate on, a sorrow we must sit with for next many hours.

Our Christ lies in the tomb, dead, because of us. Our sins, and the sins of all humanity, are the reason we need redeeming, which is the cause of our Saviour’s death. We are reason our Lord ascended the Cross, and lies now in the tomb – the sorrow we feel now should be a sorrow for our sins. A deep sorrow [not despair, because we know the end of this story], a repentance producing sorrow, a sorrow that our failings were the cause of this [motion to the Shroud and Tomb].

Come now and venerate the Life-giving Tomb of God in the flesh, offering sorrow and repentance for our lives of sin, and taking away the grace and the joy of what this ultimately means – our Lord has died so that we can be saved.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Homily on the Mystical Supper - Holy Thursday

2011-04-21T15:12:00.000-05:00

Today we celebrate the initiation of the Holy Eucharist – when Christ, for the first time, gave of His broken Body and His spilled Blood, before they were broken and spilled – He gave Himself to His Apostles for their life. We know, I’m sure, the theology and the discussions we could have about the Mystery of our Lord’s Body and Blood. Today, I’d like to read an address given by St. John Chrysostom on the occasion of today’s commemoration. And in this address, he’s going to remind us what a fearful thing it is to approach the Chalice and to partake of the Holy Mysteries of our Christ.

“O my beloved and greatly-desired brethren who have gathered in the Holy Church of God, in order to serve the Living God in holiness and righteousness, and , with fear [and love], to partake of the holy, most-pure, and immortal, awesome Mysteries of Christ: Hearken unto me who am lowly and unworthy. For it is not I who am speaking to you and instructing you; rather the grace of the Most-holy and Life-giving Spirit; for I speak not from myself, but as I have been instructed by the divine canons, and the God-bearing Fathers, as the Church received instruction from the divine Apostles who received their wisdom from God, so do I myself speak, who am lowly and least of all. I know not your works; I consider not that which you have begun; and so, as one who fears God, I give counsel to everyone among you, whether man or woman, whether great or small, to anyone of you that may be guilty of sin, convicted by your own counsels, that first you must repent and confess your sins, that you may dare, considering yourself unworthy, to approach and touch the Divine Fire Itself. For our God is a devouring Fire, and they, therefore, who with faith and fear [and love] draw near to the God and King and Judge of us all, shall burn and scorch their sins; and It shall enlighten and sanctify their souls. But It shall burn and scorch with shame, the souls and bodies of them that draw near with unbelief [or without repentance]. Therefore, [as St. Paul writes], many among you are ill and sleep in sickness, that is, many are dying unconfessed and unrepentant. And furthermore, my brethren, I beseech you, and I say: no one that swears oaths, nor a perjurer, nor a liar, nor one that finds fault with others, nor a fornicator, nor an adulterer, nor one that practices homosexuality, nor a thief, nor a drunkard, nor a blasphemer, nor one that envies his brother, nor a murderer, nor a sorcerer, nor a magician, nor a charmer, nor an enchanter, nor a robber, nor a [heretic], shall, unconfessed and unprepared, approach, touch, or draw near the dread Mysteries of Christ, for it is terrible to fall into the hands of the Living God. [Notice, he doesn’t say that sinners shall not commune, but that we must repent and prepare before communing of the Life-giving Mysteries]. For the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the joints and marrow and bones, and thoughts and hearts. See, therefore, my brethren, that no one approach, unrepentant or unprepared or unworthily, to partake of [Christ’s] dread and most-pure Mysteries. For He Himself saith: I am He, and there is no god besides me; I kill, and I make alive; neither is there any that can deliver out of My hand; for I, Myself, am King forever. [And to our Christ] is due all glory, honor, and worship: to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages, Amen."*

*Taken from ‘The Great Book of Needs,’ St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 1998, pp. 332-333

Lazarus Saturday

2011-04-16T12:13:00.000-05:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst!

Today we remember the raising of Lazarus from the dead – the first event of what we know as Holy Week. One of the Old Testament signs of the Messiah was that He was to raise the dead from their graves. We have the records of several other resurrections that Jesus performed over the course of His ministry, but this one is of particular importance. For one thing, people were there – unlike the other resurrections (which were witnessed by very few), there were numerous witnesses to the raising of Lazarus.

And there’s a particular importance to the fact that Lazarus was raised on the fourth day. Popular Jewish mythology of the dead believed that the soul remained at the body for three days. So raising a man on the fourth day meant that his soul had already departed into eternity – this was something no mere ‘wonderworker’ could do. The fourth day, as we hear in the Gospel, also marked a distinction physically, in that the body had begun to stink – the corpse of Lazarus was already beginning to decay.

There can be no doubt among the people that a man who was dead had been brought back to life by Jesus. This is why, tomorrow morning, the people of Jerusalem will greet our Lord with palm branches and singing Hosannah. He has been revealed, through the raising of Lazarus, to be the Messiah. Come not only to offer us bodily healing in this life, but more importantly, spiritual healing and a share in the life of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The raising of Lazarus is also an image to the Apostles – though they’d refused to hear it, our Lord had already prophesied of His impending death and later resurrection. For their sake, and for ours, Christ demonstrates His absolute authority over sin and over death.

Death is the last great hurdle of life. The Father’s tell us that all of our lives are a preparation for the moment of our death – the moment when our soul and body will be ripped apart [a totally un-natural event] and we’ll stand before the Lord of Glory for His judgment on our lives. And we’ll stand before Him not with these broken bodies we have now, but with a resurrectional body, like we see in Christ after His holy resurrection.

All of the people Christ raised from the dead during His earthly ministry died again. The healing we’re offered in Christ is not simply earthly and physical, but total and eternal. Throughout human history, death has always been a dreaded mystery – but this is overcome by Christ. Now death for us can be simply a transition from life in Christ in this world to life in Christ in the Heavenly Kingdom.

The thing that makes possible this conversation about the overthrowing of death and our resurrected bodies has begun today to be fulfilled. Our Lord begins His journey to Jerusalem, and ultimately to His death and His life-giving Resurrection. As we relive the events of the final week of our Lord’s earthly life, let us keep in mind the two events which bookend this week – the resurrection of Lazarus and the Paschal resurrection of our Lord. These two events define the content of everything we’ll experience over the course of the next week.

Let us give thanks to our Christ for redeeming us from the consequences of our own evil choices, for offering us healing and life eternal in Him.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Homily 3: On the Lenten Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian [in three homilies]

2011-04-13T16:56:00.000-05:00

O Lord and Master of my life, the spirit of idleness, of meddling, of love of power, and of idle words, grant me not.
But the spirit of continence, of humility, of patience, and of love, do thou grant unto me thy servant.
Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to perceive mine own offenses, and not to judge my brother; for blessed art thou unto ages of ages. Amen.

I’d like to finish our look at the Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian today, but first a brief review of what we hear in the first two sentences of the prayer.

We begin by asking God not to grant us, or not to tempt us (like in the Our Father) with – idleness (incapacity for spiritual labors), meddling (undirected hyperactivity), love of power (hunger to control), and idle talk. Then, we ask God to grant us a spirit filled with – chastity (self-control, moderation), humility, patience, and God-like love.

The 3rd and final sentence of the Prayer of St. Ephraim is the culmination of what Great Lent is all about. “Grant me to perceive mine own offenses”—let me see myself the way God sees me. And not just see, but also understand what my state of sinfulness means. The Father’s say that to see ourselves as we really are is the greatest miracle, greater even than raising someone from the dead. So we pray for the ability to see ourselves as we truly are—and only when we can honestly look at ourselves in our sin can we begin to achieve the mind of Christ. And as we’ve seen through the first two sentences of the Prayer, we’re asking to be preserved from the mind of Satan, and to be filled with the mind of Christ. So we pray to see ourselves as we truly are, “and not to judge my brother.” Seeing ourselves in our sin leads naturally to not judging others. On what basis are we judging another when we see ourselves (in the words of St. Paul) to be the worst among sinners? We’re typically so quick to judge and to blame others, this really is one of the characteristics of our society—we’re have this trend of blaming anything but the person for their actions. In the Christian mindset, we’re always to blame – one of the results of our free will is that we bear the responsibility of all of our actions. In humility and patience and love for our brother we always accept the blame, and we’re called to never judge another.

And this is really the point of everything we to do for Great and Holy Lent—to soften ourselves, to make ourselves receptive to the grace of God, so He can show us where we are and how to move to where He wants us to be. And we praise Him already in the prayer for the grace we know will come during the Great Fast – “Blessed art Thou unto the ages of ages, Amen.”

So as we continue to pray this Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian over the course of the next weeks, I encourage us to really think about the words we’re saying. When we offer our prayers, we can’t do it mindlessly—we have to enter into the prayer as much as possibly can – we’re called to pray with understanding. So I encourage us to meditate on the things we’re praying to be kept from, and praying to be given—and in doing this that we’ll begin to see ourselves in the way that Christ sees us.

Sunday of St. John of the Ladder

2011-04-03T14:16:00.000-05:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

This Sunday of Great Lent is dedicated to the memory of St. John Climacus, abbot of St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mt. Sinai, and author of the classic spiritual text 'The Ladder of Divine Ascent.'* St. John is mostly remembered for his writings. The Ladder is assigned to be read during the weekday services of Great Lent. Traditionally, it’s read in its entirety by Orthodox monastics the world over during the Fast.

But we have to be careful not to separate what a man produces, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, from the life that he led in Christ. In our modern context we often find ourselves looking only at texts, and then deciding the worth of the text based on how we like what it says. But we forget that the writings of the Saints are not the result of opinion and speculation, but of the experience of the life and grace of God. In the Orthodox Church we have a single infallible source of doctrine and teaching on the spiritual life—and it comes from Christ Himself as revealed to His Holy Saints. The Ladder of Divine Ascent is the fruit of a life filled with longing for Christ. A life directed by the love of God. A life where we could say it was no longer St. John who lived, but Christ lived in him. And it’s for this purpose, to lead others to that same love, that St. John wrote his treatise.

So I’d like us to enter, for a moment, the life of this lover of God—to see his activities and then to hear a word from him about cultivating our life in Christ.

St. John Climacus entered the monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai at the age of 16. He was a dutiful disciple of the Abbot, Fr. Martyrius, until the latter’s death only 3 years later. But in those three short years, St. John learned silence, humility, obedience, and prayer. And so at the death of his superior, he found a place of solitude about a half mile from the monastery Church, where he lived as a hermit for the next 40 years. One of his biographers writes that his was a life “burning and being ever consumed with the love and fire of divine love.” (Monk Daniel of Raithu, Ladder, p. xxxv) We aren’t privy to know the efforts and the graces received over the course of these forty years of solitude. We know that he left his isolation only for the Divine Services, and to occasionally get provisions. And we know that he took very few provisions, but to avoid falling into pride he ate everything that his monastic vows would allow. He spent his time in prayer; he kept both his body and his soul still in his cave, rapt in the vision and love of Christ; and he rarely spoke a word to anyone.

He cultivated a relationship with Christ on a level that few of us can imagine. By the time he comes out of his isolation to accept his election as the abbot of the holy monastery, he is a spiritual giant among men. He was gifted with the ability to heal physical infimities, and most importantly to look into a man’s soul and offer him spiritual healing. He was able to discern the thoughts, and the movements of the Grace of God. His reputation for holiness had obviously gone out even from Mt. Sinai, because The Ladder of Divine Ascent was written as a treatise on the spiritual life at the request of the abbot of another monastery.

I’d like us to hear one small story from The Ladder of Divine Ascent, to experience how St. John speaks about the spiritual life. The fourth step is dedicated to obedience. And we’ll hear a short tale about a monk who learn obedience, but in learning obedience he also cultivated several things that we’re all struggling with during Great Lent—humility and the ability to serve Christ selflessly. In other words, he learned to do the things of God without expecting a reward, for the love of his Saviour.

Step 4: On blessed and ever-memorable obedience
About Isidore (pages 28-29)
23. A certain man called Isidore, of magisterial rank, from the city of Alexandria, had recently renounced the world in the above-mentioned monastery, and I found him still there. That most holy Shepard (the abbot), after accepting him, found that he was full of mischief, very cruel, sly, fierce and arrogant. But with human ingenuity, that most wise man contrived to outwit the cunning of the devils, and said to Isidore: ‘If you have decided to take upon yourself the yoke of Christ, then I want you first of all to learn obedience.’ Isidore replied: ’As iron to the smith, so I surrender myself in submission to you, holy father.’ The great father, making use of this comparison, at once gave exercise to the iron Isidore, and said: ‘I truly want you, brother, to stand at the gate of the monastery, and to make a prostration to everyone coming in or going out, and to say: “Pray for me, father; I am an epileptic.”’ And he obeyed as an angel obeys the Lord.
When he had spent seven years there, he attained to deep humility and compunction. Then the glorious father, after the lawful seven years and the man’s incomparable patience, judged him fully worthy to be numbered among the brethren, and wanted to have him ordained. But Isidore, through others and through my feeble intervention, implored the shepherd many times to let him finish his course as he was living before, vaguely hinting that his end and call were drawing near. And that was actually the case. For when his director had allowed him to remain as he was, ten days later in this state he passed gloriously to the Lord. And on the seventh day after his own falling asleep, the porter of the monastery was also taken. For the blessed man had said to him: ‘If I have found favour in the sight of the Lord, in a short time you also will be inseparably joined to me there’ [as they were joined at the gate]. And that is what happened, in witness of his unashamed obedience and divine humility.
24. When he was still living, I asked this great Isidore what occupation his mind had found during his time at the gate. And the renowned ascetic, wishing to help me, did not hide this from me. ‘In the beginning,’ he said, ‘I judged that I had been sold into slavery for my sins; and so it was with bitterness, and a great effort, and as it were with blood that I made the prostration. But after a year had passed, my heart no longer felt sorrow, and I expected a reward for my patience from God Himself. But when another year had gone by, I began to be deeply conscious of my unworthiness even to live in the monastery, and to see and meet the fathers, and partake of the Divine Mysteries. And I did not dare to look anyone in the face, but bending low with my eyes, and still lower with my thought, I sincerely asked for the prayers of those coming in and going out.’

Holy Father John, pray to the merciful God for the salvation of our souls!
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

*All quotes and references are from The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston, Massachusetts, 2001.

*UPDATE-All 4 articles by Fr. Alexis (Trader) now published

2011-04-01T14:48:00.000-05:00

Fr Alexis (Trader), priestmonk of Karakallou Monastery on Mt Athos, is the author of a new book that I find most intriguing - Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy: A Meeting of Minds. Fr Alexis will be publishing a series of four short articles on his new book, each to be posted on a different blog. I will be posting links to each article as it becomes available.

First article:
Behind Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy: A Meeting of Minds

Second article:
Questions Beneath the Question: Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy: A Meeting of Minds

Third article:
The Importance of the Thoughts: Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy: A Meeting of Minds

Fourth Article:
Practical Value? Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy: A Meeting of Minds

Homily 2: On the Lenten Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian [in three homilies]

2011-03-31T00:10:00.000-05:00

First homily HERE
O Lord and Master of my life, the spirit of idleness, of meddling, of love of power, and of idle words, grant me not.
But the spirit of continence, of humility, of patience, and of love, do thou grant unto me thy servant.
Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to perceive mine own offenses, and not to judge my brother; for blessed art thou unto ages of ages. Amen.

Today we'll be looking at the 2nd sentenceof St. Ephraim's prayer—here we ask God to grant us the qualities of a desireable and penitential spirit, of a spirit that is repenting and returning to Christ. So what do we pray to be granted?

1-spirit of continence/chastity: sophrosyne in Greek. This word can be translated to mean discretion, moderation, sanity, self-control, temperance, chastity. The dictionary definition of continence is “control over physical, especially sexual, impulses leading to self-restraint, moderation, or abstinence.” There are two aspects to the spirit of continence—singleness and wholeness. You want a singleness of sight (focused on Christ), and a wholeness and a completeness of vision and person. We’re praying for the ability to control ourselves, to exercise mastery over the passions. This certainly includes physical (sexual) passions [and this aspect the Fathers, including St. Ephraim the author of this prayer, write and comment on a great deal—especially in writing to married people in the world to observe moderation and self-control with their spouses], but it stretches into all aspects of our lives. We walk the middle road, the Golden Path as St. Basil the Great calls it, not falling into extremes on one side nor on the other—the path of moderation and self-control, of continence.

2-humility: tapeinophrosyne in Greek. Tapeinos is humility, and phrosyne is the mind as it deliberately chooses something. So the spirit of humility is a petition that our minds voluntary choose the way of humility. And again the inner connection in the prayer—as we voluntarily choose humility, the spirit of continence, of moderation and self-control, can be real in our lives.

3-patience: hypomene in Greek. Patience arises from humility. St.Isaac the Syrian wrote “In proportion to your humility you are given patience in your woes.” When you see things as they truly are, and you do it deliberately, then there are never any reasons for stress or impatience. We know that God is in control, that His will is best, and in submitting ourselves to this we naturally become patient.

4-love: agape in Greek. The last characteristic, really the defining characteristic of a desirable Christian soul, is love. And specifically here we ask for agape—the love of God. In Greek there are different words for different types of love, and agape is specific, in the Biblical/Patristic literature, to God. We strive to have agape—love that is un-offend-able. That we love everyone no matter what. That our love is never shaken by how others act or anything that’s going on. Christ says that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend—we hear agape in the words of St. Paul when he prays that if all could be saved, he would be willing to die and go to hell.

These are the qualities of a spirit that is well pleasing to God – moderation, humility, patience, and God-like love for our brothers. We’ll look at the final sentence of the prayer next Wednesday.

Sunday of the Precious Cross

2011-03-26T22:37:00.000-05:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

Today is the middle Sunday of the Great Fast. We only have two Sundays after today, and then we’ll be to Holy Week! So right here in the middle of the Fast, the Church places before us the Precious Cross. This is one of the very few times in our Tradition that we make full prostrations on a Sunday morning—in our veneration of the Precious Cross.

The Church places the Cross before us with two thoughts in mind. The first, to strengthen those who are struggling diligently in the Fast. And secondly, to encourage those of us who are lagging, or not taking the Fast as seriously as we should, to encourage us to vigilance by the sign of our Saviour’s Cross. We heard the wonderful Epistle from St. Paul’s letter to the Hebrews, which identifies Christ with us, and then sets Him up as both our High Priest, and the Sacrifice for our sins. Following this we heard the Holy Gospel, which calls us to take up our Cross and follow Christ. To identify ourselves with Christ, and to become a part of His saving Sacrifice.

We’re receiving instruction from the Scriptures to make ourselves to be more like Christ, and we’re receiving encouragement to do so by the Cross brought out for veneration.

I’d like us to see, this morning, the two thoughts in the mind of the Church—our strengthening and our encouragement—from one of the verses in our Gospel reading. The Scriptures obviously have objective reality, but the Fathers frequently interpret them within specific situations, as well. So we’ll look at how one verse from the Gospel reading can apply to our Lenten struggles.

“For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the Gospel’s, the same shall save it.” (Mark 8:35)

The first phrase, “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it,” we can understand to be needed by the second group we mentioned above—those of us who are lagging and failing in the struggle to maintain the discipline of the Fast, which is really the tension between being in the world but not of the world. Who ever will take pity on his flesh, who ever will give his body whatever it wants, who ever will give in to his passions—this is man who is “saving his life.” Instead of focusing on preparing himself to be the throne of Christ, he’s busy enjoying the temporal things of this world. And in focusing on the passing enjoyments of this life, we give away eternal life with Christ. If our focus is on saving our life, on making the most of what we have on this earth, then we do it at the expense of life eternal.

Now there certainly is this tension that I mentioned a moment ago.
We’re created for life with Christ, and we’re also created to live in this world. There is a fine balance, a tension, between properly using and enjoying the things of this world, but not growing attached to them. Keeping our ultimate focus on Christ. A wonderful way to judge if we’re maintaining this tension is in quote from St. John Climacus—“If anyone thinks he is without attachment to some object, but is grieved at its loss, then he is completely deceiving himself” (Step 2.11). We can properly use and enjoy the things of this world, but we do so carefully guarding against undo attachment, remembering always, that “the Lord gave and the Lord hath taketh away, blessed be the Name of the Lord.” (Job 1:20) So we have the first half of our chose Gospel verse, “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it,” as a warning of sorts. A warning meant to encourage us to read on to the second half of the verse, and to emulate what it teaches us.

“Whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the Gospel’s, the same shall save it.” This phrase we can understand to be directed to those who are faithfully engaging the spiritual struggle during Great Lent. The Cross is brought out for their strengthening, and the words of our Lord are used for further encouragement. Even when we know the thing we’re doing is worthy, it's nice to be reminded how good the thing is. We know our fasting is with purpose in Christ, and now we have a reminder of our ultimate goal, the promise of Christ—the salvation of our soul. In more ancient times, this verse would literally be applied to the martyrs—those who would lose their physical life for Christ. In our situation, it certainly can be applied to those who lose their lives in the sense of giving up their own will for the things of Christ.

As we choose to suppress the desires that would bring us temporary pleasure in pursuit of the way of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, this is a sort of martyrdom. A martyrdom of our will. A martyrdom of our flesh. So as we lose our lives for the sake of Christ and His holy Gospel, we in fact are saving our existence for all of eternity. And as we’re continuing down the straight and narrow path of Christ that leads to life eternal, if we were to be called on to lay down our life in defense of our Faith, to literally lose our physical life, then we certainly would be expected to do so. Maintaining the tension, again, between being in the world but not of the world, is the only way to always be ready to “die”—in whatever way we’re called on to do so—for Christ.

The Fathers have wisely given us this Gospel and the vision of the Precious Cross while there’s still time for repentance. So those of us who lag can have the time to prepare for Christ’s Holy Pascha, and so that those who are faithful will have the strength to endure for the rest of the race. So as we prepare ourselves now for the reception of the Holy Body and Blood of our Saviour, sacrificed for us on the wood of the Precious and Life-giving Cross, let us take most seriously the words of our Pre-Communion Prayers, applying our petitions both to the grace we receive from the Cross, and the life we receive from the Holy Eucharist.

“May these Holy Things be for the overthrowing of my adversaries, the blotting out of my many transgressions, for my purification, sanctification, and provision for the kingdom and the life to come.”

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Litya (the blessing of bread, wheat, wine, and oil)

2011-03-26T22:23:00.000-05:00

The service of Litya in the Orthodox Church is beautiful and rich with meaning and grace, but unfortunately it is a service all-to-seldom served. We should be familiar with the history of the Litya, and then think some about the implications both of the history and of the blessing of this service.

In the ancient Church, offerings were brought by the people to the Church. Today we predominately bring money, but in the past it was most common for people to bring bread and wine, but other things were brought as well (primarily food-stuffs, but money as well). The best of the bread and of the wine were set aside for use in the Holy Liturgy as the antitypes of the Holy Body and Blood of the Lord (the Eucharist). The remainder of the food was then blessed at the Saturday evening service. The clergy and the people went in procession from the Temple to the portico (the courtyard in front of the Church), where all of the food was lain out on a table. Special hymns were sung, and the priest then blessed the food with the following prayer (which we still use today):

“O Lord Jesus Christ our God, who didst bless the five breads in the wilderness, and didst satisfy the five thousand therewith, thyself bless these breads, this wheat, wine and oil, and multiply them in this city, and in all thy world; and sanctify the faithful who partake of them. For it is thou who dost bless and sanctify all things, O Christ our God, and unto thee do we send up glory, together with thy Father, who is without beginning, and thine all-holy, and good, and life-creating Spirit, now and ever, and unto ages of ages, Amen.”

After the blessing, the food was distributed among the poor, the orphans, the widows, the sick, and all of those in need. The Church reached out to the helpless in a very real and tangible way – by helping to feed them. The poor weren’t even “tricked” into the Temple; the blessing was done outside, so those in need could obtain the help they needed regardless of whether they went to Church or not.

It’s good for us to remember that the life of the Church does not exist only in the Temple – we’re to take the Truth of the Gospel, the Love of Christ, into the world and share it with those in need. And we’re not to only share a good word, but we’re called by our Lord to offer tangible help to those in need if we are able (remember the Parable of the Last Judgment: the condemned are sent away from Christ because they refused to care for “the least of these your brethren”).

When we serve the Litya, in the prayer of the blessing of the loaves, we ask God to bless this food and multiply it for those in need (referencing the feeding of the 5,000), and also to bless this place where we live, and the people who live in it. We offer bread, wheat, wine, and oil, and in return God blesses them and offers us (and all of those around us) the chance to share in His life. As we share together in this blessed food, let us remember that all good things come to us “from the Father of Lights”: receive with thanksgiving, and share with hope and with love.

The Implications of God Residing in the Womb of the Virgin Mary

2011-03-25T13:35:00.000-05:00

With this Feast of the Annunciation, my mind began to drift away from many of the more typical things said near this feast (especially about the implications of God becoming fully and completely human) and toward contemplating how this reality speaks to our modern age. Specifically, I began thinking about the reality of the Creator of the Universe living a completely human life, beginning with 9 months in the womb of His holy Mother. Our Lord’s sojourn in the womb of the Virgin Mary is perhaps the most resounding defeat of one of the greatest sins of our modern age – the horror of abortion.

Abortion is the voluntary decision of a mother to destroy the child in her womb [it is in no way similar to a miscarriage, which is a tragic occurrence in the life of any family]. We hear abortion supported with statements like, “it’s her body so it should be her choice,” followed closely by the irrational conclusion that the baby in her womb is not truly a human being until some later point (a randomly chosen point of maturation, or at worst, after birth…though there are some now who would even argue that a born child can be allowed to perish and that would be acceptable as well). These positions fly in the face of both logic and of human experience, and for the person claiming Christianity there can be no discussion. We see the Truth by simply glimpsing the Annunciation.

The Feast of the Annunciation (Luke 1:24-38) is the Christian feast remembering the appearance of the Archangel Gabriel to the young girl Mary. At this appearance the Archangel says “behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus.” When Mary protests that she has never known a man, the Archangel reveals to her that the Holy Spirit will overshadow her and the Child will be formed in her womb. At the moment of Mary’s consent, “be it unto me according to your word,” the Incarnate Son of God was formed within her. God lived as both fully God and fully man, in the womb of Mary. This is why we revere her as Theotokos – “bearer [carrier, mother] of God in the flesh.” We see an additional mention of this reality as well – when Mary, pregnant with Jesus, visits Elizabeth, she is greeted with the words, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! But why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Luke 1:41-42). Elizabeth and the baby within her womb, St. John the Baptizer, recognize the presence of Christ in the womb of Mary.

In the prophecy of Jeremiah we read “before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart” (1:5). God knows us in the womb – we exist as complete human beings in the wombs of our mothers, exactly as Christ existed as fully God and fully man in the womb of His own earthly mother. Destroying a child in the womb through abortion is murder of a human being, plain as day. If God existed in the womb for 9 months, how can we be so foolish as to attempt to claim that the child in its mother’s womb is not truly human? Our nation cannot be allowed to continue to commit murder through indifference, ignorance, or convenience.

We live in a country which extolls the right of the individual; the right of every person to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When we will extend these same rights and privileges to the innocent and currently unprotected pre-born human beings of our nation? May God have mercy on our souls!

The Annunciation

2011-03-25T10:28:00.000-05:00

Today, we celebrate one of the major Feasts of the Christian Church – the Annunciation. This is the day when the Archangel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary to announce to her that she was chosen to be the mother of the Messiah. This is a central moment in human history. The “fullness of time” had finally come for God to be incarnate and walk among men. God, the Creator and Sustainer of all, became a babe in the womb of human mother. He did not simply appear, rather he took on our humanity in its entirety, in order to heal our fallen nature and restore us to what we were created to be.

It’s important for us to note that in the Scripture reading, the Archangel’s announcement was not merely an order, but rather he waited for the Theotokos to respond, “be it unto me according to your word.” This is how our God deals with us fallen human beings; He works with us and in us and in spite of us. The work of our salvation is a work of synergy, of cooperation between God and man. We submit ourselves to His will and His way, and He pours out His grace on us so that we can remain steadfast on the path of His commandments.

Let us remember today the amazing life and blessings given to the Virgin Mary – as we recall her sinless-ness and her dedication to the Saviour, let us also commend ourselves wholly unto God, and struggle to walk the narrow path which leads to life eternal.

"Today is the beginning of our salvation,
The revelation of the eternal mystery!
The Son of God becomes the Son of the Virgin
As Gabriel announces the coming of Grace.
Together with him let us cry to the Theotokos:
Rejoice, O full of Grace
The Lord is with Thee!"

Homily 1: On the Lenten Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian [in three homilies]

2011-03-23T11:09:00.000-05:00

On each of the next three Wednesdays (including today), I will be posting a short reflection on the Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian. This is the first of the reflections.

O Lord and Master of my life, the spirit of idleness, of meddling, of love of power, and of idle words, grant me not.
But the spirit of continence, of humility, of patience, and of love, do thou grant unto me thy servant.
Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to perceive mine own offenses, and not to judge my brother; for blessed art thou unto ages of ages. Amen.

The Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian is one of the most noticeable and notable additions to the weekday services of Great Lent. In fact, not only is it added to every service at least one time, but it is also added to the daily prayers (both morning and evening) of all Orthodox Christians during the Great Fast. So, here just a few days before the official beginning of Great Lent (with Forgiveness Vespers) we’re going to spend some time looking at the Prayer of St. Ephraim. If the Father’s see this prayer as important enough to add to almost everything during Great Lent, we need to have a good understanding of what we’re praying and why.

Great Lent is counter-cultural in every way—it causes a sort of shock to many converts, especially as they try to live Lent for the first time. Lent opens a gap between us and society; it stops the ceaseless ongoing of society. We focus on our spiritual lives—so we turn off the radio and the television, we don’t go out with friends and party, or spend any more time than absolutely necessary involved in the trappings of modern life in America. And in this silence—both the literal silence and the quieting down of the rapid pace of our lives—we can begin to recall who we are in God. The Father’s choose the Prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian as the centerpiece, so to speak, of Great Lent, because the Prayer reveals the heart of Orthodox Christian Lent. This simple Prayer gives us the full meaning of Lent. And the Prayer is meant for everyone; we all pray it together for the entirety of Lent, with the purpose of our lives being changed together for Christ.

The prayer is divided into three sentences. The first sentence describes an undesirable spirit in 4 qualities. The second sentence describes a desirable spirit in 4 qualities. And the third sentence completes the prayer with a movement into the incarnation of what Great Lent is all about.

1st sentence—it’s important to firstly to note that the Prayer describes an undesirable spirit, and asks God to “grant me not” this spirit. We don’t pray for God to “take from me the spirit of…” (which is what the more widely used translation says), but rather to preserve us and not to allow us to have the 4 qualities in this first sentence. Why? In the entire Biblical and Patristic Tradition, we have to say that God sends trials, or allows trials to come, to His beloved. [Whether He “sends” or “allows” is an irrelevant semantic difference—He is God and He is in control of everything.] So in this Tradition, we’re praying that the qualities of a proud and undesirable spirit will be kept away from us. What St. Ephraim, and we with him, are praying, is do not give me this spirit because I might not be able to overcome it. It’s a Prayer of ultimate humility. What do we pray to be kept from?

1-spirit of idleness: argia in Greek, often translated sloth, but in the original understanding argia is a total lack of any capacity to act (a + ergia=no work; if you use a Greek lexicon you’ll come up with a work/vacation contrast). It’s not just laziness, which is the connotation of sloth, but a demonic inability essentially to live, to be productive in any way, especially in one’s spiritual life.

2-spirit of meddling: preiergia in Greek, which literally is the opposite of argia. Argia is no work, no action, and preiergia is hyper work. They are opposite sides of the same coin. This is often translated despair, and despair might come to one who is busy meddling in everything that’s going on around them, but we’re not praying to be kept from despair but rather from uncontrolled meddling and hyper activity. [To be fair, when translating from Slavonic you would be accurate to have faintheartedness or despondency, but this does seem to miss the original intent, and you lose the internal relationship between argia and preiergia] This hyperactivity is not only in our lives of interaction with others, but also in our spiritual lives. If we suffer from argia then we can’t say our prayers and we miss Church and we don’t tithe and we don’t read and study the Bible and the Fathers. When we suffer from preiergia then we’re always looking for some new spiritual experience, we’re always reading and wanting to acquire information—but we don’t live a Christian life any more that the one suffering from argia.

3-spirit of love of power: philarchia in Greek, the hunger to control things. The desire to be in control, to be the one in power. This comes especially from #2; as we’re involved in more and more, our desire to control the things we’re involved in increases. This is obviously a temptation of pride—believing that we know best and need to be in control of everything that we’re meddling in.

4-spirit of idle words: argologia (a + ergia + logia) in Greek. So basically the makeup of the word is “no work words.” Idle talk. Speech that achieves no work. Sitting around running our mouths for no reason other than to hear ourselves speak. And if we remember the words of Christ, we’ll give an account at the Last Judgment for every idle word that we speak. Even spiritual conversations can be idle talk—if we’re just talking to show off what we know and not for the purpose of up building and edifying our brother in Christ.

Remembrance of Wrongs (Reflection #4)

2011-03-20T14:45:00.012-05:00

This reflection is the fourth in a series – links to the first three reflections can be found below.
The first reflection
The second reflection
The third reflection

Recognizing our own sins, taking responsibility for them, repenting of them, and forgiving ourselves for our failings [this is a surprisingly hard step – forgiving ourselves as part of our repentance] – this is quite a difficult set of steps that we undertake every day of our lives. It becomes even more difficult when there is another person involved, and infinitely more challenging when that other person has sinned against ME. When I’m the one who’s been harmed and I am in the position of needing to extend forgiveness to another.

Forgiving my brother is obviously a difficult thing, and we can see this by remembering the words of Christ and the writings of the Fathers of the Church. Our Lord tells us that He will “forgive our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” From this mention in the Our Father we can see that forgiving others is a thing we must learn to do, and also that it must be a difficult thing, since Christ to attached our own forgiveness to it. St. John Climacus (author of the Ladder of Divine Ascent) has many things to say about the remembrance of wrongs (failure to forgive), among them:
“Remembrance of wrongs is the consummation of anger, the keeper of sins, hatred of righteousness, ruin of virtues, poison of the soul, worm of the mind, shame of prayer, cessation of supplication, estrangement of love, a nail stuck in the soul, pleasureless feeling cherished in the sweetness of bitterness, continuous sin, unsleeping transgression, hourly malice…Some, for the sake of forgiveness, give themselves up to labours and struggles, but a man who is forgetful of wrongs excels them. If you forgive quickly, then you will be generously forgiven. The forgetting of wrongs is a sign of true repentance. But he who dwells on them and thinks that he is repenting is like a man who thinks he is running while he is really asleep.”*

Failing of refusing to forgive others is commonly known as ‘remembrance of wrongs.’ This doesn’t mean simply that we have a memory, but that when we recall the offense we continue to have a passionate reaction. We carry memories around with us, this is a product of our being human, and our capacity for memory is not inherently evil. Forgiveness does not equal forgetting – this phrase is popular in our culture, but wrong. When we forgive that does not mean that we erase all memory of an offense from our brain – that is biologically impossible and foolish to expect of ourselves. Forgiveness is the erasure of an offense’s hold on us, the letting go of all passion (anger, hurt, disappointment, etc.) aroused by a certain offense. The memory remains, but we soon quit thinking about it when our reaction to it has gone away.

As thoughts come to the surface during our times of silence, remembrance of wrongs is a type of thought that we need to stop, analyze, and deal with. So, how do we do this?

1 – pray for the grace and strength to forgive;
2 – pray for this grace as you remember the thought;
3 – pray to be able to let go of your passion;
4- [this is, for me, the key step that we hear about very infrequently, and really the main reason I wrote this reflection] – if we have remembrance of wrongs, this means that there are people we’ve failed to forgive. There’s a reason we’re struggling to extend this forgiveness, and it’s a profound thing for our salvation. If I’ve been unable to forgive someone for an offense against me, it’s very often the case that we see something of ourselves in this person and in their offense – we’re reminded of something in ourselves that we despise – so we condemn this evil in another instead of taking ownership of our sin and repenting.

Approaching this 4th step takes great humility, discernment, patience, and grace. We have to look at the particular situation, and search out, in prayer, our own secret sin – what about me keeps me from forgiving my brother. If we can begin to honestly search out these sins in our remembrance of wrongs, we can seek forgiveness ourselves, and we’ll find ourselves able to ‘forgive our debtors.’

*from The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 2001 : Step 9 “On remembrance of wrongs (or, resentment, malice, rancor, spite),” pp.87-89

Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas (2nd Sunday of Lent)

2011-03-20T13:40:00.001-05:00

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

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

Today we have the commemoration of St. Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki. St. Gregory reposed in 1359, and was canonized in 1368 – only 9 years after his repose [that rapid of a canonization is something virtually unheard of in the history of the Church]. And from the time of his canonization, the second Sunday of Great Lent has been dedicated to his remembrance. Today is considered to be a second Triumph of Orthodoxy, in both the life and the teachings of St. Gregory. Last Sunday we remembered the preservation of the Church by the grace of God [the Triumph of Orthodoxy], and today we have the presentation of this triumph in the person of St. Gregory.

St. Gregory is, obviously, a Saint of the Church. By the grace of God, he lived the life that Christ has called us to live. The Saints present most perfectly to us the lived theology of the Church. Not theology in a book, not a grouping of teachings – the Saints actually do what Christ gives us to do. Their lives give us an example of the truth of our faith, of the reality of Pentecost. There are some men and women who follow after Christ, and who are healed of the sins and passions of this life, and who are filled with the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit – and this fact demonstrates the Truth of the Gospel. In the Epistle reading this morning, St. Paul wrote, “we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away. For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast…how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him.” The Saints are counted with those who have seen the Lord, and their lives are a continuing confirmation to us of the word of the Lord. St. Gregory is a Triumph of Orthodoxy because his life is a continuation of the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The teachings of St. Gregory Palamas are the second aspect of the victory of Christ’s Church presented to us today. The word of a Saint is at once both traditional and original. The Saints continue to teach what has always been taught and believed about Christ. They teach the truth, and only the truth. St. Silouan once answered the question, how do the perfect speak? His answer is that they only say what the Holy Spirit gives them to say. The Saints follow wholeheartedly in the stream of the Tradition of the Church. But their words are also original – inspired in their hearts by the Holy Spirit, and directed specifically at the audience they are called to speak to. St. Gregory’s teachings are exactly like this – he teaches only what the Fathers before him had taught, but he does so to defend the faith from heretics. His works aim at giving us a vision of the life of the Gospels as at it had been taught and unpacked and lived by 1300 years worth of Saints.

At the center of St. Gregory’s defense of the Truth is our Orthodox understanding of salvation. The thrust of our Epistle reading this morning is to call us to remember that God has called us to sit at the right hand of Christ and to be ministered to by the angels and to co-rule the created universe as sons of God. And St. Paul calls on us to be mindful of our calling and of our purpose lest we “neglect so great a salvation.” We have to remember (not be neglectful) in order to struggle to attain. Once we forget, even for a second, our salvation in Christ, then we easily stray away from the path.

St. Gregory was called on to correct the false teachings of the heretic Barlaam the Calabrian. Essentially, Barlaam taught that all of the experiences of God that the Saints throughout the ages had spoken of were mediated experiences. In other words, the Saints didn’t have direct contact with God, but with some go-between substance or grace that God had created. The implications of this for our salvation are huge – if we don’t actually have any contact with God, then what’s going on? What was the purpose of the Incarnation of Christ if not to bring man into direct contact with God? We have real experiences of the grace and mercy and love of God, which flow from God Himself. We do not simply have contact with God through created means, we have real contact with God. Sharing in the life of God is our salvation. King David describes our salvation in the Psalms – “Ye are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High” (Psalm 81:6).

To use the more technical terminology of St. Gregory – we experience the uncreated energies of God (His activities), but we never have knowledge of His essence. We will never be God (this is the implication of the essence of God, we can’t know the essence of God without being God, in the same way that we can’t know the essence of one another). We know one another by our activities – but these activities are real revelations of ourselves to each other, and our activities are real experiences of who we are. Again – St. Gregory taught (along with all of the Fathers of the Church) that mankind can have true knowledge of God, true contact with God – and this is our salvation. If we remove real experience of God from our theology, then we have no salvation.

St. Gregory certainly had other things to say, and many more things to teach us, but this discussion is at the center of what brought him out of seclusion (he was a hermit monk on Mt. Athos) and gave us the whole body of his teachings. His practical teachings on prayer and on the spiritual life are also very helpful and important. The teachings of St. Gregory were upheld by two local Councils in Constantinople, and both of these councils are accepted in the Orthodox world like they were Ecumenical Councils. The teachings of St. Gregory Palamas are central in Orthodox theological discussions today. He presents the Faith as it always had been taught, and his points continue to be very crucial for us today in presenting the fullness of the faith of Jesus Christ to the world around us. For example, our topic today – salvation continues to be very wrongly taught and thought about today. From the idea of living in a static state and simply gazing on the magnificence of God, to the idea of heaven as a place where all of our material and earthly desires will be fulfilled (big houses, great food, golf, etc). These presentations of heaven, which are the norms today, are so hollow, and present such a skeleton of what we’re called to be in Christ. There’s nothing in them centered on what the Scriptures and the Church consider to be so important – relationship with God, theosis (sharing in the life and glory of God), incarnation, love.

As St. Paul says, the Lord has prepared for us a great salvation in Christ. Let us run the race with endurance, so that we might reach the end and receive the prize.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Resuming regular posting

2011-03-19T16:27:00.002-05:00

To my readers, please forgive me for very irregularly posting to this blog. Postings will begin again with some frequency. I pray you all have a blessed Lenten season, in preparation for our Lord's saving Pascha.

St. Gregory Palamas Sunday - 2nd of Great Lent

2011-03-19T16:23:00.001-05:00

In preparation for St. Gregory Palamas Sunday - this is a link to the audio of a talk on St. Gregory given by Dr. Christopher Veniamin, professor of Patristics at St. Tikhon Orthodox Theological Seminary. The lecture is about 30 minutes long, followed by about 30 minutes of audience question and answer.

Holy Father Gregory, pray to God for us!

AUDIO HERE

Christ has Revealed Himself to Us : Homily on the Sunday after the Nativity of our Lord

2011-01-03T13:45:00.003-06:00

Galatians 1:11-19; Matthew 2:13-23

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

St. Paul makes a very important point in the Epistle reading this morning regarding man’s knowledge of God. He says that the Gospel he preaches is not of man, nor revealed by man, but the Gospel came through the revelation of Jesus Christ. All of the things that we profess and believe and live are the product of God revealing Himself to man. The Nativity is a perfect example of this: by purely human reason and logic the birth of the baby Jesus is simply the birth of another child. There’s nothing special, in a human sense, about the Feast we celebrated yesterday.

We worship the Birth of God in the Flesh because knowledge of Who this baby was was revealed to various people by God. The Angel appeared both to Mary and Joseph to prepare them for the birth of the Messiah. God worked in the hearts of the pagan Magi to inform them of this miraculous birth, and to bring them to Bethlehem bearing gifts worthy of a king. They came and worshipped Him. The Angels appeared to the shepherds, singing the praises of this birth, and the shepherds came to worship Him. When our Lord is taken into the Temple, the righteous Symeon and the prophetess Anna are enlightened by the Holy Spirit to recognize this Child as the Saviour. None of these first people had any reason to think this Child special – knowledge of the Truth was revealed to them by God.

And when we sit to read the Scriptures, Old Testament or New, or when we sit and read the writings of the Saints of the Church, we can very quickly see that their knowledge of God doesn’t come from human learning. They know God personally (person to person), and their knowledge of Him comes from experience and revelation. We do ourselves an enormous dis-service if we think that our knowledge of God comes simply from things we hear or things we read or things we’re taught in Church. All of these things lay a foundation for us – but as Christians all of us are striving to get to the point in our walk with Christ where we can say with St. Paul that the Gospel we believe is revealed to us by God.

God wants us to know Him, He wants to be in a relationship with us. All of His dispensation, from Creation to the Prophets to the Judges to the Kings and finally to the life and death and resurrection of Christ, the Apostles, the Church – all of human history is for us. God pursuing man – He wants to come and make His home in us, our Lord teaches. All He asks is that we desire Him, and the rest will come with time and grace.

This Feast of our Lord’s Nativity offers us a perfect opportunity to reflect on all that God has done for us, collectively as the human race, and individually, to give thanks to our Creator for never giving up hope, but for continuing to pursue us and offer us His life. This kind of reflection will make us feel thankful, it will increase our zeal for our God, and it will make our hearts tender, so we can continue to know the God Who dwells in us person to person.

We thank God for His great love for us, and particularly for His birth of the Ever Virgin Mary for the salvation of the human race!

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Homily on Colossians 1:12-18

2010-12-05T15:56:00.002-06:00

Colossians 1:12-18; Luke 17:12-19
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

We have, in our Epistle reading from St. Paul to the Colossian Church, a passage that’s very theologically dense. We’re going to look at what he says in a moment, but I want us to first remember that in the Church, we don’t have theology for theology’s sake; we don’t have purely academic or intellectual theology – we have a theology based on the life of Christ and the Saints’ experience of the living God. Our theology matters, it affects the way we live because it reveals reality– so this morning’s reading from St. Paul informs not only our intellect but also our praxis, it should affect the way we live on a daily basis.

So to the passage - St. Paul begins this passage by giving thanks to the Father – the Father is the fountain of the godhead, so all praise begins with Him. There are the three things that St. Paul gives thanks to the Father for: He has enabled us to join the choir of the Saints, He has delivered us from bondage to sin, and He has made us inheritors of the kingdom of His Son. These all are summed up by simply saying that St. Paul is giving thanks for the Son; he’s giving thanks for Christ. This is a position that we always find ourselves in, giving thanks to the Father for the source of our salvation (Christ).

Then the majority of this passage St. Paul uses in praising Christ for Who He Is.
-He is the image of the invisible God – The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God, sharing one energy, one action, and one will. Christ says that if we have seen Him then we have seen the Father. The icon of Christ we see is the face of God in flesh.
-He is the firstborn of all creation – the Fathers often say that Christ is the first Adam. He existed with the Father before all time, yet His incarnation is known in the mind of the Father before the foundations of the world are laid. The image of God that we’re created in is the image of the incarnate Godman Christ.
-All things were created through Him, by Him, and for Him, and in Him all things have their being – Genesis tells us that God created and St. Paul further informs that it was Christ who created. All was created for Him and in Him all things have their being, He continues to keep in existence all things that continue to exist.
-He is the head of the Church – our Church is led not by a book or a person or a set of rules, we’re headed by Christ. He is our head, leading us always toward Himself.
-He is the first-born of the dead, thereby being first in all things – Christ is the first born of the creation and the first to rise from the dead (permanately), so as God He has preceeded us in all things. He has been all the places we’ll ever go. We’re comforted with this knowledge as we pray to God in our various troubles that He understands exactly what we’re experiencing both as God and as man.

Knowing, intellectually today, all these things about our Saviour, our striving is to know these things in our hearts, and to live in a way that demonstrates these truths.

Our major struggle in life is with pride – all of our sins begin with our self-determining will. And we really think that our will and our desires and our thoughts are important because their ours, we want for ourselves. But when we’re faced with this cosmic reality of Christ, we’re convicted that our lives are to be Christ-centered. Our thoughts, our will, our whatever is insignificant in the light of Christ. He is our everything as St. Paul reminds us this morning. He is the Author of all Creation and the Giver of Salvation to man. So let us join with this St. Paul not only today but every day, praising the Father for the gift of His Only-begotten Son, and for all that’s been done to allow us to know Him and to share in His salvation.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Facing our Thoughts: A Deeper Repentance (Reflection #3)

2010-12-01T13:50:00.003-06:00

The first reflection may be read HERE

The second reflection may be read HERE

Facing our Thoughts

As we begin to spend some time alone with God – time specifically structured so that we can focus on ourselves and on Christ – “stuff” starts to happen. We begin to be faced with things in our souls (psyche) that we need to address and deal with. These “things” that arise are mostly identifiable as sin. There are certainly other thoughts that will come as well – some to distract us from the work at hand, and some legitimate things we need to care for in our lives. But in our silent times with God we need to carefully focus on ‘the work’ we need to do in Christ. There will be plenty of time to deal with everything else – the time we set aside with God is precious. [It should be said here, as a reminder, that all of our time is to be spent in Christ, but there should also be time we set aside ONLY for Christ.]

So, what is this work that we have to do? The work, the goal and focus of our life is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). Putting Christ first in our life is the work we have to do. It is a real struggle for us to do this – our ego wants us first, our sin acts as a barrier between us and God, and the world constantly offers distractions to take our mind off of focusing on Christ. The distraction step has to be taken care of first – whether we’ve left the world (as a pilgrim or a monastic), or whether we’ve created a space in the world for quiet time to focus on God, as discussed in the previous reflection. We must take time as often as possible, daily if at all possible, to be quiet with ourselves and God.

This is the step of ‘facing our thoughts.’ We’ll be sorely tempted to run to distractions when, in silence, we begin having thoughts that are uncomfortable – when we begin seeing things in ourselves that we don’t like. We have to learn to continue persevering in the silence – forcing ourselves to remain and face our thoughts. We can’t run from them or we’ll never find healing. Sit, and pray. Ask Christ to help you know what to do with the thoughts. Many of the thoughts will have to be analyzed, as we’ll discuss below. Remember, we don’t dialogue with temptations or idle thoughts, rather we’re to analyze the remembrance of our sins.

A Deeper Repentance

As we spend this time in prayer with God, we begin to deal with the real issue – the sins I bear that separate me from Christ. My sin has to be dealt with, not on a surface level, but in the depths of my soul. St. Isaac the Syrian famously wrote, “This life is given to you for repentance, waste it not in vain pursuits.” We have the opportunity in this life to remove all barriers between ourselves and Christ and to draw near to Him.

Quite frequently, when we repent of our sins in our daily prayers and even in Confession, our acknowledgement of our sins remains on a surface level. We merely say we’re sorry for some action or thought that violated the commandments of Christ, that separated us from Him. This is good and right and necessary – we need to take ownership of our sins and ask for their forgiveness. But to truly repent, to truly turn away from our sins, requires a deeper repentance. Not only do we need to identify our sins, we also need to understand the harm that our sins have done to us, and we need to understand and take responsibility for the damage that our sins have done to others. With these two understandings we can more sincerely repent, we can ask forgiveness with understanding, and spiritually be ready to walk a different path.

This understanding comes slowly, one sin at a time. And as I understand the specific damage my sins have done to me [how they have affected me, how they have changed me], this knowledge typically leads one back to Confession – a deeper Confession with greater understanding. As I begin to analyze how my sin has hurt others, more unsavory realizations come to light. I realize that I ENJOY SINNING AGAINST OTHERS. As much as we want to believe that we abhor sin, we wouldn’t continue in sin if we didn’t derive some pleasure from it. This is a hard word to face. I’ve enjoyed the harm I’ve done to others by my sin – we must be able to admit this to ourselves. Then we can see what the harm was, and why we’ve enjoyed it.

At this stage we’re entering a fairly deep repentance – now I can acknowledge my sin (the surface sin), the harm I’ve done to myself, the harm I’ve done to others by my sin, and we can acknowledge the deeper sin, the secret sin, that resides within us – this sin that actually gets pleasure from the damage we’ve done to others. This deepest sin is virtually always linked to pride. But we can’t simply walk into Confession tomorrow and say, “I’ve been proud;” we must come to a place where we truly believe it, when we’ve actually seen what the evil in our lives is responsible for, and where that evil has come from – deep within ME. This is a fact that we’d prefer not to see, one of the reasons we enjoy the distractions the world provides us. The reality is that we all suffer from this same disease – we’re all sick – and Christ, our Good Physician, is calling us to healing.

These ever deepening realizations will again lead us to Confession. I realize that this idea of multiple Confessions around the same sin may be a strange idea to some. Technically, we are not confessing the same sin – we’re confessing new knowledge, new understanding of even deeper sins related to the first. The sin of harming oneself in various ways, the sin of harming others [not in a general way, but with specific accountability for specific harm], the sin of enjoying sin, the sins of motivation, etc. Our humbly going to Confession with our ever deepening repentance is for our healing – bringing our broken hearts and lives to Christ for the grace of forgiveness and reconciliation with both God and man.

The next reflection will focus on one particular type of sin that seems to plague us, “The Remembrance of Wrongs”

Recommended reading –
Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives: the Life and Teachings of
Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica (Serbia)

Exploring the Silence (Reflection #2)

2010-11-17T12:49:00.004-06:00

My last reflection [which may be read HERE] ended where this one will pick up, with the importance of silence in the spiritual life of the Christian. Our spiritual healing in Christ requires that we honestly face our true selves, with all of our sins and shortcomings. We have to see the ‘ME’ that we find repulsive; we have to claim as our own the evils that we commit and even enjoy [more on this in the next reflection, ‘A Deeper Repentance’]. St. Isaac the Syrian tells us that our lives are given to us for repentance – but before we can truly repent we must be able to see our sins. We can’t repent only on a surface level. To go beneath the surface, to break through the protective facades we erect around our hearts, we need to explore silence.

First, a few quotes from the Fathers of the Church on the importance of silence:
-“True wisdom is gazing at God. Gazing at God is silence of the thoughts. Stillness of mind is tranquillity which comes from discernment.” -St Isaac the Syrian
-John the Solitary in On Prayer: “For God is silence, and in silence is he sung by means of that psalmody which is worthy of Him. I am not speaking of the silence of the tongue, for if someone merely keeps his tongue silent, without knowing how to sing in mind and spirit, then he is simply unoccupied and becomes filled with evil thoughts: ... There is a silence of the tongue, there is a silence of the whole body, there is a silence of the soul, there is the silence of the mind, and there is the silence of the spirit.”
-Abbot Vasilios of Iveron Monastery in Hymn of Entry: “...By receiving a new sense of taste and a new form of knowledge in ‘stillness’ and in giving himself over to God totally. Be still and know. Be still: remain in a state of spiritual wakefulness, with your prospects and your senses open, to hear what God's will is at each moment.”

On a daily basis we find ourselves constantly attacked with ideas: ideas that come from within our own minds, ideas that come as temptations from the demons, and ideas that come to us from the outside (from exterior stimuli, like TV or advertisements or even conversations with others). To find and then explore our heart (our true selves), we have to quiet these distracting ideas, no matter what their source. As our above quotes reveal, silence is not simply an exterior quiet, but also an interior stillness. This is not something we can just sit down and do – learning to bring our bodies, souls, and minds to stillness takes some training. As with prayer and other efforts in Christ, there is an order.

The first step is finding some exterior silence. The mature Christian can carry on in the hustle and bustle of daily living and maintain interior quiet, but those of us who are beginners will require a lot of practice before we are able to do that. Since we are psychosomatic beings (consisting of a soul and body working together and influencing one another), those things which affect our bodies also affect our souls. In order to begin seeking interior silence, find exterior quiet first. Once we begin spending time in quiet, separated from the distractions of the world, we’ll finally begin to hear our minds and our souls.

While we’re learning to be alone with ourselves and God, it is especially helpful to occupy ourselves with prayer. Otherwise, we’ll soon be distracted by our thoughts, remembering things we need to do, or want to do, or other thoughts pertaining to activities we’d like to be doing instead of spending time in quiet meditation. Prayer will help keep our thoughts at least partially under control, until we’re ready to begin dealing with these thoughts that arise. Pray as it suits you best – Psalms, written prayers, extemporaneous prayer – many people find the simplicity of the Jesus Prayer to be exceedingly helpful in quieting the thoughts. It is also necessary to pray for assistance in the work we’re undertaking – we need help from our Lord to quiet our thoughts and to see our sins and to come to a point of repentance for those times we’ve separated ourselves from God.

As we experience silence in prayer with our Christ, the thoughts that we actually need to address will begin to arise. Here’s where we must use discernment – those thoughts that come as distractions must be passed over and ignored, thinking on these things will only be a waste of our time. There will be other thoughts that need our attention – we’ll remember our sins, situations where we need to seek God’s wisdom, people we need to intercede for – as we explore the silence, we’ll begin to more clearly see who we are today.

Running around in the world, we’re able to suppress many of the unpleasant things about ourselves that we need to deal with in order to be healthy in Christ. If we are truly lovers of God, if we honestly want the peace that He provides both in this life and beyond this world, we must begin going deep inside ourselves and cleaning out the gutters. The Fathers teach us that true knowledge of ourselves is the greatest miracle, because it is the miracle of raising one (ourselves) from the dead.

There’s obviously much more that can be said about silence in the life of the Christian, much deeper we can go than can be explored in this reflection, so we’ll have a taste of this depth in a final quote:
“Man, the greatest of all God’s creatures, [is] called to enter into direct and unmediated communion with God, even from this present life. The chief manner by which this is achieved is though the grace of God and noetic prayer, that is, through the prayer of the heart, also known as the Jesus prayer,” or the way of stillness (hesychia). -Dr. Christopher Veniamin

May God guide and strengthen us all in this work!

The next few reflections will look at dealing with the thoughts that arise in the silence which demand our attention – “A Deeper Repentance” and “Remembrance of Wrongs”

Thinking on the Nativity Fast

2010-11-15T10:36:00.001-06:00

As a general rule, I like to have a good idea of my destination before I begin a journey. Today, (November 15) we begin a fast in preparation for the Nativity of our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ. The following prayer is designed to be prayed by the priest during the Holy Liturgy for the Nativity (found in the Trebnik, or Book of Needs). It is a beautiful prayer, and I think if we hear it in the proper way, a wonderful beginning for our fasting – this is a prayer that we are preparing ourselves to hear at the Nativity of our God and Saviour in the flesh. May your efforts be blessed!

Prayer at the Nativity of Christ for Spiritual ChildrenO Master, Lord God Almighty: When Thou wast born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem in Judea, the trembling creation wast illumined and the world wast made glad at Thy Nativity. Thou madest man according to Thine Image and Likeness and gavest unto him Baptism for the repentance. Thou hast led Thy servants to this most-honorable day, by abstinence of the passions in the hope of the Resurrection. Having instructed them in the truth of Thy Godhead, open to them, in their hearts and minds, to know Thee the Son of God, Who takest away the sins of the whole world.

O Master, the Lover of Man, now accept Thy servants, as once Thou didst receive Peter when he was sinking in the sea and again, when he had denied Thee thrice, weeping bitterly, Thou didst accept him. Accept, O Master, the tears and sighs and repentance of Thy servants, just as Thou didst receive the groaning of the Publican and the weeping of the Harlot who anointed Thy feet with tears, with her own hair wiping them for the sake of mercy. Thou didst receive the thief to Thyself who had cried out on the cross to Thee: “Remember me, O Lord, when Thou comest into Thy Kingdom!” And Thou didst say to him: “Today thou shalt be with Me in Paradise!”
We have heard voices speaking of the Magi worshipping with gifts, shepherds piping and angels singing, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will to men,” and of Herod greatly disturbed, for God had revealed Himself in the flesh for the salvation of the human race. Now, O Master, the Lover of Mankind, all creation sings Thy praises, saying, “Christ is born! Glorify Him! Christ comes from Heaven! Meet Him! Christ is on earth! Be exalted!” Now the angelic assembly rejoices and choirs of Martyrs make glad, having seen Thy glorious and honorable Nativity. Therefore let all of us praise Him, as is meet, with hearts and lips.

O Gracious Lover of Mankind and Lord, accept now these Thy servants repenting of their own sins, known and unknown, voluntary or involuntary, and out of Thy customary love for mankind, accept the bowing of the knees and the fasting of Thy servants, that having fulfilled Thy commandments and having reached Thy holy and precious Nativity, pure and without reproach, they may become communicants of Thy Most-pure Body and Thy Precious Blood. For to Thee are due all glory, honor, and worship, together with Thy Father and Thine All-Holy, Good and Life-creating Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

St. Gregory Palamas

2010-11-14T15:12:00.003-06:00

For the Feast of St. Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessalonica (November 14)- this is a link to the audio of a talk on St. Gregory given by Dr. Christopher Veniamin, professor of Patristics at St. Tikhon Orthodox Theological Seminary. The lecture is about 30 minutes long, followed by about 30 minutes of audience question and answer.

Holy Father Gregory, pray to God for us!

AUDIO HERE

The Spiritual Pilgrimage – Intro to Upcoming Reflections (Reflection #1)

2010-11-11T15:20:00.002-06:00

Intro

I recently took a 3 week long spiritual retreat/pilgrimage to St. Herman of Alaska Orthodox Monastery in the mountains of Northern California (in the small town of Platina). My family’s link to the monastery goes back even further than our being Orthodox Christians – some of the books they publish were instrumental in several of our friends finding the Church – a journey they later shared with us. So my trip was much anticipated on several levels, one of them being the opportunity to visit this place on the other side of the country that had such a role in our conversion.

A spiritual retreat is an opportunity for growth and reflection, repentance and re-orienting one’s life to Christ. I learned a great deal on this particular retreat, and at the urging of a dear personal friend and brother priest, I’ll be writing several essays over the coming weeks reflecting on various aspects of my 3 weeks at St. Herman Monastery.

Pilgrimage

We are often exposed to two general ideas regarding pilgrimage: 1) they can be of great spiritual benefit; 2) our life in Christ is not dependant on location. I would posit, for what it’s worth, that both of these notions are equally true. Our life in Christ is what we are called to live each and every moment of every day in every place. We can’t use a pilgrimage to escape the realities of our day to day life – in fact, we’ll see later on that the pilgrimage typically does exactly the opposite. Change of place does not change inner realities. However, a change of place for a time, especially a retreat to a spiritually nourishing place [like a monastery, where the monastics are living lives of radical dedication to Christ] can help us gain perspective on our lives.

My pilgrimage was organized wonderfully. My daily schedule was something like this: morning services, breakfast, free time to walk in the mountains and read and think and write and pray, lunch, more free time to walk in the mountains and read and think and write and pray, evening services and dinner. As you can see, the majority of my time was spent in activities that were at least potentially spiritually nourishing – and most of my time was spent in silence. What one ‘gets out of’ a pilgrimage, however, depends as much on inner disposition as on exteriors. We can always find a way to distract ourselves, or we can allow ourselves to be in silence, alone with God. The Fathers tell us that this silence is a very important part of our spiritual lives, our lives in Christ.

The quiet of a pilgrimage allows one not to escape, but to honestly face one’s true self. In the silence, away from external distractions, we can’t help but deal with ourselves – our innermost thoughts, dreams, struggles, and sins. We learn to still the inner distractions as well, and focus our being on the Lord. We can find this quiet at home as well, by spending some time each day undistracted – no phone, no TV, no radio, no computer. In the times of quiet we share only with God, our inner life (which the average person typically pays little attention to) rises to the surface. The advantage of a trip to the monastery is the removal of so many of the worldly distractions that eat up our time. We are free to focus on ourselves and on Christ.

Hopefully, in subsequent reflections, we’ll explore together some of the things that may arise when we have time to spend alone with Christ, and how we begin to draw closer to our Saviour.

Next reflection: "Exploring Silence"

Mount Thabor Publishing

2010-11-08T17:53:00.004-06:00

I would offer up for my readers the work of this fairly new Orthodox Press. Two particularly important lines of publishing work are going on at Mount Thabor - the homilies of St. Gregory Palamas, and the writings of the spiritual son of Elder Sophrony, Archimandrite Elder Zacharias. The homilies of St. Gregory, as with any Father of the Church, would serve as wonderful reading for the Orthodox faithful. These homilies have been published in a complete set, and also in smaller topical volumes.

The writings of Fr. Zacharias are an important contribution to Orthodox literature in English. Fr. Zacharias is in the spiritual family of St. Silouan of Mt. Athos (who was the spiritual father of Elder Sophrony).

Please take some time to visit the website of this Orthodox publisher.

Mount Thabor Publishing

"He has made us one" - Homily on Ephesians 2:14-22

2010-11-07T12:42:00.005-06:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! [He is and shall be!]

We have, this morning, in our Epistle reading from St. Paul to the Church in Ephesus (Ephesians 2:14-22), a really beautiful description of what Christ, by His very existence, does to the human race, and by extension, to the entire cosmos. Paul begins this section of his epistle (just a few verses preceding where our reading began) by reminding the readers that historically speaking there was a great separation between the Jews and the Gentiles. The Jews were set apart as the chosen people of God; the Gentiles were outside of this group.

Paul then goes on to say that this gap between the chosen and the not-chosen has been closed, the separation abolished, in Christ. Now obviously, we really don’t think in terms of Jews and Gentiles today – but we do sometimes think in terms of Christian/non-Christian, or Orthodox/non-Orthodox. We still tend to divide humanity into various ‘groups,’ and we then approach each group in a different way. So, there’s still an enormous message for us to be reminded of in the Epistle today.

St. Paul doesn’t ease into his message – he begins by telling us that Christ, in His person, in His union of God and man – has abolished the enmity (antagonism) between God and man, and between man and man. “He has made us one,” St. Paul writes, “abolishing in His flesh the law of commandments and ordinances” (v 15). The Jews lived by the law; the Gentiles didn’t have the law – the ordinances (sacrifices) were also given to the Jews. These things are abolished* in the person of Jesus Christ. Nothing is to be separated any longer – we’re called to union with God, and union with one another. These are the two great commandments of Christ: love God, and love your brother. These two universal callings of God to man are accomplished only in Christ.

Christ is our peace, St. Paul writes – He is our source of peace personally in our lives, and He brings peace to the created order (between God/man and man/man). The beautiful words of verse 16 – “reconciling us to God in one body [all mankind in one body] through the Cross and slaying enmity.” Christ’s death on the Cross is the perfect sacrifice and reconciliation, demonstrating for us the extent of God’s love for us – we’re loved by our Lover (God) so deeply that He allowed us to murder Him (the death of God in the flesh) to show His undying love for man. As the Scripture says, the blood of Christ has reconciled God and man.

But this offering of True Life (life in God) is not to a specific group of people, the offer is extended to all. St. Paul writes, “[Christ] preached to all because through Him [all] have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (vv 17-18). This makes all of us, not just those of us in this building, and not just those who today profess a faith in Christ, Christ’s work makes all humankind fellow travelers on this earth. We all have the same calling; we’re all beckoned to the same final destination. We’re called to be “no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the Saints, and of the household of God…whose cornerstone is Christ” (v 19).

In the last few verses of the reading, St. Paul narrows the focus to those who choose Christ. He’s taught us for 7 verses what we’re called to – he finishes with a few verses dedicated to those who accept this calling to unite themselves to Christ. “Ye are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; In Whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit” (vv 20-22). The Spirit of God comes to dwell in us, and is manifest to the world through us individually and through the Church.

This passage we thought on this morning is so filled with grace and power. We’re reminded of God’s love for us, and what that means for us. What God has done for us, and what He has called us to. “What is my response to God’s love for me, and His love for all mankind?” This is a powerful question to contemplate, brought to the surface this morning. And we’re reminded that all are called by God in love – salvation is offered to everyone. The love we’re called to have ‘for all mankind’ should rise up within us – we’re to prepare ourselves to be dwelling places of God, and we’re to call others to know this reality as well.

We’ll end with a pair of quotes that remind us how we as Christians are to relate to this reading from Ephesians.
-Francis of Assisi: “Preach the Gospel always, and when necessary use words.”
Our lives are to be a testament to the reality that God has called all mankind to Himself.
-St. Seraphim of Sarov: “Acquire the spirit of peace [Christ is our peace, acquire Christ] and a thousand souls around you shall be saved.”

Glory to Jesus Christ! [Glory forever!]

AUDIO OF HOMILY

HERE

*Please do not understand this to result in a state of lawlessness – Christ also teaches that those who love Him will keep His commandments. There are still laws, still boundaries we are not to cross, but these statutes are the same now for everyone.

The Law of Love

2010-11-02T16:21:00.004-05:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! [He is and shall be!]

One of our seminary professors had the same thing to say about virtually every situation we discussed – gentlemen, it’s all about the story. What he meant was that we trace all of our issues back to the Garden of Eden, to Adam and Eve and the Fall. We see what we were created to be, and what we failed to be, and we even have the promise of our redemption, all in the first few chapters of Genesis. Everything, it’s all about the Story. And when Christ is asked by the young lawyer this morning what is the greatest of the commandments, we see him missing the point of the Story.

His question is a set up – the scribes and Pharisees have identified literally hundreds of laws from the Old Testament that the people are required to follow in order to be considered ‘good Jews.’ So Christ is asked this question to put Him on the spot, to make Him pick a particular law and then leave Himself open to criticism and being disproved by the religious authorities. But our Lord delivers the perfect answer – the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind. Above all the laws is the law of love.

Fr. Vasileios – [in the Fall and consequently by our continued sin] man chose himself and rejected an interpenetrating interpersonal love relationship with God. We’re created to live in a relationship of love with our Creator, and with each other [second commandment]. The law, as we understand it, was given to man to form perameters – to give us a safe space in which to live and to grow. The law was to show us how we were created to be; and by living according to the law we would be maximally human. But man perverted the law, and the law became a thing unto itself. So this morning Christ puts it all into perspective – the greatest of all things is to love God. And to love God with everything we are (soul, heart, mind).

Of course, we also have to remember that Christ also said if you love Me, keep my commandments. But this isn’t a legalistic side to our relationship with God – if we truly love Christ, then we’ll strive to do the things that He has called us to do. The Fathers tell us that the law flows from God’s love of us, and as we learn to love God ever more completely, the things He desires for us naturally become the things that we desire for ourselves.

This is a considerably different definition of love than we usually run across in our society today – it has nothing to do with feelings or emotions—it has to do with choice. To love God means that nothing in any aspect of our lives comes before Christ. Christ is where we center our existence. It would be a good exercise for us to undertake periodically, to step back and evaluate our lives in the light of this commandment. To ask ourselves, is anything coming before Christ. Take a look at how we spend our time, what we do with our money, where are our most intense desires focused. And if we do this honestly, we can see places in our lives where perhaps we don’t love God with all of our heart and soul and mind, and then we dedicate ourselves to repentance and reprioritizing so that we can direct ourselves toward the keeping of this greatest of all commandments : Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind.

Glory to Jesus Christ!

AUDIO OF HOMILY

HERE

Ancestral Memory and Migraine Headaches

2010-08-10T16:14:00.003-05:00

I have recently been reading the autobiography of famed psychiatrist Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. The other day I ran acrossed a few sentences that reminded me of some rather startling (at the time) statements made to me by a monk of IM Iveron (the Holy Monastery of Iveron) when I was visiting Mt Athos in the summer of 2005. Below I'll first quote Jung, and then briefly relay the content of my conversation with Fr Hierotheos.

from Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Vintage Books: New York, 1989, p 233-4
"...I became aware of the fateful links between me and my ancestors. I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to answer questions which fate had posed to my forefathers, and which had not yet been answered, or as if I had to complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished [emphasis mine]. It is difficult to determine whether these questions are more of a personal or more of a general (collective) nature. It seems to me that the latter is the case. A collective problem, if not recognized as such, always appears as a personal problem, and in individual cases may give the impression that something is out of order in the realm of the personal psyche. The personal sphere is indeed disturbed, but such disturbances need not be primary; they may well be secondary, the consequence of an insupportable change in the social atmosphere. The cause of disturbance is, therefore, not to be sought in the personal surroundings, but rather in the collective situation. Psychotherapy has hitherto taken this matter far too little into account."

My conversation with Fr Hierotheos
When I was staying at Iverson Monastery in 2005, I woke up on the morning of my departure with a terrible migraine headache. After several extra hours of rest and some medication, I finally had to get up and gather my things and prepare to take a van to the port, a boat to the mainland, and a bus back to Thessaloniki. Needless to say, this was a trip I was very much not looking forward to. I had a few things to purchase last minute from the monastery gift shop (namely some Nama, wine), so I made my way acrossed the courtyard and toward the shop. As I passed the main gate, and the Portaitissa Chapel, Fr Hierotheos came out of the chapel and walked my way. I had spoken with Fr Hierotheos a few times during my stay - a middle-aged monastic, not a priest, from Australia. He could immediately tell that I was feeling poorly, and he asked what was wrong. I told him I had a headache, and he unexpectedly asked if this was a regular occurance. I relayed to him that on a fairly regular basis I suffered from migraine headaches, and I had since I was about 6 years old. He proceeded to ask about my parents and my children - did they also suffer from migraines? I told him that they did, and all of us seem to begin having the headaches at about the same age. He then had quite a lot to say, the main idea of which was the notion that something lay unresolved in my family's past. Some sort of issue, a sin, was being passed from generation to generation, and was causing each successive generation the same agonizing pains. He then said that having this knowledge lay a burden on me - I knew there was something going on, and now it was up to me (as a son, and a father, and a husband, and a Christian, and a priest) to seek out this unresolved issue and address it. If this was done, he said, the cycle could be stopped.

As I read Jung's words, it brought back the advice of Fr Hierotheos from several years ago. The connection seemed almost eerie at first, until I realized that the similarity came from the content of TRUTH in each statement. We read in the Scriptures: "6 And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, 7 Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation" (Exodus 34: 6-7) [emphasis mine]. These verses are the subject of many various interpretations and arguments, but I would contend that they provide the resolution for Jung's comments, as well as the words of Fr Hierotheos. In one of the many mysteries of human existance, we are all connected with one another, and that connection seems particularly strong within famiy systems. As Fr Hierotheos alluded, perhaps some of our burdens are not ours alone, but provide us with the opportunity to heal not only ourselves but also the past, and clear the way for the future.

Just some 'food' for reflection.

Posting update...

2010-08-10T16:12:00.003-05:00

Since I am now the assistant priest at a new parish, I will not be regularly posting homilies. Sometimes there will be homilies to share, other times I will be posting various reflections/articles/reviews. I hope the new direction of these postings will continue to be helpful and enjoyable to the readers.

Thinking of the Theotokos on Her Holy Dormition

2009-08-16T13:04:00.002-05:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

As I was thinking this week about the feast that we celebrated yesterday, the Dormition of the Theotokos, the question that I naturally thought of was, ‘what is the place of the Theotokos is the Church?’ There are many different angles that you can take to look at this question, from historical to popular piety to the feasts of the Church. But I think that we have the simplest and most direct answer demonstrated by the two icons in the center of the Temple – the icon of the Dormition and the icon of Christ “Not Made By Hands.” The Mother of God, from her birth and her life, to her death and even now after her death, the place of the Theotokos is the Church is pointing mankind to Christ.

Like any of the Saints, we remember the Theotokos not in and of herself, we remember her in relationship to Christ. The Gospel that we read for all of the Feasts of the Mother God spells it out – she has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her. And the Gospel ends with the words, blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it. From her very childhood, the Theotokos hears the word of God and keeps it. Her image for us is incredibly powerful – as an image of what we are all called to be in Christ. From her birth, she was part of God’s plan – we sing at the feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos that she was born to be the Mother of the Messiah, the Mother of God. We’re all born with this potential, to be a part of the greater plan of God for the salvation of the world. The difference is that we often make choices that alienate us from God, choices that move us outside of the will of God. The Virgin Mary conforms her will always to the will of God. We hymn her as being most pure and without sin – she was born with the inheritance of ancestral sin like any other human being (death), but she never submitted her will to evil. She lived a normal human life without sin, always in the will of God.

At the Annunciation we see the Archangel Gabriel announcing that she would be the mother of the Messiah, and we praise her for this honor constantly in the hymnography of her feasts. But the announcement of the Archangel is not what defines the relationship of Mary to Christ – God chooses her as His mother because of her relationship with Him. She’s not holy because she was the Mother of Christ – she was chosen to be His Mother because she was holy. We see this dynamic in the lives of all of the Saints – and if we take the words of the Prophet Jeremiah, that he was called even from his mother’s womb, if he chose a path that took him away from God, that calling would be of no effect. Our will and our actions have to meet God’s calling. We are baptized into the Body of Christ – but if we turn away from this great grace, then it doesn’t help us, if anything, having the call and turning from us is for our damnation.

The Theotokos stands out in history as the one person [outside of Christ] who did exactly what we are created to do – she lived in Christ at every moment of her life. And that the Theotokos has such a highly exhalted place in the Church is no surprise – when we look at Christ people often make the very human excuse, sure He perfect because He was God. But in the Theotokos we don’t have that rational – she was like us in every way, yet she lived a life that entirely directed to her God. She would take no honor of herself – in the early Church she doesn’t come out as a leader because she was the mother of Christ – she stays mostly in the background, in prayer and in support of the faithful. She points all of the praise and the honor and the glory to Christ.

Friday night, in the Lamentations before the Tomb of the Theotokos, we praised her for the great gift that she was given, to be the mother of God. To carry the Creator of all in her womb, to nurse him, to raise him. But our praise never stops there – it’s always put in the perspective of why she was chosen. She gave everything she was to God. She grew up in the Temple, living a life of prayer and fasting and virginity. She intended her entire life to be dedicated to God, she wanted nothing else. And God was able to take her humble offering, and do something great with it, something that changed the course of human history.

More than anything else, the Mother God points us to Christ by her life. We all face a myriad of choices every day – and every choice can have only two outcomes – drawing us closer to Christ, or leading us away from Christ. If our choices lead us away from God, we have Judas as our example – moving away from God leads us only to death. But the Theotokos shows us that not only should we constantly choose Christ –which we know – she shows us that we can. We can lay aside all earthly cares, as we’ll sing in a few minutes at the Cherubic Hymn. We can choose good, and truth, and beauty – we can choose Christ every moment of every day. But it takes a radical dedication to Christ – look at how the Mother of God lived – she grew up in the temple, in prayer and praising God and in intercession and supplication. Everything in her life was centered on God, and every moment was given to Him. Every decision, every action, was weighed in the light of God. That’s the dedication we have to live with as Christians. One of the desert Fathers said this, and I’d like to end with it – If a man wills it, he can attain to the measure of God this day. If our will is there, like we see in the life of the Theotokos, we can be perfected in Christ even today.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

St. Herman of Alaska

2009-08-09T17:24:00.001-05:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

This morning I’d like talk about St. Herman of Alaska. Today is his feast day, and as American Orthodox Christians we certainly should know about our first canonized saint, St. Herman. And I think we can learn a lot from the way he lived his life – calling people to Christ in an authentic and personal way.

St. Herman came to Alaska as part of the original Russian Orthodox Mission Team in 1794. This team of 10 came from Valaam Monastery – all of these men who were to become missionaries and convert so many of the Alaskan natives were monastics (in other words, they weren’t parish priests or bishops or what we would think of as evangelists – they were ‘ordinary’ Orthodox monks). The Mission Team came to Alaska to minister to the Russian fur traders who were livings there (primary job), and also to offer the Orthodox Faith to the people of Alaska. They took both parts of their assignment very seriously – and when it became evident that many of the fur traders (and the managers of the Russian American Company) were not very interested in living an Orthodox life, the efforts of the team became almost wholly missionary in focus. And the way these man shared the Gospel with the Alaskan peoples should serve as a model of the mindset that we all need to have when attempting to share Christ with others. They lived with the people, they got to know them and their customs and their history, they learned the language and translated the Scriptures and the services...they didn’t just arrive as outsiders bringing salvation. They entered into personal relationships in order to share the Truth about a personal God.

St. Herman lived in Alaska from the time he arrived until his death – he was the last survivor of the original missionaries – the others had died, been martyred, or returned to Russia. The natives in Alaska revered St. Herman because one of the things that he felt very strongly about was protecting the natives from abuse and exploitation by the Russian fur traders. He wrote letters back to his monastery and to civil authorities in Russia to document how the natives were mistreated by the Russians. We have several of his letters still – letters that alienated him from his people (Russians), and endeared him to the natives of Alaska. He didn’t worry about how the authorities over him would react, he told the truth, and he looked out for the people that were being taken advantage of. St. Herman lived on Spruce Island – where he built a monastic cell, and a chapel, and a school. The native children would come over to the island and he would teach them Russian, math, church music, and about the Christian faith – he was educating the people to better deal with their new interactions with outside cultures, and at the same time introducing them to Christ. He grew a garden, and from that garden he ate, and he also provided for the orphans. He built a guesthouse, and people came to visit him, seek his counsel (since they knew he was willing to defend them and to intercede with the trading company for them), and just to be with him. At one point many of the natives of Kodiak were dying in an epidemic, and St. Herman stayed with the ill, caring for them, and offering prayers for them constantly for the month-long duration of the illness. The orphans of this epidemic were especially close to St. Herman, because they saw how he loved and took care of these people who were dying.

St. Herman loved people – not just his people, not just Orthodox people, not just friends – he loved people as Christ loved people. He gave himself freely to the Alaskan people, and because of this, many people came to Christ through his example and his teaching. We see an example in St. Herman of how our lives as Christians are to be lives of love – love for God, and love for our fellow man. St. Herman said "if we love someone, we always remember them; we try to please them. Day and night our heart is concerned with the subject. Is that the way [we] love God? Do [we] turn to Him often? Do [we] always remember Him? Do [we] always pray to Him and fulfill His holy commandments? For our own good, and for our own fortune, let us at least promise ourselves that from this very minute we will try to love God more than anything and to fulfill His Holy Will!" St. Herman’s life was about God, and about the people.

Christianity is not about numbers, it’s certainly not about money or pride, and not even about being right – it’s a life of love for a people, and through that love the people were brought into direct contact with Christ. We see this in all of our saints, even from our Lord who healed people and asked them not to tell. The Scriptures say He was moved to compassion by their suffering and He healed them. He loved the people, and this sincere love moves people to seek its source, which gives us the opportunity to preach Christ. May we also be moved to love like St. Herman loved – that’ll do far more than special events or religious dialogues to bring people to the knowledge of God.

Holy Father Herman of Alaska, pray to God for us!

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Slaves of Righteousness

2009-07-04T22:24:00.004-05:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

This morning’s passage from St. Paul’s letter to the Roman Church begins with his writing “having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.” And for the rest of the passage he uses this language of slavery – building the fact that we are either slaves of sin or slaves of righteousness. And in the second verse he explains the use of this language – “I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh.” In other words, this language of slavery gives us an idea of what St. Paul’s trying to convey. He has to use a language that we’re familiar with, if he uses a spiritualized explanation, we might not be able to understand what he’s saying. But we do have to remember that this language of slavery is an approximation – it gives us an image of what St. Paul’s teaching us, but its not the fullness, the image can only be taken so far.

St. Paul says that when we were slaves to sin, we were free with regard to righteousness. In other words, as sinners, righteousness had no hold on us. We didn’t have to be concerned with what was right or what was wrong. We were slaves to our desires. Some philosophers debate the idea of where our morals come from; can man be moral and strive for the good apart from the existence of God. St. Paul certainly seems to imply that God is the source of righteousness, and apart from God not only is the good not what we desire, righteousness doesn’t even exist apart from God. Apart from God we’re all about ourselves – we seek for what we want, and we might behave morally if it suits our will, but if it doesn’t, we’re just as likely to destroy our neighbor to get what we want. Apart from God, righteousness is not part of us.

But when we choose Christ, we’re made slaves to God and to righteousness, and we’re set free, then, from sin. In Christ our whole paradigm is changed – we’re no longer to seek after sin, but we’re to pursue righteousness to holiness. We’re to seek God’s way, in order to be set apart (holy) from the world and sanctified to God. And St. Paul says we’re set free from sin; in Christ, sin no longer has a hold on us, we’re no longer slaves to sin, we can choose something else, we can choose God and His righteousness.

After having told us of our position in Christ, St. Paul also tells us what we have to do. He writes, “For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness.” Before Christ, we gave ourselves to sin like slaves. We chose pleasure, we followed our own will, and we did it like we didn’t have the freedom to do anything else. We were slaves of uncleanness and sin. But now that we’re in Christ, we’re to present ourselves as slaves of righteousness. Even in the way St. Paul phrases this, you can see where the image of slavery comes to an end. A slave has no choice – he has to do what he’s told to do. But in Christ, we still have a choice. We can choose to continue living for ourselves, or we can present ourselves as slaves of righteousness, which is what we’re called to do in Christ. His words remind me of a saying of the Saints – that we’re the most free when we’re slaves, when we have no will of our own. In other words, we’re able to live freely, as human beings, as we’re created to be in Christ, only when we set aside our own will and submit ourselves wholly and in all things to Christ. But this is a choice that we freely make – to enslave ourselves to Christ.

St. Paul then ends this morning in a way very much like Christ often ends a parable or a teaching – with a word of warning, and a promise. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” If we continue to choose uncleanness and unrighteousness, then the result of our choice will be death. And St. Paul doesn’t just mean death in the body, everyone experiences that. He means death of the soul: a soul blind to God for all of eternity. But the gift of God to those who choose it, to those who freely become His slaves, servants of the Gospel, the gift to those is eternal life with Christ. Life in the Kingdom of God, where there is no sickness or sighing or sorrow but Life everlasting.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Trusting in God

2009-07-04T22:20:00.001-05:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be! The chapter that our Gospel reading comes from this morning (St. Matthew 6) is the middle section of our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7). This Sermon on the Mount is an extensive teaching by Christ on the life that God would have us live if we choose to follow Him. And the passage that we have this morning deals specifically with trusting God, especially when it comes to our basic day-to-day needs. This is something that many Christians truly struggle with – trusting God to care for us, trusting God with our lives and our situations, and knowing what it means to trust in God to provide for our needs. The first three verses of this passage we read initially doesn’t seem to go with the rest of the reading. Most of the reading is about trust in God to provide – but the first few verses actually give us an important perspective. Christ begins by teaching that we can’t serve two masters; we can either serve God, or we serve the ways of the world. If we try to do both, eventually we’ll wind up loyal to one and despising the other. And the Father’s of the Church make it clear that Christ means eventually we’ll turn our backs on God for the immediate physical pleasure of the world. Christ then goes on to talk about trusting God to care for our needs – but in the teaching our Lord is constantly re-enforcing the fact that we can’t serve two masters. We can’t serve the things of the world, and then somehow also expect ourselves to trust in God. When we read passages like this, or talk about trusting in God, sometimes we don’t stay on the safest road, we lean a little to the right or to the left. We’re tempted to think that we can just do whatever we want to do and that somehow God will make things work out. We trust God will work things out, and we just live. And then there’s also the temptation to do nothing; to just wait for God to do things for us. But it’s obvious from the examples our Lord uses that neither one of these things is the case. He talks about food and drink and clothing – if we do nothing, then we’ll have nothing. Let he who doesn’t work not eat. So our Lord isn’t talking about doing nothing and waiting on God to give us something. And He certainly isn’t teaching us to do whatever we want to do and make occasional reference to trusting that God will watch out for us and make things okay at the end of the day. Christ is referring in this passage again to the beginning – we can only serve one master. Only one thing can occupy the highest priority in our lives. Either we give God the first place in our lives, or we give the world first place in our lives. And so the warnings Christ gives this morning show us the wrong path – if we’re overly worried and anxious all the time about food and drink and clothing and shelter – then there’s a good chance that our priorities aren’t straight. Our Lord is warning us against anxiety and being caught up in the things of the world – we’re being warned against having our ultimate focus (that #1 place) on the world, even on the most basic and physically necessary things in life. We have to think about these things; we have to work to provide for ourselves, and we have to shop and buy houses and all those things. But our focus is to be on Christ. Those without Christ [Gentiles] worry constantly about the things that keep them alive physically (food, drink…) because that’s all they know. We know something more. Christ is risen from the dead, we sang at Pascha, destroying death and giving life. A total pre-occupation with the things of this world, what Christ is warning against this morning, it ultimately comes from a fear of death. If all I know as a source of life is food, then I chase food. But as followers and disciples of Christ, we know that the source of life is God. We chase God; we seek God first in all things; He who is the Creator of the food and the drink and the shelter. Christ then ends this section of the Sermon on the Mount with a re-iteration of what He said at the beginning – “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things [that you need for your daily life on earth] shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). This is constantly our Lord’s message. We get caught up in so many things that distract us from God, but for true Health and Joy and Peace, we’re told to do one thing. Seek first the Kingdom of God. Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

The Judgments of God

2009-06-21T19:59:00.003-05:00

Epistle Reading Romans 2:10-16

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

In this morning’s Epistle reading from St. Paul to the Church in Rome, St. Paul gives us some insight into the judgments of God. And specifically – how God judges the actions of man. Obviously, St. Paul thought this was an important thing for us to understand. And it’s important for several reasons – how God judges man reveals again [in addition to the Scriptures and the life of Christ] the love of God for man; His desire for us is our redemption and our salvation. And also, if we have some insight into how God judges, it may help us work on one of the passions that just plagues humanity: which is our constant judgment and criticism of each other.

There are many false notions about God in our world, and there are some terrible mis-representations of God as an angry and vindictive judge who just can’t wait for the chance to punish us for all of our failures. But that’s not the image St. Paul paints this morning. God is Love, God is Truth – and the judgments of God flow from Who He Is. And one of the potentially most “scandalous” realities that comes through from St. Paul, is that the judgments of God are not monolithic. Everyone is not judged in the exact same way. We are individuals, with various experiences and abilities, and we’re treated by God as individuals. It’s like parents try to be with their children – they love their children, and they strive to be fair, but each child has to be treated as a unique person. We aren’t all the same.

I’d like to read an excerpt from this morning’s Epistle:
But glory, honor, and peace to everyone who works what is good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For there is no partiality with God…for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them (Romans 2:10-11, 14-15).

When God judges man, He sees us for who we are. There is no partiality with God, St. Paul writes. God doesn’t play favorites based on any factors (the Jews despised the Gentiles because they were outside of the law, but St. Paul makes it clear to them that God will treat each person as they are). And he goes on to explain that the Gentile will not be judged according to the law given to the Jews. That wouldn’t be fair – to be measured by a standard that you never knew. Rather, the Gentile will be judged according to the law written on their hearts. Those without the law are measured by their conscience. Our conscience is our God-given way to know what’s right and what’s wrong. The second century apologist St. Justin Martyr makes exactly this point, using St. Paul as a reference – those with no knowledge of Christ will be judged according to their conscience. This is an enormously important point for us to remember. It shows us the lengths of God’s love – after all that was done for our salvation, He still treats each of us as a unique person. God’s desire is not to exclude people from the Kingdom, but to call us all to Himself.

And when we hear St. Paul explaining for us these judgments of God, we’re immediately reminded that the Scriptures also warn us not to judge one another – all judgment belongs to God [and in fact, that judgment will be carried out by Christ]. When we judge one another, we judge based on us, based on what we expect or want of another. We can’t be magnanimous judges (the type described in the Epistle) because all of our judgments revolve around us, and we’re fallen and in need of being judged ourselves. God judges in Truth and in Love – and it’s a grave sin to take on ourselves this prerogative of God’s. In St. Matthew’s Gospel we read (7:1) “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”

The bottom line, when we’re reflecting on the judgments of God, is that God judges not only our deeds, but also our heart. God has everything in the universe at His disposal, and His desire for us is that each and every person be saved. We can take refuge in that knowledge. So the only thing left is our question to ourselves – is our desire Christ, are our struggles for Christ. We do our part – we struggle to live our lives for Christ, according to the Gospel – and we can safely leave the judging to God.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Sunday of All Saints

2009-06-17T14:26:00.001-05:00

Hebrews 11:33-12:2
Matthew 10:32-33, 37-38, 19:27-30

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be! This morning I’d like to expand on a few things I mentioned before the Kneeling Vespers service on Pentecost last week. The Leave-taking of Pentecost was yesterday, but even today with the commemoration of the Sunday of All Saints, we continue looking to Pentecost. And from today until Lent, we’ll count all of the Sundays by their distance from Pentecost – today is the 1st Sunday after Pentecost, and it will continue like that until Great Lent begins. With the Feast of Pentecost, we Liturgically enter again into modern times, into the life of the Church after the Ascension and after the Descent of the Holy Spirit. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descends on the apostles, and we begin immediately to see some of what Christ had promised them—that they would do incredible things and work miracles and be led into the understanding of all truth when the Comforter was sent. After the descent of the Holy Spirit the Apostles preach in tongues, they are filled with a new boldness for the preaching of the Gospel, and moving on through the New Testament we see them build the Body of Christ and work many miracles (Christ had even told them at one point that they would work greater miracles than He did by the power of the Holy Spirit). Pentecost is celebrated as the birth of the Church – God dwelling in man in a new way. The Holy Spirit was sent to the Apostles at Pentecost not because He’d never worked in the world until then (the Holy Spirit was present and working in the Creation from the beginning, from Genesis). But He descends on the Apostles because His relationship with man was new/different because of the Incarnation of Christ – in addition to working in the world, He now lives in Christians and works in us and in the world. This is the time we live in today, the era of the Church, the time of God’s working in the Creation through the Holy Spirit calling all of us to relationship with Christ. Part of the effect of the life of the Holy Spirit and the presence of the Church in the world we saw last week – we’re living in the time after the coming of the Bridegroom. Before Christ came, the people offered sacrifices to God. Then there was the brief period when Christ was here on the earth, and then there was the Ascension. And Christ told the Apostles that after the Bridegroom was gone, then would be the time for fasting (the Pharisees were upset that the Apostles didn’t fast, and Christ said you don’t when the Bridegroom is present). By fasting we can understand ‘now is the time for the living out of the commandments.’ In this time we’re working, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, to model our lives after Christ. To bury the old man, to put off the skin of sin and of death, and to be clothed in virtue and in Christ. But so often we forget, all of us do – I do frequently – we forget that this struggle for how we live is not a struggle that we undertake alone. WE don’t stop sinning on our own, we don’t lay aside sloth and judging and gluttony and greed and all those things that we’re so easily caught up in, we don’t lay those things aside on our own. We don’t have the strength to succeed in living as Christians on our own. Christ specifically told the Apostles one time that they wouldn’t be able to live out His commandments on their own, but help was being sent. We can do all things through Christ, in the Holy Spirit. It’s very easy for us to get caught up in our own lives, in all the things we’re doing and dealing with and trying to accomplish. And we become the masters of our lives – we try to get everything done on our own power. But we can’t do it. This is why the Holy Spirit is sent to the Apostles – the indwelling presence of God in the lives of His people (the reality that the Holy Spirit lives in us) finally gives humankind the opportunity to live as we were created to be – to live in the image of Christ. The Holy Spirit comes to empower and enliven the followers of Christ. Not so that we can do whatever we want to do (we don’t tell God what we want and then use the power of the Holy Spirit to get it). God lives in us to lead us and to guide us to the Truth, which is Christ, and to give us the grace and the strength we need to abandon the fallen things of this world to hold on to Christ alone. Every other path, no matter how enjoyable it may seem, every other path leads to misery and to death. So in the afterglow of the Feast of the Descent of the Holy Spirit I want to encourage us all to think about our lives in a Holy Spirit-guided and Christ-centered way. Especially with our entering the Fast of Ss. Peter and Paul tomorrow, it provides us with a perfect opportunity to reflect on the reality that the Holy Spirit dwells in me. My task is to seek His guidance, seek the face of Christ – enter into the fast, pray (so important!), read the Scriptures, most of all be filled with joy that Christ is come and has sent us the Comforter. The Church gives us today the Feast of All Saints as an encouragement, they did it, they lived in Christ, and by the grace of the Holy Sprit, we can too. So I’d to end with the last few verses of our Epistle reading from this morning: “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” And may He grant that we do the same. Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Sunday of the Samaritan Woman

2009-05-17T16:55:00.001-05:00

John 4:5-42

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!

I’d like us to focus for a few minutes this morning on the last verse of the Gospel reading we just heard. St. John writes, “they said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.” The people have believed not just because of a witness, but because they have seen and heard Christ themselves. This verse describes the usual Christian pattern of life, and of evangelism. One at a time, particular persons have a life-changing experience with Christ. This is our Faith – man’s relationship with God.

Today we have the story of Photini, the Samaritan Woman. She very literally sits and talks with Christ at the well. A very strange place, we may think, for a conversion, but this reminds us that a person’s meeting with Christ can be anywhere, and at any time. And that person meeting Christ can be anyone – the Samaritans were hated by the Jews. In Photini we see that we can never think “not that person.” [we’re tempted to do this, not that person, but in Samaritan woman we see it can be any one and in any place] Christ opens this woman’s eyes by telling her everything about herself, he knows things about her that no one else knows. And in this meeting, she sees that this man is the Christ. Her first instinct is to run to town and share her experience with other and to bring them back to meet Christ.

This story is a microcosm of the Christian experience: when our souls are converted, we want to share this knowledge in some way with others. We see this in the Scriptures and the lives of the saints, and even today, most people who visit an Orthodox Church have been encouraged or brought by someone whose life has been changed in Christ. But this sharing of Christ is ultimately not enough for the hearer, they also have to step out and meet Christ themselves. Many of Photini’s fellow townspeople believed her words and her experience. Then they also wanted to go and to meet Christ. This is why the last verse is so very important. “Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.”

Our movement, as Christians, our movement in life is toward Christ. To seeing His face and hearing His voice. Our desire is this life-transforming meeting with the Lord. We can meet Him anytime and in any place. And each meeting with Christ, if we are prepared to see and to receive Him, each meeting transforms us more and more. Making us to be what we’re created by God to be – in the image and likeness of the Risen Lord.

Christ is Risen! Indeed He is Risen!

Palm Sunday

2009-04-13T09:53:00.002-05:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

We began yesterday, with the commemoration of the raising of Lazarus from the dead, our journey with our Lord during the last week of His life, culminating with the ultimate sacrifice for our salvation – Christ’s death on the Cross, burial, and His Holy Resurrection. Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday are inextricably linked, not only in the liturgical cycle of the Church, but the events of Palm Sunday are directly related to the raising of Lazarus from the dead. The two days share a Troparion: By raising Lazarus from the dead before Thy passion, Thou didst confirmed the universal resurrection, O Christ God. Like the children with the palms of victory, we cry out to Thee, O Vanquisher of Death: “Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord.” On the path to His own death and resurrection, Christ gives His disciples on final (and most clear) indication of what was to come [He had prophesied His own death many times, but the disciples refused to hear it, they didn’t understand what He meant]. A week before His own resurrection, Christ raises Lazarus from the dead. He shows His power over life and death by bringing back to life one who had been dead four days. Everyone knew that Lazarus was dead; he had been ill and died and was prepared for death and placed in the tomb. And many people from Jerusalem had come to be with the family as they mourned the loss of their brother. It was common knowledge that Lazarus had died, and after Christ raised him from the dead, it was common knowledge that a dead man had been brought back to life by this man, Jesus Christ.

This is how we come to Palm Sunday. There’s no other reason (on a human level) for the people to greet Christ with palms, to receive Him as a king, and to sing “Hosanna in the highest! Blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord.” They greet Him because word has spread in the city that this man (already known as a teacher and a healer) had raised someone from the dead; everyone wanted to see Christ. This triumphal entrance into the Holy City of Jerusalem was clearly prophesied in the Old Testament. Last night at Vespers we read the prophecy from the book of Zechariah (who lived about 500 years before Christ). Zechariah wrote, “Greatly rejoice, O daughter of Zion! Proclaim it aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King comes to you; He is righteous and saving; He is gentle and mounted upon a donkey, even a young foal” (9:9). Matthew and John both cite this prophecy as referring to Christ’s entry in Jerusalem today. The prophecy is fulfilled through the raising of Lazarus.

Christ was respected by some, questioned by many, hated by some; but because of Lazarus, all came out to meet Him as He entered Jerusalem. At the end of this week, these same crowds will reject Christ, and they’ll cry to the Roman governor, “Crucify Him!” They greeted Him as a king, and they expect Him to usher in a time of freedom – of political and personal freedom from the Romans, a time of prosperity for the Jewish people. This is the Messiah they want; but this is not Christ. And when it becomes clear that Christ will not be the leader they expect, they turn on Him, and they’re ready for Him to be put to death and moved out of the way. Today is the only time in our Lord’s earthly life that’s received by the masses as the true King and Messiah that He is. And ironically, it’s all this coming together at the end of Holy Week that turn the people against Him.

Holy Week is a special time in the Orthodox Church. We fill the week with services, with times to remember the saving work of our Lord, and time to relate our own lives today with this week in history. We re-live and re-member (not sentimentally, but we enter into this time again, year after year), remembering the final week of our Lord’s life with both joy and sorrow – joy at the accomplishing of our salvation, and sorrow knowing what we were capable of doing to Christ, sadness at all He had to suffer in the flesh to show us salvation. Take up your palms today and greet Christ, receive His Holy Body and His Precious Blood for your salvation. Make firm your resolve to walk with Him to the end – not only in this week, but throughout each and every day. When we turn our backs on our Christ and we lean to sin, then we’re re-enacting in our own lives the move of the people in Jerusalem – how often we go from receiving Christ with joy and anticipation and the desire for Him to be everything for us, and how soon we lean our hearts again to sin. One of the Church Fathers writes that each time we sin, we crucify Christ again. I urge us all to listen carefully in the services this week (be there as much as you can), and let the words of the Scriptures and the hymns and the readings sink deep into our minds and into our hearts, preparing us all to greet the Holy Resurrection with “fear of God, and faith and love.”

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Lord I believe; help Thou my unbelief!

2009-03-29T15:06:00.002-05:00

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

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

One of my absolute favorite lines from the Bible we heard this morning in the Gospel – when a man prays to Christ, “Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief” (v 24). I use this phrase a lot in preaching, and in talking with and counseling people. So since we all hear it a good deal, I thought it would be a good idea to take a good look at the scene from the Gospel of St. Mark where we hear the phrase, and then be reminded of exactly what it means to believe and to not believe at the same time.

At the beginning of the reading we find out that there is a father with a possessed son. And the father has brought the child to Jesus to be healed; he took the child to the disciples first, but they weren’t able to heal the boy. Jesus’ first words when he hears about the disciples failure to heal this boy are important for us to hear – “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring the child to Me” (v 19). He already recognizes that the people are without faith – Blessed Theophylact comments if the father had believed, then the disciples could have worked the miracle; and if the disciples had believed, they could have worked the miracle. The great multitudes that flocked to Jesus - if their faith was real then they wouldn’t have needed to travel for their healings. Christ recognizes and points out the general lack of faith of everyone. But instead of getting angry or frustrated, our Lord (yet again) uses this miracle as an opportunity to build up the faith of the faithless – everyone’s faith is strengthened when Christ heals the boy (father’s, boy’s, disciples’, and the multitudes’). We see the father’s lack of faith demonstrated when he says to Christ, “If you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us” (v 22). Our Lord replies to the father of this demon-possessed boy, “if you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes” (v 23). If you can bring yourself to some amount of faith, then anything is possible. St. Matthew’s Gospel records this same scene, and we have an additional thing said to the Apostles, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; [if you have faith] nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20). After Christ tells the father that all things are possible with faith, the father cries out with tears, “Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief!” (v 24). With this prayer offered by a grieving father, our Lord rebukes the unclean spirit and it leaves the child. The father confessed his belief, and he prayed for Christ to heal, to make whole, his lack of belief. And with this simple prayer, his son is healed.

To help us understand this prayer, I’d like to mention a distinction that I heard Metropolitan JONAH make one time between faith and belief. Belief is an act of our will, of our reasoning mind. We believe something that we know scientifically; we formulate our beliefs by gathering data, processing it, and then coming to a conclusion. Faith is knowledge we have of things unseen. It’s a knowledge that’s different from scientific knowledge, deeper. We have faith in God because we’ve experienced God, we’ve felt His presence in our heart, we’ve seen His activity. We know that God is real and that His Word is true on a level that’s deeper than the knowledge we gather from our senses. Belief will fail at times; what we believe about all sorts of things comes into question as we gather other data through our senses and draw new and different conclusions. But our faith can remain strong in Christ because we know Him, we’ve met with Him, we’ve known His presence, we’ve heard His voice. And when times or situations make belief difficult, Metropolitan JONAH said that’s okay, belief comes and goes and rises and falls and is firm and then shaken the next moment. But we rely on something deeper than belief, we live by faith.

So with this distinction between faith and belief, we could easily reword the father’s prayer, “Lord, I have faith; help Thou my unbelief!” This is a very important prayer for us to use in our spiritual lives. As two brief examples…We’re faced constantly with struggle against passions that we don’t believe we can overcome, but we do know all things are possible with Christ (we don’t believe, but we do have faith), so we can pray, “Lord, I have faith; help Thou my unbelief!” When we think of our loved ones, and everything we see leads us to despair for them (happens often to parents), again when we pray for our children and for God’s intervention and action in their lives, we can use the father’s prayer, “Lord, I have faith [I know that you love this person and you can do all things]; help Thou my unbelief [help my doubt that things can work out]!” The examples we could use could be endless. There are countless situations where our belief will fail, when our rational mind will tell us the worse, and that God doesn’t care, or look how terrible or unmanageable things are. Our belief will fail, but belief is the product of a fallen, rational mind. We often think, when we struggle with belief, that our faith is weak or failing. And perhaps our faith is weak, at times. But the product of our rational minds (what we believe) is not the same thing as the knowledge of God we carry in our hearts (faith); the knowledge of God is far deeper than any worldly learning or understanding. So the Metropolitan recommended that we not get too worked up over struggling with our beliefs – we know what is true on a level deeper than rational thought and human understanding. And if we don’t yet know God on this deeper level, if we don’t yet possess this true deeper faith in Christ, then seeking to know God should be the number one priority in our lives. This is the purpose of engaging Lent, this is the reason that St. John Climacus (commemorated today) wrote his book The Ladder of Divine Ascent – the purpose of our life is to know / to meet / to be with Christ.

So this morning we really get 3 prayers to use constantly. The prayer from the Gospel - “Lord, I believe; help Thou my unbelief.” We can pray this prayer so often in our day-to-day lives. A prayer for the strengthening of our faith - “Lord, I have faith; help Thou my faithlessness.” And finally, the prayer that distinguishes between our beliefs and our faith - “Lord, I have faith; help Thou my unbelief.” Another prayer that situations in our lives will lead us to frequently if we have it within us. My desire for you is that these prayers be part of who you are constantly. Any time there’s a doubt, or a struggle, we cry out to God immediately for His help, and if we have any question remaining, we accompany our petitions with the prayer of the demon-possessed child’s father – “Lord I believe; help Thou my unbelief!”

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

The Sunday of the Veneration of the Precious Cross

2009-03-22T15:16:00.003-05:00

What Happened on the Cross?

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

Today, on the third Sunday of Great Lent, we have the Veneration of the Precious and Life-giving Cross. In the hymns and prayers of the Church, we hear magnificent phrases concerning the Cross of our Saviour: "Before Thy Cross we fall down in worship, O Master!" In the evenings we pray "Hail, most precious and life-creating Cross of the Lord, that driveth away demons by the might of our Lord Jesus Christ who was crucified on thee…and gave us thee, his precious Cross, for the casting out of every enemy." The question I would like us to consider this morning is “Why?” What makes the Cross such an incredible weapon for Christians? The answer to this question is found in the answer to another question: “What happened on the Cross?" How do we, as Orthodox Christians, understand the saving work of Christ accomplished on the Cross? How do we interpret the language of the Scriptures, the language of offerin/ransom/ propitiation? What happened when Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son and Word of God, died on the Cross?

When we read the Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church, we find their discussions on the work that Christ accomplished on the Cross, the language of these discussions fall into basically three groups – a juridical/legal paradigm, sacrificial understanding, language of love. I don’t mean, by listing these three groups, that there are three separate ideas. We can’t just choose one of the ways that the Bible talks about the Cross and focus only on that. The Cross is a mystery, and human language is like a vague reference, a dim glimpse at the reality. We need everything the Scriptures give us in order to have a proper understanding of the Cross of Christ. The how of our redemption is ultimately a mystery. Christ offers us salvation through the Cross, and at the end of the day, this action of Divine Humility is a mystery that we can’t fully understand. But we can hear what the Church says about the Cross (everything that the Scriptures and the Fathers have to say), and with this better understanding, we have a better understanding of human nature, divine action, and ultimately a better understanding of our salvation.

The first type of Scriptural language I want us to talk about is perhaps the most misunderstood today – the juridical and legal language explaining the Cross. In the Bible we read: “The Son of Man came…to give His life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). “Thou wast slain,” we read in St. John’s Revelation, “and hast redeemed us to God by Thy Blood” (5:9). St. John also writes, “[Christ] is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the ins of the world” (1 John 2:2). There are many other places that use this type of language, but the last one I’ll mention is from St. Paul, “[Christ] by the Grace of God … taste[d] death for every man” (Hebrews 2:9). The basic model for this juridical language is that at the Fall man was sentenced to death. By His death on the Cross, Christ took on Himself that sentence, but since He was sinless the sentence was abolished for all mankind, and we were thereby freed from this curse of sin and the sentence of death. By His death Christ redeemed man from slavery to sin and the punishment of death. This is the language of the Scriptures that we heard just a second ago. St. Gregory Palamas writes, “since Christ gave His Blood, which was sinless and therefore guiltless, as a ransom for us who were liable to punishment because of our sins, He redeemed us from our guilt. He forgave our sins, tore up the record of them on the Cross and delivered us from the devil’s tyranny.”

In addition to the language of the law used in the New Testament, we also find the language of sacrifice. As the Christian Church, we understand the sacrifices of the Old Testament as a prefiguration of the one True Sacrifice which would be offered for the whole world in the person of Jesus Christ. In the 1st Epistle of St. Peter we read, "Ye were redeemed with the precious Blood of Christ, as a lamb without blemish and without spot, Who was foreordained from the foundation of the world" (1:19-20). In Hebrews we read now once at the end of the world Christ hath appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself (9:26). One of the questions that comes up with this sacrificial language is, “to whom is the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross offered?” I think this is not a particularly helpful question; it forgets that the sacrificial language is mystical. But the Fathers do address the question. A few Fathers will say the sacrifice is to Satan, to ransom us from his grasp on us through our sin (Origen-who is not a Father, and St. Gregory of Nyssa, to name two). But the vast majority of our Fathers say that the sacrifice is offered to the Father, or to the Holy Trinity. Why did God sacrifice Himself to God? This gets at the crux of mystery of the Cross. St Gregory the Theologian says that we should not try to conform the mystery to human logic, and we should not apply to the language human concepts that are unworthy of God. St Gregory writes, “the Father accepts the sacrifice not because He demanded it or felt any need of it, but on account of economy” (to fulfill the Divine plan). St. Gregory Palamas also says that God could have chosen any way to redeem us from sin and death, but the sacrifice of the Cross was chosen to fulfill justice and righteousness – death was the just penalty for our sin and Christ paid it, but His death was unjust because He was sinless, therefore the death of Christ destroyed death. The bottom line is that this was God’s choice, in accordance with His wisdom. St. Paul reminds us that “the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25). There’s a mystery here that we can’t enter into.

These first two ways of speaking about the Cross - using legal and sacrificial language - are much abused and taken literally in a harmful and un-Christian way. People see the language of a ransom and sacrifice as pointing to an angry and vengeful God who has to be appeased by the blood of His Son. Nowhere in our discussion this morning have we said anything like this. Human language is weak, so even the language of the Scriptures only gives us a really fuzzy idea of what’s being said – but we have to put forth the effort to properly understand what the Apostles have written. The conclusions we draw about the Cross, the things we believe, must be consistent with everything else the Bible teaches us about God. Which leads us the third type of language used by the Fathers and the Apostles to explain the saving work of Christ on the Cross – the language of God as love.

St Isaac the Syrian explains this love beautifully. He writes, “God the Lord surrendered His own Son to death on the Cross for the fervent love of creation. ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son’ to death for our sake (cf. John 3:16). This was not, however, because He could not have redeemed us in another way, but so that His surpassing love, manifested hereby, might be a teacher unto us. And by the death of His only begotten Son He made us near to Himself. Yea, if He had had anything more precious, He would have given it to us, so that by it our race might be His own.” This is my personal favorite language (though we need them all) – that God expresses the depth of His love for us on the Cross. He’s willing to do anything for our salvation, even to become man and allow us to kill Him to show the lengths He will travel for our love.

So how do we understand the work of Christ on the Cross? St Athanasius the Great ties everything we’ve been saying this morning together in this short word: “taking a body like our own, because all our bodies were liable to corruption and death, He surrendered His body to death in place of all (as a ransom), and offered it to the Father (as a sacrifice). This He did out of sheer love for us, so that in His death all might die, and the law of death thereby be abolished.“ (On the Incarnation). We venerate the Cross today because it was means used by the providence of God for the overcoming of sin and death and offering mankind (and through him all of creation) salvation.

All we can say now is, “Glory to Jesus Christ!” Glory forever!

St. Gregory Palamas Sunday

2009-03-14T16:31:00.002-05:00

Epistle Hebrews 1:10-2:3
Gospel Mark 2:1-12

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

Today we have the commemoration of St. Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki. St. Gregory reposed in 1359, and was canonized in 1368 – only 9 years after his repose [that rapid of a canonization is something virtually unheard of in the history of the Church]. And from the time of his canonization, the second Sunday of Great Lent has been dedicated to his remembrance. Today is considered to be a second Triumph of Orthodoxy, in both the life and the teachings of St. Gregory. Last Sunday we remembered the preservation of the Church by the grace of God [the Triumph of Orthodoxy], and today we have the presentation of this triumph in the person of St. Gregory.

St. Gregory is, obviously, a Saint of the Church. By the grace of God, he lived the life that Christ has called us to live. The Saints present most perfectly to us the lived theology of the Church. Not theology in a book, not a grouping of teachings – the Saints actually do what Christ gives us to do. Their lives give us an example of the truth of our faith, of the reality of Pentecost. There are some men and women who follow after Christ, and who are healed of the sins and passions of this life, and who are filled with the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit – and this fact demonstrates the Truth of the Gospel. In the Epistle reading this morning, St. Paul wrote, “we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away. For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast…how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him.” The Saints are counted with those who have seen the Lord, and their lives are a continuing confirmation to us of the word of the Lord. St. Gregory is a Triumph of Orthodoxy because his life is a continuation of the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The teachings of St. Gregory Palamas are the second aspect of the victory of Christ’s Church presented to us today. The word of a Saint is at once both traditional and original. The Saints continue to teach what has always been taught and believed about Christ. They teach the truth, and only the truth. St. Silouan once answered the question, how do the perfect speak? His answer is that they only say what the Holy Spirit gives them to say. The Saints follow wholeheartedly in the stream of the Tradition of the Church. But their words are also original – inspired in their hearts by the Holy Spirit, and directed specifically at the audience they are called to speak to. St. Gregory’s teachings are exactly like this – he teaches only what the Fathers before him had taught, but he does so to defend the faith from heretics. His works aim at giving us a vision of the life of the Gospels as at it had been taught and unpacked and lived by 1300 years worth of Saints.

At the center of St. Gregory’s defense of the Truth is our Orthodox understanding of salvation. The thrust of our Epistle reading this morning is to call us to remember that God has called us to sit at the right hand of Christ and to be ministered to by the angels and to co-rule the created universe as sons of God. And St. Paul calls on us to be mindful of our calling and of our purpose lest we “neglect so great a salvation.” We have to remember (not be neglectful) in order to struggle to attain. Once we forget, even for a second, our salvation in Christ, then we easily stray away from the path. St. Gregory was called on to correct the false teachings of the heretic Barlaam the Calabrian. Essentially, Barlaam taught that all of the experiences of God that the Saints throughout the ages had spoken of were mediated experiences. In other words, the Saints didn’t have direct contact with God, but with some go-between substance or grace that God had created. The implications of this for our salvation are huge – if we don’t actually have any contact with God, then what’s going on? What was the purpose of the Incarnation of Christ if not to bring man into direct contact with God? We have real experiences of the grace and mercy and love of God, which flow from God Himself. We do not simply have contact with God through created means, we have real contact with God. Sharing in the life of God is our salvation. King David describes our salvation in the Psalms – “Ye are gods, and all of you sons of the Most High” (Psalm 81:6). To use the more technical terminology of St. Gregory – we experience the uncreated energies of God (His activities), but we never have knowledge of His essence. We will never be God (this is the implication of the essence of God, we can’t know the essence of God without being God, in the same way that we can’t know the essence of one another). We know one another by our activities – but these activities are real revelations of ourselves to each other, and our activities are real experiences of who we are. Again – St. Gregory taught (along with all of the Fathers of the Church) that mankind can have true knowledge of God, true contact with God – and this is our salvation. If we remove real experience of God from our theology, then we have no salvation.

St. Gregory certainly had other things to say, and many more things to teach us, but this discussion is at the center of what brought him out of seclusion (he was a hermit monk on Mt. Athos) and gave us the whole body of his teachings. His practical teachings on prayer and on the spiritual life are also very helpful and important. The teachings of St. Gregory were upheld by two local Councils in Constantinople, and both of these councils are accepted in the Orthodox world like they were Ecumenical Councils. The teachings of St. Gregory Palamas are central in Orthodox theological discussions today. He presents the Faith as it always had been taught, and his points continue to be very crucial for us today in presenting the fullness of the faith of Jesus Christ to the world around us. For example, our topic today – salvation continues to be very wrongly taught and thought about today. From the idea of living in a static state and simply gazing on the magnificence of God, to the idea of heaven as a place where all of our material and earthly desires will be fulfilled (big houses, great food, golf, etc). These presentations of heaven, which are the norms today, are so hollow, and present such a skeleton of what we’re called to be in Christ. There’s nothing in them centered on what the Scriptures and the Church consider to be so important – relationship with God, theosis (sharing in the life and glory of God), incarnation, love. As St. Paul says, the Lord has prepared for us a great salvation in Christ. Let us run the race with endurance, so that we might reach the end and receive the prize.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

The Image of God in Man

2009-03-11T22:20:00.002-05:00

Genesis 4:16-26
Proverbs 5:15-6:4

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

In the Orthodox Church, it’s actually not that often we read the book of Genesis in the services of the Church (like we did earlier tonight). Primarily, Genesis is read during Great Lent. Every day we read small sections of the first book of the Bible in the evening services, and by the end of the Fast we’ll have read the entire book in the services. I want to focus on a phrase from Genesis very much related to our reading tonight – a phrase that adds some clarity to the final portion of our reading, and gives us some things to ponder – but comes just a few verses after the reading we heard.

What we actually read comes immediately after Cain kills his brother Abel. Cain kills his brother, then he’s cursed by God, marked by God for his protection, and sent away to another place (away from the rest of his family). And then we heard from the genealogy of Cain – we heard who his descendants were. At the end of the reading we get another piece of information regarding Adam and Eve: “Again Adam knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore a son, and he named him Seth” (Genesis 4:25). The third named child of Adam and Eve (in the Scriptures) is Seth. But it’s a phrase about the birth of Seth from the 3rd verse of the next chapter that I want us to hear as well: “Now Adam lived two hundred and thirty years, and begot a son according to his form and image, and named him Seth” (Genesis 5:3). A very telling phrase – Adam begot a son according to his form and image. He bore a son in his own likeness.

We learn in the story of Creation that mankind is created in the image and likeness of God. We’re created in God’s image, with the potential to attain to His likeness. We have the ability to be, by grace, everything God is by nature. This is our Orthodox understanding of salvation – to share in the life of God by His grace. This was God’s purpose for us, for us to grow and be like Him and be with Him. We’ll never be God, there’s no confusion in Orthodoxy theology – man is always man, and God is always God. But by God’s good pleasure, He wants to share with us everything of Himself that we possibly can contain. Adam and Eve were created without sin. We often refer to them as perfect, and in the since that they were without sin, they were perfect. But they weren’t yet all that they could have been. God placed them in the Garden, and His goal was for them to grow in their relationship with Him and with each other. Created in God’s image, they were to grow in His likeness.

But according to the story we have in Genesis, the very first time temptation came to Adam and Eve, they fell. They chose to do their own will; they abandoned the likeness of God. They wanted the things of God, without God. The serpent promises that they will be like gods once they eat the fruit, so instead of following the commandments of their Creator, they choose their own path. Adam and Eve fall from grace, they are expelled from the Garden (we sing – they fell and were cast from Paradise into this world). Instead of sharing in the life of God, Adam and Eve condemn themselves (and future generations) to an existence of sin and death. Shortly thereafter, we have this phrase regarding the birth of Seth – “Adam begot a son in his form and likeness.”

Seth was born in the image of his parents, fallen. When we think about sin in the world, or the idea of the parent’s sins being visited on the children, certain temptations that seem to run in families…this phrase from Genesis helps us understand these phenomena. We’re born in the image of our parents. We’re born fallen, condemned (in the flesh, at least) to death. We’re born into a fallen and sinful and dying and pain filled world as well. Because we’re all born in the image of our parents. And as successive generations have given birth to children in their own form and likeness, is it really any wonder that the state of world continues to deteriorate? We inherit the issues of our parents, add to them our own sins, and pass them down to our children, and that cycle has continued since the birth of Seth. This also helps us understand the importance the Fathers of the Church place on the holiness of the lives of parents. So that parents can pass on to their children a better form and image than perhaps was passed on to them.

But there’s another side of this that we as the Christian Church can never forget, and can never forget to proclaim. While Seth was born in the image of his father, since he was human, he was also born in the image and the likeness of God. Adam and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God, and all of us carry within us that image as well. The image of God in man is never erased. Even the most hardened and terrible of criminals, people of other faiths, people in exceptional sufferings, people who struggle with psychological disorders – the image of God is always present in us. Mankind always has the opportunity to ascend to the likeness of God, to be what we were created to be. This is eminently visible in the Bible – bad parents give birth to Prophets and Saints, and on the other hand, good parents give birth to some of the worst of sinners. The image of our parents is imprinted on us from birth, but the image of Christ is imprinted even deeper. For all of eternity, we’re in the image of our Creator.

Everything in the world is redeemed in the Incarnation of Christ. God became man, took on all of our sins and failings, destroyed the ancient curse of death on the Cross and in His Holy Resurrection, in order that we can be with Him, so that we can be saved. And if we undertake the call of the Gospel – to unite ourselves to Christ, to follow in His commandments, in His footsteps, if our desire and struggle is to be with God – then nothing (not our parent’s image, not the state of the world, not even our own sins) can stand in the way of our ascent to the likeness of God, and to our salvation.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Sunday of Orthodoxy

2009-03-08T18:33:00.005-05:00

Hebrews 11:24-26, 32-12:2
John 1:43-51

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

Today is the Sunday of Orthodoxy. The Sunday of right belief, of proper and true worship of the One True God. This is what we mean when we call ourselves “orthodox” – that the Church possesses the fullness of the truth about both man and God, and that we offer proper worship to the One True God. Today we celebrate the Triumph of Orthodoxy – the victory of the fullness of the truth over anything less. The victory of the Church of Christ over heresy.

Specifically, in the hymns for today and in the service of the Triumph of Orthodoxy that we’ll serve after the Liturgy, we remember the victory of the Church over iconoclasm. For several hundred years there were factions in the Empire and even in the Church that tried to get rid of the Holy Icons. Obviously (if you look around in our temple), the icons were restored in the Church. But not only is today’s celebration about the holy icons; it’s about the Orthodoxy of the Church. Everything that’s part of the Tradition of the Church is to be maintained and passed on from generation to generation. The people who wanted to remove the icons from the Churches denied the Incarnation of Christ. They would talk about the person of Jesus Christ in many ways, but not as perfect God and perfect man.

So the removal of icons wasn’t just about getting these pictures out of the Churches – there was a deeper theological reason behind the move. If Jesus wasn’t really man, then you couldn’t depict Him on the icons – the 10 commandments forbade the depiction of anything unseen in heaven or on earth. We have icons of Christ because He became man and was seen on this earth. We have images of God in the flesh, because Christ was truly man [we don’t have icons of things that haven’t been seen, that’s a basic principle of iconography]. So the people who wanted to destroy the icons were denying much deeper Truths from the Tradition of the Holy Church.

With heretics of any sort, at the base of the problem is a denial of that very powerful statement we heard in the Gospel reading from the Apostle Nathanael - “Thou art the Son of God! Thou art the King of Israel!” That’s the faith that we’re given; that is the Triumph of Orthodoxy. The Son and Word of God became man and lived among us, died on the Cross, was buried for three days in the tomb, rose from the dead, and ascended to the right hand of the Father in glory. That’s the Orthodox Christian faith. We preach Christ, St. Paul says several places in his letters. The Gospels are only about Christ. The denial of anything of the truth about Christ threatens to collapse everything in the Christian Church because Christ is the center and foundation and focus of everything for us.

Today we really give thanks that the fullness of the Truth of Jesus Christ has been preserved and passed on and lived in the Orthodox Church. This celebration of the Sunday of Orthodoxy is really magnificent. It’s an opportunity for us to praise God for His mercy and His grace in preserving His Holy Body in the world in the midst of enormous temptations and sin. But for each of us, to simply be a part of this Tradition is not enough. It’s not enough for to simply be Orthodox, what we celebrate today has to be a part of us. We have to believe this fullness of the Truth, and we have to struggle to live in it. We have to be transformed by the person of Jesus Christ. We have a vision of this living Orthodoxy from our Epistle reading this morning. Moses had the opportunity to be the son of the pharaoh in Egypt, but St. Paul writes, “he chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward” (Hebrews 11:25-25). And then we’re given a list first of people who persevered in the Faith, and then a list of the characteristics of these people who held to nothing but Faith in God. This is how we’re struggling to live. We give thanks for the Triumph of Orthodoxy – but we can’t sit back and rest and be content to simply be a member of this Church. We also must take up our crosses daily, and follow Christ.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

St. Theodore Saturday

2009-03-07T16:24:00.004-06:00

Epistle: 2 Timothy 2:1-10
Gospel: John 15:17-16:2

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

In the Orthodox Church, today is known as Theodore Saturday (this is always the case for the first Saturday of Great Lent). Throughout the season of Great Lent (period given to us for repentance – refocus on Christ in a proper way) we’re constantly reminded of things in our own lives that we need to be looking at. The Church helps us in our repentance, and in our walk toward Christ, with hints and reminders, especially in the services of the Church. I’d like to begin by relating the story that gives today it’s name, and then reflect on our interactions with God through the prism of this story.

Today we remember the miracle of St Theodore and the boiled wheat. The Holy Great Martyr Theodore the Recruit (Tyro) was a Roman soldier during the reign of Galarius (305-311). He was commanded to offer sacrifices to idols, but being a Christian, he boldly proclaimed his faith in Christ. He was given several days to consider whether he wanted to sacrifice to the idols or be killed - St. Theodore spent the time in prayer and of course again confessed Christ. He was then thrown into prison to be starved, and later he was tortured and finally burned. Fifty years after the death of St Theodore, the emperor Julian the Apostate (361-363) wanted to wanted to do something horrible to the Christians in the capital city. So he commanded the city-commander of Constantinople during the first week of Great Lent to sprinkle all the food provisions in the marketplaces with the blood offered to idols. The food would not only be contaminated with blood (during Lent we fast from animal products), but the food would be contaminated with something that had been offered to pagan false gods. St. Theodore appeared in a dream to Archbishop Eudoxius, ordering him to inform all the Christians that no one should buy anything at the marketplaces, but rather to eat cooked wheat with honey (kolyva). This miracle of the appearance of St. Theodore in a dream preserved the Christians of Constantinople from eating what would have been evil food. In memory of this occurrence, the Orthodox Church annually celebrates the holy Great Martyr Theodore the Recruit on the first Saturday of Great Lent.

I wanted us to hear this story to use this miracle of God’s providence to help us examine our own lives. In this story, God was watching out for His people – He protected and preserved the Christians of Constantinople from eating this defilement. God was guarding His people, even when nobody knew what was going on. [No one was praying specifically about this – the emperor plotted in secret, but God still acted for the good of the Christian Church.] The reality of our daily lives is that we often doubt God’s concern for us. In fact, a very popular notion of God today (and in various times in the past as well – its nothing new) is this idea of a God who has a hand in creation and somehow watches over things, but really doesn’t have anything to do with the individual lives of the people living on earth. Just recently I was watching one of my favorite TV shows, and one of the main characters gave exactly this understanding of God. He said he just couldn’t believe that God would be concerned with all the minor (or even major) details of the lives of people on earth. If He was this all-powerful being ruling the entire universe, surely He had better things to do with Himself than to interfere in our lives all the time. Of course, this is a very convenient God. The question of creation is settled, but this God doesn’t impose on lifestyle – this is a God that let’s man do whatever man wants to do. A very appealing God, but nothing like the God of the Christian Scriptures. And not like the God we see acting in today’s commemoration – a God who is concerned for His people.

BUT, this attitude that we encounter throughout time (of the hand-off God), this attitude frequently infects the Church, and our lives as believers. We sometimes doubt that God really cares about us. At times we have a conscious doubt; does God really care about this? Sometimes that thought is a temptation [where we know that God is active, but we’re being tempted with the thought that perhaps our issues aren’t that important]; sometimes it’s a real concern. That’s natural, in a way, for fallen man to sometimes have doubts – even King David will occasionally question God’s actions in the Psalms. But even more often that thoughts of doubt, we live like we don’t think there’s a God who really cares about what’s going on on the earth. We live like we don’t believe God cares what we do. We often sin like we don’t even believe there’s a God. We feel no shame, no remorse, we often don’t even second-guess our evil impulses – we just do what we want to do. And I can’t think of a better proof that we don’t really believe that the God of the Scriptures, the God of the Christian Church, is involved in His world in the way that we say we believe it – look at how we live. Going further, how we pray? Like we believe God cares? How we plan our lives? Like God has some purpose for them?

These are attitudes that we should take a real serious look at – how do live, how do we pray, how do we go about our day? What we do with ourselves is a very good indicator of what we actually believe. The big difference between the Christian God and some of our more popular secular ideas of God is love. God really does care what happens in the lives of each and every person on the face of this planet. Not because He’s bored, not because He has nothing better to do, not because He’s a busybody. God cares because God is love.

I’d like to end with a few quotes from the Scriptures that reveal to us the depths of God’s concern for us, not just as “the human race,” but for every individual on the planet. “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father [‘s knowledge]. The very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows” (Matthew 10:29-31). These are the words of Christ from the Gospel of St. Matthew, assuring the Apostles that God is watching over them. Even a bird doesn’t die without the Father’s knowledge and consent; God knows how many hairs we have on our head – how much more mundane yet intimate does it get? I’d also like to read a few of the verses of Psalm 139. "1 O lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. 2 Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. 3 Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. 4 For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether…7 Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? 8 If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. 9 If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; 10 Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me."

So the examination of ourselves that we can make today: Do we really believe what these Scriptures teach? Do we really believe that God cares about us? We have to recognize that sometimes we don’t act/think/pray like there’s a God who’s intimately involved in our lives. And once we see this, once we recognize this within ourselves, we can do something about it: we can repent, we can watch out for attitude of a distant God that very easily infects our thinking, and we can pray (one of my favorite prayers in all of Christian history), “Lord, I believe. Help Thou my unbelief.”

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Forgiveness Sunday

2009-03-01T15:31:00.004-06:00

Epistle Romans 13:11-14:4
Gospel Matthew 6:14-21

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

This Divine Liturgy on Forgiveness Sunday is the last service each year before we begin Great Lent. During the Vespers service this evening, we’ll change all of the cloths to purple, we’ll begin to sing the Lenten melodies, and the Great Fast will begin. Each of these Pre-Lenten Sundays we’ve been looking at how the various Gospel readings were specifically chosen for how they help us prepare for Lent. On the eve of our entrance into the fast, today’s Gospel reading focuses on three main topics: forgiveness, fasting, and our life’s overall focus.

1st – Forgiveness
On Forgiveness Sunday our Gospel reading begins with an admonition to forgive the people who offend us or sin against us in any way. The statement is conditional – “If you forgive men their trespasses, [then] your heavenly Father will also forgive you” (v14). The “Our Father” is given to the Apostles in the verses immediately preceding this morning’s Gospel – in it we pray, “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). If we refuse to forgive others, then we’re also refusing the forgiveness that Christ offers to us. This point is so important that today is named Forgiveness Sunday. During Lent we’ll be focused in many ways on repenting of our sins, and turning our lives to Christ. For this to have any effect, we have to be able to forgive each other. We’ll come into this temple tonight (at Forgiveness Vespers) for the first service of Lent, and one of the most important. We’ll bow down before each other and ask for forgiveness (we’ll repent before each other). And our response to each other will be, “God forgives and I forgive.” The “I forgive” is the key – I have to forgive everyone, I have to hold no grudges or resentments, in order for my sins against God [which are far greater than my neighbor’s sins against me] to be forgiven. We have a beautiful reminder of God’s forgiveness with the baptism of the infant Philothea this morning. God washes our sins away, He removes them from us as far as the East is from the West. We just have to remember to forgive one another in this same image.

2nd – Fasting
Our Lord then goes immediately from discussing forgiveness to discussing fasting. One of the most prominent features of Great Lent is our fasting – so very appropriately we hear some words from Christ this morning on fasting. And His message is very simple (contained in just 2 verses) – don’t appear outwardly to be fasting. We don’t brag about it, we don’t find ways to bring it up in conversation, we don’t go around looking miserable so we get questioned and then have a reason to talk about it. Our fasting is between us and God. The Church certainly helps us find parameters for our fasting (we don’t do it in a self-willed and prideful way), but even in the Church we don’t talk about what we’re doing. The Church gives us the norms, and then the choice of what to do is ours. And we don’t look at what other people are doing either, St. Paul reminds us. “Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat, and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats; for God has received him. Who are you to judge another’s servant?” (Romans 14:3-4a) We offer our fast to God and He receives it, and that’s all. We don’t need the praise or the pity of others – our fasting is between us and God.

3rd – the Focus of the Christian life
The Gospel reading then ends with some discussion on how our lives should be directed. We’re not here to stack up earthly wealth and reputation and status. If our lives are focused on attaining the things of this world, at some point (even if its not until death) all the things of this world pass away. If nothing else, the worldwide financial crisis that’s underway right now should remind us that the things of the world are fleeting. So Christ gives us our goal – “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:20-21).

Everything in Lent, and everything in Christian life in general, in about Christ. He’s to be the focus of everything for us. Christ is the desire of our heart, Christ is our goal, Christ is our completion, our love is for Christ. And if this is the way we operate, if our heart’s desire is Christ – the we’ll long to forgive the people who offend us for the sake of the love of Christ; we’ll fast in the secret of our closet just for the love of Christ; as we enter each day and every circumstance and situation, Christ will be for us a reference point for everything else that we do. Re-orienting like this isn’t easy, it takes some work and some effort on our part. As we enter Great Lent, it’s our time to struggle to be as much like Christ as we possibly can. We’re called to be like Christ, to be perfect even as the Father is perfect. Take the upcoming period of Great Lent very seriously – get rid of any resentments and frustrations you have by forgiving the people who hurt you and dealing with your own residual anger; offer your fast as fully as you can for the healing of your soul and drawing closer to the Saviour; and remember that the focal point for everything in life is Christ. May God grant us a blessed fast, and a holy preparation to greet the Resurrection of Christ with joy.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Sunday of the Last Judgment

2009-02-22T21:51:00.004-06:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

Following the calendar of our services in the weeks before Great Lent, we come today to the Sunday of the Last Judgment. We’ve been viewing all of the Gospel readings this pre-Lenten season through the prism of preparation. The Church offers us opportunities to look carefully at various aspects of our lives; this prepares us to enter Great Lent, when we’ll be very focused on drawing closer to Christ in every way, especially concentrating on the weakness we’ve discovered in the few weeks before the Fast. Zacchaeus Sunday asks us if we really want to see Christ (is Christ our ultimate desire in life); the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee invites us to analyze our approach to living the commandments of our Lord (is our ascetic life deepening our love of God); the parable of the Prodigal Son then prepares us to repent, to turn away from all the sin in our lives, especially through the image of the loving Father who eagerly awaits his fallen son and rushes out to meet him and to forgive him.

And so today we have this reading on the Last Judgment from the Gospel of St. Matthew. Today we’re being prepared for that great meeting with Christ when the days of our lives have come to an end and we stand before the dread judgment seat of our God. In our prayers we call this moment dread or fearful because to stand before the face of the king and creator of all is a dread a fearful activity. All of us at some point in our history will come to this moment – standing before Christ, to whom the Father has appointed all judgment of the deeds of men, awaiting His judgment on our lives. Fr. Zacharias says that our lives, in the final analysis, are a preparation for our death; we choose the way we’ll walk in life, and this decision sets our course for all of eternity. This is a very weighty thought when we consider our lives in the light of this mornings’ Gospel.

It can be very tempting to talk about this Gospel in terms of the ascetic life of the Christian, but that’s not what the Gospel is about. Other places in the Scriptures talk about how much we pray, what books we read, church attendance, repentance, fasting. But not this morning. It’s easy to say we should do these ascetic things more, it’s even easy to want to do these things more. But that’s not what Christ says this morning. At the seminary, the homily for the Last Judgment always contained a reminder that the judgment wasn’t a theology quiz; no questions about books or theological terms or even prostrations or prayer rules. All of this is important in our lives – we learn and we pray and we read and we fast and we commune at the Divine Liturgy in order to live in Christ. And it’s how we live that Christ puts to the test in this morning’s Gospel. Met. JONAH reminded us recently that 95% of Christian life takes place “in the world.” We certainly need the other 5% - in the Church, in the icon corner, etc. But most of our lives we spend out in the world.

And the questions Christ poses to us this morning: Do we feed the hungry? Do we clothe the naked? Do we assist the needy and visit the sick and those in prison? The Gospel could be no more clear – these are the things that are important. Christ identifies Himself with all men, even the least of all men. “If you’ve done it to the least of these, you’ve done it to me.” And if we’ve refused to do for others, then we’ve refused to do for Christ. This is the type of Gospel lesson that’s difficult for us to hear, because it actually requires that we do something. We can’t just say a prayer, or send a check in the mail – we actually have to present Christ in us to everyone we meet. And we’re even called to seek out those in need, and then to treat them like we would treat Christ. This isn’t an easy Gospel – but in order to be prepared for that final day of judgment, this is something that we have to address in our lives. We tend, in our society, to be judgmental of people in need or in prison, and we assume someone else takes care of the sick and the hungry. But Christ puts the measure of a Christian life before us today. Everyone on this planet is created in the image and the likeness of Christ – do we see it, do we believe it, and do we live it?

We’ll end with a restatement of the Gospel, in a quote from St. Maria of Paris. She very literally lived this Gospel - she hid Jews under the Nazis, went to a concentration camp after being caught, and by her own choice she replaced a Jewish woman in the line to the gas chamber. She gave her life for her fellow human being. “At the Last Judgment I will not be asked whether I satisfactorily practiced asceticism, nor how many prostrations and bows I have made before the holy table. I will be asked whether I fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick and the prisoner in jail. That is all I will be asked.”

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Prodigal Son

2009-02-15T15:43:00.003-06:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

This morning we hear on of the most popular and well-known parables of our Lord – the Parable of the Prodigal Son. There are many different ways to approach this parable; many different benefits for our spiritual lives are contained in these words of our Lord. I want to continue with what has been our theme this pre-Lenten season: preparation. As part of our preparation for Great Lent and Holy Pascha, we’ll look at this parable as the story of our lives, what it reminds us of, and what it calls us to consider.

At the beginning of this parable, the Prodigal Son decides to leave home. He takes his inheritance, and he leaves his father’s house. We can guess that this young man had a lot going for him – he was raised in a house of privilege, he had money, he had some degree of intelligence and ability. We find that he’s able to make it on his own. He’s able to survive, for some time, outside of his father’s house. But with no one to oversee him, or to help him, or to offer him advice, eventually he wastes everything that his father had given him. He finds himself basically destitute – his friends all leave him, he’s out of money, he has nowhere to live, not even any food to eat. And before we get to the point in the parable when he comes to his senses and decides to return to the house of his father, he’s feeding pigs, and even willing to eat the food that goes to the pigs. He’s been totally humiliated – he’s lost everything on his own, and he’s doing a job with animals that the Jews weren’t allowed to have any contact with. Eventually – we don’t know how long he was too proud to return to his father and stayed destitute and humiliated and feeding pigs – he gets up and returns to the house of his father. He’s realized that even the servants in his father’s house have it better than he does. That’s saying a lot, servants were a very low class of citizen; their lives were virtually entirely under the control of their master. So to basically be a slave was better than the life of this Prodigal Son. He returns to his father’s house, and the greeting he receives is beyond his wildest expectation. His father is watching for him, waiting to see if his son would come home. And the father runs down the road to meet him, and hugs him and kisses him, and won’t even listen to what the son has to say. The Prodigal Son is restored in the house to his former place – he’s given the best robe and a ring and sandals, and a feast is prepared to celebrate his return.

Now to how we can think about this parable right now: The Prodigal Son in the parable can very easily been seen as us; and the father, of course, is God. According to the Scriptures, we’re all prodigals. “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The Father’s house, the place we’ve left by our prodigal activity, is our relationship with God. Again, to use the language of the Scriptures and the Fathers of our Church, to sin is to turn our backs on God. We move away from God, we separate ourselves from Him, by our sin.

Some of us experience very long periods in our lives of prodigal behaviour. We just do whatever we want, and we don’t think too much about God or our faith or eternity. Many people today, even those raised in the Church, we’ll experience times of prolonged prodigal living. And then sometimes we have shorter periods – vacations, times of hardship or struggle, stressful times – periods when we really should be focusing more intently on Christ, but we sometimes tend to turn away and to manage our own affairs the way we want to with very little or no reference to God. And we all sin, so on a daily basis we experience times of being the prodigal, no matter how brief these moments may be.

When we’re separated from God by our sins, we’re like the Prodigal Son feeding the swine. We’re in a place we shouldn’t be, a place we never should have been. And sometimes we’re eager to get up, and to return to God. Other times we’re quite happy, sometimes for long periods of time, to stay in that sin – the image of feeding the swine – we stay in the filth and the mud and the stench of our sins. But by the grace of God, when we see the pitiful state we’ve fallen to, we have the desire to return home, to be re-united with Christ.

The Prodigal realizes that even slaves are better of than he is. In the language of St. Paul, our only choice in the world is slavery – we’re enslaved to sin and death, or we’re the slaves of Christ. The greatest freedom, the Father’s teach, is in slavery to Christ. Where we give ourselves no choice other than the will of God. In Christ, we’re free to be what we were created to be – there’s no slavery to sin, addiction, habit, death. The Prodigal was stuck feeding swine, but he was always free to return to his Father’s house. And his father received him with open arms; no questions, no excuses were allowed, only unconditional love and forgiveness.

Our return to God from sin and prodigal living is the same. God receives us as we are, as long as we turn our back on our sin. There’s no need to offer excuses, no need to beat ourselves up over our faults and our failures – we repent, we return to God and we change our lives, we desire something different, and God rushes out to receive us home and to forgive us. The Prodigal had no desire to return to feeding the swine; the pull of his life in the world was probably still something he had to struggle with. But all he had to do was remember where that led, to feeding pigs and starving, and the temptation to return would disappear.

In preparation this week for Great and Holy Lent, we can examine our lives in the light of this parable. Are we living as prodigals? Are we stuck out there in the pig pen, in a long period of turning our backs on the will of God? Are we repenting daily for the sins we commit? Many of our daily prayers remind us that sin almost constantly – in thought, word, and need, even without consciously knowing some of the sins we do. How are we dealing with our prodigal activity? These thoughts, meditating on this and examining our lives carefully to see where we are and how we’re behaving right now, helps prepare us for Lent because we get a better idea of where we are, where our weaknesses and struggles are, and how we need to focus our energy and our prayer during the Great Fast. Always remember that God is love – He’s waiting with outstretched arms, watching to see us even from far way, to rush out and meet us with His mercy and His forgiveness. So the question is – are we willing to get up out of our sins and accept the forgiveness and the love of God?

We’ll end with words of one of the sticharion from Lord I Call from Vespers last night:
What great blessings have I forsaken, wretch that I am? From what kingdom have I miserably fallen? I have squandered the riches that were given me; I have transgressed the commandments. Woe to me when I shall be condemned to eternal fire! Cry out to Christ, O my soul, before the end draws nigh: “Receive me as the Prodigal, O God, and have mercy on me!”

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee

2009-02-08T23:55:00.003-06:00

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

Today is the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee – for many of us it’s the beginning of one of our favorite weeks of the year: a fast-free week. But the real purpose of this week is not simply/exclusively to not fast in order to prove that we’re not going to be Pharisees with the laws of Christ and the Church. In the same theme we were thinking about last Sunday – preparation – this week gives us a pointed opportunity to reflect on and to remember that the focus of our lives as Orthodox Christians is Christ.

Everything set before by the Church is just that – things – they aren’t ends in themselves; we’re provided with opportunities to grow in Christ. Prayer isn’t about having good attention and memorizing the prayers and feeling pious while we pray – prayer is an opportunity to communicate and commune with Christ. Fasting isn’t about giving up certain food – it’s about denying ourselves for Christ, following the guidelines of someone outside ourselves for Christ, taking a break from rich foods and long periods of meal preparation in order to spend time with Christ. Even Holy Communion, the end goal isn’t just to partake worthily of the Holy Eucharist, the end goal and purpose of this Liturgy isn’t just to come up and take Communion – it’s about Christ, offering myself completely to Him, and being joined with Him for my transfiguration my and salvation.

And so we take a break this week, and have time to analyze our mindsets and our motives, and to prepare ourselves to enter the Great Fast with a godly mind and with the proper intentions. But we have so much going on in life, and in the life of the Church, it’s easy for us to lose focus. I remember when I was a very new Orthodox Christian, and very enamored with all of the various aspects of the ascetic life – all of the things that I felt like I was expected to do now as an Orthodox Christian.

So I was talking with some of my friends one day, and I was very anxious to explain to them (which I had no business doing) the differences between the Orthodox understanding of salvation and other understandings that were popular in the Christian world. I spent all of my time talking about confession and communion and fasting and praying and Church. A 30 minute conversation about salvation, and not one mention of Christ! My focus was all wrong. My answers were wrong, not because they weren’t things that we do in the Church, and things that are very important – my answer was wrong because it wasn’t centered on Christ.

In the Old Covenant and the New, the focus of life was to be God. And in both Covenants, help was given to the people in the form of laws and commandments. Laws are for outlining proper and improper behaviour, helping to teach the people how to be godly people. But we have to remember that everything offered to us in the life of the Church is about cultivating and deepening our relationship with Christ.

I don’t believe that the Pharisees began with the idea of being hypocrites. The vast majority probably loved God, and they had a sincere desire to follow His will. But they were very easily trapped and their attention was redirected because they began to be overly concerned with fulfilling the Law. Fulfilling the letter of the law became the focus and the end goal – and somewhere in that, God as the reason and goal for the Law was forgotten. And the Church reminds us today how easy it is to fall into that trap.

Listen again to what Christ says of the prayer of the Pharisee – “The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, 'God, I thank Thee that I am not like other men - extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.'” If God had been his ultimate desire, no matter how perfectly he fulfilled the letter of the law, he still would have prayed with the humility of the Publican. “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” It doesn’t matter what we do, if our hearts are still far from God.

So, as we don’t fast this week, remember that this isn’t about “the law.” We don’t do things in the Church simply because we’re required – fasting, praying, coming to Church, tithing and almsgiving, etc. There certainly is some small benefit to doing things because we’re told to, but this is very easily perverted, as we see in the Gospel reading today. Our singular focus and desire in all that we do is Christ. This week, take the time to reflect on how our life in the Church, following her teachings and ascetic traditions (like fasting), brings us closer to Christ. We act in knowledge, not in ignorance or blindness – so as a portion of our preparation for Great Lent, examine that question – “am I living as an Orthodox Christian in knowledge, in a way that daily offers me the chance draw closer to Christ in every way.”

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Zacchaeus Sunday

2009-02-08T23:51:00.004-06:00

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

Today is Zacchaeus Sunday – the beginning of our Sunday preparations for Great Lent. We’re exactly one month from Forgiveness Sunday, and the start of the Great Fast. In the Church, we’re offered the chance to prepare thoroughly for everything. Fasting periods to prepare for feasts. Communion fasts and prayers to prepare for the Liturgy. The catechumenate to prepare for baptism and chrismation. And even an entire month to prepare ourselves for Great Lent, which has the purpose of preparing us for Great and Holy Pascha.

All of the events in the life of the Church are for our salvation, for the grace of God to be poured out on us and for our lives to be transformed. And the Fathers consistently teach us that to receive the grace of God and to be transformed, it requires preparation on our part. For the Holy Eucharist to penetrate every aspect of my being, and for me to retain and to be changed by the grace of God, I have to be prepared for that to happen. The Christian life isn’t magic – God operates in a way that the Church Fathers call synergy. We work together with God. Our part may in fact be tiny, but our will and our movement toward God are necessary.

So as we begin even distantly to approach the Great Feast of Pascha, the Church is endeavoring to give us every opportunity to participate as fully as we possibly can in the Mystery of our Lord’s death and resurrection. The first step in this being to prepare ourselves for Great Lent. The story of Zacchaeus is a perfect place to begin our meditations for Lent. Zacchaeus has the desires and realizations that each of us as followers of Christ have to come to. This is our Point A, our starting place.

1 - Zacchaeus sought to see Jesus. We naturally have a desire to see the ones we love. It doesn’t really matter what drew Zacchaeus to look for Jesus in the first place; most likely, many of the same things that still today draw people to the Christian Church. But Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus. This is at the center of our lives as Christians. Out of love for our God, we want to see Him, to be with Him, to be seen by Him. We can so easily get caught up in the goings on of life in the world that we forget our main goal is to see Jesus. Not in some bizarre non-Christian understanding. But it’s a natural and necessary thing to want to see Jesus. This sets the framework for everything we do in the Christian life (according to the Fathers) – to see, and to be with, Jesus.

2 - Zacchaeus climbed into a tree just to catch a glimpse of this man Jesus. This shows how strong his desire was. Even today, to climb into a tree at an event is pretty embarrassing; we see young people do that sort of thing sometimes. But Zacchaeus was a tax collector, he was a prominent man in his community. He had a lot of power, and as we know well from the Scriptures, a lot of people had reason to hate him (both for being a tax collector in general, and by his own admission he was unfair to the people). So as a powerful man in the community, he humiliates himself by his willingness to climb into this tree, since he was too short to see over the crowds, he climbed a tree to see Jesus. He was willing to do whatever it would take to accomplish this first goal and desire – see Jesus. We can evaluate somewhat the fervor of our desire by examining what we’re willing to go through, or to suffer, to give up, for the sake of our faith in Christ.

3 - Jesus recognized Zacchaeus’ going out of himself, and Christ speaks to him. We see very clearly in this story the synergy that we mentioned earlier – the end result is Zacchaeus’ salvation, but Zacchaeus had to want it, and he had to do something about it. Obviously, the Holy Spirit was already at work before the beginning of this Gospel Reading: somehow, Zacchaeus had already heard of Jesus, and was already interested. We can’t get caught up in wondering who moves first – God in His Holy Spirit is always moving in the hearts of men, we have to respond by going out of ourselves. We have to leave our comfort zone. Being Christian is not easy; it’s not always comfortable. What the Gospel calls us to is very different from the way the world at large likes to operate – to follow Christ requires a willingness on our part to go against the grain and to follow Christ. And not only the willingness, but we have to do it. And then, in the words of St. Silouan, God sees the desire of our heart and He rushes out to meet it with His love and His grace.

4 - Zacchaeus responds to Jesus. Jesus doesn’t ask Zacchaeus to do anything; there are no demands made in the Gospel reading. Once Zacchaeus was with Christ, he knew what he needed to do, and he was willing to do it. And what he did was enormous – giving away half of his goods and repaying anyone he had cheated four times over. If we’re in the Church for the right reasons, for the love of God and the healing of our souls, then generally speaking we know we’re called to do. We have the Gospels, the Beatitudes, the Ten Commandments, the teaching of Fathers on how Christian people are called by our relationship with Christ to live. Again, the story of Zacchaeus asks us the question, “are we willing to change our lives even now?” – we’re all sinful and in need of change no matter how long we’ve been Christians or even Orthodox Christians, we have Lent every year and confession available every day because we all have sins we continue to struggle with. So we have to regularly return to the question, am I willing now to change for Christ (and to be changed by Christ)? We can’t do anything of our power, the Scriptures teach – am I willing to let Christ work a change in me? Zacchaeus answered yes, and the response of the Lord is a beautiful one that we all want to hear.

5 - “Today, Salvation has come to this house.” Christ, salvation incarnate, was in the house of Zacchaeus. But he had also allowed himself to be transformed in Christ. This is the same as hearing on the Great Day of Judgment – “well done my good and faithful servant…enter into the joy of your Lord” (Matthew 25:23).

So Zacchaeus begins for us some serious considerations, and he poses for us several central and essential questions that we ponder and work through again and again in the Christian life.
Over the course of the next several weeks, the Church will very vividly remind us of both the struggles and the glories of this life in Christ that we’ve chosen.
Use these reminders, and in your evening prayers over the next month I strongly suggest that you spend some time meditating on these things in your heart; preparing yourselves slowly and by the grace of God, to enter into the time of Great Lent in anticipation and with joyful mourning, and with a clear vision of the path of repentance that leads to our Lord’s Pascha.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

St. Gregory the Theologian

2009-01-26T11:13:00.002-06:00

In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Gregory of Nazianzus – Gregory the Theologian. I’d like us to hear something of the life of this saint this morning. I certainly don’t think we can always preach about the saints, but the legacy of the lives of the holy men and women of our Faith are very important. They show us that the way Christ has called us to live is something do-able. Christ doesn’t call us to fulfill the impossible - people have followed Christ in everything. And every step of the way, the saints always give the credit to Christ; they know that their every action is guided by the grace and love of a merciful God. And we have saints from all walks of life, again, showing us that no matter what our situation may be, Christ has called us, He’s chosen us, and we can respond and follow.

St. Gregory is such a wonderful Saint for us now because his life speaks to many things that we continue to deal with in our world today. He was raised in a Christian home, and his parents placed a great emphasis on his education. He traveled to many surrounding cities for his education, and when he was of age he went to Athens, which was an educational center at this time. He was trained in all of the secular subjects that were important – rhetoric, philosophy, math, astronomy. St. Gregory was very intelligent, and he trained his mind well. We feel a tension sometimes, today, in some circles, between secular education and being Christians. St. Gregory didn’t feel this tension – he knew some things that people believed were wrong, he knew others weren’t very useful, but since God had given him a great intelligence, he trained it, and he used it. St. Theophan the Recluse tells that we should always do our best in school, or with work training, that we should use the minds the God blessed us with to the best of our ability – always remembering to give thanks to God. To do all things for the glory of God.

But we don’t remember St. Gregory because of his intelligence or his education. We remember and honor him because of his relationship with Christ. From the time he could read, his mother made sure that he had holy books to read, especially the Holy Scriptures. He not only trained himself in the way of the world, but he focused also on the training of his heart and of his soul. We know he was intelligent, and we can assume that he had a great deal of intellectual understanding of his Christian faith. His father was a bishop, his family was very pious; he was raised in the Church and in that environment of real focus and dedication to Christ. But he understood that simply reading the Bible and believing the events wasn’t enough. He had to live the words of Christ to truly understand their meaning.

We call St. Gregory “the Theologian.” Only three saints of our Church have that title – St. John (writer of the Gospel, Epistles and Revelation), St. Gregory, and St. Symeon the New Theologian (who lived in the late 10th and early 11th centuries, and wrote extensively about the mystical and spiritual life of the Christian). To define what a theologian in the Orthodox Church means, we’ll use the words of St. Gregory – he writes that only those who are experienced can properly reason about God, those who are successful at contemplation and, most importantly, who are pure in soul and body, and utterly selfless. To reason (theologize) about God properly is possible only for one who enters into it with fervor and reverence. To be a theologian in this sense requires an absolute and uncompromising cooperation with the grace of God in every aspect of one’s lives. Knowing God, loving God and our fellowman, ascending from our baseness and sinfulness to the glory and majesty of God – this is the theologian/saints only desire. And in it, God enlightens the mind and heart of His saints.

When St. Gregory finished his training in Athens, he had a promising career ahead of him as a teacher. But he chose to return home to Nazianzus, and soon after was ordained (against his wishes) to the priesthood. As a priest he helped his father administer the diocese, but when they wanted to make him a bishop he fled to the desert monastery of his good friend, St. Basil the Great. St. Gregory’s humility is evident – he didn’t want the titles and positions in the Church. He didn’t have the desire to be a leader of the people of God. He was a man of prayer and study and solitude. But the call of the Church persisted, and several years later St. Gregory returned and was consecrated bishop. The Church was so persistent because they saw in St. Gregory what St. John mentions in the Gospel reading this morning: he would be a good shepherd, in the image of Christ, caring for the sheep and not running away when the wolves would come. We see him living up to this image during his time as bishop; St. Gregory was very active in fighting the great heresy of his day – Arianism. He even went to Constantinople (at the invitation of the council of bishops) to preach what the Church had always taught about Christ. This is what we remember him for – his teaching of theology. The hymns from Vespers last night focused almost all their praise for the saint on his teaching the people of God true theology. As an example, at Lord I Call we sang: O Father Gregory, the tomb that brings oblivion did not seal your lips; for you were revealed as the mouth of theology. Even now you utter teachings of piety to the inhabited earth. Therefore humbly pray that peace and great mercy be granted to our souls!

To study in depth the sermons and writings of St. Gregory doesn’t work for a Sunday morning homily. But we can say with certainty that it is in large part because of the dedication and the teachings of St. Gregory the Theologian, the Orthodox won a victory of the heretical Arians at the Ecumenical Councils, and we are all the beneficiaries of this great theologian and saint of God. I want to end with just another brief mention of St. Gregory’s youth. The saints always remind us that a godly upbringing is incredibly important and formative – it helps us grow up with a love for Christ and the Church. As we read in Proverbs, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (22:6). Certainly we all make our own choices, but we see the truth about the influence of a godly family in the life of St. Gregory, and in his extended family. St. Gregory is a saint, a theologian of the Church. His parents and his sister are also saints of the Church. So let us join with the voice of the Church in praise of St. Gregory the Theologian: Come, with sacred songs, let us praise the Theologian: the vigilant eye of grace and all-wise mouth of the Spirit, the radiant beacon of the inhabited earth, the magnificent voice of the Church, the all-marvelous glory of Orthodoxy, the fountain of theology, the ever-flowing river of divine doctrines, the spring gushing with divine streams of spiritual nectar!

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Christ into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief

2009-01-20T11:49:00.006-06:00

Epistle reading 1 Timothy 1:15-17

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

In this morning’s Epistle reading, St. Paul expresses to his protégé Timothy an understanding that we all are in the process of understanding and making real in our own lives as Christians. In verse 15, St. Paul writes, “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.” One of the basic truths underlying our Faith [and the beliefs of most religious groups] is that we are sinners. As Christians, we readily acknowledge this – we are sinners. I would like us to consider 3 questions to further delve into what St. Paul is saying: 1) what does it really mean to be “a sinner?” 2) am I the chief sinner, as St. Paul said he was? 3) how do we see Christ’s salvation (worked out) in the life of St. Paul?

I)
We say that we’re sinners, but what does the Scripture and the Tradition of the Church understand this to mean? It doesn’t simply mean that we’ve broken certain rules. That is part of it. But to be a sinner is not equal with being a law-breaker. The word sin – amartia (Greek) – means to miss the mark. The idea being that a goal exists, and anything less than perfectly attaining that goal would qualify for amartia (sin).

God created man with the goal being communion and life with God. We’re created to enjoy the blessings that God pours out on us. But to enjoy these blessings presupposes a certain way of life. And so God gave to mankind laws, guidelines, so that we would walk along an appropriate path. The laws of God were never designed to restrict man and to make life miserable – we’re created to enjoy life, and to live with God, and the laws of God preserve an environment where we can do that. So being sinners in a Christian understanding is not just the fact that laws are broken or boundaries are crossed. It’s a much deeper and move devastating statement – to be a sinner is be one who separates ourselves from the life and the love of God.

When we do things that are not consistent with God, the natural result is that we fall away from God, we place a barrier between the love of God and man. When I sin, the real tragedy is that I’ve turned my back on God. God isn’t a judge looking then to punish the sinner; we often hear the language of medicine used here – that our sins plunge us into illness, we’re sick and dying and God is the Great Physician looking to restore us to perfect health and life. As St. Paul writes, Christ came to save sinners, to be the Physician and to apply the salve of God’s love and forgiveness to the wounds caused by our sins.

II)
But St. Paul not only recognizes himself as a sinner, but he ends this specific verse by saying, “of whom I am chief.” He calls himself the first among sinners. This isn’t hyperbole, it’s not a dramatic overstatement by St. Paul. He says it because he feels it; he believes as he stands a new man in Christ before God the Father, he believes that he had been the worst of all sinners, and Christ still offered him redemption. St. Paul was a persecuter of the Christian Church, and that’s a terrible sin. But St. Paul doesn’t call himself the chief among sinners because of any specific act. He calls himself the chief of sinners, because as Christ says, if we’ve committed one sin, then we’re guilty of them all. He recognizes that he’s guilty of all sins, he’s guilty of an enormous separation from God, and how could he not see himself as the first of all sinners with this recognition?

And this is a realization that we’re all moving toward, as Christians. We use this phrase from St. Paul to refer to ourselves in our prayers. Before coming to communion, we say…”I believe, O Lord, and I confess that thou art truly the Christ, the Son of the living God, who camest into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first.” And in our morning and evening prayers, we pray these same words, or some with the same meaning. Again, we not speaking these words symbolically – we’re repeating them daily so slowly we can recognize that we are the chief among sinners. Our sins were responsible for the death of Christ. And eventually, we won’t even think, “my sins and everyone else’s sins,” but we’ll think only of our sins, of our failings, our separation from the love of God caused by our sins. And the knowledge of our separation from God will also help us say with total conviction, that we are the chief among sinners.

III)
St. Paul does say in this verse, that even though he’s the chief of sinners, that Christ has offered him salvation. He doesn’t deserve it, and the reason he gives for his own salvation (in the next verse) is so that the rest of the world could see by his example – God saved even Paul, therefore Christ really came to save all mankind. We see the results of “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners” very vividly in the life of St. Paul. He totally changed. His life became about Christ, sharing, preaching, teaching, calling others to experience the love of God in the same way he experienced it. St. Paul stopped persecuting the Church and became one of Her chief Apostles – and eventually he even suffered martyrdom in Rome for the sake of Christ. He was a new man, totally transformed and transfigured by Christ. And this is what he preached – Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.

This same totally transfiguring salvation is what Christ offers to us, and to everyone around us. We’re here to participate in the life and the love of God, and to preach it and to share it with others. Christ came to save us from sin, to save us from eternity separated from God. Christ came to restore to us the purpose for our existence. The effects and the results of sin we still see in the world – people get sick, they die, horrible crimes happen, all of the evil that existed before Christ still exists in the world after Christ. But we don’t have to be part of spreading that evil. We’ll still feel it’s effects – but we don’t have to be part of destroying humankind and all that God has created by our sin. Christ comes to save us from this, and to offer us a different life – a life of love, of communion with God and our fellow man. Christ fulfilled all it means to be human, and we’re offered the chance to share in that now, and unto all ages.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

The Lands of Zebulun and Naphtali

2009-01-11T19:48:00.004-06:00

Gospel Reading Matthew 4:12-17

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

In St. Matthew’s Gospel, after our Lord is baptized in the River Jordan by John, He then goes into the wilderness for 40 days to fast and pray and is tempted 3 times by the devil. After He returns from the wilderness, (at the point we begin our Gospel for this morning) He hears that John has been put into prison. So He goes to Galilee. St. Matthew writes that He goes in the regions of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that the saying of the Prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled. The first part of that prophecy is The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. I’ve never given much thought to this quote, until this week. Both the prophecy and its fulfillment are really quite interesting.

Zebulun and Naphtali are tribes of Israel – Naphtali was the second son of the Patriarch Jacob, and Zebulun was the 6th son of Jacob. The twelve sons of Jacob are the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel. And if you think about the physical land of Israel, each tribe lived in a certain area. The land areas weren’t equal, and I have no idea how the distribution was decided on. But the “land of Zebulun” and the “land of Naphtali” refer to the land area in Israel where the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali lived. By the time of our Lord, Israel had been conquered many times, and was under the domination of the Roman Empire. So the land of the tribes didn’t hold up under occupation. Zebulun and Naphtali were north and west of the Sea of Galilee and the River Jordan. They occupied the same land that Galilee, or Galilee of the Gentiles, occupied in the time of Jesus. So the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali are the same geographical location as Galilee. And by the time of our Lord, this area is predominately Gentile, it’s not part of Jewish Israel any longer. So this is the place our Lord visits almost immediately after His public ministry has begun. A land that once had belonged to the Chosen People of God, but now was a land of Gentiles.

The prophecy of Isaiah finishes by saying The people who sat in darkness [these people of Galilee] have seen a great light, and upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death Light has dawned. The prophecy is fulfilled in its entirety—Zebulun and Naphtali are the Gentile land of Galilee, and Christ goes to bring these people who have set in darkness the light of Gospel. These people sitting in darkness refers to their lack of knowledge of God. They live in godlessness (not necessarily sin, but without God), darkness, because of their separation from God. They don’t worship the One True God. Isaiah further describes this sitting in darkness as the region and shadow of death. Not knowing God, darkness, is equated with death. The great enemy of humankind is death – so the people who don’t know God sit in the shadow of death. Death always looms.

The Father’s say that the fuel for our sinfulness being continually perpetuated and always getting worse is the fear of death. On one level we know that our life on this earth will end, and we struggle with the temptation to be happy and fulfill physical desires with nothing but our own gratification in mind. Even over us as Christians, the shadow of death affects our actions. The solution for the darkness and shadow and region of death—a Light has dawned. Christ has come. He comes as the Messiah for the Jews, and as a Light for the Gentiles. He comes for salvation for all mankind—salvation and redemption from the region and shadow of death.

On the greatest feast of the year, that’s what we sing: Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life. And the first place Christ goes to bring this message is to Galilee. A hybrid land. Formerly the land of the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali. Formerly land of the Chosen People, now the land of Gentiles. A place full of Jews, and Gentiles, and a large population of Gentile converts to Judaism. This message of Christ is for all mankind.

He comes to Galilee and he preaches, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” For the light to shine, for the shadows and the darkness to withdraw, for this great redemption to come, Christ preaches “Repent.” Turn from sin, turn to God. It’s a very simple message (outwardly). This is our message. Every Sunday and Wednesday and Saturday (and every day of the week) the services of our Church are a constant call to repentance. The Scriptures are a constant call to repentance. One of my favorite patristic quotes, from St. Isaac the Syrian, “This life is given to you for repentance, waste it not in vain pursuits.” We hear this message daily (if we say our prayers and read Fathers/Scriptures). And this is the message of the Church – Christ is risen; repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. This heaven, Christ says, the kingdom of God is within you. We turn our hearts and souls to Christ, and then our interior landscape that lies in sin and darkness, it’s transformed by the love and the light of Christ.

Zebulun and Naphtali are good reminders for us as Christians – they were part of that chosen land and that chosen people of God. The people turned away from God constantly (we see it throughout the Old Testament). And by the time the Messiah comes, these portions no longer belong to Israel, and the rest of the lands are conquered and under the dominion of the Romans. We have to be constantly reminded to live this repentance, to accept and seek the Light of Christ, so we don’t wind up fallen away and dominated by sins and the devil, when once (to use an image Christ uses) we were proud the children of the King. We’ll end with the words of the Exapostilarion of the Feast of our Lord’s Nativity-Our Saviour the Dayspring of the East, has visited us from on high, and we who were in darkness and shadow have found the Truth, for the Lord is born of the Virgin. We have the Truth and the Light; what a magnificent blessing from our God.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Choosing the Will of God

2009-01-11T19:42:00.004-06:00

This homily was given at a mission Vespers service in St. Francisville, LA, on Janury 8, 2009

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

This evening I just wanted to say a few words about what it means to be a Christian. The purpose of the Christian life, what we’re supposed to be doing as Christians, is following Christ. In the Orthodox Liturgy, at one point we sing a hymn with words—“now lay aside all earthly cares.” At that point in the service we’re specifically preparing for Holy Communion, but in all aspects of our lives as Christians our focus is to be Christ, following Christ, doing His will.

Our lives are constantly filled with choices – every thing we do is the result of a series of choices that lead eventually to some action being taken, some decision being made. To be here this evening you had to choose this Vespers service over other things. You had to give up the opportunity to do something else right now, in order to choose to be here right now. We all made the choice to come to this place to pray and to sing and to worship God. Some of things we gave up to be here were good things. For instance, dinner with our kids and family may have been postponed or done differently. Some of things we gave up to be here were potentially not so good things. We’re always tempted to spend our time in wasteful or even sinful ways, but tonight you are here. And some of things we gave up to be here were neutral things. Here's where I fall; I'm a huge college football fan, and to be here, I am missing the BCS Championship Game!

The point really is that if we’re going to choose the best that this life has to offer us, to be fulfilled and truly joyful human beings, then our choice must be for Christ. And in following Christ we will daily, constantly, be called on to make decisions to abandon other pursuits in order to the things of our God. Christian life is not just giving up bad and sinful things, it’s giving up everything for the sake of Christ. Remember these words of Christ from the Gospel of St. Matthew, “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it” (Matthew 10:37-39). Christ is to be first in all things!

In the Orthodox Church we celebrated Theophany on Tuesday (January 6). This feast remembers the baptism of our Lord in the River Jordan at the hand of St. John the Forerunner. The beginning of Christ’s earthly ministry – His revelation (epiphany at both baptism and nativity). When Christ came to the earth, the whole of creation was re-made, re-formed. And we have choice – to willingly participate in this recreation of the world, to be a part of what God wants the human race and the world to be. Or we can choose to do nothing, or to stand against God.

After Theophany we have a tradition of blessing our houses. We bless water at the service of Christ’s baptism, and then we carry this water into our homes and the priest comes and blesses our house. We set aside water to be used only for God. It’s not magic water, it’s water that’s only use is in the original intent of water. All things are made to glorify God, in our fallen-ness we tend to misuse everything. So then we bring this holy water (holy = set apart) and we set aside our homes for God. Our houses are to be places where the will of God is accomplished. The blessing isn’t magical – we still have to daily choose to give our hearts and our lives and our possessions to God. Our actions go out to meet the blessings of God.

In the life of the Christian, everything is put in second place to Christ. He is all, all in all. Everything of the world is forsaken (left, walked away from) for Christ. And our reward, in return, we don’t get massive earthly blessings (yeah, some people are rich, and some are healthy, and whatever). “He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). What God longs to give us is not earthly riches, but life eternal. God longs to share His glory and His wonder and His holiness with us. In exchange for our choice to abadon worldliness for the sake of Christ, we receive life in and with our God.

We'll end with a wonderful quote from Fr. Zacharias’ (The Hidden Man of the Heart):
“we accomplish the exchange of our limited and temporal life for the unlimited and infinite life of God. We offer to God [what little we are], but in that … we place all our faith, love, humility, expectation of Him, all our life. And we say to God, ‘Thine own of thine own, we offer unto Thee in all and for all.’ We offer to God all our life, having prepared ourselves to come and stand before Him and do this act. And God does the same: He accepts man’s offering and He puts His life - the Holy Spirit - in [him]… God accepts our gifts and fills them with His life, and He renders them back to us.”

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Pre-Theophany Homily

2009-01-04T21:31:00.003-06:00

Gospel Reading Mark 1:1-8

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

On the Sunday before we celebrate the baptism of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we hear St. Mark’s account of the ministry of the Forerunner of the Messiah – St. John the Baptizer. This morning, I would like us to consider the last phrase from the last verse of the Gospel reading, that St. John baptizes with water, but Christ will baptize with the Holy Spirit. This is a significant distinction, especially as we prepare to celebrate the Feast of our Lord’s Theophany, and as we remember and give thanks for our own baptism into Christ

St. Mark’s Gospel records (1:4) that St. John came baptizing, and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. The Father’s say this second mention of baptism is another baptism, not his own…so he came baptized and preaching of another baptism which was to come for the remission of sin. In Judaism there was and is a type of baptism, a rite of total immersion in specially prepared baths for ritual cleanliness [if you did something that would make you ritually unclean, then you had to go through this rite of immersion]. Baptism for cleanliness. Gentiles who wanted to convert to Judaism also had to go through this baptismal service. This baptism is not about removing sin or the effects of sin, but of cleansing a person and restoring them to an original state of purity – close to our understanding, but not the same.

So if we understand in St. Mark’s Gospel and from history that the baptism of St. John was not for the remission of sins, then what was it? Venerable Bede, in his commentary on this particular passage, writes – “John’s baptism is properly called a ‘baptism of repentance’ because there is no other reason for anyone to want to be baptized in the font of life except for repent[ance]…and even though the baptism of John did not unloose the bonds of sins, nevertheless it was not entirely unfruitful for those who received it. Although it was not given for the forgiveness of sins, it was a sign of faith and repentance. All who were inititated by this were to recall that they should keep themselves from sins, devote themselves to almsgiving, believe in Christ, and as soon as he appeared they were to hasten to his baptism, in which they would be cleansed for the forgiveness of sins.”

St. Bede makes clear that the function of St. John’s baptism was to call the people to repentance. It wasn’t just to make them ritually clean, but a call for them to remain clean, especially from sin. St. John called them to an ascetic life (a life very much like he was living in the desert)– to following the commandments given by God. And their baptism served as a sign and a reminder of their commitment to repent. So John's baptism was not exactly the same as the usual baptism of the Jews. Blessed Theophylact writes in his commentary, “All those who came and were baptized by John, by their repentance were loosed from the bond of their sins when they later believed in Christ…[John’s baptism] did not bestow the forgiveness of sins, but instead only led mankind to repentance.”

The Orthodox Study Bible, in the commentary on our particular Gospel reading, as well as the commentary regarding St. John from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, provides a succinct analysis and a segue to the meaning of baptism in Christ. “Confession of sins (repentance) is essential to baptism under both the Old Covenant and the New. John’s baptism, however, was a sign of repentance and the forgiveness of sins only. It did not confer the power of total regeneration nor adoption as a child of God as does Christian baptism” (Matthew 3:6). The commentary also notes, “John’s baptism did not grant remission of sins once and for all, but prefigured and prepared people for the baptism of Christ which was to come [those baptized by John were later baptized in Christ by the Apostles]. John is a figure of the Law in that, like the Law, he denounced sin but could not remit (lit. ‘put away’) sin” (Luke 3:3). Both the baptism of St. John and the Law of the Old Covenant point to the One who can remit sin. The Law is fulfilled in the life of Christ – as He accomplishes every jot and tittle and fulfills its every meaning; and the baptism of the Old Covenant is fulfilled when Christ is baptized in the waters of the River Jordan – its potential is realized and made greater.

Baptism in Christ is for cleansing, but not just in ritual, but in fact. And baptism in Christ is much more. In baptism, our sins are remitted, put away, cleansed, forgiven. All of our regeneration and new life and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, for these things to happen we first have to be forgiven and made whole. We’re restored to the potential that Adam had in the very beginning of time. Christian baptism confers the power of regeneration and adoption as a child of God. After everything we put God through with our sin and rebellion, He adopts us as His own. Baptism bestows on us the Holy Spirit and the potential to possess all of the various gifts of the spirit. Venerable Bede writes that Christ ”pardoned sins by the favor of the Holy Spirit…bestowed the grace of the Holy Spirit…giving of charismatic gifts in the Spirit” We’re made to be partakers (even now) of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Christian baptism is not only a rite, and the results are not only of ritual. In Christ there is a new life, a new man born from the waters of the baptismal font. A man now called to preserve the grace of the Holy Spirit poured out on us, called to the same ascetic life that St. John called his followers to – good works, fasting, prayer, and watchfulness. Christ comes to make all things new, and when we were baptized, we were made anew. It’s essential for us to remember this re-creation every day, and especially to give thanks and reflect on how we’ve lived out this new life as we prepare to celebrate our Lord’s baptism in the River Jordan by St. John.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

Sunday after Nativity

2008-12-28T23:00:00.002-06:00

Gospel Reading: Matthew 2:13-23

Christ is born! Glorify Him!

This morning’s Gospel reading comes from St. Matthew, and is the reading that follows immediately after the reading we had for the Feast of our Lord’s Nativity. So we’re continuing the story – the function of the Gospels is to tell us the story of Christ. And we see in the way the Father’s look at this morning’s Gospel that all of the Scriptures are telling the story of Christ, or preparing the way for that story to be heard.

In the trip described in this morning’s Gospel, we see in the life of our Lord a recapitulation of the story of the people of Israel, and in many ways a healing of the mistakes of the people of God. Christ flees the wrath of Herod and goes to Egypt. And if we look into the Old Testament, the two lands of evil for Jews were Egypt and Babylon. St. Theophylact writes, “By means of the Magi He accepted the adoration of Babylon, and Egypt He sanctified by His own presence.” This reminds me of the way we hymn the feasts of Christ—in baptism He sanctified the waters, in His ascension He sanctified the airs, in burial He sanctified the earth and even goes in Hades—the presence of Christ in a place brings healing and redemption and sanctification.

By the time He was only a few years old, our Lord had already received the worship of the Babylonian people who were constantly persecuting the Jews (held them as captives on multiple occasions), and He travels from the Holy Land to Egypt (like Joseph and Jacob and his kin in the famine), and at the end of this morning’s reading, He’ll travel back to the Promised Land from Egypt, like Moses. This trip to Egypt fulfills the word of the Prophet, “Out of Egypt have I called My Son.” Originally a reference to the calling of the Chosen People out of Israel, and now referring literally to the Son of God. The original trip made by a Hebrew people who constantly returned to idol worship was a foreshadowing, St. Theophylact writes, of a greater truth that was to come—the Son of God come in the flesh.

We see another parallel between Herod and the Pharaoh of the Old Testament—Pharaoh killed all the male children of the Hebrew people, and Herod did the same thing. Pharaoh was really a murder of children two times—the male children of Israel to prevent population growth, and the firstborn of all Egypt in the 10th plague which was caused by Pharaoh’s stubbornness. We’ll hear the question, “why did all of those children have to die in Bethlehem,” and I’ll read St. Theophylact’s explanation. “The children [were] allowed to be slaughtered…so that Herod’s wickedness might be revealed…they [the Holy Innocents] were not wronged but were made worthy of crowns. For anyone who suffers some evil here, suffers either so that his sins might be absolved, or so that his crowns might be multiplied. So it is with these children; for their suffering they will receive a greater crown in heaven.” And in fact we do remember the slaughter of the Holy Innocents in the Church, and all of the infants murdered for Christ are counted as martyrs and saints (Feastday December 29).

So that puts Christ now in Egypt. In the Gospels and in the regularly accepted apocryphal works, there’s no mention of how our Lord spent His time in Egypt. What we do know for certain is that at the death of Herod, Joseph has a dream and the family returns again to Israel. But our Lord ends up spending His childhood not in Israel proper, but in Galilee, which was a land with many Jews living there, but is was the land of Gentiles. Christ’s family settles in Nazareth, and our Gospel reading ends by saying, “he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.” We don’t have the exact quote to point to here – theories about the reference abound, from Nazareth being a place despised and our Lord being despised [St. Matthew trying to make a connection there], to perhaps this being an unwritten or unrecorded prophecy. It doesn’t really matter. It is interesting to note that the word nazarene means “sanctified,” holy. This title for our Lord is right – the Holy One of Israel is a title used by many of the Prophets.

So we see even in this short reading that all of the history of the people of God is going to be brought together and sanctified in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. And now our lives are to follow the pattern of the life of Christ. It’s not that the life of Christ followed the pattern of Israel—He was foreshadowed by Israel, and now we’re called to follow Him. Christ is the archetype of man. He is everything that we are created to be. Mankind is created in the image of the image of God – we’re created in the image of Christ, Who is the exact icon of the Father. The axis around which all of human history revolves is the person of Christ. Time before Him pointed to Him, rushed toward His coming in the flesh. And time now pushes on to the Second Coming, when the saved [those in Christ] will be joined to the presence of their Creator for all eternity.

Christ is born! Glorify Him!

Christ is born! Glorify Him!

2008-12-25T09:04:00.003-06:00

Thy Nativity, O Christ our God, has shown to the world the light of widsom! For by it, those who worshipped the stars, were taught by a star to adore Thee, the Sun of righteousness, and to know Thee, the Orient from on high. O Lord, glory to Thee!

On the Virgin Birth

2008-12-21T17:02:00.004-06:00

Gospel Reading Matthew 1:1-25

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Christ is in our midst! He is and shall be!

This morning, even though we’re a few days before the actual Feast of the Nativity, on the Sunday before the Feast we always read the account of the birth of Christ. This is one of the central events in human history, and it’s one that’s gotten a lot of negative attention in the last 50+ years—reinterpreting, mythologizing, outright attacking, etc. Especially criticized is our belief of the Virgin birth, and Who Christ truly is. We have to understand, as best as we are able, what the Church has always taught about our Lord’s Nativity (and why it’s been taught), because God becoming man in the person of Jesus Christ is absolutely necessary for our salvation, and for existence of our Faith.

The Virgin Mary was found to be with child “by the Holy Ghost,” St. Matthew writes. And this was done to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah, “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which means “God with us.” The Christian Church must believe and teach the virgin birth of the Messiah—not because human procreation is bad or evil. And not to make the birth of Christ seem that much more amazing (we don’t teach the virgin birth for shock value). The Church must believe and teach the virgin birth of Christ really for two reasons—I) it is the witness of the Scriptures and the Tradition, and II) this belief is essential to preserve a proper understanding of the person of Jesus Christ.

I.
Both the Old and the New Testaments witness to the Virgin Birth of Christ; the Tradition of the Church we would also hold up and see that never has this teaching been challenged in the Orthodox Church. Even from the time of the Prophet Isaiah, the people of God were taught that a virgin would conceive in her womb a son. St. Matthew and St. Luke both specifically write in their Gospels that Christ was conceived in the womb of the Theotokos by the Holy Spirit—she had never known a man. We’ll sing at Matins for the Feast - Why do you marvel, O Mary? Why are you amazed at what has come to pass? “I have given birth in time to a timeless Son; I cannot explain how He was conceived in me. I have known no man; how then shall I bear a child? Who has ever seen a birth without seed? When God so wills, as it is written: ‘The order of nature is overcome.’” Christ is born of the Virgin in Bethlehem of Judah. To be Christians, we’re bound to believe those things that have always been taught and believed by the Christian Church. But there’s a reason that St. Matthew and St. Luke and all of our Fathers have known and taught the Virgin birth of Christ.

II.
The belief in this reality is necessary to our proper understanding of Who Christ is. The Prophet Isaiah said He would be called Immanuel. And in St. Luke’s Gospel, the angel who appears to the Theotokos at the Annunciation says to her, “The Holy Spirit will overshadow you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you, therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). Even before His birth, Christ is called “God with us,” and “the Son of God.” The Virgin Birth isn’t needed for shock value, but to preserve the reality that the Son born of the Virgin Mary has no human father; His Father is God. He is the very Son of God. And in the Person of Christ, God is with us.

We see here the working of the Holy Trinity—according to the will of the Father, the Holy Spirit descended on the virgin, and the Word of God was formed in her womb. Christ is fully God—He is God by His essence. The Holy Trinity is a mystery that we can only barely begin to speak about, and certainly we can’t understand. But we believe that there is One God in Three Persons—Father, Son, and Spirit. There is one essence of God in which these three Persons share naturally. They are the One God. It’s beyond our meager human logic to understand. What is necessary for our healing and salvation is that the second person of the Holy Trinity—the Word of God—became man in the womb of the Theotokos.

He remained fully God; God cannot become “not God.” Christ was always God. And in the Incarnation, when He was formed in the Virgin’s womb as a little child, God became man. Christ didn’t take over the body of some random human being—the body of Christ was His own, created just for Him, in the same way that our bodies are our own. And in this moment, when God becomes man, this is the working out of our salvation. What it means to human (we all share that in common—human-ness) was joined for all of eternity with what it means to be God. There was no confusion (as we say in the Creed). Mankind did not become God; but human nature from that moment on was given a new relationship with its Creator.

The love of God for us is shown so powerfully in the life of Christ. We often look to the Crucifixion—His beatings and tortures and humiliation and eventually the horrendous death on the cross. But we should also look and find the enormous love of God for us shown in the Feast we’re preparing to celebrate later this week. The Word of God laid aside what it meant to live as God, and He entered the womb of a 15/16-year old girl. He took on the form of His creation. We were created to be like God, but for our salvation God had to become like us. So the God of all grew in the womb of the Virgin, nurtured by His own creation. He was born into a fallen and sinful world, where He was totally at the mercy of those around Him. Herod tried to kill Him; the wise men came to worship Him; His mother and foster father Joseph cared for Him—fed Him, clothed Him, taught Him, raised Him. But Christ wasn’t just any other child; they were raising God in the flesh.

It is an unimaginable love for the all-supreme being in the universe to come and experience life as we live it on the earth. In just a few days, God will be born, God will lay in a manger in a stable, God will sleep in the lap of His Mother and nurse at her breast. As we sing in Matins for the Feast – How can a womb contain Him Whom nothing can contain? How can he remain in His Father’s bosom, yet rest in His mother’s arms? It is His good pleasure to accomplish this. Having no flesh, He purposely assumes it for our sake. HE WHO IS becomes what He never was. He shares our substance without forsaking His own nature. Desiring to make us citizens of the world on high, Christ, the Only-begotten of the Father, is born on earth as a man.

This is why we try to understand and we preach what the Scriptures and the Fathers teach us about the Nativity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To proclaim the love of God for man, and to preserve the teaching of our salvation, seen in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ in the city of Bethlehem some 2,000 years ago.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!