Fr. Dcn. James

Why do we suffer?  This is not a question that lends itself to easy answers.  The reason is that suffering is often intensely personal.  At other times, we watch innocent people suffer, and we cannot help but feel their grief and desperation.  No one claim to have any easy answers to the question of why we suffer.  Our world is fallen, and sorrow and pain are our everyday lot.  But our reading today gives us a glimpse into another question, which is equally important:  How do we respond to suffering?  Do we shrug it off as a punishment for our sins?  Or do we see in suffering an opportunity to sharpen our faith, and learn to give glory to God in all circumstances?

You will remember the story in our Gospel reading today.  Jesus is in Jerusalem, and he has just finished a very heated confrontation with the Jews in the Temple.  In fact, at the end of chapter eight, St. John tells us that the Jews were so enraged by the exchange that they were picking up stones in order to stone Christ.   Nonetheless, Jesus left the Temple unharmed.  As he left, however, he came across a blind man, one who had been blind from the moment of birth.  The man had never known anything other than darkness.  As an infant, a child, a young man – he had never seen the light of day, never beheld the face of a loved one, never gazed on the beauty of the world around him.  In fact, some Syriac traditions, best represented by the writings of St. Ephraim the Syrian, hold that the man simply did not have any eyes at all – simply empty sockets where his eyes should have been.

It appears that Jesus’ attention may have been called to the man not by the blind man himself, but by his disciples, who asked a question: “Rabbi, who sinned, this one or his parents, that he was born blind?”  This question may strike us as a little odd, but it was an entirely logical one for them to ask.  For the people of Israel, all suffering was seen to be the result of sin, not only their own, but it was also commonly believed that people often suffered for the sins of their parents.  This belief was not something that God had taught them.  In Deuteronomy 24:18, Moses taught them that “…the sons shall not be put to death for the fathers; everyone shall be put to death for their own sin”.  The prophet Ezekiel had likewise tried to teach them, when he said “Let this parable no longer be spoken: The fathers have eaten unripe grapes, and the children’s teeth shall be set on edge.” (Ezk 18:2). Still, it was a pervasive belief throughout Israel and, if the truth is told, we sometimes find ourselves thinking the same kind of thoughts from time to time.

Jesus, however, answered the disciples plainly.  The man’s blindness was not the result of either the sin of his parents, or his own sins.  Instead, Jesus said, the man’s suffering was so that “the works of God might be manifested in him”.  He took clay, made mud of it, and anointed the eyes of the man.  He then told him to go wash in the pool of Siloam, and to return.  The blind man did as our Lord instructed him, and when he returned he could, for the first time in his life, see.

There is, of course, a great deal more to this story, but for our purposes, we will stop there.  There are two great lessons to be learned, and each of them will speak clearly to each of us here today. 

First, Jesus did not come to teach us to lay blame, or to convict.  He came to move us beyond the law, from the black and white of statutes and rules to the fulfillment of the essence of the law.  He did not come fence us into rigid codes of behavior, and to impose the inexorable cause and effect of sin and punishment, but to transform us.  This was an entirely foreign concept to the Jews.  Father Lawrence Farley wrote that “…it is characteristic of Judaism to investigate and assign blame; it is characteristic of Christianity to reach out to transform.”  For the Jews -- and, it must be said, for some churches that call themselves Christian -- sin is a crime, and the Law utterly condemns you.  As Orthodox Christians, however, we recognize that sin is the product of our passions, of our unwillingness to surrender all of ourselves to God.  The Church does not condemn us, but seeks to heal our spiritual illness, to purify our soul and spirit, to help us, as St. Paul puts it, to go from glory to glory.  This is not an instantaneous transformation, but over time, as we struggle and cooperate with the Holy Spirit, our rough edges are made smooth, our hearts are softened, our souls become ever more open.  All of us in this room are in that process.  The Church is commonly referred to as the spiritual hospital, and each of us are patients under the care of the Great Physician.  If there is one great difference to remember between the Jewish faith and the Apostolic faith, this is it. 

Second, our reading today offers us a perspective on suffering.  How often do we ask ourselves that question:  why do I suffer?  Why am I in such pain?  At times, without doubt, our suffering is the result of our sin.  If I choose to drink more than I should and then have an accident driving home, there is a clear cause and effect between my sin and my suffering.  But more often we find ourselves suffering through no particular fault of our own.  We may fall ill, we may have financial problems, we may endure an entire host of difficulties and setbacks.  Why do these things happen?

This question – this overwhelming need to understand suffering – is perhaps the most pervasive cause of doubt among us.  A person may suffer, and sometimes he or she may begin to lose their faith.  It is critical that we maintain a proper spiritual perspective on our suffering, and that of others.  The truth is this: sometimes we bring our suffering on ourself.  Sometimes, our suffering is the result of evil committed by others.  At times, we suffer simply because we live in a fallen world.  Regardless of why we suffer, what Christ teaches us today is that we may use our suffering so that the works of God may be manifested in each one of us.

This has always been the experience of the martyrs, and it should be the experience of each one of us.  If approached rightly, our suffering can cleanse us.  If we see our suffering as an opportunity to glorify God, then we will reach the other end of that suffering – even if that is the time of our death – a far different person than when we began.  There is a story told by Father Zacharias, a spiritual son of the modern saint, Elder Sophrony.  A woman came to see Father Zacharias, and told him with great fear that she had been diagnosed with cancer.  The doctors had told her that in six months she would die.  He made no attempt to tell her that the doctors were wrong, that nothing was the matter.  He told her “Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.  Prepare for this meeting.  You have six months.  That is wonderful!  Prepare for the greatest moment of your life.”

The woman took him at his word, and she began to pray, quietly repeating to herself “Glory be to Thee, O Lord.”  Every time the monk saw her, she would be saying that simple prayer, and bearing her cross.  Finally, the day of her departure came.  Father Zacharias came to see her just at the end, and he found her weeping quietly.  She whispered “Am I worthy to be given such grace to bear this monstrous thing?  My relatives come here thinking to console me, and they disturb my prayer, and do not understand it.  And the Lord is there – she pointed to the corner of the room – waiting for me.”  And having said that, she died.

In that woman, just as in the blind man in today’s reading, the works of the Lord were made manifest.  In each of us, whatever our problems may be, we have the same capacity, and the same potential, for manifesting the glory of the Lord.  It is easy to express the joy of the Lord when times are good.  It is more difficult, but far more meaningful, to do so when times are not so good.  We must never forget that, because the choice is ours to make.

Fr. Dcn. James

Earlier this week, on Wednesday, we celebrated the feast of mid-Pentecost.  On that day, we were, if you will, tipped on the balance, halfway between the resurrection joy of Pascha, and the majesty of Pentecost.  We look back and we look forward, and we see much joy and hope in both directions.  Yet ironically, at this midpoint we can sometimes sense within ourselves a certain sluggishness, a notion that we have lost or misplaced the keen edge of Pascha. 

It is no surprise that this subject came up this past week in a conversation with a friend about what we might call the Post-Pascha letdown.  That sounds like a fairly odd phrase, but I think we all know about it.  We struggle through Lent, and we walk to Golgotha with Christ during Holy Week, and suddenly it is Pascha, and our joy is limitless.  But then we have a long period of time, a number of weeks, where there is very little fasting, and very few services aside from Sunday liturgy, and one morning we wake up and become conscious that we are a little flabby, spiritually speaking.  We wonder where our focus and our dedication went.  Here we are in the third or fourth of fifth week after Pascha, and we wonder why our joy seems to have diminished.   Pentecost is coming, but where, we wonder, is the flame?  Where is the fire? 

So it is only fitting that our Gospel reading this week introduces the first glimmerings during this Paschal season of the work of the Holy Spirit.  Oh, the Spirit has always been a part of the Godhead, but prior to the revelation of Christ, the work of the Spirit was largely misunderstood by the Jews.  Yet today, early in His ministry, we find that the subject of the Spirit is a deeply important part of our story.  At the same time, our passage today is the story of a conversation, one between a single individual and the Saviour of all mankind.  In these two things we find a great truth, a key to our salvation, and the answer to the Post-Pascha letdown.

It is only right that all of this takes place in the context of one person, a woman who we might instantly recognize in someone we know, in a family member or even, dare I say it, in ourselves.  It is the Samaritan woman who assumes a role that almost anybody could play.

We know her name, of course.  Scripture omits it, but we know her name is Photini, and today she is a highly respected saint of the Church, that we know more fully as St. Photini, Equal to the Apostles and Martyr.  In our reading today, though, she is simply Photini, and she was not a happy woman.  Indeed, we could say that as she went to well that day, she already had three strikes against her.  First, she was a woman, in a time when many people were unsure about whether or not being a woman was really an honorable characteristic to have.  Indeed, it would be highly suspect for a man to speak to a woman who was alone.  That helps us understand Photini’s startled reaction to being addressed by Jesus.  Strike one.

She was a Samaritan, which meant that she was as good as pagan.  While the Samaritans considered themselves to be pure Jews, their beliefs were most definitely out of the Jewish mainstream.  The truth is that any good Jew considered the Samaritans to be vile and unclean.  Remember the story of the Good Samaritan?  For first century Jews, the shocking part of that story was that the hero, the man who Jesus told them to emulate, was a Samaritan.  But Photini is a Samaritan.  Strike two.

Finally, Photini has had a rather checkered past.  She has been around the block a few times, having had five husbands, and as our passage opens, she is living in a 6^th relationship without, as we might say, the benefit of matrimony.  That helps explain why Photini is at the well at noon, in the heat of the day.  Ordinarily, women went to the well in the morning and in the evening, when it was cool and pleasant.  They would meet there and socialize.  There would be laughter and companionship.  But Photini lives in shame.  If she goes to the well with the other women, they whisper about her.  They shun her.  She is a sinner, and so she goes to fetch water from the well alone.  She goes at noon, when it is hot, it is lonely, there is no shade to shelter her.  Photini is not respectable.  She is not by any stretch of the imagination a righteous person.  Strike three.

The ironic thing about all of that is that Photini is very clearly a person with a spiritual heart.  When Jesus engages her in conversation she is open and receptive, in a way that only a yearning heart will produce.  She has a very lengthy conversation with Jesus, maybe the longest conversation we find in the Gospels between our Lord and any one person.  It is important to note that it was not a comfortable talk.  Jesus quietly challenges her assumptions, and reveals to her the truth of her past.  It was one which she could easily have broken off at any point, and walked away from the man who was sitting at the well.  Many people would have done so, and would have politely said good bye, gotten up and left.  But Photini did not do that, for a reason that we can all identify with.  Photini knew this: even living as she was living, she knew that there was something better.  She knows that what she does is wrong, even as she cannot find a way out of the dead end of her life.  She knows, instinctively, that there is purity and truth and beauty and unadulterated joy to be had, even if she has no idea where to find it.  She is, in short, every man and every woman who has felt isolated, who has felt afraid, who has looked at the circumstances in his or her life and said to herself “there must be something better”.  If you have ever sighed and felt hopeless, then you are Photini.

So perhaps it is no wonder that a tired and weary stranger came up to her that day at the well, and began to speak to her.  Who better could Jesus find?  All of the respectable people were sheltering in their homes from the burning heat.  All of those without need of comfort from the Messiah were perfectly comfortable at home.  All of those who knew what their life was all about were busy leading that life.

Those people weren’t ready to listen to Jesus.  Only the sorrowful, only the contrite, only the broken hearted are fully prepared to hear the word of Christ.  Only Photini, and her spiritual heirs, people who know sorrow and know shame and know hopelessness, were ready for this conversation.  That is why Jesus started to teach about the Spirit.

Jesus told Photini this:  “The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him.  God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Do you see?  True Christianity has two aspects.  One is truth, which means right faith and true doctrine.  It means the Orthodox faith.  That is truth, and it is absolutely essential to our salvation.  But it is not enough.  The Apostle James – you know, the good James – writes “You believe that God is one; you do well.  Even the demons believe and shudder.”  In other words, just knowing the truth of the faith will not save us.  Simple knowledge never saved anyone.  If we study the structure of Orthodoxy, the dogma and the canons and all of the things which define our faith, we have to understand that we are seeing only half of the faith.

The canons give us structure and discipline, but not hope.

Dogma gives us truth and gives us identity, but not hope.

That is why Jesus says that we must also worship in the spirit.  The Church excels in this, even if we do not know it by this phrase.  Why do we focus on our soul, why do we fast and deprive our bodies, why do we pray and confess and stretch ourselves as far as we can?  We do these things precisely to free the spirit, the liberate it to soar among the angels, so that our spirit may commune with the Spirit, the Holy Spirit.  The greatest saints have done this in ways that are unimaginable to us.  Perhaps the day will come when we will do that as well.  But for you and for me, to worship in the spirit is nothing more and nothing less than a conversation with God.  Speaking.  And listening.

That, I think, accounts for the Post-Pascha letdown.  We celebrate, we savor the joy of the season, but we can get so caught up in Pascha and its following weeks that we forget our conversation.  We lose that sense of being in an intimate meeting with our Lord.  He is still here.  He is still waiting to hear what we have to say, and what we are worried about.  And He is still patiently waiting to tell us the answer to our problems and the solutions to our fears.  We need only listen.

There is a great deal that we must address in prayer.  Our concerns for ourselves and our family, for each other and for our parish, for our Church.  For all of the suffering that we see, in our own homes and neighborhoods, and in far corners of the world.  We seek the intercession of God, and help for ourselves and our loved ones.  But having done that, we must quietly open our heart and our soul to the Holy Spirit.  Listen to what God has to say to you.  Let us offer our spirit to the Holy Spirit, and truly worship as Jesus told Photini – in spirit and in truth.  With our actions and our belief, with our works and our sacrifices, with our love and our willing spirit, with our petitions and our prayerful silence.  This is worship in spirit and in truth.

That I think, might be why the Church in her wisdom has placed this reading from John on the calendar for today.  It is as if the Church is saying:  Listen!  Listen to Christ tell this outcast, this woman who no one likes and no one respects, how she may be saved.  How she may worship, in a new way, a way that opens her heart and her soul to the voice of the Spirit.  That Spirit is coming!  Let us listen for that same spirit.  Let us quiet our restless and suffering souls.  Let us remember to speak to God, and then to listen for the still, small voice of our Saviour.

Fr. Dcn. James

+Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit

How many times did He tell them?  How many times did Jesus tell the disciples that he would die, but he would then arise on the third day?  If you think back to the Sunday Gospel readings of Lent, it seems as though every one included an admonition to his followers:  I will die, but on the third day I will rise again.

No one listened.  No one believed Him.  He may as well have been speaking to the wind.

I am reminded of this now, in the joyous Paschal season, by the readings both for today and for last Sunday, Thomas Sunday.  It is as though the Church, in her wisdom, wants to speak to us about the varieties of doubt, the species of despair, the cloud of disillusionment which even now, even in this time of celebration, can take us unawares.  It seems a paradox, to speak of doubt during the bright season of Pascha, but we, of all people, know from our own experience that despair and disillusion can strike us at any time.  In the midst of our own discouragement, these Gospels offer reminders that we badly need to hear.

In today’s gospel, we go back in time, as it were, to the three days during which Christ lay dead.  We know that this was a time of enormous turmoil for the disciples, a time where we see both amazing courage and terrible fear, even cowardice.  Many had fled during the trial and crucifixion of Christ.  Peter, to his shame and sorrow, had denied even knowing Jesus.  Only the women, particularly the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene, together with the Apostle and Theologian John, persevered while Christ was on the cross. 

Our passage from St. Mark begins after Jesus is dead, something which happened so swiftly, relatively speaking, that Pilate himself expressed surprise at the fact.  Joseph of Arimethea, who tradition tells us was a member of the Sanhedrin, went to Pilate and asked for the body of Christ.    We have to understand that he did not have to do this.  In the ordinary course of things, Jesus’ body would have been given to his family, to his mother and brothers.  To go to Pilate was a risky and dangerous thing for Joseph to do.  After all, it was Joseph’s colleagues on the Sanhedrin which had been instrumental in bringing about the crucifixion of Christ.  For Joseph to now openly reveal his allegiance to Jesus was a courageous act, one which we can understand only in the light of the great love which Joseph had for the Saviour.  His act was, if you will, a bookend, a counterweight, to the betrayal of Peter.  Peter, the well known disciple of Christ, disavows Him.  Joseph, however, the secret disciple, now openly pledges his fidelity to the Messiah.  Peter flees from the condemned Christ; Joseph lovingly removes His broken and mangled body from the cross.  Peter denies knowing his Saviour; Joseph wraps him in clean linen, and places Him in a newly hewn tomb.

 Similarly, St. Mark goes on to tell us of the visit to the tomb by the myrrh-bearing women.  In this instance, there are three:  Mary Magdelene, Salome and the Theotokos, who was the step-mother of James, the brother of the Lord.  They went to the tomb just at dawn on Sunday morning in order to complete the burial ritual upon Jesus.  There had not been time on Friday for him to be properly buried.  He had been wrapped in burial cloths, but had not been anointed with the herbs and spices used by the Jews.  Yet a simple errand, a ritual task, does not fully explain the meaning of this story.  We must look beyond the surface, and find there another, heart breaking, level of meaning.

To reach that, we must remember that a large stone had been rolled across the opening of the grave.  As the women walked to the tomb, they asked themselves the question:  “who will roll away the stone for us from the face of the tomb?”  The women knew that they very well that the stone was too large, too heavy, for them be able to move.  Without help, they would not be able to get into the tomb.  Purely logical people would have waited until more people were up and about; when they would have been able to recruit some men to move the stone.  But pure logic rarely produces great acts; acts of which we sing.  No – the reason we celebrate the myrrh bearing women is because of their great and abiding love, a love which was not fenced in by logic, but was made immeasurable by devotion.

So in our Gospel, we have great and indisputable acts of courage and love.  We see people doing things that we wonder at; things that we privately admit to ourselves might have been beyond our own capacity had we been present during that terrible time.  So it is a sobering and ironic thought to understand this:  that these acts, however noble, were done without true understanding.  These acts, so praiseworthy, were done blindly.  These acts, that we admire and sing of, were done without true remembrance or understanding of the words of Jesus Himself.  Do you remember?  He said:

The Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill Him.  And after He is killed, He will rise the third day.

That is the key to our Gospel today.  Joseph of Arimethea exhibited enormous courage, but he did so blindly.  The women evidenced heart-rending love, but they did so without understanding.  Do you see?  It is in that failure to remember, that failure to truly believe, that we are able to look, as if in a mirror, and see ourselves.

How often do we find ourselves in such times?  It is not at all uncommon for us to be confused by what we are facing, and even pessimistic about what the future holds.  As individuals, we struggle with fear and uncertainty.  Even now, as a parish, we are passing through deep water and difficult times, wondering what the future holds for us.  That is not to say that we are without courage or without love.  Everyone in this room is devoted to Christ.  Everyone in this room is here out of love.  Not out of duty or obligation, but out of a deep and abiding love of Christ, of the Church, of this parish.  And, not least of these, a deep and abiding love for each other.

Still, we are human.  We worry.  Times are difficult.  The road ahead seems to be uncertain.  What will become of us?  What does the future hold?  Yet, isn’t that what Joseph of Arimethea thought as he made his way to Pilate’s palace as the sun set on Friday?  Isn’t that what the women thought as they walked through the pre-dawn darkness on Sunday morning?  Isn’t that what we ourselves think as we wait, for what seems to be an unbearably long period of time, facing an uncertain future as a parish family?  And sometimes, don’t we find ourselves becoming so accustomed to difficult circumstances and painful uncertainty that we unconsciously confine Christ to the tomb.  We become pessimistic.  We come to think of pain as normal, of anxiety as natural, of fear as an ordinary thing.

But none of that is true.  Are we ever abandoned?  St. Paul put it well, when he said this:

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness or peril, or sword?...Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.  For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

It is helpful to stop and remind ourselves:  Christ is no longer in the tomb.  The noble Joseph, even though he placed Him in the tomb himself, discovered that.  The women, full of love and grief, discovered that.  Even Peter, despairing and suffering in his failure, discovered that.  And on this day, let us re-discover that.  Christ will not abandon this parish, a part of His Body.  Our fears are simply wisps of smoke.  Our doubts are but human frailty.  Didn’t St. John Chrysostom say it?

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.

On this day, let us remind ourselves of that.  Let our fear turn to hope.  Let our courage lead us to boundless joy.  The darkest of times are inevitably followed by the brightest of days.  We need only to keep our eyes focused on the Cross, and always searching for our Risen Lord.

Christ is Risen!  Indeed He is risen!   

Fr. Dcn. James

Today we gather for the fourth Sunday of Great Lent.  It has been, dare we say, a strange season.  Even under the best of circumstances, our arrival at the Sunday of St. John Climacus can find us worn down and distracted from the disciplines of this period of prayer and repentance.  We live amidst the cares of the world, and it can be difficult to maintain the diamond sharp focus on repentance that Lent demands.  When that happens, it is good to stop momentarily and take stock of our position.  Both the remembrance of St. John of the Ladder and our gospel reading help us to do that.   

Sometimes we forget exactly why the Sundays of Lent are assigned to particular saints or commemorations.  Certainly the Veneration of the Cross, which we did Last Sunday, is clear enough, as the remembrance of the salvation brought on by an instrument of torture and death is brought to mind.  Similarly, next Sunday’s commemoration of St. Mary of Egypt resonates with all of us.  I do not think that there is a single more memorable statement in the life of any saint than what St. Mary tells Zosimas about her excruciating period of repentance in the deserts of Palestine:  “the first seventeen years were the hardest”.  That is a statement that brings hope to all of us who struggle with besetting sin.  If that great saint of repentance, Mary, had to fight so hard against the passions that assailed her, then we too can take courage when we find ourselves falling into sinful habits and patterns of behavior.  It is a measure of Mary’s greatness that it took her only seventeen years.  I have been at it much longer, and my progress, if it exists at all, is measured in terms of millimeters.  Her confession of struggle encourages me that all, perhaps, is not lost.

But we may not be as clear as to the hows or whys of other saints we remember during the Fast, such as the one we remember today, St. John Climacus, or as he is often called, St. John of the Ladder.  St. John, a 6^th century monk in Egypt, is best known for his book, The Ladder of Divine Ascent.  While the book is primarily written for monastics, it is deeply profitable for us who live in the world.  It is written in thirty chapters, each corresponding to a particular sin or virtue.  St. John does not suggest to us that the ladder is easily climbed.  Indeed, if there is a single unifying theme to the book, it is that of patience.  When asked what advice he would give to people in the world, for example, St. John replied:

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

In a word, patience.  We live our lives, we struggle to attain the virtues, we suffer from the consequences of our sins and our passions.  This is the summation of our daily existence.  That this is the root of all virtue is can be seen in today’s epistle, where St. Paul notes that Abraham, after he had patiently endured, obtained the promise of blessings given him by God.

Patience.  Struggle.  Suffering.  If you observed that the advice of the saints sounds like what we are focused on during Lent, you would be right.  This is the lesson of the Scriptures and of the Fathers.  It is the lesson we must take home with us today.

Which brings me to the lesson in today’s Gospel reading, which is uniquely suited to this Sunday deep in the Great Fast.  On the surface, we may think otherwise.  Often we read this and simply see the demon-possessed child as an object of our pity.  Other times, we read it and identify with the cry of the boy’s father, who begs for help in his unbelief, or in the disciples themselves, who wearily confess their impotence before the demon and ask Jesus why they were powerless in its face.

The Church fathers, however, did not take such a piece meal approach in their understanding of this lesson.  For them, the passage describes the condition of us all.  The boy, beset by demons, is none other than you and I, struggling in a fallen world.  The demons which beset him abuse him cruelly.  They cast the boy into both fire and water.  Both of these elements are meaningful for us.  The fire is perceived by the Fathers as the sins which so often beset us, such as anger, jealousy, hatred, lust.  These are sins that fan the flames of our passions; sins that we often seem to be drawn to, as a moth to a flame.

The child is also cast into water, and in that too the fathers saw our kinship with the unfortunate boy.  Water is seen as the worldly cares with which we are preoccupied.  The blessed Theophylact describes the burdens of daily life as "the crushing waves and billows of worldly care."   That is not a sin in and of itself.  But from common experience we know that our worries and concerns, our distractions, will keep us from God.  They will burden our hearts, and keep us from prayer.   

If we stop to think about it, we immediately recognize both of those things in our lives.  Fire and water.  Sin and cares.  They feed on each other, and if we are not careful we will find ourselves caught up in an endless circle, where we find ourselves in constant activity, always moving, but going nowhere, simply around and around and around.

In all honesty, this is where I found myself as I thought about this homily.  I have become distracted during this Holy season of Great Lent.  I find myself subject to the same irritating sins I always fall prey to, while at the same time I worry incessantly about any number of problems.  When I look at myself clearly and without deceit, I realize that I am thrashing about, working hard but getting nowhere; striving energetically, but making no progress.  Here, on this 4^th Sunday of Lent, I am steadfastly going nowhere.  I am crashing through the underbrush of my life, making a great deal of noise, but achieving exactly… nothing.

Fortunately, today’s Gospel also has the answer.  This kind, says Jesus, come out by nothing other than prayer and fasting.  In other words, we must stop our frenzied activity, and turn our minds and bodies toward God.  When we become so busy, and so distracted, we end up being subject everything but our Savior.

I am glad to be reminded of this.  It is a truth which I know, but too often forget.  I am reminded of an experience I often have, which teaches me what Lent is like:

 Late in the evening, I step out of house for a breath of air, and to look at the stars.  If you have ever done that, you know that your ability to really see stars will not be good, so long as there is other light present.  Outside my front door, the lights from inside the house could be seen, shining through the windows.  If I wanted to really see the stars in the sky, I have to leave the porch, leave the light and busyness of the house, and walk into the darkness.  If you have ever been to our house, you know that it is on the side of a hill, and there are no neighbors nearby.  So when I say that I walked into the darkness, you can imagine that it was really dark.  I could not see where I was going, I could not clearly see what was in front of me.  I picked my way down through the trees, past our shed, and onto the open space that we call the lawn.  Only then did I look up at the sky.  When I was at the house, I saw only a very few stars.  But here, having passed through the darkness, I see what appear to be thousands and thousands of stars, blazing in the night sky.

Lent is like that.  To know God, we have to walk into the darkness.  We have to leave behind the artificial distractions of our lives and enter the Gates of Repentance, into the very depths of our heart.  It is only there, freed from the sins that cripple us and the cares and distractions that turn our eyes from the Cross, that we can really see our Saviour.  It is only there that we can begin to cultivate patience, to endure our suffering, to understand our struggles.  It is only there that we find salvation.

We have two weeks left to us, plus the austere majesty of Holy Week.  Let us resolve to set aside distractions, and worldly care.  Let us turn inward, unafraid to face the darkness in our soul, and thus reach the Light of the World.  Did not our Lord tell us to seek the Kingdom of God first?  We should turn out hearts toward the celestial light.  Light of light, true God of True God.  Let us continue our Lenten journey, in hope and in love and in joy.

(Fr. Dcn. James)

Yesterday we celebrated one of the twelve feasts of the Lord, a major feast of the Church.  It was the Meeting of the Lord at the Temple, and as we stood at the property on East Cherokee Drive, consecrating the land to the service of God, I could not help but be struck by the rightness, by the appropriateness of the day.

You will remember the story of the Feast.  In accordance with Jewish law, the Virgin Mary and Joseph went to the Temple in Jerusalem forty days after Jesus’ birth.  There, they presented the child, as a first born son, to the service of God.  This was a requirement of the law.  In the Book of Exodus, we find God’s commandment that the people “sanctify to me all the first-born, whatever opens the womb”.  As we see repeatedly, Christ in every way fulfilled the ancient law, being obedient to His Father in all things.

But the law was also directed at purification.  As Metropolitan Hierotheos points out, it was considered that under the law both the mother and the child required purification.  This is not to say that children are not a blessing, nor that childbirth is itself something which is unclean, yet under the law it was a matter which required ritual purification. 

As we know, of course, neither Christ nor the Theotokos required purification or cleansing.  The birth was virgin, and the Father of Christ was no man.  Yet it was fitting and entirely expected that Christ, the Son of God, would fulfill the law in each and every respect.

But there were others in the Temple that day, and it is on them that my thoughts have turned over the last week, and particularly yesterday.  The first is the Righteous Simeon.  The tradition of the Church tells us a great deal about him.  We are told that he was one of the 70 translators of the Old Testament into Greek, the Septuagint.  Locked into separate rooms, so that each of their translations would be their independent work, uninfluenced by others, each of the 70 produced identical translations.  Simeon, however, expressed skepticism at the translation of the passage in Isaiah which foretold that a virgin would give birth, saying that it was impossible and could never happen.  He received a revelation from the Holy Spirit, was scolded for his disbelief, and was told that he would live to see the Son of God in the flesh.  For many long years, Simeon lived in expectation of the day that he would be blessed to see the Messiah, truly born of a virgin.  On the day on which the Infant Jesus was taken to the Temple, he was told by the Holy Spirit to go to the Temple, and that the time he had awaited for so long was at hand.

The Prophetess Anna was the other person that St. Luke talks about on that day.  An elderly woman, long a widow, she had devoted her life after her husband died to prayer and to fasting.  Her devotion to God was so great that she was divinely given insight into the truth concerning the child, and what his coming meant to all people.  

Two people.  A man and a woman.  For years they had dreamed of and longed for this day, when they would finally saw God face to face.  And while God in the flesh could have been revealed to them anyplace, that ultimate revelation happened in the Temple, in the house of God.

It is in the Temple that Simeon saw the fulfillment of his greatest desire, of the salvation that he has sought for so long.

It is in the Temple that the Righteous Anna, having devoted her life to prayer and supplication to God, is finally allowed to see God face to face, and is granted her ultimate understanding of the meaning of the Lord’s birth.

It is in the Temple that the old met the new, and the New was revealed.  It is in the Temple that the Lord was presented as a pure sacrifice.  It is to the Temple that the Virgin Mary, the very Theotokos, and St. Joseph humbly came, without complaint and with joy, to fulfill their duty in all piety and peacefulness.

The Temple in Jerusalem has been destroyed, but we now stand on the threshold of building and offering our own Temple to the service of the Lord.  It is no coincidence that Orthodox churches have traditionally been referred to as Temples.  The Lord himself said that “where two or three are gathered, there I am also”.  While God reveals Himself in all places and at all times, it is in the Temple that we come together to worship, to join our voices with those throughout eternity, saints and believers, angels and archangels, before the very throne of God.  We meet to serve a molieben, to supplicate God for aid and assistance.  We meet and serve vespers, and ask that “our prayers may arise in Thy sight as incense”, offering our evening worship to God.  And on Sundays and feast days, Soul Saturdays and Presanctified Liturgies, we meet and eat and drink of the most pure body of Christ. 

All of this happens in the Church, in the Orthodox temple.  Just as the Christ child was presented at the Temple so many years ago, he comes and he meets us.  To be sure, He has always done so, in all the years that this mission has been in existence.  He has met us in chapels of other faiths, in restaurants, in conference rooms and in basements.  But never before have we been in a position to build a true temple, a sacred space in which God abides, and where every time we open the door, the Lord meets us.  A space where icons grace the walls and we can gaze into the eyes of the great saints of the church.  A space where our incense freely rises to mingle with our prayers.  A space where angels guard our altar, where we tread sanctified and holy ground every time we open the doors.

We have never had this.  But we are on the threshold, the very doorway, of this great blessing and stunning miracle of God.

We have never had a home.  But now we can see it, taking shape before our very eyes.  I assure you; the angels see it and sing.  The saints see it and thank God for the fulfillment of their prayers.  We should look at it, and fall to our knees in thanksgiving.

The importance of this act, of this struggle, cannot be overstated.  It is an act of faith, not in ourselves, not in the building committee, not in Father Paul or in this Deacon, but faith in God Himself.  We build so that we may see our salvation.  We build so that we may see God face to face.  We build so that people we do not know, men and women who have not yet been born, will come to God, and will come and worship at the Divine Liturgy and at Vespers, long after each and every one of us is gone, our souls remembered only by our merciful God.  Like us, the people in years to come will gather in times of great joy, in times of great sorrow and fear, but always in gratitude and with love. 

If we stop to think about it, this is something that we can scarcely comprehend.  Imagine!  In a pasture, located in a place where Orthodoxy is largely unknown, a temple arises, bringing the faith to great numbers of people who have never heard of the Apostolic Church.  You cannot tell me that St. Herman of Alaska, St. Innocent, Sts Cyril and Methodius, have not stood before the throne in supplication for us.

We have an opportunity to bring the witness of true Orthodoxy to those in desperate need of hearing of the genuine spirit of faithfulness, of sacrifice and of love.  We have the opportunity to bring pure doctrine and true faith to a place that is awash in shallow spirituality.  You cannot tell me that the great saints of love, St. John the Theologian, St. John Chrysostom, St. Seraphim of Sarov, have not interceded for us.

We have survived for over a decade, through difficulties and discouragement.  You cannot tell me that our patroness, St. Elizabeth, has not beseeched the Lord for us.

And you can never, ever tell me that our beloved Theotokos has not constantly interceded for this mission, and for each and every one of us.

In the consecration of our land yesterday, we took an enormous step.  This is an act of consummate faith, and of consummate obedience.   The saints intercede for us.  How can we despair?  The Theotokos comes to our aid.  How can we be faint hearted?  God himself is with us.  Who can stand against Him?

This Sunday – this weekend – let us be glad.  If you have been distressed, take courage.  If you have been doubtful, thrust your cares on God.  This year, at the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord, we have met Him in a new and astonishing way.  We see before us the vision of a new Temple, in the Orthodox church of St. Elizabeth.    In this Temple, we and our children and our children’s children, along with great numbers of people we cannot know and cannot imagine, will meet the Lord.

Father Dcn. James

We are at the midpoint, more or less, of a deeply festive season. We have welcomed the Infant Jesus into the world, in the cold silence of a Bethlehem night. We have joined the shepherds and the angels, the Magi and the beasts of the field, in adoration of God made flesh. In the joy of His coming, we forgo our usual fasting. Our celebration is deep, and heartfelt.

Yet no sooner have we celebrated the Nativity then we see disquieting signs, reminders that the Incarnation is but the first step in an arduous journey of salvation. We are reminded of this on December 27, when we remember the protomartyr, the Deacon Stephen. Today, we read of the heartbreaking slaughter of the 10,000 innocents by Herod. And next Sunday, we will celebrate a feast of a different character, that of the Theophany of Christ.

In fact, in the early Church there was only one winter feast, that of the Theophany. For us today, the Nativity and the Theophany are like bookends, bracketing a season of joy and celebration, before we begin a period of ordinary time that leads us inevitably into the somber reflection of Great Lent. We might ask: what links these events? On the surface, there does not seem to be a connection. What does a new born infant have to do with the baptism of the fully grown God-man, Christ? And what does any of it have to do with us?

The answer is not found in the way we see Christmas celebrated around us, in a society which does not celebrate the baptism of Christ at all. It is only in Orthodoxy, in the Church itself, that a true and complete understanding of these events is found. And what the Church tells us is that the joy of this season does not derive from gifts we receive, but rather in what we sacrificially give. Christ, as always, is our unparalleled example. By being born of the Virgin, Christ underwent what the Fathers called kenosis, the complete emptying of Himself. The Son of God consented to a birth in rude surroundings. He entered the world not as a King, but as an infant, dependent upon his mother for care, and upon his guardian, Joseph, for protection. Where the angels sang before his throne in the heavenly courts, he is now surrounded by farm animals. The Incarnation was a voluntary denial of self that led directly to the cross. Even in the Nativity icon we see that link:

Christ, the second person of the Trinity, is born in a cave. After His crucifixion, he will be laid again into another cave, a tomb.

When He is born, he is wrapped in swaddling clothes which binds the limbs of the child. After his crucifixion, he is wrapped again in cloth.

When he is born, he is laid in a manger, a receptacle for holding food. He will indeed become food for us, and his Body and his Blood sustains us in every Liturgy.

But understanding that the child has embarked on a road to the cross does not lessen our joy. As St. Athanasius the Great exclaimed, God became man so that man might become God. The Incarnation is the opening of the door of salvation. It is the only door to salvation, and for that we are filled with gratitude. Yet it is a door which we must choose to enter. The mere existence of an open door means nothing unless we avail ourselves of the road which is offered. And it is in the Theophany that we begin to see that clearly.

It is the universal teaching of the Fathers that Christ submitted to baptism in obedience, in order to fulfill all things. He had no sin for which he needed to repent. Unlike the throngs of others who came for the baptism of John, He had nothing to confess. He needed no forgiveness. Yet in his obedience, the Trinity was revealed, as His Father declared that Jesus was His son, in which he was well pleased, and The Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove. The Godhead became apparent. From that, we understand that our own obedience is demanded.

There is an Old Testament story that helps remind us of the link between God’s work, and our own obedience. In the book of 2 Kings, we find the story of Namaan. Namaan was the powerful commander of the army of the King of Syria. At the height of his career, however, he developed the dread disease of leprosy. His wife had a slave girl, an Israelite, who told her mistress about the wonderworking prophet of God, Elisha. He, the slave girl declared, could cure Namaan of leprosy. Word got to the Syrian king, and he sent his commander to the King of Israel, carrying enormous treasure, asking that Namaan be cured.

The King of Israel misunderstood the request, thinking that he was supposed to somehow cure Namaan. Scripture tells us that the King fell into despair, tearing his clothes. The King, you see, failed to see the request through spiritual eyes, but through the eyes of the world. He thought that the King of Syria was hoping to start a quarrel, and begin a war which Israel would lose. He did not stop to think that the request was a plea for assistance, nor did he think to send the man to the Prophet Elisha, who lived within his borders.

Elisha, however, heard of the demand. He sent a message to his king, and told him to send Namaan to him. The general came to his house, with his soldiers and his chariots and all of the signs of his power. Namaan was a proud man, and a powerful one. It was not in his nature to approach Elisha in humility. In his mind, he just had this one little problem – leprosy – and if he could just be cured of it, he would go back to being the powerful man he had always been.

Standing in front of the rude house with his servants and his soldiers, what Namaan expected was that Elisha would come out to where he was impatiently waiting, wave his arms around, call on an obedient God and – viola! – he would be cured. He wanted it done quickly, and in accordance with his schedule, at his convenience. Namaan was used to getting things done as he wished.

But God had other plans. "Go," Elisha told Namaan, "and wash yourself in the Jordan River seven times, and you will be healed."

Now, I have to tell you, the Jordan is not the world’s most attractive river. It is not huge and grand like other great rivers, nor is it as pristine and delightful as a mountain stream. Frankly, Elisha’s order offended Namaan. There were prettier rivers in Syria, rivers that he would enjoy getting into and bathing. Why did he have to go into the Jordan, and why did he have to bathe seven times? Furious, Namaan turned to leave. He was going to return home. From his point of view it was humiliating to be told to go to some muddy river and wash himself seven times. He was dissuaded, however, by his servants, who said "My father, if the prophet had commanded you to do some great thing, would you not have done it?" So why not go in obedience, and wash yourself in the Jordan? Namaan obeyed, and against his every expectation, he was healed of his leprosy.

Now, there is more to this story, and in the end, Namaan’s leprosy was transferred to a servant of Elisha’s, who acted out of pride and greed. But for our purposes, let’s stop and think about Namaan.

Namaan was a proud man, used to having things his way, and doing as he wished. It was not in his nature to humble himself. Oh, he was open to anything that appealed to his heroic nature, or to any task that he could take pride in performing. But to be asked to dunk himself seven times in a muddy little river was almost more than he could stand. There was no heroism, there was no glory, there was no self, if you will, in Elisha’s command. There was only self-emptying, there was only humility, there was only obedience.

All of us can see ourselves in the person of Namaan. We are proud, and want to do things our way. We have firm ideas about the best way to live our life. We have definite preferences for what is clean and shiny and attractive, as opposed to what looks not shiny and not attractive. We all are drawn to praise for things we have done, and we bask in the admiration of other people. And we all have this little problem – call it spiritual leprosy – that we need taken care of.

In response, we must emulate Namaan. We must set aside our worldly trappings and achievements, and empty ourselves, in imitation of our Lord. We must repeatedly submerge ourselves into the Jordan of repentance, in obedience and in hope, that Christ our Lord, He who has opened the door of salvation, will heal our souls and save us. It is worth noting that the number seven in this story was not just happenstance. In scriptural terms, seven is the number of completion. It tells us that in our Christian life, we must return repeatedly to the Jordan, not for baptism by water, but for what the Fathers call the baptism of repentance. We must constantly humble ourselves before God, acknowledging our shortcomings and our sins. We must constantly submerge ourselves in the waters of the Jordan.

Do you see the lesson for us? At Christmas, Christ is born in a cave, having emptied Himself for the sake of mankind. At the Theophany, Christ is baptized in the Jordan, submerged into a muddy river in obedience and in fulfillment of the divine will, and in His obedience he sanctified the waters of the earth.

That is the thread hat connects Christmas and the Theophany. The extreme humility of Christ, and the humble response from us. Think of the infant Jesus in the cave, and know that He was born for you and I. Think of Jesus, who submitted to baptism in that muddy little river, and know that He did that for you and I. Let us respond. Let us humble ourselves to our God, and like Namaan, set aside our pride and our achievements. Let us seek the baptism of repentance, dipping ourselves into the Jordan, for as long as we live.

(Fr. Dcn. James)

There is little that has caused such division in the Christian world than the issue of wealth. An entire school of religious thought, known as liberation theology, infected parts of the Roman Catholic church in the 1960s, and continues to this day, teaching that the wealthy are simply instruments of oppression, and that the Kingdom of God is found in seeking what they view as economic justice. Several centuries ago, some early protestant sects taught that wealth was in and if itself evil. On the other extreme, in our day and age, other protestant denominations, particularly here in the United States, teach that wealth is a gift which God will give to every true Christian who "names it and claims it", and that every "true" Christian should be awarded earthly riches. Regardless of our theology, however, this is an issue we are always facing in our culture. The truth of the matter is that we living in this country are each wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of any Biblical king or ruler. So what are we to think, when we see such polarized viewpoints, and then read today’s rather challenging gospel?

The answer is not found in economic analysis, but in spiritual reality. It is worth reminding ourselves at the outset that there is very little that is inherently evil. Food is given to us for nourishment and enjoyment, but when it becomes an obsessive focus of life, it becomes the sin of gluttony. Sexual intimacy is a God given gift for men and women in marriage, but the misuse of sex produces sins ranging from lust to adultery to homosexuality. Drugs are a way for us to be healed of disease and infirmity, yet wrongly used they become an open door for sin of all kinds.

Understanding that kind of thought provides a way to approach the issue of wealth, and indeed, all of life. In his exchange with the rich young ruler, Jesus is not engaged in economic analysis, but instead in the diagnosis and treatment of souls.

We look at our passage to understand the lesson. A young man, described as a rich ruler, comes to Jesus. It appears that he is seeking justification, or at least some reassurance that he is on the right spiritual path. In response to Jesus’ questions, he asserts that he has followed the commandments all of his life. He has not committed adultery, nor murder. He has not stolen from others, borne false witness, nor failed to honor his parents. He has, in other words, followed the rules. He has obeyed the commandments. In the eyes of the Jews, he was most certainly a righteous man. For us, living today, his way of life would be considered praiseworthy. We are all required, at a minimum, to keep the commandments of God. What could be more simple? But the truth is that the "thou shall not"s of Scripture are only, if you will, kindergarten for Christians. If we want more, if we want to follow the road of the saints and truly become the children of God, we must not think that our spiritual life stops there.

Jesus, seeing the young man with the eyes of God, knew that, and pierced right to the heart of the matter. The issue, as Jesus observes, is not simple obedience of rules and regulations. The issue is not whether or not we can justify ourselves, to make ourselves appear to be righteous or worthy of commendation. The true issue, the key question which every Christian must face, is whether or not a person has surrendered his entire life to God, or does he or she reserve some parts wholly for himself. Put another way, does a person observe the more difficult commandments of the New Testament: that he truly love the Lord God with all of his heart, and all of his strength, and all of his soul, and that he love his neighbor as himself? Or has he compartmentalized his life, so that God is consigned to only one of a great number of boxes, pigeon-holed and kept separate from the rest of life?

Jesus knew that the focus of the young man was his wealth. It was what characterized his life. It was, in the end, the way in which he defined who he was and what he did. It was, in the end, the thing that kept him from God. He thus challenged his questioner to abandon the very thing that, whether or not the man knew it, separated him from God. To that end, Jesus asked the man to surrender that part of him which he kept separate and that he valued the most – his wealth. Keep in mind that in this instance, wealth was simply the symptom of the disease. In other circumstances, with other people, it was something else. Often it was a rigid attachment to the Law itself, or to the odds and ends of daily life. The point is that in each instance, here is something separating the person from true worship, from a genuine relationship with God.

St. Clement of Alexandria spoke to this very issue, when he wrote:

As St. Clement points out, many have disposed of their wealth to no benefit, if their underlying passions remain. And St. John Chrysostom, who himself spoke harshly of the wealthy in his own age, noted that even the poor are lost if they have within themselves the same overwhelming attraction to riches and wealth. For that matter, it is worth remembering that there were people close to Jesus who had wealth: Matthew the tax collector turned Evangelist, Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimethea. It is not the money. It is the heart of the one who holds it.

Looked at in this way, we see an immensely important principle that we can, and should apply to our own life. The question is not what do we have in the bank. The question instead is this: how do we define ourselves? How do we see ourselves, and more importantly, how do we appear to God?

For many of us, this is a genuine challenge. It is not uncommon to reserve some aspect of our lives as being outside of our faith. That preserve, that part of our life that is separate from God, can be anything. For some of us, it may be our desire for wealth, or what we do for a living. For others, it may be a seemingly unimportant hobby or passion. It may be the music we like, the clothes we wear, or the television and movies we like to watch. Whatever it may be, we know – if we are honest with ourselves – that this is an area that we like to keep for ourselves. We may even say, as the young man in today’s gospel did, that it doesn’t matter because we are at least obeying the ten commandments, and that we are, on the surface anyway, leading a moral life.

There are two problems with that sort of thinking. The first is that any area we segregate from Christ is an open door for sin to enter our life, because any such part of our life is almost certainly rooted in some passion, some deeply held personal desire. St. Theodoros the Great Ascetic plainly describes how being drawn away from the protecting grace of God occurs in but a moment.

In other words, whether we simply allow ourselves a seemingly harmless pleasure, or give in to a larger passion such as greed or lust, it can cause a cascade of sin and error, leaving us in dire straits, and sorely afflicted.

But there is another reason as well. If we allow ourselves to focus on that deeply held passion or desire, it causes us to miss entirely what God may be saying to us. From experience, we know that our worldly interests create, if you will, a background noise for our lives. We think to ourselves that if we are straying where we ought not, that our conscience will warn us, and that God will call us back. But the background noise of our lives will often drown out that warning, if we are not constantly attentive to the leading of the Lord. In the Old Testament Book of First Kings, there is a passage describing an experience of the prophet Elijah as he awaits the Lord:

The still small voice is the Lord. In our gospel today, Jesus knew that even though the rich young ruler kept the rules, and observed the law, that his desire for wealth, his defining characteristic, was also the background noise that would keep him from hearing the still small voice. It was what would keep him from truly entering the Kingdom of God, because if he could not hear that whispering voice, he would never find the gate.

This is the challenge for us. We may not be rich young rulers, and we may think this gospel does not apply to us. We may lead moral lives, not breaking any of the rules, and we may think that this gospel does not apply to us. But if we are honest with ourselves, we will see something, somewhere inside of us, that we cling to tenaciously, an area of our life which we stubbornly refuse to yield to God. Whatever it may be, we find ourselves faced with the dilemma of the young man – can we surrender that which we hold dear, that we clutch to ourselves and call it precious – can we abandon that, for the love of Christ?

(Fr. Dcn. James)

What is faith?

Both our Gospel and our epistle today focus on issues of faith. In the reading from Luke, we find that the faith of the woman who was suffering from the issue of blood brings forth healing from our Lord. And in our epistle, St. Paul makes it plain that it is by faith alone that we are saved.

But what is faith? What constitutes saving faith in Christ? That may seem like a question with an obvious answer, but in fact the simple truth has become obscured in our day and age. We have all had the experience of our neighbors or friends or family members, people who come from one or another Protestant denomination, who come to us and talk about "being saved"? Often, they will tell us that Orthodoxy is not true Christianity, because they perceive, from the outside looking in, that because our faith is an active one then we believe that we are saved by our works. It is true enough that our faith is one where we believe that we have a role to play in our salvation. We do not sit passively, but we pray and fast and prostrate ourselves. We give alms, we confess, we participate in sacraments. So we may be told from time to time that what we do is simply works, and that they are unnecessary. If you are unfortunate enough to run up upon a theology geek, that person may try to tell you that the Orthodox are semi-pelagian, which is a fancy way of saying that we supposedly rely on works, instead of faith, for our salvation.

Given that our culture is overwhelmingly protestant, this is a message that we will hear fairly frequently. And it is not just you and I, but our brothers and sisters around the world. Indeed, Russia and eastern Europe are even now flooded with Protestant missionaries, eager and anxious to convert the Orthodox away from the Church, and into whatever variety of protestantism the missionary subscribes to. So it is important to understand, as Orthodox Christians, what faith is, and what it is not. If we know the truth, then we will not be easily swayed by delusion and error. Just as important, if we know the truth, then we may ourselves help to heal our neighbors of their own misunderstanding, and bring them to the Church founded by Christ himself.

We look first at our gospel. Jesus, as usual, is in the midst of a great crowd of people. You can imagine the scene. Enormous numbers of people surround him. Some are his disciples, some are there seeking help for an affliction or circumstance. Others are there to report back to the Sanhedrin about what he might say; still others are simply curious. There can be no doubt that a great many of them sincerely believed that Jesus was the long awaited Messiah.

In your mind’s eye, you can imagine the scene. So many people, pressing inward toward one messiah. So it would be easy not to notice a shy, pale woman creeping almost furtively toward Christ. As Jesus walked through this milling mass of people, the woman came up behind him, reached out her hand and touched the hem of his robe.

It is important to understand what drove this woman. St. Luke, who was himself a physician, tells us that she was suffering from a condition which had caused an issue of blood from her continuously for twelve years. Aside from the obvious physical pain and distress that this caused her, the condition had other ramifications. Among the Jews, a woman in that condition was unclean. She was not fit for the company of others, and moreover, she was not fit to enter the synagogue, to even be in the presence of God. This is a woman who was closed out of everything. She was blocked from the company of other people; she was barred from the worship of God.

You can imagine her distress! St. Luke tells us that she had journeyed from doctor to doctor. She had expended what means she had, in order to pay one physician after another. And without exception, none of the doctors to whom she went had been able to help her in the least. After twelve years, she is still lonely, she is still ill, she is still burdened in every way.

It is in that condition that she meekly approaches Jesus. Notice that she is so downtrodden that she did not have the courage to approach our Lord openly. Rather, she very quietly and humbly, almost surreptitiously, approaches. She does not presume to be worthy of Jesus’ time, but tells herself that if she can simply reach him, and touch his Robe, she will be healed.

In fact, that is what happens. Jesus immediately perceived that power had flowed from him, and asked "who has touched me?" Although his reply is rather sarcastic, Peter provides us with an important detail in his answer, when he notes that there is a multitude thronging around Jesus, that there are a great many people who must have touched Jesus. In Peter’s mind it was pointless to try to identify one person who had touched Christ. It could have been any number of people. It was silly, he implied, for Jesus to even ask. Yet Jesus knew that in that great mob, with people pressing in on all sides, that only one person had touched him in any meaningful fashion. Only one person had reached out in hope and in love. Only one person had touched him in faith.

For the church fathers, the story of this woman goes beyond gender, and it goes beyond physical illness. In this desperate woman, unclean and lonely, the Church sees us all. Each of us is burdened with sins. Each of us knows loneliness. Each of us knows despair. And in our desperate straits, we reach out to Christ. The Blessed Theophylact, commenting on this passage, says this:

So what is different? In the middle of a crowd of people who thought that Jesus was someone very special, what distinguishes this woman?

It is this: she did not simply believe, on an intellectual level. She does not simply assent to the truth of who Jesus is. She does not simply take that internal knowledge and cherish it in her heart. Rather, she takes that knowledge that lives in her heart, and expresses it in her actions. She pursues Jesus and she reaches out her hand to him. She does not wait passively for him. She acts. She does, if you will, perform a work.

That is what distinguishes Orthodoxy, the true faith, from what passes for faith in our culture. We do not simply believe. We do not see our belief as a pretext for entertainment, or as an invitation to believe that faith is expressed in the heft of our Bible and the size of our mega-church. Instead, we see our whole life as a journey toward God. Your friends may ask you to "make a decision for Christ" or to pray what they call the sinners prayer. Once you do this simple act, they will tell you, your salvation is assured. But how sad is that promise? What if you thought that once you said "I do" in the wedding, you never needed to do anything more, that your marriage was eternally secure! A decision is only a beginning, a first step on a long and arduous journey, or what St. Paul repeatedly refers to as a race, or a contest.

Sadly, some parts of scripture, and especially our epistle today, have been misinterpreted over the last several hundred years. St. Paul’s reference to being saved by grace in our epistle today must be read in combination with everything else he wrote. Did the Apostle Paul ever stop striving, ever declare that worship was intended to entertain those attending the service, ever simply stop and say that the job was done? There is no doubt that we are saved by grace, and that our works do not save us. But our efforts, however meager, are essential to our salvation, for God takes our small offering, our evidence of faith, and by grace transforms us and in the process saves us.

So the next time someone asks you if you have been saved, tell them that salvation is a journey, it is a race, it is a synergy of faith and grace that extends beyond this life into the next one. As Orthodox Christians, we commit our lives, our entire being, to God. A decision? Our faith is more than that. It is active and vital. It gives structure to our lives, and substance to our worship. Our faith has put us on a road, one that we travel together. We don’t just make a decision and then wait on the side of the road for a bus to come pick us up. Instead, our faith is the road, and God’s grace is what energizes us to complete our journey, through sorrow and joy, good times and bad, until we complete our race and come face to face with our Creator.

(Deacon James)

The Apostle and Evangelist John tells us, very simply, that "God is love." We take this as an article of faith, but sometimes it is good for us to be reminded of how deep, how limitless, that love is. Our gospel today gives us that opportunity, for in the story of the widow of Nain we see that side of Christ which demonstrates his boundless compassion.

In our reading today, we are told that Jesus was traveling in the vicinity of the village of Nain. It is worth noting that as far as importance goes, Nain had none. It was simply a small place on the side of the road, and Jesus is simply traveling past it. It is not his destination, nor does it ever appear again in scripture. It is not like Jerusalem, or Capernaum, or any of the places we associate with our Lord. It is an unimportant place, and there is no good reason for Jesus to perform a miracle there.

Nonetheless, as Jesus is passing by, he comes upon a funeral procession leaving the town, making its way to a freshly dug grave. The deceased is a young man, and foremost among the mourners is his mother, a widow. The fact that his mother is a widow has some significance. In that age, a woman was wholly dependant on her husband, or if her husband is dead on her sons, for her support. We are led to understand that in losing her son, the widow was losing her last support. This is not only an emotional loss. It is a loss which devastates the poor woman in every way. She has lost the one she loves, and her life stretches out before her, empty and forbidding.

In an instant, Jesus understood the situation. The evangelist tells us that he was moved by compassion, stretched forth his hand, and brought the man back to life. We are not told that the widow was a Jew. We are not told that she was one of his followers. We are not told that she even knew who Jesus was. We are told only that Jesus was moved, that he performed this miracle simply and solely out of love.

If we look at this story in context, it gains even more power. Immediately before this passage, Jesus had healed the servant of the centurion. You will remember that in that instance, the centurion was a God-fearing gentile, a man who admired and tried to follow the dictates of Judaism, who had sent word asking that Christ heal his servant of an illness. "Don’t bother coming," the centurion said, "I am not worthy to have you in my house, but I know that you have authority over all things. A word from you, and my servant will be healed." In that instance, it is the faith of the centurion that causes Jesus to marvel, and to heal the servant.

In rapid succession, there are two miracles. One is compelled by great faith. The other is compelled by great love. The contrast is important, for it teaches us two very great things.

The first is this: our faith is crucial to us. We are Orthodox Christians, and we know that our entire life is directed at matters of faith. We are members of the church of Christ, and we have unimaginable riches, great sacraments that literally allow us to meet God face to face. We commune the Body and Blood, we stand before God and confess our sins and receive absolution, we are married in the sight and presence of God. Every time we receive a sacrament, we receive God himself. Our whole life is devoted to growing in faith, growing in purity, growing in holiness, becoming ever more obedient to God. We strive for the great faith of the centurion, because we have seen God in our lives, and we know his power and his presence. Faith is the bedrock of our communion.

But we know this as well: at times we are distraught by fear or pain. We may be beset by our own sin. Our faith may not be as sturdy as we would like. We may have friends or family members with no faith at all, but for whom we are deeply concerned. We pray and we pray, but life continues to be chaotic, and sin is the hallmark of the world around us. Our own faith may be shaken. In that case, we rely on the love of God, the love that caused Jesus to resurrect the son of a woman he did not know. Do you remember the story of the raising of Lazarus? When Jesus reached his friend’s tomb, he found Lazarus’ family and friends grieving over his death, and scripture tells us that at the sight, Jesus wept.

Do you see? Our faith is what carries us toward God. God’s love is what brings him to meet us. God is never blind to our suffering, or to our deepest needs. On an individual level, we identify with all of these people. One day, we may be the centurion, full of sturdy faith. The next, we may be the widow, sorrowing over our loved ones. And on yet another day, we may find ourselves in the position of the young man, spiritually dead and desperately in need of the unsought and undeserved compassion of God.

But there is another dimension to this, a vitally important one that speaks to us in a somewhat different way. The Church Fathers see in the figure of the sorrowing widow a representation of the Church herelf. The great British saint, the Venerable Bede, writing of this passage, said

Saint Ambrose of Milan follows the same thought, when he says:

It is a beautiful image. Our mother, the Church, weeps for her children out of a true love. Yet what is the Church, but we, ourselves, assembled as the Body of Christ? Saint Ambrose completes the picture:

We – the Church – pray in faith and in love for each other. We lament for our own sins, we grieve for those around us, we beseech the Lord for mercy, for each and every one of us. We pray in faith, like the Centurion. We pray in grief and in urgent need, like the widow. And God responds. He hears our prayers. He raises us from spiritual death, and after physical death, he rescues us from the grave.

Never let anyone tell you that prayer is futile. Never let yourself be persuaded that your heartfelt prayers fall on deaf ears. We may not always recognize the answers to our prayer. We may even conclude that God is not answering our prayers. But be assured, prayer is always answered by our loving and compassionate God. At times, like the prodigal son, people may themselves delay the fulfillment of prayer, but God is always ready to meet us, and heal us. He does not promise us fame or wealth or everlasting good health, or worldly happiness and success. But in his love, He promises peace for our spirit, and love for our soul.

Similarly, never let anyone tell you that prayer for those who have passed on is meaningless. People who tell you that, usually in ignorance, are really committing a terrible slander on the Lord. Does love stop at the grave? Do you no longer love those who have been important in your life – mother or father, wife or husband, son or daughter, brother or sister, friend or companion – simply because they have passed from this life? Our love never stops, and if that is true for us, how much more is it true for God himself? That is why we pray and give alms, and do works in remembrance of those who have passed, and God responds, in compassion and in love, in ways that we cannot fully understand. St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco spoke passionately of this in a homily of his own, saying:

The story of the widow of Nain is a wonderful story. It reminds us that the Gospel, like the Christian life itself, is seamless and perfect. The demands made on us are no less than the demands of love and of faith. As the Apostle John said, God is indeed love. And He responds to us, to the Church, as we in faith and in love cry out to him. For ourselves, for each other. For the living; for the dead; for the entire world. We cry out for mercy and for love and always – always – God responds. It is for this – faith and love – that we will be held accountable at the dread judgment seat. Nothing else. Not buildings, not numbers, not visible success. Faith and love. This is our life in the Church, it is our life in Christ.

(Fr. Deacon James)

"The Kingdom of Heaven is like a marriage feast." This is a common enough image in the Scriptures. We find it in several places, and hear it on more than one occasion during the year. While we normally think of a wedding as a joyous occasion, however, when we see it in the Gospels it is almost always accompanied by sobering lessons. This is the dilemma we see in today’s gospel. Our Saviour describes for us a joyful setting, and then injects elements of doubt, uncertainty and even fear. Jesus’ parable has some challenging aspects to it, important meanings that we need to understand, and to think about.

The image of the wedding feast is an important one for the Church. Generally speaking, it refers to the bond, to the union of Christ and his Church. As members of the Church, we are guests at the feast. By virtue of our baptism and chrismation, we have become members of the family of God or, as St. John the Evangelist says, we have become the children of God. We are family members come to celebrate a great event. In a sense, Liturgy every Sunday is a feast, as we come to the Lord’s table and partake of what He has prepared for us. In a broader sense, the wedding feast continues for all time, and in heaven itself. There, we will, as the prayer of Thanksgiving after communion says, "attain to the everlasting rest, where the voice of those who feast is unceasing, and the gladness of those who behold the goodness of Thy countenance is unending". Whether here or in heaven, the feast is an occasion of joy and celebration, a mark of the enormous love which God has for all of His children.

Yet we also know that simply being within the Church does not guarantee our salvation. We do not belong to the "once saved, always saved" camp. St. Gregory the Great reminds us that both good and bad are mixed together in the Church, and we see the truth of that in our own times. The Church has men and women of amazing sanctity, and it has others – lay people, clergy, even occasional bishops – who harbor within themselves soul destroying passions.

Now, of course, none of us is immune from the passions; from greed or lust or anger. Most of us are between the two extremes of good and evil. If we are serious about our faith, we are striving to work out our salvation. We consciously struggle with the sins and temptations in our life. We fervently seek to root the passions out of our soul, through prayer, through fasting, through confession, and through partaking of communion. As our life continues, we gradually shed more and more of these blemishes of our spirit, as we draw ever closer to God. It is that cleansing, that conscious effort to follow the Lord, that creates our wedding garment, the one that we wear to the feast.

You see, when Jesus tells us that the man was confronted for not wearing a wedding garment, it is not clothing He is talking about. As long as we dress modestly and with an eye toward honoring the sanctity of the Church, what we wear is unimportant. This is no beauty pageant!

But our spiritual garment – our wedding garment – is of the utmost importance. It is woven of the virtues we have cultivated, and of the love we have expressed. The Church Fathers tell us that our wedding garment is woven on a divine loom, from the twin strands of love of God and love of neighbor. It is what tells the world that we are indeed Orthodox Christians. Not in a showy fashion, where we proudly speak of how much we fast or pray or read the Fathers. Nor is our garment apparent if we speak critically of other Orthodox Christians, and attack them for some presumed failure in praxis or what we view as faulty tradition. This is self-justification, it is puffed up pride. St. Paul spoke to his own spiritual children, saying this:

"Do we begin again to commend ourselves? Or do we need, as some others, epistles of commendation to you or letters of commendation from you? You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men...written not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart."

Or listen to Jesus, speaking at the Sermon on the Mount:

"You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men."

Do you see? Coldness and pride in our hearts separates us from God. We must have love for each other, love for those who visit us in our homes and in our parish, love for those who we meet in the byways of life. If we secretly cherish pride or resentment, we do not show the love of Christ. Instead, we show the disdain of the devil. That is the garment of the Pharisee, and there is no love in it.

In the parable, we are told that the man not wearing such a garment, utterly unable to defend himself, is cast into the outer darkness. What is the outer darkness? It is separation from God. In the parable, where the king represents God himself, we see the man bound hand and foot and consigned to the darkness. It is a spiritual reality that if we nurture our resentment or pride we may find ourselves cast into the eternal darkness, separated from the light and the warmth, from the joy of the feast. The soul is bound, for it is no longer able to help itself, to show charity or love. And while that is a judgment of God, it is one we have authored ourselves. We choose to love or to hate. To blame or to forgive. To grasp or to give. We have been admitted into the kingdom. If, like the man in today’s parable, we find that we have been ejected from it, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

That is why we are told that many are called, but few are chosen. The truth is that we are all called. It is not a question of whether God wants us. He wants all of us to be saved. Rather, it is a question of whether or not we want God. Those who are chosen are those who wish to be chosen. While we cannot save ourselves, we must, in the first instance, make up our mind to pursue God. Our life, indeed, our entire being, must ceaselessly focus on the task we have begun, in cooperation with God Himself, of weaving our wedding garment. We cannot let ourselves be unprepared for the great wedding feast that we will all attend.

(Fr. Deacon James)

When we come to church and hear the reading of the Epistle for the day, we are used to hearing that the reading is from a letter written by St. Paul. Indeed, almost all of the New Testament epistles are written by St. Paul, and over time they become familiar to us. We see him, rightly, as the teacher of great theological truths. Yet we sometimes forget the context in which he lived and operated, and how that context relates to us.

Imagine, if you will, a parish that is fairly new, one that is struggling to define itself. It is a parish that is located in an environment where most of the people around it do not understand what the parish believes or how it worships. This small parish does not have a building of its own. Usually it meets in borrowed space or in the home of one of its members. Its members sometimes face hostility from their own family members. At other times, conflict within the parish itself causes people to leave, or even to fall away from the faith entirely. But most of the Christians in this parish remain devout and dedicated, and strive to live a Christian life, following after Christ Himself.

When I describe that parish, you may think that I am describing St. Elizabeth Mission, and you would be right. But that same description applies also to every church that received an epistle from St. Paul. Whether in Rome or Corinth, in Ephesus or Thessalonica, Paul was a missionary, and he lived and breathed in the context of the missions that he established. Paul was not writing to people in great cathedrals, or in long established parishes. He was writing to small missions; to people with whom he was intimately familiar. We see this in every letter. He greets by name great numbers of people, and passes along greetings from other people who are wherever he is at. Like it is now, you can tell that the Church of St. Paul’s time was a small world. Sometimes we hear about six degrees of separation to describe how close we might be to people we don’t know in different parts of the world. In the Church, I think it is more like two or three degrees of separation at most, and that was certainly true in St. Paul’s day.

I make a big deal out of this for a reason. If we understand that Paul was writing to people who were like us, and faced many of the same pressures that we face, and the problems that we face, then it gives us a new perspective on what Paul is saying. He is not simply writing theory. He is writing what he has found to be day to day truth.

When I first looked at today’s epistle, I was struck by how precisely it spoke to our own situation here at St. Elizabeth. It is as though the great Apostle was thinking of us when he wrote these words to the small and struggling fellowship in Rome. St. Paul is talking to us about our role in the Church, and about how we relate to each other. It is important to understand what he teaches, because the Body of Christ is not like any other group of people. It is not like a corporation or a social club, it is not like the boy scouts or a school. It is a unique body, infused with the Holy Spirit, and purchased, and led, by Christ Himself.

The first thing that Paul teaches us is that we all have a role to play. There is nobody in this parish that simply attends, that is simply a warm body occupying space, that is not important to the life of the Church. Instead, St. Paul teaches us that we all have a gift. For some, it is ministry, for others teaching, or encouragement, or leadership, or even mercy. Nor should we think that the list in today’s reading is exclusive. In several other places in his epistles, the Apostle has similar teachings, and his list of gifts or ministries is different in each instance. In truth, there is no list of spiritual gifts, set in stone to the exclusion of all else.

It is funny in a way. You sometimes hear people expressing some amount of angst over the question "What is my spiritual gift?" Sermons are preached, classes are taught, weekend retreats are conducted, all with the goal of trying to determine: what is my spiritual gift? Often people have trouble deciding. I have had people talk to me at length, dithering about whether they are called to prophesy, or teach, or...well, fill in the blank.

Here is the truth of the matter: your spiritual gift, in the way that St. Paul speaks of it, is whatever you find yourself naturally doing. If you sing, that is your gift. If you teach, that is your gift. If you are good with administration or finances and you use this to serve the parish, then that is your gift. If you sit quietly in a corner and just smile at everyone, that is your gift. And, over time, the gift you offer may change, as a person matures and develops in Christ. A person may decide to sing, or a man may decide that he wishes to look into entering the clergy. If it is a natural progression, untainted by pride or vainglory, then you can be confident that it is God that leads you.

There is a corollary to this. Since each of us brings our gift, our unique contribution to this parish, we feel it deeply when that person is no longer there. It really doesn’t matter why the person leaves. It may be death, or because the family has to move. It may be due to some vague discontent or perceived conflict. For whatever reason a person is no longer with us, the truth is that we have all suffered a loss. There is a hole in the fabric of the parish, a hole that must be repaired. And – it must be said – the person that leaves will, on some level, either consciously or unconsciously, also feel a sense of loss.

Do you see? A parish family is a mystical family. It is a microcosm of the Church as a whole. We are not a random group of people, but a collection of souls, brought by God into one place in order to constitute that local Body of Christ. St. Paul certainly understood that, and for that reason he continues today’s epistle with the second great teaching. Having each brought our gift to the Church, we must be bound by love. It is worth hearing again what he has to say:

(Fr. Deacon James)

Today, the Sunday of All Saints, is one of those Sundays where we listen to the Epistle and the Gospels, and we think to ourselves: This is hard. In our epistle reading, St. Paul writes of saints of God who were martyred in terrible ways. In our Gospel reading, Christ Himself tells us that we must carry our cross, and leave everything we love behind. We listen to this, and we say "How can I ever hope to be a saint? How can I follow Christ in the way that He demands of us?"

If it helps, you aren’t the first to ask that question. No less a saint than St. John Chrysostom struggled to understand how mere men and women become deified, become saints and true friends of Christ. In thinking about our epistle today, he wrote:

The truth is that we find this same despondency in the lives of every saint. A memorable example is that of Abba Poeman of the Desert Fathers. On his deathbed, the saintly man wept. His disciples were puzzled. They asked him: Why are you weeping, you who are so pleasing to God? The Abba whispered, "Because I have not yet begun to repent." Indeed, what saint hasn’t confessed to those around him or her that they are awash in sin, and not worthy of the Lord?

The truth of the matter is this: no man or woman has ever been born a saint from the womb. Saints are no different than you and I. They have failings, and they have weaknesses and they have sins. For example, the Life of St. Silouan the Athonite, a twentieth century saint, relates that he grew up in a village in Russia, where he was considered kind of a big galoot. He was just like every other young man in the village, drinking and chasing girls. On one occasion, while he was drunk, he hit another young man so hard that he almost killed him. Yet today St. Silouan is revered as a saint.

St. Moses the Ethiopian was a robber and a murderer. Today he is a saint.

St. Mary of Egypt led a life that even today, in our own permissive society, would be considered incredibly decadent. Today, she is a saint.

St. Photini, the woman at the well, led a life so shameful that Jesus found her at the well at noon, the hot part of the day. Photini had gone to fetch water at that time, instead of during the cooler parts of the day, in order to avoid the disapproving looks and comments of the other women. Today, she is a saint.

The examples are endless. So how did these men and women, along with enormous numbers of others known and unknown, become saints, great heroes of the Church that we celebrate today as being part of that great cloud of witnesses?

The answer is this: they did it one step at a time. And the first step that each and every one of them took was to make a decision, however tiny, to set aside his or her own will, and instead to follow the will of God. One faltering step, which was followed by another, which was followed by another. Because being a saint is less a reflection of instantaneous glory than it is the story of a journey.

This is a journey we can take. If you say to yourself "I can never be a saint", then my answer to you is this: Here is the road. Every step is a choice. Every moment of every day, we are forced to make choices. Maybe at night we are tired, and do not feel like praying. We can still make the choice to pray. We may feel bombarded by messages from our culture that appeal to our passions, to our baser nature. We can make a choice, and avert our eyes. We can always find a reason not to come to the services of the Church, or to fast within our capabilities, or to read the Scripture or the lives of the Saints, or to love our neighbor. Or we can make a choice to do those things, one step at a time. The key is that we voluntarily make decisions which set aside our own will, in favor of the will of God. St. Symeon the New Theologian, comparing his time to those in which the saints were martyred and put to death, put it this way:

Do you see? This is not about HAVING to do things. We are not like some people, who will tell you that if you don’t do this or don’t do that, then God will consign you to Hell. It is not about duty or obligation or requirements. It is about love.

Consider, if you will, your human relationships. Perhaps you are married, or think about your relationship with your parents or children. We all know that in such a relationship, if you do only what you think you have to do in order to get by, the relationship will not last. The marriage will dissolve, the relationship with children or parents will rupture. We all know this is true. We know instinctively that we must lay our own will aside, even if it means doing things we might not feel like doing, or not doing things which we might otherwise want to do. We sacrifice our will for the sake of love.

Christ did precisely this for us. The second Person of the Trinity came for us, to rescue us. Do you think that when Christ was nailed on the Cross that He was thinking "Oh boy! I’ve been looking forward to this!" Of course not. Yet He did all of this – the Cross, the nails, the spear – for us. He built the Church, for us. He gives us the Sacraments, including His own pure Body and Blood, as manifestations of His love, for us. He sends the Holy Spirit, to enlighten and illumine us all, for us. His most pure Mother entirely subsumed her own will, and agonized at the foot of the Cross, ultimately for us.

The fact that you are here this morning is proof enough that there is within you that love. Whether it is great or small; a blazing flame of love, or an almost imperceptible ember, it is enough to start. Take that love within you, and if you but take that first step, you are on the road traveled by the saints. And here is the wonderful part: We do not journey alone. If we take one step toward God, He takes many more steps toward us. As we journey, His angels and the Saints uphold us, God Himself immeasurably aids us. Sure, there will be missteps. There will even be times when we might lose direction and travel the wrong way entirely. But that is why we were given the Church, so that we might have guidance, so that we might have a map. The Church teaches us, and gives us provision, and gives us companions. We are equipped with everything we need to make the journey to sainthood. All that is required of us is to put one foot in front of the other.

And here is a mystery that the saints teach us: however hard it may be to take those steps, the more we persevere, the greater our joy. The more we give up, the more we receive. The more we love Christ, the more we love our neighbor. The more we humble ourselves, the more we participate on God’s glory. We may look at the road before us and say "But it is so hard". The Saints look at that same road and say "It is so beautiful!" Saints respond to the love of Christ with love, and the closer they come to God, the more their hearts overflow.

There is an old saying of the Church that the purpose of the existence of the local parish is to produce saints. This is a true saying. This parish of St. Elizabeth has one purpose: to make saints of those who are its members. Never let it be said that will never be any saints in this parish! We should make it our mission to prove otherwise. Let us begin our journey today. Be watchful for the choices you make. Pray, and consciously decide that you will seek the Lord’s will, and set aside your own. Do not worry about stumbling. Even Christ stumbled in carrying His cross, and someone else carried if for Him for a time. St. Paul himself tells us that in our weakness His strength is more than sufficient. We need only persevere, taking one step after the other, and we will find joy beyond our imagining in this journey of love. We may never appear on an icon, and we may not be remembered by those who follow us, but we may certainly take our place in that great cloud of witnesses.

(Fr. Deacon James)

At first glance, it might seem odd that we end Bright Week with our reading today. We are ending the most joyous week of the year. Why then does the Church raise the issue of doubt at this time? Yet if we think about Bright Week, the reason becomes clear. This week we returned to our life and our routines, and even though the joy of Pascha remained, for most of us our problems and fears emerged once again. And every time we give in to fear or doubt, we are really exhibiting a problem with belief. If we truly believe that Christ is who we say He is, then we shrug off all that life can throw at us. So – Why don’t we believe? And more to the point, how do we overcome our disbelief? These are the questions raised by today’s Gospel; questions that in fact permeate all of scripture. Time after time, we see those who should know better struggling with doubt and fear. So it is no wonder that the Church has appointed this story, that of St. Thomas, for this first Sunday after Pascha.

The story in the Gospel is compelling. It takes place late in the day on Sunday, the very day of the Resurrection. The disciples have heard the incredible news of the myrrh-bearing women, yet they obviously do not believe it. After all, they had seen the beaten, bloody corpse of Jesus. They knew, beyond any doubt, of His death.

Even aside from the grief they were struggling with, the Disciples were in deep fear and anxiety. The Jews had brought about the crucifixion of their Lord, and it was not beyond belief to think that they themselves were in grave danger. They were known to be followers of Jesus, and there was every reason to think that there was a price on their own heads. We can only imagine their fear! Jesus is dead. Judas – formerly a trusted member of their circle – was first a traitor and then a suicide. The disciples themselves had shamefully run away, forsaking Christ, and at least one, Peter, had denied even knowing Him. As they gathered on that Sunday evening in the upper room, and locked the door for protection, there was nothing to cheer them. They were in mourning, aware of their cowardice, and looking at any moment for the arrest to come which would result in their own death. The disciples suffered from unbelief arising from their fear.

Yet, truth be told, the disciples had every reason to have confidence that Christ was resurrected. Aside from the report of the women, they had their own experiences to fall back upon. Time after time, Christ Himself had told them that he would rise again after three days. In our readings during Lent, how many times did we read just those words? The disciples had, with their own eyes, seen Christ perform astonishing miracles. They had heard, with their own ears, His teaching, and some of them had even witnessed the revelation of His transfiguration in the uncreated light of God. They should have known, utterly and completely, that Christ was not confined to the grave.

Nonetheless, it was not until the moment that Jesus appeared to them, in the locked room, that belief came to them. John tells us that the disciples rejoiced, and I think we can assume that was an understatement. Imagine their joy! That is not to say that their problems disappeared, or that they were no longer in danger of death, or that they had not acted shamefully just days before. But now they knew beyond any doubt that the Lord had risen. More to the point, their unbelief was changed to belief, to an unshakeable faith. We see evidence of that in today’s epistle reading, describing how not too long after this the Apostles are teaching and healing, openly proclaiming the Gospel, no longer shaken by the dangers which faced them.

But on this, the Sunday of the Resurrection, their faith was grounded. All except for poor Thomas. Thomas was not a bad person – he is a saint of the Church -- but he was a little bit of a pessimist. He always assumed the worst. In Chapter 11 of John’s gospel, we find him already showing that part of his personality. When Jesus, having been told of Lazarus’ illness, told the disciples that they were going to Bethany, what was Thomas’ reaction? He said: "Let us also go, that we may die with Him." When later the other disciples tell him of Jesus’ appearance in the Upper Room, he again takes the pessimistic view. "I’ll believe it when I actually put my fingers into His wounds."

Imagine – for eight days, all of the disciples and the women are doing everything possible to make Thomas believe what they were saying. Yet stubbornly Thomas refused to listen. Thomas’ unbelief arose from his refusal what he himself had not witnessed. In other words, if he could not see it, he would not accept it. Boiled to its essence, his unbelief arose from pride – if he could not conceive of it, could not touch it, could not explain it, he would not believe it. Thomas placed his own intellect over the clear teaching and promises of Christ.

It is worth noting, in passing, that both St. John Chrysostom and St. Gregory Palamas tell us that one lesson we should draw from Thomas is that we must be in Church every Sunday. In the same way that Thomas’ absence on that first Sunday meant that he had missed the appearance of the Risen Lord, the two saints tell us that not being present for the miracle of the Liturgy each Sunday can harden our hearts, and lead us into unbelief. We all know the truth of that statement. If we make a habit of not attending the Liturgy, we find our spirit grows lazy, and doubt grows.

But laying aside the dangers of willfully absenting ourselves from the Church, we have seen thus far that unbelief can arise from fear, and it can arise from pride. But there is one other root cause for unbelief, and for that we turn back to the story of the raising of Lazarus. Remember that Christ arrived on the scene several days after Lazarus had died. He was met by the sisters of Lazarus, Martha and Mary. The two women reproached Christ, telling Him that if He had only gotten there in time, their brother would yet live. The unbelief of Martha and Mary arose from disappointment. We see this even in St. Mary Magdalene, who was so stricken with grief that when she saw the resurrected Christ, she first thought that He was the gardener.

Do you see how unbelief cripples us? Fear. Pride. Disappointment. All of us suffer from one of those, and some of us from all three. But regardless of the root of unbelief, the results are the same. We take a short view of things. We become focused on our present problems, agonizing over whatever situation directly confronts us. Martha and Mary could not imagine the resurrection of their beloved brother. The disciples could not look past their fear and sorrow. Thomas could not look past his own intellect. But the Lord does not show us these moments of weakness in the saints simply as a literary device. Instead, in learning that even the great saints of the Church have had moments of unbelief and of failing faith, we can find encouragement in our own life. Their failures, and their ultimate overcoming of those weaknesses, give us hope for our own condition.

Here is what the saints learned: faith pays no attention to things of the world. Faith ignores the short view, on the things that seem to threaten to overwhelm us, trusting in God’s ultimate goodness. If I stand directly in front a tree, I can see nothing but the tree. But if I step to one side, and focus on the long view, I see past what was immediate. Indeed, faith focuses entirely on the long view, on eternity itself. Are you ill today? Are you frightened today? Are you awash in pride, or in disappointment? The truth of the matter is that such things do not last. Part of our transformation, of our purification, is that we leave those things aside, just as St. Mary Magdalene laid aside grief, and St. Thomas laid aside doubt. Instead, true faith opens the windows to eternity, and shows us that grand and awesome vista of God. It is only when we perceive that vista, when we discard our disbelief and honestly and truly believe in the Resurrection of our Lord, that we can respond as St. Thomas does, falling on our knees, and exclaiming "My Lord and My God!"

(by Fr. Deacon James)