The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (18:23-35)

Today we hear a parable, a story of Our Lord Jesus Christ.  Honestly we should be in complete awe and wonder that Our Lord would allow us a glimpse into the things of His kingdom.  Who am I that the Lord should reveal anything to me, let alone His heavenly kingdom?  Yet He does reveal these things to us and we are blessed if we truly hear them and apply them in our lives.  But woe to us if we hear them and don’t heed them.    

Today we hear that the kingdom of heaven is like a King who wished to settle accounts with His servants and those to whom He lent money.  We are reminded by this that everyone and everything within the world is called to be a servant to the Lord and that each of us has actually been given many gifts and treasures but they are given with an expectation.  What have we been given from God our King?  First, we have been given life.  Life is a gift that only God can give.  He is the life-giver.

Next we have been given the image and likeness of God as human beings.  But we can go much further.  We have been granted grace through the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Through His death and resurrection we have been granted a chance to enter into newness of life through our baptism.  In this baptism we have received mercy and forgiveness of our sins and we continue to receive these gifts every day in the life of the Church.  Everything that we receive here is a reflection of the kingdom of God.  It is a place full of God’s mercy through the prayers and the sacramental life.  

Since we as humans did not and could not earn these treasures, we are all in debt to the Lord.  It is actually an impossible debt that can never be paid.  It is paid through love and sacrifice, by our Lord.  His love and His sacrifices for us are a sign of His mercy.  We could not possibly earn this love.  They are a sign that He truly loves us and wants us to be with Him.  He doesn’t desire our sins to interfere with this relationship.  He doesn’t want our sins to be a wall between us and Him, so He removes them.  He doesn’t count our sins against us at all.  It’s as if He doesn’t see them.  But there is a catch according to the parable.  The catch is an expectation that is set for each of us.  

The Lord says in effect, “I have forgiven and will continue to forgive you, but you must also forgive others continually.”  This is often beyond our human comprehension.  But it is clear that this is the parable. What is truly terrifying is that the real implication of the parable is that the doors to the kingdom of heaven are not locked by the king, the master of the house.  The key that can unlock the mercy of God is held by each of us.  The key that unlocks God’s mercy is mercy itself. 

St. Tikhon of Zadonsk says, “Do we refuse to forgive? God, too, will refuse to forgive us. As we treat our neighbours, so also does God treat us. The forgiveness or unforgiveness of your sins, then, and hence also your salvation or destruction, depend on you yourself.”

As fellow Christians we have lots of moments in life where we fall or fail or offend or hurt others.  We can each look back and see faces and situations that are uncomfortable for us.  Sometimes we harbor resentments and have a real sense of pain, maybe even post traumatic stress, from the way that people might have treated us.  Sadly, this can happen with those whom we are closest to.  The more time you spend together, the more opportunity there is for your humanness and your imperfections to manifest themselves.  So we might have a situation where there is enmity or bitterness between husbands and wives or between parents and children, or between siblings or any other possible configurations, between co-workers or between friends or between neighbors or between your brothers and sisters in the church.  Yet in all of this, the key that unlocks mercy is mercy itself.

Sometimes when others have hurt or offended us, we need to step back and perhaps recall a time when we hurt or offended others yet they did not hold it against us.  Of course the best example of all is the various ways we’ve offended God and sinned against Him.  Yet we recall that God has not judged any one of us harshly.  If you had been judged harshly, you wouldn’t be here.  When we remember the great list of our own sins and failings, we begin to be humbled and we might even begin to make excuses for others before God and others.  We might let go of resentment and bitterness to not only free ourselves from that terrible net but free the other person as well.  When we hold grudges we wrap the other in chains.  We hold them captive, yet ultimately we are the ones who have to carry the weight of those chains.  

When we forgive we open doors and we know that this reflects the love of God who opens His arms to us and opens the doors of His kingdom to everyone who would enter with faith.  And our behavior towards others must reflect this commandment given by our Lord right before His betrayal and crucifixion, “that you love one another, even as I have loved you.”  It is a commandment that is self enforcing.  Either you love and have mercy or you can’t understand that language, it’s like something alien to you and even if the Lord would open the doors to His kingdom you wouldn’t be able to enter because you could not comprehend His mercy or His love. You would run from it as from fire.  Because it is something that would cause you discomfort and anguish instead of bringing you peace and a sense of belonging.  It is an energy, a spirit that we don’t comprehend if we haven’t assimilated it into our lives, rather, if we haven’t assimilated into the life of Christ.

I would like to leave you with a short quote from St. Moses of Optina who writes,

 “If at some time you show mercy to someone, mercy will be shown to you.  If you show compassion to one who is suffering (and of course, this is not a great deed) you will be numbered  among the martyrs.  If you forgive one who has insulted you, then not only will all your sins be forgiven, but you will be a child of the Heavenly Father.”

What a gracious, bountiful and merciful God who allows us the opportunity to reflect His love and gentleness to others and by doing so, to be transformed and to truly grow as His beloved sons and daughters.  Glory be to God, AMEN. 

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (17:14-23)

This week we celebrated the Feast of Transfiguration, the appearance of Christ in and as radiant light, to His chief disciples. The gospel that we heard today is in fact the very next passage after the transfiguration of our Lord. There is nothing so painful for a father or a mother than to see their child sick, to see their child unwell, to see their child suffering and in pain. Any sane parent would gladly switch roles and places with their child if it would mean alleviating their child’s suffering. In today’s gospel we encounter such a man who brings his son to the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ. The father tells the Lord that his son suffers from epilepsy, that he frequently has seizures and that these seizures, far from being harmless actually are very dangerous and life threatening. How do we know this? Because the man tells Our Lord that when the boy has seizures, he is often thrown into the fire and into the water. To this very day, in our modern world there is very little that is more dangerous than fire and water, than burning or drowning.

It seems to me that there is also a deeper symbolism in this because we learn that the epilepsy that is associated with this boy is not merely a physiological condition or physical ailment, it is demonic, spiritual in nature. So the fact that the demons that possess the boy are attempting to throw him into water and into fire is a sign of the true character of the demonic forces. They have only one desire, to destroy life. Life is a gift from God, and they have rejected life in God. They reject God Himself and they aim to do their best to undo His creation especially mankind who is the pinnacle of God’s creation, created in His image and likeness.

In our lives we struggle with various spiritual ailments and we become lukewarm and we convince ourselves that our sins are insignificant and don’t really matter much but we would do well to remember that we are tempted because the demons seek our destruction. They want to ruin your life and destroy your soul so that you never can repent and turn back to God. They don’t really care whether this takes a short amount of time or a very long time in a gradual slide towards spiritual death. Either way, they are pleased with the outcome if we are spiritually dead and far from the Lord.

Now this man comes to the Lord and tells him the situation regarding his own son and he adds another important detail: And I brought him to Thy disciples, and they could not heal him.” To this Our Lord responds in an unexpected way saying, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.” Through this we see that the Lord considers the man to be lacking faith and in addition it seems that He is saying that the disciples themselves also lacked faith. The noted scholar Origen believes that the words of the Lord are meant for the whole human race. So often we come to God in prayer or we come to the priest in the church and we ask for healing and prayer, but do we actually believe, do we have living faith that Christ can work healing and miracles? If we don’t have faith, why not? What stops us from believing? Why is our faith so small? Why is our image of God so lacking? Have we not read and studied and observed what God has done and continues to do everywhere and at all times?

Now St. John Chrysostom had an interesting take on these events especially regarding the disciples and their inability to heal in this case. St. John says that this is in fact a demonstration that oftentimes the disciples of Christ were able to heal even when the one who asked for healing didn’t have faith. Since it seems clear that many people received healing from the disciples and everyone was surprised that the disciples could not help in this particular case. Chrysostom goes on to say that “just as the faith of the one bringing in the sick was often sufficient for receiving a cure even from lesser ministers (those who lack some measure of faith), so the virtue of the minister was also sufficient to achieve a miracle even without the faith of those bringing them in.” -The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 57.3

But either way, the words of the Lord hold true. Everyone in this situation lacked the faith necessary for this healing. The disciples, the father, the people there present.

Yet the Lord did not leave His people empty handed and begging by the side of the road. He did not leave them lost in the wilderness. He taught them and He showed them the truth. That faith is not static. That faith is not simply given as a gift from the Lord, as the disciples might have imagined. Faith is a living entity within us. It is a flame. Faith can increase or decrease. Faith can be cultivated.

The chief methods for growing faith are shared privately with the disciples, when they ask why they could not heal the boy. The Lord told them that they lacked faith and then He gave the methods for growing that faith: Prayer and fasting. It is as if the Lord is speaking directly to the Orthodox Christians! The Church gives us roughly 200 days out of the year to fast. The Church also gives us a daily cycle of prayers, to grow our faith, to bring us closer to Christ. How many days do we squander? How many of these days do we complain?

Or on the other side of the equation, how often do thank God for the gifts of fasting and prayer? How often do we run to the Lord to receive these gifts for our sanctification and the healing of our souls and bodies? How often do we take the Lord at His word and pray with great faith and believe that with God all things are indeed possible? The Lord says that for the one who has great faith “nothing will be impossible.” This is a promise given to the children of God through Our Lord and Master. This promise brings us full circle back to the feast of Transfiguration which we just celebrated and which came right before this passage. Through prayer and fasting, God’s grace is given an opportunity to work in us. Faith changes from theory to life and truth and power in Christ. St. Nikolai of Zicha writes, “In the man who only theorizes about faith, there is a great deal of room for the demon. But in the man who gives himself to sincere prayer and fasting, there is only the narrowest space for the demon, and he must flee from such a man.”

This, my brothers and sisters is the faith that Our Lord Jesus Christ wants to impart to us. This is the faith that is our inheritance with all of the saints. Through their prayers may this faith grow within each of us…to the Glory of God, AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (14:22-34)

Each time we read or hear the holy gospels we are encountering God. The gospels stand in a place of preeminence in the life of the Church. We believe in the Bible and revere it as the inspired word of God. But we put the gospels even higher than the rest of the Bible. As you see the gospel book sits alone, wrapped in gold (gold plating) on the Holy Altar table. Why? Because the gospels reveal God to us clearly and completely. The gospels are the eyewitness accounts of the life and the teachings of the Son of God, Our Lord Jesus Christ. They are the most precious treasure, the most important texts ever written in the history of the world. We take the things written in them, the things of Christ and His Church seriously.

For an Orthodox Christian these are not cleverly devised tales or myths. They are our sacred history. The gospels give us our meaning and our identity and every other identity that we have comes second to our identity as Christians. When we begin to compromise our identity in Christ, when we begin to compromise the way that we live and we begin to live a life of rebellion against the teaching of Christ and His Church then we find that our foundation cracks and before long we find ourselves on the outside looking in, completely unable to understand the Christian faith. We become alienated. This alienation didn’t happen because Christ or the Church or it’s people changed but rather because we moved, we shifted, we changed. Yet the gospel stands as an ever present reminder and witness to the truths we accept through faith. The gospel is ready to enlighten you and to teach you and to help you correct your way of life. It will help bring you to life in God if that is what you truly desire.

In today’s reading we see that Our Lord Jesus Christ has completed His long day of teaching, healing and feeding the multitudes. He dismisses the crowds and then He does something that we would not expect in our human logic. After a long and exhausting day outside, in the elements and with the many people and their many pains and struggles, we would very likely be drained. We would probably want to sit down and rest. We would want to eat and possibly go straight to bed. That would be normal. Yet the Lord is not like us. He chooses to hike up a mountain to spend most of the evening in prayer. He is teaching us even in these quiet moments in the middle of the night. What we desire in food and rest, the Lord desires from His Father in prayer. God is His food. God is His rest. Prayer is food, shelter and refreshment. We are told that He goes up the mountain to pray. In this we understand that prayer itself requires an effort, like climbing up a mountain. It is not so easy. It doesn’t often feel like running downhill. It feels like an uphill battle if you will. Good prayer sometimes requires sweat and tears. Yet there can be no mistake. The gospel account is clear. Christ our Lord is teaching us that prayer is our rest and refreshment.

So often when people come to confession they say that they don’t pray enough. We often look at prayer as a check list. I pray because I have to, right? I pray quickly for 3 minutes and I feel that I have done my duty. But what did you accomplish friends? Prayer is for you, not for God! Prayer is not a punishment but many of you treat it as if it is a sort of death sentence. How do I know? Because you run away from prayer. You don’t go to prayer with intention and feeling and zeal. You don’t run towards prayer. We fail to see that prayer is a special time to be alone with God and enter into a deep communion with Him. God desires time with you. It should really open our eyes that Our Lord spends His evening in prayer. He is always with God the Father and the Father is always with Him. They are one. Yet, He prays in order to be in intimate union with His Father without any distractions.

Prayer also changes us. St. Ephraim the Syrian says “Virtues are formed by prayer. Prayer preserves temperance. Prayer suppresses anger. Prayer prevents emotions of pride and envy. Prayer draws into the soul the Holy Spirit, and raises man to Heaven.” So this is an antidote to the idea that you can become different by trying harder. Trying harder does very little. Prayer changes us.

Those of you who have come to confession know the example about the iron and the fire. If you take a cold rod of iron and you bring it close to a fire as it gets closer to the fire what will happen to it? It will no doubt get warmer. And if you bring that iron very close what will happen? It will get hot. And if you put the iron in the fire and leave it there for a time what will happen? It will become red hot! The fire will be married to the iron and the iron to the fire. The iron will glow and be hot as flame. This is what is possible for an Orthodox Christian in the life of prayer. We are the iron, often cold and lifeless. Yet we can be activated through prayer.

We can become energized with the grace of God. We can become like God. We can become by grace what God is by nature. We can be completely transformed and transfigured through the Holy Spirit, in prayer. We can have union and intimate relationship with God. This is not a speculation or wishful thinking or theory. It is established and confirmed in the lives of the saints of the Church and in the teaching of the New Testament. Prayer is a doorway to become partakers of the divine nature.

Perhaps your life is full of storms. Yet Our Lord Jesus is waiting for you in the midst of the storm. He calls to you. He invites you to Him. He wants you to be where He is, to be with Him. Why do we doubt and hide ourselves in so many other distractions? But we should also remember that prayer isn’t only when we are in front of our icons in the morning or the evening. Any moment of the day can be a moment of prayer for us.

As St. Tikhon says, “Prayer does not consist merely in standing and bowing your body or in reading written prayers….it is possible to pray at all times, in all places, with mind and spirit. You can lift up your mind and heart to God while walking, sitting, working, in a crowd and in solitude. His door is always open, unlike man’s. We can always say to Him in our hearts Lord , Lord have mercy.”

Morning, evening, midday, midnight. When we are worried, when we are tired, when we are joyful, when we are lost, when we are angry, when we are tempted, when we are sad, when we are thankful, in each of these moments we can turn to God in prayer and He will never leave us empty handed. What Father will give His children a rock if he or she asks for bread? The disciple were in the midst of the storm and Peter was sinking. They were in complete fear yet Christ was not far from them. He is not far from anyone who loves Him and tries to put in some effort to know climb the mountain of prayer and I want you to know that this is the most worthwhile activity that a human being can undertake in their life. St. Mark the Ascetic writes, “Prayer comprises the complete fulfillment of the commandments; for there is nothing higher than love for God.” And Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (9:1-8)

In today’s gospel reading we encounter the story of a man who is a paralytic.  We are not told his name or anything about him.  Only one thing we know for sure.  He is paralyzed and cannot walk let alone move.  When we hear this story and similar stories we are struck by the degree of suffering and the difficulties caused by such an illness.  We look at this man with our all too human eyes and we think that we understand the situation, that we understand what is really wrong.  Yet glory be to God that Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, does not see the world through our merely human eyes.  The Lord goes much further, much deeper in His examination of the person who is before Him.  This should cause us to tremble and also to be joyful.  We should tremble because God will see the truth about us.  We should rejoice because in that truth lies our salvation and our real healing.  In God’s truth we see who we are and what we are.  We are exposed before God, as Adam and Eve were exposed in the garden.  Yet this is to our benefit because what is not exposed before God is not healed.

Through our human understanding we think that the greatest issue with the man is his paralysis.  But Our Lord Jesus Christ wipes away this understanding.  The greatest enemy of this man is not his physical paralysis, but rather his spiritual paralysis.  The paralysis of his soul.  This is the deeper point of the gospel.  And we are beyond comforted to hear the most gracious and beautiful words spoken of by the Lord Jesus to this man who is suffering in a way that is deeper and more profound than what the onlookers could imagine.  He suffers from the sickness of his sins.  Yet the Lord sees this man in his entirety and breathes forth words of mercy, healing and life:  “Take heart my son; your sins are forgiven.”  

Through this gospel passage we learn that the most critical aspect to our human healing is the healing of the soul even more than the healing of the body, although the two are closely tied together.  It is the primary and most important aspect because our Lord forgives the man before He causes him to get up and walk.

We each deal with sin in our lives, whether sin of words or deeds or thoughts, whether large sins or small sins.  But sin is a paralyzing agent.  Sin makes it impossible to live a truly human life, to live a life that  reveals us as created in God’s image and likeness.

When I was with some of the kids at camp I asked them a simple question:  “why do the commandments of God exist?”  I received so many answers, many of them were good answers.  They might say “they exist so that we will obey them.”  But I asked them to go deeper.  Why do the commandments exist?  Finally I revealed the answer to them.  The commandments exist because God loves us and wants to protect our souls.   Sin is not failure to fulfill the letter of the law.  It is about protecting the soul from damage and corruption and ultimately death.  But not mere death, since everyone has to die.  But the death of the soul, which is an everlasting death that stays with us forever.

So in the gospel we see many aspects of the truth although they are often hidden at first glance.  We are reminded that sin is the very worst human condition.  And we are encouraged by the Lord to take heart.  No matter how bad we may seem, no matter what life we lived, no matter what the world may think of us, God still loves us and wants to heal us.  He wants to redeem us from corruption.  He wants to wipe away our sins and make us whole.  For the Orthodox Christians it is clear that this process of complete forgiveness and healing happens in the context of the sacraments of the Church, primarily through Holy Communion, Holy Unction and the Holy Confession.  

Some of the saints have mentioned that the greater our confession is, the more it is bold and truthful and humble, the greater the healing that will come through the sacrament.  You hear the gospel and you wish that the Lord would offer you this healing and unloose your burdens…then come and confess your sins and do not hide them.  God already knows the situation but you have not shown humility and faith in trusting God and the sacraments of the Church to bring you healing and forgiveness.  If you are afraid to mention your sins and the things that bring you shame to the priest who is a mere man during confession, then how will you stand before the living God with unconfessed sins?  

In the life of the Church, the priest is like those who carry their friend on a stretcher to place them before Christ.  The priest does this during confession and he does it even more profoundly during the offering of the liturgy.  The priest stands before the table to make an offering on behalf of himself and all of the people and their sins so that Christ who loves mankind may have mercy and see our act of faith through worship.  The offering is not in order to pacify or appease God, it is an offering of ourselves, our hearts, our minds and our bodies in order to unite ourselves with the divine life of God.  In order to make God’s life, our very life.     

 St. Paisios (whom we commemorate today) said “God wants us, above all, to be happy and to enjoy inner peace. God is not a tyrant who pesters and intimidates us, but instead he wants us to be free.”  Christ is waiting for us to appear before Him with all of our brokenness and with a desire for healing.  We do this when we come to the church with and when we pray in our own homes from a pure and humble heart.  He did not reject the paralyzed man and neither will he reject us.  He desires to forgive us, he desires to heal us, he desires to be with us, so take heart.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians. (5:22-6:2) and The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (8:28-9:1)

Today’s gospel reading is about the two demoniacs, the two demon possessed men.  Often we have a sort of odd curiosity or fascination with this idea or phenomenon.  It of course strikes us as strange but also as somewhat remarkable, but in truth the idea of demonic possession should terrify us.  It is sometimes glamorized in horror movies as well as in pop culture but possession is a serious and very real phenomenon and nothing to take lightly. 

There have been many books written about this subject although most of them are not written from our Orthodox Christian perspective.  One of the books written on this subject is “The Pope’s Exorcist” by Fr. Gabriel Amorth.  There is also a movie by the same name but the movie is about one particular story from his life (that has been given the Hollywood treatment) while the book is really a general summary of his teachings on the subject of demons and possession.  Fr. Gabriel was the chief exorcist of the Vatican.  He has written much about this subject as the most difficult cases were often referred to him.  

Among his research and experience he noted that those who were demonically possessed were often people who took counsel from psychics or those who went to witches to inflict spells on others.  He also mentioned those who went to see tarot card readers and those who went to visit with mediums who claimed to speak with the dead.  In all of these cases, what may have seemed rather innocent was in fact far from it.  These are portals that open our souls and give permission to the demons to deeply disturb and affect us.  The same would also be true of ouija boards and other “games” that are far from playful.

Demonic possession is relatively rare.  One of the passages about St. Paisios, who was a man of powerful prayer who could heal demonic possession, relates that St. Paisios believed that far less than 1% of the people brought to him were demonically possessed.  He would have a certain test in which he would hold the relics of a certain saint secretly and those who were truly demon possessed would react right away.  For the demon possessed, it is impossible to be near that which is holy.  It is a fire which causes them great torment and discomfort.

Nevertheless, although we don’t often deal with demon possession in the life of the Church, we certainly have plenty of spiritual warfare and demonic influences from movies to music to news to websites to social media and forums.  The whole life of the Church as related by the saints and fathers and mothers of the Church is likened to warfare.  It is the aspect of becoming an Orthodox Christian that is the most surprising and least comfortable.  Every day of your life is a battle and the field of battle is the human heart and mind.  This is where the battle takes place on a daily basis.  Whether you pay attention or ignore it, whether you apply yourself or you are negligent, you are already at war.

  Often our catechumens will be surprised when they begin to encounter or to notice struggles and temptations that they never really dealt with in the past.  This is common because they are attempting to move closer to Christ and to His holy Orthodox Church.  This is one of the human activities that the devil hates more than any other.  He hates when we build churches.   He hates when we repent.  He hates our confessions offered in simplicity and humility. He hates when we baptize and chrismate new souls.  He hates when we come together for the divine services and especially for the divine liturgy.  Each and every liturgy is like an atomic bomb of God’s grace. The devil also hates when we love and forgive one another.   

So briefly, what can we learn about spiritual warfare from the saints?  What does it look like?  St. Theophan the Recluse writes about this in his book “Unseen Warfare.”  In this book he gives us a distillation of the work of the great ascetics and spiritual teachers .  It is a template of the path to a proper Christian struggle.  He begins by reminding his readers of the goal of the Christian life: “I will tell you plainly: the greatest and most perfect thing a man may desire to attain is to come near to God and dwell in union with Him.” — Part 1, Chapter 1

He then goes on to give us four weapons in our battle.  1) Never rely on yourself in anything.  2) Bear always in your heart a perfect and all-daring trust in God alone 3) Strive without ceasing.  4) Remain constantly in prayer.

He spends much of the book speaking about the practice of prayer.  “Prayer is the test of everything; prayer is also the source of everything; prayer is the driving force of everything; prayer is also the director of everything. If prayer is right, everything is right. For prayer will not allow anything to go wrong.” — Part 1, Chapter 48

On the point of prayers he spends extensive time teaching us to flee to God through the use of the Jesus prayer on a regular basis.  He sees the Jesus prayer as something that can become a part of who you are and that this is one of the surest and most direct paths to holiness for an Orthodox Christian.  He also gives encouragement to those who stumble and fall.  He tells us that when we stumble we should repent immediately and get up and begin again without any emphasis on anger or shame or despair because these are typically signs that we have hoped in ourselves and haven’t really been trusting in God.  I would highly encourage you to give this book  “Unseen Warfare” a read once you are an Orthodox Christian.   

And I want to remind you that as baptized Orthodox Christians you are sons and daughters of God.  Every power that the Lord has over the demons, as demonstrated in today’s gospel, is also given to His children.  But it is given to the degree and to the measure that we are actively engaged in our spiritual battle and in using all of the gifts that God has given us faithfully.  The Lord cast out the legion of demons with a word and left the men in their right minds.  He healed them and made them whole.  This is what He also offers to each of us through the life of the Church.

Let us take heart in this battle and hear the words of St. Theophan again: “Be sober, watch and pray, and the enemies will do nothing to you.”  AMEN

Source: Sermons

Feast of All Saints 2026

It may seem strange to you that we celebrate the feast of all saints on this day, the Sunday after Pentecost but we might rightly ask “what better day could there possibly be to make such a celebration?  In the west, on the Gregorian calendar, it is common practice to celebrate all saints day on November 1st.  For this reason we have a great cultural celebration on All Saints, or All Hollows Eve, AKA Halloween.  However for the Orthodox the feast of All Saints is directly, intimately connected to the celebration of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  So days and feasts and celebrations are ordered and placed in such a way that the Church is always teaching her children through every aspect of her life.

The feast of All Saints is placed on the Sunday directly following Pentecost to show us something and give us a glimpse into the life of the kingdom.  Sanctity is made possible through the work of the Holy Spirit.  Holiness is made possible through the work of the Holy Spirit.  Saints are made possible through the descent of the Holy Spirit.  In the life of the Church there are many many saints, in fact they are numberless.  Yet each day of the church year we commemorate some of them, typically those who reposed or fell asleep on a particular day.  Yet for other even more important saints we might celebrate not only the day that they died but other days as well such as the day they were conceived or the day they were born as we see with both St. John the Baptist as well as the Holy Virgin and Mother of God.  

St. Paul speaks of all of the multitude of the saints as a “great cloud of witnesses.”  A witness according to our Christian definition is one who witnesses or testifies to the truth of Jesus Christ.  Our word witness comes from the Greek work for martyr.  A martyr is one who boldly proclaims and bears witness to the truth of the gospel and the person of Jesus Christ. Those who died for their faith in Christ as well as those who lived righteously for their love of God.  The martyr is one who is not turned away by any threats of imprisonment or punishment or torture or anything else, even death.  Because to deny the Lord Jesus Christ is considered by the martyrs and saints to be much worse than death.  It is the death of the soul.  I should tell you that for the saints this applies not only to the teaching of Our Lord but to the teaching of His beloved bride, the Church, the body of Christ.  The Church is the presence of Christ on earth.  Her teaching is a reflection of God’s truth and goodness.  So when someone rejects the clear and unchanging teaching of the Church they in fact reject Christ Himself.  

Let us return to the saints for a moment.  We are blessed greatly by hearing and reading and studying the lives of the saints.  I wish that everyone who make a practice of always having a life of a saint that they are working through and these days we can easily find books translated into English as well as some websites with stories and biographies of the saints.  And my brothers and sisters, each of these saints and each of their stories teach us something new and different.  Each of them help us to grow in our own faith as we see their lives and their struggles and the unique ways that they brought their faith and love for Jesus Christ to life. No two saints are exactly the same just as no two humans are exactly the same.  The Holy Spirit affects and inspires each person differently.  

There is a short passage from the desert fathers that makes this point.  “Abba (Father) Poemen said that Abba John said that the saints are like a group of trees, each bearing different fruit, but watered from the same source. The practices of one saint differ from those of another, but it is the same Spirit that works in all of them.”  -Sr. Benedicta Ward, The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, 

This is one of the reasons why it is so important to learn from the saints but we should never try to imitate them in the details of their lives and struggles.  What might work for one person may actually hurt another.  The beauty of our faith is that God gives each one of us exactly what we need to grow and become saintly.  This may come as a surprise to you.  You might have thought that sanctity and holiness are for some other special people.  You might have thought that saints are born that way.  All of this is false.  We were all born with the same nature.  It is the work of Satan to discredit your faith and your sonship, the birthright given to you through holy baptism.  You were made to become saints.  God gave you life in order for you to use that life as you choose, yet in reality He desires to know you and to implant His life deeply within you.  He wants to have such an intimate union with us that we bring forth holy fruit.  That we have the ability to feed others of the fruit of sanctity.

But it is really important to understand that you cannot and will not become holy through your own efforts if those efforts are undertaken apart from God.  Because we are under the sway of the passions and evil desires.  So our efforts have to be rooted in Christ and His Church.  How often people come to confession and they say, “I will try to be less angry, I will try to have less lust, I will try to be more humble etc.”  This completely misses the point.  It sounds like self-help.  Our way is the way of the saints, who try by drawing nearer to Christ on a daily basis.  That is the way given to us by our great role models and teachers of the Christian life.  

St. Macarius the great writes, “Whatever the soul may think fit to do itself, whatever care and pains it may take, relying only upon its own power, and thinking to be able to effect a perfect success by itself, without the co-operation of the Spirit, it is greatly mistaken. It is of no use for the heavenly places; it is of no use for the kingdom – that soul, which supposes that it can achieve perfect purity of itself, and by itself alone, without the Spirit. + St. Macarius the Great, Spiritual Homilies, Homily 24

We run to Christ on a daily basis to receive something that is foreign to our broken human nature.  We run to receive the treasure of the grace of the Holy Spirit.  This separates the saints from everyone else.  Those who allowed the Holy Spirit to adorn the walls of their hearts now themselves adorn the walls of the churches throughout the world.  May we all join them as one family of saints.  AMEN.  

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Acts of the Apostles. (2:1-11) and from the Holy Gospel according to St. John. (7:37-52; 8:12)

Today we have the privilege to celebrate a joyous and glorious feast.  This is the culmination of Pascha, the conclusion of these holy fifty days with a generous gift from the Lord.  We began these days with the celebration of life through Our Lord Jesus Christ’s holy resurrection, through his conquering of sin and death itself.  And now we complete this festal season with something new and quite extraordinary.  With the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Some will wonder, why is this so important?  Wasn’t the Holy Spirit moving and working and inspiring people throughout the scriptures?  Absolutely.  That is true.  Yet our God willed that we should come into a new relationship with Him through the Lord Holy Spirit.  That somehow the Holy Spirit would be given to us in a new and wondrous way.  That it should become a part of us.  That we should not only be created in the image and likeness of God but that we should also become temples of the living God. In fact we might even say that there will never again be another temple, at least not as we properly understand that word “temple.”  We know for instance that the temple in Jerusalem will be built again before the end times, but that is neither here nor there for us as Christians.  The temple built of stone is nothing.  It is an empty and hollow shell.  It will be less than worthless to the people of God.  It will not be the place where God dwells or where the people meet God.  Rather, those who belong to Christ are themselves holy temples and dwelling places for the Lord almighty.

Many of you know that on Saturday evenings we celebrate Great Vespers.  What some of you may not know is that Great Vespers is actually the start of the liturgical day in the Orthodox Church.  As we see in the pages of Holy Scripture, the day begins on the previous evening and concludes in the morning.  On the day of a great feast this vespers is accompanied by Old Testament readings to help us prepare for the feast.  Last night one of the readings we heard was this one from the Prophecy of Ezekiel (36:24-28).

“Thus saith the Lord: I will take you from among the nations, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land; and I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean from all your filthiness and from all your idols, and I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new Spirit will I give you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments and do them. And ye shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers; and ye shall be My people, and I will be your God.”

“You shall be my people, and I will be your God.”  Wow.  What a powerful statement, but more than this it is a new reality for us.  We are not just people, we are God’s people.  And He is not just some god, He is in fact our God.  He is the one with whom we have a personal, familial and intimate relationship.  He who once dwelt in the temple in Jerusalem, has chosen, by His grace, to dwell within those who are baptized and chrismated, in those who love His Son and His commandments.  But with God all gifts are given with an expectation.  The gift is meant to be used properly.   The gift requires something of us.  “To whom much has been given, much is expected.”

  St. Gregory the great of Rome writes, “‘And my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him’ [John 14.23]. My friends, consider the greatness of this solemn feast that commemorates God’s coming as a guest into our hearts! If some rich and influential friend were to come to your home, you would promptly put it all in order for fear something there might offend your friend’s eyes when he came in. Let all of us then who are preparing our inner homes for God cleanse them of anything our wrongdoing has brought into them.”  + St. Gregory Dialogos, on Pentecost

St. Gregory speaks of welcoming the Holy Spirit of God into your hearts as you would welcome your beloved friend or an esteemed guest into your own home.  He tells us to work to tidy up that space we call our home.  It should be spotless and neat.  It should be a place where God would like to lay His head.  One day I flew somewhere and landed late.  I went straight to my hotel which I had booked on one of the discount sites.  After I grabbed my key I went to my room and one thing after another was not right or was out of order.  The lamp shade was partially warped and melted.  The dresser was broken.  Everything looked unkempt.  Although I was exhausted I could not, my body would not let me relax and lay my head down.  I kept thinking to myself.  If everything here is in such bad shape, imagine how little care was taken to clean this place.  I couldn’t rest.  But my beloved, the Lord the comforter, the Holy Spirit is the same with us.  He does not rest when He sees that our soul is disordered and filthy with sins.  He wants to rest there within us, but what kind of a space have we made for Him?  Have we prepared ourselves for Him at all?  

How do we prepare a place for the Lord?  Through our heartfelt repentance and confession.  Through our desire to run away from sin and towards the good. Through our struggle to love God and our neighbor.   Through our life of obedience to the commandments and teachings of Christ.     

Let’s hear these words from St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain, “The grace of the Holy Spirit which is given mystically to every Christian when he is baptized acts and is manifested in proportion to our obedience to the commandments of the Lord. That is, if a Christian obeys the commandments of the Lord more, grace acts with him more, while if he obeys them less, grace acts within him less. Just as a spark, when covered in the ashes of fire becomes increasingly manifest as one removes the ashes, and the more fire wood you put the more the fire burns, so the grace that has been given to every Christian through Holy Baptism is hidden in the heart and covered up by the passions and sins, and the more a man acts in accordance with the commandments of Christ, the more he is cleansed of the passions and the more the fire of Divine grace lights in his heart, illumines and deifies him.” + St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain, Christian Morality

This is our calling, our purpose and our potential through the Holy Spirit.  Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. John. (4:5-42)

How beautiful is Our Lord Jesus Christ?  How overflowing is His love?  How merciful is His heart towards us as sinners?  The moment that we think we have an answer to these questions Our Lord breaks through our preconceived notions and shatters them completely and shows Himself to be far above anything that we think that we understand.  This became clear to me once again as I read and prepared for this week’s gospel reading.

We are told that the Lord Jesus Christ was in the region of Samaria.  As many of you know, this is not a Jewish region.  Samaritans are not Jews.  They are like an offshoot from Judaism, they would be something like schismatics, those who make a schism or break off from the larger group.  I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ came to this particular reason, not because He was thirsty for water, but because He thirsted to do the will of His Father and to bring a certain Samaritan woman to salvation.

Not so coincidentally this woman whom we call Photini, came to the well, but she did so at a very strange hour, at the sixth hour or noon.  To me this is strange since typically in a warm climate the people will go to the well either very early in the morning or very late in the day after the sun has started to go down.  Perhaps she was going to the well in the middle of the hot sun because she did not want to encounter anyone.  Perhaps she felt shame over the state of her life and her situation.

In fact we are quite sure that she felt shame since she tried to hide her broken situation from the Lord Jesus Christ when He told her to go and call her husband and she tried to lie to his face saying “I have no husband.”  

But first we notice something quite beautiful.  Our Lord asks her for a drink.  He sees this woman and He knows her to be someone who is living in sin.  He comes down to her level.  He doesn’t behave as if He is above her, although He is in fact above all the heavens and the earth.  He bends low in His person in order to ask her for a drink of water.  This is really quite important.  It is so shocking to her that she questions him because it is well known that Jews don’t have any dealings with Samaritans.  They were considered like a different class of people who did not honor God and believe as the Jews believed.  Yet He condescends not only to speak with her as a Jew but as the Son of God.

He does this because through appearing to need her assistance, He gets her to open up and to enter into a conversation.  This is always the path to salvation, conversation and engagement with Jesus Christ.  What follows is the single longest conversation that Our Lord had with one person in the whole New Testament.

He asked her for water but in fact He was getting ready to give her living water.  The water that she could offer him was natural water from the well.  One would drink some of it and just a little while later they would be thirsty and would require another drink.  Yet the water that Our Lord would offer her would be water that never runs out, water that continually refreshes, water that changes life forever.  He promised her this water and He immediately grabbed hold of her interest.  She wanted this water because she was tired and thirsty, but He knew that what she was really after was something much deeper.

In our lives we grow thirsty and tired.  We thirst for so many things and then when we receive them we are still surprisingly unhappy.  Think for a moment of the multitude of pop stars and actors who had everything, fame, fortune, influence and yet they were not happy and kept running to try to satisfy the thirst even more and typically because they ran towards the wrong things they found this thirst was never satiated.  They grew even more thirsty and they would follow these urges towards their own destruction, often through broken relationships and drugs among other things.  

Each one of us also has thirsts.  You can’t pretend that you don’t have them.  They are part of the human condition.  But where do we go to receive refreshment?  Where do we go to have our thirst quenched?  For Photini, she was thirsty for love and companionship.  So thirsty in fact that she was willing to live outside of the law of God to have it.  She had had 5 husbands, and we don’t know what happened to them.  We don’t know if they died or if they gave a certificate of divorce or what exactly happened to them.  And now this Samaritan woman was with a man to whom she was not married.  And she tried to hide this fact but the Lord saw right through her.  He examined her heart like a good surgeon and He knew immediately that she was seeking meaning in her life and that she was seeking deep and lasting love.

She found this deep and lasting love in the person of Jesus Christ.  From the very first moment that He spoke with her, He began to bestow His grace on her.  He began to fill her heart which was empty with that living water.  She allowed this to happen and because she engaged with Him, He filled her with a new joy and over time we have learned through our sacred tradition that His thirst became her thirst, that is, she thirsted to do God’s will and to share this living water which was given to her, with others.  

“At Pentecost Saint Photini received baptism, along with her five sisters, Anatole, Photo, Photis, Paraskeve, Kyriake, and her two sons, Photeinos and Joseph. She then began a missionary career, traveling far and wide, preaching the good news of the Messiah’s coming, His death and resurrection.

When Nero, the emperor of Rome, began to persecute Christians, Photini and her son Joseph were in Carthage, in Africa, where she was preaching the Christian gospel. After Jesus appeared to Photini in a dream, she sailed to Rome. Her son and many Christians from Africa accompanied her. Photini’s arrival and activity aroused curiosity in the capital city. Everyone talked about her, “Who is this woman?” they asked. “She came here with a crowd of followers and she preaches Christ with great boldness.”

Soldiers were ordered to bring her to the emperor, but Photini anticipated them. Before they could arrest her, Photini, with her son Joseph and her Christian friends, went to Nero. When the emperor saw them, he asked why they had come. Photini answered, “We have come to teach you to believe in Christ.” The half-mad ruler of the Roman Empire did not frighten her. She wanted to convert him! Nero asked the saints their names. Again Photini answered. By name she introduced herself, her five sisters and younger son.

The emperor then demanded to know whether they had all agreed to die for the Nazarene. Photini spoke for them. “Yes, for the love of Him we rejoice and in His name we’ll gladly die.””

Her life continued with many more trials and tortures and yet she overcame them all because the water that was in her was much more powerful than the fire within the emperor.  Hers was the living water, the water of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus.  Let us also receive Christ gladly and we will receive everything that we need to quench our deepest thirsts and to drink of the water of His glorious resurrection.  Christ is risen!

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Mark 15:43-16:8

“Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, Who was crucified. He has

risen, He is not here; see the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His Disciples and Peter that

He is going before you to Galilee; there you will see Him, as He told you.”

These are the words of the angel at the scene of the tomb of Jesus. “Do not be amazed”. But let us think about that for a moment. The angel is telling these women not to be amazed although the event that has just taken place is completely utterly amazing by every possible definition of the word.

You know that often people who might mean well but who know very little about religion will tell you that truth is relative and that all major religions are basically the same etc etc, so on and so forth. I beg to differ. You see there is only one major religion in the world that claims that its leader was crucified like a common criminal. In most cases you see religions that look at their leaders in a triumphalistic way, but with a crucified Lord where is the triumph? Yet amazingly with Christianity we see another feature not found in the other major religious groups. The impossible, unfathomable claim that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day.

I submit that no other religion has the guts to make such a claim because no one could even imagine such an event. Who in their right mind would believe it? Even in the case of celebrities such as Elvis we see that people always imagine that he is alive…the difference is that some are convinced that he never actually died. But that is hardly the case with Jesus of Nazareth. His crucifixion was a public event seen by many. His disciples went into hiding for fear of the Jewish authorities. They felt that they would be the next ones to be crucified for following Jesus.

So we as the hearers of this gospel are forced into this situation where the angel is telling the women not to be amazed while it is quite apparent that what has in fact taken place is epic, cosmic and yes, amazing. But here is the reason why the Angel tells them not to be amazed……The Lord Jesus not only told them all that He would do it, but since He is God, His ability to do it is simply not amazing. The angel understands this because he understands the true nature of the Son of God. Life is a simple thing to the source and giver, to the Creator of life.

When our thinking is forced to change in such a crucial way that is called a paradigm shift. With the true revelation of the identity of Jesus, there is a new paradigm, a new set of rules…..a new reality. 2 Cor 5:17 “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” All things become new in the light of Jesus Christ, in the light of His suffering, His death and His defeat of death.

The resurrection is not simply an afterthought in our lives. It is not simply something that happened 2000 years ago to Jesus in a far away land. The resurrection is ours…..it is our hope and reason for a life of joy. It is a reminder that even when things in our life are looking bad, maybe terrible, nothing really scares us because Our Lord is greater than these things. If anything does scare us it should be that we don’t have enough faith and that we don’t take enough care for our souls to protect ourselves from falling into sin, for this we should each be terrified. But we shouldn’t worry about the things of this world and the threats of this life because Our Lord Jesus Christ has conquered the worst that the world could throw at Him while saying “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

The one who has overcome the world has overcome not only the little difficulties of life, He has overcome the worst things that we can even imagine. Injustice, cursing, reviling, slander, imprisonment, suffering, torture and finally death. If He is my Lord and Master and if He has endured and defeated all of this, and if He has permitted me to draw near to Him and to partake of His life, then shouldn’t I see the whole world and all of my life and all of my struggles and sufferings differently?

St. Barsanuphius of Optina writes, “You need not be despondent. Let those be despondent who do not believe in God. For them sorrow is burdensome, of course, because besides earthly enjoyment they have nothing. But believers must not be despondent, for through sorrows they receive the right of sonship, without which is impossible to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The resurrection is indeed the amazing event that proves to us that the rules have changed. It proves to us that Jesus has overcome death and subjected it under His feet. This tells us that because He is on our side, we can and will overcome whatever is thrown at us. But we won’t so this by our own power and strength, we are powerless without Him. But through Him, we become “a new creation.”

It is true that until we begin to understand the identity of Jesus Christ as the only Son of God we are amazed by the story of the resurrection. But after we understand His identity, the story is much less amazing because it is a story about life and life is the signature of God. Yet we are still amazed because He has allowed each of us the opportunity to enter into His unending life.

May we see His signature all over our own lives.

(based on homily preached April 29, 2012)

Source: Sermons