The Rich Man and Lazarus

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

Today our epistle and gospel lessons [1 Corinthians 12:27-13:8; Luke 16:19-31] combine to reveal the preeminent importance of love, not only in this life, but in the life to come.

The very heart of the Christian revelation and the core truth that gives meaning to all the rest, is that God is love. This was best summed up by the holy apostle and theologian John, and indicates to us that every action of God toward creation is motivated by love and is an expression of His love. God acts in no other way except in love, because God is love.

By the love of God, the invisible hosts of heaven are spoken into existence, as is the material world, full of beauty and harmony. Man is created in the image of God to share eternally in the communion of love with his Creator. Love is the single greatest force of all, infinitely greater than even the forces of sin and death which man introduced into the world by his prideful turning away from God’s love. Indeed as love is the source of all life, the turning away from love is the cause of all death, both temporal and eternal. Out of love, God even allows mankind and all the material world to experience death and suffering as the natural consequences of that turning away from love, in the hope that man will turn back and find life once again.

In his pastoral letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul sought to remind the often struggling Christians there of the preeminence of love. We’re all familiar with 1 Corinthians 13 because it is read at nearly every wedding we’ve ever attended. But the message that without love we are nothing should not be restricted to newlyweds only. We all need to remember that love is the most important pursuit of a person’s life; that love is patient and kind, not jealous or boastful, not arrogant or rude. Oh, how our lives and our relationships with others could be bettered if we remembered that love does not insist on its own way, is not irritable or resentful, and does not rejoice over evil, but over what is good. How we need to choose the love of God in our lives that we might bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things. How we need a love that does not end, further, that does not weary of doing what is good, that never tires of seeking truth, beauty, and goodness.

St. Justin Martyr, in describing the early Church, wrote to his pagan audience that Christians were characterized by their sacrificial love for one another. If some were hungry, others would go hungry, in order to supply their own food to those who were in need. What a contrast this is with the rich man in today’s gospel lesson. This man had more than enough food available to him. He could have easily sent a measly ration of bread and olives to poor Lazarus at his gate each day without missing a single calorie from his own sumptuous meals. Yet he did not possess even this much love or concern for his humble brother. Out of love, God send poor Lazarus to the gate of the rich man that the latter might discover compassion, and acting upon it, find his salvation. But the rich man refused this kindness of God, and hardened his heart against his needy brother, remaining indifferent to him.

This self-centered attitude, this concern only for himself and his own, imprinted itself indelibly on the rich man’s soul, and became his orientation even after death. Finding himself in torment, he called out to Father Abraham to cast Lazarus out of Paradise that the poor man might attend to his needs as a servant, now that he was suffering in Hades. There’s a considerate fellow for you! “I wouldn’t lift a finger to help Lazarus, even when it would cost me nothing. But now send him into these flames with me that he might dip his finger in water and cool my tongue”.

Father Abraham responded that he could not do that, since Lazarus was now being comforted for his sufferings in life, while the rich man was suffering for his stubborn refusal to share his comforts. In addition to this, Abraham noted that “a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us”.

What is this great chasm, and who fixed it in place? Some, who see Hades and Paradise as literal, geographical locations, assume that God fixed the chasm to prevent sinners from escaping His eternal wrath. But Orthodox saints have tended to take a different view. They have tended to see Hades and Paradise, and for that matter, heaven and hell, less as literal places than as states or conditions of the soul. This view is informed by what they understood as the one constant in the universe, the love of God.

If God is love, and His only action toward mankind is love, then the torment of Hades can only be the love of God refused by those who despise it. Have you ever been loved by someone you just didn’t love, and found their attention annoying, even harassing? Imagine that feeling amplified infinitely if the love you reject is God’s. Think of Satan, whom God still loves, yet his rejection of God’s love is so complete and thorough, that to even be reminded of it torments every fiber of his wicked being.

The flames of Hades in this parable cannot be material fire, for the rich man did not possess a material body to experience physical pain. It is the souls of those in Hades which experience torment. And that torment is the love of God which burns them like fire, as they still stubbornly reject it. Even after the resurrection, when all souls are reunited to their bodies once again, the “lake of fire” spoken of by Jesus cannot possibly be a literal place, for this would mean that God has specifically created a dark and hideous chamber where He can cease to act out of love, and show nothing but endless, sadistic malice.

It is man who is capable of both love and cruelty simultaneously, not God. Medieval concepts of hell as a literal place of eternal wrath do not tell us the truth about God. They are inconsistent with the revelation of God as love, yet they have crept into contemporary Christendom and have become a part of the way that many people understand God.

If anyone insists on taking a literal view of Hades and hell as actual places that God has created to torment sinners, then he must answer a difficult question. Would not a sinner, awaking from the delusion of this life and finding himself in Hades, become sincerely repentant and beg God for mercy? Are we to expect that God would only shrug at this and reply, “Go cry, deep fry; you had your chance”? Isn’t this kind of callous indifference exactly what destroyed the rich man, and yet we imagine God is capable of the same sin?

On the other hand, if Hades and hell are states or conditions of the soul which cause a person to remain unrepentant and defiant of God’s love, then can’t we see that it is not God who is hard-hearted, but the sinner himself?

Returning to our gospel lesson, we can see that the rich man remained unrepentant even in torment. Some might argue that he showed a smidgen of love by wanting Lazarus to be sent to his brothers to warn them. But once again what he demonstrates is that he was only concerned for his own. What about his countrymen, what about the rest of Israel? Could the rich man show no concern for them? God in truth did show concern for these and for all the world, by not only raising another Lazarus from the dead, but even His own Son. Yet as Abraham gravely predicted, even this proof was rejected by many, and is still rejected today.

Our Orthodox saints teach that not only are heaven and hell states of the soul, but they are states that each person is living in right now. Each of us is living either in a progression toward full communion with God’s love, or in an utter rejection of it. Each of us is experiencing either the renunciation of self-love and the freedom to love and give of ourselves to others, or we are becoming more selfish, more sinful, more alienated from the love of God.

God is not to be blamed for any who may find themselves in hell, for even there, the love of God is to be found. Hell is not a place of God’s absence as some teach, for this would mean that God is not omnipresent, and therefore not truly God. God is “everywhere present and fillest all things,” even hell. As always the question is, will we respond favorably to God’s love and make ourselves into a true reflection of it, or will we make ourselves into the opposite of His love, and despise Him for all eternity? May God help us to take our lives in the right direction.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

If Pigs Fly, Would That be "Swine Flew"?

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

Today our gospel lesson from St. Luke’s account [8:26-39] describes the healing of a man possessed by many demons. How many times have we heard this story read over the years? A lot, to be sure. We might wonder why this passage, or others very similar to it, are placed before us by the Church so often and so regularly. Be assured that we are not reading about graveyards and demons because it is the week before Halloween. As always, the Church puts these scriptural stories before us because they are needful to our salvation. There are details of great importance in this text that we need to pay close attention to, lest we succumb to things far scarier than ghosts and goblins.

The story opens with Jesus arriving at the country of the Gergesenes (sometimes referred to as the Gadarenes). This was a region truly on the outskirts of Jewish civilization at that time. Located along the Eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, it was largely a Gentile region with a small Jewish population. Christ obviously came to preach to the Jews there, since His ministry was mainly to the children of the house of Israel. What He found when He arrived in this region however was a Jewish people quite out of touch with their religious heritage, and heavily compromised by their close association with the Gentiles. The people there were raising pigs. Although today we appreciate pork as “the other white meat,” both lean and delicious, to observant Jews, pigs were unclean animals with which they were forbidden to have contact. Obviously, the Jews living in the Gergesenes felt that the economic benefits of raising pigs to sell to the Gentiles far outweighed any silly little religious rules against such things. Forget pleasing God; there was money to be made!

This could be our first clue as to why this passage is important to us and to our salvation. Of all the reasons that may cause a person to compromise his faith and obedience to God, the love of money is right up there at the top. To make their fortunes, some people are willing to to anything they think they can get away with, even if it brings harm to others, including swindling seniors out of their retirement investments, or selling drugs or pornography. Others choose the more legal route of grossly overcharging clients for goods or services rendered. But even if we don’t engage in any of these practices, there are other ways for us to put the love of money above the love of God.

The most common way is to neglect the poor. Jesus tells us that if you have two cloaks, give one to the brother who has none. He doesn’t say that this would simply be a nice idea. He says in no uncertain terms, do it. How often do we obey that commandment? Most of us have more clothes in our closets than we can comfortably wear at one time. Do we ever think that we have too much; that we should share with those who have less? Maybe we think, “Hey, I earned my cloaks; I deserve them. Why should I give one of my cloaks to the bum who spent his all money on wine?” Well, maybe because that bum is your brother; more importantly, he is Jesus, and he is cold. Is that not a good enough reason?

Another way for us to put the love of money above the love of God is to neglect the temple of God. I’m sure you remember the story of the widow’s two mites. Jesus and His disciples were present in the Temple when the rich folks were making their offerings. Along came a poor widow who contributed two mites, the smallest coins. Jesus alerted His disciples and told them that this poor widow had contributed more than all of the others combined, for while the rich gave of their excess, she sacrificially offered all that she had to live on. But that’s just the beginning of the story. As they walked around the Temple, some spoke of the great adornment of the place, with all its gold and precious stones. Jesus immediately informed them that all they were looking at would soon be cast down, foretelling the Roman destruction of the Temple in 70AD.

Now think about this for a moment. Jesus had just praised a woman for sacrificing all that she had for a Temple that He knew would be destroyed in just a few decades. Wasn’t this unfair of Him? Shouldn’t He have rushed in to stop her saying, “Look I appreciate your good intentions, but save your money; this place won’t be here much longer”? Absolutely not! Jesus taught through this that the faith relationship of the person to God, and the willingness of a person to make sacrifice, is what matters more than any earthly concern. The widow received praise from God for her action, and eternal life for her faith. This was of far more value than any personal suffering her sacrifice certainly caused her.

Often we lack this kind of faith when it comes to our giving. Smitten by the fear that we might not be left with enough, we sometimes withhold our tithe from the parish and rely on our brothers and sisters to keep the doors open and the lights on. Either by making full tithes, or smaller “widow’s mite” offerings as they are able, many of our dear friends are seeking to honor God and to keep the parish going by paying the bills and contributing to the alms fund we use to help the needy, both within our own parish and outside as well. It is wrong to leave this work to others only. Each of us needs to step up to the plate and take upon ourselves the responsibility of making sacrificial offerings to God.

We often forget the importance of making tithes and offerings to God when we are so focused on our own financial woes in this dreadful economy. Forgetting these things, we become slightly less Christian, even slightly less human, and become hoarders rather than givers, selfish rather than selfless.

Becoming less human is exactly what today’s gospel lesson is all about. The man possessed by the legion of demons likely had turned his heart away from God long before the demons gained domination over him. Due to his close proximity to the swine, and their mention in the story, it is not a stretch to assume that he had once been among the Jewish men who had conveniently set aside their faith to make their living as pig-farmers. This compromise, combined with all his other passions, likely opened him up to further demonic persuasion, and to eventual possession.

As we know, Christ intervened in his life, bringing healing and restoration. But following this, all the other people from the village came out and begged Jesus to depart from them. They did not want to deal with the holiness and high standard of godly living that He came to impart to them. “Go away; leave us with our demons and the filth we choose,” they begged of Him. And the most frightening part of all--more scary than any Halloween story--is that He heeded them, and departed from them exactly as they had asked. If we honestly want nothing to do with Jesus and His difficult demands on our lives, He will respect that choice and leave us. What He leaves us to is a hell of our own making. A torment in which we will never receive what we want. Even our swine will run off and drown themselves and leave our desires unfulfilled. Only by listening to Jesus and making the decision to obey Him will we find lasting satisfaction and contentment in everything that is eternally good.

Perhaps this is the meaning behind our gospel lesson this morning. May God help us to find the courage to overcome our own fears, both financial and otherwise, and to gladly invite Jesus into our village, into our parish, our homes, and our lives, in order that He might bring restoration and healing to us all.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

A Heavenly Family

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

Our gospel lesson this morning [Luke 10:16-21] gives us a brief account of the seventy men whom our Lord Jesus Christ personally hand-picked, spiritually-empowered, and sent out as apostles to preach the word, to cast out spirits, and to bring healing to all. (The word apostle means one who is sent) This passage holds a special significance for our parish, because our patron saint, Barnabas, was among these very special men chosen by our Lord.

According to the kontakion we sing in his memory, Barnabas was first among the Seventy, meaning that he was preeminent among them, being a good man and full of the Holy Spirit. As our hymn tells us, he was found worthy to accompany the great St. Paul on his missionary journeys, and through his wise preaching, brought many to to the knowledge of Jesus Christ as Savior. Barnabas also spent more than a year in the city of Antioch, teaching the church by word and example, and together with Paul, laid the solid and lasting foundation which we still enjoy today as present-day members of the Church of Antioch.

Have you ever considered that in addition to whoever else in the world St. Barnabas prays for, he surely intercedes continually for our parish and for each of us, his spiritual children? No doubt his pastoral concerns include that we would grow strong in faith and love and spiritual understanding, and also that we might be found fruitful in the good works which glorify our Lord Jesus Christ. We should never forget this connection we share with this missionary-apostle who still labors from heaven to draw many into the knowledge of Christ. This parish will not always have the same hierarchs, the same priests and clergy serving it, but it will always have St. Barnabas to watch over it, to guide and protect it, and I think to imprint upon it his special qualities of encouragement and love.

As we ponder these things, it is good to bear in mind that we give glory to God and honor to our patron saint when we show the same concern for our parish community that they do. We must never forget that the local parish is far more than a group of reasonably nice folks who get together occasionally for religious services and coffee. The parish is truly a holy community, a dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit who gives life to all who are united to Christ within it. It is a heavenly family whose Father is God, and rightly therefore are we called brothers and sisters in the Lord. Our membership here is not by chance or accident, but by the good will and choice of God, who hand-picked each of us and brought us to this place as living stones to be fitted together as a holy temple, as one Body which is Christ, that we may find our common salvation in Him.

If I understand the New Testament scriptures correctly, salvation is a corporate experience, meaning that it takes place for us in the context of the Body, and specifically, in the local parish to which we have been called. We like to say that the Church is the normal means that God has provided to save mankind. This does not imply that God cannot save the thief on the cross or those vast numbers of people who, either by ignorance or ideology, reside outside the communion of the Church. It merely means that God, who is not the author of confusion, has established an outpost of sanity in a fallen and quite insane world, a place where truth is taught in fullness and everything necessary for man’s illumination, salvation, and glorification can be found.

This is often a difficult concept for Americans to grasp. Although we are still a mostly church-going nation (or at least claim to be whenever religious polls are taken), we have largely redefined “church” to make it a place of fellowship and study, rather than the place where salvation is encountered, worked out, and experienced. As a result, Americans see church as optional. You can fellowship with your Christian buddies on the golf course and you can study your bible at home, so why bother with church? What we’ve done is to remake church in our image and according to our preferences. What we’ve lost is the traditional Christian understanding of the Church as the household of God, the pillar and foundation of the Truth, the place where God forms us together into the fullness of the stature of Christ. We Americans have forgotten the central role of Church in God’s plan of salvation.

This affects every one of us. Constantly each of us faces the struggle to overcome our individualistic leanings and to remind ourselves that the parish is central to our communion with God. In old Russia and Greece, villages were built around the Church as a reminder that the parish was central to the life of the people. In America, our towns are built around shopping malls and soccer fields, with churches found along the edges of communities. We can only guess what that reveals about us.

Our daily priorities reflect whether or not the parish (and thereby God) is central to our lives. Do we pray, and teach our children to pray, and instruct them in the Orthodox faith by word and by personal example? Do we make the motto “Church First” a hallmark of our family life, by attendance, by financial support, by service, by concern for the well-being of all, and by living righteous, holy lives for the benefit of our brothers and sisters in Christ? When we pray, do we take upon ourselves the needs of others in the parish and pray for them as if they were our own needs? Do we ask for the intercessions and help of St. Barnabas and share the same love for his parish that he holds for us within his heart? If not, then this is exactly what we should be doing in order to please God by resisting our fallen and self-centered approach to life.

I don’t think there’s anything more difficult, and at the same time more rewarding, than serving one’s parish. God designed it that way you know, because it’s exactly what we need to prepare each of us for the community of heaven. It’s hard to deny ourselves our “independent lives” and live to serve others. When we make out the family budget and decide where to allot each precious dollar, it’s hard to think “Church First” and write that tithe check to honor God and help our community. When the parish needs volunteers, it’s hard to commit to driving all the way back to church to clean toilets or set up tables for some event. When we are offended or have a conflict with someone in the parish, it’s hard to think of the other person as more important than ourselves and make the choice to serve him or her in love. It’s hard to accept the sometimes unpleasant circumstances in our lives as being allowed by God that we might learn humility and patient trust in Him. In times of temptation, it’s hard to remember that we actually owe right living and holiness to one another, and thus must deny ourselves indulgence in sin. It’s hard to come to confession and be reconciled to the community, especially if “community” is something we don’t often concern ourselves with. It’s hard not to think of ourselves as the center of our own existence and fight the selfish desires that emanate from that fallen and bitter orientation.

The very fact that these things are hard demonstrates the direct bearing they have on our salvation. And where else but in the parish do we shine the light on these fallen traits in ourselves, and thereby discover our fundamental need of repentance?

I’m sure you know as well as I do that when we humans face things that are hard, we have a tendency to avoid them, or rationalize our way around them. We don’t always have the presence of mind or the determination in our hearts to see these challenges as coming from God for our salvation. In this way, life’s many opportunities to trust God and draw near to Him can pass us by. These things are easy to neglect and yet it’s parish life and the intercessions of our patron saint that keep them before us and graciously give us always one more opportunity for repentance and change. God loves us very much, and so does St. Barnabas, and they do everything to help us. Let us learn to unite ourselves to that great and abiding love, and take on the challenges that will join us to one another in gaining the glorious salvation that takes place within this holy community.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council

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

Today the Orthodox Church commemorates the Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, who met together in the year 787 to defend and describe the proper use and veneration of the Holy Icons (Images).

Icons have been a part of the Christian experience since apostolic times. St. Luke is in fact credited with being Christendom’s very first iconographer. According to ancient tradition, he crafted an image of the Theotokos and Christ-child that was blessed by her, and later used as the basis for the “Vladimir Mother of God” icon which is still very popular today. Images and various Christian symbols adorned the catacombs of the first centuries, and later the churches of the Constantine-period and far beyond.

Yet despite such early and widespread use and endorsement, there has always been a small percentage of people in every generation who stubbornly opposed the use of holy images within the Church. There are many such people even today in the Christian traditions outside of Orthodoxy. Such people invariably resort to the Old Testament to argue that Christian icons are a form of “graven image” expressly forbidden by the Second Commandment. Despite the fact that the Old Testament lawfully included profuse imagery--including the brass serpent Moses held aloft to symbolize Christ crucified, the architecture of the earthly Temple which was modeled after its antitype in heaven, and the golden cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant--for some reason Christian icons are singled out by some as “violations of scriptural commandments” and those of us who use them are uncharitably branded as “foolish idolators” who blindly follow “the teachings of men” rather than the pure word of God. I’m sure we have all heard such accusations.

While being in full agreement that icons should never be worshipped, the Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council defended the proper use of them within the Church on the basis that through the incarnation of the Son of God, the invisible and immaterial God added to His existence a visible and material human nature which could now rightfully be depicted by human art. In short, Christian Iconography exists solely because of the incarnation of Christ! This is why attempts to use the impartial revelation of the Old Testament to argue against the fuller revelation demonstrated in New Testament iconography is mistaken and invalid.

Icons prove that God became man, bringing glorification to humanity. The Christ-figure portrayed in the icons is not a ghost or an illusion, nor merely an ordinary man. He is the God-man Jesus Christ, the Blessed Second Person of the Holy Trinity, truly incarnate and divinely glorified in the flesh for our sakes and for our salvation.

The Holy Fathers taught that icons are not merely useful to the Church, but in fact essential to preserving the full understanding of the incarnation and our glorious salvation against the many heresies that continually assail these beliefs. The icons not only depict God incarnate, but they also show the saints deified by their union with Christ as partakers of the divine nature, which indeed is both the promise and potential shared by all of us who are joined to the glorified humanity of Christ through the new birth of water and the Spirit in Holy Baptism.

The spirit of error denies the essential importance of iconography, claiming that Christian truth can be preserved by words alone. That’s simply false. The Holy Images convey truth on a different level than written or spoken words, and at the same time combine with them to present truth in a more full and complete way. Interestingly enough, most heretics who deny the deity of Christ are perfectly content to use the Church’s bible to teach their falsehoods. But they do not use the Church’s icons. There is something a bit too “divine” in the portrayal of the Theotokos and her Child, in the image of Christ glorified, or in the images of the saints filled with God. Such an unmistakable sense of divine presence and holiness which the icons convey does not lend itself well to the empty teachings of those who deny the deity of Jesus Christ, and for this reason the heretics condemn icons and refuse to have them in their buildings. The paint and wood of icons do “make real” the incarnation in a way that the paper and ink of books alone cannot.

The Holy Fathers defined exactly how icons should be used by the faithful. Forbidding the worship of them, the Fathers taught that honor or veneration should be offered through them to the saints they depict, and by this action, adoration and worship offered to God alone, who by His divine condescension took our flesh to make sainthood possible. I have heard people say that it is wrong to venerate the saints because such practice supposedly detracts from the glory that should be given to God. This makes no sense. If you praise a piece of art for its beauty, are you not giving honor to the artist who created it? When we give honor to the saints who were pleasing to God, we give glory and worship to the very God whose transforming grace made them saints. Those who portray God as envious of the honor given to His saints are misguided and have an incomplete and distorted view of God. “I am the LORD, and My glory I shall not share with another!” thunders their God from the pages of the Old Testament [Isaiah 42:8]. In contrast, Jesus prayed to His Father concerning His saints, “And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them, that they may be one, even as we are one” [John 17:22, emphasis added].

To refuse honor to the saints is to deny the incarnation of the Son of God and our blessed union with Him, by which He is pleased to share His glory with men. It is a denial of the very means of our salvation and the humility of God in the sharing of His life and glory with us. It is an action not rooted in love, but in the vain imaginings of men who esteem their opinions as possessing greater weight than the teachings of the Church. As we heard in our epistle lesson this morning from Titus 3, such men are sinful, subverted, and self-condemned and are sternly admonished by the Church to repent.

To Orthodox Christians, a church building adorned with icons is as meet and right as the walls of a healthy, happy home adorned with the photographs of many loved ones. The icons remind us of our larger family, and of the common inheritance we share with them all. They make this a warm home, bright and welcoming to all who enter under its roof. Though we were once strangers to God, we have been made a family with all the saints in every generation and with one another by the love of our heavenly Father and His kindness toward us. It is of the greatest importance therefore that we show this same love and kindness toward others, and especially toward those who are so convinced that we are wrong.

The Holy Icons vividly demonstrate the love of God. They leave no question that God has done everything divinely possible to raise man up to a position of great dignity and holiness. Perhaps the best thing we an do for modern day critics of the Holy Icons is to become ourselves living icons of God’s love and kindness. As they harshly demand of us biblical justification for our practices, and in many cases shut their minds to our answers, what more can we do but to show them the love of our Father and be kind to them as He Himself is kind to all? It is not our obligation to convince people, but to love them as God does, and thus become true and living icons of our Lord Jesus Christ. May this be the path we choose.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Two Mysteries

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

In our gospel lesson this morning [Matthew 9:27-35] we heard that our Lord Jesus Christ opened the eyes of two blind men and cast out a demon from a man who could not speak. The passage goes on to describe how Christ travelled to all the cities and villages, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.

Miracles of physical healing and deliverance from spiritual oppression often accompanied the preaching of gospel of the kingdom as a sign that the salvation of God has come to reverse the consequences of the fall and release mankind from the wretched tyranny of sin, death, and the devil.

In passages like this and in our epistle lesson this morning [1 Timothy 3:13-4:5], we witness the conflict that continually rages between the kingdom of heaven and the domain of darkness. One aims to bring healing and freedom to man, the other to cripple and enslave him forever. At work in this conflict are two mysteries which we shall examine today; one good, one evil. Both of these mysteries are actively present in the world, and sometimes even in our own thoughts and choices. We need to be aware of their presence and learn to incline ourselves toward the good, that we might find God’s freedom rather than the devil’s enslavement.

The first mystery we encounter is actually named by St. Paul in today’s epistle. He calls it the mystery of godliness. What is the mystery of godliness? I believe it refers to the ineffable manner in which God brings His divine life into the world so that we might find healing and salvation.

Many people don’t see godliness as a mystery. They see it either as the natural result of following the laws of their religion to the letter, or else as a kind of legal status bestowed upon those of approved belief. But for St. Paul, true godliness could only come from the mystery that is God Himself. Quoting an ancient creed of the apostolic-era Church, he wrote: “God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up in glory”.

What is it that Paul is speaking of here? He is speaking of the mystery of the incarnation of Christ and all that is accomplished for us in His glorified humanity. For the early Church, the incarnation was central to the message of godliness and salvation. That message was not simply that God assumed a body to slay upon the cross, but that He took our humanity and added it to Himself to infuse our nature with His divinity and holiness. This is the same message that the Orthodox Church lives and proclaims today.

But there is more to this. If we accept that this quotation came from a creed of the early Church, we can perhaps understand that it was most likely from a baptismal creed, a confession of faith which was made as the candidate stood ready to be received into the Church through the “new birth” of water and the Spirit into union with Christ. This is truly a great mystery! Only God can understand how baptism unites us to Christ, how it makes us members of His Holy Body the Church, how together with the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit it makes His divine life and energies available to us for the transformation which leads to salvation. Indeed only God can understand the mystery of godliness. Thankfully, this mystery does not require our understanding in order for us to participate in it, only our faith and our desire to draw near to God.

Unfortunately, in this modern age men seek rational explanations for everything, and attempt to subject even the mysteries of God to the limitations of the human intellect. Such attempts invariably strip the mysteries of all power, and leave men with only empty symbols which cannot lead to the fullness of truth and the deepest experience of sanctifying godliness.

Behind these actions is yet another mystery. In his epistle to Timothy, Paul went on to say that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and the doctrines of devils. Elsewhere, in his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, St. Paul described something he called the mystery of iniquity, which he linked directly to the antichrist and his foul teachings. St. John wrote that the spirit of antichrist is already in the world and working to lead many astray.

This seductive spirit of antichrist seeks to draw all men away from truth and the mystery of godliness to enslave them by deception. It never operates entirely alone, but relies on man’s own spiritual pride to coax him into setting aside the Holy Tradition of the Church in favor of something he sees as better. For some, this temptation comes in the form of Sola Scriptura, the alluring promise that with my bible alone I can gain all wisdom and declare my independence from the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. But while we Orthodox may reject this false use of the bible, we may still fall victim to a seductive spirit of pride and of raising our opinions above the life and faith of our holy Orthodoxy.

Let me give some examples. It concerns me deeply whenever I see Orthodox believers who are indifferent to the life of the Church, who come to the services infrequently and only at their own convenience, who seldom give attention to their Orthodox life outside of Church; who disregard their prayers, the fasting, the sanctified giving and support of their parish, and ignore the holy confessional with its life-giving penance. It worries me whenever Orthodox people act as their own spiritual guides, following their own thoughts and ideas in regard to their life, without any consultation with a priest or elder. I am troubled when people make major decisions which change the course of their lives without so much as seeking the blessing of their priest, let alone his counsel.

It’s certainly true that it takes time, humility, and attentiveness on our part to allow the Holy Spirit to form in us an Orthodox ethos or mindset, leading to our becoming truly Orthodox in our thinking and manner of life. It should in fact be our goal to allow this spiritual formation to take place in us through our obedience to the life of the Church and submission to the Spirit of God. But if we allow our own willfulness and human pride to impede this formation, if we live Orthodoxy entirely on our own terms, doing as we please, are we not setting ourselves above the Church and even God Himself, seeking to rule our own lives rather than seeking the rule of God?

My brothers and sisters, this is the spirit of the antichrist. We may claim to love the Church, but if we behave with a casual indifference toward its sacred life, does this not reveal an independent and proud spirit within us that is in opposition to God? Do we wish to follow the Spirit of humility leading to godliness, or only the spirit of self-worship leading to iniquity?

Let us remember that God has called us to a holy life, which we must approach with reverence and a voluntary self-emptying of willfulness and stubborn disobedience. St. Anthony of the Desert taught that by humility, man can avoid all the snares of the enemy. This is the path which can save us from the antichrist and from the mystery of iniquity which will take so many unwary people captive in these last days. Great is the mystery of godliness through which we are saved! May God grant us the humility to live as truly faithful and obedient Orthodox Christian believers.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sunday of All Saints

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

Today is the Sunday of All Saints. On this day the Church celebrates not just two or three or a handful of saints, but literally all the saints in every generation, including our own. On this First Sunday after Pentecost, we commemorate all the saints to remind us that the Holy Spirit has come for the purpose of making sainthood possible. A more personal way to say this is to say that because the Holy Spirit has descended and now dwells within the Church, each of us has access to being cleansed, sanctified, glorified and numbered with all the saints who have ever walked with God. On this Sunday we don’t simply remember the saints gone before us; we remember that we also are called to become saints or holy ones of God! It is a gracious and highly-exalted calling, representing our opportunity to enter today into the eternal communion of God’s life and love and to be transformed by it from endless shame to everlasting glory.

There are a few things about this we must be certain to understand right off the start. First, that the Holy Spirit has come to make us holy. That is His purpose and His work, and He accomplishes it well. He initiates it, He enlivens it, and He perfects it according to the will of the Father. We do not make ourselves holy; it is the Spirit’s work, thank God! Second, as the Spirit is truly holy, so He makes God’s saints truly holy. There is no such thing as “positional righteousness” except in the imaginations of men who have separated themselves from Orthodox teaching. God’s work is real. His transformation of fallen humanity is real. The holiness He imparts to His people is also real. The lives of the many saints throughout the Church era demonstrate this fact reliably and incontrovertibly. And finally, although sainthood is the work of the Holy Spirit and very real, it is also fundamentally a calling, meaning that it is something we must respond to. God calls, but we must answer. Sainthood will not happen in us automatically. We must give our willing consent to the process and enter into it actively.

When each of us was chrismated, God granted us the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit. No one has been denied this precious deposit. From that moment forward we were meant to live by the Holy Spirit, or in other words to follow His guidance into the life of the Church, and by so doing, allow His presence and operation in our lives to become an ever-increasing reality. This process is what some have referred to as acquiring the Holy Spirit.

Addressing this very subject, St. Seraphim of Sarov wrote: “Prayer, fasting, vigil and all other Christian activities, however good they may be in themselves, do not constitute the aim of our Christian life, although they serve as an indispensable means of reaching this end. The true aim of our Christian life consists in the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God.”

“The acquisition of the Holy Spirit” is the fundamental action of the Christian life, and involves submission to the Spirit in order to cooperate fully with His sanctifying work. One who is filled with the Spirit is one who has learned to set aside his own fallen will in order to will and to do what God wills and does.

This is what I like to call “The Gethsemane Factor”. You’ll recall that prior to His arrest, false trial, and crucifixion, our Lord prayed in the garden of Gethsemane with great agony that He might be spared the events awaiting Him, but concluded each request with the words, “Yet not My will, but Thine be done”. This He did for our sakes, to show us how we must live. Our Lord knew He would have to endure these things for our salvation, yet He wanted to teach us how absolutely necessary it is for those who would follow God to submit their own human will to the good and perfect will of God.

This is not to say that our Lord’s agony was an act, or somehow not real. In a mystery both terrible yet beautiful to behold, the God-man Jesus Christ genuinely struggled to bring His human will into full conformity with His divine will to accomplish the great and fearful work He had come to earth to do.

Is it any surprise then that our number one struggle in this life is to bring our own human will into conformity with the will of God? Come to think of it, that might indeed be a surprise to many Christians, for far too many never give a thought to accomplishing the will of God in their lives, and even routinely excuse themselves whenever they choose do that which is in direct opposition to His will.

Here’s something I want you to remember: a willful person can never accomplish the will of God. Human willfulness is always in opposition to the Holy Spirit, and only the one who has learned to crucify his willfulness and submit to God’s will can begin to acquire the Spirit of God.

What do I mean by willfulness? I’m not talking about free will in and of itself, for this is God’s gift to us that we might choose love. Only a person with a free and unconstrained will can freely choose to love his God and his neighbor as himself. It is a free will choice to enter into the communion of God’s love and be transformed by it. But willfulness, at least according to my definition, implies a certain loss of freedom, the misuse and distortion of free will, for it is the habitual and slavish devotion only to the self, to one’s own stubborn desires, passions, and fallen inclinations. It is the natural state of one who has not yet received the Holy Spirit, according to St. Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 2. And after the Spirit is given, the struggle against willfulness to gain the fulness of the Spirit is the major work of the Christian life.

Because of this, so much of the life of the Church engages us in a direct assault upon our stubborn willfulness. We are given a structured worship, authored in antiquity by the Holy Spirit, instead of a contemporary, made-up service that we mislabel as “spirit-led”. We are given a rule of prayer to guide us, rather than letting us entirely make up our own prayers or not pray at all. We are given a Church calendar with seasons of fasting, seasons of penance, and seasons of celebration to sanctify our time and set the boundaries of our life. We are given the confessional to remind us that we do not answer to ourselves alone, but to God, to the the community of the faithful, and to the counsel and guidance of a father-confessor. Many Orthodox Christians fail here, for they either resist confession, or they treat the penance they are prescribed as little more than “advice” which they can take or leave as they please. That’s willfulness!

Everything that God has provided in the life of the Church, everything we are called to do as Orthodox Christians, has as its goal the crucifixion of our fallen self-will and the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. This is why many Orthodox Christians do not live the Orthodox life in fulness, for they are not yet ready to overcome their willfulness and submit themselves to the Spirit’s leading.

I think it is vital to develop an awareness of this, and to keep it before ourselves continually, for we face little conflicts between our willfulness and the Spirit’s leading daily. Shall I say my prayers today, or make excuses for myself? Shall I fast, or eat what I want? Shall I come to the service, or stay home and relax? Shall I be kind today, or treat people badly? Shall I be pure, or give in to my lusts? Shall I go to confession, or keep my little secrets? Shall I obey my penance, or lay it aside to do as I please? Constantly our willfulness challenges the will of God, but do we even recognize that this is taking place? Do we realize that every decision is the choice to either obey God and acquire the Holy Spirit, or to willfully resist Him, grieve the Spirit, and gain nothing? Do we ever consider The Gethsemane Factor in our daily lives and enter into that agonizing struggle to declare, “Not my will, but Thine be done”?

Today we are reminded that we are called to be saints, and nothing less than saints. The Holy Spirit awaits our response. We must crucify our willfulness and submit to the work that the Spirit does in our midst, in our Church, in God’s kingdom. It is God’s work, my beloved. Our work is only this: to give our willing consent, to say “Yes” to the Spirit’s leading, and put to death our stubborn opposition. May God remind us and lead us in this daily.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council

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

Today the Holy Orthodox Church commemorates the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council. This was the council which condemned the Arian heresy that claimed Jesus was a created being who only later was glorified by God. The council upheld the tradition of the apostles regarding the eternal divinity and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. We remember the Spirit-led work of these Holy Fathers on this Sunday, right between the feasts of Ascension and Pentecost, because this timing helps us remember the promise made to the Church by her Lord. Jesus told His followers that He would not leave them as orphans after His ascension, but would send the Holy Spirit who would guide His Church into all the truth. The Spirit came at Pentecost, and remains with the Church to this day. Through the Holy Spirit, the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council aggressively defended the truth and quite literally saved the Christian faith at a time when the whole world was filled with the darkness of error and deceit. Our commemoration of the Holy Fathers of Nicea is therefore just as much a commemoration of the work of the Holy Spirit Himself, and a grateful recognition that He labors in synergy with holy men to uphold the truth of God and bear witness to the apostolic faith in every generation.

We can see an early example of the Holy Spirit working together with holy men this way in Acts chapter 15. There the Spirit is invisibly present in the council of Jerusalem, during which the apostles had to decide on the difficult matter of what to do with Gentile converts to Christianity. At last, in a letter sent to the Gentiles abroad the council declared its decision with the words, “For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us…” [Acts 15:28] With these words, the council of apostles and holy hierarchs was not trying to bolster its position or authority, but was simply recognizing that the Holy Spirit aided the Church in times like this, as the Guide into all the truth that Jesus had promised. This set the precedent that every successive authentic Church council would follow.

There have been seven ecumenical councils--meaning, councils whose decisions have been accepted by the entire Church, universally and throughout time--which were convened whenever any heresy endangered the purity of the Orthodox faith. Through all these councils, it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us--meaning our Holy Fathers in every age--to articulate, clarify, and advance the Christian faith delivered once for all at that first Pentecost so long ago.

In our day, far too many believers ignore these historic and Spirit-led councils with the claim that “All I need is my Bible and the Spirit to lead me into all the truth.” How delightfully ego-centric! Such people make the HUGE assumption that there would even be bibles in existence today or any recognizable semblance of Christian faith to adopt had not these councils acted as they did to preserve the truth. “But God would have found some way to preserve His truth!” they might protest. And yes, He did find a way, and this was it: the Holy Spirit, working together with holy men, in His holy Church.

People have a hard time accepting what God actually did in history, preferring to substitute their own ideas of what He should have done. Perhaps this is because if they acknowledge what God actually did, that would mean that there is a higher authority than themselves; a Church to which we are accountable rather than vice-versa. When man is in a state of delusion, he imagines that the Church which Christ established, His very Body, which He promised the gates of hades would never prevail against, to which He granted the Holy Spirit to abide in it and to lead its faithful into all the truth, is somehow fundamentally less reliable than me with my bible. This is what Arius believed, and we see where that belief got him. And yes, it is delusional. God’s plan is and always has been centered on His Church.

Did you know that the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council are even alluded to prophetically in the Old Testament? In Genesis 14 we read of the foreign kings waging war and taking Abram’s brother, Lot, captive. Verse 14 tells us, "And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued them unto Dan." There Abram defeated the kings and set his brother free. Three hundred eighteen is also the exact number of Holy Fathers who were present at the council of Nicea. These were servants of God, raised in His own House (the Church) and armed with the knowledge of Truth, who fought against the Arians that had taken many souls captive with their foreign and corrupt teaching, and defeated them to bring freedom. The Church has recognized that this Old Testament story gained a New Testament fulfillment in the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council. This leads us to the understanding that it is not only Christ who fulfills Old Testament prophesies, but sometimes even His Church and His saints alike, because all are one in divine life and mission.

In our reading from Acts this morning, the prophecy continued with St. Paul warning the Ephesian elders to guard the flock and care for the Church of God which He had entrusted to them, for “from among your own selves will arise men speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them” [Acts 20:30]. Arius was such a man, a presbyter of the Church, whose perverted teachings nearly overthrew Christianity until the servants of God prevailed against it.

In our gospel lesson from John 17, Jesus told us what the stakes are. He said, “And this is eternal life, that they know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent”. Eternal life hinges on true knowledge of the only true God, which the heretics pervert in their efforts to lead many astray. This knowledge is never merely theoretical, cerebral, or abstract; it is experiential, spiritual, and actively saving. Neither is this knowledge relative to what we choose to believe about God. Rather, the true knowledge of God is wedded to the Church, comes forth from the Church, and is fully known only within the Church. We come to know God not by reading about Him but by living in union with Him in His Church. The knowledge of God is not words and doctrines alone but life and communion.

It was this very life which they possessed that allowed the Holy Fathers to recognize the error of Arius when they encountered it. It wasn’t just that Arius was teaching something new; he was teaching something lifeless. It was a false teaching that did not unite its adherents to Jesus Christ, that did not lead to the true knowledge of God, that did not impart the grace and salvation of God. For this reason it had to be condemned. And all who do not confess the Symbol of Faith which came forth from the Council of Nicea also risk the condemnation of alienation from the true knowledge of God and from eternal life.

My brothers and sisters, we do not pronounce that judgement ourselves. We love all men and reserve for them the same hope of salvation that we hold for ourselves, regardless of their church affiliation or their beliefs. Yet we do not regard all churches or beliefs as equal before God. There is one true Church and one true life and communion within that Church. It is this Orthodox Church to which we must be faithful, even while we pray for the peace of the whole world and the salvation of all men. We are not called to judge but to witness, showing forth the light of God’s life in love to the fallen and broken world around us. Our witness must not consist of empty words or of dogmas we have not bothered to live, but of lives that have found their way into communion with God and are undergoing the transformation of love. This is what people want to see and what we can show them, for the Holy Spirit is still dwells with the Church, and still works with holy people to bear witness in a fallen and broken world. May God grant us to be that people.

+To the glory of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.