Orthodox Truth

Wednesday of the Eighth Week of St. Matthew

You can listen to an audio podcast of this post at https://www.spreaker.com/user/youngfaithradio/matt8wed

In today’s reading from the Gospel, the Lord foretells His suffering and death to the Apostles: 

At that time, Jesus charged his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ. From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. – Matthew 16: 20-24

St. Theophan the Recluse, by way of commenting on this passage, addresses a specific type of temptation in our spiritual warfare, what the Fathers call the temptation from the right side, and how the Lord protects us from this kind of demonic interference by the means of enabling us to endure sorrows for the sake of our salvation: 

When the Holy Apostles confessed the Saviour to be the Son of God, He said, I must…suffer…and be killed. The work had ripened; it remained only to complete it through the death on the cross. The same thing occurs in the course of a Christian’s moral progress. While he is struggling with his passions, the enemy still hopes somehow to tempt him; but when passions have settled down and the enemy no longer has enough power to awaken them, he presents external temptations, all sorts of wrongful accusations, and, moreover, of the most sensitive kind. He tries to plant the thought: “So what did you work and struggle for? No good will come of it for you.” But when the enemy thus prepares a war from without, the Lord sends down the spirit of patience to his struggler, thereby preparing a lively readiness in his heart for all sorts of suffering and hostility before the enemy can manage to stir up trouble. As the Lord said about Himself, “I must suffer,” so spiritual strugglers also feel a sort of thirst for sorrows. And when the suffering and hostility come, they meet them with joy, and drink them in as a thirsting man drinks cooling water. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 154-155 

Here the saint is addressing a spiritual problem common to sincere Orthodox people who are striving to obey God’s commandments and lead a pious life: during the periods of their lives when temptations from the left side arising from the lower passions – such as anger, lust, sloth, gluttony, and so forth – are quiet, and they are having some success in their struggles with these kinds of sins, the enemy of our salvation approaches with temptations from the right side, appealing to the deeper and more hidden passion of pride, which is, of course, the worst passion and foundation of all the passions. These subtle temptations take two forms:  Either to tempt one to spiritual efforts for which one has not received the specific graces from God needed for such efforts,  or to recall past sins and present shortcomings in order to lead one to lose the grace of hope and to despair of one’s salvation.  In his essay today, St. Theophan describes the latter kind, when the demons slander us in our minds and tell us to give up.   Let us speak briefly of the first kind and its remedy, which is quite simple, and then go on to the saint’s description of the second kind and the remedy that the Lord sends for our relief from these thoughts, which are so painful to a sensitive soul. 

When we conceive the idea of adding to our spiritual exercises, such as prayer and fasting, this may be an inspiration that is pleasing to God or it may be a temptation from the right side, especially if the addition is something completely new and somewhat dramatic.  The right way to approach our decision is simple:  to reveal our thought to our father confessor and get a blessing for our efforts.   With a blessing comes grace, and in consultation with our spiritual father, we will discern, after some days of experience, whether these greater efforts are truly according to the divine will or not, before making any promises to God to keep doing them.  If the spiritual father does not give a blessing, we need to obey.  The greatest spiritual efforts, if not done in obedience, are not pleasing to Our Lord, and humility is among the greatest virtues, whereas prayer and fasting are not, strictly speaking, virtues;  they are, rather, instruments in the service of virtue.   

This is the safe path for gradually adding to one’s ascetic routine.  

The other kind of temptation from the right is demonic slander, by which the demons attempt to cause us to despair of our salvation and to give up the spiritual life.   This usually takes the form of recalling our past sins of commission, especially the more shameful sins, or presenting to our minds all kinds of real or imagined sins of omission in our present situation:  “You should be doing this or that, but you are not!   You are doomed!”   

How should we deal with the memories of shameful sins from the past?  In the case of adult converts, most or all of these probably took place before our Baptism.    We need to be absolutely convinced that all sins prior to Baptism are forgiven by God through the grace of Baptism. There is simply no question of this: it is a dogma of the Orthodox Faith.  In the case of serious sins we committed after Baptism but have not confessed, we simply must run to the saving tribunal of Confession, make a completely transparent and honest confession of our sins, believe without doubting in the grace of the absolution pronounced by the priest, and carry out whatever eptimion (kanona, penance) prescribed by the spiritual father. This should set our conscience completely at rest.   

But what of sins we have already confessed, but the memory of them keeps coming back to mind and troubling us?  In the case of carnal sins related to the passion of lust, the Holy Fathers tell us to forget them completely, forcing all remembrance of them from our minds with violence and consistency.  There is no benefit whatsoever from recalling them:  these thoughts will either cause us to despair or they will attract us to commit the sin again.  We absolutely need to look ahead and forget that such things ever happened. 

In the case of the other passions, the remembrance of past sins that have been confessed and absolved is not pleasing to God if it causes us to doubt the forgiveness granted us in the Holy Mystery of Confession.  This doubting thought is usually accompanied by gloom and by the loss of hope in our salvation: it is obviously a demonic slander, a temptation from the right side.   If, however, recalling the past sin does not cause gloom but rather compunction, a sweetly painful sorrow for our sins accompanied by joy and gratitude to the Lord for His mercy to us, and if this memory spurs us on to greater efforts for our salvation, it can be beneficial.  Our Guardian Angel has, perhaps, given us the thought in order to help us repent more deeply of a sin for which we have indeed received God’s forgiveness in the Holy Mystery of Confession but have not yet repented of as thoroughly as we should; perhaps we have not yet replaced the passion with its corresponding virtue and therefore the door of the soul remains open to committing the sin again.  We should reveal all such thoughts to our spiritual father, and in the grace-filled arena of Confession, the Holy Spirit will help us to discern where these thoughts are coming from and for what purpose. 

When not slandering us with devious thoughts about our past sins of commission, the demons may be slandering us with accusations of present sins of omission:  “You should be doing X, Y, or Z, and you are not!  Look at So and So over there, who is so wonderful and prays so much and helps others, and so forth, while you are a worthless person who barely does anything for your own soul or for other people; you are doomed!”    Again, the best medicine is to reveal these thoughts in Confession, and with the unique grace that is in the Holy Mystery, the spiritual father can help discern how much more we should be doing in order to fulfill our duties to love God and our neighbor.   We need to pray for the grace of humility, to be free from vanity, and see ourselves as we really are.   A deluded picture of ourselves brings either exalted notions on the one hand or despair on the other hand, and the two false images will often alternate in order to create a confusion of soul that can become very dangerous.  An accurate picture of ourselves pleasing to God grants humility, stability of purpose, and peace of heart, and, having a mind cleared of delusion, we can, with prayer and good counsel, make prudent decisions and make do-able resolves to serve God and our neighbor.      

St. Theophan offers, finally, the conscious and joyful acceptance of the Cross as the best solution to demonic slander.   “All right, you demons, you can say all you want about me, but I am resolved to suffer all things for my salvation.   May the Lord’s will be done in me, may I receive whatever sufferings I need for the forgiveness of my sins, and may He grant me the patience to endure all things for Christ.”   The Lord will undoubtedly send or allow various sufferings for the cleansing of whatever impurities remain in our souls,  and by embracing these sufferings willingly, with gratitude, we will receive the joy that comes  from the assurance of the hope of salvation.  We will learn to drink sorrows as a refreshing spring,  as the All-Patient Lord patiently trains us to fulfill His holy, perfect, and pleasing will.   

O most gracious and long-suffering Lord, Who endured all things for us, glory to Thee for all things!  Glory be to Thee!   

Monday of the Eighth Week of St. Matthew

In today’s reading from the Holy Gospel, the Lord refuses to give the leaders of the Jewish nation a “…sign from heaven,” but He instead tells them that they will receive “…the sign of the Prophet Jonas,” that is, as Jonas was in the belly of the whale for three days and came forth alive, Jesus would die, be buried in the earth, and rise from the dead on the third day.

The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him that he would shew them a sign from heaven. He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed. And when his disciples were come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread. Then Jesus said unto them, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. – Matthew 16: 1- 6

Now think about this. These men, no doubt the best informed people in that country, knew perfectly well that Christ had been working a great number of miracles that were both demonstrations of divine power and eminently useful and compassionate – exorcisms, healing, feeding the hungry, even raising the dead. But they still demanded that He prove Himself by something as spectacular as it was pointless, a “sign from heaven,” i.e., lightning bolts, an eclipse, shooting stars, etc. It strikes one as incredibly immature and shallow. Why would the leaders of this captive nation not rejoice that the poor and suffering of their own people, their own flesh and blood, were already receiving a truly great consolation? Why did they so oppose the one who was bringing them, both through tangible physical help and the liberating truth of His preaching, a real deliverance from oppression and sorrow?

Their hatred of Jesus sprang primarily from envy. The patristic commentaries and the services of Great Week state this over and over again. They knew deep down that Jesus was the Real Thing, while they were spiritually bankrupt phonies and power-seekers, and instead of bringing them to repentance, this knowledge filled them with envious hatred. Both parties, the Pharisees and Sadducees, had made idols out of some outward thing: the Pharisees were busily constructing a nitpicking, complicated, oppressive, and ultimately meaningless code of behavior to replace the true practice of the Mosaic Law, while the Sadducees worshipped their own authority as the priestly caste and the glories of the Temple worship over which they presided. Both parties were determined to project a false image of their supposed spiritual superiority, which gave them power over others.

The resulting emptiness of their inner life corresponded precisely to the inanity (literally “emptiness”) of this absurd cosmic fireworks show they were demanding from the God-Man to prove His credentials. Their brand of religion was all about outward show. Today we might say that it was all about marketing.

How do we prevent ourselves from falling prey to false religious leaders who maintain their authority through outward show but are actually apostate by reason of their having renounced the confession of the Orthodox Faith? It get backs to the basic question: Do I want my faith to be the Real Thing? The Real Thing requires the narrow way Christ speaks of in the Gospel. Do I want that, or do I want a reasonable facsimile thereof, a pleasant and, yes, convincing, simulacrum that offers a broad and smooth highway on which one can enjoy the sensations of a pretended spiritual, intellectual, and cultural superiority (“Orthodoxy, the Coolest Religion Ever!”) combined with worldly advantage?

Hebrews, chapter eleven, gives us a criterion of discernment. We must ask ourselves if we honestly agree to pay the price required to spend eternity among that “cloud of witnesses” of whom the Apostle writes that they

…had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. – Hebrews 11: 36-40

We must daily search our hearts and ask the Lord to enlighten our minds to see our true motivation. The bedrock, essential, and eternally efficacious miracle of our times is simply that we keep the Orthodox Faith, and that we receive the grace to stay in “dens and caves of the earth” in order not to join the great lemming rush to the Great Apostasy. The foundational miracle, the only sign we really need, is the Faith itself. Without the pure Faith, nothing – neither the following of a supposed holy elder on the right nor a fashionable academic theologian on the left, nor seeking security in the historical titles of patriarchs and synods – will save us. The Lord did not say, “When I return, will I find monasteries and cathedrals?” He did not say, “When I return, will I find elders with visions and miracles?” He said, “When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find the Faith on the earth?”

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

P.S. A suggestion for spiritual reading relating to this Gospel text: “On Miracles and Signs” by Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, which you can find at http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/st-ignatius-brianchaninov-miracles-and-signs.aspx.

Tuesday of the Seventh Week of Matthew 

Today’s Gospel reading recounts Herod’s wickedly killing St. John the Baptist, which ever after tormented his conscience.

At that time Herod the tetrarch heard of the fame of Jesus, And said unto his servants, This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead; and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him. For Herod had laid hold on John, and bound him, and put him in prison for Herodias’ sake, his brother Philip’s wife. For John said unto him, It is not lawful for thee to have her. And when he would have put him to death, he feared the multitude, because they counted him as a prophet. But when Herod’s birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod. Whereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would ask. And she, being before instructed of her mother, said, Give me here John Baptist’s head in a charger. And the king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath’s sake, and them which sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her. And he sent, and beheaded John in the prison. And his head was brought in a charger, and given to the damsel: and she brought it to her mother. And his disciples came, and took up the body, and buried it, and went and told Jesus. When Jesus heard of it, he departed thence by ship into a desert place apart: and when the people had heard thereof, they followed him on foot out of the cities. – Matthew 14: 1-13

St. Theophan the Recluse points out that Herod jumped to the conclusion that John had been resurrected because the tyrant had an uneasy conscience:

…He could have thought of anything, yet he thought of no one but John. Who led his thoughts in that direction? His conscience. From it you cannot hide unconscionable deeds; you cannot correct its judgment with anything…There is a voice within us that we must acknowledge is not our voice. Whose is it? God’s. He Who gives us our nature, gives us this voice. If it is God’s voice, we must obey it, for creatures dare not contradict their Creator. This voice says that God exists, that we completely depend upon Him, and therefore we cannot but have a reverent fear of God. Having this fear, we must fulfill God’s will, indicated by the conscience… – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 148-149

Conscience is one of three innate attributes of the human soul which demonstrate undoubtedly that man is the creature of a personal God Who intends for man to know Him, to obey Him, and to love Him.  These attributes are conscience, the fear of God, and the thirst for God.  God placed them in human nature, but the inherited sin of Adam prevents them from performing their proper functions.   Holy Baptism awakens their natural energies, and thereafter the saving and sanctifying liturgical and moral life of the Church, if undertaken consciously, with the fear of God, develops them.  In the saints, we see them developed to the highest degree. 

Conscience speaks first: It is the voice of God telling us what is right and what is wrong. Our gnomic will, the darkened, opinionated, and unsteady will we have inherited from our First Parents because of the Fall, may choose to obey or not obey this voice. Humanistic thinking mistakenly identify this will as “free will,” but in fact this fallen will both frees and enslaves itself by turns, depending on its choice of good or evil. We must force it always to obey God and thereby recover our natural, Edenic will, which always chooses according to conscience and is thus the only truly free will.

Heeding the voice of conscience energizes man’s potential for the fear of God:  As he trains his will to obey the innate Law of right and wrong, man naturally begins to fall down before the Lawgiver in reverent awe, humbly acknowledging God’s absolute right to command and to judge him, fearing lest he should displease his Creator and desiring to offer Him the un-hypocritical worship possible only when he has a clean conscience.

Living according to conscience in holy fear, man begins to feel his thirst for God, that is, he begins to energize his potential not only to know and obey God, but to love Him, to be united to Him, to have Him dwelling within. At this point, the spiritual life properly speaking can begin, characterized by attentive, regular prayer and by the regular reception of Holy Communion for which he has actively and attentively prepared under the Church’s direction. This spiritual life in turn becomes a foretaste of Paradise, and the Christian acquires a firm hope of salvation, disposing himself to receive the grace of persevering in faith and repentance to his last breath.

Sadly, these instinctual powers – conscience, fear of God, thirst for God – planted in each man by the Creator and restored through Holy Baptism, find themselves starved, crushed, distorted, and eventually ignored in the life of of those Orthodox Christians who choose to live in such a way that conscious moral struggle, daily repentance, and attentive prayer are foreign to them.  Their way of life is indistinguishable from that of the mainstream society around them, and their Orthodoxy is purely an external identification.  This may be true even if they go to church regularly and take part in the external functions of parish life. 

Moreover, today we live in an age of unprecedented apostasy by the historical Church hierarchies, so that it is likely that only a small percentage of those identified outwardly as Orthodox Christians actually possess – ontologically, that is, and not only notionally – the true Faith, are in union with a valid hierarchy, and have access to valid Holy Mysteries.   And within that small remnant, the True Orthodox, how many of us really grasp the enormity of the situation we are facing and the radical response that this requires?   Is it not true that many of us, including those who speak freely and often about the apocalyptic character of current events, nevertheless consistently make choices that ensnare them in distraction and worries, a habit that  precludes a repentant life of conscience, fear of God, and thirst for God?  

It is this situation within the historical Church bodies that has allowed the current apocalyptic scenario to come about. The outward forces visible and invisible, the dark powers of evil that we love to blame, as real as they are, constitute in fact mere circumstances allowed by God to test us, fully in accord with His all-wise providence and His sovereign will. 

Thoughts such as these should indeed make us sober, but they should not make us sad, for God is sovereign, the Master over all things. And, what is more, He is paying attention to each of us personally, He desires our salvation infinitely more than we do, and He is waiting to give us His all-powerful help in time of need.  Let us be glad then and fear not. The duty is ours; the consequences are God’s. Let us heed the voice of conscience, live in holy fear, and desire to love God with all our hearts. He will take care of the rest.

For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator. – I Peter 4: 17-19

Thursday of the Sixth Week of Matthew

You can listen to an audio podcast of this commentary at https://www.spreaker.com/user/youngfaithradio/matt6th

In today’s Gospel reading, the Lord Jesus teaches the disciples that He permits the existence and intermingling of both the good and the evil during our earthly life, and how this relates to the Dread Judgment:

At that time, Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field. He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear. – Matthew 13:36-43

St. Theophan the Recluse takes this occasion to explain the role of evil in the spiritual life of the faithful:

…Thus will be carried out the division of good and evil, light and darkness. Now is the period of time in which they are mixed. It pleased the Lord to arrange that the freedom of creatures should grow and be strengthened in good through the struggle against evil. Evil is allowed, both in connection with inward freedom and outside of a person. It does not determine anything, it only tempts. One who feels a temptation must not fall, but enter into battle. He who conquers is freed from one temptation, and advances forward and upward to find a new temptation there – and so on, until the end of his life. Oh, when will we comprehend the significance of the evil which tempts us, so that we might arrange our lives according to this understanding? The strugglers are finally crowned, and pass on to the next life, where there are neither sicknesses nor sorrows, and where they become inwardly pure like angels of God, free from the sting of tempting inclinations and thoughts. This is how the triumph of light and good is being prepared, and it will be revealed in all of its glory on the last day of the world. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, p. 145

One of the stock arguments of atheists is the so-called problem of evil: “How can a good and all-powerful God allow evil? Either He is good but not all-powerful and therefore cannot prevent evil, or He is all-powerful but evil, since He causes or allows evil to exist.” There are several things wrong with this argument, but let us make one thing clear: Only the Christian understanding of evil allows for man’s moral freedom, for man to be a spiritual and free being capable of loving God.   No other explanation makes room for this. God does not will evil, but He allows it, so that man may choose freely to obey Him or not, and so that the existence of evil may provide the arena for man’s spiritual struggle; truly do the Fathers say that without temptations no one would be saved.  Anyone who has engaged in conscious spiritual life in an Orthodox setting understands this immediately.

Our intellects say, “Yes, now that someone has explained this to us, it is quite reasonable,” but we initially received this lofty understanding of man’s vocation through divine revelation, by grace, not by our own mental efforts. We realize that, being of divine origin, this truth is of course incomparably superior to the explanations that the fallen mind of man has created. We perceive that it gives us both peace of soul and the incentive to fight evil and to do good, and therefore not only is it intellectually satisfying but of the highest therapeutic and moral value.   Experiencing this, we ask, “Why would anyone not want to believe in the Faith?”

The answer, of course, is pride of mind, pride of will, and pride of sensuality: Fallen man wants to create his own reality, fallen man wants to disobey God’s law, and fallen man wants to indulge his passions. Even so, man has always wanted to explain evil, and therefore the finite and fallen intellect of man has constructed three basic explanations of evil: either good and evil are illusions because all distinctions are illusions, or all outcomes are determined and you have no freedom, or everything is matter, and so God, soul, mind, and will do not exist.

The Eastern religions – Hinduism, Buddhism, and their variants – say that this world is an illusion, that evil is being trapped in the illusory, material world due to some cosmic accident no one can explain, and that you need to go through various incarnations to get rid of your materiality, in order to realize that even your personal existence and the existence of a personal God are illusions (or, conversely, that you are God, which amounts to the same thing), and that once you get rid of all mental distinctions, you will be absorbed into the World Soul, totally lose your individual existence, and feel no pain. One is eerily reminded of the epitaph of the apostate Greek novelist, Nikos Kazantzakis, who claimed to have no religion at all: “I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”

Islam – and, to the extent that they are infected by determinism, schools of Roman Catholic and Protestant thought – say that only God’s will is operative in the universe, that He is not interested in explaining anything to us, that what constitutes good and evil is not even a question open to rational discourse, and that your job is to submit without question or thought to the great Divine Steamroller, Allah, or whatever you want to call it.   Admit His total sovereignty, do not question anything, and jump onto this cosmic juggernaut before it runs over you.   On Judgment Day, all you can do is hope for the best, because you have no idea whatsoever if you have pleased the GUI (the Great Ultimate It) or not.

Materialism says that everything we experience is an accidental concourse of material stuff, and therefore nothing means anything. Eat, drink, and be merry, or seek total power over others for the thrill of it, or commit suicide, or whatever. Since mind does not exist, who cares what good or evil are, anyway, or who could offer a meaningful definition, since what the neurons in your brain invent is an accident, and what the neurons in my brain invent is another accident, and the two do not have anything to do with each other, do they?

What all three explanations have in common, ultimately, is nihilism, “nothing-ism.”   At root, all three deny Who God is, deny who man is, and deny the love of God for man.   All three, at root, are the fruit of pride, of Satan’s rebellion against the All-Good and All-Loving God Who created him, the fruit of Satan’s choice to “reign in hell rather than to serve in heaven.”   To adopt any of these three views and really live by it is to consign oneself to hell in this life, much less the next. Yet people fall very easily into these views, and only with great difficulty, and by God’s grace, do they accept the Truth. Without the miracle of grace, humankind cannot bear too much reality.

The Orthodox Church teaches us the truth, which is that God created man out of love and for love, so that man could freely choose to love God and do His holy will.   Advancing step by step from the fear of punishment to the desire for heavenly rewards to the love of God for His own sake, and thereby attaining the freedom of divine friendship, a man becomes a “god by grace,” and in the process, far from being absorbed into the Cosmic One, and far from being the helpless pawn of an inscrutable fate, he becomes more, and more truly, himself. To accomplish this, however, we must be courageous and full of hope in God’s mercy; we must open our hearts and throw ourselves into the abyss of His love, trusting Him to catch us.   We have to look evil square in the face and bravely hope in the all-loving and all-wise God, Who cares for us, Who became a man and died for us, and Who rose from the dead, giving us the hope of an everlasting life.

Kazantzakis claimed that he had no fear because he had no hope. This is not courage but the very essence of cowardice. We can choose this way – the way of nihilism – or we can go the path of the saints.   Increasingly it becomes clear, from all that is happening around us, that there is no other choice.

Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Matthew

In today’s Gospel, the Lord instructs the disciples on two levels: How to understand heresies and schisms in the Church, and how to understand the warfare between good and evil in the heart.

Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way.
But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn. – Matthew 13: 24-30

St. Theophan the Recluse guides us into an understanding of the Lord’s words as relating to the Church and as relating to our inner life:

The good seed was sown, but the enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat. The tares in the Church are heresies and schisms, while in each of us they are bad thoughts, feelings, desires, and passions. A person accepts the good seed of the word of God, decides to live in a holy way, and begins to live in this way. When such a person falls asleep, that is, when his attention toward himself weakens, then the enemy of salvation comes and places evil ideas in him which, if not rejected at the start, ripen into desires and dispositions, introducing their own spheres of activity, which mix themselves in with good works, feelings, and thoughts. In this way, both remain together until the harvest. This harvest is repentance. The Lord sends His angels – a feeling of contrition and the fear of God – and they come in like a sickle, then burn up all the tares in the fire of painful self-condemnation. Pure wheat remains in the granary of the heart, to the joy of man, the angels, and the Most Good God worshiped in Trinity. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 143-144.

In the Church, the “tares” (weeds) are heresies and schisms. Today clever people have fabricated a novel teaching that the Lord’s command not to tear up the weeds means that we are not allowed to separate from the heretics, and therefore the orthodox who separate from bishops because they are heretics thereby become schismatics, because (according to this novel idea) heretics remain in the Church, like weeds among the wheat, until the Dread Judgment, and the heresy of a bishop – contrary to the teaching of all the Fathers – is a “private” sin that only affects his soul, not the souls of his flock. Therefore (according to this idea), it is required to commemorate and remain in communion with heretics in order to remain in the Church: one must continue indefinitely in communion with heretics, commemorating unrepentant heretical bishops, obeying them, and receiving what purport to be sacraments from them, perhaps until the end of time. This error is ridiculous, of course, despite the fact that recent much-adored pseudo-saints of official Orthodoxy have taught it to their deluded disciples, trapping them in heresy while they imagine that they are preserved from all harm because their elder’s epitrachelion magically preserved them from the apostasy of the bishops whose names they continue to invoke at the Liturgies they serve on antimensia “consecrated” by these heretics. In addition to the abundant historical evidence against this error, St. John Chrysostom also corrects those who teach it in his 46th Homily on Matthew, which you can read online here, http://newadvent.org/fathers/200146.htm, and which you can listen to here, https://archive.org/details/parables_jesus_christ_commentary_gospel_matthew_1511_librivox/parables_03_chrysostom_128kb.mp3

The great Chrysostom here relates not only his own teaching but also the consensus of the Fathers: The Lord in this passage is not forbidding us to separate from the heretics; He is not forbidding us even from actively opposing them with non-lethal, legal methods of coercion if necessary (and if possible – not likely nowadays!). He is simply saying, “Do not shed their blood; do not slay them.”

St. Theophan, in his commentary on this passage, however, spends only one sentence – less than one sentence, only one clause – on this ecclesiological theme, which he mentions in passing. His chief topic, as usual, is the spiritual life of the Christian soul. The wheat consists of our good works, feelings, and thoughts, and the tares are our bad thoughts, feelings, desires, and passions. Just as, at the end of the world, the Lord will send His angels to gather His enemies and burn them, so now, in this life, He sends His messengers – contrition and the fear of God – to burn up our evil inclinations and gather our spiritual goods – our good thoughts and habits of mind and action, our virtues – into the barn of the heart, where they are kept safe by grace and induct us into the Heavenly Kingdom, which we begin to experience by anticipation even here on earth.

St. Isaac the Syrian also connects our salvation today, in the heart, with our eternal salvation in the Kingdom that Is To Come:

…Be a persecutor of yourself, and your enemy will be driven from your proximity. Be peaceful within yourself, and heaven and earth will be at peace with you. Be diligent to enter into the treasury that is within you, and you will see the treasury of Heaven: for these are one and the same, and with one entry you will behold them both.The ladder of the Kingdom is within you, hidden in your soul. Plunge deeply within yourself, away from sin, and there you will find steps by which you will be able to ascend. – The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 2

Paradise and hell, then, both begin in this life. Let us beg the Lord for His good messengers – contrition and the fear of God – to burn up our sins and passions, and to collect our scattered thoughts into one thought – the Name of Jesus – concentrated in the granary of the heart. There we will have Paradise, both in this life and in the Age to Come.

Thursday of the Fifth Week of Matthew

Listen to an audio podcast of this commentary at https://www.spreaker.com/user/youngfaithradio/matt5th_1

In today’s Gospel reading, the Lord Jesus reminds us to realize who our true relatives are:

At that time, while Jesus yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side. And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the shore. And he spake many things unto them in parables. – Matthew 12:46-13:3

St. Theophan the Recluse, commenting on Our Lord’s words, discusses the meaning of spiritual kinship:

“For whosoever shall do the will of My Father Who is in heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother (Matt. 12:50).”  By this the Lord gives us to understand that the spiritual kinship which He came to plant and raise up on the earth is not the same as fleshly kinship; although in the form of its relationships, the spiritual is identical to the fleshly.  The spiritual also contains fathers and mothers – they are those who give birth to people with the word of truth, or the Gospel, as the Apostle Paul says.  And it contains also brothers and sisters – those who are born spiritually from the same person and grow in one spirit.  The bond between [spiritual] relatives is founded on the action of grace.  it is not external, not superficial, but it is as deep and alive as the fleshly bond, only it has its place in another, much higher and more important sphere.  This is why it predominates over the fleshly and, when necessary, offers the fleshly as a sacrifice to its spiritual interests without regret, in full certainty that this sacrifice is pleasing to God and is required by Him.  – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, p. 140

Today, as we know, the natural, or traditional, human family is under attack as never before in “mainstream” society, to the point at which it is the exception rather than the rule.  To see a happy family of faithful, once-married, loving father (a man) and obedient mother (a woman) with many happy, healthy children,  surrounded by an extended family of caring grandparents and other relatives – though such families predominated in our society within living memory – is like encountering a vision from a lost world.   When the poor slaves (or, rather, lab rats) of the present day dystopia – brainwashed, addicted, self-mutilated, fornicating, aborting, sodomizing, having children out of wedlock with various “partners,” experimenting with their “identity,” hooked on demonic music and demonic video, feminized men and masculinized women mentally and morally paralyzed by the basest passions and near-complete ignorance – encounter such a vision, they hardly know what they are looking at; they do not know where to place it in their understanding of reality.  The age-old normal has become unfamiliar, even disturbing.

Living as we are surrounded by such a nightmare, it may seem rather hard to us for the Lord and His saints to call us not only to live as traditional families but furthermore to surpass even the natural bonds of family and place greater value on our spiritual relationships.  The truth of the matter, however, is that until we place our natural families in right order to our spiritual obligations and spiritual relationships, the natural family will continue to be lost. As Pushkin once said, if God be not in first place, He shall consent to be in no place.  If we do not subordinate even our traditional, natural, and praiseworthy earthly relationships to His holy will and holy plan for man, God will not hang around as an accessory, a deus ex machina to swoop in and conveniently fix the messes that we make, in order for us to live nice worldly lives according to the chimerical image of a “wholesome” 1950s TV show.

Where do we start? Let Orthodox people who are married and have children construct their family life on the old pattern, as best they can:  Daily family prayer, family meals, faithful Church attendance Saturday night and Sunday morning, and feast days as much as possible.  Let father and mother with their children fast according to the Church’s laws, and practice frequent confession and Holy Communion. Let families prioritize according to the Gospel:  Better to be poor and spend more time at Church and with your children, than for mother and father both to work 60 hours per week in order to afford things people do not need nor until recently even imagined that they needed.  Turn off the media input and cut out all the extraneous “activities,” and make your home a happy, quiet, ordered holy place.

Let the single people earnestly seek God’s holy will for their lives and use their free time to serve the Church. Are they being called to the monastic life?   The Lord will show them the way.  Are they being called to marriage? The Lord knows how hard it is to find a spouse nowadays:  He would not have put them in the situation in which they find themselves if it were not for their salvation.  The main thing is to remain courageous and full of hope, based on faith.

All of the above, though it is actually just a “baseline,” a starting point, may seem too much to most of us, surrounded by circumstances that seem to entrap us in a vicious cycle of worldly cares and compromised principles.  But our situation is not hopeless, not at all.  For – and here is the Good News – the Orthodox Faith is not a self-help program by which we pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.  It is the power of God working in our lives, based on the confession of the True Faith.  This power, coming by grace, is experienced directly when we put spiritual things first.  Has the Church failed us? Is it not so, rather, that we have failed Her?

When the Lord called us to “…be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” He meant it.  We are failing all the time, and therefore we must live in repentance.  Yes, the force of circumstances may be such that normal, much less spiritual, life seems unattainable at times.  But let us, rather than living in alternating denial and rage, look at our circumstances straight in the eye, always tell the truth to ourselves and to others, and weep for our sins and the sins of the whole world! Let us constantly sorrow and grieve over so many souls being lost, and pray more earnestly, more energetically, more faithfully, with tears, to be delivered from the traps that surround us!   “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”  He will hear our prayer, and He will deliver us.

In addition to, or, rather, as the only effective setting for, our own life of prayerful repentance and our own domestic discipline, we have the life of the Church!  St. Theophan, in the passage above, speaks movingly of that special bond felt among spiritual siblings, the faithful who are born of the same spiritual father or mother.  This is seen most clearly in the circles of the pious faithful who have been given new birth by a truly God-inspired monastic elder or eldress; how they see each other with new, spiritual eyes, and cherish each other.  They experience family at a whole new level, and yet – if the elder be genuine and not a cult leader – this new experience transfigures and empowers the domestic church life of their natural families and does not denigrate it.  Truly, as St. John of the Ladder writes:  God is light to the angels, angels are a light to monks, and monks are a light to men.

Many of us – most of us – however, especially in the diaspora, do not have access to such a monastic figure.  We trust, however, in the grace that is in the Church.  If our parish priest is pious and God-fearing, if he preaches Orthodoxy and ministers the Holy Mysteries with godly fear, if he patiently hears our confessions and gives us traditional advice based on the Fathers, we find new birth through him, in virtue of his office, which is from God and not from man. Increasingly we need for our scattered parishes to be true spiritual families, in which the parishioners strive spiritually together, loving and helping each other.  The system under which the various parish churches are viewed only as buildings (albeit holy buildings) among which unaffiliated, uncommitted, and generally unsupportive Christians – whatever their outward show of piety – simply circulate to “light their candle,” and in which the clergy are merely cultic functionaries dispensing services to “customers” on demand no longer works (if it ever really worked!).  Let us commit to our parish churches as our true families, love and respect our priests as fathers in Christ, and help one another!

Finally, we must speak of the role of the godparents.  Time is long past when the godparent relationship may be allowed simply as a social tie ritualistically sealed by an obligatory baptism service grinned and giggled through as a sentimental cute-baby event. Sacramental kinship that is exploited to cement merely worldly relationships is not only less than what it should be, but is positively displeasing to God, as being a perversion of that which is holy.   Every prospective godfather or godmother must put spiritual things first, accept to baptize a child (or adult!) as a sacred duty, and do his best to pray for, encourage, enlighten, and edify his godchild with all fear of God and love.   If this is in place, then the social side – financial help, companionship, etc. – will flow naturally from this, with discretion. How delightful for the soul of a child, when, in addition to his natural father and mother, he has godparents whose pious example and wise words elevate his innocent soul!    All the earthly helps they give – presents, outings, etc. – are transfigured by Faith.  This is a taste, for the child, of Paradise on earth.

When all is submitted to the hierarchy of goods ordained by God, all is well.  Let us take steps today, making a short list of those behaviors we do have control over and can change, and pray earnestly to the Lord to enlighten us regarding our spiritual families and our earthly families, that we may see all things in light of the Gospel, set good priorities, and experience the power of grace.

God is with us.

Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Matthew

You can listen to an audio podcast of this post at https://www.spreaker.com/user/youngfaithradio/matt5wed_1

In today’s Gospel reading, the Lord Jesus Christ teaches us about the necessity of perseverance in the work of salvation.

At that time, certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered Jesus, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here. The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here. When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation. Matthew 12:38-45

The Pharisees and scribes in this passage are like a lot of people today, a lot of people throughout history, both Christian and non-Christian, who want God to prove Himself to them by some kind of flashy miracle that is worldly, spectacular, and, ultimately, empty. The Lord brushes aside their foolishness and tells them that the sign He will give them is His own resurrection from the dead.   If by the testimony of the Prophets they cannot recognize the One Who is already among them, and if they will not believe even though He should rise from the dead, what good will signs and wonders do them?   As Father Abraham tells the Rich Man in Luke 16, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” (St. Ignaty Brianchaninov wrote an important essay on this theme, which you can find at http://orthodoxinfo.com/ecumenism/st-ignatius-brianchaninov-miracles-and-signs.aspx)

Several years ago we had a parishioner, now reposed in the Lord, who had returned to the practice of Orthodoxy in old age.  After many years of non-churchly living, he began reading the Gospel and praying every day, and he prayed for many other people as well. He was amazed and touched, continually, by the miracle of the Holy Fire that occurs in Jerusalem every year on Great Saturday, and he never tired of watching YouTube videos of this stupendous occurrence. He would frequently ask me, “How can people see the Holy Fire and not believe in Christ?”   I would answer him, “Because their hearts are not open, and so it does not matter what they see before their very eyes.” It had not occurred to him that his reading the Gospel and praying every day was a far greater miracle than the Holy Fire.

After rebuking the Pharisees’ unbelief and their worldly desire for a spectacular miracle, the Lord gives a solemn warning to those who do believe: We must be sober and watchful over our own spiritual state, lest we fall back into sin after our conversion and we become even worse than we were before our conversion. St. Theophan the Recluse explains it this way:

In every person who lives unrepentant in sin, there lives a demon, as if in a house, who takes charge over everything within him. When by the grace of God such a sinner comes to contrition over his sins, repents, and ceases to sin – the demon is cast out from him. At first the demon does not disturb the one who has repented because, in the beginning, there is much fervor within him which burns demons like fire and repulses them like an arrow. But then, when fervor begins to grow cold, the demon approaches from afar with its suggestions, throws in memories about former pleasures, and calls the person to them. If the penitent does not take care, his sympathy will soon pass to a desire for sin. If he does not come to his senses and return to his former state of soberness, a fall is not far off. The inclination for sin and the decision to commit it are born from desire – the inner sin is ready, and the outward sin is only waiting for a convenient occasion. When an occasion presents itself, the sin will be accomplished. Then the demon will enter again and begin to drive a person from sin to sin even faster than before. The Lord illustrated this with the story about the return of the demon into the clean, swept house. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 139-140

There are several things to note here. The first is that the Lord’s words do not make any sense unless one accepts that an unrepentant person has a demon living in him. This is not figurative but literal. Apart from faith and baptism, human beings are naturally (that is, according to fallen nature) in spiritual communion with demons. Until one believes this, one is not even at square one of an Orthodox understanding of conversion and spiritual life. One reason why we, who do profess the Faith and are baptized, fall back into sin, inviting the “seven worse” back into our lives, is that we do not have a lively appreciation of this stark reality.

The next thing to note about St. Theophan’s words is that a penitent is usually tempted to stop being penitent when the fervor of conversion – either that of his initial conversion or of a conversion following a good confession and change of life after Baptism – wears off. So, to be wise warriors, we have to anticipate this moment of danger, and say to ourselves ahead of time, “The Lord is giving me this obvious grace of fervor and zeal now, but it will inevitably wear off, and then I must resolve to go on fighting sin even if I do not feel like it.”   When the first moment of slackness comes, and desire comes knocking at the door, we will say, “Aha, there it is!” and force ourselves to fight, begging the Lord for mercy and for a return of our spirit of zeal.   Remember how St. Anthony the Great struggled all of one night against demons until he was almost dead, and when the Lord’s presence finally relieved him, he asked, “Lord, where were you all night?” The Lord answered, “I was here all along, but I wanted to see your struggle.”   The times of struggle without consolation are inevitable for all of us, and we must make a firm resolve to be courageous. In His good time, the Lord will give us consolation and renewed strength.

Finally, note that St. Theophan links the inclination to sin and the decision to sin to desire.  We have to kill our love of pleasing ourselves, which is the basic reason why the Church enjoins us to fast and to watch over our senses. The entire effort of the advertising industry which dominates all of our news, entertainment, and social media is directed towards cultivating sensuality, pleasing ourselves, and feeling sorry for ourselves:   “You deserve a break today.” “Have it your way.” “You need this.”   By accepting such thoughts, we forge for ourselves unbreakable chains of slavery to sin; we become paralyzed and unable to act according to God’s will. Those who spoil themselves also tend to spoil their children, and thus spiritual death is passed from one generation to the next.

Let us then resolve to flee quickly to the saving tribunal of confession and repentance, to preserve the spirit of zeal and keep fighting when we do not feel like it, and to avoid constantly pleasing ourselves as we would avoid a poisonous snake.  The miracle of true and lasting repentance, that is, the resurrection of the soul, will take place continually in our hearts, and we will have no need of spectacular signs and wonders.   The sign of Jonas – the Resurrection of Christ – will be all that we need.

Monday of the Fifth Week of Matthew

You can listen to an audio podcast of this post at https://www.spreaker.com/user/youngfaithradio/matt5mon 

In the Gospel today, the Lord reproaches the Pharisees for distorting the meaning of the Sabbath rest:

At that time, Jesus went into the Jews’ synagogue: And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. And they asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days? that they might accuse him. And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the sabbath days. Then saith he to the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, like as the other.- Matthew 12: 9-13

St. Theophan the Recluse points out that while the Pharisees’ insistence on not doing certain things kept them from doing good works on the Sabbath, now we have Orthodox believers who insist on doing certain things that lead them to desecrate Sunday, the Lord’s Day of the Resurrection:

…Not doing things kept the Pharisees from performing good works, whereas the things which Christians allow themselves are what lead them away from good works. On the eve of Sunday they go to the theater and then to some other entertainment. In the morning they oversleep and there is no time to go to church. There are several visits, then lunch, and in the evening again entertainment. Thus all their time is relegated to the belly and to pleasing other senses, and there is no time even to remember God and good works. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 138-139

Our 19th century Russian author here portrays the worldly aristocratic life depicted by Tolstoy in his novels: Theater, the opera, balls, dinner parties, frivolous social visits for gossip and flirting, etc. We might say, “Well, my boring, stressed-out existence bears no resemblance to that! I work all week, and I need my weekends for myself, to catch up on all the things I don’t have time for during the week and to have some fun with my friends in order to relax.”

But why does God allow us to fall into this meaningless existence, to run like rats on a wheel in this ceaseless round of superficial and hollow activity?  Is it not because we do not give to God the time that God demands for Himself alone? When is the last time we looked honestly at our Sundays and remembered that from sunset on Saturday to sunset on Sunday the day is set aside for three things: worship, rest, and good works? That to use it otherwise is still a sin? That on Judgment Day Christ will demand an account of how we will have used our Sundays?

A man giving me advice on how to attract people to my former parish once described to me, as a model for imitation, the grand entrance of a popular and wealthy priest into a noisy dance being held very late on a Saturday night, a dance, sad to say, organized by and attended only by Orthodox people: how this well-groomed, smiling man in his fine suit and Roman collar had gone from table to table like a politician running for office,   being greeted with acclaim, the center of everyone’s attention and admiration. “They were just eating out of his hand,” my volunteer advisor said with awed voice. Perhaps it did not occur to him that he had witnessed, in approving silence, a priest blessing that which is forbidden by God and, if unconfessed and un-repented, could send this priest and his unfortunate flock to hell for all eternity. Perhaps this priest had forgotten that heaven, hell, and eternity are the proper business of priests.

The Orthodox rhythm of Sunday remains today the same as it ever was: Saturday evening is set aside for Vespers or Vigil at church, for quiet preparation of the soul for the Day of the Resurrection, and, whenever possible, preparation for Holy Communion. Sunday morning is set aside for returning to the church to attend Matins or the Hours, followed by the Divine Liturgy. On Sunday afternoon we rest and also spend time in God-pleasing activities such as a peaceful dinner with virtuous family and friends -those who provide a good example – with whom we can share God-pleasing conversation and sentiments, study, teaching our children the Law of God, visiting the elderly or ill house-bound brothers and sisters who cannot come to the church, volunteer work to care for the unfortunate, etc. On Sunday evening (not Saturday), or the evening of (not the evening before) feast days, is the time for parties, dances, and entertainment, but even these must always accord with tradition, modesty, and restraint, and are arranged for the sake of love, of community, of true friendship in Christ, and not for coarse pleasure.

Unavoidable limitations in our circumstances may cause us to alter this schedule and this agenda. We may live very far from church, for example, but that does not prevent us from reading services at home on Saturday night instead of going to parties or football games. We may have a vocation to help suffering man in the medical profession or other work that demands our attention occasionally on Sundays.  But this does not prevent us from saying the Jesus Prayer and being mindful of the Lord when we have to work on Sundays. God knows our circumstances and our limits, and He also knows when we are being honest with ourselves and when we are lying to ourselves. Let us be honest with ourselves and ask the Lord to enlighten us as to what is truly unavoidable and what we pretend to be unavoidable in order to excuse our worldliness. Here is a test: When we think that some obligation – real or imagined –  is forcing us out of a pious Sunday observance, do we feel oppressed by this world or relieved to be off the hook? Are we sad or glad?  Think about it.

O most beloved Lord, most worthy and above-worthy object of all our love and devotion, Creator and disposer of all the days and hours of this life, enlighten us to keep Thy Day in holiness! Amen. 

The Lord rests on the Seventh Day from the work of Creation.

You can listen to an audio podcast of this post at https://www.spreaker.com/user/youngfaithradio/matt4sat

Saturday of the Fourth Week of Matthew

The Gospel for today is Matthew 8: 14-23.

At that time:  When Jesus was come into Peter’s house, he saw his wife’s mother laid, and sick of a fever. And he touched her hand, and the fever left her: and she arose, and ministered unto them. When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses. Now when Jesus saw great multitudes about him, he gave commandment to depart unto the other side. And a certain scribe came, and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead. And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples followed him.

St. Theophan the Recluse makes clear what the Lord’s command to leave all and follow Him means:

…this means that he who wants to follow the Lord should not expect any comfort on earth after following Him, but only deprivations, needs, and sorrows. And it means that worldly cares, even the most legitimate, are not compatible with following Him. It is necessary to decisively renounce everything, so that nothing attaches you to the earth, and then to condemn yourself to every kind of suffering or cross. Having thus prepared yourself, follow the Lord. This is the direct will of the Lord! – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, p. 136

The author goes on to make clear that this command is for all Christians, not only for monks.

But how do we, living in the world, follow this command? How can we join such radical discipleship to the duties imposed by Christian family life in the world? Several considerations should serve to make clear that the two are compatible:

Note that St. Theophan says that the Lord’s followers should not expect any comfort on earth if they are real disciples. This does not mean that they will never have any comfort on earth. The Lord grants us consolations, both inner and outer, as we need them. He knows our weakness and condescends to give us encouragement in our struggles. But our basic attitude must be that of the soldier in the front lines, who expects to be required to die any minute, and counts every minute of life a gift. So should we, every day on earth, expect the sorrow of the cross but rejoice when we receive the joy of the resurrection. True Christians do not have the entitlement mentality (“I deserve happiness on earth”). They expect to carry their cross as the normal mode of life, but they rejoice in God’s good gifts when and how He deigns to give them. And those who carry the biggest crosses enjoy their consolations the most. Think of an ascetic who eats only fasting food all year except for one boiled egg on Pascha. How that egg must taste! We cannot imagine. Think of the young mother who has suffered several miscarriages and finally bears a healthy child. How she treasures that child; how much keener is her delight in her child than that of those who have not suffered as she has!

Worldly cares, the author says, are not compatible with following the Lord Jesus. This does not mean that worldly duties are not compatible with following Him. Even St. Paul, for instance, says that though he would rather die and go to be with the Lord, he still wants to live longer on earth in order to take care of those whom he has converted to Christ. According to our station in life, we accept duties and perform them, but without care insofar as we truly do them for the Lord, His grace helping us. Blessed duties become sinful cares when we make an idol out of our success, desiring wealth, comfort, and glory for ourselves instead of God’s glory, or do not rely on the Lord but on ourselves. This is true even of the good that we intend to do, not only the obviously selfish goals that we may have.

In the times we live in, Orthodox Christian family life necessarily involves heavy crosses, if it is truly a God-pleasing life. Those who marry, accept as many children as God pleases to send them, and make every sacrifice to rear these children in strict purity and piety, will doubtless receive a great reward as long as they do not stray from the narrow path, accepting all sorrows, privations, and loneliness as from the hand of the Lord for their salvation. This kind of life is a life of martyrdom, of witness. Such spouses and parents will find their place among those robed in white at the Throne of the Lamb. By the same token, because of the times we live in, many pious single people who deeply desire marriage and family life cannot find a suitable spouse. If they persevere in the Faith, despite the great loneliness they endure, they will find a great reward.

Let us resolve joyfully to run the course set for us by the Lord, the Judge of the contest and the Rewarder of those who do His will!

Thursday of the Fourth Week of Matthew 

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In today’s Gospel, the Lord invites us to cast off the heavy burden of sin and take up the light yoke of His commandments: 

The Lord said, All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. – Matthew 11:27-30

St. Theophan the Recluse describes how this change comes about in the heart of a repentant sinner: 

The Lord said, “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” O divine, O dear, O sweetest voice of Thine! Let us all follow the Lord Who calls us! But first we must feel something difficult and burdensome for us. We must feel that we have many sins, and that these sins are grave. From this feeling is born the need to seek relief. Faith will then show us that our only refuge is in the Lord and Saviour, and our steps will direct themselves toward Him. A soul desiring to be saved from sins knows what to say to the Lord: “Take my heavy, sinful burden from me; and I will take on Thy easy yoke.” And it happens like this: the Lord forgives the sins, and the soul begins to walk in His commandments. The commandments are the yoke, and sins are the burden. But comparing the two, the soul finds that the yoke of the commandments is light as a feather, while the burden of sins is heavy as a mountain. Let us not fear readily accepting the Lord’s easy yoke and His light burden. In no other way can we find rest unto our souls. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, p. 135 

Here the saint has given us a step by step explanation of how the good change from walking on the path of perdition to walking on the path of salvation takes place in the soul:  

1. We must feel the burden of our sins, that they are many and are grave. 

2. From this feeling is born the need to seek relief. 

3.    Faith shows us that our only refuge is in the Lord and Savior. 

4. Our steps will direct themselves toward Him, and the soul knows what to say: Take my sins from me, and I will take on the yoke of Thy commandments!  

5. The Lord forgives the sins, and the soul begins to walk in His commandments.  

St. Theophan, of course, was writing for a readership of Orthodox Christians baptized in infancy, who were struggling with the sins that they committed after Baptism.  But the process of repentance is the same, whether one is still in need of the Mystery of Holy Baptism or one is a baptized Christian who needs the second Baptism of the tears of repentance.  And the process is the same for every human soul, for every soul needs Christ for relief from the burden of sin; every soul needs to take upon itself the light yoke of God’s commandments and to find salvation through Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as the only refuge of salvation. 

Not every human soul, however, responds to God’s call to Faith in the same way.  There is the worldly mind, the mind of unbelief, and there is the otherworldly mind, the mind of Faith.   Let us see how these two different minds work at each step of this five step process that St. Theophan has described:  

1.  Every human being feels the pain of bearing the burden of sin, but the worldly mind feels it only unconsciously or, when aware of it, ascribes it to something other than sin; it does not want to talk about sin.    The mind of Faith, on the other hand, says, “Yes, I have sinned; I see that my pain comes from my own choice, and that the only real evil for me is my own sin.  Nothing need separate me from God, if only I can repent!”  

2.  Every human being seeks relief from this pain of sin. But how the worldly mind seeks relief and how the mind of Faith seeks relief are two different things, and between them is a great chasm.  One can only go one way or the other. 

3.  The worldly mind seeks relief in worldly remedies, some that are noble or, for most people, some relief that is ignoble:  Being a do-gooder or being an evildoer;  being a good citizen or being a criminal; taking up some non-Christian ascetic practice like vegetarianism or being a glutton and a drunkard; being a philanthropist or being a miser – either way the result is the same, which is that the worldly relief does not heal the soul but rather only anesthetizes the soul from the pain of the consciousness of sin and the need for humility and repentance.   The mind of Faith, on the other hand, understands that all of these remedies are useless; the soul understands that it can find relief only in Christ, for all human efforts are worthless apart from faith in Christ.  So the mind and the will say, “Yes, I assent to the truths of the Faith,” and God gives the grace of Faith.  

4.  The worldly soul directs its steps on the path of pride, whether according to the higher or lower passions – the result is the same.  If the worldly person delights in the acts of goodness, he says, “I will follow the moral law my own way; one need not believe in this or that religion, but only be a good person.”  If the worldly person delights in the acts of evil, he simply indulges his passions.  But both are following the demonic mind, the mind of pride and self-chosen damnation, and the result is the same.  The former person may find an even greater punishment than the latter, for his pride may have been increased more by his good behavior than the other’s by his bad behavior.   The soul that lives according to Faith in Christ, on the other hand, directs its steps on the path of humility.  He knows that only the Lord Jesus Christ can take away his sins; his own behavior, unaided by Faith and Grace, cannot do this, no matter how hard he tries.  He takes up the yoke not of any commandments, not of some universal moral law or humanistic false virtue,  but rather he takes up consciously,  specifically, and explicitly the yoke of Christ’s commandments in the Gospel, and the experience of his constant inability to rise to the perfection of the Gospel inspires in him humility and complete dependence on grace.   This is why the yoke is light:  because at some point we realize we cannot carry it, and the Lord Who laid this yoke on us also carries it for us!  

5. The person who has the mind of the world finds a pseudo-salvation through temporary worldly happiness, whether of the higher or lower kind.   But his sins are not forgiven, because he has not come to Faith and repentance; he still carries the burden of his sins, because he has not given it to Christ in return for the light yoke of repentance.   The person with the mind of Faith finds forgiveness and salvation.   His soul is as light as a feather, for its burden – the burden of sin, the devil, death, and hell –  has been taken away and replaced by the light yoke of Christ, Who has already carried for us His Cross, which takes away all our sins.  

Dear Orthodox Christians, may we, every day, cast aside our passions and sins, and the dark thoughts that torment us, seeking not to numb our souls with the distractions and false promises of this world but rather to face the pain of our sins consciously and seek the remedy where it is to be found, in the tears of repentance to the Lord, Who takes from us the heavy yoke of sin and grants our souls feeling and light, as we rest in the unassailable refuge, in the shadow of His wings.