Orthodox Truth

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Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Matthew

In today’s Gospel reading, the Lord Jesus tells the Parable of the Mustard Seed and the Parable of the Leaven:

The Lord spake this parable: The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof. Another parable spake he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.
Then Jesus sent the multitude away, and went into the house. – Matthew 13:31-36

St. Theophan the Recluse, commenting on Our Lord’s words, explains how we can apply the images of the mustard seed and the leaven both to the Church and to our own spiritual lives:

The Kingdom is like a grain of mustard seed and leaven. A small grain of mustard seed grows up into a large bush; leaven penetrates a whole lump of dough and makes it leavened. Here, on the one hand, is an image of the Church, which in the beginning consisted only of the Apostles and a few other people. It then spread and became more numerous, penetrating all of humanity. On the other hand, it is an image of the spiritual life revealed in every person. Its first seed is the intention and determination to be saved through pleasing God in accordance with faith in the Lord and Savior. This determination, no matter how firm, is like a tiny speck. Its movement and strength multiply and mature within its own self, and it begins to penetrate all the powers of the soul – the mind, will, and feelings – then fills them with itself, leavens them according to its spirit, and penetrates the entire constitution of the human nature – body, soul, and spirit – in which it was engendered.  – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, p. 144

The seed, then, of spiritual life, is the “intention and determination to be saved through pleasing God in accordance with faith in the Lord and Savior.” There are three elements to this: Intention and determination to be saved, pleasing God, and faith.

We can check ourselves every day, and ask ourselves, “Do I intend to be saved, am I determined to be saved?” It cannot be a vague wish, as we would vaguely wish for someone to hand us a million dollars, though we neither think it likely nor make any efforts towards obtaining our wish. We have to intend it, choose it, set out decisively to get it, with determination. When our intention becomes unsteady or our determination weakens, we must ask the Lord to clarify our minds and strengthen our wills.

Every day we should ask ourselves, “Do I desire to please God?” and we should ask the Lord to strengthen this desire in us. It is impossible to overestimate the power of the desire to please God, to do His holy will.   Once someone is irrevocably committed to the doing of God’s will, he will receive very great power from God to do so.   The Lord will strengthen his will, and he will experience the truth of the words that with God nothing is impossible.

“Very well,” you may say, “I do intend and I do will, but weakly, and sometimes it seems like such a dry experience.  Often I approach it as though it were a Stoic self-improvement program.”  At this point we must recall the third element in the “program” St. Theophan outlines:  Faith.   We must beg with tears for Faith, which, on our part, is the voluntary assent of the mind to divine Truth, but is also, on God’s part, a free gift of His grace, without which the act of Faith on our part is impossible.

When our will grows weak and the clarity of our intention grows blurry, let us open the Holy Gospel and start reading slowly aloud.  Let us read the Life of a saint.  Let us kneel before the holy icons and carefully, slowly, read the Akathist to Our Sweetest Lord Jesus Christ or His Most Pure Mother.  Let us carefully confess and prepare for Holy Communion.  The sweetness of His love, the vision of His divine beauty, shall once again captivate our hearts, and we will remember why we made our original act of will to be saved, and that will shall grow strong again.  We will remember the end of Faith, which is Charity – Divine Love – and, unable to forget the Beauty of that Divine Love, we will open our hearts to Faith, and the Hope born of courage will be not barren but rather give birth to many fruitful acts of the will to do good.

O Lord, Who desirest our salvation, make to grow the seed of Faith in our hearts, give us firm Hope in our salvation, and deprive us not of the ultimate vision of Love, the beauty of Thy countenance forever. Amen.

Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Matthew

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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

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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

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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

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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. 

Thursday of the Fourth Week of Matthew 

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: 

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: 

“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 some that are ignoble:  Being a do-gooder or being an evildoer;  being a good citizen or being a criminal; taking up some non-Christian ascetic ideology like vegetarianism or teetotalism, or being a glutton or 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, in concert with the will, says, “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 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 heavy burden of his sins, because he has not surrendered 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 borne 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 choosing to face the pain of our sins consciously and seek the remedy where it is to be found, in 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. 

Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Matthew 

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The reading from the Holy Gospel today is Matthew 11: 16 – 20. 

The Lord said: But whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets, and calling unto their fellows, And saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented. For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath a devil. The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of her children. Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not. 

St. Theophan the Recluse likened the unrepentant sinners to whom Christ addressed these words to his contemporary, 19th century Orthodox Russians who were living mindlessly for this world, insensible to death and God’s judgment:  

The Lord says that we, not heeding the Gospels, are like those to whom merry songs are sung, but they do not dance; sad songs are sung, and they do not cry. You cannot do anything with them. We are promised the heavenly Kingdom, most bright and joyous, but we are unmoved, as if they were not speaking to us. We are threatened with impartial judgment and unending torments, but we are not alarmed; it is as if we do not hear. Downtrodden, we have lost all feeling of true self-preservation. We move as ones being led directly to destruction, and have not a care for our destiny. We have lost heart, given ourselves over to carelessness—what will be, will be! Look at our state! Is not this why suicides are so frequent? It is the fruit of modern teachings and views on man and his [in]significance! There is progress for you! There is enlightenment! It would be better to be totally ignorant, but save your soul with fear of God, than, having attained the title of an enlightened person, to perish unto the ages, never thinking your entire life about what will happen after death. Not a single jot shall pass from the word of God, which describes both the heavenly kingdom and hell—all will be as it is written. Take this to heart, everyone, as something which touches you personally; and take care for yourself, with all your strength, and as long as time remains. – Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 133-134 

Our Lord in His time was rebuking not outsiders, not the Gentiles, but the Chosen People, the members of the Old Testament Church.  St. Theophan likewise applied the words of Christ to members of the New Testament Church, the Orthodox Christians of his own time.  Today, to profit from the Lord’s admonition, we must direct His accusation at ourselves.

St. Theophan accuses the false education of his time for creating this indifference of baptized Orthodox Christians to the hour of death and God’s judgment.  The science, falsely so-called, of the apostate West had by the late 19th century destroyed the minds of a critical mass of the Russian aristocracy, intelligentsia, and clergy, and therefore when a certain foreign element engineered the Revolution, the weakened and effete souls of the Russian leadership class could not resist it, did not even want to resist it; many of them even danced with suicidal joy as the Revolution rose up and devoured them.    Liberal clergy and academics who escaped the wreck of their nation fled to Paris and other Babylons of apostate worldliness like New York, and, they went right on, not missing a beat, setting up academic comfort zones where they could continue to propagate the lies of liberalism and modernism that had enabled the triumph of Marxism, utterly shameless, oblivious to their guilt for the catastrophe which they and their mentors had done so much to create.   Their intellectual heirs today are the superstar academic theologians – so-called – of World Orthodoxy who teach ecumenism, universalism, and the re-interpretation of Holy Scripture in the light of evolutionism. 

What do the teachings of all of these pied pipers of apostasy, who claim to be Orthodox theologians, have in common?  It is the spirit of Antichrist, for they do not claim to attack Christ but rather the opposite:  they claim that they are teaching the truth about Christ !  But behold the fruit of their teaching in their disciples: indifference to the literal reality of the coming judgment, supercilious self-satisfaction posing as virtuous moderation, and an Epicurean enjoyment of the physical and psychic beauties of Orthodoxy without  bearing the cross of confessing the hard truths of Orthodoxy to the apostate world.  Their assignment from the demons, who are their masters, was the task of destroying that single-minded and pure-hearted zeal for the salvation of souls which alone will enable us to escape the wrath that is to come. Judging from the typical sermon one hears from the amvon on any given Sunday, they have performed their task quite well.

The false teachings of these men include a denial of the literal reality of the Six Day Creation and of the universal Flood of Noah; they claim that one can reconcile the fairy tales of Darwinism with the truth of Holy Scripture.    For them and their disciples, the history of the world stretches back endlessly into a time so great as to be unreal, and stretches forward into the future in the same manner:  both the Creation and the Second Coming as taught in Holy Scripture are really just images, metaphors for, well, something or other quite abstract and far away, that can only be described accurately by experts like them, in long, boring pages of mystifying rigamarole.   Those who believe in such things will live according to this belief, which means that they will live for this world and not the next. They will not escape the wrath that is to come.

Another one of their fond imaginings is that heaven and hell are not places but “states of mind.” This is so vague and so incomprehensible to the ordinary mind that it must be highly intelligent, even spiritual…right?    But here is how a real Orthodox teacher, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov teaches us to think about hell:  

Frequently enumerate the eternal woes that await sinners.  By frequently docketing these miseries make them stand vividly before your eyes.  Acquire a foretaste of the torments of hell so that at the graphic remembrance of them your soul may shudder, may tear itself away from sin, and may have recourse to God with humble prayer for mercy, putting all hope in His infinite goodness and despairing of yourself.  Recall and represent to yourself the terrible subterranean gulf and prison that constitute hell.  The gulf or pit is called bottomless.  Precisely!  That is just what it is in relation to men.  The vast prison of hell has many sections and many different kinds of torment and torture by which every man is repaid according to the deeds he has done in the course of his earthly life.  In all sections imprisonment is eternal, the torments eternal.  There, insufferable, impenetrable darkness reigns, and at the same time the unquenchable fire burns there with an ever equal strength.  There is no day there.  There is always eternal night.  The stench there is insupportable, and it cannot be compared with the foulest earthly fetor.  The terrible worm of hell never slumbers or sleeps.  It gnaws and gnaws, and devours the prisoners of hell without impairing their wholeness or destroying their existence, and without ever being glutted itself.  Such is the nature of all the torments of hell; they are worse than any death, but they do not produce death.  Death is desired in hell as much as life is desired on earth.   Death would be a comfort for all the prisoners of hell.  It is not for them.  Their fate is unending life for unending suffering.  Lost souls in hell are tormented by the insufferable executions with which the eternal prison of those rejected by God abounds; they are tormented there by the unendurable grief; they are tormented there by that most ghastly disease of the soul – despair. – The Arena, chapter 28, “On the Remembrance of Death” 

The worldly man recoils at such words, not only, or even primarily, at the simplicity and the horror of this description of the torments awaiting him, but primarily because he cannot accept the way of escape that the saint offers to him:  “Acquire a foretaste of the torments of hell so that your soul may shudder, may tear itself away from sin, and may have recourse to God with humble prayer for mercy, putting all hope in His infinite goodness and despairing of yourself.”   The pride of the fallen mind cannot abide such words; it runs instead to fabricate its own imaginary escape from the torments to come in the form of a delusory intellectual construct.    Such a man may say that he believes in God, but in fact he believes in the powers of his own mind.   He will write “I did it my way” on his tombstone and go to burn in hell.  

We, however, most certainly need not go this way of pride, despair, and damnation.  We can choose the narrow but joyful path of simplicity of heart, accepting the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Tradition of the Church as they are taught to us clearly by the saints.  Let us acquire the mind of the saints, which is the mind of Christ, and with non-reliance on our fallen minds and wills, with all-daring hope in God’s mercy towards sinners, obtain that firm hope of salvation that He desires to grant those who believe in His Word with purity of heart. 

Thursday of the Third Week of Matthew

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In today’s reading from the Holy Gospel, the Lord assures His faithful ones that their struggles will not be in vain:

The Lord said to His disciples: When they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come. The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household? Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known. What I tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows (Matthew 10: 23 – 31).

It is a curious feature of our fallen nature that no matter how often we hear Christ telling us that suffering, rejection, exile, etc. mark the life of a true disciple, when we actually do suffer, we conclude that we must be doing something wrong. If we were “good people,” would not everyone like us and praise us? Would we not be, in fact, the toast of the town? Would we not – at least! – have peace and plenty? So we conclude that we must be missing something, that we did not get the memo.

In today’s reading, however, Our Lord assures us once again that exile and persecution mark true discipleship, and therefore we should not get rattled when trying to follow Him creates problems for us, even problems that are so great as to seem impossible. No, we do not have perfect discernment, and yes, we make mistakes – too much zeal or too little, speaking out of turn or not speaking at all, making promises to God we cannot keep or being too afraid to promise anything, offending people without need…or not offending them enough (and, believe me, there are people who need to be offended). We are not perfect – well, join the human race. But it is still far better to be like Peter and step out on the waves, though we mostly have no idea what we are doing; all we know is that the Master has said, “Come.” This is enough. With enough hard knocks, discernment will follow, if we humble ourselves and just keep going.

We know that our Orthodox beliefs concerning just about everything run contrary to the way most people think today, and this makes us lonely. But we should rejoice, because the Lord promises today that our witness will some day be vindicated before all mankind at the Dread Judgment. Of course, the corollary to this is that our failure to witness will also be exposed in the light of God. This should motivate us greatly to stay the course.

Wednesday of the Third Week of Matthew

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In today’s Gospel, the Lord promises His disciples that they who endure to the end shall be saved:

The Lord said to His disciples, Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues; And ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved – Matthew 10: 16-22

St. Theophan the Recluse gives us a to-do list of concrete measures to take in order to endure wisely unto salvation:

…Do we have anything to endure? In this no one is lacking. Everyone’s arena of endurance is vast, and therefore our salvation is at hand. Endure everything to the end and you will be saved. However, you must endure skillfully – otherwise you may not gain anything by your endurance.

First of all, keep the Holy Faith and lead an irreproachable life according to the Faith. Immediately cleanse with repentance every sin that occurs.

Second, accept everything that you must endure from the hands of God, remembering firmly that nothing happens without God’s will.

Third, give sincere thanks to God for everything, believing that everything which proceeds from the Lord is sent by Him for the good of our souls. Thank Him for sorrows and consolations.

Fourth, love sorrow for the sake of its great salvific power, and cultivate within yourself a thirst for it as for a drink which, although bitter, is healing.

Fifth, keep in your thoughts that when misfortune comes, you cannot throw it off like a tight-fitting garment; you must bear it. Whether in a Christian way or in a non-Christian way, you cannot avoid bearing it; so it is better to bear it in a Christian way. Complaining will not deliver you from misfortune, but only make it heavier; whereas humble submission to God’s Providence and a good attitude relieve the burden of misfortunes.

Sixth, realize that you deserve even greater misfortune. Recognize that if the Lord wanted to deal with you as you rightly deserve, would He have sent you such a small misfortune?

Seventh, above all, pray, and the merciful Lord will give you strength of spirit. With such strength, when others marvel at your misfortunes, they will seem like nothing to you.

 – from Thoughts for Each Day of the Year, pp. 129-130

Now there we have a handy to-do list to print out and put on the refrigerator!

St. Theophan makes several points here, but I should like to expand on three: That we all have something to endure and therefore our salvation is at hand, that we actually deserve greater misfortunes than those which we receive, and that above all we must pray.

First: “…therefore our salvation is at hand.”   The spiritual struggler will lose hope if he sees this life as a dark tunnel with no end in sight. The devil would certainly like for us to see it this way. But this is an illusion.   When one thinks of the thousands of years since the Creation, and all the human generations before us, and the illimitable expanse of the aeons of the invisible universe inhabited by the angels, and the endless joy of the saints in heaven…one realizes that one is a very little person after all, that this life is short, and that all that matters is whether we please God in our short trial or not. This life is a sprint, not a marathon. Soon all will be over here, and our real life – or real sufferings – will start there. Is it not worth our while to endure for this short time?

Second: “…realize that you deserve even greater misfortune.” St. Ignaty Brianchaninov, in The Arena, is more explicit: One should realize that one deserves every temporal and eternal punishment.   Why is this? It is because the infinitely holy and good God has lavished His love on us, but we sin against Him. What misfortune would be sufficient to punish such ingratitude?   But the Lord does not visit such misfortune upon us – nothing we suffer is commensurate with what we deserve.   The proud human mind says that this teaching is a false image of a cruel god. The humble mind realizes that this is very Good News indeed, for it signifies that God desires our salvation, and that the misfortunes He sends us are not retribution but cleansing, because He wants us to be with Him once more in Paradise.

Third: “…above all, pray…”   The time of misfortune is actually the most opportune time for prayer, because it is a crisis, a moment of judgment, when we either go more deeply into prayer or we run away from God into illusory solutions to our predicament. When we do turn to God in great pain of heart, in the midst of suffering, our prayer deepens, we feel His presence, and we understand that we are made not for this life but for another world, that our home is not here but there, and this thought becomes the source of inexhaustible consolation. Prayer changes from being an interruption to our supposedly real life to the content of our really real life. We start praying more frequently, even constantly, and with greater fervor and attention.  This in turn gives us greater strength to endure the present misfortune and those yet to come.

Living in this way, we come to know in our experience the meaning of St. Paul’s words, “…we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose… For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:28, 38-29).”

Saturday of the Second Week of Matthew

In today’s reading from the Apostolos, St. Paul tells us flat out that no human being is naturally pleasing to God or can become so by earthly means.

Brethren: Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. – Romans 3:19-26

Today everyone is yelling and screaming to prove that he is better than that other person out there, who is evil and needs to be silenced and, perhaps, even destroyed. St. Paul has the answer to this: For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

Today everyone is casting about for materialistic solutions to what are essentially spiritual problems. St. Paul has the answer to this: For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

Today those of the educated class believe that they can discover the roots of evil through psychology or sociology or political science or historical analysis. St. Paul has the answer for this: For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

We need to remind ourselves constantly that apart from the grace of God and the forgiveness through Jesus Christ, apart from enlightenment and protection from above, we are naturally in continuous communion with malicious demons who are invading our minds every minute, giving us false opinions, aggravating our sinful passions, and impelling us to bad decisions, sinful behavior, and the destruction of community, family, and self. This is just the way it is. And this is true of everyone, not just the obviously wicked.

Though we are baptized Orthodox Christians, we easily forget this truth, rely on our own righteousness, forget to abide in constant mourning over sin, forget death and God’s judgment, and live in delusion. Every single man and woman born on earth functions constantly under the influence of delusions to a greater or lesser degree, except that those who sincerely believe themselves worthy of every temporal and eternal punishment, who cast their care entirely on the Lord, and abide in constant repentance, are on the way out of delusion.

Grant us, O Lord, in this holy fasting season, the grace of repentance!