The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (2:22-40)

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord.  It is the day when the Mother of God and Joseph the betrothed brought Our Lord Jesus Christ into the temple in order to fulfill the days of purification and to dedicate the child to God.  Today we follow this model for each woman who gives birth and returns to the church after 40 days.  This is called the churching and it contains prayers of purification for the woman to restore her back into communion since she has been away from the church and from the liturgy for an extended period of time.

This liturgical act reminds us that it is not normal to be away from the Sunday gathering, the liturgical worship, for an extended period of time. In fact, in the early church the canon law says that when a Christian missed three Sundays in a row without serious sickness or injury, that person was to be excommunicated from the Church. Likewise, if a bishop, priest or deacon was missing from the assembly for three Sundays in a row without being very ill, that clergyman was to be defrocked and restored to the ranks of the laity. All of this demonstrates how serious it is to commit your life to becoming an Orthodox Christian who has received the fullness of the faith and who comes to receive the holy body and precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is for a Christian who understands reality, a matter of spiritual life or death.

In the west, this feast of the presentation or meeting of the Lord is also called Candlemas.  This name is given because of the blessing of candles that takes place on that day in the western tradition. In fact, this practice was at times also done in the eastern tradition as you will see in a moment.  Finally, this great feast also closes the celebration of the season of the Nativity.  And as we mentioned last week, we begin to draw ever closer to the season of Pre-Lent and Lent. I wanted to conclude with a brief but lovely sermon on this feast from St. Sophronios, bishop of Jerusalem, who lived between 560-638 ad.

Sermon on the Presentation of the Lord by St. Sophronios of Jerusalem

“Our lighted candles are a sign of the divine splendor of the one who comes to expel the dark shadows of evil and to make the whole universe radiant with the brilliance of his eternal light. Our candles also show how bright our souls should be when we go to meet Christ. The Mother of God, the most pure Virgin, carried the true light in her arms and brought him to those who lay in darkness. We too should carry a light for all to see and reflect the radiance of the true light as we hasten to meet him.

The light has come and has shone upon a world enveloped in shadows; the Dayspring from on high has visited us and given light to those who lived in darkness. This, then, is our feast, and we join in procession with lighted candles to reveal the light that has shone upon us and the glory that is yet to come to us through him. So let us hasten all together to meet our God. The true light has come, the light that enlightens every man who is born into this world. Let all of us, my brethren, be enlightened and made radiant by this light. Let all of us share in its splendor, and be so filled with it that no one remains in the darkness. Let us be shining ourselves as we go together to meet and to receive with the aged Simeon the light whose brilliance is eternal.

Rejoicing with Simeon, let us sing a hymn of thanksgiving to God, the Father of the light, who sent the true light to dispel the darkness and to give us all a share in his splendor. Through Simeon’s eyes we too have seen the salvation of God which he prepared for all the nations and revealed as the glory of the new Israel, which is ourselves. As Simeon was released from the bonds of this life when he had seen Christ, so we too were at once freed from our old state of sinfulness.

By faith we too embraced Christ, the salvation of God the Father, as he came to us from Bethlehem. Gentiles before, we have now become the people of God. Our eyes have seen God incarnate, and because we have seen him present among us and have mentally received him into our arms, we are called the new Israel. Never shall we forget this presence; every year we keep this feast in his honor.” Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (19:1-10)

Our Lord Jesus Christ was traveling and ended up going through the ancient city of Jericho. Those who have read the Old Testament will remember that Joshua and the Israelites conquered the city of Jericho by following the guidance of God. Through their faithfulness, a great miracle took place as the walls of that city came down. Yet today we are witnesses to an even greater miracle as the walls of one man’s hardened heart came crashing down.

We do put walls around our heart. This happens both intentionally as well as unintentionally. We put up walls intentionally through choosing a life of rebellion, a life of sin, a life apart from God. We might not think of it this way but in fact sin is a wall that separates us from God. When we choose to live in sin, we are in fact building a fortress around our hearts and setting a guard to keep something or someone out. That someone is none other than the Lord Himself. But when we build this wall due to our life of sin, we keep out God and we keep out our loved ones, friends, everyone. We keep everyone at a distance.

The fathers of the Church often speak of sin as not simply a choice, it is also an illness, a condition into which humanity has fallen. So when we see that someone has fallen into sin, it is not good to judge or condemn the person. We can judge the actions or behaviors as wrong, but we must see the person as truly sick with the sickness that afflicts everyone, everywhere, at all times. It only afflicts them to differing degrees and with differing severity. This is why the Lord teaches us not to judge others, because we are immediately judged by that same judgement.

Zacchaeus the tax collector was also a man who had fallen into sin. We do not know exactly what his sins were but we can gather from the reading that since he was a tax collector, he had been greedy and perhaps he took more taxes than he should have since he held a position of great power within the Roman Empire. It was normal at that time for the tax collectors to collect extra from their subjects than was necessary. They did so because they had the power to do it and because it helped them become wealthy men. If they were going to be hated for being tax collectors, they might as well get wealthy doing so.

Zacchaeus’ heart was hardened, but the entrance of the Lord Jesus began to change everything in his life. The presence of Christ and the commotion of the crowd caused Zacchaeus to become curious. The founder of the company Apple, Steve Jobs once said “Much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on.” For human beings curiosity can be directed to either what is good, true and beautiful, otherwise it may be directed to what is ugly, evil, false and destructive.

On this particular day in the great city of Jericho, Zacchaeus curiosity led him to explore the person of Jesus Christ for himself. And he did so with such a great and childlike effort that he was rewarded with something quite priceless. His house become the temple of God. His heart become a place of rest for the Lord Jesus Christ. His curiosity had opened up the slightest crack in his hardened defenses but this was enough for the grace of God to enter and begin the work of changing him completely. He had noticed the crowd, but he needed to see the Lord for himself. And he saw Him, and more importantly, was seen by Him.

Likewise, the Lord honors our intentions and desires. He blesses our good intentions and desires and multiplies them for us. He waits to see a little effort, and He overwhelms us with spiritual riches that we can’t comprehend. We make a bit of effort to pray, and the Lord begins to help us pray. We make a bit of effort to study and learn about Jesus Christ and He himself grants us true wisdom. We make an effort to obey the commandments and the teaching of the Lord, and we find grace assisting us to do so more perfectly and completely.

At the request of Jesus, Zacchaeus immediately welcomed the Lord into his home. He said to the Lord, “Lord this is no longer my home but your home and your kingdom.” Christ had conquered his heart completely. He led the man to heartfelt repentance. He led the man to a real change. These are the signs and indicators that a man has had a true experience of Jesus Christ. He is changed over time. He may not be perfect. He may still stumble and struggle, but he will slowly be growing into the man that God had always intended. This is a promise that is also given to each of us. So when the Lord calls on us to open our hearts to Him, let us do what Zacchaeus did and make haste to receive Him joyfully. For there is no greater joy than to have Christ dwelling in your heart and in your life.

On the opposite side of this we see that sometimes God calls us but we barely respond. We might be lazy or negligent. We might think that other things require our attention and our focus. We might think that we don’t need an active life with God. And because God is love, He will often give us the space to do what we desire, because this life is given to us as a gift of God’s love. Yet this makes the actions of Zacchaeus all the more impressive. He used his freedom to climb the tree and seek our Christ.

He used his freedom to welcome Christ into his home and to feed Him at his table. He used his freedom to repent, not a little bit, but fully and completely. He was prepared to give up everything in his life once Christ was with him. Because Christ became his only treasure and everything else became like rubbish to him. This is exactly the sentiment shared by St. Paul when he writes to the Phillipians saying,

“7But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 12Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Php 3:7-14

May we also be like St. Paul and Zacchaeus and leave everything else behind and press on with courage and hope in the promises and the riches of fellowship with Jesus Christ our God. AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (17:12-19)

Our reading today is a familiar one from the life of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The evangelist St. John says at the end of his gospel that if all the miracles of our Lord Jesus Christ were written down, that not even the whole world could contain the books that would be written. I mention this because as Christians who hear the word of God, hopefully on a daily basis, we may find ourselves taking for granted the many miracles of Christ. They happen so often within the gospels that we barely notice them.

In today’s gospel reading we see Our Master encountering ten lepers. They stood at a distance because of their leprosy and the way that others had treated them due to their leprosy. After all, having leprosy was a serious disease. It was in fact considered something like a death sentence. When one was found with leprosy he was immediately forced to separate himself or herself from the rest of the healthy community because this disease was contagious. His life changed so dramatically. He was ostracized from the community, from all those he knew and loved, and who also loved him. He was either left to fend for himself or to become part of a new community that would embrace and accept him. But the only ones who would embrace such a one was naturally, a group of lepers.

So this is how we get ten lepers who are all together and standing at a distance from the people. We are told that they lifted up their voices. This makes sense because they tried to keep a healthy distance from others so as not to scare them or infect them. And as they raised their voices they cried out “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” You know there is great power and beauty to these words and to words that are similar to these. “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us” or “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” What is that great power that is available in these words? It is the power of a broken and humble heart that is crying out to God and is open to receive God’s grace. It is also the power found in the very name of Jesus. These prayers are in fact so powerful that we teach people to say them daily because the practice of repeating them will soften the heart and cause a change within us. If we are not yet broken and humble, the prayer by God’s grace will transform us.

You can say these prayers, like the Jesus prayer, very easily at any time, day or night. The prayers can be said with a prayer rope or without a prayer rope although using a rope is good for keeping track and not drifting away from the focus of prayer. When you have a prayer rope it should be mostly for private use or used quietly while in the church. For instance if you have a prayer rope of beads, that might be better for home use because it makes noise and brings attention to you whereas a prayer rope with wool or cloth knots will be silent. Also, we should note that prayer ropes are not really a form of jewelry or decoration, so we shouldn’t stack many around our wrists. One small prayer rope is enough. It should be very inconspicuous and not easily visible to others. This follows the principle of how the Lord Jesus taught us to fast and do our works in a private and quiet way, and not to be seen by others.

Great power is found in the Jesus prayer as we see from today’s gospel reading. Many volumes of writings of the saints have been dedicated to this one spiritual practice alone. It is easy and accessible to anyone who has the desire to grow in Christ. Let me share a couple of the sayings of the saints regarding this prayer:

St. Nikiphoros also writing in the Philokalia taught saying “(the intellect) should constantly repeat and meditate on the prayer, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me’, and should never stop doing this. For this prayer protects the intellect from distraction, renders it impregnable to diabolic attacks, and every day increases its love and desire for God.”

The modern saint Sophrony of Essex was a great teacher of prayer and he gives us some of the following advice:

“We try to stand before God with the whole of our being. Invocation of the Name of God the Savior, uttered in the fear of God, together with a constant effort to live in accordance with the commandments, little by little leads to a blessed fusion of all our powers. We must never seek to hurry in our ascetic striving. It is essential to discard any idea of achieving the maximum in the shortest possible time. God does not force us but neither can we compel Him to anything whatsoever…..In the atmosphere of the world today prayer requires super human courage. The whole ensemble of natural energies is in opposition. To hold on to prayer without distraction signals victory on every level of existence. The way is long and thorny but there comes a moment when a heavenly ray pierces the dark obscurity, to make an opening through which can be glimpsed the source of the eternal Divine Light.”

He continues saying, ““The way of the fathers requires firm faith and long patience”, whereas our contemporaries want to seize every spiritual gift, including even direct contemplation of the Absolute God, by force and speedily, and will often draw a parallel between prayer in the Name of Jesus and yoga or transcendental meditation and the like. I must stress the danger of such errors-the danger of looking upon prayer as one of the simplest and easiest ‘technical’ means leading to immediate unity with God.”

Finally the saintly man tells us, “There is no ascetic feat more difficult, more painful, than the effort to draw close to God, who is Love (cf. i John 4.8, 16).

This is our task in emulation of the ten lepers. This is the work of our lives, to cry out to God with our whole hearts, with faith that Jesus Christ will heal the leprosy of our souls just as He did heal the physical afflictions of those who cried out to Him. But let us also take a word of caution from the Holy Gospel. When we begin to receive healing let us remember to turn back regularly and give gratitude to the Lord who alone has made such healing possible by His grace. Glory be to God forever AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (4:12-17)

Long ago, many hundreds of years before the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ, the prophet Isaiah gave the people these words: “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”

We might say to ourselves, “why were the people in darkness? What can this saying mean?” In fact the meaning of it is clear from the previous verse: “The land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali, toward the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles..” The Holy Spirit, speaking through the prophet regarded the gentiles as people who sat in darkness. It means that they were people who spiritually speaking had no light. In our own day we have a tsunami of pluralism within the culture. We are afraid to offend anyone and we are afraid to take a strong stance that might make us look different than others. But in fact that is part of what it is to be of the Church, of those who are called out and set apart by God. We aren’t meant to blend in at all times. We must say that not all religions or beliefs are considered true. This is the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ. And not all practices are good or moral. To say otherwise is to trivialize our faith and to diminish and make void the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. Not that it can ever be made void, but that we somehow void it’s power in our lives by rejecting it.

What set the Jews of the day apart from the gentiles was that the Jews possessed the books of Moses, they had the law of God and the teachings of the prophets. They had received spiritual light and were not in complete darkness. They had received some illumination from God. Yet for all that they had, they still did not have the fullness of the light, the fullness of the truth because they had not yet seen the Anointed one, the Messiah, the Christ. Yet all of that changed when Our Lord heard that His cousin John had been arrested and He withdrew into this gentile region. The prophet tells us that something changed that day that Christ entered this region. Like a powerful light in a pitch black room, His presence completely disbursed the overwhelming darkness.

Christ changed this place and made it a place of light. And there is another place which was full of darkness and which Christ overcame by His presence…our hearts. On the day in which we were baptized and received into the Church, Christ took possession of our hearts. He made us the abode of the Holy Spirit. He allowed us to be vessels of light, vessels of His light. He took lives that were full of darkness and He brought them into His glorious light.

In the reading we hear not only these words “the people who sat in darkness” but also “those who sat in the region and shadow of death…” In fact, we understand that the whole world, the whole of creation, all of mankind was under the bondage and slavery of this shadow of death. It lingered and hovered over everything. Because darkness and death go together just as light and life go together. They point to one another. Darkness and death go together with a life of sin. Light and life are always together in lives of godliness and sanctity. Our Lord Jesus Christ says “I am the true light. He who follows me shall not walk in darkness.”

So it is the presence of Jesus Christ and our faithful pursuit of His commandments that becomes a light for our lives. Indeed, when we fully embrace this way, our lives radiate this light and grace to others. This is the witness of the saints and holy ones who have been well pleasing to the Lord throughout every generation.

Yet we are reminded that before someone can make friends of the light, he must first do something else. He must cast off the darkness. He must repent. We’ve mentioned before that in the gospels the very first word of preaching from John the baptist is this word “repent.” We’ve mentioned also that this same word is the very first word preached by Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is the foundation and basis of a proper spiritual life. All of the men and women who were received into the Church last week first came and repented formally with confession. Each and every one of us is encouraged to do likewise. When do we repent? Once in our lifetime? No! Rather we repent every single day of our lives. Read the lives of the saints and you will see that their repentance is an ongoing, living, dynamic repentance. St. Symeon the new theologian writes, “Through repentance the filth of our foul actions is washed away. After this, we participate in the Holy Spirit, not automatically, but according to the faith, humility and inner disposition of the repentance in which our soul is engaged. For this reason it is good to repent each day as the act of repentance is unending.”

The saints show us that the more one grows in holiness, the more he or she will realize their own fallenness and the more one will strive in their spiritual struggles. Why? Because the grace of God is like a light that shows our own faults and imperfections. St. Isaac the Syrian writes, “think of the heavy sins of those who fell and repented; and of the praise and honour they received afterwards, so that thou mayest acquire courage during repentance.” He is telling us that courage is required. It is not easy work. But nothing worthwhile is easy.

As the light increases, we see more of the dirt and grime around our souls. This is not a bug, but a feature of life in Christ. The more we turn to Christ, the more He brings our darkness into the light and burns it away by His presence. Another interesting thing happens as we strive to repent and know Christ. We begin to minimize and ignore the sins of others because we are so focused on our own. St. Ignatius Brianchaninov writes, “It is worth noticing that, after acquiring spiritual understanding, the defects and faults of one’s neighbor begin to seem very slight and insignificant, as redeemed by the Savior and easily cured by repentance—those very faults and defects which seemed to the carnal understanding so big and serious….The carnal mind sees in others sins that are not there at all.”

This is the path laid out for us as children of God, as Christians. Daily repentance, daily prayer, daily obedience to the teachings of Christ, daily love for God and for one another. In this way we continue to push back the darkness of sin and we overcome death through the One who opened for us the gates of His kingdom. Let us joyfully walk through those gates together with God’s help. AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Epistle of St. Paul to Titus. (2:11-14; 3:4-7) and the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (3:13-17)

Joy of the feast my brothers and sisters in Christ! In today’s reading we hear these words of St. Paul to his fellow worker Titus. He writes “the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men, training us to renounce irreligion and worldly passions, and to live sober, upright, godly lives in this world; awaiting our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ…”

I want to begin by pointing out that the teaching of the Holy Scriptures, the New Testament, the apostles and the Church is clear: God desires to save all men, all mankind. For what else can be taken from this phrase “the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men”? We understand everything about the life in Christ and in the Holy Orthodox Church through that lens. Through the lens of the work of salvation and through the lens of God’s infinite love, and mercy for mankind, who is the pinnacle of God’s creation.

St. Paul tells Titus that God saved us. He uses the past tense. In so doing the apostle is telling us that what God set out to do, has been accomplished as much as it is within God’s power and ability to do so. He saved us. How did he do this? He saved us by taking human form and suffering and dying upon the cross and rising again to conquer sin and death that had enslaved all of mankind. From God’s standpoint the work is complete forever. He cannot add to His saving work. It was done perfectly and the cross stands as the axis upon which the history of creation and of salvation is understood, around which it revolves. This is the meaning of the grace of God. God opened the door to the salvation of all people, not because we deserved it, but because He desired this for us. It is God’s desire to save us. However, it must also be noted that often it is not our desire to be saved. God in His love, refuses to push or coerce or force us to accept His gifts. He wants us to be with Him, to choose Him, to be His friends, to have communion with Him.

This week I was reading the life of St. Seraphim of Sarov since he was commemorated on January 2^nd. Did you know that the Mother of God appeared to him 12 times during his life? 12 times! Why did he get such special treatment? Because the Mother of God and the saints found him to be of one mind and one heart with them. In fact the Virgin Mary said exactly that to St. John during one of her visits while Seraphim was very sick. She said “he is one of us.” And that sentiment is something that the saints take from the Lord. The Lord wants us to be with Him. He became a man to make us like Him.

In today’s feast we celebrate the baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ and all of the miracles that surround this event. We believe that everything that was undertaken by the Lord was undertaken for us and for our salvation. Jesus did not need to be baptized for His sake. He was baptized for our sakes. In so doing He transformed the merely symbolic water baptism of John the baptist into a baptism into power. The power to become a Son or Daughter of the Most High. The Lord entered the baptismal waters so that we could then be baptized into His death and resurrection. We could be put to death in the old man and raised from the dead as a new creation.

He was baptized so that by our baptism and Chrismation, we could receive the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit and become temples of the living God. By grace He has permitted us to become what He is by nature, a child of God. So we are renewed and saved by this mystery of baptism because the Lord Himself first partook of this to sanctify and make holy this act. Yet, we see that our salvation exists as promise and potential. The promise is God’s part. The potential is our part.

St. Paul says in today’s epistle that the Lord Jesus purified for Himself a people of His own who are zealous for good deeds. How do we become God’s very people? Certainly through our baptism but this won’t be enough. In order for each of us to reach his God given potential and growth in Christ, he is expected to be zealous to do good at all times and to everyone. To become good. To be like Christ who alone is good.

We don’t undertake this to add to God’s work or to earn something. We don’t do this from a sense of moralism either. We do this to build on the foundation of God’s work through synergy, a cooperation with the grace of God, the grace of the Holy Spirit. That is what the saints did and they had a nature like ours! They dedicated themselves and their lives to putting their carnal desires and passions and sinful habits to death. They dedicated themselves to taking every possible advantage they could in the spiritual struggle so that they could walk innocently, blamelessly, purely, according to the holy commandments of Christ. Because in the commandments of Christ there is knowledge of God and a relationship with God becomes possible.

On the day that Our Lord Jesus Christ approached His cousin John and asked to be baptized, John trembled! He was afraid. Our hymns tells us that the very waters themselves were terrified at the coming of their creator. This is not fear in the worldly sense. It is reverence and awe at the great mercies and blessings of God.

But how about each of us? We come to the liturgy on Sunday morning, we come to approach the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and how do we approach? We approach the Lord Jesus Christ in the liturgy not simply to touch Him, but to consume His holy body and precious blood! What a truly awesome and terrifying gift that we have been given by God. Some of you, our newly illumined will be receiving the body and blood of Christ for the very first time. Glory to God! Today you receive His power and grace and the joy and peace of His resurrection within yourselves. The Lord Himself teaches that the one who eats and drinks His blood receives eternal life and will be raised up at the last day. May we all come to receive worthily, with humility and reverence and purity of heart because the holy things are indeed for the holy.

As the Deacon prepares for the distribution of the gifts he proclaims “In the fear of God, with faith and love, draw near!” Let this also be our desire not only when we receive the divine gifts of holy communion but in our daily efforts to know God. May we draw near because He is near and He desires each of us to dwell with Him. AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (2:13-23)

We are told that an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. From this we learn that in fact our dreams are used by the spiritual powers to influence us. In the case of Joseph, the angels used his dreams to protect Joseph, Mary and the infant Jesus from attack and persecution. We know also that sometimes our dreams can be fertile ground for demonic activity as well. This is one of the reasons why the evening prayers are important and there are specific prayers that ask that our angel will guard and protect our sleep.

We also ask the Lord to give us a sleep free from the fantasies of Satan and disturbing dreams. To this we might add that our evening routine is very important. The hour before you fall asleep should be a time where you wind down, not scrolling through tiktok or reels or looking at indecent images, but a time to read healthy spiritual words and to conclude with prayer. If we struggle to do this or to have any time without outside distractions like music and television and smartphone, that is a sign that the soul and mind haven’t had practice in quiet time and stillness. I confess that I often start winding down too late and then I’m already exhausted and don’t have the ability to focus on evening spiritual reading. If you are doing these practices, great! If you are not, it’s a good time to begin to change your habits. It is a good practice to set an alarm for yourself everyday to remind you of your own bedtime and your time for prayer and spiritual reading, otherwise the day may slip away from you.

Now the angel in the reading warned Joseph and he took this dream very seriously. He packed up his family and departed by night to the land of Egypt. This is powerful imagery because Egypt was seen as one of the great powers and oppressors of Israel throughout the biblical text. You remember that Moses was tasked by God to speak to Pharaoh and to liberate the people from the bondage and slavery that they had endured in Egypt. Over and over Egypt is seen as an oppressive force in the Old Testament. Yet we see that things are being turned on their head due to the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh.

The one who was the oppressor is now seen as the safe refuge and those who should have been the protectors, the people of Israel are now seen as the persecutors of the one whom they should have adored, worshipped and served. So even when the Prophet Hosea mentioned these words many years before they came to pass, “Out of Egypt have I called my Son.” Those words would have rang out as strange and peculiar because the people have had a long and difficult history with the land of Egypt.

By most accounts we are told that the Holy Family spent between 3 and 4 years in the land of Egypt and as we heard in today’s gospel, the angel told Joseph not to return to the land of Israel until King Herod had finally died. It is possible to this present day to travel to Egypt and actually tour some of the holy sites of pilgrimage where the holy family stopped and rested and dwelt within Egypt. Among the Coptic Orthodox people these sites are a great source of comfort and joy. “According to the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of James, the Holy Family fled together with Salome, Mary’s midwife. They made their way through the Judaic desert to the Jordan valley….Sources of the Coptic Church tell us that the Holy Family proceeded from Bethlehem to Gaza, then to El-Zaraniq (also known as Floussiat), some twenty-eight miles west of al-Arish, near the oasis of Ain Hagla close to the Jordan River, orthodox monks have named their church in honor of the Holy Family. For them it marks the place where the Holy Family had their first rest.

Subsequently, Ain Hagla was surnamed Kalamonia, which means ‘good abode.’…Next, they threaded their way along northern Sinai until they reached Farma (ancient Pelusium) mid – way between al-Arish and present-day Port Said. The Greek monk Epiphanius Hagiopolites (eighth century) as well as the Western monk Bernard the Wise (870 AD) mention in their writings that the Holy Family stopped in this city. The local church dedicated to Mary commemorates the Angel’s message to Joseph to leave for Egypt.

They then traveled east to the ancient city of Hebron, reputedly one of the oldest cities of the world and a holy site for Jews, Christians and Muslims since here in the cave of Machpelah Abraham and Sara, Isaac and Rebecca as well as Jacob and Lea found their last resting place….On the twenty-fourth day of the Coptic month of Bashans, which corresponds to the first of June, the Coptic Church celebrates the entry of the Lord Jesus Christ into the Land of Egypt. On that day, the churches throughout the land pray in the words of the Doxology:

“Rejoice, Oh Egypt; O, people of Egypt and all ye Children of Egypt who live within its borders, rejoice and lift up your hearts, for the lover of all mankind, He who has been before the beginning of ages, has come to you”.” Flight into Egypt by Sister M. Danielle Peters

When it was safe the holy family was instructed to return to Egypt. “They had covered approximately 1242 miles typically with a donkey, sometimes on a sailboat down the Nile and often by foot.” Flight into Egypt by Sister M. Danielle Peters

None of this would have been easy, but the life of our Lord was never easy. He endured all of this affliction and suffering even before the start of His preaching. He endured every aspect of the human condition except for sin, in order to redeem us from our afflictions and the sufferings caused by sin. He undertook and overcame all of these trials and tribulations in order to demonstrate to us His great mercy and love toward mankind. Let us flee to this Lord Jesus as He at one time fled to Egypt for refuge.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew. (1:1-25)

Today is the annual Sunday when deacons all around the world have to struggle to repeat many long, strange and complicated names. It is the Sunday before the feast of Nativity, the Sunday of the genealogy. The Church makes sure to give us this Sunday before the feast as a necessary reminder. Jesus Christ is part of a larger story. He did not appear as an alien from the sky. No! He is part of a story that was being told for many centuries before His birth. He is related to His people. He has the bloodline of His mother Mary. He also has the lineage by law, from the man whom everyone considered to be His earthly father, Joseph. Of course we know that in fact, Christ had no human father, nevertheless, according to the Jewish understanding, Joseph was His father, and treated as such.

As we dig through this great list of names we recognize a list of who’s who of the Old Testament. The history of Israel is unveiled in the names of these people. We recognize that many of them are great figures, yet some of them were not so great. Many were virtuous, and some were less than virtuous. Some of them had moments of great treachery as well as highlights in their life where they showed tremendous faith in the Lord. We are reminded that the history of Israel is imperfect in the earthly sense. Yet we are comforted that God does not need man made perfection in order to do His work and fulfill His will and His plans.

Each of us is part of a family as well. You will agree that our families are not perfect. No family is perfect because it contains human beings who are created in the image and likeness of God but are nevertheless subject to the passions and sinful inclinations. So no matter how wonderful your family might be, they are not perfect. We shouldn’t idolize them or disparage them. God made each of us a part of our family according to His will for our lives and according to His plan for our salvation. Not a single detail has escaped the Lord’s watchful eye. If this is true for each of us, how much more is it true for the details that surround the people of Israel and the lineage of the Lord Jesus Christ?

Every detail mattered and God used them all because He always planned to have His Son Jesus Christ save the whole universe. The people listed above were often far from perfect. Yet, God found a way to weave their lives and the details of those lives into a redemptive story and by doing so, He redeems them as well. And in the course of hearing their names and learning the Old Testament stories about them, we come to understand that without the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh, we and they would be without hope because of the multitude of our sins and failings. We are truly a collective mess apart from the great grace of the living God.

St. John of Kronstadt said “Why, and for what reason, was there such condescension [shown] on the part of the Creator toward His transgressing creatures – toward humanity which, through an act of its own will had fallen away from God, its Creator? It was by reason of a supreme, inexpressible mercy toward His creation on the part of the Master, Who could not bear to see the entire race of mankind – which, He, in creating, had endowed with wondrous gifts – enslaved by the devil and thus destined for eternal suffering and torment.”

The great grace of God is shown in a most powerful way in the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. This incarnation did not begin on December 25^th, on Christmas day. No. The incarnation began on March 25^th when the Virgin Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit. Until now we still have those who do not accept the teachings of the Church on conception, pregnancy and the great sin of abortion. This is not a women’s right issue as the world would have you believe. It is an issue of human rights for those who have no voice whatsoever, for the fetus in the womb, including the 50% that are female. But it’s not just an issue of human rights.

This is an issue of right versus wrong. You are free to hold whatever position you like, but you are not free to do so while claiming to also be a practicing, believing, faithful Orthodox Christian. The two are incompatible. Be bold in standing against the world and those who want to have fellowship with darkness. Young people, teens, young adults, be bold in standing up for Christian teaching. You are meant to be a light to the world. If you won’t be bold in your faith, who will be? And when at times you meet those who are difficult or stubborn, walk away from such discussions because wolves do not honor what is sacred, and they have no problem tearing it apart.

Even if we had not known the incarnation of Christ, this teaching would be true but how much more sanctified and powerful is this truth once we have understood that our Lord Jesus Christ also partook of this aspect of our lives? He was conceived by the Holy Spirit in his humanity and He developed as a fetus within the womb. The hymns tells us that the womb of Mary became more spacious than the heavens, because this womb held God. All of this to save us from our sins…Emmanuel, God with us!

We have put on Christ who first put on our humanity. This humanity that he put on was from a lineage full of various kinds of people. Some good, and some not so good. But now that we have received Christ we have to choose which side of the story we would like to be on. On whose side will we stand? Who will we serve? As we draw near to the feast of Nativity, let us be like Joshua the son of Nun and say “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!”

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (14:16-24)

The Lord Jesus Christ taught this parable about the great banquet. He speaks of a man who planned a large banquet and invited many guests. Yet those who were invited began to make many excuses for why it was not a convenient time for them to come to the banquet. This inspired the man to send his servants out yet again and to invite others until finally the banquet was full.

Who is this man that invited the people to a great banquet? We can say that this is God or His Son Jesus Christ who send out His servants with invitations. Who are the servants? They are the holy apostles first sent out by Jesus Christ. Today we would say that they are those who were appointed by the apostles such as the bishops, priests and deacons, and perhaps others…

What is this banquet? Is this a reference to heaven above? Yes. But is it only a reference to the afterlife that awaits godly people? No. Our eternal life cannot be disconnected from our lives here and now. They are connected. Moreover, our spiritual life cannot be disconnected from our physical life. They are both connected. So the banquet is certainly a reference to the heavenly kingdom but it not merely the heavenly kingdom. The banquet is also here and now. Our Lord Jesus says “the kingdom of God is within you.”

It is also a reference to what we are doing when we come together as “church.” We don’t come together merely for fellowship or to sing a few songs. We come together to worship the living God. We begin every liturgy with the words “Blessed is the Kingdom.” This signifies that a change is happening. That we have left the world and are entering a new place, a new state of being, a new land. We are entering the kingdom of God. This is one of the reasons why we must build churches and why the churches must be ornate with iconography and beauty not bare white walls because the church is manifesting the kingdom and it’s realities to the world around it. The walls of the church declare an often hidden reality, God and His saints are with us in this place. This place filled with the mercy of God and His grace, becomes a part of the kingdom because Christ has conquered it with His love.

Likewise, each of us becomes personally a participant in this kingdom. We are told in the parable that the man had his servants invite people personally! We are a group who are in communion with one another, but we first participate personally. Before we become a community, we are individuals. We are invited as individuals and we are called to accept or reject the invitation.

The first time that someone is invited is when they first encounter the gospel teachings of Our Lord Jesus Christ. They feel called to change their way of life, to repent, to come to Him. For others this might happen later after they have been in the church for sometime, such as children who are baptized at a young age but have not internalized and accepted their relationship with the Lord. They may come to a moment where they metaphorically stop arguing with God. Where they “lay down their arms and surrender.” Where they cease to fight against God and His ways, and finally allow Christ to declare His victory and conquer their hearts and their lives.

In the passage we find that many who were invited never took the invitation seriously. Our Lord is telling us something about reality isn’t He? He is telling us that although people are personally invited, some of them have other priorities in their lives. They have somehow lost focus on what is most important. We could and we must say that some of you are here physically but the heart and mind are elsewhere. No warmth or love for Christ or His Church or His kingdom. It’s nearly the same being too busy to accept the invitation. But to accept the invitation is to give your heart and your attention to Christ as much as it is possible. In our own lives we might say, I’ll take my relationship with Christ more seriously but first I want to get married. Or we say, I will focus on Christ but first I want to have a successful career. Or we say “I am serious about Christ but I am unwilling to give up my sinful ideas and desires and habits.” But brothers and sisters, we need Christ and not vice-versa. He desires us to sit at table with Him and the saints and what is necessary for us is to accept the invitation with joy and gratitude. We never deserved the invite in the first place, it came only by grace.

Our response is one of joy, gratitude and heartfelt desire to run towards Christ and His kingdom daily. But we can’t run towards Christ while we are weighed down with all of the others stuff. We would be just like the folks in this passage. One has to tend his field and the other has to take care of his oxen and another has to focus on his wife.

St. Cyril of Alexandria says of them: “By senselessly giving themselves up to these earthly matters, they cannot see things spiritual. Conquered by the love of the flesh, they are far from holiness. They are covetous and greedy after wealth. They seek things that are below but make no account in the slightest degree of the hopes that are stored up with God. It would be far better to gain the joys of paradise instead of earthly fields and temporary furrows.” Commentary on Luke, Homily 104.

Let us not be like those men in the parable, who put other things before Christ. The first sign of this is how we approach and desire and focus ourselves for the earthly feast of the Divine Liturgy. This is our entrance into the kingdom. I leave you with another quote from St. Cyril who says, “Come, for look, all things are ready.” God the Father has prepared in Christ gifts for the inhabitants of the earth. Through Christ, he bestowed the forgiveness of sins, cleansing away of all defilement, communion of the Holy Spirit, glorious adoption as children, and the kingdom of heaven.” May we enter and receive this feast with the saints and holy ones of God!

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians. (2:14-22) and The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (13:10-17)

In today’s epistle reading St. Paul tells the church at Ephesus that Christ is our peace. Those are important words for us. I would like us to meditate upon what that means for our lives. Christ is our peace. The first way in which Christ is our peace is that He himself has broken down the wall that existed between us and God. What was this wall made of and when was this wall built?
It was built first by Adam and Eve when they transgressed and fell in the garden. It was a wall of rebellion (which is sin) against God and His commandments. Due this rebellion, other walls were also built to fortify this wall, such as walls of shame. In this way we reinforce our decisions not to honor and obey and live with God and we further isolate ourselves until we feel that we are completely estranged from everything and everyone that we love, or rather, that loves us. In truth when we live in this kind of rebelliousness we don’t sense that others love us. We only sense that everyone is out to get us. That is a dysfunctional state of being but it is all the more dysfunctional when we apply this to our relationship with God almighty.
But the apostle Paul tells us that these walls have been broken down by Jesus Christ. How did he break them down? He broke them down by offering Himself, His broken body and His shed blood for us and for the life of the world. St. Sophrony of Essex would say that Jesus Christ justified God before man and that He justified man before God. How so?
Christ justified God before man in that He became man and lived with us and sacrificially gave His life for us in order to prove exactly how much God loved mankind. And then Christ justified man before God because by becoming man Himself, the Lord Jesus lived a perfect human life worthy of all praise and honor before God. In doing this He justifies man by showing God that man is indeed worth saving because man can live righteously, in holiness and love for everyone. In Christ we see the potential of man.
So these two sides of the coin work together to demonstrate that Jesus Christ is our peace. We were at war within ourselves, at war because of our sins, at war due to the outward laws and ordinances of the Jewish Mosaic laws and at war with God (or that was how it seemed). But because of His love which is clearly demonstrated for us, no one can open their mouth against the love of God. They try often and appear foolish because God’s love is clearly seen in all of creation and especially in the work of our salvation through the selfless offering of Our Lord Jesus Christ upon the wood of the cross.
St. Paul tells us that Christ “preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near for through Him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.” This is firstly a reference to the difference between the Jews and the gentiles, but we read deeper and see it as a reference to those who had some type of relationship with the living God and those who had no relationship whatsoever with the truth of the living God.
The apostle tells us that both groups of people now have equal access to the Holy Spirit because of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We can live in, through and with the Holy Spirit. In fact, we MUST! Whatever you are chasing in life is merely an idol if it doesn’t somehow honor and glorify and bring Christ to the center of our lives.

We chase so many things because we think that they will bring us peace. We chase wealth and power and identity and freedom and autonomy as well as relationships and experiences and affirmation and attention and love. Yet these things cannot give us life apart from the giver of life Himself. We can’t take a top down approach with peace. Peace starts from the foundation which is built on Christ who is the cornerstone of the foundation. Everything is then built upon this foundation so that the whole temple will be solid, and strong. So that it will last forever, because you are meant to live forever with Christ.

Stop pretending to be like the rest of the world when you are not, you are citizens of Christ. You are no longer strangers, so stop estranging yourselves from God through sinful and impure living. And the chief of those sins is to put anything in the place of God. To seek real peace part from Christ. St. Paul give us great encouragement and hope by telling us that we are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. What an honor and a blessing! Although we don’t deserve any of it, the Lord made you a member of His family on the day that you were baptized and chrismated. And we have this as a promise and yet also as potential. God will not revoke the promise, but He also will not force us to live up to our potential. It is given to those who have faith, to those who are faithful.

One of the modern elders of Greece, Elder Aimilianos says that God waits to see if we will be focused on lower earthly things or if we will direct our gaze to what is above, to the spiritual and heavenly things, because this is what God desires to share with us, but He can’t share those things with us when we are fixated on things that are much lower hanging fruit, to what is earthly. If you have your mind and your eyes set on the things that are below you, how will you ever rise to what God has promised from above?

We are truly comforted by these teachings. God isn’t out to get us, and He is not angry with us. You can see His tenderness even in today’s gospel passage and the healing of the woman on the Sabbath. He loves us and desires that we should be with Him, healed and full of life. That is the definition of peace. He knows that we struggle in this life yet He says to each of us, “In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world!” AMEN.

Source: Sermons

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to St. Luke. (12:16-21)

In today’s reading the Lord gives a simple parable about the subject of treasure. Namely, what do we consider to be our treasure and how do we use or misuse our treasure. He tells us about a rich man whose crops flourished. They flourished to such a degree that in fact he ran out of space in his barns and storehouses. So upon seeing all of his abundance and the situation that was caused by this over abundance of crops, he asks “What shall I do?” On the surface, he did what any logical person would do. He decided to pull down the barns and build even bigger barns to store all of his wealth, meaning, his grains and produce. Now as he was contemplated all of this, he finished his daydream by thinking about the result of building new larger barns. He thought about how he would say these words “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.”

Now at this point in the parable we are told that God spoke to the man saying ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” I think that this message is very clear for us. And it is a two sided message. The first and plain reading is that we focus too much of our attention to our financial wellbeing without thinking about the “well-being” of the things of God. We worry too much about caring for our needs, and not nearly enough in caring for the needs of the things of God. But what are the things of God? Namely, the care of the poor and the care of the church. After all doesn’t our Lord Jesus tell us that the one who serves the poor serves Him? And doesn’t St. Paul also tell us that the Church is the body of Christ and the house of God?

When one is rich towards God, he starts from a point of view of gratitude towards God for all things. He looks at his treasures and his bank account and he doesn’t worry about his wealth, he worries instead about how he can show love and gratitude to God for all of the gifts that He has poured out on us, although we are unworthy of these gifts. He thinks about how he can glorify God with a small portion of his treasures. And he trusts that God receives these through the church and uses them to bless the lives of countless others.

My brothers and sisters, you know that we are raising funds to build a simple but beautiful church and now you can see the skeleton of that church. Do you think that this is simply a building? No! It will be a hospital for the many wounded who enter. It will be a refuge for those who feel unsafe. It will be a shelter and a home for those who feel homeless and without a family. It will be a lighthouse for those who are wandering in the darkness. You and your children and your grandchildren for generations will come here to take blessings and to commune with God. It becomes all of those things by the grace of God and by the love offerings and offerings of thanksgiving that we provide according to our ability. And Our Lord mentions these things not for His benefit but for our benefit.

St. Cyril of Alexandria says “How carefully and with what great skill he brings the lives of the holy apostles to spiritual excellence. And with them he benefits us too, because he desires all humankind to be saved and to choose the wise and more excellent life.” In desiring that we choose the excellent way, the Lord wants to free us of worldliness. He wants to free us of greed and orient our hearts to what is lasting, to what has eternal value.

Now I told you that there is also another meaning to this text. Specifically, that one who is rich towards God is focused on righteousness. He is not so focused on the condition of his bank account as much as he is focused on the condition of his soul because his soul will live forever. St. Cyril again writes, “It is true that a person’s life is not from one’s possessions or because of having an overabundance. He who is rich toward God is very blessed and has glorious hope. Who is he? Evidently, one who does not love wealth but rather loves virtue, and to whom few things are sufficient…. It is one whose hand is open to the needs of the poor, comforting the sorrows of those in poverty according to his means and the utmost of his power. He gathers in the storehouses that are above and lays up treasures in heaven. Such a one shall find the interest of his virtue and the reward of his right and blameless life.”

So St. Cyril actually connects the two. He tells us that when we care for the poor we are actually caring for our own souls. We can also say that the reverse is also true. When we focus only on ourselves, somehow we are not caring for but mutilating our own souls. The treasures we have are temporary possessions but if they are not properly and wisely used, they take possession of us. St. Leo of Rome tells us that as Christians we should always be focused on preparing for the end of our earthly life. He writes, “This should be the careful consideration of wise people, that since the days of this life are short and the time uncertain, death should never be unexpected for those who are to die. Those who know that they are mortal should not come to an unprepared end.” Sermon 90.4.1.

What is so important about this idea is that it is a common idea found among the ancient desert fathers as well. That we should always be preparing for our death. It seems from the outside like a strange and dark sentiment, but in fact, it is a spiritual boost and it allows us to focus on reality as it is. No matter who we are, king or queen, emperor or president, billionaire or philanthropist, doctor, lawyer, engineer, priest, builder, farmer, athlete, soldier, stay at home mom, or even a rich landowner, this is still our reality. May we love God and the things of God and keep these things in proper order in our lives so that we will not hear this dreadful word “Fool!” but will instead hear the Lord say to us “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.”

Source: Sermons