Sunday Sermons from Father Oleg 2024

The Samaritan in today’s gospel is a model for all of us in many ways. He joined with the other lepers in calling out, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” In other words, he began with humility, openly acknowledging that he was sick, needed to be healed, and could not work on his own cure. We should do the same thing in our prayers every day, confessing our sins and asking for the Lord’s forgiveness. We should also acknowledge our weaknesses daily and pray for His strength to resist temptation, to overcome our bad habits, to calm our passions, and to help us grow in faith. The Samaritan is also an example for us in his obedience because he did what Christ told him to do, to head toward Jerusalem to show himself to the priests. One would imagine that Samaritan lepers were surely not welcome there, but he went nonetheless. And as he was going, he was healed. Here we have another powerful image of the Christian life, for we open our lives to the Lord’s healing by obeying Him, by keeping His commandments. It was not walking toward Jerusalem that healed him; it was the mercy of Christ for which he could take no credit at all. The leper certainly knew that, which is why he returned to the Lord to thank Him. Let us offer thanks to the Lord by living lives that are pleasing to Him, and killing the habits of death and darkness that can so easily destroy us and harm others. Christ made a wretched Samaritan leper an icon of His salvation and He will do the same with us, if we follow that man’s example of humility, obedience, and gratitude.

In today’s gospel our Lord Jesus Christ challenged the young ruler to stop thinking about his relationship with God as a set of behaviors, which he could master. Someone who responds to the Old Testament laws by saying, “Oh, I’ve always followed them since I was a child” has a very shallow understanding of what God requires of us. In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ showed us the true meaning of God’s requirements. He said that we are guilty of murder if we are angry with others, if we hate and insult them, and if we do not love God and our neighbors as ourselves, we have broken the greatest of the commandments. Jesus is saying to the rich young ruler, “You’ve kept all the law? Let’s start with number one: “Thou shall have no other gods before Me.” Jesus knew that money was this man’s god. His way to life—to eternal life, that he was asking about—was blocked by his unwillingness to surrender his possessions and to follow Jesus. In the instance of this man, the specific issue was wealth. It might have been something else. It may be something else in the life of another individual. This man wanted to make sure that he had eternal life; Jesus said, “Eternal life will only come by way of setting aside your substitute god, and then coming and following me.” Unfortunately, all of us behave like a rich ruler. We are justifying ourselves that we are not rich, but Christ gives us an example of a poor widow, donating her last two pence. The purpose of giving is not only to help the poor, but also to allow Christ to work in our lives. If we can return our wealth to its first and proper owner, the ties that bind us to possessions can be broken and a barrier to eternal life removed.

In today’s gospel we have the story about a sick woman who was healed on the Sabbath day. The ruler of the synagogue was trying to defend and endorse the literal execution of the law and by doing that he called to obey not God’s law, but his own personal understanding of this law. Jesus Christ came to this world not to trespass the law, but to fulfill it. He calls us to repentance and to the change of our way of thinking. He wants us to see the true meaning of the Commandment about the Sabbath, answering thus to the reproaches for healing on this Day: “Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath lose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham,.. be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?” Here in essence is the difference between the old testament and the new testament. The old was based on obedience to the law. Justification before the law was how the pious Jew saw as fulfilling his obligation to God. Love is not about rules. Love is about a relationship that we each should have with the other. Love moves us beyond the law. Love allows you to see God in the other. The woman, who was cured from her infirmity, received from Jesus Christ not only alleviation of the sufferings of her body, but also, as the gift of Faith, redemption from the sufferings of her soul. “He laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God”. Let us always remember that only Jesus Christ is able to free our souls from the burden of sins and from the devil’s enslavement and that only God possesses power to liberate and make us spiritually straight.

Today’s parable tells us that we can find true happiness only in God and with God. The Rich Man thought he could find happiness through the accumulation of material possessions, but he had forgotten the simple truth that no matter how much we attain in this life, death will eventually take it all. The remembrance of death puts everything into right perspective and we are supposed to live remembering that each moment may be our last. To hope in things of this earth leads eventually to despair because nothing in this life is permanent. So the Rich Man was deluded. He could not see things as they really are and so death surprised him and revealed his spiritual poverty. He went to bed and discovered that the barns that matter, the storehouses of his soul, were filled with nothing. “Be rich,” Jesus instructs, “in the things of God.” If we are following Christ and paying attention to what is going on inside of us we will begin to see reality and gain insight into how things are. Then we will be able to embrace all of life and not be surprised at anything that happens and with all joy and gratitude be able to give thanks to God in all things. That is the path to happiness and peace. St. John Chrysostom died on the road as he was being taken into exile from Constantinople, and his last words were reported to be, “Thanks be to God for all things.” Our faith has to be the same: we shouldn’t try to control things that are beyond our control, give thanks when we succeed, and to trust in God so much that we rejoice in all that is.

Today’s parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us, first of all, the need to read the Holy Scriptures, which contain answers to all our practical questions. What is written in the law, Christ asks the lawyer? He immediately sees the answer and, as it were, his reflection in the mirror of Scripture. He doesn’t like this reflection, and in his desire to justify himself, he asks the question: who is his neighbor? From Christ’s answer we see that any person is our neighbor, regardless of his religion and other circumstances. To the Jews of Jesus’ time, a Samaritan was not a neighbor. Exactly the same attitude one can see in modern wars in the Middle East. To the Muslims also every heterodox is kafir, infidel. To the ancient Greeks, every foreigner was a ‘barbarian.’ In our attitude towards people, we must therefore forget about our religious prejudices. The other lesson from this Gospel is that most of us, given the direct chance, will likely not act like the Good Samaritan. Only one out of three people helped the man who was robbed and beaten, although two of them were highly respected Jews, a priest and a Levite, and the third one, who came upon the wounded man and had compassion and helped him was the half-breed heretic, the Samaritan. The most common reason for ignoring those in need is that we are too busy. We have other things to do that are more important in our imagination. Let us look for someone who needs a neighbor and see, let us have compassion and go to them, and maybe, it will let us bring them to the inn of the Church, to the spiritual medicines of the Holy Mysteries.

Today’s Gospel shows us that Jesus Christ came to this world in order to defeat evil and sufferings that appeared on the earth as a result of the first people’s sin. A sick woman, after having lost any hope in earthly cure, touches with faith the edge of Jesus Christ’s vestments – and becomes healthy again. She does it by herself and secretly, trespassing the Law of God, as once Eve stretched secretly her arms to the forbidden fruit. But at this time it is the reverse movement: Eve, by transgressing the will of God, had detached herself and her descendants from our Heavenly Father, while this sick woman through her faith obtained the power to live. Christ calls her out of the crowd so that her faith could serve as an example. When Christ comes to Jarius’ home, He handles the situation differently. This time He sends everyone away, and after the girl has been resurrected, He tells parents to tell no one. Resurrection of the dead is a byproduct of our faith, and Christ came to the Earth in order to die for our sins and not for performing miracles.This story teaches us a lesson that faith is a willful decision to do the things of Christ. The woman with the flow of blood not only prayed: she broke the Law and physically touched Jesus. After that she spent the rest of her life sharing the truth of Messiah with those around her. The synagogue’s ruler out of love for his daughter also publicly humiliated himself asking for Christ’s help. Let us invite Christ to enter the house of our heart, let us believe in Him and reveal our faith in our deeds like today’s woman.

In today’s Gospel reading, we heard a very strange and inexplicable appeal when the Gadarenes asked Christ to go away from them, to leave and to depart from their coasts. Why did they ask that? A violent wind arose over the sea, carrying the boat in which the Lord and His disciples were sailing to the western shore of the Lake of Galilee inhabited by the pagan Gadarenes. As soon as the Lord stepped onto the shore, He cured the demoniac, who was feared by all the people. The fact that the demons pleaded to be sent into the pigs shows how much they hated roaming about in the world without any habitation. Most probably these demons could not have seen that their new habitation, the pigs, would suddenly run down the hill and all drown because if, in fact, they saw that coming, they wouldn’t have asked for it. Then, the whole city poured out to see the miracle. And what did the people do? Instead of praising God or thanking the miraculous Healer, they asked Him to leave their region. They were frightened and did not want to listen to His words; this miracle shocked and terrified them. So it is with us: for souls without faith, a miracle is not strengthening; on the contrary, it is frightening and destructive. Many of us feel the same because we do not want to respond when the Lord knocks at our hearts. We do not explicitly say: “Leave us alone,” but through our coldness, negligence, and laziness of soul we are often incapable of hearing the voice of our Lord. Today’s words of the Gadarenes should warn us not to miss the right moment, our time when the Lord sends His gift to us, but rather to accept and respond to it with our entire lives.

From the first reading of today’s parable, it is not entirely clear why the rich man ended up in hell and Lazarus in paradise.  We know from the Gospel that, even though wealth is seductive and not in general beneficial for spiritual life, still, not all the rich were condemned, as well as not all the poor were blessed. Lazarus received a heavenly reward, of course, not because of his material destitution, but because of his consciousness of his spiritual destitution, because he apparently listened to Moses and the Prophets. And the rich man was punished because he was not only physically sated, but also spiritually, and he trusted in his wealth, he did not feel a need for God’s help. The poor Lazarus looked to the rich man to see if God is real, good and kind, but the rich man could not live the Commandments and demonstrate it to him. The Gospel reminds us that life in this world is not all, there is life in the world to come, which is shaped by our life in this world.  Today, the post-Christian world looks to us to see what God is like, to encounter the Gospel. That Word of God has to be written on our hearts, and our lives have to narrate to others what is written on them. God has called us to be a light to the world, to show the Gospel to others by how we live. Let us pray that in our consciousness we would become poor in spirit, as Lazarus, and that we, like all the saints, would constantly stretch out our hand and beg alms of Christ in our prayers, church services and good deeds.

Most of the parables of Jesus Christ are very simple, but they require explanations for modern people. We live in an urban culture, buy bread in the supermarket and don’t think about the fact that it takes several months to prepare it. Our spiritual life is similar to the work of a farmer: we sow good and evil deeds and words all our lives, and we collect their fruits only after many years. At the same time, we expect that if we prayed or helped someone, then the next day we should receive a reward from God. In spiritual life, we often receive the fruits of what our ancestors sowed, and our children will receive the fruits of our lives. Today’s parable makes clear that the issue of infertility and inability to bloom does not lay with the quality of the seeds or the Sower himself, but rather with the quality of the soil where the seeds happen to fall.These types of people are impressionable and sensitive who have made themselves vulnerable to all kinds of ideas and popular ideologies, and as such, groundless for the word of God. As for those of the rock, their acceptance of the word is “immediate and fast,” but it also fades quickly and disappears during times of adversity and persecution, even at the level of personal challenges. Then there are the ones of the thorns, who suffocate the word with the worries and pleasures of life, and therefore eliminate any place or fertile soil for the seeds to produce. It is evident that for the people of the good soil, the bearing of fruits requires a number of things. One such imperative being patience and vigilance. To be vigilant and alert to God’s teachings is the second new birth; the “birth through the word” that the Apostle Peter speaks of; and this action of hearing is associated with work and implementation, which in turn develops the fruits of the Holy Spirit, the fruits of obedience, patience and hope.

The Lord’s great act of compassion for the widow and her son in today’s gospel is a sign of our salvation. At every funeral we weep and mourn not only for loved ones, but also for the broken state of our life because of its abnormality. Death,destruction, hatred, fear, and decay in all their forms are the consequences of our refusal to live faithfully as those created in the image of God. Jesus’ miracle demonstrates that our faith is not fundamentally about justice or punishment for sinners. It is instead about the infinite and holy love of Christ Who will even submit to death on a cross in order to destroy death by His glorious resurrection. Every time that He healed the sick or raised the dead, He surely knew that his enemies were watching, noticing Him as a threat to their power. And they certainly did not like Him or His ministry. We too must have the courage to show compassion to those who suffer, who mourn, and whose lives are filled with pain and disorder. Christ did not come to show mercy upon those who deserved it, for mercy is something that, by definition, we can’t deserve. Unfortunately, it’s become second nature for us to try to judge others, and take every excuse not to care for those who don’t measure up to our standards. Let us be compassionate to those who suffer, and our lives will become signs of Christ’s salvation, living evidence of His victory over sin and death. And that same holy compassion that raised the son of the widow of Nain will raise us, and others, into the blessed eternal life of the Kingdom.