Sunday Sermons from Father Oleg

Commemorating the memory of Saint Blessed Xenia, we read the Gospel about ten virgins – five wise and five foolish. From the point of view of common sense, the life of St.Xenia was a complete failure and she belonged to the latest ones. Her husband died, she gave away all her property, put on a man’s dress and began to live homeless, spending her nights in prayer. All smart people strive to build large, comfortable houses, live richly, well-fed, and prolong their lives as much as possible in order to enjoy it as much as possible. Naturally, her behavior was perceived by everyone as crazy: they pointed fingers at her, the boys teased her, threw stones and lumps of dirt at her, and she humbly endured it all for Christ’s sake. In order to beg Christ for the soul of her husband, who died in sins, she called herself by his name and lived her life for him. Her friends, after she gave her house to her friend and remained to live on the street, got her examined for legal capacity, and she was declared completely healthy and sane. And now more than 200 years have passed, but people remember and honor her. She was canonized, and her memory will never fade. During this time there were many rich and well-fed people on earth, and they are already forgotten, and the names of many are also cursed, because they often used their money for evil and did not do any good. The Gospel parable about the ten virgins implies that a person can be wise in different ways, and worldly wisdom is the opposite of spiritual one. St. Anthony the Great said, “People are usually called smart because of the incorrect use of this word. Not those who are smart are those who have studied the sayings and writings of the ancient sages, but those whose souls are smart, who can judge what is good and what is evil; A truly intelligent person has one concern – to wholeheartedly obey and please the God of all.” Let us pray for granting us this spiritual wisdom which may allow us to inherit the heavenly Kingdom through the prayers of St. Blessed Xenia and all the saints.

In today’s parable our Lord Jesus Christ compares the heavenly kingdom with a king’s wedding feast for his own son. Nobody before Him described the kingdom of God as a party. Jewish zealots thought of it as a great military confrontation in which the powers of light would obliterate the powers of darkness. The Pharisees saw the kingdom of God as a huge courtroom in which the good would be vindicated by God. We can see in this parable that God offers all of us a simple invitation to come and enjoy the feast. All our theologies and doctrines come down to one thing: God has made possible our being with Him through our bearing the cross and participating in the Holy Eucharist. The only problem is that our minds are preoccupied by our useless hustles to the point that we refuse the opportunity of a lifetime – to attend the marriage feast of a king. The demands of business, the care of the home and family, the lure of passions – those things cause us to say, “Well, Lord, for now I’m afraid I am too busy.” Let us remember that our eternal fate is decided when we, having heard God’s call, respond to it or not, and care for our “wedding garment” or not. Every minute and every day of our lives we hear God’s call, and at any given moment we make choices between good and evil, between God and the devil, between light and darkness – a choice upon which our future depends.This is the message of the Gospel, the good news, that The Church continues to carry the invitation to the world, even if the world refuses this invitation or reacts violently.

The main lesson of today’s gospel is that our Christian life is labor. To be a Christian is to have an obligation, because all workers in God’s vineyard have to “…render Him the fruits in their seasons.” The greatest mistake in our spiritual life is the opinion that one can have belief without labor. The fruits of the kingdom are love, intimacy, mercy and forgiveness, justice, generosity, compassion, presence, wisdom, truth, healing, reconciliation, self-surrender, joy, thanksgiving, peace, obedience, humility. These things are not abstract ideas but lived realities in the lives of saints. We have to remember that if we are in the vineyard and do not participate in producing fruits then we will be cast off. The wood that comes from a vine, like grapes, when it dries out, burns incredibly rapidly and with great heat and intensity. This is what will happen to those who cast themselves off the vine by not laboring. The antidote to our self-exclusion from God’s kingdom begins with first recognizing that self-exclusion. So, let us work in the vineyard, struggle for our salvation and understand that every moment God requires of our fruit.

A rich young ruler in today’s gospel approached Jesus and asked Him what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus tells the young man to sell all that he had and give to the poor, and the rich man left Jesus feeling sad. When Jesus said about one thing that the young ruler still lacked, he implied that the young man should have already given to the poor. When Christ died on the Cross and rose from the dead, He paid a ransom to purchase us from the bondage of sin and death. He was the ransom, and because he gave up His life for us, He demands we give our lives for each other. In another parable of the Poor Widow Christ shows us an alternative to the rich young ruler. The widow did not have much but she gave all her possessions – two pence- to God in the temple. Her gift was of more value than the hundreds or thousands of dollars some might give today. 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.

Today’s parable, where the servant whose debt is forgiven by his master, reminds us of the centrality of forgiveness in Christian life. What is the debt owed by the servant to the king? Jesus gives the answer with the greatest commandment “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind”. The debt is the inequality of love between God and man, when He loves us much more than we love Him. Our passions and weaknesses prevent us loving God as we should. God shows the enormity of His love and compassion when He forgives the servant’s debt completely. St John Chrysostom says “What power prayer has! This debtor … only asked his Lord, then he succeeded in inclining him to mercy. Let us not weaken in our prayers.” But what happened next? The servant “went out” from his state of humility and repentance, forgetting about God and the great miracle of forgiveness he had just experienced. He finds one of his fellow servants who owed him a trivial amount. The fellow servant begs him, using the same words the first servant had used with the king. However, Instead of compassion, the servant reveals harshness; instead of forgiveness, exacting judgement, and instead of love, cold heartedness. We want to be forgiven, yet find it hard to forgive others, because forgiveness is a mindset, a continuous way of life. Finally, the king says “Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?” This is the direct way to the kingdom of God. If we ask for mercy, He gives us much more than we ask for. Many times, ungrateful as we are, we don’t appreciate or remember this mystery of forgiveness. God wants us to treat other people the same way that He treats us in order we can pray “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”.

The poor man with the sick son in today’s gospel had already tried to get the apostles to heal his son, but they couldn’t. The father accepted and confessed his unbelief, beseeching God with tears, to make his faith complete. This was the price for this healing, paid by Christ himself at the Cross. And yet, we must be the ones who pray and beseech Him first. The disciples couldn’t cure the boy because he was possessed by the spirit of this world, the enemy of Christ who was and is well rooted in society. It is passed onto people like a virus and it “throws them onto the ground to be smashed, into the fire to be burnt, into water to be drowned”. Today these images are repeated as drugs, sex deviations, gambling, anything that distorts the image of God. This spirit has a very old history, and it cannot be repelled by anything other than things opposite to its nature – prayer and fasting. “Why could we not cast it out?”, asked the holy Apostles in shame. Our Lord answered them about prayer and fasting, which are the key to repentance. Today, we should recognize the lack of consistency making us “faithless and perverse”, abandon our confidence in our faith and actually embrace the opportunity to repent and reorient our lives to greater faithfulness. May God grant us all fullness in faith, peace, and joy on our climb to heaven.

In today’s gospel St. Peter asked Christ to let him walk on the water, but instead of focusing his attention and trust in the Lord Who miraculously enabled him to walk on the water in the first place, Peter let doubt and fear fill his mind. So he began to sink; but when he called out in terror for help, the Lord reached out to him and saved him from drowning. This is the best image of our earthly life. We should always remember that faith is not given once and for all. It is a constant interaction between God and Man: a constant double movement from God to Man and from Man to God. Like St. Peter, we pay more attention in this life to the dangers that threaten us than to the Lord Who gave us life in the first place and continues to enable us to walk by faith through all challenges that the world presents. Of course, in daily life we must give attention to our work, our family, our friends, and many other significant things. But these objects of our attention don’t have to distract us from the Lord, because when we turn away from Him, we turn away from our true selves. That’s why we all experience the weakness of slavery to our habitual sins, our passions that seem almost second nature to us. Our faith always shows its weakness when we are confronted with a difficult challenge, and fear, panic, and anxiety likely then seem more real to us than faith, hope, and love. We have to remember that apart from Christ, we will sink like a stone, but in Him, we become fellow workers with God for our salvation. Let us keep our eyes and our hearts centered on Christ, for He is our only true foundation.

In today’s gospel, Christ came to the land of Gergesenes, where He healed two possessed men; and what was the response of the people? They were in terror because they had seen the power of God manifested in such a way that filled them with fear, not with joy. And they ask Christ to be gone: Leave our realm, go away! This story tells us not only of ancient sinners: we happen to do very similar things. We ask God to come into our lives; and suddenly we discover that God is not coming in the way in which we want Him to be. We want what we had: an orderly life, without problems, without anything great, but also without anything tragic. The Gergesenes at least “begged” Christ to leave them, while modern people drive Him out in much more cruel ways in order to be left alone with their pigs and their masters, the demons. The Holy Fathers of the Church teach us that slavery to our passions is even worse than demonic possession, since it is something willfully chosen. Whereas the demons can attack us from “the outside”, it is only these willfully chosen passions that can take root in the deepest part of our soul. As Christians, we must not be afraid like Gergesenes to give ourselves totally and completely to Christ. We have nothing to lose but our chains – the chains of our sins and passions and our slavery to the prince of this world. And we have everything to gain, because Christ gives us everything. Our true freedom, our true happiness and our true joy are in Christ alone. If only we soften our hearts with love and humility – towards God and towards our brothers – we will meet Christ with joy, and through our own life, we can, like the healed demoniacs, praise and glorify the living God.

In our days no one wants to be a servant or held accountable to anything that they did not freely choose. We want to be free from all constraints with total liberty to define ourselves and live on our own terms. Worst of all, we project this fictional freedom onto our relationship with God, and in the name of this freedom, we easily enslave ourselves to different desires and passions. Today’s gospel story about the healing of the centurion’s servant reminds us of one truth: human society and the Church are hierarchical. Each member of the Church has spiritual superiors and subordinates, those who went on the same spiritual path further and became closer to God and those who left behind. They can and should recognize each other and have a sense of one’s place in this spiritual hierarchy. What united Christ with a pagan Roman officer? The centurion recognized in our Savior the highest level of the same love and compassion that he himself had towards his servant, and he risked public humiliation by begging publicly for his life. He also confessed his sinfulness by telling the Lord that he was unworthy to have Him enter his home. It was an astonishing statement from a Roman officer to a Jewish rabbi, a person quite far beneath him in every way according to the standards of the empire that he served. Only those who are empty of self attain such heights of humility, and because of that, the Lord granted his request and used him as an example of those gentiles, who would share in the heavenly banquet with the great patriarchs of the Old Testament. With the humility of the centurion, let us be faithful witnesses of what our Lord’s mercy can do with even the most unlikely guests at the heavenly banquet, including sinners like us.

In today’s gospel, we learn that no one can serve two masters: God and money. Our hearts are where we store up our treasures, and this is what truly matters. The focus here is on the attitude of the heart. If we are preoccupied with money, passions, selfish desires, or anything else, our hearts cannot be fully devoted to God. When these distractions consume our time and desires, they become the master of our lives. We ultimately become enslaved to whatever holds that power over us. This is why Christ teaches us that all believers must deny themselves and let go of anything that has mastery over them. If God is the true master of our lives, we will come to despise the sinful desires of the world. However, if we choose to allow someone or something else to take that role, we may grow bitter, angry, and resentful toward God. As Christians, we need to self-examine and ask, “What is the master of my life?” Is it truly God, or is it something else? Let us always choose to follow Christ and make the love of God our ultimate guide.

Today’s feast was instituted in 1918, at a time when the terrible persecution of the Church had begun in Russia. It was considered that the people under the Soviet yoke had, as never before, to turn to the saints for intercession, protection and mere survival. We hear in today’s Gospel about how Christ called to Him His disciples, who left everything behind them, their families, all the possessions and followed Him. This leaving of material things is the most noticeable act, which distinguished Christ true followers. Many theologians and church historians have tried to define the type of Russian holiness and agreed that its main characteristic is a kind of foolishness in relation to the world, later mistakenly defined by Leo Tolstoy as non-resistance to evil by violence. The first Russian saints were Boris and Gleb, who did not resist their murder by their own brother, and the last were the holy Royal Family, who were also glorified in Russia as passion-bearers. This ability of Russians to die well was long ago noticed by the enemies of Christ and is actively used by them now in the fratricidal war in Ukraine on both sides of the front line. Another feature of Russian holiness was the desire to avoid conflicts for worldly interests. In general, Russians are the only European people who voluntarily chose to live on territory unsuitable for agriculture, giving the best lands to their more aggressive neighbors. Saint Sergius simply left Moscow for the swamp in Radonezh because of a conflict with his brother-abbot, and his disciples carried out the great colonization of the Russian North for the same reasons. Another characteristic feature of Russian holiness was its direct dependence on the teachings of Christ. Russia did not have any culture comparable to the Greco-Roman culture of Byzantium. There were almost no theologians in Russia and most Russian saints were poorly educated. They were deeply touched by the words of God, and sincerely tried to live according to the Gospels. On this day of the feast of the Russian saints we glorify their sincerity and devotion to God which is an example to us of a true Christian life. Let us try to take advantage of their example through the practical implementation of that part of the Orthodox doctrine that is most characteristic of our national character and can bring us more fruits of the Holy Spirit.

Today the Lord tells us that we must confess Him before men, confess Him with mind, heart, word, deed, and our entire lives. Shame, timidity, and wavering are not tolerated in this confession. The pleasers of God who labored in the world confessed Him by their disdain and complete disregard for worldly principles. Confession of the Lord joined with resolute and total denial of the world and of themselves is the sign of all the saints. When a person confesses God in a way that is pleasing to Him and as prescribed by Him, it is a sign that God has chosen that person. The fruit of a good human will is inclusion amongst the ranks of the chosen, who always are subjected to the many different torments of sin both within them and from the outside. The fallen spirits who thirst for their destruction, work against them with hatred and incredible craftiness; working against them also are the majority of people, who have willingly enslaved themselves to the fallen spirits, and who serve them as blind, unhappy instruments; working against them also are their own passions and weaknesses. But in result followers of Christ receive even in this life a hundred fold more than what they have forsaken for Christ’s sake—they receive the grace of the All-Holy Spirit. All earthly good things and advantages abandon a person and remain on the earth, when he leaves the earth and settles irrevocably into eternity. Divine grace, however, follows a different rule: it accompanies us to regions beyond the grave. As soon as saints cast their body, like chains, away from themselves, the grace extends itself in them broadly and magnificently. It serves as a pledge and testimony for the chosen one of God. Let’s remember, that behind and beyond our personal cross, as we see today in the Feast of All Saints, is a beautiful garden, a Divine vineyard, for which may we all be made worthy, through our Lord Jesus Christ unto the ages of ages.

Today’s Gospel is a wonderful example of a living and conscious faith, the bearers of which all Christian believers are called to be. It tells us not only about the miracle of the healing of the blind man but also about the specific type of voluntary blindness: the blindness of religious people. For example, many people today have difficulty in accepting the fact that a miracle has taken place and are stubborn in accepting it as a miracle because, for instance, it happened outside their Church. The Pharisees were afraid to accept the miracle because if most of the people began to believe in Jesus, their Jewish Orthodoxy would be defeated. On the other hand, we can see that a shortage of such religiosity can completely change a person’s life. The pharisees tried to discredit the miracle firstly by lying that the man was not blind from birth, then by discrediting Jesus and saying that He is not from God because He does not keep the Sabbath, and at last by saying blasphemy against Christ by calling Him a “sinner”. The man born blind, to the opposite, becomes a real witness for Christ in this story. He witnessed Christ before his neighbors and the Pharisees, and as a result, he was thrown out of the temple. He has shown his faith and courage when his parents denied Christ out of their fear and put the responsibility on their son. Thus, this Gospel passage is a great lesson on witness and denial of Christ. Nothing should obscure Christ from us with its external splendor, no religious authority or institution can replace our spontaneous love and gratitude to the risen Christ. Having this example before our eyes today, we must develop the same willpower, without which it is impossible to confess Christ as God in our evil time. You were bought with a huge price, the Scripture teaches us, do not become slaves of men.

The first week after Pascha is called Renewal week, or the week of Antipascha (the Greek prefix, anti, means “in place of”). On this Sunday, the Lord repeated for all eleven of the Apostles His appearance on the first day after the Resurrection, but because it was especially for the sake of the Apostle Thomas, this day is called Thomas Sunday. The Apostle Thomas’s unbelief had nothing to do with the hardened denial that we see in the Jewish leaders, and Christ answered Thomas’ doubt with the same words that he had used to express it: Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing. This is probably the reason why Thomas did not make use of his Teacher’s invitation to touch His hands, feet, and side, but rather believed immediately and confessed Jesus Christ as God: My Lord and my God. The Holy Church tells us that in our faith there will always be room for doubt, and opportunities for people in their “wisdom” to deny what is so plain and simple to all who have truly found the narrow path that leads to life. Let us always remember the words “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed,” and be faithful to Christ.

Today, celebrating the entrance of Christ in Jerusalem, we should not forget why He goes there. He takes away the sins of the world, and His death and resurrection conquer death itself. He is the King of the world, but He is reigning not as a military leader or politician but as a despised victim of torture and capital punishment. The crowd is right shouting “Hosanna,” which is a plea for God’s salvation to come upon the earth. But that’s not what the crowds expected; it’s apparently not what the disciples or anyone else anticipated. For it goes against all our preconceived notions of what it means to be successful, to be powerful, and to rule upon the earth. And this week, we journey with Christ to His cross, becoming participants in His passion. Like the disciples, we will be able to see that what looks like complete failure is actually total triumph. So it’s time to lay aside our usual distractions, excuses, and obsessions, and enter into the passion of our Lord by worshiping Him in the services of the church, as well as in every thought, word, and deed. It’s time to embrace the great mystery of our salvation, and allow “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, to guard our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

In today’s gospel Jesus confronts his disciples’ obsession with political power. This obsession caused them to be distracted from the mission He has for them, and missed the central point of his teaching. Jesus Christ had told them that He was to suffer, die, and rise from the dead, but they were apparently so consumed by their desires for prominence and power that they refused to hear Him saying that He was nothing like an earthly king. Jesus was headed to glory, and so were the disciples, but they didn’t know the path he’s taking. They had the wrong idea about the kind of glory and kind of power Jesus is bringing. He responded by making clear that the path to true greatness was to follow His way of selfless service. “For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many”. A ransom is a price paid to buy someone back from kidnapping or slavery. All of us are slaves to people’s opinions, we want to be thought well of by everyone. So when Jesus says He would be delivered over to be mocked, that scares us the most. We want to be respected for our expertise or ability, so Jesus says He would be spat upon. We are slaves to comfortable living, so Jesus says He would be flogged. We are slaves to fearing death, so Jesus says he would be killed.Jesus’s giving up his life to ransom us from slavery frees us from all this, and from our biggest problem: our slavery to our sin, our rebellion against our creator God. We all have the opportunity to confess how we have enslaved ourselves to our worldly ways of life, and let us open the eyes of our souls to this glorious truth through selfless service, humble prayer, and genuine repentance.

On this Sunday, we commemorate St. John Climacus, who wrote the book The Ladder of Divine Ascent, in which he reminds us that we must all move upward on that spiritual ladder if we are to follow our Lord. But the first step upward requires a first step downward, for it is the step of humbly acknowledging our weakness, imperfection, and corruption. In today’s gospel, the father of the demon-possessed young man cried out and said with tears, ‘Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.’ The disciples had lacked the spiritual strength to cast out the demon, but in response to this sincere cry from the heart, the Lord Himself healed the young man. Lent is a time to stop hiding our true spiritual state from ourselves. It is a time to turn away from the illusion that we have already arrived spiritually and that prayer, fasting, and confession are only for other people. External religiosity, such as frequency of attendance at church services, is always the best mirror of our spiritual state. We have to believe that we climb up the ladder of holiness by lowering ourselves through humble repentance.“Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.” That is the only confession that will enable us to prepare for what is to come in the weeks ahead as we enter into the Passion week of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.

Today we heard one of the shortest and simplest gospel readings: deny yourself, take up your cross and be ready to lose your soul in order to find it. The apostle of love St.John says it in other words: Do not love the world or anything in the world. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father. Today’s gospel, however, is also the most difficult to understand, since it directly denies the gospel of antichrist, referred to by St.John, which we all follow outside the church. This is the gospel of love for the world and everything in the world, the gospel of personal external success, and the gospel of personal self-preservation through non-interference and indulgence in the works of darkness. The devil at first traps people individually through the bait of personal sins: pride, debauchery, love of money, and others, but then he also demands open public service to himself in different ways. We live in such a time when our service to one of the two gospels listed above becomes more and more obvious. May God grant us that we do not make a mistake in our personal choice and do not accept the gospel of love for this world, and even more so: do not begin to assure ourselves and others that this gospel is the real New Testament. Let us take up our cross and follow Christ.

Today we celebrate the triumph of Orthodoxy, but we live in a secularized world and as Christians, we should understand the history of our faith itself is one long defeat. We shouldn’t expect differently, because this is a spiritual victory. Christ told us that in this world we would have trouble and suffering, but He also said that we should be of good cheer, because He has overcome the world. Christ has established His Church upon the rock of faith, the confession of St. Peter. He said that the gates of Hell would not prevail against the Church. We have now just begun our Lenten journey. It is a journey of purification, a journey of suffering and struggle. But it is also a journey toward the great Pascha of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. He has thrown down the dark powers from their thrones, and now He is defeating the last enemy, which is death. And that is the Triumph of Orthodoxy. When He comes in His Kingdom, may we be found faithful.

Today’s gospel reminds us of two fundamental truths about spiritual life. First, despite God’s patience and mercy being limitless, even He cannot forgive those who do not repent and sincerely seek reconciliation with Him. And second, eventually there will be a final judgement & reckoning. We will appear before the Lord of Glory and be held accountable for what we have done and who we have become in this life. Today’s Gospel clearly tells us how our faith should be made manifest – by noticing and then helping those in need around us. We can see that both, those who were being rewarded and those being punished were not fully aware of the significance of their actions. But each person, and group, displayed through their actions, who they had become. We all know what our faith and devotion to Christ means; it means solidarity, it means loyalty, it means faithfulness, it means being as one in soul, heart, and action with our brethren. Let us strive to follow Christ’s instructions and become like Him, in His love and sacrifice, so that we can look forward to His return in Glory.

At today’s Matins we sang the sad and nostalgic Psalm 137: By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, and we wept when we remembered Zion.., and it has become forever the song of man as he realizes his exile from God. Realizing this spiritual exile, the sinner becomes believer again: the one who can never be fully satisfied by anything in this fallen world, for by nature and vocation he is a pilgrim to the Heavenly Kingdom. Today’s gospel parable also reveals to us the time of repentance as man’s return from exile. The prodigal son, we are told, went to a far country and there spent all that he had. A far country is a definition of our human condition that we must assume and make ours as we begin our approach to God. If we are perfectly “at home” in this world and its life, if we were never touched by the nostalgic desire for another Reality, we cannot repent and we are not Christians. Repentance is not only an objective enumeration of our sins and transgressions, or the act of “pleading guilty”. True confession begins in the feeling of alienation from God, from the joy of communion with Him and from our real life given by God. When we realize like the prodigal son that sins defiled our souls and took us far away from our real lives, and that something precious and beautiful has been hopelessly broken in the very texture of our existence, then we can get a  desire to recover our lost homeland. Let us feel the time of the Great Lent as a pilgrimage and repentance as our return to God, and the Heavenly Father will meet us with joy and remission of our sins.

In today’s parable we encounter two different men. One  of them appeared to be the model of righteousness, and the other one was a corrupt tax collector who collaborated with his nation’s enemies. But this second man had one tremendous virtue – his humility. He would not even lift his eyes up to heaven, but simply prayed from his heart saying “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” The Pharisee in the gospel was so spiritually blind that he even prayed to himself. He apparently thought that he needed no forgiveness and was justified in worshiping himself and condemning others. His religion was a form of idolatry that was focused on the glories of his own life. The tax collector was the complete opposite, focused only on his own need for God’s mercy as the chief of sinners. We should learn to see ourselves as today’s publican with nothing to present to the Lord except a plea for mercy and a humble desire to turn toward God in how we live our lives. May we all follow his blessed example during our Lenten journey this year.

Today is Zacchaeus Sunday, and this Sunday is an invitation to the Great lent. Zacchaeus was a tax collector, which means that he was a notorious extortionist and sinner. What did Zaccheaus do to deserve such an honor, such an encounter with the Messiah? Zacchaeus had something often lacking among those who take Christ only on their own terms: single-minded zeal to see Him. He could have easily been disqualified from seeing the Lord because of his past sins and because of his short stature. And this important and rich man climbed up into a sycamore tree to see Him. The Lord, knowing Zaccheaus’ humble zeal to see Him and his repentant spirit, gave him more than could be imagined: a personal encounter with Him as an opportunity to be received and restored by God. In confession, we can also invite Christ to come under the roof of our heart and to live with us. Zacchaeus didn’t satisfy himself with pious feelings and emotions. Instead, he put repentance into action: He promised to “restore fourfold” anyone he defrauded, giving half his goods to the poor. All we need is the zeal and repentance of Zacchaeus, and today we can seize the opportunity to follow the example of this man who would not let anything keep him from Christ, and do the same.

In today’s gospel we read the story of Jesus healing a blind man. It is highly likely that he has heard of all the miracles Jesus was doing throughout the land of Palestine. Although there were some who tried to stop him from getting to Jesus, he did not stop screaming His name. Jesus knew what he wanted, but offered him an opportunity to express his faith which played a role in his healing process. Without hesitation the blind man said, “Lord, I want to see” and immediately he heard the response “Receive your sight; your faith has healed you.” If Jesus were to ask us the same question today: “What do you want me to do for you?”; would we be able to answer this question? If not, we have the hint for that in today’s second gospel. “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, And upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death Light has dawned.” We  must ask Christ to enlighten us with this light, and we will get the whole world as a bonus. Whatever we want God to do for us, we can present it to Him in prayer; however, we must have faith that God is able and trust His will in the process. Jesus already knows our needs and the desires of our hearts. However, through prayer, we can boldly and confidently tell Jesus what we want him to do for us and expect His will to be done in our lives.

In today’s gospel we hear the story of Jewish king Herod, who after the Christmas in his madness and lust for power, sent out his soldiers to kill the innocent children in Bethlehem. He saw clearly that Jesus was a threat to the existing social and political order in general, and to his own royal authority in particular, but he had no precise theology in mind when he sent out his soldiers. He didn’t believe that he was murdering the Messiah, he was murdering someone who might claim to be Messiah, or whom people might later come to think was Messiah.  He didn’t believe in the Law and Prophets, and it was a huge delusion: human beings cannot change God’s providence. History has proven Herod right. Jesus did live, and did become King, sitting in power at the right hand of God, and the old status quo is indeed gone forever. Now we can come out of darkness into the light, and enter into the heavenly Kingdom. It means, of course, surrendering our hearts and autonomy to the King of Kings, and becoming His servants, and giving up once and for all the mad Herodian dream to control our own lives. Now that Christmas has come and Jesus reigns, all will not end in death. It will end where the Christmas story began, with peace on earth and glory to God in the highest.

Two Evangelists, Matthew and Luke, include genealogies of Jesus in their Gospels and they differ from one another. St. Matthew’s genealogy emphasizes that Jesus is the Son of David. He begins with David and moves then to Abraham, because his aim was to convince the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah and Davidic sonship was essential to do so. St. Luke emphasizes the Lord’s human nature so he begins his genealogy with Adam to be more universal in his message.  For his predominately Greek audience that would be significant.  Luke points also to the Lord’s divine origin. He ends with “Jesus the Son of Adam and the Son of God”. Both genealogies are essential for our understanding of the Incarnation. They complement one another. The genealogy of the Most Holy Theotokos is the same as St.Joseph’s, because they were from the family of David. We can see among the names of the righteous in this family tree a lot of former sinners, and It proves the necessity of the incarnation of Christ. The real story here is that the Son of God was born at all. The genealogy tells us that Jesus was a real, live human being with grandparents, uncles, aunts, and many cousins. The Son of God reveals to us the example of His own human and divine life. We too, even though we are created, share this human and divine connection: in Christ divinity is by nature, and it is granted to us creatures by grace. The Incarnation reveals all this and more. This week before Christmas, in the services and hymns, we will explore this great mystery and let us all partake in them and fill our hearts with joy from the salvation of all mankind.

In today’s gospel Christ compares the heavenly kingdom with a king’s wedding feast for his own son. The lesson closes with the words “Many are called, but few are chosen”. The invitation has gone out to all who care to listen, but some just refused, and some wanted to come but refused to submit to the requirements of entrance into the kingdom. So none of these will be present in the kingdom. Those Jesus refers to as “chosen” are the people who respond to the invitation to come, and respond in the proper manner so that they are prepared to enter the kingdom.  We may conclude the gospel intends to say that God is not surprised by the acceptance of some and the rejection of many – in other words, God’s grace is still at work, even though on the human level we see how some refuse and some accept and prepare. In Church history the invitation to the Messianic banquet had been extended to the Jews first, those who had the promise of the covenant; but they refused. And then Jesus began to turn to the Gentiles, and as many as believed in Him would enter the kingdom in the place of the others, even if the ones who believed were formerly prostitutes and sinners rather than scholars and pious believers. Let us remember that our eternal fate is decided when we, having heard God’s call, respond to it or not, and care for our “wedding garment” or not. Every minute and every day of our lives we hear God’s call, and at any given moment we make choices between good and evil, between God and the devil – a choice upon which our future depends. This is the message of the Gospel, the good news, that The Church continues to carry the invitation to the world, even if the world refuses this invitation or reacts violently.

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.