Wednesday, May 6, 2026: Mid-Pentecost
ACTS 14:6-18
JOHN 7:14-30
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is risen! Today in the Gospel, we have our Lord Jesus, Who is in the temple. And He is in the temple, and He’s teaching. And He’s teaching the people, and really the rabbis, which are the teachers of the Jewish people at that time, He’s teaching them about the word of God, about the law. Teaching them about what God wanted from His people.
And Jesus says something very interesting. He talks about knowing essentially what is right. How do you know when something is right? Well, He says, to want God’s glory versus your glory, essentially, is how you know when something is right. And we have a word for that. In our church, we call that discernment. Can you guys say that? Discernment. Yeah, you’ve probably never heard that word before, huh? Yeah.
Discernment is not just knowing what to say. Discernment isn’t really just knowing what to do. It’s knowing is something from God, or is something not from God. Right? And this is really important, because when we have discernment, everything becomes so much more simple. You see, discernment happens when we have our hearts and our minds wanting the glory of God.
So take, for instance, a mommy, right? You can have a mommy, and she knows she has to do her duties as a mommy. She has to, you know, cook. She has to make sure the kids are doing their homework. She has to manage the house, make sure that things are in order at the house, right? She has all these things she has to do, okay? But the thing is, a mommy has a lot of responsibilities, doesn’t she? A lot, okay? And if that mom wants to do really well, she has to do it to the glory of God. Because if the mommy doesn’t do it to the glory of God, and she does it, you know, just to – it’s great to have good meals. It’s good to have yummy food. It’s good to have roses on the table. And it’s good to have all these things that make a home beautiful. But if we’re doing it just for that, and we forget God, then what can happen is the mommy can become so busy, busy, busy, busy. And then she starts feeling kind of empty. She doesn’t really have all the joy that she should have about feeding and cooking and managing the house.
It’s the same thing with a dad. A dad, he can go to work. He can, you know, like the fact that he’s able to bring home money for his family. He sees his kids. He does work around the house. But if he doesn’t do it for the glory of God, if he does it just because he thinks that’s what he’s supposed to do, then what happens is he gets tired. He gets tired.
Our bishop, Bishop Serafim, he says, when a man does things, a person does things for Christ, he has endless energy. But a person who doesn’t do things for Christ but does it just for themselves, they will eventually run out of energy. And so when Jesus is speaking and He’s teaches us to do things to the glory of God and not for one’s own glory, He’s basically saying we need to have discernment. We need to know, are the things that we’re doing, saying, and thinking, are they to the glory of God? Or are the things that we are doing, saying, and thinking, are they really to our own glory, our human glory? If they’re to our human glory, we’re not going to be able to do them very long and for very well. But if we do them to God’s glory, that means your homework. That means if you guys are learning something, you guys are going to get older. Maybe you’ll learn a guitar. Maybe you’ll learn piano. Maybe you’ll learn how to ride a skateboard. Maybe you’ll learn how to build a jet. Maybe you’ll learn how to become a scientist.
Who knows what you’re going to do? But whatever you do,as you grow older, if you do it to the glory of God, you’re going to have the peace and the joy to see that all the way through. But if you do it just for your own glory, you’re going to get tired real quick. So this word discernment is something that I hope you can come back to every once in a while.
When you’re feeling tired, when you’re feeling frustrated, when you’re feeling that things aren’t just working, you need to ask God for that discernment. “Am I doing this for your glory, Lord? Or am I just doing it for myself?” Christ will show us the way. And He’ll help us so that we make our efforts to His glory and not to our own.
Christ is risen!
Monday, May 4, 2026: Day of the Angels
ACTS 10:1-16
JOHN 6:56-69
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is risen! Man is a very mysterious thing, insofar as man is this bridge between the heavens and the earth. And this bridge, to be sure, there is a tangible, obvious connection there. Man walks upon the earth, always grounded. Yet man is like the mountain jutting up from the earth and at one part in the sky. Our heads, our eyes always scanning the air. We are physical beings, but we are also spiritual beings. We are more than animal, but yet not quite. We are this bridge between the material world and the spiritual world.
And in being this bridge, the true and great mystery is the fact that God, in His wisdom and truly His benevolence, deems that man would be granted His image. And so this image of freedom, this is what truly makes our existence mysterious. Now, the fall and the fruits of the fall, of course, dim this image, twist the image, if you will.
And so man, in his weakness and in his fall, takes something profoundly mysterious and, to be frank, perverts it. This need to consume, to consume. We know that prior to the fall, our ancestors, we were meant to consume. God placed man in a garden and said to him, eat. Have dominion, but eat. Just don’t touch of this one tree.
And so in the beginning, we see that to consume is part of God’s design in us. And it’s not something of the fall. And yet, it is, in some regards, the primary aspect of our being that did fall. Because it was in this consuming that the fruit, the forbidden fruit, was taken. And thus the fall began. This capacity to consume and to take in, it reveals in many ways, perhaps, the great distinction between man and God.
God is uncreated. Man is created. This is an obvious thing. But the need to consume, the ability to consume, if you will, prior to the fall, it reveals this aspect, this icon, if you will, of the created aspect of man. This is important because, remember, the devils fell because of their envy of man. So the angels who were of pure mind, they fell from their highest state in envy of mankind. And so, therefore, if mankind had this need – you could almost say, limitation – of his created being that he needed to consume, then it says a lot, actually. It says a lot about the fact that we can consume, that we are designed to consume, to take in. To take in.
What does God need to take in? God is sufficient. Within the Holy Trinity, there is no lack. So consuming speaks theologically also about God, not just about us. Now, in the Epistle today, we hear of Peter being given this vision. And this vision of this sheet coming down, the four corners being held invisibly. And within this sheet, all manner of hooved and creeping things. The four corners being the world. The visible world. Four corners. That’s why we say the four corners of the universe. North, south, east, west. And within that, all these things which were not kosher.
And so, of course, as we can surmise, we’re speaking also about Cornelius, this righteous gentile, his prayers, his alms, going up to heaven, God hearing him. Peter being given the vision so that he would know to not call anything unclean, which He has made clean, i.e. the gentile Cornelius and the subsequent gentiles, in which Peter struggled with, by the way. And that brings me to my point. God spoke to him several times in the vision. “Rise, Peter, kill and eat.” He says, no, I have never eaten anything unclean, Lord.
I was speaking with a brother, a clergyman, the other day. He’s a deacon. And perhaps he’s discerning a call to the priesthood and he rightly, he rightly is worried about being made a priest. Because to be a priest is a terrible thing. St. Nikolai of Zhicha, he says, to be a priest is to have honor before men, but to have a terrible burden before God and the angels. And so, my friend, he says, I don’t think I want this. He speaks to his spiritual father. I don’t think I want this. His spiritual father says to him, well, if God wants this for you, how can you say no? Yes, it’s terrible. But if God wants this for you, how can you say no?
Peter says no to the Lord three times. Finally, he acquiesces and he eats. And we can still see, though, that he still would struggle with it later on. Nevertheless, yes, he obeyed, but he still struggled. And so, in this consuming and consuming something which according to his tradition, to his understanding of tradition, was unclean.
God reveals something, not just about man, but really about Him and Who He is. Another theological statement, if you will. All this in the light of the most mysterious and scandalous thing, the fact that God himself gives us Himself to eat.
In the Gospel today, the Lord is speaking in the synagogue. And those who are hearing him, His disciples, are scandalized. Eat My flesh, drink My blood, what is this? This is a hard saying. This is madness. And, interestingly enough, in the numbering of the Gospel at John, this is John chapter 6, verse 66. It says that many of them walked with Him no longer. Many of the disciples walked with Christ no longer because of this command to eat. Peter struggles with this command to eat. To consume.
For us to consume is a humble thing, actually. And I submit to you, this, in some regards, reveals the painful mystery hidden here. It’s humbling to consume. Yes, unfortunately, because of the fall, and yes, unfortunately, because of our fallenness, eating becomes something gluttonous. It becomes something self-serving. But perhaps the reason behind the gluttony is actually to cover the shame and the humility that’s inherent in consuming. Because, you see, to consume truly means that you are in need. To consume means that you are not sufficient in and of yourself. And so man, even before the fall, had to consume.
Man is created. God alone is uncreated. God alone needs nothing to take in. God takes nothing in. God gives. But man, even perfect man, and Adam and Eve were perfect before the fall, even perfect man still consumes. Jesus, when He rises from the dead, He reveals Himself to the apostles. He eats the honeycomb and the fish. Why? Does He need to eat? No. But Jesus is fully God, fully man, and that nature, that human nature that He has taken on, is now deified.
And yet, watch this, even in that resurrected state, perfection, there’s still this consuming. It’s redeemed. It’s made holy again. It’s made perfect again. But it’s still humble. It still reveals its humble nature to take in. The everyday things are not so everyday. My sons and my daughters, my brothers and my sisters, and forgive me, I know I’ve labored long on this one, but it’s important, and I’ll tell you why.We have moments in our lives when this is so clear to us. When we are children, but yet we forget, of course, but when we are children, it’s very clear to us. Those of us who have had children, it becomes clear again to us what it means to consume, but also in sickness. In sickness, one of the ways in which we know of dying is that the body begins to lose its ability to consume, to take in. Starvation and famine, a terrible, fearful thing that mankind dreads. And yet, it’s in famine and starvation that we begin to awaken to our reality of our humility, our need to consume.
This should be understood primarily spiritually. This need to take in the life, to take in the Bread from heaven, to take in the Body and the Blood of God. This profoundly mysterious aspect of what it means to be human. Yes, in one sense it’s terrible, but if we allow ourselves to have humble eyes, it’s an intimate, awe-inspiring thing. We need God. And to the point, He’s given Himself to us.
Christ is risen!