Thursday, January 30, 2025: St. Anthony the Great
HEBREWS 13:17-21
LUKE 6:17-23
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Glory to Jesus Christ!
Today we commemorate Saint Anthony the Great, the father of monasticism. We see in his life the call of God being placed upon a man, and that call of God bringing a man to conviction. We see that in Saint Anthony’s life, there is this famous word of his, “I no longer fear God, I love Him.” And we can ponder what Saint Anthony is saying here, we can look and try to understand, but I think that if we look at two key events in his life, we can be brought to a place of deeper understanding.
We see Saint Anthony, his first moment of this fear of God, and the proper understanding of it, is his very call to leave the world, to go into the wilderness. Hearing the gospel, and it penetrating his heart to such a degree that he is compelled. He’s compelled to give everything up, his inheritance, his wealth, his relation to his only relative left, his sister, having her being cared for, Saint Anthony leaves literally everything behind.
Saint Anthony, in that same fear of disobeying God, that same fear of not heeding the word that was given directly to his heart, he goes and he seeks to put himself under someone. Saint Anthony seeks obedience. And this is probably one of the most profound aspects of his life, because in our day, even now, this word “obedience,” for all of us who should know it well, all of us quote-unquote Orthodox, all of us quote-unquote Christians, all of us quote-unquote monastics.
Obedience is something that we still cringe at. We pay lip service to obedience. We pay lip service to the obedience of our parents. We pay lip service to the obedience of our bosses. We pay lip service to the obedience of our spiritual fathers. Our superiors, our elders, we pay lip service to obedience.
We cringe at obedience. The very moment that we are given a word of something we don’t like, we’re given a task of something that we don’t necessarily agree with, we cringe at this word obedience. We pay lip service, but our hearts are not there.
Saint Anthony sought this very obedience. We could spend hours talking about his battle with the demons, his ascetic labors, him struggling day in and day out, in tombs, not having food, being deprived of things. But yea, I tell you, that is not the thing. Hindus do that. You’ll find gurus now who do that, who they go and they asceticize and they do it for the glory of men and for their own glory. No.
Saint Anthony feared God and it’s evidenced by his desire to find obedience, to seek it, to submit his will to God through man, true faith, true obedience. And that obedience was tested. Because this other moment in his life, this famous account, where he is now in his full stride, if you will, asceticizing, being excluded from the world.
And we’re all familiar with Anthony’s battle with the demons and this one particular night, which we were all also familiar with, where the demons physically beat him so badly that he was all but dead. And Anthony, in his crisis, he calls out, “Lord.” And then the Lord appears to him and he says, “Lord, where were You?” And the Lord says to Anthony, “Anthony, I desire to see your contest. I desire to see your fight. I desire to see you as I appointed you my champion. I desire to see how faithful you were. I desire to see that the wager that I put on you, that you don’t know about, that is unseen to you. I knew you would prevail. And so in that, I bless you.”
And from that point, Saint Anthony is “the Great.” But truly, what was it? What was it that brought him to that place? It was his obedience. Because for Saint Anthony to say, “I no longer fear God, I love Him,” that came from obedience. Obedience, this powerful virtue, this marriage of wisdom and humility. Obedience is the very weapon by which he defeated the demons.
Obedience is the very weapon by which he defeated his physical infirmity, his cowardice. Let us not be deluded. Let us not be foolish. Let us not be naive and think that Saint Anthony wasn’t frightened. He was frightened. Let us not think that Saint Anthony was some sort of inhuman caricature that didn’t have feelings.
No, Saint Anthony felt loneliness. No, Saint Anthony felt the pains of his asceticism. All of those things are very true, but how did he conquer them? Obedience.
We have his relic with us. We have a piece of the man who saw God. We have a piece of the man who obeyed God. His very grace is with us. But more than just his example, may his love be with us. And may we evidence that love by that holy thing, the one thing that Anthony had that conquered the demons.
What conquered the demons? It was his obedience.
Through the prayers of Saint Anthony the Great, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. And grant us, if You will, holy obedience.
Wednesday, January 29, 2025: St. Turbo, Mount Tabor School
JAMES 3:11-4:6
MARK 11:23-26
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst.
You know, the most important thing that we need to live, what do you think the most important thing that we need is?
God.
God, that’s right, but although God is not a thing, right? God is a Person, okay? So for like our bodies, you know?
Water.
That’s right. We need water. And what kind of water do we need?
Fresh water.
We need fresh water. We need water that isn’t salty. We need water that doesn’t have a bunch of gunk in it, right? Because if we don’t have clean water, we only have a little bit of time that we can live.
It’s so important that we have clean water. You know, it’s really important too because when you have a city, or you have a town or a village, right? Like when there’s places like a desert, and there’s people that you find living in the desert, you know the first thing that they have to figure out, where’s the water, right? And they also have to figure out how to keep the water clean. Because if the water isn’t clean, then you won’t have life.
The people won’t have anything to drink. The animals won’t have anything to drink. If the cows and the sheep and the llamas and the alpacas and whatever else you got, if they don’t have any clean water, then they’re going to die, and they’re not going to be able to help anybody, right? And then if you don’t have any animals to help, then there’s no milk, there’s no meat, there’s nothing.
And then, you see, everything begins to fall apart, all because the water that was clean became dirty, and there’s no water at all. Now, inside all of us, God has given a bit of His Spirit, right? The Holy Spirit is dwelling within us. And the Holy Spirit is often compared to water, clean living waters.
But what can happen is we can allow some pollutants to get in there. We can allow something dirty to get in there, and then very quickly, that clean water can become salty, it can become dirty, and then there’s no life. And out of all the things that can get in there and pollute the water of our hearts, what do you think the worst is? What do you think that worst thing is? There’s one thing that’s worse than all of them.
The dirtiness.
Yes, it is the dirtiness, my dear, but the dirtiness of what?
Sin.
Yes, sin. But there’s one particular sin. There’s one sin that if we allow it to get in there, and it’s tough because these, like, they’re like little tiny, tiny particles, and you don’t know them. You can’t see them always at first.
Pride.
Pride, yes, but let me tell you, it’s unforgiveness. It’s unforgiveness.
When we have unforgiveness in our hearts, and it gets in the water of our souls, we don’t notice it at first. The particles are so small, you wouldn’t even notice it. You know, every once in a while, go drink a glass of water on a hot day, maybe see a little speck of something floating in there, yeah, it’s not a big deal, right? But if you see a bunch of them, you’re going to be like, “I’m not drinking this,” right? But the thing is, when we have unforgiveness, you don’t notice it at first, but after a while, there’s more and more of it.
And then very soon, our hearts get clogged up. And not only is the water no longer clean, you can’t really drink it, but now things aren’t moving because that unforgiveness has got everything inside of us all jammed up. We don’t have any more joy. We don’t have any more hope. We don’t have any more love. And now all that is in us is bitterness.
We’re always mad at people. We’re never happy with what we get. All that begins to happen because we have these little bits of unforgiveness in us.
And in the Gospel today, the Lord says, “Forgive.” Because your Heavenly Father forgives, but if you don’t forgive, what will happen? He can’t forgive you. Because all those little bitternesses and those little unforgivenesses we have maybe with our little brothers, right? Our mommies, our daddies, or our sisters, or our friends.
Those are little bitternesses we have with God. You think you’re mad at your friend. You think you’re mad at your little brother or your big sister. But really, you’re mad at God. Because isn’t the Spirit of God in them too?
But see, we forget that. And then all of a sudden, next thing you know, we’re thinking crazy and we’re acting crazy. And then we really have problems, right? So we’ve got to keep the water clean, guys. And when that water is clean, when we make sure that we’re confessing and forgiving, when people upset us, we need to not sleep on it. We need to say, “God, please help me to forgive them.”
And then we need to make peace with our loved ones. We can’t let it go a day, two days, and three days. Next thing you know, we’re always mad, right? And when we have forgiveness, what will happen is we’ll have joy, we’ll have love, we’ll have hope, we’ll have faith.
Because we can’t say anything to a mountain. We can’t even ask for a paperclip if we don’t have faith. I know. It’s silly, isn’t it? God wants to give us so much. But we have to have trust, that’s what faith is. We have to have trust.
And you know what kills faith, trust in God the quickest? Unforgiveness. Unforgiveness. So let’s work really hard on forgiving one another, okay? Let’s work really hard on not allowing unforgiveness to be in our hearts.
And when we do that, God’s going to give us the greatest gift. He’s going to give us clean water to drink. And then everything that we need spiritually will be there for us, okay? In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Monday, January 27, 2025: St. Nina
JAMES 2:14-26
MARK 10:46-52, MATTHEW 25:1-13
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst.
I saw a very interesting portion – trying to redeem my time – an interesting portion of a film I’m not aware of, but a scene that I caught a glimpse of in which a nanny, perhaps in the 19th century England, she is tending to a child, and the scene is this woman is tending to this child, and this child is of a mixed heritage.
She begins to say, you know, fairly nasty words, saying, “Go to bed, you know, you half-breed,” you know, saying these nasty things to this child. And unbeknownst to the nanny, the mother of the child is behind her, observing her cruelty. And it’s interesting because the mother then, without any type of – it’s a brilliant performance – without any type of, you know, raising of the voice, without any, you know, hand gestures, without any real external anger, but with real authority, and with a fierceness that isn’t demonstrated again through anything, you know, necessarily visceral, but still is powerful.
And she begins to tell this woman just very simply, “Do not put the child down, do not touch the child, don’t speak to the child, proceed to leave this room, pack your things, and get ready to go.” And the nanny, instantly, another great performance, the nanny begins to just, you know, change her attitude and begin to whimper and say, “Oh, no, forgive me, mistress, I was just playing with the child and began to plead and to make all kinds of excuses.” And the woman was just steadfast. She didn’t leave her position of peace. She just spoke matter-of-factly, with authority, and with a righteous indignation.
In the Gospel today, we hear of the ten virgins, and we hear of how there was five that were foolish. And we all hear this and we all know this Gospel account, we know this parable. And we can understand that the Lord is saying, well, you know, there’s five virgins who had the oil and they were, they had good works. They were prepared. They had done well with their time. They’d used their time well. And so when their visitation came, they were prepared.
The other five who were foolish, they were not prepared. They did not have good works, as the Epistle says of James. Interestingly enough, they’re caught, like this nanny, and they begin to beg and to plead and to try to arrange things in such a certain way.
We can all sympathize with that. We can all sympathize and empathize, if you will, with this kind of being caught red-handed. This awareness of, “I could have done better, I should have done better, but I didn’t.”
We can all understand that. But I hope that this homily, and God willing, hopefully all my homilies are more about the nature and the character of God than the nature and character of us and our failings, because we’re all very aware of that. The nature and the character of God is such that He says when He comes, “I don’t know you.”
God is not like us. And this is the tale of warning, I think. Like that nanny, we sometimes are expecting God to come in in a fury and a huff and rustle feathers and do all these things, because part of us wants God to do that. Part of us wants God to make things very dramatic. Hopefully we think that if God would just do something extreme, I would wake up.
But do you notice this? We’re putting the blame on God. We are shifting again our responsibility to God and saying, God, You need to really get things going. You need to stir things up in my life. If You don’t make a mess of things, God, if You don’t really turn things upside down, I’m cooked.
And God is saying, “I didn’t know you.” The peace of the Lord is the Lord’s peace. And we must be aware of that because it’s the Lord’s prerogative to come to us when He’s going to come to us.
It’s Lord’s prerogative to call us when it’s time to call us. We don’t need to wait for the Second Coming or nuclear war. It can be cancer, it can be a car accident, it could be food poisoning.
You don’t know when the Bridegroom is coming for you. And so in that spirit, I would say, let’s be careful. Because like that nanny and like those five foolish virgins, we’re going about our business.
And we are mistaking God’s calm, steady way as God not being there. And all the while, we just keep adding day upon day of doing the same thing. And God is there, fully aware of what we’re doing.
Or rather, in the case of the virgins, what we’re not doing that we should be doing. Do not expect God to come and turn everything upside down. Just simply expect Him to come.
And in His coming, will we be ready? Will we be able to say, “Yea, Lord, I have the good work of being faithful; yea, Lord, I have the good work of tending my lamp; yea, Lord, I have the good work of not abandoning the call”?
Through the prayers of St. Nina and St. Sava, may it be so. May we be faithful to what the Lord has given us. May our lamps be filled and trimmed.
And may we be awaiting, rightly, the Bridegroom.
Sunday, January 26, 2025: Apodosis of Theophany
1 TIMOTHY 1:15-17
LUKE 18:35-43
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Christ is baptized.
There is a terrible tragedy that can often happen. And that tragedy is, you can have someone who is married, you can have a man and a woman, they can spend 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years, sometimes even together. And then at some point in time, one of them wakes up and they look at the other person and they realize, like, “I don’t even know you. I don’t know who you are.”
Something that’s even more common than that is that children will spend their formative years with their parents, 20 years, and they look up one day, they have a heart-to-heart with their mom or their dad, and they realize, “I don’t even know you. I don’t know you. I don’t understand you. I don’t even see how we’re related.”
And this tragedy is very common, especially in the spiritual life, where someone can spend 10, 20, 30 years as an Orthodox Christian, and they wake up one day and they realize, “Do I even really know God? I don’t know God.”
St. Paul, who was a master Pharisee – no one knew the Scriptures, no one would have had a better pedigree than St. Paul. A Pharisee circumcised on the eighth day, the tribe of Benjamin, taught under Gamaliel, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, teachers, rabbis of the day. And St. Paul did, as salt, many mighty works, supposedly.
And then he realizes one day, “I don’t know God. I can tell you every single one of the liturgical laws, backwards and forwards. I can tell you about what the Torah says. I can tell you what the prophets say, and I don’t know God.” What a tragedy. What a tragedy.
Today in the Gospel, we hear of the blind man who is by the road, and his sight has been taken from him, and he is unable to perceive the world as most of us perceive the world, with a certain measure of, shall we say, taking things for granted. We don’t think about all the ways that sight informs us. Many of you know this, but I’ll share with you, it’s pertinent.
You know, my mother was blind. And so I understand this very clearly because my mother went blind, and the things that she had to learn over again were, you know, kind of shocking. Everything you have to learn over again. You have to learn how to eat differently, go to the restroom, get dressed.
There’s so many things that you take for granted. Every single one of us here, because we can see clearly. But then, God forbid, one day your sight is taken from you, your whole orientation is different.
I thank God that my mother went blind, because although she suffered, it revealed something so much deeper in her. And this is what happened to the blind man on the side of the road. His blindness revealed something so much deeper.
It revealed a faith that was able to see God. This is the thing. The blind man saw God.
And it was precisely his blindness that allowed him to see God. He called out with a desperation and with a belief, a faith. And this is what the Lord says himself, “Your faith has healed you.”
Your willingness to believe, your willingness to not just let yourself rot. Your willingness to believe that God knows you, sees you, loves you. This is his faith.
And this is the type of faith that we often need to access with God. That husband, that wife, after 30 years, that wife, she needs to have faith. That although maybe her husband didn’t bring her flowers and wine every weekend, he paid the bills and he came home to her.
That husband needs to have faith that although the wife didn’t give him the shoulder massages and didn’t, you know, she didn’t cheer for him like she did when he was the high school football star, she was the one day in and day out taking care of the house, taking care of him and the kids when he was sick. That type of faithfulness, this is what he learns to rely on.
And this is where he says, “You know what? I do know you. I do know you. But I realize there’s things about you that I don’t know.”
And so let me build off of that. And this is what happens to us with God. You will realize, and I’m really keen on trying to get people to realize, realizing what you don’t know about God.
And that’s so important. And we have to be careful that when we realize there’s so much about God we don’t know, we misunderstand, that we don’t become, you know, despondent. We don’t say, well, like, “This is too much.”
But in fact, it causes us to want to grow deeper in God. The worst thing that you can do is to take your parents, your beloved spouse, your God for granted. And just to assume that you know everything about them and that they’re just there to do your bidding.
Your parents, your loved ones, God, they’re not there to do your bidding. They’re not there as the furniture that you can just kind of fall down on and trust that it’s not going to break. No.
God and our loved ones, because our loved ones are part of God’s love, they’ve been given to us to lead us into a deep mystery of life. And if you don’t know what that deep mystery is, that’s why you’re here.
You’re here in Liturgy. You say your prayers. You enter into the sacrament of life because you don’t know what the mystery of life is. And you’re asking God, you’re looking for God to unfold it to you day by day.
Through the prayers of our holy fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen.
Saturday, January 25, 2025: St. Sava and St. Tatiana
COLOSSIANS 1:3-6, HEBREWS 7:26-8:2
LUKE 16:10-15
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Christ is baptized.
Why do we love money? Why do we feel the pull, the desire, the compulsion to give our very souls to money? We will work ourselves physically, literally sick.
We will abandon those who need our love. We will neglect those who love us, who crave to be with us. We will do unspeakable acts for money.
Men will take other men’s lives, and women will give themselves over to undesirable pursuits for money. Why is this? Money is the ultimate expression of idolatry. Idolatry being this false good, this seemingly good but a false good.
We think that in money we will find peace, we’ll find the ability to ease our anxieties, we’ll find the ability to alleviate our boredoms, we’ll find the ability to make all our problems go away. With money we think we have immortality, we’ll be able to pay for doctors, get the right creams to take away aging spots. With money we think that we will be able to have power, to make changes in the world even if they are seemingly good, to make others do our bidding, to have influence. With money we seem to think that we can become God.
The antidote to this terrible disease of avarice, desiring money, is to love and desire God. Because God is alone the one who can give us immortality, who can alleviate our anxieties, God alone is the one who can provide us true power, the power over ourselves.
It says in Proverbs, a man who controls himself is greater than a man who can conquer whole cities.
Today we are commemorating Saint Sava, the great enlightener of Serbia. We’re also commemorating Saint Tatiana, the Virgin Martyr of Rome. And both Saint Sava and Saint Tatiana give us this example of what it means to reject mammon, to reject power, to reject money, to reject all the false influences of these things and to pursue God. And accordingly, in rejecting those things, Saint Sava, rejecting privilege, rejecting a potential life of comfort, he finds himself uncomfortable. He finds himself struggling in the right ways, becoming a holy monastic, and in turn God gives him power, God gives him immortality, God gives him all the things that he desired. Saint Sava becomes the father of a whole nation.
Saint Tatiana, rejecting all the allurements of high society, embracing the true call of virginity, keeping herself ultimately for God, and in doing so, she loses her earthly body but is given an immortal one. Both Saint Sava and Saint Tatiana understood very clearly in their hearts that this call, this temptation to have eternal youth in this world, a false youth, to have a seeming power, a false power, all these things would be ultimately in vain.
And so it is through the love of God and the giving of themselves over that they gained the things not only that they were looking for, but they gained them in an eternal sense. Tatiana is forever pure, she’s forever young. Saint Sava will always be the father of nations, the father of holy people.
Instead of building temples to themselves, they built temples to God. Let us look at their example through the prayers of Saint Sava and Saint Tatiana. May we continue to strive for the true riches, the true source of immortality and eternal youth, our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Wednesday, January 22, 2025: Mount Tabor School
JAMES 1:1-18
MARK 10:11-16
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Glory to Jesus Christ. So guys, what’s the most important thing about being a kid? What do you think it is? Any ideas? What do you think?
Being happy?
Okay. That’s something that’s valuable.
Being sad?
Well, actually that’s kind of a good answer. Actually. Otto?
Obeying your parents.
That’s a really good answer too. That’s a really good answer.
All those are kind of good answers, but I think what I want you guys to understand is the most important thing about being a kid is that kids are learning. Kids are learning. I mean, isn’t that one of the things that all kids share? That all kids are learning something?
All kids are learning how to be kind. All kids are learning how to be responsible. All kids are learning how to love other people. Some kids are learning how to milk cows, right? Some kids are learning how to bake cookies, right? Some kids are learning how to, you know, color or to draw or to write, how to communicate, right? But the thing that all kids have in common is that they’re learning, right?
And when children forget that they’re supposed to be learning, you know what happens? We talked about this a few months ago, but something called a bad attitude happens. You guys know what an attitude is? Bad attitude? Yeah. We don’t really like those, but we can all have them sometimes, can’t we? Bad attitudes. But the thing is, if we just remember that we’re here to learn – especially if you’re a kid, right? – you’re here to learn something.
One of the problems, and I remember this very well, even though it’s been a long time since I was a little kid, was that I would get frustrated. You know that word “frustrated”? I would get frustrated because I wanted to know everything right now. And then sometimes my parents or my older sister, she would talk to me and I’d be like, “Why are you talking to me that way? I understand it. I can do it.”
But you know what? You want to know what the secret was? I didn’t understand. And I couldn’t do it. And I needed my older sister’s help. And I needed help from my parents. I needed them to teach me. I needed them to help me to learn. Does that make sense? So every time I got a bad attitude, it was usually because I was being proud and I didn’t want to listen. I didn’t want to learn.
Now, you know what’s really funny? The secret to being an adult, you want to know what the secret is to being a good adult? It’s easy to be an adult. The secret to being a good adult is not forgetting what makes it important to be a kid. Does that make sense? A good adult remembers, “Oh, I’m still learning.”
See, Jesus, when He says the kingdom of God, right? He talks about children. He says, these are the ones who enter into the kingdom of heaven. He’s trying to show us that if you want to get into heaven, whether you’re nine years old or whether you’re 90 years old, you have to have a mind and a heart that understands it’s important to learn and to listen and to not think you know everything.
Because the person who thinks that they know everything, they can’t get anything from God. Does that make sense? Because if God’s going to try to give them something, they’re going to think like, “Well, I don’t need this, God. I already know this.”
And do they already know it? Probably not. And this is why in the Epistle today, St. James, he said something very interesting. He said, “Blessed is the man who endures temptation.”
Do you guys know what temptation is? No? What’s temptation, Sophia?
It’s when there’s a sweet sitting on the counter, and then you want it, but your parents said no. You really want it, but you can’t have it.
Yeah, that’s what a temptation can look like. Temptations happen when we want something, when we have what we call a desire, in our will, the thing that makes us go like, “How am I going to get this? But I know I shouldn’t.” It’s when there’s a little bit of a fight within us. Does that make sense? When we know what is good and right, but our desire is not the same. Our desire is not wanting the good and the right. Our desire is going to be wanting the bad thing. We have a temptation.
And St. James says, “Blessed is the one who endures temptation.” Do you know why? Because temptation is what God allows, right? God allows it to happen to us so that we can remember the importance of learning to listen. We can remember the importance of learning.
Because when you go through a temptation, you endure, meaning that you say, like, “That was really hard. I really wanted that sweet, and I felt like I was just going to cry, and just stomp my feet. But I didn’t do it.”
And then God comes to you, and your Guardian Angel, and says, “Good job. You’ve learned.” But even when maybe this can happen, we give in to that temptation, and we sneak the sweet, because that happens sometimes, doesn’t it? And then we kind of feel guilty or bad maybe, right? And that’s where, if we go to confession, and even when we confess to our parents, we say, “You know what? I stole that cookie. Even though you told me not to, I took it.”
And then your parents begin to correct you, and when you even sit down and you endure that, when you say, like, “Okay, I didn’t do good in resisting not eating the cookie, but I can at least listen to my parents when they’re correcting me.”
That’s a blessing. You know why? Because your parents love you. And when they correct you in something you did wrong, you’re going to be that much smarter. You’re going to be that much better in your heart. You’re receiving a blessing from God.
So, you should always remember, the best thing about being a kid and the thing about being a kid, your job is to learn, to listen. Right? And when you get older, don’t forget that. Even when you’re an adult, you need to learn, you need to listen. Because when we don’t learn, we don’t listen, we’re being proud.
And when we’re being proud we can’t receive anything from God. Okay?
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Monday, January 20, 2025: Synaxis of St. John the Baptist
HEBREWS 11:17-23, 27-31
MARK 9:42-10:1
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Christ is baptized. Amen.
Today we honor the great Saint John the Baptist, the last of the great prophets, and the first of the ones who herald the coming of the Lord. Saint John is this fascinating, mysterious figure who ends the lineage of the great prophets foretelling the coming of the Messiah, but he begins the great lineage of the ones who will proclaim the coming of the Lord, the glory of the Lord, the power of the Lord until the end of time. Saint John the Baptist, in many ways, a father of monasticism. Saint John the Baptist, hiding in the wilderness, not just a simple wilderness in regards of nature, but the wilderness in which the world finds itself, barren, devoid of truth, blinded, scorched by the heat of deception and self-love, freezing for the lack of love of God.
This wilderness that Saint John was crying out from is the same wilderness that we seemingly find ourselves in today. And, thanks be to God, there are still lights hidden, not just in the crags of the mountains, not just on holy mountains, but also in cities. We see lights still.
And the lights that monastics carry, the lights that those who would seek to speak truth to power, the light that they carry is truly the spirit of Saint John the Baptist. It’s important for us to remember that Saint John reveals to us the very need for us to not simply be religious in our mindsets, but the fact is, we must be speaking truth to the world. And this is oftentimes, I believe, where we find Christians missing the mark.
The thought that we are to just kind of nestle in, hunker down, and have our own kind of personal piety is a mistake. Saint John the Baptist reveals to us the very need and the reality that if one has a clarity of vision, when one can say, behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world, then in that same breath, one must also say to a Herod, “Nay, you break the laws of God.” These two things are indivisible.
These two things are inextricably linked. Jesus says, our Lord says, I came, John 3:16, not to condemn the world, but to save it. And so the preaching of John was a preaching of a Messiah who would come and save the world.
And the saving of the world is done by the Messiah by giving that spirit to His people. And that his people would be His body. And that His body would do the work that He sought to have done in this world, which was to convict it of sin and to bring it to a place of repentance.
This is the spirit of Saint John. This is the icon of monasticism. And this is the reality of the life of every Christian in the wilderness that we call the world.
When we turn away from our pharisaic tendencies, when we turn away from the fear that so quickly enfolds us, and we accept the cross of being in the world to whatever capacity that is, we’re given the sure weapon of clarity, the sure weapon of prophetic voice. Not in a self-righteous sense, not in a moralistic sense, but a sense that sees very clearly where God is working. And make no mistake, God is working everywhere.
And so may we continue to have the favor and the prayers, and may we seek to continue to emulate and continue the prophetic work of Saint John the Baptist. May our lives here in this world, until we pass on to the other one, may we remember that it’s to be seasoned with salt and fire. And that Saint John, like Saint Elijah, their work we continue on.
We proclaim His coming. We proclaim His death. We proclaim His resurrection.
And we bear witness to His holy justice in this world. Through the prayers of Saint John the Baptist, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen.
Sunday, January 19, 2025: The Theophany and Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ
TITUS 2:11-14; 3:4-7
MATTHEW 3:13-17
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is baptized!
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure, nay, it’s better to say the joy, of giving a tour to people outside of our tradition. I’ve had a roofer come through, a good, pious, Evangelical man. We had a college come through with some 10-15 odd students, curious about Orthodoxy, the nature of our worship. We’ve had a neighbor or two come through, being given a tour.
And the thing that I find interesting, but not shocking, is that, yes, they see the iconography, yes, they’re curious about so many things, but the one thing that was maybe surprising to some of you is, they were all very interested in the baptismal font.
Each one of them, in each group of them said, what is that? Is that a baptism? Yeah, it’s a font. And then we would begin to discuss the baptismal font over in the corner. And the thing that’s interesting is that, in each one of those instances, they were aware of baptism, but they weren’t aware of the place that it should have.
And so, because of that, it was suddenly given to them, that there’s a power in baptism that they just weren’t aware of. It was evidenced by their curiosity; it was further evidenced by their willingness to hear, as I began to teach them what the Church’s position on what baptism really is.
The fact that we would have, not just a baptismal font in the actual nave, but the fact that there’s even a baptismal font. One person said, “Yeah, we don’t even really care about that. Maybe we’ll get a horse trough or something.”
I said, “Exactly.” Baptism is maybe an afterthought for a large portion of people who are Christians. And I will share with you, this is another reason why there’s a commiserate, large portion of Christians that do not experience the grace, the power, the joy, the healing in their Christian life.
Because baptism for them and for their leaders, their pastors, is at best something you do to be part of a club. It’s not a change to their being. And the only way that you can understand that it’s a change to a being is if you understand that baptism is a Theophany.
Baptism is a Theophany. A revelation of God; of Who God is. And God is Trinity.
So many call on the Father and they cannot. So many wrongly and in error call on the Father and they know not the Father. Why? Because they don’t have the Son. They may know of the Son. They may say His name. But they don’t have the Son. Why? Because they haven’t beckoned the call of the Holy Spirit.
Many of you over the last few weeks have heard me telling you, don’t worry about what you’re supposed to do. Many of you, many of you in confession I’ve been telling, don’t worry about what you need to do. You already know what you need to do. You need to stop resisting.
Who are you resisting? The Comforter. The Spirit of Truth. The Holy Spirit. You already know what you should or should not be doing, and you resist. What God wants out of all of you, out of all of us, is greater obedience to the Holy Spirit. Why? The job of the Holy Spirit is to convict us of sin, to convict the world of sin, and bring us into all righteousness.
So what that means is, the Holy Spirit will show you where your rebellion is, where you are persisting in your rebellion. And when you listen to the Holy Spirit, and you don’t resist, guess what? Then the Holy Spirit points you to Christ, because that’s the other job of the Holy Spirit, is to show you who Christ is. And many people call on His name, but they do not have Him.
Why? Because they do not want the Cross. They will not bear the Cross. They will not look for the Cross. They will not be with Christ on the Cross. They do not have Him. They call His name, but He cannot hear them.
He does not hear them. You can’t come unto the Father except through the Son. The Heavenly Father has nothing to tell you, has nothing to give you, except the Comforter.
So even if the world is backwards, my sons, my daughters, my brothers, my sisters, may you not be backwards. If you’re not making progress, if you feel stuck, you’re not listening to the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit’s showing you where to be with King Jesus, and you’re resisting.
And only then, when you are with King Jesus, with the Christ – not in resurrection, there is no resurrection for you outside of the Cross. There is no victory for you outside of your loss and your death. Like I’ve been saying, you can’t have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat.
You have to be on the Cross first. This is what Paul says. And so, when you are with Christ on the Cross, as the Holy Spirit has led you, then, and only then, do you have any boldness to go to the Father and request something.
Do you know why? Because by that time, you’ve been so scrubbed and cleaned, you’re not gonna go to the Father asking for a car. You don’t want a car so that you can drive people to the hospital. You don’t want a car to bring food to people who don’t have anything. You don’t want a car to take care of your elderly mother. You want a nicer car. That’s why you’re asking God.
It says in James, you ask, but you ask wrong, because you don’t ask aright. Our hearts are not correct. And so, we go to the Father, we’re frustrated. “God’s not hearing me. God’s not hearing me.”
Of course, He’s not hearing you. Because you’re not hearing Him. You’re not hearing the Holy Spirit and therefore, you’re not with Christ. And therefore, since you’re not taking on the Cross, the Holy Father, the Heavenly Father, has nothing for you. Because whatever you’re gonna ask is sin. And God loves you. And He doesn’t want to give you more sin.
Your baptism is a Theophany. To know how to speak to God, Who is Trinity. If you are frustrated with God, if you feel as if God is not hearing you, if you feel stuck in your sin, it’s because of your stubbornness, your disobedience. God is not indifferent.
God is sending you angels, saints, His Holy Mother. And you say, “yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.” We scroll away the prompting of the Holy Spirit. We eat away the prompting of the Holy Spirit. We drink away the prompting of the Holy Spirit. And we have the audacity to be mad at God.
If you obey the small things that the Holy Spirit’s teaching you, asking you, begging you to do, if you sit with Christ just a little bit on that tiny cross He’s given you, all of heaven opens up because the Heavenly Father is there waiting to give you everything that you ask in His Son’s name. But you have to ask in His Son’s name. And if you think Jesus is there to give you what you want versus what you need in salvation, you’re dead wrong. Emphasis on dead.
Your baptism is a Theophany. You need nothing new. You need to honor what’s been given to you. May a mighty rushing wind and may the fire burn all of us so we may be purified to receive the Word of the Heavenly Father.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Wednesday, January 15, 2025: St. Seraphim of Sarov, St. Juliana of Lazarevo
GALATIANS 5:22-6:2
MARK 12:28-37
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst.
Hear, O Israel, the Lord God is One. And even more than that, the Lord begins to teach. And He says, this is the unity of the commandments: To love God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy mind, with all one’s understanding. To love one’s neighbor as oneself.
This is the completion. This is the fullness. This is the pulling together of the Law: Hear, O Israel, the Lord God is One. Now is it that David says, the Lord said, sit at my right hand. The Lord God is One.
When we look at the Epistle today, and we see all the Fruits of the Spirit. We have a tendency, because of our modern approach to things, our utilitarian approach, our materialistic approach… We look at the things of the Spirit, and we see them as collectibles. Collectibles. We see them as maybe the kind of, you know, accoutrement to a car. “What kind of, you know, good things do I want in my car? Do I want power windows? What kind of paint job do I want? What other kind of goodies do I want? How do I want to build up my entertainment system? What are the nice little add-ons to the kitchen that I can get?”
You know, in our society today now, and I know this firsthand because I suffered from it for many, many years. First as a child, collecting cards, and then toys. And that carries even, unfortunately, to my own shame as a man. Video games, and records, and all these things. Collecting items, and trying to get the best setup. This is not how the spiritual life is.
Here, O Israel, the Lord God is One. We want dichotomies. We want, “This is my professional life. This is my spiritual life. This is my social life.” All these things, we like to set them up nice and neat so that we can have everything just right. Just the way we like it. We look at life like it’s a menu, like it’s a buffet. Pickles, bacon, cheese.
Here, O Israel, the Lord God is One. When we look at great saints, like the saints we’re commemorating today. Let’s take St. Seraphim. Every virtue is revealed in St. Seraphim. It’s revealed in a different order, yes. And if you compare St. Seraphim to, let’s say, St. Juliana, who we’re also commemorating today.
One would make the mistake of thinking, well, you know, St. Juliana, she was a mother. She was a wife. She sacrificed herself. She wasn’t able to do the things that she longed to do. And that was her ascetic poverty. Yes, this is true.
But did St. Juliana fast? Absolutely, she did. Did she hold vigil? Absolutely, she did. Did she give alms? Absolutely, she did. Did she pray? Absolutely, she did. And her order of things is not the same as St. Seraphim’s.
St. Seraphim suffered in the flesh mightily. Mightily. Bedridden for years. Beaten. Hobbled. Bent over. Not from age. St. Seraphim wasn’t bent over from age. He was bent over because he was beaten so badly that he was never able to fully recover. And so, he literally had to walk over with either an axe or some sort of staff. The same men who beat him and crippled him, he forgave. This is a spiritual gift. This is a spiritual virtue.
It is on the surface different from St. Juliana, but it’s just ordered differently. Why? Hear, O Israel, the Lord God is One. When you enter into the life of God, all of God is offered to you. The divine energies are not divided like collectibles. We enter into these things, and here is the word: They’re called gifts.
Gifts. We don’t look at the spiritual fruits, the Fruits of the Spirit, the spiritual gifts, as something that we just kind of attain as we want. “I want word of knowledge.” No one ever says, “I want humility.” No one ever says, “I want to suffer long.” No one ever says, “I want the strength to endeavor in ascetic feats that no one will ever see.”
No one says these things, but the saints do. Why? Because the saints realize, Hear, O God, hear, O Israel, the Lord God is One. They recognize that for the love of God, they must acquire everything that is in God, because it’s a gift.
And so today, as we honor these great lights, St. Juliana, St. Seraphim, I make note not to point out their exploits. I make note not to point out their healings and their miracles and the way that they serve people. I make note of this.
There is no division in them. There is no division in St. Juliana. There is no division in St. Seraphim. They love God with their whole heart, with their whole mind, with their whole soul. If you want to be saved, you must love God. And if you want to be holy, you must love Him with everything you’ve got.
It’s like our dear Metropolitan says, the saints are just the ones who love God the most. That’s what makes somebody a saint. They love God with all that they’ve got.
So, through the prayers of St. Seraphim and St. Juliana, may the Lord help us to love Him with everything that we have.
Tuesday, January 14, 2025: Circumcision of Our Lord, St. Basil the Great
COLOSSIANS 2:8-12; HEBREWS 7:26-28, 8:1-2
LUKE 2:20-21, 40-52
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst. I bet sometimes you guys wish you could eat your dessert before dinner, don’t you? Yeah.
Sometimes, every once in a while, that’s okay. But you know what happens if you do that all the time? What happens if you eat your dessert before your dinner?
If you eat your dessert before your dinner, you get sick.
Yeah, if you eat your dessert before your dinner, you get sick. And why do you get sick, do you think? Why is that?
Because you usually want to eat the nutritious stuff first, and then eat the stuff that you can have after dinner.
Yeah, so if you’re eating the sweet stuff that isn’t nutritious, the stuff that you find really yummy, but it’s not good for you, if you eat all that first, you won’t have any room for the nutritious stuff, right? And if you don’t eat the nutritious stuff, eventually, you slowly, slowly will get sick. And you may not even realize it.
You may think you’re feeling great, you’re really healthy, but actually you’re getting sicker. Until one moment, it really hits you and you realize, “Oh boy, I can’t run, I can’t play, I can’t do, I can’t work, I can’t do the things I need to do because I’ve just been eating the sweet stuff all the time and none of the nutritious stuff.” Right? You see, everything has a time and a place, kids. Everything has order, right? And the problem is that sometimes, you know, we think we want order the way we want it, right?
And so, sometimes maybe, I know it’s none of you guys here, because you guys would never do this, but could you guys imagine some other kids who maybe would throw fits because they didn’t get what they want? None of you guys would do that, but some other kids.
They would give their parents attitude, be rude, be disobedient, not do what they’re supposed to do because they want their way. Could you imagine that? Can you picture that? Yeah, and so can you picture then parents just giving in to their kids every time they throw a little fit? “Okay, fine, you want the sweet stuff, go ahead. No vegetables for you, no meat for you. Oh, you want to drive my car? No problem. You can’t even read. Here’s my keys.”
Yeah, would that be good? No. I mean, Felix, you’re really smart, but I couldn’t imagine you driving a big old 4×4 out in the snow. That’d be pretty dangerous and silly, wouldn’t it? Yeah.
See, God has established that there’s order and time for things. You have your meat, then you have your pudding, right? You learn to read, you learn to be responsible, then you can drive, right?
And so Jesus today, when He, in the Gospel, He’s in the temple teaching. And when He’s teaching, the problem is that the Theotokos and Joseph, they didn’t know what time it was in regards of the life of Jesus.
They thought because He was a certain age in a worldly human sense, they were surprised. They would have never thought that He would have been in the temple teaching. But He was, because that was a particular time that Jesus needed to be there and to be doing that.
But do you notice, Jesus went back and he was obedient to the Mother of God. He was obedient to the Theotokos and to Joseph. Why? Because even though He was God and He needed to be in the synagogue teaching those rabbis there, those Pharisees something, He was still a young boy.
And so He had no problem submitting himself to that good order and doing things as they needed to be. Sometimes God does things in a way that does not make sense to us. And we can get very mad, we can get frustrated, we can throw our tantrums.
But the reality is that God puts things in order the way that He thinks they need to be in order, not us. And so even though the Mother of God, she was concerned and she was worried, ultimately, what did she do? It says that the Theotokos just kind of kept these things and she thought about them. And that’s what we need to do.
We find God doing things that we don’t understand in a way, in a timing that we don’t necessarily like. We shouldn’t throw tantrums. We should just be quiet and be like the Mother of God and wait and see, “Why, God? Why is this happening at the time it is?” And when we do that, you know what will happen? We too, like Jesus, will grow in wisdom and in stature.
Wisdom is only given to those who learn good order. And here’s this very important word: patience. Good order and patience.
We have to be patient. We have to do things in good order. And God will bless us with holy wisdom.
Through the prayers of St. Basil, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us.
Sunday, January 12, 2025: Sunday after Nativity, St. Anysia
GALATIANS 1:11-19
MATTHEW 2:13-23
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst. Christ is born.
Today we are remembering our forefathers in Christ. Remembering the Holy Prophet David. Remembering Joseph the Betrothed. Also remembering James, the older brother of the Lord, the child of St. Joseph.
And in this commemoration, I want to take time to, for some of you, for most of you, remind us of something. But for many of you people who are new to the church, something to understand. We have this phrase that we use, “Through the prayers of our holy fathers.”
We will often end services with this phrase,“Through the prayers of our holy fathers.” And that prayer is important. Because that prayer, it seals us, and it unites us to those who have gone before us in the faith.
And it’s so important for us to remember, that when we’re entering into the Orthodox Church, that we’re entering into a faith that’s been lived. A faith of experience of others who have experienced God, and who have wrestled, not just with themselves and their passions, but with the world, injustices of the world.
And they’ve wrestled and fought in such a way to attain God, to attain peace in this life. If we recall the prophet David, the forefather of our Lord, the son of Jesse. And even from his youth, you can see struggles not so unlike you might have.
David’s a runt. He’s the smallest of the litter of his brothers, all but forgotten. When the Prophet Samuel comes and is looking for the king to anoint, he goes to Jesse, and he says, Okay, the Lord has sent me here, where is the one whom to anoint? Jesse brings all his brothers, tall, strong, handsome.
And the Lord says, “This is not it.” And Samuel says, “Well, there must be one more.” And they’re like, “Oh, well, there’s David. David the small one, David the shepherd. David, the one who’s kind of doing all the things that we don’t want to do. There’s him.”
And so from his very beginning, David is forced to embrace his humility. David is forced to embrace, if you will, the shame of being the runt and being the youngest one. And from there, David’s life is this fantastic mix of tragedy and glory at the same time.
David, who stood up when every man in Israel was cowering against Goliath. And said, the Lord should not be blasphemed. And so out of this zeal, he killed Goliath. And he gained the fame and the adoration of the people of Israel. But very quickly, his fortunes turned. And David, in these moments of having good fortune and then finding himself in tragedy, this back and forth, David never blamed God.
In fact, David persevered and he went deep into prayer. And this is where the Psalter, so much of the Psalter is from these prayers of David. The prayers of our holy fathers.
Prayers are not magic spells. The prayers are not just things that we read to kind of get somewhere or to get something. The prayers of the church are the prayers of men and women who have suffered and labored and endured.
And that is the imprint, that is the treasury that they leave. And so when we open our prayer books and we pray the prayers of the church, what we’re praying is these prayers. We’re having our hearts and our minds formed in such a way by those who have already been formed through the sufferings of life.
David’s own son rebelled against him. Think of Joseph the Betrothed again. Joseph the Betrothed, taking upon himself a duty. Joseph was a widower, and the lot fell to him to care for the Virgin Mary. A duty, not a joy. This is what the Protestants, they don’t understand this. May God help them and enlighten them. Joseph took on the Virgin Mary as a duty. He wasn’t getting a young wife who’s going to please him and do these things. He took on a holy duty for the sake of God, for the sake of the nation of Israel. His older son, James, he took on that duty. James was with the family, the holy family, when they fled into Egypt.
Can you imagine? Your mother’s dead. Your father’s been chosen to take on this young girl who’s just about your age. And you have to flee? You have to become a refugee. Can you imagine being a refugee in that time?
Through the prayers of our holy fathers. When you read the book of James, and you read all that James says about the tongue, and about patience, and about faith, all these things, where did that come from? That came from his struggle. That came from him fleeing into Egypt with his father. That came from him seeing the persecution, and the shame, and the hatred that his own Brother, but also his Messiah, his God, suffered.
James saw firsthand the suffering of the Lord, the injustice that Jesus suffered. He saw the injustice that his father suffered. He saw the injustice and the frustration of the dear Theotokos.
The prayers of our holy fathers. The book of James is a book of prayer. The suffering that we must face. This is what the church – this is our inheritance. It gives us in our prayers. The books of prayer that the church has given us, they are a key to enter into life. And that life links us up to the source of life, which is Christ.
We begin to understand, minutely, small-ly, but nevertheless, begin to understand the work and the nature of Who Christ is. Because the suffering of our fathers becomes our suffering. And that suffering becomes our glory.
Because when we think of David, we don’t remember David’s folly and his sin. We remember David’s meekness. We remember David’s victory. We remember David’s faithfulness. We remember David’s love. When we think of Joseph, we don’t think of Joseph being delivered. We think of Joseph who is faithful. When we think of James, we think of James the triumphant apostle.
We need to put our heads high. And we need to glory, not in our own selves, but in the glory of our fathers. Our tradition. When we hold to this, when we allow our hearts to be formed by the prayers, and this is why, for those of you who are entering the church, it’s important that you take the time.
And yes, it’s fine for you to speak from your heart to God, but really, you need to learn the prayers of the church. You need to put time in the prayer book because the prayers of our fathers, they are the way to understanding the heart of God. So on this day, let us remember the struggles, the suffering of our fathers.
Let us also remember that if we join into their sufferings, we’re also going to be joined into their glory. Through the prayers of all these fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen.
Monday, January 6, 2025: Eve of Nativity
HEBREWS 1:1-12
LUKE 2:1-20
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Glory to Jesus Christ!
The icon of the Nativity is an incredible icon. It’s filled and it reveals the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in our tradition.
The icon in and of itself has many actors; many things are moving at once. You have the shepherds receiving the glory, hearing of the triumphant decree from the angels. In many of the icons, if not most, you have the handmaidens washing the Lord after his birth.
Likewise, you also have Joseph, the betrothed, bewildered, pondering, being tempted by the devil, being goaded to doubt the sanctity of Mary and the providence of God. You have the three wise men, pagans, worshipers of the stars, and yet they’re giving truth, and they act upon that truth. They leave their worship of the stars and of fire, and they go to worship the True Star, the True Living Fire, the Flame of Christ.
We have, at the very center, the Christ child, His precious Holy Mother, our precious and Holy Mother, lying next to him, comforting him, warming him, loving him. There is so much happening in this icon, and seemingly at once. And so it is in our hearts this day.
There’s so many things that we could ponder. We could ponder all the different actors in our life. We could meditate on our loved ones, our family members, our brothers, our sisters. We could think about our community. We could even think about the times that we live in. There’s so many things, so many angels bringing news, so many shepherds watching and not watching.
There’s so much happening, but yet at the center of it all is Christ. At the center of it all is Christ the God-man, incredibly vulnerable. God himself, the Ancient of Days, the Maker of all things, Power Incarnate, Glory and Majesty, in the most absolutely vulnerable position any human being, any creature could be in as a child, in a manger, surrounded by animals, exposed to the cold.
What a mystery. What a mystery that the God of the universe Himself deemed it right and good to find Himself so vulnerable, so exposed, so uncomfortable. And yet we, my dear sons and daughters, my brothers and my sisters, by the slightest thing, we lose our peace.
By the slightest inconvenience or slight against our precious, pristine and pure egos, we lose the peace. We lose the vision of that precious, vulnerable Child. As you know, that manger, that cold place where animals feed and oftentimes drop their dung, is that not our hearts?
Did God not say, I dine with men and look to sup? May God continue to bless us with His mercy. May He see our feeble efforts to find repentance and may He bless us because without that blessing, who can stand? Without the star being shown to those pagans and fire worshippers, those wise men, they would have never found him. Without the angels being released and given the blessing to go speak to the shepherds, they would have never been heralds.
Without God and His mercy, Joseph would have abandoned Mary. All of these things are possible only by God’s mercy. And we enter into today only by God’s mercy. We have no strength. We have no wisdom. We have no righteousness apart from him, the Son of righteousness.
Should we not be merciful? Should we not lay aside all these things that don’t matter? Should we not seek the true peace? Should we not seek the King of Peace? Should we not do it on this day? Should we not remember how vulnerable He was? If we do that, then we won’t disdain the moments of our vulnerability. Instead, when we are vulnerable, when we are exposed, when we feel like we are being thrown to the wolves because someone gave us a side glance, God willing, we’ll be able to say, “Lord, this day, I look for You to be in my heart, that filthy, dung-filled manger.”
Glory to Jesus Christ.
Saturday, January 4, 2025: Baptismal Liturgy; St. Anastasia, St. Nikiforos
EPHESIANS 1:16-23, ROMANS 6:3-11
LUKE 16:10-15, MATTHEW 28:16-20
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst.
Can you hear it? Can you hear that alarm ringing? Calling all of us to salvation. Wake up, all you sleepers!
Truly, truly today is a gift and a wake-up call. The obvious gift is to the newly illumined, who they have been entrusted with something so precious. Something profoundly beautiful, and something unutterably worthy. Worthy of every awe, every concern, every effort. Being clothed, being baptized, being infused with Christ, there is no greater gift.
But today is an even greater gift to all of you, my brothers and my sisters who have already been baptized. Perhaps you have forgotten the great gift that was given to you. Perhaps you have forgotten the absolute joy and anticipation you had in your own baptism and chrismation. Perhaps you have forgotten your longing to be with Christ, and your clear understanding of what it meant to become Orthodox.
Today is truly a gift for all of us, that we can remember what has been given to us. And instead of allowing the great grace of our baptism and our chrismations to sit on the shelf, and to be something that we kind of look at nostalgically, but we can actually polish it up, take it off the shelf, clean it with our tears, put some elbow grease into the effort of repentance, to bring the luster back to our baptisms, to bring the luster back to our commitment to God, to remember that we cursed the devil, we spit on him, and that he is still and even more so active and desiring, because instead of working from within, he now works from without.
And once he has been cast out, he desires to come back in. So let us remember the gift that God gave us. By praying for the ones who are baptized, you will bring grace to yourselves. By praying and asking God to help them to stay faithful, to help them to remember their vow to God, to help them remember what God has done, God will then have mercy on you, and forgive you for putting your grace and your gift and your pearl on the shelf, to gather some dust, to be looked at nostalgically. Newly illumined, I want to give you a warning now, and I want to give you a personal gift as your spiritual father: Be careful of some of these old ones who think they’re wise.
Don’t let anybody tell you, “Well, it’ll die down.” I want you to invoke the spirit of St. Nicholas and slap them. “No.”
Your zeal doesn’t have to die down. In fact, it should increase. Zeal unto knowledge, zeal unto sobriety, zeal unto love. Don’t let anyone steal this from you. It’s the most precious thing, far better than gold.
Through the prayers of St. Morwenna, St. Philothea, Nathan, Nonna, Gregory, Marina, Porphyrios, St. Tamara, St. Peter, St. Matrona, Lord, we ask for you to preserve these new souls to grant them the grace that doesn’t die.
May they always lovingly and longingly remember their oath and remember what was given to them today.
Through the prayers of St. Mary of Egypt, Lord Jesus Christ, our God, have mercy on us. Amen.
Thursday, January 2, 2025: St. Ignatius the God-bearer and St. John of Kronstadt
TITUS 1:5-2:1, HEBREWS 4:14-5:6
MARK 10:17-27, MARK 9:33-41
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Glory to Jesus Christ!
In the first Gospel, we have, again, the account of a rich young ruler. And I love this word, “astonished.” It’s astonishing to see the love of God. This rich young man, he comes, presents himself to Christ, knowing that He’s a well-known teacher, knowing that His reputation has gotten around, and he seeks to present himself. He seeks to show off a bit, shall we say.
It’s astonishing because the Gospel says that Jesus looked on him and loved him. He loved him. And then He gives him a hard word. And that young man is counted as false, it says. It says because he had many possessions. And so it’s interesting because we see a correlation between the love of God and something difficult being put before us.
We see that, in fact, that the love of God can very often be the very thing that can cause our countenance to fall. Why is this? It’s because we put our trust in our possessions. It’s because we put our trust in these things which cannot save us. We put our trust in things which cannot bring us rest.
Today we’re commemorating St. Ignatius, the great hierarch. And St. Ignatius, as tradition holds in the second Gospel, when the disciples come and they’re asking Christ this and that, and He says, oh, you were on the road. You were on the road discussing who’s going to be great. Come here, my boys, sit down. And He grabs a child, embraces the child, and says, if you want to be great in the kingdom, unlike the gossiping that you’re doing on the road, if you want to be great in the kingdom, look, here, this little child.
Well, tradition holds that little child was St. Ignatius. That’s a good tradition. Because St. Ignatius, like St. John of Kronstadt, they had their eye on something.
In the Epistle today, it talks about entering into the rest of the Lord. But there’s an admonishment that St. Paul gives us in the Epistle of Hebrews, talking about who will enter into the rest of the Lord and who will not enter into the rest of the Lord. And St. Ignatius, like St. John of Kronstadt, they entered into the rest of the Lord.
How? Because they did not hold to their possessions above holding to eternal life. St. Ignatius famously begging the Christians of Antioch, “Do not stop me. Do not keep me from Christ, heading towards the lions.”
His famous icon being torn asunder by the lions, begging them, “Don’t stop me.” In essence, “Let me enter into my rest.”
St. John of Kronstadt, many people may not know this, but St. John of Kronstadt had a good handful of assassination attempts on him. St. John foresaw the great tragedy coming to Russia. But St. John, like St. Ignatius, he didn’t seek to flee from these things. He just trusted in God.
And this is the rest. The rest of God is God Himself. The rest of God is not some paradise with fruits and virgins and all these things. It’s not some worldly, fleshly thing. The very rest is Himself. How can you get to paradise? How can you even think about going to paradise if you don’t want to be with the one who is paradise? Paradise isn’t a place, per se. Yes, yes, yes, the fathers, I understand. Paradise isn’t a place, it’s a person. It’s Christ.
What good is it to being in a luscious garden with mangoes and talking fruits and whatever fantasies we want to think about paradise might be, but not being with God? What kind of paradise is that? How do we get to this paradise? We have to trust. Because both St. John of Kronstadt and St. Ignatius, this is what they had. They had trust in the right thing and the right One.
They trusted in the Lord. The rich young ruler trusted in his possessions. He trusted in his daddy’s inheritance that he got. He trusted in his education. He trusted that he was a good religious Jew, able to keep to the law. He trusted that he was handsome. He trusted that he was young. He trusted that he was healthy. He trusted in all those things, which probably in five years began to leave him.
He trusted in the wrong things, and so he had no rest. And he knew he had no rest, because when Christ loved him and spoke that word, his countenance fell. When Christ speaks that word to you, what do you do? This is a litmus, my sons and my daughters. What do you do?
If your countenance falls when Christ speaks to you, no problem. All it means is you have serious work to do. And here’s the thing, do your work. You can get to a place where God speaks to you, and instead of your countenance falling, you begin to experience joy.
Instead of fear and your knees knocking together because you’re worried about what you’re going to lose, or you’re worried about the pain you’re going to go through, you begin to grow in your trust in the Lord. You say, “Okay, Lord.” You almost wring your hands a little bit like it’s an adventure.
This can happen to you. But you have to be honest with yourself. You have to first acknowledge, “Yes, when the Lord speaks to me, when the Lord comes to me in love, I don’t like it. I’m still a child that doesn’t like my daddy wiping my bum. I’m still a child that when my daddy says, don’t play with that poisonous steak. Don’t go across the street or you’re going to get hurt. I get mad at him because I want to do what I want to do.”
Until you’re honest about this immature state you find yourself in, you will always be like that rich young ruler. And the love of God will always turn you sour.
It’s only until you become an adult that you begin to value the love of God. That the hard word is the good word because it sets you right. And it puts you in this place where you can begin to enter into His rest.
You begin to trust Him. You begin to realize the only thing that matters is that I’m going to be with Him. Through the prayers of St. Ignatius and St. John of Kronstadt Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.