Sunday, September 13, 2026: Sash of the Most Holy Theotokos, St. Cyprian of Carthage
2 CORINTHIANS 4:6-15; HEBREWS 9:1-7
MATTHEW 22:35-46
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst! St. Sophrony of Essex, he would give this instruction; he would give this admonishment to his spiritual children there in the monastery. He would say to them that they should have a cheerful countenance. That they should keep the countenance, the expression of their face, in such a way that it communicates not just a kind of consistency, but the joy of Christ. He said even if inside, you’re tormented, or you feel the need to weep for your sins, you do this in the privacy of your cell. To go about in the monastery with a downcast face is a temptation. It’s a temptation not just to those around you, but it’s also a temptation in the sense that it elicits the influence of the enemy. The enemy studies the countenance of the face and accordingly will bring temptations. And so when one is seen, easily moved, then the enemy has you, is able to then begin to test and to prod.
Now, in the Epistle today, St. Paul talks about God bringing knowledge of Himself. The Holy Trinity bring knowledge of the Godhead through the face of Jesus Christ. And the face of Christ is such that those who have dedicated their life to Christ and take very seriously their vocation to be on this quest to seek Christ, they do find the face of Christ. Because the face reveals everything. The face reveals everything. The face is the most important part of a piece of art, if you will. The face is the thing that we look to to see if someone is safe or not. The face communicates everything.
And so the face in many ways shows whether someone is telling the truth or not. The face is where you get to understand and to know and have communion with someone. So to have the face of Christ in your heart is to actually be in communion with God. But now the problem is, how do you acquire the face of Christ within your heart? And this is very difficult. And it’s very difficult because we have these antichrists sitting on the throne of our heart where Christ should be sitting. We have an antichrist. We have something in the place of Christ. And so our emotions, which we think is our true self – our emotions, which we think are communicating the truth and the essence of how I am.
But my sons and my daughters, my brothers and my sisters, this is false, actually. Because your emotions are not your true self. And so because we have been taught, because our society is such that we think that our emotions are our true self and to thine own self be true. This false Christ reigns in our heart instead of the true Christ. So the thing that’s motivating you, the thing that’s changing your countenance is not Christ. It’s something else.
What are we to do? How are we to discern between the antichrist and the true Christ that should be in our heart? In the Gospel today, the Lord says that the commandments are summed up in these things: Love the Lord your God with all your mind, soul, and heart; and love your neighbor as yourself. Upon these two things hangs everything.
And so Orthodoxy, as I’m often saying, Christianity, unfortunately for too many of us, is an abstraction: “Let me read a book. Let me study a thing. Let me do a thing. And if I do these things, if I can study these things, then I have the thing, meaning God.” But you don’t, actually. And in fact, what’s happened is you’ve begun to build an antichrist, if you will. Because you still haven’t mastered yourself. You still haven’t bent the knee, if you will, of your emotional state, of how you think about something, how you’re relating to something. You haven’t submitted that to Christ.
And so because you haven’t submitted that to Christ, Christ can’t rule and reign in your heart. And here is the real test. If you can’t find the grace to be gracious, to have this countenance with your loved ones, one that is communicating Christ – if you can’t love those around you, simply with your countenance, then how can you see God? To think that you know God and to be wildly out of control is the most absurd thing. And it’s a sign of a great delusion that we’re all under.
No, our hearts cannot be ruled and reigned by an emotional state that’s wearing a paper mache mask of Christ. You have to find the truth. And what is the truth? How do you know the truth? You look for the commandments and the commandments lead you into that truth. Can you keep all the commandments? Yes, but you can’t keep them all at once. You have to start somewhere. So my encouragement to all of you – this is a practical homily – my encouragement to all of you is, for the most part, you know what you’re wrestling with, passion-wise. Start there.
Start there. Start with the passion that’s disrupting your home. Start with the passion that’s disrupting your community. Start with the passion that’s moving you. And begin to ask the Holy Spirit for wisdom and to reveal the face of Christ, not your emotions. Because the big secret here is, whatever that emotional state is – anger, envy, resentment, lust – it needs to be broken. It needs to be crucified so that the true face of Christ can rule and reign. And you know that face of Christ will begin to rule and reign because, in spite of how you feel, your countenance is communicating the love of God to those around you.
This is not about being fake. This is not about putting a false facade. Rather, it’s about being put under the obedience of Christ. Because the real fakeness, actually, is the thought that you’re an animal that can’t control yourself. And therefore, you can’t do anything, you’re hopeless, you’re helpless. “I can’t help myself.” That’s fake, actually. That is what’s false. If you’ve been baptized, if you’ve been chrismated, if you’ve received the Holy Gifts, then there’s a measure of power that God gives you to begin to crucify this idealized self so that the true face of Christ can rule and reign.
The litmus is, can you love your neighbor? So that eventually, in time, you can love and cherish the face of God within you. Through the prayers of our holy fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, show us Your face and have mercy on us. Amen.