Wednesday, September 30, 2026: Saints Sophia, Faith, Hope, and Love
EPHESIANS 5:25-33
MATTHEW 23:29-39
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst! Good morning. Today we are commemorating a wonderful saint and her children. Who are we commemorating, do you guys know?
Saint Sophia.
That’s right, Saint Sophia. And she had these three lovely daughters. What are their names?
Faith, Hope and Love.
That’s right. Now Saint Sophia, she’s this wonderful woman. She’s a mother. And you know what makes a mother a mother? What makes a woman a mother? What is it? Obviously she has children, that’s right. That’s what makes a woman a mother. But what’s the most important thing for a mother to have? Yes, for them not to die. But actually, the most important thing for a mother to have is love. Is love. And Saint Sophia had a lot of love. She had a lot of love, obviously for her three daughters, right? One of them being Love. But even more than that, she had a love for Jesus. She loved Jesus so much. She loved God so much that she was willing to prove her love to God.
Now, when we look at Saint Sophia and we look at all the martyrs, essentially, all the martyrs, they are willing to lay down their life for the Lord. And we can say to ourselves, that seems kind of crazy. But the thing is, Saint Sophia understood something. She understood that the love that she has for her children was something more than just their flesh and their blood. More than just giving them, you know, food to eat for their bellies to be nice and full. She understood that she needed them to have eternal food. And that the love that she had for them was something that was going to last forever.
And so, in the same way, we sometimes need to prove things. And, for example, if your mom and dad… How about this? Not even your mom and dad. If you guys get a bike, let’s say. You get a brand new bike, right? What’s the first thing you want to do with that bike? What do you want to do? You want to what? Exactly. You want to ride the bike. You want to test the bike. You want to make sure that the bike rides as good as it looks. Right? And this is the same thing in the love of God. Sometimes we need to get that love tested. To make sure that it’s strong. To make sure that it’s good. And to make sure that it rides as good as it looks.
And so, when Saint Sophia, like so many other martyrs, is persecuted… When she has someone in authority saying that she can’t worship God, that her children can’t worship God, she had to make a choice. And the choice she made was love. Love for God. And that love was so strong that she was willing to allow her three daughters to be martyred too.
Now, Sophia also means wisdom. That’s what her name means. And the love that Saint Sophia had for her children, the love that she had for God, it wasn’t foolish. It was wise. Because Saint Sophia knew that if her children denied God, if she denied God, that they would lose eternal life. So she said, even though it might be painful now to see them be martyred. I know that the wisdom of God is that they’ll live forever. And so, she allowed Faith, Hope, and Love to be sacrificed for the love of God.
And look now, how many centuries later – that happened a really long time ago, and we’re still talking about Saint Sophia and her three children. So Saint Sophia and her three children, not only do they have the love of God then, they have the love of God now. Because we still remember them. We’re still inspired by them.
And if we hold on to the love of God the way that she did, we too will have faith, hope, and love in us. And that faith, hope, and love is what connects us to each other and to Christ. So, our love is tested. But when we trust God and we have the wisdom to know that the only way for love to survive is in Christ, then that choice becomes an easy one. It becomes a wise one. Through the prayers of Saint Sophia and her children, Faith, Hope, and Love, Lord Jesus Christ our God, grant us the truth of Your love. Amen.
Monday, September 28, 2026: Day of the Angels; St. Porphyrios the Mime
EPHESIANS 4:25-32
MATTHEW 23:13-22
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst! There’s a priest who I’m, shall we say, I respect very much, I’m very fond of. And I listen to his sermons from time to time. One of the sermons that I was listening to recently, you know, each one of us, children of God, but in particular each one of us, you know, priests, we have our own things. Of course God uses our life experiences, our different personalities – and God uses us, you know, in the same way you would use stained glass, you know, colors, and the same light, but the light takes on a different capacity, if you would, a different aspect as it shines through each piece of glass, and so – but I digress.
This priest, he was saying how one of the worst sins is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy, he was speaking of it as just the most abominable poison. And you know, there’s some truth to that. There’s some truth to that. The thing about hypocrisy, and the thing that makes what he was saying so terrifying, terrifying, is that, which one of us aren’t guilty of hypocrisy?
In the Gospel today, the Lord is giving, shall we say, in some regards full vent to the Pharisees. He’s speaking to them, holding nothing back, holding nothing back. And He’s upbraiding them for their hypocrisy, for their double-mindedness, for their saying one thing and doing another, presenting themselves as one way, but actually being completely different in another capacity. And I would even dare say a little light here for us is that he’s especially frustrated with their tendency to double down on their hypocrisy.
And the reason why I say this is because when he speaks about them going to great lengths to make a proselyte, to make a disciple, the great lengths to maintain the hypocrisy, you see. Now, I think the temptation here can be, you may agree with what I’m saying, because it would be madness to say, “No, no, no, I’m not a hypocrite, I’m free from it.” But I think the temptation is to look at the Pharisees and to really separate them from yourself. I think we can be all tempted to see the Pharisees and separate ourselves from them because we can say, “I’m not a priest. I’m not teaching anybody. Why would I be a hypocrite?”
In the Epistle today, St. Paul, he says, “Put away lying from yourselves. Speak truthfully to your neighbor.” And interestingly enough, he goes from exhorting the Ephesians to not lie to saying, and by the way, anger. “Be angry, but do not sin.” That’s a curious word. Yes, of course, because the Fathers say that anger was given to us so that we could fight against our sins, and fight against the demons. Very good. And so, of course, we can understand, okay, there’s a place for anger. But don’t sin in your anger.
And be assured, don’t let the anger see, you know, a whole night over. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger. Don’t go to sleep with your anger. Why? Why does he say, don’t go to sleep, don’t let the sun go down on your anger? Because those of us who have been married, those of us who have lived a certain amount of time – and being a priest, being a father, the advice I give to everyone in marriage counseling, the advice I give to everyone is, the one thing you need to not do is to let the sun go down on your anger – in any relationship. Why? Because what happens is, that anger, although it leaves the heat of the moment, it becomes something very different, and it becomes so much worse. Because although you aren’t as hot as you were, that anger, it goes down, and it becomes something so much more insidious, it becomes resentment.
And then that resentment begins to ferment. And oftentimes, a seed of deep poison is planted deep in the heart, so deep, you don’t even know it’s there. Many a marriage has hit some very difficult problems, because there was an argument that was never quite resolved. And the husband says, “I don’t want to argue anymore, I’m fine, I don’t care.” He gets up, he goes to work, he does the same thing as he did all those times before, but there’s a deep wound that isn’t healed, and it festers, and it begins to rot. And it can be days, it can be weeks, and it’s oftentimes years, and he finds himself being motivated and feeling a certain way, and he’s not quite sure why.
A wife, same thing. Going about her duties, kissing the kids, making dinner, doing all the things, but there’s a distance. It happens with families. A son looks upon his father. A bitterness over being chastised, being dealt wrongly with some years ago. A daughter looking upon her mother. A mother looking upon her son, because he’s never truly humbled himself. All of these things, if they go without being dealt with, they can become the deepest of bitternesses.
And here’s the rub: you don’t even know it. You can’t quite figure out why you’re not getting along with someone. You can’t quite figure out why you have been feeling a certain way. You can’t quite figure out why your prayers are cold. Because you have a deep seed of bitterness, and it’s not even based on truth. See, that’s what’s so terrifying. Because that resentment has become something so completely mutated and distorted.
Even if you were to be shown by God, the original context of the argument, you would say to yourself, “I don’t understand how I got here from there. I don’t even care about what happened.” Sure, but guess what? Because you left it there, it became this deep, festered wound. And the infection looks nothing like the initial wound. Woe unto us.
What are we to do? Today, on this wonderful day of the angels, we are commemorating St. Porphyrios, the mime. The mime. This interesting class of saints. You have martyrs; confessors; Holy Fools, yurodiviye. But you also have this odd class. I only know two of them – I’m sure there are more, but I only know two. These holy mimes. Porphyrios is one of them. Genesis, the other one.
Porphyrios, in the court of Julian the Apostate, mocking Holy Baptism. Mocking it. And lo and behold, during the course of him mocking Holy Baptism, the grace of God descends and bursts forth within him. Amazing. Amazing. And of course, Julian the Apostate is not pleased. And he martyrs, he kills St. Porphyrios, the mime who is seeking to mock God at first through baptism.
Now you may say to yourself, “This is wild. It’s too early in the morning, Father Turbo. What are you talking about?” Let me tell you what I’m talking about. We are all hypocrites. And at the very least, we are all tempted, let’s say, to hypocrisy. We are all tempted to hypocrisy. We are all tempted to find ourselves being motivated and acting and feeling certain ways contrary to how we want to be seen, contrary to how we want to be.
God is merciful. Let us give ourselves the benefit of the doubt. We don’t want to be hypocrites, but we find ourselves in hypocrisy. We find ourselves in sins over and over again. We find ourselves in resentment with people. We don’t even know why. We act like we don’t have it, but it’s there. What are we to do?
Do you remember I mentioned how your prayers can be cold? This is a sign. You’re not sure what’s going on. Remember St. Porphyrios. Remember how God allowed His grace to flow upon and through this mime who was mocking Him.
Read your prayers. Say your prayers. Go to confession. Do those things that you’re supposed to do, even if you don’t feel it. Because if God can give grace, and if you will, invert the hypocrisy of St. Porphyrios, why wouldn’t He do the same for you? If God would take, in essence, a wicked man serving a wicked emperor and allow His grace to come forth, why wouldn’t he do the same for you? The mime mimics. A hypocrite is another ancient word for an actor. St. Porphyrios was acting, but boy, oh boy, did it come true.
You may be acting. You may be acting at being the saint and the Christian you want to be, but you know you’re not. I would say to you, keep going. Keep going. Because by God’s mercy, one day, you don’t know when, you don’t know how, that grace will strike. And where there was once hypocrisy, due to hidden sins, due to bitterness, due to whatever, there can come forth the truth and the grace of your baptism – your baptism being greater than your hypocrisy.
Do the things that you need to do, and God will do His. Through the prayers of St. Porphyrios, and the Holy Angels, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.
Sunday, September 27, 2026: Exaltation of the Cross
1 CORINTHIANS 1:18-24
JOHN 19:6-11, 13-20, 25-28, 30-35
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst! Wisdom. Wisdom of this age. St. James, in his Epistle, he speaks of wisdom. He talks about how there is the wisdom of this world. But this wisdom, the wisdom of this world, it’s sensual, it’s demonic. We should understand that when St. James speaks of this, we should take caution. We should be humble in hearing these words because we can often think that we hear the word sensual and we can allow our minds to go elsewhere and so we can think, “Oh, I would never fall into that. I’m not privy to that kind of wisdom.” But we are because we should understand that sensuality as being the common sense of the age.
The common sense of the age. And this common sense, it appeals to our flesh. It speaks to us in such a way that it actually pits us against God. It pits us against the wisdom of God. For instance, if you are familiar with the ocean, swimming in the ocean, and there is this very odd thing, this phenomenon. If you were to witness someone drowning, the other thing that you’ll witness is you’ll witness a seasoned lifeguard taking their time, seemingly. You would think to yourself, “Someone’s drowning. Quickly, quickly, with all haste, get out there.” But a seasoned lifeguard will actually methodically get out there. Why? Because they’re waiting for the person to stop flailing and to seemingly begin to drown. Because if the lifeguard goes out there prematurely while all the limbs are going off, he could very easily be caught up and drown himself. See, it’s a different kind of wisdom. If you’re caught in quicksand, the logic, the sensual logic says, “I’m sinking, I’m stuck. Quick, vigorously, let me wrestle. Let me fight against it.” But that only gets you more stuck in the quicksand. You have to actually relax. And then, with intention, pull yourself out of the quicksand.
In our life, we are tempted to thrash about. We are tempted to fight with our flesh the second that we are threatened. This is that sensual wisdom. But it betrays everything that God has taught us. When we slow down and we stop and reflect, we realize that ultimately, unless God helps us and delivers us, we have no hope. And so, although our flesh is frustrated with it, this is how the wisdom of God is revealed in our lives. It is through weakness that His strength is made perfect.
And that is presented perfectly in the crucifixion of our Lord. The Lord says to Pilate, essentially, the only reason why you can do anything to Me is because I’ve been given over. His life, no one took from Him. He laid it down. He laid it down willingly. He submitted to the higher authority, which is the authority of the Father. This makes no sense. This is, in many ways, weakness.
I heard a reflection this week, and it struck a profound chord in me. I heard it from this priest, Andre. He says, he talks about life and how life is revealed in weakness. When we think of a young tree or a sapling, we think of it as weakness. It’s pliable. It can be moved. But that weakness actually reveals that it has life in it. When you think of a tree, at the end of its life, it’s firm, it’s hard, it’s brittle, but it can be broken, and it withers and it dies. And the strength of that tree, in many ways, reveals that its life is about to leave it.
When we reflect on life and how tender life is, I tell you, I look back and I think to myself, there’s so many times the life of my children could have been taken from them. There’s so many times my life could have been taken from me. It’s nothing but a miracle that we’ve survived. It’s nothing but a miracle that we all survive. The weakness, our mortality, if you will, is the revelation of God’s strength. And when we thrash about and we fight against it, it brings nothing but the wrong kind of wisdom. But when we surrender to this fact, the wisdom from God comes.
And something miraculous happens. Your eyes are opened to God’s wisdom. You start seeing God’s wisdom in everything, in particular the difficulties, in particular the places where you are called to be crucified. Because you and I have no life and no strength in and of ourselves. And although we are people of faith, that sensual, that demonic wisdom is still seeking to seduce us.
What are we to do? The week of the Cross is always a week filled with temptations. Bodies hurt, cars break down, bills don’t get paid. Praise God. Because it’s a week in which He says, of all the time, this is the time that you can learn of Me. This is the time that you can share in My wisdom. This is the time that you can experience the power of My cross.
But for many of us, it takes us sometimes years to lean into the temptations of the week of the Cross. But to you young ones, to you my brothers and my sisters, my sons and my daughters, I just give you what the Fathers teach us and I just give you what the wisdom of the Lord is. The Cross is the source of our life. And so let us rejoice and let us not be seduced into the sensual wisdom of this world to try to fight against what the Lord is doing, because He’s simply joining us to Him. And we’ll never taste His power of resurrection unless we first taste the bitterness of His crucifixion.
Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
Thursday. September 24, 2026: St. Silouan the Athonite
GALATIANS 5:22-6:2
LUKE 6:31-36
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst! Saint Silouan the Athonite is a great gift to us. He embodies everything one needs to understand on how to repent, on how to leave off and leave behind the things that are an affront to God.
Saint Silouan – Simeon, before Silouan – strong, physically strong, handsome, the life of the party, if you will. Simeon, before Silouan, having many advantages, actually, and in the worldly sense, he learned to drink deeply of these worldly advantages he had. His charisma, his strength, reputation, and these things brought him to a point where a line was crossed.
He began to see that the indulgence into these natural gifts not only brought his soul to a place of ruin, but it could have even, without God’s mercy, had cost a man his life, potentially, him striking a man during a night of revelry. And the Mother of God speaks to him about how his soul was revolting to her. He then goes to the mountain, the Holy Mountain, and more or less still in these natural gifts, if you will, he receives grace.
But that grace that he’s given was more of a, shall we say, a setup in some ways, because it’s in this place of grace, quote unquote, that he begins his first real descent. And it’s in the descent that he began to know Who God was. An elder spoke to the young Silouan and said to him, after speaking with him, hearing his confession, if you will, and seeing the state of his soul, being impressed with him: “If you’re like this now, how will you be when you’re older?”
And it took that one compliment. We can assume that the elder, the spiritual father, meant well. But nevertheless, in God’s providence, that one word, that one compliment caused him to descend. And it hurled him into years – not days, not weeks, not months – it hurled him into years of trial, in which pride began to become his chief opponent, and the demons began to afflict him. Now, it’s in this place of struggling deeply against himself, against his own pride, that Christ comes to him, and Christ speaks to him, and Christ speaks these famous words to him: “Keep thy mind in hell, despair not.” And St. Silouan says that from that point on, he began to experience freedom, humility. The humility of waiting on the Lord began to be his liberation, his food, his drink. He began to deeply commune with the Lord.
Now, what’s important to understand is that St. Silouan was all but illiterate. He was all but illiterate. And maybe even what’s more important to understand is that St. Silouan also began to become debilitated in his body. He says that he suffered from profound migraines, the type of migraine where he couldn’t even have a clock. The ticking would drive him mad. And yet, St. Silouan maintained his obediences. And yet, St. Silouan maintained his ascetic endeavors.
You see, St. Silouan embodies hope for us. Why? Because St. Silouan could have very easily been any one of you brothers – charismatic, everything going for you. The hardest thing that you ever have to do is to put yourself aside. It’s the hardest thing you ever have to do. St. Silouan did it. St. Silouan receiving a compliment, being tossed into despair. This could happen to any one of us. Our pride getting the best of us, tormenting us. St. Silouan allowed Christ to strip him of everything. Of everything.
And that stripping – and this is my point – St. Silouan didn’t allow himself to be stripped for anything else except for love. Because we can make the mistake in thinking that St. Silouan went to the mountain to achieve a state. To best himself. To prove to himself that he can do it. That’s not why he went to the Holy Mountain. And we can think to ourselves that St. Silouan was just simple. Out of trying to maintain some sort of affect, some profound affect. That is not why St. Silouan was simple.
St. Silouan like so many other saints, the secret to him is love. It truly is love. His profound love for God. His profound love for his brother. His profound love for the souls of so many countless names who he knew not, but he knew in the spirit that were perishing. Because they did not know the mercy and the forgiveness of God. Love. St. Silouan allowed himself to be tormented for the sake of love. St. Silouan allowed himself to be led, if you will, in a barren desert by the Holy Spirit for the sake of love. What do I mean by that? St. Silouan was all but guided by himself. Not out of pride. But out of a radical abandonment to God.
Love. St. Silouan and Sophrony were at an all-night vigil – and as you can imagine, on Athos, when they say an “all-night vigil,” they don’t mean just an extra half hour. And at the end of this long vigil, Silouan turns to Sophrony and says, essentially, we’ve beat the donkey, but what have we accomplished? Now, you can hear this and you can say to yourself, was he trying to be some sort of, you know, renovationist? Is he trying to say something about the top-heavy, bloated, self-indulgent liturgics of the Athonites? No. No. But what he was saying was that without love, what will we accomplish? Even our asceticism without love is nothing.
There is nothing hindering any one of us here. Except for one thing. Our lack of love. And so when you read about St. Silouan, those of you who are new to the faith, those of you who are seasoned and you know Silouan, you go back to him, for all of us – myself first and foremost – we should always read Silouan, his words, his life, and not be amazed by anything other than simply this, his profound love. Because without love, Silouan, ourselves, and really everything is nothing but a clanging symbol. So through the prayers of St. Silouan, Lord Jesus Christ our God, grant us deep love.
Monday, September 21, 2026: Nativity of the Theotokos
PHILIPPIANS 2:5-11
LUKE 10:38-42; 11:27-28
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst! Today on this joyous feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God, we remember the miracle in which God brought forth the hope for men’s salvation. And of course, this obvious miracle of the Mother of God, the Ark, the East Gate, which no man shall enter past. This is an obvious — she is the obvious miracle we can point to.
I want to point to another miracle, and one that can often be overlooked. Joachim and Anna, the parents of the Mother of God. Not only was Anna barren and Joachim impotent, but they were both ridiculed, and they were both suffering under the pain, the shame of not being able to bear children. And we can get a glimpse of it here and now, because there are still many unfortunate couples who suffer from this. And so, even in this society right now, which does not value family, our society does not value, unfortunately, the precious gift of children. Even in this society that doesn’t value such obvious blessings, that suffering of not having the ability to bear children is still, you can still find it. It was all the more painful in the ancient times, without exception. If a family, if a couple could not bear children, without exception, it was painful and shameful. The ridicule that was heaped upon Joachim, the silent whispers and the stares that were given to Anna, no one would have questioned those responses to them. It would have seemed normal. Clearly, they had done something wrong for God not to give them children. This was the standard assumption. Which brings me to the miracle I want to point to today.
How many times for something far less, how many times for something not as consequential, have we buckled under the pain and the shame of something and abandoned God? How many times have we gotten a flat tire, been slighted over the raise at our job? How many times maybe the menu wasn’t exactly what we wanted? And although we don’t outright curse God in our heart, how many times are all of us guilty of this? And yet, Joachim and Anna, they take that shame and they take that pain. And not only do they not turn away from God, but they embrace God in prayer.
Now that is a miracle. Because it was precisely in that turning towards God that the real thing that needed to happen began. Those seeds of faith began to change. Not just the attitude of Anna, not just the disposition of Joachim, but it began to change them physically. And they began to become receptive to the grace of God. And in that grace, they were able to conceive the Holy Mother of God.
There are so many instances that we can look towards and we can say to ourselves, what if, just what if, what if I had given myself over to a godly attitude over the situation versus complaining or judging? What would have happened? What could God have done through me?
I was reflecting with John Garrett yesterday. We were talking about when Father and Matushka were not able to get the house across the street. What a temptation that could have been for them. But if they had gotten the house across the street (on Chestnut), he would have never been on the street to be talking with Nektarios, and Nektarios would have never been baptized, you see. I mean, I could go on and on. The whole reason why I ended up in Kansas City was because a whole other door closed for me in California. What would have happened?
You see, God gives us this freedom to move our hearts. And trust me, trust me, trust me, trust me. I know it feels like you’re not free, but you are. You can’t choose the family you’re born into. You can’t choose the time you’re born into. You can’t choose the color of your eyes. There’s so much you cannot choose. But believe me, the devils lie to you when they tell you, your attitude, you can’t change that.
Yes, you can. In fact, it’s probably the one thing in this world that you can change. People can lock you up. They can take away your toys. They can take away your food. They can do all those things. The thing they can’t take away is your disposition and your heart towards God. That’s your attitude. That alone is squarely yours. May God help us. Because it’s in choosing to embrace God and the many miracles He’s worked, not just in the Mother of God being born, not just in the fact that his suffering brought eternal life for everyone, on and on and on, but in your own life. Just think about it.
On this feast day, those of you who are going to commune, what if you were to come to the chalice in repentance? Just hear me out. What if you were to come to the chalice in repentance and say, “You know what, Lord, I know I went to confession a million times over this, but I’m sorry that I’ve been complaining the last five years about something. I’m sorry I’ve been complaining about this for the last six months. I’m sorry. Give me new eyes of my heart, Lord. Help me to see how I can actually now see what You’re actually trying to do in my life.”
What would happen? What would happen if for once you actually said no to yourself and no to the devils and you came to the chalice believing — on something that God has already done, but you’re blind to it because it’s not according to how you want it and how you think in your small mind that it should be? What would happen? This can be another homily, and it can be another Liturgy, and it can be another time of taking bread and wine, or you can open your ears and you can repent and you can have Holy Communion with the living God on the feast day of His mother being born.
His ancestors, her parents saying yes to hope, yes to embracing God in spite of circumstances, being open to being used by God. The secret is, God’s glorified in the thing that you cannot change because if you could change it, then you don’t need God. What if?
May our Holy Lady help all of us to remember that Christ is the answer to the great “what if.” Amen.
Sunday, September 20, 2026: St. John of Novgorod
2 CORINTHIANS 6:1-10
MATTHEW 25:14-30
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is in our midst! The Apostle Paul, this morning in the Epistle, he says, he speaks to us about not taking the grace of God in vain. He goes on to speak about salvation and being given at an appointed time. And the grace of God, the energy of God, the ability of God to work in our lives is something that is never random. And we have these vestiges of pagan mentality. And we bring it into the Church, and we begin to think of the life in Christ as a matter of luck; God working in our lives as a matter of luck. And we really need to move away from it.
This is why when you come into the Church, you learn certain things of the culture of heaven. We don’t say “Good luck.” We say “God bless you;” we say “May be blessed.” We speak in such a way to show that our inner life is orientated towards the awareness of God governing our lives. Luck and fate, which is an impersonal force, does not govern our life. The living God governs our life, and the living God Who is Person.
God is not the force. God is Trinity. And this is important because we forget that God is Person. And we treat God as the force. We are more familiar – as many of you may remember from catechism, if I catechized you – we are more comfortable and familiar thinking about God in a Star Wars mythology than we are in an actual patristic way of thinking. God is just this thing that we can kind of hopefully catch at the right moment and get what we want and get what we need and move on.
And this is not God. God appoints things at a particular time for our salvation. And the reason why I’m saying all this is because in the Gospel today, we have a little peek into the character of God. Now, depending on your disposition, certain aspects of the Gospel are going to come forward. For many of you, the emphasis is like, “Man, he kind of came in and just took care of that servant. And he just took everything from him and he threw him out into the darkness.” And he even says, “If you don’t have anything, even that’s going to be taken from you.” And your disposition could be, “God’s kind of harsh.” And I say to you, if that’s your disposition, no problem. The problem is if you’re going to be in denial about your disposition. See, if you can be honest about, “Yeah, I can’t get past that.” See, if you can start there, then you can start getting to actually know God.
But a lot of us, because of piety, because of these different things, you know, there’s an old expression, forgive me, you know, you kind of “fake the funk,” if you will. And the thing is, is God knows your heart. God knows how you really think of Him. And if your emphasis there is like, “God is a cruel master and I got to watch it,” then I want you to pay close attention to what I’m going to share with you. Because although that is true, and although we have to remember that we serve a holy God, and that God will hold us accountable, that is not where the emphasis of that Gospel is. And that’s not where your heart should be.
We should be seeing the generosity of God. The generosity of God. That God trusted those servants. He went off on a long journey. It says, the landowner, he goes off on a long journey. So he says, “Okay, I’m going to trust you. I’m going to give you these things.” So the first thing is, is not only can we trust God, but God trusts us. God imparts to us certain things. And He leaves us with these things. And this is where we get stuck. He leaves us with a measure of freedom. And I tell you, my dear good Americans, you really don’t like freedom. You think you do, but you don’t.
Something terrible happens to us when we come into the Church. We want God to turn us into puppets. We want God to make sure that we do everything right, so we don’t get any problems. But that’s not freedom. And that’s not what God has created you for. He’s created you in freedom to be free, because He’s free. And in a large sense, this is what it means to bear the image of God. To bear the image of God is to be free like God is.
Now, the trick is, will you acquire the likeness of God? And how do you acquire the likeness? By using your freedom like God uses His freedom. That’s how you acquire the likeness. And so God, in His generosity, He gives time and He gives freedom. Now we look at that first servant and the five senses. As some of the fathers say, these five talents being life, the kind of mortal life, the five senses. He redeems it. He uses it. He takes that life and he brings more life into the world. He multiplies the life in God. So God rewards him for that.
What else did God give you? Well, God gives you these primary things to eternal life. He gives you baptism and He gives you chrismation. He gives you the sacramental life, which takes you from a natural life of being stuck with worrying about your bills and your pleasure and your food, and he brings you to a life of something so much higher through baptism and through chrismation.
You’re given spiritual life, which doesn’t negate the life of the five senses, but it adds dimension. It adds value to that five senses, to that earthly life. And so that servant multiplied it also. That servant goes from a natural life of being like an animal. And moves into having a spiritual life, knowing God, loving God and loving his neighbor according to as God asks.
But now we come to the hard part. And you have this servant who’s given this one thing, and he buries it. Now this one thing could be a lot of things, but let me just allude something to you. Do you remember when the Lord, He’s in this room visiting with others. And Martha, the sister of Mary, comes and says, Lord, Lord. Make her help me, Lord. I’m sitting here serving. I’m sitting here sweating. And she’s here at your feet. Please make her help me, Lord. And what does the Lord say to her? The Lord says to Martha, Martha, Martha. You are worried about many things, but the one thing needful, Mary has taken care of.
There’s many ways we could interpret that one talent, if you will. But for today, I want you to consider that that one talent, that one thing is at least the awareness of God. That one thing is being able to sit with God. That one thing is your consciousness, the awareness of life, the awareness of God. That’s the one thing. And God help you if you bury that one thing. That one thing of just knowing God.
And here’s where it gets tricky because what does that servant say? He says, I know that you’re a cruel master. I know you. So I hedged my bets and I made sure to bury it because I’m going to play it safe. I’m not a dummy. Here you go. What’s interesting is the Lord says, okay, you knew I was a cruel master. You knew that I reap what I did not sow. So if you’re so smart, then why don’t you do something with it? And this is really important because this place of not being honest with where we’re actually at. Remember, I began with many of you were probably focused on the fact that God took away the talent and threw him into the outer darkness. And I said, that’s okay. What’s not okay is if you’re in denial about that. Do you remember that? So now we’re back to that.
My sons and my daughters, the one thing we all need to remember is we cannot fool God. God is the One who breathed life in you. God is the One who gave you consciousness. God knows you better than yourself. So from that place, from that one understanding, start there. Start really being honest about your life and what you’re doing with it. Yesterday, we had this funeral for Nektarios. And what a mercy of God. Not for Nektarios – yes, of course, for him – but for all those people that were here. Many of you were not here, but trust me when I tell you, it was miraculous. And watching God calling people. Why? I’m going to tell you why. Because we can forget in the Church what it’s like being in the world. We can forget what it’s like to perish. God doesn’t want anyone to perish.
God didn’t give you that one gift of knowing Him, that one gift of consciousness, on top of the two gifts of chrismation and baptism, on top of your five senses which are to be given and experience thanksgiving – he did not give that to you for you to flush it down the toilet needlessly. He did not give it to you for you to waste. He did not give it to you for you to sit it on the shelf for it to rot like unwanted bologna.
He gave it to you that it would nourish you and you would nourish others. He gave it to you that you would know Him because He’s good. He’s generous and He’s patient. And we find ourselves fearing Him. That’s okay, but don’t stop there. Some of you heard me talk about the slave and the soldier and the son. Don’t just stop at the slave. Don’t stop at just doing something because you’re scared of judgment. And don’t just stop at doing something because it feels good to have a little bit of authority; it feels good to be able to do something. It feels good to not be out there with the animals. Don’t stop there. Get to that place of being a child of God. Because God is good. And God loves you, and God is patient, and God is generous. That wicked servant was proud and assumed that he knew his master. But in truth he didn’t. The simple fact of what he had, it eclipsed the truth of who his master truly is.
Remember, God’s generous. Remember you don’t need to ask for more. You need to do with what you’ve already been given. May God help us to be faithful. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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.