Monthly Archives: March 2018

Without Repentance the Gift Condemns Me

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Monday, March 19 (O.S., March 6), 2018: Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent; 42 Martyrs of Ammoria in Phrygia († c. 845): Theodore, Constantine, Aetius, Theophilus, Basoes, Callistus, and others; ; Hieromartyr Conon and his son Conon of Iconium († 270-275); Venerable Arcadius of Cyprus (4th C); Venerable Abraham of Bulgaria; Holy Hierarchs Evagrius the Confessor, Patriarch of Constantinople; Holy Hierarch Taranius, Bishop of Antioch; Venerable Fridolinus, Abbot of Sakingena; Martyr Gregorisus; Venerable Job, in Schema Joshua, of Anzer († 1720); Finding of the Precious Cross and the Precious Nails by the Holy Empress Helen in Jerusalem (326); Icons of the Mother of God: “Chenstokhov” (1st C), “Blessed Heaven” (14th C) and “Shestokovskoy” (18th C).

Sixth Hour: Isaiah 37:33-38:6
Vespers: Genesis 13:12-18
Vespers: Proverbs 14:27-15:4

Reading the passage from Isaiah quickly, we might overlook the fact that–in both cases–God is merciful. Both kings suffer. The King of Assyria is defeated in battle, Hezekiah suffers a debilitating and–but for God’s intervention–fatal disease. The difference in outcomes between the two rulers is straightforward. Hezekiah repents, the Assyrian king doesn’t.

Repentance requires more than I’m sorry for my sins. This, after all, can be motivated as much by being disappointed with myself as easily as it can an awareness that I’ve strayed from God’s will. Often the sorrow I feel is more the former than the latter.

While sorrow is the opening moment of repentance, in the full sense I need to move past my distress. Repentance requires not bad feelings but a change of heart (metanoia). Not grief for my failure, but obedience to the will of God.

We have an example of obedience in Abraham.

God promises the patriarch that He will give him “the land of Canaan.” Abram (as Abraham is still called), we receive from God all the land he can see from where he stands. “Lift up your eyes, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see I will give to you and to your descendants forever.”

To this promise, God adds that Abram’s descendants as numerous “as the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your descendants also can be counted.”

At God’s command, Abram walks “the length and breadth of the land.” Eventually, he comes to “the oaks of Mamre” pitches his tent and worships God.

The metanoia God seeks from me isn’t simply sorrow for my sin, it isn’t even obedience. What God seeks from me is my willingness to still myself and, like Abram, worship Him.

Material wealth, political power and military prowess, these are celebrated by the Old Testament as God’s blessings. The coming of Christ doesn’t undo any of this or any of the other blessings God bestows on His Israel.

What Christ does, is make available to us the wisdom without which material and social blessings become traps. As Solomon says

The wicked is overthrown through his evil-doing, but the righteous finds refuge through his integrity. Wisdom abides in the mind of a man of understanding, but it is not known in the heart of fools. Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.

It isn’t that the King of Assyria was a sinner and Hezekiah wasn’t. It isn’t that one man regretted and the other didn’t. It is rather that, like Abram, one man worshipped God and made God’s will his own.

Without the wisdom that comes from the “fear of the LORD” the blessings God give us remain fallow. Separated from a living awareness of God’s gifts as exactly that, His gifts to me, I begin to think of God’s blessings as my own achievements.

As gratitude withers, prides grows until “passion makes the bones rot.” and I become the man who “oppresses the poor” and “insults God.”

But Christians who reject or minimize material and social blessings are equally misguided. These are given to us so that we can share in God’s redemptive work. Like the man who uses them for his own selfish ends, the Christian who turns his back of these blessings–or condemns those to whom God has given them–and becomes one “who oppresses a poor man insults his Maker.”

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Homily: Repentance Frees Me to Love

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Sunday, March 18 (O.S., March 5), 2018: Fourth Sunday of the Great Lent; St John Climacus. Martyrs Conon, Onisius of Isauria (2nd c.). Martyr Conon the Gardener of Pamphylia (251). Virgin-martyr Irais of Antinoe in Egypt (3rd c.). Martyr Eulampius. St. Mark (5th c.). St. Hesychius (790).

Epistle: Hebrews 6:13-20/Ephesians 5:9-19
Gospel: Mark. 9:17-31/Matthew 4:25 – 5:12

Glory to Jesus Christ!

Today we commemorate our father among the saints John Climacus or St John of the Ladder. The saint’s title is a nod to his work on the spiritual life The Ladder of Divine Ascent. Read in monasteries during Great Lent, the Ladder sketches out the 30 steps or “rungs” by which the soul ascends from repentance to the intimate communion with God in which we come to share in the divine life (see 2 Peter 1:4).

Though written for monastics, there is also a great deal of wisdom in the Ladder for those of us who don’t live in a monastery. For example, St John tells his reader “Do not be surprised that you fall every day; do not give up, but stand your ground courageously.”

At first, this might seem less than encouraging. But this is only if we listen to the first half of what the saint says and ignoring the last half.

Yes, I will sin and I will sin daily. In fact, I’ll sin throughout the day in ways great and small. But this isn’t–or at least needn’t–be the whole story of my life. By God’s grace, we all have the ability to repent, to stand our ground “courageously”  when tempted to surrender to sin.

As does the whole of the Church’s tradition, Climacus places great importance on human freedom. Actually, after grace, human freedom is the only thing that matters for the saint (and Holy Tradition).

Simply put,

…no matter how much I’ve messed up,

…no matter how badly I’ve failed,

…no matter how serious the sins I’ve committed,

by God’s grace, I have the ability–the freedom–to begin again. And not just me. All of us can begin again.

When in the Divine Liturgy we ask God to grant us a life of “peace and repentance” what we are asking for is precisely this ability to begin again. To start over.

For many Christians, even those who are sincere in their love of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Church, the idea of a “life of repentance” sounds dreary.

Such a life sounds wholly negative.

Such a life sounds as if it were focused solely on their shortcomings.

Such a life sounds like life with a nagging wife or an abusive husband.

Nothing, however, could be further from the truth.

G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy) says that the because children are filled with an unbounded enthusiasm for life, they never tire of repetition. What was just done, they want to be done again. And “the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.”

God, however, Chesterton says is strong enough to bear repetition. Every morning God says to the sun “Do it again,” and again the sun rises.The “sun rises regularly” because God “never gets tired” of watching the sunrise.

Chesterton goes on to say that it isn’t from any necessity that compels God to make “all daisies alike.” And yet God, Who makes “every daisy separately” never tires “of making them” alike. “It may be,” Chesterton says, that God “has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

To live a life of repentance is to live a life in which we grow younger. It means to live a life in which we grow in innocence and the joy that only innocence can know.

To live a life of repentance means to remove from my life everything that compromises my freedom, that obscures from my eyes the beauty that God sees all creation and in each of us. Repentance frees me to love.

Though the world, and let’s be frank not a few Christians, see repentance as negative, St John Climacus and the Church’s tradition with him sees it as wholly positive.

You see, as I grow in my knowledge of God, as I grow in my obedience to Him, I begin to see creation as He sees it. This, after all, is what love does. To fall in love doesn’t just me I’m attracted to someone. To fall in love, to be in love means that I love what my beloved loves.

And to love God? To lay aside everything in us that would make it impossible for us to love Him? What does this mean?

If we love God, we don’t simply love what He loves. No, if we love God, we love as He loves, without qualification or limit.

Repentance changes us so that when we at creation, we the goodness and beauty that God sees.

Repentance, in other words, is how we grow in our ability to love God and so to love as God loves all that He has created.

And repentance means to see in ourselves the goodness and beauty that God sees in us. It is this experience that gives us, to return to St John’s advice, the courage to remain faithful in the face of our shortcomings and inevitable practical and moral failures.

No matter how successful I might be, no matter what accolades I receive, no matter how many people praise me, if I don’t know that I am loved by God I will feel myself to be a fraud and live a life of anxious striving.

If we truly love God, we won’t neglect the abilities God has given us but instead see them as they are. They are concrete means God has given us to grow in our love of Him and of each other.

A life of repentance is anything but a dreary. It is a wholly positive way of life in which we grow in our love for God, our neighbor and, yes, even ourselves as men and women who have first been loved by God.

My brothers and sisters in Christ!

We have been given a better way–the way of repentance. So let us from this moment on and by God’s grace and our own efforts remove from our lives all of love’s obstacles. Let us repent!

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

The Challenge of a Life Without Shame

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Friday, March 16 (O.S., March 3), 2018: Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent; Martyrs Eutropius, Cleonicus and Basiliscus of Amasea († c. 308); New Venerable Martyr Martha and Martyr Michael († 1938); Venerable Virgin Piama († 337); Sts. Zeno and Zoilus; Icon of the Mother of God of Volokolamsk (1572).

Sixth Hour: Isaiah 29:13-23
Vespers: Genesis 12:1-7
Vespers: Proverbs 14:15-26

My words and deeds often don’t align because, as the reading from Isaiah suggests, I am often ashamed of myself.

It may be that I have shameful thoughts or done shameful deeds. Just as likely, however, I may be ashamed of the Gospel. Or maybe, I don’t want to behave in such a way that makes clear that I am a Christian. I can be ashamed of goodness as easily as wickedness.

Shame is insidious. It twists and distorts my heart, my relationships with God and neighbor. The great challenge in overcoming shame is that it rarely travels along a clean, straight line. Rather shame mixes everything together, it’s a jumble of sharp edges that cut and dull edges that bludgeon.

The prophet Isaiah summarizes the experience when he says to shame, “You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay; that the thing made should say of its maker, ‘He did not make me’; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, ‘He has no understanding’?”

Yes, a life free from shame is desirable. Accustomed as I am to shame’s many burdens and limitations, however, the offer of liberation is unsettling, frightening even. I may not like shame, but at least it’s familiar.

This is why, as in Genesis, the spiritual life is often described as a journey to a strange land. I may not like shame but it at least as the “virtue” of familiarity. In a fallen world, shame is my native land, my “father’s house.”

When I hear the offer of salvation not simply as the promise of heaven at the end of my life but as freedom from shame in this life, like Abram I’m not sure I want to make the journey.

Freedom from shame not only means traveling to a strange (emotionally and spiritually) land. It also means becoming a new person–Abram becomes Abraham–who has new and rather intimidating responsibilities.

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves.

What if, shame insinuates, I’m not up for the challenge? I’ve failed before, why do I think I won’t fail again? Maybe I’d be better off staying where I am.

To this Solomon responds the “simple believes everything, but the prudent looks where he is going. A wise man is cautious and turns away from evil, but a fool throws off restraint and is careless.”

Hearing the offer of salvation, I need to look carefully not only at where I’m going but where I am. And where I am isn’t good. Yes, I need to be cautious and not run headlong into the future. I need to do this though not because God can’t be trusted but because in those first few moments of the journey I’m still unsure of myself.

Accustomed as I am to shame, I will at first find my new freedom in Christ intoxicating. Being still unsure of what God wants for me, and from me, I can become quick-tempered, acting too quickly and so “foolishly.” If I’m not cautious, shame can again trap me causing me to be arrogant or to express myself with an unwise zeal.

I need to give myself time to adjust to this new life, this new journey. I need to acquire “discretion” and prudence. In a word, I need to grow in wisdom.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

Contracts, Folly and Wisdom

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Thursday, March 15 (O.S., March 2), 2018: Thursday of the Fourth Week of Lent; Icon of the Mother of God ‘She who Reigns’ (1917); Hieromartyr Theodotus, Bishop of Cyrenia († c. 326); St. Arsenius the Bishop of Tver († 1409); Martyr Euthalia of Sicily († 257); Martyr Troadius of Neocæsarea (3rd C); Venerable Agathon of Egypt (5th C); 440 Martyrs slain by the Lombards in Sicily († 579); Venerable Sabbas, Barsonuphius, Sabbatius, and Euphrosinus of Tver.

Sixth Hour: Isaiah 28:14-22
Vespers: Genesis 10:32-11:9
Vespers: Proverbs 13:19-14:6

Contracts are essential not only to civil society but also our life in Christ. In Jesus Christ, God makes a covenant–a contract–with us. At baptism, God incorporates us into His Body the Church. He seals this new relationship in chrismation; in Holy Communion, we receive a foretaste of the life to come.

The other sacraments build on this baptismal covenant.

Each sacrament renews and strengthens the promise that binds God to us and us to God and each other. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that the sacred contract between God and His People is the archetype for all other civil contracts. God’s covenant with His People is the standard against which all other contracts and promises we make between ourselves are judged.

All of this helps us understand the horror that opens today’s reading from Isaiah.

The rulers of Jerusalem made a contract, “a covenant with death.” Rather than looking to God for their salvation. They make a contract with (Hades or Hell), so that “when the overwhelming scourge passes through it will not come to us.”

As the next few verses make clear, this covenant with death is made of “lies” and “falsehood.” In effect, the rulers made a self-defeating promise that undermines even the possibility of fidelity.

God in His mercy annuls the agreement with death.

In the short-term, this means that the people will be overwhelmed with scourges; they “will be beaten down” by them. This is a severe mercy. The severity doesn’t reflect any “divine” malice but how far morally and spiritually the people have strayed from God. The way back to God and to their own vocations is far, the journey arduous.

The journey back to communion with God is long because the people have become not just strangers to Him but the enemies of the justice and righteousness with which God builds His Kingdom.Once again, humanity has come to the plains of Babel.

Like men we read about in Genesis, the rulers of Jerusalem have conspired with death to frustrate the will of God. The fact that this is impossible and self-defeating doesn’t factor into the decision either at Babel or Jerusalem. Against all the evidence of God’s goodness and patience, they are hell-bent on asserting their own will over the will of God.

Isaiah’s warning to Jerusalem and the divisions in the human family that result from Babel are all still applicable today. We are all of us just as prone to make false promises in a vain attempt to subvert the will of God.

Solomon reminds us–reminds me–that “Wisdom builds her house, but folly with her own hands tears it down. He who walks in uprightness fears the LORD, but he who is devious in his ways despises him.” It is folly to despise God and to seek to overturn His will for me. Instead, it is in my best interest to discern the will of God and pursue it to the best of my abilities. “A scoffer seeks wisdom in vain, but knowledge is easy for a man of understanding.”

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory

When God Makes War

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Wednesday, March 14 (O.S., March 1), 2018: Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent; Venerable Martyr Eudokia of Heliopolis († 160-170); Venerable Martyr Olga († 1937); New Hieromartyrs Priests Basil, Peter, John, Benjamin, and Michael, Venerable Martyrs Anthony, Anna, Daria, Eudokia, Alexandra, Matrona, Martyrs Basil and Hope († 1938); New Hieromartyr Priest Alexander († 1942); Martyrs Marcellus and Anthony; Martyrs Nestor and Tribimius (3rd C); Martyr Antonina of Nicæa, in Bithynia († c.284-305); Venerable Martyrius of Zelents († 1603); Venerable Domnina of Syria († c. 450-460); Venerable Agapius of Vatopedi.

Sixth Hour: Isaiah 26:21-27:9
Vespers: Genesis 9:18-10:1
Vespers: Proverbs 12:23-13:9

God is always ready to come to our defense. “Would that I had thorns and briers to battle! I would set out against them, I would burn them up together.”

Eager to help us though He is, God will not help us against our will. God will not impose His grace on us. Immediately after these verses God says “let them lay hold of my protection, let them make peace with me, let them make peace with me.”

Before God exercises His power on my behalf He exercises it, if I can speak this way, against Himself. God restrains Himself. Or, in St Paul’s phrase, He empties Himself “and takes the form of a slave” (see Philippians 2:7, NRSV).

Even when God does exercise His authority, He does so with restraint. This can be hard to realize because often the Scriptures use images drawn from human warfare when it talks about God defending His people.

Today’s reading from Isaiah is a good illustration of how the image of warfare is used to discuss God liberating us from sin. But such language isn’t used without qualification. To do so would suggest that God was simply one warlord among others when He isn’t.

Referring to God’s response to the sins of Jacob and Israel the reader is asked to consider God has “smitten them as he smote those who smote them? Or have they been slain as their slayers were slain?” The answer is “No!”

Human rulers make war against their enemies to destroy them; God makes war against His enemies to heal them. “Measure by measure, by exile thou didst, contend with them; he removed them with his fierce blast in the day of the east wind. Therefore by this, the guilt of Jacob will be expiated, and this will be the full fruit of the removal of his sin.”

The false altars are pulled down and, in Christ, a new altar is erected so that we can “worship God in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24, NKJV).

But if God doesn’t impose Himself on us, if He respects our freedom and waits on our response to His invitation why do the Scriptures so often talk about God making war on His people, punishing them with sickness, poverty, harsh weather, exile and even death?

It often feels like God goes to war against me because I’m at war with myself. In my life, I am the enemy God must overcome.

Look at Ham. In exposing the shame of his father Noah, Ham is both his father’s enemy of and his own. I’m Ham. My willingness to harm you harms me. Making you my enemy, makes me an enemy to myself.

Solomon condemns the wicked man who “acts shamefully and disgracefully.” While the particulars differ, at one time or another, we are all this wicked man just as we are all Ham.

God doesn’t go to war against me. I have gone to war against myself in my refusal to love my neighbor. Like good deeds to “the slothful,” grace often feels to me like “forced labor.”

Like “the scoffer” I don’t “listen to rebuke,” I refuse to take God’s correction of me to heart. I do not repent of my sins. I war against God and neighbor and so war against myself.

In Christ,

+Fr Gregory