II Corinthians 6:16–18; 7:1

Brethren, you are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will live in them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.” Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.

Saint Paul reminds us that we “are the temple of the living God.” And then, having reminded us of God’s promise to live in us and move among us, to be our God and our Father, he says:

“Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, and make holiness perfect in the fear of God.”
—II Corinthians 7:1

I would like to offer a meditation on that holiness, with some help from Saint John Chrysostom.

And I would like to begin with the reminder that holiness is real. It is the presence and action of God in our lives. It shines like light, driving back the darkness. It radiates like warmth, driving back the cold.

To be a bit less abstract, it is the kindness that transforms and drives back hatred, manipulation, and apathy. It is the humility that transforms and drives back pride. It is the hope that transforms and drives back despondency.

These are the fruits of God’s presence within us, as we learn to cooperate with His grace.

And it matters. It matters to the people who live with us, to the people who work with us, to the people who depend on us. When we grow in holiness, we become a blessing to them, to the world.

We know this. We know what it is like to be around someone whose peace and patience help us become peaceful and patient ourselves. And we know what it is like to be around someone whose anger puts everyone on guard.

We have been both of those people. I know I have. We have done damage to ourselves and those around us; but we were called to heal, to strengthen, and to serve.

There is no such thing as private virtue, any more than there is such a thing as private sin. What we cultivate within ourselves naturally affects the people around us. This is the power God has given us as His imagers on this earth.

We can put on a good show. We can explain our intentions. We can justify what we do and say. But we and the people who live with us still have to live with the consequences.

So becoming holy matters. And becoming holy requires effort.

But notice where Saint Paul begins. “You are the temple of the living God.”

God has already acted. He has drawn us to Himself. He has given us His promises. He calls us His sons and daughters. Our struggle for holiness begins with that gift, with that relationship, with that love.

We can put Saint John Chrysostom’s reminder simply:

Remember Who dwells in you.

When you are preparing to say something about your neighbor, remember Who dwells in you. When you are deciding what to do with your time, your attention, or your money, remember Who dwells in you.

You are a temple. And the way we live should reflect the holiness of the One who has made His home within us.

We also hear the command to “come out from them, and be separate.” This separation requires us to turn away from the sins that damage our neighbors, even as we draw near to those neighbors in love.

Now, we can hear this and immediately think of certain sins, things that do not belong in the temple. And rightly so. There are things that we do with our bodies that are incompatible with the life God has called us to. We need to repent of those things. We need to stop doing them.

But Saint Paul says “body and spirit.” And Chrysostom makes sure we do not rush past that second part. He names malice, deceit, envy, pride, and vainglory.

Let’s take the last one: vainglory. The desire to be seen and admired. The desire to have other people recognize how good we are.

This is where things become difficult, because that desire can attach itself to the very things we are doing to become holy.

We can fast and become proud of our discipline. We can learn the faith and become contemptuous of people who know less than we do. We can defend something true and take pleasure in humiliating the person who got it wrong.

The outward action may be defensible. Something good may even be accomplished. But there is also something that needs correction, something within us that needs healing. And the damage grows when we allow that passion to distort our relationships.

Chrysostom’s example is almsgiving.

Someone comes to us hungry, and we give him food. Glory to God. We have met a real need. But Saint John Chrysostom asks us to examine our hearts even here.

Are we giving out of mercy? Are we attending to the real needs of this person? Or have we found an opportunity to show everyone how generous we are?

Because if we use our brother’s need to advertise our goodness, we may give him money or food while taking away his dignity.

And Chrysostom points out that the damage can go even further. Once we have publicized our generosity and the way we fixed everything, other people may assume that this person has everything he needs. They may stop helping. They may even condemn him if he asks for help again.

We wanted credit for doing something good. Our neighbor, who is still in need, gets to live with the consequences.

Our giving can reveal both our desire to be admired and our difficulty letting go of what we have.

And this is where Chrysostom’s warning about wealth becomes so practical. The more we have, the easier it can become to organize our lives around keeping that wealth and getting more. We become practiced at recognizing what we want, while becoming less attentive to what our neighbor needs.

This is a serious warning. And it brings us back to something we have talked about many times: we are poor judges of our own actions and intentions.

We know how to explain ourselves. We know how to describe our anger as concern, our pride as conviction, and even our desire for praise as the desire to set a good example. We have big brains; we can justify pretty much anything.

Sometimes those descriptions are true and useful. Sometimes they are excuses to cover our sin. And we need help telling the difference.

This is one reason the life of the Church is so concrete. We have commandments. We have prayer and fasting. We have confession. We have spiritual guidance and a community in which we can learn to receive loving, supportive, and necessary correction.

These things help us see what we would otherwise overlook. They give us a way to repent of things that, if we even notice them, we have become very good at justifying.

But Chrysostom takes us a step further. Avoiding evil does not complete the work of holiness. We must cultivate goodness. We must become attentive, earnest, and faithful in our love of God and neighbor.

It is certainly good to stop speaking cruelly. We also need to learn how to speak with kindness.

It is certainly good to stop taking what belongs to others. We also need to learn how to share what has been entrusted to us.

It is certainly good to recognize our pride. We also need to practice humility, including the humility of doing something good without receiving credit for it.

So let us be concrete.

When we give, whatever it is that we offer, let us consider the dignity of the person receiving. When we correct someone, let us attend first to whether our words will actually help. When we are tempted to describe someone else’s faults, let us first examine our own.

And let us do some good that we are willing to leave unadvertised.

God sees it. The person receiving it benefits from it. Let that be enough.

This is part of making holiness perfect “in the fear of God.” We learn to live with an awareness of His presence. We take His love seriously. We take seriously the people He has entrusted to our care.

We remember that God sees what we have learned to hide, even from ourselves, and we allow His judgment to correct our own.

Remember Who dwells in you.

And when this work, this remembering, reveals something ugly within us, something selfish or proud, let us bring it to Christ. He already knows it is there. He loves us, and He desires our healing.

He is the source of our holiness. We cannot become the men and women we are called to be on our own. We need His mercy. We need His strength. We need His life within us.

And that is God’s promise to us, which Saint Paul reminds us of today:

“I will live in them and move among them.”

“I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters.”

Since we have these promises, beloved, let us do the work. Let us repent. Let us receive correction. Let us practice mercy.

And through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the One who lives within us, let us become a blessing to the people around us: a visible sign of God’s presence and action in this world.

Galatians 2:16-20; Mark 8:34-9:1

We have two incredibly powerful readings today, and they belong together. In the Epistle, St. Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” And in the Gospel, our Lord tells us, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” This is the Sunday after the Exaltation of the Cross, and the Church is teaching us what the Cross means for us. The Cross is not simply something that happened to Jesus Christ two thousand years ago. The Cross reveals the shape of the Christian life. Christ was crucified for us, but now we are called to be crucified with Him. He took up His Cross, and now He tells us to take up ours and follow Him.

To understand just how radical this is, it helps to go back to the beginning. Human beings were created as the images of God in this world. God created the world good, and He entrusted it to us so that we could cultivate what He had made, taking what was good and bringing it toward greater goodness, beauty, and glory in the service of God and our neighbor. That is part of what it means to bear the image of God. We were created to participate in God’s work in the world.

But both we and the world suffer from the consequences of sin. Because our own hearts are divided, even our best intentions can go sideways. We try to do good, but selfishness becomes mixed with love. Pride becomes mixed with service. Fear becomes mixed with prudence. The desire to help becomes mixed with the desire to control. We were created to cultivate the world toward glory, but because we ourselves are disordered, our work in the world so often becomes disordered as well.

And so God gave us the Law.

The Law was a gift. We should never speak as though God made some sort of mistake in giving it. The Law taught God’s people what holiness looked like. It protected them from some of the worst consequences of their fallen instincts. It restrained idolatry, violence, exploitation, and selfishness. It ordered their common life. It distinguished between what was clean and unclean, between what led toward life and what led toward death. And it prepared and preserved a people in whom the Messiah could come.

But there was something the Law could not do. The Law could reveal holiness and train God’s people in it, but it could not itself heal and transform fallen human nature. It could restrain sin, but it could not heal everything within us that wanted to sin. It could command us to love God and our neighbor, but it could not, by itself, transform us into people for whom love had become natural and instinctive. The Law could protect. It could teach. It could reveal. It could prepare. But it could not give life.

And that is why what St. Paul says today is so radical: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” Christianity is not God giving us a better version of the Law. Christianity is God giving us His life.

And this helps us understand something wonderful about Orthodoxy. Christianity really is a Way. In fact, before “Christian” became the ordinary name for the followers of Christ, the book of Acts repeatedly describes Christianity simply as “the Way.” And that is what we have received. Orthodoxy is not just a collection of correct ideas about God. It is not simply a set of propositions that we agree with. It is a holistic and all-encompassing way of life, received and developed within the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, for our salvation and theosis.

For two thousand years, the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, has received, developed, adapted, vetted, and handed down services, prayers, fasting disciplines, feasts, prostrations, icons, hymns, prayer rules, and countless other practices through which the life in Christ is learned and lived. We have a way of ordering the day. We have a way of ordering the week. We have a way of ordering the year. We have ways of training the mind, the body, the appetites, the imagination, and the heart. It is an entire way of life.

These traditions provide a kind of scaffolding for our life in Christ. The scaffolding is not the building, nor does it build the building. But it provides the structure within which the work can take place. In much the same way, the practices of the Church dispose us to cooperate with the grace of God, giving shape and structure to repentance, prayer, self-control, worship, gratitude, attention, and love.

And when someone is raised within that life, something beautiful can happen. A little child does not begin by reading a theological treatise about the Cross. He learns to make the sign of the Cross. He does not begin with a sophisticated theology of repentance. He sees his parents ask forgiveness, and he learns to ask forgiveness. He learns to fast a little before he learns to fast a lot. He learns to stand in church. He learns to kiss an icon. He learns the hymns before he understands everything they mean. He learns that there are times to feast and times to fast, times to stand and times to kneel, times to speak and times to be silent.

Of course, being raised Orthodox does not guarantee that any of this formation will happen well. Traditions can be neglected, misunderstood, or emptied of their meaning. But at their best, they provide a pattern of formation appropriate to each stage of life.

And as that child grows, the Church grows with him. At every stage of spiritual development, the Way is there, working with the grace of God to heal what sin has damaged and to make virtue increasingly natural and instinctive. Things that begin as external practices gradually become internal dispositions. We practice reverence until we become reverent. We practice repentance until repentance becomes more natural. We practice generosity until generosity becomes less frightening. We practice forgiveness until mercy becomes increasingly instinctive.

That is extraordinary. That is formation. That is what a healthy Christian culture can do. It forms us before we even realize that we are being formed.

But many of us did not grow up that way. Many of us came to Orthodoxy later in life. And that creates a particular challenge for us. Instead of having twenty or thirty or forty years for these things to become part of us gradually and organically, somebody hands us the whole thing at once. Here is your prayer rule. Here are the fasting rules. Here is your prayer rope. Here is the liturgical calendar. Here are the services. Here are the prostrations. Here are the canons. Here is how you prepare for Communion. Here are the saints you should read. Here is how you arrange your icon corner. Here are two thousand years of Orthodox tradition. Welcome to the Church!

And because we love Christ, and because we recognize something beautiful and true here, we want all of it. That is a good desire. We should want to enter deeply into the life of the Church. Many of us came to Orthodoxy precisely because we had already discovered that good intentions were not enough. We loved God. We wanted to serve Him. But we also knew the experience St. Paul describes elsewhere: I want to do what is good, and somehow things still go sideways. We recognize that we need these traditions, these practices, these scaffoldings.

But right there we encounter a tremendous temptation. We can take the Way that was given to bring us into the life of Christ and turn it back into a law.

And this is exactly the sort of thing St. Paul is warning us about. He says, “If I build again those things which I tore down, then I prove myself a transgressor.” We can take fasting and prayer and prostrations and services and all the other good things the Church gives us and begin measuring our righteousness by them. Did I keep the fast correctly? Did I say all of my prayers? Did I make enough prostrations? Did I attend all the services? Am I wearing the right thing? Am I reading the right books? Do I look Orthodox enough? Do I sound Orthodox enough?

And eventually the means by which Christ is healing us become ends in themselves.

There is another version of the same temptation that is especially attractive to converts. Because we receive so much at once, we can begin to approach the Orthodox life as something to master. We master the prayer rule. We master the fasting rules. We master the services. We master the theology, the canons, the calendar, and the customs. There is always another book to read, another service to learn, another ascetical practice to adopt.

But the Way was not given to us primarily so that we could master it. It was given so that, through it, Christ could reshape us.

There is a tremendous difference between those two approaches. I can master information while remaining exactly the same person. I can learn all sorts of things about fasting while remaining gluttonous in other parts of my life. I can know the services while remaining inattentive to the people standing next to me. I can read the Fathers while remaining proud. I can become extremely knowledgeable about repentance without actually repenting.

The proper posture toward the Way, therefore, is not anxious acquisition but patient immersion. We enter deeply into the life of the Church and allow its practices, through grace and over time, to conform us to Christ.

And there is a tremendous irony here: our determination to master the Orthodox life can actually make us harder to form. Formation requires humility—the willingness to be corrected, redirected, slowed down, and shaped according to a wisdom and timetable other than our own. If we become rigid, the very traditions meant to reshape us can become tools for defending the shape we have already chosen for ourselves.

Worse yet, once the practices become ends, they become wonderfully convenient ways of judging everyone else. I am fasting correctly; why isn’t he? I am at this service; where is she? I follow this prayer rule; why doesn’t everyone else? I know the canons. I know the Fathers. I know how Orthodox people are supposed to behave. And before long, the beautiful Way that was given to heal our pride has become fuel for our pride.

That is the Pharisaical temptation. And it is worth remembering that our Lord had tremendous patience with prostitutes, tax collectors, and people whose lives were obviously broken. They could see that something was wrong. They knew that they needed mercy. But He was extraordinarily severe with the Pharisees because their religious accomplishments had become the very thing that prevented them from recognizing their need for mercy. They had become good at the religious system, and because they were good at it, they thought they were good.

That is a danger for us as well. If I think that fasting, saying my prayer rule, wearing my cross, using my prayer rope, knowing the services, or following all the traditions makes me righteous, then the very practices intended to lead me toward repentance can convince me that I no longer need it. Then we become rigid. We become quick to correct. We become quick to condemn. And eventually we can become the sort of people who know everything about Orthodoxy except how to love.

There is another reason we need humility here. The Orthodox treasury is enormous. None of us is working on everything at once, nor should we be. At a particular stage of our life, under the guidance of the Church and our spiritual father, one of us may need to concentrate especially on fasting and self-control. Another may need to concentrate on learning to pray consistently. Another may need to learn generosity. Another may desperately need to learn patience with a husband or wife, or gentleness with children, or forgiveness toward someone who has wounded him.

Their spiritual lives may look very different from the outside, and both may be faithfully cooperating with the grace of God.

That means I need to be very careful about measuring someone else’s progress according to the particular work God is presently doing in me. I do not know everything that God is presently forming in that person. I do not know the counsel he has received. I do not know the wounds that are being healed or the virtues that are being strengthened. What God is using as medicine for me at this moment does not automatically become the prescription I should write for everyone else.

So be patient with one another. And be patient with yourself—not patient with sin, but patient with the process by which God is healing you from sin.

Be patient with the tempo of God’s work in you.

You cannot take a shortcut to perfection.

That is difficult for some of us to accept. We discover the treasury of Orthodoxy and immediately wonder what we can read, what discipline we can adopt, what practice we can master to accelerate the process. But there is no advanced spiritual technique that allows us to skip humility, repentance, patience, and mercy. Sanctification takes time because God is not merely teaching us new information. He is healing and transforming persons.

None of this diminishes the importance of the practices themselves. Fasting, prayer, prostrations, worship, confession, the liturgical calendar, and the traditions of the Church matter precisely because they form us. The mistake is not taking them seriously. The mistake is forgetting what they are for.

The Way is not a substitute for following Christ. It is the way we learn to follow Christ.

Fasting is not the destination. Fasting teaches me to deny myself so that I can follow Christ. Prayer is not the destination. Prayer teaches me to turn my attention toward Christ. Prostrations are not the destination. They teach my proud body repentance and humility. The services are not the destination. They gather us together into Christ and teach us to live as His Body. The prayer rope is not the destination. It teaches my wandering mind and heart to call continually upon the name of Jesus.

These things are not “just rules.” They are far more important than rules. They are parts of a divinely ordered way of life through which generations of Christians have learned to take up the Cross and follow Christ. But the moment I turn them into accomplishments by which I establish my own righteousness, I have taken something that belongs to the life of the New Covenant and forced it back into the role of the old Law.

And today’s Gospel gives us the corrective. Christ does not say, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him master the religious system.” He says, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

Follow me.

That is the center. That is the purpose of everything else.

And notice what happens when we get that right. Christ does not merely teach us how to behave better. He transforms us. This is the glory of what St. Paul is saying: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” The Christian life is not ultimately about making the old person behave himself a little better. It is about the old person being crucified with Christ so that the life of Christ can become active in him. It is not merely behavior modification. It is transformation. It is theosis.

This is what the whole Orthodox way of life is for. Not to create people who are extraordinarily good at being Orthodox, but to create saints.

We fast so that Christ can heal our appetites. We pray so that Christ can heal our attention. We confess so that Christ can heal our self-deception. We worship so that Christ can reorder our loves. We practice generosity so that Christ can heal our possessiveness. We forgive so that Christ can heal our resentment. We take up the Cross so that the old life can die and His life can become ours.

And over time, through the grace of God, something wonderful begins to happen. What once required tremendous effort begins to become natural. Mercy becomes more instinctive. Forgiveness comes more readily. Prayer becomes less foreign. Generosity becomes less frightening. Love becomes less calculating. We begin, however imperfectly, to become the sort of human beings we were created to be.

And now we can return to where we began.

God created human beings as His images in this world. We were made to receive what He created good and cultivate it toward greater goodness, beauty, fruitfulness, and glory. Sin frustrates that vocation because broken people bring their brokenness into the things they touch. The Law could restrain some of that brokenness. But in Christ, God does something greater: He begins healing the people through whom He intends to heal and glorify His creation.

That means the fruit of our formation does not end with us. As Christ heals us, our relationships begin to be healed. The crooked begins to be made straight. Places that had become barren begin to flourish. A husband who is learning patience changes a marriage. A mother who is learning mercy changes a family. A Christian who is being freed from pride changes a parish. A community whose members are learning to forgive, encourage, serve, and bear one another’s burdens becomes a place where wounded people can begin to heal.

We become increasingly capable of doing the work for which humanity was created: receiving the good world God has given us, cultivating it in holiness, and offering it back to Him more beautiful, more fruitful, more loving, and more alive.

That is what the Law could point toward but could never accomplish by itself. The Law could reveal holiness. Christ unites us to the Holy One. The Law could command love. Christ pours His life into us so that we can learn to love. The Law could restrain us from death. Christ takes us through death into resurrection.

And that is why these two readings belong together on this Sunday after the Exaltation. St. Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ.” And Christ says, “Take up your cross and follow me.”

Brothers and sisters, that is the Way.

Everything the Church gives us—every fast, every feast, every prayer, every prostration, every service, every discipline, every beautiful tradition—is there to teach us how to walk it. So yes, let us learn the traditions. Let us keep the fasts. Let us say our prayers. Let us worship faithfully. Let us take seriously this extraordinary way of life that has been entrusted to us.

But let us receive it patiently. Let us resist the desire to master it and instead allow Christ, through it, to reshape us. Let us be patient with the particular work God is doing in us and equally patient with the work He is doing in our brothers and sisters. And let us never confuse the means with the end.

The goal is Christ. The goal is to be crucified with Him so that He can live in us. The goal is to become by grace what God created human beings to be: His sons and daughters, filled with His life, transformed into people who know how to love—and who, increasingly, love naturally, instinctively, and without reservation.

That is the Way. Let us take up our cross and walk it.

7

In the third chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, our Lord gives us a wonderful comparison between a type and an antitype: the serpent lifted up in the wilderness and Christ lifted up on the Cross. Because of their hard-heartedness, the people of Israel had been bitten by poisonous serpents, and those who looked upon the bronze serpent that Moses lifted up were delivered from the poison. Our Lord tells us that this prefigures the Cross: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up.” Christ is lifted up, and when we turn to Him in faith—when we acknowledge Him, bow before Him, and give ourselves to Him—the poison of sin and death is overcome.

But there is a warning hidden in the story of that bronze serpent, and it is a warning that Orthodox Christians especially need to hear.

Orthodoxy is unapologetically maximally incarnational. The Word truly became flesh. God entered His creation, and because of the Incarnation, creation can be taken up, sanctified, and restored to its proper purpose. That is part of the reason we have beautiful temples, icons, relics, holy water, incense, candles, vestments, and all the other material things that surround our worship.

We have a lot of holy stuff.

But precisely because we have so much holy stuff, we need to make sure that our relationship with it is itself holy.

Think again about the bronze serpent. God commanded Moses to make it. God worked through it. People really were healed when they looked upon it. There was nothing wrong with the serpent. It was a God-given instrument of healing.

And yet, centuries later, we learn that the Israelites had turned it into an excuse for idolatry. The thing through which God had worked had become detached from the God who worked through it. And so the righteous King Hezekiah broke it in pieces and called it Nehushtan—a piece of bronze.

That distinction matters enormously for us. A holy thing is not a talisman.

We know that the Cross is powerful. Why? Not because two pieces of wood arranged in a particular shape contain some independent magical force. The Cross is powerful because of Christ. On the Cross, Christ defeated sin and death and opened the way to resurrection.

So yes, we venerate the wood of the Cross. Glory to God that we can do so. We have a relic of the True Cross at St. Sophia Seminary, and I can go there and kiss that wood. That physicality reminds us that Christianity is real. God really became flesh. Christ really suffered. His hands really touched wood. His blood really flowed. He really died, and He really rose again.

But we must guard against magical thinking. If an icon streams myrrh, is that because the icon has somehow acquired an independent sacred power? Heaven forbid. It is miraculous because God is working through His creation for the salvation of His people. The gift directs us toward the Giver. The image directs us toward its prototype. The holy thing draws us toward the Holy One.

The danger begins when the gift replaces the Giver, and the type replaces its prototype.

And now we can turn to the Epistle, because St. Paul is dealing with a surprisingly similar problem.

Today’s reading comes from the conclusion of Galatians. St. Paul writes, “See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand.” Paul elsewhere used a scribe, but here he draws attention to these words being in his own hand. St. John Chrysostom sees even the large, perhaps awkward letters as evidence of Paul writing this himself.

And what is so important that Paul wants to put it in his own hand?

“It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would compel you to be circumcised.”

That has been the controversy running through the entire Epistle. Gentile Christians were being taught that faith in Christ was not enough—that in order to belong fully to the people of God, they also needed circumcision and the observance of the Jewish Law.

That was a problem. But the problem was not that circumcision was not evil.

After all, God had commanded it.

That is important. Paul is not contrasting something holy with something obviously wicked. Circumcision was the sign of the covenant. The Law was holy. It guarded Israel, it it helped formed Israel, and it helped prepare Israel for the coming of Christ.

But what the Law had been preparing Israel for had now come to fulfillment in Christ.

That is why St. Paul is so fierce about this. Something God had given for a particular purpose was now being treated as though Christ had not come and fulfilled that purpose.

Do you see the similarity?

The bronze serpent was given by God. It was good. God worked through it. But eventually the people confused the instrument with the One who worked through it.

Circumcision was given by God. It was good. It formed and identified His covenant people. But now some were insisting upon it as though union with Christ were insufficient.

The problem is not the thing itself. The problem comes when something meant to lead us toward God begins to take the place that belongs to God.

And so St. Paul forces upon us a very simple question, and it’s a question all of you have been asked:

Have you united yourself to Christ?
Have you united yourself to Christ?
Have you united yourself to Christ?

Our catechumens must be tempted to look at us during the reception service as though they were St. Peter after the Resurrection: “Yes, Father. I already told you!” But the Church asks several times because she wants that answer to go all the way down into the heart so and instinctively defines us and our relationship with the world.

Have you united yourself to Christ?

That really is central. Everything else has to be understood in relation to that.

And please don’t misunderstand me. This is not an attack on Holy Tradition. Quite the opposite. Holy Tradition does not take us backward into a world without Christ. Holy Tradition teaches us how to live in Christ. Its rituals, disciplines, images, prayers, and customs embody our faith in Him. They train us to perceive the world in Him and direct us toward Him.

But precisely because these things are powerful, we must never confuse the means with the end.

St. Paul then tells us something about the teachers who were troubling the Galatians. They wanted the Galatians circumcised, he says, “that they may glory in your flesh.” They were using religion to create a visible sign of belonging—a sign by which they could measure success and claim these people as their own.

In his homily on these verses, St. John Chrysostom notices that Paul directs much of his anger toward the teachers rather than toward those who have been misled.

There is a lesson there for us. Do you blame the neophyte who, in his zeal, follows the bad teaching of someone he trusts? Neophytes do knuckleheaded things. That is almost part of being a neophyte; it’s why neophytes are not given positions of responsibility. But the greater responsibility belongs to the teacher.

And that should make every priest and teacher tremble a little.

As your teacher and priest, what might I give you as part of “the package” of Orthodoxy that is actually just something I am accustomed to? What might I treat as essential because it is important to me because it was part of my formation? What might I teach you to identify with so strongly that, rather than helping you become a new creation in Christ, it becomes another identity in which you glory? What if my teaching leads you to become a child of hell rather than a child of God (Matthew 23:15)?

That question is especially important now because we have more Orthodox teachers available to us than perhaps any generation before us. Anyone can start talking online, and the teachers who attract attention are often those who speak most confidently, draw the hardest lines, identify the clearest enemies, and offer the strongest sense of belonging.

And belonging is both powerful and important.

That brings me to one contemporary example: nation and culture.

Human beings naturally live in peoples, nations, languages, and cultures. These things can be great goods. A culture can be sanctified by Christ. Its language, music, customs, family life, feasts, stories, and habits can preserve the faith and transmit it from one generation to the next.

Orthodox Christians in America know this especially well because we received the faith through cultures that had been shaped by Orthodoxy for centuries. Syrian, Lebanese, Greek, Russian, Ukrainian, Romanian, Serbian, Bulgarian, Georgian—all of these peoples have given us treasures, and we should receive those treasures gratefully. For them, their faith and culture are natural and largely invisible to them– like water to a fish. But it stands in contrast to our own culture, so we see it clearly.

Until we have a mature American Orthodox culture that naturally produces saints, we should be humble enough to learn from cultures that have been doing this much longer than we have.

But a culture can carry the faith without being the faith.

A nation can serve Christ without being Christ.

And when we forget that distinction, something good can become Nehushtan.

But this danger is much broader than nationalism. We can do it with almost anything that has helped us become Orthodox. We can do it with a jurisdiction. We can do it with a particular style of music. We can do it with the way we fast, the prayers we use, the books we read, the teachers we follow, even the particular customs of a parish.

And converts are especially susceptible to this because we are trying to learn what Orthodoxy looks like. That is a good desire. We come into the Church, and we want to learn how Orthodox Christians pray, how they fast, how they worship, how they raise their children, how they organize their lives and we want to do that ourselves. Glory to God.

But there is a temptation to take the particular form through which we learned Orthodoxy and identify it with Orthodoxy itself.

We say; “This is how Orthodox Christians do it; this IS Orthodoxy”

Well, maybe. Or maybe this is how the people who taught us do it.

That distinction requires humility.

The problem is not that these things are unimportant. They are important precisely because Christianity is incarnational. We need concrete practices. We need particular melodies. We need actual words and gestures and disciplines. We cannot live Christianity in the abstract.

But all of these things have a purpose. They are supposed to form us in Christ.

And that gives us a way to test them. Is this making me more faithful? Is it making me more humble? Is it teaching me to repent? Is it helping me love God and my neighbor? Is it drawing me more deeply into the life of the Church?

Or has it become another way for me to know that I am right and somebody else is wrong?

That is when we need to be careful.

And this is one of the great lessons of Pentecost. Pentecost does not abolish particularity. Notice what happens: the Apostles do not all begin speaking the same language. The Holy Spirit does something much more wonderful. Each nation hears the one Gospel in its own tongue.

Unity does not require sameness. The languages remain languages. The cultures remain cultures. The particular gifts remain particular gifts, and they are beautiful. But now they are capable of being taken up into something even greater than themselves.

They can glorify Christ together.

And that brings us back to St. Paul: “Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

He is not going to glory in circumcision.

And I am not going to glory because I can do services in Ukrainian. I am not going to glory because I am getting better at Byzantine music. Those things can be good. They can be beautiful. They can serve the Gospel.

But they are not the Gospel.

What do I glory in?

The Cross of Christ.

Because the Cross is where the old man dies. The old Anthony (I call him “Doug”) who wants praise, recognition, belonging, certainty, and the approval of his tribe—that man has to go onto the Cross.

And that gives us a useful test.

When someone teaches you that in order to be a faithful Orthodox Christian you have to adopt all the things that he has adopted—the same practices, the same cultural preferences, the same opinions, even the same enemies—take an emotional step back.

Some of those things may be good. Some may even have helped that person grow in holiness. But that does not make them the Gospel.

Ask instead: Is it true? Is it holy? Does it serve salvation? Does it help me repent? Does it help me love God and my neighbor? Does it build up the Body of Christ?

St. Paul gives us a different model. In 1 Corinthians 9 he says, “To the Jews I became as a Jew,” and “to those outside the law I became as one outside the law.” Why? “So that some might be saved” (1 Corinthians 9:20–22).

Notice what Paul does. He does not demand that other people become like him. He gives up his own preferences and prerogatives so that he can meet them where they are and lead them to Christ; this is the part of his ministry we are to imitate (1 Corinthians 4:16). The culture serves the Gospel; the Gospel does not serve the culture.

That is what culture is for. That is what ritual is for. That is what our customs and teaching are for: they are meant to lead us into the new creation.

So love your country. Love the good things in your culture. Seek what is just and good in politics and public policy. Receive with gratitude the cultures that preserved and handed Orthodoxy down to us.

But do not turn any of them into Nehushtan.

Do not take something through which God has worked and begin treating it as though it were God.

Do not let the gift replace the Giver.

Do not let the image replace its prototype.

Do not let the culture replace Christ.

And do not let any of them divide you from God or from one another.

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.”

That is where all of this has been going: a new creation.

The bronze serpent served its purpose, but it was not God. Circumcision served its purpose, but it could not give the life that comes through union with Christ. Our rituals, cultures, customs, and identities can serve holy purposes, but none of them is the source of our life.

Christ is.

And so St. Paul gives us our final word:

“Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

That is our boast. That is our identity. That is our salvation.

Before the “Blessed is the Kingdom”

Let all things be done decently and in order. (1 Corinthians 14:40)

St. Paul was dealing with a dangerous situation in Corinth: factions, a lack of self-control, and a lack of humble charity; all leading to a lack of fellowship. Individual vices compounded, threatening to turn the liturgy into a parody of its purpose: a diabolical ritual of division rather than a godly one of communion. Proper order in church is essential for cultivating the kind of loving environment that will open the community to the presence and working of the Lord in their midst.

But the answer is less the imposition of rules than it is a restoration of real purpose and meaning. This is a hospital; and we are both patients and healers. There is an important thing that good doctors know but that many have forgotten. It’s not just about identifying ailments and their corresponding prescriptions. That’s important, but we can’t forget the context in which medicines work: the body wants to be well. A healthy atmosphere isn’t just one that is free of disease, but one in which people flourish. Orthodoxy, with all of its rituals and all its beauty, and the availability of grace, is designed to facilitate that kind of atmosphere. Everyone who comes to church has given their lives to Christ; they want to be made well and know that the Christ who is in their midst is the one who can make it so.

So how do we make sure that everything is done decently and in order; that is to say, in a way that builds piety, community, and love? Again, the body wants to be made well; it is designed for health. I’m not just talking about the individual bodies, but the collective body of believers. It wants to be well, with the eye doing its part and the foot its own, with all of the members being under the governing authority of the head. And that head is not – of course - any of us, but Christ. The liturgical dance perfects us when we defer to and follow His lead; and he leads with harmony, beauty, and truth. The rituals of the Liturgy, crossing ourselves, bowing, the processions, the queuing and folding our arms before communion, the constant movement of the children, the singing together, the speaking in unison; all of it molds us from broken individuals, through grace, into a holy family; His holy family.

Every year, I vary the theme of the teaching liturgy. Today, I am going to focus on some of the rituals that help us develop the kind of culture that will lead us always onward and upward.

After the First Antiphon

The rituals are awesome, but how do we know what to do when? Two things will help: first, finding people who have been doing this for a while and doing what they do. That’s the traditional way to learn; not from books, not from the YouTubes, but by being part of a real community and imitating the people who have been doing things well for long enough for it to become natural. The second is to realize that there is often more than one way that experienced people do things, and therefore, that there is more than one way to do things well. This does not mean that “anything goes.” But, at least in this parish, it means that doing things “decently and in order” doesn’t mean that everyone’s actions are perfectly choreographed and everyone moves in lockstep. There are many biblical verses and images that support this view, from “let the little children come unto me” to “the strong bear the burdens of the weak” to the constant movement of the the cherubim and seraphim around the very throne of God tto the image of the church as parts of a body all with different functions and roles; all speak to harmony within a unity of vision rather than uniformity of action.

After the Second Antiphon

An example of a harmony resulting from unity of vision leading to different actions at any given time is the ritual of venerating icons and lighting candles. In general, this is a time for communal prayer; this is why it isn’t really appropriate to say the Jesus Prayer during the services: it is a private devotion, in part meant to deepen our participation in the greater mysteries. Venerating icons and lighting candles are private devotions and venerating icons are private devotions, but they are part of the ritual of preparation for entering into communal worship. They are the traditional things that Orthodox Christians do when they first arrive to the service. For a very few people on Sunday morning, this is done before the start of Orthros. For everyone else, it is done when they first arrive. Just as it is proper when arriving to a big celebration at someone’s house to seek them out and greet them when first arriving, so it is proper to go and venerate the icons of Christ, His Mother, and St. Raphael when we first arrive. I also go over and venerate the Gospel at the place where we do our confessions to ask the Lord for forgiveness of sins, and the icon of the Inexaustable Cup to pray for people who are struggling with addiction. It is also traditional at this time to light candles and pray for our families, our friends, those who are struggling, and, in the Memorial place, for our departed loved ones.

After the Third Antiphon

A minute ago, I told you that it is traditional to go to the front and venerate the icons when you first come in, no matter when that is. This is one of those examples of how people can do things at different times and all be right. But, again, that does not mean that “anything goes.” For one, we don’t play with candles, and we should always light candles with our children to reinforce the proper – and safe – way to do it. In addition, there are times when it is not appropriate to venerate icons and light candles: we do not do that during the processions of the Little and Great Entrances; during the reading of the Epistle and Gospel, and during the Homily. You may feel self-conscious coming up front to venerate icons even when it is allowed, but I assure you that it is part of the constant movement of the “liturgical dance” in established parishes in traditional Orthodox nations. At the very least, venerate the icon of St. Raphael when you first come into the narthex, the icon of Christ there in the middle of the nave when you come in here, and, if you are short enough, the icon of the angels, as well.

Homily

We are the hordes that were brought out of the hedges and byways. We were dirty and broken; but the Lord invited us into His house. Into His Kingdom. Our clothes were soiled and torn; how could they not be? But the Lord didn’t want that to divide us or keep us from the celebration, so He gave us wedding garments. Again that is us. But it’s not really about clothes is it? Yes, we should wear clothes that are appropriate – modest, humble, and respectful, but the clothes are really about the state of our soul. At baptism, God gave us a new garment by forgiving us of our sins. He clothed us in the robes of righteousness. The language of the baptismal services says that we are meant to keep it “undefiled.” This isn’t about clothes. It’s about virtue. I can wear these vestments, and still be like a whitewashed sepulcher on the inside. This makes me like the man in the parable who was sent into eternal torment, despite the fact that my vestments are so nice. For what it is worth; one of the reasons that we vest our priests in such beautiful vestments is so that you are not distracted by my sin. It is similar with the way we dress; when we dress modestly, we do not distract people by our pride. And, the beautiful thing about rituals is that, done well, they transform our hearts. The longer we dress modestly and piously, the more that the acts of putting on and wearing those clothes transform us into modest and pious people. This is not a case of faking it until we make it, but rather “dressing” as the people we are striving to become more of. I have dressed like a priest long enough to have seen the transformation in myself.

The Release of the Catechumen

Starting next week, we will be releasing the catechumens (“Depart all catechumens, let all catechumens depart…”) to go upstairs for instruction on the Orthodox Christian faith.

Before the Great Entrance

It’s okay to move around during the liturgy: in fact the people on the sides and in the middle will need to move out of the way in this next section so that the clergy can process for the Great Entrance. In addition, some people may want to make their way to the procession to touch the vestment of the deacon and priest. This is a good and pious ritual as long as it is done reverently and with the proper understanding. When we do this, we are imitating the woman with the issue of blood who touched Christ’s garment and received healing. But it’s important to remember that in the symbolism of the Great Entrance, Christ is being carried into Jerusalem on a donkey. I, your priest, am just the donkey; Christ is symbolized during the movement by the bread I am carrying. You don’t touch it or the garments that cover them because that would not be safe; so, instead, you touch my garment.

After the Litany of Supplication

God wants us to be one as He is One. The skills of community have atrophied quite a bit; the Liturgy will help to build them back up. One of the ways we do that is by singing together and saying things in unison. Doing this well requires that we submit ourselves to the rhythms, melodies, and patterns of the things that are being sung and said. We add strength to the celebration in the same way a single twig adds to the strength of a bundle; not by standing out, but by being part of it. When one of my seminary students asked a monk for advice on how best to sing as part of a church choir, he told her to be invisible. What he meant was that our rhythms and pitches should match that of the music and other singers in a way that adds to the whole rather than distracting from it. This is as true when we are reading the communion and post-communion prayers as it is when we sing the Our Father, the Creed, and Lord have mercy.

Before the Kiss of Peace

We are going to try something today; it’s new to many of us, but it is actually something quite ancient. After the exclamation, “Let us one another, that with one accord we may confess…” we are going to share the kiss of peace.

During this time, you may turn to the people immediately around you to quietly share the greeting “Christ is in our midst… He is and shall be.” If there is room and the other person is up for it, you can also share a dry kiss on each cheek. Please don’t move around for this; this is one of those things where there really can be too much of a good thing. Regardless, it is best to be finished with your greeting when the deacon or priest comes out of the altar and offers that same greeting, “Christ is in our midst,” to you; that puts a punctuation mark on the kiss of peace and is the indicator that it is time to stop the greetings so that we can say or sing The Creed together. The reason most parishes do not do this good and ancient practice is that it can become immoderate and disruptive. Let’s avoid that.

Before the Anaphora

This is the pinnacle of the service. All of our attention is on participating in the prayers and beauty of the changing of the Gifts and our own partaking of them. Please not that, while it is never proper to talk during the Divine Liturgy, it is especially important to stay quiet during the Anaphora and Communion. Seriously, we shouldn’t even be talking in the Fellowship Hall while people are taking communion.

Final Word

Everything needs to be done in good order, but this is the good order of an orchestra or a ballroom dance rather than that of a military parade.

Recognizing the need for order, we are sometimes tempted to impose discipline on others without first cleaning up our own thoughts and actions; maybe even using the log in our own eye to beat people about the head to get them to fix the spot in theirs. That’s not required. Everyone is trying to do things well. Plus, this isn’t basic training; it’s a hospital. Hospitals have their own rhythms and their own disciplines, but it is a quiet, persistent, and patient one; devoted not to order for its own sake, but for the sake of healing. People want to be well; let’s let all we do here be done in love so that health and holiness may abound.

St. Matthew 19:16–26

You have made the most important decision of your life.

You have seen something of the wickedness of the world. Perhaps you have also seen something of the darkness that resides in your own heart. And you have rejected it. You have done the most important thing a human being can do: you have rejected the fallen way of the world and its diabolical ruler, and you have united yourself to Christ.

You have chosen the better way.

Glory to God.

It is a wonderful thing to become part of the Gospel—not simply to choose a life that eventually leads to salvation, as though Christianity were some kind of transaction, but to choose the Way itself: the way that leads not only to eternal life, but to everything good, everything holy, everything joyful, everything true.

But one of the things we hear in today’s Gospel is that even after we have dedicated ourselves to holiness, to being with God, to being in God and having Him in us, the struggle continues.

Our life in Christ is a process. We can call it theosis, deification, transformation—perhaps “two steps forward and one step back”; I like to call it the long slow slog of salvation. But however we describe it, part of that process is learning to see with new eyes the things in our lives that are still holding us back: things we have carried with us from the old life, perhaps giving them new names or dressing them up with theological language or perhaps just hiding them in some compartmentalized closet of our minds and lives.

As we grow in Christ, and as we receive the wisdom of the Church—through our conscience, through the Scriptures, through spiritual fathers and mothers, and through friends who genuinely love us—we begin to recognize that we are in need of continual change.

Continual repentance.

Saint John Chrysostom offers a wonderful image in his homily on this passage. He asks us to imagine someone who develops an absurd desire to fly through the air by his own power. How do you cure him? Do you start fashioning wings and inventing contraptions to accommodate the desire? Or do you persuade his mind that the desire itself is unreasonable and that he needs to let it go?

Now, if you are like me, your first thought is, “Well, Saint John, eventually we did figure out how to fly.”

That’s not the point.

The point is: let it go.

No, the way to freedom and salvation does not involve breaking into song and building your own private ice castle. That’s not the Gospel, that’s Disney.

But seriously: Let. It. Go.

Do not spend your life constructing elaborate machinery and justifications to preserve something that Christ is asking you to surrender. That is a misuse of your intellect, no matter what the algorithm of the world might say. Jesus Christ, the eternal Logos, says something different.

And as we come to today’s Gospel, there is something important to remember. When Jesus has these difficult conversations—with the rich young man, with the Pharisees, with the scribes—we should not stand at a distance congratulating ourselves for not being like them.

Exegetically speaking, we are them.

Their questions are our questions. Their temptations are our temptations. Their evasions are our evasions.

And yet God loved them.

Christ did not rebuke them out of irritation or self-righteousness. He loved them and wanted them to be saved. He loved this rich young man.

And He loves each of you.

So put yourself in this man’s place and hear what He has to say.

Saint John Chrysostom insists that we should not dismiss this young man as insincere. He really does desire eternal life.

Imagine asking Christ the same question.

“Lord, what must I do?”

Perhaps He begins with the things you already know.

Go to church on Sunday prepared to receive Holy Communion. Go to confession regularly and whenever needed. Fast according to the Church’s calendar. Pray every day. Celebrate the feasts. Give alms. Support the Church. Love your neighbor. Forgive.

There is a list. Much of it is already in your prayer book.

And perhaps many of us could say, with the young man, “Lord, I have been doing these things.”

Not perfectly, certainly, but sincerely.

And yet we know that we have not been completely transformed. We are not yet holy as He is holy.

So we ask again:

“What do I still lack?”

And He may answer us in essentially the same way He answered that young man:

Give it up.

Give up the thing you are holding onto.

Give up the thing you have allowed to define you.

Give it up, and follow Me.

It is tempting, especially for us as Americans, to reduce this passage to money. “Give until it hurts.” And certainly the man’s wealth matters. Christ explicitly tells him to sell what he possesses and give it to the poor. But this is not finally a lesson about financial management. It is about the man’s salvation. The poor do not need this man’s money in order to save him. Christ is not proposing a transaction in which the rich man purchases eternal life by transferring assets to the poor.

Something much deeper is going on.

His sorrow reveals that his possessions have a hold on him stronger than he realized. And Christ says: Let them go.

The same principle applies to us.

Yes, Christians should give generously. We should work toward tithing. We should support the life of the Church and care for the poor. But even there, the deeper issue is not that God needs our money. God does not need our money. The success of the Church does not depend upon our bank accounts.

This is about what possesses us. It is about removing whatever separates us from perfection.

And then Christ gives us this unforgettable image:

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.”

We have heard attempts to make that saying easier—to turn the eye of the needle into some narrow gate through which a camel might just barely squeeze. But don’t tame the image. Christ is describing something impossible. The disciples understand Him perfectly. That is why they immediately ask, “Who then can be saved?”

Exactly. Who can get a camel through the eye of a needle? Nobody. It can’t be done by ingenuity. It can’t be done by discipline. It can’t be done by constructing better wings. It can’t be done by becoming clever enough to preserve everything we refuse to surrender while squeezing it through somehow.

We cannot take everything with us. And the things we refuse to surrender may finally be the very things that keep us from passing through.

There comes a point at which Christ says:

Let it go.

Trust Me.

Pass through.

And this is where another saying of Christ becomes important:

“Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for My name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life.”

That can sound frightening. Immediately we wonder: What will be on the other side? What happens to the people and the things I love? Will my family be there? People even ask, “Will my dog be in heaven?”

I don’t know. I haven’t been there. But I know this: if our dogs are not there, whatever God gives us will do more than suffice.

And that is the kind of trust Christ is asking of us.

When Christ asks us to surrender something, He does not promise that He will simply hand the same thing back to us, only better. He promises something greater: Himself and His Kingdom. Whatever is truly good in what we surrender cannot finally be lost in Him.

Again, the promise of the hundredfold is not some prosperity-gospel investment strategy—“Give God ten dollars and He’ll send you a hundred.” Or whatever the math works out to.

No. It is a description of the way reality has been structured from the foundation of the world. The way to life passes through surrender. There is an intersection between this age and the age to come, and at that intersection stands the Cross. The Cross is the narrow passage.

Christ says:

“If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”

So how are we saved? How do we enter into life in abundance? Again, the money is not finally the point.

Tithing really does involve our money. Prayer really does require our time. Worship really does require us to reorder our lives. But none of these is ultimately about the thing being surrendered. Through them, we are learning to offer ourselves.

Offering our marriages, our children, our friendships, our careers, our ambitions, our identities, our fears, and our desires to God is not primarily about creating better circumstances.

Those benefits may follow. But they are not the thing itself. The blessing is the thing—not what comes back to us, but communion with God.

This is the way of salvation. This is the way of eternal life. This is the way of abundant life here and now.

We surrender what we have because we trust the One to whom we surrender it.

“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

God does not ask us to walk a road He Himself has refused to walk. Christ, “being in the form of God,” nevertheless “emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant.” He humbles Himself. He gives Himself. He becomes “obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross.”

And He tells us: Follow Me.

You have already done the most important thing you can ever do. You have rejected the way of the world and united yourself to Christ.

Now comes the walking.

And that means sacrifice. It means bearing the Cross. It means continual repentance.

It means allowing God, little by little, to show us what we are still clutching and then learning to open our hands.

We have all sacrificed for love. I know enough of many of your stories to know that. We all know that sacrificial love can hurt.

We also know that sacrifice is essential to our salvation.

But here is the great mercy of God.

He knows that we do not always have the strength to make the perfect sacrifice of ourselves. He knows that the way of humility and continual self-offering can sometimes seem beyond our strength.

So He gives us His own sacrifice.

What is the greatest sacrifice we offer to God? Is it our time? Our treasure? Those make a nice alliteration, but no.

The great sacrifice of the Church, the people of God, is what we are doing here.

At the Eucharist, Christ gives Himself to us, and we offer back to God what God Himself has first given us. “Thine own of Thine own.” Even our sacrifice begins with His gift. Christ gives Himself to us so that we may learn, in Him and by His grace, to give ourselves to God.

And the life waiting on the other side of that impossibly narrow passage is His own life.

That is why the disciples’ question—”Who then can be saved?”—receives the answer that completes the whole Gospel:

“With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.”

We cannot squeeze ourselves through the eye of the needle. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot perfect ourselves. We cannot construct enough wings to fly into the Kingdom.

But Christ can bring us through.

And because He gives us His grace, we can let go. We can trust Him. We can take up the Cross. We can follow.

What is impossible with us becomes possible in Him. That is Christ’s final answer to the rich young man’s question. It is His final answer to our question.

So let it go. Trust Him. Take up your Cross. And follow Him through.

Glory to Him Who has given us this way.

St. Matthew 18:23-35
I Corinthians 9:2-12

We have lived through a difficult season, and we can be sure that things are not going to get easy any time soon. In fact, there will always be new temptations before us. One of our greatest social temptations is division. We live in a culture that increasingly encourages us to define ourselves over against one another, to assume the worst about those who disagree with us, and to believe that only our own side possesses what is good and true.

Today’s readings call us to something different.

One of the Lord’s constant commandments is that we love one another—even our enemies. Genuine love cannot exist where we are trying to dominate people, remake them, or judge them against our own image. The Christian life is not about making everyone alike. It is about helping one another become fully who God created us to be.

This is one of the greatest beauties of Christianity. God did not remake the world by stamping everyone into the same mold. He does not hand us a template and say, “Go forth, make disciples of all nations—and make them all look exactly alike.” Yet that is one of our constant temptations. We—or perhaps it’s just me—often imagine that holiness means making everyone into copies of ourselves, even the best versions of ourselves.

But that is not how God works.

When Christ comes to a people, He does not erase what is good in them. He fulfills it.

When the Gospel came to the Slavs, for example, the missionaries did not say, “Become Greeks.” They did not insist that everyone adopt the customs of Constantinople before they could become Christians. Instead, they recognized what was already noble, beautiful, and true in the culture. They purified what was false, baptized what was noble, and brought everything into Christ.

The result was not a copy of Byzantine (Roman) culture. It was the flowering of a distinctly Slavic Christian civilization that has, glory to God, filled the world with saints.

The same is true of every person.

Each of us bears the image of God in a unique way. The Christian life is not about becoming copies of one another. It is about becoming fully who God created each of us to be.

This is also true in parish life.

Every year I watch young men prepare for the priesthood. It would be easy to imagine that there is some specific mold—perhaps the mold made from my favorite priest, or perhaps an amalgam of all the best qualities I have seen in priests who have labored faithfully to the glory of God.

Regardless of the model, we could create one and try to force everyone into it. But that would be a terrible mistake.

Instead, at seminary, we try to recognize each man’s gifts and help him develop them. One may become known for preaching. Another will be given the gift of hearing confessions. Another for beautiful liturgical service. Another for pastoral care. Another may assume the mantle of prophecy. Another may be gifted in administration.

We cultivate those gifts while helping each man overcome—and protect against—his particular weaknesses.

The goal is not uniformity.

The goal is holiness.

And this applies to every Christian, not just clergy.

One of the responsibilities we have toward one another is to recognize the gifts God has placed in each person and help those gifts flourish. Of course, we also help one another recognize the temptations that threaten those gifts, so that together we may grow into the fullness of Christ.

This same spirit should shape the way we look at our neighbors—and even, yes, our enemies.

It is so easy for us to see only the faults of those who disagree with us. It is much harder to ask, “What good is that person trying to protect? What truth have they seen, even if imperfectly? How might Christ fulfill that good rather than simply destroy it—and the soul that bears it?”

That kind of generosity, brothers and sisters, is an act of love.

And trust me—it can be done without giving away the farm.

Saint Paul models this same generosity in today’s Epistle. Some people were criticizing him because there were those receiving material support while preaching the Gospel. Paul responds that those who labor for the Gospel have every right to receive such support.

The point is larger than that particular controversy.

Christians should be slow to condemn practices simply because they differ from our own preferences. The first question is not, “Would I do it this way?” The first question is, “Can this be done faithfully, to the glory of God, to the building up of the Kingdom, and in the service of our neighbor?”

This generosity also changes the way we think about work.

Think about our own society here in America. Some people look at our economic system and see only greed and corruption. Others see only opportunity—a way to make a buck.

The Christian sees something different and asks a different question.

Can this work become an act of love? Can this profession genuinely serve other people? Can I offer my labor to God and my neighbor in this way?

If the answer is yes, then our daily work becomes part of our vocation as members of the royal priesthood. Even the purchases we make become a way of blessing those who have provided them.

We are all members of that royal priesthood. Whatever honest work we do, if it truly serves our neighbor and is offered to God with thanksgiving, it becomes an offering of love.

This isn’t naïve. It’s simple.

I know there are problems with our economic system. I am not suggesting that everything the marketplace rewards is good. It is never acceptable to exploit people, deceive them, or profit from their suffering or their sin. Christian freedom always has moral limits.

But within those limits, our ordinary work becomes another place where we may love both God and neighbor.

Today we are reminded of the boundary that we cannot cross, given to us in today’s Gospel.

The servant who himself had been forgiven an unimaginable debt refused to forgive someone who owed him very little. He used the freedom he had been given not to show mercy but to dominate another.

That is the opposite of the Kingdom.

God possesses all authority, yet He does not tyrannize us. He gives us freedom because love cannot be coerced. He asks us to use our own freedom in the same way: not to manipulate, not to dominate, not to crush, but to forgive, to build up, to heal, and to love.

This calling is especially important in times of disagreement and division.

Every age presents us with opportunities to objectify people, to reduce them to categories, to see them as members of one group or another instead of as persons created in the image of God.

The Gospel calls us to a more difficult path.

It calls us, in the light of Christ, to discern what is truly good in every person, to encourage it, and to help it flourish, while patiently calling one another away from sin.

That is how saints are formed.

That is how cultures are transformed.

That is how families are healed.

That is how parishes become strong.

The Kingdom of God does not spread by manipulation or coercion. It grows through love working in freedom, one person at a time, as each of us becomes more fully who God created us to be.

May God grant us the humility to recognize His image in one another, the wisdom to cultivate what is good, the courage to confront what is sinful, and the charity to forgive as we ourselves have been forgiven.

Matthew 17:14-23

Faith is a wonderful thing—but only if it is faith in the right thing.

When I was a boy, I had an idea...[ the sword.]

At the time, it made perfect sense to me. I was convinced it would work. I probably defended the idea if anyone questioned it. But then reality got a vote. Wood doesn’t care what I believe about it. Physics doesn’t change because I’m sincere. The real world eventually reveals whether my idea was true or false.

Later, my friends and I had another great idea... [the boat.] This one was even more interesting because it wasn’t just my delusion—it was our delusion. We encouraged one another. We reinforced one another’s confidence. The more we talked about it, the more certain we became. And then reality got a vote. The boat either floated or it didn’t. Reality always gets a vote.

This isn’t just true of childhood adventures. It is true of every part of life.

Every one of us has what we might call a “good idea fairy” living in our head. Ideas occur to us. They seem plausible. We become attached to them. Then something even stronger happens. We begin to define ourselves by them. God created our minds to recognize truth, but after the Fall our minds became vulnerable to self-deception. Once we become attached to an idea, we naturally notice evidence that supports it and explain away evidence that challenges it. Even worse, once our identity becomes wrapped up in that idea, disagreement begins to feel like a personal attack. Our passions become inflamed. We stop asking, “Is it true?” and begin asking, “Is it ours?”

The Fathers of the Church had a name for this long before modern psychology existed. They called it prelest—spiritual delusion. Prelest is not simply believing something false. It is the condition in which our desires, our pride, and our passions distort our perception of reality itself. We begin trusting ourselves more than God. We mistake our own thoughts for wisdom, our own feelings for discernment, and our own will for truth.

This isn’t merely an individual problem. Communities suffer from it too. Families can reinforce one another’s delusions. Churches can reinforce them. Businesses can reinforce them. Nations can reinforce them. History is full of tragic examples. Nazism and Soviet Communism were not sustained merely by fear. Millions of people encouraged one another to believe obvious falsehoods. Loyalty was demanded not only to a government but to an entire false vision of reality.

Eventually... Reality got a vote. It always does.

When our delusions concern engineering, biology, economics, or politics, reality eventually exposes them. You can only pretend that gravity is optional for so long before bridges collapse. You can only deny economic realities for so long before societies begin to unravel.

Religion can be trickier. False religion—or even distorted religion—can survive much longer because the consequences are often less immediate. Spiritual delusion has a way of lingering. It can persist for years, even generations.

But eventually... Reality still gets a vote.

Many of us are Orthodox today because of that very fact. At some point the worldview we had inherited could no longer explain our experience. Perhaps it could not account for the reality of sin. Perhaps it could not account for the reality of grace. Perhaps it offered morality but not healing, rules but not communion, forgiveness but not transformation. Eventually something no longer fit. And God, in His mercy, used that discomfort to draw us closer to the truth.

That is all to the good. Because reality is not impersonal. Reality is God’s creation. Truth is not something we invent or negotiate. Ultimately, truth is not merely a thing to be discovered at all.

Truth is a Person.

As Christ Himself says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

And that changes everything. If Truth is a Person, then faith is not merely believing propositions about reality. Faith is entering into communion with the One who is Reality Himself.

Now, if I had preached this sermon twenty years ago, I probably would have ended there, encouraging you simply to trust God, receive the Holy Mysteries faithfully, and allow the life of the Church to heal you from the many delusions that constantly threaten the human heart.

But today I think I need to go further and give an additional warning.

We have created a world that cooperates with our fallen psychology in ways previous generations could scarcely have imagined. Our news is customized. Our entertainment is personalized. Our conversations are curated. Algorithms learn what we already believe—or what we are tempted to believe—and quietly feed us more of it.

The Fathers warned us that the passions naturally incline us toward prelest. Our modern technologies have learned to profit from those same passions. They reward outrage, reinforce tribalism, flatter pride, and encourage us to live inside carefully constructed worlds where our assumptions are rarely challenged. Never before has it been so easy to mistake a carefully curated illusion for reality.

But reality still gets a vote. Sooner or later the real world intrudes.

More importantly, God does.

This is one of the reasons the Church is such a gift.

Not because Orthodox Christians are incapable of error—we certainly are not. Not because priests are always right—we certainly are not. But because the life of the Church is designed, over time, to heal us of prelest. Scripture corrects us. The Fathers correct us. Confession corrects us. Fasting corrects us. The Divine Liturgy corrects us. Even our brothers and sisters in Christ correct us.

Every one of these is a gift from God, gently loosening our grip on illusion and teaching us to see the world as it truly is. The ascetic life is not punishment. It is therapy. God is patiently healing our perception until we begin to see, desire, and love what is truly good, beautiful, and true.

And let me say one more thing. If an algorithm brought you here, welcome. We are glad you’re here. But understand this: the internet cannot catechize you into Orthodoxy. It can introduce you to Orthodoxy. It can even inspire you to seek the Church. But every one of us—whether we were born Orthodox or discovered Orthodoxy yesterday—comes with misconceptions, ideological baggage, and our own forms of prelest. The Church does not simply confirm our expectations. She patiently purifies them. If you stay long enough, Orthodoxy will disappoint every false image you have of it—and thanks be to God for that. Every disappointment with our fantasies is an invitation to discover Christ as He truly is.

And this brings us back to today’s Gospel. The disciples could not cast out the demon.

Why?

Because faith is not simply believing harder. Faith is not positive thinking. Faith is not convincing ourselves that something is true. Faith is trusting Reality Himself.

Christ says that faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains—not because faith is magical, but because genuine faith unites us to the One through whom all things were made.

Every one of us lives by faith. The question is never whether we have faith. The question is whether our faith is placed in something real. Every falsehood eventually collapses under the weight of reality. Every idol eventually disappoints. Every ideology eventually reaches its limits. Every delusion eventually hears reality cast its vote.

But Christ never disappoints. He is not merely someone who teaches us the truth. He is the Truth. He is Reality Himself.

So let us place our faith—not in ourselves, not in our tribe, not in our passions, not in the latest certainty of the age—but in Christ. Let us receive with gratitude the healing life of His Church, which patiently frees us from prelest and teaches us to see the world as God sees it. For in Him our faith never collides with reality, because in Him faith finally meets Reality Himself.

Gold or Straw? I Corinthians 3:9-17

In today’s Epistle, Saint Paul gives us two images. First, he says that we are God’s building. Then he says something even more astonishing: we are God’s temple. Those two images belong together. Buildings are not assembled all at once. They are built stone by stone, beam by beam, choice by choice. That is the Christian life.

Notice that St. Paul does not say, “You are Paul’s building,” or “You are Apollos’s building.” He says, “You are God’s building.” Paul planted. Apollos watered. Others continued the work. But the Church belongs to God. That means the Church was never meant to gather around personalities, no matter how charismatic, convincing, or popular. It gathers around Christ.

Then St. Paul says something even stronger: “No one can lay any other foundation than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.” Chrysostom piles image upon image from Scripture. Christ is the Head, and we are the Body. Christ is the Vine, and we are the branches. Christ is the Bridegroom, and we are the Bride. Christ is the Foundation, and we are the building. Every one of those images teaches the same thing: there can be no gap between Christ and us.

Because he is remembered as such a great theologian, it is easy to forget that St. John Chrysostom was also a pastor who understood the daily struggles of his flock. In his homily on this Epistle, he shares a piece of deeply practical wisdom. We often think the greatest danger comes from great sins, but he warns us about little ones. Going back to the image of the building, a tiny crack in a wall becomes a collapsing building. A small tear in a garment becomes a ruined cloak. A branch cut off only a little while from the vine quickly withers. Small acts of neglect, if ignored, soon become great ones. That is why the spiritual life requires attention—not because God is keeping score, but because love is either growing or shrinking.

Then Paul changes the image. Now he says every one of us is building with different materials. Some build with gold, silver, and precious stones. Others build with wood, hay, and straw. What does that mean? Chrysostom says he is talking about the life we build. Some habits endure forever—we carry both them and their fruits into the age to come. Others prove empty. They cannot withstand the testing fire. Patience, mercy, faithfulness, prayer, and truthfulness become like gold. Resentment, vanity, bitterness, and self-indulgence are straw. They may seem substantial now, but they cannot sustain us in this life, and they have no place in the life of the Kingdom.

That raises an important question: what are we building today? Because we are always building something. Every conversation, every decision, every act of forgiveness, every refusal to forgive, every prayer, every excuse, every generous act, every selfish act—another stone is being laid, or another bundle of straw.

Finally, Paul says, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple?” Notice the progression. We begin as a building. We end as a temple. God is not constructing a monument. He is preparing a dwelling place. His purpose is not merely that we behave better. His purpose is that He Himself may dwell within us. That is why holiness matters—not because God needs better rule-keepers, but because God desires a home in the human heart.

And that changes everything. We do not practice patience simply because patience is a rule. We practice patience because it prepares the heart to receive Christ. We forgive because resentment has no place in God’s temple. We pray because prayer is how the living God is welcomed into His temple. We come to church week after week because God is still building us—stone by stone, prayer by prayer, act of repentance by act of repentance—until the building truly becomes what it was always intended to be: the dwelling place of the living God.

Galatians 3:23-4:5

In today's Epistle, Saint Paul says something that has puzzled Christians for centuries. He tells us that "before faith came, we were kept under guard by the Law." Then he says that "the Law was our tutor"—our guardian—"until Christ came." That naturally raises a question. If Christ had to come, then why did God give the Law in the first place? Was the Law a mistake? Did Christ come to replace what God had already done? Not at all. Saint John Chrysostom says Paul isn't criticizing the Law. He's defending it. The Law accomplished exactly what God intended it to accomplish. The problem wasn't the Law. The problem was thinking that the Law was the destination instead of the journey. Perhaps an example will help. Imagine someone saying, "Elementary school is useless because you can't become a doctor unless you go to medical school." Well, of course you can't. But that doesn't make elementary school a failure. It was never meant to produce physicians. It was meant to teach you to read, to write, to count, to think, so that one day you could become something greater. You don't despise elementary school because you've graduated from it. You honor it because it accomplished exactly what it was designed to do: it prepared you for something greater. That is exactly what Saint Paul is saying. The Law was God's elementary school—or, as Paul says, the guardian who escorted His children until they were ready for Christ. It taught His people who He is. It taught them holiness. It taught them justice. It taught them mercy. It taught them that sin separates us from God. It taught them that sacrifice is necessary. It taught them to long for redemption. Every commandment, every sacrifice, every feast, every priest, every prophet was preparing Israel for Christ. The Law was never the destination. It was preparing God's people for the One who is. That's why Paul calls it a guardian. The Greek word is paidagōgos. It doesn't mean a classroom teacher. It refers to the trusted servant who escorted a child to school, watched over him, corrected him, and protected him until he became an adult. The guardian had an important job. But no loving parent intended for the child to remain under the protection of the guardian forever. The goal was maturity. That is exactly what God was doing with His people. The Law guarded Israel. It preserved them. It protected them from idolatry. It formed them into a people through whom the Messiah would come. And when Christ came, the time of preparation gave way to the time of fulfillment. That is why Paul goes on to say something astonishing. He does not merely say that Christ forgives us. He says that "God sent forth His Son... so that we might receive adoption as sons." Notice how much greater that is. God's purpose was never merely to produce well-behaved servants. His purpose is to raise sons and daughters. He doesn't simply pardon sinners. He adopts us as His children and welcomes us into His household. That is why the Christian life is so much more than rule-keeping. Rules can regulate behavior, but they cannot create love. They can restrain evil, but they cannot heal the heart. Only Christ can do that. Through the Holy Spirit, He writes God's Law upon the heart. Only the life of Christ dwelling within us can make us into the kind of people who naturally love what is good. This is why Orthodoxy speaks so often about salvation – theosis – as a process and a way of life. God's purpose is not simply to forgive sinners. His purpose is to unite us to Christ so completely that we begin to share His life. As Saint Athanasius famously said, "God became man so that man might become god"—not by nature, but by grace. That is what Saint Paul is describing. We are no longer merely subjects obeying a king. We are children living in our Father's house. And that changes how we understand the Christian life. Many people imagine Christianity as an endless list of religious obligations. Pray. Fast. Confess. Attend services. Receive Holy Communion. Read the Scriptures. Give alms. Sometimes it can even feel exhausting. But what if we've misunderstood all of it? What if these are not assignments given by a strict schoolmaster? What if they are the ordinary practices by which children grow into the likeness of their Father? A child becomes part of a family in a single moment. But learning to speak like the family, to think like the family, to love like the family, takes years. So it is with us. The moment we are united to Christ, we truly become God's children. But growing into that reality is the work of a lifetime. As we discussed last week, that is why we return to church week after week. Why we pray the same prayers. Why we fast. Why we confess. Why we receive the Holy Mysteries. Not because we are trying to earn God's love, but because we already have it. These are the ordinary means by which the Holy Spirit forms us into the people God created us to be. Again, little by little, almost without noticing it, our desires begin to change. The sins we once loved begin to lose their attraction. The virtues that once seemed difficult begin to bring joy. We become more patient, more merciful, more truthful, more generous—not simply because we are trying harder or following more rules [even Orthodox rules], but because Christ is living His life within us. But this also comes with a warning. It is possible to remain spiritually immature. It is possible to spend years in the Church and still prefer the security of the guardian to the intimacy of the Father's house; to imagine that God is keeping score instead of raising a family; to measure our faith by checking boxes rather than by growing in love. Saint Paul calls us beyond that. He calls us into maturity. Into sonship. Into freedom—not the freedom to do whatever we please, but the freedom to become what we were created to be. And if we were to keep reading beyond today's Epistle, Paul brings his argument to its beautiful conclusion. He says, "Because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, 'Abba, Father!'" Abba. That is the goal. Not merely that we obey God. Not merely that we fear God. But that, in Christ, we know God as our Father, and by the Holy Spirit we begin to love Him with the very love of the Son Himself. That is the fulfillment toward which the Law was always pointing. That is the life into which Christ has brought us. So let us not become discouraged if the road sometimes seems long or the growth seems slow. No child becomes an adult overnight. Formation takes time. God is patient, and He is faithful. As Saint Paul says elsewhere, "Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, let us press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." For this is the good news of today's Epistle. The Law brought God's people to Christ. Christ brings us to the Father. And the Holy Spirit patiently raises us into the mature sons and daughters we were created to become. That is the Christian life—not merely obeying God's commandments from the outside, but gradually becoming the kind of people in whom those commandments are fulfilled by the life of Christ Himself, until we can truly call upon God with confidence and joy, "Abba, Father."

ouncil
Matthew 5:14-19; Titus 3:8-15

In today’s Gospel, our Lord says something that must have surprised His listeners.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them.”
Now, at first glance, that almost seems unnecessary. Nobody listening to the Beatitudes would naturally conclude that Jesus was attacking Moses. After all, He had been teaching humility, mercy, purity of heart, peacemaking, and love. Nothing about that sounds like rebellion against God’s Law.
So why does He stop to say this?
Saint John Chrysostom says it is because Jesus knows what He is about to do.
He’s about to say things that sound startling.
“You have heard it said, ‘Do not murder.’ But I say to you, do not even harbor hatred.”
“You have heard it said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I say to you, do not even cultivate lust.”
He isn’t lowering the standard.
He’s raising it.
The people might naturally think, “Wait a minute. Is He replacing Moses? Is He setting aside everything God gave us?”
So before He says another word, He reassures them.
“I have not come to abolish. I have come to fulfill.”
That word fulfill is important.
Christ doesn’t erase the Law.
He reveals and connects us with what it was always pointing toward.
The commandment against murder was never just about keeping blood off your hands. It was always meant to teach us to love our neighbor. Christ simply carries it all the way into the heart.
The commandment against adultery was never merely about outward behavior. It was always about purity of heart and faithfulness. Christ carries it into our thoughts, our desires, our imagination.
Every commandment moves in the same direction—from external obedience toward inward transformation.
That’s what fulfillment means.
Saint John Chrysostom points out something else that is beautiful.
Christ fulfills the Law in three ways.
First, He fulfills it Himself.
He alone keeps it perfectly. He can honestly ask, “Which one of you convicts Me of sin?” Every commandment finds its perfect expression in Him.
Second, He fulfills the prophecies.
Everything the prophets had spoken—His birth, His ministry, His suffering, His kingdom—comes true in Him.
But then Chrysostom gives a third fulfillment, and I think this is the one we often forget.
Christ fulfills the Law in us. And that was necessary, because the Law could teach righteousness, but it could not communicate the life by which righteousness is fulfilled.
The Law could show us the good.
It could expose our failures.
But it could not heal the heart.
Christ does what the Law by itself could never do. Through His death, resurrection, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, He actually begins making us into the kind of people the Law always envisioned.
 
Not merely people who avoid murder…
but people who love.
Not merely people who avoid adultery…
but people who become pure.
Not merely people who tell the truth…
but people whose whole lives become truthful.
That’s why Christianity isn’t about lowering expectations.
Neither is it about adding more rules.
It’s about becoming a new creation.
This is why Orthodoxy speaks so much about theosis. God’s purpose is not simply to forgive sinners, but to make them partakers of the divine life.God is not merely interested in better behavior.
He is forming saints.
The commandments are not arbitrary rules meant to restrict life.
They are a portrait of fully human life—life as it looks when it is filled with the life of God.
So when Christ says, “You have heard… but I say to you…” He is not correcting Moses.
He is revealing the deepest meaning Moses had been pointing toward all along.
And there is one more thing that Saint John Chrysostom says that I find deeply encouraging.
He reminds us that at first the Christian life can seem difficult. Forgiveness feels hard. Patience feels unnatural. Humility feels costly. We imagine that holiness means spending our whole lives forcing ourselves to do things we don’t really want to do.
But that’s only true at the beginning.
As Christ heals the heart, He also heals our desires.
The things that once seemed impossible slowly become natural. The sins that once looked attractive begin to lose their appeal. The virtues that once felt burdensome become a source of joy.
That is what spiritual formation is.
God is not simply teaching us to behave differently.
He is teaching us to love differently.
That is why we return to the Church week after week.
Why we pray the same prayers.
Why we fast.
Why we confess.
Why we receive the Holy Mysteries.
These are not religious chores. They are the ordinary means by which the Holy Spirit reshapes the heart.
Little by little, almost without noticing it, Christ is teaching us to desire what He desires and to love what He loves.  The [lost] likeness is gradually restored.
But that encouragement also comes with a warning:
It’s possible to keep the rules while missing their purpose.
The Pharisees became experts at outward observance while neglecting mercy, humility, forgiveness, and love.
That temptation hasn’t disappeared.
 
It’s possible to be outwardly Orthodox—to fast, attend services, know the prayers, defend the faith—and still carry resentment, pride, envy, or contempt in the heart.
Christ loves us too much to let us settle for appearances.
He always leads us deeper.
From actions…
to desires.
From behavior…
to character.
From keeping commandments…
to becoming people who naturally love what is good.
So let us not become discouraged if the road sometimes seems steep. Let us simply keep taking the next faithful step. As Saint Paul says, “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, let us press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
That is the Christian life—not perfection overnight, but faithful formation day after day, until the commandments are no longer something imposed upon us from the outside, but fulfilled within us by Christ Himself. That is what He came to do—not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it, in Himself, and by His grace, in us.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Check out this episode!

Romans 12:6-14

Every Christian has received gifts from God, but discernment begins not with extraordinary revelations, but with a quiet heart that learns to recognize where God is already at work. Drawing on St. John Chrysostom’s image of the vessel, this homily explores how repentance, prayer, humility, and faithful cooperation with God’s grace enlarge our capacity to receive His life. The goal of the Christian life is not to envy another’s calling but to become fully ourselves in Christ, growing “from grace to greater grace, from love to deeper love.”  Enjoy the show!

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In today’s Epistle, Saint Paul says something both wonderfully encouraging and deeply challenging. He reminds us that every one of us has received gifts from God. No one here has been overlooked. No one is unnecessary. The Holy Spirit has given each of us something through which He intends to build up the Body of Christ.

But that immediately raises a question.

How do we know what our gift is?

Sometimes we imagine that discernment means waiting for a lightning bolt from heaven. We think that one day God will suddenly reveal exactly what He wants us to do. Usually, that’s not how it works. More often, discernment grows out of a life that has already become quiet enough to hear God.

Part of your discernment is simply paying attention. What has God placed in your life? What opportunities has He given you? What needs has He placed before you? What abilities has He entrusted to you? Those are often the first clues to discovering your vocation.

Discernment isn’t first about discovering a career or even a ministry. It is learning to recognize where God is already at work and joining Him there.

Saint John Chrysostom has a beautiful insight here. He says that Saint Paul is careful to preserve two truths at the same time. First, every gift is truly a gift. If someone has the gift of teaching, or leadership, or generosity, or mercy, there is no room for pride because none of us manufactured these gifts ourselves. They have all been entrusted to us by God.

But Chrysostom also says there is no room for laziness.

He uses the image of a vessel. God pours out His grace generously, but the amount a vessel can receive depends upon its capacity. The larger the vessel, the more it can hold. The more the vessel has been enlarged through faith and repentance, the more room there is for God’s grace to work.

That means our task is not to envy someone else’s gift. Our task is to enlarge the vessel.

Notice what Paul doesn’t say. He doesn’t tell us to manufacture the grace. He tells us to become capable of receiving it.

I was reminded of that recently while traveling in Italy. Everywhere we went, coffee was served in those little espresso cups. Perfectly fine for espresso—but after a few days I found myself missing my big American coffee mug! A larger vessel simply holds more.

But then it occurred to me that size isn’t the only thing that matters. A large cup that is full of old coffee grounds, grime, or yesterday’s leftovers still can’t receive fresh coffee. Before it can be filled, it has to be cleaned.

The same is true of us. God is always pouring out His grace. The question isn’t whether He is willing to give it. The question is whether we have made room to receive it. Repentance cleans out the vessel, and the spiritual life enlarges it.

How do we do that?

By repentance. By prayer. By worship. By humility. By learning to quiet the passions that so often drown out the voice of God.

This is why the spiritual life is so important. Before we can use our gifts well, we must become the kind of people who can receive and exercise them wisely.

And that requires stillness.

We live in a noisy world. There are constant opinions, constant distractions, constant arguments, constant anxieties. Every day someone tells us what we should fear, what we should desire, what we should be angry about.

It becomes very difficult to hear God when every other voice is shouting.

One of the greatest acts of spiritual discipline is simply learning to become quiet. Not merely quiet on the outside. Quiet on the inside.

Quiet enough that we stop reacting to every impulse. Quiet enough that we stop needing to prove ourselves. Quiet enough that we can finally listen. Only a quiet heart can recognize the gentle movements of the Holy Spirit.

There is another temptation, and it’s a subtle one. Because we rightly confess God’s grace, we can begin to think that our role is simply to wait. “If God wants me to become holy,” we tell ourselves, “He’ll make it happen.”

But Saint John Chrysostom won’t let us think that way. Grace is always God’s gift. But he reminds us that the beginning lies with us. We enlarge the vessel. We exercise the gift. We practice the virtues. We pray. We repent. We forgive. We become faithful in the little things.

God supplies the grace, but He does not bypass our freedom. He invites our cooperation. And our cooperation is required because the command is to love God and our neighbor, and love requires action.

This is what the Fathers mean when they speak of synergy—not that we earn God’s grace, but that we freely cooperate with it.

And that finally brings us to trust.

So much of our anxiety comes from believing that everything depends on us.

What if I make the wrong decision? What if I miss my calling? What if I should be doing something else?

But those are the wrong questions. The right questions are much simpler.

Am I becoming faithful? Am I becoming humble? Am I becoming the kind of person who can receive what God wants to give?

Because if the answer to those questions is yes, then God is perfectly capable of directing your life.

As we look through the Scriptures, one thing becomes obvious. God has never had trouble finding capable people. Egypt had capable people. Babylon had capable people. Rome had capable people. Finding competent men and women has never been God’s problem.

What God delights in finding are hearts that are willing to trust Him.

Hearts humble enough to learn. Hearts faithful in the little things, day after day. Hearts open to receiving His grace.

That’s why comparing ourselves with other people is such a waste of time. God isn’t asking you to become someone else. He’s asking you to become fully yourself in Christ.

So don’t spend your life wishing you had someone else’s gift or someone else’s job.

Don’t imagine that if only you could preach like this person, sing like that person, organize like someone else, then God could finally use you.

That isn’t His question. His question is: What have I already entrusted to you?

And what kind of vessel are you becoming?

Are you enlarging it through prayer? Through repentance? Through trust? Through love?

The saints were not people who received different grace from us. They simply spent a lifetime enlarging the vessel because God delights in filling every vessel that is offered to Him.

God has already given you everything you need for today’s obedience.

Just look around you.

There is no shortage of opportunities to love.

There is no shortage of people who need encouragement.

No shortage of burdens to help carry.

No shortage of prayers to offer.

No shortage of forgiveness to extend.

The opportunities to love are already waiting for us.

And here’s the beautiful thing: as we are faithful in these little things, God enlarges the vessel. He entrusts us with more—not because He needs more accomplished, but because He is teaching us to love more deeply.

That’s the joy of the Christian life.

God is not merely giving us work to do. He is forming us into the kind of people who can love as Christ loves. Every act of obedience, every quiet prayer, every burden we help carry, every hidden act of mercy is one more way that the Holy Spirit shapes us, little by little, into the likeness of Christ.

And that is the greatest gift and the highest calling of all.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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This weekend our nation celebrates the Declaration of Independence. Whatever else one thinks about our country’s history—and there is certainly plenty to celebrate and plenty to repent of—the Declaration itself is a remarkable document.

It is, first, a rejection. It rejects tyranny. It rejects the idea that human beings exist merely to serve the ambitions of earthly rulers.

But it is also a commitment. It commits a people to a new way of life, built upon certain convictions about human dignity, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Now, if we’re honest, those words have never perfectly described America at any point in her history. But they do describe what Americans have continually aspired to become. They are ideals by which each generation measures itself, calls itself to repentance, and tries once again to live more faithfully.

As your priest, I’m not terribly interested in convincing you about apple pie, hot dogs, and patriotism. I mention this because it gives us a helpful analogy for today’s epistle.

Christianity and our own life in Christ also begins with a declaration. 

We have rejected tyranny. Not simply the tyranny of earthly rulers, but the tyranny of sin, death, and the passions.

We have united ourselves to Christ, the One who is Himself Life, Liberty, Truth, and the source of every good thing.

But just as the Declaration did not instantly produce a perfect nation, Baptism does not instantly produce a perfect Christian.

So St. Paul asks us, in effect, “How are we doing?”

Not how are we feeling. Not what opinions do we hold. Not which controversies have we won or followed online. But what fruit is growing? 

Let’s look at the list:

Love.

Is my heart becoming more capable of loving people who irritate me, disappoint me, or disagree with me?

Joy.

Not entertainment. Not excitement. But that quiet confidence that Christ is risen and therefore nothing essential can ever be taken from me.

Peace.

Or am I continually agitated by politics, by the news, by social media, by the next crisis that promises to be the end of civilization?

Patience.

Especially with those whose spiritual growth is slower than I think it ought to be—or perhaps slower than my own.

Kindness.

Goodness.

Faithfulness.

Gentleness.

Self-control.

Notice how ordinary these are.

St. Paul isn’t describing spectacular miracles.

He is describing the slow transformation of the human heart.

And that’s especially important for those who have recently entered the Church.

Many converts—and if we’re honest, cradle Orthodox too—expect to become saints in about six months.  (And the expectation of instant gratification really has become more American than apple pie!)

Then they discover they still struggle with anger. Still become impatient. Still have distracting thoughts during prayer. Still fall into old habits. Still have days when joy seems very far away.

St. Paul isn’t surprised by any of this. He doesn’t say, “If you fail once, perhaps you were never really a Christian.” He says, “The fruit of the Spirit is …”

Fruit grows. Fruit takes seasons. Fruit appears because the tree remains alive.

And if you stumble along the way?

He immediately tells us what the Church is supposed to do.

“If a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.”

Restore him.

Not shame him. Not crush him.

Restore him.

And then, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

This is what the Church is. This is what this parish is. Not a gathering of people who have already become perfect. But a family helping one another keep walking toward Christ. Because here is the Gospel.

The tyranny has already been overthrown. Christ has already conquered sin. Christ has already conquered death. Christ has already opened Paradise. The victory does not depend on tomorrow’s election. Or the next war. Or picking the winner in the latest internet controversy. Or lamenting the newest heresy making the rounds on YouTube.

Christ reigns.

Our task is not to panic. Our task is not to become experts in every cultural battle. 

Our task is to live by the Spirit.

To keep returning to Christ, so that it is:

“Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
and Christ beneath me,”

To keep opening the eyes of the heart—the noetic faculty God has given us—to receive the grace that He never ceases to pour out.

Because the more we abide in Him, the more His life becomes our life.

And then, slowly, almost without noticing it, love grows. Joy grows. Peace grows. Patience grows.

Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control.

That is what freedom looks like.

Not merely freedom from tyranny.

Freedom for communion with God.

And that is the independence worth celebrating every day of our lives.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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