Greetings for the feast of the Holy Martyr Mamas: a shining beacon of holiness and complete abandonment to God, despite his young years.

As the offspring of a family anchored in pure faith in the age of the martyrs, the youth, St Mamas, put nothing before his loyalty to Christ.

In today’s Gospel reading, we hear of the rich young man, who struggled with the thought of letting go of his wealth to follow the Lord: material wealth and security that came between him and life in Christ.

But… as we have reflected – year by year – for each of us who are far from rich, there may be an equivalent obstacle to abandoning ourselves to life in Christ and following Him freely with focus on Him alone.

Attachment to earthly comforts – our homes and possessions, our holidays and trips, our clothes and accessories, our social engagements and calendars, our careers and professional or social reputation – may all come between us and Christ, and be chains to the world that prevent us from true discipleship and honest service to the Lord. 

Even the most basic things – too much food, too much sleep, too much television, social media or computer consumption can come between us and Christ – who might say of each of us, that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for us – with our individual attachments, comforts and perhaps even passions – to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. 

We have to be clinically honest with ourselves and ask – have we put our hobbies and interests, social engagements or diary commitments before being present at the Divine Liturgy – whose celebration is the greatest thing that humans can do on earth? 

Have we neglected the Great Feasts of the Church, perhaps because social commitments have taken precedence over the celebrations of the great events in the life of the Lord or the Mother of God, or great saints? 

Have we justified missing the Liturgy or other services because we are tired, even though we know full well that the Saviour was so exhausted when He fell beneath the Cross and the weight of the whole of humanity, when He carried each and every one of us to Golgotha, dragging Himself in the broken, tortured weakness of His flesh to the Place of the Skull? Even when He was tired to the point of dereliction, the Saviour did not give up on us, so when we are tired, should we give up on Him?

Have we been weak and indulgent, failing to even fast for one day out of obedience to Christ through the tradition of His Church – convincing ourselves that we can’t go a single day without milk in our tea or butter on our toast – using health, tiredness, inconvenience or worldly excuses to justify needless leniency? 

Have we neglected our prayers because social media, television, the theatre or a trip to the pub with our friends has been higher on our priority list? Have we found more time for our friends than we have for God? 

Are we more motivated to meet our peers, than to meet God in the Holy Mysteries, in prayer, in pilgrimage, or in the silence of our hearts?

When we fail in such things, our fall is very often not a one-off-event, but a manifestation of a serial behaviour, of a fault-line in our spiritual lives, and an attachment, that comes between us and Christ – our equivalents to the young man’s wealth, and reminders of camels and needles, and the threatening and frighteningly low probability of us entering God’s Kingdom.

Do our attachments form an obstacle, or even a barricade between us and God, and block any progress even towards His Kingdom, let alone getting anywhere near its entrance?

But… to return to St Mamas…

His parents, Theodotus and Rufina, were dead, having perished in imprisonment for the Faith in the Roman persecution of the Christians. Any wealth or possessions of the once illustrious family had been confiscated and lost when they were arrested. 

His mother Rufina had begged the Lord to find someone to care for her prematurely -born child, who entered the world in a prison cell, and the Lord called a rich Christian widow to adopt the child. 

As an open and faithful Christian, the faith of young Mamas became an increasing danger as he entered early adulthood, and it made him a target as his parents had been, in ongoing persecution. 

Like his parents, Mamas was arrested, but his noble, patrician family background and his confident and capable character led the governor Democritus, in Cappadocian Caesarea to refer his case to the Emperor Aurelian, hoping that this promising young man could be saved from Christianity and lured away from Christ. 

The emperor sought to buy Mamas and steal him from Christ by offers of a comfortable life, with wealth and influence – the prospect of him becoming a rich young man.

In the lives of the martyrs – time after time – we hear the judge seeking to entice the one being accused and tortured for Christ: the enticement of a warm bath house to the forty martyr’s of Sebaste; the offer of a military career and imperial commission to the great warrior saints; the offers of rich marriages and socially-eminent husbands to the aristocratic women great-martyrs, renounced and betrayed by their noble pagan families.

Life’s comforts and security were the lure used to draw Christians away from their confession of Christ again and again. 

In the passions of the martyrs, we hear their rejection of the offers what amounted to a living death in miserable earthly existence after having denied and blasphemed God.

Occasionally we glimpse those who gave in.

We know of the single apostate of Sebaste who preferred the warmth of a bath house to suffering with his fellow soldiers perishing in a freezing Armenian lake. 

We know of the weakness and apostasy of St James the Persian, under the persecution of the Sassanian King, Yazdegerd I, and of his repentant confession and death by gradual mutilation. 

We know of the apostate monks of the Holy Mountain, who betrayed Orthodoxy and accepted the unia, only for their dead bodies to be cursed with hair and fingernails growing century after century, making them a terrifying spectacle for those who saw the physical sign of betrayal. 

Mamas, too, was offered enticements and incentives, but refused and remained anchored in Christ.

In contrast to both emperor’s offer of wealth and influence, and the portrait of the rich youth of the Gospel, we encounter the fifteen year old Mamas divinely delivered from imprisonment, and living in the wilderness, in fasting, prayer and constant communion with God – surrounded by wild animals with which he had the relationship of Adam and Eve in paradise: 

With his life with his foster-mother Ammia a thing of the past before his arrest, we see a young man with no earthly possessions, wealth or material chains to the world – despite the traps and offers that had been set before him, and despite the former wealth and social position of his family.

Unlike the rich young man of the Gospel, this spiritually-rich youth had nothing material to chain him to earthly existence or to come between him and the Lord, yet even in his poverty and abandonment in Christ, there was still one last danger that could imperil his soul and make him a slave to the world. Undue attachment to worldly life itself – life according to the ways and influences not only of the world, but its fallen ways of thinking and existing. 

Even though he was so young, St Mamas gave no thought to self-preservation when he had been discovered by the pagan authorities.

When the governor sent a detachment of soldiers to search the mountain and arrest Mamas, they mistook him for a simple shepherd, though he invited them to his dwelling, and gave them milk to drink, revealing his name. 

Whether they failed to understand, or were avoiding detaining him we shall never know, but  His life tells is that he told the soldiers to go ahead of him into Caesaria, as he followed them to the gates of the city, and Saint Mamas, accompanied by a mountain-lion, whom he rides to his martyrdom in many of his icons. 

He was unbreakable in this second trial by the deputy-governor Alexander, not even weakening as he was tortured.

He was thrown to wild animals in the arena, but they would not touch this teenage boy who had lived in peace and harmony with the animals of the wilderness, and so, one of the pagan priests mortally wounded him with a trident. 

The passion and witness of this young, but fearless martyr need to make us take a long hard look at ourselves, asking uncomfortable questions about who resolute we are in confessing Christ, whether we are willing to sacrifice the attachments, comforts and security of our lives to follow him, and to even ask whether we are so attached to life itself, that this holds us back from being free and liberated followers of Christ. 

It is not only riches that can come between us and the Kingdom, and to see today’s Gospel as only being about wealth is dangerous and a deception.

How far we would go to both pursue and preserve our Faith, and what are we willing to sacrifice and leave behind to follow Christ.

There was no chance of a camel passing through the eye of a needle, as St Mamas rode into the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven mounted on the lion of courage, journeying to martyrdom and willing to surrender and give up everything – including his temporary and fleeting earthly life to follow Christ – the Way, the Truth and the Life.

The Holy Gospel according to Mark (6: 14-30): At that time, king Herod heard of Jesus (for his name was spread abroad) and he said, that John the Baptist was risen from the dead, and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him. Others said, that it is Elijah. And others said, that it is a prophet, or as one of the prophets. But when Herod heard thereof, he said: “It is John, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the dead.” For Herod himself had sent forth and laid hold upon John, and bound him in prison for Herodias’ sake, his brother Philip’s wife: for he had married her. For John had said unto Herod: “It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife.” Therefore Herodias had a quarrel against him, and would have killed him; but she could not: For Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just man and an holy, and observed him; and when he heard him, he did many things, and heard him gladly. And when a convenient day was come, that Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords, high captains, and chief estates of Galilee; and when the daughter of the said Herodias came in, and danced, and pleased Herod and those who sat with him, the king said unto the damsel: “Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it thee.” And he swore unto her: “Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me, I will give it thee, unto the half of my kingdom.” And she went forth, and said unto her mother: “What shall I ask?” And she said: “The head of John the Baptist.” And she came in straightway with haste unto the king, and asked, saying: “I will that thou give me by and by in a charger the head of John the Baptist.” And the king was exceeding sorry; yet for his oath’s sake, and for the sake of those who sat with him, he would not reject her. And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison, And brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel: and the damsel gave it to her mother. And when his disciples heard of it, they came and took up his corpse, and laid it in a tomb. And the apostles gathered themselves together unto Jesus, and told Him all things, both what they had done, and what they had taught.

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

Dear brothers and sisters, greetings as we celebrate the feast of the Holy Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist, John. S prazdnikom!

This feast of the beheading of the Forerunner is a reminder that truth and righteousness have a cost, and that we – as those who know and worship Truth as a Person, in our Lord and Saviour – must have the courage of the Forerunner, without worrying and stopping to calculate the cost of being true to our Faith and opposing the falsehood of rulers and powers.

We must live truth, speak truth, act in truth, and – as the people of God – preach truth, and oppose falsehood as a poison which is soul-destroying, deadly and the way to perdition.

Just as St John opposed the tyrannical Herod – a false king, unworthy of the throne of Israel – so, across the world, people of Faith face tyranny from above, with laws that trample on rights of religious expression; with liberal weaponised accusations of extremism used to quash and attack freedom to protest and for basic association; with constant surveillance following us and tracking the movements our everyday lives; in a world in which saying there are only two genders in heresy, in which using the wrong pronoun can threaten jobs and careers, and where language-police constantly survey our vocabulary for offences against the decency of the new dystopia; a world in which parental rights over children are denied by governments, who destroy the lives of the young as woke agendas not only allow, but even encourage confused minors to surgically, physically and mentally destroy themselves when identity is a source of confusion and doubt; a world in which political candidates feel fine in advocating abortion up to birth, and in which living and viable aborted children are left to die on surgical trollies.

The most chilling things is that we are surrounded by people who willingly and energetically dance to the crazed and frantic tune of this Herodian dystopia, in which governments compete not only for the crown, but to show their “worthiness” and conviction in advancing the brave new world.

A great curse was that Covid saw the leaven of Herod infect not only government and society, but sadly even the Church, as individuals danced so frantically to the frenzied rhythm of Herod’s tune, that they trampled the Holy Things of God in doing so.

In Greece, people happily reported priests who continued to commune the faithful, and bishops disciplined and suspended them for their Faith and Orthodoxy.

Closer to home, science-worshipping, but Christ-denying theoretically Orthodox totally abandoned the Holy Mysteries, and across Britain clergy who feared germs and Herod more than God and who showed more “faith” in science than in the Body and Blood of the Conqueror of Death, and who later appeared with the chalice like angels-of-death in black masks, ironically to impart the Bread of Life to the faithful.

The faithful were not permitted to venerate icons, which could so easily have been wiped, and a new iconoclasm was wedded to the eucharistic heresy of those who preached the Body and Blood of the Saviour as a source of infection and death, and not the Bread of Life.

After this, as though it was not bad enough, clergy beating the tambour and piping the melody for Salome’s dance, refused the unvaccinated entrance to Liturgy and access to the Holy Mysteries.  

How the tyrannical spirit of Herod fills the world and even infects the Church, yet as children of the Resurrection, we face all of this darkness with courage, fulfilling the witness of the Holy Forerunner.

Like the Baptist, each of us must be willing to individually raise the prophetic voice, to oppose the madness and iniquity of the world; each of us needs to live the apostolic life, in witnessing for the Truth and spreading the good news of the freedom the Gospel brings, in contrast to the slavery to Herod; each of us needs to struggle to be earthly angels and heavenly people, seeking to build the Kingdom of God, not of Herod.

And, when we do this TOGETHER, no longer as limited, weak and feeble individuals, but AS THE CHURCH, we will do so not with the voice of the Forerunner, but with the voice of the Saviour Himself, Who has made us partakers of His Resurrection.

As the Church, like the Forerunner, we must speak for the Saviour, uniting in denouncing the iniquities and falsehood of the world, and decrying the tyranny of the latter-day Herods.

But for this we require unity: unity in seeking righteousness and holiness, unity in prayer, unity in the Holy Mysteries, unity in upholding and defending Sacred Tradition, unity in resisting assaults against the Faith and the Church, unity in preserving the purity of Orthodox teaching: united to proclaim the Way, the Truth and the life. 

So, let us fast together, pray together, keep the feasts together, celebrate and share the Holy Mysteries together, rejoice in pilgrimage together, cooking, eating and having fellowship together, so that TOGETHER, we may traverse the spiritual wastes of the world and be like John, as angels-of-the-desert making straight the way of the Lord, proclaiming the Lamb of God, and knowing that He will come again in glory to lead the faithful into the Kingdom of Heaven, when the kingdoms of the countless modern Herods shall perish and cease.

In unity of Faith, united in Christ, united in His theandric Body – the Church – let us pray for and seek John’s boldness, neither compromising nor even counting the cost of TRUTH.

Amen!

Thanks to Father Mark “the Younger” for Sunday’s Homily.

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

In today’s Gospel we are told of encounters Christ has with those in need, and through this reading we are taught again about the power of true faith.

Firstly – Christ continuing his journey, after healing the woman with an issue of blood and raising Jairus’s daughter from the dead encounters  blind men on the road.

The  blind men had followed Jesus and were crying out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!”

Here we can see that their faith was already active and alive. We naturally understand this to be the case because they have heard or witnessed the previous miracles that Christ had performed. So, whilst they could not see physically, they possessed something greater, a spiritual sight – and it was this that would ultimately bring about the healing they fervently petitioned for. 

However, unlike some of the other miracles we are told that Christ did not immediately heal the men and continued the short remainder of his journey to the house he was visiting …. with the spiritually emboldened blind men following Him, continuing their petitions to be healed.

They recognised Jesus as the Son of David – the promised and prophesised Messiah. What is important for us to understand is how they persisted in their plea.

This persistence in prayer is something we must learn and adopt in our spiritual lives. Often we pray but we do not receive what we ask for immediately, and we are tempted to give up. We need to be mindful that the Lord may delay his answer not out of spite or egotistic control – but out of love –  to allow us to reveal the sincerity and depth of our faith, not only to Him but also to ourselves. He desires that we approach Him not just with our lips, but with a heart full of faith of trust and persistence.

When Jesus finally turns to the blind men, He asks them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” And they responded, “Yes, Lord.”

Their answer was simple, but it carried the fullness of their faith in Him as the Messiah. Jesus then touched their eyes, saying, “According to your faith be it unto you” and immediately their eyes were opened.

These blind men submitted themselves to God with their unwavering faith, and it was according to their faith that they received their sight.

The Gospel then continues with a Second healing: the healing of a man possessed by a demon that had made him mute.

We know little of this man, but the power of evil is clearly evident in his long and continual suffering – but once the demon was cast out, with light replacing the darkness the man spoke, and we are told the crowd “marvelled”. Everyone that is except the Pharisees.

It was in this healing that the Pharisees accused Jesus of casting out demons by the prince of demons. That only evil commands evil. They could not see the truth that He (Christ) is the Messiah – our God and Saviour. They could not see the truth or the light because their hearts were blinded by pride, by envy, by spite and by jealousy

 “Divine grace is resisted by those who are puffed up with pride, but is eagerly received by those who know their weakness and seek God’s help”. (St. Cyril of Alexandria)

The blind men and the man possessed, in their humility and torment received healing, while the Pharisees in their arrogance, rejected the very source of life – the God they purported to worship so grandly and publicly.

It’s a significant reminder to us of the importance of humility and the dangers of pride. We may be different colours, may have different opinions, different lives but are all made in Christs Image and should all profess the same faith and submit ourselves fully to His love and mercy.

Therefore in order to receive the fullness of both physical/spiritual healing and Grace that Christ offers freely, we must come before Him in humility with an open and contrite heart, acknowledging our need for His mercy.

Finally… after the miracles of healing

It’s easy to overlook to huge but simple statement in the final phrase in what appears to be what we call a “filler or throw away statement”

We hear that Christ “went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction”.

It is in this last phrase that we are again reminded that the mission of Christ is not just about healing (be it physical blindness or casting out demons and breathtaking miracles), but it is to bring the light of truth to all humanity, to heal the sickness of sin, and to restore us to the fullness of life in Him which was taken from us by the falling of Adam.

We see a convergence with John’s Gospel where he writes about Christ. “I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but through Me.” (John 14:6)

Christ Himself is the Truth: truth in action!  Christ healing the sick; Christ casting out demons; and Christ teaching humanity the way of salvation.

Therefore, let us, follow the example of the blind men in today’s Gospel. Let us approach Christ with firm unwavering faith, dogged persistence and absolute humility, trusting that He is the truth and that He can heal us, not just physically but spiritually.

Then as we receive His Grace, let us give glory to God, recognising that all good things come from Him and through Him.

Amen.

“А́нгелом дивя́щимся восхо́да стра́нному, и ученико́ м ужаса́ ющимся стра́ шному взы́ тия, возше́л еси́ со сла́вою я́ко Бог, и врата́ Тебе́ взя́шася Спа́се. Сего́ ра́ди си́лы небе́сныя дивля́хуся вопию́ ще: сла́ва снизхожде́нию Твоему́ Спа́се, сла́ва ца́рствию Твоему́, сла́ва вознесе́нию Твоему́, Еди́не Человеколю́ бче.

While Angels gazed with wonder upon Thy dread Ascension, and while the disciples were awestruck as Thou from earth wast taken, O Saviour, as God Thou didst ascend in glory while the gates were raised for Thee. For this cause then did the Hosts of the heavens cry, while marvelling in amazement: Glory to Thy descent, O Saviour Christ. Glory to Thy Kingdom’s sovereignty. Glory be to Thine Ascension, O Thou only Friend of man.”

Kathisma hymn from festal matins

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

Dear brothers and sisters, Съ праздникомъ!

Greetings on this feast of the Ascension: a feast of double-wonder – the wonder of the apostles as they saw their Lord and Master translated in His risen humanity into the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven, and the wonder of the heavenly hosts, as they beheld their Lord and Creator entering heaven in the very humanity He had created, and in which they had beheld Him laid in the Cave of Bethlehem, when Divine Love reached down from heaven to earth.

The Saviour’s Ascension is the consummation of this salvific journey of love, in which He not only descended to His creation, but even clothed Himself in that creation in His flesh, uniting Himself to humanity that had fallen in Adam and Eve, and was banished from Paradise.

But, the Saviour not only descended to earth in His earthly life, but by His sacrificial death descended even to the depths of Hades. Through His self-emptying and self-denying love, the Life-Giver descended into the realms of the dead to seek the lost, to rescue them and lead them to the bosom of the Father on high.

Mar Jacob of Serugh writes of the Creator-Saviour seeking out those whom He had made in His own image and likeness, rescuing His Image-bearing children from the chains and shackles by which death that held them captive in Hades.

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“By death, He descended to the abyss of the dead, which swallowed Adam,

And like a brave swimmer He brought up the precious pearl.

He descended, explored the depths, visited the ones who were buried and sought for the lost ones,

He slept with the dead and laid His bed among those who have fallen asleep. He made there a speech of judgment with the Prince of Destruction,

and He asked from him the image of Adam, which was corrupted.

He descended to the depth of the abyss and sought there

the great likeness of the creative (power), which was perishing in hell.

He had done judgment to death in the land of death and asked for the image, and taking His own to come with pomp from perdition.

He conquered the Tyrant in his place and inspected his chamber,

and He took out the booty, which was gathered by him in his palace.

He unbound mercifully the bound ones and bound powerfully the Captor,

He returned mightily to the land of his Father.”

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Having suffered in fleshly-unity with mankind, enduring His life-giving passion and death for the sake of humanity, and having descended to the nethermost regions in search of His children, His glorious translation from earth to heaven shows us that the annulment of the fall and the restoration of Adam is not simply by the conquering of death and His third-day Resurrection, but in the ascended glorification of thathumanity and its enthronement at the right hand of the Father.

This is the ultimate sign of God’s love, which calls mankind not to the earthly paradise from which fallen Adam and Eve were banished, but to the glory of heaven, where the Ascension exalts and enthrones humanity above all of the angelic ranks.

As children of God, we are called to holiness by our baptism into the Saviour’s death and Resurrection, and called to the heavenly kingdom by His glorious Ascension.

If we truly believe that “as many that have been baptised in Christ have put on Christ”, in faithfully living the Paschal mystery, the Ascension will call us to spiritual-labour, in a struggle for the Kingdom of Heaven, gained not by half-hearted Christian-nominalism, but only by dedication and spiritual force: the force of Faith, the force of prayer, the force of repentance – following in the foot-steps of  the Saviour as the Way, Who guides us to the Kingdom of Heaven by His glorious Ascension.

Our life must be a constant and forceful struggle for the kingdom of heaven, and whatever earthly worries or burdens we may have to endure or bear, the Ascension challenges us not be be earthbound and have our eyes fixed upon the clay from which we were formed, but to look heavenwards with hope and joy, as did the disciples, for…

“when the Lord entered the heights of heaven, not only were they affected with no sadness, but were even filled with great joy. And truly great and unspeakable was their cause for joy, when in the sight of the holy multitude, above the dignity of all heavenly creatures, the Nature of mankind went up, to pass above the angels’ ranks and to rise beyond the archangels’ heights, and to have Its uplifting limited by no elevation until, received to sit with the Eternal Father, It should be associated on the throne with His glory, to Whose Nature It was united in the Son. Since then Christ’s Ascension is our uplifting, and the hope of the Body is raised, whither the glory of the Head has gone before, let us exult, dearly-beloved, with worthy joy and delight in the loyal paying of thanks. For today not only are we confirmed as possessors of paradise, but have also in Christ penetrated the heights of heaven, and have gained still greater things through Christ’s unspeakable grace than we had lost through the devil’s malice. For us, whom our virulent enemy had driven out from the bliss of our first abode, the Son of God has made members of Himself and placed at the right hand of the Father…” (St Leo the Great: Sermon 73, “On the Lord’s Ascension”)

The right hand of the Father in the Kingdom of Heaven is our inheritance, for which we must struggle with force, in hope, and with Faith, called and guided by the Saviour going before us, from whence He will return in glory to judge the living and the dead, and to where He will welcome His good faithful servants into the glory of the age to come, saying, 

“Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”

The Ascension is our promise and calling, so let us hear and act!

Amen.

The feast of the Visitstion of the Most Holy Theotokos to St. Elizabeth, which falls today for Orthodox Christians, is a wonderful celebration of both spiritual and familial kinship and of the reality of unborn life and personhood.

The little icon, missed by many people, at the back of the Anglican  shrine-church in Walsingham, captures the joy of the encounter, which we know to also have been the meeting of the Saviour and the Forerunner within their mothers’ wombs, with the Forerunner leaping in recognition of his Saviour and Creator’s Presence.

Life-unborn lept for joy at the Presence of the Life of the God-Man, not yet born or incarnate in the world.

This great meeting of the Only-Begotten Son of God and the unborn Forerunner is one which we boldly need to thrust before those who insistently claim to be ‘Christians’, yet refuse to take a Christian stance on the sanctity or even the reality of life, personhood and individuality from conception.

The centre of the wondrous meeting in this feast of the Visitation is one hidden from our eyes in traditional icons: the unseen encounter of creation and creature with the Creator, within the new Holy of Holies: the sanctuary of the womb of the Mother of God.

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

Dear brothers and sisters, today sees the coinciding of the feast of the Annunciation with the Sunday of the Cross at this point of mid-Lent, and in that coincidence we see a great spiritual complement, as the Mystery of the Cross illuminates and explains the significance of the Annunciation and the Virgin’s obedience and agreement to become the Mother of God, and Mother of our Salvation.

In the troparion for the feast, we hear, “Today is the fountainhead of our salvation and the manifestation of the mystery which was from eternity.” But what is this mystery from all eternity?

The answer is simple… it is the mystery of God’s redemptive love, and the response of that Divine Love to the rebellion and fall of Adam and Eve.

• a redemptive-love that seeks out out the lost and actively looks for those who have gone astray, descending to earth so that by the Cross, it can raise up humanity to heaven: a love in which God descends so that His earthly children may not only be raised from the dead, but ascend to heaven itself.
• a healing-love that restores humanity and all creation: sick, fallen, broken, dysfunctional and exiled.
• a sacrificial-love in which Christ-God hides His Divine glory and exhausts Himself for the sake of His fallen children, taking on human nature at the very moment of the Annunciation, so that human nature could be restored and transformed – to be as God originally intended.
• a self-denying love in which Christ – Love-Incarnate – was beaten, tortured, mocked and killed, fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy in which the Christ of Holy Friday is seen in the Man of Sorrows: oppressed, despised, rejected, wounded, bruised and beaten, and brought in silence like a lamb to the slaughter… in endurance and suffering that was the fruit of this selfless, perfect, unlimited love.

This Divine Love, finds its ultimate realisation in the Cross and the Saviour’s Passion, but the incarnate journey of the Only-Begotten Son to the Cross began when the Archangel appeared to the Mother of God, who accepted her necessary part and obedience in the economy of salvation as she submitted to God’s will, saying, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word…” In plain-speech, I am God’s slave, let what you say come to pass in me. I surrender myself to God. I submit.

In his epistle to the Philippians, St Paul counselled the Christians in Caesarea Philippi, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, He humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

In other words… have the mind of Christ through your obedience, humility and submission to God’s Will, with the Cross as the ultimate sign and realisation of this, and do not stop to think of yourself or worry about yourself, but rather give yourself over to the will of the Father.

Though the Cross was decades away from the day on which the youthful Mother of God received the good-news from the Archangel, and even further in time from when St Paul would write those words to the Philippians, her obedience and humble submission to God were already the foundation for the Cruciform redemptive plan of God’s love, as she took on not simply the role of a servant, but of the very Mother of the Saviour: lauded in the akathist-hymn as the “Ladder by which God came down”, and “the Bridge leading from earth to heaven”.

Just as the Only-Begotten Son’s obedience, surrender and submission to His Father’s will is at the very core of the meaning of the Mystery of the Cross, it was already reflected in the Mother of God’s selfless acceptance of the divine plan revealed by the Archangel Gabriel.

This Mystery became an abiding reality in her life at the side of her Son, as was prophetically recognised by St Symeon in the temple, “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also.”

St Paul wrote to the Church in Rome, “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of One shall many be made righteous.” and in his first letter to the Corinthians (15:21-2), the Apostle states that “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”

The first Adam brought about the fall by rebellion and disobedience, but conversely, as the Second-Adam, the Saviour brings about reconciliation and salvation through obedience and submission to the Divine Counsel. As the pinnacle of the saving love of God, the Cross is the sacrificial-means of this redemptive act.

Similarly, we an opposite contrast between the first-mother, Eve, and the Mother of God as the “Second-Eve”.

Before the Fall, Eve, like the Mother of God, Eve was a sinless virgin, but in as much they not only listened to such different messengers, through their contrasting disobedience and obedience towards God, the stark contrast of both action and consequence emerges.

Tertullian (160-240) wrote, “As Eve had believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel. The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, the other, by believing, effaced.”  

Mary’s obedience annuls the rebellion of Eve and its fateful consequences, as expressed by St (c. 120/140 – c. 200/203) in his “Against Heresies”:

“Mary, the Virgin, is found obedient, saying, ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord be it unto me according to your word.’ But Eve was disobedient for she did not obey when as yet she was a virgin.”

“Thus Mary’s obedience undid the knot of Eve’s disobedience; for what the virgin Eve had bound up by her unbelief, the Virgin Mary set free by her faith…”

At the root of this emancipation and freedom is the conforming of human free-will to the will of God as the very foundation of obedience, and by this alignment of the human and Divine Will, the Annunciation becomes the moment of the Incarnation and “the fountainhead of our salvation and the manifestation of the mystery which was from eternity”.

Despite all of those childhood years within the precincts of the Temple, despite the unknown experiences of the infant-Theotokos in the Holy of Holies, Mary’s ‘fiat’, her ‘yes’ to the Archangel, was not a foregone conclusion. She still possessed freedom and free-will, but her selfless-love for God and obedience to Him, led to her acceptance of God’s plan, and led her through the trials and sorrows of her life as Mother of the Saviour, epitomised by seeing her Son bloodied and disfigured upon the Cross.

From the encounter between the Mother of God and the Archangel at the Annunciation to the Crucifixion of her Son, as she stood at the foot of the Cross, her life was one of continuous agreement and alignment with the Divine Will, negating the disobedience of Eve whose rebellion saw her driven away from the Garden of Eden and barred from the Tree of Life.

Like the moon reflecting the rays and light of the sun, so the Mother of God reflects her own Son in her own life, and by emulating her humility, selflessness and obedience, she will truly be our Hodegetria and show us the way.

That way will lead us to the foot of the Cross, which – as the supreme sign of the Saviour’s sacrificial love and obedience to the Father – is our Tree of Life, which in the poetry of the services of the Church we hymn, saying, “…we embrace thee, O desire of all the world. Through thee our tears of sorrow have been wiped away; we have been delivered from the snares of death and have passed over to unending joy.”

As the new Eve, the journey of the Mother of God took her from the Annunciation to to stand at the foot of the Cross, as the new Tree of Life, but beyond that, to hear the good tidings of another angel, who would greet the Myrrh-bearing woman on that first Pascha, with the wondrous words,

“Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying, the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.” (Luke 24:5-6)

Today, speaking of the Annunciation, we chant those words of the troparion, “Today is the fountainhead of our salvation” but on Pascha, with our hearts and minds at the empty Tomb, reflecting upon the precious Cross, we can then joyfully proclaim the words of St Ephrem: “through faith it is no longer a tree, but the fountain of life eternal; that the Cross is a fountain of Life even as Jesus said: I am the life and the resurrection (Jn 11:25).”

And as we venerate the Cross at this mid-point to Pascha, hearing the Saviour say, “Whosoever desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24), we must be joyful in the knowledge that the meaning of this Cross – the submission, humility and obedience, seen in the life of the Saviour, also reflected in the life of His Mother will lead us to the joy of the empty Life-Giving Tomb and the angelic words, “Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen…”

May the mystery of the Cross in our lives, through selfless love, obedience, submission and humility lead us to the fountain of life and the joy of the resurrection.

Amen.

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

On this Forgiveness Sunday when we commemorate the casting out of Adam and Eve from Eden, we reflect on the fall and exile of the first-father and the first mother through their disobedience and rebellion against God, yet we do so on the threshold of the wonderful journey that leads us from this annual commemoration of the sorrow of banishment to the wonder of Pascha: the great sign and celebration of our salvation, and of our reconciliation with God through the Saviour’s life-giving passion and third-day resurrection.

We embark on this penitential-journey with the foreknowledge of the economy of salvation, of the Victory of the Cross, and the message of the empty Tomb, already knowing that Christ is risen and has conquered death by death.

Though this Sunday is a lamentation for the world-changing effects of the disobedience of the first-Adam and first-Eve, in the imminent penitential-season we will journey to Golgotha and the empty Tomb to rejoice in the saving and life-giving obedience of the Saviour, the second-Adam, born of the Theotokos who is the second-Eve: the Son of God obedient to the will of the Father “even to the death of the Cross”, and the Mother of God obedient to the will of the Most High, announced to her by the archangel to whom she obediently submitted: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.”

Through this redemptive obedience, beyond the season of the Great Fast, at Pascha, the three signs of the fall identified by St John Chrysostom – the woman (Eve), the tree and death – will be negated and cancelled out by the Woman (the Theotokos), the Tree (of the Cross), and the new life of the resurrection!

The signs of the fall and the bitter fruits of pride and disobedience were destroyed by humility and obedience, as the Lord born in the flesh, entered the world through the selfless obedience of the Mother of God, redeeming humanity through His own obedience to the Father, even descending into Sheol/Hades to harrow it and lead Adam and Eve and all of His exiled forefathers and mothers on an exodus journey from the slavery and imprisonment of death to the freedom of the life of the heavenly kingdom.

So… as we mourn the bitter fruits of the tree of disobedience in Eden, we already anticipate the end of the Lenten journey, looking to reap the wondrous life-giving fruits of the tree of obedience, which is the Cross – looking forward to celebrating Christ’s victory over death and the harrowing of hell, through the wood of the cruciform Tree of Life set up on Golgotha.

Yet as we remember the exile of Adam and Eve from paradise, we must not fall into the mistake of thinking that the mystery of the Cross was something centuries away from them, after the Old Testament centuries, or that the Lord had to come up with a plan B, having to figure out how the fall would be remedied and fallen humanity restored.

There is an old Slavic icon, (of western inspiration, and not without controversy), the “Pre-Eternal Council – Prevechny Sovyet” which reminds us that even as Adam and Eve fell, even as the effects of their disobedience were pronounced, and even as they were banished, God as all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful ALREADY had the remedy – already had the answer, and already looked forward to the unfolding of the mystery of salvation in the fullness of time.

Without entering into iconographical and canonical arguments, this icon possesses a powerful message because of the salvific reality it expresses.

The Father, with the dove representing the Holy Spirit upon His breast already presents the Tree of the Cross, upon which the Son is nailed, often with angelic wings covering His body and showing that this is not in the fulfilled event of the crucifixion, but as a pledge and a sign of the sacrificial love and obedience in which the Saviour – met in the Old testament as the angel of Great Council – will enter creation and human-existence to look for and find Adam and Eve, and seek out their children from the beginning of the ages to the end of time.

It is an iconic representation of the council of the persons of the Holy Trinity, the perfect community of love and self-offering, giving and directing love one to another, and manifested in this salvific-plan to be realised and fulfilled Saviour’s future passion, and the Victory of the Cross.

In this icon, in the already conceived economy of salvation, the Father has already raised up the Cross, and the the Only-Begotten Son and Word of God has already accepted its inner meaning and taken it up in His obedience to the Father, and through the centuries of the Old Covenant, God-in-Trinity has already set in motion the journey to Golgotha and the Arimathaean’s Tomb through the generations of the sons of Adam.

In the Old Testament, through their human generations recorded in the ancestral genealogies in the Gospels, Christ-Yahweh is already on the highway seeking out the Prodigal Son, journeying toward his exiled heirs

The encounter with them in His earthly, incarnate-life, His Passion, and the Mystery of the Cross is already unfolding through the Old Testament centuries, not just as a historical and temporal event in Jerusalem centred on an ignominious wooden gibbet, but as the self-emptying, sacrificial-love through which God’s remedy for the fall and its bitter fruits is made real to broken and fallen humanity.

In the vigil service, we hear the words, “Taking up the armour of the Cross, let us make war against the enemy”, so in this season of the Fast, let us imitate Christ, and take up our own Cross, renouncing our self-will, selfishness and the earthly shackles that enslave us, knowing that the Mystery of the Cross in our lives will lead us from death to life, from slavery to freedom and from darkness to light, led forward by the Saviour to Whom we cry, “Glory to Thee, Who hast laid Thy Cross as a bridge over death, that souls might pass over upon it from the dwelling of the dead to the dwelling of life!”

This stark contrast of bitterness, exile and death with sweetness, reconciliation and life runs through this day, and is represented powerfully by the fact that it is traditional for Paschal Hymns to be chanted during the rite of forgiveness at the end of vespers, so that even as we are lamenting the fall and asking forgiveness of one another we are already singing of “a Pascha which has opened for us the gates of paradise’, and even as we embrace one another asking forgiveness and reconciliation, we hear the Paschal words, “Let us embrace each other! Let us call ‘brothers’ even those that hate us, and forgive all by the resurrection!”

Knowing that obedience is at the heart of the Paschal Mystery, let us seek to follow the Saviour from death to life through our repentance and transformation by the Saviour in Whom all things are made new, and Whose Cross and Tomb call us to journey with prayer, fasting and spiritual watchfulness through the season of the Great Fast to the radiant night of Pascha, starting as we now celebrate the vespers of forgiveness, performing the rite of forgiveness as we hear the quiet invitation of the Pascal greeting: Christ is Risen!

Amen.