Tag Archives: Homily

On the Feast of the Transfiguration

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

Greetings on this glorious feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord – a feast of not just symbolic or metaphorical glory, but of both the physical and spiritual manifestation, in time and place, of the uncreated glory of the Creator Himself.

Mount Tabor became the place where the glory the Only-Begotten and Pre-Eternal Son of God was revealed to the disciples, as far as they were able to bear it.

The Saviour revealed that which had not been seen by the men and women of the Gospels: not by the magi, even though they fell down and worshipped Him as they laid their gifts before Him; not by the shepherds, even though an angel revealed the new-born Lord to them; not by Symeon the God-Receiver, even though he took the Infant-Saviour into his arms and recognised Him as the Light to enlighten the gentiles; not by the many sick, disabled and possessed people whom He healed and set free, even though He, as their Creator made them into new creations through the miracles He wrought.

Peter, James and John beheld the Saviour in a way that none had so-far beheld Him, as Christ the Eternal Logos revealed His divinity on Mount Tabor, and yet the Transfiguration represented a restoration of the glory in which Adam and Eve were clothed before the Fall, as we chant in the aposticha of vespers

“Thou wast transfigured, and didst cause the darkened nature of Adam to shine again, imparting to it the glory and splendour of Thy divinity.”

The glory that radiated from the Saviour and enveloped Him in the Transfiguration was not something in which He was clothed on the occasion. Rather, as the Church Fathers made clear, when Jesus was transfigured He did not take upon Himself something new that He did not formerly possess, or change into something or someone else. Rather, in the radiant splendour of the godhead, He showed Himself to His disciples as He already was, and as He always had been, though His divinity was temporarily hidden when He was incarnate, as the Saviour of the World.

In the words of St Gregory Palamas,

“We believe that at the Transfiguration He manifested…  only that which was concealed beneath His fleshly exterior. This Light was the Light of the Divine Nature, and as such, it was Uncreated and Divine.”

The Saviour revealed what His humility, His love and compassion had hidden when He was obedient to the Father’s will in the incarnation, clothing Himself in Adam and hiding what the Prophet Ezekiel had seen and struggled to describe when the Lord-Yahweh, the pre-incarnate Saviour, appeared on the heavenly chariot-throne in

“… a likeness with the appearance of a man high above it. Also, from the appearance of His waist and upward I saw, as it were, the colour of amber with the appearance of fire all around within it; and from the appearance of His waist and downward I saw, as it were, the appearance of fire with brightness all around. Like the appearance of a rainbow in a cloud on a rainy day, so was the appearance of the brightness all around it. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord.”

The uncreated-light of Christ’s divinity on Mount Tabor echoed the glory that Ezekiel could only approximate in words and images, and also the glory that Moses encountered when he ascended Mount Sinai: glory that was such that Moses himself was transfigured by his encounter with Christ-Yahweh, as St Gregory Palamas reminded his listeners:

“Even the face of Moses was illumined by his association with God. Do you not know that Moses was transfigured when he went up the mountain, and there beheld the Glory of God? But he (Moses) did not affect this, but rather he underwent a Transfiguration.”

On Mount Tabor, Moses, present in spirit, again reflected the divine-glory, whilst Elias who had bodily ascended into heaven reflected the light of the Transfiguration both physically and spiritually.

And, the Saviour appeared in glory, not simply to show the glory of His divinity to the disciples, but to give them a glimpse of the radiant promise of the resurrection, preparing them for the necessary suffering which would lead Him from Gethsemane and the Praetorium to Golgotha and the Arimathean’s tomb, as He went to His voluntary passion like a lamb to the slaughter, in the brokeness of the suffering-servant foreseen by the Prophet Isaiah, and Who…

“hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him… He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief… brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.”

The Transfiguration pre-empted His suffering, so that the necessity of the Cross and the sacrifice of Christ, as the Lamb of God and New-Passover, could be understood by those closest to Him, so that they would not be scandalised by the Cross of Christ, and His crucifixion.

Behind this voluntary and sacrificial-suffering, self-emptying and selfless giving was the same Christ who was transfigured to show the certainty of the glory which lay beyond the Cross and tomb: the glory of the Pre-Eternal Word made flesh for us men and for our salvation.

As St Ephrem the Syrian preached,

“He led them up the mountain and showed them his kingship before his passion, and his power before his death, and his glory before his disgrace, and his honour before his dishonour, so that, when he was arrested and crucified by the Jews, they might know that he was not crucified through weakness, but willingly by his good pleasure for the salvation of the world.”

Paths of suffering would also be the lot of the disciples, given courage by a glimpse of the glory of the Kingdom and the Master’s divinity, to shortly be reinforced by their experience of His resurrection, His glorious ascension, and the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

The Saviour sought to share His glory with them, so that they – and every generation of faithful – might be partakers and inheritors of His glory, called to be transfigured like Moses and Elias, radiant in His light.

Similar paths have been trodden by the Saviour’s followers throughout the history of the Church, from the Roman persecutions to the trials of the new-martyrs and confessors of the Communist Yoke in the 20th century, and the suffering of the persecuted Ukrainian Church, today.

Through this suffering countless believers have been spiritually transfigured, finding great strength and joy even in their sufferings – encountering God, with their endurance and courage buoyed by the promise touched upon by St Leo the Great in his homily for the feast,

“About which the Lord had Himself said, when He spoke of the majesty of His coming, Then shall the righteous shine as the sun in their Father’s Kingdom (Mat. 13:43), while the blessed Apostle Paul bears witness to the self-same thing, and says: for I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory which shall be revealed in us (Rom. 8:18): and again, for you are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. For when Christ our life shall appear, then shall you also appear with Him in glory (Col. 3:3).”

… and in this he reminds us that most will have to wait for the life of the age to come to behold God’s glory, when the righteous shall shine like the sun, when the elect will be sharers in the light which shone upon the mountain of the Transfiguration.

Few will have the worldly foretaste of this glory, like St Symeon, St Seraphim or St John the Wonderworker, but we live in hope of the promise of the glory of God manifest on the mountain.

To attain to this promise, glimpsed on Tabor by the disciples, we must take up our Cross and follow the Saviour in selfless love and obedience: thoroughly, faithfully, and maximally.

This is the only way each of us can even begin to climb the mountain, even its lowest and gentlest slopes: embracing spiritual life as askesis/ascetic labour – praying, fasting, struggling for purity, through repentance and by making the Gospel and the Law of God the entire rule of our lives, day by day.

Above all, let us be fervent in prayer, as our communion with the Living God joins time and eternity, and our finite and transient human lives with the changeless eternity of the life of God who always IS.

In prayer there is a certain transcendence of time and place, as there was when the Lord was transfigured on the mountain, and pure prayer is at the centre of our metamorphosis and transfiguration.

St Gregory Palamas, (taking the Transfiguration Gospel from St Luke) observes that

“That same Inscrutable Light shone and was mysteriously manifest to the Apostles and the foremost of the Prophets at that moment, when (the Lord) was praying. This shows that what brought forth this blessed sight was prayer, and that the radiance occurred and was manifest by uniting the mind with God, and that it is granted to all who, with constant exercise in efforts of virtue and prayer, strive with their mind towards God. True beauty, essentially, can be contemplated only with a purified mind.“

Let us raise up our hearts and minds to God, as even in wordlessness, this is prayer.  And, through prayer – sometimes easy, often a struggle – let us labour to purify our intellect, thoughts and senses, so that we may contemplate things divine and eternal, and join ourselves to things heavenly and changeless: racing to the mountain in this prayer, eager to behold and experience the glory of the Lord.

“Arise, ye slothful thoughts of my soul, which have ever been dragged down to the earth! Be ye upborne and rise aloft to the summit of divine ascent! Let us make haste to Peter and the sons of Zebedee, and with them let us go to Mount Tabor, that we may see the glory of our God with them, and may hear the voice which they heard from on high; and they preached that Thou, in truth, art the Effulgence of the Father.”

(Ikos of the Matins Canon)

… and let us not simply rise up to go, to seek, to hear, but to spiritually labour and struggle to be clothed as partakers in that very glory that shone forth upon the mountain, so that Adam’s darkened nature in us may shine once more.

S prazdnikom! Happy Feast!

Amen.

 

The Ascension of the Lord

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Dear brothers and sisters, S prazdnikom!

Greetings on this joyful feast of the Lord’s Ascension, in which the economy of salvation finds wondrous consummation, as the humanity in which the Lord was clothed in His Divine Incarnation is exalted to the heavens, in which flesh had never dwelt before.

In the Ascension of the humanity of the God-Man, assumed in the womb of the Most Pure Mother of God, the Saviour calls us to physically be with Him in our own fleshly humanity in the glorified resurrectional-life of the age to come.

His Ascension was infinitely more than the completion of the return-journey of human nature to restored communion with God, as the Word did not become flesh to simply restore the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve to Paradise – to the earthly Eden from which our first-father and first mother had been exiled – but to exalt humanity to the very height of the heavens.

The Son of God, obedient to the Father clothed Himself in humility, in the humanity which He Himself had created, so that the created physicality of human-nature itself might be exulted and enthroned in heaven, at the right-hand of the Father.

In the litia we chanted,

“Thou hast renewed in Thyself Adam’s nature, which had gone down into the lower parts of the earth, and Thou didst raise it up above every principality and authority today…”

… and in the ninth ode of the canon of the feast, we chant –

“The majesty of Him Who became poor in the flesh hath been manifestly taken up above the heavens; and our fallen nature hath been honoured by sitting with the Father.”

The Church Fathers described this human nature to be the deadly bait by which Hades was defeated and decimated as it eagerly sought to swallow the Saviour, the God-Man, when He breathed His last breath upon the Cross. The Lord of Life was deadly-poison in the nethermost regions of darkness, which were unable to contain Him, and were made to spew forth not only Christ the Giver of Life, but also the souls of the righteous-dead held captive there.

But, having defeated death and hell, the Saviour did not elect to lay aside the humanity and flesh that proved so deadly to death. The ‘robe of Adam’ had not just been a temporary or disposable property or costume, but was destined to be the eternal, glorified sign of man’s whole redemption and total restoration in Christ.

Exalted beyond the heavens, in Christ’s flesh, humanity would be worshipped and adored in His Divine-Humanity by the bodiless powers of heaven and by the saints.

“Do you see then to what height of glory human nature has been raised? Is it not from earth to heaven? Is it not from corruption to incorruption? How hard would not someone toil in order to become the intimate friend of a corruptible king here below? But we, although we were alienated and hostile in our intent by evil deeds, have not only been reconciled to God the Father, through our Lord Jesus Christ, but we have also soared aloft to sonship, and now our nature is worshipped in the heavens by every creature seen and unseen.”

St Ephrem the Syrian

The last phrase from these words of St Ephrem seem almost impossible to us, as our nature is not only restored, made incorruptible and reconciled with God, but is worshipped in the heavens because Christ has made it His own nature!

That which was not only unknown, but hitherto seemed impossible came to pass, and as the bodiless powers of heaven beheld Christ ascending in glory, they witnessed something new: human-flesh ascending as the Son of God was exalted not only as God, but also as man.

The troparia of the  third ode of the canon speak of the wonder and astonishment of the bodiless angelic powers on beholding this sight:

“The ranks of angels, O Saviour, on beholding man’s nature going up together with Thee, were amazed and ceaselessly praised Thee.

The choirs of angels were amazed, O Christ, as they beheld Thee taken up with Thy body, and they praised Thy holy Ascension.

As the Saviour ascended in the flesh unto the Father, the arrays of the angels were astonished at Him and cried: Glory to Thine Ascension, O Christ.”

And in the Praises of matins, the angels poetically ask,

“What sight is this? He that is seen is endowed with the likeness of mankind’s form, yet as the incarnate God doth He now ascend far above the bounds of heaven’s heights.”

And, as we celebrate this feast, we perceive it as the signpost and token of the promise and inheritance to which the Saviour calls us as physical as well as spiritual beings.

Yet, for now, as the saints worship the ascended Saviour in His humanity as well as His divinity, they only dwell in heaven as bodiless, spiritual beings, and like all humans other than the Most Holy Mother of God – bodily translated into heaven at her assumption – they must await the end of time before they can dwell physically with the ascended Lord in their glorified and renewed bodies, but this yet unrealised life is the Lord’s calling to all of us through His glorious Ascension.

He does not jealously guard and preserve the reality of His Ascension for Himself alone, but in the eternity of the age to come desires each of us to follow Him and His Most-Pure Mother to heavenly life in the totality of restored, transfigured and ascended, created-being, saying to us,

“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”

John 14:3

The Saviour, seeks the whole and complete restoration of humanity made in His image and likeness, in which the first-father and first mother were intended to grow in perfection and glory, reflecting the glory and holiness of God, as do the angelic ranks.

In our baptism, we have been initiated into the Cross and Resurrection, but we are also called to the ascension also – labouring in prayer, fasting and spiritual toil; through the struggle for purity of soul, mind and body; through spiritual and holy living; aspiring to become vessels of Grace and living temples of the Holy Spirit.

His Life-Giving Cross and Passion, His victory over death and hell, His third-day Resurrection, are steps on the journey to the Mount of Olives and His Ascension in glory, but like every aspect of salvation, the Lord – has given us liberty, freedom and choice – and does not force salvation upon us, even though He desires every human being who has and will have existed since Adam and Eve, to be saved and be coheirs of the Resurrection, Ascension and translation to the glory of His Kingdom.

But – this very much depends on our will reflecting and being conformed to the Lord’s will; our lives being shaped by the Gospel; our spiritual and intellectual faculties, physical existence, and very being demonstrating the indwelling of God in us – in short, the struggle for holiness as Christ is allowed to act in us and through us.

Though the resurrection and Ascension are our calling and vocation, day by day, we must decide if we wish to inherit the Kingdom to which the Lord has called us, and whether we desire to receive the great gifts that the Lord has bequeathed for our eternal inheritance.

On this feast, it is not enough for us to simply outwardly rejoice and celebrate,

“Let us all make feast, and with one accord let us cry out with jubilation and clap our hands rejoicing.”

Unless their spiritual meaning is reflected and made real in our lives, feasts will neither save us nor bring us a share in the life of the Resurrection and Ascension, rather only constant, abiding, and dedicated selfless life in Christ – the Way, the Truth and the Life, what St Paul spoke of, when he said,

“…it is no longer I that live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20)

If we wish to follow the Lord, and mount the very heights of heaven, we must be united to the risen and ascended Christ.

The choice is ours. 

May God bless you all.

In Christ – Hieromonk Mark

Greetings on the Feast of the Annunciation

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“Behold, our restoration hath now been revealed to us! God uniteth Himself to men in manner past recounting! Falsehood is dispelled by the voice of the archangel! For the Virgin receiveth joy, an earthly woman hath become heaven! The world is released from the primal curse! Let creation rejoice and chant aloud: O Lord, our Creator and Deliverer, glory be to Thee!”

Dear brothers and sisters – s prazdnikom!

Greetings as we celebrate the joyful feast of the Annunciation.

How wonderful it is that it is in this springtime of unfurling leaves, spring flowers and blossom ready to burst open the gardens hedgerows, that we celebrate the yearly feast of the Annunciation – that great Springtime in the Divine economy of salvation, in which the long winter of man’s exile and estrangement from God was undone by the Divine condescension and Mary’s ‘fiat’: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy word.”

The great hymnographer, St John of Damascus wrote,

“Today, from the cold winter, the warm and flowery spring has shown forth, and the golden sun of rejoicing and happiness has dawned for us.

Today, God-planted Eden is re-opened, and God-fashioned Adam, due to His goodness and love for man, enters again to dwell within.”

This incarnational journey from the spiritual winter of exile to the springtime of salvation echoes the beautiful prophetic words from the Song of Solomon,

“The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land. The fig tree forms its early fruit; the blossoming vines spread their fragrance. Arise, come, my darling; my beautiful one, come with me.”

As we anticipate the yearly celebration of Christ’s victorious rising from the dead, let us rejoice in the Annunciation, in which our Triune God addresses these prophetic words of Solomon, “Arise, come, my darling; my beautiful one, come with me…” not only to the Mother of God, but to every soul, created, cherished and loved by Him, as the Divine Bridegroom reaches out to humanity through His coming and dwelling among us – and even as we look forward to Pascha/Easter, we are struck that this word “Arise” calls us not only from spiritual slumber to attention and vigilance, but to be sharers and participators in the joy of the resurrection.

So, let us embrace this spiritual-springtime and the promise contained within it, to bask in that golden sun of rejoicing.

We look beyond the dawn memorialised by this day to its culmination of in the glory of the resurrection of the Saviour, the Risen Sun of Righteousness, remembered in this feast as that tiny physical Presence within the womb of the Mother of God, yet the One Who not only re-opened paradise, but went to search for Adam and Eve in the very depths of Hades. Setting them free by His victory on the Tree of the Cross and His third-day resurrection, He was able to say to each of them – to the Forerunner, and to every righteous soul of the Old Covenant – “Arise, come, my darling; my beautiful one, come with me.”

Let us look to Christ the Bridegroom with longing, who in His great love came in the Annunciation and Incarnation to seek us in our own dwelling-place as the Word who “became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

May God bless you and may this great feast be filled with rejoicing, and guide and hasten us towards the Lord’s glorious resurrection.

In Christ – Hieromonk Mark

Homily: The 22nd Sunday After Pentecost

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Luke 8:26-39: At that time, Jesus and His disciples arrived at the country of the Gadarenes, which is over against Galilee. And when he went forth to land, there met him out of the city a certain man, which had devils long time, and ware no clothes, neither abode in any house, but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God most high? I beseech thee, torment me not. (For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For oftentimes it had caught him: and he was kept bound with chains and in fetters; and he brake the bands, and was driven of the devil into the wilderness.) And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him. And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep. And there was there an herd of many swine feeding on the mountain: and they besought him that he would suffer them to enter into them. And he suffered them. Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were choked. When they that fed them saw what was done, they fled, and went and told it in the city and in the country. Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus, and found the man, out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid. They also which saw it told them by what means he that was possessed of the devils was healed. Then the whole multitude of the country of the Gadarenes round about besought him to depart from them; for they were taken with great fear: and he went up into the ship, and returned back again. Now the man out of whom the devils were departed besought him that he might be with him: but Jesus sent him away, saying, Return to thine own house, and shew how great things God hath done unto thee. And he went his way, and published throughout the whole city how great things Jesus had done unto him.  

 

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

In the Gospel for the twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, we encounter the demoniac dwelling in the tombs, benighted and chained by the powers of darkness that controlled him, spiritually-dead and spiritually-decaying whilst still in the world – hardly alive in the miserable, possessed existence that he led, robbed of freedom, dignity, and personhood in his nakedness and enslavement.  

The tenth century monk, Blessed Notker the Stammerer, famously wrote “Media vita in morte sumus… In the midst of life, we are in death…,” and although this refers to us all in our common human mortality, in the case of the possessed man of the Gospel we see this truth in a very graphic and specific way, as he dwelt among the tombs as a possessed and living corpse.  

In many ways, his situation, through the demonic hold upon him, was only a concentration and magnification of the existence of all of the Gadarenes who rushed to the scene when they heard of the miracle of his deliverance and healing – not to rejoice, nor to celebrate and fall down at the feet of the Saviour and glorify Him, but rather to ensure His departure, as His mere presence threatened and challenged the way of life that they did not want changed, as they failed to even appreciate their own spiritual captivity.  

The demons who possessed the tomb-dwelling man recognised Christ, asking, “What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God most high? I beseech thee, torment me not”, yet the Gadarenes were insensate to the Saviour, despite the obvious wonder that He had wrought.   

They were in fearful awe seeing the former demoniac “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind”, but as soon as they learned the details and the loss of their pigs they wanted the Miracle-Worker gone and far away from them, and like the demons their attitude was “what have we to do with you?” Awe changed to fear for themselves and their way of life as they beheld the challenging power of Jesus. 

Their profane attachments to the world, summed up in their reaction to the loss of their pigs (an unclean, impure, and forbidden animal in Jewish society) were more important to them than Christ’s power and message.

They wanted no participation in the miracle; no share in true freedom; no part in Christ’s promise; preferring their worldly attachments, uncleanness and impurity symbolised by the herd of swine – and all because they did not want to change, fearing all that Christ represented as He stood before them.  

How little the world has changed, as we look around and find ourselves surrounded by Gadarenes who do not wish to hear the voice of the Saviour in His Gospel and in His Church, and the challenges that His message brings to lifestyles, choices, attachments, ideologies, -isms and worldly passions that have become a way of life.  

Modern day Gadarenes believe themselves free, though they are as shackled and as much in bonds as the man dwelling in the tombs. They do not want change; they do not want challenge; they fear both. They are too attached to life as it is, even though it is like the pigswill that failed to fill the Prodigal Son, no matter how much he ate. 

Society lives out the maxim we read in the sayings of St Anthony the Great, “A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, ‘You are mad; you are not like us’.”   

There are those who see our Faith as a madness and tyranny that enslaves us, unlike them in the ‘sanity’ and ‘freedom’ of their living-death, passionate attachments and spiritual-slavery.  

But our challenge is to be a contrast to this, and to ALWAYS be like the healed and exorcised man, as “he went his way, and proclaimed throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done unto him.”  

The dangerous truth is that we so often vacillate between behaving as the healed man and the Gadarenes, with their attachment to the swine. We cannot have it both ways, 

He could so easily have slipped back into being no different to them despite his new found freedom. The release from the demonic power that possessed him was only a beginning and the starting point of his new-life in which he begged the Lord to receive him as a disciple, to live alongside Him and follow Him from place to place. But, such was the Lord’s will that the man’s discipleship was to be in his own country, proclaiming the great things that God had done for him.

The liberation of this man who had dwelt in the tombs can be seen as a token and foreshadowing of the resurrection, just as our exorcism, baptism and clothing in our baptismal robe are the beginning of our life in the Risen Saviour and the resurrection in the age to come. But, like the new beginning after the driving out of the man’s demons, the new birth of our baptism is no guarantee of continued and sustained new life in Christ unless we are willing to follow, obey and embrace the freedom we have been granted and the salvific promise made to us. 

We cannot vacillate between freedom and slavery, neither can we embrace and accept change that we like and which suits us, whilst rejecting the need for change, involving the rejection of things and behaviours to which we are attached and with which we are comfortable, despite their harmfulness and destructive power in our lives. 

No… we cannot swing between being like the healed man and the Gadarenes. We have a choice, between freedom and the swine-attachments, between liberated personhood in Christ or the dissolution of self, and loss of personhood in spiritual slavery.

When Jesus encountered the paralysed man at the Pool of Bethesda, He asked “Do you want to be made well?” 

It is not enough for each of us to simply answer “Yes”. We must be willing to do everything to preserve our freedom and growing wholeness in Christ, by following Him and rejecting all that can make us sick again, and possibly even worse than we were at the starting point of our first encounter with the Saviour. 

Having being led through the waters of baptism from slavery and the tyranny of the spiritual-pharaoh to the promised land and freedom of life in Christ, let us not look back and long for the fleshpots of Egypt. 

Serving the Lord with gladness, we must reject all that comes between us and life in Christ, even if we initially miss what is harmful, despite the fact that it may have brought gratification and pleasure in our past lives. What is harmful is so often like this. 

We cannot have freedom and slavery; we cannot cling to the swine, whilst being called to obedience and sacrifice. 

Our life has to be simple and spiritually focussed, not divided and contradicting itself. This can often seem like a challenge, but there is no other way for us to live in Christ as we long for the resurrection and the life of the age to come.

Let us rejoice in the spiritual freedom of our present life, even if it a struggle and challenge, going our way proclaiming the great things that God had done for us.

Amen. 

On the Dormition of the Mother of God

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

Dear brothers and sisters, greetings on this feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God.

On this Summer Pascha, we celebrate the falling-asleep and resurrection of the Theotokos as the firstborn of the children of Adam and Eve, truly risen in body and soul, and assumed into the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven.

As the Hodegetria, ‘she who shows the way’, the Virgin is glorified in the totality of the resurrection, going physically as well as spiritually before the faithful-departed of every generation into the radiant eternity of the Eighth Day, which shall have no end.

Despite the heavenly nature of this feast, we are sometimes so earth-bound as we look at the plashchanitsa and icon.

Though mindful of the Lord taking His Mother – body and soul – into heaven, and though rejoicing at the empty tomb in Gethsemane, we often fail to reflect on the celestial joy of the glorious reception of the Mother of God into heaven.

In his poetic homily for the feast, Mar Jacob of Serugh reminds us that it is not only the company of the apostles that gathers at the Dormition of the Mother of God, but also the whole throng of the angelic hosts, who rejoice at her translation from death to life.

“Ranks and companies, also choirs of the sons of light; a clamour of watchers and a multitude of burning flames.

Fiery seraphim with wings closely covered by flames, with legions and their heavenly divisions.

Mighty cherubim who were yoked beneath his throne are moved by wonder to give praise with their Hosannas.

Followers of Gabriel, a glowing fiery multitude, and variously transformed in their natures.

Followers of Michael full of movement in their dissent, feasting, rejoicing, making merry this day with their Alleluias.

Heaven and the air of glory were filled with celestial beings, who journeyed and came down to the place of earth.”

Mar Jacob then turns to the saints of the Old Testament – the patriarchs, prophets, judges, kings and righteous ones who are not only the forefathers of Christ, but also of the Mother of God, through whom the Saviour was clothed in the flesh of Adam in His Incarnation.

By the victory of the Cross, Christ harrowed hell and stripped it of the righteous held by the chains and shackles of death, but it was only in spirit that their exodus led them from death life, and from the depths of Hades to the heights of heaven.

As they behold the full realisation of the resurrection, which they still await, Mar Jacob paints a poetic picture of their rejoicing as they see their daughter according to the flesh enter Heaven in that very flesh that has been received from them as her forebears.

“On this day Adam rejoices and Eve his wife, because their daughter rests in the place where they are gathered.

On this day the righteous Noah and Abraham rejoiced that their daughter has visited them in their dwelling-place.

On this day Jacob, the honourable old man, rejoices that the daughter who sprouted from his root has called him into life.

On this day the twelve just sons of the lame one rejoiced greatly and are glad in that she visited them.

On this day let also Judah rejoiced greatly, for behold the daughter who has given life, went forth from his loins.

On this day let Joseph rejoice in the great Moses, for one young maiden has called all mankind to life.

On this day let Aaron rejoice in Eliezar and all the tribes of the sons of Levi with their priesthood.

On this day let David the renowned forefather rejoice, because the daughter who was from him, has placed a glorious crown on his head.

On this day let Samuel rejoice with Jeremiah, because the daughter of Judah dropped dew on their bones.

Come Ezekiel, trained in prophetic revelation, if the thing that has occurred is described in your prophecy.

On this day let also Isaiah the prophet rejoice, because she whom he prophesied, behold she visits him in the place of the dead.

On this day all the prophets lifted their heads from their graves, because they saw the light which shone forth on them.

They saw that death is disquieted and flees from within them; and that the gates of heaven and the depths of the earth are opened again.”

Despite their greatness, these Old Testament saints only encountered God in veiled-appearances, types and shadows, with the Lord telling Moses, “Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.”

In the harrowing of hell they spiritually beheld the Lord, whose body rested in the sepulchre even as He descended in soul to liberate their souls from death. In his Ascension, they – abiding in heaven awaiting the physical resurrection – beheld Him in His glorified flesh.

In their earthly sojourn, they had prophetically looked forward through the centuries to the virgin-mother, the rod of the root of Jesse, who would bear Immanuel – God with us.

In the glory of the Dormition and Assumption they welcomed their daughter, whose childhood entrance into the Holy of Holies of the Temple foreshadowed this day, when she entered the eternal sanctuary on high, following her Son’s translation of glorified human-nature to the right hand of the Father in his Ascension.

Though the forefathers, like all of the departed other than the Theotokos, must await the fulness of the resurrection, they rejoiced with the bodiless powers of heaven as they witnessed her Assumption as the fulfilment of the promise that they await.

With the passing of the centuries, new generations of the faithful are added to the synaxis of angels and humans who celebrate the heavenly translation of the Mother of Life, who leads us from death to life, and our own aspiration to the glorious reality of the Dormition and Assumption demands that we look to the example of the Mother of God in our hope to follow her heavenward-journey.

Striving to embrace the simplicity, humility, purity and God-centred obedience of her life, and imitating her by bowing before the Lord’s will each day, we must constantly echo her words, “Be it unto me according to Thy word”, whilst obeying her command at the marriage of Cana, “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.”

Just as her selfless life always pointed to the Saviour, so that she reflected Him as the moon reflects the light of the sun, His teachings and life-in-Him must be the existential reality and narrative of our lives, reflected and realised in each thought, word and deed.

If we are prepared to follow her example, the Theotokos already shows us the way from death to life, and from all that is earthly, temporal and transitory to the eternal glory of heaven, where the saints rejoice – radiant in the resurrection of Christ for all eternity.

Striving to emulate the Mother of God, and to follow her, let us struggle to mount the heights of heaven, rejoicing in the words of Mar Jacob “that death is disquieted and flees… and that the gates of heaven and the depths of the earth are opened again.”

Amen.

On the Sunday of Zacchaeus

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At that time, Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. And, behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, which was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich. And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press, because he was little of stature. And he ran before, and climbed up into a sycamore tree to see him: for he was to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and saw him, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, and come down; for today I must abide at thy house. And he made haste, and came down, and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all murmured, saying, That he was gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner. And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord: Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.

(Luke 19:1-10)

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

Dear brothers and sisters,

On the Sunday of Zacchaeus, we yearly encounter the spectacle of Zacchaeus the publican and Roman-collaborator – despised and shunned by Jewish society – clambering into the branches of a tree, from whose height the whole perspective of his life was transformed.

A man who knew that he had power and control over the lives of the people whom he squeezed and plundered for the sake of his own purse, as well as that of the Roman occupiers, threw image and propriety to the wind, simply to see over the heads of those – and indeed everything – that stood between him and his encounter with Christ.

St Ephrem saw the tree that Zacchaeus climbed as the opposite of the Tree of Knowledge, for whereas Adam was guilty through his actions at that tree, the tree for Zacchaeus became a sign abd token of his innocence.

“The first fig tree of Adam will be forgotten, because of the last fig tree of the chief tax collector, and “the name of the guilty Adam will be forgotten because of the innocent Zacchaeus.”

St Ephrem the Syrian: Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron

Like the children of Palm Sunday, the tax-collector climbed amongst the leaves and branches to see the approach of the Saviour, in a childlike spectacle, but whereas the Feast of Palms marks the Saviour’s entrance into the Holy City, the events of the Sunday Gospel mark the entrance of the Saviour into the life and house of Zacchaeus, where he is welcomed by a heart and home that were changed by the salvific encounter.

Furthermore, the tree becomes a reference for the tree of Cross, and Blessed Augustine of Hippo calls upon us in our humility to climb the Cross, as Zacchaeus in simple humility, climbed into the boughs of the ‘sycamore’.

This Gospel calls us to stop worrying about what the world, society, colleagues, neighbours… even family think of us, so that in seemingly divine-folly and abandon we may try to gain a viewpoint and perspective of the Lord – doing whatever it takes to draw near to the Saviour, leaving the crowd behind, and not worrying about what anyone else thinks in order to  encounter the Saviour, even to simply glimpse him for a moment.

As Zacchaeus forgets his own dignity and sacrifices his image to behave like a child rather than a wealthy Roman civil servant, willingly to make a laughable spectacle of himself, he puts aside the cares of the world, and by doing so receives the King of all, as we are called to do every time we chant the cherubic hymn.

To return to Blessed Augustine’s words on this Gospel:

“Zacchaeus climbed away from the crowd and saw Jesus without the crowd getting in his way. The crowd laughs at the lowly, to people walking the way of humility, who leave the wrongs they suffer in God’s hands and do not insist on getting back at their enemies.

The crowd laughs at the lowly and says, ‘You helpless, miserable clod, you cannot even stick up for yourself and get back what is your own.’ The crowd gets in the way and prevents Jesus from being seen. The crowd boasts and crows when it is able to get back what it owns. It blocks the sight of the one who said as he hung on the cross, ‘Father, forgive them, because they do not know what they are doing…’

He ignored the crowd that was getting in his way. He instead climbed a sycamore tree, a tree of ‘silly fruit.’ As the apostle says, ‘We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block indeed to the Jews, [now notice the sycamore] but folly to the Gentiles.’

Finally, the wise people of this world laugh at us about the cross of Christ and say, ‘What sort of minds do you people have, who worship a crucified God?’ What sort of minds do we have? They are certainly not your kind of mind. ‘The wisdom of this world is folly with God.’

No, we do not have your kind of mind. You call our minds foolish. Say what you like, but for our part, let us climb the sycamore tree and see Jesus. The reason you cannot see Jesus is that you are ashamed to climb the sycamore tree.

Let Zacchaeus grasp the sycamore tree, and let the humble person climb the cross. That is little enough, merely to climb it. We must not be ashamed of the cross of Christ, but we must fix it on our foreheads, where the seat of shame is. Above where all our blushes show is the place we must firmly fix that for which we should never blush.

As for you, I rather think you make fun of the sycamore, and yet that is what has enabled me to see Jesus. You make fun of the sycamore, because you are just a person, but ‘the foolishness of God is wiser than men.”

Like Zacchaeus, let us become fools in the eyes of the world, to gaze upon the face of the All-Merciful Saviour, and to embrace His way and Holy Wisdom which is folly to the proud and worldly.

Like Zacchaeus, let us find the humility and abandon to become a spectacle, whatever the world may think and say.

Like Zacchaeus, let us open the doors of our home and heart to the Saviour, so that He may say to each of us, “Today, salvation has come into this house.”

Amen.

08/08/2021 – Homily for todays Gospel The healing of the blind men

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Following todays Liturgy Father Mark reflects on the Gospel reading.

The blind men are asked – Do you believe that I can Heal you ?

A firm reminder that when our faith is challenged we should remember that Christ came with love to heal us all.

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