Good Fruit from Dry Sticks

Among the saints commemorated today is our holy father John Kolobos (little, or dwarf) of Egypt, a friend of St. Paisios the Great, and teacher of St. Arsenius the Great. Among the aspects of his life we learn how, as a novice, he was given an obedience by his spiritual father, St. Pambo, to plant a dry stick in the ground, and to water it every day until it produced leaves. St. John watered that stick every day for three years, until, by the grace of God, the stick produced leaves, and then fruit, which St. Pambo gathered and took to the church, saying, “Come and taste the fruit of obedience!”

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Yesterday, we celebrated the festival of the holy archangel Michael and all the other bodiless powers with the added blessing of the presence of the most holy Theotokos through her Kursk Root Icon, whose visit was a great privilege and blessing. We considered how it is that the nature of angels, who certainly appear far more powerful than we are ourselves, not to have dominion, but rather are called to serve. We remember that it is said of many of the saints that they lived as angels on earth; and how each of us is called to be the servant of everyone around us, honoring and respecting every person because they are made in the image and after the likeness of God, and, being blind to, and quick to forgive, their sins, remembering only our own sins, to consider all others as being more worthy of honor and respect than we may ever be ourselves.

Everyone, I am sure, will agree that actually obtaining this ideal requires a great deal of labor, a great deal of struggle. Yet the life of St. John Kolobos and his watering of the stick should encourage us, as we should also be encouraged by the account of the woman with an issue of blood, of whom we hear in the reading today from the Gospel according to St. Luke. No doctor was able to cure her, and she suffered daily for twelve years; but drawing near to our Lord Jesus Christ by faith, and touching only the fringe of His garment, she was healed. Both her healing and the restoration of life and the bearing of fruit from what was once a dry stick are beyond our power to achieve, or to comprehend; yet both are possible by the grace of God.

Brothers and sisters, in so many ways we are like the woman with an issue of blood: suffering the loss of our lives both bodily and spiritually because we have cut ourselves off from the root of Life by our sins. We are like the dry stick: lifeless, and with no chance of bearing fruit. But if we will put our trust and hope in the Lord, and draw near to Him by prayer and fasting and all the other practices of our Orthodox way of life, and persevere in doing so, even when all it might seem that we are doing is watering with faith a dry, lifeless stick, by our obedience, by desiring and pursuing the grace of God, not the least of which by drawing near with fear and faith to regularly receive the holy mysteries of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, we may have hope that we also, like the woman with an issue of blood, and like the dry stick, may be healed, and so bear the fruits of the Spirit, and so live in such a way that others may taste of that fruit, and draw near to God, and so be saved.