"I Am the Door"

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In the reading today from the holy Gospel according to St. John the Theologian, our Lord says of Himself that He is “the door.” What does He mean when He says this? One place we can go for insight is the reading from the holy Gospel according to St. Mark: a memorable scene, in which a paralyzed man, carried by four friends to our Lord to be healed, is actually brought into His presence by being lowered through a hole they made in the roof. What does the Lord tell this man to heal him? “Your sins are forgiven.”

Of course, this stirs up the Pharisees, who sought at all times to live according to the 613 laws of Moses, because they thought that this was the pathway to salvation. Having dealt with the man’s problem, our Lord then dispels their objections by healing the man physically as well as spiritually, linking the two. This is important for us to understand; so let’s look at the objections raised by the dissenters.

“Who but God can forgive sins?” they ask. Our Lord thus shows all who would raise this objection that He is, indeed, God, by restoring the paralyzed man to physical health, so that he could stand, pick up his bed, and return without help to his home. So it is that we begin to understand how we should grasp that our Lord says of Himself, “I am the door.”

Remember that when Adam and Eve were cast out of Paradise, cut off from dwelling in the immediate and intimate presence of God, the gate – a form of a door – was guarded by cherubim with a flaming sword, to prevent Adam and Eve from seeking to return to the presence of God in that way. Now here is our Lord telling us that He, God, is the way for us to return to Paradise, to return to dwelling with God close by us – indeed, within us, something that Adam and Eve did not possess. He is the door to the abundant life He came to bring.

How do we access that door? We access it by becoming like Him: by drawing near to Him with faith, in love, through prayer and fasting and giving and forgiving; and by living at peace, with the love of God, with all those around us. And, to the extent we fail to do these things in love, we confess our sins, asking forgiveness, and starting again – even if we must break through our own ceiling, our earthly desires and attachments, in order to be lowered into His presence to be healed by the forgiveness of our sins.

Brothers and sisters, let us keep this in our hearts and on our minds as we journey through the forty days of fasting before Holy Week and Pascha. Let us remember that our Lord is the door by which we enter into eternal life; and let us, through the way of life of the Orthodox faith and church, strive to let the light and life of Christ be seen in and through us, so that we may enter through the Door, and bring others with us as well.

The Triumph of Orthodoxy

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Today is the “Sunday of Orthodoxy”; sometimes known as the “Triumph of Orthodoxy.” The celebration of this day, which takes place every year on the first Sunday of Great Lent, celebrates the decision made at the Seventh Ecumenical Council that icons do not violate the provisions of the second of the Ten Commandments, in that, by becoming incarnate, the invisible God Whose form could not be depicted properly in any way could now be seen, and so could be depicted in icons. The same was held to be true for icons depicting the Mother of God, and the saints, for all of them, though imperfect, show us the image of Christ – indeed, every person is made in the image, and after the likeness of God, and so each one of us is an icon of Christ.

We come to church, and we find icons. We cross ourselves and bow, or make prostrations, before them. We offer prayers before them, asking for the prayerful assistance of the saint whose image we see, or of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, being aware of His presence with us in a special way through our seeing Him in the icon. We are not confused. Our Lord is not in the icon – at least, not in some magical way. For we know that our Lord Jesus Christ, being God, is everywhere present and fills all things through God the Holy Spirit. He is present in the icon only in the same way that He is, as we have said, “everywhere present.” But for those who understand – and the Orthodox Church has never required any of her members to revere the icons, only to avoid saying that the use of icons is idolatry – we are connected by faith with the person we see in the icon, and that the love and respect we show to the icon is not offered to wood and paint, but actually passes to the person who is the object of our devotion.

But our bowing and prostrations and prayers are meaningless if we do not realize that these images are less important than the living icons standing here all around us. Our devotion and respect and prayers are meaningless if we forget that every living person is an icon, and do not treat them with the same devotion and respect we offer to the images of pigment on wood. The truth of our Orthodox faith, and the triumph of our faith, celebrated today, is worthless if it does not cause us to understand the connection between the icons in the Church and the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the homeless, the sick, and the imprisoned about whom we heard on the Sunday of the Last Judgment. Remember what our Lord said: for inasmuch as you have done these things unto one of these, you have done it unto Me; and to the extent you have not helped them, you have not helped Me – and each group receiving its reward. We will not be judged on the basis of how much we reverenced the icons we find in the church and in the prayer corners of our homes; we will be judged on the love and respect we have offered to the living icons all around us. That recognition and the action that flows from it, as we reach out in love to help another person – that is the real triumph of Orthodoxy. May God grant us the grace we need to be truly Orthodox, loving God, and loving our neighbors as we love ourselves.

"Where are the Other Nine?"

Our holy father Ambrose of Milan was born to a Christian mother and a pagan father, who was the Roman governor of the province in which Milan was the principal city. When his father died, the emperor appointed Ambrose in his place. It was in his capacity as governor that he went to the church in Milan, where the bishop had died, causing a division in the congregation between the Orthodox Christians and those who were followers of the heresy taught by Arius. Although Ambrose had gone to keep the peace, a child at its mother’s breast cried out, “Ambrose for bishop!” – a cry taken up by others as well, who considered it to be the voice of God. Ambrose was baptized, consecrated reader, and ordained a subdeacon, deacon, and priest all within one week, at the end of which he was consecrated as the Bishop of Milan. He slept very little, worked tirelessly, prayed without ceasing and fasted every day except Saturday and Sunday. Because of this, he was privileged to see many great works of God, and to perform them, as well. He healed the sick, cast out demons, and even raised the dead. Humble before those whose position in society was lower than his, he was fearless with the nobility; he even ordered that the Emperor Theodosius not be permitted to enter any church until the Emperor repented of his sins. He departed this life on the morning of Pascha in the year 397 A.D.

In the reading today from the Gospel according to St. Luke, we hear the account of the healing of the ten lepers, one of whom, a Samaritan, returns to give thanks, prompting our Lord to ask, “Where are the other nine?” Presumably, those who did not return to say, “Thank you,” were from the people of the first Covenant, to whom God had revealed Himself in a special way, setting them apart from everyone else on the earth. It was this group of people who had been given the promise of the Messiah, and the prophecies about Him. Now He had come; but among these ten lepers, the only one to recognize Him was someone from outside the house of God.

We should always pay attention when the circumstances and responses of those who had been given the first Covenant by God are the subject of the story, because now that group is us, the people of the new Covenant. We are partakers of the special revelation of God to us in Jesus Christ; we are the beneficiaries of the promise of God; and now we can enjoy the special relationship that sets us apart from all other forms of belief, worship, and practices. But can we honestly say that we are doing any better than our predecessors? Like them, we are more likely to live according to the ways of the world, rather than the way of life required by God. Like those who are not members of the community of the new Covenant, we are not looking for the second coming of Christ; and, like the nine who were healed but did not return to give thanks, we daily experience the loving mercy of God, but so often fail to give thanks to God, much less give thanks to God when things do not go the way we’d like them to go. God might look at St. Ambrose, and the good example of his life, and, thinking that the saint was not made in any way differently than any of us, ask, “Where are the others?”

Brothers and sisters, let us not be like those who, having been blessed by healing in the Gospel account today, failed to return to give thanks and to bow down at the feet of our Lord. Let us set our hearts and minds to give thanks to God even in the midst of sickness and suffering, and certainly when we have been given good things by God. Let us not follow any longer the ways and practices and beliefs of the culture around us, but rather let us beg God to give us His grace and strength to follow instead the example of life given to us by our holy father Ambrose, of the saint whose name we bear, and of the most holy Lady Theotokos.

Holy hierarch, father Ambrose, pray to God for us!

Saint Nicholas: The Power of Love

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Our father among the saints, Nicholas, was the only child born to wealthy parents, and was instructed in the Christian faith by his uncle (also named Nicholas), who was the bishop in the town of Patara, where St. Nicholas was born. When his parents reposed, Nicholas gave away his considerable inheritance to help the poor, and entered the monastery his uncle had established. It was his uncle who tonsured Nicholas as a monk, and who ordained Nicholas a priest. Throughout his life, Nicholas was known for his love and mercy, and for miracles worked both before and after his repose. Part of his legacy can be seen in his presence in our midst even today. Many nations, including Russia, look to him as a protector of their land and people, and more than 1,200 churches are named in his honor, including 400 in Great Britain – more than any other saint. It is estimated that western artists have depicted him more frequently than any other saint, apart from the most holy Theotokos. Many people don’t realize that the “right jolly old elf” dressed in red and driving a sleigh with reindeer has his origins in this saint: “Santa Claus” is the anglicized version of “Sinter Klaus” – Dutch for, “St. Nicholas.”

Most of us are familiar with certain aspects of the life of St. Nicholas. Probably the most well-known story is how the saint secretly provided gold coins to a family where poverty threatened to cause the sale of three daughters into prostitution. The gold – in some stories, it is dropped down a chimney to land in the stockings of the daughters, which had been hung by the fire in order to dry – spared the family from such a terrible decision. Many of us also know, and, in a way, sort of enjoy, the story of how St. Nicholas, enraged by the heretical teachings of Arius, struck Arius – according to some accounts, he punched Arius in the nose – at the Council of Nicaea in the year 325. Perhaps you even know how, on two separate occasions, St. Nicholas intervened to spare three men who had been wrongfully sentenced to be executed: once, when he confronted a regional governor who had take a bribe to find three men guilty; and again when he appeared in a dream to the Emperor Constantine to tell him that three officials of the imperial court were innocent of the charges that had been brought against them. IN each case, the condemned men were set free.

While these stories are familiar to us, we seem to be less familiar with the deeper details of the life of the saint, the details that make such actions as are celebrated in these stories possible. What power makes it possible to confront a government official, risking imprisonment or even death – and St. Nicholas certainly suffered for the faith during the persecutions under the emperors Diocletian and Maximian – to save innocent lives? What power makes it possible to stand up against popular false teachings to defend the Christian faith? What power – and this is particularly crucial in our world today – makes it possible to break the grip of wealth and possessions, and to give away a fortune? There is only one power capable of doing these things: the power of the love of God in Jesus Christ, that flows through those who love God above all else, and whose love flows to everyone made in the image of God, making them sources of God’s love for each one of us to everyone around them. If we do not love God, we will not put ourselves at risk to protest injustice and unrighteousness, to spare others from suffering or to save innocent lives. If we do not love God, we will not take a stand against false teachings; and we will even make compromises with teachings and practices that do not agree with those of the Orthodox Church and faith. If we do not love God, then we cannot truly love each other as we should; and the things of this world that attract and hold our attention – wealth, fame, honor, power, pleasure – these will capture us and keep us from rising toward heaven, as St. Nicholas rose, living as an angel on the earth in the midst of others.
St. Nicholas is loved by many because he loved so richly. His love for God caused him to turn his back on the world, giving away his worldly possessions, and not seeking any worldly honors. His love for God led him to be obedient when, in pursuing a solitary life, he was instructed by God to live his life in the midst of the people around him. His love for God led him to love every one of us – and in his love for us, to seek justice and righteousness for us, and to give gifts of love.

Brothers and sisters, let us love one another as Christ loves us – for He went to His passion and death through the power of His love. Let us love one another as St. Nicholas loves us, and ask for the grace to follow the example of his life.

Holy hierarch, father Nicholas, pray to God for us!

Mercy, Not Sacrifice

Today we celebrate and remember the holy Apostle and Evangelist Matthew. He was a tax collector – every bit as unpopular at the time as he would be today – and was at his work when the Lord Jesus called to him, saying, “Follow me.” To his credit, Matthew did so, leaving behind all worldly possessions and possibilities, choosing instead an inheritance in the kingdom of heaven. According to tradition (although modern Biblical scholarship may say otherwise), he wrote the first account of the birth, life, and ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ; and the account he wrote is first among the four Gospels in the New Testament canon. This is why he is called an Apostle and an Evangelist: for he was one of the Twelve who accompanied our Lord, and one of the four who wrote about Him after His passion, crucifixion, resurrection from the dead, and ascension into heaven. St. Matthew went to Ethiopia, where he established a church and consecrated a bishop. He also baptized the wife and son of a prince of that land, causing the prince to seek the arrest of the apostle. The first band of soldiers sent to bring him to the prince returned without him, saying they had heard his voice, but could not see him. The second detachment found the saint, but the light that shined from him dazzled them so that they cast down their weapons and ran away. The prince himself went to find the saint, and was blinded by the same light; his sight being restored only by the prayers of St. Matthew. This did not prevent the prince from seizing the apostle; and, after many tortures, in which he was protected and sustained by the Lord, the holy apostle yielded his spirit to his Master. The prince ordered that his body be placed in a casket made of lead and thrown into the sea; but the bishop, following the appearance of the apostle in a dream, found the body. It was this miracle that brought the prince to repent, and to embrace the Christian faith; and he became first a priest, and then later the bishop of that land, serving the Lord as a faithful shepherd of the flock until his own falling asleep in the Lord.

In the reading from the Gospel bearing his name, we hear of the feast that St. Matthew gave after he left behind his earthly life to follow the way of Jesus Christ. It is striking to hear how the Pharisees criticized our Lord for sitting down to eat with tax collectors and sinners. We should recall that the Pharisees sought to fulfill all the commandments of the law of Moses, which included avoiding meals with those who were “unclean” – and certainly Matthew and the others gathered for the feast he gave qualified for that distinction in the eyes of the Pharisees. Our Lord speaks to them; and we would do well to hear and understand what He is saying. First, He says that He did not come for the righteous, but to save sinners. Then, He rebukes them, saying, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” Of course, it is the work of an evangelist to bring the good news of our salvation in Jesus Christ to those who do not yet know Him, who have not yet come to Him for mercy and forgiveness and new life in Him. We don’t have any real problems with the first part of His reply to the Pharisees. But that second part? For some reason, this can be a very real challenge for some of us as we seek to embrace and practice the Orthodox way of life.

The danger for us is that we can get so caught up in trying to do everything right that we can miss the real center of the Orthodox faith: to love God with the fullness of our being, and to love others as we love ourselves. If we remember to pray, but do not remember the poor, what god does praying do for us? If we remember the fast, but do not feed the hungry, does our fasting really benefit us? If we confess our sins, but judge others in our hearts, have we truly confessed? If we pay more attention to what others are doing while we are in church than we are to the prayers, have we really taken part in the worship of God? “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,” says the Lord – and I take that to include the need for us to be blind to the faults of everyone else, except perhaps in order to pray for them, and to not be so focused on outward acts, as valuable as these may be, that we do not remember to forgive, and to love, and to be patient, and to be humble, and not to judge, or tell another person what to do – unless, of course, they come to you and ask.

Brothers and sisters, let us leave behind the ways of the world – including the ways of the Pharisees – and, following the example of the holy apostle and evangelist Matthew, let us be transformed from our lives in this sinful world to shine with the light of the love of God in Jesus Christ, even to the point of praying for those who seek our deaths.

Saved by Grace? Grace and Works in Our Salvation

“For by grace you have been saved by faith; and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; not by works, lest any man should boast.” (Eph. 2:8-9)

St. Paul writes this in his epistle to the Church in the city of Ephesus. He tells them of God’s plan and purpose, to bring all of creation together under Christ: a plan that begins with His reconciling us to Him through the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Being reconciled with God, we are then to be reconciled to each other, with the barriers that separate us having been torn down by the Lord Jesus. Made one, we are able to become the Church, through which and in which the message of salvation is to be proclaimed throughout all the world, so that everybody everywhere has the opportunity to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

Why emphasize the point that we cannot save ourselves? The saint wants us to know that we lack the capability to truly love, or to forgive, or to be merciful, when we are apart from God – and sin, of course, separates us from God. He is telling us that God works first in us; that His work is that of faith, the faith in Jesus Christ that saves sinners. There is nothing, no work that we can do to earn the favor of God. Does this mean, then, that it does not matter what we do? Is there any need for praying, or fasting, or giving? Is there any need to struggle against our passions, against the impulses and appetites that, left uncontrolled, soon control us, and lead us away from the path that leads to heaven? If we are not saved by our works, why bother to forgive, or to discipline our flesh, or to pursue humility or patience or generosity or mercy?

Our salvation is a gift from God. No one “earns” a gift; no one “deserves” a gift. A gift is given, at least, ideally, because the giver loves the person for whom the gift is intended. The act of giving is independent of the recipient. But this is not to say that we need do nothing. Actually, those aspects of the Orthodox way of life that might be called “works” – praying, fasting, giving, forgiving, struggling to be patient, humble, laboring to uproot the passions that betray us – these are things we undertake in response to the gift we have been given. We follow the Orthodox way of life not because it saves us – it does not – but because it is through the development of the qualities that praying and fasting and giving and struggling produce in us that allows us to “get out of the way,” as it were, and allow the life of our Lord Jesus Christ given to us in holy Baptism to come forth, to be seen and heard in what we say and do. The “works” of the Orthodox way of life are a way of giving thanks for the gift of salvation given to us freely, while we were still sinners, while we were still the enemies of God, so that we might know the love of God for us in His Son, and in His death on the Cross on our behalf. As we allow the life of our Lord and Savior to be seen in and through us, we may know that we are becoming His Body, His Church – and that the message of salvation is being proclaimed in this time and this place, as St. Paul wanted the believers in Ephesus to know and to do.

Brothers and sisters, we cannot save ourselves; but the good news is that God has saved us, doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Let us give thanks to God for the love that is the source of His mercy and grace; and let us, with thanksgiving, embrace the way of life of our Orthodox faith, so that we may fulfill His purpose for us, and be His servants, gathering in all His people, to the glory of God.

God's Love in Action

As you know, the life of the liturgical year is one that is rich. The calendar of the Church year is extensive. Each and every day has a saint or saints whose lives are celebrated, and there are feasts and fasts and the celebration of a wide variety of events. Some of the saints, and some of the feasts and fasts and events are well known to us all, and we look forward to that day, and to come to church to come into the presence of the Lord in a special way, to be with Him and to celebrate the Divine Liturgy and the offering of His most precious and holy Body and Blood for us to eat and drink, so that our wounds in body, mind, and spirit may be healed, and that our souls may be saved. The bread and the wine that become, by the grace of God, the Body and Blood of Christ are real food, essential food, with our physical bodies being nourished through the material elements of bread and wine, and our souls refreshed by the grace of God, so that the life of Christ given to us in our baptism may grow strong, and be seen in us, bearing fruit unto salvation.

The saint we celebrate today is not the first choice on the liturgical calendar. This is not to say that our holy father Anthony the Roman is not worthy of our attention – far from it! The story of his life and ministry have much to teach us about who we are, and about what we may do, if we will embrace the life of the Church, as the fathers have taught us. Our holy father Anthony was born in the city of Rome in the year 1086, some 32 years after the Patriarch of Rome excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople, who returned the favor, in this way bringing into its fullness a division of the Church, east and west, that had been developing for over 200 years, and that has persisted to this day. (If you think it was difficult to restore unity to the divided Russian church after 80 years or so of separation – and it wasn’t easy! – imagine what will be needed to restore the unity of all Christians…) As a result of the split, those who remained faithful to the Orthodox Church and faith were persecuted, including our holy father Anthony, whose parents had raised him through their own pious way of life to love the Lord and to serve the Church. He gave away all he possessed – and his family had been wealthy – to help those in need, became a monk, and went to stand on a rock in the sea, to pray to God in an Orthodox manner. As he prayed, the rock was separated from its lower layers, and, by the grace of God, the saint was carried across the sea, and up the river to the city of Novgorod the Great. There our holy father Anthony built a temple in honor of the Mother of God, and established a monastery in which many monks were found. He served as the abbot for many years, and proclaimed the grace and mercy of God through many miracles, before he departed this life in the year 1148.

There’s another reason why he is celebrated today – a personal reason. Our holy father Anthony the Roman is the saint for whom our late archbishop Antoniy was named, the saint Vladika Antoniy revered. Now, I have to be honest and say that the story of the saint sailing across the ocean on a stone as if it were a boat is one that my mind, shaped by the rationalism and skepticism of our culture, must struggle to accept; and there is no explanation apart from the grace of God, the Worker of miracles. But although that aspect of the life of the saint is distant, the same is not true of the faith of the saint who fled from this earthly life and spent 14 months in prayer on a rock, and whose love for God and for those made in the image of God was so great that he found the wealth of this world to be useless unless it served the glory of God and met the needs of God’s people. How do I know this? I know because I saw the same love, the same devotion, the same humility, and the same charity in Vladika Antoniy. He loved the services of the church; he loved to be in the church to pray; he looked after his flock with love and care; and he repented of his sins with humility. He lived a simple life, and kept much of his devotion to God a secret – including the fact that he was a monk of the Great Schema, which made his ministry as a bishop all the more extraordinary, as the task of being a shepherd of the flock entrusted to him by God kept him from retreating into the life of a recluse, which is what monks of the Great Schema typically do. He found a way to fulfill his vows as both a monk and as a bishop; and those of us who had the privilege of knowing him, and of serving with him are rich because of his example in our lives. I believe that the last person he ever ordained was me, when he made me a deacon; and I pray, for his sake, that he did not make a mistake when he did so.

I am telling you these things about Vladika not to praise him, but to remind each of you that we all know of someone like him: someone who lives the Orthodox faith and life in a way that touches us in our hearts, inspiring us to do more – for, among other things, they show us what is possible when we live in and through and for Christ our God, and not for ourselves. We are called to do the same: to accept God’s love for us, taking His love into ourselves as we take the bread and wine of His Body and Blood; and sharing that love in serving others, teaching in words and by example the way of life that we share with the angels, if we are willing. So, let us give thanks to God for the life and ministry of our holy father Anthony the Roman; and let us also give thanks for those who, in our sight and in our hearing show us God’s love in action in our own lives as well.