Destroying the Image of God

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Why does the demon possessing the boy in the account read today from the Gospel according to St. Mark treat the boy as he does, throwing him onto the fire, and into the water? The answer is simple: he is trying to destroy the image of God in that young man.

One of the things that makes us different from the angels is that, unlike them, we are created in the image and after the likeness of God; and while we are created but a little lower than the angels, when the kingdom of God is established, we shall be closer to God than are they. Our Lord Jesus Christ never took on the form of an angel; but He did become incarnate, He did take on our form. As St, Athanasios the Great said, “He became like us in order that we might become like Him.” It is believed that this is why Lucifer, the Light-bearer, the greatest of the angelic order, rebelled against God, and led others to do the same: his pride would not allow him to accept that he one day would be subject to us. This is why the demons hate us; this is why they try to destroy us.

What was true for the boy in the Gospel account is true for every one of us: there are demons who would love to throw us into fire and into water to destroy us. They cannot overthrow God; so they seek to destroy His image in us; and if they cannot destroy us in this world, they seek to make us their victims in the world to come, to cause us to suffer the torments they, too, will suffer when the Kingdom comes in its fullness. If we do not want to share their fate, we need to do something: we need to remove ourselves from being influenced by them. We should take note, then, of what our Lord says when His disciples ask why they were unable to heal the boy. “This kind,” He says, “come out only by prayer and fasting.”

Each one of us has sins that we have learned to love; sins that we repeat, and against which we seem to be powerless. Like the father in the Gospel account, each of us, looking at our lives, can say, Lord, I believe; help me in my unbelief!” What is our help? Prayer and fasting. Every time we find ourselves repeating a sin, we should recognize the need to pray and to fast. Every time we find ourselves tempted to sin, we should pray and fast. Now that we are past the halfway point in Great Lent, with the celebration of Pascha coming ever nearer, we should pray and fast.

Brothers and sisters, let us give thanks to God Who has made us but a little lower than the angels. Let us give thanks to God that He has made us in His image and after His likeness. Let us give thanks to God for the love that led Him to become one with us, and that led Him to the Cross for our salvation, and has given us a way to climb on high with Him. Let us fast and pray and give thanks, to the glory of God and the salvation of our souls.

Called to Bear the Love of God

In the second reading today from the Gospel according to St. Luke, we hear our Lord giving instructions on how we are to love. Those who were at the Vigil service last night also heard a reading from the first Epistle of St. John the Theologian that teaches us about how we are to love. It’s important enough that I want to read it again for the benefit of those who were unable to attend.

If a man says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? This commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should also love his brother. Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. Whoever loves the Father also loves the child who is born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. His commandments are not grievous. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world: your faith. Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

We know that it is important for us to pray, for praying is meant to draw us closer to God; but, as St. John the Theologian teaches us, if we do not love our brothers, we cannot say that we love God, no matter how wonderful our time in prayer may be. We know that it is important to fast, for fasting helps us gain the control we need over our flesh, so that the desires we experience for the things that feed our passions rather than our souls, and so lead us into sin and death, are mastered by the discipline of fasting; but keeping the most severe fast does us no good if we do not love each other. We know that it is important for us to give from the wealth that God has entrusted to us, because by giving to help those in need, and for the work of the Church, we set ourselves free from our attachments to worldly goods and pleasures, and so rise more easily to heaven; but even giving away everything gains us nothing if we do not act out of love.

Who are we to love? Our Lord tells us that our love must go beyond loving those who love us. It is easy – or, at least, easier – to love those who love us. We are certainly supposed to love our families: parents, children, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews. We are certainly called to love each other as we gather together to worship the Lord. But we must also love those who might laugh at us as we say a prayer before a meal, and make the sign of the Cross over ourselves in their presence. We must love those who, by word or by deed, offend us – such as the person who cuts us off on the highway, or gets in line ahead of us. We must love those who hate us, even those who would, if they were able, put us to death, so that we might no longer remind them of the reality of our faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and our hope that our sins will be forgiven, and we may be given eternal life with Him in heaven.

We are called to love, even when it is difficult to do so – if only because God, Who is holy and righteous, and who detests sin, has loved us when we were His enemies, has loved us in the midst of sinning, and has shown His love for us by becoming one with us, joining His divine nature to our fallen nature, restoring us to where we were before the Fall, and opening once more for us the way to dwell unceasingly in His presence, as Adam and Eve lived before they violated God’s commandment. God is merciful, and expresses His love for us in His mercy; and so we are to be merciful – but we cannot do so if we do not love.

Brothers and sisters, called to be the bearers of the love of God: this is a most difficult task. We cannot accomplish it without embracing ever more fully the Orthodox way of life. Let us ask God for the grace we need to become more fervent in prayer, more stringent in fasting, more generous in giving; to be humble and patient and forgiving, so that we may be purified and then filled with His love, so that all the world may know the great love of God by which we are saved, and so join with us in worshipping and glorifying the God of love.

Flaws and Miracles

Last night, those who were present were blessed by the presence of the most holy Theotokos and Ever-virgin Mary through her myrrh-streaming Iveron icon from our parish in Honolulu. Someone said to me after the Vigil had ended, and we had processed with the icon from the church to the car in which it was traveling to say, “goodbye,” that we should announce every week some miraculous event at our church, rejoicing that so many people had come to take part in worship with this most wonderful sign of God’s love and caring for His people through the prayers and protection of His most holy Mother.

Many of you may have read the account written by Reader Nectarios about the myrrh-streaming icons of the Cross of our Lord and of the Iveron Mother of God. One part of the story that I learned from Fr. Anatole, the priest of our parish in Honolulu, which is dedicated to the Holy Theotokos of Iveron, is that the print of the icon was purchased by him while on a visit to Toronto. At the bookstore where he was purchasing icons for his parish church was a table with icons whose selling price was greatly reduced, because there were flaws of one kind or another in each print. He wasn’t sure why, but he was moved to purchase the print of the icon now streaming myrrh from that table. I mention this because it has a message for each one of us who have our own flaws, as made evident in our sins. In the case of this icon, God has taken what was flawed, and through it has worked, and is working, a miracle. This should give each one of us hope, for no matter how great our sins may be, if we repent of our sins, and confess them, and return to our Orthodox way of life, making ourselves offerings to God, who knows what God may accomplish in and through us?

Earlier, I mentioned the comment made by someone last night, about how we should announce a miracle every week. Although I don’t think that person meant that in a serious way, the truth is that we could, indeed, say that a miracle takes place here every week; indeed, every time we gather in worship. For example, today at this celebration of the Divine Liturgy, as at every celebration, we are in the presence of the miraculous blessing that transforms the bread and wine that we offer to God to become His most precious Body and Blood that He offers to us for our salvation. We receive from Him His Body and Blood in the form of the bread and wine of the offering in exactly the same way that His disciples, who were gathered together with Him in the upper room on the night in which He was betrayed, and went to His Passion and to death on the Cross, received His Body and Blood; through the miracle of God’s love for us, by which we are saved. At this, and at every, celebration of the Divine Liturgy, and at every Vigil service, and at every molieben and pannikhida offered, we are gathered together with the saints and angels, who join us in our prayers as we worship God. Whether we can see them or not; whether we are aware of it or not, these miracles are taking place, just as the miracle of myrrh streaming from a flawed picture printed on a piece of paper and mounted on a simple pine board shows us that God can take the ordinary and humble and raise it to miraculous heights.

Brothers and sisters, let us worship and glorify our God, Whose love for us is so great that it is beyond our ability to understand or describe. Let us give Him thanks for the great blessing of being witnesses to the miracle of the myrrh-streaming Iveron icon of the Mother of God; and let us pray that He will make us ever mindful of the miracles that take place every time His people gather for prayer and for worship. Let us, as we consider these miracles, remember the great depths of God’s love for us, and seek to bring this love to everyone around us, so that they may also experience the great miracle of the love of God in Jesus Christ, and join with us to worship and glorify Him, the God of miracles, and the God of love.

Sowing Abundantly

Each of us knows – or, at least, should know – the hallmarks of the Orthodox way of life. First of all, there is prayer: which we might say is to be in conversation with God. Conversation, of course, involves both talking and listening; and relationships cannot exist without conversation. Prayer, then, becomes a way for us to grow closer in relationship to God, if we learn to enter His presence on a regular basis, and if we will listen as well as talk. There is nothing wrong with prayer that praises God, and gives Him thanks; there is nothing wrong with sharing with Him our hopes and fears, asking for help for others and for ourselves; but we must also listen, especially with our hearts, to what God may be saying to us, even as we are talking with Him.

Next comes the discipline of fasting. Above all, this is a strength and a skill we exercise and develop beginning with dietary restrictions. We all know there are days and seasons we mark by removing meat, eggs, and dairy products from what we eat; and even abstaining from fish, wine, and oil on the most strict days. By following this teaching and practice of the Church, we learn obedience – from which flows reverence and meekness; and meekness attacks the root of sin, which is pride. Fasting also is a form of training, such as what an athlete does to prepare for competition. Fasting helps us teach our flesh that it cannot always have whatever it wants whenever we want it; and this discipline can grow to help us resist other passions that would lead us into sins if we surrendered ourselves to them.

Prayer and fasting, above all, are the signs of the Orthodox way of life. There is another practice, however, that we do not speak about as frequently, yet is, nevertheless, one that is quite important: giving. This is the subject spoken about in the reading today from St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian church. St. Paul is writing here to remind the faithful of this important practice of the Orthodox way of life. What, if anything, should we take from this to do in our own lives?

Remember that, in the Old Testament, the people of God were given, as a law, the requirement to give ten percent of what they received – a tithe of their year’s income. This is not what St. Paul is telling the faithful. Rather, he tells them that the act of giving is a voluntary act; and then he addresses how we are to think about giving. What does he say?

St. Paul does not promise that those who give will receive an earthly reward of wealth. He reminds us that God has given us all that we have; and calls upon us to give in the same way that God has given to us – that is, to be generous. He uses a powerful image: “He who sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly; while he who sows abundantly will reap abundantly.” What do we sow when we give? He also talks of sufficiency and abundance. We are promised that we shall be given what is sufficient for our needs, so that we can learn to be free of the things of this world, including food, clothing, and shelter; and by trusting that God will provide what we need, and learning to not live with what goes beyond sufficiency – which is what the world would have us do – we will have enough to give for the benefit of others, while setting aside for ourselves treasures in heaven.

Put another way, St. Paul, and St. John Chrysostom as well, want us to distinguish between what we need – sufficiency – and what we want. St. John Chrysostom uses an example of a person spending very large amounts of money to clothe and entertain someone from the theater, but who, when confronted with a poor man in need of alms, gives little or nothing, perhaps out of the fear that giving will bring poverty on him, the giver, as well. He asks, what will be said to this person, who used the richness given by God for earthly things, but neglected the spiritual aspect of giving without thought of return or reward, which we do when we give to help those in need – and let us remember that part of the reason we give to the Church is to make it possible to meet the spiritual needs of others, both in our midst and in the world.

Brothers and sisters, we are called by the fathers and the saints to share with them in the Orthodox way of life. Let us fast and pray; and let us give, not from necessity, but in thanksgiving for what God has given to us. Let us ask God for the grace and strength to live sufficiently, but no more, so that, by being generous with what God has given us beyond sufficiency, we may use this wisely, giving to the Church and for those in need, so that we may live abundantly in the life of the Spirit, both now, and unto the ages of ages.