Feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God

This feast that commemorates the bodily death and resurrection of the Most Holy Mother of God, along with the feast of the Lord’s Transfiguration, coincide with the yearly fruit harvests in the eastern Mediterranean. Under the Old Law, these harvests were marked by the ancient biblical feast of Succoth, or the Feast of Tabernacles, which commemorates the passage of the people of Israel through the desert during the Exodus.  The event of the Lord’s Transfiguration actually occurred at the start of the Feast of Tabernacles in the Lord’s last year of His earthly life.  It is in this context that St. Peter’s suggestion to build booths for the Lord, Moses and Elijah makes sense.

     According to the Tradition, the Most Holy Mother of God died in Jerusalem during the Feast of Tabernacles.  It was during that feast, which commemorates the wandering of the people of Israel in the desert and their final entry into the Promised Land that the Lord chose as the end of His Most Holy Mother’s earthly sojourn and her entry into the everlasting Promised Land of Paradise.

     The fruit harvest in the eastern Mediterranean is the second harvest.  Earlier in the year, in May and June, the wheat harvest was brought in.  This first harvest was marked by the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, which commemorated the fact that the Lord gave the Law to Israel on Mount Sinai.  Now, of course, the feast commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles.  The first harvest represents the Lord’s Resurrection from the dead, which is the source and beginning of our salvation, but the second harvest is a promise to us all.  We are promised a share in the life of God, which comes to us through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. 

    Sharing the life of God is not something that we wait for death to do.  The beginning of the life of God is not our bodily death.  The life of God begins for us with out baptism, and continues with our personal commitment to the work of our salvation.  It is a personal commitment to purifying our hearts by ascetical effort.  We need to purify our hearts for a serious life of prayer, and it is prayer that brings us our share in the Life of God.

     In the life and death and resurrection of the Most Holy Mother of God, we see that there is no division between the life of prayer and good works.  The principle good work is prayer, and no good work exists without prayer.  Any work that is performed without prayer is performed for selfish motives.  The work that is done with sincere prayer is life-giving both to ourselves and to our neighbours.  Through cooperation with Divine Grace, by our strenuous effort to please God, we begin the path from glory to glory—to becoming uncreated in the perfection of the image and likeness of God.  This path begins with humility, and with the admission that we are sinners.  It is in the proportion that we humble ourselves that we will be exalted. 

     The example of the Most Holy Mother of God should bring us by means of encouragement to humble ourselves everyday in prayer.  Let us put ourselves in hell, without despair, and call out to God assiduously and faithfully for mercy.  We only have this opportunity to cooperate with Divine Grace, and willingly receive the Life that God is trying to give us.  We have only this one chance to become people of prayer. 

12 Sunday After Pentecost-- Postfeast of Transfiguration

AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE: BREAD ON THE TABLE

Brothers and sisters in Christ—

     Today, we continue to celebrate the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ.  This is a very important feast in our Church, because this mystery so clearly reveals the true essence and meaning of the Christian life.  The Gospel accounts concerning the Transfiguration are very brief, but we know that this event was a very important, a very powerful experience for the apostles, who were present with Christ on the Holy Mountain.  The Holy Apostle Peter, the Prince of the Twelve Apostles, tells us about it in his first epistle: “As all things of his divine power which appertain to life and godliness, are given us, through the knowledge of him who hath called us by his own proper glory and virtue. By whom he hath given us most great and precious promises: that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature… For he received from God the Father honour and glory: this voice coming down to him from the excellent glory: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him. And this voice we heard brought from heaven, when we were with him in the holy mount.”

     The great desire and goal of the Christian life is salvation, which means everlasting life in the Kingdom of God, but we receive everlasting life when we become partakers of the divine nature, just as St. Peter said.  The only everlasting life is God’s life, for only God lives eternally. If we hope to take part in everlasting life, we have to be in God.  St. Athanasius of Alexandria spoke about this fact in very simple terms. He said: “God became man, that man might become god.”  In Christ, we take part in the very life of God, so that we have the same life with Him, and, as we know, that which has the same life we call by the same name.  Christ accomplishes our union with God in His own Person, for Jesus Christ is One single Divine Person, who subsists in two natures: His own proper Divine Nature and also the human nature, which He accepted from the Most Holy Mother of God.  In this way, Christ God became “Emmanuel,” for He was God, Who created the universe, from the beginning, but He became “with us,” becoming our brother according to the human nature.  In His Person, He has already accomplished our union with God, but in order to take part, personally, in this everlasting life, we have to have fellowship with Him.  How can we become united with Christ? Our effort begins with the destruction of our will.  The human will is not evil in itself, but God made it to infallibly choose the good.  Sin introduced into it the sense of deliberation, just as the Prophet Moses described in the Book of Genesis: “The serpent said to the woman: No, you shall not die! But God knows, that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will become like God, knowing good and evil.”  Our ancestors already knew good.  Afterall, they knew God.  What they learned was evil.  In other words, they learned nothing from the transaction, for evil is only a shadow and a deprivation. 

     We can restore our wills, if we destroy the sense of deliberation, which is in them.  In order to do this, we have to accept that which God sends us.  It is necessary for us to practice “kenosis” just as the Holy Apostle Paul says of Christ: “He, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men.”  Our Lord Jesus Christ gave us a very simple, yet powerful, illustration of His humility, which is our example: He became bread for us.  The Early Christian Church had the intuition that individual Christians need to become like bread for others.  St. Ignatius of Antioch wrote about his approaching martyrdom: “I am the wheat of God, and I will be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts that I might become the pure bread of Christ.” In the account of the martyrdom of Ignatius’ friend the Bishop of Smyrna, St. Polycarp, it is related that, after the saint’s terrible torments at the hands of the government officials, when they finally burned him to death, his holy body took on the appearance and aroma of baked bread.  Closer to our own time, St. Albert Chmielowski, the Polish saint of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and a friend of our Metropolitan the Servant of God Andrey Sheptytsky, said that “the Christian needs to become like bread on the table. Anyone who desires some can cut off a portion.  Bread has no self-interest. It is for the hungry.”

     All we need to do is to imitate Christ—Our Heavenly Bread. If we become like that Heavenly Bread, then we will have the peace and joy of the Heavenly Kingdom, in the same way that Christ offered Himself in sacrifice for us (He became our Bread) I was also glorified to the right hand of the Father.  In the Mystery of the Transfiguration, He showed to His disciples His Divine Nature, giving to them and to us a glimpse of our ultimate goal.  But when He descended from the mountain and continued His journey to Jerusalem, there He showed to His disciples the manner in which they would be able to attain that goal.  He washed their feet and gave them the Divine Eucharist, His own Body and Blood, then He showed them His sacrifice, giving to them the solemn commandment that they love one another as He had loved them.  He told them: “Greater love than this no man has, that he lay down his life for his friends. When you do everything that I have commanded you, then you are my friends.”

11th Sunday After Pentecost-- Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ

Brothers and sisters in Christ—

     In the Mystery of the Transfiguration, the Lord shows to His chosen disciples “as much of His Divine Glory as they could possibly bear.” In the meantime, Moses and Elijah appear with the Lord, and discuss with the Lord Jesus all the things that would take place in Jerusalem.  Moses represents the Law of God, for he wrote the five books of the Law, which governed the people of Israel.  The Prophet Elijah represents the prophets, those revelations that were given to Israel after Moses’ time, which gave Israel hope in the Messiah and in the age to come.

     The Holy Apostles Peter, James and John, who were with the Lord Jesus on Mount Tabor during the Transfiguration, were told not to tell anyone about the vision until “the Son of Man had risen from the dead.” After the Resurrection, the Apostles reflected on the strange event.  In the Holy Apostle Peter’s second letter, he writes: “His divine power has bestowed on us everything that makes for life and devotion, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and power. Through these, he has bestowed on us the precious and very great promises, so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature, after escaping from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire. …We had been eyewitnesses of his majesty.  For he received honour and glory from God the Father when that unique declaration came to him from the majestic glory, “This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven while we were with Him on the holy mountain.” The Apostles’ reflection on the Transfiguration brought them to a knowledge of the point of our faith—our hope that we can become uncreated; we can share the Life of God through communion with Him.

     Our personal share in the Transfiguration of the Lord is our own conversion to the voice of the Law and the Prophets, to the prophetic voice of the Church.  It is our own interior conversion to God, which makes it possible for us to share in the Divine Majesty and Glory revealed on Mount Tabor.  In fact, the Lord Jesus Himself tells us that such a conversion to God creates exceedingly great joy in heaven, among the angels. 

10th Sunday After Pentecost-- True Priorities

Brothers and sisters in Christ—

     The Gospel reading today directly follows the account in St. Matthew’s Gospel concerning the Transfiguration.  The Lord Jesus, and the disciples Peter, James and John come down from the high mountain, and encounter the father of the lunatic.  The other disciples have been trying to cast the demon out of the lunatic son, but with no success.  In the meantime, a crowd has gathered. 

     Just as with any passage from the Holy Scriptures, in order for our meditation to be truly profitable, we must put ourselves in the place of the various characters of this story.  We must enter into their sentiments and make their aspirations our own.

     First, we put ourselves in the place of the lunatic son.  We suffer terribly, and we often fall into fire and into water.  We suffer terribly on account of the effect of sin in our lives, because often we labour under the heavy burden of evil habits, or vices.  Often we “fall into fire and water,” that is, we suffer as a result of our propensity to anger and lust; while, on the other hand, we suffer from temptations and habits of depression, boredom and complacency.  While, on the one hand, our passions are too hot, on the other hand, our love for God is too cold.  We therefore spend our lives on the pendulum of vice, swinging between the heat of irascible passions, and the chill of forgetfulness of God.  Without practice in prayer and virtue, and real progress in the spiritual life, we will be incapable of escaping our circumstances and helping ourselves.  To put it another way, we cannot help ourselves at all.  Only Christ can help us to change our lives and become conformed to His Divine Nature. Recognizing ourselves in the lunatic son, we should pray to Christ everyday for His help in correcting our vices, casting out our evil habits, and conforming ourselves to His Divine Nature. 

     The father is also a role that we are familiar with.  Most of us can relate to having deep concern for another person: a child, a relative, a friend.  Our concerns can be about many things.  We can be preoccupied with our children’s prospects for employment or married life, their education or even their appearance.  Nevertheless, we should remind ourselves daily that our central and basic concern should be about the salvation of our loved ones.  Yes, we can be concerned about our loved ones’ physical health, but it is the health of their souls, which should bring us to our knees before God.  Throughout Christian history there are striking examples of this kind of holy concern.  For example, St. Bridget of Sweden, when her eldest son became involved with an immoral woman, prayed that her son would die rather than commit serious sin.  In the end, her prayer was heard, he died a holy death in the peace of the Church.  Similarly, St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine of Hippo Regius prayed earnestly for thirty years that the direction of her son’s life would change toward God and the Church.  Her assiduous prayers were finally heard, after many sacrifices and mortifications, when St. Augustine was converted from a life of heresy and sexual immorality to a life of true faith and sincere piety.  We should be preoccupied everyday with concern for the salvation of those who are dear to us.  Who should be dear to us? First of all, our family members and friends, of course, should be first in our prayers. But after them, the salvation of every human being should be our concern, as we see them enslaved to false religions, sexual immorality, vice of all kinds, and forgetfulness of God.  Every abandoned human person, who believes that he is only an animal, and that the purpose of his life is the pursuit of pleasure, should be the concern of our prayers, and our prayers should be as insistent as those of the father in today’s Gospel reading.

     We can also place ourselves in the sentiments and aspirations of the disciples, as they ask the Lord Jesus, “Why could we not cast the demon out?” We too, at times, may have the same doubts, as we wonder, “why can we not change, even in the smallest ways, the evils of this world around us?” Or, perhaps, we have come to believe that we are indeed incapable of making any difference at all.  But the Lord Jesus answers our doubts, “You cannot change the direction of this sinful age because of your little faith.” With the disciples, we might well answer, “Lord, increase our faith.” But He says, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you would be able to say to this mountain, “be uprooted and thrown into the sea.” At times, we may become accustomed to a Christianity that is merely cultural, without the obligation to steady growth and progress in the spiritual life, but God is not willing to forget that our faith is a means to communion with Him.  Communion with God is the point of our faith. It will take work and dedication on our part to build the life of prayer, which leads to communion with God. The key is consistency in daily spiritual practice, even though we may, at times feel a great aversion to it.

     Central to the life of prayer is recognizing our sins and faults, and asking God to correct them, interceding for the salvation of others and for the world, and deepening our faith through daily spiritual exercises.

9th Sunday After Pentecost-- Daily Examination Revisited

FIVE MIRACLES THAT DEMAND A RESPONSE

Brothers and sisters in Christ—

      The miracle, which is described in today’s Gospel reading, is actually the combination of five different miraculous signs.  Taken altogether, these miraculous signs have deep meaning about our relationship to our Lord Jesus Christ.  The five miracles are as follows: 1) the Lord walks on the water, 2) Peter walks on the water at the Lord’s invitation, 3) the Lord preserves Peter, when he begins to sink, 4) The Lord stills the tempest, and 5) the boat is immediately at port.

     This whole complex of miraculous signs can be understood as a description of the way that the Lord works in the lives of all of us.  First, He gives to us the ability the pass through the midst of the temptations and troubles of the world without harm.  As long as we are in His company, we have the assistance of His grace, which helps us through the trials of our lives.  This world is a troubled, stormy sea, filled with the whirlpools and eddies of worldly distractions.  God allows us to tread these things under our feet, as He also calms the passions, temptations and persecutions of this life.  Finally, He also leads us with faithful support to the harbour of eternal life.

     The complex of these five miracles, which, in a mystical way, illustrate the way that God deals with each and everyone of us as an adopted son or daughter, also show us the means and way that we relate to God.  We know how important our daily examination of conscience is to our growth in relationship with the Lord.  The complex of these five miracles also shows to us the five stages of our daily examination. 

     In the course of the examination of conscience, we first give thanks to God for all of the blessing and graces that we have received during the past day.  This corresponds to the miracle of Jesus walking on the water.  Just as the Lord walked peacefully on the troubled water, in the same way, we, at the end of the day, are able to cast our eyes over the blessings and graces of God that have carried us through the difficulties of the previous day. 

     After our thanksgiving, we pray for light, so that God will illumine our consciences.  We need God’s help so that we can accurately see our sins and failings, and also accurately access our strengths.  This sincere prayer for light corresponds to Peter walking on the water at the Lord’s invitation.  It is only with God’s help that we can pass through this world’s temptations and struggles.  We express our dependence on God, and our confidence in Him by this simple prayer for light.

     After praying that our consciences be illumined, and our knowledge enlightened, we then review our sins and failings committed during the day.  In the Gospel, the Lord preserves Peter from drowning when he begins to sink below the waves of the sea.  In the same way, we recognize that it is the Lord’s compassion that has preserved us, when we have fallen into sin.  The Lord’s compassion has always raised us up, and the memory of our sins is the memory of His merciful actions towards us. Having been enlightened by Him to truly see the truth about ourselves, we make an honest review of our sins during this day. 

     Next, in the course of our examination of conscience, we ask God for forgiveness.  This is a very important stage in the process, and it corresponds to our Lord Jesus Christ calming the tempest.  The Lord by His word alone stills the water of the sea; just as, by His word alone, He remits our sins, obliterating them from His Divine memory.  If we are truly sorry for our sins, there is no limit to the amount of transgression that He will forgive.

     Lastly, we ask the Lord’s help with the work of the coming day. We make resolutions for the coming day that will help us to grow in the spiritual life.  We forecast the events of the coming day, asking God’s special assistance with specific things that concern us.  This corresponds to the miracle that the boat was instantly at the port.  The Lord’s deepest desire for us is to share His life with us eternally, and all our circumstances are directed by Him towards the realization of that end. Putting ourselves completely in His care, trusting Him completely, is a foretaste of our goal of being in His loving presence forever.

8th Sunday After Pentecost-- Remembering Ss. Vladimir and Olga

THE LORD FEEDS US THROUGH THE LIVES OF THE SAINTS

Brothers and sisters in Christ—

     Today, in the Gospel, the Lord Jesus feeds the great multitude in a miraculous and unexpected way.  It is time for us to reflect that, in the very same way, He feeds us in very miraculous, very unexpected and beautiful ways, to satisfy our hunger and thirst for salvation, for the life of God and the glory of His presence.  Again and again, over the long history of the Church, the Lord has told us, His disciples, the same simple message concerning the great spiritual hunger and desperation of this world.  He says to us repeatedly, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” Then, when the task seems so very far beyond our power, the Lord Himself, by His Divine Power, takes it upon Himself to feed the people through us. 

     One of the way that the Lord feeds this desperate world, so hunger for Divine Life, is through the lives of the saints.  He raises up certain people in every age, to whom He gives the ability to feed His people with inspiration and example.  Today we turn our eyes to the ones, whom our Church calls “the Equals to the Apostles,” because they brought their whole nation with them to the Christian Faith: Great Prince Volodymyr and his grandmother, the Princess Olha. 

     Particularly, today, we should focus on Saint Olha, just as it is appropriate to examine the root before we turn our attention to the lofty heights of the full-grown tree.  St. Olha is a good example to us, because she is so much like ourselves.  In the history of the life of St. Olha, we see a remarkable change from before she came to Christ to the period after her Baptism. She, who was so well known for cruelty, deception and vengeance, became known instead for gentleness, sincere charity and wisdom.

     St. Olha was born at Pskov, but at a young age she was wedded to Prince Ihor of Kyiv, who had succeeded his father Prince Oleh.  Some time later, she bore the prince a son, whom he named Sviatoslav.

     Prince Ihor was anxiously seeking to unite the Rusyn lands by extending the authority of the Kyivan Prince into the territory of all the neighbouring principalities.  As a result of this policy, Prince Ihor was assassinated by his rivals from the region of Drevlyani, when his son, Sviatoslav, was only three years old.  After Ihor’s death, Olha became the regent for her infant son.  Gathering her armies together, she marched against Drevlyani with a terrible vengeance.  At the siege of Yaroslavl, she pelted the city with rotten wheat, and then released flocks of pigeons, which had burning firebrands hanging from their legs.  The thatch roofs of the city were set on fire, and many burned and choked to death in the ensuing conflagration of flame and smoke. 

     Rounding up all the leaders of the plot that had killed her husband, her justice was terrible.  She brought them to Kyiv, bound with ropes.  In the freezing cold, she made them lie next to one another on the ground.  Then, she slowly scalded them to death with boiling water. 

     Once her vengeance was complete, she turned her attention to completing her deceased husband’s policies, by extending and strengthening Kyivan authority over all the surrounding regions.  She was the first to divide her territories into oblasti, which were ruled by governors responsible to her in Kyiv, thus ignoring and circumventing the authority of the local rulers.

     In this way, she handed over a very well organized state to her son, Sviatoslav, on his sixteenth birthday. Sviatoslav made her his ambassador to the Roman Empire, and sent her to Constantinople to negotiate a treaty of peace.  Olha, at this point, was already familiar with Christianity.  When she left Kyiv at the head of the embassy to Constantinople, she already intended to become a Christian there.

     Olha was baptized in Constantinople in 954 by Theophylact, the Patriarch of Constantinople.  The Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus was her godfather. Her godmother was the Empress Helen, who would also become, after the passage of many years, the grandmother of St. Volodymyr’s wife, Princess Anna of Byzantium.  St. Olha’s lady in waiting and future daughter-in-law, Malusha, was baptized with her.  Some years later, after her wedding to Prince Sviatoslav, Malusha bore Volodymyr.

     After Olha’s return to Kyiv from the embassy to Constantinople, she became known for her gentleness, meekness and wisdom.  At every opportunity, she promoted the Christian faith and the life of prayer.  She continuously urged her son, Sviatoslav, to embrace Christianity, but he did not acquiesce.  She turned her attention to building up the Church in Rus’.  She tried many, many times to obtain bishops for Kyiv and the surrounding cities, but her entreaties were not heeded, either by the Church in Constantinople, or by the Pope of Rome.

     As a mature Christian, her deepest inspiration came from the passage from the eighteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew, in which the Lord Jesus says, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Whoever humbles himself like a child, he is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.” She strove to practice this kind of meekness and humility everyday.  Because of her humility and her incessant prayers, her innocence was restored to her.  Despite her many sins, she was given the gift of incorruption after her death. When she died in 969, she was interred, according to her instructions, in the Church of St. Nicholas Over Askold’s Grave, but her grandson, St. Volodymyr, ordered for her remains to be moved to the Church of the Most Holy Mother of God, where they lay in a special sarcophagus, through which the people could peer, and see her body in the same condition as when she was alive.

     The lives of the saints are our nourishment.  Is not the life of St. Olha our nourishment? Are we not sustained in our faith, when we can see that someone, whose sins were so great, was, nevertheless, glorified and purified with her original innocence restored? We can have that too.  No matter how great our sins, an evil and angry heart can become renewed, like the heart of a little child.  St. Olha is praying that this may be so, for all of us.