THE ROBE OF GLORY: OUR INHERITANCE

 

Brothers and sisters in Christ—

The feast of the Beheading of the St. John the Baptist is traditionally a day of fasting and penance, but this year this feast falls on Sunday, therefore there is no fast.  Today, we remember the heroic sacrifices of the greatest and last of the prophets, whom God sent with the spirit and power of Elijah to be the forerunner of the Messiah, just as the Prophet Malachi had foretold: “Behold! I am sending you Elijah the Prophet before the Day of the Lord comes, the great and terrible day. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I should have to come and strike the land with doom.”  These are the last words of the Old Testament, and according to the Jewish faith during the centuries before the coming of Christ, the Spirit of the Lord left Israel after the death of the Prophet Malachi.  Therefore, the birth of St. John the Forerunner began a new era of prophecy, when the Spirit of the Lord returned to Israel with new strength to prepare for the salvation of the whole human race.  Not only was prophecy renewed, but every aspect of life and culture, both Jewish and Gentile. On account of the global power of Rome and her allies, there was a period of unprecedented peace.  This was the great stage on which God prepared the restoration of His image.  This was the moment that God chose to realize His plan, and recapitulate His design for human history and for all of Creation.

     When He created Adam and Eve in the beginning, He gave them Divine Life and Glory.  They were clothed with Divine Glory like a robe.  In fact, the early theologians of the Eastern Church used the metaphor of the robe very often.  This metaphor is very appropriate given the fact that our first parents, after their fall into sin, realized that they were naked.  They lost the robe of Divine Glory.  Furthermore, in our contemporary Liturgy, the priestly phelon is often called “the robe of glory.” Adam and Eve were clothed like guests at a wedding. In the ancient Near East, often kings would invite all their subjects, both rich and poor, to a royal wedding.  The king would give all the guests a special garment, which they wore over their own clothes, so as to hide the shame of the poor and moderate the opulence of the rich.  The Lord Jesus Christ mentions this special wedding garment in the twenty-second chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew.  Adam and Eve received the wedding garment of Divine Glory from the hand of God when He created them.  But, by their sin, they lost this life-giving robe.  From the beginning, The Lord God desired to restore this, our inheritance, to us, but His plan was to do this without destroying our human freedom, for the Lord God wants us to love Him freely, rather than by force and coercion.  Imagine that you have the coercive force of the whole universe at your disposal, but you do not use it, because you want your enemies to love you freely.  This is generosity that makes our very definition of generosity seem like nonsense.

     In order for us to bear this robe of glory once again, we need to strip naked—that is, to put off all the pretense we have to independence from God.  In this, we can follow the example of St. John the Baptist.  We remember the description of that great saint, when he first was manifested to Israel: John was clothed in camel hair with a leathern belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. In other words, by his dress and his manner, everybody knew without question that John was completely dependent on God. Naturally, it isn’t necessary for us to wear camel hair, but perhaps we can express our dependence on God our Father with a sign, which will remind us and others that God exists and He cares: perhaps our absolute rejection of worry, and total confidence in God; perhaps our desire to glorify Him by our suffering and deeds of kindness; perhaps our life of prayer, by which we silently labour for the salvation of others.