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A Man Up a Tree (Luke 19:1-10).

The Gospel lesson today describes an encounter in the life of Zacchaeus that changed the whole direction of his life. It was the day he met Jesus of Nazareth face to face. The whole Gospel is contained in that encounter, for it made Zacchaeus a new and redeemed man. Tradition tells us that he later became Bishop of Caesarea.

One day Jesus was passing through Jericho. Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector, sought to see who Jesus was, but could not because of the crowd and the shortness of his stature. Anyone else would have given up then and there, but not Zacchaeus. So eager was he to see Jesus that he climbed a tree to get to see Him.

It was no doubt a strong desire to see Jesus that made him climb the tree — a sycamore. When we really want to find God as much as Zacchaeus did, no obstacle will stop us. We will find Him. A seeker once asked a Christian, "How can I find God?" The Christian replied, "Let me show you." He took him down to the sea and immersed his head in the water three times. Then he asked him, "What did you desire more than anything else when your head was under water?" "Air," replied the seeker. "When you desire God as much as you desired air, you will find him," said the Christian.

It was much more than curiosity that made Zacchaeus climb the tree. It was a strong desire to find God in Jesus. Zacchaeus was restless, fed up with himself, fed up with the kind of life he was living. Restlessness has always been one of the symptoms of man's search for God as Augustine knew when he prayed, "Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Thee."

The crowd was an obstacle to Zacchaeus; it stood between him and Jesus. As long as he stood with the crowd, he would not be able to see Jesus. So he left the crowd; he climbed above it. The last thing many of us want is to be "different." But if we are to see Jesus and stand with him, we shall be called upon many times to leave the crowd, to buck the strong current of the Gallup Poll in favor of the unchanging laws of God. To be a Christian means that one is not crowd-controlled but Christ-controlled.

Zacchaeus was "up a tree" in more ways than one. He was a dishonest tax collector, looked down upon by his people as a collaborator and traitor, collecting taxes for the hated Romans. He had lost his self-respect. He had cut himself off from God and man. He was alone, fearfully alone, a "man up a tree."

In this respect Zacchaeus is like many of us who have ever been up the tree of our own moral failure, hating ourselves for it, longing to be different but lacking the courage to come down. God sent Jesus into the world to invite us to come down. This is the great wonder of God's love that Zacchaeus experienced when he discovered that God was seeking him!

"And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up ..." Zacchaeus must have thought that he would never be noticed up the tree. But as Jesus walked by, He stopped right beneath him. He looked up right into the tree, right at Zacchaeus and the eyes of the two men met. Zacchaeus couldn't believe it. Great beads of perspiration broke out on his forehead. He expected Jesus to condemn him: "You child of the devil! You who grind the face of the poor and turn orphans and widows out on the streets, how shall you escape the damnation of hell?" This is what Zacchaeus expected to hear. Instead he heard Jesus call him by name and say, "Zacchaeus, make haste and come down; for I must stay at your house today." How kindly Jesus dealt with Zacchaeus. "God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved."

When King George of England inspected reconstruction work in one of Britain's heavily bombed cities, thousands of people, including classes of school children, lined the streets to catch a glimpse of the monarch. After the procession had ended, a small boy was weeping bitterly. "What in the world is the matter?" his teacher asked. "Didn't you see the king?" "Oh," the lad sobbed, "I saw the king, but he did not see me."

What a comfort to know that it is not only we who see our great King but even more so, He who sees us and responds to our needs.

Jesus not only saw Zacchaeus; He addressed him by name! This great King Who holds the whole universe in the palm of His hand cares enough and has time to speak to one individual. What does this mean but that the Master knows each one of us personally and by name. He knows the restlessness and the great desire for God in Zacchaeus' heart. He knows the need in each soul and He cares. He draws near to Zacchaeus as He drew near to the woman of Samaria and poured out to her some of the most wonderful teachings of the Gospels. Wherever there is a need and a desire for God, Jesus will draw near. For He is above all a seeking God.

The great Jewish scholar, Claude Montefiore, set out to find the feature of Jesus' teaching that most clearly distinguished it from the teachings of the Jewish religion. He found it in the teaching of Jesus that God is like the Good Shepherd who takes the initiative and goes out to seek the lost sheep. Other religions picture man in search of God; Christianity proclaims a God who seeks man. Jews, he said, always believed that God was a God of love and forgiveness and that, if the sinner repented, God would freely forgive him. But Jesus taught that God would not wait for the sinner to repent; He would go out and seek him to call him back.

"Zacchaeus, make haste and come down; for I must stay at your house today." Mark these words, "I must stay at your house." Jesus had promised, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me." Now He fulfills this promise. He has dinner with Zacchaeus! Not with the chief rabbi or priest, not with the mayor of the town or some other respectable person, but with a much maligned outcast, a sinner.

Jesus went to Zacchaeus' house. But it has to be a certain kind of house that can receive Jesus as a guest. Some things will not live in His presence, and one has to choose between Him and them. And Zacchaeus chose: "Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded any one of anything, I restore it fourfold." Jesus must have smiled as He said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house." That same love of Jesus that walked into the house of Zacchaeus to seek and to save that which was lost exists today and says to each one of us as it said to Zacchaeus, "I must stay at your house today."

When the people of Jericho heard Jesus invite Himself to Zacchaeus' for dinner, "They all murmured, 'He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner/ " The first thing that turned the religious leaders against Jesus and shocked them more than anything else was His attitude toward sinners, His way of mixing with people who were openly disreputable and sinful. A Pharisee would never dream of entering the house of such a person, let alone sitting at meal with him. Jesus did. He was more interested in these people than in anyone else. They criticized Him saying, "This man receives sinners and eats with them." They even ridiculed Him by calling Him "a friend of publicans and sinners." These words, spoken originally in ridicule, are some of the most comforting words for sinners today. For they tell us that in Jesus we sinners have a real Friend Who will never let us down.

"I did not come to invite the righteous but sinners to repentance," said Jesus. Who is righteous? Not one. But there are people who think they are righteous. Every day we should pray that the Lord may deliver us from the so-called "righteous" people, the modern Pharisees, who look down upon the Zacchaeuses of today, refusing to associate with them and thus alienating them from the Church. So Jesus says today as He said then: "I did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." In other words, "I did not come to invite people who are so self-satisfied and convinced of their goodness that they consider themselves better than others. I came to invite people who are very conscious of their sin and desperately aware of their need for a Savior." Zacchaeus was such a sinner. That is why Jesus invited Himself to his house. He knew he needed Jesus and was ready to accept the invitation.

Like Zacchaeus, we today will never see Jesus if we remain on the level we are. There are too many persons and things standing in our way. We must climb higher. Fortunately there are trees we too can climb to help us see Jesus.

There is the tree of prayer. Prayer is speaking with Jesus just as really and truly as Zacchaeus did. If we are to see Jesus, to make His presence a reality in our lives, we must climb the tree of prayer daily.

Another way we can see Jesus is through the Bible and the liturgy. God speaks to us today through the Bible which is His personal letter to us. Through the liturgy, He comes to make His home in us through Holy Communion.

Another tree we must climb in order to see Jesus today is the tree of repentance and restitution. "Blessed are the pure in heart," said Jesus, "for they shall see God." The heart must be cleansed of sin; it must be made pure by a sincere sorrow for our sins and by a determined turning away from them before we can see God. Zacchaeus climbed this tree of repentance. And after he was forgiven by Jesus he made restitution: "Behold, Lord ... if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold." After repentance comes restitution — an honest attempt to undo the damage we have done with our sins. Repentance without restitution is like saying, "I stole a watch but I've been forgiven by God so now I can keep it."

The last way we can take to see Jesus is the way of service. Zacchaeus climbed this tree of service. "Behold, Lord … the half of my goods I give to the poor ..." After he restored fourfold what was not his, he gave half of what he owned to help the poor. We remember the words of our Lord, "I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink … what you did to one of the least of these my brethren you did to me." On the branches of the tree of service we will always meet and serve Christ in the persons of those to whom we minister.

We do not need to climb a sycamore tree to see Jesus today. There are other trees we can climb: the trees of prayer, the Bible, the liturgy, repentance, restitution, and service. From these trees not only shall we see Jesus but He will also see us as He saw Zacchaeus. And He will say to us as He said to him: "Make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house" — in your heart, in your mind, in your soul.

Come, Lord Jesus, as You came to Zacchaeus. We too seek You, for we are restless for the peace, the wholeness, the salvation which only You can bring. We hear your knock on the door of our souls. We open to invite You to come in. Fill us with your loving Presence. May we too hear from your lips those precious words, "Today salvation has come to this house."

Two Men Went Up to Pray (Luke 18:10-14).

Two men went up into the temple to pray. One a Pharisee, highly respected, a man of rank, a very devout and religious person; the other a tax collector, an outcast, nobody's friend, nobody's hero, a traitor and robber. Jesus dares to compare these two people. It is as if He is comparing a saint and a gangster. The comparison becomes very revealing as we overhear their prayers.

These two men went into the temple to pray. Having separated themselves from the busy world, they are deep in their devotions. We will watch them as they pray without their suspecting that they are being watched. For we have much to learn from them.

"The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself… " He "stood" when he prayed which was the normal Jewish position for prayer, but if we read between the lines we can see that the Pharisee had no objection to being seen. He was praying for the sake of effect, publicity, admiration. He was thinking about himself and the impression he would make on others. He even "prayed with himself." In other words, he talked to himself instead of God. True prayer is always offered to God and to God alone. Not so with the Pharisee. His prayer was self-congratulatory. As someone noted,

The Pharisee's prayer begins well: "God, I thank thee ..." But he spoils it; he uses even thankfulness to God to exalt himself. He thanks God that he is not like other men. "I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get!" he said. "Man, look at me — how good I am!" Don't we see this same attitude in others today and especially in ourselves? The self-righteous, holier-than-thou attitude that says to God, "I thank You God that I don't steal from my business associates. I thank You that I am white and not black or brown. I thank You that I am honest and clean, unlike those other people who act as if they are animals. I thank You that I live in America and not Bangladesh! I thank You that I live in a quiet respectable neighborhood and not in a filthy, crime-ridden ghetto. I thank You that I am not like other men are, especially not like that neighbor of mine who goes out and plays golf on Sunday mornings instead of going to Church!"

"God, Be Merciful..."

Let us now look at the tax collector. Standing alone, he did not dare to lift up his eyes to heaven; he was too full of shame. Instead, he looked down to the ground, and, beating his breast penitently, he prayed. He may have been a kind father and a good friend, but it does not occur to him to mention all that. He sees himself in God's sight only as God sees him. He prays, "God, be merciful to me, the sinner." The Greek text says not a sinner but the sinner. He regarded himself as the sinner par excellence. As the Pharisee had singled himself out as the only holy one in the world, so the tax collector singles himself out as the greatest of sinners. In the end this man who knew his own sin got nearer to God than the Pharisee who could see nothing but his own virtue.

"God, be merciful to me, the sinner." He has nothing to trust but the mercy of God. He looks nowhere but to God's mercy for help. He knows that people as personified by the Pharisee are unmerciful to him, but he believes God to be merciful. His only plea is, "God, be merciful!" Without this prayer Christianity would be a philosophy, a history, a code but not a religion that saves.

"God, be merciful to me, the sinner." We are always dependent on God's mercy. We can never approach Him with any claim but that of mercy. This is the one claim God will never reject. See how much this claim is built into the worship services of the Orthodox Church! How often during the liturgy we repeat the prayer of the tax collector: "Lord, have mercy!" The famous "Jesus

Prayer" is nothing more than an adaptation of this prayer, "Lord Jesus, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, the sinner."

A precious story pictures a mother pleading with Napoleon to spare her condemned son's life. The emperor reminded her that the crime was dreadful; justice demanded his life. "Sir," sobbed the mother, "not justice, but mercy." "He does not deserve mercy," was the answer. "But, sir, if he deserved it, it would not be mercy." "Ah yes, how true," said Napoleon. "I will have mercy."

We dare not stand before the throne of God and ask that we be given what we deserve. Our only plea is, "Lord, have mercy" (Kyrie Eleison). And the miracle is that there is mercy. At the very heart of the universe beats God's love. "I tell you," said Jesus, "this man went down to his house justified rather than the other."

A sinner said once, "If I were God I would never forgive a man who sinned as much as I did." His pastor replied, "But you are not God. God's mercy is bigger than anything we can imagine."

"Lord, have mercy!"

C. S. Lewis tells an interesting story in his book "The Great Divorce." A busload of ghosts is making an excursion from hell up to heaven with a view of remaining there permanently. They meet the citizens of heaven and one very big ghost from hell is astonished to find there a man, who on earth, had been tried and executed for murder.

"What I would like to know," he explodes, "is what are you doing here, you a murderer, while I a pillar of society, a self-respecting decent citizen am forced to walk the streets down there in smoke and fumes and must live in a place like a pigsty." His friend from heaven tries to explain that he has been forgiven, that both he and the man he had murdered have been reunited before the judgment seat of Christ. But the big ghost from hell replies, "I just can't buy that!" "My rights!" he keeps shouting, "I have got to have my rights the same as you!" "Oh no!" his friend from heaven keeps reassuring him, "It's not as bad as all that! You don't want your rights! Why, if I had gotten my rights, I would never be here. You'll not get your rights, you'll get something far better. You will get the mercy of God."

This is why we pray so often, "Lord, have mercy." This prayer, uttered with the least particle of faith, will open the way for God's forgiveness and for the coming of His kingdom in our hearts. St. Isaac the Syrian wrote in the sixth century, "Never say that God is just. If He were, you would be in hell. Rely only on His injustice which is mercy, love, forgiveness."

Today is called on our church calendar the "Sunday of the Tax Collector and the Pharisee." Last night we began using for the first time the Triodion — the liturgical book that we shall be using during the entire Lenten season which begins in three weeks. The Church has very wisely selected this parable to help prepare us spiritually for Lent. For our Lord's story today is not really about two men who went up into the temple to pray. It is about God, and how He looks at sin and righteousness — how He looks at us, you and me. "I tell you, this man went down to the house justified rather than the other; for every one who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted."

"God, be merciful to me, the sinner. Amen."

Three Magic Words: "I Was Wrong" (Luke 15:11-32).

A major league umpire was asked if he ever made mistakes in calling balls and strikes. He replied, "Of course, I make mistakes. My only trouble is I can't admit it." Our hope in life as Christians is the humility to admit to ourselves and to God that, not being infallible or perfect, we have made mistakes — and do make them every day.

If you were asked what is the hardest task in the world, you might think of some muscular feat, some acrobatic challenge or some act of bravery on the battlefield. Actually, however, there is nothing harder, nothing more arduous than to say these three words, "I was wrong." It takes a humility and a self-effacement such as few people are capable of. Yet no three words are more needed in our life than the words, "I was wrong." They are magic words; words that reconcile; words that unite; words that heal wounds and bring peace.

Many years ago there was a man who was not afraid to say, "I was wrong." His name was Judge Samuel Sewall. He was on the Governor's Special Commission in Massachusetts which tried the famous Salem witchcraft cases. He was one of the judges who passed the verdict of "guilty" on the so-called witches. But later Sewall became convinced that his judgment had been wrong.

And so, on a cold January day in 1697, as the Rev. Samuel Willard walked down to the pulpit, Judge Sewall handed him a document requesting that it be read before all the people. On that paper Judge Sewall had written that he was wrong in his verdict of five years before. He did not blame anyone but himself. He asked forgiveness from men and from God.

In no other hour had this New England jurist been as brave or good a man as when he stood before the congregation in church while the pastor read his confession: "I was wrong."

One day a man was passing a truck. Suddenly he had to cut in sharply right in front of the truck to avoid a car coming from a side road. A few minutes later the truck roared around this man's car and cut in front of him sharply the same way.

Soon the car and truck were standing side by side waiting for a red light. The man who cut in front of the truck rolled down his window. The truck driver leaned forward, grim-faced, waiting for an argument.

"I'm sorry that I cut you so short back there," the man said pleasantly.

For a moment the truck driver was speechless. Then he smiled. "Forget it. I was the one who acted like a heel," he said.

Think how differently this incident could have turned out; think of the curses and shouts and bad feelings that could have been generated if the first driver had not uttered those magic words: "I am sorry. I was wrong."

How healing these words can be in marriage and in family life. A couple, for example, may have had a painful misunderstanding, but if the guilty partner is willing to come right out and say, "I'm sorry. It was my fault," there is nothing more about which to argue. Hurt feelings are mended. There is reconciliation, harmony, peace.

Many parents feel that to maintain their children's respect they should never admit a mistake. For this reason they seem to be saying constantly to their children, "We're perfect. We don't make mistakes like you."

This is one of the factors that increases the generation gap. Children need to learn that parents are not perfect. They too make mistakes. It will not hurt for parents to share some of their failures with their children. It will certainly make them seem more human. It will help their children learn how to cope with their own failures. It will help them be much more honest with parents if they feel that parents are completely honest with them. Nobody wants to take his problems to someone who has never made a mistake. How different parent-child relationships would be if adults learned to say, "I'm sorry. I have also been wrong."

One seventh-grader says, "Some moms and dads never will admit they're wrong. One thing I like about my folks is that they will apologize sometimes. This helps a lot because you listen more to people like that."

There are friends and relatives who have not spoken to each other for years. How different things could be if only one of them would take the initiative to practice a little Christian humility and say, "I am sorry about the whole situation. I know I was wrong."

A retired clergyman who has counseled thousands of people writes, "Into my study come many people — educators, scientists, rich people, poor people — girls burdened with sin, boys who know they have done wrong, married men and women who are ashamed of themselves. They tell of the misery in their homes and of the unhappy burdens they carry in their hearts. Almost always I am compelled to say to them, "Why don't you go home and say you are sorry? Why don't you go home and ask for forgiveness?"

The first law of mental health is to be honest with yourself. If you have done wrong, don't hide it. Don't bury your guilt feelings in your subconscious mind where they will fester and come out as hypertension, neurasthenia or neurosis. Face the facts about yourself. Admit them. Confess them.

The Prodigal Son in today's Gospel lesson was honest with himself with a frank and merciless honesty. It was when he admitted the wrong in himself and said, "I have sinned," that he came to his true self. A new chapter of his life began that very day. A new chapter can begin for us if, bidding good-by to self-excuse, self-pity, self-defense, we will face the facts about ourselves and say, "Yes, that's the kind of person I am; that is the sort of thing I am capable of doing and have done, but, by the grace of God, I can be different, and I will be different."

If it is therapeutic to admit our faults to others and say, "I'm sorry. I was wrong," it is even more so to admit them to ourselves and to God. It is not enough to say just to oneself, "I have sinned." This can lead to despair and suicide. When Judas, for example, saw that Jesus was condemned, he brought the money to the chief priests and elders and said, "I have sinned in that I have betrayed innocent blood." Then, throwing the pieces of silver in the temple, he went and hanged himself. Judas was remorseful enough to admit his sin to himself and to the chief priests, but he just could not bring himself to face Jesus and say, "I'm sorry. Forgive me."

Jesus, who forgave the penitent thief on the cross, would have forgiven Judas, too, if he had gone to the cross and confessed. If only he could have realized that the reward for apology and confession far outweighs the momentary humiliation and embarrassment of saying, "I am sorry."

When the Prodigal Son said, "I have sinned," he did not stop there. To have stopped there could have meant despair and self-pity. He took the next step. He said, "I will arise and go to my father." And this is what Jesus urges on us. When we see ourselves for what we really are, are ashamed of ourselves, have difficulty accepting ourselves, we can be sure of one thing — God will accept us in the same manner as the Prodigal Son was accepted in today's Gospel:

But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him… . and said to his servants, "Bring quickly the best robe and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found.

This is the way God welcomes us when, with deep repentance in our hearts, we come to Him with those magic words: "I was wrong." Three of the most difficult words to say to yourself, to others and to God. But to the person who musters enough courage to say them, there comes forgiveness, peace, new strength, and a new lease on life.

A psychiatrist recently listed five of the most upsetting experiences people can have. They were as follows: death of a child, death of a spouse, a jail sentence, death of a relative, an unfaithful spouse. Three of the five were related to death.

Some time ago an intriguing story appeared in one of our magazines. It was the story of a man on his way home from the office on a rainy Friday evening to face a cluster of minor problems involving the various members of his family. As he made his way home through mid-Manhattan, he happened to see a man who had just been run down by a car, lying dead in the middle of the street. This was only his second or third contact with death and it really shocked him. The conscious realization that he too was going to die one day hit him like a sledge hammer. It made a difference when he got home that night. The problems that he thought were so great, were not as big as he imagined. The thought of death had given him a new perspective.

One of the striking characteristics of our time is the absurd lengths to which we go to keep death out of sight and out of mind. Dr. John Brantner, a University of Minnesota clinical psychologist, said recently that American society "deals very badly with death and the dying. ... As a society we fear death and through our fear we foster it." Studies have shown that dying patients want very much to talk about death. It helps them accept it and relieves anxiety, but few people are comfortable about bringing up the subject.

Tolstoy, in his masterful tale "The Death of Ivan Ilyitch," describes the conspiracy of silence that we maintain in the presence of the dying. "Ivan Ilyitch’s chief torment was a lie — the lie somehow accepted by everyone that he was only sick, but not dying, and that he needed only to be calm."

Simone de Beauvoir, in "A Very Easy Death," writes of her mother dying of cancer, "At the time the truth was crushing her, and when she needed to escape it by talking, we were condemning her to silence, we forced her to say nothing about the anxieties and to suppress her doubts, she felt both guilty and misunderstood."

In earlier days, along with the other basic facts of life like birth, marriage, bearing children, and raising a family, death was openly accepted as a fact of life. The burial ground surrounding the church stood in the very center of the community. The body was not viewed in a funeral parlor; it was brought right into the living room of one’s home. One could not evade the fact of death. One had to accept it and learn to live with it.

Our Church calendar provides many occasions when we are asked to face up to the fact of death. Good Friday is one such occasion. So is Easter. Sunday is another. Every Sunday is a "little Easter" celebrating Christ’s victory over death. On our Church calendar every year, there are special Memorial Saturdays or "Saturdays of the Souls" which provide another opportunity for us to face up to death, i.e., the two Saturdays preceding Great Lent; the first Saturday of Great Lent, the Saturday before Pentecost. On these Saturdays the Divine Liturgy is celebrated and special prayers are offered for our deceased loved ones. We pray for the dead especially on Saturdays since it was on the Sabbath day that Christ lay dead in the tomb, "resting from all His works and trampling down death by death." Thus, in the New Testament, Saturday becomes the proper day for remembering the dead and offering prayers for them.

There are two questions often asked about the practice of praying for the dead that we have in the Orthodox Church: 1. WHY do we pray for the dead? 2. WHAT can we expect of these prayers?

Christianity is a religion of love. Praying for the dead is an expression of love. We ask God to remember our departed because we love them. Love relationships survive death and even transcend it. There is an inner need for a relationship with a loved one to continue to be expressed even after a loved one has died. Often even more so after a loved one has died since physical communication is no longer possible. The Church encourages us to express our love for our departed brethren through memorial services and prayers.

The anniversary of the death of a loved one is very painful. The Church helps us cope with this pain by encouraging us to have memorial prayers offered in Church for departed loved ones on the anniversaries of their deaths, i.e., forty days after the death, six months, a year, etc. This gives us the opportunity to do something for our loved one. It helps express and resolve our grief.

Death may take loved ones out of sight but it certainly does not take them out of mind, or out of heart. We continue to love them and think of them as we believe they continue to love us and think of us. How can a mother forget a child who has passed over to the life beyond? The same love which led her to pray for that child when he lived will guide her to pray for him now. For in Christ all are living. The same love makes her wish to communicate with him. Yet, all communication must take place in Christ and through Christ. No other communication with the dead is possible or lawful for the Christian. God is God of the living. Our dear ones live in Him. Only through Him is it possible for us to communicate with them. Every liturgy in the Orthodox Church contains prayers for the dead such as the following: "Be mindful also of all those who slumber in the hope of a resurrection to everlasting life. Give them rest, O God, where the light of Thy countenance shineth."

Just as we pray for the deceased, so we believe they continue to love us, remember us, and pray for us now that they are closer to God. We cannot forget the example of the rich man in Hades asking Abraham to send Lazarus to warn his brothers lest they, too, go to that place of torment. Though he had left this life, he did not cease to be concerned for his brothers still on earth.

The Orthodox Church prays for the dead to express her faith that all who have fallen asleep in the Lord, live in the Lord; their lives are hidden with Christ in God (Col. 3:3). Whether on earth or in heaven, the Church is a single family, one Body in Christ. Death changes the location but it cannot sever the bond of love.

Since a person’s eternal destiny is determined immediately after death (though one must wait for the General Judgement to receive the full measure of one’s reward), we must not expect our prayers to snatch an unbeliever from Hades to Paradise. It is our present life that determines our eternal destiny. Now is the time to repent and accept God’s grace. Death puts an end to that state and commits each person to his special judgment. This is why the Lord said that work must be done "while it is day" because "the night cometh when no man can work." "Day" means the present life, "when it is still possible to believe," writes St. Chrysostom, while "night" is the condition after death.

What happens beyond the grave belongs entirely to God. He has told us as much as we need to know; the rest is covered with a veil of mystery which man’s curiosity is incapable of piercing. The faithful have committed themselves to God for the duration of their earthly lives. Now, it is well and good for them to commit their departed loved ones to the mercy of God through prayer, for they have the assurance that God in the riches of His mercy has ways to help them beyond our knowing. Some church fathers state that our departed loved ones experience a kind of spiritual relief as a result of the prayers of their loved ones on earth.

Whether our prayers for our departed loved ones bring any benefit to them we know not; we leave this to the mercy of God. But of one thing we are certain: such prayers do benefit those who pray for the departed. They remind us that we too are going to die; they strengthen faith in the life beyond; they nourish reverence toward those who have died; they help build hope in divine mercy; they develop brotherly love among those who survive. They make us more cautious and diligent in getting ready for that ultimate journey which will unite us with our departed loved ones and usher us into the presence of God. They remind us that now is the time for moral development and improvement, for faith, repentance and love; now is the time to strive for the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to those "who have fought the good fight, finished the race and kept the faith." In other words, the Lord never told us that after we die, somebody else’s prayers will get us into heaven — no matter how many memorial prayers they offer in our behalf. Salvation is a personal matter between each person and his Lord to be achieved in this life.

Nowhere did Jesus ever tell us that prayers for the dead are necessary to help shorten the stay of our loved ones in a place called Purgatory. The Orthodox Church has never accepted Purgatory. We are not saved by pain or suffering in Purgatory; we are saved by grace through faith in Christ. Nowhere in the teachings of Jesus do we find any suggestion that heaven is a Dantean inferno out of which the spirits of the departed must be "prayed." Instead Jesus referred to heaven as "My Father’s House."

Knowing that our loved ones are in our Father’s house, — love motivates us to pray for them as St. Paul prayed for his converts: that God will grant them, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by the spirit of the inner man, that Christ may dwell in their hearts by faith, that they, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend all the greatness of the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that they might be filled with all the fulness of God (Ephesians 3:16-19).

Dr. Paul Tillich believed that the anxiety of having to die is the anxiety that one will be forgotten both now and in eternity. Burial means a removal from the face of the earth. This is what men cannot endure. Memorial markers will not keep us from being forgotten. One day they will crumble to dust. The only thing that can keep us from being forgotten is our faith that God knew us before we were born and will remember us for all eternity.

In a lesser but still very real way, memorial prayers offered by loved ones serve to relieve the anxiety of being forgotten.

The first child of Dr. Martineau, an eminent minister, died in infancy and was buried in the French cemetery of Dublin. Before they left Ireland for Liverpool, the father and mother paid a farewell visit to the grave of their first-born son. The years went by. Mrs. Martineau died. At the age of 87, Dr. Martineau was a lonely old man. But when he was at the tercentenary of Dublin University, he stole away from the brilliant public function to stand once more by the tiny grave that held the dust of his first-born child. No other living soul recalled that little one’s smile or remembered where the child was sleeping. But the father knew and the little buried hands held his heart. A father’s heart never forgets. Love always remembers. That is why the Orthodox Church has always encouraged us to sponsor special memorial prayers and services for the departed.

It is customary among Orthodox Christians from Greece to bring a tray of boiled wheat kernels to church for the memorial service. The wheat kernels express belief in everlasting life. Jesus said, "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (John 12:24). Just as new life rises from the buried kernel of wheat, so we believe the one buried will rise one day to a new life with God. The wheat kernels are covered with sugar and raisins to express the bliss of eternal life with God in heaven. St. Paul writes, "So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body" (I Cor. 15:42-44).

When Orthodox Christians pray for departed loved ones, they focus not only on them but also on Christ in Whom they died: "Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith ..." (Hebrews 12:1). "I am the resurrection and the life," He said, "he who believes in me though he were dead yet shall he live, and he who lives and believes in me shall have life everlasting."

The King in Disguise (Matthew 25:31-46).

In the early days there was a king who decided to test the character of his people. Disguised as a peasant, he traveled about his country and was treated for the most part quite shamefully. In time he came to realize that the honor with which his people greeted him as a king was not due to the respect they felt for his goodness; rather, it was the result of the fear and awe they felt for his wealth and power.

Then, at length, as the king went about in disguise, one of his subjects recognized him. This subject protested the king's going about like any other man, and insisted that he go back to his throne, put on his royal robes, and rule as a proper king should. The people thought it was a sort of trick the king was playing on them to see if he could catch them off guard.

There is another King who travels in disguise. Though He was born not in a royal palace but in a cave with animals. Though a King, He was born not of the royalty of this world, but of a poor peasant girl. Though a King, He lived and worked in the tiny town of Nazareth as a carpenter.

After His resurrection Jesus often "appeared in another form" (Mark 16:12). His disciples did not immediately recognize Him. Mary Magdalene, near the sepulcher, took Him for the gardener (John 20:20). On the road to Emmaus, the two disciples took Him for a traveler (Luke 24:13). To the apostles fishing on Lake Galilee, He appeared to be a stranger until John said to Peter: "It is the Lord" (John 21:7).

In these ways Jesus was showing us that He is present in all persons. He tells us so in today's Gospel lesson. He declares that He was hungry and thirsty, naked and sick, a stranger and a prisoner in those whom we have fed and given to drink, clothed and visited and welcomed. He was present also in those who were in need but whom we did not help. "Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it not to me." This does not mean that God and His creatures are identical by nature but by grace as members of His body, as His living images and temples. This is the mystery of the visible presence of Christ among us today. St. Chrysostom tells us that more sacred than the stone altar in Church is the human altar set up in every street and crossroad because on the first Christ is offered, but the second is Christ himself.

At the close of World War II, a young officer of the United States Army found himself on an island in the South Pacific, which had a large leper colony. As he wandered around the separate dwellings he happened upon a nun who was dressing the wounds of the patients. When the soldier saw the infected legs and running sores he became nauseated. He watched as the Sister calmly and expertly removed the soiled dressings, applied ointment, and then proceeded to bandage the limbs. He was amazed at the nurse's poise and serenity. All this was too much for him, and he exclaimed: "I would not do that for a million dollars!" Undisturbed the nun turned towards the young man and replied sincerely: "Neither would I!" For a million dollars she would not touch those running sores, but because Christ dwells in those outcasts whom society banishes from its sight, she had left home and wandered thousands of miles to assist those in suffering, to assist the King in disguise.

J. D. Salinger in his book "Franny and Zooey" tells of a Fat Lady sitting on her porch all day, swatting flies, with her radio going full blast. He describes her as having "thick legs, very veiny" and being tormented by cancer. Then Salinger asks, "... don't you know who that Fat Lady really is? ... It's Christ Himself. Christ Himself..."

Jesus is often pictured as an attractive man — tall, with a straight nose, friendly eyes, and a radiant face — a person anyone would want to include on the invitation list to a party. But the Gospel lesson today suggests that Salinger's picture of Christ as the Fat Lady may be closer to reality than the picture of Christ we see on our icons. Christ appears to us today in disguise as He appeared to His disciples following the resurrection. He comes to us as an ordinary person: as one of the least of our brethren: the hungry, the naked, the thirsty, the stranger, the prisoner, the Negro, the Fat Lady. The King in disguise.

An Associated Press news item from Calcutta, India, read as follows: The sign over the door reads "Home for Dying Destitutes." Inside, 66 men and 72 women lie on steel frame cots waiting for the end to come. These people are products of this population-choked city, which hardly has time to care for the living. Some of the men and women here were forced to leave hospital beds when they were termed incurable, to make room for those who might be saved. Others were among the countless thousands of nameless persons whose homes are Calcutta's sidewalks and gutters. Work is scarce and begging is fruitless. People like these used to die anonymously. In the old days, trucks picked them up and dumped them into the Hooghly River, an arm of the Ganges. Then in 1952, Mother Teresa, Superior General of the Roman Catholic Church's "Missionaries of Charity," took over a former rest house for Hindu pilgrims and made it a haven for the dying. Since then, 18,000 persons have gone to the crowded stucco building on a cluttered street in Calcutta. Of these, 8,500 died. But, amazingly, the others, most of whom have to be carried into the home, regained strength and the will to live and walked back out into the city streets.

What made Sister Teresa leave the comforts of the West to minister to those forgotten people? Why don't agnostics do this? Why don't atheists? Why don't humanists? Simple! They do not have the ethic of Christ: " ... as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me." The King in disguise!

A soldier of World War I tells of stumbling over the body of a dead German, a mere boy. As he looked, the boy seemed to disappear and in his place he saw Christ on the Cross. From that moment on whenever he saw a human suffering, he saw Christ staring at him from the Cross calling him to share the sorrow and help alleviate the pain. The King in disguise!

There is an old legend of Martin of Tour, a Roman soldier and a Christian. One cold winter day a beggar stopped him. Martin had no money but he saw that the man was shivering from the cold. He took off his soldier's cloak, worn and frayed as it was, cut it in two with his sword and gave half of it to the beggar who blessed him and left. That night Martin had a dream. He saw all the angels of heaven and Jesus sitting in their midst wearing the torn half of a Roman soldier's cloak. One of the angels asked him, "Master, why are you wearing that battered old cloak? Who gave it to you?" And Jesus answered softly, "My servant Martin gave it to me." The King in disguise!

The things Jesus talks about in the parable today are simple things. Anybody can give them: a piece of bread, a cup of water, a word of welcome, a piece of clothing and a visit. Nobody is so poor that he cannot give something to the King in disguise. In fact, St. Chrysostom tells us that if the Church ever comes to the point where she has nothing to give to help the poor, the holy chalice and the other sacred vessels of the holy altar should be melted down and made into gold coins to help feed the hungry who are the living temples of God.

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory … before Him will be gathered all the nations … and He will separate them one from another ... to those at His right hand He will say, 'Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world! ... to those at His left He will say, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels The basis on which we shall be judged by God when He appears at the end of history is: how deeply we loved the King when He appeared to us in disguise: "Lord, when did we see Thee hungry and feed Thee or thirsty and give Thee drink? Or when did we see Thee a stranger and welcome Thee?" And the King will answer, "... as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to Me."

The King in disguise!

Christ's Three-Part Recipe for Lent (Matthew 6:14-21).

In today's Gospel lesson the Lord Jesus offers us a three-part recipe for Lent: forgiveness, fasting and laying up treasures in heaven.

First, forgiveness. The trouble with our world today is that we have built too many walls. The Iron Curtain. The Bamboo Curtain. Walls between the races. Walls between husbands and wives, parents and children. Walls between man and God. One of the best ways to tear down walls is by forgiveness.

Let us start with the walls between man and God. These walls are built by sin. During Lent the Church calls upon us to look at the cross of Jesus and His great mercy. She invites us to come to Christ during Lent in the great Sacrament of Confession to exchange our sins for the riches of His Grace, to taste and experience for ourselves the sweetness of His forgiving love.

Having received His forgiveness, God calls on us to grant forgiveness to all who have hurt us and also to seek forgiveness from those whom we have hurt. God offers us His forgiveness very graciously and generously. But His forgiveness obligates us to forgive others. This is exactly what Jesus says in today's Gospel lesson: "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." Christianity begins with the forgiveness of our Lord. But it does not end here. Because I have been forgiven and daily am being forgiven by God for my many sins, I am obligated to forgive others.

So Lent becomes a time for tearing down walls first between man and God and then between neighbors — walls created by enmity and hatred; walls tougher than steel or concrete; walls which forgiveness alone can destroy.

Fr. Alexander Schmemann has written, "The triumph of sin, the main sign of its rule over the world, is division, opposition, separation, hatred. Therefore, the first break through this fortress of sin is forgiveness: the return to unity, solidarity, love. To forgive is to put between me and my 'enemy' the radiant forgiveness of God Himself. To forgive is to reject the hopeless 'dead-ends' of human relations and to refer them to Christ. Forgiveness is truly a 'breakthrough' of the Kingdom into this fallen and sinful world" ("GREAT LENT" by Fr. Alexander Schmemann. Copyright St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary, Crestwood, New York. Used by permission.).

Our first challenge for Lent is to receive God's forgiveness and to forgive.

The second part of our Lord's recipe for Lent consists of fasting: "When you fast, anoint your head and wash your face that your fasting may not be seen by man but by your Father who sees in secret: and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."

There are many very valid reasons for fasting but the main one is love. Love was one of the main purposes for fasting in the early Church. For example, writing when Christianity was less than a century old, an ancient Christian writer, Hermas, reported an interview with an angel on the subject of fasting. Asked what sort of fast he was making, Hermas replied that he was fasting in the customary manner. The angel was not impressed. He replied that Hermas hadn't the fuzziest notion of what a genuinely Christian fast is, and that what he was doing was pointless. The angel went on to say that if fasting is to have meaning, one should keep careful track of how much money is saved by it, and give the savings to the poor and the needy.

Another early Christian, Aristides, writes in his "Apology," "If there is a poor person among the Christians and they do not have the means to help him, they fast two or three days and give the food they have saved through fasting to the hungry person."

This is the fast we are called upon to practice during Lent which begins tomorrow. We are called upon to fast not only for reasons of self-control and prayer, but also for reasons of love: to deny ourselves something that we may share what we have saved with a needy person.

One family decided to have a meal of just rice once a week during Lent since that is the daily diet of millions of underprivileged people in the world. Of course, the rice was fancied up a bit. It was not watered down into a thin gruel as in the underprivileged countries. When Lent was over, this same family decided to continue once every month the practice of serving only rice for dinner. The $2.50 they saved was placed in a special envelope to be given through their church to the poor of the world. They could have obtained the money by cutting out some luxury but they felt that the rice meal helped them identify with those they wished to help. Once a week during Lent — and once a month following that — they would get a taste of hunger to keep them reminded both of the bounty in their land and of the desperate plight of those who have no access to such bounty.

The Lord God said through the prophet Isaiah, "Is not this the fast that I choose. ... Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked to cover him…" (Isaiah 58:6-7). This is the fast that is pleasing to God.

The Triodion which contains our church services for Lent says the following about the Lenten fast: The Lenten spring has come, The light of repentance… Let us receive the announcement of Lent with joy! For if our forefather Adam had kept the fast, We would not be deprived of paradise… While fasting physically, brothers, Let us also fast spiritually; Let us loose every knot of iniquity, Let us tear up every unrighteous bond, Let us distribute bread to the hungry and welcome to our homes those who have no roof over their heads So that we may receive great mercy form Christ our God.

After forgiveness and fasting the third part of Christ's recipe for Lent is expressed in His words: "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

The question God puts to us in today's Gospel lesson is: What treasures have you laid up for yourselves in heaven? What security will you have when you face the final your? What will you be able to claim as yours when you appear before the throne of God? Granted, God means that we should live our life upon this earth to the fullest, but He also intends that we should live it as a preparation for that which is to come. The question we must ask ourselves is: Are we laying up treasures in this life only? or are we using this life to lay up eternal treasures, treasures that we can take with us when we go, treasures that shall be ours for all eternity?

All our treasures on earth — said Jesus — will last only as long as this life. They are "rust collections." They will all end up in the junkyard. But in Jesus we find real treasures that will never lose their value.

What are some of these treasures that God commands us to accumulate, treasures that are pleasing to Him, treasures that we can take with us, treasures that satisfy eternally.

There is the treasure of love. "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing. Now remain faith, hope, and love these three; but the greatest of these is love." To be rich in love is to be rich indeed.

There is the treasure of forgiveness. The strongest walls between people and between nations are not built of iron or steel but are created by fear, hate, and prejudice. The only way to break down these walls is through the practice of forgiveness. To be rich in forgiveness is to be rich indeed.

There is the treasure of knowing Jesus personally as our Lord and Savior. "This is eternal life that they may know Thee the only true God and Jesus Christ Whom Thou hast sent" (John's Gospel). "But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ…" (Phil. 3:7-8).

Lent is a time to strengthen our relationship to the most important person in he universe: the Lord Jesus by extra prayer every day, by reading His word daily in the Holy Bible, by frequent Communion, by attending the extra Lenten services. Our lives are cluttered with a lot of unessential activities that lead to heart attacks and nervous breakdowns. Lent is a time to weed out and cancel some of these unnecessary activities and create time for God and the soul; time to stop and live; time to accumulate some treasures in heaven where "neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal." To know Christ personally is the greatest treasure there is.

There is the treasure of faith in Christ. Without this faith no man can be saved. Faith is powerful — so powerful it can "move mountains"; it is the force to which God Himself responds. To be rich in faith is to be rich indeed.

There is the treasure of doing God's will. "He who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother" (Jesus in Matt. 12:50). In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said, "He who does… (these commandments) shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:19). True nobility, said St. Chrysostom, consists in doing the will of God. To do the will of the Father and to be called by Jesus "my brother and sister and mother" is indeed a treasure.

There is the treasure of prayer — the awesome privilege of speaking and communing with our loving Lord at any hour of the day or night. Someone has written: Executives are hard to see Their costly time I may not waste; I make appointments nervously And talk to them in haste. But any time of night or day, In places suitable or odd, I seek and get without delay An interview with God.

Truly, what a privilege — and treasure — it is to carry everything to God in prayer!

Finally, there is the treasure of service to others in the name of Christ: "And whoever gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water… truly I say to you, he shall not lose his reward" (Matt. 10:42). One of our service projects for Christ this Lent will be to place the proceeds of our fast of love in our special Lenten offering envelopes. The proceeds will go to the mission program of our Church and to help feed the hungry of our world in the name of Christ.

These, then, are the treasures that really count in God's eyes, treasures that are not "rust collections" but will last forever: the treasure of love, forgiveness, knowing Jesus personally, faith, doing God's will, prayer and service to our fellow humans through the fast of love.

A ruler once threatened that he would take everything away from St. Chrysostom. The great saint replied, "My treasure is in heaven and you can never take it away from me."

Another person said, "I struck it rich." His friend asked, "Gold?" "No," was the answer. "Just remove the 'l’ — God!"

Treasures in heaven

Why not try Christ's three-part recipe for Lent: forgiveness, fasting and laying up treasures in heaven. You will find it to be the perfect recipe if you are looking not only for a resurrected Christ but also for a resurrected you this Easter.

"Jesus Answered ... I Saw You" (John 1:44-52)

When Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, He said, "Behold! A man who is really an Israelite. A man in whom there is no guile!" Nathanael said to Him: "How do you know me?" Jesus answered, "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you."

It was not so much that Jesus had seen him under the fig tree that surprised Nathanael; it was that He had read the thoughts of his inmost heart. So Nathanael said to himself, "Here is a man who understands my dreams and my prayers and has seen into my most secret longings. This must be the Son of God, none other than the Promised Messiah."

"And the people of Israel groaned under their bondage, and cried out for help, and the cry under bondage came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God saw the people of Israel, and God knew their condition" (Exodus 2:23-25).

God is He Who sees the affliction of His people. He said to Moses: "I have seen the affliction of my people … and have heard their cry ... I know their sufferings, and have come down to deliver them…" (Exodus 3:7-8).

Dr. Henry Norris Russell, noted Princeton astronomer, was once lecturing on the infinite greatness of the universe compared to our tiny earth. When he finished his lecture, a woman came to him and asked: "If our earth is so little, and the universe so great, can we believe that God actually pays attention to us?" Dr. Russell replied: "That depends, Madam, entirely on how big a God you believe in."

Our Christian God is bigger than the universe He created; big enough to pay attention to each and every one of His children. But what kind of attention does He pay to us? What does it mean to live constantly in the sight of God?

Does it mean that we may threaten our children and say, "God is watching you. You better behave!" and thus make God a Giant Babysitter providing us with free service whenever we leave home? Is this what it means to live in the sight of God?

Some prisons are now equipped with television cameras placed at such strategic spots that every jail cell is within view. Guards can see everything that goes on. Nothing can be hidden from the probing eyes of the camera. Such cameras are now found in banks, hospitals, and department stores. They remind one of the all-seeing eye of God that is painted on many Orthodox icon screens. Is this what it means to live constantly in the presence of a God who sees all? Is God a great eye constantly watching us to see if He can catch us off guard?

Certainly not!

Plato tells the story of a young shepherd who found a ring which would make him invisible to his neighbors. This gave him the right to do as he pleased without being observed. Prior to having received this ring, the young shepherd was a righteous and godly person. But when he was freed from the scrutiny of his neighbors, he degenerated into an unscrupulous, rapacious person.

It is a good thing to live with the eyes of our neighbors upon us. It helps keep us at our best behavior. In fact, it is when people leave home and go to strange places where no one knows them that they are tempted to do things they would never do at home.

In Lloyd C. Douglas' novel "The Robe," Marcellus asks Justus, "Where do you think Jesus went?"

Justus replied, "I don't know, my friend, I only know that He is alive — and I am always expecting to see Him. Sometimes I feel aware of Him, as if He were close by." Justus smiled faintly, his eyes wet with tears. "It keeps you honest," he went on. "You have no temptation to cheat anyone, or lie to anyone, or hurt anyone — when, for all you know, Jesus is standing beside you."

"I'm afraid I should feel very uncomfortable," remarked Marcellus, "being perpetually watched by some invisible presence."

"Not if that presence helped you defend yourself against yourself, Marcellus. It is a great satisfaction to have someone standing by — to keep you at your best."

Edward R. Murrow once described the secret of Britain's stand against Nazi tyranny, "Unconsciously they dug deep into their history and felt that Drake, Raleigh, Cromwell, and all the rest were looking down at them and they were obliged to look worthy in the eyes of their ancestors." He who looks down at us constantly is our loving Lord Jesus. How much more obliged should we feel to appear worthy in His eyes?

This, then, is what it means to live in the presence of a God who sees. It is like the little girl who was having a great time demonstrating to her grandfather a dance she had learned. Half of the fun for that little girl was in having a friendly eye to watch her.

The ultimate in despair is to feel that we are not seen by anyone. In Thornton Wilder's play, "Our Town," a young woman who had died shortly after her marriage, is permitted to return from the dead to spend a day at her home. Because she returns as a ghost, nobody sees her. The resulting isolation is more than she can bear. Before the end of the day she longs to return to the grave over the hill.

Because we have seen God in Christ, we know that He sees and He cares. A little girl was present at a meeting where the candidacy of Calvin Coolidge for the Presidency was being discussed. Following his appearance before the group, Coolidge's qualifications were being discussed. Suddenly the little girl interrupted to say that Coolidge was the best qualified man. When her father asked her why, she lifted up her bandaged thumb and said, "He is the only one of you who noticed that I had a sore thumb, and who asked me how it was getting on."

Our God is not aloof. He sees. He cares. "Not one sparrow falls to the ground unless it be the Father's will," said Jesus.

God does not see us from the top of some ivory tower but from the cross. Through Christ we have learned that the eyes of God are the eyes of tender love and mercy. He sees us not because He wants to punish us but because He loves us. In fact, He loves us so much that He cannot take His eyes off us. As a mother cannot take her eyes off her newborn baby, so the Lord does not withdraw His eyes from those who put their trust in Him (Job 36:7).

He sees us in our suffering and pain. Because He sees He is able to comfort and strengthen and help. And because we know He sees we can say, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil." Why no fear? "For Thou art with me."

He sees us in our sorrow. He sees us also in our sin. But even in our sin He looks on us with love summoning us to repentance. For example, Jesus looked on Simon Peter after he had denied him three times. As a result of that look Peter went out and wept bitterly. Why? What was it in that look of Jesus that made Peter repent and become the mightiest preacher of Pentecost? Surely it was that the eyes of Jesus were filled with compassion and love. It was this that broke the heart of the impulsive apostle. God is He Who sees us even in our sin. But His seeing is an act of love inviting us to repentance and forgiveness, pleading with us and saying, "Come let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be made as white as snow" (Isaiah 1:18).

He sees us in our suffering to comfort us. He sees us in our sin to make us aware of our error and to bring us to repentance. Thirdly, "the Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7). There are people who have their facial expression so much under control that it is impossible to guess what is behind it. God looks on the heart. He sees the character. He sees the real motive behind each act. He distinguishes between the real and the unreal, between the expression and the intention, the mask and the original.

Finally, think of the compassion in the eyes of Jesus; for these are the eyes through which God looks at us today. What compassion must have shown in His eyes when, looking at Jerusalem, He wept over it. What compassion must have shown in His eyes when He healed the sick and raised the dead. What compassion must have been there when He wept before the tomb of Lazarus, His friend.

The way we look at people exerts a powerful influence on them. A man can look at another with a look that hardens the other's heart. A man can look at another with a look that hurts and destroys. A man can look at another with cold indifference, humiliating and degrading the other. But a man can also look at another with reverence and when that happens, the other will be given the freedom to be himself. A man can look at another with kindness and goodness, with a look that encourages and loves, that opens up what is locked up inside the other, that awakens his powers and brings him to himself. This is the way God looks at us.

Romano Guardini captured so well the meaning of God's seeing when he wrote: "God is He Who sees. But His seeing is an act of love. With His seeing He embraces His creatures, affirms them, and encourages them… . His seeing is not the kind that merely looks at something: it is creative love, it is the power which enables things to be themselves and rescues them from degeneration and decay … God turns His face to man and thereby gives Himself to man … To be seen by Him does not mean being exposed to a merciless gaze but to be enfolded in the deepest care… We are seen by Him whether we want to be or not. The difference is whether we try to elude His sight, or strive to enter into it. ... None of the shortcomings and evil in our lives are fatal so long as they confront His gaze. The very act of placing ourselves in His sight is the beginning of renewal… But everything is in danger once we refuse to place ourselves and our lives in His sight" (THE LIVING GOD by Romano Guardini. Pantheon Press, a division of Random House, Inc. Used by permission).

"He who formed the eye, does he not see?" asks one of the Psalmists. "Yes, He does!" we answer. He saw what was in Nathanael's heart. He saw Abraham. He saw His people suffering in Egypt. He sees us today. He sees us in our sorrow to comfort us. He sees us in our grief to uphold us. He sees us in our sin to forgive us. He sees us from the cross. He sees us with love and it is His seeing that keeps us at our best. If the eyes of Christ are windows through which God sees us, they are also mirrors in which we see ourselves as cared for and loved by our Creator and Redeemer.

What a difference it would make in our lives if every day — throughout the whole day — we remembered that everything we do and say and attempt and think and imagine is going to be done under the eye of God. It would truly revolutionize our lives!

Jesus answered, "Before Phillip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you."

The first Sunday of Lent is called the Sunday of Orthodoxy. It marks the day on which the use of icons was reinstated. It commemorates the triumph of Orthodoxy against the iconoclasts whose purpose it was to remove forcibly all icons from churches and destroy them as instruments of idolatry.

The use of icons is certainly subject to abuse: the record of the iconoclastic controversy is full of evidence to that point. A letter addressed by Byzantine Emperor Michael in 824 A.D. to Louis Le-Debonnaire says among other things:

"They choose the images of saints to serve as godparents to their children… . Some priests have taken to the practice of scraping the paint on the icons, mixing this powder with the Eucharistic bread and wine and distributing the mixture to the faithful after the Eucharist. Others place the body of the Lord in the hands of the icons from where the communicants receive them."

But the misuse of any religious practice cannot be an argument against its true use. Even the spoken word, for example, is an icon. It describes the reality of God and His disclosure of Himself through His Son. Yet even the word — spoken or written — can become an idol which we worship in lieu of God Himself.

Since the icon is one of the most distinctive features of Orthodoxy, we shall consider briefly what it signifies, why it is used, its practical value as well as its doctrinal significance.

First, let us consider the charge of idolatry. Orthodox Christians do not worship icons; they merely reverence or venerate them as symbols. Leontius of Neapolis wrote in the seventh century:

"We do not make obeisance to the nature of wood, but we revere and make obeisance to Him who was crucified on the Cross…. When the two beams of the Cross are joined together I adore the figure because of Christ who on the cross was crucified, but if the beams are separated, I throw them away and burn them" (Migne, Patrologia Graeca).

The iconoclasts held that God cannot be painted because He is eternal and invisible. "No man has seen God at any time" (John 1:18). But the Orthodox insisted that God can be painted because He became man. Because of this it is lawful to make a picture of Him. Those who were denying the icon of Christ were denying the truth that He had become man. In other words, they were denying the very basis of our salvation: God become man in Christ. Thus, what we really commemorate on the first Sunday of Lent is not a controversy about religious art, but about the Incarnation of Christ and the salvation of man.

It would be theologically accurate to say that God Himself was the first icon maker by visibly reproducing Himself in the likeness of His Son. The iconoclast controversy was not simply a controversy over religious art, but over the entire meaning and implication of the incarnation. God took a material body, thereby proving that matter can be redeemed. "The Word made flesh has deified the flesh," said John of Damascus. The materials employed in the icons are but another expression of belief in the materialism of Christianity. This has much to say to us today in the area of ecology: that matter is sacred and should not be abused or contaminated.

The Reformation was negative to icons. For Luther they were permissible as illustrations. Calvin could accept nothing more than historical scenes with more than one person depicted, so that it would not make the faithful stumble into idolatry."

Puritans in England and America took a dim view of religious art. They despised and prohibited all religious paintings. In a way they were probably right. Much of contemporary "religious art" is offensive because it makes it hard to believe that the only begotten Son of God became man.

The picture of the Christ as a bearded lady, sometimes with a bleeding valentine heart showing through a transparent chest, if taken seriously, denies that he was made man. Such pictures give the idea that he became a phantom, neither male nor female.

As Eric Newton writes,

"But from the moment when God sent His only begotten Son to dwell on earth, born of a mortal woman, to preach, to perform miracles, to suffer death at the hands of the Jews, and to be resurrected, the situation for the artist changed, for the new religion contained within itself the fact of the invisible made visible, the Deity made human, the supernatural made physically manifest. At last there was no reason to forbid imagery, for if God Himself became incarnate there could be no possibility of the artist’s image of Him leading to idolatry" ("2000 Years of Christian Art," Eric Newton and Wm. Neil. Harper and Row. Used by permission).

The tendency among some of the early Christians was not to use a realistic image of Jesus. Instead they used abstract signs — letters that would stand for Jesus, such as Chi-Rho, the first two letters of the Greek word for Christ, or IHS, the first letters for the name Jesus in Greek. They also used figures as the fish, which was a secret sign for Christ, or a sheep, standing for the lamb of God.

The Trullan Synod, held in Constantinople in 692 A.D., stated that it was wrong for the church to depict Christ in signs and symbols any longer. The Synod specifically decreed that it would be wrong to portray Christ as a lamb. If He really became man, the Synod said, then He must be portrayed as a human being — not as an animal or as a symbol.

But the church fathers felt that the divine nature of Christ should be brought out in the images as well as His human nature. They said, in the same directive, that images of Him should not be "too carnal." So the icon makers worked out a representation in which the image of Christ was thoroughly human but also highly stylized. This is perhaps why the icons look so very contemporary. They have the stylization, something of the abstraction, of contemporary art, but they have wedded this to an image of Christ as a human being. It is interesting that the late medieval Gothic artists made the image of Christ more human and lost the Byzantine stylization and abstraction that attempted to present also the divine nature of Christ.

Perhaps we should mention the fact that the West has traditionally emphasized the human nature of Christ through the use of statues, the Sacred heart of Jesus, the Christmas Crib etc., whereas the East has placed more emphasis on the divine nature of Jesus through the icon that lends itself very effectively to the expression of the divine, transfigured state of Jesus through the use of stylization and abstraction.

There are three possible ways of "portraying" someone: the photograph, the portrait and the icon. The photograph records the features as they are. A successful portrait reproduces a person’s features in a way that is true to life and recognizable; but at the same time it brings out his character and gives expression to his inner nature. An icon is not a photograph but more like a portrait. Yet it is more even than a portrait. It aims at giving a true likeness of the person, and at the same time it attempts to bring out in a person what he has become through the power of the Holy Spirit. An icon then is more than a photograph, more even than a portrait. Iconography portrays what happens to people after God touches them. They become new persons. By omitting everything irrelevant to the spiritual figure, the figure becomes stylized, spiritualized, not unrealistic but supra-realistic. (I am indebted for this comparison of photograph, portrait and icon of Rudolf Muller’s article, ‘The Theological Significance of a Critical Attitude in Hagiography," which appeared in the "Ecumenical Review"). The icon is thus set aside from all other forms of pictorial art. It offers an external expression of the transfigured state of man, of a body so filled with the Holy Spirit, so trained in good, that it has become like the spiritual body which we shall receive at the Second Coming of Christ.

There are some who believe that abstractionism, the reduction of a figure to its purest essence, originated with the iconographers.

Icons have been called prayers, hymns, sermons in form and color. They are the visual Gospel. In reality, the Eastern Church has two Gospels: the verbal and the visual to appeal to the whole man. As St. Basil said, "What the word transmits through the ear, that painting silently shows through the image, and by these two means, mutually accompanying one another ... we receive knowledge of one and the same thing." One has but to enter an Orthodox Church to see unfolded before him on the walls all the mysteries of the Christian religion. "If a pagan asks you to show him your faith," said John of Damascus, "take him into church and place him before the icons."

Through the icon the Orthodox Church appeals to the eye which is the pope of the senses. We remember much more easily what we see than what we hear. The Old Testament prophets, for example, often used the method of dramatic and symbolic action. Men might refuse to listen, but they could hardly fail to see. Jeremiah, for example, forewarned the people of the slavery that was to fall upon them by making yokes and wearing them on his neck. The current practice in Communist countries of hanging pictures of their leaders everywhere was borrowed by the Russian Marxists from the use of icons in the Russian Orthodox Church. The pictures are, in effect, icons of the new gods intended to stimulate a kind of worship and absolute obedience.

The icon is more even than a means of instruction. It is in effect a sacrament. For, an icon is not fully an icon until it has been blessed. Then it becomes a link between the human and the divine. It provides an existential encounter between men and God. It becomes the place of an appearance of Christ, provided one stands before it with the right disposition of heart and mind. It becomes a place of prayer. An icon participates in the event it depicts and is almost a re-creation of that event existentially for the believer. As S. Bulgakov said, "By the blessing of the icon of Christ, a mystical meeting of the faithful and Christ is made possible." Many icons are regarded as "wonder-working." These are considered to be the icons par excellence.

Standing in an Orthodox Church whose walls and ceiling are covered with icons of Christ and the saints, the worshipper does not feel alone. He experiences the communion of saints. He experiences a fellowship with Christ and the saints. He is made to feel that he is a member of the family of God. Cecil Stewart describes this well when he writes,

"The pictures seem to be arranged in a way which instills a feeling of direct relationship between the viewer and the pictures … each personality is represented facing one, so that one stands, as it were, within the congregation of saints. Byzantine art, in fact, puts one in the picture … He (the viewer) observes and is observed."

A Japanese girl in an American college was invited to spend the Christmas holidays with a classmate. Afterwards she was asked how she enjoyed the holidays. "Very well," she replied, "but I missed God in the home. I have seen you worship God in your church. In my country we have a god-shelf so we can worship our gods in our homes. Do not Americans worship their God in their homes?"

It has been traditional for Orthodox homes to have such a "God-shelf" in the form of an icon with a votive light burning before it. This serves as a reminder of God’s presence in the home and as a center for family prayer. In old Russia, for example, every house — from the great winter palace of the Czar to the thatched hut of the peasant — had an icon of Christ or the Virgin Mother. At that time no Russian home was a home until it was consecrated by the icon. In fact, upon entering his home or visiting a friend, a Russian Christian would first of all bow low before the icons and make the sign of the cross before greeting his family or host.

If the Church in Russia has survived under Communism these past years despite lack of any facilities for instructing children in the Christian faith either at school or at church, it is due (humanly speaking) to the Christian family. Throughout Orthodox Christendom the family has been regarded as a "house church" with its own "altar" where prayers are offered before the icons.

One wonders, however, what has happened to the "house church" and the "icons" in the modern Orthodox family. How many of our homes have icons today? Among our younger families I have seen pictures of famous movie stars on the walls but very few icons. Are we going to allow one of the most precious traditions of our Orthodox faith — the icon — to disappear from our homes? Then what will symbolize God’s presence in our homes? What will serve as an invitation to prayer? What will serve to appeal to morality and conscience?

The icon was never intended to hang on a wall as an aesthetic object. If it is used as an attractive piece of decoration, it ceases to function as an icon. For an icon can only exist within the particular framework of belief and worship to which it belongs. Divorced from this framework, it loses its function as an icon.

In a fragment of the "Life of St. John Chrysostom" preserved in a work by St. John of Damascus (675-749), we are told that Chrysostom had an icon of the Apostle Paul before himself as he studied Paul’s epistles. When he looked up from the text, the icon seemed to come to life and speak to him.

Icons in the home consecrate the profane; they transform a neutral dwelling-place into a "domestic church" and the life of the faithful into an unceasing liturgy.

One of the Patriarchs of the Russian Church (Alexis in 1947) said: "If in hospitals, which treat the diseases of the body, everything is arranged to make the surroundings conducive to the patient’s return to health, what great care must be taken to order everything in a spiritual hospital, a church of God." We can apply this also to the Christian home which should include reminders of God’s strengthening and healing presence.

It has been said that love is the great interpreter. It is the conductor of an orchestra who is in love with the music of a composer who can best interpret and express it. A young artist once brought a picture of Jesus which he had painted to a great painter for his verdict. The artist studied it for quite some time and finally said, "You don’t love Him, or you would paint Him better."

This great truth is practiced among Orthodox icon painters who are usually monks. Such iconographers are not considered to be religious artists but rather as persons who have a religious vocation. They are clergymen preaching visual theology. The icon, like the Word, is a revelation, not a decoration or illustration. More important than being a good artist is the fact that the icon painter be a sincere Christian who prepares himself for his work through fasting, prayer, Confession and Communion and has the feeling that he is but an instrument through whom the Holy Spirit expresses Himself. It is important to know Him better if one is to paint Him better. In the West, the theologian has instructed and even limited the artist, whereas in the East the iconographer is a charismatic who contemplates the liturgical mysteries and instructs the theologian.

Since we are talking about icons we would be remiss if we neglected to say that by far the best icon of God is man who was made in God’s own image. This is the reason the Orthodox priest during the liturgy turns and censes the congregation after having censed the icons. Each person in the congregation is a living icon of God. Through censing we pay respect to the image of God in man which resides in all men regardless of the color of skin or class. To pay respect to the icons in Church and to show disrespect to the living icons of God — our fellow men — is hypocrisy of the worst sort. The Sunday of Orthodoxy should remind us that God made us .in His own image. We are His living, walking icons. Yet often we allow the icon of God in us painted by the Holy Spirit to be marred and blurred by sin. By her emphasis on the restoration of icons on the first Sunday of lent, the Orthodox Church calls on us to restore also the fallen icon of God in our souls through repentance and a return to the renewing power of Christ in the Eucharist.

A Sunday school teacher once said to her first-grade class, "You know how you feel when you draw a picture. You want everybody to see it and admire it because you made it. That’s how Jesus feels about you. You’re the picture He draws."

A little boy asked, "Is everybody Jesus’s picture?"

"That’s right," said the teacher.

"Even Annie?"

"Yes."

Suddenly a scrap of brown paper fluttered into the teacher’s wastebasket. "I was going to put flypaper in Annie’s milk," he said sadly, "only Jesus drew her so I better not."

As soon as one enters an Orthodox Church one is greeted at the door by an icon of Christ whose house we have just entered. He stands at the door to greet us as Host. We, in turn, greet Him by making the sign of the cross and bowing before or kissing His icon. Then as we enter the church we see Christ Pantocrator in the dome reminding us of His all-pervading presence in the universe and in our lives. On the walls and on the icon screen He is surrounded by the prophets, apostles, Virgin Mother, martyrs and Saints. Finally on the floor level of the Church are the living saints — all of us, the Church triumphant in heaven and the Church militant on earth, gathered round our Lord and singing praises to His glory.

A little girl once visited our church on a quiet Sunday afternoon. Relating the event to me later, her father told me that they were members of another church that did not use icons. Their church was rather plain on the inside. As soon as the little girl entered the church and saw the huge picture of Jesus in the dome and the other religious paintings on the walls and icon screen, she walked up to the altar and instinctively knelt down and began to pray. She had felt God’s presence. We, too, can feel His presence not only at church but also at home every day and every night through the devotional use of this great aid to prayer: the icon, the visual Gospel.

Razing the Roof (St Mark 2:1-12).

One day four friends brought a paralytic to Jesus for healing. When they saw that the house where Jesus was preaching was packed and the doorway jammed, they did not give up in despair. Faith never gives up. It perseveres. It is inventive, fertile, full of ideas. It laughs at barriers. If the road is closed one way, faith will look for another way. And it finds another way. Removing some of the loosely-joined tiles on the simple Palestinian roof, the four friends lowered their burden of grief down through the opening, and laid it at the Master's feet. Imagine the amazement of those in the crowded house when they heard the crumbling noise above them, felt the dust and debris falling all over them, and looked up to see the ceiling open and a pallet bearing a sick man descending on them. Imagine Jesus staring at the open sky through a hole in the ceiling and seeing four heads looking down at Him! Here is an example of how faith will literally raze the roof to get to God. These men made it clear for all to see that Christian faith is something more than a stab in the dark; it is a determined effort to establish contact with Jesus. The person who says, "I was not in church last Sunday but my heart was there" is kidding himself. If his heart were there, his body would have been there. You simply cannot stop faith from finding a way to be with Jesus.

Let us take a look at the four friends of the paralytic. The first thing for which Jesus admired them was their faith. It was when He "saw their faith" that He performed the miracle of healing. But Christian faith does not stand alone; it walks hand in hand with love. When these four friends came to Jesus, they did not come alone. They remembered one who wanted very much to see Jesus but could not because of paralysis. Most people had forgotten him, but not these four friends. They took the time and made the effort to go and get this man and bring him to Jesus. They are the kind of people who delight the heart of God. They not only wanted to see Jesus themselves, but they also thought of someone to bring with them who otherwise could not have come.

We begin by bringing ourselves to Christ. But we never stop there. After we have brought ourselves, we bring others. The greatest gift that any man can bring to another is Christ. Very few people pass even a single day without being in touch with someone who does not know Christ, and who greatly needs to know Him. Isn't this our whole purpose as a Church, i.e., Sunday school teachers, parents, youth workers, choir members, friends — each in his own way, to bring others into the healing presence of our Lord? How easy it is, for example, to bring a friend and lay him at the feet of Jesus on the stretcher of prayer! The four men in today's Gospel could not heal their paralyzed friend, but they were willing to bring him to the One who could heal.

See how tenderly and with what great compassion Jesus spoke to the paralytic, "My son, your sins are forgiven." Seeing him lying there on his pallet paralyzed, he addressed him as "My son." He was indeed speaking to one of His children who was hurting and He brought to him — as He brings to each one of us — the total love and power of God.

Jesus could have said to the paralytic, "Your paralysis be healed." But he did not. Instead He said, "Your sins are forgiven." The trouble with that man was not paralysis but something deeper. Body and soul live so close together that often the sickness of the one affects the other. The torture of sin and guilt was the deeper cause of this man's paralysis. So Jesus removed the primary cause: "My son, your sins are forgiven."

If a person is a bad driver, he will ruin any car — even the best one. The best therapy in such a case is not the constant repairing of the car, but the re-education of the driver. If Jesus had healed only the body of this man, the guilt of unforgiven sin would have found expression in some other physical ailment. This man was paralyzed by guilt and physical paralysis was only an outer manifestation of the inner spiritual paralysis. Sin is the greatest paralysis. It paralyzes man, body and soul. Jesus came to cure this paralysis.

We come to Jesus today paralyzed by the meaninglessness of life, we leave with a sense of purpose: "I have come that you may have life and that you may have it more abundantly." We come to Jesus paralyzed with sin and guilt, we leave pardoned and forgiven. We come to Jesus paralyzed by anxiety and fear. We leave with peace — "the peace of God that passes all understanding." We come to Jesus paralyzed by our weaknesses; we leave with power. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," said St. Paul. We come to Jesus paralyzed by a feeling of loneliness, we leave having found a Friend who loves and cares. We come to Jesus paralyzed by discouragement, we leave with hope — a hope that is rooted in God who so loved the world that He "spared not His own Son, but delivered him up for us all." We come to Jesus paralyzed by skepticism and doubt, we leave having found the Truth. "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man comes to the Father but by me," said Jesus. We come to Jesus paralyzed by sadness, we leave with joy. "These things have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full." We come to Jesus paralyzed by the fear of death, we leave with the assurance of life everlasting.

When the scribes heard Jesus say, "My son, your sins are forgiven," they objected saying, "Why does this man speak thus? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?" The scribes felt that since only God can forgive sin, Jesus had committed blasphemy. Jesus shows them that He is God by healing the paralytic. "But that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins — he said to the paralytic — I say to you, rise, take up your pallet and go home." We must remember that the scribes believed that no paralytic could get up and walk unless first his sins were forgiven. According to the scribes all sickness was the result of sin, and no sickness could ever be cured until sin was forgiven. Now, if Jesus was able to make this man get up and walk, then that was proof that the man's sins had indeed been forgiven and that Jesus was indeed the God who alone can forgive sin!

"Which is easier," asked Jesus, "to say to the paralytic, 'Your sins are forgiven' or to say, 'Rise, take up your pallet and walk'?" Which is easier? To forgive or to heal? Archbishop William Temple answered this when he said once, "To create (the world) was easy ... no effort there. 'Let there be light; (said God) and there was light. But to convert hearts like ours from the self-centeredness which is natural to them into love which is God's own nature … that costs the agony and the bloody sweat and the death (of God) upon the cross." Indeed, which is easier?

"Rise, take up your pallet and walk!" The world will always say, "You made your bed and now you must lie in it;" but there is One greater than the world who says to every penitent sinner, "Take up thy bed and walk. Thy sins are forgiven."

"Why does this man speak thus? … Who can forgive sins but God alone?" ask the scribes. But the paralytic knew. Here in Christ is God! So the people "were all amazed and glorified God, saying, 'We never saw anything like this!"

Through the power of the same Christ, we, too, can rise from a paralyzed mind, a paralyzed soul, a paralyzed spirit and walk into a new life, a life of wholeness and health. We, too, can glorify God, saying, "I never saw anything like this. I never dreamed anything like this joy, this peace, this forgiveness, could be possible!"

God's Great Plus Sign (St Mark 8:34-9:1).

The third Sunday of Lent is dedicated to the Adoration of the Holy Cross. During the liturgy the cross is carried from the altar on a tray of flowers and placed in the midst of the congregation that we may pay homage to the symbol of our salvation. When the priest bows down before the cross today, he bows not to wood or metal but to Christ and His great love, of which the cross is but a symbol. The beautiful flowers surrounding the cross signify the fragrance, sweetness and beauty that it has added to life.

Today we shall talk briefly about the meaning the cross can have in our daily lives.

A little girl had arrived at the point in her schooling where she was studying the mysteries of mathematics. She was deeply impressed with division signs, multiplication signs, minus signs and plus signs. On the Sunday after she had learned about plus signs, she noticed the cross behind the church altar which she had seen many times before. But this time it deeply impressed her and she whispered to her father, "Daddy! What is the plus sign doing behind the altar?"

The girl's question was a natural one but far more perceptive than she realized. In a profound sense the cross is God's great plus sign.

The cross means that man does not have to rely solely on his own resources. He can have the great plus of God's power. God has placed tremendous power in nature. In one glass of water there is enough energy to propel a ship across the Atlantic Ocean. Shall the God who placed such power in nature refuse His children when they come to Him in weakness seeking strength? If Jesus taught us anything about God, He taught us that He is a God who grants strength to the weak. Man's weakness plus God's strength equals the ability to overcome anything life can place before us.

To a man burdened and cast down by an overwhelming sense of guilt, feeling that he can never be forgiven, that he can never again look God or man in the face, the Cross brings the great plus of God's forgiveness. "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do," prayed Jesus from the Cross. And St. Paul writes, "God showed his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8). If the most difficult person to forgive is oneself, then the fact that God has forgiven and accepted us, will help us forgive ourselves. If He accepts us, then we can learn to accept ourselves. Sinful man plus God's great mercy equals salvation, wholeness, peace with God and self.

Plus power. Plus forgiveness. Thirdly, plus newness of life. The addition of Christ to man's life is not "simple addition," like adding one apple to one apple and getting two apples. It is more like adding hydrogen to oxygen and getting a totally new substance — water. As St. Paul put it, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all old things become new." He who is "in Christ" has a new center for life; and Christ Himself gets a new, unique expression in the world through a life that has never been here before and will never be here again. Man plus Christ equals new life, new meaning, new goals, new values, a totally new person.

Plus power. Plus forgiveness. Plus newness of life. Fourthly, plus eternal life. The greatest minus sign in life before Christ came was death. Christ took this minus sign and crossed it out by his resurrection turning it into life's great plus sign: "But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive" (I Cor. 15:20-22). "He who believes in me," said Jesus, "though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die" (John 11:25). Dying man plus Christ equals life everlasting in a place where "eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it ever entered into the heart of man what things God has prepared for those who love him" (Paul).

Plus power. Plus forgiveness. Plus newness of life. Plus eternal life. Fifthly, plus God's love. The Cross is a very eloquent sign and symbol. It is a pledge that God will go to the uttermost for us; He will never wash His hands of us or leave us to perish. The Cross speaks: it says, this is how much God loves and cares. He cares so much that He gives His only Son to die for our sins. It says again, greater love hath no man than this. It speaks of the limitless love of God which will not cease to love even when crucified. Erase the Cross from our lives and we are left with no assurance that man is worth more than a doornail. Erase the Cross and the heart of the universe remains cold and closed. But with the Cross we can sing with St. Paul: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities … nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:35-39).

Plus power. Plus forgiveness. Plus newness of life. Plus eternal life. Plus God's love. Sixthly, man plus Christ equals the promise of ultimate victory. St. Paul writes in Colossians, "On that cross he (Jesus) despoiled the cosmic powers and authorities … ; he made a public spectacle of them and led them as captives in his triumphal procession" (Col. 2:15 NEB). In our Orthodox faith the Cross is never viewed apart from the Resurrection. Christian faith sees in the Cross of Christ a death-struggle with all the forces of evil and sees in the Resurrection their ultimate and final defeat. Man plus Christ equals ultimate victory. "Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (I Cor. 15:57).

There are two kinds of people in life — the plus people and the minus people. Those whose symbol is the minus sign never add to anyone's happiness. Rather, they take away. When they leave your company, you feel poorer in faith, poorer in love, poorer in hope. But thank God there is another group of people — God's people — the people of the Cross, the people who live by faith in the Son of God, the plus people. The Bible calls them "the salt of the earth" and "the light of the world" and "the aroma of Christ." They add to life: courage, faith, love, hope, peace, joy.

So today on the Feast of the Adoration of the Holy Cross as we look at God's great plus sign beautifully decorated with flowers we are reminded that:

1. Man need not be alone in his problems and troubles. He can have the great plus of God's presence, His love and care.

2. Sinful man plus God's mercy equals forgiveness.

3. Confused man plus Christ equals new purpose, new meaning, a totally new person.

4. Guilt-ridden man plus Christ equals "the peace of God that passes all understanding."

5. Dying man plus faith in Christ equals eternal life with God in heaven.

6. Weak man plus Christ equals strength. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me," testifies St. Paul.

7. Despairing man plus Christ equals hope — a hope that says, "You need not stay the way you are. You, just as you are, plus God's redeeming power, equal the person you were meant to be, the person about whom God can say one day, "This is my beloved son or daughter, in whom I am well pleased."

Lord, as we come to reverence your Cross today we reverence not wood or metal but the symbol of the greatest victory mankind has ever known — your victory over sin and death; a victory in which we all share through Baptism and faith; a victory which has changed the great minus signs of life into plus signs, a victory which makes each Christian a plus person in the world adding light where there is darkness, love where there is hate, hope where there is despair, a cup of cold water where there is thirst, and a piece of bread where there is hunger. Amen.

Whenever we wish to win people to a cause, a party or club, we put the best foot forward. We point out the advantages they would gain should they join our group.

When Jesus wanted people to follow Him He used no such bait. On the contrary, His invitation to them was: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me."

"…let him deny himself." Let us say something about this life of ours. One of the big troubles we have with the self is that it is always with us. We cannot get away from it. If we have a disagreeable neighbor, we can move away from him. But we can never move away from ourselves. If we go to the uttermost parts of the earth, we take ourselves along. And this is the cause of a lot of misery to people who go on vacations to faraway places to "get away from it all."

To escape themselves, many people turn to drink and sex. The trouble with these is that the escape is only temporary. After we have gotten drunk and indulged ourselves to excess, the self, with which we still have to live, becomes less desirable to live with. We come to hate ourselves even more.

What then does one do with oneself? Many answers have been given. The man bent on pleasure says, "Enjoy yourself!" The teacher says, "Educate yourself!" The artist says, "Express yourself!" The philosopher says, "Know yourself!" Christ says, "Deny yourself!"

Deny yourself? Is not this a sort of spiritual suicide? to destroy the personality? How can it be God’s will that we destroy the self which He Himself has given us? If God gave us our personality, why should He want us to deny it? Shouldn’t He rather want us to develop the gift He has given us? Don’t people become sick mentally and emotionally exactly because they try to deny self and become someone they are not?

Why, then, does our Lord ask those who wish to follow Him to deny themselves? For one very good reason. Each of us has at least two selves. Plato described man as a charioteer who drove two horses, one white one that was tame, the other black and wild. Robert Louis Stevenson has immortalized for us the man of dual personality: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Others tell us that man is not so much a human being as a civil war. In most people there is constant tension between these two or more selves of which we are composed.

Carl Sandburg wrote once:

The story is told of Abraham Lincoln leaving the White House for an evening walk. Suddenly a boy ran through a hedge and crashed into the President’s long legs. Picking himself up the boy said, "It’s getting to be that a Southern gentleman cannot walk the streets of Washington without being knocked down." Lincoln put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and said, "Son, the fellow who is in your way is inside you." Isn’t it true that the fellow inside us is oftentimes our greatest enemy?

There is, then, a bad self. But there is also a good self in each one of us. When the prodigal son "hit bottom" in the far country of sin, the Gospel tells us that he "came to himself." In other words, he came to his real, his true, his noble self and said, "I will arise and go to my father." The real self in each of us is the good self, the self one truly is. It is the image of God which we all bear. The sinful self is a stranger, someone who does not belong inside us but who struggles to invade and take control. This is Satan or the devil. When our Lord said that a man must deny himself, He did not mean those qualities in man which make for God-likeness, but rather those barnacles of selfishness and sin which prevent him from becoming all that God wants him to be. Jesus asks us to deny the false self, the sinful self, in order that we may express the true self, the image of God in us.

We say "No" to one self in order that we may say "Yes" to the other self. A man, for example, may choose to live the life of a philanderer. He will throw all restraint to the winds. He will stop at nothing in indulging his passions and enjoying the pleasures of the senses. The word "discipline" simply isn’t in his vocabulary. He will not deny that self. But think of what he is denying himself. He’s denying himself the chances of a happy home, the love and respect of a good wife and children. He’s denying himself the deeper experiences of loyalty, beauty and friendship. When he says "Yes" to one kind of life he automatically says "No" to another kind of life.

A football player may be very fond of midnight suppers and club carousels. But if he wants to stay on the team, he has to say "No" to these. The reason for his "no" to carousing is the "Yes" that he says to the team. So it is with us. If we have said "Yes" to Christ, we must keep saying "No" to sin and evil.

Arnold Toynbee said once that a visitor is likely to forget that the city of Los Angeles is in reality only a tiny patch of green in a vast desert. The grass is kept so perpetually green by constant sprinkling. It comes as a shock — he says — when we see huge desert weeds bristling up in vacant and untended lots. We realize then that the same savage nature exists under all those green lawns just waiting for a chance to sprout up again. So it is with man. There is the good self, like the grass, but below this exists the sinful self — the weeds — just waiting for a chance to take over. The easiest way for the weeds to take over is simply for us to do nothing. Because we have said "Yes" to the grass, we must constantly say "No" to the weeds.

An Indian explained it this way: "There are two dogs that live inside, a white dog and a black dog.

The white dog wants me to live for Christ. The black dog wants me to sin. And they fight each other all the time. But I know what to do! I feed the white dog and starve the black dog."

This, then, is what the Lord expects us to do if we are to follow Him: to starve the black dog, the evil, sinful self within us. "Let him who will come after me deny himself." This is what St. Paul means when he says, "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. ..." Paul had nailed to the cross his lower, sinful self and from that crucifixion and death there rose within him a new self, the real self, the Christ-self.

Some time ago the walls of the St. Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople were being cleaned and under many layers of dirt and grime was found a beautiful mosaic of the Lord Jesus. That icon is in every man. God painted it there. It is the image of God in our souls but only God knows how we can overlay it and hide it with our sins. This is why Jesus tells us in today’s Gospel lesson, "Give the best in you a chance. Say ‘No’ to evil. Deny your false self, your sinful self and let the real self, the self you truly are, the image of God in you, blossom forth in all it’s splendor."

"I Believe: Help My Unbelief!" (Mark9:17-31).

One day a father brought his sick son to Jesus with the faint hope that Jesus could cure him. He said to the Master, "Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a dumb spirit." The father went on to say that the malevolent spirit possessing his son would torture him. On many occasions the boy had thrown himself into the fire and almost burned to death. At other times he had fallen into the water and nearly drowned. He was a tortured, afflicted person. He would wallow on the ground and foam at the mouth. The father was desperate in his search for a cure. He had sought out the best medical treatment but with no success. Finally he had brought his son to the disciples. Even they could not help. The father's complaint to Jesus is poignant: "... and I asked your disciples to cast it out and they were not able."

Jesus said to the father, "Bring him to me." One of the great secrets of life is to be found in these words, "Bring him to me." When we have a sickness or a problem, we Christians always have someone to whom we can go. "Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden," said Jesus, "and I will give you rest." How many cries for help we hear every day! If we try to help them alone, we are helpless. But if we believe in Jesus, it is our mission to bring them to the true Helper. As parents, friends, employers, fellow workers, we can be His middlemen, His helpers. All who need help will find real help only in Him. But before we can bring others to Christ, we must bring ourselves to Him. We must let Jesus strengthen our faith. We must let Him break the power of sin in our lives and set us free. We must let Him perform the miracle of salvation for us. Then we cannot help but bring others to Him.

Jesus dealt with the father in a beautiful and tender way. He began with the question, "How long has he had this?" Of course, Jesus knew! The question was asked only to give this father the courage to speak out the story of his long sorrow. Jesus was in effect saying to the father, "I am interested in your problem. Tell me about it." The very fact that the father found a sympathetic listener helped lift the burden. There is great healing power in having someone to listen who sincerely cares and understands. Here lies part of the great value of prayer. We have a God who loves us and wants us to pour out our problems to Him. The father responded to the Master's question. He poured out his heart to Jesus, and gave vent to the bitterness that had poisoned the happiness of his home all these years.

As the father told his sad story the boy had another attack. Looking at the gentle face of the Galilean, the father pleaded, "If you can do anything, have mercy on us and help us." The most important word in the man's appeal for help was "if'-"if you can do anything." One can understand why the father had some doubt as to whether Jesus could help him. He had been disappointed so many times. His little boy had epilepsy since childhood. Like any father, he had left no stone unturned to heal the boy. He had carried him hopefully to every doctor he could reach. He had purchased every new drug on the market. He had carried him to the synagogue to be prayed for. He had even brought him to Jesus' disciples. All these had failed. Each time he met with disappointment. It was only natural for the father to have some disbelief.

A person can have so many problems, so many disappointments, so much bitterness, so many frustrations that after a while, he begins to doubt not only the existence of God, but also the existence of anything good. It is possible for the pile of sorrow to become so great that we lose hope and, losing hope, we lose God. Such was the condition of the father when he said to Jesus, "If you can do anything, have pity on us and help us."

Jesus countered with another "if." "If you can believe; all things are possible to him who believes." He suggested that the father's faith had a lot to do with the whole situation. The problem says Jesus is not whether I have the power to heal; the problem is whether or not you believe I have the power. For "all things are possible to him who believes." God's power is limited only by our faith.

Faith has no power by itself. It is only when it clings to Christ that it lays hold of the tremendous power of almighty God. If you screw a pipe to a water main and turn a handle, the water flows out through the pipe and fills the empty vessel. Faith itself is as empty as the hollow water pipe, but when it becomes the connection between almighty God and empty man, the fullness of His grace flows through and fills the emptiness.

It is our faith in Christ that determines the amount of power we shall receive from Him. The size of our cup of faith can be large or small. We shall have just as much purity, just as much peace, just as much wisdom or gentleness, or love, or courage, or hope as the size of our cup of faith will hold. If we are not getting what we need from Christ, instead of blaming Him, we need to take a good look at the condition and the size of the cup we bring to Him. "If you can believe! All things are possible to him who believes." Scientists believed they could split the atom before they actually split it. There were those who said it could never be done, but it was. There is power in faith when it is based on science. There is even greater power in faith when its object is God. The magic of believing stimulates a wonderful power flow within us. It tunes us in to the mind of Jesus. It connects us to the greatest source of power in the universe: "You shall receive power," promised Jesus, "when the Holy Spirit has come upon you."

Jesus performed two miracles. He not only healed the epileptic boy; He also increased the father's faith. From saying, "If you can do anything," the desperate father reached the point where he could say, "I believe." And yet it was not a change from unbelief to complete belief. His one-sentence prayer, "Help my unbelief showed that he did not possess complete and absolute faith. He expressed and acted on the faith he had, but he did not hide his doubt. He was honest with Christ. No person believes perfectly. In every person there is a mixture of faith and doubt. But the important thing is whether we let ourselves be controlled by the faith we have or by our doubts. Miracles happen not because of perfect faith, but rather because of imperfect faith in the perfect Christ.

Lord, we believe. We believe that You are the greatest miracle that ever happened on earth. We see how You healed the epileptic boy and so many others. We see how much You cared for people — how gently You treated the troubled father, how You increased his faith. Lord, we acknowledge that the size of our cup of faith is small. Increase it — we pray — that our lives may be filled with your peace, power and love. Amen.

The Truly Great: Those Who Serve (Mark 10:32-45).

A national magazine advertised recently for two persons to serve as servants — cook and butler — on a large estate. No one responded. The magazine concluded with this not too profound statement: "Americans don't like to be servants, and in the long run most of us will have to learn to do without them."

It is not only Americans who do not like to be servants. James and John, two disciples of Jesus, came to Him in today's Gospel lesson and said, "Grant us to sit one at your right hand and one at your left in your glory." It was as if they had said, "Lord, now that you're going to become king, let one of us be the secretary of state and the other the secretary of the treasury.''

"When the other disciples heard it, they began to be indignant at James and John." They were angry with them for their self-seeking ambition: they were also angry with themselves for not having thought to ask for these positions first.

How did Jesus handle the request of James and John that they be first in the kingdom?

The Gospel says, "Jesus called them and said to them, You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whosever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

The world says that you are great according to the POWER that you exercise over others. The more authority you have to dominate, the greater you are. "But it shall not be so among you," said Jesus.

The world says that you are great according to the POSITION you hold. The greater the position, the greater the person. "But it shall not be so among you."

The world says that you are great according to the POSSESSIONS you have. Your greatness is measured by the suburb in which you live, the size of your house, the kind of car you drive, the amount of money you have. "But it shall not be so among you," said Jesus.

But if greatness is not to be found in position, in power, in possessions, where then is it to be found?

Whoever would be great among you must be your servant…

In a single sentence Jesus reverses the values of the world. The world has placed at the top of the list kings, military commanders, the rich, those who have positions of honor and recognition. Behind them come the great masses of humanity, followed at the very end by the servants. Jesus reverses the whole scale of values and says, "The greatest of these are those who serve."

The word servant today is an unpopular word. Few people wish to serve. Everybody expects to be served. Most people want to lord it over others; their goal in life is to get to be "top man on the totem pole" — even if they have to step on others to get there. Much of the trouble we have today is caused by people who desire to be the greatest — the most honored, the most privileged, the most powerful, the most prosperous, the best paid, the best fed, the best housed.

When some of us get the idea that we are better than others around us, when we get the idea that we are just naturally superior and ordained by God to be first — then trouble really starts — as it started among the disciples. "When the other disciples heard it, they began to be indignant at James and John."

Why does the Lord Jesus place so much emphasis on the importance of serving? Why does He place it above position, power, possessions and all else? The answer is that if Christianity is anything, it is LOVE, nay, it is more than love. Christianity is love militant. It is love in action. It is love going out to serve. It is love sacrificing itself. It is love rooted in the love of Christ who came "not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many."

Whenever the spirit of Christ captures a man, whatever his station in life, that man becomes a servant.

A few years ago Cardinal Leger, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Montreal, gave up his office to go as a simple missionary to the lepers of Africa, who are among the poorest and most neglected people in the world.

Dr. Tom Dooley, young medical doctor, left what could have been a comfortable life for himself in this country to become a servant to the poor people of Laos providing them with free medical service.

Dr. Paul Carlson, medical missionary, killed a few years ago, servant to the people of the Congo.

Father Damien, servant to the lepers at Molokai.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer, noted philosopher, theologian, musician and physician, servant to the sick of Africa. When the natives asked him why he came, Dr. Schweitzer answered very simply, "Jesus sent me."

We do not have to leave home and go to far-off places to be servants for Christ like Cardinal Leger or Dr. Tom Dooley or Dr. Schweitzer. We can begin to be servants for Christ in our homes.

We can be a servant to our spouse in marriage. How many marriages have been wrecked by the desire to command and be obeyed, to be loved instead of to love, to be served instead of to serve, to be understood instead of to understand. How different our marriages would be if we strove after Christ's kind of greatness: "Let him who would be great among you be your servant."

What a difference being servants would make in our relations with our children! How many young people have risen in rebellion against a childhood lived in the grip of a dictator in the home? a father or mother who just barked commands? who acted like prosecuting attorneys? who demanded obedience just because of their position in the family? But does the greatness of parents depend on their position in the family, or does it depend rather on their willingness to be servants to their children, to set for them an example worthy of respect, to spend time with them, to play with them, to pray with them, to talk with them, to listen to them, to reason with them, to understand them?

"Whoever would be great among you (even as a spouse or parent) must be your servant."

The greatest example of such humble service was Jesus. Once when no one else was willing to wash the disciples' feet as was the custom, Jesus removed His outer robe, took the basin of water and towel, knelt down and washed their feet.

Celsus, a second century pagan, found this utterly blasphemous. It was one of the things he held against Christians that they were so low-minded as to picture God, not only as crucified, but also as washing people's muddy feet.

Far from being blasphemous, Christians have considered this act of Jesus one of the greatest lessons He taught us. For after performing the task of the slave and washing their feet, He said to them,

Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Lord and Teacher; and you are right for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you" (John 13:12-15).

As we think of this humble act of Jesus we ask ourselves, was it a greater humiliation for Jesus to wash His disciples' feet than it was for Him — the Creator of the Universe — to be wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger? or to be slapped by a servant during His trial? or to be crowned with thorns and mocked as a king? or to be nailed to the cross as an arch-criminal? The one time God chose to come to earth, He chose to come in the form of a servant. St. Paul expressed it beautifully when he wrote: …Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross (Phil. 2:6-8).

Let us part with these words by Archbishop Temple,

I want to leave you for this moment with the picture that St. John gives of what our Lord did in a moment of special consciousness of His divine mission and authority. Knowing that He came forth from God and went unto God, what did He do? He did not sit on a throne and invite His disciples to bow before Him in homage. He girded Himself and began to perform for them the act of service which was in that time and place regarded as the most menial that one could do for another. He washed their feet. This is what He felt to be God meant: to serve.

"I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done" (John 13:15).

"You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them . . . But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant."

Lord, perhaps there are some of us who cannot carry the cross; it is too heavy; we are too weak; but there is not one of us who cannot carry a towel—the towel of love and service performed in Your holy name. Amen.

Holy Week begins on the Saturday of Lazarus, It begins with a resurrection (Lazarus) and it ends with a resurrection (Christ). Thus, Holy Week is placed between two brilliant shafts of light which illuminate the darkness of the Cross with meaning and ultimate joy.

Before this, Jesus had raised at least two others from the dead. One was the daughter of Jairus, the other was the only son of the widow of Nain. The first had just died; the second was being carried to the cemetery in his coffin; but the most astounding of all was Lazarus.

It all began with Lazarus’ two sisters, Mary and Martha. They sent word to Jesus saying, "Lord, he whom you love is ill" (John 11:3). What a marvelous lesson this is in prayer! The first thing they did when trouble came to them was to inform Jesus. They wanted Him to know about it. How many people through the centuries have found peace, comfort, and strength when, as they became frightened and burdened, they instinctively reached through the darkness to feel for the hand of Christ. We know that He cares and responds to our requests as He did for Mary and Martha.

When Jesus arrived at Bethany, Lazarus had already been dead for four days. Hearing of His arrival, Martha ran out to meet Him. Although she had some confidence in the power of Christ, it was still a very limited one as we see from her words, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."

Jesus responded, "Your brother will rise again." Martha said, "Yes, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day."

The faith that Martha expressed in the resurrection was that of most of the Jews. As the Samaritan woman at the well knew that the Messiah would come, but did not realize that He had already come and was standing right there before her, so Martha, though believing in the resurrection, did not know that the Resurrection was standing right there before her. As Jesus told the woman at the well that He was the Messiah, so now He said to Martha: "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die."

Next we read, "When Jesus saw Mary weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled" (John 11: 33). In these words, "deeply moved in spirit and troubled," we see Jesus’ attitude toward death. He treats death not as a sometimes pleasant release from pain and despair. He treats it as an enemy, as a product of evil, as our last and greatest foe. He shows us that death is not to be accepted as much as it is to be overcome. If Christ is Life, then death is an enemy to be destroyed. Jesus, "deeply moved in spirit and troubled," as He stood before the tomb of Lazarus, shows us that death is abnormal, and, therefore, truly horrible. The Son of God is deeply moved and troubled by death — so moved that He submitted Himself to the same suffering and death to overcome this enemy with His power and give us the fruits of His victory.

"Where have you laid him?" asked Jesus. They said to Him, "Lord, come and see." Then we come to the shortest but most moving verse in Scripture, "Jesus wept." Jesus is so moved by the death of His friend that He bursts into tears. Three times Jesus is described as weeping in the Scriptures. Once over a nation, when He wept over the sins of the world; and, in this instance over Lazarus, when He wept for the effect of sin, which is death. None of these tears were for Himself, but for the human nature He had assumed. He wept for sin and what it had done to man. He wept to show His concern for all those who lose loved ones. He wept to show us that we, too, should weep with those who weep. To express our grief through tears is not unmanly or unchristian: the Son of God Himself wept. But these are more than just tears of sympathy. When He Who is Life weeps at the grave of a friend, it is then that victory over death begins.

The place where Lazarus was buried was a tomb with a stone before it. "Take away the stone," said Jesus. Martha replied, "Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days." One early French painting in the Louvre, on the Raising of Lazarus, shows one of the bystanders holding his nose.

Martha tried to warn Jesus that the condition of Lazarus was now such that all hope of his resurrection should be abandoned until the last day. Yet, in spite of this, in obedience to our Lord’s command, the stone was taken away. Then Jesus addressed a beautiful prayer to His Heavenly Father, expressing His desire that everyone who saw this miracle might believe that He and the Father were One, and that the Father had sent Him into the world.

Then Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out." And the dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with bandages, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him and let him go." The same voice which in the beginning said, "Let there be light, and there was light" — that same voice now says, "Lazarus, come out," and Lazarus, dead four days, comes walking out of the tomb. "My Lord and my God!" Who can now doubt that "In Jesus is life"? Who can now doubt that on the last day that very same voice shall speak again "when the trumpet sounds" and "those who are in the graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth"? Who can now doubt the words we confess in the Nicene Creed every Sunday: "I believe ... in the resurrection of the dead and in the life of the world to come"? "By raising Lazarus from the dead," says the troparion of the day, "Christ confirmed the truth of the general resurrection.’’

"Do you really believe Jesus called Lazarus from the dead?" someone was asked. He answered, "I never knew Lazarus, but I know what Jesus did for me. I understand Lazarus had been dead only four days. I had been dead four years and was in a bad state of decomposition. I had gone to pieces — I was both down and out. My family had gone to pieces. My business had gone to pieces. One by one my friendships had gone to pieces. Then Jesus spoke to me, and I became alive again. Now my family have come back. My friends recognize me. All things are made new. I do not know much about Lazarus, but one thing I do know — Jesus called me out of death into a new life."

Even today He calls, "Lazarus, come out." Those who hear His voice come walking out of real graves to a new life.

An agnostic, trying to ridicule the raising of Lazarus from the dead, asked an audience, "Can anyone tell me why Jesus said, ‘Lazarus, come forth’?"

An elderly man stood and said, "Sir, I can tell you! If my Lord had not said, ‘Lazarus, come forth,’ every grave in that Bethany cemetery would have been emptied!"

What a happy reunion there was when Lazarus was restored to his sisters, Mary and Martha. What is this but a foretaste of what will happen on the last day when we shall be reunited not only with our Precious Lord, but also with all our departed loved ones to be with them forever: parents with children, brothers with brothers, friends with friends.

We ask: who is that man in the tomb called Lazarus? whom Jesus loves? for whom He weeps? to whom He speaks? Could I be that man? Could I be Lazarus? Could this story of resurrection be my story? Of course, did not Jesus call me His friend? "I have not called you servants but friends ..." Was not I created for friendship with God: to know Him, love Him, serve Him, and be forever with Him? Did He not come to resurrect me not only from the final grave but also from the many graves in which I bury myself today?

After Lazarus came walking out of the tomb in the full glare of a noonday sun, one would have thought that everyone would have believed. But miracles are no cure for unbelief. Some will not believe even though one were to rise from the dead. It was the resurrection of Lazarus that brought out the crowds on Palm Sunday, but it was also Lazarus’ resurrection that built the cross; for as the Apostle John writes, "From that day on they plotted his death."

The decision is made. Caiaphas, the high priest, unconsciously affirms that Jesus would die for all the people. The high priest in ancient times was believed to have the power of prophecy, and the Gospel testifies that Caiaphas’ statement was true prophecy when he said:

Thus, toward the end of his life, Caiaphas, the high priest, who did not believe in the resurrection affirmed what an angel had announced at the Birth of Him Whose name was Jesus, namely that:

"He will save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21).

The raising of Lazarus was a promise of more to come. It foreshadowed another and a greater miracle, Christ’s own victory over the tomb. With Lazarus’ resurrection "death begins to tremble." This is why a spirit of great joy pervades the liturgy on the Saturday of Lazarus. In the early church Lazarus Saturday was considered a pre-announcement of Easter. It signified the beginning of the end of death.

The two resurrections (Lazarus and Jesus) are brought together intimately through Mary. It was her love for Christ for raising Lazarus that led her to do a beautiful thing which is read in the Gospel lesson on Palm Sunday. Immediately after the resurrection of Lazarus, "a supper was given in his (Jesus’) honor, at which Martha, served, and Lazarus sat among the guests with Jesus. Then Mary brought a pound of very costly perfume, … and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped them with her hair, till the house was filled with the fragrance." When Judas objected, Jesus said, "... she prepares for my burial…"

The great duel between Light and Darkness takes place during Holy Week. But it takes place between two brilliant shafts of light: on the one end, "Lazarus, come out"; on the other end, "He is risen. He is not here. See the place where they laid Him!"

One of the most beautiful stories in the Bible is told in the Gospel lesson that is read on Palm Sunday. The time was six days before Good Friday. As Jesus was seated for supper a woman entered. Her name was Mary; her city, Magdala; her reputation, a prostitute. As the woman knelt before the feet of Jesus a sob was heard. The woman was weeping. The tears fell on the Savior’s feet. She tried to wipe them away with her hair, but the fountain flowed on, as if answering to the deepest misery of life. Tears shed over our sins — say the Church Fathers — constitute a second baptism.

Then she remembered she had concealed under her veil a vessel of precious ointment pressed from the best of God’s creation. This ointment was costly. Judas, who put a price on everything, valued it at about a year’s wages. The ointment was costly for Mary but not too costly for the Son of God. Nothing ever is. Mary did not do what you and I would have done. We would take the vessel of precious ointment and pour it out slowly, deliberately, resolutely, drop by drop, as if to indicate by the slowness of our giving the generosity of the gift. Not so with Mary! Not so with those who really love. She broke the vessel to permit an unmeasured flowing upon the head and feet of the Master!

In a few days, at the Last Supper, Jesus would break bread as a token of His Body which would be broken on the Cross. From Mary’s "broken and contrite spirit," which God never despises, came this other broken thing in dim prefigurement of His death. After anointing first His head, and then His feet, she wiped the latter with her hair.

Judas protested, "Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?" Jesus replied, "Let her alone … She has anointed my body beforehand to prepare it for burial" (Mark 14:8).

Mary did not wait until Jesus was dead before she anointed His body. She came before His death. This reminds us how very kind and thoughtful we are to a family that has lost some member, and what kind words are said after the person is dead and gone. How much better it would be to say a few of those good things before a person goes, to bring some of our bouquets before a person dies, and not go and load down the coffin later. Mary performed for Jesus the last kindness He received in this life.

"What is the meaning of this waste?" (Matthew 26:8) asked Judas. Is it ever a waste to grasp an impulse to express love? Was it a waste when Jesus shed His precious blood for us on the Cross — not just a few drops but all of it — knowing full well that not all people would accept His love? Was it a waste when the father of the prodigal son was himself so prodigal in his love that he put a ring on his son’s finger and new shoes on his wandering feet? Is it ever a waste to send a letter of thanks? Is it a waste to tell someone how much we love them and how grateful we are to them? Is it a waste to give some special gift or speak some special word?

Love knows well that there are certain moments in life which come and which do not return. There were endless and limitless opportunities to help the poor, but, if that woman had not seized that moment to make known her love to Jesus, the opportunity would never have come again. There are moments in life which do not come a second time. How that last extravagant, impulsive kindness must have uplifted the heart of Jesus just before His death.

In the Old Testament three kinds of people were anointed. Priests were anointed (Exodus 29:7). Prophets were anointed (I Kings 19:16). Kings were anointed (I Samuel 9:16). Anointing was proper to the priest, the prophet and the king. By accepting the anointing of this woman Jesus implicitly claimed to be the Prophet who brought to men the word of God, the Priest who built for men the bridge to God, the King who claimed from men a throne within their hearts.

There is a certain extravagance in love. The alabaster phial of perfume was meant to be used drop by drop; it was meant to last for years, perhaps even for a lifetime; but in a moment of utter devotion the woman poured it on the head of Jesus. There is a recklessness in love which refuses to count the cost.

Every one of us has a jar of costly ointment within. The gift of worship and prayer must be broken and shared. The seal must be broken from the fountain of love in order that we may pour ourselves out to someone. Have we ever broken our alabaster vase for Christ? He calls on us to break the jar of love and pour ourselves out in love and service.

One time a church was involved in a rather extensive project. The need for money was great. A strong appeal was made on Sunday. At the door of the church a little lady asked the pastor to come by her home the next day. She was a widow who lived meagerly on a pension.

When the pastor visited her at home, she handed him a check. The amount took his breath away. When he protested that he could not take that much from her, she explained it was an inheritance. "Please let me give it all," she said. "It’s my alabaster vase."

When Simon, at whose house Jesus was being entertained, saw this woman anointing the feet of Jesus, he said to himself, "This man, if he were a prophet, would know surely what kind of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner" (Luke 7:39).

Jesus caught Simon right in his thought. As if Simon had spoken aloud, Jesus replied to him, "Simon, I have something to say to you … Do you see this woman? I entered your house, you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much; but he who is forgiven little loves little! And he said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven’ " (Luke 7:44-48).

When this story of Mary’s anointing the feet of Jesus and wiping them with her hair was read to a sinful woman once, she asked sobbingly,

"Will He ever come again?"

"Who?"

"Him — Jesus Christ. I’ve heard tell, I think, that he was to come again some day."

"Why do you ask?"

"Because — " she said, with a fresh burst of tears, "My hair ain’t long enough yet to wipe His feet."

Precious Jesus, You are the Christ, anointed by the Holy Spirit to be our Prophet, Priest and King. Together with Mary accept our anointing as we, too, pour on Your precious feet the tears of our repentance breaking for You at the same time the alabaster box of our love and devotion. Amen.

Commitment to the King (John 12:1-18).

"So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him crying, 'Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!' '

Great crowds went forth on this day to meet Jesus. They waved palms. Thousands of men and women shouted with joy, "Hosanna, blessed is He that comes in the name of the Lord!" They hailed Jesus as King. The news that He had brought Lazarus back from the dead had spread like wildfire. They cast their robes for Him to ride over. They sang. They ran. They strewed the ground before Him with wild flowers.

Today, we, too, shall be given palm branches. For just as Christ entered Jerusalem many years ago, so He will make a triumphant entry into our hearts this Holy Week and Easter when we receive His precious Body and Blood in Holy Communion.

The important thing this Palm Sunday is not that Christ entered Jerusalem many years ago, but that He comes to us today; not how He was received 2,000 years ago on this day, but how He will be received by us.

"Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. . .the King of Israel" (John 12:13). When Christ entered Jerusalem He was hailed as a King. When He comes to us today, shall we receive Him as our King? "7 am a king," said Jesus, "and to this end was I born, that I should bear witness to the truth."

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem he used a method of action which many a prophet of Israel had used before. The prophets had often used the method of dramatic and symbolic action. Men might refuse to listen, but they could hardly fail to see; and again and again the prophets had cast their message into the form of some vivid action, as if to say: "If you will not listen, you can at least see." Jeremiah, for example, forewarned the Jewish people of the slavery that was to fall upon them, by making yokes and wearing them on his neck. Christ's triumphant entry into Jerusalem on this Palm Sunday was a deliberately made claim on His part to be King. The donkey, for example, on which Jesus rode was the beast on which kings rode when they came in peace; only in war did they ride upon horses. No doubt Jesus was remembering the prophecy of Zechariah which Matthew cites: "Behold your king is coming to you … mounted on a donkey." In that triumphant entry into Jerusalem Jesus, in a dramatic, symbolic action which spoke more loudly than any words, was making one last appeal to his people, and saying to them: "Will you not, even now, accept me as your Lord and King, and enthrone me in your mind, your heart and your will?"

Even the inscription on the Cross: "Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews" — written in the three great languages of the ancient world: Hebrew, Greek and Latin proclaimed Him King. Each of these three great nations stood for three great contributions to the world: Greece taught the world beauty of form and thought; Rome taught the world law and good government; the Hebrew nation taught the world religion and the worship of the true God. The fulfillment and consummation of all these things is seen in Jesus. In Him was the supreme beauty and the highest thought of God. In Him was the law of God and the Kingdom of God. In Him was the very picture and image of God: "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself." All the world's seekings and strivings found their fulfillment and consummation in Christ. It was symbolic that in the three great languages of the world men called Him king: "Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews!"

When the aged Bishop Polycarp was brought to trial, the judge stood before him and shouted, "You are to renounce the faith! You are to curse the name of Christ!" St. Polycarp answered, "Fourscore and six years have I served Him, and He never did me wrong: how then can I revile my King, my Savior?" The result was that Bishop Polycarp was burned to death in the amphitheatre in Smyrna. When the young church set down in writing what happened for future generations to know, it wrote: "Polycarp was martyred, Statius Quadratus being proconsul in Asia, and Jesus Christ being King for ever!"

Out of the persecution of Christians by Diocletian has come the story of Genesius, an actor who was playing a part in a burlesque on the rites and customs of the hated Christians. In the midst of the play, as though the Holy Spirit suddenly shamed him for straying from the faith of the Christian home in which he was born, he cried out, "I want to receive the grace of Christ, that I may be born again, and be set free from the sins that have been my ruin!" The surprised crowd saw the mock baptism that was being pantomimed turn into a hallowed moment of conversion as Genesius, fearlessly proclaiming his faith, cried out towards Diocletian, "Illustrious emperor, and all of you who have laughed loudly at this parody, believe me, Christ is the true King!"

Unmoved, except to fury, Diocletian ordered that he first be ripped with claws, then burned with torches, and finally beheaded. Before the end he was heard to cry: "There is no King except Christ, whom I have seen and whom I worship. For Him I will die a thousand times. I am sorry for my sins, and for becoming so late a soldier of the true King."

Someone said once, "Kings? Kings are only something to cheer for." He meant that the human heart loves parades, and that a king was merely a symbol. Christ is not that kind of King — a King we enclose in a decorated church with fragrant incense, stirring hymns and burning candles as if He were dead. He is a living King who says to us today, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." He is a King who challenges, who gives purpose and meaning to life; a King who forgives, strengthens, and heals. "No man ever spoke as this man," they said of Him. "Who is this man that even the wind and the sea obey Him?"

Christ becomes King personally and existentially to those who submit to His Kingship through commitment.

What do we mean by commitment?

A certain author wrote, "Let us not fool ourselves. We will submit to some master, whether that master is work, sex, pleasure, liquor, or what-have-you. Our problem is to choose which master. The only Master worth serving is Jesus Christ, the Master we were created to serve."

We can be captured by the cheapest and the lowest in life, or we can be captured by the highest and the best that human experience knows: Jesus Christ. He can fulfill life. He can light the lamp no darkness can put out.

When Christ enters our life, we must abandon the throne of our will, our ego, our pride, and allow Him to step up to this royal chair. He will increase; we shall decrease. He will speak; we shall listen. He will command; we shall obey.

Yes, some people will object, but will I not lose my personality if I commit my life to Christ? Does the violin lose its personality when a great master takes it and runs the bow back and forth across its strings? Of course not! It becomes a symphony. Our lives, too, become symphonies when we commit them into the hands of God.

Fr. John Meyendorff said once in a lecture to Sunday school teachers: "We are told in the Gospels that education implies a positive acceptance of Christ. This is the real conversion. // this marriage does not take place at some time during the life of a Christian, he is simply not a Christian. We have a very clear statement about this in the tradition of the Fathers. What makes a Christian a Christian is this personal commitment to Christ. One's formal belonging to the Church through Baptism and other sacramental participation remains a mere potential if the individual commitment does not take place. The sacramental gifts of Baptism and the Eucharist and of all the sacraments are essential for an objective membership in the body of Christ; but again they are pure potentials if they are not taken seriously, and if a conversion of the heart and mind does not occur at some point in one's life."

When we were baptized, God said to each one of us, "YES, I accept you as my son or daughter." There must come a time in our lives when we must say to Christ, "Yes, Jesus, I accept you as my Savior, my Lord, my King, and I commit my life to You."

This is what commitment to Christ meant to former Governor Mark O Hatfield of Oregon, "I could not drift along as I had been doing; going to church because I had always gone. Either Christ was God, and Savior, and Lord, or He wasn't. And if He was, then He had to have all my time, all my devotion, all my life." This is what commitment to Christ should mean to us.

Tolstoy wrote, "I walked deep into the woods one day and there gave my life to the Lord. Suddenly the whole world came alive to me. All was new and different. I have come to the conclusion that God and real life are one and the same thing." Tolstoy discovered real life through commitment to God.

Ignatius Loyola was a soldier in the army of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1521. Severely wounded in a battle, he spent many months convalescing in a castle at Loyola. To help pass the time he asked for some books on romance. None was available, so he was given the lives of Christ and the Saints. These books changed his life. Instead of continuing in the service of an earthly king, he decided to devote his life to the service of his God and seek to win spiritual victories whose fruits would be everlasting. "Take, O Lord!" prayed Ignatius. "Take all — my liberty, my memory, my intellect, my will — all that I am and all that I have. You gave it all to me. I give it back again to You. All of me is Yours. Do with me whatever You will. Give me Your love and Your grace. That is enough for me."

Ignatius founded the Society of Jesus which has given the world many scholars and saints. He wrote a little book "The Spiritual Exercises" which became a classic. He achieved such eminent holiness that the Roman Catholic Church declared him a Saint. His profound influence on the world began with the personal and complete commitment of his life to Jesus as Lord and King!

Fran Tarkenton, Vikings quarterback, said, "My father is a minister and I have always been in and about the church, yet I had never felt that my life had any real direction or power until August, 1958, when I made a complete and all-out dedication of my life to Jesus Christ … Until that time my faith had largely been something I had inherited. The confrontation with Christ made it alive, personal, powerful. There is quite a difference between a faith you accept from others and a faith you reach out for yourself."

If we who live in the States wish to travel to England, we may choose to do so by committing ourselves to a carton box, but we will never make it. If we commit ourselves to an ocean liner, we will make it. So it is in life. Commitment to anything less than Christ is like committing one's life to a carton box. To commit one's life to Christ, on the other hand, is to commit oneself to the most powerful Person in the Universe, One who is "able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think;" One who is able "to save to the uttermost."

Commitment to Christ, says St. Paul, is our response to Christ for what He did for us on the cross: "He died for all that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for Him Who for their sake died and was raised" (2 Cor. 5:15).

Another benefit of commitment is expressed in Christ's words: "Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall have life everlasting," said Jesus. Not to all but only to those who commit their lives to Him — who live and believe in Him — does God bestow life eternal, life with God. In other words, Christ commits Himself only to those who commit themselves to Him. He cannot commit Himself to someone who does not want Him.

Buffeted by the trials of this world a certain Christian prayed: "Lord, tie me to something eternal. I tie myself to houses and lands and stocks and bonds and by some turn of fate, I lose them. I tie myself to a loved one and a single microbe comes and death snatches her away. I tie myself to a friend and the friendship vanishes. Lord, tie me to Your program, to service in Your Kingdom, to You, God, that I might be tied to the Eternal." Commitment is that which ties us to the Eternal!

If you make Christ your King through commitment, then you are the child of a King. He will let nothing — not even death — snatch you from His hands. He will give you power to be king of yourself and your passions. He will bestow upon you one day the Crown of righteousness. He will grant you life eternal and will make you heir to the greatest kingdom in the universe.

The significance of receiving palms today is to help us renew our commitment to Christ, to salute Him as Lord and King of our lives. May this be for us the meaning of the palms we receive today: a symbol of our personal commitment to Christ as Lord of our lives. For — let us remember — the first commitment was His. He first committed Himself to us, not part of the time or with half a will, but so much so that He went to the cross!

Someone asked a Christian one day: "Do you believe in Divine healing?" The Christian replied, "What other kind of healing is there?"

In the entrance hall of a great hospital in the United States, there stands a statue of the healing Christ. By whichever door one enters one seems to be facing Christ, the One Who is behind all healing.

Very often when illness comes many of us blame God: "Why did He do this to me?" Yet, if anyone is to blame for the illnesses that come to us, it is not God but we ourselves. As one medical doctor said, "Most illnesses do not, as is generally thought, come like a bolt out of the blue. The ground is prepared for years, through faulty diet, intemperance, overwork, and moral conflicts, slowly eroding the person’s vitality." God becomes the scapegoat for many of our ailments.

Never once in the Gospels do we see Jesus inflicting illness on anyone. On the contrary, He is constantly healing the sick. We read, "… for power came out of Him and healed them all." The sick woman who touched the hem of His garment felt a surge of healing power go through her body. And Jesus felt power leaving His body: "Some one touched me; for I perceive that power has gone forth from me" (St. Luke 8:46). Jesus is "the same yesterday, today and forever." The power is still there for those who touch Him with faith.

The Church as the House of God is a spiritual hospital to which people come with diseases of mind, soul and body. They come to the Great Physician Who touches them with His healing power. "And the whole multitude sought to touch him: for power went out of Him, and healed them all."

Healing will always come. If it is not physical healing, it will be spiritual healing. St. Paul, for example, prayed three times to God to remove the thorn in his flesh, a chronic and painful ailment. Instead of removing it, God gave him the strength to bear it. That, too, is healing. When we are sick in body, mind or soul, God may not always take away the illness. Instead, He may give us an inner power to overcome our self-pity, despair, and complaining; a power to rise above our weaknesses in triumph, and an inner peace that is beyond human understanding. Who is a greater example of this than St. Paul?

The healing power of Christ is channeled to us today through one of the Sacraments of the Church: Holy Unction. It is a sacrament for healing. We read in the Epistle of St. James:

"Is any among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the Church, i.e., presbyters or priests, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith will save the sick man, and the Lord will raise him up …" (James 4:14-15).

The oil, always used for healing in the ancient world, is blessed by the Holy Spirit to bring to us

God’s healing grace. As we come to be anointed with this consecrated oil, we must bring with us our "prayer of faith," i.e., a living, personal faith that when we are anointed with this oil, the hand of Christ will touch us with His healing power. God speaks to us through the fourteen Scripture readings that are part of this Sacrament (seven Epistle and seven Gospel readings). He speaks to increase our faith in His power to heal. The fact that the presence of seven priests is recommended (but is not mandatory) for the celebration of this sacrament gives expression to our faith that the whole Church is present and praying for the sick person together with relatives and friends.

It is not necessary to travel to one of the great shrines such as Tinos, Lourdes, etc. for healing. Through the Sacrament of Holy Unction, every Church becomes a healing shrine pervaded by the prayers of the clergy and the faithful, and hallowed by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Here we find our faith fortified and sustained as we grow in grace and understanding. Here we find the power and the presence of the healing Christ.

Lord, touch me. Anoint me. Heal me. Forgive me. Strengthen me. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit. Lord, make me whole. Amen.

If Christianity is anything, it is forgiveness.

To the paralytic Jesus said, "Thy sins be forgiven thee."

To the woman of the streets He said, "Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more."

From the cross He prayed, "Father, forgive them…"

Forgiveness fills the gospel, and finds a score of metaphors. It is the father’s welcome to the prodigal son. It is the carrying home of the sheep that was lost. It is the eating and drinking of the Son of God with sinners. It is the kiss upon the traitor’s brow. It is the tender look across the courtyard at Peter who had just denied Him three times. It is the promise spoken to the dying thief: "Today you will be with me in paradise."

Christianity, if it is anything, is forgiveness.

There are those, however, who criticize Christianity for its doctrine of forgiveness. They call it demoralizing and immoral because they believe that such free forgiveness encourages people to sin. It is like saying, "Come, everybody, and have your sins forgiven. It’s all very easy and free." It’s like Jesus saying, "Oh, well, you’re only human. I can’t expect too much from you. I’m God — the only perfect One. I have the authority, so I’m letting you off."

Perhaps these critics are right. This attitude of free forgiveness can easily become demoralizing. Consider what a trivial thing most people today consider sin to be. It’s not sin anymore; it’s fun. Consider how lightly we esteem the pardoning grace of God. We sin and then we come to ourselves and kneel and ask forgiveness. And God gives it every time. And we rise up and go our way not in the least surprised, and but little grateful or impressed. Perhaps many of us feel like that cynic who said once, "God will forgive me: after all, that’s His business."

But all of this is a complete misunderstanding of what God’s mercy means. God’s forgiveness is not free; it is costly. We know exactly how costly on Good Friday when we see the Son of God on the cross. It cost God to forgive! If He offers us forgiveness, He offers it with nail-pierced hands. If we consider forgiveness free, look at the cross and see that it cost God His all to give it to us. If we consider sin trivial, look again at the cross and you will see what sin really is; what it does to God. It crucifies Him. It breaks His heart as well as His body. Forgiveness of sins comes not from tears shed in sorrow; it comes from the blood of the Son of God shed on the cross.

When Christianity invites us to forgiveness, it does not invite us to a light-hearted place where sins are condoned. It calls us to the Cross.

It costs. As it costs for us to forgive a loved one. For example, if you should grossly wrong your wife and then penitently ask her forgiveness and she should say, "Oh, never mind; it is nothing" — that would solve no problem. It would simply mean that she did not care about you or what you did. A true-hearted woman would go deeper than that. Two things would be in her: first, a love high and deep enough to forgive; but second, a character, an uprightness that would be wounded and crushed by your sin, and integrity that would find it hard to forgive.

No one who has received his pardon from the lips of Christ on the Cross is going to think that forgiveness is free and cheap or that God says, "Oh, never mind; come along; it will all be well." God never says, "Never mind" because He does mind. The cross shows us exactly how much He minds.

How easy it was for God to create the world. "Let there be light!" He said. And there was light. But how hard it was — and is — for God to forgive. It cost agony, sweat, blood, death. "And He parted from them about a stone’s throw; and He kneeled down and prayed, saying, "Father, if Thou be willing, remove this cup from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Thine be done … and being in agony He prayed more earnestly: and His sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood falling down upon the ground." That is the cost!

"It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour… . Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into Thy hands I commit my spirit!’ And having said this he breathed his last" (Luke 23:44-46). That is the cost!

We measure the value of most things by what it cost to procure them. Forgiveness is not cheap — not when we look at the cost.

Forgiveness is costly to God; but it is costly also to us. It will cost us a cross to receive it: the cross of penitence, the cross of a broken heart, the cross of restitution, the cross of pardon, the cross of humility, the cross of forgiving those who have hurt us, the cross of an honest determination to renounce all those persons and places that led to our sin. Forgiveness is a gift, of course, God’s gift to the penitent sinner. But it is a very expensive gift, for if you take the gift, you will belong forever to the Giver. He will have all of you, your total love. Forgiveness is a gift, but it is a gift that binds your forgiven soul in endless love and gratitude to the Forgiver. They love most, says Jesus, who have been forgiven most.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the famous German theologian, who was put to death in a Nazi concentration camp wrote much about what he called "cheap grace." What is cheap grace? It is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring that inner revolution called repentance; it is coming to church once a year at Easter and thinking this makes you a Christian; it is coming to Communion without ever coming to Confession, without ever taking a good look at yourself and your sins; it is calling Jesus Lord but letting it make no difference in your life; it is separating life into the sacred and the secular; it is leaving God in church, never taking Him out of church into your home, into your place of business. That is "cheap grace."

But the grace we Christians know is not cheap. It is not cheap because of the price paid for it on the cross. It is not cheap because it calls on us to forsake all and follow Jesus not part of the way but all the way. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, all your strength." Such grace is not cheap because it costs us our total allegiance, our total commitment to Christ as Lord.

The following passage comes from the book "Jesus: A Dialogue With the Saviour" written by a monk of the Eastern Church: "Blood flows from your forehead, from your hands, and from your scourged body (O Lord). It flows slowly in long streams. It is going to flow from your open side as though your heart were bursting under the pressure of Your suffering love. The cup is poured out in libation.

"The crown of thorns bruised Your head. Woven in the form of a circle, these thorns are like the sins of men, gathered together and heaped upon You.

"Your feet (O Lord) are nailed to the wood. Your Cross is the winepress where the true vine is pressed. You have no possibility of escape. You are waiting for me … Fastened to the Cross, You compel Yourself to this waiting. It is possible for me not to come, but You are there and You remain where You have allowed Yourself to be placed.

"Your arms are stretched out. They are open as an appeal to all men. They cannot be closed again. The nails keep them there in this gesture which is at one and the same time an invitation and an embrace. In silence they beckon to me: ‘Come.’ ‘

God doesn’t force anyone to come. We aren’t dragged into His kingdom by the hairs of our heads.

He loves us into it, and because He loves us into it, it means the Cross. Thorns. Nails. Crucifixion. Costly forgiveness!

A person said once, "I’ve seen an awful lot of anger in my time and I’m not scared of hell, no matter how fiery some people may think it is. But I’ll tell you what I’m scared of. I’m scared of the love of God. Scared of having to look in the eyes of the Crucified Christ on the Last Day and see that I failed Him, that I did not accept His costly forgiving love, that all of what He did on the Cross was in vain as far as I was concerned. This for me would be hell."

When some of his soldiers were being buried on the battlefield, George Washington turned to one of his officers and said, "There will come a day when people will think that freedom is cheap because they have not died for it."

Freedom is not cheap. It is paid for with blood. Is the love of God cheap? Is His forgiveness cheap? When we look at the Cross we know that God has gone as far as He can go for us. Can He go any farther? Can He die again? How far will you go to meet that love?

"Thanks Be to God Who Giveth Us the Victory."

Those who have seen "Jesus Christ Superstar" tell of leaving with a depressed feeling because it ends with the crucifixion. What can be more depressing than to have a play or a movie end with the crucifixion of its hero? It is not surprising that "Jesus Christ Superstar" ends with the crucifixion since those who wrote it are non-believers. They tried to express through this rock opera their depressing philosophy about life, namely, that it ends with a crucifixion for everybody.

The disciples may have acted this way immediately before the resurrection, but definitely not after it. The key note sounded by the early Christians following our Lord's resurrection was VICTORY:

"Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy victory? O grave, where is thy sting … Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (I Cor. 15:54-57).

"In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us" (Romans 8:37).

"This is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?" (I John 5:4-5).

The New Testament is full of the glad conviction that through Christ God has given us the victory; victory over every enemy; victory over every possible evil; victory over everything that has gone wrong with God's creation; victory over sin, evil and death.

Because of our Lord's resurrection, the true Christian is an eternal optimist. The trouble with being an optimist is that people think you're naive; you don't know what's actually going on. The real Christian is anything but naive. He knows exactly what's going on. He knows that there are evil men in the world who want war; he knows there are such things as terminal illnesses, and he knows his world today is much like a jungle. But he is an optimist because he knows Christ. And he fastens his attention not upon the problems but upon the answer.

"In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world" (John 16:33). Jesus did not say, "I will overcome the world," but "I have overcome." When He cried out on the cross, "It is finished!" It was not a cry of defeat, but of triumph. "It": the purpose for which I came has been "finished": completed, fulfilled. I have redeemed my people. I have given them the victory. Now it is up to them to accept it. For I cannot force them to receive it."

In celebrating the resurrection of Jesus we do not merely celebrate an historical event that happened sometime in the past; we celebrate an event that affects each one of us personally today, right now. Because of Christ's resurrection, every baptized Christian who has committed his life to Jesus as Lord can say: "Christ lives; therefore, I too shall live. Christ lives; therefore, I too have passed from death to life. Christ lives; therefore, I too have at my disposal the same power that raised Him from the dead. Christ lives; therefore, I too have the victory."

1. Victory over sin. Sin has the power to enslave, the power to bury us alive in the tomb of guilt and despair. Christ alone has the power to break open this tomb and set us free.

2. Victory over demons. The Gospels often portray Jesus as casting out demons. He does the same today granting us victory over the demons that plague us and make life a veritable hell: hatred, envy, lust, greed, etc. "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold the new has come" (2 Cor. 5:17).

3. Victory over self. Christ offers us victory over self. The real war is always within. It is here that we must have victory before any outer victory will have meaning. Yet many church-going Christians are not victorious, but defeated. Defeated by circumstances, defeated by sin, defeated by loss, by pain, by suffering, by worry. They are Christians in name only. They have a form of religion but they deny its power. They have never got up above the lowlands of self-centered living; they have never climbed the heights of faith and total commitment to Christ. They have yet to claim for themselves the victory of Christ: victory over sin and self.

4. Victory over death. The final victory Christ offers us is over our last and greatest enemy: death.

A man dying of cancer asked one day why it was that his pagan friends seemed not to like to come to see him, but his Christian friends came more and more. His friend replied that perhaps the reason was that Christianity faces all these things, has a place for them, knows the peace of God in the midst of them, and the assurance of ultimate victory in Christ. In the many years of my ministry here, I have officiated at not a few funerals. I have faced together with many of you great sorrows and tremendous personal losses in the death of loved ones. At such times, several things have served to soften the grief — the presence of friends, the gift of flowers, the service of the funeral. But beyond all these, there were the words of our precious Lord Jesus taken right from the heart of the Easter message. "I am the resurrection and the life. ..." These words do something which nothing else can ever do. To be sure, the hurt and the loss are still there. But somehow the words of the Risen Lord give us the strength to go on and the assurance that death does not have the last word. St. Paul affirms it in language that speaks to every generation:

"In face of all this, what is there left to say? If God is for us, who can be against us? I have become absolutely convinced that neither death, nor life, neither messenger of Heaven nor monarch of earth, neither what happens today nor what may happen tomorrow … has any power to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!"

In old Russia a service was held every Easter Sunday afternoon in the village cemetery. Having ended the service in the cemetery chapel, the priest accompanied by acolytes and choir led a procession through the cemetery singing "Christos Voskrese" or "Christ is risen." Stopping at graves where family members stood by in memory of their departed loved ones, the priest greeted each group with his proclamation, "Christ is risen!" and they replied with the same happy assurance, "Truly, He is risen!" What a dramatic expression of our Orthodox Christian faith. To walk through a cemetery on Easter Sunday and sing "Christ is risen!"

"But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive" (I Corinthians 15:20-23).

Here is victory over death. "If any one keeps my word, he will never see death or taste death" (John 8:51, 52). "Whoever lives and believes in me shall never die" (John 11:26).

What most people want today is anything that will help them escape from reality. This is why the entertainer is paid far more than a doctor. An entertainer provides an escape from reality. This is also why so much money is spent on liquor. The thing people rate highest is escape. For this they are willing to pay expensively.

Yet escape is a temporary thing; it may work for a short while, but eventually reality catches up on us and we have to face it. And herein lies the greatness of our Christian faith. It offers us not escape but victory. It enables us not to run away from life, but to conquer it through Christ who said, " … be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."

The victory of which we have been speaking is a derived victory. It has been won by Christ. We share in it through baptism and faith. St. Paul reminds us in Romans 6:4-11 that the resurrection is intended to be a part of the life of every Christian. In baptism, he says, each one of us is made to share Christ's resurrection experience. As He was buried in the earth and rose again, so we are buried in the waters of baptism and raised again. Christians have all received the power of the risen Christ to rise from the death of sin to a new life in Him. This is why in the early Church baptism was always conferred on the joyous night of Easter. Because most of us were infants when we were baptized, Easter becomes the time for us to renew our baptismal vows: our rejection of Satan and our commitment to Christ.

In a sense our crowded churches at Easter deny the very fact they are supposed to celebrate. Thousands of people betray their unbelief by coming to church once a year. They don't really believe in the tremendous victory of Christ in which we are called to share. If they did, they would be here to celebrate it and share in it every Sunday since for Christians every Sunday is the celebration of Easter.

When against fearful odds the Greeks beat the Persians at the Battle of Marathon, they sent a Greek soldier running all the way to Athens to bring the news of victory to the besieged city. Straight to the magistrate of Athens he ran and gasping the message, "Rejoice! We have won!" he dropped dead from exhaustion.

Jesus uses the same word "Cherete!" Rejoice! Here is the result of victory: joy! G. K. Chesterton wrote, "A real Christian who believes should do two things: dance out of sheer sense of joy and fight out of a sheer sense of victory." Ritual dancing in the Orthodox liturgy to express the joy of Christ's victory is not unknown. It still survives in the Ethiopian liturgy. Another expression of this joy is found in the Easter hymns of the Orthodox Church. The rejoicing in these hymns becomes ecstatic. Here is an Easter hymn that retains the stammering jubilation of the early Christians:

Vince Lombardi said once, "Winning is not everything; it is the only thing." The resurrected Christ has assured us of victory. How much we need this victorious mood today! Our tasks are tremendous. To lose confidence is to lose everything. The devil always wins when he breaks our assurance. To be sure in Christ is the beginning of victory. Nay, it is victory! To fail to claim for ourselves the victory of Christ over sin, self and death is to cheat ourselves of the greatest victory we shall ever know both for now and for all eternity.

Three of the saddest words in the English language are "We had hoped..." They capture some of the deepest pain, loss, and disillusionment human beings can feel.

"We had hoped that our marriage would work out… We had hoped that our business venture would be more successful. .. We had hoped that life would treat us more fairly than it has … We had hoped that our son or daughter would turn out the way we wanted … We had hoped that illness would not be such a constant source of sorrow and financial drain . .. We had hoped that death would not separate us so soon or so unexpectedly… We had hoped that our child would be normal and healthy."

Easter began as a we had hoped experience. Christ had warned His disciples that He would rise from the dead, but they missed the meaning of His promise. And who wouldn’t? We just don’t expect the dead to rise. Nothing seems so permanent to us as death. We had hoped!

Right after Jesus was killed, a couple of his disciples were slowly making their way to the town of Emmaus with very heavy hearts. Their dreams about the way life was going to be had been shattered. They saw the crucifixion of Jesus as an end to all their hopes and dreams for the future. They didn’t remember the words of Jesus when He had told them, "You have sorrow now, but I will see you again and then you will rejoice and no one can rob you of that joy" (John 16:22).

The disciples were not looking forward to seeing Jesus again, and when they were told that He was no longer in the tomb, they thought His body had been stolen.

As the two disciples walked along the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus, they were talking about Christ’s death when suddenly Jesus Himself came and walked beside them. But they didn’t recognize Him.

He looked at their sad faces and said, "What are you so concerned about?"

"Haven’t you heard?" one of them named Cleo-pas said. "You must be the only person in Jerusalem who hasn’t heard about the terrible things that happened there last week."

Jesus listened as they poured out their sad tale to Him, about the wonderful Jesus of Nazareth who had done such great miracles that they were sure He was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel, but the religious leaders had handed Him over to the Roman government and He had been crucified. The men spoke as if they had just witnessed the greatest tragedy the world had ever known. "We had hoped," they said, "that this Jesus was going to liberate Israel." On top of it all, they said, the body of Jesus was missing from the tomb, and some women said they’d seen angels who told them that Jesus was alive. The men seemed certain that the last bit of news could only be a fairy tale.

"Then Jesus said to them, ‘You are such foolish people! You find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the Scriptures. Wasn’t it clearly predicted by the prophets that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering His time of glory?’

"Then Jesus quoted them passage after passage from the writings of the prophets, beginning with the book of Genesis and going right on through the Scriptures explaining what the passages meant and what they said about himself" (Luke 24:25-27).

By this time they were coming near the town of Emmaus, and since it was getting late, the two men asked the stranger to spend the night with them. They still had not recognized Him!

Jesus came home with them, and when "they sat down to eat, he asked God’s blessing on the food and then took a small loaf of bread and broke it and was passing it over to them, when suddenly — it was as though their eyes were opened — they recognized Him!" (Luke 24:30-31).

At last they believed. The Risen Savior had come to them in their despair.

In the midst of our shattered dreams and our broken hopes, in the midst of all our "if onlys" and devastated expectations, in the midst of all our we had hoped experiences, the Risen Christ comes even today to bring hope and victory. Where there once appeared to be no life, only death, He comes to bring resurrection and new life.

At our Good Friday service we heard the story of Ezekiel’s vision. As he looks over an entire valley filled with dead men’s bones, he hears the voice of God say to him, "Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Behold they say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off! Therefore prophesy and say to the captives of Babylon, ‘Thus says the Lord God, ‘Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you home into the land of Israel… and I will put my spirit (breath) within you and you shall live.’ ‘ Ezekiel’s vision was fulfilled by the Risen Christ Who even today calls dead men back to life and clothes their dry dead bones with meaning, purpose, life and hope!

We think of our many loved ones lying buried in the cold darkness of our cemeteries. As we think of them, we lose ourselves in despair. We had hoped! We had so many hopes for them but they were all crushed by death. Or were they? If Christ is risen, then hope is risen. If Christ is risen, they lie not in the darkness of a grave but in the everlasting arms of our beloved Savior in a place of brightness and joy. If Christ is risen, there is more of life, more of joy, more of love, an endless eternity of them.

We had hoped? No! St. Paul says, "He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redmeption, the forgiveness of sins" (Col. 1:13).

We had hoped! No! "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," writes St. Peter. "By his great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, reserved for you in heaven" (I Peter 1:3-4).

We had hoped! The risen Christ has liberated us from such pessimism. That is why as we light our Easter candles we sing full of hope and joy: "Christ is risen! Christ is risen, and the demons have fallen. Christ is risen, and the tombs have beem emptied of their dead. Christ is risen, and life is liberated."

Sartre speaks of the silence of God;

Heidegger speaks of the absence of God;

Jaspers of the concealment of God,

Bultmann of the hiddenness of God,

Buber of the eclipse of God,

Tillich of the nonbeing of God,

Altizer of the death of God.

The New Testament writers — eye witnesses —

speak of the RISEN and LIVING Lord!

To Him be all honor, worship, praise and thanksgiving now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Scarred Hands! (John 20:19-31).

A missionary was tortured for preaching Christ in pagan Burma. His fingernails were torn from the roots and he was hung by his fingers until his hands were twisted and scarred. Later when he asked to preach in a certain town, the pagan Prince of that town refused saying: "I would allow a dozen ordinary men to speak, but not you with those scarred hands. My people would never listen to what you say, for they could not help seeing your hands."

The inference was that the missionary's scarred hands would speak more convincingly of his love for Christ than any words he could say.

The Gospel lesson today spoke to us of the scars of Jesus. When the other disciples told Thomas that they had seen the Lord, Thomas said to them: "Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe." Eight days later when the disciples were in the room and Thomas with them, the doors being shut, our Lord stood in the midst of them and said, "Peace be to you." Then He said to Thomas, "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it into my side; do not be faithless, but believing." Thomas answered Him, "My Lord and my God!" Thomas believed when he saw the scars of Jesus. For him the scars were the greatest proof that this was the real Jesus, the Jesus who had suffered and died, the Jesus Who had risen from the tomb.

Through the Gospel lesson today the Risen Christ appears also to us. He shows us the scars in His hands and side! What do the scars of Christ teach us? What do they tell us about Him?

First, the scars of Christ speak most eloquently of His love for us. St. Paul writes, "While we were yet helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Why, one would hardly die for a righteous man — though perhaps for a good man one will dare even to die. But God shows His love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." (Romans 5:6-8).

A little girl sat on her mother's knee, and as she looked into her mother's face she said: "Mummie, you've got the prettiest hair and the sweetest eyes I have ever seen. And Mummie, yours is the kindest face in all the world. But, Mummie, why are your arms so ugly?" The mother then explained to her daughter that when she was a tiny baby the house caught fire. She ran into the house and rescued her out of her crib. In the process her arms and hands were badly burned. When the little girl heard this, tears began streaming down her face. Looking once more into her mother's face she said, "Mummie, you've got the prettiest hair I have ever seen, and yours is the sweetest face, and your eyes are wonderful. But, Mummie, your hands and your arms are the most beautiful of all. I have loved you always, but I love you more than ever now."

The scars of Jesus speak eloquently of His love for us. Such eloquence should evoke in every true Christian the response it evoked in Thomas and in the little girl, "My Lord and my God, I loved you before but more than ever now.

Secondly, the scars of Jesus teach us that life is a struggle. Whoever got the idea that a good Christian never suffers? "God had one son without sin," said St. Augustine. "He has no sons without suffering." He has never promised us immunity from suffering — His own Son suffered — but He has promised us victory in our suffering. "In the world you have tribulation but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world," He said. The worst thing that evil can do is to kill God. Having been defeated in that, in its strongest moment, when evil wore its greatest armor, it can never be victorious again.

Thirdly, the scars of Jesus speak eloquently of His love, but they also speak to our scars. The hardest part of suffering for Christians is the dark hour when they are tempted to believe that God is not with them in their suffering; when they suppose that Jesus reigns in some far-off splendor, untroubled by their woe. This is simply not true! The first thing Jesus does when He comes to sufferers is to show them His scarred hands. What a password! When you are pouring out your passionate protests to Jesus and asking Him why this should happen to you, look! He is showing you His hands.

Finally the scars on the body of Jesus were caused by man's sin. If we were to choose a symbol for sin, perhaps the best one would be a nail. Each sin is a nail that continues to be driven into the body of Jesus. The best definition of sin is that it is not only the breaking of God's commandments, but even more so the breaking of God's heart.

There was a soldier who was with the occupying forces in Germany, far from wife and home and loved ones. One evening he was walking down a German street, where one of the few buildings remaining was a house of ill fame, its doorway decorated with suggestive photographs. He was greatly tempted. He reached into his pocket for his billfold. As he opened it his eyes fell on a picture of the crucified Christ which he always carried with him. He saw the scars on the hands of our Lord. He thought of the nails his sin would drive into those hands. Then, without hesitation, he walked away from temptation saying to himself, "I cannot sin against Him. I had forgotten the scars."

A Frenchman was crossing the desert with an Arab guide. Day after day the Arab knelt on the burning sand and called upon his God in prayer.

One evening when the Arab knelt to pray, the unbelieving Frenchman asked him: "How do you know there is a God?"

The guide fixed his eyes upon the scoffer for a moment and then replied: "How do I know there is a God? I'll answer that question, if you permit me to ask you one first. How did we know this morning that it was a camel and not a man that had passed our tent while we slept last night?"

The Frenchman laughed and said, "Why, we could tell it by the print of the hoof in the sand. That print was not from the foot of a man."

The Arab then looked to the West where the setting sun threw shafts of red and gold and purple into the vaulted canopy of heaven, and pointing toward the sun, he said: "Neither is that the footprint of a man."

The world about us is filled with the footprints of God! Every sunset, every sunrise, every tree, every flower, every lake, every blade of grass, every twinkling star in the diamond-studded ceiling which envelops this marvelous world of ours — is a footprint of our Maker.

The Bible tells us: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork" (Psalms 19:1). He who can see the scarlet sun sink into its pool of purple, splashing the sky with streaks of gold and crimson — and still not see the footprint of his Maker — is like a pair of spectacles without a pair of eyes behind them.

But God has not left us to follow the path to Him by footprints. He has revealed Himself to us through the pages of His Word. The book of nature may tell us that there is a God, but only the Book of God can tell us who He is — and what He has done for us through Jesus Christ, His Son.

The footprints of the setting and the rising sun may tell us that God is. But only the nailprints in the hands of our Savior can tell us that God is — LOVE.

Jesus appeared to the disciples, and to Thomas, showing them the scars in His hands and side — scars that were proof of His love; scars that won for us the final Victory over death; scars that speak a compassionate word of understanding to our wounds; scars which if we have re-opened through our sin, we can hopefully re-close through our sincere and honest repentance.

Too long have we been hard on Thomas. He is now our spokesman. Surrounded by scars we, too, say: "Until I see in His own hands the mark of the nails, and put my finger into the nailmarks and my hand into His side, I will never believe." Having seen the scars, we cannot but say with Thomas, "My Lord and my God!"

Who Will Roll Away the Stone for Us? (St Mark 15:43-16:8)

"And when he learned from the centurion that He was dead, he granted the body to Joseph. And he bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped Him in the linen shroud, and laid Him in a tomb which had been hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb."

"And he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb." That was to be the end of the greatest life that ever lived!

He touched the blind and gave them sight. He touched the minds and hearts of sinners and made them new persons. He offered hope to the hopeless. He healed the sick. He raised the dead. Then they crucified Him. And, after ascertaining that he was dead, they laid Him in a sepulcher and "rolled a stone against the door of the tomb."

So it is. Life rolls stones, buries hope, nails dreams to a cross. Bitter disappointment, defeat, frustration, sickness, death: these make up life, between short interludes of happiness. Life is nailed to a cross and ultimately a stone is rolled against the door of the tomb.

On Easter morning the women were on their way to perform their last work of love for Jesus. Expecting to find Him lifeless, they were to anoint His body with spices. Worrying about the huge stone they were sure they would find at the entrance of the tomb, "they were saying to one another, 'Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?"

The great stone sealing the tomb of Jesus impresses us. For we, too, meet with many such formidable stones in life, stones that block our doorways into the future, the stones of sin, sickness, sorrow, loneliness, and ultimately death.

Like St. Paul we cry out, "Who will deliver me from the body of this death." We think of the huge stones that stand in our way: — the regrets for the way we have often taken in the past, — the uncertainties that plague us this moment, — the fears that are in our hearts concerning things to come, and we cry, "who will deliver me?"

We think of our inadequacies, our inability to measure up to the tasks of life, our weakness in the face of temptations, and we plead, "Where can I get the power? WHO WILL DELIVER ME?"

We think of our sins, of the good we have failed to do, of the persons we have exploited and hurt, and, tortured by feelings of guilt, we cry out, "who will deliver me?"

We think of death, the last and greatest enemy of mankind. We think of the tomb — our tomb — and the stone that will one day be placed on it and we cry out, "who will roll back the stone? Who will deliver me from the body of this death?"

The stones that block the way to life and happiness are many.

There is the stone of sin. In the book "Jesus: a dialogue with the Savior" a monk of the Orthodox Church writes: "Jesus often seems imprisoned in my soul and reduced to helplessness, as He was in the sepulcher before the Resurrection. The heavy stone of my sin keeps Him in that state. How many times have I longed to see Jesus rise in me in power! How many times have I tried to roll back the stone — but in vain! The weight of sin, the weight of its habits was too strong. I would say to myself almost in despair: 'Who will roll the stone back?"

"…But the women going to the tomb are not empty-handed. They bring spices bought in order to embalm the Savior’s body. If I long for the stone to be removed from my soul, I must — at least as a sign, a token of my good will — bring something with me. Perhaps it would be very little, but it must be something which cost me something, something which is in the nature of a sacrifice.

"Now the women find that the stone at the entrance to the sepulcher has been removed. It has been removed in a way which they had not foreseen. 'There was a great earthquake. For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and coming rolled back the stone.'

"In order to remove the stone, nothing less than a cataclysm was necessary. A push, a slight readjustment would not be enough. Likewise, the stone which seems to immobilize and paralyze Jesus in my soul can be taken away only by an earthquake, that is to say, by a violent interior catastrophe (revolution), by a complete and radical change. A jolt like lightning is required to unsettle me. Jesus rises from the dead in me only if the one who I was ceases to exist, giving way to the new man. Not a retouching or a tuning up will do; but a death and birth are necessary" ("Jesus: A Dialogue with the Savior" — by a Monk of the Eastern Church. Desclee Company. Used by permission.).

In addition to the stone of sin, there is the stone of death. The final stone. The stone of extinction. Yet it was exactly this stone that was moved from the tomb of Jesus. "For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat upon it." That is what earth had always been doing — laying man's hopes in a tomb and then sealing the doors against their escape. But now earth had been the ruler long enough. Earth had said enough and done enough. Now it was God's turn, and God was taking over. So "the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door." If man would not open the tomb, God would do it Himself. Moreover, He would keep it open; for when the angel rolled back the stone from the door, he "sat upon it." This was not a temporary defeat for evil. This "sitting" on the stone was the ultimate victory, the final conquest.

"And he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb." That was supposed to be the end.

Death is never the end of the story. It is not the end for the infant who dies at such a tender age. It is not the end for that loved one whose life is ravaged by cancer or snuffed out by a failing heart. It is not the end for that young soldier killed on the battlefield in the prime of his youth. It is not the end; for the stone has been rolled away.

A Christian missionary captured by the Communists and facing certain death wrote this poem in a letter to a friend:

In rolling back the stone in Joseph's garden, God removed the biggest stone of all. He won the final and complete victory over sin and death. All the stones that stand in our way today are but chips off the old block. But the old block — the biggest of them all — has been rolled away.

Margaret Slattery wrote in honor of those who died in World War II:

"There are graves in the lonely sands of Africa where a brother who died bravely was buried; a dear beloved friend; a boy who won at tennis and swam across the lake with steady strokes a few short months ago. They were buried where they fell and the tide of battle roared on leaving a mound, a cross, a flag. Above such graves there is a voice saying, he is not here.

"In far away Bataan they buried a nurse who had been good and gay and very daring; a doctor who with his last ounce of strength had ministered to those in pain; and a Filipino patriot, one of his country's finest sons. Over their graves a voice in the wind, a clear voice is saying, not here — not here — because I live — they live also."

"Who will roll away the stone for us from the door of the tomb?

"And looking up they saw that the stone was rolled back; for it was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, "Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; He is not here; come, see the place where they laid Him."

"Sir, I Have No Man" (John 5:1-15).

At a dinner where guests were being entertained, the hostess, a woman deeply involved in social causes, was called to the phone three times during the meal. She returned to the table after the third call quite irritated. She said rather impatiently, "There is nothing worse than being bothered all the time." One of her guests said quietly, "There is one thing that is worse, and that is, not to be bothered at all."

In today's Gospel lesson Jesus comes to the pool of Bethesda. He observes the great multitudes plagued with various illnesses, waiting to be moved into the water for healing. Suddenly He notices a poor creature who seems more needy than all the rest, and tenderly He asks, "Do you want to be healed?" The helpless paralytic looks up and answers, "Sir, I have no man to put me in the pool when the water is troubled. Thirty-eight years I have waited ..." Thirty-eight long, weary years this bundle of pain waited for someone to help him into the pool. One can imagine the utter despair behind those words, "Sir, I have no man." How well he knew the pain of loneliness — a pain expressed so well by the Ancient Mariner: "Alone, alone, all, all, alone; alone on a wide, wide sea."

A famous doctor was asked to name the most devastating disease. His reply was, "Loneliness. Just plain loneliness." Another doctor called it, "The most devastating malady of our age."

Loneliness drives people to do desperate things. Studies have shown that it is one of the major causes of suicide. Alcoholics Anonymous tells us that loneliness is one of the great causes of alcoholism.

It is no respecter of age. There is the loneliness of small children whose parents spend too little time with them. There is the loneliness of teenagers who feel that they are not understood by their elders and feel alienated. There is the loneliness that can exist within marriage where two people can live together in the most intimate of relationships and feel estranged. There is the loneliness of the aged who often feel unwanted and useless. There is the tragic loneliness of losing a loved one or anticipating one's own death.

Here we have the problem: "Sir, I have no man ..." What is the solution? Here we have the disease — "man's greatest disease" — some have called it. What is the cure?

There is a cure: a false cure and a real cure. The false cures for loneliness are many. Among them are the corner bars, and night clubs. Here man tries to relieve his loneliness in lust. He tries to buy or drink his way out of boredom — only to wake up the next morning with a greater loneliness than ever. Others work excessively or go incessantly. They plan their schedules so that they are never alone. Rollo May tells of how many people must keep "dated up" with activities just to avoid the fear of being alone.

Just as counterfeit money can exist only because there is real money so these false cures exist only because there is a real cure. It is to the real cure that we shall now turn our attention.

1. The first thing we must ask ourselves is whether our loneliness is our own fault. Blaise Pascal said, "The man who lives only for himself hates nothing so much as being with himself." It was said of someone named Edward: "Edward is a small island surrounded entirely by Edward!" If we have shut ourselves off from other people, asking for pity instead of offering service, wanting to be loved and forgetting that the only way to be loved is to love, then we must do something about it. We must start building bridges to other islands, to other lonely persons, by not waiting for them to speak to us but by speaking to them first, asking them about themselves, showing genuine care and concern. We read in Genesis, "The Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone." He created human companionship as a therapy for loneliness. Our positive response to the plea: "Sir, I have no man ..." will not only provide the solution to the problem of loneliness but will also fill our life with meaning.

2. The second cure for loneliness is to lose oneself in service to others. A minister once went to a mental hospital to enlist some people there in a sewing project for handicapped shut-ins. He spoke to the women patients who had nothing to do. They just sat all day unoccupied. He felt they would respond to such a project where they could busy themselves and be of help to others. To his surprise not a single person volunteered. "We've got our own problems to worry about," grumbled one lady. Upon seeing this, the minister said to himself, "Then I understood: that's why they were here! A lonely preoccupation with self had poisoned the mind of each."

To a woman who could not stand the loneliness in her life after her children had grown and left home, a certain pastor wrote:

"In the past, your immediate family needed most of your time and strength. Now you can extend the range of your love. There are children in your neighborhood who need understanding and friendship. There are aged people near you who are starved for companionship, blind people who cannot even enjoy the television you find so boring. Why not get out and find the joy of helping others?" Weeks later, she wrote again: "I tried your prescription. It works! I have walked from night into day!"

This lonely woman, like thousands of others, had proved the wisdom expressed in one of Frances Ridley Havergal's poems: "Seldom can a heart be lonely if it seeks a lonelier still, self-forgetting, seeking only emptier cups to fill." All about us are emptier cups. Try filling them and see how quickly loneliness evaporates.

But the lonesomeness of life cannot be solved simply by joining a club or by throwing oneself into community service projects. There will always be those dark corners that will refuse to be illuminated. This brings us to the third cure for loneliness.

3. One of the deepest causes of loneliness is a hunger for God. Loneliness basically is a sense of incompleteness that draws us toward the One — the Only One — who can make us complete. It is a hunger that only a relationship with God can satisfy. May it not be that God makes us lonely that we may realize the emptiness of life without Him? Loneliness, then, is an inner emptiness craving to be filled by the only One who can satisfy it — the Lord Jesus! Only He can give us a sense of the importance and worth of life, a sense of direction and a source of power that never fails. Only He can give life a meaningful purpose the lack of which can cause a deep inner loneliness. Can any loneliness be deeper than the one expressed by atheist Albert Camus:

"Man can will nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of infinite responsibilities, without help ..."

If sin is the great destroyer of man, it is precisely because it makes man lonely by separating him from God, from his best self and from his fellow human beings. Jesus came to be our Savior, to destroy the damage caused by sin, to reunite us with God, with our best self and with our fellow humans.

Loneliness has been aptly called the far-off echo of the voice of our Creator whispering to us: "I have made you for Myself, and you will never be complete without Me."

Our Lord Himself pointed to part of the problem, and part of the solution of loneliness when He said, "The hour is coming, has indeed already come, when you are all to be scattered, each to his home, leaving me alone. Yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me ..." When His enemies turned on Him, when His friends deserted Him, when the Cross loomed up as a cruel reality, He said, "I am alone, yet not alone, for the Father is with me." In other words, there come in life those lonely moments which cannot be overcome by any human means — only by God.

How often Jesus sought out His Father. He sought Him out alone. He rose early in the morning and went up into the mountains to be close to Him, to talk to Him and commune with Him. Because He was so often alone with God in prayer, He was never really alone. The Father was with Him. Even when He faced that symbol of ultimate separation and aloneness — death — He did not face it alone. He prayed: "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit."

When a little boy was operated on, he urged his father to stay with him all through the operation. When the anesthesia had been applied and the boy was asleep, the nurse suggested to the father that he might like to leave the operating room because it would not be a pleasant experience. The father decided to stay. At the end of the operation, he was rewarded when his son, struggling back into consciousness, searched for his dad and seeing him said, "You stayed, Dad!"

Some of the greatest promises of the Bible assure us that our God is a God who stays:

"They shall call his name Emmanuel… . God with us."

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me." "Lo, I am with you always even to the end of the world."

Two sailors were interviewed on what they had done when the news of the Japanese surrender came during the second World War. One said that he climbed a lamp-post in Times Square and shouted at the top of his lungs. The other said he had gone into a church to pray. The interviewer then commented — "I suggest to you that there are many people who try to cure their loneliness by climbing lamp-posts or going to night clubs and shouting at the top of their lungs. They usually wake up with headaches and very hoarse throats, lonelier and more miserable than they were before. But there are others who have learned that the only real cure for loneliness comes from communion with God ..."

"Sir, I have no man ..." said the paralytic to Jesus. But he did have a Man — the God-Man, Jesus Himself. We, too, can have Jesus as our Friend and Companion in life to make us strong, when by ourselves we would be weak; to give us courage, when by ourselves we would be faint-hearted; to instill in us the promise of His presence, when by ourselves we would be lost in loneliness.

"I am not alone … the Father is with me." With this faith we still have problems but we have also a Presence that inspires confidence and conquers loneliness.

A Woman at the Well (John 4:5-42).

The time was noon. Jesus was weary. He sat down "just as He was," says St. Chrysostom, "not on a throne, not on a cushion, but simply on the ground" beside Jacob's well. As He rested: "There came a woman of Samaria to draw water" (John 4:7).

Notice that Jesus was at the well before she came. God is always there first waiting for us. Our Lord found Zacchaeus, not Zacchaeus the Lord. He found Paul on the road to Damascus when Paul was not even looking for Him. The Hound of Heaven waits at the well for His prey.

Notice, too, that the Samaritan woman came to the well alone. The other women, no doubt, despised her for her loose morals and would not associate with her.

As she filled her pitcher, she recognized Jesus as a Jew with whom the Samaritans did not associate. She tried to avoid Him. But to her surprise, Jesus addressed her with a request: "Give me a drink" (John 4:7).

Nothing puts people at ease as quickly as to be asked for help. By asking someone for a favor, we place ourselves at the mercy of that person. We accept a lower, inferior position. This is how Jesus tried to establish a relationship of trust with the woman of Samaria.

Jesus needed water to quench His physical thirst; the Samaritan woman needed living water for her spiritual thirst. The physical thirst would occur again; the spiritual thirst would be satisfied by the living water. The physical water came from a deep well; the living water came from the Living Christ. One was essential for life; the other was necessary for abundant life. Jesus asks, He Who can give all. He asks, that He may give all.

A Jew does not ask a Samaritan woman for a drink. So the woman abruptly raises what we call the "racial issue." But Jesus does not share the prejudice that makes one group of human beings despise another for no other reason than the accident of birth or color of skin. By the simple act of talking to the Samaritan woman, Jesus demolished the social, political, and racial barriers of His time. As a man He talked to a woman. As a rabbi, He spoke to an immoral woman. As a Jew He spoke to a Samaritan. Completely ignoring these distinctions, He goes straight to the central point — what He has to offer every person of every race:

"If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water'' (John 4:10, 11).

If only you knew the Gift of God! But we can know! The Gift of God to man is none other than Jesus: "This is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." Jesus speaks of Himself as the Gift of God and the living water. But the woman sees only a weary pilgrim not the One Who came to bring rest to weary souls. She sees the thirsty traveler not the One Who came to quench the world's thirst.

"Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep; where do you get that living water"' (John 4:10).

The well is deep — it is true — and we need something to draw with. It is a long way from man to God. But Christ is the One — the only One — Who can bridge the gap and bring the living water to our thirsty soul. We have not something but Someone to draw with.

"I do not know what heaven is going to be like," said a Christian, "but I know it will be a place where the language of love will be spoken and I am trying to learn that language now. It will be a place where honesty and purity will be the order of the day, and I am trying to incorporate those things into my life so I will feel at home." He was developing the power to appreciate such a place as Heaven might be expected to be, so that he would have something to draw with when he arrived.

"Sir, you have nothing to draw with." Jesus needs nothing to draw with. He is the well. He is the living water.

"Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well?" (John 4:12)

He is indeed greater than Jacob — far greater. But He does not go into that now. He proceeds to make one of the greatest statements He ever made: "Every one who drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst; the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (John 4:13, 14).

Jesus declared that He could give permanent satisfaction to the parched human spirit. The water He gives is as a spring welling up constantly. It is never exhausted, never grows stale. Never can His resources be drained dry. And if He lives in us neither will ours! For we shall be spring-fed by Him.

Here is the thirst of the soul for God of which the Bible speaks so often. "To the thirsty I will give water without price from the fountain of the water of life" (Rev. 21:6). God says in Jeremiah, "My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns, that can hold no water" (Jer. 2:4). There is no substitute for the living water. If we try to quench our spiritual thirst with anything less than God, we shall remain thirsty. "He who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst," said Jesus.

Hearing these words the Samaritan woman replied,

"Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw" (John 4:15).

It could be that the Samaritan woman was tired of her life, tired of men, tired of adultery, tired of being a social outcast, tired of pretending to be satisfied when all along her life was no more than a living death. So when she heard this talk about the living water that satisfies completely, her soul fairly shrieked, "Give me this water."

But before the Samaritan woman could receive this living water, she had to face herself honestly. She had been living in sin and was unwilling to admit it. So Jesus says to her,

"Go, call your husband, and come here" (John 4:16).

True Christianity begins with a sense of sin, with repentance. Jesus intended to bring out her sense of shame and sin. "Go and face the truth of the life you live; then come and receive the water of life." To us He would probably say, "Go call that person whom you have wronged. Go call that slander which you uttered against your neighbor."

The Samaritan woman stiffened as if a sudden pain had caught her. She became defensive. "I have no husband" she said (John 4:17).

This was an honest confession as far as it went, but it did not go far enough. Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying, 7 have no husband;' for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly." (John 4:18).

Though these words came from ancient Sychar, they sound as if they come straight from modern Hollywood. The man with whom she was now living was not a husband. Neither were the others. To Jesus marriage was a sacrament. It was sacred. There has always been something not only sinful but also neurotic about illicit sex. It is a symptom of inner emptiness. People try to find in it the answer to some of their deep frustrations: their lack of importance, their lack of success, their lack of closeness with their mates, their lack of identity, their lack of religious conviction, their lack of fulfillment as human beings. No doubt the Samaritan woman had sought such fulfillment in her illicit life but when Jesus brought it up she began to feel that He was "meddling" in her personal life. So she did what millions of people have done ever since, when religion demands a change in their conduct: she changed the subject. She began talking about the religious differences between the Jews and the Samaritans. She was not really interested in these differences, but they took the spotlight off herself.

Finally she said: "I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ); when he comes, he will show us all things" (John 4:25).

"I who speak to you am he" (John 4:26).

Jesus declares for all generations to hear that He is the Messiah. The greatest mystery of faith is announced not to the disciples but to this foreigner. "I am he" — the One you have been expecting, the One who brings God to you, the One who brings you to God, the One who has the power to forgive sin, the One who gives direction to your life, the One who has overcome death. "I am he."

She came to draw water. When she realized she had found the True Well, she left behind her water jar, as the disciples had abandoned their nets. Hardly a convert yet already a missionary, she ran to the village to tell her people: "Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?" (John 4:29).

Her heart burns within her. She cannot keep silent. She feels compelled to lead others to the Messiah. Yet she does not say, "You must believe what I say," rather she tells them, "Come, and see for yourselves." They came and after seeing the Lord, they said, "It is no longer because of your words that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world" (John 4:42).

Having Eyes, We See Not (John 9:1-38).

Of all our physical faculties, we cherish most the ability to see. We would rather lose our hearing, or our ability to speak, or even our arms or legs than to lose our sight.

Today there are many people who see with their eyes but their hearts are blind. As our Lord said, "Having eyes, they see not" (Mark 8:18). A tourist took one look at the Grand Canyon and said to the guard, "Where is the golf course?" When the guard told him there wasn't any, he said, "What do you do around here?" In the presence of one of the most sublime and awe-inspiring spectacles of the world this man saw nothing. He had eyes but his capacity to see beauty and grandeur had not been developed. Having eyes, he saw not.

Elizabeth Barret Browning wrote:

Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;

But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,

The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Our trouble today is not that we are physically blind but that we are spiritually so.

Helen Keller who was born blind and deaf was visited one day by a good friend who had just returned from a long walk in the woods. "I asked her what she had seen," said Miss Keller. "Nothing in particular," was the reply. "It might have been unbelievable," Miss Keller said, "had I not become accustomed to such responses, for long ago I became convinced that those who have eyes actually see very little."

Seeing, really seeing, makes every day a new revelation of God. Emerson said once, "If the stars should appear but one night in a thousand years, how many men would believe and adore and preserve for many generations the memory of that one night of magic mystery." But we get used to it, never see the stars, or if we look at them they seem like wall paper in a waiting room. Having eyes, we see not. Like the blind man in today's Gospel lesson we, too, need to be healed by Jesus. For we are blind in so many ways.

Much of our blindness is willful. How easy it is to shut out the world. All we need do is pull down the two window shades of the body: the eyelids. How well I remember the story of two Americans traveling through Africa on a train. They were in one of those destitute African villages. A crowd of starving African children gathered about the train and peered hungrily through the windows. In order not to let this scene interfere with their enjoyment of the meal, the two Americans reached up and pulled down the shade.

Many of us are guilty of pulling down the shade on the needs of our world. We are blinded by our tremendous wealth. We cannot imagine a Biafran mother having to decide which one of her three children she must let die for lack of food, or the 150,000 people who sleep on the sidewalks of Calcutta every night because they have no home — not even a crude shack; or the unthinkable poverty of millions in South America who eat out of garbage cans and drink polluted water without any hope of help, or the indescribable poverty and malnutrition that exist right here in the slums of our American cities. It is so easy to shut all this out of our lives and be blind to it.

There is an old Chinese story of a man who lusted after gold. One day he went to a jewelry store, grabbed some gold, and ran. After the police arrested him, they asked, "How could you rob somebody else's gold in broad daylight and in front of all those people?" The prisoner answered, "When I reached for the gold, I saw only gold. I didn't see any people."

Could it be that this is part of our problem: we are so blinded by gold, by our materialism, by our search for profits that we don't see people any more? Remember the story Jesus told of Dives, the rich man, and Lazarus, the poor beggar who lived outside his door, eating the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table. The rich man never exploited Lazarus or fleeced him; he simply never saw him. He was totally blind to his existence.

Isn't this our problem: we don't see. We don't see the misery on earth; we don't see those two people out of every three in the world who are starving. All around us there are people living in distress, in despair, in loneliness, in sorrow, in sickness. Do we see them? We have learned to walk down a street and never see any of the people who, with us, crowd the sidewalk. Even more than the blind man in today's Gospel we need to ask Jesus to restore our sight that we may see the suffering and afflictions of our fellow humans.

One person who did not suffer from this kind of blindness was Dr. Tom Dooley, the young ex-Navy doctor who dedicated his life to providing free medical service to the natives in Laos. He said one day, "I certainly cannot see God when I look at a Mercedes-Benz convertible. But in the jungle it is easier … Sure, I would like to stay here and drive a convertible, drink Scotch on the rocks, and date pretty girls, but / keep seeing these broken, swollen human beings." The Lord had restored his sight!

We are blinded by color. We refuse to see the image of God that abides in every human being — white or black, red or brown. Our cities today are suffering because of our racial blindness which is basically a spiritual blindness. How desperately we need Jesus to restore our sight that we may see and respect God's image in every person.

Some of us are blind to the things that are close to us; we can see only what lies in the distance. We are farsighted. We can easily see our neighbor's sins but not our own. We think we possess the truth and reject the point of view of others. How desperately we need to pray, "Lord, let me receive my sight that I may see and remove the log that is my own eye before I concern myself with the speck in my neighbor's eye."

How blind we are to our friends and loved ones! In the play "Our Town," Thornton Wilder, the author, has Emily relive after death one single day of her earthly life in Grovers Corners, and we hear her pleading with her mother, "Oh, mamma, just look at me one minute as though you really saw me!" We may look at people but we really don't see them. We look through them. We may as well be blind.

Dr. Paul Tournier tells of a brilliant surgeon in New York. He was extremely successful. There was only one thing wrong: his wife was very nervous. He sent her to a psychiatrist who suggested that he was not paying enough attention to her. One day the surgeon began to feel terribly responsible for his wife's nervous condition. He knew that simply sending her to a psychiatrist would not discharge him of his responsibility. While he was leading a most thrilling life at the hospital, performing operations, saving lives, doing research, writing for medical journals … back at home his wife was dying of emotional starvation. And he had been blind to it all.

How much we need to pray: "Lord, let me receive my sight that as I work to serve others, I may not be blind to the needs of my loved ones.''

How often we hear people complain, "I waved at him on the street, but he ignored me." People look at us with their eyes but not with their heart. Like the little girl who complained to her mother, "But, Mommy, you're not listening to me." Mother objected, "I am listening./' "But, Mother, you're not listening with your eyes." How we communicate with our eyes! A hateful look, a cold fishy eye can shrivel up a personality and freeze the marrow of the blood. But a pair of sparkling eyes, what cheer and sunshine they can bring into life. "Lord, let me receive my sight that I may look at others with love and zest."

Finally, there are those who are spiritually blind. They simply do not see God. Some people see God everywhere. They see Him in every tree, in every mountain, in every ray of sunshine, in every event, in every person. But the spiritually blind see Him nowhere.

I am reminded of John Burroughs the great American naturalist. He made a neighborly visit one day to a woman who knew his great love for birds. She said to him, "Why is it, Mr. Burroughs, that you have so many birds at your place, but I don't have any birds at all in my yard?" John Burroughs had just been watching in absorbed fascination all sorts of birds flying amidst the shrubbery and trees in the lady's yard. He replied, "Madam, you will not see birds in your yard until you have birds in your heart."

And perhaps we can say the same to those of us who are spiritually blind. We miss seeing God in the world because we do not have enough of God in our hearts. We have failed to cultivate the vision of God. We have trained our eyes to see things, to count dollars, to measure distances, but we have neglected the most important capacity that belongs to man, the capacity to see God through prayer and worship.

If we are to see again, a miracle must take place. Jesus must touch our eyes as He touched the eyes of the man born blind. Then we will begin to see. Then we will come to realize that without Jesus no man can truly see and with Him no man can be truly blind. He is the opener of the eyes of the soul, and without Him it is always darkness. "I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

The daughter of Joseph Stalin, reared within the very citadel of godless materialism, testified to having been like a blind person who suddenly was touched by Jesus, saw the light and offered herself for baptism. Even today Jesus opens the eyes of the soul.

There is a story of a lonely man who felt so rejected by the cold city in which he lived that he decided to kill himself by throwing himself in the river. As he left his room, he told himself, "If I meet someone on the street whose eyes catch mine, who somehow takes notice of me as a human being, I'll turn back. Only then." So he began his walk to the river.

Here the story ends. But it poses this question: suppose he had met you on the street, would he have turned back?

Four of the greatest miracles of Christianity are: the Son of God becoming the Son of man, the Resurrection, the Ascension into heaven, and His coming again to judge the world. It was a great day for our planet when the Son of God appeared upon it in the likeness of our flesh. It was a momentous day when He rose from the grave. It was a majestic day for the Church when a cloud received Him out of sight. It will be an even greater day for the world when the ascended Christ shall return in glory.

Let us concentrate on the miracle of the Ascension: what it is and what it means.

Just as the Lord Jesus came to earth in a supernatural way so He left in a supernatural way. One of the best descriptions of the Ascension is found in Acts 1:9-11, "And when he (Jesus) had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. And while they were gazing into heaven as he went, behold, two men stood by them in white robes, and said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’ ‘

The words "and when he was lifted up" do not mean that Jesus was elevated so many feet above sea level. They mean that through His ascension Jesus entered a higher existence. When a school boy says that he has been promoted to a higher class, we do not take him to mean that he was transferred from a classroom on the ground floor to one upstairs. Likewise, the words "and he was lifted up" mean that Jesus was promoted to glory, to a different realm of life, to heaven.

It is interesting to note that when one does go "up" into outer space, one enters a new and different realm than what we know here on earth. For example, scientists tell us that by the end of this century we will be able to break the light barrier just as we did the sound barrier. In other words, men will be able to travel at the speed of light, i.e., 186,000 miles per second. To reach the nearest star at that speed would require ten years: five years to go and five to return. We here on earth will be ten years older when the astronauts return but they will be only ten days older. Why? Because when they break the light barrier, they reach the point where time almost ceases to exist. Time in space is not as it is here on earth. It is a completely different realm. So it is that when the New Testament says that Jesus "was lifted up," it means to say that He entered a new realm of life completely different from what we know here on earth.

In the Bible, a cloud is a sign of the presence of God. It was a cloud which enveloped Mt. Sinai as God gave Moses the Ten Commandments. When Jesus was transfigured we read that "a bright cloud overshadowed them" (Matthew 17:5). It was probably from a cloud that God’s voice came when Jesus was baptized saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am pleased." So when we read in Acts, "A cloud took him out of their sight," it means that Jesus entered into the very presence of God.

Why did Jesus go away when there was so much He could have done here on earth? The answer was given by Jesus Himself: "It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you" (John 16:7). Jesus tells us here that His human form will be replaced by the presence of the Counselor, the Helper, the Holy Spirit. He will bring us into much closer contact with Jesus than His human form could bring about.

Seen in this light, the Ascension and Pentecost are not two separate holy days. The Ascension is a prelude to Pentecost. Jesus goes away that He may send the Holy Spirit. He goes away in order to change the form by which He will work among us. Now He will work through us, the Spirit-filled, Christ-filled members of His body, the Church.

Jesus came down from heaven as the Eternal Son of the Father, but when He went back to the seat of honor and glory at God’s right hand, He took with Him our human nature. He returned to His Father as God-man. It was our nature, in everything except its sin, that sat down at the right hand of God. The Son of God descended to become one of us and ascended to enable us to ascend with Him. Through the ascension and enthronement of Christ, all human nature has been enthroned at the right hand of the Father. Since the manhood of Jesus was taken up to the heavenly places, our manhood will also be taken up. The Ascension is proof that man was made for heaven not for the grave, for glory not for corruption. St. Paul does not hesitate to describe Christians as "enthroned above the heavens, in Christ Jesus."

The Ascension was the enthronement of Jesus. It was His coronation as King of the Universe. Jesus ascends into heaven to resume His universal rule and dominion. This is brought out beautifully in one of the icons of the Ascension where the iconographer depicts the ascending Christ as growing larger and larger until the earth itself becomes no bigger than a ball which He holds in His hand. In other words, through His ascension Christ is no longer a prisoner of space and time. He is no longer confined to Palestine in the first century A.D. He now transcends space and time as Ruler of the Universe.

When Jesus ascended into heaven, He passed into another world, spiritual, invisible, yet just as real as the world in which we live today. This tells us that we mortals may be at home somewhere else in this vast universe than on earth. "I go to prepare a place for you that where I am there you may be also," said Jesus. The Ascension gives us the certainty that we have a Friend not only on earth, but also in heaven. He is our forerunner who has gone on before us to prepare for our arrival. To die is not to go out into the dark; it is to go to Him.

The message of the ascension concludes with the announcement of the return of Christ: "This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11). The Ascended Jesus is Lord of the future. He will return one day in the same manner as He ascended. He left in person, He will come back in person. He left in His glorified body, He will come back in His glorified body. He left in sight of men, He will return in sight of men. Only then, as we read in Revelation, not a mere handful of select disciples, but "every eye will see him" (Rev. 1:7). Before His judgement seat will appear every person who ever lived. No Christian can take lightly his ultimate appearance before God — when all his thoughts, words and deeds will be laid bare. The great mystery of God’s grace is that He who will judge the world is the same One who gave His life to save the world!

Jesus ascended into heaven not to end His work for us but to continue it — this time as our great intercessor before the throne of God. Even before His Ascension Jesus prayed to God for us. He prayed for His disciples, especially for Peter that his faith might not fail him. In His sublime prayer at the last supper He prayed for all Christian believers, past, present and future. Now that He is in heaven He continues this intercession. ".. . who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us" (Romans 8:34).

If it helps to know at times that some wife or little child, or blessed mother or father, or true friend is praying for us, if the thought of those prayers helps and strengthens and purifies, so that our hearts are brave again and strong, how much more will it help us to remember that the Ascended Christ is now our great intercessor in heaven ever praying for each one of us?

St. Luke records that as Jesus was ascending into heaven, He raised His hands in blessing: "Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them" (Luke 24:50-51). His whole life among us was a blessing. He died as a blessing. He rose as a blessing. He left His followers with a blessing. In almost every icon He is pictured with His hand lifted up in blessing. It is His blessing that the priest bestows upon the congregation when he says, "Peace be with you." And now through His Church He seeks to enrich all of us with the greatest blessing there is: the promise of pardon and peace and life with God.

Our Lord promised the disciples that they would see "heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man." What do these words mean, "the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man"? They refer to the continued presence of Christ in the world even after His ascension. Christ’s coming into the world marks the opening of heaven. He came down the ladder from heaven and ever since then heaven has remained open. We may say that Christ Himself is the ladder — the only way to the Father and to heaven. There is a contstant stream of traffic on that ladder. Those angels ever going up and coming down are our prayers. Up to gain help and inspiration — down to bring a little bit of heaven, a breath of Godly air into this world of struggling humanity. "Prayer," writes St. John of the Ladder, "is a continuous ascension to heaven." We may add, so is the liturgy and the reading of God’s word — a continuous ascension to where God is.

In conclusion we remember that everything Jesus did, He did for us. For us He ascended into heaven. For us He sits at the right hand of the Father. For us He pleads and prays. For us He has gone to prepare a place in the presence of God. For us He has opened heaven that our prayers may ever ascend to Him. For us He shall come again to take us unto Himself that we may ever be with the Lord.

The Least Boring Life Ever Lived (John 17:1-13).

A pastor announced from the pulpit one Sunday morning that there would be a special meeting of the church's board at the close of the service. When the meeting was called to order, it was discovered that a total stranger was present.

The pastor explained to him that there must be some mistake as this was a meeting of the church's board. The man apologized by saying that when the pastor announced a meeting of the "bored" he thought it meant him, because no one in the congregation was more bored than he was.

Boredom has been called the number one American disease. Doctors testify that a large percentage of patients who come to them are not physically ill, but are bored to death with their station in life.

A Boston priest, noted for his suicide prevention work, recently called boredom the first step toward self-destruction.

Ours had been dubbed the atomic age; but one might also call it the age of ennui, boredom. Perhaps people in rich powerful America are more bored than people elsewhere. One report has it that American kids are even "fed up" with sex. So they've turned to drugs.

More sin is due to boredom than to anything else. People will do almost anything to escape it. They will drink, drug themselves, sell their bodies and their souls, fling themselves into crazy causes and even start wars to escape the misery of being bored. Anyone who can discover the cure for boredom will put an end to one of the greatest causes of human tragedy.

Before taking his life a certain person wrote: "I have run from wife to wife, from house to house, and from country to country in a ridiculous effort to escape from myself. In so doing I am very much afraid that I have brought a great deal of unhappiness to those who have loved me … No one thing is responsible for this suicide and no one person — except myself — I did it because I am fed up with inventing devices for getting through twenty-four hours a day."

Psychiatrists are disturbed by an odd upsurge of troubled husbands and wives. They have no serious marital or monetary problems; their health is good; their children reasonably obedient. But they complain of feeling vaguely depressed; often become violently irritated without reason. They lie awake at night, plagued by inexplicable bouts of anxiety. Some confess to seeking solace in secret drinking. These people are bored.

Tielhard de Chardin wrote in "The Future of Man," "The greatest enemy of the modern world, 'Public Enemy No. 1', is boredom… Mankind is bored. Perhaps this is the underlying cause of all our troubles. We no longer know what to do with ourselves."

Few things are more miserable than boredom. Is it any wonder people will do almost anything to escape it.

One of the basic causes of boredom is not so much that life is boring as it is that man has made himself boring. Someone once said, "What a bore it is, waking up every morning to the same old person!" That's boredom! Disgust at the staleness of one's personality! or at having to face the same guilt feelings day after day and night after night. But the good news of the Gospel of Jesus is that one does not have to remain the "same old person." We can be forgiven. We can develop. We can experience the joy of spiritual growth. We can rise above sin and stale-ness. Christ can make us new persons with a brand new attitude toward ourselves and toward life. He can put a new glory in our hearts.

One person writes, "How any human being can live in this fascinating world of ours and be bored is too mysterious for me to understand. My most disturbing thought is that there are not enough years left in my life to see all the things I want to see, read all the books I want to read, meet all the people I want to meet." Christians have far more reason than Nietzsche to cry out. "Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?"

One of the basic causes of boredom is emptiness of soul. The bored people are the empty people, people with nothing to live for and nothing outside themselves to fix their affections upon — the "hollow men" T. S. Eliot talked about, for whom life is void of meaning.

When looked upon as emptiness, boredom is good news. It is proof of our higher heritage. It is a sign that man was made for God, for the invigorating, enduring, satisfying life only He can give. Boredom means that the infinite in us will not let us be satisfied with the finite, with the little bubbles we clutch at to fill the soul.

Some time ago there was a song called, "Is That All There Is?" It told of a young woman who expected something more out of life than she ever received. When she was a little girl, her daddy took her to a circus. She watched all the acts, always expecting that finally the really big event would occur. But after she had seen all the animal tricks, the clowns, and the daring high wire performers, she asked, "Is that all there is? Is that all there is?"

And that's the way she went through life, asking, always asking, and expecting that somewhere along the line the great event would happen that would shower her life with meaning and give her the total excitement and glory she was looking for.

What she was really looking for was God, Who alone could give her life meaning. Dr. Carl Jung said once, "About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically defined neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives." We are not thrilled with life because we are not thrilled with God. It is the Eternal God who gives meaning and purpose to life. And without purpose, without a goal, life becomes extremely boring.

A prominent American who visited Sweden was told by a young Swede, "You know, we've had this permissive society now for a generation. Anything goes and we are filled up to here with it. We're sick of it. Let's walk down some of the main streets of Stockholm. Do you see much laughter, much joy, much happiness?" There were hundreds of young people, but there was something missing. They looked bored. They had one of the highest suicide rates among young people in the world. Why? Because permissiveness without discipline does not bring happiness. Happiness and peace are found in God, in a personal relationship with Jesus, and in a disciplined life.

Kirkegaard said once, "Whoever is without God in the world soon becomes tired of himself and expresses this loftily by being bored with life; but he who has fellowship with God lives with One Whose presence gives even the most insignificant an infinite significance."

Dag Hammarskjold discovered the truth of this by saying yes to God. From that hour, he says, "I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, thereafter, my life in self-surrender, had a goal."

As Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold was a man of affairs, deeply immersed in the hurly-burly of international politics and social problems. Yet in addition to his public life in the world, he maintained a daily personal contact with God. It was this communion with God that gave direction to his life and a zest for his work.

Possibility for boredom in life is vast. Consider, for instance, eating three times a day, or working, doing approximately the same thing day after day. Married, you look at the same person every morning, conversing in the same manner each time, using the same gestures. Life is repetition, and where there is repetition there is monotony and where there is monotony there is the danger of boredom. What can save us from boredom is more devotion, more dedication, more love, a great purpose.

When life is lived in daily communion with Christ, it becomes renewed, challenged uplifted, invigorated, enhanced, empowered. But it requires discipline: beginning and ending each day in fellowship with Christ through prayer; seeking to do God's will in every situation; worshipping Him in church on Sunday; receiving Him in the Sacraments and bearing the burdens of our fellowmen.

One of the least boring lives ever lived was the life of Jesus. It was a life full of enthusiasm and glory because it was a life filled with God, with an all-consuming love and a supreme purpose. Nowhere is this more evident than in the great priestly prayer of Jesus to His Father which was read in today's Gospel lesson: "I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou gavest me out of the world. ... I have given them the words which thou gavest me… While I was with them, I kept them in thy name. ... I have guarded them and none of them is lost… But now I am coming to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves."

Where does one detect boredom in these words? Is it not rather the joy of having a great mission to perform and having fulfilled it? Of loving God, conversing with Him, serving Him and ultimately returning to Him?

If life has been boring for you, try this prescription. It is written in the spirit of the priestly prayer of Jesus:

The truth of the Orthodox Christian faith can never be based on one person’s experience or thought of God, but on that of the whole of redeemed humanity. An Orthodox Christian would never say, "This has to be the truth because I know. I had a special revelation from Christ or the Holy Spirit." That "special revelation" must agree and not depart from the collective Christian experience of the Church as a whole from the apostles down to the present. The Church Fathers are not dead. They still speak to us of their vast experience. We benefit from that experience. We still drink from the wells of their inspiration and wisdom.

We owe a great debt to the Church Fathers. Where would we be without the liturgies of St. John Chrysostom and St. Basil the Great? the beautiful kontakia of Romanos the Melodist? the precise definitions of Orthodoxy by St. John of Damascus? the glorious Nicene Creed? the exquisitely magnificent hymns written by monks and fathers in the early monasteries where prayer was a way of life? the inspiring Jesus Prayer? the definitions of Christ and the Trinity as formulated by the Ecumenical Councils? the sublime icons? How many others have labored in our behalf that we could come to this hour as Orthodox Christians? All that we have, all that we are, the great treasure of our faith has been bought with enormous price. We are not our own. We were bought with a price none can repay. We are debtors living on great gifts from the past.

Hopefully, what Edward R. Murrow once said of Britain’s heroic stand against Nazi tyranny may be said of us: "Unconsciously they dug deep into their history and felt that Drake, Raleigh, Cromwell, and all the rest were looking down at them and they were obliged to look worthy in the eyes of their ancestors."

The Orthodox Church honors the Fathers not because they are witnesses of antiquity, or of a very ancient faith. She honors them because they are witnesses of the true faith, witnesses of the truth of Christ. This is the faith the apostles received from Christ and passed on to us (I Cor. 11:23). The Church Fathers are witnesses and guarantors of that complete and unaltered truth given to us by Christ and the Holy Spirit. Thus, behind Basil and Chrysostom, John the Baptist and John the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa and Symeon the New Theologian — behind them all stands Jesus Christ and His saving truth. We are not saved by the Church Fathers, but we are indebted to them because they are the earthen vessels who bring to us the great treasure which is Christ.

There is a great danger involved in possessing a rich tradition as we Orthodox Christians do. One of the dangers was pointed out by the historian Gibbon who describes some of the degeneration of Christianity under the Greek scholars of the 10th century, who handled the literature and spoke the language of the spiritual but knew not the life: "They held in their lifeless hands the riches of their fathers without inheriting the spirit which had created and imparted that sacred patrimony. They read; they praised; they compiled; but their languid souls seemed alike incapable of thought and action." Admittedly, Gibbon was for the most part ignorant of and prejudiced against the Eastern Church. Nonetheless he points out a real danger for those who have inherited a rich patrimony.

Another danger is that our theology become merely a theology of repetition. While referring to the Fathers is a method of maintaining continuity with the faith of the early Church, the practice can undermine and restrict the theological vigor of Orthodox theology. We are not just pulled by the past; we are also pulled by the future. There has to be a balance between the two. The pull of the past can be so strong as to neutralize the pull to the future. We must be open to the old without being closed to the new. The present is more than just clinging to the past.

Another danger of inheriting the rich tradition of the Fathers is pointed out by Professor von Campenhausen: "The Fathers had become so holy that in the end they could no longer beget any sons who were their equal in vitality … Imprisoned in their own territorial and cultural confines, their Church rested upon its own perfection. It trusted in an unchanging and indestructible continuity with the apostles and Fathers of the past whose achievements it admired so much that it failed to observe the changing nature of the problems which faced theology. It preserved their intellectual inheritance without doing anything to renew it" (The Fathers of the Greek Church by Hans von Campenhausen. Copyright e Pantheon Books, a Division of Random House, Inc. Used by permission).

Another way of stating this would be to say that we live by clipping coupons. Our fathers and grandfathers amassed the capital. Boasting about how much they had on deposit, we live on the interest without adding to the capital. But when the capital is used up, the coupons are useless. We have to keep adding to the capital.

We have two kinds of possessions — the things we inherit and the things we achieve. A rich inheritance can often make us complacent and prevent us from achieving.

Preserving the treasures of the past is important. But Orthodox Christianity is not just a past greatness. The Church Fathers have established the foundations. It is up to us to keep building on those foundations.

When the 1964 Olympic Games opened in Tokyo, the Olympic flame was brought by plane from Olympia, Greece, the site of the first Olympics in 776 B.C. From the plane the burning torch was carried by relays of runners, who passed the flame from one to the next until it reached the site of the games. It linked the Olympic Games in Tokyo with their source in the past.

As Christians we are all "torch bearers." We have received the light of life from its source in God. The torch was handed to us by a great line of believers stretching back to Christ himself — apostles, martyrs, saints. It is our privilege and duty to pass it on to others.

Einstein said once, "A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead. I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving." Think of those 318 blind, crippled Church Fathers meeting in Nicea in 325 A.D. to pass on to us the lighted torch of Christ. Think of what they suffered to place the torch in our hands today.

Violinist Jascha Heifetz has virtually retired from the concert stage to devote his talents to teaching. Explaining why he did this, he said, "I should like to pass on what I know to my pupils. To be an artist is like being entrusted with something precious for a brief time. It is the duty of an artist to hand it on, like those Greek runners who passed on the lighted torch, one to another."

We are all entrusted for a brief time with something precious — the Lord Jesus Christ "in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge" and, as the Gospel says, "whom to know is life eternal." This is the lighted torch we are to pass on to our children and to our friends who do not know Christ.

St. Symeon the New Theologian regarded as the most dangerous heresy the notion that the Church no longer possesses the same fulness of the charismata as it did in ancient times. The same gifts are assured to those who today, as yesterday, seek them in humility and self-surrender. To have Church Fathers is a permanent dimension of the Church.

We Orthodox have a great past, a great tradition. We are proud of this. But we must not live in the past. Where are our John Chrysostoms today? our Basils? our Gregories? our Athana-siuses? our Johns of Damascus? We have the apostolic doctrine. We have the apostolic succession. But we can have, too, the apostolic power of the Holy Spirit to produce new and powerful witnesses for the Lord today, new Church Fathers — not carbon copies of the old but originals as they were. For God is always more interested in producing originals than carbon copies.

The Orthodox Church is not a museum of the first thousand years of Christianity. We must not succumb to the temptation that the Fathers have said everything and that all we have to do is to repeat them verbatim. Father Florovsky has reminded us that the notion of "father" is not limited to the period called "Patristic." St. Gregory of Palamas, for example, was a "Church Father" in the fourteenth century. To repeat, to have Church Fathers is a permanent dimension of the Church. The Fathers beget us in the faith that we in turn might become fathers, that is, free creators under the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit who empowered and guided the early Fathers.

I should like to close with a challenge addressed recently to Orthodox Christians by Krister Stendahl of Harvard: "The word ‘gifts’ comes easily to my mind when I think about the Greek Orthodox Church. It must be wonderful to be able to call one’s own in a very special manner the Greek Fathers, to participate directly and by oneness of language in the world of the Apostles and the Apostolic Fathers…

"Great gifts, indeed, are yours in the Orthodox Church. So great that they may have overwhelmed you and given you the feeling that you can never hope to emulate that greatness of the greats… . With fear and trembling, I must remind you of the manna in the wilderness. According to the Bible, we know that the manna could not be stored, not even from day to day. Israel had to trust that the gift would be renewed as needed, and those who worked to keep this lavish gift, preserving it for future use, found that it spoiled overnight. That is a word of warning, I think, for anyone who thinks that the gifts of the past, the gift of traditions, can save the Church and feed its people.

"Thus I would love to think that faithfulness to your Orthodox heritage must include a bold recapturing of the fearless and sometimes risky creativity of your great fathers. For their gift was not only their thoughts, but their very style of continuing creative exploration of the faith. I see no valid reason why we should not — by the help of the Spirit — expect your Orthodox theologians to become again the pioneers of theology. To be guardians of the faith is not enough … You can do it, and we others are eager for your gift."

When the Orthodox Church celebrates an event in the life of our Lord, it does not simply commemorate or remember the event. It re-lives it so that we today may experience it for ourselves. It brings the past into the present. In many ways it is like that TV program that was shown a few years ago called "You Are There," which made present again and re-lived before us actual historical events. It made us feel as if we were actually there.

In this, the Orthodox Church is very much like the Jewish synagogue. When our Jewish brethren observe the exodus from Egypt (the Passover) they re-live the event in order to experience it personally. The ancient rabbis taught, "In every generation every man should look upon himself as if he personally had experienced the exodus from Egypt." As one rabbi said, "The Passover says to us, 'Don't just discuss the exodus, feel it! The experience changes your outlook on life...'' Thus the Jews observe the Passover today by eating the same unleavened bread and chewing the same bitter herbs as their fathers in order that they may in some way feel for themselves the bitter plight of their ancestors when they were slaves in Egypt. The past is made to live in the present so that the Jew today may feel as if he himself were brought out of the slavery of Egypt by God.

We Orthodox Christians do the same. We try to re-live the religious event we observe on a particular day. This is why at Christmas we sing, "Today Christ is born in Bethlehem of the Virgin ..."

During Holy Week we sing: "Today there stands before Pilate the Lord of Creation ..."

"Today there hangs on the Cross He who has suspended the earth in the midst of the waters ..."

The Holy Week and Easter services in the Orthodox Church, for example, are designed to help us experience the Passion of Christ personally, to make us feel that it was for us Jesus died on the cross, to lead us out of the slavery of sin and death to a new life.

Christianity is not only about events in the experience of God; it is also about the way we today can participate in these glorious events. f

Let us share a series of examples from Scripture.

St. Paul writes in Colossians 3, "If you then have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God." The amazing aspect of this verse is that St. Paul is telling us that we can be related to Christ in such a way as to have participated with Him in the great victory of His resurrection. He speaks of being raised together with the Lord Jesus Christ. This truth is expressed in the Easter hymn of our Church: "Yesterday, O Christ, I was buried with You; today I rise with You. ..." St. Paul expresses it again in Ephesians 2:4-7, "But God who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive with Christ… . and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus."

In another New Testament book, Galatians, we are told that we participate also in the crucifixion of Christ: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in ;the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." In Colossians 3:3 we read, "For you have died, and your life is hid with God in Christ.''

Our involvement in Christ's crucifixion and resurrection is expressed in the Sacrament of Baptism. The baptismal immersion in water symbolizes death, since a person cannot live long under water. Yet, we are not kept under water. We are raised to signify the resurrection. As St. Paul says, "We were buried therefore with him (Christ) by baptism into death so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life." In the Orthodox Church the Sacrament of Baptism is the personal Good Friday and Easter of each believer. Through this sacrament we die and rise again with Christ.

Thus, through faith, baptism and daily repentance we die to sin and are raised by Christ to a new life where we "seek the things that are above."

When the Bible speaks, of Christ's second coming, it speaks also of our participation in it: "When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory" (Col. 3:4). In I John 3:2 we read, "Beloved, we are God's children now, it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is."

We participate in the Last Supper. As our Lord gathered His disciples together in the Upper Room, so He calls us together in every liturgy and addresses to us the same personal invitation He addressed to them, "Take, eat, this is my Body … Drink ye all of it, this is my blood … He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I in him." Each Holy Communion is a Good Friday, since "every time you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord, until he comes" (I Cor. 11:26).

We participate not only in the crucifixion, the resurrection, the Second Coming, the Last Supper, but also in the Ascension. Christ our Lord ascends so that we may ascend with Him. What is the liturgy, what is prayer, but the constant ascension of man into the presence of God?

Since today we celebrate the great feast of Pentecost we must stress also our participation in this great event. As the Holy Spirit came on this day nearly 2,000 years ago to fill the disciples with God's presence and power, so He will come to each one of us today as we kneel shortly in prayer. He will come to fill us with the same Power, the same fruits of His Presence: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control" (Galatians 5:22). He will come as refreshing water to man's parched soul: "If anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink," said Jesus. "He who believes in me as the scripture has said, 'Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.' Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive" (John 7:37-38).

Come, light unfading; Come, holy Comforter, Come, fill us with God's presence; Come, make our bodies Temples of God; Come, fill us with power to overcome; Come, restore the image of God in us; Come, strengthen our faith; Come, empower us to speak and work for You in the world; Come, forgive our sins; Come, breathe into us the life of God, immortal, everlasting; Come, Holy Spirit, Come!

First man: "How did you make all your money?" Second man: "I formed a partnership with a wealthy man." First Man: "How did you do it?" Second man: "He had the money and I had the experience." First man: "And was it a successful business for you?" Second man: "Immensely so. When we dissolved a year later, I had the money and he had the experience."

Experience is a great teacher.

Mark Twain, in his reporting days, was instructed by an editor never to state anything as a fact that he could not verify from personal knowledge and experience.

Every so often a person says, "I go to church, I pray, I try to give my life to God, but He seems far away, and nothing happens to me."

If one starts questioning these people, one will usually find that they never did have any joyous sense of the presence of God in their lives. They had been in contact with the forms of religion but never the Spirit. It was an inherited religion passed down through their family. There is no life or power in that kind of hand-me-down religion. It is not personal. Each person has to have his or her own experience of God.

"Of the three ways of acquiring knowledge," said Roger Bacon, "authority, reasoning, experience, only the last (experience) is effective."

Walt Whitman was listening one night to an astronomer lecturing on the stars. The hall was stuffy, the lecture dull, and the charts even more dull, until, says Whitman, I could no longer bear it. I rose and wandered out into the night and looked up at the stars themselves. I was overcome with breathless wonder.

There are people today who do the same with their religion. They stay inside poring over the charts and diagrams, memorizing the number of sacraments, concentrating on the mere mechanism of faith. They will not walk outside to see the stars for themselves. They need to proceed from theory to experience, from knowledge about God, which is abstract, to knowledge of God in Christ, which is personal.

For example, every Easter the church is filled to overflowing. If the Easter crowds really believed in the resurrection of Jesus, really believed it, church would not be half-empty on the Sunday following Easter. It would be bursting at the seams. The resurrection is real, but people need to experience it in their own lives. They need to experience the power of Christ to resurrect them from their own dead hopes, dead dreams, dead lives, from the deadness of sin, to a new life, a life of glory and peace and hope and joy in the Lord.

God cannot be fully expressed. In fact, a God fully defined is no God, but He can be experienced. He expressed Himself once in the Person of Jesus. The purpose of that expression was that He might be experienced in the lives of His people as Emmanuel — God with us.

St. Macarius states that Christians do, and even must, experience consciously the presence of the

Spirit in their hearts. His definition of the Christian faith as a personal experience of God was adopted by St. Symeon the New Theologian and other great saints of our Church.

The great appeal of the charismatics today is that they satisfy the need for man to experience God. The appeal to the intellect, though necessary, is not enough. The heart, too, has needs of which the intellect is unaware. God can be known intellectually, but He becomes real when He is experienced personally.

No one can ever prove to you that Christ is the Son of God. You’ve got to find out for yourself. It’s like love — you can only love by experience, not by reading it in a book.

That is why the call of God in the Bible is: "Come and see!" When Andrew found Christ, he said to his brother Simon, "I have found the Messiah, the Christ. I do not ask you to take it on my word. I ask that you come and see for yourself." After the Samaritan woman found Christ at the well, she ran to her people and said, "Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?" That night when they came back, they said to her, "Now we believe, not because you told us: for we have seen and heard Him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world!"

Faith is not something that must be intellectually understood as much as it is something that must be experienced and lived. When asked by a Moslem disciple how he could experience Allah, the Sufi mystic simply slipped off his large cloak and stepped out into the pouring rain. Lying on the grass he opened his mouth and spread his arms. Then, turning to his questioner, he said, "That’s how I experience God."

That is one way of saying that God is not to be found at the end of an argument or syllogism. God is not a concept or an idea to be argued about; He is an old name for a profound experience. "Taste and see that the Lord is good," said the Psalmist.

Faith is an experience of God, a living relationship of love with Him in, with, and through His Son, Jesus. Listen to the Apostle John: "That which ... we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands … (this) we proclaim to you" (I John 1:1-3). Our Orthodox Christian faith is based on the Bible and on Sacred Tradition, but let us not forget that the Bible and Tradition become real when we experience God’s presence, power and love personally in our lives. "We have seen … we have heard ... we have touched." We have experienced.

Being an Orthodox Christian is far more than being able to produce a baptismal certificate; it is a personal experience of the Risen Christ living and reigning in our lives. It is inner peace and freedom, a new sense of direction and purpose in our lives.

We can have experience long before we have explanation. In fact, experience comes before understanding. Without the experience first, we have nothing to reflect on but abstractions and theories. All of man’s attempts to describe beauty are nothing compared to actually seeing and smelling a beautiful rose. As Orthodox Christians we believe in the Holy Trinity, i.e., that God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But first, man experienced God as Father. He experienced God as Son in Jesus. He experienced God as Holy Spirit on Pentecost. After the experience came the explanation that we call Holy Trinity. If we separate the experience from the explanation we are talking of empty abstractions. "One thing I know," said the blind man who had been healed by Jesus, "that whereas I was blind, now I see." The experience changed his life. The experience led to faith — a faith that was unshakable as it was real.

How do we gain this personal experience of God that we have been talking about? How did the apostles gain it? It came to them on the day of Pentecost. Jesus commanded them "not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which he said, you heard from me, for John baptized with water, but before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit… you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth" (Acts 1:4-5, 8).

When the Holy Spirit came on Pentecost, he brought a new and powerful experience of God’s presence and power in their lives. They were never the same again. The experience of God in their lives through the presence of the Holy Spirit was powerful and personal.

"I know him in whom I have believed," said Paul. I know from experience. "I am persuaded that nothing shall separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus." "I know that all things work together for good, to make men Christ-like, when the heart loves God." "I know that if the earthly tent we live in is dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens…" - "I know." Here is a faith that was born not of argument or discussion but in the inner experience of living by faith and prayer, obedience and love in the Holy Spirit.

It is not enough that the Christian believe that Jesus Christ or the Holy Trinity lives in him, said St. Symeon. That presence must be operative in a way that is consciously experienced. We should be aware of that divine life moving and operating in us just as a pregnant woman is aware that new life stirs within her.

What people want to hear is not God’s lawyers presenting logical arguments for His existence but God’s witnesses sharing from personal experience what God has done for them. And this is what the early Christians were: witnesses, martyres. In the words of E. S. Jones: "God? They knew Him! Miracles? They themselves were miracles! Resurrection? They had gone through it! Heaven? They were living in it! Hell? They had escaped it! Reconciliation? They rejoiced in it! Eternal Life? They possessed it!" ("Selections From E. Stanley Jones" by Eunice and James Matthews. Published by Abingdon Press. Used by permission).

Pentecost was the day on which the apostles experienced God’s powerful presence in their lives through the Holy Spirit. Through prayer every day can be Pentecost. For, it is through prayer that the Holy Spirit comes to us today.

Let me conclude with the personal testimony of one man’s experience of God’s presence and power in his life.

"I was taken into a lead-lined room containing the huge ‘Eldorado’ gamma ray machine. A beautiful physiotherapist put me on a table and set things up for my treatment, carefully shielding all of my body except the parts containing the deadly malignant cells doing their devastating work.

"She then left the room, and the enormous door quietly glided into place, leaving me in absolute silence. This can be, and often is, a frightening experience to the patient. A red light glows in the semi-darkness and there is a soft humming sound as the healing gamma rays pass into your body.

"I had thirty-six treatments. Each was a time of great blessing and communion with God. It was a lonely place until I remembered that I was not alone, except that I was alone with God. What an opportunity for cleansing and healing!

"During each treatment I talked with Him, knowing that He was listening. I asked for forgiveness, cleansing and healing. I asked Him to pour into my being His own powerful, loving, healing rays along with the gamma rays from the machine. I thanked Him for the healing that had already begun and asked Him to strengthen my weak faith. I was assured that He was there and listening, and more often than not tears of gratitude ran down my cheeks. Never, before or since, have I felt closer to my Lord Jesus Christ. My prayer always ended, ‘I am willing to accept whatever you have for me.’

"One day (my wife) Lillian was sitting in the waiting room during my treatment. Beside her sat a woman who was waiting to be called in for her first treatment. She was so frightened and upset that in desperation she turned to Lillian and told her all about it. Lillian simply told her what I did when I went in: ‘Take God in with you,’ she said, ‘and you will not be alone.’

"When the woman came out, she was radiant. ‘It was the most wonderful time of communion and renewal — and I had no fear whatever!’ She had had a new experience of the presence of God" (From "Today Is All You Have" by Overton Stephens. Copyright « 1971 by Zondervan Publishing House. Used by permission).

(Matthew 10:33, 37-38, 19:27-30).

A railroad worker said once, "I never work on Sundays except for the Lord." "What's the pay?" he was asked. He replied, "Well, the pay isn't so hot, but you can't beat the retirement plan."

In today's Gospel lesson Jesus speaks as it were of His retirement plan; He speaks of rewards. Peter asks Him, "We have left everything and followed you. What, then, shall we have?" Jesus replies, "Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man shall sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones … And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters... or lands, for my name's sake will receive a hundred fold, and inherit eternal life."

When we read these words, some wonder whether Jesus is trying to bribe us into the kingdom of heaven with the promise of thrones. Far from it! Jesus pointed out often that to be a Christian is costly. He promised His followers persecution and a cross. He Himself said in today's Gospel lesson, "He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me." Jesus never tried to bribe people into following Him; He tried to challenge them. He never promised that there would be a kind of squaring up of the balance sheet in this world. He did let us know that in this world it would seem as if goodness did not pay and virtue did not have its reward. But God has not only this world in which to repay. He has all eternity. After all, if our deeds always received their immediate reward in this world, then virtue would become a racket.

Still there are those who feel that the reward motive should have no place whatsoever in the Christian life. As Dr. Steimle says, "They are embarrassed by the continual emphasis on reward in the Bible: eternal life, abundant life, treasure in heaven, sitting on thrones, pie in the sky." These people feel that we must be good merely for the sake of being good, that virtue is its own reward, that the whole idea of reward should be eliminated from the Christian life. Someone said once that he would wish to quench all the fires of hell with water, and to burn up all the joys of heaven with fire, in order that men might seek goodness not for any reward but for its own sake. We cannot but agree. Yet Jesus speaks of reward repeatedly.

He speaks of it in today's Gospel lesson. "Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters… for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life." Elsewhere He tells us that the right kind of charity, the right kind of prayer, the right kind of fasting will have their reward. In the Beatitudes, He says, "When men … persecute you ... on my account, rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven." In Luke 14:12-14 He says, "When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends ... or cousins or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.''

If He doesn't wish to bribe us, then why does Jesus talk about rewards? Simply to assure us that life is not meaningless, that we reap what we sow, that this is not a crazy, insane universe, that there is a God who rules over it, who sees to it that the faithful as well as the unfaithful have their reward.

Let us remind ourselves at this point that all that God gives us is GRACE. We cannot earn what God gives us; we cannot deserve it; we cannot put God in our debt. What He gives us is given out of the goodness of His heart. What He gives us is not pay but a gift, not a reward but grace. This is why what God gives us is so way out of proportion to what we can ever do: ' "Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it ever entered into a man's heart what things God has prepared for those who love him."

There are three types of Christians. One type is the Christian who does the will of God because he is afraid of going to hell. We call this person a slave because he does everything out of fear of what the Master will do to him.

The second kind of Christian is called the hireling. He works for hire as workers who work for pay. If he does any good, he does it only because he expects God to reward him. He wants to be paid for all he does. This is the person who tries to bargain with God: "I'll do this for You, Lord, if you'll do this for me/' Jesus spoke of the hireling when He said of those who do good that they may receive glory from men, "Verily, I say unto you, they have received their reward."

The third and highest kind of Christian is he who loves his fellow man spontaneously without ever thinking of hell or getting a reward for anything. As we read in "The Way of a Pilgrim," "God wills us to come to Him neither as slaves or mercenaries but in the manner of sons and daughters who lead honorable lives for the love of Him and from the eagerness to serve Him."

One morning a little boy put a piece of paper beside his mother's plate. On it he had written: "Mother owes John:

His mother smiled but said nothing. At lunchtime she placed the bill with .55$ on it by her son's plate. But there was another little bill that read: "John owes mother:

Tears came to his eyes. He threw his arms around his mother's neck and returning the .55$ said, "Take the money back, Mom, and let me love you and do things for nothing."

How inspiring are examples of Christians who worked for God not as slaves or mercenaries but spontaneously out of love for Him. A. J. Cronin tells of a nurse who for twenty years, single-handedly served a ten-mile area in England. "I marveled," he says, "at her patience, her fortitude and her cheerfulness. She was never too tired at night to rise for an urgent call. Her salary was most inadequate, and late one night, after a particularly strenuous day, I ventured to protest to her, 'Nurse, why don't you make them pay you more? God knows you are worth it,' 'If God knows I'm worth it,' she answered, 'that's all that matters to me.' " She was working not as a slave or a mercenary but out of pure love for God.

A church volunteer worker was making the rounds in a hospital, bringing cheer to patients and helping them in many little ways. A patient noticed by her tag that she was affiliated with a certain church. He asked, "Are you hired by the Church to do this work?" "Oh no," she replied quickly. "We are volunteers." Before she had a chance to explain further, the patient asked, "Why?" She replied, "I love the Lord, and this is one way I can express it, by helping others."

The patient found this hard to believe. "You mean you don't get paid? You do this for nothing?"

"We do it for something," she smiled — "for the hope that we can bring comfort to you who are sick and share with you our Savior's love and strength."

The man was quiet for a few moments, then replied, "If the church really cares that much about us sick folks, maybe there is still hope for this old world of ours."

A missionary doctor in Korea who had just performed major surgery on a poor peasant woman was asked, "Doctor, how much would you be paid for an operation like this back in America?" He replied, "About five hundred dollars." "How much will you be paid for it here?" Looking at the poor Korean woman who had begged him to save her life, he replied, "For this I will get her gratitude and my Master's smile. But that is worth more to me than all the money that the world can give."

The strange thing about the attitude of Jesus toward reward is that He promises it to those who are obedient without thought of reward. In the parable of the Last Judgment when Jesus says to the righteous, "Come, O Blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you ..." they are caught by complete surprise. They ask, Why, Why, Lord? What did we do to deserve this? And Jesus had to tell them: "I was sick and you visited me. ..."

The world has its own rewards: money, recognition, honor, but none of these can ever compare to the reward God has in store for those who serve Him every day in so many little ways not as slaves or mercenaries but of a spontaneous and grateful love for what He did for us on the Cross: "Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters… .or lands, for my name's sake will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life."

A prayer by Ignatius of Loyola sums up well what we have said: Teach me, Good Lord, to serve Thee as Thou deservest; to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labor and not to ask for any reward save that of knowing that I do Thy will, through Jesus Christ, the Lord. Amen.

(Matthew 6:22-23).

One summer a tailor toured Europe. Somehow he arranged for a meeting with the Pope. When he returned to work, his friend eagerly asked, "Tell me, Art, what kind of man is the Pope?" Art pondered a moment, then answered, "He's a 39 short."

It is a truism that we see as we are. The painter sees the world in color, the sculptor in form; the musician perceives the world in sounds, and the economist in commodities. Show two people the very same picture, and each will see something different in it. Two men look out through the same bars: one sees the mud, the other sees the stars.

We tend to see and hear things not as they are, but as we are. He who is filled with hate sees only hateful people. If we feel insecure inside, other people will seem to threaten us. We are constantly judging others by ourselves. The thief is far more suspicious of his fellow men than is the honest man.

There is a story about a king in an ancient kingdom who chose a good man and a bad man from among his people. To the good man he said, "Go out into the kingdom and find an evil man." The good man searched and searched, but he could find no evil man. To the bad man the king said, "Go out into the kingdom and find a good man." The bad man, too, searched and searched, but he could find no good man. We see as we are.

We see only the things in which we are really interested. Some young men reported after they had just come home from the First World War that Paris was a terrible city of dirt and filth and nothing but brothels. Others reported it was a beautiful city of cathedrals and lovely parks. We see as we are.

We see only what we have prepared ourselves to see. Why was it that only the Wise Men saw the star? Because only they were looking for the star. Why was it that only Simeon and Anna recognized Jesus as the Savior of the world when Mary brought Him to the Temple on the fortieth day? Because only they were expectantly looking for Him. An astronomer will see far more in the sky than an ordinary man. An artist will see far more in a picture than one who is not an artist. It is said that a member of his congregation greeted the famous preacher Henry Ward Beecher at the church door after a worship service and said, "Dr. Beecher, you may be interested to know that I counted a dozen grammatical errors in your sermon this morning." Another worshipper that same morning said to him, "Today I found God." Both men had listened to the same sermon. Both had found what they were prepared to find. We see as we are.

On a tour of the Swiss Alps, a tour guide was pointing out the spectacular beauty of the snow-crested peaks, the bubbling mountain streams, the mirror-like lakes and the majestic skyline. One unappreciative heckler kept saying, "What is so wonderful about that?" The tour guide quickly replied, "Man, if you haven't got it on the inside, you'll not see it on the outside."

What is inside is all-important. If we do not have God on the inside, we shall never see Him on the outside. If we have Him inside, we cannot help but see Him everywhere: in every bird, in every sunset, in every tree, in every fellow human who hungers or thirsts.

Jesus once said, "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness" (Matthew 6:22-23). The eye is the window of the whole body. By "eye," Jesus means the soul of man. If the soul is unclean; if it is obscured by prejudice, hatred, lust, self-conceit; if it is obsessed by envy and jealousy, it will distort our entire vision. We shall see people and things not as they are, but as distortions of our hatred or envy. "Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to those who have barbarian souls," said Heraclitus twenty-five centuries ago.

Pointing at a neighbor's wash in the back yard, a housewife said, "Just look at those clothes on the line — so gray and streaked!" A friend replied, "It looks to me as if the clothes are very clean. It is your windows that are dirty."

If life looks cloudy, maybe it's our windows that need cleaning. Jesus is always calling on us to keep the windows of the soul clean through daily self-examination, repentance, and confession. If we don't, we shall be constantly seeing others not as they are but as we are — hateful, envious, conceited, selfish. "Better keep yourself clean and bright," said George Bernard Shaw, "you are the window through which you must see the world." And Jesus said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

Lord Jesus, You came to make all things new. Cleanse us. Make us new inside that we may see life as You want us to see it, clearly, and with Your perspective. Amen.

Do you Believe that I am Able to do This?" (Matthew 9:28).

Two blind men cried out to Jesus, "Have mercy on us, Son of David." Jesus asked them, "Do you believe that I am able to do this?" They replied, "Yes, Lord." Then He touched their eyes, healing them of their blindness.

"Do you believe that I am able to do this?"

Is He able? He who said, "All power in heaven and on earth is given unto me?" Is He able? He who said, "Do you not know that I have power to summon twelve legions of angels …?" Is He able? He who proclaimed, "I am the resurrection and the life, he who believes in me though he were dead, yet shall he live?" Is He able? He who created the universe out of nothing; He who placed power in the atom; He who healed the sick and raised the dead? Is He able? He who said to Job, "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" Is He able?

People are trying to save themselves these days by all kinds of power: white power, black power, water power, air power, flower power, and political power. All the powers have failed, and only one remains: God’s power. "Christ," said St. Paul, " … the power of God and the wisdom of God."

To know God in Christ is not an intellectual discovery. It is that, but it is far more. It is an experience of power, not something that we achieve, but something God puts into us. Ask the twelve fishermen how they were able to shake themselves free of their weaknesses and go out to change the world; and they would answer, "It was not we, it was nothing at all in us — it was Christ!" "Do you believe that I am able… .?" Yes, Lord!

Ask the reformed alcoholic or drug addict how he was able to free himself from his terrible addiction, and he will say, "It was not I, but Christ in me! Without His power I would still be enslaved." "Do you believe I am able...?" Yes, Lord!

When I bungle things and make a sorry failure of my life, Christ does not come to me and say, "You must try again! You must try harder than you ever tried before." There is no gospel in that; it would only drive me to despair. Instead He comes to me, and says, "Get closer to God, and He will do it for you! Come closer to Me, and my strength shall be yours." "Do you believe that I am able …?" Yes, Lord!

A father lost his only son in a tragic accident. His whole world collapsed. He said later, "Three ways were open to me: despair, drink, or Christ. I chose Christ, and that’s where the power came from." Do you believe that I am able …?" Yes, Lord!

Gert Behanna of "The Late Liz" had gone through the hell of alcoholism. Several times she had tried suicide. Finally, she was referred to a psychiatrist. As she stumbled from his office, she found herself pronouncing a word she had never said before except in profanity. "I don’t need a psychiatrist. What I need is God." That evening she fell to the floor by her bed and prayed, "Oh, God, if you are anywhere about, I hope you’ll help me, for I sure need it." "In twenty minutes," she said, "it was all over." Christ’s power came into her life and she has been a new person ever since. "Do you believe that I am able…?" Yes, Lord!

Listen to the testimony of another Christian, "I always knew that Jesus was necessary, but I never knew till now that He was enough." He is enough. He alone is able!

Christ’s power is available to those who believe in Him, who surrender their broken, empty lives to the fullness of His grace. Christ did not say to His apostles, "Go into all the world and good luck." He said, "Go … and be sure of this — / will be with you always, even to the end of the world. I will never, never fail you nor forsake you." It is in this personal, vital relationship to the living Christ that we find power to overcome. The trouble with many of us is that we do not expect or anticipate the power that comes from Christ. We do not really believe in it, so we do not receive it. We look to other powers that invariably fail us.

The blind men came to Jesus with their blindness. He touched them. They were healed. We, too, may come to Him today with our weaknesses, our sins, our problems, our own blindness. Like them we may say, "Have mercy on us, Son of David." He will ask, "Do you believe that I am able to do this?" If our answer be, "Yes, Lord," He will fill us with an inner power that will be beyond what we ever imagined. "Never was anything like this seen in Israel." And never will anything like this be experienced in our life once we receive the infilling of His presence and power.

We are told that we face impending power shortages today. Power blackouts and brownouts are certain to increase. But for those who truly believe in Jesus and yield their life to Him and His Holy Spirit, there will never be any power blackouts or brownouts. The power behind us will always be greater than the task ahead of us.

Listen to the personal experience of St. Paul, "My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 4:19).

"Do you believe that I am able to do this?" Yes, Lord!

"Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen" (Eph. 3:20-21).

God Can Use You (Matthew 14:14-22).

According to a certain legend, when God was creating the world, four angels came to Him, each with a question. The first one asked the scientist’s question, "How are You creating the world?" The second asked the philosopher’s question, "Why are You creating the world?" The third one asked the question of all self-seeking persons, "May I have it when you finish?" The fourth and last angel asked the Christian’s question, "May I help?"

This is the question Jesus loves most as we see in today’s Gospel lesson. Faced with a crowd of hungry people, the disciples were ready to send them back to the villages to buy food for themselves. Jesus said, "They need not go away; you give them something to eat." Whereupon the disciples replied, "We have only five loaves here and two fish." Jesus replied, "Bring them here to me." Then, blessing the little batch of food, He was able to feed all five thousand. St. Matthew is careful to tell us that there were even twelve baskets full of leftovers.

How often we hear the complaint, "Why doesn’t God do something?" Why doesn’t He feed the hungry? etc." We seem to forget that God has chosen to "do something" through us, His instruments, the members of His Body. He has chosen to do His work in the world today through us who are His people, His Church. "They need not go away; you give them something to eat." We must take whatever we have — our five loaves and two fish — and bring them to Jesus. He will bless what we bring and use it to help our fellow humans,

"You did not choose me," said Jesus to His disciples, "But I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide..." (John 15:16). Jesus is telling us, "I have a task for you to perform that no one else but you can do. That task may be to speak a word of comfort or encouragement; it may be to guide the footsteps of a child growing to maturity. Just as the Father chose me to do His work, I have chosen you to carry it further, making each one of you an extension of Me in the world."

John Henry Newman was so fully conscious of having been chosen by God to serve Him that he wrote,

He does nothing in vain.

He knows what He is about.

We do not have to possess great talents to serve Him. We serve Him with what we have. "There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?" asks Simon Peter (John 6:9). But Jesus says, "Bring them here to me/’ A miracle happened that day because a boy offered to Jesus the one thing he had. What a Church we could have if people offered to God what they had. If we have a voice, to use it in the church choir. If we can teach a little, to do so in Sunday school. If we have a skill or craft, to use it on our church buildings. If we have a home, to open it to lonely people. If we have a car, to give an older person a ride to Church.

Albert Schweitzer said,

"Open your eyes and look for some man, or some work for the sake of men, which needs a little time, a little friendship, a little sympathy, a little sociability, a little human toil. Perhaps it is a lonely person or an invalid ... to whom you can be something … search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity ... do not be satisfied without some side line in which you may give yourself out as a man to men. There is one waiting for you if only you are willing to take it up in the right spirit."

"But I am only one person. What can one person do?" If you allow this argument to keep you from giving yourself, remember that among the five thousand people who were in the crowd, it was only one person, a young lad, who brought to Jesus the elements with which He performed a miracle, the five loaves and the two fish.

I am only one person! But so was Columbus! So was Alexander the Great! So was Paul! So was the one lad in the great crowd! So was Jesus! It was one man who founded the Red Cross; one man who devised the Braille system.

I am only one — but I am one,

I cannot do everything, but

I can do something.

What I can do — I ought to do,

What I ought to do — by the

Grace of God — I will do.

One of the books by Agatha Christie begins with the story of a man who tried to commit suicide by throwing himself down a cliff. He escaped death by falling on a jutting tree. At the hospital he told his nurse that he did not wish to live anymore, since no one needed him. After some thought, the nurse said, "Maybe God has need of you!"

The glorious news is that God does have need of us. He who needs no one, has in His condescension stooped to work in and through His obedient children. "Without God, we cannot. Without us, God will not." "Pray as if everything depends on God. Work as if everything depends on you." You are important to God. No matter how insignificant your life may seem, it is distinctly unique in this world. God works through every human being to fulfill His plan for the world. Unless you fulfill this God-given mission, something in this universe will remain forever incomplete. This is how important each one of us is in the eyes of God.

How can God use us? There is only one way. We must make ourselves utterly available to God and to our neighbors. God does not ask you about your ability — only your availability. He provides the ability. The supreme question is: are we available to Him? Moses made himself available and God provided the ability for him to do great works in His name. So did the humble fishermen and countless others.

A very ordinary man named Aeschines once came to Socrates. "I am a poor man," said Aeschines. "I have nothing else but I give you myself." "Do you not see," said Socrates, "that you are giving me the most precious thing of all?" Jesus can work wonders with people who will give Him themselves.

Asked about the tremendous power which enabled him to do so much for Christ, a great preacher replied, "God has had all there is of me." Is there anything higher or more noble in life than for us to dedicate ourselves in complete self-surrender to the Lord Jesus and let Him use us?

There is a fable of three trees that grew in the days of Christ. One said, "When I grow to be a big tree I will be cut down and made into lumber. That lumber will be used to build a big hotel where kings will lodge." The second tree said, "When I grow up I want to be cut down and made into lumber to build a big ship that will cross the ocean." The third tree said, "When I grow up I want to remain in the forest and point men to God."

None of the three trees got its wish. The first tree grew up and was cut down, but the lumber was used to build a little manger. The tree complained and complained, until one night the Son of God and the Son of Man was born there. Then it was at peace.

The second tree was cut down and made into lumber to build a boat to sail on the Sea of Galilee. It complained and complained, until one day the Son of God and the Son of Man stood on its deck and spoke wonderful words of life. Then it was at peace.

The third tree was cut down and made into a cross. The tree complained and complained, until one day the Son of God and the Son of Man died upon that cross. Then it, too, was at peace.

Whatever our lot in life, God can use us! Let us be willing to let Him use us according to His will.

Following are a few examples of how God has used others when they offered themselves to Him.

When General Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, was told that he had lost his sight and would never be able to see again, he said, "I have done what I could for God and for the people with my eyes. Now I shall do what I can for God and the people without my eyes."

An older woman walked up to the pastor following a worship service, and said, "I retired a few years ago, and there were so many things I wanted to do in the church. I had dreamed of giving all my time to God and His Church. Shortly after my retirement, I was stricken with arthritis. I can’t do the things I dreamed about, and there are times I can’t even attend Church." Then with tears in her eyes, she said, "But I can do something: I can pray."

A blue-smocked lady walks the corridors of a hospital, helping patients. One of them sees her pin and asks her if she is with a church. "Yes," she replies. "Are you hired by them to do this work?" "No," she replies. "We are volunteers." "Why?" he asks. "I love the Lord, and this is one way I can express it, by helping others." He seems to find it hard to believe. "Don’t you get paid? You mean you do this for nothing?" "We do it for something," she smiles — "for the hope that we can bring comfort to you who are sick and share with you our Savior’s love and strength."

A friend had prevailed upon a businessman to take Jimmy, a victim of cerebral palsy, to his special school one day. The man reproached himself, because he had allowed his busy day to be interrupted with a job that could be done by just "anybody."

As soon as they started, Jimmy asked: "Are you God?" "No, I’m not God," came the reply. "Do you work for God?" "No, I don’t work for God, but why do you ask these questions?" asked the businessman. "When I asked my mother who was going to take me to school," Jimmy explained, "she said she didn’t know, but God would take care of it."

After a period of thoughtful reflection, the man said, "Sonny, I’ve never really thought much about working for God before. From now on you can be sure that I will work for Him in every way I can."

Merciful Heavenly Father,

When there is a need for teaching,

When there is need for a message,

When there is a need for love,

When there is a need for music,

When there is a need for understanding,

When there is need for counseling,

When a gift is needed,

Whenever prayer is needed,

When a helping hand is needed,

Looking To Jesus (Matthew 14:22-34).

A large passenger ship was crossing the Atlantic. The ocean which had been so blue and peaceful early in the afternoon suddenly became a black and angry sea, dashed with foam and white caps. The terrible storm sent most of the passengers to their staterooms. Some of the less fearful gathered in small groups along the deck to watch what was going on. As one of the officers of the ship passed by, a passenger asked him, "Do you think we are going to have a bad night?"

"Yes, I think it will be quite stormy/’ he replied. Then he added reassuringly, "But there is nothing to worry about. We have a fine ship and plenty of sea room."

Just then a vivid flash lightened the sky. The same nervous passenger exclaimed, "Look at the storm!"

"No," the officer countered, "Don’t look at the storm, look at the ship!" Then very calmly he proceeded to tell about the construction of the boat and how it would be able to ride out any storm. Though he didn’t minimize the difficulty at hand, he had firm faith in his vessel. He was confident that it was sufficient to withstand any storm.

We, too, must face storms of life. God never promised if we would follow Him, we would escape the storms of life. He did not exempt even His own Son from the cross. What God does promise us, however, is strength to face adversity. No matter how heavy our cross, His grace will always be adequate.

The secret of weathering the storms of life successfully is to look at the ship instead of the storm. Instead of looking at our troubles and being overcome by fear, we choose to look to Jesus and place our faith in Him who can calm even the stormiest sea.

We find an excellent example of this truth in today’s Gospel lesson.

When Peter saw Jesus walking on the water, he said, "Lord, if it is you, bid me come to you on the water." Jesus asked him to come. "So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus; but when he saw the wind he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, ‘Lord, save me/ ‘

Peter’s difficulty was that he took his eyes off Christ. He looked at the waves, the water, the wind; he looked at this own fearful heart instead of keeping his eyes fastened on Christ who was beckoning to him. He became so preoccupied with the problem (the wind) that he forgot the solution (Christ).

It has been said that man has three eyes — the eye of sense, the eye of reason and the eye of faith. The eye of sense he has in common with all the animals; the eye of reason in common with all men; the eye of faith in common with all of those who commit their life to God. Each eye is higher than the other. By the eye of faith we "see" God and life comes into true focus.

It is important that we look at the right things in life. Whether we look at the storm or at the ship; whether we look at the waves or at Christ has much to do with our survival.

One day a person riding a bicycle saw a stone lying on the road. He wanted to avoid hitting it so he kept his eye fastened on it. The result was that he went right over it. The jolt nearly knocked him off the bike. He realized later that he had kept his eye on the wrong place. He should have kept it on the path where he wanted to go; not on the rock where he did not want to go. For we are drawn to that on which we fix our gaze. When the author of Hebrews urges us to look to Jesus (Hebrews 12:2) he uses the Greek word "aforontes" which means to fix one’s gaze upon Christ by turning one’s eyes away from everything else.

The best way to overcome sin is to remove our eyes from that which tempts us and fasten them on Christ through prayer. "Looking to Jesus" (Heb. 12:2).

We try not concentrate our attention on the obstacles we meet in life. The more we look at the obstacles, the more they confuse and overwhelm us. It was when Peter turned and looked at the wind and waves that he began to sink. As long as he kept his eyes fastened on Christ he walked on the waters as on a rock. The more difficult our task, the more terrifying our temptation, the more essential it is that we look to Jesus.

Five boys, playing out in the country one winter day, decided to see who could make the straightest set of tracks in the snow. They were very careful to put one foot directly in front of the other, but when they had crossed the clearing and looked back, they saw that one track was curved, one was crooked, and two were zigzag. Only one boy had a straight track. When they asked him how he did it, he replied that he had not looked at his feet; he had picked out a tree in the distance across the clearing and had walked straight toward that tree.

If we are to leave a straight track in our daily walk for others to follow, we must have our minds centered not on ourselves but on Christ. We are to "run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus …" (Hebrews 12:2). Just as sailors steer the course to their destination by the stars, so we Christians steer the course to our destination by the Lord Jesus.

When we are troubled, there is no good in keeping our mind pounding on the problem. Nothing comes of that but more darkness. The more you keep your mind on your own weakness, the weaker you become. You’ve got to lift your eye of faith to where strength is. You’ve got to fix your thought on Jesus as Peter did when he felt his feet slipping into the sea. As someone said, "When we look within ourselves we see our weaknesses and get discouraged; when we look around us we see the confusion and get distracted; when we look above us and see Christ we get empowered."

A person said once that he had hit bottom, and couldn’t handle his life any more. Upon hearing this, a friend congratulated him. "That’s odd," said the troubled person. "You congratulate me because I have hit bottom?" "That’s right," replied the friend. "Because when you hit the bottom, you can’t go down any further. The only direction you can go from now on is up. So thank God that you have hit bottom and are not going to go any further down. Look up to Jesus in faith. Put your life in His hands and let Him pull you up from the bottom and place you where you belong — on top of life." No matter how low you may have fallen, look to Jesus and be lifted up!

A diamond assessor has a difficult job. He has to examine hundreds of diamonds each day and place each one in a tray marked according to its own particular value. He was asked how he could look at all those diamonds each day and not be confused, not lose his sense of values. He replied that every half hour he would lift up his eyes and look at a perfect diamond which he kept before him. The look at that flawless diamond would restore his sense of values! Jesus is God’s perfect Son. By looking constantly at Him and measuring all things in the light of His perfection, we keep a sense of what is really important in life and what is not. Look to Jesus and let Him sharpen your vision of life’s true values.

A missionary who had to bury his young wife with his own hands after only a few months on a South Pacific island, said, "I should have gone mad and died beside that lonely grave if it had not been for Christ and the comfort He gave me." Look to Jesus in your sorrow and He will give you the "peace that passes all understanding." He alone has words of eternal life. Look to Him in your confusion to find the way, in your weakness to find strength, in your sin to find forgiveness.

Let us return for a moment to the Gospel lesson. When Jesus saw Peter sinking, he "immediately" reached out his hand and caught him. He did not let Peter go down twice, catching him the third time in order to teach him a lesson. He did not let him thrash about wildly in the waves. He immediately stretched out his hand and caught him. Jesus was where He was needed. He always is and will be even till the end of time. He is our ever-present help. So as we run the race of life we shall ever look to Him in faith.

In the words of Annie Johnson Flint:

"I don’t look back; God knows the fruitless efforts, the wasted hours, the sinning, the regrets; I leave them all with Him who blots the record, and mercifully forgives and then forgets.

"I don’t look forward; God sees all the future, the road that, long or short will lead me home, and He will face with me its every trial and bear for me the burdens that may come.

"I don’t look round me\ then fear assails me, so wild the tumult of earth’s restless seas; so dark the world, so filled with woe and evil, so vain the hope of comfort or of ease.

"I don’t look in; for then I am most wretched; myself has naught on which to stay my trust, nothing I see save failures and shortcomings, and weak endeavors crumbling in the dust.

"But I look up — into the face of Jesus, for there my heart can rest, my fears are stilled; and there is joy, and love, and light for darkness, and perfect peace, and every hope fulfilled."

Moving Mountains (Matthew 17:14-23).

When the disciples asked Jesus why they were unable to heal the epileptic boy, He replied, "Because of your little faith. For truly I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there/ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you."

A Sunday school student said once, "The Bible says we can move mountains with faith. Well, how come we don’t move mountains with faith? How come we use bulldozers?"

The problem here is the meaning of the word "mountain." It is obvious that its meaning is symbolic. It stands for all the troubles and difficulties that block our path like a veritable mountain and make life impossible for us. Real mountains do not stand in our way any more. We have invented giant earthmoving machines to flatten them. Recently we read of the completion of a tunnel through one of the highest mountains in the Alps. Earthly mountains no longer stand in the way of man. Neither should other kinds of mountains. Jesus tells us that real, honest, sincere faith in Him generates power great enough to move mountains.

Man was created by God to be bigger than any mountain, even though he stands only six feet tall. He has a head on his shoulders with a brain, and this is what places him above all other creatures. If he cannot climb the mountain or tunnel through it or walk around it, he builds a plane and flies over it at thirty thousand feet. Today, no physical mountain can stand in man’s way.

Neither should any other kind of mountain. This is what the Lord Jesus is telling us in today’s Gospel. There is no mountain of difficulties that a man who believes and prays cannot surmount.

St. Paul, for example, had a mountain in his life. He tells us about it in his second letter to the Corinthians: "And lest I should be exalted above measure … there was given me a thorn in the flesh … For this thing I besought the Lord three times, that it might depart from me." The Lord gave Paul power to overcome this mountain. He was not defeated by it. The "thorn in the flesh," obviously some kind of physical illness, did not put Paul in bed as an invalid, but drove him to greater dependence on Christ and greater power.

Jesus faced such a mountain in his life. In the 26th chapter of Matthew we read of the experience He had in Gethsemane. "Then said Jesus to the disciples, ‘My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here and watch with me.’ And going a little farther he fell on His face and prayed, ‘My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me… . ‘ ‘ How painful was this mountain of suffering that Jesus faced! Yet He was not defeated by it. He overcame it. He changed the cross into a marvelous resurrection experience for Himself as well as for those who believe in Him.

There are others. Helen Keller was blind and deaf, but she was not defeated by her great mountain. She once wrote, "I thank God for my handicaps, for through them I have found myself, my work, and my God."

A famous auto racer who had won the Indianapolis 500 and many other races turned to the old tranquilizer, alcohol, to escape from the tensions of his profession. He became an alcoholic. His career was on the verge of being ruined. But he turned to Christ for help, and through Christ’s power he was able to move the great mountain of alcoholism from his life. Later, when a reporter asked him if winning the Indianapolis 500 was the greatest victory of his life, he said it wasn’t. The thing that meant more to him than winning the 500 was to know that through the power of Christ he had conquered himself.

There is no mountain in life that is bigger than Christ. He is bigger than any temptation; bigger than any sin, any failure; bigger than any difficulty, any problem. When we place our life in His hands, He gives us the power to become bigger than we ever dreamed we could be, bigger than our illness, bigger than our weakness, bigger than our hatred, bigger than our prejudices, bigger than our defeats.

"Jesus answered and said unto them, "If you have faith … you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible to you."

Lord, give us this faith that moves mountains. You alone know the difficulties, the pains, the problems that loom before each one of us as impenetrable mountains. Lord, we believe, help our unbelief, strengthen our faith. Amen.

The Miracle of Forgiveness (Matthew 18:23-35).

A boy once went out of his home to do something his parents felt was wrong. He was involved in an accident and lost both his legs. When his parents saw him he said to them, "Will you forgive me?" Running up to him they both hugged him and said, "Of course, we have already forgiven you." And he answered, "Then I can live without my legs."

Few people can live without forgiveness. Our Lord spoke often of forgiveness. Once He told a parable on why we should forgive. Called the parable of the unmerciful servant, it is a commentary on two things Jesus said, "Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy" (Matthew 5:7) and "Forgive us our debts as we have also forgiven our debtors" (Matthew 6:12).

The unmerciful servant, Jesus said, was forgiven a debt of 10,000 talents by his master. Immediately afterward he went out and choked a fellow servant who owed him only a few pennies.

The debt which the master forgave the servant was 1,250,000 times greater than the debt owed by the fellow servant. The contrast between the debts is staggering. And the point Jesus is making is that nothing people can do to us can in any way compare to what we have done to God. It was our sin that brought about the death of His Son. If God has forgiven us that great debt, which is beyond all paying, then we must forgive the lesser offenses of our fellow humans or we can never hope to find mercy. "So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart," said Jesus.

This is what has been called THEREFORE ethics. Because the Lord has forgiven us the tremendous debt of sin, which we could never repay or cancel out by ourselves, therefore we are obligated to forgive all those who have hurt us.

What if God forgave us the way we at times forgive? We say, for example, "Well, I’ll forgive, but I won’t forget." What if God said that to us? We say, "I’ll forgive, but I’ll have nothing more to do with you." What if God said that to us? We say, "Very well, I’ll overlook it this time, but if this happens once more — just once more-it’s the end." What if God said that to us? Fortunately for us He does not.

Of course, someone will always object, "How can you expect me to forgive so-and-so after all he’s done to me?" If we could only say these words and look at Christ, I’m sure we would hear Him say, "Yes, but what about your evil thoughts? What about your doubts? What about the task you failed to do? What about the lie you told? What about the hurt you inflicted with your sharp tongue? What about your hatred? Have I not forgiven you your great debt? Then why should you not forgive the debts of your fellow men and women?"

A preacher once said to Governor Oglethorpe of Georgia, "You had better forgive that man who did you wrong. Don’t hold a grudge." To which Governor Oglethorpe replied, "Sir, I never forgive." The answer he received is valid for us: "Sir, then I hope you never need to be forgiven." Lord Herbert said, "He who will not forgive another has broken the bridge over which he himself must pass."

The main reason most of us do not forgive is that we do not want to. Refusal to forgive makes us feel morally superior to the other person. Yet the bitterness and the hostility inside spreads like a fast growing cancer. It makes us sour and irritable. We develop a martyr-complex. We begin to pity ourselves. Before long we even begin to enjoy our misery. Few people are more miserable than those who refuse to forgive.

Jesus tells us that another reason we refuse to forgive is that we do not see ourselves as guilty before God. The man who has accepted God’s forgiveness as his only hope of heaven is one who cannot refuse to forgive another.

There is no better way to get rid of enemies than through forgiveness. An old fellow interviewed on the radio said, "I’ll be ninety years old tomorrow and I haven’t an enemy in the world." The announcer said, "That’s a happy thought." "Yep," he said, "I’ve outlived them all." That’s a good trick if you can do it. Another person, a Spanish patriot, lay dying. His priest asked him if he had forgiven all his enemies. "Father," he smiled, "I have no enemies. I shot them all." There’s a terrible penalty to pay for destroying one’s enemies that way. But when Abraham Lincoln was asked one day about his enemies, he said, "Madam, I have no enemies. I have destroyed them all by making them my friends through forgiveness!" There is no doubt that this is by far the best way to destroy one’s enemies.

One of the fringe benefits of forgiveness is emotional and physical well-being. A sick person who was suddenly healed of anemia was asked by his doctor if anything out of the ordinary had happened in his life lately. "Yes," said the healed person. "I have suddenly been able to forgive someone against whom I had a terrible grudge; all at once I felt I could, at last, say yes to life."

Forgiveness works real miracles in the lives of those who give it as well as those who receive it. A nurse pleaded to be forgiven for a mistake that resulted in the death of a patient. Forgiven, given a second chance which she desperately needed in order to prove herself, she went on to become the head of a large hospital, one of the most honored nurses of her country.

A Korean student studying in Philadelphia was brutally and senselessly killed by a group of delinquents. The boy’s parents, devout Christians, sent a letter saying, "We are sad, now, not only because of our son’s unachieved future, but also because of the unsaved souls and paralyzed human nature of the murderers. We thank God that He has given us a plan whereby our sorrow is being turned into Christian purpose … Our family has met together and decided to petition that the most generous treatment possible within the laws of your government be given the criminals." They sent $500.00 (five times the per capita yearly income of Koreans). "We are daring to hope that we can do something to minimize such criminal actions which are to be found, not only in your country, but in Korea, and, we are sure, everywhere in the world."

This letter from Korea deeply stirred the conscience of the Philadelphians to new concerns for the problems of their city. One church raised $1.6 million for social work. The city raised a scholarship fund to bring other Korean students to the United States for study. It was a miracle of awakening and concern brought about by the Christian forgiveness of the slain boy’s parents.

First aid teaches us to take care of little cuts immediately because, left unattended, they turn into dangerous sores. A wise person gives first aid even to a little cut before it gets worse.

The little "cuts" are the daily disagreements we have with family members and friends. A little grudge, a little grievance nursed, pondered and brooded over, can become a cancer in our souls. We are to take care of these grudges immediately lest they grow and make us enemies. We are to treat them with the "first aid" of forgiveness. "Never let the sun go down on your anger," said St. Paul. Take care of it immediately. Forgive even as you have been forgiven by Christ. Forgive that same day, that same moment, to prevent the spread of the cancer of hatred. Nothing relaxes and reduces the load of hostility as much as forgiveness. There is no more effective "first aid" for mending broken relationships.

Peter asked Jesus one day, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Seven times?" Seven times is a lot of times. Some of us have not been able to forgive even one time. But Jesus replied in effect, "Peter, there’s no limit to forgiveness. Not seven times but seventy times seven!" That’s four hundred and ninety times! In other words, forgiveness is not an act. It is an attitude — an attitude that is born of the fact that we Christians, who have been forgiven a debt we could never pay, are to go out into the world, armed with the spirit of forgiveness: to heal the hurts, right the wrongs, and change society by the spirit of forgiveness.

Telephone companies now have direct distance dialing. By first dialing a code you can dial your party direct.

God has had this system in operation since the world began. The code is forgiveness. If we are holding a grudge against another, we are blocking the prayer line to God. So our calls don’t get through. St. Paul said to the Ephesians, "Let all bitterness and wrath and clamor and anger and slander be put away from you, with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you" (Ephesians 4:31). St. Paul knew the code.

How many lawsuits would be dropped if we forgave? How many ulcers and heart attacks would be prevented? How many marriages saved? How many parent-child rifts spared if we were kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another even as God in Christ forgave us?

Let Go! (Matthew 19:16-26).

A person accidentally slipped and fell of a cliff. On the way down he grabbed hold of the branch of a tree and remained suspended there. He started praying as he had never prayed before: "Lord, save me! Lord, Lord!" Suddenly the Lord answered, "Yes?" The man pleaded, "Save me, Lord!"

"Have you attended Church?" asked the Lord.

"Yes, I did whenever I could, but I promise never to miss if You will save me."

"Have you kept the ten commandments?"

"Yes, as much as I could. I promise to obey them to the letter if You will save me."

"Have you said your prayers every day?"

"Yes, Lord, but just get me off the side of this cliff and I’ll be the best praying man in the world."

"Have you given generously to the work of my Church?"

"Yes, I think I have, but I’ll give even more generously in the future. Just get me off the side of this cliff."

"Do you trust Me?"

"Yes, Lord, of course I trust You — completely."

"Then let go the branch."

Let go the man-made crutches you hold onto. Replace them with a tight grip on God.

Let go the sin that has possessed you. It seems that we become so accustomed to our sins that we feel comfortable with them and refuse to let go.

Let go that hatred. How many times have we heard people say, "I’ll do anything for You, Lord, but just don’t ask me to forgive so-and-so."

Let go that alcoholism. A short time ago there was a convention of Alcoholics Anonymous at the Leamington Hotel. Three thousand well-dressed, dignified persons attended the banquet — all of them former alcoholics. Those who had remained dry for one year were asked to stand up. Then two years, then three. A fellow priest who was there told me that it was the most inspiring sight he had ever seen. All of those people had been brought back from death to life because they had let go the branch, the bottle, arid trusted God.

The rich young man in today’s Gospel lesson came to Jesus seeking eternal life. Knowing that his besetting sin was love of money, Jesus prescribed the remedy: "Sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me." The Gospel says that "when he heard this he became sad, for he was very rich. Jesus looking at him said, ‘How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!" In other words, how hard it is for those who become so attached to their riches, so enslaved to their material possessions, that they cannot let go because their possessions have become their god.

Like the young man in today’s Gospel lesson, how many there are today who want everything that Christ has to offer: forgiveness, peace, assurance of life eternal with God — but they don’t want to let go their false gods, their besetting sins.

So, the Lord asks us today:

"Do you trust Me?"

We reply,

"Yes, Lord, we trust You."

"Then let go," He says. "Let go the demons, let go the death that is within you."

We reply prayerfully,

"Lord, I let go trusting that You will bring me back to life."

The Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen (Matthew 21:33-42).

Jesus tells a parable. An owner rents out a vineyard. Again and again he sends messengers to collect the rent. Finally he sends his son feeling that they will respect him. Seeing the son, the tenants decide to kill him that the inheritance might be theirs.

The interpretation of this parable is obvious. The vineyard is the Jewish nation. The householder who so carefully planted the vineyard and hedged it in and made everything ready for the time when it should bear fruit is God, who chose the Jews to be His people, protected them from their enemies, nurtured them in His truth, and trained them in His ways. The cultivators to whom the vineyard was loaned are the Jewish leaders in the succeeding generations. The series of messengers who were sent by the householder to receive a percentage of the fruit of the vineyard and who were stoned and killed are the prophets who were sent by God to Israel to speak His word, and to remind them of their destiny. The householder’s son who was sent as a last appeal to them is none other than Jesus Himself.

This parable was spoken by Jesus on Tuesday of Holy Week just before His crucifixion. It was designed to awaken the Pharisees, the scribes and the priests to the terrible sins they had committed in the past against the prophets and the great sin they were about to commit against God’s own Son.

Jesus has much to tell us in this parable about God, about man, and about Himself.

First, about God and His love. One would have expected God to put his foot down and destroy those tenants who had taken over His property and treated His servants so shamefully. Instead, He keeps making repeated attempts to win them over by sending more and more messengers. God’s love for man is truly incomprehensible! Who among men would tolerate the cruel treatment that God’s servants were subjected to? Who among men would think of sending his own son to a people who had beaten, killed and stoned others that had been sent? Yet this is exactly what God does! "They will respect my son," he says. "But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and have the inheritance.’ And they took him out of the vineyard, and killed him."

We shall never come to terms with this parable unless we see ourselves involved in it. How do we treat the messengers God sends us today? Certainly, we do not stone them. We’re not that cruel any more. We have other — more refined — ways of getting rid of them. We ignore them. We pay lip service to them. We call ourselves Christians and are members of the Church but the real God some of us worship is not Christ but self. We have many ways even today of rejecting God’s messengers.

"They will respect my son" said God. Is not this the chief end of man? To respect the Son of God when He comes with His claims and promises? To follow Him single-mindedly as Lord and find in Him the fulfillment of life?

The parable tells us secondly of God’s generosity. The vineyard was not a wilderness; it was already "planted" and equipped with everything that was necessary to make the work of the cultivators easy and profitable. It was fenced in by a thick-set thorn hedge to keep out wild animals and thieves. It had a wine press and a watchtower which provided lodging for the cultivators and a spot from which to watch for thieves. Is not God just as generous with us? He not only gives us a task to do; He also gives us the means to do it. He gives us the gift of life; He entrusts to our care this whole big beautiful earth; gives each one of us special talents; He endows us with a mind to create computers and spaceships and solve intricate problems. Truly who is more generous than God?

In addition to God’s love and generosity the parable tells us of God’s trust. The owner goes away and leaves the vineyard in sole possession of the cultivators. They are under no restraint whatsoever. He trusts them completely. They are to be their own bosses running the vineyard as they see fit with no one standing over them. Doesn’t God pay us the same compliment? Doesn’t He give us the freedom to run life as we choose? Truly, one of the wonderful things about God is that He allows us to do so much for ourselves. He endows us with the great gift of free will.

The parable tells us of God’s patience. The master sent messenger after messenger to the tenants "to collect his debt." Not once or twice but countless times He gave the cultivators the chance to pay the debt they owed. When the first messenger was abused, He did not treat them with vengeance. He gave them chance after chance.

How wonderful the patience of God! If God had been a man with human reactions, He would long ago have smashed this universe to bits in sheer despair at the sins and follies of men. But not God! He is patient with each one of us even in our sinning. He does not cast us off. To the very end, as with the penitent thief, He waits for us to repent and return to Him. An atheist once tried to prove that there is no God. Dramatically, he pulled his watch and said, "If there is a God, I will give Him one minute to strike me dead." The audience waited through the minute which seemed interminable. Finally, someone rose and asked, "Does the little man think he can exhaust the patience of Almighty God in one minute?"

The parable speaks of God’s judgment. God is very patient. Men might even take advantage of His patience but in the end come judgment and justice. God’s forbearance is long but in the end He acts. Having sent His Son into the world in the person of Jesus, God can do nothing more. There is no further appeal. Ultimately we are all to be judged by our response to God’s Son.

"When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?" They said to him, "He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons." The great task which should have belonged to the Jews, said Jesus, will be taken away from them and given to the Gentiles. The Jews should have been the nation to lead all men to God. Instead they rejected God’s Son when He came; so the task of evangelizing the world would be given to the Gentiles whom they despised.

God is merciful, patient, generous, trusting, but He is also just. The cultivators thought that they could kill the son and possess the vineyard for themselves. They must have thought that the owner was too far away to act or that he was dead. Many today still feel that way about God. But He is still very much alive and in charge of things. Because of this, the day of reckoning always comes. He has placed us here in positions of trust, but one day He will return, and, when He does, He will have the right to expect something from us.

In addition to speaking to us of God’s love, trust, generosity, patience and judgment, this parable tells us of man’s sin. We see it in the stoning and killing of the prophets. We see it ultimately in the crucifixion of God’s Son. "This is the heir; let us kill him and have the inheritance." We see man’s sin also in the tenants trying to possess the vineyard. They claim for themselves what has only been lent to them. The stewards try to become the owners. They try to "play" God. They lose sight of the fact that they are tenants enjoying a vineyard they did not plant. Don’t most of us do the same? We have this "master-of-the-house" attitude especially when we’ve been a little successful in life? We assume all the credit for our success.

A teacher once said to a student, "You’re a gifted boy." The student blushed and hardly knew which way to turn. He was embarrassed and self-conscious because he felt the talents belonged to him. What the teacher meant when he used the word "gifted" was that his gifts were not his but were entrusted to him by God. How often we try to take over the vineyard and forget the owner? We receive the gifts and forget the Giver.

Finally, Jesus says something very important about Himself in this parable. Last of all, says the parable, God sent His Son to them. He had sent servant after servant, messenger after messenger. Now comes not a servant or a messenger, not another Moses or Isaiah, but the Son Himself, God in Person! The parable contains one of the clearest claims Jesus ever made of His uniqueness. He is superior to even the greatest who came before Him. They brought God’s messages; He brings God Himself. They revealed God’s plans; He opens God’s heart. They told men what God wanted; He shows them God in Person. St. Mark expressed it this way, "He had yet one, a beloved son: He sent him last unto them." The author of Hebrews says, "In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son ..." (Hebrews 1:1-2). Here is God’s last word, God’s final invitation, God’s ultimate appeal. This is it! There is nothing more God can do. In his final days, just before His crucifixion, Jesus used this parable to make it crystal clear to the leaders of Israel exactly who He is and what His mission is.

Far from being an "absentee" landlord, who long ago created this world for Himself, then left it and forgot all about it, God is One Who is constantly present, caring, loving, patient, generous, sending messenger after messenger, ultimately even His own Son to offer us the gift of heaven.

"Friend, How Did You Get in Here Without a Wedding Garment?" (Matt. 22:2-14).

A common nightmare is dreaming that you are at some important event, such as a wedding, a reception, a conference, or a church service, improperly clothed or not clothed at all! If you have ever been at some social event improperly dressed, you know how embarrassed you can become.

Nakedness has special meaning in the Bible. It is used to describe man’s standing before God. Having sinned against God, Adam and Eve suddenly became aware of their nakedness. When they heard the voice of God they tried to hide. Adam hid among the trees. We today have our own trees behind which we try to hide from God the nakedness of our soul. We try to hide behind university degrees, stocks, bonds, real estate, furs, diamonds, jewels. We try to hide behind the masks we wear. We pretend to be what we are not, thinking that this way we will hide our nakedness.

No Wedding Garment Jesus once told a parable of a man who came to a wedding feast. The king came in to look at the guests whom he had invited to a wedding feast. He saw there a man who had no wedding garment. Here we need to understand that in those days the host who invited guests to a marriage feast, provided each one with a special wedding garment. This was to be worn upon entering the banquet hall. Upon seeing the person with no wedding garment, the king said to him, "Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?" The guest was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, "Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness."

There is another marriage feast to which the King, who is our Lord, invites all of us. It is the great banquet of the Last Supper: the Sacrament of Holy Communion. This is a real wedding feast because through this Sacrament the Lord Jesus actually weds himself to us and we to Him in the most intimate relationship that exists between God and man: "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I in him" (John 6:56).

The parable tells us that there was one man who had not taken the trouble to come properly prepared. Could it be so with some of us? We approach the Sacrament without having truly repented. Our sins may be hidden from human view. Our fellow parishioners may not suspect us. But there is One who knows, One Whom we cannot escape. It is a terrible moment when He says to us, "Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?"

What is the proper wedding garment? How does one obtain it?

The same God who invites us to the marriage feast, also provides a wedding garment for all who would come. Man does not buy or earn this wedding garment; it is given to us by God. It is the gift of God. It is the white robe of salvation in Christ. St. Paul speaks of this robe when he says, "For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ" (Gal. 3:27). At baptism we are cleansed of sin. We are made pure. But we also put on Christ as we put on a new suit or dress. Yet it is not only at baptism that we put on Christ; if we are true Christians, we are to put Him on every day. Every day we are to put on "the mind of Christ" (I Cor. 2:16) so that we think what He thinks, see what He sees, will what He wills. Every day we are to put on His compassion, His kindness, His lowliness, His meekness, His patience, His forgiveness and above all His love, which binds everything in perfect harmony (Col. 3:12-24).

Yet when many of us come to the great banquet of God’s presence, the Sacrament of Communion, we come as we are. We come with little or no sorrow for our sins. We come with little or no determination to overcome and forsake our sins. We come feeling that God will forgive us anyway; it’s His business to forgive just as it’s a baker’s business to bake bread. We come and then we go back to the same old sins we were committing before. We take God’s love and justice lightly. We come without real repentance. We come trusting in our own goodness, feeling that we have done so many good works that even God himself is indebted to us. He must accept us. We come wearing the garment of our own self-righteousness and pride. This is exactly the garment the king does not recognize as His own. "He saw there a man who had no wedding garment. And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ " The guest was speechless.

When God invites us to the wedding feast He does not say, "Come as you are." He says, "Come better than you are. Come clothed with Christ." When the priest invites us to partake of the Eucharist during the liturgy, he faces the congregation with the chalice and says not "Come as you are," but "Come, with the fear of God, with faith and with love." Come, but before you come, make sure you destroy the old sinful man within you. Make sure you have repented of your sins and confessed them. Make sure you detest them, and have decided to forsake them. Come, but before you come, take off the masks of hypocrisy. "Put to death … what is earthly in you: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire … covetousness … anger, malice, slander … foul talk" (Col. 3:5-9). Come, but before you come, make sure you put on the wedding garment of the King: put on Christ. Come clothed with repentance, forgiveness, love, and humility.

God said to Moses at the burning bush, "Do not come near. Put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground" (Exodus 3:5).

God asked him to remove the habitual shoes with which he walked around every day, for he was now standing on holy ground. Should it be any different for us when we stand on the holy ground of His presence in the great Sacrament of Communion?

When we come into the presence of God, we don’t wear casual clothes as if it didn’t matter much. This is why the Orthodox priest does not wear his everyday street clothes when he celebrates the divine liturgy. He wears special clothes called vestments to denote that we are to come into the presence of God not as we are, but better than we are, clothed with Christ.

Man today experiences a deep nakedness; it is nakedness of the soul: a soul that has lost God. Man has tried to be his own God and has thus come to discover his weakness and insecurity. Look, for example, how naked men feel in regard to the H-bomb. How naked they feel in the presence of disease, illness, and death. This is perhaps why, when a man finds salvation in Christ, he speaks of being "clothed" in it. Emil Brunner, the theologian, says, "We must … wrap ourselves up in the grace of God in Jesus Christ just as a little child, when it becomes afraid, wraps itself up in the apron of its mother, has a good cry there, and is ... so comforted that it jumps again happily in the street."

Our great need today is to wrap ourselves up in the grace of God regularly through faith, prayer, the Bible, the Sacraments and the total relinquishment of our life into His hands. The person who daily wraps himself up in the grace of God covers the nakedness of his soul, and is "clothed" with a security that fears neither illness nor death. In the words of the Apostle Paul, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loves us" (Romans 8:35-37).

"Into the glorious company of Thy saints how shall I enter, Lord; I who am so unworthy. For should I, too, dare to enter the wedding chamber my robe betrays me, for it is not a wedding garment and I shall be bound and cast out by the angels. Cleanse my soul, O Lord, from wickedness, and of Thy compassion save me."

The Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30).

"All men," says the Declaration of Independence, "are created equal." But how equal are we?

There are many playwrights, but how many Shakespeares? many painters, but how many Rembrandts or El Grecos? many musicians, but how many Rachmaninoffs or Carusos?

We are all equal in that we have a common origin. We are all children of God. We are all equal in worth to God. Because of this, we all have equal and inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But apart from this — our relationship to God — there is literally nothing in which all persons are created equal. For example, we are not equal in native capacity or intelligence. This is what the Master tells us in today’s parable of the talents. The three servants in the parable were not equally endowed. One was given five talents, another two, and the third one, "to each according to his ability" (Matthew 25:15). No two persons are alike in ability and thus no two persons are alike in talents. Some have stronger bodies than others; some have more brilliant minds; some have better opportunity to develop their capacities; but every child born into the world receives from the hand of God a specific endowment. No child of God ever receives less than one talent!

The majority of men and women are endowed neither with five talents nor with two, but with one. As one author said,

"In every generation there are a few people who are born with exceptional ability — four-leaf clovers, so to speak, in the field of life. But the clover which keeps the fields green, feeds the cows and the bees, giving us milk and honey, is the three-leaf clover, the common ordinary kind."

Most of us are three-leaf-clovers, people of average ability, endowed not with five or with two, but with one talent. The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those who sang best. The trouble is that we refuse to accept the facts about ourselves. We hesitate to come to terms with our limited talents. We try to conceal our one talent either by developing a superiority complex, bragging as if we had more than one talent, or by developing an inferiority complex, denying even our one talent.

St. Paul has another word for "talents." He calls them charismata. The Greek word charisma means something that is given to man by God which man himself could not have acquired or achieved on his own. For example, a person might practice the piano for a lifetime, and yet never play like Gina Bachauer. The great artists become great not solely through practice; they have something more, a charisma, a gift of God. Friml, the great composer, at age 80, said, "I am so full of music that if I don’t sit down and write, I will burst." Call it talent, call it charisma, it is a gift of God.

No two persons have the same number or kind of talents. Sometimes we forget this and we begin to compare ourselves with others. We say, "If I had So-and-So’s wealth, or his great influence, or his power, or his personal gifts, how much I could do!" But the real question is, "What use am I making of what I have?"

No man is judged by what he would do if he were someone else, but rather by what he is doing with the gifts he has. I shall not be judged for not being a Moses or a St. Paul, but because I was not myself. God judges every man by a separate yardstick according to each person’s ability and talents.

There is great danger here with parents who make unreasonable demands on their children, expecting them to achieve a five-talent brilliance in life when God has endowed them with one talent. Or the parents who compare one child to the other, forgetting that no two children have the same number of talents or the same kind. The result is that the one-talent child develops the idea that it is not worthwhile to develop the talent that he does have. "Why try? I can never hope to do as well in school as my sister or make the football team like my brother." Thus the talent that the child has is oftentimes lost, and a sense of inferiority is permitted to ruin his life. The greatest of all fairy tale writers — Hans Christian Anderson — got his start from a publisher who one day saw some of his writing and said, "Not bad. Keep trying. I’ll help you/’ Here lies one of the greatest contributions of the parent to the child: to discover what talent God has given each child and to encourage the child to develop it. A beautiful poem was written about children by Miriam Dale,

The three servants in today’s parable were equal not only because they were all alike recipients, but also because upon all three was laid equally the responsibility of using what was given. Jesus said, "Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required." Since our talents, be they many or few, are given to us by God, it is to Him that we are all at last accountable. He does not judge us by the size, the amount of our returns, since those who have been given much will obviously make a bigger return. He judges us rather by the degree of faithfulness with which we have used our gifts, be they many or few. Because we do not have the same number or kind of talents, God will not expect the same performance from all of us. In fact, He will expect our performances to vary greatly. In only one way will He expect our performances to be equal: we should all be faithful.

Jesus thus introduces a new standard of evaluating people. By our standards the great man is the greatly gifted man. By God’s standards the great man is the greatly faithful man. Look at the parable. Jesus does not say to the one who has received five talents, "Because you have been faithful in great things enter into the joy of your Lord," but He says even as He would have said to the one-talent man, "You have been faithful in little, and because you have been faithful in little things, enter into the joy of your Lord."

The one-talent man did not know the importance that his master attached to the little service that he could have rendered. For the little service that comes from a one-talent man in God’s eyes is equal in value to the great service that comes from the five-talent man. In the parable, Jesus called the one-talent man a "wicked servant" not because he was a murderer or an adulterer, but simply because he hid his talent in the ground. He had something he could use for God, but he failed to make use of it. Edward Hale said,

It is because of our faithfulness in little things that the Lord will one day promote us to glory. We shall not be blamed for having only one talent. But we shall be blamed for not using that one talent. When we say "using" a talent, we must exercise care in how we use it. Talent isn’t enough. We must ask ourselves, "Talent in the service of what values? Talent in the service of self? Talent in the service of greed? Or talent in the service of Christ and our fellow humans?"

The man in the parable who had only one talent was afraid to invest it. For if he lost it, he would have lost all he had. "Safety first" was his motto. But how wrong he was! We never really save our talent when we bury it. God’s law for life is, "If you do not use it, you lose it." For example, perhaps we have only a little faith. Bury the little faith we have and we lose it. Use it and we increase it. Our gift for prayer may be small. Bury it and it becomes smaller. Use it, and it is enlarged. Perhaps we have only a little human understanding, compassion and kindness. Bury it and it will disappear. Use it, and it will grow. Use it or lose it. But you can’t bury it.

God has given each one of us some unique talent or capacity which no one else in this world possesses. Each one of us has a certain way of being helpful to others, and an ability to do certain things as no other person can do them. This gives every man, woman, and child the value of uniqueness. The world would be less if we had not been born. We have added something that was not here before we came. That something is from God, and it is precious beyond all price. Think not then that we don’t matter. God has entrusted us with something He gave to no other person, and the way we use it is just as important to Him as the way our most gifted men and women use the talents they possess. As Edwin Mark-ham says,

"There is waiting a work where only your hands can avail: And so, if you falter, a chord in the music will fail."

Creativeness in the world is, as it were, the eighth day of creation. As Christians we are called to be instruments of God in the continuing act of creation through the development and use of our talents.

Jesus once told a story about a fig tree. After three years during which the tree bore no fruit, the owner grew impatient and ordered it to be cut down. But the gardener asked for one more year’s grace to see if he could not cultivate it so that it would produce. But he concluded with these words: "And if it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, cut it down" (Luke 13:9). Just to stay alive is not enough. We are here to produce.

Sometimes we look at a great person and we say, "Isn’t he a gifted individual?" Yet are we not all gifted? Even the one talent is not ours, but a gift from God. These gifts are God’s investment in our life. The point of the parable is that God expects a return on His investment. One day He will ask us to account for what we did with the gifts He entrusted to us.

"You have small talents" someone said to a Christian. And the Christian replied, "Yes, but I have a great God." "He who abides in Me," said Jesus, "and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit."

"Stir up the gift of God that is in you," said St. Paul to Timothy.

We thank you, dear Lord, for endowing each one of us with talents. Help us to remember that these are the means You gave us for fulfilling our mission on earth, for enriching not only our own lives, but also the lives of our fellow humans till that great day when we shall be called before You to render our account.

The Canaanite Woman and Intercessory Prayer (Matthew 15:21-28).

Bob Hope said once, "I thought it was wonderful when Astronaut Gordon Cooper prayed during his 17th orbit. That was the place to do it. From there it was a local call!"

If anyone ever put in a "local" call to God, it was the woman in today’s Gospel lesson. She came to Jesus in person, pleading desperately in behalf of her sick daughter. Here is a wonderful example of intercessory prayer.

Intercessory prayer is praying for others as the Canaanite mother prayed for her daughter. We identify ourselves with the sufferer and are willing to take up his burden. It is an expression of love; we care enough for others to share their burdens by praying for them.

The great litany at the very beginning of the liturgy is a good example of intercessory prayer. It is an all-embracing prayer showing the Church’s concern for everyone and everything in the universe.

We have many examples of intercessory prayer in the Bible. We have the prayer of Jesus for Peter: "Simon, Simon, behold Satan demanded to have you that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren" (Luke 22:31, 32). Here we see the power of Christ’s prayer strengthening Peter when his faith is tested. St. Paul writes to the Thessalonians, "Brothers, pray for us" (I Thessalonians 5:25); to the Romans "... without ceasing I mention you in my prayers …" (Romans 1:9); to the Colossians, "We have not ceased to pray for you" (Colossians 1:8-9). The Apostle James writes, "The prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effects" (James 5:13, 16). Through intercessory prayer we Christians have the tremendous privilege of bringing our fellow humans to the throne of God’s grace. It is love in action. The prophet Samuel said, "... God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you …" (I Samuel 12:23). The Christian prays not only for loved ones but also for those who are hard to love. "Pray for those who persecute you," said Jesus in Matthew 5:44.

Comedian Bob Hope was aboard an airplane which was caught in a storm. The plane rocked back and forth with frequent elevation drops. The passengers displayed tenseness. Looking across the aisle, he noticed a man praying. Not lost for words even in great crises, he tapped the man on the shoulder and asked, "Say, would you mind making that a package deal?"

Intercession through which we express to God our concern for others makes every prayer what it really should be: a "package deal." One person takes the newspaper with him every night when he prays. He reads the birth notices and prays for the babies who were born that day. He reads the marriage notices and prays for the couples who are to be married. He reads the deaths in the obituary column and prays that God’s comfort may come to those who have lost loved ones. There is no end to the number of persons we can bring to the throne of God’s grace through intercessory prayer.

The Chaplain of the United States Senate was asked once, "Do you pray for the Senate?" "No," he replied, "I look at the Senators and pray for the country." After all, it isn’t only senators who need prayer.

Some time ago a minister’s wife wrote that she had been using her "hold-up" prayer for a certain person — "just holding you silently in God’s presence for a while," she said to him.

Here’s how she explains the prayer, "On numerous occasions in my life I have felt a certain lifting of spirit that meant just one thing: someone was praying for me. This knowledge sends me to my knees to pray for someone else. I don’t try to tell God what that other person needs: He knows. My aim is simply to hold that person up before God for a while, in love and wordless concern."

If someone has been unkind, hold that person up in God’s presence. If a child has been difficult, hold him up for God to embrace. Friend, enemy, husband, wife, neighbor, priest, world leader — hold each up to receive our Lord’s love. Who can tell what changes would result if enough people did this every day of their lives!

One housewife found a new way of praying one day while ironing. She got to thinking about how many lines there were — bus lines, telephone lines, clothes lines, fishing lines. "Why not a prayer line?" she asked. So she strung up a short rope across one corner of her kitchen. On it she hung cards with the names of shut-ins, of the sick and the bereaved. As she ironed she prayed for those people by name.

Father John of Kronstadt writes, "Pray for all as you would pray for yourself, with the same sincerity and fervor; look upon their infirmities and sicknesses as your own, their spiritual ignorance, their sins and lusts, as your own, their temptations, misfortunes and manifold afflictions as your own. Such prayer will be accepted with great favor by the Heavenly Father, the most gracious, common Father of all, whose boundless love embraces and preserves all creatures."

Perhaps you feel that while you pray for others, no one prays for you. I call upon you today to remember that there is One who is always praying for us: our one and only Intercessor in heaven who stands before the throne of God the Father and prays for us unceasingly, Jesus our Advocate, who shed his tears for us, who shed his blood for us, who prays for us now, as He prayed for Peter, that our faith fail not.

Frank C. Laubach has written, "Most of us will never enter the White House and offer advice to the President. Probably he will never have time to read our letters. But we can give him what is far more important than advice. We can give him a lift into the presence of God, make him hungry for divine wisdom, which is the grandest thing one ever does for another. We can visit the White House with prayer as many times a day as we think of it, and every such visit makes us a channel between God and the President" (Prayer the Mightiest Force in the World by Frank C. Laubach, Spire Books. Used by permission.). Truly, there is no place intercessory prayer cannot reach, no door it cannot open.

Mr. Laubach also believes in what he calls "shooting" prayers toward people either on the street, on a bus, or wherever he may be. He describes how he sits on a bus and looks around at the other passengers. He picks the most discouraged face and aims prayer at the person, saying to himself several times, "Jesus will help you." "Flashing hard and straight prayers at people in a bus while repeating, ‘Jesus … Jesus … Jesus ..." will sometimes make those near you act as if they had been spoken to." He tells how suddenly a scowl is replaced by a smile because of the prayers and love that he "shoots" at people.

A powerful story of intercessory prayer was told by an alcoholic who was taken to a hospital a few years ago. He was placed in a room with three other patients who did nothing but scream. When night came, he prayed to be able to sleep, but the screams continued.

Then suddenly he changed his approach; he began to pray for his three roommates. "May God give you peace," he said quietly over and over. The screams stopped. "Not only that," the alcoholic reported later, "it was as if something broke in me. Praying for them released my own tension. I was free." A short time later he was well enough to go home.

I share with you another experience that happened in our own congregation. Our Friday prayer group had been praying for a parishioner who was going through a very painful and dangerous post-operative experience in a hospital. At the exact time he was being remembered in prayer by the group, the patient who was sleeping, felt a sense of the presence of God as he had never experienced it before. He dreamed that the priest was by his bedside praying for him. This was so real he woke up expecting to find the priest there. But the room, of course, was empty. Yet the sense of God’s presence remained with him and proved to be the turning point in his illness. It was later, as we talked together, that we discovered that all this had happened at the exact time the group had united their hearts in prayer for him.

In 1938 a monk died on Mt. Athos, Archimandrite Sofrony, whose biography "The Undistorted Image" was written by Rosemary Edmunds. He was a very simple man, a peasant from Russia. For a long time he was in charge of the monastery workshops on Mr. Athos where Russian peasants would work for a year or two to earn some money and go back home to support their families. One day other monks who were in charge of other workshops said, "Father Sofrony, how is it that people who work in your workshops work so well while you never supervise them, while we spend our time looking after them and they try continuously to cheat us in their work?" Father Sofrony replied, "I don’t know. I can only tell you what I do about it. When I come in the morning, I never come without having prayed for those people and I come with my heart filled with compassion and with love for them, and when I walk into the workshop I have tears in my soul for love of them. And then I give them the task they have to perform in the day and as long as they will work I will pray for them, so I go to my cell and I begin to pray about each of them individually … and when the day is over I go, I say a few words to them, we pray together and they go to their rest." Here again we see what intercessory prayer can do when it is combined with sincere love and compassion.

Like every good thing, intercessory prayer can be misused. Strange as it may seem, it can become a way of washing our hands of people. "I’m praying for you," can be used as an escape from involvement. As someone said, "I was lonely and you left me alone to pray for me."

Here we must emphasize that prayer is a cooperative effort between God and us. Once we have prayed we must set out to make our prayers come true. We must back them up with all we have. There is no point in praying that the lonely be cheered and the sorrowing comforted unless we are prepared to do something for the lonely and the sorrowing. Prayer is not pushing all the work off on to God. God does not begin to help us until we begin to help ourselves.

Two brief examples may help us here.

A priest once asked Pope John to pray for the paralyzed wife of a friend. "We can do more than that," said the Pope. He immediately called for his car and had his driver take him with the priest directly to the house of the paralyzed woman where he chatted for some time and then prayed for her, much to the delight of the woman and her family. Prayer was combined with a visit to show personal love and concern.

A poor farmer had an accident one day and broke his leg. That meant that he would be laid up for a long time, unable to work. His family was large and needed help. Someone organized a prayer meeting at the church to pray for his family. While the people were asking God to help the family, there was a loud knock on the door.

Someone tiptoed to the door, opened it, and there stood a young farm boy who said, "My dad could not attend the prayer meeting tonight, so he just sent his prayers in a wagon/’ And there was the wagon loaded with potatoes, meat, apples, and other produce from the farm. This is what intercessory prayer is all about. Far from being an escape from involvement. It motivates us to help the person being prayed for in whatever way we can.

I knelt to pray when day was done,

Lift from each saddened heart the pain

And when I awoke at break of day,

The whole day long I did not try

I did not even go to see

Yet once again when day was done,

But as I prayed, unto my ear

"Pause, hypocrite, before you pray.

God’s sweetest blessings always go

And then I hid my face and cried,

Let me live another day,

"Put Out into the Deep" (Luke 5:1-11).

A passenger on one of the old Mississippi steamboats said to the captain one day, "Captain, I suppose you know every shallow spot in the river." "No, I don’t," replied the captain. "It would be a waste of time." "What! A waste of time? If you don’t know where the shallow spots are, how can you pilot the boat?" "Yes, a waste of time," the captain repeated. "Why should I go kicking about among the sandbanks. I know where the deep waters are."

In the Gospel lesson today Jesus said to Peter, "Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch." The disciples had been fishing all night without catching a thing. The reason for their failure was that they were too close to shore. Peter obeyed Jesus and the result was the largest catch of all.

"Put out into the deep." These words are symbolic of the way we live. Too many of us skim the surface of life, we hug the shore. If we really want to live, we must launch out into the deep, and putting our faith in the Lord Jesus, let down our nets.

"Put out into the deep." Somehow these words express so well the mind and the heart of Jesus. He was forever inviting people into deep waters, realizing that there was little worth taking in the shallows.

"Put out into the deep." Truth is not always on the surface. The surface is that which is on top; that which we see first. To get to really know persons and things we have to penetrate below the surface. Truth is deep. That is why first impressions about people are often so wrong, so superficial. It is when we pierce a deeper level of a person’s character that we get to know the truth about him.

"Put out into the deep." The Kingdom of God is love and joy and peace. But God’s kingdom is not to be reached by living on the surface. God is in the depths. Paul Tillich called Him the "inexhaustible depth and ground of all being." To reach Him we must break through the surface. We must penetrate the deep things of ourselves, of our world, and of God. We must ask deep questions: What is the meaning of my life? Where did I come from? Where am I going?

I recall the owner of a sailboat saying, "Among the many things sailing has taught me, one of the most important is the adventure of getting out of the harbor into the deep where the wind and the waves wait for the sailboat. There is no sailing as long as one hugs the shore or stays tied to the buoy. One has to move out of the shallow waters into the wind and the waves. This is where the mysterious power called the wind can move the boat and where the thrill of sailing comes."

Is it not the same with our faith? As long as we hug the shore, making sure we can touch bottom, we shall never know the thrill of swimming, of relinquishing ourselves to the water and letting it hold us up. The famous Danish philosopher Kierkegaard used the illustration of the swimmer who wants to keep a toehold on the bottom rather than trust himself to the water. He is not really a swimmer until he ventures out into the deep, abandoning the support of the toehold for the support of the water. Faith is like lying on "70,000 fathoms of water," relying solely on the buoyancy of the sea. In other words, we are either going to trust the water or we are going to trust our own foothold on the bottom. The Christian is one who is called to move out of the shallows of self-trust and into the deep of a total relinquishment of his life to Christ as Lord and Master. Only then will he be able to feel the everlasting arms of God upholding him as he lies on "70,000 fathoms of water."

Occasionally, people have seen a strange sight at sea. The wind, the tide, and the surface ice will all be going in one direction, but moving majestically against these forces will be an iceberg. There is a reason why the iceberg moves against the wind and tide. Only a tiny part of the iceberg is visible above the surface. Deep down in the water is the base which is controlled by more powerful and deeper currents than those on the surface.

So it is with the Christian who puts out into the deep of a total faith, a total relinquishment of his life to Christ. He is controlled by deeper, more powerful currents than those on the surface. He moves against them with a clear, strong purpose. To change the metaphor a little and use the words of the Psalmist, "He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers" (Psalm 1:3).

Dear Lord, in response to Your call to "put out into the deep," may we launch out from the shallows into the depths of Your boundless love. Help us to sever the ties that hold us in the shallows of a purposeless existence. As the disciples’ boats were filled to overflowing with fish when they obeyed Your command, so we pray, fill our lives to overflowing with Your power, peace, and joy as we relinquish our toehold on the bottom and make the leap of faith into Your loving arms. Amen.

"But Love Your Enemies…" (Luke 6:31-36).

The acid test of love is not whether we love our friends, but whether we love our enemies. A great Russian Saint asked, "How do we know whether a person abides in God and is sincere in his Christian faith? There is no other way of ascertaining this than by examining the person’s life to see if he loves his enemies. Where there is love for one’s enemy, there also is God." That is the great test of whether we are in tune with God; for that is what God Himself does. He sends His rain on the just and the unjust. Chesterton said once, "Love means to love that which is unlovable, or it is no virtue at all."

But to love our enemies in a world like ours seems highly impractical. To love your enemy — some object — is to allow him to take advantage of you. To love your enemy is to let him step all over you.

So we thought, until psychology and psychiatry came along and taught us a few things about hostility and hostile people. Specifically, they told us that a hostile person hates because he fears you will strike him; so, to protect himself, he strikes first. He is hostile because he expects vilification and hatred from you. The last thing he expects is love. So if, instead of hatred, you give him love, you will disarm him. Love is what he craves more than anything else. Love is the only thing that can destroy his hostility.

"Give him the devil!" said someone to a friend who had suffered an injustice at the hands of a third party. The reply he received was truly inspired, "He’s already got the devil. I’d like to give him God." To love your enemy is to give him God.

But does God expect us to love the sin and the evil people do? Of course not. He expects us to hate the sin but to love the sinner. But isn’t this splitting hairs? How can one distinguish between the sin and the sinner? Yet we make this same distinction every day with ourselves. We do terrible things; we commit egregious errors. We hate the errors we commit, but we continue to love ourselves. Do the same with others, said Jesus. "Love your neighbor as yourself." Hate the sin; love the sinner. Someone expressed it this way, "To love one’s enemy does not mean to love the mud in which the pearl lies, but to love the pearl that lies in the mud."

Why must I love my enemy? That I may be a child of the Father. "Love your enemies … and you will be sons of the Most High." God wants me to be what He is. He loves His enemies. He does good to those who hate Him. He prepares green pastures for us when our just reward would be a desert. He leads us by still waters when we might have expected a land of drought. While we were yet sinners, God loved us and died for us. Shortly before He died Jesus told His disciples: "A new commandment I give unto you; that you love one another, even as I have loved you."

"Love your enemies." The man who makes your misery his policy, who dogs your steps, who sets snares for your feet, who twists your words, who is always pointing out the fly in the ointment, and who is never happier than when he is slowly dropping bitterness into your cup; your enemy, love him. Love him for My sake, says Jesus. Love him "even as I have loved you." But love him also because your enemy is first of all an enemy to himself. The bitterness which he drops into your cup has, first of all, poisoned his own cup. Forget the superficial injury he inflicts on you and think of the fatal injury he is inflicting upon himself. On your part he creates bitterness; on his part he commits suicide.

As the great Russian priest Father John of Kronstadt writes in his inspiring book "The Life of Christ:" "Every person that does any evil, that gratifies any passion, is sufficiently punished by the evil he has committed, by the passions he serves, but chiefly by the fact that he withdraws himself from God, and God withdraws Himself from him: it would therefore be insane and most inhuman to nourish anger against such a man; it would be the same as to drown a sinking man, or push into the fire a person who is already being devoured by the flame. To such a man, as to one in danger of perishing, we must show double love, and pray fervently to God for him; not judging him, not rejoicing at his misfortune. For My sake, says Jesus, but for their sakes, too, ‘love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them who despitefully use you and persecute you.

We are to love people not because they are attractive but because they need love. The very fact that a person dislikes you may mean that he needs you. His soul is warped by his hatred of you, and you alone can warm him and free him. Ashley Montagu has written, "Show me a hardened criminal, a juvenile delinquent, a psychopath or a ‘cold fish’ and in almost every case I will show you a person resorting to desperate means in order to attract the emotional warmth and attention he failed to get but which he so much desires and needs. ‘Aggressive’ behavior when fully understood is, in fact, nothing but love frustrated, a technique for compelling love — as well as means for taking revenge on society which has let that person down, disillusioned, deserted and dehumanized him. Hence, the best way to approach aggressive behavior in children is not by further aggressive behavior towards them, but with love. And this is true not only for children but for human beings of all ages."

Thus, two major reasons why we should love our enemies is first that they need love; and, second, love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

A third reason is fairly obvious. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate. Only love can break the vicious circle. A man once bought a farm and was walking the bounds of his new property when he met his next door neighbor. "Don’t look now," said the neighbor, "but when you bought this piece of ground, you also bought a lawsuit with me. Your fence is ten feet over on my land."

Now this is a classic opening for a feud that could go on for centuries and create generations of enemies. But the new owner smiled and said, "I thought I’d find some friendly neighbors here, and I’m going to. And you’re going to help me. Move the fence where you want it, and send me the bill. You’ll be satisfied and I’ll be happy."

Well, the fence was never moved, and the potential enemy was never the same again. He became a friendly neighbor. Love quenched the fire of hatred.

The ultimate reason why we should love our enemies is expressed in the words of Jesus: "Love your enemies … and you will be sons of the Most High." We are all potential sons of God. Through love that potentiality becomes actuality. We must love our enemies because only by loving them can we know God and experience the beauty of His holiness.

How is it possible to love one’s enemy?

1. It is not possible unless one first loves God. Jesus gave us the clue when He said, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength and with all thy soul, and thy neighbor as thyself." If you love God with your whole being, then you will love your neighbor, even though he be an enemy. Such love is a gift of the Holy Spirit abiding in us.

2. "Do good to them that hate you," said Jesus. St. Paul says, "If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink… . overcome evil with good" (Rom. 12:20-21). Do something good for your enemy and it will surprise you to find how much easier it will be to love him. It will help him remove the bitterness from his heart. But overcoming evil with good means that we must take the first step; we must begin by doing some kind act. "That enemy is best defeated who is defeated by kindness."

A wise physician said once, "I have been practicing medicine for 30 years, and I have prescribed many things. But in the long run I have learned that for most of what ails the human creature, the best medicine is love."

"What if it doesn’t work?" he was asked.

"Double the dose," he replied.

3. Jesus says, "Pray for them who … persecute you." Remember them on your knees. Name them quietly and kindly in the most secret place. Offer them the highest privilege it is in your power to grant — the privilege of being remembered when you are face to face with God. No person can pray for another and still hate him. One of the best ways of killing bitterness is to pray for the man we are tempted to hate.

4. Look for some good in your enemy. There is good as well as bad in the worst of us. Fr. John of Kronstadt writes: "When your brother sins against you in any way — for instance, if he speaks ill of you, or transmits with an evil intention your words in a perverted form to another, or calumniates you — do not be angered against him, but seek to find in him those good qualities which undoubtedly exist in every man, and dwell lovingly on them, despising his evil calumnies concerning you as dross, not worth attention, as an illusion of the Devil. The gold-diggers do not pay any attention to the quantity of sand and dirt in the gold-dust, but only look for the grains of gold; and though they are few, they value this small quantity, and wash it out of heaps of useless sand. God acts in a like manner with us, cleansing us with great and long forbearance."

5. Do good, pray, look for the good in your enemy, and finally develop the capacity to forgive. Without forgiveness it is impossible even to begin the act of loving one’s enemies. This forgiveness must begin with the one who has been wronged. Only the injured person can pour out the warm waters of forgiveness. Here is an example:

On April 9, 1968 — the day of Martin Luther King’s funeral — a white bus driver named Martin Whitted was pulled out of his bus in San Francisco by eleven black youths who savagely beat him and left him mortally wounded. He died shortly thereafter. Tension rose in the black and white communities. Rumors of violence began to spread. Then Dixie Whitted, the bus driver’s widow, appeared on television. Her reaction to her husband’s murder was something moving, something extraordinary, something not of this world. Quietly she spoke of her love for her husband and her faith in Christ. She told the people to refrain from violence, to be peacemakers instead. Through the power of Christ, she said, she had no bitterness or hate. She asked that a memorial fund be established not for herself but for all the young people in the area where her husband was killed.

The results of her compassionate act were electric. Cynical television crewmen cried. A Stanford coed called in to say that her whole life was changed by this Christian witness. A prisoner, who identified himself as a negro, wrote to Mrs. Whitted: "I owe you a debt. You have never known me but because of your way, your deep understanding, the beauty of your refusal to hate ... I’ll never be able again to hate collectively all white men. What a monument you and your children are to your husband’s memory."

"But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful."

The Widow of Nain — How to Handle Grief (Luke 7:11-16).

Those who have fought on the battlefield tell us that the loss of a comrade is more painful to a soldier than a bullet through his own body. One can imagine how painful must have been the grief of the widow in this morning’s Gospel lesson on her way to the cemetery to bury her only child — a son.

"A large crowd was with her," says the Gospel. But no matter how many people around her, she was now alone, aware only of her pain and grief. She had no one. In the beautiful city of Nain all she could see was two graves — that of her husband and now that of her only son.

This is the story of one woman. It happened long ago and far away. But isn’t it really everyone’s story? Life can be beautiful for a while, but inevitably the day comes when it is no longer so. There is suffering; there is trouble; there is war; there is fear; there is death.

The result of all this suffering is grief — an utterly painful experience that every single one of us must at some point in life come to terms with. Most often it is a pretty devastating experience.

It is not only death that brings on grief. There are many other experiences of loss in life that bring on the same kind of pain. The loss of a job, the failure to receive an expected promotion; having to move from a place you love and leave behind dear friends; separation or divorce, forced retirement when you have to leave behind the work that has been a vital part of your life for so many years, the giving up of a child through marriage or a child going off to college or into service, a sudden setback in one’s health, a financial loss — all these experiences cause grief. They are like amputations; they destroy a part of us; they bring death to a part of our lives.

How does one handle grief effectively? Someone has said that grief is one of the daggers that life throws at us and it makes all the difference in the world whether we catch it by the blade or the handle.

We live in an age of miracle drugs. There are few pains that science today cannot lessen or eliminate completely with the so-called pain pills. Yet, there is no pill or sedative that can ease the anguish, loneliness and suffering of a grieving and broken heart.

Medical authorities tell us that the mismanagement of grief causes all sorts of illnesses from ulcers to diabetes to psychosis. It may even lead to suicide. Many times we read in the newspaper a news item that concludes a suicide story with the statement, "Relatives say that Mrs. So-and-so had been depressed since the loss of her husband six months ago."

Some people feel that the greatest cure for grief is time. Yet time alone will not heal grief completely. Time can do terrible things to grief. It can turn it into bitter resentment which can poison the body and the mind. If we are to cure grief we must cooperate with time in ways that are constructive — a few of which we shall now mention.

Express It! One of the most serious mistakes we can make is to refuse to express our grief, to keep it bottled up, or, as some people say, "to keep a stiff upper lip." It is such unexpressed grief that causes all sorts of physical and mental ailments. Modern psychiatry has emphasized that when the eyes refuse to cry, other organs in the body will begin to cry with all kinds of psychosomatic illnesses resulting.

One young pastor who lost his wife through cancer refused to talk about it with anyone or shed tears. In fact, he conducted the funeral himself. Some of the people in the congregation said, "What faith!" Others who knew better said, "What foolishness!" It was not long before he collapsed in the pulpit. The diagnosis was emotional exhaustion due to unresolved grief. Hospitalized for three weeks, it was not until he began to talk about his wife’s sickness and death and the great loss to himself and the children that he began to regain his composure. There is an extreme necessity for grief to be expressed.

A very constructive way of expressing grief is to let the tears flow. The stoic philosophers used to advise, "Don’t mourn. Self-control is the answer to sorrow." Jesus taught the opposite, "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." In other words, "Blessed are those who go through the difficult task of mourning, for they shall find healing comfort."

In our culture we often equate tears with weakness. "Big boys don’t cry," we say. We even say, "If she had enough faith as a Christian she would not cry." Yet tears have nothing to do with weakness or lack of faith. When Lazarus died, St. John writes in 11:35, "Jesus wept." And the next verse says very simply but profoundly, "And the Jews said, ‘See how much he loved him.’ " The fact that Jesus wept teaches us that sorrow is natural. Jesus wept even though He knew that life is eternal. Tears are an expression of love. Even the sure knowledge of eternal life will not take all the grief out of the human heart when we lose a loved one. St. Paul says, "Do not grieve as others who have no hope." He is not saying that we should not grieve; he is saying that we should grieve with Christian hope.

The Jews in the days of Jesus had some very healthy customs pertaining to mourning. As we see in the Gospel today, friends would surround the grieved persons to help them in their grief. "A large crowd from the city" was with the widow of Nain. Deep sorrow lasted for seven days. The first three were days of weeping. During the first week one could not anoint himself, put on shoes, engage in any kind of study or business, or even wash. This time was to be spent in total mourning. One had to face his loss and express the grief. Everything that distracted a person from this primary task was removed. Then followed thirty days of lighter mourning. To this day our Jewish brethren are not wary of expressing grief.

The Greeks are very much like the Jews in this respect. It is interesting that the Greeks have been Christian longer than any other European people. The greatest feast of the Orthodox Church is Easter celebrating the resurrection of Christ as well as faith in our own personal resurrection. Yet the Greek people wail loudly at funerals and speak of departed loved ones with tears in their eyes. Not to do so would be considered unnatural. To facilitate the healthy expression of grief, our Church sponsors memorial services on specified Saturdays throughout the year and on anniversaries of our loved ones’ passing. The Church has always realized that in many ways a grieving person is like a steam engine. Unless the steam can escape in a controlled way, pressure will build up and the boiler will explode.

Rare is the person who has suffered a grievous loss in death who does not experience some guilt. We recall the many things we left undone, or the unkind things we did to the deceased. The husband feels he should have been more considerate of his wife; a parent feels he should have spent more time with his child; a wife feels she should have made fewer demands on her husband. Part of our guilt comes from the fact that, after a person has died, we can no longer make it up to him in any way.

The trouble with such guilt is that we expect ourselves to be perfect. We expect ourselves to be superhuman or even God. We must realize that we are all frail and imperfect beings. We need to accept God’s forgiveness, to forgive ourselves, as our loved ones in the other world would surely forgive us, and, above all, to be kind to ourselves instead of harsh critics.

One of the most unconstructive ways of dealing with grief is to allow it to lead you to self-pity. The cure for self-pity is to take your mind off self and think of others. Consider an example. One lady loses her son, a medical student. She places her spacious home at the disposal of medical students and does everything she can for them in memory of her son. She turns the loss of her son into gain for other people’s sons. She is adjusted and happy. But another woman who loses her son shuts herself off from the world and goes into excessive, unhealthy grief. She becomes miserable. It is no wonder that self-pity has been called the most disintegrating of all emotions.

To see how faith can help us in our grief let us go back for a moment to the Gospel lesson. We can see the widow walking behind her son’s coffin on the way to the cemetery. Her hopes, her aspirations, her dreams were being buried in that coffin. "A young man who had died was being carried out" to the cemetery, says the Gospel. The procession of death was making its way through the city gates.

But there was another procession that day: Jesus and His disciples, and "a great crowd … with him." The two processions met at the city gate. The mother’s grief touched Jesus and He said, "Do not weep." Then He laid His hand on the coffin and commanded the dead one: "Young man, I say to thee, arise." And he who was dead, sat up, and began to speak. And Jesus gave him to his mother.

Two processions! At the head of one is a corpse, symbolizing despair, grief, sorrow, the helplessness and the hopelessness of man. At the head of the other is Christ, the Eternal One, the Savior, sent to stop man’s tragic trek to the grave, to offer him salvation, hope, peace and life eternal. Small wonder that "fear seized them all!" Small wonder they cried out, "God has visited his people!"

As God visited His people then so He visits us today to grant us hope and comfort in our sorrow. Because of Christ we never grieve as though what has happened to us or to our loved one is the end of the story. It is not! The presence of Christ, the promise of the resurrection, the love of God from which nothing can separate us, the assurance of forgiveness, the confidence in eternal life, all mean hope. A hope that changes the very character of our grief.

To show how Christ is still present today to comfort us in our grief, let me share with you a letter written by a daughter who had lost a child to her father:

The Parable of the Soils (Luke 8:5-15).

(Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council)

A young man was impatient. He wanted everything in life all at once. He could not wait. One night he dreamed he was in a shop. Behind the counter was an angel. Nervously he asked what the shop sold. "Everything your heart desires," said the angel. ‘‘Then I want peace on earth, an end to sorrow, famine and disease…" "Just one moment," smiled the angel. "You haven’t quite understood. We don’t sell fruits here — only seeds."

It is not only great oak trees that from tiny acorns grow; most ideas and thoughts grow from seeds that have been sown in our minds and hearts. How important then are the thoughts sown in the mind!

Sow a thought, reap an act, Sow an act, reap a habit, Sow a habit, reap a character, Sow a character, reap a destiny.

In the natural world seeds are so powerful that they can push through thick black asphalt. What of the heart’s seeds of love, hate, compassion, greed, envy? Let us never doubt their power to push through any part of our lives where there is an entering wedge.

John Oxenham wrote,

In today’s Gospel lesson Jesus compares the truth, which is His word, to a seed. The seed is scattered everywhere: on the beaten path, among rocks and thorns as well as on good ground. It falls everywhere with the same possibility and promise of life and growth. Every word in the Gospels is a seed, the beginning of an endless process of development.

Sometimes we hear people say, "If only I had an opportunity to hear God speak in Person, I would run my feet bloody to get there." Yet God speaks to us in Person every Sunday when His words are read in the Gospel and preached in the sermon. God has given us His word in Church and at home in the Holy Bible. This is God’s word as surely as if God Himself were speaking to us.

The word of God is the seed: His parables, His healings, His miracles but also the Word (Logos) Himself Who was cast as a seed into the ground and buried to be raised to new life. Jesus sowed His seed o’er hill and dale, and on the last bare hill He sowed Himself. This is how far the love of God has gone for us.

The emphasis in the parable is not on the seed or the sower but on the soil which is the final determining factor as to whether or not the seed bears fruit. The seed falls on four types of soil, says Jesus. Three out of four reject it. I suppose this means that there are four types of people who go to church. Three out of four receive no lasting good by going. Three out of four will miss the point of this sermon or perhaps get the point and be offended by it, or perhaps not hear the sermon because their mind is on some other matter or on no matter at all because they will sleep or daydream through it.

If Christianity has experienced crop failure through the centuries, it is because God’s truth was preached but not accepted. The fault is not in the truth, the seed, but in the soil, the hearts of the hearers, where the truth was never allowed to take root.

Let us look briefly at the four types of soil as Jesus described them.

"The ones along the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, that they may not believe and be saved."

We have heard of hardening of the arteries, but a far more deadly disease is hardening of the heart toward God. One stops the flow of blood causing physical death; the other prevents us from receiving the Bread of life causing the death of the soul. Nothing stops the word of God but a closed heart: it stops it completely; it doesn’t penetrate at all. There is no softness at all in the soil to receive the life-giving seed, only a supercilious hardness. It is of these hearts that Jesus said, "Neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

"But," some will object, "this is an extreme case. This is certainly not true of me. In no way is my heart like the hard ground" Think again! How many times have you heard a sermon and never realized that it was for you. You were thinking of the sins of someone else and hoping that the preacher would "pour it on them." If you think hardened sinners are bad, "hardened saints" are far worse.

How are hearts hardened to the word of God? Some are hardened by pride. They think they have the answer to every question. They do not want to be disturbed by any fresh ideas or new growth. They call it growing up and becoming wiser. Perhaps this is the reason Jesus urges us to be like little children who are forever open to new ideas. Like the soil beaten hard by many footsteps, some hearts are like highways — hard-pounded thoroughfares. So much goes over them, such a huge volume of traffic, such a constant pounding that the word of God has hardly a chance to get through. Familiarity also induces hardness. Having heard some of the truths of our Christian faith since childhood, we take them for granted; they make no impression on us any more. Finally the heart can become hardened to the word of God through lack of cultivation. Just as no water hardens the soil, so no prayer, no church, no sacraments hardens the soul. It loses its responsiveness to God; it becomes hard. The word of God cannot get through.

If only once — just once — it could get through, what a transformation it would bring about. If only we would lay ourselves bare to receiving the life-giving seed, what faith it would produce, what love, what hope, what peace, what power! But we remain hard. Like the birds that snatch up the seed, demonic forces come and take away the word of God lest we believe and be saved. As the devil comes to us when we pray to steal our prayers by distracting us with other thoughts, so he steals the word of God from our hearts by thickening the surface of the heart to prevent its receptivity.

"And some fell on the rock; and as it grew up, it withered away because it had no moisture/’ Explaining this, Jesus said, "And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy; but these have no root, they believe for a while and in time of temptation fall away."

These are the people who admire the word of God. "What a lovely sermon!" and that’s the end of it. They "receive it with joy." But that’s as far as it goes. "They have no root in themselves." There are many subtle ways of rejecting the word of God. Strange as it may seem, one is by admiring it.

Let me illustrate.

The Danish Theologian Kierkegaard once told a homely parable about a flock of geese that milled around in a filthy barnyard imprisoned by a high wooden fence. One day a preaching goose landed in the barnyard. He stepped onto an old crate and began to preach. He castigated the geese for being satisfied to live in that filthy barnyard when God had given them wings with which to fly into the trackless wastes of the sky. He spoke of the goodness of God in giving the geese wings. He urged them to use their wings to fly out of the barnyard to better surroundings. This pleased the geese. They nodded their heads in approval and commented on what a great preacher the goose was. They marveled at what he had said and applauded his eloquence. All this they did. But one thing they never did. They did not use their wings to leave the barnyard. They went right back to their old accustomed haunts.

Apply this to ourselves and see how true it is! When we hear a good sermon we are eloquent in our praise of it. When we read a great verse in the Bible we are deeply moved. But then what? Most of us go back to our old ways. We hear the truth — we may even admire it — but we do not accept it. So we continue to live with our hatreds, our prejudices, our pride, our envy, and our wars.

"And some fell among thorns; and the thorns grew with it and choked it." Explaining, Jesus said, "And as for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature."

This is probably the saddest part of this parable. The soil that could produce greatness produces a jungle. A soil that produces weeds has great potential. It must be good soil; otherwise weeds would not grow there. But, said Jesus, the thorns grow quick and fast, and they soon choke the good seed. Now there are a lot of good people represented here. They receive the word of God and they really want to serve God. But they become involved in so many other interests that God is gradually choked out. It’s not that the things they’re busy with are always bad; on the contrary, they may be good things, but they drain our energies and turn our hearts away from Christ. Someone has well said, "Many people give first-rate loyalties to second-rate causes." A real estate salesman said once, "My prayers don’t even reach the ceiling before I’m thinking about that real estate deal that’s hanging over me." One day a church announced the reception of new members on a certain Sunday. One new member called the office and said he was sorry but he could not be present on that day. Later on in the week he called again. "I made a mistake," he said, "The Vikings are playing out of town Sunday. I can be there after all." "The thorns grew with it and choked it."

So many activities that are good clutter up our lives that they become the enemy of the best. Jesus poses a question to each one of us: what thorns are we permitting to grow in our own life that are choking at that one great central loyalty to God?

Some Fell Into Good Soil "And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold." "And as for that in the good soil," said Jesus, "They are those who hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bring forth fruit with patience."

The good ground represents those of us who receive the word of God. It becomes a part of us. We keep it in our heart and bring forth fruit with patience. It grows and slowly takes possession of our desires, our emotions, our thoughts and our actions. Little by little our lives become fruitful and God-like.

We must admit that there are times when we are any one of the three poor types of soil or we are a strange combination of all of them. There is a beaten path in each one of us and rocky soil and thorny ground. But the point Jesus makes is that soil can be improved. Hard soil can be plowed; rocks and thorns can be removed. By care and cultivation, our hearts can become fertile and productive, like "the good soil" that produces a hundredfold.

One of the key ways to improve the poor soil of our hearts, says Jesus, is by good hearing. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." "To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God." How can we know if we do not hear?

A person boasted once of the fact that he heard a great and famous preacher every Sunday morning. He did not expect the reply he received: "What a terrible responsibility!" It was true! Anyone who hears the word of God preached is under great obligation not to criticize or compliment but to decide.

We need to become sensitive to God’s voice, as sensitive as a sleeping mother is to the cry of her infant; as sensitive as the great music lover is to the different instruments of the orchestra, able to catch a lonely wrong note from the second violin; as sensitive as a farmer is in New York City, able to hear a single grasshopper above the roar of traffic; as sensitive as those who sit in a lawyer’s office listening to the reading of a last will in which they expect to be remembered. It is a law of life that we hear what we have trained ourselves to hear. Day by day may we listen to the voice of God so that it becomes not fainter but stronger as we move in years closer to our final meeting with Him.

There’s an old Japanese legend according to which a pious Buddhist monk died and went to heaven. He was taken to a place where there were piled and labeled on shelves what looked like dried mushrooms. On closer examination, he saw they were actually human ears. Upon inquiring he discovered that they were the ears of people who on earth went diligently to the temple, listened with pleasure to the teaching of the gods, yet did nothing about what they heard so that after death they themselves went elsewhere and only their ears were saved. Only their ears reached heaven.

How often have we heard the complaint that we church people are mostly ears, that we go to church and nothing comes of it, that we substitute hearing for doing and call that serving God. It is a complaint that is painfully true. It has caused great crop failures for Christianity through the ages. ‘‘He who has ears to hear, let him hear." Let him roll up his sleeves, pick up a hoe, plow the soil, pull up the weeds and stones and prepare to bear rich fruit for Christ!

The Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31).

The story of the rich man and Lazarus that was read in today’s Gospel lesson touched off a revolution in the life of Albert Schweitzer. Schweitzer went to Africa in 1913. In 1921 he explained that it was this parable told by Jesus that made him leave his position as professor at the University of Strasbourg, his literary work, and his organ playing to go to Equatorial Africa as a doctor.

For Schweitzer, the rich man in this parable was the white man endowed with all the benefits of culture and science, and Lazarus was the Negro exploited and oppressed and lacking even medical treatment for his disease and pain. In short, Africa was a beggar lying at Europe’s doorstep.

How awesome it is to realize that this terrible and sad story which Jesus told inspired a great man to a life of service. Schweitzer founded a hospital in Africa where he served for fifty years. Through this parable he saw "Lazarus" lying at "his" door.

Let us examine this great parable by looking at it as a drama in three acts.

"There was a rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate a poor man named Lazarus, full of sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table; moreover the dogs came and licked his sores."

The first act opens with a picture of how the rich man and Lazarus lived on earth. The rich man lived in ease and luxury. "He was clothed in purple and fine linen." He wore two-hundred-dollar suits in a day when the average working man’s wage was about fifteen cents a day. He "feasted every day sumptuously." The word our Lord used for feasting describes the life of the gourmet with exotic foods and costly tableware.

Not once did our Lord criticize the man because he was rich. He never called him a cheater of the poor or even a glutton. He was a highly successful, reputable person; a good mixer, and a hard worker who loved the good things of life. For that our Lord did not condemn him.

Lying just outside the rich man’s palace on the doorstep was a lowly beggar. His name was Lazarus, which means "God is my helper." And the fact is that, apart from God, nobody paid any attention to him. He was hungry. He was sick. His body was covered with ugly scabs and sores. He was so weak and helpless that he could not defend himself against the dogs that licked his sores. Dogs in the East at that time were no pets or playthings, but unclean beasts. He sought to live from the bread that was thrown out as garbage. In those days they did not have table napkins or finger bowls. Instead, the fingers of the guests were wiped on pieces of bread, and the bread tossed through the open window into the street. This was the bread that "fell from the rich man’s table."

Here, then, is the picture we see in act one: the rich man covered with purple and fine linen; Lazarus covered with ugly sores. The one feasts sumptuously every day; the other tries to live with what falls from the table. The one has all kinds of servants to cater to his whims; the other has only dogs to tend his sores.

The second act tells of the death of the two men: "The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried." Weak and sick and hungry, it was not long till Lazarus died. No mention is made of a funeral. He was too poor to be able to afford one. Not only that, but he had no friends. Yet he who suffered the final indignity of being denied a decent burial; he who had no friends but dogs, is now lifted gently to heaven by ministering angels. He "was carried by angels to Abraham’s bosom."

For the rich man it was different. He "died and was buried." Here the parable tells of a funeral. The body had all the time been very important to him. So he was no doubt given a splendid burial. He was allowed to live longer than Lazarus, which is another way of saying that God, in his mercy, allowed him to live longer that he might have more time to repent.

The third act reveals the fate of the two men after death. "And in Hades, being in torment, he (the rich man) lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus in his bosom." They both wake up in the other world quite clear-headed. Although it is not proper to construct a theology of the after-life on the basis of one parable, there are certain very important facts that come out of this parable. First, we see that death does not destroy consciousness. The rich man and Lazarus are not asleep or unaware of what is going on about them. They are conscious. Secondly, death does not destroy identity. Lazarus was still Lazarus and the rich man was still the rich man. Death cannot change personality. The individual self lives on. Thirdly, death cannot destroy memory. The rich man remembered his life on earth. He remembered Lazarus. He remembered his brothers. Finally, death cannot destroy destiny. On earth the rich man and Lazarus traveled different roads. They made different choices. They lived in different worlds. These same worlds continued on into eternity. They are the two worlds of heaven and hell.

The parable tells us that the rich man woke up in hell, and Lazarus, the poor man, in heaven. The question is why? Why should the rich man end up in hell? What did he do to deserve such a fate?

The answer is that he did nothing. He never did anything for Lazarus. He never persecuted him. He never kicked him as he passed by. He never drove him away from his doorstep. He just ignored him. He accepted Lazarus as part of the inevitable landscape of life. Lazarus was right there at the rich man’s doorstep every day, but the rich man never noticed him. When Marie Antoinette was married, she ordered that all the beggars should be cleared from the streets along which her wedding procession was to drive. She did not want any ugly or sad sight to spoil her bliss. She was at least aware of the existence of beggars. Not so the rich man of the parable. He was aware of only one person: himself. This was his sin.

The parable will have no effect on our life unless we see ourselves in it exactly as did Albert Schweitzer. And as far as this parable is concerned, we dare not place ourselves anywhere but alongside the rich man. "But," you say, "I am not rich!" But you are, compared to someone who has far less than you have. There is always someone much poorer than you. While you eat your dinner, 417 die from starvation around the world. That’s 7 deaths every minute. 417 every hour. 10,000 deaths every day. Most of them children. But what can I do? There are many things you can do. You can contribute to one of many agencies that provide food for the hungry, or initiate a drive in your own parish to collect food for the hungry. We can be aware enough to be concerned.

But riches are not limited to material possessions. We are rich in love, in understanding, in sympathy, in compassion, in forgiveness. All around us — and on our very doorstep — lies a world starving for just these things: love, understanding, forgiveness.

Many times we are shocked by a suicide or a nervous breakdown in our neighborhood or in our parish. Suddenly we realize that here was a person who broke down under the lovelessness of us all; here was a person living in the shadows. And we ourselves avoided him. We felt some fear and uneasiness in the presence of his poverty and his cold bitterness. So we simply drove him into deeper loneliness. And there was no one to love him out of his isolation and lostness.

Every one of us has a Lazarus at his door. The underprivileged, the hungry, the unwanted, the unemployed, the sick, the afflicted, the shut-in, the insecure, the lonely, the unloved — they all lie at our door in need of God’s love and ours. They need more than just crumbs from our table.

It is no sin to be rich. Father Abraham, into whose bosom Lazarus was carried, was one of the richest men of his day. But he was rich not only in material possessions but also in faith and love. It is not a sin to be rich, but it is a sin to be rich and not to care, not to love, not to be concerned, not to be aware, not to notice, not to help.

Being in torment, the rich man experiences for the first time something like love. He thinks of his five brothers and begs Abraham to send Lazarus back to earth to warn them of the fate in store for them if they do not mend their ways. He said to Abraham, "Well, father, I beg you, send Lazarus to my father’s house, for I have five brothers; let him go and warn them so that they, at least, will not come to this place of pain."

It’s not real love that prompts the rich man to think of his brothers. He is hinting that he himself had not been properly warned. He is trying to justify himself by accusing God of being unfair. "If I had been sufficiently warned, if I had known that this place would be the goal of my worldly life, I would not have come here. But now at least let my brothers be warned."

"No," said Abraham, "Your brothers have Moses and the prophets to warn them; let your brothers listen to what they say."

"No," said the rich man, "That’s not enough. But if someone would rise from the dead and go to them, then they would change their ways."

But Abraham said, "If they will not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone were to rise from the dead."

The wonder of it all is that after Moses and the prophets God did send someone from the dead to warn us. He sent Christ. Like Lazarus, Christ was "despised and rejected of men." Like Lazarus, He lay at the world’s back door when He was born in the cave of Bethlehem. Like Lazarus, His body was covered with sores. He was "wounded and bruised for our iniquities." He came as one of us — a brother — to warn and save us, His five brothers. Do not expect God to give a greater sign than this; there is none greater. "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have life everlasting."

Listen carefully then as Christ speaks the word of God to you. Look at your life to see where your neglected Lazarus lies. God has placed him there on your doorstep to help you reach heaven!

"My Name Is Legion" (Luke 8:26-39).

A prison inmate, in a series of unfortunate events, had his teeth pulled, his appendix removed, and his right arm amputated after a work mishap.

The warden visited him in the infirmary after the last accident and said, accusingly, "You can’t fool me, Murphy. You are trying to escape piece by piece."

There are times — I’m sure — when we feel that instead of being one unified self, we are many contradicting, sometimes opposing, pieces of self. Our family pulls one piece of us. Our work pulls another piece of us. Ambition pulls still another piece, etc. We wonder where all this pulling of the pieces of self will get us.

A woman had once seen the picture of how an early Christian martyr was put to death. A horse was tied to each hand and one to each foot, and the horses were all pulling in different directions. She told her psychiatrist that was exactly her condition. She felt she was being "pulled to pieces."

The Gospel lesson today describes a man who was literally being pulled to pieces. When Jesus asked him, "What is your name?" he replied, "My name is legion." In the Gospel of Mark 5:9 his answer is, "My name is legion; for we are many." "Legion" was Latin for an army division of about six thousand soldiers. This man’s personality was so torn to pieces by conflicting interests and drives that he seemed to be not one person, but a whole mob of people all pulling in different directions. The Gospel goes on to define who these many people who dwelt in this person were: "For many demons had entered him," it says.

Today we do not deny the existence of demons. If anything, we have re-discovered their existence. Even psychiatrists are admitting that there are demons: the demons of hate, revenge, resentment; the demons of greed, guilt, fear; the high-pressure demonology of modern competition, stress, conflict and keeping up with the Joneses. There are people today who are inhabited by many such demons. Their name is "Legion."

You may recall that Shakespeare made one of his characters say, "To thine own self be true and it must follow as the night the day thou canst not then be false to any man." This is good as far as it goes. But the question remains to which self shall I be true! The civic self, the parental self, the financial self, the religious self, or the society self? For my name is Legion.

There is the self I think I am. There is the self that others see in me. There is the self I present to the world. Then there is my real self that I hide from all. Our souls are like haunted houses inhabited by saints and devils. As Edward Sanford Martin says,

That is my problem. This is every man’s problem. I am not one but many. "I am large," cried Walt Whitman, "I contain a multitude." There is the Child, the Parent, and the Adult in me. I am not so much a personality as a battleground, at war with myself, tugged in a thousand different directions. "My name is Legion."

The word "split" is a key word today. We have split personalities, split families, split nations, split atoms, a split world. We also have splitting headaches. We are in desperate need of a uniting power, of something to keep us from "going to pieces."

Recently I came across the following statement: "We are trying to live several lives at once, without all our selves being organized by a single mastering life within us." This is how another modern thinker has expressed it: "Several selves at once! No single mastering life within!" Jesus expressed it this way, "You cannot serve God and mammon." In other words, we were not made to serve many masters. We were not made to serve God and mammon, God and the crowd, God and Satan without "going to pieces." We try to mix things that simply won’t mix. Nitroglycerine is an explosive because its constituents (nitric acid, sulphuric acid, and glycerin) naturally do not belong together: a slight blow sends each element hurtling to its proper company. The same happens when we try to pay lip service to Christ and His Church and real service to the world or the crowd. "You cannot serve God and mammon," said Jesus. God is one. Only one ultimate is needed in life. Any more ultimates would split life into pieces.

Psychology says that in order to develop a mature personality, one must integrate one’s life around a single goal. Jesus expressed it this way, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God…"

Many of our split personalities today issue from split loyalties: partly for Christ, partly for self; partly surrendered to Christ, partly not surrendered to Christ; partly for the kingdom of God, partly not for the kingdom of God. We were not made to find happiness this way. We were made to find happiness and a unified self by integrating our life around the greatest goal in the universe, God in the Person of Christ. He is the "One in Whom all things hang together," the One in whom we are complete; the only One who can hold life together and keep it from "going to pieces."

In the first World War the Allies tried the method of having many generals commanding their own armies. It failed. Then they made Foch the supreme commander of all their forces. Only then did they get somewhere. In World War II it was decided early that the invasion of Europe could be carried through successfully if, and only if, one person was placed in supreme command. That position, as we all know, was given to General Eisenhower. Where would the Allied cause be today, if we had been subjected to the frictions, vacillations, hesitations, and indecisions that invariably grow out of multiple or divided control? The confusion would be hopeless.

The principle holds true on the more personal battlefield of your life and mine. We must have one commander-in-chief, one motive over-all, one love, one God, one Ultimate: the Lord Jesus Christ. He becomes the controlling principle, like a traffic policeman who stands on duty at the intersection and controls the flow of traffic. When the traffic policeman abandons his post within us, utter chaos occurs as inner drives and urges are released from control and collide with each other causing confusion and conflict.

When we describe an immoral person as a "loose" person, we don’t realize how accurate this description is. Such a person is not integrated or tightened efficiently within himself. He does things, not because he wants them, but because the crowd is doing them; or like St. Paul he feels a demonic force inside him, pushing him to do things he does not want to do. He is not one but many. His name is Legion. He needs Someone to tighten him up, to fuse him together, to organize and unify his personality. He needs to surrender his life not partly but totally to Christ, to let Christ sit on the throne of his heart, to let Christ be the Organizer, the Presiding Chairman, the Director of life. With Christ’s help we are able to overcome and crucify the many selves that wreak havoc within us: the ambitious self, the angry self, the jealous self, the sinful self.

Whether it is the case of the man dwelling in tombs as in the Gospel lesson, or the man or woman sitting in the pew today, the problem is the same — a divided heart, a divided allegiance, a divided self. There is no way out of this divided condition except through surrender of the self to Christ as Lord.

"Then the people" says the Gospel lesson, "went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus, and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. ..." To sit at the feet of Jesus, to learn of Him, to let Him be the organizer of life is to put an end to the strife within the soul, to recover our sanity, to gain a unified command over the empire of our personality so that we might say with St. Paul, "This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

Who Touched Me? (Luke 8:41-56).

There is a language that we should all learn to speak well. It is a language that really communicates; a language that expresses effectively the warmth of love; a language that can break through formidable communication barriers. It is the language of touch.

Sensitivity groups have only recently rediscovered this forgotten language. But it is an ancient language. Jesus used it. When children came to Him, He took them into His arms and blessed them. When He wanted to heal a leper or a blind man, He touched them. When He wanted to demonstrate the fathomless depths of His love, He again used touch by washing the feet of His disciples.

A juvenile judge said once that he had never seen a father, who appeared in court with his son, touch his boy or show any sign of affection. If he would only put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, he said, it would transmit something. But it never happened.

Whenever I visit the sick as a priest, I hold their hand in mine as I pray. There is something about the human touch offered in love. It is the touch of Christ Himself.

Dr. Smiley Blanton, a psychiatrist, used to ask couples with marital or family problems: "Tell me, how long is it since you’ve taken a walk with your arm around your wife? Do you ever get down on the living room floor and play with your children? Has your family ever tried holdin