THE MYRRHBEARING WOMEN

"Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week," the Myrrhbearing Women approached the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus with sweet smelling spices.  Meanwhile, the disciples were hiding behind closed doors "for fear of the Jews," mourning in solitude the untimely death of their Master.

Clearly that which the Myrhhbearing Women intended to do was an act of pure love and devotion, and indeed--perfect love casts out all fear.  Nor was this a rationally thought out plan they had conceived, considering that the tomb had been sealed with a large stone and secured by a guard of Roman soldiers.    Certainly they had no hope of rolling away the stone themselves.  What then were they thinking? 

Even so, they purchased the myrhh and set forth on their mission, because their hearts--overflowing with love for the Lord--would not allow them to do otherwise.  And so it came to pass that they were the first to receive the glad tidings our Lord's glorious Resurrection.  Though their hearts were burdened by inconsolable grief and despair no less than the Apostles, they nevertheless did not succumb to a sense of defeat and hopelessness, but rather--they actively sought to fulfill the laws of piety.

For their focus was not, you see, centered upon their own self-centered grief and disappointment that things had seemingly not turned out as they had hoped or expected.  Their focus was rather upon the One who had utterly transformed their lives, opening their spiritual eyes to the sublime vision of a dimension of reality that far transcends the stark reality of this fallen world.

The Myrhhbearing Women were, in fact, captivated by a vision of Beauty and ultimate Truth so profound that it can never fade away.  And it is indeed this very vision of ultimate Truth and Beauty that sinners such as you I  must ceaselessly cling to, no matter how dark and dreary our circumstances may appear in this vale of tears, as we patiently endure every trial and temptation we may encounter on the path of salvation that leads to eternal life in God's heavenly Kingdom.

TAKE UP YOUR CROSS

"Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me."  This Gospel imperative is perfectly clear, yet all too often we simply gloss over what is demanded of us if we truly desire salvation.  Step number one is that you must deny your self --which means simply that you must cease to exist as a self-centered ego desiring little more than the satisfaction of your own earthly passions and desires (even though they may not be sinful in themselves).  But have you, my friends, so far taken even the first step toward this goal?

Then there's the part about taking up one's cross, which seems at first glance like a pious and proper thing to do, until we come face to face with the reality of this injunction in our day to day lives and come to realize that what is required is the eager and willing acceptance (with profound gratitude toward God) of whatever pain and suffering he may send us for the sake of our salvation.  And here again--can any of us truthfully say that we have taken up our cross in this sense without grumbling and complaining, and that we are determined to endure unto the bitter end the trials and tribulations that have been allotted to us in this life?

And yet it seems to me that we would all be eager to confess that we are Christians--followers of Christ.  But what kind of following is this, really?  We do believe, perhaps, that He truly is the eternal Son of God Who alone reveals the way of salvation.  We believe with our minds, however, while our hearts remain attached to the false promises of this world.

As for myself, I fully accept as my own the words of St. Polycarp on his road to martyrdom in Rome, "I have not yet even begun to be a disciple of Jesus Christ."  May God have mercy on us all during this season of the Great Fast, and reveal to us the only Path that leads to eternal life in His heavenly Kingdom!

ON THE ESSENCE AND ENERGIES OF GOD

"Therefore we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away..."  the Holy Apostle Paul writes to the Hebrews, and again..."How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?"  For truly the living God Whom we worship is nearer to us than the very air we breathe.  It is through Him alone that we live and move and have our being, and it is by His grace that we are vouchsafed to become partakers of the Divine Nature, that we might be granted the gift of eternal life in His heavenly Kingdom.

For it is sure and certain that the God Whom our father among the saints Gregory Palamas proclaims is not some abstract philosophical construct totally inaccessible to our human experience.  While the essence of God is indeed totally transcendent to every conceivable conception of the human mind, His energies permeate the entire created order, sustaining every particle of existence...whether seen or unseen.  Unlike the false God of the Muslims, the God we worship is love, and it is precisely through love that he sustains the universe and opens unto us the path that leads to eternal life.

God alone is truly eternal--Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, and so--of all things in this created universe--love alone shall endure unto endless ages!  And so--if we truly love God with all of our heart, soul and mind, and our neighbor as our very own self--we shall be saved--and truly nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!

It is, however, unfortunate that we latter day Christians have rendered love itself into some sort of abstract principle, essentially unrelated to our everyday life in this world.  For to truly love means that we cease to exist as self-centered egos.  We must die to this world if we desire to live in Christ--and that is the great challenge we face during this Lenten Fast.  So may God grant to us all patience, courage, meekness and humility...and all things else that are needful for salvation.

COME AND SEE

Nathaniel said unto Philip, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"  And Philip replies, "Come and see."  Now it is obvious that what Philip invites Nathaniel to "see" is not the mere outward form of Jesus.  After all, the Pharisees and other religious rulers of the Jewish people likewise "saw" the human form of Jesus as He went about preaching and performing miracles.  They "saw" indeed, but truly they did not comprehend that this was the eternal Son of God, of one essence with the Father.

It is only through the eyes of faith--not the eyes of the flesh--that it is possible to behold the divinity of Christ concealed within and beyond His earthly form.  For surely Jesus Christ is not merely a "good man" or a prophet--He is in truth the Godman--fully human and fully God.  He is God made flesh,  Emmanuel--God With Us.

It is, for this reason, not only possible, but absolutely necessary that His human image be depicted in icons.  This is why all those who refuse to venerate the icons have placed themselves outside the Church of God.  For if it is not truly the case that our Lord took flesh from the pure blood of the Virgin, then all our hopes for salvation are in vain.

Heaven forbid that we should venerate the icon as a mere "religious picture," or even worse as some sort of idol.  An icon serves as a window into heaven, through which we behold--with the eyes of faith--the ineffable glory that shines forth from the prototype.  God became man, that the sons and daughters of God might become gods by grace, as the holy Fathers taught.  This is the true Orthodox Faith that has established the universe!

THE DAY IS AT HAND

In his Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul commands the Romans, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."  (This quote, by the way, is from the Old Testament book of Leviticus--one indication among many of the continuity between the Old and the New.  In Christ, the Law of Moses is not set aside, but fulfilled.)    St. Paul then goes on to add "And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep....The night is far spent, the day is at hand."

Truly time is God's great gift, given that we might work out our own salvation with "fear and trembling."  But do we, in fact, fear God in the biblical sense (for He is awesome)--according to the true meaning of the word--trembling before His presence as we contemplate the Final Judgment that awaits us all?  And are we seriously striving to work out our own salvation?

Ah! but no, my friends--is it not rather the case that we allow ourselves to be carried along upon the relentless flow of time while we slumber--mostly unaware that the night is well spent and the day of God's judgment is at hand?  But now the season of Great Lent is suddenly upon us, and we are about to embark upon a perilous journey upon the vast sea of the Fast.  It is, therefore, high time that we awake from our lethargy, setting aside our egotistic thoughts and desires for the sake of the heavenly Kingdom.  Let us, then, at least make a beginning at storing up for ourselves riches in heaven, which neither moth nor rust can corrupt.

Let us put on the armor of light and wage war against the forces of darkness that lurk within us all, seeking to destroy us in a hell of our own making.  But the truth is, we cannot even take the first step toward the light of salvation until we have sincerely forgiven, from the bottom of our hearts, all those who have offended us--even our worst enemies.  For truly love is the fulfillment of the Law.

THE SHEEP AND THE GOATS

Nothing's black and white, we are told, yet it seems like today's Gospel of the Last Judgment truly is black and white: when Christ returns at the end of time to judge the nations, it would appear that there will be but two categories...the sheep and the goats.  Each and every one of us, my friends, shall be judged accordingly: either we shall be a sheep or a goat, and there seems to be no middle ground.  There are, indeed, no geeks and no shoaps. 

Either we have ministered to the least of Christ's brethren during the course of this earthly life, or we have not.  Either we shall "inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world," or you shall "depart into the everlasting fire prepared for the  Devil and his angels."  It will be impossible, at that point, to straddle the proverbial fence.  Indeed, our salvation is not a game...or if it is, we are playing for keeps.

That situation at the Final Judgment could hardly be more starkly black and white, and surely there are no "fifty shades of grey."  So where in all of this is there any wiggle room at all?  There are but two possible outcomes: either we shall be welcomed as faithful sheep into Christ's pasture, or we shall be consigned to the outer darkness, where "there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

Of course, this is not the "Jesus meek and mild" I learned about in Protestant Sunday school.  Until the Final Judgment strikes us like a ton of bricks, we can waffle all we want, but then--WHAM!  Either we are with Him or we are against Him, and there can be no middle course.  The bottom line is simple--we must put to death our self-centered egos for the sake of the least of Christ's brethren, or else we shall willfully isolate ourselves for all eternity in a hell of our own making.

THE PRODIGAL SON

Just who is the man who has wandered into a far country, wasting his inheritance from his father on prodigal living?  It is, indeed, EVERYMAN--you and I--who has squandered the good gifts of our heavenly Father through loose living. 

And so it is that once we have willfully departed from our Father's house, we experience inevitably a famine--spiritual rather than material--for truly our Lord assures us that "Man does not live by bread alone."

Fortunately, the Prodigal Son at last "comes to himself"--he sees clearly what a foolish mistake he has made, and he repents.  But the fact is, nations can also "depart into a far country" and experience the spiritual famine of godlessness.  When the sons and daughters of Holy Rus rejected the authority of the God-anointed Czar and departed unto the  atheistic "far country" of Godlessness, they thought to experience the purely materialistic fruits of a New World Order through which would be created a heaven on earth--a so-called 'Worker's Paradise." 

Instead, they brought to pass a spiritual famine the likes of which the world had never known, until finally--in the fullness of time, through the prayers of the holy New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia--the nation repented of its madness and cast off the dark satanic forces that had held them in constraint for eighty years.

Only now it is we here in America who are confronted with the temptation to create a new evil empire in which man supposedly does live by bread alone.  And so, may God grant mercy to us all, that we may truly comprehend the deceits of the Devil and endure unto the end the persecution that is sure to come.