Humility – Page 8 – St John’s Adult Education

Pharisee & Publican – Triodion Synaxarion Reading

It was our Holy Fathers’ idea that through the entire Triodion would be commemorated in a concise form all God’s benefits to us from the beginning, using it as a reminder for all of us that we were created by Him, and were exiled from Paradise through the tasting of the fruit, rejecting the commandment that was given to us for our knowledge, and we were cast out through the envy of the arch villain serpent and enemy, who was made to crawl for his arrogance. That we remained cut off from the benefits of Paradise and were led by the devil. That the Son and Word of God, having suffered in His mercy, bowing the heavens, descended and made His abode in the Virgin and became man for our sake, showing us through His life the ascent into the heavens, through humility first of all then fasting and the rejection of evil and through His other deeds. That He suffered and rose from the dead and ascended once more into heaven, and He sent down the Holy Spirit upon His holy disciples and Apostles, who all proclaimed Him to be the Son of God and the most perfect God. And that once more the divine Apostles acted through the grace of the most Holy Spirit and gathered all the saints from the ends of the earth through their preaching, filling the world on high, which was the intention of the Creator from the beginning.

Now the purpose of the Triodion intended by the Holy Fathers on these three present feasts of the Publican and the Pharisee, the Prodigal Son, and the Second Coming is a kind of preparatory lesson and stimulation to prepare ourselves for the spiritual labors of the Fast, having put aside our usual corrupt habits.

First of all they present to us the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee, and they call the week following precursory. For those who desire to go off to do military battle, first ascertain the time of the battle from the leaders, so that having cleaned and polished their weapons, and preparing well all their other matters, and having removed all obstacles from their path, they earnestly go forth to their labors, taking the necessary supplies. Often before battle they tell anecdotes and tales and parables to incite their hearts to zeal, driving off idleness, fear, despair and other inadequate feelings. So the divine Fathers herald the coming fast against the armies of demons as a passion which holds fast our souls to cleanse ourselves of the poison accumulated over a long period of time. Not yet possessing those benefits, let us strive to obtain them, and arming ourselves properly, so let us set off to the labors of the Fast. Now the first weapon among the virtues is repentance and humility. And the temptation to attain the greatest humility is pride and arrogance. So they place before us first of all this present trustworthy parable from the Divine Gospel. It encourages us to shun the desire for the pride and arrogance of the Pharisee, and to cultivate the opposite desire of the Publican for humility and repentance. For the greatest and most grievous passion is pride and arrogance, since this is how the Devil fell from the heavens before the morning star and was cast into darkness. Because of this Adam, the father of our race, was driven from Paradise through partaking of the fruit. Through this example the Holy Fathers encourage all not to be proud of their successes, but always to be humble. For the Lord sets Himself against the proud, but He gives grace to the humble. Better a man who has sinned, if he knows that he has sinned and repents, than a man who has not sinned and thinks of himself as righteous. For Christ said, “I say to you that the Publican went down to his house justified rather than the Pharisee.” This parable reveals that no one should exalt himself, even though he has done good deeds, but rather should always be humble and pray from his heart to God, for even if he should fall into the most serious sin, salvation is not far off. Through the prayers of all Thy holy Hymnographers, O Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen.

2018 Homily Zaccheus Sunday – Holy Cross Monastery Abbot Seraphim

Today, as we stand at the threshold of Great Lent, the Holy Church gives to us in the Gospel story of Zaccheus an icon of the Lenten journey which lies ahead. It is precisely an icon, because everything happens as it were in a flash, in one single image passing before our eyes. We hear nothing of Zaccheus’ past, and after these few short verses he never again appears on the pages of the New Testament. In fact, it is only in St. Luke’s Gospel that we hear of him at all. Yet for all its brevity, this Gospel passage contains within itself the entire narrative of salvation.

Zaccheus was the chief among the publicans. The publicans, the tax collectors of the Roman Empire, were considered to be the lowest of the low by the Jewish people. This was not only because they had betrayed their own people, becoming officials of the hated Roman occupation. It was not only because they enriched themselves by preying upon the poor, the weak, and the defenseless, openly committing thievery and extortion among their own neighbors and kinsmen. No, they were considered to be abominations above all because in order to become officials of the Roman Empire, they were required to voluntarily make pagan vows and to offer pagan sacrifice. In exchange for the fleeting riches of this life, they had willingly betrayed their God, their people, and their own souls.

Here is vividly shown the ineffable compassion of our Savior. Even before Zaccheus showed any sign of repentance, the Lord not only did not disdain him, but was even willing to voluntarily take upon Himself this greatest of shames before the people of Israel by eating and lodging in Zaccheus’ house. Truly, the Lord gives nobody up as lost, not even those who have deliberately and knowingly betrayed God and cut themselves off from their divine inheritance as “the seed of Abraham, and heirs according to the promise.” Such is the hope and the power of repentance, which the Church places before our eyes on this last Sunday before the Lenten Triodion is opened and the “Season of Repentance” begins.

And truly, all of us … have betrayed and continue to betray our ineffable and divine calling, choosing to turn away towards the riches of this present life, whatever the form they may take in each of our sinful hearts. As Abba Dorotheos warns us monastics: “We think that having left the world and come to a monastery, we have left everything worldly; but here also, for the sake of meaningless things, we are filled with worldly attachments.” We have crucified ourselves to the world, and yet we have not crucified the world to ourselves. We monastics, far more than those living in the world, are without excuse in our love for the fleeting things of this life, yet all of us alike fall many, many times each day.

This is tragic, and yet we will never pass out of the reach of our own failings so long as we are on this earth. In the words of the Apostle James, all of us stumble in many things. Each of these stumblings has idolatry at its heart; in every fall, we sacrifice a bit of our souls which rightly belongs to God. And yet, though seeing more clearly than we do our deep impurity and ingratitude, the Lord does not reject us as we have rejected Him. He yet comes to us, and even now He is coming to us in the Holy Gifts about to be consecrated, coming to lodge with us in the unworthy and neglected house of our soul.

Seeing this, we must all like Zaccheus hasten to come down and prepare a place for the Lord. As the Holy Fathers teach us, to “come down” is to humble ourselves, which is the absolutely necessary prerequisite to any work of virtue. Had Zaccheus not come down and humbled himself, then doubtless he would have been filled with vainglory and smug self-satisfaction at such a great deed as his giving away of all his goods to the poor and to those he had wronged – and he would have thereby lost Christ, who “resisteth the proud but giveth grace to the humble.”

These works of virtue, however, are still quite necessary, especially – as Zaccheus practiced – those virtues which oppose the passions that run strongest in ourselves. It is a spiritual law that if we are not progressing in virtue then we are falling back into sin, and consequently falling away from the presence of the Lord. Yet at the beginning of this Lenten journey, it is essential to firmly remind ourselves that all virtue, all asceticism, and all piety will serve only for our condemnation if they are not accompanied by a sincere striving for humility.

Yet even more than all of this, there is one aspect of today’s Gospel story which we must learn without fail in order to properly begin our Lenten struggle. What happened to Zaccheus which wrought such a great change in his soul? What was it that not only brought about sincere repentance for his former deeds, that not only filled his heart with longing for a better way of life than that of treachery and ill-gotten gain, but which also inspired him to imagine that such a great change was even possible for such a one as he? Certainly not the hatred, scorn and derision of the righteous ones of his day. In short, what turned him away from all the false glamor, ease and pleasure of this life toward the Kingdom of Heaven, and what made him believe that even one who had fallen so far as he had any hope of entering therein?

The answer is quite simple: he caught a glimpse of Christ. We do not know what was happening in his heart up until that time, but we do know that when he saw Christ, everything changed. His life was instantly and forever transformed. Though he was not touched by the healing hands of the Savior, though he was still separated from the Lord by the crowd of his own sins and passions, yet one glimpse which he caught from the top of a sycamore tree was enough to renew and recreate his heart.

And though all of us standing here have betrayed our God like Zaccheus, yet all of us have also, at least once in our lives, in a brief and fleeting instant, beheld His saving face. Some of us may be given the grace to perceive His presence often. For some of us, that moment may never come again on this earth. But it is enough. It is enough, as long as all the rest of our life is a striving (even if through constant failure) to remember that Holy Face, and to purify – as far as we are able – the house of our heart, in the knowledge that He is coming again at the end of the ages to abide there forever. This was the real meaning of Zaccheus’ asceticism, of his total renunciation of all his former life. It was this that led him to his holy death as a martyr. And so it must be for us also, during this Lenten season and during all the season of our life on this earth. All the righteousness and all the asceticism in the world will avail us nothing if at its heart there is anything other than the all-merciful, all-compassionate, and all-forgiving Face of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, to Whom be honor and dominion, together with His Father Who is without beginning and His all-holy and good and life-creating Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Pharisee & Publican – Great Lent Week By Week Meaning – Greek Orthodox Archdiocese Of America

Arrogance is the perversion of the soul and spirit of man; it is the greatest weapon of the evil one; it is the mother of hypocrisy; it is the obstacle of spiritual progress: it is the degradation of civilization; it is the greatest enemy of man; it is the opposite of repentance; it is the corruption of the conscience of man. This is why the Church designated the first Sunday of preparation for acceptance of the Message of the Resurrection of Christ, with the Parable of the Tax Collector and Pharisee being read. The root of evil, arrogance, should be uprooted and replaced with the virtue of humbleness, which is the teaching of this Parable. The highest degree of man’s arrogance is when a person speaks to God in prayers as did the Pharisee, who said, “God I thank thee”, only for the opportunity to enumerate his achievements publicly, comparing himself to others who, according to him, were sinners, saying “I am not like other men, sinners, or even like this tax collector”. He extolled himself saying, “I fast, I give tithe”, which he did. But the more he boasted, the more he condemned himself through arrogance.

On the other hand, the tax collector confessed: “God be merciful to me a sinner”. The repentance of the tax collector is the basis of Christian life; it is the passage into the Kingdom; it is the reestablishment of the image of God in the soul of His creature. Humbleness is the queen of all virtues. Thus, the first phrase of the hymnology of the day is: “Let us not pray pharisee-like. . . . Open to me the doors of repentance”. The combination of almsgiving, prayer and piety, along with the intention of repentance like that of the tax collector, is imperative in the life of a Christian. The attitude of the tax collector made him a steward of divine gifts. Repentance and confession of faith is the same two-sided coin.

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