Lent – Page 2 – St John’s Adult Education

How to Say Yes to God: Homily for the Feast of the Annunciation

By Father Phillip LeMasters

Today we celebrate the very best example of how to live faithfully as a human being before God with the feast of the Annunciation. When the Archangel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she was to become the Theotokos, she freely accepted this extraordinary calling when she said, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” When she offered herself to become the Living Temple of God, she played a crucial role in how the Savior would “deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage.” In opening her life without reservation to Christ, she made it possible for Him to “share in flesh and blood” and participate in our humanity so “that through death He might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil.”

By conventional human standards, this teenage girl had no power or prominence at all. No one in first-century Palestine would have been inclined to look to her as having a role in delivering them from anything. But through her courage in accepting a calling that would impact every dimension of her life in ways that she could not possibly have fully understood, the Theotokos became a fierce warrior against evil because she broke the cycle of disobedience that went back to the rebellion of our first parents. They chose satisfying their own self-centered desires over obeying the Lord and becoming more like Him in holiness. She chose, instead, to say “yes” without reservation to the point of sharing her own flesh and blood with the Son of God, and of loving and serving Him throughout His earthly life, even as He hung on the Cross. She is the New Eve through whom the Second Adam became one of us for our salvation.

In order for the Savior to be fully divine and fully human, He had to be born of a woman. In order for Him to be the Great High Priest Who offered Himself fully on the Cross to conquer the power of death, the Messiah “had to be made like His brethren in every respect.” The Theotokos’ offering of herself in free obedience made it possible for Him to do that. Here we encounter the great mystery of divine-human cooperation or synergy, for God always respects our freedom as unique persons in responding to His will. God did not choose the Virgin Mary randomly, but prepared for her across the generations of the Hebrew people, culminating in the aged, barren couple of Joachim and Anna. Like Abraham and Sarah before them, they did not conceive simply by their own youthful physical abilities, but after painful decades of childlessness due to the miraculous blessing of the Lord. John the Baptist was born to Zechariah and Elizabeth in the same way.

These elderly parents of newborns bear witness that something very different from birth into a world dominated by the fear of death has arrived. Now a new age of the fulfillment of God’s promises has dawned. It is fulfilled through a young girl’s amazing obedience, as the Savior becomes an unborn Child in her womb. She conceived and gave birth without passion, without a husband, and in a way that preserved her virginity. In the Theotokos’ astounding offering of herself to the Lord, the brokenness and corruption of our humanity is unwound and undone. This New Eve does not choose the satisfaction of her own desires over obedience to God, but opens every dimension of her being to share in His life. Through her, the New Adam is born Who heals all the corruption of the first.

Remember, however, that neither our Savior nor the Theotokos is a conventional hero. Instead of destroying His enemies through brute force, the Lord submitted to the ultimate humiliation of crucifixion, death, burial in a tomb, and descent to Hades in order to deliver us from captivity to fear of the grave and to bring us into the joy of eternal life. He does not inflict suffering upon others, but takes it upon Himself purely for our sake. The Theotokos was a young virgin, unmarried and of no particular importance in her society. Her unwed pregnancy was scandalous and certainly not a path to a conventional life. Eventually, she saw her Son and God condemned as a blasphemer and a traitor, and then nailed to the Cross. Her purity and blessedness were surely hidden from the world and known only to those who had the eyes to see her Son as the Savior, not in spite of His Passion, but because of it.

We must use the spiritual disciplines of Lent to become more like the Theotokos in her complete obedience and receptivity to the Lord. The Archangel announced her unique calling to which she said “yes.” Through her, the Son of God united Himself with humanity. Our calling, then, is to become like her in hearing and responding to God’s calling as we unite ourselves personally with Him.

If we believe the good news of this feast, then we may shut off no part of our lives from communion with Christ in holiness. His becoming the God-Man calls us to follow the example of the Theotokos in receiving Him in a fashion that transforms every dimension of our life into a sign of His salvation. That is a tall order that we probably cannot image we would ever fulfill. We likely cannot even begin to understand how that could be possible for people like us who are gravely weakened by our sins and the slaves of our self-centered desires.

By this point in Lent, we may have a clearer sense of how hard it is to open our lives to Christ through prayer, fasting, generosity, forgiveness, and repentance. We undertake these practices so poorly and feebly, often gaining a stronger sense of our weakness than of peace, blessedness, and joy. If we have embraced the season with integrity so far, Lent will have opened our eyes a bit to the true state of our souls; and if we are honest, there is much there that we do not like to see. Though that may seem like bad news, it is actually exactly what we need. For if we are to grow in personal union with the Lord, we have to get over any self-righteous illusions that would drown out the message we need to hear. If we are to learn to say “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word,” we must do so as the particular people we truly are. If we try to relate to God with some kind of imaginary holiness or religiosity, we will do more harm than good to our souls. We may be able to fool ourselves, but we can never fool God.

Through the Theotokos’s response to the message of the Archangel, the Savior became one of us, uniting divinity and humanity in His own Person. By His grace, He calls and enables each of us to find the healing of our souls by sharing in His blessed life. As the Lenten journey continues with all its struggles, we have the opportunity to gain the spiritual strength to receive Him more fully as we grow into the unique persons He created us to be in His image and likeness. Let us look to the Theotokos as our hero, our great example, of what happens when a humble, obedient person says “yes” to God from the depths of her soul. There is no way other than becoming more like her to open ourselves to the victory over the fear of death that her Son accomplished through His Cross and glorious resurrection on the third day.

Surrender Ourselves To God’s Grace – Archimandrite Aimilianos

In our class Sunday we discussed distractions and how difficult it can be to remain focused during these longer, more intense services we experience during Lent. I thought this article was full of wisdom and pragmatic guidance that might be useful to us as we approach the mid-point of the Fast which occurs next Wednesday. The focus of the article is on the Divine Liturgy. It’s an excerpt from the outstanding book ’The Way of the Spirit’ by Archimandrite Aimilianos. It’s a useful next step as we get in touch with our sense of exile that he described in this earlier article . It’s also a good followup to the article we read about ’finding our true selves in Christ’.

Chapter 2 – On The State That Jesus Confers

My beloved children, how marvelous was today’s Gospel lesson! It’s one we’ve heard many times and experience continuously, especially during the celebration of the Divine Liturgy. As we journey through the desert of life, it is only natural that our thirst should draw us to the Liturgy, because the Divine Liturgy is a sumptuous table set in the open air, such as that which the Lord has spread before us today.

What did we hear in the Gospel? Jesus gathered the people together. Why? Because the Apostles told Him they have nothing to eat (cf. Mk 6.36; Mt 14.15). Thousands of people, who had come from every town to see Jesus (Mk 6.33), would have gone hungry, and so the Lord had them sit down in groups on the ground (Mk 6.40), in order to satisfy their souls. They had gone forth into the wilderness to see Jesus, and He gathered them all together (cf. Mk 6.35; Mt 14.15).

The Divine Liturgy, my beloved, is precisely this going forth; it is a movement from one place to another, which we enact continuously. It is also a sitting down in the open in order to eat. It is, first of all, a kind of exodus. But from where? The people mentioned in the Gospel went forth from their towns and villages (Mk 6.33; Mt 14.13), but we come forth from ourselves, as well as from the places in which we live. We leave one kind of place, and come to another, which is different from the one we left. And who among us, upon entering a church, does not sense that there is something special here? Who does not know that to come here means to leave all else behind? And this can be seen by the fact that, if an inappropriate thought enters our mind while we’re here, we immediately want to dismiss it. And even if we’re unable to, we recognize it as something foreign, something that has intruded into the space of our soul, something that has slipped past our guard and entered into us.

We enter the church, then, when we go forth from ourselves in power, in substance, and in truth, leaving behind all our sins, our inclinations, and our aspirations. To enter the church means to leave outside all those things that make up our life in the world. That which exists is God (cf. Ex 3.14), but that which is ours, and which alone belongs to us, is our sin, our self will, and our desire. Apart from God, the self is something non-existent, even though it is, and remains, the creation of His hands, the breath of His first blessing (cf. Gen 2.7).

When we enter the church, we leave behind, not simply the things we see, but even the things for which we hope, because the latter in particular occupy a central place in our lives. Even though the things we hope for are not currently in our hands, we live as if they already were, feeling them intensely, as if we could run our fingers through them, lay hold of them, and possess them. In general, the intensity of our feelings about such things assumes the character of an actual experience, and we must leave that behind, along with all that we see. 2

And what we “see” is everything we encounter in the course of the day: things seen by the eyes of the body as well as those of the soul—which are much more perceptive. The things we “see” are all the things we experience, which stir us up, unsettle us, occupy our minds, give us pleasure, and lift our spirits. When our eyes fall upon them, they elevate us, but only to a place within the visible world: never beyond it.

In leaving behind everything we see, we come forth from that which constitutes our place of exile. This is the new exodus undertaken by the children of God every time they assemble and unite themselves to Christ in the sacred space of the church.

Having left everything behind, where do we find ourselves? In the open air, as befits people close to God (Wis 16.9; cf. Lk 21.31). 3

Why do I say in the open air? Because, looking around the church, we feel that we’re standing in heaven, and heaven cannot be considered a closed space. 4 And this is why Christ chose the desert as a place for prayer: precisely because its endless expanses and tremendous openness symbolize heaven itself. The desert, moreover, stands in contrast to the world: it contains no worldly pleasure, it gives you no earthly delight, and it offers you no fleshly repose. Heaven is something like that.

It follows, then, that no one can live in the desert if he’s still seeking to satisfy his own desires, if he is still anxious to realize his own hopes. You ask God to satisfy your desires, and, when He doesn’t, you think He’s turning a deaf ear. You ask God to realize your hopes, and to your dismay they remain elusive. You ask God to deepen your religious feelings, only to discover that He keeps Himself at a distance. Why? Because in reality those things are only about you, and not God, and thus they constitute the closed space in which you are confined; they are the place out of which God wants to lead you. Now, however, we find ourselves in the open air like that crowd of thousands, people close to God, close to the Lord. As for me, I’m blind, but I’m here too. I’m paralyzed, but nevertheless I’m here. I have no wings, I’m confined to the earth, but I’m here too, close to God.

What does it mean to be close to God? Think for a moment: can you be close to an icon and not be moved to venerate it? Can you be close to a fire and not be warmed? Can you be close to the light and not be illumined? Of course not. How, then, can you be close to God and not become godlike? How can you stretch out on God’s open spaces and not be raised up to the heights of His grandeur?

It follows, then, that after our exit from the world, we find ourselves close to God. We do not, however, find ourselves before the face of God (cf. Ex 33.11). Why? Because, for the most part, the eyes of our soul and body (which are both earthly) do not see God: they only seek Him. In the darkness broken by the brazen lamps, we seek Him, but we do not see Him. And that is the tragedy of human existence: we see everything except that which truly exists. All creation, which had a beginning and which will come to an end, falls under our gaze, which means we see things that, in reality, have no independent existence. 5 The tragic figure of man does not see that which alone truly exists: the One Who Is (cf. Ex 3.14), and Who is always with us.

That is what it means to be close to God. And when we enter into the open spaces of the church, we immediately experience a particular feeling, a feeling which confirms for us that here, in this place, our Helper is at hand. He is invisible, but you feel Him, as if He were rushing toward you, as if you could hear the sound of His breathing. He is your Helper, the One Who can deliver you, Who can redeem you, Who alone can satisfy your insatiable soul, which is forever being gnawed by hunger. You are close to God, and God is invisibly present. But, you may ask, where is He? Who can see Him?

If you wish to see God, my beloved children, there’s only one thing to do: go to church filled with longing to see His face, filled with divine and heavenly desire to be able, somehow, to feel the presence of your Helper and Defender. When you do this, your soul will experience an initially strange feeling: it is God touching your heart. And what will the heart do in response? Will it laugh and rejoice? No. It will be filled with a blessed, godly grief, and begin to weep and lament. In the presence of the Lord, you’ll feel your heart—which is like a useless sack—filling to the brim with the sense of its own emptiness and thereby overflowing with tears. And these tears will be its secret cry, saying:

“Where are You, Lord? Have mercy on me.” “Where are You, Lord?” That is the heart’s first cry. But it immediately realizes that it’s not able to see God, and that, if it did, it would lose its life (cf. Ex 33.20). Correcting its mistake, it continues: “Grant me Your mercy, You are my mercy, Yours is mercy, I am Yours, and You alone can have mercy upon me; You alone can bring me up from the pit of tribulation, from the depths of Your absence and my absence—Your absence from me, and mine from Your own spiritual life.”

When the soul begins to cry—and it cries to God, my beloved, very easily indeed, because God, in a sense, is the soul’s only surviving relative, and what could be more natural than that it should seek Him, and that it should cry when it realizes that it cannot see Him? When you allow your soul to cry, when you reject everything that cuts off the flow of your tears, then you’ll have a feeling of much greater intimacy with God. You’ll understand that now someone else governs your life. You’ll sense that now someone else has grasped the tiller, someone else has taken hold of the wheel (indeed of your own hands) and is now directly guiding you Himself. You become someone guided by the grace of God.

We are guided by God’s grace, to which you can surrender yourself in all confidence. Indeed, it is impossible for you to do the slightest thing without it. Consider the glory of the stars, the magnificence of the heavens, and the wonders of the earth: none of these can give you anything at all. The only thing that can fashion a new heart within you (cf. Ezek 11.19), rendering the old one utterly useless, is the power of God’s grace.

Glorifying What Is Not Of This World – The Kingdom Of God Through The Divine Sign Of The Cross In Our Hearts

By Father Sergius Bulgakov ; extracted from the book ‘Churchly Joy: Orthodox Devotions For the Church Year’

The power of God triumphs by means of itself, not by means of the power of this world. For the world, there is no power of God. The world does not see and does not know the power of God: it laughs at the power of God. But Christians know that the sign of God is powerlessness in the world — the Infant in the manger.

And there is no need to gild the manger, for a gilded manger is no longer Christ’s manger. There is no need for earthly defense, for such defense is superfluous for the Infant Christ. There is no need for earthly magnificence, for it is rejected by the King of Glory, the Infant in the manger.

But there is a need for the authentic revelation of the God of Love. There is a need for the image of all-forgiving meekness, praying for His enemies and tormenters. There is a need for the image of the way of the cross to Christ’s Kingdom, to defeat evil by the triumphant self-evidence of good. There is a need for the image of freedom from the world.

And powerless, we are powerful. In the kingdom of this world we desire to serve the Kingdom of God; we believe in, call, and await this Kingdom. For we have come to know the sign of the Infant in the manger.

Power in powerlessness, Triumph in humiliation. And let our heart be our manger, in which we bear the divine sign, the sign of the cross.

2nd Sunday of Lent Adult Education Class

This week the Church honors St. Gregory Palamas and his many important contributions to our faith. The theme I’d like us to focus on this week in the context of St. Gregory’s teaching is healing. Here is a quote from him that describes this process:

St. Gregory writes,

This bodily renewal is seen now through faith and hope rather than with our eyes, not being reality yet. The soul’s renewal, on the other hand, begins… with holy baptism through the remission of sins and is nourished and grows through righteousness in faith. The soul is continually renewed in the knowledge of God and the virtues associated with this knowledge, and will reach perfection in the future contemplation of God face to face. Now, however, it sees through a glass darkly.

An important aspect of ‘our part’ in this healing is in the keeping of the Lord’s commandments as we learn to rely and depend upon the gift of the Holy Spirit. St. Gregory continues:

For the Lord has promised to manifest Himself to the man who keeps [His commandments], a manifestation He calls His indwelling and that of the Father, saying, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and will make our abode wth him, and “I will manifest Myself to him.”

I’d like us to begin class this week with your observations on this second week of Lent. Next, I’d like us to read and reflect on the short homily from Father Phillip LeMaster entitled ’St. Gregory Palamas and the Healing of our Paralysis’. I’d then like us to read a short, very powerful reflection from C.S. Lewis that fits very nicely into this healing current of St. Gregory with an article entitled ‘Finding our True Selves in Christ’. I’d also like us to spend some time on prayer and use Archbishop Kallistos Ware’s very short article ’How Essential Is Prayer’.

I will print out the following articles for our class tomorrow:

Below are the other posts from this week that may also have value and relevance to our class and your Lenten journey:

On the subject of the Paralyzed Man – Homily by St. Gregory Palamas

Taken from The Homilies of St. Gregory Palamas Vol. 2, compiled by Christopher Veniamin. Homily 29 “On the subject of the Paralyzed Man who, according to Matthew the Evangelist, was healed in Capernaum. Also on Godly Sorrow”

The scribes and Pharisees, Greeks and Jews, are doubtful about the power and grace of Holy Baptism in which we believe, and ask, “Who can forgive sins?” (Mark 2:7). But we whose souls and bodies used to be paralyzed through sensual pleasures and passions, and incapable of doing anything good, hear the Lord saying to each of us, as to that paralyzed man, “Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thy house” (Matt. 9:6). Strengthened by the grace and power of Holy Baptism within us, we become vigorous and active in virtue, and bring into subjection our mental and physical capabilities and those material things which ought to be subservient to them, but which formerly overpowered us. We then go wherever pleases God and ourselves and, as far as we can, move to our real home, the eternal heavenly mansions. Those who see us ordering our lives in this godly way, marvel and glorify God, Who has given such power and authority to those who believe in Him (cf. Matt. 9:8), that they have their citizenship in heaven while still living on earth. But when we sin after being baptized, although the grace and power of Baptism remain because of the Giver’s love for mankind, the soul’s health and purity depart.

That is why we who are sinners need to be sorrowful and downcast again over our former sins, and to prostrate ourselves anew in repentance, that we may hear once more in a mysterious fashion those words to the paralyzed man, “Son, be of good cheer”, receive forgiveness and have joy in exchange for our grief. For this kind of sorrow is that spiritual honey which we suck from the barren rock, according to the Scriptural allusion, “They sucked honey out of the rock” (Deut. 32: 13 LXX). As Paul says, “That Rock was Christ” (1 Cor. 10:4). Do not be surprised that I refer to sorrow as honey. This is what Paul meant when he said, “Godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of (2 Cor. 7: 10). When someone with an injured tongue is offered honey, it seems to sting, but when his wounds are healed he realizes that honey is sweet. Similarly, when the fear of God touches perceptive souls through the preaching of the Gospel, it brings sorrow, as they are still covered in sin’s wounds. But once they have rid themselves of these through repentance, they receive the Gospel’s joy instead. As the Savior says, “Your sorrow shall be turned into joy” (John 16:20). Which sorrow? The sorrow the Lord’s disciples felt at being deprived of their Master and Teacher; the suffering Peter experienced when he denied Christ; the grief of every godly person who repents of his transgressions and his slothful lack of virtue. On falling into sins we should accuse only ourselves and no one else. When Adam broke the commandment, putting the blame on Eve did not help him, nor was it any use for her to accuse the serpent (Gen. 3:12-13). God put us in charge of ourselves, and our souls have been granted absolute authority over the passions, so nothing can prevail over us and force us.

This, then, is godly sorrow that brings salvation: to blame only ourselves, nobody else, for what we do wrong, to grieve over ourselves, and to be reconciled with God through confession of our sins and painful remorse over them.

St. Gregory Palamas and the Healing of our Paralysis – Second Sunday of Lent

By Father Phillip LeMasters

Think for a moment how you would feel if you went to the doctor with a serious health problem and were simply told medical facts about your condition and that you were an interesting case. You would probably not be happy at all because you go to a physician to be healed, not simply to learn truths that in and of themselves do not restore you to health.

On this second Sunday of Great Lent, we remember a great saint who knew that our salvation is not in mere ideas about God, but in true participation in His life by grace. St. Gregory Palamas lived in the 14^thcentury in the Byzantine Empire. A monastic, a bishop, and a scholar, he defended the experience of hesychast monks who in the stillness of deep prayer beheld the divine light of the uncreated energies of God. In ways that go beyond rational understanding, they saw the divine glory as they participated in the life of God by grace.

Against those rationalists who said that such a thing was impossible, St. Gregory insisted that we know the Lord by being united with Him in prayer and holiness. Jesus Christ has joined humanity and divinity and dwells in our hearts by the power of the Holy Spirit. We truly become partakers of the divine nature when we know by experience the presence of God in our lives.

That is precisely what happened to the paralyzed man in today’s gospel lesson. The Lord did not simply convey ideas to Him, but instead shared His divine energies by restoring him to health, both spiritually and physically. At the root of all human corruption is our sin, which weakens and sickens us all, and the Savior showed His divinity by forgiving the man’s sins. Christ then enabled the man to rise up and walk as evidence that He has the authority to forgive sins as the Son of God.

This healing also shows what it means to be infused with the gracious divine energies, for the paralyzed man experienced freedom from bondage and a miraculous transformation of every dimension of his life. He did not simply hear words or receive a diagnosis, for the Lord healed him inwardly and outwardly.

This miracle speaks to us all, of course, because we are sinners paralyzed by our own actions and those of others. We have made ourselves so sick and weak that we do not have the strength to eradicate the presence of evil in our lives. Just think for a moment of how easily we fall into words, thoughts, and deeds that we know are not holy. Our habitual sins have become second nature to us; left to our own resources we are no more able to make them go away than a paralyzed man is to get up and walk.

The good news is that Jesus Christ comes to every single one of us with forgiveness and healing. Too often, we are willing only to ask for forgiveness, but not to rise, take up our beds, and walk. In other words, we fail to see that being infused with the gracious divine energies is not a matter of simply being excused from paying a penalty or declared not guilty; instead, it is truly a calling to become who we are created to be in God’s image and likeness. It is to be healed from all the ravages of sin and to shine with the light of holiness as we participate by grace in the life of the Holy Trinity.

No, we do not have to become monks and nuns in order to do that. But we do need to do everything that we can to open ourselves to the healing energies of God. When we pray, fast, give to the needy, and practice forgiveness and reconciliation, or any other act of truth faithfulness or repentance, we do so in cooperation with the Holy Spirit, alive and active in us. Even the smallest bits of “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” that we experience are the fruits of the Spirit’s presence. (Gal. 5:22) We should cherish them as such and do what we can to help them grow and become characteristic of our lives and personalities.

The truth is that if we want to know Christ’s healing and strength, we have to obey His commandments, for He calls us all to get up and move forward in a holy life. In order to do that, we have to welcome and cooperate with our Lord’s mercy. Think again of going to the doctor yourself. We’re glad to hear that there’s a cure for our ailments, but that knowledge will do us no good unless we participate in the treatment. We have to take our medicine and do our therapy if we want to benefit personally.

How sad it would have been for the formerly paralyzed man to have disobeyed the Lord’s command and simply stayed in bed. How sad that we so often do precisely that in our refusal to cooperate with Christ’s healing and mercy by obeying Him. As we continue our Lenten journey, let’s remember that in every aspect of the Christian life we experience the gracious divine energies of the Lord. The Son of God has joined Himself to every dimension of our human existence and the Holy Spirit dwells in our hearts. We do not have mere signs and symbols of salvation, but God Himself. The only limits to His presence, power, and healing in our lives are those that we keep in place. This Lent, let’s leave our sick beds behind and do all that we can to participate more fully in the healing mercy that the Savior brings to each and every one of us. That’s the best way to prepare to behold the glory of His resurrection.

St Gregory Palamas – 2nd Sunday of Lent

By Abbot Seraphim Holy Cross Monastery Wayne, WV

St. Gregory was born in Constantinople in 1296. His father, who reposed when Gregory was only seven years old, enjoyed a prominent position in the Imperial Court as a member of the Senate and a Councilor of the Royal Court. He was entrusted by the Emperor to be the tutor of his grandson, who came to be the next emperor. Despite his father’s repose, St. Gregory enjoyed a privileged youth growing up near the Emperor and being educated by the most gifted philosophers and theologians of the time.

Following these studies, St. Gregory left for the Holy Mountain and became a monk. At the same time, his mother and two of his sisters also went to convents in Thessaloniki. In 1325, St. Gregory was ordained a hieromonk. In 1335 he was chosen as Abbot of the Esphigmenou Monastery but afterward stepped down and pursued the hesychastic life until he was asked to defend the Athonite monks against the charges launched by Barlaam the Calabrian. This conflict has commonly been termed the Hesychast Controversy. Later, he was ordained Archbishop of Thessaloniki. During this period, he was sent to Constantinople where the Turks captured him. After having been ransomed, he spent all his time with his flock in Thessaloniki during which period we have a significant portion of the homilies he delivered. He reposed on November 14, 1359. Nine years after his death, he was canonized and placed on the official calendar of the Hagia Sophia.

In his introductory work on the saint, Professor Papademetriou writes,

[Saint Gregory] Palamas did not construct a theological or philosophical system, nor was he a teacher writing academic theology. He was himself a man of prayer – a theologian who devoted himself to prayer, and when the Church was attacked, he was called upon to use his talents to defend it.[i]

Central to the controversy which St. Gregory was involved in is the question “What is the aim of the Christian life?” In its simplest answer, we can say, it is theosis which is the Greek word, usually translated into English as deification. It is a word that expresses the union of the Christian to God.

Further emphasizing this union, Fr. Dumitru Staniloae writes, “Orthodox spirituality aims at the perfection of the faithful in Christ. This perfection can’t be obtained except by participation in His divine-human life. Therefore the goal of Orthodox spirituality is the perfection of the believer by his union with Christ.”[ii]

This word cannot be rendered adequately in any modern language and can appear difficult to understand. Yet the term is used and defined when we read the Fathers of the Church, past and the present.

It is found in the writings of Saint Irenaeus of Lyons and, a hundred years later, in the works of St. Athanasius the Great. St. Irenaeus wrote, “the Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.”[iii] In the letter to Adelphium, St. Athanasius writes: “For He [i.e., God] has become Man, that He might deify us in Himself”[iv]and in his work entitled On the Incarnation he says, “For He [i.e., the Word] was made man that we might be made God.”[v]

This union with God is not to be confused with an absorption into God in a pantheistic sense like a drop of water into the ocean. Nor is it to be confused with a human relationship wherein is a union between those who love each other. Instead, this union with God is brought about by the grace of God which transforms and deifies man. It is not a by-product of intellection or virtue. As Saint Gregory writes,

Through grace God in His entirety penetrates the saints in their entirety, and the saints in their entirety penetrate God entirely, exchanging the whole of Him for themselves, and acquiring Him alone as the reward of their ascent towards Him; for He embraces them as the soul embraces the body, enabling them to be in Him as His own members.[vi]

God is the Creator and we the created. Some describe this distance as God being “holy” and “other” than us, but He is not entirely so because He still communicates Himself to us in a manner that imparts His life to us. St. Gregory describes this with the analogy of the sun. For us humans, the sun is out of reach, yet we experience the sun’s rays, its solar energy, and heat. In this same way, we are unable to grasp God’s essence, but we can experience Him through His energies. The experience of God in this way and the transformation that it brings about is called theosis-deification. In the words of Professor Papademetriou, “This does not mean that we become God but are instead filled with his energies such as love and grace. As the energy of the sun is in the plants as chlorophyll, yet the plant does not become the sun, in the same way, we participate in the divine energies, and our person is filled with God’s uncreated energies, and we attain theosis…”[vii]

This union with God is not a “manner of speaking” or something symbolical as though we appear perfect or “justified” without actually being so. Rather, as Metropolitan Kallistos writes, “Our theosis is in no sense merely symbolical or metaphorical: it is a genuine and specific reality, a pure gift of grace experienced even in this present life.”[viii] Moreover, it is this experience of God that is central to the Christian life. As Fr. Georges notes, “The ultimate purpose of St. Gregory’s theological teaching was to defend the reality of Christian experience. Salvation is more than forgiveness. It is a genuine renewal of man.”[ix]

How does this happen? Although this transformation is not apparent in the body because of bodily weakness, and the death, yet in regards to the soul, it begins in Baptism, as St. Gregory writes,

This bodily renewal is seen now through faith and hope rather than with our eyes, not being reality yet. The soul’s renewal, on the other hand, begins… with holy baptism through the remission of sins and is nourished and grows through righteousness in faith. The soul is continually renewed in the knowledge of God and the virtues associated with this knowledge, and will reach perfection in the future contemplation of God face to face. Now, however, it sees through a glass darkly.[x]

In his sixteenth homily, St. Gregory describes this transformation noting that it is “complex.” He writes,

There is a starting point and perfection, and an intermediate stage in between. The grace of baptism, which is called the washing of regeneration, inaugurates this action in us, providing remission of all our sins and of the guilt of the curse. Perfection will come with the resurrection of life for which believers hope, and the promise of the age to come. The intermediate stage is life according to Christ’s gospel, by which the godly person is nourished, grows, and is renewed, making progress day by day in the knowledge of God, righteousness, and sanctification. Gradually he reduces and cuts away his eagerness for things below, and transfers his longing from what is visible, physical and temporary to what is invisible, spiritual and eternal.[xi]

In another work, St. Gregory, referring to the keeping of the Lord’s commandments, writes:

For the Lord has promised to manifest Himself to the man who keeps [His commandments], a manifestation He calls His indwelling and that of the Father, saying, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and will make our abode wth him, and “I will manifest Myself to him.”[xii]

In this way, God’s presence within a person is not related to his intelligence. Rather, it is through the fulfillment of the commandments. For St. Gregory, the fulfillment of the commandments has no other result than the purification of the passions and, according to God’s promise, only this keeping of the commandments will procure the presence, the indwelling, and manifestation of God.[xiii]

Fathers, brothers, sisters although our theosis is a great mystery and its magnitude towers over our understanding, yet St. Gregory tells us simply keep the commandments and God will unite you to Himself.THROUGH THE PRAYERS OF SAINT GREGORY, LORD JESUS CHRIST, SON OF GOD, HAVE MERCY ON US. AMEN.

[i] Papademetriou, George C. Introduction to St. Gregory Palamas (Brookline: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2004), 42.

[ii] Orthodox Spirituality (South Canaan: St. Tikhon’s Seminary Press, 2003), 21.

[iii] St. Irenaeus of Lyons, “Against Heresies” in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus; Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Roberts, A. and Donaldson, J. (Peabody, Hendrickson Publishing, 1999) 1:526ff.

[iv] St. Athanasius the Great, “Ad Adelphium” in Athanasius: Select Works and Letters ; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Schaff, P. and Wace, H. (Peabody, Hendrickson Publishing, 1999) 4:576f.

[v] St. Athanasius the Great, “Incarnation of the Word” in Athanasius: Select Works and Letters ; Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Schaff, P. and Wace, H. (Peabody, Hendrickson Publishing, 1999) 4:65ff.

[vi] Palmer, G.E.H., Sherrard, Philip, and Ware, Kallistos eds. & trans. “The declaration of the Holy Mountain in Defence of Those who Devoutly Practise a Life of Stillness” in The Philokalia (London: Faber&Faber, 1995), 4:421.

[vii] Introduction., 42-43.

[viii] Palmer, G.E.H.,Sherrard,Philip, and Ware, Kallistos eds. & trans. The Philokalia (London: Faber&Faber, 1995), 4:292.

[ix]“St. Gregory Palamas and the Tradition of the Fathers”

[x] “Homily Sixteen” in Saint Gregory Palama: The Homilies, C. Veniamin, ed & trans (Dalton: Mount Thabor Publishing, 2014), 131.

[xi] The Saving Work of Christ: Sermons by Saint Gregory Palamas. Christopher Veniamin, ed. (Waymart: Mount Thabor Publishing, 2008), 97.

[xii] The Triads, Meyendorff, John ed. and Gendle, Nicholas trans. (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1983), 61.

[xiii] The Triads, 59.

Triodion Reflections – Tuesday in the Second Week

In thine idleness my soul, why art though become a slave of sin? And in thy sickness, why dost thou not run to the Physician? Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the true day of salvation. Rise up and wash thy face with tears of repentance, and make thy lamp burn brightly with the oil of good deeds, so that Christ our God may grant thee cleansing and great mercy.
Matins Aposticha Tuesday in Second Week

O Christ, Thou hast stretched out Thy sinless hands upon the Cross, gathering together the ends of the earth. Therefore I cry unto Thee: Gather together my scattered mind, taken captive by the passions; cleanse me in every part through abstinence, and make me a sharer in Thy sufferings.

The season of the Fast is one of gladness. In shining purity and unfeigned love, filled with the light of prayer and every virtue, with rejoicing let us cry aloud: Most Holy Cross of Christ, that has brought us life and joy, count us all worthy to venerate thee with pure hearts, and grant us forgiveness and great mercy.
Vespers Lord I have Cried Stichera Tuesday of Second Week

When Thou was crucified in the flesh, O Lord, Thou has crucified our fallen nature with Thyself; when Thy side was pierced by the spear, Thou has pierced the serpent that destroyed mankind. Nail my flesh with the fear of Thee and wound my soul with Thy love, that, gazing on Thy Passion, in abstinence I may pass through the appointed time of the Fast, governing not my stomach only, but all the other entrances of sin. Repenting over my past sins, may I offer Thee in sacrifice a humble spirit and a contrite heart. O deliver me from my offenses in Thy love for mankind.
Vespers Aposticha

Get Real for Lent – Father Stephen Freeman

According to St. Basil, God is the “only truly Existing.” Our own existence is a gift from God who is our Creator. None of us has “self-existing” life. We exist because God sustains us in existence – in Him we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).

Sin is the rejection of this gift of God – a movement away from true existence.

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Much of our attention in the modern world is engaged seemingly with things that have no “true existence.” We engage with illusions, with digital constructs. Our economy allows us to escape the normal necessities such as seasonal scarcity or other mundane concerns. We are increasingly removed from the very environment in which we naturally live.

It is said that astronauts, after spending a prolonged time in space, have lingering effects of zero-gravity. Our bodies are made for gravity and require its constant pull for everything from muscle tone to bone density. But we now live in situations in which many forms of natural “gravity” have been reduced or removed. What effect does the long-term ability to have almost any food at any time of year have on the human body? As someone who has spent the better part of my life at a desk, I can attest to the effect of a sedentary existence. My lower back, my range of motion, the flexibility of my joints are all consistent with the modern white-collar worker.

What effect do such things have on the soul? For the soul requires “gravity” as well. Plato stated in his Republic, that all children should learn to play a musical instrument because music was required for the right development of the soul. We give far too little thought to such things, assuming that no matter what environment we live in, our inherent freedom of choice remains unscathed and we can always decide to do something different, or be something different.

I could decide to run a marathon tomorrow, but I know that the first quarter-mile would leave me gasping for breath and exhausted. You cannot go from 40 years at a desk to the demands of a marathon – just because you choose to do so.

And so we come to Great Lent.

Some see this season of the year as a spiritual marathon. They rise from their sedentary spiritual lives, set off in a sprint and fail before the first week is out. The failure comes in anger, self-recrimination, even despondency.

The first year that I “chose” to fast in the Orthodox manner (it was 4 years before I was received into the Church), the priest I discussed the fast with said, “You can’t keep the fast.” I argued with him until I realized his wisdom.

“Do something easier,” he told me. “Just give up red meat.”

“What about chicken?” I asked.

“Nope. Eat chicken. Eat everything except beef and pork. And pray a little more.”

And so I returned to my Anglican life, a little disappointed that my zeal had made such a poor impression. But my family accepted the proposal and we ate no red meat for Lent. It was, in hindsight, the best Lent my family had ever had. No longer were we musing over “what to give up for Lent,” and instead accepted a discipline that was given to us.

In subsequent years that same priest (who is now my godfather) increased the discipline. And we were ready for it. It is interesting to me, however, that my first experience of an Orthodox fast was being told not to be so strict. The “strict” part was learning to do what I was told. That is sometimes the most difficult fast of all.

Lent is a time to “get real.” Not eating some things is actually normal. In our modern world we have to embrace a natural “gravity” that we could easily leave behind – at least, we have to do this if we want to avoid an atrophy of the soul.

In 2000, the average American ate 180 pounds of meat a year (and 15 pounds of fish and shellfish). That was roughly a third more than in 1959. Scarcity is not an issue in our diet. Our abundance is simply “not real,” and the environment frequently shows the marks of the artificial nature of our food supply. But we have no way of studying what is going on with our souls. What I know to be true is that – as goes the body – so goes the soul. Those who engage the world as consumer are being consumed by the world to an equal measure.

And so we get real.

Getting real means accepting limits and boundaries. Our culture is a bubble of make-believe. It rests on an economy of over-consumption. The crash of 2008 came close to a much greater disaster and could have easily gone into free-fall. Many fail to understand just how fragile our lives truly are. In the season of Lent (and on all the fasting days of the year) we embrace the fragility of our lives. We allow the world to say “no” and take on extra burdens and duties. It is worth keeping in mind that such things do not make us spiritual heroes, first they have to make us human.

Become a Living Icon: Homily for Sunday of Orthodoxy

By Father Phillip LeMaster

At the end of Liturgy today, we will parade around the church carrying our icons in celebration of the Sunday of Orthodoxy, which commemorates the restoration of icons to the church after the period of iconoclasm many centuries ago. We do so because Icons are not mere works of decorative art to us; they are windows to heaven which remind us that the Son of God really has become one of us, with a visible human body, and that we are called to become like the saints whose images are portrayed in them. For we are all icons of God, created in His image and likeness. Jesus Christ is the new Adam Who has restored and healed every dimension of our fallen humanity, and brought us into the very life of the Holy Trinity. It may help us to think of Lent as a time to make ourselves better icons of the Lord.

When we recall the great saints of the Old Testament mentioned in today’s reading from the Epistle to the Hebrews, we are humbled by their faithfulness, obedience, and humility. But even they “did not receive the promise, God provided something better for us that they should not be made perfect apart from us.” As hard as it is to believe, we have been blessed beyond them, for God’s promises in Jesus Christ were not fulfilled in their lifetimes; they hoped for what they did not receive, but their lives were still icons of faithful anticipation of the Messiah.

We live many generations after the New Testament saints Peter, Andrew, and Nathanael encountered Jesus Christ. And the Lord’s promise to Nathanael, “you shall see the heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man,” is the fulfillment of all the hopes and dreams of the Old Testament. In Jesus Christ, humanity and God are united; no longer shut out of paradise, we are raised to the life of the Heavenly Kingdom by our Lord. Our destiny is not for the dust and decay of the tomb, but for life everlasting because of His glorious third-day resurrection.

In Lent, we take small, humble, imperfect steps to open ourselves to this new life in Christ, to become better living icons—living images—of what it means for human beings to share in God’s salvation. The point of Lent is not to punish ourselves or simply to make us feel guilty, miserable, or deprived. Instead, the purpose of our spiritual exercises is to help us share more fully in the promise fulfilled in Jesus Christ. We want His holiness, love, mercy, and blessing to reshape every dimension of our lives, to be evident in how we go through the day, in how we treat others, in what we say, think, and feel.

And the more we grow in His image and likeness, the more we will become our true selves. Icons portray particular human beings whose lives have shown brightly with the holiness of God. The unbelievable truth is that, in Christ Jesus, we may do the same. No matter our age, health, occupation, family circumstances, personality quirks, or anything else, we too may become living, breathing manifestations of our Lord’s salvation when we open ourselves to His healing mercy through prayer, fasting, forgiveness, generosity to the needy, and all the various forms of spiritual nourishment given through the life of the Church.

There could be no greater optimism about us than what we proclaim on the Sunday of Orthodoxy. We not only carry icons, we are icons. We not only venerate icons, we are called to become living proof of what happens to a human being who enters into the eternal blessedness of God, even as we walk around our parish. Let this sink in: What the Old Testament saints hoped for, we possess. This Lent, let’s take Jesus Christ as His word, and prepare—with humility, persistence, and mindfulness- to “see the heaven open and angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” For that is the good news of our salvation.