Sermons

Saint Philip, Metropolitan of Moscow

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 22:34:29 -0800

Western commentators often accuse the Orthodox Church of having been wholly subservient to secular authorities and of having allowed ruling governments to determine the tenor of the Church’s doctrinal and moral teachings. That state of affairs is often referred to as Caesaropapism, which is defined as follows: “The system whereby an absolute monarch has supreme control over the Church within his dominions and exercises it even in matters (e.g. doctrine) normally reserved to ecclesiastical authority.”[1] However, that accusation, when directed toward the Orthodox Church, is the product either of an extremely superficial understanding of history or of malevolence, that is, the desire to vilify Orthodoxy regardless of the truth. And, indeed, the historical record testifies to the truth.
I say that because the history of the Church is replete with examples of Hierarchs who defied immoral rulers or who resisted attempts by rulers to dominate the Church. One need only mention examples such as Saint John Chrysostomos, who publicly criticized the worldliness of the Constantinopolitan aristocracy and paid for that outspokenness with his life. Or, to cite another example, during periods when heretical monarchs held power, for example during the reigns of the Arian or Iconoclast Emperors, Orthodox Hierarchs were driven from office and severely persecuted for their refusal to bend the knee before apostasy.
Today we will consider the life of a hierarch who stood courageously athwart the evils and immorality of his monarch and who, consequently, was murdered by the minions of that monarch and gained the Martyr’s Crown.
Saint Philip of Moscow was born in the year 1507 to a family of the Russian nobility, in fact, one of the most distinguished families at the royal court. The Saint’s father determined to rear and educate his son to participate in affairs of government and the military, in other words to follow in his footsteps. But the young man was of a very different temperament from his father and was most interested in the writings of the Holy Church Fathers, in visiting churches, and in intense prayer.
The course planned by his father promised wealth, power, and earthly acclaim in service to the state, yet, that kind of life, while perfectly honorable, held no appeal to Saint Philip. His attraction to the things of God and of the Church led him to enter the Solovetsky Monastery at the age of 30. There he excelled in the monastic life, obediently performing menial tasks and fulfilling all his spiritual duties. It is said that he was always the first to arrive for Church services and the last to leave. After more than a decade as a simple Monk, Saint Philip was elected the Monastery’s Igumen, or Abbot. As he excelled as a simple Monk, so also did he excel as Igumen. “Through his spiritual authority and practical ability, the Monastery became the ecclesiastical, economic and cultural centre of the region.”[2]
Now it happens that just before Saint Philip was elevated to the leadership of his Monastery, Ivan IV (know as “Ivan Grozny” or “Ivan the Terrible”) ascended the throne of Moscow. Ivan was a peculiar man, beset by certain psychological illnesses that manifested themselves in fits of violence and cruelty. So unstable was he that, in a paroxysm of blind fury, he struck his own son with his staff and killed him.
In order to assure that his will was obeyed throughout the country, the Tsar established an organization of political police known as the Oprichnina, which was utterly ruthless in upholding Ivan’s wishes and in assuaging the monarch’s ever-growing paranoia. This was “a militia to which [Ivan] gave a quasi-monastic veneer and which committed atrocities of every kind.”[3] Any act of disobedience, major or minor, or even the least act or word of opposition to the Tsar, was mercilessly punished by torture and killing. Thousands—some say tens of thousands—were butchered and whole regions devastated. Unalloyed fear of the Oprichnina gripped the land.
In 1566 Metropolitan Afanasy of Moscow retired to a Monastery due to ill health. He was succeeded by Saint Gherman, Archbishop of Kazan, who fearlessly reproached Ivan over his cruelties. For his courage, he was deposed and later murdered “in secret by the Tsar’s henchmen.”[4] The Tsar then approached Saint Philip, asking him to agree to become the new Metropolitan. Knowing the exceedingly dark nature of Ivan’s reign—more accurately, his reign of terror—, the Saint hesitated. Finally, he agreed to serve as Metropolitan if the Tsar would agree to dissolve the Oprichnina and restore a truly Christian mode of rule, one marked by benevolence. Ivan apparently agreed, but upon the elevation of the Saint to the office of Metropolitan, reneged on his promise. Soon thereafter, Saint Philip spoke bluntly to his monarch: “In Russia charity no longer exists, even for the good and innocent. It is my duty to tell you this by the will of God, even if death awaits me for doing so.”[5] The Tsar was taken aback, but continued to ignore the Saint’s private reprimands. Saint Philip then made his admonishment public. At the Cathedral of the Dormition, he spoke to the Tsar from the Amvon in full view of everyone: “Sire … we are offering the unbloody Sacrifice here, while the blood of Christians is being shed outside this holy church.”[6] Tsar Ivan angrily told his Metropolitan to be silent, but he nonetheless persisted: “If I do not bear witness to the truth, I render myself unworthy of my office as a Bishop. If I bow to men’s will, what shall I find wherewith to answer Christ on the Day of Judgment?”[7]
The people in attendance that day surely gasped in shock at the Hierarch’s boldness, knowing what it presaged. Indeed, since the Saint had become so publicly outspoken on his tyranny and oppression, the Tsar commanded a synod of compliant Bishops to depose Saint Philip on the ridiculous charge of sorcery which, sad to say, the Bishops did. Saint Philip was exiled to a monastery, confined to a cell in the basement, placed in shackles and chains, and “two days before Christmas 1569, … was suffocated there by one of the Tsar’s secret executioners.”[8] He is commemorated January 9th.
“If I do not bear witness to the truth, I render myself unworthy of my office as a Bishop.” So spoke Saint Philip of Moscow. Some of you may remember my talk on Saint Germanos of Constantinople some months ago who, like Saint Philip, also bore witness to the truth by speaking forthrightly to his Emperor. So it has always been with the Saintly Bishops and clergy of the Orthodox Church. As both men made clear, to oppose heretical, un-Christian, or immoral conduct by one’s Monarch, or one’s government, is the duty of a Bishop, an essential duty. It is likewise the duty of any and all Orthodox clergy. All are required to speak openly against tyrannical abuses by their rulers. Moreover, Orthodox Christian believers, even when they are not Bishops or other clergy, must also oppose acts by government that promote immorality or threaten the lives of the innocent.
Under republican forms of government, where the people vote for candidates who, if they win, will hold positions of governmental authority, Orthodox Christians must exercise their voting rights with decency and truth uppermost in their minds. To vote for candidates who support laws that allow, for example, the killing of unborn babies or same-sex “marriages” or other such abominations is tantamount to approving such laws, when, of course, such things are blatant violations of Christian moral teachings and are destructive of the moral framework that holds society together. What would our forebears of seventy-five or one hundred years ago have said of such things?
To vote for candidates who through their support of the objectives of the militant Left, such as those I have just mentioned, is to promote the rise of social chaos—social chaos that is the veritable delight of the demons. Moral considerations must come first, at such times, and not, by way of contrast, one’s economic or other interests, or, God forbid, the glibness or physical handsomeness of a candidate, or other such puerile considerations. We must say, to paraphrase Saint Philip, “If I do not bear witness to the truth, I render myself unworthy of my calling as a Christian.”
To be sure, honest, decent, truly selfless politicians are extraordinarily rare today, since our anti-Christian mass media—the newspapers, television, and radio—invariably oppose such men and women, unjustly portraying them as bigots or fanatics. But one must do one’s duty as a Christian to cut through the media’s fog of deception and take the time to discern the truth from lies, and, thereby, to identify those office-seekers who bear witness to truth. If we do not do that duty, then, to paraphrase the Saint again, “what shall we find with which to answer Christ on the Day of Judgment.”
Saint Philip gave his life in his effort to bring the rule of decency and charity to his country and to defend the lives of the innocent. We need not give our lives to accomplish the same ends—at least not at this stage of things—but we are obligated, at the very least, to direct our actions as citizens according to the teachings of our Church. To do otherwise is simply to render our Faith pointless and futile. May we ever remember Saint Philip of Moscow and pray to him to give us his guidance in matters pertaining to our government.

[1] Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd Edition, ed. F.L. Cross, 3rd edition edited by E.A. Livingstone (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 262:
[2] The Synaxarion, Vol. III, p. 99.
[3] Ibid.
[4] The Synaxarion, Vol. II, p. 52.
[5] Father James Thornton, Quickened With Christ: Sermons on the Epistle Readings of the Orthodox Liturgical Year (Etna, CA: Center For Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2004), p. 35.
[6] The Synaxarion, Vol. III, p. 99.
[7] Father James Thornton, Quickened, p. 36.
[8] The Synaxarion, Vol. III, p. 100.

Saint Tarasios

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 09:58:20 -0700

Saint Tarasios,
Patriarch of Constantinople

Beloved Children in Christ,

In the year 784, a drama played itself out in the Imperial Capital of Constantinople—one that would have immense significance for the people of the Empire and for the future of Christendom. The Patriarch, Saint Paul the New, had made known to the Empress Regent, Saint Irene, his intention to abdicate the Patriarchal Throne and retire to a monastery, since he was old and ill and could no longer bear the burdens of his high and sacred office. Moreover, he had been elected during the reign of Emperor Leo IV, an Iconoclast, and had been required to sign an oath disavowing any sympathy with the veneration of Icons. He told the Empress that his conscience was greatly troubled by his acquiescence in the matter of Leo’s heretical views: “It is this that distresses me so much,” he said, “and because of this I have decided to do penance, praying God not to punish me for having failed to preach the truth from fear of your folly.”[1] He also insisted that an Œcumenical Synod be assembled to right the terrible wrongs of the previous six decades, during which three Iconoclast Emperors had ruled, keeping the Church in the chains of heresy. He told the Empress that if a Great Synod was not called “to rectify the error that is in our midst, there is no way of saving you.”[2]
Since the death of her husband, Leo IV, four years before, Saint Irene had been compelled to tread very cautiously in the matter of Iconoclasm, just as during his reign she had maintained her silence. After more than half a century of official favor, Iconoclasm enjoyed considerable support, especially in the army, since the most fanatical of the Iconoclast Emperors, Constantine V Copronymos,[3] had been a successful military leader, having often led his troops to victory. To many soldiers, his memory was golden. In addition, several generations had been reared without ever seeing Icons or understanding their purpose or import.
His abdication and retirement accepted, the old Patriarch then recommended a successor, a high-ranking government official: the Consul, Senator, and Protasekretis (the highest ranking of the Imperial Secretaries of State) Tarasios, a man who “combined outstanding political talents with a strong sense of the eternal dimension in human affairs.”[4] Saint Paul knew, of course, that his proposed successor favored the veneration of Holy Icons and, if elected, would take whatever steps necessary to end the Iconoclast nightmare. Saint Tarasios was educated and brilliant of mind and, though a layman, well schooled in theology. When told of his election, he, contemplating the near insurmountable difficulties he would have to overcome, was reluctant. Finally resolving to accept, he set forth one condition to the Empress: that an Œcumenical Synod be convened as soon as possible to restore the Holy Icons and the Holy Tradition of Orthodox Christianity. The Empress wholeheartedly concurred. And so it was that in December 784, despite his personal misgivings, Saint Tarasios was Ordained through the ranks of the Priesthood and enthroned as Œcumenical Patriarch.
Saint Tarasios was born in Constantinople to a family of the Byzantine nobility. His father, whose name was George, was Imperial Prefect (Governor) of the Capital and a member of the judiciary. His mother, Evkratia, was also from a family of high rank. He was also the uncle of the future Saint Photios the Great,[5] who would come to the Patriarchal dignity in the following century.
Saint Tarasios was renowned for his great piety. His personal life was marked by prayer and fasting. And he was loved by the people for his works of charity. He not only built shelters and hospitals for the poor and sick, but it is known that he would invite them to his residence to dine with him and would himself act as their servant during the meal. He was no less loved for his humility. “He followed after the Lord in regarding himself as the servant of all and in refusing to let people act as his servants. Simply dressed and unassuming in all that he did, his example was a sermon in itself against the arrogant luxury of the clergy of the time.”[6]
The Empress-Regent and the Patriarch summoned the Hierarchs of the Empire to a Great Synod, which was to open July 31, 786, in Constantinople. However, Iconoclast sentiment was still powerful and, consequently, the Synod was disrupted by soldiers acting at the bidding of rebellious Hierarchs and government functionaries. It was decided, therefore, to postpone the Synod until September the following year, 787, and to move it to the Asian side of the Bosporos, to Nicaea,[7] where Iconodule sympathies were stronger and where the First Œcumenical Synod had been opened four hundred sixty-two years before. The Synod was a success. Iconoclasm, which had attacked not only the veneration of Holy Icons, but likewise had forbidden the veneration of Holy Relics and the veneration of the Most Holy Theotokos and the Saints, was condemned and the Orthodox Faith restored to its fullness. Saint Tarasios enjoyed a Patriarchal reign of twenty-two years. He reposed in the Lord in February 806 and is commemorated February 25th.
It is especially noteworthy that after the Seventh Œcumenical Synod, Saint Tarasios “bent all his efforts to restoring the heretics to the bosom of the Holy Church with gentleness.”[8] His moderation in that regard was meant to bring peace to the Church and to avoid anything hinting of persecution, since harshness would in all likelihood, have imparted new strength to the Iconoclasts and unnecessarily prolonged the dissension. Formerly Iconoclast Hierarchs and Priests were required only to renounce their heretical views. Doing that, they were accepted as fully Orthodox and were allowed to resume their positions.
Let us now consider this question of the quelling of heresy and the wisdom of a policy of moderation in dealing with those who, for whatever reason, have collaborated with heresy.
Periodically, the Church has found it necessary to call Œcumenical Synods to answer challenges to Her dogmatic teachings: teachings that are rooted in Holy Scripture and in the Patristic witness. Each time that such a Synod was called, false teachings had come to the fore and, in several instances, had risen up so forcefully they dominated, at least for a short period, the external machinery of Church government. The Arian heresy, for example, which denied the full divinity of Christ, held sway over much of the Church during the fourth century. Monophysitism, which in effect denied Christ’s human nature, did the same in the fifth century. And Iconoclasm, which ostensibly only forbade the veneration of Icons but in fact, as we have noted, in so forbidding the veneration of Icons undermined the Church’s teachings regarding the full implications of the Incarnation, actually controlled most of the Church’s higher offices for the better part of a century.
In each of these cases, an Œcumenical Synod corrected the errors of the heretics and set the Church back on the path of Holy Tradition. It must be emphasized that at no time was the Church as a whole seduced by error. Always, somewhere in the œcumene, faithful clergy and people opposed the fabrications of the Evil One, establishing Churches in resistance. Ultimately, Truth prevailed in each instance, and Orthodox Tradition was reestablished through the aegis of the Œcumenical Synod. Yet, even after the Great Synods completed their doctrinal labors, there still remained the problem of reestablishing Church unity and of dealing with those who had initiated the heresy or who had collaborated with heresy.
Those who had devised a heresy and refused to recant their errors—Arios or Nestorios, for example—were condemned, excommunicated, and deprived of their ecclesiastical offices. Their collaborators, however, were dealt with in various ways, depending upon the degree of their culpability and their willingness to submit to the decisions of the Synod. The Fathers of the Holy Synods understood that in many—probably most—cases, the collaboration with heresy came from ignorance, stupidity, or cowardice.
At the First Synod of Nicaea, the Hierarchs Theonas of Marmarica and Segundus of Ptolemaïs remained intransigent and refused to repudiate their Arian views, and so they were excommunicated. Those who were prepared to recant their heresy and submit to Truth—the vast majority at that time—were merely required to affirm their adherence to the decisions of the Synod. From that point on, they were regarded as Orthodox. Thus, the spiritually ailing clergy of a spiritually ailing Church were, by submission to the Faith of the Orthodox, cured and brought to good spiritual health through repentance and an unqualified affirmation of truth.
With regard to the Grace in (i.e., the “validity” of) the Holy Mysteries of the errant clergy during the time they were in submission to error (since formal condemnation had not yet occurred), it was simply accepted that Grace remained present, the temporary spiritual illness notwithstanding. There were no mass re-ordinations or re-baptisms, even though heresy had remained in control for lengthy spans of time.
Precisely the same thing occurred at the end of other periods where heresy dominated the official Church organization. On the one hand, the Holy Fathers insisted that Hierarchs (and other clergy) formerly obedient to heretical ecclesiastical authorities were to return to their positions if they repented of their error and sincerely confessed the Orthodox Faith without reservation. On the other hand, those who were unwilling to renounce heresy and confess the true Orthodox Faith were condemned and cast from the communion of Christ’s Church. And so it is that the moderation of Saint Tarasios and of the Holy Fathers of the other Œcumenical Synods serves to teach us much about our situation today, in the twenty-first century.
The lurch into the panheresy of ecumenism and its kindred movements, modernism and New Calendarism, on the part of local Orthodox Churches during the past century has been a genuine tragedy. The late Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky, one of the great theologians of the Orthodox Church in the twentieth century, tells us that the aim of the ecumenist heresy is “the Establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth,”[9] an aim that contradicts Christ’s pronouncement that His Kingdom is not of this world.[10] Father Michael writes that ecumenism insists that “all attention, all strivings of Christianity, must be directed towards the idea, not of the personal salvation of each person, not concerning one’s soul, not about future eternal life, but of building a society on new foundations”[11] and the establishment of “a just social structure...in the form of socialism realized peaceably, with the help of Christianity.”[12]
This, it must be emphasized, is essentially a liberal sectarian notion, a notion of the Protestant Left that has abandoned its faith in exchange for a political agendum and, to borrow from Father Michael again, “considers even miracles and the element of the supernatural in history to be foreign.”[13] And there is an even darker and more sinister side to all of that which Father Michael observes; he pinpoints it he writes the following disconcerting words: “There can be no doubt but that the ecumenical movement is being joined and supported by, if not directed by, secret and overt world organizations [that] are alien to religious tasks, and perhaps even inimical to them.”[14] Finally, elsewhere, while addressing a separate but related issue, Father Michael considers the Zeitgeist, the “Spirit of our Times,” which is pertinent to the present subject. In that regard he notes “the tendency towards general disintegration and mass leveling which is apparent in all of the trends of modern civilization, including decisive steps towards widespread religious equalization and merging in the contemporary world, which can be attained only through the rejection of many values and dogmas that have hitherto been considered inviolable.”[15] In other words, religious equalization and a merging of religions can only be achieved by jettisoning the bulk of the Holy Tradition of the Orthodox Church, as well as its moral teaching.
The participation by the Orthodox in this movement does not mean that every such Orthodox participant subscribes to all of these strange ideas; but Orthodox participation in the movement nevertheless aids and abets in the dissemination of such ideas, granting the sectarian promoters of ecumenism a respectability and dignity they most assuredly do not deserve and would not otherwise have. Additionally, the fog of ambivalence engendered by Orthodox participation in ecumenism creates, at very least, confusion among the Faithful and, at the very worst, encourages a sickly relativism that deems all religions to be of the same value insofar as salvation is concerned—the “religious equalization and merging” against which Father Pomazansky warned. This is a mindset that erodes genuine Orthodox Christian Faith and piety.
However, despite all that we have just learned and despite the seriousness of this breach with the Traditions of Orthodoxy, it does not yet signify the death of Orthodoxy in those local jurisdictions that participate in ecumenism; rather, it signifies the rampant spreading of spiritual illness. Grace still exists in those Churches—albeit Grace attenuated in its effects, to some degree, by the illness of ecumenism. It should also be pointed out that this illness manifests itself to a greater extent in some locales and with some persons and to a lesser extent in other places and with other individuals. Many hierarchs and clergy and most Orthodox Churches in the world do not accept the full implications of the ecumenist heresy, even if they remain in local Churches that are involved in promoting ecumenism. Most do not accept, for instance, the so-called Branch Theory of Christianity; nor do they reject the truth that the fullness of Christianity is present in the Orthodox Church.
The various Churches in resistance are found among those Orthodox Christians (including the so-called "Old Calendarists") in several national Churches who are “walled-off” from the plague of ecumenism, who have, so to speak, placed the spiritually ill in quarantine, to protect the healthy from this contagious spiritual illness. Until the epidemic subsides and until the illness is fully cured, the Churches in resistance remain a criterion, a benchmark, one might say, or (to use another metaphor) a beacon by which the ill are alerted to the danger and guided back to good health. Thus, the Churches in resistance are not the Church; nor are they substitutes or replacements for the ailing local Churches. They are temporary ecclesiastical entities protecting and preserving Holy Tradition and awaiting the resolution of a temporary crisis and the restoration of Church unity, all of which will come in accordance with the good pleasure of our Lord, God, and Savior Jesus Christ.
We learn from the teaching and example of Saint Tarasios (as well as from many other Saints and Holy Fathers) the importance of the rôle of moderation in the resolution of crises in the Church. This does not imply a softness towards heresy itself, which must be relentlessly and absolutely opposed, but rather the exercise of prudence, charity, and compassion towards the errant infected by heresy and a recognition of the distinction between those authorized to pass judgment on transgressors against Holy Tradition and ordinary members of the Church, who are not so authorized.
Remembering, too, that imperfect men sometimes make unsound choices based upon what appears to them, at a particular moment, to be sound reason, it must be stressed that we do not judge as individual persons those involved in ecumenism. God, who sees into the hearts of all men, will ultimately judge them, as He will judge us all.
God willing, there will come a time in the future when a united Orthodox Church will dispel the darkness of the panheresy of ecumenism and reaffirm the Patristic Calendar and the whole of our Tradition. In the meantime, we carry on our resistance in the proper spirit of Christianity, with faith and with patience, and without a particle of hatred or harshness. At the same time, in the words of our beloved Metropolitan Cyprian: “The fight must be strong, lawful, and unto death. For, ‘be faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life,’[16] says the Lord of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, our Lord Jesus Christ.”[17]

[1] The Synaxarion, Vol. VI, p. 661.
[2] Ibid., pp. 660-661.
[3] Constantine V Copronymos not only hated Holy Icons, Holy Relics, Monasticism, and the veneration of the Holy Theotokos and the Saints, but “so disliked the words saint and holy that these terms had to be dropped [during his reign] from the names of Constantinople’s churches.” Imperial Byzantine Portraits: A Verbal and Graphic Gallery, by Constance Head (New Rochelle, NY: Caratzas Brothers Publishers, 1982), p. 57.
[4] The Synaxarion, Vol. III, p. 610.
[5] See Made Perfect in Faith: Sermons on the Lives and Works of Fifty Holy Church Fathers, by Father James Thornton (Etna, CA: Center For Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2006), pp. 204-211.
[6] The Synaxarion, Vol. III, p. 611.
[7] An account of this Great Synod is given in my book, The Œcumenical Synods of the Orthodox Church: A Concise History, (Etna, CA: Center For Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 2007), pp. 103-118.
[8] The Synaxarion, Vol. III, p. 612.
[9] “The Church of Christ and the Contemporary Movement for Unification in Christianity,” in Selected Essays, by Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1996), p. 212.
[10] St. John 18:36.
[11] Pomazansky, p. 212..
[12] Ibid., p. 213.
[13] Ibid., p. 211.
[14] Ibid., p. 215.
[15] Pomazansky, “The Old Testament and Rationalist Biblical Criticism,” p. 123.
[16] Rev. 2:10.
[17] “An Ecclesiological Position Paper,” in The Old Calendar Orthodox Church of Greece, by Archimandrite [now Archbishop] Chrysostomos (Etna, CA: Center For Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1985), p. 103.

Symbols of Our Joy—Christmas 2008

Wed, 7 Jan 2009 09:19:10 -0800

There exists a thread of peculiarly somber colors that winds its way through that vast tapestry which is the history of Christian belief. Students of that history can trace that thread as far back as the fourth century, where it appeared as a sectarian movement called Manichaeism (after its founder Mani or Manichaeus). This religious view, a type of Gnosticism which opposed a world of pure good, which it identified with light, the soul, and spirituality, against a world of evil, which it identified with darkness, the human body, and all material things. In theological texts this genre of religious thought is called “dualism,” since it postulates a world of spirit, identified with God, versus a world of matter, identified with Satan.
In contrast to dualism, Christianity holds that the spiritual and the material were both created by God. The first chapter of the Book of Genesis tells us that “God created the heaven and the earth” and all of the things on the earth, all of the plants, animals, fish, birds, and finally Man himself. The Scripture says that God blessed all of these things and that chapter concludes by declaring that “God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.” It is clear that matter, created, blessed, and affirmed as good by God, is not therefore evil.
We may add to that by remembering that in the New Testament Jesus Christ took flesh — that is, He took humble matter — lived life in our material world and by that life among the created, material things of this planet, won redemption for mankind. Moreover, Christianity sees man as neither wholly matter nor wholly spirit but as a fusion of the material and the spiritual. Later, of course, after the creation, evil entered the world, according to Genesis, and we may summarize the Biblical teaching of that event by saying that evil consists not in matter itself, but rather in the misuse or abuse of the good things that God has created. Manichaeism died out sometime around the fifth century, but the dualistic inclination has surfaced from time to time, mostly for comparatively brief periods, within what we may call the broad mainstream of Christianity.
We see an example of that tendency in mid-seventeenth-century England, during the Cromwellian dictatorship, when Christmas was outlawed. Cromwell held that Christmas and all its customs were “heathenish,” that is pagan, either in origin or in flavor, and therefore, despite the fact that they had been part of Christianity for well over 1,000 years, they were banned. At the root of this notion there seemed to lurk a latent Manichaeism, for one of the things that vexed Cromwell was the joyousness and celebratory climate fostered by Christmas, the singing, the decorating, the unrestrained happiness, and the family feast. By Cromwell’s decree, all shops and businesses were required to stay open, the singing of carols was forbidden, churches were locked up on that day, and any celebrations honoring the Birth of Christ were severely punished. Even private commemorations of the great day, if they came to the attention of the authorities, could mean imprisonment.
It has been said that prior to that period Christmas had sometimes been celebrated (as it sometimes is today) in a spirit of excess and with an immoderacy of drinking and feasting, and that Cromwell’s injunction was in part a reaction to that excess. But Cromwell, it seems, exchanged one form of excess for another, seeking to obliterate the occasion from public memory, rather than in taking steps to discourage overindulgence.
Happily, Christianity has, for the most part, avoided these pitfalls. Cromwell believed that the evil came from the material things themselves, from the things that by tradition marked the Christmas season. He failed to recognize that these things, used correctly and in moderation, were ways whereby abstractions, such as historical events of long ago or religious teachings, could be made more real and alive to ordinary believers not able to conceptualize the transcendent without some concrete assistance.
Our beautiful Icons perform the same function. These material things take concepts that are otherwise entirely abstract and make them tangible through symbolism. Orthodox Christianity has always done that. It recognized that the things of this material world, properly used, are good, are indeed gifts from God, and that human beings have need of tangible expressions of intangible truths. In the case of Christmas, these tangible expressions testify, among other things, to the fact that Christianity is not a dour, grim religion like Manichaeism, but is a religion of joy.
How does one convey abstract notions such as the Incarnation, Nativity, Resurrection, and so forth, and the great joy that these supreme events in all of history have kindled in the hearts of Christian believers? One of the ways is that we celebrate, throughout the year, various special days that commemorate the story of Jesus Christ’s life. One of the chief among these is the remembrance of His Nativity on December 25th (the old-style of which is January 7th). Though Christianity was granted its freedom under Constantine in 312, it grew only gradually in the consciousness of the bulk of the ordinary people of the Empire. Among some people the new religion was accepted fully, among others only superficially, and in yet other cases it was not accepted at all.
A major problem for the church was that pagan practices, most of them going back centuries, were woven tightly into the very patterns of daily life. Now Christianity did not aim at an outward revolution, it did not seek to overthrow the whole of the old culture, civilization, economic system, government, and way of life and replace it with something totally new. Rather it sought to keep the best from the old traditions, to transform these things, to Christianize or “baptize” them, and in that way make these customs the bearers of something edifying and spiritually healthy by linking them to some component of Christian truth. In that way the fabric of life and of imperial civilization was not torn or mutilated since, as we have noted, Christians wished to accomplish their goals by means of a gradual, inner revolution of the hearts of men and women.
The second half of December, in the years before the rise of Christianity, was a time of several pagan festival days. Saturnalia, dedicated to the god Saturn, began on December 17th and lasted until the 23rd. December 25th, considered by some early Christians as Christ’s actual birthday, which it may have been, was also considered by the pagans the birthday of the Unconquered Sun (Sol Invictus), and in the north of Europe people celebrated the winter solstice with the Festival of Yule, which began on December 21st. Such occasions were deeply ingrained in the lives of the people and were stubbornly retained by the common folk long after Christianity became a major influence. It was decided, therefore, to absorb and transform this season of the year by Christianizing it. The idea of celebration on December 25th was retained, but the purpose for celebration was changed. In that way, holidays took on a Christian meaning and were used to impart certain Christian truths. The familiar and fundamental order of life was not altered, but the emphasis and the meaning definitely were.
The Orthodox Troparion for the Feast of the Nativity of Christ is a direct historical link to this period of the transformation of those feast days from pagan to Christian:

“Thy Nativity, O Christ our God, hast manifested to the world the light of knowledge. For by it, those who worshipped the stars didst learn from a star to worship Thee, the Sun of Righteousness, and to know Thee, the Dayspring from on high. O Lord, glory to Thee!”

This hymn was written to drive home the point that while on this day the pagans had worshipped the sun and the stars, Christians now worshipped the “Sun—S-U-N—of Righteousness” (a phrase from the Book of Malachi) and the “Dayspring [in some texts “Dawn”] from on high” (a quotation from the Gospel of St. Luke). Indeed, Christians sought to capture worthy aspects of the old cultures, but at the same time they strove to teach the new beliefs and new obligations that went with the new interpretations. And so, while it is true that certain things that we associate with Christmas are actually older than Christianity, let us remember that these things are but vessels, the contents of which have been utterly transformed. Let us consider some examples.
Evergreens are a fine example of this transformation. Long before Christianity they were used as winter decorations, and so they are one of the oldest vestiges of pre-Christian customs. Pagans decorated their dwellings with pine branches and holly in the winter because they imagined that these plants possessed some form of magical powers, with their ability to retain green leaves even in the harshest northern snow and cold. Some even brought forth their fruit at this time of year, which amazed the pagans even more. St. Gregory the Dialogist, also called St. Gregory the Great of Rome, a man honored by the Church for both his sanctity and outstanding pastoral wisdom, encouraged his clergy in mission lands to adopt, where possible, various local customs and to Christianize and reinterpret them, so long as they did not violate Christian dogmatic or moral teachings. Holly, for instance, made beautiful garlands for the decoration of homes and public buildings in the winter. And so the red holly berries came to symbolize the blood of Christ, and the holly leaves, with their sharp points, the crown of thorns. All evergreens became symbols of eternal life.
Insofar as outward decorative symbols are concerned, none are so essential to modern Christmas as the Christmas tree. In fact, however, its use among the English-speaking people of the world is of recent origin. The Christmas tree originally appears as part of that pagan love of the mystery of evergreens. As a Christian symbol, however, it comes from Germany. In the fourteenth century, it was the custom for troubadours to parade through the streets carrying huge, decorated pine branches that advertised special religious plays that were performed on the steps of the local church buildings. This type of decorated branch eventually acquired the name Christbaum, literally “Christ-tree,” later transmuted into the English “Christmas tree.” The Christmas tree was brought to England by George I, a German prince of the House of Hanover who could not even speak the language of his new kingdom and who insisted on retaining all of his German ways in his private household. Few of his subjects were even aware of this German Christmas custom and, therefore, the tree failed to spread beyond the King’s quarters.
The Christmas tree finally achieved popularity in nineteenth-century England under Queen Victoria. Prince Albert, the Queen’s husband and a German prince, set up a decorated tree in the royal palace at Christmas. The Queen allowed a picture of herself to appear in The Illustrated London News in which she and all her family were arrayed around a giant Christmas tree, alight with tiny candles and laden with gorgeous decorations. Almost immediately, Christmas trees caught on with the public and within two decades became fixed parts of the British holiday. At Roughly the same time, that is early in the nineteenth century, German immigrants brought the custom to America, and by mid-century the decorated tree had become entrenched here as well. The use of candles (nowadays electric lights) on the tree was thought by some to symbolize Christ as the Light of the World.
Christmas gift-giving too has a intriguing history. The pagan Romans exchanged symbolic gifts on New Years day. Later, after Christianity rose to a dominant position in Europe, it became the custom in certain countries to give gifts on Theophany, in remembrance of the gold, frankincense, and myrrh brought as gifts to Christ by the Magi. In other countries, for instance Christian Greece, the practice until fairly recently was to give gifts on December 6th, St. Nicholas Day. It is revealing that American author Washington Irving, in his History of New York, tells the story of St. Nicholas flying in a wagon over the Hudson Valley and dropping gifts for good children down chimneys on St. Nicholas Day, not on Christmas. This book was published in 1809, and it is therefore apparent from this story that it was not until well into the nineteenth century that the giving of gifts on Christmas Day became prevalent. When Christmas gift-giving did gain in popularity it assumed very modest proportions at first since the gifts exchanged were simple and inexpensive. Not until the general increase in prosperity in this century did the relative extravagance, which is characteristic of today’s gift-giving, establish itself.
Man is a creature with senses—sight, taste, hearing, smell, touch—and even in his most religious moments, when he is most prayerful and pious, he is nonetheless not a mere disembodied specter. The senses are among the things that make us human, they are gifts from God, and when combined with our human intelligence these faculties can be the means by which we are uplifted to the contemplation of spiritual realities. There are many examples of this; the majesty of an old church building, the grandeur of its soaring arches or its great dome, the splendor of the art within, the resonant sounds of a choir, the fragrance of burning candles and incense, all of these things appeal to human senses, to human feelings, and tend to move the heart and elevate the mind towards higher things. So it is too with all of the wonderful traditions of Christmas.
There is no question that good things can be abused and that even Christmas can be the occasion for misuse of the gifts of God. At worst, Christmas can be a time of excesses. This was certainly the tenor of the Sol Invictus celebrations in pagan Rome where conduct was often a scandal to decent people. Yet one must take care not to fall into Manichaeism where the human body is rejected, where the material world is looked upon as something dark and evil, and where joy itself is shunned. Christianity, in taking over pre-Christian festivals and transforming them, has always striven to transform the way these days were celebrated. It desired to make them both happy and holy, without the abuses typical of the pagans. Therefore, it does not matter in the least that certain of these traditions can be traced to pagan times, any more than it matters that the names we use for the months of the year and days of the week are entirely pagan in origin. If sectarians should accost you with these accusations, you may respond that the things to which they refer have become transfigured and made eternally new. May that eternal newness fill your hearts! May the joy of Christmas, the spirit of the Feast of the Nativity of our Lord and Savior, be with each of you this day, and throughout the coming year!

The Power of God’s Touch

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 09:27:06 -0800

Sermon on the Gospel of St. Luke 8:41-56

Twenty-Fourth Sunday After Pentecost

The Gospel read for this Sunday involves two miracles of Christ Jesus, one the healing of the woman with a flow of blood who touches Christ’s robe and the other the raising from the dead of the twelve-year-old daughter of Jairus, whom the Gospel identifies as a “ruler of the synagogue,” which is to say that he was a man of no little importance and social standing in the community. Today, I wish in our discussion to focus on the healing of the woman who touched Christ’s garment.
The Gospel passage states that Christ was returning from the land of the Gadarenes to Judea proper, and here “the people received Him with gladness: for they were all waiting for Him.” For good reason were they waiting and did they rejoice at His return. This imperfect, fallen world, as all of us know, is filled, even overflowing, with the trials and rigors of daily life such as those caused by disease or infirmity. Many people thronged about Christ to hear His words, to be uplifted by the beauty and wisdom spoken by Him.
But many others came to Him in their agony over an illness or some other misfortune, or some catastrophe that had befallen them or a loved one, hoping that this wondrous Worker of miracles, whose reputation had spread throughout the country, could help them. Such was the case with the woman who had suffered twelve years with an issue of blood. This poor woman had spent her entire savings on physicians, but none had ever been able to help her, in fact her illness had grown worse.
We can see in our mind’s eye the scene described by the Gospel. Here is Christ surrounded on all sides by a multitude. Doubtless, the crowd was disorderly, pressing in all about and jabbering all at once, each man trying to gain Christ’s attention. What chance for this wretched woman weakened, most likely, by her physical debility? But this woman had faith. She did not need to gain Christ’s attention, she did not need to stand before Him and present the details of her sad condition to Him. She need only come close enough to Him to touch the edge of His robe and, so her faith told her, she would be healed. And so it was. She “was healed immediately,” relates the Gospel lesson, healed silently, without anyone, except Christ, knowing.
But Christ, of course, did know what had happened and said “Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me.” That word ”virtue,” employed by the translators of the King James Version, in this instance, means “power,” since the English “virtue” derives from the Latin “virtus” which refers to manliness and strength, and so power remains in English a secondary definition of the word. So Christ perceived that the reservoir of power that was inherent to Him and been drawn upon, tapped, one might say, by this woman’s touching the edge of His garment. But here a curious question arises. How is it that Christ’ robe was a contact point of that power?
Clothing, in Christ’s time, was made of such natural products as wool or linen and we may presume that there was nothing exceptional about Christ’s robe, insofar as the material itself was concerned, since He came from a comparatively poor family. But whatever it was made of, how can common cloth material be a conveyor of the power of God? How can such an ordinary substance be linked to the supernatural and the spiritual? Had the woman touched Christ’s hand or arm, we could better understand, but the edge of His robe? A robe which is, after all, only rude matter made from plant or animal fibers?
Our initial answer to this problem is that the ordinary matter of Christ’s robe was infused with His divine power by its contact with His sacred, physical being, but let us delve a bit further. We Orthodox Christians do not believe, as do some pagans and sectarians, in dualism. That is to say, we do not believe that the invisible world is good while the material world is bad and we do not believe that matter is evil. To prove this we need only begin by citing the first chapter in the Book of Genesis, which tells us that when God created the material world He repeatedly deemed that material world good—”and God saw that it was good.” That phrase appears again and again with reference to the material things that God created. Let us add that “good” is not a conditional term here and does not mean simply that matter possesses utility for God’s purposes, but that it is fundamentally good, since it was created from nothing by God.
True, material things may be used for evil, and material things may even be said to have acquired a certain taint, a certain disjointedness in relation to man’s life on earth, as a result of the profound consequences of man’s fall. That, however, is another story and one that has little relevance to our subject today. It has little relevance except in one respect. Man’s fall separated us from God, not in an absolute sense but in the sense of the possibilities of eternal life, and so brought God to rescue us and to win for us the possibility, once again, of spending eternity with Him. God thus, in the words of the Symbol of the Faith, “came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man.” This, the Incarnation, comprises our next piece of evidence that matter is not evil or worthless.
God took on human flesh and blood and bones—He took on matter, He took on material—and became man. He who created all of the universe deigned to become one of us and to live among us, to be wrapped in coarse swaddling clothes at His birth, to wear material garments, to eat food, to drink water and wine, to breathe air, to walk along dusty roads, to smell the fragrance of flowers, to see with physical eyes the fields of grain and the birds of the air, to be baptized by St. John in the River Jordan, to sail upon seas, and so forth. God entered the material world He had created and lived as a human being, completely immersed, as we are, in the many aspects of that material. And it is abundantly evident that He loved what He had created, that he enjoyed His life among us.
Matter is thus thrice sanctified by God: it was sanctified by its origin in God’s creation; it was sanctified by God’s declaration that it is good; and, it was sanctified by God’s taking on human flesh and wrapping Himself, so to speak, in matter, in the material world. Matter is therefore not evil per se. Not only is it not evil, matter is essential to our salvation, as essential as was Christ’s robe to the healing of the woman with an issue of blood.
No people on earth pay so much honor to sanctified matter as do Orthodox Christians. We bow deeply before altars made of wood, stone, and cloth; we fall to the floor before the Holy Cross on Cross Veneration Sunday; we kiss icons made of wood and paint, and kiss Holy Books made of paper and ink; we pay homage to bread and wine even before its transmutation into Christ’s body and blood; we show the highest respect to the relics of the great Saints; we piously light candles made of wax and offer to God incense made of gums, resins, and fragrances; our worship is composed of beautiful chanted ceremonies, of priests resplendent in special garments; and we honor our own human bodies by blessing ourselves with the Sign of the Cross. All of these things indeed are material, and all either serve as symbols of a higher, better, total reality, or are things transfigured, or on the verge of transfiguration. They are things—material things—touched by and conveying to us the infinite power of God, just as that plain cloth robe conveyed God’s power in today’s Gospel.
Sectarians, to be sure, regard all of this as peculiar and unnecessary, at best, and perhaps heathenish, at worse. Poor people, poor people! They misunderstand us and misunderstand the very processes of creation and salvation, as we have just seen, and they misunderstand too the very nature of themselves, the very nature of human beings, for man is not a disembodied specter but a deliberate blending by God of the spiritual and the material. As such, matter is part of his inheritance and as such material things are intrinsic to his salvation.
Sacred Tradition tells us that the woman healed by Christ in today’s Gospel became a Christian and was sufficiently prosperous to have built a small monument to the event, which portrayed herself kneeling before Christ. The historian and Bishop, Eusebius of Caesarea, who lived at the time of St. Constantine the Great (that is, the first half of the fourth century), writes in his History of the Church that the statue was fashioned of bronze and that it still stood in his time, in fact he saw it himself when he visited the area.
This woman had an abundance of faith, so much so that she braved the noisy crowd around Christ and was saved by her belief that a mere touching of Christ’s robe would heal her. Christ said to her, “be of good comfort: thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.”
We do not have, in this fine Church, the very robe of Christ so that we might touch it and be healed. However, we have icons, we have relics, we have an altar cross, we have Holy Water, and we have all of the other Holy Things consecrated by God for our salvation. If we honor these objects, bowing before them, kissing them, paying homage to them, treating them with great reverence, and if we do this with the faith of the woman in today’s Gospel we may possibly be healed of our physical infirmities as she was. We may, depending on the will of God and on His plan for each of us.
But one eventuality we can count on for sure, and that is the most important eventuality, since it involves eternity and not just our short lives here on earth. If we reverence all of the things I have mentioned, and if we do this with the complete faith of the woman healed by Christ, the power of God will with certainty heal our hearts and save our souls.

Dives and Lazarus

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 09:06:40 -0800

Sermon on the Gospel of St. Luke, 16:19-31

Twenty-Second Sunday After Pentecost

The Parable of the Rich Man & Lazarus is one of the great passages of the New Testament, eloquent in its simplicity and abundant with meaning for men of all times and of all nations. It is also illustrative of the fact that certain overarching spiritual themes are repeated by Christ, each time in somewhat different form, so as to hammer home to His listeners, some lessons essential to their eternal salvation. Love of God and of neighbor is certainly one of these themes and we read throughout the Gospel various lessons and parables stressing that theme. Trust in God, as opposed to trust in temporary material things, is another. Christ emphasizes again and again that invisible spiritual reality is infinitely more real, and therefore infinitely more important, than visible, apparently solid, temporal reality, which, after all, perishes quickly.
We read today that there lived two men, the first a man of great wealth who clothed himself luxuriously and who feasted sumptuously every day. According to an old English tradition, this man is given the name “Dives” (pron. “Dye´-vees”), a name derived from the Latin word for “rich” or “rich man.”
The second man, a beggar named Lazarus, insofar as his station and way of life are concerned, was wretched almost beyond belief. Not only was he poor, and without shelter, but his flesh was covered with sores and he was comforted after a fashion by dogs, which licked the sores. He subsisted solely on handouts from passersby.
In time, Lazarus died and Christ says that he was carried by angels into Abraham’s bosom, or, as we would say, to Heaven. The Rich Man also died and found himself in the eternal torment of hell. The Rich Man, when he lifted up his eyes, could see Lazarus in heaven and he begged for mercy, asking that Lazarus be sent to assist him. In his own words, he asked that Lazarus, “dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.” That was not possible, however, for it is explained that a great gulf separates the just from the damned and that no one can pass from one state to another.
The Rich Man then asked that he be allowed to return to the world so as to warn his kinsfolk of their approaching doom, should they fail to mend their ways and alter the course of their lives. However, this request too was denied. If the message of the Holy Scripture is insufficient to move them to repentance, says the Gospel, then neither would a visit from the dead suffice to change them.
This is a grim story, in almost all its aspects it is grim and severe and sobering; indeed such passages as this from the Holy Gospel must be something of a shock to religious sentimentalists and the more liberal-minded sectarians, who insist on the heresy of universal salvation and who emphasize God’s mercy to such an exaggerated extent that the concepts of reward and punishment, along with the concept of justice, are watered down, so that they essentially disappear. Such, we are assured by Christ Jesus, is definitely not the case. In the life to come, we are either rewarded or we are punished, based on the sum of all the good and bad choices made during our earthly lives.
Now, what do we know about the Rich Man’s life and about the evil choices, the failings, that, upon his death, caused him to be dispatched to eternal punishment? First, it strikes us from the description given in the Gospel that the fundamental object of the Rich Man’s life was pleasure. We read that he adorned himself in the costliest garments and that each and every day he feasted sumptuously; as St. Cyril of Alexandria says, “he lived in never-ceasing banqueting,” and truly that cannot be denied.
What else did he do, and what else do we gather about this man’s character? It is evident from Christ’s narrative that this man lived for the enjoyment of luxury, that he had made a god out of high living—this is what he worshipped.
Bound up with this obsession with opulence, he worshipped himself, and the extravagant clothing and food bear stark witness to his feelings of his own towering importance. But in here (in his head) and here (in his heart) there is nothing in this man save pride and love of pleasure. There are no thoughts of an elevating nature, no thoughts of the duty to God imposed on him because of his wealth, no thoughts for those less gifted in material things, and no thoughts for the indisputable fact that his life would someday end and that he would then be required to provide an accounting before the Supreme Judge of All. His heart was like stone, apparently, without care, without remorse, without any realization of the spiritual, without any sense of higher responsibility or of the seriousness of life. One would be hard pressed to discover a more vivid picture of vulgar wealth, unless one looks closely at the lives of some of our contemporary film and rock-music “stars.”
Secondly, we see in our mind’s eye the doleful figure of Lazarus, a man with nothing, a man in rags, a man covered in sores, a man who lived from crumbs given him by strangers. A poorer and more tortured creature would be hard to imagine. But we read of no complaints from his lips because of his miserable lot in life. This was the “hand” that life had “dealt” him. To put it in Christian terms, his station in life was evidently in accordance with God’s will and he trusted in the Lord to provide the minimum for his existence, knowing that life was short and that eternity loomed just beyond the horizon.
We do not read that the Rich Man was deliberately, actively cruel to Lazarus. We do not read that he called the authorities to have him removed from his front door step, or that he spoke harsh words to him, or kicked him, or even harbored unkind thoughts about him. The Rich Man had no thoughts about Lazarus at all! He was oblivious to him; he was indifferent to his plight. Lazarus to him was rather like the modern fictional story of “The Invisible Man.” The Rich Man was too busy pampering himself to take any notice of Lazarus, or the abysmal condition in which he lived, whatsoever. This was the Rich Man’s second great failing. The first was that he had made gods of pleasure and of pride and of himself, and the second was that he was utterly detached from and utterly disinterested in the sufferings of his neighbor.
And so, Lazarus went from earthly torment to eternal bliss, from pain to paradise : the Rich Man, by way of contrast, went from earthy voluptuousness to everlasting torture. St. Cyril says he went, “from pleasure to torment, from glory to shame, from light to darkness.” So great was his degradation that he was driven to beg relief from the former beggar, to beseech the smallest act of mercy from the one to whom he had denied the smallest thought. He had dedicated his life to, and thoroughly relished, his earthly delights beyond all measure, and now he paid a dreadful price.
This then is the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. Its message is crystal clear. Brothers and sisters must help brothers and sisters regardless of wealth or station. St. Cyril writes, “Come, therefore, ye rich, cease from transitory pleasure; be earnest after the hope that is set before you; clothe yourselves with mercy and kindness; hold out the hand to them that are in need; comfort those who are in necessity; count as your own the sorrows of those that are in distress....”
Now, let us be clear, so that there be no misunderstanding (and we have discussed this before), that there is no sin per se in wealth, and, conversely, no automatic holiness in poverty. To each of the men and women of this world God distributes certain gifts, requiring that they be used in His service. Wealth, treated with care, without haughtiness, and with an eye to helping those without the physical necessities of life, can bring salvation. Poverty, endured with dignity, without complaint, without envy and hatred of those with more, can bestow a peace and blessedness and an abiding trust in God often denied the more affluent. The poor may, by their example, convey some notion of such spiritual values to those in need of them.
Modern history has recorded that societies have been afflicted for at least the past 200 years with secular ideologies that seek to set man against man, class against class, thereby enflaming the passions by the use of envy. True Christianity rejects all of that. In a Godly Order here on earth, in societies truly animated by the Gospel of Christ Jesus, there may still be poor and rich and those in between. But these considerations are secondary. Each fulfills his role in life, as dictated by God, and each strives to fill the needs of his brothers and sisters, both spiritual and material. There is no indifference of one class towards another in such settings, and no hatred motivated by envy. All men and women work to make the lives of their fellows decent and tolerable. That too, needless to say, is part of the message in today’s Gospel. God desires that all men to be saved and this can come nearest to realization where Christian solidarity and love of neighbor reign supreme.
So, with the solemn knowledge of what is at stake both here on earth and in the life to come, let us labor in our lives to make our earthly journey centered on God, and not centered on some passion made into an idol, like pleasure-seeking, or pride, or personal adornment, as was the case with the Rich Man in today’s Gospel. Let us focus more on the spiritual and not the material. Let us banish from our hearts envy of others who are richer, or more handsome, or more favored in their professions, or whatever. Envy is as alien to true Christianity as atheism; it is a poison that can kill the soul, and, at a mass level, destroy whole civilizations, kill millions of innocents, and cost millions of souls, as we have seen in our own terrible time.
In our personal lives, let us emulate poor Lazarus, who never entertained the least animosity towards the Rich Man, despite the wall of indifference that the Rich Man set up to separate the two. If we do these things, we shall come that much nearer to saving our own souls and to helping our fellow Christians to save theirs as well.