In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit, one God, Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy
on us and save us. Amen. It is a great joy to
be with you once again. I am actually here as
we had a family reunion yesterday, a family reunion.
The actual occasion will remain nameless so that
I can get on with the homily. But anyway, it
was joyful. So here I am, and I am, as a preacher,
I am looking out at two mountains, a giant mountain
and a lesser mountain, but they're connected
by the same range. The giant mountain is how
to understand the entry of the Virgin into the
temple at three years old and dwelling in the
Holy of Holies. And the slightly lesser mountain
is the scripture that the Holy Tradition has
given us to help us understand this, which is
kind of interesting. Especially the Martha and
the Mary story. Of course, you know the Martha.
Everyone, we all know the Martha and the Mary
story. But how does this story actually help
us understand the mystery of the Virgin in the
Holy of Holies? That's our challenge. That's
my challenge. And so I'm asking you, as good
brothers and sisters, to pray with me. That the
Holy Spirit will give me the proper guidance
so that words will come out of me that will be
fruitful to the occasion and helpful to each
of us. So, in preparing for this, I read both
homilies of St. Gregory Palamas, Homily 52 and
Homily 53. Homily 53 is an extraordinary homily.
It's a work of genius. It would be a third mountain
to have to try to analyze it. But it is a paean
of worship, a paean of adoration, a paean of
veneration to the Mother of God and a uniting
of the truths of our Orthodox faith within all
of that. But how do we bring it down? How do
we bring it down to our life? Maybe we're not
supposed to bring it down to earth, but how do
we raise ourselves up to it? I mean, it is in
the temple. The idea of a temple, what does that
mean to us today? Even we call our churches temples.
And for a good reason. Because it has a narthex,
a nave. a sanctuary, and a holy of holies. But
do we understand that in the way that we should?
So I'm going to take a brief excursus to kind
of deal with this point, and that's this. I recently
heard a lecture by an academic philosopher, and
he was actually a real philosopher. It was something
that he gave recently, and the title of the lecture
was Living in Eternity. And so my ears perked
up. I said, oh, this is going to be good. But
it was not expressed from a Christian standpoint.
It was expressed from a Platonic standpoint because
he was trying to analyze the work of Plotinus,
the philosopher who lived in the 3rd century,
on eternity and time. Now what he said in that
lecture isn't important, but at the question
and answer period, there was a challenge. Somebody
asked him, what does Plotinus think of memory
and what does Plotinus think of hope? And he
dispensed with memory, saying, well, if Plotinus
thinks that memory is... is a temporalized thing.
It's just in this world, doesn't exist in eternity.
And as for hope, he said, there is really no
even virtue of hope in the Platonic tradition.
And then he said this thing that caught my ear.
He said, you know, one of the main differences
between Platonism and Christianity is that Christianity
In Christianity, hope is a virtue. And not only
a virtue, it's a theological virtue. But in Platonism,
if you believe in hope, which is to say, if you
believe in the future, you are as far away as
possible from eternity. Now that struck me. It
struck me for two reasons. One, there seems to
be a modicum of truth there. There seems to be
something we can learn from that. But the second
thing is, of course, it doesn't go to the vision
of God. It doesn't go far enough. It doesn't
really express the idea of the Holy of Holies.
But it does express something about eternity.
How? The idea that eternity is now. It's an eternal
now. It's not in the future. This is the truth.
Eternity is not in the future. It's now. It's
only now. So living in eternity has to be living
in the now. All right. With that as our background,
let's now look at the scripture. What is the
story of Martha and Mary? What are we to learn
from that? Well, you know, we know it so well.
We have learned to think that Martha and Mary
are types. You know, just like Leah and Rebecca,
Rebecca or Rachel? Yeah, the two wives of Israel,
of Jacob, you know, that we read about, that
we hear about in the canon of great Andrew. Leah
is the type of activity, and the other is the
type of contemplation. Is Martha a type of activity
and Mary a type of contemplation? Is that what
we're being told here? I don't think so. I don't
think so. And here's why. Let's look at the scripture
closely. Not looking for a type, but just looking
for what's going on. What happens in this scripture?
First of all, they go to a village, right? A
certain village. And a woman in that village
invites... Mary welcomes them into her house.
It's her house. It doesn't say anything about
Lazarus, her brother. It's her house, so she
invites him in. And she has a sister called Mary
who sits at the feet of Jesus and listens to
his word. So clearly, Martha is the stronger
figure. Martha is the elder. Mary is the younger
sister. Then what she says to Jesus is a complaint.
But what a complaint it is. What presumption.
What presumption she uses there. And we don't
hear that. We just hear, you know, why don't
you have her come and help us? But what does
she say? She actually says, and I'll read it
to you. She says, but Martha was distracted by
much service. And she approached him and said,
Lord, do you not care that my sister has left
me to serve alone? Therefore, tell her to help
me. You see what she's doing? She is inviting
Jesus to take her side. Why? Because her side
is the correct one, according to her. According
to the social rules of the day, women served
the guests. Period. That was it. That was a rule.
And it still exists to this day. I mean, in certain
societies. I mean, I recently, in 2013, went
on a pilgrimage to Serbia. And we had a big feast
at one of the towns there. And it was the Feast
of St. John the Baptist. And we were all invited
in for a feast day to a long hall with two long
rows of tables. Everybody sat down, but all the
women served. All the men sat down, all the women
served. The only women that were sitting were
the women in our pilgrimage group. They sat because
they were guests. So she was saying to Jesus,
these are the rules. And she was saying, you
must help me. Get her to help me. That's what
she was actually doing. So when Jesus said, Martha,
Martha, and by the way, do you hear the deep
affection that Jesus has here for her? The deep
affection and love he has, Martha, to say twice,
Martha, Martha. You know he loves her. You know
he cares for her. She's not a type to him. She's
not the type of activity. She's a person. And
he, loving her, says, you're troubled by many
things, Martha, dear Martha. But Mary has chosen,
Mary, but there is one thing needful, and Mary
has chosen the good part, and it shall not be
taken away from her. So, clearly there, Jesus
is, his reprimand is not to, is not just to reprimand
Martha for being busy, but to say, the reality,
I'm here. Christ is here. God is here in person.
Social rules, the social mores don't compute,
don't fix. They are transcended by this reality
that we're living in right now. And this is then
proved by the next two verses, which are added,
you know, the verses that are added, where the
woman, hearing him from the crowd, lifts up her
voice and she says, blessed is the womb that
bore thee and the breast that nourished thee.
And then what does he do? He immediately, he
doesn't say, yes, well, thanks, that's my mom,
you know. He doesn't do that. What did he say?
He said, yea, rather, but rather do them. It's
more important than blessed is the womb. blessed
are those who hear the word of God and keep it.
So there again too, he deflects, he deflects
the social rules that we all live by and points
to the presence of life that he is living, which
is eternity. So when we then think, when we think
of, Mary, in the temple, the temple then representing
all of creation, all genuine holy temples represent
the whole of creation, and the Holy of Holies
is there. To go in there as a three -year -old
and to voluntarily, according to St. Gregory
Palamas, to voluntarily, of her own will, leap
up those stairs and walk up to the high priest
there. And he was directed to bring her in, into
the Holy of Holies. And she accepts this. This
is a reality beyond our normal life. It's beyond
our social life. It's inconceivable for us. And
yet, this is what we are honoring. So what are
we honoring? What we are honoring is what Mary
did there, what Mary does there. What she accomplished
for us there was not just God's honoring her
by having her in the temple sitting around the
Holy of Holies because he knew that in the future
she was going to be the mother of God. That's
clearly there. But for us, in order for us to
really grasp this and not get lost in all the
wonderful expressions that we have about the
Virgin Mother. that we don't really understand
because they just go right by us. Rejoice, O
Virgin Theotokos, you know, we say. They go right
by us. But they are all there for a purpose.
They are all there. They are all expressions
of eternity. And so what Mary, what she is doing,
is she is showing us how to live in eternity.
So, as St. Gregory, Palamas says at the very
end there, when he says, he says that so we,
in order to follow her, in order to understand
living in eternity, this is what we must do.
This is what as Christians we must do. As Christians,
if we are like Martha, we are troubled by many
things, right? We're worried and exposed to many
different things. And we don't hear Jesus saying
to us, Joel, Mary, Gail. Twice, you know, you're
troubled and worried by many things, but one
thing is needful. One thing is needful. So Mary
in the gospel is not a symbol of contemplation.
She is an image of someone who's sitting at the
feet of the Lord of glory. Contemplation is obviously
there, implied, but what's really there is the
one thing needful is for us to turn from everything
in this world within our hearts and turn toward
God in eternity. We must learn to live in eternity
while we're living in the present. Jesus didn't
say to Martha, you know, what you're doing is
wrong. She was actually doing right by society.
By the social order of things. That's the way
to do it. And we can't just throw the social
order up in the air and say it has to go by the
board. No, that's how we have to live together.
It's ways we learn to live together. It's the
way that society learned to live together and
we have to learn it our way. But within that,
our hearts have to be turned toward eternity.
So we learn to live in eternity. And thus...
And thus we can say then with St. Gregory that
we can say that through Mary we learn this truth
that we have our dwelling places, our dwelling
place should move from earth to heaven. And then
following the words of St. Maximus the Confessor
who said that who said to the apostles at the
transfiguration that they moved from flesh to
spirit. We have to move in our beings from flesh
to spirit. And then finally, that we have to
acquire this longing, a longing for eternity,
a longing to live in eternity, so that... And
that longing has to kind of overwhelm the things
we do in daily life. Not that we have to give
them up, but we have to kind of do them in the
light of, in the shadow of. And we can't be Christians
if we don't do them that way, if we don't learn
to think that way, if we don't learn to act that
way and move that way. So what I think... what
this feast is telling us, is showing us, is not
just that we honor the Virgin Mother for all
that she has done, but we honor also her for
showing us the way to live in eternity. And if
we can't live in a way, if we can't live in eternity
now, then we must strive to live toward eternity.
So if we're not living in eternity, at least
let us live toward eternity. Because in that
way, we will be truly Christian. And in that
way, The only hope that is God -like, the reason
why hope is called a theological virtue is it
is the hope that is according to God. And God
exists in eternity. As Saint Maximus the Confessor
says, the reality around God is infinite and
eternal. So living in eternity means living toward
God. all times, even in the social situations
you're in, even in raising a family, even in
your job and whatever, there is something in
you oriented toward eternity and doesn't get
lost in the daily life. So this is what I think
and I pray that our Virgin Mother is telling
us, that she loves our praise, she loves to hear
us say rejoice. but she is now the source of
joy. So who are we saying rejoice to? We're not
the angel anymore. We are people living toward
eternity, trying to live in eternity. And I think
that's really the message that the Theotokos
would like to give us in the 21st century, in
2021, as we go on. So God bless you, each one.
Learn, learn, learn above all to live toward
eternity. Amen.