Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory to the Father. In
the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. Amen. There are different ways that we
know things. We might know the same thing one
day and learn it in a different way another.
I'll give you an example from my own life. Once
I was on my way to fill in to a parish. It was
during Lent. And I wondered to myself, how clear
is it? in the gospel, that Jesus is going to
go to Jerusalem and be arrested and killed and
rise on the third day. How clear is that? If
you were one of the disciples, if I were one
of the disciples, would that be explicitly clear
to me? Well, I got to the place where I was going
to give the sermon the night before, and I was
going to use their library, but it was covered
with plastic, it was painted, I couldn't use
the concordance. I couldn't use the dictionary
that I'm used to. All I had, and I didn't even
have my Orthodox Bible that has all the little
references in it where you can compare this to
that. All I had was the Howard Johnson's Gideon
Bible with no helps at all. In other words, all
I had was Scripture. And I thought, how inconvenient.
Just the Scripture. But then I developed a...
which is a good habit. On those Sundays when
I would preach, I would read the chapter that
the text comes from. I would read the chapter
that precedes it and the chapter that follows
it. It became a very good practice. So that's
how I began to prepare for the sermons. And on
that Sunday, it was Mark, and it said, When they
departed and passed through Galilee, he said
to his disciples, The Son of Man is being betrayed
into the hands of men. They will kill him, and
after he is killed, he will rise on the third
day. I thought, that's pretty clear. That's very
explicit. And then in the chapter before, I read
also, this was... Could that child come closer
to me? We can merge our voices. Then I looked
at chapter 8, and it said, He began to teach
them, the Son of Man must suffer many things
and be rejected of the elders, and the chief
priests and scribes and be killed, and after
three days he rise again. Oh, he said it twice.
It's very clear. And then I went to chapter 10
of Mark. Well, you know where I'm going. It turns
out he says it again a third time. So I got to
church that day. And I said to the deacon, I
said, I was wondering how clear it was in the
gospel that Jesus was going to be arrested and
killed and rise again. I just wondered how, and
I found it three times in Mark 8, Mark 9, and
Mark 10. So he said it three times, very clear.
And the deacon said, of course, Father, everyone
knows that. And I said, they do? I just discovered
it. Now, intellectually, I probably knew that.
And when I got home and looked at my Orthodox
Bible study, it says, under each heading, it
says, Jesus' first prophecy of this passion.
The next one says, it says Jesus' second prophecy.
It tells you all there. I'd read that many times.
But it didn't stay in me in the same way. Now,
the way something stays in us, We know many things.
You and I have much information. But not everything
is held the same way. Well, I understood this
small thing. It's a tiny example. But I felt
it. It was organized to me differently. Not all
of you are aware of processing somatically bodily.
But really, sometimes you hold things in your
mind. And some things, they're like at the center
of your being. And this is what we are taught
to do with scripture, to hide scripture in our
hearts. And when it's hidden in our hearts, we
turn it over and we understand it different ways.
It's not just information. There are days when
I wake up and I feel like I don't know anything.
It's like everything fell away during the night.
And I'm starting over. But what do we still have?
We still have what's hidden in our hearts. Now
for the purpose of this sermon, let's suppose
we are all in the same situation. Some of you
are not yet catechumens. Some are catechumens.
Some are baptized. But let's assume we're all
the same. That we have all said, at the entrance
of the church, we've been asked, do you renounce
Satan? And we've all said, I do renounce Satan.
We were asked a second time, do you renounce
Satan? And we said a second time, I do renounce
Satan. And we were then asked, have you renounced
Satan? And you said, I have renounced Satan.
And then you breathed upon him and liturgically
spit upon him. You know how that is. And then
you were asked. Do you unite yourself to Christ?
And you said, I do unite myself to Christ. You
were asked again, do you unite yourself to Christ?
And you said, I do unite myself to Christ. And
then you were asked, have you united yourself
to Christ? And you said, I have united myself
to Christ. And in this, we come into the church
and we begin to hold knowledge. and experience
in a different way. What before was information
and something that perhaps made sense to us and
maybe even meant sense to us deeply and profoundly.
But as we're walking in the spiritual life, we're
learning it again fresh. Let's say for the purpose
of this sermon that you've confessed your sins.
You have no anger hidden in your heart. You have
no revenge plotting in your heart. None of that
is in your heart. Your heart is pure. But then
what goes in that heart? And the scriptures say,
and the Lord teaches, and the prophets teach,
it's in Psalms, Psalm 119, verse 11. Thy word
have I hid in my heart. I have stored up your
word in my heart. I have hidden your word in
my heart. You can see why that reminded me of
what we say as we prepare to be baptized. The
way it goes is, thy word have I hidden in my
heart that I might not sin against thee. I have
stored up your word in my heart that I might
not sin against you. I have hidden your word
in my heart that I might not sin against you.
And for those of you who are studying Deuteronomy,
this past week you studied Deuteronomy 6 .6,
and these words which I command you this day
shall be hidden in your heart, shall be in thine
heart. So this is what we seek to do. When we
do this, I will just parenthetically say that
when a priest is preparing to give a sermon,
at least when I prepare to give a sermon, the
bulk of what I think about is the things I'm
not going to say. We're going to throw that out.
We're going to keep this sermon short. And everything
that follows I threw out. I'm going right to
the ending. We hide a scripture in our heart
when we ponder it from many different angles
and ways. And it stays with us. And we know it
differently. and we act upon it. It begins to
coordinate in our body. I use a very bodily metaphor
here because we feel it dimensionally. Everything
else we can forget, but what's hidden in our
heart stays with us. This is how we learn. Hiding
scripture in our heart is the first step in learning
how to reach the heart in prayer and how to reach
the heart in preparing. for communion and how
to pray for other people in there's so many things
i could say about this and it's it's key that
i that i spread them out over many sermons and
not just not just one but this is the beginning
we are accepting christ into our heart in a different
way than what we debate a different way than
what we even that we are even capable of understanding
intellectually. It's something that we take into
ourselves, which is the very nature of communion
itself, that we receive the body of Jesus Christ
and the blood of Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit
into us through our hearts in love for one another.
This is what we all do today. May God bless each
one of us. Glory to Jesus Christ.