Glory to Jesus Christ, in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters, we are on the second
Sunday of the Great Fast. I welcome you. I rejoice
together with you on this day. When I was a child,
well, back when I was young, back in the 60s,
we used to say youngsters. That sounds like grandpa's
talk. When I was a youngster living in Biloxi,
Mississippi, it was a heavily Roman Catholic
area because it had been founded by the French
and the Spaniards. Catholic kids would ask me,
you know, back then, it was not unusual, like,
what religion are you, would be asked by children
to each other. I'd say Orthodox and people like...
You're Jewish? And I'm like, no. But I really
couldn't say more. But they would also ask me
when Lent comes around, what are you giving up
for Lent? Because, of course, they're giving
up candy or whatever. Little did they know. So
we think of Lent, at least initially, as when
we do something. We fast. We come to church during
the week. We have matins, we have presanctified,
alms, the liturgy is longer. Alms, yes. Keep
in mind that the first two things are for us.
God doesn't need them. But the alms, we learn
in Matthew 25, is a way that we honor, we venerate
the Lord himself in that other person that we
think is probably not worthy. The least of these,
my brethren. Just as much as we honor Christ
when we kiss this icon, we honor Christ when
we serve somebody. It's the same thing. It's
veneration. So that third one is something that
is absolutely essential. And I think we know
from the gospel we heard some weeks ago, not
optional for us. It's a sign of our Christian
love. So yes, we do something during Lent, but
we soon discover in Lent that it is he, the Lord,
our Savior, Jesus Christ, that does something
for us. Catechumens, please be clear, you heard
that epistle reading from Hebrews. Did any of
the angels, did the Lord say, sit thou my right
hand till I make thine enemies footstool before
thy feet? No, this is Christ, the King, the Savior,
not some spiritual emanation. This is the Son
of God. Otherwise, whatever he does for you is
not going to help you any more than what I do
for you. He does something for us. Just in the
way that when we are very ill, we go to the hospital,
we're helpless on that bed, and it's the doctors
and the nurses that are doing something for us
and to us to heal us. That's what Christ is doing
in Lent. The fasting, the prayers, the alms,
of course. What is that but to allow us, to prepare
us, to give us capacity to receive God's grace,
God's activity, his deifying, his sanctifying,
his holy, his joyful, his mercy. Joyful mercy
in our hearts. So that our spiritual eyes, as
we say in some of the prayers, our noetic faculty,
the faculty of the heart, can be healed. Father
Maximus, the late monk Maximus, Anastasia Brother's
father, and a dear friend and mentor to many
of us, preached here in 2017. I shared that sermon
with you online. For this day, this second Sunday
of Lent. And he clearly explained why we need
this spiritual hospital of Lent. Which the church
brings us before Christ. He says this. Because
our spiritual senses are atrophied. In other
words, they're just not working. It's like I
had muscles once but I never used them so they
atrophied. Because our spiritual senses are atrophied
by the fall in the Garden of Eden. We are not
seeing, as we should, the ocean of God's light
and love. And that blindness, which is not the
will of God for us, can make this life seem like
a virtual hell with anxiety, uncertainty, fear,
and going continually in the wrong direction.
If you are a catechumen, please recall that Great
Lent is the time, the training, the spiritual
therapy, and for us too, that may have been baptized
even as children, we relive it, we redo it, so
that we will, the grace of God will be renewed
within us. It's preparing you to meet the risen
Lord. We meet, The crucified and risen Jesus
Christ. The real one. Not an imaginary spiritual
being. We meet him by doing something real. Picking
up our cross. That is denying ourselves. Saying
no to ourselves. Opposing ourselves. So we can
affirm the other person. So we can affirm God's
place in our life. We meet him by picking up
the cross and we follow him to Golgotha. And
the fasting and the prayers and the repentance,
it can be the cross for us. And very difficult.
It is a Golgotha because something in us is dying.
And that's sin. So something real, true. Who
you really truly are can live and blossom and
be fruitful. We follow him to the joy of Pascha.
And in all this effort, catechumens are long
time orthodox. We discover that Jesus Christ
is doing something for us. His providence, if
we keep our eyes open, and I can tell you I failed
miserably the first week of Lent. There were
so many instances when I look back. God was pointing
me in the right direction. I won't go into the
details now, but I guarantee you, if I had only
been more watchful and attentive to God's providence,
that first week of Lent would have gone very
differently for me. And I could have embraced
something much more profound than just living
on the surface. You discover that Jesus Christ
is doing something for you as you struggle and
as you fail, as I did. And failing is an important
part of Lent. It's built into it. So don't be
discouraged. Failure is a part of Lent. It's
okay. It teaches humility. It teaches that it's
not all you. But listen carefully. This gospel
account that we had today. The four friends bringing
the man to Jesus and couldn't get into the house
because it was so packed. What a glorious thing
that would be if this church was so packed, like
you were sitting right up to here, and we'd have
to walk across this with the altar service, and
there'd be no parking to be parking on the street
all the way up. That would be amazing. May God
grant that. May God grant that. You've heard
this gospel about the man and his four friends.
And all of us, the catechumens too, sense this
very much. You were brought here, like those
four friends brought that man. You were brought
to church by someone. If you were a baby, if
you were an adult, by somebody's prayers, by
somebody's hands, perhaps you were invited, somebody
prayed for you, you didn't even know it. For
all of us, that's true. Your godparents, your
parents, your friends, your former pastor maybe.
Your family. Maybe your sin. You were brought
here. This is an image of the church. Catechumens,
you're being brought before the Lord by the friends
of the Lord who trust him. You and I are in some
ways are absolutely helpless. You look at the
cross over here and what do you see? Christ having
given up all the glory of being the son of God.
Naked on the tree. Helpless. And only depending
on his father to raise him in glory from the
dead. He gave it all up. That's the way we're
going to be too. If we're smart, we will realize
right now, we are still helpless ahead of time.
And like the paralyzed man, if we're brought
to Christ, he will heal the spiritual atrophy
of our spiritual vision. He will forgive our
sins, those things that stop us from seeing the
glory, the light, the mercy, the ocean of God's
love that monk Maximus mentioned. Perhaps on
this day of the commemoration of the great saint,
the Athonite saint and the bishop of Thessalonica,
Gregory Palamas, which we commemorate on the
second Sunday of Lent, a way to honor him, at
least the way I'm capable of doing, is to quote
from his sermon for today. St. Gregory died in
1359. He died on November 14th. And because that's
the day of the Apostle Philip, the Athonite monks
felt after his death that his commemoration,
he was, icons are painted of him ten years after
he died. The Athonite monks felt that his memory
should be moved to the second Sunday of Lent
as a bridge. Sunday of Orthodoxy. What happens
when you live this Orthodoxy? St. Gregory Palamas.
And he shows us how to carry the cross, which
is our theme next week. St. Gregory says that
the paralytic represents our own soul. I can
relate. I seem pretty paralyzed most of the time.
The bed on which the paralytic lies, says St.
Gregory, is our body. And the four friends, let's
call them virtues, that's what he calls them,
who carry him represent... spiritual realities
that bring us to Christ. St. Gregory identifies
these four things. They are self -condemnation,
compunction, constancy in prayer, and commitment.
Self -condemnation, compunction, constancy in
prayer, and commitment, the four C's. Now, the
first word, self -condemnation, can sound harsh,
and we don't like that. Condemn myself. But St.
Gregory doesn't mean self -hatred. He means something
healthier. He means honest self -knowledge. To
stand before God without excuses. To not pretend.
To not blame others. But to be accountable. That's
self -condemnation. It's just being truthful.
Getting real about yourself. Takes courage. And
from that, honesty comes. And from honesty comes
the compunction, which is what? It's the softening
of the heart, a grateful sorrow, the sorrow that
produces joy, that opens us up to God. And that
compunction, that joyful sorrow, gives birth
to commitment. We sense the love of God in his
providence, and we will not leave him. And it's
a firm desire to be healed, no matter what. And
this commitment naturally leads to constancy
and prayer, wanting to be with the Lord, wanting
to speak to him and to feel his presence, the
longing to remain always in the presence of God.
These are the four friends that carry us. All
the things we build to avoid this self -condemnation,
this honesty, looking into our heart to accept
our condition, there's too much noise. That we
allow. And we can't even tell if we have a soul
sometimes. But repentance, the four friends,
leads to repentance. And that tears open the
roof, says St. Gregory. And the soul is lowered
before Christ. And this lowering is humility.
There at the center of the heart stands Jesus
Christ. And we are helpless and exposed before
him. But he loves us. And so we feel received.
We feel accepted. We don't feel a guilt trip.
We feel God's mercy. The soul line helpless before
the Lord. And what does Christ say? What does
he say to the man? He doesn't begin with the
man's paralysis. He says, son. Words of love.
Son, your sins are forgiven. His word unties
the knots that have bound us. Come to Christ.
Don't delay with your sins. And the noose, that
is the spiritual faculty of the heart, that thing
that is atrophied, that we can't see the ocean
of God's love around us. Even sustaining and
upholding the trees and the wind and the rocks
and the frogs and the lizards and all of that
stuff. We're freed from the chains of sin and
the paralysis of our passions and we become capable
of holding God's uncreated. life -sustaining,
deifying grace in our heart. We are free. Christianity,
this path of orthodoxy that St. Gregory speaks
about in just this simple sermon that he gave,
brings us freedom. He frees us from the fear
of death and from sin, and he speaks those healing
words, the next words that he says to that man.
Arise, take up your bed, and walk. And we are
going to walk as free creatures before God, brothers
and sisters, all the way through Lent now. This
is the liberating experience of deifying grace,
God's activity in this world, that St. Gregory
was so careful. to explain to his flock as he
was Archbishop in Thessalonica. This is the vision
that St. Gregory places before us today on this
second Sunday of Lent, and he reminds us that
we are created for this vision. We may feel extremely
far from it, like these are just sort of religious
-sounding words, but be assured, this is the
vision. We are called and invited and equipped
to have this experience so that Christ dwells
within us. Quoting Jesus Christ, St. Gregory
says, The kingdom of God is not far away. It
is within you when the heart is purified and
illumined by grace. Let's think about this during
this week and remember this is what God does
for us. Amen.