08/04/2011
5th Sunday of Lent
Ambition and demand and how to cure them.
Today is the fifth Sunday of Lent and our Church is preparing us even more for Christ’s passion. We hear Christ Himself in the Gospel, speaking ever more clearly of His passion to His disciples and Apostles. While in last Sunday’s Gospel He told them that He would be given into the hands of men, generally and non-specifically, He now identifies these people, who are the Scribes and Hierarchs and the spiritual leaders of the Jews.
He continues and clearly tells them of His passion, that they will mock Him, they will crucify Him and that he will die. He also gives them the joyous news that, after three days, He will rise. This is what Christ does. When something huge and difficult is about to happen, He prepares us in His own way.
The Apostles however showed that they did not understand. James and John, two of His three favourites, even asked Him for something serious. They brushed aside the other Apostles, and having first set their mother, Salome, to do the asking, they asked Christ to give them the first two seats in His Kingdom. They believed that this kingdom would be an earthly one and they wanted to be FIRST. How evil is ambition - for one to want to trample on others in order to show himself and to be dominant. The Lord was saddened and reprimanded them. He also said, though, that there is good ambition! “You do not know what you are asking”, He said. Firstly, I am not going to create a temporal kingdom and secondly I am not seeking this sort of ascent, for that is the way to fall. I want the way of toil, sacrifice and grace”.
He then asked if they were able to drink of the cup that He was about to drink – that is, to die. They said “Yes”. One who is so ambitious, sees things in a different light and thinks that he can do all things, just to succeed in his aims. He also gives everything, just to succeed.
And the Lord said: “You will die as martyrs, but to receive your place on my right and on my left is not my doing, for it is God’s on the one hand and yours on the other, for the great seats need great toil and great sacrifices”.
When they heard this, the ten were indignant, for they too were ambitious and they too wanted the honour seats. “Why them and not us?”, they thought. This happens in our lives on earth, every day and every second. Even today, we see things and we suffer and the powers that be, want to lead nations, to impose their beliefs and ideas through violence, blood and oppression.
Jesus then took them aside, did not chastise them, neither did He advise them against what they were doing, but said: “Come here, my children. People here on earth do these things, but for us, things are different. Whoever wants to be great, must become a servant. And he who wants to be first, must become a slave to all. Do you want an example? Take me. I did not come to be served, but to serve. I did not come to sacrifice, but to be sacrificed and to give my life as a ransom for all, that all may be free”.
Therefore, the cure for ambition is humility and love. As Christ Himself did. If we want to, let us follow Him and we will be cured from all evil ambition and demand and everything negative and our lives will shine both here and in the eternal creation.
07/04/2011
A Sermon on St. Mary of Egypt
Committing Sins and Committing to God: A Sermon on St. Mary of Egypt
Orthodox Christianity records many accounts of conversion experiences. Throughout her long history the Church has commemorated thousands of men and women saints whose former unethical and undesirable lifestyles were transformed into a wholesome Christian existence of submission and obedience to the will of God.
By God's grace, the one-time rulers, persecutors, tax collectors, prostitutes, thieves, and murderers, today make up our canon of saints. This reality bears witness to the Church's raison d'être; to why our Lord established the Church within the world. The Church is God's ultimate vehicle for transforming people's lives. The Church's main purpose is to heal, sanctify, and save all believers.
In Orthodox theology, the Church is properly called the "redeemed community" of Christ Jesus, a union of sinners constantly struggling and growing toward God's eternal Kingdom, of which the Church offers only a glimpse. To suggest that the Church exists only for the holy and worthy is to undermine its whole nature, if not ridicule Christ, who came into this world to save sinners and established the Church to continue this ministry of conversion and salvation.
The life of St. Mary of Egypt
The saints of the Church then come right out of the ranks of us sinners. On this Fifth Sunday of Great Lent, the Church remembers and honors one such sinner turned saint: Mary of Egypt. Her life is extraordinary. St. Mary was an individual who represented a cross section of the immoral, fallen world of her day, a woman whose powerful conversion experience from a life of prodigality to a life of holiness and purity has been the focus of much admiration among the Orthodox.
St. Mary lived during the fourth century A.D. At the tender age of twelve, she relocated with her parents to the prominent metropolitan city of Alexandria , in Egypt , where she lived on her own for seventeen years as a loathsome prostitute. So enveloped was the young Mary in her sexual sins that many times out of desperation, she sought out clients for herself without requesting any payment in return. Her fellow citizens looked down on her lowliness as a harlot and treated her with the utmost disrespect. Mary in turn resented her accusers, living in seclusion, and realizing that she was willfully throwing her life away.
Until one day . . .
A group of Christians gathered to embark on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the solemn feast of the Elevation of the Cross. Driven by curiosity, Marytagged along with the group. When the Alexandrian Christians arrived in Jerusalem , they headed immediately for the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Christendom's most sacred shrine, built over the place where our Lord was crucified and the tomb from which He rose.
As Mary reached the gates of the church, some invisible power obstructed her from physically entering in. Pious worshipers passed her on either side and made their entrance, but Mary's limbs seemed to become stiff and petrified. As Mary peered into the church, she saw every Christian falling to his knees as the Precious and Life-Giving Cross of Christ, still fully intact, was raised and processed around the sanctuary. Mary's gaze then fell upon an icon of her namesake, the Blessed Virgin Theotokos, and immediately, Mary also dropped to her knees in deep contrition, weeping uncontrollably for the sins she had committed.
Leaving the church, she returned the day after, this time able to physically enter and venerate the Precious Wood. At that moment, Mary decided to change her life by dedicating the remainder of it to God through repentance. That same day, she left the Holy City , crossed the Jordan River , and entered the desert, where she lived in all piety, humility, and poverty for 47 years.
For almost half a century, Mary engaged herself in strenuous fasts and prayed to God unceasingly, repenting over her former life and praising the God whose mercy and compassion back in Jerusalem made her aware of the seriousness of her spiritual condition and saved her.
Toward the end of her life, St. Mary sent word to a priest named Zosimas to come to the desert and offer her Holy Communion. St. Zosimas came to the dying Mary on Holy Thursday and communed her. Returning the year after to the same place in the desert where he had last seen St. Mary, Fr. Zosimas found her dead, asleep in the Lord.
Miraculously, he found her body undecomposed and uncontaminated, fragrant with the grace of the Most Holy Spirit of God. Next to her body there lay a note, written by St. Mary's own hand, which read: "Father Zosima, in this region bury the body of the lowly Mary. I surrendered my spirit the same day that I communed the Precious Gifts. Please pray for me." Edified by this miraculous woman, St. Zosimas offered St. Mary a Christian burial. Church historians place the date of her falling asleep as April 1, 378 or 437 A.D.
The meaning of the life of St. Mary of Egypt
Two aspects of St. Mary of Egypt 's life stand out and are worth noting. First, Mary's complete immersion in her sins made her cognizant of just how serious her spiritual state was. Second, God's full-force attempt to transform Mary's life made her abundantly aware of just how much God loved her and how much she desired to follow Christ and serve Him. Let us examine both aspects in greater detail.
Mary's complete immersion in her sins made her aware just how serious her spiritual state was. Like most harlots and people of ill repute in her day, Mary had no time (and made no time) for personal meditation and inner spiritual assessment. She offered herself from client to client, blinded by her transgressions. She did not realize she was spiritually ill. She did not know there was something really wrong with her. Then her past struck her in the face like a brick, then was her heart pierced with the pain of knowing how many souls she led to the gates of hell, including her own. Mary's immersion in sin was the final motivating force behind her conversion. It proved, in the end, a great blessing, because it reinforced in her heart and mind the severity of her sinfulness and the immediacy of conversion.
If Mary of Egypt had sinned only a few times, then repented, and again fell into the same sins, her conversion process not only may have been lukewarm, but also may never have occurred at all. A little sprinkle of rain will not cause a person to run inside for shelter, but a violent downpour will. St. Mary experienced this "downpour" of sins, this unrelenting storm in her spiritual life. With God's grace, she ran for cover and was saved. For this reason must we never gossip or condemn or criticize others because, believe it or not, they may very well become tomorrow's saints, like Mary of Egypt.
God's full-force attempt to transform Mary made her realize just how great God's love for her was. Many times God reveals His power to us in a physical, materialistic way, in a way He knows will appeal to and be understood by a physically minded world. Before Christ spoke to people's souls, He knew that He had to make known His power on a purely physical level.
For St. Mary of Egypt , it was an "invisible forcefield" at the gates of the Holy Church . For St. Paul , it was a blinding light on the road to Antioch . For Lazarus' sisters, it was the bodily resurrection of their brother following his four-day entombment. In each circumstance, the recipients of the miracle do not simply become physically healed; instead, a deep faith and devotion, once dormant in them, now becomes alive and draws them into a deeper understanding and love for God. As Jesus says regarding Lazarus: "This [Lazarus'] sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of man may be glorified through it" (John 11.4). The same with the blind man (John 9.3). God's love is mysteriously manifested through the actions He takes in people's lives ¬ actions which at times are quite harsh ¬ to induce more faith and thus to effect within them a spiritual as well as physical healing.
My dear people, the Church today lifts up St. Mary of Egypt as a prime example of repentance and conversion. In her life we witness two necessary extremes, which lead her to change: her complete sinfulness and God's sublime revelation within the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem . Sometimes such extremes, humanity going one way and God forcefully chasing after us, are blessings in disguise, ways in which God tries to redeem a lost situation and give to it meaning and direction.
Indeed, to know God fully in His goodness many times means we must encounter evil in His absence, or at least hardships. Then only can we truly appreciate His fatherly love and never again want to leave Him. Remember once again the Prodigal Son from the Bible. At the lowest point in his life did he "come to his senses" and return back to his father. The road, like the one St. Mary of Egypt traveled, was a long and narrow one, but it was also the most direct road to the Kingdom of God .
Fr. Stylianos Muksuris, BA, MDiv, MLitt, PhD (candidate), is a graduate of Hellenic College and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, Brookline , MA , and the University of Durham , Durham , UK , and specializes in Eastern Liturgy and Theology. His doctoral dissertation is entitled "Economia and Eschatology: The Mystagogical Significance of the Byzantine Divine Liturgy's Prothesis Rite in the Commentaries of Sts. Nicholas Cabasilas and Symeon of Thessalonike". He has also authored "The Anaphorae of the Liturgy of Sts. Addai and Mari" and the "Byzantine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great: A Comparative Study" (unpublished MLitt thesis). He may be reached at: profsgkm@yahoo.com.
Fr. Stelyios Muksuris
Posted: 24-Mar-07
The prayer of the Archimandrite Sofronie Sakharov; a prayer that must be told in every morning .
O Lord Eternal and Creator of all things, Who of Thy inscrutable goodness called me to this life; Who bestowed on me the grace of Baptism and the Seal of the Holy Spirit; Who imbued me with the desire to seek Thee, the one true God: hear my prayer.
I have no life, no light, no joy or wisdom; no strength except in Thee, O God.
Because of my unrighteousness I dare not raise my eyes to Thee. But Thou said to Thy disciples, 'Whatsoever you shall ask in prayer believing, you shall receive.'
and 'Whatsoever you shall ask in my name, that will I do.' Wherefore I dare to invoke Thee. Purify me from all taint of flesh and spirit. Teach me to pray aright.
Bless this day which Thee give unto me, Thy unworthy servant. By the power of Thy blessing enable me at all times to speak and act to Thy glory with a pure spirit, with humility, patience, love, gentleness, peace, courage and wisdom:
aware always of Thy presence.
Of Thy immense goodness, O Lord God, show me the path of Thy will, and grant me to walk in Thy sight without sin. O Lord, unto Whom all hearts be open, Thee know what things I have need of. Thee are acquainted with my blindness and my ignorance, Thee know my infirmity and my soul's corruption; but neither are my pain and anguish hid from Thee. Wherefore I beseech Thee, hear my prayer and by Thy Holy Spirit teach me the way wherein I should walk; and when my perverted will would lead me down other paths pare me not O Lord, but force me back to Thee. By the power of Thy love, grant me to hold fast to that which is good.
Preserve me from every word or deed that corrupts the soul; from every impulse unpleasing in Thy sight and hurtful to my brother-man. Teach me what I should say and how I should speak. If it be Thy will that I make no answer, inspire me to keep silent in a spirit of peace that causes neither sorrow nor hurt to my fellow man.
Establish me in the path of Thy commandments and to my last breath let me not stray from the light of Thy ordinances, that Thy commandments may become the sole law of my being on this earth and all eternity.
Yea, Lord, I pray to Thee, have pity on me. Spare me in my affliction and my misery and hide not the way of salvation from me. In my foolishness, O God, I plead with Thee for many and great things. Yet am I ever mindful of my wickedness, my baseness, my vileness. Have mercy upon me. Cast me not away from your presence because of my presumption. Do Thee rather increase in me this presumption, and grant unto me, the worst of men, to love Thee as Thee have commanded, with all my heart, and with all my soul, and with all my mind, and with all my strength: with my whole being.
Yea, O Lord, by Thy Holy Spirit, teach me good judgment and knowledge. Grant me to know Thy truth before I go down into the grave. Maintain my life in this world until I may offer unto Thee worthy repentance. Take me not away in the midst of my days, nor while my mind is still blind. When Thee shall be pleased to bring my life to an end, forewarn me that I may prepare my soul to come before Thee. Be with me, O Lord, at that dread hour and grant me the joy of salvation.
Cleanse me from secret faults, from all iniquity that is hidden in me; and give me a right answer before Thy judgment-seat. Lord, of Thy great mercy and immeasurable love for mankind, receive my prayer. Amen.
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