DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF ST. JOHN OF SAN FRANCISCO

Presbyter Neketas S. Palassis, Editor
November 13/26, 2000
EIGHTH SUNDAY OF ST. LUKE
23rd Sunday after Pentecost.
Vol. XXXIV, No. 5 (1504)
Epistle: Hebrews 7:26-8:2. Gospel: Luke 10:25-37. Tone:  I

    It is difficult indeed for the concept of eternal life to make its way into the human soul. Imprisoned by time and space, the inhabitants of this earth suspiciously stand their ground against anything coming from without and cannot bear the intrusion of something outlasting time. Bound bodily by matter, the world-weary man rebels against the thought of eternity because in it he perceives his own minuteness. The chasm existing between time and eternity is unbridgeable for him because he lacks the strength and ability to get across it. Thoroughly besieged by death, he covers with scorn all those who say to him, “Man is immortal; he is eternal.”

    A person must know himself to be immortal at the very core of his being; otherwise, he will feel that eternity is a condition imposed on him from the outside. If at one time man did have a sense of immortality and awareness of eternity, he had it so long ago that it has since wasted away under the weight of death. Our problem is how to rekindle this extinguished human certainty.
Human beings or human philosophical thought cannot do this. It can be done only by the eternal God, Who became incarnate, and in His incarnate Self, entered man’s awareness. Only in Christ does man feel himself immortal and know himself to be eternal. As the God-man, Christ bridged the chasm between time and eternity. and because of this, only that person who is made one with Christ and one with His body, the Church, truly knows himself to be immortal. Thus, for all humanity Christ is the one and only path from time to eternity.

    The Church is eternity incarnate within the boundaries of time and space. The Church is defined by the Person of the eternal Christ. The mission of the Church is to make every one of her faithful one with the Person of Christ—to turn their self-awareness into Christ-awareness, that they might not live for themselves, but that Christ might live in them. The mission of the Church is to bring about in her members the conviction that the proper state of man is one of immortality and eternity and the conviction that man is a wayfarer who is merely wending his way through time towards eternity.

    The Church is in the world, but not of the world. She is beyond nationality, ageless, universal, and indivisible. Thus it is a fundamental error and a blasphemy to turn the Church into a national institution, to narrow her down to petty, transient, time-bound aspirations and ways of doing things. All too often the Church has adapted herself to people when, in actuality, people should be adapting themselves to the Church. The purpose of the Church is all-embracing, beyond nationality. It is to unite all men in Christ regardless of nationality, race, or social station. Through the Mystery of the Holy Eucharist, found only in the Church, a person is made organically one with Christ and with all the faithful.

    The mission of the Church, given by Christ and put into practice by the Holy Fathers, is this: that in the soul of our people be planted and cultivated an awareness that every member of the Orthodox Church is a universal person, a person who is for ever and ever, a person filled with divine grace; that each person is Christ’s and is therefore a brother to every human being, a ministering servant to all men and all created things. This is the Christ-given objective of the Church, and for the local church to be the Church of Christ, the clergy must strive continuously to bring about this objective among the faithful. And those faithful who have come to a proper understanding of what it means to be an Orthodox Christian, should aid in achieving this purpose.

    Yet what are the means for accomplishing this superhuman objective? The means themselves are superhuman—the cultivation of the ascetic virtues, which can be successfully practiced only by Christ-bearing Orthodox Christians through the grace of God. And it should be the aim of every member of the Church to cultivate these virtues. These superhuman virtues exist in an organic relationship. Each has its source in the other, and they bring one another to completion.

    First among the ascetic virtues is the effort of faith. The faithful must constantly be encouraged to exert themselves in the effort to strengthen their faith, that they may know that belief in Christ means depending on Christ, and on Christ alone, in every aspect of their lives. And they must come to realize that faith in Christ is a superhuman virtue that is universal, reaching beyond nationality.

    The second ascetic virtue is the combined virtue of prayer and fasting. These habits must enter into the soul of an Orthodox Christian and become a way of life, since they are the powerful, Christ-given means of purging not only our own souls, but society and the human race at large, of every defilement. Prayer and fasting are to be performed not merely for the individual, but for everyone—for friends and for enemies, for those who persecute us and those who put us to death, because that is how Christians are to be distinguished from the Gentiles (Matt. 5:44-45).

    The third superhuman virtue is that of love. This is the love which knows no bounds, which does not question who is worthy and who is not, but loves all men— friends and enemies, sinners and evildoers; but without, however, loving their sins. Like the sun, it shines on both the evil and the good (Matt. 5:45-46). This Christ-like love must be cultivated because its universal nature sets it apart from self-proclaimed and relative loves. It is not animal love, or pharisaical love, or humanist love, or altruistic love, or nationalistic love. It is all-embracing love, and it is acquired through prayer because it is a gift of Christ. The Orthodox heart prays fervently: O God, Lord of love, please give me this love of Yours, which is for all things and for everyone!”

    The fourth virtue is the God-given virtue of meekness and humility. Only he who is meek can appease fierce hearts that are in an uproar. Only he who is lowly in heart can humble proud and haughty souls. Every true Christian must “show all meekness unto all men” (Titus 3:2). And he can become meek only when he surrenders his heart to our Lord Jesus Christ and is rendered meek by His meekness. Pray to our Saviour: O meek, gentle Lord, assuage the arrogance of my fierce soul! Our Lord humbled Himself with the greatest humility when He became incarnate. If you want to be of Christ, then humble yourself as a worm. Feel in your own flesh the pain of all who are in pain or sorrow; the trials of everyone tormented by passions; and the suffering of every animal and bird. Humble yourself lower than all men according to Christ. And when you are alone, pray: O humble Lord, by Your humility, humble me!

    The last ascetic virtue is that of patient endurance. This means to endure all afflictions with the patience that comes from grace and to endure when someone ill-uses you; not to render evil for evil, but compassionately to forgive all assault, slander, and hurt. To be of Christ is to be perpetually crucified to the world, to be persecuted by it, to be spat upon. Just as the world would not tolerate Christ, it will not tolerate Christ-bearing men. We must learn, and we must teach the faithful, that it is through martyrdom that a Christian brings forth fruit. For the Orthodox person, martyrdom is purification. And so, pray: Long-suffering Lord, give me patience and forbearance!”

    Thus, it is the Church’s mission to infuse these grace-given virtues and ascetic exertions into the people’s way of life, for this is the only way the soul can wage war with the world and save itself from the erudite atheism of contemporary society. So the watchword which should be heard within the Church today is: Let us return to the Christ-bearing ascetics and to the Holy Fathers! The Orthodox Church will always generate ascetic rebirth because within the Orthodox faithful there exists an ascetic spirit created by Orthodoxy throughout the centuries. This is lacking in Roman Catholicism and Protestantism because the latter are forms of Christianity based on proud European humanism and not the humble grace-given Truth of Orthodoxy.

    The ascetics are Orthodoxy’s only missionaries, and asceticism is her school. The Orthodox life is one of ascetic effort, and an ascetic priest can make the parish an ascetic focal point. Prayer and fasting, a life of liturgy—this should be the center of parish life. This is how a parish can be regenerated and how in Christ-like and brotherly love, in a spirit of sacrifice and self-denial, it can minister to all people. And the prerequisite for this is that our bishops, priests, and monks themselves become ascetics. Let us, therefore, beseech the Lord for this. Amen.
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    The French abortion drug—RU 486—is widely known as a deadly concoction with an unprecedented potential for killing babies in the womb.

    But ever since the Clinton Food and Drug Administration gave its approval to make this lethal regimen available in the United States, RU 486 has demonstrated an uncanny ability for propagating. I’m referring to the seemingly innumerable horror stories spawned by the drug’s well-documented ability to kill not only babies in the womb—but their mothers, as well.

    At last count, RU 486 had been accused of causing hemorrhaging in women, making women infertile and even precipitating their untimely demise.

    Predictably, Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion fanatics have attempted to dismiss these stories as nothing more than pro-life propaganda. . . but based on a recent national survey conducted by American Life League, there’s at least one anti-life bastion refusing to buy their lies.

    Generally, America’s colleges and universities walk in lockstep with their liberal cohorts in the pro-abortion establishment. But when it comes to RU 486, nearly all of them have broken ranks with the pro-abortion movement.

    After surveying nearly 100 college clinics, we discovered that none of them planned to offer RU 486 to their coeds.

    That’s right—not even a single exception. Now, if our nation’s overwhelmingly liberal campuses are running from the risk posed by RU 486—what do you think the odds are they know something the average pregnant woman will only discover the hard way?

    It’s a safe bet you don’t need a master’s degree to figure out the answer—and that some young women are going to die before they get a chance to earn one.

   (Judie Brown is the president of the American Life League.)
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    The devil, then, is acknowledged by all to be evil. What, then, shall we say about this beautiful and wondrous creation? Pray, is the creation, too, wicked? And who is so corrupt, who so dull and demented, as to accuse the creation? What, then, shall we say about the creation? For it is not wicked, but it is both beautiful and a token of the wisdom and power and loving-kindness of God. Hear, at least, how the Prophet marvels at the creation, saying, “How magnified are Thy works, O Lord! In wisdom hast Thou made them all.” He did not go through all the works of creation one by one, but withdrew before the incomprehensible wisdom of God. And, that God has made the creation thus beautiful and vast, hear another, saying, “From the vastness and beauty of the creatures, the Originator of them is proportionally seen.” Hear, too, Paul, saying, “For the invisible things of Him, since the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made.” For each of these men, through whom God spoke, declared that the creation leads us to the knowledge of God because it causes us to know the Master fully.

    What, then? If we see this beautiful and wondrous creation, itself, becoming a cause of impiety to many, shall we blame the creation? In no way, but we should blame them who were unable to use the medicine rightly. Whence, then, is this, which leads us to the knowledge of God, a cause of impiety? “The wise,” says Paul, “were darkened in their understanding, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.” The devil is no way here; a demon is no way there;

    Amen.

* St. John Chrysostom, Three Homilies Concerning the Power of Demons, Homily II: Against Those Who Object Because the Devil has not been put out of the world," The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ. Co.), First Series,
Vol. IX, p. 188. (Slightly edited)

    Selections from THE INSTITUTES and THE CONFERENCES in a small pocket edition. Also contains a brief life of St. John Cassian by Prof. I. M. Kontzevitch.
143pp.  paper   $9.00 + shipping  Order

    The incredible story of a woman who lived as a hermit beyond the Jordan River, around the turn of the 20th century –  a modern St. Mary of Egypt. She was found by Fr. Joachim in his quest to find holy hermits. Trans. from the Greek.  Beautifully illustrated with line drawings.
135pp.  Paper  $8.00 + shipping  Order
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