Are we saints? - Sunday of St John Climacus
Brethren, when God made a promise to Abraham, since He had no one
greater by whom to swear, He swore by Himself, saying, “Surely I will bless
you and multiply you.” And thus Abraham, having patiently endured, obtained
the promise. Men indeed swear by one greater than themselves, and in all
their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. So when God desired to show
more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of
His purpose, He interposed with an oath. So that through two unchangeable
things, in which it is impossible that God should prove false, we who have
fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to seize the hope set before
us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that
enters into the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a
forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order
of Melchizedek.
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At that time, a man came to Jesus, kneeling down and saying unto him,
“Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a dumb spirit. And wherever it
seizes him, it dashes him down; and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes
rigid; and I asked Thy Disciples to cast it out, and they were not able.” And
Jesus answered them, “O faithless generation, how long am I to be with you?
How long am I to bear with you? Bring him to Me.” And they brought the boy to
Him; and when the spirit saw Jesus, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he
fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. And Jesus asked
his father, “How long has he had this?” And he said, “From childhood. And it
has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if
Thou canst do anything, have pity on us and help us.” And Jesus said to him,
“If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”
Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I
believe; help my unbelief!” And when Jesus saw that a crowd came running
together, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You dumb and deaf
spirit, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again.” And after
crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a
corpse; so that most of them said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the
hand and lifted him up, and he arose. And when Jesus had entered the house,
His Disciples asked Him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” And Jesus
said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and
fasting.” They went on from there and passed through Galilee. And Jesus would
not have anyone know it; for He was teaching His Disciples, saying to them,
“The Son of man will be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill
Him; and after He is killed, He will rise on the third day.”
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Hebrews 6:13-20
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Mark 9:17-31
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In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Spirit, one God, Amen.
“Why am I not like the saints?” This is a question which is easy to pose to
ourselves. We read the lives of the
saints, we hear about them in Church – the Theotokos, the Forerunner, great
Apostles, learned Hierarchs, Ascetics, Kings and Queens, Martyrs – and we
wonder why God has chosen them and not us. “I could never be a saint,” we lament, “I
could never do what they do.”
When we hear these two words, “saint” and “holy,” we should
remember that they are pointing to the same reality. And, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
it is to this reality, to sainthood, to holiness, we are called. “[A]s he who called you is holy,” says the
Apostle Peter, “you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, ‘Be
holy, for I am holy.’”[1] When starting his epistles, the Apostle Paul
often uses this language,
To all who are in Rome, beloved
of God, called to be saints,
To the church of God which is at
Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints,
To the church of God which is at
Corinth, with all the saints who are in all Achaia,
To the saints who are in
Ephesus, and faithful in Christ Jesus,
To all the saints in Christ
Jesus who are in Philippi,
To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ who
are in Colossae.[2]
To be a Christian is to be holy: we are called to live as
saints. We are Christians in as much as
we are holy, in as much as we are saints.
What a great calling we are given!
We must then, dear brothers and sisters, each answer the
question: “How do I live as a saint, as a holy one?” Later in this Divine Liturgy we will hear the
priest say, “The Holy Things for the holy.”
Perhaps a strange saying, the Body and Blood of Christ offered to all
the holy ones – to you and to me! – to all the saints here present yet the
choir, on our behalf, will respond “One is holy, one is Lord: Jesus Christ, to
the glory of God the Father. Amen.” We
are called holy, we are called saints, and yet only God is holy.
This apparent paradox is answered by the Apostle Paul when
he explains, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live,
but Christ lives in me.”[3] When we die with Christ in baptism, when we take
up our own cross and follow him,[4]
we take on the holiness of God. By
myself I am simply a body and soul but if I take up my calling to holiness – if
I, so to speak, allow Christ to activate my own baptism – then I would become a
true person, a person in whom the likeness and holiness of God is revealed, a
person who is a saint.
Do you, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, allow the
Lord to activate your baptism? Do
I? Do we bring ourselves before the Lord
at all times, not only Sunday mornings? Do
we pray? Do we read Scriptures? Do we allow the mind of the Church to become
our mind? Do we strive to be holy? Are we saints?
God made a promise, a covenant, with the patriarch Abraham, “I
will certainly bless you, and assuredly multiply your seed as the stars of heaven
and as the sand on the seashore; and your seed shall inherit the cities of their
enemies. In your seed all the nations of
the earth shall be blessed, because you obeyed my voice.”[5] Abraham received this promise yet did not see
its fulfilment because that fulfilment was in Christ. We, children of Abraham by grace and called to
be saints, receive the promise to which the Apostle Paul draws our attention in
today’s Epistle reading. Abraham had
faith because the Lord said, “by Myself,” that is, by God, “I have sworn,”[6]
and by this we can have confidence to “have strong encouragement to seize the
hope set before us.” Our hope is the one
we see crucified, the one we see buried, the one we see risen and ascended: our
hope is Jesus Christ, “that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have
eternal life.”[7]
“[S]eize the hope,” my brothers and sisters in Christ: be
saints! “I have come,” says the Lord, “that
they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”[8] Accept the life which the Lord offers, the
only true life, so that you may come closer to God.
The disciples had thought this would be easy: they knew how
to be saints. The Lord had already given
them “power over unclean spirits … So they went out and preached that people
should repent. And they cast out many
demons and anointed with oil many who were sick, and healed them.”[9] This was recorded by the Evangelist Mark a
few chapters prior to today’s reading. Think
back, if you can, to when you first came to faith in Christ, or perhaps when
you joined the Orthodox Church, or when you came back to the Church after a
period away. Being a saint was, perhaps,
easy in those early days.
We could easily imagine when the father in today’s Gospel
reading brought his son to the disciples one of them came forward and expected
the same result as a few chapters earlier. Perhaps others of them tried. “Why could we not cast it out?” they came
asking to the Lord later. We, too,
expect our spiritual life, our saintliness, to be the same. “Why is it harder to pray than it used to be?”
we ask. “Why do I feel further away from
God?” We feel like “it” – whatever “it”
means – does not work anymore.
The Lord answers the disciples, “This kind cannot be driven
out by anything but prayer and fasting.”
And the Lord answers us likewise.
We cannot expect to grow in the spiritual life – to grow in prayer, to
grow in holiness, to grow in love, to grow in humility – except with work on
our part. When a child learns to walk we
hold his hand to help him and support him but we eventually let go so he can
learn to walk by himself: the child feels abandonment and may give up, return
to the floor and cry. In the spiritual
life, on the path to being like the saints, we may feel abandonment when the
Lord takes away his hand and allows us to stand on our own two feet.
Do you, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, drop to the
floor and cry when the Lord lets go of your hand? Do I?
Yes, the Lord gave us support in the spiritual life to start with, he
fed us on milk until we were ready for food, but he now wants us to grow into
the person each of us is called to be, he wants us to be saints.
What should we do? The
words of the Lord then are still relevant today, “O faithless generation, how
long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?” How many of us, and of our society, are
willing to put our faith in money, in football, in food, in astrology, in
fortune tellers, in political parties, in gurus, in diets, in fashions, in
ideologies? Yet all of these are
unstable and fleeting. “O faithless
generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?” This word, from the Word, is addressed to us,
it is addressed to me.
“If you can believe,” says the Lord, “all things are
possible to him who believes.” Yes, my brothers
and sisters, “all things are possible,” “if you can believe:” if we believe in
Christ, place our hope in him and have faith that his Death and Resurrection
have brought us to new life, then we can be saints. And the father replies, in words which have
resonated through the centuries to all who struggle in the spiritual life: “Lord,
I believe; help my unbelief!” We offer
to the Lord our belief in him, no matter how small it is, we offer it to him. “Yes Lord,” we say, “I know that you have
taken your hand away from me. I do not
understand why but I trust in you.” And we
may fall, sometimes the Lord will pick us up again whereas at other times he
may encourage us to stand by our own efforts, and he will return to us our
small belief and multiply it within us.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the Lord tells us that
our growth in the spiritual life, our becoming saints and heirs of the promise
made to Abraham, is through prayer and fasting. Let the remaining days of the Great Fast be
for us all an opportunity to deepen our faith through prayer and fasting, to
learn to reflect God’s holiness in us that we may be beacons of him –
lighthouses - and be known as the Church of God which is at Poole, those who
are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints.
That we may glorify his saving Death and Resurrection and
through him come to the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[2]
Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:2; 2 Cor. 1:1; Eph. 1:1; Phil. 1:1; Col. 1:2. Galatians (“To the churches of Galatia” Gal
1:2) and the two epistles to the Thessalonians (“To the church of the
Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” 1 Thess. 1:1; “…
God our Father …” 2 Thess. 1:1) use different formulae.
[3]
Gal. 2:20.
[4]
Matt. 16:24; Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23.
[5]
Gen. 22:17-18.
[6]
Gen. 22:16.
[7]
John 3:15.
[8]
John 10:10.
[9]
Mark 6:7,12-13.
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