In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Ghost.
To go through Lent receiving all it can give, we
must understand in what spirit we approach it. Many endow Lent
as a period of sadness and they are mistaken. Bitter,
challenging, bracing would have been the weeks of preparation
when we are confronted in the reading of the Gospel, in the
songs of the Church, with all our human situations: with our
blindness in the person of Bartimaeus who causes us not only to
understand that we are blind. It causes us to come to a point of
such desperation that we should no longer be able to bear it and
should turn to Christ when He passes our way in the words of the
Gospel, in the prayers of the saints, in the gifts of
sacraments, and cry to Him louder than all the voices that try
to silence us, “Lord, have mercy, Lord, save me, Lord, give me
my sight!”.
And then we are confronted again with what
happens when we begin to see; we cast a glance around us and we
see human faces, we are confronted with human judgement and we
are afraid of the appraisal of men. We must learn from Zacchaeus
to reject all our fear of human judgement, of human mockery, of
human rejection, and turn to God whatever the cost, however
foolish it may appear, however much it discloses to others that
we are sinners and that we need salvation, while they may have
been thinking that we are better than we really are.
And then, when we turn away from the judgement
of men, we are confronted with the stern judgement of our own
conscience. You remember the story of the Pharisee and the
Publican; how the Publican stood at the threshold of the Temple,
having of a sudden perceived that this place belongs to God,
that this realm is holy, that he, with the life he had led, had
no right even to step into it. And yet, he did not turn away, he
did not turn from the presence of God because even his worldly
life had taught him that in a human cruel society there are
moments, there are oases of mercy, of compassion and that such
moments can give hope, that justice or cruelty may suspend their
action and that a miracle may occur, and freedom, liberation,
forgiveness may be offered. And yet, in the face of his own
judgement he did not dare walk in the sacred realm of the
holiness of God; he returned to his house, beating his breast,
recognising his sins, but the Lord had seen him and he returned
home more justified than the righteous Pharisee who was unaware
of sin.
But there is more to our relationship to God;
the story of the Prodigal Son teaches us that we need not, when
we are condemned by our conscience, only beat our breast, only
stay at the threshold and then sadly return to the world of
godlessness, the world where he is not the Lord and King:
however far we have strayed from home, however cynically we have
taken all the gifts of God to squander them in the strange land,
we must remember that we have a home and we have a father, that
we may have become unworthy sons and daughters, prodigals
indeed, but that the Father has remained faithful and fatherly
while we have forgotten Him. He has remembered us with pain and
love. We can, like the prodigal son, move homewards and will be
met on our way by the Father who has been waiting for us and we
will be reintegrated into the household for no other reason than
that we have not forgotten that we have a father and a home and
we have come to be forgiven and may fall again.
And again, the Church confronted us in these
weeks of preparation with the judgement. And again we were faced
with something more than the judgement of’ man, the judgement of
our conscience, the testing hope of the publican, the sure hope
of the prodigal or the despair of the blind Bartimaeus. We were
confronted with the fact that the very substance of the
Judgement is not the multiplicity, the variety of good and evil
actions which we may have done on earth, or committed on earth,
but love. The story of the sheep and the goats tells us that the
only judgement is based on love: have you been human? Have you
been compassionate? Have you been merciful? Have you had pity,
have you been, at your own cost and risk, faithful to the
solidarity and fellowship of men? If you have, then you may
enter into the greater realm of the greatest love which is love
divine. But if not, there is no way into divine love - but what
to do?
And the next Sunday told us that if we cannot
get love, we can at least forgive, if we wish to be forgiven,
and if we cannot yet forgive with greatness of heart,
wholeheartedly, generously, we can at least accept one another,
sinful as we are, difficult as we are, a cross to one another as
we are, and carry one another's burdens; and the first burden is
my neighbour’s person and personality, and so, one day, become
able to receive one another as Christ has received us.
But this is the end of preparation. After
Forgiveness Sunday, when we have entered into the spirit of
forgiveness, we enter also into a new realm, because forgiveness
has one characteristic which judgement has not: it is gratuity.
We enter now, we have entered into the realm of grace, into the
realm in which God, gratuitously, freely gives to all who will
come to Him, all who need to be saved.
The Triumph of Orthodoxy which we have kept last
week speaks, indeed, not of a triumph of a visible Church over
visible enemies or adversaries; it speaks of the victory of God,
of divine love, of divine truth, of the divine grace and power
over each of us, over all of us, and through, in, and around us,
over all the world that surrounds us. The Triumph of Orthodoxy
is the beginning of a new life; Orthodoxy is nothing else but a
true knowledge of God as He is, and adoration of God in a manner
which is worthy of His holiness, of His beauty, of His
greatness.
The Triumph of Orthodoxy is our gradual growth
by the grace, mercy and love of God into life eternal. And now
we are in the realm of grace.
And today we keep the memory of Saint Gregory
Palamas, who taught about grace and who revealed in his life
what grace can do to make a man into a saint of God. In his
teaching, he proclaims, together with the whole Orthodox Church,
against all those who were in error against him, that grace is
not simply a created gift which God bestows upon those whom He
chooses and loves, but that grace is the outpouring of God
Himself, reaching us, communing with us, giving Himself to us,
making us partakers of His own life, indeed, according to the
daring words of Saint Peter’s Epistle, of the divine nature.
This is what God is doing. The triumph of Orthodoxy is the
triumph of God making us by participation, communion into the
brothers and sisters of Christ, into the true children of the
Living God.
And if we ask ourselves how can that be, next
Sunday the answer will come. We will be confronted with the
Cross, the sacrificial, crucified love, God giving Himself at
the cost of His own life, acquiring the right to forgive because
He has paid the cost of sin, acquiring the right to give us
eternal life, because He has died our death and also a Cross
that must fill us with certainty and with hope, the certainty
that God has so loved us that nothing, nothing can snap us, tear
us out of the hand of God, out of the love of God. And also, if
that was done by God for us, then we are truly precious to Him,
as precious as life and death are; and then, what shall be our
response?
Saint John Climacus will help us and the image
of Saint Mary of Egypt will stand before us. Saint John Climacus
will teach us that nothing, nothing but repentance, that is
turning away from all things and turning God-wards, God-wards
can make us partakers of this life. And Saint Mary of Egypt will
demonstrate to us in her whole life that all sins can be
overcome and that all things are possible to anyone who turns to
God in the power of Christ.
And then will come the resurrection of Lazarus,
preparing us for Holy Week and out of the contemplation of the
deeds of God we will enter into the contemplation of God Himself
become man that we may be saved.
Let us therefore re-examine ourselves and if we
have not done so according to the passages offered in the weeks
of preparation, take off our blindness, become aware of a
desperate condition, turn to God in desperate hope away from
human judgement, face our own conscience, face God’s own
judgement, and hope, and love, and enter into the realm of
gratuitous love of the grace of God which is Lent.
Let us enter into this time which is called “the
spring of life” as we enter into the physical spring of this
season, when all things are made new, when all things begin to
breath with new life, and only then shall we be able to face the
stern and yet life-giving days of the Passion, of the death and
the Resurrection of Christ. Amen.
