Sunday, March 3 By Fr Nicholas Karipoff In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Today’s parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) gives one of the greatest images of God’s love. The greatest, of course, is the image of Christ on the cross. We are beginning this journey towards that image, the Pascha of the Cross and the Resurrection. The church now gives us this parable to break up the ice of our hearts with this story that speaks on a deep level to all of humanity collectively and to each one of us separately. Today I would like to view some aspects of the parable from the angle of church life. The Father’s house is clearly the church. The two brothers represent two approaches to the church and the spirit of its life. Christ wants us to learn not only about the spirit of the repentant young man but to learn from the image of the patient and forgiving father. The life of any parish is built up from the spiritual work of its pastors and the whole family. I would like to share something from the past of our parish. We had a saintly archpastor here in Melbourne during the 1960s, who projected the loving image of the father, just like in today’s parable. He was Bishop Anthony. Bishop Anthony left Melbourne in 1967 to go to San Francisco to take over from the holy hierarch, St John Maximovitch. Melbourne’s own bishop in the church of St John! There he became Archbishop Anthony. There is a short story by the Soviet writer, Konstantin Simonov, who visited San Franscisco in the 1970s, with an official Soviet guide. This guide told him that the ROCOR parish was a bad parish. This description piqued the writer’s interest in visiting Archbishop Anthony. He went to his modest apartment and knocked on the door. When the door flung open Simonov gasped because there in front of him, greeting him, was someone who was just like the father in the parable of the Prodigal Son. He had open arms, flowing white hair and eyes filled with love. Simonov writes: I felt that I had come to him like the Prodigal Son. The result of this meeting was the short story called “Bad Parish”! Another similar story was shared with me by my late father-in-law, Fr Vladimir Vygovsky whose bishop (Gideon) in Novosibirsk visited San Francisco in the 1980s. He felt the same effect on meeting Archbishop Anthony. We all wish to enter the joy of the father’s house. We are all prodigal sons. We need to understand the loving spirit of the church and to project it in the way that Archbishop Anthony did. But it cannot happen straight away. It can only happen when we are firmly established in the family of the church. Before we get to that level of love we need to learn from the prodigal son that we cannot dictate our terms of return to the father. It must be an unconditional surrender to his love and to the spirit of the church. We can never act in the spirit of the older brother who insists on his merit before the father. Such a person seeks justice. St Isaac the Syrian wrote: Don’t call God just. When we were His enemies, He sent His only begotten Son to die on the cross for us. What kind of justice is that? The church is not about justice. It is about humility and love.
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Thursday February 15. The Meeting of the Lord In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Today’s Gospel event, the meeting of the Lord, is a feast of both the Lord and of the Mother of God. The Lord, a forty-day-old baby, is silent but He teaches us even from His birth. He teaches about God’s humility and trust towards us which are an expression of His love. The Mother of the Lord and the righteous Joseph teach us today about their obedience to the law of God which enabled them to rise to true spirituality. The person who teaches today with his words is of course, Simeon, a man with a pure heart and mind. He is a prophet who sees and speaks by the Holy Spirit. He speaks about Christ’s future and the future of His mother whose soul will be pierced by the sword. Simeon speaks about the fall and rising of many in Israel who will be enlightened by the light of revelation or else will choose to stay in the darkness, scandalized and provoked by the Lord’s humility. To us, Simeon speaks through his inspired song used by the church for private and public worship since the apostolic times: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel. In objective terms, what does Simeon see? He sees a very modest, if not a poor, couple bringing a baby for the required prayers, and sacrifices. But he received in his arms God as fire, more than the coal brought by the angel to the great ancient prophet Isaiah, which was a prototype of this meeting of the Lord. No one is stopping us from preparing for the meeting with the Lord. This preparation can take a long time, as we hear in Psalm 90: with length of days I will satisfy him and show Him My salvation. The preparation for meeting the Lord can happen progressively, step by step. This is our life within the church, the struggle against wrong thoughts, which are thoughts without love. Repentance, reconciliation with love and communion with love. We have access to much more than Simeon had. He was only waiting for the consolation of Israel. He waited a long time until he could say, My eyes have seen Your salvation. May this feast always be an inspiration for us to be patient, trusting and loyal to the Lord. This is our part. The fire of love is the gift of God. He meets with us when we are ready. Blessing of Fruit at the feast of the Meeting of the Lord The tradition of blessing the fruits of the harvest comes from Old Testament times, when the first fruits were brought to the temple to be blessed by God. Blessing of the Fruit in the Orthodox calendar traditionally happens at the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, in August. In the northern hemisphere this is harvest time, but for us in the southern hemisphere the harvest begins in February, so we bless fruit at the Meeting of the Lord, although it is not connected to the feast. We have been blessing fruit on this day in the Southern Hemisphere for many decades. In fact, we in the Southern Hemisphere bless fruit twice a year, once on the traditional date of Transfiguration, and also at this feast. When we venerate an icon of Christ we are conscious of His birth, life, death and resurrection. By using the blueprint that Christ left us, we can rebuild our lives. In the Gospel, Christ's answer to the lawyers about the most important commandment is love. Love towards God and love towards our neighbour. The cross is the way towards love and the way of acquiring love. Christ told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." We have to tear away from the way of the "old man" which is steeped in passion, sin and chaos; a process akin to an Olympic athlete preparing - it's painful but heroic. In Slavic languages the word for ascetic struggle is podvig and it also implies heroism. The Theotokos – the Birthgiver of Christ – sustains our life. Her life speaks of the fruits of prayer. How can we really pray? We don't really know how until we are pushed to a point where nobody else can help us. Then we turn to God. The Mother of God’s parents, Joachim and Anna, were pious people who endured gossip and slander – their childlessness was seen as an absence of God’s blessings. Nothing could be more beneficial for us than dishonour! It is the only thing that can cure us of vainglory and does miracles for our soul. Sure, we will be indignant, but if we endure slander with patience as did Joachim and Anna, we will surely grow. It is only in humility that we are opened up to the grace of God. When we are self-righteous with our fists up, we can’t communicate with God, nor our neighbours. Ever wondered what the parable of the evil workers in the vineyard refers to? The story goes that the master left his workers, he then sent messengers to them to check in and the workers killed the messengers. Finally, the master of the vineyard sent his son, who was also duly killed. Christ was not just taking aim at his contemporary enemies here who sought to kill Him - the Son; he was speaking to all of humanity. The prophets were sent to instruct Israel and look at Isaiah – the ‘Evangelist’ of the Old Testament was cut in half with a wooden saw. But how are these messengers relevant to us today – how is it also the story for all of humanity? The messengers could be thought of as our good thoughts sent by God to our conscience. The evil workers are our passions which resist our conscience. Father Nicholas ends the sermon by asking what would the master of the vineyard (God) do when he comes back? We have to answer for what we have said, done and thought. In this sermon, Father Nicholas preaches that most Christians, including Orthodox Christians, do not understand what it truly means to be a follower of Christ. What do we need to do to be faithful? What are we missing? Listen to the full sermon below. In this sermon, Father Nicholas discusses how for the Christian, spiritual freedom is liberation from our passions. The Church – the Kingdom of Christ that is freedom. How? Christ offers the rich young man the option of selling everything he has and giving the proceeds to the poor. The young man baulks at this because of his enslavement to his material wealth. There are many rich people in both the Old and New Testament, however none of them were told to do this by God because they were not enslaved. In contemporary society, freedom is “when I can do what I want to do” and of course, money is helpful to achieve these ends. The Kingdom of heaven belongs to people with the heart of a child. Adults are fraught with passions… pride, alienation, selfishness. Other passions develop to protect our carnal self – our so-called ‘freedom’ to do what we want – acquisitiveness, sensuality, love of money, vainglory. Christ offers us the option to walk away from these. Freedom FOR passions vs. freedom FROM passions |
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