The final days of the journey to Pascha and the Resurrection approach...

Sunday April 21.
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
In today’s reading (Mark 10:32-45), the Lord Jesus Christ announces to His disciples His firm resolve to leave the country beyond the Jordan, where He had raised Lazarus, and journey to Jerusalem. This would be the final days of His ministry, His passion, death and resurrection.  Today, the fifth Sunday of Lent, is also dedicated to St Mary of Egypt. The moving story of her death and resurrection is an image of inspiration and consolation for all of us.
 
Christianity is not like all religions and social ideologies which  accept the state of a human being as more or less “normal”;   that humanity only  needs rules and structure to be enforced in society to make life on earth turn into the “pursuit of happiness”, as we hear in the American constitution.  Today’s conversation of Christ with His disciples, and the life of St Mary, tell us that being a Christian turns that idea upside down.  Without Christ and the Holy Spirit, we remain firmly anchored in something that St Peter calls “aimless conduct”, which means meaningless existence; we are doomed to this superficial and chaotic life. The history of humanity is full of examples of people who have tried to  control it by political force. It is still happening today! In today’s gospel,w e see the same temptation in two of the most zealous of the twelve disciples. They failed to hear Christ’s explanation of the cross and instead asked Him for something that is completely insane – to participate in God’s power. They wanted to sit at the right and the left hand of Christ as the King of Israel and ultimately of the whole world. A  few days after this Gospel story, Christ is teaches us that we should accept Ceasar.  But he is not interested in being the emperor.  Not at all. To rule people without healing them first, without saving them through the cross. What’s the point of that for the Saviour? 
 
The story of Mary, the Egyptian, is a story of healing;  it is about death and resurrection and that is what healing in Christian terms is!  She was a young terrorist of carnal chaos for seventeen years.  On the day of the Holy Cross, in Jerusalem she takes up her own cross.  She cooperates with Christ, the Holy Spirit and the church represented by the Mother of God.  She suffers in the desert from the chaos that was inside of her. Ultimately, she purifies her heart and becomes an earthly angel.  
 
Christ is maximalist in His teaching.  The great saints like St Mary, or another Egyptian, St Anthony the Great,  and countless others in all nations, were able to  mobilize their total commitment to Christ, sometimes in literally minutes.  We cannot.  We need time.  Our journey is often a zigzag that takes a whole lifetime. It is important to understand that it is about direction of our life’s journey.  We fall, we crawl, but we must continue. Only then help is given when we show that we are for real, that we really intend to live the Christian life.  By teaching His disciples about the most essential aspect of the Kingdom, Christ explains to us too that we must give up the idea of ruling over others. Otherwise, we remain unchanged and sick in our self-assertion of pride. Whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant, we hear today.  That means to become Christ-like in humility and thereby defeat the chaos we have inside with His help. 
 
Sunday April 14
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Lent is our yearly course in spiritual life.  Now that we have reached the last two weeks before the Pascha of the Cross begins - Passion week and the Lord’s entry on Palm Sunday - the Church gives us the final lessons.  Today (Mark 9:17-31) we are reminded of the teaching of the ascetics represented by one of the giants, St John the Abbot of Sinai, the author of the “The Ladder of Divine Ascent”. Human nature in our fallen state is a slippery eel. We desperately resist seeing our real self.  This is why the Lord Jesus Christ has so much to say about the danger of being our own saviours.  Just think, people who condemn to death the Saviour of the world, thought of themselves as being religious and righteous people.  They thought they were doing the work of God. It is very easy to say, I am not like those men. Yet that thought alone shows the person is on a slippery slope towards that same pharaisaical spirit. Did not the pharisee in the parable say, “Thank you God that I am not like other people”?  Spiritual life begins first with a serious commitment to keep the commandments, yet again the rich young pharisee said to Christ, I have kept all the commandments from my youth. He was right, and yet he was terribly wrong.  The question is how he kept the commandments.  
 
All the spiritual fathers and mothers teach that keeping the commandments has only one goal – to know our weaknesses and so reach a measure of humility before God.  We really do not understand how important that is.  Without that, we are just not open to God. Keeping the commandments is certainly not to become a better person. That is rubbish!  That is how the world thinks, that to become better people it is necessary to  compare ourselves to other people,  like the pharisee did: to paraphrase him, Thank you God that I am not like those other no-hopers! 
 
 A proper commitment to keeping the law of God will show us how we are constantly attacked by tempting thoughts.  Do you remember the Lenten homework I gave you about judgement?  Add to the list envy, jealousy, vain glory, anger, love of possessions, impurity, love of eating, and the list goes on.  We have these passions like a dirty torrent passing through our thoughts and our souls.  We will understand that we are helpless against these attacks if we try to keep these commandments properly. Then we will remember what Christ said, as we heard today in the Gospel reading just now:  This kind is only expelled through prayer and fasting. 
 
Fasting does not mean just a change of diet.  It means making every effort of our will to be obedient to God, not to the things that we have turned into idols.  Again, the only purpose of prayer and fasting is to cultivate that contrite and humble heart of which King David sings in Psalm 50.  That is what makes the heart open to God’s grace, nothing else does.  Christ will fortify us in our battle inside the heart when He sees that we are serious about it.  Commitment means we will be reminded about God when we try to be faithful and fail constantly.  That will help us to cultivate prayer and the fear of God.  In Greek and Latin, the word for “God” means “one who sees”. Different cultures have different words for God; in the English language “God” means “Good”. If we cultivate the  sense that He sees, that He is present, that will be a mighty help for us not to think wrongly, not say wrong things and not to do bad things. Fear as reverence will make our prayer into a transformative force.  This transformation will be not a change into “better people” but a transformation into the children of God.  
 
Sunday April 7, Annunciation.
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
The Liturgical year is a kaleidoscope of surprises.  This year, Alpha and Omega have come together; The Feast of Annunciation is the alpha, the beginning of Christ’s entry into the world, and the third Sunday of Lent is the omega, which reminds us of His and our journey to the cross and to the resurrection. The purpose of both the Annunciation, the incarnation of the Lord, and of His Cross is to bring transformation to the world.  This transformation, transfiguration, is in the life of the church. 
 
In discussing transformation, there are some basic questions to ask. People in today’s society may be able to answer in a limited way the first two questions of who am I and who is Christ? But today’s Christianity has a very vague feel to the third question:  what is the church? This is indicative of the spiritual state of the world today. The world has lost direction because it cannot see the light coming from us Christians.  It is decaying in spirit because there is not enough salt, this ancient preservative, that has to come from us, from the church.  To know what the church is is to know the life with Christ. Moreover, not only to know – it is easy to know, it can be an interesting intellectual game – but to commit ourselves to this life.  
 
The moment of His incarnation on the day of the Archangel’s annunciation, is the beginning of the emptying, the extreme humility, of the Son of God. It reaches its crescendo on the cross when He is crucified. The church connects and participates in that humility and love. The church is not organised religion.  The church is not ideology.  The church is not a club, especially an ethnic club. The church is the mystical supper with Christ.  Jesus Christ washed the feet of His disciples to give them a practical lesson in humility before the supper. To participate in the church as the supper, we must put aside all earthly cares and forget about our egos. Judas was unable to because of his attachment to the world, because of his ego.  He left the supper; he went to betray Christ.  
 
The early church had a clear and simple maxim. The Body of Christ receives the Body of Christ in order to become the Body of Christ.  That may need some explanation!  The body of Christ of course is the Church. We are the church through baptism, but that is only potential. We receive the body of Christ, at the Eucharist, the Mystical Supper, to become the real living body of Christ, not just an organisation. We must understand by experience that membership in the church is not like membership in an organisation. It is a dynamic process that depends on every moment of our life being energised by the grace that comes from the mystical supper, the Eucharist. 
 
This Sunday is seen as a hill from which we can see our journey to easter, to the cross and resurrection.  Today is all the more special as it coincides with the Annunciation. Let it be for us a contemplation of our life with Christ.  Let us be serious about the church. 
 
Sunday March 31
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Today’s Sunday reading  (Mark 2:1-12) is about sin, illness, forgiveness and healing.  In addition, it gives us an image of the church carrying us to Christ for this forgiveness and healing. The memory of St Gregory Palamas on this the second Sunday of Lent adds a dimension about the role of the grace of God in the healing of soul and body.  Orthodox Christianity never forgets Christ’s teaching that we address God as “Our Father” not “My Father”.  
 
The four men in today’s story who make a great effort in their love for their paralysed friend are an image of the church, our brothers and sisters here on earth and also in Heaven.  We need each other.  As we mature in spirit, we begin to understand our connectedness with other people, especially in the family of the church. In the first week of Lent, I read from the book by St Dorotheus of Gaza during the evening services. On the Thursday night, we read chapter six about the refusal to judge our neighbour.  St Dorotheus explains that in connecting with people we connect more with God, and vice versa; when we get closer to God, we also get closer to our neighbours.  Sin is a disconnect from people and from God.  It is the failure to love.  This is why the Lord Jesus Christ says to the paralyzed man, “your sins are forgiven”.  Once this connection, or rather, reconnection, is made, God’s healing grace flows into the soul and body of the sick man. Reconciliation with God is a greater joy than anything else.  But, as we see in the story, it is invisible to observers, and so in this Gospel story, some of them remain sceptical.  Has anything really happened when the Lord said, your sins are forgiven?  This is what they are asking in their hearts.  At that point the Lord shows not only His power to heal but to forgive sins, something only God can do. Three thousand years ago, King David showed in his moving Psalm 50 (51 in the Hebrew Bible) that repentance and forgiveness opens the heart to receive the Holy Spirit:  A contrite and humble heart God will not despise.  
 
Let us learn from today’s story and the culture of Lent which is prayer and fasting.  Let us learn that there are two wings of spiritual life that can raise us up from the mundane level of earthly cares:  that is the church and the body of Christ which lives breathes, connects and energises its members with the energies of the Holy Spirit. The difference between that life and a life focused on earthly cares is as huge as the difference in the life of the paralytic before and after the miracle.  We can practically discover the difference. As King David says:  O taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man that hopes in the Lord. Amen.