Sunday of All Saints

 

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfection of our faith.

Today we are keeping the Day of All Saints, of all those who have heard Christ speak, whose hearts and minds have been set afire, and went out into the world to bring to the whole world the good news. The news that God has so loved the world, that He has entered into it never to leave it, and that in His Resurrection He has taken all that is the world - in His Flesh the whole visible world, in His soul all the human world - and has established it on the right hand of the Father.

This is not only the glory of the Church, it is a call addressed to each of us. Today we are called by the Gospel, we are encouraged by the Epistle, so to love God as to become truly His disciples, and that means that our faith in Him must be and become, day after day, more truly faithful, so that seeing us, seeing how we live, seeing who we are, people could believe that Christ has come to save the world and is worth following as a Master and as a Friend.

St James, speaking to people of his time said: "If you want to show me your faith without your works, I will show you my faith by my works…" Let us then go into the world to bring to a world which is in great misery now, in distress that it has lost its way, the good news. Not only the news that God has come and is in our midst, that He has shown us the way, that He is the way and He has given an example for everyone to follow, not in a slavish way, not as a hireling, but with the joy that following this way means that we are fulfilled and that life is deep in us and it can flow on to others.

This is the message of today's feast. In the next two weeks we will keep more particularly the feast of our particular Church like Vladimir and his mother St. Olga or the patron of our Eparchy St. Josaphat and even the saints glorified in our own country St. Elizabeth Seton or St. John Neumann, - people of our blood, our flesh, our kin. Let us think of them and let us try to live in such a way that they may rejoice that they have a following worthy of Christ and worthy of their lives. Amen.

Pentecost Sunday

"And there appeared to them cloven tongues as it were of fire, and it sat upon every one of them: and they began to speak with other tongues, according as the Holy Spirit gave them utterance."

(Acts 2:3-4)

Following His Ascension, when the Savior fulfilled His promise and sent the Holy Spirit, the Comforter appeared to Christ's followers as tongues of fire. As a result of the Spirit's operation the disciples spoke in languages foreign to them and were guided as to what to say. It is extremely significant that on the day of Pentecost the manifestation of the Holy Spirit should take the form of tongues and that the first results of the disciples' baptism of the Holy Spirit should be the ability to speak in languages other than their own. This affirms the universal character of Christ's mission, one which was formed for all nations, resulting in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Of great significance as well is the fact that the fruit of the disciples' labors on Pentecost was the addition to the Church of about three thousand souls. (Acts 2:41) Here we begin to understand what our Lord meant when He told His chosen ones that they would henceforth be fishers of men. Hearing about such a large number of individuals brought into the Church by Peter and the eleven, we recall that during Christ's earthly ministry it was only when the disciples obeyed His will that they caught such an enormous catch of fish that their "net brake."

What happened on that fiftieth day after our Lord's resurrection was the filling of the disciples with the Holy Spirit, their transformation into the Church. Pentecost is the day of the Church's founding. From this point in time the disciples were empowered to do what our Lord told them: "As the Father has sent Me, I also send you." (John 20:21). Throughout its history the Church never lost its conviction that Jesus had given it the strict mandate to "catch" the entire world, to bring all people into His net. The disciples – and those who came after them – were convinced that their message, committed to them by Christ, was vital, a matter of life or death. This is why they were able to convince so many, because they themselves were convinced. On this Pentecost Sunday let us reaffirm our "conviction" to evangelize ALL nations and to bring many into His net the Holy Church.

How Frequently Should We Go to Confession?

Enter into the Church and wash away your sin, for there is a hospital for sinners and not a court of law.

St. John Chrysostom

As we celebrate the First Reconciliation-Confession of our parish children maybe we should take time to focus on this important question. The answer to this question is interrelated with the similar question---how frequently should we receive Holy Communion? The goal and purpose of the Christian life is to be united with the Lord, which can occur only as we become increasingly like Him, little by little. Therefore, since being united with Him in Holy Communion and overcoming our sins by frequent Holy Confession are very effective means (within a life daily prayer) of moving towards this goal of the spiritual life, ideally we should receive Holy Communion at every Divine Liturgy and go to Confession frequently. Let me ask you this question: How often do you see your doctor? Once a year… More often than that… If you are suffering from a physical illness you visit your doctor on more regular bases. Therefore in order to heal our souls and bodies we are to go to Confession on more regular bases. As a child I remember the practice of so-called "First Fridays", which encouraged the faithful to go to Confession on monthly bases. What we witness now days is the tendency to receive Holy Communion more frequently, but often without the adequate preparation that includes frequent Holy Confession. It is fairly common today that if a person receives Holy Communion every week, it is considered acceptable that they go to Confession just during the two penitential seasons (Philip's Fast-Advent and Great Fast-Lent).

    We must remember that our sins make us sick in our souls (and sometimes bodies). Therefore, we need to visit our spiritual physician (our Father Confessor) and receive the "Medicine of Immortality" as frequently as possible, if we are to have any hope of overcoming our sins and receiving healing of our sin-sick souls and bodies. Let us strive to do the most possible to be united more fully with the Lord, rather than to settle for the least we can get by with. It is virtually impossible to love the Lord too much, or desire to be united with Him too much. Similarly, it is virtually impossible to receive Christ's Body and Blood too often, or to go to Confession too often, as long as we participate in these Holy Mysteries with sincere prayer and preparation.

Sunday of the Man Born Blind

We do not know from experience what physical blindness is, but we can imagine how this man was walled in himself, how all the world around him existed only as a distant sound, something he could not picture, imagine. He was a prisoner within his own body. He could live by imaginations, he could invent a world around himself, he could by touch and by hearing approximate what really was around him; but the total, full reality could only escape him. We are not physically blind, but how many of us are locked in ourselves! We meet people, and we see them with our eyes; but seldom it happens that beyond the outer shape, features, clothes, - how often does it happen that we see something of the depth of the person? How seldom it is that we look into a person's eyes and go deep in understanding! We are surrounded by people and every person is unique to God, but are people unique to us? Are not people that surround us just 'people', who have names, surnames, nicknames, whom we can recognize by their outer looks but whom we do not know at any depth?

Often this is our condition: we are blind, we are deaf, we are insensitive to the outer world, and yet, we are called to read meanings. When we meet a person, we should approach this person as a mystery, that is as something which we can discover only by a deep communion, by entering into a relationship, perhaps silent, perhaps in words, but so deep that we can know one another not quite as God knows us, but in the light of God that enlightens all and each of us. But are we doing this? Is our concern to convey the width, and the depth, the beauty and the meaning of things to every person whom we meet? Are we not rather concerned with receiving than with giving? And yet, Saint Paul who knew what it meant to receive and to give, said, "It is a more blessed thing to give than to receive".

On this Sunday let us reflect on how rich, how richly endowed we are, how much it was given us to see, and to hear. And let us realize at the same time how tragically walled we are within ourselves unless we break this wall in order to give, as generously, as richly, as abundantly as we were given. And then indeed, our joy will be fulfilled according to Christ's promise. And no one, nothing will ever be able to take it away from us. Amen

Sunday of the Samaritan Woman

Today's Gospel reading from St. John the Evangelist (Jn 4:5-42) does not give us the name of the Samaritan woman. But the Tradition of the Church remembers, and calls her in Greek - Photini, in Ukrainian - Svitlana, in Western languages - Claire. And all these names speak to us of one thing - of light.

Having met the Lord Jesus Christ she has become a light shining in the world, a light that enlightens those who meet her. Every Saint is offered to us as an example; but we cannot always emulate the concrete ways in which a Saint lived, we cannot always repeat their way from earth to heaven. But we can learn from each of them two things. The one is that by the grace of God we can achieve what seems humanly impossible; that is, to become a person in the image and likeness of God, to be - in this world of darkness and tragedy which is in the power of lies - a word of truth, a sign of hope, the certainty that God can conquer if we only allow Him access to our souls. Because if the Kingdom of God is not established within us, if God is not enthroned in our minds and hearts, a fire that destroys everything unworthy of ourselves and of Him, we cannot spread God's light around.

And the second thing which the Saints can teach us is to understand the message which their names convey to us. Today's Samaritan woman learns and speaks of light. Christ has said that He is the Light of the world, the light that enlightens all people; and we are called to give shelter within our souls, minds and hearts - indeed, within our whole self - to this light; so that the word spoken by Christ, "Let your light so shine before all men, that seeing your good deeds they may give glory to your Father who is in heaven", may be fulfilled and accomplished in and through us.

It is only through seeing our deeds, through seeing how we live that people can believe that the light is God's light; it is not in our words, unless they are words of truth and of power like those of the Apostles, or of Christ Himself indeed. On this Sunday of the Samaritan Woman let us reflect, each of us, on the meaning of our name and on the way in which we can become what we are called. Amen.