Tag: christ

The Unsung Hero of Palm Sunday

The Unsung Hero of Palm Sunday

Adapted from a sermon by Fr Mark Basily

During this time, the love of humanity is shining. Everyone looking out for their neighbours. Do you need anything? How can I help? Among all this, have we asked God if He needs anything?

Theologically, can God even be in need? God is the Provider, what could He ever need from me? 

In the gospels of Palm Sunday, Jesus expresses His need for a donkey. The donkey holds a prominent position in all four of the gospels. While the palms of Palm Sunday are only mentioned in one of the four gospels, the donkey gets mentioned in all four. And there are specific requirements that Jesus had for the donkey.

If we focus on the gospel of Luke – the donkey had to be tied up. This is essential and is mentioned five times. He tell the disciples that they will find a colt that was tied. Not any colt, but this particular one had to be tied. He tells them to loose the colt and bring it to Him. If anyone was to ask why they were taking the donkey, it was because the Master was in need of it;

“Go into the village opposite you, where as you enter you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Loose it and bring it here. 31 And if anyone asks you, ‘Why are you loosing it?’ thus you shall say to him, ‘Because the Lord has need of it.’” 32 So those who were sent went their way and found it just as He had said to them. 33 But as they were loosing the colt, the owners of it said to them, “Why are you loosing the colt?”34 And they said, “The Lord has need of him.” – Luke 19:30-34.

The emphasis throughout the account is on the tied-up donkey that needed to be loosed before it was brought to Jesus.

Why were these requirements emphasised so strongly in the Gospel accounts? What was the purpose of the donkey? At the time of the Passover, thousands of Jews would travel into Jerusalem for the feast. They would all walk into Jerusalem from all the surrounding towns and villages. 

But Christ doesn’t walk into the city, he takes the donkey that he insisted upon. This reflects Zechariah’s prophecy that is mentioned in Matthew’s account of the gospel;

Behold, your King is coming to you;
He is just and having salvation,
Lowly and riding on a donkey – Zechariah 9:9

When the people saw the scene of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, the One who had just raised Lazarus from the dead, they could see the fulfilment of the prophecy. They began chanting the royal psalm as Christ entered; 

19 Open to me the gates of righteousness;
I will go through them,
And I will praise the Lord.
20 This is the gate of the Lord,
Through which the righteous shall enter.– Psalm 118:20

It continues,

[Hosanna!] We have blessed you from the house of the Lord.
27 God is the Lord,
And He has given us light;
Bind the sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar.– Psalm 118:26-27

Christ was coming to bind the sacrifice to the altar. He doesn’t do it in the way we expect. He binds the sacrifice to the altar of the Cross. The donkey was not the sacrifice. The donkey was already bound, but then loosed out of necessity.

When we ask the question, does God have a need for anything, we see the need He had on that day and the one that He still needs from us today. He needed a donkey to fulfil a prophecy that He had come in peace and humility. This was a sign to the Jews that their Messiah had come.

Today, Christ still needs a donkey. We are the donkeys, but not just any donkeys, the donkey that Christ needs before He can enter into Jerusalem. We are the ones tied up. Tied to problems, tied to sin, tied to this earth, tied to worries and anxieties. There are so many things that tie us down.

But God has need of us, He has a need for us to be untied for His use. Donkeys are the most stubborn animals and like to remain in their place, without changing, but under the right guidance they can travel through the harshest of conditions. Christ orders the disciples and the church to loose the donkey and bring it to Him, for He had need of him. 

We are called to be set free, and to take Christ on our shoulders and walk into Jerusalem. When the Lord entered Jerusalem, He began the week with a need. A need of a donkey. A donkey that was tied. He has the same need today. He wants us to be untied and set free. He wants to take us on the journey with Him through Holy Week. He wants to untie us so He can tie Himself to the Cross for our sake. As we begin this week of Holy Week, let us contemplate on the one thing that ties us to the world. What is tying us down that we need Christ to untie us of so that we may enter into Jerusalem joyful under the guidance of our Master?

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Christ is Our Man

Christ is Our Man

Adapted from a sermon by Fr Daniel Fanous

John 5:1-18

“When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he already had been in that condition a long time, He said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” (John 5:6)

Christ stood there observing the paralytic man. He observed his helplessness, his condition, his loneliness. Therefore, He approaches him and says, “Do you want to be made well?” This is one of the healing miracles in the gospel of John where Christ takes the initiative. He doesn’t wait to be asked.

The man responds, “I have no man to put me in the water.” St John Chrysostom contemplates on this says, “What can be more pitiable than these words? What more sad than these circumstances? Do you see a heart crushed through long sickness? Do you see all violence subdued?”

This paralytic man has no one. He doesn’t have a single person to help him; no friends or family. He stands on the edge of the pool knowing that if he enters when the angel stirs the pool, he will be made well. We don’t know how long he was by the pool but we know that he had been a paralytic for 38 years.

He was surrounded by a multitude of people, many that could have been touching him, yet he had no one. He belonged to no one. It was likely his own family abandoned him, otherwise they would have waited beside him and took him down to the water. If he was paralytic for 38 years, it was probably a congenital disease and thus, rejected from a young age.

Truly when he says, “I have no man,” it was a reflection of the 38 years he spent alone. Fr. Alexander Schmemann contemplates saying;

“This truly is the cry of someone who has come to know the terrible power of human selfishness, narcissism. Every man for himself. Looking out for number one. All of them, all that great multitude of blind, sick, paralyzed, are all “waiting for the troubling of the waters,” in other words, waiting for help, concern, healing, comfort. But…each waits by himself, for himself. And when the waters are troubled, each throws himself forward and forgets about the others… From the gospel’s point of view, this pool is of course an image of the world, an image of human society, a symbol of the very organization of human consciousness.

But even when someone has apparently overcome personal selfishness, he is still held prisoner by the category “his.” He may have overcome bondage to himself as an individual, but then it is “his” family, and for “his” family, since “charity begins at home.” If not family, then “his” ethnic group or country. If not this, then “his” social class, “his” political party. His, always his! And this “his” is invariably opposed to someone else’s, which by definition becomes alien and hostile. We’re told that this is how the world works, what can you do? But is this really true, is this really the ultimate, objective, and scientific truth about the person and human life?

Listening to these words, “I have no man,” is a cry of a feeling of everyone looking to themselves, or their own family, or their own friends. One thing I have noticed about this current crisis is that people look to themselves. People are concerned over amenities and supplies for themselves or their own home, family, businesses. People are hoarding and barricading themselves, creating borders between them and everyone else. Even nations are looking out for only their own.

In almost every phone call, every confession, every thought, the focus is on ourselves and our own. This is understandable because the nature of this disease is contact, we want to avoid touching others. We are fearful to protect our own. This is also a challenge for us, a chance to understand the words, “I have no man.” For each of us is concerned for our own – our own family, our own friends, and not anyone else.

He cries out, “I have no man,” and yet Christ saw him. We read, “He observed him” – He thought about him, He wondered about him. For 38 years no one saw him, and maybe just as remarkable; “I have no man.” In Greek, “I have no Anthropos,” which translates, “I have no human being.” No one around him acted as a human being. Each looked to themselves or their own.

These words are the exact same words Pontius Pilate when he presents Jesus before the people. He puts Christ before them and says, “Behold, the man;” “the Anthropos.” Christ is the One True Human Being. He is the One that sees beyond Himself. He is the One Man that sees beyond His own. None of us – just as no one around the paralytic was a human being – each of us sees ourselves or at best, our own. But Christ is that Man that sees beyond Himself. He sees him, and He is the Man for the paralytic.

He says to him, “I am your Man, I live, I breath, I move and have become flesh for you. You are my people, you are my concern. You have no one and yet you have Me.”

Christ enters his suffering and bears his suffering. He not only sees him but He is present with him. As followers of Christ – Christians – we are called to become human beings to the world that cries out, “I have no man.”

St Dionyius, bishop of Alexandria in 250-260 AD, wrote of an epidemic that decimated the population after the war. 60 years before this there was outbreak of a disease that was most likely small pox that killed one third of the population. He writes of the pagans;

“At the first onset of the disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled from their dearest, throwing them into the roads before they were dead and treating unburied corpses as dirt, hoping thereby to avert the spread and contagion of the fatal disease; but do what they might, they found it difficult to escape.”

He contrasts, “Most of our brother-Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another. Heedless of the danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ, and with them departed this life serenely happy; Many, in nursing and curing others, transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead. The best of our brothers lost their lives in this manner, a number of presbyters, deacons, and laymen winning high commendation, so that death in this form, the result of great piety and strong faith, seems in every way the equal of martyrdom.”

The focus was not on how unfair this epidemic was, no on the lost family, or lost business. Their focus was the chance to give themselves to those around them. Like Christ, we observe and see others. Like Christ, we are there for those that are not our own, especially for those that cry out, “I have no man.”

One historian contemplates on this event and infers that this was the reason that many Romans became Christian; not because of miracles, preaching or political influence, but the response of the Christians to those in need. The irresistible love for the world.

This is very hard for us all, especially when caring for others may mean that we contract the disease. While we should not be reckless concerning these things, our eyes should always be on others. When shopping, who are we buying food for? Why not our elderly neighbour?

As things become worse, we don’t further barricade ourselves. We become more radical in caring for others. St Anthony the Great says, “Our life and our death is with our neighbour. If we gain our brother, we have gained God, but if we scandalise our brother, we have sinned against Christ.” How we treat our neighbours is our life and death. This discerns Christians from non-Christians. Our concern, our care and love for those that are not our own. Let us look beyond ourselves, our own cares, our own families, our own churches even.

Let us be Christ to those that say, “I have no man,” see them, love them, just as Christ did. Even in the depths of our suffering, Christ is that Man and we should likewise be that man for others.

Do You Want Coronavirus to Go Away?

Do You Want Coronavirus to Go Away?

Adapted from a sermon by Fr Mark Basily

John 5:1-18

Take a moment to think about this question – do you want coronavirus to go away? You may be thinking, “what a silly question, of course we want it to go away. Isn’t it obvious?”

We witness a scene of devastation in the gospel reading of the paralytic man; similar to what we see in the world today. St John describes it as, “a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed” (Jonh 5:3). They’re all lying there by a pool which is situated next to the gate.

The gate was the sheep gate where the sheep would enter on the way to be slaughtered for the Passover. By the gate was a pool so that they could be washed before they were taken to the Temple for slaughter. Because there was a direct link between the pool and the Temple, it was considered to be holy water.

The people thought they would be healed when it was stirred and given power.

We have a scene set around a multitude of sick people but then the story hones in on one person, a man paralysed for 38 years. He was probably in the worst state, all the more reason for Christ to focus on him.

Christ approaches him, a man that had been paralysed for 38 years, and asks him a question; “do you want to be made well?”

What a silly question, of course he wants to be made well. Why ask a question like that?

The gospels are not just historical stories or events, the gospel is for our lives. Our own personal encounters with Christ. The gospel takes these stories and puts them in the midst of our lives. So the question we can take from this is – do you want coronavirus to go away? This is the question that Christ asks the paralytic man.

We know that Christ would not ask a silly question. Everything He did had a profound purpose. Why did Christ ask this question?

When I was ordained a priest, I had to go to Egypt for my ordination. When I arrived in Egypt, I met Anba Bakhomious just before the liturgy began for the ordination and he looked me in eyes and asked, “are you prepared to be a priest?”

I replied, “Yes, Your Grace, by your prayers.”

He raised his voice and asked again, “are you prepared to be a priest?”

Again I said, “umm yes, by your prayers.”

Then he became visibly angry and he shouted, “Are you prepared to be a priest? Yes or no?”

So I said, “yes.”

And he replied, “good.”

It seemed like an obvious question. I’ve resigned, I’m here, I travelled from Australia to Egypt, so I was prepared. But he was asking in the sense of – Do you realise the consequence of what you are entering?

Do you realise what will be required of you?

Do you realise the sacrifices necessary?

Do you realise that you will lay down your life to others?

Do you realise what you are embarking on?

Are you ready?

It is for that reason that Christ asks the question, “do you want to be made well?”

Are you ready to be made well? No longer will you lie here. No longer will you rely on others to feed you. Are you ready to stand, to walk to carry your bed, to work? Are you ready for the consequences and responsibilities of healing?

The climax is when Christ finds him again and says, “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.”

We see the link that Christ puts between disease and sin. It’s not clear whether this man’s sin led to his disease or if it were the other way around. What is clear is that there was a link between disease and sin and part of his physical healing was to sin no more, and restore his spiritual health.

“For since for the most part when the soul is diseased we feel no pain, if the body receive though but a little hurt, we use every exertion to free it from infirmity, because we are sensible of the infirmity, therefore God oftentimes punishes the body for the transgressions of the soul, so that by means of the scourging of the inferior part, the better part also may receive some healing.”

St John Chrysostom

Christ after healing the paralytic finds him again so that he can complete the healing, the spiritual healing. In the NKJV, we read, “see you have been made well.” In the other translations, it reads, “see you have been made whole.”

You are now complete, physically and spiritually whole. We see the ultimate responsibility of healing – repentance.

Do you want coronavirus to go away? There are many ways that the world is responding to coronavirus; social distancing, closures, lockdowns, self-isolation, closing borders. They’re all good measures.

Other measures include prayer. Even the prime minister said his prayer knees were getting a good workout. There is another measure beyond this that some people are putting in place. I believe this is the most effective measure. The measure of repentance. Do you want to be made well? Do you want coronavirus to go away? Let us repent. Let us sin no more. If God sees us all repenting what would He do?

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

2 Chronicles 7:14

We implore God’s mercy to heal our land, to heal our world by giving Him our repentance.

The scariest thing about corona is that our actions affect everybody else. If we are infected and we don’t self-isolate, it effects everyone around us through the ripple effect. Our actions affect others. If a virus can do that, repentance can do the same, more even. My repentance has a ripple effect on the world and on God’s heart.

The Absolute Truth

The Absolute Truth

by Daniel Rafla

One of the most sought-after objects in the world, the most desirable form of knowledge. Truth. Humanity itself revolves around what is true – in friendship, love, success, happiness, strength, etc. You could literally qualify the highest level of attaining any one concept or virtue by referring to it as true. Pontius Pilate himself upon questioning the Lord Christ

“Pilate therefore said to Him, “Are You a king then?” Jesus answered, “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?” ” John 18:37-38

Winston Churchill comments, “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.” (Churchill, 1916) Yet no one has ever quite been capable of summing up the mere impact of the truth better than the words of Christ,

“ ‘Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ ” (John 8:32)

This appears to be a fairly universally known quote, and it can be commonly found in film, music and books. We ourselves, in order to teach the importance of the truth to children, refer to this one verse constantly, that we can create a definitive link between the truth and peace. The irony is that the true impact of truth is itself difficult to measure, and difficult to quantify. That said, I wonder – if the impact of the true means of something is to an individual seeking it can be immeasurable, then what if we were to consider the absolute truth.

The word absolute is rooted from the Latin word Absolutus meaning freed and unrestricted, however the modern understanding of the word is that it is all encompassing, that something being absolute becomes the measure of the thing it contains. Consider for a moment the mathematical symbol of absolute     |X|

I want you to now begin to visualise the way in which these two bars actually not only surround that “X” but they are the literal boundary that contains and transforms whatever is inside of it to a positive number.

Now into the rabbit hole we go, as I now begin to delve into an absolute truth that I’ve meditated over during the period of the Great Lent and even into the Holy week of Pascha, rather He who is the absolute truth, Jesus. There can be found no better summary, nor better wording than what He did speak on when He said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” When Pilate asked his question, he did not know that He was speaking to the answer, though I feel that there is many complications around why He said that, especially as He was responding to Thomas asking Him about the things to come, I will however choose to focus on why He referred to Himself as the truth. As I have said above, truth is something we all seek in various aspects of life – things which we can know that Christ has perfected in His life on Earth. Furthermore, we know that in Christ we have life, and that anyone who places themselves in Christ, and allows God to surround them, transformation to their positive form is attained. No matter the value within the absolute bars, it is transformed. Likewise, when Christ envelops any one person, you can be assured that this person, no matter how great or small, will certainly find themselves in the light, no matter how dark they previously were.

Brothers and sisters, the impact of absolute truth is that it is transformative, for the absolute truth is Christ Himself.

The Prodigal Son

The Prodigal Son

Adapted from a sermon by Fr Daniel Fanous

Luke 15

The prodigal son- the most beautiful of the parables. This parable came at a time when sinners were gathering around Christ. The Pharisees and Scribes were seeing this and thought to themselves, “this Man gathers sinners together and eats and drinks with them.”

Every word that follows is in response to their judgement. The son comes to the father and asks for his inheritance. The father does not say no, nor does he try to challenge him. He respects his freedom entirely. He not only gave away the inheritance that his son asked for but he allowed him to sell his inheritance.

In the Jewish Michener – one of the writings of the Rabbis on the interpretation of the law – it was permissible to give a child their inheritance before the father passed away, but never could you sell it before the father passed away. The son goes in haste, within days, and sells his entire inheritance. What shame this would have brought upon his father in the eyes of the entire community.

At the time that this happened, the prodigal son’s actions were the equivalent of him saying to his father, “I wish you were dead.” The son did the unthinkable, but we observe how the father reacted in complete respect for his freedom. Christ also demonstrates in this parable a completely different take on sin and sinners. The sin was not the mark of somebody that had made a mistake. It’s not a cross that was put against someone’s name. It was not a catalogue of sins that the sinner would have to account for, one by one. On the contrary, it was a broken relationship – moving away from the unity with God. The son humiliated the father, left him and went as far away as possible.

An old Jewish tradition was called the Kezazah shaming. When a Jewish person lost their inheritance to the Gentiles, they would be greeted with the Kezazah shaming upon their return to their village. The people would get pots and fill them with burnt corn and nuts and break these pots as the person returned to their village. While they did this, they would shout repeatedly, “you are cut off.” It was intended to be a deterrent so that a person would be extra careful with their family’s land.

The prodigal son knew the shame that would befall him if he returned because his immediate action was to tend to the pigs. Pigs were not a kosher food and would not be kept by Jews. The prodigal son must have been working for Gentiles as far away from his father’s home as possible.

And yet, the father never forgot the son; he remained watchful. Christ portrays the image of the father standing in the middle of the village square with his eyes fixated on the entrance. The prodigal son was the last of three parables Christ taught about the lost in response to the judgement of His dining with sinners. He starts with the good shepherd that lost one of his 100 sheep, the good woman that lost a coin and ends with the good father that lost his son. All three are symbols of Christ. The heroes of the parables are those that find the lost and rejoice.

The hero of the parable of the prodigal son is the father. Christ is telling us that He is the father, He is always watching and waiting for the son that has wasted his inheritance. We look at the son who became a herder of pigs whose only food was the food of the pigs. We read that he realises the state he is in and says,” I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants” (Luke 15:18-19). He doesn’t say, “I will go and be a slave,” but a, “paid servant.” He wants to go back and earn what he lost. He knows that the Kezazah shaming is what awaits him and he knows he has a lot to make up for. The son was not searching for mercy and repentance, his mind was not on the broken relationship but on the lost money. Christ was teaching us that no father truly care more about the money that was lost over the broken relationship with his son. Christ is saying to us, “When you sin, you haven’t lost My money, you haven’t discarded something of Mine but you have broken your relationship with Me.” This is what sin is.

The son returns to the father that has been waiting all along. The father who is Christ, the One who eats with sinners, who yearns to repair every broken relationship. The actions of the father depict Christ’s love for the sinner. The father runs to his son after waiting day after day for the son that has shamed him. We read, “But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). He was inwardly moved with compassion. Christ is inwardly moved with compassion for every sinner that returns.

The father ran to his son, possibly to stop the Kezazah ceremony from even commencing. Running for a wealthy middle eastern man was shameful, they would never run in public. Yet, he ran, he humiliated himself for the sake of the son. He embraces and kisses the son before he could even open his mouth. This is Christ speaking to his children. This is Christ’s feeling for the sinner that returns in repentance. He embraces him even before he repents. The son could only manage the beginning of his speech – ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ Before he can say, “make me like one of your hired workers,” he stops. He doesn’t need to say those words, he doesn’t need to earn back his inheritance for his father that has accepted him back. The relationship is healed. The father embraces him and overlooks his weakness. This is Christ self-emptying for us – a son that has rejected Him and wasted his inheritance and come only because he was hungry, but Christ overwhelms us with His love.

Peter Chrysologus, Bishop of Ravenna in the 5th century says, “The father fell on his neck and kissed him. This is how the father judges and corrects his wayward son and gives him not beatings but kisses. The power of love overlooked the transgression. The father redeemed the sins of his son by his kiss and covered them by his embrace in order not to expose the crimes or humiliate the son. The father so healed the son’s wounds as not to leave a scar or a blemish upon him. Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and his sins are covered.”

Not only does the father return the son to his original state, but he elevates him for joy for his son who was dead was now alive. This is the nature of who Christ is. He created us out of the super abundance of his love so that we could be with him and we could be united with Him.

Finally, we see how the older son complains after a hard day of labouring in the field to return back to the festivities for his brother. He says to the father, “these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him’” (Luke 15:29-30).

Again, we see the nature of Christ when dealing with the older son. He pleads with him to return, gently encouraging him to share his compassion. He doesn’t condemn him for being judgmental nor scold him. He gently pleads that he becomes more like him, and share in his joy to have his son back. Christ calls us to love the way He loves. To seek the healing of our brothers and sisters and nothing else. All Christ wants is to shower us with His mercy. We were never just statistics of sin, but temples for His dwelling out of the super abundance of His love.

When they accused Christ of eating with His sinners, this is how He responded to show Himself as the father, sinners as the younger son and those that condemned Him as the older son. St Isaac the Syrian says, “among all of God’s actions, there is none which is not entirely a matter of mercy love and compassion.”

God is not waiting to pass or fail us depending on our actions. He waits to hear from us and to bring us to perfection. How then can we not turn him? How then can we not confess? How then can we not run team recognising that we have broken our relationship to him? Knowing that He is ready to forgive and heal us of all sin. May we all know who Christ is in the deepest recesses of our hearts.

The Pride of Life

The Pride of Life

Adapted from a sermon by Fr Samuel Fanous

Matthew 4:1-11

Today we have a perfect reading for us as we’re in Lent. Jesus was baptised in the Jordan and as soon as He came up out of the Jordan, the Holy Spirit came unto Him and this is immediately when He was led by the Spirit into the temple. If you think about Adam and Eve as the first humans who were tempted by sin in the Garden of Eden, they failed. These temptations are the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

From the book of Genesis when Eve was tempted by sin, it says, “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food..” – this is the lust of the flesh, her hunger, “… and that it was pleasant to the eyes” – this is the lust of the eyes, “…and a tree desirable to make one wise” – this is the pride of life “…she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.” (Genesis 3:6)

Eve lusted out of hunger for the fruit. She looked at the fruit that was pleasant to the eye, and this was where the devil said I will make you ruler over everything, I will make you wise and she believed the devil. This was the pride of life. Adam and Eve represent all of humanity. Like us they sinned.

The first temptation is the lust of the flesh. It says the devil came to Jesus and gave him a stone after fasting for 40 days. Can you imagine not eating for 40 days? Eve looked at the stone that the devil gave to her and she saw that the stone was good as fruit. She was hungry and she desired it.

Oregon says the devil tries to convince us that this stone is bread and will nourish us. He tries to convince us that if you are well fed, if you have comfort, if you have sexual fulfilment, if you have everything you want in this world to satisfy your flesh, you will be satisfied. However, to you and to everyone it is just as good as a stone. It cannot satisfy us any more than a stone could satisfy anyone’s hunger.

The “bread” will provide a minute of enjoyment, a minute of satisfaction, but there is no lasting satisfaction with any of the lusts of the flesh. Christ teaches us how to overcome these lusts. He denied His body as soon as He was baptised. The second He was baptised, the battle began, and this is why, for most people, Christianity is too hard. It is too hard to fast, too hard to go to Church, too hard to pray and too hard to love unconditionally. So, most people take the easy way out. They don’t pray, they don’t fast, they don’t love unconditionally, they don’t come to church because it’s easy.

Jesus says that the easy way out will never satisfy you. What’s His response to the devil? He says “man shall not live by bread alone.” Our satisfaction will not come from bread but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

The second temptation is the pride of life. That pride where in your heart you want to be like God, you want to have His authority. You think “I am my own God.” Satan convinced Eve that God didn’t want her to eat the fruit because if she did, she will have His power. Eve thought that was a pretty good deal. I eat this fruit and I become like God.

This is the pride where she wanted to become better than what she was created to be. Most of us want this in our lives. We want to live, ruling our own life and making our own decisions. How many of us live as if we are God, at least to ourselves and probably to those around us?

Everything in this world, everyone in this world exists for me. For what I want, for my comfort, my satisfaction and my achievement in life. It is very difficult to realise that you are proud until you have been humiliated.

When I’m humbled, when I’m embarrassed, when I’m disrespected, what happens? People will say that they’re not proud but watch when someone disrespects them publicly. What happens when someone is more successful than me or when someone is smarter than me. Do I feel anger and bitterness on the inside? Why is this person better looking than me? Why does everything good happen to this person and not to me? It’s my right. I should have it. We don’t realise it until we’re humbled and humiliated, we have no idea that we are filled with pride.

Everyone suffers from this to some extent – it is the basic human condition. Jesus, once again teaches us how to overcome. His death and His essence is so beyond our comprehension that we can’t even begin to fathom it, yet this same very God emptied Himself of all His glory and every right that He had, yet He had all the rights.

He was crucified, He was poor, He had nothing. If God emptied himself of His glory and humbled Himself, then we must. There is no disrespect, no humiliation, no embarrassment that could ever compare to what Christ has gone through.

When we hold a grudge, respond in hatred, act petty, with envy, with jealousy and cannot forgive, we are not acting to be God, we are making ourselves out to be far above God. When we are humbled, we apologise when we feel like we shouldn’t, we accept disrespect the same as you would respect. That is when you are behaving like God.

The last temptation is the lust of the eyes. The fruit was pleasant to the eyes and this is the human desire. I look at everyone around me and I want what they have. I’m never satisfied with what I have. This is the curse of Western civilisation. Jesus once again teaches us how to overcome this. He was baptised and immediately He fled to the desert to the wilderness. Saint Arsenius says, there’s one way to overcome this world. Flee, be silent, and be still.

Wealth, investments, and status are only attractive because we have nothing to compare it to. If we go to the wilderness, away from the noise and distractions and find God, we realise all of these things are counted as nothing. They’re relatively meaningless. It doesn’t mean we don’t work and try to achieve in all the things we do, but they have no hold over me.  If I have them, thanks be to God if I lose them. We have to recognise that there is nothing external that can satisfy me, only what is within.

Christ says “Behold, the kingdom of Heaven is within you.” It’s only what’s within me that can satisfy me. We are made in the image of God, in His likeness. If you want to find Christ, retreat to yourself. There you will find him.

Let’s focus on retreating into my inner deserts. Let’ take the opportunity to utilise that quiet. Retreat into your bedroom and find Christ there. If you go into your bedroom and open your heart before God, you will find the pearl of great price that Christ talks about. When you find the pearl of great price Christ says, you will sell everything you have to get that pearl.

Let’s overcome the temptations like Christ showed us by hungering from physical comfort. We are nourished by the word of God, which is Jesus Christ, by emptying ourselves of our pride, sacrificing ourselves and living for others and finally retreating into the wilderness, into the silence and stillness, to encounter God who is within me.

 

Let Your Eyes be Filled with Light

Let Your Eyes be Filled with Light

Adapted from a sermon by Fr Daniel Fanous

Matthew 6:19-33

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” – Matthew 6:21. This is a vital reminder to lay treasures in heaven and not possession on earth.

Jesus goes on to say, “The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”

This is strange comparison made by our Lord. He first talks about treasures in Heaven and then diverts to the lamp of the body being the eye. They don’t seem to be related, but if you look closely, the relation becomes clear. Whatever your heart treasures, your eye will naturally be drawn to.

Why does He refer to the eye as the lamp of the body? The word lamp in Greek means source or window. The eye is the window of the body, it is the entry point for light to enter the body. But what is the light that comes to us?

St Cyril of Alexandria says, “Before the coming of our Saviour, the Father of darkness, Satan, made the world dark and blackened all things with an intellectual bloom. In this state of affairs, the Father gave us the Son, Jesus to be a lamp to the world to illuminate with divine light and to rescue us from satanic darkness.”

Furthermore, the gospel of John says, “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it” (John 1:5). Christ is the source of light. Light is an energy and we know energy must always extend from an energy source. By extension, Christ is the lamp and our eyes will never see light unless they see Christ. Where your treasure is, your heart will be also for your eyes are ever upon the desires of your heart.

For the eyes to see and recognise Christ, they must be functional. If the eye is good then the entire body will be full of light. The actual translation for the word, ‘good’ is ‘seen.’ If the eye is seen then the entire body will be full of light. When the eye is fixated on the seen, life will have a single purpose with no confusion for seeing truth.

If the eye is bad then the whole body will be filled with darkness. The Greek translation for the word, ‘bad’ is, ‘disease.’ If the eye is disease then nothing you do will allow light to travel through. We must be conscientious in protecting our eyes from any sources of harm. Another requirement for eyes to function is the presence of light. Eyes cannot function without light, they can’t retain health unless there is a source of light. In babies for example, if they are starved of light, their eyes will not be able to develop into functioning eyes that bring images to the body. Receiving of light is what ensures eyes can grow and function appropriately.

When the eyes are starved of light, they adapt to the darkness. They begin to hallucinate and see things that aren’t there. First, they see moving patterns and then turn they see full blown images. For our eyes to be functional, they need the light of Christ. This is why Christ says, “But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”

St John Chrysostom says, “If we destroy our eyes which ought to give light to the rest of our bodies, by what means are we going to see clearly? For when the pilot is drowned, when the candle is put out, when the general is taken prisoner what sort of hope will remain for those that are under his command?”

But more than this – if our eyes are diseased and deprived of life, we are not only in darkness but we begin to hallucinate. Our sense of right and wrong becomes distorted and we do not know how to act. We become angry irrationally, we judge inaccurately, we imagine people have said things against us, we create false scenarios and negative perceptions of other people and then act upon these.

Amid all this turmoil, what we see most clearly is who we actually are. A painter will see the world in colour, a builder will see the world in measurements and a musician perceives the world in sounds. We see as we are. Somebody that is full of anger and hate can only see other angry and hateful people. Somebody that is insecure feels threatened by everyone around them.

If you have murky vision, everything looks dirty; nothing looks clean. But if you have clear vision everything looks beautiful. Father Bishoy of Alexandria was an example of someone so filled with light that he could only see good in other people. When someone would come to him and say that they spent all night thinking sinful thoughts, Father Bishoy would see this person’s capacity for contemplation. When someone confessed that they had spent all night parting, he saw the person’s capacity to pray all night. This is why Christ could only see good in the sinners that came to Him in repentance. Mary Magdalene came to Him as a prostitute, He saw the thief on the Cross but both gained the Kingdom.

May we open our eyes, purify our vision and see Christ as He is where His light not only purifies my eyes but will help them grow so that I can see everyone like Christ sees them. Let us understand the symptoms of disease. If I can only see evil, mistakes, darkness and malice in people around me then I know there is a problem with my eyes, and not those who I see. When I have conversations with my friends, what do I say about other people? Let us purify our eyes so that our interactions remain pure also. May we learn to see how Christ sees. May Christ be our eternal source of light.

The Resurrection of the Dead

The Resurrection of the Dead

For reference while reading this blog, join and contemplate on the following readings:
1 Corinthians 15-16
Matthew 24
1 Thessalonians 4-5
2 Thessalonians 2
2 Peter 3

The Resurrection is at the centre of our faith and St Paul makes this clear in 1 Corinthians 15, when he states that if Christ is not risen from the dead, then we, as Christians, are the most pitiable of people because our faith is empty. However, fear not, St Paul confirms that Christ truly has risen, through the testimony of his life, where he preaches Christ’s Resurrection to his martyrdom!

Sometimes we find ourselves doubting the resurrection because we think it doesn’t make sense scientifically, which requires that something be observable and repeatable under certain conditions. But one thing we have to realise is that the resurrection is not meant to be looked at scientifically, but it is to be looked at as a historical event. And one of the biggest pieces of evidence that this historical event really occurred is the witness of the Apostles after Christ’s resurrection. These normal people could have gone back to their everyday lives, and accepted that they were fooled in the three years of Christ’s ministry. Instead they dedicated their whole lives to spreading the message of Christ and His Resurrection. Would they dedicate their lives to a lie? Some may argue they just did it because it made them fill their time, kept them united or made them famous. Sure, that would have lasted for a while. But when they were threatened with and were at the point of death, for any sane person, that would have been the final straw. Nobody would die for a lie! And yet we see all of the Apostles, except for John the Beloved, being martyred for the sake of Christ. And if you think they did it because of peer pressure or because they were together and everyone was doing, then think again! St Mark was martyred in Egypt, St Paul in Italy and St Thomas in India, and so they weren’t there supporting each other at their toughest moment and it would have been easy for them to admit that they were preaching a lie so that they could save their lives. And yet they didn’t! And they didn’t because they were sure of what they had seen and what they had heard, and they knew that Christ had truly risen from the dead! So the question still stands, why would so many of them die for a lie? And if you can’t find an answer then this is just one piece of evidence to convince you that Christ truly is risen!

The rest of the readings mentioned tell us how to respond to the Resurrection of Christ. The gist of it is that we should always live with the Resurrection at the forefront of our mind, living out what we say in the Creed where “we look for the Resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”  The chapters tell us to be ready for His coming, since we know neither the day nor hour, but that we should not wait in fear, but in joy and comfort, as we know that Jesus will come to save those who believe. This waiting time should also be used as an opportunity to “put on the breastplate of faith and love, and as a helmet the hope of salvation.” (1 Thessalonians 5:8) and to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 3:18) And the best way to do this is in the Church, and by living her life of prayer, repentance, and by participating in her Sacraments.