The weekly homilies are now also available on YouTube in video format: Homilies
Matt 4:18-4:23 & 4:25-5:12
Today, on the second Sunday after Pentecost, we celebrate the memory of all the saints of the local Church. Here we are blessed to remember the saints not only of North America where we live, but also of the Russian Land, the root from which our local saints have sprung. The saints of Russia are great in number and reach all the way back to St Vladimir the Great, who brought the Orthodox Faith to the Russian people and even further to the apostolic journeys of the Apostle Andrew the first called. Just as the Russian Church itself was the fruit of the labor of missionaries such as Sts Kyrill and Methodii, so also the Church in North America is the fruit of the labor of Russian missionaries such as Sts Herman, Innocent of Alaska, Tikhon Patriarch of Moscow and St John of San Francisco. Today we look back not only on the Holy Ones of our own land and nation but also to the whole choir of saints of our heritage, those of the Russian land, for we are tied together as closely as a mother and her child.
When our Lord called His first disciples, He promised to make them “fishers of men” for they had been fishermen by trade. They were not the recognized spiritual leaders of the people; they were not among the learned and wise; they were not even among the civil leaders of the people. They were simple and ordinary men who stood out only in that they believed and acted on their belief. Their simple origins remind us that not just a select few, but all men, no matter their place in the world, are called to follow Christ. Taking these men to Himself, our Lord immediately began to teach them the path of salvation. When our Lord first called the Apostles, He said to them, “Follow me” and when they did begin to follow after Him, He then began to teach them, explaining how they were to follow Him.
This basic teaching in the Gospel of Matthew, of which we read the beginning today, is known as “the sermon on the mount” and it contains the most concentrated explanation by our Lord of how to follow Him. The beginning of the this great sermon, or homily, given by our Lord describes the kind of person who will enter the Kingdom of Heaven in the form of the “beatitudes” or more simply the descriptions of what makes a man “blessed”. These nine beatitudes have become the New Testament counterpart of the ten Old Testament commandments. The commandments define those sins which are spiritually deadly and teach us to avoid those sins. The beatitudes, on the other hand define for us those virtues which are the result of a healthy spiritual life and teach us to desire them. It is these beatitudes, this description of the spiritual man who will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, that we heard read to us today. Just as the ten commandments of the Old Testament are daunting in all the things we must avoid, so also the beatitudes sound impossible to attain. Even later on, in the rest of the sermon on the mount, as our Lord explains how these virtues are to be acquired, He says to us, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Mt 5:48). It is difficult even to grasp what this means for the sanctity and perfection of God is so great, so far beyond us, that it is impossible for us to comprehend, let alone to obtain. However, our Lord, knowing our imperfection, knowing our sinfulness, knowing our weakness, still gives us this charge. We know that He does not call us to any task that is impossible for us but that He gives us the strength and tools needed to fulfill all His callings; and so we also know that despite the utter impossibility of this calling, to become like God, He will make this possible for us. When the disciples realized the impossibility of this task and asked, “Who then can be saved?” did not our Lord say to them, “With men these things are impossible, but with God all things are possible.” It is impossible for us, in our weakness to aspire to the likeness of God – to be the person described in the beatitudes – to become saints. But our Lord, the incarnate God/man Jesus Christ, gives Himself to us and makes this impossibility possible.
Today we remember all those who, by their lives, have demonstrated that indeed it is possible to become like the God/man Jesus Christ, to put on robe of righteousness and to acquire the virtues which adorn us in the Kingdom of Heaven. The saints were not daunted by the impossibility of this undertaking, but trusting that God would provide for them the means by which they could be transformed, by which they would acquire the grace of the Holy Spirit, by which they would enter the Kingdom of Heaven, began simply to follow Christ. They did not follow by leaps and bounds, jumping immediately to the lofty heights of the spiritual life, but they went step by step, climbing out of the valley of the shadow of death, fleeing the darkness of sin, ascending the steep hills of repentance and self-denial. Step by step, they climbed through all manner of difficulty and sorrow and suffering, fleeing the sin that pulled at them, seeking to sink them in the mire of death. Every time that they slipped, falling backwards toward sin they repented and turned again to climb away from the death that grasped at them. They turned their faces towards the light of Christ, the brightness of His righteousness and His love for us. They were driven by their love for Him as they took each step towards the heights of the Kingdom of Heaven. Even having reached the place where they began to resemble our Lord Jesus Christ more than the world, where they began to appear to the world as saints, they did not let up or rest in their efforts. They still felt the pull of sin, reaching if possible to drag them back into its darkness. They still saw before them the indescribable heights of the glory of God which they had only begun to obtain. Although they may have seemed to have reached the heights of heaven, they knew, they saw, that they were only on the foothills of the glory of God and that there were greater heights ahead of them – and so even to the last day of their life, the saints continued to climb toward the Kingdom of Heaven.
With this example before us, it is now our turn to imitate the saints even as they imitated Christ. Like them we need to climb out of the valley of sin and death in which we are mired. Our Lord, by His death and glorious Resurrection has freed us from the chains that held us there. He Himself has begun to ascend into heaven, showing us the way and calling us to follow Him. The path of the saints shows us how to make each step, how to climb slowly but surely out of the depths of sin towards the heights of righteousness. They did not leap in one bound to the mountaintop, but climbed step by step and in so doing left for us a path to follow – a path made up of small steps each of which is possible, and which lead us inexorably away from sin and ever closer to the Kingdom of Heaven.
Let us then immerse ourselves in the lives of the saints, let us study their lives to see how it is they were able to climb step by step out of the same life of sin with which we ourselves struggle. Let us set the love of God as a bright light before us, drawing us up and away from the darkness of sin. Let us follow the path that the saints have shown us by their own labors as they also follow Christ. To become like God, to become the person described in the beatitudes may seem to be impossible for men, but with Christ all things are possible and the saints show us the truth of that possibility. They ascended step by step, one day, one moment at a time towards the Kingdom of Heaven and now they stand on the threshold of their reward, ready to enter into the heights of God’s glory. But they are waiting – they are waiting for us to finish our climb and to welcome us into their company so that we all might enter the Kingdom of Heaven together.
Let us then praise all the saints of Russia and North America who have blazed the path of sanctity before us and who now await us as we ascend by the same path, step by step coming to the threshold of the Kingdom of Heaven. Let us give thanks to those who by their lives, left a trail for us to follow, showing us that even when it seems impossible, even when it seems as though we will fall back into sin, that God will provide that which we need and lift us to the next step. Step by step, day by day, we struggle to ascend the hills of repentance and self-denial. Step by step we come closer to the Kingdom of Heaven. Step by step we follow in the path of salvation shown to us by the lives of the saints. Step by step we join our fellow strugglers in Christ as we all come to the gates of the Kingdom of Heaven. And then, when we have all come together, we will take that final step together with all the saints as we enter God’s Kingdom and rejoice in Him for eternity.
Acts 2:1-11
The great feast of Pentecost is sometimes called the “birthday” of the Church for it was with the descent of the Holy Spirit that the believers were imbued with the life of Christ through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Until this time, even though our Lord Jesus Christ had already defeated death by His glorious Resurrection, the disciples and the other believers had not as yet been united to Christ. With the descent of the Holy Spirit this union was accomplished for now God lives within the hearts and souls of all those who are born again. The Church as a single living entity, the Body of Christ, comes into being with the descent and indwelling of the Holy Spirit which draws each member into unity with Himself and bestows upon each of us the common life of Christ that binds us together.
Before this time, the Holy Spirit would descend and overshadow the prophets inspiring them to speak and to prophesy, giving them visions and dreams in which they heard the word of the Lord – but this overshadowing was an external phenomenon and not the indwelling which now happens for the first time. The Holy Spirit did not dwell within the prophets consistently, but descended upon them for short periods after which He left them. It is as if they were surrounded by the Holy Spirit, wrapped in a spiritual blanket, as it were, for a short time, and then the blanket was removed. But now, since our Lord Jesus Christ has come and prepared the way, the Holy Spirit descends and does not simply surround and overshadow the disciples and believers in an external manner, but instead He enters into them and joins Himself to them, bringing to them the life of Christ which we share. To this end, today we resume the prayer “O Heavenly King…” in which we beseech the Holy Spirit to “come and dwell within us … and save our souls…” Because He now dwells within us, He no longer departs but remains a constant presence in the heart and soul of every member of the Church.
Because we have the Holy Spirit living in us, His grace is constantly poured into our hearts. We are no longer alone, but we are united to Christ by the presence of the Holy Spirit in us. He joins Himself to us and empowers us to work out our salvation, helping us to develop and nurture within ourselves the virtues and to resist the temptations and attacks of the evil one. Even from the Apostles we see the empowering effect of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Prior to the descent of the Holy Spirit, the disciples lived in fear of those who would persecute them, they hid from public discourse and worshipped God in a closed community. With the coming of the Holy Spirit, their mouths were opened and they came forth from the room in which they had hidden in prayer speaking boldly of the Gospel and the Resurrection of Christ. On that first day of Pentecost the apostles preached the Gospel in every language of the world, foreshadowing the fact that they would in fact take the Gospel over the whole world. They who had lived in fear of the Jewish authorities began to speak boldly before those same authorities, and not only that, they began to speak boldly before kings and emperors, even in the face of their own martyric sufferings and death.
Just as the Holy Spirit empowered the disciples on the day of Pentecost so He also empowers us in our own lives. We are called by God to bear witness to all the world of the Gospel. Not all are apostles or preachers or teachers, but we are all called to demonstrate the transforming power of the life of Christ by our daily lives, by what we do and say even in the ordinary course of life. For this task we too are empowered by the Holy Spirit. By our own strength this would not be possible, but it is by the power of the Holy Spirit dwelling within our hearts and minds that we are transformed. Although the power of sin and death has been broken by the Resurrection, still in our weakness we tend to hold on to those sinful habits and to the fear of death. But the Holy Spirit enables us to overcome that weakness, to set aside the tendency to sin, to resist the temptations that threaten to overwhelm us every day. By the love of God, the Holy Spirit destroys the fear of death, and indeed all fear within our hearts, making it possible for the life of Christ to be manifest in us.
Like the disciples, we have seen the Resurrection of Christ, we have experienced the great joy of His triumph over sin death and the devil. Like the disciples, we have been waiting now for the coming of the Holy Spirit who does not simply overshadow us, wrapping us in the glory of His presence, but who enters into us and dwells with us, transforming us so that the glory of God emanates from within and becomes part of us. It is this inner working of the Holy Spirit that effects our salvation, for it is the means by which we are transformed, united to Christ and become like Him. The only task left to us is to cooperate with this saving and transforming action of the Holy Spirit, to move as He moves and speak as He speaks. We need only to listen to and trust the prompting of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and follow His lead – He does the rest. The Holy Spirit in us will warn us away from sin and give us the strength to resist it. In fact, when we are too weak or hard hearted to resist on our own, He will “prevent” us from sin by placing obstacles to sin in our path. The Holy Spirit in us will incline our hearts towards the virtues, towards every good thing and give us the strength to fulfill those good things in our own lives. The Holy Spirit in us will unite us to Christ and bestow His life upon us, meshing it with our own that we might become like Him and be saved.
The descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Church at Pentecost is the beginning of the divine life of the Church. It is the Holy Spirit that brings to the Church the life of Christ. It is by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that the various members of the Church are joined to one another and to Christ and are able to share in the life of Christ. The descent of the Holy Spirit is not just for the Apostles or for the first Christians gathered in Jerusalem – the descent of the Holy Spirit is for every believer, for each one of us. Today we celebrate the birthday of the Church, the day on which the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles and those with them bestowing upon them the life of Christ which is the means by which we are all united into the Body of Christ, into the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which is bestowed upon every member of the Church at his Chrismation, enlivens each of us to work out our salvation, to flee from sin, and to cultivate the virtues and become like Christ. Today we are filled with the Holy Spirit, today our transformation is begun, today the life of Christ becomes our life and we are united to Him.
Yesterday, the Church remembered the Holy Fathers of the Seven Ecumenical Councils. Today the Church remembers the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council, and tomorrow marks the 1700 year anniversary of that Council. The gospel reading yesterday recorded the words of our Lord at the Mystical Supper on the night of His betrayal and arrest: “I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever -- the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you. A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.” Notice the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and also notice that Jesus Christ wants them to know Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Whom there is life. This is underscored in the words we heard in the gospel today: “And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”
In these words, we can understand the importance of Theology. The Tradition, the Faith of the Church which was given to the apostles and handed down in every generation was not given so that we might have religious subjects to argue and fight about, or so that we can feel proud of our ability to speak about complex and esoteric subjects. The Tradition of the Church is given to us so that we can know God and have eternal life.
The Fathers of the Church have preserved and explained only the truths that had already been given to the Church, not exceeding the boundaries of what God had already revealed. Our Lord prayed this morning, “I have given to them [the apostles] the words which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that you sent Me.” Our Lord came to reveal Himself, as well as the Father Who sent Him, and the Spirit Whom the Father would send into the world, that we might know God and live in Him.
But as Saint Paul warned this morning, “I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves.” Indeed many such savage wolves have tormented the flock of Christ over the centuries, spreading falsehoods against the truth revealed by Jesus Christ. The Fathers, good shepherds after the example of Christ the Good Shepherd defended the flock against these wolves. But we should note that the wolves come from among ourselves they are not outsiders, but predators attacking from within.
The Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council gathered to confront the heresy of Arius. Arius denied the divinity of Christ, teaching that the Son of God was a created being, and that there was a time when the Son of God was not. The Fathers of the Council didn’t convene to decide Who Jesus Christ was, but to confess Who He is according to what had already been delivered to them.
Our Lord asked His Disciples once, Who do men say that I am? And they had a number of answers based on what they had heard. He then asked them, Who do you say that I am? Saint Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus said, “Blessed are you, Simon Son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven.” The Knowledge of Who Christ is -- Who Father, Son and Holy Spirit is cannot come from men and their ideas, but from direct revelation of God. This is how we know God. Arius in all of his intelligence managed to convince Himself that Jesus Christ was someone other than true God of true God, begotten not made, of one essence with the Father -- all because He trusted his own thinking.
Jesus went on to say, “And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.” The Church itself, the body of Christ, the flock of the Good Shepherd will endure despite the craftiness of the evil one. Christ will be victorious, and those who choose their own thoughts over God’s revelation will not prevail.
Over the centuries that followed, heretics rose up with their false teachings, and so the good shepherds that God appointed over His flock would gather several more times to declare what had been believed from the beginning. They taught that the Holy Spirit is the Lord the giver of life, Who proceeds from the Father, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified. They confessed that the Holy Spirit, like the Son of God is truly God, one in essence with the Father.
The Fathers confessed that the Son of God and the Son of Mary are one and the same person. That there was not a man Jesus of Nazareth who was somehow united to the Son of God, but that the Son of God became incarnate as the man Jesus Christ.
The Fathers confessed that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man, and that in becoming man both natures are preserved. He is one in essence with God and one in essence with us. The divine is not combined with the human, there is no confusion between the two, and yet there is no division within the God man Jesus Christ,
They confessed that Jesus Christ, being both God and man, has two wills, two actions, two energies. He has what is proper to each nature, because to not have these things would mean being different from either God or man.
These things matter because if Jesus Christ is not God He doesn’t have the power to bring about a change in us to rescue us from the bonds of death or our enslavement to sin. Only God can accomplish those things. All the prophets and righteous of the Old Testament could not achieve this for us, but Jesus Christ has. Likewise, if Jesus Christ is not man, then all of the things that He did He did apart from us. They do not transform humanity from within, but merely affect humanity from without.
The last Ecumenical Council dealt with images or icons. If Jesus Christ is truly man, then He must have an image. And if He is truly God and Man and there is no mixture or confusion, nor separation or division within the God man Jesus Christ, then the icon of Christ is an icon of God Himself, without attempting to depict the undepictable divine nature. Furthermore, to depict the Saints is to testify that they are created in the image of God and that through the power of the Holy Spirit, they have been transformed into and confirmed in the likeness of God. They show God in themselves insofar as they are able.
We stand in between the Ascension Of Christ this past Thursday and the Feast of Pentecost next Sunday. We have witnessed the accomplishment of what Jesus Christ became incarnate to do. He took on our humanity, became a man like us in all things except sin. He worked wonders and gave saving commandments. He was betrayed, arrested, suffered, was crucified, died, and was buried. He rose again on the third day, He appeared to hundreds of those Who had followed Him. He taught His disciples the things that testified of Him in the scriptures, and He promised to send them the Holy Spirit to lead them into all truth. He then ascended into Heaven in glory, telling them to stay in Jerusalem until they received power from on high. So with them we wait. We await the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
This Holy Spirit, true God, one in essence with both the Father and the Son, came to them and transformed them, and through them the whole world. This same Holy Spirit is given to each of us that we might likewise be transformed and that we might be the means of transforming the world around us.
Before the prayers of consecration in the Liturgy, the priest prays, “O Lord Who at the third hour didst send down the Most Holy Spirit upon the Apostles, take Him not from us, O Good One, but renew Him in us that pray unto Thee” We should continually seek the renewal of the Holy Spirit, but particularly as we approach the day of Pentecost. We are reminded today that it matters Who God is. That Jesus Christ is the means by which we come to know the Father, and so it matters Who Jesus Christ is. And the Father reveals to us Who Jesus Christ is by the power of the Holy Spirit. We cannot know God except by His revelation of Himself to us. And if we believe in some version of Father, Son, or Holy Spirit of our own imagining, then we cannot come to know God at all.
So ask the Lord to renew the Holy Spirit in you, that by the Holy Spirit you might know Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That you might believe what God has revealed, and live in faithfulness. We shouldn’t seek merely data or information about God, but personal experience of God for eternal life in Him.
John 9:1-38
Two weeks ago, we heard of the healing of the paralytic at the pool by the sheep’s gate in Jerusalem. The Gospel tells us that “Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.” This reminds us of the connection between sin and illness – or really between sin and the many misfortunes that fall upon us. This connection is found throughout the scripture and the lives of the saints as well – that unrepentant sin results in sickness or even death. The body and the soul are connected and what happens to one affects the other as well.
Today in the Gospel of the healing of the man born blind, the apostles asked Jesus, “who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” Here we have another aspect of the relation of sin to sickness and suffering. Sins may not only affect the sinner, but also his progeny – as the Lord says to the people of Israel in Exodus, “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.” This connection is not just within biological families, but even more within the spiritual family of the Church. We share one essence and what affects one part of the body is felt by all the members of the body. We see this physically in our own bodies and this is an image of how those in the Body of Christ are interconnected as well. The positive side of this interconnection is that not only do we share the suffering of the sins of our brothers, but we also benefit from the intercessions and spiritual strength of our brethren as well. We are instructed to bear one another’s burdens – so that when we see someone suffering (whether physically or spiritually), in compassion, we reach out to them, (whether directly or through our prayers) and lift them up, helping them out of the mire of sin and suffering in which they are trapped.
The Apostles asked the Lord whether this blind man had sinned or his parents, and our Lord replied that it was neither – it was in fact of no importance who had sinned initially. What is important is that here we have before us someone in need and we reach out to him to help him carry his cross – or in this case to bring him healing and relief from his affliction. How often when we see someone else in distress, we try to figure out what they did to end up in such a situation, saying in effect, “who sinned, and how”. But our Lord points out that this is not important, rather when we see someone suffering, we reach out in compassion to offer solace and help – to lift them out of their sins and suffering and to set them again on the path of salvation along with us. Or when we ourselves are suffering, we may try to discern what we did to merit this suffering or perhaps we try to figure out whose fault it really is that I’m suffering (since its not my fault) rather than to simply repent, confess our sins and humble ourselves. Either way it is not defining the fault that is important but rather the Christian qualities of repentance, forgiveness, humility and love for one another.
In his first general epistle, St John (from whose Gospel we read today) puts this all very clearly: “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.” (1Jn 4:7-11). Here is the heart of this interconnection to one another – that is the love of God. God loves us and fills us with his love and in order for us to be united with Him we must also love one another. God did not wait for us to love Him first that He might respond to us with His love, nor did He wait for us to merit His love – He gave it to us even before we repented (while we were yet sinners) that it might be the cause of our repentance. In the same way we are called to act towards one another – to love first without waiting for the other to approach us and to love without condition.
This is hard! This goes against all of our worldly and sinful nature – but this is not how we were created, but it is the result of the distortion of our created nature which is the result of our own sin and turning away from God. We are like that man born blind – we are born imperfect, with a defective nature. Not only are we blind but deaf and mute as well, and our hearts are like stone. All this needs the healing of our Lord Jesus Christ. So again, we return to this man born blind as our model of how to be healed. He comes to Christ who makes clay out of saliva and the dirt on the ground. He anoints that eyes of the man with this mud and then sends him to the pool of Siloam to wash. First we must come to our Lord seeking healing; He is the only source of spiritual healing and restoration. We must be willing to be healed. This requires that we set aside our pride, self-righteousness and self-justification; in other words we must humble ourselves and admit that we are sinners who are in need of healing. This is that first step of following Christ – to deny yourself. And this is not something that we do only once – but continually, recognizing that the weed of pride is so deeply ingrained in us that we must pull it out over and over again, whenever it pops up. Every day, every moment, we have to stand before our Lord and say, “Have mercy on me a sinner.” Only with this kind of persistence can we begin to acquire humility.
Having humbled ourselves and having come to Jesus Christ for healing, we accept all that He gives us – in the case of the blind man, that meant that he accepted mud made of spit and dust that was placed upon his eyes. It is pointed out by many of our spiritual fathers that at this moment our Lord, by whom all things were made, acted again as Creator and created the eyes that were missing in this man – fashioning them as it were out of the dust of the earth. We lack spiritual eyes, spiritual ears and tongues and all these things we need to receive from Christ our God. When we come to him for healing, He creates for us that which is missing and plants it in our souls – however it is up to us to accept it as the blind man accepted the mud that was smeared on his face. Such implantation may not make any sense to us, it may seem to be disrespectful and even shameful – but it is God working in us. Whatever He gives us, we receive with gladness and seek to use to His glory. This acceptance is how we receive the eternal gifts of God.
Having received this gift of God – the eyes that he did not even know he had received yet – the blind man then obeyed the direction of our Lord – to go to a pool and to wash. Going to the pool of Siloam was not an easy task for this man – he couldn’t see where to go, he stumbled and tripped over obstacles, he required help along the way. His face was smeared with mud and so he looked at best like a fool. And then, having arrived at the pool he washed off the mud that had been smeared on his face. Having received from God the gifts that we need to be spiritually restored, we then have to follow His directions in order for those things to become active in us. It is not enough to have the eyes, they have to be uncovered and cleansed so that they can begin to see. And our hearts, which have become stony and hard have to be softened so that they can receive the grace of God which He pours out upon us. In order for all this to happen, we have to follow our Lord Jesus Christ – we have to act according to His instruction. We can’t simply do things our own way – what if the blind man had only gone as far as the next stream or puddle and washed there; he would not have been healed and would still have been blind. We must follow His directions, not our own ideas or our own reasonings. We must go to the pool oof Siloam – that is the pool that arose miraculously from the heart of Mt Zion. (In some interpretations, Jerusalem represents the soul and Zion is the heart or “nous” within Jerusalem.) Therefore we must go to this “pool” that pours forth from the heart of the Church, that is the pool of Grace that is the fountain of Living Water (of which we heard last week). This pool is found in the sacraments of the Church, Baptism, Chrismation, Holy Communion, Confession and so on. Here we find this grace and without it, the gifts of God in us remain undeveloped and inert. And so we are baptized, and sealed with Chrism. We confess our sins and repent and we receive the Holy Mysteries. This is what it means to “wash in the pool of Siloam”. In this way the grace of God fills us and works in us to unite us with our Lord Jesus Christ and with one another in the Body of Christ.
Let us remember that we are all linked to one another, we are all connected and share the same nature in our Lord Jesus Christ. Just as God loves us, so ought we to love one another and thereby participate in that unity. This requires that we humble ourselves, that we repent, that we accept from God that which He bestows upon us and that we follow His directions. The place where we come together with our Lord and with one another is in the Great Mystery of the Body and Blood of Christ – that is Holy Communion. This is the altar where we offer ourselves as a sacrifice in order that we might receive in return our Lord Jesus Christ. Here it is necessary that we are prepared to be united to one another and to Christ (which is why confession and communion are so closely linked) for indeed the Holy Mysteries will make us one.
“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God … If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.”
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