Second Thursday in Great Lent

Kathisma 5 (Psalms 32-36)

“Better is the little which the just man hath than the great riches of sinners… The sinner borroweth and will not repay, but the just man showeth mercy and giveth… All the day long the righteous showeth mercy, and lendeth, and his seed shall be unto blessing.” (Psalm 36)

Almsgiving is the one Lenten discipline that people seem to hate more than any other. Giving up rich foods is one thing. Praying is one thing. Telling people to give away their money? Now you’ve gone from preaching to meddling!

The Holy Scriptures are absolutely full of admonitions about what we do with our money. Even though rich, modern Christians seem to complain that all the Church ever does is talk about money, I don’t remember the last time I heard an homily about almsgiving. Jesus, on the other hand, spoke about money more than any other single topic!

Why are we so sensitive to money talk? I suppose it is probably because we are so attached to our money. It’s where we derive our sense of purpose, our sense of security, our confidence for the future, our daily bread… hmm, wait a minute! Aren’t those things supposed to flow from our trust and faith in God? Alas, that is why Jesus didn’t pull any punches when He showed us how money can become an idol, and that just doesn’t work for our jealous God. ‘You cannot serve both God and money.’ (Matthew 6:24) That’s pretty clear.

Almsgiving as a discipline means we don’t do it when we want to, but until we want to. It hurts at first. It is hard. It gets easier with time, though. Before too long, you actually feel the need. A little while longer and you actually look for opportunities to be generous.

Letting go of money is hard, but the scriptures promise that when we let go of it, we learn to trust God more. We learn to know Him more intimately. We are enabled to follow Him without fear for the future. We become peaceful and content. We learn humility. Almsgiving really does free us from the sins of idolatry, love of money, and unbelief. (Proverbs 15:30)

Let’s face it, this is the question of Great Lent: if almsgiving will bring you closer to Christ and teach you to rely on Him more in faith, then you either prefer to be closer to Christ with less money, or you prefer to keep the money. Pretty harsh, huh? Well, Jesus didn’t say it any more gently.

Second Wednesday in Great Lent

Kathisma 5 (Psalms 32-36)

“I sought the Lord, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my tribulations. Come unto Him and be enlightened, and your face shall not be ashamed… For in Thee is the fountain of Life, in Thy light shall we see light. O continue Thy mercy unto them that know Thee, and Thy righteousness to the upright in heart.” (Psalms 32 and 35)

A lot of people are talking about ‘enlightenment.’ The Psalter tells us how to be enlightened: seek the Lord and come to Him. St. John calls our Lord and God Jesus Christ, the Light of the World who comes into the world to enlighten every man. Come unto Him and be enlightened.

That is what our journey of Great Lent is all about: seeking the Lord. We are seeking His face, we are chasing after Him like a lover, we are crying out to Him with our whole heart. The Psalmist promises that we will not be ashamed. Our ascetic discipline – the fasting, the prayer, the almsgiving, the devotion – we won’t come away from it empty-handed.

Christians sing this verse every single day all around the world in the Lesser Doxology, but most of us know it best from the Great Doxology we sing in Orthros on Sunday: ‘Glory to Thee Who hast shown us the light… For with Thee is the fountain of Life and in Thy Light shall we see Light.’

Two things always draw my attention in the hymn’s ‘light’ theme. First, what does it mean that we see light in His light? Second, how does He show us the light?

To the first I suppose we can say that outside of God’s mercy and grace and Presence among His People, the Church, we are really wandering around aimlessly. I mean, we might know we want to be enlightened, but we don’t even know what the light is until we stand in His light and He shows us.

To the second, the hymn itself gives the answer: Enlighten me by Thy statutes! Jesus is Himself the Light of the World, and He comes to us and gives Himself to and for us, but He also teaches us. He enlightens us when He teaches us. When you read the Sermon on the Mount, the Light of Christ is shining on you! When the Church preaches the Word of Christ, the Light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome Him.

This is what Lent is all about. It isn’t about suffering. No! It is about laying hands on the Light of the World and refusing to let go until He gives us a blessing, teaches us His precepts, enlightens us and gives us His very Self. Don’t let go until He does!

Second Tuesday in Great Lent

Kathisma 4 (Psalms 24-31)

“The sins of my youth and mine ignorances remember not; according to Thy mercy remember Thou me, for the sake of Thy goodness, O Lord. Good and upright is the Lord; therefore He will set a law for them that sin in the way.” (Psalm 24)

Some people stop confessing their sins because they are afraid that they are just too far gone. They are afraid that what they have done can’t be undone and the consequences are just too hard to deal with. They give up.

In my experience working with college students, I’ve found this to be especially true with regard to virginity. Some genies just can’t be put back into the bottle. When someone sins by having sex before they are married, that holy virginity is lost forever. So, what now? What’s the point of picking up all the pieces if you can’t turn back the clock?

Statistically speaking, once a young person has his first premarital sexual encounter, he is much more likely to have more. Maybe people just give up on holiness. ‘In for a penny, in for a pound,’ seems to be the mindset. This is only one example, but face it, you really can’t un-sin any of the sins you commit. That’s why this Psalm has one of the most beautiful assurances about the Lord: ‘He sets a law for them that sin in the way.’

What does that mean? It means that once we confess our sin, we really can start over. No, we might not be able to go back to the way it was before, but because the Lord is gracious and merciful, He shows us the path forward from where we are, not where we ought to be.

Maybe you gave away your holy virginity? Confess the sin and receive forgiveness in Christ our Lord. More than that, receive the path He will set for you where you are now. So you aren’t a virgin anymore? What’s the path of holiness for single non-virgins? Do you really have to ask? You’re clean and forgiven, and the way forward now is chastity until marriage. Again, it is only one example.

The bottom line is: no, you can’t go back, but you can go forward. The Lord doesn’t wash His hands of us when we sin. He forgives us and puts us on the best possible way forward from where we are. You won’t leave Confession aimless, but with a new path of holiness to walk from here on. This is the Christian life of repentance: walk the path, mess it up, confess, be forgiven… walk the path, mess it up, confess, be forgiven… lather, rinse, repeat. Somewhere in this struggle, we grow in faith and love and holiness, if we only stay on the merry-go-round.

Second Monday in Great Lent

Kathisma 4 (Psalms 24-31)

“Because I kept silence, my bones are waxed old through my crying all the day long. For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me, I was reduced to misery whilst the thorn stuck fast in me… I said: I will confess mine iniquities before the Lord against myself.” (Psalm 31)

Confession is hard. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who said they just loved to go to Confession. I’ve never met a person yet who likes to go to the dentist, either. I hate it, but I sure am glad we have dentists. If we didn’t have dentists, our teeth would be rotting out of our heads! That doesn’t make me like going any more, though. I can say the same about Confession. I don’t really enjoy going, but I am very happy that we have this mystery in the Church.

The Psalmist admits that he had some unconfessed sin, and look at what it did to him. It made him miserable. He calls his unconfessed sin ‘a thorn stuck fast in him.’ Unconfessed sin does that to you. It sits there and festers. It poisons you. The longer you leave it there, the worse it gets. The longer you leave it untreated, the harder it gets to treat it. Just like a thorn will fester and become even more tender and swollen and hard to remove, unconfessed sin will make your spirit defensive and hard where the thorn is concerned. You’ll justify it and ignore it and convince yourself it isn’t really a thorn at all. No, it’s something wonderful. Yeah, that’s it. Wonderful. What’s more? The Psalmist knew the whole time what was making him miserable, and he knew what to do about it; he just didn’t want to.

A friend of mine said this about going to Confession: “I always go to Confession nervous and mourning, but I always leave unburdened and singing. If I didn’t know how I’d leave, I’d never go.”

I don’t think I’ll ever forget that last part, because I feel the same way. My friend just gave me words for it. That is the faith part of repentance. It is only because we are confident that we will encounter a gracious and merciful Lord in Confession that we are able to go in the first place. It is only because we know how it ends that we are able to begin.

You know how it will end: with freedom, forgiveness… relief. Don’t live with a festering thorn in you. Don’t let your bones waste away because some unconfessed sin is eating away at your spiritual life and spoiling your Lenten discipline. Just go to Confession! It won’t be fun to go, but you’ll be glad you did.

Sunday of Orthodoxy

“For if mine enemy had reviled me, I might have endured it. And if he that hateth me had spoken boastful words against me, I might have hid myself from him. But thou it was, O man of like soul with me, my guide and my familiar friend, Thou who together with me didst sweeten my repasts; in the house of God I walked with thee in oneness of mind.’” (Psalm 54)

Today we speak the anathemas of the Church against the unbelievers and the heretics. We declare those who deny the intercessions of the saints, those who disallow the veneration of the icons, and countless other heretics to be, well… heretics.

Don’t be surprised if your friends who share these heretical beliefs and practices are offended. After all, today the Church violates that most sacred commandment – not of God, but of every pluralistic society: be nice. That is what most people mean when they say they are ‘ecumenical.’ They are nice. Where they have differences with others, they’d prefer not to address them. ‘Let’s just concentrate on what we have in common,’ is their cry.

Well, that isn’t going to work for us. You see, this stuff is personal. Those who have wandered from the True Faith are not strangers or enemies. If that were the case, maybe it would be easier to ignore it. No, these folks who have separated themselves from the Church are those who once went to the altar with us. They were our brothers and sisters and we once walked in oneness of mind. But no more.

That is why we take this stuff very seriously. That is why we are truly ecumenical. We know that we’ll never truly be reunited by ignoring our differences and pretending we don’t have some serious issues to work through. The only way we can restore unity is by recognizing the disunity that exists. The only way forward is through humility and repentance, but a false ecumenism, a ‘nice’ ecumenism, will never bring that about.

So we speak the anathemas. It isn’t a day to pat ourselves on the back. It is a day to look around with sorrow. After all, if St. Paul asks us, ‘Is Christ divided?’ either way we answer will be painful. Either He is divided, and that would be a cause for pain, or He is not, and that would be a cause for pain, because it would mean that all those outside the Orthodox Christian Church are simply not Christians. Speak the anathemas. Listen to the anathemas. Put faces on the anathemas – faces of friends and family, and with humility and sorrow, pray. Until the Lord Jesus Christ returns and every division ceases, pray for true unity.