“I will send a famine into the land: not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the word of the Lord” (Amos 8.11).
A plague of delusion swept across the Israelite nation during the reign of King Jeroboam in 793 B.C. Psychologists today call it mass psychosis, when a society loses touch with reality. The human heart so easily falls into delusion. We have to be vigilant in our life, guarding ourselves from delusion, and straining our hearts to the Spirit of Truth.
If we could let this message sink into our heart, our problems would vanish. “Crave pure spiritual milk.” If we built our life on nothing else, waking up each morning seeking only this, everything else would fall into place. In his first epistle, St. Peter sums up not only the Gospel, and our Lord’s words today, but the whole purpose of your life in four words: “Crave pure spiritual milk.”
“The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace” (Romans 8:6).
It is not enough that Christ is risen. We too must rise with him. Our Lord’s Ascension paves a road for us: inviting us to lift up our hearts from the drudge and vanity of this world and to become heavenly minded — to learn to see, breathe, and walk in the Holy Spirit.
“I have run to the fragrance of your myrrh, O Christ God, for I have been wounded by your love; do not part from me” (St. Porphyrios).
“As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note” (George MacDonald).
A Christian will always carry in his heart a wound. When you are touched by Christ, you never recover. When you have glimpsed paradise, you forever after long to return to paradise. The wound from encountering God is life’s greatest treasure. It is the door to contemplation.
“Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart” (Jeremiah 15:16).
Prayer should become intimate like the stillness in the conversation of lovers. The quality of relationship Christ asks from us is deep and personal. He wants a companionship: a sharing of who we are and a tuning in to who He is. We make life complicated, but it should not be. We are here to know Him and be known by Him.
Nurture in your heart a joyful nostalgia. Pascha is the season for nostalgia, for love sickness and resolute longing for home. Of course, our home is not here on earth, nor in our past, nor in another country. Home is in paradise with our resurrected Lord.
What weighed on St. Thomas’ heart that morning the disciples told him they had seen Christ?
Moses descended the mountain radiating glory. “The skin of his face shone” (Exodus 34:29). Qā-ran – in Hebrew – no dim glow but the brilliant light of the sun or the flashing lightning of a storm. He had spent forty days face to face with God. As the moon reflects the sun’s light, heaven’s grandeur burned within the prophet. His glory was beautiful and terrible, so the people feared to look up at him. Their eyes were too dull. They could only converse with Truth when it was covered up with a veil. So we spend our lives, wearing veils over our eyes, walking along blind and deluded.
Our gospel today is a gospel about blindness.
“Which of you convicts me of sin?” Jesus asked. The intensity has turned up in Jerusalem. Rumors are everywhere. Haters have spread their malice and the Sanhedrin plots his death. The closer he gets to Golgotha, the more Christ reveals his nature, and the more the world reacts.
“If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is from God hears the words of God.”
“You have a demon!” the people responded.
Christ continues: “I know [God] and I keep his word…Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.”
“Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by” (John 8:46-59).
Everyone had been talking about Jesus. Some said he was a prophet, some a magician, others a fraud. The moment came when Christ revealed himself. “Who are you?” they demanded. “I am that I am.” “I am Yahweh.” “I am the eternal one.” He pulled off the veil. He shown in his glory. A light switch came on in the room and the atmosphere changed instantly. All these people had seemed pious and righteous before. The were good ordinary citizens. No one would have thought they were capable of evil, just as we feel about ourselves. But in the burning light of God, their true colors came out. They gnashed their teeth. They spat. Anger and murder burned in their hearts.
Then Christ vanished.
We think we know a lot nowadays, with all our science and technology. A good scientist is quick to point out how false that is. We hardly know anything. We are about as blind to the universe as a mole in sunshine. In fact, we share a lot in common with the moles — digging about in dirt and shadows. Our hearts are smothered by layer upon layer of veils. Our spiritual eyes are covered up by these veils, and we hardly see reality at all.
“And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not” (John 1:5).
The Gospel is not overly pessimistic when it refers to our world as darkness. The atheists ridicule Christians because they say, if there were a God, He should show himself. But God does show Himself, in everything, everywhere, at every moment. We are too dull sighted to see. Choked up in delusion, blinded by self-interest and egoism, we stumble about in a world of fog.
How would we react if we stood face to face with God?
It is easy to think we would be happy. Skeptics assume they could begin to believe. Sinners feel they will repent. Yet, the prospects do not look good. When God did appear on earth, earth rose up to kill him. The people did not want to look at the light shining from Moses’ face. They did not want to look at the light of Christ either. The human heart prefers to hide from God.
“Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by” (John 8:46-59).
Passion Sunday comes two weeks before Pascha.
We are left to sit a while in darkness. What is a church without icons? It feels empty and void. What is life without heaven? It is barren and forsaken. The veils help us to look at the condition in our hearts. What veils are we wearing? What barriers have we put up in our lives?
How do we stand before God?
In the old times, a widow wore a black veil for a year. The veils helped a widow to walk through her grief and process the imminence of death. This is still continued in Orthodox cultures, where widows often wear black for the rest of their lives, embracing a kind of monastic vocation. Priests veil themselves in black for a similar purpose. The ordination vows call the clergy to a life of looking face on at death. The veil reminds us of the day of judgment, and pricks the conscience of passersby. The day Christ hung on the cross, the sky itself wore a veil of black. All creation mourned. All of heaven shouted out to earth, be quiet now, look at yourself, how are you living?
Today, the church herself dons a veil. We have two more weeks of Lent. We are tired of fasting by now. We are tired of avoiding entertainment and looking at our sins. But we need this time. These remaining weeks are the most urgent part of the fast. We must go deeper now into our heart, deeper into our struggles, deeper in our repentance. Christ is coming. Will we be ready?
We are here to learn to pray. That is all. Just as an acorn needs rich soil to grow and thrive, the condition in which we may flourish is a state of constant prayer. Every breath should be a prayer. Every deed an act of adoration. We see this in the lives of the saints. We read about them reciting psalms through the night, making prostrations for hours at a time, or reciting the Jesus Prayer with every step. Then we look at our lives. We fall so short of it. What did the saints have that I do not? What do we need to pray more like the saints? We despair: “I do not have the time!” We feel the same way Philip did when Christ asked his disciples to feed the multitude.
“When [Jesus Christ] looked up and saw a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, ‘Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little’” (John 6:5-7).
Step back and look at the situation. It is ludicrous. Over 5,000 people had gathered around Jesus Christ. They are in the desert. There are no markets anywhere. By all earthly standards, it is a hopeless situation.
This is the same situation we find in our own life every day. We are busy. Every minute is packed with responsibilities and we are usually behind. You go to bed with the intent to get up and pray. The morning comes and you have slept in past your alarm. You cannot find your razor, your phone is full of texts needing immediate attention, you are late to work, and you tell yourself, you can pray tomorrow. If you are disciplined enough to bite the bullet and stand before an icon, your lips start moving but your head is pummeled by the thought of all the things to do.
You know the rest of the story. The day unfolds in the same manner. Always behind, always overwhelmed, always stuck in the race. If it is not busyness that steals our attention away from God, it is lethargy, indifference, or plain forgetfulness. Work, distractions, television, comfort, the world sucks in your soul like quicksand.
Philip answered for all of us, ‘Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little’” (John 6:5-7).
In other words, “My God, what you ask of me is too much!”
How important is prayer? St. Tikhon of Zadonsk wrote: “As a bird without wings, as a soldier without arms, so is a Christian without prayer.” The fathers say this about prayer. It is: “The greatest possible achievement of human beings on earth”; “The first and foremost duty in your life”; “A return of Adam to the beauty of his former spirituality.” It is a wonder that we do not make the pursuit of unceasing prayer the priority in our life. We Christians worry about where we should live, how we can pay the bills, what jobs we should pursue, which medications we will take. Does it all really matter, in light of the urgency that we learn to pray?
The crowd was hungry. They were exhausted and could not go on without nourishment. Our soul is exhausted, and desperately needs prayer. We are starved in the desert, stuck in the desert, and it all seems too much.
“Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ … Philip answered him, ‘Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little. [Then] one of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, ‘There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish’” (John 6:5-7).
This is the moment. What St. Andrew says here is one of the most important declarations in the Gospels:
“[We do have] five barley loaves and two fish.”
Jesus Christ asked the disciples to leap over a chasm. Andrew responded, “I can’t jump far, but I’ll jump as best as I can.”
“I do not have much to give, but here is what I have.”
“Jesus said, ‘Make the people sit down.’ Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’ So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets” (John 6:10-13).
What do you have that you can offer to God? It may not be much, but it is enough.
We have to start asking ourselves, what little more can I give? Can you get up a little earlier to pray the Jesus Prayer? Can you lock yourself in your closet for 5 minutes to find a little stillness? Can you turn off the TV for ten minutes to read the bible? Can you skip a meal to make prostrations?
We have as much time available to us as any saint did. We must merely choose to claim that time for God.
The crowd swarmed around the disciples with hungry bellies. It was all so overwhelming, an impossible situation. What Christ asked of them was staggering. Yet the story teaches us this, all we have to do is start with what we have. God will do the rest.
The Christian is given a colossal task no less daunting. We are called to become saints. Where do we begin? What do you have to offer? Start there, and trust the rest to God.
Therese of Lisieux is known today as the Little Flower. Icons depict her holding roses with the sweet smile of a young girl. Yet, her witness is anything but saccharine. She suffered terribly in her final days while dying with tuberculosis. What was worse than her aching pain was the internal warfare. “[God] permitted my soul to be swamped by the thickest darkness,” she said, “so that the thought of heaven which had been so sweet to me became nothing but a subject of bitterness and torment.” Some consider her the patron saint of atheists. She was attacked by thoughts of a godless universe, and prophesied that these numbing thoughts would arrive like a plague in the modern world.
How can we pray when God’s silence crushes us? How can we endure feelings of abandonment? There are times when God’s grace bathes our soul and overwhelms with joy. There are other seasons when you cannot feel God at all. The saints often suffered a dark night of the soul, and their example teaches us how to persevere and triumph.
King David often despaired, “I am numb and badly crushed; I groan in anguish of heart” (Psalm 38:8). Job wallowed in existential abandonment: “Should [God] come near me, I see him not; should he pass by, I am not aware of him” (Job 9:11). St. Silouan describes the dark night that can inflict us for years: “The soul feels her fall from light as a spiritual death. God has wounded our heart with love and then departed…an austere struggle which may last for years…many, many years.” One philosopher calls the 21st century, “a flattened human universe where the escapes are boredom and distraction” (J. K. Smith).
Today, we read from the Gospel of St. Matthew, about a woman of Canaan. She was born and raised in an ancient culture, shrouded in darkness, where occultism, slavery, and child sacrifice were the norm. Her daughter is tormented by a demon. Many of us have watched a friend get dragged down by addiction or seen a child battle psychological illnesses. If you have, you can sympathize with the Canaanite women. She is hurting. She is a reject, and is so broken that she cannot even talk to Jesus Christ like a normal human being.
“Ekérazen, legousa, Elehson me.”
Ekérazen comes from the Greek word, krazw, which literally means shouting or bawling like a maniac. It is an onomatopoeic word. Her cry to Jesus Christ sounded like the hoarse cry of a raven or the barking of an animal.
“Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David.”
Where can someone turn is such desperation? Her people cannot help her. The Jews certainly will not help her. The world has nothing to offer. She is hopeless and alone. So she turns to God. Then what?
“But he did not answer her at all.”
God is silent.
She turns to heaven and is rejected. Her prayers hit a wall — nothingness. At this moment, the Canaanite woman represents every man or woman today who feels spiritually starved. She prayed to God. She begged for His mercy. She looks up at the universe. What does she find? The atheist Richard Dawkins sums up her experience and the feeling of many who do not believe: “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
“[She] came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’ But [God] did not answer her at all.”
Now the Canaanite does something that Richard Dawkins will never do. Heaven is silent and she keeps crying out.
“She came and knelt before him.” She got down on the dust and kept praying, ‘Lord, help me.’
She is like the widow who kept banging on the doors of the judge, demanding justice. That women was relentless too, and because of her fervor got her justice. “Will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? (Luke 18:1-8). The Canaanite woman cries out relentlessly. Does she get what she wants?
The moment arrives. Jesus Christ speaks. “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
Can you imagine? Heaven was absent for so long. God was silent. Finally, a crack bursts open in the wall between heaven and earth. God reveals himself. God answers her prayers, and God’s answer is painful.
After all her suffering, after all her vain prayers, she meets God face to face and God calls her a dog. The universe is suspended. The disciples are silent. The angels are silent. The sun and the moon are probably pensive at this moment. Now what?
This is not just about the Canaanite woman. This is about all of us. We too will stand exactly where she stands. When judgment day arrives, all humanity will stand before the judgment seat. Everyone who searched for God, everyone who doubted God, everyone who suffered through life wondering where is God, will meet God.
It is not easy to stand before God. Everything is revealed. We will see Him in all His beauty and perfection, and we will see ourselves in all our blemishes. For one moment of agonizing silence, we will stand before him like this Canaanite woman. How will we respond?
“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Then Christ marvelled! “‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.”
God knows we are broken. God knows we are make a mess of things. He also knows we struggle with hurt and doubts. At times, he even steps back and gives us a taste of life without Him. But he never really abandons us. Even in the darkest moments He is there, waiting with magnificent love. Will we persevere? Will we surrender ourselves to Him?
St. Gregory Palamas praises this woman as a true hero. “Let us learn from this teacher with how much patience, humility and contrition we must persevere in our prayers. Even if we are unworthy, and even if we are sent away because we are soiled with sins, let us learn not to turn back, but to keep humbly asking from our soul.”
“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished” (Matthew 4:1-2).
“Hunger…Most people are terrified of hunger. And so many have substituted [true fasting] for a [mere] change in dietary restrictions. Whereas hunger is the teacher…fasting, hunger, thirst…these teach us to turn to Him” (A priest of the Oriental Church).
Famished. It comes from the Greek word, πεινάω, stemming from an earlier word still, πένης. Penance, poverty, pining, all these share the same root. Our Lord was taken to the wilderness to be broken and emptied. He spent forty days in depravity, in order to become acquainted with the great, universal teacher: Hunger.
A severe drought and a plague of locusts covered the Land of Israel. It was so austere, there was little to nothing to eat. Prophet Joel described the situation in impassioned words:
“Hear this, you elders; listen, all who live in the land. Has anything like this ever happened in your days or in the days of your ancestors…What the locust swarm has left the great locusts have eaten; what the great locusts have left the young locusts have eaten; what the young locusts have left other locusts have eaten.”
This is a semitic way of saying: “When it rains, it pours.”
Droughts and famines are well known in the world’s history. The Dust Bowl swept across the American land. The bubonic plague ravaged Medieval Europe. The whole world was wiped away long before that by a colossal flood, sparing only a few men on an arc. The drought in Prophet Joel’s time was not unique to Israel. Yet his words cast a special light on the meaning of famines.
He continues, “Wake up, you drunkards, and weep!” “Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth.” “Despair, you farmers, wail, you vine growers.”
The prophets got away with saying things like this. Can you imagine if a priest preached this way? You better believe he would get an earful afterwards, if he still had a job. Of course, nobody liked these guys in their lifetimes. Nowadays, we have to put up with angry reviews on youtube. Back then, when they were not preaching, they were usually hiding in caves, avoiding mobs with pitchforks and torches.
“Wake up!” St. Joel shouted. “Declare a holy fast…and cry out to the Lord” (Joel 1:5-14).
Who is responsible for famines and plagues? Who instigated the great flood? Who covered Egypt with lice and flies? Who lead Israel into the drought? Somebody is responsible for it all, and the answer is not easy. It was the same person who lead Jesus Christ into the desert.
“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil” (Matthew 4:1-2).
God welcomed the plagues. God ushered Jesus into temptation. God walks us as well into all our trials.
What kind of God is this? He is a God that loves us. He knows us. He knows our flaws, and he knows we will only truly flourish when we have been purged.
“I will put [my people] into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’ and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God’” (Zechariah 13:9).
In the end, the elect in paradise will say to God: “You, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. You brought us into the net; you laid a crushing burden on our backs; you let men ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a place of abundance” (Psalm 66:10-12).
Christ was led out into the wilderness to be tempted.
“He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread”’ (Matthew 4:2-3).
Jesus Christ could have turned the stones into bread. He could have made bread enough to end all poverty and hunger on earth. He did not. He taught us that something is more important than food. Indeed, he taught us to value a lack of food, to embrace hunger.
“Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, “He will command his angels concerning you’” (Matthew 4:5-7).
The devil tempted him with pride. “You don’t need to fast.” “Feel good about yourself.” “Pamper yourself.” It is easy to fall for this one. “Why push forward? Why strain yourself anymore? Why keep the fast? It doesn’t make any difference in your life. You are already better than your friends and neighbors. You deserve a break.” Jesus Christ ignored the empty flattery. He just kept on.
“Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour… ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me’” (Matthew 4:8-10).
He could have had it all. He could have had fame, power, and prosperity. Instead, he chose hunger.
“Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him” (Matthew 4:11).
Διηκόνουν αὐτῷ. The angels served him. They feasting him on a banquet. Our Lord walked down the path of hunger. He pierced the depths of hunger, and, on the other side, found the feast of paradise.
Matthew the poor, the renowned ascetic, preaches thus:
“To reach maturity under God’s hand, man has to undergo countless stages of purifying and discipline. God puts to death to bring back to life; he breaks to bind up, wounds to heal, smites to embrace, and banishes to restore to his bosom…He who enters into a covenant of prayer…has first to consign himself to ‘Chastisement Kindergarten,’ then to ‘Suffering Primary School,’ then to the ‘Higher Institute of Affliction’…it is impossible to share his glory without first sharing with him in his sufferings…Persist….he will be given you…He will reveal to you higher mysteries and other things which I cannot express in ink and paper…Celestial joy will then be your portion day and night.”
