19th Sunday after Pentecost

Good morning to all of you. We have a little bit different routine, and for elderly people like me, changes in routines are difficult. I say that with jest, but it's true too, actually. So the difference is they're having Church school immediately after receiving Communion, and we'll think this through a little bit. It'll be better next time. But here we are on this beautiful day. I don't see much sun, but it's definitely beautiful because God created it for our enlightenment and for our nourishment. And today we celebrate—it's very fascinating because Matushka and I went to Russia in ninety-three, which is just a very short time after the coup and so on. It was about eighteen months actually. And we went because we went in the spring. And we went to Optina and they were in process of reconstructing things. But they had a very serious monastic community there, and there was a main church, and then up an incline—I mean, it's sort of like a hill, not a steep hill—they'd probably about a quarter of a mile walk. You came to where the hermitages were for the Optina Elders.

And I, being a person who typically gets up early—so we were there on Saturday and we were guests for Saturday night and the Vigil in the great, in the big church. And Saturday morning I decided to get up, and it was a little before six o'clock, and I walked up the path that led to the hermitages where the elders had dwelt. And there was a church service going on in this smallish church, probably a church about this size, actually. Not as tall, but this size. And I was amazed. They were chanting a combination of Znamenny and Byzantine chant, which sounded, you know, very, very beautiful. And of course the Kievan chant sounds beautiful, but it's all very beautiful. So we had this wonderful time, and we were greeted by various fathers of the monastery. And so we're talking—we were there in the end of June, and at Pascha, I think it was three of the fathers were murdered during the Pascha Vigil when they were out ringing the bells for Pascha. Some obviously terribly terrible people came and killed the bell ringers. So it was an amazingly emotional time and a wonderful time.

And when I was a very young priest, I had the blessing to meet Archbishop Andrei of Novo-Diveevo, and the Elder Ambrose reposed under his epitrachelion. He actually was—he wasn't a monastic, but he was with them. And the Elder Ambrose—when he wrote The Brothers Karamazov, we have the Elder Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov, which is a, you know, a very famous book, and I don't know how many people have come to Orthodoxy through The Brothers Karamazov, but it's a lot. I mean, it's got to be in the thousands, in many thousands. And so anyway, he had the Elder Zosima in this book, and he modeled him after the Elder Ambrose. And I think anybody who knows a little bit about Fyodor Dostoevsky, who was an amazing author, but he had a very tumultuous life—but at the end of his life, he really came to profound piety and dedication to our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. And it was in reality the result of his visit to see the Elder Ambrose. So he went to see him, and he came away filled with the spirit of repentance. He was profoundly aware of his own circumstances, his own sinfulness and waywardness on the one hand, and on the other hand, he had a tremendous peace that had been gifted to him through this visit. And from that point on, Fyodor Dostoevsky, you know, lived a life of great piety. He was always a deep and profound believer, trust me. And his faith comes through his writings, but nevertheless personally he really had a lot of struggles. And so he came to repentance and to peace visiting the Elder Ambrose.

So anyway, moving on, the Gospel actually—we had a mistake today from one of the Gospels. For the holy elders, it is from the Gospel of St. Luke. "And He came to a level place with a crowd of His disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem, and those who were tormented with unclean spirits, and they were healed. And the whole multitude sought to touch Him, for power went out from Him." And so this is the introduction to the Beatitudes as they are recorded in the Gospel of St. Luke. And here we have this level place with a multitude of people with all kinds of problems as a result of sin and waywardness and sometimes just plain—their fate in life. And He cast out the unclean spirits, which is very, very important. And He healed their diseases and their infirmities. And so then He lifted up His eyes toward His disciples and He said, "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you, and revile you, and cast out your name as evil for the Son of Man's sake. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for indeed your reward is great in heaven, for in like manner their fathers did to the prophets."

"But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full, for you shall hunger. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets."

So this is—we've heard this and it's read many times during the liturgical cycle for the saints and elders. So, "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." So what does this mean, "you poor"? And obviously we could look at this through carnal eyes and say, "Well, you know, people don't have any money," and, you know, they're—but it could—being poor could in fact actually create circumstances where a person turned to God. There's no question about that. However, those who are humble in such a way that while in their life they have sustenance on the one hand, but in their heart and soul they're yearning not for the food of this world, but for the food that we receive through the Word of God. And one of the things that I repeat over and over again is that when we read the Word of God, first of course we encounter descriptions of events and we encounter words of instruction. And what we're reading right here, these incredible words—but in reality we can approach the reading of Holy Scripture in faith, in profound and deep faith. And if we do that, we will receive not just simply the words, but through the words, the light of Christ will shine into our hearts and our minds and change us. The light of Christ will change us and purify us and root out, as it were, with love and compassion and gentleness, all of our passions.

So when we hear, "Blessed are you poor," maybe it's "Blessed are you who are humble and meek and simple of heart." And yours is the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God is—while in the ultimate end we all would hope that we will enter the kingdom of God on high in salvation—the reality is the kingdom of God is among us. It's in the Holy Church. It's potentially in all of us. And what really—actually, if you go into the Greek on this—the kingdom is really the kingly power of God. And what the kingly power does, it's almost like the light of the sun. The light of the sun shines down and it brings forth life, material life. And so the light of Christ shines into our hearts, hopefully that we are in the state of spiritual poverty, that is, lacking pride, and then the light of Christ will shine into our hearts and give us peace and maturity and a profound sense of God's love for us.

It says, "Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled." And, well, obviously, once again we have the material concept of hunger, which is a reality. Do we hunger and thirst for our Lord and God and Savior? Does our heart yearn to receive Him and to, as it were, participate in His life? In one of, of course, the greatest miracles of the world, Jesus Christ gave us His Body and Blood in the form of bread and wine, which when it's consecrated in the context of the Church, is truly the Body and Blood of Christ. And so if we hunger spiritually, and in a sense when we come to Divine Liturgy, we should hunger. We should look into ourselves and desire to commune, as it were, with our mind, with the mind of Christ. But through our body we can commune, as it were, with the Body and Blood of Christ. So what is fulfilled by the light of Christ and made known to us on the one hand is truly completed through participating in His Body and Blood. So, "Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled." So we must yearn for and thirst for righteousness, but a righteousness which is not founded in our own conception but grafted into us by the light of Christ and His divine and holy uncreated energies that seek us out. The energies of Christ are seeking a place where they can shine, and not shine only in us, but through us to others.

"And blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you, and revile you, and cast out your name as evil for the Son of Man's sake." And this is amazing when you hear this. We can apply this to our current circumstances. We believe, you know, in the sanctity of life. And we believe in the sanctity of marriage. We believe in all of the institutions that have been established by the Holy Spirit. And so we, as we believe, we hunger. We hunger. And we desire fulfillment. And He says, "Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh." And in a secular sense it's a very common thing. But actually the root of this word relates to divine joy. And there are times—the divine joy of celebrating the divine mysteries as a priest and so on—it's so intense that you want to laugh. I mean, you can just feel it come out of you. You know, it's not a laughter of the flesh, and of this—of the presence of the divine joy.

He says, "Blessed are you when men hate you and they exclude you"—I skipped one here—"and revile you and cast you out for My name's sake." And so back to—obviously I had a pause here in my aging mind—but so here we are, we're confronted with all kinds of practices that are emerging in society that are complete disregard for divine order. I mean, it's a very, very serious thing. And here He says, "And when they exclude you," it's like when they cancel you if you disagree with the movements, the sinful movements that are happening in our society. And what do they do if we say anything about something? We see it all the time. They exclude us, and they revile us, and they cast us out as evil. And this is going—the cast out and canceled and reviled. And so we have to receive this for the Son of Man's sake. Namely that if we find ourselves in this kind of circumstance, which we do feel it—we feel it all the time, I think now it's present everywhere—we need to make the sign of the cross and stand up and worship our Lord continuously and try to achieve continuous prayer. And if not continuous prayer, then we can go a step further and have unceasing prayer, which is a remarkable gift that we could possibly actually find ourselves deep down inside continuously praying.

And He says, "Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for indeed your reward is great in heaven, for in like manner their fathers did to the prophets." And He says, "Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full, for you shall hunger. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep. Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets." And I think what He's saying—"Woe to you who are rich"—is people who are rich and in a sense worship their own position and their own wealth, that somehow they think that satisfaction for them, for their lifetime, is to be wealthy and to have the material security that wealth implies. And so the Savior says, "You have received your consolation," a material consolation which will not be sustained in our Savior and in the process of salvation. And those who are full, who just feel always full, you know, happy, and completely protecting themselves and who they are—in the end they will hunger. And, "Woe to you who laugh now, for when you encounter judgment and the light of God, you will mourn and weep. And woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets."

"But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who spitefully use you. To him who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who asks of you, and from him who takes away your goods, do not ask them back. And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise."