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PRODIGAL SON
In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
How simple and how restrained are the words in which the Gospel describes his cruel rejection of his father, and prepares his departure into the far, the strange country! “Father - give me my part of thy inheritance!” Do these words not mean: “Father - I can't wait until your death! You are still strong, and I am young; it is now that I want to reap the fruits of thy life, of thy labors; later they will be stale. Let us come to an agreement: for me you are dead; give me what belongs to me or what would belong to me after your actual death, and I will go, and I will live the life I have chosen”.
This is what really the young man meant; but isn't it very much the way we treat God and His gifts. From Him, as long as we are with Him, we are in possession of all things, but we feel constrained by His presence, we feel limited by the inevitable rules of His household: He expects from us integrity and truth? He expects from us to learn from Him what it means to love with all one's mind, all one's heart, all one's strength, all one's being, - and that is too much for us. And we take all His gifts, and we turn away from Him to use these gifts so that they can profit us, and us alone, without any returns either to God, or to anyone else.
We all, without any exception but in different degrees obey the cruel, deceitful question of Satan to Christ in the wilderness! You have the power to do it - make these stones to become bread; You are God's child - use what God has given you of wisdom, of strength, use it for you own benefit! Why waste your time until you are too old? Isn't it an image of our own behavior?
And then, the young man leaves; he leaves for an alien country, a country which is not God's own, a country which has rejected God, renounced God, which has been betrayed into the power of His adversary, a country where there is no place for Him. And he lives according to the rules of this country and to the desires of his heart. And then, hunger comes.
Now, we turn away, carrying with us the gifts of God; and we live in a country which is also alien; we live in a world which is man-made, but not God-made; or rather: made by God, and distorted by man. What kind of hunger comes to us? We are rich, we are safe, we have everything which God gave us, and continues to give - only we don't realize that God continues to give while we squander. But what is the hunger that can come to us? The awareness which Christ describes in the first Beatitude: Blessed are the poor in spirit, theirs’s is the Kingdom of God... Who are the poor of spirit? The poor of spirit are those who have understood, and understand day in, day out, all their life through that they have no existence except that God loved us into existence; we have no life except God's life poured into us, His breath, the breath of life. And then we are so rich, because God has revealed Himself to us: He has revealed Who He is; we can love Him, know Him, worship Him, serve Him, emulate Him indeed because He has become man and has shown us what a man can be. And He has given us all that our intelligence, a heart, a will, a body, the world around us, the people around us, the relationships that are ours - all these are God's, because we cannot make them, we can force no one to love us, and yet, we have friends and people who love us. We cannot be sure of our mind: in one moment a stroke can extinguish the greatest mind; there are moments when we want to respond to a need, to a suffering - and our heart is of stone; only God can give it life! We waver between good and evil - only God can steady our will; and so forth.
If we only realize this, then we understand that we are totally destitute: we are nothing, we have nothing, and yet, so rich we are; because destitute, we are endowed with all the gifts of God; having betrayed Him time and again, turned away from Him time and again, we still are loved of Him: indeed - “blessed are the hungry: they shall be filled”! If we only realise our hunger for the real things, then it will come our way. But not simply because we are hungry; they will come our way at a moment when totally poor, we are loved: and this is the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom of love: God loves us. And He has granted the gift of love to each of us. The young man felt hungry. He felt hungry for his father's home, and yet he knew that he had no right anymore to call himself a son to him: he was a murderer! He had told him: Die before your time that I may live according to my will... And yet he goes, because he still can call the man whom he rejected 'Father’.
And what happens then? The father sees him coming from afar off; he does not wait in dignity for him to fall at his feet and confess his sins. He rushes towards him, he embraces him! And the young man makes his confession: I am no longer worthy to be called thy son - but at that moment the father stops him: you may not be worthy of being my son, and yet, you are my son, and you cannot become a hireling in you father's house... He claims from his, as God claims from us that we should be aware, and grow to the level of our human greatness: the children of the Living God called to be partakers of the divine nature, His sons and daughters in Christ and in the Spirit.
That is what this parable tells us; that is what we must reflect on: where do we stand to this first simple, cruel, murderous words of the young man? And are we aware of our dereliction? Are we hungry enough to realize that we must go home to the Only One who loves us, and Who, seeing us fallen, still claims from us the greatness of sonship...
Let us reflect on this. It's one more step towards the day when in repentance we will come to make our confession, receive forgiveness. And if we were honest in our repentance, determined in our turning God-wards, we will be at home and ready to enter into Holy week together with Christ the Son, together with the Father Who gives His Son, together with the Mother of God Who accepts the death upon the cross of Her Son, that we may be saved. Amen
Commemoration of the New Martyrs of Russia
In the Name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
We remember today the martyrs of the Russian Church who gave their lives - and I say gave their lives, because it was not taken only, but offered - in the last century. We remember them with love and with deep feeling. But it is not enough to remember; we must learn from them.
To be a martyr means to be a witness. They have witnessed to their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and their faithfulness to what God in Christ has taught them. Their life has been a testimony and a glory to God. One may say that the first martyr, the first witness to Love absolute and life perfect is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the Son of God Who became man in order to save us, Who chose to die that we might live, and after Him, millions of men, of women, of children followed in His footsteps.
I remember now the first martyrs of Russia, Boris and Gleb, who were in danger of death from their brother, and who said to one another and those who surrounded them, ‘If blood is to be shed, let it be ours.’ And they allowed the murderers to put an end to their holy life on earth. These were the first witnesses, the first martyrs of Russia. They gave their lives rather than defend them at the cost of anyone else’s. But it is not always without a struggle that heroic deeds are performed.
I remember that I was told about a Russian priest who, at the beginning of the Revolution, terrorized by the death of thousands of believers around him, renounced his faith. And then he was dragged before his parish to testify before his spiritual children that he had lied to them all his life: that there was no God, there was no salvation in Christ; and to prove it he was to tread under his feet a crucifix. And when he was brought forth and saw the crucifix, he burst into tears, fell on his knees, kissed the cross - and died a martyr. So it is not always an easy path of holiness.
There are thousands and thousands of men, of women, of children, who have been witnesses of that kind - not always murdered; many simply died.
I remember a story told me by a witness, an eyewitness, of a small child of eleven years of age, who said to his parents, ‘God wants me to leave you and to go into the woods to pray for the salvation of Russia.’ He left his family and he disappeared for a while. And one day he was met in the wood by a peasant. The boy was in rags and barefoot in the snow, and this little boy of eleven said to this man, ‘Could you find a pair of shoes for me, because it is so painful to stand in the snow all winter.’
When the peasant came back, the child was dead, lying in the snow. He had given his life for the salvation of the land and of the Church.
All these are examples, great - too great, perhaps - for us. All of us who are called to be faithful, if we can say honestly that we believe in Christ, that we believe that Christ is God’s own Son Who became the Son of man to die with us and for us, because of our unworthiness and our sinfulness, then can’t we respond by being faithful to Him in what He commands us: to love one another, to be faithful to each other, to be faithful to the way of life He has offered up to us at the cost of His own death?
We will now celebrate a moleben to sing the glory of those who proved faithful to the end. And we will pray that by their prayers, faithfulness may grow in us and determination will become greater in us to be worthy not only of Christ Who gave His life for us, but our brothers, our sisters, our children, who believed in Christ in such a way as to give everything, including their lives and at times not in one moment of martyrdom but in years and years of torment, in camps and in prisons - and with an open heart.
I remember a man who had been thirty-six years in prison and in concentration camp: a priest. And he was sitting in front of me, and he was telling me with eyes shining with gratitude, ‘Can you not see how incredibly good God has been to me? At the time of persecution, He chose me, an unworthy, inexperienced, young priest, and He sent me first to prison for five years, to a prison where no priest was allowed to minister, but where I being one of the prisoners could minister to all my companions. And then for the rest of my captivity to a concentration camp where I continued my ministry. How infinitely good and merciful He proved to be.’
Can we not learn something from these simple examples? May God give us courage to be faithful, as much as we can, as perfectly as we can.
And may the blessing of the Lord be upon you, by His grace and love towards mankind, always, now and forever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
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