Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In Her ancient wisdom, the Church calls us to enter into the Fast of Great and Holy Lent in a spirit of love and willingness, to be vulnerable so that we may be strong. This spirit to love and a willingness to be weak for the sake of Jesus Christ is utterly indispensable for the salvation of our souls and our spiritual growth. The Fast, as we are all well aware, has a way of challenging such love and willingness. It is a time – God’s time – long recognized by the Church as invaluable to all those who desire Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, who give themselves to its ascetic rigors. It is thus a time of increased spiritual warfare, of doing battle with the powers of darkness and death, outside of ourselves to be sure, but most especially in us in the form of our appetites and desires generally called the passions (Ep. 6:10-18). Great and Holy Lent might indeed be called the annual Olympics of the Church in which all of Her baptized are athletes and contestants competing for the coveted gold medal of the Kingdom of God. St. Paul uses such imagery sprinkled throughout his divinely inspired Epistles (1 Cr. 9:24-27; 2 Tm. 2:5; Jm. 1:12). It is naturally presumed that all the baptized desire this heavenly prize. Otherwise, for what are we baptized? Why, then, do we believe? And so, the Church announces in Her Triodion hymnody of Matins on this day,

The arena of the virtues has been opened. Let all who wish to struggle for the prize now enter, girding themselves for the noble contest of the Fast; for those who strive lawfully are justly crowned. Taking up the armor of the Cross, let us make war against the enemy. Let us have as our invincible rampart the Faith, prayer as our breastplate, and as our helmet almsgiving; and as our sword let us use fasting that cuts away all evil from our heart. If we do this, we shall receive the true crown from Christ the King of all at the Day of Judgment (Sunday of Forgiveness, The Lenten Triodion, Matins Lauds Stichera).

We should take note here, beloved, that we are not sent into the arena of our spiritual combat defenseless nor are we on our own, left to rely solely on our own wiles and strength against an enemy who truly is our superior. But, rather, we have the blood of Jesus Christ shed for us. We have the divine armor of the Cross, that invincible weapon and trophy of peace by which the very powers of Hell have been defeated and its darkness put to flight. We have the true and ancient Faith, preserved within the bulwarks of the Church, which the powers of Hell cannot surmount (Mt. 16:18; 1 Tm. 3:15; Ju. 1:3). And, along with this, we have at our disposal the time-tested spiritual disciplines of prayer, almsgiving, and fasting “that cuts away all evil from our heart.” When it comes right down to it, the battle lines are drawn up, not somewhere out there, but right here in our heart and soul. Here in us is the frontline of engagement. Here in us is to be found the enemy, and here is to be found the Kingdom of Heaven, as our Lord has said (Lk. 17:21), reminding us that “’the violent take [it] by force’” and press into (Mt. 11:12; Lk. 16:16). The violence of the Great Fast.

This intense spiritual season of the Great Fast is designed to reveal just how weak we are so that through our weaknesses we might be made strong in Jesus Christ alone. Lent is the testing ground of our faith so that we can see where we need to grow up and become more mature in Jesus Christ (Ep. 4:11-24). “’Verily I say unto you, unless ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven’” (Mt. 18:3; Lk. 18:16). Are there any weaker than children? And yet, our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ chose weakness, at least by the world’s standards, in order to know and to live by the power of God. “For we also are weak in Him,” St. Paul says, “but we shall live with Him by the power of God . . . .” (2 Cr. 13:4), a weakness, mind you, that St. Paul relished because he knew the spiritual power and strength that only weakness can provide if we are in Jesus Christ. “Therefore most gladly,” he says, “I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. . . . For when I am weak, then I am strong” in the strength of the crucified and risen Jesus Whose strength is perfected in our weakness (2 Cr. 12:7-10). This sounds most nonsensical and contradictory, yet when we are able to see this through the lens of the Cross, it all comes together. By dying, we live. By suffering, we know the resurrection power of our Lord (Pp. 3:7-21). By being crucified, we arise. Through our weaknesses, we experience the saving and sanctifying grace of God. All the saints of every time and every place have borne witness to this true reality in Jesus Christ.

As contestants and competitors in this spiritual arena, then, St. Paul calls us specifically to engage our passions. Why? Because we no longer live for ourselves, he says, but rather “for Him Who died for [us] and rose again” (2 Cr. 5:15). In short, we have been baptized and chrismated and united with God in Christ. Therefore, we now, having the Holy Spirit dwelling in us as in a temple, no longer belong to ourselves, no longer follow our own will, no longer call the shots. The Christian life is not about us, but about Jesus Christ and His Kingdom. We have been called out of the world into the Kingdom of God. Now, instead of glorying in ourselves, we are to “glorify God in [our] body and in [our] spirit,” which are His possessions by virtue of creation by His hand and redemption through His blood (1 Cr. 6:19-20; Ep. 1:1-12; Co. 1:13-23).

And so, St. Paul sounds the trumpet today at the start of the Church’s Olympics, “[P]ut on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts [passions].” If we pay careful attention to the Sacred Scriptures, we would hear very clearly that salvation – God’s saving action – is an ongoing process in our lives, working itself out in us and through us, just like yeast in Prosphora dough (Pp. 1:6; 2:12-13). We are God’s Prosphora – an offering to God – which is what the word Prosphora means. Since we no longer are alive for ourselves, living for our own interests and to satisfy our own desires, we now live for God, for the desires of Jesus Christ, in order to satisfy Him! To do His will. And that means we must wrestle with our fleshly lusts called the passions or appetites and inclinations, to make no provision for them, to deny them access to our heart and soul, to deny them room and board, to give them no quarter in this spiritual warfare. This is why the Church has long endorsed this Great and Holy Lent and its intensified practices of prayer, almsgiving, and fasting, along with increased attendance at Her Divine Services.

Having been baptized in the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, we have indeed put on Christ. But, the Apostle beckons, if not exhorts us, to further action, to deepen the work of baptismal grace already ours. “Get up, lazy bones!,” he cries out. “The night is far spent and the sunrise dawns upon us! Salvation is closer today than yesterday, and you still haven’t done anything! The Master comes and will not delay!” “Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of Light” which is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. And, we are to do this again and again and again in true repentance and amendment of life. In some ways, this is what our Lord was driving at when He once spoke about how an unclean spirit, having been cast out of a man, goes about seeking new lodging, and finding none, returns to its former abode which he finds “’empty, swept, and put in order’” but not occupied. So, what does that unclean spirit do? Jesus says, it finds seven other spirits like itself, but bigger and badder and meaner, “’and they enter and dwell there; and the last state of that man is worse than the first’” (Mt. 12:43-45; Lk. 11:24-26).

Such is the soul that has become spiritually negligent and does not actively seek the One in Whom she was baptized, chrismated, and united to in the Mystery of the regenerating waters of Baptism (Ts. 3:4-8; 1 Pe. 3:21). Having been re-born “’of water and the Spirit’” (Jn. 3:3-8), she has come to believe that to be sufficient in and of itself, and so has neglected to be filled again and again and again with the Holy Spirit and renewed in Him, just as the Church prays ever and again in the Divine Liturgy, just before the Epiclesis, beseeching the Lord three times: “O Lord, Who didst send down Thy most Holy Spirit upon Thine Apostles at the third hour: Take Him not from us, O Good One, but renew Him in us who pray unto Thee” (Anaphora). We have been created to be in perpetual communion with God and that means we must attend to His holy Presence in us “without ceasing” (Lk. 17:21; 1 Th. 5:17), just as Sacred Scripture teaches us. To make no provision, then, for our fleshly passions isn’t simply to deny them power over us but to be filled with the Spirit of God. That’s how we combat our passions that are so ingrained in us. We become empty, “’swept and clean,’” so that we may be filled, always and ever, “[R]enew Him in us who pray unto Thee.” We must replace those vices and passions with virtues. We must “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” and in the virtues of the Holy Spirit, bearing His fruit in our lives: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, [and] self-control” (Ga. 5:16-26; 2 Pe. 1:5-11; 3:18). To choke out the weeds, we overseed with good grass.

It just may be that many of us have the kind of relationship with our passions as expressed by St. Augustine in his Confessions. At one point, Augustine confesses to have lived a rather hedonistic lifestyle. He confides to God,

As a youth, I was quite unhappy, unhappy in the beginning of the period of adolescence. I even begged chastity of Thee, saying, ‘Give me chastity and self-restraint, but not just yet.’ I was afraid that Thou wouldst quickly heed my prayer, that Thou wouldst quickly cure me from the disease of concupiscence, which I preferred to be appeased rather than to be abolished (The Sayings of the Fathers of the Church: The Seven Deadly Sins, “Lust” #16).

Sometimes, like St. Augustine, we want God to save us, but not quite just yet because we would prefer our passions to be appeased rather than abolished. Why that is the case remains a mystery entwined with our human frailties stemming from the Fall. We resist letting go of our passions because we’re comfortable with them. It is this passage from today’s Epistle that actually snapped Augustine out of his spiritual lethargy, believe it or not. It was his wake-up call from God. Let it be ours today, as we enter together this arena of the Fast of Great and Holy Lent knowing full well what awaits us 40 plus days hence.

Through the prayers of our holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.

Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!

PROPERS:

Rm. 13:11-14:4

Mt. 6:14-21