One characteristic of our Byzantine Spirituality is that of light.  Light is all around us.  We have candles on the altar, candles that illumine the faces on the icons in the Church.  We light candles for those who have died and for the living.  Light is all around us.  I told you on Easter night, that the light that we hold in our hands, that was lit from the light that never goes out, is the light that we have to take into the darkened world, the light of the Resurrection of Christ, and that we have to let that light shine, especially in the world around us today that tries very hard to darken that light.

There is a direct link between the light of the Resurrection of Christ and the light that shines into our consciousness.  But this light is of little value to our souls if it does not translate itself in an increase of that inner light which must direct and transform our lives.  If we are not first transformed by the light of the Resurrection then we have little or no hope of trying to transform the world with that same light.

We hear, in today’s Gospel passage from St. John, of the healing of the man born blind.  The important part of the passage to keep in mind is that the man was born blind, he did not become blind at some point in time in his life, he was born this way.  In the hymns of the Vespers service last night we hear the Man Born Blind saying this: “I am not content to continue asking whether it is night or day. My feet can no longer endure tripping on the stones. I have seen nothing: neither the sun shining, nor the image of my Maker.”  He has never seen anything!

But he meets Jesus, and with some spittle and dust from the earth, Jesus tells the man to go and wash in the pool in Siloam.  After he does this he receives his sight.  But, as we read, he becomes an object of hostile curiosity and insidious questions from the Pharisees.  At this point the Pharisees are trying to find a way to catch Jesus, and they are using whatever means they can to do just that.  Eventually the man is expelled from the Temple by the Pharisees and is found by Jesus.  Jesus reveals to the man that He is indeed the Christ, the Son of the living God, and Scripture tells us that the man believed and worshipped.

But there is an interesting part of the story here that deserves some attention from us today.  Notice that after the man was expelled from the temple he did not go in search of Jesus.  Jesus found him, Jesus sought him out and when he was found he preached the good news to him.  Jesus was not sitting somewhere waiting for the man to come to Him, no, Jesus brought the light, the light of the truth and the light of the Gospel to the man.  This is what we have to do, and we do that by letting the light of the Resurrection shine from within each of us.

But, as always, there is more to the story.  We see the man, blind from birth, but is this story just about the physical blindness of the man?  No, I do not think so, what the story is about is spiritual blindness.  Sure Jesus healed the man of his physical blindness, but most importantly, and this came after he had been thrown out of the Temple, Jesus healed the man of his spiritual blindness.  However, we cannot separate the two events, the man not only had to be willing to be healed of his physical blindness but also had to be willing to be healed of his spiritual blindness the two are not always the same.

It has become fashionable in 21^st century American religious life, for the church to be about entertainment, good music that makes you want to clap your hands, and for sermons to be preached that make us feel good, touchy feely as I like to call them.  I do not recall any point in Scripture where Jesus tells everyone that what they are doing is okay.  I do not recall any sermons by Jesus, or in the hundreds of thousands of sermons from Church fathers, where we are told that everything is fine and we are great people and what we are doing is okay.  It is my belief that this type of preaching and these types of sermons only aid in our spiritual blindness.  In order for us to seek out any sort of healing we need to first come to the understanding that we are sick.  The role of the Church is not to  make you feel good about yourself, the role of the Church is to assist you to come to realization that you are sick, in a spiritual sense, and that you need healing.  It is the role of the Church, just as Jesus did today with them an born blind, to give you the tools that will enable you to be whole and well.  We cannot transform the lives of others if we ourselves are not first transformed!

The hymns of the Matins service speak of this truth:

“I come to You, O Christ, the eyes of my soul blind as the eyes of the man born blind, and in repentance, I cry to You, You are the light of supreme brightness for all those who are in darkness.”

The staying power of Orthodoxy is that we strip away the “I’m okay You’re okay” spirituality of the 21^st century American Religious experience, we get our hands dirty with spittle and the dust of the earth, and we bring the healing and transforming power of Jesus Christ to people, not through drums and hand clapping, but through the ancient rites and rituals of the Church of Jesus Christ.  We bring the truth of the Gospel message, not some poll tested popular Gospel, but the actual hard nose, we are all sinners and need the help of Jesus, His Church, and one another, for salvation.  We preach the Gospel, revealed to the Church, that we are not saved, but we are in the process of being saved and that it is a daily struggle that we must, absolutely must, work on each and every day.  We are not okay, in fact we are far from it!

We stand here today bathed in the light of candles, bathed in the light of the son and we must take this light inside of us and let it transform us in ways that we have never experienced before.  We have to let Jesus use His spittle and the dust from the earth to heal us and transform us.  One does not seek out medical help if one is well, no, one seeks out medical help when one is sick.  We do not go to the doctor so the doctor can tell us that we are okay and that our lives are fine just the way they are, no we go to the doctor when we need their expert healing to make us well.  The Church is just the same.  We do not come here just so we can feel good about ourselves what would the point of that be?  Jesus did not condescend to become human just so we could feel good about ourselves.  Jesus, the God Man, become man so that we might become god!  And the only way we can do that is to allow the healing power and the healing presence of Jesus Christ transform our lives.

Let the light of the Resurrection into our lives and into our hearts and let is transform us.  If we are able to do that, if we allow that to happen, that light that will then come from each of us will set the world on fire!

All during the period after Easter we read from the Book of Acts.  The book of Acts tells the story of the formation of the early church and the ministry of St. Paul.  We see a shift starting from the ministry of the original Apostles to that of others.  The Book of Acts also records for us the election of bishops, in the replacement of Judas, and the first council of the Church to determine the answer to a question.  And today we see the church in action.

We heard this morning about how the message of the Gospel had spread pretty far.  Up to this point the Apostles had only been preaching to the Jews but the message has managed to reach people all on its own.  Sometimes we do not have to preach the Good News it just sort of makes it way around.

When word reached the Church in Jerusalem that someone was preaching the Word, they sent out a representative, Barnabas, to see what was going on.  You see, even in the early days of the church, it was important to make sure that those who were preaching in the name of Jesus were in fact preaching the right message.  Barnabas was overjoyed with what he saw and heard and went to get Paul and brought Paul back to Antioch to preach and teach.  Scripture tells us he remained there for a year teaching and making sure the Church has a proper foundation.

Antioch is the place where the followers of Jesus Christ were first called Christians.

So in this verse we see some of the first missionary activity of the Church, but we also see some of the first Philanthropy in the Church in the sending of aid to the Church where famine has broken out.

I have said this before, but we are commanded to love our neighbor.  We heard on the Sunday of the Last Judgment, Jesus telling His followers by what measure they would be judge.  He goes on to talk about those who are hungry, naked, and sick and in prison and whether or not we helped them.  You see, aid to those in need is not optional for Christians.

The Church we read about today from the Book of Acts was in need.  The people were suffering from a famine and the Church decided to send aid.  But the way they sent the aid is what is important for us to hear.  “Every one according to his ability.”  Everyone is to help according to their ability.  Now what does that mean?

Some of us have been blessed by God with money.  Those of us who have been so blessed should give to their ability as determined by them in consultation with their Spiritual Father.  Some of us have been graced by God with strong backs, strong hands, and the ability to perform physical labor.  We are to give to those in need according to our ability.  And some of us have been graced by God with the ability to pray for those in need.  You see it is not just about money, or physical labor or even prayer, it is about doing what we can with the gifts that God has given us.

The interesting point of all of this today is that the same Church that the writer of the Book of Acts wrote about and their need, is the same Church that on this very day, is in need.

I don’t think I need to tell you that for the last few years of the so called “Arab Spring” Christians in the Middle East have been under persecution and dare I say extinction.  There is a concerted effort by radical Islam to cleans the Middle East of all traces of Christianity.  This harkens back to the time of the Nazi persecution of the Jews prior to and during the time of World War II.

If I understand my history correctly, and I believe I do, the war in Europe was because one man was trying to exterminate a race of people and replace that with the master race.  Now I know that the reasons for a war are never that simple, but the United States, and other Nations, have sent the military all around the world to save people in all sorts of situations, but in this case we are funding those who are actually doing the killing.  Under the guise of bringing democracy to an oppressed people, we are sending aid to the very people who have perpetrated this holocaust on the Christian population in the Middle East.

The Church in the Middle East is desperately in need of our aid!

But what can we do?  How can we help?

First and foremost we can pray.  If you are not praying for the Christians in the Middle East now, start to pray for them.  Prayer is the simplest thing that we can do.  We can ask God to intercede in this, and every situation to bring comfort to those people if that is His will.  We can support the IOCC with funds.  IOCC is on the ground in the Middle East bringing what comfort it can and works as an advocate at the highest levels of government.  You can write, call, send emails, if you are active in the Social Media you can post stories to raise awareness of the situation and call people to action.  And you can educate yourself on what is going on.  It is time for us to remove our heads from the sand and realize that is happening in the world.  Christ demands us to love our neighbor and that is not just the person living next door to you!

The entire message of the Gospel is one of action and it is clear today that we are being called to action.  We can no longer afford to just sit by and watch this happen, we have the power, the power of God, to defeat the enemy and we must join our voices to the thousands of others.  By ourselves we are small, but together we are Great!

Christ is Risen!

I recently took up horseback riding.  That’s right, your truly gets on a horse and rises around.  I know that right now you are picturing a John Wayne type sitting high upon his majestic beast and riding off into the sunset. Well, you can get that image right out of your head.  I am more like one of the three stooges, hanging on for life, as the horse does what it wants.  But, like anything else, you need perseverance to make it all work.

I have not been riding long, in fact I have only ridden once, but it was an experience I will not soon forget.  I serve as Chaplain for the National Lancers.  The Lancers are the oldest military unit still in existence in Massachusetts and they are the mounted honor guard of the Governor.  Their role now is ceremonial but the work is still hard and demanding.

So there I was, in the stable a few weeks ago.  Standing beside a very large horse, not the largest of horses mind you but a large horse none the less.  I put the blanket on, then the saddle, adjusted the stirrups and walked the horse out to the field where we would ride.  The name of the horse was Taps and I was not sure if that was a good thing or not.  Since I am bound to the earth by the force of gravity I could not mount the horse in the usual way, I needed to use the steps that are set aside for rookies.  Keep in mind that this entire experience brought much joy to my fellow riders.  But I got on the noble beast and prepared to ride.

That is when it happened, I was paralyzed with fear!

I have done many things in my life and I have been placed in some pretty harrowing situations but I have never been so scared in my life.  Here I was, sitting on a horse, wondering what in the name of all that is Holy ever possessed me to get on this animal.  Perhaps possession is the right word, but I was literally paralyzed.  I could not move, the horse was willing, but the flesh was weak.  All I wanted to do was to get off of this thing and back on the ground, standing up of course, but that was not going to happen.  Everyone was telling me it was going to be okay and to just relax.

This may come as a surprise to many of you but I like to be in control.  Being in control of a situation is important to me and is part of my personality, I have learned to let go of a lot of things in my life and continue to work on this daily, so to be so out of control was way over the limit for me and it was not comfortable.  Well relaxation did not come until I was on my way home, but I did settle in and it turned out to be a rather joyous ride.  I do plan on doing this again by the way.

Today we heard the story of another man who was paralyzed, although I doubt it was because he was riding on a horse.  We do not really know why he is in this condition but we do know it has been a long time that he has been afflicted.  Scripture tells us he had been waiting 38 years to be healed, waiting by the pool for just the right moment, but that moment never came.  He would just sit there, day in and day out, and wait.  Wait for someone to carry him into the water so he might be healed.

This water, that he was waiting to enter, would be moved by an angel and the first person to enter the water after this happened would be healed.  He sat and watched person after person, enter the water and come out healed from whatever it was that ailed them.  But it was to never happen to him.

Jesus comes and sees the man sitting there.  He walks over to him and asks him if he wished to be made whole.  The man replies to Jesus that he has no man to put him in the pool and that another come before he has a chance to get in.  In other words he does not answer the question that Jesus had asked him.  Nevertheless, Jesus tells him that he is healed and to take his bed and go.

St. John Chrysostom tells us that Jesus singled out this man, who had suffered for 38 years, to teach us about perseverance.  Imagine having the patience to wait 38 years for something.  To lie within reach of it, but not being able to grasp it.  In our world today we want everything right away.  We want fast food, we want instant savings, we go through the express line, and we get agitated if we have to wait in traffic.  We are not a citizenry that likes to wait.  Our attention span only last about 10 minutes, imagine waiting 38 years.

But this is what our spiritual life is all about.  We are called to persevere each and every day on the spiritual walk.  There will be good days and there will be bad days but we must keep on going.  Regardless of what is going on in the world we have to keep on track with our spiritual life.  We need to spend time in prayer and reading each and every day not just on Sunday.

The other part of the story that needs to be pointed out is what happens at the end.  Where did the man go after this miracle had been given to him, did he run and tell his family?  Did he go out to eat and celebrate this victory over sin?  Did he head to the local bar and hoist one?  No, Scripture tells us that Jesus found the man in the Temple, after his healing he went to Church and there he thanked God for what had happened to him.

Far too many only come to church, or even think of God when the going gets difficult.  We are quick to blame Him when things go wrong, but many people think that if things go well it is all them that made it happen.  Sure we are the “masters of our own destiny” but the gifts that we have, the skills that we use to make things happen, have come from God and we need to thank God for all of the graces that have been given to us.

When I climbed down off that horse, by the way, getting off the horse is easier than getting on, I thanked God that I was able to stay on the beast in the first place.  I thanked God for the people who were there to watch over me and to make sure that I was safe.  And I thanked God for giving me the opportunity to reach beyond my fears and to do something that I thought I would never do.

How much time do we spend thanking God?  Do we turn to God only in the bad times or do we turn to Him at all times, in season and out of season, and thank Him for the many blessings, and yes there are many, that He bestows upon us.

As we continue our celebration of all that He has done for us, take time to thank God and really mean it.