Christ is Risen in the Appalachian Ridge and Valley region of the Susquehanna Confluence. Truly He is Risen!
This blog is an ongoing reflection on Orthodox Christian life, apologetics, and Bible study in Northern Appalachia, by an unworthy American Russian Orthodox country priest who as a literature professor studies and teaches about Christian ecosemiotics, or the articulation of meaningfulness in Creation. He asks for your prayers. Below is an introduction to the blog.
Appalachian-style Orthodox chant, video above and below.
The Russian Orthodox statesman-writer Konstantin Pobedonostsev wrote, “Let us remember the ancient admonition: ‘know thyself.’ In application to life this means: know the milieu in which you must live and act, know your country, know your nature, your narod [the community of people] with its soul and its way of life, its wants and needs. This is what we should know and what we for the most part do not know. But what a blessing it would be for us and for all of society if we tried to know all this, if only that place, that region, that corner of a region where destiny has placed us” (translated by Thomas Calnan Sorenson).
This can relate to prophecies of the restored Israel as the Church (as in Ezekiel 36)–a place in which Paradise is glimpsed, along with a sense of the Kingdom of God, by illumination in the local parish as fractal for the “One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church.” The mystical unity that Russian Orthodox Christians call sobornost, non-essentialist and from the heart, sparkles in the mystery of the Orthodox Church as the Body of Christ in every place, including in the Northern Appalachia of our parish.
(Above) Saint Zosimas gives communion to St. Mary of Egypt after her desert sojourn.
Throughout Great Lent the Church in her wisdom has reminded us of God’s goodness in spurring us to forgive and repent. On the first Sunday the Church reminded us of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, and how the restoration of the icons led us to venerate and humble ourselves before the holy icons and to ask our Lord, His Mother, and the saints for their help. Then the second Sunday she reminded us of St. Gregory of Palamas and how grace is the connecting point directly of the divine with our physical embodied existence, an important reminder for our repentance in Lent. At the middle Sunday of Lent we venerated the Cross as a reminder of how it is the bridge given us to heaven, through the beautiful struggle of ascetic repentance. Then on the Fourth Sunday we remember traditionally the Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John Climacus, the ascetic self-emptying steps that lead us to put God and our neighbor first, not our own will.
Today, the last regular Sunday of Great Lent in this year 7534 on the biblical calendar, 2026 on the civil calendar, is the memory of Saint Mary of Egypt. An highlight of Lent is the Standing Saint Mary Service we offered here Wednesday night, with the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete read with all its marvelous examples from Scripture of repentance and faith, and the Life of St. Mary. Now at Divine Liturgy we prepare to partake of the Body and Blood of our Lord while commemorating her and asking for her prayers for our Lenten journey toward Pascha.
Saint Mary we know was a great sinner, who today might be labeled a sex addict or even celebrated as a kind of pro-sex feminist. However, while she had a successful crafts business to make money, she was obsessed with sensual pleasure and identified with her passion so there seemed to be nothing else to her life but that identification. It was as if every day was a Pride Parade for her, wrongly essentializing her life as her passion. In Orthodoxy we should never identify with or essentialize our passion, we seek to self-empty in Christ, not to self-assert. That is the new Commandment our Lord gave us, to love as He loved, even to die for others.
Maybe our own life may seem less extreme than St. Mary’s, but consider how we may identify with our passions nonetheless. Career. Comfort. Pleasure. Seemingly simple indulgence on the internet or in an encounter with another. We often are immersed in such seemingly invisible supposedly small sins as if were living in a giant MyPillow and trying not to notice. But encounters in our Church ministries can sometimes help put this in perspective—in our parish prison ministry, in hospital visits and visits to shut-ins. Consider volunteering to help with these Orthodox ministries. The things that bother and stress us often are related to our living lives apart from God, in a kind of bubble of lies about ourselves and others. Even a simple negative encounter in traffic or at the grocery store, someone hogging the aisle or maybe us forcing another to wait as we rush ahead, is an opportunity hopefully for self-reflection and repentance.
All these indulgences of our passions and identification with them in seemingly low-key ways enmesh us in the idea that Jesus Christ has not really come to save us, which the Apostle John says is the spirit of Antichrist. Remember our Lord’s message to the Church at Laodicea in the Book of Revelation, which Father Seraphim Rose suggested could be a message to these latter days. Our Lord said, “I wish that you were either hot or cold, but because you are lukewarm I will spit you out of my mouth.” This is in its own way even more dangerous than St. Mary’s sinful state, and we may be in it every day. But her example encourages us to heroism with God’s help. Struggle and humility are two great virtues in Lent preparing for the resurrection of Pascha.
St. Theophan the Recluse devoted himself to prayer of the heart, examining his sins, and communicating truths of our faith as a help to others in 19th-century Russia and worldwide. Let’s hear a brief selection from his homily for St. Mary Sunday. St. Theophan writes: “What we can learn from the conversion of St Mary of Egypt, or about the veils of sin…. The example of the repentance of Saint Mary of Egypt is so comprehensive and so instructive that the holy Church especially wants to impress it on our hearts.…. Let us hearken to this lesson… in order to point out how each one of us can and should dispose ourselves to be worthy of the same grace.
“You will see that she was completely immersed in sin and did not even think of abandoning it. But grace comes, and, by its striking action, awakens her from the slumber of sin. Awakened, she sees the calamity of her condition and resolves to change it for the better. It was as if someone was immersed in a mire and an outsider came and with his strong arm pulled him out of its depths and set him down free on solid ground….
“…But what must we do to ourselves in order to deserve this grace of conversion?… I will briefly show you. Let us take a person in such a situation that only one simple thought came to him: whether or not to take care of himself and think about correcting his life.…. do not cast it away, but take hold of it at once and begin to perform operations, so to speak, on yourself that would give this thought the opportunity to take possession of all the powers of your being…. Sin entangles the soul in a multitude of snares, or hides itself under various veils, because in itself it is ugly, and would repel anyone at the first sight. These veils are: the deepest and nearest veil to the heart, which is composed of self-delusion, insensibility, and carelessness; higher above it and closer to the surface of the soul lies the veil of distraction and the concern for many things; then follows the upper veil—the predominance of the flesh and the surface order of external life, permeated with sins and passions…. First, curtail your usual affairs and relationships. The eyes, ears, and tongue are the widest channels for sinful sustenance…. Second, take hold of the body: deny it not only pleasures, but also reduce the satisfaction of the necessary demands of sleep and food….This is what prudent fasting accomplishes. Third, solitude and fasting make it easier for the soul to turn to itself. But, entering inside itself, it encounters terrible confusion there, caused by the concern for many things and scattered thoughts…. Here we need to suppress them and cast them out of the soul and heart, even if only for a short time…. For this reason, it is necessary to gather the scattered children—the thoughts—into one, as a shepherd gathers the sheep or as a glass convex collects the scattered rays of the sun, and turns them all toward yourself. This is accomplished by attention, or sobriety. Fourth. Allow the concerns to finally subside, the thoughts to calm down, the mind to gather itself …. You now stand next to your heart. Before you is your inner man, immersed in the sleep of carelessness, insensibility, and blindness….
“…. To make the effect of all these thoughts more sure, enclose all of them in a single image and bear it in your mind as a constant stimulus. …. Now the sinner is revealed to himself; he is not insensitive to his dangerous situation and often wants to arise and go, but this is not all done. What is clearly missing here is the main thing: a grace-filled awakening. Labor has been used, what was sought has been discovered, but all this constitutes only attempts, efforts to attract grace on our part, but not the very thing that we are seeking. We seek and knock, but the gift is in the will of the One Who distributes “to each one individually as He wills” (1 Cor 12:11).
“…. Pray both in church and at home, compelling the Generous One to grant you, as your daily bread, grace-filled help for salvation. Thus labor and strain, ‘seek and you will find.’ Thus ‘knock and it will be opened’ to you (Matt 7:7)…. It will come, that is, what was given freely to the holy Mary of Egypt! … This is why the example of [her] is now offered to us within the season of Lent… to turn us toward a careful analysis: did we prepare as we ought to have. Anyone who has properly prepared should feel awakened, revitalized, and ready to exert effort in the matter of salvation. His goal is not just to go to Church and fast, but to acquire grace, or to recover what was lost, or to strengthen its fire which had begun to fade. And this outer order is needed, but the main thing is the change of inner disposition. If one has been made worthy of this, give thanks to the Lord; if not, then there is still time…. The Lord is near. Draw near to Him, and there will surely be a union between the Lord, the lover of fellowship, and your soul, created in His image and likeness, sought by Him and possessed by Him.” (From Now is the Accepted Time.)
Dearly beloved in Christ, today is also the feast of the Holy Aristobulus of the Seventy, a very early apostle to the deserts of Britain. Let us also ask his intercession for our Lenten struggle, that coming through Pascha, we as a mission family will be strengthened for missionary work in the coming year. Holy Saint Mary of Egypt and Saint Aristobulus of Britain pray to God for the conversion of our hearts each day, so that our light may shine before men for Christ. Amen.
At St. John’s Russian Orthodox Christian Church, 92 St. John’s Lane, Winfield, Pa, with the Bucknell University Orthodox Christian community. See details at stjohnthewonderworker.com. All are welcome! Note: There will be no online classes or Bible Study on Lazarus Saturday through Pascha Sunday, but those will resume Sat. 4/26 and Sunday 4/27, God willing
Feast of the Annunciation, Holy Tuesday 4/7 Hours and Typica followed by Vesperal Liturgy, 8:30 a.m.
Bridegroom Matins, 6:30 p.m., Confessions
Holy Wednesday 4/8 Hours and Typical with Presanctified Liturgy 9:30 a.m. Matins for Holy Thursday, 6:30p.m., Confessions
Holy Thursday 4/9 9:30 a.m. Hours, Typica, and Vesperal Liturgy. Matins for Holy Friday (12 Passion Gospels), 6 p.m.
Holy Friday 4/10 Royal Hours 8 a.m. Great Vespers and Small Compline 3 p.m. Matins of the Lamentations, 7 p.m. Followed by the Guarding of the Tomb and Reading of the Psalter.
Holy Saturday 4/111 Hours, Typica, and Vesperal Liturgy 9:30 a.m. Followed by the Reading of the Acts of the Apostles preceding night time Pascha services.
Pascha Services 4/11-12 11:15 p.m. Midnight Office, Paschal Matins, Paschal Hours, and Pascha Liturgy, followed by banquet.
Sunday 4/12. 1 p.m. Agape Vespers, followed by Lewisburg Pascha procession.
An homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent 7534/2026 from St. John Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers.
Dearly beloved in Christ, today we commemorate the Holy Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, whose famous feast day in Church history falls on this Fourth Sunday of Lent, which is usually reserved for St. John Climacus and the Sunday of the Ladder. But the two are related in what is often called the “beautiful struggle” of Lent. Last Sunday we commemorated the Cross at the halfway point of Lent. The Ladder, a classic book by St. John reflecting his ascetic life at Mount Sinai, tells of how to climb the Cross in unworthy emulation of our Lord, as a stairway to heaven. This is what the Holy Martyrs of Sebaste did in what is now eastern Turkey.
There in 319 they were subject to the persecution of the pagan Romans, the precursors to our modern persecuting secularists and occultists. These 40 Roman soldiers faithful to Christ were put outdoors in freezing waters for refusing to renounce their faith. Witnesses described a glow of heavenly light, the uncreated energy of God, around them as they were received into Paradise by our Lord. Within living memory, St. Basil the Great, who wrote our Liturgy today, commemorated them in a homily at Constantinople. Today, some 1800 years later, we ask for the prayers of the Holy Martyrs for our mission in America. There were 40, just as there are 40 days of Lent for us, reminding us of the 40 days of Noah and his family surviving the Flood, and Jesus’ 40 days being tempted in the wilderness. The numeral 4 involves a sense of the cosmic (as in the Four Evangelists, the four seasons, the four directions, etc.), and the number 10 a sense of the wholeness of God’s law now fulfilled in Christ, multiplied together in the symbolism. Even in the Orthodox wedding ceremony, the Forty Holy Martyrs are invoked in a prayer , that the bride and groom crowned with the crown of martyrdom may be as faithful.
Their witness to Christ stands as a reminder that all of us as Orthodox Christians are called every day to the joyful sorrow of asceticism, or denying ourselves in Christ, so as to open our hearts to the uncreated light. This is the message, too, of St John Climacus’ The Ladder. Some say wrongly that St. John’s book is only for monastics and not for those of us in the world. But the Church in her wisdom has made it a regular standard of Great Lent, usually on this Fourth Sunday, and today presents the example of the 40 Martyrs for our urgent attention. Truly while there is a difference between what we in the world and what the holy fathers and mothers of our monasteries can do, qualitatively there is no difference in the kind of govenie or ascetic focus and attention that we should give to our faith each day as we say the “Jesus Prayer” and fast during Lent, even in the world.
The secret prayers in our Liturgy remind us of this, too. At the Clergy retreat I attended this past week, we were reminded of how those prayers are meant to be said by the priest out of earshot of the congregation. This is in line with our Orthodox hesychastic tradition of inner quietness in prayer. Not all the mystery is explained aloud during the service. The choir may fill in, and there may be moments of silence. Worshippers bear that silence in prayers in your hearts, as with the Jesus Prayer silently, “Lord Jesus Christ mercy me.” We “mind the gap” so to speak of the silence, and contemplate more deeply the hymns. Bishop Luke reminded us also to remind worshippers to pray along silently with the priest in your hearts when he says prayers aloud in the service. We’re not meant to be passive in worship and in prayer, but to participate, in synergy with God’s uncreated energies, in worship as in our salvation, to share the joyful burden of active love, which is true asceticism in Orthodox Christianity–the beautiful struggle.
Such focus on inner quietness and dedicated devotion must also include radical compassion, because these are all together as the effect of God’s uncreated grace received in active love. In the collection called the Ancient Patericon of sayings of the desert fathers, compiled by St. Theophan the Recluse, there is the story of a monk who was ejected from a monastery for sin. As the monk was leaving, he saw the abbot who had ejected him walking out the door with him. Father, he said, where are you going? The abbot said, I am leaving with you, because I too am a sinner.
There is a famous icon of the Forty Martyrs in the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Yet today, that holy temple built by Emperor-Saint Justinian, the site of our Lord’s tomb and of the Holy Fire, is sadly closed due to war. One of the prosecutors of that war this week told the world that Genghis Khan was more correct than Jesus in his appraisal of humanity, in asserting the raw worldly power of this world. We as Christians reject this spirit of the antichrist wherever it comes from, because it rejects that Jesus Christ our God has come in the flesh with all power, and we must start by doing so in our own hearts, rejecting the desire for power and wealth and comfort just as did the Forty Martyrs and St. John Climacus.
This rejection of the world must include secular heroes and celebrity, however appealing. This week in the news also saw the death of the American pop culture hero Churck Norris, an action movie hero who later in life turned to heterodox Christianity. Norris once said that he didn’t want to be a movie star but wanted to be a figure that kids could look up to as he as a child without a dad had looked up to the movie star John Wayne, who in turn had been been inspired as a young man by having the real-life cowboy hero Wyatt Earp as a mentor. In my early years as a university professor and long before my ordination, the few who knew wondered why I liked sometimes in the evening to watch Walker Texas Ranger reruns starring Norris. I found them often humorous relief from the anti-Christian nihilism I found in American higher education. But for all his vaunted and joked-about strength, Norris was not able to evade death, and none of us shall, and his beliefs however positive in a general way were not Orthodox Christian and thus ultimately could mislead. Our real action heroes as Orthodox Christians must be the Holy Forty Martyrs of Sebaste and all the holy martyrs, and ultimately our Lord Jesus Christ who conquered death for us. Our real protection is in the Orthodox Church, which is the Body of Christ, not in any mythology, American or otherwise. May they inspire us in our own action heroism, our active love in beautiful struggle, in contributing to the conversion of America to Orthodox Christianity.
Brothers and sisters, as our Lord said, we hear of wars and rumors of wars. But let us pray for wisdom and discernment that we not deny our Lord to Antichrist. As the Evangelist John said, the spirit of Antichrist is the denial that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. That too is a denial of the Body of Christ in the Orthodox Church, which is the true Israel today.
A beautiful custom in Slavic Orthodoxy lands for today is to make Skylark pastries in the shape of birds, to honor the 40 martyrs, that the birds who sing to greet the springtime today may also represent the joyful reception of the 40 Orthodox martyrs in heaven. Thanks to Scott and Kris for making those for us today for coffee hour.
Let us join in the song of the skylarks welcoming the spring and the Lent that leads us into Resurrection, as it did so long ago with the Holy Forty Martyrs. They are with us today as we worship in Appalachian America. May they pray for our souls and for our mission. Amen.
***
Gospel of the Sunday, and that of the Martyrs —
The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Mark,
§40[9:17-31]
At that time, one of the multitude came to Jesus, bowing before Him and saying: ‘Master, I have brought unto thee my son, who hath a dumb spirit. And wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him; and he foameth and gnasheth his teeth and pineth away. And I spoke to thy disciples that they should cast him out, and they could not.’ Jesus answered him and said, ‘O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him unto Me.’ And they brought the boy unto Him. And when the spirit saw Him, straightway he tore the boy; and he fell on the ground and wallowed about foaming. And He asked his father, ‘How long is it ago since this came unto him?’ And he said, ‘From childhood. And oftentimes it hath cast him into the fire and into the waters to destroy him; but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us and help us.’ Jesus said unto him, ‘If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.’ And straightway the father of the child cried out and said with tears, ‘Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief!’ When Jesus saw that the people came running together, He rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, ‘Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him and enter no more into him.’ And the spirit cried, and rent the boy sorely and came out of him; and he was as one dead, insomuch that many said, ‘He is dead.’ But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. And when He had come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, ‘Why could not we cast him out?’ And He said unto them, ‘This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting.’ And they departed thence and passed through Galilee, and He would not that any man should know it. For He taught His disciples and said unto them, ‘The Son of Man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill Him; and after He is killed, He shall rise the third day.’
Holy Gospel according to Matthew,
§80[20:1-16]
The Lord said this parable. ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, who went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and said unto them, ‘Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you.’ And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing idle, and said unto them, ‘Why stand ye here all the day idle?’ They said unto him, ‘Because no man hath hired us.’ He said unto them, ‘Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.’ So when evening had come, the lord of the vineyard said unto his steward, ‘Call the labourers and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first.’ And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. But when the first came, they supposed they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received it, they murmured against the master of the house, saying, ‘These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us who have borne the burden and the heat of the day.’ But he answered one of them and said, ‘Friend, I do thee no wrong. Didst thou not agree with me for a penny? Take that which is thine and go thy way. I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?’ So the last shall be first, and the first last. For many are called, but few are chosen.’
We are halfway through Lent, and can see the pattern of meaning laid out for us in the tradition of our Lord’s Church. It is a path of forgiveness and repentance that leads to the Resurrection.
First we had the Sunday of Orthodoxy, commemorating how we venerate and humble ourselves before the icons of our holy saints and ultimately of the Mother of God and our Lord Jesus Christ. The icons are otherworldly windows giving us strength in our journey of Lent. Then came the Sunday of St. Gregory of Palamas, reminding us of his brilliant defense of the Orthodox teaching that God’s grace is uncreated yet engages us physically.
Today the Sunday of the Cross reminds us of the Cross we need to bear, and how it also is our ladder to Pascha, and our life preserver. “Lent” is an old word for springtime, and we must during Lent like a seed die in the wintry ground at first in order to come really to life in the spring of Pascha. The Cross is the Tree of Life that springs from the deep soil of Lent. It lifts us up in joyful sorrow, closer to God and to one another in the branches, while we suffer to put off our sins.
The goal of Lent is the achievement of the Cross, to empty ourselves in Jesus Christ, not to assert ourselves. As the classic Orthodox book Unseen Warfare, whose final editor was St. Theophan the Recluse, tells us of the Way of the Cross:
“A man who is moved toward doing one thing or another purely by the consciousness of God’s will and the desire to please Him never prefers one activity to another, even if one is great and lofty and another petty and insignificant, but he has his will equally disposed toward either, so long as they are pleasing to God… for he has but one intention and one aim to the exclusion of all else—to please God always and in all he does, whether in life or in death, as the Apostle says: Wherefore we labor, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted by Him. Therefore, beloved, be ever watchful over yourself, be collected within, and strive by all means in your power to direct all your activities toward this single aim… to please God by obeying His will, since it is in God’s wish that you should go ot heaven rather than be cast into hell.
“None can fully conceive how great are the strength and power in our spiritual life of this motive and aim,” Unseen Warfare tells us, “to please God. For even if some activity is in itself quite simple and unimportant, if it is done for the sole purpose of pleasing God and to His glory, it becomes in the eyes of God infinitely more valuable than many other great and glorious deeds performed without this aim….
“This inner task, which you must practice in anything you do—the task of directing your thoughts, feelings, and actions only toward pleasing God—will seem difficult at first, but will later become easy and light, if, firstly you constantly exercise yourself in this spiritual effort and, secondly, if you constantly keep warm your yearning for God, sighing for Him with a live longing of the heart…. The more often this search for limitless good in God is practiced in our consciousness and the deeper it penetrates into the feeling of the heart, the more frequent and warm will be the actions of our will I have described, and the more quickly and easily shall we form the habit of doing everything solely through love of the Lord, impelled only by desire to please Him, since He is the most worthy of all love.” (Robert Edwards’ translation)
This warming of our hearts that the manual Unseen Warfare describes, brothers and sisters, touches in on the compassion of our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane where he sweat as if blood for our suffering human nature. This is the Way of the Cross we commemorate today.
Metropolitan Antony, the first primate of the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, wrote that our Lord “was oppressed with the greatest sorrow on the night when the greatest crime in human history occurred, when God’s ministers—with the complicity of Christ’s own disciple, the former through envy, the latter through greed—decided to put the Son of God to death…. One must suppose that during that night in Gethsemane, the thought and feeling of the God-man embraced all of fallen humanity—numbering many millions—and wept with loving grief over each one individually, as only the all-knowing Divine heart could….having suffered in His loving soul over our imperfection and our corrupt will, the Lord poured into our nature a wellspring of new, vital strength, available to everyone who has ever or will ever desire it, beginning with the wise thief.”
This is the way set forth to us fully and finally on the Cross. Yet the Cross offers in reality but a ladder to the Resurrection. Brothers and Sisters, let us clamber up the Cross this middle of Lent, as we look forward to next week’s Sunday of the Ladder. By our death to self on the Cross with God’s help we are healed, and we find our salvation and redemption in the Lord Who in his suffering poured forth compassion upon us, died for us, and lived again to save us, and showed us the Cross as the way home. The Cross is our life preserver, and our way home.
Amen
The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Mark,
§37 8:34-9:1]
The Lord said: ‘Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the Gospel’s, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Whosoever, therefore, shall be ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed when He cometh in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.’ And He said unto them, ‘Verily I say unto you, that there are some of them that stand here who shall not taste of death till they have seen the Kingdom of God come with power.’
Lent is a time to help those in need. And St. John’s members Innocent (Robert) and John Sam need your prayers and help with donations and volunteer assistance for their current housing transition.
If you can donate to help, please do so on this link, and write “housing assistance” in the memo field: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=RNEGFXJNUBAX4 Your donation will be used entirely to assist them, with no administrative costs, and will be tax deductible in going to our Church (St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church, a tax-exempt religious organization) to make the disbursements on their behalf as part of our charitable efforts. There will also be a basket for donations to help them in this transition at St. John’s at the candle table.
The Sam brothers have both been in Grand View Nursing Home in Danville for a few months, after health issues required that they leave their apartment (they are no longer able to climb the stairs there).
Due to changes in their insurance situation, they may need to vacate their old apartment in Williamsport by May 1, and this will require renting a dumpster and possibly moving help to empty out their former home, as well as volunteer assistance with storage and with care for their cat Buster.
But there also may be an opportunity for them to stay if proper medical care can be worked out through insurance, and in that case funds would still be needed for cleaning and potentially transportation. (Please also keep on the lookout as a backup for an affordable ground-floor or elevator apartment, preferably not far from St. John’s in the Selinsgrove-Sunbury-Northumberland-Lewisburg area.) Please look for updates on this page as details become available, and again keep them in your prayers.
Later this spring we hope to have a work party at their old apartment in Williamsport to help with cleaning up, please keep in touch with Fr Paul at 570-863-9039 by text or calls if you an help. Thanks!
This month of March on the Church calendar (which begins March 14 on the civil calendar) includes the most glorious Feast of Feasts, the Pascha or Passover, Orthodox Easter, commemorating the Resurrection of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ!
(Above) The Holy Fire in Jerusalem on Holy Saturday (photo from the Seattle Times).
The Sundays of Lent lead us through this springtime of our souls, from the commemoration of the triumph of the icons before which we humble ourselves and venerate the holy saints of the Church and most of all our Lord’s Mother and our Lord Himself, then to the Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas, which reminds us of the physical presence of the uncreated grace of God in our repentance and devotions, and then this month the Sundays of the Cross, the Ladder, and St. Mary of Egypt, all progressively reminding us of the transfigurational power of repentance and forgiveness in our lives with God’s help. As our Lord says “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24).
Lent culminates in Passion Week and finally in our beloved Pascha, the Day of Resurrection of our Lord, and for ourselves in His Body the Church, God willing. This year after Agape Vespers we’ll plan to have a brief but joyful Pascha procession on Market Street in downtown Lewisburg, weather permitting. Please note also that this year the Feast of the Annunciation will be on Holy Tuesday, and we will have a Liturgy for this major feast of the Church on that morning.
We’ll update this newsletter schedule here online if there are any changes in the service schedule, and we’ll also be updating as needed the calendar on the website, stjohnthewonderworker.com, also.
In other news, please keep our faithful member Mary (Sally) Strayer in your prayers as she has surgery on March 18 on the civil calendar; we will have a Moleben for her after Liturgy on the upcoming Sunday of the Cross. Also, please see details here, https://ecosemiotics.com/2026/03/13/helping-with-a-housing-need/, about efforts to support our members Innocent and John and their transition hopefully toward attending Church with us again and moving from their nursing home into a new apartment later this spring. We will be accepting gifts to help them with their expenses in moving; please consider donating as part of your Lenten alms-giving (this will be done via the Church PayPal link; please include “housing assistance” in the memo of donations).
Our prison ministry at Muncy SCI continues, and we ask for your prayers for that as well, for our Orthodox inmates Rachel, Tanya, and the Ethiopian Orthodox inmate Helina, and also for your donations for prayer ropes for them and others among the 20 or so inmates who come to our prayer and discussion group weekly. A basket will be at Church to help support the prison ministry, or check with me.
We look forward to two baptisms next month during the Paschal Season, of Zachary on Thomas Sunday, who will be taking the name of Saint Zachary of Rome, the last Byzantine pope of Rome in the 8th Century, and Ryan, who plans to take the name of Saint Isaac the Syrian, potentially on the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women. Please pray for them and also for other catechumens who also will be preparing for baptism in coming months.
The latest news on improvements for our Church Temple include that our dome installer Francis now says he plans to install our rooftop onion dome and Cross the end of April, so at least the construction work won’t interfere with Holy Week and Pascha services. Let’s keep in prayer that this may be completed soon, God willing, as we want to move on to other beautification projects once that expenditure is complete and budgeted: Upcoming projects will include the iconostasis, altar table, and possible benches for the side walls. A storage shed and further work on the closets/kitchenette are also potential items, along with a new set of covers for the altar area and icon stands. May the Lord help our efforts to beautify His Temple, with the prayers of St. John!
In addition, we’re working on new altar server robes, and will be taking measurements for those this month.
Please keep in touch as always with any needs, and remember that you should have confession this Lenten Season and before Pascha. Also, please bear in mind appropriate traditional attire for services during Lent, Holy Week, and Pascha, including long sleeves and pants for men, and long dresses or skirts for women, with head coverings especially when communing.
After Pascha, we hope to continue with plans for the Orthodox film festival for outreach, as well as for the Brotherhood Retreat at the Sportsmen’s Club and new Sisterhood activities. The Sisterhood as usual will be helping to coordinate cleanup and food for Pascha this month.
In asking for the intercessions of the Holy Saints for our mission work, we remember also this month two pre-eminent Celtic saint days, for Saint David of Wales (Sat. March 14 on the civil calendar) and also for Saint Patrick of Ireland (Monday March 30 on the civil calendar). May the patron saints and evangelists of Wales and Ireland pray to God for our mission work in North America, that our land may be converted as was theirs, and that the Orthodox faith endure in America until the Lord comes.
Wishing you all good strength, with God’s strong grace and tender mercies, this Lenten and Holy Week season, culminating in the Resurrection of our Lord, and asking for your prayers as you are in my unworthy supplications.
With love and prayers,
Father Paul
***
Services and Events this Month for the End of Lent, Holy Week, and Pascha (Dates are given with the Church Calendar date first then the Civil Calendar date.)
*Please note that Online Orthodoxy Classes will continue, God willing, until a break for Lazarus Saturday and Holy Saturday, and are usually on Saturdays 10 to 11 a.m. Please contact Fr. Paul for the Zoom link and details. *Also, Bible Study will continue on Sundays at 2:30 p.m. at the Bucknell bookstore except for a break for Holy Sunday and Pascha Sunday. Those weekly events are not noted below. *Vigil each Saturday at 4:30 p.m. unless noted otherwise. Akathists will not be served on Wednesday evenings during this part of Lent.
March 2/15 Sunday of the Cross. Procession. Pascha Choir Rehearsal after Liturgy. Molten for Mary (Sally) Strayer. Sizing for new altar server robes.
No Presanctified Liturgy on Wednesday morning; Fr Paul at Clergy Conference at Jordanville.
March 9/22 Sunday of St. John of the Ladder
Wed. March 12/25 Presanctified Liturgy, 9:30 a.m.
Wed. March 12/25 Great Canon of St. Andrew with Compline and reading of the Life of St. Mary for the Fifth Week of Lent, 5:30 p.m.
March 16/29 Sunday of St. Mary of Egypt
March 19/April 1 Presanctified Liturgy, 9:30 a.m.
Friday March 21/April 3, Matins for Lazarus Saturday, 7 p.m.
Saturday March 22/April 4 Lazarus Saturday, 9:30 a.m.
March 23/April 5, Holy Sunday
March 23/April 5, Bridegroom Matins, 6:30 p.m. Confessions.
Holy Monday March 24/April 6 Bridegroom Matins, 6:30 p.m., Confessions
Feast of the Annunciation, Tuesday March 25/April 7, Liturgy 10 a.m., Hours 9:40.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today the Church in her wisdom urges us to remember the example and teaching and role in the Church of St. Gregory Palamas. Following up on the Church Fathers who resisted the heresy of those attacking the icons, as we remembered last week, this week we remember the saint who stood for one of the most distinctive teachings of Orthodox Christianity: That of the uncreated energies of God. Think of it, that the energies or activity of God, also known as grace, are themselves divine and reach us here and now in Creation even as fallen human beings. It is so important that the work of St. Gregory Palamas, expressed in various Church councils in the 14th century, is sometimes called the Ninth Ecumenical Council. This teaching of the uncreated energies is one no heterodox forms of Christianity whether Protestant or Catholic or other fully share. It is our great gift from our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in the Church, the Body of Christ, which is our great living inheritance as Orthodox Christians from the Apostolic Church, we who have been fostered into the true Israel today.
Psalm 50 in the Orthodox Bible, written by the holy Prophet David, in his great repentance for adultery and murder, tells us of God’s tender mercies, which are working in us in the Lent of His Church. God’s tender mercies are His grace, His uncreated energies, for which St. Gregory stood against the lies of the heretics who claimed that those tender mercies were created. The heretics argued that God’s tender mercies are more like thunder bolts sent randomly. St. Gregory stood for the Orthodox teaching that they are all around us, like a field alive with sparkling energy that is God’s love for us and can unfold in our hearts with our ascetic Lenten-style attention.
There is a movie called Tender Mercies made by the late Robert Duvall that seeks to depict this in symbols. It is not an Orthodox film but it echoes aspects of the spirit of Christianity in our flawed culture today. In the film, a man has fallen into a shipwreck of his life, but finds redemption through God’s grace, in the ascetics of marriage inspired by Christian tradition, with renewed attention to faith and others in his life. This is a symbol of what St. Gregory taught in the Orthodox tradition of hesychasm, that God’s grace, those uncreated energies, those tender mercies, manifest themselves physically in our lives. This is also what we commemorated last week in the triumph of the Orthodox teaching of the icons. On Wednesday, God willing, our Church will go on pilgrimage to see the myrrh-streaming icon in Taylor, Pennsylvania. It is a reminder of the physical effects of our faith defended by St. Gregory and the Church.
Another example of those physical effects of our faith is how marriage and monasticism are two great ways of life in our Church’s tradition that stand against our society’s apostasy from truth. A New York Times article this week reported how even the abomination of polyamory is gaining legal recognition in America. But Great Lent is a great medicine for us Orthodox Christians living amid such delusion. It reminds us and challenges us how with the divine grace of God in our lives, Orthodoxy must be lived and embodied. It is our springtime, preparing us for the Resurrection of Pascha.
The Russian saint and ascetic Theophan the Recluse has written about this in his homilies for Lent, including one for today. He writes:
“Here, let us consider the parts of our nature, the attacks on them, and what weapons we have against them. Let us begin to sort out the composition of our nature part by part and appropriately arm it. We have a body. The life of the body is sustained by the harmonious action of its various parts and functions. Satisfying the needs of the body is a law of nature, but when the passions approach, it loses proper measure and form and becomes sin. Our body must be nourished. The organs of nourishment are the palate, the throat, and the stomach. The passions that attack this part are overeating, sweets, luxury of the table and its seasonings, gluttony, and drunkenness. The weapons that must be used to guard this part are abstinence and fasting. Our body has senses. The organs of sensation are the nerves with their feelings. The passions that attack this part are manifold. Each sense has its own temptation: the eyes—their own, the ears—their own, the taste—its own. Everyone has a common passion for the pleasant stimulation of the senses, or for sensual pleasures. The weapons, which it is necessary to arm this part, the holy Fathers call the preservation of the senses, especially the sight and hearing, from all seductive impressions, most of all through solitude and avoidance of encounters with tempting persons, places, and things. Our body has movement. The organs of this movement are the muscles, the arms, and the legs. The passions that attack this part are, on the one hand, laziness and drowsiness, on the other frivolity, restlessness, the passion for games and amusements, dancing, acting, fights, and so on. The weapons to protect this part are: labor, vigil, bows, and moderate regularity of movement. The body has a tongue, the organ of words. The passions that attack it are: empty speech, idle talk, gossip, quarrels, blasphemy. The weapon with which to protect it is prudent silence of the lips. Such is our body, such are its passions, and such are the weapons against them. The holy Fathers call the totality of these weapons bodily ascetic labors. This is how the body must be taken in hand and taught to live a godly life. ‘And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires’ (Gal 5:24).
“Let us move on to the soul. Here in the first place is the imagination with the memory—the storehouse of the soul with an index of its treasures. The passions that disturb this faculty are: reverie; absent-mindedness, or the plundering of the mind; and fantasizing, fueled by reading novels and empty conversations. The weapons against them are attention, sobriety, and watchfulness of the spirit. The imagination is followed by the intellect and reason, whose work it is to identify everything. The enemies that act unfavorably on them are curiosity, doubt, pride, trusting only in one’s self, stubbornness of opinion, and lack of conviction. The weapons with which to arm them are: reading the word of God and writings of the Fathers, conversation with people experienced in spiritual life, personal reflection in submission to the voice of the Church. Alongside the intellect is the will, the active capacity of desires and undertakings. The passions that torment it are the following: excessive cares, self-interest, willfulness, insubordination, impudence, and licentiousness. The weapon against them is an all-around obedience, or submission to legal orders and regulations: worldly, civil, ecclesiastical, and those given by one’s spiritual father. Next in the same row is taste—the capacity for aesthetic pleasures. The passions that overcome it are: fashion, dandyism, and a passion for entertainment, balls, and theaters. The spiritual weapons to protect it are: spiritual hymns, icons, and especially going to church, which provides the most complete satisfaction of the needs of uncorrupted taste. Such is the soul, such are its passions, such are the tools against them. The totality of these weapons is the range of spiritual ascetic struggles, through which we glorify God ‘in our spirit’ (1 Cor 6:20) and save (Heb 10:39) and purify our souls (1 Pet 1:22).
“Finally, above the soul is the spirit, the power turned toward God and things divine. The enemies here are: unbelief, forgetfulness of God, fearlessness, burning of the conscience, dislike of the sacred, despair. The weapons against them are: faith and love devoted to God—enlivened by hope and active in walking before God, unceasingly turning the mind and heart to God, and unceasing prayer. I will shorten these instructions in order to give freedom to your tired attention, which has been led through an unfamiliar field of subjects. Rather, I will only enumerate in succession all the instruments of our spiritual warfare, namely: faith, prayer, going to church and abiding in all the orders of the church, all-around obedience, reading the word of God and the holy Fathers, lively conversation with experienced people, godly reflection, sober attention to ourselves, bodily labor, vigil, bowing, solitude, guarding the senses, silence, abstinence, and fasting. The same weapons, not in letter, but in spirit, are also indicated by St Paul, when, having commanded Christians to put on all the weapons of God (Eph 6:11), he then lists them. “Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints” (Eph 6:14–18)…. Thus, do not refuse but force yourself to pass through everything prescribed. God will be your Helper, only begin and continue without omission. Now is Lent, the most favorable time for such practice. He who has prepared has already used all spiritual weapons, and those who are preparing will also use them. All that remains is to apply a little force to yourself by starting to keep up with them. And then, God willing, you will like these weapons so much that you will never want to part with them. One has only to cleave a little to ascetic struggles, and they will more and more turn into our need, will nourish and delight us. They are not contrary to our nature, but are akin to it in its purest form, which vouches for their success in prevailing over us.” (Translation from Now is the Accepted Time.)
Brothers and sisters, let us never forget as Orthodox Christians the physical touch and warmth in our heart of God’s tender mercies, which are themselves uncreated and divine energies, yet which reach us here, sparkling and energizing us. Let us nurture them in our heart from the spark of God’s love in us, so that like kindling a winter campfire in Lent, they may warm us and shine out in time for Pascha bonfires, to fill our Lord’s words that we are the light of the world. Amen.
I wrote this in 2023 for the 40th anniversary of the film Tender Mercies, which for me is one of the great classics of America’s flawed Hollywood film tradition, in which I try to explain why. Robert Duvall’s recent death reminded me of this essay, which was never published before, and so I offer it here, as my Bucknell University Bible as Literature class also watches the film.It illustrates the cosmological beauty of the Christian tradition of marriage, even today as polyamory now is the latest secular American appropriation and twisting sadly of that tradition into transactional consumer terms. Lord have mercy!
This year marks the little-noticed 40th anniversary year of a great but today largely forgotten American film.
Tender Mercies exemplified the elusive Christian culture of a country that has always gone in search of itself but seems more lost than ever now.
It still offers hope amid the tragedies of its country-music themes.
Tender Mercies appeared in the noontime of the Reagan era, winning two Academy Awards.
Yet it offered moviegoers a subdued, reflective, and heartfelt tone that touched deeper chords than the politics of the time, in its redemption story of the fallen country music singer Mac Sledge (Robert Duvall).
The film’s celebration of fidelity and quiet virtues of family life in the midst of life’s tragedies exposed a counter-current to the sexual revolution and materialism of its Studio 54 era. It still provides a remembrance of virtuous love running deeper in the American heartland than the insanities of those of us coastal adorables.
Screenplay writer Horton Foote, consummate poet of the big and little screen (he had adapted To Kill a Mockingbird in which Duvall also had appeared) once was described as the American Chekhov who, like famous Russian writers, knew how to depict quiet people.
If Russian novels, most notably Dostoevsky’s, captured Christian philosophy in fiction, Foote’s screenwriting echoed it in Hollywood’s context, most especially in Tender Mercies.
The film also struck chords in Nashville, despite highlighting the country-music industry as an image of American Mammon. When Duvall won Best Actor Academy Award for the film, he got an extra hug from trophy-presenter Dolly Parton, while cheered by Johnny and June Carter Cash in the audience, for a heartfelt portrayal of the struggle for virtue amid excess.
Appropriate to the film’s regional setting, Foote was a son of Flannery O’Connor’s Christ-haunted South and cousin to the Civil War’s poetic historian Shelby Foote. Moving north to practice his craft, he also became a devout convert to Christian Science with its deeply flawed but refracted mystical yearnings from America’s Puritan heritage. He balanced that with quiet devotion to Dostoevsky’s Christian aesthetic that “beauty will save the world.”
Duvall shared Foote’s Southern background and Christian Science spirituality by birth, though a wanderer from that faith who became a Hollywood standout with work stretching all the way from The Godfather to The Apostle.
Together their sojourning spirits fed Tender Mercy’s thirst for Christian faith beyond conventions of American materialism.
In the opening segment, Duvall’s character Mac Sledge has fallen so low that he has to work off the bill for the desolate rural motel room of his last drunken binge. He labors for the roadside inn’s owner-widow, who lost her husband at age 18 in the Vietnam War, and struggles as a poor single but loving mother whose singing is in the church choir.
“Were you really Mac Sledge?” a fan asks him outside the feed store in the small town nearby.
“Yeah I guess I was,” he says with a laugh.
When he asks his young widowed landlady (played by Tess Parker) to marry him, it is one of the sweetest yet most laconic romantic moments in cinema. Its breathtaking purity is truly a tribute to the art of Foote and the actors and the film’s sad sweetness, which seems to ferment with time.
Duvall’s character rejects a potential Nashville return to throw in his lot with a group of young rural musicians traveling in a van, with whom he makes a new song hit.
Meanwhile the tragedy of the loss of his daughter from his previous marriage to a Country star (played by Betty Buckley) interweaves with the bittersweet lyrics of the hymn “On the Wings of a Dove.”
Tender Mercies is a movie about redemption and the second chances that Theodore Dreiser alleged American life didn’t offer but which the film shows it has done, and maybe can summon again.
It is about a lost America that can’t go home again but does in faith, based in the virtue of personal fidelity that Foote loved and found in his own real-life lifelong marriage, although this movie’s protagonist finds redemption in new love and faith.
John Adams said America would only survive as a republic with a virtuous people. His son John Quincy Adams said it was Christian marriage with its bonds of faith, sacrifice, and love that modeled what would enable America to endure. But this in real life is something more than insufficient legalistic virtue, instead evoking virtue as otherworldly grace.
Feckless politicians, consumers, narcissistic intellectuals—the all of us in society have gambled with that cultural heritage and lost too often, abandoning fidelity and the model of marriage that Christianity at its best left to us.
We ran through capital from a badly flawed but still partly numinous legacy, like Duvall’s alcoholic fallen star and Foote’s spirituality as a screenwriter.
But Tender Mercies is a reminder of how even the fallen can be redeemed. Maybe that applies to a people, Americans, as well as to people.
Maybe Alexei’s observation at the end of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, that even just one good memory can be enough to save a person, can be true for a country, too. Perhaps for us Americans the start of such a memory can even flash off a screen from this decades-old cinematic intervention.
Walk don’t run to watch this quiet film in its 40th anniversary year, which leads to deeper reflection than this year’s Barbenheimer film craze.
Imagine an Orthodox Church, even our modest country church, where one night all the iconography vanishes, here and in Orthodox churches around the world, and from our own home icon corners also. It would be like a nightmare, stripping our worship space of much beauty and spiritual meaning. It would not stop our faith, but would be sorrowful. Yet for 120 years or so in early centuries of the Church this was a real historical challenge. From this struggle came the Triumph of Orthodoxy we celebrate today. When icons were restored after the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787, the victory came out of a defeat, which resulted in a greater understanding of the role of icons in our faith. We celebrate this triumph on the first Sunday of Lent in part because, like repentance, it is a celebration of victory coming from humbling, the full development of a theology and practice of bowing before icons as spiritual friends. And it came only after they had been stripped from our churches and homes, sometimes violently and producing martyrs.
God restored the icons. But today especially in Protestantism and in the secularism that emerged in the West we often see the same cheapening of Christian worship and faith and of life. This heresy denies the energizing of Creation by God with divine beauty, and how the image of Christ may be seen in each of us. Today our online world in a new subtler iconoclasm turns icons and ourselves into virtual images empty of relationship with God, and shapes a virtual reality of idolatry.
But always the triumph of Orthodoxy remains an embrace of humility. We bow and venerate and make the sign of the Cross before icons as windows into eternity, and also as family portraits. In the same way, our very involvement in a parish Church family is a humbling experience, recognizing the importance of others in our lives, and we bow to each other at Forgiveness Sunday just as we will embrace at Agape Sunday, recognizing the image of Christ in each other. For as Jesus Christ said, His New Commandment is to love each other as He loved us. He laid down His life for us. This means we are to love one another not only as our self, but more than ourself.
The Triumph of Orthodoxy really in a sense lies in our embrace of worldly defeat as Christians. That the Triumph of Orthodoxy is not of this world but otherworldly, is seen in the cup that Jesus Christ drank for us. Great milestones of Orthodox Church history are the loss of Constantinople, the persecutions by Islamists, and the Communist takeover of Russia. But these also involved humiliations that were great lessons for our faith and a source of martyrs who intercede for us and whose example in Christ help light our way to salvation.
Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov wrote about this in a wonderful short essay called “The Cup of Christ” which is most appropriate for this first Sunday in Lent. He wrote:
“Two beloved disciples asked the Lord for thrones of glory, and He gave them His Cup (Matt. 20:23). The Cup of Christ is suffering. But for those who drink from it on earth, the Cup of Christ grants participation in Christ’s Kingdom. It prepares for them the thrones of eternal glory in heaven. We stand in silence before the Cup of Christ, nor can any man complain about it or reject it; for He, Who commanded us to taste it, first drank of it Himself. O tree of knowledge of good and evil! You killed our ancestors in Paradise, you deceived them by the delusions of sensual pleasure and the delusions of reason. Christ, the Redeemer of the fallen, brought His Cup of Salvation into this world — to the fallen and to those who are exiled from Paradise.
“The bitterness of this Cup cleanses the heart from forbidden, destructive and sinful pleasure. Through the humility that flows from it in abundance, the pride of understanding on the carnal level is mortified. To him who drinks from the Cup with faith and patience, the eternal life, which was -and still is – lost to him by his tasting of forbidden fruit, will be restored. I will accept the Cup of Christ — the cup of salvation. The Cup is accepted when the Christian bears earthly tribulation in the spirit of humility learnt from the Gospel. St. Peter turned swiftly with a naked sword to defend the God-Man, Who was surrounded by evil doers; but Jesus said to Peter:‘Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?’ (John 18:11).
“So, too, when disaster surrounds you, you should comfort and strengthen your soul, saying,‘The Cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?‘ The Cup is bitter: at first sight all human reasoning is confounded. Surmount reason by faith and drink courageously from the bitter Cup: it is the Father Who gives it to you, He who is all good and all wise. It is neither the Pharisees, nor Caiaphas, nor Judas who prepared the Cup; it is neither Pilate nor his soldiers who give it! ‘The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?’
“Pharisees think evil, Judas betrays, Pilate orders the unlawful killing, the soldiers of the government execute his order. Through their evil deeds all these prepared their own true perdition. Do not prepare for yourself just such a perdition by remembering evil, by longing for and dreaming of revenge, and by indignation against your enemies. The heavenly Father is almighty and all-seeing. He sees your affliction, and if He had found it necessary and profitable to withdraw the Cup from you, He would certainly have done so….
“How can we reject the Cup, which is the means of attaining this Kingdom and growing with it? I will accept the Cup — the gift of God. For the Cup of Christ is the gift of God. The great Paul writes to the Philippians ‘For unto you is given in behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake’ (Phil. 1:29). You receive the Cup, which seemingly comes from the hand of man. What is it to you whether the bearer of the Cup acts righteously or unrighteously? As a follower of Jesus, your concern is: to act righteously; to receive the Cup with thanksgiving to God and with a living faith; and to courageously drink it to the dregs.
“In receiving the Cup from the hand of man, remember it is the Cup of Him, Who is not only innocent but All-Holy. Thinking on this, remind yourself, and other suffering sinners, of the words that the blessed and enlightened thief spoke when he was crucified on the right hand of the crucified God-Man: ‘We receive the due reward of our deeds… Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom’ (Luke 23:41-42)…. Pray to the Lord on behalf of those who have insulted and outraged you that what they have done for you should be repaid by a temporal blessing and the eternal reward of salvation, and that, when they stand before Christ to be judged, it should be counted to them as if it had been an act of virtue. Although your heart does not wish to act in this way, compel it to do so, because only those who do violence to their own heart, in fulfilling the commandments of the Gospel, can inherit Heaven. If you have not the will to act in this way, then you have not the will to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. Look deep within yourself and consider searchingly: have you not found another teacher, the teacher of hatred – the devil – and fallen under his power?….
“A living faith in Christ teaches one to receive the Cup of Christ, and the Cup of Christ inspires hope in the heart of him who receives it; and hope in Christ gives strength and consolation to the heart. What torment, what torment of hell, to complain or to murmur against the Cup that is pre-ordained from above!… It is sinful to complain of neighbors, when they are the instruments of our suffering; still more sinful is it when we cry out against the Cup that comes down to us straight from Heaven — from the right hand of God. But he who drinks the cup – with thanksgiving to God and blessings on his neighbor – achieves holy serenity — the grace of the peace of Christ. It is as if already he enjoys God’s spiritual Paradise….
“Righteous Job heard bitter news. Tiding after tiding came to pierce his steadfast heart; the last of these was the hardest: all his sons and daughters had been struck down suddenly by a cruel and violent death. In his great sorrow, he rent his clothes and covered his head with ashes. And then – in submissive faith – he fell down upon the ground, and worshipped the Lord saying ‘I myself came naked from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, the Lord has taken away: as it seemed good to the Lord, so has it come to pass; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ ” So wrote St. Ignatius Brianchaninov.
Brothers and sisters, the Triumph of Orthodoxy stems from defeat and humiliation, in our lives as in Church history. In bowing ourselves before the icons, we relive this and pass it forward in the spark of God’s love in our hearts that overcomes the world. Job from his humiliation said ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ and we are told in the end (in the Septuagint) that he died in hope of the resurrection. Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky of blessed memory, the founding first hierarch of our beloved Russian Church Abroad in the sorrow of the Russian Civil War, famously taught that it was our Lord’s acceptance of the Cup at Gethsemane that marked a special moment in our redemption. For the tears that He shed like blood there, when He said He would take the cup, and uttered the words “Not my will but Thy will be done,” were for our benefit. They expressed His compassionate sorrow for our sins. So, too, all of Lent and the Triumph of Orthodoxy in particular, seen in the windows of the icons, teach us to empty ourselves in Christ so that we may bear the life-giving Cross of loving one another more than ourselves. For ultimately the Cup of Christ is the Cup of the Chalice in which together lies our sharing of His Body and Blood. Glory to Jesus Christ!
Holy Gospel according to John for the First Sunday of Lent
§5 [1:43-51]
At that time: Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and found Philip and said unto him, ‘Follow Me.’ Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said unto him, ‘We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and the Prophets wrote: Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’ And Nathanael said unto him, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said unto him, ‘Come and see.’ Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and said of him, ‘Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!’ Nathanael said unto Him, ‘How knowest Thou me?’ Jesus answered and said unto him, ‘Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.’ Nathanael answered and said unto Him, ‘Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel.’ Jesus answered and said unto him, ‘Because I said unto thee, ‘I saw thee under the fig tree,’ believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things than these.’ And He said unto him, ‘Verily, verily I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’
