An homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers.

The Ascension Sabbath

Dearest, Christ is Ascended!

Today our Lord ascends to heaven with a shout. This both fulfills the Resurrection of the Pascha season, which just ended yesterday, and points us toward Pentecost ,which will arrive in 10 days. For the Ascension reminds us of our need as Orthodox Christians to be looking up always to the example of our Lord Jesus Christ, and invoking him through our prayer without ceasing and our way of living and participation in His Body the Church. At the Ascension, He brings our human form and nature, as He is both fully God and fully man, to sit at the right hand of God the Father, in completion of our redemption and salvation. From there, He will send us the Holy Spirit marking the full establishment of His Church as the realization of biblical Israel and the home of our salvation, through all the Church’s mysteries.

That great Orthodox saint Gregory Palamas in fact associates the Ascension with the fulfilment of the Sabbath as laid down in the law, the Sabbath which has become the day of Resurrection every day for us as Christians. I’ll share here brief selections from St. Gregory’s two homilies on the Feast of the Ascension.

The holy father writes (translation by Christopher Veniamin from St. Gregory Palamas: The Homilies):

THE JEWS KEPT THE FEAST of the Passover, the crossing from Egypt to the land of Palestine, as laid down in their law, and we have celebrated the gospel Pascha, the passage of our human nature in Christ from death to life (cf. John 5:24, 1 John 3:14), from corruption to incorruption (cf. 1 Cor. 15:42, 50). What words can express the superiority of this celebration over the solemnities of the old law and the events commemorated on its holy days? No one can adequately state how much more excellent it is. The enhypostatic Wisdom of the most high Father, God’s pre-eternal Word who is beyond all being, who was united with us in His love for mankind and lived among us (cf. John 1:14), has now revealed through His actions a cause for celebration even more distinctly superior than Easter’s excellence.

For we now celebrate the transition of our nature in Him, not just from the subterranean regions up on to the earth, but from the earth to the heaven of heavens, and to the throne above the heavens of Him who rules over all. Today the Lord not only stood with His disciples after His resurrection, but was also parted from them and was taken up into heaven as they watched (Acts 1:9–11), ascended and entered into the true Holy of Holies and sat down on the right hand of the Father, far above all principality and power and every name and honour that is known and named, either in this world, or in that which is to come, saying, “Be ye ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh” (Matt. 24:44). In this way He made all the days into blessed sabbaths for those who choose to obey Him perfectly, and so in this respect as well He did not abolish but fulfilled the law 

We, by contrast, are entangled in worldly affairs, but if you abstain from acquisitiveness and mutual hatred, and strive to speak the truth and be chaste, then you too will make every day a sabbath by being inactive in evil. When a day comes that is especially profitable for salvation, you must free yourselves even from blameless work and words, patiently stay in God’s Church, listen with understanding to the reading and teaching and contritely attend to the supplications, prayers and hymns to God. Thus you too will fulfil the sabbath, ordering your conduct according to the gospel of God’s grace and lifting up the eyes of your understanding towards Christ sitting above the vaults of heaven with the Father and the Spirit. He has made us sons of God, not sons adopted in name alone (cf. Rom. 8:14–17), but having become members of one family with God and each other in the communion of the divine Spirit, through Christ’s own body and blood.

Let us preserve this union with one another by indissoluble love. We should always look towards our Father in heaven, for we are no longer “of the earth, earthy”, like “the first man”, but like “the second man, the Lord from heaven” (1 Cor. 15:47). “As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:48–49). As we lift up our hearts to Him we shall behold the great spectacle of our nature united for ever with the fire of the divinity. And laying aside everything to do with the coats of skins in which we were clothed because of the transgression (cf. Gen. 3:21), let us stand on holy ground (cf. Exod. 3:5), each one of us marking out his own holy ground through virtue and steadfast inclination towards God. In this way we shall be bold when God comes in fire, and run forward to be enlightened and once enlightened live with Him forever, to the glory of Him who is the light above all, the threefold Sun and sovereign Brightness, to whom belong all glory, might, honour and worship, now and for ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

St. Gregory continues:

Let us take up our cross and follow Him (Matt. 16:24), having crucified the flesh with its passions and desires (Gal. 5:24), that we may be glorified together with Him (Rom. 8:17), and rise with Him, and after our resurrection be taken up to Him, as He was taken up today to the Father. He was standing in the midst of the disciples, as Luke says (Luke 24:36), or rather, He appeared to them, as Mark records (Mark 16:14) – for He did not arrive at the moment He appeared, but was always with them and showed Himself visibly when He wished. So, as He was standing in the midst of His disciples He ordered them to preach (Mark 16:15), gave them the promise of the Holy Spirit (Luke 24:49) and declared that He would be with them to the end (Matt. 28:20). After these words, He lifted up His hands and blessed them, and was taken up as they watched (Luke 24:50–51). In this way He showed that those who obeyed Him would also be carried up to God after rising again. He was separated from them in the body (though as God He was with them) and, as He had promised them, He was taken up and sat on the right hand of the Father with our human flesh. As He lived, died, rose and ascended, so we all live, die and are resurrected. Not all of us, however, will attain to the ascension, but only those for whom to live is Christ, and to die for Him is gain (Phil. 1:21), those who, before they died, crucified sin through repentance and a way of life in accord with the gospel. After the resurrection of all, they alone will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air (cf. 1 Thess. 4:17). A cloud also received the Lord as He ascended, as Luke relates in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 1:9). After the ascension the disciples did not see Him with their bodily eyes but with the eyes of their souls, yet they worshipped Him (Luke 24:52).346 Let us do the same, then, like them, stay in peace (for Jerusalem means peace) keeping peace within ourselves and with one another. Let each of us go into our own upper room (Acts 1:13), our mind, and stay there praying, and let us purify ourselves from passionate and base thoughtts. In this way we shall not miss the coming of the Comforter, and shall worship the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in spirit and in truth, now and for ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Dear brothers and sisters, in the illustration of how, as St. Gregory teaches, the Ascension brings us a sense of the Sabbath every day, with our Lord in heaven with the Father, let us now also prepare in these coming 10 days to receive the Holy Spirit sent from heaven to the Church. For we are together in worship of Him the Body of Christ. He told us, although He ascended, that Lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. As we empty ourselves in Christ each day, we do not assert ourselves, but find ourselves in Him, and He redeems and transforms us. Thus this season from Ascension to Pentecost puts us in reminder in body and soul, how theosis, or oneness with God’s uncreated grace, is our purpose and fulfillment in the Orthodox Church of Jesus Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit. Let us in prayerful peace await that full coming, at Pentecost with help of the prayers of the saints and especially our Lady the Theotokos. Our Lady, present at the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the Ascension, and the Pentecost, lifts us all up with her prayers to her Son, reminding us also at this time of year of her motherhood of us in the Church, and of our oneness with one another with Him, our Lord and God, through the Holy Spirit.

Christ is Ascended!

An Homily from St. John’s for the last Sunday in Pascha, 7534/2026, by Priest Paul Siewers.

Christ is Risen!

An old English hymn points to the meaning in Orthodox Christian belief of the healing of the blind man we remember on this last Sunday of Pascha:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind but now I see.

In Orthodoxy, grace goes deeper than in any Protestant or Catholic belief, because the Orthodox Church preserves the full teaching and experience in our mysteries and saints of the uncreated grace of God. This means the uncreated light, known in our tradition of hesychasm, and even in modern times termed “Orthodox psychotherapy” in transfigurative effect.

Saint Seraphim of Sarov famously showed this to Nicholas Motovilov, who wrote an account of that experience. Motovilov recalled: http://orthodoxinfo.com/praxis/wonderful.aspx

“Then Father Seraphim took me very firmly by the shoulders and said: ‘We are both in the Spirit of God now, my son. Why don’t you look at me?’

“I replied: “I cannot look, Father, because your eyes are flashing like lightning. Your face has become brighter than the sun, and my eyes ache with pain.”

“Father Seraphim said: ‘Don’t be alarmed, your Godliness! Now you yourself have become as bright as I am. You are now in the fullness of the Spirit of God yourself; otherwise you would not be able to see me as I am.’

Then, bending his head towards me, he whispered softly in my ear: “Thank the Lord God for His unutterable mercy to us! You saw that I did not even cross myself; and only in my heart I prayed mentally to the Lord God and said within myself: ‘Lord, grant him to see clearly with his bodily eyes that descent of Thy Spirit which Thou grantest to Thy servants when Thou art pleased to appear in the light of Thy magnificent glory.’….’

After these words I glanced at his face and there came over me an even greater reverent awe. Imagine in the center of the sun, in the dazzling light of its midday rays, the face of a man talking to you. You see the movement of his lips and the changing expression of his eyes, you hear his voice, you feel someone holding your shoulders; yet you do not see his hands, you do not even see yourself or his figure, but only a blinding light spreading far around for several yards and illumining with its glaring sheen both the snow-blanket which covered the forest glade and the snow-flakes which besprinkled me and the great Elder. You can imagine the state I was in!…

I answered: “I feel such calmness and peace in my soul that no words can express it.”

“This, your Godliness,” said Father Seraphim, “is that peace of which the Lord said to His disciples: My peace I give unto you; not as the world gives, give I unto you (Jn. 14:21). If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you (Jn. 15:19). But be of good cheer; I have overcome the world (Jn. 16:33). And to those people whom this world hates but who are chosen by the Lord, the Lord gives that peace which you now feel within you, the peace which, in the words of the Apostle, passes all understanding (Phil. 4:7). The Apostle describes it in this way, because it is impossible to express in words the spiritual well-being which it produces in those into whose hearts the Lord God has infused it. Christ the Saviour calls it a peace which comes from His own generosity and is not of this world, for no temporary earthly prosperity can give it to the human heart; it is granted from on high by the Lord God Himself, and that is why it is called the peace of God. What else do you feel?” Father Seraphim asked me.

“An extraordinary sweetness,” I replied.

And he continued: “This is that sweetness of which it is said in Holy Scripture: They will be inebriated with the fatness of Thy house; and Thou shalt make them drink of the torrent of Thy delight (Ps. 35:8) [16]. And now this sweetness is flooding our hearts and coursing through our veins with unutterable delight. From this sweetness our hearts melt as it were, and both of us are filled with such happiness as tongue cannot tell. What else do you feel?”

“An extraordinary joy in all my heart.”

And Father Seraphim continued: ‘When the Spirit of God comes down to man and overshadows him with the fullness of His inspiration [17], then the human soul overflows with unspeakable joy, for the Spirit of God fills with joy whatever He touches…. Yet however comforting may be this joy which you now feel in your heart, it is nothing in comparison with that of which the Lord Himself by the mouth of His Apostle said that that joy eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for them that love Him (I Cor. 2:9). Foretastes of that joy are given to us now, and if they fill our souls with such sweetness, well-being and happiness, what shall we say of that joy which has been prepared in heaven for those who weep here on earth? And you, my son, have wept enough in your life on earth; yet see with what joy the Lord consoles you even in this life! Now it is up to us, my son, to add labours to labours in order to go from strength to strength (Ps. 83:7), and to come to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ (Eph. 4:13), so that the words of the Lord may be fulfilled in us: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall grow wings like eagles; and they shall run and not be weary (Is. 40:31); they will go from strength to strength, and the God of gods will appear to them in the Sion (Ps. 83:8) of realization and heavenly visions….What else do you feel, your Godliness?’

I answered: “An extraordinary warmth.”

“How can you feel warmth, my son? Look, we are sitting in the forest. It is winter out-of-doors, and snow is underfoot. There is more than an inch of snow on us, and the snowflakes are still falling. What warmth can there be?”

I answered: “Such as there is in a bath-house when the water is poured on the stone and the steam rises in clouds.”

“And the smell?” he asked me. “Is it the same as in the bath-house?”

“No,” I replied. “There is nothing on earth like this fragrance. When in my dear mother’s lifetime I was fond of dancing and used to go to balls and parties, my mother would sprinkle me with scent which she bought at the best shops in Kazan. But those scents did not exhale such fragrance.”

And Father Seraphim, smiling pleasantly, said: ‘I know it myself just as well as you do, my son, but I am asking you on purpose to see whether you feel it in the same way. It is absolutely true, your Godliness! The sweetest earthly fragrance cannot be compared with the fragrance which we now feel, for we are now enveloped in the fragrance of the Holy Spirit of God. What on earth can be like it? Mark, your Godliness, you have told me that around us it is warm as in a bath-house; but look, neither on you nor on me does the snow melt, nor does it underfoot; therefore, this warmth is not in the air but in us. It is that very warmth about which the Holy Spirit in the words of prayer makes us cry to the Lord: ‘Warm me with the warmth of Thy Holy Spirit!’ … And so it must be in actual fact, for the grace of God must dwell within us, in our heart, because the Lord said: The Kingdom of God is within you (Lk. 17:21). By the Kingdom of God the Lord meant the grace of the Holy Spirit. This Kingdom of God is now within us, and the grace of the Holy Spirit shines upon us and warms us from without as well. It fills the surrounding air with many fragrant odours, sweetens our senses with heavenly delight and floods our hearts with unutterable joy…. Our faith consists not in the plausible words of earthly wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit and power (cp. I Cor.2:4)….’”

Brothers and sisters, the Body of Christ, His Orthodox Church, in her mysteries and wisdom, supports our understanding of this and our participation even through the mysteries and holy saints. 

“Find peace in your heart and thousands around you will be saved,” Saint Seraphim said.

This past week we had our first funeral and burial service here at St. John’s. The newly departed John Sam’s sight is now opened to this uncreated light of God. Let us pray for him in his 40-day transition, and for ourselves that our spiritual eyes may be opened too in our precious time on earth, in preparation for that journey. 

As the Righteous Hieromonk Seraphim Rose, an American convert and spiritual apprentice to our patron St. John, said: “It is later than you think. Hasten therefore to do the work of God.”

Christ is Risen!

Is one of the above images not like the others? From the top: Icon of Hieromonk Seraphim Rose, the process for whose glorification was blessed recently by the ROCOR Bishops Council; profile photo of the spokesman for the Fordham Orthodox Studies Center, Sergei Chapnin; and a screen shot of a less-than-gracious Substack message from philosopher David Bentley Hart.

—

Writer Sergei Chapnin, who was pushed out of a high-ranking position at the Moscow Patriarchate and became spokesman for the Fordham University Orthodox Studies Center in New York City, earlier this month launched multiple online posts opposing the glorification of Hieromonk Seraphim.

This followed the Bishops Council of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia announcing it had blessed the process for glorification of the widely revered California monk-priest, for sainthood.

Chapnin was not the only favorite of the Fordham Center to go on the attack online.

American academic David Bentley Hart (a Maryland native who studied at Cambridge and has the accent to prove it) jumped in as well, calling Father Seraphim a “moron” in a Substack message. Hart was recently featurd in a video sermon on the Fordham site and is its kind of Western intellectual.

Their angst over the ROCOR announcement arguably illustrates the dearth of saintliness in US academic rhetoric more than anything else.

But Chapnin’s responses — on social media, at the Fordham-allied  The Wheel, and on the Public Discourse blog of the Fordham Center– not only reflect a common theme of embarrassment over the traditional mindededness of Father Seraphim, but a familiar tactic in American secular culture: “It’s all just political.”

In higher education in America, when traditional cultural and religious differences are under attack, the justification for the resulting cultural insensitivity is: “It’s just political.”

That indeed is Chapnin’s approach toward Father Seraphim, a spiritual son of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco. The Russian emigre argues that the process of glorifying the American Hieromonk is motivated by the desire to please politically conservative U.S. converts.

Yet Father Seraphim’s writings and translations and life have inspired many American converts to Orthodoxy since the 1970s, with miracles ascribed to his intercession, not politically connected.

The aggressive hostility toward his glorification by online influencers such as Chapnin and Hart illustrates a cultural gap between the nexus of their network at the Orthodox Studies Center at Fordham, and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, of which Father Seraphim was a member.

The Center, in addition to being based at a Catholic institution, is strongly allied with the Istanbul-based Greek Ecumenical Patriarchate (EP). That wing of world Orthodoxy is at odds with the Moscow Patriarchate because of the support by the EP of a newly minted nationalistic Ukrainian Church and resulting persecution of the canonical and historical Ukrainian Orthodox Church there.

The Ecumenical Patriarchate is also in its intellectual culture out of sync with the traditionally oriented ROCOR, and decidedly more ecumenist in efforts at connections with Roman Catholicism and the West — ironically in order to shore up the EP’s own precarious political situation in Turkey.

Fordham’s Orthodox Studies Center itself is known for what critics call a “renovationist” empathy for secular American pansexualism and care-free ecumenism. Hart, for example, controversially advocates for universal salvation, a view at odds with historical Orthodox Church councils but in line with American secular elite thinking. (I have argued that he overstated his patristic-era sources in that advocacy, in “From Eriugena to Dostoevsky: Christian ‘Universalism’ in Hiberno-Latin Contexts and its Continued Significance,” in  Sources of Knowledge: Studies in Old English and Anglo-Latin Literature in Honour of Charles D. Wright; Brepols, 2023.)

Meanwhile, the lead professors at the Fordham Center,  Aristotle Papanikolaou  and George Demacopoulos, cultivate work alleging Americanization of Orthodoxy by supposedly right-wing converts. But, if we must fit everyone into demographic categories, they themselves arguably come from a background of “ethnic Orthodox” immigrant aspirations for Americanized success. The alleged “deplorables” among the American  hoi polloi  of Orthodox conversions may not be a good fit with Hellenistic phyletism of many of the EP’s allies — at least when using the same broad brush as the Center tends to use on converts. However, their zeal for their adopted faith often seems less “Americanized” than the attitudes of the secular academics.

My direct contact with the Fordham Center came several years ago when I as an Orthodox university professor was asked to join a phone conference call to discuss participation in a forum of articles on Orthodox writer Rod Dreher’s book  The Benedict Option. Dreher also is an Orthodox convert, who for a time belonged to a ROCOR parish until it closed and he moved. He is known for his conservative views. The phone conference was (I had thought) to be a discussion by academics about preparing a kind of special journal issue or online forum on the book. Dreher’s work had called for Orthodox Christians in the West to form more intentional communities to resist Western secularism.

But my sense from the phone discussion was that the effort was more to attack Dreher’s social conservatism than to engage in a scholarly project. One could even argue that the project was political. But it seemed to me to be based in a cultural gap between the academic culture of the organizers and Dreher’s perspective. Arguably in my view that gap stemmed from a bias again American converts to Orthodoxy who did not share a more secular academic outlook. As both a professor at a secular university and rector of an Orthodox parish of mainly converts, I have a unique vantage point for recognizing such bias.

Reducing the spiritual experience of American converts to secular politics reflects a reductionist view, which removes spiritual agency from the varied experiences of actual American converts I encounter in my pastoral work. Such instrumentalist or transactional analysis easily becomes objectification, redolent of the determinism of what has been called a”cultural Marxism” of Western academia by both friends and foes (the former notably including UCLA’s Douglas Kellner).

Elsewhere I have argued that similar unfair academic critiques of American converts to Orthodoxy emanating from the Fordham network, alleging that they in effect are acting as foreign agents for the Russian Federation, has a Fu Manchu Orientalist-like outlook.

Speaking from a depth and breadth of experience, I can say such accusations are not only absurd, but akin to Chapnin’s political reductionism.

Elevating the political above issues of tradition and spirituality is a hallmark of Western secularism. It abandons sensitivity to cultural difference in the name of supposed scientific objectivity. Arguments in academia get termed political when obfuscating unpleasant issues about cultural bias. Yet often such bias is the bottom line.

True, the political and cultural often meld. In world Orthodoxy, there is a history of political division in the “byzantine” world of the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s efforts to shore up Western support for its precarious position in Turkey, given its sense of rivalry with the much larger Russian Church. This involves a geopolitical fault line that is also cultural between the EU/NATO, a realm in which the Istanbul Patriarchate moves comfortably, and Russia. But academic defenders of the EP’s geopolitical-cultural positioning such as the Fordham Center (whose leaders are Archons or designated prime defenders of the Istanbul Patriarchate) do not term their own actions as either politically or culturally biased. Rather, they say they are engaged in impersonal intellectual analysis.

Father Seraphim’s context is both more complicated and personal than such analysis can capture. Just so are the lives of American converts to Orthodoxy.

Father Seraphim’s personal trajectory was transformed by the Orthodox faith. He came to serve in an exile Church resisting atheistic communism spiritually, not primarily politically. More basically, his life is an illustration of the otherworldly power of spiritual conversion in Christ. His own suffering experience was in a way like that of a 1960s American version of St. Mary of Egypt, though someone equipped and inspired apologetically, with the help and prayers of St. John and others, and in earlier training through graduate work first at the former American Academy of Asian Studies and then at Berkeley, to help articulate and translate Orthodoxy to Anglo-America.

Chapnin’s argument against glorification of Father Seraphim includes the political case that the monk-priest opposed ecumenism, which Chapnin now accuses ROCOR of engaging in positively by having joined communion again with Moscow in the past two decades. Thus, he argues, weirdly given the EP-aligned perspective of the Fordham Center, that Father Seraphim is unsuited politically for glorification by the now allegedly ecumenistic ROCOR.

But that argument seeks to apply a situation from today back to Father Seraphim’s lifetime in a different context, decades ago, involving viewpoints he shared with many in ROCOR at that time. In addition, it makes arguably unfair generalizations about ROCOR’s situation today.

Some anti-ecumenists use the same type of arguments Chapnin raises about ROCOR’s re-unification with the Moscow Patriarchate as “too ecumenist” to target the Ecumenical Patriarchate for the same reason. Perhaps politically now the EP itself should lend moral support to the glorification of Father Seraphim to fend off its own critics?

None of this confusion is really about authentic Orthodox Christianity of the heart.

Sergei Chapnin is right to criticize politics in the Church, pointing out the tendency of all humans to sin out of pride and envy and lust for power and comfort, among whom I am the greatest of sinners.

But the Fordham Center lacks self-reflection on its own politics on behalf of its favorite Patriarchate, when its Communications Director veers off into a media campaign against another Orthodox jurisdiction’s process for glorifying one of her own.

And ignores the cultural difference.

***

Note: Another focus of criticism of glorification of Hieromonk Seraphim, now being entwined with the “political” argument and and following the secularist playbook of throwing all manner of worldly accusations against expressions of traditional Christianity, is the alleged history as a sexual abuser of his monastic brother Father Herman (Gleb Podmoshensky), who was defrocked from ROCOR after Hieromonk Seraphim’s repose. A detailed refutation of the validity of that criticism of the glorification of Fr. Seraphim can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=1632559311380612&set=a.550698192900068

An homily from the funeral and burial service for John Sam on the Fifth Friday of Pascha, 7534/2026, at St. John’s, by Priest Paul Siewers.

Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!

There are a few words of our Lord Jesus Christ that are remembered in the Acts of the Apostles but not in the Gospels directly. Indeed, the Evangelist John said the world could not hold all the books that could be written of our Lord’s words and deeds. Indeed, they surround us in the very Creation. But those few extra words of our Lord quoted in Acts are these: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

And the Apostle Paul highlighted those words by writing, “God loveth a cheerful giver.”

In my memory of John Sam, he will always be a cheerful giver. At times mischievously direct, yet I always remember him with a smile exemplifying the faith of the believer.

He departed from our sight in the Pascha Season of Resurrection. His passing was peaceful, quiet, as if falling asleep while passing into another dimension of life, as prayers and Scripture were read around him by those who love him.

It is a blessing to be in the presence of a believer when he passes thus. And we now must pray for him especially during his 40-day transition, moving in and toward the particular judgment. John himself spent a good part of the last months of his life in prayer. When told that he did not have long to live, he lived longer than the expectations of the physician. But he did so with renewed prayer.

When I would visit him and his brother Innocent at the hospital or nursing home and bring communion, when the prayers were over, and we had talked, and I got up to leave, John would always ask: Can we say more prayers now?

Brothers and sisters, so should we also be in our lives now with John as our example. We are all granted time on earth for repentance and for service to our God, His Church, and one another, in the love that our Lord commanded and exemplified for us. Jesus Christ said His New Commandment is to love one another as He has loved us. This goes beyond the Great but Old commandment of loving our neighbor as ourself. He has commanded us, following His example, to love our neighbor more than our self. How much we all have to do, and how much to repent each day, emptying ourselves in Him instead of asserting ourselves. If nothing else and more than anything, we can pray, “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me” throughout each day. May we do so with John’s persistence and humility.

We pray for him now as we also pray for his brother Innocent, Bob, for strength and in love. Innocent, God has a plan for you, brother, in you being here still on earth, and likely it is the plan He has for all of us, myself more than all, which is for our repentance and prayer. To start, we each need to be there for John in prayer during his 40 days. And put ourselves in God’s hands to do His will and not ours.

St. Gregory the Theologian wrote that the Father accepts Him, Christ, in His sacrifice on the Cross, though He neither asked for this nor needed it, because of the divine plan. And that the human being must be sanctified by the humanity of God as our Lord did, so that God Himself might set us free, conquer the tyrant death by force, and lead us back to Himself the Father through the mediation of the Son. The Son also planned His sacrifice to the honor of the Father, to Whom it is manifest that He yields all things. These things we know in part from Christ. But there is a great mystery also, the mystery of love and of co-suffering compassion, as mentioned in our prayers this morning.

The Cross, a sign of death, has become through Christ a sign of victory. Likewise, as St. Gregory added, drawing on the shadows of the Old Testament, the bronze serpent in Numbers was hung up to oppose the biting serpents. This was not as a type of the One Who suffered for us, but as an antitype. It saves those who look at it, not because they believe it is alive, but because it has been killed. Yet it mortifies with itself the powers subject to it. So we know and believe that Jesus Christ died for us in His human nature, fully God and fully man, and arose again from the dead so that His death became a trampling down death by death for all of us. As St. Gregory concluded, “what is a fitting funeral oration for it from us? O death where is your sting? O Hades where is your victory? By the Cross you have been overthrown, by the Giver of life, you have been put to death.”

So the Cross near the end of this Pascha Season takes us beyond death, turns death backwards, and shows it to be dead itself. So during this season at the altar table, we turn the Cross around so that the Resurrection side faces out, and likewise flip the Gospel’s book cover to show the Resurrection of Him Whom we worship. 

Dear ones, let John be our example, in using our time here for the best. Let us start with seeking a deeper repentance and a deeper state of prayer with God’s help. Force yourself, as our dear Vladyka Luke says. For God energizes us in all things, as the Apostle Paul says. We do not take a breath without the Holy Spirit breathing through us, and so let that breath be in prayer. Let us remember the words of the Righteous Hieromonk Seraphim Rose, a spiritual son of our patron St. John, when he said: “It is later than you think. Hasten therefore to do the work of God.”

Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!

In May on our Church calendar we move from Pascha into the Ascension to Pentecost, and touch on the opening of the Apostles Fast.

This is an “in-between” time appropriate for us mortals seeking redemption from our Lord, marking our growth from our baptismal roots in His Resurrection, into branches God willing of the Vine of the Body of Christ, His Church.

The Resurrection of our Lord blooms for us in the founding of His Church at Pentecost, symbolized in the green leafy branches we place in our Church following Russian tradition, but fitting for the Northern Appalachian Penn’s Woods in which we live.

Between Pascha and Pentecost, He ascended to sit in human form at the right hand with the Father. What a transfigurative honor for us if we empty ourselves in Him; what a great gateway for our salvation. As St. Cyprian of Carthage noted, he who would have God as Father must have the Church as Mother. So we in our community and personal lives bloom and grow in the grace of God’s uncreated light energizing us.

From this vantage point given to us by His grace in the Church calendar, we can reflect both back on our Lord’s Passion Week and Resurrection, and forward to the missionary ascetic struggling of the Apostles Fast. Our Lord’s sacrifice–to whom?

St. Gregory the Theologian (from Fr. Demetrios Carellas):

“It is clear that the Father accepts Him – though He neither asked for this, nor needed it – because of the divine plan, and because the human being must be sanctified by the humanity of God, so that God Himself might set us free; conquer the tyrant by force; and lead us back to Himself through the mediation of the Son, Who also planned this to the honor of the Father — to Whom it is manifest that He yields all things. This much we have said of Christ, and the greater part will be revered by silence. But the bronze serpent [Numbers 21:4-9] is hung up to oppose the biting serpents, not as a type [a representation] of the One Who suffered for us but as an antitype. It saves those who look at it, not because they believe it is alive but because it has been killed; and kills [or mortifies] with itself the powers subject to it — being destroyed, as it indeed deserves. And what is a fitting funeral oration for it from us? ‘O death where is your sting? O Hades where is your victory?’ [I Cor. 15:55] By the Cross you have been overthrown, by the Giver of life, you have been put to death. You are lifeless, dead, motionless, without activity, even if you [death] who are lifted high on a pole, keep the form of a serpent(*).” [Part 21 of 28]

Here the Theologian offers insight into a great mystery, as Fr Demetrios’ grandson Evangelos explains from the Greek: “In his masterful allegorical exegesis, Saint Gregory, like many of his fellow Church Fathers, identifies the Old Testament brazen serpent with the Cross of Christ. ‘It saves those who look at it,’ the faithful Christians, ‘not because they believe it is alive,’ as in early heretical beliefs that could not believe God was capable of suffering, and thus held that the suffering and death of Christ was a kind of illusion or phantom, ‘but because it has been killed.’ We cannot have the Resurrection without the Passion. The powers subject to it, that is, the biting serpents, Death and Satan, are likewise slain with Christ by the Cross, however, they do not rise with Him. It is here that the subject Saint Gregory has in mind seems to shift, as he addresses a funeral oration not for Christ, but for those slain powers that do not rise with Him.”

So the Cross becomes for us in this season of the Ascension, Pentecost, and the Apostles, a witness to death on which depends the Resurrection–the death of our old selves as we grow forth, the seed God willing having fallen into the earth and died, so the wheat of the Bread of Life can grow through us, however unworthily.

This month we see further growth as a mission parish: Our first funeral, and our first burial in our consecrated Orthodox cemetery. This past year has seen our first catechisms, baptisms, chrismations, and wedding in our new Temple, which is dedicated to the Lord by His presence with us in the Eucharist and the prayers of our Church family of saints in the icons around us.

Appropriately to this new growth, we are training a new cadre of altar servers and readers of the Hours from among our newly enlightened ones baptized during the Pascha Season. We look forward to a missionary Orthodox film series in the community starting this summer season (stay tuned for details), together with outreach-fundraising food-sale projects, and more downtown missionary work in the communities of our region. And we rededicate ourselves to the ascetic ethos of the Orthodox Church in the Apostles Fast and our prayers (see the article on the Lestovka prayer ladder below), a Fast that we uphold on the ancient Church calendar even as it virtually disappears on the “modern” secular calendar adopted by some unfortunately.

But while we ask the Holy Ghost to keep us zealous in spirit for the faith, we must also seek humility from God for our mission work. As the Righteous Seraphim Rose (who our Council of Bishops blessed for the process of glorification recently) put it: “It is later than you think. Hasten therefore to do the work of God.”

Glory to God for all things!

(Note: This newsletter follows the Church calendar dating, not the civil calendar, so May 1 here is May 14 in secular dating; doubled numbers below, with a slash mark between, indicate first the Church calendar and then the civil calendar date.)

Above: Pentecost at Holy Trinity Monastery Cathedral, Jordanville, NY.

Weekly Services and Programs

Saturday Vigil, 4:30 p.m. Sunday Divine Liturgy 10 a.m. (Hours 9:40).
Regular programming: Orthodoxy Online, Saturday 10 to 11 a.m. (check with Priest Paul for link), and Orthodox Bible Study Sunday 2:30 p.m., Bucknell Barnes & Noble Cafe.
Confessions at Vigil, early Sunday, and by appointment.

May Calendar, Special Dates

May 1/14. Psalter reading for the repose of John Sam, 8 p.m.
May 2/15. Funeral and burial service for John Sam, 10 a.m.

May 4/17. Pascha procession after Sunday coffee hour in downtown Sunbury.

May 11/24. Sunday outreach procession through downtown Lewisburg after coffee hour.

May 7/20. Leave-taking of Pascha and Ascension Vigil, 6:30 p.m.
May 8/21. Feast of the Ascension, Liturgy 10 a.m. (Hours 9:40)

May 18/31. Feast of Pentecost, Liturgy 10 a.m. followed by Kneeling Vespers

May 26/June 8. Apostles Fast Begins.

MINISTRY/MISSION WORK UPDATES

Orthodoxy Online Class: The Online Orthodox class is discussing the Long Catechism of St. Philaret of Moscow together with the Catechism by Metropolitan Antony of ROCOR. This is a helpful weekly discussion not only for catechumens, inquirers, and new Orthodox Christians, but for those who are “experienced” as well, as a refresher. We meet Saturdays from 10 to 11 a.m., usually at Bucknell.zoom.us/my/Kentigern/.

Orthodox Bible Study: We continue our weekly Bible Study, currently exploring the Wisdom of Sirach in light of the Church Fathers.

Prison Ministry: Priest Paul continues his regular visits to pray and meet with interested inmates at the Muncy SCI, God willing starting to bring Communion to the Orthodox with assistance from Reader Nicholas.

Sisterhood of St. Olga of Alaska update: Mary (Sally) has kindly invited the sisterhood to meet for a spring tea at her home in Williamsport. Hopefully that will be scheduled soon. Watch for other projects.

Brotherhood of St. Alfred the Great update: Thanks to members of the brotherhood for taking up landscaping work and also we hope an outdoor retreat this summer.

University Ministry: We hope to welcome a new Orthodox Christian student entering Susquehanna University to our parish, as well as a new cadre of Orthodox students at Bucknell, where Fr. Paul is Orthodox chaplain. Let’s prepare for renewed outreach and support for college students in the area this fall.

Beautification of Temple: Please pray that the beautification of the exterior of our temple may be completed as a vehicle of outreach to our community, in installing the dome. Once the installation is made, we hope to proceed with plans for the permanent iconostasis, for which we already have the design.

A few ongoing reminders from our Church Tradition:

–Please dress respectfully for Church services. Men should wear long pants and long-sleeved shirts, women long skirts or dresses below the knees with shoulders covered, and women should wear head coverings at services but especially when coming up for communion.

–Attending Vigil, at least Vespers, is part of preparation for Holy Communion. If you cannot attend, then please ask Fr. Paul for guidance on prayers at home or away that you can say, and see him for a blessing early Sunday before taking Communion.

–As we enter this month into the Apostles Fast, please remember that confession should be made at least once each major fasting session, including now this new one. But preferably more frequently–once every two months is a good rule of thumb, or more often if you have committed any sin that would be an obstruction to receiving communion. If in doubt, partake of this healing Mystery of the Church!

–In preparing for Communion, remember the preparation prayers and fasting preparation. Check with Fr. Paul if you have questions. Preparation is about accountability and focus, not legalism, but it represents us making a sacrifice for God in our own lives and circumscribing our self-will for Him.

–If you will be absent for a good cause and visiting another Church to receive Communion, please receive Father Paul’s blessing in advance; other Priests appreciate knowing that your “home” parish Priest has blessed you to receive elsewhere as a visitor, and that you are prepared. Be sure also to contact the “host” Priest with whom you will be visiting in advance. Receiving is a blessed gift, not an entitlement, for all of us. Glory to God!

Contact Info

Father Paul, 570-863-9039, priestpauls@pm.me
www.stjohnthewonderworker.com

This Month’s Prayer Encouragement: The Lestovka Prayer Ladder

(Condensed from St. Demetrios Orthodox Monastery in Virginia, https://virginiamonks.org/products/old-believer-lestovka-leather-prayer-rope)

Every Orthodox Christian should have and use a prayer rope. Elder Ephraim of blessed memory called it “our weapon” in spiritual warfare; just as in secular life, some gun enthusiasts may “conceal carry” for security, as Orthodox Christians this is our way to focus our prayer in spiritual defense that is always needed. One type of Orthodox prayer rope is the Lestovka, described below.

Made of leather, handcrafted glass beads, or fabric the Lestovka or “Ladder” is a type of prayer rope used in Russia before the arrival of the Greek knotted prayer rope in the 18th century. It is still used today by pious Orthodox Christians, and has been historically used by various saints of the Moscow Patriarchate in modern times ( St. Seraphim of Vyritsa during the Soviet Union (20th century), St. Seraphim of Sarov (18th century), Alexandra (Melgunova), foundress of Diveyevo Convent (18th century), St. Sergius of Radonezh (14th century), St. Anna of Kashin (14th century), St. Ilya of Murom monastic of the Kyiv Caves (12th century), St. Erasmus of Kiev Caves (12th century), St. Mark the Mute of Sarov (18th century), Righteous Juliania, etc). 

The ladder outwardly resembles a flexible staircase and symbolizes in the ancient Slavic Christian tradition the ladder of spiritual ascent from the earth to Heaven. It should be carried reverently in your front pocket (not in the back pocket), and can be also stored when not in use on your prayer corner. 

The Lestovka has four lapostki (leaves or flaps), symbolizing the four Evangelists. The stitching around the leaves symbolizes the teaching of the Gospel. Sealed between the leaves are seven movable pieces, as tokens of the seven Great Mysteries of the Church. Where the Lestovka is joined together there are three steps at each end, and on the Lestovka itself are three more steps, for a total of nine, which stands for the nine orders of angels, and for the nine months during which the most pure Mother of God carried in her womb the Infant Who is before all ages. 

The empty space after between the juncture represents the earth. Then there are twelve counters (babochki, rungs, steps, beads or loops), signifying the twelve Apostles who walked on the earth with the Lord. Then there are thirty-eight counters for the weeks in which the Theotokos carried Christ in her womb. The next thirty-three counters represent the thirty-three years the Lord walked the earth. And the seventeen counters symbolize the seventeen prophets who prophesied concerning Christ.

Like other Prayer Ropes, any repeated prayer can be said, however the one used most often is the Jesus Prayer.

The traditional (but not required) way to pray the Lestovka:

First three and Last three steps: 
Alleluia Alleluia glory to thee o God x3 (prostration)

The empty space after the first three and last three steps: 
Lord have mercy (bow)

The steps: 
Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me

1st through 3rd big steps on main “ladder”: 
Remember me; O Lord; when thou comest into thy kingdom (prostration)

At the end of the Lestovka after all other prayers have been said:

God be merciful to me a sinner (bow)

Thou hast created me, O Lord have mercy on me (bow)

The meaning of these short prayers is always the same: a person acknowledges God as Almighty, realizing his unworthiness before Him, understands his sinfulness and spiritual weakness, and asks the Most Merciful God for forgiveness of all his sins; bringing forth the worthy fruit of repentance. 

At the end of the prayer rule on the lestovka, it is proper to take the flaps in ones left hand and pray: “Lord, have mercy” (three times). Then you move to the other side and praise God: “Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.”

When praying on the lestovka, one should also not forget about bodily feats – prostrations to the ground and waist. Prostrations are made on the Alleluia and large steps (9 prostrations). When performing prostrations, it is necessary if possible to use a prayer rug or do the prostration so that the lestovka does not hit the ground (by placing it into your front pocket or holding it in your closed fist). 

Here is an example of a prayer rule for praying 10 lestovka: the first seven ladders are to Jesus Christ (they can be easily counted by moving), the eighth ladder is to the Guardian Angel, the ninth ladder is to John the Baptist, and the tenth is to the Most Holy Theotokos.

Information on how to use the Lestovka can be found in the following article:
Edinovertsi’s Treasure: The Rule of Home Prayer / OrthoChristian.Com

The following video from Fr. Deacon Phillipexplains the Lestovka further:
(187) Old Believer Lestovka explained – YouTube

This documentary explains the symbolism and history behind the Lestovka (auto-translate can be turned on to English and the translation is understandable)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVOeNbd-K0Y

The following video shows a lestovka being made at Valaam Monastery:
(187) Учимся делать лестовку (русские четки) вместе | Валаамский монастырь – YouTube

An homily from St. John Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers

Dear brothers and sisters, we are at the Fifth Sunday of Pascha, overlapping the Feast of Mid-Pentecost we commemorated during this past week on Wednesday. Pentecost overlaps now in the glory of our Lord’s Church calendar with the most joyful Pascha. The account in the Gospel of the Samaritan Woman expresses this. Last Sunday the Paralytic remained by the pool until our Lord Jesus Christ came, illustrating Holy Baptism that comes from the Resurrection. Today, the Samaritan woman receives word of the Living Water and of God as Spirit, pointing toward the Chrismation of Pentecost and the full founding of the Church as Israel fulfilled. The lesser blessing of the waters we performed in Church on Wednesday for Mid-Pentecost show this link. For the waters of baptism, in the triple immersion reliving Jesus Christ’s three days in the tomb and Resurrection, relate to the waters upon which the Spirit moved at Creation and again to the sound of a violent wind and the vision of flame-like tongues at Pentecost followed by diverse languages and then baptisms. For the Spirit moved upon the waters of Creation as if a transforming wind, and  flame produces water too as do tongues and speaking. From our Lord’s most pure Body, water fell on the earth both from his agony in the Garden and from the Crucifixion, in both cases blood and water together. In His teaching, He associates the Living Water integrally with the inspiration of the Spirit. The Living Water and the flames of Pentecost both typify the uncreated light, the divine energies, of God’s grace, sparkling in Creation both like flame and light on the waters of Creation.

Our Lord tells the woman at the well, “God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” He declares here, especially as evident in the original Greek, the Holy Spirit as God, while telling of the nature of the Church as superseding old forms of worship centered on one particular place, as with the Samaritans in their ethnic heartland, or likewise the Jews at Jerusalem, where, although he indicates salvation is of the Jews, drawing on the types and shadows of the Old Testament, the time is coming when God will be worshiped in Spirit. This is because the Church is the Body of Christ. Both the Resurrection and Pentecost form the Church as the Body of Christ. 

I used to belong to two related old New England unitarian cults before I became Orthodox, Unitarian-Universalism and Christian Science. They both claimed descent from Puritanism, which often was hailed as the foundation of American Protestantism. In both cases they denied the personhood of the Holy Spirit. Instead they subscribed, as many Americans of Protestant background do, to a vague Deistic sense of God, without the true theology of the Holy Trinity found in Orthodoxy, while looking to America heretically as exceptional in relation to its individualistic and “progressive” faith.

Christ’s message at the well would fall on deaf ears in the case of much of such American culture. The latter’s sense of the one Spirit was impersonal and vague and outside the Body of Christ, His Church, while engaging in a confusing false ecumenism. Likewise, like the Samaritans, modern Jews and Christian Zionists wrongly tend to revere the state of Israel as a particular focus for worship, and Roman Catholics have done the same, mixing up the state of the Vatican with salvation, neither understanding the Orthodox Church as Israel for all nations.

Thus they all lack also the true practice of Christianity, proclaimed by Orthodoxy, exemplified for us by Jesus Christ to the woman at the well.

For our Lord cared for this Samaritan woman, even though she was a member of an ethnic community considered deplorable by the Jews. This marked how His ministry in His Church would be to all nations and peoples. Likewise He cares for us Americans here in Appalachia today, and also gives us the living water. Our little Church here in Northern Appalachia is a fractal for the whole of Christ’s Body, in which we participate God willing in the Eucharist.

And the Holy Spirit is not impersonal but a Person of the Trinity, Who proceeds from the Father. He is not subordinate to other Persons of the Trinity but all dwell together in love as one, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The old name Holy Ghost may convey to us moderns that ancient and living and everlasting Personhood of the Holy Spirit.

Blessed Theophylact writes of our Lord’s words to the Samaritan woman,

“By ‘in spirit’ He points to the practical life. For, as the divine Apostle says, ‘As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they put to death the deeds of the body, and again, ‘The flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.’ By ‘in truth,’ He indicates the contemplative life, as Paul again says, ‘with the unleavened bread of sincerity,’ that is, purity of life, which is the practical part, ‘and truth,’ which is the contemplative part, for contemplation concerns itself with truth in doctrine. Also, since it was the peculiarity of the Samaritans to confine God to a place, saying that He must be worshipped there, while among the Jews all was done in types and shadows, the Lord says: ‘In spirit’—in opposition to the Samaritans, showing that true worship is not local but noetic and of the soul; and ‘in truth’—in opposition to the Jews, showing that it is not in type and shadow, but in reality, free of foreshadowing rites. Therefore He says: ‘The hour is coming, and now is’—that is, the time of My bodily presence—when the true worshippers will not worship as the Samaritans, in one mountain only, but everywhere in spirit, offering incorporeal worship, as Paul also says: ‘I serve God in my spirit.’ Nor will they worship as the Jews, in types and shadows that point to what is to come, but in truth, with a worship having nothing shadowy. For such worshippers the Father seeks: since He is Spirit, He seeks spiritual ones; and since He is Truth, He seeks true ones.”

Despite her immoral history of marriage and cohabitation, our Lord reached out to the Samaritan Woman with love, reflecting His New Commandment, to love our neighbor more than ourselves. And the highest love is to bring our neighbor to the living Water of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in the Orthodox Church, as we were grateful to witness again this morning in welcoming our new brother Isaac into the Church through baptism and chrismation, a living icon of today’s Gospel lesson.

The woman at the well became a Christian, and took the name of Photini (or Svetlana in Slavonic) at baptism, meaning “the enlightened one,” and she is referred to as apostle and evangelist in early Church homilies. At Pentecost she was baptized with five sisters and two sons. After a vision of the Lord, she traveled to Rome, and appeared before the crazed Emperor Nero with her son Joseph and other Christians, saying, “We have come to teach you to believe in Christ.” The emperor asked whether all agreed to die for the Nazarene. Photini said, “Yes, for the love of Him we rejoice and in His name we’ll gladly die.” Tortured, imprisoned, and tempted with wealth, St. Svetlana and her companions held firm to the faith. In fact, in the process, St. Svetlana converted the Emperor’s daughter. For three years Svetlana and her company, after having survived various forms of torture and poison, were kept in a Roman prison, and St. Svetlana made it into a “house of God” where many Romans came to the prison to become Christians. The enraged Emperor finally had the whole group beheaded except for St. Svetlana. She was thrown into a deep dry well and then into prison again before giving up her life to the Lord. She became a mother to many in the Church, while on earth and as an intercessor, reflecting also the appropriateness of this Sunday also being Mothers Day this year. May the Holy Martyr Svetlana pray to God for us and the salvation of our souls and for our mission work to America. 

We may remember in this regard the works of Hieromonk Seraphim Rose of California, of blessed memory, who this past week our Council of Bishops announced is in the process of glorification as a saint in our Church. He would be the first American saint from the continental U.S., a suburban child and sinful intellectual who found the Orthodox Church and brought many others to her, with help from our patron St. John. Father Seraphim famously said, “It is later than you think. Hasten therefore to do the work of God.” Brothers and sisters, this is so true, and we are blessed today, in this time of the overlay of Pascha and Pentecost on the Church calendar, to realize how our Lord lifts us up out of the limits of human time, for our salvation, to that day which with the Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. Let us rest in the Living Waters that we may rise with Him, and cover a multitude of sins by bringing others of our family and friends to holy baptism. Today at Mid-Pentecost is a good time to renew our baptism vows and missionary zeal, with humility in the Risen Christ.

Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!

****

The Reading from the 

Holy Gospel according to John,

§12 [4:5-42]

At that time, Jesus cometh to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with His journey, sat thus by the well; and it was about the sixth hour. There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said unto her, ‘Give Me to drink.’ (For His disciples had gone away unto the city to buy meat.) Then said the woman of Samaria unto Him, ‘How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest a drink of me, who am a woman of Samaria?’ For the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans. Jesus answered and said unto her, ‘If thou knewest the gift of God and who it is that saith to thee, ‘Give Me to drink,’ thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water.’ The woman said unto Him, ‘Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. From whence then hast thou that living water? Art thou greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank thereof himself, and his children and his cattle?’ Jesus answered and said unto her, ‘Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.’ The woman said unto Him, ‘Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw.’ Jesus said unto her, ‘Go, call thy husband, and come hither.’ The woman answered and said, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said unto her, ‘Thou hast well said, ‘I have no husband’; for thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband. In that thou saidst truly.’ The woman said unto Him, ‘Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and ye say that Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.’ Jesus said unto her, ‘Woman, believe Me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither on this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. Ye worship ye know not what; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh and now is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.’ The woman said unto Him, ‘I know that Messiah cometh, who is called Christ. When He has come, He will tell us all things.’ Jesus said unto her, ‘I that speak unto thee am He.’ And upon this came His disciples and marveled that He talked with the woman; yet no man said, ‘What seekest Thou?’ or, ‘Why talkest Thou with her?’ The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city and said to the men, ‘Come, see a man who told me all things that ever I did. Is not this the Christ?’ Then they went out of the city and came unto Him. Meanwhile His disciples entreated Him, saying, ‘Master, eat.’ But He said unto them, ‘I have meat to eat that ye know not of.’ Therefore the disciples said one to another, ‘Hath any man brought Him aught to eat?’ Jesus said unto them, ‘My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work. Say not ye, ‘There are yet four months and then cometh the harvest’? Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages and gathereth fruit unto life eternal, that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. And herein is that saying true, ‘One soweth and another reapeth.’ I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour; other men laboured, and ye have entered into their labours.’ And many of the Samaritans of that city believed in Him because of the saying of the woman who testified, ‘He told me all that ever I did.’ So when the Samaritans had come unto Him, they besought Him that He would tarry with them; and He abode there two days. And many more believed because of His own word, and said unto the woman, ‘Now we believe, not because of thy saying, for we have heard Him ourselves and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.’ 

(Above) Traditionally the icon of Jesus Christ preaching as a youth in the Temple is used as an icon for Mid-Pentecost, because of the feast’s emphasis on our Lord as Teacher. (Below) Icon of Saint George the Great-Martyr.

An homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, for Mid-Pentecost (7534/2026), by Priest Paul Siewers.

Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!

The holy glorious and right-victorious Great-martyr and Trophy-bearer George was a Christian Roman soldier who stood against pagan tyranny for the Orthodox Christian faith and was killed under Diocletian in the early fourth century A.D. His example leading many to the Church. St. George, as a warrior-saint who was also famed for killing a dragon, became a patron saint of Russia and England, and thus affects both sides of our heritage at St. John’s, an English-speaking Russian mission parish in American Appalachia.

The saint’s fight with the dragon according to tradition began with a dragon nesting in the source of water for a Middle Eastern town, prompting citizens to offer human sacrifices to the dragon to move it away at times from the needed water source. George in his travels arrived as the local princess was being offered to the dragon. Invoking the Holy Trinity, he slew the dragon and saved the princess, leading to the conversion of the town to Christianity. George’s fight of the dragon reminds us of the battle of Archangel Michael with the dragon Satan at the end of the world in the book of Revelation. St. George’s victory, depicted in the icon before us in Church (and pictured above), reminds us of how each of us as Orthodox Christians is called to spiritual warfare. 

In his letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul reminds us of how each of us must put on the belt of Truth, the Breastplate of Righteousness, the shoes of the Gospel of Peace, the Shield of Faith, the Helmet of Salvation, and the Sword of the Spirit, which is God’s mighty Word. Thus we are reminded how virtues such as courage or might are gifts of the Spirit from God, for which we must struggle to open our heart. These gifts grow out of our baptism and chrismation with God’s help.

Revelation also reminds us of how the serpent, Satan, in Genesis, had swelled into a dragon in the latter days. Legends of dragons cross many human cultures, although perhaps St. George’s tradition is the most famous worldwide. They are symbols of ancient creatures known in earlier ages of the world, which some say lingered into ancient human times, but also of earthbound primordial carnivority linked to the Fall.

Today, the conjunction of the Feast of St. George with the Mid-Pentecost Feast is a special blessing. It reminds us of how the mysteries of Baptism in the Resurrection, from Pascha, and of Chrismation by the Holy Spirit, from Pentecost, are linked in this Mid-Pentecost feast today. The Living Water of Baptism given to us by our Lord Jesus Christ and infused by the Holy Spirit is a theme of the springtime Mid-Pentecost Feast, and we will have a traditional Lesser Blessing of the Waters for the feast soon also. 

An entry in The Great Horologion for Mid-Pentecost states:

“Therefore, since the things spoken of by Christ in the middle of the Feast of the Tabernacles are related to the Sunday of the Paralytic that is just passed, and since we have already reached the midpoint of the fifty days between Pascha and Pentecost, the Church has appointed this present feast as a bond between the two great Feasts, thereby uniting, as it were, the two into one, and partaking of the grace of them both.  Therefore today’s feast is called Mid‐Pentecost, and the Gospel Reading, ‘At Mid‐feast’—though it refers to the Feast of the Tabernacles—is used.

“It should be noted that there were three great Jewish feasts: the Passover, the Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles…. Pentecost was celebrated fifty days after Passover, first of all, because the Hebrew tribes had reached Mount Sinai after leaving Egypt, and there received the Law from God; secondly, it was celebrated to commemorate their entry into the Promised Land.”

Pascha and Pentecost are inseparably connected, for the one leads to the other, and the later holiday draws on the first. This season links all the above-mentioned three great Old Testament feasts in their fulfillment in the Orthodox Christian Church as Israel.

We move toward Pentecost, the establishment of the Church as the Body of Christ in the Holy Spirit, all of which flows from the Resurrection of our Lord.

This is a special joyful time between and amid both. Spiritually this season is where we should live year-round as Orthodox Christians, courageous from our baptism and chrismation, upholding the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ in the flow of the Living Waters He gave us from the Holy Spirit–just like Saint George the dragon killer, our Christian exemplar in unseen warfare. May St. George intercede for us in our spiritual battles for Orthodox Christian evangelism in America.

Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!

*   *   * 

Troparion, tone 8: Having come to the middle of the Feast, refresh my thirsty soul with the streams of piety; for Thou, O Saviour, didst cry to all: Let him who thirsts come to Me and drink. O Christ our God, Source of Life, glory to Thee. 

Kontakion, tone 4: When the Feast of the law was half over, O Lord and Creator of all, Thou didst say to the bystanders, O Christ our God: Come and draw the water of immortality. Therefore we fall down before Thee and cry with faith: Grant us Thy bounties, for Thou art the Source of our Life. 

=

***

Holy Gospel according to John, 

§ 26 [7:14-30]

In the midst of the Feast of Pentecost, Jesus went up into the temple and taught. And the Jews marvelled, saying, ‘How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?’ Jesus answered them, ‘My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me. If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be from God, or whether I speak from Myself. He that speaketh from himself seeketh his own glory; but He that seeketh the glory of Him that sent Him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in Him. Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law? Why go ye about to kill Me?’ The people answered and said, ‘Thou hast a devil. Who goeth about to kill thee?’ Jesus answered and said unto them, ‘I have done one work, and ye all marvel. Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers), and ye on the Sabbath day circumcise a man. If a man receive circumcision on the Sabbath day, that the Law of Moses should not be broken, are ye angry at Me because I have made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath day? Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgement.’ Then said some of them from Jerusalem, ‘Is not this he whom they seek to kill? But lo, he speaketh boldly, and they say nothing unto him. Do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ? Yet we know from whence this man comes; but when Christ cometh, no man will know from whence He comes.’ Then Jesus cried out in the temple as He taught, saying, ‘Ye both know Me, and ye know from whence I am. And I am not come of Myself, but He that sent Me is true, whom ye know not. But I know Him, for I am from Him, and He hath sent Me.’ Then they sought to take Him; but no man laid hands on Him, because His hour had not yet come. 

Holy Gospel according to John,

§52 [15:17-16:2]

The Lord said to His disciples, ‘These things I command you, that ye love one another. If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you: ‘The servant is not greater than his lord.’ If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept My saying, they will keep yours also. But all these things will they do unto you for My name’s sake, because they know not Him that sent Me. If I had not come and spoken unto them, they would not have sin, but now they have no cloak for their sin. He that hateth Me hateth My Father also. If I had not done among them the works which no other man did, they would not have had sin; but now they have both seen and hated both Me and My Father. But this cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in their law: ‘They hated Me without a cause.’ But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth who proceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of Me. And ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with Me from the beginning. These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not lose faith. They shall put you out of the synagogues; yea, the time cometh that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.’ 

An homily for the Sunday of the Paralytic, the Fourth Sunday in Pascha, from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers.

In today’s Gospel our Lord shows us, appropriately for this Pascha season, how He heals us from paralysis—from feeling entombed within a worldly life whether bodily, or in terms of sin and set habits, or the cares of mortal life generally.

Blessed Theophylact in his Orthodox commentary on the Gospel, drawing heavily on St. John Chrysostom, notes that the pool by which the paralytic man lay for years was called the Sheep’s Pool “because the sheep intended for the temple sacrifices were brough there and their entrails were washed in its water. It was the common belief that the washing of the sacrificial entrails imparted divine power to the water, and that after the washing an angel would descend to the water to work a miracle. Here divine providence is plainly evident, guiding the Jews of ancient times towards faith in Christ by preordaining this miracle of the pool. God intended in due time to bestow Baptism, the greatest of gifts, making it full of power to wash away sins and bring souls to life…. God worked this miracle at the pool to prepare the Jews to receive the grace of Baptism…. This miracle was accomplished entirely by the activity and divine energy of the angel. Likewise with us. In Baptism, ordinary water by the divine invocations receives the grace of the Holy Spirit and cleanses us from spiritual disease. The water of Baptism heals all: the blind, whose spiritual eyes are darkened and cannot distinguish good from evil; the lame, who are paralyzed and neither practice virtue nor make any spiritual progress; and the withered, who are in complete despair because of their inability to accomplish anything good. In former times infirmity prevented many from being healed in the waters of the pool, and only one was made whole. But now, we have no obstacle to being baptized. For not only one being healed leaves the rest without healing. Rather, even if the whole world comes together, the grace is in no way diminished.”

So explains Blessed Theophylact. For God so loved the world that He gave us His only beloved Son. The tears of our Lord in His agony in the Garden falling on the earth with bloody sweat, the water from His side on the Cross, these are all the promise of healing and salvation in his co-suffering compassion, the gift of the uncreated grace of the Holy Trinity He opens for us in the Holy Spirit, through His Body the Church. This freeing love is available to all, there is no scarcity and no competition for it, it is wider and deeper than all the seas.

Blessed Theophylact continues that, “The endurance of the paralytic is astonishing. He had thirty-eight years in his illness, and each year, expecting to be freed from his disease, he was thwarted and hindered by those stronger than himself. Yet he did not withdraw, nor did he despair. Therefore the Lord asks him, desiring to show us the patience of the man…”

Thirty-eight years, brothers and sisters. And I will add here on the side, by meaningful coincidence, that there is an inmate in the prison to which our parish now ministers, who has now been there 38 years. She has long patiently waited for Orthodox Confession and the Eucharist. I was corresponding last week with the priest of her family’s home parish, we have her baptism documented, and are preparing soon, God willing, for her to receive the mysteries of Confession and Communion. Long has she waited, serving a life sentence that so far has been as long as the paralytic’s time by the pool, and without the mysteries of the Church. Brothers and Sisters, this is a reminder in one case of how what our parish does through our prayers and support unworthily forms part of the Body of Christ, glory to God.

And glory to God that we have had newly enlightened brothers and sisters baptized into Christ, with one this morning, three others so far earlier this Pascha season, and another coming up soon, God willing. This too is a freeing form the paralysis of worldliness and sin, by which all of us can renew our baptismal vows in this mystery of the Church in Christ.

(Above: Baptism at our mission this morning on the Sunday of the Paralytic)

Blessed Theophylact continues: “From the Lord’s words to the paralytic, ‘See, you have been made well. Sin no more,’ we learn, first, that the disease came upon the man because of sins; and second, that the word concerning Gehenna is true, and that punishment there is everlasting…. Are all sicknesses from sins? Not all, but most. Some are because of sins, as with this paralytic; and in the Book of Kings also we see someone struck with disease of the feet because of sin. Others are for proving and trial, as with Job, in order that his virtue might be shown. And some come from bodily excesses, such as gluttony and drunkenness….

“Understand, then, the Sheep Pool as signifying the grace of baptism, in which the Lamb offered for us, Jesus the Lord, was washed when He was baptised on our behalf. This pool has five porches, for the four virtues together with the contemplative and doctrinal life are signified with baptism.”

Brothers and sisters, I’ll add here a reminder that the four virtues of Scripture include wisdom, understanding, counsel, and might. They also are named prudence, temperance, justice or righteousness, and courage. These are not just legalistic checkboxes in Orthodoxy, they are gifts of the Holy Spirit, virtues that express the uncreated grace of God. They lead us into the Christian virtues of contemplation, namely knowledge, piety, and the fear of God, best known from St. Paul as faith, hope, and love. 

Until Jesus Christ came, these gifts of the Holy Spirit lay dormant in the paralytic, as Blessed Theophylact observes, reading the Gospel symbolically as well as literally in Orthodox fashion. The paralytic also symbolizes human nature, which, he writes, “neither humbly believed in the Trinity, nor in the eternal age, I mean the resurrection and the judgment of deeds done, and so found no healing. [Human nature] had no man to put it into the pool—that is, the Son of God had not yet become man, Who was about to heal it through baptism. But when He became man, He sanctified our nature, and commanded the bed to be taken up—that is, the body to be made light and unburdened, raised from earth, no longer weighed down with fleshly cares, but awakened from sloth toward what is good, and made to walk, that is, to move in the practice of virtue. The troubling of the water of the pool signifies the disturbing of the spirits of wickedness, shattered and drowned by the grace of the Holy Spirit. And He teaches us also to find health: those who are weak, and unmoving toward every good work, and having no ‘man’—that is, no human reasoning—but joined with mindless beasts, that they might be cast into the pool of tears of repentance, in which the one who first enters is healed…. Therefore be the first to enter, lest death overtake you.

“This pool of repentance is stirred by an angel. Who? The Angel of the Great Counsel of the Father, Christ the Saviour. For unless the divine Word touches our heart, and causes disturbance in it through the remembrance of future punishments, this pool will not be stirred, nor will health come to the soul that lies idle. This pool is rightly called ‘Sheep,’ for in it the entrails and thoughts of the saints who are living sacrifices, pleasing to God and harmless as sheep, are washed clean. May it be ours, then, to obtain this healing, and after our healing to be found in the temple, lest a worse punishment come upon us. May we no longer defile ourselves with unholy thoughts. And when the Jews accuse Christ as a breaker of the Sabbath, He shows Himself equal to the Father: ‘My Father is working until now, and I am working.’ ‘For as the Father governs creation even on the Sabbath, so also the Son works with Him.’

The relation of today’s Sunday of the Paralytic to baptism and Resurrection should also remind us of the upcoming Feast of Mid-Pentecost, which we will mark God willing with services Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. That beautiful quiet feast evokes in its hymns the Living Waters given us by our Lord, linking the Resurrection with Pentecost. The Mid-Pentecost service includes a Lesser Blessing of the Waters. It marks the midpoint between the First Sunday of Pascha and Pentecost. It reminds us of the timeless relation between Baptism and Resurrection, and how the Holy Spirit moved upon the waters of Creation just as in the waters of Baptism in our little country mission this morning. In addition, this Mid-Pentecost is also the Feast of the Great-Martyr George. He is the patron of both England and Russia, two nations which play a role in the background of our own English-speaking Russian mission in Appalachia. St. George as patron saint of England and Russia is a reminder of the baptism of both those nations, including of England in Orthodox times, as we work to bring America today to Orthodoxy.

In our mission work, we proclaim our Lord’s healing baptism and resurrection of paralyzed human nature this Pascha in a simple phrase. “Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!”

***

Translation of commentary by Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid from Blessed Theophylact, The Collected Commentaries of the Gospels, Nun Christina, and The Explanation by Blessed Theophylact of the Holy Gospel According to St. Matthew, trans. C. Stade.

***


The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to John,  § 14 [5:1-15]

At that time, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep market a pool, which is called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of invalid folk — blind, halt, withered — waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool and troubled the water. Whosoever then first stepped in, after the troubling of the water, was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. And a certain man was there who had an infirmity for thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had been in that state a long time, He said unto him, ‘Wilt thou be made whole?’ The infirm man answered Him, ‘Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool; but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.’ Jesus said unto him, ‘Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.’ And immediately the man was made whole, and took up his bed and walked. Now it was the Sabbath on that day. The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, ‘It is the Sabbath day; it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.’ He answered them, ‘He that made me whole said unto me, “Take up thy bed and walk.”’ Then they asked him, ‘What man is that who said unto thee, “Take up thy bed and walk”?’ And he that was healed knew not who it was, for Jesus had removed Himself away, a multitude being in that place. Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said unto him, ‘Behold, thou art made whole. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.’ The man departed, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him whole.  

 

An homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers, for the 3rd Sunday of Pascha, 7534/2026.

In the Pascha Stichera sung last night at Vigil, the Church includes an account of the Myrrh-bearing Women, the Noble Joseph, and the Righteous Nicodemus, all of whom we commemorate today.

“Come from the vision, * O ye women, bearers of good tidings, * and say ye unto Sion: * Receive from us the good tidings * of the Resurrection of Christ; * adorn thyself, exult, * and rejoice, O Jerusalem, * for thou hast seen Christ the King come forth from the tomb, * like a bridegroom in procession….

“The myrrh-bearing women * in the deep dawn * stood before the tomb of the Giver of life; * they found an angel * sitting upon the stone, * and he, speaking to them, * said thus: * Why seek ye the Living among the dead? * Why mourn ye the Incorruptible amid corruption? * Go, proclaim unto His disciples. 

“Pascha the beautiful, * Pascha, the Lord’s Pascha, * the Pascha all-venerable hath dawned upon us. * Pascha, * with joy let us embrace one another. * O Pascha! ransom from sorrow, * for from the tomb today, * as from a bridal chamber, * hath Christ shone forth, * and hath filled the women with joy, saying: * Proclaim unto the apostles….

“With Nicodemus, Joseph took Thee down from the Tree, * Who dost clothe Thyself with light as with a robe; * and seeing Thee dead, naked, unburied, * he took up heartfelt weeping and said, lamenting: * ‘Woe is me, O Jesus most sweet! * When the sun beheld Thee hanging upon the Cross but a little while past, * it shrouded itself in darkness; * and the earth quaked in fear, * and the veil of the temple was rent in twain. * But, lo! now I see Thee, Who of Thine own will didst undertake to die for my sake. * How can I bury Thee, O my God, * or how shall I wind Thee in a shroud? * With what hands shall I touch Thy body? * Or what hymns shall I chant for Thy departure, O Compassionate One? * I magnify Thy sufferings; * I hymn Thy burial and resurrection, crying out: * O Lord, glory to Thee! ….”

And then the Church in her verses adds for us:

“It is the Day of Resurrection, * let us be radiant for the feast, * and let us embrace one another. * Let us say, Brethren, * even to them that hate us, * let us forgive all things on the Resurrection, * and thus let us cry out: * Christ is risen from the dead, * trampling down death by death, * and on those in the tombs * bestowing life. “

The Myrrh-bearing women came in the deep of dawn, the edge of sorrow and joy. Our Lord Jesus Christ already was in Hades with His soul as God, freeing the Righteous of the Old Testament who would hear Him, those who had heard the Forerunner there announce His coming.

“In the deep dawn” (or deep of dawn as sometimes translated), that phrase about the Myrrh-bearing Women also may remind us of the opening to the Supplicatory Canon to our Lord Jesus Christ found in the Jordanville prayer book. 

That begins, “In the deep of old the infinite Power overwhelmed Pharaoh’s whole army, but the incarnate Word annihilated pernicious sin. Exceedingly glorious is the Lord, for gloriously is He glorified.” 

What is that “deep of old”? It is the place like the “deep of the dawn,” the experience of God’s love as grace so powerful that it turns time back and transforms it. The sun turns her face away and later the tomb is broken. We may have a little feeling of this when we leave the Pascha banquet in the early dawn. The deep of beyond-time to which the Resurrection takes us this Pascha season is a place of healing of old sins and trauma, a place where death is broken for all time, and love is remembered as stronger than death. In the beginning, in the Logos, God made the heaven and the earth. We find ourselves by emptying ourselves in Him. This Pascha season let us leave our mourning at the empty tomb, and comforted by the Comforter gifted to us by Him, let us go forth and bring others to the Risen Body of Christ, His Church.

Dear friends, this Third Sunday of Pascha has special meaning for me. It was on the Sunday afternoon of the Myrrh-bearing Women that Matushka and I were married, although on another date. It was a special Day of Resurrection for me, only a few years after I had become Orthodox, and not many months after we had met at the same Church where we were married. It was the Church that was the home of the Tikhvin Icon in exile, and it had been the Church of St. John of Chicago, the first priest-martyr of the Communist yoke, both reminders of the suffering of Russian Orthodox Christianity this past century. But that suffering also was a reflection of the Resurrection, of the redeeming compassion of our Lord overcoming death.

Let us say their names, the Myrrh-bearing Women. Often the Virgin Mary, the Theotokos, is included. Mary Magdalene. Mary the Wife of Cleopas. Salome, the mother of the Apostles James and John. Joanna, the wife of Chuza, steward of Herod Antipas. Susanna, a financial patron and follower of Jesus, and Mary and Martha of Bethany, sisters of Lazarus. These are generally identified as the eight Myrrh-bearing women remembered in Church today. (Some include, instead of the Theotokos, Mary the wife of Alphaeus, mother of the Apostle James, not the brother of the Lord.)

Also commemorated today are the secret disciples of what liturgical verse calls “the hidden God” on the Cross, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. Their names are made known to the world through the Gospels, and while not publicly His disciples before the Crucifixion, they risked all from a worldly standpoint to help bury His body. The Righteous Nicodemus is known for his earlier dialogue with Jesus about being born again and for his words in defense of Jesus to the hateful religious leaders. The Noble Joseph was released from jail in Judaea after helping with he burial, according to tradition, and ended his life as a missionary to Britain.

I had a deep encounter of my own unworthily with his tradition even before my marriage on this Sunday. Eight years before becoming Orthodox and about 10 years before my marriage on this day, I was in Britain visiting the place associated with St. Joseph’s mission, Glasotnbury. Actually, I spent two years writing a graduate research thesis focused on that tradition. As I did that research, and as I visited also sites associated with other early Celtic and British saints. I a great sinner was blessed to learn first only in an academic way about how western Britain, the source of the traditions about Joseph of Arimathea, had been a very unusual area in Western Europe. That region around the Irish Sea was said to be the one area in the West that had maintained a long and broad continuity of its earlier culture during the era of barbarian migrations that changed the face of the Roman Empire, paralleling the cultural continuity found on a larger scale in the Eastern Roman Empire known today often as Orthodox Byzantium.

Indeed Christianity was part of that continuity of “Romano-Celtic culture,” and contact with Eastern monasticism during the time of Emperor Saint Justinian also helped confirm that whole region around the Irish Sea as a center of Orthodox monasticism and Christian culture in the West in the early Middle Ages. In fact, our parish patron St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco in the last century helped renew the veneration of those early Western monastic saints from that era on our Orthodox Church calendar.

My research concluded that the traditions of an apostolic establishment of Christianity in the Southwest region of Britain associated with traditions of the Noble Joseph made sense in light of archaeology in Roman Britain and in an early historical account by Saint Gildas in the early 500s. Beyond that account, few or no texts had survived the eventual fall of the old Romano-Celtic realms. However much the Noble Joseph’s record in Britain may remain shrouded in legend (and often disparaged from an academic standpoint), associated often with Arthurian legends of the Holy Grail, what I experienced in the saintly sites of the old Celtic West of Britain, including Glastonbury, went deeper by God’s grace into a reality of Orthodox faith experience ultimately.

Unknown to me I can see now how with the prayers of those saints the Lord led me from a unitarian Protestant cult when I arrived to study in Britain, into a doubtful sea of being without any worship affiliation for a time, and then to be an unworthy and sinful convert to the Orthodox Church. My encounter with the early saints ended up going beyond the academic, unworthily into their faith, by God’s grace.

Such is the influence of the saints and above all the powerful compassion of our Risen Lord. Indeed, the mission of the Noble Joseph that led him according to tradition from the tomb to the then-end of the world in Britain, and what became origins of the English-speaking world, continues today here in our little mission in Appalachian America.

Just so he and the Myrrh-bearing Women and the Holy Nicodemus are with us today in this Divine Liturgy in which we also remember them, all of us worshipping our Risen Lord together as a Church family. May we also be born again in the joy of the Resurrection this Pascha season, joining also with the newly illumined John and John (our newly baptized brothers in Christ), and from last week Zachary, in continuing the missionary work of those earliest Christian saints in the deep of dawn.

Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!

***

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Mark,

§69 [15:43-16:8]

At that time, Joseph of Arimathea, an honourable council member who also was waiting for the Kingdom of God, came and went in boldly unto Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. And Pilate wondered if He were already dead; and calling unto him the centurion, he asked him whether He had been any while dead. And when he learned it from the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph. And Joseph bought fine linen, and took Him down and wrapped Him in the linen. And he laid Him in a sepulchre which was hewn out of a rock, and rolled a stone unto the door of the sepulchre. And Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses beheld where He was laid. And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint Him. And very early in the morning on the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. And they said among themselves, ‘Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?’ And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away, for it was very large. And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were frightened. And he said unto them, ‘Be not afraid. Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here. Behold the place where they laid Him. But go your way. Tell His disciples and Peter that He goeth before you into Galilee. There shall ye see Him, as He said unto you.’ And they went out quickly and fled from the sepulchre, for they trembled and were amazed; neither said they any thing to any man, for they were afraid. 

An Homily for Thomas Sunday, the Second Sunday of Pascha, 7534/2026, from St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers.

Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!

In Orthodoxy, we call the Apostle Thomas Believing Thomas and not Doubting Thomas as in Catholicism, because his experience strengthened his faith, and was a Gospel example to strengthen us.

Let us hear our founding First Hierarch, Metropolitan Khrapovitsky, comment on this day.

He noted (https://orthochristian.com/53064.html):

“One can say that everyone rejoices when they hear the troparion of the Resurrection. But they sometimes grow bored when it is sung often. This hymn, however, should be endlessly joyful to people: its continual repetition about the victory over death and the devil should be an infinite source of consolation. Therefore, if this joy soon passes, it passes because one’s faith is not so living and strong. People find it difficult to believe because their souls do not especially love this victory.

“They say: Thomas, who had been previously ready to die for Christ, also did not believe. No, Thomas asked for assurances not because he did not believe, but because he desired an untroubled faith, for he longed for the resurrection and understood its significance. Before their entry into Jerusalem, having learned that there would not be any external success but, to the contrary, that the Savior awaited suffering, the disciples thought that the same death awaited them as a reward for following Him. They were overcome by horror and fear, and then Thomas said: Let us go that we might die with Him [Jn 11:16]. Thomas had a loyal heart. How many of them were troubled when they learned that there was not, and would not be, any external success!

“When [the Lord] was to them a great miracle worker, healing them and giving them bread, they believed; but when they learned that He was ready to accept and bear the great deed [podvig] of patience and suffering for the sake of their spiritual benefit – then they all ran away, their faith weakened and, if their conscience rebuked them, they easily found an excuse in themselves: we trusted that it had been He [Lk 24:21].     

“People say: if we had seen Him we would not have denied Him. This is not true: the majority of those who denied Him had seen Him, and they denied Him because they did not love spiritual values, and the victory over the devil spoke but little to their hearts; they desired external success.

“Cases of full denial are not many. Normally a remnant of faith remains, and this half-acknowledgment and half-faith is perhaps even worse, and such half-believers are in the majority. If they were to be excluded from so-called believing society we would see that there are but few true worshippers. Church and cross, unity in Christ, unity in the name of the feat [podvig] of love – there is the outline of our relationship towards the Lord. But half-believers do not strive to understand either one or the other–unity or Christ’s love–in the way that Christians understand it.

“Half-faith has many degrees, but one thing inevitably follows from all half-belief. Those who deny know both what they have denied and to what to return. But the half-believer does not have any such clarity and grows accustomed to a life guided by sophistries, half-truth, and hints at some sort of supposed truth.” 

So Metropolitan Antony of blessed memory tells us for Thomas Sunday.

Friends, in the warm embrace of our Lord and His Body the Church in this Pascha season, let us not live in the shadowlands of half-belief. For that is where so many of our countrymen live. They of course have more excuse than I do as an unworthy Orthodox priest. They come from heterodox backgrounds. But the decline of the so-called seven sisters of Protestantism, for example, the mainline denominations of America, marks the slipping away further into heterodox half-belief, non-denominational and no-denominational, watering down or leaving even further Scriptural tradition and practice. This is true also of too many Orthodox Christians. For we live in a land dominated by what William James called the goddess success, and like the great Whore of Babylon of Revelation, from that idol the mark of the beast lies heavy on those who worship career, success, and comfort, and who place idolatries of self before love of unity in Christ and Christ’s love for us as the real source of our being. 

Such a shadow life of worldly careerism of various types is what Dostoevsky’s novels warn against, a luke-warmedness of belief, by which, as the Book of Revelation warns, God will spit the luke-warmed out of his mouth. For to live a lie is to succumb to the devil. The great Orthodox writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn said we must learn to live without lies about ourselves and about others. For if we lie about ourselves and others, as Dostoevsky’s Elder Zosima, based on St. Ambrose of Optina, says, we cannot truly love. For the devil is the liar and the father of lies. In modern speech, the lies our Lord warns about as satanic are the virtual realities with which we become entangled today under demonic influence.

Do we believe more in our electronic devices than in the Lord Jesus Christ? Let us set aside all idols and lies in this Pascha time, and redouble our devotion to the Risen Lord, following the example of the faithful Thomas, who touched him, to dispel all heresies of Gnosticism and the spirit of Anti-Christ, which would make Christianity into only a phantom, a bodiless half belief, rather than the embodied experience of life our Lord gives us at Pascha and every Day of Resurrection year-round.

Today is also called the Antipascha. It means in place of Pascha. It is a good reprise of Pascha. St John Chrysostom tells us in his famous Pascha Matins homily that those who arrive at the 11^th hour are as welcome as those who arrived at the first. Even those of us who missed Pascha or may not have fully opened to Pascha during Bright Week now have this second Sunday of Pascha, the Antipascha. It has none of the negatives of the similarly formed word Antichrist, for in being in place of Pascha, it reinforces Pascha, it offers no deception. And the Gospel reading today presents this.

For Thomas, born a fisherman, touched the Lord and proclaimed “My Lord and my God” unto the ages and to many lands. As St. John Chrysostom put it, “Thomas, being once weaker in faith than the other apostles, toiled through the grace of God more bravely, more zealously and tirelessly than them all, so that he went preaching over nearly all the earth, not fearing to proclaim the Word of God to save nations.” According to tradition, after founding Orthodox churches in Palestine, Mesopotomia, Parthia, Ethiopia, and baptizing the Magi or Wise Men of the Nativity, he ended his evangelism career a martyr in India. 

In Greek, the inscription on his icons reads, “The Touching of Thomas,” and in Slavonic, “The Belief of Thomas.” For in Orthodoxy, the uncreated grace of God reached him from his touch and transformed him, unlike the Western heterodox view that underestimates God’s grace and falsely made him into doubting Thomas. Earlier, before the raising of Lazarus, Holy Apostle Thomas expressed a desire to die with the Lord, when other disciples feared the Pharisees would try to kill Jesus if they re-entered Judea. But his touching of Jesus, which we remember today, for all time showed the lie of Gnosticism and the falsity of denying that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh and been resurrected bodily. For this is the lie that Scripture identifies with the spirit of anti-Christ and it is the lie of all half-believers of our age, including those Orthodox half-asleep and drifting into ecumenism of the anti-Christ. All of us are in danger of doing so in our culture today.

Agape Vespers last Sunday also put forth the account of Believing Thomas, on the joyful afternoon of the first Pascha Sunday. It is no coincidence that that is a time of acknowledging the resurrection of Jesus Christ bodily, a believing touch that is so Orthodox, while we also engage in the Agape of unity of love with him and one another, emptying ourselves in Him and in Him losing our sinful self-assertion in loving each other more than ourself, following His New Commandment. This is part of proclaiming the Risen Christ. While our Lord told Mary Magdalene not to touch Him because He would be Ascending, He allowed Thomas to do so for a special teaching purpose for us.

Adapting the words of an old hymn, we Orthodox Christians in American can pray that unworthily the Lord may help us to follow the Believing Thomas: “Amazing uncreated grace, how sweet the energy, that touches a wretch like me.” For Jesus Christ, the light of the world, sets alight the Paschal candles we all carry into the world. For as he commanded us, “ye are the light of the world, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”

Like believing Thomas let us today touch the Risen Lord in His Body the Church and in His Eucharist, His Body and Blood, and fall back full of that uncreated light, saying “My Lord and my God,” going forth in the joy of the Resurrection in body and soul this Pascha season, to help our families and neighbors and America find salvation in our Lord’s Orthodox Church!

Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!

***

The Reading from the 

Holy Gospel according to John, 

§ 65 [20:19-31]

The same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in their midst and said unto them, ‘Peace be unto you.’ And when He had so said, He showed unto them His hands and His side. Then were the disciples glad when they saw the Lord. Then said Jesus to them again, ‘Peace be unto you. As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you.’ And when He had said this, He breathed on them and said unto them, ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained.’ But Thomas, one of the twelve, called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said unto him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said unto them, ‘Unless I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into His side, I will not believe.’ And after eight days the disciples were again within, and Thomas was with them. Then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in their midst and said, ‘Peace be unto you.’ Then said He to Thomas, ‘Reach hither thy finger and behold My hands, and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into My side: and be not faithless, but believing.’ And Thomas answered and said unto Him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said unto him, ‘Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed. Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.’ And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, ye might have life through His name.