Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today the Church in her wisdom urges us to remember the example and teaching and role in the Church of St. Gregory Palamas. Following up on the Church Fathers who resisted the heresy of those attacking the icons, as we remembered last week, this week we remember the saint who stood for one of the most distinctive teachings of Orthodox Christianity: That of the uncreated energies of God. Think of it, that the energies or activity of God, also known as grace, are themselves divine and reach us here and now in Creation even as fallen human beings. It is so important that the work of St. Gregory Palamas, expressed in various Church councils in the 14th century, is sometimes called the Ninth Ecumenical Council. This teaching of the uncreated energies is one no heterodox forms of Christianity whether Protestant or Catholic or other fully share. It is our great gift from our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit in the Church, the Body of Christ, which is our great living inheritance as Orthodox Christians from the Apostolic Church, we who have been fostered into the true Israel today.

Psalm 50 in the Orthodox Bible, written by the holy Prophet David, in his great repentance for adultery and murder, tells us of God’s tender mercies, which are working in us in the Lent of His Church. God’s tender mercies are His grace, His uncreated energies, for which St. Gregory stood against the lies of the heretics who claimed that those tender mercies were created. The heretics argued that God’s tender mercies are more like thunder bolts sent randomly. St. Gregory stood for the Orthodox teaching that they are all around us, like a field alive with sparkling energy that is God’s love for us and can unfold in our hearts with our ascetic Lenten-style attention.

There is a movie called Tender Mercies made by the late Robert Duvall that seeks to depict this in symbols. It is not an Orthodox film but it echoes aspects of the spirit of Christianity in our flawed culture today. In the film, a man has fallen into a shipwreck of his life, but finds redemption through God’s grace, in the ascetics of marriage inspired by Christian tradition, with renewed attention to faith and others in his life. This is a symbol of what St. Gregory taught in the Orthodox tradition of hesychasm, that God’s grace, those uncreated energies, those tender mercies, manifest themselves physically in our lives. This is also what we commemorated last week in the triumph of the Orthodox teaching of the icons. On Wednesday, God willing, our Church will go on pilgrimage to see the myrrh-streaming icon in Taylor, Pennsylvania. It is a reminder of the physical effects of our faith defended by St. Gregory and the Church.

Another example of those physical effects of our faith is how marriage and monasticism are two great ways of life in our Church’s tradition that stand against our society’s apostasy from truth. A New York Times article this week reported how even the abomination of polyamory is gaining legal recognition in America. But Great Lent is a great medicine for us Orthodox Christians living amid such delusion. It reminds us and challenges us how with the divine grace of God in our lives, Orthodoxy must be lived and embodied. It is our springtime, preparing us for the Resurrection of Pascha.

The Russian saint and ascetic Theophan the Recluse has written about this in his homilies for Lent, including one for today. He writes: 

“Here, let us consider the parts of our nature, the attacks on them, and what weapons we have against them. Let us begin to sort out the composition of our nature part by part and appropriately arm it. We have a body. The life of the body is sustained by the harmonious action of its various parts and functions. Satisfying the needs of the body is a law of nature, but when the passions approach, it loses proper measure and form and becomes sin. Our body must be nourished. The organs of nourishment are the palate, the throat, and the stomach. The passions that attack this part are overeating, sweets, luxury of the table and its seasonings, gluttony, and drunkenness. The weapons that must be used to guard this part are abstinence and fasting. Our body has senses. The organs of sensation are the nerves with their feelings. The passions that attack this part are manifold. Each sense has its own temptation: the eyes—their own, the ears—their own, the taste—its own. Everyone has a common passion for the pleasant stimulation of the senses, or for sensual pleasures. The weapons, which it is necessary to arm this part, the holy Fathers call the preservation of the senses, especially the sight and hearing, from all seductive impressions, most of all through solitude and avoidance of encounters with tempting persons, places, and things. Our body has movement. The organs of this movement are the muscles, the arms, and the legs. The passions that attack this part are, on the one hand, laziness and drowsiness, on the other frivolity, restlessness, the passion for games and amusements, dancing, acting, fights, and so on. The weapons to protect this part are: labor, vigil, bows, and moderate regularity of movement. The body has a tongue, the organ of words. The passions that attack it are: empty speech, idle talk, gossip, quarrels, blasphemy. The weapon with which to protect it is prudent silence of the lips. Such is our body, such are its passions, and such are the weapons against them. The holy Fathers call the totality of these weapons bodily ascetic labors. This is how the body must be taken in hand and taught to live a godly life. ‘And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires’ (Gal 5:24).

“Let us move on to the soul. Here in the first place is the imagination with the memory—the storehouse of the soul with an index of its treasures. The passions that disturb this faculty are: reverie; absent-mindedness, or the plundering of the mind; and fantasizing, fueled by reading novels and empty conversations. The weapons against them are attention, sobriety, and watchfulness of the spirit. The imagination is followed by the intellect and reason, whose work it is to identify everything. The enemies that act unfavorably on them are curiosity, doubt, pride, trusting only in one’s self, stubbornness of opinion, and lack of conviction. The weapons with which to arm them are: reading the word of God and writings of the Fathers, conversation with people experienced in spiritual life, personal reflection in submission to the voice of the Church. Alongside the intellect is the will, the active capacity of desires and undertakings. The passions that torment it are the following: excessive cares, self-interest, willfulness, insubordination, impudence, and licentiousness. The weapon against them is an all-around obedience, or submission to legal orders and regulations: worldly, civil, ecclesiastical, and those given by one’s spiritual father. Next in the same row is taste—the capacity for aesthetic pleasures. The passions that overcome it are: fashion, dandyism, and a passion for entertainment, balls, and theaters. The spiritual weapons to protect it are: spiritual hymns, icons, and especially going to church, which provides the most complete satisfaction of the needs of uncorrupted taste. Such is the soul, such are its passions, such are the tools against them. The totality of these weapons is the range of spiritual ascetic struggles, through which we glorify God ‘in our spirit’ (1 Cor 6:20) and save (Heb 10:39) and purify our souls (1 Pet 1:22).

“Finally, above the soul is the spirit, the power turned toward God and things divine. The enemies here are: unbelief, forgetfulness of God, fearlessness, burning of the conscience, dislike of the sacred, despair. The weapons against them are: faith and love devoted to God—enlivened by hope and active in walking before God, unceasingly turning the mind and heart to God, and unceasing prayer. I will shorten these instructions in order to give freedom to your tired attention, which has been led through an unfamiliar field of subjects. Rather, I will only enumerate in succession all the instruments of our spiritual warfare, namely: faith, prayer, going to church and abiding in all the orders of the church, all-around obedience, reading the word of God and the holy Fathers, lively conversation with experienced people, godly reflection, sober attention to ourselves, bodily labor, vigil, bowing, solitude, guarding the senses, silence, abstinence, and fasting. The same weapons, not in letter, but in spirit, are also indicated by St Paul, when, having commanded Christians to put on all the weapons of God (Eph 6:11), he then lists them. “Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints” (Eph 6:14–18)…. Thus, do not refuse but force yourself to pass through everything prescribed. God will be your Helper, only begin and continue without omission. Now is Lent, the most favorable time for such practice. He who has prepared has already used all spiritual weapons, and those who are preparing will also use them. All that remains is to apply a little force to yourself by starting to keep up with them. And then, God willing, you will like these weapons so much that you will never want to part with them. One has only to cleave a little to ascetic struggles, and they will more and more turn into our need, will nourish and delight us. They are not contrary to our nature, but are akin to it in its purest form, which vouches for their success in prevailing over us.” (Translation from Now is the Accepted Time.)

Brothers and sisters, let us never forget as Orthodox Christians the physical touch and warmth in our heart of God’s tender mercies, which are themselves uncreated and divine energies, yet which reach us here, sparkling and energizing us. Let us nurture them in our heart from the spark of God’s love in us, so that like kindling a winter campfire in Lent, they may warm us and shine out in time for Pascha bonfires, to fill our Lord’s words that we are the light of the world. Amen.

I wrote this in 2023 for the 40th anniversary of the film Tender Mercies, which for me is one of the great classics of America’s flawed Hollywood film tradition, in which I try to explain why. Robert Duvall’s recent death reminded me of this essay, which was never published before, and so I offer it here, as my Bucknell University Bible as Literature class also watches the film. It illustrates the cosmological beauty of the Christian tradition of marriage, even today as polyamory now is the latest secular American appropriation and twisting sadly of that tradition into transactional consumer terms. Lord have mercy!

This year marks the little-noticed 40^th anniversary year of a great but today largely forgotten American film.

Tender Mercies exemplified the elusive Christian culture of a country that has always gone in search of itself but seems more lost than ever now.

It still offers hope amid the tragedies of its country-music themes.

Tender Mercies appeared in the noontime of the Reagan era, winning two Academy Awards.

Yet it offered moviegoers a subdued, reflective, and heartfelt tone that touched deeper chords than the politics of the time, in its redemption story of the fallen country music singer Mac Sledge (Robert Duvall).

The film’s celebration of fidelity and quiet virtues of family life in the midst of life’s tragedies exposed a counter-current to the sexual revolution and materialism of its Studio 54 era. It still provides a remembrance of virtuous love running deeper in the American heartland than the insanities of those of us coastal adorables.

Screenplay writer Horton Foote, consummate poet of the big and little screen (he had adapted To Kill a Mockingbird in which Duvall also had appeared) once was described as the American Chekhov who, like famous Russian writers, knew how to depict quiet people.

If Russian novels, most notably Dostoevsky’s, captured Christian philosophy in fiction, Foote’s screenwriting echoed it in Hollywood’s context, most especially in Tender Mercies.

The film also struck chords in Nashville, despite highlighting the country-music industry as an image of American Mammon. When Duvall won Best Actor Academy Award for the film, he got an extra hug from trophy-presenter Dolly Parton, while cheered by Johnny and June Carter Cash in the audience, for a heartfelt portrayal of the struggle for virtue amid excess.

Appropriate to the film’s regional setting, Foote was a son of Flannery O’Connor’s Christ-haunted South and cousin to the Civil War’s poetic historian Shelby Foote. Moving north to practice his craft, he also became a devout convert to Christian Science with its deeply flawed but refracted mystical yearnings from America’s Puritan heritage. He balanced that with quiet devotion to Dostoevsky’s Christian aesthetic that “beauty will save the world.”

Duvall shared Foote’s Southern background and Christian Science spirituality by birth, though a wanderer from that faith who became a Hollywood standout with work stretching all the way from The Godfather to The Apostle.

Together their sojourning spirits fed Tender Mercy’s thirst for Christian faith beyond conventions of American materialism.

In the opening segment, Duvall’s character Mac Sledge has fallen so low that he has to work off the bill for the desolate rural motel room of his last drunken binge. He labors for the roadside inn’s owner-widow, who lost her husband at age 18 in the Vietnam War, and struggles as a poor single but loving mother whose singing is in the church choir.

“Were you really Mac Sledge?” a fan asks him outside the feed store in the small town nearby.

“Yeah I guess I was,” he says with a laugh.

When he asks his young widowed landlady (played by Tess Parker) to marry him, it is one of the sweetest yet most laconic romantic moments in cinema. Its breathtaking purity is truly a tribute to the art of Foote and the actors and the film’s sad sweetness, which seems to ferment with time.

Duvall’s character rejects a potential Nashville return to throw in his lot with a group of young rural musicians traveling in a van, with whom he makes a new song hit.

Meanwhile the tragedy of the loss of his daughter from his previous marriage to a Country star (played by Betty Buckley) interweaves with the bittersweet lyrics of the hymn “On the Wings of a Dove.” 

Tender Mercies is a movie about redemption and the second chances that Theodore Dreiser alleged American life didn’t offer but which the film shows it has done, and maybe can summon again.

It is about a lost America that can’t go home again but does in faith, based in the virtue of personal fidelity that Foote loved and found in his own real-life lifelong marriage, although this movie’s protagonist finds redemption in new love and faith.

John Adams said America would only survive as a republic with a virtuous people. His son John Quincy Adams said it was Christian marriage with its bonds of faith, sacrifice, and love that modeled what would enable America to endure. But this in real life is something more than insufficient legalistic virtue, instead evoking virtue as otherworldly grace.

Feckless politicians, consumers, narcissistic intellectuals—the all of us in society have gambled with that cultural heritage and lost too often, abandoning fidelity and the model of marriage that Christianity at its best left to us.

We ran through capital from a badly flawed but still partly numinous legacy, like Duvall’s alcoholic fallen star and Foote’s spirituality as a screenwriter.

But Tender Mercies is a reminder of how even the fallen can be redeemed. Maybe that applies to a people, Americans, as well as to people.

Maybe Alexei’s observation at the end of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, that even just one good memory can be enough to save a person, can be true for a country, too. Perhaps for us Americans the start of such a memory can even flash off a screen from this decades-old cinematic intervention.

Walk don’t run to watch this quiet film in its 40^th anniversary year, which leads to deeper reflection than this year’s Barbenheimer film craze.

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

Imagine an Orthodox Church, even our modest country church, where one night all the iconography vanishes, here and in Orthodox churches around the world, and from our own home icon corners also. It would be like a nightmare, stripping our worship space of much beauty and spiritual meaning. It would not stop our faith, but would be sorrowful. Yet for 120 years or so in early centuries of the Church this was a real historical challenge. From this struggle came the Triumph of Orthodoxy we celebrate today. When icons were restored after the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787, the victory came out of a defeat, which resulted in a greater understanding of the role of icons in our faith. We celebrate this triumph on the first Sunday of Lent in part because, like repentance, it is a celebration of victory coming from humbling, the full development of a theology and practice of bowing before icons as spiritual friends. And it came only after they had been stripped from our churches and homes, sometimes violently and producing martyrs.

God restored the icons. But today especially in Protestantism and in the secularism that emerged in the West we often see the same cheapening of Christian worship and faith and of life. This heresy denies the energizing of Creation by God with divine beauty, and how the image of Christ may be seen in each of us. Today our online world in a new subtler iconoclasm turns icons and ourselves into virtual images empty of relationship with God, and shapes a virtual reality of idolatry.

But always the triumph of Orthodoxy remains an embrace of humility. We bow and venerate and make the sign of the Cross before icons as windows into eternity, and also as family portraits. In the same way, our very involvement in a parish Church family is a humbling experience, recognizing the importance of others in our lives, and we bow to each other at Forgiveness Sunday just as we will embrace at Agape Sunday, recognizing the image of Christ in each other. For as Jesus Christ said, His New Commandment is to love each other as He loved us. He laid down His life for us. This means we are to love one another not only as our self, but more than ourself.

The Triumph of Orthodoxy really in a sense lies in our embrace of worldly defeat as Christians. That the Triumph of Orthodoxy is not of this world but otherworldly, is seen in the cup that Jesus Christ drank for us. Great milestones of Orthodox Church history are the loss of Constantinople, the persecutions by Islamists, and the Communist takeover of Russia. But these also involved humiliations that were great lessons for our faith and a source of martyrs who intercede for us and whose example in Christ help light our way to salvation. 

Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov wrote about this in a wonderful short essay called “The Cup of Christ” which is most appropriate for this first Sunday in Lent. He wrote:

“Two beloved disciples asked the Lord for thrones of glory, and He gave them His Cup (Matt. 20:23). The Cup of Christ is suffering. But for those who drink from it on earth, the Cup of Christ grants participation in Christ’s Kingdom. It prepares for them the thrones of eternal glory in heaven. We stand in silence before the Cup of Christ, nor can any man complain about it or reject it; for He, Who commanded us to taste it, first drank of it Himself. O tree of knowledge of good and evil! You killed our ancestors in Paradise, you deceived them by the delusions of sensual pleasure and the delusions of reason. Christ, the Redeemer of the fallen, brought His Cup of Salvation into this world — to the fallen and to those who are exiled from Paradise.

“The bitterness of this Cup cleanses the heart from forbidden, destructive and sinful pleasure. Through the humility that flows from it in abundance, the pride of understanding on the carnal level is mortified. To him who drinks from the Cup with faith and patience, the eternal life, which was -and still is – lost to him by his tasting of forbidden fruit, will be restored. I will accept the Cup of Christ — the cup of salvation. The Cup is accepted when the Christian bears earthly tribulation in the spirit of humility learnt from the Gospel. St. Peter turned swiftly with a naked sword to defend the God-Man, Who was surrounded by evil doers; but Jesus said to Peter:‘Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?’ (John 18:11).

“So, too, when disaster surrounds you, you should comfort and strengthen your soul, saying,‘The Cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?‘ The Cup is bitter: at first sight all human reasoning is confounded. Surmount reason by faith and drink courageously from the bitter Cup: it is the Father Who gives it to you, He who is all good and all wise. It is neither the Pharisees, nor Caiaphas, nor Judas who prepared the Cup; it is neither Pilate nor his soldiers who give it! ‘The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?’

“Pharisees think evil, Judas betrays, Pilate orders the unlawful killing, the soldiers of the government execute his order. Through their evil deeds all these prepared their own true perdition. Do not prepare for yourself just such a perdition by remembering evil, by longing for and dreaming of revenge, and by indignation against your enemies. The heavenly Father is almighty and all-seeing. He sees your affliction, and if He had found it necessary and profitable to withdraw the Cup from you, He would certainly have done so….

“How can we reject the Cup, which is the means of attaining this Kingdom and growing with it? I will accept the Cup — the gift of God. For the Cup of Christ is the gift of God. The great Paul writes to the Philippians ‘For unto you is given in behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake’ (Phil. 1:29). You receive the Cup, which seemingly comes from the hand of man. What is it to you whether the bearer of the Cup acts righteously or unrighteously? As a follower of Jesus, your concern is: to act righteously; to receive the Cup with thanksgiving to God and with a living faith; and to courageously drink it to the dregs.

“In receiving the Cup from the hand of man, remember it is the Cup of Him, Who is not only innocent but All-Holy. Thinking on this, remind yourself, and other suffering sinners, of the words that the blessed and enlightened thief spoke when he was crucified on the right hand of the crucified God-Man: ‘We receive the due reward of our deeds… Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom’ (Luke 23:41-42)…. Pray to the Lord on behalf of those who have insulted and outraged you that what they have done for you should be repaid by a temporal blessing and the eternal reward of salvation, and that, when they stand before Christ to be judged, it should be counted to them as if it had been an act of virtue. Although your heart does not wish to act in this way, compel it to do so, because only those who do violence to their own heart, in fulfilling the commandments of the Gospel, can inherit Heaven. If you have not the will to act in this way, then you have not the will to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. Look deep within yourself and consider searchingly: have you not found another teacher, the teacher of hatred – the devil – and fallen under his power?….

“A living faith in Christ teaches one to receive the Cup of Christ, and the Cup of Christ inspires hope in the heart of him who receives it; and hope in Christ gives strength and consolation to the heart. What torment, what torment of hell, to complain or to murmur against the Cup that is pre-ordained from above!… It is sinful to complain of neighbors, when they are the instruments of our suffering; still more sinful is it when we cry out against the Cup that comes down to us straight from Heaven — from the right hand of God. But he who drinks the cup – with thanksgiving to God and blessings on his neighbor – achieves holy serenity — the grace of the peace of Christ. It is as if already he enjoys God’s spiritual Paradise….

“Righteous Job heard bitter news. Tiding after tiding came to pierce his steadfast heart; the last of these was the hardest: all his sons and daughters had been struck down suddenly by a cruel and violent death. In his great sorrow, he rent his clothes and covered his head with ashes. And then – in submissive faith – he fell down upon the ground, and worshipped the Lord saying ‘I myself came naked from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, the Lord has taken away: as it seemed good to the Lord, so has it come to pass; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ ” So wrote St. Ignatius Brianchaninov.

Brothers and sisters, the Triumph of Orthodoxy stems from defeat and humiliation, in our lives as in Church history. In bowing ourselves before the icons, we relive this and pass it forward in the spark of God’s love in our hearts that overcomes the world. Job from his humiliation said ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth’ and we are told in the end (in the Septuagint) that he died in hope of the resurrection. Metropolitan Anthony Khrapovitsky of blessed memory, the founding first hierarch of our beloved Russian Church Abroad in the sorrow of the Russian Civil War, famously taught that it was our Lord’s acceptance of the Cup at Gethsemane that marked a special moment in our redemption. For the tears that He shed like blood there, when He said He would take the cup, and uttered the words “Not my will but Thy will be done,” were for our benefit. They expressed His compassionate sorrow for our sins. So, too, all of Lent and the Triumph of Orthodoxy in particular, seen in the windows of the icons, teach us to empty ourselves in Christ so that we may bear the life-giving Cross of loving one another more than ourselves. For ultimately the Cup of Christ is the Cup of the Chalice in which together lies our sharing of His Body and Blood. Glory to Jesus Christ!

The Reading from the 

Holy Gospel according to John for the First Sunday of Lent

§5 [1:43-51]

At that time: Jesus would go forth into Galilee, and found Philip and said unto him, ‘Follow Me.’ Now Philip was of Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip found Nathanael and said unto him, ‘We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and the Prophets wrote: Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.’ And Nathanael said unto him, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said unto him, ‘Come and see.’ Jesus saw Nathanael coming to Him, and said of him, ‘Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!’ Nathanael said unto Him, ‘How knowest Thou me?’ Jesus answered and said unto him, ‘Before Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.’ Nathanael answered and said unto Him, ‘Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the King of Israel.’ Jesus answered and said unto him, ‘Because I said unto thee, ‘I saw thee under the fig tree,’ believest thou? Thou shalt see greater things than these.’ And He said unto him, ‘Verily, verily I say unto you, hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’ 

An homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church by Priest Paul Siewers, for Forgiveness Sunday, 7534/2026.

Father, forgive them for they know not what they do, said our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross, in the worst type of tortured death, and the worst possible sin committed against God. Yet He forgave, and at His Resurrection he appeared to those Apostles who had not stayed with Him at the Cross as well as to John who had. He had breathed on them the Holy Spirit to forgive sins, and promised them the fuller coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost to establish the Church to redeem humanity which had killed Him. From the Church the Body of Christ He did not separate Himself from all of us of bad character, He welcomed us to redemption. Following His example, Tsar-Martyr Nicholas wrote in His diary how he was surrounded by All around me there is treachery, cowardice, and deceit.” But his daughter Saint Martyr Olga sent these words to the royal family’s supporters during their imprisonment before their execution: “Father asks to have it passed on to all who have remained loyal to him and to those on whom they might have influence, that they not avenge him; he has forgiven and prays for everyone; and not to avenge themselves, but to remember that the evil which is now in the world will become yet more powerful, and that it is not evil which conquers evil, but only love.” As the Lord’s Prayer tells us, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

Forgiveness beloved gives us insight from God into our lives and lifts us up out of the stresses that kill us to see on the horizon the Resurrection of Pascha beyond Great Lent. There is a healthy restorative otherworldliness to forgiveness, an anti-toxin. Dostoevsky’s character Elder Zosima said we must recognize that we are connected to otherworlds, other dimensions of God, to find meaning in life. Recently a friend died and had an Orthodox Christian funeral. She was a caring person, particularly to the sick. A young family friend was in the hospital the day of the funeral, under general anaesthesia for surgery. When she came too she was in a panic: Tell them to stop the funeral, she said, our friend is alive. For she had seen the friend who had passed two or three days before, in the operating room with her, comforting her. She described the friend’s clothes and head covering and their colors, and they matched exactly what the deceased was wearing in the coffin at the funeral, although the young friend would not have known this. Now maybe this was hallucination from the anaesthesia, some would say. But in Orthodox Christian tradition, the soul can wander for a short time after death with the guardian angel. Such events we don’t look for to make a big deal of the supernatural. That’s because they are natural in Christian tradition. As an early Christian writer once put it, drawing on St. Maximus the Confessor’s writing, in God nature is (from a human perspective) both that which is and that which is not. Forgiveness draws us into that kind of natural otherworldliness, into another dimension. Orthodox Christianity after all finds a closer analogy to quantum physics than to Newtonian physics. In quantum thinking, you find that the closest difference between two points lies in folding the paper, so the two points are atop one another, not in drawing a straight line between them. Forgiveness is like that, too. It is as necessary to forgive as it is to breathe. God counts each heartbeat and moves it by the Holy Spirit. Forgiveness renews our heartbeats by removing blockages of hate and stress. The flow of uncreated light (or grace) from God in us keeps us truly alive, gives meaning to our life. This uncreated energy of God sustains us in body and soul. For what the world calls sustainability comes from meaningfulness, the working of divine Providence, and letting our light shine from Him.

St. Theophan the Recluse (from Now is the Accepted Time) wrote of Forgiveness Sunday:

Lent seems gloomy until one enters into its field Glory to Thee, O Lord! We are again vouchsafed to live until Great Lent; still we are given time to come to our senses; and still the Lord has declared His readiness to receive us in the Fatherly embrace of mercy….We stand at the entrance of Great Lent: the field of repentance and God’s mercy to us. Let us enter with boldness and enter with desire. Let no one refuse. Let no one turn aside and go elsewhere. Lent seems gloomy, until one enters its field. But begin and you will see that it is light after the night, freedom after bondage, respite after a burdensome life. Have you heard what the Apostle now says: “The night is far spent, the day is at hand” (Rom 13:12). The night is the time before the fast, but the fast is the day. The Apostle desires that meeting the fast would be just as desirable for us, as meeting the day after a long night…. For what does the fast require? Repentance and correction of life. What does it give? Forgiveness of all and a return of all the mercies of God. What does it promise? Joy in the Holy Spirit here and eternal blessedness there. Take all this to heart, and you cannot help but desire the fast. The flesh alone rebels against the fast, and those not favorable to the fast are carnal, although they do not want to put themselves in this category, and they explain their estrangement from the fast somewhat more plausibly. They do not desire to abandon a life of freedom for the flesh, so they raise up complaints against the fast. But our spiritual side loves the fast, thirsts for the fast, and is at ease in it. We should say: “Awaken and develop the spiritual side in yourself, and you will be in harmony with the fast, as with a friend.” But it is for the purpose of revealing this side, that the Lord has enacted the fast. That is why self-compulsion is necessary beforehand. Bitter labor is necessary first, in order to later taste sweet fruits Let carnal reasoning shun the fast. Submit to the yoke of faith and heed the Apostolic teaching: “For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be” (Rom 8:6–7). That is why those who follow this wisdom “cannot please God” (Rom 8:6–8). This is what estrangement from the fast due to pleasing the flesh and submitting oneself to carnal “wisdom” borders on: the loss of the opportunity to please God and even enmity against God! Thus, whoever has even a small spark of the fear of God will not be alienated from the fast, but with the light of this fear will ward off all deceptive pretexts for violating it. We should say: “Revive the fear of God in yourself and you will gladly enter the field of the fast, and without difficulty will pass through it all, from the beginning to the end.” But again, how can one revive fear without the fast? Vanities, cares, empty amusements, comforts, passionate preoccupations, and even just the hustle and bustle of established relationships do not allow us to enter into ourselves, to come to our senses, and to vividly acknowledge our obligatory relationship to God! It is therefore necessary to force ourselves to enter the field of the fast and fulfill all its requirements. Then vain desires, thoughts, and passions will subside, the voice of conscience will be clearly heard, and the awareness of God and our responsibility before Him will vividly arise….. the fear of God, having in this way been revived, will become an irresistible force that knows no barriers, the action of which is aimed directly against all pleasing of the flesh, supported by self-pity. When you enter this state, then all the rights of the flesh to the privileges that we provide it in ordinary life will seem strange and ridiculous. But until you enter this state, there is nothing to expose the falseness of pretexts for pleasing the flesh, which divert us from the fast… pass through your entire life, no matter how long you promised yourself, stand at your deathbed and consider: can your conscience promise you a good outcome if at this moment death finds you as you are now? If it cannot, then know in advance that in that moment you will be ready at once to undertake the burden of ten, a hundred, a thousand fasts in order to only receive mercy, and it will not be granted to you. Thus, instead of then experiencing such a bitter rejection, Lent is now given to you, which alone is sufficient to receive mercy. Enter into it cheerfully and spend it according to God’s intention. Who knows, it could be your last Lent, and your last mercy? If you miss it, do not expect more. It seems that this would be sufficient motivation to resolve to embitter the flesh with ascetic struggles of self-mortification in the approaching fast. But something strange occurs with us. He who might be able to give the flesh ease, embitters himself more than others through fasting. But he who should embitter the flesh more than others, gives himself the most liberties. The righteous undertake toil after toil, but sinners allow themselves exemption after exemption. Is this not because the righteous feel themselves to be sinners, but sinners place themselves in the ranks of the righteous? But if so, then what better indication of the self-blindness, in which love of the flesh holds us, and what more reasonable a basis for not heeding it, and acting in opposition to it? Let us enter with courage into the field of the fast. Let there be among us no timid pleasers of the flesh, who tremble for their life, if you deprive them of any dish or remove any comfort. Let there be among us no vainly wise pleasers of the flesh, for whom coddling of the flesh has turned into a law by some special teaching of theirs. From the beginning, the Apostle put such people to shame, calling them “enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame—who set their mind on earthly things” (Phil 3:18–19). Nowadays, we hear of many teachings that expand the paths of life, and many customs have already been introduced in which our flesh is ease. But let us remember the words of the Lord: “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matt 7:13–14). Let us also cleave to those few and watchfully enter the gate of the confining fast that is opening before us, not allowing oneself superstitious interpretations and willful deviations from what was legitimized so wisely and what has been so salvifically fulfilled and is being fulfilled by all who understood and understand the purpose and value of life in the flesh but not “according to the flesh” (Rom 8:12). Amen.

So writes St. Theophan about today. Brothers and sisters, metanoia is Greek for repentance. But its full meaning really is closer to the English word transformation. And it also means to bow. To give a metanoia to someone in Orthodoxy is to bow physically before them and ask forgiveness, as we will soon do at Forgiveness Vespers. In this, forgiveness is synonymous with repentance. Glory to Jesus Christ! 

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew,

§17 [6:14-21]

The Lord said: ‘If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. ‘Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head and wash thy face, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father who is in secret; and thy Father, who seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. 

Today marks an unusual intersection of one of the 12 major feasts of the Church year, the Meeting of the Lord, with the Sunday of the Last Judgment, also known as Meatfare, in the immediate lead-up to Great Lent. In the Gospel we heard of how our Lord and God as a baby was brought to the Temple in accordance with Old Testament Law, and recognized by the Righteous Simeon and the Prophetess Anna while in the hands of the Most Holy Theotokos as the Righteous Joseph looked on. Simeon said, “’Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.’ And Joseph and His mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of Him. And Symeon blessed them and said unto Mary His mother, ‘Behold, this Child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be spoken against (yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also), that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.’”

We also heard in the other Gospel reading today of the Final Judgment, when our Lord will ask who has helped the stranger, the hungry, the poor in need of clothing, the prisoner. Who helps them helps Me, our Lord tells us. And Meatfare reminds us to be less carnivorous during Lent, less brutal toward other creatures including one another. The Gospel readings and today’s overlapping feasts in the Church remind us of the unity of sinful human nature, and how it can be restored and healed and saved in our Lord. We should be sober and repentant and attend to this healing during Great Lent.  St. Theophan the Recluse writes of the Last Judgment that, 

“…this is what the holy Church wants now to impress in our hearts. Let us accept with feeling the desolation of the situation of the sinner on the last day, the desolation in which the Judgment, condemnation, and decision of that time will place him. Let us accept it and take care to avoid it. No one can escape the Judgment. Everything will be as it is written. “Heaven and earth shall pass away” but the word of God concerning this and the Judgment “shall not pass away” (Matt 24:35). Are we our own enemies? No. So let us hasten to avoid the calamity, anguish, and despair with which the Last Day threatens us. How do we avoid it? Either by righteousness or by justification through mercy. If you do not have the righteousness, by which you could stand with those on the right hand of the Judge, then be zealous to justify yourself before God in advance, washed by tears of repentance and purified by ascetic struggles of self-rejection, and you will be accepted into their number by justifying grace, if not by righteousness. Behold, the acceptable time has already begun (2 Cor 6:2). The eve of the fast already approaches. The reduction in the satisfaction of the needs of the flesh is now instituted to give more scope to the actions of the spirit. Prepare yourselves! And flee as much as it is possible according to your conditional relationships and the weakness of you character, that which has spoiled the coming week, the evil customs of the world; so that we are sufficiently prepared to enter the field of fasting and preparation for holy communion, to be purified, to establish ourselves in purity, and to confirm for ourselves the possibility to appear purified before the terrible throne of God the Judge of all. Amen.” (From Now is the Accepted Time.)

There also is an American secular holiday tomorrow, adjoining in the world our feasts and making it a long weekend for many in the world, whose history goes largely unnoticed today because it relates to an old sense of virtue. It is called Presidents’ Day, originally George Washington’s Birthday. In light of today’s Meeting of the Lord Feast, and Sunday of the Last Judgment, thd diminished secular holiday reminds us of how insufficient are all worldly cares. No matter how great a leader may be in worldly terms, no matter what powerful position and inspirational model someone can provide, it is nothing in the face of mortality and the vastness of God’s creation and His power, and fades over time. The old law was fulfilled by Jesus Christ even as a baby. Legalism and mechanics of government and economics, even when promoted through a leader like a George Washington, are no match for the ravages of time or the power of the Holy Spirit given to us by our Lord in the Church.

President Washington was a Freemason and a vestryman in a Protestant denomination and a slaveowner, but he was renowned for his character, and his expression of biblical virtues such as courage, self-control, and prudence was seen as a necessity for self-government in the new country of America. First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was called.  Yet even the imperfect but renowned character virtues of a Washington, at their deepest level gifts from God in human nature, cannot in any legalistic framework save souls or nations. They may act as signs or encouraging reminders, alongside their imperfections. But the sustaining Spirit of real virtue comes through the Orthodox Church, in which uncreated energies of God support virtue as grace. That message of the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord has endured for two millennia, longer than any nation now on earth.

Saint Innocent of Kherson writes of how the Righteous Simeon in the account of the Meeting of the Lord is a model of virtue for us as Orthodox Christians for all time, of whom we are reminded today as we approach Great Lent. For while Simeon long before according to Church Tradition had doubted the Virgin birth when translating a prophecy of it from Isaiah, and was told he would not repose until he saw the prophecy fulfilled, he had learned patience and faith

St. Innocent wrote: “All the virtues were gathered together in St. Simeon: Love for neighbor nourished love for God and the fear of God in him; fear and love strengthened his faith in the Redeemer; his faith attracted the Holy Spirit; the Spirit accounted him worthy of revelation and gave him the chance to behold the Savior; beholding the Savior banished the fear of death – and St. Simeon departed in peace to where others can’t even look without trembling! Thus, here is the holy mystery of St. Simeon! This is how he came to such a precious opportunity – to die in peace! Whoever desires a death like his, let him walk his path: Be righteous and pious, believe in the Redeemer, try to become the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit – and you will be vouchsafed to behold your Savior!” (cited by Fr. Stephen Kaznicka)

Today Orthodoxy is increasing in the U.S. Some of us were at a conference this fall on Orthodoxy missionary work in America that bore the name of Philip Ludwell III, the first American Orthodox Christian, who was a cousin of First Lady Martha Washington and who moved in George Washington’s circles. Taking the long view, without the Orthodox mission to America, personified in Ludwell’s history, our country over time must devolve into just another declined power like many.

That would be like, at the Meeting of the Lord, focusing on the disappearing Old Testament laws being followed, rather than the baby Who is honored. Even at Church, it would be like following outward niceties of Orthodoxy, including practices of Great Lent, without giving to those in need from the heart, as our Lord says we must do, for Him to know us.

Brothers and sisters, let us not become just cogs in the wheels of what the Orthodox writer Paul Kingsnorth calls the global Machine of worldliness. Let us not in today’s world hurry to help with building some new tech Tower of Babel, whether it be via AI or other means, while trying to be good technocrats, or even superficial Orthodox Christians but not in the heart.

Let it not be so. Let this weekend’s conjunction of calendar dates from different dimensions remind us of the need for us to seek good strength and virtue from God in the Church for our missionary work, to help those in need, who are made according to the image of Christ, keeping the Last Judgment in mind. 

The Church is not legalistic or reducible to technology, however advanced. She is the Body of Christ. He fulfilled the law when He deigned to be borne in the arms of Simeon for our salvation in the Temple as a baby. Simeon’s prophecy applied not only to the early Church but in our day; “This Child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel and for a sign which shall be spoken against… that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.” Remember that Israel today is the Orthodox Church. Let us reveal our hearts by repentance, remembering the Final Judgment as we near Great Lent, and the danger of falling without seeking God’s mercy and His strength to grow our righteousness.

Following Simeon’s prophecy, with the Theotokos as intercessor, let us unworthily ask that a sword pierce through our own soul also, so that our hearts be opened and emptied in her Son, and that in Christ, in His Church, we may love our neighbors more than ourselves.That, by God’s grace. will save us at the Final Judgment. Glory to God for all things!

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew,

§106 [25:31-46]

The Lord said: ‘When the Son of Man shall come in His glory and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory. And before Him shall be gathered all nations, and He shall separate them one from another as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats. And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, ‘Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I hungered, and ye gave Me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took Me in; naked, and ye clothed Me; I was sick, and ye visited Me; I was in prison, and ye came unto Me.’ Then shall the righteous answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when saw we Thee hungering and fed Thee, or thirsty and gave Thee drink? When saw we Thee a stranger and took Thee in, or naked and clothed Thee? Or when saw we Thee sick, or in prison, and came unto Thee?’ And the King shall answer and say unto them, ‘Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.’ ‘Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I hungered, and ye gave Me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave Me no drink; I was a stranger, and ye took Me not in; naked, and ye clothed Me not; sick and in prison, and ye visited Me not.’ Then shall they also answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when saw we Thee hungering or athirst or a stranger, or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister unto Thee?’ Then shall He answer them, saying, ‘Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to Me.’ And these shall go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal.’

Holy Gospel according to Luke, 

§7 [2:22-40]

At that time, the parents of the child Jesus brought him to Jerusalem, to present Him to the Lord (as it is written in the law of the Lord: ‘Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord’), and to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord: ‘A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.’ And behold, there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Symeon, and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel; and the Holy Ghost was upon him. And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came by the Spirit into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for Him after the custom of the law, then he took Him up in his arms, and blessed God and said, ‘Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word; for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation, which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Thy people Israel.’ And Joseph and His mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of Him. And Symeon blessed them and said unto Mary His mother, ‘Behold, this Child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be spoken against (yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also), that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.’ And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher. She was of great age and had lived with a husband seven years from her virginity, and she was a widow of about fourscore and four years. She departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. And she, coming in that instant, gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spoke of Him to all those who looked for redemption in Jerusalem. And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee to their own city, Nazareth. And the Child grew and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him. 

February Newsletter, February 7534/2026. St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church, Winfield PA. 570-863-9039
Rector: Rev. Dr. Paul Siewers, priestpauls@pm.me

Our Journey Toward Pascha

This past couple weeks, your unworthy Rector has traveled blessing homes from Jersey Shore in the north to Mount Pleasant Mills in the South, from woods west of Mifflinburg to Frackville and Elizabethtown in coal country, blessing a nursing home room, and also engaging in prayers and Church/biblical discussions with inmates at the Muncy Women’s Prison and with Bucknell University students. Glory to God! These journeys offered new views of the depths and variety of our little mission parish, whose riches lie in the faith of our people. God’s help, with your prayers and your commitment to the mission, make this possible. The heart of the Church is the ecclesia or gathering in the Body of Christ to which we all are joined, and of which our country parish is a fractal, the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. The cleansing holy water, from the blessing at Theophany including of the Susquehanna River, used in the house blessings, reminds us of how Christ’s sanctification of His Church and Creation carries us forward into Great Lent, including in all the “little churches” of our homes.

Truly, as the Russian martyr to Communism St. Hilarion Troitskoy put it, “there is no Christianity without the church.”

Our mission work is to help people find our Lord’s Body, the Church, by God’s grace.

This February, as we move from the major Feast of the Meeting of the Lord into Great Lent, may the Lord give us good strength for the Fast!

Pre-Lenten and Lenten Services in February

The Meeting of the Lord and the Final Judgment, Feb. 2/15. Meatfare Sunday. This is one of the 12 major feasts of the Church year, and commemorates the fulfillment of the Old Testament in the New, of Israel realized in the Body of Christ as the Church, with the bringing of our Lord Jesus Christ as a babe into the Temple, where he is recognized by the Righteous Simeon (according to tradition one of the translators of the Septuagint) and the Prophetess Anna, in accord with Old Testament law. We are also reminded on the last day of eating meat before Lent, of the Final Judgment, to give us a sober outlook as we approach the Great Fast and the hope of Resurrection in Pascha beyond.

Forgiveness Sunday and Clean Week

–Forgiveness Vespers follows Sunday Liturgy, Feb. 9/22
–Monday Feb. 10/23, Great Compline with Reading of the Canon of St. Andrew, 4:30 p.m.
–Tuesday Feb. 11/24, Great Compline with Reading of the Canon of St. Andrew, 7 p.m.
–Wed. Feb. 12/25, Pre-Sanctified Liturgy, 10 a.m.
–Wed. Feb. 13/26, Great Compline and Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, 7 p.m.
–Thurs. Feb. 14/26 Great Compline and Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, 6:30 p.m.
–Fri. Feb. 15/27, Akathist for the Departed, 7 p.m.

The Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, Feb. 16/March 1

—Pre-Sanctified Liturgy Wed. Feb. 19/March 4.

The Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas, Feb. 23/March 8

—

Please Pray for the Sick

Mary, Magdalena and Paul, Chloe, Father James and Matushka Nancy, Hieromonk Claude, Reader Luke, Gregory, Innocent and John, among others. 

Please Pray for the Catechumens

Zachary, Camron, Scott, Ryan, James, Aaron, Corey. Also the newly illumined Cuthbert and Nicholas.

Alms-giving and Church-giving during Lent

Part of the fasting season is helping those in need, including our Church outreach work and beautification of the Church that is a part of that. Our Church is an all-volunteer operation (no clergy salaries or expense accounts currently). Please give generously as you can.

Reminders

Four rules for good Church order mentioned in the last newsletter. These are not necessarily the most important rules and are not meant to be legalistic, but to discipline ourselves for humility, especially during Lent. Please keep them “in your heart,” remembering their spiritual meaning.
1. Attending Vigil (or at least Vespers) is part of traditional preparation for Liturgy. If you can’t make it, please plan to arrive early for Sunday Liturgy and ask a blessing from Fr. Paul to receive if you can. In either case, please plan to do something “extra” at home Saturday night if unable to attend, such as watching a Vespers service “livestream” or saying a Readers Vespers at home. Attending Vigil means we keep watch with our Lord and show proper honor for the blessing of Communion. 
2. Appropriately modest attire: For men, long-sleeve shirt or jacket, and long pants. Women: long skirt or dress, shoulders covered, and head covering (the latter especially when receiving). This is to show respect for receiving the Holy Gifts of our Lord and not to draw attention to ourselves, in that way also respecting others. This has been our tradition from the start of the mission.
3. Proper Church etiquette for receiving communion elsewhere when traveling: First, please ask a blessing from Fr. Paul for such a visit (you can email). Then also email the Rector of the Church you are visiting elsewhere in advance, asking for a blessing to receive, and explaining that your parish Rector has blessed you to ask. This indicates to the host priest that you are in good standing as an Orthodox Christian and blessed by your home priest as prepared, and shows loving respect to your host Church.
4. Please remember to confess at least once during the season of Great Lent. Confession once during each of the four major fast seasons of the Church year is a basic requirement for participating in this penitential mystery of the Church–and more as needed, if anything would prevent you from taking Communion.

Home for Innocent and John

Our brothers in Christ and fellow Church members Innocent and John Sam are looking for a ground-floor or elevator-building apartment (preferably allowing a cat) in the Greater Lewisburg Metropolitan area 🙂 (i.e. including Northumberland, Sunbury, Selinsgrove, Milton, Mifflinburg, etc.). Please be in touch if you have any leads.

Prison Ministry

Our weekly prison ministry continues to the Women’s Prison in Muncy. Please be in touch with Fr. Paul if you would like to participate. Orthodox Study Bibles or donations for the same are needed for this ministry. Thank you!

Schedule

You can always double-check our service and event schedule at stjohnthewonderworker.com.

Asking for your prayers as always! May the Lord bless our community and all of us! +++

An homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Winfield, PA, by Priest Paul Siewers, on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, 7534/2026.

Dearest to Christ,

There was an historical photo on the internet this week of thousands of Russians gathered to celebrate joyously the 300^thanniversary of the Romanov dynasty. Only several years later, the crowds would ecstatically be celebrating the revolution and the removal of God’s anointed, the Tsar-Martyr Nicholas who with his family would little more than a year later die at the hands of the God-hating Communists. Where were all those who had professed allegiance to the Christian monarch? Swept away by what became a hellscape of atheist persecution of the Church.

On this day of the Prodigal Son, as we look toward Great Lent, we also commemorate the Holy Martyrs and Confessors of Russia. And there is a connection. Whole nations and societies can become prodigal or wandering in sin, and it starts with each of us not being faithful. First of all, the antidote involves being faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ and His Body the Church. The claim to go it alone outside of the Church He established is a false claim that Christianity can exist outside of the Church. And this is the gateway to atheism, nihilism, revolution, and many sins that bedevil society today, both collectively and individually.

St. Hilarion Troitskoy, a martyr to atheistic Bolshevism, wrote on this topic under the title, “There is no Christianity without the Church.” For before and during the worldly seeming triumph of Bolshevist atheism came the false belief that there can be Christianity without the Church. This is a great mass delusion and temptation in America in our own time as well. It comes from ignorance and malice against the Orthodox Church, the Body of Christ in human history. It leads to efforts to change Orthodox tradition in worldly ways, and to throw away any sense of the one holy catholic and apostolic church as a reality, in order to support the assertion of self-will.

In Russia under Communism, it came with people dissociating themselves from the Church. They as in the West today wanted to stay home on weekends with friends and families comfortably, and not attend Vigil and Liturgy. They said they could pray in their own thoughts and in their own ways, and read at home on their own about spiritual things, and leave off fasting while they had their own meditative feelings. But all this is a trap by the devil to separate us, and pick us off, like lone wandering sheep by a wolf. The Good Shepherd Jesus Christ comes to rescue and protect us, and He does this most of all by offering us His Body and Blood in the Church.

St. Hilarion the Martyr wrote, “The life of Christ the Saviour presents the reader of the Holy Gospels with numerous great moments which fill the soul with some special sense of grandeur. But perhaps the greatest moment in the life of all mankind was that occasion when, in the darkness of a southern night, under the hanging arches of trees just turning green, through which heaven itself seemed to be looking at the sinful earth with twinkling stars, the Lord Jesus Christ, in His High Priestly prayer, proclaimed: Holy Father, keep through Your name those whom You have given Me, that they may be one as We are. . . . I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word; that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. (John 17:11; 20–21) Special attention must be focused upon these words of Christ, for in them the essence of all Christianity is clearly defined. Christianity is not some sort of abstract teaching which is accepted by the mind and found by each person separately. On the contrary, Christianity is a life in which separate persons are so united among themselves that their unity can be likened to the unity of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. Christ did not pray only that His teaching be preserved so that it would spread throughout the universe. He prayed for the unification of all those believing in Him. Christ prayed to His heavenly Father for the establishment, more correctly for the restoration, on earth of the natural unity of all mankind. Mankind was created from one common origin and of one source (cf. Acts 17:26).”

Wandering from the unity of the Church is the temptation of the prodigal son for us today.  Of the parable of the Prodigal Son, St. Theophan writes in one of his pre-Lenten homilies:

“This is how every sinful fall and every man’s descent from a good state to a worse, confused, passionate state is accomplished. It always begins with a trifle, and a trifle that is plausible. The enemy knows that sin in its true form is repulsive, and therefore he does not directly lead you into it, but begins from afar, almost always covering his first attacks with the appearance of good. Then, little by little, the enemy sows impure thoughts and the heat of desire, shaking the strength of the will to oppose him and weakening its supports, until there forms in the man’s heart a secret inclination to sin, after which it is almost a matter of opportunity, and he is ready to sin in deed. And then, there is sin after sin and the repetition of the bitter fate of the prodigal’s fall. Keeping this in mind, of course, each of us will surely impose on ourselves the responsibility to strictly fulfill the command of the Apostle: “Be sober, be vigilant” (1 Pet 5:8)! Look in and around yourself and note the rounds and strivings of the enemy, who seeks to devour every zealot for goodness and purity. The first trick of the enemy is to confuse the thoughts. Usually he begins to sow only one such thought, but does so in order that it touches the heart and settles therein. As soon as he succeeds in this, immediately beside this insignificant, if not always bad thought, he gathers a whole cloud of secondary thoughts. In this way, the hitherto pure and bright atmosphere of the soul is obscured. By this the enemy prepares for himself a place and space for activity, and soon begins to act in this fog, striking the soul with passionate provocations, which leave wound after wound…. Then and there the enemy sits close to the heart and little by little begins to arouse passionate movements there. This is already the second step. Look out for this! If you notice this, stop, go no further, because anything further is already very bad. Perhaps we might not succeed in noticing this confusion of thoughts, because we happened to be involuntarily occupied with many things. But how can we not notice the movement of passions, especially when the intention to not yield to them is still intact. If this is very difficult for you, I will show you an even more tangible sign. Take note: as soon as a cooling of the heart occurs, as a result of being carried away by one thought, and then being confused by many, know that wounds and scabs have already begun in the heart, although they are not yet entirely noticeable. The cooling of the heart toward pleasing God is already more than halfway to a fall, while others say that it is a sure fall. After this, you will see what the matter involves on our side: do not permit the first alluring thought to reach the heart and do not accept them. By rejecting the first thought, you will destroy all the machinations of the enemy and cut off every opportunity for him to act on you and tempt you….If our foremother Eve had immediately driven away the tempting serpent, she would not have fallen. But instead, she entered further and further into conversation with him, became entangled in the net of the enemy and fell. Such is every fall.”

Brothers and sisters, we must keep our hearts warm to ward off temptations, and we do so through staying connected to our Lord in His Church. Let not the devil during this approach to Great Lent tempt you through spiritual warfare to separate yourself from the body of Christ, His Church, in any way, by slothfulness or pride. As St. Hilarion said, there is no Christianity without the Church. The sin of those who martyred millions of believers under Communism started with the argument and temptation that there can be Christianity without the Church. The rest unravels quickly. But God helps. Like the Prodigal Son, both individuals and nations can turn back into the loving arms of God. The Good News of the Gospel is that there is redemption in Him, no matter how bad the situation. St. Cyprian of Carthage said, to have God as our Father, we must have the Church as our Mother. Let us keep the warmth in our heart of the Prodigal’s Father, the warmth in our heart of the Church’s martyrs under Communism, and the warmth in our heart of God’s love letting that light shine in mission work for an Orthodox Christian America. Glory to God for all things!

The Reading from the 

Holy Gospel according to Luke,

§79 [15:11-32]

The Lord said this parable: ‘A certain man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me.” And he divided unto them his estate. And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land, and he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine ate, and no man gave unto him. And when he came to himself, he said, “How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father and will say unto him, ‘Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. Make me as one of thy hired servants.’” And he arose and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. And the son said unto him, “Father, I have sinned against Heaven and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.” But the father said to his servants, “Bring forth the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet. And bring hither the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” And they began to be merry. Now his elder son was in the field; and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. And he said unto him, “Thy brother is come, and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound.” And he was angry and would not go in; therefore came his father out and entreated him. And he answering said to his father, “Lo, these many years have I served thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment; and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends. But as soon as this thy son was come who hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf.” And he said unto him, “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. It was meet that we should make merry and be glad; for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.”’ 

Holy Gospel according to Luke, 

§106 [21:12-19]

The Lord said to His disciples, ‘Beware of men, they shall lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and into prisons, and you will be brought before kings and rulers for My name’s sake. And it shall turn to you to bear testimony. Settle it therefore in your hearts not to meditate beforehand what ye shall answer. For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to gainsay nor resist. And ye shall be betrayed both by parents and brethren and kinsfolk and friends, and some of you they shall cause to be put to death. And ye shall be hated by all men for My name’s sake. But there shall not a hair of your head perish. In your patience possess ye your souls.’ 

Saturday Feb. 7 we’ll start a new reading in St. John Church’s “Online Orthodoxy” class: Reading the first part of The Orthodox Church by Timothy Ware (1963-63), first edition (later the author became Metropolitan Kallistos), on Church history. We’ll be reading and discussing in sections. Please join us Saturdays 10 to 11 a.m., and contact Father Paul for the link (priestpauls@pm.me), A pdf of the first edition is attached here, and a physical copy is also available in the Church library.

Glory to God for all things!

A talk from this fall (7534/2025) at the Ludwell Fellowship conference in Stafford, Virginia. Glory to God!