A reflection on the Gospel Readings, Sunday Jan. 22, 7532 [Feb. 4, 2024 civil calendar, 35th Sunday after Pentecost and Sunday of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia], by a priest at St. John’s Russian Orthodox Church, Lewisburg, PA.
A brave Civil War general, trapped in a doomed cause as a devout heterodox Christian, was asked why he was so famously impassive in battle, unafraid. He reportedly answered: ”Captain, my religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave.
If a heterodox believer in a doomed secular cause could express such courage based on faith, then why not more so we as Orthodox Christians? On this Sunday of the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia, who most bravely died for the cause of Truth in Christ, the Gospel readings for Liturgy (offered in full at the end below) tell us indeed this is so.
In the account of the healing of the blind man (Luke 18:35-43), we are told that he calls out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me. Blessed Theophylact in his commentary notes that as a child of Israel, this man knew the Messiah would be the descendant of David, and together with asking Jesus for mercy, recognized his divinity. Then Jesus says, “Thy faith hath made thee whole.” “We may learn from this,” Blessed Theophylact writes in his ancient Byzantine commentary, “that when we ask in faith, God does not give us something other than what we ask for, but the very same thing.” But that, the Orthodox commentator says, is when we ask in faith and make a good request. Jesus’ voice, we are told, “proceeding from Him Who is the true Light, became light to the blind man.” And the gratitude of that faithful man became a light of evangelism to others. May it be so in our lives, for we are members of a mission, and thus called to be missionaries, if we use our faith aright, to receive our requests in prayer.
Think of it, brothers and sisters. The blind man was alone in isolation, begging, perhaps feeling abandoned by all, as the multitude rebuked him, telling him to be quiet. The second Gospel reading today (Luke 21:12-19) likewise tells us that we as Orthodox Christian missionaries will be reviled and persecuted, betrayed by family and friends, hated by all for Christ’s name’s sake. But not a hair of our head shall perish, we are told. Blessed Theophylact wrote of this passage that Jesus is saying, “You will be saved and not destroyed at all, even though it will seem to many that you have been destroyed. You must only endure patiently, and in your patient endurance you shall be able to gain your souls.” The enemy, the devil, trying to overwhelm us with terrible things, especially in these latter days, brothers and sisters, will receive our patience as a ransom for our souls. He can only kill us physically and for a time, not our souls, and our patience will enable us to endure. Patience is a word related to passion and with a meaning of suffering. It reminds us of the passion of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ for our sake.
“In patience possess ye your souls,” Jesus Christ tells us.
The Civil War military leader mentioned at the start is considered on the wrong side of history from a secular standpoint, and in his heterodox religiosity we also can consider him so from the standpoint of Orthodox Christianity. But in another way, we can speak of ourselves as Orthodox Christians in a good sense as on the wrong side of history. That is meant in spiritual terms, not politically, but impossibly and otherworldly, yet incarnationally at the same time. After long periods of persecution of Christians under the Roman Empire that seemed the trajectory of “normal” history, Emperor-Saint Constantine the Great suddenty received a vision of the Cross, that he would conquer in that sign. He did, and he released the Christians from the catacombs and made it legal to be of the Orthodox faith in the Roman Empire, in a way completely unexpected to the world, like Jesus’ healing of the blind man in the Gospel reading today.
As a result of St. Constantine’s miraculous conversion, the city of Constantinople arose as the Second Rome, the great Christian metropolis of the world for around a thousand years. Later, likewise, Moscow would claim the title of the Third Rome. From Russia, preserving as a rising major country, would emanate Orthodox Christianity around the world, including first to North America through Alaska, and then during the persecutions of Communism, when our own autonomous Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia became headquartered in New York City. Russian Orthodoxy spread globally in those persecutions, and indeed that is why our mission is here today, because of the patience of the faithful who went before us, as our Lord called forth in the Gospel today. Our priests today trace their ordinations in apostolic succession back all the way to Metropolitan Antony of Kiev, who became the first First Hierarch of the Russian Church Abroad in 1920, along with other bishops in Russia, who together trace their spiritual ancestry back to the Apostle Andrew in Kiev. So do all baptized in our Church.
The last Christian Russian emperor, Tsar-Martyr Nicholas, and his family, were brutally killed in a basement, shot and stabbed a multitude of times, alone and derided and humiliated by a faithless society in the name of atheistic progress, little more than 100 years ago. This was considered part of a “normal” if cruel trajectory of history. But something spiritual happened there on the wrong side of history. Today they are revered as saints, candles flicker around the world and around the clock before their venerated icons, and their captors and their system are rightly derided. The martyrs’ faith has spread to many countries, while Russia remains, despite its many lamentable sins, the one major nation today with an overtly dominant Christian civic culture, a switch from the Cold War indeed.
In CS Lewis’ Narnia story The Silver Chair, the witch tells the clownish character Puddleglum that all he thinks is good, including Aslan, a figure of Christ, is a fantasy, together with whatever good he thinks is in Creation from Aslan. It is all a delusion, she says. The awkward Puddleglum bravely rejects her, with heartening words unexpected from his tongue-tied self:
“Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things – trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But [us] babies playing a game can make a playworld which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia.“
Puddleglum in the Anglican Lewis’ story says he is ready to die for those good things and the truth in them, even if she and everyone else in the mob tries to force him to say it is all fantasy.
Orthodoxy offers the real empirical experience of Christ, Truth, in the Church that He founded, however foolish that may appear to a materialistic world that in modern Western delusion tends not to recognize the legacy of Byzantium, the reality of apostolic succession, living Tradition, or embodied hesychasm in Orthodox praxis, of the “one holy apostolic and catholic Church.” Truly mortal kingdoms rise and wane. The Church outlasts all of them and offers us the Kingdom of Heaven in Jesus Christ. Meantime Jesus tells us in the Gospel that he will give us a mouth and wisdom to voice the truth bravely to the mob of worldly thought, and to patiently possess our souls.
History has a long curve toward justice, another famous American said. But justice in Orthodox Christian terms means, as in New Testament Greek, righteousness. It is our struggle to be right with God that is met by Him in synergy, which lifts us up and turns us around and turns us inside out, to be in harmony with the Logos, Christ our God, and then desires to give others the same opportunity. Like the blind man in the Gospel account we start to see. Our isolation drops behind. The mob no longer can terrorize us. Rather, we know ourselves free, made, like Creation, in Christ, the Divine Logos, and we run to tell others. Jesus Christ the Logos gives us the words we need and the wisdom patiently to be free, free to voluntarily serve Christ, all together with one another, here in Christ’s Church. For He, our Lord, is, as he told us, more than mere human words, is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Glory to God for all things!
***
The Readings from the Holy Gospel according to Luke
§93 [18:35-43]
At that time, as Jesus came nigh unto Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the wayside begging. And hearing the multitude pass by, he asked what it meant. And they told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. And he cried, saying, ‘Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me!’ And those who went before rebuked him, that he should hold his peace, but he cried out all the more, ‘Thou Son of David, have mercy on me!’ And Jesus stood and commanded him to be brought unto Him. And when he had come near, He asked him, saying, ‘What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee?’ And he said, ‘Lord, that I may receive my sight.’ And Jesus said unto him, ‘Receive thy sight; thy faith hath saved thee.’ And immediately he received his sight and followed Him, glorifying God. And all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God.
§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.’