[Homily from St. John’s Russian Orthodox Mission Church in Lewisburg PA for the 36th Sunday after Pentecost, Commemorating the Translation of the Relics of St. Ignatius the God-Bearer of Antioch, Jan. 29, 7532 (Feb. 11, 2024 on the civil calendar).]

St Ignatius of Antioch, according to tradition, was the child taken up in Jesus Christ’s arms, described in today’s Gospel readings (the texts of which are pasted at the end below), and would end his life testifying to Emperor Trajan in Rome how he went by the name Theophorus or “God-bearer” because he bore Christ within his heart as a result of that childhood encounter. We are told that Jesus met him outside of the historical lands of the people of Israel, in the region of Tyre and Sidon. This non-Jewish region had been home to the ancient commercial empire of Phoenicia, along whose lingering trade routes, according to one legend, traveled by Joseph of Arimathea from Judaea all the way to England in the early days of the Church. To the north where Ignatius came to live, in Antioch, the Bible tells us followers of Christ were first called Christians. There a Hellenistic or Greek community of Jews had flourished. Indeed, Ignatius in Antioch as he grew up helped provide a bridge between the society of Judaea, from which the Apostles emerged, and the Gentile world. His life ended, according to a traditional account, at the center of the Roman Empire, in Rome’s Colosseum, a vast venue of imperial spectacles not unlike our modern Super Bowl. There he reportedly died in glorious martyrdom assailed by lions before a mob of tens of thousands of people. Yet how brightly his light burns in Christ to this day, as we talk about him here now a world away, in rural Appalachian Pennsylvania. St. Ignatius’ life reminds us of how the Church continued and renewed the Old Testament Israel as the Israel of all Creation, including the Gentiles, who were not descended from Abraham or circumcised into the people of Israel under the Old Testament law, and unto the lands not yet known to the Romans, including ours.

It’s worth remembering, too, that the woman in our other Gospel reading is from Canaan, and Canaan was the name of the son of Ham indicted by Noah’s curse. The Canaanites were people of the promised land conquered by and influencing the people of Israel at times toward idolatry. Yet grace is extended to her by Jesus Christ. First, though, He challenges her by saying that ‘I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ Though she worshiped Him then and called Him Lord and asked His help, He answered and said, ‘It is not meet to take children’s bread and cast it to dogs.’

Yet the Greek term translated dog here is a word meaning little dog or puppy. Elsewhere in the New Testament, the regular Greek word for dog can be a negative epithet, referring to gross immoral depravity, as in Revelation referring to wild dogs outside the walls of Christ’s City, the New Jerusalem. But here the term puppy summons an image of a little animal lacking training but perhaps with potential and appeal, less than fully human in Christ, but humbly needing to be trainable, like all of us as struggling Christians. This image conveys the strong sense of potential service, loyalty, and love, which domesticated dogs have exhibited for millennia as “man’s best friend.” That friendship is perhaps one of the consolations given humanity by the Lord in our fallen state on earth. I can attest to this as we have just this weekend had a new golden retriever puppy come to visit our household, which lost our 13-year-old dog this past fall. The new arrival is at once trainable, demanding in both the training he requires and his baby-like needs, and adorably already a friend.

However, when the New Testament uses the regular form of the Greek for dog, not in the diminutive as Jesus uses it here, but such as the Apostle Paul does in Philippians, it can refer to a spiritual predator. This draws on negative views of dogs as wild scavengers found in the old Middle East. Indeed, having formerly belonged to a Greek parish, I noticed cultural differences in attitudes toward dogs among some from Mediterranean backgrounds, as compared to those of barbarian northern European ancestry such as my own. In cultures shaped in long winters, it was more common culturally for dogs to have the run of the house. Historically they played a working role in herding and hunting and defense. But dogs are not allowed in Orthodox churches while cats (at least in monasteries) have a certain privilege as less brash rodent catchers, though in a restricted way and never in the altar area. Meanwhile in modern times there are valid criticisms of Global Westerners who sentimentalize pets as accessory-like replacements for children, spending large sums of money on them that could go to the poor.

But Jesus uses the diminutive form meaning puppy, open to a slightly different range of interpretation from just dog, and including for us both the negative and positive potential. The Canaanite woman responds, on behalf of all of us not genealogically descendants of Jacob (and perhaps not even “cradle” Orthodox Christians!), by recognizing the truth of the man she worships as Lord and His divine power. She says, ‘Truth, Lord; yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.’ ‘Great is thy faith,” our Lord tells her, ‘be it unto thee even as thou wilt.’ And we hear that her daughter was made whole from that very hour, for she was also asking for help not for herself but presumably for a child.

In a sense this reminds us that we as faithful are like puppies, needing to be trained by our Lord to realize our full humanhood. We don’t need to hold to mortal labels as obstacles or even grievances, such as in her case being Canaanite or even a woman, but need to uphold the true freedom offered us in Christianity of service to God and neighbor. “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free,” Jesus said. In the Orthodox Church, freedom is found in voluntary service to universal truth, as the Orthodox philosopher Semyon Frank wrote. That universal truth is in the divine person of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ.

Frank summed up that Christian definition of freedom, so different from today’s false notion of freedom as self-assertion, from a life of being trained, so to speak, as first a puppy for Christ in the Orthodox Church, and then a humble chastened Christian, whose writing has been praised as that of the greatest modern Russian philosopher and a Christian existentialist of note, although he remains little known today. Frank was born a Jew in Tsarist Russia outside the Church, and grew up in a family revering Jewish law. Yet he found in Christ the fulfillment of the law in the salvation and the love of the Person of God the Son.

Converting to Orthodoxy and marrying an Orthodox woman, Frank became one of the liberal intellectuals who turned to challenge the rising atheism and radical anti-Christianity of Russian elites before the revolution. Forced into exile with his family by the Bolsheviks, he re-settled in Germany. But then came the time when the racism of Nazism forced him and his family to flee due to his Jewish background. Frank and his family relocated to Paris. But then Paris was conquered by the Nazis. His family had to scatter, and he ended up living in the countryside in occupied southern “Vichy” France, trying to avoid interrogation by the Gestapo, sometimes sleeping in a barn. He never had a comfortable academic position like other philosophers and never was well known. But he had his faith as an Orthodox Christia, and wrote magnificently in an age of intellectual unbelief and existential angst about freedom as voluntary service to the Truth, Jesus Christ.

Yet how far, as he would admit, philosophy must fall to her feet before Christ, titling his greatest work The Unknowable.

To exemplify such humility, Christ long ago hailed little Ignatius the child. ’Whosoever shall receive one of such children in My name, receiveth Me; and whosoever shall receive Me, receiveth not Me, but Him that sent Me,’ meaning God the Father. The type of leadership in service this implies for Orthodox Christians reminds us also of the important living symbolism of marriage in the Orthodox Church. The Bridegroom becomes a symbol of Christ, and the Bride of the Church, the ekklesia, the assembly of the people in worship. The Apostle Paul wrote of the husband as the head of the household, but also said the husband needed to follow Christ in laying down his life for his wife and family. As we were told by the priest before our marriage, even more than love and respect, commitment is required in Christian marriage—commitment to one another in Christ in the Church. Growing into leadership in service is exemplified by the role of parents in a Christian family, our little church. This is available to all of us as we grow in faith under the guidance of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, where through Christ’s tutelage we can grow from puppyhood so to speak to become “wise as serpents but harmless as doves.” But like St. Ignatius with God’s help we hope never losing that grace of humility upheld by Christ. On Holy Thursday at cathedrals and monasteries in the Russian Orthodox tradition, the greatest of hierarchs wash the feet of a dozen priests or monks in emulation of Christ. At my ordination, the Bishop’s whispered instruction to me was not to lose either zeal in the Holy Spirit or humility.

Our Gospel readings today remind us too of the need for humility in dealing with others claiming to cast out demons in Jesus’ name. While we know that the safest place for salvation, where we must strive to bring all our neighbors and family, is the Orthodox Church, and we know that demons deceptively try to counterfeit miracles outside of it, at the same time we must be humble in our approach to those helping their neighbor in Christ’s name. We must remember that we are kings and priests unto God as Orthodox Christians. But our leadership in that sense also must be one of humble service when interacting with others. We are not ecumenists in that modern heresy. We must not accommodate but answer heresy. We must reject betrayal of Christ even unto public martyrdom if so called, as did St. Ignatius the God-bearer. But we also recognize that God’s will is a mystery beyond us. As we grow from puppydom into full humanity in Christ, God willing, our focus must be on evangelism, as missionaries in our Orthodox mission parish and the ongoing Orthodox mission to America, beginning with our mission to ourselves. We evangelize first through our daily prayer and fasting, regular preparation for and participation in the mysteries of the Church, and service to others in Christ’s name, including especially to those who may be labeled Caananites outside the Church yet are our brothers and sisters in need of salvation within Her protecting embrace.

Thus we learn from our Master, the head of our Church, our Lord Jesus Christ, Who washed the feet of his disciples in humility before giving His life for all of us. In the Eucharist He gives us unworthy children His most holy and precious Body and Blood.

Glory to God for all things!

***

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew,

§62 [15:21-28]

At that time, Jesus went into the region of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same region and cried unto Him, saying, ‘Have mercy on me, O Lord, Thou Son of David! My daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.’ But He answered her not a word. And His disciples came and besought Him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she crieth after us.’ But He answered and said, ‘I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ Then she came and worshiped Him, saying, ‘Lord help me.’ But He answered and said, ‘It is not meet to take children’s bread and cast it to dogs.’ And she said, ‘Truth, Lord; yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.’ Then Jesus answered and said unto her, ‘O woman, great is thy faith. Be it unto thee even as thou wilt.’ And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.

Holy Gospel according to Mark,

§41 [9:33-41]

At that time, Jesus and His disciples came to Capernaum; and being in the house, He asked them, ‘What was it that ye disputed among yourselves on the way?’
 But they held their peace, for on the way they had disputed among themselves as to who should be the greatest. And He sat down, and called the twelve and said unto them, ‘If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all and servant of all.’ And He took a child and set him in the midst of them. And when He had taken him in His arms, He said unto them,  ’Whosoever shall receive one of such children in My name, receiveth Me; and whosoever shall receive Me, receiveth not Me, but Him that sent Me.’ And John answered Him, saying, ‘Master, we saw one casting out devils in Thy name, but he followeth us not, so we forbad him because he followeth not us.’ But Jesus said, ‘Forbid him not, for there is no man who shall do a miracle in My name that can lightly speak evil of Me. For he that is not against us is on our side. For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in My name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward.’