(Above) Icon of Christ the Light of the World, Uncut Mountain Press.

An homily from St. John’s Church by Priest Paul for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (7533/2025).

Dear brothers and sisters, today the Gospel Readings tell us in a parable of the need to be good stewards of the fruits of our Lord’s vineyard, and also our Lord tells us to let our light shine. These are directly related. For it is by purification of our heart with God’s uncreated energies and our own ascetic striving that we can be so clear to let His light shine from our hearts. As a writer once said, I became like a bell and rang. So let our lights shine from the radiance of His glory kindled within us through our purification with His help.

The seven-branched candle stick by our altar table reminds us of how the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are to shine through us in our Lord’s Church. The seven-branched candlestick represents the menorah in the Temple whose pattern was shown to Moses by our Lord. It is found in the story of the Maccabees in the Orthodox Christian Bible. When the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70, as prophesied, following the rejection of our Lord by many of the Jewish leaders, it is thought to have been brought to Rome, and later under the Christians to Constantinople or Jerusalem. But all those cities ended up falling to enemies of the Church and the Second Temple menorah apparently disappeared like the first, which supposedly was hidden by the Prophet

But the seven-branched candle stick lives on at the altars of Orthodox Christian Churches, each one a local fractal of the Body of Christ, our Lord’s Church, which is the full realization of the Old Testament Temple, which the Incarnation and Crucifixion and Resurrection in effect had outgrown. In Revelation, the candle stick appears as bearing the light of the seven spirits of the Holy Spirit, the lights we are to let shine in our Churches and in our lives.

What are the seven spirits of the Holy Spirit? According to the Prophet Isaiah, they are wisdom, understanding, counsel, strength, knowledge, godliness, and the fear of God. They also identify with what are called the four biblical general virtues, of prudence, temperance, courage, justice or contemplation (Wisdom of Solomon 8:7 and 4 Maccabees 1:18–19) plus the three New Testament virtues of faith, hope, and love (I Cor. 13). Human language cannot describe them precisely in a totally logical and legalistic way, because biblical virtues in Orthodox Christianity are graces of the Spirit, the uncreated energies of God. Thus the human virtue of prudence or common sense is made wisdom as a gift of the Holy Spirit, and we see the fear of God fulfilled in true love, and so forth. The word virtue itself has the meaning of strength or energy.

The Apostle Paul describes these gifts according to the grace which is given us, as seven gifts, of prophecy, ministry, teaching, exhortation, giving with simplicity, ruling with diligence, and cheerful mercy. These seven spirits or lights of the candlestick of the Lord have also sometimes been associated with the Seven Churches in Revelation representing both our Lord’s Church as a whole or also seven eras of the Church’s history, and even seven Archangels watching over the Church including the Archangels Michael and Gabriel.

In any case, Holy Scripture in harmony with Church Tradition provides us with a dynamic view of virtue as energy that is the light we are to let shine, and the energy with which we are supposed to nurture bringing forth the fruit of our Lord’s vineyard, His Church, to use the imagery from today’s Gospel parable. Indeed, the very root of the word virtue is strength or power, and power is a synonym for energy or grace in biblical Greek.

So we are blessed with a very different sense of virtue, a very dynamic and empowering view, as grace and uncreated energy from God, as opposed to the worldly view of grace as just being a legalistic goody two-shoes. For the Orthodox dynamic view of virtue makes us realize that live a virtuous life is to live expressing the graces of God that allow us to give all up, our very selves up, to Christ, and to follow His New Commandment of loving our neighbor more than ourselves. Without this, we lose the true sense of Church and It can become merely organizational, instead of the spiritually organic Body of our Lord. If we forget about virtue being grace in Christ, which we let shine through our purified heart, God willing, then we lose what it really means to be an Orthodox Christian.

This is illustrated for us also in the life of the Apostle Bartholomew, also known as Nathaniel, the transfer of whose relics we commemorate today. After the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, Bartholomew evangelized in Asia with the Apostle Philip .He later preached in India and then Armenia, and was martyred there. Before his missionary work in India, he and the Apostle Philip had preached the gospel in Hierapolis, and they were both crucified upside down for their prayers leading with God’s help to the death of a great serpent whom many had regarded as a god. However, while the Apostle Philip reposed there, through God’s grace Bartholomew was released still alive by a great earthquake. He then went to India, translated the Gospel of Matthew, and then in Armenia he had cured the king’s daughter of insanity. The king’s envious brother had him crucified, skinned, and beheaded. But even in death the Apostle Bartholomew was a shining light, according to tradition, which tells of how his fellow Christians had buried his body but because of miracles happening over his relics, enemies of the faith threw his coffinto the sea. It floated to the West, to the island of Lipara where Bishop Agathon, who was led to it by a dream, buried it in a Church. The Apostle also appeared to St. Joseph the Hymnographer and told him, “Let heavenly water flow from your tongue,” blessing him that he might be able to sing spiritual hymns. Tradition tell us he also told the Emperor Anastasius at the end of the fifth century that he would protect through his intercessions the town of Dara. His relics were translated to Rome finally where miracles continued to occur over them. Bartholomew’s practice of the gifts of the Holy Spirit made him shine with the uncreated light of God even after his death, showing us how holiness and life continue beyond worldly life, in anticipation of the final resurrection. This was the Apostle of whom our Lord Jesus Christ had said, “Behold an Israelite of no guile!” Indeed, this what God asks us, to follow him, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, not Satan, the liar and father of lies.

God graced me unworthily with gifts of virtue, sinner that I am, through despairing prayer when I was elected Chair of my Department several years ago. It was the largest department at our institution, with about 35 colleagues and a staff person to coordinate. The department was full of conflict, and also with hostility targeting me. My election, while by a clear majority, went quickly from a sinfully proudful event to a mouthful of ashes for me. It created a large uproar with the senior leader in the department suggesting that he could not work with me, and others protesting to administrators and to faculty across campus. One colleague privately indicated to me that those hostile to me were trying to have me fired. This targeting of me all grew from my being a Russian  Orthodox Christian, in opposing expression of my identity as such, and in effect to cancel me as this phenomenon was called. This seemed especially egregious because it involved me as a member of a religious and religious-ethnic minority, in violation of laws and policies.

In talking with my spiritual father, he advised me to go into every meeting with the group with the Jesus Prayer, to pray it for myself alternating with the name of each person in the room, silently, and to repeat this during the meetings. “Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me… Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on x… ” God lifted me up, and gave me in that particular situation, however very imperfectly received on my part, graces of the Spirit I could not have on my own, sinner that I am, such as especially patience and peacemaking, related for example to diligent ruling and cheerful giving, amid the gifts mentioned.

These were not my own legalistic achievements but His gifts, for tending His vineyard however unworthily, under His rule. While some felt I would try to take vengeance in my new position of authority on those who had expressed such hostility, many seemed positively surprised with the outcome, glory to God. My three years as Chair were a trial and involved navigating also significant organizational changes, but kept me in prayer. Providentially by God’s unseen plan I was kept from being more of a target by being in that administrative position, although it had seemed to expose me at the time. Although the end of my term saw a rising up again of old hostilities, as I no longer would be holding perceived power in that office, in my last year as Chair I began wearing a cassock to work as a Reader, and received the start of a calling for eventual ordination and more of a role as an Orthodox chaplain on campus. I also received the opportunity for a year-long fellowship in my work after my term from a prestigious university, and later also received helpful unexpected awards from supportive alumni. I was able to thank God for my continuing calling as an educator, for opportunities to serve students and my university, but also had continuing work that could help sustain our mission practically.  Glory to God!

In all this, God provided and sustained me and my family unworthily, but also gave me gifts of virtues that I did not deserve and did not naturally have, however imperfectly I expressed them in that hostile situation, with help from the intercessions of our Most Holy Lady Theotokos, the saints, and the prayers of fellow Orthodox Christians, leading to unforeseen results. May the Lord in His love for us give us all good strength in the form of virtues to work in His vineyard and to let our lights shine in whatever darkness we may encounter in our day, so that we may remember the shining of the seven lamps on our altar, a message of hope and illumination that goes back thousands of years, and how the Apostle Bartholomew’s relics helped bring the light of Christ from the East to the West. Glory to God for all things!