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

Dearly beloved in Christ, today we commemorate the Holy Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, whose famous feast day in Church history falls on this Fourth Sunday of Lent, which is usually reserved for St. John Climacus and the Sunday of the Ladder. But the two are related in what is often called the “beautiful struggle” of Lent. Last Sunday we commemorated the Cross at the halfway point of Lent. The Ladder, a classic book by St. John reflecting his ascetic life at Mount Sinai, tells of how to climb the Cross in unworthy emulation of our Lord, as a stairway to heaven. This is what the Holy Martyrs of Sebaste did in what is now eastern Turkey.

There in 319 they were subject to the persecution of the pagan Romans, the precursors to our modern persecuting secularists and occultists. These 40 Roman soldiers faithful to Christ were put outdoors in freezing waters for refusing to renounce their faith. Witnesses described a glow of heavenly light, the uncreated energy of God, around them as they were received into Paradise by our Lord. Within living memory, St. Basil the Great, who wrote our Liturgy today, commemorated them in a homily at Constantinople. Today, some 1800 years later, we ask for the prayers of the Holy Martyrs for our mission in America. There were 40, just as there are 40 days of Lent for us, reminding us of the 40 days of Noah and his family surviving the Flood, and Jesus’ 40 days being tempted in the wilderness. The numeral 4 involves a sense of the cosmic (as in the Four Evangelists, the four seasons, the four directions, etc.), and the number 10 a sense of the wholeness of God’s law now fulfilled in Christ, multiplied together in the symbolism. Even in the Orthodox wedding ceremony, the Forty Holy Martyrs are invoked in a prayer , that the bride and groom crowned with the crown of martyrdom may be as faithful.

Their witness to Christ stands as a reminder that all of us as Orthodox Christians are called every day to the joyful sorrow of asceticism, or denying ourselves in Christ, so as to open our hearts to the uncreated light. This is the message, too, of St John Climacus’ The Ladder. Some say wrongly that St. John’s book is only for monastics and not for those of us in the world. But the Church in her wisdom has made it a regular standard of Great Lent, usually on this Fourth Sunday, and today presents the example of the 40 Martyrs for our urgent attention. Truly while there is a difference between what we in the world and what the holy fathers and mothers of our monasteries can do, qualitatively there is no difference in the kind of govenie or ascetic focus and attention that we should give to our faith each day as we say the “Jesus Prayer” and fast during Lent, even in the world.

The secret prayers in our Liturgy remind us of this, too. At the Clergy retreat I attended this past week, we were reminded of how those prayers are meant to be said by the priest out of earshot of the congregation. This is in line with our Orthodox hesychastic tradition of inner quietness in prayer. Not all the mystery is explained aloud during the service. The choir may fill in, and there may be moments of silence.  Worshippers bear that silence in prayers in your hearts, as with the Jesus Prayer silently, “Lord Jesus Christ mercy me.” We “mind the gap” so to speak of the silence, and contemplate more deeply the hymns. Bishop Luke reminded us also to remind worshippers to pray along silently with the priest in your hearts when he says prayers aloud in the service. We’re not meant to be passive in worship and in prayer, but to participate, in synergy with God’s uncreated energies, in worship as in our salvation, to share the joyful burden of active love, which is true asceticism in Orthodox Christianity–the beautiful struggle.

Such focus on inner quietness and dedicated devotion must also include radical compassion, because these are all together as the effect of God’s uncreated grace received in active love. In the collection called the Ancient Patericon of sayings of the desert fathers, compiled by St. Theophan the Recluse, there is the story of a monk who was ejected from a monastery for sin. As the monk was leaving, he saw the abbot who had ejected him walking out the door with him. Father, he said, where are you going? The abbot said, I am  leaving with you, because I too am a sinner.

There is a famous icon of the Forty Martyrs in the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Yet today, that holy temple built by Emperor-Saint Justinian, the site of our Lord’s tomb and of the Holy Fire, is sadly closed due to war. One of the prosecutors of that war this week told the world that Genghis Khan was more correct than Jesus in his appraisal of humanity, in asserting the raw worldly power of this world. We as Christians reject this spirit of the antichrist wherever it comes from, because it rejects that Jesus Christ our God has come in the flesh with all power, and we must start by doing so in our own hearts, rejecting the desire for power and wealth and comfort just as did the Forty Martyrs and St. John Climacus.

This rejection of the world must include secular heroes and celebrity, however appealing. This week in the news also saw the death of the American pop culture hero Churck Norris, an action movie hero who later in life turned to heterodox Christianity. Norris once said that he didn’t want to be a movie star but wanted to be a figure that kids could look up to as he as a child without a dad had looked up to the movie star John Wayne, who in turn had been been inspired as a young man by having the real-life cowboy hero Wyatt Earp as a mentor. In my early years as a university professor and long before my ordination, the few who knew wondered why I liked sometimes in the evening to watch Walker Texas Ranger reruns starring Norris. I found them often humorous relief from the anti-Christian nihilism I found in American higher education. But for all his vaunted and joked-about strength, Norris was not able to evade death, and none of us shall, and his beliefs however positive in a general way were not Orthodox Christian and thus ultimately could mislead. Our real action heroes as Orthodox Christians must be the Holy Forty Martyrs of Sebaste and all the holy martyrs, and ultimately our Lord Jesus Christ who conquered death for us. Our real protection is in the Orthodox Church, which is the Body of Christ, not in any mythology, American or otherwise. May they inspire us in our own action heroism, our active love in beautiful struggle, in contributing to the conversion of America to Orthodox Christianity.

Brothers and sisters, as our Lord said, we hear of wars and rumors of wars. But let us pray for wisdom and discernment that we not deny our Lord to Antichrist. As the Evangelist John said, the spirit of Antichrist is the denial that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. That too is a denial of the Body of Christ in the Orthodox Church, which is the true Israel today.

A beautiful custom in Slavic Orthodoxy lands for today is to make Skylark pastries in the shape of birds, to honor the 40 martyrs, that the birds who sing to greet the springtime today may also represent the joyful reception of the 40 Orthodox martyrs in heaven. Thanks to Scott and Kris for making those for us today for coffee hour.

Let us join in the song of the skylarks welcoming the spring and the Lent that leads us into Resurrection, as it did so long ago with the Holy Forty Martyrs. They are with us today as we worship in Appalachian America. May they pray for our souls and for our mission. Amen.

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Gospel of the Sunday, and that of the Martyrs — 

The Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Mark,

§40 [9:17-31]

At that time, one of the multitude came to Jesus, bowing before Him and saying: ‘Master, I have brought unto thee my son, who hath a dumb spirit. And wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth him; and he foameth and gnasheth his teeth and pineth away. And I spoke to thy disciples that they should cast him out, and they could not.’ Jesus answered him and said, ‘O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him unto Me.’ And they brought the boy unto Him. And when the spirit saw Him, straightway he tore the boy; and he fell on the ground and wallowed about foaming. And He asked his father, ‘How long is it ago since this came unto him?’ And he said, ‘From childhood. And oftentimes it hath cast him into the fire and into the waters to destroy him; but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us and help us.’ Jesus said unto him, ‘If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.’ And straightway the father of the child cried out and said with tears, ‘Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief!’ When Jesus saw that the people came running together, He rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, ‘Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him and enter no more into him.’ And the spirit cried, and rent the boy sorely and came out of him; and he was as one dead, insomuch that many said, ‘He is dead.’ But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. And when He had come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, ‘Why could not we cast him out?’ And He said unto them, ‘This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting.’ And they departed thence and passed through Galilee, and He would not that any man should know it. For He taught His disciples and said unto them, ‘The Son of Man is delivered into the hands of men, and they shall kill Him; and after He is killed, He shall rise the third day.’ 

Holy Gospel according to Matthew, 

§80 [20:1-16]

The Lord said this parable. ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto a man that is a householder, who went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and said unto them, ‘Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you.’ And they went their way. Again he went out about the sixth and the ninth hour and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing idle, and said unto them, ‘Why stand ye here all the day idle?’ They said unto him, ‘Because no man hath hired us.’ He said unto them, ‘Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.’ So when evening had come, the lord of the vineyard said unto his steward, ‘Call the labourers and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first.’ And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. But when the first came, they supposed they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny. And when they had received it, they murmured against the master of the house, saying, ‘These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us who have borne the burden and the heat of the day.’ But he answered one of them and said, ‘Friend, I do thee no wrong. Didst thou not agree with me for a penny? Take that which is thine and go thy way. I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?’ So the last shall be first, and the first last. For many are called, but few are chosen.’