The Kingdom of Family

Today we participate in a great feast: the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos. From all over the world, disciples rushed to Her bedside (including one whose relics repose in our Altar). We also must take our humble places near to Her, not distanced in any way, for She is our Mother, and we are Her children, each of us the apple of Her eye. This was Her Son's Divine command issued from the Holy Cross: "Behold, your Mother" (Jn 19:27). Such is God's manifest will for us.

Does this seem odd? If so, then consider Her Divine title: Mother of God, a mind-bending concept. We cannot comprehend it: the Woman Who gave birth to One Who is more expansive than the universe. Our ancient forebears, the first Orthodox Christians in the West (more than a thousand years before the Baptism of Holy Rus'), imagined Her singing at the Nativity:

With our acceptance of this Divine Mystery, perhaps we can now fully own Jesus' teaching that we are daughthers and sons of God, to Whom we might cry, "Abba, Father" (Rom 8:15). This is the great revelation disclosed by the perfect prayer: "My Father, Which art in Heaven ...." (Mt 6:9). Yes, the Greek text from St. Matthew's Gospel reads, "My," not "Our," for personal, individual intimacy between child and Father is the essence of this prayer. We enter into our greatest prayer through that door. perhaps the greatest lesson which Jesus teaches, in which lies our salvation. For the way we are received into this Kingdom of Love is through family. You see, we are anointed as a child of God before we enter into the rest.

Here is the easy and natural way to honor Jesus' two cardinal teachings. I might say impossible teachings, the Two Great Commandments. Above all, we are to love God, Who is our Father-Mother from the time we are helpless infants. And we are to love our siblings as we love ourselves. This love is as natural as the air we breathe. It is deeply reassuring to realize that we begin our journey of theosis from birth, from the time that we experience our Father and Mother's love. And it is reassuring to know that this is our birthright. We look forward to the full maturation of this love, as surely as we look for leaves appearing on trees at springtime.

At the Hermitage this is the life we live: as brothers and sisters articulating our love of God in prayer and worship and in daily vocation, even as we live out our decent and godly love for each other.

The Kingdom of Family is no metaphor, no flight of spiritual fancy, but a profound and literal truth upon which the Scriptures insist over and over again. Let us go back to St. John's Prologue:

St. John insists: "not born of blood"; "not born by carnal intention"; "not born by will of the human soul" .... but born of God. This is also Jesus' emphatic declaration:

Yes, our experience of earthly family trains us in the school of love from the time we first open our eyes. And in it we experience the full range of love from exultant fullness, stretching our hearts unto Divine love, to bitter disappointment and alienation as we encounter betrayal and treachery. For not all of God's children, tragically, have been faithful, some even descending to unresolved rebellion becoming implacable enemies of God.

Do we not see them everywhere? As I write this (was it just yesterday?) that a man, claiming to be trapped in a woman's body, brought an automatic weapon into the Holy Mass and began murdering children. I say, implacable enemies of God.

It is a commonplace and a proverb that all of these children should appear at Mother's bedside at the end — those who adored her every day, those who cared for her needs at the end of her earthly journey, and those who did not, who abandoned her long ago with never a word nor a remembrance on Mother's Day. These sons and daughters also come, the restless, the angry, and the alienated. For something inside compels them to stand in the brilliant light which God shines into our inmost selves at life's end. And which death (save our own) possesses more power than the death of our mother?

On a personal note, I tell you of my learning of my mother's death. I walked into a room, and a group of men obviously assembled to greet me said, "We need to tell you something ...." And I collapsed. Tears burst of my eyes. All involuntarily. Those you who have lost your mothers ..... didn't you want to call her at significant moments. Perhaps you absent-mindedly dialed the phone and then remembered, "She's gone."

It is right to look beyond our monastery fences at an aching world that has rejected God. The Lord Himself comments on this:

But alienation from God is a deeply personal thing. We cannot struggle for others. They struggles are their own, and they must be worked out alone, ideally in the company of a priest, who might bring them to clarity and reconciliation and grant them the all-important gift of absolution.

But today I think only of Mother. We observe the Dormition of the Mother of God in kindly and Divine light, for this is the quality of the Kingdom of God ..... and ours for the having. This is our Father's world. And at the Hermitage we have chosen to live in it. He accepts us as family and declares that our biological ties cannot interfere with this Divine and absolute blessing. Certainly, social standing has nothing whatever to do with our place in God's Kingdom.

It does not surprise us that God's Mother should be accorded Divine status (She is the Queen of Heaven, writes St. John of Damacus), and that Joseph His stepfather should be elevated to the highest place by virtue of his faithfulness and self-denying love. This is the essence of our Feast today and what the Dormition of the Theotokos signifies.

I have mentioned the Holy Family. Jesus holds aloft marriage in highest terms:

At the behest of His Mother, Jesus waits for a wedding to be the scene of His first earthly miracle bestowing a special grace upon marriage ever after. What is more, the sacred unity of marriage is not bounded by earthly limits, but revealed to be eternal: "but are as the angels which are in Heaven" (Mk 12:25).

And children, the first fruits of marriage, He also accords the highest dignity revealing that that they are first in the Kingdom of God. Indeed,

Marriage, children, family — these are the elemental building blocks of God's Kingdom, which train us and form us in God's kind of Love: "No greater love," Jesus said, the Self-sacrificing Love, which He calls agápe. And where else could we possibly experience self-sacrificing love without limit, without condition, as the Love of God flows through His chief ministers, which are those that have entered the holy vocation of mother and father.

This is God's way to prepare us to be His children, Who is invisibly present in every true and faithful mother-father heart. Without this family love, the language of Heaven could not be spoken on earth. And when we learn to speak God's language, by those same powers we hear His injunction to receive His Most Holy Mother as our own.

We pray to Her every day in real and heartfelt love. We pray for Her Holy Protection and especially that we remain pure and faithful in this dark age. We bow before Her in a holy Hermitage which bears Her Name. And on this Holy Day, we take our rightful place at Her bedside among saints and Apostles, among angels and archangels, and before the loving Presence of Father God.

As She is carried into Heaven — with Her soul in the form of a child held safely in Her Most High Son's arms — the Accuser and His Demons utterly fail in their inveterate vocation which is accusation. And Death has no dominion with Her.

This is our family. Its traditions are purity, goodness, unfailing love, and deathless eternity. So let us keep Holy Day. For this great feast is our day, all of us — an imposing picture from the family album of the Household of God.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.