These are reflections from a monastery. They are not intended as homilies for parish churches but are rather snapshots of the spiritual life lived in a secluded hermitage and farm and, in particular, our meditations on and conversations about Holy Scripture. They are offered in friendship to those who also strive for Christian conversion. The words of St. Paul are constantly before us:
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And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. (Rom 2:12) |
If they are to be used as spiritual reading, please wait until Sunday 5PM EST (GMT -4) on the U.S. East Coast. Only after they have been spoken at our services and then revised are they finished.
We have followed the teachings of St. John the Theologian. We have little contact with the secular world, only to the extent of ministry and farm business. We do not participate socially. We are not registered to vote. We do not consume radio, television, or newspapers. The few people who do visit (mostly nuns, monks, and clergy) seek peace and sanctuary from the fever of the world.
The Hermitage Farm, an enclosure of eight acres, is set apart for prayer and agricultural labors. Our lives revolve around our katholicon, Church of the Unfading Flower Icon of the Mother of God, from which our podcasts are sent out into world.
Following the precedent of the pre-history Irish and Scottish saints, the Hermitage has retreated from the world. Like, these our Western forebears, migrating west from the geography that would become Kievan Rus', eluding Roman influence, the Hermitage is situated on the edge of the earth (an island most remote from any major land mass); at the end of the day, nearly 180° from the prime meridian; and removed from the secular world by thirteen days following the Holy Calendar of Jesus and the Apostles. Humbly following the example of our ancestors, we practice monastic life, pursue serious study, offer humble spiritual writings, and labor daily on a farm — all done in a desire to stay pure as followers of the Master and of His Forerunner sought purity that they might approach the Uncreated Light of Christ and, by the grace of God, share it. We do not roam as they did, though. We broadcast on an ultra-high wattage from a tower called the worldwide web. By the grace of God, and according to His Will, no clear signal has ever reached farther.
Americans say they want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But without God, none of these things will be possible. C. S. Lewis wrote that "Human history is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy." Without God is only self-enslavement by carnal desire and continual regret which has no end, even beyond the grave.
Tragically, these gradually harden into a ghastly, permanent state from which there is no escape.
We do not suggest that God penalizes us for straying from Him. His element is Love. His Heart is only to bless. He has always already predestined all to His marvelous Kingdom. He has always already created every soul born into the world to be His adopted daughter or son, setting the Royal Image of each and every one. And this includes the royal prerogative of freedom, granting us sovereignty over our lives and dominion over our planet home. We have the final say. The destinations we choose are of our own devising. Freely, we may reject Him and His Atmosphere of peace and holy life. Many have rejected Him. This place of willful separation from the Family for which we were all destined is all too familiar. We commonly see people, morphed already into a hellish form, taking the last, heavy steps of their earthly journey.
What is the next thing people do when they encounter God? They are wonderfully energized. They seek to learn, to be guided, and to compare notes. This is our ministry: to meet with these many brothers and sisters in Christ, to offer humble guidance, to share what we have learned from our lowly journeys, and to assure them that the unbelievable things they have seen and heard are to be believed.
| Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Rom 1:7) |
Download Podcast: "Through the Mask"
Worldliness in its way is comforting. Nothing is required of us. We just drift along in a numb sameness each day pursuing the unchallenging and unrevealing familiar.
But somehow we arrive to a place where we do not know who we are. Suddenly, the familiar is not so comforting. In a moment of introspection, we might say, "My life has been wasted." And we are strangers to ourselves.
But God does not forget us. He calls. And we must respond. Otherwise, we commence living not life, but living death. We answer, "I am here, Lord." And life begins.
This re-wakening, this coming to know things as they are is "icon life." No longer are we content to live, as Plato put it, in the dim cave. But we have broken-through to the Kingdom of light. And the familiar? The familiar no longer reassures. And the hospitable now becomes inhospitable.
F. W. J. Schelling put it like this: "That which should have remained hidden but has come to light," calling this the Unheimlich, which he defined as "the un-secret."
Come, join us in plumbing the depths with us. For this is the Life in Light, through God's luminous mazes, transforming us into the real and the stable and the abiding. This is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Download Podcast: "God Is Love"
St. Luke, we might say, was a scientist of his time, certainly a careful and methodical observer. He consulted many witnesses in the course of preparing his great masterpiece, Luke-Acts. He had to get it right, for he would have been surrounded by many harsh critics, for he had never met Jesus, never seen the Lord. Yet, he arrogated to write an authoritative Gospel. It is, therefore, probable that Jesus preached His great sermon on the Plain, not the Mount, attested by many, many people.
Why, then, did Matthew introduce "the Mount." We must remember that while the Gospels are holy, they are literature, sacred literature. The Mount would have been introduced to communicate important information: that Jesus did not receive tablets from God. Jesus was God. But this new situation must needs configure us, God's people, as Moses. We are standing right before God, and He gives the Law directly into our hands, not as cold tablets but "heart to heart."
This is a very different situation. Not as Lawgiver and law-keepers (or law-breakers), but as ones whose hearts are moved. And this is appropriate, for Luke's wider ambition is to lay the groundwork for our Theosis.
Come! Take your part in the family gathering! And hear once again the family story: of our Father, of our Eldest Brother, and of the family credo which is love.
Download Podcast: "Mother & Protector"
Today, we celebrate the great Feast of the Protection of the Mother of God (called Pokrov in the Russian Church). Yes, She is the Queen of Heaven and Earth. But we live our humble lives step-by-step, with our hands full of labors. So first of all, we understand her to be our Mother, the Blessed Mother, Who really and truly cares for us and prays for us and protects us as any devout and faithful Mother would .... and does. Do you know that Her heart aches for us, for which mother, truly present to the lives of her many children, is not filled with cares? And Her Heart is most tender, exquisitely tender, as a Heart of true empathy must needs be, for She is Love itself.
On October 1 at four in the morning, St. Andrew the Fool-for-Christ († 936) beheld the dome opening of the Achernar Church in Constantinople, which was the repository of the Holy Mother's earthly robe, Her veil, and part of Her belt. It opened, he soon realized, at the approach of the Most Holy Theotokos, Blessed Virgin Mary, Who passed over him in the night air surrounded by a luminous train of angels and saints. She had come to kneel in this church and to pray. And as She prayed, She wept witnessed by St. Andrew and his assistant Epiphanius.
She petitioned Her Son to grant that the prayers of the many, faithful Christians the world over who asked for Her Protection. And when She had completed this petition, She walked to the Altar praying and retrieved her veil and in this visionary mode, miraculously placed Her veil over all the people.
St. Andrew turned to his disciple and asked, "Do you see, brother, the Holy Theotokos, praying for all the world?" Epiphanius answered, "Yes, Holy Father, I see it and am amazed!"
Download Podcast: "Rescue"
In the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Matthew, the language is the same, yet it is quite different:
| "Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men." (Mk 1:16, Mt 4:19) |
Do your hear St. Luke's tone? "You will catch men!" It is more direct. Bolder. Are not these few, spare words spoken urgently? And this would be appropriate, for the Son of God has been sent on a rescue mission, and now He is putting together His team. The scale of the operation is breathtaking, and the difficulties will be many. For the whole of Jerusalem and Judah have become lost sheep. And their "lost-ness," which Jesus likens to blindness, means that they will not cooperate.
The situation is not unlike our own. What Jesus requires is basic change — in our hearts and in our lives. And this demand brings about in us the things we see in the people of Judah: anger, interminable debate, and indecision. In a sense this is a waiting game. But isn't our indecision and delay a kind of decision nonetheless? What does Jesus say about delay and indecision? In fact, the Risen Christ is harsh in the extreme:
| "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth." (Rev 3:15-16) |
God's kairos is now. And for Heaven's sake, if you have been called, do not make God wait. For this is insolence plain and simple.
Download Podcast: "A Ransom for Many"
What Jesus proposes here is a ransom. The enemy has captured a very great King. For I ask you: which figure is greater in the Kingdom of Yourself than your immortal Soul? And, according to the rules of ransom in the first century, this captor demands payment in exchange for his captive's release. "What will you give?" Jesus asks. "What will you pay?"
While we're at it, let us expand our meditation to ask, "How many souls are held captive by this same enemy? How many of your loved ones? Are your teenage or adult children in this number? Your teenage grandchildren? Perhaps your spouse? How much would you pay in exchange for these souls? For that matter what would you give for all the souls around you?"
This particular proposition (what we today would call a thought-experiment) was a common one throughout the Greek-speaking world from Roman Britain to Arabia and certainly throughout the Levant of Jesus' time. For it contemplated something held to be most sacred: amicitia, which was esteemed to be the loftiest aspiration of humankind in the first century, discussed in the leading intellectual centers, and taught in academies and probably included the gymnasium of Jerusalem.
Let us together reflect on this, for as we ascend to its loftiest heights, we discover that this subject is the most important of our lives, indeed, of all lives ever lived.
Download Podcast: "Narrow Is the Gate"
Three kings mysteriously appeared at His Birth. Three kings now meet at the point of His death — Caesar's viceroy, Herod Antipas, and the King and Creator of the Kósmos. He is our King, our "Κύριος," reads the Gospel According to St. John. And this very noun was selected by all Septuagint translators to render the Tetragrammaton, YHWH. "Behold your God!" Who (Pilate unwittingly implies) is "'the Son of the Living God'" (Mt 16:16).
But today as we observe the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-giving Cross, so we add, Behold the One Who
| "humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the Cross." (Phil 2:8) |
But to us who follow Him in is His lowliness, He has revealed the Gate:
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"Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way
that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it." (Mt 7:13-14) |
And that Gate, which is straight, which is narrow, and which is difficult to find, is the Holy Cross. Do you embrace it before all the world? Then you shall have eternal life with God. But if you embrace the world (and there is no way to do both), then you shall have the world and the eternal decay and deceit it surreptitiously promises.
Download Podcast: "Pure Goodness"
Have you seen ancient paintings depicting the Flight to Egypt: a helpless infant, a woman wrapped in silence, and an old man of few words who dreams angelic dreams — all on their way to Egypt. They are goodness itself. And they must flee evil, even the slaughter of innocents. The man lying on the Jericho Road is a gloss on the scene, for they too travel on the open highway, where robbers and murderers hunt for easy prey. Yet in the foreground of the painting we see tumult: hordes of grotesque demons fleeing. In the background, more tumult: a pagan statue on a high pedestal shatters. But who has shattered this heavy stone statue? Who is driving these hordes of demons to flight? We see only three passive figures: a helpless infant, the woman wrapped in silence, and the man of few words discerning the messages of angels.
Who could be more vulnerable? One of them was recently a single mother whom the old man took her under his protecting wing. Else, she would have stoned to death. She cherishes her unborn Child. She would have kneeled before Him in obeissance if She could. It is their goodness alone, and their purity, that puts a corrupt world to flight, like a bad vapor vanishing before the rising sun.
Download Podcast: "Taken Away"
The "man traveling to a far country" we must understand to be the Lord, for who else might entrust such vast fortunes to servants? But we balk at calling our God "a hard man." We have difficulty with the so-called "hard Gospels" or "hard sayings" of Jesus. And this morning, we encounter one of these.
We must admit that God's perfect judgment does preside over men and women being cast into the "outer darkness" .... just as His infinite love and mercy entrust vast fortunes to us all, as the mysterious "man" in this morning's lesson.. It is our inner lives that decide which outcome shall be ours.
Let us suspend our disbelief and allow ourselves to be carried into His Realm of possibilties, for, finally, this is our Realm, and the only reality we shall ever know. Once we wake up to this, everything else will fall into place and make perfect sense.