Brothers and sisters, we have received the greatest of gifts: new life in Jesus Christ. By virtue of our baptism into Christ, we have put on Christ and become co-heirs with Him. Christ God continues to pour out His grace on us continually. He blesses us, ministers healing to us through His Church, calls us to a greater, eternal purpose, and brings meaning to our lives. He gives us communion with Him. He invites us to receive Him inside ourselves, to feed on Him with our eternal souls so that we may be with Him for eternity.
Much of God’s outpouring of grace can escape our notice. The same can be said of His protection, the depth of His love and forgiveness of our sins. And all of this, can be taken for granted.
Jesus heals ten lepers in today’s Gospel: only one comes back to praise God and give Him his thanks. We have all received Christ’s call, His offer of new life with Him. We have all been offered deification, being set upon the journey of healing that is life with God through growth in holiness and increased participation in His eternal life: further up and further into His Kingdom. Are we availing ourselves of His life, of His healing, of this deification?
If not, we can ask ourselves, what is holding me back? God’s love is constant: “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.” Why is our love for God and our fellow man sometimes so fickle? If we find it so, what do we do about it?
Christ proclaims: “The Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force” (Matthew 11:12). St. John Chrysostom’s interpretation can be summed up like this: we need to have such an earnest desire for Christ that we let nothing stand between ourselves and this new life in Christ to which we have all been called.
How hard are you fighting? How much are you striving to submit yourself to Christ and the Church, to its disciplines, to obedience and godly submission? How willing are you to grow in your knowledge and love of Christ? To take that skepticism, doubt, or lack of faith and wrestle with it, bring it to God in prayer. Do you make regular confession? Do you avail yourself of the preparation and then the reception of His precious and holy Body and Blood: “the Medicine of Immortality” at the Eucharist? If not, what holds you back?
When we lack faith, when we find ourselves distracted by the busyness of the world around us and are participation in it, we have to pray harder to be able to pray. It seems simple enough, but we all know what a great struggle this can be. But there’s no getting around it: we have to pray in order to pray, to be able to fight against the distractions and distortions of the evil one.
The good news is, that this struggle, this fight, is part of the very healing through deification that you and I need if we are to inherit life with God in His Kingdom. The struggle to live for God, to say yes to God and no to sin and secularism (in which we compartmentalize our lives into spheres with and without God) is a cross, it’s part of denying ourselves and following Christ, of allowing Christ in to heal us and equip us to be in communion with Him, not just on Sundays, or even, once or twice a day when we pray the prayers of the Church, but getting ourselves to that constant communion with God where He is never very far from our thoughts and hearts, our consciences, our tongues—all of us, body and soul.
Whatever our sin struggle, there is healing: no one is beyond God’s healing power. With God, all things are possible. But how can we find healing if we are set on going our own way, in making our communion with God through Christ and by the Holy Spirit, only a tangential part of our busy lives? What is the remedy for all that which we take for granted from God?
The difference between the one leper who came back to Christ and the other nine, who received healing, but forgot about Christ is thankfulness. Many times, our forgetfulness of God and therefore of our souls, comes from a lack of a spirit of thankfulness, of remembrance of God’s grace and mercy, His ongoing work in our lives, deifying us, forgiving us, feeding us, saving us.
As fasting is a reminder to pray, so prayer begets more prayer; it increases our hunger and thirst for God and the life He alone can offer to fulfill us, purify, heal and save us. I encourage you to read the lives of the Saints this month as part of your preparation for Christ’s coming. In doing so, you and I cultivate a spirit of thanksgiving and are spurred on in striving to live for Christ.
This holy Advent season, we are given an opportunity to remember God’s beneficence to us as we prepare again for Christ’s coming: to heal us, to strengthen us, to empower us to live more faithful lives to God’s glory. Embrace God’s love and healing as it comes to you this Nativity Fast and join me in striving to cultivate a spirit of thankfulness to God and remembrance of Him.
In this way, we will respond to Christ’s calling on our lives so that you and I may truly meet Christ at the Feast of the Nativity, grow, heal, and prepare ourselves further to become inheritors of eternal life with Him.
Christ is in our midst!
Fr. Robert Miclean
Holy Archangels Orthodox Mission
Sunday, 9 December 2012
Epistle: Ephesians 6:10-17; Gal. 4:22-31
Gospel: Luke 17:12-19; Luke 8:16-21
