Holding the Word in our Hearts Fr. David Lowell

Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory to the Father. In

the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy

Spirit. Amen. There are different ways that we

know things. We might know the same thing one

day and learn it in a different way another.

I'll give you an example from my own life. Once

I was on my way to fill in to a parish. It was

during Lent. And I wondered to myself, how clear

is it? in the gospel, that Jesus is going to

go to Jerusalem and be arrested and killed and

rise on the third day. How clear is that? If

you were one of the disciples, if I were one

of the disciples, would that be explicitly clear

to me? Well, I got to the place where I was going

to give the sermon the night before, and I was

going to use their library, but it was covered

with plastic, it was painted, I couldn't use

the concordance. I couldn't use the dictionary

that I'm used to. All I had, and I didn't even

have my Orthodox Bible that has all the little

references in it where you can compare this to

that. All I had was the Howard Johnson's Gideon

Bible with no helps at all. In other words, all

I had was Scripture. And I thought, how inconvenient.

Just the Scripture. But then I developed a...

which is a good habit. On those Sundays when

I would preach, I would read the chapter that

the text comes from. I would read the chapter

that precedes it and the chapter that follows

it. It became a very good practice. So that's

how I began to prepare for the sermons. And on

that Sunday, it was Mark, and it said, When they

departed and passed through Galilee, he said

to his disciples, The Son of Man is being betrayed

into the hands of men. They will kill him, and

after he is killed, he will rise on the third

day. I thought, that's pretty clear. That's very

explicit. And then in the chapter before, I read

also, this was... Could that child come closer

to me? We can merge our voices. Then I looked

at chapter 8, and it said, He began to teach

them, the Son of Man must suffer many things

and be rejected of the elders, and the chief

priests and scribes and be killed, and after

three days he rise again. Oh, he said it twice.

It's very clear. And then I went to chapter 10

of Mark. Well, you know where I'm going. It turns

out he says it again a third time. So I got to

church that day. And I said to the deacon, I

said, I was wondering how clear it was in the

gospel that Jesus was going to be arrested and

killed and rise again. I just wondered how, and

I found it three times in Mark 8, Mark 9, and

Mark 10. So he said it three times, very clear.

And the deacon said, of course, Father, everyone

knows that. And I said, they do? I just discovered

it. Now, intellectually, I probably knew that.

And when I got home and looked at my Orthodox

Bible study, it says, under each heading, it

says, Jesus' first prophecy of this passion.

The next one says, it says Jesus' second prophecy.

It tells you all there. I'd read that many times.

But it didn't stay in me in the same way. Now,

the way something stays in us, We know many things.

You and I have much information. But not everything

is held the same way. Well, I understood this

small thing. It's a tiny example. But I felt

it. It was organized to me differently. Not all

of you are aware of processing somatically bodily.

But really, sometimes you hold things in your

mind. And some things, they're like at the center

of your being. And this is what we are taught

to do with scripture, to hide scripture in our

hearts. And when it's hidden in our hearts, we

turn it over and we understand it different ways.

It's not just information. There are days when

I wake up and I feel like I don't know anything.

It's like everything fell away during the night.

And I'm starting over. But what do we still have?

We still have what's hidden in our hearts. Now

for the purpose of this sermon, let's suppose

we are all in the same situation. Some of you

are not yet catechumens. Some are catechumens.

Some are baptized. But let's assume we're all

the same. That we have all said, at the entrance

of the church, we've been asked, do you renounce

Satan? And we've all said, I do renounce Satan.

We were asked a second time, do you renounce

Satan? And we said a second time, I do renounce

Satan. And we were then asked, have you renounced

Satan? And you said, I have renounced Satan.

And then you breathed upon him and liturgically

spit upon him. You know how that is. And then

you were asked. Do you unite yourself to Christ?

And you said, I do unite myself to Christ. You

were asked again, do you unite yourself to Christ?

And you said, I do unite myself to Christ. And

then you were asked, have you united yourself

to Christ? And you said, I have united myself

to Christ. And in this, we come into the church

and we begin to hold knowledge. and experience

in a different way. What before was information

and something that perhaps made sense to us and

maybe even meant sense to us deeply and profoundly.

But as we're walking in the spiritual life, we're

learning it again fresh. Let's say for the purpose

of this sermon that you've confessed your sins.

You have no anger hidden in your heart. You have

no revenge plotting in your heart. None of that

is in your heart. Your heart is pure. But then

what goes in that heart? And the scriptures say,

and the Lord teaches, and the prophets teach,

it's in Psalms, Psalm 119, verse 11. Thy word

Psalms 119:11

have I hid in my heart. I have stored up your

word in my heart. I have hidden your word in

my heart. You can see why that reminded me of

what we say as we prepare to be baptized. The

way it goes is, thy word have I hidden in my

heart that I might not sin against thee. I have

stored up your word in my heart that I might

not sin against you. I have hidden your word

in my heart that I might not sin against you.

And for those of you who are studying Deuteronomy,

this past week you studied Deuteronomy 6 .6,

and these words which I command you this day

shall be hidden in your heart, shall be in thine

heart. So this is what we seek to do. When we

do this, I will just parenthetically say that

when a priest is preparing to give a sermon,

at least when I prepare to give a sermon, the

bulk of what I think about is the things I'm

not going to say. We're going to throw that out.

We're going to keep this sermon short. And everything

that follows I threw out. I'm going right to

the ending. We hide a scripture in our heart

when we ponder it from many different angles

and ways. And it stays with us. And we know it

differently. and we act upon it. It begins to

coordinate in our body. I use a very bodily metaphor

here because we feel it dimensionally. Everything

else we can forget, but what's hidden in our

heart stays with us. This is how we learn. Hiding

scripture in our heart is the first step in learning

how to reach the heart in prayer and how to reach

the heart in preparing. for communion and how

to pray for other people in there's so many things

i could say about this and it's it's key that

i that i spread them out over many sermons and

not just not just one but this is the beginning

we are accepting christ into our heart in a different

way than what we debate a different way than

what we even that we are even capable of understanding

intellectually. It's something that we take into

ourselves, which is the very nature of communion

itself, that we receive the body of Jesus Christ

and the blood of Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit

into us through our hearts in love for one another.

This is what we all do today. May God bless each

one of us. Glory to Jesus Christ.