First Sunday of Great Lent - 2020 Fr. Lawrence Margitich

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and

of the Holy Spirit. Amen. My dear brothers and

sisters and children in Christ. The epistle ended

with those words about how we're surrounded by

a great cloud of witnesses. I think the witnesses

are more than the congregation today. We're small.

That's okay. Each heart, each one, is precious

to God. So let's celebrate this feast day with

all the joy. and the enthusiasm we can. I congratulate

you first on this feast day. I congratulate you

for two reasons. First, because we've completed

clean week. We started with forgiveness, and

then we began our fast, and we had services.

It's not easy being hungry when you have to work,

and your schedule doesn't change to make things

easier. It's not easy standing for long times

in services. And even if you did not have the

opportunity to come to many services this week,

I have a hunch that your life was probably a

little more difficult this week. God gave each

of us a hurdle to overcome, a podvig, if you

will, a spiritual contest that we had to overcome.

Show our fidelity to him to stay constant in

prayer. This is clean week. It's our spiritual

therapy. And now we're ready for the rest of

Lent. So I congratulate you and I hope you feel

encouraged. We have a feast day because we have

been fasting. And now having fasted, which puts

our appetites to the back burner a little bit.

And we have a lot of appetites. For a lot of

different things. Not just food. We gave alms

and we will continue so we can show our love

for those who are less fortunate and find some

humility to put our self -love on the back burner.

And perhaps we found a little silence during

clean week so we can get away from the stream,

the television show of our thoughts. Constantly.

Directing us this way and that. And then we're

open to God's will. And this is the beautiful

thing about Clean Week. We receive so many blessings.

And that God can speak to us in our conscience.

And we can follow him more clearly. And he's

more dear to us. I congratulate you also because

this feast is about that cleansing of the heart.

You know, in a few years, we're going to have

to clean these frescoes probably. They'll get

smoky. It's just what happens. We've got all

that stuff going on all the time. But Clean Week

and Lent is where we, not just by confession

where we do that, but Clean Week we make an intense

effort and Lent we make the intense effort to

clean the image of God in the soul and the heart.

You and I are created in the image and likeness.

We heard on Wednesday in the Old Testament reading

the story of the creation. And after the sixth

day, God created male and female. He created

them in his image. And on Friday at the pre -sanctified,

we heard the story of the fall. Eve and Adam.

Ignoring God's command. One command. Just one.

You remember what God, kids, what God told Adam

and Eve not to do? What? It had to do with their

mouth, right? Not to eat. Right, to fast. But

one thing. And they failed. So the image of God,

as Luke tells us, is not what it's supposed to

be. I saw a statistic the other day. Every single

day, 75 million photos are uploaded just to Instagram.

One application for social media. 75 million.

This tells us that we love our pictures. The

image we want to retain, we want to remember,

we want to somehow... Relive it. Well the true

image. That we have to be concerned about. Is

not the 75 million. But the one right here. I

was preparing remarks for today. Preparing my

sermon. And. It just wasn't going anywhere. I

was about to call Father John. And say you preach

today Father. It's not working here. And then.

I picked up this book of the sermons of Archimandrite

Elder Emilianos of Mount Athos. He just died

in May. And I read these few pages and I thought,

that's what I want to say. And so I'm going to

share what he said to his congregation when he

was outside of the monastery and went to a church.

Because we are in his image. God does not abandon

us, even when we sin. Although we are prideful,

he is always humble. Although we often forget

him, his thoughts are always about us. If we

reject him, he never ceases to love us, in the

same way that a mother loves her children, for

they are a part of her. A mother loves her little

children, and God... Loves his little gods. And

when the little gods sinned, God wept. God wept.

But Adam ran off and hid. What did God do then?

He humbled himself. He acted like nothing was

wrong. He approached quietly, feigning ignorance,

hoping gradually to come around to the subject

of what happened. Adam, he calls out, where are

you? No answer. Just a trembling behind the trees.

But God finds him and says, why didn't you come

out to meet me? Why didn't you come running to

see me as you always do? What is the matter?

What is that that you are wearing? By this time,

however, Adam had thought up an excuse and blurted

out, the woman you gave me, she deceived me.

It's as if he had said, this is all your fault,

oh God. This happened because the woman you gave

me. No humility here. And it was Adam's utter

lack of humility that sealed the verdict of death

against him. This is a story we read about Wednesday

and Friday at Pre -Sanctified. And then the elder

goes on. To all this, God said something like,

the woman that I gave you? Do you mean Eve? But

you and Eve are one person. Aren't you? How then

can you blame this on her and say that you had

nothing to do with it? How can you divide yourself,

your nature, in this way? How did Eve become

a separate person to you? Wasn't it you who said

she was bone of your bones and flesh of your

flesh? Didn't you call her by your own name?

When did the two of you, when did the one become

two? Despite the fall of man, God did not and

never will abandon the human race. Unlike the

woman in pain in the story in the newspaper who

forgot her baby at the dentist's office, God

will never abandon us. Through his prophet, he

tells us, even if a mother forgets her child,

I shall not forget you because you are a God

I have made. So this is our God, he says to the

prophet Isaiah. I have stretched out my hand

all the day long to a disobedient and contrary

people. We have no time for God. We have no time

for God. We're too busy. We don't think about

him because we're tired. All the day long, he

stretches out his hands and entreats us. All

the day long, Christ, the great high priest.

stands with his hands outstretched on the cross

on which the little gods have nailed him. And

from that lofty vantage point, he supplicates

his Heavenly Father on our behalf. Though we

crucify him every day through our sins, God prays

for us. That, my beloved, is humility. We've

seen what God is. He is the Holy One. And I am

his image and likeness. I am a little God called

to be so. And after centuries of stretching his

helping hand down to us from heaven, God himself

came down, became man, dwelt among us. God entered

the mud to find his precious pearl and to raise

him and her up and grant him knowledge of God.

The Son of God does not come in symbols. or in

the clouds, or in the still breezes. Instead,

he removed his garments of light and clothed

himself in the garments of human nature. Long

ago, God made man a little god. Now, God himself

becomes man. And this is beyond anything that

man could ever have imagined or hoped for. Until

now God built bridges so that he might cross

over to us and we to him. Now he abolishes all

distances, removes all boundaries, comes to dwell

with us forever. Unable to endure the loss of

his creation, he sets aside his unspeakable glory

and humbles himself, definitively taking on our

condition. And his whole life was an ongoing

self -abasement. an unending self -emptying from

the moment of his conception until his death

and burial and beyond. In the extreme humility

of his descent, God did not stop at the clouds,

neither did his journey end on the earth. He

went all the way to death into Hades. In light

of God's descent, everything has changed. When

the highest entered the lowest, when God entered

the realm of Hades and death, everything there

was turned upside down. The devil was defeated.

Death yielded to life. Darkness was swallowed

up by light. Fallen man ascended into heaven.

In union with Christ, human nature now sits on

the throne of God, being filled with the Holy

Spirit. God has descended. and reduced himself

for our sake. While redeemed, humanity has become

a great assembly, exalted so high as to surpass

heaven itself. In his sermon on humility, St.

Basil the Great says, from a state of nothingness,

man has expanded into the heavens. And all of

this can be ours, if only we humble ourselves.

Having completed his work, Christ has returned

to the heavens, but he remains inseparably united

to us and has given us his spirit of power and

sanctity. He has also given us Holy Communion,

which is the continuation of his presence on

the earth, though in a humble form. Can anything

sick, any disease, pass through? That glorious

body and blood? No. He has given us holy communion.

Being united to the flesh. God communicates with

the flesh. And we, receiving God, are raised

to the heights of heaven. But, to truly commune

with the humble God, we must be humble. This

is our Lenten journey. This is why Christ says,

He who humbles himself will be exalted. What

does exalted here mean? It means that such a

person will attain to the knowledge of God. It

doesn't mean being glorified in some abstract

way or being established in a comfortable place

in heaven. Still less does it mean that people

will honor and praise us. It means that the Holy

Spirit will reveal all things to our hearts.

as long as we humble ourselves and bow our heads

to God. God decreases, but we increase. In humility,

we ascend to God. We come to know him and his

ways. To our Lord be glory and honor, now and

ever, to ages of ages.