From the story of the healing of the Gadarene demoniac, Fr. Philip LeMasters shares about how we can become our true selves in Christ.

We celebrate the Presentation of Christ forty days after His birth, in the Temple in Jerusalem. The Theotokos and St. Joseph bring the young Savior there in compliance with the Old Testament law, making the offering of a poor family, a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the old man St. Simeon proclaims that this Child is the salvation “of all peoples, a light to enlighten the Gentiles and the glory of Thy people Israel.” The aged prophetess St. Anna also recognizes Him as the fulfillment of God’s promises.

If we want to approach Lent in a spiritually healthy way that will enable us to participate already in life eternal, we too must offer up ourselves.

In preparing for Great Lent this year, we must remain on guard against the temptation of self-exaltation in any form.

As we begin our Lenten journey, we remember today how Adam and Eve stripped themselves naked of the divine glory and were cast out of Paradise into a world enslaved by death. During Great Lent, we follow the path that leads back to Paradise.

Lenten practices are not instruments of punishment or legalism, but blessed tools for becoming more fully our true selves as living icons of God.

Regardless of the particulars of our life circumstances, let us use the challenges posed by the global pandemic as reminders of the folly of making life in this world our false god.

“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” The father of the young man in today’s gospel lesson cried out these words with tears in response to the Lord’s statement that “all things are possible to him who believes.” The father in this passage provides a good example of how we should respond to the spiritual challenges posed by our current public health crisis.

The One Who trampled down death by death purely out of love for His suffering children will never abandon us. If He can make someone like St. Mary of Egypt radiant with the divine glory through the desert, then there is hope for us all.

Our calling this week is to enter into the profound contrast between the ways of the world as we know them and the life of our crucified and risen Lord. Especially today, it is easy to focus on what is going wrong, on what we have lost already or may lose in the future.

The man in today’s gospel reading would never have found healing had he chosen to remain as he had been for thirty-eight years. Lying still for a long time makes us weak and unable to move on our own.

By rising into heavenly glory as the God-Man, Christ has shown us what it means to become truly human in the divine image and likeness.

The Lord said, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” The only way to shine like a city on a hill or a lamp on a stand in a world darkened by sin is to live in a way that provides a beacon of hope for the fulfillment of the human person in God.

Fr. Philip LeMasters reminds us that our words reveal the state of our souls.

We must never think that the vocation to holiness is reserved exclusively for some people, perhaps the clergy, the monastics, or only the great saints.

As we celebrate the Exaltation of the Cross, let us examine ourselves to see if our lives appear foolish and scandalous by the standards of the world because of our faithfulness to Jesus Christ.

Our calling, like that of Peter and the first disciples, is simply to obey Christ’s command to follow Him. When we stumble in doing so, we must cultivate the humble recognition of Peter, who said, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”

The love to which Christ calls us is not merely an emotion, but a true offering of ourselves for the sake of someone else. It is a self-less offering in which we put the needs and interests our neighbors before our own. It is a personal offering that builds communion with other people and unites us together as those who share a common life. Of course, the basis of such love is the great Self-Offering of Christ, Who enables us all to share in His eternal life as members together of His Body, the Church, as a foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven.

On this feast day of the Holy, Glorious, All-Laudable Apostle and Evangelist Luke, we have an opportunity to celebrate the great witness to the Lord made by the patron saint of our parish. Our small community is named in his honor and memory. We see his image on our iconostasis and regularly ask him to pray for us in the Divine Liturgy. Author of both a gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, as well as an iconographer and a physician, St. Luke died a martyr’s death at the age of 84.

Instead of obsessing over how we measure up, we should simply focus all our energies on finding healing for our passions as we reorient our disordered desires for fulfillment in God. If we persist in doing so and call out for the Lord’s mercy whenever we stumble and fall, we will come to know the joy of those liberated from the tomb, clothed in the divine glory, and finally in our right minds.

Both the bleeding woman and Jairus were at the end of their rope. They faced circumstances so dark that they could not imagine how they would be delivered from them. The gravity of their challenges is reflected by how little these characters speak in their encounters with Christ. They did not use many words to show whatever level of faith they had in Him, perhaps because what was at stake was beyond their ability to name.

As we prepare to receive the Lord in faith at Christmas, we must use our freedom to follow St. Paul’s instruction in today’s epistle reading: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”

Theophany shows us that Jesus Christ is not merely a great religious teacher or moral example. He is truly God—a member of the Holy Trinity–and His salvation permeates His entire creation, including the water of the river Jordan. Through His and our baptism, we become participants in the holy mystery of our salvation.

As we continue to celebrate Theophany in a world that remains in “the region and shadow of death,” let us focus mindfully on living each day as those who have died to sin and risen with our Lord to a life of holiness. That is how we may wear a garment of light and become living epiphanies of the salvation of the world.

“The line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” The key difference between the Pharisee and the Publican rooted in their hearts and was not simply a matter of their outward behavior or how they appeared to others. Even the despised traitor and thief remained in the image of God and was able to embrace divine mercy when he humbly confessed the truth about his personal brokenness. The Pharisee also bore God’s image, but was so blinded by his slavery to the primordial sin of pride that his spiritual practices lacked integrity and did his soul more harm than good.

During Great Lent, we will follow the path that leads back to Paradise.

Christ did not offer Himself on the Cross and rise from the dead in order to make us well-adjusted citizens of this world, but to heal every dimension of our brokenness so that we will shine brilliantly with His divine glory.

Through the Lord’s great Self-Offering, even the most wretched person may enter into the blessedness of the Kingdom through humble faith and repentance. Even the most notorious sinner may become a glorious saint and shine brightly with eternal glory.

It is easy to assume that we have strong faith when it seems like everything is going our way. All too often, that means that we have come to trust in ourselves for following a religion that we imagine will give us what we want. When difficult struggles come, however, the truth about our weak souls is revealed. Then we come to see that real faith in God is not about serving or congratulating ourselves, but something entirely different.

The good news of our Lord’s resurrection extends to everyone and the entire world. The Church directs our attention during the Paschal season to how some very different people came to share in the life of our Lord, such as the disciple Thomas, the Myrrh-Bearing Women, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and the paralyzed man. Today we focus on someone who was different from all of them by worldly standards, for they were Jews and she was a Samaritan. We know her in the Church as the Great Martyr Photini, but in that time and place she would have seemed a very unlikely candidate to become a great evangelist of Christ’s salvation.

Christ has ascended. Let us go up together with Him as we find liberation from slavery to our passions and share more fully in the salvation that He has brought to the world.

Like the saints we remember today, let us turn away from such distractions and instead orient ourselves toward the blessedness of a Kingdom that remains not of this world. Let us offer all our blessings back to Him with gratitude, for that is the only way to live as those who know that the good things of this life are not ends in themselves, but points of entrance to eternal life.

The Feast of Christ’s Transfiguration calls each of us to nothing less than to be transfigured in holiness and shine brilliantly by grace with the light of heaven.

If we have received the Lord’s mercy, we must extend that mercy to our neighbors, especially those we are inclined to hate, condemn, or otherwise disregard.

Unlike the rich man, we must not walk away in sadness when our weakness before our passions becomes apparent, especially when we realize how far short we have fallen of the holiness to which Christ calls us.

Our fundamental vocation remains the same: to undergo a change of mind such that we offer ourselves without reservation in obedience to God. As with the Theotokos, Joseph the Betrothed, and James, there is no telling what that will mean for the course of our lives, but saying “yes” in free obedience as we take the steps we have the strength to take today remains the only way to participate personally in the healing of the human person made possible by the birth of Jesus Christ. Let us look to those we commemorate today as brilliant examples of how to do precisely that.

Those who have put on Christ in baptism and who receive the Communion of His Body and Blood must become epiphanies of His fulfillment of the human person in God’s image and likeness. As we prepare to celebrate Theophany, let us gain the spiritual clarity to behold the glory of Christ’s baptism by straightening the crooked areas of our lives.

Even as we recall the Three Hierarchs’ shining example of holiness, we remember today also someone whose life changed dramatically when he turned away from corruption in order to follow Christ. Luke’s gospel portrays the story of Zacchaeus in memorable and distinctive ways.

Let us follow the example of the Canaanite woman in persistently and boldly offering even our deepest pains and greatest weaknesses to Christ for healing.

We must devote ourselves to prayer, fasting, almsgiving, forgiveness, and other forms of repentance in the weeks ahead if we are to open the depths of our brokenness to the healing of our Lord’s humble, suffering love. That is the only way to become like the tax collector in spiritual clarity, for he was aware only of his sin and need for God’s mercy. We must know the true state of our corruption and weakness as he did, if we are to enter into the joy of the Lord’s resurrection.

The coming Lenten season calls us all to come to ourselves as we gain a clearer recognition of the ways in which we have refused to live as the beloved sons and daughters of our Father. By humbly reorienting our lives toward Him and away from slavery to our passions, we will find restoration, blessing, and joy. Now is the time to leave behind the filth and misery of the pig pen and to enter by grace into the joy of a heavenly banquet that none of us deserves.

If we are ever tempted to think that the Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are antiquated niceties for those removed from the cares of daily life, we must think again. They are absolute necessities for us to live faithfully in our world of corruption. They are not practices focused on individual spiritual gratification, but how we find the strength to offer ourselves for the blessing of our neighbors and the salvation of the world.

Whenever we pray, fast, and serve others with humility, we open ourselves to the healing light of the Lord and become more like Him. These practices are not reserved for those who have abandoned the world, but are necessary for all of us who remain weak before our passions with spiritual vision darkened by sin. The circumstances of our lives never excuse us from answering the call to become radiant with the divine energies of our Lord, but present their own opportunities to rise, take up our beds, and walk.

“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” These words from the brokenhearted father in today’s gospel lesson resonate with all of us who are honest about what the deep challenges of our lives reveal about our spiritual state.

Like St. Mary of Egypt, we must take up the cross of doing whatever it takes to find healing for our souls in the Lord Who offered up Himself for the salvation of the world. That was the path to holiness for St. Mary of Egypt, and it must be our path in the remaining days of this blessed season of Lent.

Today we celebrate that the Lord is at hand, coming into Jerusalem as the Messiah, hailed by the crowds as their Savior. He enters Jerusalem on a humble beast of burden, carrying no weapons and having no army, political machine, or media campaign to flatter the powerful and play on the fears, resentments, and hopes of the masses.

In order to follow our Risen Lord into the joy of the resurrection, we must also open our deepest personal struggles and wounds to Him for healing. Our bodies are not evil, but we have all distorted our relationship to them. Instead of pursuing a disembodied spirituality that ignores how God creates and saves us as whole persons, we must embrace the joy of His victory over death by living as those who are in a “one flesh” communion with the Risen Lord in every dimension of our existence.

In light of what such atrocities reveal about the human condition, it is obviously not enough to affirm religious beliefs, to perform certain acts of outward piety, or merely to identify ourselves as Orthodox Christians. Indeed, it is entirely possible to do all those things while remaining blind, embracing the darkness, and becoming all too comfortable with the forces of death and destruction.

As we prepare for the Dormition Fast and look forward to the feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord, we must recognize how much we remain like the blind and mute men in our gospel reading.

To rise up, take up our beds, and walk home requires obedience to Christ’s commands, but not a legalistic obedience in the sense of following a code for its own sake. Instead, this obedience is like following the guidance of a physician or therapist who makes clear to us what we must do in order to regain health and function for our bodies.