At Theophany, we celebrate that no dimension of our life or world is intrinsically profane or cut off from sharing in the holiness of God. All things, physical and spiritual, visible and invisible, are called to participate in the divine glory that our Lord has brought to the world, to become even now signs of the coming fullness of God’s Kingdom.

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

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.

It may seem strange that Orthodox Christianity gives so much attention to martyrs and saints. To speak of those who die for their faith is to recall instances of murder. Why would a religion give so much attention to such an unpleasant subject?

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.

It is easy to think that we are spiritually strong and healthy when life is good and things are going our way. It is a very different matter, however, when things are falling apart and we find that we have no place to stand.

As much as we do not like to acknowledge it, Christ’s Kingdom is not about giving us religion or anything else on our own terms. He calls us to offer Him “the fruits [of our lives] in their seasons.”

The veneration of icons should prod us all to wrestle with the question of who we are and who we want to become. Too often, however, we think that iconography simply has to do with wood and paint, and we ignore the question of whether we are becoming more beautiful icons of Christ. The icons are not merely examples of religious art, but reminders that to become truly human is to become like Jesus Christ, for He has healed the corruption of the human person that began with the first Adam.

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.

Across the centuries, the Lord has raised up such unusual saints in order to shock us out of our complacency about the alleged harmony between the narrow way leading to the Kingdom and what passes for a conventionally respectable life in any time or place.

Today we commemorate a distinctive person who bore witness in his own life to the healing power of Christ. St. Nicholas lived in the 4th century in what is now Turkey and had a sizeable inheritance from his family, which he gave away in secret to the poor.

There are many ways to view ourselves as human beings. All too often, we accept false definitions that we find appealing in light of our passions, weaknesses, and other forms of personal brokenness. When we do so, we set our sights too low, for the Savior became one of us in order to make us perfectly beautiful icons of His salvation.

If we are to complete our Lenten journey to our Lord’s Cross and glorious resurrection, we must learn to entrust ourselves to Him as honestly and fully as we possibly can.

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.

Today we celebrate that the Lord is at hand, for He is coming into Jerusalem as the Messiah, hailed by the crowds as their Savior. He does not come to usher in an earthly reign or to serve any nationalistic or political agenda. He enters Jerusalem on a donkey, a humble beast of burden, carrying no weapons and having no army. He had no well-oiled political machine to tell the powerful people what they wanted to hear or to manipulate the masses. His Kingdom was and is not of this world.

The season of Pascha has only just begun. Because of His bodily resurrection, we must become holy in our bodies and treat our suffering neighbors accordingly. Let us continue to celebrate by participating as fully as possible in the joy of the empty tomb. Now nothing other than our own refusal can hold us back from becoming truly human, for “Christ is Risen!”

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.

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.

Let us become transfigured in holiness as we pray, fast, repent, and give generously to our neighbors as we become living icons of the Savior’s fulfillment of the human person in the likeness of God.

The feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos calls us to live faithfully as those who have put on Christ like a garment in baptism, been filled with the Holy Spirit in chrismation, and become guests at the heavenly banquet in the Eucharist.

The darkness roots deeply within us all, both personally and collectively, and nothing but the brilliant glory of the Lord can overcome it. Whether we know it or not, we inevitably sink like stones into the abyss whenever we make anything or anyone else the foundation of our lives.

It is only by dying to the old ways of death that we may live as His “new creation.”

Those who weep like the widow of Nain today should take heart. The Savior has conquered death and shares His great victory with those Who respond to Him with humble faith and repentance. He has made every day of our lives “the day of salvation.”

Icons certainly beautify the church, but not simply in the conventional sense of being aesthetically pleasing. Instead, they manifest visually that the Son of God has called and enabled us to become His beautiful living icons. They show that the Savior has made us participants by grace in His deified humanity so that we may shine brightly with the divine glory.

We must remember who we are and find our true selves in Him, if we want to avoid the inevitable disintegration of personality and character that comes from slavery to our passions. Then we too will be able to obey with joy the Lord’s command to the formerly demon-possessed man: “Return to your home, and declare all that God has done for you.”

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.

As “the poor and maimed and blind and lame,” we must prepare to accept the extraordinary invitation that is ours in Jesus Christ by gaining the strength to make our daily responsibilities points of entrance to the heavenly kingdom. They are not reasons to shut ourselves out of the heavenly banquet, but opportunities to unite ourselves ever more fully to Him in freedom.

We are baptized into Christ’s death in order to rise up with Him into a life of holiness in which we regain the robe of light rejected by our first parents. In every aspect of our lives, we must become radiant with the divine glory shared with us by the New Adam.

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.

As we celebrate the restoration of icons today, let us become more beautiful living icons of our Lord’s salvation and gain the strength to treat every neighbor accordingly as we live and breathe in this world. Remember: They are His living icons also.

“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.

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.

The devotion of the Myrrh-Bearers, Joseph and, Nicodemus shows us what true faith looks like, and we will never acquire it by looking for ways to fit God comfortably into our lives in order to help us achieve our goals in and for this world, regardless of how noble we think they are.

Entering into the holy joy of Pascha is truly an eternal journey of sharing ever more fully in the healing mercy of Christ as we become more like Him in holiness. The only way to do that is to rise, take up our beds, and walk each day of our lives in obedience as best we can.

In today’s gospel reading, Christ teaches that the humble faith of the Roman centurion surpassed that of any of the Jews. Since the dominant expectation in Israel was for the Messiah to set them free from Roman rule by military victory, the Lord’s statement was surely perceived by many as terribly unpatriotic.

Due to pride, we often crave words and actions from others that distract us from seeing ourselves clearly and instead fuel illusions of self-importance and self- righteousness. When doing so becomes a settled habit, we can easily find ourselves attempting to use religion to serve our egos instead of being focused on offering ourselves to the Lord.

As members of Christ’s Body, the Church, we reap the blessings of the faithful obedience of Joachim and Anna and of their daughter the Theotokos. We must now use our freedom to take up our own crosses so that we may unite ourselves evermore fully to Christ in His great Self-Offering for the salvation of the world.

We must simply keep letting down our nets in obedience to Christ according to the particulars of our lives and circumstances.

Let us look to the Savior’s raising of the son of the widow of Nain as a sign that we must entrust ourselves only to the One Who has conquered the grave, for slavery to the fear of death is the reason that it is so appealing to entrust ourselves to false gods as a distraction from facing the truth about ourselves and our world.

When the struggle is hard and we cannot imagine being set free, we must remember the difference between a person disintegrated by the power of evil and one gloriously restored as a living icon of God.

Most people today surely do not think of the weeks before Christmas as a time of preparation for being loosed from bondage to the corrupting forces of sin and death. More commonly, we use this time of year to strengthen our addiction to the love of money, possessions, food, drink, and other worldly pleasures.

If we want to share personally in Christ’s restoration and fulfillment of the human person in God’s image and likeness, we must cut off from our hearts and minds all that would separate us from embracing the great mystery of the One Who was circumcised in the flesh on the eighth day.

The disciplines of this season give us all countless opportunities to do precisely that as we prepare for nothing less than to “see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”

Through the many struggles of this season of Lent, we all have the opportunity to grow in the faith necessary to entrust ourselves more fully to Christ.

Holy Week is not a time for rational theological speculation and argument. It is, instead, a time for entering into the deep mystery of the love of our Lord, of the great “I AM” Who remains infinitely beyond our full comprehension.

The devotion of the Myrrh-Bearers, Joseph, and Nicodemus shows us what true faith looks like, and it has nothing to do with figuring out how to use God to help us get what we want on our own terms in a pathetic attempt to distract ourselves from the fear of death.