Excerpt from a homily given in 1998 at the spiritual center “Annunciation of the Theotokos” in Kolonos.
With the help of God—for yet
another year—we find ourselves on the eve of Holy and Great Lent. For those who
love their salvation, for those who wish to struggle, this period is the most
beautiful!
No virtue is accomplished without
prayer and fasting. No passion is cast off, no weakness is cast off, without
prayer and fasting.
Behind every passion, the Holy
Fathers say, there is also hidden a demon. For this reason, our Christ says: “This
kind (that is, of demons) does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”
And fasting—as I mentioned
earlier this morning in our Monastery—is not what some unlearned and irreverent
people say, that fasting is an invention of the priests, but it is a
commandment of God, and this commandment has as much history as the existence of
man itself!
It is the first commandment that
God gave to the first-formed in Paradise, which for them was Paradise, and it
was the only commandment He gave them: not to taste one of the fruits there,
from a tree of Paradise.
And the consequence of this
disobedience is known; you see it here. Here is hidden our great misfortune,
and in the fact that we make bad use of free will. One of the greatest gifts
that God has given to man is freedom, is free will!
Unfortunately, man makes bad use
of this free will. By his will, therefore, man becomes a rebel against the
commandments of God, opposes the will of God, and, sadly, becomes an enemy of
God by his own choice.
For this reason, Saint John
Chrysostom says: “He who created you without you cannot save you without
you.” Out of inexpressible love, without your willing it, He made you a
man! He cannot save you if you do not will it.
So greatly does He respect the
freedom of man. Thus, we see our Christ Himself saying: “Whoever wills to
come after Me”! Whoever wills!
Whoever does not wish may choose
not to follow Him, but the one who wills “to come after Me,” “let him
deny himself and take up his cross.”
For this reason, therefore, the
Fathers, the Saints, have established that today the expulsion of the
first-formed from Paradise be commemorated, so as to help us realize how much
that transgression, that single transgression of the commandment, cost—not only
the first-formed, but the entire human race…
Just as they went out, the Holy
Fathers say, we shall not be able to enter Paradise without prayer and fasting.
Today’s Gospel reading, among the
many divine teachings it contains, has three most important ones. And our
Christ begins with forbearance!
Between avarice and rancor, He
places fasting in the middle. For those who did not have time to hear the
Gospel, you will allow me to repeat it.
The Lord said: ‘For if you
forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” In
another place of the Gospel, it adds: “even from the heart.”
If, it says, you do not forgive
from the heart those who have embittered you, who have insulted you, who have
wronged you—who, who, who… If therefore you do not forgive him from your heart,
neither will God forgive your own sins…!
And most of us Christians are so
foolish that, while we want God to forgive us and while we ask Him every
morning to forgive us, and we draw the prayer rope (“God, be merciful to me
the sinner,” “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me the sinner”),
nevertheless rancor does not depart from within our heart…
We do not have the strength to
forgive our fellow man, whether he be a spouse, or a brother, or a child, or a
friend, or a co-worker.
How many depart from this world
confessed, communed, yet not speaking and with passion and malice toward their
fellow men. And they even leave instructions many times to their children, to
their wife: “Let him not come either to my grave or to my funeral. See that
you do not let him come; I will rise and chase you”…!
I was saying also other things
from this very place, when someone came from Phyle and begged me weeping, “What
should I do? He has left word to
his wife and to his children that if I go to the house, to his funeral, they
are to throw me out. And what should I do? I am afraid lest we be humiliated
and become a spectacle.” And he was crying…
He had such longing to go and see
his brother, who was dying, that he was afraid… He was dying; he wanted to go
venerate his remains, and he was afraid…
And after he described the
situation there to me, I feared lest some incident occur there and I told him:
sit there opposite—they would bury him in Agioi Anargyroi—in some place where
they will bring the body, go to his grave and when the others leave, weep and
beseech God on your knees to forgive both him and you.
You see how terrible, how
terrible! For this reason, what benefit will fasting bring? For this reason,
our Christ tells us that, in order for it to benefit us, we must forgive from
the heart. If we do not forgive, God will not forgive us.
“For if you forgive men their
trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not
forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses”
(Matt. 6:14–15).
Many times, therefore, we see in
Christian people a Phariseeism. They show that they are worn down, that they
have weakness, in order to show that they are fasting…
It is something terrible for a
man to be condemned because of a virtue… To be condemned for sins, I
understand. To steal, to tell lies, to commit fornication, to commit adultery—I
understand.
But to pray and be condemned,
like the Pharisee?… To fast and be condemned?…
An ascetic once said, when they
were going to Alexandria and two others were in front of them, and he says to
his disciple: “Do you see that man, my child?” He says, “Yes, Elder.”
“He is,” he says, “a very proud man.”
For this reason, our Christ here
emphasizes to us to take good heed, so that we may not lose the reward of
fasting, how we must fast. I repeat it therefore: “But when you fast, do not
become like the hypocrites, gloomy; for they disfigure their faces so that they
may appear to men to be fasting. Amen, I say to you, they have received their
reward.”
Truly, truly I say to you,
therefore, He says that these have no reward at all with this fasting.
“But you, when you fast,
anoint your head and wash your face, so that you may not appear to men to be
fasting, but to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in
secret will repay you openly.”
And He continues, therefore, with
the third teaching: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth […]
but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust
destroys, and where thieves do not break in nor steal; for where your treasure
is, there will your heart be also.”
What will fasting profit you if
you have the passion of avarice? The Apostle Paul calls it “the root of all
evils.” And he adds: “equal to idolatry!” And it is not only those
who have much money who are avaricious… There are also many poor who are
avaricious! They become even poorer; they make their life more miserable… […]
Greek source: https://353agios.blogspot.com/2021/03/1997.html
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