The rich ruler becomes “sad” after Jesus shows him the way to “inherit eternal life” (Luke 18: 23, 18). Why should that make him sad? That’s what he asked for, isn’t it (18:18)? Yes, but the way Jesus shows him is uncomfortable. It’s not the answer he wanted. Perhaps he wanted a pat on the back for what he was already doing – a “well done, good and faithful servant” – and why not? He’d been keeping the commandments!

God knows that many of us fail to keep the commandments. This rich ruler did not commit adultery, did not kill, did not steal, did not lie. He honored his mother and his father. When Jesus began to list these commandments, the ruler must have been pleased. He had observed all these commandments from his youth (18:21), so hearing Jesus describe these as the way to eternal life must have felt reassuring at first, I would think.

The ruler had done so much already, in his own estimation. Surely following all these commandments should be enough? My brothers and sisters in Christ, there is no such thing as enough.

Upon hearing that the ruler has taken the step of following the commandments, Jesus has for him another step: “Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor… and come follow me.” If the ruler had not yet been following the commandments, I wonder if Jesus would have revealed to him this next step. I think not. He feeds us first with milk, not solid food, and gives us solid food only when we are ready (cf. 1 Cor 3:2). And, on the other hand, if the ruler had readily distributed all his wealth to the poor and followed Jesus, as many saints have done, he would then have been given another step to climb. This is what those saints have discovered.

There are those who have followed the way of Jesus and have given away all their wealth to the poor to follow after him. We celebrate one of these great saints of this coming week, Saint Nicholas. Also Saint Anthony the Great. Also Saint Francis of Assisi. Many have followed Jesus in this way of poverty. What they have discovered is that this, too, is not the end of their growth.

Eternal life is still not a done deal, even if we’ve grown to such a degree of radical trust in God. Rather, out there in the desert with no possessions and following Jesus, Saint Anthony was beset by countless demons and passions. He had to do battle out there still. The work was not done. There is always more growing to do.

We find growth uncomfortable. But Jesus is teaching us to embrace growth, which feels rather like embracing the cross. For as long as we do not embrace it, growth remains painful. We suffer growing pains. If we never embrace growth, the pain becomes everlasting. The rich ruler did not embrace growth, and so he went away sad.

I am convinced that growth is life and life is growth – and that eternal life is eternal growth. What must we do to inherit eternal life? Grow eternally. When we stop growing, it means we’re dead.

St. Gregory of Nyssa teaches us this in his book about the Life of Moses. Life is about becoming one with God, and God is boundless and perfect. “How can we reach the boundary when there is no boundary?” asks Gregory (paraphrased). “The one limit of perfection is the fact that it has no limit.” The race to virtue never ends (I, 5-6; cf. II, 242).

It’s important to remember that God commands us to be perfect. But perfection is unlimited, so how can we ever reach it? Only God is good, as Jesus reminds us today (Luke 18:19). St. Gregory observes, “The perfection of human nature consists perhaps in its very growth in goodness” (I, 10). Growth is the perfection we’re called to. Growth is life. “No limit… interrupt[s] growth in the ascent to God, since no limit to the good can be found nor is the increasing of desire for the good brought to an end because it is satisfied” (II, 239). There is “always… a step higher than the one [we have] attained” (II, 227). If we live virtuously, our capacity for more virtue will increase. Our capacity to love increases the more we love. It’s not a limited commodity. It doesn’t work like that. Our potential for growth is limitless, because the God calling us to himself is limitless.

In imitation of Christ, our Byzantine tradition constantly calls us to grow. It is not a minimalist tradition. You may have noticed. It does not propose to us the least we must do to in order to find a place in the back pew of heaven. This is not what Jesus does either. When we have grown to a certain point, he shows us that it is now time to grow to a still higher point. Our Byzantine tradition is a maximalist tradition. It proposes to us more than we can possibly do so that, no matter how much we have done, there is always more to do. There’s always another step. There’s always more growing to do.

In this season of the Philip’s fast, our tradition challenges us to grow, to give a bit more of ourselves, more of our time to prayer in the church and at home, more of our wealth to the poor. Let’s listen with some fear of God to Jesus’ admonishment about wealth today and his invitation to remember the poor (Luke 18:24-25, 22). Let’s make an effort to come to church once or twice more than we usually do during the week. Let’s go to a service we’ve never been to before. If we don’t sing the Divine Liturgy, let’s start singing – even if we only sing quietly at first. Let’s accept the challenges our tradition offers us to grow.

Since this Byzantine tradition of our is so challenging, some might be asking, why should I bother? It’ll be more convenient – won’t it? – and more comfortable to find a Roman Catholic parish nearby where I can get in and out of Mass in 45 minutes and then be about my business. Maybe business, after all, is what we really care about. Probably, most of us could find a parish closer to home, too. Being Byzantine these days takes so much extra effort and, really, what’s the point? It’s all the same thing, isn’t it?

I’m telling you, our tradition has something to offer you very much like what Jesus is offering the rich ruler today: opportunity for growth, which is life itself. We must stop looking at the inconveniences of our tradition and our situation as a problem to be avoided, and begin to embrace them as opportunities to grow in union with God. We must stop regarding our liturgical services as some drudgery to get through in order to fulfill some imagined obligation. Check the box and move on, as if that would help us grow in union with God. If we really pray our services, rather than waiting for them to be over, we wouldn’t care if they went on all day. Getting to the end isn’t the point, we’d realize. The Divine Liturgy has no end. If we don’t like praying together, we’re not going to be able stand it in heaven, because that’s what we do there. And not being able to stand it in heaven is a condition of being known as hell.

When we embrace our tradition, we will see how much it helps us grow and eventually we will realize is that it is possible to take joy in our growth. Because we are growing closer to the Lord, who is our true joy. If things other than the Lord are our joy, we find it drudgery to grow. Because growing in the Lord, after all, is growing apart from the things of this world, inasmuch as they are fallen, broken, and disordered by our sinfulness. As long as we resist this growth, it will cause us pain and life will be pain for us. As soon as we begin to take joy in growth, we begin to delight, even now, in the eternal garden of paradise.

On the Sabbath, Jesus sets free a woman who was crippled for eighteen years by Satan. On the Sabbath, Jesus says to her, “Woman, you are loosed.” You are free. You are enslaved to your infirmity no longer. Jesus unties the knots in her back so she again can stand up straight in his presence. He sets her free from bondage. And he sets us free from bondage.

This is what Jesus does. He sets his people free. “The truth will set you free” and Jesus is the truth – “the way, the truth, and the life” – the word incarnate, truth himself (John 14:6).

And the truth is, it is sin and death, passions and suffering, addictions and illnesses, powers and principalities that enslave us. It is Jesus who sets us free.

He does not “come into the world to condemn the world but to save the world” (). As we prepare for his coming into the world at Christmas, remember what Gabriel says to Mary: “you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus,” for he will save his people from their sins. The name Jesus means “the Lord saves” and it’s related to the Hebrew for “deliverance.”

But some mischaracterize Jesus as the one who binds us – as an enslaver rather than a liberator. They say this because we Christians preach the commandments of him whom we love. And they say this because they do not know what freedom is.

Some think of freedom as the license to do as they please. They regard the very idea of sin as judgmentalism. But the truth is that we who are sinners are enslaved to sin. We quickly discover this when we try and fail by our own power to live sinlessly. It is possible only by the grace of God to live sinlessly. Of course, if we don’t try at all, we might think we’re free because we’re doing just as we like. But we’re really only free if we can make the choice to sin no more. And that is only possible in Jesus Christ.

This fasting that we’re doing until Christmas is meant to help free us from our enslavement to sin. Fasting reveals to us how enslaved to our passions we really are. Once we start to practice self-control, we quickly learn how out of control we are – how badly we need to rely on the Lord for strength. Fasting without prayer is worthless. Whatever it is we have freely chosen to fast from will doubtlessly allure us at some point during our fast, unless we are fasting from something we don’t want anyway, (in which case, we should add to our fast something we do want, because fasting should train us to resist temptation).  “By training the Christian to abstain from sin, [fasting] leads to interior freedom and true joy.”[i] But how quickly and easily we look for ways to justify breaking our fast. How clear it is at times that we are enslaved to our desires. We seek freedom from this enslavement and we find it only in Christ.

There are two kinds of freedom: bodily freedom and spiritual freedom. And there are two figures in today’s gospel who illustrate these two kinds of freedom: the bent over woman and the ruler of the synagogue.

Behold the woman. She is enslaved in body until Christ frees her. But even though a spirit of infirmity afflicts her body, it does not afflict her spirit. Behold how faithful she is. She freely attends synagogue on the Sabbath., despite having suffered for so long – for eighteen long years. This has not crushed her spirit. Her body is bowed down, but even so she bows down to the Lord. How frustrating she must be to Satan. He crushes the bones of her back thinking he can thereby crush her spirit. But no. She has a freedom he cannot touch, even as he afflicts her body. And her freedom to be faithful to God, to go anyway to synagogue, despite the pain it obviously causes her, results in her being in the presence of Jesus, which results in her healing, and her freedom even in body. Jesus takes away even the little power that Satan had over her. He frees her totally. He restores totally her true and free nature.

Because really we are made for freedom in both body and spirit. God makes us like himself: unique, relational, and free – but by our sins we have clouded this likeness. When we sin, we surrender our freedom.

And what likeness to God we have lost through sin, suffering, and death, Christ comes to restore through his incarnation.  Just as Jesus restores the bent over woman to her true nature, so he is restoring us.

In the meantime, the bent over woman in the synagogue teaches us that suffering does not actually keep us from the freedom to which God calls us.

But then there is the ruler of the synagogue. He is free in body, free to speak to all those gathered there, and in a position to remonstrate with them loftily. But he is enslaved in spirit. His bondage is worse than hers. The crippling of her body did not shackle her mind or heart, but he, whose body is well, is unlovingly indignant about the Lord’s deliverance of the woman.[ii]  His passionate regard for the letter of the law only distracts him from the true spirit of the law, as he criticizes the people there for seeking healings on the Sabbath. He has forgotten what the Sabbath really is and what it is for. He has made it more like a rope around the neck than a hand untying that rope. The Sabbath rest is not meant to burden God’s people. The Sabbath is a day of freedom – freedom from the drudgery and toil to which we’ve been enslaved by sin since Adam. It was made to be a day of rest – “that is, a time of liberation.”[iii] Rest from extortion and from enslaving others. As Ambrose says, “The Sabbath is… a day of rest from evil deeds.”[iv] It’s not a day of rest from mercy. Nor are we to rest from giving drink to the thirsty or from delivering the afflicted children of God. More than once, Jesus heals on the Sabbath for this reason. That is what the Sabbath is all about.

Remember the Jubilee year, the Sabbath of Sabbaths, the year after seven sets of seven years when all debts were forgiven and all slaves were freed. This is what Jesus is doing on the Sabbath. He is freeing slaves. Those enslaved to illnesses and infirmities of body he heals. Those enslaved to demons he delivers. He is our healer, our deliverer, our liberator.

And he is come to free us today – here and now. True freedom is really available to us in the present moment – in the here and the now. Though we often think it is only possible in the future, or even in the hereafter, we have it all wrong. The bent over woman was already free in the most important way, even though she and we have to wait for the coming of the Lord for our total liberation, there was a consoling measure of freedom available to her even in the midst of her enslavement – a freedom of mind and heart, that all of us can share.

The Lord grants access to this freedom if we will open ourselves to his presence in our lives as through repentance, prayer, fasting, and giving to all.

 

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[i] Ukrainian Catechism, 220

[ii] Commentary by Warren Wiersbe

[iii] Sacra Pagina

[iv] Exposition of the Gospel of Luke 7.174-75

Now we are fasting. Now we are simplifying our lives. Now we give to those in need what we save by fasting and simplifying our lives.

Now we examine our consciences in peace. Now we confess and repent of our own sins. Now we are reconciled with God and with the Church. Now we do penance.

Now we remove distractions and keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. Now we strip away what does not matter and give ourselves over to the one thing that does.

Now is the time.

Now we pray.  Now we try to learn what it means to pray unceasingly. Now we spend less time watching television and more time reading scripture. Now we come more often to the church to pray and worship God.

Because now our lives are demanded of us.

God will say to those unprepared to stand in his glory, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you.” (Luke 12:20). It does not do to make preparations for this passing life while neglecting to prepare for the everlasting life that is to come. Pope Benedict XVI observes, “This life is not everything. There is an eternity. Today it is very unmodern to say this, even in theology.” But it remains true, and the weight of the eternal is infinitely greater than the weight of all the years of our earthly life.

How can we prepare for that limitless life and the unfathomable glory of God? He has made the way simple for us. He is the way.

The Philip’s Fast, which we have now begun in preparation for the Nativity of Jesus Christ, is a season of preparation for the coming of the Lord into the world. The Lord is coming into the world.

One morning, we will wake up and it will feel like Christmas morning when we were children, because the Lord will have come into the world. Anyway, that’s how it will feel if we have prepared for him. Either way, that day is coming.

This Philip’s Fast is another chance to prepare. I had the opportunity this week to meet up online with several of my old seminary chums. It was a group video chat, so I could see all of them as well as talk to them, even though we were all over the country. Such technological marvels we live among these days. Real life is like an episode of Star Trek. Anyway, unlike the rest of them, I didn’t have a camera, so they couldn’t see me like I could see them. All they could see of me was a photo taken a few years ago. So, I pointed out that I’d gained about 20 lbs. since that photo had been taken. Fr. Lewis chided me, “That doesn’t sound very ascetical, John.” And so I affably retorted, “Well, it’s a good thing we’re starting the Philip’s Fast now. Thank God there’s always another chance to repent.”

“Yeah,” said Fr. Dcn. Tom, “until there’s not.”

There won’t, in fact, always be more time. “The great day of the Lord is near – near and hastening fast” (Zeph 1:14). This Philip’s Fast is another opportunity to prepare and repent. Let’s not squander this chance. How many more will there be? What we do as a Church in these fasting seasons teaches us how to live our lives in preparation for the last things and the everlasting things.

Here’s the thing: the day is coming when we will stand in the glory of the Lord. This is true whether or not we prepare for that glorious day. If we do not prepare (by living the life of God and cooperating with his grace) our experience of that glory will be painful – like staring straight into the sun. But, if we first allow ourselves to be transfigured, little by little, by God’s own energies, then we will truly live this life he is giving us, and, on that day, we will be the glory of God.

“The glory of God is man truly alive,” as St. Irenaeus says. Jesus says to his Father, “I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one” (John 17:22). You see, this glory of God makes us one with one another just as God, who is three Persons, is one.

What unifies us is the same as what unifies God: love. God is love (1 John 4:8). So, the way to prepare to stand in the glory of God, the way to become the glory of God, to become one as the Persons of God are one, is to love one another. This is the simple way.

We all want to be loved, and that’s as it should be, I believe. Even God wants to be loved. And he made all of us lovable. All of us. You are lovable and God loves you. Love one another as he loves you (John 13:34). Then you will be prepared to stand in his glory and receive his love not as a searing fire but as a transfiguring light.