Sermon on Matthew 18:23-35.

Today, in a parable, our Lord Jesus Christ gives us a God’s eye view of sin and forgiveness.

An official owes his king ten thousand talents. The king is the Lord. You and I are the official. His debt represents our sinfulness. So when Jesus describes this debt, he is actually describing our sinfulness, which concerns us personally and is worth considering carefully.

There are different estimates as to the actual value of ten thousand talents, (which our translation this morning rightly calls a huge amount). We know that a talent was the largest unit of money at the time. It was worth about six thousand denarii, which was a day’s pay. So, a talent was more than 15 years of pay. So, even if a day’s pay was equivalent to less than half of the current minimum wage in Michigan, ten thousand talents would still be worth more than 2 billion dollars. So we are indeed talking about a huge amount. Imagine the burden of a debt like that. It is an impossibly large sum – more than a laborer could make in two thousand lifetimes.

It will help us to understand Jesus’ rhetoric a bit further if we also consider the word here for ten thousand – it’s μυρίος, which is the largest Greek numeral – and as such, it is sometimes used rhetorically and less technically to mean “countless” or “innumerable” – it’s where we get the word myriad. So the servant’s debt to his master is the largest numeral of the largest unit of money. In other words, it’s as big as it can be – that’s the point, I think.

And it’s also possible that Jesus is making an allusion – because this isn’t the first time that the sum of ten thousand talents is mentioned in scripture. In the book of Esther, Haman, the enemy of the Jews, feeling himself insulted by the Jew Mordecai, offers to the Persian King Ahasu-e’rus – also known as Xerxes – ten thousand talents of silver if he will agree to destroy all Jews (Esther 3:9).

Haman was indebted to his king ten thousand talents, just like the official in today’s parable. And for what? – for seeking “to destroy, to slay, and to annihilate all Jews” (Esther 3:13) – the people of God. So this sum of ten thousand talents here is blood money. The debt of the servant in today’s parable represents our sin – and the wages of sin is death – and that death is born by the true messiah of the Jews – Jesus Christ.

By our sins, we participate in the failed attempt to destroy Jesus, just as Haman, by his debt of ten thousand talents, participates in a failed attempt to destroy the Jews. In both cases, the Lord triumphs over sin and death. Through Esther, he delivers the Jews from oppression in Persia. And through Jesus he raises from the dead. So there are meaningful parallels here, which shows more clearly that this enormous debt is an image of sin and death.

It is fitting that Jesus describes all our sinfulness with a parable about money – because the love of money is the root of all evil. But even if we think our sins don’t involve money, we mustn’t think that if that this isn’t about us – we must not leave this comfortably in the abstract.

We are invited to place ourselves in this parable as the servant, to examine our own consciences, and to discover our own sins against God and against our fellow servants. Sins perish in the light and thrive in the darkness – so let us name them and confess them to one another.

I cannot judge you. You and God alone know which sins trouble your hearts – and I can only know my own sins. Let us all bring our sins to God in holy repentance, as the servant did at first – falling on his knees and begging for the patience and kindness of the Lord. When we do, we will receive the Lord’s forgiveness – which is more than the servant begged for.

Actually, when the extent of his debt is revealed, the servant stupidly asks for more time to pay back his king – it should be clear to us that this is a sum no servant could ever repay. It’s an absurdly large sum! This, I think, is how it must sound to the Lord if we ever say that we’ll make it up to him by being good people for the rest of our lives. That won’t make it up to him! That is good and necessary, but that doesn’t mean that it’s enough. Nothing we do can ever earn our union with God.

We are utterly and absolutely dependent upon his grace. Apart from the energies of God, there is no theosis. We do not partake of the divine nature by our own power, but by the power of God, with which we cooperate. We must make every effort to supplement our faith with virtue, but we must never think that our efforts can succeed unaided (cf 1Pet 1:4-5). They spring from, are supported by, and succeed in and only in the life of God, freely and gratuitously given by God.

So the king does not give his servant more time to pay him back, which would be impossible – no, he forgives the debt completely! He gives more than the servant asks for. The Lord is gracious and we depend upon his grace.

We must realize that our sin is like a debt too large for us to ever repay, and, having received the forgiveness of that debt, let us turn from our sin, repent, and sin no more. We should allow this seemingly inexcusable, impossible forgiveness and lovingkindness to prick our hearts so that we do not remain inert and insensible to our wickedness.[i] With all our hearts, let us turn away from the evils to which we cling to which we are habituated and enslaved.

This turning, this repentance, this conversion, this μετάνοια begins, as our Lord demonstrates in this parable, with forgiveness. Not only with being forgiven, but also with forgiving others.

Our Lord taught us to pray, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Or, a more literal translation is “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,” which closely ties the prayer to today’s parable of debts. So as we forgive, we will be forgiven. And if we are to have any hope for ourselves we must have the hope for others that forgiveness expresses.

After receiving the forgiveness of such an enormous amount, the servant should quickly and easily have followed his king’s example when a fellow servant begged for patience regarding a comparably small debt – a hundred denarii – a tiny fraction of what he had been forgiven.

The wrongs we suffer from our fellow servants – which really are wrongs – sometimes terrible wrongs – are nonetheless small when you compare them to the weight of our own sins against the Lord. So, let us remember our own sins and forgive others, as our heavenly Father forgives us.

Do not nurse hurt feelings or brood on wrongs. Do not let resentments grow in your hearts like weeds growing ever deeper roots. For, according to the measure with which you measure, it will be measured to you (Matt 7:2). If you would be forgiven, you must forgive – even those who don’t deserve it – even those who don’t ask for it – as Jesus and our patron Stephen forgave those who were killing them even as they were driving the nails and throwing the stones. Let us imitate this “indescribable love of God” and forgive everything.

 

 

[i] cf. Chrysostom, The Gospel of Matthew, Homily 61.1

On Matthew 17:14-23 

Demons are real. They’re not merely metaphors or symbols, but real spiritual beings, which shows us pretty clearly that it’s no good to be “spiritual but not religious.” Demons are spiritual too, and they’re no good. They hate you. They hate me. They hate the boy in today’s gospel. The demon torments him and causes him to fall often into fire and often into water, just to hurt him, or even to try to kill him.

Demons want us to suffer. They are our enemies. They want to hurt us in any way that they can. Most of all, they want to separate us from God. They want to convince us to put our trust not in God but in them or in ourselves. They want our obedience in whatever small thing – so long as we are obeying them and not God.

It would have been a small thing for Jesus to eat bread, having fasted for forty days in the desert. He was hungry, but it was the devil suggesting he eat and satisfy himself. Jesus knows that we live not by bread alone but by every word from the mouth of God (Matt 4:4). Let us obey the word of God rather than the words of Satan. Life comes from the mouth of God, not from filling our mouths with the devil’s food.

When we are fasting, as we will be for the next two weeks in preparation for the Dormition, the devil suggests we should eat. The fruit of the tree looks good to us – good for food, delightful to our eyes, desirable to make us wise (cf. Gen 3: 6). The fruit seems like such a small thing. Yet God commands us not to eat it. And disobedience, which is not hearing or receiving the word of God, always ushers death into the world. And this is what the demons want. They want to destroy us and to kill us. And they’re pretty good at it. This is the bad news.

But I’m not here to preach the bad news. I’m here to preach the good news – the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the good news is that Jesus is an exorcist. Today, he rebukes the demon, casts it out, and cures the boy instantly (Matt 17:18). And today, in Christ, we also can be victorious over the demons that afflict us.

Demons plague us like flies – but they are easily swatted by the God-bearing angels and saints. Λογίσμοι – the pesky distracting thoughts and demonic provocations that buzz around our heads like flies can be rebuked and cast out by the name of Jesus and the Jesus prayer, if we are watchful and vigilant. Yes, there are demons and they are our enemies and they would be formidable enemies, except for the fact that we have Jesus on our side.

If you’re not on the side of Jesus, if you have not been baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, or if you’re outside of God’s Church, you are more susceptible to demonic influence. There is a reason that before every baptism, we perform an exorcism. At baptism, we are receiving into Christ people who have not until now been in Christ and so have had no authority over demons. In the early years of the catechumenate, exorcisms were read often, even daily, over the catechumens. At baptism, we put on Christ, who drives out demons.

The demon in today’s gospel often threw the boy into fire and into water in a mockery of our baptism in water and in fire, of baptism into Christ and in the Spirit, of baptism and chrismation.

In ancient Israel, the water was a scary place – especially the sea. It was a place of dark depths and unknown horrors. The place of Leviathan. An abode of demons. And so today the demon tries to throw the boy into water.

Now, we lower our own babies three times into water and by this baptism, we overcome the power of the devil, who vainly tries today to use these good things destructively.  Baptism is the undoing of all infernal attacks. It is the reversal even of death, the last enemy. We are baptized into the death of Christ Jesus and through death Christ destroys the devil “who has the power of death” (Rom 6:3; Heb 2:14). Baptism is our first death and also our first resurrection.

In Christ, we’re not afraid anymore. Water may have represented the dark and frightful unknown, but now we go into the water ourselves. Having been exorcized and having exorcized also the water, we go into the water and chase the demons out. We confront them head on. Christ gives us authority over them, if we have faith, if we pray and fast. We go into the realm of the demonic and we tell it to get out. The gates of hell cannot stand against our invasion force. We go into death and we come out alive and we live in Christ forever. This is the good news.

But baptism isn’t a like a magic spell that eliminates demonic activity in our lives from that point on. In fact, sometimes the more we seek God, the more we encounter overt demonic opposition. Those whom the devil has already deceived, he’ll often leave alone in their deception. It is therefore necessary for us to discern spirits.

John tells us not to believe “every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God…. Every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God, [but] is the spirit of antichrist” (1 John 4:1-3).

It’s really rather simple, if a spirit is not of the Lord, then it is an evil spirit. There is not in the incorporeal spiritual realm the ambiguity that we experience as humans. We are good and evil at the same time, but the angels and demons, as simple spirits, are necessarily absolute and immediate in their determination for or against the Lord. And, as the Lord says, “he who is not with me is against me” (Matt 12:30). And, in another place, “Because you are lukewarm…, I will spew you out of my mouth” (Rev 3:16). So, there can be no neutral angels.

Whenever there are unseen powers at work, we have to ask who is doing this. Not “what,” but “who,” because all spiritual forces, energies, and powers, have their source in persons – either in the uncreated divine persons of the most holy Trinity or in created persons – whether human or angelic, who may be good or evil. If a power is not of God, then it is demonic. Many increasingly popular occult and New Age activities are in fact demonic. And many of the false and pagan gods are nothing more than demons in disguise (cf. Ps 95:5, LXX; 1 Cor 10:20).

Therefore, approach spiritual gifts carefully. Do not be immediately enticed or distracted by miracles or apparitions, but be hesitant and careful. The first thing an Orthodox bishop does when there is a myrrh streaming icon, for example, is not veneration, but exorcism! Only after demonic influence is ruled out, do we venerate such an icon.

When discerning spirits, just ask, does it draw you closer to God? Does it bring you to repentance for your sins? If not, then it is not of God and we must have no part in it.

One of the Desert Fathers was praying in a cave and an angel appeared to him and said, “Prepare yourself, for in three days they are coming to make you a bishop.” Well, the monk didn’t just go along with this announcement. It appealed to his ego, so he rebuked the angel and told him to get out. The next day, the angel came again and said, “The emissaries are only two days away. Prepare yourself, for they’re going to make you a bishop.” And again the monk rebuked the angel, saying, “I am a sinner, and you’re trying to tempt me to pride.”  In other words, the monk accused the angel of being a demon! Only when the angel came the third time, he told the monk, “You are indeed a sinful man, and the Lord is going to punish a sinful people by making you their bishop.” And then the monk said, “Alright, now I can believe you.” Because this was a finally a message that brought with it an awareness of his own sinfulness and an inspiration to repentance, the monk believed, and he packed his things.

Our Lord is not bound by time. But he chooses to act in time – in his own good time. The deacon says quietly to the priest at the beginning of the Divine Liturgy, “It is time for the Lord to act.” The Lord acts in time. He is acting here and now in this Divine Liturgy. However, it seems to us sometimes that he takes his time.

Not until the fourth watch of the night did Jesus come walking on the water to his disciples (14:25). As soon as evening had fallen, the boat bearing the disciples was beaten by waves – and the wind was against them all night long (14:24). But not until the fourth watch of the night does Jesus come to them and cause the wind to cease. He had been alone in the hills praying.

What are these watches of the night? In the custom of the Roman military, the night was divided into four parts by soldiers who stood watch in shifts. That way, everyone could get at least some sleep and also the watch was kept unceasingly. Each of these watches lasted 3 hours so that the four watches of the night together made up the 12 hours of night. So, the fourth watch is the last three hours before sunrise, or from about what we would call  3 am until about 6 am.

This is when Jesus comes to them who are in the boat, walking to them on the windswept water, after they had been fighting the wind and waves all night long. “They had been in danger the whole night,”[i] but the Lord comes in his own good time.

We also wait upon the coming of the Lord. And maybe we are tossed about by the disturbances and cares of the world, by unremitting temptations, and by demonic provocations, just as the disciples are harassed by the wind and the waves. But the Lord is coming in the fourth watch – in his own good time. He will return perhaps to a roving and shipwrecked Church, but he will return.[ii]

We must wait upon the Lord, and, at the same time, practice an awareness of his presence in every moment of time, even when it seems to us that he is distant. Even when Jesus was praying in the hills, he who knows all things knew of the disciples’ plight in the water. And he also knew they would be alright. So, he let them struggle a little while, as he does with us. St. John Chrysostom says that “He was instructing them not too hast­ily to seek for deliverance from their pressing dangers but to bear all challenges courageously.” We must have a little courage for this life.

It’s clear that for his own reasons, the Lord allows us, his disciples, to be tossed about a bit. And it’s also clear that he brings some good out of our time of struggle. Through it, he increases our desire for his coming, helps us remember him, and reveals to us our complete dependence on him.[iii]

We must have a little humility for this life. St. Peter, who was in that boat, instructs us from his experience to “humble [ourselves] under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt [us]. Cast all your anxieties on him, for he cares about you” (1 Peter 5:6). He will deliver us in time. We must have a little hope and a little trust and a little faith for this life.

St. Paul says to Timothy, that “the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ… will be made manifest at the proper time by the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has ever seen or can see. To him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen” (1 Tim 6:14-16).

As we wait upon his coming, let us paradoxically remember his constant presence with us. Every hour of the day and every watch of the night, let us wait and watch for the coming of the Lord. To help with this, in our Byzantine tradition, we have services of liturgical prayer for every time of the day and night.

One of our young parishioners recently asked me what are the times for prayer in our liturgical tradition. You can see in the bulletin, for example, that we often pray First Hour & Third Hour. You can tell that’s a reference to time, but to what specific time does it refer? In charts of Byzantine time, you can see that there are still four watches and 12 hours of the night and day. First Hour is the first hour of the day – so, one hour after sunrise – and it roughly corresponds to 7 am. First Hour is one of the morning prayers of the Church – the last one to develop, as it so happens. It is called First Hour simply because of the time of day we pray it. The psalms chosen for this service all make reference to the morning.

The times for prayer in our tradition begin with Vespers, which belongs to the time of the setting of the sun. “Evening came and morning followed, the first day,” we hear in Genesis. Days begin with sunset, not with midnight or with sunrise. Compline is next, which is prayed usually around 9 o’clock in the evening just before bed. And then Mesonytikon, which is the Midnight Office. That’s right! There is the tradition of rising up again to pray even in the middle of the night. Ancient peoples had no mechanical clocks and followed natural cycles, which often resulted in two sleeps. They went to bed earlier when it got dark, but rose for a time in the middle of the night before sleeping again until dawn. At dawn, we pray Matins – or Orthros as it is also called. Then there is the First Hour, the Third Hour, the Sixth Hour, and the Ninth Hour, each being that many hours after sunrise and so roughly corresponding to 7 in the morning, 9, noon, and 3 in the afternoon.

All this is to say, that all the time of the day and night is a time for prayer, for calling attention to the presence of the Lord in each time, as we wait upon the Lord to come to us in his own good time.

There was an elderly and saintly priest in the parish I grew up in whose sermons eventually got to the point of always being the same. In every sermon, every Sunday, he said the same things – perhaps in a different order, but there were several key phrases that always got said. One thing he said again and again was “…in almighty God’s own good way and in almighty God’s own good time.” Wisdom. This is a voice of experience, I believe. We must wait upon the Lord.

God will act on our behalf just exactly when he means to. We must trust in him and hope in him. As we are buffeted by the storms of life, let us wait upon the Lord, watch, and pray for his coming. He is coming and he will calm the storm in due time.

 

 

[i] Jerome

[ii] Hilary of Poitiers, On Matthew 14:14

[iii] Chrys.: “But He suffers them to be tossed the whole night, exciting their hearts by fear, and inspiring them with greater desire and more lasting recollection of Him; for this reason He did not stand by them immediately.”

 

Sermon on Matthew 14:14-22 

“I have compassion on the crowd” (Matt 15:32; Mark 8:2; cf. Matt 14:14). I once heard a preacher who would begin his sermons this way. Looking out at the congregation he would say, “I have compassion on the crowd.” These are the words of Jesus when he sees the assembled thousands in their hunger and in their illness. He sees the five thousand men, the probably twenty thousand people, the great throng, and he has compassion on them. He heals their sick and satisfies their hunger. It strikes me as bold of that preacher to identify himself so closely with Jesus in this way – using his words from this context. On the other hand, we are to be like Jesus in this way.

The word compassion comes from Latin and it means to suffer with. To feel the others’ pain. It’s a good translation of the Greek here, but it’s an abstraction of something more physical, fleshly, and poetic. The meaning of the Greek word here seems alien to us. I even find it difficult to say: σπλαγχνίζομαι (splagchnizomai) which we translate as “compassion”, more literally means to be moved as to the bowels. Where we would sometimes refer to the heart, the ancients refer to the bowels, which they regard as the seat of the more intense emotions. In other words, to feel it in your gut.

Like when sometimes we wince ourselves when we see our child fall and scrape his knees. We know what that feels like. So when we see someone else – especially someone we love – experience that pain, the memory of it is sharp – we can almost feel it ourselves.

And there is no more beautiful image of compassion than that of a nurturing mother toward her newborn baby, crying again in the night. She can almost feel his hunger and is driven by it from her own sleep and her own comfort again and again to comfort the helpless baby.

When we love someone, their pain hurts us too. This is the opposite of sadism or schadenfreude, which is taking pleasure at the pain or misfortune of others.

We sometimes mistake the pleasure that someone gives us for love, but true love is not just a gushy feeling. Love must include compassion. This means that there isn’t going to be any such thing painless love in this life – not until that blessed day when we will see our loved ones in a heavenly Jerusalem, when the Lord “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, and neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore” (Rev 21:4). Then our love will be painless. But now it is not.

Jesus himself, who has loving compassion on us, encounters death. He mourns. He cries. He feels pain. Today, Jesus’ love for the crowd is not painless. One verse prior to today’s gospel reading, he had been attempting to withdraw from the crowds to a lonely place apart, to be alone to mourn, because he had just heard news that his cousin and forerunner and baptist John was beheaded by Herod. Jesus, like any of us would, wanted to go and mourn his departed friend for a while in solitude. Jesus often went off to be alone, to rest, and to pray.

But finding a place to be alone in Galilee was no easy task. Josephus, the Jewish historian, claims that Galilee was densely populated at this time – with more than 200 towns, each with no less than 15,000 inhabitants. So that’s more than three million people in a small region. So it’s not too surprising that Jesus has a hard time finding a solitary place, and that the crowds from the towns quickly hear where he is and follow after him. Crowds tended to follow after Jesus, because great power went out from him and all were healed by that power. They would press in on him and try to touch him, because his touch and his presence was healing to all. This must have been exhausting for him, especially when he was overcome with his own grief. So Jesus seeks solitude and rest. He does teach us by example to care for ourselves as well as for others. He gets into a boat to escape the crowds… and then on the other shore there is another crowd of thousands waiting for him. How exasperating that must have felt. Some of us may have shouted, “Just leave me alone!”

But in addition to teaching us to care for ourselves, Jesus also teaches us to deny ourselves. And today, despite his exhaustion and despite his grief and despite his desire to be alone, he looks out at the great throng and sees their suffering, and he has compassion on them, and he heals their sick.

It must not have been easy for Jesus to add the pain of the multitude to his own pain. But that is what he does. He denies himself and takes up his cross and invites us to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow him.

Sometimes he calls us to set aside ourselves, our heartaches, our exhaustion, our obsessions, and to focus on the needs of others for a while. This is sacrificial love offered in imitation of Christ.  He shows the crowd compassion, and then he invites us, his disciples, also to show them compassion.

The disciples were also aware of the people’s need. They too are compassionate. They see that it’s getting late and that the people will soon be hungry. They bring this concern for the people to Jesus, along with a suggestion that the crowds should go off and fend for themselves. This is familiar: when we see a need, our first response is often that someone else should do something about it.

Feeling the others’ pain, sensing their need is the beginning, but not the end, of compassion. Jesus, by his own compassion, invites us to compassion. He says to the disciples, “They need not go away, you feed them.”

Jesus’ response here might remind some of us of what happens when we have a great idea for some service or activity that the parish ought to be providing. We take this idea to the priest, only to hear him say, “Thank you for volunteering to lead the effort!” The needs that we see are often the needs that Jesus is calling us to provide for.

But the disciples have only two fish and five loaves. It’s a meager offering, but they offer what they have.

The truth is, we really can’t do it alone. What we have to offer really isn’t enough. We really do need Jesus’ help. If I have compassion on the crowd, it is only inasmuch as I am in Christ and he is in me. The disciples offer what they have, but they need the power of Christ to take their poor offering and make it sufficient for the needs of the crowd.

Jesus takes the spark of compassion in the disciples and he multiplies it, when he says to them, you feed them. Jesus is a multiplier. He multiplies the five loaves and two fish and he multiplies our compassion. He shows us that love can grow. It isn’t ever necessary to run out of love.  Love isn’t like money. Love is not finite. Rather, paradoxically, you have what you give away.

So, whatever small and seemingly inadequate gifts we have to offer, these we offer together with our prayers to Christ for multiplication and he will make them grow to abundance. Not only will it be enough, there will be twelve baskets left over.

Sermon on Matt 9:27-35.

I’m going to tell you the same thing this year that I told you last year about this gospel. But I’ll try to say the same thing in different words. You don’t want to hear the same words two years in a row. We like a little more spice than that. Otherwise, we wouldn’t need a sermon at all.

The gospel itself says what needs to be said – and says it better than any preacher, even if his mouth is made of gold and his words are like pearls. So let’s not get any wrong ideas, the sermon has a place, but its place is beneath the proclamation of the Gospel. It’s like the placement of the candle or the lamp before the holy icon.

There’s no question here of the relative importance. The icon is what matters most. The flame is there to give living light to the icon. Likewise, a sermon, if it is any good, illuminates the gospel. If the sermon is no good, that’s unfortunate but thanks be to God the gospel continues to shine with its own light.

Likewise, the icons are filled with an interior light. I don’t know if you’ve studied the icons too much, but if you compare them to classical images, or to images produced during and after the Renaissance in the West, you can observe a significant difference with regard to the lighting. The figures in an icon are illuminated almost as it from within. The light shines from within them, rather than from a chosen external source or sources. When you study Western painting, one of the things you have to master is choosing and remaining consistent to a light source. And when you study Eastern iconography, you have to forget what you learned from Western painting. Anyway, that is the case if, like me, you were first trained in a western-style and then moved on to iconography.

But you see, the point of this is, the icon shines with its own light, and the gospel shines with its own light, yet the candle helps us to see the icon, and gives it a living pulsing warmth, and the sermon, if it is any good, does the same for the gospel.

Anyway, I haven’t gotten around to repeating myself yet. Here is what I would like to repeat, we can learn a lot about how to pray from these two blind men who follow after Jesus, saying “Have mercy on us, son of David!” I’m going to say again, like I said last year, that this is one of the roots of the Jesus prayer.

Yes, Father, we know. You told us that last year, and we would never forget what you said from one year to the next.

Nevertheless, some things are worth repeating. And one of those things is the Jesus Prayer. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me the sinner.

You can hear an echo of this, I think, pretty clearly in the prayer of the two blind men. They have the right idea: follow after Jesus, call out to him and say, have mercy on us! This is the way of life. Jesus is the way and he is the life.

“My advice to both the young and the elderly is for each one of you to make a prayer rope.  Hold it with your left hand, and as you make the sign of the Cross with your right hand, say:  Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” Those are not my words. They are the words of Saint Kosmas of Aitolos.

It’s hard to overstate the simplicity of this discipline of this Prayer. When I have suggested it to some, they have protested but they don’t know how to do this prayer. They said, we’re familiar with the rosary, but we don’t know how to pray this chotki. This baffles me. Because, while the Rosary is a lovely private Roman Catholic prayer devotion, it’s actually quite a bit more complicated than the chotki, or prayer rope.

Allow me to explain how we pray the chotki. On the each of the knots, we repeat the prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God have mercy on me, the sinner.” If this is too much, you can simply say “Lord Jesus, have mercy.” You now know how to pray the chotki.

So do it. Pray it every single day. Get yourself a small 33 knotted one for starters, rather than one of those that goes on for miles. Then when you pray that daily without fail, maybe consider moving up to one with 50 knots, or a hundred knots, or then 200 knots. Or don’t. So long as you continue to pray.

The mysticism surrounding this practice has left some mystified to the extent that they do not attempt to pray this prayer. And that is a tragedy. Remember the simplicity of this prayer and keep to it, even when you hear of the mystical experiences it has transported others into. Even if you do not yourself have these mystical experiences, at least not yet.

The experience we mainly hear of is the seeing of the uncreated Taboric light. That is, the light with which Jesus shone at his Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. The light of God made visible to men. After all, we are praying to the one who is light, like the blind men who prayed to him and were given light by him with which to see.

When we called out repeatedly to the light of all for mercy, it is no wonder he fills us with his light. Remember how I spoke before about the icons shining with an internal light. A light coming from within. Our whole purpose in life is to become one with Jesus, who is the light of all, and to be filled with his light. We are all called to holiness. The halos in the icons are meant for your heads as well as for those who are already in glory. But we cannot fashion our own halos. And the light shining from within the holy ones in the icon is the light of Christ.

So how do we join them in this blessedness? One way I know is to humble ourselves before our creator and to call out to him again and again without ceasing, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me the sinner.”

The best things are worth repeating, like the gospel, which we repeat each year.

Let us never stop repeating the Jesus prayer, not even for a moment. Let us repeat the prayer of Jesus as often as our hearts beat. May our lips ceaselessly and prayerfully murmur the name of Jesus as we go about our day. And he will fill our lives with his light and drive out every darkness. Though we have been blind, he will make us to see.