We hear today one of the scriptural roots of the Jesus Prayer. Two blind men follow Jesus, “crying aloud, ‘Have mercy on us, Son of David’” (Matt 9:27). And later they call him “Lord” (9:28). And Jesus opens their eyes.

Even those of us who can see with the eyes of the body are often spiritually blind. We do not know where we are going in life. We cannot see where God is in all of this. Note that the blind men were blind in body but that they could nonetheless follow Jesus from one place to another (Matt 9:27-28). Following Jesus set them on the right course. First, they followed. Then they could see. It is the same with us. If first we will follow Jesus (even for our whole earthly lives), then we will spiritually see. Our vision of God’s presence in our lives will be 20/20 if we first live faithfully and then look back upon it. Perhaps we cannot always see where God is in our lives right now, but we know by faith that he is present and, if we follow him, he will give us eyes to see that he was with us all along. I have experienced this already in my own life. Most of the time, I know where God intends me to go only after I get there, like a blind man following him through the streets of the city.

But how can I begin or continue to follow Jesus if I am blind and do not see where he is? It would help then to call out to him, like the blind men do. I promise, it will help us just to call out his holy name – the name of Jesus. Let us pray the Jesus prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner.

Can you hear how this is like the prayer of the blind men? “Have mercy on us, Son of David,” they pray. This is, as I say, one of the scriptural roots of the Jesus Prayer. There are also others:

• Another blind man sits outside of Jericho and similarly calls out to Jesus: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” (Mark 10:47; Luke 18:38; cf Matt 20:30–31).
• The publican (unlike the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable) shows us how to pray when he bows his head, beats his breast, and says, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner” (Luke 18:13).
• In a village between Samaria and Galilee, ten lepers stand at a distance, lift up their voices and say, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us” (Luke 17:13).

From these examples, I think we can see that the prayer of Jesus has been with us from the very beginning of Christianity. From these scriptural roots, the prayer developed further.

The Desert Fathers and Mothers of Egypt would frequently repeat short and simple prayers like these – “arrow prayers” we sometimes call them because, as St. Augustine observed, “the brethren of Egypt offer prayers that are frequent but very brief and suddenly shot forth” – rather like an arrow meant to pierce heaven.

Of these short prayers, St. Diadochus recommends we constantly repeat the utterly simple prayer, “Lord Jesus.” The frequent repetition of the divine name of Jesus serves as a constant reminder of his divine presence with us and helps us fulfill St. Paul’s instruction that we pray unceasingly (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

We are beset constantly by distracting thoughts and temptations, which threaten to remove remembrance of God from our minds and hearts. A short and simple prayer like this, that can be called upon at any moment and for any need, is a powerful tool against these thoughts and temptations. The prayer must be as constant as are the thoughts. It must be unceasing.

There are many ways to approach unceasing prayer. The Jesus Prayer is not the only way, but it is a great help and it may be the best way.

A benefit of constantly repeating this prayer is that it then enters into the unconsciousness and you begin to find it there behind the noise of life. It joins with your breathing and the beating of your heart – the rhythms of life itself – and helps us in this way to approach unceasing prayer and the constant remembrance of the presence of God.

Pray it at home and in church and in your car. Pray it a few times first thing in the morning and throughout the day as often as you can think of it and again before you go to bed. Pray the prayer while you do the dishes or the laundry. It was a great aid to Pani Katie while she was in labor. There is no time when it is not a good time to pray the Jesus prayer.

Sit quietly and pray it slowly again and again for 5 minutes or for thirty minutes. Use a chotki or don’t use a chotki. A chotki can be a helpful aid – a physical reminder to persist with the prayer when we become distracted by intrusive thoughts and imaginings. If you don’t have a chotki, get one. Some have 33 knots – one for each year of Jesus’ earthly life, others have 100 , or others 300. On each knot, you pray the Jesus Prayer. Simple.

There’s more than one way to say the Jesus Prayer. The formula of the Jesus prayer as we know it now –

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner

– is good and was pretty well set already by the seventh century, but this is not to bind us and it’s not the only way. There’s no need to change it – all its elements are already there in the scriptural roots of the prayer, which I listed – but at the same time we may find other ways helpful.

We may want to pray as simply as St. Diadochus recommends: “Lord Jesus.” The holy name of Jesus itself is a saving cry.  It means “the Lord saves” or “the Lord is a cry for salvation”. Or, you can add to it, as do some of the nuns at our Christ the Bridegroom Monastery, saying “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, the sinner.” Or, we can simplify it a bit and pray “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,” as do many of the monks on Mount Athos. Or, we may wish to pray for others as well as ourselves and so pray “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us” – in the plural. (In this case, I personally recommend that we omit the word “sinners” because, while we accuse ourselves of sin, I find it better not to accuse others of sin while we pray). All this is to say that there are many good ways of praying the Jesus prayer. Pray it whichever way you will pray it. The important thing is to pray it.

The Jesus Prayer is the central private prayer of our spiritual tradition. So much so that some simply call it “the prayer.” It is profound, versatile, and life-changing. This is due above all to the holy name of Jesus, which is the name above every other name (Philippians 2:9). St. Theophan the Recluse says “The Jesus Prayer is like any other prayer. It is stronger than all other prayers only in virtue of the all-powerful name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.” In his name and by his name, we find salvation. “There is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

 

 

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Much information was provided by Kallistos Ware, “Foreword,” in On the Prayer of Jesus (Boston, Mass.: New Seeds, 2006)

Seeing a paralyzed man, Jesus says to him, “Your sins are forgiven” (Matt 9:2). Do you think this is why the people of Jesus’ own city brought to him a paralytic lying on a bed? So that Jesus would forgive his sins? I think these words may have been rather surprising to them.

He had just come from exorcizing the Gadarene demoniacs, as we heard last week (8:28-34). And he had just healed many people. He cleansed a leper who knelt before him saying, “Lord, if you will, you can make me clean” (8:2). He healed the centurion’s servant who said, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, but only say the word and my servant will be healed” (8:8). Seeing Peter’s mother-in-law with a fever, he touched her hand and the fever left her (8:14-15). He cast out many demons and healed all who were sick (8:16). With all that healing – a whole chapter full of it leading up to this moment – he never mentions sin. Not until this paralytic is brought before him in his own city.

In fact, this is the first time in the gospel of Matthew that Jesus uses the word ἁμαρτία – which we translate as “sin.”

This word literally means “to miss the mark.” It is to do other than what we are created for. It is like hammering with a screwdriver. There is a better way. Just as a poor marksman can do all sorts of harm with his misspent arrows (those arrows can end up in his friends rather than his enemies) we sinners wreak havoc upon the world – upon others and ourselves – with our sin. When we speak of sin, it is helpful to bear all this in mind. Sin is not merely rule-breaking, but failure to fulfill our own created purpose.

Though not from Jesus until this moment, we do hear of sin from the beginning of the gospel. Remember, the angel of the Lord told Joseph that Jesus would “save his people from their sins” (1:21). And those who came to be baptized by John with a baptism of repentance (Matt 3:11; Acts 19:4), confessed their sins (Matt 3:6). When Jesus first began to preach, the first words he preached were in quotation of John the Baptist, saying “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is at hand” (3:2). He preaches repentance from the first, and repentance is to do with sin and includes the confession of sin (3:6). In his sermon on the mount, Jesus speaks of σκανδαλίζω, which is stumbling or giving offense, and is also related to sin.  But, still, Jesus himself first mentions sin – ἁμαρτία – in direct connection to illness, when he sees this paralytic brought to him. I suppose that’s a rather dubious distinction. How would you like to be the first person that Jesus calls a sinner?

Well, we’re all sinners and in need of his forgiveness, so his words, “your sins are forgiven” were surely welcome even if surprising. Some of us may have objected, “What sins? What are you talking about?” But this paralytic has more humility than that. In fact, he says nothing at all in this whole exchange.

The people were surprised to hear Jesus forgiving the paralytic’s sins because this wasn’t the pattern that Jesus had established. They knew he was healer who healed the sick who were brought to him. So, when they brought to him the paralytic, they surely expected that Jesus would immediately heal him and give him once again the power to walk. He does get to that, but he focuses first on the forgiveness of sins and the people are surprised. Some of them are not only surprised but scandalized because they think Jesus is a blasphemer and do not understand who he is. But all are surprised, I expect.

In a similar way, perhaps we are surprised to hear the prayers for forgiveness of sins in the holy mystery of anointing. We come to the presbyters of the Church to be anointed when we are ill, as St. James instructs us (James 5:14). We come hopeful of healing like the paralytic, and we are suddenly treated to prayers for the forgiveness of our sins, like the paralytic. Holding the Gospel book over the head of the sick person, the priest prays,

“O Holy King…, you do not desire the death of a sinner, but rather that he repent and live. I do not place my sinful hand upon the head of your servant who comes to you in sin, asking from you, through us, the forgiveness of sins; rather, I place your strong and powerful hand which is in this holy Gospel…. Receive your servant who has repented of his sins, and forgive all his transgressions.”

Hey! We didn’t say we were sinners, did we? We only said we were sick and need healing! What’s all this talk of us being sinners in need of forgiveness? Doesn’t that belong in the sacrament of confession rather than anointing? In truth, these two holy mysteries are intimately linked. Holy Anointing is also for the forgiveness of sins and Holy Repentance is also for healing. Indeed, from a certain perspective, forgiveness is healing and healing is forgiveness. Our souls and bodies are not two separate things in need of two separate remedies – but they are one. We are both spiritual and bodily, and we need both forgiveness and healing in both spirit and body. And our Lord, the Physician of our souls and bodies, is eager to provide us with both. When he looks upon us, he sees the whole us, with nothing left out. He knows us inside and out and through and through.

When he sees the paralyzed man, he knows he needs healing but he also knows he needs forgiveness and that these two things are really the same thing. Immediately, there is a connection drawn between paralysis and sin.

Now, in the Gospel of John, we learn that a man is born blind not because of any sin (John (9:2-3). But now Jesus sees a man paralyzed, and knows that he is a sinner in need of forgiveness. Of course, the Jesus knows everything. He knows who is a sinner and who is not. Which is to say, he knows that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). And that we all are in need of forgiveness. Still, I believe there is a connection here between this man’s paralysis and his sin. It is not the causal connection, perhaps, that we immediately jump to. We look for someone to blame. We say, it’s his own fault. He brought it on himself. He is a sinner, and this paralysis is the wages of his sin, just as ultimately death will be the wages of sin. Or, we may say it is the sins of others that have led to this. The man born blind shows us, I think, that that is not always so clear-cut.

Still, this does not eradicate the connection between illness and sin. Sin is like paralysis. And paralysis is like sin. There is at least an analogical connection between the two. The one is like the other. Sin is more like an illness in need of healing than like a crime in need of punishment. Jesus further demonstrates the connection between illness and sin by asking, “Which is easier? To say ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’?” (Matt 9:5).

He demonstrates that he does have the power to forgive sin because he also has the power to end paralysis. The one power proves the other, he says. Perhaps this is because they are, in one sense, the same power. They are the power of God over sin and paralysis, over all illness, over all suffering, and even over death. These are our enemies that the Lord will ultimately defeat and destroy. This really may be boiled down to good over evil. Paralysis and sin are in the same camp – the camp of evil. And that whole army of evil ones is subject to God. He will drive them out before us.

Today’s is a popular gospel story (Matt 8:28-9:1). All three of the synoptic gospel writers, that is Matthew, Mark, and Luke, make sure to include this story of possession, exorcism, and pigs. Most gospel stories we hear only once a year at the Sunday Divine Liturgy, but this one we get to hear twice. Once, as today, according to Matthew and once according to Luke. Some of us priests, as a result, when we see that the pig gospel is coming up again in the lectionary, find ourselves running out of things to say about it, having to preach on the subject twice a year.

But this is, as I say, a popular story. It was popular with the gospel writers and it was popular with those who arranged our Byzantine lectionary. Even today, stories of possession and exorcism are popular. Hollywood periodically uses sensationalized versions of them as fodder for horror movies. Everyone, it seems, likes a good exorcism story.

As some of you are aware, I post my writings on a blog and my most popular post of all time, by many thousands of views, is a piece I wrote called Iconography of the Devil. People are fascinated by the demonic. And this gospel story is one of the more detailed accounts we have in the gospels about a demonic possession and exorcism. So perhaps it is for this reason that it is so popular. People are eager to hear the details of extraordinary demonic activity. Curious, we are, and there can be a danger in that.

Not all stories of exorcism in the gospels are so elaborate. In the next chapter of Matthew, we read, “a dumb demoniac was brought to [Jesus]…. And when the demon had been cast out, the dumb man spoke” (Matthew 9:32-33). Notice that Matthew skips the whole exorcism this time. Interestingly, Matthew’s version of today’s story is the least elaborate of the three versions. Mark and Luke recount details about the powers and torments of the possessed that Matthew chooses to omit. In the spirit of the point I will be making, I will not recount those details at this time. Don’t you want to hear about them? Aren’t you disappointed? They are exciting and strange events.

Many of us are fascinated with evil. But evil is nothing to be fascinated with. It is our fascination with it that gives it whatever power it has. Evil has no power of its own. It has only the power that we and other beings give it. Evil itself has no being.

I don’t know how many of you may be familiar with The NeverEnding Story – either the book or the movie, but it is a fantasy story in which the whole land of Fantasia is being destroyed by what they call “The Nothing.” A little man asks a giant rock biter what he means by this “nothing.” Does he mean like a hole? But the rock biter says, “A hole would be something. No, this was nothing.” Perhaps it was unintentional, but I think that’s a pretty good description of the emptiness and non-being of evil.

Saint Gregory of Nyssa says, “No evil exists in its own substance lying outside the faculty of free choice.” Evil, you see, does not come from God, who is all good and from whom only good comes. Furthermore, nothing exists except what God creates and sustains in existence. Therefore, evil does not exist of itself. Rather, it is the absence of good. Darkness is the absence of light. Cold is the absence of warmth.  Darkness and cold are absences rather than things in themselves and evil is like them. Evil is not being but non-being. Commenting on Psalm 107, Saint Gregory even refers to evil as nothingness.

So if evil is nothing, why does it give us so much trouble? Because we and all other free created beings have the faculty of free choice and many angels and humans have chosen to serve evil rather than good. To strive vainly against the light, against the day, and against God.

While evil is nothing, demons are something. And they are real. And as much as they exist, like all things that exist, they are good. That is to say, their nature, which is angelic, is good, just like your created human nature is good – but they have chosen to turn their will rather against the good – even against themselves. In The Neverending Story there is a terrible and fierce wolf-like creature named Gmork. He refers to himself as “the servant of the power behind the nothing.” This is a good description, I think, of what the demons are and of what we become if we allow fascination with evil to consume us.

It‘s important to recognize the reality that evil has servants and that many of them are powerful. But it is even more important to remember that their power is as nothing next to the power of God. Indeed, any power that they have, they have only inasmuch as God permits them to have it.

If we are living in Christ, we can afford to be dismissive of the demons rather than fascinated with them. When the devil in the form of a monkey came to torment Saint Dominic in the dark of the night, one story goes, he treated the monkey as his servant and had him hold a candle by which he read the scripture. This is the kind of power our Lord has given his servants over the servants of evil.

And it’s a good thing, because there is nothing more common than demonic activity. Full-blown possession is a rare event (although there are some indications that it is becoming less rare as more people neglect a life of prayer and sacrament and instead give themselves over to demonic activity). Regardless, there is nothing more common and ordinary than demonic activity. Demons are as low and common as a pig, making their choice to be cast into the pigs rather fitting.

The Church has long understood that demons are present and active throughout the world. It was once the practice to regularly exorcise catechumens who did not yet have the benefit of the sacramental life while they were preparing for baptism. We retain a few of these exorcisms in the baptismal rite itself at the beginning in the narthex where we renounce the devil and cast him into Tartarus. If you’ve been to a baptism in this church, you’ve been to an exorcism. It’s not so exotic as you may have thought.

If you pray the Our Father every day, as I hope you do, you are praying a kind of exorcism. We say at the end, “deliver us from evil,” but really a better translation would be, “deliver us from the evil one.” Evil as an abstraction, as I have said, has no being. It is from the being who gives himself over to evil that we need deliverance.

Listen to the prayers on Theophany over the water. We pray that the Jordan water be a destroyer of demons and immune to hostile powers. We exorcise the water and make it an instrument of exorcism.

These are the more ordinary forms of exorcism for the more ordinary forms of demonic activity which are the most ordinary thing in the world.

So, pray the Lord’s Prayer, drink the holy water, go regularly to confession, frequently receive the holy Eucharist. These are your most powerful weapons against the demons.  And if you do not use them, the demons will make headway against you in unseen ways. Theirs is usually unseen warfare and they want nothing more than to destroy you, if that were possible. Let as avoid fascination with evil, which gives it power, and “abstain from every form of evil,” and immerse ourselves instead in the good.

 

 

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Mosshammer, Alden A. “Non-Being and Evil in Gregory of Nyssa.” Vigiliae Christianae, vol. 44, no. 2, 1990, pp. 136–167. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1584329. Accessed 5 July 2020.

 

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” (6:28-29)

Jesus’ immediate message with these words is clear enough, I think. Stop worrying! Rest in the Lord. Who of you by worrying can add to your life? (6:27) Food, clothing, shelter – to say nothing of comfort, television, and fast cars – all these are in the Lord’s gift. Really, it is the Lord who provides for us in any case. We are all, each of us, everywhere, and at all times in the hands of the Lord – no matter how much control we feign to have over our lives. So, let go. Trust. Be at peace. This is simple… And it is difficult.

But if we are not familiar with Scripture, I think we miss some of Jesus’ meaning.

The glory with which Solomon was clothed was nothing to sneeze at. According to the first book of Kings, “The weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred and sixty-six talents of gold” (1 Kings 10:14). That is almost fifty thousand pounds of gold. In today’s terms, he brought in almost four hundred forty million dollars a year – just in gold. He had so much gold, that with the excess, he had hundreds of shields made of beaten gold. Besides the gold, he was wealthy in silver, precious stones, ivory, garments, myrrh, spices, horses, mules, apes, and peacocks (1 Kings 10: 10, 22, 25).

He sat upon “a great ivory throne… overlaid with the finest gold. The throne had six steps, and at the back of the throne was a calf’s head, and on each side of the seat were arm rests and two lions standing beside the arm rests, while twelve lions stood there, one on each end of a step on the six steps. The like of it was never made in any kingdom. All king Solomon’s drinking vessels were of gold… none were of silver, [silver] was not considered as anything in the days of Solomon…. King Solomon excelled all the kings of the earth in riches and in wisdom” (1 Kings 10:18-21, 23).

I think it is important to bear all this in mind when we hear Jesus say that Solomon in all his glory was not clothed so gloriously as is… a lily.  Clearly, not as the world judges glory does Jesus judge glory.

Now a lily is wonderful. It’s my favorite flower, and flowers are indeed glorious creatures of God. Regarding these, St. Jerome waxes poetic:

“For, in sooth, what regal purple, what silk, what web of divers colours from the loom, may vie with flowers? What work of man has the red blush of the rose? the pure white of the lily? How the Tyrian dye yields to the violet, sight alone and not words can express.”

Such poetry may do little, however, to convince worldly men of the relative worth of flowers to gold. After all, they reason, a small bit of gold buys many flowers. Yet the Lord Jesus – by calling flowers more gloriously clothed than Solomon – has disparaged gold, and silver, and precious stones. He accounts material wealth of little worth, which hearkens back to an earlier point in his sermon: “You cannot serve God and mammon.”

Now what is mammon? Some of the Fathers say that mammon is a name of a demon of greed or even of “the Devil, who is the lord of money.” But the word mammon simply means riches, treasure, wealth, or possessions. It is money – sometimes in a personified sense: the almighty dollar, the golden calf. We cannot serve God and money. This doesn’t mean that it’s bad in and of itself to have wealth – but it means that we must not live our lives with money as our master. The acquisition of more and more money as an end in itself must never become the purpose of our daily labors. “The love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Tim 6:10).

Notice that Jesus does not say that we can serve mammon, provided that we serve God first. He says that we can’t serve God and mammon – we can’t serve mammon at all if we are to serve God. On the contrary, our mammon is to be put into the service of God – and not just some of it – but all of it. Not just ten percent of it. Ten percent is a bad tip. One hundred percent of our money belongs to God.

The discipline of tithing is important, but we misunderstand if we think that it means that a tenth of our money belongs to God and we get to keep the rest to do with as we please. All of our money is for God. All of it. None of our goods are ours. We are the stewards and not the masters of what God has given us – and it is all to be used for the glory of his name.

I don’t believe this means that it is wrong to spend money moderately on entertainments, for example. I think it’s okay to go to the movies or to eat out or to buy art, because I believe that God wants us to enjoy the life he has given us and that this too can give glory to God, if by this means we take delight in God’s creation and if we also remember to give him thanks for every good thing. But I do believe that we need to be conscious of how we use what God has given us and always prayerfully seek God’s intentions for whatever wealth we have.

We must ask, Is God calling me to embrace poverty? He does that, you know. If not, how is he calling me to use my wealth? Whatever we have, he is to thank for it and he has his purpose for it. Serve God and not mammon and then you shall have nothing to fear.

The Lord’s point about anxiety – that we ought not to worry about food or clothing or the like – and his point about money – that we cannot be devoted both to money and to God – are bound up together, I think. When we worry, what do we most often worry about? Well, speaking for myself, I worry about money – and I don’t think I’m alone. The way out is to give it all to God – to remember that it is all his anyway and to seek to use all that we’ve been given for the glory of God and not our own glory apart from God – for the glory of God’s creatures who utterly depend on him is greater by far than the glory of any amassed human wealth.