Acts 16: 16-34
John 9: 1-38

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Christ is Risen!

A 2nd grade boy wasn't getting good grades in school. One day he walked up to his teacher and startled her by tapping her on the shoulder. “Yes, Johnny,” she asked, “What is it?” "I don't want to scare you,” the little boy said, “but my daddy says if I don't get better grades, somebody is going to get a spanking."

Why do we so often assume that it is always the other person? It is just possible that there are things that we don’t understand, and what we don’t understand is a type of interior blindness. In this morning’s Gospel Jesus Christ heals a blind man and gives him back his vision. But this morning’s reading is about much more than physical eyes working again; it is about living by assumptions which blind our soul.

We assume that we are good people because we go to church and because we haven’t murdered anyone this week. But, like this morning’s Pharisees, there is always the danger that we followers of Jesus Christ may well be blind to our own spiritual reality. The terrible thing about spiritual blindness is that it lulls us into thinking that we, like the Pharisees, are “good”… when, in fact, we may not even be “good enough”.

The parents of two 14 and 16 year-old boys went on a trip for the weekend with friends. They left early Friday morning and the boys remained alone at home. That evening the younger boy said, “Let’s take Dad’s car, pick up some girls and go dancing!” While his brother could drive a bit, he was terrified of their taking the car anywhere and damaging it. “Dad’ll never know,” his brother persuaded, so off they went to enjoy the evening. After dancing for hours, when they went back out into the parking lot, they discovered a huge dent in the rear of the car. “You see! I told you so!” the oldest boy accused. “We shouldn’t have taken the car and now someone has bumped into it and dented it. What are we going to do? Dad will kill us!” Frantically, they phoned their friends and found someone who knew someone who could quickly repair the car. Once it was fixed, they parked it back in the garage and swore to never touch it again. When their parents returned, the two boys were too terrified to say anything about the accident. Their father went out into the garage to get something, but quickly came running back into the kitchen. The two boys went rigid with fear. “It’s a miracle!” their father shouted. “A guy drove into the back of my car on Thursday and now it’s fixed and without a dent!!"

Our assumptions are not always correct just because they are ours. We can see this in this morning’s Gospel where the Pharisees assumed that they were right since they were held to be “the righteous”… and this assumption robbed them of the ability to really see and comprehend: they saw the healing that Jesus had just done before them, but being unable to understand it, they were blind to the miracle and mercy of it.
“Understanding” is how our soul “sees”. But, when our emotions are aroused, our understanding can become confused or even erroneous. The thing is that when emotions become unbalanced, they become passions, and when they become passions, they hold us hostage; in such a state, we are, sometimes, unable to even comprehend how our captivity came about. In other words, we become blind to our inner life.
There are a number of stories about people who were born blind, and who, later in life, became able to see because of some sort of operation. But just because they now “saw” does not mean that they were able to understand what they were seeing. Many of them had problems processing what they were seeing. Their brains couldn’t interpret the colors and the shapes because they had never dealt with those realities before. That wasn’t the case with this morning’s blind man once Jesus Christ healed him; Jesus not only opened his eyes but he also opened the man’s ability to understand what he was seeing. Jesus gave this man’s eyes sight. But the real miracle was the gift of sight that he gave to the man’s soul.

A middle-aged, visibly well-off and snooty woman found herself sitting on the plane next to a young girl with multi-colored hair, various piercings, and chewing gum with a fierce and open-mouthed abandon. Disgusted, the woman called for the cabin attendant. “Is there a problem, Ma’am?” the attendant asked. 'Can't you see?' the woman snapped back, while pointing at the bewildered girl. “How can I sit next to this?! Find me another seat immediately!”

The attendant replied, 'Please try to calm yourself, Ma’am. I believe that the economy section is completely full today, but I'll go and check to see if we have any upgraded seats available in club or first class.” “Yes, do so immediately,” the snooty woman replied while staring straight ahead in icy outrage. Soon, the attendant came back. “Ma’am,” she said, “as I suspected, economy is full. I've spoken to our head attendant and club is also full. However, we do have one seat in first class. Please realize, however, that it is most extraordinary to make this kind of upgrade. I have had to get special permission from the captain. But, the captain felt that it was outrageous that one of our passengers should be forced to sit next such an obnoxious person.” With that, the stewardess turned to the young girl and said, “… so if you'd like to follow me, miss, I have your first-class seat ready for you.”

We automatically assume that we are better than others. We automatically assume that we are right. We automatically assume that someone else is the problem. And we automatically assume that we understand everything. It is all-together too possible that, no matter how many assumptions we might have, we still do not understand. The church is now leading us towards Pentecost, towards the coming of the Holy Spirit, the One whose presence illuminates so that the eyes of our soul might see and understand. Only The Holy Spirit can illuminate; only we can yearn for that illumination, for the ability to understand that which we do not presently understand. During these days leading up to Pentecost, let us presume that we are blind and not assume that we are not, and let us await the coming of the Holy Spirit with this prayer: “Come, Holy Spirit. Heal what is infirm in me, and supply what is lacking.”

Christ is Risen!

Sixth Sunday of Pascha
Known as the Sunday
Of the Blind Man

The miracle described in today's Gospel (Jn 9:1-38) is even more remarkable than it might seem at first. St. Basil and other Fathers tell us that this was not just a case of giving sight to a blind man born with eyes that did not function, but to someone who had no eyes at all! The second Exapostilarion for this Sunday says, "Along the way, our Savior found a man who lacked both sight and eyes…."
In his MENAION, St. Demetrius of Rostov calls the blind man St. Celidonius.
There are examples in the Old (Tobit 2:17) and New (Mk 8:22-26) Testaments of blind people receiving sight, but this is something completely unprecedented. The man who was blind from birth was born in this condition, because it was God’s Will and not because God wanted to punish his parents. Jesus assures this saying, “Neither he sinned, nor his parents’.
This man, therefore, was not only born blind, but was born without any eyes. Christ not only gives him his sight, but creates from the mud new eyes. The Savior placed clay in the man's empty sockets and told him to wash in the pool of Siloam. When he obeyed these instructions, the eyes of clay became living eyes!
Here proves the fact, that Jesus is the same God, Who at the beginning of creation took ground of the earth and made man, and by breathing in his face, made man “a living soul”. This same God here makes mud and creates new eyes, granting to the man who was born blind, his sight, which he was deprived for so many years.
Sin and sinful passions, however, also blind the soul’s spiritual eyes. A sinner, although he has eyes and sees the daily light, remains spiritually blind and cannot see or comprehend divine revelations.
We can compare sin to a dark cloud, which overshadows the face of the earth and does not allowed the radiance of the sun to pass through to enlighten and give life to the earth. Likewise, sin becomes the obstacle and blocks the divine radiance of God’s Grace to reach man’s soul. Thus sin deprives man of eternal life.
The man in today’s Gospel met Christ and confessed Him as being the True God. Let us follow his example; let us approach Christ and ask Him to cure our spiritual blindness. Let us ask Him to grant us the divine Light, so that we might see the virtuous path on which we must walk. Amen.

Acts 11: 19-26, 29-30
John 4: 5-42

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Christ is Risen!

A young ventriloquist from the big city decided to hone his skills by entertaining in bars out in the countryside. Once settled upon the stage with the dummy upon his knee, the dummy began telling terrible jokes which made fun of country people. After 15 minutes of this, a big burly guy in the audience stood up and growled threateningly, "I've heard just about enough of your smart mouth hillbilly jokes; how about I re-arrange that smart mouth of yours?” Flustered, the young ventriloquist replied, “Really, I didn’t mean any harm…” when the big burley guy cut him off mid-speech. “You keep outta this!” he yelled, pointing at the young man. “This is between me and that smart mouth little fella on your knee!”

Just like the big burley guy, there are things about life that we really don’t understand, even though we’re pretty sure that we do. One of those things is that of the yearning that we all feel for “more”: More possessions, more money, more of whatever there is to have more of. Another word for this yearning, is “thirst”.

In this morning’s Gospel reading Christ says to the Samaritan woman, “Give me a drink.” In other words, he is speaking of the thirst that all human beings have, a thirst that has nothing to do with liquid. We run to all sorts of things, searching for that which will quench the thirst in ourselves, that thirst which originates within the soul: It is the thirst for a relationship with God.

When we thirst we sometimes try anything that we think will quench that thirst, even if what we try actually exacerbates that thirst. For example… and this is a handy little tip for you to remember when your cruise ship goes down and you are stuck out at sea in your lifeboat for days on end… drinking salt water will only make your thirst all the more terrible. In the same way, just as faucets are useless unless they connect to a reservoir of water, so, too, all of the various things we engage in fail to quench that basic thirst that all of us feel at the core of ourselves, which is… to be connected to God. What we so often lose sight of is that it is through prayer that we are able to be in relationship with God, who addresses our thirst by giving us His Holy Spirit’s presence within us, the coming of whose presence we are now moving towards on Pentecost.

Just as a terrible storm was whipping up, the small-town doctor got a call that Lucinda was in labor, with no time to get to the hospital, and could he come and help? Just as the doctor arrived at the home, the electricity went out so he asked Fred, “Do you have anything like a camping lantern that we could use so I can see what I’m doing?” “Sure,” Fred replied and went and fetched it from the garage. When Fred returned Lucinda was beginning to deliver so the doctor instructed, “You hold the lantern up high so I can see what I'm doing." Soon, a baby boy was brought into the world. Fred went to put the lantern on the table so he could hold his little boy, when the doctor cried out, "Whoa there, don't be in a rush to put the lantern down, I think there's another one coming." Sure enough, within minutes he had delivered a baby girl. Just as Fred was about to set the lantern on the table the doctor cried out, "No, no, hold that lantern, there's yet another one coming!" Fred replied, “I don’t care what you say, I’m putting it down. I think it’s this light that’s attracting them!”

It is easy for us to see the error in someone else’s thinking and lives, but not so easy to understand how we aid and abet our own daily misery. Each day, how we live is how we go about trying to quench that thirst within us, and how we do that living can be either salt water, or sweet water.

We yearn for God, and yet… do we bother to talk with God each morning in prayer, or is our coffee and the morning news more important? Do we try to quench our thirst during the day with gossip, or do we take 5 minutes to go into a bathroom stall and talk with God? “I don’t have time to pray” is not a valid excuse; we don’t need a prayer-book in order to pray, in order to say the Jesus Prayer. When we are driving to work, we can leave the radio off and talk out-loud to God. While we sit in the Doctor’s waiting room, we can close our eyes and speak interiorly with God.

One day in medical school, the professor was discussing a particularly complicated aspect of physics. One of the students was becoming increasingly frustrated with all the talk about physics. Finally, unable to bear one more second of physics, the student jumped to his feet and yelled, "Why do we have to learn this pointless information" The professor looked at the student and calmly replied, "To save lives." Made furious by the reply, the student yelled back, "So how does physics save lives?!" Once again, calmly, the professor replied, “ It frustrates ignoramuses, like yourself, to such an extent that you will leave medical school and never become a doctor.”

Just as it is a safe bet to say that the medical student was startled to find out that his professor thought that he was an ignoramous, so too, many of us do not pray to God because we do not want to hear what he might have to say to us about ourselves. We fool ourselves into thinking that we can ignore the bad news about ourselves, and yet still have a relationship with God; therefore, we do not pray, and, therefore, we still thirst.

The central significance of prayer is found in our deepening intimacy and unhurried communion with God. Let us ask ourselves: If I haven’t the desire to pray to God, to be with him in the right here and now, then how will I bear being with him for all eternity?!

With this morning’s commemoration of the Samaritan woman, the Church leads us further on our journey from the Tomb to Pentecost, towards that meeting with the Holy Spirit, the Living One who is the only satisfaction for our thirst for God. From now until Pentecost, let us prepare for the coming of the Holy Spirit by taking some time each day… even if only 5 minutes!... to pray.

Christ is Risen!

Fifth Sunday of Pascha
Known as the Sunday
Of the Samaritan Woman

John's gospel says that Jesus, setting out from Jerusalem for his native Galilee, had to pass through Samaria. He came to the Samaritan town called Sychar, to Jacob's well. There he met the Samaritan woman.
Not just by chance did Jesus, the Savior, enter that land whose people were so bitterly opposed to their neighbors, the Jews of Judea and Galilee. Not by chance did he come to Sychar, a place of holy memories, near the beautiful site where God promised Abraham "to your descendants I will give this land"; to Jacob's ancient well where the people of the town still came for water.
The Gospel passage states: "It was about noon, and Jesus, tired after his journey, was sitting by the well." A Samaritan woman came to the well for water.
What a strong, unconventional woman she must have been! She came alone to the well at noon, not the usual morning or evening time when women of the town came in groups with their water jars. Nor does she hesitate at the sight of a man sitting alone at the well.
How forceful and sarcastic her answer to Jesus seems when he asks for a drink! "What! You a Jew, ask for a drink from a Samaritan woman?" The ancient feud between Jews and Samaritans rises in her blood.
Yet the weary man persists, talking of human thirst and the living waters God provides. Gradually, as he talks of higher things, the woman recognizes he has more to give than water from the well; he fulfills all the memories associated with this ancient, sacred place, this place for quenching thirst.
Jesus tells her something, however, that she would rather not hear. "You have had five husbands, yet the man you are living with now is not your husband."
Somehow, she must have heard it less as an accusation than as a statement of the truth of her life, for she doesn't turn away. More than an accusation, she felt him refreshing her soul's thirst.
After this encounter with the Lord, we are told that "many of the Samaritans of that city believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, "He told me all that I ever did." (4:39)
The Samaritan woman becomes the first evangelist, testifying to the advent of Christ and bringing others to Him. According to an early tradition, after the Resurrection of Christ she was baptized and given the Christian name Photini, "the enlightened one." Along with her two sons and her daughters she went to Carthage to spread the gospel. They were arrested, taken to Rome under Nero, imprisoned, and later martyred.
According to tradition, St. Photini, who first met Christ beside a well was martyred for Christ by being thrown into a well.

Acts 9: 32-42
John 5: 1-15

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Christ is Risen!

A contest was held in which readers were asked to come up with an excuse for not coming to work. The following are a few of the excuses:
-If it is all the same to you, I won't be coming in to work. The
voices told me to clean all the guns today.
-The psychiatrist said it was an excellent session. He
even gave me this jaw restraint so I won't bite things when
I am startled.
-I am stuck in the blood pressure machine down at Wal-Mart.
-I can't come in to work today because I'll be stalking my
previous boss, who fired me for not showing up for work.
OK?

Excuses get us off the hook, or so we’d like to think. The fact is, as Christ makes clear in this morning’s Gospel reading, that no matter what kinds of excuses we may give to others, our interior paralysis is often of our own unwillingness to own up to the truth of ourselves.

There was a local belief that the waters of Bethesda had healing powers. Some Biblical manuscripts read that "An angel of the Lord came down and stirred up the waters." Some earlier manuscripts did not contain that explanation, and some scholars believe that the stirring of the water was from an underground spring that would occasionally experience extreme pressure. Whatever caused the disturbance, the people believed that when the waters of Bethesda bubbled up, the first one in the water would be cured.
People with all manner of ills were gathered by the pool when Jesus walked among them and singled out one man, a paralytic, who had been ill for 38 years. Jesus asked him, “Do you want to be made well?” The paralytic immediately began complaining: “I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps in before me.”
Notice that the paralytic does not answer Jesus’ question. He does not say that he wants to be well; he merely complains about his condition. In today’s language we would say that he sees himself as a victim.

The cry of the perpetual victim is, “It’s not my fault!” The fact is that healthy people do not make excuses. While we are busy viewing ourselves as a victim, we are unable to see what we might actually be responsible for, and it is only when we begin to assume responsibility for our lives and our mistakes that we begin to be healed. Sometimes, we presume that our outlook is healthy and, as a result, ignore any indications that perhaps it is not. As in all situations that Jesus dealt with, it is quite possible that the paralysis that Jesus was addressing in this morning’s Gospel reading had nothing to do with the man’s legs, but, rather, with the man’s outlook.

IN PRISON.......You spend the majority of your time in an 8x10
cell.
AT WORK........You spend most of your time in a 6x8 cubicle.

IN PRISON.......You get three meals a day.
AT WORK........You get a break for 1 meal and you have to pay
for it.

IN PRISON........You can watch TV and play games.
AT WORK.........You get fired for watching TV and playing games.

IN PRISON.......All expenses are paid by taxpayers.
AT WORK........You get to pay all the expenses to go to work and
then they deduct taxes from you salary to pay
for the prisoners.

IN PRISON.......You spend most of your life looking through bars
from inside wanting to get out.
AT WORK........You spend most of your time wanting to get out
and go inside bars.
It all has to do with outlook: If you view yourself as a victim, then you ARE a victim; if you view yourself as having to obligation to acknowledge reality, then you are consigned to beign at odds with reality. One of the ways in which we injure ourselves is by refusing to take personal responsibility for our interior crippledness instead of blaming others or genetics or misfortune. This morning Jesus asks the paralytic… and us… to attempt something that he hadn’t done for 38 years: To stop making excuses! And… lo and behold!... when the man faced up to himself and made the effort, he was healed at once.

We all have our favorite pool by which we like to lay and complain… and complain and complain… blaming our troubles on the pool, on our lack of friends, on everything but the fact that we will not DO something to help ourselves. This morning, in the middle of the Paschal season…in fact, both the Epistle and the Gospel readings speak about what resurrection is essentially about: A coming back to life. Both readings speak of healing as being given back one’s life, a type of coming-back-from-the-dead.

A man was driving down a local street one day and approached a stop sign. He barely slowed down and, after quickly glancing for traffic, ran right through the stop sign. What the driver didn't see was the policeman watching the intersection. The policeman pulled out after him and stopped the car two blocks away. When he had stopped the car, the Policeman walked up to the driver’s window and calmly said, "License, registration and proof of insurance please."

The driver, however, angered at being pulled over and interfered with, testily replied, "Before I give it to you, tell me what the heck you stopped me for." Calmly, the Policeman cautioned, "Watch your tone sir; you ran the stop sign back there." The driver countered with, “I slowed down; what the heck is the difference?"

At that, the Policeman started silently writing out a ticket. When he was done, he wrote out another. And then another. Panicking, the driver yelled out, “Hey! What are you doing?” The Policeman kept on quietly writing. The driver again yelled out, “HEY!” At that, the Policeman looked up and asked, "Now… do you want me to just slow down, or stop?”

We sometimes act as if there is no difference between reality and our inner delusions. Like annoyed and self-centered children, we think that there are realities that we can just ignore, if we want to, and that our excuses for doing so are valid because we think they are. Christ tells us plainly this morning that if we want to be healed of what paralyzes our hearts, we need to stop laying around by our pool, stop finding excuses for why we don’t change, and begin to do our part to contribute to our own Paschal healing.

Christ is Risen!

SYNAXARION

Fourth Sunday of Pascha
Known as the Sunday
Of the Paralytic

The Gospel reading for the Fourth Sunday of Pascha records our Savior’s miraculous healing of a paralytic. Christ, the Physician of souls and bodies, is walking by the porticoes of Solomon. In 1886 archeologists excavated and located this very pool. It was believed the prime reason for this pool was for washing sheep that were to be offered in the Temple. It was filthy.
Into this pitiful scene walks our Savior. Jesus beholds a vast number of crippled, lame, and diseased individuals. They are all camping near the Sheep pool because every once in a long while one of the angels will put his finger into the pool and stir the water and the first one to step in once the water has been stirred is healed of his disease.
Jesus walks by the rest of the ailing, walks up to the paralytic, and asks what, at first hearing, seems to be a ludicrous question: "Do you want to get well?" The man has no idea what Jesus is really talking about, and begins to tell Jesus his story of how stuck he is in his current physical condition.
But Jesus wasn’t asking the man simply if he wanted to start walking again; Jesus was asking the man a question about his soul as well as his body, and the man, like so many of us, simply was not accustomed to think about his soul. Even after the healing the Lord has to approach this man and very clearly state to him: "Sin no more so that nothing worse may befall you".
The common adage "If you have health you have everything" is not correct if ‘health’ here is interpreted as merely physical health. This is why our Lord always acts to procure the health of the soul preeminently. If one pampers his body and neglects his soul in this short life than he will lose his soul for all eternity. If one obtains the health of his soul (often at the cost of bodily comfort) then he will obtain true health of both body and soul for all eternity.
Christ is the healer of the soul and the body, and His healing of the paralytic suggests several elements for our spiritual health. The first is to embrace one’s suffering as a spiritual cure. There are additional suggestions for spiritual cure in this gospel pericope such as the use of holy water (this gospel is read at the service of the lesser sanctification of the waters), the frequent reception of the divine eucharist (this pool at the Sheep Gate was where the sacrifices were prepared), and frequent attendance at the divine services.

Acts 6: 1-7
Mark 15: 43-16:8

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Christ is Risen!

A man was walking across the road when he was hit by a car which caused him to become comatose for two days before he finally regained consciousness. When he opened his eyes, his wife was there beside him.

He reached out for her hands, and holding them said, "You have always been by my side. When I was a struggling University student, I failed again and again. You were there beside me, encouraging me to go on trying.” His wife said, “Because I love you.” The man continued, “When I went for all the major interviews and failed to clinch any of the jobs, you were there beside me.” Her eyes brimming with tears, his wife gently squeezed his hands in encouragement. The man continued, “Then I started work at this little firm and finally got to handle a big contract. I blew it because of one little mistake. And you were there beside me. And now this.” She flung herself on the bed to hug her husband, sobbing with emotion. From underneath his wife’s embrace, the man’s muffled voice could be heard to say, “Apparently, you bring me bad luck: I want a divorce"

It’s always the other person who is the problem, isn’t it? Sometimes, when we add 1 and 1 we come up with 11 instead of 2, and yet remain oblivious to our miscalculation. Nonetheless, our incorrect assessment then becomes the motivation for our living.

This third Sunday of the Paschal season is called the Sunday of the Myrrhbearing Women. This refers to the women who came to Jesus’ tomb to perform their last service of love for him, to anoint his body. One of the women in this group was “our” Mary of Magdala… St. Mary Magdalene. When the women arrived at the tomb they were greeted by an angel with these words: “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here.” St. Mark describes how, when the women heard this message, and saw his empty tomb, they turned and ran, “for they were afraid”.
So why were they afraid, given that they, apparently, loved him so much? They were afraid because they had seen him dead; if he was now alive, then could they ever trust their senses again? Would the world continue spinning according to the old rules, or was something new afoot? The possibility that something new, and unknown, was afoot terrified them… so they turned and ran.
Does it frighten us that Jesus lives? Does this message give us pause as we return to our old post-Lenten way of living? Are we afraid that he will see that our repentance was short-lived, and that we have now returned to our spiritually mediocre way of thinking and living?
At the start of an important trial, a small town attorney called his first witness to the stand. She seemed like a sweet, elderly woman. He approached her and asked, "Mrs. Jones, do you know me?"

She responded, "Why, yes, I do know you Mr. Williams. I've known you since you were a young boy. You've become a huge disappointment to me. You lie, you cheat on your wife, you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you're a hot shot lawyer, when you haven't the brains to realize you never will amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you."

The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do he pointed across the room and asked, "Mrs. Jones, do you know the defense attorney?"

She replied, "Why, of course I do. I've known Mr. Bradley since he was a youngster, too. I used to baby-sit him for his parents. And he, also, is a real disappointment. He's lazy, bigoted, never has a nice word to say about anybody, and he drinks like a fish. He's been divorced five times, and everybody knows that his law practice is one of the shoddiest in the entire state. Yes, I know him."

The judge rapped his gavel, to quiet the tittering among the spectators in the courtroom. Once the room was silent, he called both attorneys to his bench. In a quiet, menacing voice, he warned, "If either of you asks her if she knows me, you'll be jailed for contempt!"
We all have some secrets which we don’t want revealed… and yet, God already knows them. When he insists that we face them, what do we do? Do we run away? This morning’s Gospel says that the Myrrhbearing women “Fled from the tomb… And they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” Running away was their first impulse, and at first, they said nothing of what they had seen and heard. But later, the realization that Jesus lives overcame their fear and replaced it with the courage of joy. Is that how it is for us here this morning? Has our Paschal celebration replaced our old fears with a new courage of joy? Or have we left Jesus Christ out of our everyday living and simply gone back to being afraid of what frightens us, gone back to burying our secrets… even from ourselves?
A plane full of New York lawyers was heading for their annual Las Vegas Convention when it was hijacked. The plane was forced to land at Chicago O'Hare Airport. The hijackers radioed to ground control with a huge list of demands. When asked what would happen if their demands weren't met the hijacker spokesman stated, "If you don’t do exactly as we say, we will release one lawyer every single hour."
When, in our everyday living God asks us to do something which scares us to death how do we react? Do we try to bargain with him? Do we run from him? This afternoon, let us take a moment to reflect upon the Myyrhbearers fear, and their running, and ask ourselves: What response is provoked in me by Christ’s resurrection… flight, or fight? When I am frightened or worried or stressed… do I run from God by the way that I live, by the way that I think, and by the choices I make?

Christ is Risen!

Third Sunday of Pascha
Known as the Sunday
Of the Myrrhbearing Women

It is true that Jesus didn’t choose any women to be among the twelve disciples, but except for that, he did not treat men and women differently. He addressed everyone with the same love and the same message. He spoke openly to women even though in the Jewish custom a man was not allowed to speak to a women in public. He healed many women, and was close friends with Mary and Martha and their brother. Several women were followers of Jesus Christ and traveled together with Jesus and the twelve disciples. When He was on the cross dying, the only disciple who was there was John. The other men disciples were afraid and ran away. The women followers did not desert Jesus. They were with Him near the Cross and after His death they went along to see where Jesus was buried.

In the early morning after the Sabbath they bravely came to mourn Jesus and to anoint Him with spices and aromatic oils, a burial custom of the Jews. This anointing was an act of love: while Jews did not embalm corpses, they did put spices on the bodies of their deceased loved ones. St. Mark is the only writer to record their conversation about how they worried along the way about rolling away the heavy stone which covered the opening to the tomb of Jesus.

When they got there they found the stone had already been moved. They were worried that someone had stolen the body of Jesus. Sitting near the stone was an angel who told them not to worry and that Jesus was not there - Jesus had been raised from the dead!

It was a special blessing from God that these women were the first to discover the empty tomb and the first to see the risen Christ. We remember the seven myrrh bearing women on the third Sunday of Pascha.

Acts 5: 12-20
John 20: 19-31

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Christ is Risen!

An enthusiastic door-to-door vacuum salesman went to the first house in his new territory. He knocked, and the door was opened by one of the meanest-looking men that the salesman had ever seen. Before the man can say a word the salesman charged inside, opened a bag of dirt and dumped it all over the carpet. He then proudly proclaimed, “If this vacuum cleaner doesn't do wonders cleaning this up, I'll eat every bit of it." The mean-looking householder broke into a wide grin and asked, "You want ketchup on that?" Completely confused, the salesman asked, “What?” The householder replied, “I asked if you want ketchup on the dirt. We just moved in and we haven't gotten the electricity turned on yet."

Some people seem to have no doubts and just charge ahead through life, although, sometimes such an approach can be ill-advised. The majority of us, however, have to wrestle with our doubts, which we often take to mean that we lack faith. This morning’s Gospel reading makes the point that doubts do not exclude faith, and that having faith does not eliminate doubts.

This morning we commemorate the Apostle Thomas and his faith in Jesus Christ. Even though the Apostle Thomas of this morning’s Gospel reading has been branded “Doubting Thomas”, still… as is evidenced by his immediate declaration of Christ as “My Lord and my God”… Thomas, too… despite doubts… expressed his faith in Jesus Christ. Quite often, faith grows out of our doubts.

A young man was walking through a supermarket to pick up a few things when he noticed an old lady following him around. Thinking nothing of it, he ignored her and continued on. Finally, as he approached the checkout line, she suddenly got in the line right in front of him, turned around toward him and said, "I'm sorry if my staring at you has made you feel uncomfortable. It's just that you look so much like my son who just died. The resemblance is uncanny. It gave me such comfort to just look at you. As I'm leaving, could you call out to me, saying, 'Good bye, Mother!'?” "Sure," answered the young man. As the old woman gathered her groceries and started to leave, the young man called out, "Goodbye, Mother!" When the cashier rang up his two purchases of a loaf of bread and a container of orange juice, he was stunned that the total came to $127.50. "How can that be?" he asked the cashier. She replied, “Well, there’s your two items, and then your mother said that you would pay for hers as well.”
There are times when we feel as if life has taken us for a ride, has pulled the wool over our eyes, has tricked us and left us confused and doubting. This morning’s Gospel passage makes the point that to doubt does not cancel out faith. Faith is, in fact, the willingness to believe in spite of our doubts. Last week, on Holy Friday, we heard even Jesus Christ express doubt when he cried out: “Lord, why have you forsaken me!” And then, right after his doubt, was his faith: “Thy will be done.” Doubts are simply a part of life.
When Christ holds out his hands to Thomas in this morning’s Gospel, he holds them out to us as well, and those hands become the question for us, “Who do you say that I am?” It is a scary thing to stare at those crucified hands, those hands that for some symbolize complete failure and loss… and to yet say, “My Lord and my God”. The scariness, however, does not makes our declaration any the less true. This is faith: To place our lives in Christ’s nail-imprinted hands, despite our worries and our doubts, trusting him to bring goodness out of life’s difficulties and out of our uncertainties.

Fred called up Lucinda and said, "Please come over here and help me. I have a killer jigsaw puzzle, and I just can't figure out how to put the darned thing together.” So Lucinda came over and asked, "What is it supposed to be when it's finished?" Fred, answered, "According to the picture on the box, it's a tiger,” and he handed the box to her. Lucinda looked at the box, looked at the pieces on the table, sat down and took Fred’s hand and said, “Honey, no matter what we do, we're not going to be able to assemble these pieces into anything resembling a tiger. Now, I want you to relax. Let's have a nice cup of hot chocolate, and then let's put all of these frosted flakes back into their box."

Has it ever occurred to us that maybe we’re not as smart as we think we are, and that, maybe, our doubts might be the result of our not understanding? Let us not be frightened by our moments of doubt. Life does not come to a halt while we have doubts about something, and neither should our relationship with God. Even in the midst of doubt, we should still talk to God, trusting that his love for us is stronger and larger than our confusion.
We Orthodox seem to always be on a journey: No sooner do we end our Lenten journey by arriving at Pascha, then we set off on a journey towards Pentecost and the coming of the Holy Spirit. As we journey towards Pentecost 2011, let us ask the Holy Spirit to come and enable our doubts to become the fuel for our faith.

Christ is Risen!

-St. Thomas the Apostle

Poor Thomas! He made one remark and has been branded as “Doubting Thomas” ever since. But if he doubted, he also believed. He made what is certainly the most explicit statement of faith in the New Testament: “My Lord and My God!” (see John 20:24-28) and, in so expressing his faith, gave Christians a prayer that will be said till the end of time. He also occasioned a compliment from Jesus to all later Christians: “Have you come to believe because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed” (John 20:29).
Thomas should be equally well known for his courage. Perhaps what he said was impetuous—since he ran, like the rest, at the showdown—but he can scarcely have been insincere when he expressed his willingness to die with Jesus. The occasion was when Jesus proposed to go to Bethany after Lazarus had died. Since Bethany was near Jerusalem, this meant walking into the very midst of his enemies and to almost certain death. Realizing this, Thomas said to the other apostles, “Let us also go to die with him” (John 11:16b).

Comment:
Thomas shares the lot of Peter the impetuous, James and John, the “sons of thunder,” Philip and his foolish request to see the Father—indeed all the apostles in their weakness and lack of understanding. We must not exaggerate these facts, however, for Christ did not pick worthless men. But their human weakness again points up the fact that holiness is a gift of God, not a human creation; it is given to ordinary men and women with weaknesses; it is God who gradually transforms the weaknesses into the image of Christ, the courageous, trusting and loving one.
Quote:
“...[P]rompted by the Holy Spirit, the Church must walk the same road which Christ walked: a road of poverty and obedience, of service and self-sacrifice to the death.... For thus did all the apostles walk in hope. On behalf of Christ's Body, which is the Church, they supplied what was wanting in the sufferings of Christ by their own trials and sufferings
-St. Thomas was a Jew, called to be one of the twelve Apostles. He was a dedicated but impetuous follower of Christ. When Jesus said He was returning to Judea to visit His sick friend Lazarus, Thomas immediately exhorted the other Apostles to accompany Him on the trip which involved certain danger and possible death because of the mounting hostility of the authorities. At the Last Supper, when Christ told His Apostles that He was going to prepare a place for them to which they also might come because they knew both the place and the way, Thomas pleaded that they did not understand and received the beautiful assurance that Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. But St. Thomas is best known for his role in verifying the Resurrection of his Master. Thomas' unwillingness to believe that the other Apostles had seen their risen Lord on the first Easter Sunday merited for him the title of "doubting Thomas." Eight days later, on Christ's second apparition, Thomas was gently rebuked for his scepticism and furnished with the evidence he had demanded - seeing in Christ's hands the point of the nails and putting his fingers in the place of the nails and his hand into His side. At this, St. Thomas became convinced of the truth of the Resurrection and exclaimed: "My Lord and My God," thus making a public Profession of Faith in the Divinity of Jesus. St. Thomas is also mentioned as being present at another Resurrection appearance of Jesus - at Lake Tiberias when a miraculous catch of fish occurred. This is all that we know about St. Thomas from the New Testament. Tradition says that at the dispersal of the Apostles after Pentecost this saint was sent to evangelize the Parthians, Medes, and Persians; he ultimately reached India, carrying the Faith to the Malabar coast, which still boasts a large native population calling themselves "Christians of St. Thomas." He capped his left by shedding his blood for his Master, speared to death at a place called Calamine. His feast day i s July 3rd and he is the patron of architects.

Second Sunday of Pascha
Known as St. Thomas Sunday

After His Resurrection, Jesus appeared to His Disciples: He miraculously entered a locked room, and showed them His wounds. Then He ate and drank with them, proving that He was not a ghost or a phantom, but that He was really Jesus the Christ, in the flesh.
St. Thomas was not with the rest of the Disciples in the room. When he returned, the others excitedly told him that Jesus had visited them. Thomas doubted their story - the bodily resurrection of Christ.
So the Lord appeared again, and invited Thomas to put his fingers in His side and touch the wounds made by the nails. Thomas did, and after seeing (and feeling) for himself, he finally believed. He cried out: "My Lord and my God!" and fell at Christ's feet. Christ told Thomas that He was glad that Thomas no longer doubted, but also lamented: "Because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believed!"
Some icons depicting this event are inscribed "The Doubting Thomas." This is incorrect. In Greek, the inscription reads, "The Touching of Thomas." The Slavonic inscription is, "The Belief of Thomas." When St. Thomas touched the Life-giving side of the Lord, he no longer had any doubts.
Christ uses Thomas' doubt to teach both the Disciples and us that we don't need to physically touch Him to have faith. But upon hearing of Christ, we can be spiritually moved by His presence to follow Him, and trust in His promise that all men will be raised on the day He appoints for judgment, and know either the eternal joy of being reunited with God or the torment of being without Him.
St. Peter heard and understood, as he writes to his flock (I Peter 1:8): "You did not see Him, yet you loved Him; and still without seeing Him you are filled with a joy so glorious that it cannot be described, because you believe; and you are sure of the end to which your faith looks forward, that is, the salvation of your souls."
St. Thomas preached the word of God in the Far East in what is now known as India. In the section of India called the Malabar Coast, there is a magnificent Church dedicated to St. Thomas. Almost every Christian male child born there is called Thomas, after the Patron Saint of the province.
Because of his preaching, St. Thomas angered King Misdai, the ruler of India, who ordered his soldiers to lead St. Thomas up to the highest mountain in Malabar. They all ran their spears through his saintly body. Saint Thomas, also called “the doubter” not only believed the truth about Christianity, but gave his life for its preservation as so many other martyrs of the Christian Church.
This day is also known as "Antipascha." This does not mean "opposed to Pascha," but "instead of Pascha." Beginning with this first Sunday after Pascha, the Church dedicates every Sunday of the year to the Lord's Resurrection. Sunday is called "Resurrection" in Russian, and "the Lord's Day" in Greek.
It is the custom in some Orthodox parishes to travel to the cemetery on this day to pray, light candles, and to sing "Christ is Risen!" to deceased family members.