The Life That Grows Within

A Reflection on the Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost

Beloved in Christ,

In today’s Apostolic reading, we hear: “And I live, now not I; but Christ liveth in me.” (Galatians 2:20) These words express, in a single sentence, something of the very heart of the Christian life. Christianity is not merely a collection of teachings to be learned, commandments to be obeyed, or religious observances to be performed. It is a new life, given to us by God, in which we are called to become partakers of the life of Christ Himself.

Yet if this is so, we might reasonably ask a question. If Christ lives within us, why does the Christian life so often seem so difficult? Why do we continue to struggle with the same weaknesses, fall into the same temptations, and find ourselves so far from the holiness to which we are called?

The Gospel appointed for this Sunday offers something of an answer. Our Lord tells the familiar parable of the sower, who goes out to sow his seed. Some falls upon the pathway, where it is trampled and devoured by fowls. Some falls upon rocky ground, where it springs up quickly but withers for lack of moisture. Some falls among thorns, which grow up alongside it and eventually choke it. And some falls upon good ground, where it takes root and brings forth an abundant harvest. The Lord Himself explains the meaning: “The seed is the word of God.”

It is worth observing that the seed is the same in every case. The difference lies not in what is sown, but in the condition of the ground which receives it. So it is with the word of God and the grace which He offers us. The Gospel is proclaimed, the invitation is extended, and the means of salvation are placed before us. Yet the response of the human heart is not always the same.

Some hear the word but never truly receive it. Others welcome it with enthusiasm, only to abandon it when difficulties arise. Still others allow it to take root, but become so occupied with the cares, riches, and pleasures of this life that the things of God are gradually crowded out. And then there are those who receive the word, preserve it, and bring forth fruit.

Notice, though, something especially important about the Lord’s description of this last group. He does not simply say that they bear fruit. He says that they “bring forth fruit in patience.” You can find a whole lesson in those few words!

A seed does not become a mature plant the moment it enters the ground. It must take root. It must be nourished. It must endure the changing seasons, the heat of the sun, and the difficulties of its surroundings. Much of its growth takes place unseen, beneath the surface, long before the harvest appears. The same is true of the spiritual life.

In Holy Baptism, we are united to Christ in His death and Resurrection. We receive not merely a new designation, but the beginning of a new existence. Through divine grace, we are made children of God and called to grow into the likeness of His Son. This life is nourished through prayer, the Holy Mysteries, repentance, and the faithful keeping of the commandments. Yet the beginning of this life is not the same as its perfection.

The Christian does not cease to be human upon receiving the grace of God. He does not suddenly lose every weakness, every disordered inclination, or every habit acquired through years of living according to his own will. There remains much to be healed, much to be corrected, and much to be brought into harmony with the life of Christ. This is not because the grace of God is insufficient. Far from it! It is because God does not save us by destroying our humanity or abolishing our freedom. Rather, He restores and perfects our nature, calling us to cooperate freely with the grace which He bestows. And this work ordinarily requires time.

We may sometimes imagine that genuine spiritual progress ought to be accompanied by extraordinary experiences or unmistakable signs of transformation. We may expect that, having begun to pray, we should quickly become prayerful; that, having resolved to practice patience, we should no longer be troubled by irritation; or that, having repented of some particular fault, we should never again encounter the temptation to commit it. But the spiritual life rarely unfolds according to such expectations.

A person may struggle for years against a particular weakness, yet gradually discover that what once mastered him now has less power over his will. Another may continue faithfully in prayer despite dryness, distraction, and the apparent absence of consolation. Another may bear the burdens of illness, responsibility, or the care of others, performing acts of love which attract no attention and receive little recognition. Such things may appear insignificant when measured according to the standards of the world. Yet they may be precisely the places in which the life of Christ is taking root and bearing fruit. Indeed, patience itself is one of those fruits.

Christian patience is not merely passive resignation, nor is it simply the ability to endure unpleasant circumstances without complaint. It is the steadfastness by which we remain faithful to God, continuing to trust and obey Him even when we cannot see the results of our efforts. It is the refusal to abandon the good merely because its harvest has not yet appeared.

This is why the Apostle’s words are so important. He does not say, “I have made myself holy,” or “I have perfected my own life.” He says, “Christ liveth in me.” The source of the Christian’s new life is Christ Himself.

Yet neither does the Apostle suggest that his own will and activity have ceased. He continues: “And that I live now in the flesh: I live in the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me, and delivered Himself for me.” He still lives, acts, struggles, and perseveres. But his life is no longer ordered merely toward himself. It is sustained by faith and directed toward the One Who loved him and gave Himself for him.

Here we see the proper relationship between divine grace and human effort. We do not earn the life of Christ through our own achievements. Neither do we receive that life merely to leave it unattended. Grace is God’s gift, but it is a gift which calls for our willing cooperation.

The seed, in other words, must be received, protected, and cultivated.

And we should remember that the conditions described in the parable are not necessarily fixed categories into which all mankind may be neatly divided. We may recognize something of each within our own hearts. At times we are inattentive, allowing the word of God to pass over us without taking root. At other times we are enthusiastic but shallow, ready to follow Christ until following Him becomes difficult. And perhaps most commonly, we allow the ordinary concerns of life to grow so thickly around us that prayer, repentance, and the things of eternity are gradually pushed aside.

The good ground, then, is not simply a description of someone else. It is what our own hearts are called to become.

And even ground which has become hardened may be broken up. Stones may be removed. Thorns may be uprooted. Through repentance and the grace of God, the heart may be prepared anew to receive His word. This, too, is a work of patience. We should therefore neither presume upon the grace we have received nor despair because we have not yet attained the perfection toward which it leads.

The Christian life is not a momentary enthusiasm, nor a single decision after which nothing further remains to be done. It is a continuing participation in the death and Resurrection of Christ: a dying to sin and self-will, and a growing into the new life which He has made possible.

The Resurrectional hymns of this Sunday proclaim that Christ has broken the gates of Hades and raised fallen humanity from its bondage. The victory is His, accomplished through His Cross and Resurrection. Yet that victory is also made present in the lives of those who belong to Him.

The same Lord Who overcame death now works within us, bringing life where there was once barrenness, healing where there was corruption, and fruitfulness where there was once only the promise of a seed. We may not always perceive that work clearly. We may see only the soil, the labor, and the long waiting. But God sees what is growing beneath the surface.

Our task is to remain faithful: to receive His word, to preserve it, to repent when we have neglected it, and to continue cultivating the life which He has planted within us. For the harvest belongs to Him, and He is faithful.

May that which is already begun within us by His grace grow ever more fully into His likeness, until the seed which He has sown brings forth its appointed fruit. And may we bring forth that fruit, as our Lord Himself has taught us, in patience.

25 October 2026

To Reveal His Son in Me

A Reflection on the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Beloved in Christ,

In his Epistle to the Galatians, the Holy Apostle Paul speaks of the extraordinary change which had taken place in his life. He had once persecuted the Church of God, seeking to destroy the very faith which he would later devote his life to proclaiming. He had been zealous for the traditions of his fathers, advancing beyond many of his contemporaries, and had regarded his opposition to the followers of Christ as an expression of religious fidelity. Yet all of this was to change, not through the gradual refinement of his former convictions, nor through any achievement of his own, but through the intervention of divine grace.

Reflecting upon his calling, the Apostle writes: “But when it pleased Him, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles…”

There is something especially significant in the Apostle’s choice of words, but which we might easily miss. Not that he does not simply say that God was pleased to reveal His Son to him, but in him. This is no small distinction.

Certainly, Christ was revealed to Saint Paul. The encounter with the risen Lord overturned his former understanding and brought him to recognize the truth of the Gospel. Yet the Apostle’s words point toward something greater than the acquisition of knowledge, however sacred that knowledge may be. The revelation of Christ was not merely an event which changed Paul’s opinions, but it was an encounter which transformed his life! The persecutor became an Apostle. The man who had sought to destroy the Church became its servant. The zeal which had once been directed against Christ was now devoted to His proclamation. What had formerly been an instrument of destruction became, through grace, an instrument of salvation.

The Christian faith is not simply a collection of truths to be learned, nor a system of moral principles to be adopted. It is, before all else, the revelation of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, and our calling to communion with Him.

This does not in any way diminish the importance of doctrine, or of the faithful transmission of the teaching received from the Apostles. On the contrary, without the truth of the Gospel, we cannot rightly know the Christ whom the Gospel proclaims. But there is a difference between knowing the truths of the faith and allowing those truths to take root within us, bearing fruit in the transformation of our lives.

A person may know much about prayer without having learned truly to pray. He may speak eloquently of charity while remaining indifferent to the sufferings of others. He may understand the necessity of repentance while continually postponing his own. The purpose of the Christian life is not merely that we should become well-informed concerning Christ, but that we should become conformed to Him. And this transformation begins, as the Apostle reminds us, with grace.

Saint Paul does not describe himself as a man who had made himself worthy of divine revelation. Indeed, his account emphasizes quite the opposite. At the very time when he was most zealous in his opposition to the Church, he was already known to God, who had called him by His grace. The initiative belonged to God.

This same truth is manifested, in a different and particularly moving manner, in the Gospel appointed for this Lord’s Day. As the Lord approached the city of Naïm, He encountered a funeral procession. A young man was being carried to his burial, the only son of his mother, who was herself a widow. Saint Luke tells us that a great multitude of the city accompanied her.

The Evangelist records no petition from the grieving mother. She does not approach Christ asking for a miracle, nor does she make any declaration of faith in His power. Indeed, nothing in the account suggests that she expected anything other than the burial of her son. Yet the Lord saw her: “Whom when the Lord had seen, being moved with mercy towards her, He said to her: ‘Weep not.'”

Our Lord did not wait to be summoned. He approached the procession, touched the bier, and commanded the young man to arise. And the dead man sat up and began to speak. Then Saint Luke adds a detail of extraordinary tenderness: “And He gave him to his mother.” The miracle was not performed merely as a demonstration of divine authority, although that authority was unmistakably revealed. It was an act of mercy toward a suffering woman, restoring to her the son whom death had taken away. Here, as in the calling of Saint Paul, we behold the initiative of divine grace.

The widow had not sought out Christ; Christ came to her. The young man could do nothing to restore himself to life; life was given to him by the word of the Lord. And Paul, far from seeking to become a disciple of Christ, had been actively opposing those who followed Him. Yet in both accounts, the mercy of God accomplished what human strength could not.

There is, of course, a distinction between the raising of a dead body and the spiritual transformation of a living person. The young man could neither seek nor coöperate in his restoration to earthly life, whereas the human person, awakened and called by grace, must freely respond to the Lord. Nevertheless, both accounts reveal the same fundamental truth: life comes from God, and it is His grace which makes our response possible.

This is a truth which we must never allow to become merely an abstract theological proposition. It concerns every Christian, whatever his present circumstances may be.

There are those who have known the faith from childhood, and those who have discovered it only after many years. There are those whose lives have been marked by a dramatic conversion, and those whose growth in faith has been quiet and gradual. Some approach God with confidence, while others struggle with uncertainty, discouragement, or the painful awareness of their own failures. Yet the Christian life is not measured by the dramatic character of one’s conversion, nor by the ease with which one has come to believe. What matters is the life of Christ taking root within us.

For some, this may begin with a sudden recognition of truths long resisted. For others, it may be the gradual awakening of a conscience, the discovery of a desire to pray, or the realization that a life once considered satisfactory has left something essential unfulfilled.

And for those who have long professed the faith, the work of grace is no less necessary! It is possible to become so accustomed to the language and practices of Christianity that we cease to attend to their meaning. We may continue to pray, to worship, and to observe the outward forms of religious life, while allowing our hearts to grow cold toward the very One whom these things are intended to glorify.

The remedy is not to abandon the practices of the faith, but to return to their purpose: communion with the living Christ.

The Apostle’s words, “to reveal His Son in me,” thus remain a challenge and an invitation. Has our knowledge of Christ made us more merciful toward others? Has our participation in the life of the Church taught us greater patience, humility, and charity? Have we become more ready to forgive, more willing to serve, and less inclined to regard our own desires and judgments as the measure of all things?

These questions are not intended to lead us into anxious scrutiny of every thought and action, still less into the presumption that we can measure the workings of divine grace with precision. Rather, they remind us that the Christian faith is meant to bear fruit. The revelation of Christ is not given to us so that we may admire it from a distance. It is given that we may be changed by it.

And here we may return once more to the Gospel. When the Lord raised the widow’s son, the people who witnessed the miracle were filled with fear and glorified God, declaring: “A great prophet is risen up among us… God hath visited His people.” They recognized that God had acted among them, although the fullness of what they had witnessed would become clear only through the death and Resurrection of Christ Himself. For the One who raised the young man at Naïm would Himself enter the tomb. The One who restored a son to his grieving mother would, through His own death and Resurrection, open the way to everlasting life.

The raising of the widow’s son was a restoration to mortal life; the Resurrection of Christ is the victory over death itself. And it is into the life of that risen Christ that we are called.

The same Lord who called Paul from persecution to apostleship, and who spoke life to the dead at Naïm, continues to call men and women to Himself. His mercy is not exhausted by the failures of the past, nor is His grace limited to those who have already attained some imagined degree of spiritual perfection.

But neither does His mercy leave us as we were. The grace which calls us is also the grace which transforms us, if we will receive it and coöperate with it. Thus the Apostle’s words express not merely the history of his own conversion, but something of the very purpose of our Christian calling.

We are called to know Christ, to live in Him, and, by His grace, to become living witnesses of His presence. Not simply that His name should be upon our lips, or His teachings stored within our memories, but that His mercy, His patience, His humility, and His love should increasingly be made manifest in our lives. For the Gospel is not merely the announcement that God has visited His people. It is the proclamation that, through Jesus Christ, He has come to give us life. And that life is meant to be revealed in us.

18 October 2026

Through a Window in a Basket

A Reflection on the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Beloved in Christ,

There are certain passages of Holy Scripture which, though familiar enough in their words, become really rather extraordinary when we pause to consider what they actually describe. Among these is a seemingly incidental detail from the life of the holy Apostle Paul, recounted in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians, which we’ve heard today.

At Damascus, the Apostle tells us, the governor had placed the city under guard in order to apprehend him. His escape was accomplished neither by a great miracle nor by some impressive public demonstration of courage or strength. Rather, he was lowered through a window in the city wall, in a basket, and so escaped the hands of those who sought him.

Frankly, it seems an almost comical image, if we permit ourselves to imagine the scene: the great Apostle of the nations, the tireless preacher of Christ, being lowered over a wall like a parcel of goods, dependent upon the hands of others to bring him safely to the ground.

Yet Saint Paul recounts this incident immediately before speaking of one of the most extraordinary spiritual experiences recorded in the New Testament.

He tells of “a man in Christ” who was caught up into the third heaven, into paradise itself, and who heard words which it was not granted to man to utter. He speaks with remarkable restraint, even referring to himself indirectly, and acknowledging that he does not know whether this experience occurred in the body or apart from it. God alone knows.

Here, then, is a man who has been caught up into paradise, yet who has also been lowered through a window in a basket. The contrast is striking, but it is necessarily made. Saint Paul is addressing a temptation which has accompanied mankind from the beginning: the desire to measure ourselves, and to be measured by others, according to our accomplishments, our distinctions, and our apparent importance.

The Apostle could have appealed to his extraordinary revelations as evidence of his spiritual greatness! He could have spoken at length of the mysteries which had been disclosed to him, or encouraged others to regard him as a man set apart by experiences beyond their comprehension. Instead, he declares: “For myself I will glory nothing, but in my infirmities.”

Indeed, he explains that he refrains from speaking further of these revelations lest anyone should think more highly of him than what may be seen and heard in his ordinary life. This is an extraordinary expression of humility. Saint Paul does not deny the gifts which he has received, nor does he pretend that the revelations were insignificant. But neither does he mistake the gifts of God for personal accomplishments, nor does he permit them to become the foundation of his own importance.

The man who had been caught up into paradise remained the man who needed to be lowered through a window in a basket. This is precisely what he – and we – need to remember.

The Apostle continues by telling us that, lest he should be exalted by the greatness of the revelations, there was given to him a thorn in the flesh, an affliction which he describes as an angel of Satan sent to buffet him. Now, much has been written concerning the precise nature of this affliction, and Holy Scripture does not settle the question for us, for Saint Paul clearly thought it not expedient to mention specifics. For what matters most for the Apostle’s teaching to us is not the particular form of his suffering, but his response to it, and the answer which he received from the Lord. Three times he besought the Lord that the affliction might depart from him. And the Lord answered: “My grace is sufficient for thee; for power is made perfect in infirmity.”

We might well imagine that one who had received such extraordinary revelations would have been granted an equally extraordinary deliverance from his sufferings. Surely the man who had been caught up into paradise could have been relieved of this persistent affliction! Yet the Lord did not remove it.

Instead, He revealed to His Apostle something more profound: that divine grace is not dependent upon the absence of human weakness, and that the power of Christ may be manifested most clearly precisely where human strength has reached its limits.

This is not to suggest that suffering is to be sought out in itself, nor that we ought to refrain from seeking relief from our afflictions. Saint Paul himself prayed repeatedly for deliverance! The Christian does not seek suffering for its own sake, any more than he seeks temptation, illness, or humiliation. But neither need he imagine that his sufferings render him useless to God, or that his weaknesses place him beyond the reach of divine grace.

We may often be tempted to think that we shall begin to serve God properly when our circumstances have improved. When we are stronger, when our difficulties have been resolved, when our health has returned, when our responsibilities have diminished, when we have finally overcome those weaknesses which so persistently trouble us… then, perhaps, we shall be able to accomplish something worthwhile. Yet the Apostle’s experience teaches us otherwise!

The grace of God is not reserved for some future version of ourselves, perfected according to our own expectations. It is offered to us here and now, amid the very circumstances in which we find ourselves. And it is precisely here that the Resurrectional proclamation of the Church sheds its light upon the Apostle’s words. Recall the words of today’s Tropar’: “When Thou didst descend unto death, O Life immortal, then didst Thou slay Hades with the radiance of Thy Divinity.” (“Егда сниде к смерти, Животе безсмертный, тогда ада умертвил Еси блистанием божества.”)

The victory of Christ was not accomplished by avoiding the weakness and suffering of our mortal condition. The immortal Son of God willingly entered into death itself, and by His divine power destroyed its dominion. What appeared to the world as defeat became the manifestation of a victory beyond all human imagining.

The Apostle’s infirmities are not, of course, to be confused with the saving Passion of Christ. Yet it is through his participation in the life of the crucified and risen Lord that Saint Paul comes to understand his own weakness differently. He need not be invulnerable in order to belong to Christ. He need not possess extraordinary strength in order to become an instrument of divine power. Indeed, he may glory in his infirmities, not because infirmity is itself glorious, but because the power of Christ dwells in him.

There is a lesson here for every Christian, and perhaps especially for those of us whose lives seem rather ordinary, whose efforts may be seldom noticed, and whose limitations are more readily apparent to themselves than their accomplishments.

We may never be “caught up into the third heaven.” We may never be entrusted with the extraordinary revelations granted to the Apostle. But we shall certainly know something of weakness, frustration, dependence upon others, and the humbling discovery that our own strength is insufficient. We may even find ourselves, figuratively speaking, being lowered through a window in a basket. And when we do, we need not regard such moments as evidence that God has abandoned us, or that our lives have somehow fallen short of His purposes.

For the Lord who raised the dead from the nethermost depths is not powerless before our infirmities. The grace which sustained His Apostle remains sufficient for those who place their trust in Him. The man who was caught up into paradise was also the man who escaped Damascus in a basket. Neither experience was outside the providence of God. And of the two, it was not the heavenly revelation which Saint Paul chose as the occasion of his glory, but the weakness through which the power of Christ was made manifest.

For the glory of the Christian is not that he has become sufficient unto himself, but that Christ is sufficient for him.

11 October 2026

Nevertheless at Thy Word

A Reflection on the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Beloved in Christ,

We hear in today’s Gospel, “Master, we have labored all the night, and have taken nothing: but at Thy word I will let down the net.”

There is no attempt in these words of Simon Peter to disguise the facts. The night’s work has failed. He and his companions are not inexperienced men who have made their first clumsy attempt at fishing. This is their trade. They know the lake; they know the nets; they know when and where the fish are ordinarily to be found. They have labored through the proper hours for their work, and now the morning has come. The boats have returned to shore. The fishermen have gone out of them. The nets are being washed. The work is finished. And they have taken nothing.

It is into this scene that the Lord enters. He teaches the multitude from Simon’s ship, and when He has finished speaking, He gives to Simon a command which, judged according to everything the fisherman knows, must seem strangely ill-timed: “Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.”

Simon does not pretend that his experience tells him this is a promising idea. He tells the Lord plainly what has happened: “Master, we have labored all the night, and have taken nothing.” But then comes the word upon which everything turns: “Nevertheless.”

“Nevertheless at Thy word I will let down the net.”

And here, my friends, is faith in one of its simplest and purest forms.

Faith does not require Simon to deny the empty nets. It does not require him to say that the unsuccessful night was really a success, or that his weariness is unreal, or that his knowledge and experience count for nothing. The net is empty. The labor has been fruitless. Simon knows it. But Christ has spoken. And so the net goes down again.

There are so many times in the Christian life when this little “nevertheless” is almost the whole of what faith requires of us.

We pray, and seem to receive no answer. We struggle against a fault and discover it again. We attempt some work of mercy and see little fruit from it. We forgive, only to find that the old wound still hurts. We repent, and find ourselves returning to confession with humiliatingly familiar sins. We try to speak a good word, to bear patiently, to teach, to encourage, to pray for another, and sometimes we seem to have “labored all the night and taken nothing.” There is no virtue in pretending otherwise. But there is faith in saying: “Nevertheless at Thy word.”

Today’s reading from the Holy Apostle gives us another image of the same mystery: “He who soweth sparingly, shall also reap sparingly: and he who soweth in blessings, shall also reap blessings.”

The sower must do something which, considered only from the standpoint of possession, appears remarkably like loss. He takes the seed which he possesses and scatters it. So long as he keeps it safely stored away, he possesses it still. Once he casts it into the earth, it disappears from his hand. Yet seed which is never surrendered can never become a harvest.

The fisherman casts the net into water from which he has already taken nothing. The sower casts the seed into earth which gives him no immediate return. Neither man can compel what happens next.

The fisherman cannot command the fish to enter his net. The sower cannot order the buried seed to spring up. They can cast. They can sow. But the increase belongs to God.

This is why Saint Paul’s teaching concerning generosity goes so much deeper than a simple injunction to give away more of our possessions. “God loveth a cheerful giver,” because the Christian life itself has the character of a gift received and given again. What we possess was first given to us; what we sow is seed which God Himself has supplied.

“And He that ministereth seed to the sower, will both give you bread to eat, and will multiply your seed, and increase the growth of the fruits of your justice.”

Our time, our strength, our abilities, our possessions, our opportunities to show mercy, our capacity to encourage another, even the very faith by which we offer these things… all have first come to us as gifts. We are not the creators of the seed. We are its sowers.

And this changes the question we ask about our Christian labor. We are very easily tempted to ask first whether something will succeed. Will this prayer accomplish anything? Will this act of kindness be appreciated? Will this sacrifice make any difference? Will anyone listen? Will anyone change? Will the work bear fruit? And sometimes prudence requires such questions. But faith requires another question before all of them: What has the Lord asked of me?

Simon could have given excellent reasons for keeping the newly washed net out of the water. The sower could give an excellent reason for keeping every grain safely in the barn. Neither would be unreasonable. And neither would reap a harvest.

“Nevertheless at Thy word I will let down the net.”

And when Simon lets it down, the result exceeds anything his own labor had accomplished. The net which had returned empty now encloses so great a multitude of fishes that it begins to break. The other ship must be summoned. Both vessels are filled almost to sinking. Yet the Gospel does not permit us to stop at the abundance. The miracle is not given merely so that Simon may become a remarkably successful fisherman. When he sees what has happened, he falls before Christ: “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”

The abundance has revealed something greater than abundance. Simon has caught sight of the One Who stands before him, and in that light he has also caught sight of himself. The Lord answers him: “Fear not: from henceforth thou shalt catch men.” The gift thus also becomes a calling.

This is also where the Apostle leads us. God makes grace abound toward us not merely that we may possess abundance, but that we “may abound to every good work.” He enriches us, Saint Paul says, that we “may abound unto all simplicity,” and that through this generosity thanksgiving may rise to God.

Grace does not terminate in the person who receives it. The seed becomes a harvest so that there may be seed again. The net is filled, and the fisherman himself is called to another fishing. What God gives becomes fruitful when it passes through our hands in obedience and becomes a blessing to another.

This also guards us against a dangerous misunderstanding. The promise of the Gospel is not that every undertaking upon which we place a religious hope will necessarily succeed in the manner we desire. Simon’s miraculous catch is not a formula by which we may demand visible success from God. Many saints have labored long while seeing very little of the fruit of their labor. Some have sown what others reaped generations afterward.

Our confidence is not that God must fill every net according to our expectations. Our confidence is that no obedience offered to Him is wasted. The seed buried beneath the earth is hidden from the sower. What God makes of it may likewise remain hidden from us. Our task is to sow what He has placed in our hands. Our task is to lower the net when He commands. And sometimes this requires more faith after failure than it did before we began.

It is easy to launch out when we expect a catch. It is another thing to return to the deep after an empty night. It is easy to sow when we imagine the harvest already before us. It is another thing to scatter precious seed into dark earth and entrust its hidden life to God. Yet this is so often the place where Christian faith actually lives: not in certainty about what we shall see, but in certainty about Whom we have heard.

“We have labored all the night, and have taken nothing.” That may be true. The prayer may seem unanswered. The labor may seem unnoticed. The good we hoped to accomplish may appear very small. The same weakness may confront us again tomorrow. The net may come back empty often enough that we begin to wonder why we should cast it once more.

We need not call the empty net full. We need only hear again the voice of Christ. And then, with Simon Peter, we may answer: “Nevertheless at Thy word I will let down the net.”

4 October 2026

Yea, Lord

A Reflection on the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Beloved in Christ,

As contrary as it might seem, there are few words more difficult for us to say to God than these: “Yea, Lord.”

We can say, “Lord, have mercy.” We can say, “Lord, help me.” We can ask Him for strength, for healing, for forgiveness, for deliverance. Yet when the word of God reveals something about ourselves which we would rather not see, our prayer very easily acquires another word: “But.”

Yea, Lord… but Thou knowest what happened. Yea, Lord… but Thou knowest what they did first. Yes, Lord… but surely my anger was justified. Yea, Lord… but aren’t my circumstances are different? Yea, Lord… but I am not really as bad as all that, am I?

We may spend a remarkable portion of the spiritual life explaining ourselves to the One Who already knows us perfectly. The Canaanite woman in the Gospel reading today does something very different. She comes to Christ crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Thou Son of David: my daughter is grievously troubled by the devil.” Her need is desperate. Her prayer is earnest. She asks nothing frivolous for herself, but mercy for her suffering child… And Christ answers her not a word. Still she remains.

The disciples grow weary of her crying and ask the Lord to send her away. Christ speaks of His mission to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Still she remains.

She comes nearer. She adores Him. Her prayer, which began with a fuller confession and petition, has now been reduced almost to its barest form: “Lord, help me.”

Then comes the word which might easily have driven another person away: “It is not good to take the bread of the children, and to cast it to the dogs.” Here at last we might expect the woman to defend herself. But she does not. She says: “Yea, Lord.” And perhaps here we begin to understand why Christ will shortly say of her, “O woman, great is thy faith.”

For she does not argue with Him in order to obtain His mercy. She agrees with Him and casts herself upon His mercy all the more completely. “Yea, Lord; for the whelps also eat of the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters.”

She does not demand the children’s place. She does not insist upon her worthiness. She does not attempt to prove that the judgment spoken to her is unjust. She accepts the lowest place presented to her and from that lowest place she discovers a reason for hope: If I am not worthy of the bread, then give me a crumb; if I cannot claim anything as mine by right, then I will ask everything of Thy goodness; if I have no argument left concerning my own worthiness, then I have nothing left upon which to depend except Thy mercy.

This is humility, but it is not despair. Indeed, the humility of this woman makes her extraordinarily bold.

False humility says, “I am unworthy; therefore I shall go away.” Faith says, “I am unworthy; therefore I shall remain at the feet of the One Who is merciful.”

The Canaanite woman does not turn away from Christ because she has been brought low. She draws nearer. She does not cease asking because she cannot establish a claim upon Him. She asks because she knows that His goodness is greater than her claim. And so the crumb for which she asks becomes a feast. “O woman, great is thy faith: be it done to thee as thou wilt.” Her daughter is healed from that hour.

There is an important lesson here for our own repentance. Repentance becomes very difficult so long as we imagine its purpose to be the successful prosecution of a case against ourselves. We hear the commandments of Christ, we examine our conduct against them, and almost immediately the defense begins. There are explanations. There are mitigating circumstances. There are comparisons with people who have done worse. There are memories of injuries suffered. There are reasons why we behaved as we did. Some of those reasons may even be true. But none of them can cleanse the heart.

Saint Paul writes in the lesson of the Apostle for this Sunday: “You are the temple of the living God.” And because this is so, he continues: “Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of the flesh and of the spirit, perfecting sanctification in the fear of God.” Notice that he speaks not only of defilement of the flesh, but also of the spirit.

There are sins which we readily recognize because they are outward and obvious. But the temple may also become cluttered with things much easier to defend: resentment, pride, envy, contempt, self-righteousness, the nursing of old injuries, the secret pleasure of another’s humiliation, the refusal to forgive. And when God places His finger upon one of these things, our instinct may be to explain why it belongs there.

But sanctification begins when we can finally say: “Yea, Lord.” Yes, Lord, this anger has become hatred… Yes, Lord, I have enjoyed thinking myself better than another… Yes, Lord, I have called resentment justice because I did not want to surrender it… Yes, Lord, I have demanded mercy for myself while measuring it carefully when another needed it… Yes, Lord, this thing which I have defended cannot remain in Thy temple. There is tremendous freedom in those words.

We sometimes fear that if we cease defending ourselves, nothing will remain but condemnation. The Gospel shows us something else. When the Canaanite woman stops with “Yea, Lord,” she does not fall into an abyss. She discovers mercy beneath her. This is because repentance is not an argument with an accuser who desires our destruction. It is an encounter with the Physician Who desires our healing.

We need not convince Him that we are better than we are. We need not hide the wound from the One Who came to heal it. We need not bargain over how much uncleanness may safely remain in the temple when the One Who desires to dwell there offers to cleanse it. The words “Yea, Lord” therefore do not mean that the Christian despises himself. They mean that he has finally ceased trusting in the necessity of proving himself right. And then he can pray as the woman prayed: “Lord, help me.” There may be times when that is nearly all the prayer we possess.

There are times when God seems silent, as Christ at first was silent before this woman. There are times when our prayer seems unanswered, when circumstances seem almost to contradict the mercy for which we are asking. There are times when all our eloquent prayers collapse beneath the weight of necessity and only a few words remain. “Lord, help me.” That prayer is enough.

The woman in the Gospel teaches us not to mistake silence for rejection, nor humility for hopelessness. She remains before Christ through silence, through apparent refusal, and even through the word which places her at the lowest seat. And from there she refuses to leave Him. Perhaps this is why her faith is great. She believes more in His mercy than in her own worthiness. She believes more in His goodness than in the discouragement of the moment. She believes that even a crumb from His table is sufficient to accomplish what she cannot accomplish for herself. And she is right.

We spend much of our lives asking God for the whole loaf while overlooking the crumbs of grace scattered everywhere around us: a remembered verse of Scripture; a moment in which we find strength not to answer an insult; a sudden awareness of something within ourselves which must change; the ability, after long resistance, finally to forgive; one sincere “Lord, have mercy;” one opportunity to begin again. We may call these little things. But nothing is little which falls from the Master’s table.

And perhaps the beginning of sanctification is not some great spiritual achievement, but the moment when we stop telling God why we cannot become holy and begin consenting to what He is already showing us. Yea, Lord, Thou knowest me better than I know myself. Yea, Lord, that which Thou hast revealed in me must be cleansed. Yea, Lord, I have no claim upon Thy mercy except that Thou art merciful. And therefore I will not go away. I will remain at Thy feet. I will ask for the crumb. I will continue to cry after Thee when Thou seemest silent. I will trust that even the least gift which cometh from Thy hand is more than sufficient for my need.

For the woman who said, “Yea, Lord,” did not leave ashamed. She heard instead the word for which every Christian soul should long: “Great is thy faith: be it done to thee as thou wilt.”

27 September 2026

Being Afraid, I Went and Hid Thy Talent

A Reflection on the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Beloved in Christ,

Notice in today’s Gospel that of the three servants in the parable of the talents, only one returned to his master exactly what he had received. Nothing was missing. The talent had not been squandered. It had not been stolen. It had not been lost through carelessness. The servant had guarded his master’s property so successfully that, after a long absence, he could return it intact.

“Behold,” he says, “here thou hast that which is thine.”

And this is the servant whom the master calls wicked and slothful.

And at first glance there is something almost perplexing about it. The other servants had taken what belonged to their master and put it to use. They had exposed it, presumably, to all the ordinary uncertainties of commerce. The servant with the one talent had done nothing so hazardous as that. He had buried the money safely in the earth, preserved it, and returned every bit of it. Yet the others are called faithful, while he is condemned.

The difference here is not simply that they accomplished more. The servant himself tells us what has happened: “Being afraid I went and hid thy talent in the earth.”

He was afraid.

His fear did not arise from nowhere. It was rooted in the way he had come to regard his master. “Lord, I know that thou art a hard man; thou reapest where thou hast not sown, and gatherest where thou hast not strewed.” Whether this description is just or unjust is almost beside the immediate point. It is the master whom the servant believes himself to serve. And because he regards his master principally with fear, he concludes that the safest course is to do nothing at all.

He cannot lose what he does not risk. He cannot be blamed for a bad investment if he makes no investment. He cannot fail at a task he refuses to undertake… and so he buries the talent.

There is a kind of spiritual life which can proceed according to much the same logic! We may become so afraid of doing something badly that we do nothing. We may become so conscious of our weakness that weakness becomes an excuse for inactivity. We may compare the little entrusted to us with the abundance entrusted to someone else and conclude that our own offering could hardly matter.

Sometimes the fear concerns not what we might do, but what we have already done. We look backward upon years badly spent, opportunities neglected, sins committed, relationships damaged, duties left undone, gifts wasted. We know very well what “ought to have been.” And because what actually is seems so poor beside it, we begin to suppose that there is little worth offering to God now. Thus the talent remains buried.

But in the parable, the servant was not condemned because he had received less than the others. This must not be overlooked. One servant received five talents. Another received two. The last received one, “to every one according to his proper ability.”

And in their return, they still were not equal. The servant with two talents did not return five more. He returned two. And he heard precisely the same words as the servant who had returned five: “Well done, good and faithful servant: because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” The master did not ask why he had failed to equal the other servant. He asked faithfulness according to what had actually been entrusted to him.

Had the third servant been faithful with his one talent, there is nothing in the parable to suggest that his poverty of gifts would have counted against him. The tragedy was not that he had little, but rather that he buried what little he had.

This distinction matters enormously in the Christian life. We are remarkably prone to measure ourselves according to gifts we were never given, circumstances we never possessed, opportunities that belonged to someone else. Another has greater knowledge. Another has greater strength. Another has more time, more money, greater eloquence, a happier history, fewer wounds, fewer responsibilities, a temperament better suited to some particular work.

Perhaps all of that is true. But the Lord does not ask the servant with two talents why he did not produce five. The question is simpler and much more searching: What have you done with what was placed into your hands?

And the master’s answer to the fearful servant contains a curious detail. “Thou oughtest therefore to have committed my money to the bankers, and at my coming I should have received my own with usury.”

The parable is hardly intended as a commendation of usury. The force of the master’s reply lies elsewhere. If the servant really believed himself incapable of doing what the others had done, there remained nevertheless something, even something very modest, which he could have done. His excuse therefore fails.

Fear had persuaded him that there were only two possibilities: accomplish something great, or preserve the talent untouched. The master tells him that this was never true. There was always another possibility.

This is worth remembering whenever we are tempted to think that our life is too badly ordered, our abilities too meagre, or our history too compromised to be placed at the service of God.

We need not bring God the life we wish we had lived. We cannot. We can bring Him only the life that is actually ours.

The years already spent cannot be lived again. The words already spoken cannot be unsaid. The opportunities already missed cannot be recovered in precisely the form in which they first appeared. Repentance does not transport us backward in time and permit us to construct a spotless history. It does something better. It turns toward God now.

This is why the words of the Apostle stand so beautifully beside the parable: “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” Not yesterday, when we ought to have acted. Not tomorrow, when we imagine ourselves stronger. Now.

There is a peculiar temptation in regret. Once we recognize that we have buried something entrusted to us, we can begin to regard the burial itself as irreversible. We have neglected prayer for so long that beginning again seems almost artificial. Or we have been away from the Church so long that returning feels embarrassing. We have failed so many times in the same struggle that another attempt seems pointless. We have allowed some ability to lie unused for so many years that we imagine its proper season has passed. We have made choices whose consequences cannot simply be erased, and we wonder whether a life containing such things can still become an offering acceptable to God.

But the Gospel does not tell us that a buried talent ceases to belong to the master. It remains his. And while there is time, what has been buried can be dug up.

This is repentance in one of its simplest forms: not pretending that the burial never happened, but refusing to leave the talent there. The Christian life does not begin – or begin again – when we finally possess something impressive enough to offer God. It begins when we take what is actually in our hands and turn it toward Him. Perhaps it is very little. Then be faithful with very little. Perhaps the strength once possessed is gone. Then be faithful with the strength that remains. Perhaps there is no opportunity to accomplish what once might have been accomplished. Then do the good which can be done today. Perhaps all one can presently manage is a hesitant prayer, a first act of repentance, an apology long delayed, a small work of mercy, another attempt at a virtue repeatedly failed. Do not despise it because it is small. Do not bury it because it is imperfect.

It is very easy to read the parable chiefly as a warning, and certainly its warning is severe. The unprofitable servant is cast into the exterior darkness. But fear has already caused enough trouble in this story. The faithful servants do not end in fear. They end in joy.

“Well done, good and faithful servant.” These are the words spoken alike to the servant of five talents and the servant of two. Their reward is not merely that they have escaped punishment. Nor does the master simply return their profits and dismiss them. “Enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” That is where faithfulness tends.

The servant who buried his talent imagined his master principally as one from whom he must protect himself. The faithful servants discovered the master as one who invited them into his own joy.

Perhaps this is why fear is so capable of burying the gifts of God. Fear tells us that we must first become worthy, first repair everything, first make ourselves useful, first ensure that what we offer will succeed. Only then may we approach. The Gospel tells us instead to be faithful with what has actually been entrusted to us.

God does not ask us to return to yesterday and use the talent properly from the beginning. Yesterday is no longer ours to give Him. Today is. And so, if the talent has been buried, dig it up. However small it seems, however long it has lain there, however much we wish we had done differently with it, bring it again into the light and place it at the service of the One to Whom it has always belonged. For “now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”

And beyond the fear, beyond the regret, beyond even the labour of faithfulness, there remains the Master’s invitation: “Enter thou into the joy of thy lord.”

20 September 2026

The Treasure in the Earthen Vessels

A Reflection on the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Beloved in Christ,

It is interesting to note the image chosen by Saint Paul in today’s Apostolic Reading: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.” A treasure ought, we would think, to be kept in a vessel worthy of it. Precious things belong in precious containers. Gold is placed in a fitting place; holy things are treated with reverence; that which is valuable is guarded carefully against loss.

Yet Saint Paul tells us that God has done something quite different.

God, Who “commanded the light to shine out of darkness,” has shined in our hearts, giving “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Christ Jesus.” And this immeasurable treasure He has placed in vessels made of earth, in us.

Saint Paul does not flatter the vessel. He does not pretend that conversion has somehow made human nature invulnerable. Almost immediately he begins describing what happens to these earthen vessels: “We suffer tribulation, but are not distressed; we are straitened, but are not destitute; we suffer persecution, but are not forsaken; we are cast down, but we perish not.”

He doesn’t say that Christians do not suffer tribulation, or that faith prevents us from being perplexed, pressed upon, persecuted, or cast down. Christianity does not require us to pretend that clay has become iron. The vessel remains earthen.

It grows tired. It suffers. It can be frightened. It can be wounded. It discovers its own limitations, sometimes painfully. The Christian may find himself in circumstances which he cannot repair, bearing burdens which he cannot simply put down, confronting questions for which he possesses no immediate answer. Yet, none of this proves that the treasure has departed.

Indeed, Saint Paul gives almost the opposite interpretation: the treasure is placed in an earthen vessel precisely “that the excellency may be of the power of God, and not of us.”

There is a great difference between Christian virtue of fortitude and the mere performance of strength. The latter insists upon appearing invulnerable. The former knows perfectly well that it is vulnerable and nevertheless trusts God.

The Christian can therefore say, without contradiction: I am cast down, but I have not perished. I am troubled, but I have not been abandoned. I do not know how this will end, but I know Who has remained with me.

The strength is not finally in the vessel; the strength is in the treasure. But what is this treasure? Saint Paul has already told us: it is “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Christ Jesus.” And here the Apostle leads us almost naturally into this Sunday’s Gospel.

A doctor of the Law approaches Christ and asks Him which is the greatest commandment. Our Lord answers with words familiar to every Christian: to love God with the whole heart, soul, and mind, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself. Upon these two commandments, He says, depend the whole Law and the Prophets.

And had the conversation ended there, one might have imagined Christianity principally as a sublime moral teaching. Love God. Love your neighbour. Certainly nothing in the Christian life can contradict these commandments, and every examination of conscience must eventually return to them. But Christ does not permit the conversation to end there. Instead, after the inquirer had finished asking his questions, then Christ Himself asks one: “What think you of Christ? Whose Son is He?”

Here we see a remarkable turn. The Gospel has moved from the greatest question of what man must do to the still deeper question of Who Christ is.

The Pharisees answer that the Christ is the Son of David. Their answer is true, but incomplete. And so our Lord takes them further. If the Christ is merely David’s descendant, how does David himself, speaking in the Spirit, call Him Lord? “The Lord said to my Lord: Sit on My right hand, until I make Thy enemies Thy footstool.”

The question remains before them… and no man is able to answer Him a word.

That question remains before every Christian as well, to this very moment, and at every moment of our lives: “What think you of Christ?”

It is possible to admire Christian morality without answering this question. It is possible to appreciate the commandment of love without answering it. One can admire the Sermon on the Mount, respect Christian civilization, study Christian theology, appreciate Christian art, defend Christian moral principles, and still leave unanswered the question which Christ Himself places at the center: What think you of Christ?

But Christianity does not begin and end with a moral program. The Gospel is not merely the announcement that mankind ought to behave better. The treasure entrusted to us is Christ Himself.

He is the Son of David according to the flesh, yet David calls Him Lord. He is the One in Whose face shines the glory of God. He is the One Who entered death and overthrew it. He is the One Who, as the Resurrectional Kondak sings, “with the hand that originated life” raised the dead out of the dark valleys. And it is His life which Saint Paul says is to become manifest in us. “Always bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodies.”

Here the image of the earthen vessel becomes still more profound.

God does not preserve the vessel by keeping it untouched upon a shelf. The Christian is not entrusted with Christ merely in order to possess a treasure privately and safely. Saint Paul speaks instead of being pressed, persecuted, cast down, and continually delivered unto death. And yet through all of this, the life of Jesus becomes manifest.

The vessel may show its cracks… and through them something greater than the vessel may be seen. This is why Christian weakness need not end in despair, and Christian strength need not end in pride. If everything depended upon the vessel, despair would be entirely reasonable. We know what we are made of. We know our sins, inconsistencies, fears, limitations, and failures.

But the Apostle directs our attention away from the clay and toward that which the clay has been given to carry: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels.”

The Church herself has often appeared before the world in precisely this way. Her saints have not always been powerful according to worldly standards. Her confessors have been imprisoned. Her martyrs have been killed. Her faithful have been scattered. Her priests have grown old and weary. Her churches have been destroyed. Whole Christian peoples have passed through persecution, poverty, exile, and apparent defeat. Yet the treasure has survived vessels which the world considered broken beyond repair.

That is because the treasure is not ours to manufacture. Saint Paul assures us: “God, Who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts.” The same God Who once commanded light to appear in the primordial darkness has caused this light, this treasure, to shine: the knowledge of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ.

That is why Saint Paul can be cast down without perishing. That is why he can bear death while speaking of life. That is why he can suffer and still believe; believe and therefore speak; speak because he knows that “He Who raised up Jesus, will raise us up also with Jesus.”

And that is why the question in the Gospel matters so much. “What think you of Christ?”

If He is merely a teacher, then His commandments may inspire us, but our weakness remains our own problem. If He is merely an example, we may admire Him while despairing of ever becoming like Him. If He is merely one religious figure among others, then the treasure is ultimately only another collection of human ideas entrusted to human keeping.

But if He is indeed David’s Son and David’s Lord; if in His face shines the glory of God; if He is, as we sing, “the Resurrection and the Life and the God of all,” then the Christian possesses something infinitely greater than his own strength. We carry the Treasure while remaining earthen vessels.

And perhaps that is precisely why God has chosen such vessels. For when the vessel is impressive, we may admire the vessel. But when something frail is pressed and does not despair, cast down and does not perish, wounded and yet continues to love, mortal and yet bears within itself the promise of Resurrection, we begin to suspect that something else is present which cannot be explained by the clay.

The excellency is of the power of God, and not of us. The vessel is earthen, but the Treasure is Christ.

13 September 2026

They Went Their Own Ways

A Reflection on the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Beloved in Christ,

In this life, there are many ways to refuse God.

Some are dramatic. A man may deny the Faith he once professed. He may openly reject the commandments of God, mock holy things, or defiantly declare that he will have no part in the Kingdom of Heaven. Such refusals are easy enough to recognize for what they are.

But in the parable of the marriage feast, Our Lord describes another kind of refusal, and perhaps a much more ordinary one.

The king has prepared a marriage for his son. The feast is ready. The servants have been sent. Those who were invited need only come. Yet we are told: “But they neglected, and went their own ways, one to his farm, and another to his merchandise.”

There is something so very commonplace about it! It wasn’t that they rejected the invitation, but rather they neglected it. One went to his farm. Another went about his business. Neither of these activities are evil. The farmer was not going to commit some notorious sin. The merchant was not necessarily engaged in dishonesty or greed. Men must cultivate fields. Men must buy and sell. Families must be supported; houses maintained; bills paid; meals prepared; work accomplished.

The tragedy here is not that these men chose evil things. The tragedy is that, when the King called, something else seemed more important.

We sometimes might imagine that the great danger to the spiritual life is hostility toward God. Certainly such hostility exists – we often encounter it on a daily basis. Indeed, the parable itself proceeds from those who merely neglect the invitation to others who seize the king’s servants, abuse them, and put them to death.

But Our Lord mentions the neglectful first.

They do not attack the servants. They do not curse the king. They do not announce that they despise his son or object to the marriage. They simply have other things to do. And this may be one of the most dangerous temptations in the Christian life precisely because it can coexist for a very long time with the conviction that nothing is seriously wrong.

We have not rejected God… we simply have something that must be finished first. Prayer can wait until we are less tired. Confession can wait until life becomes less complicated. The Scriptures can wait until we have more time. Reconciliation with someone whom we have wronged can wait until emotions have settled. The amendment of some persistent sin can wait until circumstances are more favorable.

We like to think: There will always be another opportunity. So our answer is not “no.” It’s just “not now.”

Yet enough “not nows,” accumulated quietly over the years, can eventually become a life whose practical answer to God has been “no.”

For this, the word used by the Gospel is striking in its simplicity: They neglected.

Neglect seldom feels as serious as deliberate rejection. That is why it is so easy to excuse.

A garden does not have to be attacked in order to be destroyed. It need only be neglected. A friendship need not end in a bitter quarrel; it may simply be left unattended until two people who once knew one another intimately become strangers. A house does not have to be deliberately demolished in order to fall into ruin. It is enough that necessary repairs are always postponed.

So also with the soul.

Few Christians wake one morning and consciously decide that henceforth they will become cold toward God. More often the cooling happens almost imperceptibly. One prayer is omitted because we are tired… then another because we are hurried. One examination of conscience is postponed. One resentment is allowed to remain because dealing with it would be unpleasant. One compromise is made because the circumstances are unusual.

None of these moments will feel momentous, but habits are being formed, priorities are being revealed. The soul is learning, little by little, what it will interrupt and what it will not. And God can gradually become the One whom we expect always to wait.

There is a reason, perhaps, that the examples Our Lord gives in today’s parable of those who neglected the invitation are so ordinary. Had the man gone from the king’s invitation to some den of obvious wickedness, we could comfortably distance ourselves from him. Instead, he goes to his farm. The other goes to his merchandise. Suddenly the parable becomes uncomfortably familiar.

The things which most successfully compete with God are not always sins. Often they are good things which have escaped their proper order.

Work is good. Family is good. Rest is good. Recreation is good. Providing for the future is prudent. Caring for one’s property is responsible. Even the countless little obligations of ordinary life are ordinarily genuine obligations.

Christianity does not require us to despise these things, but it does require us to know where they belong.

The farm becomes dangerous when the King may always be postponed for its sake. The merchandise becomes dangerous when every other appointment is fixed but prayer remains negotiable. Even family, that most natural object of our love, can become disordered if love for those whom God has given us somehow becomes an excuse for forgetting the God Who gave them.

The problem is, simply put, priority.

A good thing put in the place of the Highest Good does not become better, even it it was good to begin with. Instead, it becomes an idol.

And there is another side to the parable which makes the refusal more tragic still.

The invited guests are not being summoned to labor. They are being summoned to a feast. “Behold, I have prepared my dinner; my calves and fatlings are killed, and all things are ready: come ye to the marriage.” All things are ready. The King has done the preparing, he bears the expense, he provides the feast. The invitation is not fundamentally a demand that they give something to him. It is an invitation to receive what he has prepared for them.

And still the farm seems preferable. Still the merchandise cannot wait.

There is here something which reaches to the heart of our (sometimes) distorted understanding of the spiritual life. We can so easily imagine God principally as One Who wants something from us: our time, our obedience, our sacrifices, our attention. And certainly God commands these things. But before He commands, He gives.

Before there is our prayer, there is His grace. Before our repentance, His mercy. Before our sacrifice, His Sacrifice. Before our search for Him, His search for us. Christian life is not principally the story of what we have grudgingly surrendered to God, but is rather the story of what God has prepared for us. “All things are ready.”

The Gospel does not merely say that they neglected the invitation, but it adds that they “went their own ways.” And herein lies the deeper challenge.

Because there is nothing inherently wrong with having a “way” to go. Every one of us has duties, plans, hopes, occupations, and responsibilities. But the Christian life gradually teaches us that these cannot remain simply our own ways. In all that we do, in all ways that we travel, they must become ways traveled with God.

The farmer need not cease being a farmer. The merchant need not cease his business. The mother need not abandon her household; the laborer his work; the student his studies. But each must learn that his farm, merchandise, household, work, studies, plans, possessions, and future belong within a life whose first direction has already been determined.

The King has called. Everything else must find its proper place in relation to that call. This is why the spiritual life is so often less a matter of abandoning ordinary things than of putting ordinary things back into order.

So there is a great mercy hidden in this Sunday’s warning. Because the servants are still calling, the feast is still prepared, the doors have not yet been shut.

Perhaps we have neglected prayer. Then pray today. Perhaps Confession has been postponed repeatedly. Then stop waiting for the imaginary week when life will finally become uncomplicated. Perhaps some duty toward God has been pushed continually toward tomorrow. Begin it today. Perhaps the spiritual life has become something fitted around everything else, receiving whatever scraps of time and attention remain. Then hear the invitation again: “Come ye to the marriage.”

The King does not ask us to cease living ordinary lives. He asks that our ordinary lives cease being lived apart from Him.

There will always be farms. There will always be merchandise. There will always be something unfinished, something inconvenient, something apparently urgent, something which whispers that the things of God can safely be postponed until tomorrow.

But the Christian cannot spend his whole life going his own way and suppose that, merely because the road contained many good and respectable things, it must therefore have been the way of Christ.

The great question is not whether we had things to do. Of course we did. The question is what we did when the King called.

For His feast is prepared. His servants have gone forth. His invitation has been given. And all things are ready.

6 September 2026

That Which Was Wanting on Your Part, They Have Supplied

A Reflection on the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Beloved in Christ,

There are names in the Scriptures which almost everyone remembers. There are others which we have heard many times without ever quite noticing: Stephanas. Fortunatus. Achaicus.

They appear near the end of Saint Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, in the Apostolic reading appointed for this Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost. They are not introduced with great titles. We are told of no miracles which they performed, no books which they wrote, no extraordinary revelations which they received. Saint Paul simply tells the Corinthians that their coming had made him glad.

And then he explains why: “Because that which was wanting on your part, they have supplied. For they have refreshed both my spirit and yours. Know them, therefore, that are such.”

It is an easily overlooked sentence in an easily overlooked part of the Epistle. Yet there is something worth inspecting within those few words: Something was wanting. And then somebody supplied it.

In these few words, we can discern a great deal of the practical Christian life.

Now , we naturally notice the great things. We remember the martyr who gives his life, the missionary who carries the Gospel into a strange country, the teacher who defends the Faith, the ascetic whose holiness astonishes those around him. The Church rightly preserves their memories and sets their examples before us.

But most of the work by which Christian life continues from one day to another does not look like that. More often, something is wanting, someone stands in need. Someone notices. And someone supplies it.

A person is lonely, and someone visits. A task has been left unfinished, and someone quietly completes it. A family has fallen upon difficult circumstances, and someone provides what is needed. A church must be cleaned, a meal prepared, a journey made, a letter written, a sick person remembered, a grieving person accompanied, a candle lit, a prayer offered. Someone is exhausted, and another takes up a little of the burden.

None of these things seems particularly heroic while it is being done. Very often no one even notices.

But Saint Paul noticed.

He speaks first of the house of Stephanas, who “have dedicated themselves to the ministry of the saints.” This expression is worth pondering. For the house of Stephanas had not merely performed an occasional charitable act when circumstances happened to make it convenient. Rather, they had given themselves to service. They had acquired the habit of looking beyond themselves and asking what was needed.

Then came Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus themselves. Whatever precisely they had done for the Apostle, Saint Paul describes its effect in wonderfully simple terms: “They have refreshed my spirit,” for even an Apostle needed refreshing.

Saint Paul, who endured prisons, beatings, shipwreck, hunger, persecution, controversy, betrayal, and the constant care of the churches, could still be strengthened by the arrival of a few faithful Christians who brought with them what had been lacking.

We all can find some true comfort in this. Christianity does not require us to imagine that strength means never needing anything from anyone. The Apostle himself received consolation. Others supplied what he lacked. Their service did not diminish him; it strengthened him for the service which was his own.

This is one of the ways in which the Church actually lives.

We speak rightly of the Church as the Body of Christ. Yet that doctrine becomes wonderfully concrete in passages such as this one. A body does not require every member to perform every function. It requires each member to do what belongs to it, and thus to supply what another cannot. The Christian life is therefore not a competition in self-sufficiency. We truly do need one another, for there will always be something wanting on our part.

This is true even of the most faithful among us. No one possesses every gift. No one sees every need. No one has unlimited strength, unlimited time, unlimited resources. There are prayers we forget to say, burdens we cannot carry, tasks we cannot finish, people whom we cannot reach. Even when the spirit is willing, human weakness imposes its limits.

And so often, God supplies what is wanting through another person.

This ought to teach us humility when we receive and attentiveness when we give.

It is sometimes easier to perform an act of charity than to admit that we need one. We may gladly carry another person’s burden while quietly resenting the discovery that someone else must occasionally carry ours. Yet the communion of the Church requires both. Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus could supply what was wanting precisely because Saint Paul was willing to receive what they brought.

At another time the roles would be reversed.

Today I may be the one who strengthens another. Tomorrow I may be the one who must be strengthened. Today I may have enough to give. Tomorrow I may discover my own poverty. And truly, this is one of the reasons Christian community exists.

And perhaps this is why also Saint Paul adds an instruction which might otherwise seem unnecessary: “Know them, therefore, that are such.”

Notice such people. Learn to recognize them. Not merely the conspicuous people. Not merely those whose names are widely known. Notice the ones who have quietly dedicated themselves to the ministry of the saints. Notice the person who habitually arrives when something needs doing. Notice the one who remembers the forgotten. Notice the one who gives without making his generosity a spectacle. Notice the one whose presence somehow leaves others refreshed rather than exhausted.

The world has its own measures of importance. It notices prominence, influence, achievement, wealth, novelty, and power. We, as members of the Church, must learn another way of seeing.

Saint Paul looks at three men whose names would otherwise have disappeared into the immense obscurity of the first century and says, in effect: Remember these men. They supplied what was lacking. They refreshed us.

Because the Apostle remembered them, the Church has been speaking their names for nearly two thousand years.

There is also an important lesson here for anyone who wonders what he or she can possibly contribute.

The needs of the world are enormous. The needs of the Church can seem enormous. Faced with them, an ordinary Christian may easily conclude that he or she possesses neither the talents nor the opportunities to accomplish anything significant.

But perhaps that is the wrong question. We need not always ask, “What great thing can I do?” Sometimes it is enough to ask: What is wanting here? What is lacking in the place where Providence has actually put me? Who needs encouragement? What task has everyone assumed someone else will perform? Who has quietly disappeared from view? What burden has become too heavy for another person? What good thing has been neglected simply because nobody has yet taken responsibility for it?

The answer may be something very small. So was the cup of cold water of which the Lord spoke.

The greatness of Christian service does not depend upon the greatness of the task. It depends upon charity.

And Saint Paul has already given us the rule in the same Apostolic lesson: “Let all your things be done in charity.” Not some things. Not merely explicitly religious things. Not merely the things which will be noticed. All your things.

The Christian who learns to live in this way begins to see the world differently. Instead of continually asking what others ought to be doing, he becomes attentive to what has been left undone. Instead of measuring whether a task is worthy of his abilities, he asks whether it needs doing. Instead of waiting for an opportunity to accomplish something impressive, he becomes available for the ordinary opportunities which Providence continually places before him.

Such a life may never look remarkable. It may consist almost entirely of small acts which seemingly disappear as soon as they are performed. But the Kingdom of God has always contained such hidden labor.

Someone prepared the room. Someone carried the message. Someone fed the traveler. Someone opened his house to the Church. Someone cared for the sick. Someone buried the dead. Someone copied the manuscript. Someone taught the child. Someone kept the lamp burning. Quite simply: Someone supplied what was wanting.

And through such things the life of the Church continues.

Perhaps this is why the closing lines of First Corinthians feel so different when we linger over them. What can initially seem like a collection of greetings becomes a glimpse of the Church as Saint Paul actually knew her: households, friendships, journeys, labor, hospitality, mutual dependence, people strengthening one another across distances.

“The churches of Asia salute you.” “Aquila and Priscilla salute you much in the Lord, with the church that is in their house.” “All the brethren salute you.”

And among them stand Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus.

They did not do everything; they did what was needed. They supplied what was wanting. They refreshed the spirit of an Apostle.

And Saint Paul tells us still, to this very day: Know them, therefore, that are such.

30 August 2026

What Is Yet Wanting to Me?

A Reflection on the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Beloved in Christ,

There is actually something quite admirable about the young man who approaches Christ in today’s Gospel.

He does not come to tempt Him. He does not ask a clever question in the hope of catching Him in His words. He is not looking for an excuse to avoid the commandments. He comes with a question which ought to concern every Christian: “Good Master, what good shall I do that I may have life everlasting?”

Our Lord’s answer is straightforward: “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.”

The young man asks which, and Christ names them: do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness; honour father and mother; love thy neighbour as thyself.

Then comes the young man’s remarkable reply: “All these I have kept from my youth, what is yet wanting to me?”

Now, it would be easy to hear pride in those words. Perhaps there was some. But the question itself suggests something more interesting. The young man knows that keeping the commandments is not the extent of the spiritual life. He has done what he knows he ought to do, and yet he senses that something remains. So he asks, “What is yet wanting to me?”

This is one of the most “dangerous” questions that we can sincerely ask God.

We are generally quite willing to ask God what He wants from us when we suspect that the answer will confirm what we are already doing. We ask for guidance while quietly supplying the acceptable answers in advance. We ask to know His will provided that His will remains within certain boundaries. But the young man does something more courageous. He asks Christ to identify what is lacking. And Christ does.

“If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come follow Me.”

Now, there is an important distinction in these words. Our Lord had already told the young man what was necessary to enter into life: keep the commandments. Now He speaks of something further: “If thou wilt be perfect.”

The Church has always recognized here the distinction between commandment and evangelical counsel. Our Lord does not declare private possessions intrinsically evil, nor does He command every Christian in every state of life literally to dispose of everything he owns. Yet neither does this distinction permit us to make the passage harmless or meaningless. We ought not simply observe that this was the particular vocation of this particular young man and then proceed comfortably on our way.

For while the precise demand differs from one soul to another, every Christian eventually discovers an “if thou wilt be perfect.“

There is always something further.

There is always some place in the heart where obedience to commandments must become surrender; where avoiding what is forbidden must give way to freely offering what is ours; where we cease asking merely, “What must I do?” and begin asking, “What may I give?”

For this young man, Christ identifies the obstacle immediately. He has great possessions. And the problem is not simply that he possesses them. The problem is revealed by what happens when Christ asks him to surrender them: “And when the young man had heard this word, he went away sad.”

That sadness tells us more than any inventory of his property ever could.

He keeps everything. He loses nothing that he possessed when he approached Christ. His money remains his. His lands remain his. Whatever constituted those “great possessions” remains safely in his hands. And still, he goes away sad.

There is a peculiar cruelty in our attachments. We fear that surrendering the object of them will make us miserable, and so we cling to the very thing which is already making us miserable. We cannot imagine happiness without it, even when possessing it has plainly failed to make us happy.

The young man is offered an extraordinary exchange. “Thou shalt have treasure in heaven.” More astonishing still, he receives the invitation: “Come follow Me.” He stands face to face with Christ and is invited to follow Him! But there is something he cannot leave behind.

That is why this Gospel cannot safely be confined to a meditation upon money. “Great wealth” is the young man’s attachment; it need not be ours. A man may own comparatively little and nevertheless be as thoroughly possessed by what he has as another man is by a fortune. Indeed, one may be attached even to what one does not possess: to wealth desired, honours imagined, opportunities denied, another man’s prosperity envied.

And there are possessions more subtle than money. We can possess an opinion so tightly that we would rather lose a friend than surrender it. We can possess a grievance which has become so familiar that forgiveness feels almost like losing part of ourselves. We can cling to reputation, comfort, ambition, resentment, control, or some carefully constructed image of the life we believe we ought to have had.

Eventually Christ touches precisely that thing and says, in effect: And this also. That is when the question “What is yet wanting to me?” ceases to be theoretical.

It is easy to desire perfection in the abstract. It is considerably harder when perfection requires something concrete.

Yet the Gospel does not end with the young man’s departure. The disciples, hearing Christ speak of the difficulty of the rich entering the Kingdom, are astonished. “Who then can be saved?” And our Lord does not reassure them by lowering the demand: “With men this is impossible: but with God all things are possible.”

Here the Apostolic reading for this Lord’s Day becomes almost a commentary upon the Gospel.

Saint Paul looks back upon everything that he has become and says: “By the grace of God, I am what I am.”

Saint Paul, too, had been confronted by Christ. Saint Paul had possessed a life, a position, a reputation, a certainty about who he was and what he was doing. The encounter with Christ overturned it all.

But Saint Paul does not merely say that grace came to him. He adds: “His grace in me hath not been void.” And there we find the other possible ending to the story.

Grace may be offered and resisted. An invitation may be heard and declined. Our Lord may point toward the next step and we may go away sad.

Or grace may be received and answered.

Saint Paul continues: “I have laboured more abundantly than all they: yet not I, but the grace of God with me.”

There is no contradiction. Saint Paul laboured, and grace laboured in him. He responded, but the power by which he responded was itself God’s gift. Grace did not render his cooperation unnecessary; grace made his cooperation fruitful.

This is why the Christian life can never be reduced either to passive waiting or to grim self-improvement. We cannot perfect ourselves. We cannot, merely by force of will, tear every attachment from the heart and make ourselves fit for the Kingdom. “With men this is impossible,” our Lord says.

But neither are we therefore permitted to remain where we are, calling our unwillingness to change an acknowledgment of human weakness. God gives the grace by which the impossible becomes possible, and then calls us to act with that grace.

Perhaps, then, the young man’s question is one worth making our own: What is yet wanting to me?

Not: What is wanting in the Church? Not: What is wanting in my neighbour? Not: What ought the world to surrender? But: What is yet wanting to me?

What have I carefully excluded from Christ’s authority within my life? What is the thing I hope He will never ask me to relinquish? Where have I decided that I have obeyed far enough?

We should not ask such questions lightly. The answer may be costly. But neither should we fear the answer.

Christ did not call the young man to holy poverty in order that he should have less. He called him to leave behind what bound him so that he might possess something infinitely greater: “Thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come follow Me.”

Thus, the tragedy of the Gospel is not that the young man had too much. It is that, when offered more than everything he possessed, he could not open his hands to receive it.

May the grace of God in us not be void. And when Christ shows us what is yet wanting, may that same grace give us strength not to go away sad, but to follow Him!

23 August 2026