'If Thine Enemy Thirst, Give Him Drink'—A Homily for 24 January

Here’s my latest homily, delivered on 24 January, New Style. I’ll be doing them more frequently this semester—every three weeks instead of every four—and I’ll try to continue posting them here unless there are strenuous objections.

Third Sunday after Epiphany

Romans 12:16-20
St John ii.1.

Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head.

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

Today’s Epistle is a long list of exhortations—of St Paul telling us ‘Behave this way’, ‘Here’s how to follow Christ’—all of which have particular relevance to the kind of life we need to live as a school community.

In verse 16, he writes, ‘Be not wise in your own conceits.’ This is central to what we do as a school, for, according to the mediaeval manual of learning, Hugh of St Victor’s Didascalicon, humility is the basis of learning. [1] That is, we must recognise our ignorance in order to gain knowledge.

In verse 17, St Paul writes, ‘Recompense no man evil for evil.’ If another student is unkind to us, should we be unkind in return? No. And this applies to teachers too – if a parent doesn’t like something I do & slanders me, should I go around talking about them? Should I tell everyone, ‘They’re liars, or crazy, or a jerk, etc.?’ No.

In verse 18, St Paul writes, ‘Live peaceably with all men.’ This means we need to help and share with one another. We need to say kind things to build one another up.

In verse 19, St Paul writes, ‘Avenge not yourselves.’ This is very similar to verse 17, but here we get into something trickier because the Apostle goes on to quote Deuteronomy 32:35, ‘Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’ The Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy, has used this as the epigraph for his novel, Anna Karenina.

It’s good because it tells us not to seek vengeance—not to try to ‘get someone back’. But it’s tempting to be excited because God says He will ‘repay’ – we want to see our enemy ‘zapped’ by God, don’t we? Many readers of Anna Karenina enjoy seeing Anna succumb to madness and suicide as a punishment for her adultery.

Because of this zeal for vengeance, even if it is vengeance dealt out by God, it is easy to read the next exhortation as a promise that our enemies will be ‘zapped’. In verse 20, St Paul writes, ‘Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.’ It’s easy to hear this and think, ‘I’m gonna be extra nice to this jerk to show him I’m better, or I’m gonna be nice so God will really get him!’

But is that what St Paul is telling? Is this what God wants?

I don’t think so – as St Augustine says, ‘For how can it be love to feed and nourish someone just in order to heap coals of fire on his head, assuming that “coals of fire” means some serious punishment?’ [2]

There’s a clue about this in today’s Gospel which, in my opinion, ought to change completely our perception of all of St Paul’s exhortations. Every time I preach, I try to find some sort of connection between the Epistle and Gospel readings. It was a little tricky this time. It took me a minute, but finally I came up with the line, ‘If he thirst, give him drink.’

Christ in the Gospel makes wine from water for thirsty wedding guests. Now, this story demonstrates a couple of things at the surface level. Our Lord’s presence at Cana shows that He blesses marriage. The provision of wine for the wedding party shows that He blesses fun and the enjoyment of earth’s gifts.

But more importantly, the Miracle at Cana prefigures the wine of the Eucharist, the ‘Blood of Christ’. In his long hymn ‘On the Marriage at Cana’, St Romanus the Melodist, a 6th-c. hymnographer from Syria, writes:

When Christ, as a sign of His power, clearly changed the water into wine, all the crowd rejoiced, for they considered the taste marvellous. Now we all at the banquet in the Church partake of Christ with holy joy from the wine changed into His blood, praising the great Bridegroom. [3]

But the recollection of Christ’s gift of His own divine Blood to quench our thirst reminds us of the context of St Paul’s exhortation: ‘if thine enemy…thirst’. This changes our reading of the exhortations in Romans 12.

We are Christ’s enemies, because our sins necessitated His sacrifice.

Every time we become ‘wise in our own conceits’ we make ourselves Christ’s enemies.

Every time we pay back evil for evil we make ourselves Christ’s enemies.

Every time we fail to live peaceably we make ourselves Christ’s enemies.

Every time we try to avenge ourselves we make ourselves Christ’s enemies.

But now back to the rest of verse 20: ‘for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head’. As we’ve already noted, this doesn’t sound very loving, does it? St Augustine explains it thusly:

We must understand that ‘coals of fire’ means that we should provoke whoever does us harm to repentance by doing him a good turn. For the coals of fire serve to burn, i.e., to bring anguish to his spirit, which is like the head of the soul, in which all malice is burnt out when one is changed for the better through repentance. [4]

Similarly, the 5th-c. commentator Constantius writes:

In this passage Paul teahes that we ought to imitate God, who causes his sun to rise on the good and the evil, for by feeding our enemy and giving him something to drink we provoke him to peace or even to reconciliation. [5]

In the first place, Christ’s sacrifice heaps ‘coals of fire’ in the sense that we have repented and turned to Him in faith. But of course, we continue to sin (or at least I do!), and therefore we must have continual repentance, we must rekindle that proper ‘anguish of spirit’ that St Paul in 2 Cor. 7:10 calls the ‘godly sorrow’ that ‘worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of’.

This we attempt to do at Matins every day – we confess ourselves to be ‘miserable offenders’: as C.S. Lewis says, this means ‘that if we could see things from a sufficient height above we should all realize that we are in fact proper objects of pity’. [6]

But, in the second place, remember that by accepting food and drink in the Eucharist, in the Lord’s Supper, we risk heaping ‘coals of fire’ on ourselves in a more obvious sense. St Paul writes in I Cor. 11:29: ‘For he that eatheth and drinketh unworthily, eateth & drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.’

These are strong words, and we would do well to recall them before we approach to receive communion.

In James Joyce’s semi-autobiographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, even Stephen Dedalus, who has lost his faith, cannot forget St Paul’s words, and will not succumb to the social pressure to take communion because he ‘feels and fears’ the ‘body and blood of the son of God’. [7] As believing Christians, how much more discerning must we be of ‘the Lord’s body’!

Commenting on the passage in I Corinthians, St Chrysostom writes:

Since if even that kind of banquet which the senses take cognizance of cannot be partaken of by us when feverish and full of bad humors, without risk of perishing [in other words…]: much more is it unlawful for us to touch this Table with profane lusts, which are more grievous than fevers. Now when I say profane lusts, I mean both those of the body, and of money, and of anger, and of malice, and, in a word, all that are profane. And it becomes him that approacheth, first to empty himself of all these things and so to touch that pure sacrifice. [8]

He goes on to say:

What sayest thou, tell me? Is this Table which is the cause of so many blessings and teeming with life, become judgment? Not from its own nature, saith he, but from the will of him that approaches. For as His presence, which conveyed to us those great and unutterable blessings, condemned the more them that received it not: so also the Mysteries become provisions of greater punishment to such as partake unworthily.

But why doth he eat judgment to himself? ‘Not discerning the Lord’s body’: i.e., not searching, not bearing in mind, as he ought, the greatness of the things set before him; not estimating the weight of the gift. For if thou shouldest come to know accurately Who it is that lies before thee, and Who He is that gives Himself, and to whom, thou wilt need no other argument, but this is enough for thee to use all vigilance; unless thou shouldest be altogether fallen. [9]

We can see a beautiful example of what it means to ‘know accurately Who it is that lies before’ us, in the lovely poem, ‘The Holy Communion’, by the 17th-c. English priest, George Herbert. I would like to read a few stanzas of this lyric:

NOT in rich furniture, or fine array,
Nor in a wedge of gold,
Thou, who for me wast sold,
To me dost now thy self convey;
For so thou should’st without me still have been,
Leaving within me sinne:

But by the way of nourishment and strength
Thou creep’st into my breast;
Making thy way my rest,
And thy small quantities my length;
Which spread their forces into every part,
Meeting sinnes force and art.

Yet can these not get over to my soul,
Leaping the wall that parts
Our souls and fleshy hearts;
But as th’ outworks, they may controll
My rebel-flesh, and carrying thy name,
Affright both sinne and shame.

Onely thy grace, which with these elements comes,
Knoweth the ready way,
And hath the privie key,
Op’ning the souls most subtile rooms:
While those to spirits refin’d, at doore attend
Dispatches from their friend. [10]

May we too know that ‘grace, which with these elements comes, / . . . / Op’ning the souls most subtile rooms’.

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


[1] Ivan Illich, In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh’s Didascalicon (Chicago: U of Chicago, 1996), p. 15.

[2] Gerald Bray, ed., Romans, Vol. VI of Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1998), p. 322.

[3] The Orthodox New Testament, Vol. 1: The Holy Gospels, tr. & ed. Holy Apostles Convent (Buena Vista, CO: HAC, 1999), p. 485, n. 63.

[4] Bray, p. 322.

[5] Ibid., p. 322.

[6] C.S. Lewis, ‘“Miserable Offenders”: An Interpretation of Prayer Book Language’, God in the Dock, in The Collected Works of C.S. Lewis (NY: Inspirational, 1996), p. 381.

[7] James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (NY: Bantam, 1992), p. 237.

[8] St John Chrysostom, ‘Homily XXVIII on 1st Corinthians’, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf112.iv.xxix.html

[9] Ibid.

[10] George Herbert, The Works of George Herbert in Prose & Verse, ed. Robert Aris Willmott (NY: D. Appleton & Co., 1857), pp. 45-6.

Climacus Conference, 2011

One reader expressed some interest in my reference in the last post to this year's Climacus Conference in Louisville, KY. I am pleased to announce that the homepage for the conference is up and running (here), and that the roster of speakers and subjects looks very interesting indeed. The two heavyweights in my book are Vigen Guroian, whose talk is entitled, 'On the Real Meaning of Mentor: Readings in Great Literature', and David Bradshaw, whose talk is entitled, 'What is Faith? Plato, Nietzsche, & Christ'. Yours truly will also be giving a talk, with the title, 'In Thy Law Will He Meditate Day & Night: The Study of Scripture & Classical Education'. I have included a two-sentence summary on the homepage which reads as follows:

This talk will draw on scholarly studies of enduring 'oral' qualities in Western literary habits to show how such qualities have traditionally marked Christian 'study' of the Bible, particularly in the monastic milieu. The contemporary relevance of these oral qualities will be emphasized, especially insofar as they dovetail with the methods and aims of Christian classical education.

My friend, Bishop Savas of Troas, tells me he intends to go, and I know that not only Eighth Day Books, merchants attendant at last year's conference, but also the fathers of Holy Cross Hermitage in West Virginia will be setting up tables with their wares this year. I hope to see at least a few Logismoi readers there!

At Last, a Short Book Update

While some of my recent book acquisitions have inspired me to write a good old-fashioned ‘book update’, it has been so long since the last ‘update’, that I scarcely know where to begin and am certainly unable to cover everything. I shall confine myself therefore to a few of the most recent and most significant acquisitions.

Today, for example, a trip to Half Price Books yielded the first volume (containing Books I-VIII) of the Loeb Classical edition of St Augustine’s Confessions, tr. William Watts [1] (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U, 1999)—a steal at $5.38. A look inside the mailbox revealed William A. Graham’s Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge U, 1993). [2]

On another HPB trip a few weeks ago, I discovered William Griffin’s [3] fascinatingly colloquial translations of St Augustine—Sermons to the People: Advent, Christmas, New Year’s, Epiphany, tr. & ed. William Griffin (NY: Image, 2002). On the first day of the new year, I used a 50%-off coupon from Borders to purchase The Classical Tradition, ed. Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, & Salvatore Settis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U, 2010), a fascinating reference work on the continuity of the classical tradition in Western civilisation. At some point, I also received via post a copy of St Gregory Palamas’s Homilies, ed. & tr. Christopher Veniamin with the Monastery of St John the Baptist (Waymart, PA: Mount Thabor, 2009). The latter is a review copy sent to me by one of the editors of Orthodox Life, the former blogger known as ‘Felix Culpa’. Look for my review to be published, potentially, in the March-April issue.

Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, I’ve received a few books from a fellow by the name of Dennis Lackner. It’s a long story, but in this post back in 2009 I quoted from a fascinating paper of his on the Camaldolese that I had found in a limited preview on Google Books. He came across the post and we swapped a few e-mails, in one of which he sent me a pdf of the full paper. Fast-forward to Friday, 31 December 2010, and while randomly looking through old e-mails for unprinted pdfs, I discovered his and started rereading it, thinking that I might contact him with some thoughts I had about a few points. That very night, I received a mass New Year’s Eve greeting from the man himself—an interesting coincidence, I thought.

Well, the very next day, I received a personal e-mail from Dennis, asking whether I would be willing to read his entire doctoral dissertation on the Camaldolese, which he is hoping to publish, and to make editorial comments and suggestions on it. It turns out he has been keeping up with Logismoi, and had recently purchased Fr Nicholas Loudovikos’s Eucharistic Ontology at my behest. He therefore offered in return for my help to send me a copy of this book. Needless to say, I readily agreed, and was eagerly anticipating its arrival. I did not anticipate, however, the concomitant arrival of Charles Williams’s The Place of the Lion (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972) and Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Cosmic Liturgy: The Universe According to Maximus the Confessor, tr. Brian Daley, SJ (SF: Ignatius, 2003). Rest assured, there was much rejoicing. Thank you sincerely, Den! С Рождеством Христовым!


[1] I’m not sure whether there is any relation to Victor Watts, translator of Boethius.

[2] I ordered this book myself to help prepare for a talk I plan to give at the Climacus Conference in Louisville, KY, next month, entitled ‘In Thy Law He Will Meditate Day & Night: The Study of Scripture & Classical Education’.

[3] Thus bringing the total of Williams to three in as many paragraphs.

Homily on Advent & St Nicholas

At last, here is my lone Advent homily, preached on Monday, 6 December. I’ve been lacking in much enthusiasm to post it because that week was a bad one in many ways, and I received a quite discouraging response to the homily from one parent. But here it is anyway, and readers can judge for themselves whether I have, as was alleged, claimed that ‘Santa Claus’ doesn’t exist.

Second Sunday in Advent

Epistle: Romans 15:4-13
Gospel: St Luke 21:25-33

Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope (ἵνα διὰ τῆς ὑπομονῆς καὶ διὰ τῆς παρακλήσεως).

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

It is particularly fitting at this time of year that in today’s Epistle we are reminded of things ‘written aforetime’, for it is of course the season of Advent – a period when we frequently think back to the ancient prophecies of Christ’s coming. Likewise, it is meet and right that we ask ourselves what is the ‘patience and comfort of the Scriptures’ of which St Paul speaks, and what is the ‘hope’ we have through them.

The answer to the first question is suggested by the very next verse – where St Paul refers to the ‘God of patience and consolation’ (θεὸς τῆς ὑπομονῆς καὶ τῆς παρακλήσεως). ‘Consolation’ here is the KJV translation of ‘paraclesis’: the same word that is used in verse 4 and there translated ‘comfort’. Elsewhere, Christ refers to the Holy Spirit as ‘the Paraclete’, ‘the Comforter’ – in other words, God Himself is the comfort of the Scriptures. The ‘God of patience and comfort’ is also the ‘patience and comfort of the Scriptures’.

This is further confirmed when we note the patristic teaching that before the Incarnation, Christ became ‘incarnate’ in Scripture. The 7th-c. Byzantine theologian, St Maximus the Confessor, for example, writes:

The Logos [or Word] of God is called flesh not only inasmuch as He became incarnate, but in another sense as well. . . . [W]hen he draws near to men who cannot with the naked mind come into contact with noetic realities in their naked state, He selects things which are familiar to them, combining together various stories, symbols, parables and dark sayings; and in this way He becomes flesh. Thus at the first encounter our mind comes into contact not with the naked Logos but with the incarnate Logos, that is, with [the] various sayings and stories [of Scripture]. [1]

So the ‘patience and comfort of the Scriptures’ gave to the righteous men of the Old Testament the hope that the Word of God incarnate in those Scriptures would one day become incarnate as a Man. This was the Advent which they so eagerly anticipated, as when the Psalmist says, ‘O God of hosts, return again; and look down from heaven and behold, and visit this vineyard, and perfect that which Thy right hand hath planted’ (79:15-16 LXX). Thus, it is appropriate that during the season of Advent we recall their longing.

But – having ‘received the promise’ – we are now able to receive the Second Advent: the coming of Christ into our hearts and souls. A mediaeval French Cistercian, Guerric D’Igny, writes:

Assuredly He comes to us [in our hearts] now to ensure that His first coming will not have been in vain, and to avoid having to meet us at the last [coming] in wrath. In this middle advent He is intent on reforming our spirit of pride and patterning us anew on the humility He showed forth at His first coming . . . This personal visitation, which imparts to us the grace of the first advent and holds promise of the glory of the last, should be the object of our heart’s desire, the goal of all our striving. [2]

Thus, it is through the ‘patience and comfort’ of Christ dwelling in our hearts and of our continual prayer before Him there, that the great hope of His Third Advent is kindled within us. For Guerric’s words also serve as an excellent reminder of today’s Gospel. In this passage of Luke 21, Christ speaks of His third and final Advent, that is, His return to judge the quick and the dead. Incarnate in Scripture, Christ’s voice is humble and quiet – we must read attentively if we are to recognise Him there. Similarly, incarnate as a Babe in the manger, as the Man of Many Sorrows, Christ is again humble and quiet – we must have Faith to recognise who He is and to understand God’s revelation in His Son. But commenting on Christ’s words, ‘[T]hen shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory’, Bl Theophylact writes:

All shall see Him, both those who believe and those who do not believe. . . . [A]nd both He and His Cross will shine more brightly than the sun and will be recognized by all. [3]

Thus, of those who did not attend to the two Incarnations – in Scripture and in the flesh – St Gregory the Great writes, ‘They are going to see in power and majesty Him Whom they chose not to hear in a state of humility.’ And, as if thinking himself of the reference in today’s Epistle to ‘the patience and comfort of the Scriptures’ and ‘the God of patience and comfort’, St Gregory writes, ‘To the extent that they do not now submit their hearts to His patience, they will then experience His power more exactingly.’ [4]

That this be not so with us, as Guerric of Igny says, let us welcome Him into our hearts today, and attend with eagerness to His words and example for us as we prepare to celebrate His wondrous Nativity according to the flesh. For, in Guerric’s words, ‘just as, at His Second Coming, we shall run towards Him with physical energy and joy, so do we hasten to Bethlehem with jubilant heart and spirit.’ [5]

We are helped by the Church to do this on this day in particular, which on the Gregorian calendar is dedicated to the memory of St Nicholas the Wonderworker, Bishop of Myra, later known as ‘Santa Claus’. Of St Nicholas, one modern Benedictine writer has noted:

At the outset of Advent, a season that speaks to us deeply of hope because ‘the Lord is near’, as the Liturgy announces, we celebrate the feast of St Nicholas. His feast is an important pause on our Advent journey, for his life is an example of Gospel living for Christians of all times and places. [6]

Perhaps the most famous illustration of this is the very first story ever told about St Nicholas giving gifts in secret at night. A once wealthy man had lost his fortune and was soon going to have to sell his three daughters as slaves so that they would be taken care of. Hearing of this, St Nicholas went through the dark streets of Myra, and secretly left a bag of gold inside the man’s house. He did this two more times, and on the third occasion, the man waited up and found the compassionate Bishop hurrying away so he would not be seen. But this is only one instance among many of St Nicholas’s devotion to Christ’s words and example. As St Demetrius of Rostov says in his Menology:

For the character of the saint was as a child-loving father, and his countenance shone with Divine grace like an angel of God. From his face, as from the face of Moses, emanated a bright ray, and to him who only looked at him there was great benefit. For him who was burdened with some kind of passion or affliction of soul, it was enough to fix his gaze on the saint in order to receive consolation in his sorrow; and he who conversed with him already improved in good. [7]

Of course, in our day St Nicholas has been largely transformed into a cartoonish figure with little connection to the historical Bishop of Myra, much less to the Christian faith. But as Christians we must not forget that the great Wonderworker, as great a figure as he is, only desires to point us toward Christ, whose Incarnation he proclaims. May we prepare for the Feast with sobriety and celebrate it with joy.

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


[1] St Maximus the Confessor, ‘Second Century on Theology’ [§60], The Philokalia: The Complete Text, Vol. 2, ed. St Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain & St Macarius of Corinth, tr. G.E.H. Palmer, et al. (London: Faber, 1990), p. 151.

[2] Guerric of Igny, ‘The Second Sermon for Advent’, The Cistercian World: Monastic Writings of the 12th Century, tr. & ed. Pauline Matarasso (London: Penguin, 1993), p. 131.

[3] Bl Theophylact, The Explanation by Bl Theophylact of the Holy Gospel According to St Luke, tr. Fr Christopher Stade (House Springs, MO: Chrysostom, 1997), p. 274.

[4] I got these comments from the notes appended to this passage in Vol. 2 of The Orthodox New Testament published by Holy Apostles Convent. I shall add the exact reference when I return to school and have my copy of this book in front of me.

[5] Guerric, p. 130.

[6] Victor-Antoine d’Avila-Latourrette, OSB, A Monastic Year: Reflections from a Monastery (Dallas: Taylor, 1996), p. 12.

[7] Service, Akathist, Life & Miracles of St Nicholas the Wonderworker (Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery, 1996), p. 83.

Eucharistic Ontology: An Addendum on Fr Nicholas Loudovikos in English

In this post from the Spring of 2009, I strongly recommended the theology of Protopresbyter Nicholas Loudovikos of the University Ecclesiastical Academy of Thessaloniki. At that time, I wrote that ‘none of Fr Loudovikos’s work has, to my knowledge, yet been published in English’, but added, ‘If I remember correctly, an English translation of another book, Η Ευχαριστιακή Οντολογία (Athens: Domos, 1992), is in the works...’ I’m afraid I must admit that around the time that I wrote the original post, at least one of Fr Nicholas’s articles—a fine critique of some of the theological positions of his former teacher, the renowned Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon—was already being published in English under the title, ‘Person Instead of Grace & Dictated Otherness: John Zizioulas’ Final Theological Position’, The Heythrop Journal XLVIII (2009), pp. 1-16. I should have noted this and at least written an addendum to the original post some time ago.

Well, as many of you may know already, the second statement has proved to be correct, and the said translation having been completed, the first statement is now doubly if not triply untrue. Holy Cross Press has published this book, which when I talked with him in 2007 Fr Nicholas spoke of often as one of his more important, under the title, A Eucharistic Ontology: Maximus the Confessor’s Eschatological Ontology of Being as Dialogical Reciprocity (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross, 2010). Here is Fr Andrew Louth’s blurb about the book as posted on Amazon:

In this remarkable book, Fr Nikolaos Loudovikos brings his profound knowledge of the greatest of Byzantine theologians, St Maximus the Confessor, into dialogue with the recent currents of philosophy and theology in the West. This in itself is rare enough, but his central claim—that who we really are is disclosed in our final destiny in God—is one that he shows is rooted in our participation in the Eucharist. This is an intellectually demanding work, but in it Fr Loudovikos never loses sight of the fact that what he has to say bears directly on how we understand what it is to live as a Christian in the twenty-first century.

I myself have not yet read the book in Greek, much less English (though if there remain any generous readers out there willing to help a brother out, I would be delighted to find a copy in the mail!), but I have little doubt that it will prove to be very much worthwhile. The title may sound a bit unwieldy and pretentious, though it doesn’t strike me as nearly so bad in Greek, but Fr Loudovikos is a theologian who really must become better known in the English-speaking world. Order this book now!

A Homily on the 'Inheritance of the Saints in Light'

Here’s the latest homily, which I gave yesterday, 15 November. The readings were Colossians 1:3-12, and St Matthew 9:18-26. Again, I’ll try to remember to add the—in this case, few—references later.

12 Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light:

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

The verse I quoted is the twelfth verse of the first chapter of Colossians—the last verse of today’s Epistle reading. I’d like to talk about what St Paul means when he refers to being made ‘partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light’.

First of all, the use of the word ‘partakers’ by the King James translators is reminiscent of 2 Peter 1:4, where St Peter refers to our becoming ‘partakers of the divine nature’. Partaking of the divine nature, via the uncreated light or energies of God, has marvellous effects in our lives, and we can get a glimpse of these effects in the various miracles of Christ’s earthly ministry.

Two examples can be seen in today’s Gospel, from St Matthew 9:18-26: first, the healing of the woman with an issue of blood—the miracle story within the miracle story; and second, the raising of the ruler’s daughter from the dead—the pièce de résistance.

Of the woman with an issue of blood, the Greek text literally says, ‘I shall be saved’, ‘thy faith hath saved thee’, and ‘the woman was saved’. The translators of the King James Version, however, chose the expression ‘made whole’, which is of course a beautiful and rich expression in its own right. Now, what’s so suggestive about these descriptions of a healing from a physical malady is that physical illness can be seen as a metaphor for sin—the sin and the sinful passions that afflict us are in fact illnesses of the soul. The ‘issue of blood’, in fact, is a particularly apt metaphor for sin. I am reminded of one of the famous stories of the Desert Fathers, wherein St Moses the Black used a leaky jug to illustrate the way our sins ‘run out’ behind us and we do not see them.

But in the raising of the ruler’s daughter we see perhaps the most dramatic effect of partaking of the divine nature, that is the inheritance of the Saints in light—deliverance from death. St Paul writes in I Corinthians 15:26, ‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.’ And later on in that chapter, inspired by the power of Christ’s Resurrection, St Paul actually taunts death when he writes, ‘O Death, where is thy sting’ (I Cor 15:55)?

The various raisings from the dead in the Gospels—such as that in today’s reading, or that of Lazarus—are a foretaste of this final destruction, of which Shakespeare wrotes, ‘And Death once dead, there’s no more dying then’ (Sonnet 146). This destruction of death has been effectively accomplished in Christ, ‘who gleams like lightning in the unapproachable light of the Resurrection’, and this is the inheritance of the Saints, of which St Paul says we partake. Until Christ’s return, ‘there’s no more dying’ in sin if we repent and follow Him. Bl Theophylact, commenting on the last verse of today’s Gospel reading, Mat 9:26, writes, ‘And you, O reader, who are dead in sins, He will also resurrect when He puts outside the crowd and its tumult and takes you by the hand so that you might act.’ But when Christ returns, ‘there’s no more dying’ in the body, since we are transformed.

Although it’s not part of today’s Epistle reading, in verse 13 of Colossians 1 St Paul contrasts the light imagery of verse 12 with what he calls ‘the power of darkness’:

13 Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son:

The two healings in today’s Gospel illustrate vividly this deliverance from the power of darkness. St Gregory of Nyssa identifies the ‘garments of skin’ with which the Lord clothes Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:21 with the physical and spiritual effects of the Fall, in other words, the power that darkness has over us. But Christ ‘hath clothed mortality with incorruption’, and St Gregory, speaking of the future condition of the Church in the final Resurrection, says, ‘If we will not be wearing that skin, how shall we preserve the conditions which come from it?’

Now, in our own day, those conditions may seem formidable, even insurmountable. It may seem impossible that we should ever overcome sickness and death, particularly in the last one hundred years when it has finally become physically possible to wipe out all human life on this earth. This state of things can be worrisome and disturbing. Indeed, one of the great but lesser-known spiritual figures of the twentieth century, the Russian theologian Fr Sophrony of Essex, was deeply troubled by this as a young man. Fr Sophrony prayed with anguish of soul for God to deliver him from despair, and in reply he was vouchsafed to be a partaker ‘of the inheritance of the saints in light’. He writes, in We Shall See Him as He Is, tr. Rosemary Edmonds (Platina, CA: St Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2006):

And lo, on Easter Saturday, . . . the Light visited me after I had taken communion, and I felt it like the touch of Divine Eternity on my spirit. Gentle, full of peace and love, the Light remained with me for three days. It drove away the darkness of non-existence that had engulfed me. I was resurrected, and in me and with me the whole world was resurrected. The words of St John Chrysostom at the end of the Easter Liturgy struck me with overwhelming force: ‘Christ is risen and there are no dead in the grave’. Tormented hitherto by the spectre of universal death, I now felt that my soul, too, was resurrected and there were no more dead . . . If this is God, then quickly let me abandon everything and seek only union with Him [ellipsis in the original]. (p. 178)

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

A Homily for St Luke the Evangelist

I recently preached again at school, this time for the Western feast of St Luke the Evangelist. Here once more is a readable text fashioned, and ever so slightly embellished, from my speaking notes. The readings were 2 Timothy 4:5-14 and St Luke 10:1-7. Unfortunately, I am a bit less pleased with this one than with the St Matthew homily. I hope to improve next time!

Today we celebrate the memory of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke, who was sanctified by his labours for Christ’s sake and attained everlasting glory as the author of the third Gospel as well as the history of the Acts of the Apostles.

St Luke was not Jewish by birth, but may have converted to Judaism before later coming to Christ. He was a native of Antioch, which according to the Synaxarion, was ‘renowned [at that time] for the flourishing state of the arts and sciences . . . [There] Luke had developed his intellect with various scholarly studies. . . . He indubitably received an excellent education in general, for the quality of the Greek language of his writings is far more pure and correct than that of the other NT writers.’[1]

According to Bl Theophylact, St Luke ‘had a great knowledge of natural philosophy’, meaning the science of his day, ‘but . . . was also much practiced in Hebrew learning’. In Colossians 4:14, St Paul calls him ‘the beloved physician’, so we know that he was a doctor. He was a great writer who ‘knows and uses conventions’ of Greek and Roman history and novels, [2] but the prologue of his Gospel ‘rings with the poetry of prophets and psalms’. [3] Thus, he was a first-rate theologian and historian, but according to Church tradition St Luke was also a skilled artist who painted some of the first Christian iconography. He was a Renaissance man.

Some believe St Luke was also one of the two disciples who met the Lord on the road to Emmaus, but he is certainly identified as one of the Seventy Apostles sent out by Christ. It is for this reason that the passage from his Gospel in which Christ exhorts the Seventy forms the second lesson today.

After his conversion to Christ, St Luke travelled with St Paul to Greece to preach the Gospel, and there he worked diligently to establish the Church at Philippi. Next he went to Corinth to collect alms for the Palestinian Christians, who were undergoing persecution (II Cor 8:18-19). Upon his return to Palestine, St Paul was imprisoned for Christ, but, the holy Evangelist Luke remained by his teacher’s side. Indeed, he accompanied the great Apostle on the difficult voyage to Rome for his trial.

It was during St Paul’s imprisonment in Rome that St Luke, at urging of the Holy Spirit and St Paul himself, wrote his Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. Thus, according to Eusebius (in Ecclesiastical History 3.4.6), who alludes to St Luke’s profession as a doctor:

So he has left us examples of the art of healing souls which he learnt from [St Paul and the other apostles] in two divinely inspired books, the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. The former, he declares, he wrote in accordance with the information he received from those who from the first had been eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, information which, he adds, he had followed in its entirety from the first. The latter he composed not this time from hearsay but from the evidence of his own eyes. [4]

St Luke’s Gospel includes many of the most beloved stories of the New Testament—the story of Christ’s birth, which we read every year at Nativity, the parable of Prodigal Son, a beautiful story of repentance, the parable of the Good Samaritan, and story of the Road to Emmaus, which as I have mentioned may have told from an eyewitness perspective. The Gospel of St Luke has a special emphasis on the Gentiles becoming part of God’s people. St Ambrose of Milan says of it, ‘But, truly, St Luke kept, as it were, a certain historical order, and revealed to us more miracles of the Lord’s deeds, yet so that the historiry of his Gospel embraced the virtue of all wisdom.’ [5]

At this point, it seems fitting to consider in some detail today’s Gospel reading, from St Luke 10. This lesson was not only written by St Luke, but presumably tells us something about him as well, thus prompting the decision to use it as the Gospel for his feast. Christ’s instructions to the Seventy, as interpreted by the Holy Fathers, suggest virtues which characterise St Luke himself, and I am sadly conscious as well that they should characterise all who would preach or teach in the Church.

First, in St Luke 10:4, we read, ‘Carry neither purse, nor scrip.’ St Ambrose of Milan points out that Christ ‘explained clearly elsewhere why no purse is to be carried, for Matthew wrote that the Lord said to the Disciples, “Do not possess gold, or silver” (St Matthew 10:9).’ [6] Thus, we see that the minister of the Gospel is to practice non-acquisitiveness.

As for the injunction to wear no shoes or sandals, the Fathers observe that since leather is the skin of a dead animal, apart from the literal meaning shoes can be seen as a symbol of mortal cares. According to St Gregory the Great: ‘It is not fitting that he who undertakes the task of preaching should burden himself with worldly affairs, lest, engrossed in such matters, he forget the business of eternal life.’ [7] St Luke was unhampered by the concerns of this world, and so should we be.

When Christ says ‘salute no man by the way’, Bl Theophylact tells us, ‘He adds this command to them, Salute no man along the way, so that they do not become preoccupied with greetings and civilities, and thus be hindered from preaching.’ [8] St Cyril of Alexandria adds the comment—‘let that which is well pleasing to God be preferred by you to all other things; and so practising an irresistible and unhampered diligence, hold fast to your apostolic cares.’ [9] And finally, St Ambrose notes, ‘. . . [W]hen divine commands are given, human obligations are surrendered for a while. . . . Therefore, even honorable acts are prohibited, lest the grace of ceremony deceive and hinder the ministry of the task, delay in which is sinful.’ [10] Thus, St Luke was single-minded in his devotion to God’s work and was not distracted even by natural pleasures.

Bl Theophylact explains St Luke 10:5, ‘And into whatsoever house ye enter, first say, Peace be to this house’, in the following way: ‘The Lord forbids them to salute anyone along the way, but it is different when they enter a house. . . . He shows that the words, Peace be to this house, are not only a greeting, but a blessing.’ [11] Thus we learn that the minister of the Gospel is called to bless those with whom he comes into contact.

Finally, when in St Luke 10:7, our Lord says, ‘And in the same house remain, eating and drinking such things as they give: for the labourer is worthy of his hire’, Bl Theophylact comments: ‘As wages you will have your food and keep; do not expect to be fed and then, in addition, to receive a wage, but consider your food to be your wage.’ [12] We can be sure that St Luke was content with what God provided for him.

In short, all of these virtues—non-aquisitiveness, freedom from earthly care, single-minded devotion to God’s work, blessing others, and contentment with what God provides—are enjoined by the Gospel to all of us, but especially to the clergy, and as we can see from the testimony of his life, they are certainly characteristic of St Luke himself.

To return now to that testimony, St Paul was eventually released for a time, but at last under the emperor Nero he was imprisoned again. At last, facing certain death, the great Apostle writes to St Timothy in today’s Epistle: ‘Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me: for Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me’ (2 Tim 4:9-11). Concerning this striking testimony, the great Chrysostom observes, ‘Luke adhered to Paul inseparably. . . . He was a lover of labors and learning, and a man of endurance and perseverance. Of him Paul writes that his “praise is in the Gospel throughout all of the churches” (2 Cor 8:18).’ [13]

After St Paul’s martyrdom by beheading at Rome, St Luke went on to spread the Gospel in Italy, Dalmatia, Gaul, Egypt, and especially Greece, where he spent the bulk of his remaining years planting churches. At last, the ‘beloved physician’ himself was martyred in Greece at the age of 84 by being crucified on an olive tree. He was buried in Thebes, the setting of some of Greece’s greatest tragic plays, but his precious remains were later transferred to Constantinople with great honour.

Some of St Luke’s most interesting ‘posthumous fame’, however, is in the artistic and literary use of the angelic creature with which his Gospel has been traditionally identified. The four creatures of Ezekiel 1:4-14 and Revelation 4:6-8—one like a man, one like a lion, one like an ox, and one like an eagle—have long been identified with and used as symbols of the four Evangelists. St Luke’s emblem is the one with ‘the face of an ox’—which St Irenaeus of Lyons tells us is because his Gospel ‘is of priestly character, [since it] begins with the priest Zechariah sacrificing incense to God (St Luke 1:9), for the fatted calf was already prepared, to be sacrificed for the recovery of the younger son (St Luke 15:23, 30)’ in the Prodigal Son parable. [14]

It is in this from that Dante in the Purgatorio (29.91-3) describes seeing St Luke’s Gospel: ‘with green foliage crowned’ and following the 24 elders ‘As star succeeds to star within the round / Of heaven’. [15] Furthermore, the angelic ox is followed shortly thereafter by the Book of Acts in the form of an aged man who ‘seemed a member of the craft possessed / By the great Hippocrates [the famous physician of antiquity], whom Nature made / To help those creatures whom she loves the best’ (Purg. 29.136). [16] Thus, we see that St Luke, renowned for his literary craftsmanship, found a special place in one of the greatest works of literature in Christian history.

I shall conclude with a Byzantine hymn, known as a ‘kontakion’, written in honour of St Luke:

Let us praise the divine Luke, the herald of true piety, the orator of ineffable mysteries, the star of the Church; for the Word, Who alone knoweth the secrets of man’s heart, hath chosen him with the wise Paul to be a teacher of the nations. [17]

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


[1] The Lives of the Holy Apostles, tr. Isaac E. Lambertsen & Holy Apostles Convent (Buena Vista, CO: HAC, 2001), p. 259.

[2] Wayne Meeks, The Origins of Christian Morality: The First Two Centuries (New Haven, CT: Yale U, 1993), p. 203.

[3] John Drury, ‘Luke’, The Literary Guide to the Bible, ed. Robert Alter & Frank Kermode (Cambridge, MA: Harvard U, 1987), p. 419.

[4] Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, tr. G.A. Williamson (NY: Barnes & Noble, 1995), pp. 109-10.

[5] St Ambrose of Milan, Exposition of the Holy Gospel According to Saint Luke with Fragments on the Prophecy of Isaias, tr. Theodosia Tomkinson (Etna, CA: Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, 1998), p. 2.

[6] St Ambrose, p. 255.

[7] The Orthodox New Testament, Vol. 1: The Holy Gospels, tr. & ed. Holy Apostles Convent (Buena Vista, CO: HAC, 1999), p. 329, n. 205.

[8] Bl Theophylact, The Explanation by Bl Theophylact of the Holy Gospel According to St Luke, tr. Fr Christopher Stade (House Springs, MO: Chrysostom, 1997), p. 109.

[9] ONT 1, p. 330, n. 206.

[10] St Ambrose, p. 259.

[11] Bl Theophylact, p. 110.

[12] Bl Theophylact, p. 110.

[13] The Orthodox New Testament, Vol. 2: Acts, Epistles, & Revelation, tr. & ed. Holy Apostles Convent (Buena Vista, CO: HAC, 1999), p. 374, n. 23.

[14] Against Heresies 3.11.8; Robert M. Grant, Irenaeus of Lyons (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 132.

[15] Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy 2: Purgatory, tr. Dorothy L. Sayers (London: Penguin, 1955), p. 300.

[16] Dante, p. 302.

[17] Lives, p. 267.