“For while we were yet without strength, Christ in due time died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet pervadenture for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commends His love towards us.”
Now what he is saying is somewhat of this kind. For if for a virtuous man, no one would hastily choose to die, consider your Master’s love, when it is not for virtuous men, but for sinners and enemies that He is seen to have been crucified—”which he says too after this, “In that, if when we were sinners Christ died for us.”
“Much more then, being now justified by His Blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.”
And what he has said looks indeed like tautology, but it is not to any one who accurately attends to it. Consider then. He wishes to give them reasons for confidence respecting things to come. And first he gives them a sense of shame from the righteous man’s decision, when he says, that he also “was fully persuaded that what God had promised He was able also to perform;” and next from the grace that was given; then from the tribulation, as sufficing to lead us into hopes; and again from the Spirit, whom we have received. Next from death, and from our former viciousness, he makes this good. And it seems indeed, as I said, that what he had mentioned was one thing, but it is discovered to be two, three, and even many more. First, that “He died:” second, that it was “for the ungodly;” third, that He “reconciled, saved, justified” us, made us immortal, made us sons and heirs. It is not from His Death then only, he says, that we draw strong assertions, but from the gift which was given unto us through His Death. And indeed if He had died only for such creatures as we be, a proof of the greatest love would what He had done be! but when He is seen at once dying, and yielding us a gift, and that such a gift, and to such creatures, what was done casts into shade our highest conceptions, and leads the very dullest on to faith. For there is no one else that will save us, except He Who so loved us when we were sinners, as even to give Himself up for us. Do you see what a ground this topic affords for hope? For before this there were two difficulties in the way of our being saved; our being sinners, and our salvation requiring the Lord’s Death, a thing which was quite incredible before it took place, and required exceeding love for it to take place. But now since this has come about, the other requisites are easier. For we have become friends, and there is no further need of Death. — Homily 9
—We no longer believe because of your word;
for we have heard for ourselves,
and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.—
There are two kinds of rock, igneous and sedimentary — no wait, wrong lesson.
There are two kinds of rock mentioned in today’s readings.
The first is the sort of rock the represents hardness of heart. The Jewish people had seen God’s power. They saw Moses strike the sea – and it parted. They saw the cloud and the fire that protected them from the Egyptians. They saw the exercise of God’s might. Not too long after they said: ‘God, what god…’
I’m hungry, I’m thirsty, I can’t see God, God’s not entertaining me. Their hardness of heart was a chronic condition, a condition all of us share. I want, why doesn’t God provide?
The psalmist captures that hardness if heart when he sings:
—Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
as in the day of Massah in the desert,—¨Where your fathers tempted me;
they tested me though they had seen my works.——¨
That hardness of heart, those stony hearts, were confronted by the Rock of Ages. God showed that the rock in Horeb could bring forth water. Even a rock could bring forth life. Did the rock do it alone? No.
The rock that brought forth water needed two things. It needed God’s power and a faithful servant – Moses.
I will be standing there in front of you on the rock in Horeb.
Strike the rock, and the water will flow from it
There is an important lesson for us in this.
We are human – and our hearts are hard, dissatisfied, filled with doubt. Regardless, our hard hearts can bring forth springs of life. To do so we need God’s power. We need to acknowledge that power. We have to take that all important step and recognize that God is the center of our lives, of the world, of the universe, of all that exists. Once we have recognized God’s proper place in our lives we must make every effort to fashion ourselves into faithful servants.
Of course we are blessed because we have the Holy Church, as guide and support in proclaiming our faith in God and in fashioning ourselves into His faithful servants. With our commitment, and the Church’s guidance and help, we too will bring forth springs of life giving water.
The Letter to the Romans clearly shows that our hearts will be changed in our acceptance of God:
And hope does not disappoint,
because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Because of God’s love, because of a love so great that God Himself would die for us, we have been saved.
God proves his love for us
in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.
Brothers and sisters,
We have hearts of stone. Those stone hearts will be ground to powder, worn down by a love so great that we cannot help but be changed. God promises us that He Himself will give us hearts made for love. The Prophet Ezekiel tells us that God promised:
I will give them an undivided heart and will put a new spirit in them;—¨
I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.—¨
Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
They will be—¨my people, and I will be their God.
Friends,
Jesus came to give us hearts of flesh. He came and He fulfilled all that was promised. He gives us His word, His power to forgive, and His body and blood. All this so that we will recognize this simple truth:
—whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst;
the water I shall give will become in him
a spring of water welling up to eternal life.——¨
We need to drink of Christ – who will destroy our hard hearts. We need to drink of Christ, so that we may: worship the Father in Spirit and truth.
When our hearts are changed, when our hearts yield God’s message, when they proclaim God’s word, we can be sure that those who hear us will say:
—We no longer believe because of your word;
for we have heard for ourselves,
and we know that this is truly the savior of the world.—
That will be the ultimate victory. Let us begin on the path today. Accept the Rock of Ages, the Christ who gives us living water. Then go out, as faithful servants, proclaiming His Gospel. Let our hearts bring living water to all we meet.
Amen.
For I trust that you are well versed in the Sacred Scriptures, and that nothing is hid from you; but to me this privilege is not yet granted. It is declared then in these Scriptures, “Be angry, and sin not,” and, “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.” Happy is he who remembers this, which I believe to be the case with you. But may the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ Himself, who is the Son of God, and our everlasting High Priest, build you up in faith and truth, and in all meekness, gentleness, patience, long-suffering, forbearance, and purity; and may He bestow on you a lot and portion among His saints, and on us with you, and on all that are under heaven, who shall believe in our Lord Jesus Christ, and in His Father, who “raised Him from the dead.” Pray for all the saints. Pray also for kings, and potentates, and princes, and for those that persecute and hate you, and for the enemies of the cross, that your fruit may be manifest to all, and that you may be perfect in Him. — Chapter 12
Stand fast, therefore, in these things, and follow the example of the Lord, being firm and unchangeable in the faith, loving the brotherhood, and being attached to one another, joined together in the truth, exhibiting the meekness of the Lord in your intercourse with one another, and despising no one. When you can do good, defer it not, because “alms delivers from death.” Be all of you subject one to another “having your conduct blameless among the Gentiles,” that you may both receive praise for your good works, and the Lord may not be blasphemed through you. But woe to him by whom the name of the Lord is blasphemed! Teach, therefore, sobriety to all, and manifest it also in your own conduct. — Chapter 10
Let us then continually persevere in our hope, and the earnest of our righteousness, which is Jesus Christ, “who bore our sins in His own body on the tree,” “who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth,” but endured all things for us, that we might live in Him. Let us then be imitators of His patience; and if we suffer for His name’s sake, let us glorify Him. For He has set us this example in Himself, and we have believed that such is the case. — Chapter 8
“For whosoever does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, is antichrist;” and whosoever does not confess the testimony of the cross, is of the devil; and whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts, and says that there is neither a resurrection nor a judgment, he is the first-born of Satan. Wherefore, forsaking the vanity of many, and their false doctrines, let us return to the word which has been handed down to us from the beginning; “watching unto prayer,” and persevering in fasting; beseeching in our supplications the all-seeing God “not to lead us into temptation,” as the Lord has said: “The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak.” — Chapter 7
That most gentle father, likewise, I will not pass over in silence, who calls his prodigal son home, and willingly receives him repentant after his indigence, slays his best fatted calf, and graces his joy with a banquet. Why not? He had found the son whom he had lost; he had felt him to be all the dearer of whom he had made a gain. Who is that father to be understood by us to be? God, surely: no one is so truly a Father; no one so rich in paternal love. He, then, will receive you, His own son, back, even if you have squandered what you had received from Him, even if you return naked—”just because you have returned; and will rejoice more over your return than over the sobriety of the other; but only if you heartily repent—”if you compare your own hunger with the plenty of your Father’s “hired servants“—”if you leave behind you the swine, that unclean herd—”if you again seek your Father, offended though He be, saying, “I have sinned, nor am worthy any longer to be called Yours.” Confession of sins lightens, as much as dissimulation aggravates them; for confession is counselled by (a desire to make) satisfaction, dissimulation by contumacy. — Chapter 8
Reason, in fact, is a thing of God, inasmuch as there is nothing which God the Maker of all has not provided, disposed, ordained by reason—”nothing which He has not willed should be handled and understood by reason. All, therefore, who are ignorant of God, must necessarily be ignorant also of a thing which is His, because no treasure-house at all is accessible to strangers. And thus, voyaging all the universal course of life without the rudder of reason, they know not how to shun the hurricane which is impending over the world. Moreover, how irrationally they behave in the practice of repentance, it will be enough briefly to show just by this one fact, that they exercise it even in the case of their good deeds. They repent of good faith, of love, of simple-heartedness, of patience, of mercy, just in proportion as any deed prompted by these feelings has fallen on thankless soil. They execrate their own selves for having done good; and that species chiefly of repentance which is applied to the best works they fix in their heart, making it their care to remember never again to do a good turn. On repentance for evil deeds, on the contrary, they lay lighter stress. In short, they make this same (virtue) a means of sinning more readily than a means of right-doing. — Chapter I
Check out the definitive kid answer at Orthodoxie in Kid Church: Instructional Liturgy.
Bear your share of hardship for the gospel
with the strength that comes from God.
Suffering. Suffering is mentioned approximately seventy-four times in the New Testament, depending on the translation.
A few examples:
Jesus with his disciples:
From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.
“So also the Son of Man will certainly suffer at their hands.—
And how is it written of the Son of Man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt?
A woman asking Jesus to heal her son:
Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly.
Pilate’s wife:
—Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for I have suffered much because of him today in a dream.—
Jesus on Pilate’s killing of Galilean Jews:
And he answered them, —Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way?
The Acts of the Apostles – after the Apostles were dragged before the Sanhedrin:
Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name.
Suffering is an ever present reality. Some Christians attempt to deny suffering. As they account it those who suffer are apart from the kingdom. They preach a gospel of success and happiness. If you are successful, if you are happy, you are destined for heaven. Others maximize suffering. They deny the beauty and joy that is found in the world – the essential goodness that God created. They account all pleasure as sinful.
Neither of those approaches is correct. The gospel of success closes off those who suffer horribly, denying them the happiness of the kingdom. Those who hunger and thirst, those that are tortured, those who are abused and beaten – even within their own families, the sick. They are equal children of the kingdom and very much in need of the God’s loving care; very much in need of the care, concern, and Good News we followers of Christ must provide.
On the other hand the gospel of pain shuts our eyes to the beauty of the world – the magnificence inherent in creation. It makes us think that it is all coincidence – all an accident, all uncreated chemistry. Further it inappropriately makes us think that God desires pain and suffering, that God is a vengeful sadist. That God made a mistake in creating our senses.
Brothers and sisters,
The reality of life is that we have both suffering and happiness. We have pleasure and pain. We have a dichotomy – and we are lacking in perfection. We know that we do not like suffering. We know there is something more – that there is a better reality.
Jesus offers us a glimpse into that reality. He offers us a shinning moment of perfection – a view into the heavenly splendor that awaits us.
He was transfigured before them;
His face shone like the sun
and His clothes became white as light.
And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them,
conversing with Him.—¨
In that moment the voice of the Father is heard:
—This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased;
listen to him.—
As Christians we are to trust that voice. We are to trust the Father. The Son came to teach us about the Father – and to give us the Father’s words. The Father sent the Son to give us life, to give us light, and to open eternity to us. He came to open the better and true reality.
Centuries before Christ’s coming Abram trusted. He listened when God told him to pack up and leave. Abram did all that based on a promise.
Abram went as the LORD directed him.
We too must go and do as the Lord directs – and we can do that because we have more than a promise.
My friends,
We have the promise and more than that – the revelation of God’s might. God has shown himself. Jesus knew that suffering was coming – so He gave Peter, James, and John reassurance in the Transfiguration. Later He showed the ultimate reality. In the resurrection Jesus let us know that the joy and happiness that awaits us is limitless. He has showed us the heavenly – the kingdom where there will be no tears and no suffering, a place of eternal joy and perfection.
As we walk through Lent – and as we reform our lives – let us hold fast to the promise and reality of heaven. Let us rejoice, because no suffering, no persecution, no pain can keep us from God. He is our hope, heaven is our destination.
Amen.