Sermon on the 5th Sunday of Great Lent [2012]

My Beloved,

Intensity of our love for God is the one that saves us! Because the fidelity for God is measured not in words but in heroic attitudes, of profound dignity.

And remembrancing it on Saint Mary of Egypt, at fact we emphasize the victory of ascetic love in the face of religious indifference.

For that love is manifested primarily through works.

The example of her conversion is a provocative one. For it extends a hand and sinners, that it calls at repentance, but it calls and Saints at humiliation, for that it shows an amazing example of conversion.

And tell us all that what matters is the determination toward good.

In today’s Evangel [Mark 10, 32-45] we are told the same thing: who wants to be great…to be servant of all!

But what it means to be a servant of God’s perspective? A man of holiness. And in measure in that we are doers of God’s commandments then are His servants…and of all together.

Namely the ministry and the obedience have soteriological valences and not simply social attitudes.

For in Church nothing is formality…but, always, a supple relation of spirituality between God and human.

And into a postmodern world drained of spirituality, the desire of Church to live holy is a provocation. For that Church denies in express mode a mode of life lived at happening.

And the conversion of Saint Mary of Egypt from a dissolute life and her spiritualization demonstrates that the human has as fulfilling life with God and not one secularized.

The man is transfigured by grace in his entirety…but he must to want this thing.

Therefore the intensity of love, full involvement in life with God saves us.

And our fast from this time is a school of understanding. Because we learn to know our weaknesses, but and the deepest desires.

And if we come to understand that we need God more than ourselves, then we come to understand the need for continuous conversion.

For about perseverance in converting we talk now! About a mode of life that always fills us with joy, with an imperishable joy. Amen.