Sermon on the 7th Sunday after Pentecost [2012]
My Beloved,
This Sunday’s Evangel [Mt. 9, 27-35] it has four this month that talks about healing.
In every Sunday in July 2012 to talk about healing someone: of the centurion’s servant (July 1), of the two demonized from Gadarinos (July 8), of the paralytic (July 15)…
For that healing is the sign of deep human straightening through faith and good works.
For that salvation is our healing from sin, from the evil of sin…a healing that we enjoy with our whole being.
Therefore, in this Sunday, when today’s Evangel talks us about of healing of two blind men and of a mute demonized…we will talk about the healing of vices.
I use the word vice…for that to be understood by as many…although, in Orthodox Tradition, we use the correlative passion. But the passion, understood as with the habitude with the sin, in the same with the vice.
And the fundamental question is: why cannot escape immediately, when we want, of the vice of drinking, of the immorality, of the cursed, of the smoking, of the laziness, of the boredom, etc.?
For that we have no will to fight with the bad habit of us…
For that every vice/ passion is like a virus that destroys our immune system…
And when we want to fight with a vice/ with a passion…we understand the difference between to think that you can and can effectively.
Many think that they can be courageous…without knowing if they are courageous.
Many believe that they are non–chained of sins…until you do not check them at thoughts, at feelings, at the images that cross them.
But the thoughts that run through us…often become facts. And the actions and our words speak about our inner state, about our perspective to see things.
And around the vices that we have…the perspective is very narrow.
We tend to protect our vices.
We tend to slurring them. To keep them at hot…
For if you like to get drunk…and you do not like to be held for that…or get left without drinking.
And if the woman is your spasm, the desire to dominate, to possess her…without which you feel weak, unfulfilled…the fight with your own pleasure…is a fighting with the pleasure that your split interior your will.
Most often we hear or say: „I cannot leave. Try, but I cannot! I cannot stand without pleasure or without the fact to produce pain in another”.
And if various foods, and various odors and various visual delights, all brought of financial prosperity, increase pleasure, a refines in perverted mode…imaginations full of revenge, the planning of how to steal, how to kill, how to do evil grow in you the sadism, the wickedness, the perversity of rancor.
And if you think that the thoughts and the small acts of evil…are not so dangerous…in time you will see that any minimizing of evil means a sagging of it to extend.
And the evil extends until you do with all of it servant.
Makes you a coward, heated by pleasure, pride, avid after money and fame, perverted, shameless, ambitious.
An ambition that destroys everything around… while on you transforms into a ruin.
Why we cannot fight with easily with the evil?…For that we allowed it to invade us.
But the sin is not more powerful than the virtue!
We must understand this thing very well…and we observe it, everywhere, in the lives of the Saints and of Church’ man that fight with the sin.
For than when the man is entrusted by God and fight against the sin with the Sacraments and with spiritual science of Church he de-charms of bad, he unsticks of bad, he unties from evil…and he gets his freedom to feel, to live, to think in outside of sin, of the vice of distorting the perspective.
The man who thought he cannot live without drinking, no women, no cigarettes, no music…comes to understand that this is possible…then when he repents. When cleansed of passions.
The man who thought that he cannot dispense the good life, he cannot live without luxury…when he is put to survive…understands that is possibly and this thing.
Despassion/ healing of vices is an enormous heroism, with other words, a heroism theological- sacramental, for that healing is through the understanding of the evil that we do and through our fill of grace and repentance.
We, Orthodoxies, fight liturgical–mystical against the vices/ the passions…and not just at the level of thoughts/ mental!
We analyze the passions, we see the roots and effects…but, in the same time, we confess and we communicate with Christ God, fill us of grace in prayer and fasting, in the patience of temptations and in continuous rising from sins.
A simple analysis of their, psychological or psychoanalytical or philosophical, does not resolve the problem of fund.
For that the problem of fund is this: the vicious thoughts become habitudes/ habits/ the modes of comportment.
And if our vices are thoughts transformed into actions continue, in habits, the healing of vices then is of the whole man…and not just of our minds.
Therefore is needed of a fight on all plans with the vice.
And at the level of understanding and of feeling and of volition and of physiological the vice must be pursued by us and forced to sleep, with the grace of God, through that instead of sinful pleasure must be searched spiritual pleasure of good works, of spiritual understanding, of contemplation.
And instead of evil zeal, of the malice and revenge, we must want the zeal of the good for faith, and instead of evil actions…actions that ennoble us.
For Orthodox life, the life of repentance and of facts of beautiful, high, spiritual, does not produce a mutilation of human nature but a transfiguration of it.
A cleaning of it…that fills us with holy beauty.
Instead of fornication…purity, instead of bad behavior…gravity…instead of a faithless life…a godly life.
And when the man turns to God…and sees Him as the horizon of his life…that on the land to which he wants to go forever…the evil movements, ie the vices, to become movements toward good…in short time…
For that the vice is a bad centering on objects and people…which we see in utilitarian mode.
But when we get out from the circle of coarse utilitarianism, of the facts only for money, we understand that exist freedom beyond money, beyond rudeness, beyond luxury clothes and the cars of hundreds of thousands of euros.
That the naturalness of life presuppose fulfillment through what you want and do…and that life is not a chore…but a great benefit.
It is the well–doing…is very good gift of God for us…for that we know Him, to grow in beauty and holy life, for that our joy to be endless.
From this perspective, the encircling of vices and the fight with them…means a greater freedom and beauty in our lives.
For that we choose to do what God wants to do… and not what want demons to do…or we, in passionate mode, influenced by demons.
And for this we need to know books of Church’s Tradition, to learn what is vice and what is virtue. And how to fight with the vice…with the vices of all kinds…and how to acquire the virtues of all kinds.
And we go back at to what I said in the past: you cannot live orthodox without theological knowledge.
To praise the stupidity, the ignorance, the illiteracy…means to praise the theological decadence.
For that at base of decadence, of the gross sinfulness stays the theological ignorance. The unawareness of dogmas, of the canons of the Church, of Church’s services, of what is good and what is bad.
But when we enrich theological every day, when we immerse in the life of purity and piety of the Church, when we fight with passions effectively…and not optional, this thing is observed…and will observe an further in the Kingdom of God, where each of us, that we will enjoy the glory of God, we shine on measure of our spiritual growth.
So that we must believe, to hope and to love God and people on measure of our heart.
On measure of our consciousness.
On measure of our longing for holiness.
And we see that then when we strive to do everything we feel we do, we come to live the tranquility, the fulfillment.
God give us all the divine power to fight us with ourselves, with our own bad choices…so we deny the evil choices…for the spiritual joy of the best!
Give us His holy power to enjoy of life and of health and of our property in a simple mode and dignified.
For that He calls us to see with the eyes of heart and to speak with the mouth full of truth.
From good heart…
For that therefrom exits the goodness: from the heart transfigured.
From the heart where the grace of God descended at Baptism and worked wonderfully. Amen!