Sermon on the 27th Sunday after Pentecost [2012]

My Beloved,

Today’s Evangel [Luke 13, 10-17] theorizes the verticality in faith!

For that hunchback life, bent of back, is the life in heavy passions, while the life in faith is the life full of grace.

And woman of face, demonized of 18 years of „a spirit of infirmity” [v. 11] or „bounded of Satan” [v. 16] is loosed by God by word and by His grace [v. 12-13].

Ie we have here a paradigm of Confession, where, through the prayer of the priest and through the grace of God, our many sins are cleansed.

For that the Lord puts His hands upon woman [v. 13] and, through this, gave her His grace, which casts out the demon from her.

And as priest, always, with great power, I feel the work/ the forgiveness of God and in me and in those I confess.

Likewise when I sanctify the water, in the name of the Lord, I feel that I work together with God but that He is the Sanctifier of the water and of mine.

For the true liberation is the one through the grace of God. And the interior freedom is the consequence of the receiving of grace.

Without the grace of God there is not liberty and nor real relation with God and with men.

And when the Lord tells to the hypocrites, that the human joy is more necessary than animal nutrition [v. 15], then they were covered of shame [v. 17].

Shame…for that they were inhuman with the woman…And to be inhuman with someone means to deprive him of joy.

But the Lord here and always filled people with joy.

And this fasting, of the Lord’s birth, is a fasting of joy, of the gifts to others…precisely because He is the gift brought to all mankind.

And when He gives Himself to us, He does nothing else than to teach us to give ourselves.

For any gift bears our imprint and in any exit towards others we find ourselves.

So that, the today’s Evangel is a pleading for communion, for the exit in the greeting of others.

For coming in the aid of others we show that we are disciples of Him who came to save the lost sheep of the world.

And it’s so much work for us, Orthodox Christians, that, if we were serious, we did not have time to sleep.

For our lives must to be full of service, of sacred readings, of work in the behalf of all humanity.

Therefore, we must not waste time but to untie the world by her infirmities!

To teach people how to escape the passions, ie of infirmity.

And making thus we follow the Lord, Who taught us to comfort and help the whole creation.

Happy New Year to all and more peace in the end of this calendar year! Amen.