Sermons & Homilies
If we find ourselves bereft of human sympathy and understanding; if we find that all the powers of our body, mind, and soul are exhausted and depleted and ineffectual; if we feel ourselves to have come to the abyss of despair and utter confusion; then let us take heart!
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After several weeks of almost unprecedented temptations of both soul and body here at the monastery, we have just heard these beautiful and inspiring words from St. Paul in today’s Epistle lesson: “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” (Romans 15:4). And in today’s Gospel reading we are being given an earnest of this comfort and this hope, as we behold Christ healing the physical afflictions of the blind men and the spiritual afflictions of the demoniac.
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Our faith can only reach full maturity in the crucible of the desert, in droughts of consolation, in periods of dryness and doubt. If we fail to engage in the struggle of prayer and fasting as the Lord urges us to do, then we will ultimately succumb to unbelief.
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The Lord Jesus Christ came swiftly from heaven, unable to contain His ardent love which desires to pour forth all of His goodness upon us. The activity and violence of the demons is strong; but the activity of the very Self-Existing Wisdom, Word and Power of God, leaves no room for the restless vanity of the devil.
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Today, in the Gospel, we heard of a case of demonic possession. Most of the world does not have to bear such a cross; even so, we all have to bear something difficult. We have all been born into and formed within this fallen world. Now, we all find ourselves here, in this church, waiting upon the mercy of God, seeking to draw closer to Him in our hearts, awaiting Holy Communion which knits us together by grace, transforming us all together more and more into the Body of Christ. It seems that most of the world has gone mad; what is called normal by it is called demonic possession by us.
