Sermons & Homilies
Salvation is impossible without God. Of course, we say, this is perfectly logical. But do we feel this reality? Do we really feel how helpless we are without God? Do we really feel our poverty? Or do we feel ourselves...
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In today’s Gospel reading, we note the compassion of God for the woman who had suffered for eighteen years, bent to the ground, unable to straighten out. He was not ashamed to call her to Himself while in the Synagogue and to lay His hands on her and heal her so that she could straighten up amidst all those who looked on, His adversaries, as they were called, who were full of hate and accusation.
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When we look at the holy face of the Mother of God in the icons, we see a woman, a human being just like us, but one who is filled with peace, because she chose not to look away but to keep her gaze always fixed on Him. No matter what happened in her life, she did not look away from Him. This is the source of her deep inner peace that is undisturbed by the turmoil of this world.
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Abba Isaac says:
At a time of darkness, kneeling is more helpful than anything else. … Even if our thoughts are cold and murky, we ought to persist long in kneeling. And although our hearts should be dead at those times and we should not even have a prayer or know what we ought to say, since no words or supplication come to us, nor even a petition, still we ought to remain continually prostrate upon our faces, though we keep silence.
The absolute and utter helplessness of the widow of Nain is in fact the common condition of humanity. All too often we are tempted to believe that we can solve our own problems, with our own strength and our own knowledge and our own cleverness. But there is nothing whatsoever that we can do to overcome the death that has been brought about through sin.
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