In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
We have heard a fair amount about the Lord’s attitude towards suffering and about the Christian life itself. What a difference there is between the usual Canadian attitude to life and the attitude to life in the Gospel. Unhappily, what a different attitude there usually is even amongst us who are Orthodox believers as compared to what the Gospel is giving us. There is such a difference there because we are so poisoned by the attitude of the world and, for the most part, we are not immersed as we ought to be in the Scriptures, in the Gospel, and in the Orthodox Christian disposition.
We are frequently satisfied with second best. We allow ourselves to be bitter, to hold grudges, to be proud, to be vainglorious, to resent poverty, to resent suffering, to resent inconvenience, to resent discomfort, to be unhappy if we are too hot or too cold (and even to complain to God if we are too hot or too cold). Then we have a look at the example of the Apostles Peter and Paul. What is even worse is that we have the effrontery in our fat, cosy, comfortable 1990s of Canada to look at the Apostles Peter and Paul and to think about them vaguely as some sort of holy guru guys, who were sort of professional holy persons. We say : “They had it nice. Saint Paul saw wonderful visions. He was caught up into Heaven, and isn’t that lovely ! It would be nice if I could do the same”. We tend to think no farther than that. We do not bother to pay attention to the fact that the Lord Himself said that the world which hates the light loves the cosy, comfortable, familiar darkness. The world tries to put out the light and tries to destroy the Master (see John 1:5). Why should they treat us who are the children of the light any differently ?
The fact is that those apostles were human beings just like the rest of us. They were not sinless men who coasted through this life in some sort of perpetual aura of unearthly holiness. They were sinners. Let us not forget that the Apostle Paul was holding coats while others were stoning the holy martyr Stephen. Let us not forget that the Apostle Peter denied the Lord three times. What is significant about these two apostles is that they repented of their sins. Regardless of their sinfulness, they determined to turn about and conform themselves to the love of Jesus Christ.
Nowadays in Canada, we who are believers are being called to account for our belief more than ever before. We who call ourselves Christians (and especially Orthodox Christians) are being called to account for our belief and our behaviour. Previously, people used to pay very little attention to Christian behaviour in general. This is because everyone thought that everyone else was Christian and so people were just vaguely tottering along in life. Nowadays, when there is a general rejection of Christianity in Canada and a sidelining of Christianity to a museum, as it were, Christians are relegated to some sort of irrelevancy. Sadly it can happen that even Orthodox Christians become rather like Fort Garry, or like Upper Canada village in Ontario, where people are all dressed up and are playing “Let’s pretend”. This is how we tend actually to behave when the general attitude towards us is like this. We go through the motions and forget the essence.
People are nevertheless measuring Christ by our behaviour. They are measuring Orthodox Christianity by our behaviour. They are reading the Gospel themselves and they are asking how we measure up to what they are reading. They are asking : “Is that person able to suffer ? Why is that person behaving just like my neighbour when he or she gets betrayed or hurt or disgruntled ? Why is his or her behaviour no different from anyone else’s ? I thought Christians were supposed to be different. If they are no different, what is the point ?” This question can be legitimately asked because we do in fact often behave badly. We very often as Christians give a very bad example of what it is to be a Christian. Indeed, we are too often culpable of behaving as the world does : vicious, nasty, unforgiving or whatever else it might be (the options for sin are numberless). If we behave like the world and do not show the love of Jesus Christ concretely, then we become a stumbling block to others who are looking for Christ. We become the occasion for other people to say : “I don’t need that. I am going to go away somewhere else”. We become the occasion for another person to fall away. That is a dangerous position to be in if we purport to love the Lord.
It is easy for us all to fall into the traps of the world. When we are faced with the example of the Apostles Peter and Paul, it is necessary for us to allow the Lord to bring us up short, to cause us to examine our hearts, to cause us to examine the motivation of our lives, to ask ourselves how we measure up to the yardstick (or the metre-stick) of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. How much do we reflect His example, His love ? How much are we conformed to Him ? It is important for us to pay attention to our life as measured according to the example of the measure of the repentance of those two apostles. The Apostle Paul was not granted visions of the third Heaven (or whatever level it was of Heaven) just because he was such a nice guy and such a professional guru and such a levitator, or whatever else (or because he did something special to acquire it). That is precisely the attitude of the world today : if we do this or this or this, then presto, we get that. God is not milked like that.
The Apostle Paul was given such a blessing, such a vision, and obviously many other revelations of the heavenly Kingdom, because God loves him. The Apostle was living a life of repentance. He was suffering greatly. He needed encouragement, reinforcement and concrete, intimate demonstrations of God’s love for him in order to carry on. That is why it is important for us to love God, to do everything we can to open our hearts, our minds, our souls and our whole life, in fact, to the Lord’s love so that He can tell us that He loves us. It is for us to co-operate with Him so that He can heal our wounds, change our hearts, lighten our darkness and enable us to have the strength (like those apostles) to go out and face the very betrayals, the denials, the rebukes and other sorts of suffering that the world inflicts on us. We will be enabled to suffer with Him for His own world.
Brothers and sisters, on this Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, let us ask the Lord to come to us and renew us with fresh strength, with fresh injection of the Grace of the Holy Spirit. By the Grace of the Holy Spirit may we accept the strength to turn away from our selfishness and to turn towards His selflessness. May we accept the strength to remove ourselves and reveal Him only to those around us. May we accept the Grace, the courage and the strength to make our will identical with His will so that our hearts and our souls will glorify Him, our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.