Dancing through Lent in Steadfastness and Hope
Sermon preached by Teva Regule on March 30, 2025 at St. Mary Orthodox Church in Cambridge, MA
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit—one God. Amen.
How does one grow closer to God? The Gospel often tells us what we should do to live as a follower of Christ. For example, we are to love God and neighbor and do good to others (e.g. Matt. 25: 31–46), but it doesn’t give us a lot of guidance on how we grow in our relationship with God and, for us as Orthodox, become more and more God-like—what we call in Greek, theosis. This is our goal; this is what we mean by “salvation.” The question is not so much “how to or will I get to Heaven,” but “who will I become in the process of living a Christian life.” This is where we can look to the wisdom in the writings of those we call the Fathers and Mothers of the Church for guidance. They often outline this process in a three-fold manner—purification, illumination, and, ultimately, deification. The process of becoming God-like—for instance, to see the world as God sees it, to have mercy as God has mercy, and to love as God loves—is not linear. I like to think of it as a dance—with steps forwards and backwards, with dips and turns one way or another, but hopefully, moving forward with joy and hope in the resurrection of our Lord and the ultimate victory of Life over death.
This dance begins at our baptism. During the service of the making of a catechumen, we ask God to remove from us any delusions and to “fill us with [the] faith, hope, and love that is in [God]… inscrib[ing us] in the Book of Life and unit[ing us] to the flock of Your inheritance.” We are then instructed to turn West, an orientation associated with darkness, to renounce Satan and all of his works. We then turn East, an orientation associated with light, and profess our allegiance to Christ. This prefigures the double movement of purification and illumination that is at the heart of our life-long spiritual dance. Turns one way and another. In the water/bath of our baptism we are reborn of water and spirit, symbolically participating in the death and resurrection of Christ. In his commentary on the “mysteries” of initiation—Baptism, Chrismation and the repeatable rite, the Eucharist)—Cyril of Jerusalem (4th c.) explains that the water/bath is both “tomb and womb” for us. We have died in Christ, but are born anew, participating in His Resurrection. Now, we are to walk in the newness of life.
We continue this journey throughout our lives—steps forwards and backwards and. sometimes, sideways. Every now and then, we may fall or take a wrong turn. The Fathers call this giving into the “passions.” The “passions” are not merely understood as we might think today—to have strong emotions about something, but as “diseases of the soul.” We might call them addictions. The “passions” are often natural emotions, but they are ones that have become disordered and, ultimately, underlie our sinful behavior. Our ancient writers often list eight of these—gluttony, un-chastity, greed, anger, listlessness, despair, vanity, and pride. We need to be watchful of these and work to purify ourselves from their adverse effects. Then, we get back up and continue our dance. We work to redirect or illumine our thoughts through the practice of the virtues—to respond in faith, hope, love, kindness, patience, humility, and self-control. And the beat goes on. We continue to dance within a community of faith and participate in the life of the Church. In doing so, we are strengthened and grow in relationship with the Triune God. In particular, Cyril emphasizes that we do so by our participation in the Eucharist. He says, “Bread strengthens [our] hearts… So strengthen your hearts by partaking of that spiritual bread, and gladden the face of your soul… and pass ‘from glory to glory’ in Christ Jesus” (MC4.9)—towards our deification.
Our Lenten journey is a microcosm of this grand dance. As the other speakers in our series this month have emphasized, this is when we focus particularly on the “how” of growing in our relationship with God, by fasting and forgiving others (as well as ourselves), through almsgiving, prayer, and consciously and continuously saying “yes” to God in our lives. Our Lenten dance, just as our lifetime spiritual dance, takes practice and patience. We have to stretch our muscles and work on our “technique” in order to master the steps of the dance so that we can dance freely and joyfully. It requires that steadfastness of spirit and hope that we hear today in our Epistle reading and that humility of belief—“Lord, I believe, help my unbelief” that we hear in our Gospel reading.
One of the prominent prayers of the season—the Prayer of St. Ephrem—summarizes our dance through Lent. It speaks of the double movement in which we began our Christian life—purifying ourselves of those “passions” which hold us captive, and exercising those virtues we should strive to incorporate in our lives more fully. The prayer:
O Lord and Master of my life, give me not a spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power and idle talk; but grant rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love to Your servant. Yes, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions and not to judge others for blessed are You unto ages of ages. Amen.
(The book discussion group just spent last night discussing this prayer in depth using the thought of the noted French Orthodox theologian, Olivier Clément, as the basis for our reflection*. I would now like to share some of his thoughts.) As many of us are aware, this prayer is usually accompanied by three great “metanias” or prostrations, calling us to a conversion of our perception of reality. In the prayer we speak to the One who gives our life meaning—our Master—the one who, as Clément says, “gives and forgives and continues [to give us hope] in a future made anew.” He is the One who shows us the way. And yet, we sometimes find that obstacles stand in our way, often of our own making. The prayer speaks of sloth, despair, lust of power and idle talk. Let us take a look at these “passions” more closely with the help of Clément. He understands sloth to not just mean a sense of laziness, but more profoundly a sense of “forgetfulness…the inability to be amazed, to marvel or even to see” (p. 73). It can be expressed as either a sense of inertia or hyperactivity. We forget that “all things are rooted in mystery and that mystery dwells within me” (p. 74). Sloth can often lead to despair, the second of the passions listed. Despair is a sense of cynicism or numbness to the world around me, and ultimately, a loss of hope. Because of this, we may turn to lust of power and idle talk. Clément posits that, because we have lost our hope, we need slaves and enemies in order to hold someone responsible or to blame for the anxiety that consumes us. [Metania – a change of the heart…]
Having asked God to free or purify us from these passions, we now ask God to instill in us or illumine us with the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love. He emphasizes that these virtues are not “mere morality, but a participation in Christ’s humanity” (p. 77). Chastity is not just about continence, but about integrity and integration. It is desire integrated into communion and transformed by an encounter with the agapic love of the Triune God. Our humility inscribes our faith into everyday life. According to St. John Climacus (whose life and teaching we remember on this fourth Sunday of Lent), it is in humility that we learn from God and as much as we allow Him to dwell in our hearts and souls, we find rest from our struggles (p. 78 referencing the Ladder of Divine Ascent 25.3). We begin to see the world as God sees it. Patience: The virtue of patience puts trust in time. Clément emphasizes that it is not just earthly time, but time “mingled with eternity.” He emphasizes further that a “time that moves toward the resurrection is one of hope” (p 80). All virtues now culminate in “love,” whose essence is Christ (p. 81). This gives us an inner freedom that doesn’t separate prayer from service. It allows us to “discern [the] person within others… [and] bring peace to those who hate themselves and who destroy the world” (p. 81) . It allows us to have mercy as God has mercy. [Metania]
In the last stanza of the prayer, we ask God to allow us to see our own transgressions and not to judge others. This requires a sense of self-knowledge that comes from constant watchfulness—attention to our inner thoughts and feelings. For Clément to see our own sins is “to die, but to die in Christ in order to be reborn in his Breath and to regain a foothold in the Father’s house” (p. 83). When we see our own sins and not judge others, we are capable of truly loving the other. Loving as God loves. [Metania]
And so, we continue our dance—working to free or purify ourselves from the passions that afflict us—taking steps forwards and backwards—and practicing the virtues that illumine our hearts and move us closer and closer to that intimate relationship with God. This is the relationship that allows us to see as God sees, have mercy as God has mercy and love as God loves. In doing so we not only become more God-like, but with Christ as our guide, we become what we are called to be—truly human.
Amen.
* Excerpts are from Clément, Olivier. Three Prayers: The Lord’s Prayer, O Heavenly King, Prayer of St. Ephrem. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2000.