OrthoAnalytika

St. Luke 8:5-15. In today's homily, Fr. Anthony speaks about how a marriage should function in an Orthodox context and how that translates to our life in the Church. Enjoy the show!

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Here's the homily I planned on giving before I called an audible.

Homily Notes: Tending the Garden of our Souls St. Luke 8:5-15: The Gospel of the Sower

“Have you rejected Satan and all his works and all his pomp and all his pride? Have you rejected Satan and all his works and all his pomp and all his pride? Have you rejected Satan and all his works and all his pomp and all his pride?”

“Have you accepted Christ? Have you accepted Christ? Have you accepted Christ?”

Our affirmation of these questions before our baptism, the sacramental participation that followed, and the fact that we are here today means that we are Christians. We have rejected the way of the world – which is ruled by Satan – and have become part of the New Humanity that is preparing to inherit the New World; a world that is uncorrupted by Satan and the sins of the Old Humanity.

To move away from eschatological and theological terms into the beautiful metaphors Christ gave us in today’s parable: the seed of perfection (Christ Himself!) has been planted in our souls.

A seed is a miraculous thing; it contains all the information needed for the growing of a perfect plant. The DNA is all there. A wheat seed has everything needed to grow up to be a perfect stalk of wheat. More amazingly, a small acorn can grow into an enormous tree. The seed of Christ that has been planted in our souls is jut like that: we have been given everything we need – all the information – to grow into perfect men and women, into saints, into little Christ’s... to grow into the kind of peaceful, loving, and productive humans we were conceived and born to become. The perfect seed is within our souls.

But is that enough? We have all planted many seeds in our lifetime. Good seeds. Good soil. And yet we know that if we are not careful, we will still end up with a terrible harvest of weeds and brambles.

Why? How does this happen?

We live in a world that is full of loose spores. The winds are full of the world’s little seeds. They, too, carry all the potential of full growth within themselves. At some point, some of these spores are bound to find their way into our gardens ... and into the soil of our souls.

The corruption of our gardens may begin through inattention – a lack of what we call “nepsis” – but that doesn’t explain why we end up with a bumper crop of thistles and thorns, leaving the seed we originally planted weak or even completely dead. How did it happen? It certainly wasn’t the seed. And it wasn’t just that we weren’t paying attention – we always notice when something has changed in our gardens and in our lives.

It happened because we didn’t bother with the difficult work of weeding.

Weeding is such a judgmental term – it assumes a discernment that we have all but forgotten. It requires, for instance, the realization, that Church on Sunday is more important than sports or sleeping in; that Feast Days are even more worthy ways to spend vacation days than trips to the beach; that spending a few minutes in prayer is worth the sacrifice of a few minutes of facebook or television; and that chastity is better in every respect than the transitory joy of serial monogamy, pornography, and adultery.

New gardeners can’t tell a beautiful weed from beanstalk; they need to learn. We also need to learn. We need to realize

1. That there are such things as weeds;

2. That they are dangerous threats to our souls, our families, and our communities; and

3. That it is our responsibility as human beings (God’s imagers on this earth; the New Humans!) to pull them out.

Terrible and noxious things have made their way into our souls. We don’t like to call them weeds because some of them are pretty and it sounds so judgmental. But as Christ says, you know a plant by its fruit;vand the plants of this world may look nice for a while, but their fruit is death and damnation (see Luke 6:44).

The Tree of the Cross is the plant that rises from the well-tended garden of the Christian soul, and its fruit is eternal life.

Fr. Anthony speaks about discernment, the perils of pride in the priesthood, and CS Lewis’ The Abolition of Man.

2 Corinthians 9:6-11. If we are not careful, the seeds we sow will grow briars. Sow well, in Christ!

Revelation, Session Five Christ the Savior, Anderson SC Fr. Anthony Perkins

Sources:

• The translation of the Apocalypse is from the Orthodox Study Bible.
• Lawrence R. Farley, The Apocalypse of St. John: A Revelation of Love and Power, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2011),
• Bishop Averky, The Epistles and the Apocalypse (Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, Volume III. (Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2018).
• Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on the Apocalypse, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, vol. 123, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011).
• Jack Norman Sparks, The Orthodox Study Bible: Notes (Thomas Nelson, 2008), 1712.
• Venerable Bede, The Explanation of the Apocalypse, trans. Edward Marshall (Oxford: James Parker and Co., 1878).
• William C. Weinrich, ed., Revelation, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005).

Review – from the Orthodox Study Bible

Introduction and Blessing

1:1. The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants – things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John.

2. Who bore witness to the Word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw. [speaking of the Gospel of St. John]

3. Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.

Greeting to the Seven Churches

4. John, to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne,

5. and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood,

6. and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever. Amen. (OSB)

7. Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen.

8. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, says the Lord (God), who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

10. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day and I heard behind me a loud voice, as of a trumpet,

11. saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last.” And, “What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.

12-13. Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And having turned I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the seven lampstands One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band.

New Material – from the Orthodox Study Bible

14-20. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire; His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, as if refined in a furnace, and His voice as the sound of many waters; He had in His right hand seven stars, out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was like the sun shining in its strength. And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. But He laid His right hand on me, saying to me, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death. Write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after this. The mystery of the seven stars which you saw in My right hand, and the seven golden lampstands: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands which you saw are the seven churches.

1:14. His head and hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and His eyes like a flame of fire

• OSB. Further, Christ is here described as God, His hair (v. 14) being that of Daniel’s vision of God as the “Ancient of Days” (7:9; see also 1En 46:1). His eyes signify knowledge; His feet (v. 15), permanence and stability; His voice, authority or teaching; His right hand (v. 16), power; His two-edged sword, complete discernment. This imagery continues throughout Revelation to affirm the preexistence and eternal divinity of the Son of Man (see also Jn 1:1–18). Thus, in Christ man (v. 14) and God (vv. 15, 16) are united.
• St. Bede. 14. white. The antiquity and eternity of majesty are represented by whiteness on the head, to which all the chief ones adhere, as hairs, who, because of the sheep...

Revelation, Session Four Christ the Savior, Anderson SC Fr. Anthony Perkins

Sources:

• The translation of the Apocalypse is from the Orthodox Study Bible.
• Lawrence R. Farley, The Apocalypse of St. John: A Revelation of Love and Power, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2011),
• Bishop Averky, The Epistles and the Apocalypse (Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, Volume III. (Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2018).
• Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on the Apocalypse, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, vol. 123, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011).
• Jack Norman Sparks, The Orthodox Study Bible: Notes (Thomas Nelson, 2008), 1712.
• Venerable Bede, The Explanation of the Apocalypse, trans. Edward Marshall (Oxford: James Parker and Co., 1878).
• William C. Weinrich, ed., Revelation, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005).

Review

Introduction and Blessing

1:1. The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants – things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John.

2. Who bore witness to the Word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw. [speaking of the Gospel of St. John]

3. Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.

Greeting to the Seven Churches

4. John, to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne,

5. and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth. To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood,

6. and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever. Amen. (OSB)

7. Behold, He is coming with clouds, and every eye will see Him, even they who pierced Him. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of Him. Even so, Amen.

New Material

8. “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, says the Lord (God), who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

• Andrew of Caesarea. Christ is shown here both as God and as the Ruler of all things, both beginningless and at the same time endless, existing now and existing before and having no end, since he is coeternal with the Father, and on account of this he will render to each one the wages of deeds done. Ps 62(61):12; Prv 24:12; Wis 16:14; Rom 2:6; 1 Cor 5:10
• St. Bede. Who is. He had said this same thing of the Father, for God the Father came, as He also is to come, in the Son.
• St. Augustine. The Lord himself said plainly in the Apocalypse, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first”—before whom is nobody—“the last”—after whom is nobody; he precedes all things and sets a term to all things. Do you want to gaze upon him as the first? “All things were made through him.”49 Do you seek him as the last? “For Christ is the end of the law, that every one who has faith may be justified.” In order for you to live at some time or other, you had him as your creator. In order for you to live always, you have him as your redeemer.

9. I, John, both your brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was on the island that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.

• OSB. Patmos: A small rocky island 40 miles off the western coast of modern Turkey, fifty miles south of Ephesus, to which the Romans exiled criminals. John’s preaching must have been considered a seditious threat to the public interest if he was indeed a prisoner there.
• Logos. According to a tradition preserved by Irenaeus, Eusebius, Jerome and others, John, the author of Revelation, was exiled there in the 14th year of the reign of Domitian and subsequently released to Ephesus under Nerva (96 ad).
• St. Andrew of Caesarea. “Inasmuch as your brother,” he says, “being also a co-participant in the tribulations on account of Christ, I naturally have acquired trustworthiness among you. Being condemned to live on the island of Patmos on account of the witness of Jesus, I will announce to you the mysteries seen by me on it.”

10. I was in t...