Modern “Orthodox Apologetics”: What to Watch Out For—and “Orthodoxy of the Heart”

[00:00:01][bell] >> In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

[00:00:09]>> [bell] >> The world is full of people who do not understand Christianity.

[00:00:14]But worse than that, there are Christians [music] who don't understand Christianity.

[00:00:19]There are Orthodox Christians who don't understand the heart of Orthodoxy, which is [snorts] a lived faith.

[00:00:29]They don't understand the difficulties that we're up against, that there is an enemy who wants everybody's destruction, and they're working overtime, and they have people on earth here who are their servants who are watching and knowing and fighting, as well.

[00:00:44]We know very well.

[00:00:48]And they're fighting and they're trying to get us to be affected by their thinking, by the world.

[00:00:54]For the Lord says very clearly that the prince of this world is the devil.

[00:00:58]He does not mince his words.

[00:01:01]And there are Orthodox Christians, unfortunately, who get affected by the world. They listen to the media, and they think that they're standing up for certain rights.

[00:01:10]But they're affected on another side, and the reason for that is because, as St. Bessarion says, the Christian must be all eye, like the cherubim.

[00:01:20]He thinks he's careful about one thing, but then the devil's on the other side, just waiting for the attack.

[00:01:26]They spend a great deal of time scheming our destructions, the destruction of everybody, since they want everybody to be tormented for no other reason than their own hate and pride and all the evil that they have within [clears throat] them.

[00:01:46]And so, the unfortunate reality is that people get affected.

[00:01:52]It's very difficult not to get affected.

[00:01:55]But the reason why we are poisoned by this being affected is because we're not utilizing the means that are in front of us and we can be saying this millions of times and still people won't be getting it.

[00:02:09]It's very important that you pay heed and listen so that you can understand that Orthodoxy is lived in repentance.

[00:02:16]There's no other way for one to be illumined.

[00:02:21]The Pharisees were very upset with the Lord. He got under their skin as the saying goes because he corrected them.

[00:02:29]But the Pharisees among the people would correct Christ. They were contradicting his teaching.

[00:02:36]The exact same thing happens today, of course.

[00:02:39]Nowadays you can go on the internet and you can just go on to any site like YouTube where you have apologists for everything.

[00:02:50]Everybody's rebutting everybody.

[00:02:52]And people get confused and they listen to one thing and they listen to the other thing and realize there's always going to be somebody saying something and trying to prove their point.

[00:03:05]But you know something's wrong when there's no repentance.

[00:03:08]You can tell the spirit.

[00:03:10]We have unfortunately even catechumens nowadays who are who have their own channels who are preaching Orthodoxy and they have not lived the faith.

[00:03:19]They're bringing Protestant baggage with them.

[00:03:23]And yet at the same time they're trying to tell people how they should be Orthodox. This is this is the recipe for disaster.

[00:03:30]We've seen many such cases of people just falling away.

[00:03:35]But that's not the way.

[00:03:37]The way is years worth of tears of repentance, of true becames, of communion hymns, of liturgies of intense concentration and attention in the matters of our salvation in contemplation of God's long-suffering in his dealings with us.

[00:04:01]One of the most moving things is on Holy Friday when we hear the response to each of the gospel passages, "Glory to thy long-suffering, O Lord."

[00:04:10]And this is something which we should contemplate daily.

[00:04:14]His long-suffering with us.

[00:04:17]The spirit of the fathers and the spirit of the Christian is not to make fun and rebuke.

[00:04:24]It is actually to be made fun of and to be rebuked.

[00:04:29]>> [snorts] >> I wonder how what these people would do if they were to open the books of Saint Sisoes whose memory celebrate today.

[00:04:38]And so many of the desert fathers who really teach us the way since they lived it since they were these were the par excellence examples of repentance.

[00:04:48]What would they say when they open up and see exact opposite of what they are teaching like the Pharisees?

[00:04:56]What would they do?

[00:04:58]They would probably just close the book and just shrug their shoulders and go on.

[00:05:06]Well, the spirit of these fathers is very different. It's always pointing the finger to ourselves, examining ourselves because this is the recipe for salvation.

[00:05:16]This is the recipe for healing.

[00:05:20]The opposite of what we are taught in the world.

[00:05:24]Know that when you open your television or go on to the internet and listen to the media, there's probably going to be some poison.

[00:05:31]How can we fight back?

[00:05:35]Repentance.

[00:05:36]Repentance and persistence in prayer.

[00:05:40]And an acknowledgement and owning up to who we are, not who everybody else is.

[00:05:46]These people have no clue what condemnation comes upon them with slander.

[00:05:52]Slander is one of the worst evils.

[00:05:55]There's a famous story of a father confessing to a father, which I think I've mentioned here before, was confessing their sins one by one.

[00:06:07]And to the priest, [clears throat] and finally, in the confession, he says, "I've slandered."

[00:06:15]And so the confessor stops him right there and says, "Wait, hold on just a second there."

[00:06:21]And he says, "Go fetch me a pillow." And so he went and got a pillow full of feathers, and it was a windy day, and he said, "Open up the pillow and let out the feathers."

[00:06:34]And although the monk could not really understand what this the whole point of this was, he was obedient, and he opened up the pillow case, and out came the feathers, and the wind blew the feathers everywhere.

[00:06:50]And then he said to him, "Go collect the feathers now."

[00:06:54]And the monk said, "Father, this is impossible. The feathers have are scattered all over the place."

[00:06:59]And he says, "That's what slander does, because it goes from one person to another person to another person. The story gets changed over and over. Salt and pepper added, salsa, and all the other things."

[00:07:11]The story gets changed, but who is responsible for starting it?

[00:07:15]He's the one that's going to answer to God for everything, because he's causing damage. There's no fear of God today.

[00:07:22]There's no concept of this today.

[00:07:27]And people don't realize how far their word could go, especially with the internet today, where you open up your mouth and you say this and you say that.

[00:07:36]And there's no fear of judgment.

[00:07:38]And these are the weightier matters for which we should be very careful.

[00:07:44]We have so many other examples of why we should not judge. You know how many people judged St. John the Baptist and talked about some human elements which people of course blow out of proportion.

[00:07:58]>> [bell] >> I would not want to be on the side of those who judged St. John.

[00:08:03]Neither would I want to be on the side of those who judged St. Philip and the whole list goes on and it boils down to judging our savior.

[00:08:11]The Pharisees.

[00:08:14]And when you have these people who are holy, who are way way ahead.

[00:08:23]And they have insight and they look with pity. Could you imagine how much our savior, the long-suffering Lord, deals with us.

[00:08:32]How much he deals with.

[00:08:35]But he knows that we need major healing. And what does he do? On top of it all, he does the bulk. He does the majority of the work for us.

[00:08:47]Another thing we've heard so many times that we come and we kiss the cross. We have no idea.

[00:08:52]No clue of the depth of the mystery of his love for us that he he did 90% of the work for us on the cross.

[00:09:01]To show us that greater love has no man than this than to lay down his life for his friends.

[00:09:07]So that he could give to us of his blood, of his body.

[00:09:12]And we're somewhere in la-la land. We can't perceive these great things because the eyes of our souls are darkened because we do not repent.

[00:09:21]Because we're wasting too much time looking at everybody else's faults.

[00:09:26]Whether real or imaginary. And even when they're real, there's always salt and pepper, as I say, added to it all.

[00:09:34]And so this was the life of the Pharisees who rejected Jesus Christ our Lord because they did not live up to his standards. They did not listen to his word.

[00:09:44]Now, the standards of the Lord are very high.

[00:09:47]But at the same time, he gives us the redeeming medicine of repentance. And this is the reason why this is our best our best route. St. Sisoes, whose memory we celebrate today, at his deathbed requested of the angels whom he saw, "Please, give me a little bit more time to repent."

[00:10:11]And the Holy Spirit is active in the church to our very day.

[00:10:15]There are those who see.

[00:10:17]There are those whose eyes have been opened to certain degree at least so that they can they can perceive these things.

[00:10:25]They're they're all over.

[00:10:28]But not nearly what it was at the height of the illumination [clears throat] periods of the church.

[00:10:40]But by the grace of God, he richly wish it wishes to bestow upon us his great mercy. This is why he is long-suffering and waits for our repentance.

[00:10:55]Before we become teachers, we have to really be good students.

[00:10:59]And this is the reason why I say the catechumen, the uninitiated, is not a preacher and cannot preach and does not have a voice. And so, we, the Christians, have to utilize the means by which we can repent and remember very clearly the words of the Baptist who says, "Bring forth fruits worthy of repentance."

[00:11:22]So, that means it can't stop with just God, please forgive me. I'm sorry.

[00:11:26]It means that we have to do something.

[00:11:27]We have to fast all the fast of the church.

[00:11:31]We have to be going to confession regularly.

[00:11:34]And if we have a blessing to do a few 3-day full fasts or whatever it is that we have a blessing to do so that we can manifest fruits worthy of repentance and acknowledge the fact that we are unworthy.

[00:11:46]That we have wounded the body of Christ.

[00:11:50]But ironically we hear in the hymns of the church by thy wounds we are all healed, O Lord.

[00:11:57]So here we are wounding the body by our own sins.

[00:12:02]But by his wounds we are healed. And so that's why we have great saints like St. Mary of Egypt who was sanctified because of her sin.

[00:12:14]I think you know what I mean by that. It doesn't mean that sin is okay.

[00:12:19]It means that her brokenness was the cause of her return to God.

[00:12:24]It means that she did not turn back to the old vomit.

[00:12:28]It means that she was very firm in her resolution by the grace of God, acknowledging that she could do nothing without the help of the Holy Mother of God whom she had great devotion towards.

[00:12:45]And so in today's gospel we hear blind men two blind men calling out to the Lord Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.

[00:13:00]And then the gospel continues.

[00:13:03]They actually entered into where Jesus was, to him. It started off with the prayer and then finally they went to him and the Lord says to them, "Do you believe that I can do this?"

[00:13:13]Be it unto you according to your faith and they were healed.

[00:13:19]And the Lord said "Just keep this to yourself." But they went and published it everywhere.

[00:13:25]The The gives us an example hiding virtue.

[00:13:29]What we need to do.

[00:13:32]And so they persisted because again please remember one of the big tricks of the devil is he wants to convince us that nothing's happening.

[00:13:41]Perhaps we may hear these words and perhaps we may want to make a beginning but then they're going to come and tell you no, no, no, nothing's changing. Forget about it.

[00:13:51]Darkness.

[00:13:53]We can't go that direction. We have to persist and we have to persist and we have to persist and acknowledge that it's it's impossible for us to move forward without the grace of God.

[00:14:03]And our savior continues his work and then there are demoniacs who want to be healed.

[00:14:09]And the Lord heals them and this is the marvelous thing once again where we find the pharisaical evil lost mentality.

[00:14:21]Spiritual narcissism.

[00:14:24]The Pharisees say he casts out demons by the prince of the demons. That's what they say concerning the Lord.

[00:14:32]And this is what the servants of evil who give into the voices and the thoughts continuously think. That's the spirit of those people against the church, against the saints.

[00:14:47]But we must remember >> [clears throat] >> what it is to be Orthodox and Orthodoxy of the heart.

[00:14:54]We must tread upon this path. That is Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is lived in repentance.

[00:15:01]In repentance then our eyes are opened and we start to perceive.

[00:15:06]We know the direction that we need to go.

[00:15:09]It's what Elder George used to always say well, according to the fathers diakrisis logismon discerning of the thoughts. That's that's lacking today.

[00:15:19]This is one of the gifts that spiritual fathers are supposed to have to be able to discern thoughts so that when people confess their thoughts they they can help them decipher which is from the devil, what is from God, what is from ourselves.

[00:15:35]So, the message today once again is the message of repentance. We can get the great example of repentance. Today we celebrate the feast of Saint Sisois the Great who was disciple of Saint Anthony the Great. These fathers were were great.

[00:15:50]They lived a holy life but their life was really centered upon the teaching of repentance.

[00:15:57]So, as we continue our lives here on earth, let us remember how we can be protected from the waves of all of the different fads which are in the world which pull us away from God, namely repentance and holy contemplation.

[00:16:15]Let us contemplate God's long-suffering and let us be thankful.

[00:16:20]Let us be thankful that the Lord up until this very day has had mercy on us. As we read in the Psalms, "Great is thy mercy upon me, O Lord."

[00:16:30]Let us contemplate how many times we could have fallen away by making some wrong decision.

[00:16:34]One little wrong decision could have caused us a catastrophe.

[00:16:40]And if we turned away the wrong way, let us return to our master Jesus Christ.

[00:16:45]Let us learn what it means to repent.

[00:16:47]Let us learn to condemn ourselves properly.

[00:16:51]Let us learn to digest this information properly because if we don't digest it properly, we fall into despair, which is the exact opposite of what we're supposed to be doing. And the reason for that is because God is not in the picture because we are not persisting like these two blind men who went to Christ, who first called out to him and then they went to him. They persisted and then they received according to their faith.

[00:17:16]In like manner, the broken people here on earth, which is basically everybody to one degree or another, calls upon the master Jesus with their whole heart and great thanksgiving.

[00:17:31]We thank him for all the blessings he's given to us, which are many.

[00:17:36]He has given to us the church, which from all sides is warred against.

[00:17:42]On the one hand, you say you You have these accusations. You say there's grace. You say there's no grace on the other side. It's just an unending thing, but we will remain firm in the confession of the faith of our holy fathers.

[00:17:57]And we're not going to be affected by the voices of those who are not the voices of the fathers.

[00:18:04]We're not going to be affected by some catechumen who has not even become baptized yet who's preaching Orthodoxy or others who have [snorts] as their agenda malice against the church.

[00:18:19]The Lord says you shall know them by their fruits. Don't get bogged down.

[00:18:23]Don't get affected by all that stuff.

[00:18:25]Don't let it pull you down.

[00:18:27]But live the life of repentance in Christ Jesus.

[00:18:31]Let us not fall for this spiritual narcissism, where we call that which is white black and that which is black white.

[00:18:42]We've been warned by the fathers of the church.

[00:18:45]And so looking towards this example, I say of Sisoes the Great, let us study what he has to say. Last night we heard many of his sayings.

[00:18:57]Again, quite quite different from the thinking of this world.

[00:19:03]And one may say, "Well, I'm not a monastic."

[00:19:06]But we we need to understand that we're all aiming towards the same goals, whether monastic or lay people, whether we live in the desert or not, we're all working towards the same goals, trying to unite to Christ.

[00:19:20]Now, in the secular world, they say something, you only have one life to live, and we say the same thing, you only have one life to live.

[00:19:28]Let's make good use of it.

[00:19:31]Because this life prepares the way for the next life, and we have people there, in the next life, that are waiting for us, and that are hoping for our salvation.

[00:19:41]Preparing for us. Let's connect with them.

[00:19:43]So that they, knowing that they connect with Christ, so that they can connect us to Christ.

[00:19:50]We call upon his holy mother and St. John the Baptist and St. Sisois and St. John and St. Clare and all the saints who are helping us.

[00:20:00]And our guardian angels and St. Clement and so many saints to help us to learn how to repent and to think properly.

[00:20:11]And to accept the detoxing that needs to happen for us to be members of the church of Jesus Christ.

[00:20:21]Let us also give thanks to the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for all the benefits which we have received, benefits >> [clears throat] >> known and unknown.

[00:20:35]And let us pray that the Lord deliver us from the evil one and from the evil ones who want our destruction.

[00:20:43]May we be safeguarded by the power of the cross and the intercessions of all the saints. Amen.

[00:20:51]>> [bell] [bell]