Second Sunday of Great Lent – Gregory Palamas

On this second Sunday of the Great Fast we commemorate St Gregory Palamas, one of the shining heroes of Orthodox Christianity. St Gregory Palamas is an important figure in our further clarification of the Orthodox understanding of creation and God’s interaction with mankind.

Last Sunday we celebrated the Triumph of Orthodoxy and all the icons were set out in glorious display. We do this in honor of the Orthodox council that clarified and proclaimed the Orthodox understanding of the relationship between man and God, between the material and the spiritual, and that God did indeed become a man in the Person of Jesus Christ and that He transfigures and heals that which was fallen into the image of God that it was created to be. The veneration of the icons confirms this understanding of the reality of matter transfigured by the healing presence of God.

St Gregory Palamas is another key figure in understanding and clarifying both the relationship between man and God and of the reality of how God interacts with us to heal and transfigure us into that which He created us to be.

At the time of St Gregory there were debates raging about the absolute unknowability of God. St Gregory Palamas clarified that God in His essence is eternally distinct from His creatures, but that mankind can and should strive to participate and commune with the energies, with the Grace of God – which is a truly an experience of God Himself. To make a weak analogy - we cannot approach the orb of the sun but we truly experience the sun through its warmth and light. St Gregory’s distinction of the essence and the energies of God may seem obscure at first – but it was an important declaration and clarification of the proper understanding of the relationship between God the Creator and man, His creature… and it underscores just how intimate that relationship is and can be.

This awareness of the intimacy and nearness of God is essential for us to understand.

God is not a distant deity sitting on His throne in heaven… a Being with Whom we’ll not have direct interactions with until we pass from this life into the next. No, God is present here and now. He is present in your home and in your workplace. He is present in our very hearts and He stands at the door of our hearts and He knocks.

Brothers and sisters in Christ… it is a convenient mistake for us to think of God as distant and removed from our day to day lives. Such a viewpoint creates the false assurance that our secret sins are not known to Him… that our daily neglect of Him is not seen by Him… that our judgment of others and selfish passions don’t matter. As the blessed Hieromonk Seraphim Rose once said, ‘The thing about understanding that God is both personal and present, is that He requires something of you!’

This is cause for both horror and hope!

We may be horrified to realize that God is present… that He is involved in our lives and that He does demand something of us. He calls us to take up our cross, to deny ourselves, and to follow Him. What we do matters… how and what we think matters… Every moment of our lives is a pull either toward love or toward selfishness. Our pride paints the selfish choices as the most attractive, the most fulfilling… but this is the way that leads to alienation from God and from others. The way of denying our selfish inclinations in favor of loving God and others is the way that leads to healing and transfiguration.

And this is the cause of the greatest hope! The more we give of ourselves in love to God and to others, the more we begin to realize and recognize the nearness of God and of His Heavenly Kingdom. God transforms us by His grace… by His life creating and life restoring energies.

This is the message of St Gregory Palamas. This is the message of Great Lent. This is the message and the mission of Jesus Christ.

And what greater mission can be given to us in such troubled times as these?

When darkness overshadows the world, we must not react with anger or fear or frustration - these only add shadows to the encroaching darkness. Darkness is dispelled by Light. In a time when greed and war and pestilence are flourishing in this world, what greater thing can we do than to call forth the grace of God? Calling forth through our prayer and manifesting through our words and deeds the blessing and the healing presence of God’s grace and energies. This is what is needed more than anything right now and it is our privilege and it is our duty as Orthodox Christians to do all that we can to make best use of this Lenten season to do just that.

Several of our church leaders have called upon their flocks to specific efforts of prayer during this time of trouble. Patriarch Kyrill called upon us this week to read the Canon to the Mother of God in supplication for peace in Ukraine. And the saintly Metropolitan Onuphry, the head of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church has asked us to read one chapter of the Gospels each day and to make three prostrations in supplication for peace. Such practical steps not only unite Orthodox Christians all over the world, but very much call down that grace of God which we so desperately need right now.

May God bless all of you who wish to take up these additional prayers and may He give you strength. And may our Lord Jesus Christ and His Most Pure Mother bless and watch over us all.