Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Congratulations with the feast of the Resurrection of the Lord, as well as the feast of the great hierarchs and teachers of the Church, Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria.  The former spent the entirety of his adult life defending the Orthodox faith against the Arians, who erroneously taught that Jesus Christ was not consubstantial (that is, of one essence or identical in His divine nature) to God the Father.  The latter laboured much in defending the faith against the Nestorians, who thought that Christ was a simple man and not the God-man who joined within Himself the divine and human natures.  

Today in the Gospel reading from Luke we read that about which we read at the end of August from Matthew (about the rich youth, his question about the inheritance of the Kingdom of Heaven and the Saviour’s answer).  Since we have already read and discussed this topic this church year, let’s not repeat what was said earlier.  Let’s only remember that wealth on its own does not make entrance into God’s Kingdom impossible, but rather our relationship to and our degree of attachment to said wealth.

Besides Matthew and Luke, Mark also wrote about this meeting in his Gospel account.  When we splice together the different portrayals of this meeting, we are presented with quite a sympathetic picture of the man who approached Christ with the question about the Heavenly Kingdom.  Although this man was tied to his wealth, he had many goodly characteristics.  Despite his young age, he was one of the leaders of the local synagogue.  Throughout the course of his life he had not sullied his soul with crude sins, but had kept all of the commandments.  He recognized in Jesus not a simple teacher, but the Good Teacher.  He was so drawn to this Good Teacher that he ran to Him and fell to his knees before Him (Mark 10: 17).  Although he lived a pious and righteous life, he felt that something was missing and had a spiritual thirst to enter into unseen battle.  Christ, seeing all of these good traits, “beholding him loved him” (Mark 10: 21).  The Saviour loved him to such a degree, and saw in him so much good that He said to him, “Follow Me,” that is, become one of My disciples and apostles.  Before this could happen this man had to free himself from that which was holding him down, in this case his large amount of wealth.  Unfortunately this young and energetic man, full of love towards God, couldn’t do this.  

Without a doubt, Christ, looking down on us from his Heavenly Throne, loves us greatly and wishes for us to become His disciples.  To become true followers of our Creator we are left to not only fulfill the commandments, but also to detach ourselves from our earthly fixations, be they wealth or any other thing (for example, comfort, tasty food and drink, our work, television or the internet, etc.).  Through the prayers of the holy apostles and the hierarchs Athanasius and Cyril, may our Lord help us in this task.

priest Alexis