It Costs to be a Saint All Saints Sunday
1st Sun after Pent; June 19, 2022, Matt:10:32,33;37,38;19:27-30
Glory to Jesus Christ! We have just had a great fast free week, basking in the joy of Pentecost and welcoming the Holy Spirit, the treasury of blessings and the giver of life back into our prayers. Tomorrow starts the Apostles fast and lasts for 9 days until June 29, the feast day of St. Peter and St. Paul. Look around at all the saints on the Icons around us. We have wonderful support from ever-increasing numbers of saints! Such recently added powerful intercessors such as St. Savvas the New, St. Porphyrios, St. Paisios, St. Kyrillos…Let us rejoice in all the saints as this is All Saints Sunday!
As we celebrate today we remember and ask for help from all of those saints gone before us, those who have successfully travelled the road leading to Christ and the kingdom of God and are calling out for us to join them. There are millions of these saints – a great cloud of witnesses, as Paul says in his epistle today. Every century has their saints, wonderworkers, and martyrs. We are just getting started over here in North America, Most Orthodox countries have many hundred or even many thousand recognized saints, but we have just hit 20, and only 2 or 3 of those were actually born in North America.
The saints are greatly varied in their talents and giftings, but they all have one thing in common – they intensely focused on the object of their quest – being united with Christ – “the author and finisher of our faith.” They understood this was why they were here for their short tour of duty on this planet, and they let nothing distract them from their purpose. We look at the saints in awe, like we are spectators in the stands watching professional athletes who have trained and performed and are at the top of their game.
But don’t we have this completely reversed? We are the ones in the arena. The saints are the spectators, cheering us on. In today’s epistle Paul says “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race which is set before us.” We are running the race – they have finished their race. Now is our time! It is up to us to take seriously this race we run in front of God and all of heaven, with the huge crowd of angels and saints cheering us on, doing all they can to help and encourage us! We run our race. No-one else can run it for us. The effort we put in now will pay eternal rewards that multiply beyond all time. The prize that awaits us at our death, at the finish line, is life abundant, beyond our most glorious imagining, united with Christ and His Church for all of eternity. We run and fight until we die – and then we truly live! Through Christ, death has become our graduation day, transformed into our true birthday into the eternal kingdom of God. We venerate the saints on their real birthday’s – the day of their death – when they are brought fully into God’s kingdom.
What makes a saint? Following Christ with all our heart mind and soul. There are as many paths to sainthood as there are saints. Through the grace of God, the instruction of the Holy Spirit, and our obedience and acceptance, with thanksgiving, to the path that God has provided for us, we are slowly transformed. We have been given much godly instruction in the scriptures and the writings of the Fathers. We are to love God with all our heart mind and soul and love others as Christ has loved us. Taking up our cross and laying down our very lives for our brothers and sisters of the race of Adam.
But we are weak and sinful, self absorbed creatures with hearts of stone. How can we join the saints and have our hearts expanded and softened to be able to contain more of the infinite love of God. “Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving” are the usual methods given us by the Church. We are given the Church calendar with its seasons of feasting and fasting, so we don’t wear ourselves out and can recharge and enter again fresh into the good struggle. At the start of every fasting season we get to renew our efforts – which often slacken as we enjoy our feasting – and pursue more Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving.
Why these three? God has an infinite amount of love which He would have fill our hearts that we might grow ever closer to Christ. But the only way to make room for this infinite ineffable love, is for our stiff and calcified hearts to be softened and expanded to receive this love. The more time we spend in prayer, the more we deny our passions in fasting, and the more we are able to give our financial treasures back to Him from Whom they were received, the more our hearts soften and expand to receive His love and grace. These are spiritual acts extraordinaire!
We understand this concept when it comes to prayer and fasting, even though we may struggle to choose to put in the time to grow in these areas. However, when it comes to almsgiving, there is much confusion. It starts because of the very word “Almsgiving.” We picture secretly giving a few dollars to the poor on the street during Lent. Giving God perhaps even a little more than the tithe which He is due. But the original meaning of the word Alms encompassed our entire material world and means.
There are hundreds of references on the Old Testament to the sacred duty of tithing and giving “whole burnt offerings.” Giving tithes was how one acknowledged and demonstrated one’s submission to God. Tithes were not optional for practicing Jews. In Malachi (3:8) We hear, “Will you insult me by keeping back your tithes and offerings?”
Yet there is scarcely a mention of them in the New Testament. Christ only mentioned them in Matthew 23 saying “you scribes and pharisee’s hypocrites, you do good in giving your tithes, but ignore the weightier matters of justice, mercy and faith – you brood of vipers” Not exactly a ringing endorsement that tithing was still the way to find favour with God. What happened? Christ brought a new standard. Make yourself a living sacrifice to God. \We are to give Him our entire life, for if we lose our life for Christ’s sake we will find it. We are to take up our cross and follow Him. He is now offering to fully adopt us as His very children. But the cost is no longer 10%, but to offer ourselves as a complete whole burnt sacrifice. Abba Joseph, when asked what else could be done to get closer to God, simply held up his hands and his fingers burst into flames as he replied, “You can become all flame.” A whole burnt offering!
Whole burnt offerings foreshadowed the ultimate sacrifice of Christ voluntarily giving His life for our salvation on the cross as the ultimate and true whole burnt offering. They were the equivalent of simply taking and burning your money to demonstrate that you depended upon God alone, and not on earthly treasure for your life. They were not helpful in any “cause.” Not for feeding the priests of Levi, for feeding the poor, for beautifying the temple…. They were a heavenly mystery, to awaken ones soul to begin to comprehend the incomprehensible – that everything exists only in God.
This awakening and salvation of our souls was Christ’s focus when he was speaking of the value of money. His concern is not so much for our earthly prosperity as for our soul. When He spoke to the rich young man and told him to sell what he had, give to the poor, and come and follow Him, this was not to help address the problem of the poor. This was so the young man could be free from the stranglehold that money had on his soul. It is not the amount of money or how much the “cause” is helped by our donation that really matters. The widow’s mite brought about $2 into the treasury in todays monetary value, but the heavenly treasure it purchased was far beyond that of any other contribution given that day. A hundred-dollar contribution to whatever cause from someone who is truly struggling to just make ends meet can be of far more spiritual value than a $10,000 donation from someone who will really never even need the money. The spiritual value to the person receives from giving is the point, not the accomplishing of some fundraising goal. We all need to learn to give more sacrificially in this prosperous culture we live in. Not because we have a building project or want to help the poor, but just to free our soul from the greatest danger we all confront in this prosperous Country – Greed and Covetousness. We give a few quite worthless earthly dollars and gain great eternal treasure, what a wonderfully profitable investment.
Prayer, fasting and giving are all intensely spiritual acts that expand our spiritual hearts. They are sweet smelling sacrifices that connect us to God. When we don’t practise them we starve our souls. God’s love for us is not affected at all by our slackness. It is infinite and everywhere present and filling all things. But we can only be filled to the capacity our heart will allow.
Although we are weak and frail creatures, and fail miserably in most of our efforts, yet even through our failures we can begin to develop that greatest of treasures, humility. The root word for humility is “humus” – soil. Humility is being aware of the nothingness we are without Christ, and yet also becoming aware that in Christ, we are becoming the children of God Himself. We are created to be gods through union with Christ. It is not humility to think we are not able to aspire to be joined with the saints – this is delusion, and a lie of the evil one. The very purpose of our life is to be enrolled with the company of the saints and commune with God. It is humility to realize we can never be deserving of this great and awesome privilege, and yet through the grace of God, and our synergy in cooperating with Him, this is His gift and will for us.
At the end of our race, may we be joined to the glorious cloud of witnesses and enrolled with the company of the saints! Through the prayers of St. Aidan and all the saints, Lord Jesus Christ have mercy and save us.