The Holy Apostle and Evangelist Luke
Polyeleos Feast. Abstinence from meat and foods that contain meat.
Read
Colossians 4:5-9, 14, 18; Luke 10:16-21
After talking about demons, Satan, serpents, scorpions, what is Jesus most thankful for in his conversation with the Father: that he has revealed these things to children. This information sounds so ghoulish and hardly the stuff you would tell your kids, like a horror movie you wouldn’t want to show them. Yet Jesus’ words here aren’t a scare tactic. He is aiming to put the disciples in touch with reality as it is. Not the thin view of reality that ends at the terrestrial. Rather, he dilates the camera to show a wider view, one that encompasses heaven hell and the battle waged for by the invisible powers. Know also this isn’t the case that the battle is a coin toss. The battle is won. Christ is victorious over death and Satan’s wiles. Christ teaches us not to be afraid. He has removed the sting of the serpent bite of death, precisely by trampling on it, as we sing on Pascha. He gives that power to you and me, insofar as we take it seriously. This is perhaps why he rejoices over revealing this to children. Children know the severity of right and wrong. They know the gravity of good and evil; they feel it in their bones more acutely than desensitized adults, whose consciences are rendered mute by the jadedness of time. It remains for the children to minister to adults the ability to apprehend the grandeur of the created world in both its visible and invisible elements. It is through this childlike gaze that we can recognize this wider world, the role of the Saviour in it, and receive his power: to trample on the heads of scorpions. Most adults spend time rationalizing their fear. Let us be children and with the power of God, face it head-on and enjoy the victory of Christ over Satan. Like fireworks falling down on a warm summer evening, we see the most dangerous elements of nature quickly fade into fickle irrelevancy.