The Holy Martyr Charitina.
Philippians 1:20-27; Luke 6:12-19.
Read Luke 6:12-19
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
In our modern world, we are surrounded by information. It is blessing that it has never been easier to look up the Church’s teaching on a particular topic, or to access any number of the patristic commentaries on scriptural. There are also an ever growing number of apologetics websites and podcasts that aim to present the content of the faith in an easy and accessible way.
However, with easy access to all this information it can become tempting for our primary religious activity to become study. We, perhaps unwittingly, start to equate holiness with knowing more about doctrine or theology. Our struggle starts to become primarily an intellectual struggle to understand, so that we can ‘stand up for the faith’ or “be prepared to give an account for the hope that is within us” (1 Peter 3:15).
But we learn in today’s Gospel reading that people gathered to Jesus, not for information, but for healing, “a great multitude of people…came to hear him and to be healed of their diseases” (Luke 6:17).
This healing has nothing to do with what we know, but everything to do with what we are. St. Paul describes the state of fallen man as one of corruption (phthoros in Greek). The term means something similar to the rotting of a dead body. Indeed, it is death that is at work in us that manifests itself as sin in our lives. This is why the Fathers and the tradition of the our Church prefers to describe sin in medical rather than legal terms. The fundamental struggle, that is the Christian life, is not within our heads, it is within our hearts.
St. Macarius the Great writes, “ The heart itself is but a small vessel, yet dragons are there, and there are also lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. But there too is God, the angels, the life and the kingdom, the light and the apostles, the heavenly cities and the treasuries of grace—all things are there” (Homily 43)
It is the heart, the very core of our existence, that the Fathers dwell on when they look at the work of sin and redemption in our lives. The primary question for all of us to consider is: in the innermost depths of our being, are we being transformed into the image of Christ, or are we falling deeper into corruption and death?
There are a many things to think about in our faith, many of them serving as religious distractions from the essential work of repentance (ie – fundamentally changing our heart) . It is easier to argue points of doctrine than to stand honestly before God in prayer or confession. Doctrine is of course important, not in the abstract, but only as it makes Christ known to us.
The knowledge of Christ that saves is not the knowledge one gains as mere information – but rather the knowledge one gains inwardly as we repent, pray, forgive, and humble ourselves before God.
Bible References
Luke 6:12-19