The Good Samaritan

‘The Good Samaritan’. Contemporary Coptic Icon. Private Collection.

Here is a short commentary on today’s Gospel passage (Luke 10: 25-37) by St. Ambrose, 4th century Archbishop of Milan. 

                                                            The Good Samaritan

‘”A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho”… Jericho is the symbol of this world where, after he had been cast out of Paradise, that is to say the heavenly Jerusalem, Adam went down… It was his change of behavior, not of place, that made his exile. And what a change! This man Adam, who enjoyed undisturbed happiness, had no sooner lowered himself to this world’s sins than he encountered some brigands… Now who are these brigands if not the angels of night and darkness who, on occasion, disguise themselves as angels of light (2Cor 11,15) but are unable to remain thus? They start by stripping us of the garments of spiritual grace we have received: this is how they usually behave so as to cause us harm… Take great care, then, not to let yourself be stripped, like Adam, deprived of the protection of God’s commandments and lacking the garment of faith. This is why he received the mortal wound to which the whole human race would have succumbed if the Samaritan had not come down to cure his frightful wound.

‘This is not just any Samaritan: this one did not disdain the man whom the priest and the Levite disdained… This Samaritan came down. “Who has come down from heaven except the one who has gone up to heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven?” (cf Jn 3,13). Seeing that man half dead whom no one before him had been able to heal… he came up beside him. That is to say, by consenting to suffer with us he became our fellow and by showing us mercy he became our neighbor.’

First Martyrs of the Church of Rome

Synaxis of the Apostles

On this Sunday following the Solemnity of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and on which we remember the First Holy Martyrs of the Church of Rome, I share this passage from the journal of Angelo Roncalli, who served as Pope of Rome until his repose on June 3, 1963, just fifty years ago this month. He wrote these words in 1957, a little before his election, and I find them helpful and moving as I myself become older and contemplate both the lives of the martyrs and our common journey from birth to death, whatever the specific circumstances and settings of our lives may be. The passage is taken from the book ‘Journal of a Soul’ (1965) and is an English translation from the Italian original by Geoffrey Chapman.

                                               “I Will Follow You Wherever You Go”

“Give me more light as evening falls.” O Lord, we are now in the evening of our life. I am in my seventy-sixth year. Life is a great gift from our heavenly Father. Three-quarters of my contemporaries have passed over to the far shore. So I too must always be ready for the great moment. The thought of death does not alarm me… My health is excellent and still robust, but I cannot count on it. I want to hold myself ready to reply “adsum” at any, even the most unexpected moment. Old age, likewise a great gift of the Lord’s, must be for me a source of tranquil inner joy, and a reason for trusting day by day in the Lord himself, to whom I am now turned as a child turns to his father’s open arms. 

My poor life, now such a long one, has unwound itself as easily as a ball of string, under the sign of simplicity and purity. It costs me nothing to acknowledge and repeat that I am nothing and worth precisely nothing. The Lord caused me to be born of poor folk, and he has seen to all my needs. I have left it to him… Truly, “the will of God is my peace” (Dante Alighieri). And my hope is all in Jesus’ mercy… 

I think the Lord Jesus has in store for me, before I die, for my complete mortification and purification and in order to admit me to his everlasting joy, some great suffering and affliction of body and spirit. Well, I accept everything and with all my heart, if it is for his glory and the good of my soul and for the souls of my dear spiritual children. I fear my weakness in bearing pain; I implore him to help me, for I have little faith in myself, but complete faith in the Lord Jesus. 

There are two gates to paradise: innocence and penance. Which of us, poor frail creatures, can expect to find the first of these wide open? But we may be sure of the other: Jesus passed through it, bearing his Cross in atonement for our sins, and he invites us to follow him.

St. John Chrysostom on Pentecost

Here is a short excerpt from a sermon by St. John Chrysostom (c. 347-407), Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Feast of Pentecost. I have taken it from ‘Monastic Breviary Matins According to the Holy Rule of St. Benedict’, Lancelot Andrewes Press, 2007, p. 496. I would like to recommend this small but important volume, by the way. It is a recent reprint of the 1961 edition produced by The Society of the Sacred Cross at Tymawr Convent, Lydart, Monmouth, Wales, and contains a wealth of scripture passages, excerpts from patristic homilies, saints’ lives and prayers. For those who use older, and particularly monastic versions of the Roman Breviary, the English translations of patristic homilies especially are a tremendous resource. 

From a Sermon by St. John Chrysostom on Pentecost

‘On this day earth became heaven for us, not by the coming down of the stars from the sky to the earth, but by the raising up of the apostles to heaven; for the grace of the Holy Spirit was plenteously poured forth, and changed the whole world into heaven, not by altering its essential nature, but by directing its will aright. 

‘The Spirit found a publican, and made him an evangelist; he found a persecutor, and changed him into an apostle; he found a thief, and brought him into paradise; he found a harlot, and made her one with the virgins; he found wise men, and made them into evangelists; he put wickedness to flight, and replaced it with kindness; he destroyed slavery, and introduced freedom; he forgave the debt, and brought instead the grace of God. Thus earth became heaven, and this I cannot repeat too often.’

St. Gregory the Great on Mark 16: 17-20

St. Gregory the Great and St. Peter the Deacon. Icon of the Western Rite of the Antiochian Orthodox Church.

From a homily by St. Gregory the Great on the great miracles worked by the apostles and other disciples in the early Church. The text is taken from: ‘Monastic Breviary Matins According to the Holy Rule of Saint Benedict,’ Society of the Sacred Cross, 1961, pp. 466-7.

These signs do not follow us now, but should that make us any less believing? They were necessary at the time of the dawn of the Church, for it was necessary then for great numbers to be brought to believe, so that the faith might grow, and so they were nourished by miracles. It is like planting trees: at first we continuously water them, until we find that they have taken root, and then, when the roots are firm, we cease watering. Or, as Paul says, ‘Wherefore tongues are for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that believe not.’ 

There is yet greater depth to be plumbed in these signs and wonders. In our own times Holy Church works spiritually each day that which in apostolic times was done bodily. For when her priests are endowed with the grace of exorcism and lay hands upon believers whose souls are vexed by evil spirits, what else are they doing but casting out devils? And when the faithful forsake their worldly conversation and sing of divine mysteries, and show forth the praise and power of their Maker, what else are they doing but speaking with new tongues? Others, when they bear away the malice from the hearts of their fellows, with entreaties supplemented by their own good example, do indeed take up serpents.

Others, when they hear poisonous suggestions and are in no wise tempted to follow after evil works, are then drinking a deadly thing, but it does not hurt them. Those who run to assist their neighbor whenever they see his piety weaken, and strengthen him by the example of their own good deeds: what else are they doing but laying their hands on the sick so that they recover? Undoubtedly these are the grater miracles, since they are spiritual ones, and they are so much the greater, in that they raise up not merely the body, but the very soul.

John 16: 20-23

In today’s Gospel (John 16: 20-23), Jesus speaks to his disciples who are about to undergo the trauma of witnessing his passion, death and disappearance from their midst: ‘You will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices,’ he says to them. ‘You will grieve, but your grief will become joy.’ One of the lessons we can learn from this is that, for the follower of Christ, grief by its very nature is temporary. While joy, once we have passed from this life, and still more when we have experienced the glorious resurrection from the dead, will by its nature be lasting. It is hard to remember this, because some of the sorrows we experience in this life are so profound that they can plunge us into depths of despair from which it may take us months or even years to emerge. Once I somewhat frivolously said to a relative: ‘God sometimes takes our world and turns it upside down.’ To which my relative responded: ‘My world is already upside down; what I need is for God to turn it right side up.’ Which of course is what the resurrection is all about. Yet it can be hard for us to let go of our worldly concepts about life long enough for us to realize that this is so.

Jesus then gives the disciples the example of the woman giving birth: ‘When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived; but when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world.’ Another lesson to be learned: for the person of faith, pain not only gives way to joy in the kingdom of heaven, but it is pain, in many respects, which actually engenders and gives birth to joy in the first place. It is its precondition, so to speak, and Jesus’ own passion, death and resurrection are a proof of this. At birth we emerge from the dark confinement of our mother’s womb into the freedom and sunlight of the world. At death we do the same, though the freedom will be infinitely more profound, and the light the Risen Christ himself.

What follows is of course not a doctrinal statement, but I have often wondered if at least a part of the joy of heaven will be that God will allow us to relive parts of our life as we should have lived them originally–fully aware of the beauty with which he has surrounded us from the beginning, and endowed with the grace to perceive and give truly heartfelt thanks to him for persons and experiences we did not sufficiently appreciate before. To see our loved ones again, to re-experience even the imperfect circumstances of our past lives in such a way that they bring forth an unstoppable outpouring of gratitude to God, rather than irritation or dissatisfaction or disdain: would this not be heaven too? And if time does not exist in heaven, would not the experience of even a single day such as I have just described be more than enough to suffice for an eternity of joy? If so, can I begin, at least in an imperfect way because of sin, to live that way even now? As Jesus says in today’s Gospel: ‘So you also are now in anguish. But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away.’  

I Am The Way

Alexei Evstigeniev. ‘Icon Studio on Mt. Athos’. Oil on canvas, 1997. Private Collection. This is one of those scenes I would like to be able to step into, if such a thing were possible. 

Here is an excerpt from a commentary on today’s Gospel (John 14: 1-6) by St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), Dominican theologian and Doctor of the Church. Christ in his self-definition ‘I am the Way and the Truth and the Life’ is depicted in the icon on the easel in the painting reproduced above.

                                          ‘I am the Way and the Truth and the Life’

‘Christ is at once the way and its termination. In his humanity he is the way, in his divinity the termination. So, as man he says, “I am the Way”, and as God he adds, “the Truth and the Life”, two words that well describe the termination of that way. For the termination of this way is the realization of our human longings… Christ is the way to reach the knowledge of truth, since he is himself the truth: “Lead me, Lord, in truth, and I shall walk in your way” (Ps 86[85],11). Christ is also the way to reach life since he is himself life: “You have made known the paths of life” (Ps 16[15],11)…

‘If, then, you seek to know what path to follow, take Christ because he is the way: “This is the way, walk in it” (Is 30,21). Augustine, too, has this to say: “Walk in the man and you will arrive at God.” Now, it is better to limp in the way than to make good speed beside the way. For he who limps in the way, even though he makes little progress, draws nearer to the destination; whereas he who walks away from the way gets further from the destination the faster he runs.

‘If you seek to know where you are going stay close to Christ; because he is the truth that we long to reach: “For my mouth will utter truth” (Prv 8,7). If you seek to know where you can stay, stay close to Christ, because he is the way: “He who finds me finds life” (Prv 8,35).’

Fourth Sunday of Easter

Manuscript page from ‘The Meditations of St. Anselm.’ Illumination on parchment by an unknown 12th century miniaturist. Bodleian Library. 

On this Fourth Sunday of Easter we also commemorate St. Anselm (1033-1109), an Italian- born Archbishop of Canterbury perhaps best known for his definition of theology as ‘fides quaerens intellectum’ (‘faith seeking understanding’). And this feast day happily falls on a Sunday when our Gospel is John 10: 27-30, in which Jesus says ‘My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me.’ Because it was a central feature of St. Anselm’s spiritual and intellectual endeavor to explore how God knows and loves man, and how man comes to know and love God. Though St. Anselm is counted among the so-called ‘scholastic’ theologians, who are sometimes criticized for the ‘overlogicalness’ of their approach, it is important to remember that, for St. Anselm at least, it all began with faith. ‘Nor do I seek to understand that I may believe,’ he wrote, perhaps echoing a thought earlier expressed by St. Augustine, ‘but I believe that I may understand. For this, too, I believe, that, unless I first believe, I shall not understand.’ How different all this seems from the world today, in which not only is St. Anselm’s approach generally reversed at best, but more often both halves of it are rejected unconsidered. We might do well to turn to St. Anselm’s own homily ‘On Faith in the Trinity’, still read on this day in some Benedictine monastic communities. Here are some excerpts, which I believe can help us to approach today’s Gospel with deeper appreciation.

‘Holy Writ urges us to seek out doctrine, saying: “Unless you believe, you cannot understand,” thus openly admonishing us to bend our minds toward understanding, since we are shown the means of attainment. I also believe that between faith and the fulness of understanding there is a middle state: I think a certain amount of that understanding which we all so eagerly desire comes to us in proportion to the intensity with which we seek it. From this consideration, therefore, although I am a man of so little wisdom, I do sometimes rise to contemplation in accordance with the measure of divine grace that has been granted to me.’ It is true that, whether we are participating in the Eucharistic liturgy, studying Holy Scripture, meditating upon the writings of our Fathers in the faith, or attending to the various prayers of the Church, we should do so with the devout expectation that we will sanctified by these sources of God’s own self-revelation to man; we will be drawn into the divine life of God; we will be brought, according to our inner disposition and the mercies of God’s grace, into deeper understandings of the truths and realities of faith, which will not be forced upon us, and which are granted only to those who seek and desire them with faith. Then we can hear the Shepherd’s voice. Then we can follow him.

For St. Anselm, a vital precondition for coming to know and love God had to do with how we live our lives. ‘We must first cleanse our hearts by faith,’ he says in this same homily, ‘for the Scriptures say: “Purifying your hearts by faith.” And we must first enlighten our eyes by keeping the commandments of God, for: “The commandment of the Lord is pure, and gives light unto the eyes.” And we must first become as babes in humble obedience to the testimony of God, if we are to speak of wisdom…We must first, I say, if we wish to penetrate into the depths of things spiritual, put away all that pertains to the flesh, and must live according to the spirit.’ In this St. Anselm reminds me of no one so much as St. Nectarios of Aegina (1846-1920), who said that ‘Christianity is a religion of revelation. The Divine reveals its glory only to those who have been perfected through virtue.’ Now a life centered upon the virtues (actions which are true, just, chaste, kindly, honest, etc., and the dispositions which underly them), would seem to some to be simply the end product of faith and understanding. But it works the other way around too: the more we seek to live out the virtues and to love them, the deeper our faith and understanding of things divinely revealed grows. As St. Gregory the Great said of the Good Shepherd in a homily on today’s Gospel passage: ‘Those who love me are willing to follow me, for anyone who does not love the truth has not yet come to know.’ 

Three Fathers on John 21: 1-19

Lucas Gassel. ‘Christ with Peter and the Disciples.’ 16th century Flemish.

Today’s Gospel reading is John 21: 1-19, and I here give extracts from three commentaries, in roughly chronological order, by three of the Church Fathers on this text. St. Augustine (359-430) and St. John Chrysostom (347-407) were contemporaries, while Pope St. Gregory I (540-604) came two centuries later. Each stresses different aspects of the passage: St. Augustine likens the great catch of fish to the Church at the end of time; St. John Chrysostom points to the otherworldly nature of the Christian vocation; St. Gregory focusses on mortal versus immortal life, and on the change which has taken place in the Lord’s resurrected and glorified body. Here are their remarks in the order given above.

‘This is a great mystery in the great Gospel of John…Inasmuch as there were seven disciples taking part in that fishing…they point, by their septenary number, to the end of time. For there is a revolution of all time in seven days. To this also pertains the statement, that when the morning was come, Jesus stood on the shore; for the shore likewise is the limit of the sea, and signifies therefore the end of the world. The same end of the world is shown also by the act of Peter, in drawing the net to land, that is, to the shore. Which the Lord has himself elucidated, when in a certain other place he drew his similitude from a fishing net let down into the sea: “And they drew it,” he said, “to the shore.” And in explanation of what that shore was, he added, “So will it be in the end of the world.”‘ (Matt. 13: 48-49).

‘Let us then transfer our eyes to heaven, and continually imagine “those” things [which are not seen] and behold them. For if we always spend our time with them, we shall not be moved to desire the pleasures of this world, nor find it hard to bear its sorrows; but we shall laugh at these and the like, and nothing will be able to enslave or lift us up, if only we direct our longing thither, and look to that love. And why say I that we shall not grieve at present troubles? We shall henceforth not even appear to see them. Such a thing is strong desire. Those, for instance, who are not at present with us, but being absent are loved, we imagine every day. For mighty is the sovereignty of love; it alienates the soul from all things else, and chains to the desired object. If thus we love Christ, all things here will seem to be a shadow, an image, a dream.’

‘What does the sea indicate but the present age, which is disturbed by the uproar of circumstances and the commotion of this perishable life? What does the solidity of the shore signify but the uninterrupted continuance of eternal peace? Therefore since the disciples were still held in the waves of this mortal life, they were laboring on the sea. But since our Redeemer had already passed beyond his perishable body, after his resurrection he stood on the shore as if he were speaking to his disciples by his actions of the mystery of his resurrection: “I am not appearing to you on the sea, because I am not with you in the waves of confusion.” It is for this reason that he said in another place to these same disciples after his resurrection: “These are the words I spoke to you when I was still with you.” (Luke 24: 44). It was not that he wasn’t with them when he appeared to them as a bodily presence, but…he in his immortal body was apart from their mortal bodies. He was saying that he was no longer with them even as he stood in their midst.’

John 6: 16-21

‘Christ Walking on Water with Peter’. From a Gospel lectionary by Luke the Cypriot. Illustration late 16th or early 17th century Russian. Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland.

In John 6: 16-21, Jesus has just finished miraculously feeding the multitudes and withdrawn hurriedly to a mountain. Why did he do this? Firstly, because he did not want the crowds, in light of the great miracle, to drag him off to make him a secular king. Secondly, because he surely by then had a profound longing to be alone with his heavenly Father in prayer. And because, as the rest of the passage shows, he was about to teach the closest of his disciples some lessons.

More than one commentator has remarked that these disciples got into their boat despite a strong wind because of their intense longing to be reunited with Jesus and went to seek him: their longing to find him, in fact, would have been similar to his own to retreat into prayer and to prepare for his next miracle. An old proverb comes to mind here: ‘Never less alone, says the serious Christian, than when alone’, for then we are in the profound company of our own thoughts, of God, of the saints and angels and the whole company of heaven. It is no accident that the Evangelist here speaks of the lateness of the hour in connection with the disciples’ embarkation in the boat: it was to show the warmth of their longing and love for their Master. And the physical separation between Jesus and his disciples has a deeper significance here too, especially in light of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes which has immediately preceded. For we know that Christ provides for the good of his disciples not only when he is present in the body, but also when far away. 

As the wind rises we are reminded forcibly of Psalm 17: 23-24: ‘They that go down to the sea in ships, these see the works of the Lord, for he raises the stormy wind.’ And why does Jesus show himself to the disciples, walking alone upon the sea? St. John Chrysostom remarks in his commentary on this passage: ‘First he teaches them how great an evil it is to be forsaken by him and makes their longing greater. Second he shows forth his power. For as in his teaching they heard not all in common with the multitude, so in the case of the miracles they saw them not all with the mass of people, since it was needful that they who were about to be given authority over all the world should have something more than the rest.’ Then a very odd thing happens: the disciples want to take Jesus into the boat, but the boat arrives immediately at the shore to which they are heading. Perhaps this occurs for two reasons: to double the magnitude of the miracle (it’s not only about walking on water), and to teach the important lesson that, as soon as we receive the Lord, we are safe.

Fr. Seraphim Rose, the great 20th century Orthodox monk and co-founder of the St. Herman of Alaska Monastery in California, stressed the urgency of our need to seek God. ‘It’s later than you think’, he often said. And indeed he himself reposed in the Lord suddenly and in a most unexpected way before he was even fifty. As the 17th century English scripture and patristics scholar Matthew Henry put it: ‘If we have received Christ Jesus the Lord, have received him willingly, though the night be dark and the wind high, yet we may comfort ourselves with this, that we shall be at shore shortly, and are nearer to it than we think we are. Many a doubting soul is fetched to heaven by a pleasing surprise, or ever it is aware.’

St. John Chrysostom on John 3: 31

Euphrasian Basilica, Poreč, Croatia. 6th century. 

Yesterday’s Gospel passage (John 3: 31-36) finds John the Baptist responding to his own disciples’ questioning about his attitude toward Jesus. In verse 30 he says: ‘He must increase, I must decrease.” And now he goes on to say that ‘The one who comes from above is above all. The one who is of the earth is earthly and speaks of earthly things. But the one who comes from heaven is above all.’ Now St. John Chrysostom (347-407), who tended more toward the Antiochian method of interpreting scripture in plain and practical ways rather than toward the strongly allegorical approach of Alexandria, saw in this passage a simple comparison between Jesus and John. And he emphasized this point: that John the Baptist addressed his listeners on an earthly level because that was what they were capable of hearing, and because he himself was lowly and did not want to grasp after things too exalted, those being the prerogative of Jesus himself, because, as we find later in this passage, ‘The Father loves the Son and has given everything over to him.’

Here is what St. John Chrysostom has to say about human overreaching in this part of his commentary: ‘A dreadful thing is the love of glory, dreadful and full of many evils. It is a thorn hard to be extracted, a wild beast untamable and many headed, arming itself against those that feed it. For as the worm eats through the wood from which it is born, as rust wastes the iron whence it comes forth, and moths the fleeces, so vainglory destroys the soul which nourishes it, and therefore we need great diligence to remove the passion.’ Why did this saintly 4th century Archbishop of Constantinople make this point? It is a good general spiritual observation, of course. But also: ‘This I say, that we may not carelessly pass by what is contained in the scriptures, but may fully consider the object of the speaker, and the infirmity of the hearers, and many other points in them. For teachers do not say all as they themselves would wish, but generally as the state of their weak hearers requires…So too John [the Baptist] desired to teach some great things to the disciples, but they could not yet bear to receive them, and therefore he dwells for the most part on that which is lowlier.’

Yet even as John the Baptist emphasizes his own earthly lowliness, he points toward the Christ in order to lead his listeners toward that which is heavenly. Because he was concerned that they would become irrevocably mired in attitudes and attachments above which they would eventually be unable to rise. St. John Chrysostom: ‘Although I am always telling you this both in private and in public, I effect nothing, but see you all your time nailed to the things of this life, and not so much as dreaming of spiritual matters. Therefore our lives are careless, and we who strive for truth have but little power, and are become a laughing stock to Greeks and Jews and heretics. Had you been careless in other matters, and exhibited in this place the same indifference as elsewhere, not even so could your doings have been defended. But now in matters of this life, everyone one of you, artisan and politician alike, is keener than a sword, while in necessary and spiritual things we are duller than any.’

Let us not imprison ourselves in that which is merely earthly and fail to long for that which is above. Or rather, let us be like many of the Desert Fathers, who saw the earth and all of creation as God’s good gift meant to lead us beyond itself, like a sacred window or icon, into the blessedness and holiness of heaven.