Pastor: Fr John Vazquez | (518) 462-0579 |
fatherjohnvazquez@gmail.com
Monday, October 14th—8:15am—Coffee with the Fathers at Alias Coffee on North Pearl St in Albany.
Wednesday, October 16th—8am—Divine Liturgy
Wednesday, October 16th—6pm—Paraklesis of St George PARISH COUNCIL MEETING TO FOLLOW AT 7PM
Friday, October 18th—8am—Orthros
Saturday, October 19th—PREP FOOD FOR FESTIVAL OF NATIONS
Saturday, October 19th—Great Vespers with Bible Study to follow
Sunday, October 20th—9am—Orthros and Divine Liturgy—JOIN US FOR A PARISH BREAKFAST AFTER LITURGY
Sermon—Sunday 16th Sunday After Pentecost
Lk 8.4–15
WILL WE SUFFOCATE OUR LORD?
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit—one God—Amen.
I want you to imagine that you are there the night that Christ was born. And you see this beautiful mystery, this beautiful miracle manifest to us human beings here on earth. And after a little bit, after Mary has helped him for a little while, she asks you if you would take him into your arms.
And so you, you take the Lord into your arms, and you know what a special gift this is. And, of course you're in the clothes of the day, and your robe is over his head a little bit, over his face. And he's struggling to get the robe out of his face because He cant breath—your Lord and God can’t breath so of course you hold it back so that he can.
We would never want to suffocate our Lord as His caregiver right?
We hear this parable of the sower today, and there's many, many things we can talk about in this parable. The sower, who is our Lord, sows the seed, and the seed is also Him…the seed is the word of the Lord—the word of God that we receive.
And the seed is sown on the ground, and some seed falls by the wayside, some is sown on the stone, some among the thorns, and some on good ground. And what I want to talk about today is the seed that falls among the thorns.
When our Lord interprets the parable for us, we hear that the thorns grow up and they choke the word.
This reality takes place in our hearts.
If we allow the thorns to grow up, it’s as if we're allowing our garment to cover the face of the Lord and to suffocate Him in the example I just gave of holding our Lord in your arms…
We would never, we would never want to do such a thing. Right?
But we must be careful because the cares and riches of this world, the deceitfulness of riches and cares of this world, can be something that come up in our lives and we have to be careful that they do not take root in our hearts.
And how do we know what takes root in our hearts?
Well, we hear from our Lord that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks (Lk 6.45)
And you could also say that out of the abundance of the heart, the mind thinks.
So what do we spend our time thinking about? What do we spend our time talking about?
By looking at these things, we can see and understand what are those things that maybe have the potential to choke the word of the Lord in us.
We are tested in this way.
We live in the world and we have to take care of the things that we have to take care of.
It's okay to be, entertained. It's okay to have a job. It's okay to do these things. But do these things take root in our heart? Do they grow up and choke the word that has also been sown in our heart?
This is the case with the people of God in the Old Testament, when they go to Canaan.
Some of the peoples there are left there. These are there to test the people.
Our Lord says to us, “will you continue to worship me? Do you still love me?”
Every day we have an opportunity to say, yes Lord, I love you. Yes. I'm going to give some time to you today. Yes. I'm gonna come to church today, Yes. I'm gonna pray today. Yes. I'm gonna try to do the things you ask and to not allow those things to come in and choke the You.
But our enemy is very subtle.
The devil has tried the thing that is overwhelming, and he still does that sometimes, but when he tries to overwhelm the Church, like in the early Church, with all the martyrs and all the saints, that just strengthens the Church.
So often he uses another tactic, a tactic that is to be subtle.
To just do small little things...his temptation of Eve is very subtle. It's mixed with some truth.
But, when you mix truth with a lie, then it's no longer purely truth.
And so when we listen to those lies mixed with truth that he whispers to us we can be lead astray
So, what do we do to not allow this to happen?
Well, St. Paul has three answers for us today in his epistle to Titus.
As I have talked about many times, sin happens in three ways.
It happens in thought, word, and deed.
St. Paul tells us today—Do not be carried away with foolish disputes and genealogies (Titus 3.9).
And this can be likened to our thoughts kind of just running away and going here and there. We get caught up in whatever it is—the wars, the election, sports, gambling, lust, whatever it is that we get caught up in…
We can allow our minds to go after those things and be carried away.
We have to turn from those things, let those things pass by. Right?
An important thing for us to understand as human beings is that not all of our thoughts are our own thoughts.
Sometimes thoughts are suggested to us by the world—what we watch, what we read, what we listen to—thoughts come to us this way.
Sometimes thoughts are suggested to us by other people—having a conversation.
Sometimes thoughts are suggested to us by the Holy Spirit or by our guardian angel. Those are good things—we should grab on to those.
And sometimes, thoughts are suggested to us by the devil. So not every thought is our own thought.
We have to have discernment and learn how to let those foolish thoughts just pass by. But we have to practice that. How do we practice that? We spend some time in silence every day—just being quiet. And we have to practice allowing those thoughts to just slide by.
Just say, Lord have mercy and move on.
Focus on the prayer, Lord have mercy or stand up in front of your icons and focus on just being in the presence of God and allow those thoughts to just pass away. Because if you don't practice something, you're not going to be good at it. So you have to practice letting those foolish thoughts pass by.
So that's the first thing that St. Paul tells us.
The second thing is to reject a divisive man after the first and second admonition (Titus 3.10). So how does that apply here?
Well, when we know that there are things that can take us away from the path of the Lord, we have to turn away from those things.
If we know that when we listen to something, or when we watch something, or when we go and do something, that that is going to take us into a bad place, we have to quit doing it—we have to reject it.
We have to stop and turn away from that. Even if it's not all that bad of a thing objectively speaking. But maybe for us, it takes us down that path that leads to sin.
This is how it is for alcoholics. They know—"if I have one drink I can't stop."
It's not bad to have a drink but for them, they know that if they go down that path, it's going to go somewhere that is destructive for them.
So we have to know what those things are for us. We have to reject those things.
Maybe sometimes for us this is people—the company that we keep—we have to turn away from that company and know that this is not good for us. This company is not for our salvation, it can lead us down the wrong path. So we have to turn away from those things or those people.
And then finally we have to be careful to maintain good works and do the things that God asks
And this, itself, is how we really, weed and clear out the soil in our hearts and clear out those thorns and the thistles. This is how we actually take the cloth away from our Lord's face so it's not suffocating Him.
We have to do what He asks us to do, follow His commandments, read through the Gospels, and hear what He's telling us to do—Go and sin no more, Rise up and walk, Rejoice and be glad.
These are things for us to do, ways for us to follow. We have the Ten Commandments, and that's our base, and that's where we start but then we have these other things in the Gospels that when we do them are the act of us weeding our heart, the soil of our heart, and removing any obstacle to allowing the seed of Christ to grow in our hearts.
So with these three things, with rejecting foolish thoughts, with turning away from evil things that are going to lead us down the wrong path, and then finally doing good works, what our Lord asks us to do, then we can have good soil in our hearts.
We can create a place where our relationship with our Lord can grow, and we can become united, and of course we know that unity with Him is salvation.
Through the prayers of the Apostle Titus, Apostle Paul, Apostle Luke and our most Holy Lady may our Lord help us and saves us. Amen!
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