Below are three of Fr. Abbot's homilies: for the 17^th, 19^th, and 21^st Sundays After Pentecost, 2007.

We begin the cycle of St Luke after the feast of the Holy Cross in the same way we begin the cycle of St Matthew after Pentecost: with an account of the calling of the first disciples. In some religious orders, the feast of the Cross is the dividing line for their summer and winter schedules. In some Churches the feast of the Cross marks a new liturgical time: the Sundays are counted no longer as Sundays after Pentecost but as Sundays after the Cross. So it is appropriate to have a Gospel about Jesus calling his disciples: it is a new time, a new beginning, an invitation for us to renew and deepen our own response to God's call.

Each person's calling, like each one's relationship to God, is unique, even though it may fit into some general category, like marriage, priesthood, or monastic life. So I can't hope to discuss the details of every particular calling. But there are some basic elements of every calling from the Lord, for all callings come from the same source, God, and all callings are ultimately an invitation to Heaven, to eternal life with Him who calls us.

In the Gospel today (Lk 5:1-11), we see that any vocation begins with hearing the word of God and responding to it. Jesus first asked Peter to use his boat as a pulpit. Peter readily agreed. But then Jesus asked Peter something that Peter didn't agree with—and here we might find ourselves with some resistance to what God is asking of us. Peter's response was two-fold: his objection to what Jesus asked, followed by his acceptance of it. We may also find ourselves struggling with the demands of God's word to us, but we must come to the point of acceptance of it—not necessarily because we suddenly understand what He means, or because we find a way to agree with it, but simply because we recognize the divine source of the call. Peter's objection to going out to fish again was: "We have toiled all night and caught nothing!" But he recognized the authority of God in the words of Jesus and so he immediately added: "But at your word I will let down the nets." We must do the same. We may have our personal objections to what our vocation requires of us, but we have to recognize the authority of God in his word, and in those who have been entrusted with his authority, and respond: "OK, at your word I will do it."

Because of Peter's obedience, Jesus worked a miracle for him. Now our obedience may not immediately result in manifest miracles—and this is where God's calling for the majority of people differs from that of the calling of Peter, James, and John—but Jesus is not required to work miracles in all cases, only to give the necessary grace to say yes to whatever He asks, and this He unfailingly gives. Even without a miracle, we will recognize the presence of Jesus in the context of his call to us.

The next step of our response must be like Peter's: repentance, that is, the recognition of our sinfulness in the presence of the Lord's holiness. When Peter realized that a miracle was worked before his eyes, he immediately saw himself in the pure light of Christ and felt his utter unworthiness, so he exclaimed: "Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man." Religious anthropologists tell us that this is one of the first and basic reactions of man to the presence of the Holy: the awareness of one's own lack of holiness, and hence the desire, if not to flee from the holy presence, at least to completely humble oneself in repentance and confessions of unworthiness.

We shouldn't assume that we are somehow worthy of God's call to serve Him or even simply to salvation. When the Lord's presence in manifest in our lives, we shouldn't have the attitude of: "what took you so long?" Rather, we should say: "O God, be merciful to me a sinner." When St Symeon the New Theologian had a profound experience of the presence of God, all he could say, over and over, was "Lord, have mercy!"

But what does it mean, in practice, to respond to God's call? Again, I can't speak here of the multitude of different ministries, services, and ways of life that are available to Christians. But last Sunday's readings give us the bottom line of what it means to respond to the calling of God. We have to deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow Jesus. This is a basic element of every Christian vocation without exception.

After the miraculous catch of fish, Jesus did not sit down with Peter and go over the package deal He had prepared for him, with its various financial incentives, benefits, stock options, and retirement plan. No, He just invited Peter and his friends to follow Him, and they did. No questions asked. Just follow. They would be briefed along the way, and they would learn just what it meant to deny themselves and take up their crosses. They would learn what it meant to lose their lives in order to save them. They would learn the theology of the Cross—not in a classroom but in their own bodies and souls, in the struggles of life as Jesus' disciples. They would experience the agony and the ecstasy, the sorrow and the joy, the death and the resurrection that are part and parcel of the life of one who says "yes" to Jesus.

But what is all this for? Why leave everything and follow Him? Why take up the cross? Why deny oneself? The basic reason is simply for love of Jesus, but there is another reason, an ultimate one, which is at the same time the fulfillment of our love for Jesus, and that is: Heaven. We respond to God's calling, we take up the cross and follow Jesus because we desire eternal life; his call is to everlasting happiness. We are following Him to Paradise. We have to be clear on this, so that short-term projects and goals—or worse, our own selfish expectations of life—don't obscure the reason we are following Him in the first place: we are on our way to Heaven.

You might say that this is obvious; we all want to go to Heaven. Yes, but is that general wish manifested in practical ways in our daily lives? And is Heaven so important to us that we are willing to forsake everything else to attain it? How do we know that we are really living for Heaven and not for this passing world?

Here are a few practical points to ponder. (We may be unpleasantly surprised to discover that in fact Heaven is just a peripheral point in our basically earth-centered, self-centered lives.) If you get disappointed because things don't go your way, you are living for earth and not for Heaven. If you get upset, indignant, and defensive when someone points out a fault of yours—rather than being grateful for the opportunity to repent of it—you are living for earth and not for Heaven. If you resist or complain about the demands of your state in life, whether the monastic vows or the requirements of family and other responsibilities—you are living for earth and not for Heaven. If you refuse to accept sufferings, hardships, and even occasional ill-treatment, to give in to another's wishes, or if you return evil for evil, or hold grudges or refuse to forgive or in any way insist on your own ideas or opinions, you are living for earth and not for Heaven.

Why is this? It is simply because you thus manifest in practice—despite what you might say or think—that your own present comfort, self-esteem, personal vindication or preferences in life are the most important things to you. If you don't act like you are living for Heaven, then you aren't living for Heaven—let's decide today to drop all self-deception in this matter. If you are living for Heaven, all these selfish things that belong to this passing life will be of little concern to you, for your eyes are fixed on Jesus and the fulfillment of his promises in you. You will be equally content if things go your way or if they don't. For this is not your home, this is not your destiny. Heaven is your home and destiny, and if you really live for Heaven, you will not respond inappropriately to insignificant things of this life. This is a tall order, but Heaven is a tall place.

To have our eyes and hearts fixed on Heaven does not mean that we don't take seriously our earthly responsibilities—for our fidelity and obedience on earth will decide whether or not we will go to Heaven—but does mean that we won't take ourselves too seriously, we won't be touchy, easily offended, judgmental or suspicious of others. People who are going to Heaven don't act as if it is of utmost importance to get their way on earth.

So let us hear the voice of the Lord calling us to Heaven, calling us out of our selfishness, calling us to serve Him by serving his people, calling us to take up our crosses willingly and to follow Him, that we may let go of everything that would hinder our straight path to his Kingdom. Our answer to his call—not in mere words but in actions—will be our decision to live for Heaven.

This Sunday's Gospel (Lk. 7:11-16) is a kind of theophany. It is a manifestation of the presence and power of God, through his Son our Lord Jesus Christ. It's also a manifestation of other mysteries, which we'll look at shortly. But let us first see what was happening there in the crowded streets of Naim.

As Jesus was entering the city, a funeral procession was coming out of the city. Funerals were evidently great community events, since it says that a large crowd had accompanied the bereaved mother. The first divine manifestation was that of compassion. When Jesus saw her, St Luke says that He "had compassion on her and said to her, 'Do not weep.'" God knows, after having closely followed human history for millennia, the pain and sorrow that people feel when a loved one dies. In this case the sense of loss must have been particularly acute, since this woman had already lost her husband and now had lost her only child. This meant not only that her loneliness would now be extreme, but also that she was wholly without support. There were no government subsidies or welfare programs in those days. If you did not have family to support you, you ended up as a beggar.

So she must have felt truly that she had lost everything. Yet this man Jesus, whom she probably didn't know (this is the only time that any of the Gospels mentions Jesus going to this town), says to her, "Do not weep." God sees what we do not see. Usually we cannot see beyond our own problems and pain. But God is the Savior and the Lord, so wherever He is present, hope is present as well.

Jesus stopped the funeral procession. It says the pall-bearers stood still—as if breathlessly awaiting the revelation of some unforeseen mystery. Indeed, heaven and earth stood still as the God-man prepared to utter his astounding command: "Young man, I say to you, arise!" Then the dead man arose and spoke. The grieving mother no longer wept but was overcome with awe and gratitude, and with the whole crowd she glorified God.

Jesus said that He came to give us abundant life, that He Himself is the Resurrection and the Life. The several times that He raised the dead during his public ministry dramatically express this truth. As St Paul tells us, death came into the world through sin, and Christ, the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world, also came to overturn death, to rob it of its destructive power—giving the last word to life, a life that will not end, a life that will no longer be subject to death. As astounding as Jesus' raising of the dead man was, it was still but a sign, not the true fulfillment of his mission. He could have raised all the dead in Israel and still not have accomplished his purpose.

Giving life back to the dead man of Naim was part of the theophany—for only God can raise the dead—yet the reason it was only sign and not fulfillment is that the man would still have to die again. It is not unlikely that his poor mother might even have to endure his second funeral. Jesus called the man "young," so we can guess he was no older than his 20s, and since women commonly married in those days in their mid-teens, his mother may have been only in her 30s or at the oldest early 40s. Just because she was a widow doesn't mean she was an old widow. We have no way of knowing, but she may very well have seen him die again.

The point is that Jesus, in raising the dead man, was only doing part of what He came to do. This part was the manifestation of his compassion, bringing joy to those who are sorrowing, and giving a powerful testimony to the fact that He is indeed the Lord of life and death. But his main work, to which everything else must be subordinated, was, and still is, giving us eternal life. The hardships and sufferings of this present and passing life, as well as the inescapable fact of bodily death, would remain.

We see in the epistle reading (2Cor. 11:31 — 12:9) that St Paul, who wrote after the death and resurrection of Jesus, and after the coming of the Holy Spirit, was in no way spared sufferings, yet he rejoiced constantly because of his faith in Christ and the eternal life He promised. He knew more of this heavenly life than we do, since he was granted extraordinary revelations of Paradise, yet he was returned to earth with a hard crash. Earlier in chapter 11 he described what he had to suffer for Christ's sake. Let's look at just one on his long list of sufferings. Five times, he said, he received "the 40 lashes less one." According to evidence on the Shroud of Turin, Jesus received forty lashes with the common three-pronged whip of the time, since there can be counted 120 scourge marks on his body. If you have seen the film The Passion of the Christ, you know what these 40 lashes can do to a person. This happened to St Paul five times. But what is this "less one" that he mentions? The Jews had a custom (evidently unknown to the Romans who scourged Jesus) of administering 39 lashes, lest the torturer miscount and accidentally give 41 lashes—which, of course, would be cruel, and they wouldn't want that!

The point of all this is again to focus on eternal life. Christ has the power to heal the sick and to raise the dead, but look what He asks his most faithful followers to suffer! He knows not only that the sufferings will pass, but that if they are willingly, patiently, and humbly borne and offered to God, they will bring much spiritual benefit to the whole body of Christ, the Church, as St Paul explained to the Colossians (1:24).

Yet even the great St Paul had his breaking point. To keep him from becoming proud over the heavenly revelations he was granted, God sent him such an affliction that Paul begged three times to be released from it. The Lord's words in response should be words we never forget in our own lesser afflictions: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness."

The grace of Christ is sufficient. That is the message—the message behind his forgiveness of sins, the message behind his healing of the sick, the message behind his raising of the dead, and (perhaps most importantly for us) the message behind the sufferings He does not heal, the deaths He does not prevent. God's grace is sufficient.

That is why I think that the fundamental message of this Gospel is not "Young man, I say to you arise," but rather the words of the crowd: "God has visited his people!" Jesus' compassion for the grieving mother and his raising of the dead man were but particular manifestations of this great and universal fact that spells salvation for us and for the world: God has visited his people. He has done this through the incarnation of his Son—a divine act infinitely more astounding than the raising of a corpse. Consequently, God has visited his people through Jesus' own acceptance of suffering and death—He who healed the sick and raised the dead—so that we, for whom death is inevitable, might ultimately rise to immortal life in the joy of Paradise. St Paul was given a glimpse of this life, this joy, and so he was willing to suffer anything for the sake of Christ, who loved him and gave Himself for him. Paul had discovered what God has prepared for those who love Him.

Because we are people of little faith, we go through this life resisting sufferings, grumbling when we can't avoid them, becoming disconsolate over our losses or the hardships that life inevitably brings. We don't want to suffer anything for Jesus' sake; we complain when we're asked to make a sacrifice for Him. We fear the 40 lashes less one. We'd prefer the one lash less one! But Christ comes to halt our interior funeral procession, for He doesn't want our moribund souls to remain in the torpor of spiritual death. Let us, the pall-bearers of fallen humanity, stand still in his presence and hear his divine voice calling us to resurrection and life. Let us realize that all that matters is eternal life, and any price is a small one to pay for that everlasting joy which we do not deserve, but which is offered to us if we will only accept the sufficient grace of Jesus in the midst of our trials and struggles. God has visited his people; He visits us today through the grace of the Holy Eucharist—and He bids us arise.

Today the Lord gives us a striking lesson in the story of the rich man and Lazarus. But the lesson is not primarily about riches and poverty—it's more about Heaven and Hell, and about what we need to do to enter the former and avoid the latter.

Even though we might get this impression from what Abraham says to the rich man in Hell, the simple fact of having riches does not infallibly send one to Hell, nor does the simple fact of being materially destitute guarantee one's entrance into Heaven. But we see, from this Gospel passage and others, that wealth tends to breed the bad qualities that dispose one to damnation, and poverty often provides the opportunities for one to turn wholly to God.

So let's see what's going on in the Gospel. The rich man is described as being decked out in the finest clothing and eating the richest food—every day! Already there is something of a problem here, and not only for his waistline. For his lifestyle serves to enforce the inequity between rich and poor, and there's no indication that he ever shared any of his excess wealth with the needy—rather, the presence of Lazarus at his gate makes it clear that the very opposite is the case.

The basis for the rich man's condemnation to Hell was not his riches but his pride, and the rotten fruit of his pride: his self-centered lack of compassion and generosity. The rich man simply didn't care that others—whom he could easily have helped—were in dire need of food and medical care. How many times must he have walked right by poor Lazarus as he went in and out of the gate of his mansion! He did not have the excuse of being merely oblivious to someone else's need, bad as that is—he knew Lazarus, and knew him by name! "Send Lazarus," he cried to Abraham from the flames of Hell.

Now Lazarus was not only poor but sick. The Gospel says he was "full of sores." Yet we can infer that he was a humble man. There's no evidence that he was angry or bitter about his poverty or illness, nor was he making a violent protest about the social inequities of his day. He would have been content, the Scripture says, with eating the scraps that fell from the rich man's table. After spending his life in humiliation and suffering, he died and was carried by angels to Heaven—here poetically referred to as "Abraham's bosom." Abraham was known as the "friend of God," so to find a place close to him in the hereafter is also to be counted among the friends of God. The rich man also died, and, according to some manuscripts, was "buried in Hell." Others punctuate it differently, saying "he was buried; and in Hell, being in torment," etc. I think the impact and the contrast are stronger if we read, "the poor man died and was carried by the angels… the rich man also died and was buried in Hell…" Notice here the contrast, and the reduction of the two to general categories (Lazarus' name is not used here): the poor man, the humble man, goes to heaven; the rich man, the proud man, goes to Hell.

There's an important passage of Scripture that finds its application here. It's so important that it occurs in three different places in the Bible: first is it found in Proverbs, but then it is quoted in the New Testament, in the First Epistle of Peter and the Epistle of James. "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." Another version is "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

Here we can see why the rich man went to Hell and Lazarus went to Heaven. We are saved by grace; without divine grace we will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. This text says that grace is given to the humble. Ergo, humility is necessary for salvation. On the other hand, not only is grace not given to the proud, God positively opposes and resists them! That is why the rich man went to Hell—not merely because he was rich, but because his haughty selfishness closed his heart to compassion and charity; therefore what he failed to do for Lazarus he failed to do for Christ. And to such, as we read in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ will say on Judgment Day: "Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire…" (25:41).

Let us reflect upon this for a moment, for it is a serious issue. Most, if not all of us, are guilty of sins of pride, to a greater or lesser extent. Pride is, in a sense, at the root of all sin, for pride is at the root of all disobedience. Sin is fundamentally disobedience to the commandments of God. "Sin is lawlessness," says St John (1Jn. 3:4). That is, sin is the breaking of the divine commandments. Well, Scripture says—repeatedly—that to the extent we bear pride within us, God opposes us, God resists us! Is there a worse possible predicament in which to find ourselves? St Paul says: if God is for us, who can be against us? But if we are proud, Scripture says that God Himself is against us! Who then can be for us, if we make ourselves God's enemies by thinking and acting out of pride? No one can save us if we remain in that state, just as no one could save the proud rich man who was buried in Hell.

Pride is the most demonic of sins; it is the chief sin of satan himself. Pride cuts us off from grace, and hence separates us from God. Hell is the ultimate separation from God, so pride is a kind of foretaste of Hell. Abraham said to the rich man, who was begging for some relief from his torments: "no one can pass over from your side to ours or from our side to yours." Pride is self-insulating. God cannot enter a proud heart, and a proud person will not be able to connect with God—though he might, if he is "piously" proud, delude himself into thinking that he is in union with God.

Pride is at work in two of the major sins that keep people out of Heaven: despair and presumption. You may think that hope is the opposite of despair, but it is not; presumption is. Hope is the virtuous middle ground between the extremes of despair and presumption. One who sins through despair believes his sins are too great to be forgiven—thus in his pride he sins against the mercy of God. One who sins through presumption is heedless of his sins and thinks he will be forgiven even if he doesn't repent or confess his sins—thus in his pride he sins against the justice of God. This is one of the great post-Vatican II sins: "God is merciful, so why repent? God is merciful, so why confess? God understands, so He looks the other way at our sins, which we've decided aren't really sins after all; what the Bible says is just not up to date." But to think that we will be magically saved without repentance and confession is the most fatal of delusions.

So what can we do? How do we avoid the fate of the man who was buried in Hell and receive the reward of the man who was carried by angels to Heaven? Do we have to lie starving at the gates of the rich? No, but we have to start with the same humility of Lazarus. God gives grace to the humble and withholds it from the haughty. Humility isn't merely walking around with one's head bowed or refraining from loud-mouthed boasting. Our humility is basically measured by our degree of selflessness, of self-forgetfulness in quietly serving others, in sacrificing our own desires or preferences for those of others, for love of God. The proud will think: We are called to love; people should love me more. We are called to be merciful; people should be more merciful to me. We are supposed to serve; so why don't they serve me? But the humble person does not reflect on how little he is loved or served; rather he reflects and repents over how little he loves, how little he serves. The center of gravity is the other, not the self.

St Paul has the ultimate answer for us in the epistle—"I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me…" "No longer I"—that should be our motto; we should post it somewhere so that we can see it every day. "No longer I, but Christ"—this is the eradication of pride; this is the foundation of humility. If I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me, then I needn't fear the fate of the rich man, and I also needn't fear the humiliations and temporal sufferings of the poor man. For Christ is my wealth and my hope, my food and my strength, my life and my destiny.

Let us, then, spare no effort in freeing ourselves from the pride that clings so tightly, and in pursuing that humility that may seem elusive but which is available to all who sincerely desire it. For God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble; He buries the proud in Hell, but sends angels to carry the humble to Heaven.

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