In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. God is one. Amen.

Begin by reading 1 Corinthians 16:13-24. In it, St. Paul begins:

Watch. Stand fast in the faith. Be brave (Could be: Be manly.) Be strong. Let all that you do be done with love.

Watch. The Lord himself said, “Watch and pray.” Let us think about this bit: Watch. You hear mentioned a man on a watchtower, up high, scanning the horizon for approaching enemies. It’s like that. In our cases, we need to watch within ourselves, watch around ourselves, watch the company that we keep, watch the thoughts that we have, watch the sins that we might be falling into. And you look a long way ahead, so you don’t say, “Oh, I did this and this and this yesterday; I’m glad I watched out for that now.” You say, “This might happen if I do this. Therefore, don’t do that, and then this won’t happen.”

You watch your every step. You keep an eye on how you’re behaving. Is your prayer life beginning to suffer because you’ve got other things to do? Then come back. Are you reading your Scriptures? No? Then come back and start reading them. Because these are the bit-by-bit ways that we fall away from the faith, and before you know it you are doing something different. Are you spending your time doing hobbies rather than praying? Yes? Then watch, and watch out. These things will lead you away from God. Are you failing to go to church? Yes? Watch out; these things will fail you in the long run, when the Church won’t.

Stand fast in the faith. This doesn’t mean go out and attack other people with it. It means, as it says in the Divine Liturgy, “Stomen kalos. Stand steadfast”: unmoving in the faith of Christ. Others might move, but you stand there like a good soldiers. You stand there; you don’t move. You let the battle come to you, and then you fight, and you fight, and you fight. You stand fast in it. Somebody else wants you to move, let them move or let them destroy you, but you don’t move.

Be brave. Frequently we see Christians who are weak, feeble-minded people. Well, everybody is welcome. But those weak and feeble-minded people need to be trained. They need to have backbone put into them. They need their spiritual muscles strengthened like a soldier is strengthened by exercise, by doing terrible long night operations, by swimming, by lifting weights, by running miles, by going over the obstacles courses.

So also the Christian needs to be trained to be brave, to be strong, as St. Paul continues, so that we are strongly able to resist the evil that comes our way. Some of that evil comes in human form. Some will be temptations. Some will be people wanting to destroy you. So be watchful. Stand fast in the faith. Be brave and be strong.

This might make us think that this means being aggressive, but St. Paul then continues: Let all that you do be done with love. And he uses the word agape for “love.” Now, agape is that self-sacrificing love, where you allow yourself to be sacrificed for somebody else, so though you are watching, you are standing fast, you are brave, you are strong—all of these things are done self-sacrificially.

It’s hard to be a Christian. It is not a feeble thing. It is not for the weak-minded. It is not, also, for the spiritually weak. It is not for the physically weak. You need to train as a warrior for Christ. So if you haven’t been training as a warrior for Christ, get going: Pray. Read your Scriptures. Study the faith. Come to church. Receive the equipment that you need—the sacraments—to be a warrior, a fighter for the Lord. And may God bless you. Pray for me. Amen.