Changed Hearts, Transformed Lives, Godly Families

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

In the Gospel today from the fourth chapter of the Gospel of St Matthew, Jesus Christ learns that St John the Baptist has just been arrested. It is a time of great change in the life of Jesus. As set out in the final verse of today’s Gospel, chapter 4, verse 17, and I quote: “From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” In A Translation: The New Testament, David Bentley Hart offers a different phrasing of this verse; and again I quote: “From this time Jesus began to make His proclamation and to say, ‘Change your hearts; for the Kingdom of the heavens has drawn near.” In both these translations these words are linked to great changes in the life of Jesus Christ. He moves from Nazareth to Capernaum, a fishing village in Galilee. In other words, He leaves his childhood home; and He begins his work as an adult.

To leave the home of the Theotokos and St Joseph who had raised Him as a child and to begin to preach openly of the Kingdom of God was quite a move. Jesus had certainly not been impatient to leave home. The Gospel of St Luke, chapter 3, verse 23, tells us that “Jesus was himself about thirty years old” when He had been baptised by St John the Baptist several years earlier. So, Jesus Christ was in His early thirties when He moved to Capernaum and immediately started to draw disciples to Him, beginning with four fishermen—St Simon who was to become St Peter and his brother St Andrew, as well as St James and his brother St John, the sons of St Zebedee and St Mary Salome. That is a remarkable set of families from the village of Capernaum.

Appropriately, the two saints we celebrate today, St Gregory of Nysssa and his sister St Theosevia the Deaconess, were also from a remarkable family with their brother St Basil the Great and their pious parents, St Basil the Elder and St Emmelia of Caesarea, who lived in Haifa, then a small Jewish fishing village in ancient Palestine, now a large Israeli port.  The Synaxarion of the Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church tells us in entries for January First and May Thirtieth that three other members of this family also became saints—so that’s eight saints in one family. Furthermore, St Nonna, the wife of St Gregory of Nyssa, and all three of their children also became saints. How did this happen in these families in Capernaum and Caesarea?

On a practical level, many of the parents of the apostles were also saints. The Synaxarion also tells us that it was St Basil and St Gregory of Nyssa’s sister, St Macrina, who was “the spiritual leader” of the family; and it was St Gregory of Nyssa’s wife, St Nonna, who led him to Christianity. In other words, each of these saints grew up in families which searched for God’s will in their lives. Now, all of this happened in the first and fourth and fifth centuries, a long time ago. You might think, “That’s interesting, but how does it apply to me today?”

Today’s epistle from St Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, chapter 4, verses 7 to 13, offers advice about how to find the will of God in our own life and the life of every member of our family. Verse 7 in today’s epistle reads “Grace was given to each of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift.” Verses 11 to 13 explain these different gifts of Christ and why they have been given to each of us; and I quote: “His gifts were that some should be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of God’s Son—to the perfect man—to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.” In other words, whatever gifts we have each received, those gifts are steps toward “the full knowledge of God’s Son”—toward becoming Christ-centred in our lives as human beings.

To enter this moral and spiritual universe to which Christ draws us requires us to change many habits. We need to pray more, listen to God and to others more carefully, and to grow stronger as human beings. I am speaking of the changes I need to make in my own life, just as much as the changes each of you need to make in your lives as Orthodox Christians. We are each unique human beings who have been given different gifts by God to help grow His Church on earth. We each need to nurture and grow those gifts within ourselves and reach out with integrity to others. Books are often helpful in our journeys.

The Christian writer and artist, Mary Fleeson, who lives on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, has written for the Lindisfarne Scriptorium the book, Life Journey: A call to Christ-centred Living. She begins: “My journey is always just beginning, A fresh new day, On an old, old path. That’s the blessing, That’s where the hope blossoms. However much I wandered yesterday I can start again tomorrow….” [p. 13]. Her “working title” had originally been “Unknown Journey, its layers representing C.S. Lewis’ view of death as an ‘onward’ and upward’ journey to a better, brighter more ‘real’ place” [p. 15]. However, I think her new title, Life Journey: A call to Christ-centred Living, is better, because our lives now are very much a part of our later journey into heaven. Mary Fleeson’s opening prayer is a good start for each of our journeys. She writes: “My Prayer for you/ I pray that God will speak loudly/ And that you will hear humbly./ I pray that God will act mightily/ And that you will receive graciously./ I pray that God will bless amazingly/ And That you will share freely./ I pray that God will be close/ And that you will walk safely.”

I find Mary Fleeson’s book, Life Journey: A call to Christ-centred Living, helpful for continuing our journeys in “Christ-centred living.” However, it should be noted that she is not an Orthodox Christian. Her reflections focus on how we should behave personally as Christians. Even when she acknowledges that “we are called to be the body of Christ on earth” (p. 126), she does not consider how our life journeys can lead to the building up of the Orthodox Church. As St Paul states in today’s epistle, we all seek “the building up of the body of Christ.” That means we must strive locally and throughout the world to build the Orthodox Church with its right doctrines and life.



And so, we ascribe as is justly due all might, majesty, dominion, power and praise to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always now and ever and unto the ages of ages.              Father Emmanuel Kahn