My Dear Family in The Lord,

As Orthodox Christians, we all know that our life here in the world is only a temporary one, lasting only for a number of years, a few decades, or for some, a century, or a little over a century (one hundred years). We also know that everything that counts for us is the Eternity, our life after death, that we are called, God willing, to live forever with Jesus Christ our Lord in Heaven! So, we are called from the early age of our temporary life on the earth to prepare ourselves for the life to come, with Jesus in Heaven. This is our ultimate goal: to make it into the Kingdom of God, into eternity!

As far as our Church is concerned, she (the Church), offers all the prayers, the Sacraments, the Canon Law, and everything necessary to help us accomplish that, the salvation of our souls, the sanctification of our souls and bodies, and to restore God’s Image and Likeness in each one of us! Our Church has all the prayers in the world to address and respond to every human need. But, still, we as human beings always have questions about that! Questions, as the young man, from our Gospel Lesson today, had: “Good Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?” (Matthew 9:16) And the Lord, in the first place, as humble as He was, was not completely happy, that the young man, called Him Good, because He (the Lord) said that only God should be called Good! And then, the Lord told Him to keep the commandments, and the young man said: “All these I have observed; what do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”  When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions.” (Matthew 19:21-24) 

 My Dearly Beloved in The Lord,

My point today will not be to criticize the young and wealthy man, for not being capable to fully understand the Lord’s message to him, and for not being capable of renouncing his possessions and following Jesus! My point will be rather to emphasize that for us, Orthodox Christians, in our spiritual ascension to the Kingdom of Heaven, there’s always something to do, there’s always something to work on to perfect ourselves in order to restore God’s Image in us! There’s no time for anybody to relax when we work in the Lord’s Vineyard! There’s always something to do! We can never stop; this is the main message from today’s Gospel lesson for us! Observing the Commandments, partaking from the Sacraments, living a Christlike life, etc., are all good things to do, but in spirituality we can never say, that we reached this “Peak” and now we can relax, because there’s no other place to go for us, anymore, since we reached this very high level of spirituality and now, we can relax for a bit! Spirituality doesn’t work that way. We are either going up or coming down; there’s always something to do in order to climb up, to ascend towards the Kingdom of Heaven. We will never be done with that, for as long as we live! It is not only about some people being addicted to their possessions, which can pull us down, but there are a multitude of other things that do that to us! Our sins, our weakness when it comes to the point to resist temptations, our egos sometimes, our pride, and many other “thorns of various sins”, that may contribute to damaging our spiritual life. Whenever we put more trust in ourselves, instead of trusting God, and this is very wrong, because we always should put our trust in God first and foremost, instead of trusting our own selves! When we are tempted to do that, we should remember two very important things, one that the Lord said:” I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) and also:” Thy Will be done” (Matthew 6:10).

Therefore, my Dearly Beloved in The Lord, let’s keep these things in mind and try to always to move forward and to prepare all the time, in every moment of our lives, to enter into God’s Kingdom and to glorify Him in all the days of our lives, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity, One in Essence and Undivided, now and always and unto the ages of ages, AMEN!