Homily 631 – 36 APE
Holy Transfiguration, Ames, Iowa
March 2, 2025
Epistle:  (112) – Romans 13:11-14:4
Gospel:  (17) Matthew 6:14-21

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God.

This Sunday, the last Sunday before beginning the Great Fast, has a lot of names.  We call it “Forgiveness Sunday” because that is the way we will begin great lent later this afternoon, with the service of mutual forgiveness.  It is called Cheesefare, because this is the last day to have dairy products before Pascha.

The calendar of the Church, and the hymns we sing, the name and theme is the expulsion from Paradise.  That’s the icon we see in front of us.  And that provides us with an idea for what we are experiencing as we enter Great Lent.

We enter into Great Lent, sometimes, with goals and objectives we want to accomplish.  At least some of us do.  Those are fine and good, and helpful to a degree, but we shouldn’t lose track of the reason for Great Lent.  It’s primary purpose.

I like the name “Expulsion from Paradise” for a number of reasons.  When we begin next Sunday utilizing the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great, his anaphora or consecration prayer recounts the full experience of human relationship with God, and it has one line that always fascinates me.

He says in that prayer:  “You formed the human being by taking dust from the earth and honored him with your own Image, O God; you placed him in the paradise of delight, you promised him immortality of life and enjoyment of eternal good things in the observance of your commandments, but when he disobeyed you, the true God who had created him, and was led astray by the guile of the serpent and was put to death by his own transgressions, you, God, in your righteous judgment sent him forth from paradise into this world and returned him to the earth from which he was taken, providing for him the salvation through rebirth which is in your Christ himself.”

Sent him forth from paradise into this world.  That is a really revealing statement.  That is what is happening today.  We are being expelled from paradise, the presence of the Lord.  We will no longer celebrate the Divine Liturgy on weekdays until after Pascha.  We will have the presanctified gifts – and perhaps a festal liturgy for Annunciation, as a concession.

Normally, the Divine Liturgy can be served every day.  This is the norm in monasteries.  Truly this is the benefit to having a full time priest as well – we can serve weekday services as often as we are available to do so, including the Divine Liturgy.

However, we will not be allowed to serve on the weekdays of Great Lent.  The weekends are for the resurrection, and so we serve on those days, but neither do those days count as part of the Great Fast.

If we were serving every day, our vestments during the week would be dark, but we would return to light vestments for Saturday and Sunday.  Because we don’t typically serve weekday, in our parish we wear dark vestments during Lent, even on weekends, to remind us we are in a penitential period.

But by and large, Great Lent is a separation from God.  We find our temptations increasing, we find our afflictions becoming more troublesome.  And we love to blame our fasting for these trials.

We shouldn’t do that, though.  What we will experience is what Adam and Eve experienced when they left paradise.  We will experience the absence of God, the separation from God, resulting from their choices in the Garden.

This separation is not God’s will.  This separation is not what God desires.  Imperfection cannot co-exist with perfection.  The unholy cannot exist with the Holy.  This is the miracle of the incarnation – the Holy existed, the Son actually took up, the fallen nature we all share.  He became sin for us, as St. Paul tells us in the second epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 5.

That didn’t happen on the Cross – Christ became sin for us at the incarnation.

Some may say, “Well, God should just forgive us.”  That is true, and that’s what God does.  He has forgiven us.  The issue is that God didn’t separate from us, we separated from Him.  This is why throughout the scriptures we are reminded – God has forgiven us, now we have to repent.  We have to change.  We have to embrace God instead of our ego and our will and desire.

God can’t do that for us.  “But Father, I thought God can do anything?”  True, but it is not God’s desire that we be compelled to love Him, because compelled or forced love isn’t love at all.  It is taking away our free will, which is the key element in our ability to love.

Thus, we are forgiven, and called to repent.

These exercises we begin to undertake tomorrow – fasting, praying, giving alms – are to help us overcome our own will and desire, to help us crucify our ego, and repent, and to love God like the commandments instruct, with all our being.  These exercises teach us, train us, like a bodybuilder, through our activities for helping others.

St. Paul in his epistle to the Romans which we read puts it quite simply:  “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and do not think how to satisfy the flesh and its lusts.”

He echoes our Lord who tells us in St. Matthew’s gospel:  “Do not store up treasures for yourselves on the earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal. Instead, store for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consume, and where thieves do not break in and steal.”

And don’t let this season pass without remembering that it is on Pascha we will rejoin God in paradise.  That will be made permanent, and eternal, at the resurrection of the dead.

May that day of the Lord come soon.  Maranatha!

I wish you and all of us a blessed Lent, full of our repentance, that we may experience the fullness of our return to Christ in our own resurrection, with Him.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One God.  Glory to Jesus Christ.