30/03/2025
Sunday 30th March: 4th Sunday of
☦️ St. John Climacus of Sinai, author of The Ladder (7th)
⚜️📜🙏📙🤲 ⚔️ Saints:
Apostles Sosthenes, Apollos & Epaphroditus of the Seventy (1st); St. Osburga of Coventry, Virgin (c 1015); St. Sophronius, Bishop of Irkutsk (1771).
⛪ Church services this week:
📅 Wednesday 2nd April at 7.00 pm, Pre-sanctified Liturgy.
📅 Saturday 5th April at 4.00 pm, Great Vespers.
“The virtues build a new person radiating love to the world.” (Metropolitan Paul (Yazigi) of Aleppo who consecrated our temple.)
“For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
(Hebrews 4:15-16)
TODAY’S GOSPEL: Mark 9:17-31.
“Then one of the crowd answered and said, “Teacher, I brought You my son, who has a mute spirit. And wherever it seizes him it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. So I spoke to Your disciples, that they should cast it out, but they could not.“ He answered him and said, “O faithless generation, how long shall I bear with you? Bring him to Me.”
Then they brought him to Him. And when He saw Him, immediately the spirit convulsed him, and he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming at the mouth. So He asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, “From childhood. And often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. “ Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”
Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” When Jesus saw that the people came running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it: “Deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more!” Then the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him.
And he became as one dead, so that many said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. And when He had come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” So He said to them, “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.” Then they departed from there and passed through Galilee, and He did not want anyone to know it. For He taught His disciples and said to them, “The Son of Man is being betrayed into the hands of men, and they will kill Him. And after He is killed, He will rise the third day.”
FOR THE COMMEMORATION.
Matthew 4:25-5:12.
“Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” is a cry from the heart of a man who loves his son and is desperate for a cure for his boy’s epilepsy. How many of us find ourselves making the same plea to God in this troubled world, where our poor faith and the power of materialism seeks to undermine the faith we have?
The power of faith we are told will move mountains but often our faith cannot even move a molehill.
Do not worry, because when He told His disciples of His death and resurrection did they believe His words? After the Crucifixion and burial they hid out of fear but only when He appeared to them did they truly believe.
Thomas, was absent at the Lord’s first appearance, made it very clear that unless he saw with his own eyes the wounds on the living Lord he could not believe. Christ did appear to Thomas, showing the wounds on His hands and side giving him the certainty of His resurrection. Christ goes on to tell us that we who believe but have not seen are very blessed.
If we worry about our lack of faith, if we struggle to come to Him, look at the icon of The Ladder, a book which was written for monks by St. John Climacus. We see all sorts of clerics climbing up a ladder to heaven, and some being pulled down by demons, the lures of this world. For most of us we are just on the first rung of the ladder. I like to think that the saints in the bottom right-hand corner are not just mere spectators but are praying for those who are trying to reach heaven and that includes us.
Our faith is not to be hidden but to be shared, perhaps even helping someone up the heavenly ladder at our own expense. This is the Orthodox faith that we receive from the wisdom of the Fathers and the bountiful mercy of God. May God bless our weak Lenten journey and help our unbelief pointing us towards Holy Pascha and all that means for Orthodox Christians from whatever nation we may come from. Our only true nation is the heavenly kingdom, the rest is merely confetti sprinkled over the ages that blows away in the winds of change and man’s folly.
Love,
Fr. George
