Metropolitan Tikhon

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Orthodox Church in America Partners with IOCC to Support Ukrainian Refugees in Poland Beloved Clergy, Monastics, and Faithful of the Orthodox Church in America, More than four years have passed since the outbreak of the devastating war in Ukraine. Although the world’s…

Christ is risen!

Today Christ opens the eyes of a man born blind, and the blessedness, the happiness, of such a miraculous event seems self-evident. Yet the Pharisees react with hostility, and the formerly-blind man’s parents react with fear. What are we to make of this?

Christ says that he is the Truth, and that the truth will set us free (Jn. 14:6, 8:23). When he opens the blind man’s eyes to see the bright world that he made, the latter is no longer subject to the lies he was told, to the misconceptions that he nurtured, when once he was blind. When Christ opens his eyes, he is no longer subject to the false narratives woven by others; he sees clearly past the distortions of those Pharisees who desire to rule and control.

This is why, throughout the ages, the tyrannical authorities of oppressive regimes have hated the Christian faith. From the centuries of the Roman Empire to the decades of the Soviet Union, the petty Pharisees of the ruling ideology have feared the power of Christ and the Christian faith to open the eyes of the blind.

This is not because Christ’s kingdom is in competition with the kingdoms of this world: Christ’s kingdom is not of this world (Jn. 18:26). But when our eyes are opened, and we behold the light of the Resurrection, and we see ourselves as sons of the light and of the day, then we know that we are living for the age to come. Knowing the promise of the Resurrection, we are able to obtain to an inner freedom that no power in this world can overcome. “The kingdom of God is within you” precisely because it is unlike an earthly kingdom; one cannot say of it “Here it is” or “There it is” (Lk. 17:21).

Christ desires to open our eyes to this reality, too; he wishes that we would no longer see ourselves merely as part of this passing world. Blinded no longer by the power of sin and passions, we are called to understand our place in his eternal kingdom, and to live unbound and unburdened by the heavy-pressing chains of the lies told to us by the world, the demons, and by our own misguided and passionate thoughts.

The formerly-blind man’s confession of faith resounds with a deep power and unsurpassed peace: “Lord, I believe.” In the face of all life’s troubles and cares, let us also find strength and consolation in these words, knowing clearly who we are in Christ and to how great a salvation he has called us.

Christ is risen!

“He told me all that I ever did,” declares the Samaritan woman to her fellow residents of Sychar. All that she ever did – shouldn’t this be a source of shame and regret? After all, she has had five husbands, and the one she has now is not her husband. However, when the Lord tells her what she has done, this does not cause her to shrink back, reproached; it causes her to go to her neighbors with joy, even excitement.

This Gospel passage is an ever-timely reminder that God loves us regardless of our many sins, our ugly past, our current struggles. We may find the memory of the Samaritan woman’s liberating happiness especially encouraging whenever we prepare ourselves for the sacrament of confession. When we approach this sacrament, we are not informing God of things he does not know; rather, we are declaring what he already knows, in the presence of his priest as witness, so that we can experience the same joy and freedom that the Samaritan woman once experienced. He knows all that I ever did – and yet he has come to me in the heat of the day and granted me to recognize him as Christ, my Savior, my Lord and my God, and thus to know his unbounded divine love for me, his creature.

Christ is risen!

As we celebrate the Midfeast of Pentecost, we are reminded that the Paschal season is a movement. It is not simply a festive forty days after the Lenten fast, nor simply a lengthy celebration of Christ’s Resurrection. It is a movement from the empty tomb to the tongues of flame in the upper room, and this pause at the midpoint reminds us of that fact. Christ’s Resurrection was not the end, but a new beginning, pointing us toward life in the Spirit, the lives of the saints, the life in and of the Church.

Christ is risen!

In ancient days Jacob rolled away a stone to water the flocks, and during these days of Pascha, we contemplate how, the stone rolled away, living water flows from the tomb of Christ to water the flock of the faithful. Today, near the Sheep Gate, the paralytic waits for someone to lift him into the pool when the water is stirred, but instead the living Water stirs himself up and comes to the paralytic; Christ himself takes the initiative to rescue and heal this paralyzed man, this lame and lonely lamb.

But we notice that Christ’s healing consists precisely in loosing the man’s paralysis, so that now the former paralytic can walk on his own. Christ does not leave this man helpless, but grants him the ability he once lacked. Likewise, when we are baptized into Christ – and each time we turn again (or rather, he turns us again) to repentance and renewal of our baptism through confession of sins – we are not left helpless, either. Instead, we are imbued anew with the power of the Holy Spirit, so that we can walk, as it were, on our own two legs, doing the works God desires us to do. “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (Jn. 8:36).