Titus 3:8-15; Matthew 5:14-19

              There is a temptation in pursuing the Christian life to think that we are more faithful than we actually are because we have confused lesser goals for our true calling. Then we can pat ourselves on the back for achieving far less than what the God-Man has made possible for us as “partakers of the divine nature.”   Were Jesus Christ merely a human teacher of a moral code or an example of a virtuous life, then perhaps we could justify taking from Him what fits easily within our lives and disregarding the rest. Were He only divine and not also truly human, He could not heal the human person in God’s image and likeness.  We would then be left with only the piety and morality that we could muster by our own strength with no hope of truly sharing in His life.

Our vocation as Christians is not to figure out how the teachings of a mere religious teacher could be useful in our lives, nor is it to serve a remote God Who is foreign to our life in this world.  Instead, we serve a Lord Who is fully God and fully human:  one Person with two natures, as the 630 holy and God-bearing fathers of the Fourth Ecumenical Council in Chalcedon declared in the year 451.  We remember them not simply as figures of the distant past, but as those who clearly proclaimed the Gospel, for Jesus Christ must be both fully God and fully human in order to make us “partakers of the divine nature” who shine with His holy light.  He must truly be one of us in order to restore and fulfill us in the image and likeness of God such that we may become “the light of the world.”

If we set our sights low in the Christian life, then we will easily mix in with the darkness with which everyone is all too familiar and be of no particular help to anyone, including ourselves.  In today’s gospel reading, the Lord warns against a very appealing misinterpretation of His ministry, namely, that He came “to abolish the law and the prophets.”  Some who call themselves Christians today think that Christ was too kind and gentle to speak a harsh word about sin of any kind. Obviously, those people have never read the gospels.   Christ called the Pharisees a “brood of vipers “(Matt. 12:34) and told the chief priests that “tax-collectors and prostitutes enter the kingdom of God before you.”  (Matt. 21:31) He saved the woman caught in adultery from death by stoning and told her to “go and sin no more.” (Jn. 8:11)   Some think that Christ could not really have meant it when He said that those who embrace the passion of anger are guilty of murder, that those who lust are guilty of adultery, and that we must forgive those who offend us from our hearts if we are to receive His forgiveness.  Surely, they think, that is setting the bar so high as to be unrealistic and make people feel bad about themselves.

Actually, the Savior made it quite clear that “I have come not to abolish them [i.e, the law and the prophets], but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Whoever then relaxes one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but he who does them and teaches them shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”  He did not diminish or reduce the commandments out of a desire to make everyone have warm and positive feelings, but intensified them by going literally to the heart of the matter.  No longer was it enough to refrain from murdering someone with our hands; now our hearts must be purified of the anger that leads to insult and deadly violence.  No longer was it enough to stop short of having intercourse with someone other than one’s own spouse; now our hearts must be purified of desire for intimacy outside the uniquely blessed union of husband and wife. No longer did it suffice to limit our desire for revenge to “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”; now we must turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, and love even our enemies as God loves us.

Christ has fulfilled the prophecy spoken by Jeremiah: “I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” (Jer. 31:3) By the power of the Holy Spirit, the Savior heals and strengthens us so that we may become radiant with the light of the gracious divine energies shining from our hearts like a city on a hill or a lamp on a stand to the point that people “may see your good works and give glory to your Father Who is in heaven.”  Such illumination occurs through our personal participation in the Lord’s restoration and fulfillment of the human person as a living icon of God.  Instead of humbly and mindfully offering ourselves to Him for the healing of our passions every day, we too often want a religion that blesses whatever assumptions, preferences, and attachments we find most appealing. That is a path that leads to the spiritual darkness of worshipping ourselves, and it has nothing to do with embracing the healing of the human person worked by the God-Man.

In today’s culture, there are many secular and religious versions of that temptation.  There are progressive, moderate, and conservative versions of it.  There are racial, economic, and social versions of it.  What they have in common is that they cannot heal the soul and make us radiant with the light of Christ.  Regardless of our opinions about anything, we must be very careful not to import such agendas into our pursuit of the Christian life, for they do not serve our vocation to become “partakers of the divine nature” in the God-Man, as proclaimed by the holy fathers of Chalcedon.  Instead of helping us to become transparent to the uncreated light, they are like the divisions about which St. Paul wrote: “foolish disputes, and genealogies, and contentions, and controversies about the Law; for they are unprofitable and vain.”  We must remain on guard against the pernicious influence of such nonsense today in almost every facet of our culture.

By the grace of our Lord, we may become the light of the world as we do what the world does not prize:  cultivating the habit of prayer from the depths of our hearts; struggling to fast as our life circumstances and spiritual and physical health allow; giving generously to the needy without drawing attention to ourselves; forgiving and praying for those who wrong us; mindfully rejecting the temptation to praise ourselves or to condemn anyone else; and confessing and repenting of our sins on a regular basis.  Whenever we start to think that following this path has become easy or that we have somehow mastered it, we must refuse to be content with watering down the demands of obedience to our Lord, Who calls us to nothing less than the purity of heart necessary to see God.  And which of us has mastered that?

Finally, this story from the Desert Fathers should remind us all not to rest content with anything less than the salvation to which Christ, fully human and fully divine, calls us:

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame.”