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

St John of the Ladder talks about the "ladder of divine ascent" – how we progress as Christians in our life towards God. However, this progression is not like some sort of technique that you acquire so that if you do this thing, and this thing, and this thing, then God will reward you, and let you into the heavenly Kingdom. That’s not how it works.

If we had this sort of system – you do this, you do this, you do this, and God lets you into the heavenly Kingdom – then that’s like bribing God to let you into the Kingdom of Heaven. That’s not how it works at all. Many parents try that with their children, and I have seen that that doesn’t work either. It doesn’t work with human beings, and it certainly does not work between God, and us. This “ladder” is only a description of how we grow in love for God. There is nothing in Christian life that does not have to do with the love of God. There are many details, it is true, involved in the living of the Christian life, and yes, there are some rules. But those details, and those rules are only there to put some sort of order. The foundation of everything is still only Jesus’ question to the Apostle Peter when He says: “Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me? Do you love me?” (John 21:15). That is what the Lord is asking you, and me always: “Do you love me?” With the Apostle Peter our answer naturally is: “Yes, Lord, I love you. You know that I love you”. Afterwards, the Lord says to the Apostle: “Feed my sheep" (John 21:16).

That’s what that “ladder” is all about. If we love Him, then we will grow up in Him. Growing up in Him means that if we love Him, we have to show it by doing something about it. Some people pray. Some people spend their whole lives praying, and interceding for other people. And in fact – it is true – that if it were not for these people praying, the world would have fallen in on itself a long time ago. It is because there are believers around the world interceding before God in love on behalf of everyone else, that we still have opportunities to repent. Some people do good things. Some people help other people. Some people encourage other people. Some people feed the hungry, and visit the sick, and clothe the naked, and go, and help people in prison, just as we sing every Sunday, as the Lord directed us.

This love of Jesus Christ in action means that we have to do something that is supportive, and life-giving to people around us, and mostly, not the people we choose, but the people that God sends to us – people at work, people at school, people on the street, people we bump into. We don’t very often have the opportunity to choose who it is that we, like the Saviour, will serve. He gives them to us, and our heart tells us in love of Him how we are to serve.

Today, in the Gospel, our Saviour is given this child that was possessed by a devil, tormented by a devil, and no-one could do anything about it. Even His disciples couldn’t do anything about it. They wanted to, but they didn’t know how. They didn’t have enough love – you would have to say. He, Himself, tells the devil to come out, and the devil comes out. His disciples ask Him: “Why could we not cast it out?” The Saviour says: “This sort cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting”. The Apostles were not grown-up enough in the love of Jesus Christ, themselves, to be able to do this. In The Acts of the Apostles, however, which we will be reading very soon after Pascha, there will be many evidences of the Apostles doing exactly that, and more, because they had been filled with the Grace of the Holy Spirit. The power of the Grace of the Holy Spirit was acting in them, and they were healing people in the love of Jesus Christ. Sometimes they were even raising them from the dead in the love of Jesus Christ. It was not the Apostles employing some technique to raise someone from the dead or heal them from their diseases. It was their love of Jesus Christ, their compassion in Jesus Christ, which enabled Jesus Christ, Himself, to do this: to raise the dead, and to heal the sick through their intercession, and their presence. It was this love of Jesus Christ that was blowing, and giving life.

If we’re going to grow up in Jesus Christ, we can’t expect that we should be so different from those Disciples, and Apostles 2,000 years ago. In the first place, the Saviour calls every one of us also to be holy like them. Secondly, He has shown us in the course of the last 2,000 years all sorts of ordinary Orthodox believers who were just like that even into the last century, and probably in this century, too. There are people who love Jesus Christ, who have grown up in Him, and through their prayers people are healed from their diseases, and even raised from the dead.

Those things that are spoken of in the Gospel today, and in the Epistles are not just something for 2,000 years ago, and just for those Apostles. As the writer to the Hebrews says, and I love this phrase (I have heard it, and remembered it since I was five because other believers repeated it many times): “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). Because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, He works the same amongst us now in His love as He did in those days with His Apostles. What He requires from us, and what we need to give, is the yes – the yes of those Apostles, the yes of the Mother of God. I have not with my own eyes seen people raised from the dead, but I have heard in my lifetime of people who prayed, and as a result of this prayer, people were raised. In my lifetime this has happened in the world. People have been healed many times from diseases, and this I have seen with my own eyes. At the prayers of faithful people, people have been healed from all sorts of diseases because people who love Jesus Christ, out of compassion, fast, and pray, and the Lord blesses. This is growing up in Jesus Christ. This is the love of Jesus Christ at work. This is truly growing up in Jesus Christ – love at work.

The love of Jesus Christ is not something that just sits there on a shelf, and you look at it, and say: Isn’t that nice! It is something that is alive. If we do not use this gift of love that Jesus Christ gives to us, if we hold on to it, the same thing happens to that love in us as happens to a pansy or any other flower. How many times has a child brought a freshly-picked flower to his mother, held tightly in the hand. When the flower is brought to the mother, and the child says: Here Mama, look! What’s left of that flower? Some sort of squashed pulp is all that’s left of that flower. A flower is delicate, and has to be held loosely in the hand.

Human beings are like those flowers. They have to be held loosely in the hand. The love of Jesus Christ can only live, and grow, if it is offered with an open hand, with an open heart – if it is shared. When we give the love of Jesus Christ to other people, when we share the love of Jesus Christ with other people, and with creatures, God renews this love in us. The more we give, the more He gives us to give. That’s why the Cross, and the “ladder” come to us, and examples of great repentance: like Mary of Egypt next week. These examples come to us by God’s mercy, and His love, to remind us that, as difficult as life is, God is with us. He loves us. He gives us the strength that we need. Nevertheless, we have to say the yes to Him.

In this Great Lent, in the remaining couple of weeks that we have, let us offer our abstinence from food, and our extra time in church (which should actually be the usual time in church). Let us offer all this to Him, asking Him to renew this love in our hearts, so that when the time for Pascha comes, we will be able to rejoice with really, true Paschal rejoicing. When Pascha comes, and we rejoice in this true Paschal rejoicing, in the love of Jesus Christ, rejoicing in His Resurrection love, may this love, that we have grown up in a little bit more now, carry us through the coming year until the next fasting period. Let us ask Him that this love will continue to grow as we offer to Him our abstinences, and our co-suffering labour with Him, so that everything about us, in the end, may glorify Him, together with His Father, who is from everlasting, and His all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America