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

According to the sensibilities of some people, the informality of this particular community’s worship might feel a little bit uncomfortable. However, the fact is – this is rather how I think worship normally should be. It should be organic. It should be an expression of who we are. We are offering ourselves to the Lord, after all, in our worship. We’re offering Him not some sort of false front. Because He knows everything, and He sees everything, we can’t pretend anything in front of Him. We offer to Him who we are. We do this honestly, and at the same time respectfully. In the informality with which we are serving (partly under necessity, but still it’s not any the less because of the necessity), we are offering to the Lord, with respect, with love, with organic informality, who we are. I believe that this sort of attitude – the way we are – is very pleasing to the Lord.

The Lord when He is addressed by this blind man today in the Gospel, gives the blind man what he is asking for. You remember that the blind man, when he hears that it is Jesus that is walking by him, cries out: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me”. In English, we are very often mistaking what is this “Have mercy” because of the way we are taught by the usual sort of books that we are reading. The first meanings of the Oxford dictionary probably, too, will suggest that when we are saying “Have mercy”, it means to be spared or rescued from anger or punishment or death or whatever else. That isn’t really what the Greek means, and that’s not also what the meaning is in other languages. I am saying that we have to “Orthodox” the English language a little more, or our understanding of our words we have to “Orthodox” at least.

When we are saying “Have mercy” we are following what the Greek means; we are asking the Lord to pour the oil of His love on us. To an extent, yes, it can mean that we are being spared from some sort of punishment. However, the main thing is that we are asking the Lord to love us more when we are asking Him to have mercy on us. This “mercy” word, by the way, in English, comes from the French “miséricorde” (just to prove that English is French badly spoken). “Miséricorde” comes from the Latin “misericordia” which means a heart of some sort of love. We are still asking the Lord to pour out His love, and that’s what this blind man is doing. He is asking the Lord to pour out the oil of His love (because in Greek this oil, and love are somehow connected). We are asking the Lord to pour out His love, and His care upon us. This blind man, in asking this, gets what he wanted – the expression of the Lord’s love. He is asking for his sight. The Lord, out of His love, and compassion (and maybe “compassion” is the best way to talk about this “mercy”) gives sight to this man. The man immediately follows Him, praising God.

Not all of us are blind physically, and not all of us have such dramatic healings, necessarily. However, that does not mean that the Lord (when we are asking Him all the time, as we are, to have mercy on us) is not pouring out His compassion on us, because He is pouring out this compassion on us. The Apostle is saying today that we have put on Christ. We have put on a new life. We have put on a new man. This is the expression of what happens when you, and I are renewed in the love of Jesus Christ. He changes us. He changes our life. He heals the wounds of our heart. He heals the wounds of our spirit. He heals sometimes, also, the wounds of our body. But He, in His compassion, in His love, in His mercy, in His “misericordia”, comes to us, and He meets our needs.

This is why it gives us joy, also, to be here today offering to Him the totality of who we are, both singly, and all together, because we’re all in the same boat. In the first place, we are all people who have put on Christ. We are all people who are trying to live in Christ. We have experienced His love. We are, also, all sinners, more or less in the same way. Sometimes we think that our sins are so peculiar, and unrepeatable. However, if a person is hearing confessions, it’s the opposite impression. It’s all the same sort of sin that people are confessing before the Lord. It’s all the same, with very little variation. People are all afflicted, from bishops down to little children, with the same sorts of temptation, with the same sorts of obstacles in living the Christian life. We ask the Lord to have mercy on us, like this blind man. The Lord takes away the blindness from our hearts, and He renews our lives; He strengthens us. He gives us that purpose in living that we need to have, and that we are looking for. We all have a sense that we need to have a purpose in life.

“Why are we here”, we often ask ourselves. The main purpose for any of us to be here in this life is first of all to glorify our Lord who created us, and gives us life. That’s our first purpose – to respond in love to His love. After that – to be good to other people: to bring the love of Jesus Christ to other people around us. The Lord gives us all sorts of talent; He gives us all sorts of other things besides, but this is still the essence of it: to be good, to carry Christ to other people. On top of all of that, the Lord’s other blessings come. Nevertheless, it is our purpose in this life to make a difference. The difference that we are here to make in this life is primarily to help other people have hope, and encounter the love of Jesus Christ. If by our lives we help other people encounter Jesus Christ, experience Him, and His love, and have the hope that we have, we are already well on our way to doing what the Lord is asking each of us to do in this life. We are fulfilling our purpose by conveying the love, the life, the hope, the joy of Jesus Christ. Besides this, the Lord may give us many other things to do, but I don’t think anything is as important as this conveying, living, revealing Jesus Christ by how we live ourselves, how we treat each other, how we pray for each other, how we have “misericordia”: mercy, compassion for each other, and for people in need, who are all in the same boat as we are, facing the same difficulties.

This is a long, winding way around the words of the Lord today. It’s important for us to remember that when we are saying “Lord have mercy”, we are asking the Lord to have compassion on us, to pour out His love upon us. Then it is for us to do the same. The Lord does pour out His compassion on us. He does pour out His love upon us. We, in Him, need to pour out our compassion on other people. In this way we will do exactly what the Apostle was asking us to do earlier: to turn away from the ways of darkness, and the selfish deeds, and behaviours that human beings get caught up in. Instead, like Christ, let us give ourselves in love to everyone around us, and shine with light like Jesus Christ, our Saviour, our Guide, the Word of the Lord, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Let us glorify Him in every part of our life, 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