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

When the Apostle is talking about being justified by faith, this justification has many different sorts of implications. The major one that I want you to remember about this word “justification” is that it means being made righteous. In our western way of thinking, and use of language, we’re using “justice” as some sort of tangible reality which is very specific. Sometimes it’s rather too specific, shall I say, because in the Lord’s way of dealing with us, He, Himself, is not able to be fit into some sort of tight box. He doesn’t expect us to be fit into some tight pigeon hole, either. He doesn’t intend to box us in in any way, because we are made in His image. We are supposed to be growing into His likeness. He is the ultimate Person of freedom. He is the ultimate Person of love. He is the ultimate Expression of love. His love is life-giving, and it shows so many different expressions of itself that it’s not possible to box it in, and define it precisely.

In the same way, when we’re talking about justification, it has to do more with our being turned in the right direction, and on the right path, than it has to do with being something static like “just”. This word “just” is a dangerous word for us because in our western thinking it’s something quite rigid. If you see the attempt to apply justice in western society, it’s very often a cold application of some rule or other. If you break some rules, then you get this punishment, exactly like that. Maybe there’s some flexibility, but there’s always a punishment for breaking rules such as going through stop signs, and going too fast. There are very specific punishments for bending the rules (even though the rules do get bent). However, when someone is in a bad mood, then those rules are absolute, and they are minutely applied.

This is not the way the Lord is at all with us. The Lord is like a loving Parent with us: a loving Parent who corrects the child, and puts the child on the right way. When the child falls down, He picks the child up, straightens him out (sometimes giving the child what my Mother used to call a “love tap” for a reminder), and then sets the child again back on the right path. That is why this “right path” is not so strictly definable as some people want to make it, either. The Lord, in His love, is meeting each human being according to that human being’s needs. It’s not like rigid justice.

When we’re talking about “justification”, it has to do less with the idea of justification of books (because you do that in accounting, I think, and when you are justifying numbers you have to be very specific). However, when you are justifying things in other parts of life, we don’t have to be so specific. We are going in the right direction: that is the main point of the whole thing. This “going in the right direction” is made possible by faith. This faith is made possible by love. We can have faith in Jesus Christ, and trust God because we have experience of His love. This love is what propels us – you, and me – through the course of all of our lives, in the middle of all the sorts of difficulties that we encounter, in all the ways in which our friends, our family, our relatives, and other human beings will disappoint us from time to time. It’s this faith in the love of Jesus Christ, and our experience of the stability of His love which carries us through all the disappointments, pain, and darkness of this life. It is the same Lord, Jesus Christ, who is only constant, who is only all-loving, who is only always there, stably, for us. He is always there for us, and ready and waiting to give us life, to give us hope, to comfort us, to renew us.

It’s in this context that it is important to understand today’s Gospel in which the Lord is talking precisely about the depth of His love, and how much He wants to give us life. We, independent, and willful human beings, most of the time, in our independent thinking, in our determination to be self-sufficient, are do-it-yourselfers. I can blame this on our western formation; but it’s not just that, because human beings have always been like that. Read the Old Testament, and you see human beings the same, always, in our weakness. We don’t first automatically as a rule ask the Lord: What do You want me to do? We just use our heads, a little bit of logic, and paste it together, and say: This seems good. We go for it, and then it all falls apart because it was just put together with some sort of band-aid. The whole thing falls apart when it gets shaken a little bit. Then we come crying to the Lord, and say to Him: What did You do? This is how we are with Him. We propose something: it doesn’t work, and we blame Him because we think it’s His fault that it didn’t work. The Lord gets the blame from us all the time.

This is not the right way to go about things at all. The historic way of our ancestors in the faith, the ones who have grown up strong in the faith, the ones whom we call saints, also, these persons knew the love of Jesus Christ sufficiently that their hearts automatically would ask the Lord: What do you want me to do about this-or-that, and every little thing in life? This is reflected in the traditional Orthodox ways of going about life: for instance, the blessing of every ingredient of food as it is being prepared, the blessing of the baking or the cooking (and especially with bread: the making of the sign of the Cross on a loaf of bread before it’s cut), the blessing of the eating. All these things are examples of how this understanding of communication with the Lord, involving the Lord in every detail of life, works out in the lives of traditional Orthodox believers. That’s not to say that everyone always behaves like this, because that’s not at all the case. In every culture, human beings can be weak, and they can fail. However, the cultures that have been baptised by the Gospel, such as those of Ukraine, Russia, Serbia, Greece, Georgia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Egypt, and other places, have similar expressions in all of them of the involvement of Christ in everything.

And so, you bless yourself and your vehicle when you are about to drive anywhere. You bless yourself and your vehicle when you get there, thanking God that you arrived safely, or, if you had a little mishap, thanking God that it didn’t kill you or anyone else. Sometimes, even though we ask God’s blessing when we are driving, we can still be inattentive or someone else can be inattentive, and we can bear the brunt. Nevertheless, the Guardian Angels are always there, working with us. The Lord has always been sending us His Guardian Angels working with us, protecting us, and looking after us. The Lord is merciful to us. He is loving to us.

The Lord says to us: “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin”, yet their existence praises God, and their beauty praises God. If the Lord cares about flowers, and other creatures like this, how much more will He care for you, and me that are created in His image? He loves us. He created us to be like Him, to work with Him in His creation, and to be His agents of love for each other.

In the time of Adam and Eve, our ancestors had hearts that automatically knew the will of God, and did it with joy. They grew up to be their real selves in this love: unique selves, not just clones of God (or some sort of cookie-cutter-anything). No matter what, the Lord creates every human being uniquely. He does not make repeats. Can you imagine that we now have about six billion people on the earth, and every one of those six billion human beings is unique. Every one of the billions that have gone before us is also unique, not repeatable, a unique creation of the Lord. This is the expression of His love. Add to that all of the animals, all of the birds, all of the fish, all of the trees, all of the flowers, all of the planets, and stars, and everything else: all of these are the expressions of God’s love, and they exist because God loves them into existence, into being. He takes them from non-being into being because of His love, as expressions of His love.

It is really important for us, for you, and for me to pay attention to our relationship with the Lord, to nurture our love for the Lord. He is always there in His love for us. It’s important for you, and for me to be opening our hearts daily to Him, asking Him at the beginning of every day: Lord, what do You want me to do today? Help me today to do Your will, even by instinct. Be with me today.

It’s important to bless the beginning, and the end of every day, and every moment of every day, everything that we are doing during the day in order to grow up to be our real selves: real, joyful, co-workers, co-working with the Lord. We grow up to be ourselves in living in this love of the Lord which gives life, and makes us our real selves. It’s really important that we remember this no matter what our difficulties are, no matter what our pain is, no matter who disappoints us in one way or another – because we all experience this. It is the Lord who is constant. It is the Lord who is with us, as He always says. He is with us. He is always there.

In living in this loving relationship, He heals our wounds. He binds us up. He strengthens us. He renews us. He gives us energy. He gives us focus. He gives us determination. He enables us, most importantly of all, to reveal His love to every person around us. The people we meet every day are all people who are looking for consolation, for hope, for a sense of purpose in life, for a sense of direction. We, Orthodox Christians, who have access to all the tools necessary to help them are responsible by the way we live to help them, and to offer consolation and hope.

That’s why I keep going on and on and on about it, because this loving witness is crucially important. I also have to remind myself. This is how people who are preaching get straightened out by the Lord, themselves. When people are preaching to the faithful, the Lord is also reminding them about themselves: how they, like their people, have to keep these things in order in their lives. We all have to remember to keep the words of St Herman of Alaska in the front of our hearts. We have to try, if we can, to repeat them, and to live them out in our daily lives. He said to us, and he is still saying to us in his icons and in his example (he didn't stop saying it 200 years ago): “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”, glorifying the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America