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

The fact that we are today celebrating the memory of Igumen Job of Pochaiv is appropriate, because today’s readings are all about the way of repentance, the centre of our Christian life. They are about the way of repentance, the way of following Christ. If there was a man who followed Christ, it is St Job of Pochaiv.

In the Gospel reading today, we have the rich man, and Lazarus. We have the attempt to bring about the salvation of the brothers of the rich man by some sort of ghostly force, so to speak. He is asking that the Lord will send Lazarus to appear to his brothers in order to wake them up. The Lord is being very clear that there are no shortcuts to finding the way to life, and to salvation. He said that even if someone would rise from the dead, in the case of certain people, they are not going to listen. “If they do not hear Moses, and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead”. This is exactly what has happened. There are people who do hear the Law, and the Prophets, and they do understand, and accept, and live in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. However, there are many people who absolutely refuse to hear. My mother used to say very often when she was referring to me: There is none so blind as those that won’t see. That is very much the way of human existence.

Because we are slaves of fear (and that is probably 99 per cent of the time), we are not going to hear the words of the Gospel clearly, and correctly. We’re determined to distort them, somehow. It’s also because we are slaves of pride. Human beings like to be in control of everything. We like to run everything. We like to manipulate everything. If we could, we would like to control God, Himself. We are a very difficult race. It’s a wonder that the Lord lets us live so long.

I was discussing the behaviour of human beings yesterday with N, remembering a priest who is a retired Egyptologist (and a very well-known Egyptologist). I asked their priest if things were any better now than 5,000 years ago, according to his studies? He said that there is no improvement, but in fact, we are worse. So, it doesn’t matter how much we deceive ourselves in terms of our skill and technological advance – our behaviour is deteriorating. How we are towards each other as human beings does not get better. It gets worse, even. I believe this man. I believe him not just because he is an Egyptologist, a wise man, an understanding person, and a God-loving priest. I also accept what he has to say because I think I can see one or two things about what he says in human behaviour just now, with all of this stock market manipulation that is going on, and the panic and fear that is driving people one way or the other. A lot of it is cynically done, in my opinion, because this happens too regularly. People are making money, and they don’t care about anyone else.

Human beings very much like to make their own way, and control things. I remember reading in my extreme youth the passage from the Apostle that we read this morning about his being caught up to the third heaven, and hearing things that cannot be spoken about, and seeing things that can’t be expressed. Because of my naïve stupidity I thought that it would be wonderful to be able to do something so I could experience this, too. I’ve seen many other people with the same sort of deluded idea that we can somehow do something in order to experience what the Apostle Paul experienced, and experiences.

That’s not how it goes. We can’t make ourselves get there. We can’t do something to get there in terms of living by some sort of technique: If I do this, then God will give me that. There is no bargaining like that. The Apostle Paul said that it was given to him. He didn’t take it; it was given to him because he was living his life in love, and service to the Lord. The Lord poured out His love on the Apostle Paul in an inexpressible way, and allowed him to encounter Himself, the Lord, in ways that cannot be expressed. He probably heard the singing of angels, and the glorification of God in heaven. We are not going to get there by doing something such as deep breathing or whatever else some people think you can do to get there, and experience this. If you are doing all these things simply by some technique, you are inviting the devil to deceive you. However, if the Lord gives you this because you are living your life in love, harmony, submission, and obedience to Him out of love (not out of fear), then the Lord may give you this, or something like it.

The Apostle Paul needed something like this to refresh him. He was living through all sorts of beatings, imprisonments, difficulties, hunger, things that we don’t even have an idea about in our fat-cat North American ways. He was experiencing all of this deprivation because he wanted so much to share the love, and the hope, and the life of Jesus Christ. All of this was for that reason only, because he wanted other people to know the Lord the way he knew Him.

So, it doesn’t matter if you send someone who somehow came back from the dead, as the Lord is saying in this parable. If a person’s heart is hard, resistant, and focussed on self, it’s not going to penetrate. However, what does penetrate is the truth of the love of Jesus Christ. When people encounter the authentic love of Jesus Christ in Christians, they respond, if they have any openness in their hearts. They respond with hope, and love in the same way. The warmth of the love of Jesus Christ melts all sorts of icy hearts. For instance, I know one person who had known one of her neighbours since he was born. In his adolescence he had fallen away somehow (or at least he certainly thought he had). He was being rebellious, and distant from the Lord. However, this person saw the potential in the other young person. She began to pray for him out of compassion. She prayed for him every day for eight years. Then after eight years, while walking her dogs, she met this person in a park. He began to ask her questions. That opened the doors for him not only to come into the Orthodox Church, but now to be one of our deacons. He admits that this is how it went. Patience, love, and prayer, motivated by the love of Jesus Christ, accomplish many things.

I would like to speak about St Job of Pochaiv, about whom we have been singing, because the Lord has poured out a great deal of Grace through the life, example, and prayers of this man. I want to say that there are people who have semi-scientific, sceptical, intellectual approaches to relics. However, the relics of St Job of Pochaiv are uncorrupt. That means that if you go to the monastery of Pochaiv to where his relics rest in the ante-room (as it were) to the cave where he lived, you will see that his body after all these years is brown, but whole. His body has not mouldered away into bones – it is just there, brown with age. It looks as though he had a good tan. All of us who are Orthodox Christians know what it is like to come, and kiss for the last time someone who has died. That person’s body is cold, like these tiles on the floor. It is really very cold, and you know that this person is definitely gone. However, when you go and kiss St Job of Pochaiv, it’s like kissing each other’s hand. He is warm. He is lying there, in his reliquary for 500 years in a cool place – a cave. It is not heated in there. I was quite surprised, myself, when I went to kiss him for the first time, and he is warm. Try and explain that scientifically. I wouldn’t even try to explain it, apart from the love of the Lord. People want to explain scientifically the fact that he is lying there incorrupt. They try to explain why his body should not have decayed because there is some sort of very good climatic condition there in the cave. However, you can’t explain away the fact that his body is still at living temperature.

Through things like this, the Lord, in His love, is trying to melt our icy hearts, our stubborn intellect, our resistance to His love and to His life. He is trying to say to you, and to me: Wake up. I love you. No-one else loves you as I love you. No-one else will love you without betraying you (because human beings always betray each other). No-one loves you with the consistency of the truth as I love you. “Learn of me”, as He says in the Gospel: “My yoke is easy, and My burden is light” (Matthew 11:29, 30). The Lord is saying: I love you. Come to me. Come with me. Be with me. He does this through someone like St Job. St Job is not the only one, but he is a very significant one. The Lord does it through people like St Job because St Job is such a God-loving man, himself, whom people respect, to whom they turn so much, and through whom, therefore, the Lord can approach us. In fact, He can wake us up, as He certainly did with me through visiting St Job, and venerating his relics.

Brothers, and sisters, let us do our best to open our hearts to the Lord, and allow Him to live more and more in our hearts. Let us allow the Lord to soften our hearts, to give us more of this life and this joy which is the characteristic way of Orthodox Christians. This is the way of hospitality, of unified, whole, undivided, unbroken lives, lives that in every part glorify Him. Let us remember, and try to live by, the words of our favourite first saint, Herman, the Elder and Wonder-worker of Alaska who said (as I’m sure St Job also would say): “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”, and in that we will glorify with St Job, with St Herman, and with all the saints, the all-holy Trinity: 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