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by Tim Alikakos
If you ever happen to go hiking on the hills of New England you might
run into a very peculiar animal called the ermine. Most likely you have
never heard of this creature. I wanted to bring an ermine here for you
to see tonight but I didn’t think bringing a furry creature of the wild
in this chapel would be the wisest thing to do. I wanted you to see an
ermine because it is famous for its beautiful white fur. I wanted you
to see that if you let the ermine run free in this chapel it would not
go anywhere near places where there is dust or grease or anything that
might stain its fur. The ermine takes great pride in that fur and it
has developed a very strong instinct to keep itself extremely clean. In
fact, so strong is that instinct that the ermine will suffer capture
rather than defilement. Hunters who know of this will smear filth over
the paths that the ermine would normally choose to escape by and it
falls into their trap. The result, is the death of an innocent little
animal; a flaw of nature one might say. But at the same time, by such a
death the ermine wins its battle of trying to keep itself clean. It has
managed to preserve the purity of its fur as its final offering to this
world. It is because the ermine engages itself in a life-long battle of
preserving its purity that such a death translates into the ultimate
victory.
There
is something to be learned from this little creature of God. We learn
that there is a definite connection between purity and the way we view
death. The tradition of the Church hints to this connection by placing
on the commemoration of the dead on the seventh day of this week we
call the Pure Week. The small tradition of sprinkling white sugar
powder on the kolyva offering for the dead is no accident. The Third
Saturday of Souls serves to remind us that the connection between
preservation of purity and death is as close for us Christians as it is
for the ermine. For the ermine which is captured because it keeps its
fur clean, death means victory, the end of a battle well fought. In the
same way, our Christian life is a battle to preserve the purity we
received at baptism. In a battle well fought, we can also view death as
the ultimate victory.
Preserve the purity of your baptismal
garment and death will become your victory. Since when did purity take
on such a crucial role? We always hear of fasting, prayer, almsgiving
to be the means to holiness. But at Matins we hear that to be holy in
the way that God is Holy means to be pure and undefiled in the way that
by nature God is pure and undefiled. Therefore, the preservation of
purity is exactly the goal of fasting, and the goal of prayer, and the
goal of almsgiving. By fasting we purify our bodies from rich foods,
and by prayer we purify our minds by constantly thinking about God. By
almsgiving we purify our hearts from every attachment to worldly
possessions. But ultimately, because of the Fall, man could never
entirely preserve his purity from sin and thus deliver himself from the
bondage of death. Complete purification for sins and deliverance from
death could have only been brought about by our Lord Jesus Christ
Himself .
According to the author of the Letter to the Hebrews in
this Saturday’s epistle, purification for sins encompasses all of
Jesus’ earthly ministry. The incarnation of the Word, the rushing in of
the Kingdom of God, the miracles, the Cross, the Resurrection, the gift
of eternal life, all these events collapse into one deed: the
purification for sins. Christ’s work as a man was to deal decisively
with the problem of human sin. He made purification for sins in order
for us through baptism to be reconciled to God, in order for us to be
able to approach God, in order for us to be able to see God and live
eternally. This He promised in the Sermon on the Mount when He said:
“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God”. This purity of
heart becomes possible only through Jesus Himself, His cross and
resurrection, His making Himself purification for sins.
Christ,
through His Church, continues the work of purification which only He
can bring about for us. The miracle which we commemorate on the
Saturday of Souls attests to that very fact that Christ continues to
intervene in human history in order to keep the purity of His faithful
unspotted and their salvation intact. History tells us that in the year
362, emperor Julian the Apostate tried to defile the faithful of the
city of Constantinople by replacing all the foods in the marketplace
with his own foods that were sprinkled with the blood from sacrifices.
His plan entailed that since Christians would not bow down to idols
they would unwillingly defile themselves by partaking of the sacrifices
to idols. In order to prevent this defilement, St. Theodore of Tyron
appeared to the then Patriarch Eudoxios and instructed him to boil
wheat - in his country they called kolyva - and to give it to the
faithful to eat instead. Patriarch Eudoxios did as he was told, and all
the Christians of the city were kept undefiled in their Lenten fast.
The
intervention of Saint Theodore was instigated by the Lord Himself. His
task of purification for our sins will continue until His Second
Coming. In our baptism we were given a completely pure, white baptismal
garment, yet the battle of the preservation of its purity and of its
effectiveness over death, will continue until we depart from this
temporal life. Through the sacrament of confession Christ continues His
work in the cleansing of our sins. Through the gift of tears we call
upon Jesus to wash away our iniquities and to create in us a clean
heart. Through Holy Communion He purges away our sins and grants us
eternal life. We are given the purity purchased for us by the very
blood of our Savior. Preserve this purity and death will indeed be your
victory.
The gospel reading for the Third Saturday of Souls
tells us that the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath. Jesus through
His cross and resurrection stands as Lord of the eternal day that lies
beyond death. At the same time He is Lord over every temporal
institution like the day of the Sabbath. He is Lord of every country,
every culture, every institution, every circumstance of life and death.
In all walks of life He is busy clearing by His own blood a path that
leads to Him. In the seemingly most desperate situations, Christ is
there to point the clear way through the filth that may surround us or
the obstacles that are placed in our way. He is there to take us out of
despair, to cleanse us once again, and to lead us on His path of purity
so that His sacrifice on the Cross will not go in vain.
No longer
can our fallen nature stand as an excuse to prevent us from loving God,
or from keeping His commandments, or from maintaining the purity of our
body and soul. No longer can we make excuses that in this kind of world
we are not able to remain true to our pure Orthodox Christian identity.
Merely the fact that the Son of God accepted to die on the Cross in
order to bring about the purification of sins makes the availability of
a clear path all too important. In fact, the abundance of filth that we
claim to be in the world especially today, only makes it easier to
point out that one path that is truly clear. Follow that path, and
unlike following all others, you will start seeing that death is no
longer the inevitable tragedy of our fallen nature, but the victory in
a battle well fought.
It is certainly not an easy path to take.
All of us here know this very well. Following the purifying path of
Christ means sacrifice as it did for the ermine, and as it did for
Jesus Himself. Even if we do not suffer physical death as they did, we
might have to nail on the cross our pride, our passions, our
weaknesses, and our comfort.. But with every strike of the nail Jesus
is there cleansing us from all the stains that those nails might cause.
Having carried His Cross first He carved the clear path for us. And at
the end of time He will turn around, and show His life-giving face to
all of us who have followed Him. We only need to have the purity of
heart to be able to see Him. It would indeed be terrible if besides all
our efforts we never got to see the face of our Creator because of our
uncleanliness. St. John Chrysostom expresses this fear best when he
says: “I would not mind the fires of hell as much as I would mind not
seeing the sweet face of Jesus”.
Remember the ermine as it
escapes the filth that the hunter smears in its regular paths. It falls
into the hunter’s hands thus realizing by being captured, the purpose
of its life: to keep itself clean and unspotted. Christ has given us
our own spotless pure garment at baptism washed by His own precious
blood. He Himself continues to cleanse each one of us through His
Church. By being Lord of the Sabbath He has assured that in there is no
place in either side of death where a clear path will not be available
for us in order to preserve our purity until the end. In the battle of
this Pure week, we look to the Saturday of the souls and see that death
is nothing more but the ultimate victory. We should pray that the
purity of the ermine will decorate the souls of those who have left us
behind. We should also pray that our own offering to Christ will be as
pure and spotless as the offering we received from Him at baptism, so
that on that eternal day, with the clear vision of a pure and contrite
heart we too shall see God and live. Amen.
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