Homily for the Seventh Sunday of Matthew:
On Faith
By St. Luke, Archbishop of Simferopol and All Crimea
(Delivered on August 12, 1945)
By St. Luke, Archbishop of Simferopol and All Crimea
(Delivered on August 12, 1945)
Before healing the two blind men who were praying to the Lord for healing, the Lord asked them, "Do you believe that I can do this?" They answered: “We believe.” And the Lord then said: “Let it be done according to your faith,” and healed them.
Whenever the Lord Jesus Christ wanted to heal someone, He asked if there was faith in them, and only those who believed, He healed.
It is said in the Gospel that when the Lord Jesus Christ came to Nazareth, He could not perform a single miracle there, because the inhabitants of this city, in which He grew up, where they knew Him from childhood, did not believe that He was really a Great Wonderworker. And the Lord was surprised at their unbelief.
You see that the necessary condition for receiving the grace of healing was the faith of those who longed for this healing. Why is this so? Because the miracles of the Lord are the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on people, and the grace of the Holy Spirit can be received only by those hearts that are open to receiving it through fervent faith. Just as an antenna is necessary for the reception of radio waves, so a pure and faithful heart is necessary for the reception of the grace of God, for in this case the great mystery of communion between the Spirit of God and the human spirit takes place.
How can such communion take place? If a person does not have the ability and desire to receive the Holy Spirit, then nothing will happen. The Lord does not forcibly send His grace to anyone. The Lord seeks faith, love, and hope in the hearts of men, and only then does He pour out His grace upon them when they open themselves to Him with deep faith. A mystery, a great mystery, is performed at the same time. The mystery was performed during all the miracles of Christ.
You know that when the unfortunate bleeding woman followed the Lord Jesus Christ in a large crowd of people, she said in her heart: "If only I touch His garment, I will receive healing" (Matthew 9:21). And without asking for anything, silently, only opening her heart to God, she touched Christ's garment. The Lord stopped and asked: "Who is it that touched Me?" The Apostles were surprised: "How is it, O Lord, that You ask who touched You, since You are pressed by a crowd of people." And the Lord answered: "No, someone touched Me, for I felt the power that came out of Me" (Luke 8:45-46).
You see that with such miracles, power emanated from the Lord Jesus Christ, and He felt it. This power penetrated into the essence of the unfortunate sick and healed them. After healing this woman, the Lord said, "O woman, great is your faith!" (Luke 15:28). Again, as you see, the Lord speaks of faith, again He says that this woman was healed because her faith was great.
You have also heard the story of a Roman centurion, a pagan, who humbly asked the Lord Jesus Christ to heal his sick servant. And the Lord answered him, "I will come and heal him," and this humble man said, "Lord, I am not worthy that You should come into my house; but speak only the word, and my servant shall be healed" (Matthew 8:7-8). Then the Lord said to those around Him in amazement: "Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel!" (Matthew 8:10). And according to the faith of the centurion, the Lord granted healing to His servant. That's how important faith is, how necessary it is.
It is necessary not only to perceive the miraculous healings of the Lord. The Lord Jesus Christ said to His disciples: "He who has faith and is baptized will be saved, but he who has not faith will be condemned" (Mark 16:16). You see how important these words are, you see that only those who have faith will be saved, and those who have no faith will be condemned.
The Holy Apostle Paul said that the whole essence of the Gospel teaching is reduced to faith, hope and love. Consequently, we must have a deep, strong faith in order to be Christians, in order to be recipients of God's grace.
And what is faith? The Holy Apostle Paul said, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen," i.e., the certainty that things that are not seen exist. Faith is the fulfillment of what is expected, i.e., a deep confidence that what we are waiting for will come true.
About faith, Saint Isaac the Syrian said: "For spiritual mysteries, which are beyond knowledge and which are not felt by either the bodily senses or the rational power of the mind, God has given us faith."
There was a great example of faith, shown to us by the long-suffering Job, for in his unspeakable sufferings he preserved the deepest faith and obedience to the will of God. He said amazing words: "I know that my Redeemer lives, and He will raise up from the dust at the last day this decaying skin of mine; and I will see God in my flesh. I will see Him myself; my eyes, not the eyes of another, will see Him!" (Job 19:25-27). So strong, so effective was his faith, that he said that he not only believed, but knew that his Redeemer lived. This is the kind of faith we must have in order to receive God's grace.
In addition to what we see around us, in addition to what we can feel with our hands, in addition to the entire visible universe, there is also a boundless invisible world, much more extensive than the visible one. This is a world that is not comprehended by our five senses. Well, if it is inaccessible to our senses, can we say that it does not exist? Can we limit everything to our vision?
A frog lives in a swamp, it lives there all its life and knows nothing but its swamp. She does not know that on the globe, of which she has no idea, there are great mountains. It knows nothing about the vast oceans and seas, about the human world, about culture, science, art, great cities, the greatest events in human history. It does not know that there are infinite stellar worlds, planets that make their way around the Sun. Her knowledge of nature is poor, insignificant, and limited.
Let us imagine that a frog has a mind and is capable of philosophizing. She would say: "There is only what I see and hear, only my swamp, the world in which I live, those gnats, butterflies and worms that I swallow, and there is nothing else and cannot be. Foolish are those who speak of some invisible, otherworldly world." Now, if we dare to assert that there is nothing in the universe except what we perceive with our five senses, then we will be no more intelligent than this swamp frog. For, tell me, are our miserable five senses sufficient to perceive all that exists, both visible and invisible?
We know that even some animals have feelings that we don't. We know, for example, that pigeons have a special sense of direction. They fly unmistakably where they need to go. We do not have this feeling. We know that the bodily senses of many animals are immeasurably stronger than ours, for example, the sight of an eagle. A dog's sense of smell cannot be compared with our insignificant sense of smell. What prevents us from admitting that even for a complete knowledge of the visible world, special senses are necessary, which we do not possess? They are all the more necessary for the perception of the invisible world. What prevents us from recognizing that we need to have a pure heart, open to the mysteries of existence, a deeply humble heart in order to perceive spiritual mysteries?
We know that the great saints, who possessed such a heart, had a much deeper knowledge of the world than we do. They had clairvoyance, they were prophets, they knew the future and the present. And our spiritual outlook is immeasurably poorer than that of the saints. Do we really dare to think that we can know the Angels, that our human mind is equal to the Angelic mind? Of course not. Of course, we must recognize the unconditional existence of the invisible world, and first of all we must have deep faith in the fact that above the whole world is the Lord God, Who created it, Who cares for it and governs it.
People of science, people alien to religion, treat faith with contempt. They say that we should think and reason only about what is accessible to our research. They say that nonsense is empty – all the talk is about some invisible, otherworldly world.
However, denying the Christian faith, can they say that in their activities aimed at studying the nature of the visible world, they are alien to any faith? Can they say that faith belongs only to religious people? No, they cannot say this, for both in their knowledge of the world and in their scientific investigation of nature, scientists inevitably admit faith. They have their own, not religious, but faith nonetheless, for they take on faith a great deal of what they cannot prove and practically cannot know. And always, in all periods of the development of mankind, scientific faith has occupied a huge place in scientific thinking. Until very recently, no scientist could even think that the atoms that make up matter could be decomposed into even more elementary particles. There was a general belief in the indivisibility of atoms. And what happened? In our lifetime, only some 40-50 years ago, this scientific belief collapsed, because the discovery of radioactive substances showed that atoms disintegrate, decompose. There have been many such collapses of scientific beliefs in the history of human thought. When the belief in the indecomposibility of atoms collapsed, a new belief arose – now electrons were recognized as the final product of the decomposition of atoms, they became the primary essence of all matter. And the scientists' faith in the electron is now universal. But I ask, Have any of them seen the electron? Has anyone felt an electron? No one felt it. Has anyone weighed an electron? No one weighed it. Where does this faith in it come from? They answer me: "We believe in the electron because we know it by its manifestations, by the actions that it exhibits." Wonderful, and I believe, and I know the great value of investigating the invisible by its manifestations.
If you have the right to believe in an electron without seeing it, then what right have you to say that our belief in God, Whom no one has seen either, is meaningless?
I will tell you that we also know God by His manifestations. We know Him by the manifestations of His power and might, by His actions on our hearts. By the actions of God, by the outpouring of God's power upon us, by the grace of God, which we feel in our hearts, we come to know Him. Faith is unprovable. There were many, many disputes, many attempts to prove that God exists and that God does not exist. But no one in the entire history of mankind could prove either one or the other. God can only be perceived with a pure heart.
Therefore, let not your heart be troubled by all the attacks on faith from reason and science. Let science go its own way, let it explore the mysteries of nature. We have a different path – the path of faith, by which we come to know the invisible world, the faith that fills our hearts when we partake of the Body and Blood of Christ in the form of bread and wine. We believe that this is not just bread and wine, but the true Body and Blood of Christ. Also, none of us has seen our Guardian Angel, and we all deeply believe that each of us has one.
Faith is our greatest treasure, the greatest of all human values. We must preserve it more than anything in the world. The Most Wise Solomon said: "Guard your heart more than anything you treasure, for from it are the fountains of life" (Proverbs 4:23). We must guard our heart, because it is an organ by which we believe, by which we receive the grace of God. Saint John Chrysostom said: "As a serpent does not guard anything, and when its very body is cut into pieces, it does not defend itself much in order to keep its head, so do you give everything: your possessions, your body, and your very soul, in order to preserve the faith. For faith is the head and the root. If you keep it, then even if you lose everything, you will gain everything again with greater glory."
Therefore, let us preserve our faith above all else.
Source: Translation by John Sanidopoulos.
