Coming in for dinner after unloading the hay wagons all morning, the dust and dirt from living off the land seemed to attach itself to me in places I couldn’t even see. Grandma had indoor plumbing and that is where I was sent to clean up and then be seated. The table was full of farm cooking and the smells made my mouth water up a bit, especially as I was hungry enough to inhale it all without even chewing! Although Grandma didn’t make the butter anymore and bought the flour and a few things in town, the rest came from the farm and the toil of Adam and Eve. “Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, And you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return.” (Genesis 3:17-19) From those words recorded in the Book of Genesis, you gardeners and farmers know exactly what it means to eat and to survive; it just doesn’t magically appear at the grocery store!! It is a day to day struggle!
After Granddad said the prayer, it was go-time! I raised my arms to grab a bowl of good eating, as fast as a race car leaving black marks at the starting line, and Grandma caught a glimpse of my forearms, which had somehow escaped the soap and water, and she instructed me to head back to the sink and clean more than just my hands.
Well, I hadn’t looked, and I couldn’t see all these areas without twisting my forearm and glancing at the vanity glass! That is how it is with cleanliness; it takes some effort on our part! I had done the bare minimum which Grandmas’ keen eyesight quickly exposed. But I may have inherited her hawk eyes, check with my wife on that!
Now in my grandparent’s youth they experienced World War 1 and then in their twenties stretched their pennies with their young children through the Great Depression and farmed and survived through World War 2. Granddad‘s first wife and mother of three died in childbirth and he remarried and brought two more mouths into this world to feed during those hard, hard times. Life wasn’t easy!! There were all kinds of struggles such as survival, family brokenness - with thanks to Cain and Able (Genesis 4), unpredictable weather and disease and death of family and livestock and crops, but they found hope a little North of a small town named New Hope!
Now my grandparents Father had told them: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” (Exodus 20:8-11)
On Sunday north of New Hope, you would not see diesel smoke rolling out of the exhaust pipes on Granddads farm tractors, and the weeds in the gardens were allowed to take root and grow with the sunlight and not fear Grandma grabbing them by their neck and yanking them out of the earth, or at least they could suck up the moisture and nutrients until Monday! But the animals were tended too as they were dependant on us humans for survival, but that was about it. It was peaceful day with Church, family and quiet, and a good day to read and pray, unless of course the heifers got out onto the state road in which case peace became panic and the phone party line began to hum with pleas for help to round up those your four legged Holsteins and to then fix the fence. Oh, the struggles of life! The expulsion from paradise surely does keep us busy.
The readings we heard today transported me back to these memories. The reminders we heard to “cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, bringing to perfection holiness in the fear of God”. [2 Cor. 7:1] And for those of us who struggle with addictions to liquor, smoking and sinful habits that we just can’t seem to loosen, we should have plenty of time to pray the Akathist of the Inexhaustible Cup on the Sabbath Day. And then what is your Father telling you today? “Wherefore, “‘Come out from the midst of them, (the world and false religion) and be separated,’ saith the Lord, ‘and cease touching the unclean thing,’ and I will receive you, ‘and will be a Father to you, and ye shall be to Me for sons and daughters,’ saith the Lord Almighty.” [2 Cor. 6:17-18]
You see, you too can find some hope North of New Hope but it is going to take some work. The world is not our father, money is not our master, the Earth is not our home! St Isaac the Syrian writes: “The soul that loves God has its rest in God and in God alone. In all the paths that men walk in the world, they do not attain peace until they draw nigh to hope in God.” (St. Isaac the Syrian, Homily 56, 89)
Our bodies are Earthly and will perish, but our souls are spiritual. As St. Paul describes it in Galatians as this: “For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.” (Gal 5:17) Learning to love ourselves as we were formed, means coming closer and closer to the Great Artificer, and in that we have to return over and over to the cleansing process: reading our scripture daily, preparing ourselves for communion, learning to forgive and love our neighbors, and being truly repentant. And everyone needs one day of rest!
The thorns and thistles of life are abundant and nothing grows quicker than those types of weeds. Don’t you know the evil one has plenty of fertilizer? But it is only through faith and perseverance that we can find a peace that is ever so consuming, a peace that streams like Myrrh from the One who formed us, a peace that reassures us, that our Father loves His creation!
But it is going to take more than the bare minimum on our part; it is going to cost all of you! Being truly Orthodox means that we will need to make some changes. We are going to need to expose all of our filthiness and make some new healthier habits. I’ll end with these words from St. Philaret of Moscow: “Every Christian should find for himself the imperative and incentive to become holy. If you live without struggle and without hope of becoming holy, then you are Christians only in name and not in essence. But without holiness, no one shall see the Lord, that is to say they will not attain eternal blessedness. It is a trustworthy saying that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners (I Tim. 1:15). But we deceive ourselves if we think that we are saved while remaining sinners. Christ saves those sinners by giving them the means to become saints.” (St. Philaret of Moscow, Sermon of September 23, 1847)
Fr. Gabriel Weller 10-5-2025
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