The ole folks always say: You reap what you sow! (Gal 6:7) Well, I have pondered on that a bit over the years and from my observance, some of that reaping certainly must be coming in the next life. Because in my time here, I have witnessed God-seeking people suffer with disasters and physical and mental ailments and I have witnessed fleshy worldly people floating through life seemingly unobstructed.
The evil one sure makes worms with hollow legs and an all consuming fire look real good, doesn’t he? (Mark 9:48) What a sales man!! Perhaps he finds it a bit too easy to take advantage of our pride and self-worth and our need to express our independent free-will. Follow Who? Who, ME?? We all have no idea of when our last minutes will pass us! But we do know how and when we can choose to live. It will cost you everything! Let GO! Choose LIFE! (Deut 30:19)
Saint Kyril of Jerusalem instructs us: “For if a man is righteous, he will receive a heavenly body, that he may be able to converse with the angels; but if a man is a sinner, he shall receive an eternal body fit to endure the penalties of sins, that he may burn eternally in fire, nor ever be consumed. And righteously will God assign either state, for we do nothing without the body.” [Ib., Lecture XVIII(19), VII:139.]
Our Creator took on the form of creation and He too suffered in the flesh. His time in the earthly vessel had a limit and had earthly boundaries. We too have a limit. St. Paul guides us in this manor: “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”
And he then continues: “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Here indeed we groan, and long to put on our heavenly dwelling, so that by putting it on we may not be found naked. For while we are still in this tent, we sigh with anxiety; not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. So we are always of good courage; we know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord.” (2 Cor 4.16–5.6).
In this short time we all have left, what will you sow? I pray you are sowing an abundance of love for mankind, even those irritating jerks and satan kissers! The Gospel writer today reminds just of that: “Reply evil with love, And as you want people to do to you, you should do to them” (Lk. 6:31)…. Saint Luke the Blessed Surgeon encourages us: “There are many things we should pray for, repent of our countless sins. But the unceasing and main prayer must be that the Lord purify the heart from malice and may impart the great Christian virtues—meekness and humility. Never forget the most important prayer - about love. Pray in a way that God puts it on your heart, for example: "Lord, rain down on me holy love, teach me to love all people: and the rude, and the stupid, and the wicked, just as You, Lord, love us all sinners and repentant." Amen to that.” (St. Luke Archbishop of Simferopol and Crimea, October 15, 1944)
Saint Kyril of Jerusalem will close us today with these words of sowing and reaping: “Be of good cheer, but work, strive earnestly; for nothing shall be lost. Every prayer, every psalm you sing, every good deed, every fast, every marriage duly observed, continence kept for God’s sake is recorded,...for you shall rise clothed with your own sins, or else with your righteous deeds.” [Catechetical Lectures, Lecture XV(23, 25), in Nicene, 2nd Ser., VII:111, 112.]
