Sunday H Matthew (audio message)
of His Eminence Metropolitan Seraphim of Kythera & Antikythera
WRITTEN DIVINE PROCLAMATION
In today's Gospel reading we meet Christ and Savior of the world in a desert place. But a desert it is not. He is surrounded by His twelve disciples and thousands of people. Five thousand men, not counting women and children. All of them now hanging on his lips. They are wholly absorbed in His sweet word. And the hours pass quietly, secretly, mysteriously. No one sways, no one resents. Have they ever heard another speak like this, as the Lord speaks?;
The place is desolate, but the hour is past, the day is ended. The hearers of the Word are silent. The disciples now begin to grow impatient. Calculations are circling them like a bustling beehive. When will the world have time to return to their homes? Where will they make their supplies? How will the multitude, who, as if they had forgotten that they have living needs, sit and listen? Does not the Lord know? Does he not feel the needs of the people?;
But the Lord knows. He has provided. He, who with the coolness of His words quietly opened vital funnels in their desolate souls, He who filled their existential void and kindled in their souls the desire and love for the Kingdom of Heaven, will now come to meet their living needs as well. He has done the former, he will do the latter. He has provided the greatest, most salvific and eternal things, and he gives the second things, the living and ephemeral ones. Beginning with the spiritual, beginning with the material.
He receives in His all-merciful hands the five loaves and the two fishes which His disciples offer Him. He turns His gaze to Heaven, blesses them, cuts the loaves into pieces and gives them to His disciples to distribute. Just three movements, and the result? The crowd is satisfied and twelve baskets full of leftovers. What a Lord!
Lord Heikey? You bastards, we are. God the Father? His children we. How shall I live up to the honor that Christ has done me? How can I be His fellow traveler? When I do what those crowds do. When I, too, am a disciple at his feet. When I prioritize Christ-centered things in this life. When I make my first concern my unwavering faith and trust in Him. In nothing else on earth. When did a man ever get his fill of sticks? First my longing for heaven, then the respectful use of the gift of my few years on this earth. First my concern for my spiritual satiation with His Holy Body and Blood, with the Grace of His Sacraments, and with the reading of His divine Words, and then the search for the perfect bread. My first concern is that Christ will fill my soul with His presence, that is, that I will become receptive to Divine Grace, that my mind will be Christified, then and in moderation my necessary physical nourishment, beds and covers.
A lifelong struggle, but redemptive. Its ingredients are Faith and the search for Divine mercy. What room then for anxiety? Where is there room for sorrow? Where is there room for tyrannical thoughts and soul-destroying cares? Nowhere. All in Christ. He everything. All our quest and our soul's strength, in the first place. And He who richly, lavishly and lavishly provides the spiritual free of charge, He will also provide for the latter, when each time we turn our eyes to Heaven and praise, thank and beseech Him. For, «The rich have suffered and begged, but they that seek the Lord shall not be deprived of all good things.».
Fr. Pavlos Kalliikas
