1 Cor 6.12 – 20

Luke 15.11 – 32

One notes that the Gospels for these first three Sundays of the Lenten Triodion are all parables. With these parables, the Church is leading us to the entrance of Great Lent, which is the entrance of the LORD’s Tomb; for that’s where the Gospel on the Thursday before Great Lent begins will have brought us.

Our Lenten goal is to get inside the LORD’s Tomb. But the entrance to His Tomb is sealed by a very large and heavy stone. How can we get inside?

The tomb, says St Macarius the Egyptian (4^th cent), is our own heart (Hom 11.11). The stone, then, comes into view as the wall of enmity that separates us from God. How can we get past the wall of enmity and into our heart?

Again, St Macarius writes, ‘The parables have their living counterparts in spiritual realities.’ (Hom 46.6, p. 285) These parables show us another path. It’s a hidden path, a spiritual path. It will bring us into the company of the Holy Myrrhbearers on the Thursday before Great Lent begins (Lk 23.55). We will follow them into Great Lent that other path that descends into the stillness of the soul down into the tomb of our heart – this is the tomb of Lazarus – where we come upon a gate that opens out into the LORD’s Tomb, inside the LORD’s Tomb, on the other side of the stone sealing the entrance.

This hidden, spiritual path is within us. We find it when we flee from the corruption that is in the world through lust and take up our cross in the form of prayer and fasting, and the cultivation of the virtues, the preparing of ointments and spices, to follow Christ. Following the Myrrhbearers, we descend with our mind on that hidden path to follow Christ into the tomb of our heart.

As I said, this is the spiritual reality that the tomb of Lazarus is an icon of, following, for example, St Kallistos Angelikoudes (14^th C): ‘Visible things,’ he says, ‘are icons depicting the invisible things of man (Philo V, p. 130). Here is where we come upon that hidden ladder of the Kingdom that is within us, hidden in our soul, as St Isaac of Nineveh says (Hom 2 – 8^th C). By it, we are able to ascend into the LORD’s Tomb on the other side of its sealed entrance.

We will enter this hidden spiritual reality at the Matins for Great and Holy Saturday sung on the evening of Great and Holy Friday. We will process around the Church three times following the priest, the Cross, and the Holy Gospel. Then, we will come back into the Church. We will pass under the shroud. We will have come to the end of the Lenten Path to find ourselves mystically inside the LORD’s Tomb, ready to behold the wonder of His Holy Resurrection on Pascha Night that rolls away the stone and destroys the wall of enmity, the wall of death, that separates us from God.

 The parables have their living counterparts in spiritual realities, said St Macarius. Let’s stay with St Macarius now to learn from him what spiritual reality is reflected in the icon, the mirror, of this parable of the Prodigal.

The soul’s fulfillment, he says, is found only where she was begotten (Hom 46). We learn from our Mother, the Church, that our soul is the offspring of the Spirit, for Adam, it says in our Mother’s storybook, the Bible, became a living soul only when God breathed into him the Breath of Life, His Holy Spirit.

In the flesh, we are kin to our ancestors through blood. But, in that kinship of blood, we return to the dust we and our ancestors came from.

But in our spirit, we are kin to God. When the Spirit of God was breathed into Adam, it was mingled with Adam’s spirit, and he became a living soul. He lived not in the biological life of the dust from which he was taken but in the Spirit that dwelt in him from on high.

St Macarius says, ‘there is no tie of blood like that between the soul and God, and between God and the soul. In none of the creatures of the world did the LORD fix His throne, or establish communion with them. He was pleased with man alone. He entered into communion with man alone. He rested in him alone.’ (Hom 45.5, p. 284)

This is the spiritual reality reflected in this morning’s parable. The Prodigal Son is kin to his father, not to the pigs he was with in the pigpen. If, says St Macarius, ‘the offspring of the Spirit chooses to give itself the things and glory of the earth, it is mortified and perishes because it is unable to find the true satisfaction of life. For its satisfaction is only in the Spirit of God in whom it was begotten and became a living soul. (Hom 46.1, p. 286)

When the Prodigal, as the parable goes, ‘came to himself’ – as though he was waking from a deep sleep – what was it he came to? Was it not the remembrance that he was kin not to the pigs but to his father?

St Macarius says, As a wealthy maiden, betrothed to a husband, is not satisfied with any of her wealth until the time of the wedding comes and she is made one with him, so the soul is not satisfied until she attains complete union in love with her Heavenly Bridegroom. Or, as a babe, when it is hungry thinks nothing of the costly clothes it may be wearing, but cares only for its mother’s breast and how it may get her milk, so the soul is not satisfied except with the Heavenly Milk it receives from its Mother, the Church in Holy Eucharist. (Hom 45.7, p. 285)

The tragedy of our life is that have forgotten our kinship with God. We are more foolish than the beasts of the field, says St Macarios. They all are joined each to their own kind. But we do not ascend to our heavenly kin, the LORD. Instead, we make ourselves allies of sin, fighting against ourselves, and so we become Prodigals, living as though we were kin to pigs and not to God. (St Macarius, Hom 45.6, p. 285)

But ‘when our soul cleaves to the LORD,’ says St Macarius, ‘the LORD loves us and cleaves to us, and our soul becomes one spirit with the LORD. Even while here on earth, the soul has her social life wholly in the heavenly Jerusalem with all the saints. And the LORD sets her image above in Jerusalem with the saints, and He sets His own Image of the unspeakable light of His Godhead in her body. He abides with her in the city of the body while she abides with Him in the Heavenly City. She has inherited Him in Heaven, and He has inherited her upon earth. The LORD becomes the soul’s inheritance, and the soul becomes the inheritance of the LORD.’ (Hom 46.3-4, p. 288)

Our return to our Heavenly Father through our marriage to His Son, Jesus Christ, in the sacramental mysteries of His Holy Pascha is the joy that defines our Lenten journey that begins from wherever we are this morning, and that will be consummated inside the Bridal Chamber of the Heavenly Bridegroom. He is the Fountain of Life (Jer 2.19) and His Tomb has become the Bridal Chamber, the Font of our resurrection. In the blood and water that came forth from His side on the Cross, in the Heavenly Spirit we receive in the Church’s sacramental mysteries, our sins are washed away, we are raised from death to life, and we enter once more into the joy of our kinship with God. Amen!