Homily, November 16, 2025

Homily November 16, 2025

“Do not confuse man -this image of God – with the evil which is in him, because evil is only his accidental misfortune, a sickness, a devil’s dream; but man’s essence – the image of God – is always there”

St. John of Kronstadt

How scandalous Jesus must have appeared in HIs life among us. His followers were largely uneducated. His dinner companions often were tax collectors, prostitutes, and the great unwashed. Wherever He traveled the sick and demonized followed. He touched the untouchables and spoke with great grace to those who had only heard harsh words from their Rabbi 

Our Lord was holy, pure, sinless and, as one of the Trinity, inspired the very laws which many of the people He spent time with had broken. He had every right to judge and yet refrained. He had the ability to point out every flaw hidden deep within the hearts of those who listened to His words but most often chose mercy. The only prayer He had even for those who laughed at His torture on the cross was for their forgiveness. 

Now it wasn’t a matter of low standards or compromise. Indeed our Lord said that the Law must be fulfilled. It also wasn’t about what we call “love” in our times, a bland acceptance of everything, even the dangerous and cruel, rooted in wanting to just get along. There was something more. 

Our Lord Jesus saw that we humans were broken, entrapped, and made mortally ill by our sins. He knew that our decisions often made us playthings of the demonic. He knew our capacity to reason ourselves out of  our situation was compromised. We all had become confused. We were sheep without a shepherd. We had become, as St. John of Kronstadt says, “A devil’s dream.”

And, out of love beyond our imagination and mercy beyond comprehension He came to us in all our various kinds of disfigurement so that we would again be made well, holy, and true. The healthy, or at least those under the delusion of assuming their perfection, never understood this then or now. So the Great Physician came to those who would understand, the sinners of His time, indeed of all time, and chose to be their friend, their companion, and most of all their Savior. And, in doing this He left an example for us all.

One of the great paradoxes of Orthodoxy is that we run hard to get away from the sins which, as the Apostle Paul says “So easily beset us…” Our standards are high and challenging and the goal is to increasingly be nothing less than as like our Lord as possible. Yet that same standard also demands that we see those around us struggling with sin not as lepers to be avoided but as co-strugglers with us caught up in a darkness that we ourselves could easily succumb to if we let our guard down and people who need not a judge but a physician, indeed the Great Physician of our souls.

The temptation is strong, especially in these times, to want to hide ourselves away. A godly life can be very difficult to maintain in a world where things that can do great damage to our souls are not only accepted but celebrated. Yet we dare not if for no other reason than our Lord’s command to “Go ye into all the world…” 

St. John of Kronstadt, quoted at the beginning of this homily, was a man of great personal piety and yet that didn’t prevent him from caring for the hardest cases not with judgement or distance but with compassion and an understanding that each person, no matter what sin encumbered them, bore the image of God and that godly love compelled him to embrace that image even if they had no understanding of it themselves. 

We who’ve been given grace must do the same, never shunning any person regardless of their sins but rather resolving to become channels of God’s grace. To us no sinner is repulsive beyond salvation and any and all who need to repent, like ourselves, are welcome to find among us the salvation we all so desperately need. Those who judge and condemn will accuse themselves by their own standards. Those who graciously hold the high calling of God as a banner and in true Christian love desire to share what God has generously given will both save themselves and become a bridge so those battered by the world can cross to find rest and home with the One whose yoke, unlike this world’s, is easy and whose burden is light.

As Orthodox we work hard to put distance between us and everything sinful and broken within but we don’t put distance between ourselves and the people we encounter everyday who are themselves caught up in the accidental misfortunes and the devil’s dreams. To them we offer mercy, words of life and healing, and with great patience and love share the cup of living water that we’ve been given.

In some ways this is as scandalous today as it was when Jesus walked among us. We live in a world where we’re quick to judge others, forgetting the beam in our own eye while hunting for the specks in others. Yet if the world is to be saved, if we are to be saved, we must both strive for Christ’s holiness and sit, like Him, with the sinners to the end that we and they and all of us may be saved.