Homily for the Fifth Sunday Evening of Great Lent (St. Sergius Mechev)

Homily for the Fifth Sunday Evening of Great Lent 

By Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Mechev

(Delivered in 1929)

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!

In the work of repentance, my dear ones, we must distinguish two moments. One of them is the turning of the sinner to God with supplication as to a physician: “Heal, O Lord, my soul, for I have sinned against You.” This supplication was present both in the Prodigal Son and in our Venerable Mother Mary of Egypt, whom we glorify this week. This moment of the sinner’s turning is characterized by the fact that the sinner, in turning with supplication to God, enters into a secret covenant with Him. Such a covenant was made both by the Prodigal Son and by Mary of Egypt.

But all our life proceeds through repentance, and through it the original beauty of countenance is restored to a man, and from here again there is a path either to sin or to God. The “imaginary soul” strives to displace everything holy and real. Even after conversion, a question arises for a person: how to live? — and a struggle begins between the “imaginary soul” and the “true soul.” Every life is characterized by struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no life. And we, my dear ones, are all inclined to return to the former path. Just as a cancerous tumor strives to fill the whole organism, so the soul infected by sin strives to displace the true soul, and the struggle begins.

This struggle and its causes were very clearly revealed in the case of our Venerable Mother Mary of Egypt. She repented, was deemed worthy to partake of the Holy Mysteries, went beyond the Jordan, and began an angelic life. It would seem — what more is needed? Everything has already been accomplished. No, my dear ones — life had only just begun: temptations began, and the difficult podvig (struggle) of fighting them. From the Life of the Venerable one we know that this struggle lasted seventeen years — and what a struggle it was!

“On the one hand, I suffered unspeakably from hunger and thirst,” the desert-dweller told the Venerable Zosimas, “the torment was intensified by the memory of the rich foods and wine of the days of my debauchery. The evil spirit revived in my thoughts, with full vividness, the wanton songs I used to sing, and the foul, lustful images of my countless sins. On the other hand, the clothing in which I had gone out had completely fallen apart, and I was exposed to all the changes, to all the harshness of the seasons: now the sun burned me with its scorching rays, now the cold seized me. Then, falling to the ground, scorched or frozen, I felt that I was dying, while thousands of temptations attacked me with demonic force. In this indescribably cruel state, the Most Holy Theotokos was my refuge. I wept bitterly and, striking my breast, I lay stretched upon the ground and implored the Sovereign Lady not to deprive me of her help.”

And we now, my dear ones, must not only repent, but also lay the beginning of the struggle against sin. One may meet the Bright Resurrection of Christ in different ways. One may merely watch how others rejoice, but one may also rejoice oneself, and then those around will only increase my joy. But my joy will be real only when I experience some measure of crowning. If I repent and begin the struggle, then I will experience this joy.

Let us try, at least during these two weeks, to truly begin it. For many of you, my dear ones, do not even suspect what joy this struggle gives.

Let us trace this at least in the example of the saints. In this they are all very similar. First of all — struggle with thoughts, their purification, unceasing prayer, and the constant bearing of sorrows. In the example of Mary of Egypt we saw that, by purifying her thoughts, she acquired the grace of unceasing prayer. For in life one may walk before men or before God. Venerable Mary considered that only the Lord could help her through the Mother of God. And in moments of fierce struggle she fled to Her for help. “After weeping and supplication, light illumined my soul and peace returned to my heart. The merciful Queen did not refuse me her help” (Life of Mary of Egypt).

And the Lord gives us prayer and sorrows, but we do not wish to bear them. I recall a confession that can teach us much. A young woman gave me a letter that could be called a confession. This woman lived in a non-religious family, and then the Lord arranged for her to come to God and, having gone through the path of conversion, made a covenant with God and began to live, as she believed, with God. But little by little, it turned out that not all was well with her. After all, repentance must be in unceasing prayer—it is walking before God. "I walk not before people, but before God. What will my Guardian Angel say about me? God is looking at me, what will He think of me?" But for her, it was something completely different—she gave up the struggle. "There was absolutely no struggle," she writes, "I relied only on my own reason—I can heal myself. I left God, left the Divine Services, prayer, and desired only to constantly serve people with my life. The rest is, as it were, unnecessary." She began to walk in front of people. "I feared people's condemnation of me like fire. Condemnation of others developed wildly within me. I spoke to people's faces better than I thought about them." But one must, my dears, think about what God will say, not people. A person abandoned prayer, God, and fell into pride. "I considered myself almost a saint," she writes, “I did not wish to ask about what I did not understand, but wanted to understand everything immediately.” Unceasing prayer and walking before God were abandoned by her.

Venerable Mary of Egypt, as we saw, purified her thoughts; but this girl approached it differently: “Pleasure became the predominant factor of my life,” she writes. And she began to live by another soul, and pleasures took on an increasingly sensual character. She did not purify her thoughts, and the result was that she became bold and coarse, though she had been very gentle, desiring to serve others; now she became rough, fell into anger, and often grew angry with her mother. Formerly she endured all this as obedience to God, but now she poured out her anger upon her mother with foul speech. At times a thought would come to restrain herself, but she would reject it, and later learned to take pleasure in evil. Living by a sinful soul, she began to use foul language, and feeling a kind of freedom, used it with particular pleasure. She lost all desire to serve others — this person of a gentle soul. At times other thoughts would arise, at times her true soul would speak within her, but instead of listening, she stifled it. This unpleasant reminder of conscience irritated her, and after long reflection she decided that this must be ended, and she renounced holy service.

Then there appeared condemnation of all virtues, heaviness in conversations about religion. Thus a gentle soul suddenly took on this malice because it began to live not by the true soul. Immediately she fell into despondency. With fury she recalled those days when she had met people with whom she had begun the path of salvation, and felt these memories like a splinter within herself, and could not rid herself of them. All this led her to the awareness of her fall. “I felt the fall, but saw no way out,” she writes of her state at that time. “Rarely did a day pass without thoughts of suicide. Soon I lost the distinction between good and evil and began to deny sin itself.”

But finally, little by little, she began to listen to what the true soul was telling her. Having fallen, she rose again, realizing that her burden was not the bearing of sorrows, but the absence of repentance; that her first necessity was the awareness of her complete sinfulness and the realization that she could do nothing without God. “No, Lord, I can do all things, but only in You.”

Thus, my dear ones, as we now prepare for Holy Pascha, we must remember that we must have struggle, spend all our time in prayer and in the unceasing remembrance that we must walk before God, in the endurance of various sorrows and self-reproach — but above all, my dear ones, in the purification of our thoughts. One must not say: “What does it matter what I thought?” Look what became of a gentle person. And so I wish for you not merely to make a secret covenant with God, but through the purification of thoughts and the bearing of sorrows to walk the path of repentance toward paradisal blessedness — and on this path of paradisal blessedness, soon the paradisal divine service will stand before us.

And if you pass these two weeks in this way, you will have true joy. May the example of our Venerable Mother Mary of Egypt, and of this sister who was dead and repented — glory to God — give you strength to go to our Lord Jesus Christ, to Whom belong glory, honor, and worship. Amen.

Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.