Homily for the Sunday of Saint Gregory Palamas
By St. Sergius Mechev
By St. Sergius Mechev
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!
I spoke to you yesterday and today about the fact that the Holy Church now sets before us the example of Gregory Palamas in connection with the course of the Great Fast, and today at the Liturgy I spoke about, according to the teaching of Gregory Palamas, what life is and what death is, and what kinds of deaths there are: the death of the body and the death of the soul.
Here is what Gregory Palamas, Archbishop of Thessaloniki, writes to a certain pious old woman:
“Know, pious mother, or rather let the maidens who have chosen to live according to God learn through you, that the soul also has a death, although it is immortal by nature (Philokalia, III, 3). … For just as the separation of the soul from the body is the death of the body, so the separation of God from the soul is the death of the soul. And this is chiefly death — the death of the soul. It was this death that God indicated when, giving the commandment in Paradise, He said to Adam: ‘In the day that you eat of the forbidden tree, you shall surely die’ (Gen. 2:17). For then his soul died, having through transgression been separated from God, while in body he continued to live from that hour on for nine hundred and thirty years” (Philokalia III, 4).
In what does true death consist?
True death is not when the body dies, for then the soul is alive and only separated from the body. The real death is the death of the soul, when the soul is separated from God, lives not in God and not according to His commandments, but according to the lusts of this world.
“And this is the true death, when the soul is separated from Divine grace and is joined to sin. Those who have understanding must avoid such death and fear it. For those who think rightly it is more dreadful than the very torment of Gehenna. This death we too must avoid with all our strength. Let us cast aside everything, abandon everything, renounce everything — both in our relations with others and in deeds and desires — that distract us and separate us from God and cause such death” (Philokalia III, 5).
We must fear this genuine, real death, because:
“He who fears this death and guards himself from it will not fear the approach of bodily death, having within himself the true life which especially through death acquires its inalienable character” (Philokalia III, 5).
What does this mean?
“If you preserve your soul, if you do not kill it — what have you to fear then?” “God lives and the soul lives”; it lives in God, for God is our Life.
“For just as the death of the soul is true death, so the life of the soul is true life.”
In what then does Gregory Palamas see the life of the soul?
“The life of the soul is union with God, just as the life of the body is its union with the soul. For as through the transgression of the commandment the soul, having separated from God, was put to death, so through obedience to the commandment, being united again with God, it is made alive. Therefore the Lord says in the Gospel: ‘The words that I speak to you are spirit and they are life’ (John 6:63). Having experienced this in practice, Saint Peter said to Him: ‘You have the words of eternal life’ (John 6:68)” (Philokalia III, 5).
But for whom are these words words of eternal life?
“They are words of life for those who obey them; but for those who disobey the commandment of life they become death. Thus the Apostles, being the ‘fragrance of Christ,’ were for some ‘a fragrance of death unto death,’ but for others ‘a fragrance of life unto life’ (2 Cor. 2:15–16)” (Philokalia III, 5).
“…But just as after the death of the soul — that is, after transgression and sin — the death of the body followed, and with it the return to the earth and the turning into dust, so after bodily death again comes the second death of the soul, its condemnation in Hades” (Philokalia III, 6).
This is what I spoke to you about today — that at the Last Judgment the Lord will deliver us to Gehenna:
“Therefore watch, O my soul, lest you be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given over to death and be shut out of the Kingdom.”
Whoever wishes to receive true life must strive to receive it even now; he must partake here already of the true, eternal life.
“And he who is not zealous to acquire it in his soul here should not deceive himself with empty hopes of receiving it there, or of somehow being deemed worthy of God’s love for mankind at that time. For then will be the time of righteous recompense, not of mercy and compassion; the time of ‘wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God’ (Rom. 2:5); the time of the showing of the ‘mighty hand and the uplifted arm’ (Ps. 135:12), casting the disobedient into torment in Hades. Woe to him who must ‘fall into the hands of the living God’ (Heb. 10:31). Woe to him who there will experience the wrath of the Lord rather than here, who has not, through fear of God, learned ‘the power of His wrath’ (Ps. 89:11) and by his deeds obtained God’s love for mankind. This is the work of the present time” (Philokalia III, 7).
Here is the time of repentance, the time of mercy, the time of compassion, the time of loving-kindness. Do not complain against God, for He gives you time for repentance.
“For this reason God arranged this present life for us, that He might give place for repentance. If this were not so, a man who sinned would immediately be deprived even of this life. For what benefit would there be in it, or what need for it? Therefore there is absolutely no place for despair among men, although the evil one tries in many ways to cast even those who struggle well into it, and not only those who live carelessly. Since the time of life is the time of repentance, the very fact that a sinner is still alive serves for him, if he wishes to turn to God, as a guarantee that he will be mercifully received by Him. For at every moment in life free will remains in force; and to this free will belongs the choice between the path of life and the path of death, which it may accept or reject as something attainable. Where then is there room for despair, when everyone always has the possibility, if they wish, to acquire eternal life?” (Philokalia III, 7).
By these words Gregory Palamas explains that in this life we may, by our own free will, take the path of life or the path of death — the path of life for God or the path of death for God, when the body lives but the soul has died.
This life has been given for repentance:
“For this reason God arranged this life for us, that He might give place for repentance.”
Therefore remember the end of our life, and that Christ is our Path and our Life. Let each of you think about this and examine himself — whether he lives with God or without God, not only in thoughts but in life.
Remember that here is the time of repentance and mercy. Remember that the Lord sees us every minute of our life, and that here we must repent and fulfill His commandments, while there, after death, there will no longer be a place for mercy or compassion, but there will be Judgment and righteous recompense.
Do not fear to die a bodily death, for this is a translation, a passing, a removal — it is not the real death, because only the body has died while the soul lives, and even the body itself will rise again at the dread Second Coming of Christ.
“But why will it rise?” asks Gregory Palamas.
“In order to receive the resurrection not only of the body but also of the soul, or in order to receive condemnation and die completely. For although all will rise, yet each — as the Apostle says — in his own order; and he who here has slain the spirit by fleshly lusts and passions will there — alas! — be condemned together with the craftsman and author of every evil and be delivered to unbearable and unceasing torment, which is the second death that has no succession” (Philokalia III, 6).
Therefore the Holy Church calls us:
“Watch therefore, O my soul, lest you be weighed down with sleep, lest you be delivered to death and be shut out of the Kingdom; but arise crying: Holy, Holy, Holy are You, O God; through the Theotokos have mercy on us.”
This image of the great teacher and practitioner of noetic prayer is given to us by the Church so that we may, as far as possible for us, practice guarding the tongue, the mind, and the heart, preserving within ourselves the treasure of prayer. Then little by little the Mount Tabor light — the Taboric light — will also be revealed to us, the light that was revealed to the Apostles and for which Gregory Palamas contended at the Synod of 1341. Amen.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.