Homily One on the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman
By St. Justin Popovich
(Delivered in 1966 in the Ćelije Monastery, transcribed from a recording.)
By St. Justin Popovich
(Delivered in 1966 in the Ćelije Monastery, transcribed from a recording.)
Today is the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord, the Feast of the Lord’s Ascension with His body into Heaven.
With today’s Feast, the Nativity is brought to completion: it both completes and explains what the Lord Christ intended when He became man, what He desired, what He purposed, why He was born on the Nativity as man, He Who is God, why He took a body upon Himself. Today’s Feast tells us this great and holy mystery and explains why the Lord became man, why He took upon Himself the mocked, humiliated, sinful, and mortal human body. What was the purpose of this? Today’s Great and Holy Day explains it to us. The Lord became incarnate, the Lord took a body upon Himself and became man in order to raise the human body above all the heavens, to glorify the human body with inexpressible glory, to lift it above all Angels and Archangels and seat it at the right hand of God the Father.¹ Thus, this is why the Lord took a body upon Himself: the whole path has been completed. The human body, once disgraced in sins, in death, in horrors and terrors — that human body the Lord took upon Himself and ascended with it into Heaven.
In the wonderful hymns, stichera, and prayers of today, this marvelous moment of the Ascension of the human body from earth into Heaven is continually magnified and glorified. The Angels marvel and are amazed, it is said, and cannot comprehend how man, who until yesterday was mortal, sinful, completely enslaved to the devil — that this man, his body, his nature, should ascend from earth into Heaven above the Cherubim and Seraphim. The Lord glorified man with a glory higher than that of the Cherubim and Seraphim. What a wonder, a wonder of God’s love for mankind, what a wonder of divine love! The Angels cannot comprehend it, much less we small and insignificant men — small because sin has diminished us, small because death has crushed us, small because the devil has strangled us. Behold, the Good Lord frees such a man from sin, frees him from death, frees him from the devil, frees him from hades, and raises his nature above all the heavens. What glory, what honor, what divine love!
Today’s Feast is also the feast that completes and explains Holy Theophany as well: why the God Who became man was baptized in the flesh, why He came to John to be baptized by him.² Because He took upon Himself human flesh in order to show the human body the path from sin into eternity, in order to show how man can cleanse himself from every sin, how man can heal himself from every death. Yes, heal himself from death. How? Through Holy Baptism. For then the Holy Spirit is placed upon the human soul and human body through the holy water, and man is cleansed from everything sinful, from everything mortal, from everything demonic. Thus today’s great Feast shows that the body which John baptized in the Jordan — and in which He, so to speak, received all our bodies, human nature — has ascended into Heaven through Holy Baptism, and sin has been conquered, death conquered, hades conquered.
Today’s great Feast also completes and explains the Transfiguration of the Lord Christ:³ why the Lord was transfigured on Mount Tabor, why He shone with ineffable divine light. His human body shone with all divine glory — why? In order to show that the human body, my body and your body and everyone’s body, every human nature and all human nature, is meant to be filled with divinity, that this is its purpose. This is why God created the body: that we might fill it with divine powers.
He took human flesh upon Himself, as it says in the Holy Gospel: “In Him dwells bodily all the fullness of the Godhead.”⁴ Why? So that we too might be filled with that divine fullness,⁵ that we too might be deified, filled with all divine powers, so that those divine powers might drive from us every sin, every passion, every evil, every devil, every death. This is why the Lord showed His glory to the disciples on Tabor.
Behold, what He showed on Tabor, on today’s great Feast of His Ascension, He makes universal: He ascends into Heaven with such a glorified body, in the fullness of divinity and shining with divinity.⁶ He, the wondrous God-man, raises the human body above all worlds, above all the immortal Cherubim and Seraphim, above all the heavens. Again, what splendor, what divinity! The God of love gives man what no one could ever have imagined.
With today’s holy Feast, Great Friday is also completed and explained.⁷ Through today’s great Feast it is explained why the Lord suffered, why He was crucified, why He died on the Cross a shameful and humiliating death, why He was buried. Why? In order by His death to destroy death, by His death to overthrow death, overthrow hades, destroy all the power and might of demonic beings, the dark and black angels and devils.
He, God in the flesh, entering death with His body, entered it with His divinity; and from within, when death seized Him and thought it would destroy Him completely and forever, after three days He rose again by the power of His divinity. He destroyed death, and by His Resurrection conquered death for our sake, for the sake of our body, our being, and thus secured for us men the path to immortality, secured for our body the path to immortality. By His Resurrection the Lord opened a path for our body through resurrection from the dead. Our body shall rise on the Day of Judgment. This is why the Lord rose: to give human nature that power which will raise the human body from all the dead and all deaths, having conquered death. Only today, through today’s great and holy Feast, do we see and understand the mystery of Great Friday. He, the Almighty God-man, accepted death, accepted the terrible shameful death on the Cross, the death usually reserved for the greatest criminals, in order to secure for the human body immortal eternal life, secure resurrection and victory over all deaths.
Today’s great Feast also completes and explains the entire Gospel of the Lord Christ: why the Lord brought His Gospel into the world, His divine teaching — what did He intend by it, what does He desire through giving His Gospel to us men? Gospel means “Good News.” Yes, every word of the Lord Christ is Good News for man, for the human being, for human life. Only today’s Feast, great and radiant, illumines the Gospel of Christ with its light and shows us that every one of His words exists so that man may heal himself from sin, that man may heal his body from sin, heal his soul from sin, heal his whole being from sin, and from death, and from the devil, and from hades, and rise up by fulfilling that teaching into life above all Angels and Archangels.
Truly the Lord said to His great and divine disciple: “My words are spirit and life.”⁸ And indeed His words are life, life poured out upon our souls and throughout our being when we study, when we read the Holy Gospel, when we live according to it. We feel immortality and eternal life flowing through us and throughout our being. Yes, today’s Feast shows that the fulfillment of the Gospel of Christ is precisely this. The human body was given so that it might fill itself with that power, that life, that Spirit which is in the Holy Gospel of the Lord Christ.
Today’s Feast completes and explains the entire Person of the Lord Christ, the God-man Christ: why He came into this world, why He lived in this world; it explains why He died in this world, why He was buried, why He rose again. Today’s great Feast explains this entire great and glorious holy mystery, saving for us men. God appeared as the God-man and remained the God-man for your sake, O man, for the sake of every man, for the sake of all human nature.
Therefore today’s Great and Holy Feast also completes and explains the entire mystery of the human being, of human existence. The God-man Christ explains the whole mystery for us: why man was created, from where man came, of what man consists, from what material? — from body and spirit: both are mysteries, the body a mystery, the spirit a mystery. How does man begin in this world, how did human life begin, and how does human life end? Behold, all this great and glorious mystery concerning man and human existence the Lord has revealed through today’s Great and Holy Feast.
O man and brother! To you and to me a body has been given so that it may rise from the dead, conquer every death, every sin, every devil, all hades, and through faith in the Lord Christ and life according to the Holy Gospel secure immortality and eternal life for itself, above all Cherubim and Seraphim, above all the heavens. This is why a body has been given to me and to you; this is why a soul has been given to you and to me — that we might secure immortality and eternal life for ourselves, secure blessedness greater than that of angels and archangels, secure a place for ourselves at the right hand of God the Father. How shall you and I dwell at the right hand of God the Father if we do not cleanse ourselves from sin, from every sin, through repentance and through the Holy Gospel of the Lord Christ?
Yes, through wondrous love the Lord Christ reveals the whole mystery to us men of this world, and reveals the whole mystery of our being as well. We men — who are we and what are we? He created us all. This is why God became man, because only God can tell man what man is. This is why God created man. He gave him existence, He brought him out of non-being, created him from nothing, created man from nothing in order to grant him eternal life above all Angels and Archangels. What a mystery! Man — a divine majesty: man! God created man in order to glorify him with His divine powers and His divinity. This is why God became man and appeared as the God-man and remained the God-man, so that every man in this world might follow Him and attain the goal, the divine goal of his life — which is eternal blessedness and eternal life above all the heavens.⁹
Yes, this great and holy mystery, this great joy, the Holy Church proclaims to us today through this Great and Holy Feast, the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord into Heaven. All the hymns resound with this celebration; all today’s hymns and prayers are adorned with this heavenly flower, this eternal and immortal fragrant flower. And in one of today’s beautiful hymns and prayers it is said that the great mystery of salvation has been completed. Christ the Lord, ascending into Heaven for us men, completed the entire divine economy of salvation¹⁰ and fulfilled the whole work of salvation. He united earth with Heaven, united man with God, and remains forever the God-man by His divine nature. Though He ascended bodily into Heaven, by His divinity He is always beside us and dwells among us.¹¹ And as that beautiful hymn (the kontakion) says, He tells all of us who love Him: “Behold, I am with you, and who can be against you?” Who? Not death, much less men. Not the devil, much less evildoers. To accomplish this great and glorious work of saving man and the world, this great feat, the greatest feat — none could accomplish it except the Lord Christ, the Lord and God of love. He has truly given the human race its only true and eternal joy. Therefore the Holy Apostles, as today’s Holy Gospel says — and as you heard in the Acts of the Apostles — when the Lord ascended before their eyes on the Mount of Olives, returned to Jerusalem with great joy,¹² great joy, because death had been conquered, the devil conquered, sin conquered, hades destroyed.
O man and brother! — and by this eternal divine life in Heaven has been secured for you with the wondrous Lord Christ, Who in His body raised our whole nature into Heaven, as the Gospel says, and seated it at the right hand of God.¹³ To Him, the only Savior of the human race, to Him and Him alone be honor and glory, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Notes:
¹ Mark 16:19
² John 1:25–34
³ Luke 9:28–36
⁴ Colossians 2:9
⁵ Colossians 2:10
⁶ Luke 24:51
⁷ John 19:17–31
⁸ John 6:63
⁹ This entire homily, especially these final passages, resembles the 16th Homily of Saint Gregory Palamas. — Editor’s note.
¹⁰ Kontakion of the Ascension. — Editor’s note.
¹¹ Matthew 28:20
¹² Luke 24:52; Acts 1:12–14
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