Waynesboro Orthodox Mission

From Father Alban...
During this long season of Trinity, the concern of the Church’s teaching is our response to that invitation: “Come, for all things are now ready.” We are concerned with the nurture and cultivation of our new life, personally and corporately. St John, in today’s Epistle, speaks of the signs of that life in us: “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren.” We are enabled to choose to act in love.

The love of God in us is manifest in our love for one another – our active goodwill and charity: not just in feeling, or superficial emotion, not just “in word, but in deed and in truth.” Our recognition of God’s love has its necessary expression in our love of one another; and without that expression, we know that the recognition is counterfeit.

In fact, we are commanded to believe the revelation of God’s love in Jesus Christ, and commanded to express that love for one another. It is a surprising aspect of all this that St John keeps speaking in terms of commandments. Perhaps that seems a very strange way of putting it. After all, people either believe, or they don’t; they either love one another or they don’t. How can such things be commanded?

The commandment to love seems especially strange: we’re used to thinking of love as something spontaneous, something that just happens. It is an experience. One “falls in love”. What sense does it make to command it?

But St John’s approach is more realistic than our conventional modern attitudes about the spontaneity of belief and love. Our beliefs and loves do not simply “happen”; they express a character formed by a long process of training and habit. And that process always begins with commandment and obedience. It is really the essence of the Christian life, of our transformation from self-serving egos, enslaved to our passions, into Spirit-filled, obedient imagers of God. Of those who refuse bo***ge to anger and resentment and instead will forgiveness from their heart and choose to love.

Just as our natural life has its formation in obedience to parents so our spiritual life has its formation in obedience to God’s word. There is, of course, a spiritual maturity, when our beliefs and our loves are spontaneously right. That is the condition we call “sanctity”. But that is the end, not the beginning; our beginning is commandment and obedience, and the commandment is twofold: “That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment.”

Homily Excerpt from 07/14/24

From Father Alban...
Inseparable from the revelation of the Holy Trinity is the Incarnation. The germ of all Trinitarian theology is found in the beginning of St. John’s Gospel which we recite each Sunday. His three affirmations: “In the beginning was the Word…the Word was with God…the Word was God.” “In the Incarnation”, writes Paul Evdokimov, “God transcended His transcendence”.

After the fall, there was a chasm between the uncreated God and His creature. Adam was directly called to deification, to union with God, but after the Fall the obstacles of sin and death intervened to make the distance unbridgeable. The Incarnation, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of the Son bridge the chasm for us.

We can once again receive grace, our nature healed in the Incarnation, and death is no longer the end to our life of spiritual advance. On the Cross, the Son allows death to embrace Him in order to consume it by contact with His divinity. Risen and Ascended, He introduces humanity into the Trinity Itself, and sends the Spirit at Pentecost, to begin a new era when human persons, indwelt and supported by the Holy Spirit may once again freely acquire union with God & live the life in Christ, the life of grace, the life of transformation. In the Church, freedom and grace collaborate, as all who desire may respond in faith and love to the Father’s call of grace and pass through the portal of salvation and continue the journey to union with God.

- Homily Excerpt from 06/30/24

From Father Alban...
What is it for then, this period of time between the womb and the tomb? It is a preparation, a working out of grace in the life of each person. Grace is given to begin and further our transformation from fallen sinners into Saints; from those who care only about themselves in this life and about the things of this world, to those who are full of compassion for others and set their minds on things above.

We are simultaneously living in this world and in the kingdom of God. We pe*****te that reality through our prayer and contemplation, and we respond through our acts of compassion in this world. We only find our place in this world and what our ministry to it is by experiencing the transformative life in Christ and the life of the world to come. Only in Christ does this preparation time make sense.

St. Isaac writes that This life is given to us for repentance,. Repentance, that turning to God from whatever else has distracted us, and drawn us by its seduction. Turning from darkness to light – from flesh to spirit. From the counterfeit to the genuine – from falsehood to Truth. All our turnings are part of the process as we seek holiness and Life. All of them are part of the Way, as is each test, each temptation, each challenge with which we are faced in this life, given to mold and shape us into the stature of the fullness of Christ.

With each turning, we draw closer to the Comforter, Who indwells us, the Holy Spirit, whom the Lord has sent to guide and shape our life to be like His in this world, and through Him to overcome all. As He has promised, to those who overcome, He will confess his name before His Father and before His angels. He will grant to sit with Him in His throne, as He is set down with His Father in His throne. These astonishing promises He makes to His own who remain faithful to the end.

That is why we are here, and really all we need to know. That Jesus is with us unto the end of the age, and that as we cooperate with the work of His Spirit within us, we are His emissaries in this world, and we are being shaped for eternity.

- Exerpt from homily on 06/16/24

From Father Alban...
The stranger and pilgrim mentality is simply the mentality of those who love God more than the world. It is a hard daily round of the transfer of our affections and the deeper realization that the mind of Christ is simply the mind that is filled with God, standing before Him at every moment in the honesty of our heart, without disguise or pretension. It is to bring all of life, in all its aspects into the central relationship of God in Christ - to seek to live by the Word of God. That will make us strangers and pilgrims in this world, form our love for God and for our neighbor, and finally bring us to salvation.

Excerpt from Homily on May 26

**Image of St. Brendan's Grave in Ireland taken on a pilgrimage

From Father Alban...
We, like our catechumens last night, through Holy Baptism die now with Christ that we might live eternally with Him. We enter into the Resurrection of Christ, and it enters into us. We seek daily to crucify the passions of the old man, that the new man who bears the Resurrection of Christ in his very being by the Spirit of God may manifest the Risen life of Christ. A life at work in us even now. The Resurrection transforms us as it transforms time, and marks this day, and every Lord’s day as both the 8th day of the in-breaking of eternity into time, and the 1st day of the new creation, which awaits its own greater manifestation in the fullness of time. This is our new reality, the power of the Resurrection, preparing us for entry into the life of the age to come. It is why we live with hope in the face of anything the world, the flesh or the devil may throw our way. It is why we love our Lord and God and Savior more than we fear anything in this world. It is why we are willing to die rather than forsake our Lord or our faith – for we know that death has no more dominion over us. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

- Excerpt from Homily on Pascha

From Father Alban...
The Jews understood perfectly what Jesus was claiming when He responded “Before Abraham was, I AM", even if some so-called "New Testament scholars" cannot. And they take up stones to execute Him for blasphemy, but He walks though their midst, for it is not the time for His Sacrifice, nor the manner in which He will lay down His life for the life of the world. He hides Himself from them. Which is what our symbolic veiling of the Cross and images from now until Good Friday represents. Even as He is hidden from all who reject His word, so He will be more and more revealed to us over the services of Holy Week in Scripture and the ancient liturgies which form an ordered sequence of His Passion: the Entry into Jerusalem, the Mystical Supper, Crucifixion, Harrowing of Hell & Resurrection.

- Excerpt from Homily on Passion Sunday

From Father Alban...
We are often a kingdom divided against ourselves. The spirit desires to become more faithful, more disciplined, more holy – but the flesh wants none of it. And if we have not been struggling against the flesh, then the flesh will exert its mastery over us even as we enter Lent. That is the kind of self-discovery that is worth having. Because it is not meant to lead us to despair, but to a greater desire for the things of God. Instead of thinking, it’s already three weeks into Lent and I am failing, we should be thinking, ah, I still have 3 weeks before Holy Week begins, I can make a new start – maybe I bit off more than I am ready to chew – I should begin anew with consistency and faithfulness. Engage the will – cry out for the grace of God – only God can heal and cleanse us – only God can plant virtue in our hearts to take the place of the vices the finger of God is seeking to drive out of us. But only we can avail ourselves of it with our ascetical struggle. Recognize the divided kingdom in yourself and resolve now to begin doing something about it – we can make a new start every day – but today is the day of salvation, and we never know when we will be called to the life of the age to come. We never know at what moment it will indeed be too late. God is ever seeking our communion with Him, as Jesus says in the letter to the lukewarm Laodiceans: “Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him.” That door is never locked on His side, but only on ours. Lent is a perfect time to be sure it is unlocked, and invite the Lord to enter our lives that we may taste of the fullness of life, and glimpse the glory that awaits us.
- Excerpt from Homily on 04/07/24

From Father Alban...
“As dying, and behold we live…”

Memento mori is an ancient practice of the Church- to remember one’s death. It can be summed up in the words of Ben Sirach or Ecclesiasticus 7:36 "In all you do, remember the end of your life, and then you will never sin.") It finds ritual expression in our rites of Ash Wednesday, when ashes are placed upon the worshipers' heads with the words "Remember, O man, that thou art dust, and unto dust shalt thou return."

Reflection on our mortality can be a powerful means to keeping a perspective on what is truly important. It can be a catalyst for living in the present moment that is very important if we are to be focused on reality as well as on our encounters with others. It is also helpful in keeping our focus in worship in the face of wandering thoughts and internal “static”.

It can help us to remember something else St. Paul writes in our Epistle today: “Now is the accepted time; behold now is the day of salvation.” We need to choose our salvation each moment. We are to be united to our Lord Jesus Christ consciously and intentionally all the time, if we are to not “receive the grace of God in vain.”

If we do not engage the grace of God with our will with increasing frequency and fervency, it will not be active in our lives – we will have received it in vain. It can help to “remember your death”. But we should also remember, in this season of the purification of our souls and bodies by fasting and prayer, that we have already died with Christ, as He for us. And that death is now for us the gateway to eternal life.

- Excerpt from Homily on 03/24/24

From Father Alban...
Our soil must be prepared and cultivated to receive the seed of the Word. The tools are precisely the tools of Lent: repentance, fasting, prayer, almsgiving, and deeds of charity. We fast in obedience in Lent, because the Fall initially involved the breaking of a fast in disobedience. We pray because we don’t want to be found hiding from God when He calls to our hearts. We perform almsgiving and works of charity because He told us that as we do it unto the least of his brethren, we do it to Him. And we pursue the path of repentance in Lent and throughout our lives, to more fully perceive the love and mercy of God. As we receive the seed of His word with care and attention, with devotion, holding it close and allowing it to purify and illumine our hearts, it will bear fruit in us. But we must persevere, for the final word today is that the fruit is born with patience.

That is bad news for modern people who expect everything to be “instantaneous”, including their “spirituality”. This life of faith and repentance is a long, and generally slow process of cultivation and growth. It lasts a lifetime, but what we do with that lifetime will determine whether we will produce 30 or 60 or 100-fold. That seed of grace planted in our soil at Holy Baptism can be buried under layers of pride and desire and vice, and must be uncovered with the spiritual cultivation of repentance, fasting, prayer and good works; that the light and water of the grace of the Holy Spirit might pe*****te it once again. Christ asks of us faith and humility and patience. All other things will afterwards be done by Divine Grace and granted to us by the Father’s good will and mercy, as we continue to plow the soil of our hearts.

- Homily Excerpt from Sextuagesima Sunday

From Father Alban...
The way to the reward is the same for all the redeemed; union with Christ who was obedient unto death to destroy death and break the power of sin, restoring us to communion with our Father. The reward offered is the same for all, the greatest and the least. It is our striving for the reward which differs, and perhaps our fuller experience of it.

It is like the work and discipline we undertake in Lent. But why do we undertake it? To earn the prize? No, says St. Paul: rather to “keep under my body, and bring it into subjection.” Our labors do not earn salvation; they enable us to experience it. Had the latecomers not labored at all, they would not have experienced the graciousness of the householder. But, like the early hires, we may end up resenting the work, or worse, the householder.

The runner doesn’t have to pay for the prize, but if he does not train and compete, he will not receive it. Lent is the time we increase our effort; to strive to fast more, pray more and give more, so that we may more effectively experience the gift given.
The Lord asks us "Why do ye stand here all the day idle? Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive". We receive far more than is right – His gifts are far above our worth or our toil, yet toil we must. “So run that ye may obtain the prize.” The prize is also a gift, but we must run, finish the race in faith, hope and charity, that we may return to the Paradise from which we have been in exile so long.

- Excerpt from Homily on 03/03/24

From Father Alban...
It was not the wise and prudent among the Jews who received the Lord, but fishermen, prostitutes, tax collectors and other sinners who, while not well-versed in theology perhaps, knew their need of a Savior. To them, Jesus has revealed the Father who has given Him all things. He makes the familiar appeal:

“Come unto me, all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you (as we have the words in our Liturgy). Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

What is necessary to receive the rest & refreshment which comes from Jesus? Three things: awareness, acknowledgement and humility. An awareness of our condition – that we are travailing and heavy laden under the burden of our own sin – our own estrangement from the One who fashioned us and seeks our communion. An acknowledgment that we are in need of the healing blood of the Great High Priest whose life has been poured out for the life of the world. That that is the only atonement which will restore our souls to their rightful place in God. And finally, the humility to submit to His yoke of meekness and lowliness of heart.

His yoke is easy if we submit to the transformation of our hearts by the work of the Holy Spirit within us. His burden of the commandment of love is light, if we have died to ourselves. It is only when we cling to our own passions, when we refuse to relinquish the dazzling trinkets the world and the devil constantly hold before us to distract us from our true nature and home that the yoke of Christ begins to chafe, and the burden of love becomes inconvenient and heavy to us.

Many walk in ignorance that they need not continue in the travail and under the burden of the life of sin and passions, but that is part of the deceitfulness of sin itself. It promises so much, but delivers only pain and death. The Lordship of Jesus Christ, while not necessarily leading us down an effortless highway, at least brings us to the state in which we do not travel it alone, but always in league with the Master who has already entered into every highway and byway of this life before us. This is the message St. Matthias and all the apostles learned and taught and gave their lives to embrace to the end. For them, the death that came at the hands of their enemies was nothing in comparison to the glory which had been revealed to them; nothing in comparison to the joy of being a witness to the resurrection of their Lord.

- Excerpt from Homily on 2/25/24

From Father Alban...
There is something self-defeating about fallen human desire, in that what is desired, once it is achieved, leaves the desire unsatisfied. Advertisers know this only too well. This innate desire, which is really the deep and bittersweet longing for the Paradise of communion with God which we lost in Eden, points beyond finite objects and finite persons. Though they may seem, on the surface to satisfy, they eventually prove incapable of doing so – it is as true of addictions as it is of marriage when one looks to the other to be everything. In fact, our desire points through these objects and persons toward their only real fulifillment - in God Himself. This is what St. Paul refers to in verse 20:

"For our conversation (our walk - our way of life) is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself".

When we come to the realization that our true satisfaction lies in God, not our conceptions of Him, nor what we have been taught about Him, but in our personal experience of Him through the Scriptures and prayer and the Mysteries of His Church, we can, in true humility, surrender our conceptions and begin to walk in a new awareness: that while God is beyond our conceptions He is also present in every moment of our life, drawing us unto Himself, sometimes through the very things and people we often only consider distractions or nuisances in our path.

~ Excerpt from Homily on 02/18/24

From Father Alban...
St. John sees in our rebirth as children of God a new humanity, through the redemptive act of the one, unique Son of God, and applied to us in Holy Baptism. We have been granted a participation in the new human nature of the Second Adam - a human nature joined to divinity in the Incarnate Son, and bestowed upon us in the waters of Baptism. Through it we are partakers of the divine nature, as St. Peter tells us. We have communion with God the Holy Trinity and a new life which we can choose to nourish or leave dormant as we wish.

It is not something readily visible to the world, even as Jesus’ own unique divine nature was not readily visible, save to the eyes of faith. This is our true identity, and our destiny as new creatures in Christ, if we cooperate with the grace of God in our lives seeking to transform us through repentance and humility and the acquisition of virtue. In the rest of our reading, St. John is speaking essentially of this. He who looks forward to becoming like Him hereafter, must strive after His likeness now.

~ Excerpt from Homily on 2/11/24

From Father Alban...
Jesus reveals His power over both kinds of storms, those without and those within. His actions declare Him God with authority over all the creation whether earthly or heavenly, seen or unseen. There is no storm He cannot still, whether it be those which assail us from without, or any which seek to steal our peace from within. He instructs His disciples how human fear emerges out of weakness of mind & heart, not out of the actual approach of threatening trials. While their understanding of His power was still inadequate, we have no such excuse. Just as Jesus is Master of Nature, so He is Master of the demons. There is no force that can come against us over which He is not the Lord. That assumes, of course, that we have entered under His Lordship in our own lives. That He will not coerce. That only we can determine. It is up to us.

As our conscience is purified, and by His grace we recall and confess to Him all our sins and foolishness of the past, our sins are forgiven, set as far from us as east is from west, and we set forth on the path of real transformation of our lives, Our Lord Jesus Christ chose to enter fully into the frailty of human nature, to bear our sins upon the Tree of the Cross and enter death to conquer it for all. We must choose by faith and repentance to enter into the fullness of the divine life which is ours in Him. Then, we will be able to weather whatever storms we may face, in the might of Christ in us, the hope of glory.

- Excerpt from Homily on 01/28/24

From Father Alban...
The Church’s mysteries or sacraments are a return to God’s purposes. When water is used in baptism, the original, life-giving purpose of water is recalled. When bread and wine are used in the Eucharist, we are reminded that all meals are meant to be occasions for communion with God. But in this unique feast, we partake of bread transformed into the Body of our Lord; wine transformed into His life-Blood for our spiritual nourishment and union with Him. And here is where our epistle comes in. It speaks of living in faithfulness, in honesty and peace, overcoming evil with good. All so that we might cooperate in the process of coming into that realm of the Spirit in which we are changed, transformed, like water into wine; from self-centered individuals into true persons in Christ, who have been graced to be able to manifest the life of Christ in our corporate life as well as in our personal interactions.

We heard from Isaiah at Matins of the Lord providing life-giving water to the poor and needy; rivers and fountains and pools and springs. And as Jesus told the woman at the well, there is another water, a spiritual water which He provides, water drawn from the wells of salvation – the gift of the Holy Spirit to those whose hearts are purified by the water of Baptism. This is the water which will transform our lives into the rich wine of redemption, that we, and the very words from our mouths may become spiritual food to those who hunger and thirst for that which nothing else can provide but the Lord Jesus Himself.

Some have said we have entered into a kind of national sadness in the face of all the attacks upon tradition, family and morality. But we are not of those who live without hope. The wellsprings of joy are available to us through our Lord and the gift of His Spirit. We must keep our eyes on His light and not succumb to despair or despondency, for we are the warriors of the Kingdom, and fight with weapons unknown to the world. And we are being changed from glory to glory by the power at work in us. We need only submit to His gracious Lordship, and engage the enemy in the unseen warfare in His might. The battle is ours, but we do not fight alone. And we fight for the future of humanity against principalities and powers. But we must always remember that our Lord has defeated them, and in Him we are more than conquerors. May that hope and that reality be ever forefront in our minds and hearts as we bear witness to Him, ever overcoming evil with good.

- Excerpt from Homily on 1/21/24

From Father Alban...
Sin causes us to lose the graces that we have received-it erodes them.. We can be restored through the mystery of Confession, but if, time after time, we come confessing the same sins over and over again, with no progress at all, we are in danger of using Confession as an excuse to continue in our sin. Even as we struggle with the same deep-rooted passions, there must be the keen intention to root them out, forsake them, to “abhor evil and cleave to that which is good”. Otherwise, we abuse the very Sacrament which is meant to restore us to communion with God, and choose our sin over true repentance and its fruit.

In this walk with/into Jesus we are called to increasingly wean ourselves from the things of this world. It doesn’t mean we all need to become monks or nuns, but it does mean we need to be serious about cultivating our inner life and reducing our worldly one. There must be firm intention of the amendment of our lives when we bring our sins to the mystery of confession, otherwise we are cheating ourselves of the grace which seeks to bring us back to our intimacy with God, or again as St. Paul puts it so succinctly to “abhor that which is evil and cleave to that which is good”. We must see evil as evil, and stop deceiving ourselves that our continuation in it will have no consequences for our spiritual life and health.

If we take a haphazard approach to our Church life, or to the Sacraments she offers, we will begin to slide – and that slide, whether slow or fast, will follow the spiritual gravity of the careless life – downhill. Restoration is always possible and available, but if we are to properly avail ourselves to it, we must follow St. Paul’s admonition: to abhor that which is evil and cleave to that which is good, as well as all the other things he mentions in today’s Epistle. The good will uplift us, bring joy and hope to our lives, and put us in that place where we may hear the glorious words of our Lord when He returns to those who have kept His commandments: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant,,,Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

- Excerpt from Homily on 1/14/24

From Father Alban...
In the first recorded sermon we have from the Apostle’s, that is St. Peter’s on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, we read that before the great and terrible day of the Lord come, it shall come to pass, that whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved. The same is repeated by St. Paul in Romans 10:13. It is a quote from the prophet Joel (2:32), the context again being the great and terrible day of the Lord. St. Paul further states in 1 Tim 2:4 that God “will have all men to be saved, and come unto the knowledge of the truth.”

We might call all this a description of the entry into the gates of salvation, opened by the Lord Jesus Christ, gates which no man may now shut. This entry into healing, redemption and salvation is opened to all. But what then?

Jesus tells us that strait is the the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. He warns further in Matthew 7 of false prophets of corrupt trees, and then ends his discourse with those uncomfortable words: “Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” There is obviously more to the path of salvation that calling upon the Name of Jesus, and even calling Him Lord, praying a sinner’s prayer and having one’s ticket to heaven eternally punched. Apparently DOING what He commands is vital to our salvation as well.

In our Epistle this morning, St. Paul addresses some of what must come later in the professing Christian’s life.”I beseech you therefore, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

I suggest that presenting our bodies a living sacrifice means the same thing as doing the will of the Father. Most of us, if we are honest, partake of the crumbs which fall from the Master’s table, as it were. Amidst all the attractions and distractions of the world, we often take little time for prayer, for turning to God in the face of all that would seek to drive Him away from our minds.

The first proclamation of Jesus, first command, is “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”. We are told time and again that this life is given to us for repentance...
..Why is this all so important? Because each time we sin, we conform ourselves to the world – each time we own up to our sin and confess it, we are being increasingly transformed by the renewing of our minds. In doing so, we properly abase ourselves that we may be exalted by God.

Our love for God should rightly cause us to desire, like the adolescent Jesus, to be near the Father – or as the interesting Greek construct has it, in His response to his parents –"Did you not know that I must be “in the of my Father”? It can be translated “about my Father’s business, or in my Father’s house, or about my Father’s affairs. But it comes down to that desire to be close to His Father. The kind of desire that ideally is being formed in us as we draw closer to our Lord in this walk of repentance and faith.

- Excerpt from Homily for 1/7/24