Homily

I knew a priest one time who was rather unusual. He loved to take all the church services and he knew every detail of Matins, Vespers and Divine Liturgy, every rubric, every rule for any occasion. He could tell you what to do if Annunciation falls on Easter during a solar eclipse, when the Pope is in town, and you only have two sub-deacons. He was great at all that stuff. He was also good with visiting the sick and with people at funerals. But other than those qualities he didn’t seem to have any idea of how to be a real pastor, or how to run a parish. Things that nearly all priests understand as being part of the job of being a pastor didn’t seem to register with him. He simply couldn’t see how his actions, and often his lack of action was crippling his parish. People were leaving one after another. He couldn’t see how badly he was failing. One person said, “It’s like he lives in his own world and that is the only reality he can acknowledge.” And I thought that was a very accurate way of describing the situation. He lived in his own world. He couldn’t see or understand the real world, because then he would have realized how badly he was serving his parish.

But I think that I am not always living in the real world myself. Not 100%. I live in a world of my own making to some degree. This world is not the result of mental illness (or at least two of my three psychiatrists would agree with that.) It’s not totally disconnected from the real world. I shop at Costco and pay my taxes. Yet, it’s not a world that corresponds to reality 100%.

In my world Christ is King, but not all the time. There are times when my rules, my decisions, my desires win out over what the King would like me to do, which I guess then makes me the king of my world when I chose it to be so. But that doesn’t correspond to reality. How can there be two kings? But somehow I think I can make it work.

In my world I sometimes live as though this is all there is. As though this current physical reality, people, places, things, is the sum of my existence. Yes, I know there is a heaven, I know there is a hell, I know that there is a spiritual existence, that I have a soul created by God Who has no beginning and will never have an ending. I know I have an invitation to eternal happiness. But right here, right now, this world, these people, these things—they can just seem so much more important than the things you cannot eat, or drink, or wear, or touch, or use for my own satisfaction. The world I can manipulate, or try to manipulate, seems so preferable to the world I should surrender myself to. So I am often more motivated by the limited, physical, ever-changing and double-dealing world than I am by the promise of the Kingdom of God. Does that sound a little crazy? Welcome to my world.

In my world it is sometimes be difficult to find time to pray, but it is always easy to find time for entertainment or distractions. I am shocked, on a regular basis, by the bad actions of other people, but find it rather easy to forgive myself. Indeed, it’s not hard to see the faults in other people. I’ve practiced judging other people all my life and that’s why I am so good at it. And speaking of good, I often want to do what is good and even to be good, but at the same time I am so very tempted by the power of “good enough for now” and “good enough for me” that it seems I have accepted the idea that truly being good is a goal I can never achieve, so why bother trying too hard?

In my world I am, for the most part, just a normal person, and so I am afraid to put my life more completely in God’s hands because He would push me out of the range of “normal person” to a place where I’m not sure what might happen. So I resist, because I’m afraid. I can find myself to be more obedient to my fears than I am to my God, Who offers me nothing but His love. And isn’t that crazy?

And what about death in my world? What does it tell me about life? MY life? There is the world that does not care much about the Resurrection. Not concerned with Christ’s victory over death. Not looking forward to that same resurrection with any hope or confidence. Not paying much attention to the One who conquered death. And yet, at the same time, so fearful of death that it pushes it out of its conscious thoughts and lives just for today in a way that suggests there are endless tomorrows. The internet is filled with a flood of advice as to how you can prolong your life, but it is not so helpful in telling you why you are alive in the first place. There is that world, and it’s all around us. It is easy to conform to that way of living, to embrace the style of life that the so called “normal world” expects us to choose. If everybody is living like that, how can it be wrong?

My friends, I confess I am spiritually schizophrenic. In Greek “schizophrenia” literally means “having two minds” or having a “split mind” and that’s how I often find myself. St. Paul writes about this in his letter to the Romans, chapter 7:

“What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate...

For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not. For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want.

Split between two worlds: my own world and the real world. Christ calls me to the real world, where He is King and the Conqueror over the power of death. He calls me to the real world where He invites me to be with Him, and His Heavenly Father, and the Holy Spirit. He calls me to the real world, the only place where my soul can truly find rest, and not just for today but for eternity. He calls me to the real world where His love forgives sins and grants life to all who seek it.

If you even remotely share this same difficulty, then today is a great opportunity to move past the border of our own worlds and live more deeply in the beauty of the real world, where people truly rejoice to say, “Christ is risen!” Let’s not be schizophrenic, but ask Christ to make us of one mind, one heart and one love with Him.