This sermon was preached at St Thomas Albanian Orthodox Church on 5 April 2009 during the Pan-Orthodox Vespers hosted by the COCC.

Our father among the saints, Gregory of Nazianzus, once said that “What Christ did not take into Himself He did not heal, but what is united with God is also being saved.”

Now here’s the first thing those words mean: there is nothing that is new to our Lord; no sin that He is doesn’t already know about; no temptation that He’s never felt; no affliction or addiction that He’s not tasted. Not that our Blessed Lord did what we do. When He was tempted, He did not give in; and when He suffered He did not despair or lose hope. But we must believe Our Lord truly was tempted in all points as we are, yet without sin. And when we believe this, then we can also believe that we have a great High Priest who knows what we go through, and so He can and does sympathize with every one of our weaknesses.

There is no doubt that St Mary of Egypt had to embrace this truth as the first step of repentance. First our holy mother among the saints needed to believe and confess that her evil deeds were not outside the realm of God’s mercy. First she had to believe and confess that everything she was ashamed of would not automatically disqualify her from embracing our Lord. And first she had to know that whatever she had done would not prevent the Lord from embracing her. And when she believed this truth; when St Mary of Egypt took to heart that even her vilest deeds, even her most ungodly wickedness, even her most shameful acts had been assumed and consumed by her Lord—then could she have the boldness and confidence to confess her sins.

Today we commemorate and celebrate St Mary of Egypt. But we do not commemorate her just to tell her story. We commemorate and celebrate St Mary so that we might imitate her faith and courage. We commemorate this great saint so that we might imitate her confession; so that, before Pascha, we too might go to confession.

Now what keeps us from going to confession? What causes us to put off going to our spiritual father? Is it the belief that we have nothing to confess? Or is it rather our fear that Our Lord God does not understand, that He can’t identify, that He doesn’t really know what it’s like? In other words, we’ll confess—but to someone who really doesn’t know us, and what we face, and how hard it is. Now if we could just find someone like that—someone who truly understands, and has been there, and can sympathize with us.

Yet that is precisely who St Mary of Egypt found—a sympathetic ear; and more than a sympathetic ear. She found the Lord and God who had been there and back; who knew her sin not intellectually but also experientially. And St Mary found the Son of Man who had endured her temptations, and so was able to help her—all all men—who are tempted. And when she found Him, she received courage—the courage to confess.

Now isn’t that what confession is? Isn’t confession the courage to name our sins aloud, and also the courage to live against our ungodly desires? For it certainly takes courage to confess. And it certainly takes courage to live for others and against we selfishly pleases us. Yet where does such courage come from? Certainly not from the commandments. The commandments are good, but ultimately they show us that we’ve missed the mark; that we don’t measure up. And they show us how we should live. The commandments encourage us to do what is right, but they don’t give us courage.

Where then do we get the courage to confess? It comes from Our Lord Himself, who gives us His Spirit so that we might begin to know and believe that He will not turn us away—because He’s suffered our temptations.

Remember St Gregory’s words: “What Christ did not take into Himself He did not heal, but what is united with God is also being saved.”

These words mean that Our Lord has truly and really assumed and taken into Himself—into His life-giving flesh and blood—our temptations: our desire to control, our desire to satisfy our urges, our desire to accumulate, our desire to lash out, our desire to want what others have, our desire to feed our appetites, and our desire to lose heart and give up and give in to our fears.

All of these deadly sins, all of these ungodly passions and desires, Our Lord has both assumed and consumed. He has made them His own and swallowed them up in His person. He doesn’t just know about them. He took them in and suffered their sting, and then put them to death in His flesh. And He has done this for only one reason: so that He might transform and convert these ungodly passions, so that He might change them into godly desires—the godly desires which transform us.

Just think about this: Our greatest instinctual fear is that we will die. Death comes to us all. Death is inevitable. But every one of us does whatever we can to avoid death, escape death, and deny that we are dying. We even change our appearance and wear clothes so that others think we’re really not as old as we are. And why do we do that? Because getting older means getting closer to death. So we try to look and act younger so that we don’t have to deal with the death which lurks right around the corner.

Yet what does Our Lord do with death? He takes it, swallows it completely down into His flesh, so that He can transform and convert and even bless it so that it now becomes the way into the life of the world to come. Think about it: our greatest enemy Our Lord makes our greatest friend. Our greatest fear Our Lord transforms into our way to life. Our greatest curse now becomes the passage to blessedness. The thing that separates us from our mothers, is what Our Lord changes so that it now becomes the way we are born into the fullness of His kingdom.

Now what Our Lord does with death is also what He does with all those sins and passions which drive us to death. Our Lord transforms our sins into His forgiveness; He takes our unrighteous deeds and exchanges them for His righteousness; and He converts our selfish desire into a desire to love Him and all men. And how does He do this? By drinking down the bitter cup of our death so that we might drink the sweet cup of His precious Blood.

And that’s how Our Lord’s mercy works. He takes what is killing us and transforms it in His flesh, so that when we feast on His Body and Blood, we might be transformed.

That is the mercy, the grace, the comfort, the hope and the life that gave St Mary of Egypt and all the saints the courage to confess their wicked past, and to abandon their ungodly habits, and to live no longer for this life but for the life of the world to come. To strive no longer to gratify our flesh, but to strive just as hard and even harder for the fullness of the Father’s kingdom—that takes courage: the courage that Our Lord offers and presents and gives in His sacred mysteries.

Once more, I need to remind you of St Gregory’s words: “What Christ did not take into Himself He did not heal, but what is united with God is also being saved.”

During these two weeks before Pascha, let us recall that Christ Our Lord has taken and united to Himself not just our sinful desires, not just our death, but our entire persons; and He has done this so that He might bring us safely through the hardships of this life to the glory of His resurrection. And as we recall this, let us pray to St Mary of Egypt and our patron saint so that we might have the courage to confess our sins to our spiritual father, so that we might celebrate with full and unending joy these coming days, and most especially the glorious feast of Our Lord’s victory for us over death and the grave; for to this Lord Jesus Christ belongs all glory, honor and worship, together with His all holy Father, and His good and life-giving Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages.