"...Be Followers Of Me"
10th Sunday after Pentecost
1 Corinthians 4:9-16; Matthew17:14-23
We have often seen a little girl putting on her mother's shoes – she does this trying to be like her mother. A little boy can also wear his father's shoes or his father's hat, because for small children, their father and mother are the most perfect and loving persons.
Young children imitate their parents, grandfather and grandmother in language, behaviour, and habits, just as children later imitate their teachers in pronunciation and ways of speaking. The desire of children to imitate their fathers and mothers naturally leads them to imitate the faith of their parents as children, and most children become members of the same Church to which their parents belong.
In adulthood, adults try to follow, imitate outstanding people, national heroes, sometimes knowingly, and sometimes not conscious of their imitation. But the apostles of Christ tried to deliberately imitate their Lord and Teacher Jesus Christ. One such imitator of Christ was the apostle Paul, who through his imitative practice attained such spiritual perfection that he said: "And it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20).
Imitating Jesus Christ himself, the apostle Paul called to his followers, those whom he "begat in Christ Jesus through the Gospel... So I beg you: be imitators of me!" (1 Corinthians 4:16).
Considering himself to be on a clear path of salvation, the apostle wanted people who believed in the Lord through him to follow the same certain path in their daily lives, because he felt responsible for them before God.
Many of the so-called wise men of this world considered the apostle Paul and his associates to be "fools for Christ's sake"; they considered them foolish for their useless service and imitation of Christ. In general, the enemies of Christ called the followers of Christ a mocking name: Christians (Acts of the Holy Apostles 11:26), because they tried to imitate their Saviour.
And the Lord Himself called people to follow Him:
"If anyone wants to follow Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follows Me" (Mark 8:34).
Sometimes the question arises: how can one follow, imitate Christ, when He is also God, not only a Man, while we are merely human beings?
Jesus Christ was truly God and Man, but He had a normal human body. The body, which needed nourishment, also became tired, felt heat, thirst, and pain. And He, having that body which experienced pain, consciously chose to serve God's truth, to serve people, to suffer for the sake of those people and their salvation, unto crucifixion and death on the cross.
And Christ, in calling his followers to follow Him and imitate Him in serving the truth of God-- even if they suffered abuse, torture, suffering and physical death-- did not expect that persons imitating him would accomplish all this with their human strength alone. The Lord foresaw human weakness; thus He willed that His disciples would be sent to strengthen their human fortitude, "the spirit of truth, which His world cannot receive", the Comforter - the Holy Spirit (John 14:1, 26).
The power of God, the grace of God dwells in a person when he/she receives the Holy Spirit; then their faith is strengthened and they can resist any temptations of the devil and do the works of God. By the grace of the Holy Spirit, a person takes wings and can perform the works of God, as the holy apostles and outstanding miracle-working saints did them.
All Orthodox Christians receive the grace of the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament of Anointing, when the "seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit" is placed on them. Our human bodies should feel that divine grace. The Apostle Paul reminds us: "Don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, that He lives in you, that you have from God, and you are not your own?" (1 Corinthians 6:19).
Feeling the grace of that Holy Spirit should make us spiritually strong, with resilient faith, able to imitate both the apostle and our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Our Taras Shevchenko felt this God's power in himself, and that is why he was full of great faith about the future of our people when he was in punishing captivity:
Ukraine will rise
And will dispel the darkness of slavery,
The world of Truth will shine
And they will pray in freedom
Slave children. (Grave of Bohdan {Subbotiv}, Kobzar, Volume 2)
In like manner we should acquire such or similar faith - all this is within our capabilities, for the grace of the Holy Spirit is in us. It is possible for us to perform the works of God, to accomplish great works for the affirmation of God's truth. The Apostle Paul also reminds us of this:
"Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?"
(1 Corinthians 3:16).
Amen.
Very Rev. Fr. Taras Slavchenko
Taras Slavchenko was born on March 8, 1918 in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine. After graduating from school and the Pedagogical College, he entered the language and literature faculty of the Scientific Pedagogical Institute. Having successfully completed it in 1938, he served as a teacher in a secondary school.