Ready? Or Not?

Life always invites us to face the reality that moments in our lives uncover whether we are ready or not to apply the wisdom of our Faith to how we live.

An ongoing joke among church families is how long it takes to get ready for church on Sunday mornings! Of course, this isn’t true of going to work or school, a game, a dance, or most other social and work-related events. It seems we always find a way to be on time for those events. But when it comes to church services, the excuses fly!

However, we all tend not to be ready when the time comes. We know we should, and we know we can. Despite our best intentions, it seems there is a spiritual conspiracy to keep us from worshiping and arriving on time for services.

I tell my folks that they are not appropriately prepared to receive the Eucharist if they arrive too late to hear the Gospel proclaimed. That’s a good rule of thumb, but it's actually a pretty old discipline in the Orthodox Church.

Another old discipline regarding the Eucharist is that if you miss three Sundays in a row, you have excommunicated yourself and must be reconciled to the Church! Wow, those early Christians considered regularly participating in the Church's life central to their lives! I guess that’s why they were ready for whatever came their way, including dying for their faith!

So, how can we address the seemingly human-wide struggle to be ready at the right moment?

Look at our lesson today in Matthew 10:1, 5-8:

At that time, Jesus called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every infirmity. These twelve Jesus sent out, charging them, “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And preach as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying, give without pay.”

OK, let me set the scene for you. Jesus’ public ministry has just begun. He’s been baptized by St. John the Forerunner and has gathered His disciples, including the 12 Apostles and the 70 disciples that surrounded them. The Lord is sending these out two by two to spread the word of the coming Kingdom of God. They are to preach, heal, and cast out demons. In other words, they are to be the first wave of attack against the kingdom of darkness and the reign of death.

And Jesus gives them specific instructions. He tells them to go “nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Really? The Lord will use Samaritans and Gentiles as His ministry grows as examples of great faith and extraordinary belief. But He tells His disciples to avoid these groups. The Gentiles were anyone not born in the lineage of St. Abraham and under the covenant that God made with Abraham and his descendants. The Samaritans were “half-breeds.” They represent the people in history who were at one time part of the lineage of Abraham but had intermarried with pagans and had become influenced by these foreign religions and mixed the Faith with paganism. But why avoid them?

The first group that needed attention was the “lost sheep of the house of Israel!” They were formed by 6,000 years of Temple worship, stories, wisdom, scripture, preaching, prayers, prophets, and even times of exile for breaking the covenant with God. They should have known better. They had all the advantages of wisdom, scripture, and prayer and still wandered away from the Lord.

They get to hear the Good News first because they have been prepared and should have been ready.

And many did believe! What 120 followers of the Lord in the Upper Room were on the Feast of Pentecost in Acts 1, and they grew to over 3000 believers by Acts 2!

Many, if not most, converts to the Faith of Christ in the first few years of the Church were Jewish believers! Rome considered the nascent Christian Church a sect of Judaism until the events after 70 AD and the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. The Children of Abraham should have been ready.

Sadly, too many were not, and they missed the fulfillment of all they had in the Faith of Abraham.

But that’s such a familiar story: all the benefits and advantages. And still, we humans squander opportunities.

It happens in all our lives.

What’s the missing piece that makes us so susceptible to “not being ready?”

The answer isn’t mysterious or even complicated. But it isn’t easy. What you and I have to embrace is ATTENTIVENESS! We have to stay focused on the right goal. And that goal is to understand you were made in God’s image to become LIKE Him SO THAT you will ultimately become who you ARE! Staying attentive means always ensuring your faith is your life's top priority!

Perfect examples of this attentive way of life are the lives of Sts. Cyrus and John. St. Cyrus was from Alexandria, Egypt, and St. John was a Roman soldier during the reign of Diocletian. During a particularly hard persecution of Christians, St. Cyrus left Alexandria and went to the Arabian Gulf to a small community of monks there. St. John heard of Cyrus’s holiness and piety and joined him as a fellow monk. Together, God gifted these men the grace to heal diseases. These men ministered to those who were ill without pay, and they were given the name “Unmercinaries.” These holy men once heard a mother and her three daughters had been arrested for being Christians, and out of their concern for these precious women, they went to minister to them and encourage them to keep the faith even in the face of their death. Because of this, Cyrus and John were also arrested, and all of these faithful heroes were beheaded rather than deny Christ. They worked together to be ready when their faith faced the ultimate test.

Today, are you ready? You’ve had all the treasures of the Faith for generations. The Holy Scriptures and the Church's liturgical life will form you and keep you focused in the right direction! So, what are you waiting for before you live as a Normal Orthodox Christian?

P.S. From divine grace, you received * the gift to work awesome marvels: * thus, O Saints, throughout the world * you ever work signs and wonders; * and you cut out all our passions * and all our sufferings * with an invisible surgery, for you truly * are divinely-wise physicians, * O godly Cyrus, * and John, beloved of God.

Fr. Barnabas Powell is the parish priest at Sts. Raphael, Nicholas, and Irene Greek Orthodox Church in Cumming, GA. He is also the founder of Faith Encouraged Ministries and produces the Faith Encouraged Daily Devotional on Substack. Watch the Faith Encouraged YouTube Channel here - https://www.youtube.com/@FaithEncouragedTV