“Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13)
What a glorious phrase to explain the motivation behind the Orthodox Christian way of salvation: straining forward to what lies ahead [Gk. Epektasis]. We don’t tally up our virtues or mull over our past sins; we thank the Lord for our blessings and confess our failings so that we can get on with the process of growing into unity with God. In the words of Robert Browning:
“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed our grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?” (Rabbi ben Ezra)
Great Lenten Sunday gospels all have that aspect of reaching beyond our present limits. St. Nathaniel would follow the Lord Jesus because of His clairvoyance, but Christ tells him there’s so much more to experience: Surely I say to you, hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (John 1:51).
The second Sunday tells of those with such faith that they broke through the roof to get their paralytic friend before the Lord. They heard Him tell the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven you” (Mark 2:5), opening his eyes to the possibility of a spiritual healing vastly more significant than physical wholeness. Revise your priorities and seek the priceless. Another theme of this Sunday is the remembrance of St. Gregory Palamas, who pressed forward a way of explaining the possibility for the Christian to “be partakers of the divine nature” (II Peter 1:4) without sharing the essential nature of the Holy Trinity, yet in a real sense partaking of the uncreated energies of God as revealed to three apostles in the Transfiguration of Christ on the mountain (Matthew 17:2). In a culture such as ours in which believers prefer a comfort level where “God is watching from a distance,” Palamas encourages us to proceed ever deeper in our relationship with the Holy Trinity.
The third Sunday challenges us not just to believe in Christ, but to imitate our Savior by self denial. “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me” (Mark 8:34). We are called upon to share the Lord’s suffering, and to make St. Paul’s relationship with the world our own: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
On the fourth Sunday the Church presents the stages of faith. Far more intricate than the popular slogan: “I accept Jesus Christ as my Savior,” the Church asks: “Then what?” The answer comes by recounting the time when those apostles left behind were not able to heal the epileptic boy because they lacked ample faith: “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes” (Mark 9:23). There are steps to perfect faith; hence, the second theme of this Sunday is the Ladder of St. John Climacus. Once again, we are called to “strain forward” and in our personal ways emulate the monastics who make a lifetime (call it a career) of progressing on the way to God’s kingdom.
The fifth Sunday is a call to imagine ourselves among those who are leaving the familiar region of Galilee and to go up to Jerusalem. We follow behind the Lord. Like them we are “amazed and afraid” (Mark 10:32), but we realize that following Him always contains risks. The life of an Orthodox Christian is an ongoing pilgrimage, or as Russians say, podvig. Once we set as our goal the Kingdom of heaven, everything that happens to us, pleasant or sad, good or bad, we utilize as an experience that teaches us something about the world and ourselves; and we learn to give God praise and glory for the lesson.