What is holiness? Let us consult the Psalmist:

There it is. is being .... who we already are in our inmost being, the that we always yearn to be, the one that is our most natural self, what we were at our birth and continued to be .... until we chose not to be. (I can remember so clearly these choices that I made!) That is all. We born holy .... just as we are. And here it is well to point out that our word salvation is an English translation of the Greek word sotería, which is rooted in the verb meaning "to clear away the debris," "to wash off our hands."

Surely, the point of a special child — and we know who they are: Samuel, son of Hannah; John, son of Zachariah and Elizabeth, and Mary, daughter of Joachim and Anna — the point of a special child is that they be in God's sight the way God made them to be. For what can exceed God's plan for each of us? Or what goes beyond what God is capable of imagining or apprehending? Is not anything else a perversion of this?

Perhaps we are so keen to be "understood," to receive our "second chance," to be "forgiven," that we never think of this from God our Father's point of view. What is it exactly that God should receive? As we are to our parents and to our dearest friends, we are an offering set before God.

St. Seraphim of Sarov has written, If you mind your tongue, if you practice mindfulness in silence, then you will save countless lives all around you. And is there not a grave cost to be around someone who continually "acts out" from the center of his .... poor choices and uncontrolled imagination?

Since we are farmers on the Hermitage Farm, in addition to being nuns served sacramentally by a chaplain, let us prepare a delivery of produce for Father God, as we do for so many customers on our Island. The Sisters go out searching for ripe, perfect fruit. Is it too green? Has it ripened and fallen to ground? You see, you have to find the perfect moment. Has it been pierced by insects (and therefore contaminated)? Is it blemished by rubbing against branches or other fruit? I know the response: "That's not 'blue-ribbon'! The folks down at the health food store will never be able to see that!"

If none of these things is true, it is selected. I passes the Sisters' standard. They then bring it back to the farmhouse, to the double-sink, and they wash it and scrub it. They submerse each one in clean, County water, free of bacteria and mold and chemicals, so it the little ants that have crawled into tiny crevices, among other insects, might be flushed out. They then carefully pack everything in clean crates and placed in a contamination-free delivery van (part of our our organic-zone van). And then they drive it, sometime two hours (one-way), to a client's place of business. If they should fall short in any of these steps, the fruit would not be cause for joy for anyone. It would be second-best (at most!), And the people before whom it might be presented (though this has never happened) would feel naturally insulted. They would say, "You have brought me ..... this?!"

Shall we now give our God, less than even what we present to the produce buyers on this Island? Shall we skimp because God will forgive us? Shall we offer the low-grade and the contaminated because God will understand? ("You see, I have these needs!") Shall we prepare a display of rotten fruit (rotten to the core, God can see) because God knows we are only human? I can tell you that the Sisters would not apply that low standard .... even to the customers who are not quick to pay us!

Americans recently celebrated their annual national Thanksgiving Day. In the usual round of fixing blame for oppression against American Indians and other people, perhaps we have lost the essence and purpose of Thanksgiving. It is a harvest festival. We look up to the broad skies that have offered their gift of soft, nurturing rain. We look out on the soil with its richness of nutrients and warm protection. We hold a seed in the palm of our hands and marvel that all the branches, twigs, leaves, and fruits of the tree are encoded within this living particle .... and generations of trees with their millions of seeds beyond that. And we fall to our knees and give thanks to God for the wonder of His Providence. Truly,

May the small portion we offer be comely, be fragrant, be beautiful in God's sight.

By tradition, Ever-Virgin Mary, the Most Holy Theotokos, was presented to the priests of the Temple to give back to God the holy gift that He had given to Joachim and Anna, whose lives were a desert, a blasted wilderness, and a forsaken place. All that their marriage had signified, which was children and family, never appeared. But then it did appear following many tears and prayers. It appeared as perfect as the blossom on an orange tree: soft, delicately colored, pure, fragrant in the nostrils of angels. It appeared like the first perfect round of the orange fruit. And it grew into the unblemished, perfectly sphered, brilliantly colored fullness which we call "fruit." We never think of fruit as being pierced or rotten. We realize that this happens .... so some fruit But in the main, when we say fruit, we mean the beautiful, fresh, delicious .... miracle that falls so sweetly into the hand and comes so deliciously to the mouth.

The prayers of the Church, offered in thanks for the Most Holy Theotokos, never fail to say the simplest truth about each of us at birth. She is, we are, immaculate. That is God's way of growing things. What can be more pure and fresh than the first blossoms of the tree, or the Monarch Butterfly emerging from its chrysalis with luminous colors than scarcely be real. This is God's way of growing things. We are born this way: as perfect as the ideal of each piece of fruit in every grove. Have we not seen luminous children? .... unblemished, pure, miraculous. The Kontakion for the Presentation of the Most Holy Theotokos, Tone 4, lifts up these joyous words:

By tradition, at her Presentation the three-year-old Mary was brought near to the Holy of Holies. She had difficulty at first climbing its fifteen steps, where the Psalms of Ascent were offered by the High Priest once a year. Then with God filling Her with His grace and strength, She easily ascended to the top, on silver wheels (Tennyson).

Standing at the Gate to Heaven, we see that She is the Gate to Heaven, and soon the Abode of Heaven itself, Who is the Most Perfect Fruit of her Womb, Jesus.

Yes, perfection is the essence and nature of the Holy of Holies, where the High Priest stood reaching the apex of theosis, of likeness to God in a perfect balance of body and soul. At age three, Mary is perfect .... as we all are. What happens after that has to do with the presentation we make to God.

Do we watch over the fruit lovingly? Do we nurture it and care for its groves and grounds? Do we prune it? Do we rake it? Do we water it? Do we protect it? Do we select according to their miraculous perfection the fruits that God has brought forth in us? Do we keep them free of vermin and pollutions of every kind? Will they be sweet and fragrant in the courts of Heaven?

All these things belong to us. The high privilege of life is the care of these things, even ourselves. All these things are ours to do. It is not so hard. The Sisters do it every day, week-after-week, month-after-month, year-after-year, for decades upon decades. And I as their chaplain have the high honor of beholding this comely offering.

This is the sweet, sweet life our Lord Jesus has offered to us:

This is not a burden but a Divine invitation. He might have said something similar:

St. Paul does not think such life remarkable, but rather our daily vocation:

Is not this the self we choose to present to the ones we love best? Do we not strive to live up to their highest imagination for us? So let this is our prayer every day:

Blamelessness? This is not so hard to do. This is who we are: to be what God has made us to be. And then comes the part that is most natural to us: to love Him with the devotion of a son or a daughter.

My brothers and sisters, this is our birthright and forever our natural state .... our goodness and our peace.

In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.