Gal 5:22-31
Luke 8:16-21

Today we celebrate a great feast near to the hearts of the hermits. We began as a Franciscan community of the Roman Catholic Church and received as refugees of conscience briefly into an Anglo-Catholic diocese. The name of our first hermitage, following Francis of Assisi's example, was the Community of St. Mary and the Angels. (You see, he had renovated an Orthodox church naming it "Saint Mary and the Angels.") The Most Holy Theotokos is our mercy, our sweetness, and our hope. To her do we turn asking to be protected under her mantle. She is the patron of our religious house and farm and all.

We have spent most of our lives serving the Roman Catholic Church: as laity, as vowed religious. Our priest, who served the RCC as theology professor and chaplain for ten years, served the Anglo-Catholic tradition as well both as priest and Franciscan tertiary.

The season now upon us we always knew to be Advent, which we have experienced as a preparatory season leading up to Christmas. Still, for all its purple vestments, we experienced Advent as a kind of "count-down to Christmas," whether it was marked by Advent wreathes or Advent calendars. Each week or day is treated as a progression in the "count down."

The Advent calendar first appeared during the nineteenth century among Lutherans in Germany. It's everywhere in the West now. Each day, their little flaps are opened perhaps revealing little gifts in anticipation of the Great Gift Day, December 25. The whole conception is one of joyful expectation — looking forward to the One Who alone can save us.

This is appropriate for Lutherans especially, for it goes to the heart of their theology. Their "founder father," Martin Luther, was a monk of the Augustinian Canons (O.S.A.) — an order that venerated its patron St. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430). This theology stands out for, among other things, its depiction of the human person as depraved, unable to break free of grave sin. Augustine's great innovation, original sin, asserts a hopeless state of the human condition, proposing that humans can do nothing to crawl out of the pit of human wretchedness.

This suited the mind of Augustine's disciple, Brother Martin, to a "T." Biographies of Luther reveal that among the Augustinian brethren, Martin was notorious in his opinions concerning human depravity. Priests who had already confessed him would walk the other way when they saw him coming. For no matter how many times they had announced absolution over him, Luther would return again and again confessing the same sins. He was obsessed with his own sinful character.

This obsession would become a cornerstone of the Protestant Reformation. For breaking free from the moderation of his religious superiors, Luther expounded at great length in many volumes on human wretchedness and hopelessness. In his On the Bondage of the Will (1525), he argued that any particle of righteousness imputed to a human must come entirely from the outside, from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Small wonder that Lutherans would find the tradition of "count-down till Christmas" suitable. For Christmas in the Lutheran view is the season of receiving, not of giving. For we have nothing to give that is worthy (in the Lutheran view). The idea that humans could make an acceptable offering of virtuous life to God simply does not square with anything in their theology. As we have suggested, Luther's source for this theology lay in the writings of St. Augustine, who proposed a doctrine of original sin.

We pause to emphasize that our greatest and God-pleasing forebears — the Apostles, the Apostolic Fathers, the great Saints Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Origen, Athanasius, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory the Theologian, John Chyrsostom — never heard of original sin.

St. Augustine had been a popular teacher and writer, a celebrity of his day. His mother, a Christian named Monica, constantly prayed for the conversion of her son. Western hagiographies depict St. Monica weeping herself to sleep every night because of her son's scandalous life, which revolved around alcohol and promiscuous sex. This is what made his world go round.

For nearly two decades his mother together with a sympathetic bishop, St. Ambrose of Milan, attempted to lead Augustine to the waters of baptism. He finally relented. But when the great day arrived, he backed out in the eleventh hour, for he knew that he could simply not keep this promise of chastity. Impossible!

Of course, St. Augustine was baptized in the end. But imagine the complexity — intellectually, psychologically, socially, even politically — in which he now found himself. Now, it is one thing to reject someone else's point of view which you find distasteful. But it is quite another to accept this point of view and make it your own, for now the distaste must permeate every part of your mind and soul. Imagine Augustine's shame as he looked back on his personal history, his secret life, and now his public humiliation, peppered with words like "drunkard" or "pervert." Augustine was a very proud man, a huge ego — proud enough to have rebuffed the pleadings of a great and famously persuasive bishop, not for a few months but for seventeen years.

Many of us feel the need to justify ourselves, to give a deeper explanation for why we have done what we have done. In the case of Augustine — so brilliant, possessing so quick a mind and wit, and once so celebrated and respected for so long — the urge to explain his dishonorable life must have been overwhelming. This must have been the prepossessing thought of his mind and soul .... as he now walked among Christians, a leading light of Christian thought, but having a past and enduring, no doubt, a never-ending whispering campaign.

Eventually, it would explode into a dazzling display: The Confessions of St. Augustine, one of the landmarks of Western literature. Modern editors are careful to contra-distinguish it from a "tell-all memoir" emphasizing that it is a confession of faith. Nonetheless, it does read as an intensely personal narrative.

In it, he faced a sore dilemma. For he had to confront the question that was on the mind of everyone who knew him: how could a man so great have sunk so low? And his solution? Well, it's not unknown to the human character. It was to blame everyone else. You see, everybody else was responsible for his crimes. Instead of blaming himself, he chose a most ancient precedent, following the example of the fallen Adam: blame-shifting. As Adam had pointed the finger to God and then to Eve, saying

so Augustine pointed the finger of blame to both Adam and Eve. Augustine wrote that the root cause for all his sins was the original sin of our first parents. Yes, there might have been a defect in his own character, but they had put it there. They had put it in everyone and for all time.

"All of you! You're no different from me! You have it, too!" he declared. "There's a stain in your character. But you see, it's not your fault. You're helpless! They're the perpetrator of all your crimes, not you!"

This theological principle, articulated at the beginning of the fifth century would have a profound influence on Western Catholic thought ever after, literally shaping the theology of the Roman Catholic Church. It would give rise to a special dogma: Immaculate Conception and then later Assumption of Blessed Virgin Mary. In practical terms, it gave rise to the belief that the only hope for humankind was to be entirely passive, for there is nothing we can do .... but only to believe on the Lord Jesus Who alone is without sin.

The tragic follow-on to this theology, mortally wounding many Christians' wills and trapping billions in their sins, is a profound formation in wretchedness. You see, if there's nothing we can do, then why bother trying? We might as well just carry on!

How often people people have told me, "I am weak. I cannot help it. I cannot stop. God made me this way. After all, we live in a fallen world. Of course I will sin. Of course I will go on sinning. But so long as I love Jesus and declare Him to be my Lord and Savior, I'll go to Heaven anyway. Well, yes, I continue my affair with my best friend's wife, and, yes, I still carry on with my secret drug habit. But I know I'm going to Heaven because I love Jesus. Didn't Jesus make the complete and unsurpassable sacrifice, purchasing my salvation on the Cross? I'm prepaid! There's nothing I could do! How could I!"

I suppose most Roman Catholics will recognize this unfortunate outcome of the Protestant Reformation. But I wonder how many will recognize the thought of a most influential Jesuit theologian of the late twentieth century, Fr. Karl Rahner, S.J., who proposed a similar theology, which he called the fundamental option? This would become dominant among liberal Roman Catholic priests during the 1970s, remaining influential. Indeed, following the past decade, which saw the sad deprecation of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, it has become the foundation of a new and sad era of Roman Catholic history. You may wonder at all the headlines you see. The basis of it, as another Jesuit, Pope Francis, completes his teacher's course, is Rahner's theology.

I have known this very well as a penitent in the Roman Church. I have gone to priests for confession who ask me, "Do you love God? Do you know of God's love for you? Yes? Then there is no sin. It is all consumed in the fire of this love!"

In one instance, I had to insist that my confessor, a highly influential Trappist abbot and the spiritual direction of my bishop, pronounce absolution over me while I sat before him with a contrite heart and certain knowledge of my failings .... which he agreed to do.

Let us pause here to be absolutely clear. Our salvation most certainly does lie in in a once-for-all, unsurpassable self-offering of the Son of God, Jesus the Christ, who at His conception and birth flipped the telos of the human lifeworld from death to life. He then offered Himself as a ransom for many as His Conception and Crucifixion. He has expressed profound solidarity with us both in our human life and in our human death. He has modeled for us that love called αγάπε (agápe), which is a complete self-offering of ourselves in an act of superlative friendship and requited solidarity — an act so high and pure and good that it leads to complete union with Him, Who is completely united to the Father. This is our path of salvation, by the grace of God, which we declare at every Divine Liturgy:

.... a most holy declaration, an act of unbridled and unlimited self-giving, not for a time for self-consciousness, for self-congratulation, for excuse, or for self-adulation, but of free love freely given.

Be sure of this: to commit a grave sin is to separate yourself from this supernal love, which is a divorce from eternal life and an embrace of eternal death. We do not betray the ones we love! The ones to whom we have opened our hearts most purely and openly .... to the point of stretching them to the breaking point! These we do not betray! But do betray that ones we love is to change everything .... contaminating what is pure, poisoning what is good .... to kill life all for the thrill of embracing death. Here is treachery.

No matter how much God loves us, He cannot remedy our failings. Does the Prodigal's father chase him into brothels? Into bar rooms? Pleading with him? Pulling him away? No. He waits. He waits with a painful longing by a road side. He must wait as our God waits.

St. Augustine's monument of self-explanation was matched by an uncanny mirror-image. Writing from Rome, another celebrated figure, Pelagius of Britain, had been setting out a counter-theology of salvation, which is an inversion of Augustine's thought. It argued that humans were born free of sin and were able to live blameless lives before God without need for God's grace. It was conduct of life alone which was paramount in the Christian's path of salvation, Pelagius said. Yes, Jesus had taught that

But in Pelagius' view, only knowledge of the Torah was sufficient to lead a just and righteous life. And the Son of God? Pelagius argued that He was an example of godly life. The Council of Ephesus (431) condemned Pelagius as a heretic.

The Orthodox Church remains unaffected either by Augustine's teachings on original sin in the one extreme or Pelagianism in the other. The Fathers taught that the Most Holy Theotokos was born without sin, as we all are. She chose to embrace her perfection of life and then guard it all of her life. Hers is the first life after Eden to signify hope of return to the Garden. She is the Second Eve .... by the grace of God in our Lord her Son Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. We say with St. John the Forerunner, whose angel wings signify custodianship of our original "angel nature," we are not worthy to unloose the sandal strap (Jn 1:27). It is the God-man alone Who can offer us this friendship with God, and it is we alone who can embrace it and then protect it:

The ancient, secure, and safe path to friendship with God is ours to be sure, and overseen by our beloved Church. Our preparation to greet our Friend is the Nativity Fast. It is not a foretaste of the Kingdom replete with sweets and little gifts. It is a chaste joy, anticipating the Light that is coming into a dark world, from which we kindle all our hopes. And it is a reminder of another, second, Advent — two Advents: first, His Incarnation which has renovated and reclaimed the world for God, and, second, His Final Coming in the End Times. Bearing these two always in mind, we strive to gain control over ourselves. We strive to maintain balance grounded in our love of the Lord and our godly affection for each other, helping each other along the way, protecting each other, honoring the purity in each other.

But how do we keep our salvation once the Son of God has ransomed us? St. Athanasius provides this answer: keep your eyes fastened always upon Jesus. Meditate always upon Him. This will refresh and replenish the Divine life He has given us (De Incarnatione).

Like St. John the Forerunner, we too are able to receive a foretaste of the Kingdom .... not the Kingdom of Candyland, but the Kingdom of Heaven, which we crown with many names: "Bosom of Abraham," "Paradise," "Eden."

Yes, we have been born into a world blighted with ancestral sin as the Fathers have taught. Our common bond is the seed of death, an expiration date planted within our DNA. Yet, our God, the Victor, sees far past all that. In His eyes, death is nothing. He makes us to lie down in green pastures, and and He leads us into our fast to eat the vegetables and fruits of the garden as our first parents had done. We are called into a Sinai wilderness. We eat a kind of manna as St. John had done. We prepare ourselves to receive the gift that has been God's dearest wish for us from the foundations of the world. And what is that gift and wish? It is our purity and our holiness, that we might be like Him.

On the Feast of Her Conception, let us open this gift! She is our mercy, our sweetness, our hope, and the purity, which She and Her Son cherish in us. This has been our holy possession since birth. Let us protect it and guard it. For only then will we truly understand the meaning and destination of our journey, which is the Holy One and His Most Holy Mother. Their loving embrace awaits each one of us. Of this we may be absolutely certain, attested by all the saints and known to many among us today.

We are the long-awaited friends (Jn 15:15). We are the children of the light (Jn 12:36). We are the beloved of God, blessed and approved .... if we will only keep His commandments, which are the commandments of life .... "His burden, which is light."

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.