When John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask Jesus if He was the one who was to come, or if they should expect someone else, Jesus referred in His answer to what would happen to those who encountered Him: “The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.”

The Greek word used when Jesus says that the blind “receive their sight” can be translated in a different way: they “look up”, they “raise their eyes”. This is interesting, even a little provocative, because if someone is blind, there is no benefit in raising their eyes – or is it?

The first Christians lived in expectation of the Lord’s imminent return. The same expectation and hope have accompanied Christians throughout the centuries, rising to the fore especially when humanity has been beset by different trials, whether in the form of natural disasters, disease, or war. There have always been those who proclaim the imminent end of the world, and there have always been scoffers who ask: “Where is your Lord then?” Sometimes the delay of the “end of the world” is used as an argument against the Christian faith. The answer to such accusations is simple: God, who is long-suffering and merciful, wants to give as many people as possible the opportunity to repent, be saved, and inherit eternal life.

St. Paul says: “Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.”

“To owe to love” – what does it mean? No, it doesn’t mean that we do not need to love each other, because we will never be able to do it perfectly anyway. On the contrary, it means that there is nothing more important than to love – that love is our true calling and should become our true nature, just as God’s nature is love.

God promises through the prophet Jeremiah that He will raise up a righteous Branch, who shall execute judgment and justice in the earth. Judgment in the Old Testament denotes both giving and enforcing the law, as well as punishing a violation. Justice is a much broader term whose original meaning is “to be straight” or “to walk a straight path”, being thus inextricably linked with honesty and sincerity.

Depending on when Easter falls in one year or another, the number of Sundays after Epiphany and Sundays after Trinity varies. This year there are twenty-six Sundays after Trinity, and that means that the penultimate Sunday of the church year uses the prayers and readings of the sixth Sunday after Epiphany.

This Sunday’s collect focuses on the authority of the Son of God, with which He has destroyed the works of the devil and shows what must happen within us: in the hope of His redeeming and saving grace, we must purify ourselves to be pure like Him.