THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY

A Lovely Day Spent Together at the Church of the Holy Apostles

On the New Creation, the Poverty of Love, and the Judgment of Mercy

By Bp. Joseph Boyd (Archeparchate)

A Homily for Sunday, November 1, 2026 Commemoration of Saints Cosmas and Damian, the Holy Unmercenary Physicians at Holy Apostles Orthodox Church

Readings: Galatians 6:11–18; 1 Corinthians 12:27–31; 13:1–8; Luke 16:19–31

“But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” 

Galatians 6:14

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

My beloved brothers and sisters in Christ,

One of the more subtle dangers of religious life is that we can become very good at practicing Christianity without becoming particularly Christlike. We may grow in theological knowledge, become more careful in observing the Church’s traditions, and develop a genuine appreciation for the beauty and continuity of the Christian faith, while remaining surprisingly unchanged in our relationships with other people. We can become so occupied with preserving our religious identity that we lose sight of the transformation for which that identity exists.

This is the uncomfortable possibility which our Lord places before us in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and which Saint Paul addresses in his teaching concerning the Cross, the new creation, and the supremacy of love. These readings ask whether our faith has actually changed the way we live, or whether we have simply become more sophisticated in explaining what we believe.

The rich man in our Gospel is an interesting character because Jesus does not accuse him of any spectacular wrongdoing. We are not told that he was dishonest, violent, or deliberately cruel. He was wealthy, dressed beautifully, and enjoyed the privileges of his position. At the entrance to his property lay Lazarus, a poor man covered with sores, who hoped to receive even the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. What makes the story particularly disturbing is the proximity of these two men. Lazarus was not suffering in some distant country, beyond the rich man’s knowledge or ability to help. He was lying at the gate, where he could hardly have escaped notice.

The rich man’s failure appears to have been one of ordinary indifference, developed gradually through the habit of passing by. Lazarus had become part of the familiar landscape of his life, and his suffering no longer demanded attention. There is something deeply unsettling about this kind of sin because it requires so little conscious effort. We do not necessarily have to decide that another person is unworthy of compassion; sometimes we need only become accustomed to his suffering.

Saint John Chrysostom, preaching on this very Gospel, warned that wealth becomes spiritually dangerous when it allows us to withdraw from the suffering of others. He did not teach that poverty automatically makes a person holy, or that possessing property necessarily makes someone wicked. His concern was with the condition of the heart, and with the responsibility that accompanies the gifts we have received. He was particularly critical of Christians who lavished resources upon the decoration of their churches while neglecting the hungry and afflicted members of Christ’s Body. His point was not that churches should be stripped of beauty, but that our reverence for Christ at the altar must be consistent with our treatment of Christ in the poor.

There is also a remarkable detail in the Gospel which is easy to overlook. The rich man is never given a name, while Lazarus is remembered by his. Ordinarily, history preserves the names of wealthy and influential people, while the poor disappear almost without a trace. Here the arrangement is reversed. The rich man’s splendor is remembered, but his identity is lost; Lazarus, who possessed nothing that the world considered important, is known by name. That name, derived from the Hebrew Eleazar, means that God has helped, and it reminds us that the judgments of heaven are not governed by the distinctions which seem so important on earth.

The gate between these two men also carries a deeper theological significance. When the story reaches its conclusion, the distance which separated them during their earthly lives has become the great gulf of the world to come. There is an echo here of the ancient story of Adam, who lost Paradise through his attempt to possess the good apart from obedience to God. The rich man had, in a sense, constructed his own little paradise, filled with abundance and comfort, but separated from the suffering of the world outside. He enjoyed the blessings of creation without allowing them to lead him into communion with his neighbor.

The Incarnation of Christ is the divine answer to this separation. Where fallen humanity attempts to protect its happiness by withdrawing from the needs of others, the eternal Son of God enters the poverty and suffering of the world. Saint Paul reminds us that Christ, though rich, became poor for our sake, so that through His poverty we might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9). Saint Irenaeus of Lyons understood this work as the recapitulation of humanity in Christ, through which the Son of God enters the history of Adam in order to restore what sin had damaged. Salvation is the renewal of human nature through communion with Christ, so that the life which was lost in Adam may be restored in the Second Adam.

This is the meaning of Paul’s declaration to the Galatians that neither circumcision nor uncircumcision ultimately matters, but a new creation. The Apostle was confronting those who wanted to make outward religious distinctions the foundation of Christian belonging, rather than the saving work of Christ. His response was to glory in nothing except the Cross. Religious practices and outward signs have their proper place, but they can never substitute for the inward renewal which they are intended to express.

This remains a particularly important lesson for those of us who treasure the historic Christian tradition. The sacraments, the episcopate, the Church’s liturgical inheritance, the teachings of the Fathers, and the decisions of the Ecumenical Councils belong to the life of the Church and help preserve the faith which we have received. Yet a man may defend apostolic succession while neglecting apostolic charity, or speak accurately about the Seven Ecumenical Councils while remaining impatient and unforgiving toward his own family. The doctrines and traditions of the Church do not become less true because we fail to live according to them, but our failure should remind us that possessing the language of holiness is not the same as becoming holy.

Saint Ignatius of Antioch, writing in the early second century, describes faith and love as the beginning and end of the Christian life. Saint Clement of Rome similarly teaches that love joins us to God, covers a multitude of sins, and bears all things with patience. These early witnesses remind us that the centrality of love belongs to the earliest understanding of the apostolic faith.

Having described the different gifts and ministries within the Church, Paul announces that he will show the Corinthians a more excellent way. He then makes the extraordinary declaration that even prophecy, theological knowledge, remarkable faith, and personal sacrifice accomplish nothing of lasting spiritual value without love.

“And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.” — 1 Corinthians 13:2

We should take these words seriously, particularly if we have devoted our lives to Christian teaching or ministry. A person may be a gifted preacher without being a saint, an effective administrator without being compassionate, or a brilliant theologian without having learned humility. God may accomplish good through such a person, while that same person remains deeply in need of repentance.

Saint Maximus the Confessor connects genuine love of God with our treatment of other human beings. The person who truly loves God cannot cultivate hatred toward someone who bears His image. This does not mean that love requires us to overlook wrongdoing or abandon moral judgment. Rather, love purifies our judgment of the resentment, vanity, and desire for superiority which so easily corrupt it. We may need to correct another person, establish boundaries, or defend the truth, but we must be careful that our commitment to what is right does not become an excuse for enjoying another person’s humiliation.

The Desert Fathers understood this problem through their struggle against the passions. One famous account concerns Abba Moses, who arrived at a gathering of monks assembled to judge a brother while carrying a vessel from which sand was falling behind him. He explained that his own sins were running out unseen while he had come to judge those of another. Saint Isaac the Syrian develops this understanding into a beautiful theology of compassion, describing the merciful heart as one which burns with tenderness toward the whole creation, grieving over the suffering of people, animals, enemies, and all living things.

This brings us to Saints Cosmas and Damian, the holy physicians whom we commemorate today. They are remembered as Unmercenary Saints because they used their medical knowledge to relieve suffering without making payment the condition of their care. Their vocation reflects the command of Christ: “Freely ye have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8). Their example reminds us that the gifts we possess carry responsibilities beyond our personal advancement. The value of another human being cannot be measured by his ability to pay for our attention, and the skills entrusted to us become holy when they are exercised in the service of others.

Cosmas and Damian stand in deliberate contrast to the rich man of the Gospel. Both possessed resources which could have relieved suffering, but their understanding of those resources was fundamentally different. The rich man treated his abundance as the foundation of a private existence, while the holy physicians understood their abilities as gifts to be shared.

When the Gospel turns to the death of the two men, its warning becomes especially serious. Lazarus is carried into Abraham’s bosom, while the rich man finds himself in torment, separated from the comfort which he had once taken for granted. Even then, he asks that Lazarus be sent to bring him water, and later to warn his brothers. There is something revealing in these requests, for the man who ignored Lazarus during his earthly life still seems to imagine him as someone who might be sent to perform an errand. The habits we develop in this world shape the people we become, and our Lord warns us against assuming that the opportunities for repentance which we neglect today will always remain available tomorrow.

There is a wonderful little story in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov which illustrates this danger with remarkable insight. Grushenka tells the story of a thoroughly wicked woman who died and found herself in hell. Her guardian angel searched for some act of goodness in her life and remembered that she had once pulled an onion from her garden and given it to a beggar. God permitted the angel to lower that onion into hell, so that the woman might grasp it and be drawn out. As she began to rise, however, other suffering souls clung to her, hoping to escape with her. Instead of rejoicing that her small act of kindness might become the means of delivering others, she began kicking them away, crying that the onion belonged to her and that they had no right to share it. At that moment the onion broke, and she fell back into the darkness.

Dostoevsky’s insight is profound, for the woman was not condemned because her act of charity had been too small. Even an onion, given in kindness, had become an occasion for mercy. Her tragedy was that she could not bear to share that mercy with anyone else. She wanted salvation as a private possession, just as the rich man had wanted his abundance to remain his own. And perhaps this is one of the most searching questions we can ask ourselves: whether we truly desire the Kingdom of God, with all the people whom God loves, or whether we are still trying to construct a little paradise in which everything, including grace itself, belongs to us.

The final exchange between Abraham and the rich man brings the matter to its sharpest point. Concerned for his five brothers, the rich man asks that Lazarus be sent to warn them, supposing that the appearance of one risen from the dead would accomplish what ordinary instruction had failed to achieve. Abraham answers that they have Moses and the Prophets, and that if they will not hear these, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead. The Church has always recognized in these words an anticipation of the Resurrection of Christ, and of the astonishing fact that even the supreme manifestation of divine power does not compel the assent of a heart determined to resist the truth.

There is a proper and necessary place for theological study, historical inquiry, the interpretation of Scripture, and the careful examination of the Church’s canonical inheritance. Yet knowledge has its own temptations, particularly when the mind takes pleasure in the possession of distinctions which the will has not yet learned to obey. The remedy is not less theology, but a theology which has reached its proper end. The truths of the Christian faith are given to us that we might know God, and through knowing Him be transformed into His likeness.

We may also recognize something of the rich man within ourselves whenever we seek security in possessions, reputation, or control, while Lazarus may remind us of the neglected wounds of the soul which we are reluctant to acknowledge. We are often more willing to maintain the appearance of spiritual health than to submit ourselves to the painful process of healing. The prayer of David after his sin is therefore among the most necessary petitions of the Christian life: “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10).

This transformation must find expression in the ordinary circumstances of our days. A parent who listens patiently to a troubled child, a husband or wife who bears with the weakness of the other without contempt, a neighbor who notices the loneliness of an elderly person, or a Christian who refuses to take pleasure in the misfortune of an adversary may be performing works of charity which possess little outward splendor but considerable spiritual significance. Mercy does not require us to abandon truth or necessary discipline, but it does require that our correction of others arise from a genuine concern for their good rather than from resentment, vanity, or the satisfaction of exercising power.

The Eucharistic life of the Church gathers these considerations into their deepest unity. At the Holy Altar we receive the Body and Blood of Him who gave Himself for the life of the world, and in that reception we are called into a communion which exceeds every merely natural bond. Saint Ignatius of Antioch describes the Eucharist as the medicine of immortality, a phrase which expresses the conviction that the sacramental life is given for the healing and restoration of fallen humanity. Yet the Apostle Paul warns the Corinthians against approaching the Lord’s Supper while tolerating divisions in which some were humiliated and others indulged themselves. The failure to discern the Lord’s Body was not unrelated to their failure to recognize the dignity of those who belonged to it.

There is a profound consistency between the Bread which we receive at the Altar and the bread which we are commanded to share with the hungry. The rich man could not share his bread, and Dostoevsky’s woman could not share her onion, but Christ gives us His own Body as the Bread of Life, drawing us into a communion in which the good of one becomes the concern of all. We receive the peace of Christ that we may become instruments of peace, and we seek the forgiveness of our sins that we may learn to forgive those who have sinned against us.

As we conclude, I would ask each of us to consider the people whom God has already placed at the gates of our lives. There may be someone whose suffering has become so familiar that we no longer notice it, or a relationship in which we have allowed pride to become more important than reconciliation. Perhaps we have received gifts of education, influence, professional ability, or material security, and have gradually begun to regard them chiefly as the means of protecting our own position. Whatever our circumstances, the work of repentance begins when we are willing to examine ourselves without the explanations by which we ordinarily excuse our failures.

The Christian life is rarely transformed through a single dramatic decision. More often, it is changed through small acts of obedience: a word spoken with patience, an injury forgiven, a gift made without expectation of recognition, or a portion of our time given to someone who needs us. These things may seem insignificant beside the great achievements which the world remembers, but they are precisely the circumstances in which charity becomes part of our character.

The gate of the rich man’s house was an ordinary feature of an ordinary home, and the opportunity which lay beyond it required no extraordinary sacrifice. Yet upon that neglected opportunity our Lord has built a warning which has endured for two thousand years. We cannot know how many such gates stand within our own lives, or how often Christ has approached us beneath the appearance of poverty, weakness, or inconvenience. We do know that the commandment of love has already been given, and that the grace necessary to fulfil it is available to those who seek it with humility.

May God grant us the wisdom to recognize His presence in the people He places before us, the courage to respond with compassion, and the humility to understand that the true measure of our Christian life is found in how faithfully we have learned to love. And when our earthly lives are finished, may we be found among those who have received the gifts of God with gratitude and shared them generously, following the example of the holy physicians Cosmas and Damian, and above all of our Lord Jesus Christ, who became poor for our sake and opened through His Cross the way to everlasting life.

A Reflective Poem

At the Gate

I passed him often on the road,

And learned to turn my eyes away.

His face became familiar there,

A part of every ordinary day.

Inside, the lamps were lit at dusk;

The table waited, warm and bright.

I spoke of mercy over bread

And closed the door against the night.

I knew the words of prophets,

The prayers of saints long gone,

Yet somehow never understood

What they were asking of my hands.

And now I wonder how much grace

Has waited where I would not look;

How many times the Lord stood near

While I was occupied with holy books.

Perhaps the gate was never locked.

Perhaps the distance was my own.

The road was short, the need was plain,

And I had only to leave home.

And if tonight my life should end,

And I should cross that final shore,

Would I lift up my eyes in torment

And see the beggar I had once ignored?

Would I, like that rich man, plead

For water to relieve my thirst,

And ask the one I would not feed

To show the mercy I withheld on earth?

Lord, teach me now to recognize

The faces I have learned to miss,

And find, in what I freely give,

The life I seek in Your Eucharist.

The Collect

Let us pray…

Almighty and merciful God, who revealed the riches of Your Kingdom through the poverty of Your Son, and taught us through His Cross that true greatness is found in love and service: Remove from our hearts all pride, indifference, and selfish ambition, and teach us to recognize Christ in the suffering and forgotten people around us. Following the example of Your holy servants Cosmas and Damian, may we freely share the gifts we have received, bear one another’s burdens, and grow daily in the charity which never fails. Renew us through Your grace, that our faith may become visible in our lives, and bring us at last into the joy of Your eternal Kingdom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.