This Orthodox Christian life is not simply about getting all the t's crossed and i's dotted- as important as that is- getting the Faith right is important so that we can authentically know God in the Spirit, and that knowledge, which is intimate and personal results in us becoming faithful and holy.

Someone once said I do not do the things I want to do and I do the things I do not want to do, and this makes me very unhappy- Well, stop! Start doing the things you want and stop doing the things you don't want to do, and be happy. Be obedient to the command of the Lord and declare the praises of His wonder and be joyful.

Jesus tells tells his disciples a short little parable. He says in verse 21, "the woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow, because her hour is come, but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish for joy that a human being has come into the world." This is not a simple, random illustration or some generic narrative about what women experience in childbirth and how that might be comparable to what the disciples are about to go through. That is not what this parable means. This parable is a very particular reference to a very particular Woman, and Human Being which she bore.

The Shepherd nurtures and feeds. The Lord is my shepherd and I shall not want. Isaiah tells us that God will feed His flock like a shepherd and Jesus says in today's Gospel that "if anyone enters through him they will come in and go out and find pasture... I have come that they may have life and may have it abundantly". The shepherd feeds his sheep, not with rations of gruel, but abundantly.

"The Lord is King and hath put on glorious apparel, He hath put on his apparel and girded Himself with strength." Our Lord has transformed the Cross, this ugly, brutal instrument of torture, into something so beautiful and victorious. And then we begin to say the psalms, and something wonderful happens: the same psalms we chant so many times, year after year, are, all of a sudden, completely new. They come alive and are filled with the power and grace, in the wake of suffering and death, and hell, these prayers are all of a sudden infused with such glory and joy and victory.

Jesus was baptized Himself by John in Jordan- that was water without blood, but today when He is glorified in His ultimate act of love, the water comes forth with the blood, and we receive the Spirit in the water and the blood.

We do not see Him in the flesh like He once was among us, but still just as John has promised we look upon Him who was pierced for our transgression, we look upon Him in the water and the blood, in baptism through which we are washed and receive the Spirit, and through the Eucharist in which we receive His life giving blood and divine immortality.

We call today Maundy Thursday which comes from the Latin "mandatum", meaning "command", and this is a reference of Christ's words to his disciples on this night "A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another". Well that fits nquite nicely with the symbolic act of washing feet, we are to love one another by serving one another in humility. But what he said was "I give you a new commandment, to love one another, just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. Everyone will know by this that you are my disciples - if you have this kind of love for one another." To put it bluntly, Jesus did not love his disciples by washing some dirt off their feet, He loved them by dying for them.

This is what has been going on since sunday, when He rode into Jerusalem to draw demons out of their lair, that they might kill him. As I said last night, all Hell has been unleashed- this is in fact what he says to the mob who came to arrest him- "This is your hour, and that of the power of darkness." He tells us what is going on so that his plan of redemption can be fulfilled.