The reading is from the Holy Gospel According to St. Luke (8:41-56; Gal.

2:16-20) + In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit + Christs word has power. He speaks and the dead are raised. Men are healed. He speaks and demons are cast out, the winds and waters are subdued. His teachings give life. Christs body has power. He touches and gives sight to the blind, the dead are raised; sin and death are put to death in His body. His flesh and blood feed us and give us life. Indeed, whatever Christ touches can have power. Relics, icons, and even today we hear of a woman who touches only the hem of His now life-giving garment. This woman with the incurable issue of blood exhorts us to imitate her faith, for Christ says, Your faith has made you well. But what? Are we to assume that if we are not healed of sickness and infirmity that we lack faith? No, the faith given to us teaches that the healings of the body that Christ preformed in the Gospels are yes to exhort us faith, but they also serve to demonstrate Christs power and point to His Divinity. They show us that because He has power to heal the body, so too does He have power to forgive sin, to heal the soul; to heal the whole person. Christ heals and performs miracles in our lives only for our salvation and the salvation of those who witness such things. God does not of course exist to give us whatever we want whenever we want it. If we do not get the miracles, healings, or whatever we pray for, then perhaps those requests are not for our salvation. But we must remember that not being healed or getting what we pray for is not necessarily a sign or a symptom of our lack of faith, because surely St. Paul of all people abounded in faith. He prayed earnestly that the thorn and pain in his flesh be removed, but what did Christ say? My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness. i Therefore, let us be glad and boast, or at least take comfort in our infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon us. Therefore, take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distress, for Christs sake. For when we are weak, then we are strong. ii Our faith and Godly action are important and necessary, but you see, the source of our faith is Christ: His faith, His belief, His trust, His obedience [indeed His whole incarnate life on this earth] is what justifies us, not our faith as such.iii It is necessary therefore that we become united to Him; to become sons of the Father by our union His Son; to become gods by sharing and participating in the very life of God.

So our righteousness, our justification, is not simply a change in legal status, not a legal acquittal from guilty to innocent. Nor is our justification such that we are thought of or viewed as righteous when in fact we are not. No, our righteousness is real, actual effected by our real and personal union with Christiv And this union happens for us in an ongoing process that began with our baptism. In baptism we have been crucified with Christ, united to His life-giving death. For being unable to fulfill the Law of Moses, we were all dead in the eyes of the Law, but being united to the one whom Moses said would arise, perfect and fulfill the law, Jesus Christ, in Him we live. True faith is not simply making a decision for Christ that somehow warrants a created grace for favor to be imputed upon us. No, true faith is a way of life wherein we are ever transformed from glory to glory, being evermore united to an uncreated grace, the very life of God. For us, we have been saved. We were saved two thousand years ago when Christ took on flesh renewing our nature and making us fit to receive the Holy Spirit by putting sin and death to death by the cross. For us, we are being saved as we live our life in faith, co-operating with God in the working out of our salvation, and crucifying our passions, dying to this world, and carrying our crosses daily. For us, we will be saved, God willing, at the last judgment having persevered to the end.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit +

II Cor. 12:7-9 II Cor. 12:9-10 iii Amended from the Orthodox Study Bible notes, p. 1590. iv Ibid., 1591
ii