One of the greatest arguments, in the secular world, against the existence of God is the so-called "problem of evil." This problem asks the question "with a God Who is good and loving, how can evil exist in the world?" Why does a God who is love allow evil? And to be very timely, the specific question of natural disasters-why does God's creation cause such evil (death from earthquakes, floods, hurricanes)? In another phrasing, where was God as people died in Hurricane Gustav, or Hurricane Katrina, or any of the other terrible natural disasters that claim the lives of so many people in the world today? As people who have recently been affected by Hurricane Gustav, some much more than others, that question very often comes to mind-what is God's role is causing or preventing these tragedies?

The Orthodox Church doesn't try to answer that question in a way that would provide solutions to all the various aspects of the questions. That would be nonsense; as we hear expressed in the Scriptures: who is man to question God (Job); who is man to understand the mind of God (His ways are not our ways). It would be foolish to think that we can understand and explain God. But there are some things we can definitely say, beginning with placing all events in the context of God's revelation to man, using the two feasts we celebrate this month-

Nativity of the Theotokos
On this day the woman who is to be the mother of the Promised Messiah is born. The fullness of time is fulfilled, God's promise to His creation for redemption has begun, and is completed with the birth of Jesus Christ. From this feast we very clearly see that God's concern is for His creation, and for our betterment, salvation. With sin, death and decay and destruction enter the world, but the promise and eventual fulfillment of the Messiah is God's word to His suffering creation-what we suffer in this life is not of God's plan, and it won't be like this forever, a new heaven and a new earth are promised.

The Exaltation of the Cross
The Nativity of the Theotokos shows God's concern and His care for our salvation, and the Cross shows how far God is willing to go for our sake. He takes on our humanity, lives our life, and even experiences death. God, Who would never undergo suffering, allows Himself to suffer as we suffer. We don't have a God high in the sky, oblivious to our sufferings and our situations-our God became one of us, and is joined intimately to us for eternity.

As we strive to surrender our wills more and more to God, as we struggle to trust in God and to lean not on our own understandings (Proverbs 3:5-6), it's important for us to be reminded of how God has cared for His people throughout human history. We can see this fact in so many places in the Holy Scriptures, but perhaps no more beautifully than in the person of the Mother of God. She is for us a part of the fulfillment of God's plan for His people, and a magnificent image to us of how God cares for those who submit to Him.

The Theotokos as a fulfillment of God's plan
As Christians, we would first and foremost say that God's plan for mankind, expressed from the beginnings of the Scriptures, is for man to be with God. Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of God's plan for fallen man to be healed. But in the fulfillment of that plan, many other pieces had to be laid, and none more important that she who was to be the Mother of the Messiah.

The woman who would be chosen to give birth to God Incarnate, to carry God within her womb, to nurse Him, to raise Him from a child, to teach Him and nurture Him, the woman who would be chosen for this privilege was an incredibly important part of God's plan. It had to be the right woman. She would be bless-ed among all women and all generations (from Luke 1:42-55). And so when we speak of the Nativity of the Theotokos, the Fathers of the Church profoundly say that her birth is the "fullness of time" prophesied in the Old Testament. God told the prophets that the Messiah would come to save His people "in the fullness of time." The Fathers teach us that the fullness of time would be fulfilled when the woman who would be worthy to be the Mother of God would be born. And so when the fullness of time was come, we celebrate the Nativity of the Mother of God.

What would be so special about one woman born of mankind, that she would be graced to be the Mother of God in the flesh? This is an answer, hidden in the mind of God. The Fathers point out her purity, her humility, her beauty, her virtue. But really, we look to her total submission to the will of God in all things; this is the single attribute that allows her to grow in all godliness and virtue.

The parable we hear from our Lord this morning (Matthew 18:23-35) is about forgiveness. It's often interesting to put the Sunday lectionary readings into their Scriptural context, sometimes it gives us a bit more insight into the meaning of the passage. Immediately before our reading, St. Peter asks Christ, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" (Matthew 18:21) Christ then answers, "I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven," (Matthew 18:22), and then he tells the parable we heard this morning.

The parable is an example of the principle-forgive up to seventy times seven times. The way the Fathers interpret this number is simple. Christ does not intend for us to count 490 offenses from a single person, and then stop forgiving them. Rather, this number symbolizes infinite forgiveness; as often as we're offended, we forgive.

And then we have the parable (basic interpretation taken from Blessed Theophylact's Exposition of the Gospel of St. Matthew)-in this parable, there are several key "players": a king, several debts, and several debtors, who are servants of the king. The king is Christ-and the Scriptures teach us "the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son" (John 5:22). So as the King, and as the Good Judge, Christ settles accounts with His servants.

Obviously, we are the servant who owes the King 10,000 talents. As with the 70x7, this number of 10,000 is symbolic-10,000 talents is more than a laborer could earn in a lifetime of working. This is the debt accumulated for an entire lifetime. Blessed Theophylact writes that every day we receive the grace and the mercies of God, but we give nothing to God (or very little, amounting to nothing) in return. So the debt the servant owes, the debt we owe, is a debt we can't pay. The Scriptures often use the language of debt for our sin, "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors," we pray in the Lord's Prayer (and this translation is more accurate than trespasses-the prayer refers not to people who have gone where they shouldn't, but to people who owe, who are in debt). The debt of our sin is something we can never repay. We've fallen short of God's righteousness, we've ignored the will of our Creator, and nothing we can do on our own will ever make us right again. It's a debt we can't pay.

All of us, at some time or another, have faced some kind of ridicule, being looked down on and judged by someone else, being singled out. This happens in so many ways. Kids with each other and in school, as we're in the world or at our workplaces, even in the Church or in our homes with our families. So often we find ourselves being judged in some way, looks, clothes, interests, faith and morals. The list is endless because we can all be singled out and attacked for basically everything about us, depending on who we're with at any given time.

And when we're treated like this, we have a tendency to react in one of several ways. We get our feelings hurt and we become dejected-we get down on ourselves and we wonder what's wrong with the way that we do things, what's wrong with us. One of our most common responses to being looked down on is to begin to mimic, to look down on ourselves. The other most common reaction is anger-to be angry with those who are mistreating us, to lash out in some type of retaliation, to stew in our anger and just despise the people who ridiculed/questioned us. Depression/sadness, and anger, these are the two ways we normally react when our interactions with people leave us with the idea that we're being looked down on, or made fun of, or in some other way unfairly treated.

The Apostles dealt with this type of reception everywhere they went, from people they knew, and people they didn't know. They were persecuted at every turn. And in our Epistle reading this morning, St. Paul reminds us of how we're supposed to respond when we find ourselves being mistreated by others. [We are not talking abuse here, that's another level where some intervention may be needed, we're only talking about the terrible way we as human being tend to treat one another]

"Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we entreat" (12b-13a). It's not arrogance to take this verse and apply it to our lives. Even if our "persecutions" aren't on the level of St. Peter and the Apostles, and even if we're not really being treated that bad, or for our faith-this verse still provides us with guidelines for how we're to act, and what even how we're to think when we're confronted with revilement, persecution, and defamation. In other words, how to deal with something we face almost every day. *First note that this isn't simply a psychological answer, the way the Apostles react has nothing to do with positive thinking and coping skills. This verse takes us to a deeper level. If you'll take note, as we talk about each of these three proper ways to respond, we'll see that we're called to respond with love and virtue that counter the attacks we may come under.

In this morning’s Gospel reading (Matthew 14:22-24), we have one of the most well known (and most often retold) of Christ’s miracles, walking on water. We hear this miracle told with the focus mostly on Christ, on how His command over the elements, His ability to walk on water, demonstrates His divinity. But this morning I’d like us to focus not on what Christ does, but on what St. Peter fails to do.

In our Epistle reading this morning (1 Corinthians 1:10-18), St. Paul touches on a very significant aspect of the life of the Christian Church—Her unity, Her One-ness. St. Paul is addressing a specific issue in the Church in Corinth, an issue that seems kind of silly to us perhaps.

The Epistle reading assigned for this morning’s Feast is an incredibly important reading, especially for those of us who are trying to sort out what is means to be an Orthodox Christian, our purpose, our goal.

The ministry of Christ in the world is the reconciliation of God and man. Every sermon, every trip, every miracle, every chastisement, they all have the goal of showing the audience the way back to God. In our Church, this can’t be stressed enough.

Today we celebrate the feast of the Old Testament Prophet St. Elias, or Elijah (not to be confused with his successor, Elisha). St. Elias has always been one of my personal favorite figures from the Old Testament. So this morning I’d like us to think a little about what it means for a man or woman to be a prophet of the Most High God, and then look some at the life of St. Elias.

Our Gospel reading this morning (John 17:1-13) was the first half of the 17^th chapter of the Gospel of St. John, which is often called the “High Priestly Prayer of Christ.” This prayer is called the High Priestly Prayer because in it Christ prays as high priest, as one who is making an offering to God (and as one who is making an offering on behalf of others). This morning, I’d like us to look at the words of Christ’s prayer in the context of prayer, and specifically, in the context of the liturgical prayers of the Church.