Do You Believe?

In the 1950s, a Harvard psychobiologist named Curt Richter conducted studies with rats, exploring how the responses to stress differ between the populations of wild rats versus domesticated rats. The study involved cutting off the rats’ whiskers and making them swim until they died, and, to the surprise of the researchers, the wild rats—expected to be more vigorous and scrappy survivors—gave up and died after only a couple minutes, far quicker than most of the domesticated rats. Richter concluded that in the sequence of trapping, confinement, trimming, and placement into the testing rig, the wild rats had given up hope even before they had begun to swim, and their hopelessness is what led to their early demise.

The researchers proved that it was indeed hopelessness that killed the wild rats.

This is achieved by repeatedly holding the rats briefly and then freeing them, and by immersing them in water for a few minutes on several occasions. In this way the rats quickly learn that the situation is not actually hopeless; thereafter they again become aggressive, try to escape, and show no signs of giving up. Wild rats so conditioned swim just as long as domestic rats or longer.

https://www.aipro.info/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/phenomena_sudden_death.pdf

The wild rats now believed that they could survive.

In this morning’s Gospel reading, when two men approach Jesus crying “Son of David, have mercy on us!” (Sound familiar? I think there’s a prayer the Church teaches us that sounds remarkably similar.), notice Jesus’ response. It’s a question: “Do you believe that I am able to do this?”

There is little doubt that Jesus wanted to heal these men. He’d already been healing people wherever he went. One of whom, a woman, was healed simply by touching his robe. But just like he told that woman, he tells these men “According to your faith let it be done to you.”

I had the mixed fortune of being away in a COVID-free bubble on a ship for most of the recent pandemic, and so I didn’t experience it in the same way that most of you have. But my deployments took me, along with my shipmates, into dangerous parts of the world, where death hovers just a bit closer than it normally does—as it seemed to do for people facing the pandemic. But through the teachings of the Church, I know that the threat of death is just another aspect of life in a fallen world, and as Christians we all should know that. Whatever caseload spikes and whatever variants come, we don’t—or at least we shouldn’t—respond out of fear of death. We know we are going to die, and we should live each day with that reminder. As much as the novel coronavirus, or anything else, is a threat to us we should be grateful for its bringing to us more vividly the reminder of our death. No less a luminary than St. Gregory the Theologian asks us, “Do we make life a meditation of death?” But why would we do this?

First, it acts as a restraint to our sinfulness. In scripture, the Wisdom of Sirach tells us: “In all you do, remember the end of your life, and then you will never sin.” If we have close to mind that we will be facing judgement, and we don’t know when that judgement will come, then we are less likely to do evil. If we think that tomorrow may be our last day, it will affect the choices we make today, and we’ll spend more time correcting ourselves and less time correcting others.

Second, the fear of death affects how we interact with the world around us: What we value, what we hold onto. When we keep in mind the remembrance of death, we remember that the desires and pleasures of this life are the perishable things, and that all suffering—even death—are temporary parts of life. We can then focus more on the enduring aspects of life, namely our relationship with Christ.

Finally, and most importantly, because this is the worst part about what the Coronavirus did to us, the remembrance of death will help us cultivate loving relationships. If we remember the transient nature of our life, then all those things we now think are so important that we allow them to divide us will diminish into the obscurity in which they belong. Then, we can focus on the eternal things that unite us, on Christ and His Church, on the humanity that we share with each other and with Jesus.

Russian saint, Ignaty Brianchaninov, describes a person who practices the remembrance of death in this way:

He is constantly occupied with wondering what will justify him at Christ’s terrible judgment and what his sentence will be. This sentence decides a person’s fate for the whole of eternity. No earthly beauty, no earthly pleasure draws his attention or his love. He condemns no one, for he remembers that at the judgment of God such judgment will be passed on him as he passed here on his neighbors. He forgives everyone and everything. that he may himself obtain forgiveness and inherit salvation. He is indulgent with all, he is merciful in everything, that indulgence and mercy may be shown to him. He welcomes and embraces with joy every trouble or trial that comes to him as a toll for his sins in time which frees him from paying toll in eternity. If the thought comes to him to be proud of his virtue, at once the remembrance of death rushes against this thought, puts it to shame, exposes the nonsense and drives it away.

Now, this is one of those things that is far easier said than done, but fortunately, we don’t have to do it on our own. Like Richter’s rats, we are capable of far more than we think we are, but as much as we are capable of on our own, there is an end to our strength, and there is a limit to our capacity. The rats could keep swimming, but they couldn’t get themselves out of the tank.

When the priest consumes the remainder of the chalice after the Divine Liturgy, he reads the following prayer:

You who have willingly given me your flesh as food, who are a burning fire to the unworthy, do not consume me. No, my Creator, rather penetrate into my members, all my joints, my organs, and my heart. Burn all my iniquities like thorns; cleanse my soul, make holy my thoughts, make firm my knees and my bones as well. Illumine my five senses and make vigilant my entire being with the fear of You … Cleanse me, purify me, and put me in order. Adorn me, give me understanding, and illumine me. Show me to be the dwelling place of your Spirit alone and not the dwelling place of sin; so that when you enter into the home of your Communion, every evil doer and every passion will flee from me as from fire.

When we receive communion, something is supposed to happen to us. We are supposed to change and become part of the Body of Christ, part of the Light of the world, of the city on a hill that cannot be hid. We give up our blindness for spiritual sight, our deafness for spiritual hearing. So the question we have to ask ourselves this morning is this: Do we believe Christ is able to do this?

After all, it is possible to touch the Lord and come away unchanged. There were hundreds pressing in on Jesus, but only the woman with the flow of blood was healed. It is possible to receive communion—to consume the Body and Blood of Christ—and not be illumined. But if we approach with faith, love, and the fear of God, hoping and praying for illumination, for union with God, then that change will take place that will make every evil doer and every evil passion flee. It will be done to us “according to our faith.” Not because of who we are but because but because of Who is in us. And the best measure of any actual change in us is how others react to us, how the world sees us.

Maybe people won’t flee from you or me when we enter a room, but would it surprise our neighbors and coworkers that we go to church on Sundays and receive communion, that we believe it is the flesh and blood of our risen Lord? Would they be surprised if we told them we’re Christians? Or would they say, “Oh, that makes sense. There was always something different about you.” Would they—could they—remember the ways you’ve been kind and generous to others, that you didn’t often complain, and that they never saw you take part in the office grapevine.

When Saint Peter tells us to “be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks [us] a reason of the hope that is in [us],” he’s assuming that the light of our illumination is shining bright enough to make people curious, that we really are hopeful. What about now, these days? Are we, the Church, the members of the Body of Christ, reflecting hope to the world, or are we sharing in their despair and hopelessness? Do we believe that Christ is able to save us?

Too often the life of a Christian is indistinguishable from that of a non-Christian. We live our lives as if there really is no God, and thus we must survive on our own strength alone. So, just like everyone else, we use life-coaches and psychiatrists to teach us how to cope, to give us the strength that will allow us to keep swimming, when what we really need is the priest and prayer and the life of the Church to connect us with the One who can save us from having to swim in the first place.

God loves us so much, that He wanted to be like us, so that we could be like Him. And the eternal life that he promises we will receive when we partake of his flesh and blood in Holy Communion will outlast any virus, any suffering, and is stronger even than death itself. Do we believe that? Does it show?