Today, several days before the Transfiguration we have heard about the events that took place after the Transfiguration. Right after the apostles descended from the mountain of the Transfiguration.

On that mountain they saw the Kingdom of Heaven, its powerful energy and grace, and they wanted to stay there… But that impulse, though very good and proper, was not timely. People, that got to know the power of God, should also fully realize their weakness, and with that their inability to live in the Kingdom of Heaven, until cleansed from sin. It’s a great difference – to see the glory of God and to be sons of God.

And we are now going through the time of self-discovery – the time of the Dormition fasting.

The time of fasting for the apostles, after they have witnessed the Grace of the Lord, was that descent from the mountain, when they encountered the father and his sick child.

Now they saw the demonic kingdom, which also came in its power. And somehow the apostles could not withstand that power, so they appeared to become weak and grievous. They, as all the people, were a part of that tragedy. They could not fight against it all by themselves. They did not require only a good king, or a good law, but something much more than that.

“Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” And He said to them, “It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. (Acts of Apostles)

What should they (and all the Christians) better know and do? To make our transition from the kingdom of the world with its devil’s power and logic, from being a worshiper of this world, even without visible idols, but complete dependence on the goods of this world – thinking of them and treating them as the life itself, or the most essential part of it…

The apostles could do many things. You remember how they gave several loaves of bread and fish and fed five thousand people, with the Lord’s blessing.

But now they could not do it.

The disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?”

So, Jesus said to them, “Because of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”

Those two actions, that tear us from the inner paganism and move the soul closer to God, as the only source of everything for people, by fully realizing that, by cleansing the conscience and the soul, by getting to know the distance from God through fasting, and then overcoming it through the true prayer (based on fasting).

The only means to overcome the very power of this world. And not only the power, we should say, but the craftiness, the flattery (the humanism) and the false wisdom of this world and its king.

This kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting. Amen