Tenth Sunday of Matthew

August 9 falls within the afterfeast of the Transfiguration (August 6), which the Church continues to celebrate through its apodosis on August 13. The festal hymns of Tabor still sound in the services of this Sunday, and the coincidence is providential for the preacher: in Matthew’s Gospel, the healing of the demon-possessed boy is the very first thing that happens when Christ descends from the Mount of Transfiguration. The Church on this day stands where the disciples stood—between the uncreated light on the mountain and the tormented world in the valley below.

The Holy Apostle Matthias was born at Bethlehem of the tribe of Judah. According to tradition preserved in the Church, he studied the Law of God from his early childhood under the guidance of Saint Simeon the God-Receiver, the elder who took the infant Christ in his arms in the Temple. When the Lord Jesus Christ revealed Himself to the world, Matthias believed in Him as the Messiah, followed Him constantly, and was numbered among the Seventy Apostles whom the Lord “sent two by two before His face” (Luke 10:1).

After the Ascension of the Savior, the assembled Church of about a hundred and twenty souls faced the wound left by the betrayal of Judas. Peter stood up in their midst and declared from the Psalms, “Let another take his office.” Two men who had accompanied the Lord from the baptism of John until the Ascension were put forward, and after prayer the lot fell to Matthias, “and he was numbered with the eleven apostles” (Acts 1:15–26). He is thus the only one of the Twelve chosen not by the Lord’s earthly call but by the prayer of the Church and the lot of God—a man made an apostle by the Holy Spirit’s election, ten days before Pentecost clothed him with power from on high.

After the descent of the Holy Spirit, Matthias preached the Gospel at Jerusalem and in Judea together with the other Apostles. Tradition records that he traveled with Peter and Andrew to Syrian Antioch and preached in the Cappadocian city of Tianum and in Sinope, and that his later missionary labors carried him to Colchis on the Black Sea. Returning at last to Judea, he was condemned by the Jewish authorities and received the martyr’s crown about the year 63. The Greek synaxarion verse for August 9—“On the ninth, divine Matthias was hoisted on the wood”—preserves the tradition of his crucifixion, while other accounts speak of stoning; the Church’s certainty is not in the instrument but in the crown.

Matthias stands in a striking relation to today’s Epistle. When Paul writes that “God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death,” Matthias is literally the last-numbered of the Twelve—the apostle added at the end, who inherited not privilege but a martyr’s portion.

Saint Herman was born near Moscow, in the town of Serpukhov, around 1756. At the age of sixteen he entered monastic life, first at the Trinity-Sergius Hermitage near St. Petersburg, and later at the great island monastery of Valaam on Lake Ladoga, where he was formed under the elder Nazarius in the tradition of unceasing prayer. When the Church sought monks for a spiritual mission to the native peoples of Alaska, Herman was among the eight chosen from Valaam. The missionaries arrived at Kodiak Island on September 24, 1794, having crossed the whole of Russia and the northern sea.

While others of the mission were martyred, drowned, or recalled, the simple monk Herman remained. He settled finally on Spruce Island, which he called New Valaam, in a cell dug into the earth. There he kept vigil, sang the services alone, tended a garden, and gathered around himself the orphans of the Aleut people, whom he taught and fed. He became the fearless defender of the native Alaskans against the cruelty of the Russian-American Company traders, writing on their behalf and answering to no earthly power. Asked whether he was ever lonely in the forest, he replied that he was not alone: “God is there, as God is everywhere.” His most famous counsel, given to sailors and remembered by his orphans, was this: “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and strive to fulfill His holy will.”

Herman reposed on Spruce Island in 1836, the glow of candlelight seen over his cell by villagers across the water. The local people venerated him from the day of his death, and miracles multiplied at his grave. On August 9, 1970, at Holy Resurrection Church in Kodiak, the Orthodox Church glorified him as Saint Herman of Alaska, Wonderworker of All America—the first canonized saint of this continent. This Sunday is therefore a patronal day for Orthodoxy in North America: the humble monk who never sought ordination, who conquered by prayer and fasting alone, is the firstfruits of American sanctity. His life is a living commentary on the Lord’s word in today’s Gospel: “this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”

Constantine served as Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople for two years, from 675 to 677, in the reign of the Emperor Constantine IV. His patriarchate fell in the troubled years between the Monothelite controversy’s height and its condemnation at the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680–681), and in the very years when the Arabs besieged Constantinople by sea. The historical record preserves little else of him beyond his fidelity; he reposed in peace on August 9, 677, and the Greek synaxaria commemorate him on this day. Where the sources are silent, the Church’s remembrance itself is the testimony: a shepherd who kept the faith in a dark hour and was counted worthy of the calendar of the saints.

Euthymios was elevated as Metropolitan of Rhodes shortly after the Ottomans took the island from the Knights of Saint John following the great siege of 1522. During those first bitter years of occupation he shepherded his flock in a God-pleasing manner, sustaining a Christian people suddenly under the yoke. In 1529 he was arrested as the alleged leader of a conspiracy against the Turks, and was impaled upon a stake together with other clergymen and leading citizens of Rhodes. The Christians of the island honored him as a martyr immediately after his death. A Latin missionary of the period reported that the grave of the blessed Euthymios had become an eminent pilgrimage site in Rhodes, and that those suffering from malaria would come and sit beside it and were cured. He is the new-martyr witness of this Sunday: a bishop who moved no mountains, but whose mustard seed of faith outlasted an empire.

Anthony was an Alexandrian by birth, of the early centuries of persecution. Arrested by the governor of Alexandria, he was suspended and lacerated, and then cast into a lit furnace, in which he delivered his soul into the hands of God and received the unfading crown of martyrdom. The synaxaria record with wonder that his holy relic was found in the midst of the furnace unharmed and sound, untouched by the fire—not even a hair of his head. In the Synaxarion of Constantinople he is called Antoninus, while the Menaion names him Anthony. The boy in today’s Gospel “often falls into the fire”; the martyr Anthony was thrown into it, and the fire had no power over him.

• “It is being with them, and not so much the crucifixion, that is grievous.”—St. John Chrysostom, on “How long shall I be with you?”
• “It is a foolish man that changes as the moon... at times waxing great in virtue, at other times waning and vanishing altogether.”—Blessed Theophylact
• “He falls into the fire of anger and lust, and into water, that is, the waves of the many cares of life, in which Leviathan the devil dwells.”—Blessed Theophylact
• “For moving a mountain and moving death from a body are not at all comparable.”—St. John Chrysostom
• “If you had fervent, ardent faith, you would accomplish great things even though they appeared to be small.”—Blessed Theophylact
• “It is not so much the fault of the weakness of the disciples as it is of your lack of faith, which, being great, has prevailed over the equal measure of their strength.”—Blessed Theophylact
• “He continually foretells the Passion, so that no one would think that He suffered unwillingly.”—Blessed Theophylact
• “To the sorrow He weds the joy that He will rise.”—Blessed Theophylact

”And when they had come to the multitude, a man came to Him, kneeling down to Him and saying,”

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

This man the Scripture signifies to be exceedingly weak in faith; and this is many ways evident: from Christ’s saying, “All things are possible to him that believes” (Mark 9:23); from the saying of the man himself that approached, “Help my unbelief” (Mark 9:24); from Christ’s commanding the devil to enter no more into him (Mark 9:25); and from the man’s saying again to Christ, “If You can” (Mark 9:22). Yet if his unbelief was the cause that the devil went not out, why does He blame the disciples? Signifying that even without persons to bring the sick in faith, they might in many instances work a cure. For as the faith of the person presenting oftentimes availed for receiving the cure, even from inferior ministers, so the power of the doers oftentimes sufficed, even without belief in those who came to work the miracle.

Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid (+1107)

That this man is exceedingly faithless is clear from the words which Christ spoke in reply to him, “O faithless generation,” and from the fact that the man himself blamed the disciples. The moon was not the cause, but rather, the demon would take note when the moon was full, and then would set upon his victim, so that men would blaspheme the created works of God as maleficent.

”’Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and suffers severely; for he often falls into the fire and often into the water.’”

Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid (+1107)

You, then, O reader, understand that it is a foolish man that changes as the moon, as it is written (Sirach 27:11), at times waxing great in virtue, at other times waning and vanishing altogether. Then the foolish man becomes deranged and falls down into the fire of anger and lust, and into water, that is, the waves of the many cares of life, in which Leviathan the devil dwells, he who reigns over the waters. For are not the cares of the rich like waves that follow each other in quick succession?

”’So I brought him to Your disciples, but they could not cure him.’”

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

Whence it is clear in this case, that even the disciples were weak; but not all; for the pillars (Galatians 2:9) were not present there. And see this man’s want of consideration, from another circumstance again, how before the multitude he pleads to Jesus against His disciples, saying, “I brought him to Your disciples, and they could not cure him.” But you will say, “If his unbelief was the reason why the demon had not gone out of the boy, why does he blame the disciples?” To show that they can often cure the sick, even though no one brings them in with faith.

Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid (+1107)

Do you see how the man has shifted the blame for his own lack of faith upon the disciples, saying that they were too weak to heal?

”Then Jesus answered and said, ‘O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him here to Me.’”

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

He, acquitting them of the charges before the people, imputes the greater part to him. For “O faithless and perverse generation,” these are His words, “how long shall I be with you?”—not aiming at his person only, lest He should confound the man, but also at all the Jews. For indeed many of those present might probably be offended, and have undue thoughts of the disciples. But when He said, “How long shall I be with you,” He indicates again death to be welcome to Him, and the thing an object of desire, and His departure longed for; and that not crucifixion, but being with them, is grievous. He stopped not however at the accusations; but what says He? “Bring him hither to Me.” And Himself moreover asks him how long time he is thus—both making a plea for His disciples, and leading the other to a good hope, that he might believe in his attaining deliverance from the evil.

Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid (+1107)

The Lord shames him for accusing the disciples, saying, “O faithless generation,” that is, “It is not so much the fault of the weakness of the disciples as it is of your lack of faith, which, being great, has prevailed over the equal measure of their strength.” He rebukes not only this man, but everyone who lacks faith, even the bystanders. By saying, “How long shall I be with you?” Christ shows that He longs for the Passion upon the Cross and His departure from them.

”And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him; and the child was cured from that very hour.”

Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid (+1107)

“And Jesus rebuked him”—whom? He who was lunatic. From this it appears that he, too, lacked faith, and his lack of faith had given occasion for the demon to enter him.

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

He addresses His reproof not to the man singly, that He may not trouble him, but to the Jews in general. For many of those present, it is likely, had improper thoughts concerning the disciples.

”Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, ‘Why could we not cast it out?’”

Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid (+1107)

The apostles were afraid that they had lost the grace against demons that had been given to them; this is why they asked Jesus in private and with great anxiety.

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

The disciples seem to me to be in anxiety and fear that they had lost the grace with which they had been entrusted. For they had received power over unclean demons. So they approached him in private and asked him the question, not out of shame, but because what they were going to ask him was secret and of great moment.

”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.’”

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

What, then, does Christ say? “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.” But if you say, “Where did they move a mountain?” I will say that they did things much greater than that in raising up innumerable dead. For moving a mountain and moving death from a body are not at all comparable. After them other saints, far inferior to the disciples, are said to have moved mountains when necessity demanded.

Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid (+1107)

The Lord reproves them for being imperfect in faith, saying, “Because of your unbelief. For if you had fervent, ardent faith, you would accomplish great things even though they appeared to be small.” The location of the mountains which the apostles moved is nowhere recorded, yet it is likely that they did move them, but the event was not written down; for not everything was written down. Or, by another interpretation, they did not move a mountain because there had been no occasion to do so, but they did even greater things than that.

”’However, this kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.’”

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

It happened that the disciples were then weak in faith; for indeed they were but in an imperfect condition before the Cross; wherefore He here tells them that faith is the means of miracles: “Verily I say unto you, if ye shall have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say to this mountain, Remove hence, and it shall remove.” So He not only promises the removal of mountains, but goes beyond, saying, “And nothing shall be impossible to you.”

Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid (+1107)

If you had fervent, ardent faith, joined to prayer and fasting, you would accomplish great things. For the man of prayer who fasts has his spirit strengthened while the flesh is enfeebled; such a one is not weighed down in the warfare against the spirits of wickedness.

”Now while they were staying in Galilee, Jesus said to them, ‘The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men,’”

St. Cyril of Alexandria (+444)

He brought the disciples to the mountain and showed them the glory with which He will shine on the universe in the future. Then coming down from the mountain He freed a person from a rough and evil spirit. It was altogether necessary for Him to undergo His saving Passion for us and to suffer the violence of the Jews. When this happened, it was quite likely that the disciples would be alarmed and would ponder it and say among themselves: “He has raised so many from the dead by divine power, He commands the seas and winds, He overwhelms Satan with His words—how has He now been taken and fallen to the noose of His murderers? Then maybe we were deceived when we thought that He was God?” So that they should know the future fully and completely, therefore, He foretells to them the mystery of the Passion.

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

In case they say, “Why do we delay here so long?” again He tells them about His Passion. Hearing of it, they did not even want to see Jerusalem. Peter had been rebuked, those around Moses and Elijah had spoken with Him and had called the thing glory, the Father had spoken from above, so many miracles had taken place, and the resurrection was close by—not even thus could they endure it, but “they were distressed,” and not simply distressed but “greatly distressed.”

Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid (+1107)

He continually foretells the Passion, so that no one would think that He suffered unwillingly, and also, to train them not to be shaken by the unexpected when it occurred. To the sorrow He weds the joy that He will rise.

”’and they will kill Him, and the third day He will be raised up.’ And they were exceedingly sorrowful.”

St. John Chrysostom (+407)

This arose from their being ignorant as yet of the force of His sayings. Mark and Luke indirectly express this: the one saying, “They understood not the saying, and were afraid to ask Him”; the other, “It was hid from them, that they perceived it not.” And yet if they were ignorant, how were they sorry? Because they were not altogether ignorant. That He was to die they knew, continually hearing it; but what this death might be, and that there would be a speedy release from it, and that it would work innumerable blessings, as yet they knew not clearly—wherefore they grieved; for indeed they clung very earnestly to their Master.

Blessed Theophylact of Ochrid (+1107)

To the sorrow He weds the joy, that He will rise—so that they would be trained not to be shaken by the unexpected when it occurred.

Source: Homilies 57 and 58 on the Gospel of Matthew

Chrysostom’s two homilies covering this passage are the fullest ancient treatment of it. Beyond the verse-comments excerpted above, he develops two pastoral threads: that the failure of the nine disciples must be read against the absence of “the pillars” (Peter, James, and John, still descending Tabor), and that the Lord’s rebuke is a physician’s frustration—like a doctor who says “How long shall I keep visiting this house?” to a patient who will not follow his prescriptions. A convenient compilation of the relevant sections is posted as the Gospel commentary for this Sunday at the Mystagogy Resource Center (Gospel Commentary for the Tenth Sunday of Matthew).

Source: Fragments of the Commentary on Matthew, on 17:22–23

Cyril reads the Passion prediction as deliberate inoculation: Christ foretells His arrest precisely so that the disciples’ logic (“He raised the dead—how is He taken?”) cannot curdle into the conclusion “we were deceived.” Foreknowledge announced beforehand becomes, after the fact, evidence of divine willingness rather than defeat.

Source: The Explanation of the Holy Gospel According to Matthew, chapter 17

Theophylact compresses the earlier tradition into the moral key most useful for preaching: the “lunatic” is every unstable soul that waxes and wanes like the moon; the fire is anger and lust; the water is the drowning cares of life where “Leviathan the devil dwells.” His treatment of the moved-mountains question—either unrecorded, or unneeded, but never impossible—is a model of exegetical sobriety.

Matthew places this healing immediately after the Transfiguration, and the Church reads it within the Transfiguration’s afterfeast. The juxtaposition is itself a theology: the same Christ who blazed with uncreated light on the mountain descends at once into the chaos of human suffering—a shrieking boy, a desperate father, arguing disciples. Cyril of Alexandria draws the line further: mountain, healing, and Passion prediction form one continuous revelation, so that glory is never separated from the Cross. The Christian life reproduces this shape. Moments of vision are given, but they are given for the descent; the test of what was seen on the mountain is what is done in the valley. Peter wanted to build tabernacles and stay; Christ walks down to the demoniac. Any spirituality that wants Tabor without the valley below it is, in the Gospel’s own arrangement, incomplete.

The Lord names unbelief—not a difficult demon—as the reason for the disciples’ failure, and then makes the astonishing promise that faith the size of a mustard seed moves mountains. The Fathers refuse both easy readings. The mustard seed is not “a little faith suffices”: Jerome and Chrysostom agree that the seed is an image of intensity, not smallness—fervent, ardent, concentrated faith, hot as the mustard grain is sharp. Nor is the promise mere hyperbole: Chrysostom answers the skeptic’s “where did they move mountains?” by pointing to the greater thing actually done—“moving a mountain and moving death from a body are not at all comparable.” Theophylact adds the quiet observation that not everything was written down, and that the apostles never lacked power, only occasion. The preacher can press the diagnostic edge: when our prayers seem powerless, the Gospel’s first question is not about God’s willingness but about the temperature of our faith.

“This kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.” The word is addressed not to the crowd but to the clergy of the infant Church—the nine who had received authority over unclean spirits and found it inert in their hands. Authority, the Lord teaches, is not a possession but a relationship, kept alive by the same disciplines that formed it. The Fathers generalize the point: prayer strengthens the spirit while fasting lightens the flesh, and the two together are the Church’s ancient technology for every “kind” of evil that mere willpower cannot touch. The providence of the calendar preaches this theme by itself: the Gospel falls in the middle of the Dormition Fast, when the Church is actually doing what the Lord prescribes, and on the glorification day of Saint Herman of Alaska, whose entire missionary conquest of a continent’s edge was accomplished from an earthen cell by exactly these two weapons.

The Epistle gives the Gospel its ecclesial mirror. Paul’s catalogue—spectacle, fools, weak, dishonored, hungry, homeless, “the offscouring of all things”—describes what apostolic power looks like from the outside. The Corinthians wanted to reign as kings; Paul answers that God has displayed the apostles “last, as men condemned to death.” The saints of this day form a living exposition: Matthias, the last-numbered of the Twelve, crowned with martyrdom; Euthymios of Rhodes, impaled beside his flock; Anthony, unharmed in the furnace only after death; Herman, a monk without rank who out-endured a trading company and became the first saint of America. The disciples failed below Tabor when they presumed on their gift; the saints prevailed when they had nothing left but God. Paul’s closing word—“I urge you, imitate me”—is not arrogance but fatherhood: he begot the Corinthians through the Gospel and shows them the only pattern there is.

”While the stone was sealed by the Jews, and the soldiers were guarding Thy most pure body, Thou didst arise on the third day, O Savior, granting life to the world.”

The apolytikion of the week’s tone proclaims the very thing Christ promises at the end of today’s Gospel—“the third day He will be raised up”—turning the disciples’ sorrow into the Church’s Sunday song.

”Thou wast transfigured on the mount, O Christ God, revealing Thy glory to Thy Disciples as far as they could bear it.”

Sung through the apodosis on August 13, this hymn holds the congregation on Tabor even as the Gospel walks them down into the valley below it.

”O Holy Apostle Matthias, intercede with our merciful God, that He grant unto our souls forgiveness of offenses.”

The common apolytikion of an apostle, appointed for the day’s principal saint—the man numbered among the Twelve by prayer and the lot of God.

”On the mountain wast Thou transfigured, and Thy Disciples beheld Thy glory as far as they could bear it, O Christ God; that when they would see Thee crucified, they would comprehend that Thy suffering was voluntary.”

The kontakion of the afterfeast makes Cyril of Alexandria’s point in song: Tabor exists so that Golgotha will be understood as voluntary—exactly the logic of the Passion prediction that closes today’s Gospel.