By Fr. Michael Psaromatis
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Australia
On the feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos, the Gospel closes with Christ’s words, “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:28). A woman in the crowd has called His Mother blessed for bearing and nursing Him. Christ does not take this blessing away from her, but directs us to the way the Panagia lived throughout her life: she heard God’s word and kept it (Luke 11:27–28). Elizabeth recognises the same faith when she blesses her as the Mother of her Lord and as the one who believes that what God has spoken will be fulfilled (Luke 1:42–45).
At the Annunciation, the Panagia asks the Archangel Gabriel how this will take place, listens to his answer and then freely gives her consent: “Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Saint Irenaeus says that her faith and obedience undo the knot of Eve’s unbelief and disobedience (Against Heresies, III.22.4). In the Panagia, hearing, discernment, obedience and keeping belong together. She receives the word in a heart wholly open to God and remains faithful to it through everything that follows.
When God’s word reaches us, however, it often meets a heart crowded with our own will, opinions, desires and grievances. We can hear the Gospel, follow a sermon closely, listen to a podcast or open a spiritual book and still keep what we hear at a distance. A sermon about forgiveness may turn our thoughts towards the person who owes us an apology. We may even wish that they had come to church to hear it. We have followed every word while avoiding its claim upon our own life.
Pride and self-will do more than make spiritual understanding difficult. Through sin, we push God away and close the heart to His work within us. His love does not cease and He continues to call us, but He does not force Himself upon us. We can resist His grace, grieve the Holy Spirit and fill with ourselves the place that belongs to Him (Ephesians 4:30; 1 Thessalonians 5:19).
For us, the ascetic and sacramental life of the Church is essential to hearing. Through prayer, repentance, fasting, almsgiving, confession, Holy Communion and obedience, we freely choose God and cooperate with His grace. We do not first attain a clean heart and only then begin to hear Him. God calls us and gives His grace from the beginning, and throughout our life, as we turn towards Him and struggle against pride and self-will, He cleanses and heals the heart. This is why the Church continually places the prayer on our lips, “Create in me a clean heart, O God” (Psalm 50 [51]). As the hold of the passions weakens, we become more able to receive His word, discern what it asks of us and keep it in the life we actually live.
Saint Mark the Ascetic teaches that the grace given in Baptism dwells within us and becomes active as we keep the commandments. He also says that grace first awakens the conscience and never ceases to help us, while our response remains free (On Those Who Think That They Are Made Righteous by Works, §§61–62). Ascesis is not self-purification by our own power. God begins and sustains the work, and we consent to it in the concrete circumstances of each day.
To hear God’s word truly involves more than understanding the meaning of a sentence, because we hear according to the condition of the heart. Pride can turn correction into an insult, resentment can make mercy appear unjust, and attachment to comfort can persuade us that a commandment does not apply to us. Saint Athanasius writes that a good life, a pure soul and virtue in Christ are needed for the right understanding of Scripture. We come to understand the words of the saints by entering their way of life and imitating their works (On the Incarnation, §57).
As God works within us, He gives discernment. This is not intelligence, personal preference or a strong inner feeling, but a gift of the Holy Spirit by which we recognise what comes from God, what arises from the passions and what His word asks of us. Saint John Climacus calls it true self-knowledge in beginners and, in the mature, understanding born of divine illumination. He also says that it is found in those who are pure in heart, body and mouth (The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 26). Such discernment belongs to the life of the Church, where we receive the Scriptures within Holy Tradition, worship, the teaching of the Fathers, the Holy Mysteries and spiritual guidance. It does not place the Gospel on trial, nor does it require us to accept every word of a preacher as the word of God. Those of us who preach must measure our words and our lives against the Gospel and the teaching of the Church, while Saint Paul tells all the faithful to “test all things” and “hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians5:21).
Honest questions have a place within this discernment. The Panagia herself asks, “How can this be?” (Luke 1:34). Her question is open to God and is followed by obedience. When something sounds wrong or remains unclear, it is right to ask, but we must also examine what is moving within us. Does our concern arise from faithfulness to the Church, or has the word touched a habit, resentment or desire that we do not want to surrender? Saint Mark the Ascetic warns that attachment to possessions, human praise and sensual pleasure blinds the intellect and dulls spiritual knowledge (On the Spiritual Law, §§101–103). We must discern both what we have heard and the heart with which we are hearing it, lest we mistake our own will for the will of God. Obedience is our free response to Christ, His Gospel and the life of His Church, not uncritical submission to every human demand. As we act upon the light already given, self-will loses some of its hold, the heart sees more clearly and God leads us further. If we continually discern but never obey, discernment becomes another excuse for postponing repentance.
Prayer brings before God the things upon which we have been insisting and asks Him to teach us His will. In confession, we name our sins without hiding them or arranging the story in our favour. We stop defending what has wounded our communion with God and receive Christ’s forgiveness through the ministry of the priest. As He begins to change our habits and heal the heart, we may recognise in our own life what we once dismissed when we heard it in a sermon or read it in a spiritual book.
Fasting exposes how readily we obey our appetites and how difficult it can be to deny ourselves something we want. When it is joined to prayer and repentance, fasting teaches self-control and helps loosen the rule of desire. Almsgiving exposes our attachment to possessions and comfort. Isaiah joins true fasting with feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless and relieving oppression (Isaiah 58:6–7). Through such acts, we choose God over the demands of the ego and learn to respond when His word asks us to give ourselves for another person.
We approach the Holy Eucharist with faith, repentance and the preparation given by the Church. We receive Christ’s very Body and Blood for the forgiveness of sins and the healing of soul and body, and are united to the Lord whose word we hear and whose commandments we seek to keep. Christ does not leave us to improve ourselves. He unites us to Himself and works within us by His grace.
Pride can follow us even into sacred things. The Pharisee fasts and gives tithes, yet he looks upon the publican with contempt (Luke 18:9–14). Church attendance, fasting, spiritual reading and knowledge of the faith cannot bear their proper fruit when we use them to place ourselves above another person. Ascesis that leaves us harsh, self-satisfied and unwilling to repent has been taken over by the very ego it was meant to restrain.
Before the Gospel is read in the Divine Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, the priest asks Christ to illumine our hearts, open our understanding of His Gospel and help us overcome sinful desires so that we may live according to His commandments. The Church places illumination, freedom from the passions and obedience within the same prayer because we need God both to understand His word and to live it.
The same connection between hearing and the life of the heart was expressed by Archbishop Makarios of Australia when he addressed newly tonsured readers in Sydney on 2 August 2026. He spoke of the need for “a heart that has first loved and heard the word of God and has surrendered itself completely to Him.” He was speaking to readers, but his words apply to every Christian who hears the Scriptures, whether reading in the kliros or listening in the congregation.
Hearing and discerning must lead to keeping. In Luke 11:28, Christ uses the verb φυλάσσω, appearing here as φυλάσσοντες, which means to guard or observe. Saint Luke shows us what such keeping looks like in the Panagia: she treasures and ponders in her heart the events surrounding Christ’s birth (Luke 2:19). Later, when she and Joseph find the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple, they do not understand His saying, yet His Mother keeps it in her heart (Luke 2:50–51). She remains faithful without demanding that everything be made clear at once.
To keep the word begins with guarding it in the heart, but it cannot end there. Saint James compares the person who hears without doing to someone who looks in a mirror and then forgets what he has seen (James 1:22–25). The word must enter our decisions, our speech, our use of money and time, and the way we treat other people. True keeping is the word of God lived through obedience.
If we have heard Christ’s teaching on forgiveness and discerned what it asks of us, we bring our resentment into prayer and confession. We stop repeating the other person’s faults, resist the angry reply, pray for the one who has hurt us and look for a way to act with mercy. We will stumble and begin again, but we can no longer make peace with the sin or defend our refusal to change.
Zacchaeus shows what keeping can look like. When he receives Christ, he gives to the poor and restores what he has taken unjustly (Luke 19:8–9). After the parable of the Good Samaritan, Christ tells the lawyer to “go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37). Saint John Chrysostom speaks of honouring Christ’s Body at the Holy Table and caring for Him in those who are hungry or without clothing (Homilies on Matthew, Homily 50, §§3–4). What we hear in church continues in our homes, our relationships, our work and every opportunity God gives us to show mercy.
Christian obedience is not servile fear, nor does it erase the person God created us to be. It is the free response of love. Christ says, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word,” and promises that He and the Father will make Their dwelling with that person (John 14:23). He also tells us that if we keep His commandments we will abide in His love, and then commands us to love one another as He has loved us (John 15:10–12). We obey because we love Christ, and the truth of that love is seen in the love we show one another.
In keeping God’s word, we are seeking Christ Himself, the Word of God, and asking Him to live and work within us. “The Lord is hidden in His own commandments,” Saint Mark writes, and we find Him as we seek Him there (On the Spiritual Law, §190). Keeping God’s word is life in Christ, lived by the grace of the Holy Spirit through faith, obedience, repentance and love.
At Cana, the Panagia tells the servants to do whatever her Son says (John 2:5). She remains beside His Cross, and after His Ascension she perseveres in prayer with the disciples (John 19:25; Acts 1:14). She keeps the word received at the Annunciation through all that follows. As we honour her and ask for her intercessions, we pray that our own hearts may be opened to God.
Let us ask what within us is still resisting God’s work and what His word requires of us now. Through repentance and ascetic struggle, let us choose Him over our pride and self-will, seek the discernment that comes from the Holy Spirit and respond in obedience. By God’s grace, what we hear can be guarded in the heart and lived in our deeds. With the Panagia we say, “Let it be to me according to your word,” and ask Christ to make that answer the truth of our whole life.
