The Legion of Other Selves
Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, July 26, 2026
I learned something valuable from my homiletics professor at ORU, an old-school Methodist. He taught us to look at the world with homiletical eyes, that is to be mindful and open to life which provides an unlimited amount of material for building good sermons. After all, Jesus did. He used the stuff of everyday life to teach about eternal things. Fishing, agriculture, birds, taxes and on and on. For example, I re-heard "Strawberry Fields" this week and this line stuck out to me. "Living is easy with eyes closed misunderstanding all you see." True, so very true. Today's sermon owes a debt to Dr. Lacour and John Lennon.
The Feeding of the Five Thousand, reminds me of a line from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself." "I contain multitudes," He wrote. What did he mean by that? Some say he was referring to the many thoughts, feelings, and identities each of us hold within ourselves. I agree.
And that reminds me of a spiritual treatise commonly attributed to St. Simeon the New Theologian called "Three Forms of Prayer." It advises monks to go into their cells, close the door, sit on their three-legged stools, put their beards on their chests, and look inside. "What will you see?" he asks. "Chaos." The "multitudes" Whitman wrote about like flies buzzing around in our heads, as St. Theophan the Recluse wrote. St. Simeon continues, "But do not get discouraged. After awhile," he wrote, 'a great, peaceful space will reveal itself within you as God wills."
We look around us and see multitudes of unfortunate people. "The least of the brethren." We look inside and see multitudes of thoughts, feelings, and identities clamoring for our attention. Carl Jung called them the internal "least of the brethren." Evagrius of Pontus called this cacophony, "the legion of other selves." There are multitudes outside of us and inside of us in need of our tender loving care.
The Gospel tells us that the five thousand were listening to Jesus "in a lonely place." I know of no more lonely place than the desert in our own hearts and minds. How we are prone to loneliness! Even in the midst of family and friends we can feel incredibly alone.
The day was ending and evening approached. The people were hungry and needed food. In this lonely place food was scarce. When the disciples told Jesus to send them away to fend for themselves, Jesus replied with a command, "No, you give them something to eat." Then Jesus took a couple of fish and five loaves and turned them into a feast resembling a rudimentary Eucharist. There was more than enough and leftovers as well to show us that the food the Lord provides, his flesh and blood, is inexhaustible.
In the same way we are called to provide spiritual food for the least of the brethren within us. To open our eyes to them, listen to their voices, to understand them and their hunger for transformation, love, and compassion. In us is a multitude of the needy, the frightened, the lonely, and despairing. We must not ignore the legion of other selves that live under our own roofs. Love of self means not only love for the image of God in which we were made, but also for the broken and shattered pieces of ourselves that manifest as sin and dis-ease. For food we offer them the Eucharist, "The medicine of immortality." For a cure to loneliness we teach them meditation and prayer and community. And in this new space the Lord has created for us, this kingdom of heaven within us, we will find Christ, freedom, and transformation.
We must not be afraid to open our eyes and see these realities in ourselves. Opening our eyes provides an aperture through which the light of Christ makes its way into our deepest darkness. We are called to evangelize our interior lives as well as the world around us.
St. Porphyrios contrasted the strict and rigorous way of asceticism with what he called the easy, shorter, and safer path of love, "Do not fight to expel the darkness from your soul. Open a tiny aperture for light to enter and the darkness will disappear. Do not choose negative methods to correct yourselves. There is no need to fear, the devil, hell or anything else...The object is to live, to study, to pray and to advance in love..."
Porphyrios recommends the path of love and so do I. Allow the light to enter. He enters through our wounds. We must let go of fear and open ourselves to God. Then watch his love rise like the sun in that great, peaceful, and sacred space as it reveals itself in us (it has always been there) and give thanks for everything for through all things Jesus leads us where we need to go.