Category Archives: Homily/Sermon

Homily/Sermon

Paschal Greetings: Christ is Risen!

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On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

Dear fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, Christ is Risen! Христос Воскресе!

After the excitement and hustle and bustle of celebrating and triumphantly proclaiming the Lord’s Saving Resurrection, we now enter a quieter time of contemplative reflection on the risen Saviour and the empty Tomb.

As we read in the Lord’s appearing to the disciples, His first act was to exchange the “shlama”: “Peace with you.”

It is in this peace of Christ, without the chanting of the choir, without the enthusiastic Resurrection exclamations of the clergy with incense, cross and candles, and without the animation and excited joy of the community, that each of us must now prayerfully contemplate and reflect upon the world-changing, history-changing, cosmic reality of the words, “Christ is Risen! Христос Воскресе!”

What do these revolutionary words mean for each us, not simply as a statement of fact, but in relation to the way we live our lives? 

It is not enough to have unflinching, cast iron faith in the Lord’s Resurrection, unless the events of that first Pascha have a spiritual and moral impetus for us, and challenge us to live and spiritually struggle in the light and power of Christ’s Resurrection.

Not only are we baptised in the power and image of the events of the resurrection, descending into and rising from the baptismal font, mirroring the Lord’s descent into death and rising from the depths of Sheol (Hades), but we are each called to continually be “rising” from the old fallen person, to resurrectional lives of changed, transformed personhood in Christ.

From the moment each of us rose from the waters of baptism, our spiritual struggle should have been, and should continue to be one of divine ascent, led heavenwards by the Risen Lord, Who in our baptism took hold of each of us, just as He grasps the wrists of Adam and Eve in the Paschal icon of the Harrowing of Hades, as He raises their souls from death to life and from Hades to heaven.

In the letter to the Hebrews, which speaks of the Saviour as our Passover and High Priest, the Apostle Paul writes that “The blood of Christ . . . will purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:14), and in the Paschal canon, we sing of Pascha (the new Passover) as “a Pascha of purification”.

We will only understand Pascha and the Mystery of the Resurrection if we struggle to serve the Living Lord, as those who have been purchased and cleansed by Christ’s Blood, and heed the call of the Paschal Canon:

“Let us purify our senses, and we shall behold Christ, radiant with the unapproachable light of the Resurrection, and we shall clearly hear Him say, Rejoice! as we sing the hymn of victory.”

Struggling for this purification, and confessing and repenting when we fall, are the means by which the Resurrection will have an abiding and continuing reality in our lives, and is the only path by which we can hope to be partakers and behold Christ the Conqueror of death.

Now, in the quiet of Holy and Bright Monday, and in the days of the Paschal Season that lie before us, we must contemplate, evaluate, and struggle for this purification, as day-by-day, we sing the Paschal hymns, so that Christ’s victory may trample down all that is fallen and sinful within us, and that He may raise us up, even in this earthly life, to renewed life in Him.

As we sing the Paschal Canon, which is profitable every day in this holy season, we should reflect upon the chains and snares which hold us captive: our bad habits, habitual sins, the recurring temptations, and, perhaps passions which hold us as slaves, not to life, but to a living-death and to the evil one.

We must turn to the Lord, asking Him to grant us freedom from the chains of our sins, just as He freed the righteous in Hades from the captivity of death, knowing that this liberation must come by our fulfilling His will in struggling for purity and fighting temptation, seeking to make each day a day of resurrection.

As much as in the Great Fast, this is a time for struggle – a resurrectional struggle for the freedom which the Lord’s glorious Rising brings: a season for positive, affirmative action in which the joy of the resurrection is reflected in every aspect of our lives.

With St John Chrysostom, we face hell and death knowing that, the great final victory is already won, but that the stealer of souls will do everything to rob us and our brothers and sisters of the new life that the risen Lord brings.

Preserving humility and knowing our weakness, we must find our strength in the risen and victorious Lord, and armed with the cry of victory – “Christ is Risen!” – we must be bold and courageous knowing what Christ has gained for us, and boldly and confidently say,

“O death, where is thy sting?

O hades, where is thy victory?

Christ is risen, and thou art cast down.

Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen.

Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice.

Christ is risen, and life flourisheth.

Christ is risen, and there is none dead in the tombs.

For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of them that have fallen asleep.”

Let us unite ourselves to the Lord’s victory and third-day rising from the Tomb, and recognise the Resurrection as a constant living reality and not a just future event: as our birthright and calling by the Lord of Life, in Whom all things are made new.

May Christ our true God, Who rose from the dead, and trampled down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowed life, through the intercessions of His most pure Mother, of the holy and glorious Apostles, of our holy and God-bearing fathers, David, Dyfrig and Teilo, and of all the saints, have mercy upon us and save us, for He is good and He loveth mankind. Amen!

On the Raising of Lazarus

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In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Today’s celebration of the raising of the Holy and Righteous Lazarus reverberates with joy, as a foretaste of Pascha, but only as a partial one, in as much as the flesh and bones of Lazarus-of-the-Four-Days were still to once again feel the kiss of death, and to await the final resurrection to which the Lord’s Pascha calls each of us!
In this “little-Pascha” at Bethany, the excitement of a four-day-dead corpse wondrously restored to life by being powerfully and authoritatively ordered to come out from the tomb, sets the scene for the wild excitement of Palm Sunday, as the news of the miracle spread, and the worldly expectations of the populace of Jerusalem and its environs became a frenzy.
Buoyed by the raising of Lazarus the crowds were ready to cry and chant “hosanna”, and “Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord!” yet in their excited frenzy they had little understanding of Who the wonderworker of Bethany really was.
They failed to truly recognise the nature of His entrance into Jerusalem, and that the Saviour Who went to His voluntary passion possessed the authority over life and death, as had already been shown in those commanding words, “Lazarus, come forth!”
Unlike those who waved branches and spread their cloaks before the Messiah, we know the tortuous and painful events that will unfold in the coming week, and we understand their meaning. 
We understand that the Lord rides into the Holy City not to overthrow worldly  powers and establish an earthly kingdom, but rather to open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.
The bloody and humiliating spectacle of Passion Week that shocked, confused and scandalised the very same people who rushed to Bethany to see the risen Lazarus and to shout “hosanna”, convinced many of them that the Saviour was a failure and even a fraud, Whom they would call the authorities to crucify.
They clearly forgot the image of the Suffering-Servant and the prophetic words of Isaiah concerning the Messiah, “He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.”
The excited crowds failed to understand, that the prophecies and figures of the Old Covenant had already told of His approaching blessed silence, humility, sacrificial love and obedience in the days following the raising of Lazarus and the entrance into Jerusalem.
“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.”
In His sacrificial suffering, every blow, every wound, every insult convinces us of the absolute power of Christ’s love to destroy death and shatter the gates of Hades, and having called Lazarus from the dead, the Saviour’s own willingness to enter into the darkness of death, allowed Him show the power of His self-effacing love to not only destroy death, but also to renew creation and raise it to the very heights of heaven.
The mocking and torture, the spitting, insults and punches, the whipping, the crown of thorns, the Cross, the nails, the spear and death – were all endured so that the wonderful but incomplete and partial resurrection of St Lazarus might be superseded and replaced by resurrection to the eternal life of the age to come.
Such was the Saviour’s love for Lazarus, His friend, that He wept and was seized with sorrow, temporarily overturning death for the sake of His love, but this raising was also for the sake of His disciples and those who crowded around Him, as a concrete demonstration and promise of the resurrection of the dead.
But, the events of Passion Week would even more forcefully demonstrate the power of this Divine Love, as the Saviour offered Himself, so that what Lazarus received as a prophetic foretaste of the resurrection, would be a common gift for all of humanity: not as an earthly reprieve, but as the blessing of eternal, heavenly life.
It is by the Lord’s tasting the very death from which He had called His beloved friend that we receive His calling to this new and eternal life.
Unlike the branch-waving, hosanna-shouting crowds, and also unlike the devil and murderer-of-souls, we know that the Saviour, Who today called Lazarus from the tomb, used His own flesh and humanity as the very bait that would be deadly poisonous and would choke Hades.
We  know that in swallowing Him, as the earth quaked,  the sun was eclipsed, the Veil of the Temple was torn asunder and the bodies of the saints arose, Hades choked on Christ our Life, and could not endure the body of the Word-Made-Flesh, but spewed forth the righteous dead as the Giver of Life stripped it bare.
As Christian’s, like Lazarus, we too have received a foretaste of new life in as much as the risen Saviour has called us by baptism into His death and resurrection.
Lazarus came forth from the tomb and the darkness of death, but we have come forth from the waters of baptism, having been baptised into the dying and rising of Christ.
Through that baptismal descent, the Lord has called us to die to the old man and be restored to newness of life in the power of His resurrection, as children of the resurrection, even though we still abide on earth. 
But for what have we emerged from this death to the old me and new life in Christ? 
To what life have we emerged from our baptismal foretaste and calling to the resurrection?
Lazarus emerged from the tomb for a life of devoted apostolic ministry, preaching the message of Christ, the Light, the Way, the Truth, the Resurrection and the Life, but has the renewing power and grace of our baptismal resurrection given us drive, direction and the desire to reflect the risen Lord in our earthly lives?
After that first Pascha, the righteous Lazarus, laboured not only in the light of the Lord’s third day arising, but also in the light of his own earthly taste of restored life-in-Christ, with the ultimate meaning of his new life in Christ being the resurrection of the age to come. 
Though none of us have received the cold kiss of death, and the embrace of the grave, as did Lazarus, our baptism nevertheless calls us to live in the light of the resurrection of Christ, every hour and every day of our lives in Him. 
We must ask ourselves how our earthly lives have been changed by the resurrectional vocation of our baptism, and its call to heavenly life, and whether we are striving and struggling towards the reality of the resurrection in our daily lives, knowing that there is also a resurrection to a life which will not be with the risen Lord, “those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation” among the goats on the left side?
We must live and struggle in the light of the resurrection, hoping to abide with the Lord, with Lazarus and the company of the saints who died and rose in Christ.
Through the intercessions of Thy beloved friend, St. Lazarus, О Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.

Celebrating the Annunciation With Joy

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And after those days Elisabeth the wide of Zacharia conceived, and hid herself five months, saying,Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men. And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

Luke 1:24-38

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Greetings as we celebrate the feast of the Annunciation and the Synaxis of the Holy Archangel Gabriel.

How wonderful it was to be blessed with a warm, sunny spring day to celebrate the great and salvific event that marks the spring-time of God’s plan of salvation, reflecting the words of the Church Fathers, for whom this feast was one of great importance and radiant joy.

In his first festal homily, St Gregory the Wonderworker says, “Today is the glad spring-time to us, and Christ the Sun of righteousness has beamed with clear light around us, and has illumined the minds of the faithful.”

With similar words, St John of Damascus writes that, “Today, from the cold winter, the warm and flowery spring has shown forth, and the golden sun of rejoicing and happiness has dawned for us.”

In his festal encomium, St John joyfully recognises that this feast, and the Saviour’s conception by the Mother of God is the great and cosmic  turning-point in the history of creation and humanity, and that the fall and estrangement of the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve is already undone in the Mother of God’s humble acceptance of the Archangel’s message.

“Today, God-planted Eden is re-opened, and due to His goodness and love for man, God-fashioned Adam, enters again to dwell within.

Today, the forefather’s condemnation of sorrow is dissolved, and the corrupting exile and arduous penance of Eve ceases.”

This again mirrors the words of St Gregory.

“Today is Adam made anew, and moves in the choir of angels, having winged his way to heaven.”

The Annunciation is hymned by St John Damascene as a cosmic moment of restoration to which the past looked forward and to which the future and present look back.

Though the fruit of the Mother of God’s fiat had to await fulfilment in the saving death and resurrection of the Saviour, by her acceptance of the divine message, she already forcefully placed her foot upon the head of the serpent.

Whilst St Gregory writes that,“ Most of the holy fathers, and patriarchs, and prophets desired to see Him, and to be eye-witnesses of Him, but did not attaint hereto…”, St John Damascene sees the Annunciation as the joyful and wonderful moment in which the patriarchs and prophets see the fulfilment of their far off vision of the Virgin, who will conceive and bear a Child, and participate by their anticipation of the mystery of the feast: “Today, the holy book of the Prophets from all time, is brought amidst us, and each of them proclaims before-hand the grace of this Feast.

In heaven and on earth, angels and saints, people high and low, old and young, across centuries, across continents and lands, are united in jubilation, and as creation is exulted, heaven and earth join in celebration, rejoicing in the hidden and silent reality of the physical beginning of our salvation in the flesh, known at first only to the Mother of God herself.

“Rejoice, O Full-of-grace, for the King of all was adorned with a body [through thee] as if adorned with a royal purple robe.”

What joyful voices are heard in hymns and homilies, and in the akathist hymn to the Most Holy Theotokos, whose words by St Romanos the Melodist were heard in our churches only a few days ago.

An Archangel was sent from Heaven to say to the Mother of God: Rejoice! And seeing Thee, O Lord, taking bodily form, he was amazed and with his bodiless voice he stood crying to her such things as these:

Rejoice, thou through whom joy will shine forth: rejoice, thou through whom the curse will cease!

Rejoice, raising of fallen Adam: rejoice, redemption of the tears of Eve!

Rejoice, height hard to climb for the thoughts of men: rejoice, depth hard to scan even for the eyes of Angels!

Rejoice, for thou art the throne of the King: rejoice, for thou upholdest Him Who upholdeth all!

Rejoice, star that bringeth the Sun: rejoice, womb of the divine incarnation!

Rejoice, thou through whom creation is made new: rejoice, thou through whom we worship the Creator!

Rejoice, thou Bride unwedded!

Reflecting on the joyful triumph of the Annunciation, we should each examine how we have celebrated in our homes and families, what it means to each of us, and whether we have fittingly greeted the Mother of God and her feast with worthy celebratory words and prayers.

Indeed, have we even made any time in our day or evening to celebrate the feast, or have we put our routines, comforts and interests above reverencing the Mother of God, and even finding half and hour in which to honour her?

Did we spend any time explaining this feast to our children, and have our parish families prayed together, if only to read the Gospel and say the troparion and kontakion – something quite simple at a shared meal, which should ideally be part of the celebration of every Great Feast?

Have we greeted the Mother of God with a joy that raises our souls, hearts and minds in celebration?

If the answers our negative or admit negligence, if we have failed to even make our children aware of the feast, if our families have not managed a single prayer together – then we must ask why, and how we can consider this acceptable?

How do we call ourselves Christians and neglect the Mother of God, who offered her life for each and every one of us, so that our Saviour and Redeemer could be clothed in our flesh, so that it might be translated into the glory of heaven as the sign of our invitation and calling to the heavenly life.

How is it that the Christians of past centuries celebrated this feast with such great rejoicing, and that it filled them with joy, hope and encouragement in the Christian life, yet we fail to fitly celebrate the great feast as an offering to the Theotokos, the Mother of our Salvation.

St John of Damascus presumed that his hearers, whatever their status – in their own personal way – would play their part in the laudations of the feast, confessing her as Theotokos, but approaching her not only as Mother of God, but also as the mother and protectress of each and every one of us.

Let us live up to his expectations and, rejoicing and celebrating the beginning of our salvation, let us hasten in the footsteps of the Holy Fathers to celebrate the glorious Annunciation, and echo the tidings of the Archangel Gabriel.

“Today, we and all men take up the Angel’s voice, and offer encomia like his, to her who is the forerunner of the taking away of the curse…

Rejoice, O Full-of-grace, O gate of those troubled and hope of those without hope, and the awesome protection for those who with good heart confess you to be the Theotokos.

Rejoice, O Full-of-grace, who bore the Master Who loves man for the salvation of our common race of men, and who entreats Him on behalf of everyone, as a Mother.”

Let us take up the Angel’s voice to fittingly and worthily celebrate the Annunciation in which  “our restoration hath now been revealed to us! God uniteth Himself to men in manner past recounting!  Falsehood is dispelled by the voice of the archangel! For the Virgin receiveth joy, an earthly woman hath become heaven!” 

(From the Aposticha of vespers)

Most Holy Mother of God, save us!

Amen.

Saint Philip, Metropolitan of Moscow & All Russia, the New Confessor.

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Dear brothers and sisters, greetings for the feast of the Holy New-Hieromartyr, Philip, Metropolitan of Moscow and All Rus.

He remains a great and inspiring model of Christian life for all of us, reminding us that it is our Christian duty to put the Law of God above all things, and to not turn aside from the precepts of Christ’s Gospel and our Christian principles to please and conform to the expectations of  “the world”.

Having exalted Truth and faithfulness to the Saviour and the Gospel above all earthly comforts, reputation, security and even life itself, St Philip reminds us that the Christian life is dangerous, if we live it properly.

His steadfast opposition to the tyranny and violence of Tsar Ivan, and his resulting martyrdom, showed that our discipleship has a cost, and we see this continuing in the world as employees, students and pupils, prospective adoptive parents, employment interviewees, Christian doctors, nurses and health care workers, and all manner of other people of Faith face persecution, exclusion and prejudice for their faithfulness to the Gospel and the Law of God.

Let us turn to St Philip, in prayer, for his help in our Christian witness, and for strength and faithfulness in times of uncertainty, injustice, inequality and tyranny, where the Herod’s and Caesars of government, globalism, world finance, international conglomerates, giant pharmaceutical companies and powerful NGO’s seek to mould humanity to their own image and conform it to their agendas.

Like St Philip, we are called to oppose falsehood with the Truth of Christ; darkness with the Light of Christ; the hate of the world with the Saviour’s love; and to oppose the fallen, perverted agendas of world powers with the Law of God – for like him, we belong to Christ, His Law is our law, and our Christian calling is to not be of this world, but as the Church to be the Saviour’s abiding Presence in the world.

The Church’s prophetic voice is needed, not simply through the giants like St Philip, but through each and everyone of us, however weak and seemingly insignificant we are. Together, we are the Church, and the gates of hell and death will not prevail against it!

May St Philip pray for us, and may his example give us the courage to live the Christian life with all of the risks and dangers that professing the Gospel and swimming against the political, sociological and ideological tide pose for us – and may we have the courage to do so heedless of the threats of governments, societies, and even those in the Church who oppose the Gospel with agendas that betray the Orthodox Faith of the Holy Fathers, of the Sacred Councils, and of the Saints, among whom St Philip is glorified.

Holy Hieromartyr and Wonderworker Philip, pray to God for us!

Christ is Born! Glorify Him By Your Love!

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In the Name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Dear brothers and sisters:  Christ is Born! Glorify Him!

How blessed we have been to have such wonderful Nativity services in the Oratory Church, blessed by the warmth and generosity of the Oratorian Fathers, knowing that St Alban’s is a place where we are welcome: a place of love, generosity and boundless good will – reflecting the love which is the very meaning of the Incarnation of the Saviour, and of His glorious Nativity.

We celebrate the Nativity as the feast of Love-Incarnate, born in Bethlehem and laid in a manger, where we see the realisation of God’s immeasurable and selfless Incarnate-Love in action: love, which is neither abstract, nor an emotion, feeling or sentiment, but Love Who is a Person – and not any person, but the Creator-Saviour of all things, coming and dwelling among us, through Whom the whole Holy Trinity loves us and embraces us from within humanity itself – as Emmanuel: “God with us”!

Though we shall never be able to fully comprehend the depth of that Incarnate-Love, born in the lowly Bethlehem stable and laid in the manger, we know that it was so strong that the Only-Begotten Son and Word of God came down to earth from heaven, and was ready to not only become man, but the Man of Sorrows, Who would be mocked and beaten, and go to the Life-Giving Cross like a lamb to the slaughter, with love so unshakeable and immovable that He would remain silent, enduring torture and the agony of the Cross for us: agony because He did not simply look human, but was truly human.

Love and mercy would render Almighty God mute and silent, as the works of His own hands beat Him, mocked Him, spat in His face, wounded and pierced Him: such was the power and enormity of His love!

In Him, born in the cave and laid in the manger, we see Love-Incarnate, Who accepted a human heart to overflow with love for His whole creation, and to be pierced on the Cross not only by salvific-love, but by the cold iron of the centurion’s lance;

Love-Incarnate Whose human hands reached out to heal and comfort;

Love-Incarnate Who accepted human feet, to journey the highways and bye-ways with His in His saving ministry of love and salvation, with human lips and tongue speaking the life-giving words of the Gospel;

Love-Incarnate Whose arms opened wide on the Cross to embrace the whole world;

Love-Incarnate Whose shoulders bore not only the Cross – the Tree of Life – but also the sin and weight of all humanity;

Love-Incarnate Whose body – victoriously lifted up on the Cross – flowed with the life-blood offered and shed in redemptive, sacrificial-love for us all.

In the Incarnation, we see the earthly manifestation of the love that is the very nature of God: eternally existing in the loving relationship of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the physical realisation of a love that is the bond of divine-unity, in the reciprocal, self-giving of each of the Divine persons of the Holy Trinity to one another.

From within this perfect but expansive Triune fellowship of love, it was in actively seeking to love something outside of His Triune self, that God created heaven and the earth, with creation as the physical manifestation and material realisation of His love: something external and other than Himself that He could love, care for and sustain.

Within this creation, humanity manifested God’s desire to not only have creation to love, but to have a reciprocal and personal loving relationship with His creation. God created man to love Him, to be loved by Him and to be in a relationship of loving communion!

When humanity rebelled and fell away from God, His wonderful, all-embracing love then became the very meaning of the economy of salvation and the wonder of the Incarnation.

In a divine reaching-down to redeem and restore, this love was the very reason that God entered into creation in humanity itself, clothing Himself in human nature to heal and restore mankind, not to an earthly paradise, but to something far greater: the eternal glory of the Kingdom of Heaven.

As we joyfully announce “Christ is Born!” we contemplate the beginning of this heavenly calling and heavenward journey, lying quietly in the manger, as a new-born babe but a few hours old, worshipped by shepherds and given precious gifts by the eastern magi.

But beyond this apparent newness of this life, we recognise the Pre-Eternal Son, the Word of God, Who created heaven and the earth, and know that the Christ-Child is the same Lord, Who is the maker of heaven and earth,

Yahweh-the-Lord walking and talking with Adam and Eve in the coolness of the day;

the same Lord Who visited Abraham and Sarah to promise them a son and Who stopped the sacrificial hand of Abraham to save Isaac;

the same Lord Who wrestled with Jacob at Bethel;

the same Lord Who spoke to Moses from the Burning Bush and gave Him the Law on Sinai;

the same Lord Whom Ezekiel saw upon the awesome chariot-throne in the heavens;

and the same Lord Who Daniel encountered in the Ancient of Days.

As St John Chrysostom preached in his His Homily on the Nativity:

“The Ancient of Days has become an infant. The One seated on a high and exulted throne is now lying in a manger. The One Who cannot be touched and is bodiless is now held in human hands. The One Who breaks the chains of sin is now wrapped in swaddling clothes, for this is what He willed. He desired to transform dishonour into glory, to clothe shame with splendour, and to show the power of virtue through the humble form of a servant.”

And the whole meaning of this divine condescension can be encapsulated and summarised in that one word, LOVE: love which seeks not justice for humanity, but to overflow with God’s mercy and compassion, and His desire to restore the loving communion which He established when He created man from the dust of the earth and breathed into His nostrils the breath of life.

As we celebrate the Nativity, we must remind ourselves that God created humanity to not simply be a passive and inert recipient of His love, but to grow in perfection and holiness within the relationship and the communion it had, and still continues to have with Him – for despite the fall, and consequential sin and death, our All-Loving God has not abandoned this intention.

In the Incarnation He has restated this calling, through

“The Word of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.”

(St Irenaeus of Lyons: Against Heresies, Book 5, Preface)

The Incarnation, the Nativity and the whole economy of salvation were acts of God’s new creation, to put right what had gone wrong – our calling to restoration through the Lord’s conjoining of our humanity with His divinity.

Through His love, we continue to be called to be children of God in eternal communion and blessedness with Him, and adopted children and heirs of the promise, called to grow in perfection, holiness, and perfect love.

But, unless we live to love not only God, but also one another, the Nativity and Incarnation become meaningless, as we fail to be icons of the Incarnate Word Who has ordered us,

“A new commandment “I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”

(John 13:34-35, Matthew 22:34-40)

If we fail to love and thereby obey this divine command, we reject the Nativity, and as much as we celebrate the wonder of the birth of Christ, our hymns of praise will be hollow, our prayers meaningless, and our offerings an insult to our Saviour and Lord.

Whether the birth of the Saviour and the Incarnation have any real meaning in our lives will be reflected in whether we accept or reject God’s commandment to love not only Him, but also our neighbour.

By loving, or not loving, we choose whether we accept or reject the Prince of Peace, and whether His birth has any meaning and real significance in our lives.

We repeatedly greet one another and proclaim the feast with the joyful proclamation, “Christ is born!” and the joyful answer’ “Glorify Him!”, but we can only glorify Him if the love of His Incarnation is reflected and manifested in our lives, as the bond of communion, kinship, solidarity and unity with one another as well as with God.

If Christ truly dwells within us, each of our hearts must be a fitful and worthy manger, in which love abides as the condition for His Presence. His expansive and limitless love can only coexist with our reciprocal love, reflecting Him in our lives.

We must each proactively reflect the love-in-action of His Incarnation, and the world must encounter God’s love in us, not as something theoretical but real and tangible, through which the world knows that we are disciples of the Lord, Who was born in Bethlehem to call us to the glory of the Kingdom.

Not only our mouths, but also our deeds must gratefully and lovingly announce “Christ is Born!” and each day of our lives must proclaim “Glorify Him!” And, let them be lives of gratitude to the Lord, Who came from heaven to raise us to its glorious heights.

“Let us not be ungrateful to the Benefactor, but rather bring forth, as much as we are able, faith, hope, love, chastity, mercy, and kindness.”

(St John Chrysostom: Homily on the Day of the Nativity of Christ)

May our love proclaim the wonder of the Incarnation, and that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us; full of grace and truth.”

Love was His meaning. Let it be our meaning, also – living and abiding in us, for His sake and to His glory.

Amen!

From Ur to Bethlehem: Humanity’s Salvific Journey of Faith

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In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Dear brothers and sisters, on this forefeast of Christmas, as the white vestments of the clergy proclaim the nearness of the Lord’s Nativity, the ancient pre-festal hymns of the Church urge us to make ready and hasten to the city of David, and for Bethlehem itself and the land of Judah to be ready for the coming of the promised Saviour,

“Make ready, O Bethlehem, Eden hath been opened unto all. Prepare, O Ephratha, for the Tree of life hath blossomed in the cave from the Virgin…” 

“Гото́вися, Вифлее́ме, отве́рзися всем, Еде́ме, красу́йся, Евфра́фо, я́ко дре́во живота́ в верте́пе процвете́ от Де́вы…”

In the aposticha of vespers we hear,

“Behold, the hour of our salvation draweth nigh! Make ready, O cave, for the Virgin approacheth to give birth!

Се вре́мя прибли́жися спасе́ния на́шего, гото́вися, верте́пе, Де́ва приближа́ ется роди́ти…”

… and today’s pre-festal matins canon urges the created world and its people to celebrate because the Saviour is nearly here, even calling past generations to rejoice.

“Ye mountains and hills, fields and vales, people and generations, nations and every creature: exult, filled with divine gladness, for the deliverance of all, the Word of God, the Timeless One, Who in His loving-kindness hath come under time, doth come with haste.”

“Горы ́и хо́лми, поля́ и де́бри, лю ́дие и коле́на, язы ́цы и вся́кое дыха́ние, воскли́кните, весе́лия Боже́ственнаго исполня́еми: прии́де и приспе́ всех избавле́ние, Сло́во Бо́жие Безле́тное, под ле́том за милосе́рдие бы ́вшее.”

In today’s Gospel of Christ’s forebears, called to “exult, filled with divine gladness…”, we have heard great names from among these generations, from Abraham, called to be the the Father of the Promise, through the centuries Christ’s ancestors who were God’s human-preparation for the moment in which Godhood – divinity – would be joined with humanity, and born as a little Child, both divine and human and laid in a manger.

Once again, we have heard the familiar poetry of the genealogy of the generations of the ancestors of Christ: how “Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren…”, and in the succeeding generations, we have heard familiar names – Jesse, David, Solomon – as well as unfamiliar names, encountering the Old Testament and the Old Covenant established through Abraham, as the unfolding history of our salvation, as humanity drew closer and closer to the birth of the Saviour.

The oikos of the canon, addressing the Mother of God goes even further than this, saying that “the God-loving Abraham, the ever-memorable Isaac, Jacob and all the divinely assembled choir of saints rejoice, and, with joyous utterances, they lead creation forth to meet thee.” 

…a powerful image, teaching us that in God’s plan of salvation, not only humanity, but the whole of creation is led forward, towards the Mother of God and to Christ her newborn Son by the very generations of holy fathers that we commemorate in these Sundays before the Nativity.

These generations of the Messiah’s ancestors are God’s saving plan in action, and a reminder that though humanity was banished from paradise, that same humanity was NOT banished from taking a central place and an essential part in His plan of salvation.

Even though the fiery angel stood at the gates of Eden to stop exiled mankind returning to the Tree of Life, and  even though humanity was banished from Paradise, at the same time, human nature was being used by God to bring  His plan of salvation to fruition and realisation.

The All-Loving God, would not save humanity from the outside, through an external act of salvation. No! He would save humanity and the world from from the inside, having chosen that Abraham and his descendants would not only be included in His plan of salvation, but that they would be vital and absolutely necessary for this to be accomplished.

In an act of sacrificial-love, God Himself would not simply come and dwell within the human world, as a divine visitor, but would go so far as to to clothe Himself in humanity; the Creator putting on creation… and the Creator-Messiah-Saviour, would lift up His creation with Himself on the Cross; would restore that creation through His life-giving death; would raise that creation with Himself in His third-day Resurrection; and would translate that creation, in His humanity to the heights of heaven.

Abraham led his family and tribe from Ur, in Chaldea, to new life in Israel; Moses led the children of Israel from captivity to the freedom of new life in the Promised Land; but Christ, the God-Man, born in the cave and laid in the manger, came to ultimately lead His people not to an earthly promised land, but to everlasting glory and eternal life of the Kingdom of Heaven.

In history, time and space, the Creator-Saviour a set this heavenward journey of humanity into motion in the calling of Abraham to leave his homeland, to journey to a new land, with the divine promise, that in him, all the people of the world would be blessed.

Thus, we could say that the human-journey to Bethlehem began when Abraham was obedient to God.

The humanity that the Pre-Eternal Son put on in the womb of the Mother of God, through her obedience to God’s calling, is the fruit of Abraham’s obedience and faith, and the obedience and faith of all of those generations that link Abraham to Christ.

Starting with Abraham, today’s reading from St Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews says that,

By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country…

By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac…

By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come. 

By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph…

By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel…

By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents

And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and of Samson, and of Jephthah; of David also, and Samuel, and of the prophets: Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions. Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens. 

Faith is the constant thread that runs through these successive generations, and the relationship of the righteous ancestors of Christ with God was built on the rock of this faith, but despite this, we hear, “And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise…”

Although they were essential to the promise, and though it came through them, they could not see that promise in their earthly lives, as Christ deigned that He would come after them in their flesh, but we rejoice that the day of their rejoicing did come when the Lord’s Body was placed not in the manger, but in the Life-Giving Tomb, in soul He descended into the depths of Hades, and stripped it bare of all of His righteous ancestors, who had played their part in the Divine plan to redeem mankind, and though they await the resurrection of the body, they dwell in heaven with Him Who their Lord and God, and yet also their own child, their own flesh and kin through the wonder of the Incarnation and the Nativity

When the Word became flesh in the wonder of the Incarnation, He was flesh of their flesh and bone of their bone, put on, in humility for their sake, and for their salvation.

When the Saviour spoke the saving words of the Gospel, it was with the tongue and lips that He – in divine humility – received from His forefathers.

When the Saviour walked through the towns and villages of Palestine, and even when He walked upon the waves of the see, it was on the feet that He – in divine humility – had received from His forefathers.

When the Saviour, touched the sick and healed them, when He took morsels of food and fed thousands, when He broke the bread and blessed the wine of the Last Supper, it was with the hands that He – in divine humility – received from His forefathers.

When the crown of thorns was thrust down upon His head, it was the head that He – in divine humility – received from His forefathers.

When He opened His arms wide on the Cross for the sake of the whole word, they were arms that He – in divine humility – received from His forefathers.

When saving and life-giving blood and water flowed from His pierced side, it was blood and water, which – in divine humility – He received from His forefathers.

When the Lord rose from the dead, and Thomas felt the wounds in His limbs, and placed his hand on the wound in the Saviour’s side, it was the risen, triumphant and risen body, that the Giver of Life – in divine humility – had received from His forefathers.

And when the Lord ascends in glory, surrounded by the holy angels, and takes human nature into heaven, to be glorified by all of the angelic ranks, it is the humanity that He, not only in divine-humility, but also in His sacrificial love received from His forefathers.

This is His sign of the final fulfilment of His promise to Abraham, which is ultimately not earthbound, terrestrial and material, but heavenly and spiritual.

In embracing humanity, and making that humanity part of His divine plan and economy of salvation, God calls the forefathers, the righteous of both the Old Covenant and circumcision, and the New Covenant through Holy Baptism, to be with Him in the everlasting glory of the age to come.

It is through the faith, obedience, and sacrifices of the forefathers, that we now approach the Nativity to worship and adore the new born Saviour together with the shepherds and the magi, celebrating all who were not simply human details in God’s divine plan, but the very rungs on which God came down from earth to heaven, to be Emmanuel: God With Us.

And it is through the willing and devoted part of the holy fathers in the divine plan, that we are called with them, not to an earthly paradise, but to the eternal glory of heaven to be with God, Who calls us to be children and heirs of the promise.

Amen!

Greetings For St Spyridon: Съ праздникомъ!

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Dear fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, Съ праздникомъ!

Greetings for this radiant feast of St Spyridon, especially to Father Spyridon. Many, blessed years, dear Father!

It is always a joy to arrive at the feast of St Spyridon, and to see how God can take the lowly and seemingly ordinary, and make it into something not only glorious, but in the case of our beloved saint and heavenly-intercessor, into a radiant beacon of the Faith celebrated throughout the whole Christian world.When we regard many hierarch-saints of the Church, we are talking of men of learning, trained in universities and the great theological schools; men of letters and spiritual literati who left writings and books of spiritual counsel, scriptural exegesis, or dogmatic theology; bishops, archbishops and patriarchs who counselled emperors, kings and princes…

Then we encounter our beloved St Spyridon: a simple Cypriot shepherd; a widowed husband and father; a family man with a sense of communitas, who used what God had given him and what he earned from his own labours for the relief of the poor, to feed the hungry, to help his neighbours, to assist the homeless, to reach out to those in need.

He had not studied in the ancient universities; Plato and Aristotle, Homer and the wealth of classical Greek learning were not the foundation of his “education”; rhetoric, logic and mathematics were far from his formation and world; he had not spent his years learning oratory and philosophy among the bright young minds of the Hellenic world.

No! As a family man and as a shepherd protecting and caring for his beloved sheep, learning from the Gospel, and taught by the Saviour in the power of the Holy Spirit, the great wonderworker and shepherd of souls was a “home grown” spiritual force and bearer of the Light of Christ.

In English, we have a proverb that you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear… but time and again we see that in spiritual terms, this proverb is earthbound, wrong and mistaken, in as much as God constantly affects this transformation.

Our All-Powerful and All-Merciful God took the dust of the ground, and fashioned man, the very apex of creation, and his created humanity became the chosen robe of the Saviour in which He ascended the Cross, conquered hell and death, rose again and ascended into heaven, where that glorified humanity (once nothing but dust) is worshipped by the angelic hosts.

Having received the joyful proclamation of the archangel, and having conceived Christ within her womb, the All-Holy Mother of God proclaimed the upside-down-ness of the Gospel, as God exults the humble and meek, as He most certainly did with St Spyridon, whose lack of learning and cultural sophistication was no obstacle to God.

After the death of his wife, during the reign of the Saint Constantine, the Equal-to the-Apostles (306-337), St Spyridon was elected and consecrated as bishop of Tremithus, where combined his hierarchical duties and pastoral service to the local Church with still going to care for his beloved sheep – wearing his famous plaited- straw shepherd’s hat.

What valuable spiritual lessons he must have learned from his shepherding labours: the need for nourishment, the vital necessity of assuaging the hunger and thirst of his sheep, the threat of wolves and predators, how to defend and protect his flock – all vital lessons for him as a bishop and shepherd of souls with his human flock.

His hierarchical service was one of great simplicity, in which God’s power and confirmation of his great holiness was constantly seen, as was evident at the First Ecumenical Council, where St Spyridon confuted the heresy of Arius not with eloquent words, but with a simple miracle. Taking a brick from which water trickled and fire shot out, leaving nothing but the dust in his hand, St Spyridon said simply and boldly, “There was only one brick, but it was composed of three elements. In the Holy Trinity there are three Persons, but only one God.”

Imploring and receiving God’s help in times of both drought and crop-destroying rains, healing the sick, casting out demons and even raising the dead, St Spyridon lived for his flock, among his flock, and with his flock – not as a great prelate and prince of the Church, but as a humble spiritual-shepherd.

His earthly falling asleep did not bring his miraculous care to an end, but rather, freed St Spyridon to work greater wonders for those who have and still turn to him in faith and in need, and with his relics having been taken to Corfu (though his right hand in is Rome), he wondrously and lovingly embraced the island and its people, saving them for the Ottomans and caring for them for centuries, as a father caring for his children.

It is the joy of so many Christians, to be able to make their pilgrimage to Corfu to venerate his darkened but incorrupt relics, knowing that St Spyridon is not only constantly praying for us, but constantly helping us, wherever we are.

God truly shows the wonder of Faith and the power of Christian holiness in St Spyridon, and he is a reminder that true theology comes from our intimate, loving relationship with the Living-God; not learned from books and lectures; not as the fruit of study; that it does not depend on intelligence or intellectual prowess; that it is not a system of sacred, dogmatic theory – but is rather the realisation of a life dedicated wholly and solely to God, in which the Divine will and human will have been joined in a sacred union, and in which God indwells in His beloved children, revealing profound truth and manifesting His Grace.

In St Spyridon we see that love, charity, compassion and mercy are not theories, but actions, and that the Sermon on the Mount is not a series of lofty ideals, but a command to go out and do all of the things with the Saviour will bring blessedness.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Like St Nicholas, celebrated less than a week ago, St Spyridon is not only the concrete demonstration of Faith-in-action, but a sign of how ordinary people like us can be raised up to the glory of God, becoming living manifestation of His love, vessels of His Grace and beacons of Truth.

It was not the simple, unsophisticated “Spyridons” of the ancient world who proposed heretical teachings, and attacked the Church, but the learned intellectuals of the academies, with their knowledge of the classics, their skills in logic, rhetoric, oration, philosophy and academic theology. The arch-schismatics and arch-heresiarchs were men of learning and intellect – as are those attacking the Church in Ukraine, today, and betraying Orthodoxy in the ecumenical melting-pot of compromise.

Thus, though the Church will always need it’s “Chrysostoms”, “Gregories” and “Basils”, it increasingly needs its “Spyridons”: home-grown people who aspire to serve the Church in holiness, selfless giving, defence of Truth and the fullness of Orthodoxy.

The Church needs “Spyridons” to say NO to compromise, to renovationism, to betrayal of Orthodoxy in the name of modernism, reform, or false-science.

Whether our lowly “Spyridons” are lay people or clergy, men, women or children – the Church needs us to selflessly dedicate ourselves to the Lord with fervent Faith, built on the Gospel, on the fulness of Orthodox Tradition, and always in pursuit of love, truth and peace – and always defending our Faith!

Let us be inspired – to prayer, to selfless love, to charity and works of mercy, to serving the Church and defending it by that wonderful name and glorious example of our Orthodox Christian Faith: ST SPYRIDON!

In Christ – Hieromonk Mark

Troparion, Tone IV: The truth of things revealed thee to thy flock as a rule of faith, * icon of meekness, and teacher of temperance; * wherefore, thou hast attained the heights through humility and riches through poverty; * O hierarch Spyridon our father, ** entreat Christ God, that our souls be saved.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

Troparion, Tone I: Thou wast shown forth as a champion of the first Council * and a wonderwork­er, O Spiridon, our God-bearing father. *Wherefore, thou didst speak to one dead in the grave, * and didst change a serpent into gold. * And, whilst chanting thy holy prayers, thou didst have angels serving with thee, O most sacred one. * Glory to Him that hath given thee strength! * Glory to Him that hath crowned thee! **Glory to Him that worketh healings for all through thee!

Now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. AmenContinue reading →

The Nativity of the Mother of God – a Fountain of Blessing and Joy

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In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Dear brothers and sisters, Greetings for the Great-Feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God.

Though we celebrate this feast when the green of summer is fading, the natural world beginning to look tired, with the days becoming cooler and the nights darker, the Nativity of the Mother of God is the springtime of our salvation – a spiritual turning point in the existence and history of the human race.

The Holy Church celebrates this feast with great joy and solemnity – a joy which those outside the Church, and those lacking the Orthodox mind of the Church may fail to understand.

We have every reason to be joyful and see in the Nativity of the Mother of God a wondrous event that touches and embraces all of creation.

Our holy father, St John the Wonderworker of Kronstadt wrote that,

“The event that we celebrate – the birth of the God-Chosen maiden – brought joy to all the world, for the God-Man, Jesus Christ, Who shone forth from Her, destroyed God’s curse which weighed heavily upon the transgressing and accursed human race, and brought God’s blessing upon it; having trampled down inherent death, He gave people eternal life. Thus the Holy Church explains the cause of the present joy.”

This feast marks the advent of the Mother of God as the means of the Incarnation of the God-Man, and she would come in her own right to be part of the undoing of the curse that entered the world through the tempting of the serpent and the disobedience of Adam and Eve.

At the very time of the disobedience of the First-Father and the First-Mother, God looked forward to the Incarnation, through the Most-Holy Virgin, and spoke of this day to the tempter and deceiver.

To quote our newly-glorified Father, Saint Cleopa of Sihăstria–

“Understand, dear brothers, that God opened His Divine plan for the salvation of the world through the Theotokos already at the beginning of the world, when He told Eve that her seed would crush the serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15). For about Christ it was said “Seed of the Woman” as having been born not from the seed of a man. At the very beginning of the world the All-Good God already through the old Eve in this mysterious way pointed to the new, spiritual Eve, that is to the Mother of God, able to bear in the fullness of time the New Adam, Christ, Who by His Incarnation crushed the head of the serpent, and death, and sin, for as in Adam all die, so in Christ all are quickened (cf. 1 Cor. 15:22).”

In His Divine Humility and sacrificial, self-effacing love, God’s salvific plan – of which the serpent was warned – required both sonship and motherhood: a Divine-Human birth in the fulness (not simply the appearance) of human nature and existence; a Saviour born in the flesh as the New Adam, and from the womb of the New Eve.

We should be in awe of the fact that God – limitless, almighty, immortal, beyond comprehension – decided that the Fall, sin and death, should be healed, restored and undone through the cooperation and inclusion of the very humanity that had destroyed and lost the life of Paradise – through the Son of God putting on our human flesh.., the flesh that He created from the dust of the ground.

In the same homily quoted, St John of Kronstadt, reminds us that all of mankind is honoured and magnified through the Mother of God, “for it has been made worthy of renewal and sonship by God…” You and I, all of us assembled here are honoured and magnified, because through the Mother of God we become not only children of God, but are made new. Our human nature is honoured and magnified in her, who becamse the Mother of the God-Man who was made flesh and human through her birthgiving.

In that enfleshment, in His wisdom, God foreordained that the Mother of God would take not only a central, but an essential part in the realisation of His plan, the Economy of Salvation, and in her our humanity, opur human nature our own flesh – become an instrument of our own salvation, as God takes humanity and uses it as the remedy for its own fallen condition. God does not condemn this humanity simply because it has rebelled – simply because it is fallen, simply because it is diseased through sin.

After all, God is the Creator who made that humanity, and made it to be good, made it to be pure, made it to grow in holiness – not as something finished, even what we might describe as perfect. This humanity was open ended and intended to grow in holiness, developing from its infancy in Adam and Eve: a humanity filled with the potential to grow and be infused with God’s grace and holiness.

The fall of Adam and Eve, and even their banishment from Paradise did not suddenly mean that God wished to throw humanity away. Rather, as the loving father, as the creator and source of life – only bringing this humanity back, healing it and restoring it could be a reflection of God, Who is perfect and absolute love.

The limitlessness and even scandal of this love would be seen in God becoming incarnate, sharing in nature, so that humans might be restored and become gods by adoption – not by nature – of course – by their inclusion in His life, in their reflection of His glory, by their partaking of His Grace, by their presence in His holiness.

Without the inclusion of the Mother of God, this could not, and would not be possible, for to become human, the Only-Begotten Son and Word of God needed to be born of a human, and putting-on Adam’s flesh required the human-bridge linking earth to heaven: a living-door though which the Incarnate-God would enter the world to redeem it and to save.

Following God’s warning to the tempter-of-souls, God’s plan and economy of salvation unfolded century by century in the generations of the sons of Adam who were the ancestors of the Mother of God, and therefore ancestors of Christ, but this wonderful feast marks the manifest physical foundation of God’s plan for our salvation – for the restoration of fallen humanity, heralding the reversal of the Fall, the conquering of death, and the cleansing of sin, as the Mother of the Saviour – the New Adam – is born as the New Eve.

Born to childless Joachim and Anna, not simply as reward for their faith and as an answer to their prayers, but to be the Mother of the Saviour Himself, the Theotokos enters the world as a prologue of the Gospel, as God’s preparation for the incarnation and birth of the Christ-child in the cave of Bethlehem, where “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.”

In the birth of the Mother of God the “bridge leading from earth to heaven”, the “opening of the doors of paradise”, and the “door of salvation”, entered the world, and salvation drew nearer to the human race.

As such, this glorious feast is a herald not only of the Nativity of the Saviour, but also of the Life-Giving Cross and Resurrection, which proceed by God’s economy from this glorious feast, as the beginning of the last leg of the journey of Adam’s seed to Bethlehem, and thence to Jerusalem, for the Saviour’s Passion and third-day rising from the Tomb.

This gives us every reason to celebrate and every reason to be joyful.

St John of Kronstadt asks,

What joy does the Nativity of the Mother of God bring us?

Through the birth of the Ever-Virgin, through Her only-begotten Son and God, cursed and outcast mankind makes peace with God Who is immeasurably offended by man’s sins, for Christ became the mediator of this peace (cf. Rom. 5:10-11).

Man is freed from the curse and eternal death, made worthy of the blessing of the Heavenly Father; he is united and co-mingled with the Divine nature; he is raised to his first inheritance by this co-mingling, according to the Church hymn.

Mankind, once an outcast, has been made worthy of sonship to the Heavenly Father, received the promise of the glorious resurrection and eternal life in the heavens together with the angels.

But we should not only be asking what the feast brings to us.

We should also be asking ourselves, what we bring to the feast, and what we offer to the Mother of Gpd as we celebrate her Nativity.

The Venerable Elder Iachint of Putna (+1998) instructs us that as we rejoice in her birth, for joy would to be full,

“…we must follow her angelic life; that is, to become God-bearers by knowledge and the preserving of His commandments. After all, that is why God created us.”

The Mother of God laboured for holiness, rejected temptation and sin, and was not miraculously free of temptation through some sort of divine force-field, as proposed through those who propose the immaculate conception. Rather, the Mother of God was tempted as we are, and it was through spiritual heroism in a life of holiness and ascetic struggle that she remained free of sin. Her life calls us to emulate her in these thing, and if we ish to truly honour her on this joyful feast, we must not insult her by drawing close with lives that go against her example, and all that she offered to God.

With forceful and challenging words, the Elder continues, 

“Every Christian who listens to Christ, who loves the way of the Church, who lives with everyone in love, who renders mercy to the poor and hates nothing but sin is a true Christian – a Christ-bearer. But he who does not love the Church, who hates everyone and does not forgive, who does not confess, and does not unite himself with the Most Pure Mysteries is deprived of the grace of the Holy Spirit and left as prey for the devil, and rebels against Christ by his sins. 

Thus, if we want to bear Jesus Christ in our hearts, let us follow the example of the Mother of God, whose nativity we now celebrate. Let us bear the fear of God in our hearts. Let us bear in our souls Divine love. Ever bear in mind the thought of death, on our lips the words of holy prayer. Let us have tears of repentance in our eyes and on our face the joy of reconciliation and union with Christ. 

By mercy and prayer let us make our home a church, and not an infernal cave by drunkenness and lust. Let us make our arms a cradle for a child, and not an instrument of sin. Let us make our children into children of the Church and society, and not agents of destruction. 

If we thus live, we will become true God-bearers, and the Mother of God will be the most fervent intercessor for us, who by her prayers pours out the joy of Nazareth and prosperity in life upon us, and the bliss of Paradise will also be with us.”

Grant this, O Lord!

Amen.

 

St Mamas as a Model of Christian Obedience to Christ’s Calling

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Greetings for the feast of the Holy Martyr Mamas: a shining beacon of holiness and complete abandonment to God, despite his young years.

As the offspring of a family anchored in pure faith in the age of the martyrs, the youth, St Mamas, put nothing before his loyalty to Christ.

In today’s Gospel reading, we hear of the rich young man, who struggled with the thought of letting go of his wealth to follow the Lord: material wealth and security that came between him and life in Christ.

But… as we have reflected – year by year – for each of us who are far from rich, there may be an equivalent obstacle to abandoning ourselves to life in Christ and following Him freely with focus on Him alone.

Attachment to earthly comforts – our homes and possessions, our holidays and trips, our clothes and accessories, our social engagements and calendars, our careers and professional or social reputation – may all come between us and Christ, and be chains to the world that prevent us from true discipleship and honest service to the Lord. 

Even the most basic things – too much food, too much sleep, too much television, social media or computer consumption can come between us and Christ – who might say of each of us, that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for us – with our individual attachments, comforts and perhaps even passions – to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. 

We have to be clinically honest with ourselves and ask – have we put our hobbies and interests, social engagements or diary commitments before being present at the Divine Liturgy – whose celebration is the greatest thing that humans can do on earth? 

Have we neglected the Great Feasts of the Church, perhaps because social commitments have taken precedence over the celebrations of the great events in the life of the Lord or the Mother of God, or great saints? 

Have we justified missing the Liturgy or other services because we are tired, even though we know full well that the Saviour was so exhausted when He fell beneath the Cross and the weight of the whole of humanity, when He carried each and every one of us to Golgotha, dragging Himself in the broken, tortured weakness of His flesh to the Place of the Skull? Even when He was tired to the point of dereliction, the Saviour did not give up on us, so when we are tired, should we give up on Him?

Have we been weak and indulgent, failing to even fast for one day out of obedience to Christ through the tradition of His Church – convincing ourselves that we can’t go a single day without milk in our tea or butter on our toast – using health, tiredness, inconvenience or worldly excuses to justify needless leniency? 

Have we neglected our prayers because social media, television, the theatre or a trip to the pub with our friends has been higher on our priority list? Have we found more time for our friends than we have for God? 

Are we more motivated to meet our peers, than to meet God in the Holy Mysteries, in prayer, in pilgrimage, or in the silence of our hearts?

When we fail in such things, our fall is very often not a one-off-event, but a manifestation of a serial behaviour, of a fault-line in our spiritual lives, and an attachment, that comes between us and Christ – our equivalents to the young man’s wealth, and reminders of camels and needles, and the threatening and frighteningly low probability of us entering God’s Kingdom.

Do our attachments form an obstacle, or even a barricade between us and God, and block any progress even towards His Kingdom, let alone getting anywhere near its entrance?

But… to return to St Mamas…

His parents, Theodotus and Rufina, were dead, having perished in imprisonment for the Faith in the Roman persecution of the Christians. Any wealth or possessions of the once illustrious family had been confiscated and lost when they were arrested. 

His mother Rufina had begged the Lord to find someone to care for her prematurely -born child, who entered the world in a prison cell, and the Lord called a rich Christian widow to adopt the child. 

As an open and faithful Christian, the faith of young Mamas became an increasing danger as he entered early adulthood, and it made him a target as his parents had been, in ongoing persecution. 

Like his parents, Mamas was arrested, but his noble, patrician family background and his confident and capable character led the governor Democritus, in Cappadocian Caesarea to refer his case to the Emperor Aurelian, hoping that this promising young man could be saved from Christianity and lured away from Christ. 

The emperor sought to buy Mamas and steal him from Christ by offers of a comfortable life, with wealth and influence – the prospect of him becoming a rich young man.

In the lives of the martyrs – time after time – we hear the judge seeking to entice the one being accused and tortured for Christ: the enticement of a warm bath house to the forty martyr’s of Sebaste; the offer of a military career and imperial commission to the great warrior saints; the offers of rich marriages and socially-eminent husbands to the aristocratic women great-martyrs, renounced and betrayed by their noble pagan families.

Life’s comforts and security were the lure used to draw Christians away from their confession of Christ again and again. 

In the passions of the martyrs, we hear their rejection of the offers what amounted to a living death in miserable earthly existence after having denied and blasphemed God.

Occasionally we glimpse those who gave in.

We know of the single apostate of Sebaste who preferred the warmth of a bath house to suffering with his fellow soldiers perishing in a freezing Armenian lake. 

We know of the weakness and apostasy of St James the Persian, under the persecution of the Sassanian King, Yazdegerd I, and of his repentant confession and death by gradual mutilation. 

We know of the apostate monks of the Holy Mountain, who betrayed Orthodoxy and accepted the unia, only for their dead bodies to be cursed with hair and fingernails growing century after century, making them a terrifying spectacle for those who saw the physical sign of betrayal. 

Mamas, too, was offered enticements and incentives, but refused and remained anchored in Christ.

In contrast to both emperor’s offer of wealth and influence, and the portrait of the rich youth of the Gospel, we encounter the fifteen year old Mamas divinely delivered from imprisonment, and living in the wilderness, in fasting, prayer and constant communion with God – surrounded by wild animals with which he had the relationship of Adam and Eve in paradise: 

With his life with his foster-mother Ammia a thing of the past before his arrest, we see a young man with no earthly possessions, wealth or material chains to the world – despite the traps and offers that had been set before him, and despite the former wealth and social position of his family.

Unlike the rich young man of the Gospel, this spiritually-rich youth had nothing material to chain him to earthly existence or to come between him and the Lord, yet even in his poverty and abandonment in Christ, there was still one last danger that could imperil his soul and make him a slave to the world. Undue attachment to worldly life itself – life according to the ways and influences not only of the world, but its fallen ways of thinking and existing. 

Even though he was so young, St Mamas gave no thought to self-preservation when he had been discovered by the pagan authorities.

When the governor sent a detachment of soldiers to search the mountain and arrest Mamas, they mistook him for a simple shepherd, though he invited them to his dwelling, and gave them milk to drink, revealing his name. 

Whether they failed to understand, or were avoiding detaining him we shall never know, but  His life tells is that he told the soldiers to go ahead of him into Caesaria, as he followed them to the gates of the city, and Saint Mamas, accompanied by a mountain-lion, whom he rides to his martyrdom in many of his icons. 

He was unbreakable in this second trial by the deputy-governor Alexander, not even weakening as he was tortured.

He was thrown to wild animals in the arena, but they would not touch this teenage boy who had lived in peace and harmony with the animals of the wilderness, and so, one of the pagan priests mortally wounded him with a trident. 

The passion and witness of this young, but fearless martyr need to make us take a long hard look at ourselves, asking uncomfortable questions about who resolute we are in confessing Christ, whether we are willing to sacrifice the attachments, comforts and security of our lives to follow him, and to even ask whether we are so attached to life itself, that this holds us back from being free and liberated followers of Christ. 

It is not only riches that can come between us and the Kingdom, and to see today’s Gospel as only being about wealth is dangerous and a deception.

How far we would go to both pursue and preserve our Faith, and what are we willing to sacrifice and leave behind to follow Christ.

There was no chance of a camel passing through the eye of a needle, as St Mamas rode into the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven mounted on the lion of courage, journeying to martyrdom and willing to surrender and give up everything – including his temporary and fleeting earthly life to follow Christ – the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Celebrating the Forerunner as Heralds of Truth

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The Holy Gospel according to Mark (6: 14-30): At that time, king Herod heard of Jesus (for his name was spread abroad) and he said, that John the Baptist was risen from the dead, and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him. Others said, that it is Elijah. And others said, that it is a prophet, or as one of the prophets. But when Herod heard thereof, he said: “It is John, whom I beheaded: he is risen from the dead.” For Herod himself had sent forth and laid hold upon John, and bound him in prison for Herodias’ sake, his brother Philip’s wife: for he had married her. For John had said unto Herod: “It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother’s wife.” Therefore Herodias had a quarrel against him, and would have killed him; but she could not: For Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just man and an holy, and observed him; and when he heard him, he did many things, and heard him gladly. And when a convenient day was come, that Herod on his birthday made a supper to his lords, high captains, and chief estates of Galilee; and when the daughter of the said Herodias came in, and danced, and pleased Herod and those who sat with him, the king said unto the damsel: “Ask of me whatsoever thou wilt, and I will give it thee.” And he swore unto her: “Whatsoever thou shalt ask of me, I will give it thee, unto the half of my kingdom.” And she went forth, and said unto her mother: “What shall I ask?” And she said: “The head of John the Baptist.” And she came in straightway with haste unto the king, and asked, saying: “I will that thou give me by and by in a charger the head of John the Baptist.” And the king was exceeding sorry; yet for his oath’s sake, and for the sake of those who sat with him, he would not reject her. And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison, And brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel: and the damsel gave it to her mother. And when his disciples heard of it, they came and took up his corpse, and laid it in a tomb. And the apostles gathered themselves together unto Jesus, and told Him all things, both what they had done, and what they had taught.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Dear brothers and sisters, greetings as we celebrate the feast of the Holy Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist, John. S prazdnikom!

This feast of the beheading of the Forerunner is a reminder that truth and righteousness have a cost, and that we – as those who know and worship Truth as a Person, in our Lord and Saviour – must have the courage of the Forerunner, without worrying and stopping to calculate the cost of being true to our Faith and opposing the falsehood of rulers and powers.

We must live truth, speak truth, act in truth, and – as the people of God – preach truth, and oppose falsehood as a poison which is soul-destroying, deadly and the way to perdition.

Just as St John opposed the tyrannical Herod – a false king, unworthy of the throne of Israel – so, across the world, people of Faith face tyranny from above, with laws that trample on rights of religious expression; with liberal weaponised accusations of extremism used to quash and attack freedom to protest and for basic association; with constant surveillance following us and tracking the movements our everyday lives; in a world in which saying there are only two genders in heresy, in which using the wrong pronoun can threaten jobs and careers, and where language-police constantly survey our vocabulary for offences against the decency of the new dystopia; a world in which parental rights over children are denied by governments, who destroy the lives of the young as woke agendas not only allow, but even encourage confused minors to surgically, physically and mentally destroy themselves when identity is a source of confusion and doubt; a world in which political candidates feel fine in advocating abortion up to birth, and in which living and viable aborted children are left to die on surgical trollies.

The most chilling things is that we are surrounded by people who willingly and energetically dance to the crazed and frantic tune of this Herodian dystopia, in which governments compete not only for the crown, but to show their “worthiness” and conviction in advancing the brave new world.

A great curse was that Covid saw the leaven of Herod infect not only government and society, but sadly even the Church, as individuals danced so frantically to the frenzied rhythm of Herod’s tune, that they trampled the Holy Things of God in doing so.

In Greece, people happily reported priests who continued to commune the faithful, and bishops disciplined and suspended them for their Faith and Orthodoxy.

Closer to home, science-worshipping, but Christ-denying theoretically Orthodox totally abandoned the Holy Mysteries, and across Britain clergy who feared germs and Herod more than God and who showed more “faith” in science than in the Body and Blood of the Conqueror of Death, and who later appeared with the chalice like angels-of-death in black masks, ironically to impart the Bread of Life to the faithful.

The faithful were not permitted to venerate icons, which could so easily have been wiped, and a new iconoclasm was wedded to the eucharistic heresy of those who preached the Body and Blood of the Saviour as a source of infection and death, and not the Bread of Life.

After this, as though it was not bad enough, clergy beating the tambour and piping the melody for Salome’s dance, refused the unvaccinated entrance to Liturgy and access to the Holy Mysteries.  

How the tyrannical spirit of Herod fills the world and even infects the Church, yet as children of the Resurrection, we face all of this darkness with courage, fulfilling the witness of the Holy Forerunner.

Like the Baptist, each of us must be willing to individually raise the prophetic voice, to oppose the madness and iniquity of the world; each of us needs to live the apostolic life, in witnessing for the Truth and spreading the good news of the freedom the Gospel brings, in contrast to the slavery to Herod; each of us needs to struggle to be earthly angels and heavenly people, seeking to build the Kingdom of God, not of Herod.

And, when we do this TOGETHER, no longer as limited, weak and feeble individuals, but AS THE CHURCH, we will do so not with the voice of the Forerunner, but with the voice of the Saviour Himself, Who has made us partakers of His Resurrection.

As the Church, like the Forerunner, we must speak for the Saviour, uniting in denouncing the iniquities and falsehood of the world, and decrying the tyranny of the latter-day Herods.

But for this we require unity: unity in seeking righteousness and holiness, unity in prayer, unity in the Holy Mysteries, unity in upholding and defending Sacred Tradition, unity in resisting assaults against the Faith and the Church, unity in preserving the purity of Orthodox teaching: united to proclaim the Way, the Truth and the life. 

So, let us fast together, pray together, keep the feasts together, celebrate and share the Holy Mysteries together, rejoice in pilgrimage together, cooking, eating and having fellowship together, so that TOGETHER, we may traverse the spiritual wastes of the world and be like John, as angels-of-the-desert making straight the way of the Lord, proclaiming the Lamb of God, and knowing that He will come again in glory to lead the faithful into the Kingdom of Heaven, when the kingdoms of the countless modern Herods shall perish and cease.

In unity of Faith, united in Christ, united in His theandric Body – the Church – let us pray for and seek John’s boldness, neither compromising nor even counting the cost of TRUTH.

Amen!