Category Archives: Homily/Sermon

Homily/Sermon

The Victory of the Holy Martyrs

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

This tenth day of the Nativity Fast is blessed by the double celebration of two Great-Martyrs – St Catherine of Alexandria and St Mercurius – who both lived during the first age of martyrs, resisting the paganism of the Roman Empire with the light and truth of Christ.

As an aristocrat and the daughter of the Roman consul of Egypt St Catherine was a product of the learning and culture of Hellenic antiquity. Educated to the highest standards of the classical world, she mentally outstripped even the greatest philosophers engaged to debate with her, when she disgraced her father’s house by not only rejecting the most learned, desirable and richest suitors – including the Emperor Maximian himself – but by publicly declaring her Faith in Christ, her only suitor and bridegroom.

Given over to the authorities by her own father, St Catherine learned the brutal truth of the Lord’s words in today’s Gospel for the martyrs, “You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death.”

Rejecting all of the temptations of marriage proposals and worldly comforts, defeating the “wisdom” of the pagan philosophers, her unshakeable, steadfast and immovable faith in Christ sealed her fate and the victory of Christ in the martyrdom following her placing her own head upon the executioners block.

St Mercurius, who lived a half century earlier, gained the reputation of being an outstanding, celebrated soldier, but this was not enough to protect him from the Roman laws against Christianity, after the emperors Decius and Valerian issued a law ordering all Roman citizens to worship the pagan gods and condemning Christians to death. 

As yet unknown as a Christian, St Mercurius proved himself a great leader in the Roman war against the Barbarians, for which he was made a military commander by the Emperor, placing him in an ever more noticeable public position in Roman society.

Mercurius refused to participate in the mandated offering of sacrifices to the pagan gods, and was summoned before the emperor. But he was neither threatened nor daunted by this, and openly declared himself a Christian, throwing down his soldier’s belt and mantle at the emperor’s feet, repudiating his military honours and his place in Roman society.

For this rebellion, the Great-Martyr was stretched over fire and lacerated with knives. So great were the cuts and lashes to his body that the blood from his wounds extinguished the flames. Yet after each bout of tortures, when his tormentors threw him back into the prison close to death, the Lord granted Saint Mercurius complete healing. 

These continued miracles showed the impious pagans not only God’s power, but also the power of the Great-Martyr’s faith in Christ.

Having been condemned to death, St Mercurius was granted a vision of the Lord, promising him a quick release from his sufferings, granted by his beheading at Cappadocian Caesarea, after which his body exuded myrrh which healed the sick.

How foolish and weak these great saints must have seemed to the Romans who mocked, tortured and martyred them… just the latest Christians consumed and seemingly destroyed by the death-machine of the pagan Roman Empire. Had the Romans kept statistics, they would have seen the sheer numbers of Christians martyrs as the evidence of the futility and uselessness of Christianity. Yet, the death of every martyr was another nail in the coffin of classical pagan civilisation, for every martyrdom was the victory of Christ over the earthly manifestation of the Kingdom of Satan.

In the same way the death of every new-martyr of the Soviet yoke brought the end of Communism and the collapse of the Iron Curtain closer. The blood of the martyrs was lethally poisonous to the Marxist system, just as that of the first martyrs was to paganism.

Every martyrdom and the passions and miracles that preceded the death of the saints not only manifested the power of Christ, but drew countless pagans into the net of His Gospel, confirming the words of the Gospel: “You will be brought before kings and rulers for My name’s sake. But it will turn out for you as an occasion for testimony.”

When St Catherine broke the torture-wheel, rather than being broken by it, the empress Augusta, the imperial courtier Porphyry and a vast number of soldiers confessed their faith in Christ, sealing their own martyric fate, and further hastening the crumbling demise of pagan Rome. The historian Lactantius declared that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church, but the self-same blood was also deathly poison to paganism.

The Faith and courage of the martyrs awoke those imprisoned in the darkness of paganism, declaring what we have heard from St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians:

“Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light.”

The courage, unshakeable faith and example of the martyrs must also call us to arise from our spiritual sleep and our worldly complacency.

Since the first age of martyrs, the Church has seen wave after wave of recrimination: from heretics, from Muslims, from Communists, from politicians. 

In the 20th century and beyond, in the new age of martyrdom and renewed persecution for the faithful of the former Soviet block, the Balkans, the Christians of the Holy Land and Islamic regimes, believers quickly shared in the experience of the faithful of the Old Israel, described by St Paul in his letter to the Hebrews:

“There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated –  the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the earth.”

The twentieth century saw believers shot, drowned, burned alive, frozen to death, starved, buried alive, tortured to death, thrown from cliffs. In Gulags, prisons, concentration camps, gaols, political headquarters, and even hospitals and childrens’ homes, the KGB, Securitate, Ustashe, Stasi, Islamists, Zionists, and various terrorists have continued the assault of hell against Christianity, but all in vain, as the gates of hell cannot possibly overcome the Church.

On the back of the systematic persecution of Orthodoxy in Ukraine by the agents of western powers, we see the demonisation of Orthodoxy in the western world itself, with propaganda attacking coming from political elites in the USA, from the Czech government, and in the Baltic states.

We see the storm clouds gathering and know that persecution could be on the horizon for believers who thought this could never happen in western democracies, and never happen to them, calling us to now heed the Lord’s words, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness…”

But, all those living the Christian life are continually called to wrestle against worldy powers in living according to the Law of God.

In doing so, we must be close to the matyrs, by reading their lives, praying to them, seeking their help, and keeping heir memory alive by sharing it, so that those their steadfast examples of courage, faithfulness and strength may encourage us and others in the Faith, helping us to remain strong and resilient in defending Christian truth and being willing to face the consequences of confessing Christ and he Gospel. Perhaps, in the future, our own experiences will be held up as a testimony.

This can only be possible with dedicated Christian living, founded on prayer, spiritual life and struggle. We must head the words of St Paul to the Ephesians and “Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”

Not all of the martyrs were military saints, as indeed St Mercurius was, but they were all spiritual warriors, and we are all called to be so, not only those who suffer for Christ, but ALL believers in simply LIVING for Christ. We are ALL called to “take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand”

We are ALL ordered “gird your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace.”

We are ALL commanded “take the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And…the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

This is our call to spiritual arms in a dedicated, active Christian life, whether our future vocation will be to sufferer for Christ, or not, as we are called to be witnesses and to resist acquiescence to the world.

Because we believe; because we have hope; because we have faith and know that Christ has already gained the victory, even though it is daunting, we need not fear, but rather “be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.”

His might was shown in the victory of the martyrs, and by submitting our lives to Him, we can allow His might to be shown in us, who not only love the martyrs, but seek to imitate them in their righteousness and holiness.

Holy Great-Martyrs Catherine and Mercurius, pray to God for us!

Amen.

The Endeavour For Unity

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Ephesians 4:1-6: Brethren: I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, With all lowliness and meekness, with long-suffering, forbearing one another in love; Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; One Lord, one faith, one baptism, One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

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

Dear brothers and sisters, as we enter this period of the Fast, in today’s first Apostol reading, Saint Paul, charges us to struggle for peace and unity, united in our Christian calling and in a singular hope in ONE Lord, ONE faith and ONE baptism. 

Calling us to be humble and patient with one another, the Apostle calls us to endeavour to “keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”, and in that very word ENDEAVOUR, he acknowledges that this pursuit and maintenance of unity may sometimes be a challenge, but it remains a challenge that we must always pursue, for if we reject the need for that unity, let alone attack that unity, we REJECT one Lord, one faith and one baptism. We essentially cut ourselves off from the fellowship of the Church.

In his experience of human nature, St Paul was a realist, and in the infant Church he battled against disagreement and division, with his travels and letters not simply being to preach the Gospel and strengthen the local churches, but as part of the struggle to preserve, maintain and – when needed – restore unity in the local congregations, making it clear to the first Christians that in Christ, division was NOT a choice or option, given that we indeed, have one Lord, one faith and one baptism.

St Paul began his letter to the Church in Ephesus by calling himself “the prisoner of the Lord”, a motif he echos in other places, making clear that as a willing captive for Christ, he is not the master and he does not make the rules. Rather, as a prisoner for Christ, he willingly obeys the Lord’s commandments, and subjects himself to the orders he receives from the Saviour, and for Christians to live in harmony, peace and unity is one such order.

In this Apostol, he is writing to the Church in Ephesus, but he also addessed fractious Christians and local Churches in other parts of the ancient world.

He encouraged the Church in Corinth, “I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another in what you say and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly united in mind and thought.”  1 Corinthians 1:10

It is striking that later in the same letter to the Corinthians, Paul is very blunt (something we know him for), calling them immature in strong terms: “I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly – mere infants in Christ” before a very direct correction: “You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?”

St Paul tells them to stop being babies and grow up, and start living according to their Christian calling, to stop being willful and worldly, and that fractiousness, jealousy and quarrelling is not worthy of a Christian.

He speaks in such strong terms, because unity and peace are essential qualities and characteristics of the Church, which is not simply an earthly institution, but also a divine one, called upon to be the theandric (i.e. Divine-Human) Body of Christ in the world, and this unity finds its origin in its founder in Whom was united both Divinity and humanity.

Starting from the Holy Mystery of Baptism, each of us called to unity – be one with Christ. Through that same baptism, each and every Christian believer is called to not only be united to Christ, but united to one another in Him: Christ not simply as our hope, but as our identity, because having been baptised in Christ, we have put on Christ. If we share this identity in Christ, we should be one.

In baptism and Faith, reflecting the Cherubic Hymn, each of us is called upon to have put aside worldliness, and to have put on Christ, so that the division, jealousy and quarrelling of which Paul speaks can have no place in the Church. 

How can we be one in Him if we argue, judge, gossip, condemn, vie for power, influence?

When we argue, cause division and militate against the unity of the Church we reject the vocation to which the Apostle refers at the beginning of today’s Apostol: “I… beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called…” and we show that we are not prisoners for Christ, but prisoners of the world and its passions, ambitions, and agendas. We show that our baptism has no meaning. How can this be squared with hope in ONE Lord, ONE faith and ONE baptism?

The foundation of our essential unity must be peace: peace with God, peace with our own conscience and peace with one another, and the theme of peace and unity present themselves at the very beginning of the Divine Liturgy, the most important expression of the Christian life, and our relationship with God.

In every Liturgy, the deacon calls us to pray in peace, something which is totally impossible of we do not strive for the peace and unity of the Church,  and without peace of mind and heart, and without peace with our brothers and sisters, we are not worthy to stand before the Altar of God, as the Saviour Himself made clear in Matthew’s Gospel, commanding us, “Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.”

It is in unity with one another, with peace of both heart and mind that we must not only attend the Divine Liturgy, but even stand before the Lord in prayer, for only then can our prayers have meaning. 

The creed is the liturgical sign of the unity of which Saint Paul speaks, and for which he laboured among those who were divided, but liturgical statements sung by a congregation led by its deacons will have absolutely no spiritual currency and meaning unless we have first heeded the deacons words before that first, “I believe…”

“Let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess…”

In the bond of love and unity, we are called to no longer be individuals, but to confess the Symbol of Faith as the Church, doing so not simply with one mind, but with one mouth, as we say not “We believe…,” but “I believe…”

Having prayed together, chanted the creed together and offered and shared the Holy Gifts together in our first parish Liturgy of the Advent Forty Days, we begin this journey to the Nativity as a community,  and must do mindful that not simply peace and unity, but reconciliation is the very meaning of the Nativity of Christ. The appearance of God-Made-Man was to bring the greatest unity other than His own Incarnation in the union of His two-natures: the reconciliation of heaven and earth, and God and man, but also in our shared identity in Christ to bring this unity to redeemed humanity in the Communion of Saints.

If we cannot heed the Apostle Paul and struggle for spiritual unityduring our earthly lives, then what relevance can either the Nativity Fast, the celebration of the Nativity, or even the Christian Faith have for us? What can Christ mean to us if we fail to work for the peace and unity of the Church

St John records the prayer of the Saviour before His betrayal, “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us…”

By trying to live in love and peace with one another, being compassionate and merciful to one another, forgiving one another, seeking to understand oneother, struggling with our differences, and endeavouring – as St Paul says – for unity, we will be saying “Amen” to this prayer of the Saviour, even if our labour for unity is sometimes difficult.

Let us abandon ourselves to be prisoners in Christ, that He may work in us and through us, and that in our weakness, He may be our strength, and our unity.

Amen.

The Good Samaritan and the Inn as an Image of the Church

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

Dear brothers and sisters, forgive the briefness of these words sent to spare our tired Father Mark having to write a homily after his travels and demanding week.

Our Gospel reading today begins with the question that is the very reason for the Saviour preaching His parable of the Good Samaritan: “Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”

Sadly this was not a sincere question, but a prideful and crafty attempt of a young pharisee to entrap the Saviour, and elicit an answer at odds with Jewish teaching.

The Lord, of course, saw through this scheming and had the seemingly clever young man answer his own question by declaring the answer, based on Jewish teaching in the Torah: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind…”

But that is not the whole answer. There is one more phrase, which does not come from the Torah – “…and thy neighbour as thyself.” This was the Saviour’s own addition to the Old Testament Commandment, showing us that the pharisee had already heard the Lord’s preaching, and was here quoting the Saviour Himself, but this is possibly simple a ruse, so that he can then add, “But who is my neighbour?”

The Jewish answer to the pharisee’s essential question highlights the vast gulf between the consciousness of the Israelites as a people set apart, superior, above and distinct from all other nations, and the new radical challenge of the New Covenant of the Gospel, superceeding the Law: the Old Covenant seeing neighbourly duty and obligation only towards those elect by race, circumcision and Torah… and the New Covenant seeing no distinction between Jew and Gentile, with the opening of the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.

Christ is clear in this parable that our neighbour may be a person that we have met and encountered for the first time today; is not simply the known and familiar person with whom we feel comfortable and safe; those whom we like and are happy to be with; those who share our views, faith or socio-political outlook; those who speak our language and belong to our ethno-cultural world.

The parable’s initial challenge is that of recognising our neighbour, but we can easily miss the significance of the end of the parable, particularly after the departure of the Samaritan, when the inn becomes the place of healing and recovery, in which care, and acts of mercy and compassion continue at the command of the Samaritan, even though his journey has taken him away. We often fail to recognise this essential detail, and only concentrate on the acts of mercy performed at the road-side.

We should turn to the interprestation of the parable by the Church Fathers to bring us to this point.

The Church Fathers are very clear that the robbed and beaten man in the parable represents Adam, the first-father – and by extension each and every human being – on that dangerous downward descent from the spiritual heights of Jerusalem to the depths of Jericho, representing rebellion, sin and the passions.

The road which is the place of ambush and attack in the parable is humanity’s perilous downhill journey and spiritual descent that has been rebeliously trodden since the Fall.

The beating and violence inflicted on the unsuspecting victim on this road is understood as that of the demons, attacking and assaulting humanity as it turns its back on spiritual living and obedience to God.

Yet, despite the fact that the victim of the attack in the parable is travelling in a clearly wrong direction of spiritual rebellion and exile, he is not condemned or judged by the Samaritan, the image of Christ the Saviour and Healer, Who like the Samaritans of the Holy Land was an outsider and figure of contempt to the Jewish establishment.

His washing of the victim’s wounds with oil and wine is symbolic of the economy and work of salvation, pointing towards the chrism of the baptismal rite and the oil of unction, and the wine indicative of the Divine Liturgy and the Eucharist.

The representatives of the Old Covenant, the priest and Levite, who had passed  on the other side of the road before the arrival of the Samaritan, were not only cold and negligent in their lack of mercy and compassion for the man lying wounded and beaten in his own blood, but were actually symbols of the impotence and powerlessness of the Old Covenant to help or heal fallen humanity.

The Temple, its sacrifices, rites and clergy could do nothing to redeem or heal fallen Adam and his descendents. Their prayers, liturgies and sacrifices were temporary and limited. They could bring no lasting reconciliation between God and man, and heaven and earth. They could bring no lasting forgiveness of sins.

They had no oil and wine as tokens of the healing, redemptive and restorative power of the God-Man we see in the Samaritan. This healing could only come from Him, as the Way, the Truth and the Life.

The Samaritan’s symbolic acts of mercy and compassion in the roadside cleaning of wounds with that self-same oil and wine, and their bandaging, is only the beginning and initiation of the healing process for the man left lifeless as though he were dead

We must contemplate what the Samaritan, representing the Saviour, does next:

“And [he] set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, when I come again, I will repay thee.”

As this is a parable, filled with symbolic sigificance, what is the significance of the inn, which is essentially the place of healing, convalescence and restoration for broken, wounded humanity, represented by the bloodied, robbed and beaten man?

The Church Fathers are clear that this is an image of the Church, to which the Saviour entrusts those Whom He has sought out and saved. The Church is the spiritual hospital in which Saviour’s salvific-work continues, and this essentially places responsibility and the work of Christ on each of us, to ensure that the Church, as the household of God, really is a place of spiritual care and healing.

So, when the pharisee asks, “Who is my neighbour?” And the Lord answers with the parable, we are not simply called to recognition of whom our neighbour is by the selfless action of the Samaritan at the roadside, but also by contemplating the inn as the spiritual hospital of the Church, in which each and everyone of us is called to be like the inn-keeper, caring for the wounded, the broken, and the needy, with the Saviour promising us our reward when He comes again.

This places great responsibility on each of us, based on recognition of our neighbour and our willingness and duty to be like the inn-kepper in our care towards those entrusted to us by the Lord, and requiring us to act with love, mercy and compassion: welcoming them and caring for them, in the His Name, not forgetting that the heavenly inheritance spoken of by the pharisee in this parable DEMANDS that we love not only God, but our neighbour.

This is our collective and individual challenge as the Inn of the Church, and when Christ entrusts us with people who are damaged, spiritually or emotionally broken, anxious, fearful and perhaps finding no meaning in earthly life, it is not only our calling, but our God-given duty to be like the inn-keeper to dutifully and solicitously care for them, to bring them to the health and wholeness which Christ brings through salvation and the Grace of the Holy Mysteries.

This was the great labour of St John of Kronstadt, that great inn-keeper treating the bloody, beaten and crippled charges that Christ sent to him in pre-revolutionary St Petersburg – generously caring for the most tragic elements of society: the poorest of the poor, the homeless, orphans and widows, the maimed and disabled, alcoholics, drug addicts, prostitutes and criminals trying to turn around broken and shattered lives.

Like the pharisees, there were those in pre-revolutionary society that looked on with disgust and horror, that St John should take care of these disreputable and sinful outcastes representing the dregs of society. Was not St John bringing the wrong sort of people to the Church, dirtying it by their presence, and driving others away by bringing “the wrong sort of people” to the Church? (Sadly familiar complaints that we have heard with our own ears!)

Yet, the Gospel makes clear that to talk and speculate about whom our neighbour is without accepting the absolute imperative that we MUST love them is to totally miss the point of why the Lord even told this parable.

To love our neighbour is the absolute condition for the heavenly inheritance, and we must love by making the Church a place that is welcoming, loving, merciful and compassionate, in which people feel welcome, secure, safe and wanted.

To refuse to do so, to judge, to exclude, to condemn, to be cold and unwelcoming, to resent the newcomer, to not want “the wrong sort of people” who are different to us, is to actually reject the inheritance of the heavenly kingdom and rebeliously reject the Saviour’s words.

We are not the Old Israel, superior, set apart, and above all nations. We are the New Israel making no differentiation according to race and language, baptising all men and women in the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, preaching and declaring the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers, and welcoming all who hear the words of Christ, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”, not only offering – in His Name – a place of rest, but also a place of spiritual healing and restoration, caring for them as those whom the Great Samaritan has brought to us, saying, “Take care of him”.

As the Church and household of Faith, and Christ’s spiritual hospital, let us do so with gladness, compassion and mercy, loving and recognising our neighbour, in obedience to the Saviour of our souls, Who will reward us when He comes again.

Amen!

The Mother of God, the Fulfilment of the Temple’s Types

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Visit of the Kursk-Root Icon to Warminster – 17 November

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

Dear brothers and sisters, greetings on this wonderful occasion on which the ancient Kursk-Root Icon rests beneath the roof of our much-loved spiritual home of the Chapel of St Lawrence, which – in its original fabric, of which the tower remains – is more or less contemporary with our cherished wonderworking Hodegetria of the Russian Church Abroad.

It’s always inspiring to hear today’s section of the Epistle from St Paul to the Hebrews, and to contemplate the furnishings of the Temple, which the Church has historically recognised as very specific prophetic images of the Most Holy Mother of God.

The forshadowings and prophetic signs of the Mother of God, and her role as a mediatrix of our salvation was not only proclaimed in the words of the prophets, but also in the sacred imagery of the Old Covenant, especially in the ordering of the Tabernacle and the Temple: in the seven-branched candlestick, the Table of Shewbread; the golden Altar of Incense, and the gold-covered Ark of the Covenant containing the golden-pot of manna, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tablets of the Law given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, and topped with the Mercy Seat, overshadowed by the carved and gilded cherubim,

Through types, signs and symbols, these prefiguring, prophetic images of the Old Covenenant, reveal the place of the Mother of God in the Lord’s unfolding Economy of Salvation, and the allegorical and typological reading of Divine Scripture also reveals the vast gulf between our Church’s ancient approach to Biblical interpretation and understanding, and the anti-traditional hermeneutic, by which reformation-thinking and reform theology robbed believers of the rich, multi-layered understanding of God’s Word, already established in the Judaism of late antiquity .

In all of these images listed in the Epistle to the Hebrews, we see a relationship between the sacred items and that which they contained or held, for they were all functional, designed with a purpose, to hold or reserve sacred things, and to perform a God-given sacred purpose. The items mentioned, carved or cast and covered with the purest gold, were not simply ornaments, but were each revealed by God as part of the worship central to the covenenant-relationship between Him and the Old Israel.

Beyond the first veil, the great seven-branched menorah was fashioned with oil-cups in the form of almond blossoms, which were filled with the olive oil that fed the wicks whose flames filled the Holy Place with Light – a prophetic image of the Mother of God as the lampstand that bore Christ the Light of the World.

The Table of Shewbread bore the sacrificial Bread of the Presence, the sign of God’s dwelling in the midst of His people, the bread-offering filled by God’s with “infectious holiness” and grace – just as the Mother of God, as the Mystical-Table, bore Christ, the Bread of Life, Who Himself proclaimed, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” (John 6:51)

Though its exact position is debated, the golden Altar of Incense stood in the Holy Place for the morning and evening incense-offerings, whose smoke filled not only the Holy Place, but also perfumed the area around the Tabernacle and the Temple. The incense rising from the altar was a sign of unity and reconciliation between man and God, and the union of the physical and spiritual worlds.

The Mother of God has long been seen as a noetic altar, which by its sacrificial nature encapsulates her self-offering for our salvation, sacrificing her whole life in order to bear the Saviour Who is both our Great High Priest and Sacrifice for the Life and Salvation of the World. We pray, each evening, “Let my prayer arise in Thy sight, as incense; and let the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice.”  …and turn to the Mother of God as our intercessor, as she ever offers prayers for her children, lifting up her hands in intercession to the Saviour as a living sacrifice of prayer.

Beyond the second veil, the Ark, was the most holy furnishing of both Tabernacle and Temple, and the earthly throne of God’s abiding Presence in the midst of His people. He spoke from between the cherubim which overshadowed the Mercy-Seat, and this was the place of Divine-Human encounter, when the High-Priest entered the Holy of Holies once a year on the Day of Atonement.

The Mother of God became both the new Ark of the Covenant and Ark of the New Covenant, in which the Almighty Creator dwelt, hidden within the Holy of Holies of her womb, as we see in the Kursk-Root Icon, and then nurtured and raised by her, whose lap became an earthly throne of the King of all, the Mercy Seat of the world. The Mother of God became not simply a place of Divine-Human encounter, but a place of the Divine-Human union in the Incarnation of the God-Man within the chosen sanctuary of her womb, nursing the Saviour at her breast, and nurturing Him in His childhood and youth.

The contents of the Ark of the Covenenant – the jar of manna, the tablets of the law and the budded staff of Moses – were all prophetic-images of Christ, the Heavenly Bread, the Giver of the Law, and the bud from the root of Jesse, but we should recall that at the time in which the holy apostle Paul wrote to the Hebrews, the original temple furnishings had all been lost in the Babylonian exile, and the Holy of Holies contained absolutely nothing, and was nothing more than a dark, empty cube. There was no Ark of the Covenant, no earthly Divine Throne, no Mercy Seat, and no manna, no stone tablets of the Law of Moses, no staff of Aaron.

According to God’s Economy, this bare absence was necessary, so that the Holy of Holies could be restored and reconsecrated through the Entrance of the infant Theotokos, as He prepared for the coming of the Messiah and the passage of His blessing and election from the Old Israel to the New Israel.

The first Ark, and the vanished sacred relics were superceded as the infant Mother of God was led into the Temple, walked through the Holy Place, and was taken beyond the Second Veil into the Holy of Holies, which received the true Ark of God’s Presence, the Ark of the New Covenant, who would be more honourable the cherubim, and truly more glorious than the seraphim, the Living Temple and Mystical Paradise.

The world needed no gilded acacia chest reliquary, no Mercy Seat, no relics of the first Passover journey from Egyptian captivity to the freedom of the promised land, for the world received the Theotokos, in whom God would dwell in the flesh, and come as the new Paschal Lamb, to lead us from death to life and from earth to heaven.

The types and shadows of the Old Testament passed away; the Temple with its liturgies, sacrifices, priesthood rites and rituals was abolished, having served its purpose.

It would soon be destroyed, having no further role in the spiritual life of the world: an anomaly tied to those from whom the vineyard would be taken, and given to the new Israel of God, the Old Israel having forsaken its birthright and the inheritance of the forefathers, patriarchs and prophets, with the promise of Christ’s Kingdom now offered to all believers regardless of language, race and nation. As the New Israel of God, Christ’s Church, would unite all who approach in Faith.

The Kursk-Root Icon, is an icon of this new reality and fulfillment, an icon of the inclusivity of God’s salvific plan: an icon of both oldness and newness, looking back, but also forward,with the surrounding prophets turning to Mother of God with the scrolls of their prophecy, looking forward to the Incarnation, and a new era in the relationship between God and man, and to the passing from the Old Covenant to the new.

We will soon begin the Advent Fast, looking forward to the Nativity, contemplating the prophecies of the Old Testament and looking forward to their fulfillment in the Incarnation of the Saviour, and week-by-week we will pray the Advent Moleben before the Icon of the Sign, contemplating Emmanuel within the womb of the Mother of God, the great Sign forespoken of by Isaiah:

Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign:

Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son,

And shall call His name Immanuel.

(Isaiah 7:14)

…and it is as that great Sign that we behold her in her ancient Kursk-Root Icon, surrounded by the prophets, who guided the people of the Old Covenant through the long Advent of the Old Testament centuries. We contemplate this wonderworking icon as the representation of the cosmic changing point summed up in those wondrous words of St John’s Gospel… “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” John 1:14.

When we celebrate the birth of Christ, and the union of God and Man in the Incarnate Saviour, we will celebrate the fulfillment of the Old Covenant, the abolition of the Temple and its rites, and the beginning of God’s new relationship with humanity, as one Who has enterered Creation: God Who is not only truly with us, but through the selfless offering and obedience of the Mother of God in the Incarnation has truly become one of us

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them a light has shined.

For unto us a Child is born; to us a Son is given.

And the government shall be upon His shoulder, and of His peace there will be no end.

And His name shall be called the Messenger of Great Counsel, Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, the Father of the World to Come.

God is with us! Understand this, O nations, and submit yourselves! For God is with us!

(from the Song of the Holy Prophet Isaiah)

Through the Mother of God, the New Ark, whose sacred Icon stands before us, the Great Sign raised up in the spiritual darkness of the old Israel to usher in a new age; through her selfless giving and living-sacrifice; though her boundless love and conformity to God’s sovereign will; and through the Nativity whose celebration we will soon anticipate… we can truly exclaim with great joy, that thanks to her, “God is with us!”

Amen.

A Word on the Autumn Feast of the Kazan Icon

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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 autumn feast of the Kazan Icon of the Most Holy Mother of God, when we commemorate the deliverance of Moscow from the Polish occupation of 1612, during which our Holy Patriarch, St Germogen, met a martyric death by starvation, but not before he had given instruction to the faithful to fast and pray, and for the Wonderworking Icon to be brought from Kazan to Moscow by the army, headed by Prince Dimitriy Pozharsky.

Muscovy had been laid to waste by the Poles, who mocked the Orthodox Christian Faith, burning towns and villages and despoiling and desecrating churches and monasteries, just as the Tatars had done centuries before.

The Time of Troubles saw confusion, anarchy and fear in every aspect of national life, which was undermined and eroded, even spiritually.

This is why the most needful thing for the people to acquire in order to overcome occupation, enslavement and such great sorrows was the repentance to which the Hieromartyr, Patriarch Germogen, called them.

It would be in spiritual renewal and newness of life, re-centred on living in the power of the Holy Trinity, according to the Gospel and the Law of God, in spiritual union with the Most Holy Mother of God, and the saints, that liberation and freedom would be found.

In our own Time of Troubles, fraught with political, educational, ideological, financial and technological tyranny and attacks on our spiritual life, on the Holy Church and the people of God, our hope, answer and liberation lies in behaving exactly as in 1612: in prayer, fasting, assiduous and active spiritual labour and spiritual life.

The true Christian life is one of resistance and swimming against the tide, refusing to bow down and give in to the spiritual tyranny of sin.

This God-centred life will bring down God’s blessing and Divine Grace, and in this obedience to the Will of God, the Mother of God (as the perfect and primary example of spiritual obedience) will come to our aid, as our Champion Leader and Invincible Protectress, to whom has been given power by her Son, according to the will and counsel of the Holy Trinity.

Let us not despair in the sea of the fallen world’s madness, but have great hope, joy and resolution to resist sin, temptation and godlessness, as children of the Resurrection, walking in the Light of Christ!

Let us repent, with faith and compunctionate hearts, heeding the words of St. Dimitriy of Rostov about the events of this feast:

“The Mother of God delivered from misfortune and woe not only the righteous, but also sinners, but which sinners? Those who turn themselves to the Heavenly Father like the Prodigal Son, make lamentation beating their bosom, like the Publican, they weep at the feet of Christ, like the Sinful Woman washing His feet with her tears, and they offer forth confession of Him, like the Thief upon the Cross. It is such sinners whom the All-Pure Mother of God heeds and hastens to aid, delivering them from great misfortunes and woe.”

Let us turn to the Father with resolution, determination and the heartfelt desire to correct all that is wrong and dysfunctional in our lives, knowing that not only is the Heavenly Father joyfully awaiting us, but that the Mother of God will be with us and go before us, step by step, protecting and interceding for us on that wonderful, salvific journey of spiritual-return!

Let us be comforted by her maternal protection, but not as some sort of vague, warm, rosey-tinted, sentimental idea… but understanding that her protection is powerful, mighty and invincible, and let us ensure that we turn to her, as children worthy of her protection and help, emulating her humility and obedience, living as the Lord wishes us to live, and knowing that the He will exult the humble and meek, and will give them spiritual victory over their adversaries.

Amen!

Homily For the Feast of the Royal Martyrs: 17 July 2025

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I am grateful to Vladyka for the invitation to preach in the cathedral on the altar-feast of the lower church, and the first anniversary of Father Mark the Younger’s priestly ordination.

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

Dear brothers and sisters, 

It is a great joy for us to gather together in this holy temple, whose dedication honours the Royal Martyrs, and as we celebrate their sacred memory, we look beyond the horror and violence of their martyrdom to appreciate the priceless treasure that God has granted to the whole Orthodox people by calling the Imperial Family to enter the mystery of Golgotha, and  to drink from the cup of suffering and martyrdom, as they were conformed to the image of the Saviour, as we heard in the Apostol reading from St Paul’s letter to the Romans: 

“We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestine to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.”  (Romans 8: 29-30)

As God lovers, the Lord called the Royal-Martyrs “according to His purpose”, and in their suffering for that Divine purpose – contrary to the wisdom of the world – they were conformed to the image of Christ, the Suffering Servant and Man of Sorrows, Who pured Himself out for His people, until He was without beauty or comeliness, as foreseen by the holy prophet, Isaiah.

In the Gospel for the feast, we heard, 

“If the world hates you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” (John 15:18-20) 

The world vision, according to Lenin and the Bolsheviks, was at odds of the world represented by the Royal Martyrs: of Christian Monarchy defending and promoting the Christian Faith and the Church; of society built upon the precepts of the Gospel and the Law of God; of national life shaped by the Church, its Divine Services, and Christian Tradition shaped by the rhythms and celebrations of the fasts and feasts, and the seasons of the liturgical year. 

As a visible embodiment of Orthodox authority and Orthodox Sacred Tradition, itself, Christian governance and sacred-monarchy, the Royal Martyrs were an impossible threat to the Marxist-Leninist vision, and had to be destroyed as much by propoganda  lies, deception, as by the demonic, frenzied and hate-filled violence which brought their earthoy lives to their bloody end.

But, because the lives of the Royal Martyrs were based on eternal, heavenly truths, on the truth of faith, and were filled with the Light of Christ, their place in the life of the former empire and their love for their people could not be extinguished – even if their people had betrayed and forsaken them.

The lies, propaganda, obscene and solacious stories banded about in American and British newspapers, and the Russian proletarian press on the eve of the revolution seem infantile, two-dimensional and flimsy compared to the innumerable miracles through which God has glorified the Royal Martyrs since their martyrdom.

In the 1990’s, after a cross had been set up on the site of the Ipatiev House, it was illumined by a heavenly light, as the clouds opened and rotated above the Cross, and no snow fell within the large circle of light which fell upon the ground around the site of the martyrdom.

In the same decade, a former guard of the “Museum of the Workers’ Revenge” in the Ipatiev House signed an affidavit describing how she would hear beautiful church-singing from the basement room of execution, and that light shone from beneath the door during the night.

On November 7 1997, the anniversary of the Revolution, an icon of the Tsar-Martyr began to weep myrrh, and the following May, during a procession to mark the Tsar’s birthday, another icon began to weep myrrh during a procession.

Through the prayers of the Royal Martyrs, the godless have been brought to Faith; hardened hearts have been softened; the young have been delivered from depression, despair and lives heading towards self-destruction; addicts have been delivered from alcohol and drugs; childless women have been granted children; students have received help in studies; soldiers and refugees have been delivered from capture, death and great dangers; families have been reconciled and healed; the sick and infirm have been made whole.

For Orthodox Christians the resultant false ‘histories’ and mythologies necessary to dehumanise the Royal Martyrs, to justify unspeakable violence, and to desensitise the Russian people and the wider world to the horrors of the Ipatiev House and the Four Brothers Mine are an irrelevance and distraction from the glorious works of grace wrought by God through His saints.

We encounter the sanctity, rightness, and righteousness of the Royal Martyrs through their miracles, and to those of Faith, the lies and salacious stories bandied in the newspapers in America, Britain, and the Russia ‘proletarian-press’ on the eve of the revolution, seem two-dimensional, flimsy and ridiculous compared to the miracles through which Almighty God has glorified the Royal-Martyrs ever since their martyrdom.

To return to the Apostol, “…whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified”– and despite the lies the world invented and wrote about them, God has glorified the Royal Martyrs through countless miracles and outpourings of grace, and raised them up not only as exemplars of Christian living, endurance and Christ-like humility – but as powerful intercessor for the Church of Christ.

Reassured by the love of God through their deep, profound faith and their relationship with Him, the Royal Martyrs truly reflect the words of the Apostol: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” (Romans 8:35)

In 1917, the Empress-Martyr wrote, 

“Everything can be endured if you feel His (God’s) presence and love and if you believe in Him steadfastly in everything… 

One must ever thank God for all that He gives, and even if He took it away, then perhaps, when one endures without a murmur, all will be even brighter. One must always hope… 

If we, as Christian people can reflect the inspiring spiritual fortitude, constant hope in God and immense faith, refusing to lose our trust in His love, then that Divine love will flow into the workd through us, with a joy the shocks and challenges evil, violence, and cruelty with the Mind of Christ, so that we can join the Apostle Paul, with the Royal Martyrs and all the saints in confessing “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:39) 

Emulating the Royal Martyrs in faith, in life, and in death, let us put aside earthly cares, knowing that all things are in the hands of God, and that whatever may happen to us in life, His love remains immeasurable and immovable; His inscrutable will always seeks what is needful for us in the eternal scheme of His providence and wisdom, rather than according to the fickle standards and measures of success in  the world

In all things, He seeks our transformation, through the restoration of His image and likeness, calling us to be with Him in the endless glory of life of the age to come- together with the Royal Martyrs and all of His saints.

Let us hasten to the Royal Martyrs, seeking their help and intercession, but more than that, let us emulate their faith, love, courage and immovable trust in God in our own lives.

May they intercede for us!

Amen.

On the Feast of Pentecost

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O Divine Holy Spirit, Who distributest gifts unto all men and doest all things by Thy will, inspire me with Thy luminous gift, that I may glorify Thee Who art one with the Father and the Son. 

(Ode 1: the Canon to the Holy Spirit, by Theophanes)

Dear brothers and sisters, knowing that not all parishioners were able to be with us for Pentecost-Trinity, we send our greetings for this wonderful, salvific feast to our brothers and sisters wherever they are: to our students away for vacation; to parishioners on holiday with families; to those struggling under the pressure of work or studies; to those who are unwell.

We particularly pray for the newly-baptised, Macarius, and his baptismal companions who entered the holy font a little over a week ago, and for our catechumens who will soon receive Illumination.

On this Great Feast, we celebrate the sending of the Holy Spirit, not simply as a foundational, historic event in the life of the Church, but as the continuing gift of God’s Grace and Divine Power, ever-outpoured and ever-giving: in the transformative cleansing of Holy Baptism, as our catechumens are born again, through water and the Spirit; in the restorative Grace of confession trough the Mystery of Repentance; in the consecrating Divine Grace through which bread and wine become the Very Body and Blood of the Saviour, Who promised us the Comforter at His Ascension; in the Grace with which God blesses us in prayer and liturgy, in which come together to worship Him, in Spirit and in Truth.

The Church is the House which Wisdom, our Lord and Saviour, built, not only for Himself, but to the glory of His Unoriginate Father, and as the Temple of the Holy, Good, Life-Giving and Uncreated Spirit: the Temple in which the Comforter dwells, shining through the lives of the saints; revealing eternal Truth as the authoritative Voice of the Church; speaking through the holy and God-bearing fathers and Seven Ecumenical Councils; protecting and preserving the Church and her children through the holy canons and God-revealed wholeness of sacred Tradition, which is the abiding sign of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church, from century to century, and from generation to generation.

Our beloved father, St Seraphim of Sarov, teaches us that the acquisition of the Holy Spirit, is the central and essential meaning of our Christian life, and as we celebrate this feast of the Trinity and the Sending of the Comforter, each of us is called to actively seek the life of the Holy Spirit in both the life of the Church and our individual lives, by active engagement, involvement and spiritual-labour.

Our personal pursuit of the Holy Spirit is a life ceaselessly seeking Divine Grace, in tireless, continual labour and spiritual activity – by prayer, fasting and noetic struggle.

We cannot pray, “Come and dwell in us, cleanse us of every impurity, and save our souls, O Good One…” unless we struggle to unite and align our weak and fragile human will with God’s Will, so that through His promised Comforter, we may be bandaged, healed and made whole.

For this process of healing and restoration, we must each be active in seeking the power of the Holy Spirit; active in living the Christian life; active in trying to sweep out the filth and detritus of our fallen lives, as we try to make ourselves dwellings and vessels worthy of the Holy Spirit.

But, in these life-giving days of Pentecost, let us be active in pursuing the power and life of the Holy Spirit not simply for ourselves, but for the life, healing and salvation of the world.

Let us immerse ourselves in continual, persistent, humble and repentant prayer, praying the canons and akathist to the Holy Spirit, calling and longing for the sanctifying power of the Comforter to purify us and restore the Divine Image and Likeness in which we created, heeding St Seraphim’s words, “… every good deed done for Christ’s sake gives us the grace of the Holy Spirit, but prayer gives us this grace most of all, for it is always at hand, as an instrument for acquiring the grace of the Spirit.”

Let us understand Pentecost as the continuing indwelling of the Comforter, day by day, week by week, year by year, only possible through conscious, deliberate, determined searching, seeking and labour, if the Holy Spirit is to be an abiding and continued presence in our lives, and let us weigh and ponder every word and phrase of the invocation with which we once more begin our prayers:

O Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth, Who art everywhere present and fillest all things, Treasury of good things and Giver of life: Come and dwell in us, and cleanse us of all impurity, and save our souls, O Good One.

In the days ahead, let us continually return to this prayer, with compunction, concentration, and with awe at that as vessels of clay, the Saviour nevertheless vouchsafes us the seal, gift and indwelling of the Holy Spirit, with Whom He and the Father dwells in unoriginate and everlasting glory.

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.