Points to Ponder

Please find in the "Points to Ponder" section short excerpts from the homilies of Vladyka Seraphim.

Almsgiving

POINTS TO PONDER : ALMSGIVING

  • “We often think that Great Lent is simply about going to church much more often, reading more, and eating different things (but not necessarily less). There is more to it than that. As you will hear over and over again in our hymnography in Great Lent, giving to the poor and needy, the widows, the orphans, and so forth, is one of our major preoccupations in Great Lent. This emphasis is supposed to be helping us remember how our lives should be all the time”. See Homily : 1 February, 2009, Zacchæus Sunday, We turn a new Leaf.
  • “Metropolitan Leonty (Turkevitch), of blessed memory, is known always to have had money in his pocket specifically for the purpose of giving money to those who were going to ask for it whenever he was walking on his way somewhere”. See Homily : 28 February, 2009, Saturday before Great Lent, Humble, open-hearted, generous Almsgiving.]
  • “Metropolitan Leonty was not alone, because Archbishop Gregory, of blessed memory, and his uncle, the famous choir director, Nicholas Afonsky, behaved in just the same way. The uncle said to his nephew, Archbishop Gregory : 'If you are walking about somewhere and someone is asking you for money, it is not your business to ask him questions about this money. If he asks for money, he needs it, so give him whatever you have to give him. You do not ask him questions. If he is going to misuse it, that is his business. It is between him and the Lord'”. [See previous homily of 28 February, 2009.]
  • “Therefore, brothers and sisters, as we are about to begin Lent, let us do our best to co-operate with the Lord and His love. Let us begin Lent with the understanding that the main point of Lent is that we need our love for the Saviour to be increased more and more. We need to remember that we cannot do anything good except with His help. He will heal whatever is amiss with us more and more as we offer ourselves to the Lord”. [See previous homily of 28 February, 2009.]
  • “When we are giving money to someone who is asking for it, when we are helping a neighbour who needs help, or visiting someone who is sick in the hospital or otherwise indisposed, when we are visiting someone in prison or we are caring for the needs of others, we are also offering this to Christ”. See Homily : 22 February, 2009, Sunday of the Last Judgement, Everything must be under-girded with Love.
  • “All through Great Lent we are going to be reminded, ourselves, that in order to express our love for Jesus Christ we have to give alms to the poor. All sorts of people are forgetting this element of Great Lent, thinking that the fast is mainly concerned with depriving ourselves of meat, with bemoaning ourselves and our sins, and so forth. Lent is not just that”. See Homily : 10 February, 2008, Zacchæus Sunday, Repentance as applied Love.
  • “What we are almost always forgetting in North America is that the other significant half of Great Lenten activity is almsgiving, caring for the poor, paying special attention to people who are in need”. See Homily : 6 March, 2005, Sunday of the Last Judgement, How to observe Great Lent.
  • “This openness, this hospitality in the love of God, is what is important. It is not that someone might take advantage of us that is the main concern. If someone tries to take advantage, that is between that person and God. Our responsibility is to share, and to embrace people in love. Who knows if the person who begins taking advantage might not be healed by the encounter with selfless giving and caring ? A person could wake up from the deception of grasping and greediness, and learn open-armed hospitality, open-hearted hospitality”. See Homily : 22 August, 2009, Marriage is a serious Business.

Forgiveness

POINTS TO PONDER : FORGIVENESS

  • All the excerpts on this page are from the homily The Foundation of Forgiveness. See Homily : 9 March, 2008, Forgiveness Sunday, The Foundation of Forgiveness.
  • “It is important for us to forgive those against whom we have something negative. It is crucial that we forgive anyone who hurts us. It is crucial that we forgive anyone or everyone about everything, because our Lord says : '"If you do not forgive, neither will your Father in Heaven forgive you your trespasses"' (Mark 11:26). This is what He says to us. It is really serious. It is not merely a statement of principle. It is a statement of fact directed to each of us personally. The foundation of our Christian life is completely rooted in this forgiveness”.
  • “Non-forgiveness continues to sow poison in my heart : it continues to paralyse my life. Non-forgiveness continues to hurt other people, too, because it clouds my judgement. Non-forgiveness clouds my reactions to other people when they are inter-relating with me. Non-forgiveness poisons everything. Even if there is only one person or one situation in my life that remains unforgiven, it still makes everything cloudy and messy. It is really important that even though we may do nothing else great in our lives, we, in harmony with the Lord, must find the way to forgive everyone everything in our lives”.
  • “When we do, in the Lord, forgive everyone everything, finally we become free. We become truly free. We become free to be our real selves. We find our real selves in a loving relationship with the Lord. We exercise this real self in loving relationships with human beings and with creation, in healthy, loving relationships that are full of selfless love”.
  • “Therefore, needless to say, we have to forgive. How do we do this ? Saint Silouan of Mount Athos is a person of the previous century who (directly or indirectly) has told us how to do this simply. He tells us that we can come to forgiving by saying this simple prayer : 'Lord have mercy'. We say it over and over and over again for any person or anything or any situation that requires forgiveness. As Archimandrite Sophrony says, when we are saying 'Lord have mercy', we are actually making a statement which, all by itself, summarises the Gospel. We are confessing that the Lord is the Lord, and we are asking Him to have mercy on me, and on the person or the situation, everyone, everything, whoever”.
  • “When we are saying 'Lord have mercy', we are asking that He do exactly that : be His loving, healing Self to us all. Saint Silouan and Archimandrite Sophrony say that when this prayer passes through us to the other person, it passes through our heart, and opens our heart to this mercy from the Lord. It enables the other person to have some possibility of accepting the same mercy. Ultimately, it is always up to the other person freely to accept or to reject this mercy. The Lord does not force Himself, but this prayer enables the possibility”.
  • “Moreover, on top of all that, people are finding over and over again that when they are saying this prayer in this way, even though there may not be such a big change in the other person or the situation (because sometimes you cannot change the situation), the poison from that situation is removed from the heart. The Lord takes the poison out of the situation in the past that is so painful. He also takes away the poison of the memory of the wrongdoing from another person. The more we say this prayer, the more He extracts the poison. Through this prayer, the pain is dissipated, along with the death sown in our hearts by the anger and the bitterness that we may sometimes feel towards other people. Finally, it is taken away altogether, so that there is no remaining poison. I may remember the event, but it does not any longer poison me. I may remember the wrong, but it does not any longer poison me. Instead, I feel sorry for the person who wronged me”.
  • “When we come to the point of remembering a situation or a person or an event or whatever, and it no longer reflexively stirs up anger, no longer stirs up disturbance or depression or darkness or whatever else, then we will know that we have actually, with God’s mercy, been able to forgive. Because we have co-operated with the Lord and listened to Him, He has healed our heart, and healed our memory”.
  • “Sometimes, when something is particularly painful and particularly stubborn in our lives, the pain does not easily or quickly go away. It is important for us to offer this pain and suffering repeatedly to the Lord. It is important to supplement our supplication with taking holy water, and anointing with oil, through which the Lord does convey His healing love to our souls and bodies”.

Great Lent

POINTS TO PONDER : GREAT LENT

  • “What truly has meaning is my offering to God of my abstaining from flesh-meats and other delightful things, in order to spend more time with Him because I love Him”. See Homily : 6 March, 2005, Sunday of the Last Judgement, How to observe Great Lent.
  • “We offer our fasting, our abstinence to the Lord because of love, so that we can spend more time with Him, and less time cooking. Let us not worry about the ‘exact’ rules of everything in Great Lent. Rather, let us worry about deepening our loving relationship with the Lord. That is the purpose of everything”. [See previous homily of 6 March, 2005.]
  • “Let us be concerned about what we are doing for our brothers and sisters, and how we can be good to them. It is about precisely those things that the Saviour is going to be asking you and me at the end … “. [See previous homily of 6 March, 2005.]
  • “It is all very well to know how one ought properly to fast in a particular season. However, if the love of Jesus Christ is not at the foundation of that, if the love of Jesus Christ, and the encounter with Jesus Christ in the heart is not at the root of all of this, then, as the Apostle Paul said in his Epistle to the Corinthians, it is ‘sounding brass or a clanging cymbal’ (1 Corinthians 13:1)". See Homily : 24 September, 2005, The Example of Saint Peter the Aleut.
  • “Some people are tempted to turn the observance of Great Lent into a sort of ‘reign of terror’, one might say, where we are afraid everyday of breaking some rule about what we can or cannot eat”. See Homily : 11 February, 2007, Sunday of the Last Judgement, True Freedom in Love.
  • “The first reason I am offering a fast or an abstinence from certain foods is that I want to be pleasing to the Lord. Offering to Him this act of not eating (when almost my whole life can otherwise be pre-occupied with eating) is an attempt to take the emphasis off ‘me’, and to put the emphasis on the Lord instead, where it should be. The not-eating, and the doing of good works for people who need help and support of one sort or another, feeding the hungry and visiting the sick, and so forth, are all expressions of the love of God”. See Homily : 24 January, 2010, Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, Fasting enables the right Focus on Life.
  • “Let us ask the Lord to renew our strength, to renew our focus, to renew our hope, to renew our love. Knowing that no man is an island, let us ask Him to enable us to be an encouragement to those around us by our love, by our hospitality, by our joy, by our peace, by our stability, by our service, and by how we glorify the All-Holy Trinity”. See Homily : 27 February, 2010, 2nd Sunday in Great Lent, Encouraging one another.
  • “We have a Sunday in Great Lent given to … the reminder of this 'Ladder'. The book itself is read in monasteries throughout every Great Lent. In regard to the ladder, we do not begin stepping onto it and making progress towards Christ, who is at the top end of the ladder, unless we begin with Christ and understand that Christ, Himself, is, in effect, the whole ladder. There is no separation between ourselves and Christ in the whole course of our progress of deepening our love in Him, of becoming more and more focussed on Him, more and more mindful of Him, more and more full of His love, more and more identified with Him, and more and more like Him. He is with us at all times". See Homily : 14 March, 2010, 4th Sunday in Great Lent, Christ, Himself, is the Ladder.
  • “Acquiring the heart, the mind, the love and life of Christ is always achieved through prayer and fasting. Giving up ourselves to Him, throwing away anything that is not of Him, allowing and asking Him always to unite us to Himself, to fill us with His love, is what constitutes this progress". [See previous homily of 14 March, 2010.]
  • “May the Lord grant you the heart to increase in love, and increase in your knowledge of your real self as a beloved child of Him, who created you”. [See previous homily of 14 March, 2010.]
  • “May the Lord increase your joy as you pass through these days, and multiply your ability to serve Him. May you be a shining and effective witness of His love …”. [See previous homily of 14 March, 2010.]

Humility

POINTS TO PONDER : HUMILITY

  • "I am not the centre of the universe. Jesus Christ is". See Homily : 14 August, 2005, Learning how to trust the Saviour.
  • "If we are truly following in the footsteps of Christ, we do not exalt ourselves. We do not make ourselves out to be anything more than what we are – which is, a servant of God, a lover of God. We are not something great. The Saviour Himself, who is the Lord of the whole universe after all, came in our midst, washed the apostles’ feet, and said : '"I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you"' (John 13:15). This means that we have to be servants of each other, as He continues to be our servant to this day. We are not greater than God. We are not greater than this Master who served all of the time that He was amongst us in the flesh". See Homily : 9 February, 2009, Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, We conform ourselves to Christ.
  • "That is how we like to think : I am just like everyone else ; I am just a regular sinner like everyone else. This is not the way it is. It cannot be the way it is, because this is not how the Lord teaches us in everything He is saying to us and doing amongst us. The publican is not making any comparisons with anyone else. He is saying : 'Have mercy on me, the sinner'. He is only speaking about himself and his own condition to the Lord, and asking the Lord to save him, heal him, correct him and help him in repentance". [See previous homily of 9 February, 2009.]
  • "The fact is, my dear brothers and sisters, that the Church is a hospital for sinners. We are all more or less in the same boat. We are all more or less tempted in rather the same way, as anyone who is hearing confessions will tell you. The sins of human beings are very repetitive. We are all just about the same". See Homily : 24 September, 2005, The Example of Saint Peter the Aleut.
  • "Our Lord says that it is important for us to humble ourselves like little children. This, according to my understanding of it, truly is the essence of the way of a Christian". See Homily : 27 August, 2005, Child-like Humility.
  • "The child looks to the parents for everything, and expects the parents to protect him or her in everything. This is precisely how the Lord wants us to be towards Him. I think that people who are on farms are still in the best position to experience this sense of child-like humility. ... Farmers have always had this basic relationship of trust with the Lord which has been life-giving". [See previous homily of 24 September, 2005.]
  • "This child in us is a direct connection between us and Him. Let us ask the Lord this morning in our worship to renew this child-like love in our , and to freshen up this confidence in Him. It is this that is life-giving". [See previous homily of 24 September, 2005.]
  • hearts

  • "This is the way for you and for me – self-emptying, self-sacrificing, selfless love – not putting ourselves first and in front of everyone and everything (which Canadian society says we are supposed to do). We must do the opposite : to be the last, and to be happy to be the last ; not to be praised for everything, but to be satisfied to be serving Christ, to be doing good things in our lives, to be living according to the talents that God has given, and offering them to Him ; not to be asking to be thanked for everything that we do, but to be grateful that we can serve the Lord in helping other people, in feeding other people who are hungry, in consoling other people who are grief-stricken for one reason or another, in being useful to God according to the gifts He has given. I do not need the thanks of human beings. It is enough satisfaction to know that these things that are being done are being done to His glory". See Homily : 28 August, 2005, Being Imitators of the Mother of God.
  • "The Saviour emptied Himself and became least of all so that the Father ultimately raised Him up and exalted Him above everyone and everything. Exaltation comes only after self-emptying humility. Humility is not being a grovelling creeper, like Uriah Heep. It is knowing who we are in Christ, having confidence in Christ’s love, and knowing that we were created to be good. At the same time, humility is understanding that we do not need to be noticed ; we do not need to be praised. We do what we do because of love of God, in the same manner as the Mother of God did, and still does. She loves God above everything". [See previous homily of 28 August, 2005.]

Prayer

POINTS TO PONDER : PRAYER

  • “This is what we are supposed to be doing, you know, in our life of prayer – having a personal encounter with Jesus Christ risen from the dead”. See Homily : 8 May, 2005, Thomas Sunday, Complete Confidence in His Love.
  • “We have baptisms by fire : this is the Orthodox way. We learn best by doing. We jump in and do it. How do we learn to swim ? We jump in the water and we just start swimming. How do we pray ? We just begin. We open our mouth and our heart, and we start. That is always how we go about it.” See Homily : 10 December, 2006, Ceaseless Thanksgiving.
  • “When people are unkind to us, it is important for us to be patient, to give thanks to God, to pray “Lord have mercy” for the people that are treating us badly. Part of this is simply waiting. Through our prayers, sometimes people who treat us badly ultimately find themselves turning about, as the Apostle Paul himself was turned about in mid-track". See Homily : 23 October, 2005, Giving and Forgiving.
  • “If someone misuses the gift of love towards me, and betrays my love and my openness and my sincerity – that is that person’s responsibility to answer before Christ. It is that person’s responsibility, period. My responsibility is to make sure that my heart stays clean and pure towards that person. I, in Christ, have to be able to pray for that person, as Archimandrite Sophrony and Saint Silouan say. I have to say at least “Lord have mercy” repeatedly for that person. In doing this, I am offering that person to Christ in the hope that that person may yet see the error, turn about, and repent”. [See previous homily of 23 October, 2005.]
  • “The Lord uses our prayers as He wills. I have seen how the Lord truly does use our prayers for the living, and for the departed. He touches people who need our support even if we do not know that. People are praying (in general and in specific). The Lord hears our prayers. He meets our needs. He touches us. He looks after us all, the living and the departed together. He cares for us. He wants us to be united with Him in His love because He created us because of love. He wants us to live in Him eternally in love, in life, in joy, in everlasting bliss.” See Homily : 1 March, 2008, Soul Saturday, Keeping our Priorities straight.
  • “Let us ask the Lord to give us anew the Grace, and the outpouring of His love today, so that we will be able to take courage, and apply this basic, little prayer that He has given us : “Kyrie eleison ; Lord, have mercy ; Doamne milueste ; Seigneur, sois miséricordieux”. In saying this simple prayer, let us let the Lord heal our hearts, and keep our hearts always healed, whole, and in clear, unblocked, loving communion with Him”. See Homily : 9 March, 2008, Forgiveness Sunday, The Foundation of Forgiveness.
  • “This is how we all must be towards each other. We must be loving fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters. We must be revealing Christ to each other. We must be referring each other to Christ. In prayer, we must be bringing each other into the presence of Christ, lifting each other up before the Face of Christ, always, and in everything looking only to Christ”. See Homily : 24 August, 2008, Prayer and Fasting.
  • “We are always praying for those persons who are difficult. How do we pray ? As Archimandrite Sophrony taught (and I believe that he is right), following his spiritual father, Saint Silouan, we simply say “Lord, have mercy”. We ask the Lord in His love to be present to the other person. The more that I say “Lord, have mercy” for the other person, the more my own heart is straightened out towards the other person. I cannot make the other person change, but the Lord’s love can change my heart. This is what is important : how I am towards the person who is so difficult for me because of pain inflicted or feelings hurt by so-and-so or whatever. It is I who am responsible for me. I am responsible for how I react”. See Homily : 16 January, 2010, Learning how to forgive.

Repentance

POINTS TO PONDER : REPENTANCE

  • “It is God’s call for you and for me to be holy : to live a life of repentance, turning away from sin and selfishness, turning away from darkness and turning to light, obedience, to serving everyone else with selfless love, to being like Jesus Christ. That is the purpose of our Orthodox Church in Canada. That is why we are here”. See Homily : 27 June, 1994, Sunday of All Saints, Reasons for celebrating this Feast each Year.
  • “We see our Lord coming to Levi (who is actually Matthew), sitting at the customs office where he is a tax collector. What happens ? Our Lord says to him : ‘“Follow Me”’. Immediately Levi gets up, leaves everything behind and follows the Saviour. He immediately responds to the Lord. In other words, this man repents. He turns away from his unrighteous way of life of greedy gain (as was the way of tax collectors in those days). He turns away from it all and follows the Saviour.” See Homily : 21 March, 2009, 2nd Sunday in Great Lent, Let us turn about and follow our Saviour.
  • “This is the whole point of everything when it comes to life in Christ. The Church (and any congregation of faithful Christians) is not the society of the perfect. It is the society of those who are sick, who are wanting to be well, who are turning to the Lord. They are trying to be faithful and to follow our Saviour as Levi did just now”. [See previous homily of 21 March, 2009.]
  • “Today, we are celebrating the memory of Saint Mary of Egypt, the most important example of repentance for us all (as far as I can see, and as far as I can understand). In her Life and in the hymns, we heard what sort of a life she had lived before the time came for her repentance. She, in fact, was living a very, very twisted and ruined life, and she took people into ruin with her. Yet, when the Lord gave her a clear sign that she could still be loved, she repented. Because of the way she turned about her life (she became very holy, as we find out at the end), she is truly an important sign for us”. See Homily : 13 April, 2008, 5th Sunday in Great Lent, Will we accept the Lord's Forgiveness ?
  • “How did the apostles survive that test of walking with our Saviour on the way to His Passion ? According to our standards, we would likely say that they failed badly. Why do I say that ? Well, they kept falling asleep ; then they were afraid ; then they ran away ; and then the Apostle Peter, himself, denied three times that he even knew Jesus Christ. When it comes to this denial, it is nothing trivial, because this is betrayal. Betrayal is even more serious than what Saint Mary of Egypt did, one could say ; and yet, the Apostle Peter and the other apostles repented with tears. They were sorry that they were so weak and so overcome with fear, and they returned to our Lord. They begged forgiveness (which they certainly received, or we would not be standing here today).” See previous homily of 13 April, 2008
  • “It is important for us to remember that repentance is not what many people think it is. Many people say : ‘Boo-hoo, I am so sorry for what I did wrong’. They weep and weep, feel dejected and morose, and all those things. There may be weeping involved, but weeping and saying : ‘I am sorry’ is not the main thing. Repentance is doing. It is not talking. The word ‘repent’ means to turn about. Zacchæus is showing us exactly what this means : he had led a corrupt and broken life ; it was a life that was obviously completely selfish, and he turns about today in front of us, in front of the Saviour. He says : ‘I’m correcting everything that I did wrong insofar as I am able’”. See Homily : 1 February, 2009, Zacchæus Sunday, We turn a new Leaf.
  • “The Saviour enables Zacchæus to do what his heart is telling him to do. That is why he wanted to sneak up into the tree and see the Lord in the first place – to turn about, to serve the Lord, to follow the right path of life. Zacchæus turns from darkness to light, from death to life, from fear to love, from selfishness to selflessness. He turns about completely today in front of our eyes. This is a very big lesson for us all to be learning today”. [See previous homily of 1 February, 2009.]