Year 1995

See no Evil ; hear no Evil ; speak no Evil

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
See no Evil ; hear no Evil ; speak no Evil
11 July, 1995


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

I remember that when I was quite young, my mother used to say to me that I should pay attention to that Oriental proverb expressed in the three monkeys : See no evil ; hear no evil ; speak no evil. In those days I thought that that was cute, but I did not understand it. It became harder to understand it as life went along because, in fact, in society all around me I saw the precise opposite of those monkeys. I was hearing plenty of evil ; I was certainly seeing enough evil, and I spoke evil also, along with everyone else. It was the Canadian way that I grew up in. People see other people’s sins ; they hear about other people’s sins and faults, and they talk about other people’s sins and faults. No-one can convince me that anything has changed since I was young because amongst the young people who speak to me, I hear that the same habit that people had when I was that age is very much alive.

In fact, it seems to me that this habit is far stronger than it was when I was that age. This is so much so that not only do people (adults and also children) see, hear and speak evil about other people, but they even invent it. This is especially shocking when it happens amongst children. People imagine evil about other people and turn the imagination into facts. That is a really bad sign for us, because when people believe that an imagination is true, we say that such people are insane. In the old days, people who would say that such was really the truth, got locked up for a while and took cold baths and Epsom salts and other things until they connected again with reality. However, it seems to be becoming commonplace in Canadian life that people will, in fact, not only see, hear and speak evil, but they imagine it and make it into facts. We are so deeply poisoned by this sort of behaviour that we often do not pay attention to it. It is important that we do ask ourselves what sorts of things are we actually thinking ? What sorts of things are we actually saying ? How are we seeing other people and how are we interpreting them ?

The Lord says today in effect that if your eye is evil, everything else becomes rotten as well. If we cannot anymore perceive the truth, then we are truly lost. If we cannot see good and righteousness in other people, we are truly lost and we have surely gone beyond the edge as Christians. A Christian must live differently from the fallen ways of the evil world. It is not that the world by itself is evil. God created it good, but we are the ones that make evil out of it. In human society, the fallenness with its poison is very far-reaching. It is also very deadly. If we go along “lock, stock and barrel” without any criticism of average Canadian society, we will, in fact, not see good in other people. We will not hear good about other people and we will not be speaking good about other people. The way of Canadian society is like a sculpture I saw many years ago for the first time in Oslo, Norway. It is a sculpture by an artist whose name is Frogner. This sculpture consists of a very high pillar with nothing but human bodies all twisted together. It represents how human beings live. In other words, all those human beings are standing on each other and pulling each other down so that they themselves can get to the top and be on the top. That is the way Canadian society is, and it is that way because it is not a Christian society. That element was always there because of fallenness, but now Canada is denying its Christian character. This attitude and this disposition are running rampant.

One cannot go anywhere in society now without encountering precisely that disposition. People are jumping on each other and stabbing each other in the back, gossiping about each other, lying about each other and destroying each other’s reputation in order to get ahead. The Christian must not behave like this. The Christian must behave as Jesus Christ. The Christian must be able to see the goodness that God created in other human beings, even if they are fallen and even if they are doing bad things. Christians are the sort of people who must be ready to help that goodness come out and win over the darkness and the badness. When a Christian sees someone else doing something wrong, it is not proper that he or she starts telling everyone about the things that that person has done wrong. Even more is it not correct for this person to sit in judgement on the one who has done wrong because none of us can do that. None of us is righteous enough to sit in judgement on anyone else because every last one of us is a sinner. There is not one of us who does not do, say, hear or even think wrong things, bad things. We cannot judge other people.

It is our responsibility, when we see our brother or sister falling down, not to snicker and point fingers (as is the way of the world) and tell everyone about it. Instead, it is our responsibility to pray for that person, and ask God to help that person to see the right and to repent. We ourselves have to repent of our own sins. We ourselves have to admit that we do, think, say and hear wrong. We are not greater than anyone else. The Christian has to understand like the Apostle Paul that we are least, not greatest ; worst, not best. When we understand the darkness in our own hearts and our own fallenness, it is then that we have the possibility to get rid of it. We have the possibility to let the Lord come into our hearts, to clean house, to wash us and to change us. The Christian has to understand that being a servant of everyone else is the first responsibility. Our Lord, Jesus Christ says that the servant (which is all of us) is not greater than the Master (who is Jesus Christ) (see Matthew 10:24). If Jesus Christ Himself, our Lord, our God, our Saviour can wash people’s feet, feed people who are hungry, talk to people who are rejects, encourage them and turn them to the truth, are we greater than the Lord ?

N happened to wake me up about this. When I was a priest here, and since I became a bishop, n would often say to me : “Do you ever take a day off ?” I would say : “No, I am too busy”. Then he would say : “So, you think you are greater than the Lord, do you ? Even the Lord rested on the Sabbath Day, but you don’t take any time to rest”. N was speaking prophetically to me at that time. He was speaking from the Lord to me at that time because I needed to hear that. I cannot say that I have really managed to take a day off in the way that he thinks I should, but at least I have gotten closer to it. Now I do manage to take a little time and get myself out of the office sometimes and work in the garden instead of answering letters and answering the phone all the time when I am home. Instead of talking to people and seeing people all the time when I am away visiting, I do spend a little time being quiet, and I feel better for it. The Lord sends people to you and to me to speak to us for the Lord even if we do not know it just at the time. Later I have understood.

It is important for us to have our hearts open to the love of Jesus Christ first, in order to serve, and second, to be able to hear the love of Jesus Christ speaking to us in our brothers and sisters. It is a fact that we all sin and for certain we all do, say, hear and think things that are wrong. However, it is also a fact that we are all here together in this Temple worshipping the Lord on the Lord’s Day and other holy days because we care for the Lord and we are all trying somehow to be Christians. Even if we do not manage very well, we are still trying to live the Christian life. It is important that we do not pay too much attention to the sins of our brothers and sisters. The sins of our brothers and sisters are real, but they are real enough in ourselves, too. It is more important to encourage and strengthen the good in our brothers and sisters. In encouraging the good, in giving hope, strength and prayerful reassurance, talking about the Lord, asking the Lord even in front of the brother or sister to help in need – things like that help to encourage the one who is weak to become stronger and to overcome the sin.

To talk about the good and what is right in a brother or sister is not to ignore the sin, to hide it behind rose-coloured glasses or to act like some sort of Pollyanna who never sees anything bad. Instead, it is doing what the Lord does. We ourselves do wrong. We ourselves tell the Lord that we are sorry that we do wrong. The Lord does not boot us out because we do wrong. The Lord does not throw us away and say to you or to me : “You are nothing but a no-good-nik ; do not show your face here”. He does not say that to you or to me. He says, in effect : “I love you. All right, so, you sinned”. As He said to all the people that He healed in the Gospel, He says to us, as it were : “Get up ; go and do not sin any more”. He says that to us and He accepts our repentance. How can we be different to our brothers and sisters than our Lord is to us ? It is important for us to encourage each other in the right instead of harping on the wrong. It is important for us to remember the good things that we have done, have said, and do for each other instead of remembering all the bad things. In fact, painful as the bad things are, the good is far more numerous and far stronger. It is only because we make the mistake of listening to Big Red that we do not remember all those good things. We remember only what hurts, and forget what is healing.

Brothers and sisters, as we come to the Lord’s Table and offer ourselves once again to Him, let us ask Him to come into our hearts freshly today and give us the heart to change, to be more like Him, to turn away from the darkness and the ways of fallenness. Let us imitate Him in love and service, in doing and being good. Let us be as Christ to each other. Let us allow the Lord to give us the eyes to see Him in each other, to hear Him speak to us in each other and to be ready to speak what He has to say to each other. Let us not just be like monkeys who see, hear and speak no evil with all their senses covered up. Instead, with eyes opened as Orthodox Christians, let us see good. With ears opened as Orthodox Christians, let us hear what is good. With mouths opened as Orthodox Christians, let us speak only what is good to the glory of our Lord, God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

Emulating the two Apostles

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Emulating the two Apostles
Feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul (Old-style)
12 July, 1995
2 Corinthians 11:21-12:9 ; Matthew 16:13-19


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

We have heard a fair amount about the Lord’s attitude towards suffering and about the Christian life itself. What a difference there is between the usual Canadian attitude to life and the attitude to life in the Gospel. Unhappily, what a different attitude there usually is even amongst us who are Orthodox believers as compared to what the Gospel is giving us. There is such a difference there because we are so poisoned by the attitude of the world and, for the most part, we are not immersed as we ought to be in the Scriptures, in the Gospel, and in the Orthodox Christian disposition.

We are frequently satisfied with second best. We allow ourselves to be bitter, to hold grudges, to be proud, to be vainglorious, to resent poverty, to resent suffering, to resent inconvenience, to resent discomfort, to be unhappy if we are too hot or too cold (and even to complain to God if we are too hot or too cold). Then we have a look at the example of the Apostles Peter and Paul. What is even worse is that we have the effrontery in our fat, cosy, comfortable 1990s of Canada to look at the Apostles Peter and Paul and to think about them vaguely as some sort of holy guru guys, who were sort of professional holy persons. We say : “They had it nice. Saint Paul saw wonderful visions. He was caught up into Heaven, and isn’t that lovely ! It would be nice if I could do the same”. We tend to think no farther than that. We do not bother to pay attention to the fact that the Lord Himself said that the world which hates the light loves the cosy, comfortable, familiar darkness. The world tries to put out the light and tries to destroy the Master (see John 1:5). Why should they treat us who are the children of the light any differently ?

The fact is that those apostles were human beings just like the rest of us. They were not sinless men who coasted through this life in some sort of perpetual aura of unearthly holiness. They were sinners. Let us not forget that the Apostle Paul was holding coats while others were stoning the holy martyr Stephen. Let us not forget that the Apostle Peter denied the Lord three times. What is significant about these two apostles is that they repented of their sins. Regardless of their sinfulness, they determined to turn about and conform themselves to the love of Jesus Christ.
Nowadays in Canada, we who are believers are being called to account for our belief more than ever before. We who call ourselves Christians (and especially Orthodox Christians) are being called to account for our belief and our behaviour. Previously, people used to pay very little attention to Christian behaviour in general. This is because everyone thought that everyone else was Christian and so people were just vaguely tottering along in life. Nowadays, when there is a general rejection of Christianity in Canada and a sidelining of Christianity to a museum, as it were, Christians are relegated to some sort of irrelevancy. Sadly it can happen that even Orthodox Christians become rather like Fort Garry, or like Upper Canada village in Ontario, where people are all dressed up and are playing “Let’s pretend”. This is how we tend actually to behave when the general attitude towards us is like this. We go through the motions and forget the essence.

People are nevertheless measuring Christ by our behaviour. They are measuring Orthodox Christianity by our behaviour. They are reading the Gospel themselves and they are asking how we measure up to what they are reading. They are asking : “Is that person able to suffer ? Why is that person behaving just like my neighbour when he or she gets betrayed or hurt or disgruntled ? Why is his or her behaviour no different from anyone else’s ? I thought Christians were supposed to be different. If they are no different, what is the point ?” This question can be legitimately asked because we do in fact often behave badly. We very often as Christians give a very bad example of what it is to be a Christian. Indeed, we are too often culpable of behaving as the world does : vicious, nasty, unforgiving or whatever else it might be (the options for sin are numberless). If we behave like the world and do not show the love of Jesus Christ concretely, then we become a stumbling block to others who are looking for Christ. We become the occasion for other people to say : “I don’t need that. I am going to go away somewhere else”. We become the occasion for another person to fall away. That is a dangerous position to be in if we purport to love the Lord.

It is easy for us all to fall into the traps of the world. When we are faced with the example of the Apostles Peter and Paul, it is necessary for us to allow the Lord to bring us up short, to cause us to examine our hearts, to cause us to examine the motivation of our lives, to ask ourselves how we measure up to the yardstick (or the metre-stick) of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. How much do we reflect His example, His love ? How much are we conformed to Him ? It is important for us to pay attention to our life as measured according to the example of the measure of the repentance of those two apostles. The Apostle Paul was not granted visions of the third Heaven (or whatever level it was of Heaven) just because he was such a nice guy and such a professional guru and such a levitator, or whatever else (or because he did something special to acquire it). That is precisely the attitude of the world today : if we do this or this or this, then presto, we get that. God is not milked like that.

The Apostle Paul was given such a blessing, such a vision, and obviously many other revelations of the heavenly Kingdom, because God loves him. The Apostle was living a life of repentance. He was suffering greatly. He needed encouragement, reinforcement and concrete, intimate demonstrations of God’s love for him in order to carry on. That is why it is important for us to love God, to do everything we can to open our hearts, our minds, our souls and our whole life, in fact, to the Lord’s love so that He can tell us that He loves us. It is for us to co-operate with Him so that He can heal our wounds, change our hearts, lighten our darkness and enable us to have the strength (like those apostles) to go out and face the very betrayals, the denials, the rebukes and other sorts of suffering that the world inflicts on us. We will be enabled to suffer with Him for His own world.

Brothers and sisters, on this Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul, let us ask the Lord to come to us and renew us with fresh strength, with fresh injection of the Grace of the Holy Spirit. By the Grace of the Holy Spirit may we accept the strength to turn away from our selfishness and to turn towards His selflessness. May we accept the strength to remove ourselves and reveal Him only to those around us. May we accept the Grace, the courage and the strength to make our will identical with His will so that our hearts and our souls will glorify Him, our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.