In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
We are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of this parish here in n, and its witness in the town of n. The people who have been living and serving here from its foundation fifty years ago have been doing so, following the example of Saint Seraphim of Sarov, for whom the parish is named. They have been doing this to the best of their ability. That does not imply that every parishioner here is therefore a saint. However, it is to imply that people in this parish have been doing their best to live a Christian life.
Saint Seraphim was living very much in accordance with the Gospel in his life. The one thing that is needful in living our life is to live in accordance with, and in the love of Jesus Christ. It is our way and our calling from Christ to follow Him. He is the Way for us, and He is the Truth. Saint Seraphim recognised this, and that is why he gave himself completely to the Lord in this way, to Him who is the Truth. Life in the nineteenth century was not so different from the society we live in now. In those days, as it is now, there were all sorts of people being led by philosophical ideas who thought that there is more than one sort of truth, who thought that there are alternative truths, and that they could develop different sorts of truths. The fact is that God has revealed Himself to us. In His Self-revelation, He has clearly shown us that there is only one Truth, and that is Himself. Jesus Christ, the Word of God, and the Son of God, said to us : “‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life’” (John 14:6). Therefore, if we are following in the Way, we are following Jesus Christ. We will encounter the Truth, and nothing but the Truth, because it is Jesus Christ who is the Truth. In Him we will have life, and life in its fulness (see John 10:10). That is precisely what Saint Seraphim in the course of his life came to experience – life in its fulness, in the love of Jesus Christ. He himself was able, therefore, to live in accordance with the Truth.
Saint Seraphim was not some sort of specialist. He was an ordinary human being just like everyone else. However, Saint Seraphim was able to live the fulness of human life in the way God created us to be. He showed us that, like him, other human beings can do the same. There have been many saints before Saint Seraphim, and there will be saints after him who will teach us the lesson that the Lord is always trying to teach us : that He is with us, that He cares for us, and no matter how difficult life might be for us, He is there for us, and He will help us overcome everything. He will put everything right at the consummation of all things.
Saint Seraphim lived in a monastic community. People who do not live in monastic communities have the idea that in monastic communities people are all perfect, somehow, that they are all Grace-filled, and that they are not fallen people any more. The monks are thought to be (in the popular mind) “professional Christians”, and “experts” in how to live the Christian life. Then, when monks and nuns are found to be making mistakes or arguing with each other (and sometimes not even liking each other so well), people outside this monastic community will tend to think that there is something wrong. However, there is nothing at all wrong. Monks and nuns are human beings like everyone else, and they live in a Christian family like everyone else. They suffer from temptations just like everyone else. If in your family and mine we sometimes have disagreements, why should we expect that amongst monks and nuns it would be any different ? Indeed, in good monastic communities, the monks who are following the Gospel as well as they can, learn quickly how to forgive quickly. They learn how to reconcile quickly as my parents said (following the Apostle Paul) : “Do not let the sun go down on your wrath” (Ephesians 4:26). That is why in good monastic communities every day ends with mutual forgiveness. They do not merely say : “I am sorry”. They actually make a prostration in front of each other, and ask each other’s forgiveness. Sometimes they even get blessed with holy water to make sure that they have strength to forgive.
Saint Seraphim lived in such a community. The single-hearted way that he was following Christ (even though he was under complete obedience to a spiritual father), made some of his brethren irritated. He got a lot of criticism, and sometimes even ridicule. In a Christian family we are not necessarily living in a perfectly supportive atmosphere, and it is the same thing sometimes in monastic communities, too. It is not always just roses. There are thorns there, too, sometimes. However, God is merciful. After some time, Saint Seraphim withdrew into the desert of the forest, and he became so filled with the love of Jesus Christ that in some cases we understand that he was shining like the sun. The Grace of God was radiating from him in a similar way that the Grace of God was radiating from the face of Moses after he was on Mount Sinai. This is because of God’s love. This is because God was reassuring people of His love, and how life can be in the Kingdom. He was giving us hope. Saint Seraphim is an example of this hope that Jesus Christ wants us all to hold on to, to live in, to grasp, to make our own.
If we read the life of Saint Seraphim, we understand that as a result of his love, he was given Grace to help very many people who were facing all sorts of difficulties in their lives. When people become holy, they do not become holy only for themselves, so that they can sit on some rock somewhere, and only be holy by themselves with Christ. Nothing of the sort. When people become full of the love of Jesus Christ, more is asked of them. The Lord gives them Grace to do more and more. They become examples of what our Saviour said that Christians are supposed to be – salt and yeast (see Matthew 5:13 ; 13:33). We are supposed to be salt and yeast. Neither of these alone does anything but be itself. However, each, mixed with the environment (let’s say flour, for the sake of bread), does something very important. The yeast makes the flour rise and transforms it into bread, and the salt gives flavour which makes the bread really good, and tempts us to want to eat it all.
This is how Christians are supposed to be in the world. Filled with the love of Jesus Christ, we are supposed to be able and willing, competent in Christ by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, to help people in the way that bread is helped by yeast and salt. Yes, it is true that we will get opposition. Yes, it is true that we will not be understood. Yes, it is true that we might be rejected, and treated as foolish. However, the fact is that our Saviour, Himself, was not treated any differently. Saints in every age have been treated in a similar way – not understood, nor appreciated, until the Lord makes it clear to some people that this person is needed for the Church’s welfare. There are many saints that are not on the calendar and never will be. There are many saints that are not even known to us.
In fact, because I know some of the people who are resting here in this cemetery, I think that I can say that some of those unknown saints are resting here. I encountered them in their lives, and I know what sort of people some of them were (amongst them founders of this Temple). I believe that this is the case. These persons are holy, and the Lord used them for a great deal of good even though they faced considerable difficulty, misunderstanding, and even, sometimes, rejection. Nevertheless, their faithfulness bore fruit, and that is what is important for you and for me today.
We must remember the example of Saint Seraphim of Sarov, his faithfulness to Jesus Christ, and the fruits that came from it, not only in his lifetime when people were healed and their sorrows were assuaged, but even until this day. By his intercessions, people are helped and strengthened. Throughout our life also, the Saviour calls us in obedience to Him, in His love, to help other people find Him. In Saint Seraphim’s life, and in the lives of all the saints, we see that they never pointed to themselves or called attention to themselves, saying : “Look at me ! I made it : I am holy”. None of them would ever admit that he or she was holy. The most that anyone could get out of them, I am sure, is that they loved Jesus Christ to some extent (but they would say not nearly enough), and that they were unworthy. That they would all say, I am quite sure, because I have heard many of them say so to me. However, they clearly loved Jesus Christ, and longed to love Him much more. This is what will be the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven : loving Jesus Christ more and more – endlessly, being more and more and more alive in Him – endlessly.
Through you and me other people can see Christ (even though there may be difficulties because of our weakness). People who are called saints are those whose lives reveal Christ very clearly. The Lord’s Grace flows through them to us. Despite all the distortions of our fallenness, and our inability to be obedient to Christ’s love, despite our sometimes stubborn willfulness, it must become our hope and our prayer that people nearby us will nevertheless see something of Jesus Christ in us. It is our prayer that they find consolation, hope, and courage to continue in whatever He has called them to do. In the life of a Christian, nothing else really matters. When we love Jesus Christ, and when we are living His love to the best of our ability, despite all the difficulties, everything works out because it is He that is leading us. Things do work out (although sometimes we are tempted to think that they will never work out because of the perpetual, repeated difficulties that we face). However, things do ultimately work out for His glory, even if it means that I have to die.
We all have to die, anyway. I was told yesterday, and I believe that it is right, that when it comes to dying, it is not something that we have to accept grudgingly as a reality. In the love of Jesus Christ, it is something that we should be able to give as an offering to the Saviour. When the time comes, we can be prepared in love and trust of Jesus Christ to offer our own death to Him as an offering of love. He knows when the time is right for Him to take up this offering.
Long ago, I knew a monk who was 107 when I first met him. He was saying then that God had forgotten him (he had a sense of humour to some extent). Everyone and everything that he had ever known was already gone, and all these “young people” of seventy or eighty (even strange ones in their thirties like myself) were around him. He did, in fact, live to the age of 111. At the time of the Bolshevik Revolution, this monk fled from the monastery where he was living in central Russia, rode a horse until it died, and then walked all the way to the Arctic coast, to Pechenga in northern Finland, further north than Murmansk, and further north than Arkhangelsk.
That is where he finally stopped, and he lived there until the 1940 war in which the borders between the Soviet Union and Finland were adjusted again. Then he had to leave that monastery on the Arctic coast, and go south into central Finland and live in a completely strange monastic community again. When anyone is living as a monk, the idea is to go there, and stay there for the rest of one’s life. Transplanting is not in the picture. However, for some reason in his life, it was God’s will that he should be transplanted twice. Therefore, he was in Valamo Monastery, living in a little room. When I met him, he had been there for about 38 years in his cell by himself, with a cell attendant across the hall. At 107 years of age, he could stand up for his prayers, but could not really walk all that far.
The most important thing about Father Akaky was his regular, faithful, living out of his life. The novices, who were living above him, said that they could set their watches by him. Precisely at midnight they could hear him start to sing : “O heavenly King”, the prayer that starts almost all our services. His reading the midnight hours at twelve o’clock gave us a lesson in faithfulness. Every time I was in church, I saw him in church, too, in his wheel chair. He wanted to be there. He loved to be there. That was his life. By simply giving this example, by doing what was his calling to do, praising the Lord at all hours of the day and night, he was strengthening and encouraging the young men who were wondering whether they should continue or not.
Sometimes we feel that our lives are limited and not necessarily accomplishing all that much. We are not the deciders of what our lives are accomplishing or what is the purpose of our lives. It is the Lord Himself who decides this purpose, and what persons are touched by our lives. We have no say in the matter. We have the responsibility to respond to His love, and to live in accordance with His love. The Lord will multiply our offering as He did with Saint Seraphim and many others, and He will draw to Himself those who are looking for Him.
Brothers and sisters, may God bless you, protect you, and save you. May the Lord give you strength and courage to persevere in your life in Christ, and in all difficulties to hold on to Him, just as the Apostle Peter did on the water. The Lord will keep your head above the waves, and as a result, you will glorify Him, as you were created to do, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.