• “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.

• 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”.

• “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.]

• "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.]

• “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.

• “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.]

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

Today is the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee. We could also call it the Sunday of the Tax-collector and the Pharisee. On this Sunday, we start our journey towards Great Lent in a serious way. This week there is no fasting. On Wednesdays and Fridays this week, we have the blessing to eat whatever we like. The reason that we do this is partly to remember that the Pharisee’s way of behaving did not do him any good. He was bragging that he was fasting twice a week, and so when we do not fast this week, we are saying to the Pharisee (as it were) : “Your way of fasting was not doing you any good”. Why was it not doing him any good ? He was making a big production of it. He was pointing out everything that he did. In essence, we might say that every single solitary cent that he gave to the Temple, he had to publish. He had to make everyone know how much money he gave. Every time he did anything that was good and proper, he had to stand up and proclaim it and let everyone see what a good person he was. This man could be compared to some Orthodox Christians today who behave similarly. This is an easy trap for any of us to fall into. However, if we fall into it, we have to get out of it because as the Lord says (as it were) at the end of the Gospel today : “Those who puff themselves up and make something of themselves in front of everyone, are going to have their legs cut off, or at least have the rug pulled out from under them ; they will find themselves sitting instead of standing tall”.

Why is this ? It is because being an egoist cuts a person off from God. It cuts a person off from other people. It cuts a person off from life. Being an egoist, looking after one’s own things, one’s own children, one’s own concerns, one’s own property, one’s own affairs, drives a person back and brings a person no friends (except friends who know that one has money or influence or something else). People who are so self-centered will have friends only who will use the friendship in the same way. People who are self-centered and care only about themselves, will have friends who, when trouble comes, will disappear in a flash. Just as this sort of self-centered person uses other people and relationships with other people only for what can be gotten out it for oneself, other people will use him in exactly the same way. Of course, that is the way of the society in which we live. In this society’s mentality, very often we have friends not because we love the person. Rather, we gather around ourselves the “right sort of friends” who can contribute to our status in society. We become something that we are not, and we become even more inflated. Then, when difficulties and hard times come along, where are these friends ? They are nowhere to be found. When we have become weak, an unwanted and unexpected by-product of our pride, this weakness shows that we have declined in prestige and influence. It shows that we are no longer dependable and that they can get no more from us, and so they leave us alone.

It does not do any of us any good to insist that everyone see what a good Christian I am. It only does me good if the Lord knows that I am trying to be a good Christian. I know myself as a sinner. I know that everything good that I have would not be mine to use unless the Lord gave it to me to use. Each of us is supposed to be like that tax-collector (even though we may not have committed such great sins as he did). Our hearts are supposed to be like his heart. That condition is one of humility. He knew himself. He knew that he was a sinner, and he knew that all he could say was : “‘God, be merciful to me the sinner’”. The Lord was merciful to such a person. If we look in the New Testament, we can see every single solitary time that the Lord is teaching us this very lesson. Time after time there are people who think that they are someone, make a big production of who they are and what their position is in society. The Lord says : “Think again. Find out what your priorities really are”.

We always see Him pointing out the so-called lower person, the people who know who they are, those who have their hearts in the right place and their priorities straight. These are the persons who really know : the ones who are like children in the Kingdom of God. These are the ones who are like children with hearts that are single-minded, directed towards the Lord, and interested in serving Him alone, first and foremost in life. These are the people who are the greatest because they do not make much of themselves. Perhaps they have a lot of money and perhaps they are well off, but that does not mean that they therefore draw attention to this fact. They use what they have well and glorify God in everything that they have. That is what the Lord is asking of us. He says : “Do not be a letter-man with a big “I” on your chest. (That was my Mother’s favourite expression when someone was being a very prideful person. She would say : “That guy is a letter-man all right, with a big ‘I’ all over his chest”). We are not supposed to be this letter-man, with a big “I, I, I, me, me, me” written all over us. We are supposed to be thinking of the Lord first and ourselves second (if not third). The Lord comes first, and the needs of other people come even before ours. The Lord Himself said that we cannot do more for our friend or someone we love than give our life up for someone we love. Sometimes other people’s welfare comes even before our own when we are living in accordance with the Gospel. Sometimes other people’s lives are even more important than our own when we are living in accordance with the Gospel. So we sacrifice our lives for the sake of theirs and for the welfare of the Kingdom of God.

It all boils down to what our priorities are. Are we interested in ourselves only ? Or are we interested in being our true selves, and our true selves as found in relationship with God ? Are we interested in putting Jesus Christ first in our lives and interested in serving Him before anything else ? If we are interested in serving the Lord before anything else, at least we can say : “Thank God. I hope that I am on the right track”. Life is so uncertain that we are never sure of our salvation until we have finished this life completely and crossed into the Kingdom. However, our hope is increased every time we take the Lord’s hand, every time He saves us from our sins, from our selfishness, from our wilfulness and from our pride. Every time we take His hand and He saves us, our hope is renewed that we will be able to live with Him in the Kingdom. Always, in our lives, we have to be aware of the Lord and serve Him first and only. Everything else will be added ; everything else will make sense. Everything else will be fulfilled, and all things necessary will come to pass only when we put the Lord first, as the good publican did.

May the Lord give us the Grace so that our hearts will always be aware of Him and keep Him first in and above everything. May our whole lives glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in

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

Today’s Gospel reading gives us the fundamental lesson of the Christian life. The big temptation in living the Christian life (especially in North America), is to spiritualise our Faith. This “spiritualisation” shows up as we try to tell ourselves that everything is all right as long as we are meditating and praying and not doing anyone any harm. Therefore we try to live a good life by ourselves and be sort of upright in ourselves and take pride in being honest. That is approximately all there is for most people’s attitude towards religion and religious life : be good ; live a decent life ; do not do anyone any harm. That is what most people seem to think has to happen in what they perceive to be a spiritual life. Today’s Gospel reading shows plainly that that is anything but enough. Much more is demanded of us than merely some sort of abstract “good life”.

We are expected by the Lord to do something in our lives – something concrete, something touchable. Many times I have talked about living Love. Love love, love. The Gospel is full of examples of living love. However, loving God is not some abstract, warm, fuzzy feeling in the heart. Loving God is not merely standing in church and saying : “Oh, isn’t it wonderful ! The choir is so beautiful today. It’s so lovely”. It is not simply sitting in church and saying : “Oh, what a wonderful preacher the priest is” (if he happens to be one) or “Can’t he sing nicely” (if he happens to sing nicely). This is the least part of Christian living. It is true that standing in church and praising God is the first thing that we must be responsible for doing, and be full of joy about doing. However, if that is all that we are doing, then we had better think again. The Gospel says today from the words of the Lord Himself that in order to expect to live in the Kingdom, we have to be ready to do concrete acts of love towards our brothers and sisters. The Lord says that if we visit the sick, if we go and visit those who are in prison, if we put clothes on those who have no clothes, if we feed those who are hungry, then we are doing the will of God, the Father. Then we have hope of entering the Kingdom of Heaven and being with those on the right hand of the Lord.

If we live just by ourselves, and say : “I live a good life. I don’t hurt anyone, but that’s all. Don’t ask me for anything. I don’t bother anyone. I don’t trust anyone”. If that is how we are, we had better look closely at today’s Gospel reading. Love must act. Love must do. You might remember seeing the musical My Fair Lady. In the movie version, Eliza Doolittle has a young man who is very much in love with her. He sings songs outside her window and he reads poetry to her. All his poetry and all his songs say : “Oh, how much I love you, Eliza Doolittle”. In the end, she gets fed up with it because pretty words do not mean anything. I am sure that anyone here who has been married for a long time (or even a short time) or if you have been part of family life, you will know that the words “I love you” do not mean anything by themselves. Meaning comes when love is evident in action. The one who says that he or she loves has to do something about it. Love is meaningless if it is only words. Love is real if it is accompanied by acts, deeds, things. That is why we are always giving each other flowers and candy : to show that our love is more than just words. That is why we help those who are ill, and look after each other when we are ill, and look after each other when we cannot look after ourselves. That is why we do dishes when we are not expected to do dishes. That is why we clean when we are not expected to clean. That is why we open doors for each other and say : “After you”. That is why we shovel the sidewalk without being commanded to do it. All these little tiny actions carry love with them. Why do I do the dishes ? Why do I vacuum the floor ? Why do I shovel the sidewalk ? Why do I polish the car ? Why do I help to make meals ? Why do I do anything ? I do it because I love, that’s why. If I did not love, I would not do anything at all.

However, these acts of love have to go farther than just our family living. We have to be ready to visit those who are sick. In our parish there is Mrs. n who gets some visitors, but she does not get very many. As far as I know, only three or four of us go to see her regularly. She is 95 years old. She is almost blind now, and can hardly see anything. It gets very lonely. She cannot watch television ; she cannot read letters ; she cannot see to do anything as we can. However, she has first-class hearing, and she likes to talk. It should be our responsibility to go and see her. There are more. There is also Mrs. n who is ill and does not see anyone either, these days. We can at least phone her and talk to her. In our own community we should be more attentive about seeing who is not here on Sunday. We should find out who is ill. It should be our job. It is not just the priest’s job. If someone is absent, we can call them to see if they are all right and if they need any help. That is actively doing the love of Jesus Christ.

If things are going well in the parish, and no-one is ill, what can I do ? I can give money to Oxfam. I can help people who are starving somewhere else in the world. I can send money to help the Orthodox refugees in Lebanon who have had to leave their homes because of war. I can do all sorts of things. I have to listen to God saying in my heart : “Do this ; go help this person ; go visit that person”. If I have arthritis and I am not strong enough to move around very well, what do I do then ? We can listen to God speaking. Sometimes during the day, someone’s name will come into our mind. Those names do not come by accident. Those names come to us from God. What He wants us to do when those names come to us is to pray for those people. It may be that the person has some need, or is ill or sort of depressed and does not know why. If I do pray for those people whose names come to my heart, just saying “Lord have mercy” for those persons, then I am helping the Lord to do something for them. I may not find out what my prayers do, but they do good for the person. Sometimes when the Lord brings a name into my mind and I cannot forget that person, that means that the Lord wants me to pray in a serious way for that person. Therefore, I pray many times that day for him or her, saying “Lord have mercy” ; or “Remember n and have mercy”. That is the least we can do. If we are able to do more, then the Lord expects it of us.

All these ideas that when we die we just simply go to Heaven and everything is wonderful are dreams. We are not likely to go to Heaven unless, with the Lord’s help, we put ourselves on that road now. We put ourselves on that road now by doing good to those around us and helping those around us by prayers and by actions. When the chips are down, we even love those who do not love us ; we even love those who hate us ; we even love those who kill us. That is the Christian way. That is the work of the Gospel.

How do we do this ? There is only one way. We come here every week and receive the Lord’s Body and Blood, in order to let Him live in us, so that He Himself will give us the strength and the will and the love. That is the only way. Therefore, let us now come to Him and stretch out our hands to Him and let Him give Himself to us. Let us live in the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The Gospel and Epistle readings are both preparing us for Great Lent. They are speaking about food, because in Great Lent food is one of our chief occupations, preoccupations and sometimes even manias. (It can sometimes be a phobia, but it is mostly a mania.) Although the Lord and Saint Paul are speaking about food, primarily they are concerned about the attitude that is necessary when we fast.

The Lord is pointing out that, first of all, our attitude in fasting must be one of prayer. We do not fast simply because the rules say that we have to fast. If we are going to fast, we have to pray while we fast. Prayer goes with fasting like horses and carriages, hands in gloves, and ducks to water. If we undertake only to fast, we might as well be on a diet. It would not do us any more good than possibly losing weight. Fasting has to be accompanied by prayer and that is one of the reasons why in Great Lent we have many services in order to help us along in our praying. We need each other when we are praying. We can, of course, fast alone (the Lord exhorts us to fast alone in our closet and not to fast with fanfare). However, we pray together because we need each other. We give each other encouragement and strength to pray when we do it together, particularly in Lent when the devil is busy trying to keep us from doing what we are supposed to do. He is busy trying to make us interested in and nostalgic for a T-bone steak every day. He is anxious to try to make us think that praying is too much trouble, too tiring, too much of a struggle. All that discouragement and despair he tries to throw under our feet so that we will slip on a banana peel and forget where we are going and what we are doing. That is why we need to be here as much as possible.

However, even more, the fact that we are praying is not enough. The Lord is asking of us a certain attitude of heart : an attitude of heart which is sensitive to the strengths and weaknesses of other people. Although I may be strong and have liberty in the Lord, I am not going to exercise my freedom when I know that my brother or sister is going to fall because of my strength. And so I appear weak in the presence of other people. For instance, perhaps I know that the Lord is going to forgive me if I do not keep the strictest, total vegetable fast in Lent because I work hard or because of some other reason. Yet I know that I have a brother or sister who is a fanatic about the vegetable fast. Therefore, I do not cause my brother or sister to stumble and fall into sin by my insisting on eating cheese in front of my weaker brother or sister. Instead, I eat what that person eats when I am around that person. However, the same thing should go for the strict vegetable-faster, too, who knows that someone may have a physical weakness or some other reason for not keeping the strictest fast. If a person in good faith and with a good heart is able to keep a very strict fast in Lent, when he or she is with those who are unable by reason of heavy work or whatever other reason to keep a strict fast in Lent, then one, in one’s strength, bends the rules and does not cause another to stumble.

The Lord is calling us to be sensitive about each other. He calls us to care for each other, and to love each other enough to know what our weaknesses are and not to play on them but to be sensitive and considerate of them. By being like this, we will be able to encourage each other to live the Christian life as we cling to the Lord and persevere in the fast. May we be able together in a little while with joy to glorify and worship the Lord in His Resurrection from the dead. As pre-Lent comes to an end, tomorrow we will be ready to forgive each other for everything visible and invisible, known and unknown, voluntary and involuntary that we have done or not done to each other. We will begin the fast with a clean slate, asking God to help us keep the fast.

May that same Lord, indeed, help us to pass through this Great Lent in such a way that we will be yet stronger in our ability to remember Him, to imitate His love, to do the work of His love at all times throughout the year. May our lives thus glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today is Cheese-fare Sunday. That means that traditionally when we go home, we will fill ourselves up with bliny and all sorts of cheese and really enjoy this last day before Great Lent begins. Tomorrow we begin our journey towards Pascha in a serious way. As much as we may enjoy the bliny on the last day of dairy products before Great Lent, we have to remember the fundamental lessons that are being taught by the Gospel today.

Tomorrow, we begin to fast. What are we supposed to be about when we are fasting ? Why are we fasting anyway ? The Lord warns us against fasting as the Pharisees did. The Pharisees fasted in order to let everyone know that they were fasting and how hard it was for them to do this. They showed that there was so much pain and that their stomachs were in agony ; they did not clean themselves, and they did not wash ; they threw dust on themselves to show everyone what good fasters they were. When we fast nowadays we do not do these sorts of things. However, what do we do that is like the Pharisees ? We may be at someone’s house and be offered food that is not lenten and we may say : “Oh, no ! I cannot possibly eat that because it is Great Lent”. However, hospitality is very important, and if the host has made a mistake, it is not our job to beat him over the head with the mistake. However, even worse than that, we could be looking around to see how other people are eating in Lent. For instance, if someone is weaker for some reason or other, it is rude enough to go up to someone and ask why he or she is eating non-lenten food. However, the very worst thing that we can do is to gossip about it, and tell the whole parish how terrible it is that n is eating fish on a non-fish day in Lent, for example. What we are called to do is to be sensitive to each other in Great Lent.

Why do we fast ? We fast because we are remembering Eden, as Adam is remembering Eden. Today, we are celebrating the memory of Adam and Eve being expelled from Eden. In the hymns last night, Adam was sitting down and remembering all the beautiful flowers in Eden. He was moaning because he had been exiled from the beautiful garden, his true home. We are remembering those days, ourselves, and we try not to eat anything except vegetables in memory of those days. More important than that, we fast in order to make certain that our bodies are our servants and that we are not the servants of our bodies. We discipline our bodies in the fasting days so that our bodies co-operate with our spirits in every way to help us live in the Kingdom. It is not a negative thing at all ; it is a positive thing. It is not something that we should hate to do, but rather something that we should enjoy, because we do it in order to draw ourselves closer to the Lord. We try not to waste time cooking elaborate dishes but we simply eat some boiled vegetables that do not take a long time to prepare. We do not worry too much about it so that we can spend extra time praying. Fasting is absolutely no good unless it is accompanied by prayer. Fasting and praying go together. Without prayer, fasting is completely useless. We might as well follow the “Weight Watcher’s diet”, or something of that sort. We are fasting in order to draw ourselves closer to the Lord, and we try to spend more time in prayer during fasting-time for that purpose.

Besides drawing near to the Lord, the most important demand is drawing near to each other. These fasting-times are intended to help us to grow in being more loving and more sensitive to each other. All the readings in the New Testament that have prepared us for Great Lent have to do precisely with this sensitivity to each other. They prepare us to pay more attention to the weaknesses of each other – not so that we can gossip about them, but so that we can help each other be stronger by praying for each other. The important thing is to recognise that each one of us is a sinner. There is no-one who lives and does not sin (see 1 John 1:8). We sing that all the time in our Panikhidas and it is absolutely true. There is no-one on this earth who is not a sinner. If we think that we are so good that we are not sinners, then we are on our way to the hot place fast. Every last one of us is a sinner.

Remembering all these details, let us ask the Lord to keep us mindful not only about what fasting truly is, but also what is the true and correct spirit which motivates it. Fasting is not a diet. Fasting is also not eating nothing all day and then feasting all night. Fasting is spiritual athletics (see 2 Timothy 2:5) which strengthen us so that with God’s help we may know and love the Lord more deeply. As CBC’s Friendly Giant always said : “Let us look up. Let us look 'way up”, and thus keep our hearts and minds in the Lord and nurtured in His love.

In doing so, may our whole lives during this coming Lent become more transparent with the Lord’s love. Thus, when we come to celebrate our Saviour’s Resurrection, the joy of that great feast will carry us all the way through to the next Pascha. May our whole lives glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Saint Paul says in his prayer : “Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, … make you complete in every good work to do His will” (Hebrews 13:20). Indeed, the Lord is able to help us perform every good work. He is more than able to help us to do everything that He wants us to do. However, in every case there is one thing that stands in the way. The Lord is able, but are we ourselves able to let Him work His work in us ? Are we ourselves able to let Him ? Actually, we are not, not instantly. Even before we are truly able to let Him work His good work in us, transform us, transfigure us and raise us, we have to be ready to ask Him to help us.

When we have asked Him to help us, we open the door to Him to come into our hearts and enable us to ask Him to do more, and to let Him work His work in us. Why am I saying this ? The simple fact is that we have to realise that we do not enter the Kingdom of Heaven on our own strength. We do not enter the Kingdom of Heaven simply because we live such a good life. We do not enter the Kingdom of Heaven for any other reason than that God loves us, and He forgives us. All that He wants from us is for us to love Him back, and to live a life that shows this love. Living the Christian life is very simple and straightforward. It is, however, not so very easy. The demands are few, but not easy : love and forgiveness. Loving, at least in the way God wants us to love is not all that easy. We must have His help to be able to love in the way that He wants us to love. If we are not ready to ask for that help, if we are not ready to let Him work with us and in us, if we are not ready to co-operate, He is not going to make an invasion. He gave us freedom, which is part of our being made in His image. We are free to reject, just as Adam and Eve were free to reject, and they did. So we, as well, are free to reject the Lord and His help. If we want to follow the devil’s path, then we can deceive ourselves into thinking that we are good enough to get into the Kingdom of Heaven by ourselves.

If we want to live in the Kingdom, we have to remember, first of all, that the Lord is all-powerful and all-loving. He loves me. He loves us all, each of us – all. He wants us to be living with Him forever in the Kingdom. It is up to you and to me to take those steps that will help Him work in us. One of those steps is being here right now, today, praising Him, standing here in the Kingdom as we are always when we praise Him, standing in the Lord’s presence, serving Him, united with our brothers and sisters who have gone before us.

On this Saturday, we pray for all our brothers and sisters who have fallen asleep a long time ago at the very beginning of this parish and even beyond that. We pray for them because we are not separated from them. We are united with them in the Body of Christ. As we stand here today, so our brothers and sisters who have gone before us are standing together with us in the Kingdom and offering their praises to the Lord. We all offer to the Lord our praise, and the Lord feeds us all with Himself, with His Body and His Blood. As we continue to ask Him to come into our hearts and to continue to work in us, He works little changes in us little by little. We become stronger, better able to love in the right way. We become less and less selfish, more and more caring of other people, more and more concerned with Him, also. After a time of this co-operative living, when we look back on ourselves as we were some years ago, we can actually see that the Lord has done something (although we cannot see everything that the Lord has done). However, the Lord is merciful and He allows us to see that there are some changes for the good. We can immediately say : “Thank God that He helped me out of that mess. I did not think that I could come along that far”. “The God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep”, who loves us and knows each one of us by name (and then some), will make us perfect if we work with Him. If we let Him, He will make us perfect and give us not only the image but the likeness of Himself.

Let us commend ourselves and each other to the Lord, and let His love work in us and amongst us. May that love build us, all of us together, up into the Body of Christ. Let us be transformed by Him, and let us glorify in our lives the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we are celebrating the memory of what one of our professors called one of the greatest of Orthodox theologians, Saint Gregory the Theologian. Professor Sergei Verhovskoy used to say that he is the only one of the Fathers who is 100 percent Orthodox. That is a very good recommendation from Professor Verhovskoy, who was rather critical.

How does a person get to be this sort of theologian and bishop of the Church ? It is by living the Gospel, by following the directions of Saint Paul, and by not allowing pride or personal gain to get in the way but always doing the work of the Lord. It is also by exercising the gifts that have been given as described by Saint Paul in the Epistle to the Corinthians (see 1 Corinthians 12), and by building up the Church on the Truth, which is Jesus Christ. This truth is not gained by being a philosopher, a journalist, a private investigator or a law-maker. A true theologian is a person who knows God and then speaks as clearly as possible about the experience. That experience is consistently the same sort of experience that all Christians have always had. We can tell if a person is on the right track by whether what he has to say about his knowledge of God is correct. We measure the correctness by how the writing fits what the ancient Fathers have to say. By contrast, we can also tell how he has been “led down the garden path” by certain strays. If the person speaks about God in the way all the Fathers and Mothers of the Church have spoken, then the person remains a Father or Mother of the Church. There are Fathers and Mothers of the Church today just as there were in the days of Saint Gregory the Theologian about 1500 years ago.

Since we are all expected by the Lord to become theologians, since we are all expected to build up the Body of Christ and be saints by our baptism, therefore, we humble ourselves and give ourselves to God not as slaves, but as loving children co-operating with Him. We allow Him to work in us and we allow him to create in us not only our true selves, but the true selves of all those around us. We allow ourselves by humility to be transfigured as the Lord was transfigured on the mountain and as other saints have been transfigured since then. We allow ourselves to be transfigured into our true selves that are found in Christ. We allow ourselves, then, to share this transfiguration with those around us. By allowing ourselves to be transfigured, we become an example to other people. By allowing ourselves to live in Christ, and to put on all the weapons of the Gospel, all the armour of which Saint Paul speaks (see Ephesians 6:13), we allow ourselves to be prepared to be a good example. Then we are exercising those gifts that the Lord has given us.

The Lord does not give us all the same gifts because we are not all just the same. The individual gifts, although very similar, are not identical to each other. Each person exercises his or her own gifts. Exercising our own gifts teaches other people that they have gifts as well. As we exercise our gifts in the love of Christ, we encourage other people to do the same. The more we exercise our gifts and strengthen others in the Body of Christ, the more they strengthen other people. Thus, the whole Church becomes stronger in the world because people are exercising the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They are supporting, strengthening, healing, loving and lifting up other people.

That is essentially what we have to do as members of the Body of Christ. We co-operate. The fundamental lesson for us is to remember that we are the members of the Body of Christ. In order for the body to function properly, the members must co-operate. Our arms cannot do things by themselves ; neither can our legs or any other parts of our bodies walk by themselves or function independently. The whole body functions by co-operative effort, and each individual member is only able to function at all because it is joined to the rest of the body. That is what our living together is supposed to be : co-operation, mutual encouragement and strength (and sometimes correction), general building up, and overall co-operation. This co-operation is what brings about real unity. We humble ourselves. We remember that we are members of His Body. We recognise that we are not the Head ; but as the members of the Body of Christ and for the sake of the rest of the Body, we allow ourselves to be governed by the Head, Jesus Christ. In this way the whole Body is able to function well together and be saved by healing, strengthening, renewing and re-creation.

Therefore, as we come to receive the Lord this morning, let us ask Him to renew us and bring us to that transfiguration so that we may be truly properly functioning members of the Body of Christ, able to know Him well so that in due course, we may be given the “O” stamp of approval of Professor Verhovskoy (and the “O” means Orthodox). Thus, each of us will be a true knower of the Lord, and therefore a true theologian, glorifying in our whole life the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today we are singing : “Before Your Cross we bow down in worship, and Your holy Resurrection we glorify”. The Cross comes to us in the middle of Great Lent, not so much to remind us that Good Friday is coming, but to give us fresh courage in our attempt to be refreshed in our walking towards Christ. The Cross comes to us in the middle of Lent, and we bow down before that sign, as we glorify the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We bow down before the Cross, and bowing down before it, we offer the Lord our worship. We do not bow down before a piece of silver or wood, and kiss a mere piece of silver or wood. We are venerating the true Cross whenever we kiss these signs of the Cross. Even if we were to be able to kiss a piece of one of the few remaining pieces of the true Cross, we would still be glorifying Him who was crucified on it, Jesus Christ. We know that whenever we venerate one of our icons or make the sign of the Cross, our veneration goes straight to Christ. All these items are windows to Heaven, and these windows take us always to Christ. They take us directly to Christ Himself, or they take us to Christ through the life, example, and prayers of those who have been holy, noticeably holy, in their living and who have shown us the Lord. All this is clearly set out in the writings of Saint John of Damascus.

The Cross comes to us and reveals to us that Jesus Christ was crucified and died, and that He also was victorious over death and rose from the grave. That is why the Cross comes to us in the middle of Great Lent. It comes to us also to remind us about how we are supposed to be living. As the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews is saying, we have a High Priest who was tempted in everything as we were, and are. Although He is the Son of God, He emptied Himself and became a Human Being in order to save us (see Philippians 2:7). He was tempted in everything, and He allowed Himself to be put on the Cross to suffer and to die for us. Not only did He die for us, but that Crucifixion brought life. That sign, which was the most horrible sign of defeat in the days of the Roman Empire, became the sign of victory, life and light. As this great High Priest lived, so we are called to live. As this great High Priest was victorious over sin and death, and gave life to the world, so we are called in Him to be victorious and bring life to the world. We bring life to the world by living love. We bring life to the world by encouraging and strengthening each other in living in Christ and following Him no matter how difficult, no matter how painful that is. How do we do that ? We take up our Cross every day and follow Jesus, said the Gospel today. The Lord Himself holds us in our path. Our path is to take up our Cross and follow Him.

I have been serving the Lord now for more than fifteen years in parish work, and every year at least one person (if not half a dozen people) says to me : “Why don’t you leave time for yourself, and why don’t you take better care of yourself ? Why do you run yourself ragged ?” It is a good question to ask again today. I cannot say that I have been anything like the best priest in the past fifteen years, and I cannot say that I am the best example by any means, because I know how much I am a sinner and how great my weaknesses are and how much they paralyse what God would do through me if I did not paralyse myself. I do not know about you, but the example that I had when I was growing up was the example of parents who loved me very much and who gave up all sorts of things for the sake of selfish me. They gave up all sorts of things. You have no idea, and neither do I of how much they gave up for the sake of me, my brother and sisters. I know that you not only experience the same thing, but I see that you do the same thing yourselves for your children. All the time you are giving up all sorts of things that you could be and do for the sake of your children, and for the sake of those you love. It is a way of life, especially for Christians.

However, in the world, it is not unnatural that people should do this because that is how real love operates. In the world there are some shadows of that real love, not only selfish love. Especially amongst Christians, this way of life : giving and giving up opportunities and all sorts of advantages for the sake of children, is the way we are and how we live. We are trying to live out our love the best way we can. It is because I had that sort of example that I can do as I do, even if it is reckless, and even if I stretch myself. I can’t do anything else. I can’t operate as a parish priest in any other way. I have tried over the years that I have served in parishes, to limit what I should do and conserve energy. Probably I could have done a better job of rationing the things that I have done and the amount that I have been available to you. However, no matter how much I try to do it, it does not work. I am a perpetual “yes-man”. If you phone me up and ask me to do something, or if you need me for anything, I am going to say “Yes”. Unless it is absolutely impossible, I am going to say “Yes”.

I am going to say “Yes”, because I am anxious that the life of this parish should grow, and that the love between brothers and sisters should grow. That is why I do that. That is why I answer the phone in the middle of the night. That is why whenever I am home, I always answer the phone even if it is three in the morning. That is the only way that I can exercise the gifts that God has given to me to exercise – to be available. Even though it is not logical and even though I know that I should not do many of the things that I do, I cannot stop. That is essentially what taking up the Cross entails. It is trying, as much as we can, to put other people first, to help build up the love of Jesus in other people so that they can have the hope of being saved.

The reason that Christ stretched out His arms on the Cross was not only so that He could die. Rather, He stretched out His arms in order to accept everyone, to accept the whole world in His love. He reached out on the Cross to embrace the whole world : all its sin, all its death, and all its selfishness. He did this in order to give us life. The same attitude ought to be our attitude in life. We stretch out our arms, and we give love. We give ourselves. In giving this love, we give Christ to one another, to our children, to our neighbours, and to people whom God sends. In reaching out in this love, we give them the life that Christ wants to give them.

Therefore, let us remember who we are : Orthodox Christians. Knowing that we glorify Jesus Christ, let us remember to make our prostrations before the Cross with joy. By bowing down in this way, we show that we are ready for the Lord to be the Lord of our lives, for Him to enter us and to live in us, and to give life to our sacrifices, to our offering of ourselves for His sake and for the sake of all those around. Therefore, with our whole lives let us glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In the Epistle to the Hebrews, we are repeatedly hearing how Jesus is that perfect High Priest who fulfilled all the Law, who fulfilled all sacrifice, who fulfilled everything that was required for our salvation. What we see today is evidence of how He is, in fact, our High Priest not only because the sacrifice of Himself is predicted at the end of the Gospel reading, but because He is the Agent of God’s love in that perfect way.

Wherever Jesus is, wherever Jesus is present, there is always a reaction of some sort. We see that always in the Gospel. Wherever Jesus is, something happens. In this case, it is a devil tormenting a child. We are told that this torment had been going on for a long time. Although His disciples had tried more standard methods to get rid of it, only Jesus Himself is able to do it and He does it with just one word of command. He says : “‘Come out of him and enter him no more’”. Instantly the child is healed. Wherever Jesus is, life comes. When He comes into our lives, there has to be a similar response. We ourselves are called to live in the Kingdom. We are called to live as sons and daughters of the King. The characteristic way in which members of the Kingdom live is in an open and active response to the Lord : an immediate desire to give of oneself for the welfare of other people as well as for proper worshipping of the Lord.

It is true that the devil does not come out except by prayer and fasting. He does not come out of our lives except by our prayer and fasting. In part, anyway, that is why we Orthodox Christians spend so much of the year in fasting days. During these fasting days, we actively turn away from sin. We try to bring our lives into conformity with the Gospel. We are supposed to spend all these days praying even more than usual, and building up our resources in the Kingdom. We should be preparing ourselves for doing whatever the Lord has called us to do.

Prayer and fasting. This is one of the essential characteristics of growing in Christ. What is another ? Here in this parish, we can speak about one very practical way in which believers are supposed to behave. For a long time now, this parish (like many other parishes, but not by any means all parishes) has operated more or less for itself. People seem to have grown to believe that the only way to contribute to the life of the parish is by paying the dues. We all know how sensitive the issue of the dues is. We can never talk about dues without someone getting upset. That is, perhaps, a reasonable reaction because paying dues is not the proper way for a parish to operate, even though we do operate that way and even though we seem to be stuck with this system for the time being. Nevertheless, paying dues does not allow us to behave naturally the way Christians ought to behave. Paying dues puts a block in the way of our response to the Lord. It tempts us to be minimal. It tempts us to say : “Those few dollars are all I have to give. I will throw a dollar on the plate now and again, and that is all that is necessary”.

However, that is not how Christians have always responded, and it is not what the Bible tells us to do, either. Even in the Old Testament, we are told that the natural response to God is simply to give. The suggestion in the Old Testament is that we should first of all recognise that God gives us everything and that without the Lord we are not at all even alive, let alone active. Everything that we are and that we have is because the Lord blesses us and gives us life. Because of this, the Old Testament (and the New Testament also) as a strong suggestion says that we should give at least one-tenth of what we have to the Lord. We see that always in the Old Testament – one-tenth of the harvest goes to the Lord, to the Temple. One-tenth of everything that people have goes to the Lord. Even Abraham, when he had been successful, gave thanks to the Lord by giving one-tenth of everything that came to him to this priest-king, Melchisedek (see 1 Moses [Genesis] 14:20) whom we heard about today.

However, one-tenth of all that we have is not only one-tenth of income. One-tenth of time, one-tenth of energy, one-tenth of talents, one-tenth of everything that I am and that I have should go back to Him as a sign of my love for God. This is a fundamental Christian attitude. If this parish operates on the basis of dues (to help determine who is a member of the parish), that should not mean that that is all I am expected to give as a Christian. The Lord expects me to give much more. The Lord does not demand that I give everything back, but as a sign and a symbol of everything, one-tenth is not very much. It is ironic, but even in this secular world, we can deduct twenty percent of our income for charitable giving. Some people give away twenty percent of their income. That is pretty good. We believers often tend to fall into traps. Some people might criticise me for talking about this sort of thing. The fact is, however, whenever we might turn on the television, and listen to Jimmy Swaggart, Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, Jerry Falwell or anyone else of these Protestant evangelists, what do they say ? They are all the time quoting the Bible and saying : “You must give ten percent. Ten percent belongs to the Lord. It doesn’t belong to you, and if you don’t give it to the Lord, you are going to be in trouble”.

Orthodox Christians tend to be subtler about these things, but that does not mean that the demand of the Scriptures is any different for us. One of the funniest things that I can imagine is when Orthodox Christians sometimes criticise Calvary Temple or maybe even one of these Anglican Churches, and yet they envy how much money goes in and out, and how much they can do in their parishes. Do you know why ? It is because the people are reminded over and over and over again that God requires a sign of devotion from His people, a sign of this response of love. Therefore, people give. If we Orthodox Christians do not manage to produce and to be effective in society, there is only one reason – we do not give. We do not share. We do not honour the Lord with our gifts. We do not respond to Him. We only give Him peanuts instead of giving Him our whole selves. We just throw a kopek or two towards the Lord instead of saying to the Lord : “Here I am. Everything that I am, You give me. Help me to use what I am to Your glory”.

Whatever we do, let us not allow ourselves to be limited by bottom-line giving of ourselves, or of our energy, or of anything else that we have. Let us not wait for someone to come begging and to say : “We have a big project, and so we need money”. The response of Christians does not wait for such things. The response of Christians is giving because of love without asking any questions, without waiting. We give ourselves, our energy, our time, our abilities, not just money. Let us ask the Lord to help us to pray always ; to give thanks always every day ; to act out that love which we have for Him, and to show in all the visible ways that we can how much we love Him and how much we love each other. May every aspect of our life proclaim our love for our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good and life-creating Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Some of you might know that this week I was away at Saint Tikhon’s Monastery, and while I was there I was tonsured to be a monk. What does this really mean ? Monastic tonsure is called a “second baptism”. It is called a second baptism because a monk is called to live a life of complete repentance. In other words, from the time he is tonsured, he is expected every day of his life to be turning towards Christ. Every day his life is supposed to be dedicated to serving the Lord above everything else.

If for no other reason, I suppose that this is one reason why it is a good thing for a bishop to be a monk, as long as he pays attention to this particular pre-requisite. He must put Jesus Christ first before anything else for the rest of his life, serving Him, and Him alone. He must put away everything of the world and put Jesus Christ first.

Although I do not look or dress any differently, nevertheless in my heart I have to be much more serious than I have been until now about what I am doing and how I am serving the Lord. One of the first things that I must do is to ask everyone to forgive me, and that is what I am doing right now. I am asking you all (and not just because I became a monk but also because we are getting close to Pascha) to forgive me for all the things that I may have done or said which may have upset you or made you angry sometimes. Also I ask forgiveness for all the things which I did not do with and for you all together that I should have, because I do know that I did not do many things that I could have done and should have done while I have been here. For all these things I am asking you now to forgive me.

We all know that now we are in a transition time and there are many things that we are going to be tempted to be anxious about. However, if we hope to get the right priest for us, here in this parish, this will not be achieved by our political manoeuvering. It is not going to come by badgering the Metropolitan, and phoning him every day saying : “Vladyka, who is going to be our priest ?” The right priest for this parish is going to come for us when all of us remember together to ask the Lord to send the right one. Such a person is very hard to find. There are plenty of gifted people in the Church, but there are not many who have the right combination of gifts for serving this community. It takes hard searching to find the right person out of all the priests that there are in North America : the one who has the right gifts and is willing to come and to serve the Lord here. Our first responsibility as the Body of Christ is to pray together to the Lord that He will send the right person.

I am going to do that myself, and I am asking you to do that every day. Every day, ask the Lord : “Please, Lord, send us the right priest”. Let us ask Him to show us how we can pray better and help Him by our prayers to bring the right priest here to serve us, so that we can all serve Him together better here. Let us from this day dedicate ourselves to this prayer ; every day asking the Lord to send the right priest. Let us also ask the Lord that together we may enable this Temple to be a shining beacon of love for the one God in Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

When He is working with His creatures, the Lord does not do anything without preparation. Always He is preparing the way for the works that He is going to do. That has been the case from the very beginning. Today we have an example of this preparation. The raising of Lazarus from the dead after he had been in the tomb for four days is a preparation of the hearts and minds of those who follow the Lord for what is to come – His own Resurrection from the dead on the third day. It is not as though Jesus had never raised anyone from the dead before, but anyone else who had been raised from the dead was very briefly dead and people could say : “Oh, he was just in a coma”.

However, Lazarus was already in the tomb and decomposing. He was certainly dead, and there was no doubt about it. We cannot make the excuse of a coma with Lazarus. Lazarus was “dead as a doornail”. The Lord, the Giver of Life, came and spoke the word, and Lazarus came to life. He went on to be a leader of the Church. The Lord works very hard at preparing. Clearly there was careful preparation for the resurrection of Lazarus. When it happened, it was something that no-one in the world had ever seen. Nevertheless, it was not quickly that the Lord’s followers understood what was going on. When He Himself was speaking about His own Resurrection, they always tried to detach it from reality, and thought in vague terms just as Lazarus’ sister had said : “‘I know that he will rise again on the resurrection at the last day’” (John 11:24). However, Jesus had something much more immediate than that in mind.

It is the same thing with resurrection as with teaching. Not only did Jesus Himself raise people from the dead, but great prophets in the past also raised people from the dead. Elias and Elisha are two famous examples (see 3 Kingdoms 17:23 and 4 Kingdoms 4:35-36). However, in none of these cases was the person dead long enough to be decomposing. All through history, there have been plenty of teachers speaking about God and His love. There have been many great, enlightened men and women throughout the history of creation, who have been speaking for the Lord to His people, and telling them what He is like and Who He is, and how much He loves His people, and how His people should behave. Always His people do not pay attention. Always, predictably, His people “do their own thing”. Always, predictably, His people detach themselves from facing God. Even when Moses came down from the mountain, they could not stand to look at the glory on his face and even made him put a veil on his face as a woman in those days put a veil on her face (and in Muslim countries today, women still veil their faces). They made him veil his face because they could not stand to confront the glory of the Lord which was present in Moses and shining from him so that anyone could see it. It was not like Saint Seraphim of Sarov : only Motovilov and only very few others could see the glory shining in him. However, with Moses, everyone could see it and they could not bear it.

People, in their sin, usually put a distance between themselves and the Lord. Thus, they keep the Lord at arm’s length, so that He does not bother them too much. That is how sin operates in our lives. Every time that we are putting the Lord at arm’s length, and keeping Him away like this, we are being just like those Israelites, and just like those followers of Jesus, and just like the Pharisees who were so hard-hearted. We will not let the Lord in. We will not let the Lord work. We will not let the Lord bring that Resurrection into our lives now because we are afraid of what might happen. We are afraid of what the Lord might ask us to do and what He might ask us to be. We are afraid to be different. We are afraid to stand out. The Lord does not ask us ever to do anything bad. He sometimes may ask us to do things that appear strange or difficult, but He never asks us to do anything bad or anything that will endanger our souls. He will never desert us. He always looks after us. Even if someone kills us – big deal. He loves us and gives us eternal life. That is where our hope is.

It is easy to be dull and to keep the Lord far away. We do it only because we are sinful and rebellious and selfish and stubborn. We do not really want to do what the Lord wants us to do every single solitary moment of our lives. We want to be able to do what we think the Lord wants us to do a few days out of the week at the most, and even only a little part of them. We start looking at our watches when His worship goes on longer than we think it should. We get impatient instead of letting ourselves rejoice in being in God’s presence, in being with the One we love. Our attitude in worship and in life is supposed to be like that of people who are deeply in love with someone. People who are deeply in love with another person never want to be separated from that person. They always want to be near the person that they love. When they are not immediately close, they always somehow feel the reality, the nearness and the presence of that person. That is how it is supposed to be between us and the Lord. We are supposed to have that sort of love for Him. It should be love that rejoices in being in His presence whether it is here, or at home, or while driving, or while we are working in the garden or while we are making bread, or while we are doing whatever we are doing, whether we are in offices or digging ditches. This is the nature of true Christian love.

When we can rejoice in being in His presence, rejoice in His worship, rejoice in glorifying Him and praising Him, then we will know that our love has taken at least a baby step towards being what it should be. We will know that His Resurrection life is truly, actually working in us. However, He is not going to force us. Lararus could be raised from the dead because Lazarus loved the Lord. It is not only just because the Lord loved Lazarus that He raised him from the dead. It was because Lazarus also loved Him. Therefore, Lazarus was able to hear the Lord’s voice and come forth.

There are many people whom the Lord is calling and calling and calling and calling, but they are the living dead. They are like zombies. They walk through this life looking after themselves and no-one else. They cannot hear the Lord call. If the Lord’s voice came with a trumpet call, blaring so that everyone could hear it, these people would not hear it. They would refuse to acknowledge that it was the voice of the Lord. They would say : “Oh, it’s the spirits calling” before they would acknowledge that it was the voice of the Lord. They would find every possible way that they could find to keep the Lord away because they do not want to have Him interfering and messing up their programmes and lives. They would stay in the tomb because they refuse to hear the Lord’s call. They will not accept His love.

You and I are here today offering our praise to the Lord. As we come to receive Him, let us be like Lazarus this morning and come out of our dead ways. Our lives are often dead ways : dead ways of thinking, dead habits, hard-hearted customs, hard-hearted pre-dispositions, negative thinking, and all sorts of junk in our lives. Let us hear the voice of the Lord speak to us : “Come out of those deadnesses. Come out of that dead space in which you are. Come out to life. Come out and live. Come out and be filled with the Spirit and live in the Kingdom. Do the work of the Lord. Give life to others”. Therefore, as He gives Himself to us, let us take His hand ; let us love Him, and let us be filled with His Resurrection life. Let us glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, the Jewish people are escorting Jesus into Jerusalem. They are waving palm branches and branches of olive trees (we have pussy willows because there are no palm trees handy). They cry to Jesus : “Hosanna”. “Hosanna” is what was given for the king of Israel only. The people were sure that Jesus, who is coming, is going to be the King of Israel. He is going to make everything right. He is going to get rid of the Romans, who were occupying their country. A few days later, when they discover that Jesus, in fact, is not going to take over and boot out the Romans, they turn on Him and the Jewish people very much contribute to His Crucifixion on Friday. We will see this as we come to church this week and hear the readings from the Gospels day after day. We will see how the people (and even His own disciples) turn away from Him, desert Him, and wonder who He is.

Too many people have preconceived ideas about who Jesus is. They think that they can use Him to fit their own plans and make Him over into their own mould. They can use Jesus to suit their own purposes. The Jewish people at that time were soon to find out that they were very much mistaken. Jesus is more, much more than merely some sort of king, some sort of earthly ruler, some sort of person who is going to bring justice on the earth and make everything nice and warm and cozy and “at home”. Jesus is much greater than that. There is no such thing as an earthly king who can make everything right. It does not matter what political party we belong to or what ideals we hold in politics, whether we are socialists or conservatives : it does not make any difference. People are sinful, selfish and greedy, and no matter which political system we embrace, there is going to be at least some injustice. Political systems are no end in themselves. They only help us govern our country. They only help keep order.

What really matters is : Is there justice in my life ? Am I treating my brothers and sisters with justice ? Do I behave as God wants me to behave ? Do I treat all my brothers and sisters in this world as equals ? If I do not, I have no business saying anything about what happens in South Africa. I do not even have too much business complaining about the way the federal government treats the Inuit and the Aboriginals in this country unless I, myself, am ready to treat everyone as equal, as a child of God, no matter where we come from on earth.

Where does this fixation on an earthly kingdom in Jerusalem lead us now ? Contrary to expectations, the fact is that Jesus is not King of any ordinary kingdom. He is the Ruler of the Kingdom of Heaven which includes every creature that God makes, especially us, human beings. When God set about to save us human beings, He did not say that only the Jews are going to be saved. Even back in the Old Testament times, He never said that only Jews are going to be saved. He said that all the world would be saved through them because they were supposed to be an example (except they shut everyone out).

Therefore, God gave the Kingdom to us to spread the Gospel all around the world. Our ancestors who came from Russia did a very good job of that when they came to Alaska, and established the Church in Alaska. They converted all sorts of people there. Our ancestors in Russia were also very good at bringing Christianity to people in Kenya and in Persia. In fact, the mission that the Russians established in Kenya is still going on, and is nurtured within the Alexandrian Patriarchate with help from the Finnish Orthodox Church.

We have to be their legitimate spiritual children. Our behaviour in the world should be as theirs was only 100 years ago. The Russian missionaries would still be doing the same thing today if Alaska had not been sold and the Western government had not closed the door to Russian missionaries. The result of that closure was the need for the Aboriginal Orthodox to hold on tightly to Christ with very little spiritual support from human beings for over a century. What is this behaviour that we ought to emulate ? It is speaking with power about the joy and the life of Jesus Christ : the life that He gives us, and the ability to live with meaning, hope and power. We show that Jesus is Lord of all that is, and that He is able to take us out of our darkness and the dirt of our sins, and give us the ability to live a life that is positive, powerful, life-giving, and healing to other people. Jesus is the One who, as Lord of all creation, and Lord of our lives, heals broken hearts, heals broken relationships, brings forgiveness between people, restores everything to unity and gathers everything together. Earthly kingdoms separate, break up, and destroy. Greatly were the political Jewish people disappointed in Jesus Christ, because He did not come and establish that Israel that they thought would save the world. The Messianic Kingdom was going to keep everyone out and be stronger than anyone else. It was going to subdue the world. They were very greatly disappointed.

You and I are standing here today in the Temple of the Lord, in the New Jerusalem, which is the Kingdom of Heaven. Every time we stand together like this, we are gathered as the Body of Christ, and we are standing in the New Jerusalem. Are you and I going to be like those political Jewish people ? Are we going to be like our unfaithful spiritual forefathers ? Are we going to betray Christ ? Are we going to kill Him with the way we live ? Are we going to kill Him with our sins ? Are we going to kill Him some more by not forgiving other people, by hating, by holding grudges, by being like everyone else in the world ? Or are we going to be able truly to say : “‘Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!’” Are we going to live as children of the true Kingdom, the Kingdom which has no earthly barriers amongst people ? There are no borders in Christianity. We are all one Body. We are all members of Christ. We are all citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven. We are all sons and daughters of the King, and it is time we all behaved like that.

This coming week we are all going to be walking with Jesus as He walks toward the Cross, which He did voluntarily for our sake. No-one made Him do it. Only His love for us made Him do it. He offered Himself. He was killed. He rose on the third day. All this we are going to be celebrating during this coming week. Let us give ourselves to Him. Let us offer our lives to Him, and try to behave in love as citizens of that Kingdom so that we will never deny Him, never betray Him, and never give Him a kiss as Judas did. May we confess Him as the thief did : “Remember me, O Lord, in Your Kingdom” (see Luke 23:42). And in that heavenly Kingdom, may we with joy eternally bless the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we hear the Lord saying : “‘Do not labour for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life’”. Already Jesus had been feeding this crowd on Himself, the Word. He gave them the words of hope and eternal life. Then He nourished their bodies. In all this He was busy trying to show them where their priorities ought to be. Of course, He withdrew to pray, and we know that the apostles went ahead of Him by boat. The Lord caught up to them by walking on the water. No-one ever expected such a thing. He did this not to demonstrate how fantastic and wonderful He is and what wonders He can accomplish. They had already seen that. Certainly He gave His disciples a scare when He walked up to them on the water, but as soon as they knew who it was, they willingly received Him.

The fact is that the whole world is looking for Jesus all the time. They are looking for Him and His love. They are busy trying to find that fulfilment which in their hearts they know they must have. They are looking for that food which gives eternal life. They are striving to be fed, but no-one feeds them. We feed enough people nowadays with regular bread, as we send all sorts of food to places such as Ethiopia (although certainly we do not do enough). However, on the other hand, what are we doing about giving people what they are actually looking for, especially here at home ? Very often the things that we do are equivalent to that question that Jesus asked : “‘If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone?’” (Luke 11:11) That seems to be more or less what we do. For instance, when people are looking for Jesus Christ, very often we give them “Orthodoxy” instead. We give them the rules of our Fathers. We give them tradition with a small “t”. It is not the tradition of Jesus Christ. We very often speak to people about whether we should stand up or sit down, whether we should cover our heads or not cover our heads, but we generally do not give them the love of Jesus Christ. The love of Jesus Christ comes first. That is what we must give first, and that is what people are looking for. How do we live out this love of Jesus Christ ? Do we do it by making pysanky at Pascha ? by cracking eggs ? by how we do our poklons ? by how we cover our heads or how we do not cover our heads or by whatever else we might do ? In fact, it is not in externals alone that we live out our love for Jesus Christ. The first thing we have to be ready to do is to reveal to others through our lives Who Jesus Christ is. He wants to give them this Bread that is eternal life. The Bread that gives eternal life is Himself.

Since the whole world is hungering for the Lord, let us be like Saint Seraphim of Sarov, who, every day of his life, after he finally was certain that he knew Who Jesus Christ is, went around always saying : “Christ is risen”. Every day of his life, to every person that he ever met, he said : “Christ is risen”. We should be like that. We should be people who reveal Jesus Christ to each other in such a way that no-one can doubt that we know Him and no-one can fail to meet Him through us. It should be that when you and I are going around, people are always aware that they are somehow involved with Jesus Christ. When we are with our friends, our family, at work, it is not necessary that we mention His Name (or rarely, if we do). We can help the Lord to touch them and reach them through expressing in practical ways this renewing, life-giving love, and this support that love gives. Even when we criticise, we still support in our love. When we criticise something that is wrong, we do not slash with our swords and chop someone in half. We support. We say : “Brother or sister, such-and-such a thing is wrong, and we have to do something about it”. We do not have to say aggressively : “You are wrong !” We have to be careful how we approach each other. We have to approach each other in love so that every time we speak to each other, the power of Jesus Christ’s love is meeting the people we are with. They are being fed. They are being introduced to Him, and they are learning how they should live, and why, by observing how we live.

A huge amount of our lives is filled with words : talk, talk, talk, all the time. The fundamental way for Christians to preach Christ (even when someone wants to know about Orthodox Christianity), is to be just like the Apostle Philip and say : “‘Come and see’” (John 1:46). The only way people can understand anything about us as Orthodox Christians or about Jesus Christ is to come and see ; to come and experience ; to come and be. We do not have to talk to people about Jesus Christ all the time. We just have to live Him. We just have to be Him for other people. We do not have to speak and explain and explain and explain : we just do. If someone is sick, we go to visit him or her. If someone needs something, we provide it. We do not have to talk ; we just do. One fundamental characteristic about Orthodox Christians and their prayer life is silence. We learn after a while that in our prayers we do not have to talk, talk, and talk to the Lord and wear Him out by our gabbing. All we have to do is look at Him and love Him. We adore Him. We hold our hands up to Him like this and worship Him. We do not have to blather forever and ever. It is the same thing about preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Sometimes we have to speak, but mostly we have to be and do. There is a saying : “Preach the Gospel incessantly ; if necessary, use a few words”.

Let us ask the Lord this morning as we come to receive Him, to help us to be like our spiritual Fathers and Mothers who are not all known so much by their words. Of course, Saint Basil the Great is known for his writings, and Saint John Chrysostom and Saint Gregory the Theologian are known for their words, too. They had a special service to provide from the Lord. However, Saint Seraphim of Sarov is not so well known for his words, and neither are Saint Nicholas, Saint Vladimir or Saint Barbara, for example. All these persons were recognised quite soon after their repose for their actions. Just by their lives, they proclaimed that they loved Jesus Christ first before anything else. We do not have big books left by most of these holy people but we do have the testimony of their lives. All we have to do is to be Christians who live our lives in Christ. We practise. We do. We do not have to babble on ; we just do. We show that we are Orthodox Christians not by how much we talk about it, but by how much we live His love and by how much we bring Jesus Christ to people around us. By that, by our silence even, just by our being, we proclaim that Christ is risen. May our lives in the love of Jesus Christ, just as Saint Seraphim, proclaim the Resurrection of Christ and glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen

Today, we are remembering that time when those women, called the “Myrrh-bearers”, came to the tomb early in the morning and found the stone already rolled away.

An angel is sitting there and telling them that Christ is risen from the dead. These women were women who had been accompanying Jesus everywhere. They were helping Him and serving Him, and they are called “women disciples”. That means women followers, women imitators of Jesus Christ. These women also went on to bring about the conversion of other people, just as the men did. By their serving, these women ministered to the Lord in extremely important ways. I think that they set some sort of a precedent for how the service of women is really the foundation of Church life throughout the centuries.

That is why most of the sisterhoods in our Church are called “Myrrh-bearing Women”. I mean parish sisterhoods and not monastic sisters. The sisters of this particular parish are called the Myrrh-bearers and all the women of the parish are part of it. Their responsibility above all is to serve Jesus Christ. Of course, men also are supposed to serve Him, as Joseph of Arimathea served Him, and as the holy Archdeacon Stephen served Him. The manner of service of men and women, although they are sometimes different in the Church, are sometimes the same. All the modes of service of men and women together in the Church perform the same function. All are for serving Jesus Christ and for exercising the gifts that He has given to us. The purpose of all these gifts is to build up and strengthen those who are believers first of all, and secondly and most importantly, to testify to Jesus Christ, to bring Him to where we live so that other people may see Him, and believe.

Other people see Jesus Christ in you and in me, and that is how they come to know Him. That is how we also came to know Jesus Christ in the first place. We were touched by the example of others who knew Him and live in Him. It is the same with our spiritual fathers and mothers. We can only have one set of biological parents : one mother and one father physically ; but in the course of our life we can have many fathers and mothers spiritually. Their responsibility as mothers and fathers is to bear Christ, to carry Christ themselves and to introduce Him to us, and us to Him. Once they have introduced Jesus Christ to us, they help us grow in Jesus Christ, if we will. No-one forces us to believe in Jesus Christ. No-one forces us to serve Jesus Christ, just as no-one forces me to be friends with anyone. Vera can introduce me to Stefan as many times as she likes, but if I do not want to be friends with Stefan, I will never do it. If Stefan introduced me to Vera, it is the same thing. He could introduce me to Vera a million times, but if I do not wish to be friends with Vera, it will not happen. It would be too bad (but thank God I choose to be friends with both in this case). The principle is the same as bringing Jesus Christ to each other. Our responsibility is to introduce. Other people’s responsibility is to accept the introduction and to become friends with Him, as we are, although we have become more than just friends with Jesus Christ. We have become His brothers and sisters. We have become the adopted children of God, the Father. We have become princes and princesses of the Kingdom.

In the Acts this morning, we heard about how much work there was for the apostles to do in the early days. There was so much work to be done by these apostles that people began to criticise, because some of the widows were being neglected in the distribution of food. In those days, there was no such thing as pensions, welfare or insurance. Therefore, if the husband died, the widow was left without any way to get an income unless she had children who were old enough to support her. Once in a while she could survive if she had a business sense and had some money to get going. She could survive if perhaps her father had money. However, when their husband died, very many widows were left completely out in the cold and they had to beg. The early Christians behaved very differently from society which left the women alone and did not pay much attention to them. Even the Jewish society which was supposed to look after widows, did not bother too much. Thus, our ancestors in the Early Church and afterwards were very careful to look after the widows, orphans, and other people who were in need. The Church supplied them with food, housing, clothes and looked after them in general so that they did not suffer from need. That is how they shared everything in those days.

It seems to me that one way in which we can apply the life of those days to this day is as follows. Nowadays, we have a reasonable amount of welfare. Nowadays, we have a reasonable amount of pension money. Nowadays, we also have all sorts of institutions to look after people. When a person gets old, often the person goes to a nursing home. Once the person goes to a nursing home, the person is forgotten, like Mrs. n, for instance. I talk about her all the time because she is an example of this. She is in the nursing home and she is far away. Not very many people go to see her because she is far away. If these were the old days, the days of the Apostles Peter and Paul, Philip and Bartholomew and all the apostles, Mrs. n would not be living there. If she were not living with her family, then she would be living in some sort of a house that the rest of the parish would provide for such old people who cannot live by themselves. They would look after her in every way.

We do not need to do that nowadays, but we do need to visit because our old people who cannot get out get very lonely. Mrs. n gets lonely. Even though she lives at home and has someone to look after her, she gets lonely. She has the phone, but the phone is not like having tea with someone. It is not the same. There is also Mr. n and so many others who do not see very many faces from their spiritual families here. Most often these people do not get out as often as they would like to. I am saying that, as Myrrh-bearers, it is our responsibility to take care and to remember who is sick. There are many people like this and it is our responsibility to pay attention to their needs.

We are very busy but we should discipline ourselves once a month to go and see someone. Our sisterhood has appointed one person already to make certain that people (especially sick people in the hospital) are visited sometimes. However, it is not that person’s responsibility to do all the visiting because we are all the brothers and sisters of these people who are too old or too sick to come to church as often as they want to. It is the responsibility of us all to phone, or once in a while (perhaps once a month) to go and visit them, have a cup of tea, share a few words, bring an orange or something and say, as it were : “You are my brother, you are my sister. I care about you and I am interested in you”. That is what our responsibility is supposed to be like, I think. That is the most practical way in which we can apply today’s Gospel. Let us remember how those deacons were chosen to look after the people who were in need. Let us remember that our responsibility is like their responsibility. Although each of us has different gifts, we are each of us called to look after each other with the love of brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ.

That is how we demonstrate that we love. It is no good simply to say : “I love you”. By showing up and having a cup of tea with Mrs. n, for instance, or by trying to surprise someone else, we show that we care. Perhaps some day when we are driving on our way somewhere, we could just drop in for twenty minutes for a cup of tea and say : “How are you ?” That is all that is necessary. People really sense the love of Jesus when we do that. They really understand how the love of Jesus works when we do little things like that. A telephone call, a little visit, a cup of tea is not much, but it is everything, on the other hand.

This morning, as we come to receive Him, and as He gives Himself to us, let us ask the Lord to help us put His love more into practice. Let us ask Him to open our eyes, our minds and our ears (but most particularly our minds together with our hearts), and to remind us what we could and should do. Let us ask Him to remind us whom to visit, whom we can go and see, who needs to hear a word of care or a word of love from a brother or sister. Let us then listen for Him to speak to us. Some day when we are in the car, perhaps we will drop in to visit Mrs. n and surprise her. We could have a quick cup of tea and say : “How are you ?” and “Christ is risen”. By doing this, we will truly glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, on the fourth Sunday of Pascha, we celebrate the healing of the paralysed man. This man, who had been paralysed for 38 years, had been lying by this pool called “Bethesda” for an exceptionally long time. He had been hoping that he would be able to be first in the water when the angel stirred up the water so that he could be healed of his disease. However, someone always got there first. He was very much exasperated, but still he was full of hope. Still he kept trying.

When Jesus came to him and healed him, He said : “‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’”. When the Lord later found him in the Temple, He said to Him : “‘See, you have been made well. Sin no more’”. As I have said before, many of the things that are wrong with us come from sin. It is not always our own sin. Sometimes it is just because we are human beings, and all humanity is terribly sinful. That is why some terrible things occur to us, and sometimes that is why we get sick. However, there is a way out, and the way out is Jesus Christ. He is the Life-giver, and wherever Jesus is, there can only be life – no sickness, no sorrow, no sighing – only life. When Jesus told the paralysed man that he should not sin any more, He was telling us something that we must remember. That something is that sin paralyses us. As long as we participate in the works of darkness, as long as we do not unite ourselves to the Lord, as long as we insist on “doing our own thing”, we are paralysing ourselves, like that man who was lying for 38 years on the ground.

The Lord does not want us to be like that. He does not want us to be paralysed by our selfishness, by our greediness, by our anger, by our unwillingness to forgive. He wants us to put all this away. He wants us to live powerfully and healthily in the Kingdom. However, the only way we can have any sort of spiritual or physical health is to be united to Jesus Christ and determined to live in the Kingdom, to live in His life-giving love.

How do we do that ? The answer is very simple. We just do it. Of course, the question comes : “But how do we do it ?” By living as Jesus does. When we meet someone who is spiritually or physically ill, we bring the healing love of Jesus Christ to that person. If someone is ill, we go to that person if we can. Whether we can go to that person or cannot go to that person, we pray for that person to be healed physically or spiritually. We unite ourselves to Jesus Christ every Sunday when we come here. We unite ourselves to Him and share His love and His life with those around us. If someone is hungry, we feed them. If someone does not have enough clothes, we give them clothes. If someone is short of money, maybe we can lend them something, or even give them something if possible, depending on how God moves us to act. No-one can say how we are supposed to act precisely in any individual case, because human beings are all different. The circumstances in life are all different also. God calls you and me to behave towards each other in love.

The only way we can know for certain how to exercise this love is to be united with the Lord, who is the Source of love. He is the One who gives us the love in the first place, and He is the One who teaches us how to exercise it rightly in each case. For instance, if someone does not have any money, we should perhaps give them money. On the one hand, that would work for certain people and be “just the ticket”, but on the other hand it might be an occasion for sin because of the particular weaknesses of that person which we cannot know. I discovered that by listening to the Lord. That does not mean that just because we sometimes make mistakes in the exercising of our love we should never give of ourselves. We must give of ourselves. We must act. Unless we act, there is no love. Love must operate. It must do. It must express itself. I cannot just sit around saying : “I am a good Christian. I love”. That is no good. That does not do a thing, except say to everyone that I am a big talker. Maybe I have good intentions, but my mother said to me time after time that good intentions pave the road to hell. She was quite right. “I was going to do something” does not get us anywhere when we have to face the Lord. “I was going to be nice to so-and-so” ; “I was going to go and visit ” ; “I was going to take a pie over” ; “I was going to do this and I was going to do that”. That does not hold any water. It is a leaky bucket before the Lord. When we face the Lord it is just like when I was facing my mother. “I was going to” does not get us anywhere, but it got me a red bottom a few times, anyway. It will get us the same thing with the Lord. If I say : “I was going to do this or that”, then I can expect the Lord to say : “Why then did you not do it ?”

If we are not prepared to exercise our love, if we are so “chicken-hearted” that we cannot do a thing, then we have to be prepared for what the Lord is going to give us. The fact is that the Lord loves us. He strengthens us. He protects us from all harm. He corrects us. There is no reason at all not to be prepared to do something. The Lord is going to say to us : “Why did you not … ?” I might make an excuse that I am selfish or scared. However, perhaps I am more likely to be selfish, because, if I am selfish, that is a reason to be scared. If we cannot say that we did not do it for a good reason, then we can expect to get slapped around a bit, as it were. In fact, we can expect to get slapped around a bit right now by the Lord because the Lord disciplines the ones He loves. He loves us, and He wants us to wake up and He wants us to do what is right. He wants us to exercise this love with each other. The Lord says in another place : “If you do good things : visit the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, go and see those who are in jail, or do whatever else is necessary to meet people’s needs – if you do it to these people, you do it to Me, also” (see Matthew 25:34-36). However, if we do not look after the people who are in need, if we do not go and see Mrs n once in a while ; if we do not go and see how Mrs n or Mrs n is doing today ; if we do not check up on one of them, then we did not do it to the Lord, either. He is going to say : “Why ? Why did you not at least phone ?”

We have to exercise this love, because this love gives life. If Jesus Christ did not exercise His life-giving love, the paralysed man would never have stood up. If He did not exercise His love through Peter, the man who was paralysed would never have stood up, and Tabitha would never have been raised from the dead. We are reading the Book of Acts right now in Pascha because the Book of Acts shows us how the apostles lived out the love of Jesus Christ, and how the love of Jesus Christ built up and strengthened the community. If there is anything we believers here need to do now, it is to read the Book of Acts once a month for the next year, and try to put into practice what is said in that book about the deeds of the apostles.

Let us consider what happened to Peter when Peter was going into the Temple (see Acts 3:1-10). A man was begging for money. Peter said : “’Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you’”. He took the lame man by the hand and he was healed ; he got up and walked around. He was able to earn his own living after that instead of begging. That is what the Lord expects of you and me. He expects us to put our love into practice. We are united to Jesus Christ and we have all the tools that are necessary in this love. All we have to do is to do it. We just have to reach out a hand, and touch and do.

Why not make that our commitment today ? Let us read the Book of Acts once a month (which means about a chapter a day) for the next year, and try to act on the Acts ; to do what the apostles did, because how Jesus lives and works amongst us is no different from how He worked and lived amongst them. His love is the same. We try to let ourselves off the hook, saying : “The times are different”. However, they are not that different. People are people, like they were then. The only difference between people at the time of the Acts and people now, is how much money most people seem to have now, how many machines people have to do their work for them, and how fast they can travel around the world. It is how many gadgets we have that makes us different. Human beings remain the same and they have been behaving the same throughout all the thousands of years of history. Nevertheless, the promises of Jesus Christ are the same. His love is the same. We can be like the apostles, and He wants us to be like them, so let us read the Book of the Acts. Let us act on the Book of the Acts, so that our whole life says : Christ is risen. Let our lives always proclaim the Resurrection of Christ, and glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen

All through the Paschal season, we are hearing readings from the Book of Acts, and readings from various Resurrection Gospels. Most of all, what we are hearing in these passages is what we heard this morning in the Gospel reading about the Samaritan Woman. In the Acts, we see how the communities in those early days were formed, how they were assembled, what their life was like and how they grew.

The Samaritan Woman gives us the perfect example. She meets Jesus at the well. Jesus reveals to her Who He truly is by the things that He says to her. Instantly she accepts what He has to say about Himself. She does not even question it because of the way He presents it to her. He presents Who He is directly, and even though she is a very sinful woman, she still has the eyes to perceive what is the truth. Right away she accepts it. Her immediate response is to ask a question. After she has the question answered in a way she really does not understand, then she runs to the town to tell everyone else : “‘Come and see a Man who told me all things that I ever did’”. The town came out. This town was full of people who by Jewish standards certainly were no good. However, by their own standards, they considered themselves to be better than the Jewish people of Jerusalem.

The people of this town came out. They saw Jesus. They met Him and accepted Him right away. Some of them believed in Him because of the words of the Samaritan Woman even before they had set eyes on Him. As soon as they could see Who He is, they begged Him to stay a little longer. Jesus was only passing through because He was on His way elsewhere. However, the people begged Him and He agreed to stay a little while. This was unprecedented because Jewish people did not even speak to Samaritans, let alone stay with them. He spoke to them. He taught them and He revealed the Kingdom to them. They received Him and they accepted the Kingdom. Instantly a believing community of people turning away from sin and turning towards the Lord was formed in this little Samaritan village called Sychar. Those villagers were ready to have the Holy Spirit living in their hearts.

In the reading from the Acts, we saw people running away from Jerusalem because of persecution. Wherever they went, they immediately established communities. They preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ to those around them and converted them to the true Faith of Jesus Christ. New communities grew up everywhere. As we are reminded, it was in the city of Antioch in Syria that the followers of Jesus were first called “Christians”. Our call is the same as that of the early Christians, because we here today are the same sort of people as all those that we have been hearing about. We are not any different, even though we do not live in the Middle East and we do not speak Aramaic, Hebrew or Arabic. We are the same sort of people. We are all children of God created by Him to live in the Kingdom. That is why we are the same as those people. Even if we live in the machine age where there are all sorts of gadgets, we are still essentially like all those people we hear about in the New Testament.

Jesus comes to us in the New Testament. When we read it, we meet Him. It is the duty of all Orthodox Christians to read the Bible all the time so that we can truly know Jesus and live the way He wants us to live. He meets us as He is meeting us right now in the Divine Liturgy. He comes to us in His Body and His Blood. As He gives Himself to us, He fills us with Himself. He gives us life and power to live in accordance with His will and to live the life of the Kingdom. He enables us to live that life which is full of love, full of strength, full of power, full of healing, full of light.

It is for you and for me to be like our spiritual ancestors. Our fathers and mothers hundreds and hundreds of years ago responded to Jesus Christ whom they met either in the flesh or in the lives of other people. You and I have met Jesus Christ in the Gospel, in the lives of each other, and in the lives of our mothers and fathers, or at least our spiritual mothers and fathers. We meet Him here, now, in the Divine Liturgy, as we do every time at the Divine Liturgy. We receive Him ; we accept Him into our hearts. Now we must live this life. We must live as the Samaritan Woman lived, as all those other disciples lived, and as the people of Sychar lived. We have to be ready to say : “Come and see. Come and meet Jesus Christ, who gives life to me and to all those who will receive life from Him. Come and see Him. Come and meet Him. Come and know the joy of living in Him as I do, and as we do here”.

That is what we are called to do. We are called to live as believers amongst ourselves so that when someone else comes to visit us, someone who has never met Jesus Christ, someone who has perhaps never even heard of Him, this person will be able to sense this love, this power, this life in our midst and be eager to share it with us. That is how we are called to live. We are called to live as our spiritual ancestors did, as we see in the New Testament. This has been the call to Orthodox Christians for the past 2,000 years : to live as these people in the New Testament lived, hearing about Jesus Christ, meeting Him, receiving Him, and living Him.

It is perhaps a little difficult to think of foreign and unbelieving people coming to meet us here where probably most people around the country are already somehow believers. I suppose that even in a country like Greece, which has been Christian right from the beginning of Christianity, there are occasionally some people who are not believers. It is our responsibility to strengthen each other, first of all in our living in Jesus Christ. If we see one who is not a believer, we are not supposed to run at him or her with our Bible, wave it and quote Scripture. We are not to shake our finger and ask : “Why aren’t you coming to church ?” We are supposed to live an example of love, invitation and acceptance. Thus, without our even having to speak about it, this person will sooner or later be able to see the love of the Lord working amongst us and living amongst us. If this person has fallen away, s/he will turn back to Christ. Or if s/he has never even been told about Christ, this person will come and ask why our lives are so powerful, why our lives are so full of joy, why our lives are so full of selflessness and true love.

Everyone on earth is thirsting for this love. Everyone on earth is parched and gasping for this love even if the person does not know it. Nothing else in the world will satisfy except the true Faith, the true love of Jesus Christ. Only we Orthodox Christians know about it ; only we know how to live it, and only we know how it can be given to such a person who does not know about it and who needs it. Of course, sometimes the Lord intervenes directly. As we come to receive Him this morning, let us ask the Lord to give us the courage to live without any fear this life of love, to share this love amongst ourselves freely, so that others may see and believe. Let us live with each other so that other people may see, believe, and desire to be part of this loving, life-giving, strengthening, healing community in the Kingdom which proclaims every single, solitary day of the year : “Christ is risen”. Likewise, may this community in every way, every day, glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In the Epistle reading today, we see how the Lord manages to make something positive out of something negative such as the dissension today between the Apostles Paul and Barnabas. Because they could not agree, they went in separate directions. However, the Lord used this disagreement to multiply the proclamation of the Gospel. These were two strong leaders working together, which was a very good thing. However, when the time came for them to separate and to go on to do work individually, the proclamation of the Gospel spread even farther and deeper. Now the Gospel was being proclaimed not only in Asia Minor, but also it was being proclaimed in Cyprus when the Apostle Barnabas went there.

We have to remember always that this is what the Lord is doing all the time in our lives as well. Sometimes we commit serious sins. However, as long as we keep turning towards the Lord and admitting that we have done wrong and that we wish to do what is the Lord’s will, He turns the wrong that we have done to His glory. He is the One who heals what is broken. He is the One who makes up for or fulfils everything that is lacking. The Holy Spirit (as we are always saying) heals what is broken ; He unites what is disunited ; He brings together and unites everything.

The Lord speaks of Himself as the Shepherd of sheep and we are the sheep. A shepherd is someone who looks after sheep, and there is a unity or bond between the shepherd and the sheep. The shepherd is what he does. He is responsible for, and he protects the sheep. When our Lord speaks about being a shepherd, He refers to us human beings as being rational sheep, as it were. After Him, every human shepherd of the rational sheep remains, himself, a rational sheep. This sort of unity is evident when this perfect Shepherd is the God-Man. A shepherd has to know each one of his sheep individually if he is to do a proper job. He has to know the whole flock and he has to know every member of that flock. Not only does he have to know them, but he has to love them and care for them because sheep (as we all know) are quick to wander off and do stupid things. They get lost easily ; and if they get lost, they do not know what to do, and they do not even have the sense to go and find the flock. Therefore, the shepherd has to go hunting for the sheep and bring them back to the flock.

That is what the Lord is always doing in our lives. That is what He is always doing in our lives together in the Church. That is how He administers the Church – as a loving Shepherd gathering and uniting the sheep. The Lord is not sitting up in Heaven detached from the Church. The Lord is here in our midst all the time. He is in the middle of our lives. He is living by His law in our hearts, as He said He would do. He is in the midst of us, stirring up love for Him all the time ; and love for each other increases all the time. The more we co-operate with Him, the more united we all become, and the more united and strong the Church becomes. There is only one thing that is really required of us, and that is the commitment to do His will : to find out what His will is, and then to do it. This is how we live in Him in love.

We are to be obedient, following the Shepherd. That is another big misunderstanding that we have about how flocks operate. In western Europe shepherds are known as drovers because they drive the flock from one place to another. However, in the Middle East, shepherds do not drive the flock. Shepherds walk in front of their sheep and the sheep follow them. The sheep will not follow anyone else but that one shepherd because they know that this shepherd loves them. That is how the Lord is with us. He is not driving us anywhere. He always goes before, making a way for us so that we know where to go. If He were behind us, driving us on, we would always be scared ; we would always be afraid because we would not know exactly where we were going, and we would not even know why we were going there. We would just know that there was a dog and a stick behind us pushing us somewhere we do not know. Instead, our Shepherd, who loves us, goes in front of us so that there is nothing to be afraid of. We know where we are going. If there is a dog, that dog is there to make sure that we do not run away and get lost. In this way, the whole flock goes forward together following the Shepherd whom they love. The Shepherd and the sheep together are one being. That is what the Church of Jesus Christ is : all one being together, Shepherd and sheep.

Our Good Shepherd is with us today. He is today not separate from us. He is today in our midst. He is the One who offers Himself to the Lord and He is the One who offers Himself to us. When we come to Him to be fed by our Shepherd, He Himself feeds us with Himself. He fills us and renews us in His love. Let us come today to that great Shepherd of the sheep, and renew ourselves as sheep in the flock of the Lord and be fed by Him. Let us live in Him and follow Him wherever He leads us. May all our hearts willingly and lovingly follow and imitate our good Shepherd, our Saviour, Jesus Christ, and glorify Him together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

This is one of the longest Gospel readings that we have (outside of Holy Week). Who is blind in today’s Gospel ? It certainly is not the blind man who is blind because he who was blind from birth is able to glorify God by the fact that he instantly responds to the Lord. As soon as he knows who the Lord is, instantly he falls down, worships the Lord, and says : “‘Lord, I believe!’” More than once in the Gospel, Jesus said, as it were : “If you cannot believe Me, at least believe the works. Believe what happens ; see how God acts, and understand. Do not be unbelieving but be quick to believe and quick to understand how God’s love works”.

The Jewish people and the Pharisees were not ready to listen. They absolutely refused. They were the ones who were completely blind. They were the ones who could not see the action of the will of God even when all the evidence was right in front of their faces and there were all sorts of witnesses that this was the case. They absolutely refused to believe and in the end they threw people out of the synagogue. They were that angry at not getting their own way. There was no justice whatever, not the slightest bit. Nevertheless, the blind man is not worried about justice from the Pharisees or from anyone else. The blind man is glorifying God because he has been given sight. Our hymns last evening said that he had never in his life been able to see human beings who are made in the image of God. Instead, he had only been able to touch and to hear. When he receives his sight, he is able not only to see with his eyes, but more deeply with his soul.

There is more than one way to approach life and our relationships with each other. You and I are all images of Christ, our Lord. We are icons of the Lord. Time and again, Saint John Chrysostom says (and other Fathers also say) that we are to respect that presence of Christ in each other. We are to look for it and to help it grow. Sometimes we too are just as blind as those Pharisees who could not with their physical eyes see that this man had been healed, and that he had been healed by the love of God. They were angry because he had been healed on the Sabbath Day. The Lord had technically broken the Law by working on the Sabbath Day. They wanted to get revenge and justice, and that is all that they were interested in. What are you and I interested in ? Are we interested in getting justice for ourselves at the expense of everyone else ? Are we interested in getting our own way at the expense of everyone else ? What is important to us ? This is where our blindness comes in. Our blindness has to do with our relationships with one another. Can we see Christ in each other ? Do we affirm Christ in each other ? Do we build up the presence of Christ in each other or do we deny the presence ? Do we live as Christians must live – giving life, being honest, being supportive, healing, and building up the Body of Christ ? Or are we like the world where people eat each other up, slash each other with their words, kill with their words (not to overlook killing with weapons) ? Are we like the world where we serve our own selves first and only, or are we living in the Kingdom as we must ? Do we put the Lord first ? Do we put the service of others and their welfare even before ours ? Which way do we live ? Do we see with the eyes of the Kingdom or do we see with the eyes of the world ?

Today, we are standing in the Kingdom. Do we see that we are standing here in the Kingdom, or is this merely some sort of chummy gathering that we attend because we like to see our friends ? Are we here to glorify God first above all things ? Can we see with our hearts the presence of our spiritual ancestors, our mothers and fathers who have been here before us and who have offered their praise to the Lord, and have given this particular place such an uplifting and prayerful atmosphere ? Can we see them ? Can we feel them ? Can we sense them ? Can we know that our loved ones are here still in the Body of Christ, here in the Kingdom ? Can we see the Lord standing in our midst today, giving us Himself, giving us His life, His love and feeding us with His love ? Can we see Him standing in our midst with His arms stretched out to us, saying : “‘Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’” (Matthew 11:28) ? Are we here instead simply out of habit or obligation ? Do we come to refresh our Russian culture and language ? If we are here only for the last reason, then we are like the Pharisees with blind eyes and we have to wake up. Our first reason to be here must be to offer our praise to the Lord, to unite ourselves to Him, and to be united with all our fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters who have gone before us, as well as with each other. The blue ceiling above us is to remind us that we are standing here in the Kingdom, under the dome of Heaven. We are standing here in Heaven in the presence of the Lord before His throne.

As we come to the Lord, He gives Himself to us. He makes us one, all together. Let us ask Him to open our eyes so that we can see Him here, and in each other, and also in other places in the world. Let us ask Him to help us see Him in people that we meet, so that we may bring the presence of the Kingdom out there to the world. The unity in Christ that we find here may we bring to the brokenness of the world out there. May we bring the love that we find here amongst ourselves to those out there who have no love. There, where there is only hate and death, may we bring the life and the love that we find here. Let us ask Him to enable that, so that our lives may glorify the all-holy Trinity and that every minute of our lives we may proclaim : “Christ is risen”.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

We are all very anxious to pin things down. The disciples were anxious to pin things down. In the middle of everything that had happened, they continued to ask the Lord, as it were : “Is it now, Lord ? Is now the time ? Are You going to establish the Kingdom of Israel now ?” The fact is that they were not yet able to understand that the Kingdom of God is a mystery beyond seeing and beyond the limitations of earthly boundaries.

Palestine (as it was known) was a province of the Roman Empire. It was not an area that could contain the Kingdom of God. Even the farthest extents of the kingdom of David and Solomon were not big enough to hold the Kingdom of God. The Russian Empire was not big enough to hold the Kingdom of God and neither was the British Empire, which was even bigger, nor the American Empire, which is big enough, too. Canada, the second biggest country in the world, is not big enough to hold it and in fact, the whole world is not big enough to hold the Kingdom. We cannot pin it down like that. The Lord ascended into Heaven in order to send the Holy Spirit to us. If He had remained with us as His disciples who loved Him wished that He would, He would have had to limit Himself in His ability to be with us. However, He chose not to limit Himself permanently in His ability to be with us. The Lord ascended in order to send the Holy Spirit to us so that He would be with us always just as He promised when He departed from His disciples.

The Holy Spirit did come and spread the Kingdom of Heaven to whatever hearts are prepared to receive Him. All around the world today, as we stand in the Divine Liturgy celebrating this Event, the Kingdom of God is present. All around the world, believers have assembled in places like this, at all different times, to worship the Lord and to be in the Kingdom. Here we stand today, gathered in the Kingdom. However, we ourselves seem to be anxious to put limits on that Kingdom, too. We want to put limits of language, culture, and some other sorts of limits on the Divine Liturgy. In the presence of the Kingdom, this cannot be. How can we put a limit on the proclamation of the Kingdom ? How can we confine it ? The Kingdom has to be proclaimed. Souls have to be saved. People have to be allowed to enter the Kingdom. They have to be welcomed with open and loving arms and raised up in the Kingdom with us.

These souls that are hungry for God’s love have to find it in us Orthodox Christians because they will likely not find it anywhere else except by divine intervention. They must find His love in us and amongst us. Thus, our responsibility is to live in the Kingdom, to live as the sons and daughters of the King to our greatest ability. By reaching out our hands in love together with our hearts, we bring life to the world. That is what our responsibility is. When He parted from us, as He ascended into Heaven, the Lord said, as it were : “Preach the Gospel, the good news of reunion with God, the good news of the love of God for His creatures, and of love and life amongst all human beings in this Kingdom”. That is the responsibility that comes to us from today’s readings : the responsibility to take our Christian lives seriously.

In a manner of speaking, the Ascension into Heaven expresses what is to come for us. We must prepare by exercising our membership in the Kingdom here and now. We must proclaim the truth of the Lord. We must live His love. We must build up and unite the members of the Body of Christ and draw all together to the Lord. He stands amongst us, drawing us to Himself, offering Himself to us, saying still : “‘I am with you always, even to the end of the age’” (Matthew 28:20). Let us let Him live in us. Let us let His love and the presence of the Kingdom radiate from our lives together. May this Kingdom bring healing, life, love and victory to many souls hungering and thirsting for Him. May our lives transparently reveal the life-giving love of the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The Gospel reading today is reminding us of that perfect communion which is between the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Three Persons of the Holy Trinity live in perfect unity and perfect communion, and yet each Person retains a distinct identity. The Father is the Father. The Son is the Son. The Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit.

I am not going to go into a recitation of the Athanasian Creed to explain the Holy Trinity this morning. What is important is this matter of perfect communion in love which Jesus says that He has with the Father. It is very difficult for us to understand things like that because we are generally very slow about such things. Even though the Lord has sent the Holy Spirit upon us and filled us, we are still slow. He gave us everything that we need to understand, but we still cannot put two and two together to make four, and come to understand life in the Kingdom. This perfect communion that Jesus Christ has with the Father is what He came to give to us through Himself, through our being members of the Body of Christ, through our being baptised into Him and chrismated with the Gift of the Holy Spirit. The Lord wishes to take us up, we who are members of the Body of Christ, into perfect communion with the Father through Him. He wishes us to be in perfect communion with Him so that we can be in perfect communion through Him with the Father. He wants us to live always in love. How we learn to be in perfect communion with Jesus Christ is to be in communion with each other.

The devil is always trying to break up communion in Christ. He is always trying to throw around distractions, get people angry, get them upset, get them perturbed, and distract them from what their true purpose is, which is being one with Jesus Christ. This is one of the tactics he was using when he encouraged this young boy to fall asleep in the middle of Saint Paul’s sermon and fall out of the window. The devil’s scheme was that he should cast doubts on the apostolic ministry of Paul, and that he would cast doubts also on the power of the Lord to give life by making people discouraged and filling them with sorrow in the midst of the joy of being with the Apostle. He wanted to stab them right in the heart so that they would not listen to the Apostle. That is why things happened more or less as they happened. Even though the boy fell out of the window and everyone thought he was dead, the Apostle went down and said : “‘Do not trouble yourselves, for his life is in him’”, and they took him up alive. Most of us would not survive a fall out of a window, and even most boys would not survive a fall out of a window of more than one storey in height. Nevertheless, the prayers of the Apostle were such that, in his unity with the Lord, the Lord gave life to this boy who should have been dead. We see that the Apostle is in no way calling attention to himself.

As we see in the Acts of the Apostles, the Lord is continually giving life to those who have physically died. However, more importantly, He gives life to people who are spiritually dead – those who are dead in these sorts of sins : bitterness, anger, jealousy, envy ; people who are dead in the sins of selfishness, pride and rebellion against the Lord. He gives them life. There is more than one way to be in the tomb and have the Lord give life. One can be a zombie. Zombies (as you may remember from the movies) were the living dead. They were supposedly people who had been dug up out of a grave and robot-like were wandering around, catching people and making them zombies like themselves. Figuratively speaking, there are people who behave similarly all around us. They are so full of themselves that they do not have a second for anyone else. They do not care about anything at all except self-preservation. Their lives are lost in themselves, and they are dead to everything. There are also people who are dead because they are full of hatred, full of bitterness, full of anger, and their mouths are used only for vicious words and cutting remarks. Such people, also, are like these zombies : they appear to be alive, but they are not.

The Lord calls us to bring true life to these people and to show them what true life, eternal life actually means. True life consists in giving oneself in love selflessly with no strings attached : I give myself in service to others. The Lord is calling each one of us to be servants of everyone else, and to be seeing what we can do to help everyone else. He is calling us to see what we can do to bring life, hope, love and power into the lives of those who are all caught up in themselves, and totally lost, taken up in the sorrowful emptiness of serving themselves only.

It is our responsibility to teach them forgiveness, to teach them how to forgive. Most of the world does not know how to forgive but instead knows how to wreak vengeance and to take life. The world is getting more and more bloody and bloodthirsty all the time. It is our responsibility to break that cycle with our love, with the power of our prayers and with the power of our union with Christ in His life-giving love. It is our responsibility to bring life to the world, to bring light to the darkness and to raise out of the living tombs those who are wandering around dead but still capable of hearing the word. Living the love of Jesus Christ, it is for us to give them this word of life, by being in communion with each other and with God, and by bringing them into communion with us in Him.

This morning, let us once again strive to unite ourselves to the Lord and unite ourselves with each other. Let us remember that our calling is not to get something out of anyone but to give and forgive. Let us see what there is that we can do to help everyone else, not expecting anything in return. Thereby we will truly live Orthodox Christian lives. Thereby we will truly be united in Christ. Thereby, we will be taken up into perfect communion with the Father. Thereby we will be showing that we are alive in the Holy Spirit and that our whole lives glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today we are reading the conclusion of the Book of Acts, and with it we come to the end of the Paschal season. Tomorrow we begin the Pentecost season. As I have said before, the reading of the Book of Acts is necessary for us. It is important that we remember how the Christian community is built up and strengthened, how we are supposed to be living together, and how the Holy Spirit is still working in and amongst us. Tomorrow we will celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit as He comes to us. During the liturgical services, we will be with the disciples and apostles in the Upper Room in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit comes down in tongues of fire and gives power to those who love the Lord.

It is for us also, in harmony with the action of the Holy Spirit, to be prepared to live in accordance with the Gospel, and in accordance with the love of the Lord. We must remember to be continuously building up and strengthening the Body of Christ, Christ’s Holy Church. More than anything else, it is our responsibility to be nurturing and strengthening the body of believers here in this place by supporting one another, encouraging one another in love. Thus, we are urged to continue following the Lord, living in the Lord, all together and individually. At the same time, we are to exercise all the gifts that God has given us. He has given us all gifts of wisdom, gifts of understanding, gifts of knowledge, gifts of insight, gifts of prophesy. It is for us to discover these gifts in our lives, and to let the Lord work in us with these gifts. He has given us these gifts not just for our own strength, but so that we can exercise love in the community. In our relationships in the community, we can work together with the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. When we can put this love into practice amongst ourselves in the community, we will then be better able to do acts of love amongst people who do not know Christ and whose hearts are searching for Him. It is not all that easy to proclaim Christ to people who have not heard of Him. There are walls that have to be penetrated. It becomes more possible if we believers are able ourselves to exercise this love amongst ourselves in Christ, and all together to save ourselves in Christ.

We are not to be individual human beings concerned about “individual salvation”. That is one of the big mistakes of the television evangelists. We are not so much interested in “individual salvation” since individual salvation can only truly be achieved in community salvation. When we are all working together, encouraging and strengthening each other, there is much less focus on us as individuals. Individuals might be saved somehow, but that is up to the Lord. It is not likely that only one person in a community would be saved, because that person who is being saved is already exercising the love of God amongst others around so that they may be saved as well.

It is not possible to be a Christian and live outside of community awareness and community responsibility. Even Saint Symeon Stylites (whose memory we are celebrating today) who lived on a pillar in North Syria and never moved from it for many years, was not being saved by himself. Through his prayers, he was part of the Church all the time. People did not leave him alone sitting there on his pillar out in the country on a hill. They came and bothered him all the time, asking him to pray for them and asking him to speak to them.

Even hermits are called to serve others, and that service is what our Lord is referring to today when He is speaking to the Apostle Peter. The love of the Lord produces the feeding of the sheep, the caring for the sheep, and the tending of the flock. The love of the Lord must be demonstrated in concrete action. When our Lord says to the Apostle Peter : “‘Feed My lambs’”, “‘tend My sheep’”, “‘feed My sheep’”, He says it to us as well. It is important to remember that the number one fundamental lesson when we are reading the Bible and hearing about the works of all the great people who have gone before us (work done by the Lord through them, I should be careful to say) is that we have the same calling that they have. People throughout the generations are not different from one another. It does not matter if some people lived 4,000 years ago and were great and did wonderful works in the Lord. Living in 1987 or living in 1997 makes no difference. Human beings (although they become much more sophisticated in technology) remain the same in the heart. Their fundamental desires and needs are still the same. Their fundamental requirements are the same, and their call is just the same. The Lord calls His followers to act, and that is why we have read the Acts. Love of Him must be put into action. He calls us to work His works of love in His Kingdom amongst us, reaching out to those who are lost and in darkness.

Just as our spiritual ancestors, our fathers and mothers answered that call, we, too, today answer that call. We come to the Lord today ; He comes to us today. We receive Him today ; He gives Himself to us today. As much as He lived in those disciples and apostles 2,000 years ago, and enabled them by the power of the Holy Spirit to do great deeds and to save souls, He does the same for us in 1987, and God willing, if we should live until 1997, He would do the same thing for us in ten years’ time. May our whole lives now and forever glorify our Saviour who loves us so much, together with the unoriginate Father and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today is our parish Altar Feast. We call it an Altar Feast-day because it is indeed the name-day of the Holy Table of this Temple. This Holy Table is sanctified in honour of the Holy Trinity. Thus, we gather today as a family to celebrate at this family Table. Brothers and sisters, we know that this is our place, our home. This is where we belong. Gathered around this Holy Table, we are where we are supposed to be. This is where we know ourselves, we who are His family. We are the Body of Christ. This is where God reveals Himself to us. This where God gives Himself to us. This is where He feeds us. This is where we are truly ourselves more than any other time. We are truly ourselves when we are here together, gathered in the Lord’s house, in our Father’s house, gathered around our Father’s Table. In our Father’s Kingdom on His Day, we are offering ourselves to Him. We, offering ourselves to Him, are asking Him that we may be seen to be truly be His sons and daughters.

On this day, we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples. When we look at the festal icon, at the top we can see the Heaven bending down, where there are all sorts of flames of fire heading for the disciples and apostles and the Mother of God. It was not only the twelve apostles who received the gift of the Holy Spirit. The room was full of 120 people. They all, even the Mother of God, are called apostles. In the same way, you and I are called apostles. “Apostle” means one who is sent. You and I are sent into the world to bring the Kingdom with us into the world. As the apostles and the Mother of God all together received the Holy Spirit with fire and were given power, so you and I are given power by the Holy Spirit.

You and I are given the power to go out and live the Christian life in the midst of the darkness of this world. You and I are given the power to bring Jesus Christ to people whose lives are broken, whose hearts are broken with sorrow, whose lives are all burdened with darkness and care, sorrow, selfishness and sin of every sort. You and I are given the power and the authority to bring Jesus Christ to their sorrow, to their brokenness, to their need. You and I, who have been given the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit when we were baptised, are given the power and the authority to bring Jesus Christ to such people, to scatter the darkness with the light and the life of Jesus Christ. We are to bring His life, His light, His love to the lives of those who are wandering, looking, hungering, thirsting for this love, this light and this life that we have.

You and I, just like the apostles, have been given power. Maybe we did not see fire come down, but fire did come down. Maybe we do not realise it, but every time we come and stand here, the Lord comes from the Throne of Glory and gives Himself to us. Every single solitary time He comes to us in this way, this fire comes to us. This fire of His life, this fire of His light, this fire of His love comes to us and it burns away sin. It burns away darkness. It burns away all sorts of sins and hatred and selfishness and pride and envy. The fire burns it all away. It purifies us, this fire which comes to us when we come to Holy Communion. This fire enters us and renews us ; it nourishes us and fills us.

On this fiftieth day after the Passover of the Lord, the Holy Spirit came down in power not just on selected, chosen individuals. If you were here last night, you heard in the readings how the Holy Spirit came down on the prophets, on certain kings, judges and law-givers in the Old Testament days. Some of the Old Testament persons demonstrated His power only once in their whole lives. In those days, the Holy Spirit was only given to a few. In our days (the Day of the Kingdom, the Last Days in which we are always living), and particularly every Sunday (the eighth Day, the Last Day of the Kingdom), on this day and every day the Holy Spirit comes to us as to all the prophets. He comes to every believer, and not only selected believers. Every believer who is baptised and chrismated receives the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit fills us with this power and this life, just as He did for Elias, Elisha, Eli, Samuel, Zadok, Ruth, Rebecca, and Sarah. The Holy Spirit comes and gives us power to be in the Kingdom, to live in the Kingdom, and to bring this Kingdom with us wherever we are in the world in order to bring the whole world back to the Lord. Our responsibility as Orthodox Christians is not merely to pass through this world, but to be in this world and transform this world. Our responsibility is to bless the world by bringing it back and offering it to Jesus Christ, who made it all.

This morning, as we come once again, gathered as a family and as the Body of Christ at the Lord’s Table, let us give ourselves to Him. Let us receive Him with open arms because every single day of our lives, the Lord is standing here with His arms open, waiting for us to come to Him. He is waiting to enfold us in His loving arms to protect us and strengthen us and build us up. With our arms open, let us come to Him and let Him enfold us. Let us receive Him as He wishes to receive us. After we have blessed this water and this whole building, and after we have sat at dinner, let us go to our homes and approach the whole world with open arms. Let us receive those who would come to the Lord and who are looking for Him. With our arms open, may we let the Lord come from our hearts and bring love to His sons and daughters who are lost and bring them back into the family where they belong. We know where we belong. We belong here, together in the Lord’s House, in the Lord’s Kingdom, at the Lord’s Table. All the people out there belong here, too. Let us with our arms open bring them, and offer them with us in the Kingdom so that all together we may truly be the sons and daughters of the King gathered rightfully at His eternal banquet Table where hunger and thirst are no more. Here we are always fed with the water that never ends, from the well that never runs dry, and with the food which never allows us to be hungry again. On the Day of the Holy Trinity, let us glorify the Holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Everything has to be in its right place. Everything has to be in its proper order. That is one of the reasons why, in the Gospel readings, every time we see the Lord encounter people who are oppressed and overtaken by the devil in one way or another, there is always a dramatic encounter. Things are set straight right away. The forces of darkness are creators of chaos, mess, ruination and disorder. The Lord, who is the Source of light, puts everything in its right place. He makes everything be known as it ought to be known, and everyone known as she or he ought to be known. The Lord sets the prisoners free, and gives sight to the blind (see Psalm 145:7-8). The Lord is the One who made everything to be in its proper order in the first place. The forces of darkness try to upset and bring confusion to this order. It is the Lord who restores the order again. We are part of that work of restoration, ourselves.

There is an old Gospel hymn, a really sentimental one : “O to be His hand extended, reaching out into this world of sin”. It is very sentimental and very emotional, but on the other hand it does express what we are supposed to be doing. In some way, we are supposed to be the Lord’s agents, reaching out in this world, doing His work, helping Him to bring things back into their proper perspective and order. We begin with our own lives by putting our own lives in order with the Lord, by going to confession regularly, and getting things straightened out inside. We must get our house in order so that the devil will not have the opportunity to deceive us, to make us think that we are something that we are not and somehow twist our understanding of ourselves.

I think that going to confession regularly is one of the most important things that we neglect in our lives. Of course, no-one likes to go to confession. However, if we are going to keep our lives in order, then going to confession is truly a fundamental tool. When we just go on our own strength and try to live day-by-day, when we try to be satisfied with our own daily repentance, somehow, if we do not go to confession in public, we allow ourselves to get off too easily. We probably use the famous, old excuses and say to ourselves : “I am no worse than anyone else”. “I am just as good as the next person. My sins are not so bad after all”. We let ourselves off too easily. The fact is that our sins are not very good at all. They are worse than not very good at all. They are bad. Our sins separate us from the love of God. Confession is the discipline of coming in front of the rest of the church in order to admit our sins before God and the assembly, with the priest as the witness for the rest of the church. Our spiritual ancestors used to make a confession openly and publicly. We get off easily compared to them. For them, although smaller sins might be dealt with more circumspectly, it was certainly anything that was larger (which could separate the penitent from receiving the Holy Mysteries) that was confessed in this open manner. Such was their humility. Even so, it is now possible sometimes to see that sort of humility.

For us to go to confession before our priest, who is our witness on behalf of the Church, and confess to the Lord in front of everyone else that we are sinners, and to name the sins, is to remove the power of sin over us. By naming the sin, we “undress the devil”, as it were. We expose him. We reveal to him that we know his tricks with us and we confess to the Lord (we are confessing to the Lord and not to the priest) that we have fallen into the trap. Whether we fell into this trap willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly, we nevertheless did do it. We are sorry for it and we wish to put things right.

In such a situation, sometimes the Lord even speaks to us through our priest. Amazing as it may seem, there are occasions when the Lord does inspire the hearts and minds of priests in confession. Things are uncovered that are not even verbalised by the penitent, because the Lord knows us so completely that He will even go so far as to uncover things that we are too afraid to say ourselves. But also, even if that is not necessary, the Lord, through the mouth of a priest (sometimes even the most unlikely and unworthy priest) will say something to us that will set us straight. He shows us not only how we should get over our weakness in sin, but even how to be strong in avoiding sin in the future. These things do occur.

This world in which we live is full of chaos and confusion. For the most part, in this society nowadays, people do not know what their places are. They do not know how they properly relate to other people nowadays because relationships are all confused and messed up. Our roles are mixed up. Things that were generally expected for many generations are now all “up for grabs” in this society. It is up to us, in the midst of all this confusion to find some order, and to bring the Lord’s order back. Perhaps precisely the way things have always been done for generations is not what is going to be found for us in North America. However, it is up to us Orthodox Christians (more than to anyone else) to help to find this order in relationships.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Our Orthodox Christian inheritance is a very profound inheritance, indeed. However, what do we make of this inheritance, and what do we understand about this inheritance ? As we see in the Gospel reading this morning, do we treat the inheritance as the Pharisees treated their inheritance ? If we understand our Orthodox Christianity to be just a bunch of rules and merely a bunch of customs or even simply a language, then we are just like those Jews. We are no better than they. We are no better than the Pharisees were then, and we are no better than the Jews are now. To reduce Orthodox Christianity to something so shallow is to throw it away and spit on it. That is essentially what the Jews were doing, and are actually still doing. They are spitting on their own inheritance.

The Jews in those days and especially certain Middle-eastern parties of Judaism today who are in power and who are running the country, are in fact spitting on their inheritance. They have made Judaism into race-protection as they did 2,000 years ago. They have simply not stopped. Judaism was not a national characteristic. It was not ever intended to be limited to one race. It was intended to be a chosen people who knew that God loved them and wanted a relationship of Father and children with all His creatures. From the very beginning, through Abraham, the Lord proclaimed to those chosen people that that is what they should be proclaiming to the whole world. However, they have not so far done it.

When the Father gave His Only-begotten Son Jesus Christ to us, who took our humanity upon Himself, our Lord declared finally, and as completely as is possible, that it is this loving relationship that He desires from us and with us. If we behave as some Orthodox Christians behave in this world today, and say that I am Greek, or Arabic, or Russian, or Ukrainian, or Serbian or Byelorussian first before I am Orthodox, then I am not an Orthodox Christian and I am spitting in the face of what God wants to do with me and with us all. I am spitting on my Orthodox inheritance and I reject it.

Orthodox Christianity is a continuing relationship with Jesus Christ who is the Son of God. He was born, lived, died, rose again, ascended into Heaven and sits at the right hand of the Father for our salvation. He has done this because he loves us and because He wants to unite all His children to Himself in that love. It is that which we have inherited : this loving relationship with our God. This is the meaning and work of Orthodox Christianity. This is what made Greeks, Arabs, Russians, Ukrainians, Serbs, Byelorussians, Poles and even Norwegians into Orthodox Christians. The Pharisees seemed to be incapable of understanding how Jesus Christ could give sight to a man born blind. They did not see it because they had no understanding of this loving relationship with their loving Father.

The Lord is building His Church in this country. He is building it out of Greeks, Arabs, Ukrainians, Russians, Poles, Czechs, Hungarians, and even Norwegians. Unless we are living in that loving relationship with Him, we are going to behave in the same way as those Pharisees. We are not going to be able to accept what the Lord wants to build in and amongst us. We will be as guilty as the Pharisees 2,000 years ago and as the Zionists are today.

The Lord is building His Kingdom amongst us. He is reconciling us to Himself. He is uniting us to Himself. In the midst of a world full of blind people, people born blind (and I do not mean physical blindness), the Lord is calling us to bring sight to them. He is calling us to bring His light to them. He is not calling Orthodox Christians to be on television every Sunday in order to preach and make a big production. He is not calling us to say things that are easy to hear, things that will make money and make us all rich. It would be nice, but that is not what the Lord is calling us to be. The Lord has called us to a loving relationship with Him and with each other. In this loving relationship we proclaim that He is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death and giving life to those in the tomb. He is calling us to show, as our Fathers and Mothers have done for the past 2,000 years, that Christians are characterised by their love for God and by their love for each other. They are characterised by their compassion, and by their readiness to be reconciled with each other in ways that are not logical for the world and that are completely different from the way of the world. We are not being called to behave as the world does, which eats itself up with hatred, envy, jealousy and submits to all sorts of strife and brokenness. He is calling us to unity, to healing, to reconciling, and to forgiveness. It is not easy. It is not easy, certainly, if we attempt to do any of this with our own strength, with our own power. It is only possible if we do it in Christ, when we take up the weapons of the Gospel, and when we put on Christ.

Sometimes I am tempted to think that we should stop singing “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal” every Sunday in the Divine Liturgy, and that for several years we ought to be reminding ourselves to sing : “As many as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ” (see Galatians 3:27). We need desperately to be reminded that it is we who have been baptised into Christ, who have put on Christ. By putting on Christ, we put on His armour ; we put on His love ; we put on His strength and we put on His energy. It is no good to be intellectualising about His divine energies, and to be thinking about His divine energies, unless we are participating in His divine energies. To be an Orthodox Christian is not to be a philosopher. It is not to be a great thinker, nor to be a guru or to be a wise man. To be an Orthodox Christian is to be a lover and a knower of God. It is to be a participator in His life, a child of His Kingdom, and one who lives in that Kingdom. That is what we are called to do here today, and that is why we are here. We are here for no other reason than to remember that we have put on Christ. We are here for no other reason than to be nourished by Him, to come to His Table and to be fed by Him, to be united to Him, filled with Him, strengthened with Him and to be living with Him. We stand here today as His children, brothers and sisters of each other in His Kingdom, princes and princesses, children of the Kingdom. Let us behave as such and let our lives proclaim every day : Christ is risen. Let us glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

We Orthodox Christians in Canada over the past 100 years have allowed ourselves to fight with each other in family squabbles so much and so successfully that that is what our characteristic has become. That is what we are now known for. We are known for our divisions in Canada. What does this division produce in Canada ? It produces large numbers of people who have been until now interested in maintaining purely social customs imported from somewhere. The Church for many of these people has been an excuse for maintaining certain customs. The Lord will call us to account for this behaviour.

In these particular times, there are some very strong signs of hope in this country. Many of you will know that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada has had conversations with the Patriarch of Constantinople. People insist that we use the name Istanbul as in the old popular song : “Istanbul, not Constantinople”. The result has been that the Ecumenical Patriarch has offered to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church to accept the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada (not the one in the States) under its omophorion and into communion with her under certain conditions. The major condition is that the Ukrainian Orthodox in Church will not have the independence that it has had for the last sixty years. In July, they will have a sobor (an assembly) in Canada to make their final decision about this offer of the Ecumenical Patriarch. Will they, or won’t they ? If they do accept, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada will be in communion with world Orthodoxy, which would be a very big improvement in their situation. However, more than that, a year ago, when I happened to be in New York, Father n from Saint Andrews College happened to be there as well for some conversations. He said that the spirit of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church just now is that it really, seriously wants to be the local Church in Canada. If that is really what the Ukrainian Orthodox Church wishes to do and to be, then the Lord has worked wonders and the face of the Orthodox Church in Canada will change greatly over the next few years, and God will give the increase. However, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has been formed by some very strong, nationalistic opinions, and those will take some time to soften up a bit. We cannot expect a complete change in appearance overnight, but the fact that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Canada would be part of world Orthodoxy would be a huge improvement for which we ourselves should serve a moleben of thanksgiving.

Be that as it may, we ourselves have, and have had a responsibility here in this city getting on for 100 years now. This community will be able to celebrate its 100th anniversary of existence (not in terms of the building) before the year 2000. In four years, it will be the 90th anniversary of the construction of this building, and in five years, it will be the 90th anniversary of the sanctification of this building. It was consecrated by a man who (it was revealed later) is a saint : Patriarch Tikhon, an extremely holy man, a bold man, a clear-thinking man. When he was the archbishop of our Church, he understood that this Church must be the Church in North America. If he were here today, he would say that this Church must be the Church in Canada, and that the job of the Church in Canada is to baptise the country.

Because of our stubbornness, our blindness and our general darkness, I wonder very often how our own baptism has taken, let alone our attempts to bring the baptism of Christ, the light of Christ, the love of Christ to anyone else. I wonder very deeply how much our own baptism has taken. We ourselves who are baptised have not been able to recognise the holiness of those who are holy amongst us. We have not been able to see Jesus Christ shining in the lives and hearts of people. Because we have scarcely been able to recognise these holy people who have been living in our midst for the past 100 years and more in this country, we have not bothered to ask for their prayers. We have starved ourselves of their prayers because we have been so blind, so careless and so neglectful. We have starved ourselves of their support, their participation, and their intercession.

Three weeks ago in the Egyptian Church in Ottawa, a number of women came to clean the Temple and they put the children whom they had brought with them into a little side-chapel to play. The children were in this chapel having a very nice time. While the mothers were cleaning, they heard all sorts of excitement suddenly coming from the chapel and they came to see what was going on. The children were very, very excited. About this time the priest came in. He said to them : “What is going on ?” The mothers could not quite figure out what had happened. The priest took the children into the chapel one by one and all ten children told him exactly the same story. Over the Royal Doors of the iconostas of this chapel there is an icon of our Lord. He is holding the chalice in His right hand, and in His left hand, He is holding a prosphora. The children said that while they were playing, our Lord began to smile at them. Then His eyes began to follow them while they were moving around in the church. Then He put down the chalice, and He put down the bread, and He put His hands together, telling them to pray. When He did that, they became extremely excited and began to call Him : “Father Jesus”. They began to glorify Him. They knew quickly how to respond. They knew Who He was and what He was asking them to do. The Church in Egypt is loaded, flooded with such indications of God’s love for His children, for you and for me. That is today. That is now. The children were able to recognise the Lord immediately because these families obviously have not forgotten what the home church is all about. They have not forgotten to pray together ; they have not forgotten to look for the Lord all the time. If the Lord did such a thing to bless you or me now, how would you and I react ? Would we react like those children, and as their parents, and as their priest, instantly responding in love and glorifying the Lord ? Or would we say : “Naugh, it can’t be. I’m seeing things”. Would we send the children straight off to the psychologist or psychiatrist for a thorough examination ? Would we immediately think of the movie Poltergeist and think it was a ghost ? What would we think about and how would we respond ?

What is in the front of your heart and my heart ? What is in the front of your mind and my mind ? What am I looking for and what are you looking for in life ? When the Lord came to the disciples beside the Sea of Galilee, He did not say : “Listen to what I have to say. Listen to all the nice things that I have to expound to you. Listen to all the interesting philosophy I have. Listen to my world view. Participate in my social action, my political rebellion”. He said none of those things. He said only : “‘Follow Me’”. He intended that you and I hear those same words, and, hearing those same words, respond as the apostles did. Our Lord is here today saying : “Follow Me”. Our Lord is here today with His arms open towards you and me, saying : “Follow Me. Live in My love”. He says to you and to me : “You have clothed yourself in Me. Let Me shine through you. Let Me be revealed through you”. When the Lord says : “Follow Me”, He means : “Follow Me in My love”. It means work. It means to walk with Him.

Even if in Canada we do not yet have any saints that we have been able to recognise officially so as to write icons, ask prayers of and even have an official following for, we do have Saint Herman who somehow belongs to the whole continent. We can turn to Saint Herman. Saint Herman is not without his concern for our life here, and by his prayers and his love for Christ, the Lord has touched many lives in this country already for the good, for healing, for repentance, for strength. We can turn to him, and we had better be turning to him on a regular basis.

This parish, this city, our whole diocese had better begin paying more serious attention to Saint Herman, and begin remembering today, right now, to do everything as he directed. In many of his icons we see written on a scroll the very words that he directs to us, along with the Lord who says those same words in His call to you and to me to follow Him : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all”. And let us glorify Him in every part of our life, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In today’s Gospel we see very clearly once again that in the presence of the Lord, evil cannot remain. Time after time we see that when the Lord comes into the presence of evil, it is immediately unnerved, causes a disturbance, and has to go. However, it does not automatically go. The evil has to be removed by the Lord. It requires that the Lord act visibly. He speaks. He touches. The Lord acts, and the paralysing and enslaving action of evil is scattered.

How do we know that evil is active in our life ? If anyone thinks that evil is not active in his or her life, then that person is full of pride and blinded by that very evil. In fact, that is what happened to the devil in the first place – he wanted the first place. The devil, who was the prime angel of light before his fall, considered himself to be equal to God. He was blind to the difference between himself and God, and in this blindness he became separated from God. All this happened faster than the blink of an eye. He separated himself from God in deciding that he was the same as and equal to God Himself. He separated himself from union with God. He continues to this day in the very same delusion.

How do you and I know that evil is active in our lives ? There are plenty of signs. I am not going to get technical. However, if there is confusion, that is a clear sign of the devil’s activity in our heart. We do not usually speak about confusion as being such a sign, but in fact, it is a prime sign. You and I know who we are in the Lord, and where we stand. We know where we are going and we know right from wrong. If there is confusion, I do not know very well any of those things. If I do not know clearly who I am, I have been deluded. If I do not know that I am loved by God, I have been deluded. If I do not have peace in my heart, this is also a sign of the activity of Big Red. If I do not have peace in my heart, I have been destabilized by Big Red. If I have continuous anger and hatred in my heart, I have been taken in.

We can forget our sense of direction because we forget the ABCs of living the Christian life. We forget to read the Bible, and we forget to pray. We forget to practice love between us and we forget to recognise Christ in our neighbours and in our friends. We forget to look for the activity of Christ’s saving and touching of your life and mine while we are working, while we are at home, while we are walking down the street, and while we are shopping. We lose track of what is what, where we are going, and how we are supposed to live. We lose track of the fact that we are Christians. We put all sorts of adjectives in front of our Christianity to dress it up and give ourselves excuses for misbehaving. The Lord will not accept any of these excuses. He will not accept any substitutes for the life in Christ. He will not accept any sort of substitute for the living out of His love.

We forget what submission means, as well. The submission that Saint Paul speaks about in the reading today is the same sort of submission that he speaks about everywhere else, but it is we who misinterpret it because we are so broken. The image of submission that pops straight into our mind is that of some poor wretch grovelling on the ground, wringing his hands and saying : “O master, master, don’t chop off my head”, or something like that. This is the submission of slavery and fear that usually is in the front of our minds. However, the submission that is given to us by Christ in the Gospel is the submission which comes with love. The plain facts are that in our relationship with God, in our relationship with Jesus Christ, you and I will not find our salvation unless we submit ourselves to His will. You and I cannot get away with having our own way, with making everything in accordance with our own standards and patterns. We cannot get away with it. Because we have the strong tendency to insist on doing everything our own way, we undermine, destroy, distort, twist and smash the image and the plan of our Lord, God, and Saviour for us.

The Lord wants us to love Him first of all. We know from our human experience that if we love someone, then we try to do the very best we can for that someone. We offer our very best always to that someone. When people have lived well in marriage for a long time, it is clear that this mutual offering of self, of love, of service to each other is active, productive, and life-giving. I have seen people who have been married for sixty years, and couples married as long as that have been deeply in love with each other. They are deeply concerned about each other, and deeply interested in the health, welfare and salvation of each other. They have mutually built up, strengthened and nurtured each other. They have truly been a sign of how Christian love operates. If you know how it works in a good marriage (especially if you are one who has been married for a long time and have lived this way with your spouse), you know that this is what happens, hard times or no hard times (there are always hard times).

The way love properly operates is to do all that is possible to give life, to nurture, to strengthen, to heal, and to build up – that is the sort of submission that we are apeaking about. It is the submission of love, the conformity to God’s will as it is seen in the Gospel and as it is acted out in the Gospel. The Gospel is not a fairy tale. It is the beginning of the common experience of Christians which continues to this very day. It is the experience of how God loves you and me infinitely. He cares for us and saves us on the street, in the air, and at sea. He is involved in our lives. He blesses us, protects us, renews us, and encourages us. He sends people out of the blue for no particular, apparent reason to say something to encourage, heal, strengthen and help us when we are feeling particularly blue and distraught.

Thus we must do for the Lord and for each other and look to the welfare of each other. Let us look to building up, nurturing and strengthening each other. Let us read the Gospel so that we can live the Gospel. Let us read the Gospel so that we can encounter Jesus Christ more and more, not only in the Gospel, but in each other so that we can live in love.

Brothers and sisters, the Lord says to you and to me : “‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his Cross, and follow Me’” (Matthew 16:24). What are we doing in response ? Do we take up the Cross ? Do we take up the Gospel of Jesus Christ ? Like Judas, do we give Him a kiss and deny Him and betray Him ? There are only two ways : the way of repentance from sin, like Peter who denied but repented ; or the way of death, like Judas who denied, betrayed and did not repent. There are only two ways. On which path are you and I walking this morning ? On the way of life in the love of God ? In His love, let us love God above all, and in doing so glorify the all-holy Trinity at all times and in every place and in every way : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The last verse of the Epistle reading today : “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” is a Bible verse which I had to memorise when I was quite little. When I was little, I did not understand very much about the meaning of that verse. In my life I went blithely on my way, having that in my memory, but not knowing the first thing about it.

Saint Paul himself is very clear this morning. The way of sin leads to darkness and death. Life in Christ, the following of Christ, brings us to eternal life in the Kingdom. It has only been after plenty of stumbling, falling on my face and derrière that I have begun to learn something of what this interior darkness means and what this sin means. It is part of becoming an adult, I suppose. When I was little, I thought that this sin to which the Apostle refers was something gross and horrible, or perhaps something dramatic and terrible. However, I have come to see that it is not necessarily gross sins. It is not only living a soap opera sort of life that leads to death and destruction. In fact, it is the much more mundane, boring, simple, straightforward sins that lead most surely to destruction. It is these boring, uninteresting, humdrum, everyday sins that enable a person to be pre-conditioned to engage in soap opera sort of immorality. In fact, these small sins produce the famous “slippery slope”. This slippery slope brings a person to be able to live the sort of corrupt, degraded life that is shown to us in these soap operas day-by-day. In order to be able to do the sort of gross, corrupt, terrible and bloody things that we see in the so-called “entertainment” programmes on television now (blood and gore flow on television), we have to be pre-conditioned to do that. To be jumping from bed to bed, to be killing people, to be stealing, to be committing adultery left, right and centre, one has to be pre-conditioned and hardened up.

The Lord has built into your life and my life the testimony of our conscience. Our conscience teaches us right from wrong. When we are inclined to do something (or when we have already done or said something that was wrong), there is a burning inside that says : “Oh, Oh !” We listen to that (or we do not listen to that). Either we pay attention to those times when the alarm bells have rung and we say : “Oh, I had better pay attention here, and straighten out my life” ; or otherwise we say : “Aaagh, that is an old-fashioned idea. Where did that come from ?” If I keep saying often enough : “Aaagh, who taught me that sort of fairy tale ?” I harden myself and pre-condition myself to do much worse things. I become capable of doing those gross and terrible things.

We talk and we behave these days as though we are terribly shocked that all around us in the world there is horror after horror. We behave as though we are surprised, somehow, that this should be the case. However, there is nothing surprising about this sort of behaviour in the world. We can see in ourselves how we have led ourselves astray and not listened to the conscience that God gave us. We have not listened to the inspiration and the tugging of our Guardian Angel away from the darkness. No, I have led myself away from the teaching of that Guardian Angel, away from the pleas and the tugs of that Protector sent from God. I have gone on to talk on the telephone at great length about my neighbours, about my friends, about the people I work with, to destroy their reputation and to pass on lie after lie that I have received on that same telephone. In fact, by my tongue I have murdered my brother and my sister. I have ignored the needs of those around me, people who are hungry, thirsty and lonely. I have not met their needs. I have said : “I have better things to do. I am more valuably occupied than to spend my time doing those things which are necessary”. I have hardened myself up and pre-conditioned myself to do worse.

If I have murdered my brother or my sister with my tongue, why is it so surprising that there are many people who have got yet harder and allowed their anger and their hatred to go much farther so that they kill, steal, rob, rape, poison, abuse and oppress ? None of that is surprising. None of it should be surprising because you and I can see all that in our own hearts. I am rebellious. I insist on having my own way. I do not want to read the Gospel. I do not want to be condemned in my heart about my darkness and my wrongs by reading the Gospel and having the Lord confront me face-to-face.

“The wages of sin is death”. The product of sin is death because ultimately, when I go on that path away from the Lord, I take myself away from life, itself. Where am I going to find life except in the Lord ? Who is the Giver of life except the Lord Himself ? If I am not going to pay attention to an incident such as we see today in the Gospel reading where, because of His love, once again the Lord heals without even being there physically present ; if I am not going to put my trust and my confidence in His love for me and call out to Him and say : “Save me. Help me” ; if I am not going to put my confidence in Him, then I cut myself off from being myself.

Brothers and sisters, the fact is that you and I can only be ourselves when our life is found in Christ and our life carries the characteristics of this presence of Jesus Christ in our hearts at all times. Our life must bear the tangible marks of His presence which are found in feeding, clothing, visiting, speaking good, encouraging, uplifting, and interceding in prayer for others.

Your life and my life are judged by what we do to and for each other. Have I had patience with my brother’s and sister’s shortcomings or have I condemned my brother or my sister for what I perceive to be faults ? Have I condemned my brother or sister in my heart ? If I condemn my brother or sister in my heart, I have set myself up to be a judge as God. That sort of pride comes straight from the depths of hell. It will take me, and not my brother, to my Judge. If I let my anger turn to hatred, instead of turning myself to repentance and asking God to help me forgive the wrong that has been done to me ; if I have allowed my anger to flare up and turn into hatred, so that I practically wish that my brother or sister would die, I am the one who will die instead. I will not die in the Lord, but I will die in the devil and be taken straight to join him in separation from the Lord of life. I will live in perpetual death in separation from the Lord of life whose love penetrates everywhere.

This morning, as always, the Lord comes to you and to me face-to-face. The Lord stands in our midst and He addresses you and me not only in this Divine Liturgy, not only in the reading of the holy Epistle and the holy Gospel, but He addresses you and me in each other. He says to you and to me as it were : “Inasmuch as you have done good (or have not done good) to one of the least of My brethren, you have done it (or have not done it) to Me” (see Matthew 25:40-45). The Lord comes to you and to me today to say : “Turn away from the ways of darkness that lead to your self-destruction”. He says to you and to me : “‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life’” (John 14:6). He says to you and to me that life is found only in Him and in being like Him. The only way we can be ourselves is to allow Him to shape us and form us into that image that He prepared for us, into that plan He has for us and into that way which He has prepared for us and opened for us.

In this church, we are supported by the prayers of all the believers worshipping the Lord for almost a hundred years. We are supported not only by those prayers, but also by the presence of the continuing prayers and love of all those who have fallen asleep before us. We are surrounded even on the walls by these great and holy people – Saint Job of Pochaiv, Saint Gregory the Theologian, Saint Basil the Great, Saint Sergei of Radonezh, Saint Seraphim of Sarov, Saint Barbara, Saint Olga, Saint Nicholas – we are surrounded by them all. They in their love exhort you and me to do as they did : to give up selfishness and self-will and to live in Christ. By their prayers, may we co-operate with them, say “Yes” to the Lord and be able to join them in glorifying our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters, it is time for you and for me to put our priorities straight and get our house in order. It can only be done by following the exhortation of our beloved Father Herman, the Elder and Wonder-worker of Alaska, who says to you and to me today : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all” and glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen

The paralysis of this man who lay for 38 years next to the pool of Bethesda was not necessarily caused by his own particular sins or even necessarily the sins of his parents. It is clearly, one way or another (we do not understand these things), the product of the sinfulness of human beings as a whole. You and I, in our life, encounter many instances when people are very, very ill or terrible tragedies occur to them. When these unexplained tragedies happen, we very often hear people say : “Well, this is payment for sin”. That is a very cruel thing to say. That sort of thing was being said in the same way by our spiritual ancestors in Jerusalem to that man who had been lying there for 38 years : “Well, you must have sinned. If you didn’t sin, your parents or your grandparents sinned. This is God’s punishment on you, or on them or on all of you together”. These are not very comforting words to someone who is lying paralysed and cannot get into the pool when the angel stirs the water. He has no-one, no family, no friends to throw him into the pool when the angel stirred the waters. It is a cruel, cruel thing to say but that’s the way we are. Is that not what people say to each other ?

It is not only mama, papa, uncle, aunt, grandfather, grandmother, brother and sister who may contribute to our illnesses which come from sin. In fact, it is not so much because of God’s punishment and judgement on us that illnesses come to us. Rather, we are the ones who bring it upon ourselves. Sickness and death are the direct product of our rebellious, prideful sinfulness. The sickness and the death that results from it are the result of the breaking of the healing, life-giving loving relationship that exists between ourselves and God. The Lord is the Giver of Life. Our Saviour said that : “‘[The Lord] is not the God of the dead but of the living’” (Luke 20:38). Yet, we who say that God is love and keep speaking about His love, dare to say and dare to think that God punishes in this sort of sadistic way these little sheep whom He wants to save, to whom He wants to give life, and whom He wants to unite to Himself in everlasting bliss and life and love in the way He created us. We dare to think these things because we have become so twisted in our pride. We cannot really comprehend God in His wonderful, marvellous workings in glory. Therefore, we translate our understanding of God into a mere projection of our own brokenness and darkness, and we say that God is like us.

When we start speaking like that, then we have really fallen into the pit. When we can speak like that, we have forgotten Who Jesus Christ is. We have forgotten His love for us. We have forgotten the effects of His salvation. We have reduced Him to a mere man, a mere, ordinary human being, some wise man who said nice things for us to remember.

The paralytic was paralysed because all mankind is rebellious, and all mankind is diseased. Because of this rebellion, because of this pride, because of this rejection of God’s love, most of mankind appears to be going away from God, away from life. It seems that most of mankind is choosing deliberately to die, and blaming God for it. The paralytic was raised from his paralysis through the forgiveness of sins by our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ as we see in the subsequent conversation. Because of His love, our Saviour told the man to get up and walk. Later He said to him : “‘Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you’”. There are worse things than being paralysed and ill. There is spiritual death which is the result of deliberate sinfulness.

Because of His love for us, the Lord does wonderful things. The Lord, the Giver of Life, does wonderful, amazing things for you and for me. Today, we hear how the Apostle Peter prayed for Dorcas (Tabitha), who was so much needed and admired, and who had died suddenly and prematurely. Because God loves us, the Apostle Peter through his prayers restored Tabitha to the community of the faithful until her time should fully come. In His love for you and for me, the Lord saves us from all sorts of disasters, for which we usually forget to give Him praise. He protects us when we are sleepy on the highway and wakes us up. He preserves our life so that we will have the maximum time to be saved and to work out our salvation. When we are anxious about a child of ours and we pray to Him to relieve the child’s illness or to protect the child’s welfare one way or another, the Lord hears us. This brings healing, protection and it opens doors. When we pray for each other in our love for each other and ask the Lord to do this or that, more often than not (if we have the eyes to see) the Lord does touch the lives of those for whom we pray (even though we do not always get precisely what we asked for all the time). He brings hope, life, healing and salvation.

Brothers and sisters, let us ask the Lord to give us the eyes to see and the ears to hear the truth of His Gospel. Let us ask Him for the readiness to walk in the steps of our Lord, God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and to be like Him. Let us ask Him to give us the heart to want to be like Him. Let us today ask the Lord to help us turn away from rebelliousness, wilfulness and stubborn pride of heart ; and instead lovingly and willingly turn to Him to accept His will for us. Let us ask Him to help us care for each other as He cares for us ; to pray for each other as all the saints pray for us in their love for us. Let us look freshly into the hearts of our brothers and sisters, our neighbours, our friends and see there the activity of the love of Jesus Christ. Let us pray for and encourage our brothers and sisters, neighbours and friends in their willingness to live in Christ and to serve each other for the glory of Jesus Christ. From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us determine with all our heart to love and glorify God above all : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In the very disconnected mind of us who live in the West, Christianity is accepted to be a religion. In the Orthodox Church, no-one ever told us that. Nevertheless, we live in the West in the midst of a society that believes, in fact, that Christianity is a “religion”. Our government says it is a religion, so we tend to give up and say that it must be a religion if everyone says so. A religion is a system of belief and governance.

It is a blessing that we are Orthodox Christians. No matter how much we try to live otherwise, we cannot be any other way. The way we live shows that there is no system in Christian life. There truly is no organisation. In fact, although our Church government works, it does not make much sense to most people. However, it works. It is really odd being an Orthodox Christian. There are people coming to Orthodox Christianity from outside who are well-organised, highly systematised people. They become Orthodox Christians and then they begin to be frustrated because all the organisation which they were successful at before does not work. They get the distinct impression that they are swimming in very thick, cold porridge.

In fact, that is just the way it is and that is the way things are. This is so because it is as we heard in the Gospel today : to be a Christian is to encounter the Lord’s compassion. This poor mother has just been deprived of any hope of any sort of secure living. She is a widow with only one son who has died. Society at that time had no provision for women in that situation, and she would now have to be on the street begging for any income and hope of having food or shelter for the rest of her life. The Lord encountered this procession and He had compassion on her. As the Lord of Life, He gave her son back to her alive.

The Apostle Paul tells us this morning that he did not receive the Gospel from man. This is not a religious system engendered by humans. This is not a system of belief developed by humans. By the mercy and love of the God who has compassion on a widow deprived of her son, our Faith is a response to the revelation of God Himself in His compassion for us who are lost in our sin, our darkness and our brokenness. He revealed Himself to the Apostle who was persecuting Him, and He saved him. He saved him because the Apostle was ready to accept the loving, waking-up revelation of the Lord to himself, and to unite himself to the Lord. The Apostle was ready to do what the Lord said and to go where He willed.

You and I are Orthodox Christians because of this loving relationship with our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ. God has revealed Himself to us. It is not we who made anything happen – it is He who loves us and has revealed Himself to us. We respond, and He unites us to Himself. Our life as Orthodox Christians gets messy sometimes because our life as Orthodox Christians has nothing to do with (or very little to do with) by-laws or with any sort of organisational structures. It has to do with relationships. We have relationships of love in Jesus Christ with each other. Some of you in this congregation have been married for a long time. You know that your relationship with your spouse is a continuing mystery. You know that there is a constant mystery about your spouse. Even after many, many years you are finding out new things about your spouse. I know this is so because my parents and grandparents (who were married for 55 years) said so. I have met couples who have lasted in marriage for 65 years, who said so, thus this must be the case. If it is so about husband and wife (which is about the closest one can get in a human relationship), how much more is it so in terms of relationships in a Christian community ? We are always finding out new things about each other. Our love is not drastically affected by these new things, but as each person develops in life in Christ, it affects how we interact with each other.

Our life can be like walking through cold porridge if we try to find our way using logic and not listening to the Lord. We have Church government for instance, led by bishops. However, a bishop is not in any way a chief executive officer of anything. He is not even to be understood as such. The bishop is given to the Church by the Lord to be as Christ to the flock. He is to be like a father to the whole diocese. The relationship between the bishop and all the people in the diocese is supposed to be like father and family. For the bishop, the whole diocese is like his wife. There are all sorts of mixed up allusions : “wife”, “children”, “sheep”, but you surely catch the idea. In a somewhat similar way, the relationship between a shepherd and his sheep is a personal relationship. We have in our lives deanery meetings, diocesan councils and diocesan assemblies. We have all these organisational things to help our relationships with each other along. They are not created by God to increase the number of laws we have to obey. They are given to us as ways in which we can help and assist each other. Diocesan councils are not given to the Church in Canada for legislation. They are given in order to provide advice to the bishop from the believers on how to go about administering and organising our life as well as we are able. Sometimes the bishop can be the advisor of the council.

The main point is that it is very important for us not to allow ourselves to think of our life in Christ in terms of mere structures. Our life in Christ is a work of daily prayer to the Lord, and service to other human beings. If I want to serve God, I certainly serve Him by being here and worshipping Him week after week, and also day after day in my home. However, I serve Him just as much by phoning up someone who is sick at home and cannot get out and come to church. I serve Him just as much by taking someone who is ill or feeble and cannot do things to the grocery store to get groceries. I serve Him just as much by hugging with love people who are bereaved and deprived of loved ones through death, and being present and supportive to them while they are being healed. This is where being a Christian is revealed – how we behave in our lives.

This parish is the parish where I was placed the longest. Somehow, it was in this parish that the Lord established a particular sort of loving relationship which makes it quite difficult for me every time to go away from here even if I am here only for a short time. This parish somehow became my spiritual family. That is precisely how it is supposed to be. I give thanks to God for the time that I have spent here and for the many times that He allows me to come back here and to be in your midst. I wish I could be here all the time. I cannot, and it is impossible because that is not what the Lord is giving me to do. However, that does not prevent us from loving one another and being brothers and sisters, encouraging, strengthening, praying and helping each other in Christ to grow and mature. That is what the Lord desires for us and that is what we all desire – simply to love Christ. Therefore, let us put our priorities straight once again and remember what Saint Herman exhorts us to do. Let us ask God for the Grace to do it : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute let us love God above all”. In doing so, may our lives glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

As we come today to lay to rest our brother n, who has fallen asleep, we, who are left behind, are grieving. However, it is clear that we are not grieving as those who have no hope (see 1 Thessalonians 4:13). Over and over again we are assured that our hope rests clearly and squarely on Him. The Lord is our hope. We live our life for Him and in Him.

At this time, particularly in North American society, because people are so afraid of death and so uncomfortable with it, it is customary to hide from it (or at least to try to hide from it). Now we have either funerals where the coffin is kept closed or even worse, funerals where the person who has died is not even present at his own funeral. Already that person has already been put away somewhere. This is not the way Christians should be behaving. This body, which is in our midst which we are lovingly putting to rest today, is the body of n, who, Sunday after Sunday, was sitting in this front row where his family are sitting today. His body has been a temple of the Holy Spirit. The Lord, the Giver of Life, breathed life into him. Despite his mistakes and whatever his sins may have been, nevertheless, n was faithful. It is for you and for me who are now left behind, with our various memories and experiences of him, to pray for him because we still love him. It is for us to continue to pray for him and we continue to pray for him that the Lord will have mercy on him and forgive him his sins.

We live in a world which is full of ideas and attitudes which are not those which the Lord wants us to have and live for. It is hardly likely that any human being can survive a whole lifetime without being poisoned at least somewhat by these ideas. However, the Lord is not expecting us so much by our own strength to be pure from start to finish. He shows His love for us because He does not expect us to do all this without His help. If we do sin, if we do fall from His love and His Grace, if we do betray Him from time to time in our life, He expects us to repent. He expects us to say that we are sorry for our sins, for our rebellion, for our selfishness. He expects us also to do something about making it right again, and to turn away from it. Thus it is necessary for you and for me now at this time and in the coming weeks and months to continue to pray for our brother n. In praying for him, we will work on prayerfully forgiving him for anything that he did or said which hurt us deeply. Not only that, but also we will ask for his forgiveness for our behaviour – whatever we may have done or said to hurt him, to cause him to fall into temptation. As we have begun today and the day before, let us continue to ask the Lord to have mercy on him, to forgive his sins and to have mercy on us and forgive our sins.

The whole point is that, as our Lord Himself said : “‘God is not the God of the dead, but of the living’” (Matthew 22:32). It is His love which gives life and maintains life. What love we have in Christ for each other is not broken and ended by the death of the body. The Lord promises us that if we are faithful and if we live in Him a life of repentance, then there will come a life of resurrection – eternal life which does not end – just as we have been praying today. Love in Jesus Christ keeps us all alive and united with one another even though our bodies will get old and die. We do not end up separated from one another, because if we follow Him and live a life of repentance, we all will continue to live in Him. The Lord truly does not want us to die in darkness, to die in rebellion, to die in our own stubbornness. It is we who condemn ourselves to death by our own pride and stubbornness and rebellion by separating ourselves from His love. It is we who do it. The Lord wants us to live in Him.

Let us today, as we must always do every time we are faced with death, take this opportunity to remember that our lives are short. Time is short for repentance ; time is short for doing good and being good towards each other. Let us make the most of this life in doing good and being good to each other, being reconciled to each other, forgiving one another, encouraging one another and strengthening one another so that we may have clear hope of participating in the victory of Jesus Christ over sin and death. May we glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

As we prepare for Great Lent, today is the last day for eating meat, so I hope you enjoy yourselves today with whatever roast beef, pork, or kolbassa that you particularly enjoy. However, do not let it touch your lips again until Pascha. One of the real, sad dangers of living in this county, Canada, is living in the midst of this attitude which has grown up and which says : “It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you don’t hurt anyone”. “You can do anything you like, as long as you don’t hurt anyone”. You have all heard that. Even the former Prime Minister Trudeau said it in an oblique sort of way when he started to adjust the laws of morality in the country : “It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you don’t hurt anyone”. For such an attitude to grow up in a nation which is reputed to be Christian is really pitiful because it shows a complete misunderstanding of the Gospel. It shows a complete misunderstanding of what it means to be a Christian.

In the Epistle reading today, for instance, the Apostle Paul is speaking about meat that was sacrificed to idols and about whether it was all right to eat it. He understood that a Christian has this liberty to eat anything because as long as we bless what we eat, it is God who gives us the food, and it is God who blesses what we eat. It does not matter if it is poisoned, because we can still eat it if God gives the blessing. Some people tried to kill the Apostle himself with poison, and they were surprised when nothing happened at all, and they converted to Christ. Remember the time when an adder bit him ? It was expected that he would swell up, fall down and die in no time at all (see Acts 28:3-6). Nothing at all happened to the Apostle, because he was about the Lord’s business.

Christians have a certain sort of freedom, a powerful sort of freedom, but it is a freedom which has to be exercised in accordance with God’s will, and in accordance with God’s will only. If we start to get cocky with this freedom, it turns into licence just like that, and then it is sin, and it is against God’s will. If we try to drink poison or get bitten by snakes, we are liable to die very quickly. We can die very quickly if we are not depending totally on the Lord’s will and witnessing for Him totally. The Apostle said that even having this liberty, this power and this freedom in Christ, he would set it all aside if one of his brothers was weak in faith and if he was going to scandalise one of his brothers or sisters by the way he exercised his freedom.

Let us take today’s Gospel reading, for example. We all know this Gospel, but are we really paying attention to it ? It is clear from this passage that the Lord wants us to understand that if we want to serve Him, if we want to do good for Him because we love Him, then we cannot be satisfied with saying : “I love the Lord. I come to church every Sunday. I do good, and I don’t hurt anyone. I don’t rob ; I don’t steal and I am no worse than anyone else”. That is just nothing. That is zero for being a Christian because our Lord says in effect : “I want you to do good for Me by doing good for My children (in other words for each other)”. He says very clearly that as much as we visit the sick, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit people who are in jail, take care of people’s physical and spiritual needs, we are serving Him”.

We learn two fundamental and extremely important facts about Christian living today. If we want to serve Christ, we cannot be abstract about it. It is very popular in Canada (in particular for people who are not Orthodox Christians) to look at Orthodox Christians and say : “Oh, how we admire you and your worship. It is so lovely. It is so mystical. You Orthodox Christians are so spiritual”. Well certainly, I suppose we are spiritual, but not in the way they understand. Spirituality does not have to do with levitating off the ground or walking on air. Orthodox Christian spirituality does not have to do necessarily with being some sort of ascetic guru who eats nothing but potato leaves and says very wise, wonderful and profound things. For the Orthodox Christian, that is not spirituality at all. The Orthodox Christian is a Christian who is very much aware of the concrete reality, the materiality of our environment and what God expects of us. In all Orthodox Christian history and in the greatness of all our saints is found care and love for human beings and for all God’s creation.

We cannot say that we love God or are in love with Christ unless we are life-givers ; unless we are love-givers ; unless we are doers of good for human beings ; unless we are protectors and healers of the environment ; unless we are integrated human beings who care well about our bodies (not for selfishness) but for how well we can serve the Lord. We care for the welfare of each other, our brothers and sisters. We care for all the people whom we encounter every day on the street who are wandering along with blank looks on their faces. It is easier to care about people and be concerned about the welfare of people who are actually physically hungry by giving them some soup, than it is to be truly concerned about these people that we live with every day, whom we mix with every day who have these blank, empty and sometimes very angry faces. These are people who are lost, people who are wrapped up in themselves, interested only in making money, money and more money. They are interested in building walls around themselves and protecting themselves from everyone else for fear of what people might say or do to them. They are paralysed and enslaved by fear. Those are the people who are the neediest of the needy in our society. Their numbers are not just increasing slightly. They are multiplying exponentially these days.

What can you and I do about them ? When the Lord presents such a person to you or to me, do we diligently pray for that person ? Do we try to show that person that emptiness is not the only story in life, that it is not the end of everything ? When we are busy doing good for people and meeting their needs, that is when we Orthodox Christians are living our spirituality because our prayer-book conversation with the Lord then has flesh on it just as His love for you and for me has flesh on it. He took flesh, human flesh. Without falling into sin, Our Lord took all our humanity, everything about us, all our darkness and He allowed us to kill Him. He did this in order to save us and in order to rise victorious over that rebellion with which we are enslaved. His love has substance, and His love active in you and me must also have substance. It must be concrete and tangible.

As much as we demonstrate our love for God by the good that we do, and as much as we demonstrate our love for God by strengthening, renewing, encouraging, praying for, healing and meeting the needs of other human beings, it works also the other way. Contrary to that popular Canadian saying : “It doesn’t matter what I do as long as I don’t hurt anyone”, the fact is that the Orthodox Christian knows very well that when you or I commit even small sins, we are hurting our brothers and sisters. It is high time that we began to be open about this. In every small or large sin, we are sapping courage and strength to follow Christ from our brothers and sisters. Not only that, we are increasing the poison which we have already inflicted on this environment, the earth on which we live, which the Lord gave to us to be the custodians and caretakers of it. In either direction, whether we do good or whether we do evil, everything that we do affects all our brothers and sisters, all humanity (not just here in n) all around the world. It affects everyone and everything. That is what Saint Seraphim meant when he said that if you save your soul, thousands will be saved with you. Conversely, if you lose your soul, thousands will be lost with you. If you are struggling to follow Christ, your struggle to follow Christ and the good that you do, makes a wake just as a boat does, which makes it easier for other people near you to do the same thing. It encourages them, strengthens them, and makes a sort of current in that direction. You yourself are not breaking new ground, because you also are following in the wake of others who have shown you the way to Christ, the way to be a Christian and the way to live the Gospel. You yourself are following a way that has been made easier by the suffering and struggles of others.

Today, the Lord is asking you and me : “Which way are you going ? Which way is your life going ? Whom are you following – yourself, or are you following Me, the Giver of Life ? Are you going to do as I have shown you or are you going to do as the thief of souls teaches you to do ? Which way are you going ? How do you live your life ?” Sooner or later you and I will all come to face the Lord. Precisely how you and I live our lives now is going to determine what will happen at the Last Day when we come to face Him in His love. Will you and I by our loving lives now be able to accept Him then or will you and I, because of our stubbornness, be afraid of our Lord and run away from Him ? Which way shall we go ? How is our life today ?

If I have been going the wrong way, the Lord has this to say to me (and to anyone who has been going the wrong way : “‘Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest … My yoke is easy and My burden is light’” (Matthew 11:28, 30). He says : “‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life’” (Matthew 14:6). He says : “Come to Me, all of you, and I will give you life”. He wants us all, everyone, to enter into His Kingdom and live and reign with Him forever. Today, let us renew our determination to repent : to turn away from selfishness, to turn to selflessness : to turn away from darkness and turn to the light. Let us turn to the Lord and serve Him in each other as Saint Herman has taught us and exhorted us : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all and do His holy will”. Thus will we glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

For me, to come back home here to n this time is especially pleasant. For the first time in many years, there are many children. I am not sure if I can even remember having heard them here before. I hear a baby. That is a special blessing. That there are children and babies encourages me very much about the life of this parish. May God grant that these signs of life and hope will in time be concrete evidence of the future life and growth of this parish. Even now, this morning, there is a Sunday School and there are children able to ask the bishop really intelligent questions. That is so refreshing. This gives so much encouragement. I hope that you yourselves understand what a blessing these children are.

Today, we heard in the Gospel reading about people who are tenants in a vineyard owned by someone else. They try to steal the property and make it their own. When this story was told by the Lord, He had another situation in mind, but it applies to you and to me now, today. Here where we are together today is the vineyard. The Lord comes to you and to me and He says, as it were : “It is time to reckon up, to give to Me what you owe”. He comes to you and to me here today in this Divine Liturgy. In fact, He comes to us almost every day saying the same thing : “Give to Me what you owe”.

What do I owe to the Lord ? Two dollars ? A loonie ? What do I owe to the Lord for all that He has given ? For the fact that He died for the sake of my sins and rose again in order to give me life, what do I owe Him ? Two dollars ? A loonie ? Five dollars, perhaps ? For the Lord’s enduring my perpetual rebellion, for His endless suffering and patience with me in my continual ignoring of His love, what do I owe Him ? Two dollars ? Three dollars ? Five dollars ? One dollar ? For the love, the hope, the encouragement ; for the many times that He comes to me through my brothers and sisters and gives me hope, encouragement, correction ; for the many times that He wakes me up in time on the highway when I am driving and saves me from a terrible accident, what do I owe to the Lord ? One, two, five, ten dollars ? In fact, what I owe the Lord cannot be measured by money alone. Indeed, I owe Him everything that I am and that I have.

If I am going to be a good Christian, if I am going to be like Christ and if I am going to be an Orthodox Christian, I have to understand that it does not matter how much I work in order to acquire this or that thing, how much property, how much money I may have in bank accounts, what good farmlands, gardens, cars, what good church buildings : it is not mine. Even though I have it, it does not belong to me. It belongs to the Lord. If the Lord is so generous to me as to allow me to build up a nice bank account, a nice house, nice land, even a nice church, I am like that tenant in the vineyard. Either I honour the Lord who has rented out and lent to me this vineyard, this house, this land, this car, this bank account, this church, this anything that I have, or I dishonour Him by claiming it all for myself alone.

What am I going to do ? If I insist on being selfish and wicked, only looking after myself, at the end of my life I will come in front of the Lord. The Lord will say to me : “So, I gave you a great deal in your life. What did you do with it ? What have you got now ? Where is that house now ? Where is that car ? Where is that bank account ? What will you do with it now, here in Heaven ?” He will say : “As much as you were so selfish and did not care about the needs of anyone else and only looked after yourself in your life, you made it impossible for yourself to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. You make yourself stay out now because you care still only about yourself”.

If we want to be with our Lord who gives us life, who saves us, it is necessary for us to be like Him, to do as He does for you and for me. It is necessary for us to be filled with love for other people as He is filled with love for us. It is necessary to help, strengthen, encourage, and save other people as He helps, encourages and saves us. Most of all, it is necessary to do what Saint Paul was encouraging the Corinthians to do and what he is encouraging you and me also to do today. If we are going to be like Christ, and if we are going to have any hope of salvation, any hope of being with the Lord in the Kingdom to come at the end of our life, then we must do as Jesus Christ, who said : “‘The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve’” (Matthew 20:28). You and I, out of love, must serve each other. We must do the best we can to be good to and for each other. We must be careful to pray for each other all the time.

When someone is hurting, we should be aware of it. If the person is not answering me in the way that I would like to be answered, it is not for me to get a crooked nose, but instead it is my responsibility to pray for that person. That person is not behaving normally because of pain. Why should I be afraid of anything ? I hope and I pray that that person has not changed towards me. How can I help that person who is hurting ? This or that person might have been late for church, when the person is usually on time. Maybe that person is not well. Instead of being quick to criticise and condemn that person for being late, I should be praying for that person who might be unwell or might have had a traffic accident on the way to church. Who knows what happened ? If that person is actually lazy, then it is my responsibility to pray and not become the judge.

It is my responsibility to serve, and serve only. If my brother or sister is ill or weak, then I should be phoning my brothers or sisters to say : “Let us pray for so-and-so who is ill or weak”. We should be demonstrating our care, our genuine love and concern for each other in these concrete ways. If we are going to be like Christ, if we are going to be good tenants in the vineyard, let us “from this day, from this hour, from this minute, love God above all and do His holy will”, and serve Him and serve each other. Thus we shall glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In today’s Gospel reading we hear a history of our diocesan life in Canada (except our life does not work out exactly as the Lord described in the parable). In the soil of Canadian Church life, the Lord sowed the seed one hundred years ago. As we are celebrating the bicentennial of Orthodoxy in North America, we celebrate also our one hundred years of Orthodox life here in Canada. About a hundred years ago, the seed was sown through immigration. People came mostly from Galicia and Bukovina.

This seed took very well and quickly in the soil in which it was planted here in Canada. It spread all around and in no time, within ten years, there were already churches and parishes scattered all over the prairies and eastern Canada. Some of these Temples still remain to this day in northern Alberta and parts of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. People say that it became like the old country : every five kilometres there was a church somewhere. Although today they may not belong to the same bishop necessarily, in those days they did. There seemed to be churches everywhere, just like home. By 1910 there were Temples built as well in most of the major cities of Canada. Even in Ottawa, there were services already in 1899 on a fairly steady and regular basis, although there was not yet a formally organised congregation.

We had in Winnipeg, as I heard recently, the famous phenomenon of Metropolitan Seraphim (Ustvolsky) and the “Tin Can Cathedral”, built in 1904. In 1993 there was a play written about this messy phenomenon. Metropolitan Seraphim was a pretender who was ordained by no bishop. He was quite a character. Despite everything, he really has my admiration because he was a brave man. Tin Can Cathedral has a famous story about him and the blessing of water on the Feast of Theophany. They cut a hole in the ice in the Red River as usual, and they blessed the water of the Red River. Then, as one would expect Orthodox people to do, and much to the surprise of the mayor of Winnipeg, his office was invaded one day by this “bishop”. There were standards, deacons, clergy, and water all over the place. After the Revolution, unity and order began to break down, as you know. We did not lose our characters – we still have some around to this day. However, the life of this particular diocese went through turmoil, deprivation, confusion and severe lack of communication. The effects of this remain until the present time. Nevertheless, the Lord has not finished with the building of His Church in this country. Setbacks and difficulties there have been, but the Lord has now given us the rebuilding. We see by God’s mercy (and only by God’s mercy) once again the beginning of the flowering of Orthodox life in this country. It is only the very beginning, but it is a beginning.

We are now at a particular crossroads in our life as Orthodox Christians in this country. No matter with what difficulty, and no matter how hard it was, with seriousness and stubbornness even, our spiritual fathers and mothers for the past one hundred years have planted and kept alive tiny remnants of the Orthodox Faith in this country. Now we, their spiritual children (if not their blood children), are being called by the Lord to imitate their zeal with new seriousness. We are being asked to put things right in our own time, so that the second chance that we have been given right now will develop fruitfully.

When I was in Alaska, I felt quite at home there because, in fact, there are many similarities between life here in Canada and life in Alaska. However, we have a distance to go. We have been through many of the same struggles, many of the same difficulties (neglect and priestlessness for a long time, and all these sorts of things), but we have farther to go than they do. I really encourage any of you who can manage it somehow, to go to Alaska (but not on a tour boat). That is not the way to see Alaska. You will never see the real Alaska on the tour boats. If to nowhere else, you have to go to Kodiak. You have to go to Anchorage. Anyway, there is no way to escape Anchorage. Go to Kodiak. At least it is easily accessible. Pray with the Faithful there. Metropolitan Theodosius describes these Alaskan people as being supremely faithful people, truly Orthodox Christians. These people, who actually do not have great houses themselves, make sure that the Lord’s house (even though it may be modest) is scrupulously clean, bright, and definitely prayed in. I intend to do everything I can to enable others to get there.

The Alaskans say (for whatever reason) that we Canadians should definitely go there. In fact, I know many Canadians who have actually gone on those nasty tour boats, but they have not encountered the Church there, except by accident. I know of one lady who went to Sitka on a tour boat and she accidentally managed to get to church. The people there were surprised that she was an Orthodox Christian. She had a nice time because she had the opportunity to pray. Most of the time you do not get that opportunity if you are on a tour boat. You might be able to organise a pilgrimage in the diocese, or get there with some organised Orthodox tour group. FOS Tours no doubt has pilgrimages to Alaska arranged on a regular basis. We ourselves need visits to Alaska to help us remember where our priorities are, because we are definitely going in the same direction as Alaska, and the challenges we face are much the same.

Brothers and sisters, with new seriousness, with new zeal and with new commitment at this crossroads here in our country, let us really put the steam on in being Orthodox Christians, renew ourselves, and once again do as our beloved Saint Herman exhorts us always to do : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all and do His holy will”.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

If we look at our calendar of saints, we will see that there are many listed every day. Sometimes we can find dozens of saints on a particular day. In fact, there are so many that usually, when we are serving, we only mention a few of them – the more “significant” ones.

We can ask the question : “Why, then, do we have today’s commemoration of all the saints ?” Indeed, there are two such Sundays in a row, and the second Sunday keeps the memory of the local, regional saints. For us, that means all the saints of North America. We are starting to get more and more of them. By the end of the year, the number could be probably ten or eleven officially recognised saints. There are still three more who are going to be glorified this year.

Three weeks ago, we glorified Saint Alexis Toth (Toft) of Wilkes-Barre. Saint Alexis was a priest 100 years ago, who came from Presov in what is now Slovakia. He came to North America as a Greek-Catholic priest. Like very many of these Greek-Catholic people, he considered himself to be Orthodox, and was somehow trapped into the situation, shall we say. When he came to North America, he found re-establishing life very difficult. The local Latin bishop was not very friendly to these Greek-Catholics, and tried to persuade them to become regular Latinate priests and deacons. That opened a door of opportunity to return to Orthodoxy. This they willingly did.

The return to Orthodoxy began first in Saint Mary’s Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and it continued later in Holy Resurrection Church in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Do you know where Wilkes-Barre is ? It is a mostly absorbed suburb of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Saint Tikhon’s Monastery is a half-hour’s drive over the mountains from this. Saint Alexis personally brought about 30,000 people back to Orthodoxy (and indirectly, over 100,000). However, that is not the main or only reason why he was glorified as a saint in The Orthodox Church of America three weeks ago. People have considered him to be a holy man anyway. Personally, he was holy. He was a God-lover, and he suffered a great deal for his Orthodox Faith. That is why he is called a Confessor. He confessed the truth of Jesus Christ against all sorts of oppression.

Saint Alexis is also significant to us here in Manitoba because the first priests who served Winnipeg and rural Manitoba at the turn of the century in this area came from Minneapolis, from that very church and mission whose head was this very Father Alexis in those days. This began in 1898-1899 when the first Divine Liturgies were served in this area.

Saint Alexis, lying in his tomb, remains mostly incorrupt to this day, after about ninety years. Such incorruption is traditionally, for us, a sign of a person’s holiness, a sign for us from the Lord to pay attention and to turn to the saint’s intercessions. In fact, Saint Alexis’ intercessions have accomplished quite a bit for us already, and will continue to do a lot more. He is not going to play an insignificant role in the history of our Church. It is our job to remember to remember him and ask him for his prayers.

Towards the end of the year, in the middle of October, in Anchorage there will be the glorification of another holy priest-missionary, Jakob Netsvetov. God willing, I am going to be there. These things are necessary. He was a co-worker with Saint Innocent. He brought to the Faith many of the Yupik people. Do you know who Yupiks are ? (The Americans call them Eskimos, but we Canadians would never dare to use that word in this country.) The Yupiks are an Inuit people who live on the very far southwest coast of Alaska. He was himself half-Aleut and half-Russian. His Mama was Aleut and his Papa was Russian. Because he was himself an Aleut, and he came from the island of Atka in the Alaskan chain, he first began his mission amongst the Aleuts and converted many. He then went on to convert the Yupik people. Father Jakov finally setted around Sitka (which should be the west coast of British Columbia) amongst the Tlinkit people.

In the first part of October, there will be two other glorifications, but they will not happen in North America, even though they are our saints. These are two priests (this is a year of priests’ glorifications). One of them is John Kochurov from Chicago, and the other is Alexander Hotovitsky from New York. They were serving as priests in the Russian Mission (as it was then called) in North America. In 1917, they went back to Russia because there had been convoked an All-Russian Sobor. After the Revolution, the Church in Russia had a window of opportunity to gather and make some decisions. Amongst the first was the election of the now Saint Tikhon to be the patriarch. These two priests rushed back to Russia to participate in this Sobor on behalf of the Church in North America which had sent them. They never came back.

Father John was the first of the priest-martyrs after the Bolshevik October Revolution. Father Alexander suffered frequently and for a long time, until his death in a camp in 1937. The Russian Church and the OCA share these two priests because at that time we belonged to that Church, and because they died on Russian territory. Because their bodies are there, we asked the Russian Church to glorify them for us. Our Metropolitan will go there in October and participate in that glorification. In fact, there is a pilgrimage in October of those going with the Metropolitan to participate in the glorification.

We have numerous saints. The question may be asked : “Why do we need to have this particular Sunday to remember them all again ?” The question can be answered : “Why not remember them all again ? Why would it be difficult ? We love them”. The fact is that we do not know who all the saints are, anyway. There are many holy people who have never been recognised by the Church, by the Faithful. This is because of their humble service of the Lord and their being satisfied with complete obscurity. We do have plenty of saints – there are hundreds of thousands, even millions. There are the forty martyrs of Sebaste, who were frozen to death, and the 14,000 infants who were murdered by Herod, and the 20,000 who were killed in Nicomedia. There are the 10,000 and the 40,000 martyrs of Antioch, the 100,000 killed in Tbsilsi, and the innumerable martyrs of the 20th century in the Soviet territories. There are still innumerably more that we do not know about.

If we knew what the Lord knows about sanctity, we would be astounded at how many people are really holy people, and they pray for us. Even though we never think to ask for their prayers, they pray for us and support us because they love us. Because of the mercy of God, we can turn to them and rely on them in these times particularly, especially here in North America where it is really tough to be an Orthodox Christian. Therefore, we remember them all : the ones that we know, and the ones that we do not know. We give thanks to God for their witness and for their prayerful support.

Another reason for today’s commemoration is that the Lord has told us from the very beginning of His revelation of Himself to us in the Old Testament times : “Be holy; for I, the Lord your God, am holy” (3 Moses [Leviticus] 11:44). This reminds me of a certain Christmas pantomime (skit) that I once saw. Some happy-go-lucky subdeacons were adjusting a popular song, and exhorting us : “Don’t worry ! Be holy !” Be holy because God is holy. Be good, because God is good. Yes, 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.

We are to be holy, to be signs of the love of Jesus Christ to everyone around us ; to serve other people just as Jesus Christ does and did, and not demand to be served ; to be holy because our life is in Him. He is holy. He makes us holy. He makes us worthy. The Lord calls us to be holy because He created us to be sharers in His Kingdom, sharers in His life, sharers in His own activity. He calls us human beings to a special relationship with Him which none of His other creatures has. He calls us to be like Him. He even gives us the freedom to ignore Him. Such is His love for us that He does not turn us into robots and slaves. Instead, He gives us the freedom to fall on our faces (and other parts) and to make mistakes. Our behaviour often suggests that we do insist on exercising the freedom to fall. The Lord is always there to pick us up and to help us to carry on in the right way.

It is necessary that we understand that there are many saints recognised and unrecognised, and we are called to be like them. Not only are there saints around the whole world, holy people of all sorts, all ages, known and unknown, but there are also actual saints close to us – next door. We Canadians, living in our scatteredness, living in our separation, and sometimes our Eeyore-like “woe is me” attitude, often are tempted to believe that all the saints in all the “real” Church life are not here, but are somewhere else faraway where people can “do it right”. However, that is not the case. Holy people are here amongst us. Real Church life is here amongst us. It does not require all sorts of apparatus : large Temples, very expensive and big episcopal palaces. It requires you and me, without all sorts of fanfare and tra-la-la, to serve Jesus Christ, ourselves.

Brothers and sisters, the Lord calls you and me to serve each other, to love each other, to suffer for each other, to pray for each other, and build each other up in Jesus Christ. Don’t worry about tomorrow. Don’t worry too much about yesterday. Don’t worry about anything. Be holy. To do that, we have to do one thing. It is important that we remember every day what Saint Herman says to you and to me : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all and do His holy will”.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The society in which we live is a society that “wants to have its cake and eat it, too”. That is the old saying we are taught when we are young. Our society wants both to eat the cake and keep it. Why is this ? It is because of a loss of direction, a loss of purpose. The only purpose our society seems to have is to satisfy every imaginable passion and desire. Our society is like a spoiled child. “No” has never been said to that child, and every time there is an obstacle that child throws a terrific tantrum. This is what we have become. Take, for instance, the fact that in our society in North America crime is rampant. People lament that there is no order, and things are going to pieces everywhere. At the same time, this very society at every opportunity lambastes Christianity, which is at the foundation of North American culture.

In these days it is not “in” to be a Christian. In these days, if you are a Christian, then you are “out of it”. You do not fit in. You are fanatical, and they say you are a hypocrite. So what ? We are all hypocrites. Who is so honest as not to be a hypocrite ? Who is so righteous as not to be a hypocrite ? It is hard to find such a person. Greek philosophers went around looking for honest people, and did not find them. No-one finds them. Why ? Because we are all enmeshed with sin.

North American society is trying to deny the existence of sin. Therefore, our society is full of crime, and we have uprooted the source of righteousness in our society. We cry and lament. We recognise that in our society we have done bad things to each other. We say : “Oh, but that is not sin, and it is not my fault either. Someone was bad to me ; therefore, even if I steal your purse, take your life, rip your eyes out or destroy your reputation, I cannot help it. Thus, we give people in society the ammunition to say that it is everyone else’s fault (except mine) that I do bad things – that I misbehave, that I steal, that I kill, that I do horrible things, that I lie, that I cheat”. We say : “It is someone else’s fault, not mine”. W S Gilbert may have already comprehended this attitude when he wrote the aria : “A policeman’s lot is not a happy one” in his lyrics for the operetta “Pirates of Penzance”.

Our society in the face of all of this becomes very defensive. We do not want people abusing us in various ways. We do not want to be the object of theft, slander, rape, murder, pillaging, and looting. We want to be protected. So, what do we do ? We really do not lead people into repentance any more, because repentance does not exist in our society any more. We punish. Because we are afraid, we enact legislation. When people do bad things we put them behind bars, and then let them out again in a couple of months. All of this is nonsensical and irrational if we pay attention to it.

We want order, but we rebel against order. We want morality, but we rebel against morals. We want joy and happiness in life, but we uproot that very source of joy and happiness. We want people to be good to each other, but we make ourselves so afraid of each other that we do not dare to be good to each other, in case we get sued (that is coming to our country, too). Day by day, we fall deeper and deeper, subtly, into this crazy mire. Our own Christian foundation, our Orthodox Christian foundation gets eroded and eroded because the society in which we live is so pressuring and so subtly persuasive that it is very hard to stand firm.

The Lord has very clear things to say to you and to me about this. The fact is that things have not changed. We think that here in almost the twenty-first century, we are so modern, so up-to-date, and so far ahead of anyone before us. However, the fact is that what we have done is conveniently to forget all about history. We like to think that everything was naively rosy before (or primitively stupid), and that people did not know how to live until now.

The fact is that all those primitive people did know how to live. Where they are still alive in the world (and where they have been left more or less alone to themselves), they do know how to live. We do not. Perhaps we can hear the Lord say to you and to me, as it were : Woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your consolation with your big houses, your “electric everything”, and every imaginable comfort, and you got it on the backs of the poor around the world. Maybe we do not get it on the backs of the poor right next door, but we have surely extracted it from the poor overseas. Because we are so comfy and cosy now, we cannot expect to be so comfy and cosy after this life.

The Lord says : “Woe to you who are full, for you shall hunger” (Luke 6:25). Probably we will find ourselves hungry in this life. As a result of the unleashing of deadly passions around the world, societies which have been relatively stable and self-sufficient are ripped apart, and people are dying of starvation on land that could perfectly well sustain them, and meet every need. However, because they are filled with such hatred, and killing each other, and stealing from each other, no-one except the most evil has enough to eat. “Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep”(Luke 6:25). The first part of this next one is what runs our society : “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets”(Luke 6:26). What happened to the false prophets ? They went down with the society that they were pretending was all right (but it was dead).

We live in a society that is full of hatred and fear and self-interest. What does our Lord say to you and me ? He says the opposite : Do not kill or put in prison your enemies. Love them. Do not sue and do not put in prison those who do bad things to you. “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you” (Luke 6:27028). How far are we going to get with trying to do this in society these days ?

In fact, people laugh at us about what the Lord says next. He says : “To him who strikes you on the one cheek, offer the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either” (Luke 6:29). Here is another good one : “Give to everyone who asks of you” (Luke 6:30). By contrast, we are nowadays told : Do not give to those who beg, because they might use it to buy a drink or drugs. By contrast to that judgemental cynicism, Bishop Gregory of Alaska gave me a reminder last year. Talking about these Dominical directives, he said : “I do what my father and my uncle said : ‘If the person asks something from you, then he must need it’. Who am I to ask what he needs it for ? If I start to say : ‘I am not going to give’, then I am judging him. Maybe I will give something to the person begging on the street, but I do not simply give ; I give with God’s blessing”. If this person is misusing that gift, then with that blessing will come God’s ruler on the knuckles, as it were. The conscience will prick that person (if there is any opening) when we give to that person who is begging ; and if there is any possibility of good coming from it, then some good will come.

This following directive is even harder to take : “From him who takes away your goods do not ask them back” (Luke 6:30). His next words are ones that some make fun of, and twist around, because they cannot stand the Truth. The Lord says : “Just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise” (Luke 6:31). There is no person with any sort of real sanity, half-sanity, quarter-sanity, eighth-sanity who says : “Go ahead and beat me up ; I do not care. I just love it”.

People want to be loved. They want people to care about them, to pay attention to them, to respect them as creations of God. That is why, as we have just heard, our Lord says, in effect : Do to others what you would have others do to you. We want people to love us, to care for us ; but we cannot wait for them to love and care for us first. We have to be ready to do this first, because (as we will sing a little while later) : “We have seen the true Light; we have received the heavenly Spirit”. We have been filled with the love of Jesus Christ. We have to be the example.

This is what the Apostle is saying to us this morning. The world thinks, in its cynicism and hatred of Christ, that it is the weak and flabby way to go, to be a Christian. In a sense, I do not blame them, because some people who call themselves Christians have namby-pambied themselves into a lump of stale Jello. This is a distortion of the love of Christ. The love that Jesus Christ is talking about has nothing to do with warm, fuzzy, gutless, shapeless, formless feelings. It has to do with raw courage, acts of the will, determination, love with no strings attached, willingness to suffer even unto death for the sake of Christ. That is not wishy-washy, fuzzy emotionalism. That is life-giving, no-strings-attached love.

The Apostle Paul said to his disciple, Timothy, what is said to all the clergy, but which is especially applicable to every last one of us : Be an example to the faithful. Be an example of love (see 1 Timothy 4:12). Have the intestinal fortitude to do what Jesus Christ said and did, and be like the saints. Be powerful. Be strong. Be defenders of the Truth. Be those who live the Truth. Reveal Jesus Christ in your lives in the way you love so that by your example others will see and believe, and become completely a part of the Way.

Our first responsibility here, today, is to ask the Lord to come into our hearts more deeply, more fully, with greater power by the Grace, the inspiration, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In this way, despite our sins, despite our shortcomings, despite our selfishness and our brokenness, others will see His love, will be touched by His love as we live our lives, and they will come to be united with Him. Then, they too, will have the same joy, the same hope, the same power, and the same victory that you and I have, and that we participate in.

In two more weeks, God willing, there will be in Alaska the glorification of Saint Jakob Netsvetov. Yet another of the courageous saints of North America, he is the first half-Russian, half-Aleut priest to be glorified as a saint. He was not the first of the mixed-blood priests, but he is the first to be glorified as a saint. He was a co-worker with Saint Innocent of Alaska, and with him, translated Scripture and the Divine Liturgy into the Yupik and Athabaskan languages in south-west Alaska. The legacy of these great warriors for Christ is that the Yupik and Athabaskan peoples are the most stubbornly faithful Orthodox people in all of Alaska. If we think we have it hard now, then let us then read the lives of these holy men, sailing all over on the stormy North Pacific and Bering Sea waters, freezing half to death, starving part of the time (and lacking an electric anything). What Saint Innocent and Saint Jakob accomplished in their lives !

Later this year, God willing, two more saints will be glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church, since they were part of the original Russian mission. One priest, Father John Kochurov, was a great builder of the Church. If you go to Chicago and see our Cathedral, it was built in his day. This man, together with Father Alexander Hotovitsky (also a priest brought here in the time of Saint Tikhon, a co-worker with Saint Tikhon), worked in the Chancery in New York City. They then went back to Russia in 1918 as representatives of the Church of North America at the Assembly of the whole Church of Russia. This assembly was prayerfully deliberating while the revolution was in progress. Father John Kochurov became the first Priest-Martyr of the Revolution when he was killed by a mob during one of the revolutionary riots. Father Alexander Hotovitsky was not able to leave Russia again, and he died in a labour camp fifteen years later.

Can you imagine the strength of such persons ? What would it be like to be a First- Martyr, like Father John Kochurov, and refuse to deny Jesus Christ, and to die ; or to be like Father Alexander Hotovitsky – to serve, love, and witness to Jesus Christ as a slave labourer in Siberia ?

Perhaps the Lord does not call you and me to such outstanding and heavy tests of our commitment to Jesus Christ. However, He says the same to you and to me as He said to Father Jakob, to Father Alexander, to Father John, and to all the others : Be an example. Reveal Christ. Show by your love to Whom you belong. Show by your love to what Kingdom you belong, and let us all do as Saint Herman, the first and foremost among North America’s saints, teaches : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

It seems that most of us tend to go about our lives in a semi-conscious way, simply living each day, and not thinking about anything too much. We just get up in the morning and live our lives as everyone else does, not paying attention to the foundation of who we really are. Living in this world as we do, living in this country as we do, we tend very much to fall asleep, as it were. We become accustomed to live in the self-satisfying, self-serving routine that everyone else falls into. Many of us (although not all of us, thank God) allow the distractions and the temptations of everyday life to put us to sleep. We can forget to do basic things such as saying our prayers first thing in the morning. We forget to say “good morning” to the Lord as we were taught as children to do. In the course of the day therefore, we likely forget to give thanks to God for the good things that happen to us. We forget to call on the Lord for help when we are having difficulty. We forget to ask for His blessing on everything that we are doing.

When we come to the end of the day, instead of remembering the Lord, perhaps we sit down comfortably in front of the television to watch various programmes ; and then we do the very worst thing that a person can do, which is to watch the news at ten or eleven o’clock. The news, itself, is one of the most disturbing things that comes into our lives on a daily basis because it reports 98 percent evil activities. The news reports disturbances, evil and catastrophes which are all laced with fear. Fear makes money. Then perhaps we try to go to sleep, our minds disturbed by what we have seen. We wonder why we have difficulty sleeping and why we are restless during the night. If we watch the news at the end of the day, we should be aware that there will also come a tendency to forget about the Lord. We so easily fall into simple reaction to the news that we easily forget to treat the news as fuel for intercession. We should never dare to think of going to bed without first offering all this suffering in the world to the Lord. Thus, we ask the Lord to intervene in the suffering and the waywardness of the world. It is important also that we bless the Lord, giving thanks to Him for everything. Of course, we also ask the Lord’s forgiveness for the mistakes we may have made during the day.

Our responsibility as Orthodox Christians is to do something different and not do as other people do. We are not to fall into the sleep and forgetfulness of sin. Our responsibility is to be a light that shines. The Apostle exhorts us : “Awake you who sleep … and Christ will give you light” (Ephesians 5:14). “It is high time to wake from sleep” (Romans 13:11). Our responsibility is to be an example of hope and a force of hope to all these people who have fallen asleep in the forgetfulness of sin, and who are paralysed. We are the ones who are called to action. The Lord asks action of you and of me – the action of love. The Apostle Paul makes it very clear in a Scripture verse that I had to memorise when I was a child : “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

Sin is a word whose meaning properly comes to us from Greek, and means “missing the mark”. Most people will think of it as breaking laws, but this is not the case, although “missing the mark” could mean that too. The mark that we aim for is the state of being in complete harmony with God’s will for us. This harmony means that our love for Him should be pure and selfless, the same as His love for us. When we are in this state of harmony, we are truly ourselves, and we are truly alive. However, when we depart from this way, Christ’s way, we turn away from love, light and life to selfishness, darkness and death. We become distorted. This is what the Apostle was talking about when he said to us that “the wages of sin is death”. We choose another path than God’s, and its payment to us is death. The world in general is walking on this death-dealing path. Therefore, the way of the world brings paralysis and death, whereas our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ gives us life. He sets us free. He gives us energy. He gives us power.

Brothers and sisters, it is important that we take hold of this free gift and allow the Lord to set us free, and keep us free. Let us allow the Lord to lift up our hearts and give us energy and enable us to be alive and active. The Lord did not create us to be enslaved by forgetfulness and pettiness. The Lord created us to be alive and to be free. May our Saviour today transform each of us so that we can be a centre of love for all those around us. May He give us the courage to accept the free gift of God and to live and glorify Him all the days of our life, in everything that we do and say, from this moment onward. Let us with our whole being glorify the All-holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, always, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

We, in our comfortable North American way of living, seem seldom to reflect upon the life that the apostles lived. We really do not have an awareness of what life was like for the apostles. It is true that both the Apostles Peter and Paul sometimes lived in decent quarters (especially in their earlier years). However, when it came to the time of the preaching of the Gospel, and their witnessing for Christ, they were always living in other peoples’ houses as they travelled from place to place. This was especially the case with the Apostle Paul. He travelled almost everywhere in the Roman Empire for the sake of speaking about his love for our Lord Jesus Christ, as he tried to introduce people to Jesus Christ, as he tried to win them for the Kingdom of God.

Both the Apostles Peter and Paul suffered misunderstanding, and very often rejection, because people did not want to hear about this love of our Lord Jesus Christ. Often enough, it was because Jesus, as they encountered Him, did not fit their expectations of the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One. Therefore, they rejected Him. With this rejection, they rejected the apostles as well. Both of the apostles suffered a great deal because, as we hear the Apostle Paul admit, he was shipwrecked many times. This means he was floating around in water, holding on to pieces of wood.

Ships in those days were not like the ships these days, with fancy lifeboats. It was broken pieces of wood that kept the Apostle Paul from sinking into the Mediterranean. Many times, he was put in prison for the sake of his love for Jesus the Christ. As we hear time-and-again in the Epistles, he was beaten, sometimes very severely. Prison life in the Roman Empire was not like it is now. There were no such things as carpets, beds, and televisions. In the days of the Roman Empire, there was straw-and-mess everywhere in the prisons. Often enough, too, there were chains holding the prisoner to the wall, sometimes by the feet, the wrists, and even the neck (and in the course of all this, beatings, beatings and more beatings).

These are the sorts of things that the Apostle Paul suffered for the sake of his love for Jesus Christ. In Canada, you and I are not likely to face that sort of physical suffering for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ (although once in a while it does happen). However, with the Apostle Paul, we will indeed experience rejection by people who are afraid of the love of Jesus Christ.

We may be rejected because we are Orthodox Christians, because everywhere we go, we carry the love of Jesus Christ in us and with us always. Because we live and act out of love for our Saviour Jesus Christ, people who do not understand this can reject us because of their fear of this love. It is odd that people are afraid of love, but that is the case. People become very much afraid of this sort of selfless, serving love which is so characteristic of Christians, especially Orthodox Christians. It is that which people run away from.

That does not stop you or me from loving our Lord Jesus Christ, and it does not stop you or me from serving other people in the same way as our Saviour Jesus Christ. However, we have to understand that our Lord said in more than one way (and more than one time) in the Gospel that if the world is rejecting Him, He being Who He is, it will reject you and me (see Matthew 10:25 ; John 16:2). Therefore, we have to expect this sort of rejection, and yet carry on loving, and praying for, and serving people, regardless.

What happens is that in due course the Lord overcomes the fear of other people, and the fear of being rejected by other people. When we persist and persevere in loving and serving them, the Lord breaks down the barriers of fear that imprison other people. In due course, they are able to come with us to love and serve our Saviour. However, it takes our remembering first of all that none of us is here on this earth to be served. Every one of us is here to serve. Jesus Christ washed the feet of the apostles. The King of the Universe, Himself, is taking care of you and me, down to the numbering of the hairs of our heads. If He is serving you and me in this way, then who are we not to serve in the same way, always? We are not greater than our Master (see Matthew 10:24).

This is why it is especially characteristic of Orthodox Christians that we be hospitable people. We welcome people as guests. We treat people who come to our home as though they were Christ, Himself (see Matthew 10:40 ; John 13:20 ; Hebrews 13:2). We are not hurt people who hurt people. Rather, we are a serving people who are serving people. If people have needs, then we try to meet the needs. Russian and Ukrainian literature is full of stories about people who are doing exactly this : serving and caring for other people. We are being true to the path of our Saviour, Jesus Christ when we are behaving in this way.
The Apostles Peter and Paul are setting a very good example for us. They gave their lives completely to our Saviour, and we should do the same. However, also note that the Apostles Peter and Paul had some strong differences of opinion as to how to go about preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We can see in the writings of the Apostle Paul how strongly he disagreed with the Apostle Peter on some occasions (see Galatians 2:11).

The fact of this disagreement does not mean that they were enemies because they disagreed. They had different opinions. The Lord prospered the multiplication and the spread of the Gospel just because of these different opinions. As usual, He used an unedifying situation to bring much good fruit in reconciliation. These two very different men preached the Gospel in two different ways to different groups of people. They were suited to different evangelical tasks ; and as a result of this, many more people were converted to the love for Jesus Christ than if they had gone about doing their preaching and serving in exactly the same way as always.

True, they had disagreements. In Acts 15:37-39, we see that the Apostle Paul had disagreements with the Apostle Barnabas and with Mark, too, about how to go about things. Still, the disagreements did not mean permanent division. Even though there was disagreement, there was always amongst the apostles reconciliation and harmony. There were differences, to be sure ; but, by the mercy of the Lord, they became co-operative differences.

To illustrate this, we can see in the death of the two Apostles Peter and Paul an expression of their unity and of their harmony. In the same city, Rome, the Apostle Peter was crucified upside down as he wished, and the Apostle Paul was beheaded. This characterises in a very visible way how the Lord, who is the Giver of life, gives so many gifts to His children – to you and to me ; how He creates all of us uniquely and differently ; and how He uses all these uniquenesses, these differences, this variety of gifts, to give life to this world, to heal the broken-hearted, to heal the sick, to re-unite the separated, to bring home the lost, to give life and light where there is darkness. The Lord uses all these gifts in us for the good, to His glory, and for giving life.

In a few short years, this parish will be celebrating a century of witness in this very building, here on this very corner, because of love for Jesus Christ. However, 1904 was not the actual beginning of this parish. This community’s worshipping life is four or five years older than that. This Temple was, glory be to God, consecrated by Archbishop Tikhon, now Saint Tikhon.

Many people have come to our Saviour through the love of Jesus Christ which has been so active over the decades in this community. The Lord is working, and He will continue to work in this community, showing His love, and giving life. More people yet will come to Him, to know His love, and to have life in Him along with us.

Let us ask the holy Apostles Peter and Paul to pray for us today, that the Lord will give us the strength and determination to be faithful to Him until the end as they are, and to serve Him with our whole hearts. With these apostles, may we enter also into the Kingdom, and glorify with them our Saviour Jesus Christ, together with His unoriginate Father, and His all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

On this Sunday of the Parable of the Publican and the Pharisee, we are beginning our serious preparation for Great Lent. The Publican and the Pharisee are given to us to remind us what must come first in our lives – how to live as Christians.

Thus, our Lord says to us that there was a Pharisee who observed the Law very carefully. There was also a Publican. Do you know what a Publican was ? He was a tax collector. A tax collector in those days was not like today’s Canada customs and revenue agent who operates according to very strict rules. It was not like that in the Roman Empire. The Emperor in Rome had many tax collectors throughout the empire ; and he simply said to them : “I need this amount of money. Get it for me”. The tax collectors then went to everyone, and they extracted from them that amount of money, in one way or the other, “by hook or by crook”. Of course, the people were very careful to hide their money and goods as much as possible, so that when the tax collector came, he would not be able to get everything. The tax collectors had no restrictions placed on them. They took as much as they wanted. For example, if they were nasty, they could take all the cows, or all the horses, and this very often happened.

Last week, we encountered Zacchæus, another tax collector. When he repented of his behaviour and turned to Christ, he not only gave one-half of everything he had to the poor, but he also gave back four times as much as he had taken from everybody. Can you imagine how wealthy this man was ? Can you imagine how much he had taken from people, so that he could return four times as much as he stole and still had money left over ? He was not only an expert tax-collecting thief, but he was also a very responsible developer of his goods and belongings (even though he had gotten them wrongly). This sort of man changed his ways, and he turned to Christ.

In today’s parable, the Publican standing in the temple knows what sort of person he himself is. That is why he says : “God, be merciful to me the sinner”. The Pharisee, a very careful observer of the Law, standing up in front of everyone, and showing himself very obviously to be a perfect observer of the Law, sees the Publican. He says : “Thank God I am not like that”. The Lord makes very clear to us who is saved. It is the repentant Publican who is saved. Even though the Pharisee is a strict and careful observer of the Law, his heart is full of pride. His heart is full of himself, not of God. By parading all his right observances to everyone around him, he inflates himself and his pride, saying : “See what a good man I am. See what a good observer of the Law I am !”

What the Lord wants from us is not merely a careful observance of the Law, although it is a very good thing to obey His commandments. However, He wants us to obey Him out of love, not out of fear, or because of pride. Zacchæus repented. Out of love for the Lord, he began to observe the Law, and to do what is right. Until that time, the Law was the only way given to us so that we might know how to live life rightly, in accordance with God’s will. In fact, the Law is all concerned with love. The Ten Commandments (the Law), given to us in the book of Exodus (second Book of Moses), tell us the same things that our Saviour says to us in the Gospel. The first part exhorts us to love God first, above and before anything or anyone else. All the rest is about loving God in the right way, revealing that love to other human beings.

If people are in love with God, if our hearts are filled with love for God, we will fulfill the “Law” naturally. We will naturally have the love of God in our hearts. We will not make idols. We will honour the Sabbath day. We will honour our parents. We will not murder, lie, or covet. We will do all these commandments naturally out of love. That is what the Lord wants from us. He wants us to love Him. The Christian live consists in deepening our love for Jesus Christ, getting to know Him better and better, and showing this love by loving each other.

This community is growing. How is it growing ? It is growing because Christians are learning to love each other, to trust each other, to work together in love. Other people see this love, and they feel safe to come into our midst. In the world, we find plenty of deception and lies. People are mostly living in fear about one thing or the other. As we live our Christian lives, we spend a lot of time asking the Lord to take that fear away from us. Fear poisons our lives as we live in the world. As that fear is taken away from us by God, we become more and more our real selves. The more we know our Saviour Jesus Christ, the more we love Him, the more we can tell the difference between truth and lies. We can see the truth about ourselves much more, and we can see the lies about ourselves too. Many people suffer agony about themselves because they have accepted lies about themselves. These lies come from the devil and from the way people have been mistreated by other human beings. In general, we do not have the correct knowledge of ourselves ; we do not know the truth about ourselves. Deepening our love of Jesus Christ heals our spirit and enables us to become truly ourselves – in Jesus Christ. Because of the love of Jesus Christ, a community of believers becomes a place where people can find healing in their hearts and souls, and where they can find out the truth about themselves. They will find out that they are not so bad, that they are healable, and repairable. In other words, they will discover that there is hope. Then they can witness together because of this love so that others in turn can find themselves, and, in due course, they can find a place amongst us.

I have already heard how this community has been developing just like this. This means that the Lord is preparing this small community (small right now) to become an important witness in this city. We must make sure that there are no divisions amongst us and that we resist the devil. Rather, knowing the truth about the love of Jesus Christ, we should live in forgiveness of one another all the time, praying for each other all the time, so that God will strengthen, heal, renew and perfect us in due course. Once the foundation of love is solidly laid, the Lord will send more people. This has been the case everywhere in this country. However, the foundation of love has to come first. The sooner this foundation is laid, the sooner the Lord will send others to participate in this foundation of love. Please persevere in this, and let this coming Great Lent be a time for you all to deepen your love for our Saviour, and deepen your love for each other. Clean the house of your heart and your soul of whatever dirt is lying around, so that when you come to the greatest of all feasts, Pascha, you will be able to rejoice with great joy, having made some progress in love and in repentance in the Lord. You will thus come to Pascha a little bit closer to the Lord, a little bit more loving of our Saviour — each and all of you personally, and together.

May God grant that you all be just like the Publican. May you all, and I also, be able to repent, but to repent of our sins knowing that God loves us, that He will heal us, and, as He promised, He will always be with us. Do not be shy to speak about Him when He gives a clear sign to your heart to offer someone a word of encouragement, hope and love. In so doing, you will glorify Him, our Saviour – your Saviour – to Whom, together with the Father and the life-giving Spirit, be glory now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

We must always be prepared to confess Christ. We do not know what is going to happen on any day. We do not know what the Lord is going to ask of us at any particular time. For instance, let us recall all those Orthodox Christians who lived 100 years ago or so in Russia and Ukraine. What happened to them ? They were living their lives peacefully, and along came the Bolshevik Revolution. During this revolution, people were being killed right, left and centre, very often only because they were Orthodox believers. These Orthodox Christians had no idea that they would end their lives as martyrs for the sake of Christ. They were just plain, Orthodox Christians, living their lives faithfully.

However, when the time came that they were challenged to deny Christ, they responded : “Absolutely not” ; and they suffered terrible tortures. All this is described in the works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. There are also the two books written about Archimandrite Arseny (Streltsov) in the prison camp in North Russia. There are also the words of Father Alexander Men, who was himself a martyr in the same way. These writings help us understand what sort of suffering people endured for the sake of the love of Jesus Christ. All these people were ordinary, everyday people like you and me.

I hope that most of us in North America are not going to be put in such a position (although anything is possible). Open persecution could happen here, too, but God forbid that it should happen. In the meantime, it is important for you and for me to confess that we are Orthodox Christians, that Jesus Christ is everything in our lives. There are people all around us who are hungry, thirsty and looking for hope. In this country which has become so secular, there are people who have nothing to live for except some sort of small creature comforts. They have no hope. Hope has gone from them. However, if we live our lives with joy, and if we show love to people around us, then we can bring Christ to them. We can bring Christ to them, even if they are not ready to recognise Him yet ; and maybe, eventually, in due time, they will be ready to ask questions, and perhaps to accept Him. They may even become Orthodox Christians.

We Orthodox Christians in North America are here not just to be comfortable, to have a good life, or to have things better here than anywhere else. As Orthodox Christians, we are here to show the love of Jesus Christ to those people around us. Because we are Orthodox Christians, this is our responsibility. We, Orthodox Christians, carry without any distortion the whole truth about Jesus Christ, who is the Truth. He is the Truth that people are looking for. In Canada these days, it is so popular to hear : “Well, that is true for you, and this is true for someone else”. What is being said is that something is true for this person, and something else is true for that person. However, if truth is like that, there is no such thing as truth. By definition, there can only be one truth. If there is more than one truth, then one of the so-called truths has to wrong, deficient or lacking. There can only be one truth. That Truth is Jesus Christ, our Saviour. He is the Only-begotten Son of God, who took on our human flesh, our human condition, and our fallenness out of love in order to save us.

We have with us here, today, Mrs. n, who was not long ago in the hospital and was expected to die because of a heart problem. The doctors did not expect her to live. However, the priest and the people of the Church prayed, and here she is with us in the Temple of the Lord. Like Father n, she was and is confessing Christ with her life. There is also Matushka n, who had a very serious case of pneumonia only last year. She had double pneumonia, which can be life-threatening. However, the Church’s priest and people prayed, and she is here with us, strong as ever, serving the Saviour and confessing Him. Then we have n, who is in the hospital right now. Very recently, she was in a coma for a whole week. Her sister told me that the doctors gave her a 1% chance to survive. After the prayers of the Church (by priest and people), in due time, she woke up ; and even without any life-support system, she is walking around the hospital as though nothing had happened. She is definitely praising God and giving thanks to Him.

God is merciful. The Grace of God is amongst us here in this congregation. The Lord is hearing our prayers, and that is really what I want to emphasise. We can get very much carried away with the burdens of our daily life, and our responsibilities in maintaining this Temple and glorifying God here. Being carried away with such burdens, we can let these wonderful things I have mentioned fall into the background of our memory, instead of remembering every day what glorious things God has done for us, and is still doing for us. Even when we are having difficult moments, He is still with us. During Great Compline of the Great Feasts of Christmas and Theophany, we love to sing that God is with us. Truly, He is with us. We also love to sing : “Who is so great a God as our God ? Our God is the God who does wonders”. We are right in loving to sing these glorious praises of God. We are right to rejoice in Him in this way in these verses from Psalm 76.

In this Temple, the Lord has given us as a sign to this city, and not only to this city. Do not forget that this community is the mother community of all the other Orthodox communities in this city, and in this province. If there are Orthodox communities anywhere in this province at this time, then they are children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of this parish. The witness of this community of believers has been here almost 80 years and it has borne good fruit in this province. However, there is much, much more to do yet, because this city is very far from being an Orthodox city.

It is our responsibility to continue praying, working and witnessing for Jesus Christ as those who have gone before us have done. May those around us be able to see, believe, and come to our Saviour, Jesus Christ, and glorify Him along with us. May we all together have the hope of entering the heavenly Kingdom, there to glorify the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

There is a tendency especially in these days (as there was in other times), to re-make the Christian faith into something that is an intellectual exercise, or into something that is equal to one philosophy or another. As long as we pander to this idea, we can adjust all sorts of things to our liking. This is what is happening now in our day in North America, and in the western world in general. People try to reduce Christianity to some sort of philosophy, and we try to tinker with it to make it more suitable to our whims, fads and fashions. What we easily forget is what the Apostle Paul is saying today in the Epistle. He encountered Christ personally. Christ appeared to him, and in His compassion, He straightened him out from his wrong way of thinking. The Lord put the Apostle on the right path by leading him in the right direction.

As Saint Seraphim of Sarov said, it is most important for us Orthodox Christians to acquire the Holy Spirit first. By that, he meant that we must allow the Holy Spirit to be fulfilled in us, to work in us by virtue of our baptism and chrismation when we were given the gift of the Holy Spirit. We must allow the Holy Spirit to work in us in order to renew and build up this relationship of love between us and Christ. The way of the Orthodox Christian is not only an intellectual way. It is a way of love between us and Christ, a way of loving harmony with Christ. In harmony with Him, we lovingly and willingly obey His will. This harmoniousness might even become instinctual.

This is exactly the way of the Mother of God. In every part of her life, she said “Yes” to God’s will, even though it was not logical. At the time of the Annunciation, the Archangel Gabriel appeared to her, and told her that she would bear a child although she was not yet married, and still a virgin. She asked how this could be. The Archangel answered her (as it were) : “Not to worry. The Holy Spirit will overshadow you, and all will be well”. When she heard this amazing assurance, she accepted this, and it came to be as the Archangel had said. The rest of her life was a life of obedience, even though she still asked questions. Sometimes, she even prepared the way for her Son, as at the marriage of Cana. She prepared His way by ordering the servants to do what He was going to ask them to do.

It is high time that we, ourselves, like the Mother of God, learned to be lovingly and willingly obedient to God’s will. Even though we are often afraid of it, God’s will is always life-giving, and saving for us. It is always Life for us, even though we do not know where it will lead us, and what will happen to us. If our hearts tell us that God wants us to do something, or to go in a particular direction, then what He asks is not to endanger us but to increase true life in us. We are often afraid of losing our temporal life, of losing the sense of being comfortable in the world. However, the Lord does not want us feel that we are so comfortable in this world that we will be afraid of leaving it when the time comes. Our life in this world needs to be fulfilled in the Kingdom. Our end is eternal life with Him in the Kingdom. We have no idea what this means except that it is eternal life, eternal light, eternal love. Life in the Kingdom is far better than anything we could have in this life. This life is a vale of tears, pain and difficulty as a result of the Fall. However, in His mercy, the Lord shows us His love. He gives us hope. He gives us a sense of direction. He puts us on the path to the Kingdom and to eternal life with Him.

Today, as we are keeping the memory of King David, Saint James, the Lord’s brother, and Saint Joseph, the foster-father of Jesus, it is important that we correctly understand the will of God in their lives. It is especially important today when we are so prone to distortion. David, the King, was the direct blood ancestor of the Lord. Christ was born of the house of David. However, David is also two other things to us. In the first place, in his Psalms, David wrote many prophesies about the coming of and the life of Christ. When we read the Psalms, we are reading the life of Christ. Many Psalms are very explicit about the Birth, Life, Suffering and Death of Christ, as well as about His kingly reign. David prepared the way of Christ. In the second place, as we all know, he fell into temptation very severely. He was not a small sinner when he sinned. However, he knew how to repent, and when he repented, he repented greatly. David sinned as we all do. Being a king and head of government, as well as an autocrat, he was subject to many temptations. This is why we have to pray that our leaders be protected from the great temptations of their office. Nevertheless, even in the face of these temptations, David turned about, repented, and became an example of repentance for us. He accepted God’s correction, turned about completely, and tried to follow the Lord’s will. This happened more than once in his life, as it happens in our lives, too.

There are those who like to say that since James is the “brother” of the Lord, the Theotokos had children after she gave birth to Christ. This has always been incomprehensible to Orthodox. From the beginning, Orthodox have believed that the Mother of God was ever-virgin because she gave birth as a virgin. It is incomprehensible that she would then have children in the normal way, after she had given birth to God the Word. She gave herself to the service of God in purity and love. This is why we venerate her to this very day. Then why is it that, in the Holy Gospels, James is called Christ’s “brother” ? An article in the Canadian Orthodox Messenger (Winter 2003/2004) explains this quite well. In short, brotherhood and sisterhood is not confined to the immediate blood family in oriental, Semitic (Hebrew) thought, but means all the close relatives. Therefore, first cousins can be called brothers and sisters in popular, everyday terms. That is exactly who James, the brother of the Lord, was to Jesus Christ. He was a brother as in first cousin.

Saint Joseph, the Betrothed, is also an example for us. Although we often forget about him, and treat him as a nice piece of furniture, a convenient person to have around, we should understand the service that he rendered to our Lord as the foster-father of Christ. He provided a home for Christ and protection so that He might grow up in a good atmosphere. All these things are important, as is the fact that he was a good person, a man of prayer, and one who understood God’s will. Out of negligence, we often dismiss him. At the time of the Annunciation, he could not comprehend what was going on, and wanted to send Mary to what we would call a home for unwed mothers. According to the Law of Moses, she was supposed to be stoned because she was expecting out of wedlock. However, being a merciful man, he wanted to hide and protect her until she gave birth. When God revealed to him in a dream what was going on, he accepted the whole thing, and provided protection for Mary and the Child. When he learned in a dream that God wanted him to take Mary and the Child to Egypt in order to escape from Herod (who was going to kill all the small children in the region of Bethlehem in order to protect his kingship), Joseph obeyed the dream. When he was in Egypt, God told him when it was time for him to go back, and where he was to go. Joseph did as God had directed him. We see that Joseph was not just anyone. He was a man of God. His heart was open to God’s direction. He was worthy, like the Mother of God, to prepare the way of Christ.

The important thing in all of this is to emulate, to try to be like these people. James was the leader of the Jerusalem community from the very beginning as its apostle and bishop at the centre of the early apostolic community. All these holy persons were people who loved God. God perfected them, and they became His instruments for good. The same thing is true for you and for me. We must love God and allow His love to grow in our hearts. He wants you and me to be His instruments for good.

Here in n, people are not going to take this small community very seriously, because it is small and hard to find at the present time. Nevertheless, by God’s love and mercy, this community is going to take a big step, and become more independent and visible. People will be better able to find this community, and perhaps to find the Orthodox Faith in the process. Our responsibility is to love our Lord Jesus Christ, to befriend the persons He sends to us, and to be loving to them. The Lord will send yet more people to come to this community to encounter Christ’s love, and to experience healing, encouragement, hope, and joy. They will perceive Christ’s love, and will follow Christ in the same way, loving others and living in His love. Despite what is often mistakenly believed and done, the Orthodox Faith is not taught ; it is caught. Love is not taught ; it is caught. We want to be contagious with the love of Jesus Christ, so that people around us will sense this love, will be encouraged by this love, and will be attracted to it. Let us open our hearts with loving devotion to the Lord in order to receive Him, and allow Him to increase in us, so that we may glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In the Epistle to the Hebrews today, we heard about all the things that were suffered by so many people long before Christ came to us. They endured everything that they did suffer because they loved God. They trusted God. They were waiting for the fulfilment of His Promise of a Saviour. In due time, the Saviour did come. He fulfilled all their hopes, all their desires and all their concerns. Our Saviour began the new life in the Kingdom. In the Gospel reading today, we heard about the beginning of the call of the disciples, starting with Philip. It was Philip who found Nathaniel. This is what the Lord brought us into, along with Philip, Nathaniel, all the other apostles, and all the followers of Christ – the relationship of love with the living God.

Human beings have always had a difficult time accepting the depth and the extent of the love of God for us. Human beings have always fallen into temptations and resistance. So, in the course of many centuries, there has been one heresy after another, invented by people who could not understand and accept that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Instead, they tried to turn Jesus Christ into a “nice guy”, or a very interesting and great philosopher, or maybe even a prophet greater than John the Baptist. For them, perhaps they will even admit that He was the greatest prophet of all times, but they will not accept to say that He is the Son of God. That He is, in fact, the Son of God is difficult for some people to accept.

Such people say : “How could God do such a thing ? It is too much for me to accept”. The fact is, however, that God is God. As we are singing in our hymns all the time, God is God, and God is Love, and because of the way His love operates, God can do whatever He wants. During this last week, we were singing this very thing in the Great Canon of Saint Andrew. God does whatever He wants. This does not mean that God is impetuous or frivolous. God, the Lord, always does things for a purpose. Therefore, when it suits Him for the salvation and the good of human beings and the world, He overturns the usual order of nature. For instance, there is the miracle that occurred in Cana of Galilee (see John 2:1-11). When our Lord told the servants to fill up the giant vessels with water, and then to take some out and to give it to the master of the feast, it was found, upon being tasted, to be the very best wine. The Lord bypassed the years of the fermentation and maturing process, and He took the water straight from being water to being wine (with no grapes in between) because the people had a need. They had run out of wine, and the Lord knew that this wedding feast required wine. His most pure mother made certain that He was aware of the situation, and she knew that He could meet the need. Therefore, out of love, the Lord short-circuited nature (as it were). He does many other things like that, and not only in the Gospels. He still does things like that for human beings today, for those who love Him and who pray to Him. Even in our days (sometimes, but not very often), there are some people who have died and have been returned to life by the prayers of the faithful. I have heard of some cases in my own lifetime. It does sometimes still happen (although not every day), because the Lord knows what is necessary in people’s lives and in particular situations, for building up the faith of the people and reassuring them of His love.

Let us take as an example the famous stories about the priest-monk, Father Arseny (Streltsov). There are two books about him now translated into English from the Russian. This priest-monk spent more than twenty years in a prison-camp in Siberia. There is the story about him when he was sent for punishment in the middle of a particularly cold period of the winter, into an unheated, uninsulated storage shed, along with a young man, another prisoner. This was done in order to kill them because they were Christian believers, and because they were doing good. The young man was very afraid that he was going to die. Then he suddenly realised that he was not cold. He further realised that Father Arseny was shining with uncreated light. When the guards came to check on them more than a day later, they found that Father Arseny and the young man were just fine, well rested and warm (at minus fifty degrees Celsius !). It did not completely impress the prison authorities, so as to convert them. They only admitted that they could not understand it – some people are very stubborn. However, other people in the camp very much understood, and they came to Christ because of this. The Lord is with us, and He loves us. He cares about the small things and the big things of our lives. The Lord is with us in His love.

Today, we are celebrating the memory of the Seventh Ecumenical Council and what we call the “Triumph of Orthodoxy”. It is the triumph of the truth about Jesus Christ, who is the Truth. This commemoration is not only about the icons, themselves, but it is also primarily about Jesus Christ Himself. The icons are a gateway to Him ; and they are given to us by God, so that we can easily communicate with Christ. We like to call them our windows to heaven, and that is truly what they are. This is because of the truth about the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). This is what the Seventh Council is concerned with. Icons are an expression of the Love of God which became visible and tangible as the Only-begotten Son of the Father, in accordance with the will of the Father, took flesh through the Ever-Virgin Mary, the Mother of God and the Theotokos, in order that we might be saved. The Son took up into Himself all our sinfulness, all our brokenness, all our fallenness, all our rebellion, all our darkness, all our despair, all our depression, all our hopelessness. He took it all up into Himself. He cleaned it ; He repaired it, and He is still doing that for you and for me out of His love. This is what we are celebrating today : the triumph of the Love of God, and the truth about Him who is the Truth.

The Seventh Ecumenical Council was the last ecumenical council to solve such problems, and it was a long time ago, in 787. There have been other local councils since then that have solved smaller problems. Probably we need an ecumenical council nowadays in order to clean up some of the big messes that afflict us these days, although the Church cannot very well afford such a council (we do not have a rich emperor to pay the bills). I think that it will still be a little while yet before we will manage to have such a council. Nevertheless, the Church is carefully preparing for such a council ; and even in the preparation for this council, some problems are beginning to get cleaned up. Any council is concerned with cleaning up the messes that are created by our sins, by our limitations, and in particular, by our fears. These councils resolve the fears, straighten out the messes, and reassure the faithful, because they meet in the Grace of the Holy Spirit. The Grace of the Holy Spirit brings about the corrections that are necessary, and this Grace maintains the whole truth, only the truth about Him, who is the Truth, Jesus Christ, our Saviour, Lord and Redeemer.

Remembering this love, let us today pay attention to our Lord’s care for us. He sees us in the same way as He saw Nathaniel under the fig tree. He knows about our sorrows ; He knows about our depression ; He knows about our difficulties ; He knows about our sicknesses. He knows, and He cares about them. Let us run to Him through the intercessions of the Mother of God, and through the prayers of many saints, as we plead for His help. Let us allow Him to give that help to us, because He is the Hope of the hopeless, the Saviour of the bestormed, the Physician of the sick, the good Shepherd who cares for us, loves us, and is with us. Let us open our hearts more to Him, so that we may realise that He is truly with us. Let us allow Him to work more and more in and with us, so that we can work more in and with Him to His glory : the glory of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

All we who have been baptised and chrismated have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, although the gift of the Holy Spirit does not come to us in the way that it came to the holy Apostles on the day of Pentecost in the city of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, the gift of the Holy Spirit is given to us, and it is our responsibility to live in accordance with this gift of the Holy Spirit. Saint Seraphim of Sarov said that our main responsibility was to acquire the gift of the Holy Spirit. What did he mean by that ? He did not mean that it is something that we do not have. What he meant is that this gift is very often something that we do not let be alive and working in us.

Most North Americans, if they think about God at all, and if they are searching for God and trying to communicate with God, think that He is somewhere “out there”, far away and distant. This is one of the big difficulties of life in North America. Because people think that God is somewhere else, they ignore Him for the most part, and life is all divided up and broken up. Therefore, we have secular life, religious life, school life, work life and all sorts of little compartments into which people fit their lives. People then tend to have somewhat different personalities, depending on which environment they happen to be in at the time. It is no wonder that our North American society is in such great need of psychiatrists, psychologists, and all sorts of other psychological therapists, because life is broken. Life is divided. People really do not know who they are, and they do not know how to cope with everything. They think that it is nice that at least the Aboriginals of North America “have it all together”, and they do know that all things are one. However, for the most part even the Aboriginals have lost this correct awareness, although they once did know in the traditional way that everything was a unity and everything was interconnected. Many of them got poisoned by our way of going about things. Even though they pretend that they understand that everything is a unity, very many of them do not anymore live in accordance with real unity for the most part, because so many have become like us in the worst ways.

All the spiritual fathers tell us that we if we hope to find God, then we are going to find Him here in our hearts. If we, Orthodox Christians, are looking for God, then it is not outside that we have to look for Him, but rather, it is in the heart that we have to find Him. That is where the “Prayer of the Heart” comes from. However, strangely, many people try to practice this prayer, all the while keeping the mentality that God is “out there”. Still, trying to practice the Prayer of the Heart with the mentality that God is “out there” is quite a juggling act, and it does not necessarily work. Nevertheless, God will pour out His Grace upon a person, and He shows Himself to be here, now. We, Orthodox Christians, have inherited correctly what is the state of human beings and what is the nature of human beings : that we find God here, in our hearts. As a result of finding God here in our hearts, everything else can be understood to be in unity. Everything else finds its oneness in our lives because God is here.

Because God is here, now, it is possible for Orthodox Christians to keep everything in life together and connected. We can be one and the same person, whether we are working, whether we are in school, whether we are in church, whether we are on vacation or whether we are playing. Whatever we are doing, we can still be, more or less, the same person. Wherever we are and whatever we are doing, we are bringing Jesus Christ with us. He is with us, not beside us, but with us, in us. He is part of us. Because we are members of the Body of Christ, we are in Him. When we can live with this understanding properly, we can live our lives as God intended that we should live our lives, and we can be some sort of witness to people around us. People can see just by how an Orthodox Christian lives his or her life that there is something different (in a good way) about this way of living. They can come to desire to follow the same way, to be as we are, to have the same unity, the same joy, and the same all-encompassing belief.

It is because of this understanding of unity that Orthodox Christians have always been prepared to make the sign of the Cross on, and bless everything that they are doing in their life. They ask for the blessing of houses, cars, horses, birds, wells, workplaces and work. In the course of their daily lives, when they are cooking, they bless the ingredients of the things that are being cooked ; they bless the process of cooking ; they bless the eating of what has been cooked. They bless the beginning of a car-ride ; they bless the beginning of any sort of a journey with the sign of the Cross. Everything in the Orthodox way has the sign of the Cross applied to it. That is our inheritance.

If we really want to be Orthodox Christians who are faithful to this inheritance here in Canada, then it is very important for us that we follow this way. Let us remember how our parents and grandparents lived their lives, and let us recover it in our own lives – bringing God’s blessing on everything that we are and everything that we do, because God is with us. Jesus Christ is with us and in us. Because of our desire to serve, to be like Him, we will follow Him out of love for Him.

Brothers and sisters, we have Christ in our hearts and our lives because as we just sang : “As many as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ”. For more than 100 years, faithful Orthodox Christians have been worshipping God here in the Orthodox manner. They have been witnessing to this way of life. Because of their love and the witness of people in this Temple, many people have come to Christ. By the Grace of the all-holy Trinity, this community is being renewed, revived and enlivened. Make sure that Christ, Himself, is always in the centre and in the heart of this renewal and revival. Never let your awareness of Christ be other than that He is in the middle of everything that you are, and in the middle of everything that you are doing. In so doing, you will be a faithful Orthodox Christian. In being a faithful Orthodox Christian, you will be faithful to the inheritance that has been provided by the people of this Temple a century ago. In 1904, Saint Tikhon (who was then the bishop of North America), blessed and consecrated this holy Temple, and he blessed the faithful offering which the founders had built. This foundation provided the inheritance which is today our responsibility to perpetuate. Saint Tikhon, himself, went on later to become the Patriarch of Moscow ; he renewed the Patriarchate of Moscow, and he then suffered and died for his faithfulness in 1925 at the hands of the godless.

Most of us are not called to that, but we are still called to be faithful witnesses in the love of Jesus Christ. By God’s mercy and Grace, a special blessing has been given by our Metropolitan Herman to this community because of this particular fact of our history. Although the requested icon of Saint Tikhon has not yet arrived from Russia, it will eventually get here in Orthodox time. Nevertheless, n, the comptroller of The Orthodox Church of America, on behalf of Metropolitan Herman, has brought here a small piece of the body of Saint Tikhon to stay here in this Temple. Saint Tikhon has returned to this Temple which he consecrated 100 years ago. As you will in due course be able (with the icon) to kiss the holy relic of Saint Tikhon, himself, remember to ask for his prayers. Obviously, he has been praying all this time for the many whom he blessed in this community and also for the community which he put in order when he was here. Remember to pray to him and ask him to support you by his prayers, also.

Brothers and sisters, let us ask our Saviour to renew our hearts, and to refresh our hearts with His love so that we will be able faithfully with love and all devotion to worship Him today, together, on this great centennial anniversary celebration. In the same way and with the same love, day-by-day, always and everywhere, let us glorify the most Holy Trinity : the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

Glory to Jesus Christ.

The biggest problem that we have living here in North America is that, in its own way, this continent is a land of forgetfulness. It has come to be so, not because the Lord created it in this way ; but rather, it is so because of the abundance that our land produces, and the comfort we consequently find in all this abundance, and in all the consequent coziness. A professor I once had remarked frequently on our obsession with softness. Perhaps we might think that we, ourselves, do not have all that much comfort in our lives. However, we very likely have more than enough of the companion of comfort and coziness — distraction.

Living in such an environment, we are living in the midst of a mist, or worse, in the midst of a fog. Of course, being self-sufficient Canadians, we try to find our way in this fog all on our own. This particular fog is special, also, because while we are trying to find our way, we generally forget what we are looking for. This is one of the reasons that it is pastorally difficult for the bishop and the clergy to try to help our parishes and parishioners to “wake up”. You may well ask what I mean by the need to “wake up” ? I will try to explain now.

We all know that, in the history of our archdiocese particularly, we have gone through very many trials. Up to now, we have existed for only a little more than a century, but in this short time there have been many tests. We began with immigration from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, and those who immigrated were not well-treated by the government which imported them. They were sent to populate remote and difficult places, and they had little support. There, in the places where they settled, they characteristically began by building Temples to the Lord (even before building their own homes). There was plenty of prejudice also against these people who were so different from their predominantly British and West-European neighbours. During World War I, some were sent to internment camps because their passports said that they were Austrian citizens. The after-effects of the Bolshevik Revolution wrought havoc in the Church in Canada after this war, and those effects remain to this day. Although the hard-working people began to prosper, the diocese which ought to have supported them remained only in skeletal condition because of the many divisions that had arisen. Despite the best efforts of our holy Bishop Arseny and his successors, it was always very difficult to provide enough priests and deacons to lead, educate, form and nourish the faithful people. This difficulty remains to this day.

There were some times in the course of our history when the obstacles were so great that the diocese was nearly extinguished. Because of these trials, it seems that in many smaller places our self-sufficient people came to be content to try to manage on their own. Because of insufficient reinforcements and reminders about the essence of the Orthodox way of life, many people throughout our archdiocese fell into living for themselves, in imitation of the society in which they live. Living in this way can be described as going to sleep spiritually ; it can be described as forgetting “in the arms of morpheus”. This old expression can mean more than simply sleeping ; it can mean being comatose. When any pastor sees that this is how things are spiritually, it provokes a great compassionate concern.

By this present time, the Lord has accomplished a great deal in this archdiocese. There has been a pastoral renewal, and a renewal of relationships amongst the parishes and amongst the faithful believers in the archdiocese. Because of the serious work of many clergy and lay-persons, there has been a development of better administration and better communication. Nevertheless, the fog in which we have subsisted for many years has not yet lifted. There is still a great tendency to “sleep in”, to “take our rest”, to “get comfortable” in this world. This is the great danger of the self-indulgence which we are so much encouraged to embrace in our secularised society. When we do indulge ourselves, then we can come to understand that we have fallen into a typical worldly trap, a trap which is not at all new. Solomon addressed this at least twice,

How long will you slumber, O sluggard? When will you rise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep—so shall your poverty come on you like a prowler, and your need like an armed man (Proverbs 6:9-11 ; see Proverbs 24:33-34).

Although these words address physical laziness and its consequences, it is much worse when there is spiritual inertia. We have a term for this in the Orthodox Church : “accidie”. We do not often use this word nowadays, and I reckon that this is because most of us are so affected by it as to be unaware that it is our condition. The dictionaries usually describe the condition simply as “spiritual or mental sloth”, or “apathy”. It is not so simple. This English word “accidie” comes to us from the Greek word akedia. This word was imported into Latin with the same meaning, giving acedia. The words differ by one letter, but are pronounced the same. Accidie implies that the one suffering from it has fallen into a state of listlessness or torpor. As a result, the sufferer does not seem to care (apathy) or to be concerned about one’s position, condition or responsibilities. As a result of this state, the sufferer can become unable even to perform daily duties in life. The person forgets. It can, obviously, be mistaken for depression, but it is truly a common and very well-known spiritual condition. This is, in part, what I am referring to when I say that we forget what we are supposed to be doing ; we forget the priority of living as Christians ; we forget that the Lord loves us ; we even forget who we are supposed to be. A reader of Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings will recognise this experience in Frodo as he journeyed towards Mordor, and significantly also when he was poisoned by Shelob. When we fall into this, we may recognise that this forgetfulness is a symptom of the terrible poison that is accidie. It is a paralysing poison for which we have no antidote by ourselves.

In order to avoid the worst consequences of accidie, it is the crucial responsibility of anyone who has any understanding of the Gospel, of Christ, of the intercession of the Mother of God and of the saints, to be constantly calling on them all for help at all times. Indeed, we are not going to survive in our Christian life anywhere, anytime, unless we come to the so-called bottom, unless we come to the point of crisis, unless we come to the turning-point, to the point of encountering the fair-judgement of the Lord. Then, as indicated by the twelve-step programmes (which are geared to those who are addicted), we realise that we cannot get out of this paralysis, out of this inertia, out of this fog by ourselves or on our own. We need help. We need the help of the Lord, of the Mother of God, of the saints, of those who love us. We finally call out to the Lord for help. When we cry out to our Lord and Saviour for help, it comes. He sends it. He does help us. This is why it is so necessary that we, with His help, develop the habit and the mindfulness, and acquire the heart to do this every day, and not only once a day. It is necessary that we begin to ask for help as soon as we become conscious in the morning, and to keep asking for this help throughout the day. It used to be common that we would say something such as : “with God’s help I will do this or that”, or “God willing, I will go here or there”. It is time to recover such habits of thinking and speaking.

“Who am I ?” I am a person who has been baptised into Christ, who has put on Christ (see Galatians 3:27). Because I have “put on Christ”, the people I encounter every day (whether they are aware of it or not) are expecting something through me from Christ. They are expecting a sign of His love for them, a word of encouragement, a word of support, perhaps a word of correction. As far as it is possible, it is my responsibility to live in Christ in such a way that those I meet may see something of Him, may sense His presence in me. It is my responsibility to be transparent enough in His love that He will reveal Himself through me to others. I may not always be conscious of His acting in and through me, but it is my responsibility to co-operate with Him for the sake of these other persons who are, in one or another way, lonely, hungry, thirsty. They are hungry and thirsty for love, for hope, for some reasonable sense of direction and purpose in life. It is He who can and does provide all this.

The Apostle reminds us to put on the whole armour of God,

Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 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 in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints [...] (Ephesians 6:10-18).

He exhorts us to carry all this Gospel-equipment, and to use this Gospel-equipment. In effect, the Apostle is exhorting us to keep our prayer consciously alive, and our community in Christ alive, and to pay attention every day.

However, we forget. We forget that we have such resources. We forget to turn to the Mother of God, most particularly, for help. We live in an environment of forgetfulness about these essentials. Of course, also, since we are North Americans, we are lacking many of the resources more easily available to Orthodox Christians elsewhere. This is most particularly so in Canada. We are bereft of relics of saints and of wonder-working anything (or at least we think that this is so). Because we are living in such a cynical, secularised society, and because this environment is always eating at us, always eroding us, we tend not to be able to recognise the gifts when the Lord does give them. Indeed, in Canada there are wonder-working icons and relics, but we do not talk much about them, or do anything about them. We neglect the supports He gives us.

The secular, cynical, materialistic environment in which we live is always eating at us, and most of the time we are unaware of it. If I may personify metal, a piece of steel is unaware of the fact that it is rusting, and it does not notice the corrosion. This is how it can be for me, for us, in our lives. I also often take no notice of the fact that there is something being corroded by rust. This obliviousness has been shown up in many of the automobiles I have driven in my life. I often did not notice the rust until it began to bubble out and something was ready to fall off. The rust is very insidious in its quiet, subtle work. So it is with our lives and the work of the tempter. As we are surprised when a muffler or a fender suddenly might fall away from our car, so we can also wonder what happened when a big chunk of our interior life can suddenly disappear. Well, it happened because I was not paying attention. I did not apply the oil of God’s mercy and love, and then it fell off. Then I have the trouble of welding this lost portion back on. This is certainly something that I cannot do by myself. It has to be the Lord who does this work. This work of repair can be very difficult and painful, just as it is with the re-integration of a severed limb. The process of re-welding also requires repentance, the complete turning about of our hearts and lives, and we generally are not so very competent at that.

In this context, it is not for nothing that, in this week of our Archdiocesan Assembly, we have had some important feast-days. Such co-ordination was not by simple human planning and design. Rather, Divine Providence prepares well. The Lord organised this, and it is His gift to us. This is why our meetings have happened during this particular week in July.

For instance, the Lord gave us this week the example of the Prophet Elias, whose life and words repeatedly exhorted the wayward to repentance. Despite his doubts and fears, the Lord was always with him and guiding him and protecting him. The Lord also gave us this week the example of the repentant and bold Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary Magdalene. Using a red egg, she went so far as to proclaim and explain the Resurrection of Christ to the emperor. As did the Prophet Elias, so Saint Mary Magdalene served the Lord in and with her whole life. Now, today, it is the Feast of the wonder-working Pochaiv Icon of the Mother of God. This icon commemorates the miracle in the 17th century of the deliverance of the Pochaiv Dormition Monastery in Ukraine from the attacks by a Turkish army. The deliverance was not because of any supposed strength of the people there. It was the Mother of God herself who visibly defended the monastery. The army retreated. Some of the soldiers became Christians. During the same century, a very similar situation occurred at the Tikhvin Dormition Monastery in Russia. Because of the wonder-working Tikhvin Icon of the Mother of God, the Tikhvin monastery was spared from a Swedish invasion. The same protection was given later to the city of Novgorod, not so far away. The Mother of God herself was protecting the children of her Son. The Mother of God does not confine her activities and her protection only to monasteries in Russia, Ukraine and other Orthodox countries. She is involved in our lives here, in North America as well. Indeed, she is very much involved with and interested in our life here on this continent. Indeed, it was an icon of the Theotokos that Saint Herman used to stop both a tsunami and a forest-fire. Now, in Cicero, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, there is an icon of the Mother of God which has for a long time now been myrrh-streaming, and which also miraculously survived a very destructive fire. I saw this icon not long after that fire, which destroyed the whole Altar area and the iconostas — except for this icon alone, on which there was not even smoke-damage.

The Mother of God is trying to encourage us to do what we are supposed to be doing as Orthodox Christians : remembering who we are, remembering that we are the children of her Son. This means that we are not Orthodox Christians in name only. It means that we are people who know the Gospel, and who live it out in our daily lives. We are those who are strong in Christ, who is our true Strength. Some may recall the books and movies called Star Wars, and the rôle of “the force”. People still talk about this “force”. The principles behind the stories may not be called Christian, but there is a useful element of truth involved. It is that we must remember who we are, and who we are in Christ. If we do not put our trust in Christ, and if we do not constantly rely on Him, then we cannot be strong. None of us can be strong without constantly calling out to the Lord for help, without constantly turning to him, without constantly putting our trust in Him.

From where does the Mother of God receive the strength to do what she does ? How does she turn away armies ? How does she protect from invaders ?

Today, we sang these hymns :

"Those who pray before your holy icon, O Lady, are vouchsafed healing and receive the knowledge of the true faith, and they repel the attacks of the Hagarenes. Therefore, entreat remission of sins for us who fall down before you. Enlighten our hearts to thoughts of piety, and raise a prayer to your Son to save our souls".

"Your icon of Pochaiv, O Theotokos, has become a source of healing and the confirmation of the Orthodox Faith. Therefore, deliver us who have recourse to you from calamity and temptation. Preserve your monastery unharmed. Confirm Orthodoxy in the surrounding lands, and forgive the sins of those who pray to you ; for you can do as you will".

"O victorious Leader of Triumphant Hosts, we, your servants, delivered from evil, sing our grateful thanks to you, O Theotokos. As you possess invincible might, set us free from every calamity, so that we may sing, 'Rejoice, O Unwedded Bride'".

The Mother of God is the leader of glorious, triumphant hosts, of hosts of angels. From where does her strength come ? It comes from her perpetual “Yes” to her Son. She knows Him, and she knows how to ask Him for what is needed in complete accordance with His Love, with His Will.

When we listen to these reminders of the Mother of God to turn to her Son, we are able to have such strength. We can have such strength when we turn to her for her support and for her protection. We can, then, have the strength of those who have served in this country, such as the holy bishops Tikhon and Arseny. Through her intercessions, the Lord will give us the Grace to accomplish His will in wonderful ways, just as He did with them, and just as He did with other holy persons to whom we do not yet pay attention (because our eyes are not open enough to see clearly).

When we have been talking about our ancestors, we have been recognising that they understood these things. They arrived here with such a formation in their lives. They continued to live in this way, and they passed this way on to their children as well as they could. Let us remember this. Let not any one of us think that we who are newcomers are not, as well, the spiritual descendants of these Christ-loving and brave people, who came here more than a century ago and planted firmly and permanently the Cross of Christ. When we are at worship, we constantly remember the founders and benefactors of our Temples. These founders and benefactors are the spiritual ancestors of every one of us. They are our spiritual parents and grand-parents. In and through them, our Saviour has established His Church in this land. We are either blood-descendants of these founders, or we are the spiritual descendants who have been made a living part of this vineyard. We pray for them, those who are our ancestors, and they pray for us, who are their spiritual descendants. This is the inclusivity of the Orthodox Church, of the Body of Christ.

We are standing here today, doing what the Lord has created us to do. We are worshipping Him, and we are expressing our love to Him, and we are trying to be faithful to Him. Being who He has created us to be, standing here, glorifying Him and offering our lives to Him, let us ask the Lord to enable us to remember who we are ; to remember that, today and tomorrow and after tomorrow, we are His children. Let us ask Him to help us to remember that our focus and our home is at the Holy Table. This is our home : this Table. This Offering which we are making today, and yesterday, and the day before ; this Offering which we will be making day after day afterwards : this Offering is our home ; it is our place ; it is where we want to be ; it is where we must be. Our ancestors knew this well.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The Gospel and Epistle today have to do with the more difficult side of Christian life. Particularly in the Apostle’s case, I, myself, would have great difficulty in doing what he had to do, which was to impose some discipline and order so as to correct people. Because they were particularly self-willed and rebellious, he had to correct them somewhat sharply, and that is why he is apologising at length in case he might hurt their feelings too much. Nevertheless, what had to be said, had to be said. There is always the temptation in Christian living to fall into ... well, there is always the temptation to fall into temptation. We all do that in one way or another, and to a greater or lesser extent. There is also the temptation in this whole environment to puff ourselves up and to think that we are something, and to try to make something of ourselves. This has always been a part of human fallen society, but it is especially the character of western societies, and of North America in particular.

The way North American society forms us is the opposite of what the Christian life is supposed to be about. Whereas in Christian life, we are supposed to be learning how, like Christ, to love selflessly, western society teaches us to love ourselves above everything. It teaches us always to have strings attached. By this, I mean that there are conditions. As people popularly say : “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine”. There are many sayings of that sort. If we do something for someone else, we only do something good for someone else if they are going to do something good back to us. “Do not do good for someone else if there is nothing in it for you”. That is the way Canadian society has been tending to move for a long time now. Indeed, I have heard throughout my whole life : “What is in it for me ?” If I am going to do something, or refrain from doing something, then what advantage is it to me ? What advantage is it to me if I do something good for someone else ? “We have to look after number one (i.e. me)”. These are all secular, selfish and egocentric attitudes that completely clash with the Gospel.

On the other hand, the teaching of Christ, the example of Christ, is that we do good because Christ is good ; we love, because Christ is love. Furthermore, we do not expect anything back. If we get nothing back but abuse, we still give love and we do good to the others. We do what is the right thing, in accordance with the standard of Christ. That standard is — whether we pay attention or not — one of the reasons the Beatitudes come to us every Sunday (and even on weekdays if we offer the Divine Liturgy). The Beatitudes are with us all the time. If we were in a monastery (as I was a couple of weeks ago in Romania), every single solitary day there is the Divine Liturgy. Every single solitary day, they are hearing those Beatitudes. The Beatitudes come to us because our Saviour is telling us in them about how to love even if people do not love us in return. The Beatitudes show us how to behave in accordance with His will, even if people do go so far as to abuse us.

In the context of this subject, I always seem to have to talk about Saint Juvenaly, our first priest-martyr. He was not the first martyr in North America, but he was the first priest-martyr in North America (in Alaska), near the end of the 18th century, just before the turn of the 19th century. Saint Juvenaly had been one of those who had been zealously active in Alaska, doing missionary work. Thus it was that he went to western Alaska where the Yup’iks live. As he was approaching them on his boat (I am told by the actual descendants of those people), he was misunderstood in two ways. When he was approaching, the fact that he was wearing his gold Cross appeared to be a threat to the shaman of the area, and to their faith, because it seemed to be some sort of religious invasion. Thus, they were going to try to stop him. It was a sort of religious invasion, but it was not what they thought it was. He was not a foreign shaman trying to take over. Nevertheless, as Father Juvenaly was nearing the shore on this boat, they started to shoot arrows at him. The descendants of these Yup’ik people say to this day that their ancestors thought that he must have been “nuts” (a sort of a crazy man), because he was waving his hand. Mistakenly, they thought this hand-waving was to brush away those arrows as though they were mosquitoes or some other insect. What they did not understand was that Saint Juvenaly was doing exactly what the Gospel teaches, and what our Saviour directs us to do under those circumstances. When the arrows started to come at him, he knew what was going to happen and what his end would be. Therefore, he began with his hand to make the Sign of the Cross upon them, upon the people who were killing him. That is exactly what happened. The descendants of those people now understand. They were converted by someone else afterwards ; and now, for almost 200 years these descendants have been faithful Orthodox Christians living in that same area – very faithful and strong Orthodox Christians. In addition, they have Saint Juvenaly in heaven to pray for them. He is their own martyr at their own making, as it were, and he continues to protect them until this day.

A considerable amount of the Christian life is backwards according to the standards and ways of the world. Regardless, it is important for us, despite what the world thinks of us, to persevere in what seems to be so strange to the world. This is because it is only in this way that there is life-giving freedom and true, real love, substantial love, eternal love. It is love without borders : love without conditions. It is just plain life-giving love in Jesus Christ.

In the Gospel today, the Saviour is talking about the Kingdom of Heaven : the banquet in the Kingdom of Heaven, and what happens when people do not take seriously their invitation from Him to this banquet. As we heard, there were people who were frivolous about the invitation. They did not take it seriously, and they did not bother to come. In some cases, they even killed the messenger. Now this parable is exactly directed at the people of Christ – the Jewish people of those days – because they had been given a responsibility in God. This responsibility was rooted in the fact that long ago God had revealed Himself to the ancestors of the Jews that He is love. Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jakob, and many others besides them and after them had a personal experience of God and of His personal love for them. It was to be their work and responsibility as a people to show to all their neighbours what joy and hope there is in this loving relationship with God. They were expected by the Lord to be a witness to the world as a nation, as a people. Just as our Saviour speaks about our need to be yeast and salt, so was it the responsibility of the Jewish people, the chosen people of God, to give a good and lively example to everyone else. However, since we human beings so frequently tend to take the easy way, and so frequently do nothing, even this is a visible sign of God’s love for us, because of the unimaginable extent of His patience. Going their own way, they decided instead that because they were the chosen people, they were therefore the exclusive people.

Instead of being a light to everyone else and revealing the truth about the one true God and about His love for us, they became a closed and exclusive club, as it were. This, of course, is contrary to what God had sent them to do. Therefore, when our Saviour speaks about sending out into the highways and the byways and bringing in anyone – anyone at all – to fill up His banquet hall, this is exactly what He was addressing. He was letting us know about what would come : the mission to Gentiles — to us. He was preparing us for the mission to the people who would hear the voice of Christ and respond. They would hear His voice and say “yes”. They would hear His call, and come to His banquet. They would hear His call, and even more importantly, they would try to do His will. It would now no longer be understood to be an exclusive call. Indeed, this call cannot at all be interpreted as an exclusive call. With their hearts responding readily, large numbers of Jewish people have, from the very beginning, heard the call of Christ and come to Him, and entered into His banquet-hall. The whole idea of having an exclusive nation was broken with the coming of Jesus Christ, and the development of the Christian mission to us, the Gentiles.

Sometimes, Orthodox people still fall into the temptation about this idea of exclusivity. It is very important for us, especially here in North America (where we are still relatively free of this), to be diligent about keeping out the idea of exclusivity. This is important because as always, if I think that I merit something (regardless of what my ministry or call is), if I dare to think that it is my own ministry, my own call, my own privilege, my own anything, then our Saviour is very quick to respond, as it were : “All right, you can think like that if you insist, but I will find someone else who is ready to listen to Me and to do My will”. He does do just this. Therefore, even in our ministries in Christ, even with our particular gifts that Christ gives to us in living our Christian life, none of us had better dare to think that it is “mine” exclusively and alone. It is so sadly ironic how we human beings can be. It seems that we never grow up. It seems that we very much tend to stay emotionally and even spiritually for the most part at the age of two. At that age, of course, everything is “mine”. It belongs to no-one else. It is “mine”. We seem to be frozen in this condition. It is amazing. We tell ourselves that we have grown out of it, but if we were to look at ourselves honestly, that attitude of “mine” is still there. We can recall the story of The Lord of the Rings, with Smeagol-Gollum and his “Precious” and his all-consuming, obsessive fascination with the precious ring. We seem rather often to tend to be too condescendingly dismissive of the poor benighted chap. Even in flash-back recollections of how his torture began, not many readers or viewers seem to grasp the full import of the death-dealing process and the depth of distortion that occurred in him once he became the slave of the ring and of the evil associated with it. Not many see how Gollum, himself, became a lie.

When we come to the point of considering the details about our lives, about the seasons in our lives, about the portions of our lives, in what way are we so different from Gollum or from a two-year-old ? With His love, Christ breaks us out of this possessiveness, this obsessive, exclusive possessiveness. It is important that we learn how to grow up, and to break out of any ideas at all – in any part of our life – about exclusivity. Orthodox Christian faith, which is life in the love of Jesus Christ, is inclusive, not exclusive. Yes, it is true, there are some regulations, and there are some boundaries, but these are not for the sake of exclusivity. Rather, they are for the sake of good order. Our Lord Jesus Christ on His Cross, with His arms outstretched, was forgiving all those who were killing Him. With His arms outstretched, He was welcoming you and me into His Kingdom, along with the Repentant Thief. Our Saviour is inviting all peoples into His Kingdom. Christ is the Light and Life of the world. It is our responsibility as Orthodox Christians to be, in and with Christ Himself, a light shining in the darkness, a light to the Gentiles, a light to the nations, a light to the world, a light of Jesus Christ’s love. It is our responsibility to be bringing people into the Body of Christ. It is our responsibility – each one of us – with the net of the love of Jesus Christ, to catch human beings with His love, to bring them into His light, to bring them into His love, to unite them to His Body, and to bring them to this Banquet-Table in which we are about to participate.

It is our responsibility to use the talents and gifts that God has given to each one of us, gifts of love, compassion and mercy, to bring His love, His life, to the people around us : to the person that God is sending to us everyday, and perhaps especially to beggars on the street. It is our responsibility compassionately to bring His love to those He sends, with the hope and the prayer that they will seek His love and ask to come and see. It is not for us ever to be bashing people over the head with the Gospel as some people seem to do. When we turn on the radio or the television, we very frequently see one or another person doing just this : bashing other people over the head with the Gospel, and preaching to them about things that do not yet make any sense to them, because they probably do not yet know Who Jesus Christ truly is. It is indeed odd. People are ready to quote long passages of the Scriptures to people who have never read the Bible, and yet they expect such persons to understand what all this means.

What does the Gospel mean ? No-one can know what it means until after having been introduced to it. Nowadays, very many persons have no exposure at all to the Bible, quite unlike the environment of my own youth (in Alberta in the 1950s), when most children already knew very well Who is Christ, and already knew many scriptural passages by heart. Indeed, most people in those days regularly went to church services. How did and do children get introduced at an early age to the Gospel ? They were introduced in the first place by the love of human beings, by the witness of the love of human beings who knew and loved Christ personally. It is not different with adults. They, too, must be introduced. They will often ask us us : “What is this love ; what is this hope ; what is this joy that you have ? How can you manage to live your life in the midst of all this pain and sorrow with such joy and such hope, when it seems that no-one else can do it ?” Such a moment is precisely when we would say : “Come and see”. They would come ; and as there are in this parish, there would be some people waiting to talk about their love for Christ, and for the Gospel. When they speak, they will not start talking about this or that prophesy, or about who is this or that prophet. They will, out of love, and as a loving reflex, talk about Who God is to us. Newcomers have to be shown, little by little, for instance as in Genesis 1 (also called 1 Moses 1), how God created everything. We have to begin at the beginning with the ABCs, because we in North America are really very much like those who lived in the early times of the Christian faith, times in which no-one knew anything. Now, we can again say with some certitude that no-one knows anything about the Gospel. We can very safely assume that no-one knows anything about the Orthodox Christian way, either. We have to start from zero, and before anything else, show them that God loves them.

We also have to try in some fashion to fit in elements of the Twelve-Step Programme in which so many people are finding some sort of consolation in their difficulties in life. It is a good introduction to Christ and to the Christian way to give people some form of the Twelve-Step Programme to begin with. This is because one of the first things that a person has to do in the Twelve-Step Programme is to admit that whatever one is addicted to (and people can be addicted to very many and surprising things), whatever it is, one cannot get out of the addiction by oneself alone. They say that we need a “higher power”, but we know that this means God. We need God’s help. We can help them to realise that they are truly in need of God’s help to get through life, to get out of whatever holes they have gotten into.

When we are beginning to introduce people to Christ and the Church, we first teach them about Genesis, just as was done in apostolic times. In so doing, we teach them about the evidence of God’s love in Genesis, and then we continue, following this theme of God’s love, in Exodus. Once we have talked about Genesis and Exodus, we will have hope that they can begin to understand something about everything else. We really have to begin with the beginning. We certainly still speak about Jesus Christ, but we have to talk about Him in His full context. We cannot begin simply by reading the entire Gospel according to Matthew, for instance. If we read the Gospel according to Matthew to someone, the Gospel according to Matthew is full and overflowing with references to the Old Testament (also called the Old Covenant). Matthew cannot be understood properly without understand also the references to the Old Testament. Therefore, if we would begin with Matthew, then we will be required at the same time and immediately to make the necessary connections with the Law, the Prophets, and the Wisdom writings which we find referred to in this Gospel. Perhaps Matthew is in fact a good catechetical tool to begin with, because we begin with the fulfilment and the foreshadowing found in the Old Testament. However we may begin this introduction, it is the Lord Who is guiding it all in and through us.

Witnessing really involves how I, as a Christian, treat other human beings. How do I behave in Christ ? Do I bring Christ, His love, His hope with me when I am shopping at my grocer’s ? When I am standing in a very long line and being impatient because it is hot and people are being grumpy, do I bring Christ with me then ? Do I, as a bank teller, bring Christ with me when I am encountering someone who is really nasty ? Bank tellers seem to receive the worst of this sort of behaviour. This is because when it comes to people and money, well, people seem to become angry and impatient and aggressive very quickly. This is surely why banks offer so many machines now. People can be very nasty about their money and any small mistakes — a penny here and a penny there. On the other hand, it may be that just because they are feeling grumpy, or they have had a fight with someone that day, they take it out on the nearest bank-teller or clerk in a store. When such people are doing that sort of thing to me, do I show them Christ’s patient love in response, or do I tell them that their mother is a hamster ? Which way is it ? What sort of response do I give ? If I say to them that their mother is a hamster, I am then behaving just as everyone else in the world would. However, if I am patient and I do not answer back with the same ill-treatment, but instead if I have some sort of real peace within myself, then while I may be suffering this abuse, they will not take it out on the next person. Two and two sometimes add up to four. If I go so far as to pray for such an irate person, perhaps it may help that person to make two and two add up to four faster. Indeed, we may well understand that we meet such wounded and angry people every day.

Our Saviour invites us to His banquet. As we participate in this banquet, He gives us a responsibility to become co-workers with Him : co-workers with Him in His field ; co-workers in building His buildings ; co-workers in strengthening the members of His Body, in grafting on members to His Body. Let us be the good respondents to His invitations, those who are (because of love) eager and willing to work together with Him in His Kingdom, to eat together with Him in His Kingdom. Let us, in our co-working, glorify our Saviour in every part of our lives, every day of our lives, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The readings of today are those of the Altar Feast of this Holy Temple. This feast-day is the Dedication of the Temple of the Holy Resurrection in Jerusalem, which took place originally just before the first time the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross was served there in the fourth century. This feast-day is usually offered on 13 September ; but we are marking it today, Sunday, when the most people can be present to mark this day, and this very significant anniversary.

When the Apostle speaks about our being like members of a building, and that the Builder is God, it is important for us to remember that it is the same Apostle who talked to us about being members of the Body of Christ. In both cases, the same principle applies in our Christian living. If a building is not properly built, if the stones or the wood that constitute the building are not properly put into place and each part is not doing its job, the building can very easily fall down (especially if there should be any sort of stress, such as an earthquake or windstorm). However, if a building is properly constructed, it cannot easily be shaken down by an earthquake. Vancouver has many buildings constructed in modern times according to the modern disciplines of physics and architecture that are built for this exact purpose. So then why do we now hear about various buildings falling down here, and in other parts of Canada ?

It is not only because of our descent more and more into crime and corruption, which causes the production of low-quality structures that unexpectedly collapse. It is also because are making more and more laws to try to protect ourselves from each other. The more we make such laws, the more complex every operation becomes, and more opportunities then can be found for the unscrupulous to circumvent the laws and regulations. There is a great loss of honour and respect for ourselves and for the other as we become obsessed with making money and acquiring power. The next consequence of this selfish attitude is that we can have no concern for the health and welfare of those who live in, work in, and use these structures. The laws that we are making now in great number were not necessary before ; but even so, it does not seem to matter how many laws we make. These laws of protection do not work because we in Canada, in general, are forgetting all about Jesus Christ. Especially since the 1960s, people have been more and more forgetting (apparently often quite deliberately) about Jesus Christ. They have been reducing Him to some sort of philosophical idea (at the very best). They want to reduce Jesus Christ to something or someone that they can control, and as a result, they lose Him altogether. Jesus Christ is not some sort of philosophical idea. He is not some sort of system. Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and no-one can control God.

On the other hand, there is a strong tendency nowadays to misunderstand completely our relationship with Jesus Christ, and to forget that He is the Love of God incarnate – the Love of God who has taken flesh for us. Jesus Christ is the One whom God the Father sent. He is His Only-begotten Son. Because God so much loves the world that He wants us to be saved, He sent His Only-begotten Son (see John 3:16 ff). He allowed us to abuse Him, and to kill Him so that His Son could rise victorious over sin and death, and finally break down the barriers between us and the Lord, that we, human beings had established. We humans seem to want to blame God for all the things that are wrong in the world. We habitually blame God for all the terrible things that are happening. In fact, I hear this sort of thing said rather too frequently. It is not at all the case that the Lord is to blame for the mess. These horrible things that are happening on earth are our fault. Just last week, I was asked why God is allowing all these horrible hurricanes and typhoons to happen and to cause so much destruction. It is not that God wants all these hurricanes, horrible storms and earthquakes to be afflicting us. Rather, it is because we human beings as a race are so stubborn, so rebellious, so rejecting of Him. The fact is that we are so sunk in our selfishness and our criminal activities in the world that the weather is deteriorating very rapidly, and the condition of the earth, itself, is deteriorating rapidly.

If we Christians, especially we Orthodox Christians, would remember to pray, and be willing actually to pray, then things could be better. For instance, just recently Hurricane Yvonne was supposed to cause horrible destruction on Jamaica. It did cause much destruction, but the main part of the hurricane missed the main part of Jamaica and went to the west. Of course, everyone was surprised at this last minute change. Why did that happen ? The people of Jamaica have nothing ; they have no resources, and they are poorer than Russians or Romanians. They are very, very poor. They have nothing, except prayer. It was nice that they said this on the news, because the news broadcasts (especially Canadian news) usually erase that element. However, God is merciful, so the news reports said that the Jamaicans could only pray. Even the government said that there was nothing left to do but to pray. The people of Jamaica did pray, and I believe that this is why the hurricane moved and did not go straight over Jamaica as the meteorologists were predicting that it would do. The people prayed and trusted God to save them, and they are not even Orthodox Christians (see Acts 10).

We Orthodox Christians have a very great responsibility to pray, and to take our Saviour, Jesus Christ, very seriously. In a similar way, people would like to say that communism was overthrown because the American government was very clever in sowing the seeds of discontent, desire for material goods, and that there was American manipulation behind the scenes. The fact is, however, that these activities were not accomplishing anything. The American and western European interference in Russia made things much worse, in general. Communism went down for only one reason, which is very much neglected in people’s consciousness. In the first place, communism was overthrown because of the many millions of martyrs that Russia has had in the last century. In the second place, very many faithful people continued to pray to God to save them. It is because of their prayers, and because of the blood and the prayers of the martyrs that the whole system began to change.

There are many prophecies about Russia and its future contribution to the world. Orthodox prophets predict that Russia will be the source of future peace and growth of Christianity in the world. If it is going to be so, it will be because people were faithful to Jesus Christ throughout the course of the horrible suffering in the last century. It will also be because, in Russia and in other countries, people are still being faithful, and they are still depending on Jesus Christ. The faithful people are continuing to trust our Lord Jesus Christ for their salvation. Our Saviour is answering their prayers. We, Orthodox Christians in North America, have to remember our responsibility and to act on it. We are called to witness for Jesus Christ. We are called to witness for Him who is the Truth, plain and simple. He is the Truth. Truth is not some sort of philosophical idea (contrary to what many Canadians think). There is only one Truth, not many truths. Jesus Christ is the one and the only Truth. We Orthodox Christians understand that, and we live in accordance with that. It is our responsibility to show everyone else around us how it is that Jesus Christ brings joy to our hearts and our lives in the midst of all sorts of difficulties, sorrow and pain. He brings joy ; He brings hope ; He brings power to our lives. He brings a sense of direction. He opens doors in front of us. Things that seem to be impossible do happen.

Just a short while ago, I had the blessing to have lunch with a man who was told by the doctors two years ago that he had just one week to live. However, this man and his family are believers, and they prayed. Even though he is supposed to be dead, he is not. It is not God’s time for him to depart. This man is not taking it lying down either – he is building his house even though he is not supposed to be able to do any of that. This is because of the love of Jesus Christ. Perhaps in due course he will die, as it happens to everyone sooner or later. However, it will happen in God’s time and it will happen when this man will have testified enough to the love of Jesus Christ and to the hope that Jesus Christ brings. The Lord brings much hope to this man and to his family. He is not the only one, but he is the most recent example that I can mention to you. God is exceedingly merciful to us, and it is important for us Orthodox Christians to trust in His mercy. It is important for us to turn to Him and to turn to the Mother of God who is always protecting us. It is important to run to them in hope, and to pray fervently for those things that we need, so that we may glorify Jesus Christ. Our Saviour will give us what we need in accordance with His will ; and in doing that, He increases our confidence and our joy in Him.

It is our responsibility to share our hope and our love with our friends, neighbours and the persons that Jesus Christ sends to us day-by-day. It is important for us to share this love. We do not have to talk all the time, as do the television and radio evangelists. In North America, words are so cheap. In North America, it seems not to matter what anyone says ; people do not find it convincing. In North America, you have to do the love of Jesus Christ to other people. In this community, you are celebrating eighty years of Christian witness. This parish was the first Orthodox community to be established in Vancouver ; and throughout the years, you have drawn many people into the Body of Christ because of the loving hospitality you have shown to them. I can tell you that I am one of them. I experienced this love and this care for me amongst you thirty years ago when I first came here as a student. Because of this love, many people have come into the Body of Christ through this community. It is important for each one to pay attention to how well you take care of each other ; how well you support each other, nurture each other, and encourage each other in being faithful to Jesus Christ. It is important for you to go in the right and life-giving path, living in accordance with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you do these things, anyone coming into this community who is suffering from the terrible pains of life in this world, will feel the love, concern and care in Jesus Christ that you have for each other. They will be drawn to this community by your love, and by the doing (not just the talking) of your love. It is important to do the things that show that you love each other : you telephone each other and ask how you are ; you find out if someone is ill and you take care of that person ; you find out if someone is out of work, and you help that person to find work in one way or another. If the Lord gives it to us, it is the responsibility of each one of us to help and nurture the other person.

There are many amongst you, who have arrived recently from Russia or Russian-speaking lands, or from other Orthodox countries abroad. Between these Orthodox countries and Canada there are similarities and dissimilarities. I really hope that you would do your best, if possible, to avoid imitating the typically Canadian habit of standing in the back of the Temple and as far back as possible (and even outside the Temple). Everywhere I go in Russia, Ukraine and Romania, the faithful people are not hiding in the back. They are coming near to the front. Canadians avoid being in the front because they still remember sitting under the nose of the teacher in school and being afraid that the teacher might ask a question. No-one wants to be the first to answer a question in school because of fear of giving the wrong answer. However, here in the Temple of the Lord, we are not in school. I do not usually ask questions during a homily, but if someone were to give a wrong answer, I would not make fun of the person (or bite). What matters is that we are here in the Temple of the Lord. Throughout two millennnia, Orthodox Christians everywhere have always tried to come as close to the Holy Table as possible. That is why when you go to a Temple in Russia, Ukraine, Romania and other countries, you will find that people are all crowded up at the front. They want to be as close to the Grace of God as possible. There is Grace pouring from the Holy Table, from the Altar of the Lord, and they want to be near. That is why, when I am giving Holy Communion, I always want to stand in the Royal Doors (which is the old, historic way) in order to allow the people to come as close as possible to the Holy Table when they are receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. It is normal for you to come and be near, but it is not so normal to be crammed in the back like sardines. It is nicer to be up front where the windows are open and you can breathe. Please remember your heritage. Do not be afraid to come near to the Lord. The Lord loves you. He is waiting to give you His Gifts and His Grace. Do not be afraid to come close to the Lord and be near Him. You will receive His love, His nurturing care and His Grace (and you will not be bitten). I remember very vividly that, in Constantinople, in Greece and Egypt, the faithful are very comfortably moving near, coming up to the icons, touching them and kissing them all the time. If you get caught in the traffic of liturgical movement, you should not worry but just step out of the way, and then return to you place again. This is the living nature of our liturgical assemblies ; this is why we do not usually have much furniture in our Temples, and this is why all Orthodox cultures have this spaciousness in their Temples. Orthodox worship does not entail our being a spectator or part of a sedentary audience ; but rather, living, active, moving participation. Our worship is truly organic.

We are co-workers with the Lord, and this is expressed in our worship. Everything in our worship, everything in our life is focussed on our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ. Our worship and our whole life are testifying, along with the Apostle Peter : “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”. We understand that if we are doing anything good, if we are building anything, then we are doing it in, with, and for our Saviour. In this case, a beautiful community has been established, which worships in a beautifully appointed Temple. This was possible only because the faithful people here have done everything in, for, and with our Saviour. Therefore, it is and has been because of love. It is because of Christ’s love, love beyond expressing, that we can confess, along with the Apostle Peter, Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of the living God. It is because of this love that we can have faith, which also means confidence and trust in our Lord Jesus Christ. It is because of this faith rooted in true love that our Saviour might say to us, as He did to the Apostle Peter, “on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it”. Our building (which really means this community) will resist all spiritual storms and spiritual attacks as long as it is firmly and resolutely founded in Christ, and only Christ.

Let us, carried by the prayers and love of all those who have gone before us, offer ourselves whole-heartedly to our Saviour today, tomorrow and always. Let us offer our single-minded co-operation to our Lord. Let us ask our Saviour to refresh us by the Holy Spirit, so that our whole lives will proclaim every day the glory of the Most Holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In today’s Gospel, when our Saviour was surrounded with people, one woman who had had a hemorrhage that had lasted for many years, and who could find no cure, was so desperate that she sneaked up behind Him, and touched just the hem of His garment. Immediately she was healed. Then our Saviour said : “‘Who touched me ?’” The Apostles answered (to paraphrase) : "Lord, how can You say that ? There is a big crowd around You, and everyone is pushing against You. What do You mean ?"

There is touching, and then there is touching. In this case, our Lord knew very well the faith of the woman who had touched Him. She had strong hope that if she were able just to touch Him, and not disturb Him at all, God would have mercy on her, and heal her. That is exactly what happened. Because of her faith, she was healed by touching the hem of His garment. Every time I hear this passage from the Gospel, it reminds me of the times that I have had the blessing to visit Ukraine. During this past year, I had the opportunity to spend two weeks in Romania for the first time. When you are in these countries in particular, it is very much like what we just heard and saw in today’s Gospel reading. Our Saviour is surrounded by people who are pressing close to Him. Why are they pressing close to Him ? They are trying to get as near as possible to Him in order to receive some sort of blessing. They want to be close to our Saviour, partly because of love, and partly because they want to receive Grace from the Lord God. This woman, in particular, wants healing, and she receives it. If a bishop is going anywhere in Ukraine or in Romania (especially at the end of church services), he becomes surrounded by people. He then has to touch their heads, and they are anxious to touch his vestments in order to take a blessing from the Lord God.

There is a monastery in the village of Putna (in the north of Romania), and the feast-day of this monastery is the Dormition of the Mother of God. I especially remember that on the Feast of the Dormition, there were about 10,000 people there, and three bishops serving (it was out-of-doors, on a special stage). When the bishops left the Altar, it was almost impossible for us bishops to move because the people surrounded us. They were asking for blessings right, left, and centre. It was a Grace-filled moment. For me, in particular, in such moments, it is possible to feel drained because of such a press of people, and because so many people are asking for so much all at once. It is more than a human being can give. This situation forces me, the bishop, to rely on God simply to pass the Grace through me to them as I touch them, and give them the blessings that they are asking for. As a result of that, such an experience is no longer wearying, tiring, and dragging. Instead, it becomes life-giving, and renewing to me. While the bishop is allowing God’s Grace to pass through him to the people, the Lord’s Grace is renewing him ; and the faith of the people is renewing him. As the bishop is giving to the people from God, the people are giving back to him their love, and their faith in Jesus Christ.

This is the way it is in the Body of Christ. The bishop or the priest may give God’s Grace to the people, but the people’s love for Jesus Christ comes back to the priest or the bishop, and renews his strength at the same time. We are all together members of the Body of Christ. In Christ, we are like the building about which the Apostle Paul is writing in the Epistle today. We are all together supporting and strengthening each other, no matter what is our function in the Body of Christ. We all need each other. We all support each other. We all strengthen each other. We pray for each other. We nurture each other. We encourage each other in the love of Jesus Christ.

Today, our Lord resurrects the daughter of Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue. Everyone knew that the girl was dead. However, our Saviour had more things to show them. People think that they know everything, but they do not. They think that we are limited by a normal, average way of life, and when people die – that is it. There are two reasons why our Saviour did what He did. In raising the little girl from the dead, our Saviour reveals that He, Himself, is the Lord of the living, and not of the dead, and that He is the Giver of life (see Matthew 22:32). However, this does not mean that when anyone dies, the Lord abandons him/her. On the contrary, when people die, this is not the moment of eternal death or ceasing to be. Rather, after death we live in a different manner. Our Lord shows us Who He is. He shows us that His love for us is bringing this same life, and this same resurrection from the dead in the future as well as in the present. In her rising from the dead, He shows us what was coming with His own rising from the dead.

Our Saviour is also assuring you and me that, in our love for Him, we can have confidence that, as He has promised us, the resurrection from the dead really will happen. We can have confidence that it really will happen. If we love Jesus Christ, and if we are alive in Jesus Christ, then His Resurrection will be to eternal life for us. That is our hope for ourselves, and it is our hope for everyone we love. Because of the love of Jesus Christ, the Resurrection and life eternal in Him are, in His love, possible.

Our Lord is calling you and me to live in love with Him. This means that as much as possible, we should be trying to live a life of purity and of cleanness. There are no human beings who do not sin ; but, in confession and Holy Communion, we have the way to healing and cleansing from sin. Our Lord gives us the possibility to renew our baptism in confession and in Holy Communion. If we slip, we can be healed, and cleansed from the dirt of sin. We can be renewed in confessing our sins, and in receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. This enables us to do better. The way of the Orthodox Christian, the way of the Gospel, the way of Jesus Christ is not the way of the world. It is not the way of secular Canada. People very often make fun of those who try to do what is right, who try to live in accordance with what is right, and who try to follow the way of our Lord Jesus Christ. Despite the mocking, let us persevere in the love of Jesus Christ. Let us keep on doing and being what is right. With God’s help, let us not worry if people make fun of us or if they say negative things about us. Let us pray, saying : “Lord have mercy” for those who do not like us, and for those who are abusing us (as in the last phrases of the Beatitudes that we sang this morning). If we, in Christ, through praying for others, can find the way to forgive them, then we open the door for them to find the same strength, the same hope, the same love in Jesus Christ that sustains us. It is this love that enables us to overcome all sorts of pain, betrayals, and difficulties in human life

Brothers and sisters, our Saviour is with us here today. He is giving Himself to us in this Divine Liturgy. We are here because we love Him. He is offering Himself to us because He loves us. In effect, He is saying to you, and to me : “Come to Me, all you that labour, and all you that are weary in your labour, and I will give you rest” (see Matthew 11:28). Let us come to Him this morning. Let us receive Him. Let us allow Him to give us rest and peace in our hearts. Let us allow Him to give us hope in our lives, so that we may have strength to carry on, and to glorify Him today, tomorrow, the next day, and the rest of our lives : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The Forerunner is in the wilderness. He is proclaiming the way of the Lord ; he is preparing the way for the Lord. Very soon we will be celebrating the Theophany of the Saviour. We will be celebrating His Baptism. Actually, it is the first of the feasts of the Holy Trinity. We always think of the Feast of the Holy Trinity as being celebrated at Pentecost, but, in fact, this is the first one. When the Saviour is baptised in the waters, we hear the voice of the Father, who says that our Lord is the beloved Son, and the Spirit appears in the form of a dove.

The Prophet and Forerunner is preparing the way for the Lord. This is our universal Christian responsibility since that time. Our responsibility is, as we live our lives, to prepare the way for the Lord. Each one of us, having been baptised into Christ, and having put on Christ, bears Christ. Each one of us bears Christ wherever we go, and whatever we do. Because people are aware that we are Christians, they measure Christ by what they see in us.

People have a hard time accepting Christ. They really do. The whole world resists Christ because people cannot believe that God could love us this much, and in such a way. Therefore, the world is constantly inventing substitutes – every sort of alternative possible – except the real love of Jesus Christ Himself. Our responsibility, therefore, is to be faithful to Jesus Christ, to try our best to live as a Christian ought to live. This is not an easy thing because the Adversary is always looking for ways to undermine and distract us. I cannot remember where it was because I am getting so old, but some years ago I read that forgetfulness is one of the chief tools of the Adversary. In self-centredness, people become separated from each other, concerned only about themselves, forgetting who they are, and why they are. In this case we could check The Great Divorce by C S Lewis.

With this focus on the self in the midst of which we are living in Canada (one might as well say in the whole world now), one could say that we are becoming an insane race. I have come to understood through health care professionals, that one of the chief signs of mental illness is preoccupation with one’s self, obsession with one’s self, thinking only about one’s self. That is what makes a person get completely off balance, and sometimes quite sick. One becomes fascinated with one’s self, and afraid of everything. Everything circles around “me”. Our whole society is like that. That is why I say we are coming to some sort of collective insanity now.

The Orthodox way is the opposite of this. It is true that we ought to have a certain concern about ourselves, because our Saviour says that we are to love others as God loves us. Love for others and concern for oneself must be in balance. God loves us with self-emptying love, and we have to love other people with the same love – self-emptying love, not selfish love : no strings attached. The Saviour came, and what did He do ? He washed the apostles’ feet. He healed people. He taught people. He resurrected people. He cared for people. He served them. He Himself says : “‘The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve’” (Mark 10:45). The Orthodox way is the way of service. If we are going to imitate Christ, and if we are going to show Christ to people around us, we have to be doing what He did and what He still does to this day for us, and with us, and that is, to serve. We serve Him by caring about other people’s welfare, taking care of other people in practical ways, helping other people, saying a good word when a good word needs to be said, supporting, strengthening, nurturing people, praying for people so that God might heal them.

If, however, on the other hand, we allow “Big Red” to mess around with our minds and hearts, we quickly forget. We quickly forget, and get distracted by this and by that. Distraction of all sorts is one of Big Red’s chief tools. Then the Lord has to send someone to wake us up and remind us about who we are, Whom we are serving, and which way we are going. Sometimes, in this distracted forgetfulness, we can end up going quite far down. We have to be careful. We have to watch out. Saint Seraphim, for much of his life while he was living in the desert of the forest, was doing things like wearing chains and sleeping on a bed of rocks. To this day, if we were to go to Valamo Monastery in Finland, or to the museum of the Orthodox Church in Kuopio in Finland, or to other places also, we could see chains there on display, heavy chains that the monks used to wear. Saint Seraphim said that that was not really necessary, so why would they do that ? Essentially, monks would wear these in order to help them remember, in order to help them not to forget who it is that they are – sinners, and Who is their salvation, and Whom it is that they are serving – Jesus Christ. That is not to say that we should be wearing chains, necessarily. I think people might lock us up if we did, and give us all sorts of “nice” medication.

The time of the chains is past. The purpose of them is to help us remember Who is Jesus Christ ; who am I ; and Whom we are serving. Whom am I supposed to be like ? I am supposed to be like Jesus Christ, full of His love. Saint Seraphim said that our first purpose in life is to acquire the Holy Spirit. We have been given the Holy Spirit when we were baptised and chrismated. However, it is for us to allow the Holy Spirit to grow in us, to nurture our hearts, to enliven our hearts, and to give us the ability to live in the love of Jesus Christ. We have to be doing what is necessary to allow the Holy Spirit to grow. What do we do, then ? How do we acquire the Holy Spirit ?

First, we ask the Lord to be with us and to give us the strength to follow Him. We ask Him to fill us, to renew us, and to refresh us in His love. Then we ask Him to help us establish a rhythm in our daily lives. To grow in Christ and to pray, we have to have a regular rhythm. To pray requires that we have to go to the same place approximately at the same time, and say approximately the same things. Repetition, as the Latin saying goes, is the mother of learning. When it comes to spiritual life, it is even more so (because of our strong tendency to forgetfulness). Our spiritual teachers always say to us that we have to have a prayer corner. We have to have a place in our homes, in our rooms, where we pray. We have to go there regularly. We have to go there approximately at the same time. We should be saying the morning and evening prayers if we can possibly do it. However, at least we should be saying “Lord have mercy” over and over again, or the Jesus Prayer in the longest form, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, the sinner”. We should be saying this over and over again in front of the icons before the Lord. Saying this prayer before the icons, over and over again, with a bit of concentration, warms up the heart, and, as well, it softens our heart towards people who are not nice to us.

We must say “Lord have mercy” about people who are, shall we say, at the least, irritating towards us, or at a greater level, very tempting to us (as some people are). Even in our families it can be a big temptation when people squeeze the toothpaste the wrong way, or when they eat with their mouths open, or do something else (as in Shrek 2, where the donkey makes noises with his mouth all the time). People do things like this, and it can become a big irritation. Saying “Lord have mercy” under those circumstances can settle things down considerably. I can say this because I have experience. These things do happen. The Lord’s Grace comes when we say this prayer. That is the point of our saying it. We have to open our hearts and be in the Lord’s presence. We have to put ourselves in the Lord’s presence.

People are often saying to me that life is so chaotic, and it is so difficult in the circumstances of daily family life to pray as we are supposed to in the prayer corner before the icons. They find that the only place where it seems that there is time to pray is in the bathroom, in the car, or on the bus. All right – why not, as long as it is regular. If we can pray on the bus, so much the better. It is a good thing for us to pray on the bus, because Canadians, like Britons, do not talk to each other on the bus very much. No-one will disturb us, unless someone starts a conversation. We can sit there and pretend that we are reading a book. No-one will say anything to us most of the time. Thus, we can say our prayers quietly on the bus or on the train. Some people use cassettes. They record the morning or evening prayers for themselves, put the cassette in the car, and they pray while driving. There are all sorts of ways to put ourselves in the Lord’s presence. To pray while we are driving is an important thing, especially because of the way people drive nowadays. People get angry and impatient so quickly. It is good for us not to join the angry, impatient crowd, but instead to be quick to say “Lord have mercy” while driving. All these things help to nurture the growth of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. All these things help us to acquire the Holy Spirit.

How do we know that there is the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives ? The only way we can tell is by love. Do we love ? Do we love like Christ ? Is there at least some inkling of this selfless love ? Has serving other people started to be a more primary motivation in my life ? Am I, in fact, not so comfortable in this world as I used to be ? All these are signs that the Lord is active in our hearts. Can I hear and accept it when the Lord sends me someone who says to me : “Wake up. Such-and-such is out of focus in your life”. Can I accept it ? If I can, even if it is grudgingly, there is hope that the Holy Spirit is active and working in my heart. If I play the “Egyptian game” of living in denial, living in “denial” is dangerous, because “de-Nile” is full of crocodiles (not that I saw any crocodiles the last time I was on the Nile, and that was only two months ago). Nevertheless, when we live in denial, when we pretend that everything is all right, when we pretend there is nothing the matter, that is when we become prime prey for those spiritual crocodiles that are ready to eat us up. (I am glad you are able to tolerate these jokes.)

It is necessary for us to remember that forgetfulness of who we are, what we are, and Whom we serve, is the prime tool of the Adversary in our lives. The Adversary’s prime tool is to help us forget. (Indeed, he does not have to work very hard at that ; we seem to do that very easily ourselves.) He helps us along, and greases the way of forgetfulness for us. He distracts us, and we forget. It is important for us to remember this, and to ask the Lord to help us to be watchful, mindful, and to accept His reminders. In remembering, as we live our lives together, we can encourage and strengthen each other by our prayers, by our example, and by the way we serve each other and care for each other. By doing this, in strengthening each other, we can help each other be a clearer witness of the love of Jesus Christ to people who do not yet know Him, or have forgotten Him, having previously known Him. We can be agents of the Lord to renew their memory of Him, or to introduce Him to the people whom we meet in our lives. The world is full of lost, lonely, hungry people, spiritually-starving people. In our lives, let us give them a little food, the food of the living Bread, Jesus Christ, by showing them love in concrete ways, by doing good for them (even when they sometimes bite the hands that feed them). Still, let us do some good for them, and entice them with the net of Christ’s love into His Kingdom. Let us all, together with the saints, glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

All sorts of articles have been written by people who have a hard time accepting that the Word of God could take flesh and become a human being. They try to reduce Jesus Christ to a mere legend. They try to pretend that He never existed, or perhaps they try to make Him into a simple, nice-guy-philosopher. People do all sorts of other things in order to avoid facing Who is Jesus Christ, because they are likely afraid. They seem to be paralysed by fear, in fact, and therefore they are allowing themselves to try to escape from reality. It is a very sad thing to see such things written in public magazines and newspapers, because these escapist tactics that people are using for themselves lead many other people who are weak, away with them. That is why it is so important for us, who are Orthodox Christians, to celebrate this feast in particular, because the whole life of the Orthodox Church is rooted in making visible the love of the Lord.

The Word of God takes flesh today and dwells amongst us (see John 1:14). He is born today of the Virgin Mary in a cave in Bethlehem. For people who have doubts about that, there is a great deal of historical evidence that these things are true. There is a great deal of secondary historical evidence, too, that Jesus Christ did walk this earth, and that people understood at that time already that He was, indeed, the Son of God. They understood that He was not just like everyone else. He was like everyone except for sin (see Philippians 2:7 ; Hebrews 2:17 ; 4:15). However, besides being a human being, He is also the Son of God. The Word of God took flesh because of love, as the Apostle John says in a passage which so many children learn in their early years to say from memory : “‘God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life’” (John 3:16). These words are quoted in the Divine Liturgy in one way or another.

We know that the Lord loves us. He takes flesh today in order to bring us to salvation. That means that He is returning us to our true selves. He is bringing us to spiritual health. He is bringing us into the right focus and the right relationship with God, so that we should no longer have to be afraid, like the people who are writing these sad and sometimes crazy arguments. We do not have to be slaves of fear. We can be free in the love of Jesus Christ – free, healthy, full of joy, full of strength, full of love, as He created us to be. That is why He did this for us : to open again the door to Paradise, the door which we, in our rebellion, closed. Let us remember that it is we who closed that door. It is we, not He, who closed that door. He broke down all the barriers that we established between ourselves and God. Jesus Christ, in Himself, gives us access to God the Father. He sent the Holy Spirit to enable us to live in this love, and to maintain this personal relationship of love with Him.

That is why our Saviour gave us icons of Himself such as this one here. We have a Tradition, 2,000 years old, that says that we know more or less what Jesus looked like in the flesh. This icon is a good icon. It represents well, in the Tradition of the Orthodox Church, what is the likeness of Jesus Christ. If the shroud of Turin truly is the very burial cloth of Jesus Christ (as many people believe it to be), the Face on that shroud, also, is very like this Face. The Lord gave us these images so that, as Saint John of Damascus says, when we come and kiss this image of Christ, our love passes through the icon, which serves as a gateway or window to Heaven. Our veneration passes through this wood and this paint straight to Jesus Christ Himself.

We need to have these concrete ways to contact Jesus Christ. That is why we carry Crosses on our bodies after we are baptised. That is why we venerate these icons, because we need these concrete attachments to enable us to express our love. If Jesus Christ were completely invisible and inaccessible, it would be extremely difficult for us. However, He knows that as human beings, we have to have tangible things, things that we can touch and feel. He has given us these icons from the very beginning so that we can kiss them, and at the same time, kiss Him. It does not end there. When we kiss Him because of love, His love comes back to us. It is not as though He were not kissing us back. He loves us. How would He not kiss us, also, with His love, when we are kissing Him ? It is the same with the Mother of God and any other of the saints. This love is the foundation of our Orthodox Christian life.

Saint John Chrysostom says of us that we ourselves are living icons of Christ, because, as we sang today, we were baptised into Christ. When we were baptised into Christ, we put on Christ (see Galatians 3:27). We carry Christ with us, especially when we are receiving Holy Communion. Saint John Chrysostom says that when we receive Holy Communion, Jesus Christ is so present in each of us that we should be making a prostration in front of each other, because of love for the Lord, who is present in each of us. We, as Orthodox Christians, are carrying Jesus Christ everywhere that we go.

We are living icons and representations of Jesus Christ. It is our responsibility to be renewing this love, this relationship of love with Jesus Christ, everyday in our prayers. We should receive Him regularly and frequently in Holy Communion. Then, everyday when we are at our work, when we are in public places, when we are shopping or doing whatever we are doing, we will be able to carry Christ with us in such a way that people around us will see our love, our joy, our hope. They will see how we care about the people around us. They will see how we, like Jesus Christ, serve people, take care of people. By encountering Jesus Christ in us, they may find some hope in this very painful world, and find some encouragement to carry on living in this very difficult and broken world.

Brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ is born today in Bethlehem in Judea because of love. Because of this same love, let us allow this love to be visible in us, too. Let us ask our Saviour to strengthen us, by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, so that our love may be strong enough that people may be able to see and have hope, and believe in our Saviour. May our lives glorify 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Human beings are almost always the same. We generally have the same failings and weaknesses. We always are extremely slow to learn. However, God is merciful, patient, and waiting for us to open our eyes. Sometimes it does become possible for us to learn something. The main thing that we have to learn in our life is to trust God, to accept that He loves us, and that He is there for us.

At the end of the Gospel reading today, our Saviour says to us that some things might be impossible for men, “‘but with God all things are possible’”. It is important for us to pay attention to these words and remember these words. It is true that many things in life are extremely difficult for us, if not impossible. They certainly seem like that. One of these is, just as our Saviour is saying today, the difficulty that a rich man has to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Why is this ? It is because these things are cares and burdens that become between us and the Lord. Carrying all these burdens and cares (of wealth, riches, and responsibilities) can very easily put a block between the person and God and thus it is difficult for the person to enter the Kingdom.

What does it mean when our Saviour is saying that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven ? This is not such a self-evident expression (although a person might take it literally, and that is all right). In fact, however, there is more to it. There was a gate in Jerusalem in the old days called the “Eye of the Needle”. This gate was meant to regulate the amount of goods going into the city of Jerusalem. A camel laden with goods could not go into the city. It had to get down and have the goods taken off before it could go into the city. In fact, they did not want camels in the city in those days so they made it very difficult by making the door very low. Human beings and donkeys could get in easily enough but not a laden camel.

Regardless of which way one wants to interpret it, as long as we have any sort of burdens or cares that are the first priority in our life (and when God is not the first priority in our life), we will have great difficulty entering the Kingdom of Heaven. The apostles are asking our Lord : “‘Who then can be saved ?’” Our Lord says, as it were : “Well, maybe on your own you could not be saved, but with God you can”. In other words, we human beings have to learn, finally, that we have to ask God for help in everything. We have to ask God for His help, and pray that He be with us. It is necessary that we call to Him for help in doing everything. Then things that are impossible become possible.

For example, one of these things is the existence of this diocese. Talk about impossibilities ! Our diocese is now about ninety years old. There have been Orthodox believers in this country for well over 100 years but we did not begin to be a diocese until 1916. Regardless, in the course of all of these years, there has been nothing but difficulty in establishing a Church here in Canada. There has always been trouble one way or another and some sort of turmoil. The revolution in Russia was not the least of those turmoils, a turmoil whose effects last until this day in this country. Because our Church in its missionary infancy was cut off from “Mama”, we almost starved to death. However, God is merciful, and we continued to exist. Yet in the face of other Orthodox Churches in this country that are very rich and financially well off, we are still more or less living hand to mouth. This is not such a bad position to be in. Our brothers ask how we exist. The reason we exist is because God wills it. We have work to do in this country. In fact, we have the biggest work to do here, in this country, because we are the local Church in this country. We are responsible for everyone in it, whether or not they visibly belong to us. We must feed everyone in this country with the Gospel, whoever they are, and wherever they come from.

Thus I always like to say, as I was told, that according to the laws of aerodynamics in physics, a bumblebee cannot fly. Its body is too big, and its wings are too small. Yet, it does fly, and it does because God wills it. God helps that bumblebee to fly. According to all sorts of human logic and expectations, our diocese should never have survived. In fact, our Orthodox Church in Canada in any form should not have survived all the turmoil that was facing it and gripping it for so long. Yet, the Church has survived, and not only survived. In many ways, it actually flourishes

Here in n, we are in the midst of difficulties. In fact, today we have a blizzard. Those who managed to get here, trusting in God, will be praying to God for those who were unable to make it. This community has already had all sorts of difficulties in its short existence. Yet it has established itself, and here we have this big, new locale with a kitchen and meeting room. This is luxury compared to that tiny basement. The Lord is, in fact, opening doors for this parish. However, nothing grows very fast in Canada, and that is just as well because when it does not grow very fast, it has time to put down stable and strong roots.

As our Saviour says in one of His parables (see Matthew 13:5,6), sometimes a plant will grow very fast, flourish and flower but it does not have a proper root system. When the ground gets dry, the plant dries up very fast, and withers away. In every one of our missionary communities, everything takes time. That fact is a good thing for us. It allows us to put our spiritual roots deeply down, and to deepen our confidence in Christ. When the more difficult times come, when we have dry times and other challenges, our roots are deep enough that we can still get water, the living water of Christ. We should always be confident enough in the Lord to know how to pray when times get difficult, to know how to draw on the Saviour’s strength. Then, we will not only be able to endure, but also flourish and spread, and become really strong for the glory of Jesus Christ. In our country, and in the whole western world, people expect that everything should develop quickly and immediately. They forget to ask God to help them, especially when things get difficult.

The most important thing for us all to remember is always to call on the Lord for help and support. We must always remember to ask Him to help us to love Him and each other, and to persevere in the establishment of this community. In everything, trust in the Lord and do not forget that He can arrange and rearrange things in order to accomplish His will. God is in charge of everything, and He is the Creator of everything. Not only is He able to arrange everything, but He also very often does just that. We love to sing “God is with us” when we serve Compline. Indeed, God is with us, and it is essential to keep Him and His love for us in front of our consciousness at all times. Glory be to God the Father, the Son, and the life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

At the time of the Great Entrance, n will come out with the aer over his head. He has not been seen doing this before, and he will not be seen doing it again. Why is he doing this ? It is because at this time he will be ordained to the Holy Priesthood, God willing, and he will be offered by us. That is why his head is covered with the aer. He is part of our offering, along with the bread and wine for the Eucharist. It will be his responsibility afterwards to feed the flock by celebrating the Divine Liturgy. The priest is part of our offering, therefore, at this particular time. That is why it is important for you to pray for him when the deacon comes out and makes a prostration in your direction, saying “Command”. He is prostrated in your direction, because he is asking for your blessing, concurrence and agreement that he be part of this offering.

On this day, Meat-fare Sunday, the day of the Last Judgement, we are presented with a theme which seems to run all over the place these days (and not only these days). I grew up in Alberta, and when I was about fourteen or fifteen, I first heard Gospel radio programmes talking about the end of the world which they said was going to happen in five minutes. These things were generally scary. I had a very interesting conversation last night with the youth group, who brought up the same subject, because this theme is still running around : the end of the world is coming in five minutes, and it is a scary thing. The young people were right to express their concern about the gravity of all this.

The whole point of the Second Coming is not to be making us run scared, because when we are running scared, we are not paying attention to anything around. If we pay attention closely to both of today’s readings, we understand that they refer to the nature of our relationship with each other and with God. The Apostle Paul is saying that if a person is going to eat meat offered to idols, then one has the liberty to do so because we are blessing it anyway, and giving thanks to God. God’s blessing overcomes anything and everything associated with what is offered to idols.

However, for the sake of a brother or sister who might be tempted by our exercise of liberty, we restrain ourselves for their sake. The weaker person is not to be led into temptation by the exercise of my liberty. It is true that we have great freedom in Christ, but this freedom is not wild-fire freedom that is to be exercised on a whim. It is freedom that is to be exercised having regard to everyone around us, and first of all, having regard to whether it is being exercised in accordance with God’s will. We have the freedom to live in harmony with God’s will, and the freedom to live against God’s will. We have always had that liberty in God’s love. That is how the Fall came about in the first place, because our first parents listened to the Tempter and accepted the hypothesis which he presented.

When it comes to the Last Judgement itself, people have a strong tendency to focus in on little details about this – who exactly is going to go left, and who exactly is going to go right, and what do I have to do to make sure I go right. We are often so obsessed with these details and mistaken in our belief that God is interested in our fulfilling these details so that we can somehow “qualify” to get in. God is not interested in our fulfilling of all these little details. God is interested in the condition of our hearts, and the effect of our life on the people around us and on the environment. That is what He is interested in. Celebrating the Divine Liturgy well, beautifully and correctly, for instance, is necessary, but we are not going to be judged by that alone by any means. Observing the fast is very important. However, we do not observe the fast in order to “qualify” to get into the Kingdom of Heaven and to get “brownie points” from God. That would be blasphemy. 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.

What do we do with Great Lent ? Instead of spending less time cooking (having salads, and things that take little time to prepare), we seem to involve ourselves in observing the letter of the law of Lent, so that there are no dairy products, no fish, no meat, no oil of the wrong sort in the food, and we spend three times as long making this food. It seems that perhaps we even go to the Seventh Day Adventist shops, and get nice food which looks like chicken, but is not chicken (it is soy). Perhaps we purchase nice, good-tasting hot dogs that look like hot dogs (but are soy), and nice turkey and beef things that look like something they are not. They look good – they taste good – but they are probably not all that pleasing to God. I suppose they are pleasing to the palate, but I doubt that it is pleasing to God when we go about observing Lent like this. Is our God our stomach and our taste buds ? We have to ask ourselves this question.

The fulfilment of Great Lent, the true fulfilment of Great Lent, is, and always has been, not in observing the strict letter of the law (observing the dietary prescriptions which are good in themselves, but taken in the wrong direction they can be deadly), but in how I am to other human beings. 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. That is one of the reasons why this lesson comes to us at this particular time. As this parable from our Saviour indicates, we have to take care of those who are around us. The need may not be a material need. The need may be a spiritual or an emotional need. People have all sorts of needs, and God gives each of us all sorts of different gifts in order to meet those needs. The Christian way is, and always has been to ask : “How can I serve ? How can I help someone else ?”

N is about to be ordained to the priesthood in order to help in the nurturing of this flock, in nurturing those gifts that we all have, which are for the building up of the Body of Christ. Now we will have two priests here. Much more is going to be expected, somehow. God will give everyone more and more Grace, but more will be expected.

What is important to remember, brothers and sisters, is that the indications that we have been given are indications of how we should go about our lives, but they are not rules. The Pharisees went wrong with the Ten Commandments, for instance, by losing sight of the summary of the Ten Commandments, which was, and is, to this day : “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” (5 Moses [Deuteronomy] 6:5). Our Saviour added here : “and your neighbour as yourself” (Mark 12:31). All that is in the Ten Commandments. The Pharisees enshrined the Ten Commandments in such a way that the commandments had to be protected to minimise the risk of breaking them. The Pharisees invented thousands of other rules about how to live life in order to protect oneself from offending the great Ten Commandments. However, that again was all because of fear. The Lord is not interested in our being afraid of Him. The Apostle John says : “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). He is, of course, right. God is love, and His relationship with you and with me is all life-giving love. Fear comes from Big Red down below. Love, liberty, and life come from the living God who loves us, and is interested in our life, our eternal life. He is interested in our interior healing. He is interested in our well-being.

The Lord is not interested in holding swords over our heads and threatening us all the time, even though sometimes when He disciplines us, it might feel something like that. Anytime I have been disciplined by the Lord, I have definitely deserved it. I do not as a result feel that God is “after me”, somehow, much less, “against me”. In the same way, in my childhood I was disciplined rather firmly, corporally, frequently. I do not resent my parents and grandparents, or even the teacher who embarrassed the life out of me in grade three when she slapped me over the knuckles with a ruler. That was after I had said no to her. I do not resent that at all. I was not afraid of them either, because I was very wilful, very wilful. It was difficult for people to put me on the right path, and it took a lot of pushing and shoving, because of their love, to keep me on some sort of straight-and-narrow. The Lord does the same with you and with me in order to keep us well directed and focussed.

It is important for us, brothers and sisters, to keep our focus and our priorities straight in the coming Great Lent. This means that we offer our fasting and 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. 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 our Saviour is going to be asking you and me at the end as He says in the Gospel today. He is going to be asking you and me : “How did you love Me ?” “How do you love Me ?” “How did you show your love for Me ?” “How do you show your love for Me ?” Let us ask the Lord to help us to have our hearts attuned to Him, His love, His will, so that we will know what His will is, and so that we will do what He is asking us to do, quickly, with love, to His glory : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we have the doubt of Thomas. This doubt is a big blessing for you, for me, and for the whole Church. It is not that the Apostle Thomas had some sort of intellectual doubt, as we have sometimes. In this case, it is simply that no-one had ever seen resurrection like this before. Yes, it is true that the Apostle Thomas himself had been there at the time of the resurrection of Lazarus. This apostle should have been prepared, but he was not prepared to believe so quickly that Jesus would rise from the dead. Although his brothers, the other apostles, as well as Saint Mary Magdalene and the other Myrrh-bearing women, said that they had encountered the Risen Christ, the Apostle Thomas said : “‘Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe’”.

This determination to have proof was good for you and for me, and for the whole Church. It absolutely underlined the fact that Jesus did rise bodily from the dead. The Apostle Thomas today is told by our Saviour : “‘Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing’”. As we see and hear, this invitation by our Saviour produces instant acceptance by the Apostle Thomas.

His acceptance can be very strengthening for you and for me when people say that perhaps Jesus did not rise bodily from the dead, or when they come up with some other strange idea about the Resurrection. All the apostles saw, experienced, and touched Jesus Christ risen bodily from the dead. It is their universal experience and testimony to us that enables us to continue our Christian life in hope, confident that Jesus Christ really did rise bodily from the dead. In rising bodily from the dead, He conquered death by His death. Death could not hold eternal life : Jesus Christ, the Author of Life.

We see in the icon of the Resurrection here on the wall, the Risen Christ breaking down the doors of Hades, and bringing up with Him Adam and Eve and all the others who were held captive by death. The Giver of Life is giving life to you and to me, as well as to the apostles. It is because of His victory over death that we have hope. We have sure confidence in His love for us, because He Himself said that He did all this only because He loves us. He loves you and me and all His creatures so much that He suffered and died, and rose from the dead. In all this, He is giving hope to you and to me. He is giving strength to you and to me, and He is enabling us to live the difficult lives that we have to live.

At the end of today’s reading, the Apostle John says that there were many other things Jesus did and said when He was appearing constantly and repeatedly to the apostles and others over the forty days after His Resurrection. It was not only one time, but many, many times over the forty days that our Saviour appeared to the apostles and other disciples, and many other people. In His appearing to them, He was showing them concretely that He is risen from the dead. The Apostle John says that our Lord said and did many other things. However, what has been written, has been written so that you and I truly will be able to believe that Jesus is the Christ, that He is the Son of God, that He is the Giver of Life, that He is victorious over death, that we do have life in Him, and that He is truly with us.

The testimony of His Resurrection has not stopped there with the writing, because the person-to-person experience of Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, has continued amongst Christians generation after generation up until now. It is true that for many people, for many believers, it is sufficient that other believers speak about their experience of the Risen Christ. Such people accept it, believe it, and live by it. They eventually have their own experience of the Risen Christ. 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. Sometimes, for the good of the Church, Jesus Christ actually does show Himself to people in order to strengthen them.

Besides, we have the experience every year at Pascha of the New Fire coming in Jerusalem during the Vesperal Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil. The Fire comes to the Patriarch of Jerusalem in the Temple of the Holy Resurrection. Once, when the Orthodox Patriarch was excluded from the Temple, the Fire came from one of the pillars by the door and split the pillar. Anyone can see that today. It is a Fire that is not lit by matches. It just comes, by the Grace of God, to the candles that the Patriarch is holding while he is praying in the tomb. If people have doubts about that, one can read the recollections by and about a certain man who, as a child was in the school and the monastery of the Brotherhood of the Resurrection 100 years ago. Because he was doubting, he hid himself in the tomb of Christ. He saw with his own eyes that the Fire came out of nowhere to the candles of the Patriarch.

The Saviour does everything to ensure that we have complete confidence in His love. One can read about this Fire on www.holyfire.org on the internet. Even on the internet, there are all sorts of writings and examples about the coming of the Holy Fire in Jerusalem for the strengthening of Orthodox believers. There are books written about it. There are videos produced about it as well. People who have been there from North America, Russia and Greece have told me that this Fire, coming from the tomb of Christ, does not burn a person for the first half-hour. It does not burn beards. If people put their hands in the Fire, it does not burn their hands.

Two years ago, I was in Washington for the enthronement of Metropolitan Herman, and one of the bishops of Jerusalem was there. We asked him about his experience of the Holy Fire. He said that he had been in the Brotherhood of the Resurrection since he was a young boy in school. After school every day, it was his responsibility to come into the Temple of the Holy Resurrection, and, using ladders, renew the oil lamps, and keep them burning properly. “What about on Pascha ?” we asked him. He said : “On Pascha, I did not have to do anything because when all the lamps had been put out, they lit themselves. The Fire came to the tomb of Christ, to the Patriarch’s candles, and when the Patriarch came out, these lamps were lighting themselves. They do that to this day”.

My brothers and sisters, we see how far the Lord goes in order to confirm His love for you and for me, and to remind us not to forget that He is with us, even though we are burdened with so many cares. The Apostle Thomas, after he had been confirmed in his faith, and had confessed Jesus Christ as God, went as a missionary first to Egypt, and then to India where he converted very many people, including a king. He established the Orthodox Faith in northern and southern India. On the southwest coast of India is the state of Kerala, a state of India that people say is the closest to the garden of Eden that one can find on earth : it is so beautiful and so full of light. There are Orthodox Christian families there that can trace back their family histories to the time when their ancestors were converted by the Apostle Thomas. Then the Apostle Thomas went to the east coast of India, to a city called Madras. It is there that he was finally killed by pagan troops.

His witness for Jesus Christ lives until this very day in India. We, who are Orthodox Christian believers here in Canada, have the same responsibility to witness to the love of Jesus Christ by how we live, by how we behave in society. We have the responsibility to share our hope, like the Apostle Thomas shared his hope in Jesus Christ, so that people around us can find their way to Jesus Christ. In n, especially, there are many who are lost, who are searching for the truth of Jesus Christ, the truth that their hearts are longing for. May we, by our hope, by our love, by our Christian behaviour, bring this hope to them so that they will have the same hope and the same strength that we have for living through all sorts of difficulties. Let us ask the holy Apostle Thomas, by his prayers, to strengthen us today in our following of Jesus Christ, whom he loves, whom he served, and for whom he gave his life. Let us ask him, by his prayers, to enable us to glorify with him our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

With today’s Gospel and Epistle readings, I could keep you here for a long time, but I will be merciful. I actually would like to talk about many of the things that are in those two readings because they are so rich in sources of encouragement for you and me in our attempt to live our Christian life. Instead of my talking about everything in those two readings, why do you not later on this evening when you are home having a cup of tea or coffee, and relaxing for a little bit, open your Bible to the last chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, and the last chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John, and read them over. They are very easy to find. I think that after all the things that have happened today, when you look at these passages again, you will get some encouragement and strength, and be able to put things into perspective.

God’s mercy and Grace are beyond our ability to understand, just as the depth of His love is beyond our ability to understand. That is one of the reasons why the Lord is repeating to the Apostle Peter today : “‘Do you love Me?’” “‘Do you love Me?’” “‘Do you love Me?’” The Apostle Peter got somewhat irritated by the end. Our Lord was trying to make a point : “If you really do love Me, then you are going to look after My sheep”. Who are these sheep – except human beings ? This is the primary responsibility of every priest and bishop – to feed sheep. That is the purpose of this Divine Liturgy – feeding sheep – and we are the sheep in this case (except the Church always talks about human beings as rational sheep, not dumb sheep). I have seen sheep at work, and we can be like that too, it is true.

Confession is repetitive. It is all the same. Everyone commits the same sins. Each of us has a tendency to think that he or she is especially horrible somehow. It is a good thing that we think that, by the way, because we should think of ourselves as nothing so that God can make something of us. However, we tend to focus on how bad we are, and we forget about God’s Grace and His love, which help us overcome our weaknesses. Sometimes our confessions are rather repetitive. If anyone ever thinks that it must be interesting for a priest to hear confessions, it would be better to think about giving priests caffeine pills instead, because it is so repetitive. Yes, there is Grace there, and what is good is that God’s Grace acts during these confessions. God is able sometimes to speak through the conversation between the priest and the penitent in order to provide the right word of hope. That is what is interesting – to see how God provides. The priest often does not know what he is saying ; he does not know always the significance of the words that are coming from him. But God knows what the person has to hear. God gives the priest the words that he needs to give to the people who are opening their hearts to the Lord before this priest. That is where the interest comes. The sins are the same, over and over. The priest could just put on a record if he wants to hear these things. It is always the same, so do not think that it is anything fantastic to hear confessions. It is a duty, nevertheless, a heavy duty.

I am saying these things today, because since we are ordaining Deacon n to the Holy Priesthood, these are things that will involve him and your relationship with him. Deacons are not distinguished from priests in terms of feeding sheep, but the way they feed the sheep is different. Deacons, in particular, are people who embody Christ as a servant. Christ is our servant. We are always running to Him, crying to Him : “Help me ; give me ; give me”. He often does give (although not always precisely what we are asking for). However, He does look after us. This is part of His continuing service. It is a reflection of the depth of His self-emptying love, the love that He is speaking of in the last chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John. This love is selfless, and it does not make distinctions. It is even. It is self-emptying. Therefore, when a deacon is doing his service in the church one way or the other, according to his particular gifts, he is showing what Christ does for you and for me. He is showing us that we are supposed to be doing the same thing. By how he serves in the way of Christ, the deacon is supposed to be showing a Christian how to live his or her life.

A priest also, as the Apostle Paul says in the Epistle to Timothy (see 1 Timothy 4:12), has to try to give the best example possible. The Apostle show us how a Christian family lives in love and in service, focussed around Christ, so that the believers in the parish will have some hope that they can do it, too. Now, I know, because I have heard it too many times, that many people think that a priest or a deacon is the way he is because we pay him to do it. However, that is not at all how it is. People do not pay the priest or the deacon to do what they are doing, because if they tried to pay him, they could not afford it. For instance, nowadays even doctors are not on twenty-four hour call. However, if someone is having a heart attack in the hospital and needs him to come, most priests will still answer the phone at two in the morning.

God’s Grace and God’s mercy are poured out on the Church because the Lord loves us, and He wants to feed us and nurture us. He wants us to be like Himself. What does this mean ? How could it be ? In case we have any serious questions about what it would be like, all we have to do is to look at this last chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the context of the whole book of the Acts of the Apostles. Very close to the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, we see the Apostle Paul before he was an apostle : how he was a zealot for God, how he was misguided, putting Christians in prison, and even killing them (although not personally, but he contributed to it). We have to look at that, and then look at the end of the Acts of the Apostles, and see what sort of a change, what a transformation there has been in this man who was a real fanatic in the wrong direction before.

The Apostle Paul is now, at the end of the Acts, full of love. In a previous chapter, when the ship was sinking near the island of Malta, and the soldiers were going to kill all the prisoners (including Paul) he convinced them that no-one would survive the shipwreck unless they kept everyone alive. Some of them tried to abandon ship, swim, or escape in boats. The Apostle Paul spoke, and they listened, and they were all saved. Not a life was lost in that shipwreck. Then we see the Apostle Paul being bitten by a viper. When a viper bites, it is not that long before the end comes. It is a quick death from a viper bite. (It is not as quick as death from certain snakes in Australia, I am told. In Australia, there is about thirty seconds after the snake bite. It does not hurt to be always prepared to meet your Maker.) Well anyway, this viper bit the Apostle, and they were certain that divine justice was being administered to this man. Then they found out that nothing happened to him. Nothing at all happened to him, and he carried on as though it were a mosquito bite. Then, of course, they decided that he was a god. That was yet another distortion. Everything about this is so typical of the way we are – from one extreme to the other. It took him a while to convince them that he was only a human being, but that he had God’s Grace. He showed God’s Grace and His love by healing people on that island.

Can you imagine what it would be like to be a pagan soldier, standing next to this man, connected to him by chains for much of the time ? Here we have this unbelieving soldier, standing next to this man who is healing people, raising people from the dead even, doing things that no-one else could do, and that they had never seen before. Can you imagine what an effect it would have on someone ? It did have an effect, because our martyrs’ lists are full of soldiers. In the first 300 years of our Church’s life, it is amazing how many soldiers there are – soldiers who were converted because they saw the suffering of Christians being killed for their faith. They became Christians themselves. They turned to Christ, and became saints and martyrs themselves. They intercede for us.

Our lives can be fruitful like that, and that is the point. Our lives can be fruitful like that if we continue in our daily lives to try to let the Lord’s love grow in our hearts. Let us look for opportunities to do good in, for, and with Jesus Christ. Let us not allow our fears and our timidity, our shyness and our embarrassment to overcome us because we are behaving in a way different from general society. We cannot behave in a way that is as different as that of the apostles. I do not think we can. In the first place, even though our society is so secular now, it still has enough Christian vestiges that we do not stick out quite so much as a sore thumb (although I do a bit because I dress the way I do). Most Christians do not stick out at all. They do not look any different from anyone else, but their lives testify that in Jesus Christ there is hope, life, strength, victory, health, healing. There are all these things and more in the love of Jesus Christ.

Let us do our best through the prayers of the Apostle Paul, and through the prayers of all the departed Orthodox Christians for whom we are praying on this Soul Saturday. Through the prayers of all the founders and benefactors of this holy Temple, through the prayers of our personal ancestors – our fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters (spiritual and physical) who brought us to Christ – through all their prayers, let us do our best to follow their example, and glorify Jesus Christ with our lives, saying with Saint John Chrysostom : “Glory be to God for everything”. Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Coming back to this Temple on this feast-day reminds me of how this community has been progressing in so many good ways and so many unexpected ways over all these years. It reminds me of how much Grace God has been pouring out on this community, as He pours out His love and His life on this community. This illustrates very much what our Saviour was saying just now about rivers of living water flowing. That has been exactly the case here. Yes, it is true that there has been a lot of hard work done by not very many people. However, what is most important is that this hard work has been motivated by love of Jesus Christ, and has been accompanied by prayer. There is a saying in Russian : “Patience and work accomplish everything”, but that saying is only half-right. Patience and work accomplish everything only when there is prayer backing it up. We can have plenty of patience, and we can work very hard. However, no matter how hard we work and how patient we are, if it is not accompanied by prayer, the work will not be properly accomplished. It is extremely important to remember this.

It is because of the faith and the prayer of the believers here for over 100 years (even though there have been many difficult times) that this community has still been here witnessing for the truth of the Orthodox Faith on this corner in n. That history of 100 years was very difficult – the beginning was very difficult. This community began, one could say, not in 1904 when this Temple was built, but probably in about 1898. In those days there was a blend between Ukrainian Catholics and Orthodox, and it was not easy to distinguish who was who. When the Ukrainian Catholics decided not to be part of the Orthodox Church, but rather to continue on their own as Uniats, then this very community became clearly an Orthodox community.

Although the beginning was difficult, it was still based on the faith of the people who loved Jesus Christ, and who were faithful to Jesus Christ in the Orthodox way. I have been told stories about how parishioners used to bring coal to church on Saturdays, Sundays and other days, because there used to be a coal stove here to warm this Temple. In those days, this parish was very, very poor. People had no money. In the 1930s, especially, it was terrible. No-one had anything. They could scarcely eat, but they still brought coal from their own homes, and shared here in order to warm this Temple in the winter-time. They pulled the coal behind them on a sleigh as they walked. Not very many people in this parish in those days had a car, I think. However, the people were faithful. They believed in Jesus Christ, and they lived their Orthodox Christian Faith. It is because of this faithfulness and this witness that it is possible for us to be worshipping here together.

In this Temple we can see also the fruit of the Holy Spirit in two other significant ways. First, there is the reappearance of little children in this parish these days. It was so touching to my heart to see, when I was standing in the middle of the Temple, a child kissing the Cross on the analoy. I see this in other places, but I have not seen it here for a long time. Such children’s piety is so beautiful to see : children kissing Crosses on the furniture of the Temple. It is such a beautiful thing. Many of you probably did the same thing when you were two or three. It is a wonderful thing to see.

The other thing that is beautiful to see in this Temple is precisely the fulfilment and the repetition of what we heard in the Epistle today in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles : about the day when the Holy Spirit was poured out in Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit gave the preaching of the Gospel to all sorts of people in all sorts of different languages. Likewise, in this Temple, we do not use only one language. This is a church in which many languages are spoken by the people who come here. This is the normal way for the Orthodox Church to be. Even when some parishes want to be only one language, the Lord seems to say : “No, you cannot just be limited to one language”, and He sends people who speak other languages. He makes them loosen up, because we have to be reaching out.

Jerusalem in those days could be compared to Toronto today. It was a city to which people came from every different sort of nation. All sorts of people were coming to Jerusalem from various parts of the Roman Empire to do business, and almost every language in the Roman Empire was heard (and from beyond it also). Included in the list was Persian (Persia in those days was not part of the Roman Empire). The point is that all these different languages were being spoken there. When the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the apostles, not only the Twelve, but also the Seventy and others were given to speak the Gospel of Jesus Christ in all these languages. The people were shocked that these relatively uneducated people were able to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ in all these different languages.

The Orthodox Faith has been spread around the world precisely on that principle. As the Apostle Paul would soon remind the others, this phenomenon clearly demonstrated that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was to be shared with everyone in the whole world. That is why in the whole world to this day we have Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Greek, Syrian, Serbian, Romanian, Bulgarian, Albanian, Egyptian, and we have to say, Japanese, North American, West European, Czechoslovakian, Hungarian, and Chinese Orthodox Christians (the Chinese Orthodox Church has returned to life now). In Canada, we have parishioners in some churches who are Chinese, Japanese, Philippino, and African. I forgot Korea, where there are many thousands of Orthodox Christians, and Africa, which is one of our biggest mission fields. Apart from the original Ethiopians, Eritreans, Tigrayans and Sudanese, there are now Ghanaian, Nigerian, Congolese, Angolan, Ugandan, Kenyan, Zimbabwean, Madagascan and South African Churches. For instance, in 1984, a very small Greek-speaking parish in Madagascar that was dying, called for a priest to come and serve them. An Australian Orthodox priest went to them and began to convert the people of Madagascar amongst whom they lived. The dying Greek parish became a full parish and multiplied itself on the island of Madagascar, so that there is a whole diocese now with a bishop, and 22,000 believers. This is the increase of the Orthodox Faith.

We have to remember, too, that the Orthodox Churches persecuted in communist-dominated countries for seventy years have also been completely revived. Here are two examples. Last November, I was in Tbilisi, Georgia for the consecration of their new cathedral. It is the biggest church in the country, and I have to say, has a better design than Christ the Saviour Cathedral in Moscow. The territory of the two Temples is more or less the same, but because of the way that Christ the Saviour Cathedral was designed, there are big spaces taken up with huge columns and other things (because it was designed around 1864, and built in a different way). When it was rebuilt, it was built exactly according to the original model. Although the big stones that it was built with in those days were replaced by concrete, they felt that they had to make it exactly as it was.

The cathedral in Tbilisi is not limited by that, because there never was in Georgia such a big church before. Therefore, they were able to build it with modern concrete and reinforced bar style from the beginning, and it is very open. They are able to use this territory for accommodating people. There was one choir of 500 children at the time of the consecration. It was amazing – they were so loud that they were almost deafening when they were singing. There must have been more than 1,000 people singing all together amongst all the choirs up above on the balcony. The Temple can hold about 15,000 people but there were not so many allowed in the Temple on that day because the president was coming. It was very odd actually, because I think that there were that day only about 8,000 people allowed in the Temple. There were about 30,000 people outside who were complaining that they were not allowed in (security is security). It is so beautiful to see the love of the people and their desire to be in the Temple.

A week and three days ago, I was in Christ the Saviour Sobor in Moscow for Ascension. I was serving with Patriarch Ilia, Patriarch Aleksy and 109 other bishops. The cathedral was full of people, which means that there were probably around eight or nine thousand people. I was talking to a priest afterwards, and he said to me that when they built this Temple just five years ago, they did not know how they were going to build and sustain it. No-one is living in the center of Moscow : it is all offices, and government offices next door to the Kremlin, and then there is the Moscow River. This priest said that now, for some reason, people are going to this cathedral all the time. Every Sunday, every feast-day, the Temple is full of people. Thousands and thousands of people are going to church there. Now, he said, the Russian Orthodox Church has so many bishops that the Temple is too small to hold them when they are assembled together. I was there for the consecration of that cathedral, and there were 208 bishops serving. There was no room in the Altar (the Altar of that Temple is bigger than this church). With the Holy Table and everything, there was no room, and the bishops were bumping into each other. It was like standing squashed in a very tight church.

The Church is renewed, and renewing. In Russia, they are building churches faster than they can actually manage economically. At the end of the communist era, there were only about fifteen or twenty churches open in Moscow. Now they have opened, rebuilt, and built some new ones – up to 750 churches. However, they still have a long way to go because, before the Revolution, there were more than 1,000 churches in the city of Moscow. In the Moscow region, outside the city, there are already more than 1,000 churches opened (and they are building more). This is to demonstrate how the Church is being renewed by the Grace of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has been poured out on these countries. These are just two little examples. I can give you more, but we have other things to do today.

The Grace of the Holy Spirit has been poured out on our Church (although we do not see it so well in Canada, sometimes). I see it in this parish because of the renewal of life in this place, to God’s glory. Here there is a renewal of people’s lives, the strengthening of their faith. God is working very much with our Church because we have a lot of work to do.

Glory to God because of His love for us. Glory to God that He pours out His love upon us in such a way. Glory to God that He is renewing our life. Glory to God that He is multiplying our witness here in n. Glory to God that He is also using this community to be an instrument of His unity for the whole Orthodox Church. Glory to God that He works with us in ways that we do not understand, and cannot understand. Glory to God that He pours out the Grace of the Holy Spirit upon us, and renews us.

Let us remember to give glory to God for everything. Let us try to have the eyes to see where and how He is working amongst us : to see the change and improvement in each other’s lives. Let us support each other prayerfully in the renewal of our lives, and let us encourage each other in hope, because God is with us. Glory be to Him for all things : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Long ago at the beginning of our existence as human beings, God said : “‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy’” (3 Moses [Leviticus] 19:2). What does that mean ? It means that we should be holy, because God is holy. Holiness is the main characteristic of our relationship of love, and this love is between ourselves and God. Those whom we love, we always try to emulate. That is a standard human principle. I remember that from my childhood. I remember that from when I was five, there were beautiful, older people whom I wanted to be like. They were so wonderful, so full of love, so caring about a silly little kid like I was. Not only was I silly, but I was rather unrestrainable because I was so high-spirited. I was very independent-minded, and a daredevil, which is why my mother got grey hair early.

Be that as it may, it is a human way always that if we love someone, we try to imitate that person. How much more is this the case when it comes to our relationship with God our Creator. He wants us to live in this relationship of perfect love with Him. He wants us to be like Him, because to be like Him means to be alive, truly alive. When we are not like Him, we are caricatures ; we are twisted caricatures – we are actually like zombies, the “living dead” walking around. To be like Him means to be alive, to be free.

Power, life – that is what He wants for us. He created us to be full of power and life. He does not want anything less for us. If anything less happens to us, it is because we choose it. It is because we are afraid of His love. It is because we do not dare to approach this love. We run away from love out of fear. It is because of this that we become twisted caricatures and paralysed zombies. The Saviour wants us to live in Him, to have life, and to have it “more abundantly” (see John 10:10). Let us not forget that the Saviour’s love for us is not limited to the time immediately after the Incarnation. After all, He is the Word that spoke everything into being. There are saints who come from far before the Incarnation, even from the time of our first parents, Adam and Eve. These Old Testament persons are saints of our Church, too. The Body of Christ is not limited only by the point-in-time of the Incarnation. The Body of Christ encompasses all God’s creation. Therefore, when the Apostle Paul today is speaking about all those people who suffered such horrible things, he was trying to impress on us that they suffered for the sake of their love for God and their trust in His Promise. They suffered in the Saviour who was yet to come whom they had never seen, and would not see in their lifetime. Ultimately, they only saw Him face-to-face, when, after He was crucified, our Lord descended into Hades and preached to them. They recognised Him and He lifted them up with Adam and Eve.

Before the Incarnation, these people trusted God’s love, lived in accordance with it, and did “crazy” things (like Abraham). For no apparent reason (except that God said : “Do it”), Abraham got up and moved himself and his whole household, and became a nomad, wandering all over the place on land that did not belong to him. He was not the most welcome person in this foreign territory. Besides this, what about all the other people from the Old Testament who did weird things (according to the standards of the people around them) ? There is no point in my going into that whole list right now. We can read the Old Testament for ourself, or listen to it (there are all sorts of ways). There are very interesting people for us to learn about and understand. These people did all these weird and strange things because of their love for God, so that God, through them, would speak to His people who were lost in their “zombiness”, in their selfishness, in their stubbornness and self-preoccupation. The Lord wanted to wake up His children, and He used people like Abraham, and all sorts of others . Very often the people were just so obstinate that they did not listen at all (at least not the principal ones). However, others listened and were touched.

Nowadays, at the beginning of the 21st century, all sorts of people have the idea that to be a saint is like being some sort of “professional Christian”, some sort of Christian guru, super-specialist, super-example. They suppose that one comes to be called a saint because one gets all these “brownie points”, and that designated committees examine all these points and say : “This person is a good person to be a saint, and so we will make that person a saint”. That is not at all how it is. In fact, today, we are remembering all the saints. There are many saints whose names are not even known. In fact, there are many people who are martyrs in the Church, and they are known only to us as one of thousands of martyrs, such as those 14,000 babies in the area of Bethlehem. There are 40,000 martyrs here, and 100,000 there. All those people who were burned to death on Christmas Day in Nicomedia – we only know that there were about 20,000 of them. We only know their number. However, they are all saints ; they are all holy people – people who gave their lives for the love of Jesus Christ.

In North America, we have glorified saints. There are holy people who are well- recognised by the whole Church. It very odd that we, of all people, we who have freedom to understand things, seem to be the most guilty about thinking that in order to be declared officially to be a holy person, someone must fulfil the requirements of a point-system. We tend not to look around us. We leave it to some bishop somewhere to say that this or that person will become a saint. That is not how the Church works, not at all how the Church works. It has always been that the Lord Himself tells us who is a holy person, and to whom we should be turning in order to have encouragement and intercession and support. It is the Lord who tells us and shows us. A holy person of the past may somehow appear to us and say : “Straighten out your life”. “Do this or do that”. “Correct your life”. “Repent. Turn about, and follow Christ”. People will realise what is happening, and say : “Aha, the Lord is speaking to me through this person. This person has been sent by God to be my helper. I should remember this”.

Sometimes people are healed by the intercessions of those who have gone before, and it is through that that we can recognise who is a saint. How does all this come about ? It comes about through our normal Christian life. There is, for instance, the custom that we have to pray regularly for people who have reposed. Sometimes those persons, after their repose, come to us and correct us. God shows to us these persons who have been gathered into His bosom. They are messengers of His to us in order to correct us. Sometimes these persons are used so many times, and so many wonders come about, that the faithful people recognise that this is a person who is holy. Then it is the people who tell the bishop that this person should be a saint and recognised officially. There are many people in the Orthodox world who are not even recognised officially by any bishop, and yet who are recognised by the faithful people to be holy. They are holy. People pray to them. People go to their tombs. God answers their prayers. It is not necessarily only the ones who are on the official Church list of saints who are holy. Who is holy ? It is the person who loves God, and tries to be like Him. That is all. A saint is not some sort of “professional person” on a list.

I have been researching a list of names of saints for the sake of our people who tend not to know who the saints are, and also who do not know what a variety of names there are. Christian people have usually named their children after the saints : i.e. “George”, “Anne”, “Sophia”, and the like. However, there are so many other names of saints as well. The oldest custom about how to name people is to open The Synaxarion to the day on which the child was born, and see which saints are remembered on or near that day. The child is then named after one of those saints that seems to be appropriate for that child. This requires prayerful discernment. There is a large selection per day. For example, that is how we have people named Barsanuphius (in some parts of the world, there are people called that, and not only monks).

We, like the saints, must grow in the love of Jesus Christ. We are meant to put nothing between ourselves and God. That is what our Saviour is saying in the Gospel reading today : “‘He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me’”. Why is He saying that ? He is saying that because if I put any human being or any picture between myself and Him, I have made that thing into God. Instead of God, I have put it between myself and God. I have made it into an idol, in fact. It can be anyone or anything. It can be money or a car or anything else. That is what the Lord is speaking about in the Ten Commandments. Whatever or whoever it may be that comes between the Lord and me, between me and the Lord, has therefore become an idol to me, and usurps the rightful place of the Lord. That is why the Lord would say that the person who has done this, is not worthy of Him. If I have done such a thing, if I have put anyone or anything between me and the Lord, I have to repent, fix up my life, and put the Lord first again. No matter how much I love someone, that person has always to come after the Lord. No-one can come before the Lord in my life if I am going to be a lover of God.

The Lord wants you and me to be this sort of person who truly loves, because, as I said in the beginning, such a person is free ; such a person has a true sense of himself or herself, has peace, has joy, has a sense of direction, and does not have to have a particular job or profession. This person knows that it is because of the Lord’s loving concern and care that he or she has been called to this or that situation in order to demonstrate concern about particular persons. That is truly the purpose of life. The purpose of our life has not to do with one’s profession, or success or money. Rather, the purpose of your life and my life is to become a person who loves. All the rest is an aftermath. If I do not love people, if I do not care for them, then I am empty. Then I cannot truly call myself a Christian because I am not bearing Christ in my life, and I am not demonstrating His love to people around me. That is what it means to live a Christian life – to reveal Christ’s love to people around me, and let them have a little bit of hope.

In Canada these days, where so many people are so very lost, our responsibility is great : to live this love, to reveal and share our joy and our hope to people around us, to give people hope. We do not have to go preaching. We just have to live. We have to do this love. Let us not merely talk about it. Let us do it. That is what our Lord wants. “Do My love”, the Saviour says to you and to me. “Show your love for Me by doing it. Love each other as I love you”. That is what He wants. Then we will be becoming hope, ourselves, when we do these things. Therefore, let us take confidence in the witness, the service, the example of all the saints (both known and unknown, recognised and unrecognised) that we are remembering today, who love Jesus Christ, who are alive in Jesus Christ, and let us, ourselves, follow Him. Let us do our best to be like Him as the saints are like Him, and live in Him. By our love, let us help other people around us to find Him who loves them, and to glorify our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

By the Grace of the all-holy Spirit, once again, The Orthodox Church in America is assembling together to listen to the guiding of the Holy Spirit, and to try to accomplish the Will of God in our life together in the Church. Once again, we have assembled because we love our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ, and it is our desire to serve Him.

This is now the fourteenth time our Church has assembled as an autocephalous Church ; and the context in which we are assembling is different now, by far, from what it was, when the first of these assemblies took place. Right now, we are living in times which could be described as “out of joint”. We are living in times in which right has become wrong, and wrong has become right ; black has become white ; white has become black. Society’s understanding of how to live life has been turned upside down.

Because of this, we Orthodox Christians of The Orthodox Church in America (who are supposed to be the local Orthodox Church in, and for, North America) are called to be yeast and salt in this territory, as our Saviour has called us to be (see Matthew 5:13 ; 13:33). We have a huge responsibility. We have a huge responsibility, because, in the context of this distortion and this turmoil and the atmosphere of constant war, it is so difficult to persevere on the right path. I do not think that there has been a time without war during my lifetime. It seems that there have always been wars since I was a child. I have this phantasy that when I was a child, during “the good old days of the British Empire”, things were quieter. Probably I am deceived. Indeed, the more I read, the more I know that I am deceived about this. I must change my sentiments. Regardless, the times in which we live require a great deal from us, because everything around us works against us.

It is a time in which, as the Gospel according to John describes, darkness is trying to overcome the light (see John 1:5). It is difficult for us, very difficult for us, to maintain a sense of equilibrium, a sense of where we are going, in the midst of all this. It is very difficult indeed. If we are not careful, we will fall into some dangerous traps, traps mostly of the intellect or of the passions, traps which will divert us from our sense of direction. That is the environment in which we find ourselves this morning, as we stand in the presence of our Saviour and of the centurion, and as we witness the healing of the centurion’s servant (see Matthew 8:5-13 ; see also Luke 7:1-10).

Our Lord found in this centurion, converting to Christ, more immediate faith than He found in the children of Israel – children who had inherited the promise and the covenant. This was because people had become distracted from the right course. They had forgotten their sense of perspective, and what comes first in life. As a result, they were floundering, as human beings always do under similar circumstances. I am noted for saying that “human beings are very slow learners”. I have yet to be proven wrong, because I cannot see how human society has truly progressed in any way in more than 5,000 years. I recall talking to one of the best Egyptologists on this continent last year, and asking him the question : “Is anything different or better, in over 5,000 years ?” He replied : “No, it is worse”. We are not learning anything, because we cannot keep our eyes on what is our end, and what is our purpose in life. That end and that purpose is only one – Jesus Christ : loving Him, knowing Him, and serving Him.

Regarding the heretics, whose failures and foibles we recalled in our hymns last night at Great Vespers commemorating the Fathers of the First Six Ecumenical Councils : those conciliar Fathers kept a sense of direction, not because of their intellectual powers alone, but because their great intellects were informed and guided by the love of Jesus Christ. Their hearts knew Who Jesus Christ really is. The heretics, on the other hand, fell into intellectual traps. They were afraid of the implications of the depth of God’s love. They tried to rationalise around this love in order to make the Incarnation of the Love of God – Jesus Christ – more “acceptable” to humans, somehow. They tried in their various ways to “box in” God’s love. That never works. The Fathers, who preserved for us the Orthodox Faith, did so because their hearts and their minds were not separated, but rather united, and they knew the Lord. They knew Who the Lord is, and they also knew who the Lord is not.

You and I, as salt and yeast on this continent, are not going to be winning people by intellectual games and arguments, because this society in which we live is far too clever for all that. Our society is far too clever for the standard debates and arguments that we have used in the past to help people find God. These days, because people are so cynical in North America (they have “seen everything”, or they think they have seen everything), it comes down to the “brass tacks” of what sort of life you and I live. “Big Red” still has some surprises in store, I think ; but we, ourselves, are not responsible for the turmoil others are living in. We, ourselves, are responsible for keeping our hearts and our minds on Jesus Christ. We, ourselves, are responsible for living a life that is conformed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This life, conformed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is characterised by self-giving and self-emptying love. Actually, this life is characterised by nothing else than self-giving, self-emptying, serving love, imitating the Master Himself, Jesus Christ – who, when He washed their feet, said to the Apostles, as it were : "You have to do as I am doing". We have to imitate Him. I, myself, still have to learn a prime lesson that I was taught by a parishioner many years ago in Winnipeg, who said to me : “So you are greater than God, are you ?” I wondered what he was getting at. He answered : “I notice you never take a day off. God took a day off, don’t you remember ?” I am afraid that I still do not quite catch and apply his meaning, and that was more than twenty years ago. When I talk about “slow learning”, I know what I am talking about.

People around us, who are lost in all sorts of webs of deceit, pursuing the emptiness of trying to be comfortable in this world ; people who are broken and damaged badly by the pain of life ; people whose hearts are “dried up” – they are the ones who are looking to you and to me, Orthodox Christians, who profess to inherit the Truth, the whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth of Jesus Christ. They are looking to us to show Jesus Christ to them. The only way in which we can show them Who Christ is, is by how we truly love each other, in conformity with the Gospel.

In my early days as a priest, I was really depressed – a lot and often – by how little I found the people reading the Scriptures : by how ignorant people in our Church were of the Scriptures. Now, things are a little bit better. I now hear that people at least read the prescribed daily Scripture-portions. That is all right ; and after these twenty years and more of serving, I am glad to see that much. However, my brothers and sisters, those Fathers who “saved our bacon” 1500 years ago and more, were people who read deeply from the Scriptures every day. They were “bathing” in the Scriptures. They were “swimming” in the Scriptures. They knew the Bible by heart — not by memory, but by heart — because they read it so much. It is important for us to remember that if we are going to know Who Jesus Christ is, then it is in these very Scriptures that we are going to find out Who He really is, and how we are supposed to live.

I really took heart when I was a “green” seminarian, and a “one-year-old” priest, when I went one day to Saint Tikhon’s Monastery in Pennsylvania. I met for the first time the now departed Archimandrite Vasily of very blessed memory ; and I heard, through secondary sources, that his kellenik (cell attendant) had, not long before, been commenting about how nice it was that Archimandrite Vasily (who by this time was an old man) had asked his cell attendant to read the Bible to him every day. Then, when they had come to the end of the Apocalypse, Archimandrite Vasily had said : “Oh, that was so nice, let’s start again !”

That is exactly how we would feel when we are “normal”. There are people these days who do have that attitude towards the foundation of our life in Christ – the Holy Scriptures. You and I, brothers and sisters, have got to grow up in our life in Christ, in our love in Christ, because it is not in systems, it is not in techniques (although they help), it is not in our use of manipulative or political strategies, it is not in any of these alone that we can put any trust. It is only when we know in our heart Who Jesus Christ is, and when we are testifying by our life to that Truth, to Him who is the Truth – our Lord, God, and Saviour Jesus Christ – that we can truly grow up.

That is what this coming week is all about : deepening our love for Jesus Christ, encouraging each other to persevere (no matter how difficult it is) in serving Jesus Christ ; in being salt and yeast, imitating our Saviour, as He calls us, in His love, to do. He calls us to be life-givers and light-givers to those around us – in all humility, with no pride, but only with the love of Jesus Christ, whom, with all love, we here all glorify, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

There is a great deal about the Christian life that involves simple and plain trust in Jesus Christ, even when He asks us to do strange and difficult things. Had I been there amongst the crowd, I can hardly imagine being able to comprehend what Christ is doing today : feeding the 5,000 with five loaves and two fish. Yet, it happened.

The apostles, even though they had questions, nevertheless went ahead and did precisely what our Lord asked them to do. They gave Him the five loaves and the two fish ; He prayed, and they distributed them. To prove the whole point, our Lord said to pick up what was left over : twelve baskets full of leftovers. The leftovers were more than what they began with. This is just to prove to them, and to us, Who Jesus Christ is : the Lord of the universe, the Lord of everything, the Provider of everything. He knows what He is doing with us. We do not know anything. He knows everything.

It is important that we put our hearts towards the Lord. We have to put our hearts first, our minds second. With the eyes of our hearts on the Lord, we will be able to trust that He knows what He is doing with the universe that He created, that He knows what He is doing with your life and my life. We will be able to accept this even if things are not working out the way we had hoped for them to work out. The Lord knows what He is doing with us. In this case, we cannot find our own property and building yet, because the time is not right. That does not mean that we do not keep looking. We do keep looking, but we wait until the Lord blesses one of the things that we come up with to offer Him, or, until He sends something to us that we do not expect at all. However, we keep offering our part, which is our looking and our growing together.

This community has been stable for a while, and is slowly growing. This slow growth at the very beginning is very important. It is important for the founders of any community to know each other, and to trust each other in Christ. It is important for them to trust that each one loves Jesus Christ, and to trust that each one is going to do the best he or she can in building up the church here. It is greatly important that we nurture one another here. When the time comes to grow substantially, visibly, you will need jet propulsion at that time. You need this time (although it seems long, and you might be impatient). You need this time for putting down deep, spiritual roots, and learning how to trust the Saviour, as the apostles did.

The Apostle Paul in the Epistle today was speaking about how some people in the church in Corinth were being divided, and were saying : “I belong to this apostle” ; and “I belong to that apostle”. It seems that they had forgotten all about Christ. Nevertheless, they all belong to Christ. Ultimately, Peter, Paul and Apollos are only there for Jesus Christ. The devil is the great divider. He plays with people’s hearts and emotions in order to break up Christian communities, so that the light of Christ will not shine. It is our responsibility to trust our Lord as the apostles trusted Christ with the five loaves and the two fish, and as the Apostle Peter trusted our Saviour when He called to him to walk on the water with Him (see Matthew 14:29).

It is up to us to learn to trust the Saviour with our lives and with the growth of this community. It is up to us to trust each other, and not to allow the devil to divide us with silly suspicions, silly ideas, and silly fears. That is all he ever needs to do with us, because we usually are such stupid sheep about these things. He only needs to plant suspicion and fear in our hearts one for another and we, like silly, silly sheep, fall for it. I begin to believe that my brother or sister does not like me. Very often, a brother or sister does not behave normally towards me on a particular day because he or she does not feel well on that particular day, or has had bad news about the family, or is worried or pre-occupied about something. I am not the centre of the universe. Jesus Christ is. If someone is behaving strangely towards me, it is my responsibility not to say : “Poor me, my brother or sister has got something against me”. It is for me to say “Lord have mercy” for my brother or sister for what is bothering him or her. “Lord have mercy ; help my brother or sister”. It is important for us to keep our hearts warm towards our brother or sister, no matter what, and to live in forgiveness and reconciliation in Christ with each other.

It is on this firm foundation that this community will shine brightly here in n, and will grow for Christ. It will grow new Christians, and grow rehabilitated Christians for Christ. Thus as Saint Herman of Alaska said : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”. In doing this, we will glorify the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

It is a dangerous thing to be presumptuous. The people who were addressing our Saviour today with the silly question about the seven brothers, and whose wife the woman was going to be in the Resurrection, were in fact tempting God. This is a very dangerous thing to do. Our Lord shows them mercy. He is prepared not to admonish, but instead patiently, patiently to say, as it were : “Look, wake up and smell the coffee !” When you come to the matter of what happens after death, there is no more marrying or being given in marriage. Everyone lives as do the angels. Our Lord was not saying that they are angels (because human beings never change their nature – even in heaven we are still human beings), but we are like angels. There is no more concern about being married or anything like that. However, that does not mean that the bond of love is dissolved for any reason. What exactly is the relation between this woman and all the seven brothers who were married to her in the course of her life ? All becomes a mystery understood by God, Himself, alone. Obviously, there is some bond of love.

By the way, just so that you know : despite Hollywood behaviour (or misbehaviour), Christians cannot be married seven times. In the Orthodox Church, the absolute, maximum number of times for a person to be married under any circumstances is three, no more than three (and even that is by stretching compassion). More than one is not looked on with favour in the Orthodox Church. Anything more than one is a toleration because of our weakness. It is blessed by God, but it is not the ideal. The ideal for Orthodox Christians is one marriage – just one. Understand that. Because of our weakness (and for certain other reasons), we tolerate more than one marriage in the course of a person’s life, and this toleration as been with us for a very, very long time. It is not some sort of new, liberal idea. That does not mean that the Orthodox Church is somehow encouraging this trend or is following in the footsteps of Hollywood.

The Lord is trying to make a point here. He is saying that His love for us is stable. His love is patient. He loves us. He wants us to be like Him. To be like Him means that our lives need to be transfigured. Today, we are celebrating the ending of the Feast of the Transfiguration, the week-long celebration of the time on Mount Tabor when our Saviour is transfigured on the mountain before His disciples and apostles – Peter, James, and John. He is shining with a radiance beyond our ability to describe. The words in the English translation are insufficient because the meaning of the Greek word which is translated as “radiance” here, is something that is very, very bright, very intense, very great. If we look at the icon of the Transfiguration, we see the disciples falling down on the ground in awe and amazement because the light and the radiance of God are so great. The radiance of His love is so intense that they cannot bear it. Even though they feel that they cannot bear the radiance of God because it is so bright and so intense, the Apostle Peter nevertheless says : “‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make here three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah’” (Matthew 17:4). Even so, this is not allowed by the Lord because this moment is a taste of the Resurrection that is to come. Yes, it was awesome ; yes, it was overwhelming ; yes, it made the apostles fall down on the ground because it was such an intense experience. Their legs would not hold them up.

What was the foundation of this experience ? The experience made this apostle say, as it were : “This is hard to bear. I do not think I can bear it at all, but I want this experience to last forever”. That is essentially what the Apostle Peter said. What was this experience ? It was the experience of the Lord’s love. It was the peace and joy that come from the presence of the Lord’s love. That is why he and the others all wanted to perpetuate that moment forever. We can understand something about what this moment of transfiguration was like. For you and for me, there are times in our life when we have a taste of what it feels like when the Lord pours out His love on us. Sometimes when we are praying during the Divine Liturgy, for example, the peace and joy of the Lord are so present, and so intense that the Liturgy could go on for five or six hours ; and we would not notice the length, or even care about it, because everything is so beautiful. There are moments like that in our lives when the Lord reveals to us His love which is so life-giving that it makes one moment be prolonged and prolonged and prolonged. There have been times in my life when I have been serving in churches in one place or another, where the service has been going on for four or five hours (occasionally Pascha has been like this), but somehow people are all focussed together by some miracle. Their hearts are in harmony on that particular day. The devil is not distracting them too badly, and they are together in the Lord. The sense of the immediate presence of the Lord can make those four or five hours feel like one hour, but not much more. When the service is finished, people often say that it would have been good just to stay there and hold on to that moment forever (just as the Apostle Peter desired to do at the Transfiguration). The Lord gives us moments like this to encourage us, and to remind us that He is with us and that He loves us.

The Apostle Paul says that everything is “Yes” in Jesus Christ (see 2 Corinthians 1:19). Everything is true in Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ, Himself, is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, as He says (see John 14:6). Although many people in North America are trying to say nowadays that there are many truths, this is all wrong. There are not many truths. There is only one Truth. In Jesus Christ is found all Truth. We have to remember that there is not a variety of truths. There is one Truth. Everything that is true finds its truth and its rightness in Jesus Christ. If anything is true, it is because it is in Jesus Christ. That is how we must understand truth as Orthodox Christians. Everything is in Jesus Christ. Everything comes from Him, and everything points to Him. As the Apostle says : “Of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever” (Romans 11:36). (Evil, however, has no being or substance. It is all illusion and fakery.) He who loves us and brought us into being, gives us these moments I have been describing, like the moment of the Transfiguration. The Lord in these moments gives us courage and strength to go on, and to persevere at times when we feel that it is really hard and heavy, and when we do not necessarily feel the presence of the Lord close to us. Nevertheless, He truly is close to us. We just have to have faith in Him.

The Lord knows that difficult moments will come to us. He gives these Mount Tabor moments to us so that we will have courage to persevere, knowing that the difficulties will pass, and we will feel the sense of His love again. The moment of the Transfiguration happened close to the time of the Crucifixion, the Death, and the Resurrection of Christ. The Lord gave this experience of the Transfiguration to the apostles so that they could eventually understand His Resurrection. Even when He did rise from the dead, they were a bit slow to catch on. Our Lord had to remind them in various ways, through the Grace of the Holy Spirit, to see in their hearts the connexion between the Transfiguration and the Resurrection. He gives us these moments for the same purpose – to remind us that these are tastes of Heaven. These moments are tastes of the sweetness, joy, peace and love of Heaven, and the timelessness of being in His presence.

In conclusion, I would like to tell you about how the Feast of the Transfiguration is celebrated every year on Mount Tabor in Palestine. I think it is important to hear about God’s love for us as a word of encouragement. I heard this story first from a bishop who used to serve in Palestine as a representative of the Moscow Patriarchate. He served the Feast of the Transfiguration every year on Mount Tabor where the Transfiguration itself happened. I have also heard the same story from many other people who have lived at one time in Palestine, and who have been at the Divine Liturgy of the Feast of the Transfiguration at the top of Mount Tabor. They all say the same thing. In Palestine at that time of year, it is hot, dry, and it never rains. The sky is clear blue, and 45° C is the normal temperature in that part of the world. In the evening, on the eve of the Feast of the Transfiguration, year after year, there is always a circle of small clouds round about the top of Mount Tabor. Because the Roman Catholics own the large, main church building on top of the mountain, the Orthodox are serving in the nearby Orthodox Temple of their monastery in the middle of the night. They serve Vespers, Matins, and the Divine Liturgy, which takes a good 6 hours. They go up to the top of the mountain with all their baskets of fruit which they leave outside of the church. This is unusual, is it not ?

While they are in the Temple in the middle of the night, singing God’s praises, and celebrating the Divine Liturgy, all the twelve or thirteen clouds merge and become one single cloud on the top of Mount Tabor. The humidity from this cloud makes all the fruit wet. I do not think that there is an Orthodox believer who would deny that God Himself blesses the fruit. At the conclusion of the Divine Liturgy (unlike everywhere else in the world, where we have the blessing of the fruit with Holy Water), on Mount Tabor, they do not have that service because the Lord Himself blesses the fruit. In the morning, the cloud dissipates.

The Lord has given us this (and the fact that people around the world know about it) as an encouragement to us. He loves us, and He is with us in concrete ways. However, it is for you and for me here in difficult North America to open the eyes of our heart, and to let the Lord show Himself to us. We must allow ourselves to see, and hear, and smell, and taste the Lord’s presence with us. He is very close. Sometimes He even allows us to smell His presence. I know of many people who have sometimes smelt the sweetest and most beautiful aroma of incense in their homes, and even in their cars. This is the presence of God that is meant to encourage them, telling them : “I am with you. I love you. Be with me. Be faithful. I am with you”.

That is why it is important for us to remember today on this feast-day, and also here in this Temple (which almost came tumbling down), that this community is again being called to witness to Christ’s love in n. However, in effect, the Lord is saying to us : “I am with you. There is a reason why this building is being restored. It is a sign of My love here, where I have loved people who have served Me here for a hundred years, and where I have served you for over a hundred years”. Other people are going to continue to serve here – we have no idea who – but hearts have been moved. The Lord will do with this Temple as He wills. Let us offer this Temple to Him in love, as we have to do also with our lives. Trusting Him, let us glorify Him : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In the Gospel reading this morning, when the Lord is speaking to the Apostle Peter, He begins by asking (as a result of the tax-collecting requirement) what is the correct order of things. This apostle answers Him well. Ultimately, our Lord demonstrates just through the fishing how things are all in God’s hands.

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. What is a child to his or her parents ? The child is the object of the parents’ love, obviously. To some extent it depends on the parents’ ability (and other factors) how this love is played out in the course of life. Sometimes it gets distorted. Nevertheless, it is the intention on the part of the parents (even though there may be weaknesses and emotional baggage) to love their child. The parents want the best for the child, who is the fruit of the parents’ love. Most parents that I have known will give anything of themselves for the welfare of their children. Sometimes they almost die from self-deprivation so that their children will be well. That is one of the characteristics of behaviour of prairie settlers. People arrived in Canada with nothing, and still at the end of their lives they found that they had very little. They had given their all for their children. They did this so that their children would have a better opportunity to have a stable and good life. They deprived themselves in order that their children do well.

I have met a number of poor families even in these days, who, when money is short between paycheques, will deprive themselves of food. They eat very little, in order that their children have enough to eat until they have enough money again next paycheque. I am not referring to people on welfare, either. There are plenty of legitimately poor people whose income is very small. Sometimes there are accidents that happen that require extra money for something or other. Sometimes there is a miscalculation, and the last few days before one gets paid the next time are rather tight. Parents will give everything of themselves for the sake of their children. This is how God made us. It is the working out of love.

This is also a reflection of how God is towards us. I have said many times in many places that if I had been the creator of the universe, I would have wiped it out a long time ago. It is so awful how people behave, and how ungrateful people are towards the Lord. We have a loving, merciful God who is patient beyond our imagination, precisely because He has this sort of love that parents have for their children.

From the child’s perspective, the child knows that the parents love him. The child looks to the parents for everything, and sometimes this can come to an irritating level. I remember in my own childhood a number of occasions on which I was saying to my parents : “Give me this ; give me that”. I was asked : “Who was your slave last year ?” It is the parents’ job to put things into perspective. A child can become unbalanced in his or her perspective when taking the parents’ love for granted. The parents’ love requires that they give to the child a certain correction. “Who was your slave last year” is a very mild correction. I remember feeling embarrassed when I was told that. Nevertheless, I remember it to this day.

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. No matter how much a farmer may be able to work on and with the land, everything depends on the weather. We can do everything correctly according to the book, but some flies are going to come or there is too much dryness, or there is too much water, or things are out of balance, and we can have a very bad harvest that year. Sometimes we can wonder whether we are going to eat properly at all during the winter (and even more so these days because the financial output of farmers is so great). Farmers have always turned towards the Lord, and said : “Help me, Lord, while I am planting. Help this crop to grow. Help me while I am harvesting. Help me while I am preparing for the next year”. Farmers have always had this basic relationship of trust with the Lord which has been life-giving.

This is actually one of the reasons that I have always enjoyed going to the country parishes. The believers in the country still have a more direct sense of this relationship between themselves and the Lord than those in urban parishes, it seems. They are dependent upon Him to provide what is right. I have seen, as a result of this, in one place or another, how a believing farmer in a difficult year (because of the climate) can be praying to the Lord, and asking the Lord for protection. The result is that even though the crop may not be great, it is often better than the crops of people who are merely tossing on chemicals and then going for coffee, expecting that science will do it all. People who are turning to the Lord have this way of allowing the Lord to bring about the best that is possible under the circumstances. It will not completely change the climate, but it might save you from a tornado. It might save you from excessive hail sometimes, for instance. These sorts of things the Lord can protect us from.

The Lord sends rain and sun on the righteous and on the unrighteous (see Matthew 5:45). Nevertheless, He measures each person according to who he or she is. If He is trying to give a lesson to the whole neighbourhood for one reason or another, He will still take into account the faithfulness of one person there. For example, in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, the angels were going to visit Lot to see who was faithful there. They were prepared to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of its people. Nevertheless, these angels listened to Abraham because Abraham cared about his family. Lot, of course, cared about his family, and he cared about the people that he lived amongst even though they were awful, and they abused him and his family terribly. They even tried to abuse these angels (as we read in 1 Moses [Genesis] 19). Nevertheless, Abraham said, as it were : “You will not destroy the city if there are fifty faithful people here ?” The Lord said : “No, I will not destroy it for fifty”. They went on bargaining like that, and ended up limiting it just to ten righteous persons. (In fact, in Sodom and Gomorrah, there were not any good people left, except Lot’s family.) Only Lot and his family escaped. Everyone else was destroyed.

Human beings are slow learners. Overall, it seems that from the time of Sodom and Gomorrah, people have not learnt how to live properly. We always seem to fall right back into the same old junk (as our society is doing today). It will serve us right if our economies all collapse and everything falls down because we, as a society, have taken our eyes off the Lord. We have stopped trusting in the Lord. In fact, we have rejected God. In Canadian society that is simply how it is. As a society, we have rejected God.

We, who are faithful, have to remain faithful and save something of the good that remains. There are a great many good people. As a whole, the rot is very pernicious and takes a lot of people down. People are quick to take their eyes off the Lord, and to turn them on themselves and on really empty self-satisfaction (which is temporary), instead of looking to the Lord and to what is eternal. We ourselves need to remember that the Lord values the love of the child. He values that love in us. This is the part of us that we need to keep alive – this child in us, that still trusts that the Lord loves us, and still has confidence that the Lord will look after us. Everything is balance. I do not deserve anything. If I try to grab too much, the Lord will put me in my place.

Nevertheless, the Lord does love us. He does want to protect us. He does want to nurture us. He does want us to be well here in this life. He wants us to be productive persons in our life. He will give to each one – to you and to me – the resources we need to become the productive plant, the productive person that He created each of us uniquely to be. There never was a person like you or me in the world before, and there will not be after (no matter what reincarnation likes to say about things). We are unique creatures. God’s love is not in any way limited that He cannot keep on creating people who reflect Him, like you and me. 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 hearts, and to freshen up this confidence in Him. It is this that is life-giving.

I know that in a small community like this in rural parts of Canada (especially in Manitoba and Saskatchewan where rural population is such a significant thing), people think very often that because the numbers get greatly diminished, it means that the end somehow is quite soon. However, this is not necessarily so. It is possible that certain communities decline. They cannot continue because of various factors. Sometimes the people have completely gone away. Sometimes a congregation is even closed down.

Let us consider Sifton, for instance. Sifton, almost gone, is now starting to wake up and come back to life. We never want to focus on what might be the end of anything because we simply do not know. I have seen this happen in a lot of rural communities in Saskatchewan and Alberta. People thought that because there were so few left, it was too difficult to carry on. Yet the Lord gave them the resources to continue. Somehow, out of nowhere, new people arrive and life continues and is renewed. The Lord wants His Orthodox Christian witness shining in all corners. The Lord wants this Orthodox life and His love shining in all corners because people in this really depressing environment in which we live, need hope.

We, who have the love of Jesus Christ, have inherited the right way to live the love of Jesus Christ. Our perseverance, our loving treatment of each other – just that alone can give people what they need to continue, themselves. Let us use these resources of God’s love, and glorify Him in our lives as we continue to live to His glory, and as we worship Him now : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we are celebrating the death of the Mother of God. We are also celebrating her resurrection, because, as the icon of this Feast shows us, the soul of the Mother of God is being taken away by Christ at the time of her death. However, we also know from the earliest Tradition of the apostles that when the apostles went to look for her body, they could not find it because it was already gone. Therefore, we have to say that she was the first-fruits of the Resurrection.

Why is this the case with her ? It is because she lived out the very last words that we heard today in the Gospel. She became, in the living out of those words, the example for the rest of us of how to live the Christian life, how to gain eternal life, and how to enter the Kingdom of God. The two readings today come together to show us precisely how.

Very many times I have heard certain people (who do not know the Scriptures very well) say that when someone in the crowd comments : “‘Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts that nursed You’”, and our Saviour replies : “‘More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it’”, these words are putting down the Mother of God, somehow. However, nothing of the sort is the case. Our Saviour is putting in their place the people who said such things. It is not simply because the Mother of God bore Christ that she is blessed as a woman. It is not only because she gave birth to the Saviour that she is “more honourable than the Cherubim, and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim”. It is not only because she gave birth to the Son of God and raised Him to adulthood. It is because she heard the word of God and kept it.

The Apostle Luke tells us precisely that. The Mother of God kept in her heart the things that happened when Christ was a Child, and she treasured them (see Luke 2:19). She kept God’s word her whole life through. From her earliest childhood she was dedicated to the service of God. Her life, her whole life, was a life of obedient service to the Lord ; loving, obedient service to the Lord.

When the Archangel Gabriel, sent from the Lord, told her that she would give birth to a Son (and she was not even married), she said : “‘How can this be?’” (Luke 1:34). Nevertheless, she accepted the promise even though she could not understand. Also, Joseph, her betrothed husband (who had all sorts of doubts and struggles about the whole situation), when the angel visited him, trusted God and accepted His word.

These, our spiritual ancestors, heard the word of God and kept it. What does this mean : “to hear the word of God and to keep it ?” It means, in part, being like the Mother of God herself. It means being like Christ Himself, who did not think it “robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself”, as the Epistle says. He limited Himself – He who is not limitable. He who created everything, and is creating everything, became Himself a creature. He emptied Himself. He became a human being in order to save us, in order to save us from ourselves, in order to save us from our darkness, our fear, our fallenness.

Why did He do all this ? It was because of love, selfless love, love with no strings attached. Why did the Mother of God live such a life of obedient service, and hear the word of God and keep it the way she did ? She did this because of love, the same love of the same loving God. 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.

“You can never please everyone”, my Mother said to me many times. “Do not even try to please everyone ; you cannot do it, because people are too different”. People are too different ; people are too moody ; people are too selfish. You cannot please all the people all the time. We have to be pleasing to the Lord. After all, God is eternal. God is our Creator. In God, we have hope of eternal life. Which is better : to try to please God or to try to please fickle people ? God, I believe. However, we usually fall into trying to please fickle people because we are so easily distracted.

The Mother of God, in her life and in her death, is an example of how to live our lives in hope and to come to the end of our lives in hope. We do not have eternal life just because we are human beings, just because God saves us, just because God loves us. We have eternal life because, already in this life, we begin to participate and share in it. Already, in this life, in our behaviour towards other human beings, in our behaviour towards the creation around us, we have the possibility of participating in the beginning of eternal life. That is how we find the hope of eternal life : in experiencing this love now, in practicing this love now, here, amongst each other. The life which we are now living is the preparation, the entry-way to eternal life with Christ. What this is going to be like very much depends on what we are doing with our life now.

The Mother of God was, and is salt and yeast (see Matthew 5:13 ; 13:33) because of her love, her obedience, and her service. Her whole life was love, and obedience in love and service. She lived this way not because she was even asked, but because she saw what needed to be done. She understood in her heart what God was directing her to do, and she did it. She became like Adam and Eve before the Fall, whose hearts were completely, 100 per cent in tune with God’s will. God did not even have to tell them what to do because their hearts told them what God would like them to do in certain circumstances : how to name this animal, how to name that animal, how to name this tree or that tree, how to live amongst these animals, how to be good and nurturing to these animals and these trees and these plants in the garden. Even when they fell, they did not lose all communication with the Lord right away.

The Mother of God became like that. You and I can become like that as well. Probably there are other people alive today who have, in the course of their lives, lived as salt and yeast in this world (and there certainly have been quite a few people who have lived this way before us). Salt and yeast are not visible – we cannot tell where they are. We cannot see them, but we can certainly tell what they do. When we taste bread, we can tell that salt and yeast have been at work. That is what you and I are to be like in this world – like 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.

Keeping the word of God means understanding what He wants us to do : to live according to His love, and to do what this love, this selfless love, directs us to do. Saint Herman, the Elder and Wonder-worker of Alaska, who was a wonderfully holy man, was one of those imitators of the Mother of God in the way he lived his life in Alaska around 200 years ago. He said over and over again so that all the people in the region remembered his words after 200 years without writing them down : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”.

Let us indeed love God above all, and do His holy will. Let us ask the Mother of God to pray for us, to protect us, to support us, so that we will be able to love God above all, and do His holy will, as she did and does. Let us also ask Saint Herman to pray for us, too, and to support us by his prayers, so that we, in our imitation of their loving service, may imitate Christ as they imitated and do imitate Christ, and live in love, being yeast and salt in this world. May we come at the end to the heavenly Kingdom and hear our Lord say : “‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you’” (Matthew 25:34). May we love God above all, and do His holy will, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Every year as we celebrate the patronal feast of this Temple, we are celebrating at the same time the Dedication of the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem. This church is named for that Temple and that feast which always happens the day before the Elevation of the Holy Cross. The Exaltation of the Holy Cross happened in that Temple in Jerusalem the day after the church itself was dedicated.

In celebrating this feast, we are celebrating the mystery of God’s love for us, and how it works out. It is a great mystery how Saint Helena could find the true Cross which healed people as soon as it was found, and demonstrated to people that God is still with us. It is God Himself who led Saint Helena to this Holy Cross. It was not because she was a good detective that she found it. It was because she had a good heart that was listening to God’s leading. She paid attention to the words of believers who remembered where it was kept. She listened to the Holy Spirit moving in her heart, and that is how the Holy Cross was found.

Ever since that time, the Holy Cross has been for us an example of God’s self-emptying love. The presence of parts of this Holy Cross in many corners of the world has been an encouragement to believers where there has been a lot of suffering and difficulty. People have been able to turn to the Holy Cross and find healing. Saint John of Damascus has told us that every time we venerate any representation of the Holy Cross, the veneration goes straight to the original Holy Cross, and through it, to Christ Himself who was crucified on this Holy Cross. It is He, that through His Cross, gives us life in His Resurrection. It is He, that through His suffering on the Cross, brings us healing and life today through the Grace of the Holy Spirit.

The Lord, in His love, is with us. We built this Temple a long time ago, and before that, its ancestor farther downtown, in order to have a place in which to worship the Lord. It was built not only so that we can worship the Lord, but also so that people around would be encouraged by seeing that there is such a Temple of the Lord, and that there are believers worshipping there. When the bell is ringing, even though the neighbours may not come, they are touched in their hearts by the sound of the ringing of the bell. Some of them may sometime come, as other people have come to this holy Temple and have found Christ. They have worshipped Him with us, and have become part of us over the years.

It is good for me to see this Temple again with blue domes. It was nice while they were gold, but for me, sentimentally, it is better now that they are blue. When I first came to this Temple more than thirty years ago, they were blue. These blue domes are also reminding me of the blue domes of Ouspensky Sobor in Trinity-Sergius Lavra, for instance, because they have a similar character to them (although I did not know that when I first came to this Temple). These blue domes and the shiny Crosses upon them will catch peoples’ eyes and make them think : “What is this lovely church ? Maybe I might be able to go there sometime”. And sometime they might.

It was because believers in this community were loving and caring (and were in some ways related to believers I knew in n), that I was able, when I first came to this city as a student, to be brave enough to come here, even though I did not yet know anyone. However, the people I had been told to look for, met me. They were expecting me, and they welcomed me. Then people like n, who did not know me, met me, and greeted me, and warmed my heart. This is how it has to be. When that door opens, we do not know who it is that the Lord is sending through that door, and what will come with that person who comes through that door. It is our responsibility to be welcoming in Christ, to be receiving in Christ.

God moved the hearts of Orthodox believers eighty or more years ago to build this Temple to His glory. As the words from the Epistle this morning say : It is the Lord who is the Builder. People helped Him build, but it is the Lord who built this Temple (first the one downtown, and now this one). It is He who moved the hearts of faithful people to do this work. They worked with Him to build this Temple to His glory, in which we have been able to worship Him day by day, and week by week until now. It is important for us to be grateful for the founders who established this Temple and its predecessor. They listened to God. They listened to the moving of the Holy Spirit in their hearts. Because they did this, they were able to erect a Temple to His glory here in this city. From this very community have, in fact, grown up all the other Orthodox communities in the whole of this province. This one was the first. It is because this church was established to the glory of God that other communities of believers were able to establish themselves in various parts of this city and province.

I still remember well how the welcoming disposition of this community enabled a second Greek-speaking worshipping community to develop. It was in the hall over there that for a number of years that fledgling community was worshipping at the same time that we were praying here. Because of the generosity of the people here, because of their willingness to support other believers, there came to be a second Greek church. It was because of the welcoming and God-loving disposition of the people here, that various Romanian communities were able to establish themselves in this city. People here welcomed them, and gave them a start.

A great deal of good fruit has come from here, not the least of which is that Mission in n, which for many years waited for the right and opportune time to come for it truly to grow. Back in the days of Vladyka Ioasaph, when n was a deacon (well over thirty years ago), they went over to n and were serving in that Mission, establishing a seed. The seed had a hard time growing, I guess, because it is very rocky spiritual ground over there. Eventually there was enough soil around for the plant to grow, through the prayers of Vladyka Ioasaph and the people who originally went there. Because of their love and their service so long ago, now we have a thriving community there. It still calls itself a Mission, but it actually is not. It has regularly sixty people in church already. It is advanced enough to be called a parish. This is because faithful people have been ready to co-operate with the Grace of the Holy Spirit. People who have come before us, because they always have been welcoming and loving to people who came through that door, enabled a great multiplication of the Orthodox Faith in this province.

The Lord has been building through you and in you. The Lord speaks to us today in the Gospel about that rich young man (who could obey the commandments but who could not give up everything and follow Christ) : “‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God’”. When the apostles ask who then could be saved, our Lord says to them : “‘With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible’”. In this community, even though some people have become well endowed with financial resources, most of them have still been ready to put the Church first in their hearts and lives. They considered these resources to be God’s blessing, and they have used these resources to God’s glory. That is one reason why this Temple is in such good condition. We have such nice doors, windows, and cupolas. The parish hall is in good condition, because people have been prepared to share their personal resources for the glory of God. They have been ready to share with the rest of the church what God has given them, to glorify God, to give thanks to God, and to show their gratitude in a material, as well as a spiritual way.

The way of the Orthodox Christian is to show and express gratitude. That is why we are here today. We, Orthodox Christians, are standing here today in the Temple of God’s glory, which our ancestors erected (our spiritual or physical ancestors). All the people who came before, if they are not our personal, physical ancestors, are definitely our spiritual ancestors. We are standing here today in the Temple which they erected to God’s glory. We are continuing with them and in their footsteps as we glorify our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ. We are doing what the Lord is asking us to do. Every week, and very often during the week, we come here to give thanks to Him, and to praise Him for His love for us, for His presence with us, for the Grace that He pours out upon us, for the love that He shares with us, for the healing that He gives to us, for the doors that He opens for us to find work, for the way that He helps us to reconcile our differences one with another. We are giving thanks to Him today, and praising Him in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, as the Apostle Paul says (see Ephesians 5:19), because we are responding to His love for us. We are grateful that He is with us, that He is helping us, that He is supporting us, and enabling us to do the supposedly impossible for ordinary, unbelieving persons. He helps us to do the impossible.

One of these apparently impossible things is to remain hopeful, joyful, strong, vigorous, with a sense of direction in the middle of a time and a society where everything is inside out and upside down ; in a time when people are depressed because their selfishness is leading them into nothingness and complete emptiness. Psychiatrists are so overloaded with appointments these days that all they can do is give people pills. Very often, these doctors do not even have time to listen to their story. People are in such a wrecked condition. However, we Orthodox believers are still able to go about life with a sense of direction, with a sense of God’s being with us, with a sense of hope, with joy, knowing that no matter how bad things are in our society, no matter how much people have turned their backs on Christ, we have not. God is with us. His love is with us, and we are going to share the light of His love by going about our lives in this way. Hopeless people are seeking help from psychiatrists. Hopeless people grasp at empty straws in weird philosophies and theories. Hopeless people struggle to find meaning through magic. All these paths are ruinous and empty. Indeed, may it be possible that because of the activity of the light of Christ in us, they may find true hope.

Dear brothers and sisters, God in His mercy is with us today as we celebrate to His glory the Feast of the Dedication of the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem. He is with us today as we give thanks to Him for His love. He is with us today as we give praise to Him for His love, and in His love. He is with us as we go from this Temple today and tomorrow, and as we go about our lives. Let us offer anew our hearts to Him, our lives to Him, and allow Him more and more to direct our lives. Then everything about our lives will be directed in Jesus Christ. Then everything about our lives will point others to Jesus Christ just as the Mother of God herself always directs everyone to her Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ, so that we, and others with us, may glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Since the very beginning, everything has been, and ought to have been about the relationship of love between the Creator and the created. We are the created, and not the creators. This is where we get confused sometimes and follow in the footsteps of him who thought he was equal to God, then rebelled, and fell from Grace. Actually, he did not think he was equal to God ; he even thought he was greater. At least, that is how we understand it.

Pride can actually be like that. It is very plausible. There are people in mental hospitals who think this way. That is why I am saying that it is plausible. When people fall into a delusion, they can fall very far. A lie can become all-consuming. This lie, this self-preoccupation, this self-centredness, is a very dangerous thing, a very deadly thing. It is important for us to remember how deadly it is, because this consumer society in which we live is consumed with this sort of selfishness. It is consumed with this sort of self-preoccupation : me, me, me, I, I, and I. We can see around us what is the result of that in the decay of human society, in the inability of human beings to live together in harmony (which is at an all-time low). We can see it in the decay of all creation, which we are causing ourselves because of our self-centred way of going about life.

There are many consequences to this self-centredness : many deadly consequences. If we examine human history, we can see that human beings over the whole course of their existence have learned the equivalent of zero about how to live. We have gained a terrific amount of technical knowledge and ability. We can fly to the moon, but we cannot live on earth. We poison our own nest, as it were. We are really a wreck as a race.

That is why the challenge for us who are Christians is so great. We are the ones who have the experience of God’s love. This self-emptying love is revealed in the Incarnation of the Only-begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ. He emptied Himself, became a human being, and allowed us to kill Him upon the Cross whose image is before us. He allowed us to kill Him so that He could rise from the dead, conquer death, overcome sin, and restore to us the possibility of communion between ourselves and our Creator which we ourselves ruptured.

In allowing Himself to be killed upon the Cross, the Saviour made what was a disgusting instrument of torture, a symbol of shame, of death, and of defeat become instead a symbol of life, victory, and love. We, who venerate the Cross, venerate Him who was crucified upon it, as Saint John of Damascus says. Every time we wear our Crosses upon our bodies, every time we venerate the Holy Cross in our homes or in the church, we venerate the true Cross, and through that true Cross, Jesus Christ, Himself, who was crucified upon it.

It is this Cross that conveys life and healing to us. That is, after all, how they found out which of the three crosses that Saint Helena discovered in Jerusalem was the authentic and true one (because they were all fragrant). Which one was the true one ? It was the one that raised someone from the dead. That is how they could tell. That true Cross continues to convey Grace, and there are pieces of that true Cross amongst us to this day. In this parish there is the blessing to have such a tiny particle of the true Cross. Do not underestimate the blessing of having such a relic of the true Cross. (Relic means remains. In this case, it means a particle of the veritable Holy Cross.) Thus the Holy Cross throughout the world today still conveys the healing love of Jesus Christ, who died upon it and who rose again from the dead. I say “throughout the world” because of the very many tiny particles of this Cross which are shared amongst Christians throughout the world. We Orthodox Christians share in that life, in that victory, and in the love which conquered and conquers everything that is evil, dark and deadly. We are the ones who are responsible for carrying Jesus Christ with us wherever we are, and whatever we are doing, and showing Him by our behaviour (not solely by our words) to people around us.

Why do I say not solely by words ? I say that because we are living in such a corrupt time that words do not have any meaning to most people. Today, words are just something that you use for some sort of minimal convenience. Words themselves do not have much meaning nowadays. I still remember, when I was a child, seeing the musical My Fair Lady. Eliza Dolittle was being courted by this poet, and she said (to paraphrase) : “Words, words, words, I am sick of all these words. If you really love me, then show me that you really love me. Do not just talk about it”.

This is what the whole world is saying to us, Orthodox Christians, too. It is saying to us : “We have plenty of words, and most people who are using words do not mean anything they say. Therefore, if you are really Christians, show it to us ; prove it to us by how you live. The rest is all window-dressing. People say one thing, but they do another thing. We want to see a people, a believing people, who follow through, who say that they are Christians and live it ; a people who are not like everyone else, betraying, deceiving, etc”. They want people they can trust so they can understand that the love of Jesus Christ is, in fact, what we say it is, what Jesus Christ says He is. He says : “‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life’” (John 14:6).

In order to do this, brothers and sisters, we have to work at our lives. We have to remember the words of people who were around Jesus Christ, words like : “‘He must increase, but I must decrease’” (John 3:30). That is really important for us to remember. Jesus Christ must increase, but I must decrease. I am not the engineer of my life. Jesus Christ is in charge of my life. It is my business to listen to Him, and to let Him guide me on the path I am supposed to be treading. If I do that, through me He will accomplish all sorts of wonderful, seemingly impossible things.

However, if I continue to try to engineer, I will continue to wreck things. Human beings, as I said, are non-learners, not just slow learners. As a race, we are non-learners. For instance, the United Nations was a so-called bright idea for people who did not believe in God but thought that they could organise the human race, and make human beings work together. They thought : “If only we have a nice system, everyone will say : ‘Yes, that is the way we will work together. It is only logical’”.

What dreamers ! The United Nations has turned into nothing but a political wrangling place where people beat each other up with money and power. Human beings, as I have said, are non-learners. It is no different right now from the time of Sodom and Gomorrah, and we know what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah. It is no different from the time of the tower of Babel, and we know what happened to the tower of Babel. It is no different from the time of ancient Egypt and the Pharaohs, and I have proof. One of our priests, newly retired from his secular job in n, was a teacher of Egyptology at n University (where he became, I am told, the fifth best Egyptologist on the whole continent). I asked him : “Is it any better now or any different now than it was in the time of the Pharaohs ?” He said : “No, it is worse”. He ought to know. He is an excellent, respected scholar of ancient Egypt. What I like about him is that even knowing all that, and knowing that things are worse now, he still has a sense of humour. I think you would like him. However, it is not easy to meet someone in n, 8,000 kilometres away. Because I have been there, I can tell you. However, Father n has been here, so maybe some of you know him. He is lovable, and he is eccentric as a Christian ought to be, but he does know his Egyptology, and he does know human beings.

It is our responsibility to remember what the Apostle Paul said to us this morning, that for him to live is Christ. Everything is referred to, and in, and about Jesus Christ. That is what we, Orthodox Christians, have to work on in our lives, giving up our selfishness and our stubbornness. Stubbornness can be all right as long as it is stubbornness with Christ. However, if we are stubborn because we are exercising our own independent will, we are going to get broken on our stubbornness. I can tell you that because it has happened to me a few times in my life. I do not wish the same for you. That is why I am telling you : “Do not do as I sometimes do myself. Do what I say”.

What the Gospel says and what the Apostle Paul says in effect is this – put the Lord Jesus Christ in the driver’s seat of your life. Allow Him (hard as it is) to guide every detail of your life. Ask Him : “What am I supposed to do today in this or that situation ?” Learn how to listen to your heart. Learn how to look for peace in your heart about this decision or that decision. Look for where there is disturbance, and if there is disturbance, do not go there. Look for where there is coldness, and if there is coldness, do not go there. Look for where there is peace : go there. Look for where there is warmth : go there. Look for where there is joy and love : go there. That is your heart telling you by the Grace of the Holy Spirit and with the help of your Guardian Angel, what God’s will is for you, and what He wants you to do. When you are tempted to do something, when you get a warning sign in your heart, you had better think twice about doing something. If you get this warning sign in your heart, or you hear : “I would not do that if I were you”, then maybe it is a better thing (instead of being stubborn, and doing it anyway because you want to do it) to be safe, and say : “I will not touch it because it is hot. I do not want to get burnt”.

We have to learn to listen to our hearts. We have to learn to listen to the Lord. All these saints that we are surrounded by on the walls, whose lives we read (whose lives were kindly prepared for us in summary by Father Lawrence, along with many other writings he has provided for our convenience), these lives tell us about people who have struggled to do the same thing. One way or another, all human beings are no different from you or me. They are all the same sort of ordinary human beings. Do not get any idea that these saints are some sort of spiritual professionals who have a Ph.D. in how to pray. Many of them did not know how to read or write. However, they did know how to love. They did know the Gospel by heart, because they listened.

Recently I was being told about a priest who was serving in Greek in some village somewhere where people did not have a very high literacy rate. He read the Gospel, and at the end of the Divine Liturgy, when he was giving the Cross and people were leaving, one of the grannies came to him and said : “Father, you missed a word in the Gospel today”. She was illiterate. How did she know ? Because she had grown up hearing this Gospel her whole life. She had listened intently with her heart, and she knew the Gospel. That is why some people in places like that have no texts. We Canadians so love to have our little books right in front of our nose as we follow the Divine Liturgy text, that we cannot see anything that is going on around us. Those grannies do not have the possibility of putting their noses in the text, but they use their ears and they use their hearts. The Lord puts the word of the Gospel in their hearts. He puts the Divine Liturgy, all the tropars, and the services in their hearts.

How many times I have heard of people in churches in those ancestral countries of Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, who could sing Matins or Vespers by heart, with the stikhs. Come to think of it, I remember hearing not long ago that in an English-speaking parish, there was a problem with texts. Somehow the people who were the singers and the readers remembered enough together that they were able to sing Vespers by heart. That is how the Lord does things with us. He does things like that with us to make us wake up. He says : “Yes, you can do it. You do have it in your heart. You do not have to depend on that piece of paper. You can speak to Me and sing to Me straight from your heart, and I will help you remember how to do it”.

He does. Usually He does it not just one person at a time, but all together. Thus we start to sing to the Lord, and we all help each other to do it. No matter what little bit one might forget, another remembers, and it all goes well. In fact, that is how the people in the Gulag Archipelago in the days of the Soviet Union in Siberia managed to pray. They remembered the Gospel, and they remembered the Epistles by heart, together. No matter how hard the Communists tried to wipe them out, they did not wipe out the Church.

Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church. We do have to remember that, because the days of communism, especially in Russia, were very tough. In the days of the Second World War, when Stalin was being invaded by Germany, Stalin had already put so many of the bishops in jail that there were only three bishops left who were not in prison (and they were old and decrepit). It was a providence that the war came as it did because Stalin was not born yesterday. He knew that the only way the people would rally behind him (because he had already slaughtered many millions of people in Russia and in Siberia) would be if the Church said so. Therefore, he let the Church out of prison in order for that to happen. The Lord does what He does. It is amazing how the Lord organises things.

The Lord Jesus Christ is in charge of everything. He is in charge of our lives. He is in charge of the Church. He will not abandon our Church. He said that He is the Head, and the gates of Hades will never prevail against the Church. Let us all together offer our loving hearts to the Lord, as we praise and glorify Him : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

During the course of today’s Gospel reading, when our Saviour begins telling the apostles about what is going to happen, as is typical with us human beings when being told about impending suffering, they do not accept what He is saying. They (as we all often do) pretend that it is not going to happen. They (as we usually do) pretend that everything is going to be all right.

There is a pun in use these days which can help us to understand this : people today are suffering from “the Egyptian disease” of living in denial. However, I am not talking about the Nile River. I am talking about denying that there is going to be suffering or that there has been suffering. Human beings have always been doing this since the Fall. Ever since our first parents Adam and Eve, people have been hiding from the truth of suffering and pain. Because they hide from the truth, the poison goes deeper, and they do not allow the Lord to heal them. Then the poison goes even deeper ; and as a result, it is passed on from generation to generation. As it is passed on, it remains undetected and unnoticed in the depths of many persons, while it festers and, from time to time, provokes a behaviour or a response in these inheritors of the poison. Sometimes, they may try to discover the trouble, but usually they simply grit their teeth and bear with it, all the while perceiving themselves falsely because of it.

It is important for us to overcome this tendency to deny that there has been something wrong ; to deny that I am in pain, and to deny that I need to repent of my willfulness and my self-centredness. We all have to get over hiding from the truth. The only way any of us can get over that is by turning to God and asking Him to help us. Our Saviour shows us the way today. The Apostles James and John were not catching what our Saviour is saying. They were interested in the arrival of the Kingdom which had been talked about. They were interested in the glory of the Kingdom of Christ. They did not understand. Therefore, they ask : “Grant us that we may sit, one on Your right hand and the other on Your left, in Your glory”. In other words, they are asking : “Can we be the very first in Your glory, in Your Kingdom ? Can we sit right next to You as You reign in Your Kingdom ?”

Then the Lord tells them the blunt truth, which is, in summary : “If you want to be first in the Kingdom of Heaven, then you have to live in accordance with the Orthodox Christian perpetual paradox, which is to be the least. You cannot be the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven unless you consider yourself the least”. Therefore, He says to them, as He says to you and to me : “If you are going to follow Me, then you have to be able to be baptised with the baptism that I am baptised with”. He says to you and to me : “If you are going to follow Me, then you have to be baptised with the same suffering that I am going to suffer”. We have to be able to drink the same cup of bitterness, betrayal and pain that He drank. When the apostles naively say : “We are able”, they do not understand what they are talking about.

However, our Lord in His love says to them, as He says to you and to me : “Whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant”. Why is it great to be a servant ? The world thinks that being a servant is the lowest and dirtiest thing that you can be — just some nameless person who works in a hotel, for instance, cleaning rooms, or someone who waits on tables, or someone who cleans up after others. How is that so great in the Kingdom of Heaven when the world considers it to be nothing ? We take such people for granted.

It is great because our Saviour does precisely this. He was and is always serving the apostles and people around Him who come to Him asking for healing, asking for this and for that. He was and is serving because He emptied Himself in love. The way in which you and I will find our way in the Kingdom of Heaven can only be to imitate Christ in everything. How are you and I going to be able to be servants unless we first have His love ? Unless we first have His love, His self-less, self-emptying love, we are merely lovers of ourselves. We human beings are notoriously lovers of ourselves only. However, we cannot be like Christ while we are loving ourselves. Christ did not turn in on Himself. He emptied Himself and gave Himself to everyone round about. He served people. As we will see on Great and Holy Thursday, our Saviour will show the apostles the excellent way in serving by putting a towel around His waist and washing the feet of His disciples and apostles. The One who is the Word of God and the Son of God, by whom all things were and are made, washes the feet of the disciples. If you and I are going to be like Christ, be great like Christ and imitate Christ, then we have to find this sort of love that gives us so much freedom that we can imitate Him and do these things. However, we are mostly afraid to do this, because we are slaves of fear. You and I are afraid to be so low. We are also afraid to be thought to be lowly by anyone else.

Today, we are keeping the memory of Saint Mary of Egypt. She lived a life of the lowest of the low because she had been a prostitute, and she had delighted in taking people down with her. This is a 100 per cent classical illustration of how evil works. Her Life tells us that she was in absolute degradation. She was so degraded when she was this low, that she seemed to be happy to bring people down with her. As the English saying goes : “Misery loves company”. Thank God, Saint Mary of Egypt was not a stupid person. When she wanted to enter into the Temple of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, the Lord would not let her in. She tried to go in the door, but she simply could not even put her foot inside, no matter how she tried. It was not because someone was visibly stopping her. It seemed to her that there was an invisible wall in the doorway. In fact, she was four times pushed back by some mighty power. As she said : “The church would not receive me”. It was only then that her heart understood what was wrong in her life. Her heart broke. As she, herself, said : “The word of salvation touched the eye of my heart, and showed me that the impurity of my actions obstructed my entrance. I began to weep and grieve, beating my breast and groaning from the depths of my heart”. She then saw the icon of the Mother of God ; she repented, and only then did the Lord allow her to go into the Temple. Then, in His love, He sustained her afterwards in the desert for more than forty years, during which she had nothing.

This woman, who considered herself to be nothing and no-one, lived in the desert and became to you and to me one of the absolute, greatest signs of our hope that we could be saved in the love of Jesus Christ. She became a bright light of His love to Saint Zossima, whom she met in the desert more than forty years later. She became a bright light, a beacon of light to him, just as she is to you and to me. She, who led one of the most corrupt sorts of life that a person can live, turned everything about in and by Christ’s love. She became not the worst, but the best. She became our encouragement (yours and mine), in that no matter how much we may betray Jesus Christ by our sinfulness, our selfishness and our fear, and no matter how much we may hide from Him and deny Him (as the Apostle Peter did), the Lord still loves you and me just as He loves Saint Mary of Egypt. Just as He did everything in order to turn the heart of Saint Mary of Egypt, so He also does for you and for me when we get lost in the darkness of our selfishness and our fear. He loves us.

When we say : “My Saviour, I am sorry that I have done such horrible things and that I have betrayed You”, He accepts you and me in His love, just as He accepts Saint Mary of Egypt, and also His naïve and blind apostles. Because He loves you and me, He does not desire the death of the sinner but that the sinner turn from his wicked way and live (see Ezekiel 33:11). He wants you and me to live with Him in the Heavenly Kingdom. The Lord loves you and He loves me. If we are ready to say that we are sorry, He is ready to accept us. Even if we are not ready to say : “I am sorry”, He is ready and waiting for us to say it, like the father of the prodigal son. He already is accepting us, but we have to accept His acceptance. His arms are outstretched to you and to me, but we have to enter those loving arms. He is waiting for you and for me.

Let us follow the example of these holy apostles who gave themselves and suffered for the sake of Jesus Christ, just as they said that they thought they were able. They were able, because our Saviour enabled them. You and I are able in Jesus Christ. Let us entrust ourselves to the same Saviour, Jesus Christ, who turned Mary’s life around ; and let us glorify Him, together with His Father, who is from everlasting, and His all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In the Scripture readings we heard today what it is like for believers in the world. We are not at home in this world, and this world does not receive us very kindly, overall. We can all attest to that from the experience of our personal life, I think. Who really does take Christians seriously in Canadian society today ? The government certainly does not. For instance, I belong (out of necessity) to various groups and institutions that write to the Prime Minister and other government authorities from time to time. We tell them that they could do things in a better way, and they reply : “Thank you very much for your comments”. That is all that they say. We, being Canadians, know what is behind that sort of thank-you-very-much. “Go away and do not bother me” is what they are saying.

This is the attitude that Canadian society has developed towards Christian values and Christian ways in general ; to Orthodox Christians and the Orthodox Christian way in specific. “Go away and do not bother me”, because I am having so much fun in playing the game of denial, and living with all my goodies, my comfortable things, chasing after wild geese, and so forth. This is exactly what our society is about : wild-goose chases – looking for comfort in things that give no comfort ; trying to find some sort of substance in things that are empty. However, the only hope that we have is in Jesus Christ, Himself. He is the only One who does not fail us.

We Orthodox Christians have a difficult time growing in the context of the western ways of our environment. The west is, willy-nilly, all intellectual. Christians of the west are (if they examine themselves) more often than not intellectual. People in the west know about emotion, but the truth about the heart is not so well known in the west. There is a confusion made between emotions and the heart. Orthodox Christians live by the heart, with the intellect, in fact, guided and informed by the heart. It is not the head that runs the heart. People in the west tend to talk about the heart as though the heart were all emotions. They usually say that a person cannot let the heart run the head because one would then become an emotional wreck. However, that is not how it works.

The heart is where the Lord is. The heart is where we encounter God. It is the heart’s encountering of God that informs the intellect. It is the intellect that is all scattered and running around, and very often it is empty. It is through the intellect that we get caught up in every sort of fear. That is one of the reasons why the North American way is so scattered and actually so fear-driven these days. We merely have to observe how many ways the North American way of life is driven by fear. We merely have to observe how we are making laws to protect ourselves. Human beings in the long run are not different from how they were when I was little, but our fear of each other is much, much greater.

Saint Peter the Aleut, the patron of this Temple, was probably still a teenager when he had been conscripted into the Russian-American Company’s service, and was sailing around in the fur trade, and other sorts of trade. This took him from Alaska as far south as San Francisco (because Fort Ross, the last most southerly Russian trading post, was just north of San Francisco). The fort is still where it was then (I have been there), but it is not operating as it was in those days. Saint Peter encountered a hostile reception, and a complete misunderstanding of his Christianity. He, knowing Saint Herman, had accepted Christ, had encountered Christ, and in his heart, knew Christ. It is because of this encounter that he entrusted his whole life to the Lord. He knew what was right. He knew that he believed in Jesus Christ. People who encountered him in San Francisco were determined that that way was absolutely foreign, and could not possibly be right. They tried to force him to give up what he knew was right, and to change his ways – to become a “real” Christian, they said. However, Saint Peter already was one. He knew very profoundly that he was a real Christian, even if he could not give a rational defense of it. Saint Peter was too young to know many details of the why-and-wherefore of his faith as an Orthodox Christian, but he certainly did know that he and his family had encountered Jesus Christ in Saint Herman and the other missionaries. They had experienced the Orthodox way in the lives and witness of Saint Herman and the other missionaries. They were not going to change for anyone or anything.

This is how our lives should be. It is all very well to read books about the Orthodox Faith. It is all very well to know the canons, and all sorts of rules about what one ought to do as an Orthodox Christian. 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). It is all empty noise. The rules of the canons, and so forth, all of these things are important. The details of fasting are also important. However, if the tail wags the dog, it does not work. If the cart goes in front of the horse, it does not work. If we put rules in front of Jesus Christ, rules in front of the love of Jesus Christ, the rules are senseless. The love of Jesus Christ is what makes all those rules make sense. It is because of the love of Jesus Christ that we behave in all these ways. It is because of the love of Jesus Christ that we fast. We offer this fast to Jesus Christ, whom we love.

It is important for each of us, who are parishioners of this holy Temple to remember what comes first. What come first ? Jesus Christ comes first. If we say we are Orthodox Christians, then Jesus Christ must come first in our lives as in the life of Saint Peter, the Martyr. By the way we live our loving relationship with Jesus Christ, we must reveal Him to each other in our daily life. We do not have to be preaching to each other. We do not have to be teaching each other. However, we do have to be serving each other because Jesus Christ, our Saviour, on the night in which He was betrayed, washed the apostles’ feet. He said, as it were : “Whoever wants to be great amongst you has to be as the least. You have to do for each other what I am doing for you” (see Luke 22:26-27). We have to be servants of each other.

I learned that lesson in a long-term way. This only began really to make sense in my life in later years as I gained experience in the Christian life, and the Lord finally woke me up to some extent. I, like most other people, am a slow learner about some things. In this case, I remember how, in my childhood, I came to take my parents and my grandparents, even, for granted because they were so good to me. I started to treat them as though they existed for me – I was the centre of the world, and they were there for me. I would tell them to do things for me. Then I got the response : “Who was your servant last year ?” That was a shocking thing to hear a few times, and I did hear it a few times, because I am a slow learner. I realised later on in my adulthood that my parents were like that towards me because they loved me. I could not presume on that love. I had to accept that from them, and learn from them. Ultimately, I think I got somewhere in that direction.

What, nevertheless, is important is that we remember that Jesus Christ must come first. We must be like Him. If we are going to be like Him, we have to serve as He serves (see Luke 22:27). We have to care about each other as He cares about us. We have to be supporting each other and nurturing each other deliberately in each others’ lives. More important yet, because of the difficulties of living the Christian life in Canada these days, we have to try to be together in Christ as often as we can. It is easy for us to make excuses (because of how busy we are, and how many things we are doing) not to be with our brothers and sisters in the Temple of the Lord sometimes when it does not seem so important.

However, this actually is a temptation. There are many times when I, too, do not feel like going to church. Many times. Before Vespers, for instance, it sometimes feels so heavy. I am so tired. It has been such a long day. It is so hard, and I am really tempted not to go. Then, of course, the Lord speaks to me in my heart, and says : “Wake up”. Then I do go. I find that every time I might feel like this before Vespers or the Divine Liturgy or any service, when I get to the Temple of the Lord all that heaviness sooner or later during the service goes away. Being here with my brothers and sisters, and offering praise to the Lord sends those clouds away. Two and two make four in the end. Why do I feel heavy and reluctant to go to church ? It is because You-know-who-down-below is trying to drag me away. Yes, it does happen to bishops. Bishops can be tempted, too (in fact, you have no idea how much and in what diabolical variety).

We have to use our head, our common sense. If I am feeling that it is too much ; it is too hard ; it is too expensive ; or I do not know what – all these are ideas that come to keep me at home away from the Temple. Why is this ? Well, if I stay home, I can continue to feel sorry for myself, and say : “No-one loves me ; no-one cares about me, and so forth”. These are the sorts of things that I have been tempted to fall into, and did, many times in my life before. What is even worse is to think : “Well, I stayed home, and it did not really make any difference, anyway. Maybe I can stay home some more”. Then, I do not go, and I do not go, and I do not go. What has actually happened here ? By listening to the Tempter, I have separated myself from the fellowship of the Faithful. I have separated myself from the people who support me by being there, co-struggling. I feel sorry for myself, and say : “No-one loves me”. However, in fact, my brothers and sisters, who are co-strugglers, have lost me as their support. That is how it goes. I have given up my responsibility – I do not go. I do not support my brothers and sisters. I am not washing their feet.

Therefore, I have betrayed my brother and my sister by giving into my self-will, my self-indulgence. 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. As Father Schmemann once said : “The devil is not all that creative in temptation. However, we certainly are gullible”. If I come to the Temple (even if I do not feel well or I do not feel like it), by my being here I am encouraging and supporting my brothers and sisters. Without doing anything seemingly active, but being here, offering my praise to the Lord, I am supporting my brothers and sisters. I am supporting each one who is struggling in the same way that I am. In the heart, we are loving Jesus Christ. In the heart, we are knowing Jesus Christ. In the heart, we are trying to be faithful to Jesus Christ, but suffering all sorts of obstacles on the way. Just by being here together, we renew the joy of this love in one another, and we give each other hope. We can see Jesus Christ ministering to each other in our mutual presence.

Let us, brothers and sisters, remember the example of the patron of this holy Temple, Saint Peter. Let us remember his example of faithful love, and, through his intercessions, be like him, loving Jesus Christ. Let us be faithful to each other, and encourage each other on the way of life. Let us together glorify the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

As we are struggling to live our Orthodox Christian lives day by day in this difficult environment, it is extremely important to keep our hearts and minds in the Gospel. If we are Orthodox Christians, everything in our lives has to be related to and referred to Christ. If we are going to try to do this, we have to keep remembering Who He is. I remember not long ago being reminded about a particular river of Greek mythology, a principal river of Hades called Lethe. If a person should drink of the water of this river, then everything would be forgotten. There is much about the world in which we are living right now which is like drinking from this river of forgetfulness. There are very many distractions in everyday life. There are many pressing needs of one sort or another (or shall we say “apparent” pressing needs). Therefore, it is very easy for us to pay so much attention to these so-called needs that our conscious awareness of the Lord can drift into the background or even the sub-basement of our lives. It is a very dangerous thing for us to allow this to happen. When our consciousness of the Lord drifts into the background of our lives, then we become prey to the temptations of “Big Red” more than ever. Then we are in greater risk of being pulled away from the Body of Christ. We are in greater risk of being separated from the flock, and being eaten up by the wolf. These are real metaphors that the Lord gave us : flocks of sheep, shepherds.

For our sake, it is important every day to ask the Lord to help us have the strength to remember to read a little bit from the Scriptures. The readings for every day, which we find in all sorts of Church calendars, are not all that long. If we read those readings for every day, in the course of a whole year we will have read almost the whole New Testament. It is not that hard. A year to read these little portions is not all that hard. However, You-know-who-down-below makes us think that it is a very difficult thing to open the Bible, and read six or even ten verses. If it is a whole chapter, it seems that it is going to take so much time, and this becomes an obstacle. Actually, it takes three or four minutes. However, he helps us to think that it is so much to read that it feels like wading through porridge to open the Bible. That is how it feels. That is the way the Deceiver deceives us. That is how he plays with us.

However, when we manage actually to open the Scriptures, we encounter Christ in those Scriptures. He makes us realise that even though it felt like wading through porridge to get to opening the Scriptures, once we start to read, it is refreshing. It is refreshing because we remember Who Christ is to us, and Who He is to the world and to the Church. We are renewed in our hope of being able to survive. That is why it is important to try to read the Scriptures at the beginning of the day, not at the end of the day (because at the end of the day we are tending to fall asleep even after a couple of verses, especially if we have a big dinner).

Once having opened the Scriptures, once having encountered Christ, we are refreshed. We are renewed. We are given the ability to survive the rest of the day by beginning the day reading the Scriptures. We have food to remember and a correct perspective of life for the rest of the day. It only takes a few minutes to read those Scriptures. If we want to get into reading a Kathisma of Psalms, that is a more serious chunk of time – a whole ten minutes. However, even just a few minutes like that with the Lord and a couple of prayers will give us focus, and will help us to keep going for the rest of the day.

Who is Jesus Christ to us ? Jesus Christ to us is just as He is to the Apostles Peter, Andrew, James and John and all the rest (especially the ones today who are encountering Him by the Sea of Galilee). Our Lord borrows the Apostle Peter’s boat so that He can sit in it and teach people from it. That sounds rather strange from an average Canadian perspective, because it is not so obvious to us how it is easier from a boat to teach a crowd of people on the shore. I will tell you how it is easier.

In the first place, there were a lot of people. There always were a lot of people around Jesus Christ when He was teaching. How was He to be heard ? When one is sitting on a boat on the water, already the voice carries better. Simply the acoustics of being on the water makes the voice carry better. Besides that, the Sea of Galilee is surrounded by fairly steep hills. It is not some place where the land merely slopes gently into the water. By the Sea of Galilee there is a fairly steep rise, and it almost gives the effect of an amphitheatre. There is the water and the rise, and the people being able to see the speaker (in this case, Christ) in the boat. There is a possibility of being able to concentrate on who it is that is speaking, and being able to hear the one who is speaking. This is sort of an ideal place and way to teach. In the Gospels on more than one occasion we see the Saviour standing or sitting in a boat doing exactly the same thing. He knows His creation. He knows His creatures.

The Lord shows how He knows His creation, and knows His creatures by telling the Apostle Peter : “‘Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch’”. The apostle says : “‘Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing; nevertheless at Your word I will let down the net’”. They go out ; they fish ; and as we heard, they get so many fish that they have to fill several boats with these fish. Now they know Who He is. Now they know what would be necessary for them to do when they would come to shore, and He says : “‘Follow Me’” (Matthew 4:19). They leave everything and they follow Him because they have complete confidence in Him.

Saint Euphrosyne of Suzdal and Saint Sergius of Radonezh, whose memory we keep today, also have complete confidence in the Lord. They were both contemporaries, more or less, at the time of the Mongol invasion in the fourteenth century. They withdrew for different reasons : he, because God called him into the wilderness ; she, because she was widowed on her wedding day. Saint Euphrosyne withdrew to pray. Saint Sergius withdrew into the forest to pray. Both of them depended on the Lord to look after them, and He did. As we heard last night, the monastic brethren were grumbling sometimes. I am sure that that happened in Saint Euphrosyne’s community as well. Sometimes food gets scarce (or very repetitive) with preserved apples, buckwheat and sauerkraut – that is the likely diet. There is an old Russian proverb that says : “Cabbage soup and buckwheat – that’s our food”. The brethren easily become rather irritable when there is no variety in the diet for a long period of time. Sometimes monastic communities have had to live like that, but the Lord does always provide. Many times in these monastic communities, they have seen as concrete evidence of the Lord’s providing that when there is nothing left (and they think that they are going to begin starving), someone sends money so that they can buy food or someone brings food to them, and the day is saved just in the nick of time. Why is this ? It is because the brethren of those monastic communities, who have withdrawn to serve the Lord and the Lord only and above all in their lives, have to be reminded that it is the Lord who is feeding them. He is feeding them in the same way as He feeds the birds of the air. This is precisely what it says in the words of Christ (see Luke 12:22-31).

There have been very many people whom I have known who have been in exactly this boat : lay people, Christian families, who have often been in a very precarious position. Out of nowhere the Lord provides from some unexpected place. Some person sends money saying : “I was thinking of you”. The Lord helped the other person to remember this person three weeks before so that that person would write a cheque, mail it, and the mail would get there on the right day. The Lord knows what He is doing. The Lord is in charge of His creation. The Lord is in charge of us in this community as well. He is leading this community. He is leading all of us personally and all together. He is leading us in the direction of life, and health and salvation.

To underline this again, Saint Euphrosyne in Suzdal was told ahead of time that her father would be a martyr, and he was. This is because the Mongols came and levelled Suzdal, except for her monastery. Her monastery was the only thing left in Suzdal after the devastation of the Mongols at that time. That was because she and her sisters were praying and trusting completely in Christ, and the Lord wanted them to be a witness. The martyrs were witnesses in their own way, but the Lord wanted that community of Saint Euphrosyne in Suzdal to be a witness of how the Lord is with us. Other people have had similar confidence in Him in various other places. For example, there is the wonder-working icon of the Theotokos of Tikhvin (which we took back to Russia last year). In the old days, when the icon was first in its monastery in Tikhvin not very far from where St Petersburg now is, the Swedes were attacking (as the Swedes did like to attack Russia in those days). They were going to destroy Tikhvin, except that the brethren of that monastery obeyed the Mother of God and they made a procession with the icon around the monastery, and without a fight the Swedes just went home.

These sorts of things have happened time and again in Christian history. Who is in charge of the universe ? It is the Lord. He created us all. Who is in charge of my life ? It is the Lord. He created me. He gives me life. Who is in charge of the details of our life together ? It is the Lord. Our Lord Jesus Christ is our Saviour. He is our loving Pastor. He is our loving Shepherd. He will not betray us. Every human being, willingly or unwillingly, sometimes betrays other human beings even if we do not want to, just because we are fallen. We make mistakes and we have to repent of our mistakes. Jesus Christ is the only One who is ever faithful, ever trustworthy. We can see Him in failing human beings, but we do not compare Him with failing human beings. He alone is faithful, and He alone will sustain us in every difficulty, every trial, every disappointment, every pain, every obstacle. He will sustain us and He will teach us how to survive, how to live positively, healthily, and with strength.

Saint Sergius of Radonezh and Saint Euphrosyne are very good, positive and strong examples of what are the fruits of trusting Jesus Christ. Let us, ourselves, do our best to trust that Jesus Christ knows well what He is doing with us, and to allow Him to lead us. Let us not put blocks in His way, but let us ask Him : “What do You want us to do ? We will do it. Just show us the way. I am saying this especially for two reasons : this community is being tested a little bit just at this time. It is not too bad, and it will work out all right. However, another challenge will come in the near future probably, and that is : where will be the final permanent place for this parish. Is it going to be a variation on this theme, or is it going to be in a different place ? This will be what has to be discerned in Christ. As I said before, I hope it is a place down the block, but we cannot count that chicken before it hatches. If we count that chicken before it hatches, I can tell you that it will not hatch. We can hope, and the Lord knows that we hope, but we cannot say it must be. Maybe, for some reason, the Lord wants us to re-arrange this Temple, and He will give us the ability to do it. He will show us, and it will be understood by people, together.

Keep your hearts open to the Lord and attuned to the Lord so that you will know what He is saying to you. Keep your eyes on Jesus Christ every day. He will not disappoint you or desert you. He will always feed you, guide you, support you and sustain you, and enable you to glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

It is not by our design that this Temple, dedicated to the Mother of God, is being dedicated today, on this particular day, the Feast of her Protection. This has to do with God’s design, because everything happens according to His will. If we had tried to prepare to come to this point on this particular day, it never would have happened. As always, if we try to leave God in charge of our lives, in charge of our affairs, things work out with a much deeper, much more positive, much more life-giving logic than we could ever invent.

These words, underlining the fact that God is protecting and strengthening His people, are not only words for this congregation, but words for the whole Orthodox Church in this city and in this country. Now that we are in this new (to us) Temple, there are some things which this congregation must remember and keep in mind about where we have come from. We have to remember that the process of building the Church is always difficult. It is always full of temptations, and all the people who are doing the building are always subject to feeling discouraged (even when there is nothing necessarily evident about which to be discouraged). The feeling comes because the Tempter is always at work, trying to undermine the resolve of the Christian faithful people to do God’s will.

The cost of this building, and undertaking the huge responsibility that goes with it, was daunting for us. It was very daunting, because there is such a contrast, as you can see, to our previous tiny cathedral. It was very daunting in a lot of ways because that little building was like a womb which enfolded us, and kept us warm and all squashed together. It was hard for people to think about making that move, except that there were so many evidences that it had to be. Where it would be, no-one could know for a long time. It was only by God’s providence, and I have to say (because of things that have happened since) the direction of the Mother of God, and her direct involvement in our affairs, that brought us to this place, to this day, and to this responsibility. When the people who bought the other building from us were having it inspected, it was discovered that the building was full of mould. There were cracks in the foundation. The main beam of the floor was weak. The wiring was deficient. The people who have gone into that building after us have to rewire, clean up, repair cracks, and shore up the main beam.

These things say to me very much how God has been protecting us. We could easily have burned down that building with that sort of electricity, considering how much we were using the power in that building. The mould might have made people sick, but it never happened. So many times that church was over-packed with our generously-proportioned people, and it is a wonder that the floor did not somehow fall in. I really take seriously the fact that we got out of that building with no harm to anyone or anything. On top of that, the people who bought the building were still willing to pay a reasonably good price according to what we needed. It was enough for us to get a foothold on this building. We have a long way to go yet, but still it is by God’s mercy. He will support us. He brought us here. He has established us here. He will show us how we are to use this building to His glory, and also to fulfil our responsibility to those in this city who are in need in one way or another.

As before, we are hidden. This is not a super-obvious place, but it is good for us. We are at least findable, much more than before. The other thing that is important for us to remember is that when the large icon of Christ (once hanging behind the Holy Table in the other building) was taken down, it left behind it a very dirty wall, because it had been hanging there for forty years or so. However, there was one spot which was completely white, completely clean, and that was (and it was determined by measurements afterwards) exactly where Christ’s right hand of blessing was on the icon.

It is important for us to remember these things. God was blessing and protecting us where we were. He is with us now, even if we face challenges and difficulties in growing into this new building. God is with us even now. He is continuing to nurture us. The Mother of God is with us also, even now, and she is nurturing us. As she always does, she points us to her Son. She directs us to her Son, and reminds us in the case of this building itself that it is to Him that we must turn, and that it is in Him we must have our hope. We do not understand all the meanings of this blessing. We do not understand, now, everything that is going to be. We do not even know yet what it is going to look like here in the next year or so. It has only been three weeks, and it cannot look like this for too long, because things get in the way of our proper behaviour (like having only one staircase). There is work to do.

There is work to do. We need patience, because all this takes time. We have to learn how to sing differently in this building. We have to learn how to serve differently in this building. Those are details, small details. The main thing that we have to be reminding ourselves of as we unpack is how are we best to serve Christ in this Temple. How are we best, in this Temple, to be the Orthodox witness with our brothers and sisters, and other Orthodox congregations in this city ? How are we, together with them, to be an Orthodox witness for this city, which needs our Orthodox Faith very much.

It is important for us, as we are growing up here in this building to take every opportunity – it is our responsibility in this building – to be doing as much as we can to offer assistance, and mutually support our other Orthodox brothers and sisters in this city. Precisely how we are going to do this, no-one knows yet, but we have to remember that this is our purpose. We are not given this responsibility for ourselves – we never are. It is part of our being salt and yeast in this city (see Matthew 5:13 ; 13:33).

Taking the last verse of the Gospel today seriously, let us remember that when the woman said to our Saviour : “‘Blessed is the womb that bore you’”, our Saviour corrected her. He corrected her, not by putting down His Mother (as some persons like to think) when He said : “‘More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!’” Clearly, our Lord was saying this about His Mother – that she hears the Word of God, and keeps it. She is thus the example of how to live the Christian life. It is important for you and for me to remember that the Lord’s blessing is upon those who hear the Word of God and keep it. That means not holding on to it, but doing it. Not defending it (because Christ defends it) but doing it. This is our responsibility : to live the love of Jesus Christ according to the pattern of the Mother of God, who is our most perfect example. With her, let us glorify our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

As we know, in the environment in which we live, love is a very conditional thing. There are generally, as we say, plenty of strings attached to the giving and sharing of love. Our Saviour made it quite plain that if we give, expecting something in return, or if we love only people who love us, we are no different from anyone else. We, who are Orthodox Christians, are not called in our loving relationship with our Saviour, Jesus Christ, to be just like anyone else. We are called to be their example. We are called to be their hope. We are called to be their encouragement. It is all connected with how we live this love.

We have to be prepared to take the Gospel seriously in order to be the salt and the yeast (see Matthew 5:13 ; 13:33) that our Lord has called us to be, and is calling us to be. It is all operating on the basis of love. We have to be prepared to forgive everyone more than seventy times seventy. We have to be prepared to let people persecute us. We have to be prepared not only to swallow things that people do to us, and the hurts that we endure, but we also have to pray for them, for the people who are abusing us or hurting us. This is how Saint Silouan and Archimandrite Sophrony applied the Gospel to life.

Father Sophrony tells us quite clearly how we have to go about this. We have to pray for people who are hurting us, and for people who are abusing us. We have to pray in a non-interfering and non-judgemental way. In other words, contrary to the behaviour of some mass-media evangelists, we do not try to tell God what to do. God knows what to do with this person. We do not know what to do with this person. For instance, I know very well myself, that if I were God, and the world were as it is now, it would have been gone a long time ago. It would have been burned up and gone. But God is not me – thank God for that. God’s love is infinitely patient. He waits for us, in our rebellion and stupidity, to wake up. Instead of telling God what to do, Archimandrite Sophrony said that we should simply say this little prayer : “Lord, have mercy” for each person. Only “Lord have mercy”. Not even the whole Jesus Prayer, but just “Lord have mercy”.

In saying “Lord have mercy” for people who have injured us somehow, who have hurt our feelings, or whatever they have done, we ask God to be His loving Self towards that person. As much as we say “Lord have mercy” for the person who has hurt us, we allow God’s peace and healing love to enter our hearts. We allow God Himself, in His love for us, to heal the wound, or wounds, in our hearts.

At the same time, our hearts become warmer towards the one who has hurt us. In the long run, maybe we will not exactly get along at first, but at least there is not poison in the heart towards the person who has hurt us. The whole point is to take the poison of anger, bitterness, hatred, and other retaliatory passions to which we are subject, and allow the Lord to extract them from our hearts, to heal us, to pour the balm of His healing love on these wounds. His love removes that poison. His love changes that darkness of our hearts into something that is light. That sort of anger and perpetually-felt grudge to which human beings are so prone is something that is deadly to the heart. It turns it in time to stone. A heart that has become stone has difficulty functioning if it can function at all. It is important for us, truly important for us all, to learn the nature of the love in which we live, the nature of the love which the Lord gives to us all the time, the nature of the love with which the Lord is sustaining us. It is important to live in it as much as we can, co-operating with this love as much as we can. The maturing of this love in us can be seen when we can pray with Saint Nikolaj Velimirovic : “Bless my enemies, O Lord. Even I bless them, and do not curse them”.

Here in this Temple, we have been given big responsibilities. We all know that it was not easy to come here. Now, it is not going to be super-easy to stay. There is not one particular difficulty. Our main obstacle and pitfall is that the Tempter tries to discourage us. It is our responsibility to be very careful not to take these little difficulties and make them into big ones.

This morning, for instance, here in the sanctuary we were all getting ready, and the light went off. No-one could find the switch. No-one could find the breaker and the fuse box. No-one knows where the breaker is found. Well, it is so predictable, you see. People are going to say that it just happened because someone used too much power somewhere. You can believe that if you want, but I do not believe that it is that simple. Why should it happen just then, just before the Divine Liturgy, and cause people to run all over the place and be distracted ? That it happened just before the Divine Liturgy is a design from the Tempter to undermine us, to distract us, to make us upset, to make us wonder during the whole Divine Liturgy : “Where is that breaker ?”

These are simple ABCs of the spiritual life. They are ABCs that we do not necessarily remember to pay attention to. So, the lights go off. “Big Red” is playing around. They will find the switch eventually. It is probably providential that the light goes out now, anyway. The Lord always turns these things about. The light goes out now, and we are going to find out where this weakness is in the power supply. What is interesting in all this, is that it is an opportunity. It truly is an opportunity for us all, always, to keep our hearts and minds focussed on the Lord, our Saviour. It is an opportunity for us to remember His love for us, His presence with us. It is an opportunity for us in connexion with this to remember and to turn to the protection of the Mother of God as well. She has been involved in our community for a very long time. She prepared the way for us to come here. She is preparing the way for us even now.

It is very, very important for us to remember all those who came before us in this building and in this neighbourhood. Let us consider this particular icon : Our Lady of the Passion (the Catholics call it Our Lady of Perpetual Help). We call it Our Lady of the Passion because the icon has angels bearing the Cross and instruments of the Passion. There are people in the neighbourhood who are still coming here to pray before this icon. Glory to God for that. The Lord has enabled us to keep this icon here, partly because it is part of our service to the neighbourhood : maintaining this icon and letting people come to the Mother of God.

It is to this icon that people (at least Roman Catholic people) turn for help, hope and consolation. They turn to this icon and to the Mother of God. That she is still here with us in this continuity is important for us to remember, because it is a concrete demonstration of her love, her protection, her presence with us. We are not without support. We are not without resources as we live here and take up the responsibility of this building, and learn how to live here, glorifying our Saviour here.

Lastly, we must always remember that it is in Christ’s selfless, self-emptying, self-giving love that we live and must live. It is to Him that we must always, every day, turn, even when there are small things bothering us. We must turn to Him, receive His support, and the protection, the support of the Mother of God. We must take up the whole armour of God, and glorify our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

When we are in a missionary situation as is this community, it is important for us to remember and keep remembering Who He is that we are serving, and what we are about. This is the case especially when we continue to make beginnings, as we are doing. This Gospel lesson today about the raising of the only son of the widow of Nain is an important lesson for us in this : Who is He that we are serving ? Just Who is Jesus Christ ?

When the Lord raises the young man from the dead, He does it out of compassion most likely because this widow, with her only son dead, would have no-one to look after her. This was in the days when there was no social welfare, as there was not in most of the world. We, in Canada, tend to get a little bit lax about these things and forget how good we have it here. The fact is (in those days, and to this day in most of the world), if a woman is a widow and her only son has died, it would mean that she would have nowhere to live. She would have no-one to look after her. She would have no home. She would end up being a beggar. It is a horrible situation for any woman to be in, except that in some cases there is a certain amount of relief.

Our little monastery in BC, in a sort of way is avant-garde in this respect, I think, because every year that little community that has nothing buys a cow for a widow in India – a different widow every year. Why do they do that ? If they buy a cow for a widow in India, this cow will give milk (in India they do not kill or eat cows). With the milk this widow can make some money, and she can have at least a basic, minimal existence. I guess there are some other things that you can do with cows, also, to make money (farmers know that sort of thing, and I do not have to explain it).

This widow in Palestine does not have any such resource. In case you do not know where Nain is, it is a little place not far from Mount Tabor, the place of the Transfiguration. We could almost say that it is in the valley at the foot of the mountain. It is here that this is happening. The Lord, out of compassion, raises the widow’s son, and restores not only her son to her, but her livelihood, her protection, her dignity. He restores everything to this woman. The response of everyone around is as we heard it : everyone is completely amazed. They certainly recognise that Jesus had to be at least a prophet, and a great prophet at that. I think that the only other record of resurrection through the prayers of anyone in the Old Testament will have been through Elias and Elisha. Those two are the greatest of the Old Testament prophets, and so the people are immediately associating Christ with them.

Who is this that is able to do such a thing ? He is more than a prophet, as we know. He is the Son of God. He is the Lord of the living and the dead. He is the One who is the Word by whom all things were made. As such, He can do precisely what He did : raise the dead. This He did many times during the years of His incarnate service on earth. It is not as though He does not still do it sometimes. There are occasions still when people are resuscitated from the dead by Christ through the prayers of the faithful. Even in these days it does happen. This is Who He is that we are serving : the One who is the Lord of Life.

He is the Lord of all life, and He is the Lord of your life and my life. It is important for us to remember this since we have to ask in association with this : why did He create us, and why does He continue to create us in large numbers (not by recycling, as some people think) ? He creates us so that we might enter and live forever in a loving relationship with Him. He is the Giver of Life ; He loves to give life. He loves to give life in love. The two things, “life” and “love”, are synonymous and go together (it does not matter what cynics say). We are created to love. We are created to give life with Him. We are created to nurture life together with Him. At the same time, we are created to worship God.

How are we to respond ? Love is a two-way street. God creates us. He gives us life. He gives us everything. Even though we seem to think we do it all ourselves, nevertheless, He is the Source of all. He gives us everything. How do we respond if we love Him ? Every polite Canadian knows that we have to say “thank you”. We Canadians are quite good at saying thank you (in fact, if we do not send thank-you notes for numbers of things, the giver can get a crooked nose). We know that we ought to be thankful, and express this thanks. We know that it is expected of us Orthodox Christians with each other.

How much more is it the case with the living God. We should be doing our part to express our thanks to the Lord. Our whole life should be, in fact, a loving response of thanksgiving. Everything about our life should express this thanksgiving. That is why in traditional Orthodox cultures (which Canada has not yet become), people are always giving glory to God for everything. If someone says thanks, the person being thanked gives glory to God right away. I like to tell about when I was a “green” seminarian many years ago, and I was visiting a Greek women’s monastery. The nuns were so nice to us, and hospitable. As a polite Canadian making my departure, I thanked the Abbess, and she said : “The Lord”. I said : “Thank you, also”. She said : “The Lord”. I said : “Yes, Mother”. Of course, I meant : “All right, I catch the drift”. She understood that we have to refer everything to the Lord. Who am I, myself ? God is everything. Everything has to be referred to the Lord Himself.

Ukrainians have a language full of expressions of referring everything : glory, thanksgiving, health – absolutely everything – to Christ. Our English language needs to find the way to do the same. We Orthodox Christians in Canada have to develop this habit. We have to learn from our ancestral cultures (that have been baptised by the Gospel) what they did in response to the Gospel, and do it according to our culture here. We have to find the way to do it. It is not as though we have to find it so freshly, because many Christians (not Orthodox Christians) who lived in Canada (let’s say before about 100 years ago), actually did come from a culture that knew this also. The English language does have some history of this. However, certainly in the last fifty years, it has all gone out the window. Even things I remember from my childhood are generally forgotten. It is important that we Orthodox Christians recover this way of speaking, reminding ourselves to give glory to God and thanksgiving to God for everything.

Primarily, this means that we ought to remember where we belong on Sundays and feast-days, and every possible occasion. We belong here, together before the Lord’s Table, giving thanks to Him. That is primarily the focus of this Divine Liturgy. There is a considerable amount of praise in it, but the main part of the whole thing is thanksgiving. With the praise there is thanksgiving. When we are standing here today in this assembly (in this temporary Temple), we are being what the Lord created us to be. We are doing what God created us to do : expressing together our joy at being one in the love of Jesus Christ. We are expressing our gratitude to God that we can be together. We are expressing our gratitude that we can have this mutual encouragement with, and for each other in this mutual thanksgiving and glorification of God. We owe it to the Lord to be here as often as possible. We owe it to the Lord, who gives us everything. Because of our love for Him, it is part of our loving response. It is part of who we truly are. It is part of what we have to do to be who we truly are. We are expressing our true selves by being here today, together, worshipping Him, giving thanks to Him, expressing our love for Him, and allowing Him by His Body and Blood to feed us, to renew us, to strengthen us and to enable us to persevere.

We heard today what the Apostle had to endure (and that was only a shadow of what he had to endure). All sorts of abuse the Apostle Paul endured. He, along with the other apostles, suffered all sorts of horrible things. They were being tested by people who could not believe that God loved them in this way. This unbelief, this testing happens to this day for us. We do not get beaten up usually (not in Canada, not yet). We do not usually get put in jail because we are Orthodox Christians. We do not usually lose our lives because we are Orthodox Christians in Canada at this time. However, people sometimes are not very nice to us. People sometimes will ridicule us. Sometimes people will say very bad things about us. Sometimes people will shun us and ignore us because we are Orthodox Christians.

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. He, himself, who was a persecutor of the Church, was turned about through the prayers of believers, and through the Grace of the love of Jesus Christ, whom he met on the road to Damascus.

When we are blessing those who are persecuting us, and praying for those who are treating us badly, in the course of all this, we open the door for the possibility of their hearts to soften and to change. Very many times in the lives of martyrs we see that the suffering and the death of a Christian will turn about the hearts of the executioners, who become Christians and who, themselves are also killed. It has happened many times in Christian history. It has happened even in the most recent Soviet persecution in eastern Europe. The persecutors, the punishers, the torturers had their hearts softened by the faith of the Orthodox believers.

It is important for us to do simple, straightforward things about being faithful as Orthodox Christians : loving the Lord, remembering to put Him first in everything. Everything else falls into place. If we do not put the Lord first, our lives are distorted, weak and emaciated in the long run. Let us, dear brothers and sisters, do our part now together in offering ourselves, our lives and each other, all together, to Christ our God, glorifying Him together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

People who have known me for a long time, along with my sisters and brother, will admit that I was a geezer long before my time. Because I have been a geezer for such a long time, I have a sort of nostalgic wish that on a day like today, when the readings are as they are, it would be possible to speak about the Scriptures as they used to speak in the old days. That means to pay attention to all the really good things that are in them – even for an hour or two perhaps. However, this is North America, the twenty-first century, so I cannot behave like that. That is good for you, because I would probably put you to sleep in the process.

Nevertheless, I will try to say as briefly as I can what, I think, the Scripture reading has to give to us today. When I was young and I would hear the Gospel that was read today, I used to think : “How could that rich man ignore Lazarus who was sitting there right under his nose every day ?” Dives was being taken out on his litter (it was not like driving in a Cadillac nowadays, or some other big car where you can have tinted windows, turn up the radio so you cannot hear or see anything, and pull some curtains). In those days, they were being carried around on a sort of stretcher with a chair on it. It would be hard to ignore people who are sitting right in front of your nose. There would have been no radio – only the noise of the streets and the sellers all around. How could the rich man ignore Lazarus ?

Since I am grown up, I have come to understand that the fact is that human beings are quite capable of ignoring all sorts of things that are right under their nose (just as I find that I do as I have grown up). It is interesting what we learn as we grow up, and the perspective that comes in life as we grow up. It was easy for a rich man like Dives to ignore others. It is interesting how like him we can be : interested in ourselves, afraid of what is out there, afraid of what is around us, but mostly, self-preoccupied. I am sure that this rich man, Dives, was such a self-preoccupied person. How would he be so different from anyone else, anyway ? When we become very rich, and everyone is bowing and scraping to us, and everyone is doing this and that for us, we begin to think that the world revolves around us. In a sort of way, many do not pass beyond adolescence in that respect, and they think that everyone owes them something.

Everything about the readings today that the Lord has given us describes what sort of life a Christian is supposed to live. A Christian life is open. It is selfless. It is open-handed. As I was taught many years ago, it is open-armed in the way that Christ is open-armed to us, and has been open-armed to us always. This was so especially when He was crucified on the Cross, with His open arms embracing us who were killing Him at the same time. It is true. That was His attitude from the Cross when He said : “‘Forgive them’” from the Cross. His hands were voluntarily nailed to the Cross. He was not forced. He was voluntarily crucified for our sake. He has been open-handed with us at all times. We go crying to Him for everything. He is giving us everything.

Then we have the nerve to say : “I did it myself. I’ve got my career. I’ve got my house. I’ve got my everything”. We forget that Christ is the source of everything. That is how we so easily, so quickly, turn in on ourselves. Yet in His open-handedness, He is always giving to us, always meeting our needs, binding up our wounds, comforting our sorrows, mending all our wounds, tending our “boo-boos”, spiritual and physical.

Sometimes, I suppose, we are grateful. However, we are not nearly grateful enough. Truly, if we were living our Christian life every minute of every day, then we would be filled with a sense of gratitude for God’s love, for His provision for us, and for our ability to be able to co-operate with Him. Freely He gives to us. Freely we receive. It is for us freely to give, and to be ready to give everything : not just money, but ourselves, and everything that we are. We cannot have this sort of mentality, this sort of readiness, unless our hearts are somehow prepared, unless we are renewing and refreshing our love in and for and with Jesus Christ every day.

Here in the seminary, where studies are very demanding, I remember (sometimes too well) that the demand is so intense that it is easy sometimes to let go to the side those moments of daily, regular prayer, Scripture reading, and so forth. We can say to ourselves, for instance : “Well, I am going to hear the Scriptures in Matins anyway ; I will just skip reading the Scripture reading today”. However, the problem is that if I skip looking at the Scripture reading today before I come to the Temple, then my heart is not prepared to receive whatever the Lord wishes to give today. If I have not said at least some sort of basic good-morning prayers to the Lord when I get up, my heart is not prepared to receive what is about to happen in the chapel and in the services. Even if this basic prayer is only the most minimal, it opens the door of the heart just a little, and prepares the heart to receive what the Lord is going to give. If I read the Scriptures ahead of time, then the Lord will speak to me and tell me what I need to hear in order to survive today. That is the whole point.

The heart has to be warmed up slightly at least, in the morning. It has to be opened up and readied to be in communion with the Lord in such a way that I might hear Him say to me what I have to hear today in order to be more who I am supposed to be. This prayer, together with all the study that is going on in this seminary, is a whole life experience. Our life here is not merely an intellectual exercise and the passing of examinations. Even less is it concerned with regurgitating information provided by professors, and returning to them what we think they want to see and hear from us. There is nothing that we are learning here (even in all its technicalities and refinements of meaning) that is not applicable to everyday life sooner or later. It is applicable here in our discussions with each other, and also when we leave here, and when we are going to be confronted by various sorts of persons who want to know what does Jesus Christ mean and Who is Jesus Christ to them. Our hearts must be prepared and ready.

Metropolitan Leonty, of blessed memory, was a man different from the rich man today. He had fallen asleep in the Lord before I ever came to these parts. Some people remember him from their youth. Amongst us there are people whom I know who have known him for a much longer time : Father Sergei Glagolev, Father John Nehrebetsky, Father Vladimir Berzonsky and others. Just this week, Father Sergei was reminiscing about being with Metropolitan Leonty in the Bowery. It is so long since I have been in that part of New York that I do not know what it is like anymore. People are telling me that it is becoming rather “yuppy”. I remember that it used to have Hell’s Angels and all sorts of alcoholics everywhere in those days. Metropolitan Leonty went out on foot very often when he was living at the cathedral, there in the Bowery. Sometimes Father Sergei Glagolev would go walking with him. (I am quite sure that Father Sergei will forgive me for telling this story, as he tells it quite freely himself.) Metropolitan Leonty, as he was going along, had a purse with him, and to anyone who was asking for money, he was giving – not lots, but he was giving. At one point he said to Father Sergei : “So, you do not approve of what I am doing, do you ?” Father Sergei knew that he was caught, and said : “Vladyka, you know that I think that they are just going to drink”. Metropolitan Leonty said, to paraphrase : “Yes, I know you think that. It is entirely possible. However, the point is, that I am not responsible for what that person will or will not do. If he asks, I have to give. I cannot condemn him or judge him according to what he might or might not possibly do. If I am giving openly like this, and freely like this, then maybe there is some hope that he will use it in the right way”.

What is interesting about this is that I heard precisely the same sort of story from Archbishop Gregory about his uncle. Therefore, we have before us this attitude about non-judgemental giving – simply giving openly and freely to whoever asks, as our Saviour says in many places. There is life going with this giving. There is love, and me going with this giving. There is my prayer, at least “Lord have mercy”, going with this giving to the person who has been asking and is receiving. By the act of giving, by this act of open-handed love in sharing with this person just a little bit, comes an opportunity for the person. People are always free to receive in the right spirit or to abuse and to betray. It is their business and their concern.

Everyday life, as we experience it here in this seminary, is similar. This seminary is not merely some sort of ivory tower. We experience real life in this community, and it always has been this way. Here and everywhere, we Christians give ourselves openly and with love to each other. We serve each other in Christ, like Christ, and with Christ. Sometimes temptations grab another person, and the person who has been receiving this love and this trust and this openness so freely can betray that trust. We get a stab in the back, a stab in the heart, a stab in a few places. When that happens (and it does happen all through life), how do I respond ? How must I respond in Christ ?

I cannot retaliate, because Christ never retaliated. I have to be very careful about being bitter and bearing anger, because both of those are deadly poisons for the soul, for the heart. I have to do what Christ did, and does. He said from the Cross : “‘Forgive them’”. I have to learn in His love to forgive the person who betrays and stabs me, as the Lord forgave Judas. The Lord forgave the Apostle Peter for his betrayals. The Lord forgave the Apostle Paul for his over-rambunctious, over-zealous persecuting of Christians, and He turned him completely about.

The Lord’s forgiving love does wonders. I have to be careful not to take onto myself the responsibility that is not mine for how someone else misuses the gift of love towards me. 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.

Everything in the Christian life involves giving. Even if we all make mistakes, still we must give ourselves in Christ, with Christ, openly, lovingly, and unreservedly. This offering must be with no strings attached (unlike the American teabag). There must be no conditions – only the love freely given of Jesus Christ which we share. In sharing, let us glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

On this day we are hearing the Gospel reading about Lazarus and the rich man. Lazarus sat outside the door of the rich man for many years, and the rich man had many daily opportunities to give to the poor because the poor man was sitting right under his nose. In those days, when a rich person would go out from his house, he did not go out in a Mercedes with dark windows and with curtains so that he could not see around. In those days he went out from his house carried likely in a chair by his servants. Maybe there were curtains, but they were sheer curtains because it was hot where Lazarus and this rich man lived. Every day, this rich man could see and hear Lazarus asking for help. Every day he did not give help.

This lifetime in which we live is our time for doing good for each other. It is part of what God gives us : to do good for each other. It is by what we do for each other that God is ultimately going to measure us when we come to the end of our life. When we come before His throne, He will say : “How did you love Me ?” What are we going to say ? If we never give to the poor, if we never care about each other, the Lord will say (as He said in another parable) : “‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me’” (Matthew 25:45). However, if you were good to those poor people, those suffering people, those needy people, then He will say : “‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me’” (Matthew 25:40). We cannot be Christians, and merely say : “I am a Christian”. If we are truly Orthodox Christians, we must do something with this Faith of ours.

Our Faith is not something limited only to the head. Rather, it is in the heart. It is our life. The Orthodox Christian way is the way of life. That is what made Russia become Russia ; that is what made Ukraine become Ukraine ; that is what made Byelorus become Byelorus ; that is what made Greece become Greece ; and Romania become Romania ; and Serbia become Serbia ; and Bulgaria become Bulgaria, etc. That is what made those countries what they became : different countries from the places we are living in here and now. That is what made those countries become places where people know the right way to live, the right way to behave, and how to look after each other (even if they are not perfect). No-one is perfect. Not even Russians and Ukrainians are perfect – although they truly can be good. They do know how to care for people in the manner of the Gospel. When someone is on the street asking for something, the Orthodox Christian who is properly formed, knows he must do something.

Metropolitan Leonty of our Church, who died in 1965, was born in Kremenets, in Ukraine. When he was in North America, his wife died, and he became a monk. Then he became a bishop, and later on a metropolitan of our Church. He was well-known, because in New York City our cathedral was in a very poor area. Now this neighbourhood is becoming “yuppy” – more fashionable. However, in those days, it was very, very poor. One of our priests was talking to me (about three weeks ago) about his memories of Metropolitan Leonty. He said that the two of them were walking out on the street one day, and Metropolitan Leonty had a change purse. He always carried a change purse. In it he always had coins to give to people who were poor. He said to this priest as they were walking along the street : “You do not approve of what I am doing, do you ?” The priest knew he was caught because he did not approve, and he said : “Well, Vladyka, you are right”. Metropolitan Leonty said to him : “You think that they are going to drink this money that I give them, don’t you ?” He replied : “Yes. That is what everyone says ; that is what I think is probably the case. They are going to spend it on drinking”. Metropolitan Leonty said : “Well, Father, I am not responsible for what they do with this money. If they ask, I must give. I am not the judge. Christ is the Judge. If they do not use the gift well, that is their responsibility. It is my responsibility to give”.

Metropolitan Leonty was a very holy man. Before some of you younger people die, he should be on the Church calendar, I hope. He always had in his pockets sweet things for children. He was a very special person. Of course, parents are not so happy to have their children eat sweet things. Nevertheless, he was loving them ; he was sort of an uncle or grandfather to them, and they loved him, too. A retired archbishop of our Church, Archbishop Gregory, who was born in Kyiv, confirms this attitude. He said that his uncle always told him that we have to have money in our pocket to give to the poor. This uncle always did, and Archbishop Gregory did, also. He talked about it in order to remind us younger ones to pay attention.

We are responsible for what we give. We are not responsible before Christ for what someone else does with the gift. I am not a social worker. I am not a psychologist. Many times I have given to people with precisely those same fears, because everyone talks about it in North America – they are going to drink ; they are going to buy drugs or whatever. Many times when I have been thinking along these lines, I gave, and they ate. I saw them go and eat. I have been put to shame.

The Tempter is always coming to you and to me to try to pull us away from the right way to live. We Orthodox Christians here in Canada have been brought here to Canada for more than one purpose. Although we have the blessing to come to Canada for the sake of a stabler and more peaceful and more productive life, there is yet more for us to do. Canada is a country that used to be spiritually not too bad. Now it is really getting lost. People are forgetting everything, and especially, they are forgetting about the way of Christ. It is important for us, who are Orthodox Christians, to remind them, to show them by our life what is this right way. Many Canadians used to know it, and when they see us, they are encouraged again to pick up their Christian life, to repent, and to follow Christ in the right way. Nevertheless, we are the Orthodox, and it falls on our shoulders, this responsibility to be in Canadian society the yeast and the salt (see Matthew 5:13 ; 13:33) that Christ is speaking about, because He loves this country. You people, Orthodox Christians who immigrated here, have a responsibility to share this Faith. When the very first Orthodox Christians came to Canada (mostly to western Canada over 100 years ago), even before they built their homes, they built the Temple. They lived in a borday (sod house) first before they built the Temple. When they had built the Temple, then they built their own houses. They had their sense of priorities correct.

It is important for you, coming to this country 100 years later, to have your priorities correct, too. Why am I saying this ? The answer is found in Saint Paul’s words this morning to the Galatians. Saint Paul said, as it were : “I am not preaching something that someone has thought up. I am not preaching something that I thought up. I am not preaching something that is the result of my reading. I am preaching Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead”. Our Saviour revealed Himself to be the Son of God. God Himself revealed the Holy Trinity on the Feast of the Baptism of Christ, and on the Feast of Pentecost. The Holy Trinity was demonstrated : one God, Three Persons, on these two feasts, and other times, too. We know for certain, at the time of the Baptism, that the Father said : “‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’” (Matthew 3:17). Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He reveals Himself to people. He revealed Himself to the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, and many more times in his life in one way or another.

Christ has revealed Himself to Orthodox believers in every century, in every country in which people are believers up until now for the past 2,000 years. Christ reveals Himself to each of us. He reveals Himself to each of us sometimes by a personal appearance (that is not so often) : sometimes He lets us see Him, Himself. Very often He reveals Himself through an appearance of His Mother in one way or another. He reveals Himself very often in the goodness of human beings who do good for each other because they love Him. We are carriers of Jesus Christ. When we were baptised, we put on Christ (see Galatians 3:27). We were baptised into Jesus Christ. We died and rose in Christ in the water of baptism. We put on Christ. When we are doing these good things (like helping someone who is in need or giving sweet things to children or doing other things that God moves us to do that people need), we are sending to that person the love of Jesus Christ with the good thing that we are doing ; we are revealing Jesus Christ in ourselves, too, to the person who is receiving.

Even on Sunday morning, we are standing here and we are supporting each other as we stand here worshipping the Lord. We are giving Christ to each other. As we come to receive Him, He gives Himself to us in His Body and His Blood. He gives Himself to us, also, in the hymns and prayers that we are singing and saying. He also gives Himself to you and to me in the mutual love and support that we give to each other. Jesus Christ is truly amongst us. Jesus Christ is truly alive amongst us. It is important for you and for me, Orthodox believers, to live in this way, because Jesus Christ reveals Himself to you and to me. He tells you and me : “I love you. I am with you. I am protecting you. I am helping you”. We are able to love Him. He is to you and to me a Brother, a Father, a Friend. He is all this and much more to us. The relationship between you and me, between us and Jesus Christ, between us all and God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is one of love. This relationship does not consist in mere mental activity (although the mind and the logic can explain things sometimes). This relationship is characterised by love.

Every spiritual Father and Mother has talked about the relationship between themselves and Jesus Christ in this way. It is all focussed on love. When Saint Seraphim says : “Acquire the Holy Spirit”, it is, again, love to which he is referring. Otherwise, why would he, at the end of his days, dress in white and say to everyone : “Christ is risen”. Indeed, why would he say that if it were not because of love ? Everything he said was ultimately about Jesus Christ risen from the dead, and His love. Healing came to people through Saint Seraphim because he was full and overflowing with this love himself. It was the same way with the Fathers of Optina, and other Fathers and Mothers all over Russia, Ukraine, and the Orthodox world. You and I have a big work to do here in Canada, but it is primarily a work of love, glorifying Jesus Christ in our whole lives, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In the Epistle reading this morning, the Apostle Paul is speaking to us about how everything is gathered into one in Christ. It would be very helpful if we all kept in mind that particular admonition of the Apostle this morning, because we live in a time and a culture in which the opposite is understood. In most of Canadian society and in most Canadians’ attitude these days, God (where He is considered at all) is merely a sort of philosophical concept, something that we turn to when we have some great need or other. (Notice that I am saying “something” and not “Someone” in this case.) These people think that God is “out there somewhere”, far away, and that we approach Him or it, feeling guilty and full of fear, and so forth.

All these concepts are contrary to what we, as Orthodox Christians, understand Him to be. The Lord is not a philosophical concept or idea. He is not a construct of our imagination. He is not some sort of sociological development. God is the Creator of everything that is. It is He who, because of His love, brought everything into being. If there are any scientific attempts to understand the origin of the universe, all those origins are still very understandable by the action of God’s love. Even the “Big Bang” theory conforms very well to the explosion of God’s love. He brings everything into being because of His love, not merely because of a compression of gases. Where did those gases come from ? If we accept the theory that in the beginning there was a primeval mass which eventually explodes, then the question must be answered : “Where did that come from ?” We understand that the primeval mass comes from God. God is the Creator of everything. He is not only the Originator of everything, who winds up the universe, puts it on a shelf and lets it tick away. God sustains everything. He sustains everything, always. Therefore, when Pope Benedict (at that time Cardinal Ratzinger) wrote a book about the Divine Liturgy, entitling it God is near us, he showed that he was off the mark. God is not simply near us. When we say that God is near us like that, we are suggesting that He is nearby, but separate. This is not at all the case. We Orthodox say that God is with us. Especially at the great feasts of the Nativity and the Theophany, we love to sing at Great Compline that “God is with us”. This is right and true. God is with us. He is not looking at us from some distance. He is with us. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He is closer to us than we can be to ourselves. That is how “with us” He is.

The Lord in His love sustains with love everything that He created because of love. Since God is love, as we believe, and as the apostles have taught us (and as we experience also in our life), everything is both created by and sustained by His loving presence. It is important for us to remember that, because there are societies where people get depressed so easily that they forget to turn to God at all. They wait for crisis moments before they turn to Him. In fact, we do tend to put God on the back burner of our lives, instead of remembering that we depend on Him for everything. In our very technological and sort of pseudo-scientific age (i.e. “science without God”) we tend to think that we are doing everything ourselves. We seem to think that we are achieving and acquiring everything for ourselves by ourselves. We also like to think (as a poet of a couple of hundred years ago said) that we are the “captain of our own ship”, and the “master of everything round about us”.

However, that is not the case at all. Yes, we acquire many things, and we accomplish many things in the course of our life. Moreover, everything that we have that is good, in fact, we have because God has blessed us to have it. We have it as a responsibility. Nothing that we have is for ourselves alone. The Apostle Paul always makes that clear to us. Everywhere in his writings he is teaching us that what we have been given as gifts (whether they are material gifts or spiritual gifts or intellectual gifts) are not for us alone. They are given to us in order to be of use to other people, in order to build up the Church of Christ, in order to be useful and helpful to people. The Lord gives everything to us to be used as yeast and salt (see Matthew 5:13 ; 13:33). He gives us these things in order to make more life, to make more love, and to increase everything. The Lord is the Giver of Life.

Many of the scientists, for instance, do not ask themselves properly how it is that after some of the cataclysmic catastrophes that have occurred on the earth in the past (with the extinction of dinosaurs, and so forth), life came back so quickly, and in such great variety. After a cataclysm such as that, creatures that had never existed before now existed, and in large numbers. Where did they come from ? It is not that these things just bubbled out of the sea by some sort of fortuitous strike of lightning upon the waters. This had to do with the activity and the result of God’s love. God, who is the Creator and Sustainer of everything, renews creation. He renewed everything in a fresh way when the time of the dinosaurs came to an end. When we finish poisoning the earth in our time, the Lord will likely renew it again. He will clean it up.

The Lord, the Giver of Life, engages you and me, made in His image, and called to be in His likeness, to be co-workers, co-creators and co-guardians in His creation. That is why He gives us these gifts – in order to be this sort of co-worker and co-guardian. That gives us the opportunity to be such a person as the Samaritan today. This Samaritan was, to the Jewish people, a despised and disgusting sort of person. He was an outsider. He was semi-Jewish, but not really believing and worshipping correctly in accordance with the Jerusalemite understanding. The Samaritans were in fact treated like dogs in those days. Yet, according to the Lord’s parable, when a Jewish man, is beaten up and left for dead, several clergy walk by and do not dare touch him because they would be defiled by the possibility of touching a dead body (because they were not sure if he were dead or not). Even if he was not dead and he was bleeding, even that would make them unclean and unable to serve in the Temple. Therefore, they did not touch him. However, it was this very unclean and untouchable person who came along, expressed God’s love, and brought God’s healing to this man. The Samaritan restored him at his own expense and not at the government’s expense. A denarius is at least a day’s wages for a worker. It is not exactly a small thing that this man is giving up of his own substance in order to restore this injured person to health and well-being again.

In many ways in Canadian society, we who are Orthodox Christians find ourselves being like this Samaritan. Very many Canadians say that they are disappointed with Christianity in one way or another, because of the failures of Christians, and because of the poverty of Christian witness in the past. We, who are traditional, do not try to water down Who Christ is for the sake of making people more comfortable. Therefore, we preach and live and teach and serve Jesus Christ who loves all these broken-up Canadians, and who Himself, like the good Samaritan, wants to heal them. He wants to heal them, to renew them, to bring them back to life. It is we who are the hands and feet of that Samaritan. It is we, unlikely people, who are called by the Lord to bring renewed hope throughout the society in which we live.

In all the places throughout the country where there are churches, we are mostly small, and not seen by most Canadians. Our Temples can be sitting on a main street (some of them quite big, and some of them with very nice architecture) and yet people do not see them at all. They are not aware of them or if they are aware of them, they think that perhaps it is some sort of Sikh temple, or something like that. They do not imagine that it could be a Christian church that is standing there. In the long run, people who are coming to us across the country, are people whom the Lord Himself sends to us.

I am very much impressed by the seriousness of some of our parishes in terms of trying to be visible and to reach out. For instance, a parish in n that had recently built a new building, decided that they were going to try to make their church visible. They wanted to let people know that they were there, so they published a pamphlet. It is a nice little explanatory pamphlet (professionally done) about what is the Orthodox Church, and what is this parish. They printed 10,000 of these, and delivered them all by hand, door to door in the whole area around the church. They delivered 10,000 of them. As a result of this, four people came to the church. They advertised in the phone book. They advertised in the newspapers. Once in a while someone would come to the church from that. They were doing something to make themselves visible. Nevertheless, the vast majority of people who come to the church there are people who simply show up one Sunday morning. Some of them come because they know someone in the parish. They have encountered this Orthodox Christian, and they understand that there is something good and different about this person that attracts them. Therefore, they dare one Sunday to come to church. Sometimes they do not stick, but some of them do stick. There are other people who come, and no-one knows why or how they got there. Out of the blue, the Lord did something in that person’s heart one Sunday morning, and that person arrives in the church.

This is the way yeast operates in bread. It hides, as our Lord said in His parable – The Kingdom of God is “‘like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of flour till it was all leavened’” (Luke 13:21). What became of that yeast hidden in the flour (because once it is mixed together we cannot tell one from the other) ? It gives life. It raises the whole thing. What happens when someone puts a little pinch of salt in the flour ? After water is added, where is the salt ? However, we can certainly tell its presence by its taste. That is how we are to be. That is how we are perhaps behaving in this country. Slowly, our Church is growing and developing in unexplainable ways, precisely because the Lord is using us as His yeast and salt. This community has been here for ten years in n, and we have not grown very much visibly. On the other hand, there are people I know who have passed through this parish. They are in one place or another elsewhere in the country, still alive in Christ, and still serving Christ in a different parish. I rather suspect that the service of this community is not confined to this province. I understand also that this area is not one of the easiest places to establish the Orthodox Church. That is partly because this area is so old in Canadian settlement. However, there are yet older and tougher places.

That does not mean that the Church cannot be properly established here. This city, like everywhere else in the country, has people whose hearts are looking for Christ. They are hungering and they are thirsting. They are looking for Christ. It is up to us to live our lives sincerely and lovingly, following Christ, with open hearts, open arms, being hospitable in the way the Samaritan was. Actually, if the Levite and the priest of the Temple had really listened to their hearts on that particular day that our Lord spoke of in the parable, they might have let go their service in the Temple that day for the sake of this broken human being. This broken human being is truly important to the Lord.

It is necessary that we in our lives here in this city, keep the sense of equilibrium, of balance, and remember that the Lord is with us. He is not far away from us. He is with us. He is helping us at all times, giving us strength at all times, and protecting us at all times in this environment. Even if we do not necessarily see it, He is bringing fruit of life from our lives, as we touch people who are around us in our daily lives. He does something with it. He does not ask us to be or do everything : He asks us to be co-workers with Him. However, He does the major work all the time. We are the catalysts. We are the yeast. We are the salt.

The traditional saying of the Jesus Prayer by Orthodox Christians underlines our understanding that God is with us. When people are being taught how to do the Jesus Prayer properly (that applies mostly to monks, but other people are doing it too), they are given to understand in the first place that the purpose of saying the Jesus Prayer is to encounter God, to deepen one’s love for God. We do not just say some sort of prayer in order to become better focussed mentally, or to become some sort of guru or yogi or something like that, because of the ability to concentrate. The repetition of the prayer is all concerned with love. Everything about the Christian way is concerned with love. The person who is being taught how to say the Jesus Prayer is taught to focus. Where ? On the heart. The person has to look not out, but in. One finds Christ here, in the heart, in the center of our being. That is where we find Christ. It is a tricky business, so when most people are asking how to say the Jesus Prayer, that particular direction is not given to them in the beginning. The person is taught to say the Prayer slowly and carefully, and perhaps to look at an icon of Christ. After that, of course, the person can begin to look in. We have to remember for Whom we are looking when we are looking in. When we look in, we are going to see just soot. Everyone of us is in about the same condition. It takes some time to learn how to find Christ in there.

God is with us. The Lord is nurturing us. He is supporting us. He is enriching us with His love, always, and everywhere. Let us glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

All those Hebrew names today that are hard to pronounce, represent people who were in a line of those who trusted God’s Promise. God reveals Himself to us. He has revealed Himself to Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and so forth. There are many people to whom God revealed Himself in the course of our history, not to forget people like Ruth. It is not only to a line of men that God revealed Himself. In revealing Himself to us, He revealed Himself to us throughout Scripture as a loving Father (not like broken, human fathers, but an all-loving, all-perfect Father). He revealed Himself to us as God who is Love (see 1 John 4:8, 16).

Human beings in the course of our history have very often betrayed that love for one reason or another, mostly because we are limited, selfish, and we cannot understand the Lord’s love. We often fall into the trap of trying to control and regulate that love, and that never works. If anyone wants to know why heresies have risen in the past in human history, in Orthodox Christian history, these heresies have arisen because human beings could not manage to cope with the breadth and the depth of God’s love, with the absolute incomprehensibility and unexpectedness of God’s love. People, with their so-called intelligence, have tried to regulate God, to box Him in a little bit, so that He would be more understandable, somehow. By doing that, they have distorted their understanding of Who He is.

We cannot tell God Who He is. We cannot tell Him how to behave with us. We have to accept His love, and live with His love. The prophet Isaiah tells us that a pot does not tell the potter how to make it (see Isaiah 45:9). The potter knows how to make it, and the pot then functions according to how God made it. It is the same thing with us. God loves us. Because of His love, He creates each one of us uniquely. He gives us talent. He gives us ability. Everything is rooted in His love. His love gives us life, and we live in this love. If we do anything good in this life, it is the product of His love.

Thus it is that all these three times fourteen generations of people (whose names we heard today) prepared the way for the coming of the Incarnation of God’s love. They prepared the way by being faithful before the Incarnation, before the visibility of God’s love, before He could be comprehended in such a way as we Orthodox Christians comprehend Him. If we have some difficulty living in the wake of this Incarnation, if we have difficulty living day by day 2,000 years since the Incarnation, accepting God’s love in the fulfilment of the Promise, can you imagine how much more difficult it was for those three times fourteen generations of people who lived beforehand only with the Promise – a Promise not fulfilled. Having seen evidence of God’s abiding love amongst them, and how many times He saved them from this-and-that, they did not encounter the fulfilment of His love. They were not filled with the Holy Spirit so that they could be members of the Body of Christ.

They, in anticipation, were prepared to have everything done to them (as the Apostle Paul said to us this morning in the Epistle to the Hebrews concerning how they were tortured for the sake of this yet unfulfilled Promise). How much more, then, are we responsible for the living out of this love in our lives – we, who call ourselves Orthodox Christians, we who say that we believe. We bear in us and amongst us the Truth, the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth, the undistorted full Truth about the Holy Trinity, and Who is Jesus Christ. We have the responsibility to shine with the light of this love not just on Sunday or on a feast-day when we happen to be here together.

We have the responsibility to shine with this love every day. We have the responsibility to be this yeast and this salt that our Saviour says we are supposed to be if we are truly living His love. We are supposed to be catalysts of love in our everyday life, in our families, first. We are supposed to be persons to whom other people who are suffering and burdened by the cares of life will turn, because they see in us joy, they see in us a sign of hope, a sign of stability, a sign of peace. They can tell that we are Christ-bearers, because we love without attachments, without conditions, and we are servants like Christ. We do not puff ourselves up, exalt ourselves and squash other people, as the world does. We do not care what people think of us. Instead, we serve. We behave as Christ did. We wash people’s feet as Christ did (even if it is only a metaphorical washing).

When we behave like this, people turn to us in order to find Christ. When we behave like this, washing people’s feet (figuratively, or in fact), when we are going about our daily lives (as the servants or slaves of Christ that we are), we live in a certain freedom that other people do not know. People are bound up and enslaved by fear. We, who have been baptised into Christ, who have put on Christ (see Galatians 3:27), who bear Christ with us, are free in His love. We are not slaves of sin. We are not slaves of fear. We are free, free in His love. In doing all this, we are exercising that royal priesthood that all Christians who are baptised into Christ share, and must exercise. This priesthood has all to do with gathering the flock, the scattered sheep, the lost sheep, uniting them to the Body of Christ.

Now I would like to say that, as I stand here today in this Temple, in the midst of this flock, it is really obvious to me how much the Lord has been at work amongst us over the more than 25 years that this community has been serving and witnessing to His love, and the truth of His love. His Truth, by the way, is rooted in love. It does not consist in or of some sort of rules, regulations and philosophy. Jesus Christ, Himself, is the one and only Truth. Only He is the Truth. There is only one truth : living truth, loving truth. This same Saviour, who is Love, who put on flesh, who is Love incarnate, has been active amongst us. When we are singing at the top of our lungs, pouring out our hearts with love in praise of Him, no-one, I think, could deny that they feel the mutual love of Jesus Christ expressed amongst us here.

Thus, as much as the Lord has been building us up, and as much as the Lord has been working amongst us, we cannot at all become complacent in any way. Yes, the Lord has done a lot of good with us. He will do a lot more yet. He has united very many people to Himself through the work of this community. He has increased the community of faith through the life, love, and service of the believers here. However, there is a whole city of almost a million people, the vast majority of whom do not know the whole truth of Jesus Christ. Many of them do not even know anything at all about Jesus Christ. We, and those who come after us, have much work to do. It is not a five-minute job to make this city into a right-believing city. However, living His love, we allow Jesus Christ, the Lord of love, our Lord, Emmanuel, who is with us and amongst us all the time to multiply our meager offerings. He does this, and we allow Him to bring those scattered and lost sheep to Himself by our love, by the exercise of our love. There is much to be accomplished yet, but let us not forget that God is with us. That is one of His titles, and it is not merely a title, it is a fact. It is the expression of Who He is. He is with us. He always will be with us. He promised never to desert us or forsake us (see Matthew 28:20).

Therefore, holding on to our Saviour and being faithful to Him, let us help Him to grow this flock as He wills. Let us help him bring His life, His love, His salvation, and His unity to this city in which we live, so that this whole city may eventually glorify Him with us, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

As the years are passing by, so much more the importance of our celebrating this festival of the Incarnation of our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ, because the world is having a yet harder time accepting the fact. We turn on the radio nowadays, and we hear stupid programmes speculating on whether there really was such a thing as the Virgin Birth, and whether Jesus is really the Son of God. (However, I am actually happy that there are more real Christmas carols this year than I have heard for a while – at least it seems like that.) Always, while the light is shining, the darkness is trying to overcome this light, as is said at the beginning of the Gospel according to Saint John (see John 1:5). It is more and more important for us Orthodox Christians to take seriously the implications of the Incarnation. The Word of God took flesh and dwelt amongst us – that is the meaning of this feast.

It does not matter how people want to re-interpret the Scriptures. The Scriptures are quite plain in describing what happened, and it is important for us to take the Scriptures for what they say. “‘God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son’” (John 3:16). He loves us, and so He emptied Himself. He took on our humanity in order to redeem it, in order to reunite it to God the Father, from whom we had separated ourselves in the earliest times by our selfish rebellion, by our thinking that we know better. That spirit of thinking that we know better, trying to avoid God’s love somehow – wanting it, asking for it all the time – but running away from it at the same time, has been our perpetual characteristic. And so, in our day, we are in a society that is hungering and thirsting for the truth of Jesus Christ’s love. When they are faced with that love, people frequently run away from it. You and I know how that can be, because we ourselves in our daily lives are not always 100 per cent faithful to our Saviour. We ourselves sometimes give in to selfishness, to our self-will. But mercifully, we have confession ; we have a spiritual physician to go to. We can have this selfishness again and again washed off. Because of the Lord’s loving mercy, we have new opportunities yet again to submit to Him.

People speak about the various interesting Orthodox customs that we have. Often they demean them by calling them quaint. They notice all sorts of details such as holy suppers at Christmas and Theophany, the blessing of homes and other such customs. We have very many daily customs : for instance, how bread is baked on certain occasions (because there are different sorts of breads for different purposes) ; how things are cooked one way at one time of the year, and another way at another time of the year ; even how we dance ; and what sorts of things we sing at what time of the year (because, especially amongst Ukrainians, there are not just Christmas carols – people can sing songs in Ukraine for all sorts of different occasions during the year). Those are the sorts of things that people will say are “quaint”, or even “cute” customs.

In their running away from the Lord, people try to say that somehow these are customs that go back into pre-Christian times. Most of the customs that we follow do not, in fact, go back into pre-Christian times, and certainly not pagan times. Those customs about how we eat, how we drink, when we do this and when we do that, how we sing, and how we dance, are all reflections of how Christ baptises cultures, those Orthodox Christian cultures. And so, while Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Serbs, Romanians, Greeks, Albanians, Syrians, and many others (Georgians in particular) all sing, dance, and eat different ways ; how they live their lives is very similar. Their day-to-day lives are all geared around the cycle of the feasts of Christ during the year. They follow the feasts and the fasts ; and the differences between how they eat, drink, dance, and sing are determined only by the natural environment of the land on which they live. However, their sensitivity about how the Christian lives life is all the same. They have the same concern, really, and that is to be Christians, to be known in and by Christ, to serve Christ, and ultimately to be like the Mother of God, obedient in love.

When we are worshipping here, especially now when a bishop happens to be here, people from outside think it is awfully grand, imperial, and hard to swallow. The fact is that this whole service, with its grandeur, does not have to do with the bishop himself. How we are serving (and serving the best we can) is not for the sake of any bishop, but rather for the One whom the bishop is re-presenting. Who is that ? Of course, it is Christ. As the great martyr Ireneus said : “The bishop is as Christ in the diocese”. Therefore, the bishop has to re-present Christ as well as his fallen humanity will allow. Nevertheless, even if his fallenness does not allow it very well, because he is a bishop, he still does re-present Christ. If there is any respect and honour given to him, it is only because of Jesus Christ. As an icon, all the respect that is given to a bishop or to a priest, is passing on to Christ, whom they re-present. It is because of Christ that a bishop or a priest or a deacon or anyone, has any significance in the Church.

Thus, as Saint John Chrysostom says, when we are receiving Holy Communion, the presence of Christ is so much in us that we really ought to be making prostrations before one another, because of the presence of Christ in one another. Everything about the Orthodox life is focussed on Jesus Christ. Everything involved in how we live, what we say, how we worship, everything is focussed on Jesus Christ, His Incarnation, and our gratitude for it. Everything is focussed on His love for us, and our gratitude for His love. Everything in the Church refers to Jesus Christ. As the Apostle is saying to us and is reminding us this morning : having been baptised into Him and having put Him on, we have become children and heirs in our incorporation into His Body. We are not outside. As members of the Body of Christ, we are inside ; we are with God. It is not for nothing that we love to sing that “God is with us”. He is with us. He is everything to us (see 1 Corinthians 15:28).

Brothers and sisters, our responsibility is to try our best day by day, even with our failures, to be faithful to His love, to call upon Him for help, to take His hand of love, and allow Him to hold us up, to support us, to direct us, to nurture us, to correct us, to feed us, and save us. He gave everything, and He is giving everything to us because of love, even though that love is so beyond our ability to comprehend at all. Nevertheless, let us receive it, and try with His help (indeed, we can never do anything without His help) to live by His love, and give glory to Him in our day-to-day lives. With His help, then, let us shine with the light of His love. May others be able to see the hope that we have, and come to join us in this hope. Let us glorify our beautiful, beloved 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

God has revealed Himself to us. That is the beginning of everything. We see that from the first book of Moses [Genesis]. God has revealed Himself to us. Everything after that is our response to God’s revealing Himself to us. It is He who is in charge, not we. He shows us that He loves us, that He cares for us, that He is always with us and nurturing us. How we live as Christians is a response to that declaration of love. The declaration of love that God has been giving us ever since the beginning is fulfilled and completed in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, our Saviour.

God put flesh on His love in the Incarnation of His Only-begotten Son. He allowed us to mistreat His Only-begotten Son. Nevertheless, in His love for us, His Son rose from the dead, and is with us to this day, giving us not only hope, but, in fact, re-uniting us to God the Father from whom we had separated ourselves in our self-centered rebellion. In Christ, all these crazy things that we have been doing to ourselves over the course of history, have been reversed. It is possible for us in Christ to become whole, to be completely healed, in fact.

Talking about his own experience, the Apostle Paul writes that when he, himself, who had been living in a very misguided way and persecuting the Church (because he thought he was doing right according to the Law), encountered Jesus Christ face-to-face on the road to Damascus, his life was turned about. The Apostle could be changed like this because his heart was in the right place. However, his head was out of focus. He was being led by his head instead of by his heart. That encounter with Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus turned things about and put them into the correct focus.

Our Saviour today, as we are singing in the hymns, taught us about obedience. He that created everything, and He that created the Law, also obeyed the Law that He created. Why not ? It has to be understood (and this is where people have been constantly going wrong) that the Law is not mere legislation ; it is not something that can be changed. It is not something that can be modified by an amendment, because it is all governed and regulated exactly by its summary, which most of us neglect to remember. What is the summary of the Law and the Ten Commandments ? Quoted by our Saviour Himself, the summary is : “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind … and you shall love your neighbour as yourself’” (Matthew 22:37, 39).

Love is the whole basis of the Law. Therefore, the Ten Commandments are not like legislation. They are our sense of direction. They are our compass. If we are truly responding to God’s love and doing what the summary says – loving God with all our being – then we would have everything in the correct order. It would be impossible for us to have another God, except the one God. It would be impossible for us to make idols, substitutes of things created, to put in place of the Creator. We would keep the Day of the Lord holy. We would worship the Lord. We would respect our parents, and we would abstain from murder, theft, lying, and coveting, etc. All these things are positive things. The Law is a positive thing. It is a measure of how a believer lives life, how a believer who has encountered God’s love lives out this love.

It is important, therefore, for you and for me, it is important for Orthodox Christians living here in this city where so many people are preoccupied with making money, to remember not to be distracted. It is easy for people to turn money into one of those substitutes for Him, which come between the Creator and themselves. In so doing, they could even easily lose their sense of direction. If it is not money, it would likely be position or power. They are all related. We, who are Orthodox Christians, have to be careful to remember to keep first things first in our lives. That means keeping alive always the love of Jesus Christ in our hearts, nurturing that love, because that love is the source of our being. That love is the purpose of our living.

It is not an option for an Orthodox Christian to be maintaining the personal relationship in communion of love with Jesus Christ. It is the root of our being. It is who we are. From that comes everything in our lives. From that comes the ability to live positive lives. If people have difficulty in living life, it is often because they have forgotten Jesus Christ. In Christ, it is possible to live through every imaginable difficulty, overcome every imaginable obstacle sooner or later, as long as we are living in Jesus Christ, and in harmony with His love, and therefore, knowing His will.

It is possible for an Orthodox Christian to return to the state of Adam and Eve before the Primordial Fall – it truly is. There have been saints who have done this in the course of their lives, because they have completely given up their self-will. They have given themselves over completely to Jesus Christ, and in this atmosphere of love, they know instinctively what He wants of them. They do not even have to ask Him. Their hearts tell them before they can even ask what they should be doing, what is the right thing to do, to say, to think, and how to be in any situation. It is possible, because that is the direction that the Lord’s love takes us. It takes us to reunion of communion with Him. In reunion of communion with Him, it becomes possible to be like Him as we see and hear Him in the Gospel.

I cannot speak from experience. However, I can just say that I have seen this written in the lives of the saints. I have seen some people myself, in the course of my travels around the world, who, if they are not in that condition already, are very close. It can be done. Such purity of life can be lived by giving one’s self over to the Saviour. In giving one’s self over to the Saviour like this, fear is removed, because as the Apostle John says : “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). We do not have to be slaves of fear when we are full of the love of Jesus Christ.

Saint Basil the Great, whose memory we celebrate today, was such a person. He became such a guiding force for the whole Church that 1700 years later his influence is still alive in our Church. Why ? Because he was such a person. He gave himself over to the love of Jesus Christ. This is what obedience to the Law means. It means lovingly doing God’s will (not slavishly and fearfully doing what I am told). I must lovingly offer my compliance with God’s will, so that I might be a fulfilled human being, a whole human being.

It is not a small work we have to do as Orthodox Christians here in this city, but the Lord has been very busy blessing our progress. I look forward to seeing what else He is going to do in this community, and with Orthodox believers in this city. May God grant us the ability to follow the example of our Saviour Himself in His obedience to His own parents, to the Law which He created Himself, to His living in harmony with the creation that He created. May the Lord give us the ability to give ourselves over to Him in love, so that His light may shine in us, so that people may see His love at work in us, and be encouraged and drawn to Him, and see and believe. May the Lord enable us truly with all our lives and with all our being to glorify Him : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The task of being a shepherd, especially the sort of shepherd that the Saviour is, is not an easy one, and it is certainly not one that I have ever been comfortable in undertaking, because the difference is so great between Him and me. Yet, according to the Scriptures this morning, according to the teaching of the Apostle Paul, the Holy Spirit gives gifts, in accordance with the will of God, and in accordance with the needs of the people, the sheep. Therefore, regardless of what I think about myself, and whatever my inadequacies may be, my responsibility must be to try to be as well as I can a shepherd with the same motivation as that one Shepherd.

There is, in the end, only one Shepherd – our Saviour, Jesus Christ. There is only One who is in charge of the whole Church, and that is Jesus Christ. There is only One who is in charge of this diocese, and that is Jesus Christ. I have great hope and confidence in Him, that whatever are the shortcomings of me, as the bishop, and whatever are the shortcomings of any priest in the diocese (because we are all simply human beings, and we are all makers of mistakes), nevertheless, the Lord in His love for us will make up the difference between our lack and what is the need of the Church.

This has been the case, anyway, throughout all Christian history. There have been human beings who have failed greatly, who have been led astray greatly by the Tempter. Always the Saviour has been able (because He is the Creator of everything anyway, and because His love is so great) to bring things back into the correct focus and the right direction.

In the other reading for today, the Saviour is emphasising once again the importance of our being child-like. He says, as He accepts children to Himself, blesses them, and lays His hands upon them, that we all have to enter the Kingdom as children. The problem is that instead of being like children, child-like, we often behave childishly, and there is quite a difference, a very big difference.

It is very important for us to remember what sort of person Saint Gregory the Theologian was, and the few others, also, who like Saint John the Theologian, carried the title “Theologian”. It is necessary to remember that they came to this title, this appellation, because they were so full of the love of God. They were so full of the love of Jesus Christ, that, in fact, they became like children. They became like children because of their complete and utter trust in the love of Jesus Christ. Such people are persons who have actually grown up (this is one of the Orthodox paradoxes – we grow up to be a child). To be a truly adult Christian, we have to have child-like, pure faith. Such faith is not confused by fear, and especially not paralysed by fear. In order to arrive at such paradoxical purity, it is necessary that we open our hearts to the Saviour, and give ourselves over to Him. It is crucial that, because of love, we trust Him in everything.

My nephew gave me The Mountain of Silence to read, and I should have read it a long time ago. I am very grateful to my nephew for giving me this book, and pressing me to read it, too, because I have to give it back. He wants to make sure that I read it soon. In The Mountain of Silence there are many stories told about Athonite elders who have lived recently : Elder Paisios in particular, and Father Maximos, who is still living in Cyprus, and Archimandrite Sophrony and others like them. All these men (and women too, because the Eldress Gavrilia of Greece is also mentioned many times in this book), are people who, even though they may appear to be eccentric, have given their whole lives over to the Saviour, and are loving the Saviour completely. Some of them, like the Elder Porphyrios in particular, and the Elder Paisios in quite a similar way, were so full of the love of Jesus Christ that they were able to tell people all their problems, correct their problems, help them at a distance, phone them up and tell them what was the problem – that sort of thing. They are people who have managed to give themselves over so much to the love of Jesus Christ, that their hearts became like those of Adam and Eve before the Fall. Their hearts instantly respond to the love of God, and they know what God wants without having even to ask.

This is not the call of “specialists” only, because this Paisios, this Porphyrios, this Gavrilia and many others, even in the last century, who were of a similar devotion to the Saviour, are not different from you and me. They are human beings with the same sort of temptations and weaknesses, but they were ready to give themselves over to the Saviour, and trust Him with everything in their lives. This call is the call to everyone of us. The Saviour’s love is the same for each of us. He created each of us in His image, and we are supposed to be in His likeness. This likeness is love. This love is selfless. This love gives gifts, and allows the gifts of the Saviour to grow.

The Holy Spirit gives particular gifts to us all, according to who we are. He gives these gifts not for us alone, not at all. He gives these gifts for the sake of everyone else around us. That is why these elders, these Gavrilias, these Porphyrioses, and these Paisioses (if you can say it like that in English), gave themselves over to hours and hours and hours of people coming to them in confession, just as happened to Saint Seraphim. We have all probably read or heard about how many years he lived in the desert by himself (the desert of the forest, that is), and how, when the time came, Saint Seraphim, full of life, was in the monastery, and for hours on end was hearing people’s confessions, and hearing their heartbreaks.

Gifts are given to these people for the well-being of everyone else who is hungry, and thirsty, and lost. The good Shepherd who knows His sheep, knows us. He knows our needs. He knows all our weaknesses. It is, in fact, beyond my ability to comprehend what is the nature of His love, and how it works itself out in our lives. However, I do see, everywhere I go, the fruit of that love : in pastors feeding their sheep, in pastors teaching their sheep, in faithful people being nourished by these pastors. The sheep grow up and become strong believers, who are magnets of Christ’s love themselves, bringing people to the Saviour by their example. I see this more and more.

It is important that we all pay attention to the fact that the Saviour is so active amongst us because He loves us, because He is with us, because He cares for us. Even if we have all sorts of difficulties and troubles, He is still with us. He is still helping us out of all these things ; He is helping us through all these things and healing the pain of our hearts. He heals the scars of our hearts. He renews us. He makes us over into who we are supposed to be in the first place. He lifts us up, and gives us the ability to live in joy.

The characteristic of a Christian, par excellence, is to be able to live in joy : as did Saint Seraphim of Sarov, and the many Greek saints of the last century. It is the characteristic of the way of Christ : this peace and this joy which give life to everyone and everything around.

Glory to God that He has such concern for us, that He has such patience with our stubbornness and our blindness. Glory to God that He is so ready to heal our weaknesses, our fears, our fragilities, and to provide for the needs of His rational flock. Glory to God that we are able to be here together, glorifying our Saviour. Glory to God, also, that there are such Orthodox Christians who are interested in celebrating an obscure birthday of this relatively obscure bishop. Glory to God for your love, for your care, and for your faithful service to Christ, whom we glorify, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

On this day, we are remembering the Seventh Ecumenical Council as always at this time of year, and we are also remembering the restoration of icons to the Church, and the implications that come with that. The restoration of the icons to the Church has its actual roots in the Incarnation of Christ, because God took flesh. He could be represented in paint and in other matter as well (as He has been from the beginning of the Church’s life).

However, the implication goes far beyond iconography. There is an aspect of Christian living that seems to have eluded people one way or the other over the past 2,000 years. It is true that intellectually we may have a firm grasp of the truth of the Incarnation, but living it out is the hard part which continues to elude us. We live in a society which wants to reduce Jesus Christ simply to being some sort of philosopher, or “nice guy” (which is even worse). There is almost nothing worse than being a “nice guy”. Because we who live in this society seem very often to fall into that trap of the “nice guy” mentality, the true living of Christian life will continue to elude us.

Our responsibility as Orthodox Christians is to know Jesus Christ, and being faithful to Jesus Christ, to carry Him with us wherever we are and whatever we are doing, so that, even if we are not very good at transmitting the image and likeness of Christ, at least we are trying. At least, if we are failing somehow, we are ready to say : “I am sorry. I will try to do better”. And at least, if we are not so strong as we thought we might be in Christ, and not saying and doing things as clearly Christ-like as they might be, we are still able to pray to the Saviour to make up the difference. And He does. We are still able to pray to the Saviour to help us to forgive people, people who ridicule us, people who make it difficult for us to continue to be faithful. And He does. He does bring forgiveness to them, to us. He does bring healing and reconciliation to them, to us.

In this community, the Lord has given many resources, both physical and spiritual, as well as particular challenges (not small ones, either). The Adversary, Big Red, is not leaving this community alone. He has been working one way or another, trying to discourage one person or another through illness. These things are not coincidental. These are the attacks of the Adversary. It is not simply that someone gets sick. It is not only illness. Always, and perhaps more seriously, the Adversary walks around trying to sow seeds of doubt, suspicion, anger, and division amongst us in one way or the other. We, who have been given this opportunity to be part of this community and to participate in the struggles of this community, must, absolutely must, be putting on the whole armour of Christ daily. This container of holy water should be refilled and blessed very frequently. That is part of the armour that we need to be taking up daily. We need to be daily taking up and putting on our confidence in Christ, our Saviour, and His love for us by deliberately asking for His help right from the beginning of every day.

Approximately ten years ago, Archbishop Paul, the Abbot of the Kyiv Caves Monastery, came to Canada, and passed across the country with the relics of some of the saints of the Kyiv Caves. He left these relics amongst us. An icon was written at the Holy Transfiguration Hermitage to carry these relics. The icon contains the relics of the saints whose images are on it. There is Saint Agapit, the physician ; Saint Mark (the grave digger) who is the exorcist. If we go to the Kyiv Caves, his hat (or helmet) is there in the caves, and people are daily exorcised by the application of this hat. There is Saint Moses the Hungarian, the healer ; there is Saint Alipy, the iconographer ; Saint Spiridon, the prosphora-baker ; and Saint Nestor, the chronicler. All these famous, well-known Fathers of Kyiv are founders and protectors in many ways. I believe that the Lord is sending this icon for the protection of the Archdiocese, though it will remain mostly at the Cathedral in Ottawa for encouragement and strengthening.

The Lord, in His mercy and His love, knows us, as He knows the apostles whom He calls today. He knows us. He knows our needs. He loves us. He cares for us. He is with us. He is supporting us. He is never abandoning us. As difficult as we sometimes feel it is, and as dragged out as we sometimes are feeling in looking after the responsibility of establishing our presence and the presence of Orthodox witness in this community and in this building, as tired as we are, and sometimes as discouraged as we are, the Lord, nevertheless, is with us. The Lord, nevertheless, is taking care of us. The Lord, nevertheless, is ahead of us, preparing the way for us. The wonder of it all is that the Lord, in His love, takes the time (He has infinite time) and the trouble, not only to prepare the way of this community together, but also to prepare the way of each of our lives. The Lord, in His mercy, is with us. The Lord in His mercy, is before us, all around us, and in us. The Lord, in His mercy, is working through us.

It is important for us daily not to fall prey to the father of forgetfulness down below, but to embrace the Father of remembering – our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ. Remembering is loving ; the two things go together. We exist, because the Lord loves us, and He remembers us. Therefore, let us renew our confidence in our Saviour. Let us continue to take up the burden of the responsibility, a burden which Christ says is light. It is light if we are directly connected with Him. Let us embrace His protection, and let us fulfil our responsibility regardless of what comes. Let us fulfil our responsibility in the love of Jesus Christ – His love of us, our love of Him. Let us glorify Him, with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In these days we are hearing texts about the Second Coming and the need to be prepared for it. Of course it is true that it is necessary to be prepared. It is important that we remember what this preparation is like for us who are Christians. It is especially important that we pay attention to this now, because in these days (and in fact, as long as I have lived), there have been people on the radio who talk about the End Days. They talk about it with great fear and trepidation, and they give people a feeling of guilt all the time. They entice us with something that we want, but at the same time, something that we are deadly afraid of, somehow.

The End of all things is not a small event at all. It is beyond my comprehension. The End of all things is inexplicable. It is serious, yes, and awesome, yes ; but for us who are Orthodox Christians, it is much more than an awesome event and a spectacle. It is the return of the Bridegroom. It is the return of Him whom we love. It is the culmination of all the work of His self-emptying love since the beginning of all. We, who are believers, ought to be anticipating this with a certain amount of uncertainty about ourselves and our preparedness. Nevertheless, with longing we await the Lord who is to come, so that we may be able to live in His love, without any more sickness, sorrow, suffering, dying.

The expectation of the Orthodox Christian is a mix. Yes, there is repentance, and we have to be prepared. Repentance is part of our daily life : it is a fundamental element of our way of life. Our hope is that, in this attempt to repent, to turn about from selfishness to the way of Christ, to the way of selflessness, in our turning about, the Lord will accept our love, our offering of love, our turning about. We love the Lord, and He loves us and we long to be eternally with the One whom we love. We hope that He will admit us along with the wise virgins into His banquet hall in His Kingdom.

The way of repentance is an element of our life which people seem to be forgetting in ordinary parish life. It does not matter where we go, somehow many people everywhere have the very mistaken idea that when we come to church, we should somehow be standing amongst the community of the perfect. When we encounter people’s weaknesses, their shortcomings and their sins, voluntary and involuntary, people tend to become disappointed or disillusioned. The Church has never been anything but a hospital for sinners. We must come to recognise that we ourselves, because of the love of Jesus Christ, because of knowing Who He is and what sort of love He has for us, and having confidence in Him as well, need to be like those four men today who carried the paralytic.

These four men knew what sort of love Jesus Christ had for them and for their friend, whom they carried on his stretcher. Their confidence in Christ was great enough that when they found that the house was packed full (and even the outside as well), and that there was no way at all for them to get their friend in to the Saviour, as we heard in the Gospel reading today, then they went up on the roof, and they opened it. This is something that could be done in the Middle East by moving tiles around, although we could not do it here very well. There obviously would be massive destruction to open this roof, and to let down someone on ropes in order to put such a person before the Saviour. Nevertheless, they did open the roof, and they lowered the man before the Saviour. The Lord saw their faith. He understood their love, and He taught a great lesson to everyone (to them and to us) when He said to the paralytic : “‘Son, your sins are forgiven you’”. In the end, it was through this “Your sins are forgiven you” that the paralytic rose from his bed and walked. Faced with this, people were able to say : “‘We never saw anything like this!’”

It is the responsibility of us all to have confidence in our Saviour when we see the weaknesses of our brothers and sisters, and to be like those four men, and carry that person in our prayer to the Saviour. We must give that person to the Saviour, who, in His love, will touch that person, correct that person, and heal that person. It is not our responsibility to laugh at, or condemn the person for being paralysed, because paralysis in life comes from sin. Sin is all bound up with fear. There is not one of us who is not subject to fears in one form or another. These fears paralyse us from doing the good that we ought to do. Sometimes they stop us from doing anything at all. Fears can be so intense from time to time. It is the Lord who frees us from these fears, from the chains with which the devil binds us. It is the Lord who sets us free from these fears, and enables us to become more and more productive workers together with Him in His Kingdom.

That is why it is important that we intercede for each other all the time, and not only occasionally. We must pray for each other all the time. We should be praying for all the members and friends of this parish on a regular basis. If it is possible, those who have time should pray for all the people on the parish list every day, saying simply “Lord have mercy” for each of them, but at least praying for each of them. By doing this, we are being like those four men with the paralytic, supporting each other, bringing each other before the Saviour, and offering each other before the Saviour so that He might correct, heal, strengthen, nurture, and give whatever we need.

Today, we are here all together before the Lord in His Kingdom, which is the case every week at the Divine Liturgy. Every time we are assembled, standing here together in the Temple of the Lord, in the Temple of His Kingdom, we are standing here all together as He feeds us with His own hand, and with His own life. We are standing here today, as we always will be doing at the Divine Liturgy. We are participating in the whole of God’s saving acts from the beginning to the end, from the time of Creation past the Second Coming. In a mystery, as we are standing here today, we are standing in the Kingdom after the Second Coming, also.

When we are offering the Gifts to the Lord, as we hear in the Divine Liturgy, we are remembering God’s saving acts. After “Thine own of thine own”, if we listen carefully, we can hear that we are offering all God’s saving acts from the beginning, including the Second Coming. For us, in a mystery, the Second Coming is a past event. That is why it is possible for us to have such confidence in the Saviour’s love, in view of the Second Coming. He is already merciful to you and to me in giving us a taste of that banquet, together with the wise virgins, and the others who are wonderful in the Saviour.

As we are participating in these ineffable Mysteries of God’s love, let us ask Him to refresh this love, which is our life, and enable us more and more, day by day, even without ceasing, in our hearts to glorify Him : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Saint John, the abbot of Sinai, wrote The Ladder of Divine Ascent. The metaphor of the ladder describes our progress as Christians in our life towards God. However, this progression is not some sort of technique that we can acquire. Such a technique would tell us that if we simply do this thing, and this thing, and this thing, then God will reward us, and admit us into the heavenly Kingdom. That is not how it works, although many (including the naïve Muslim) believe that this is so.

If we had this sort of naïve, simple system which would give us the password for reception into the Kingdom of Heaven after we had lined our ducks up correctly, then that would be very much like bribing God. That is not how it works at all. Many parents try that with their children, and I have seen that that does not work either. It does not work with human beings, and it certainly does not work between God and us. Any system which presumes that God clearly wants to be placated is just plain blasphemous. God is not interested in correctly lined-up ducks. God is interested in our hearts and our love. A careful reading of the Book of Job will show that this is the truth.

The metaphor of the ladder in the book The Ladder of Divine Ascent is simply a description of how we grow in love for God. There is nothing in Christian life that does not have to do with the love of God. It is true that there are many details involved in the living of the Christian life, and yes, there are some rules. However, those details and those rules are only there to provide some sort of order. The foundation of everything is still only Jesus’ question to the Apostle Peter when He says : “‘Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me more than these?’” (John 21:15) That is what the Lord is asking you and me always : “Do you love Me ?” With the Apostle Peter, our answer naturally is : “‘Yes, Lord; You know that I love You’” (John 21:15). Afterwards, the Lord says to the apostle : “‘Feed My sheep’” (John 21:17).

The “ladder” is given to us to help us. If we love the Lord, then we will grow up in Him. Growing up in Him means that if we love Him, we have to show it by doing something about it. Some people pray. Some people spend their whole lives praying and interceding for other people. It is true, in fact, that if it were not for these people praying, then the world would have fallen in on itself a long time ago. It is because there are believers around the world interceding before God in love on behalf of everyone else, that we still have opportunities to repent. Imitating the Lord, some people do good things. Some people help other people. Some people encourage other people. Some people feed the hungry, and visit the sick, and clothe the naked, and go and help people in prison, just as we sing about the Lord every Sunday in Psalm 145.

The love of Jesus Christ in action means that we have to do something that is supportive and life-giving to people around us. Mostly, these are not the people we would choose, rather, the Lord sends to us those whom He knows that we can help : people at work, people at school, people on the street, people we bump into. We do not very often have the opportunity to choose who it is that we, like the Saviour, will serve. He gives them to us, and our heart tells us in His love how we are to serve.

In the Gospel reading today, we heard about a child who is possessed by a devil, tormented by a devil, and no-one can do anything about it. This child is brought to our Saviour, and His disciples could not help the child. They wanted to, but they did not know how. We would have to say that they did not yet have enough love. Our Saviour Himself tells the devil to come out, and the devil comes out. His disciples ask Him : “‘Why could we not cast it out?’” The Saviour says : “‘This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting’”. The apostles were not “grown-up” enough in the love of Jesus Christ to be able to do this. However, in the Acts of the Apostles (which we will be reading very soon after Pascha) there will be many evidences of the apostles doing precisely that, and more, because they had been filled with the Grace of the Holy Spirit. By this time, they were overflowing with love. The power of the Grace of the Holy Spirit was acting in them, and they were healing people in the love of Jesus Christ. Sometimes they were even raising them from the dead in the love of Jesus Christ. It was not that the apostles were employing some technique to raise someone from the dead or heal them from their diseases. It was their love of Jesus Christ, their compassion in Jesus Christ, which enabled the Lord Himself to do this. Through their intercession and their presence, the Lord raised the dead and healed the sick. It was the love of Jesus Christ that was acting and that was giving life.

If we are going to grow up in Jesus Christ, we cannot expect that we should be so different from those disciples and apostles 2,000 years ago. The Saviour calls every one of us to be holy as were the apostles ; He has shown us in the course of the last 2,000 years all sorts of ordinary Orthodox believers who became holy just like them. We have such examples of holiness even into the last century, and probably in this century as well. There are people who love Jesus Christ, who have grown up in Him, and through their prayers, people are healed from their diseases and even raised from the dead.

Those things that are spoken of in the Gospel today and in the Epistle are not merely something for 2,000 years ago. They are not limited only to those apostles. As the writer to the Hebrews says, and I love this phrase (I have heard it and remembered it since I was five because other believers repeated it many times) : “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). Because Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, He works the same amongst us now in His love as He did in those days with His apostles. What He requires from us, and what we need to give, is the “Yes” : the “Yes” of those apostles, the “Yes” of the Mother of God. I have not with my own eyes seen people raised from the dead, but I have heard in my lifetime of people who prayed, and as a result of this prayer, people were raised. In my lifetime this has happened in the world. People have been healed many times from diseases, and this I have seen with my own eyes. At the prayers of faithful people, many have been healed from all sorts of diseases since those people who love Jesus Christ, because of compassion, fast and pray, and the Lord blesses. Growing up in Jesus Christ means growing up into His love, so that we are at one with His love. In unity and harmony with His love, we act in accordance with His love. We bring the healing love of Jesus Christ to people near us, and to our environment.

The love of Jesus Christ is not a thing that just sits there on a shelf, and we look at it, and say : “Isn’t that nice !” Rather, His love is life. His love is alive. We are alive in His love. If we do not use this gift of love that Jesus Christ gives to us, if we hold on to it, the same thing happens to that love in us as happens to a pansy or to any other flower. How many times has a child brought freshly-picked flowers to his mother, held tightly in the hand. The child says : “Here Mama, look ! These are for you !” What is left of those flowers ? Some sort of squashed pulp is all that is left of those flowers. A flower is delicate, and has to be held loosely in the hand.

Human beings are like those flowers. They have to be held carefully and loosely in the hand. The love of Jesus Christ can only live and grow if it is offered and shared with an open hand and with an open heart. When we give the love of Jesus Christ to other people, when we share the love of Jesus Christ with other people and with creatures, God renews this love in us. The more we give, the more He gives us to give. That is why the Cross and the “ladder” come to us, and also examples of great repentance, like Saint Mary of Egypt next week. By God’s mercy and His love these examples come to us to remind us that, as difficult as life is, God is with us. He loves us. He gives us the strength that we need. Nevertheless, we have to say “Yes” to Him.

In the few weeks that remain in Great Lent, let us offer our abstinence from food, and our extra time in church (which should actually be the usual time in church). Let us offer all this to Him, asking Him to renew His love in our hearts, so that when we arrive at Pascha, we will be able to rejoice with true Paschal rejoicing. When we arrive at Pascha and we exult in this true Paschal joy, let us ask Him to let this love continue to grow as we offer to Him our abstinences and our co-suffering labour with Him. Thus, may everything about us glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

It is a good thing for us to pay attention to what we just heard in the Gospel reading today, not only in the context of itself, but also in the context of what is coming, and how human beings are. Today, our Saviour is telling the apostles precisely what would be coming. He is preparing them by telling them that He would be crucified, that He would die, and also that He would rise again from the dead.

In two short weeks, we are going to be hearing about how the disciples, when Jesus Christ rose from the dead, could not comprehend it, did not expect it, did not know what was happening, and could hardly believe it. Of course, we understand now. However, at that time, resurrection was unheard of. It is not as though they had not been told before, and it is not as though they had not been prepared by our Saviour Himself, that this would happen. Yet, their fallen human experience was so limited that they could not comprehend it. It is not even a question of doubting. It is plain, simple, non-comprehension. The apostles could only comprehend it when they encountered Jesus Christ, face-to-face, risen from the dead. Even then they could not really comprehend it, but they began to make a step in that direction, anyway. During the rest of their lives, they began to live out precisely what are the implications of this Resurrection.

Two of the apostles asked our Saviour if they could sit, one on His right, and one on His left, when He comes in glory. He responded that instead, they would have to be baptised with the baptism with which He would be baptised, and drink the cup that He would drink. When they said that they would be able to do this, they did not know what they were saying. Nevertheless, it came to be. He said that He, the Saviour, the Son of God, did not come to be served. He came to serve. It is in this way that the apostles grew up after the Resurrection. They grew up as servants of Jesus Christ, serving together with Him.

This is the way of Christ – to serve, to be the servant of all. Being a servant in this context is not something that is slavish. It is not something that is done because of fear, since nothing for a Christian should be done out of fear. It is done because of love. We Christians serve. We serve Christ. We serve each other. We serve strangers. We serve the needy. We serve whomever the Lord gives us to serve because we love Jesus Christ. His love propels us into serving in our daily life. One could say that to serve, to try to be of service, is second nature for a Christian. Even if we are compelled to serve, even if we are indentured to serve, the Christian way is, as the Apostle Paul demonstrates to us, that we serve the Master and obey the Master with the love of Christ. We do this, despite any possible maltreatment by a master. Indeed, a harbinger of this behaviour was the Patriarch Joseph before he rose in the court of the Pharaoh.

All sorts of pop psychologists are going to say that if we are busy trying to help people all the time, that is because there is some sort of interior hurt that comes from our childhood and that needs fixing up. They say that we are always trying to help people because we have been bruised ourselves in our childhood, or something like that. There are various theories that are applied one way or another in psychology. Well, when it comes down to it, it is just as well that people might think that we are cracked. I admit it myself, on a regular basis, if you have not noticed. When people ask me : “How are you ?” I say : “I am cracked”. Well, I hope that I am mostly cracked in Christ, but probably there are some other things as well that the Lord is still working on. It does not matter, though, if the world thinks we are cracked, because the way of the Christian is not the way of the world. The way of the world is all focussed on “me” : “I am number one”. “Make me comfortable in this world”. “Let us get as much as we can”. “Let us fill up our barns with wheat (as in the parable the Lord told), and then die bitter”.

That is not the way of Christ. The way of Christ is all love. It is all hope. It is all life. It is life-giving. It is service, because this service that we do in Christ, for Christ, in and with each other, is all part of the same life-giving work. It is all life-giving. It is all because of love, filled with joy. It is true that we get tired (and sometimes cranky) because we get overworked. Still, the fundamental of it all is that we are loving Jesus Christ. We are in love with Jesus Christ, and in this love we want to serve. We look for every occasion to serve, to be helpful, to encourage, to strengthen people around us.

It is that sort of love that I have been blessed in my life a number of times to experience simply by being near it. I have never been near anyone so fiery as Saint Seraphim, for instance, and some other saints like him ; but I have been near several holy persons in the course of my life. Just being next to them can give us a strange combination of a sense of intensity of love for Jesus Christ, a real energy, and at the same time, a great peace – great peace. This is peace greater than we can encounter anywhere else, except sometimes, perhaps, here in the Temple of the Lord together with each other. Perhaps once in a while we may have this moment, this sense of peace in prayer. However, in the presence of such a person, the love of God, the peace and the joy all together are so intense that it is overwhelming. This is how we all ought to grow up and become. There is still time for us all to make steps in that direction.

We cannot on this day omit mentioning Saint Mary of Egypt because she is for us such a great example of what is the meaning of repentance. Repentance means simply to turn about (a 180 degree turn) : turn about from darkness, turn to the light ; turn about from death, turn to life ; turn about from selfishness, turn to love. Saint Mary of Egypt, as we hear in her Life, lived an extremely broken life in which with delight she was pulling people down with her into despair. Yet her heart was searching. When she was confronted by the Lord’s love in Jerusalem, in the Temple of the Resurrection, she did, in fact, turn about completely. Then she gave herself up 100 per-cent to serving Jesus Christ, in love with Him, so much so that she withdrew into the desert. She was not seen or heard of for who knows how long, until Saint Zossima came along to prepare her for her death.

All these things are done and accomplished by the Lord’s love. The Lord prepares you and me, too, for the moments of repentance in our lives, in the same way as Saint Mary of Egypt. He prepares us for great blessings. He is always there, going ahead before us, ready to meet us with His life-giving love. Our responsibility is to be prepared to accept that life-giving love when the Lord presents Himself to us. Our responsibility is, like Saint Mary of Egypt, to turn about from our self-serving to serving Him in everyone, to turn about from loving ourselves and only ourselves, to loving Jesus Christ. Nothing else matters. I become my true self in the context of loving Him.

We have two more weeks in which to focus ourselves in our prayers. We have yet time to concentrate our efforts in abstaining from too much eating (and eating things that it would be better not to eat), and in serving Him and caring for other people. Let us ask the Lord to give us this Grace in the last days of Great Lent, so that when we come to the end of Great Lent and we are celebrating the joy of Pascha, we will be able to encounter the Resurrection with joy and love. The Lord has prepared us for this in the same way that He prepared the apostles for the Resurrection. We will be able to live in the Resurrection during the days after the Resurrection. Through this abstinence, and through the Resurrection, our lives will be straightened to serve Him better in the coming year with more love, more focus, with deeper service, with deeper joy. In doing this we will glorify Him together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen

It is a special joy for me to have the possibility to come today, the last day of Bright Week, to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ. It is very important for us to remember the words of today’s Gospel. The words of the Prophet and Forerunner, John, apply most particularly to us and to our daily life in Christ. The Forerunner said that “‘He must increase, but I must decrease’”. That means that even in those early days of the revelation of Who is Jesus Christ, His cousin, the Prophet and Forerunner, John, already understood very well Who He is, and what is necessary. People came to him and said : “‘Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have testified – behold, He is baptising, and all are coming to Him’” (John 3:26). In the world, and apart from Christ, that would, in fact, start a competition. People would say (to paraphrase) : “These people belong to me. These are mine”. They would form a party, and start arguing about who belongs to whom, and who is better than whom. This is not the way in Christ. This is not the Orthodox Christian way. Even though we fall into the temptation sometimes, it is not our way.

The way for us is the way of the Forerunner. The Forerunner expressed his great joy that so many people went to Christ to be baptised because he knew that Jesus Christ is the Bridegroom. We cannot have anything except joy that the Bridegroom is amongst us, and that people respond to the Bridegroom. We are the Church, the Bride of Christ. We are responding to the Bridegroom with love and affection, recognising Him and uniting ourselves to Him. The Prophet and Forerunner expressed this joy, and he said : “‘He must increase, but I must decrease’”. The way of the Christian, the way of the Orthodox Christian, is precisely like the way of the Prophet and Forerunner. Everything has to point to Jesus Christ in our lives in the same way as in this icon of the Mother of God, who is the image of our Church. She is holding Jesus Christ in her arms in this icon, and she is pointing to Him. It does not matter what form the icon of the Mother of God takes, whether it is this very expression or not ; nevertheless, the Mother of God is always directing or drawing us to her Son. Everything about her life pointed, and does point to her Son. Even in these days, when sometimes the Mother of God will appear to one person or another, one group of persons or another, she is always directing us to her Son.

This is how our life must be as Orthodox Christians. The way we live our lives ; the things we do ; the things we say ; the way we react in difficult times ; the way we react when we are in trouble, when we are attacked – this always must be pointing to Jesus Christ, and involving Jesus Christ. In Orthodox ancestral countries, we see this simply in the way people talk. People are always saying : “Glory to You, O Lord”, “Glory to God”. They are always saying things like : “Help me”. “Help me, Lord”. “Save me, Lord”. People are always saying these things. They always bring the blessing of Christ upon themselves when there is difficulty. When they want to do anything, when they want to drive a car, when they want to leave the house, they make the sign of the Cross, and bring Christ’s blessing with them. When we go to the grocery store or wherever else we are going in any given day, we are taking Jesus Christ with us.

In certain parts of the Slavic world (mostly in western Ukraine and Carpatho-Rus’), people will not talk to each other until first they have said : “Glory be to Jesus Christ”. The answer is : “Glory be forever”. If Christ is not glorified at the beginning of the conversation, then no conversation is going to happen. We do not find that absolutely everywhere in the Orthodox world. This custom may be a bit extreme, but it is spiritually prudent. In case anyone wonders where that custom came from, I believe that those western Ukrainians and those Carpatho-Rusyns got it from monks a very long time ago. If we are in a monastery, and we want to talk to a monk or a nun, we have to knock on the door of the monastic and say : “Through the prayers of our holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and save us”. The answer inside has to be : “Amen”. Then the conversation can begin.

Even if we do not talk just like that, and behave just like that, our life as Orthodox Christians needs to grow into this. We have just sung “As many as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ”. We carry Christ with us. Our life, like that of the Mother of God, must point to Jesus Christ. When people encounter us, they should be able to feel love, joy, peace, gentleness, kindness, long-suffering, and all those other fruits of the presence of the Holy Spirit that the Apostle Paul speaks about (Galatians 5:22-23). When we have this about us – love, joy, peace, gentleness, kindness, long-suffering – it is evident that Jesus Christ is alive and active in our hearts, and we are being like Him. That is to say, we are being servants like Him, and our love works like His.

Brothers and sisters, let us pray that Grace will come from our Saviour Jesus Christ, to help us to live in the love of Jesus Christ, and to glorify Him single-heartedly, single-mindedly, putting Him above everything, so that like Saint Seraphim, our whole life will proclaim with love : “Christ is risen”.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen

When Saint Mary Magdalene and the other women ran to the apostles and said that they had seen the Risen Christ, did the apostles immediately believe them ? No. The apostles went and saw the empty tomb, and even then they were not sure until finally they were convinced by a series of events. The questions of the Apostle Thomas are in line with the same hesitancy of all the other apostles.

This is important for us Orthodox Christians to remember in our spiritual lives now. In the course of our everyday life there are many people saying plenty of things, trying to draw us away from the truth of Jesus Christ. There are many theories, and much this-and-that these days which is intent on taking us away from Christ.

Also, there are always thoughts, because, while we live our lives, thoughts come and go. There are questioning thoughts, doubting thoughts, suspicious thoughts – all sorts of thoughts. We have to learn how to discern what is the truth.

What is the truth ? As we know also (the Lord Himself warned us that it would be the case), there are many people who come pretending to have secret knowledge about the truth about Jesus Christ. Such people are proclaiming that they have secret knowledge about the end of the world. This is so common. People are afraid of the end of the world. Any time someone claims to know, by some sort of divine revelation, that the end is coming soon, and on a particular day, people become very afraid. However, at the same time they tend to believe this sort of silly talk. No-one knows the time of the Lord’s Coming. Our Saviour Himself said when He was amongst us that only the Father knows the time, the day, and the circumstances of the culmination of all things. That means that only the Father knows the time of the Saviour’s return.

Christians cannot survive unless they read the Bible, unless they know the Bible in their hearts. Also, they cannot properly understand the Scriptures unless they are reading what the Fathers said about the Scriptures. Therefore, when people say one thing or another, make one suggestion or another, propose alternatives, it is important for us to know the Scriptures, and to know what is the truth about Jesus Christ.

What happens, for instance, when the Jehovah’s Witnesses or the Mormons come to your door ? It is important that we know the truth in the Scriptures, so that we will not listen to their distortions of the Scriptures (because they rewrite things). We have to know what Christ, Himself, and the apostles gave us. We have to know our Scriptures. However, to argue about Scripture with people, in my experience, is never fruitful. This is because they have an idée fixe, and they are not going to listen to anyone. The only thing that will affect them is the love of Jesus Christ in our hearts, and our prayers for them. If they are willing to pray with us (and most of them are not), then Jesus Christ may get through to them.

Thus it is with thoughts, too. Thoughts come from all sorts of different places. They are not all only generated by our brain. Thoughts come from our environment and they penetrate us. Thinking is not only the functioning of those cells in the gray matter in the brain ; it is much more than that. Thoughts come also from the Tempter himself. There are many sources of these thoughts.

It is important for us, in knowing Jesus Christ, knowing Him who is the Truth, Himself, and knowing the Scriptures, and knowing the Orthodox way, to be able to discern whether a thought is a truth or a lie. It is not easy, and it is not simple. However, because the Grace of the Holy Spirit is in our hearts, the Lord can teach us to see, hear, and understand clearly what is the nature of one thought or another, and whether we should accept it or reject it. By rejecting it, it is important for us not so much to try to fight with the thought as to turn our backs on it, and to turn ourselves to Jesus Christ and to say : “Save me from this thought”.

All this is connected to the Apostle Thomas in one way or another. The Apostle Thomas, having seen and having immediately believed, then, like the other apostles, went abroad, and took the love of Jesus Christ with him. In more cases than not, when the apostles were going amongst the people, it was not by arguing that they brought people to Jesus Christ. It was by speaking the truth about Him, who is the Truth. It was about living the love of Jesus Christ in their midst.

The Apostle Thomas went first to Egypt. I remember reading that, just a few years ago, they had discovered a little portion of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew in upper Egypt, and that it was to the 50s or 60s that this portion of the Gospel was dated. It was dated to those years because of other documents and artifacts that were found around it. This is less than thirty years after the Crucifixion. The Gospel in written form was already copied by hand, transmitted to Upper Egypt, and then somehow lost or buried. Probably something happened, and the Gospel was buried with other documents of the same period (perhaps to protect them).

Nevertheless, we have a little particle of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew from such an early date. The Apostle Thomas may have been one of the means by which the written Gospel already had reached Egypt in those early days. After going through Egypt from north to south, the Apostle Thomas went across the Indian Ocean to India where he began to live and speak about Jesus Christ. He converted a prince in northern India to begin with. He went first to northern India, and then to southern India. In the state of Kerala (“the pepper state” on the west coast), he converted many people from the Brahmin class, the top-ranking priestly class of the Hindu religion. He converted very many of them, and then he went around to the other side of India, to Madras. It was there that he was finally killed by pagans after he had brought many more people to Christ.

There are Indian families today, Orthodox Christian Indian families in the area of Kerala and also in the area of Madras, who know all their Christian ancestors back to the Apostle Thomas. The rest of us are not usually so sure who our ancestors are past 100 years or so.

However, the people who received the Gospel of Jesus Christ in India 2,000 years ago had the witness of the Apostle Thomas, whose doubt has produced so much fruit. These people are still Christians today. The personal encounter of Jesus Christ has been handed on. This is the true Tradition of the Orthodox Church – the handing on, and the personal encounter with the one Lord, Jesus Christ.

We are inheritors of the work of all the apostles, the Apostle Thomas amongst them. We have inherited their personal encounter as well. It is the way of the Orthodox Christian to come to a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. We have met Him. We know that He loves us, and we know that we love Him. We have to be grateful to those apostles for their readiness to share this love with those around them, so that we, today, can experience this love, this hope, this joy, this peace. May we be able to share with others in our own lives this same love, joy and peace.

Our Saviour, who inspired the apostles, who was so infinitely patient with them (and, as we saw today, with the Apostle Thomas), did not wag His finger at the apostle, but He just said, as it were : “Come, touch and believe”. Let us ask the same patient Saviour, in His infinite love and patience, to give us the strength to live in His love, to give witness to His love to those around us, to live in His truth, and thus to glorify the Risen Christ, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen

It is sad for me as I travel from parish to parish in the Paschal season, because wherever I go, there are many new people coming from Russia, and I see how quickly they have become Canadianised in a negative way. When I say : “Christ is risen” to them they say : “Indeed He is risen” very quietly. That is the Canadian way. Canadian habits are all right in some ways, except when it comes to saying “Christ is risen”. When we say : “Christ is risen”, we are proclaiming what is the centre of our life. We really must say : “Indeed He is risen” with audible strength. The usual insipid Canadian response will not do. That limp response is the equivalent to saying : “Yeah, sure, of course He is risen”. If we are Orthodox Christians, what does this mean ? The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the centre of our life. That is why we are here today. That is why Russia survived seventy years of persecution, death, destruction. That is why the Orthodox Church is alive today in Russia. The Church is being resurrected.

Therefore, it is very good that I have a chance this year to come in the Paschal season because I see this happening here, and I have a chance to exhort you to wake up and to remember who you are. You are, we are Orthodox Christians who live by the Resurrection. We live in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Let us all be strong in our Orthodox Faith, and show it by how we respond on these days.

Today, the Acts of the Apostles is telling us about the diaconate : what is the meaning, the purpose of the diaconate, and how it came to us. The apostles, as we heard, were very busy with preaching the Gospel. However, they were also so busy feeding widows, distributing food to the hungry, and meeting so many other urgent needs, that they had no time to do their first responsibility, which was to preach to the world about Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit inspired the apostles and told them to set apart deacons. The deacons were to do the work of caring for those who were in need in any way. That is precisely what deacons are doing, and ought to be doing until this very day. It seems that our Church has become somewhat forgetful in North America, and does not have nearly enough deacons.

However, God by His mercy is raising up men to become deacons, and they are serving as they follow in the footsteps of Stephen, Timon, Parmenas, and all the others that we heard of today. Their responsibility is to lead people in worship (as they do, and as they have always done). However, at the same time they also care for the people who are in need. As the eyes and ears of the priest, they keep watch in the parish in order to see who is sick, who is in need, who has problems one way or another. They make sure that in some way the needs of these persons are seen to. That is what deacons ought to be doing. It is their work to be helping the priest like this, so that the priest can bring the sacraments to the shut-ins and the sick. Through them, the parish council can make sure that if someone is in a particularly tight spot, perhaps the parish, as brothers and sisters in Christ, can help that person in whatever way that might be.

Service is the way of Christ. Above all, we love Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ loves us. We are here precisely because of that. However, it does no good (and we can see it in the Gospels and the Epistles all the time) for us merely to say : “I am a Christian ; yes, sure, I love Jesus Christ”. It has to be demonstrated in concrete ways. Earlier this week, we had the reading from the Acts about Ananias and Sapphira (see Acts 5:1-11). They were two early Christians. In those days, everything was held in common. By mutual agreement, Ananias and Sapphira fell into a temptation. They were selling their property. Ananias and Sapphira, as the Acts tell us, decided that they would only give part of what they got for this property for the life of the Church, and they hid the rest from the apostles. Therefore, when Ananias came and laid at the apostles’ feet the proceeds from this property, and said, as it were : “This is all there is”, the Lord taught the Apostle Peter that this was not true. The apostle said (to paraphrase) : “You are not telling the whole truth here. Did you not sell it for so much ?” Well, that was true, and because that was the case, Ananias fell down dead. Sapphira came in later, and then the Apostle Peter asked her : “‘Tell me whether you sold the land for so much ?’” She agreed in the lie her husband had told, and said : “‘Yes, for so much’”. The apostle then said to her : “‘The feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out’” (Acts 5:8-9). And immediately she died also.

The problem here is not that Ananias and Sapphira did not give everything, because that could have been allowed. It could have been agreed that they would keep part of the proceeds for whatever they had to do with these proceeds. The problem is that they told a lie. They told a lie, and this lie is what brings death. That is what happened with Adam and Eve at the beginning. They disobeyed the Lord, and, beguiled by the serpent, they took the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden. After that, they hid from God. Then of course, Adam blamed Eve – it was really bad. They began to lie, because to hide from God means that we accept fear and we run away. We cannot be like that. The way of Christ is not like that.

The way of Christ is living the truth. Above where I am standing we see written on the wall (it is Jesus Christ, Himself, speaking) : “‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’” (John 14:6). Jesus Christ Himself is the Truth. We are living in that Truth. There is no other truth. That is another crazy Canadian idea, that there can be many different sorts of truths : there is this truth for one, and that truth for another. That is just plain stupid. There is only one truth. There is only one. Just by definition, truth is truth, and it is only one. If there are alternatives, then there is no truth ; there are only ideas and opinions. There is only one truth, and the one Truth is Jesus Christ, whom God the Father sent to us. When Saint Arseny had those words put on that wall, he knew what he was doing for you and for me. Ever since I became acquainted with those words many, many years ago, I have been impressed with the importance of them. No matter what else he did, Saint Arseny left us a great legacy just in having those words written on the wall. We are living in Jesus Christ, who is the Truth.

This gives me again another opportunity to make a correction, in case anyone fell into this trap. Today we heard how Saints Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome (the Myrrh-bearing Women) came to the tomb of Jesus Christ in order to anoint His Body with spices. However, instead, they found that He had risen. These women are the first witnesses of His Resurrection. Because there is so much lying circulating about Saint Mary Magdalene these days, I must say that Saint Mary Magdalene, equal to the apostles (who indeed was the woman who had seven demons cast out of her), was not a prostitute, as the recent phantasy book, The Da Vinci Code, tries to pretend. The Scriptures never said that. The apostles never said that. The Church’s tradition never said that. That is an invention of some Europeans in the Middle Ages. That is not an Orthodox understanding, and it is not the truth. Saint Mary Magdalene was not the woman in the Scriptures who was a prostitute, and who was healed. Saint Mary Magdalene was delivered of demons, and that is quite a different thing.

The other lie that is being circulated, associated with The Da Vinci Code (this is terrible ; this is really bad), is that Jesus Christ did not die on the Cross. The lie suggests that He only pretended to die, but by a clever trick, He appeared to rise from the dead ; He got married to Mary Magdalene, lived in the south of France, and had children. That is such an evil story. It is truly evil. It is especially evil in North America because people are so lost, and they have abandoned the Christian Faith. Thus, they easily believe this lie. They are swept away by this lie.

You and I, Orthodox Christians, live in Him who is the Truth, and we know the truth. We know the truth about the Truth. It is our responsibility when people say that they believe what this crazy phantasy book says, to correct them, and say that it is only a phantasy, and not history. The true history, which is demonstrated in the writings of the Church and in some documents, is that Saint Mary Magdalene, after her missionary journeys, settled in Ephesus near the Apostle John the Theologian. There she died and was buried. Her final resting place was in Constantinople, not France. Let us remember that her relics ended up in Constantinople, and one portion of her relics is in the Monastery of Simonos Petra on Mount Athos.

More important than these details about Saint Mary Magdalene, however, is the fact that Jesus Christ truly did die, and rise from the tomb. He rose bodily from the tomb, and we know it because there are so many eyewitnesses to this fact as recorded in the Scriptures. Until this day, there are very many other witnesses of Jesus Christ, who makes Himself known to millions and millions and millions of Christians. Then, finally, we know it because millions and millions and millions of Orthodox Christians in the former Soviet Union were prepared to die for love of Him, for Him who is the Truth, because of their experience of the Risen Jesus Christ.

We, who are Orthodox Christians, must remain in harmony with all these believers who knew, and do know the truth. We know the truth, too, and when we hear these lies being spread, we have to correct them. It is not our responsibility if people do not believe us. That is their problem. We have to speak and correct them.

Now, back to the Myrrh-bearing Women, who were the first to see the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. At the end of the Gospel, it is said that they said nothing to anyone because they were afraid. Would we not be, under those circumstances ? Let us put ourselves in the shoes of those Myrrh-bearing Women going to anoint His Body and finding that He is not there. The stone has been rolled away. At first we might think that someone had stolen Him, and then we find out from the angel that He is risen from the dead. An angel speaks to them and says : “‘Tell His disciples – and Peter – that He is going before you into Galilee; there you will see Him’”. Would any of us not be shaken up considerably ? I have no idea how I would react under circumstances like that.

Finally, the Myrrh-bearing Women did talk. They did tell the apostles. The Apostle Thomas was not there when the other apostles encountered the Risen Christ. The Apostle Thomas is called “Doubting Thomas”, but he is not alone. We recall that the other apostles did not believe until they saw. The other apostles also had to see. Doubt was good in this case, because when Jesus Christ appeared to the apostles and showed Himself risen from the dead, it confirmed their faith. They were unswervable after that.

The Myrrh-bearing Women, themselves, give to the rest of us an example of what is the way of a Christian. Christ, at the Last Supper, washed His apostles’ feet. And He said that you and I are supposed to live our lives in the same way. We are supposed to be caring for each other, not demanding to be cared for. Our Lord said : “‘I am among you as the One who serves’” (Luke 22:27). All we Orthodox Christians are in this world as servants. Those women came to the Saviour as servants, loving Him, wanting to give Him the last rites, the last anointing as it were, because there was no time when they buried Him to finish the ritual of anointing and properly bury Him. They came because of love and service.

In the whole of the history of the Orthodox Church, who has served as the example of service ? We have deacons, men that are expected to be the living examples of servants for the rest of the Church from the time of Christ. However, it is the women of the Church, following in the footsteps of all those women in the Scriptures, who are truly living out this service.

Women in this parish have held this place together year after year. It is women in all sorts of parishes who, because of love for Jesus Christ, make sure that the church has what it needs. The church is looked after. It is women’s groups who have cared for children and made sure that they had money for education. In many parishes, the women would make sure that they knew the dates of the birthdays and name-days of the children, so that they would send them a card from the church to remind them that they are prayed for and remembered. It was women very often in our past who made sure that people who were in the hospital had a flower or a card, and had someone amongst the women who, in addition to the priest, would go and visit. Yes, it is the job of the priest and the deacon to go and visit. However, often a person lying in a hospital bed will say in his heart : “It is nice that the clergy come to see me, but it is their job. When my brothers or sisters from the parish come to see me, it gives me extra encouragement, extra joy” (or words to that effect). This is the way. It is women who have in the past embodied this.

Brothers and sisters, our life is a life of joy, a life of love, a life of service, a life of living in the Truth. Let us ask the Saviour to renew our hearts in His love, so that having confidence in Him, we will not be afraid to step out, and do and say things that He asks us to do and to say, because He said : “‘I am with you always, even to the end of the age’” (Matthew 28:20). That is not only until the end of the world, as it says in so many Western translations. It is until the end of everything. When we are alive in Him, there can be no end. His Resurrection means for you and for me that when we are alive in His love, there is no end. God is love, and there is no end of His love. Let us, therefore, brothers and sisters, step forward in faith and in love, and let us glorify our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, the Lord heals the paralytic by the Sheep Pool. When He heals the paralytic by the Sheep Pool, He tells the man who is healed : “‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’”. It should be emphasised that this man had been paralysed for 38 years, not just a couple of days. For most of his life, he had been lying beside the Sheep Pool waiting for someone to put him into the water when the waters would be stirred up by an angel, so that he could be healed. However, no-one ever did – and then the Saviour came.

The people knew very well who this man was. Nevertheless, they saw him on the Sabbath day, walking, carrying his bed. That is against the Law according to Jewish law because carrying a bed is considered to be work. They did not pay any attention to the fact that this paralysed man was walking normally. They did not, as they ought to have done, give glory to God straight away. Immediately they noticed what was obvious to them – that he was breaking the Law. Of course, when they found out everything, they were angry with the Saviour Himself, too, because He healed on the Sabbath. Healing on the Sabbath was considered by them to be work.

Nowadays, we are in a very crippled condition ourselves. Even though the Sabbath was not done away with after Christ came to us, we do not keep it any more. We do not even keep the Lord’s Day properly any more. Except perhaps for going to church, the Lord’s Day is no different from any other day. Even if people might go to church, very often for them the rest of the day is filled with all sorts of work and all sorts of other busy activities. All this activity fills up and occupies what the Lord gave us as a day of rest for our own good. The Lord, however, always emphasises that : “‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath’” (Mark 2:27). That is another thing that was forgotten by the critics of the Saviour. What better day, the Saviour shows us in another place in the Gospel (see Matthew 12:11-13), what better day on which to do good : to heal, to restore people who are created in the image of God ? “This is the day that the Lord has made : let us exult and be glad in it” (Psalm 117:24). What better day, indeed !

Today we have all this brought into sharp focus for us in the healing of the paralytic at the Sheep Pool. We have also the healing by the Apostle Peter of another paralysed man. However, this was not accomplished by the Apostle Peter himself because he always said : “In the Name of Jesus Christ, arise”. He, and all the apostles always did that. They never took credit for themselves for anything that they did. Rather, they always gave glory to God. They always recognised that it was Jesus Christ Himself who was doing whatever was being done through the apostles.

The apostles’ greatness is found in their transparency. It was because the Apostle Peter had become transparent in Christ that when Dorcas (also called Tabitha) had died, and he was called to come, he came and he prayed, and he discerned what was the will of God for Tabitha. It was not that he was praying, girding himself up so as to energise himself by some mysterious technique in order to work a wonder. Not at all. This apostle, or any apostle, never did anything so base or blasphemous as to try to apply some non-existent technique so that by his own will he could, as they used to say in the American south : “Haul off and make a miracle”. It is not like sorcery in any way whatsoever. What he was doing was discerning what was the will of God for Tabitha. When he had listened long enough to understand in his heart that the Lord was going to raise her, the Apostle Peter spoke for the Lord. He told her to get up, and she did. However, it was because the apostle was transparent in Christ’s love that he was able to understand what the Lord directed him to do. Then he did it.

Therefore, why should we not be quiet on the Lord’s Day, and spend time with our families ? We will have just been in the Temple of the Lord, and we will have received the Body and Blood of Christ. In the past, in every monastery I have been in, normally after the Divine Liturgy, those who have been in the Liturgy (and especially those who have received Holy Communion) take a “PLN” (which is a post-liturgy-nap). We take a rest after we have done the work of praising the Lord, and after we have received the Grace of God. When we take this rest, we allow ourselves to rest in Christ, focussed on Christ, and we allow His Grace to renew us inside. Then, getting up, we spend time as quietly as we can. This is the ideal, but the devil comes and tempts us, and stirs us up. If we can, we should spend quiet time afterwards, just being with the Lord, and being with each other in the joy of the Lord. That is the purpose of this day.

In my grandmother’s time, however, on the Lord’s Day people went to church, and then they did nothing. Everything had to be cooked the day before because they would not do anything on Sunday. They drew the window-blinds ; they sat in relative darkness in the house, and if they read anything, they read the Bible, and that was all. It was like this because they chose to obey the Mosaic Law of the Sabbath. It was very strict. This strictness included obedience by force. It was because the obedience was oppressive that my grandmother and grandfather did not go to church for a long time in their lives. It was too strict. On my grandmother’s side it was extremely strict Presbyterian, and on my grandfather’s side it was very strict Baptist, although there was a similar mentality. Their families seemed to be oppressed by the rules, the rules and the rules. It was strict Calvinism. It can be said that they read too much Old Testament and neglected the New Testament. To be sure, they were God-loving people, but rules, rules, rules ! It kept their children away from the church for a while. In Scotland or in southern Ontario in those days it might have worked, but in western Canada it did not work any more. People would not accept those rules.

What they would likely have accepted was the truth of love. They would probably have willingly done those things and they would have been quiet on the Lord’s Day, if it had been understood by them that the parents did the very same things with joy. However, the parents did not transmit that joy very well to the children. If the children had understood that being at peace and being quiet with the Lord, simply being with each other in the Lord was a joyful thing and a good thing, and that one could read something other than only the Bible, that one could read something uplifting, then I am quite sure it would have been all right. Nonetheless, those children never stopped being believers, even though they were rebellious for a time.

Nevertheless, the whole point of everything is not so much how precisely we will observe the Lord’s Day, but rather what sort of person we are. We, as Christians, are loved by God. At least some of us may have been raised in an environment in which God is loved in return. Thus, it is in an atmosphere of loving God that we would have been nurtured. It is a life-giving atmosphere. It is a life-creating atmosphere. This is what we want to provide for each other, even if we are not strictly observing rules about no work. At least on the Lord’s Day in particular, we try to slow down, and we try to keep the Lord in the fore-front of our heart and our memory during that day especially. By doing that, we have hope that when we go to work the next day, the memory of the Lord is going to be with us.

Every day of our lives as Orthodox Christians, we are tested. “Do I love Jesus Christ more than anything ? I know He loves me, but do I love Him ? Is He in the fore-front of my everyday life ? Do I let His love carry me through all the difficulties and the trials of everyday life ?” When people are testing me by snarky remarks or other sorts of teasing remarks, or even by lying, or whatever else people do, when I am confronted with all these difficulties with other human beings, am I listening to my heart to see what the Saviour is guiding me to do and to say in any of these particular situations ? On the other hand, do I forget, and give vent to my negative emotions ? Do I analyse and calculate with my mind, and forget the Saviour ? When I run away with my emotions, and when I am calculating in my mind what is the best thing to do and to say, every time, I am out of kilter. This wild, emotional and tumultuous way is always away from the right way. There might be some good in it, but that is because the Lord makes good out of bad. If I am going to calculate and try to assess something mentally, it has to be with Jesus Christ. If I am going to have my emotions involved in something, those emotions still have to be in, and subject to, Jesus Christ. I have to involve Jesus Christ in everything. If I do, I will be helped. If I do, I will be mostly peaceful. If I do, I will be well-directed. If I do, I will, even without thinking, be able to speak for the Lord, and the Lord will say, through me, what the other person needs to hear. I do not have to think up what someone needs to hear ; the Lord will give it.

However, our hearts have to be open. We can notice, by the way, that when the apostles are doing everything that they are doing, and going everywhere that they are going, and enduring everything that they are enduring, they are doing all of this in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. It was Jesus Christ who, when He washed their feet, said that they should be like Him, and do as He does. Therefore, wherever those apostles went, whatever they did (even if they were speaking about Jesus Christ), they always behaved as servants. They were always putting themselves at the disposal of people they were with, and they were helping them in one way or another. The Apostle Peter was definitely helping the paralysed man, and he was helping Tabitha. He was helping not only Tabitha, but all the people around her who depended on her, because she was such a strong believer.

Today, God willing, we are going to be ordaining n to the Holy Diaconate. By how he serves, by how he exercises the particular gifts that God has been giving to him amongst the people, he will be trying to show how Jesus Christ is serving us. He will be trying to show how a Christian is supposed to live. He will also be trying to show how we must serve each other, because serving is the essence of being a Christian. The word “deacon” means servant (actually it means “slave”). We understand in our democratic environment that the word “servant” is nicer. But still, for people who have their noses in the air, being a servant is not at all a pleasant thing. No matter who we are, we Christians must be like Christ : a servant. Deacon n will be exercising this in front of us, and amongst us. It is important for us to pray for him so that we can support him in his serving, so that he will be the best example possible for us of the meaning of Christian service.

Let us, brothers and sisters, do our best to keep our Saviour in the fore-front of our hearts. Let us ask Him to remind us daily (because we do need those reminders) that He is with us, that He loves us, that He is supporting us, that He is educating our hearts and minds, as He promised, and that He will not abandon us. He is always with us, but we need those reminders. Let us ask Him to keep reminding us, so that we will be able to serve Him faithfully and well, with the whole heart and with love, and glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen

As I go across the country from place to place, I tend to draw attention to the Paschal greeting : “Christ is risen. Indeed He is risen”. The farther we go into the Paschal season, the more uncertain it seems to sound. I generally say that we are too polite as Canadians to respond in a proper way, with some boldness, sense of enthusiasm, and assurance : “Indeed He is risen”. Sometimes when I say : “Christ is risen”, the response is very faint. Ultimately, I think that it is not merely Canadian politeness, shyness, and backwardness about such things that is the problem.

The main problem for us is remembering in our hearts what is the implication of the Resurrection for us. Why is it so important for us ? We are so burdened with cares and distractions every day. There is not any one of us who does not suffer from trials and tribulations in the course of our life. There is not one of us who does not have difficulty with other persons from time to time. There are people that some seem to be able to get along with, but others cannot. There is something about one person or another that does something in the heart – we do not know what it is. If we look into our heart long enough, and ask the Lord long enough, He will reveal what it is, and He will help us, correct, and heal us. However, as long as this sort of irritation or whatever other sort of negative feelings are going on between me and another person, and I do not do anything about it, but just let it be, it is simply going to keep festering, and that’s all there is to it.

We forget to ask the Lord : “What is the matter with me that I am reacting this way ?” “What is there in my heart that has not healed, that I am reacting to such-and-such a person in this way ?” We forget to ask Him. We just live with it. On top of all that, we very often do not even pray for the person that is so inexplicably an irritation for us. Therefore, there are all these factors involved, and many others, in the difficulties of our daily lives. So-and-so does not like me, and I do not know why. This is very common. So-and-so does not like me, and I feel that I am somehow worthless because so-and-so does not like me. What matters is not whether someone or other likes me or not ; it is whether I love that person in my heart that matters. If someone does not like me, that is the responsibility of the person who does not like me. Except for praying for that person, I cannot do anything about it if someone does not like me. I can guard my heart in the love of Jesus Christ, making sure that my heart does in fact respond warmly to the person who does not like me for whatever reason that may be.

We have to be ready to take responsibility, ourselves, for all these situations, and not be immaturely dependant on the approval of, or the liking by someone else. We have to grow up in Christ, and understand that His love for us is unconditional. We have to learn how to love other people with the same unconditional love, and allow the Saviour Himself to look after the deficiencies of inter-human relationships. Human beings are specialists at being deficient in inter-human relationships.

The Lord, the Healer of everyone, straightens everything out, as He does with the Samaritan Woman. In His short conversation with her, not only does He point out that she is living a misfocussed and deceiving life, but that she is off track in how she thinks she is so right in her worship. I have high regard for this woman, first, because she knows her Scriptures – the way she responds tells us that she knows her Scriptures ; second, because her heart is open enough to see immediately what sort of Person is sitting before her and talking with her. She immediately responds and says : “‘Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet’”. He immediately begins to ask her burning questions, and He straightens her out. Immediately, her heart responds with gladness, and she immediately shares her joy and amazement with everyone around her. She says : “‘Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did’”. She recognises Who He is : the One giving her living water that wells up unto life everlasting.

She shares immediately. Such is her sharing, and such is the power of the sojourn for two days of the Saviour and His disciples in Samaria, that a significant response comes from those inhabitants who say to her (as it were) : “Now we truly know. We have encountered Christ personally. Now we truly know Who He is. We do not depend only upon your witness. We know for ourselves”.

There is so much to say about all the words of this Gospel reading. Suffice it to say that Saint Photini allowed the Lord to turn her life about so much, that not only did she become a saint both by her manner of life and by her manner of death, but many of her family became saints too, and martyrs, and so forth. They were strong witnesses for the love of Jesus Christ. Having encountered Him, they embraced Him, and lived in Him.

We, ourselves, after 2,000 years, are still participating in the same sort of experience as Saint Photini and the people of Sychar in Samaria. If we grow up in a Christian family as children, we come to know Who is Jesus Christ from our parents because they speak of Him and live in a certain way. However, there comes a time in our life when our heart has its door opened, and the light goes on, as it were, in our personal encounter with Jesus Christ. We, ourselves, like those Samaritans, come to the point where we say to our parents and our friends, those people who bring us to Christ : “Now I know. It is not simply intellectual any more ; it is not simply a mental process that I understand in the mind that it is right what you say about Jesus Christ. In my heart I know. I have finally encountered Him personally in my heart. I know Him. I love Him myself, and my heart confirms everything you have ever said about Jesus Christ. My heart confirms how you yourself live in the love of Jesus Christ”. This is how we Christians grow up.

I consider Saint Seraphim of Sarov to be one of the most mature Christians of all time, precisely because of how far this response went in his life. He submitted himself to the love of Jesus Christ in everything, and allowed Jesus Christ to remake him, and make him whole. The Saviour is the Saviour. He is the salvation of all because He makes us healthy. If we learned Latin in school (as most people do not get to do any more, which is too bad because we have a deficient understanding of our English language because of that), we would understand that “salvation” comes from the word that means “health”. It does not just mean being rescued. It means “health”. Therefore, when we are in Christ, and we are speaking about salvation, we are speaking about being healthy, whole, one, undistorted, unbroken in His love, alive in His love.

Even though Saint Seraphim was battered and beaten up by events in life, and all bent over, nevertheless he was whole. He was healthy. He said at the end of his life, every day of the year, and to everyone who encountered him : “Christ is risen, my joy”. He could say : “Christ is risen, my joy” to everyone around him because his assurance of the reality was so strong ; his understanding of how important it is to remember the Resurrection every day of our life, was so intense. He understood how easy it is for every human being to get burdened down by everything, and to let the awareness of the importance that Christ is risen fall into the background of our perception of ourselves and of everyday life. By God’s Grace, he was able to say : “Christ is risen, my joy” everyday to everyone he encountered. He said : “my joy”, because by that time in his life, no matter how broken any person might have been that met him, that person was his joy in Jesus Christ. He could see, and with his whole heart understand that everyone that he met was a creature of Christ, and a reflection of Christ, even though the reflection might be dim.

That is why Saint Seraphim is so important for us. That is why it is necessary that we remember his example, and keep the Resurrection of Christ in the fore-front of our minds by God’s Grace and mercy. God grant that our hearts be so full of the Resurrection life and love of Jesus Christ, that we will ourselves be inclined to glorify Jesus Christ, saying : “Christ is risen” to people we meet at any time of the year. (If we say it too often, of course, people are likely going to say that we are putting on airs.) Still, we all need to be reminded through the course of the year that Christ is risen – that He is truly risen. If we become so lax in the way we respond after only a few weeks of celebrating the Resurrection, how much more important is it for us, later in the year, sometimes to hear from a brother or a sister that reassuring and strengthening greeting : “Christ is risen”.

Brothers and sisters, it is a serious matter to live the Christian life because nearly everything around us is aimed at drawing us away. Let us ask the Saviour to keep holding our hand, to keep holding onto our hearts, so that we will not be distracted and fall away, but be faithful, like Saint Photini (Svetlana) and all her relatives who are on our Church calendar. Along with many other holy families, of whom many now are on our calendar as holy examples, let us ask the Lord to keep the fire of our love for Him burning all the time. Then when someone will say to us : “Christ is risen”, our hearts will not hesitate, but instead instinctively and immediately, and with fire, will answer : “Indeed, truly He is risen”. Let us ask the Lord to give us the strength to be faithful to Him every minute of every hour of every day, and glorify Him in our whole life always, and everywhere, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

It seems to me that very many people in the world have not caught the importance and the meaning of the last word that we just heard from the mouth of our Saviour : “‘Many that are first will be last, and the last will first’”. Certainly, in the world in which we are living, the first thing that matters is striving to be first, striving to be recognised, striving to be thanked, striving to be comfortable in this world all the time. As a poet said : “I am the captain of my own ship…”.

As long as we have this attitude while we are living our lives, there is nothing clearer under these circumstances than that Christ is in the backseat, not in the front. In the context of that mentality, He is on the backburner or even off the stove, and certainly not on the front burner. The way of the Christian is the way of suffering and service, following precisely in the footsteps of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, and imitating Him in every way. This means living a life of love, which puts the service of God and doing His will first, above everything else, as we allow Him to direct our lives and to look after our needs. When we are doing everything ourselves and showing how competent we think we are at acquiring everything we need, we are saying, in effect : “I am afraid of the Lord. I do not trust Him to look after me. I do not trust Him to provide”.

It is important for us, Orthodox Christians in North America, to do our best to live in accordance with what is the foundation of the Orthodox way, however that may work out in our lives. Not one of us is the same, and we are not all called to be monks ; but neither are all monks, by any means, the same. Monks or not, all Christians are to have loving Christ and serving Christ as our first priority. Even monks and nuns often do not succeed so well at this. However, still it is important for us, when we wake up in the morning, to try our best to put the Lord, His service, and doing His will first. Of course, we must allow Him to show us how He wants us to live that out. He is not asking every one of us to live in some basement suite or some sort of shack somewhere. He does expect us to live with dignity in this world as well as we can. Nevertheless, because He loves us and gives us everything that we have, He expects us, because of love, in the same way to acknowledge that He gave us everything, and that we owe Him everything. We have to live our lives in gratitude accordingly.

Today, we are celebrating the memory of all the saints, both known, and unknown. It is interesting that there are actually some people who think we have too many saints because our Church calendar is so full, and there are so many names on that calendar. They seem to think that we should be paring it down, and simplifying it all. The fact is that God calls every last one of us, everyone, and not merely some chosen few. The ones who are on the calendar are the ones that are stronger examples, somehow. It could be said that those are the ones that the Lord has set apart as examples for us. We cannot even say that the fact that they are on the calendar is our doing. It is the Lord’s doing that they come to be listed on the calendar.

Not even all the saints are on the calendar of the Orthodox Church throughout the world. There is a list of saints that is in use generally throughout the whole Orthodox world, but there are plenty of other saints that are more locally known. Then there are some saints that are known only in their diocese, and others that are known only in their parish. There are some saints that are known only by a few people. There are plenty of saints altogether unknown to us.

We do not and cannot have too many saints. We have lots, but not enough. There might be enough saints if every one of us were holy, and if the whole world were holy. Then it would be enough, I suppose, but then I am not God to say that. That would be my guess.

It is important for us to remember that being a saint is not being a “professional Christian”. It is the average way, the normal way a Christian should be. We, who are not like that, are far below average. There are many ways of being holy. Some people become recognised as being holy because they die for the sake of Christ. Some people are known to be holy by other people because their faith has been put to the test. They have been tortured in one way or another, and they do not give up. In fact, I think a few of them may have weakened at some moment, but they came back, confessing fully and repenting fully, and they are still named on our world-wide calendar. However, the normal way for us all to be holy is to be trying to live the life of simple, straightforward, honest Christian love and service. Therefore, let us try to remember this when we are living our lives.

Now for the travelogue. For the past two and a half weeks, I have been in Ukraine, leading a pilgrimage of 22. It turned out that many people did not know about this pilgrimage, because for some strange reason it was not advertised in our Messenger. That is because of temptations that befall us before and after any pilgrimage, and even during it. This sort of thing always happens. One cannot go on a pilgrimage without being tested at first, tested during, and tested afterwards. This testing is not from God, but from below. During this pilgrimage, certain parts of our anatomy were very much put to the test, because we spent up to thirteen hours in a day, sitting in an old bus that was not air-conditioned (except for opening the windows). This old bus was nick-named by Metropolitan Onouphry of Chernivtsi the “Pakistan Express”. Mercifully, this time, unlike all the other times, there was cool weather for most of our stay (in the teens, and the twenties). There was frequent rain, and we did not have to live constantly in our personal, private sauna there (not that a sauna is anything to complain about – but 24 hours a day is a bit heavy).

The pilgrimage began in Kyiv. While I was participating in necessary meetings, the pilgrims went to venerate the saints in the Far Caves. After that, we went to the Vvedensky Monastery in Kyiv, which is the Monastery of the Meeting of the Lord. This monastery was founded after the Crimean War, about 150 years ago or so, by Saint Dimitra. She was the widow of a warrior who was killed in the Crimean War, and she was a Bulgarian. After the death of her husband, Dimitra moved to Kyiv, became a nun, and then received the blessing to establish her own community. Because she had some friends in the imperial court in St Petersburg, she got extra funding to help this along. During communist times, the monastery served as a jail for the army, so naughty soldiers spent time in this monastery building. One of the priests, who was serving in one of our dioceses, had been given a discipline in this jail when he was a young soldier and not 100 per-cent obedient. However, in that particular army, 100 per-cent obedience does not necessarily mean that one would therefore escape from that sort of discipline. Therefore, when anyone might see an icon here in this Temple of a nun holding a church in her hand, it will be understood that that is Saint Dimitra of the Vvedensky Monastery in Kyiv. Her relics are in the basement of that Temple. That Temple is Braille-friendly because the iconostasis and the icons are carved in marble, bas-relief.

I will give you a very short account of the pilgrimage. After Kyiv, we drove to Sumy, which is about 300 kilometers to the east of Kyiv, very close to the Russian border in the diocese of Sumy and Akhtirke. We served Vigil for Ascension in Sumy, and the Divine Liturgy in a village an hour and a half bus ride outside of Sumy to the west called Romne. In the evening of Ascension, we went back to Sumy, and then we drove south for an hour to Akhtirke, the second cathedral city of this diocese. There, in the evening we served a Moleben to the Mother of God. In all the places that we were, there are wonder-working icons of the Mother of God. There are many of these wonder-working icons of the Mother of God in Ukraine. Why ? I believe that it is because the people need the encouragement and strength of these signs of the Lord’s love. We need encouragement and reminders in the course of our suffering here. Through the Grace of the Holy Spirit come wonders from these icons : sometimes oil is streaming from them.

From Sumy, we went to Romne. In order to do that, we had to go back through Kyiv, because Kyiv is the only place on the Dnieper River where there are bridges. Having few bridges is an old, long-standing defense tactic, and it helped to minimise the damage of the Nazis on that territory in World War II. The Ukrainians have not changed it to this day. There are still no bridges on the Dnieper River, except in Kyiv. There are not many bridges there, so getting through Kyiv takes quite a bit of time. Kyiv now has 3,500,000 people. For Sunday Divine Liturgy, we went from Romne to Pochaiv. I, and the subdeacon from Edmonton who was accompanying me, had gone there on Saturday to serve Vigil with the monks. In 1994, when I first went to Pochaiv, there were sixty monks. Now there are over 300. That is an example of how life seems to be improving, spiritually speaking, in Ukraine. On the other hand, we might just as well forget it in terms of material improvement. Except for the rich people, it is still a hard life economically. Nevertheless, spiritually, life is really mushrooming there ; Orthodox Christian life is really mushrooming.

Vigil was the typical Vigil for Saturday night for them (four and a half hours in length). Does that sound intimidating ? Well, it is not all that bad. It is not all that bad even for the bishop who might have to anoint many of the 5,000 in the congregation. This anointing alone can take half an hour in itself. It could take the bishop right until the end of Matins (which they serve with no shortcuts). He cannot lose any time on each anointing – there is no conversation. I was not alone doing the anointing. They counted, and said I had anointed about 800 people by the time they dragged me out. However, what I did not notice was that there were six priests also anointing on the side, and each of them had anointed 700 or 800 people too. Those monks are very clever and they know how to save the enthusiastic bishop from himself. (He wanted to anoint everyone.)

Then we went to Chernivtsi, which is about 250 kilometers to the south. We got there rather late because no bishop can get away from Pochaiv very quickly. There are plenty of people to talk to, including the parents of Matushka Irina Melnyk. The local pray-ers pray to God there, and they do so in order to protect the monastery from the dangers of the take-over attempts that sometimes happen on the part of the Autocephalists and the Uniates there.
In Chernivtsi, Metropolitan Onouphry always welcomes us with love and open arms. In fact, this is the province of Ukraine which has produced the greatest number of Orthodox immigrants to Canada in the last 100 years. However, it is important to understand for the sake of information, that the province of Chernivtsi did not belong to Ukraine until World War II when Stalin annexed it from Romania, to which it had always belonged. The diocese of Chernivtsi is still packed with Romanian speakers. In our own diocese there are quite a few Romanian customs that people do not necessarily pay attention to, because we think that all Bucovinians are Ukrainians. The main part of our inheritance in this diocese is from this province of Chernivtsi.

Thanks to Metropolitan Onouphry, a few people went in a mini-van with a Romanian-speaking guide to Sochava, Radaouts, and Voronets in one day. They learned how to drive fast in that van, and they also learned that even if visas are not required to cross that border back and forth, nevertheless it is not so easy to cross that border. The reason they very much wanted to go this time was that Matushka Dianne Kennaugh, thinking that she was Austrian in ancestry, had done some research on part of her family, and found that they all came from Radaouts, and from a village close to Sochava. They did some investigations, and found that there was no-one left from the family, and whoever else was left there had been given a “vacation”, shall we say, to go somewhere else. Stalin was good at that, and so were other Communist regimes good at giving “vacations”, or “tickets to exotic places” like Tobolsk, Vladivostok, Arkhangelsk. They had the opportunity to venerate the relics of Saint John the New of Sochava. Although I have been there, I never got to venerate these relics, so they are more blessed than I am. We never know how God can bless us. He blesses us in many ways that we do not expect, but about what we think that we want now, He often says : “Not now”. We probably do not know why until later sometimes (if we ever really know). The Lord knows why. They were very blessed by the Holy Spirit, and very much uplifted by the whole experience of going into Romania.

After that, we went to the second and most serious part of our pilgrimage (which included not only going to holy places). We visited a village called Kolomeya in which there is a 400-year-old Temple built out of wood, from whose walls sometimes comes myrrh. People are sometimes delivered from demons and diseases just by touching the walls.

Then we began to visit orphanages. For the last three times that I have gone, this pilgrimage has always involved encountering orphanages, and the poor in one way or the other. People who are on the pilgrimage come armed with suitcases full of things that are necessary for needy children, and for some of the adults, too. Orphanages over there are nothing like what we expect of an orphanage here. They have only a minimum of absolutely everything. Many of these orphanages are operated by people who are not, shall we say, those most guided by Christian principles and honesty. Things that should go to the children often go to them and to their families. However, we are concerning ourselves as well as we can with people that are the most trustworthy. At the age of fifteen or sixteen, children from these government-run orphanages are told goodbye, and that is all there is – bye-bye. At that age, the doors open, and – bye-bye.

As a result of this, terrible things happen to these children, and the jails are full of such people. When the children are ejected from the orphanages at the age of 15, they encounter predatory people ready to pounce on these helpless victims. Garbage bins are full of such children who have been killed one way or another. It is very popular for people who run prostitution to snare the young people as soon as they come out of these orphanages. We learned to our horror that at the recent World Cup, there was a whole village set up beside the places where the athletes lived, and there were 4,000 girls between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five who had been taken there from Ukraine and Romania for the purpose of sexual slavery. Annually, a hundred thousand young women are removed from Ukraine because of this sort of slavery. Five thousand of them are in Canada, it turns out, at the present. We, who think that we are so nice, are not so squeaky clean as we think.

This is how denial and deception play with us. We cannot simply look down on the weaknesses of other people. We have to be prepared to say, as my Mother used to say : “There, but for the Grace of God, go I”. We have it good in our lives. We are comfortable, and that is our downfall, because we think that we are so self-sufficient and we do not need to pay attention to the suffering of other people. Those 5,000 and more girls brought to Canada as slaves (and there are probably boys in the same boat) were brought here with false promises of a real job, and not because they wanted to enter this way of living. They were living lives in poverty that Canadians cannot comprehend. They had no one, because they were already abandoned. How can we help them here ? We can remember that everything is not simple, or how it appears to be. We can pray for the captives, and remember that these are captives, also. We can look these persons in the face when we see them, treat them as human beings, and pray for them. If the Lord puts any of them in our lives, we can do what the Lord gives us to do for such a person. The way of the Lord is the practice of love. Again, as my Mother used to say : “Practice what you preach”. Therefore, asking the Lord to help us do just this, let us glorify Him : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

It is good for us to remember what n had to say last night regarding the way in which the Lord has enabled human beings in the course of history to know Him, if they will to do so. It is a question of whether the heart will listen to the Lord. Will the heart recognise the one God as the Creator of all, and try to listen to Him, and be obedient to Him ? As n was outlining last night, this was apparently the case in early China, because the nature of the prayers of the Emperor demonstrate a recognition of God as a loving God. However, the Chinese nation, as well as anyone else, got lost. We got lost in our own passions, lost in doing our own will instead of God’s will. That is where the problems always have arisen for us : doing our own will, and not God’s will.

The Apostle Paul today is speaking about how the Lord in His creation reveals Himself to us. Are we, ourselves, prepared to accept the revelation ? The fulness of this revelation came in the Incarnation of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. In the context of our self-deforming, it is very difficult for us to accept God’s love as it presents itself. As human beings seem always to do, we, using our own intellect, think of a “better way”, somehow. Usually we do not bother to pay any attention to the Lord and to His will, and we do not actually accept Him as Who He presents Himself to be. Instead, we reinvent Him. That is, for instance, what Arius did, what Nestorius did, and others have done ; and especially in these days, this is what many people are doing. They are remaking Christ so that He will fit their idea of what seems easier to take. However, when we do this, our troubles multiply – they do not get less. It is our responsibility, especially as North Americans trying to witness for Christ here in North America, to put Christ first always, at all times, and everywhere. We must let our hearts be open to Him, to His direction, and try to be ready to follow His will, and not what we think might be a “better idea”.

God having His will with me, sometimes, sends me from place to place, it seems. Two weeks ago, I was in Ukraine, serving in a series of little villages outside of Lviv in western Ukraine. This is an area where the Orthodox Church (especially the canonical Orthodox Church) is under a great deal of pressure. Fifteen years ago, all the canonical Orthodox churches (except one) in the whole diocese were taken away from the parishioners and given to someone else. That is because of the way the government operates. At that time, all churches belonged to the government, and the government could do whatever it liked. It still does. All those buildings were taken away, and then the canonical Orthodox faithful had to start over from nothing.

Within a few years, some arrangements were made with Ukrainian Catholics. In a few of the parishes in these little villages, Orthodox and Greek Catholics alternate, taking turns on Sundays. One Sunday the Orthodox go first, followed by the Greek Catholics ; the next Sunday the Greek Catholics go first, followed by the Orthodox. However, in most of the places, they had to find a piece of land, and that was not easy. Then they had to get permission to build, and, finally, they had to build. A week ago, I was serving in a little church on the edge of a town called Chervonograd close to the Polish border. In Chervonograd, there are already two parishes that have been re-established. The one in which I was serving was right on the edge of the town. They were very creative. The building may look strange to us. It looks as though it were part of a ship, a sailing ship without the masts. It is amazing. When we go inside the Temple, we feel as though we are in the hold of a ship. It is a very literal way of expressing through architecture the metaphor of the Church as being a ship. Usually, we expect the church to look like an upside-down ship, representing the ark of salvation. Sometimes the Temple can be cruciform, but the basic idea is that the Church is a ship. The English word “nave” (the middle part of the church) comes from navis, the Latin word for ship.

Because their parishioners had found sponsors who had money, in some other places much bigger Temples had been built, more in line with what we would expect, with domes and cruciform shape. Nevertheless, the way the architecture was done in Chervonograd was very interesting and pleasing. Each of these Temples is unique, with a combination of the traditional shape of the church with domes, and with exterior decoration which makes it look somehow more modern. A person simply has to go to Ukraine and see this, although I think we do not only have to go to Ukraine. I am quite sure that in other countries where building is going on, similar combinations of traditional architecture and modern taste and ideas go together very well. It is the inspiration by the Grace of the Holy Spirit that makes these things possible, because people in these places obviously love Jesus Christ above all. They were willing to listen to the Lord saying to them (as it were) : “Buy here ; talk with this person ; do this ; do that”, and they did. They were able to rebuild. They were willing to listen to the Lord, and listen to Him say to them : “It must be done ; it can be done ; it will be done ; just do it. Do not be afraid – just do it”.

In this building, it is much better than before, because you do not have to take down and set up every Sunday. It is not yet your permanent home, but nevertheless, you have come a long way. You have a visible presence in a good place, and there is a sign that can be seen from the street. The church can be found now, and people do not have to depend on anyone else. You have made a big step forward. The Lord will show you the next step. However, I say to you as the Lord says to the apostles today : “‘Follow Me’”. Immediately they followed Him. Let your hearts listen to the Lord, also, so that when He speaks to you and says : “This has to be done ; it must be done ; it will be done, because I am with you” – then just do it. Do not be afraid. Whatever the Lord is leading you to do next is always scary, and often does not make sense. However, if you do what the Lord says to do, it happens, because He is blessing and He opens the doors.

Through the prayers of all the saints of North America and all the saints of China, may the Lord give you the strength and the ability to hear Him. May you continue growing and building and increasing the Body of Christ here in n, to the glory of our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

It is hard for us, generally, to take the words of the Lord about the lilies of the field and the sparrows and live by them. However, the fact is that this is how the Lord created us to be. If we are not like that, we are far short of who we were created to be. If we have not come to this, we are far short of the sort of person we can become.

We have on our calendar many saints, including Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco, whose memory we are keeping today. He was one of those saints, in fact, who in a strange way, I think, did come to live in accordance with this Gospel passage. He was so much like this that people called him a Fool-for-Christ. He behaved in ways that were unusual. In the first place, he went about in bare feet quite a bit. For Orthodox bishops that is generally a no-no. If people do not laugh at the bishop for going about in bare feet, they will criticise him thoroughly for doing so. However, I still remember almost forty years ago in Vancouver when a subdeacon at Holy Resurrection Church was telling me about his encounter one time with Saint John. In San Francisco there was a Church feast-day, and when the Archbishop came to the Temple, there were not very many people there at all. And so, in his mantya, he went out of the Temple with his pastoral staff, and he walked along the street until he came to a hotel. In this hotel there was a ballroom, and a large number of the parishioners were celebrating the Feast ahead of things somehow, in their own order. They were celebrating in this ballroom but they were not in church. Saint John came, I am told, and with his mantya, stood there in the door, and thumped the floor with his pastoral staff a couple of times. People saw him standing there. Everything stopped. He turned around, went back to the Temple, and people followed after him. He did not have to say so many things, but he certainly lived by Whom he followed.

He followed Jesus Christ. He suffered much in the course of his life. He was in exile more than once. Yet, no matter how painful and difficult the circumstances of his life might have been, he continued to be faithful to Jesus Christ, as he looked to Christ to supply everything, just as the Gospel says. The Saviour did supply everything for him. This is a man who died not long ago.

Why should we be able to ask so many things and expect so many things from the Lord ? The answer is that our relationship with Him is all love. Our very life comes from Him. Everything comes from Him and His love despite the times when we yield to the temptation to think that we are the source. It is still because He blessed me to have it that I have anything. Everything comes from Him, beginning with my life. My life comes from Him because He loves me. Everything in creation is the result of His love. Everything, whether we accept it or not, whether we reject it or not, whether we co-operate or not, everything that is (not only on this planet) is the product of His love. Everything is created because God loves it into existence.

Our problem mainly is that we listen to the Tempter. We get preoccupied with ourselves. We say, in response to this Gospel : “Am I not supposed to be taking some initiative here, and doing something myself ?” The answer is : “Well, yes, you are”. However, taking this initiative has to be preceded by asking the Lord : “What is Your will ? I want to do Your will. I love You ; I know that You love me, and I want to do Your will about everything. What do You want me to do ?”

There are, and have been, many people whose hearts have been so connected in love with the Lord that they instinctively knew what was God’s will. Everything that they did bore fruit because it was God’s will. They knew that it was the right way to go. However, if we are not so attuned to the Lord in our hearts as all that, we can still open our hearts towards the Lord when we are faced with choices, and first ask Him the right thing to do.

The Lord does provide. I just heard this week about a certain person who does not have very much of an income at all. However, this person had given away quite a bit of money out of love and care for other people. Within a month, the Lord had re-supplied it all. This person is living on next to nothing, and yet the Lord does look after this person. There are many monks and nuns in this diocese who are living precisely on that basis. They are serving Him. They are helping other people. The Lord does look after them, and He supplies whatever is necessary for life.

Knowing what is the will of the Lord is a very direct product of living in the Scriptures, living in the Gospel. That is why it is important for us to read the Scriptures all the time. The Lord shows us how to live our Christian life by the things that are written in the Scriptures from 1 Moses [Genesis] to the Apocalypse. He shows us how we are supposed to live. He shows us how He loves us. He shows us how we are supposed to behave towards each other. He shows us how we are supposed to live our lives in thanksgiving and in service.

We have Fathers and Mothers in the Orthodox Church who have written many things which give us examples of how we are supposed to be living in response to God’s love. They were able to write what they wrote, not because they wanted to write what they wrote, but because circumstances demanded that they write what they wrote. There was a specific need that demanded that they write, and so they wrote. However, they wrote out of their experience of life in the Scriptures, and life in communion in their hearts with the Lord. As a result, what they wrote for us (I guess one could say as long ago as the second century) is still used by us to help us keep on track.

Living the Orthodox Christian life is not concerned with rules. Rather, it is concerned with love in Christ, with Christ. It is concerned with coming to know God’s will and doing it, so that we always know what is the right thing to do. Ultimately, we do not even have to ask, because our heart tells us right away. I am not saying these things because of having my own experience. Rather, I am saying these things because I have seen it so much already. I have not only read it or heard people speak about it. God is merciful. He has let me see many examples of this, and therefore I can share it with everyone (except that I have a sneaking suspicion that many of you here have seen much of the same thing already in the course of your lives). At a young age, I had not seen very much myself, but it was not long before the Lord began to expose me to such people.

The Lord loves us. It is His desire that we be protected, that we live lives that are productive, that are fruitful, that are healthy, that are constructive, that are supportive to other people. As He gives life to us, we give life to other people in Him. Let us ask the Lord to give us more courage, hope, and strength in the midst of all of the difficulties that we endure in the course of our lives. Let us ask Him to enable us never to take our eyes off Him, so that our hearts will never be distracted from Him, and that the whole substance of our lives always will serve Him and glorify Him in everything, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

When the Apostle Paul is speaking to us today about how we should be living correctly, and the consequence of living incorrectly, he does not get a very good hearing from most people these days. However, what he says is the absolute truth. He says that when people are living in self-will and licentiousness, the result of it is death. Primarily, the root of it all is their turning their backs on the Lord, and doing whatever they think best and not consulting the Lord at all, but just going according to the winds that blow in their minds. If this were my ancestors speaking to me, under those circumstances in which I find myself very frequently (although not quite as frequently as in my greater youth), they would say : “That is why the wind is blowing in your mind, because there is nothing there”. Ultimately, there is a vacuum if Christ is not at the centre of everything. He is our anchor. He is our sense of direction. He is our Everything. If He is not our Everything in life, we are empty-headed, and blown about by every wind of who-knows-what. Ultimately, the result of that is spiritual death. All sorts of terrible things could happen to us.

Often we are going our own way. We invent our own direction. We pay attention to some psychologist or psychiatrist or some philosopher or some popular, money-making speaker or some theorist. Such a person tries to make things appear to be rosy, and the sensible way to go. However, without Christ, we go nowhere at all. As I have said many times throughout my life : “The reason that psychiatrists are so much needed and that they can make a living is that people do not have the real source of healing at hand. If it is at hand, it is ignored”. We are weird people, because the Saviour, who is our Life, who is our Everything, is entirely capable of straightening out everything in our life. We see how He healed the servant of the centurion. We see how He raised people from the dead. We see how He does everything. We see how He heals until this very day. We are somehow afraid of the Lord, who loves us, and is with us, and assures us of His tender, loving care for us. We do not trust Him to do what He says He will do. Instead, we will often turn to everyone and everything else first.

Another example of this is what it is like to go to confession, and what it is like for a priest or a bishop to hear confession. Long ago, when I was in seminary, Father Schmemann said : “People often erroneously think that it must somehow be exciting for a priest to hear the confessions of all sorts of different people”. However, he said : “Such people are absolutely wrong. It is boring. It is boring because people’s sins are all the same. It is all repetition”.

Everyone seems to comes to confession thinking that he or she is committing some unique new sin, and it is so horrible. Well, yes, it is horrible. Sin is horrible. However, there is nothing unique about any of it. It is hardly likely that there is any sin that any one of us can come up with that someone else has not already committed somewhere, sometime. In normal parish life, the priest who is hearing these confessions finds that confessions are all variations on a theme. Over and over and over again, he is hearing the same thing from which people are suffering. Human beings are all approximately the same, regardless of how we like to think otherwise. We are quite the same. Thus we say to ourselves : “Why is it that I keep coming to confession over and over and over again for the same things in one form or another ? It is always the same thing. I am bored with my own confession”. This has to do with the fact that we do not truly grasp in our hearts yet that the Lord is the Lord of everything in my life. All this boringness and repetitiveness is sin. It is all because I forget.

What am I forgetting ? I forget to listen to the Lord first. I listen to my wayward, confused, conflicting thoughts first, instead. I do not often ask the Lord about what is the right thing to do. I just go ahead and do whatever seems good according to my thoughts, according to my logic, according to some book I read, according to some television or radio programme I saw or heard recently, according to what my neighbour said to me over tea recently. I am influenced by all these instead of remembering to ask the Lord first. Even if I do ask the Lord first, I still find myself having to go to confession because I still do not hear Him properly. I still do not live as well as I ought to live, in accordance with His will. We all ought to have the sensibility and sensitivity about trying to live in accordance with the Lord’s will. The confessions of holy people are very profound, albeit that they might be simple, direct and very straightforward. The confession may boil down to sorrow for having disappointed Him who is truly our Everything in life. After all, we love Him with our whole being, and we want to please Him with our whole being. Nevertheless, we know that we fall short. It does not matter how holy a person can become. The holiest of persons is going to recognise how far he or she still is from living in accordance with the fulness of the love of Jesus Christ. That person will know how much better it could still be.

By the way, very often people are misunderstanding what it is to live in the Kingdom of Heaven. Our society, particularly, is full of all sorts of crazy ideas leading us to think that living in the Kingdom of Heaven is somehow static. The phantasy is that once we have “made it” to the Kingdom of Heaven, we merely sit around on fluffy clouds and have a nice time. That is the way the Muslim think about Heaven. They envisage that we do nothing but sit around and eat grapes and other delicacies ; we indulge ourselves in unmentionable activities and we participate in one unending, eternal party. This childish phantasy is, to my mind, extremely boring. That is not how Christians think about Heaven. That is not the way of the Kingdom of Heaven.

The Kingdom of Heaven certainly has to do with the banquet, the heavenly banquet of the Lord in which we are participating here today. It is very different from how the Muslim have distorted it. Feeding on the Lord’s presence, living in His love, we endlessly, endlessly, continue to grow in love and dynamism. God is unknowable, because He is so great, but He brings us into Himself in His Son as members of His Body. In the Body of Christ we are taken into the Holy Trinity, and we are able in love to grow up in this love which never ends, and always changes, always continues to mature and grow. It is never boring. It is never static. It is always alive, and more alive. If we want to read a nice allegory about how this can be, let us have a look at C S Lewis. His Narnia books, and The Great Divorce, particularly, give some good ideas about how it might be (although it is all allegory). We cannot expect the Kingdom of Heaven to be just as he writes.

There is nothing static about the love of Jesus Christ. The love of Jesus Christ is always providing us with surprises : how He leads us unexpectedly over and over again. We who went to Ukraine on a pilgrimage recently, encountered this many times over in those fourteen days : how the Lord knew exactly what we needed, and what the people there needed. He put us together at the right time in the right places in ways that we could never have organised if we had even tried (even with the strongest computers). We could never have done it, but the Lord did it, and continues to do it all the time. In our daily lives here, He is doing it. However, we have to have the eyes of our hearts open to see and to comprehend what is going on, and glorify and give thanks to Him for it quickly, immediately. The more we are able to recognise the activity of His love surprising us with His tender compassion, and the intimacy with which He is concerned in our lives, the more we are ready to recognise this and give thanks, then the more we are ready to grow up in Him. As a result of this, we are all the more able with joy and divine power to share with others the Lord’s tender care for us.

The Lord’s tender care shows itself today in the healing of the centurion’s servant. The Lord’s tender care shows itself in the Gospel passage that we just read a couple of days ago about the healing of the Apostle Peter’s mother-in-law (see Mark 1:30, 31). The Lord’s love shows itself in all sorts of different ways in the Gospel. His love also shows itself in different ways in our lives here, today, now. This is the way that leads to life, as the Apostle Paul was saying in the Epistle reading today. This is the way that leads to the health and the stability that enable us to live through the worst sort of turmoil and suffering in life. This is how we get to know that the Lord is with us. He is strengthening us, and He will see us through no matter what, because He loves us. He wants us to live with Him and be alive in Him. He does not abandon us. He does not abandon me. He does not abandon this community. He does not abandon even this city as crazy as it seems to be becoming. He gives us work to do. We Orthodox Christians must remind people of Who is their end, and what it is that they are looking for. He gives us as a sign of hope and life to everyone around us.

Brothers and sisters, let us not leave ourselves open to the accusation of my ancestors to me about empty-headedness and its results. Instead, let our hearts, our minds and our whole being be full of Jesus Christ. Let us hope on Jesus Christ, and live in His love, and glorify Him in eternity, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

When it comes to being a human being, a regular, recognisable human being, there are some standard characteristics that we generally expect to see in such a person, regardless of gender. It is into these characteristics that we normally grow up. If we are really going to be true human beings, then we are going to grow up as human beings patterning ourselves after the most perfect of them all, Jesus Christ Himself, and His Mother, the Theotokos, also. The foundation of that identification is love, and a perfect relationship between this human being and God and His will. As we know from the Scriptures, and as we also know from our inheritance, God is love (see 1 John 4:8, 16). Everything about God and our relationship with Him has to do with this love. We live out and express this love in one way or another.

In the Gospel reading today, we heard about the two demoniacs who are so fierce that no-one could pass by them. These demoniacs are people who became possessed in one way or the other by the devil, and they were living at the very best an irrational life. However, this was far worse than a merely irrational life. It was a completely distorted life. It was a twisted life, a caricature of human life, we might say, because their behaviour was the opposite of how a normal human being should be behaving, and especially a Christ-imitating human being.

When our Lord heals the men, they are instantly restored to being normal human beings. This is like the deliverance that we hear about during the course of the liturgical year in the Gospels of Mark and Luke of a particular demoniac in this region being healed and being restored to his own right mind. Saint John Chrysostom passes to us the apostolic understanding that the other two Gospels focus on the fiercer of the two possessed men rather than present a supposed second occasion. There are other persons in the Scriptures who are being delivered from possession by the devil and being restored to their normal, integral personality. They were restored to a personality in harmony with the Lord, a personality in harmony with God’s will, a personality in harmony even with itself. We know that it is highly irregular for swine to be raised anywhere on Jewish territory. However, human beings have always been like this, and it is important for us to understand that. Yes, the law is the law, and the rule is the rule, but people often take the law into their own hands, regardless. In this particular out-of-the-way region hidden from the sight of most people, swine were being raised.

When the legion of demons enter the swine, immediately the little pigs, that were going about their normal business as pigs do, go insane, jump in the lake and drown. That is a very, very clear illustration of what happens when we separate ourselves from the Lord, and when we play around with the powers of darkness and say to ourselves : “I want to do it my way, and I am going to try to make the Lord conform to my way” (instead of the other way around). As soon as I do it my way (without consulting the Lord first), and I go in a contrary direction, already I am becoming like those demoniacs and like those pigs. I am behaving irrationally. I am giving myself over into the hands of the powers of darkness when I do this. For you and for me, the only way we can live, is to live in harmony with God’s will (in other words, in harmony with His love), and to live out His love.

Today, we are celebrating the memory of the Fathers of the first six Ecumenical Councils. Very many people in our western cultures like to speak about these Fathers as though, in the course of those several centuries and their various Councils, they were developing Christian doctrine on the basis of some logical development (or even worse, on the basis of some philosophical principles). Those Councils had nothing to do with doctrinal development. We Orthodox do not understand development in this way. In the Orthodox Church there is no such thing. There is no such thing as change when it comes to what we believe about God, what we believe about our Saviour, Jesus Christ, what we believe about the Church, and what we believe about all creation in this relationship. There has been no change.

Therefore, why these Councils and why these definitions ? These Councils came about precisely because, in various periods, there were people who had it in mind that they could come up with a better way to say things so that others could understand and grasp things. In their attempt, they distorted everything and ultimately made people crazy. Such thinkers were people who were falling away from true understanding and from living in harmony with what God revealed Himself to be – which is the point of everything. God reveals Himself to you and to me. It is for us to live in response to that revelation of who He says He is. Who are we to tell Him to be different ? Even until this very day, the Lord reveals Himself in the same way to believers everywhere.

As the Epistle says, He is the same : “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever”. The Greek, however, says “unto the age”, rather than “forever”. God is the same. His love is the same. However, as Arius did, there remain today many who think that they can try to redefine Him and to remould Him according to their limited logic. That is why the first Council was convoked. Arius tried to suggest that Jesus Christ is not the uncreated Son of God, but rather some sort of creature who volunteered to be the “sacrificial lamb”, as it were. However, that is not at all the meaning of the Incarnation. If the Son of God Himself had not done what He did, reconciliation with the Father would not be possible. Yet we know that reconciliation with the Father did happen because that has been our experience in common for 2,000 years.

There were others also who came along and thought that they had clever ideas. There were people such as Nestorius, who had a hard time accepting that Mary could be the Mother of God. He tried to change her into being merely the Mother of Christ, thereby reducing Christ Himself. It is very complicated. It is more than just a little bit confusing when people are thinking, thinking and thinking and trying on the basis of their criteria, logic, and philosophies, to make sense of the Christian Faith. The tail cannot wag the dog, and the cart cannot go in front of the horse.

Our experience of Jesus Christ, our experience of His revelation of Himself to us must, absolutely must, lead, define and determine everything. This is what the Fathers were doing in all those seven Councils (actually there were eight, but the eighth has not been recognised universally yet). The Fathers were listening to the Holy Spirit as well as they could. Sometimes the listening had to persist during a meeting which lasted longer than a year in order to come to a true understanding of Who is Jesus Christ. They were asking themselves : “What is our Tradition of Him, and how can we with words as clearly as possible, speak about it ?” That is what theology is. That is all that theology is – speaking in clear, correct words (and one would have to say even in inspired words) about our experience of God.

Nowadays, people are speaking about theology as though it were something that can be learnt in some university somewhere. People go and get a degree, and then call themselves a “theologian”. In calling themselves theologians, such people can very often be heard to say strange things about Jesus Christ, things that do not connect with Him, and our 2,000 years’ experience at all. What sort of theology is this ? It is only philosophy and egocentric idea-systems trying to dress themselves up as theology. Very few people can speak about theology, and those are persons, generally, who do not have a university degree to prove that what they are saying is correct. Papers mean nothing.

Therefore, what is our call from the Lord in the context of these swine, and also in the context of the Epistles today ? Our responsibility as Orthodox Christians is in the context of the love of Jesus Christ, and in living in obedience to the love of Jesus Christ. Our responsibility is to become human beings as closely resembling Jesus Christ as possible. That is also what we should be trying to do as a believing community, as a Christian family : trying to live as closely as we can to the example of Jesus Christ. In doing so, we become an example to the people around us of what is sanity, true sanity, true humanity.

People seem to like to make fun of us Orthodox Christians, however. For us, time is a little bit flexible (sometimes very flexible). Food seems to be an obsession (not that we want to eat so much, but we want to feed others so much). We want to give people food, and we want to offer them hospitality. In all our Orthodox cultures, the faithful practically kill themselves trying to give hospitality to people who come to their homes. This is all the expression of Christian love.

There are still people alive in Canada who remember when very many more Canadians (even Anglo-Canadians) behaved more like that. However, probably since I was about twenty or so, that way of living has catastrophically fallen away from most Canadians. Canadians in general have fallen in on themselves. They tend to look to themselves and they are afraid of other people. It is for us to show the example of how human beings are supposed to live. We do this by not being afraid of other people who are created in God’s image. People are a wreck because they are broken. We can show them how they can be healed.

That is our responsibility. It is not so small, and it is not so easy. However, it is, as Father Alexander Schmemann rightly said, full of joy. Father Alexander always spoke about joy, and he said that if joy is lacking from anyone, then Christ is lacking from us. There cannot be Christ in us without there being joy. Even when we are suffering a lot, in the midst of that suffering, there is still joy in the heart. There is still hope. There is still confidence. There is still a sense of direction and life, even though there is great and intense pain.

Let us cultivate that joy, that love of Jesus Christ in our hearts. Let us exercise that love and joy on each other. Let us do our best to show Christ to each other, and together let us sow a seed in this city that will grow and produce not just twentyfold, not just forty or fiftyfold, but at the very least a hundredfold, to the glory of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Let us bring people into His Kingdom and join them to His Body, with us to glorify Him together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In the life of Father John and his family, we have an example of the working out of what we have just heard in the Holy Gospel. It is important for us to remember this, and especially to remember the words of the Gospel, and the assurances of love that our Saviour gives to us. We, ourselves, must take confidence in these words of love in our living of our lives in Christ. Our Saviour, no matter what, is always with us. He emptied Himself in His love, in order to keep us in loving harmony and in union with Him. Everything about Him and His relationship with us is concerned with this love.

It is important for us to remember the life of Father John in this context, and the life of his whole family, because his inheritance was all concerned with and filled with living in the confidence of this love. He was not the first person in his family to serve Christ. There were five generations of clergy before him in his family. His father was a Pentecostal minister and missionary. In his childhood, Father John was in China and India because of his parents’ love for Jesus Christ. While he was in India, the way that Orthodox Christians whom he met there worshipped and loved God affected him very much, also. It seems to me that, to a great extent, his experience of his parents’ love for Christ, and of the love for Christ of Christians he encountered in other parts of the world, confirmed him in his own desire to serve Jesus Christ in this same single-minded, single-hearted way. That was, as far as I can recall, in my experience of him for about 25 years, completely characteristic of him.

Father John (or “Papa John” as many prefer to say) was full of the love of our Lord, and he wanted to serve Him, to serve Him only. He was willing to do what sometimes seemed to be ridiculous to other people, in order to be faithful to our Saviour Jesus Christ, and to the truth about Him. That is why he gave up everything, and came into the Orthodox Church, because of embracing the whole, full truth about Him who is the Truth, Jesus Christ. He told Archbishop Sylvester that he did this because he had found the Pearl of great Price (see Matthew 13:46).

It is because of his obedience and his love that we ourselves are able to be here today in this building. It is because of his loving obedience (even though there were many difficulties, and he made mistakes, like everyone else). It was Father John’s love for Jesus Christ that enabled him to gather people together to establish one of the earliest English-speaking missions in the country, and then to do what was thought to be impossible. What was the impossible ? I do not know that it is being done anywhere else yet – but by his prayers and by his example, it became possible here : the re-unification of the anglophone Holy Transfiguration community with its russophone mother parish, Saint Nicholas, to make our cathedral community. For the most part, people got along reasonably well after that reconciliation, and a truly life-giving and strong community was formed.

If we are being accurate, then we will accept that it is also because of Father John that we are now in this particular building. I am quite sure that if Father John had not been so convinced by the Mother of God that this was the right thing to do when he was venerating the Kursk Root Icon of the Theotokos (as many know from his own words), then I do not think that we would be here today. Of course, that is just as well, because if it were not God’s will, we should not have been here. It was also because of Father John’s love for Jesus Christ, and the joy with which he lived that love of our Lord, that this cathedral community is able to be such a family in Christ. If we are going to be faithful to his love for our Lord Jesus Christ, and if we are going to live following his example of living the love of our Saviour, then, making mistakes (as he made mistakes) and repenting (as he was repenting), we ourselves are going to do everything that is possible, with God’s help, to maintain this community as a loving family, even though it is quite a big family in quite a big house.

Being a big family like this one is not easy. Sometimes, we have to associate with one another in sub-group families in order to keep together. Nevertheless, the community still somehow has to be maintained as a united family, because the Lord would not have given the responsibility to Father John to bring all this into being if that were not how it is supposed to be. The Lord would not have brought things about as He did if that were not what we are supposed to be doing in this city, in this diocese. Our situation is as it is, because God wills it. Father John has been co-operating with that Will, not necessarily always knowing precisely what he was doing, and why. Nevertheless, this is the fruit of his love of Jesus Christ.

Father John was a good father. He was a good father, and not only to his physical family and blood-relatives. It is a good thing for the rest of us (especially fathers) to remember his example, and to do something similar, as well as we are able. No-one can be Father John again (not even his children). No-one can be Father John again, because there only ever was one – God only created one of him, as He creates only one of you and one of me. That does not mean that there cannot be similarities, however. We can encourage each other by the example of our lives, and by the memory of his good, Christ-loving example. Those of you who heard from him in his last week amongst us, heard how full of joy he was, even when he was faced with the possibility of a cancer (and everyone knows what his family already went through with Suzanne in that, and how the prospect could have been extremely upsetting for him). By God’s Grace and mercy, he was full of joy, full of peace, and full of acceptance of God’s will, no matter what it would bring about. He was radiant with joy, as people have been testifying.

Well, is not that an example for us : how to be encouraged in our own difficulties and struggles in trying to follow our Lord Jesus Christ ? Our Saviour was in him, facing everything he faced. Although he did not have an easy life, as he faced everything he was confronted with, and as he endured everything he was given, he was still able to be so effervescent with the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, so emptying of himself. Even the night before he departed, he was still emptying himself, serving, loving, and giving of himself one hundred percent to people around him, being the father that he was to everyone around, and in the foot-steps of Christ, serving people all around him.

Our Saviour gave him this joy, this strength, this peace, this ability to face something difficult or something horrible, with joy and with victory. Then the Lord took him just like that, in the middle of the night. No-one expected anything. The Lord took him just like that. Well, how merciful was that, because anything having to do with colon cancer is unpleasant (to make a real understatement). The Lord spared him and his family such an ordeal. Yet we know by his love, by his faith, by his confidence in Jesus Christ, that if the Lord had asked it of him, then he would have lived through that ; he would have endured it as he had always gone through everything – with love and confidence in our Saviour, and with joy.

We are full of heartache right now, and we are full of tears, mixed with joy, in the Orthodox way. It cannot be otherwise, as long as we remember the fundamental : that the love of Jesus Christ, and joy in the hope of the Resurrection (which the texts are assuring us about) all have meaning. It is not some sort of crazy, philosophical idea. It is reality. Father John lived, and continues to live that reality. We are following with him in the same path, loving the same Jesus Christ with him. We have him, along with many others now, to intercede for us, and to support us in the work that we have to do.

Let us not get lost in the cares of this world ; but let us remember him, his love, his faithfulness, and be encouraged, ourselves, to persevere in the same love. Let us allow the Lord to give us the same joy, the same strength, and the same sense of direction. Then, when our time comes, we will meet him there in the Kingdom of Heaven, with all those others whom we love, who have gone before us, and who are glorifying the Saviour. With them, we will unite our hearts and our voices in eternal praise of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, in the Kingdom, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

One of the drawbacks, it seems to me, of being raised in Canadian society is the extent to which we are formed to depend on various sorts of systems, organisations, etc., for things to be accomplished in life. When we are faced with the reality of Christ, there is a big tendency in our country to try to box in Christ. We try to make Him subject to one sort of system or another. Perhaps we try to invent a technique to get out of Him what we want. My suspicion is that today, in the case of this exorcism which the Lord accomplishes (but that the apostles previously could not), what the Lord is driving at is that the apostles had not yet caught on to the fact that it is not a technique. In my experience, I do not think there is a technique for exorcising anyone.

Only our Saviour can be the Exorcist of someone who is possessed. When our Saviour is speaking about the faith that is required, I think that it is truly our Orthodox understanding that He is the one who accomplishes it, that enables us to let Him work through us. They have to have confidence in Him that He can do it, and they must co-operate with Him in order that He will do it. Therefore, if there is a mountain pushed into the sea somewhere, it is because the apostles, knowing God’s will, co-operate with Him in prayer, and it is done. However, it is not because the apostles know some technique. Anyway, when it comes to techniques and such things, what technique can there be when the shadow of an apostle will heal someone (as we read in the Acts of the Apostles). Just the shadow of an apostle passing over someone brings the Lord’s healing (see Acts 5:15). There is no technique in that. It is the Grace of the Holy Spirit.

In our life in the Orthodox Church (especially in North America), we are falling into a trap of systems and “correct”, “acceptable” ways of going about things according to bylaws, and so forth. The Orthodox way has nothing to do with these systems. It does not matter how many bylaws we have. The Orthodox way is not found in the bylaws, and these governmentally-approved, politically-correct manners of doing things.

The Apostle Paul is saying today, in effect : “You have many guides. You have many people who will give you some sense of direction in Christ, but you do not have many fathers”. He not only regarded himself as a father to all the people that he had brought to Christ, but, he, in fact, behaved as their father, whether they always accepted it or not, whether they always understood it or not. He behaved as their father.

The Orthodox way is focussed on interpersonal relationships of love : love in Jesus Christ, reference to Jesus Christ, faith in Jesus Christ, trust in Jesus Christ, living in harmony with Jesus Christ. Christ is our life (see Philippians 1:21). He is everything. We are nothing. He must increase and we must decrease (see John 3:30). He is the reason for our existence. He is the reason we are here, together. We are here, together, because we have some sort of love for each other in Christ. We show Christ to each other and encourage each other in Christ.

This is the Orthodox way. It has nothing to do with prestige ; it has to do with responsibility. It has nothing to do with earthly power ; it has to do with authority in Christ. Not only bishops have such authority. Indeed, lay people also have such authority in Christ.

The laity in the Orthodox Church are not insignificant players. In fact, if it were not for these holy, Christ-loving lay-people, the Orthodox Church would not exist. Most especially, the Orthodox Church would not exist these days in the territories of the former Soviet Union where it was only the faithful who were “free” (even though they paid for it with their lives, sometimes). They were still the only ones who were free to pray and be faithful, and they dared to do what Christ was calling them to do – to be the Church. I have heard many stories of just how the Lord, through the prayers, the faithfulness and the bravery of these Orthodox lay-people, protected the Church in these Orthodox countries that used to belong to the former Soviet Union.

It is still the responsibility of the lay-people here in North America to be faithful, to pray, to be Christ to each other. The responsibility and the challenge have not gone away simply because the economy is better. In fact, our challenge can be even greater because we have become spiritually fat, physically fat, forgetful and neglectful in our cozy comfort. Indeed, the cozy comfort makes our continent a land of forgetfulness. It is my prayer that in this community we will be able to live up to the words of the Gospel, to the example of the apostles, to the example and witness of the Mother of God after whom this parish is named. It is my prayer that we will be able, like her, to be faithful to Christ (to Him, and not just to some system), and allow Him to lead and guide our lives on the right way. There is only the Orthodox way when it comes to following the right way. Have no fear in following the Mother of God’s example. Let us entrust our lives to her intercessory prayers and to her protection, asking that she will enable us to be faithful to her Son, as she has always been and is to this day, so that we may glorify Him, together with her and all the holy Church : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

As we are standing here today, in the middle of a hierarchical Divine Liturgy, perhaps it seems strange to some people to hear the bishop say that the Christian life is actually very simple. Well, it is very simple. It is just not so easy. Very many people are saying these days that Islam is very simple and straightforward, because in one’s life there are only five things one has to do. In the Christian way it is simpler still. There is really only one thing we have to do : that is to love as our Lord loves, and everything else falls into place. If we love as Jesus Christ, then everything falls into its place naturally. Everything follows from loving Him.

The Old Testament summary of the Law (which our Saviour Himself quoted) says : “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind … and you shall love your neighbour as yourself’” (Matthew 22:37, 39). The two commandments are the same. It is all one thing – love. “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16), says the Apostle John. If we are in Him, everything about us has to be love, too. Everything about the Christian way has to do with love, and there are no two ways about it. I suppose it could be a bit boring and repetitive to hear the bishop always talking about love, love, love all the time, and it is not because I was ever a hippy. (I have been quite hippy in my day but I have never been a hippy. I am supposed, according to the doctor, to get rid of some more of these hips, but that is another story.)

This love is the essence of what it is to be a Christian, and I have to be talking about it, because that is all there is to talk about, really : how to manage to live in the context of this love. That is all we can all talk about. When it comes down to it, when we are speaking about the Lord, and we are speaking about our joy in the Lord, it is all a reflection of one aspect or another of this love, this one thing that is truly the essence of our Christian life.

Our worship is an aspect of that. Our worship is a bit complicated because we have had 2,000 years of various cultures glorifying God according to their ways and their contexts. We, somehow, here in Canada today are worshipping Him in a distillation of all this joy of Christians worshipping the Lord for 2,000 years. It is not only 2,000 years of worshipping the Lord, either. It is far more than that, because our worship of the Lord did not just come from nowhere. It did not appear from some sort of instant, divine inspiration to the apostles. They worshipped the Lord in the context that they already knew : the Temple, the synagogue. Our worship, which is indeed very much based on the Psalms and the Old Testament, all grows out of what the apostles were accustomed to. Were we to make a serious survey, we would be able to understand that our Liturgy has roots that go back 6,000 years and more.

As Orthodox, we are not ever living in isolation. We are living in a living context, and that context is God’s Self-revelation. He reveals Himself to us in the whole course of our history from the very beginning, from Adam and Eve. Even before, when He was creating everything, God was revealing Himself to us in love. We are the fruit of His love. We are living in the eternal context of His love and the fruit of His love.

It is still hard, though, for us to do some of the consequences of this basic love because of how we tend to be turned in on ourselves, and because of the bad choices that we have sometimes made in our lives. These choices are always concerned with turning our backs on life and love, turning our backs on the Saviour. In other words, we have mostly been turning in on ourselves and putting ourselves in front of Him. All the idiotic things that have happened to human beings since we have existed are connected with that : putting ourselves before God and His love, and even trying to escape from His love. In having listened to the devil, we are afraid of God’s love. We are embarrassed like Adam and Eve if we are caught in our rebellion. Like Adam and Eve, we blame each other, blame someone else, tell lies, run away and hide.

There is nothing that has changed about human beings since we began. There is zero change. We keep talking about how much more advanced we are, how intelligent we are, and how capable we are. However, all this technology that we come up with, and all these wonderful and good things that we come up with, ultimately add up to zero unless they are involved in God’s love, unless they are offered in Christ, and unless they are used in Christ. They are all otherwise only escapes. We have become the victims of email, mobile phones, and now BlackBerries – it is true. It is very easy to become a slave of all these things unless these technologies are given to Christ.

If these technologies are given to Christ, and they are used particularly for His glory, if they are used because they are helping us to serve Him better, and we offer these technologies and techniques to Him, then we do not necessarily have to regard ourselves as actual victims of mobile phones, email, and BlackBerries. If they are offered to the Saviour, He gives us the Grace not to be jumping to it every time it rings, but to make it wait, like everything else, until it is its place. Using technologies is like being retrained by the Lord like a child, because a child does not know what interrupting is. A child gets an idea, and says : “Mommy, Daddy ! Do you know what ?” and right away cannot wait to say whatever it is or ask whatever it is. These telephones and these devices can be precisely like that in our lives. As when we are training children, we always have to say : “Now just wait, I have to finish this thing, and then you can say this or ask that”. Everything has to be in its place. It is the same with this thing that is here in my pocket. It has to know that it cannot be turned on during the service, and it has to wait until after coffee-time before it gets any attention.

Almost always, the difficult thing for Christians in life is to forgive. That is why it is important to pay attention to this Gospel lesson today that our Saviour has given us. Our Saviour gives us the parable about the steward who owed 10,000 talents. How much is a talent ? It is fifteen years’ wages for a labourer. One talent is fifteen years’ wages, and this king was owed ten thousand of these. When he was not being paid, the king commands that the debtor and his family and all their possessions be sold and payment be made. The man begs for forgiveness and says that he would pay everything, and the king who was owed forgives him everything. He forgives him the 10,000 times fifteen years worth of income, and he says in effect : “All right, because you have repented, I can have mercy on you”. The king who was owed the money could do this because he was able to love in this way, and so he could forgive.

What does the man himself learn from this ? Nothing. He immediately goes to someone who owed him 100 denarii (the denarius is one day’s wage). He throws him in prison because he could not pay. When the fellow servants understand what had happened, they tell the king about it. Having summoned the unrepentant servant, the king rebukes him, and condemns him to the debtors’ prison until he can pay all that he owed. Therefore, what he got from his master was definitely “just deserts”, because he could not forgive the debt in the same way, even though what he was asked to forgive was small in comparison.

When you and I look at this Gospel reading, we have to connect ourselves with the person who owed 10,000 talents. Who is the Master that is forgiving us this debt ? This debt which we have is there because of our selfishness, our rebelliousness, our turning in on ourselfness – all that. We have accumulated this debt because of our turning our back on Him, and our non-love. We have been turning our back on the Saviour. Let us recall the passage in another place : “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Thus, when we are rebelling against Christ, when we are turning our back on Christ, and when we are turning in on ourselves, we are inviting precisely this death, and we are participating in this death. What is death ? Death is the work of “Big Red” (of course you know to whom this refers), because everything about him is against life, against the truth. It is all lies, emptiness.

When we face Christ, the encounter is life ; it is light ; it is love ; it is fulness ; it is reality. There is nothing fake. If we turn our backs on the Saviour, we embrace death. We embrace the opponent of God, and Light, and Love. We embrace the father-of-lies. Our indebtedness to Christ is immense and immeasurable, because He is freely giving us life in His love. He Himself is doing everything for us. We do not have to do anything. We cannot do anything, anyway. He does it all for us. Our Lord did everything on the Cross, and in the Resurrection, and He is still doing everything for us every day, with every breath of our lives. He is saying to you and to me, as it were, as to the Apostle Peter on the waves : “Take my hand. Stand with Me on the waves, and live”.

Instead of remembering all this, we can become very much like the man who was ungrateful. We forget. We punish someone else for doing something so little or offending us in some little way. We nurse grudges about little things against one person or another. We gossip sometimes. We get lost in busyness. We forget the love of our Master who forgave us everything, and not only forgave us everything, but continues to forgive.

People are always asking : “Because I was hurt so much by one thing or another, how am I supposed to forgive ?” The Lord Himself says what we are supposed to do. We are supposed to bless those who persecute us, and pray for those who despitefully use us. When people misuse us, we pray for them ; and when people are even trying to kill us, we bless them (see Matthew 5:44). That is the Orthodox way. That has always been the way of the martyrs. All this “eye for eye, tooth for tooth” so-called justice that we are trying to wage on each other in North America accomplishes nothing. Our penitentiaries seem to have little to do with penitence. They are coming to be just plain prisons these days. There is not really much that is penitential about them. We Orthodox Christians have to teach again the society in which we live (our society did know before, but it has to be re-taught) how to love and how to forgive.

How do you pray for someone who has really hurt you ? As I am always telling everyone, Saint Silouan (and Archimandrite Sophrony after him) taught (and rightly so according to my experience and the experience of many others) that the best way to pray for anyone is repeatedly to say : “Lord have mercy”. That simple prayer asks the Lord to be His loving, forgiving, healing, restoring Self to whomever it is that we are praying for. At the same time as we are praying : “Lord have mercy” for someone who has really hurt us and abused us, the Lord’s love, passing through our hearts, warms our whole heart, softens our heart, and enables the forgiveness. We have so very much trouble forgiving. However, when we say : “Lord have mercy”, He enables it. There is no technique in forgiving. There is no if-I-do-this, this-will-happen automatic forgiveness. I cannot make myself forgive anyone. The only way forgiveness can come is to love. It has to be practised through this very simple, Gospel-based prayer : “Lord have mercy”.

Let me conclude by saying that in this parish we have a long history of the application of precisely this sort of Christian love. It is not perfect, because who is perfect ? However, we have a parish here which was founded on the love of Jesus Christ, founded on the desire to worship Him fully and wholly. This community has lived this way all these years – founded in love, and desiring to worship the Lord fully, with all the understanding, with all the heart. As a result of this long heritage (based on a good foundation which was fed and re-fed with love), this congregation here in n (even though it has changed its composition quite a few times over the years) has, in this love, borne plenty of fruit. There is some visible fruit amongst the people in this community. However, there is also a lot of not-so-visible fruit from this community in this province and in this diocese. You probably will never know all the things that the Lord has been accomplishing through you and your faithfulness, and the exercise of your love.

You have been faithful as well as you have been able to be. You have been put to the test quite a bit, and that part is not going to stop. Everyone who loves our Saviour, Jesus Christ, is put to the test – not by the Saviour (He is the One who protects us and supports us), but by the opposition down below. Also, broken people who cannot believe that He can love us like this will put us to the test quite often.

It is important that we prove that we are for real, and not just another spin-doctoring, window-dressing fake. However, if we continue to be faithful in Jesus Christ, the Lord will continue to multiply the offering. I might as well tell you about n, for instance. She is a product of the love of this community. You do not see her. Where is she ? She is in Ukraine. What is she doing ? She is, on our behalf, applying this Christian love in practical ways for people who need it. She is doing our work for us over there. I hope also that you do not forget to pray for her, and the people who are working with her over there. I hope people are not going to forget about this child sponsorship program, which has been so fruitful, and in which we Orthodox in Canada have been so involved.

Dear brothers and sisters, persevere in the love of Jesus Christ. God is with us. He loves us. He is always with us. There is no doubt about His presence in this community, and the fruit coming from His love in this community. Let the Lord continue to nurture you and nurture the people that He gives to you. He draws them to Himself by your personal witness of love in Jesus Christ. Bring people to Him, and He will do this nurturing. We do not do it. The Lord does it all. With our heart, soul, mind, and strength let us glorify our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The Apostle Paul exhorts us this morning to be strong and steadfast in love. He is speaking about his love for the Corinthians, although he expresses that love to everyone else to whom he writes, also. His love is quite general, and not partial to one place or another. What sort of love are we talking about ? In fact, there is only one sort of love for Orthodox Christians, and that is the love of Jesus Christ. This has been the case, in fact, since the beginning of creation.

However, we have never been able to understand properly what the Lord has been trying to give to us. He gives to us a relationship of love, a relationship of life, a relationship of co-creating, co-working in His creation. That is why He placed Adam and Eve in the garden : to be co-workers in His creation, to teach them to become complete human beings. However, they got distracted, just as we all so often get distracted. They went according to a different way. They wanted to become like God, since they listened to the temptation of the serpent.

Even with the Incarnation of Christ, even with His Suffering, Death, and Resurrection, even with all His Self-sacrifice and re-opening the way for us to the heavenly Kingdom, we still generally seem to prefer to do things our own way instead of the Lord’s way. From the beginning, our way has led to paralysis and corruption. The Lord’s way has always led to life. It has always led to health. It has always led to joy and energy.

If we hope as Christians to live a life that is pleasing to the Lord, we have to see the Lord’s love, appreciate the Lord’s love, and participate in the Lord’s love. We have to learn to love, and to behave in our lives according to the selfless love of Jesus Christ. It is not even our love : it is His. If we are able to love, it is because He gives us the strength, the energy and the Grace to do it, to live it.

Human ways are almost always selfish, just as we saw in the parable that the Lord told about the vineyard. Instead of understanding that they had life by being tenants in this vineyard, that everything they had was life-giving in this vineyard, the tenants decided that they would rather take it over for themselves. They decided to take over everything because the landlord was away. In the end they killed the heir in order to ensure that they could have it for themselves. However, by doing that, they undid themselves completely.

That is what happens to us every time we do the same thing. In our lives, we cannot run everything. We have to allow the Lord to run everything. According to our Saviour’s own parable, we have to be like birds or flowers, trusting completely in the Lord to feed us and to look after us (see Matthew 6:26, 28). When we are able to put our lives in His hands and to trust Him in this way, He fills in everything else, and enables us to live up to our potential as fruit-bearing creatures. Our responsibility on earth is not to be comfortable here but to be like yeast and salt as our Saviour said (see Matthew 5:13 ; 13:33). It is our responsibility to spread the joy and peace of His love, and to share it with the people around us. We must introduce the people around us to Jesus Christ by the way we live this life, and by the way we have joy and peace in Jesus Christ whom we bear. That is how our lives are to be lived.

That is why the Apostle Paul was able to be so effective, and why, we would have to say, he was able to be in his life so “durable”. Not many people are able to endure the things that he had to endure : being in prison, being beaten (and almost killed a number of times), being shipwrecked, and lost at sea. There is the famous example of what happened to him on his way to Rome for trial and execution. They were lost at sea and landed on Malta, where the Apostle Paul was bitten by a snake, and did not die because he prayed. He could never have done all these things unless he were filled with the love of the Lord. In Jesus Christ we can do what is apparently impossible otherwise : only in Jesus Christ. His strength is what we need. It is His strength, His life that we need.

It is important for us, daily, to take hold of that life and that love. Daily we have to ask the Lord to be with us, and to help us through all our struggles. We have to call upon Him in any sort of need, and trust that He will look after us, save us, and protect us, no matter what is happening to us. This is the Orthodox Christian way : to be conscious of Jesus Christ and His love for us, and to trust Him every moment of every day.

Let us ask the same Lord, our Saviour Jesus Christ, to send the Grace of the Holy Spirit to our hearts to enable us to put our lives in His hands more today, and even more tomorrow, and after tomorrow, that we may mature as He wants us to, and glorify Him in this life, and in the Kingdom of Heaven, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we were hearing our Lord asking His disciples : “‘Who do you say that I am?’” The Apostle Peter replies : “‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God’”. Our Saviour then says to him that flesh and blood had not revealed this to him but the Grace of God sent from the Father revealed it.

This is the essence of our Orthodox Christian way. The Apostle Peter was a man just like everyone else. He was tempted just like anyone else. He denied Christ because he was afraid. Several times he tried to run away from his responsibility because he was afraid. However, every time he repented, he turned about and he went back to Christ. Christ forgave him. Christ strengthened him. Christ made him strong by the Grace of the all-holy Spirit.

It is important for you and for me to remember that the Apostle Peter had his weak moments too. He was not a perfect person. He was a human being like you and I are human beings. He could be afraid. At the time of the Crucifixion and the condemnation of Christ, he was so frightened of what might happen that he pretended that he did not know Christ. We know all this from the Scriptures. Yet with tears he turned again to Christ.

Our way is the same way as his. You and I sometimes forget our way, and sometimes we forget Whom we are serving. Sometimes we fall down. However, when we have turned back to the Lord with tears and asked for His forgiveness, He is waiting to receive us with love. He is waiting just as He was waiting for the Apostle Peter to turn back to Him. He is waiting for us to turn back to Him, to take His hand, and to stand on the waves of the sea with Him, looking at Him, confident in His love. On that particular occasion when the Lord is walking on the water towards the boat on the Sea of Galilee, and the sea is stormy, and they are afraid, still the Apostle Peter says : “‘Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water’” (Matthew 14:28). The Lord does, and this apostle walks on the water (until he takes his eyes off Christ, and notices all the wind and the waves). He begins to be afraid, and to sink. However, as soon as he begins to sink he cries out : “‘Lord, save me’” (Matthew 14:30). The Lord takes him by the hand and says to him : “‘Why did you doubt?’” (Matthew 14:31) He pulls him up, and the Apostle Peter stands again on the water with our Saviour.

You and I, in the midst of the turmoil of life in the middle of the waves and disturbance of life, must be like the Apostle Peter and look at our Lord, and not at the trouble around us. We must look at the Saviour, and trust Him. When the Apostle Peter looked at the Saviour and trusted Him, not only did he stand on the water, but the storm was stilled.

Brothers and sisters, we are living in a very difficult time in human history. There are more wars than we could ever have imagined would be happening at the same time. People are feeling afraid everywhere. We, who are Orthodox Christians, must show them the way : the way of love and trust in Jesus Christ. It does not matter what happens to us as long as our eyes and our hearts are focussed on Him. He is our Saviour. There is no other. He will protect us. If the time comes for our lives to end, He still will protect us and draw us to Himself, and in love He will give us eternal life. That is how we live our Orthodox life – loving Jesus Christ, knowing Jesus Christ, and serving Him.

Our whole Orthodox history has been focussed on nothing else but knowing and loving the one, true Jesus Christ, and living in accordance with that love. He is the one, the only Truth. We live in that Truth, the Truth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who took flesh because of love for us. He was crucified, died, was buried, rose again from the dead, ascended into Heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, and sends upon us the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father (see John 15:26). We do not, as Orthodox Christians, have philosophical ideas about who that one, true, same Lord Jesus Christ is. We only explain our love. We only explain our personal encounter with Jesus Christ, and how that affects our lives, and how we live our life because we love Jesus Christ. Everything about us is concerned with that.

Today, when the Apostle Peter confesses Jesus Christ, our Saviour says to him : “‘You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church’”. Peter in Greek means “rock”. It is not only on the Apostle Peter himself, by the way. The rock is also the rock of his faith in Jesus Christ, and the Rock Himself, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. This is the foundation of our Church.

When times are difficult, when times are troubling, when we are feeling afraid like the Apostle Peter, when we have doubts like the Apostle Peter, when we are afraid enough even to betray and deny Christ like the Apostle Peter, nevertheless, let us recall the Saviour’s love. Let us turn about, take His hand, and stand in His love. Our life of love affects people everywhere around us. The Lord is using us as His missionaries of love. A person does not have to have a degree to be a missionary of Christ’s love. We just have to know Jesus Christ, love Him, and be willing to serve Him.

Brothers and sisters, like the Apostle Peter let us hold on to the hand of Jesus Christ. Let us look into His eyes and His heart, and allow Him to give us strength, hope, peace and the Grace to follow Him, and to convey His love to those who are hungry, thirsty, and searching. In this way He will draw them to Himself through us. Together, we will more and more glorify our Saviour, and God willing, enable this city to become an Orthodox Christian city.

This has to be the aim of our lives : to be yeast and salt in this city (see Matthew 5:13 ; 13:33) so that the Lord may bring this city to Himself. May we, together with this whole city, glorify our Saviour, Jesus Christ, in eternity as well as here, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we have heard about the unexpected catch of fish at the command of the Lord. As a result of this, there is in the Gospel according to Luke, the first recognition of the Apostle Peter and the others that Jesus might be the Christ. The apostles trust Him, even though they had not caught any fish all night. They let their nets down again, and they catch more than they could cope with. The Lord reveals Who He is. Always, the Lord’s revelation of Himself is based on love and life. He is giving us everything. It was through Him that all these things came to be, these things that were created. He is the One who spoke them into being at the command of the Father.

The Apostle Paul, who had been a persecutor of the Church, encountered the Saviour and was filled with His love. It was because of this personal encounter of love that the Apostle was able to endure so many things as we heard described in the Epistle this morning. He endured a lot of suffering. He endured it because he knew that the Lord loves him, and he loves the Lord.

Nothing has changed between those days and now. Everything about being an Orthodox Christian always has been based on this loving relationship. People have endured unimaginable tortures, difficulties and hardships for the sake of the love of Jesus Christ. Take, for instance, those Alaskan Fathers (and the martyrs in particular) whose memory we keep today. It was not a simple thing to walk across Siberia, but that is what these monks did. They walked from Valamo Monastery, which is close to the Baltic Sea, all the way across Siberia. Most of the walking had to be in wintertime, by the way, just to make it interesting, because in the summertime (just as in northern Canada) there is muskeg, quicksand, and all sorts of mosquitoes. They walked in the wintertime about 8,000 kilometres and finally came to the east coast of Asia, to around Vladivostok, I suppose. There they took a ship, and sailed through a very stormy area of the North Pacific for a couple of months more, and then arrived on Kodiak in Alaska.

They did all this for the love of Jesus Christ. They stayed there and defended the state of life of the Aboriginals against the money-grubbing fur traders, again, for the love of Jesus Christ. They competed as to who would have what part of Alaska to evangelise, for the love of Jesus Christ. No part of their life was easy, ever. For struggles and suffering, these men were in the same league as the Apostle Paul and all the other apostles, because all the apostles had nothing but difficulties in spreading the love of Jesus Christ.

However, this love of Jesus Christ is very contagious. Glory be to God that this love is so contagious. Those of us living here at the beginning of the twenty-first century, with all our conveniences, have a tendency to become lax. The phenomenon sometimes shows itself in Canada in the fact that people have become by and large “Sunday Christians” (not everywhere by any means, but it does show itself from time to time, because the Tempter is so clever with us).

However, it is important for you and for me, always, when there is a tendency to slide in that direction, to say : “Why am I satisfied with Sunday morning only ? Why have I become so lazy, and so ungrateful to God that Sunday morning is the only thing that I am ready and prepared to give to the Lord ?” Sometimes we may say this (or words to that effect) even grudgingly because we have to get up early on a day off. If we have gotten into that condition of heart, it means that we have been listening to the Tempter, and we have forgotten about the reason for our being. It is time then to call out to the Lord, saying : “Help me, and save me from my laziness and forgetfulness”. Let us not forget that the devil is the master of making us forget all sorts of things. Let us say to the Lord : “Save me from the evil one’s traps, and help me to remember who You are to me, Lord”.

The way of the Orthodox Christian is the way of being in His Temple with joy, and worshipping Him with love and with joy. It is the way of supporting our brothers and sisters by being here together, praising the Lord together, and by interceding for our brothers and sisters all together. This is the way of the Orthodox Christian, the way of showing our love to the Lord, and our gratitude to Him for everything that we have and everything that we are. We should not be satisfied just with Sunday, but we should be grateful for the opportunity to be able to be here in His Temple many other times in a given week (as many times as work and other responsibilities will allow).

It is necessary for us to make sure, brothers and sisters, that it is this love, this commitment to Jesus Christ, that is the centre of our life, the driving force of our life, and that nothing will ever get between us and Him who loves us and gives us life. Let us ask the Lord to give us the same love that these Alaskan martyrs had (Saint Juvenaly, the priest-monk, and Saint Peter the Aleut in particular), so that we may unswervingly confess Him with every part of our life in everything that we do, everywhere we go. With these martyrs, in the wholeness of our life, let us glorify our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

When the Apostle Paul is saying to us this morning that we were called out to be a distinct and separated people, he is not saying that we should live in some sort of sectarian enclosure surrounded by walls in a fortress sort of environment. He is not telling us to keep everyone else out so that we will not be contaminated by those around us. There are some people who mistakenly interpret those words in the direction of fortress mentality, but that is not at all what the Apostle means. He is saying that we have to be a distinct people, God’s own, and that the way of our life has to be clearly different from the way of the fallen world around us. Why ? We are to be this way because we know Who is the Truth.

We know Jesus Christ. We live in Jesus Christ. Because we live in Him, and because this relationship of living in Him is one of love and life, and joy and peace, we have to share it with the people around us. We always have to be careful to guard the peace that is within us, and to be faithful to Him who is the Truth. It does not take much for any one of us to fall into a hole, and live like everyone else who is without the Lord in this world. It is a complicated thing being yeast and salt in the world (see Matthew 5:13 ; 13:33), because we have to keep our identity. We have to be active. We have to be life-giving and creative in the world, and yet not take all the darkness of the world into ourselves, and become poisoned and paralysed by that.

You and I who are living in the world must keep our eyes perpetually on the Lord – not just the physical eyes, but the eyes of our heart. We must always remember Whom we are serving. When we are slipping, we must always ask for forgiveness and restoration. It is a daily exercise.

It was very interesting, flying back from Chicago the other day. It turned out that I was sitting next to an important person in the steel industry. He was a person who had an understanding of how life is supposed to be. For a change, I was not unhappy that I had my ear talked off for an hour and a half while I was in the plane, because this particular man, who has travelled, and is travelling all over the world, has a decent sense of how a human being is supposed to live. He is some sort of a Christian. He was talking about this Thanksgiving weekend, and saying that he is always teaching his family (and now he has grandchildren) that if we are going to be thankful in our life, the best way to be thankful is to keep giving. When it is his birthday, for instance, most of the time he does not let people give him presents. He gives presents to his family and his friends on these celebrations. He said that with regard to Thanksgiving, for him it is not just an occasion for eating and being tokenly grateful to God. For him, Thanksgiving is also an opportunity for making sure that other people have something to eat, too. This man had some sense about what is the right way to live.

Just this morning, the Lord Himself who is always giving to us, gave us an example of how this love has to be lived out. When the Lord comes across this funeral procession at the gate of the city of Nain, He encounters something that was very familiar to Him but of which we in Canada with our moderately socialised system are often not conscious. This widow’s only son, who is young, has suddenly died. She has no-one left in the world. A woman who is a widow with no family in that sort of a society (in those days for sure, but in most of the world still to this day), has no way to survive. In certain societies she could work and she could survive, but there are many societies in which a woman is not allowed to work publicly. For such a woman it means starvation ; it means begging on the street. It is a complete catastrophe, an implosion of everything, and it even could mean death. She has no-one to look after her and protect her, because that is how those societies work. The Lord in His compassion restores her son to her. We can imagine, to a certain extent, the joy of a widow, who, having lost her son, has her son restored to her. However, I think we cannot really comprehend the enormity of the joy, the magnitude of the joy and the gratitude to the Lord that she must have felt at that particular time.

You and I also have been given everything by the Lord very much in the way the widow of Nain had been given her whole life and everything about her life back to her. We have been given everything. It is important for you and for me, if we have not developed that habit yet, to begin to learn how to give thanks to God sincerely every day for all the wonderful things that He is giving to us : our lives, our families – everything. As we are raised in our western ways, we are so accustomed to thinking about life as though we are doing and accomplishing everything ourselves, as though we achieved everything that we have through some sort of enterprise in one way or the other. In such a case, the Lord is definitely on the back burner of everything. For us, He is the source of everything. If I have acquired anything, if I have anything that is good in this life, then it is because the Lord has blessed it to be so, and He has given me Grace to accomplish whatever it is. Whatever it is that I have and can do, I have to share it : I must share it.

This is the way of Christ, the way in Christ, the way in love. Nothing can be held in a closed hand. It must always be held in an open hand. Everything in our whole life must be held in an open hand. It is a perpetual offering back to Him in gratitude : an open hand and an open heart. Brothers and sisters, during this Divine Liturgy we are giving thanks. All our life as Christians is taken up with giving thanks. While we are giving thanks, let us seriously do what we are saying in our prayers : “Let us commend ourselves, and each other, and our whole life unto Christ, our God”. Let us glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The Apostle Paul hit the nail on the head regarding the behaviour and attitude of people, when he was speaking this morning about how some people in those days were being circumcised only in order to escape the criticism of those who were insisting that the Old Testament Law had to be followed to the letter. People who are behaving this way are behaving simply out of fear. The whole point is (especially from everything the Apostle Paul is saying) that the way of Christ is not the way of fear at all. The way of Christ is the way of love, of life, of actual freedom, freedom which North Americans do not really know and understand. It is the way of true freedom : living in love with Christ, doing God’s will because of love for Christ – not because we are afraid of what might happen if we do not obey the Law, if we do not do what He says. We do what He says because we love Him. We follow His example and we follow His path because we love Him.

This is the way of Christian obedience. It is not : “Do what I tell you ; do it because I say you should do it”. True obedience is imitation of Christ. I am going to offer my imitation of our Saviour because He loves me and I love Him, and I want to be like Him. This is how love works. People who are married have to know about that. People who have ever been in love also probably have to know about that, because we try to emulate the one whom we love. We try to be pleasing to the person whom we love because we love that person. It is not because of some sort of slavish attitude. If the relationship between a loving couple is really honest, if they love each other, then they try to be pleasing to each other because of love.

Thus it is between us and Christ. We try to be pleasing to Him because we love Him. That is the nature of Christian obedience. It is not just rules and rules and nothing but rules. In this parable today about Lazarus and the rich man, we have yet another concrete example of how Christians are supposed to live (or not supposed to live), as the case may be. The rich man is obviously going to the Temple, and he is making the necessary sacrifices. He is being carried in and out of his palatial estate every day, going about his business. Every day, this poor Lazarus is sitting at his gate. I do not think those were the days when they had curtains around the sedan chairs. In all likelihood, it was not possible for this rich man to be carried out, and escape noticing that Lazarus was sitting there. To him, Lazarus was like a piece of furniture. He really was not paying any serious attention to him.

This man sitting outside his door was his opportunity to practice his love of God. However, this rich man (like most people are doing even to this day) would have been saying : “Let him get a job ! What is he doing sitting there, leeching off me ? Let him get a job and do something constructive instead of sitting there, even if he is covered with sores and the dogs are licking him. Let him go and look after himself. Do not bother me !”

In fact, Lazarus had been put there by the Lord so that this rich man would do something for him. We have to remember that this was before the welfare state. If one did not have work, the only other alternative was to beg. Let us turn our attention to Lazarus himself sitting outside the gate starving. Who knows if Lazarus did not starve to death outside that gate because the rich man did not feed him ?

When the rich man dies, he sees Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham. Then the rich man becomes worried about his brothers, and asks Abraham to send Lazarus to his brothers so that they would be rescued from the same fate as his. However, if Lazarus should go to his brothers from the dead in order to warn them, what would be the effect ? Lazarus, appearing to someone in a dream, is going to be frightening. He is going to warn them that if they do not straighten up, they are going to come to the same place as their brother. Let us take note of the underlying environment of fear : Lazarus should frighten his brothers with fear, so that because of fear they should comply with God’s Law and do what is right, so that they will not come there. The fact is, you know, that the Lord does not want us to come into His Kingdom because of fear. He wants us to enter His Kingdom willingly with love and in freedom, not because of fear. The Apostle John tells us : “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). This is the way of the Christian life : to be without fear. Fear is one of the major tools of the devil by which he regulates our lives and paralyses us. Being afraid of God is not the best motivation for entering the Kingdom of Heaven. He wants us to come into His Kingdom in love, and in freedom.

Sometimes people ask me : “How do I show God’s love ?” Obviously, we are showing our love for God by being here together this morning in His Temple as we are worshipping Him. That is one way of showing our love for God. The second way of showing our love for God is by communicating with Him in our prayers every day at home. People who love each other do not ignore each other. If they ignore each other, they do not really love each other. If they are a married couple and never talk to each other, that is not much of a marriage. Love requires communication. It requires affirmation. It requires renewal all the time. It requires constant, mutual feeling in order to be truly alive.

This is how it is between us and the Lord. We need to be telling Him that we love Him. We need to be quiet with Him sometimes, letting Him tell us that He loves us. However, it does not stop there. It can never stop there, because Christian love must be expressed in concrete ways, beyond just talking. In a marriage, you cannot just say to your spouse : “I love you ; I love you ; I love you”, and leave it at that. That never suffices. Love has to be expressed in concrete ways as well. I am getting old now, and I find that many people have never seen the operetta, My Fair Lady. They do not know about the young poet who tells Liza in all sorts of poetry how many ways he loves her. She gets all irritated and exasperated, and she tells him to stop talking about love and to show her in concrete ways that he loves her. That is precisely what we have to show each other : that we love each other. We have to demonstrate to the Lord in concrete ways that we love Him as well.

How do we do that ? We do that by how we treat Lazarus. By that I mean by how we treat all the odd and strange people that the Lord puts in our path in any given day. How do we behave towards these people ? Do we condemn them for their weirdness, their eccentricities, their weaknesses, or do we thank God for the opportunity to meet such a person and say a good word to this person ? A good word is hard to come by these days. Mostly everywhere you go, people groan, moan and complain about this and that. They do not talk about anything good. They have forgotten all about the movie, Bambi. Thumper’s mother said : “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all”. People can be really gloomy these days. They need a good word. They need – we all need – to hear a good word from time to time.

The Lord does, in His mercy, send people to speak to us good words, nurturing words, helping words, correcting words sometimes, too. Without fear, we have to try to be an example of what it is to have joy in Christ : by how we behave towards a cashier in a store, for example. I saw two cashiers just the other day. Those poor persons looked so down that they did not want to talk. The relationship between human beings is painful to them, because people are often so grumpy – so they try to avoid communication. We have to show them the light of the love of Christ. Those poor cashiers that are beaten down by grumpy people have to be shown the love of the Lord. We have to show the love of Jesus Christ in countless ways, in all sorts of unexpected ways to unexpected people : people in airports, stewards and stewardesses on airlines. There are all sorts of persons that the Lord sends to us whom we must address with this love, with this joy in Christ. This love of Christ in us will die unless it is expressed. It must be expressed, and it must be expressed in all sorts of ways every day, and not only to our friends, not only to our family, not only to this congregation. It has to be expressed to the people around us every day amongst whom the Lord has placed us. We must express this love of Jesus Christ.

Then we will be following the right path. Then we will truly have hope of being in the Kingdom of Heaven because we will have allowed this love (which is the nature of life in the Kingdom of Heaven) to flow amongst us and through us, now, here, today, and every day. We express this love and share the Lord’s love without preaching, without quoting Scripture or quoting anything. We simply have to be a loving person to everyone around us. If the occasion comes to say something about Scripture, if the occasion comes to speak about Christ openly and clearly, it will present itself. A person will ask a question, and we have to answer. We have to be this love first. The Saviour is saying to us in a number of places that we have to be like salt and yeast in bread (see Matthew 5:13 ; 13:33). One cannot distinguish salt and yeast from the rest of the flour or anything else in the mixture. One cannot see where it is, but it is definitely active. Bread rises because the yeast is active, and the bread has flavour because the salt is active. This is how we have to be.

When it is time to be seen, the Lord will give that occasion. Just living this love with joy is the main thing of our life, especially as Orthodox Christians, because the Lord has given us everything. There is nothing lacking in our Faith. He has given us every tool, every resource necessary to live this life. We have to use those tools. We have to take them up, and we have to employ them.

Brothers and sisters, let us ask the Lord to give us the strength, the courage, the hope, and the strength of love to do exactly this. Let us concretely express His love, day by day, wherever we are, in the midst of whatever situation He provides for us so that everything about our life will declare His glory, together with that of the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

“‘Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?’” The Lord is underlining some important matters for us to pay attention to in our dispositions as we are passing through our lives. The Apostle Paul was telling us this morning that our lives as Christians are supposed to be lives that are full of gratitude. Everything about our lives is supposed to be full of gratitude towards the Lord for everything that He gives us, beginning with the gift of our lives. We are supposed to be giving thanks to Him every day for everything. The Divine Liturgy is focussed upon giving thanks to the Lord for everything that He is doing for us, that He has done for us, and that He will do for us. This Divine Liturgy, as with every Divine Liturgy, is rooted in giving thanks to Him for His love, His mercy, His life, for His tender care for us as well.

After they had asked to be healed, these lepers were walking back towards Jerusalem. They were on route to do what the Saviour had told them to do – to show themselves to the priests, which was in accordance with the Law. Why ? In accordance with the Mosaic Law, whoever is healed of a disease such as leprosy, has to go and be examined by the priests. The healing has to be proven, because a leper in those days (as is still the case in many parts of the world), is separated from society because people might catch their disease. These lepers lived in little colonies of poverty all by themselves. We do not see it at all in North America, but in other parts of the world such groups of suffering people still exist. These are people who have been separated out, and who are living in dire poverty. They are rejected. People who encounter them anywhere run away from them. In some movies like The Robe we can see what happens with lepers (although the lepers in movies appear to be too healthy – leprosy really is a wasting disease).

These people had to show themselves to the priests. The priests had to pass them through a series of tests to be absolutely certain that the disease was gone. Then they could be returned to normal society and to normal life. Let us also not forget that anything having to do with any weakness or any disease in those days implied absolute destitution. There was no such thing as welfare or universal health care such as we have here in this country. Even if it does not work all that well sometimes, it is still a big gift from God.

The nine, who did not go back to our Saviour to say thanks, were like many of us as we pass through our lives and experience the Lord’s blessings. Perhaps our experience is not as dramatic as being healed from leprosy (when the Lord healed parts that had already fallen away). When the Lord restores and heals people, He does not do a half job of it. He heals completely. I do not recall ever seeing an instance in the Scriptures when the Lord is healing, and He only half heals. When He is restoring these lepers, He is restoring their lost parts, too. These nine, walking along, going back to the city to show themselves to the priests, saw themselves healed. Just like most people, they probably said : “Oh ! Isn’t that nice ! I deserved that !” They just carried on, very happy of course, very joyful that they could return to normal society, but somehow saying : “Well, I deserved that ! I must have done something right”. They immediately forgot where the healing came from. They immediately forgot God’s Grace, His mercy. They immediately forgot to give thanks where thanks was due. Thanks is definitely never due to ourselves for all these mercies. Thanks must always be directed to the Lord. It is important for us when we are paying attention to these words, and the words of the Apostle, to recall in our future days this way of thanksgiving.

Orthodox life has always been full of little habits that reinforce this mindfulness. It is our custom, for instance, when we are going for a drive, to make the sign of the Cross and ask God’s blessing on the driver. Again, when we go out of the house, it has always been a custom amongst Orthodox believers that we make the sign of the Cross. We may even have a little icon near the door which we kiss when we go out and when we come back in, giving thanks to God for the safe return home (because we never know what can happen to us when we go out of the house – unexpected things can happen). We bless our children when they go out and when they come back in. We bless them when they get up in the morning, and we bless them when they go to bed, as we do for ourself. This is our Orthodox way. We bless food when we are beginning to prepare it. We bless food when we are eating it, and we bless God in thanksgiving when we have consumed it. Because of gratitude, we bless everything all the time because the Lord has given us something to be blessed, something to eat, somewhere to go, health to walk, health to drive, protection in the course of our lives.

Making the sign of the Cross on all these things has been the way Orthodox people have remembered to give thanks to the Lord. We need habits. We are not somehow perfect, intellectual creatures who can remember everything. We need these habitual little things in order to remember, because if we are really honest with ourselves, when we go about our lives without these things, we can be like Pooh Bear, a bear of little brain. At least, that is how I sometimes go about my life, and I do not suppose that I am so different from everyone else. Little brain forgets the most obvious things : forgets to say thank-you when gratitude must be expressed. Why do we forget ? Empty space. My mother accused me of that quite a few times. She was right, of course, because mothers always are.

Giving thanks is truly the essence of the Orthodox way. When the light of Christ is shining in our hearts, as we heard from the Apostle this morning, our lives shine with Christ’s love. This light helps us wash away all the obstructions, all the dirt, all the selfishness. It helps us remember Whom we are serving, where we stand, and what we are doing.

As we are standing here today in this Temple, we also are giving thanks for the twenty years of service that n has been giving to the Church. Looking at this congregation here, I am remembering how it was for us twenty years ago, in another building near by, all crammed in. I am remembering farther back than that. I am remembering almost 28 years ago, when I first came to this community : the garage with a few people. The first thing that happened to me when I came back from seminary that season was that I was instructed to lead the choir. 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.

However, I also am remembering how frightened everyone was. They were loving the Church, and loving Christ, but they were afraid of making mistakes (because many could be and were made). They were wanting to do things right for the Lord. It seems to me that we might be getting into that department in our worship here. Also, to some extent in our general parish life, we are getting into that department. By this I mean that I am referring to the danger of doing things right but paying too much attention to the externals and forgetting the heart. There was such a tendency before and there is such a danger now. In no way can we allow ourselves to think that we can rest on any laurels because You-know-who-down-below is always ready to trip us up when we start thinking that we have “got it made in the shade” or that we are really doing it right. We can always do much better.

Moreover, standing here today in the Temple, with the singing as it is being rendered to the Lord, I cannot help but think about how we are fitting in with other parts of the world where people are singing habitually with their whole hearts as a congregation, as it is being done here. They do it with joy. They do it with harmony. I saw this in Slovakia just last year. That made me remember this congregation. I am remembering you, wherever I go, because of these connexions. It made me also remember how in my childhood I was impressed with how the Welsh sing. I am thinking that Welsh people coming to this congregation and hearing the singing of this congregation would feel right at home, even if they did not recognise the melodies (but they would catch them quickly).

At the same time that we are giving thanks that we are able to give something good to the Lord, something beautiful to the Lord, it is really important for us not to start making any comparisons whatsoever between ourselves and anyone else. That is another one of our big weaknesses as human beings. There is the temptation to think : “Look how wonderful it is in this parish ! It is really beautiful to worship the Lord here ! They cannot do it better down the street. We are better”. We cannot ever think that we are better than anyone else. As soon as we think that we are better than someone else, the Lord is going to come and put out a little stick to trip up our heels, so that we fall flat on our face and recognise where we really are. That is what has been happening to me during my whole life, so I know that it is going to happen. If we take our eyes off the Lord and stop being thankful to Him for everything, we will get into deep trouble. The wake-ups are pretty sharp.

It is better not to have a sharp wake-up or a big trip-up, and fall down with a bloody nose or a black eye that lasts quite a while. If someone asks what happened, we can only say : “I tripped over my own feet (which is really what happened)”. It is important for us to look to the Lord, to give thanks to the Lord for everything, to be grateful to Him that we are able to offer all this worship and beauty to Him, and to be supportive to everyone around us. We must help them to do as well as they can, and even to do better, and not put them to shame. We must encourage them, help them, boost them up, strengthen them, because this is the Orthodox way. Let us not say : “Look at us ! Aren’t we great ?” Instead, let us say : “Do not look at my mistakes and my stupidity. Look to the Lord. Give thanks to the Lord for everything, and let me help you, too”. That is our way.

Continuing to give thanks to the Lord for everything, let us praise our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

I suppose by this time that many of you will have seen the very old movie called It’s a Wonderful Life. You can find it at your favourite video store. It is a good story, but it is not especially Christian (especially that bit about angels getting wings when bells ring). That is really a bit too sentimental and too far out. Nevertheless, this film has a good point.

In case you do not know the story, here is a little outline. There is a man who is tempted to kill himself because suddenly his life is in a terrible condition. He had been sort of wishing that he had not been born. He had been thinking that his life was a complete failure and useless. He had gone into bankruptcy, etc. I will not tell you the whole story. An angel comes to him and shows him how different life would have been if he had not been born. If he had not lived, all sorts of terrible things would have happened. He was very much a catalyst for good things in other people’s lives. When people are tempted by the devil in this particular way, that is one of the things that they are blinded to : what life would be like without them. They forget, even though their lives are very painful, that the Lord is using them for good in many unexpected ways.

It is important for us to remember that particular detail today when we remember the ancestors of the Lord. We hear the genealogy of the Lord today going back to the beginning, fourteen generations times three. All these people that are listed in the genealogy are people who prepared the way for the coming of Christ. They are all people whose lives said “Yes” to the Lord. They were preparing for the Mother of God herself to say her ultimate “Yes”. Her “Yes” in life was not just “Yes” to the Incarnation, but “Yes” to the Saviour in everything in her life. If any of those persons had not been born, she would not have been prepared properly to become the Mother of God.

Now we are living after the fact, after the fact of the Incarnation. The same thing goes for us – for you and for me. Each of us the Lord creates uniquely. He loves us uniquely. As painful, difficult, and full of woe as sometimes our lives may be (sometimes to ourselves appearing useless), our lives are not useless. It is important that we go through all these difficulties in our lives with the eyes of our heart on the Saviour and with our confidence in Him.

I had a phone call early this morning when I was just waking up from some place in the east, from a family who are relatively new immigrants to the country, and who have had considerable difficulty. They arrived here as English-speakers, so it is not as though they had all sorts of linguistic difficulties one way or the other. Nevertheless, they were facing the difficulties that immigrants face. They were a whole family of people who had no permission to work. They had no money, and they were struggling and struggling. However, they were determined to keep their hearts on the Saviour, and to do what they had been taught to do – that is to trust Him, even though they just felt like giving up and running away. As a result of their faithfulness, their taking prosphora every morning, and their taking holy water every morning as believers can do, the doors finally opened. They are finally getting their passports and work permits. They simply wanted to call me this morning and give glory to God for the fact that this was finally happening. Despite all the difficulties they had in getting themselves settled in this country, the Lord has opened the doors for work to come. This family I knew in Europe quite a number of years ago. They have the potential to be very beneficial to our Church in this country. They have the gifts to be very good for our agriculture as well. I am looking forward to seeing what the Lord is going to do with this family.

The same thing goes for you and for me. We struggle. Yes, we do struggle, but the Lord is with us. However, without us, without our persevering and our struggling, other people would be falling down and getting lost. The Lord does not always show you and me who it is that is affected by our faithfulness, although sometimes we get a hint. What is important is not what use I am in the world. In the end, we are so materialistic in North America. The value of most things is limited to their usefulness. An ant is useful to a human being for what ? A hippopotamus is useful to a human being for what ? That is too often how we are assessing things. One person is useful to another human being for what ? What a degradation of God’s creation !

Our value is not in our utilitarian merit. Our use is in who we are : the fact that we exist in the first place. That we affect other people for good is all great, but the important thing is that God created you and me. He created us because He loves us. Who cares about the exact processes that doctors and scientists now understand and were taught in school. Human beings have been born and have been created like that for many thousands of years. What matters is that everything is because of God’s love. What is important about creation is what is its unseen foundation.

The source of everything is the fact that God loves His creatures. He loves you and He loves me uniquely, and He loves us all together as His children. Our value rests in this love that produces us and this love that sustains us. This love, this communion between us and Him is the meaning and purpose of all our life and all our interpersonal relationships. Yes, it is good that there are very many unseen, unknown, positive effects from the struggle and the life of each of us. In the end, it is still most important that God loves us. We love Him, and we are living in that love.

Let us respond to the demonstration of God’s love for us, His intimate care for us that is shown in this genealogy : the tender, unique, personal care He gives to each of us. Let us give thanks to the Lord for that. Living in the context of that, let us live our lives glorifying our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

It is necessary for us to have the right attitude when we are going about living our lives in Christ. The Beatitudes, which we just heard and sang, and then heard again read in the Gospel, are important for our everyday life. Through the Beatitudes we may understand how blessing comes from God, and how we live our lives under His protection, with His blessing.

In North America where we are all living (and where most of us grew up), we are taught in every aspect of our secular life that we do everything ourselves, that we acquire everything ourselves, and that we make everything ourselves. If there is any reference to God, it is sort of on the edge. Generally, in North America we are trained to think that God is out there somewhere, disconnected from everything. That is not at all the truth. This is not the way it is. We Orthodox understand how things truly are.

“God is with us”. We love to sing that at Christmas-time and Theophany-time (although that particular group of verses is available to us in Compline and also in Great Lent – although usually only monks get to do it then because parishes are generally not serving that service). We have a musical setting that most of us can sing, which is very beautiful and expresses the emotion of our hearts. We certainly like to sing these verses : “God is with us ; understand all you nations, and submit yourselves, for God is with us”. In those words we are asking all the nations, ourselves and everyone else also, to submit themselves to God’s love. That is the thrust of the Beatitudes.

We know that if we want to accomplish anything, it has to be with God’s blessing. Therefore we must turn to Him. We must forget ourselves. We have to stop thinking that we are accomplishing everything ourselves. It is easy to say, but when we are raised the way we are, it is not even possible for us by ourselves to stop thinking like that. We cannot do even that by ourselves. It is necessary for us to understand that even for that, even to acquire a correct understanding of how things are in the universe and in the creation, and in our relationship with the Lord, we have to ask for the Lord’s help. We have to ask for the Lord’s help for everything. That is why, in doing this, Orthodox Christians in various parts of the world have been able to survive the most terrible torments that human beings can suffer, and still have joy, and still have hope. There are all sorts of books and stories about believers in the Soviet Union who lived through and survived the gulags of Stalin, Khrushchev and others. These writings describe how they spent tortuous years there in horrible prison camps. Still the believers were able to express joy. Still they were able to express their confidence in the Saviour. Still they were able to remain faithful and to be blessed by the Lord.

When people came to this country a hundred and some years ago with nothing (I do mean nothing – so much of nothing that modern Canadians cannot even imagine that), they got off the train in the forest, and with an axe and a shovel built themselves a life. Yet these people, believing in God, turning to Christ, with His help managed not only to establish themselves well but to provide well for their children and all their other descendants. It was because they were believers, because they loved the Lord, because they turned to Him and trusted Him for everything.

Saint Nicholas, whose feast-day we are celebrating, was just such a person who put love for the Lord first in his life. Because of this love for the Lord, because he knew the Lord in prayer, in his heart, in the context of the Divine Liturgy and in the context of his whole life, he was able at the First Council in Nicaea to defend the truth about Jesus Christ against the wrong ideas of Arius. He supported the true Faith of Jesus Christ, and the true Faith prevailed at this First Council. Much more than that, however, he is known for how he practiced this love by caring for other people, how he provided for the poor, how he rescued orphans, how he protected widows, how he fed the hungry, how he visited the sick and those who were in prison. He lived the Beatitudes. That is why at the Divine Liturgies which are served for holy people like Saint Nicholas (and he is not alone amongst saints of this sort), we read the Beatitudes, because he, and others like him, lived the Beatitudes. They lived the Beatitudes because they loved Jesus Christ.

As a bishop, Saint Nicholas was truly what a bishop should be to his people : a loving father, a father who cares about his flock, who cares about his children, and who tries to provide for them. He is the example to believers on all levels (from lay people all the way to bishops) because he practiced the love of Jesus Christ. He did what Jesus Christ Himself would do for other people. He always turned to Christ asking for direction and for understanding, and the Lord gave it to him. Until this day, people turn to Saint Nicholas. Mostly, it seems that they turn to him when they are travelling, because after his death, Saint Nicholas is showing us that he is particularly concerned with those who are travelling. He rescues people in danger of death on the sea. We often have an icon of Saint Nicholas in our cars. He still cares about the small details of our lives 1500 years and more after his death. He cares because he loves Jesus Christ. He hears our pleas to him for help in our travelling, and in whatever else we ask of him. He cares about us and he prays to the Lord on our behalf because of his love for Jesus Christ. This love has never changed, but only multiplies after his death and his entry into the Kingdom with the Lord.

This is our Orthodox path : the way of love. It is the way of caring for other people, and the way of caring for the creation in which we live. Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople is very well known for his concern for ecology. This is not merely because of some basic principle. It is because this is the Orthodox priority. We are poisoning things so badly in our environment ; we have to be responsible in cleaning it up. We Orthodox have to lead the way in this part of our life, too. It is appropriate that the Patriarch of Constantinople is going to do this. The rest of us ought to pay attention to this as well. It is for us to ask the Lord about how we can do our part in caring for human beings, for animals, for the soil, for the trees and rocks. The Lord, as He inspired ( and does inspire Saint Nicholas), will inspire our hearts also. He will renew and multiply our love, and He will help us do what is right. It is not that we have not been doing a lot that is right already, but He will help us do even more. We have the role, the responsibility as Orthodox leaders and examples, to do this. May the Lord give us all strength to follow the Saviour in the same way, with the same love as our holy Father Bishop Nicholas, and with him let us glorify our Lord 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

We live in an environment that is very skeptical, very doubting, very separated from God, in fact. In the West, there has been a long history of misunderstanding about the relationship between God and human beings. I was reading a book by the current Pope which is good in itself. It is about the Divine Liturgy, and is mostly all right, but he shows in the title precisely what is the difference between them and us. In the title he says : “God is near us”. However, we always say : “God is with us”. Especially when we are speaking about the Divine Liturgy, and receiving Holy Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, we must be saying “with”, and not “near”. In the West, God seems to be thought of as “out there somewhere”, “looking at us from a distance”, and therefore disconnected from us. Some people do not even think that He is looking at us.

We, on the other hand, understand that the Lord is with us. He is in us. He is everywhere, and nothing exists apart from Him. We express it in our tropar to the Holy Spirit : “Everywhere present and filling all things”. There is no separation between Him and what He created because, if there were, it would not exist. His love sustains everything that exists. Everything that exists is held together by His love. It originates in and emanates from His love, and continues in His love.

I find it important, every time we hear this Gospel reading, to say : “Pay attention”. The Lord is being told that His Mother, brothers and sisters are outside waiting. (First cousins, and even second cousins are considered brothers and sisters in many cultures.) The Lord is saying : “‘My mother and My brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it’”. That is not to say that the Mother of God and His relatives did not hear the word of God and keep it (especially the Mother of God). In fact, that is why she is who she is to us and to the whole world. She hears the word of God and she keeps it.

In this way, we are enabled to be brothers and sisters of the Lord, ourselves, in that we hear the word of God and keep it. Our kinship with the Lord is not based on blood, which is the whole point of the Epistle. It is not based merely on blood, inheritance and genes. Rather, it is based on our loving relationship with the Lord. Everything is based on, and rooted in our relationship of love. As the Apostle Paul was saying, rules and laws tend to produce an attitude of slavery in us, and we do things because there is a rule that says we have to do it. However, doing something because we have to do it, even if we do it, does not bear the same Grace as doing something because we love to do it.

There is a blessing that comes with being in the Temple of the Lord on Sundays or on feast-days because I have to be there as an Orthodox Christian, because it is a rule. However, the blessing goes far deeper in our hearts, and has much more effectiveness in our lives if we come to the Temple every week and every feast-day (and even oftener if possible) because we love to be here worshipping in the Temple of the Lord, in the presence of the Lord. It is because of love that we are here. We are here because we are free to be here. We freely choose to be here. We freely want to be here. This being here produces much deeper roots in our hearts and in our lives than being here because I must be here. Still, that is not to say that the Lord is confined to what I just said. There have been many people who have come to the Temple of the Lord because they were told they must. After being in the Temple of the Lord and worshipping the Lord over a period of time, the fire of God’s love is struck in their hearts. They no longer come because they must. They come because they want to, because of love.

When we are living in the environment of the Grace of the Holy Spirit, rules (which are not always the best things to live by because of a tendency to slavery) become life-giving, nevertheless, because of the Lord who is the Giver of life. The Lord is not confined by what a bishop is going to say about rules, regulations, his preference for other ways, and his various sorts of prejudices. The Lord knows the hearts of His children, and He comes to the hearts of His children and turns their hearts softly into love. He brings them to life. The Lord puts them on fire, and He enables these burning hearts, full of love for Jesus Christ, to bear much fruit.

It is not for nothing that there has been even up to the present day the example of women who were unable to bear children for one reason or another. When it became impossible according to normal human behaviour to have children, then they did. Sarah was the first and greatest example, I suppose, but there have been many since then. The Lord does this not only to give consolation to the parents who are childless, but also to show everyone that the Lord is the Lord of all creation. He does what He wills in creation in order to give us hope, in order to give us confidence, in order to remind us that He does love us, and that He can overcome all our limitations.

The Lord prepares the way for the birth of His Only-begotten Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Underlining this preparation by these various sorts of events, He shows His love for us ultimately in the “Yes” of the Mother of God, when the Archangel Gabriel came to her, and in the continuing “Yes” of the Mother of God throughout the course of her life. It is this which enables her to be to us, even to this day, the sign of what it is to be a Christian, the sign of what is the Church. The Lord shows His great love in sending to us His Only-begotten Son, so that we may be able to be united with Him, and live in Him.

We celebrate today His love, His tender care for us and for all our spiritual ancestors. Let us ask the Lord to freshen up the fire of our own love for Him in our hearts today, and ask Him to help us to be able, with the same sort of joy and lightness that the Mother of God had, and does have, to serve our Saviour, Jesus Christ, and glorify Him together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The Incarnation of the Word of God is what the world has (and always has had) great difficulty accepting, because the Incarnation means the putting on of humanity by the Son of God. All sorts of people, somehow, cannot swallow the fact that God would empty Himself in this way. Such people cannot bear to face the fact that God took flesh, that Jesus Christ truly is the Son of God, that this Child who was born in a manger is the Love of God incarnate. They invent all sorts of other theories about who He is in order to satisfy their intellect. They try to reduce Him to some sort of philosopher, or social “nice guy”, or an avant-garde activist of some sort. However, that He would be simply the Love of God incarnate, come to earth to restore communion between us and God the Father, is beyond them. All the substitution theories by the way, all those other theories that people have come up with in their desire to make Christ more “palatable”, do not work, logically speaking.

The only way reconciliation could be achieved between us and God the Father was by the Incarnation, just as it happened. You and I, 2,000 years later, are singing the same hymns, more or less, and reading the same Gospel stories as Christians have been doing all this time. We have been encountering personally the same Lord Jesus Christ that the Apostle Paul encountered, and by whose love he lived : the same Lord Jesus Christ that all the apostles encountered, and in whose love they lived and died. It is the same Lord Jesus Christ that Christians have been encountering personally all along. My favourite old man that I love to quote from my childhood, Ole Olson, always used to say over and over again, quoting from the Epistle to the Hebrews : “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). That is how it is, exactly. He is the same Lord Jesus Christ, whom we all are encountering, in whatever time we live, and wherever in the world we live, and in whatever culture we live. It is the one Lord Jesus Christ whom we are encountering, in whose love we live, and in whose love we die.

It is very important for us to keep this in mind especially now, at this time of the year, because remembering it now might help us to remember it during the rest of the year. Being an Orthodox Christian is not an intellectual exercise. To be an Orthodox Christian does not require a degree in philosophy. To be an Orthodox Christian requires love enough to do as the Mother of God did, and always has been doing : that is, to say “Yes” to His love. We have to live in accordance with His love.

In order to live in accordance with His love, our hearts have to be in communion with Jesus Christ. We have to be talking with Him regularly. We have to be refreshing in our hearts our experience of Him by reading the Gospels regularly and the Epistles, too (and that is not to exclude the Old Testament, because it is all bound up together). We cannot have the New Testament without the Old Testament : it is all one. Jesus Christ sums everything up. The whole Old Testament prepared for Him. As we were hearing, prophecies were fulfilled in the movements of Joseph and his family in accordance with the Scriptures. No-one would have known what to expect, nor been able to understand the events when they occurred if the way of the Lord had not been prepared.

Even though our Lord came as promised, He did not come as various people had decided He must come. In their minds they turned Him into a political figure, not a Child in a manger in a cave in Bethlehem, the lowest of the low, apparently. They expected Him, as did the three Wise Men, to be born a king in a palace. However, He was not. The Lord is always dealing with us in paradoxes. Our hearts have to be attuned to Him so that we can recognise Him in our hearts.

As they have been my whole life, many people these days are frantic about the Second Coming and the Antichrist, and so forth. Fear, fear, fear. Fear is the primary instrument of the devil. Fear is not the characteristic of people who love the Lord. In fact, the Apostle John said : “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). If we truly are Christians, if our hearts are attuned to the Lord, and we are living in Him, our lives would be marked by lack of fear. Whenever the Antichrist may or may not show up as a person, we, in our hearts, have to be able to know the difference. According to the Scriptures, we will not know the difference by how things appear, by glitzy activities. We will not know the difference by all sorts of fancy argumentation. Like the apostles on the road to Emmaus, it will be because our hearts burn within us, and witness to the love of Jesus Christ that we will be able to tell the difference between the true and the false Christ. It requires a communion of love in our hearts.

This communion of love is accompanied by tell-tale signs. Warmth, joy, peace, stability, goodness, kindness, gentleness accompanied by firmness are all indications that Jesus Christ is present. It is for us to nurture our hearts through continual exposure to the Scriptures, and daily prayerful communication with the Lord. Then we will have real hope of being able to recognise our Saviour at the Last Coming, and, just as importantly, to recognise Him at work in other people around us and in the creation.

May the Grace of the Holy Spirit enable our hearts to have such longing for our Saviour’s presence, that we will every day without hesitation turn to Him in everything and, with love, glorify the all-holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we are celebrating more than one feast at the same time. The two most important things that we are celebrating are the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ and the repose of Saint Basil the Great. It may seem strange that, as we sing the hymns, the Feast of Saint Basil in some respects takes precedence over the Feast of the Circumcision. However, the Feast of the Circumcision was not established until very long after the celebration of the departure into Heaven of Saint Basil had been firmly established. This is one reason why we still serve the Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil the Great on this day. His memory and his writings are extremely important for us. Therefore, the way we are keeping the memory of these two events may seem unusual. This is merely one of our Orthodox paradoxes.

Today, when we are celebrating the Feast of the Circumcision of the Lord, we are paying special attention to His obedience, and that of His whole family, to the Law. He was raised in the tradition of Moses as everyone else of Jewish tradition was in those days. He grew up in a pious family. We understand that they were definitely observing the Laws of the day. Our Saviour came from a long line of fourteen times three generations of people, many of whom suffered for the sake of the Promise of the Incarnation of the Saviour. All such people were faithful to God even though they were still waiting for the fulfilment of the Promise. Even though, as the Apostle Paul said in one of his writings, they had not seen what was to come, yet they were faithful to God, as Abraham was. Abraham trusted God even though it did not necessarily seem logical sometimes. This is an example for us of trust in the Lord. In fact, there were many other people, likewise, who came before who were, because of love, obedient and faithful to the love of the Lord whom they knew, but could not see. Now we have seen God in the Incarnate Christ. He lived His life in accordance with the Law, but as we see in the Gospel, He was living in accordance with the spirit of the Law, and not always according to the letter of the Law. He put things into their correct perspective. The Lord showed us the way : that obedience in love is the way of freedom.

According to the way the Law had developed, people were observing the Sabbath : it was extremely important to obey the law of rest on the Sabbath. All sorts of rules developed to make sure that people did not do any sort of work accidentally on the Sabbath. As we hear our Lord saying, and the Apostle also saying, people were so busy obeying the little rules that they forgot that “‘the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath’” (Mark 2:27). What is this Sabbath ? It is the one day in the week on which we are supposed to rest. Of course, nowadays, the memory of the keeping of the day of rest has been neglected and then almost universally forgotten. Nowadays, we do not bother to rest, and that is not good. It is crucial for us to learn that the Lord directed us to rest, and we should rest regularly, somehow. When I am talking to you about these things, I am talking to myself as well, for even to this day I have not properly learned how to do this.

According to the Gospel we heard today, our Lord was growing up in obedience to the Law. His family had been in Jerusalem in obedience to the Law, and then His Mother and Saint Joseph lost track of Him on the journey home. They went back to Jerusalem to find Him, and they found Him in the Temple of the Lord where He was talking to the elders. He loved to be in the Temple of the Lord. This has always been characteristic of Orthodox Christians throughout the past 2,000 years. The faithful people love to be in the Temple of the Lord. They love to come to the Temple of the Lord to pray and to worship Him and to be in His presence. In some parts of the world where the churches are not yet locked up all the time (unlike North America where the churches are now most often locked up all the time), people go to church ; they light candles, and they stand there and pray for a while. People love simply to be there in the presence of the Lord in the Temple of the Lord.

In North America these days, and in the West in general, people are making a little too much of the “fear” of God. There is an unhealthy fear of God, somehow, when they read the Gospel. They make the mistake that people have been making for 2,000 years and more. People somehow cannot accept that, because of His love, God would empty Himself, take on human flesh, live as a human being, fully, yet remaining fully God, and allow us to kill Him, as it happened, so that He would rise from the dead on the third day in order to conquer sin and death. Many people have had difficulty with this, and they still do. Somehow, they often try to limit Christ to being merely some sort of human being or merely a philosopher, in order to make Him more acceptable to their reasoning. However, God is not and cannot be boxed in like this. God is not limited like this in any way. If the Lord should choose to empty Himself, God is God, and He can do what He pleases. It pleased Him to empty Himself, to become a human being for our sake in order that He would save us from ourselves. Truly, that is what He was doing – saving us from ourselves. This is the extent of His love for us. So very many people have such a hard time accepting that the Lord could love us that much. Yet, He did, and He does.

It is essential to understand that our Saviour, in growing up as a human being, was showing us the example of how we should be : living in complete harmony with God. He was showing us the direction. If that is not enough for us, His Mother, also, following in this loving path of obedience to God’s will, is for us an example of a human being obedient to the will of God. She said “Yes” to God. This “Yes” is always bringing life. It brings suffering, too. All who follow the Lord in this world suffer, because the prince of darkness is not happy if the light shines in the darkness. In the Gospel according to Saint John, chapter one, we read that the light is shining in the darkness, and the darkness tries to overcome it but does not succeed (see John 1:5). In our lives it is essential that we Christians, bearing Christ, remember that we are lights shining in the darkness. We have Christ’s light, and if we have difficulty in our lives, it is connected to this same opposition to the light. Before our time, very many other Christians have suffered because they were shining with the light of Christ in the dark. We likewise have to take courage from the Saviour, because He is with us. We, who have been “baptised into Christ, have put on Christ” (Gal 3:27). He is with us, and He will be with us. He will protect us.

Saint Basil the Great, whose memory we are celebrating today, is one such light who had to suffer very much. He did not suffer the death of martyrdom, but, in those early days, he had a very difficult life, nevertheless, being faithful to Christ in a society which was not Christian. Yet, 1700 years after his death, he is venerated as being one of the greatest of the shining lights. The Lord will do for you and for me similar things. He will bring light in and through you and me, but we have to be faithful. Here in n, it was thought to be almost impossible that this parish could continue to be an example of Orthodox living in this community. Indeed, many people believed that it was far too difficult, and they had given up hope completely. Yet the Lord chose faithful people to come here again, and renew the life and the visible presence. The Lord is with us and He will bless us. There has been a complete transformation, and God is blessing. The Lord will continue to strengthen and bless those who labour for Him.

It is important for you and for me, always, to keep our hearts and our minds on the Saviour at all times in love. May we always be ready to respond promptly and to do His will, like Saint Herman of Alaska who said (as we must all learn to say, and to live it out) : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”. In doing so, we will be glorifying the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The consequences of living in the unity of love between us and God, and the unity of love amongst ourselves is very great. This is the way Christians are supposed to be living in contrast with the way of the world. The way of living the Christian life is the way of living a life in Grace.

When our Lord is baptised in the Jordan today, things change, and they continue to change. Today, participating in the baptism of Christ in the Jordan, we are going to be blessing water. We are blessing this water today because Christ is blessing the water Himself by descending into those waters. We will put the Cross into the water today, blessing the water with Christ Himself, because the Holy Cross is the representation of Christ Himself. When the Cross goes into the water, it is Christ Himself going into the water. The consequences are greater than we imagine. What are people doing with the blessed water afterwards ? Most people put it in the fridge, and they forget to do anything with it. This blessed water is not to be put on a shelf and looked at. We are supposed to take this water and use it. It is for the blessing of our homes, and not just at this time of the year. It is to be used at any time when there is a difficulty.

A long time ago, I was a priest living in Winnipeg in a district that had many Aboriginal people in it. These Aboriginal people had a sense of life which is very like the Orthodox sense of life. Whenever there was a big fight or argument in their household, the grandmother of that household (and there was not only one who would come) came to the door saying : “Please, Father, can I have some holy water ? There was a big dispute in our house, and I want to clean it up with this holy water”. She knew what to do. That is what we are supposed to do with holy water. Properly pious and knowing Orthodox Christians drink a little bit of holy water every day first thing before taking anything else.

Why do we do this ? This water is given to us by the Lord for our physical and spiritual health. It is not a superstition. We westerners are very frequently skeptical about everything and say that it is a superstition. It is not superstition at all. The Lord has confirmed this in a very strange way. An atheistic Japanese scientist was studying the crystallisation of water at the freezing point. He discovered that the crystals are not all the same. The crystallisation of water takes many different forms. There are different sorts of water. When water is healthy and clean, the crystals are quite lovely. They are uniform, balanced, and beautiful. He found that polluted water, or water that has been around anything that is dark, negative, or evil, is all deformed, twisted, and sometimes not even capable of crystallization at all. It is just ugly and deformed. However, if anyone blesses this water, or says nice things to this water, it begins to be cleaned up and cleared up. He found that when a Buddhist person said nice things to the water, the water was particularly nice. This was his study. Then Russians, being as they are, found this study, and they decided to take the experimentation even farther. They did very many more experiments on the crystallisation of water in different circumstances. Then they paid special attention to water that had been blessed in the Orthodox Church. The water is, in fact, purified by the blessing. The crystals are extraordinary. They are saying now that one part of this clean water will purify, I think, 600 parts of turgid water.

Scientists now, therefore, are confirming to us that what we are doing today does have its beneficial consequences. When we are blessing a lake and saying that all the water in the lake is blessed, we can expect it to be so, not only because of our faith, but also because we have scientific confirmation that water is changed (as people have always understood), by Christ’s descent into it. Dirty water can be healed by the presence of Christ. Since we are made up mostly of water ourselves, we can understand that the Lord is present in us, one part healing 600 parts, and creating beneficial effects in ourselves.

We are not so different from this water, ourselves, in our environment. We, carrying Christ Himself in us, can have a similar effect on the people and society around us who come in contact with us. Just as the water is healed by contact with Christ, human beings are healed also by their contact with us who bear Christ to them.

Let us give thanks to God that He is so loving to us, so merciful to us. He cares so much about us that He will overcome our skepticism, our doubts, and our weaknesses. For us in the 21st century, He will reassure us in a loving, kind way, that His Word is absolutely true. When He says something, it is. It is not merely a philosophical proposition or an idea. We can take Him at His Word. His Word is our Saviour, Jesus Christ, who descends into the waters of the Jordan today. He heals the waters of the Jordan. He heals the waters of the world. He heals the waters in us human beings. He heals His universe. We poison things very often by our bad attitudes, by our falls, by our rebellion. Nevertheless, it is healable by the love of God who is the Creator and Sustainer of everything, to whom we give glory : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

We are celebrating today the Birth of Jesus Christ. This Birth is not like any other Birth because Jesus Christ is not merely an ordinary human being. He is not a philosopher. He is not a social reformer. He is the Son of God and the Saviour of the world. There is a big difference between Him and any other great person who has ever been before or since, because He is both God and Man.

As we have heard, when the Archangel Gabriel came to the Mother of God and said that she would bear a Child, it was by the Holy Spirit that she conceived this Child and not by a human being. God took flesh. The Mother of God said “Yes” to the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit came to her. God emptied Himself in His love for us. Even after 2,000 years, we do not understand His love very well.

For some reason we have difficulty accepting that He truly does love us, and that He is, in fact, with us. Human beings are always trying to limit Jesus Christ from being God and Man to being an ordinary human being, a nice person with nice ideas (and perhaps even a competent philosopher), but nothing more than that. If Jesus Christ were only that, there is no point in our being here today. Philosophers come and go. Their ideas come and go. They live. They die, and their ideas very often die with them. Jesus Christ is not a philosopher.

People tried to make Jesus Christ into a politician, and they tried to build kingdoms upon Him. That does not work, because Jesus Christ did not come to establish a kingdom on the earth. Why would He ? He is the King of the whole universe. We do not understand. People try to say that Jesus Christ is a social reformer because He cared about the poor. He cared about widows and orphans, and looked after them, yes. However, He is not a social reformer. Jesus Christ does not bring systems to us ; He brings love to us.

There are many people who are disillusioned with life and with faith, sometimes. We often hear (especially in North America) that people do not want to belong to an organised religion. I always say, and many others as well are saying : “Then come to the Orthodox Church because we are not organised. It looks as though we are organised and that there is a system, but it is not so”. Because Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church, it is His love that operates the Church, that gives life to the Church. It is His love that makes everything happen in the Church. It is His love that saves us.

It does not matter if one might be a bishop or a patriarch. None of us can make things happen just the way we want because we think we are so good, and such good organisers. The Holy Spirit is much greater than any of us. The Holy Spirit guides the Church. Even bishops and patriarchs must be obedient to the Holy Spirit. They must be obedient to Jesus Christ, Himself.

Jesus Christ is born today. He puts flesh on His love. In order to prove to us His love, He empties Himself. He shows us by His life how you and I are supposed to live. It is leadership by example. He empties Himself for the care, for the love of other people. Emptying Himself in love, He gives Himself to you and to me. We come crying to Him all the time, asking Him for help, and He gives us help. Many times when we are not even thinking to ask for help from Him, He is giving us help. He is sending His angels to protect us in dangerous traffic, for instance. He is helping us to remember things that we would otherwise forget. He is sending people to us to encourage us when we are feeling depressed. We do not even remember to ask, and He still sends.

This is what we are giving thanks to God for today : the love of Jesus Christ, who emptied Himself, and still empties Himself in His humility, bringing life wherever He goes, bringing hope wherever He goes, bringing joy wherever He goes. This is what He gives to you and to me. He asks of you and of me that we share this love, this joy, this hope, and also this peace.

Canada is a difficult country in which to live as an Orthodox Christian. It is difficult in Canada. Nevertheless, Jesus Christ is our true hope. As we sang last night : “God is with us”. Jesus Christ is with us. If we keep our hearts directed to Him, if we keep asking Him to help us in everyday small things, if we ask for His blessing on everything that we are doing, He will continue to be with us. He will give us the strength that we need to persevere as Christians in this difficult country and in this difficult life. Because He is the Word of God, His Word is truth. He, Himself, is the Truth (see John 14:6). He says to you and to me at the end of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew : “‘I am with you always, even to the end of the age’” (Matthew 28:20). He speaks the truth because He is the Truth. We can trust Him. It is important for us to turn to Him.

Let us lift up our hearts and rejoice today in the Birth of Jesus Christ, the Birth of Love. Let us glorify our Saviour, the embodiment of love, in the whole of our lives, and do as Saint Herman of Alaska teaches us to do. He says : “From this day forward, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”. In doing so, we will glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

When we hear the Gospel about Zacchæus, we know we are already on the threshold of Great Lent. It is important for us as we begin the fasting period to hear about the essence of Great Lent.

We begin with the lesson of Zacchæus. Zacchæus was a man who spent his whole life taking everything from everyone because tax collectors did that in those days. It was not like Revenue Canada which is fairly well controlled, where we more or less get our money’s worth out of our taxes. In the days of the Roman Empire, Zacchæus (and others like him) were agents of the occupying power. He was a Jewish man, a son of Abraham, and an agent of the Roman Empire which had conquered Palestine. The Jewish people were oppressed by the Roman Empire, and they considered Zacchæus to be a traitor because he was an agent of the conquering power, and was collecting taxes on behalf of the emperor.

Moreover, people like that had a free rein to collect whatever they wanted. They knew they had to collect a certain amount from the people in order to satisfy the tax requirements of the emperor who demanded that the tax collector “fleece the sheep”. He was told how much money he was supposed to collect each year, and he went about collecting it as well as he could. The tax collector in those days also had the right to collect whatever he could in order to live, and in order to do the tax collecting. They collected very much from the people, and were often considered to be extortioners. When it was tax time, the people, therefore, hid everything they had in the woods or in the ground.

That was the environment of Zacchæus, and his work until this particular time in his life. Today, we see Zacchæus very much wanting to meet our Saviour. There was something about the events of his life that made him want to encounter Christ. It could probably be said that the Holy Spirit was moving in his heart so that he wanted to encounter our Lord. He did not necessarily know everything about why, but he knew that there was something out of order hidden inside of him. He must have known that Jesus Christ was able to put things into the right order, and just that very thing happened today. Zacchæus, being short, climbed up into a sycamore tree so that he could at least see Christ. He was not expecting to encounter Him, but at least he wanted to see Him.

Jesus, who is the Knower of hearts, knows what was going on in the heart of Zacchæus. The Lord comes to the tree and tells Zacchæus to come down. Then the Lord goes to Zacchæus’ house. That He would go to Zacchæus’ house was outrageous in His day. Even though He was controversial, Christ was considered to be a respected teacher. Now we see him going to the house of a tax collector, who was considered to be a robber and a traitor to his own people. Jesus has dinner with this man. To have dinner with someone like that was also very controversial. To have dinner with someone indicated that those who were eating together were somehow in communion with each other. It was a sign of fellowship with one another. A respected person, known for teaching what is right, would not ordinarily eat with someone like Zacchæus.

What is important here is not simply obeying the letter of the Law. The Saviour, who is the Originator of the Law, also knows the spirit of the Law. In the presence of the Saviour, the heart of Zacchæus is turned about. It is not so much what is said at that dinner that touches Zacchæus. It is being with the Lord. We see it in other places in the Gospel. Often, when our Saviour is in one place or another, He does not say anything in particular to someone about something, yet things are happening around Him. His being there, wherever He is, produces a reaction. In Zacchæus’ case, it is the reaction of repentance. As we can see, Zacchaeus’ whole life is turned about, inside out and upside down. He repays fourfold the things that he had taken from people. He had a great deal of money, and he could pay back fourfold things that were taken unrighteously. However, the main point is not the restoration of everything. The main point is that Zacchæus’ life was turned about in a moment from that encounter with our Saviour : which is exactly the meaning of repentance. Just as it happened with the Apostle Paul, his life was turned about. Zacchaeus turned away from selfishness to selflessness. Even more than that, his whole way of life changed. He turned about from self-love to love of Christ and love of everyone and everything around him instead of being closed in on himself. Instead of grasping everything, he became open to meeting the needs of others.

He is our example of how things are supposed to be for us as we pass through this lenten period. We are supposed to be turning away from ourselves, turning to Christ, and turning outwards. The way Zacchæus gave away half of his goods is also part of what we are supposed to be doing in Great Lent, and not just in Lent, but all the time. We are supposed to be living our lives open-heartedly and open-handedly, sharing with people around us who are in need. Almsgiving, in other words, is a major characteristic of how we express ourselves in Great Lent. This should happen not only in Great Lent, but also in the whole course of our Christian living.

These particular words of the Apostle Paul to his disciple Timothy today are very important words for us. He is exhorting the Apostle Timothy, a young person, to be faithful to Christ, and to be a good leader in the Church. How is one to be a good leader in the Church ? Engraved on the back of most Crosses that priests are first given is the citation of these very words that the Apostle Paul gave to his disciple Timothy : “Be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity”. The shepherd has to lead the flock into the Kingdom. The shepherd cannot push the flock into the Kingdom. The sheep will only follow the shepherd. If the shepherd tries to push them, they will resist in every way. However, if the sheep know that the shepherd loves them and if the shepherd walks forward in the direction they are supposed to go, the sheep will follow him. Our Saviour has told us in the Gospel according to Saint John, that He is the Good Shepherd who gives His life for the sheep. The sheep hear His voice when He calls them by name and they follow Him (see John 10:1-16). Therefore the Apostle tells the Apostle Timothy to be a good example to the people because he is ordained to be their spiritual shepherd, and they are his rational sheep. If he goes in the right direction, they will follow.

The sheep (especially rational, human sheep) know all too well when the shepherd is out of kilter and falling apart. The Tempter tempts everyone, but especially priests and bishops, because they are the leaders. He tries to distract them and pull them out of the right way so that they will get lost, and their people also. However, Big Red does not take into account that the Holy Spirit is active in the hearts of the sheep. If the shepherd gets out of focus, as sometimes happens, the sheep instinctively feel that there is something out of kilter with him.

What should the sheep do ? Often they start to do what they ought not to do – complain and grumble. That is not at all the way to make things better for a priest who is out of focus. The more the sheep grumble, the worse they make it for the shepherd, who somehow has become lost. The Desert Fathers teach us that the Christian way is to cover with our cloaks or coats the sins of our brother and sister who are slipping. What is important is that when the sheep see that something has gone wrong, they agree to pray together for the priest so that the Lord will touch the priest’s heart, and put him back into focus. They must not even try to force anything themselves. They offer their priest to the Lord and ask Him to fix it. When they do that, it becomes possible for the priest to hear what is necessary to hear, to find what is wrong, and to repent. It is very much a question of mutual responsibility, living the Christian life. Yes, we are shepherds and sheep, but we are not exactly shepherds and sheep like the animals and their keeper, because we are called “rational” sheep. Even though we behave stupidly like sheep very often, at the same time we have the advantage of having received rationality in the mind and in the heart. We do have the ability to hear the Holy Spirit speaking to us.

As we are about to enter Great Lent in a few short weeks, let us ask the Lord to keep our hearts turned about. This turning about of our hearts in repentance is a daily exercise for Orthodox Christians. Every day we have to have the determination to turn to Christ because our selfishness keeps dragging us down and Big Red keeps distracting us. We have to ask the Lord to help us to remember to keep turning to Him. We always have to ask Him for help. We need to remember to turn to Christ. We have to pay attention to His example because He is the supreme example of how we should be living. His Mother is the second supreme example after Him of how we should be living life – a life that says “Yes” to the will of God, a life that is full of love, a life that is life-giving, a life that is turned to Christ.

Let us ask the Lord to make us a good example to other people (as the Apostle directed the Apostle Timothy), so that we can encourage them to go in the right way, to see the joy, the hope, the peace and the strength that we have in Christ. Let us follow Him willingly because of this love, this joy, this peace, confidence, and hope that we have in Christ. Let us endure every sort of difficulty because of our assurance and our confidence in Christ who is with us. Let us glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In the parable that our Saviour is telling us today, there is a big contrast between the attitude of the father and the attitude of the elder brother. As we know, the loving father was waiting and praying for the return of his erring son. The fruit of the patient father’s love is that when the son made his return in penitence, hoping only for compassion and mercy from his father, the son was received back into his place in the family. His relationship with his father was restored. He resumed his place in his family although he had no more inheritance.

This is a very important lesson for us because in our hymns we are always equating God, our heavenly Father, with that father in this parable who is waiting for the return of his erring child. We are the erring child. The loving, heavenly Father is always waiting for us to come back. He is waiting for us to wake up. He is waiting for us to come back to His loving arms, to life. That is why He gave His Only-begotten Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ, in the Incarnation, in order to open that door finally for us, to break down all barriers so that we could make the journey home much more easily.

After 2,000 years of communal, corporate experience of the Only-begotten Son, our Saviour, we still have difficulty accepting that God loves us like that. We still have the same tendency to wander, to look elsewhere, to do something else because we have a hard time accepting that God could and does love us like this. Sometimes we get into a mentality or disposition of soul and heart which is so dark that we think that God cannot forgive us. We fall into the condition of beating ourselves up, and such a condition is very poisonous ; in fact it is deadly poisonous. The fact is that, if we turn to Him, take His hand, and let Him, God is quite capable of forgiving, no matter how horrible the things are that we have done. The only way that God cannot forgive you or me or anyone is if we refuse to let Him. He does not force this forgiveness and this love on us. He waits for us, like this loving father. This loving father did not go chasing after his son everywhere. He waited. His heart was always with his son, and he waited. There are many people, in fact, who have children who have difficulties in life, and they find themselves to be in precisely that same position with their children, even today. It is important that we remember this lesson of love, which teaches us about the love of our heavenly Father for us, and His readiness to accept us when we turn about. We cannot be like that elder brother, because if the elder brother takes over in our lives, we are going to be lost also. The elder brother did not recognise the love of his father for what it was, and he condemned his brother, disowned his brother when his father did not. We can notice that when the elder brother is criticising the father, he says to the father : “‘this son of yours’”. He does not say: “my brother”. The elder son had already thrown away his brother.

We have to be very careful also about ourselves. Let us remember two simple examples of the depth of God’s readiness and willingness to forgive. There is the example of the Apostle Paul who had blood on his hands : he was responsible for the deaths of many. He stood by at the death of the Archdeacon and First-martyr Stephen. God forgave him, turned him about, and made the Apostle a powerful witness for His love. There is also the example of Saint Mary of Egypt. Before her repentance, she delighted in bringing people down with her. She said so. It is written in her Life that it is so. She delighted in dragging people down. Then, through the prayers of the Theotokos, she encountered the Lord, and she turned about. She is now our prime example of repentance (not that we all have to go and live as she did in the Jordanian desert for forty years). However, we do need to repent, to turn about from death to life, from darkness to light, from self-love to the love of God as she did.

If ever we are tempted to think that we are unforgivable, it is good to remember those two persons in particular. There is nothing that the Lord is unwilling or unready to forgive. We have to be ready to let Him work this forgiveness in us. We have to accept it.

We live in a society that is completely out of balance. It is completely inside out and upside down. It is topsy-turvy. Let us keep in mind those words of the Apostle Paul in today’s Epistle reading about the right attitude towards our bodies, and how we should be behaving towards our bodies. He says : “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?” Our bodies need to be treated like the temple of the Holy Spirit. We need to look after them with the right attitude – not as our own possession, but as God’s gift to us. Indeed it is His gift to us. If we mistreat our bodies, it is a sign that our hearts somehow are not in order, and something needs to be straightened out. I know this from my own personal experience quite well. How we behave towards ourselves and our bodies is a symptom of how we truly are inside. If we are mistreating our bodies, it is a strong sign that somehow there is something out of kilter in our hearts. There is something in our hearts that makes us against ourselves. We are condemning ourselves ; we are angry at ourselves for something or other. It is important for us to find out what it is, and put it straight with the Lord, and put everything into its proper perspective.

On the other hand, we live in a society that deifies human bodies, and expects impossible things of human bodies. The majority of us Canadians have a tendency to be on the large size. On the fashion programmes on Air Canada TV, we see anorexic people wearing clothes most Canadians could not fit into, because Canadians are too well fed. We do not see real people – such as most of us who tend to put on some extra weight.

Nevertheless, last week I had a very strong experience of the absolute extreme of North American distortion and forgetfulness of God. In Las Vegas there was the Assembly of the Diocese of the West to choose their nominations for their next bishop, and I had to represent the Metropolitan there. I could not recognise it as the same city that I saw in 1979 when I passed through. It is a “counterfeit” city whose main economy is based on what is fake – imitation this or imitation that. It is Disneyland for adults. However, it is not Disneyland either. Standing in the centre of that city, one cannot but see that the focus of most of the city’s commerce is geared to dragging people to the bottom. One cannot escape noticing what is the mainspring of that city. Gambling is the most addictive of all the addictions. It seems that one cannot go to any activity (such as a play) without going through a casino hotel. The major attractions there are geared to hooking people and dragging them down. When it comes to harlots (on which the young man in today’s Gospel wasted his inheritance), this so-called “profession” is completely legal in that city, and advertised. Sad to say, this is the most visible sign of what is distorted in our North American society. There is so much that is geared to dragging people down into a pit.

When we live in an environment like this, it essential that you and I remember and keep in mind what the Apostle is saying to us this morning. It is important that we go home and reread the Epistle to the Corinthians. We must graft these words into our hearts, and remember what is first in our life. First in our life as Christians is Jesus Christ. We love Him because He loves us, just as the Apostle said (see 1 John 4:19). Our relationship with Him is a relationship of love. In that relationship everything else works out in a life-giving way. We do not need to be enslaved to anything. We do not need to be addicted to anything because the love of Jesus Christ can set us free from all these things. The love of Jesus Christ can turn about our attitude towards ourselves. The love of Jesus Christ can clean up our hearts. The love of Jesus Christ can help us, and enable us in every way to have a healthy attitude towards ourselves, each other, creation, and everything. The love of Jesus Christ can help us to be joyful, peaceful, strong, stable, loving and healthy members of the society in which we live. We can be signs to other people that there is a better, healthier way than being afraid of weighing a kilogram or two extra, looking a little large, and not being absolutely gorgeous. However, being alive instead, alive and life-giving in Christ, spreading His joy and His life is what truly matters.

As we approach Great Lent, it is extremely important that we do not enter it attacking ourselves for our shortcomings. It is essential that we enter Great Lent simply saying to the Lord, and to all our brothers and sisters : “I am sorry. I did not live up to what I could do, and by your prayers, I will try to do better. I will try in Christ to be more authentically me as He created me to be”. Before we enter Great Lent, I also have to say that to you. I have to say to you that because of my short-sightedness, forgetfulness, fear, and other similar frailties, I have not been able to live up to what I am supposed to be as your bishop, and the bishop of the diocese. I ask for your forgiveness and for your prayers, and I will do the best I can, by your prayers, to listen better to the Lord especially during this Great Lent, and in the coming year. I will pray for you, too, so that we all together will be able to come to Pascha with joy and new life. Therefore, this year, may Pascha bear great fruit in the hearts, minds, and bodies of each one of us so that everything about us may more and more glorify our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

As we are about to enter Great Lent, let us remember the freedom that we have as Christians, about which the Apostle was just now speaking to us. Freedom comes with living in a relationship of love with Jesus Christ. As we are entering Great Lent, it is important for us to be careful how we observe the customs of Great Lent. 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.

The Apostle is speaking to us today about how we are supposed to be behaving because of peoples’ sensitivities as to what has been offered to idols, and what has not ; what it is right to eat, and what it is not right to eat. I have heard often enough in Vancouver in Chinese or Indian restaurants : “What is safe to eat ?” For a Christian, it is all safe to eat if we know what we are about and if we have our wits about us. When we invoke the Lord’s blessing upon the food, that food is offered to Him in thanksgiving. Our partaking of that food is in the context of Jesus Christ who is the Provider of that food. It is not the fault of the food if the people who are preparing it think that it has something to do with their idols. They are mistaken ; we are not. We have the freedom to partake of this food as long as we invoke the Lord’s blessing upon it. However, as the Apostle said, there are some people who simply do not quite “catch the drift” yet, and they are still bound with fear. They are afraid that something bad will happen if they eat food that has been offered to idols. For their sake, we do not eat that food, but not because we do not have the freedom to do so, and not because we could not eat it. However, because we are being sensitive to the fragility of our brothers and sisters, we do not eat it.

This is how it has to be, too, in Great Lent. Some people, because of health conditions, have recommendations from their doctors and the blessing of their clergy to eat things that are not strictly following the rules, because food is also in the category of medicine. For instance, if someone is a diabetic (and some people are severe diabetics), and does not eat according to the rules, that person could die. The doctors tell diabetics, for the sake of their life and their health, that they must eat certain things in certain ways. They are given a particular blessing to do whatever they are doing. Nevertheless, they have to pay attention to the sensitivities of their brothers and sisters who are trying to observe the fast and the abstinences correctly in accordance with the custom. The diabetics, for example, cannot go in front of everyone else and eat liberally whatever the doctors say they have to eat as though to say : “Ha ha ! Look at me !” If a person yields to the temptation to flaunt what they are able to eat because of an illness or a weakness, then the flaunting takes away the blessing, and the freedom can become shackles. The diabetic, or whoever it is, has to be sensitive to other people’s observances during Great Lent. This person should protect whatever weakness there might be in the brother or sister who is trying to observe the fast carefully so as not to lead them into temptation by eating what s/he must eat but which the others should not eat. All this is concerned with maturity in the love of Jesus Christ. Living as mature Christians, we have freedom in Christ.

On this Sunday of the Last Judgement, we are presented with what will happen at the end of all things when everything is gathered up by God into the Kingdom. What will happen then ? We live in a society which has all sorts of people being driven by fear about what might happen at the end, and about when this end will come. In their fear they try to be ready all the time for this. I remember since my childhood all sorts of stories about people who have heard from someone that the end of the world will come on this day or on that day. These people drive up onto the top of a mountain, and they wait and they wait and they wait. Nothing happens, and they go down disappointed. This still does happen ! These people seem to think that they can have an advantage because they have some sort of secret knowledge about the end of the world, and therefore they can more prepared than anyone else. Our Saviour Himself said : “‘Of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of Heaven, but My Father only’” (Matthew 24:36). It is no-one’s business when it will happen.

Our business is to live a Christian life that is filled with the love of Jesus Christ, and that is pleasing to Jesus Christ. Then we will have real confidence that everything will be well, and that we will have life in the Kingdom. As I have said before in many places, we are standing here today as we stand every Sunday, and at every Divine Liturgy, in the Temple of the Lord, in the presence of the Lord. We sometimes sing a tropar that says : “Standing in the Temple of Your glory, we think that we are in Heaven”. And we are. We are standing in the Temple of the Lord in Heaven right now in His Kingdom. This Table on which the Divine Liturgy is being served is the throne of God. From this throne Christ Himself will feed us. We are saying in our prayers that we are offering to Him everything, including the Second Coming (as though it had already happened). When we are standing here in the presence of the Lord, we are in the Kingdom, as it were, on the Last Day as though the end had already happened. We are standing eternally in the Kingdom, in the presence of the Lord of Life, the Lord who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

As we are here day by day, week by week, in the Temple of the Lord, it is important that we take confidence that His love for us is such that it does not matter when the actual end of everything will come. What matters is that we love Him now, and that we are faithful to Him now, and that this faithfulness will bring us into the Kingdom of Heaven because the Saviour loves us. As we say in other prayers, we acknowledge that He does not want us to perish. He wants us to be with Him, to live with Him in the Kingdom. He does everything He can in order to bring us there with Him.

With our hearts and our minds firmly fixed on the Saviour, let us live our lives in confidence in Him, offering our fasting and our abstinence and everything else to Him in love, because He is the Source of everything. He gives everything to us. Even if we work for it, He still gives it to us : it comes from Him. Let us glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

A Saturday in Great Lent is as appropriate a time as any for the tonsuring of a monk. The main point about being tonsured into monastic life is to embrace fully, formally, openly, the way of asceticism. This way of asceticism is entirely concerned with putting Christ in front of everything else in life. Everything else takes second or third place, but Christ is first. That is why the monk has to remember to take up the Cross and follow Christ. The monk is wearing the paraman (which is the Cross) on the chest and on the back all the time. The monk is always remembering Whom s/he is following and supposed to be emulating. The monk expects (as we heard from the instruction) to receive the same sort of treatment that Christ did.

N has experienced a fair amount of that already in one way or another, and it will not stop now. What she has been given with monastic tonsure is extra Grace so that she can go the whole way with the Lord : following Christ, and putting Christ first. It is true that with monastic tonsure does come a certain Grace because it is not for nothing called “second baptism”. The monk truly takes seriously and literally the baptismal hymn : “As many as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27).

We all will hear (and n also, I am sure, has heard and will hear) various criticisms and comments about monks living by themselves and being part of a parish, and not a monastic community. However, the problem is that when you are in Canada, it is not that easy to achieve the coenobitic ideal all at once. In Canada there are only two canonical women’s communities, and they are Greek-speaking. Before n even began, she was already too old to be accepted by them (even if she had wanted to try them). In fact, she began this journey before they began.

What does this mean – the archdiocese having monks living by themselves here and there ? In the first place, there is more than one way to live the monastic life. Although the coenobitic life may be said to be the ideal and the best way to go about it, it is not the only way (and besides, there have always been solitaries). As we see from monastic history, there have been other ways. Monks have grown to be good examples of Christians in other environments as well. It is just harder. In Canada, we do not have much possibility to start any communities. We all have to begin somewhere. Monks began somewhere, too. It has been like that in Russia and other places, where people simply began to try to live as monks where they have been living and working. This is like what Metropolitan Anthony (Bloom) said when he wrote that in order to start to pray, a person simply begins. A person simply prays. Thus it is the same in the life of repentance as a monk. How does one do it ? Just begin. Take up the Cross, and follow Christ.

A monk is not a “professional Christian”. Despite the propaganda or the misunderstandings to the contrary that we are surrounded with in the West, monks are just human beings like everyone else. They are people that have decided to take up the Cross single-heartedly and single-mindedly. In fact, wearing black and standing out like a sore thumb in the midst of people is actually to their advantage. Tempted as monks may be one way or another to one type of a fall or another, they are watched by their brothers and sisters and held accountable by these brothers and sisters. The fact that these spiritual siblings are looking to this person’s life of repentance for encouragement in their own perseverance can give the monk the courage to persevere, and not listen to the Tempter.

The benefit of living in a parish like this one in particular is that this community is truly quite honest and forthright. If n should seem to be getting confused or if n is barking up the wrong tree somehow in the course of the future of her life, and she seems somewhat to be wandering from the beaten path, one of her brothers or sisters will question : “Why are you doing this ?” “Why are you saying this ?” “Why are you thinking this ?” She will either have to show that she is not barking up the wrong tree and that she is not off the beaten path, or she will say : “Oh, I did get lost”, and she will come back onto the path. In some respects, parish life is not so different from a monastic community except that parish people tend to be rather too polite, and tend not to speak quickly or openly about things that need to be said. It is my experience that in this parish, people are rather forthright, and that is good. It is a good environment for n.

Being a rasophor is being a perpetual beginner and never in fact getting officially started. N has been a rasophor for so long that I do not remember what she looked like before. (I have known of monks being rasophors even for fifty years, but there are not many of those.) Perseverance as a rasophor certainly demonstrates a determination to follow Christ regardless of how ridiculous it may appear to others (or even to oneself sometimes). That is how it is with monastic life. Trying to be obedient, simply trying to follow Christ, the monk stands out like a sore thumb. Therefore, it is possible to become confused and to feel sometimes just plain ridiculous. On the other hand, both the prayers and the instruction are addressing this conundrum. People will say : “That is ridiculous”. However, some people also said that our Saviour was ridiculous. We hear it on the news these days. People are still saying that the Saviour is ridiculous. Nevertheless, He remains always the Saviour, always the Life-giver.

N has to demonstrate, as we all do as Christians (because, by the way, being a monk simply means being a serious and focussed Christian), perseverance in love for Jesus Christ. We have to be ready to try to show Who is Jesus Christ by this sort of life of service, of suffering, of endurance, but mostly of joy. None of this happens without joy. If there is no joy, then there is definitely something out of balance. That is one barometer for us all. If we feel joyless ourselves, we can tell that we need to go to confession quite badly because something is out of focus, and it is time for a check-up. If we see a brother or a sister whose joy has disappeared, that is the time to pray for that person, support and encourage that person because darkness has somehow come and distracted and confused him or her. This praying expresses our mutual responsibility as Christians. This is how we confess the Saviour. This is how we demonstrate that we are not ashamed of Him. We have hope, therefore, in this environment of love and joy that the Lord will not be ashamed of us when we come to face Him at the culmination of all things in the Kingdom. Rather, may we hear His voice say to us : “‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a few things; I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord’” (Matthew 25:23). There may we all together glorify our Saviour for eternity, together with the Father, and the life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The importance of this Gospel passage is that it is a demonstration of God’s love and forgiveness for us. The two go together. The Lord wants to draw us back to Himself, and He wants to forgive us. The Pharisees and the ordinary people around Jesus Christ today cannot comprehend how it is that a human being can forgive sins, because they do not know Who Jesus truly is. They think that He is perhaps a prophet, perhaps a gifted man, but they do not understand, as we do, that He is the Son of God. To demonstrate that He has the authority to forgive sins, to make it clear, He says to the man : “‘I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house’”. And he does.

Human beings always seem to have difficulty accepting the love of God for what it is. That has been our problem and our weakness from the time of Adam and Eve, in fact. Ever since this beginning, we have had difficulty accepting the depth of the love of God, and living in accordance with His love. We always try to limit the One who is unlimitable. He, Himself, it is true, limited Himself when He became Man, but that was His own self-limitation, His own self-emptying. We cannot do the same for Him. We cannot close Him in and measure Him somehow, and make Him more acceptable to our limitations. It is not we who pull Him down from Heaven, and reduce Him to our level. Rather, it is we who have to come up to Him. It is we who have to grow up into Him. The way human beings have been behaving is still contrary to Him who is the Truth, the Absolute Truth.

We must have a correct understanding of our relationship with Christ. Two things stand in the way of our relationship with Him. It seems that we human beings are always afraid. Fear is therefore often our first response to everything. We often see it in the reflex answer “No”. Next, we have our pride and our self-confidence in our so-called intelligence. In the time of Saint Gregory Palamas, there was a big controversy between the East and the West. This was at the time when philosophical Scholasticism had grown up and taken precedence in Christian life in the West. This means that in the West all theology was subjected to philosophical and logical systems. On the other hand, Saint Gregory Palamas was telling, and is telling us that the most important thing for Christians is to know the love of God, and to live in the love of God. The intelligence, the logic, the reasoning – everything has to be subjected to that relationship of love. Saint Gregory Palamas tells us that we can know God, not in the essence of Who He is, but in His energies. We can know the Lord as He reveals Himself to us. However, we cannot know the Lord so as to control Him.

That is one reason, by the way, why we never speak the Name given by God to Moses as to Who He is. This Name of God, a four letter Hebrew word (the Tetragrammaton), is so holy that traditionally the Jews do not pronounce it. Rather, a substitute word is provided. This word is translated “the Lord”, and we Orthodox Christians also have always used this substitute word. For the past few hundred years, Western people have been trying to pronounce this word under the influence of so-called enlightened logic. “Jehovah”, or “Yahweh”, or something like that, is not even close to the correct pronunciation. On the other hand, even if it were close, it is completely inappropriate for human beings ever to try to pronounce the Name of God. For human beings, to name something is to control it. We put names on things so as to have control over them. There is a famous Protestant saying : “Name it and claim it” which is related to this. This “Name it and claim it” (which really means “Name it and control it”), when it comes to a relationship with God, is crazy. God is not some sort of cosmic cow that anyone can milk if just the right technique is learnt. God gives His gifts and everything to us freely. We cannot extract anything from Him according to some technique.

Who do we think we are, anyhow, to approach God with such insolence and such pride – to think that we can milk God like a cow ! God gives His gifts to us, and we live these gifts in accordance with what the gifts are, and in accordance with the nature of our love which gives life to those gifts. We are not all the same. As the Apostle Paul said, we do not all have the same gifts (see 1 Corinthians 12:4-6). Each of us has unique gifts because God creates each of us uniquely once, and only once. God is not in the recycling business. We do not go and come back. This is our one time. God is not limited in how many people He creates, because His love is unending. It is His love that creates us all.

There is a relationship of love between us and God. This love is the raison d’être of our life. We must live in the love of Jesus Christ. We have to do all things, pronounce all words, pray all prayers, in this relationship of love with Jesus Christ. God created us for this reason : to live in a relationship of love with Him. Saint Seraphim of Sarov tells us that the goal of the Christian life is to acquire the Holy Spirit. He meant that we should live the whole of our life in the love of Jesus Christ. That is the aim of our whole life. Let us enter into the love of Jesus Christ, continue in the love of Jesus Christ, grow in the love of Christ, do all things, think, and pray in the love of Jesus Christ. Let us at all times and every where glorify the same Jesus Christ, together with the Father, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen

When hearing the words of the Gospel today, we may be reminded of the call of Nathaniel at the beginning of the Gospel according to Saint John. Our Saviour has seen Nathaniel under the fig tree, and He tells him about this when Nathaniel comes to meet our Saviour for the first time. When our Lord says : “‘When you were under the fig tree, I saw you’”, Nathaniel says : “‘Rabbi, You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’” Our Saviour replies : “‘Because I said to you, “I saw you under the fig tree,” do you believe? You will see greater things than these’” (John 1:48-50). He says the same thing to the Apostle Thomas (as it were) : “Because you are able to touch My wound and to know that I am truly risen from the dead, you believe. However, there are more important things than these by which to believe”.

For us, it is important that the Apostle Thomas was doubting, because there always have been, even until this day, people who do not accept that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. However, there truly are eyewitnesses of His Crucifixion, His Death, and His Resurrection from the dead. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the writings of such eyewitnesses. On television, radio, newspapers, and magazines today there are people who try to pretend that the Gospel proclamation is made-up fiction.

However, the Gospels are not made up at all. They are eyewitness accounts, just as the Apostle John says : “There are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25). It is not only the eyewitness accounts of the apostles on which we depend, but it is also the common person-to-person experience of the Risen Jesus Christ that Orthodox Christians have. Over the last 2,000 years, in our prayers and in our lives, we Orthodox Christians have been having a personal encounter with this very Jesus Christ who is risen from the dead. Our experience of Him is the same as the experience of the apostles about which they wrote in the Gospel.

Because he was so reassured by the Saviour’s Resurrection appearance, according to some source the Apostle Thomas first went to Egypt and preached the Gospel, as did the Apostle Mark. Then he left Egypt and went to India and preached the Gospel (lived the Gospel I should say, because when we speak about preaching the Gospel, we mostly mean living the Gospel). He went and lived the Gospel, first in north India, and then in south India. Finally he was killed by Hindu priests near the city of Madras. Most of the apostles went abroad bringing the truth of the love of God in Jesus Christ, and most of them were eventually killed. However, they sowed the seed of Christ’s love everywhere they went. The seeds that were planted by the Apostle Thomas remain in south India to this day. There are tens of millions of Orthodox Christians in south India, and even though they are not in communion with us, they still consider themselves to be Orthodox. These Indian Christians in south India take very close care of their family genealogies. Some families can trace their ancestors in these original Christian families in India back to the first persons who were converted by the Apostle Thomas in south India 2,000 years ago.

We, likewise, even if we cannot trace it, have a similar genealogy. Maybe we are not descended from the original converts by blood, but we are definitely descended from the original converts by faith and by our common personal experience of Jesus Christ. Generation after generation, following in the footsteps of these apostles, have revealed Christ. People have turned to Christ because of their love. To this day in North America, in Russia, in Ukraine, in Georgia, in all the Balkan countries, in Japan, in China, in Indonesia and elsewhere, people are turning to Jesus Christ because of the faithful, loving witness of the lives of Orthodox Christians.

Our own Saint Herman of Alaska is a perfect example of such a person. This man came with other monks from Valaam Monastery 200 years ago to Alaska. The other monks were either killed or died. Saint Herman (just a monk – neither a priest nor a deacon) was left, and he lived with the Aboriginal people of Alaska for the rest of his life. He taught them, but mostly, he loved them. Because he loved them, they accepted Jesus Christ. They could see what is different, what is positive and what is good in the life of Saint Herman, and they came to Christ. In Alaska, there are Orthodox Aboriginal families that 200 years later still know their ancestors who were converted to Jesus Christ by Saint Herman. They love Jesus Christ because their ancestors 200 years ago – their great-great-great-great-grandparents – came to love Jesus Christ through the love of Saint Herman.

In this city, as Orthodox Christians, we have the same responsibility. The Lord put us here, whether we were born here or whether we moved here from somewhere else. He put us here to live the life of the love of Jesus Christ in the Orthodox way because this city needs the love of Jesus Christ. Let us look out and see the sorts of things that are advertised and done here, defying Christ – people who are lost, looking for the Truth, but struggling. It is our responsibility to show the light of the love of Jesus Christ to this city which so much needs the light of Jesus Christ. This city once knew the love of Jesus Christ, but this knowledge is now gone.

The Lord has given us the responsibility to renew this light in n. That is one reason why this church is where it is. It has been in this area for so long, because the light of the love of Jesus Christ must shine here in the heart of n. It is our responsibility, following in the footsteps of the Apostle Thomas and the other apostles of Christ, to bring the light of the love of Jesus Christ with us wherever we are, whatever we are doing in this city, everyday.

When someone says : “Christ is risen”, we answer : “Indeed He is risen”. However, this is not merely the Orthodox response at Pascha. This is the proclamation of who we are, and why we are. That is why I am so glad that I hear it answered so strongly here. May the Lord grant that your lives be equal in love for Jesus Christ (at least equal if not double) to the strength with which you respond to this proclamation of the Resurrection of Christ. May we all together without fear, glorify our beloved Saviour, the Risen Christ, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen

As we are exchanging the Paschal greeting : “Christ is risen”, it is important that we remember that this is not merely a custom. This is very much a proclamation of our Faith. Christ is risen from the dead, and because He rose from the dead He gives us life. He conquered sin. He conquered death. In the times when I have had the blessing to be in Ukraine or Russia during the Paschal season, I always enjoyed how the faithful shout : “Indeed He is risen”. It almost takes your ears off.

We restrained Canadians have to overcome our inhibitions. There is nothing more important for us than the fact that Christ is risen. If Christ is not risen from the dead, nothing else matters (see 1 Corinthians 15:14-19). We might as well go and be social workers, or join the Lions Club. Christ is risen, and so we are here today. Christ is risen, and we are here together in this hospital for sinners.

This is another thing people are constantly making a mistake about. I hear it all the time. People are griping because in the Church there are problems : in the Church people gossip ; in the Church people backbite ; in the Church people are hypocrites. Orthodoxy is a living out of the whole truth, and organisation is very peripheral for us. It is true that we try to be organised and we try to make sense of things, because that is the way we human beings have to live together. There has to be some sort of organisation. However, the Grace of the Holy Spirit is greater than all our organisation. The problem, of course, with our organisation is that we cannot just let a little bit of organisation do. We have to sign, seal, deliver, and guarantee everything, and we bind ourselves up in every sort of rule. We bind ourselves up with every sort of regulation. Then we wonder why we are strangled and cannot move, because we have made provision for so many little, minute things. Still, the Grace of the Holy Spirit is greater than all these things. Even though we, in our sheep-like behaviour, do these things, the Lord still liberates us from ourselves. He liberates us from the restraints that we put on ourselves. He still breathes life into all those rules we put on ourselves, and with which we constrain ourselves. He breathes His life into all that. That is why, even though we have organisation to an extent, when people say that they do not want to belong to “organised religion”, they need to belong to the Orthodox Church !

Why do we paralyse ourselves with all these rules ? We do all these rules to ourselves because of fear. We are afraid. Human beings live in fear. That is why we are a hospital for sinners. We, the hospital for sinners, are here all together acknowledging that we are all in the same boat. Without Jesus Christ we can do nothing. Without the support and help of each other, too, in Christ, we cannot do anything. This is an important fact that we all have to acknowledge. That is why the Church is not a society of perfect and “professional” Christians. This is a society of people who are trying to live the Christian life, and our whole lives are about that : falling down and getting up. A monk was asked what he did in the monastery. The answer was : “I fall down, and I get up ; I fall down, and I get up”.

That is just what we are all doing (even the bishop) : we are all falling down and getting up. We always have to apologise to each other for our slips and our falls, for our mistakes, for our fears. Especially for our fears. These fears, which bother us all to a greater or lesser extent, are the main tools of the devil to keep us separated from each other, to keep us broken apart from each other. It is this that the Master of division, the devil, uses always to divide the sheep away from the Shepherd. The Tempter (Divider) divides the sheep from each other by planting suspicions in our hearts which we voluntarily accept, gullible that we are. We then nurse these things, and unless we come to a point where we are confronted with the fact that this thought that we accepted is a lie, we find ourselves walking out the door of the church. Eventually we will not be able to believe anyone or trust anyone. That is where the devil tries to take us all. It has happened to many people in the course of our Christian life. In the course of all human history, this is how the devil has always been dividing us and conquering us, by pulling us away from Christ.

When the Myrrh-bearing Women are at the tomb, and they are confronted with the empty tomb and with the angels who are saying that Jesus Christ is risen, commanding them to go and tell everyone, they do not tell anyone at the beginning because they are absolutely shocked, amazed, and afraid. Most likely we all would be. After 2,000 years, we are accustomed to the fact of the Resurrection. However, for these women today, it is their first encounter with it. How can they not be afraid ? If we read on beyond the Gospel reading for today, then we would see that the Myrrh-bearing Women were not the only ones that were afraid. All the apostles were afraid too, absolutely flabbergasted and amazed, and they did not know what to do. It was not until the Risen Christ encountered each of them that they began to comprehend. Yes, the impossible has indeed happened. Christ was not stolen, nor was He lost or removed. He is risen from the dead.

There are four different versions of the Resurrection in the four Gospels. We read four different persons’ experience of the Resurrection of Christ. These four different persons are showing us by their encounter with Christ how He truly convinced them that He is risen from the dead. He even ate fish with them. For forty days He was with them explaining to them, and helping them to understand everything that had gone before. The Apostle Peter and the others had thought that they understood everything about Who Christ is. However, they all had run away at the time of the Passion because they were confused when they understood that He was going to be crucified. The disciples could not figure it out at all because they really did not understand everything that our Saviour had been saying to them. He had given them preparation for everything but they had preconceived ideas about who is the Messiah, and what the Messiah would do. They had heard and absorbed all sorts of popular ideas in the society of the time, and various interpretations of the Scriptures and the writings of all sorts of people. One such popular idea was that the Messiah would establish an earthly kingdom better than Solomon’s. They did not understand at all about the Kingdom : the Kingdom not being of this earth.

The initial inability of both the Myrrh-bearing Women and the apostles to understand, and the malcomprehension of them at their first encounter with the Resurrection is very similar to that of “Doubting Thomas”. These malcomprehensions are interrelated. These doubts, this inability to comprehend, give us the opportunity through the subsequent encounters of the disciples with Christ to be convinced of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Moreover, we Orthodox Christians (and other Christians, too) have had 2,000 years of continuous personal and common experience of Jesus Christ who is risen from the dead. It is the same Jesus Christ, always and forever, as the Apostle is saying in the Epistle to the Hebrews. I love to quote this text because in my childhood there was a Norwegian in Bible study who always quoted it. He quoted it throughout my entire childhood. Ole Olson said : “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). It really stuck, especially because of his strong accent, I suppose, but also because of what sort of a Christ-loving man he was. He was truly a good example of a Christian. This same Jesus Christ has been encountering you and me, and all the people that have gone before us, those who introduced us to Christ. This same Jesus Christ has been revealing Himself in His love to us all as the same Person. In the Gospels we see ourselves in our encounter with our Lord Jesus Christ : Jesus Christ as He is appearing to the Apostle Paul, Jesus Christ as He encounters various saints. We are all recognising in ourselves, too, the same experience of the same loving Person, the same life-giving Person.

It is essential for us to remember that our life as Christians is the life of spiritual struggle. It is very important for us to pay attention to this fact in our lives. We who are following Christ are the target of the Tempter. The Tempter will come and try throughout our whole life in one way or another to drag us away from Christ. He never goes away. He will try to distract us, to turn us in on ourselves, to divide us from each other and to pull us down. It is crucial for us all, always, to keep the eyes of our bodies and the eyes of our hearts on Jesus Christ alone. To do this, we can enlist the help of His Mother and the saints who are successive generations of living examples revealing Christ. We can all count on Jesus Christ alone. Every human being, wanting to or not wanting to, fails every other human being. None of us can escape the fact that we are limited, and we will, even by accident, by misunderstanding, by who knows what, fail other human beings even if we did not know we were making a mistake. However, if we keep our eyes on our Saviour, and if we learn to apologise to each other for making mistakes and simply say : “I am sorry”, we will be farther ahead.

More and more I am convinced that the Twelve-Step Blue Book would not be a bad idea for everyone to read and then to follow its steps in practice. We do not necessarily have to go to Twelve-Step meetings all the time but to do so would probably be helpful. The Twelve-Step Programme helps people to get over their inhibitions with each other, and admit that they are all in the same boat. They all cannot overcome whatever it is without God. Actually, the more I am hearing about this Twelve-Step Programme, the more I notice that I am being told by people who are better educated than I that this is truly a very Orthodox programme, a very Orthodox system (with echoes of The Ladder of Divine Ascent). It fits us. However, we have to understand who is Who. Our Helper is Jesus Christ. After that everything falls into place. There is no-one here (myself included) who could dare to say that he or she is not addicted. We may not be addicted to alcohol ; we may not be addicted to some drug or other, but we are definitely addicted to two things : ourselves, and sin. Those two things are more deadly than anything else. It would be very good for us to follow this Twelve-Step Programme, and to admit together that we are all in the same boat of distraction, sin and betrayal. We can better help each other if we admit that we are all more or less stuck and immobilised in the same situation. We can only get out of the quicksand with the help of the Saviour. It is fear, fear, fear that we all have to overcome. The Myrrh-bearing Women and the apostles had to overcome fear. Every Christian has to overcome fear, and it can only be overcome in Christ by His love.

We must constantly keep our eyes on Christ by turning to Him when we are tempted, turning to Him when we are feeling fear, turning to Him when we are in turmoil, turning to Him when we are having doubts. Even though a brother or sister might slip in his or her support of us, still we should accept the good intentions of the brother or sister. We should pray also for the brother or sister who slips. Our supporters may slip, but we slip in our support, too. Let us pray for each other and support each other so that when we slip, we will not fall seriously. We will help to pick each other up. We will all together, supporting each other, enter the Kingdom in the light of the Resurrection, together with the Myrrh-bearing Women, the apostles, all the saints who have gone before us, our parents, our ancestors, and everyone else who is in the Kingdom. Together, may we proclaim our faith : “Christ is risen”.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Not a few people have said to me in the course of time that this seems to be a rather sad feast-day because today the Lord ascends to Heaven, and is taken away from us, as it were. We stop singing “Christ is risen”, and everything changes. On the other hand, our Saviour Himself says that all this has to be because something more important has yet to come for us. The gift of the Holy Spirit has to come. Our Saviour says that unless He would ascend into Heaven, the gift of the Holy Spirit would not come. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that He ascend into Heaven, as He is doing today.

We learn today that just before the Ascension into Heaven, after forty days of His being with them, telling them Who He is, and what He is doing, reminding them about everything, the apostles are still saying to our Lord : “‘Will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?’” They, like all sorts of us, were slow to understand. We will see in the readings that after the Ascension, the Apostle Peter and the other apostles obeyed and prayed. They asked the Lord to choose, and Judas was replaced by the Apostle Matthias. However, they remained in fear, locked behind closed doors. The Apostle Peter was one of those who were still afraid. He, like we, was taking a long time to catch on to things. We will recall that he was an older man when he encountered Christ. We also know that after the age of 25, people characteristically are already very set in their ways.

Nevertheless, the love of the Lord is so great ; the love of the Lord is so all-encompassing ; the love of the Lord is so deep that it is beyond us. We cannot even begin truly to grasp the immensity of the Lord’s love. I have said many times (and other people have said it too) that if I were God, this earth would have been wiped out and fried a long time ago. We humans do not have anything like the love and the patience that He has. Why has the world not come to an end long ago with all the evil that is rampant upon the earth ? It is because the Lord in His mercy, the Lord who is the Lover of us all, the Lord who created us all, the Lord who continues to love us into existence and through our existence, this same Lord is patient in His love. He is still waiting for us all so that we might have the maximum opportunity to turn to the light, to turn away from darkness before such a consummation of all things will occur.

Many people are talking about the end of the world on television, radio, and so forth. These people do not have the patience of the Lord. They speculate that because things are so horrible, things must be coming to an end now. However, our Lord has said over and over that “‘of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only’” (Matthew 24:36). It is our business, in the midst of all this difficulty, all these trials and tribulations, to be persevering in love. It is our business to be living out the love of Jesus Christ through the Grace of the Holy Spirit in the way that He showed us. Without the Grace of the Holy Spirit, who could survive ? That is why it was important that the Lord ascend into the Heavens today, so that He would then send the Holy Spirit upon us and enable us to live our lives in the midst all the difficulties.

If it were not for the outpouring of the Grace of the Holy Spirit upon the Church, how would all the martyrs from the time of the beginning of the Church have known how to be faithful as they were ? Let us consider the seventy-plus years of Soviet domination of the former imperial territory, the former Soviet Union. It is beyond imagination how the people lived and endured all the godlessness and all that slaughter throughout all those years. How could they have managed to live through all that, and survive and still be Christians (and that there still be a Church) if the Holy Spirit had not been poured out upon them, and if the Holy Spirit had not sustained them ? Often we think that it is so difficult for us one way or another here, now, in Canada. What we are living (no matter what our difficulties are) is just “a piece of cake” and “a walk in the park” compared to what people had to suffer in those territories for seventy years, and what other people elsewhere had to suffer, too, over the course of the past 2,000 years. It is true that the greatest, the gravest, has been in this last century. It was horrible. But still, no matter how hard the devil tried to put out the light, he never succeeded, and he never will.

As we see the Lord ascend into Heaven today while we are standing with the apostles and the Mother of God on the Mount of Olives, and He is taken from our sight, let us all rejoice in the coming of the Holy Spirit to strengthen us. He does already strengthen us because we are already living in the Grace of the Holy Spirit. Let us take strength from the Lord and keep confident in His promises that He is going to be with us all the time. He says : “‘I am with you always’” (Matthew 28:20), and indeed He is with us always. It is extremely important that we remember the promise of the Lord every day of our lives when the Tempter is trying to drag us away. The promises of the Lord are always constant, and always faithful (unlike us, who seem always to find ourselves breaking promises). The promises of the Lord are always faithful, and they are always fulfilled. The Grace of the Holy Spirit does come to us and enables us to live our lives with joy, with confidence, and with power.

Today, with the apostles, we are looking up and seeing our Saviour part from us. Let us follow the example of the apostles, and be in the Temple constantly praising the Lord, because this is what we were created to do. Above everything else, we were created to praise God. It is crucial for us to make certain that all our lives are characterised by this praising God, glorifying Him for everything. I want to remind those of you who are of Ukrainian origin, that your language (like Russian, Romanian, Georgian, Serbian and Greek) has very many daily reminders woven into it about glorifying God. For instance, there is the western Ukrainian custom of always saying : “Glory be to Jesus Christ” before we ever talk to each other. We always put Christ between ourselves before we begin the conversation. If someone says “thank-you” to us, then we say : “To the glory of God”. Everything is referred to Jesus Christ. Everything is offered to God. Everything is referred to Him. Those are just a couple of expressions.

There are many more similar expressions in the Ukrainian language in particular, and in Russian too. These languages have been baptised by the Grace of the Holy Spirit over the past thousand or more years. These languages, and the way of life, bring into everything the presence of Jesus Christ and the glorification of God. Let us get busy and make certain that we translate these customs into our Canadian English way. The Canadian English polite way in which we never say anything about anything (always being so silent) tends to help us to be forgetful. It is necessary that we avoid such temptations in Canada, and that we translate these important idioms into English and use them. In fact, not so long ago, English did have some such idioms. We also need to be reminded that everything has to refer to God. Everything that we are, and do, and all our relationships have to have Jesus Christ in the midst of them.

The Lord ascended in glory granting joy to His apostles. He gives joy to you and to me. Even though another Paschal season has come to an end, the joy of the Resurrection never does end. The living out of the Resurrection never does end. The fulfilment of the love of God never ends. Let us ask the same loving Lord to give us the Grace and the strength to persevere in His love, remembering to trust Him in everything, no matter what difficulties we face. As our Saviour says : “‘I am with you always, even to the end of the age’” (Matthew 28:20). To Him be glory, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Every year after the celebration of the Ascension of our Lord into Heaven, we remember the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council in Nicaea. It is important that we keep this memory. First, we must remember that our Lord was, is, and shall be praying for our unity, for our unity with Him, just as we heard now in the Gospel. Second, we keep it always in the forefront of our minds that He continues to intercede for us and to work for this unity in us, in every part of our life.

At the time of the First Ecumenical Council, just after the ending of the first series of big persecutions of Christians, there were all sorts of strange ideas developing because of the connexion with philosophy. This came about because human beings always have difficulty comprehending the fulness of the love of Jesus Christ. There is always a temptation amongst human beings, first, not to trust Him, and at the same time to be afraid about all sorts of things. Second, we are tempted to think that we know better, and to think that we can somehow be controllers and protectors of the Orthodox Faith and controllers and protectors even of Christ.

There were some significant and seriously mistaken ideas that had developed at that time. The most pernicious of them, perhaps, was the Arian heresy in which it was said that Jesus Christ was not eternally begotten from the Father. Arius said that there was a time when the Son of God was not. Arius said that the Son of God had a beginning. This is all because of philosophy. People became confused (and often still are) because it is difficult to accept the truth of the love of Jesus Christ, and how deep is the love of Jesus Christ. Ultimately, it is difficult to accept Who is Jesus Christ. If we want to take our minds in directions like those of Arius, Nestorius (and others who have strayed from the Orthodox way), we are following a path of fear. As the saints always taught us, it is imperative that we find Jesus Christ in our hearts, and that we know Him in our hearts. His presence in our hearts directs our intellect, directs our head, and keeps our confused thoughts in order (and in the right order, too).

Jesus Christ, the Only-begotten Son of God, can change water into wine if it is for the good of the people He is caring for. He can raise people from the dead if it is for God’s glory, and for the accomplishment of God’s purposes. He can give sight to the blind. He can heal the paralysed. He can do all sorts of things, as He has done, and is doing to this very day, if everything is to the glory of God.

In these present days, the Lord has accomplished yet a new wonder for us. This is the reconciliation between the Moscow Patriarchate and the Synod of Bishops in exile (the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia). This separation, brought about by politics, has had a very big influence on the Church’s life. The political issues which caused the separation have ended, and the Church is free. By the Grace of God, the Church has been brought back together again, and what was broken is being healed. For those people who may be unaware of the causes of this division, I will give a brief outline. Many books have been and can be written about this painful period. The first and major cause of this division was the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. This revolution unleashed wild, blood-thirsty and godless forces which attempted to exterminate the Orthodox Church.

There was a very large emigration from the former Russian Empire territories, as people escaped with their lives. The exiles were dispersed over several continents, and with them, the Orthodox Church. Many of the escapees were monarchists who hoped to be able to return. A large number of those who escaped migrated to Western Europe and to North America, where they found that the Orthodox Church already existed because of previous economic emigration and because of missionary activities. In North America in particular, the Russian Orthodox Mission had been long established, and it had begun to take root. Therefore, it had a different character from the Church in other places, even Western Europe.

When the people who were exiles arrived, it became obvious that there were two scarcely-compatible perceptions about Church life in North America. Some were concerned with developing the Orthodox Church in North America. Others hoped to maintain their culture, their Orthodox traditions and their language so as to be able to return to their former life in a possibly restored Russian Empire. Both streams were still dependent upon the Patriarchate of Moscow.

Because of the demands of the Soviet state that the Russian Orthodox believers outside Russia must be Soviet citizens, both groups found themselves cut off from communication with the Patriarchate. One group continued to try to recover normal communion with the Patriarchate of Moscow. The other group doubted the true Orthodoxy of anyone left in the Russian territories. When Stalin established a fake, imposture “church” (the “Living Church”) whose tentacles appeared in Europe and North America, the distrust increased greatly. After World War II, when Stalin had to ease his persecution of the Church in order to win the war, conversations about reconciliation began again with some of the Church outside Russia. Others would have nothing to do with it.

For the missionary-minded of North America, the conversations enabled an eventual reconciliation (1970) which transformed the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church in North America into The Orthodox Church in America. For the remainder of the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia, a complete reconciliation (which nevertheless left a small, stubborn, schismatic remnant) was not possible until after the fall of communism. Then it could be seen that the Patriarch of Moscow was truly a canonical Orthodox believer, and the Russian Orthodox Church with him was properly canonical, and the faithful people were truly Orthodox believers.

On the internet, there is a site where we can watch the service, all five hours of it. I was able to watch part of this momentous event yesterday. It was heart-warming and joy-giving that this reconciliation has been made possible, and that families that had been divided can now be reunited, and be in communion with each other, as well as the Churches that had been divided. This is the work of the love of Jesus Christ. Human beings work at it, but they work at it in and under the guidance of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

From this reconciliation, I believe that a huge amount good will come to the Church in general, and to the Church in North America more specifically. The Church in Russia did not feel this division very much because the people who were not in communion were not very numerous. However, here it has been a more significant part of our history, a more painful part of our history which can now be healed. I am looking forward to the full effects of this healing as we are able more and more to work together to build up the life of the Orthodox Church and witness for our Saviour, Jesus Christ, here in North America. The more we are able to do this together, the more people will be able to begin to understand the Orthodox Faith.

Next Sunday, we will be celebrating the outpouring of the Grace of the Holy Spirit upon the Church. Every time we celebrate a feast-day, we are present at the Event. Next week, when the Descent of the Holy Spirit is being celebrated, we will be with the apostles in the upper room in Jerusalem with the Holy Spirit being poured out in fiery tongues. We will be present, and the Holy Spirit will refresh us also, along with the apostles.

It is necessary that we all remember that it is by the Grace of the Holy Spirit that we Orthodox Christians live our lives. It is the Grace of the Holy Spirit that Saint Seraphim of Sarov said we had to acquire. By “acquiring” he meant that we have to allow the Grace of the Holy Spirit to grow to fulfilment and maturity in our lives. We are given this gift when we are baptised, and we can either squash it or allow it to grow. The Lord gives us such freedom. It is important for us to allow the Grace of the Holy Spirit to grow and mature, and that we be on fire in our hearts. The Orthodox way is always completely involved with love, loving God first of all, and loving each with the same selfless love, just as our Saviour says. This love is alive. This love is not merely a technicality or an idea. This love is alive. That is why Saint Seraphim of Sarov and other saints like him were able to be as they were because this love was alive in them. In the Orthodox Church we do not have “specialists”. These holy persons are outstanding holy persons, true, but we all are called to the same life of love in Jesus Christ, the same living love in Jesus Christ.

We all are called to be holy, along with Saint Seraphim, along with Saint John of Kronstadt and everyone else. Today, we are celebrating the joy of this reconciliation between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia. We are gratefully celebrating this wonder which has been accomplished by the love of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, and which is being accomplished (because there is a lot of work to do). Therefore, let us ask the Lord to renew this love in our hearts this morning, and ask Him to refresh us, so that we will be truly faithful to Him.

We must be faithful to Him like those many hundreds of thousands of martyrs and confessors in the last century in Russia, Ukraine, Georgia and the Balkans. Let us never forget that in the last century there was the biggest persecution that ever happened to the Orthodox Church. Let us ask the Lord to give us the faithfulness and the love for Christ of those martyrs and confessors. May this love renew us, and enable us to be faithful to our Saviour, Jesus Christ. May we be able to live in accordance with His love, and witness to His truth, in harmony with the Nicene Fathers, and with all those who have gone before us. With them, let us glorify Him in every part of our lives, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today is the second Sunday after Pentecost. Every year on this Sunday we are keeping the memory of all the local saints throughout the world. Thus in Ukraine it is All Saints of Ukraine today ; or in Romania, it is All Saints of Romania ; or in Russia or Georgia, or Greece or wherever. Today, in North America, we are keeping the memory of All Saints of North America. One of the many interesting things about our Church history (which is only a little over 200 years old in North America) is that there are, in fact, many officially and unofficially recognised saints amongst us. They began already to appear in our midst from the earliest days. We have martyrs amongst us from those days in North America. We have holy people, men and women, who have served Christ with all their hearts throughout their lives. That we can have about ten saints (already recognised and on the calendar) after 200 years is an indication that we do have potential for holiness in Christ in North America. It is also an indication that the Lord knows that we, especially in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, would need the support of the early saints.

In the Gospel reading today, we hear the call of the apostles. Jesus comes to the apostles, each one personally, and says : “‘Follow Me’”. Would any one of us meeting a person who would say : “Follow me”, just leave everything and do that ? Not too likely. But then, the sort of Person that Jesus is makes a difference because He is not merely an ordinary sort of person. He is the Son of God. We can notice that everywhere He went about preaching and teaching, as the Apostle Matthew says today, He was also healing the diseases of people.

To encounter Christ personally is different from encountering other people. When we encounter Christ face-to-face, we encounter the Love of God that has taken on flesh. When we encounter Jesus Christ, we encounter the Love of God Himself. It is this personal, face-to-face encounter in Christ with God Himself that would enable the apostles when He said to them : “‘Follow Me’”, to do precisely that. Their hearts would have overflowed instantly with love, confidence and trust in their Saviour. They understood that the love that was pouring out of this Man was such that they could not live without it. Therefore, they left everything and followed Him. He did not send letters of invitation. He did not do any sort of promotion programme ahead of time. This is important for us to remember. There were no warm-up mail-outs or anything like that. There was simply the personal encounter face-to-face with the Love of God.

No matter how well-educated we are, and no matter how informed we are about everything theologically, scientifically, and every other way, our understanding of the Orthodox Christian way boils down to loving Jesus Christ. The essence of our life is being able to respond with confidence in love to the love of God. In this love, we are enabled in some way, just as when our Saviour says to the Apostle Peter : “‘Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?’” to answer along with him : “‘Yes, Lord; You know that I love You’” (John 21:16). This has been the case since the days of the apostles.

The love of God reveals itself not only in the Divine Liturgy as we gather as the Church today. It is not only revealed in the sacred Scriptures (although in both cases God’s love does reveal itself), but this love is also revealed in the human beings who are baptised into His Body. We bear the title “Christian” that directly and specifically identifies us with Him. Thus we try to live a life that is in harmony with Him. This is the way love always operates. If we love someone, we want to be pleasing to that someone. We want to be living in harmony with that someone. People who are married will certainly understand that. People who live in any sort of a family as children also have to understand that. We love each other. We try to be pleasing to each other. We try to imitate each other. When it comes to the relationship with Christ, whose love is greater by far than any human love, and whose love sustains us, gives us hope, gives us life, we instinctively want to try to live a life that is pleasing to Him : a life that is in harmony with Him and His love. That is how the Orthodox Church lives, and always has lived. It is the response of love to the love of Christ.

All our lives, everything about our lives, should reflect Christ and His love. That is why in Orthodox families we start every morning traditionally with giving thanks that we woke up this day to glorify Christ. We make the sign of the Cross on everything that we are going to do this day. We say : “Good morning” to the Lord. We bring His blessing with the visible sign of the Cross on everything that we are doing during the day : things that we begin ; every time we travel ; every time we send our children off, and when we bring them back. Everything is in the context of invoking Christ’s loving blessing on our whole lives.

This is our way. This is what inspired people who settled in this part of Alberta ninety years ago (a little bit more actually) to establish this Temple here in this place. It was because of their love for Jesus Christ and the priority that He had in their lives. This Temple, and many other Temples like it from the same period were established for the same reason. People wanted to have a place to gather together to worship their Saviour, Jesus Christ, to be refreshed by Him, and to be enabled to continue to invoke His blessing on their lives. Of course, He did give it. The fact that this Temple is still being used by descendants and other people who have joined this community ninety years later is a testimony to the love of the founders for Jesus Christ, and to the priority that He has in their lives. The joy and the love that they planted ninety years ago remains to this day here in this parish, in this Temple, in this community, and similarly in the other churches in this area.

In the 21st century in Canada, we have a very difficult time living in the same spirit as the people who established this community because we are so distracted by material things and material cares of every sort, and by our so-called intellectual advancements. In fact, if we look at human history, human beings have not learned much of anything. We have not changed in thousands and thousands of years, and we continue to make the same mistakes over and over and over again. Now, in the 21st century, we allow ourselves to be so distracted that our society seems to have forgotten Christ altogether. We put Christ on the back burner of our lives (if He is there at all). When we have come to this point in our existence, we are in danger, great danger.

It would indeed be very helpful and fruitful that we all take an inventory of our lives, and make certain that Christ and His love are truly in the front of every detail of our lives. Without His blessing, without His love, we cannot live a productive life ; we cannot live a life that gives life, that multiplies life. Without His love we are lost. We are where we are today because we are the product of the love of Christ of all those who have gone before us. For us who are living in this age of probably the greatest temptation that human beings have ever faced in any manner, it is extremely important that we keep our eyes on Christ, and on Him alone. We must allow ourselves to be nourished by His love, and to nourish each other in His love, support each other in His love, strengthen each other in His love, so that we will all together be able not only to survive, but to live truly creative, constructive, helpful, joyful lives in the midst of this terrible rat-race that we have fallen into.

Brothers and sisters, it is a serious thing when we say that we love the Saviour. It is a serious thing when He says the same to us. It is a truly serious thing for us to live in that love. He has given us such a great gift. He continues to pour out this great gift upon us all the time. Let us be faithful to those who have gone before us : our parents, our grandparents, and all our ancestors who are still praying for us. In harmony with them, and faithful with them in their love for Christ, let us ask them to redouble their prayers for us. In that way we will have the strength to be even half like them in our imitation of Christ, in our obedience to His love, in our zeal to be like Him. We will have the strength to share with joy His life-giving love to all those around us, and help to save our society and our planet, which can only be saved by conformity to His life-giving love. Let us glorify this same Saviour now every day of our lives wherever we go, glorifying Him together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we are commemorating the memory of Saint Tikhon of Kostroma. To begin with, this man was a soldier. In due course, as he followed his military obedience, he went from Lithuania to Russia, and there he left the military and became a monk in the monastery in Kostroma. In this new place, he gave up everything and followed Christ. In Kostroma he worked with his hands, as did all the monks in that monastery, and he contributed to the economy of the whole monastic family as is normally the case. Although every monastic community has its own way of life, some communities make their living in other ways than only working with their hands. However, what else might be done depends on where the monastery subsists, what is the environment and climate, and what are the abilities of the monks. In Egypt, they made baskets, and the like. In the case of Saint Tikhon, his work was to do wood-turning on a lathe, and some other things. Apparently there is a very good manuscript about him.

Saint Tikhon concentrated so much on following Christ that by the end of his life, he had nothing of his own, and thus he had nothing for his burial. The archbishop and the monastic community had to put together the things that were required, including the shroud, for his burial. Not everyone of us is called to follow Christ in quite that particular way, but we are all called to put Christ first in our lives, and to trust Him that everything will work out correctly and well, even though we have all sorts of difficulties and bumps in our lives.

It is the same Lord of our lives who is healing the lepers this morning. It is the same Lord, who heals leprosy because of His loving compassion, that takes care of your life and mine. This same loving compassion has never changed. He looked after Saint Tikhon in the same way.

When we look at the lives of people who have gone before us in this diocese in particular (because this is our context), we can see many examples of people who have been sustained by Christ, regardless of the difficulties. Saint Tikhon, the Patriarch of Moscow, was the one who incorporated this diocese in 1903. He consecrated many of the Temples in this diocese. He also consecrated Temples that are no longer in this diocese. When Saint Tikhon came to North America, he was faced with a very big challenge. He prepared the way for the mobilisation of our Church in North America through his establishment and organisation of things. Through the blessings that he gave, our Church in North America took its character as a North American Church, and not merely a ghetto. By this I mean that Saint Tikhon blessed the organisation of dioceses and parishes in the spirit of normal Orthodox ecclesiology, while taking into account how civil law, incorporations and property ownership function on this continent. The incorporation of the dioceses of Canada in 1903 was a brilliant example of this. Under his direction, the Church met the needs not only of the immigrants, but also of the many converts to Orthodoxy that his blessing made possible.

When Saint Tikhon went back to Russia, he very soon encountered the Revolution. It was he, an unlikely candidate (because of various Church politics), who was chosen by the Lord to lead the Church in Russia through the worst times of the Revolution. We can so strongly say that he was chosen by the Lord since his name was picked from three names in a chalice by an old, blind and holy monk, after prayer. It was because of his love for the Lord, and the Lord’s protection of him, that he was able to survive and to make the Church survive all the attacks against her. He listened to the Lord. The Lord inspired him, and he acted accordingly. It was not only because Saint Tikhon was so smart a man that these things happened. It was because his heart was in tune with the Lord. That comes first for us all, and it came first for Saint Tikhon. Because of that, he was able to make all the decisions that were necessary for the Church in Russia to survive in the time to come. We are not so certain how he died. Some say he died of natural causes, and other people say that he died because they gave him ground-up glass in his food (which is likely enough). Regardless, he is definitely a confessor and martyr for the Church, and a strong intercessor for the Church there, and for the Church here.

It is important for us to remember that although Saint Tikhon left North America, he never forgot his flock here. He continued to pray for them, and he still continues to pray for us. (It was not because he wanted to go back to Russia. Rather, he went out of obedience. He was told that his time in North America was over, and he was to go back to Russia and work there.) This is the same love that characterises our Saviour. He is always with us. He is always looking after us. He is always compassionate and caring for us. It is this sort of love that you and I need to try to imitate, to emulate. This love is not particular, partisan or exclusive. This love embraces everyone. The love of Jesus Christ, the love of both the Saint Tikhons mentioned today, is not exclusive but inclusive love. It is love that embraces everyone both together, and in particular. “Particular” by itself can be exclusive, but within the inclusiveness, the particular is life-giving. It is not exclusive. It brings people in and enables people to grow. This is the love of Jesus Christ. We can see this in His love for the apostles all together, and for each personally at the same time. As one nun said : “The Lord loves each one of us best”.

Saint Seraphim spoke about the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. That included this sort of love, and this way of living life in the love of Jesus Christ : imitating Him, emulating Him, trying to be pleasing to Him, telling other people through this love how to find Him. Let us ask the Lord this morning to renew our love for Him, to quicken us in this love, and to help our hearts to hear Him when He speaks to us and to follow Him when He says : “‘Follow Me’” (Luke 5:27). Let us do what He says to do when He asks us to do it, even if to do so is intimidating, even if it is strange. He says : “Go ; do”. It is necessary that we go and do as He says. He knows what He is doing with our lives, and He does not tell us in advance what is going on. His love knows all, directs all, and gives life. It is crucial that we learn how to trust Him. This love is never deceptive. This love is never failing. This love is always right. Let us ask the same Lord to enlighten our hearts so that we can discern that it is He who is speaking to us. Let us follow Him, obey Him, and glorify Him throughout our lives, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

When our Saviour is speaking today about shepherds and sheep, and the relationship between them, He is speaking about a relationship that we usually do not know about in the West. In the West, what we almost always see about the relationship between shepherd and sheep has to do with the shepherd driving his sheep ahead of him, and using dogs to keep the sheep all in line. Not so long ago, there was a semi-animated movie called Babe about talking sheep, and so forth. In this film there is a perfectly clear illustration of what is this relationship between the shepherd and the sheep in the western mentalities. As far as the shepherd is concerned, the sheep are just there : they are potential dinner, or potential wool, or something potentially utilitarian like that, but that is about all.

In the East, sheep have a similar destiny. However, let us notice a difference. Not unlike an Aboriginal concept, the sheep give their wool, to be sure, and from time to time, when sheep get older, the sheep give themselves to be eaten by people (although at festivals it is lambs). This expresses a long-standing relationship between people and animals. During the daily relationship between the shepherd and the sheep, the shepherd talks to his sheep, and the sheep know his voice. When the shepherd is taking his sheep somewhere, he is walking in front of them, and talking to the sheep while he is leading them, and the sheep go with him. Sometimes in the Middle East they will use a goat as an extra-friendly persuader (because a goat is even more obedient than a sheep in this respect), but still, the sheep, knowing the voice of the shepherd, follow him. The sheep know the shepherd, and the shepherd knows each sheep by name. That does not mean that he is never going to eat those sheep, because the end does come for them. As the sheep is getting older, it is a respectable thing to eat it.

The Aboriginals have a custom of asking the forgiveness of an animal before it is eaten. This is completely in harmony with today’s Gospel reading, and how Orthodox people have attempted to live authentically over the centuries. There is what might be called a “normal relationship” between human beings and animals. We understand that God created us both. He created us. He created the animals. We have a responsibility toward the animals. Since the time of Noah, he gave us some of these animals for food. However, if we are going to use the animals for food, we still have to treat them respectfully. We cannot treat them as though they were merely a rock. They are living creatures. We properly treat them respectfully and address them respectfully. We are good to them. They are good to us. The Aboriginals in Alaska are very commonly saying that if they are able to catch a whale, a salmon or any sort of fish, this is not happening unless the whale or the seal or the fish gives itself to them. They have all sorts of stories about how the fish and these animals have compassion on those silly human beings who cannot look after themselves, and therefore they give themselves to us for food. If we are honest about ourselves, we will admit that we are not as competent as we like to think.

Continuing on this subject, all this has to do with the relationship between us, the Lord our Creator, and the rest of His creation. This relationship from the very beginning is completely concerned with love. Through love, God created everything that is. Because of love He created us in His image. He invites us to grow up into His likeness, into the likeness of Jesus Christ, Himself. He invites us to grow up into this likeness. What is this likeness ? Jesus Christ is the Word of God. He is the One who spoke, and does speak everything into existence. How does He do this ? He does this through love. How do we know this ? The Scriptures say that God is love (see 1 John 4:8, 16). God revealed Himself and He still does reveal Himself to you and to me as love. Therefore, if we are going to grow up into the likeness of Christ, who is the image of the Father, how else can this be except by a life that is characterised by selfless love ? If we are going to imitate Christ, this will naturally be in imitation of love.

Our Saviour said many good things (we will notice that many of the good things that He said were said already in the Old Testament). In the Old Testament, He already was preparing us by inspiring the Prophets, and our Saviour repeated these things with an added emphasis, an added point. He was not simply repeating the Prophets, the lawgivers, the Patriarchs, and all who had gone before. He was showing us what is the true meaning of all those things that were said in the Old Testament. All those true meanings find their fulfilment in Him, and in the exercise of love. Why would He endure the suffering that He endured ? If you have seen the movie, The Passion of Christ, you have some idea, but only an idea of what it was like. Why would He endure suffering the way He endured ? To be sure, it was not only on the Cross that He was suffering, because He endured much more before that. Why would He do this except for the fact that He loves us.

Our Lord says that He is the true Shepherd, and anyone who pretends to be, instead of Him, is a thief, a robber, and a liar. There are important lessons here. We are His sheep. We know His voice, and we follow Him. There are all sorts of people these days in Canada (and in the western world in particular) who are working very hard at trying to convince people that Christianity, especially Orthodox Christianity, is merely another philosophical system. They insist that it is only some sort of invention. Again, they want to say that Christianity is one amongst many systems, and that it can be adjusted by human beings (as it appears that we can adjust everything else). In trying to treat Christianity this way, they are completely “barking up the wrong tree”.

Christianity is not a religion, and never has been, no matter how many times people try to say that it is. Rather, Christianity is simply the way in which people live out their love with the Lord, in response to His love. They live out their lives because God reveals Himself to them in love, and they respond to Him in imitating Him, in being like Him in this selfless, life-giving love. It is crucial that we do not let ourselves be sucked into this lie that Christianity is merely some sort of a system. It is not. That is one reason why I love to respond to people who say that they do not want to belong to any organised religion : “Well then, welcome to the Orthodox Church”.

There is a certain order in the Orthodox Church – it is Christ-given, too. However, we are not systematised. We are not slaves. We are not some sort of robots in this order. In fact, people who are in authority (such as those North American bishops in the Orthodox Church who have a particular sense of humour) say that trying to herd Orthodox faithful is like trying to herd cats. God creates human beings as unique persons. There is no cookie cutter or mould that produces human beings. Each and every one of us is completely unique. We are all unique persons in the love of Jesus Christ. Herding (especially in the western way of herding) is not a very successful enterprise. The only truly successful way of herding in the Orthodox Church is to do it Christ’s way. In the Orthodox Church we cannot say : “Do what I say, but do not do what I do”. Everything in the Orthodox Church is by example. Therefore, if I hope that someone would follow me in living the Christian life, then I had better be living that life : I had better be giving the example. If I want someone to know the love of Christ, and live by the love of Christ, and have the joy, the hope, and the life in the love of Christ, then I had better be showing that example myself. In the fallen world, there is no example of that sort of love. In the fallen world, it is all self : me, me, me first ; I am number one. This is the opposite of the Orthodox way which is to put everyone else first, to be life-bearing, to give support to everyone else around.

Our Saviour is inviting you and me today to hear His voice, to follow Him, to trust His love, to imitate His love. Let us do our best to let Him work His love in us, so that the people who are around us will encounter Him, and find the same hope, joy, strength, and the same wholeness that we have, and become part of us, part of the Body of Jesus Christ, and with us glorify Him with our whole life, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Because of the ways of Canadian society and Western civilization, there is a tendency in this society to behave towards the Lord as though He were far away, usually angry, and somehow “laying down the law” to us. This attitude towards the Lord is not native to the Orthodox Church. It is a distortion. If we lived in a native Orthodox country, we would find that people do not behave that way. They do not treat the Lord as though He were always angry, waiting for them to make the smallest slip and then beating them up. God is not like that. However, sad to say, there are enough people in the world who have somehow been so damaged by life, by family, one way or another, or even worse, by philosophy (very much by philosophy in North America) that they tend very much to treat God this way. They seem erroneously to perceive that God is an angry old man up in the sky who does not care much about what happens here (except that when something goes wrong, then He can get out the stick). It is a lie, a lie about God that He should be considered like this and treated like this. The contrast to this lie is found in today’s readings and today’s events in which we are participating in this Divine Liturgy.

At the beginning of today’s Gospel reading, we have the healing of the servant of the centurion. What is the nature of the relationship between the Lord and the centurion ? The centurion, who is not Jewish at all (let us not forget that this is a Jewish environment that we are talking about), is a Roman, who is a part of the conquering, occupying army, one might say. This soldier comes to Christ, and says to Him : “‘Lord, my servant is lying at home paralysed, dreadfully tormented’”. Our Saviour says to him : “‘I will come and heal him’”. However, the soldier in his humility says : “‘Lord, I am not worthy that You should come under my roof. But only speak a word, and my servant will be healed’”. A centurion is like a major or something like a major, a bigwig in the army. His title comes from being a leader of one hundred soldiers. To paraphrase, this conquering soldier says to this Man who is just walking around teaching (that is how it looks) : “I am not worthy for You to come to my house. I am a soldier ; I know how it goes. I tell people what to do, so obviously, You can do the same, please”. Our Lord responds by doing what the centurion asks. The servant is healed – just like that. That is what the Gospel says. Just like that, at that moment, the soldier’s servant is healed. By this time, this soldier has obviously heard very many things about what this Nazarene has done and said. He would expect Him to be, at the very least, a prophet. Indeed, the soldier understands that our Lord is not merely some sort of nice guy walking around teaching nice things. If the soldier already does not yet believe precisely that the Lord is the Son of God, then at least he does understand that our Saviour behaves like it. The centurion can tell that God, who is Love, is revealing Himself in this manner, and this love is pouring out. He has seen many people be healed already by this love.

In these works of love we can clearly understand that God is love as the Apostle John tells us in his Epistle (see 1 John 4:8). There is also the famous little phrase that I memorised when I was about seven : “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). This is the central meaning of our whole life. God, who is Love, simply loves every one of His creatures. God is love, and He loves us. He is waiting for our response to love Him in return and that is probably why He has not wiped us out yet. He loves us. He is more patient that any one of us could ever be. I like always to say that it is a good thing that I am not God, because none of us would be here. I have heard many people say this. I do not have that patience. God, however, does have this patience ; He does have this love.

His love is demonstrated again in the other event, besides His Resurrection, that we are celebrating today : the Birth of Saint John the Forerunner, the first cousin of Jesus Christ. He was born six months before the Saviour. He says always in his life that he is preparing the way for the One who is promised, the Saviour who is to come. In his whole life, John is preaching (as our Saviour Himself begins His public service) : “‘Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand’” (Matthew 3:2). What does he mean by “repent” ? It means to “turn about”. By the way, we are informed in our environment here in Canada with all sorts of radio and television programmes that are not Orthodox, that to repent means to break down in tears, and weep and weep and weep, and be sad and sorrowful and depressed. That is not at all the central meaning.

“To repent” means simply to turn about, to turn away from darkness, and to turn to the light ; to turn away from hatred and fear, and to turn to love ; to turn away from death, and to turn to life. It simply means to turn about : to turn away from selfishness (me, me, me only), and to turn to selflessness. This means that everyone else comes first ; it means that I care about everyone else, and me afterwards. That characterises many mothers I have known. The way of love was preached by the Forerunner. He was asking people to turn about to life : to stop focussing on manipulation and politics, to focus on love and serving. Before he was born, it had been promised for a very long time (fourteen times fourteen generations) that the Lord would send the Saviour.

The Lord was preparing for the fulfilment of this Promise all along. Human beings are so stubborn, so selfish, so rebellious that it took a very long time to prepare us to receive the Saviour. As the Lord was refining this preparation, He was calling certain people, who began to listen to His voice, and say : “Yes”. One of the main preparers was a couple, Abraham and his wife, Sarah. We cannot leave Sarah out, because without Sarah nothing happens. She has to co-operate as much as Abraham has to co-operate. Abraham does not completely understand at the time when the Lord is calling him to follow this inexplicable direction to get up, leave the country and go somewhere else. Why does the Lord ask Abraham to go somewhere else ? “Because I love you, and I want you to multiply”, says God (as it were). This relationship of love continues generation after generation from the time of Abraham.

Often, people are sometimes listening, and sometimes not. Even the great King, Prophet, and Poet, David, sometimes listened, and sometimes did not listen. Even when he did not listen, when he did not pay attention, when he forgot and became selfish, still David turned about and said : “I am sorry”. A reflection of this we see in Psalm 50. The Prophet David did do some bad things, but he still said to the Lord : “I am sorry”. We must keep in mind that a king has the hardest time of almost anyone, probably, to remember the right way because the temptations are so great. The Lord accepted his apology because even if David had made these mistakes (some of them were horrible), still his heart loved God above everything, and he wanted to live in God’s love.

The Lord in His patient love waited, and formed people generation by generation until this particular time came which we are remembering and participating in today, when we first hear the Archangel Gabriel speak to Zacharias. Zacharias does not truly believe, and he asks questions. Therefore Gabriel says, in effect : “Just to be sure that you do not have any doubt, you will not be able to speak from this announcement until your child is born, and you will name him ‘John’”. Zacharias obviously told Elizabeth somehow that the child’s name had to be “John” because the Archangel had spoken to him. Elizabeth says today, let us remember : “‘He shall be called John’”. Of course other people do not believe it. “What does she know ?” they say. “We will have to ask the High Priest Zacharias. He must know”. He confirms it in writing by saying : “‘His name is John’”. Immediately to confirm all that, his mouth is opened and he praises God.

This is how God’s love works with us always. The way of the Christian is not the way of being paralysed by fear ; it is not the way of being afraid of God and waiting for God to beat us up. The way of the Christian is to acknowledge God’s love for us. We try to be pleasing to Him because He loves us, and we love Him, too, and we want to love Him more. The point of this is that the more we love Him and the more we behave in accordance with His love, the more He gives us the Grace and the strength to do even more. We can see that in the course of Orthodox Christian history, people have done amazing things.

People are very fond of Saint Seraphim of Sarov. There is a famous story about his conversation with Motovilov out in the forest in the middle of winter-time. Saint Seraphim is wearing only summer linen clothes. As he is speaking with Motovilov, Motovilov is realising that he does not feel cold at all despite the fact that it is the middle of winter in central Russia. Winter in central Russia is like winter was here in the old days of my childhood when there were real winters. We can suppose that it was probably minus 45 C. In the middle of this cold, Motovilov is feeling sort of warmish. Saint Seraphim is standing there in very light clothes, and they are surrounded by light. How does this happen ? How can it be ? This happened not only to Saint Seraphim. There are all sorts of other people who have gone into the forests of the far north of Russia, many of them Karelians. Karelians are not really Russians at all. They are a sort of Finnish people in the area of Karelia, where about 180 saints have been given to the Church by the people of this region. These people lived in the forest and many of them ultimately were given the same sort of blessing : being kept warm by God’s love. I have met here in some Canadian cities a few street people who might be called Orthodox strays. These people, somehow, being foolish for Christ, seemed to be able to be not frozen to death at minus 45 C at the corner of an Edmonton street in the winter.

The Lord’s love does do wonderful and marvelous things with us. It is His love that enables us. We are not going to be doing the things of the Lord so that we can show off, living in summer clothes at forty below in the winter-time. There is no showing off in the way of Christ. The way of Christ concerns being hidden. We live out our lives “hiddenly”. If someone finds out that Saint Seraphim or some other saint is living like this, that is a person-to-person thing, and it is an encouraging thing. None of us can try to pretend that we are some Tibetan yogi, and try to do things like this because we have learnt about some secret technique. We will find out that we will not be able to do it. Saint Seraphim did not have this ability. He had a gift from God. There is no secret technique that can enable anyone of us to do the things of Christ. Only love, only the love of Jesus Christ can show us the way. If He wants us to be something special to someone who needs it, then He will give it to us, so that the other will be convinced of God’s love. We may find that there are many stranger circumstances than forty below weather. However, we will not be able to exercise these gifts just any time we like. We can only do these things when God says (as it were) : “Go do it. Be like this”. For instance, we cannot just go and be friends with a bear ; nor can we just decide to be friends with a lion, as some saints in Palestine and Africa have done. The love of God has to be evident and alive in us. Those animals have to come to trust that our love is sincere. Then maybe it could happen, but human beings are so abusive to animals that they cannot trust us.

The important point of all this is that when we are hearing or reading the Gospel and the Epistle, we have to look for this one thing : What is the Lord saying to me about His love here, now, in this passage ? What response does He want from me here and now ? The Prophet David said, and our Saviour says that He wants us to turn about from darkness to light, and to walk in the life and the light of His love. He wants us to imitate Him, and be life-givers to all those around us.

Remembering that, let us ask the Lord to give us the Grace in our hearts to do a little better later today. It is easier here during the Divine Liturgy to do it, and it is probably not so hard downstairs while we are having coffee. However, when we step out from the Temple, the test begins again. Let us ask the Lord to help us when we are leaving here to remember this love a little longer, and to be faithful to Him a little longer before we fall (because we all fall sooner or later). When we do fall, let us ask the Lord to give us the Grace and the mindfulness quickly to turn about, and to say : “I am sorry”. Let us also allow Him to renew our strength and our determination to persevere in the right path of His light and His love, and glorify Him together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, within the year of the hundredth anniversary of this parish’s establishment in n, we have renewed the Holy Table in this Temple. In renewing this Holy Table, we are offering ourselves to be renewed as well, so that we can effectively fulfil God’s purposes for us. As Father n has researched, the beginning of this parish 100 years ago was not part of what was planned by the Church authorities in New York at the time, because the authorities did not know that there were any believers here. However, God did. He sent the priest (who was intended to go somewhere else) to n instead, and the church was established here, as was needed 100 years ago. Ever since that time, this community has been a witness for love in n. This community has been a witness to the truth of Jesus Christ and also a witness to hospitality in Christ in n.

In today’s reading, when the Apostle Peter answers the questions of Christ, he confesses that Jesus is the Christ. After the Resurrection, the Apostle Peter will profess his love for Christ whom he has just confessed here and now. At that future time, when our Saviour hears his confession of love, He will say to the apostle : “‘Feed my sheep’”. Today our Lord says to him : “‘I say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My Church’”. The Apostle Peter is, in fact, the chief of the rocks, as it were. When you and I encounter Christ, as the Apostle Peter did, and our hearts are warmed with love for Him, as is the heart of the Apostle Peter, and also the Apostle Paul (because their love for Christ cannot be denied at all), we, like them, must share that love. That love must be shared.

We must show Christ to the people around us by how we live as Orthodox Christians. We do this first by loving God above everything ; then by loving people around us, even people that are difficult ; and then, by having both joy and hope in caring for other people before ourselves. This is the way of Christ. We do not put ourselves first. In the love of Jesus Christ, we put others first. We serve. We do not ask to be served. This is the Orthodox Christian way.

As this parish has for 100 years now witnessed to the love of Jesus Christ and has been like yeast, here, in n. This parish is still a witness to Christ’s love (even in what has become a difficult neighbourhood). The light of Christ is still shining here in the city of n, in this community of people who care about Him and His service.

Therefore, let us ask the Lord that He give us the strength to be faithful witnesses every day of our lives, faithful witnesses to His love, faithful servants of Him through His love. Let us ask Him that everything we do in our lives may not glorify ourselves, but rather Jesus Christ, and only Jesus Christ, and glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, in both the Epistle and the Gospel, we hear in two different ways, proclamations of the love of the Lord. We hear three times during the course of the year this Gospel reading in one form or another. People begin to make jokes about how many times in the year we hear about the swine running over the cliff. If we hear this Gospel reading at church three times during the year, then it is for a purpose, and it is our responsibility to understand what our Lord is telling us. The point is not so much about the pigs that are running over the cliff, although that is important enough because they show just what happens to you and to me when we play with the devil. If we do that, then we become demented as did the swine. They went over the cliff and the same thing happens to us.

The man who was possessed by the demon was out of his mind. He was crazy. He was violent. He was naked. He was living in a cemetery. Association with the devil always produces this sort of insanity, this sort of crazy behaviour. However, when He met this man (even without the man’s asking Him), our Saviour was already casting the devils out of him. They tried to distract Him and stop Him, but nothing stopped Him because the Lord’s love wanted to release this man from the slavery of the devil, the slavery of fear. Our Lord restored this man to his right mind and he became a peaceful person wearing clothes again. This is the whole point of hearing this Gospel : we have to know the Lord’s love for us ; we have to understand the danger that comes from playing with evil. In our North American society, a large number of people behave and speak as though they did not believe in the devil, and yet there are so many people that are deeply enslaved by the devil. It is said that it is one of the cleverest tricks that the devil ever invented that he should persuade people that he does not exist at all – and then, oy, yoy, does he play with us.

The Lord, our Saviour Jesus Christ is love, life, hope, wholeness and health. As we see in the Gospel, wherever He goes, He is bringing joy, hope, health, wholeness, sanity, stability, peace. He is bringing this, always, wherever He goes. He brings the same love, joy, peace, longsuffering, goodness, patience, hope to you, and to me all the time. We are baptised into Him. We put Him on. We are members of His Body.

Why do I say as I do : “Please come forward in the church ?” Because, of course, Canadians especially, are very shy, and they think that being in church is a little bit like being in school, and the teacher might ask a question. Therefore, they want to be invisible and hide, somehow. That is how Canadians are, and it is rather sad that people who emigrate from Russia and Ukraine are infected with the same mentality. This is the opposite of what I experience when I am in Russia and Ukraine where people do not stand at the back of the Temple – they stand right up at the front. Why do they stand right up here at the front all the time ? The clergy have to push through people to get where they have to go if there is a procession. Why is this ? It is because people over there still perceive (even if it is not in their minds, it is in their hearts) that our life is coming from this Holy Table. Grace is coming from this Holy Altar. People want to be close to the Lord. They want to be near the love of the Lord. If there is going to be extra Grace coming, such as when the bishop or the priest may come out of the Altar and sprinkle with Holy Water, they want to receive that blessing. They do not want to be in the back corner where they might be missed altogether. They want to be in the front where they are going to get splashed well with the Grace of the Lord’s blessed water. That is why I am saying : “Please come forward – don’t be shy”. Why should we be shy in the house of the Lord – here, in our own place ? We are the members of the Body of Jesus Christ. We are His children. He loves us. As children with their parents, we need to be close to Him, too. We want to be here, close to Him, so that we can receive His love easily and quickly, and even maybe be the first.

We have to make sure we understand why we are here in this Temple. We are here in this Temple because we love our Lord, Jesus Christ, and we know He loves us. It is important that we should be here in this Temple, close to Him as often as we possibly can, so that our loving Lord can give us as much strength as possible to live this difficult life. Everyone of us has difficulty in life. Even bishops have difficulty in life. However, the Lord, in His mercy and love, gives us the strength to overcome those difficulties, to live through those difficulties.

The Lord in this Temple (which has stood here now for over 100 years) has been giving this love, this Grace and this hope to His children all this time. Over here in the corner we have an icon of the Mother of God. This icon of the Mother of God is an icon which disappeared, and then she showed herself again to us. People have had their prayers answered before this icon of the Mother of God. The Lord has sent us many such icons, and the relics of saints all around the world. Why ? Because He knows we need these contact points with Him, and so He gives us these blessings. Today, we are celebrating the presence amongst us (not in Canada but in Russia) of the wonder-working Kazan icon of the Mother of God. This is one of the most famous wonder-working icons that the Lord has given to Russia. I still remember when I had the blessing to be present at the time of the return to Russia of the Tikhvin icon of the Mother of God. We were reminded at that time how, in the early days of the Monastery of Tikhvin, that when the Swedes were invading, the Mother of God taught the monks to take her icon in procession around the monastery. They did precisely this ; the Swedes went home, and no-one fought. This happened not a few times in Russia’s history. It was the same thing with the Vladimir icon, the Pochaiv icon of the Mother of God, and other icons.

The Lord in His love is with us. He is protecting us. He is helping us. That is why it is extremely important to overcome the weak part of Canadians (which is to be shy and hide, and to stand in the back), and rather to take hold of our place as children of the Lord, and eagerly be in the front, here, close to Him. The back of the Temple should be unoccupied, and the front part of the Temple should be packed full of people as it is in Russia and Ukraine. There, the back of the church is empty, and the front of the church is packed full of people. That is the way a father likes to see his family. I am not talking about the bishop. I am talking about the Lord, Himself. The Lord is feeding us from this Altar. The Lord Himself wants His children close to Him. He wants them gathered around Him so that He can show His love to them, embrace them, encourage them, strengthen them.

The Mother of God on this day is with us. We face difficulties, yes, but she is here, too. She is praying for us, and she is protecting us. Let us take her protection, and ask her to be closer yet to us. Let us ask her to help us to be closer to her, so that in everything, with her, we will be able to be pleasing to her Son. We will not be afraid to be close to Him, rejoicing in Him, and receiving from Him these Gifts, so that in every part of our life, no matter how difficult things are ; no matter how discouraging things are ; no matter what difficult challenges are facing us ; we will know that the Lord is with us. God is with us. He loves us, and He is giving us what we need to live. He is giving us the food for our hearts so that we can glorify Him : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In the Gospel today, 5,000 people are fed with five loaves of bread and two fish. When we are serving special services on feast-days, we use five loaves of bread which remind us of the miracle in today’s Gospel reading. Nowadays, we ask the Lord also to bless wheat, wine and oil (instead of fish). The prayers that go with the blessing of the five loaves of bread on these special feast-days and other special occasions ask that the Lord will multiply the loaves of bread, and that He will feed everyone.

Our Lord multiplied the five loaves of bread and the two fish. The provision was so generous that it did not merely feed the 5,000 men (they counted only the men in those days). However, there were obviously women and children present, in large numbers. He fed them so well that there were still plenty of left-overs after everyone was completely satisfied. The Lord’s provision is in abundance. They gathered up the left-over pieces into twelve baskets (and these were not little baskets). We are talking about big baskets such as the ones in which we collect apples, or even bigger ones : those great big baskets that you can hardly get your arms around. These baskets were taken up after everyone had eaten and felt full. That is what we are told today in the Gospel reading, and this is extremely important for us to remember. This is Who is looking after you and me also to this day. This same King who is in charge of feeding His people (or feeding His sheep because He is also a Shepherd), is feeding His flock, His children, His family, not simply enough, but rather He is feeding us with more than enough, because there are always left-overs.

It is necessary for us to remember how much the Lord is looking after us. There is a tendency in Canada with our “rationalism” and so forth, to think that such events are limited to those apostolic days, and that only our Saviour and His apostles did these things. However, that is not at all the case. There are stories over and over and over again in the lives of monks, nuns and saints, that when people are in dire need, and they turn to the Lord and ask Him to meet the need, the need is met. I have known this in my own life in recent years many times (not just rarely). Many times the need is not always met precisely as we asked for, because the Lord knows best. Nevertheless, the need truly is met. What we truly need is given to us. In many monasteries when there was no food left for another meal, suddenly before the next day, someone would arrive at the door with enough to eat for quite a while. I know monks and nuns in the United States and in Canada who can speak of this from their own experience. They have had this happen to them. The Lord, who loves us, is with us. This is happening not only to monks and nuns, although it is monks and nuns who speak about it more. I know that there are ordinary parishioners who have been in the same predicament : Orthodox Christian believers, and other Christians, too, who, turning to the Lord in their need, have their need met. They trusted the Lord, and the Lord fed them. The Lord saw them through. He sees each one of us through our difficulties, and He meets our needs.

Sometimes our Lord is feeding us just as He feeds the multitude today with the five loaves and the two fish. Today’s Gospel reading is not merely a story. It is an event which actually occurred. It really happens, and is happening because the Lord is the Lord of all creation. If He can turn water into wine by short-circuiting the grapes and the fermenting process and about five years of quality control, He can also multiply five loaves and two fish. If we look at the Gospel passage today in which we have heard about our Lord’s loving generosity (which we imitate with our Christian hospitality), we recognise the custom in many Orthodox families of always setting an extra place in case someone drops in. In Canada, however, because we are obsessed with having appointments for visitors, it is happening much less than it used to. However, in my childhood it happened many times. People would arrive at supper-time, and we always had to have more food than for ourselves alone because someone was certainly going to show up – and they did. Sometimes it still actually happens out there at Fair Havens, and I am certain that it has happened to you, too. The point is : always be prepared to give hospitality and love. We show our confidence in our Saviour’s provision when, at the end of meals, we customarily ask the Lord to multiply the left-overs from this meal and throughout the world. This is a very clear example of what our Lord does today with the 5,000, and what He is doing with us all the time.

If we read beyond today’s Gospel reading, we will see that our Lord let His disciples go off in the boat. He says His last words to the crowd, and He leaves to pray by Himself for a while. The disciples are on the Sea of Galilee, on which a storm often can blow up unexpectedly. That is just what happens this time in the middle of the night. It is a violent storm, and the disciples are all greatly frightened because of the waves. Walking on the water in the night, our Saviour comes to them and He calms the storm. He calms the waves. This is Who He is to you and to me in the storm of our life, too. He calms the storm of life around us so that we can live in peace and glorify Him, and live our lives giving thanks to Him. He feeds us. He cares for us. He meets our needs. This is Jesus Christ in whom we live, whom we love, whom we serve. He is the Lord, the King of the universe. He provides everything for us. He is the King of the universe, for whom the other kings in Israel had been preparing. It is that King into whom we are baptised, and in whom we are also anointed. That is why we can live in Christ the way we are able to do, glorifying Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The Christian way is, and always has been the way of self-sacrificing, self-emptying love, and Saint Seraphim of Sarov, whose feast we are celebrating today, is an example of this sort of love. I saw, in fact, an example of just such an elder last summer when I was in Romania in the Monastery of Petru Voda.

There is an elder there, Father Iustin, who is 87 by this time. He hears more than a hundred people’s confessions every day. He gets up with the other brothers for the morning services which start at about four o’clock. They do not end until about eight. In the meantime, there are people lined up outside his cell, and he leaves the services early to go and start hearing confessions, and talking to people. He is hearing them all day. He attends other services in the middle of the day. He returns to his cell and hears confessions some more. Then he returns to church for Vespers, and again he goes back to hear confessions all the way up until midnight. He participates in the midnight service with the brethren, and after that he goes to his cell to be alone for two hours, and that is his life. It is quite clear that no ordinary human being can do this sort of thing.

Saint Seraphim, we are told, was living like this at the end of his life. He was no spring chicken. It is not as though he were twenty when he was doing these things. It is not as though his health were perfect because we know by his icons that he was all bent over after he was nearly killed. One could say that he was not in robust physical health, but the Lord gave him the strength and the energy, as He gives to the Elder Iustin to do all these things, and to be the mouthpiece of the Lord’s love and forgiveness to the people who are coming to him in need.

The Lord wants you and me likewise to live in this sort of loving relationship with Him. This loving relationship with Him enables the forgiveness that we all need to give to all sorts of people in our lives. There is no-one amongst us who does not need to forgive someone, sometime (and practically every day). If not every day, nevertheless, we all have to be ready to forgive in Christ someone, somehow (sometimes many persons have to be forgiven in this way). The fruits of living in this love and in this forgiveness are seen in the life, the witness, and the example of Saint Seraphim of Sarov. They are also given in the lives of other holy persons, as in the life of holy Elder Iustin whom I have mentioned, and others.

Just so you know the great confidence that I have in Saint Seraphim, and in his intercession for us even to this day, at our recent Archdiocesan Assembly, there were various sorts of problems that could have been difficult to talk about at that Assembly. Our Metropolitan was coming. People had had an unhappy experience with him at the previous Assembly because he was not feeling well, and they had never met him before. The Metropolitan at that time thought that he was not welcomed by us, and our people thought that he was not welcoming us. People became apprehensive. It was a huge misunderstanding. Saint Seraphim’s relics were brought to this recent Assembly, because on the new calendar his feast happened in the middle of the Assembly. The Divine Liturgy that the Metropolitan presided over was on the feast of Saint Seraphim, which we are celebrating now, thirteen days later. (So much has happened since that last Assembly only thirteen days ago that it feels to me like about two months ago.) Anyway, the Metropolitan had decided that instead of coming for just one day, he would come for the whole Assembly. He did not know what he was going to meet when he came to us. Our people were surprised that he was coming for the whole Assembly, and they did not know what to expect from him. He was suffering very badly from sciatica in his left leg. He fell, I think, in Holy Week, and did something to his back. He has this particular nerve problem, and it is giving him a great deal of pain. The Metropolitan was quite uncomfortable, and there was plenty of potential for more misunderstanding.

However, through the intercessions and interventions of Saint Seraphim, the whole Assembly was peaceful and joyful from beginning to end. The Divine Liturgy on Thursday went beautifully and peacefully because the relics of Saint Seraphim were with us all the time. People were able to see the warmth of Metropolitan Herman, which is truly there, and he was able to see the respect and the love for him of the people in this archdiocese. The mutual forgiveness, reconciliation, the whole experience of reconciling love was enabled by our dear Father Seraphim’s presence. That is what I am talking about. Saint Seraphim is truly a unique saint but he is not alone in his love for Jesus Christ. Many others, following a different path, have exhibited similar fruits of this love – this reconciling, forgiving love in Jesus Christ.

It is important for you and for me to remember that it is this reconciling love in Jesus Christ that has to be the foundation of your and my Orthodox Christian way. We all have to learn how to live in this love : to offer our pain, our sorrow, our angst, our fear, our everything, to the Lord by saying : “Lord have mercy” as Saint Silouan and Archimandrite Sophrony said. Simply saying : “Lord have mercy” over and over again, offering our anxieties, our pain, and our everything to the Lord, brings healing to our hearts. He brings healing to our difficult relationships. He brings healing to everything, and restores joy and peace amongst us.

This parish has the privilege of having the relics of Saint Seraphim here all the time. It is extremely important for us to remember to keep turning to Saint Seraphim for help in living our Orthodox Christian life. He is there, still, with love to pray for us, to support us, and to bring down to us the Grace of the Holy Spirit and the love of Jesus Christ. He will help us all, that we may imitate the life of Jesus Christ and glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, when the Apostle Peter is confessing to Christ that he believes that He, Jesus, is truly the Christ, our Lord says : “‘Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in Heaven’”. For us who are confessing that Jesus is the Christ, this is sometimes revealed to us by the Lord, more or less directly. I mean to say that some people have an experience a little bit like that of the Apostle Paul. It is possible that the Lord will reveal Himself to a person, and show Himself to be the Christ. A person can also come to understand this sometimes by reading the Bible, sometimes under very many other circumstances. Those, however, are exceptional circumstances. The main way in which people learn to confess that Jesus our Saviour is the Christ, is that He is revealed to them through human beings, through the living witness of Christians. When we say that Jesus is the Christ, we mean that Jesus is the Messiah, the One who is anointed, the One who is sent for the redemption of the world.

This is how, for instance, Alaskan Aboriginals came to Christ during the time of Saint Herman and the other missionaries. Saint Herman was an ordinary monk. He was not ordained to anything. He was simply a monk. Recently, when I was in St Petersburg, we went to visit the Trinity-Sergius Monastery in the area of Petrodvoretz. In this monastery which had been recently re-opened and now is functioning, I found out that Saint Ignaty Brianchaninov had been Archimandrite there 150 years ago or more. Decades before that, in this same monastery Saint Herman was tonsured into monasticism even before he went to Valaam Monastery. Saint Herman remained an ordinary monk. When he was living on Kodiak Island (and afterwards on Spruce Island), it is true that he was telling people about Christ, but mostly he was showing Christ by his life. He specialised in baking cookies for children. He saved the people from an earthquake by placing the icon of the Mother of God on the ground. He saved them from a tsunami by putting the icon of the Mother of God on the shore. He saved them from forest fires by placing the icon of the Mother of God in the path of the flames, and saying that the fire would come no farther. In every case the Lord protected the people.

However, the importance of Saint Herman for us is not only that he was a wonder-worker (although these things confirmed it), it was his daily witness of love for Jesus Christ no matter how difficult the circumstances of life were. His circumstances of life were not pleasant very often because the Russian-American Company at that time liked to take Aboriginal people almost as slaves in order to do hunting and trapping so that they would be able to get fur. Saint Herman was protecting the Aboriginal people from the money-grubbing fur traders. The Russian-American Company was not so different from the Hudson Bay Company, or from the North West Company of our own experience. It is sad to have to admit it – but that is how life goes. Human beings are human beings. Saint Herman, an ordinary person, lived the love of Jesus Christ. That love of Jesus Christ, that daily love of Jesus Christ, brought very many of these Aboriginals to Christ. Because of the conversion to Christ by so many people through the witness of Saint Herman, they and their descendants remained faithful Orthodox Christians even until now. Let us remember that after the sale of Alaska to the United States, there was strong opposition to Orthodox Christians, and there was a great difficulty in supplying priests. These Aboriginals, remembering Saint Herman, and passing on the personal experience of Christ in Saint Herman from generation to generation after him, stayed faithful to Jesus Christ as Orthodox Christians and did not budge.

It is important for you and for me to pay attention to our lives in Christ, because other people are measuring Christ by how we behave, by how we live our lives. Whether they will become Christian or not, whether they will persevere in the Christian life or not, can very much depend on how you and I live out the love of Jesus Christ in our daily lives. If our lives are filled with the love of Jesus Christ, and if people can see this stable love in us, if they can see this joy and life which comes from Christ in us, then they may, if they are already Christians, be encouraged to carry on even if they are severely tempted. It is our patience, our ability to persevere in the face of every sort of difficulty, and our joy (which is the main characteristic of Christians everywhere, always), which foster an increase in love in believers and the beginning of the fire of love in those who want to believe. If they are not Christians, they may very well decide to come to Christ because of our love. We, ourselves, confess with the Apostle Peter that Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One of God, the Messiah. He is the One who is sent to save us, who did save us, and who does save us.

It is also important for us to put the communion with Jesus Christ, and the renewing of our personal relationship of love in Jesus Christ as the first priority of every day. Historically, Orthodox Christians are not people who intellectualise Christ. There is much intellectual activity, but that does not come first. The love of Jesus Christ comes first. This love is lived out and nurtured in very practical, material ways, and not only in spiritual, non-physical realms (as Orthodox Christians are often misrepresented as being).

Normally, in the morning every day Orthodox Christian families take a piece of prosphora that they have brought home from church from the last Divine Liturgy, and making the sign of the Cross, they eat it. Some people also take a sip of Holy Water first thing in the morning to go with it, while they make the sign of the Cross. They then say their prayers before the icons and ask the Lord to bless the day that is coming. In the course of the day, with the sign of the Cross, they bring Christ’s blessing on everything that is happening. It is traditional, for instance, when parents are sending their children out of the house in the morning to go to school or to play or whatever, that they send them after first signing them with the sign of the Cross. When they go out themselves, they make the sign of the Cross. They bless the door when they close it, asking God to protect the house. When they get in the car, they make the sign of the Cross, and ask God to bless the journey and give them protection. Every time something is happening, Orthodox Christians normally bring Christ’s blessing upon everything. Innumerable times I have seen that a loaf of bread is signed with the sign of the Cross with the knife that is about to cut it. It is an uncountable number of times I have seen and heard in my life how people who are making bread (or making anything else) bless with the sign of the Cross everything that is going to be done. This is simply the normal Orthodox way of living : bringing the blessing of Christ upon everything, giving thanks to God, calling to Him for help, always referring everything about our life every day to Him. In North America, this is not done very much anymore.

North American society used to know something about this way of life, but whatever was known is mostly gone by this time. It is hard for Orthodox Christians in North America to keep up these very good and life-giving habits. Many people lose them because the environment is a quite critical, and people are shy ; they do not want to stick out. However, if we are going to be Orthodox Christians, we have to be honest, and faithful to Christ. We cannot be ashamed of Christ. He said that if we are ashamed of Him here, He will be ashamed of us in the Kingdom of Heaven (see Mark 8:38 ; Luke 9:26). We cannot be ashamed of Him. We love Him. He loves us. He is our life. Our way of life is important for us, even if people think it is odd. Really, it is no more odd or strange than wearing a turban, for example. What is different ? Sikhs are very happy to show who they are by wearing a turban. That is a sign of their faith. Therefore, why should we, who are Christians (in this country which advertises that everyone is free) be ashamed of our Faith ? We are not criticising the Sikhs (or anyone else) by making the sign of the Cross. Rather, by doing this, we are being faithful to Jesus Christ. I still remember a few years ago on a CBC programme at Christmas-time, that there was an interview of a Sikh elder. The question was whether talk about Christmas was offensive to the Sikhs. This Sikh elder said : “If you are Christians, why should you not talk about it ? It is normal for you to talk about it. Just do not force me”.

Being who we are does not imply that we are forcing anyone else to be who we are. No-one can force anyone to be a Christian – not honestly. We can only love them into Christ. This is the only way. In order to be able to be seen and understood, we have to allow ourselves to make the sign of the Cross when it is normal and natural to do so. This is our way : blessing ourselves, people, things, the environment, everything, blessing with Christ’s love, honestly, uprightly, with love, with joy, blessing everyone and everything. In fact, I could have gotten myself accidentally into “hot water” when I was in Suzdal, because I was not at all thinking that there would be non-Christians working in that place. There were some men working on a roof in a monastery and doing all sorts of repairs. As I was walking by, I blessed them, and they did not seem to object, although the guide said : “Oh, they are Muslim”. They were from Kazakhstan. Well, anyway, they did not object. In fact, I think that many Muslim do not object so much as all that, as long as what is offered is offered in love.

Let us do our best, as the Apostle Peter, to confess Christ in everything in our lives. Let us ask Him to help us because we are weak, and it is difficult, and we are shy. Sometimes we are afraid – it is true. Let us ask Him to give us strength, and to send His guardian angels even more often to remind us, to keep us on the right way. May His angels help us to be faithful to Jesus Christ, and to show His love by how we live, by what we do. Let us ask Him to give us the strength so that in every part of our lives, referring everything, always, to Him, we may glorify Him, our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we are still within the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Today, our Lord says to us : “‘Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his Cross, and follow Me’”. We are not taking up the Cross in a literal fashion, but we are imitating Jesus Christ and His life. If we are to follow Christ and imitate Him, then it is important that we first know Him and that we love Him. For us to know Him and love Him means that we have to be reading the Bible regularly. When we are reading the Bible, we are encountering Jesus Christ personally. When we read these words, Jesus Christ comes to us. He fills us with His love. If we are filled with this love, then it becomes possible to follow Him. As He Himself tells us, this love is not like the usual love of human beings. I used to like to tell this illustration very often, and I will revive it again for this occasion. When we go to the United States and we want to drink tea, we find that the tea bag has a string attached to it. This is how usual human love is. Human beings say to each other : “I will love you if …”. There is almost always some sort of condition attached to this love.

Sometimes we approach God in the same way, and we say to God : “I will love You if You give me what I am asking for”. Not one of us likes it, when we know that this is how people are treating us. Things have changed, but when I was young, Canadian tea bags used to be always different from the American ones : Canadian tea bags never had strings attached to them. I suppose this is because Canadians still knew how to make tea correctly in a tea pot. Now we seem to be forgetting that. Nevertheless, a tea bag without a string helps us to understand the love of God. There are no conditions attached to the love of God. There are no “ifs” attached to the love of God. God simply loves us.

Anyone who reads in the New Testament about the love of God will see and understand that God Himself is Love. This is why He does love us – because He is Love. If each one of us exists at all, it is because He loves each one of us, and each one of us is one of His creations. We tend to think that somehow everything is automatic in human life and in animal life. However, there is nothing automatic. Everything lives because God loves. If we have anything good in life, it is because He loves us.

Therefore, how do I know that there are no strings attached to the love of God ? In the middle of the church we see the Cross. On this Cross our Saviour is hanging, and His arms are stretched out. Because of His love, He allows us to crucify Him. When I say that we are crucifying Him, I am saying that we contributed to it, and we are also responsible for what happened. Every time we are rebelling against the love of God and doing things against His love or doing things our own way, we are contributing to that Crucifixion. However, when Christ is hanging on the Cross with His arms stretched out, He voluntarily allowed Himself to do this for us. When His arms are stretched out on the Cross, He is, at the same time that we are killing Him, embracing us with His love. From the Cross He forgives the people who are killing Him, and He forgives us from the Cross as well. When He died and descended into Hades (the place of the dead), He gathered people who were believers, and He brought them up out of Hades with Him. We see this in the icon that we are venerating at the time of Pascha. Christ is breaking the doors of Hades. He is bringing Adam and Eve out, and He is bringing everyone else out. When He is rising from the dead, He is not alone. Because He is Light, because He is Love, He gives light and love to everyone.

When we are living our lives, and when people are sometimes mean to us or hurting us in some way, it is important for us to remember Jesus Christ on the Cross, and how He suffered because of love. When we are suffering because of love, He will help us. Since He forgives us from the Cross, we, in love, can forgive other people who hurt us. Because Jesus Christ loves us, He will give us the strength and the love to forgive as He forgives.

Through the intercessions of His Mother, let us behold how much the Lord loves us. She, an ordinary human being, shows us that the Christian life can be lived. In this icon of the Mother of God of Port Arthur which is visiting us today, we see broken swords under her feet. By her prayers, the Mother of God can bring peace and break wars. She has sent away foreign armies more than one time when people have prayed to her. Now that this icon has come to Canada, the Lord, through the prayers of the Mother of God, has been helping people who have come to pray to her. The Lord loves us. The Lord helps us. He gives us everything we need.

It is important that we be faithful to His love, and every day turn to Him and ask Him for help. In this way, we take up the Cross. In this way, we follow Christ, and we glorify Him together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, our Saviour raises the son of the widow of the village of Nain. A long time ago, I saw where this village is – near the foot of Mount Tabor where the Transfiguration happened. From the time of my childhood, I remember that I was hearing about this miracle, and I was very impressed with our Lord’s ability to raise someone from the dead. I did not understand the whole picture at that time, because I was only little. I did not have much experience of life and what it meant to this woman to lose her only son. What impressed me was the fact that our Saviour could raise someone from the dead. It was the same with my reaction to the raising of Lazarus : that really impressed me. I suppose this impresses many people in the same way still to this day – the raising of someone from the dead. It is a wonderful thing. People generally think of this miracle as some sort of magic, or some sort of “ability”, and say : “You can just do it”. In fact, our Saviour did do it. However, it was not because of some sort of ability – as we understand “ability”. It was Who He is that made this happen – the raising of people from the dead. He proclaims Who He is : the One who loves people into life and speaks them into existence. That is Who He is. Therefore, when He is giving life to the son of the widow of Nain, He is doing it because of compassion, because He loves, and because He is Who He is.

By the way, it is important to remember that it was a horrible thing for this woman to lose her only son, a young man. At that time, there was no such thing as welfare, and it meant that this was the end of a normal life for her. It meant that she had no-one to look after her any more, and she would have to go out on the street and beg for anything and everything in order to live. It was a big catastrophe that happened to this woman. Our Lord, out of compassion for her, gave her son back to her.

Sometimes in situations like that, having compassion, we would like to help in the same way. However, the problem is that for you and me, if we could do such a thing from our own strength (which we cannot), then being who we are as fallen, always it would turn into a point of pride for us, and we would start to make money on raising people from the dead. In concert with this, predictably we would say : “Look at what I can do, and what I can do for you !” This is how fallen human beings tend to behave. This is not at all to say that raising people from the dead has not happened since today’s event in Nain. We have seen this happening in apostolic times – for example, those that are written about in the New Testament. In the course of these last 2,000 years, this raising from the dead has happened many, many times. Nevertheless, it is never because any one person has the personal ability to do it or has the ability to make it happen. It always happens only when there is a reason for it to happen – when the Lord wants it to happen. It often happens when people are not expecting it. Therefore, in the lives of holy people even in our day, such things can and do happen when the Lord wills it, and when a person co-operates with the Lord’s life-giving will.

I remember hearing from a priest who had a call to a home where there was a newly-born child that was going to die. He ran quickly to the home in order to baptise the child before it should die. However, the child did die before he got there. He was concerned about the family, so he did what one should never do : he baptised the dead child. The child lived after that. This did not happen because he was able to do it, or anything else. This happened because God loves us with unimaginable, unthinkable love, and He knows what we need. He knew that for some reason this baby had to live and this family had to have this baby, and He inspired this priest to do what he should not do. The baby lived, and God was glorified.

This is how it is with us. Everything in our life has to refer only to the Lord. The Apostle Paul was speaking today about his own experience when he was caught up into Heaven while he was praying, and the joy and the wonder which he felt in being there. The consequence of this was that he had the strength and determination to bring people to the same love of Jesus Christ. The way of the Christian is the way of love, the way of compassion. We live in love with the Lord Himself, and it is the experience of this love that sustains you and me through all sorts of difficulties, and sometimes excruciating, painful situations in our lives. This love enables us to be faithful to the Saviour, to be open to His healing love, to be ready to follow Him in the Way of Life. He is the Way. He is the Life. He is the only Truth.

The Lord may not give to you or to me the responsibility of raising people from the dead. However, He gives us His love, and it is certain that He gives to you and to me the responsibility of sharing with those around us the life that is His, the love that is His to those around us. This sharing of His love brings life to hearts that are deadened, to lives that are broken ; it brings hope to those who are in distress. This love which propels you and me to do irrational things sometimes, likewise gives hope to those around us. We can give life in Christ to those around us. To Him be glory, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

The first thing I want to do is to say thanks to everyone that came, and especially to the clergy who concelebrated with us today, and that are visitors. It is a special blessing, from my point of view, that everyone came from such distances. One came particularly far to participate in this celebration, and I want to thank Vladyka Iov for coming specially for this feast. Most of all, I want to thank His Beatitude, Metropolitan Herman, for taking the time in a very busy life to come here to Montréal, and to lead this celebration. It makes all the difference in the world for this one hundredth anniversary that His Beatitude is leading all the events.

The city of Montréal, I often am saying, is truly the heart of Canada. Much of Canada does not necessarily understand or recognise that Montréal is the heart of Canada, but it has been that for about 400 years, so Canada should get used to it. More than that, we have to admit, too, not with any grudge (but with enthusiasm on my part), that where we are right now is the original Canada, and everything else is only an extension. Therefore, if we want to use the expression “the rest of Canada”, that is everything else outside of Québec. I want to say also, that wherever I go, I meet many people who sing the praises of this city because it is a special city. It has a particularly good character although it is not without its problems. No place is without its problems. Human beings are human beings. However, this city is very special in itself. People even like to come here from the States. People come here from everywhere because of the warmth, and the positive character and characters of Montréal.

A long time ago, in the earliest days of Canada, Montréal used to be both the heart and the bank of the country. Then there was a time of troubles when people were “chicken”, and took their money out of Québec. It went to a certain other city on the north shore of Lake Ontario. Much of the money went there, so Montréal lost some of the bank department of the country (although it did not all go away, thank God). Montréal is still partly the bank of Canada. However, even though it lost some of the bank of Canada, it never lost being the heart of Canada, and that is my strong opinion. I will argue with anyone who says that I am wrong.

As for this parish celebrating its 100th anniversary, it is in its own way an expression of the city, and what it is to the rest of the country. This parish has been one of the warmest places in the whole country to me from the first day that I came to this parish (and that is a long time ago). The hospitality of this parish has always been warm, and very Christian, and I am grateful to God for that. I am grateful to God that you are like that. This parish, being 100 years old, is, as we have heard, the first Orthodox parish in Montréal. Thus, this parish is the mother of all the Orthodox churches in this city. By this time, about thirty or so parishes in this region have come from this mother parish of Saints Peter and Paul. In all likelihood, almost everything in eastern Canada comes from this parish. Many more parishes farther west have also sprung from this root.

This cathedral parish has fostered life in the rest of Canada. That was particularly the case in those days when this diocese had very hard times. Twenty, thirty, as much as forty years ago, the diocese was having all sorts of difficulties in its life. However, the glue of the whole diocese was Vladyka Sylvester and this parish together. For many years, this cathedral parish produced the only newsletter that the whole diocese had, because Vladyka Sylvester cared about the diocese, and so did you. Your service to the diocese has been long-standing in many ways as well. Not just a few priests have come from this parish to serve the diocese.

I am grateful to God that so much renewal of life has been happening in this parish as has been described. I am grateful for the potential that this parish has for future service in supporting other work in the diocese. The Lord is renewing your life for a purpose to do even more good work. God bless you all. God protect you all. God save you all.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

At the beginning of the Gospel reading today, when our Lord meets the man who is possessed by the devil, He does not wait to be asked. Our Saviour immediately begins to cast the devil out. It was not merely one demon either ; it was many. That is why this man’s name was “Legion”. This man had many devils. No-one could hold him down. He was living wild in the graves among the dead. He could be described as a living-dead-man when he was possessed by devils. When a person is possessed by devils, who the person truly is becomes squashed down, and all these other personalities come in, take the person over, and turn the person into a marionette or a puppet. This is what it means to be possessed.

Ultimately, only our Saviour Himself can get rid of the demons, and put things back into their proper order. That is precisely what He did. He gave a few other lessons to people in the process about whether we should or should not be raising swine (because the Law said that it was not permitted to keep them). People were rather perturbed. That is one of the reasons, I think, that the people of the city asked Him to go away after they found out what had happened. However, this is not the only time that people were so overawed with the wonder of what Jesus was doing in their midst : how He was setting people free, how He was showing love to them, how He was giving them life, how He was changing everything. Other reasons scared them off, I suppose, because in other cases our Lord would be told, in effect : “Please go away from here” (see Luke 9:53). In another case, a man said to Him : “‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord’” (Luke 5:8).

Sometimes we are like that ourselves. When we are paying attention to our sinfulness, to our brokenness, to our fallenness, and we think we are unworthy to be in the presence of the Lord because we are ashamed, we ask Him to go away from us. When we are in His presence, we feel how we have betrayed Him ; we feel how we have caused His suffering ; we feel ashamed of our behaviour, of our betrayal. However, the Lord, in His mercy, does not go away from us. He never goes away from us. We are the ones who go away from Him from time to time. He never goes away from us because He loves us, and He wants us to live with Him always, ever, and unto the ages of ages. He never leaves us, no matter how many times we leave Him. We are like the apostles, who in the time of the Crucifixion, ran away. However, even though they ran away, He was still with them, and they came back to Him. We do the same : we run away from time to time because we are afraid. However, He is always with us, and He helps us to come back to Him. The Lord, the Giver of life, cares about what happens to you and to me. It is for us to allow Him to work this love in us, this life in us.

A primary priority for the Orthodox Christian is to express this love in thanksgiving, as we are doing here, now, today, during this Divine Liturgy. This is our thanksgiving all together to the Lord for His love for us, and for everything that He is doing for us. The more we love Him, the more we love being here with Him, not only on Sundays, but on any other day possible. I know that life is busy for many people, and there are many demands, but lately, when I have been coming here for Vespers, there have not been all that many people in church. Compared with the attendance on Sunday, it is few, and it is my responsibility to say that Saturday Vespers is an important service because it prepares you and me for today.

In fact, I was thinking as I came into the church this morning and the vesting began (and then the Divine Liturgy immediately began), that in the old days (when I was younger), when the bishop came into the church, he came in early, and then the Hours were read, and then the Divine Liturgy began. However, when I come in and the Divine Liturgy begins immediately (since the Hours are read ahead of time to make everything easy for everyone), it feels to me like a sudden start. The Hours prepare us. They get us warmed up. They get us going. The heart warms up while the Hours are read, and by the time the Divine Liturgy begins, it is easier to focus ; it is easier to offer this thanksgiving ; it is easier to glorify the Lord ; it is easier to be focussed about what we are doing, instead of simply jumping in, as it were. That is one of the purposes of Vespers : to help us to get ready for today. The hymns in the evening tell us more or less what is the theme of this Divine Liturgy : whose memory we are keeping, and what we are celebrating today. With reference to the saints and the feasts of the day, during the Divine Liturgy, the only texts that refer to them are the tropars and the kontaks (and sometimes the readings). In Vespers and Vigil, this preparation truly warms up the heart, and there are plenty of hymns that are telling us what is coming liturgically. It prepares us for today. I am encouraging you to try to make more room for this preparation. If I sometimes ask for the entrance of the bishop to be even earlier than it is now so that I can be part of the Hours, do not be surprised.

The Lord wants us to be with Him, and our place is here where He is in our midst. With our hymns and our songs, we tell the Lord that we love Him. He is giving us His Word of life from the Scriptures, and He is feeding us with the Body and Blood of our Saviour. He is with us, showing His love to us, giving His love to us, revitalising us with His love. The Lord never deserts us. He always keeps us on the right path (even though the evil one is from time to time, or always, attacking us). Therefore, let us ask the Lord to protect us and keep us going. Let us ask the Lord to renew the fire of love for Him within us so that as Saint Herman, the Elder and Wonder-worker, says : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, we will love God above all, and do His holy will”. In so doing, we will glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Human beings are all just about the same. It seems to be characteristic of human beings that the more we have, the more we want. The more we care about the things we have – the more things we want. The more we have, the more we think about ourselves, the less we think about other people. This is just how it progresses in human history. Human beings are not different ever, anywhere. We are all just about the same. Somehow, we cannot manage to learn. We have more and more things, and when we have more and more things, we are preoccupied with all those things, and we forget about everyone else. That is precisely the case with the rich man that the Lord is speaking about today in the Gospel. This rich man has so many ripe crops, and he says : “‘What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?’” Instead of doing something more selfless, all he did was build bigger and bigger storage, and prepared to enjoy himself. He was turned in on himself, and he did not think about sharing all that wealth. Therefore, the Lord says : “‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will be those things you have provided?’” That was it.

We have to be very careful ourselves about how we are living our lives. The way of our Lord is never characteristically tight-fistedness and holding on to everything. His way is always the way of open-handedness and sharing. Saint John Chrysostom speaks over and over again about the need to care about the poor and the needs of other people. The Gospel reminds us over and over again that the way of the followers of Jesus Christ, the way of love, is to care about what happens to all the people around us, and to care about creation as well. What happens to creation around us ? In living out the love of Jesus Christ, we have a responsibility towards people, animals, trees, water, everything around us.

The way of Gandhi was to make as small a negative impact as possible on the environment around us. In that way, he was right. For Christians, our responsibility, being where we are in our environment (and that includes people, animals, water, everything), is to be co-creating with God, to be life-giving with God in this environment, working, living in the love of Jesus Christ. To do this we have to be, as our Saviour said, rich towards God. If the Lord is blessing us with many things, then it is important for us to give thanks to Him for His gifts (and not to think that we have done everything ourselves), and to share what He gives us with people around us. The more we are ready to share what He has given us, the more He gives us to share. The more we hold on tightly to what we have, the less we have. If we hold on tightly to what we have, then this is because we think it is ours : “I got it myself, and no-one is going to take it from me”. When we hold on so tightly to things, we kill everything.

From my childhood (and from seeing other children, too) I remember children who pick dandelions or other sorts of little flowers for their Mummy. They bring them home to their Mummy, and they are holding onto those flowers very tightly so as not to lose them. By the time those flowers get to their Mummy, they are all strangled. It is an offering of love from the child, and the Mummy is going to accept the strangled offering with love anyway. We are like that with our holding onto things. We do not approach the Lord like the child towards his mother with the strangled dandelions, but we are often holding on tightly to whatever we have, not even thinking about offering to anyone else. This is just plain death. It is important for us today to remember that the way of Christ is always about openness. It is remembering the Lord. It is giving. Giving.

Now a few words about the past week which I spent in Greece. I had the blessing, finally, for the first time, to be able to go with a group of people to Mount Athos. The Lord truly gives us object lesson after object lesson. We thought that we had planned according to the rules (indeed, there are many rules about how to get to Mount Athos). Even if we did plan and try to do everything correctly, everything always changed. When we finally came to be prepared to go to spend our three days (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) on Mount Athos, we thought that things would just happen as normal. However, on Monday, when we had arrived in Ouranopolis and were getting ready to go to Mount Athos, we did not go to Mount Athos because it was windy and there were no boats. We finally made it very early Tuesday morning. We thought we would find a monk-taxi for rent, but instead we found a little mini-bus driven by a monk from Karakallou. As a result, we saw half a dozen monasteries, including Vatopedi (which is where Father Pierre’s home monastery is), and finally we arrived at Iveron late in the afternoon. By then, we were running short of time, and we thought that we might get to Panteleimon. The winds were just favourable enough ; the boat came, and we managed to get to Panteleimon. We were only allowed to stay on the Holy Mountain for three nights and four days. We were simply going to be obedient to that (and anyway there was no time for any other possibility). We said, therefore, that we would have to resign ourselves to one night at Panteleimon.

However, we had two nights at Panteleimon because the winds did not let us leave. By then, we had begun to think that this would be all, and we would go back to Thessalonika, and maybe go to a church shop or two and then come home. However, we stopped at two monasteries on the way to Thessalonika. Then we stopped at four churches in Thessalonika and finally got back to the hotel. The hotel people, obviously used to such things, were not like most North American hotel people. We had missed a day in our hotel arrangements, and they said : “Ah so, you finally made it back !” They were quite peaceful about it.

What happened was that we proposed a way to approach the Holy Mountain and to make this pilgrimage, and we thought this was the possible and right way to go about it. However, the Lord said to us, as it were : “No. This is not good enough. You are going to do this, and you are going to see much more. You think you will get this much blessing, but I have more blessings to give you, and I am going to show you”. We venerated so many more saints than we had ever imagined. When anyone goes to the Holy Mountain, it cannot be as a tourist merely looking at these ancient buildings (although, of course, we do see ancient buildings). By the way, for women (who are not permitted to set foot on the Holy Mountain), it is actually possible for them to take a boat (as long as the winds are favourable – in summertime it is a much more predictable thing), and go all the way around the Holy Mountain. The boat comes quite close to the monasteries, and the monks bring the relics out for the passengers to venerate. They pray with the women who thus have an encounter with the Holy Mountain. Therefore, it is possible for them to come close to the Holy Mountain. There are women’s monasteries nearby the Holy Mountain also, that are dependent on the men’s monasteries. However, the point still is : we are not simply wandering around and looking as gawkers do. It is the personal encounter with the saint whose relics are there that matters ; it is the personal encounter with the monks who are living there and praying daily that matters. They are not merely playing around in their prayers.

All the monasteries have about the same daily starting time. Either they start at 1 a.m. Greek time, or they start at 2 a.m. Greek time. Why do I say “Greek time” ? The Holy Mountain is on a different clock. They are on the biblical clock which used to be the clock of the old Roman Empire. The day starts at sunset. The first hour of the night is the first hour after sunset. The clock is all different, and, in fact, it put us another seven hours ahead. We were living on the Holy Mountain fourteen hours different from time here – not just seven hours. It is like being in China, I suppose, according to the clock. The daily liturgical cycle begins at 1 a.m. in Panteleimon, and they finish at about 5 or 6 a.m. If there is a great feast then they finish at around 8 or 9 in the morning. Then they start again at 2 in the afternoon with Vespers, after which is a Molieben (or a Paraklesis) to the Mother of God (which is not particularly short). Then they have supper, and after supper they go back to church for Small Compline in which there is an Akathist to the Mother of God because the Mother of God is Abbess of the whole Holy Mountain.

The monks always say : “No women can come here nowadays”, but a woman is the Abbess of the whole place. The Mother of God is the living Abbess of the whole Holy Mountain, and the Mother of God actually does regulate what is going on – we experienced it. The daily life she does regulate. Compline, which one would expect to last for 25 minutes, lasts for more than an hour. On an average, ordinary day, they are praying for six to eight hours, because that is the work of monks – to praise God. That is their first work. After that they do manual labour for four hours. Their days are not very short, and they are not at all empty.

When we are standing there in the churches, in these services, we are facing the Lord, and we are facing one another. More than one of the pilgrims said that he had come to understand himself and his relationship with the Lord much more clearly just by standing in the services (not necessarily understanding all the Greek or all the Slavonic). Nevertheless, he was there ; he knew the order of the services. In the presence of the Lord, in the presence of all those people who truly are praying, there is a great deal of focus, and all that focus brings Grace, blessing and healing to the heart.

That is the purpose of a pilgrimage. It is remembering that we are in the hands of the Lord, and that the Lord is directing our lives, to whom be glory : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

You and I are temples of the Holy Spirit. That is our life. We have been baptised into Christ, and therefore, we have put on Christ. We are all carrying Christ. We are all Christophers, and therefore, wherever we are going in our lives, whatever we are doing in our lives, people around us should be able to encounter Christ in you and in me if we are truly mature, Orthodox Christians.

How did our Saviour behave in His life ? We just heard the answer to this question. It did not matter what day it was – He was always ready to meet the needs of His creatures. Therefore, today in the Gospel, He heals a woman on the Sabbath. That got Him into trouble because according to the Pharisees of the time, healing anyone who was sick on the Sabbath Day is work. This attitude is what corrupted the Law. For the Saviour, and for anyone involved in the work of the Saviour, work is not that. Setting people free, healing people, bringing Grace is not work – it is just life itself. It is life-giving. It is bringing Christ to the one who needs it. That is not work – it is life ; it is joy. It is true that the body might get tired sometimes with all these activities, but it is not work as work was understood in the Law of the Old Testament. It is not a desecration of the Sabbath. It is not a rejection of anything. It is not a perversion of anything. It is the fulfilment of the Law.

We human beings tend to be rather like control-freaks. We like to be able to explain everything, to understand everything, to make everything work, and especially to make things work according to our understanding, our desires. That is how we like it. Nearly everything about us is saying that we are control-focussed. We want things our way. Therefore, we usually forget to consult the Lord first about anything. We always think about it ourselves, and do it ourselves first, and maybe eventually we get around to thinking : “Is this what the Lord is asking ?”

Abraham encountered God personally. Everything that he did afterwards was the result of this loving encounter with God. Abraham trusted God in doing what otherwise seemed to be ridiculous and inexplicable : pick up ? move to nowhere ? go wander around with your family ? do these things and more because God said : “Do this, and I will multiply you ?” However, Abraham did do all these things and more. He did, as a result of his encounter of love with God and he trusted God to fulfil His word. God did fulfil His word, regardless of the many tests that Abraham encountered.

In due course came the Law on Sinai. This Law is what we often call the Ten Commandments. This Law is summarised by these words which we ourselves are repeating all the time (because we are the new Israel, after all) : “You shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart, from your whole soul, and from your whole power” (5 Moses [Deuteronomy] 6:5). The Ten Commandments are describing what a life looks like if we love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, with all our strength. If we do love God above everything, then, of course, we would not worship any other god ; we would not make idols ; we would keep the Sabbath Day ; we would respect our parents ; we would not kill or murder people ; we would not steal from people ; we would not tell lies ; we would not covet things or try to take things away from someone else ; we would not be distracted by all sorts of things. We would live in love, and we would do things in a positive way. Our life would be full of virtue because our life would be fired by the love of God.

I was only on Mount Athos for a few days, but all the time I heard about how the monks are listening to the Mother of God, and serving the Lord. They are following her example and following her direction. She is the Abbess of the whole Holy Mountain and of all those monks (who do not let women go there mostly because of their own weakness, and not because of anything else). Those monks serve the Lord under her direction. They are always speaking about it. It is an ironic situation in this context where no women can go. At least that is officially the case. (A long time ago, a few women have actually visited there, and they were queens. It would be hard to say “No” to them.) Nevertheless, there is one woman who is always there, and that is the Mother of God.

The Mother of God serves the Lord in freedom. She serves the Lord in might and strength. That is why she is called the “General” of the conquering hosts of heaven. She does all this because she is living in a harmony of love with Her Son. Like Adam and Eve at the beginning, before the Primordial Fall, she does not, and they did not, need to ask much about what is God’s will because their hearts were open always to what is God’s will. Their hearts heard what is God’s will, and they did God’s will. We hear in the Scriptures very often on the feasts of the Mother of God the little passage where a certain woman says : “‘Blessed is the womb that bore You …’”. Our Lord replies : “‘More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!’” (Luke 11:27, 28). In this passage He is referring to His Mother. Indeed, she hears the Word of God and keeps it. Following Him, she lives in accordance with this Word of God. The Word of God in her case is her Son. She lives in complete harmony with the Word of God. She is the example of how we ought to be living. In the context of this love, our hearts ought to be open, alive, mindful, conscious, ready always to do the will of the Lord.

Most of us are spending our lives in one state of cloudiness or other. It is virtually unavoidable because of the foggy environment in which we live. Thank God we get the chance to go to confession sometimes to clear the cloud away. Nevertheless, the Lord in His mercy (despite all this cloudiness) is asking us to do what is right. Even bishops can sometimes get confused by this cloud, disturbed by this cloud of distraction, forgetfulness, sin, whatever. Take myself, for example. This morning I tonsured n a reader. N should have been tonsured a reader about twenty years ago. I finally woke up. N should have had the protection of these prayers and this sort of ordination because of the responsibilities that he is carrying and the service that he is offering to the Church. However, the Bishop, in his confusion, did not catch on.

Now I will tell you a little joke, because this is how our life is. It has to do with the Church of England. There was a very young, green assistant priest who was summoned for some reason to the bishop’s house for breakfast, and he was scared to death. (In England, a bishop is like a lord in the House of Lords : he cannot be insignificant in public society in the way a Canadian bishop can be.) The curate comes to the bishop’s house, and he is shown in by the butler, and he goes into the dining-room. The bishop comes in ; they say their prayers and sit down. The curate (the young assistant priest) is given boiled eggs for breakfast. The bishop has them, too, of course. The bishop sits there in his sort of reverie (it is popularly understood that bishops live in some other dimension somewhere), and the nervous, young cleric is sitting there. Finally he is brave enough to open his boiled egg. To his great consternation he discovers that this egg is “off”. Then he does not know what to do, because an egg that is “off” is not exactly appetising, and there are various people who say one should not touch such a thing. The bishop finally comes to himself, and sees the boy picking at this egg, and says : “Something the matter with your egg, Boy ?” Upon hearing a tone of voice like that, the young man is multiplied in his fear, and shaking, says : “Oh no, sir, it is very good in parts !” Some other things are like that : very good in parts, but not so good in other parts.

What is important for us is that when we do “come to”, we do give thanks to God for His love for us, for His extraordinary patience with us as we bumble around in this life, in this fog. I suppose that I have some people accompanying me in this fog. In this fogginess, the Lord shows us the light and we do come to the light. He dispels the fog. He warms us with His love. It is essential for us to give thanks to Him, and to allow Him to keep this fog away from us more and more in our lives.

It is important that we turn to the Mother of God, our example, and that we ask her for her protection. I have read so many accounts of how her protection has been helping people in their lives. I have experienced it too, myself. However, more important are the significant things that have happened to other people in their lives – how the Mother of God is sheltering them, protecting them, guiding them, directing them in and to her Son. It is necessary that we turn to her for her protection, for her direction, her guidance. Like her, with her, without any fog, but in the brightness of the light of her Son, may we glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Very often we are carried away by rules and regulations, and that is very much the case in today’s Gospel reading, because this woman is healed of her illness on the Sabbath Day. (In this particular case it was not simply an illness, but it also had to do with a demonic oppression.) A very important thing to remember is that underlying everything in the relationship with the Lord is this saying : “‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath’” (Mark 2:27). The Sabbath Day, the day of rest, was given to us as a blessing, a day on which we could rest from doing all sorts of work and instead, devote ourselves to worshipping God. That should take precedence over everything.

However, the worship of God should not be unreasonable. Human beings like to take liberties, of course. That old saying : “Give them an inch, and they will take a yard or even a mile” applies to all human beings. When it is understood by human beings very often that there is freedom to do whatever their heart moves them to do on the Sabbath Day, the tendency is to do whatever one feels like on the Sabbath Day. People would naturally begin to do all sorts of things that are not particularly restful and make excuses for not attending worship services. Those who were in charge of the congregations in those pre-Christian days, as people still do today, said, in effect : “Well, since people are getting all unruly, we have to regulate life and put things in order. Therefore, we are going to have to make extra rules to make sure that people do not do any work at any time on the Sabbath Day”.

The rules that they came up with became almost ridiculous. If anyone had been doing some sewing some other day, and accidentally on the Sabbath had put on a coat or a cloak that had a needle in it, and got caught by someone, this person would be accused of working on the Sabbath Day ; such a person would be given penalties because a needle was being carried in a cloak. This does not work, of course, because we get ridiculous in our attempt to protect something that is holy. The Sabbath Day is holy.

Society used to keep the Lord’s Day, the Christian day of rest. We did not lose Saturday as the Sabbath and the seventh day of the week. Rather, we Christians added the factor of resting on Sunday, the Lord’s Day, the day of the Lord’s Resurrection. Sunday, the first day of the week, is also the Eighth Day. The Eighth Day is the day of the Kingdom of Heaven. This fact adds to the solemnity of the Lord’s Resurrection. This is why on this day, we worship the Lord, attend church, pay attention to the Lord, and put the Lord first. When I was a child, of course, nothing was open on Sunday anywhere in Canada. All shops were closed. Restaurants were maybe open a little bit, but not much at all happened on Sunday. I was quite surprised when I was in Thessalonica a couple of weeks ago to see that this is still the case there. I could not believe it. On Sunday, after church, nothing is open at all, and such restaurants that are open are already closing at 6 o’clock. Everyone is taking a rest on Sunday in Thessalonica, and I am told that it is the case in all of Greece.

Here in Canada, this sort of liberty that we began to take has gone to extremes. In Canada, it seems that more and more, all that people do now is work, work, work every single, solitary day. No day is any different ; money is money ; business is business – work, work, work. There is no day off. We have no day off at all in Canada. This is where we are getting ridiculous in the opposite direction. However, making federal laws to stop us working on Sunday is not going to get us anywhere because we always rebel and try to get around those laws one way or another. We do not like being regulated.

If things are going to change, we ourselves have to do something in our hearts in the first place. We have to let the Lord guide and govern our hearts, and direct us correctly. Worshipping the Lord, being in His presence, being together in the House of the Lord, at the Table of the Lord on the Day of the Lord is the most important thing for us no matter what else seems to be important. It is difficult to survive, to endure to the end of any week unless we first come here on Sunday to worship the Lord together. When we are here at the Table of the Lord amongst the people of the Lord, He feeds us with Himself, with His life, so that we have strength to continue to follow the right way, with hearts that are open to the Lord, and able to hear everything by the Grace of the Holy Spirit.

This woman today is bent over. Nowadays, because of Canadian medicine, we seldom see a man or a woman all bent over. This, of course, is a symptom of osteoporosis. However, in this particular woman’s case, her condition seems not to have been as simple as osteoporosis. Something else was burdening her, since the Evangelist Luke says that she had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years. In her case it was not osteoporosis. Something had happened to her spiritually that affected her physically, and bent her all over. The Lord, who everywhere and at all times, is setting people free, approaches her, and sets her free just like that. She immediately stands up straight.

It is necessary that we remember this, because we, ourselves, are often burdened by sin, by guilt, by too much paying attention to evil thoughts, by all sorts of other things. Perhaps our bodies are not all bent over, but our hearts can be all bent over and darkened. It is important for us to remember that the Lord is the same Lord always. He is the same to us as He is to this woman. He cares about this woman that we just heard about ; He cares about us in the same way. As He sets this woman free from her oppression by the devil, He does set you and me free also from oppression by the devil, and from enslavement to our sins of one sort or another. He sets us free by His love. He is the One who gives us life. He is the One who turns us about, cleans us up, washes us, straightens us up, gives us the strength to do what we have to do as healthy persons, as healthy Christians.

When we are hearing about spiritual struggle (which is sometimes called “warfare” in one or another form), we are often speaking about ourselves as some sort of Star Wars warrior or the like. Very often such images pass through the mind (especially today when the Apostle is talking about putting on the whole armour). Spiritual struggle is not as simple as this. The spiritual Fathers and Mothers, who have experience, understand this. They repeat frequently that accepting and cultivating images in the mind is not the way. It is never a safe way to start trying to battle with devils and evil face to face and directly, ourselves. It is not as though we can put on some sort of impenetrable armour and be like Frodo, or some elf in a Tolkien story. Those sorts of weapons and protections are merely imaginary and illusory when it comes to dealing with good and evil. In the struggle between good and evil in our hearts and in our lives, there is no bullet-proof vest that we can put on. The only protection you or I can have is the protection of the Saviour, Himself. The armour that we put on is Christ. If there is going to be the overcoming of evil in our lives, it is going to be done by Christ. Indeed, in Christ we have also the wonderful protection of the Mother of God who ably wields His protection.

I will give you an example. This is an account that I read a long time ago about a man, who around 1907 had lived a very bad life in Russia, and never went to church (although he had gone when he was a child). In those days, there were many people who did not go to church. He had lived some sort of evil and dissolute life (as Canadians live now, by and large). This man contracted pneumonia. A hundred years ago, pneumonia was very, very serious, and it was easy to die from it, even if the person were young. He was in the hospital with a terrible fever, and so forth.

The doctors and nurses were coming and going, attending to him, and at one stage it was so bad that he came out of himself, and was looking down upon himself. He was seeing the doctors and the nurses standing there, and they said : “There is no hope for him. There is nothing we can do”. When he heard that, he felt himself being taken away by someone nearby. He went into a darkness, and then began to go towards some sort of light. We all have heard or read perhaps of these near-death experiences. This man did not have a near-death experience ; he had a complete death experience. He was being taken by an angel towards the light that he began to see. As he was going in this direction towards the light, there began to be dark creatures approaching him. These nasty, distorted creatures began to accuse the Guardian Angel (as he soon understood this person to be), saying : “This man belongs to us because everything about his life has been belonging to us. You have no right to take him”. They argued like this, and the man was absolutely terrified (or horrified, to put it in other terms). The angel carried him on farther, and the attacks became more and more intense and severe, and all true (they were not lying about what he had done in his life).

Indeed, he was so scared that he did not know what to do. Yet the angel was still there. Suddenly he remembered having been in church with his grandmother when he was a child, and only one prayer that she said in church, or with him at home, came back to his memory, and that was : “Most holy Theotokos, save us”. Therefore, he said it. Immediately some sort of fog surrounded him, and he could not see those dark creatures or hear their accusations anymore. He was surprised, so he repeated the prayer. The more he repeated this prayer, the more the fog became thick, and he could hear less and less the accusations. His fear became less, and he became more calm. He continued to repeat this prayer.

Eventually they came out of the fog, and there were no demons around, no ugly things. There was only the light, to which he approached, and in the presence of which he felt extremely warm, at peace, and full of joy. As he approached very close to this light, there was a voice that said : “Not ready !” Immediately he went into reverse and he was returned to the hospital where his body was. However, by this time, his body was already in the morgue of the hospital. A hundred years ago, in an Orthodox country, the morgue was not like those of modern Canadian hospitals where they put the body in some sort of drawer in a cooler. His body was on a table (and there were probably other bodies on tables as well), and the psalm-reader was reading the Psalms, which was his job in an Orthodox hospital in an Orthodox country. This is the Orthodox way when someone dies. Someone stays in the presence of the body until the family comes to collect it. In traditional culture, if the body is at home, immediately after the repose, someone begins to read the Psalms over the body, and stays in the presence of the body until the time comes for washing the body, dressing, preparing for burial, and taking the body to the church. The man came back to himself. Apparently the return to his body was with a certain amount of power and demonstrativeness as he began to breathe and flail about, and come to consciousness. The psalm-reader fainted. (Wouldn’t you have fainted, in such circumstances ?)

This man wrote a pamphlet describing his experiences, because he wanted other people to know what his life had been like, and how the Lord had touched him. He wanted other people to know that the Lord truly does love them, and that they can turn from their darkness and come to their senses, like the prodigal son. They can come to life. This man did apparently live a truly Christian life afterwards. This is the armour of Christ – turning to the Lord.

In this case, the man asked for the help of the Mother of God. It is the same thing as asking for the Lord’s help, because she immediately prays to her Son for whoever turns to her, just as can be seen in this icon. The Mother of God is always referring us to her Son. Her Son is blessing. She is always in perfect communion of love with her Son. She knows His will. He tells her what to do. She prays to Him, asking on our behalf. He blesses. This is what happened in this man’s case, and that is what happens in our case, too. We can turn to her. We can ask her as a friend, as a mother, to pray for us and to help us. What happened to this man can happen to us, too. The love of the Lord comes to us through her, and through her prayers. He, Himself, is the Actor in this case, but she is the extra agent of love, as we sometimes are, too. The Lord does hear your and my intercessions, similarly, as agents of His love.

When we are in the middle of temptation and we are being attacked by evil, whether it is one sort of a struggle or another in our lives, it is important for us to turn to the Lord and say : “Help !” This is precisely what “putting on the armour” means. It is not that we are going to start sword-fighting. Rather, we employ something like oriental-style martial arts technique : when an attack comes, we sidestep, allow it to pass by, and say : “Help” to the Lord.

It is the Lord who puts on the protection and stops the attack, Himself. It is not we who do anything. If we think it is our doing, then immediately for us it becomes “me, me, me”. As soon as we say “me, me, me”, it is all finished, and Big Red has won. It always has to be Jesus Christ, who is our Saviour. He is the only Saviour. I cannot save me. I cannot save anyone. The Saviour does all the saving. He is the Protector. Let us glorify our Saviour, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we are celebrating the Conception of the Mother of God, which is the very beginning of the fulfilment of the Promise. This Promise is important for us to remember because everything happens according to God’s direction. Something extraordinary is going to happen. The Mother of God is going to be born, eventually, and she will then give birth to the Son of God. Who is He that we are worshipping ? Who is He whom we serve ? It is necessary that we remember this because we live in such an egocentric time. Human beings have always been egocentric, but it is more than ever like that now.

Who is He whom we are serving ? We heard and remember what the Apostle Paul said to the Colossians this morning : “He is the Head of the Body, the Church”, and more than that, too. He is the One from whom all things are. Therefore, we call Him the Word of God. (We did not invent this. He told us Who He is.) He spoke everything into being, and He still does speak everything into being because creation is continuing. Everything that exists, exists because of Him. It is that Person, the Word of God, the Only-begotten Son, who is being prepared for by the Conception of the Mother of God, and all the other fulfilments of the Promise that are to come.

He is the Source of everything. He is not merely some nice-guy, some philosopher, some person with interesting ideas. He is the Source of everything. In that context, the words of our Lord to His followers after the healing of the lepers that we heard in the Gospel today are important. Most of the lepers who were healed were not grateful at all. They took their healing for granted. Only one person came back to Him, and said thank-you, and he was not even a Jew. This person was a Samaritan, and that sort of person in those days was despised, rejected, and thrown out. That person remembered to come back and say thank-you.

We Christians are beginning to be considered as Samaritans were in those days. In our society Christians have fallen to the bottom, and society is considering us to be naïve, silly, or worse. (A lot of this is really our own fault because of our faithlessness.) It is crucial that we remember Who is the Lord in our lives. It is necessary to remember that contrary to what we are taught in school, on television, and so forth, we do not achieve everything on our own ; we do not acquire everything by ourselves. What good that is accomplished, what we have, what we are doing, comes about (and it is good and effective sometimes) because the Lord is giving it to us. He helps us to become whatever we are becoming, and to do whatever we are doing. However, we have to remember to say thank-you to Him for being willing to give us these things and to help us to do these things.

This is truly essential for us, because the whole way of Christian living is giving thanks. That is what we are doing now in this Divine Liturgy. We are giving thanks to the Lord for everything that He is, for everything that He does, for His love for us. We are giving thanks that we have life because of His love. We are giving thanks to Him in this Divine Liturgy for everything.

It is important in our daily lives when good things are happening to remember to say thank-you to the Lord, remembering Who He is. He is the Word of God who speaks everything into being. The speaking into being is an act of love. What comes to be is the product of love because “God is love” (1 John 4:16). If we loved Him as we love our family, our friends, our relatives, then we would say thank-you to Him regularly, frequently, every day, for all the good things He is giving us, enabling us to be stewards of the good things He has given us, caretakers of the good things He has given to us.

The most important thing we have to keep in mind, I think, is this thanksgiving. We have to remember all the time to recognise the good that is coming forth to us from the love of God, that is spoken to us in the love of God. We have to remember to give Him thanks for every little thing that we can see happening during every day (even for the difficulties), and to be therefore able to glorify Him constantly in our lives in thanksgiving : the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In our fallenness and our distractedness, somehow we human beings are so very obsessed with details and small things. We are very interested in paying attention to minisculi : little, tiny things. We want to know how to do things exactly right. Another big thing we get into trouble with is that we almost always try to take shortcuts. (Historically, this is our way : there is no evidence that we have ever changed. In the history of the human race we have learned nothing.)

Human beings have a tendency to try to take a shortcut into the Kingdom of Heaven. People ask questions such as these : “How could we have some sort of fire insurance (so to speak), so that we could get into the Kingdom of Heaven ?” “What are the sorts of things we have to do that would satisfy the Lord so that we would get into the Kingdom of Heaven ?” Human literature is full of such things. It is not as though I have not heard such things in confessions over all these years : confessions are roughly the same. Human beings are always doing the same thing : “What do I have to do ?” “What will satisfy God ?” We are always looking for these little, concrete sorts of insurance.

However, these concrete sorts of insurance things do not work at all. There is no system of good deeds or ten thousands of prostrations every day maybe (if one likes to do such physical things) or other things like that. No method of tinkering like that will get any one of us into the Kingdom of Heaven. We have to recall what are the fundamentals of our Faith if we hope to get into the Kingdom of Heaven. What does all this mean ?

There is no human being that is good, as such. Even our Saviour Himself says in the Gospel : “‘No one is good, but One, that is, God’” (Matthew 19:17). Therefore, if we go around thinking that we are good, we are already “out to lunch”. There is no-one good, except God. Where is our hope, then ? In fact, our hope is in the Lord. How does God reveal Himself to us ? He reveals Himself to us as love. He has always said to us that that is Who He is. In the Epistles of the Apostle John, it is said explicitly : “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). From Old Testament times, the Lord has been saying to us that the relationship between us and Him has to be a relationship of love.

If we want to live, then we have to live in love. Thus, the summary of the Ten Commandments in the Old Testament is : “You shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart, from your whole soul, and from your whole power” (5 Moses [Deuteronomy] 6:5). If we love God like this, then our life will be in accordance with the Ten Commandments. We will not have any other gods, except the one, true God. We will respect our parents ; we will honour the Sabbath Day ; we will not kill, and we will not steal, and so forth. Those are simply characteristics of a person who lives in a relationship of love with God. Because of this loving relationship, God gives us the ability to live a life in such a way that we fulfil those ten characteristics. They are not mere suggestions. They are ten clear characteristics of what the life of a person is like who loves God.

The Lord, the Saviour, is the Word of God who spoke everything into being, and He still does speak everything into being. When He put flesh on His love and became a human being, He Himself showed us how this love works in human relationships. He was supported by His Mother. She was born a human being, as other human beings. However, unlike other human beings, she remained completely obedient to the Lord throughout her life. She is the only person who has lived this truly perfect example of how a lover of God should behave. That is why she is called the image of the Church, the example of the Church. She is our example of how to live.

When we see our Saviour in the Gospel, He is showing us how a lover of God should be living. There is a concrete example of this in today’s Gospel reading in the healing of the ten men who had leprosy. Leprosy is a horrible disease. It is a disgusting disease in which one is like the living-dead and rotting while still alive. After a long time the fingers and toes start to fall off. If anyone lives long enough, then the nose and the ears probably fall off. It is a sort of a flesh-eating disease, one could say. Actually, that was the case right up until about 100 years ago. If we had leprosy (people still get it, but now they have treatments), we would have lived in some sort of leper colony, off by our lonesome. There used to be such a colony in Hawaii. There was a famous Catholic saint who had a leper colony there, and was looking after them. Not that long ago, the situation was just the same as it had been in the lives of the ten lepers that we are hearing about today.

Our Lord, in His love, healed the ten lepers. He restored them to complete health. Perhaps we are not all given the Grace of God to go about healing people, physically speaking. Even if it were the case, it is not we who are healing these people. It is the Lord who is doing all the healing. It is true that people, through prayer, are healed of all sorts of horrible diseases. I heard just last week of one bishop who was anointing one of his parishioners at an unction service last year. She was a very forward sort of person, and she had an inoperable cancer on her chest somewhere. She went to the bishop at the time of the anointing. He started to anoint her forehead. Then she said : “Not there !” She opened her shirt, and said : “There – anoint it there”. He anointed her, and immediately the cancer disappeared, just like that. This woman was one of those irascible people with a very strong personality. She was not the bishop’s favourite person, because she was so outspoken. However, somehow she knew that it was the time of the Lord’s love. There are similar examples of women in the New Testament (such as the woman with the hemorrhage). They knew and they approached the Lord, and said : “Now. Now. Now”. This woman did that. She came ; the bishop anointed ; the Lord gave. That is the whole point : it is not because the bishop did something, since he did not even like her. The Lord gave. It was a sacramental moment and the Lord gave. The Lord does touch people in all sorts of situations under different sorts of circumstances. He loves us. He touches our lives.

In the context of this loving relationship that we all have with each other, the Lord expects you and me to be agents of this love. Therefore, if someone is sick amongst us, then we should be asking the Lord to do something. He will do something. He really will. I have seen people healed when other people pray. I have seen it happen many times, and not only in isolated, occasional circumstances. I have seen it happening very much. Nevertheless, the Lord does not always give us what we ask for in exactly the way we have requested it. Sometimes He answers immediately ; sometimes He answers later ; sometimes He answers in a visible way ; sometimes He answers in an invisible way, so that we need a correct understanding in order to perceive it. He always acts. He always acts in love.

Perhaps you know about the intercession list that we are trying to circulate in the diocese every year. There are people who are praying daily for clergy and people in the diocese. Because people are praying, things are happening in the diocese for the good that would not likely otherwise happen. I can see where it comes from – people are praying. They love the Lord. They love each other, and they pray to the Lord for each other.

The weakness of these nine lepers is the same weakness that “dogs” us all : instant forgetfulness and instant ingratitude. Ten of the lepers went off healed and only one came back and said thank-you. The one who came back and said thank-you, if we pay attention, was a Samaritan. For the Jewish people, a Samaritan was a veritable outcast. We Canadians like to think that there are no modern-day comparisons for such a person. We tend to tell ourselves that we are all so easy-going and tolerant about everything that there is no-one who is an outcast like that in Canadian mentality. However, we live in denial about the plight of Aboriginals in our country. Further, it has steadily been becoming more and more politically incorrect to be a Christian. Internationally, it is politically incorrect to be an Orthodox Christian. For the Jewish people of that time, Samaritans were considered to be some sort of foreigners, even though, technically, they believed in the same God and they were mostly the same people. They had not co-operated with the centralisation of temple worship in Jerusalem a long, long time before, and they insisted on keeping their own temples in Samaria. They were considered outcasts, as our Saviour said, and foreign. It was worse than that, because they were treated like dogs. One was considered to be defiled if one had anything to do with a Samaritan.

Yet, at the same time let us notice in the Gospel that Samaritans are referred to by our Lord as examples, such as the Good Samaritan. Unlike the priests who walked by the man lying there as good as dead, a Samaritan came and looked after this Jewish man. His brethren should have been looking after him, but they were afraid, and did not want to get involved. (Modern Canadians would say : “Do not get involved – just walk by”.) This Samaritan, who was a lover of God, came and showed them the right way. He picked up the man, and saw to his recovery at his own expense. The Samaritan today is the one who comes and says thank-you.

When the Lord is talking about the Samaritans, He is talking about you and me, too. In the Jewish perspective, we are not Jewish by race : we are Gentiles according to Jewish reckoning. That means we are not physical descendants of Abraham. At the same time, the Church is the new Israel, so we are the spiritual children of Abraham. We do not get off the hook about anything that is required of Israel. We, in our own way, by extension, are still the chosen people. We have to keep all these things in mind.

The Apostle, in his words to the Colossians today is saying to us that this relationship between us and the Lord has to be chiefly love. He said : “Put on love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful”. The Christian way, in the context of this love, is to give thanks at all times. That is why, in pious Ukrainian and other Slavic customs, we are always hearing people say : “Glory to God” for everything that happens that is good. The product of this love is to do good things, just as the Good Samaritan did. It is not simply lip service. We have to put into concrete form the expressions of this love. A truly serious Orthodox Christian, who is being thanked directly for doing something good, will say : “Glory to God” or “To the glory of God”, and will not accept the thanks directly. This is because we know that on our own, by ourselves, we do not have the strength to do what is good. We know that it is the Lord, who lives in us, that gives us the strength to be good and to do good. It is He that is Goodness. Everything is referred to Him. We can tell that pious Ukrainian history is formed by the Gospel because of the way the people traditionally have spoken, just as we can see it in Romania, Greece, Russia, and other places.

In Canada, when I was young (before we were so badly de-Christianised), it was actually a custom to be something like that. There were natural expressions that people used a long time ago in Canada to give glory to God for good things that were happening. Our Orthodox responsibility in this country is to bring back in fulness, and in the right way, this giving of thanks to God. We can only do that by simply doing it ourselves, living it ourselves. If something good is happening, we must not be too afraid, too shy to say : “Thanks be to God”. When I grew up, “Thank God” was only an expression. It was me, giving thanks, myself (and not telling others to give thanks, as some might think). We can see how our mentality has all changed. Now I have to say : “Thanks be to God”; “Glory be to God”. May we all understand that what matters is that we

Here, in the Divine Liturgy, we are doing this. We are giving thanks the way we are supposed to be doing. This Divine Liturgy is participating in the Divine Liturgy that happens perpetually in Heaven, where there is constant glorification of God, and thanksgiving to God for everything. He is Life to us. We give thanks, already touching the Kingdom of Heaven. We give thanks to the Lord for His love for us, and in giving thanks we glorify Him : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

At this time of year when we are generally so distracted by everything else except the central fact that we are celebrating right now, it is important for us to pay attention a little bit more closely to what exactly is happening now. When we hear all these long lists of names that are almost unpronounceable (and which are for some people unpronounceable), it just sounds like a long list of names, and odd names, too, because they are all Hebrew names. However, those names are not just a list of names, and it is not even the whole list of names. Saint Matthew, the Apostle, today gives us fourteen times three generations of names of the ancestors of Christ. However, if we look in the Gospel according to Saint Luke, he goes farther. Saint Luke takes us all the way back to Adam. The list of the ancestors of Christ is very long indeed.

All these persons are not simply names on a piece of paper that we proclaim once a year. These are all persons (like those of whom the Apostle was speaking to us in the Epistle to the Hebrews) who suffered for the sake of the Promise yet to be fulfilled. Abraham was the first to receive clearly of this Promise when he pulled up stakes and took his whole family and everything to a strange land where he was a complete stranger, unwelcome, unaccepted. He wandered and wandered around with his family, his sheep and their tents all over Palestine. This region is not nearly as pleasant as Mesopotamia (as it was at that time). Nevertheless, Abraham did this because the Lord’s Promise was such that he was compelled because of love to do this very unusual thing : to get up and move, and spend the rest of his life wandering. There are many similar examples amongst his descendants, up to the time of Jesus Christ. The Apostle is reminding us of people who suffered every sort of inconvenience for the sake of the Promise of the Saviour, for the sake of the Promise of God with us. I suppose one could say that it is an inconvenience to be burned at the stake, to be beheaded, to be sawn in two, to be crucified, to live in caves – all these things are definitely inconvenient. However, all these persons, real human beings who lived out their lives (just as you and I are doing), lived their lives for the sake of a Promise that was as yet unfulfilled.

We who follow have not done much better in accepting the fulfilment, in accepting the continuation of the Promise, in accepting His love, in being obedient to His love. Everything did not immediately become rosy and wonderful (at least visibly). The Lord had no home and no place, and even in His infancy He was rejected. He had to flee to Egypt with His family. Later, when they returned, they had to try to establish their domestic life. Our Saviour was considered to be a stranger during the whole course of His life. In the course of everything, He suffered – physically, yes, but in the heart much more because of the nature of His love for us. His love for us is, as it were, with open arms, accepting anything.

You that are parents have experience of this in your own children, I am sure. You love them with all your heart, and you give up everything for their sake. Sometimes parents starve themselves for the sake of their children, so that the children eat and grow (whereas the parents can sometimes stand to lose a kilo or two here or there). Yet in the course of life, willy-nilly, children sometimes poke the parents in the eye. Willy-nilly, sometimes children, not understanding the love of the parents, give them a kick – that is the way human beings so often are. With our self-centredness and pre-occupation with ourselves, we do not always realise the immensity of the gifts that God has given to us. I know I certainly did not fully understand it when I was growing up. Like many people, I took my parents for granted. As so often happens with human beings, it was after my parents had died that I more properly understood how valuable they were for me in my life, and how much they had given up for the sake of us four, and how much they indeed did and do love us. Well, this is “how the cookie crumbles” in being a human. We are always too late about all sorts of things. However, the Lord makes up for our weakness, for our shortsightedness, for our selfishness. He bridges all these gaps that we produce by our selfishness.

I bring up the life of the family, and the difficulties with love which we have in the family, and sometimes our mistreating of each other in the family because it also happens in the parish family, too, from time to time. We misunderstand each other or we lose sight of one thing or another, or we are just plain afraid of one thing or another. Without intending to, we can mistreat each other. Sometimes this may be the result of some sort of reflex reaction. We often do not treat each other the way we ought to.

Amongst the saints who are being remembered today, there is Saint Nahum of Bulgaria, who was named after the Prophet Nahum. This man was a co-worker with Saints Cyril and Methodius in Moravia, in that part of the country now known as Czekhia. Here Saints Cyril and Methodius, Saint Nahum and others established a whole village of up to 50,000 people who were very anxious to bring Orthodox Christianity and the Gospel to people who spoke Slavic languages. It was in this village that they were doing the translations of the Divine Liturgy and the Scriptures, and making the alphabet for the Slavic-speaking people. By God’s mercy, when our Metropolitan was making an official visit to Czekhia and Slovakia some years ago, I had the blessing to be with him. We went and visited this very place which has been archeologically discovered and unearthed to some extent. Here, these holy persons were living and giving this gift to us. It is because of their life and their work there in that village that most of us are here today. It was their evangelisation of the Slavic people that directly and indirectly produced our presence here together today. In one way or another, we are indebted to those men and women who lived in that village in the ninth century. However, certain other sorts of Christians decided that they were “no-goodniks”, and drove them all out, and some of them were killed.

Saint Nahum went then to Bulgaria, which is why he is now associated with Bulgaria. There he finished translating the Scriptures into Slavonic. Because of their love for Jesus Christ, this man and all the others were ready to share this love with people who did not know the Lord, and who needed to know Him. Saint Nahum and the others suffered all sorts of pain and difficulties. It was not easy to build the village in the first place, and it was certainly very painful to be driven out. Yet the driving out produced a scattering of the seed. This, one could say, providentially made the Gospel grow in many more places faster than it would have grown if the village had stayed intact for a much longer period of time.

Nevertheless, it was still at the hands of so-called Christian brothers that this happened. This sort of thing still happens to this day. We Christians do not necessarily treat each other very well because usually we are afraid of something. More than anything else, that is what makes us behave badly : we are afraid of something or other. We “strike out”. We forget Christ. We try to protect things ourselves. We try to be engineers of one thing or another.

You and I are here today because of the love of Jesus Christ. We are here because we love our Saviour, and we know definitely that He loves us. That is what brings us all together here. That is what enables us human beings to manage to live through all the difficulties of life that we face. We all face difficulties and pain in our lives. It is the love of our Saviour that enables you and me to live through it all (and not merely to endure). It is this love which enables us to live with joy and with hope. It is not that we simply stand there “gritting our teeth”. With hope, with love, with joy we pass through the pain, the difficulties, the sorrows, the rejections, the misunderstandings. We pass through it all praying for those who do not understand us and who sometimes reject us. We keep our hearts and our minds on the Saviour, Himself, who is the only reason for any of us to live on. Keeping our eyes and our hearts on Him we continue ; we persevere ; we pass through it all. The Lord renews our joy, our hope, and our strength.

Why we are remembering all those names is that they are not just names, but people with long and difficult lives, people also like Saint Nahum. Let us not forget that each one of us is not just some sort of statistic or disembodied name. We are all lovers of Jesus Christ who are suffering together, persevering together. It is important that we, with our love, pray for each other. It is necessary that we support each other, encourage each other, and always live in forgiveness with each other. In doing this we will fulfil the work of Christ which is beginning in this Incarnation about which we are hearing, and which we are celebrating now. In doing this we will glorify our Saviour who loves us, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

On an evening like this, when we are serving as we are serving with all these services in a row, it can feel a little bit long. I know there were times earlier in my days when I thought that even Vespers-and-Matins was a bit long because I did not have the Orthodox equivalent of sea-legs quite yet. However, if there was anything that resolved any questions about legs, it was going to Mount Athos, and standing through a regular night’s service where they are standing about ninety per cent of the time for five and a half or six hours (and this was not a feast-day). I had to give up complaining altogether.

Actually, that experience helped me to pay attention to the reason why I am here in the first place. Why am I here ? I am here because I love our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ, and because I was created to worship Him. It just so happens that I like to do it, even though my legs and other parts occasionally complain. I do like to worship Him, and it is a great joy to be here, worshipping Him. How many times in the course of my pastorate have I heard old people in their eighties talking about when they were babies, and their parents brought them to services like these. Wrapped up, they took a little nap and slept somewhere, but they somehow absorbed the whole experience of the worship of the Lord. They caught the love of Jesus Christ from their parents. Their parents were there not only because they had to be, but because they liked to be. They wanted to be there. Therefore, these children caught the love of Christ which lasted them through the rest of their whole lives into their eighties. Still in their eighties, they were saying how they liked to go to church. They liked to worship the Lord. They liked to sing praises to Him. I think that there are some people here, too, even less than eighty years old, who have had some of that experience in their lives, too. Even though I have not talked to you specifically about it, I have known some of you long enough, and I know enough about your lives to guess that this must be somehow the case.

I still remember the first Christmas I had in this parish. Every time I come home, I remember it. The first Christmas in this parish (it was in the garage) when I was a green seminarian, and had just begun to learn what tones were, Father Jaroslav gave me the Festal Menaion, and said : “Here – you are leading the singing”. That was indeed baptism by fire. I still remember that. I thought I was going to die. However, God is merciful and He helps us through all these things. I learned a lot by it. This was the first time that the reason why I am doing this was clarified. I was saying to myself : “This is so hard and so difficult that I can hardly remember all these things. I am perpetually embarrassed because I keep making mistakes. Why am I doing this ? There is only one reason. It is because of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who is the Hope of my life and your life”. That is why we are here : because of Him, because we love Him, because it is a joy to serve Him. Even if the back aches sometimes, it is still a joy and even fun to be here together to serve Him and to glorify Him. This is why He was born : to give us this joy, the joy that the shepherds felt when the angels appeared to them, the joy that the Wise Men travelling from the east felt when they came to the house to worship Him. We feel their joy, as well. The Wise Men did not come at the same time as the shepherds, but at some time later.

I am not certain that it is at all possible for us to comprehend the joy of the Mother of God, who gave birth to this Child. We talk about it, and we sing about it, but I am not certain that in this life it is possible for very many of us to comprehend this joy : the depth, the immensity of this joy. However, we can just get a taste of it, anyway. This joy is going to be mixed with grief, just as our whole life is as Orthodox Christians, as human beings. Our whole life is joy mixed with grief. Why do I say that ?

The Nativity of Christ and the Baptism of Christ, together, are called the “Winter Pascha”. Everything about this “Winter Pascha” happened in order to enable the Pascha, the ultimate Queen of Feasts, in the spring, to happen : the sacrifice of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, His suffering, His death. It happened so that He could rise victoriously over death and over sin for us and for our salvation, so that we might have eternal life. All this joy is through that sorrow, which in itself produces greater joy than anything else we know : Paschal joy. As much joy as we have at Christmas-time, it is still mild compared to the joy of Pascha. That joy is still only the vaguest shadow of the joy of the Mother of God which she experiences in the Kingdom of Heaven, now, where she intercedes for us before Him, where she protects us with her veil, as she protected her Son during His life. The Mother of God is an invisible woman in many ways. There is no lack of strength in the Birth-giver of God.

Jesus Christ, today, is born for us. He puts flesh on His love. He lives this love for us. He dies this love for us. He rises victorious in this love for us. His love is a mystery beyond our comprehension. However, it also is a love which we can taste, and which we can actualise a little bit, ourselves. We can share this love with each other, as we are doing. We can share this joy with each other, as we are doing. When we say : “Christ is born”, and we respond with some sort of strength : “Let us glorify Him”, this is not merely a perfunctory formula. We say it because we like to do it. Let us glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The words of the Apostle to the Galatians this morning are truly very important for us to remember, because they have to do with what is fundamental to us and our approach to Christian living. In particular, he says that what he is preaching is not something that a human being dreamed up – it is not a Gospel according to a man – but instead, he said, it came through a revelation, a revelation of God.

Most of what we encounter in religious experience amongst human beings has to do with people who are afraid of all sorts of things. There are various types of systems that are developed in order to cope with the difficulties of life. Most of the things that are called religious systems in the world are more like philosophies than they are anything else. However, in our case, we are not dealing with a philosophical system or proposition. We are encountering and responding to God Himself. In Matins, we are singing in one form or another : “God is the Lord, and has revealed Himself to us”. An alternative order is : “The Lord is God, and has revealed Himself to us”. The Lord, who created everything, is God, and it is He who has revealed Himself to us.

He has been revealing Himself to us ever since we were created. Our relationship with Him has always been a relationship of love. He has been revealing Who He is to us, ever since the beginning. However, ever since the beginning we have had great difficulty comprehending even the first thing about this love of God. In the same way that Herod tried to block the will of God, we too typically have also tried to control the will of God by making it fit our plans and our sense of what is right, rather than accepting that the One who created everything might know something about our lives, what is supposed to happen, and what is good for us. We so often insist on doing it our way, and this has always gotten us into trouble.

Herod did it his way. He was not going to have anyone overthrow and take over his government, because it would make problems. He did not, of course, understand anything concerning the fact that the Messiah had been born. He did not comprehend anything about it except that it implied a kingdom and a king. No-one actually understood this King and His Kingship. I am not sure that we do now 2,000 years later. Nevertheless, the Lord in His mercy and in His love, is patient with us, and He continues to be patient with us, and waits for us to “catch the drift”. What is the drift, once again ? It is that “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). He is Love. He is with us. He has revealed Himself to us. The full revelation of Himself to us came in the Incarnation of Christ, in which God the Word, who spoke everything into existence through love, put on flesh. This love became visible and tangible. He lived, and He lives amongst us. He, who is the Way, showed us what is the right way for us to live. How He behaved in His life amongst us, shows us how we are supposed to live with each other. To reinforce that, we have the example of His Mother, and other relatives, who, loving the Lord, lived in the same way. The Mother of God, herself, still, of course, lives in this same way, and she is still extending the love and protection of her Son to us. When we run to her asking for help, she does not simply say : “Go, solve it yourself”. She prays. She helps. She protects.

Our way of life is all taken up with expressing this love of God to each other. The point of being a Christian, the whole point of the Incarnation that we are celebrating, is that God loves us. He encounters you and me in this love. We are here because we have experienced this love to some extent. Our being together here today is part of our response to this love that we have encountered in Christ in various ways : sometimes in prayer, sometimes here in worship, sometimes in reading the Scriptures, sometimes in encounters with other human beings, sometimes by a direct encounter such as Joseph was having. Sometimes the Lord does encounter us in such ways. Regardless, the Lord reaches out to us in His love, and He presents Himself to us face-to-face in His love.

“The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us” (John 1:14). Imitating God’s self-revelation, we who have been baptised into Christ and have put on Christ, and who have been called to follow in His way, also reveal Christ to each other and to people around us who do not know Him. Each one of us who has been baptised into Christ, who has encountered His love, who lives in His love, who in gratitude exercises this love with others, also reveals the same Jesus Christ by how each one of us lives. People can see Jesus Christ in you and in me, who call ourselves Orthodox Christians, if by God’s mercy our lives are faithful to Him. They can respond to Him, likewise, finding hope and joy in His love, a reason to live in His love, powerful living in His love, a clear sense of direction in His love. Often it is a sense of direction very different from that which is expected by the world. Nevertheless, it is a life that has a direction and a positive influence on the lives of those around.

You and I are here as our Saviour Himself said, to be yeast and salt (see Matthew 5:13 ; 13:33). We are to have an effect for good. Both yeast and salt give life to food (at least, the last time I either tasted or encountered either of them, it seemed to me that that was the case). There is a big difference between food that has at least a little salt in it, and food that has zero salt in it. There is a big difference between bread that has no yeast, and bread that has yeast. Norwegians in particular, and Swedes, have their experience of flatbread (“knikkebröd” – at least one sort of it is called that because it cracks and snaps when you break it and try to eat it). Ryecrisp is probably how we experience it here. Ryecrisp is very different from a loaf of bread that your Mama might bake with her own hands, and put in it all sorts of lovely goodies. The yeast, itself, makes it so attractive. We walk into the house, and we smell the yeast at work in this bread. Whether it is from the rising-time, or the baking-time, it is the yeast that makes that bread so attractive and easy to devour.

In fact, I am remembering now how many times in my life I have been in homes where there are many children, and the mother was making bread herself because it was cheaper to bake it than to buy commercial bread. In the end it is healthier, too. Especially when the children were adolescents, these women had to bake mounds of bread two or three times a week because, in the first place, the children were “adolescently” hungry and insatiable, and in the second place, because (as those children said, and still say any time they encounter it) this bread is better than anything else, and they could eat it until they burst. (I find that I am still full of all these old sayings like : “Eating until the cows come home”, and no-one seems to understand them any more.)

We are expected to be this yeast, and we ought to have this same sort of effect on people around us. In us, the Saviour should be so attractive and so appealing that people want to be near Him, and cannot get their fill of Him. You and I also, if we are honest with ourselves, can never get our fill of Him and His love ; the love of His Mother ; the love of the saints ; and the love of the life that the Lord is giving us. We can never get our fill because there is so much joy, and we are insatiable for this joy, for this life, for this hope, for this power of living.

This is the way of Orthodox Christian life. It is this sort of love, this relationship of love that has produced many people such as Saint Seraphim of Sarov, who went around shining with light, and expressing his joy to each person he encountered by saying : “Christ is risen” any time of the year. He is not by any means alone (although he is the most famous), for there are many other Orthodox Christian saints aflame with the same sort of love and joy.

In this season, we see how the Lord is protecting us, and what a gift He has given to us. In the Nativity narratives that we are hearing right now, we see that the Lord knows so much better than we do. We see that no matter how stupid and actually resistant we human beings can be, He, nevertheless, is going to make sure that the work of His salvation, and the opening of the door of reconciliation for us is going to be accomplished. He goes to so much trouble for this. He also goes to so much trouble in your life and in my life. In fact, if the Lord with His angels had not gone to so much trouble in my life (and He still does), I do not think I would have survived childhood. I was such a daredevil. I definitely gave my Mother grey hair far before her time. (She told me, too. I know why I gave her grey hair.)

The Lord is merciful. He loves you and me. He revealed and is revealing Himself to you and to me. He is asking that you respond, that I respond. He who is the Lord, the Giver of life, the Provider of life, the Source of life is the Beginning and the End. Giving thanks to Him, rejoicing in Him, let us glorify Him. As Saint Herman said : “From this day, from this hour, and from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”. In doing this, we will be putting flesh on His love, and glorifying the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

When we are celebrating today the Theophany of our Saviour, this is not a simple feast, a simple celebration of only the Baptism of Christ. True, it is the Baptism of Christ and this is extremely important. However, at the same time that we are celebrating the Baptism of Christ, we are celebrating also the revelation of the Holy Trinity. This is the first of our liturgical experiences of the Holy Trinity in the sanctoral liturgical year. As we are singing in the tropar : The voice of the Father calls Jesus His beloved Son, and the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, confirms the truth of the voice of the Father. As we can see, this is a very important moment for us. The Holy Trinity, in the form of the Three Persons, is revealed to us. What is expressed in the tropar is not only the fact that Jesus Christ is truly the beloved Son of God. What also is expressed is the fact that the Holy Trinity is being revealed to us. God’s love for us, His patience with us, and His care for us are completely beyond our comprehension.

We, who are Orthodox Christians, have to remember this particular detail : that God is revealing Himself to us. We live in a society that is enslaved to logic and to all sorts of visible data – so-called “science”. It is not really science ; it is pretending-to-be science. If it were truly science, it would recognise God, and everything else would fall into place. However, what we are calling “science” is godless, and therefore, it is just a fake. There is some truth in this “science”, but who can believe exactly what are the conclusions when the conclusions are without God. In our society, we are constantly demanding some sort of particular proof. We want to have some sort of proof of God. As the Soviet Nikita Khrushchev said, when the first satellites were flying above the earth : “They didn’t report seeing God up there”. The cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin is often maligned as having said this. This man, however, was a firm Christian believer, and anything he would say to support Christian belief would be changed to suit the godless. It was Khrushchev who said these words.

When we are singing : “The Lord is God, and has revealed Himself to us” (as we are singing on this feast, and other feasts also, but most particularly on this feast), we are, in fact, proclaiming what is the foundation of our experience. God is the Lord – the Lord is God ; He has revealed Himself to us. He, in His love, shows to us Who He is. Who is He ? The Apostle says that God is simply love. Love. On that foundation, all creation exists. It does not exist because of a series of silly accidents : lightning striking some pond sometime, or a million more “accidents”. No. Where does this lightning come from anyway ? No scientist can say that. Where does anything come from ? No scientist can say that. God is the Lord – the Lord is God, and has revealed Himself to us. The Lord, who is love, out of His love creates everything, and everything that is, exists by His love. It does not exist apart from His love. He is also in everything that He creates. The Grace of the Holy Spirit sustains everything that exists.

The Lord is in everything. He is with us, also. He is renewing everything that He created, and He is renewing us also. This is the expression of His love. When we have our sorrows, our pains and our illnesses, we turn to Him and He consoles us. Sometimes we get physical healing ; always we get some sort of spiritual healing because the Lord, in His love, cares for us. He is with us.

It was not long ago (because I am involved in dialogues) that I was having to read a book about the Eucharist by the current Pope. The title of this book is : God is near us. Here the Pope is showing where he is off track because God is not near us. He is with us, in us – that is the whole point. (I am sad that the Pope lost the point. However, if we are having conversations with him, eventually maybe he and his successors will get the point.) What is always important for you and for me to remember is that we, who know the Lord, have the responsibility to reveal to people around us the Lord God, who has revealed Himself to us, and who still reveals Himself to us. If we are Orthodox Christians, and we believe truly that the Lord is God, and has revealed Himself to us, then it is important that we live this love (which is God’s love). It is important, in living this love, that we share it with people around us, and reveal Christ in us, and allow Christ to reveal Himself through us to other people who are without Him.

Another important point for us today is about this water. Today we are going to be blessing this water, by the Grace of God. We are asking God to bless this water with the blessing of the Jordan River. In the same way that Christ descends into the waters today and is baptised, and blesses the waters of the Jordan, and through the waters of the Jordan blesses the whole earth, so we are renewing that blessing, and extending that blessing by placing His holy Cross in the water. By the Grace of the Holy Spirit, this water takes on, by His mercy, the character of His love.

Here is an interesting twist about “science”. In Japan, there was a scientist, Masaru Emoto (maybe some of you have already read this book), who decided that he was going to study the character of water at the point of freezing, and watch the crystallisation of water and its characteristics. He did this by studying different sorts of water. He studied tap water, lake water, water that is polluted, water that is around pleasant circumstances, water that is around rock music, water that is around Mozart, water that has people saying to it : I love you, water that has people saying to it : I hate you. He studied the nature of the crystals under all these circumstances, and he found that the crystallisation of the water was very different according to the circumstances. Under positive circumstances, the crystals are very clear and normal. When water is under generally good circumstances, things are regular. When water is around Mozart, or words of love, encouragement, hope, peace, and so forth, the crystals are particularly nice-looking. When the water is polluted, you can hardly recognise a crystal at all – it is all completely distorted. The same thing happens around negative emotions like hate, anger, and certain sorts of rock music (because certain sorts of rock music are characterised exactly by anger, and even hatred).

Then there was a study done in Russia by Russian scientists who decided to take this a step farther. They made a DVD of the results of this experiment. They repeated the studies of the Japanese scientists, and then they added on their own more elaborate studies of the characteristics of water. They showed what holy water looks like, water that has been blessed in the Orthodox Church. This water is, apparently, really extraordinary – extraordinarily beautiful. They did further studies, and they discovered that water that is in this good condition heals water that is in a bad condition. One small part of blessed water or healthy water will heal corrupted water at least 60, if not 600 times as much. It does that much. That is the strength of the influence of this holy water, this blessed water, this healthy water on corrupted water. We Orthodox Christians have been for 2,000 years blessing water. Now, we have science, “godly science”, on our side to support what we are doing. It is not just some sort of nice thing. To drink holy water is not just something you have to do because you are an Orthodox Christian. The scientists have confirmed that it is good for you. It is not just good for us – it is good for all God’s creation. It was an interesting DVD to see, although I did not understand it so thoroughly, of course, because I have too little Russian to comprehend everything. I did have explainers to help me, however.

This water, this healthy, holy water, that is healing all the corrupted water around it, is also a sign for you and for me, Orthodox Christians, who live in the context of this blessing. Our bodies are made up of so much water. If the Lord is blessing us in this way, the water that is constituting our bodies has to have a similar quality. Our life must have a similar quality. It is our responsibility to bring Christ’s healing to people around us, and to the earth around us on which we live. This is our responsibility. This is all part of God, who is Love, revealing Himself to us. The Lord is God. God is Love. His love is with us. His love transforms this water. His love transforms us. His love transforms everything.

Nevertheless, we must co-operate. And so today, as we are receiving the precious Body and Blood of our Saviour, and also, this holy water, let us ask the Lord to heal our hearts, our bodies, our lives. Let us ask Him to enable us, also, to bring with us wherever we are, this healing, transfiguring, transforming love, bringing health to human relationships, health to people who are broken. Let us actively allow the Lord to change things through us ; and in doing this, let us glorify Him, our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, as we are celebrating the Birth of Jesus Christ, we are not celebrating the birthday of just anyone. This particular Birth is different from any other because this is the Birth of the Son of God. In this case, Mary, a human being, is the Mother of God ; but God, Himself, is the Father of this birth. Joseph is a foster-father, we could say. In this Birth, we are seeing the love of God taking on flesh. Why do I say “the love of God ?” I say it because the Apostle John in particular tells us that God is love (see 1 John 4:8, 16). The Scriptures from the beginning (and not just the Apostles) have been telling us that God is love, and that everything that has been created is from His love. All creation is sustained to this day because of His love.

The Only-begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is the Word of God, in the beginning spoke everything into being. This is why we are calling Him the Word of God. We did not decide by ourselves to call Him the Word of God. It was shown to us by the Lord that we are supposed to call Him the Word of God. He, the Word, spoke everything into being, and He still does actually continue to speak everything into being, because nothing comes into being without His speaking. This is Who is taking flesh today. The Word of God, who spoke and speaks everything into being is taking flesh today. He is taking flesh today in order to save us.

The whole purpose of this Birth is going to be fulfilled at Pascha very soon. The fulfilment of this Birth comes at Pascha. He takes flesh in order to restore to us the way into the Kingdom of Heaven, that way that we closed because we are so selfish and so stubborn. We closed it. How did we close it ? We closed it because, in the first place, we believed a lie, the lie of the serpent in the garden of Eden. After we, in our first parents believed the lie and fell, the first thing that we did was to lie and to blame someone else. Adam and Eve were blaming each other. They immediately became afraid of God, and they hid themselves.

We still do that to this day. There is nothing different in us since this time. We are afraid ; we hide ; we run away, and this is what kept the door closed. Moreover, we never did say we were sorry. Adam and Eve did not say that they were sorry, and we have not been very good at it either.

Repentance is the hard thing for us : turning away from darkness to light, turning away from selfishness to selflessness, turning away from death to life. However, in order to save us, because He loves us, the Word takes flesh today, and the light is shining in the darkness. The light is now shining in you and in me. As we sang just now : “As many as have been baptised into Christ, have put on Christ”. We are clothed with Christ. We are shining, ourselves, with the light of Christ. His light is shining in us. In Pascha, the Lord, Himself, is breaking down the walls which we had set up between us and Him. He is bringing us back into the Kingdom of Heaven.

In this Birth we are celebrating the love of God for us. He empties Himself. He allows us to kill Him because He loves us. In all this, He is victorious over sin and death, and He gives us life. That is what we are celebrating now, too, and that is one of the reasons that we are calling this time of the year the “Winter Pascha”.

It is important to remember this love of Jesus Christ for you and for me, to accept it and to allow this light to shine in us. It is important to take hold of the hope that He is giving us in this Birth, and to live in this hope. Let us remember to live in this love and to shine with this light, the light of Jesus Christ, the light of His life. In every part of our lives, all our lives, let us glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

It seems to me that we human beings are not necessarily very spiritually attentive as we pass through our lives. It seems to me that this is so because we tend to be so distracted by our wilful egos, and by the multitude of small, daily details and concerns that preoccupy us. It is, nevertheless, important for us to pay attention, because our Lord is telling us that we have to be looking for Him, expecting Him, at all times. We have to be prepared for Him to come at any time, and anywhere. The Gospel reading for today concludes by saying that our Lord is going to come back at a time when we are not expecting Him to arrive, or when we are not even thinking about Him, because we are distracted by something or another.

What is the important thing to pay attention to here ? The important thing is that we are to be prepared. How are we going to be prepared if our minds are not constantly focussed on the Lord, doing His will, and communicating with Him ? The servants of the house about whom our Lord is speaking in this parable, are servants who love their master ; they are ready to do everything for him, to be pleasing to him. As soon as he knocks on the door, the door is immediately opened by the servants, and he does not have to wait. Such servants are actively waiting for their master, and they are prepared because of love and respect for their master. What does this master do when he comes to the house ? It is not what normally would happen. Unexpectedly, he does not sit down so that all the servants that have been waiting for him are able to give him something to eat. No. Instead, according to the words of our Lord, this master, when he comes home from the wedding, is going to wrap a towel around his waist (“he will gird himself”, the Gospel says) ; he is going to serve the servants ; he is going to feed them. Of course, all this is a metaphor for the Lord.

The Orthodox Christian way is sort of upside down as compared with what the world understands. This is the Orthodox Christian way – service. Our Saviour is our pattern. We are to be imitating Him. Service is the way. We are to be looking for ways in which we can serve. Our Master, Himself, is serving the servants. This is not at all what we would expect. However, let us look again at what the Apostle is saying to the Ephesians about what is the disposition of our Saviour, who is our example. He was, is, and always shall be completely obedient out of love to the will of the Father. The Apostle is not talking about how our Saviour rose from the dead by Himself, and so forth, and how He exalted Himself. No. It was the Father who raised Christ from the dead, he says (see Colossians 2:12 ; 1 Thessalonians 1:10). It is the Father who exalted Him, and who does exalt Him. It is the Father who made Him the Head of the Body of Christ of which we are members. The Son, Himself, shows the true nature of humility as being the product of love. He is the living example of how to live love, selfless love.

I hope that we all can remember these words of our Saviour. This is really what it means to live an Orthodox Christian life : to imitate Jesus Christ, to be like Him, to love like Him, to serve like Him, to shine with the light of love like Him, because He who is with us is within us and enabling us to do and to be all this. Let us ask Him to renew this love, this purpose, this sense of direction, this communion of love in our hearts, so that at whatever time He does come to us (not only in the Second Coming, but anytime He comes to us), we will be ready to open the door to Him, and we will not make Him wait. Instead, we will welcome Him instantly with open heart and open arms. Let us all, in our whole life, glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

It is important to remember the very last words of this Gospel pericope, when our Saviour begins to preach saying, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”. In those days, people did not understand what he meant, and I do not know if we understand this so very well even now, even after 2,000 years.

When our Saviour first said these words, people were certainly looking for the establishment of the promised kingdom and the righting of everything. They were looking for a Messiah who would be a king, and because of this, they perceived that what our Saviour was talking about was this – that this kingdom was going to be established quite soon. They were looking for the establishment of this kingdom according to what they understood the prophecies meant to say. They all were expecting an earthly kingdom, that is for certain. When the Saviour was saying that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, they were quite certain that this meant that very soon this kingdom would be established, the Roman invaders would be gone, and all that Greek-speaking which they had to endure, too, would be gone. They would have a nice theocratic kingdom as they thought they had been promised.

What they did not comprehend (and what most people are still not comprehending, somehow), is that when our Saviour says that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, He is talking about Himself, and not just Himself as some sort of a king. He is saying that the Kingdom of Heaven is in Him. He is the Way. He is the Truth. He is the Life (see John 14:6). He is, Himself, the Kingdom. We understand this Kingdom in which we are participating to be the Body of Christ, of which we are all parts (even though we do not necessarily always behave like it). Jesus Christ, Himself, is the Head. All this came to be out of His perfect obedience to the will of the Father. This, our Saviour’s obedience, was not accomplished because God the Father (as it were) said to God the Son : Do this, because I said so, or else. The Son lovingly and voluntarily offered His obedience to the will of the Father, and always did, always does, and always will because of the nature of His love.

We still have not learnt the proper meaning of the word “obedience”. We keep behaving as though obedience meant that I have to do something someone else says because it is the law, such as a stop sign or a speed limit sign (which, if the truth be known, we always bend). I do it because it is the law. It says so, so I have to do it. However, that is not what real obedience is.

Real obedience in Christian life (and in real life) is voluntarily offering my obedience out of love. I love someone, and therefore I will be obedient. However, you see that this obedience is not just doing something that someone says because he/she says so (although sometimes it can be like that). True obedience is more like emulation. I love someone, and therefore I want to be like that person. If you are going to be obedient in a monastery for instance, or in parish life, this obedience is offered to someone who has, obviously, a life in Christ, a life of love in Christ.

When the Lord is saying, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”, He is saying to us, as it were : Turn about. We do not really understand the word “repent” these days, either. It seems to me that every time we hear the word “repent”, we suppose that we ought to be having some sort of an emotional reaction, with tears in our eyes, feeling very sad and sorry, and so forth.

Repentance is not necessarily a matter of having tears in the eyes and feeling sorry (although that does have its place). Repentance has to do with turning about : turning away from the darkness, and instead turning towards the light ; turning away from selfishness, and instead turning towards selflessness ; turning away from death, and instead turning towards life. When such turning about takes place, it is filled with joy, also. It is true that there could be some sadness, some regret about bad things or mistakes, and so forth, which we made while we were in the other mode of life, in the other mode of consciousness.

However, when we turn towards the Lord, this turning towards the Lord brings life, light, joy, peace – the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Our lives become different. They are lives that are full of joy – not woe-is-me-hang-your-head lives. They are lives that are, instead, full of joy, full of life, full of vigour, positive and full-of-power lives. This is what our Lord is talking about when He is, as it were, saying : Turn about. When He is saying, “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”, He is, as it were, saying to us : Understand that this present life can be new, vital, joyful.

It is for you and for me, 2,000 years after He said this, to come to understand that our lives really are found in Him. He is the Way, the Truth, the Life. He is the living Kingdom. It is at His Banquet and Table that we are here, today, gathered. Standing together here today in this Temple, we are gathered around the Lord’s Table and waiting for Him, Himself, to feed us with His own Self, with His own hand. He uses our bishops or priests as His hand, I suppose you could say, but it is He who is feeding us all.

It is He, Himself, who is feeding us. In fact, that is part of one of the prayers that is said just before we receive Holy Communion. We are asking the Lord, Himself, to feed us all with His own hand ; and He does. Let us ask Him, as He is feeding us, to renew our love for Him. Let us ask Him to renew our sense of direction and our awareness that He is the Way, so that we may be ready to be there with the Lord whom we love, and who is the whole purpose of our being. Let us ask Him to renew this simple, straightforward love and joy so that we can glorify Him in every part of our lives, all together, supporting each other in the Kingdom, standing as we are, glorifying the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

When we are paying attention to the words of our Lord this morning about the Kingdom of God, it is important for us to remember that things are not necessarily quite as black-and-white as we sometimes are trying to understand readings. Our Lord is definitely saying, however, that there are people who will not get into the Kingdom of God. He says this on the one hand ; and on the other hand He says : “They will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and sit down in the kingdom of God”. What does this mean ? What is He talking about ?

He is speaking directly to people who are still very much conscious of the Law, and concerned about doing the details of exactly what is right (in other words, obeying the letter of the Law). This obeying of the letter of the Law is what we human beings are always getting stuck on. We are treating God as if He were perpetually angry with us, as if He were waiting to pounce upon us, and as though there were some “sword of Damocles” hanging over our heads. We are always going about like frightened puppies, or like our frightened little cat who is frightened for who knows what reason, frightened of her own shadow often, it seems. We do go about in this frightened way, worrying about transgressing the smallest iota of God’s commandments. They are knocking on the door, and He says : “I do not know you, where you are from”. They say to Him : “We ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets”. However, He will say : “I tell you I do not know you, where you are from”. There is a modern idiom : “Do you know where I’m coming from ?” Saying : “I do not know where you come from” is tantamount to saying : “I do not know who you are”. Why does He not know them ? This is because it is they who do not really know Who He is. Our Lord cannot recognise His own in them. That is what this passage is partly concerned with. This passage is also not concerned with supposed threats from the Lord.

I cannot claim by any means to give a complete survey of the meaning of our Lord’s parable. We, who have eyes, often cannot see, and we who have ears, often cannot hear ; or sometimes, perhaps, we even will not see or hear. This attitude is all couched in fear, because we human beings do tend to live in fear. This is our burden, I suppose it could be said. Because of fears, we, ourselves, sometimes cannot recognise the Lord for Who He is, even when He is right in front of us. Yet, in the context of all this (it is very serious), the Lord recognises those who respond to Him in love, and who are not preoccupied with making the iotas of the Law a higher priority. The observing of the iotas of the Law, and the little, minuscule details about the Law, are supposed to be things that come naturally to people who love the Lord. These observances are the product of love. They do not come ahead of the love. When such concerns about details come in front of the observance of the law of love, they block the proper relationship with the Lord. It is about all this, I believe, that the Lord is trying to help us to understand. People coming from all points of the compass will still come and sit down in the Kingdom of God. The ones who come are those who have responded to Him in love. We might even say that this is a sort of prediction of the spreading of the Gospel to the whole world, to the Gentiles and to everyone else.

Now, I am going back to the very beginning of the Gospel. It is important for us to remember that when we are living our lives in the proper context (that is, if our lives are filled with the love of the Lord), the expression of the Kingdom that He gives at the beginning of this Gospel can take place. In the context of this loving relationship with the Lord which is the focus of everything, the Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed which is a very, very, tiny seed. However, this tiny seed grows into a very big tree, just as our Saviour says. I saw one once in Palestine. It is truly amazing. It is quite a big plant that comes from this little, tiny seed. Sometimes, big seeds only produce bushes. This little, tiny seed can grow into something huge. Our Saviour has said that a little bit of yeast in a large amount of flour can produce a great quantity of bread. Our Lord said something similar about salt in another place, regarding its necessary effect upon flavour.

The point is, that it does not take much – it really does not take much. Something that is insignificant (from the point of view of the world) can produce an amazing amount of fruit : good fruit, life. When our Lord is speaking about these things, He is referring to things that are not only growing, but even exploding into life. This mustard seed produces a very, very big plant, which bears very much fruit. The plant produces not merely a few mustard seeds, but a multitude of them. What happens with just a tiny bit of yeast in some flour ? It produces very many loaves of bread. Our Lord is speaking about life — life in Him — and the abundance of life that comes as a result of living in a loving relationship with Him. The Kingdom is expressed in terms of love and life, and of exponential multiplication, by I don’t know how many superscript figures to what power. The Lord is bringing about fruit and productivity from our lives. This is what He is talking about.

He is looking to you and to me, He is patiently waiting for us to respond to Him in love, and to live in love. The fulfilling of the Law will naturally come second, because if we want to be pleasing to Him, we will naturally observe the Law, which is really an expression of how we were created to live in the first place. He wants us to live in love with Him, so that He can give life, not only to us, but to people and creatures around us. He wants our lives to be bearing fruit like the mustard seed and multiplying like the yeast. From all the points of the compass, the Lord will bring to Himself those who encounter His love. He will bring them to His table. They will sit down with Him in the Kingdom of God, and they will all rejoice in eternity, glorifying the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

According to the sensibilities of some people, the informality of this particular community’s worship might feel a little bit uncomfortable. However, the fact is – this is rather how I think worship normally should be. It should be organic. It should be an expression of who we are. We are offering ourselves to the Lord, after all, in our worship. We are offering Him not some sort of false front. Because He knows everything, and He sees everything, we cannot make any pretense about anything in front of Him. We must be true about ourselves in the presence of Him who is the Truth. We offer to Him who we are. We do this honestly, and at the same time respectfully. In the informality with which we are serving here, today (partly because of necessity, but still it is not anything less because of the necessity), we are offering to the Lord, with respect, with love, with organic informality, who we are. I believe that this sort of attitude – being who we truly are – is very pleasing to the Lord.

When our Saviour is addressed by this blind man today in the Gospel, He gives the blind man what he is asking for. You remember that the blind man, when he hears that it is Jesus that is walking by him, cries out : “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me”. In English, we are very often mistaking what is this “have mercy” because of the way we are taught by the usual sort of books that we are reading. The first meanings of the Oxford dictionary probably, too, will suggest that when we are saying : “have mercy”, it means to be spared or rescued from anger or punishment or death or whatever else. This is not only what the Greek verb “eleison” can mean, and that is also not what the meaning is in other languages which translate this same word into their terms. Slavonic and its derivative languages use “pomilui”. Romanian uses “milueste”. In neither case does the meaning of the word agree with the Oxford use. I am saying that we have to “Orthodox” the English language a little more (or at least we have to find a way to “Orthodox” our understanding of these words).

When we are saying “have mercy”, in effect we are asking the Lord to pour the oil of His love upon us. This essentially follows what the Greek verb seems to be trying to convey in its meaning. To an extent, this can mean that we are being spared from some sort of punishment. However, the main thing is that we are asking the Lord to love us. We do not ask Him to love us more, nor do we ask Him to love us less. His love for us and for all His creatures is always constant. This “mercy” word, by the way, in English, comes from the French “miséricorde” (just to prove that English is French badly spoken). “Miséricorde” comes from the Latin “misericordia” which means a heart of love. We are asking the Lord to pour out on us His love, from His Heart of Love ; and that is precisely what this blind man is doing today. He is asking the Lord to pour out the oil of His love upon us (because in the Greek word, this oil and love are somehow connected by implication). We are asking the Lord to pour out His love and His care upon us. The blind man, in asking this, gets what he asked for – the expression of the Lord’s love. He is asking for his sight. The Lord, out of His love and compassion (perhaps “compassion” is the best way to talk about this “mercy”) gives sight to this man. The man immediately follows Him, praising God.

We are not all blind physically, and we do not all necessarily have such dramatic healings. However, when we are asking Him all the time, as we are, to have mercy on us, this does not mean that the Lord is not pouring out His compassion on us. Rather, He is constantly pouring out this compassion on us. The Apostle is saying today that we have put on Christ. We have put on a new life. We have put on the New Man (see Ephesians 4:24). This is the expression of what happens when you and I are renewed in the love of Jesus Christ. He changes us. He changes our life. He heals the wounds of our heart. He heals the wounds of our spirit. He heals sometimes, also, the wounds of our body. He, in His compassion, in His love, in His mercy, in His “misericordia”, comes to us, and He meets our needs.

This is why it gives us joy to be here, today, offering to Him the totality of who we are, both singly and all together, because we are all in the same boat, as it were. In the first place, we are all people who have put on Christ. We are all people who are trying to live in Christ. We have experienced His love. We are, also, all sinners, more or less in the same way. Sometimes we think that our sins are so peculiar and unrepeatable. However, when hearing confessions, one has the opposite impression. It is all the same sort of sin that people are confessing before the Lord. It is all the same, with very little variation. People are all afflicted, from bishops down to little children, with the same sorts of temptation, with the same sorts of obstacles in living the Christian life. We ask the Lord to have mercy on us, as this blind man is asking for mercy. The Lord takes away the blindness from our hearts, and He renews our lives ; He strengthens us. He gives us the purpose in living that we need to have, and that we are looking for. We all have a sense that we need to have a purpose in life.

We often ask ourselves : “Why are we here ?” The main purpose for any of us to be here in this life is first of all to glorify the Lord who created us, and who gives us life. That is our first purpose – to respond in love to His love. After that – to be good to other people : to bring the love of Jesus Christ to other people around us. The Lord gives us all sorts of talent ; He gives us all sorts of other things besides, but this is still the essence of it : to be good, to carry Christ to other people. On top of all that, the Lord’s other blessings come. Nevertheless, it is our purpose in this life to make a difference. The difference that we are here to make in this life is primarily to help other people have hope, and to help them to encounter the love of Jesus Christ. If by our lives we help other people encounter Jesus Christ, experience Him and His love, and help them to have the hope that we have, then we are already well on our way to doing what the Lord is asking each of us to do in this life. We are fulfilling our purpose by conveying the love, the life, the hope, the joy of Jesus Christ. Besides this, the Lord may give us many other things to do, but I do not think that anything is as important as this conveying, living, revealing Jesus Christ. Others may find Him by seeing how we live ourselves, by how we treat each other, how we pray for each other, how we have “misericordia” : mercy, compassion for each other, and for people in need, who are all in the same boat as we are, facing the same difficulties.

This is a long, winding way around the words of our Lord today. It is important for us to remember that when we are saying : “Lord have mercy”, we are asking the Lord to have compassion on us, to pour out His love upon us. Then it is for us to do the same. The Lord does pour out His compassion upon us. He does pour out His love upon us. We, in Him, need to pour out our compassion upon other people. In this way we will do exactly what the Apostle was asking us to do earlier : to turn away from the ways of darkness, and the selfish deeds and behaviours that human beings get caught up in. Instead, like Christ, let us give ourselves in love to everyone around us, and shine with light like Jesus Christ, the Word of God, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, our Saviour, our Guide. Let us glorify Him in every part of our life, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

I think that it is important for us to remember as we are celebrating this Feast of the Entry of the Lord into the Temple (also called the Meeting of the Lord in the Temple) that in the beginning of the course of all creation, the Lord puts a particular order in all things. He gives us this order to live by for a good reason : that we should be healthy, and that we should be a life-giving sort of person. There is an order in God’s creation, and in everything about us, and, in fact, in our history. We are not necessarily always so willing to acknowledge this, because we are raised to consider everything that is happening as being quite random (which is not exactly how it is).

Here we are today, in the Temple, with our Lord. Our Saviour is being brought into the Temple in Jerusalem by His parents, to do what is required according to the Law. When He is forty days old, He has to be presented in the Temple, accompanied by sacrifices, because He is the first-born son in the family (in this case, the only son). Therefore, they come, and they are doing what is in accordance with the Law. While they are yet in the Temple, two persons come to them : first, Simeon. This passage does not tell us exactly who Simeon is. What we need to know is that this old man, who had been told by the Lord that he would see the Messiah, recognises Him immediately when he comes into the Temple today. It has to be understood that this is not just some sort of happenstance. This old man was an old man in harmony with the Lord. His heart was in such harmony with the Lord that when our Saviour now appears before him as a child, this old man knows for certain Who He is, because his heart is telling him. Simeon understands in his heart because the Lord clearly told him that this is the Messiah, the Promised One. That is why he says : “Lord, now you are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen Your salvation” (Luke 2:29-30). Simeon points out in this particular hymn who this Messiah is, and what He is about to do. He is the salvation of the people, Israel. He is also the Light to enlighten the Gentiles : that is us. I believe that all we who are here today are amongst the Gentiles. This is what the promise is : He is the Light to enlighten the Gentiles.

Then after this, comes the very old woman, Anna. According to the writings of some commentators, it seems that she is only 84 years old. However, the way I have been accustomed to reading these passages is that she has been a widow for 84 years, and that besides this, she was a wife for a short time. This is how the Greek seems to put it. Therefore, this holy woman is definitely no “spring chicken”. So much for these ideas that people only lived for twenty or thirty years in those days. Maybe that might have been some sort of average because of sickness, death and destruction, and so forth, but some people did live to a very great old age, and not only just this particular woman. At any rate, she comes into the Temple, and she confirms what Simeon has just recognised and proclaimed. She recognises the Messiah. She speaks about Who He is to all who will hear her. We may very well presume that after this encounter, her heart would have repeated to the Lord words similar to those spoken by Simeon earlier. No doubt she would now have been ready to be received herself by the Lord.

It is important, as the Apostle is saying to us in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to pay attention to the way the Lord works in and with His own creation. There was a particular order in the Jewish society at the time. There were two sorts of priests. There was the Aaronic priesthood – those were the ones who were charged with making the regular sacrifices, and so forth, in the Temple. There were the Levites, who were in charge of looking after everything else in the Temple, somehow – they were preparing things one way or another. There was a sort of co-operative. Thus, we see that there are the priests who are specifically the descendants of Aaron, and the priests who were the descendants of the Patriarch Levi. They were of the same tribe, but they had different responsibilities and functions. The Apostle says that in the same way that Melchisedek was both a king and a priest at the same time (but was not related in any way to either of these priestly lineages), so is the Saviour. The Apostle points out that our Saviour comes from the tribe of Judah. The tribe of Judah is the tribe which is producing kings. From the tribe of Judah, the Apostle says, no priests have come. The Apostle is making a point of this. The Saviour comes from the kingly tribe, and He is fulfilling the prophecies about where the Messiah should come from, and to whom He should belong as the legitimate descendant of King David. At the same time, our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ, like Melchisedek, is a Priest. Why ? It is because He offered Himself as a sacrifice for us. The words of the Liturgy of Saint Basil help us to understand this, when Saint Basil writes that our Saviour is both the One who offers, and the One who is offered ; He is the One who is received, and He is the One who receives. He is beyond Melchisedek. That is why the Apostle is drawing our attention to this.

At the same time, because He is Lord of the creation that He creates, He also is capable of making adjustments in the order of creation for our good from time to time. We generally do not expect it, and, for the most part, we are confused when it does happen, as people often have been (especially in the early days after the Incarnation). Who is this ? Our Saviour does not exactly fit what we expected. The Jewish people expected an earthly kingdom : our Lord gives us the heavenly Kingdom. He is a King, and He is a Priest at the same time, like Melchisedek, but beyond Melchisedek. They were not prepared for such things. The Lord, in His love for us knows what is good for us, and He knows how to prepare us. He knows what to do with us. He knows what is necessary for us, and for our salvation.

The Lord works His wonders, as He always does – loving us, caring for us, protecting us. He is, in fact, asking us to have hearts that are like these two elders, Simeon and Anna – hearts that are in tune with Him, in harmony with Him, ready to recognise what is His will, what is His way, what He wants us to do, instantly able to recognise His will, just as these two old people did. They recognised that what was happening in the Temple was fulfilling the Lord’s will for our salvation. Thus, we say at the end of this Divine Liturgy that in his arms, Simeon carried our Saviour for us, and for our salvation. All these things are accomplished for us and for our salvation because the Lord loves us. He cares for us. He is with us in everything, no matter how difficult our lives are ; no matter how complicated things are ; no matter how painful things are. He is with us. It is important for us to keep our hearts in Christ, so that He can always be refreshing us, renewing us, strengthening us, healing us, and making us strong to the glory of the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

It is important that we remember the Gospel reading today, because it is connected with what the Apostle Paul has just said to us. He says that he considers himself to be the foremost of sinners. He talks about the patience of the Lord with him, and the love of the Lord for him, because he considers himself to be the foremost of sinners. We know details from the Acts of the Apostles (and other writings also) about his life, details which indicate to us why he would call himself the foremost of sinners. Yet, I would say instead that he is the foremost of repenters.

With his co-operation, his life was turned about. That is what this repentance means. His life was turned about. Instead of persecuting the Gospel, the Apostle began to proclaim the Gospel of Christ most effectively. He is an example of repentance for you and for me, because repentance means that we co-operate with the Lord who gives us the strength to turn about. In Him, with Him, and through Him, we are able to turn about from darkness to light, from death to life, from fear to love. This is precisely what happened to the Apostle Paul. This is what happens to you and to me in the course of our lives. I do not suppose that many of us necessarily have quite so dramatic an event happening to us as happened to the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus ; but that does not matter. What matters is that we are turning our lives about to Him.

What did the Apostle Paul do in the course of his life ? He was primarily known for preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles (that is, the non-Jews). Always, however, in the Acts of the Apostles, he goes first to the synagogues, and then to the Gentiles. This is important for us to remember because there is a correct order to everything. He goes first to the Jews, and then to the Gentiles. All these things are exactly reflecting what happens today in the Gospel. Our Lord, having withdrawn from the Lake of Galilee area, is going into the region of Tyre and Sidon. This area is now known as the Lebanon. This is the time we know about when our Saviour withdraws into non-Jewish territory, and He encounters there, of course, a Canaanite woman. If we hear the word “Canaanite”, it means the original inhabitants of that area of Palestine before the Jewish people came there. It also implies that this person is likely to be a pagan. This Canaanite woman comes to our Saviour today, and she is begging for the release of her daughter from slavery to a demon (at least one – we do not know what the number is, and it does not matter). He answers her not a word at the beginning. Why ? Because our Lord is, in the first place, a Jew living in a Jewish society, living according to the Law. He could not properly speak to this Canaanite woman because she is a pagan, and outside of the house of faith, as it were. It was not correct for Him to speak to her. This still happens today : in an Islamic society, a man cannot speak to just any woman, and I suppose, it goes the other way around, too. There are only certain people you can speak to under certain circumstances. This “whom you can talk to” was very regulated in Jewish society.

He answers her not a word, but she continues to insist. His disciples were saying to Him, in effect : "Do something, because she is pestering us all the time”. Then He speaks to her in a way that often can offend us (such politically-correct-type Canadians). He uses this expression : “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs” (i.e. according to the Jewish reckoning, a person such as she would be compared to a dog, and in such societies this is a very negative comparison). It was a very insulting thing to say. Yet, because she obviously had encountered our Lord and His love somehow, she had been touched by Him somehow. She had heard his words somehow. She knows that this Person could help her daughter. Out of desperate love for her daughter, and with confidence in Him, she begs Him yet more, and she says in her extreme humility : “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table”. Let us remember that immediately our Lord says : “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be to you as you desire”. Her daughter is immediately healed.

In this encounter, by going to the Lebanon, by talking to this Canaanite woman, and by healing her daughter, our Lord is already preparing the way for what the Apostle Paul (and all the apostles also) would be doing after Pentecost. It was definitely not only the Apostle Paul who would be going to the Gentiles. The Apostle Thomas, for example, went to India, and also to parts of Africa. The others went to many other places, but that is another story. Our Lord is preparing them and us for what was going to happen, and He is exactly, in His own way, showing Who He is right now. Who is He ? We heard the answer already in the verses on “Alleluia”. We hear the answer every evening at Vespers : He is a “Light to enlighten the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel” (Luke 2:32). He is the “Light to enlighten the Gentiles”, and He certainly brought light to the life of this Canaanite woman. He brought light to her daughter who had been possessed by a demon. Such possession is not ever a pleasant condition, because people who are in such a condition are enslaved to fear. We must understand that fear is the opposite of love. God is Love. What is the opposite of this love ? The opposite is not hatred – it is fear. People who are enslaved to “Mr. Down Below” are enslaved to fear. The characteristic of everything in and from “down below” is fear. The Canaanite Woman’s daughter was released from fear this day by our Saviour into the light, and into the freedom of His love.

In the same way, you and I are released by our Saviour from the fears that beset us in our daily lives. Along with the daughter of this Canaanite woman, He sets you and me free, also. If we have the faith of this Canaanite woman on behalf of those who are in need whom we know, the Lord will hear us also. He will hear our cries on behalf of other people whom we know who are enslaved by fear. By our prayers, He will bring them also to the light. I have known this to be the case many times in my life (not because of me), but because I have seen other people pray, and I have seen the results. There are people in our diocese (and outside our diocese) who know how to intercede for other people, and they do so. They seriously care about other people, and they pray for people they love. I have seen how their prayers bear fruit. Their prayers really do bear fruit. Your prayers bear fruit, too. When you are bringing before the Lord those whom you love, those who are in need, you do not always necessarily see it immediately, but those prayers do bear fruit.

You and I are the inheritors of the promise of the enlightenment of the Gentiles (at least most of us are Gentiles). Nevertheless, there are many people who were born Jewish who have come to Christ and put on Christ with us. It is important for us to give glory to the Lord for His love for us, for His care for us, for His patience with us, as He had patience with Saul before he became the Apostle Paul. He has patience with you and me, too, because He is Love. I noticed when I was coming in that you will soon have a whole series of lectures on the topic of love. You could not do better for a subject. When you are studying love and its work, you are studying the Lord, Himself. You are opening your hearts to the Lord, Himself. You are uniting yourselves to the Lord, Himself. You will be the better equipped in this love to be a light shining in this city, which needs so much the light of the love of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. (There once was plenty of the light of His love in this society, but it has been forgotten.) It is time for us to bring it back. That is why we are here.

Let us ask the Lord to give us the strength, the heart, the joy, the focus and the determination to live our lives in the context of this life-giving, liberating love which He so abundantly pours out upon us. Let us ask the Lord to enable us to reveal Him in His love to the people around us by how we, ourselves, live in life, love, joy, freedom, peace, gentleness, long-suffering and goodness. People round about us will take hope, and find our Saviour if they can see this in us. Let us ask the Lord to multiply these fruits of the Holy Spirit in us, so that our lives, glorifying Him, may also help other people come with us to glorify Him : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The Apostle Paul is saying to his disciple and spiritual child, Timothy, today, that as a bishop in the Church, he has to set an example to the faithful by his way of life. He is to be a template for what a Christian life is supposed to be like. It is important for you and for me to remember that a priest also has this responsibility to set the example of how to live a Christian life. When a new priest is ordained and given the pectoral Cross to wear, this Cross customarily has engraved on its reverse, the words of the Apostle Paul to Timothy : “Be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity (1 Timothy 4:12). However, at the same time, this responsibility does not stop there with the priest. The responsibility passes on to all the faithful, because all the faithful are, in their own way, priests in the Church. There is what is called “the priesthood of the laity”, and it does have its concrete expression. One of the ways in which it does express itself is in the fact that we are supposed to be setting for each other, and for people around us, a good example of what it is to live a Christian life.

Today, we hear in the Gospel about our Saviour’s encounter with Zacchæus. This Gospel reading about Zacchæus comes to us every year more or less at this time, and it always tells us that Great Lent is coming in a few weeks. Of course, that also means that the Great Feast of Pascha is coming a few short weeks after that. It is sort of a harbinger of spring, you could say (even though the weather outside is not exactly spring-like today). Nevertheless, we are talking about the spring that is Pascha. In conjunction with the instruction to Timothy, Zacchæus is reminding us how we are supposed to be living.

We have to remember, of course, that Zacchæus was not a tax collector employed by the Canadian government. He was not just a tax collector – he was a chief tax collector 2,000 years ago in the Roman Empire. When a person was a tax collector in the Roman Empire in those days, it meant that the Emperor commissioned a number of people to go out into the Empire, and to get for him that year the money he needed. The Emperor required this money in order to operate the government, to pay the civil servants, to pay the army and navy, and everything else he wanted to do. Of course, he would take as much as he wanted for himself. Therefore, all these tax collectors went out without any sort of limitation. They went around and extracted all this money for the Emperor, wherever they could, however they could. Each area had its quota, I suppose, according to the government. These tax collectors came to the house, and said : “We are taking this, and that”. No-one could say “no” to the tax collector, because it was the Emperor who said that this money was owed to him by all his subjects. No-one could ever say “no” to a tax collector of the Emperor. That part has not changed much, because today, we cannot say “no” to a Revenue Canada tax collector. However, the manner in which our collectors collect taxes is very different.

Regardless, in those days the tax collector was not the favourite person of anyone in any society in the Roman Empire. Today, we see in the Gospel that Zacchæus is in double trouble with his people. The Jewish people were a conquered people, conquered by the Romans and subjected to the Romans in a slavish way. When Zacchæus, a Jewish man himself, was collecting taxes from the Jewish people on behalf of the Roman Emperor, we can guess how all the Jewish people around felt about him. They had not very pleasant feelings about this man. There were many more collectors just like him, too. The Apostle Matthew was also such a person, but he was not a chief tax collector. He was just a simple tax collector.

For whatever reason, Zacchæus is determined to see our Lord because he has heard much about Him. At the same time, he is a little man. (He must have been like my grandmother who was four-foot-nine. She always said that good things come in small packages. So did we, because she was a pretty good grandmother.) Zacchæus could not see over the heads of people (that is why I said that he was like my grandmother in height.) In order to be able just to see Jesus while He was walking by, surrounded as always by many people, Zacchæus gets up onto the branch of a sycamore tree which was by the path where Jesus was going to go. There he would be able to see Jesus, and see who it is that people are talking about all the time. Instead of Zacchæus’ just seeing who it is that everyone is talking about, Jesus walks right up to him, and says : “Zacchæus, make haste and come down, for today I must stay at your house”. (When I was a little boy in Sunday school, they used to have a song which was rather quaint. In that song, Jesus would say to Zacchæus : “Zacchæus, you come down, for I am coming to your house for tea”. I do not think that they were drinking tea in those days, although it is possible that tea from India had gotten as far as the Middle East by that time ; but that is another story.) It was not at all what Zacchæus expected, and it was not at all what the other people around him expected.

Immediately, the other people start to criticise our Lord, saying : “He has gone to be a guest with a man who is a sinner”. He was not a sinner just because he stole, because that is what tax collectors did, and they took far more than they were supposed to. You notice that the Gospel says that he was rich. Zacchæus was considered to be a sinner also because, as a tax collector, he was considered to be a traitor. When they are saying that he is a sinner, they are being mild in their criticism of Zacchæus. However, the Friend of sinners such as you and me and the Apostle Paul (as he refers to himself), Jesus the Christ is there, eating in the home of Zacchæus. This was doubling up the trouble our Lord seemed to be in (according to the people who were criticising Him). However, our Lord knows people’s hearts. He knows that there is more than meets the eye in Zacchæus when He walks up to that sycamore tree, and says : “Today I must stay at your house”. When our Lord goes to Zacchæus’ house, Zacchæus, just as any person would do (especially if they are Orthodox), gives Him food. Someone cannot come into your house, and get away without being offered food. That is the Orthodox way, and we inherited that from Judaism. The fundamental expression of Christian love is the giving of hospitality. Our Lord could not escape without eating.

While our Saviour is sitting in the house of Zacchæus, His presence affects Zacchæus ; the words of life that come from Him affect Zacchæus. In the midst of all the people he is feeding (all those people that came with Him, and it was rather more than we who are gathered here today), Zacchæus stands up, and says to Jesus (and this tells us how rich he was) : “Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold”. He absolutely had to have a lot of money in the bank to be able to say such a thing. Zacchæus would still have had something left to live on after having given away all this. However, we can understand what a big change had taken place in the heart of Zacchæus just by being in the presence of the love of Jesus Christ. He stopped putting himself first. He stopped putting money first. He stopped putting security first. He suddenly and unexpectedly found his security, his love, his life, his hope in Jesus Christ. Then nothing else mattered except the love of Jesus Christ. This tax collector, who had been putting plenty of money aside, immediately understood what was necessary. (What is necessary, all sorts of people did not understand, and even the Apostles were slow to understand sometimes.) It is a lesson to us. That is why this Gospel is coming to us now before Great Lent. Zacchæus gave half of everything he had to the poor. He cared immediately. The love of Jesus Christ was caught by Zacchæus, and he immediately understood what was necessary. Our Lord had seen what was the potential of this man, Zacchæus, and Zacchæus immediately began to live up to that potential.

Zacchæus shared his riches with the poor, and with the people whom he had wronged. On top of that, the rest of his life will have been characterised by exactly what he did at this moment. Even though he would still probably be a rich man by most other people’s standards, he will still have multiplied his hospitality thereafter. As he did on this day with our Saviour, Zacchæus would have been bringing into his house all sorts of people who did not even like him. Even though they did not care at all for Zacchæus, a crowd of people entered this house with our Lord because they were with Him, and they felt they had to go in with Him. They, themselves, now learned a big lesson. Long, long ago in the early days of our Church’s life, the Fathers were encouraged to read this Gospel at this time of the year in preparation for Great Lent, because this is how everyone learns this lesson.

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. Yes, we are supposed to feel regret for our sins, and we are supposed to turn about, therefore, in repentance. Great Lent is completely concerned with our turning about from our selfish ways. In conjunction with this focus on repentance, the hymns all through Great Lent are addressing the priority of daily giving to the poor.

More than anything else during Great Lent, we should not be concerned about what we are giving up so much as what more are we giving to the people who need help – the poor, the needy, the person that our Lord is sending to me this day. It is not everyone who is lacking cash. Mostly these days people do not lack so much cash, but they definitely lack love. Even if we Orthodox Christians do not have a lot of cash, we do have love. We do know how to share this love. We do know how to share our hospitality, and our table also. We know how to care for people because we, like Zacchæus, have been touched by the love of Jesus Christ. Our hearts have been moved by the love of our Saviour, and we know that because of this love we can give people even what we do not have enough of, ourselves. We think that we do not have enough of this love, but our Lord provides enough, and more than enough for us. The fact is, the more you are living the Orthodox Christian life, the more you do things out of love for each other, the more love our Lord gives us to give, and to act on. This love, which our Lord has given us (and which He is continually giving us) only increases if we give it away. If we do not give it away, love decreases. In stagnation, love never increases. Our Lord’s love only increases in activity, in its exercise.

Brothers and sisters, here we are in this Temple, which is all freshly painted, and which now has insulated windows. That our Lord made this possible is, itself, an expression of our Lord’s love for us. This Temple that people had thought had come to its end, in fact, did not come to its end. It had to wait for Him to put the right resources into place at the right time with the right people. This Temple is once again a sign of the love of Jesus Christ to this city, in this part of the city where people need it most. We are capable of giving this love. I have already seen an example of how it happens in this parish. Let us give glory to God for His love for us. Let us give thanks to God for His love for us. Let us ask Him to help us more and more to live this love so that people can have the same joy that we have, the same hope, the same strength from serving Him, worshipping Him, and glorifying Him, our Lord who loves us, the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

One of the most important things in our life is somehow trying to keep our priorities straight. It is something I have always had difficulty with. Father n, who is with us here (and who has known me for over forty years already) will testify to the fact that I have had some difficulty with priorities. This presently preaching bishop is a human being, and other bishops are human beings, too. Bishops have many of the same sorts of difficulties with their lives as everyone else does.

Keeping focus, remembering who we are, is the main challenge for us believers. The prevailing attitude of human beings in this world is “me-centered”. As a result, much of what we encounter in human society is simply empty, false window-dressing, false promises. It is ghastly – the sorts of false promises we keep hearing and reading about these days. The world is loaded with disappointments, and we all have plenty of experience of these disappointments. Nevertheless, we human beings continue to be lured away. The allure of all these false promises — things that are shiny, things that are pretty (and still very empty) — keep distracting us, keep pulling us away. People persist in talking about the great advancements we human beings have made. I suppose, technologically, we have made some advances. However, as persons, the way we react to things, the way we behave in life, is no different from how it ever was.

We have, as human beings, as a race, really not learned anything. Human beings make the same mistakes over and over and over again. If we had learned anything, I am saying, there would not be any war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in all the other places where there is war right now in the world. There would not be hungry, starving people, homeless people, people wandering around this city, and other cities. In the biggest city in this country (I suppose we could say it is the richest city, too), there are more than 40,000 people living without a home. This city is no better off proportionally – there are people here who have no place to live. This is not how it was when I was a child. Things have really changed. This is not to say that it was perfect when I was a child, not by any means.

There are so many people in so much need. So many of us are ready to forget and reject them. That is why I am saying that we have not learned anything. If we look at human history (let us say in Pharaonic times), and if we pay attention to how people behaved in those days, how they related to each other, the mistakes they made, then we will see that there is actually no difference. If we go back to the time of The Epic of Gilgamesh, and those people in the Mesopotamian area (which is the same area that is now all torn up), the situation is no different. If we study ancient Chinese history or Indian history, it is all the same thing, because human beings are still much the same as they always have been, from the earliest times. Once we got distracted from the true source of our purpose, of our being (in the Garden of Eden we got distracted), then we stayed distracted. No matter how much we try to pull ourselves back (as we keep trying to do), we do not get anywhere, because we, ourselves, cannot get anywhere by ourselves.

This is one of those nice places where Alcoholics Anonymous have it right. The first thing human beings have to understand about everything in life (not just about addiction, because addiction is only a symptom of great interior pain, and illness therefrom), is that we need the Lord. In everything in our life, we need the Lord (they call Him the “Higher Power”). We need help. We need the Lord to help us up and out of the dirty messes in which we find ourselves. We need the Lord to bring us back into focus from being distracted by all the pretty, shiny, empty things and the false promises. We need the Lord, and we need His strength even to begin to say : “Help”. We need His strength for everything. This is what I am talking about in terms of priorities in life.

We have to learn as a fundamental that everything in our life – our hope, our joy, our meaning, our purpose, our sense of direction – is all in the Lord, and from the Lord, and blessed by Him. Our purpose has to be to learn how to look for His blessing all the time as the Psalm says : “Behold, as the eyes of bond-servants are unto the hands of their masters, as the eyes of a maid-servant are unto the hands of her mistress, so our eyes are towards the Lord our God” (Psalm 122:2). We are looking for what He is asking us to do, looking to Him first because we love Him. We love Him. He loves us. We exist because He loves us. We love Him. We respond to Him in this love, sharing this love in the same way with each other.

We learn how we should be meeting the needs of each other as our Saviour met the needs of people all around Him all the time, telling them the truth about the Truth. That is our job : imitating our Saviour ; telling, living, acting, practicing the truth about Him who is the Truth. This is all because “God is love”, as the Apostle John says (1 John 4:8). Because God is love, all our work, all our being, everything about us has to be in the context of this selfless, serving love.

I am saying all this because our Lord is telling us today in the Gospel that when the time comes for the end, there are going to be plenty of deceivers. There definitely are amongst us on this continent (and in the whole world now), plenty of deceivers, plenty of false saviours. He says (as it were) : “Who is going to recognise Me when the time comes ?” Are we going to be able to know that it is truly He, Himself, when He comes ? The only way we are really going to have hope that this can be is if our hearts are already in harmony with Him, if we already know Him, if we are already trying to live in communion, in co-operation, in collaboration with Him, seeking to do His will, as the Prophet David said, looking to His hand, ready, eager, zealous even (in the right sort of a way) to do His will, to do His love, to act on His love.

Today is a Soul Saturday. We are remembering all the faithful who have departed. I can tell already that in this little community (because you are young, and still new), you do not have much experience as a community with Panikhidas, and so forth. It is a blessed, and a good stage of your life to be in. However, this experience will come to this community, because, as they say, death and taxes are certain. For us all, death will come. We have to face it, and when we face it, it is important for us to remember that our Lord said : “For He is not the God of the dead but of the living” (Luke 20:38). He is talking about those who are alive in God. Our Lord says that God is “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Luke 20:37). He is explaining to us that God is the God of the living because Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the Patriarchs, Noah, and all the rest, are all alive in God, in His love. Even though they have died in their bodies, they are alive in His love. In anticipation of Christ they are alive, those who have fallen asleep amongst us.

We pray on a day like this for everyone who has died everywhere, and in all times. Truly, we are praying for absolutely everyone, that they, who have fallen asleep will find rest in the mercy of the Lord. The Lord is the Judge of all ; He knows everything, and we are praying that He will extend His love to all those who have fallen asleep, with hope on our part that He will do this as He promised. We are also praying for those who have fallen asleep, that truly they will be able to accept His love, and be received into the heavenly Kingdom by receiving His love. This prayer that we are offering to the Lord now on behalf of all the people who have fallen asleep is not just for our relatives, and not just for those around here, now – this prayer is for everyone at all times. Our prayer (because the Lord is the Lord of all time and all people, always, everywhere) is for everyone, always, that the Lord will have mercy on them, and that they will be able to accept the Lord’s mercy. It is up to them, and it is up to the Lord. It is our business to pray.

The Lord uses our prayers as He wills. I have seen how the Lord does really 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 out of love. He wants us to live in Him eternally in love, in life, in joy, in everlasting bliss. May the Lord grant to us all the ability to keep our hearts focussed on Him, and our sense of purpose clear and direct. It would not hurt if you would pray for me once in a while, that I will finally get my own act together, and get my sense of priorities straightened out, so that we can all glorify together our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today is the Sunday of the Last Judgement, and this is the last day for eating meat before Lent begins. Tomorrow we start eating up all the dairy products we can manage in the next week. It is not exactly good for the liver, I suppose, but that is how we do it. The following weeks are very good for the liver so it all balances out. On this day when we are remembering the Last Judgement, there are two main points that are important to remember.

In the first place, the Apostle Paul this morning is emphasising to us the importance of being careful about how we use our liberty in Christ so that we do not scandalise our brother or sister. In this case, he is talking to the Corinthians particularly about food that had been offered to idols. The point he is making is quite correct. If a person, who is a believer, blesses the food with Christ’s blessing, it does not matter where that food has been, whether it has been offered to an idol in a temple or not. It does not matter at all because Christ’s blessing overcomes all those things. Anyway, all the idols in the temples are cheap imitations at the very best ; or they could be called deliberate imitations, and simply lies and ghosts, as well.

The point the Apostle is making is that the idols have no substance in themselves. They are just there, and people are worshipping creatures, and not the Creator. Nevertheless, a person who has a weak conscience or a weak faith can be tempted to feel that there is some substance there, so that if a person is eating this food that is being offered to idols, it might affect him somehow or associate him with this idol worship (which is not at all the case). However, a person who is weak is a person who is weak. He or she listens to tempting thoughts, and accepts the tempting thoughts as real.

It is really important, as the Apostle Paul says, to pay attention to the people around us. We can exercise our liberty in what we eat or what we do not eat, but we have to be careful about the fragility of our brother or our sister who sees us exercising this liberty. In the Christian way of living, we are called to be very sensitive to those around us. Because of our love for Jesus Christ, and our love for our brothers and sisters, we are supposed to know what are their strengths and weaknesses, and never play on the weakness. We are only to help the brother or sister overcome the weakness.

One of these weaknesses can be legalism, of course. In Jewish society, the way of life and the way of worship were focussed on the rules : what you must do, and what you must not do. At any rate, this is how they were living out life. It does not mean that rules are truly the essence of life. The essence of how everything is supposed to be lived out in Jewish society is found in the summary of the Law in the Old Testament, which is : “You shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart, from your whole soul, and from your whole power” (5 Moses [Deuteronomy] 6:5). Our Saviour repeated this in the New Testament. In addition, He said, in effect, that the whole of the Law also says that “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Matthew 22:39).

We have to be sensitive in the love of Christ. We have freedom. Nevertheless, some people are still bound by legalism and other sorts of fears. This is because legalism is one of the faces of fear. People are bound by it in one way or another, and we cannot force them out of it. We have to be careful how we behave so as not to scandalise people, and break them. Taking into account their weakness, we support them, so that they can grow out of their weakness, out of their fear, out of their being bound by one thing or another, and be able to grow up into the true freedom which is in the love of Jesus Christ.

Today, our Saviour is talking about the Judgement. There is going to be the separation of the good from the rebellious, as the shepherd would separate the goats from the sheep. In the Apocalypse (22:1), there is a reference to a river that flows from the throne of God. Iconographically, there is sometimes added a river of fire flowing from the same source. Many people (in connexion with the fear that people have, and the sense of legalism that people have) are understanding that God is somehow very angry, and that He is waiting to strike everyone who is disobedient, and everyone who is stepping out of line. This is not the case. God did not reveal Himself as an angry God in such a way. Otherwise, the Ten Commandments would not be summed up with this exhortation to love : to love God, to love human beings, to love each other, and to love all creation. The Ten Commandments talk exactly about loving God, and loving each other in such a way that our lives will be pure, holy, life-giving and constructive.

There is nothing in the Ten Commandments that does not apply to a Christian today. They are the expression of how a person who loves God lives : putting first things first, putting the Lord first, putting His worship first, accepting no substitutes for Him in any way, putting nothing between Him and us in any way, treating each other in this context with such respect that we do not kill, lie, commit adultery, covet, and so forth. These are the expressions of love.

As mentioned before, in an icon of the Last Judgement, we will often see a blue river and a red river. The red river is to be understood to be the river of fire, and the blue river to be the river of life, as it were. We will notice that they are both coming from the throne of the Lord. To begin with, we have to remember Who is the Lord. The Lord is love. The Apostle John, in his Epistle makes it very explicit : “God is love” (1 John 4:8). What is coming from the Throne of Glory ? What is this river of fire ? It cannot be hell-fire in the way we usually think about hell-fire : just perpetual, sadistic torture that goes on and on for ever. It is not like that. People such as Archimandrite (Saint) Sophrony (Sacharov) have said (and I believe that this is really how it is) that since this river of fire is coming from the Throne of Glory, it has to be another characteristic of God’s love. God’s love is experienced by some of us from time to time in life as burning. I have experienced, myself, this burning in my heart when it needed to be cleaned up. It has been quite an intense burning feeling.

This is why I believe that Archimandrite Sophrony (who is being seriously considered in Constantinople for glorification) is right. He says that this fire is an expression of God’s love, and it is perceived as water by people who already love, know, and accept Jesus Christ. This is the blue line in the icon. For those who are rejecting God, who are still bound by fear, it is experienced as fire. It is a refining fire, a fire that is intended to burn away the darkness, and admit the light. I believe that we might say that the Prophet Malachi has spoken about the Lord’s love as being like a refining fire (see Malachi 3:2). The Prophet actually says that the Lord Himself comes as a refining fire ; but we know very well from the Apostle John that God is Love (see 1 John 4:8). A refining fire burns away our rebellion, and enables us (as long as we co-operate with the Lord) to experience this, first, as fire, and then as living water. It is not that a person cannot have experience of both. I am not saying that there will not come a time when, as we say in the Church, a Cross will be put on everything. I am not saying that this will not happen.

What I am saying is that, until such a time, we all can experience the Lord’s love as fire, which is a refining fire. The Lord’s love wants to bring us to Him in any way He can. Some of us have to get burned in order to get waked up. It is not only one time in my life that I have experienced this fire. The Lord, in His mercy, as we wake up, transforms this burning into healing balm, and into living water. That is the point for you and for me to remember while we are entering Great Lent.

It is true that the Lord is righteous, and that He does not admit into His presence any darkness, any rebellion, any shadow of lies, any cheap imitation. He admits into His presence nothing that is apart from His love and His will. In His presence, everything is real. However, for some of us, coming into this reality has to mean passing through some fire. The Lord wants to bring us to the reality, the truth of Who He is – Love, life-giving Love. He wants us to come with Him, and live in eternity with Him, to be always and forever alive, more and more truly ourselves, in accordance with His promise, in accordance with His love, in accordance with His example.

Therefore, as we are about to enter Great Lent, let us offer to the Lord everything that we are doing : whatever we are eating or not eating, our extra prayers, our extra almsgiving to the poor. (This is a very much forgotten essential of Great Lent. Although we have to care for the poor all the time, we are especially called to do this in Great Lent.) Whatever we do, let us offer it all to and for the Lord in the context of His love. We then will have hope of coming to His Throne of Glory, and hope of hearing Him say to us : “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me”, and in the Kingdom of Heaven we shall glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we see the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. Even though this theme was not explicitly in the readings today, it has certainly been in the hymnography yesterday and this morning. The expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise is connected with their being distracted from paying complete and whole attention to their relationship of love between them and their Creator. Instead, they listened to a distracting voice suggesting that they might have some advantages if they did, in fact, eat the fruit of this tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Tempter was suggesting to them that they would somehow gain superior knowledge ; they would become like God, Himself. You see what sort of terrible suggestions he was sowing. He carefully poisoned them, and they listened. They swallowed the poison. Knowledge, knowledge of good and evil is all right in its place when you are in a position where you know what to do with it, I suppose. It is possible that the Lord would have given them the blessing to take the fruit of this tree in due course. However, they were too immature at this time to touch this tree and live. We see from the story of the Fall exactly what happened.

Knowledge is still very much our downfall in our day. We are swimming in knowledge ; in fact, we are drowning in knowledge in our day. We know so many details about so many things ; and, with our “super-duper” technology, we have access to more information than we can ever digest. However, what understanding do we have of this knowledge ? Knowledge is just facts, one might say. Knowledge is all sorts of information. However, information that is not somehow processed, focussed, directed and meaningful, is merely a bunch of noise. All these facts are very noisy, indeed. Our lives are just overloaded with facts : interesting tidbits of information that we keep getting all the time. They come in magazines ; they come by way of the television and the radio ; they come as computer-spam – all sorts of “lovely”, interesting, quaint pieces of information. Do I really need to know all these things ? No, I do not, not really. When I need to know something for a purpose (not just because I am curious, but for the good of all of us), then I can find out what I need to know.

Adam and Eve fell from simple curiosity and distraction. This curiosity and distraction turned their hearts from the Lord, closed a door to the Lord, turned them in on themselves. What was their first reaction after they ate the fruit ? Immediately they became afraid. They had not ever in their lives until then known fear. Where does fear come from ? It comes from Big Red down below. This is his favourite weapon with you and with me. Fear brings confusion. If we are suffering in our lives from fear and confusion, then we are surely at the mercy of Big Red down below. This means that he is very much at work, because fear, confusion, division, turmoil – all these things — are characteristic of his behaviour, his work. When we submit to it all, it is very much to his satisfaction.

It is important for us to remember these lessons. Adam and Eve were created, and all of us have been created for communion in love with our Creator, with the Lord. The Lord has patience. Indeed, He is Patience. He is bent over backwards, one could say, waiting for us to wake up, waiting for us to listen to Him, waiting for us to co-operate with Him. In the times and the moments when we do, in fact, co-operate with Him, wonders do occur. The stopping of tidal waves and forest fires by Saint Herman is a simple example of this. It is not only Saint Herman who is an example of this. There are many saints in the course of human history who have lived in co-operation with the Lord. Through their prayers, through their simple, obedient boldness, they have embraced the simple love of Adam and Eve, in fact. It is a love in harmony with the Lord that saves lives, and saves and restores creation.

People often say that the world is in a mess. No-one can deny that we are in a mess. Some people say that half a dozen to a dozen real praying believers in the whole world at any one time are responsible for keeping everything from falling apart, and I can probably accept that. I do not think that these intercessors are all alone, because I know that many other people are praying, too. These particular other persons are also hidden from us. These particular intercessors throughout the world, who are so in love with the Lord and who are so obedient to Him, are, through their prayers, helping us to survive. Together with the Lord, wonderful things still do occur. When we are living in harmony with the Lord, weather can be moderated ; earthquakes can be mitigated ; wars can even be stopped. We have to learn again how properly to pray in harmony, in love with the Lord.

The very first thing that our Lord says to us in the Gospel today is that 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. It is crucially important for you and for me to be paying attention to our lives every day, listening to our hearts every day to see whether there is someone I have not forgiven. 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 : “have mercy”, we are not saying to Him : “Spare us from Your wrath” (because that is what we usually think that this means in English). It does not mean that. Even in old, historical English it should not mean that. The word “mercy” comes from the Latin word “misericordia”, whose meaning is more like “compassion”. The French language still has this word “miséricorde”. Other languages have this understanding of the Lord’s love embedded in the word that they are using. For example, in Greek they say : “Kyrie eleison”. In this word “eleison” in Greek (and in Coptic, because they use the same word, too), it can be understood that they are, as it were, asking the Lord to pour oil, the oil of His love on us, on the other persons, on the situations. The root word for “oil” is involved in the word “eleison”. I have also come to understand that we can also find the same sort of concept in the Slavonic “pomilui” or in the Romanian “milueste”. There is a sense of the Lord’s compassion in this word, and that sense is what we English-speaking people need to recover. We English-speaking people need to recover a true comprehension and understanding of what our words really mean ; and we have to use our words in the right way. This is part of the process of baptising of our language. The Romanian language began to be baptised almost 2,000 years ago, and Slavonic as well, and Greek even more.

We have to let the Lord baptise our language, too. This will show forth very much in our proper using of this word “mercy”. If we want to ask God to spare us, we can say : “Spare us”. When we ask Him to have mercy, we have to mean that we are asking the Lord to pour the oil of His love on me and on the other person. Saint Silouan said (and so did Archimandrite Sophrony) that when we are doing this, we are capable of making no judgement whatsoever about the situation – we condemn not the other person, and we do not say bad things about ourselves. We only acknowledge that we are in need of the Lord’s love, compassion and His healing. (By the way, even though Archimandrite Sophrony is not yet officially a saint, he should be.) 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. That is the direction. 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. The Lord gives us the tangible reassurances and sacraments because He does love us. It is not His will that we should be stumbling about, sick, and crippled all our lives. He wants us to be healthy in every way.

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. In this open communion with Him, being co-workers with Him in everything, may we be able to glorify Him in all that we do and say in our lives, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

While we are passing through the beginning of these days of Great Lent, and we are singing and reading the Great Canon of Saint Andrew of Crete, we pay attention to how we have fallen away from the Grace of God. We pay attention also to how far we have fallen from the Grace of Adam and Eve. It is important for us to look at ourselves, to take an inventory of ourselves in these days, and to remember that we really, truly have fallen far short of what the Lord created us to do and to be in this life. As we are reciting all the fallen events and behaviours of human beings after the Fall, we can realise that if it were not for the fact of the Incarnation of the Word of God, then everything would be meaningless and hopeless. However, because of the Incarnation, we understand the fulfilment of the promise made first to our First Parents, and to Abraham. We know what is to come. We know the love of our Lord, God and Saviour, Jesus Christ ; we know that even though we acknowledge our sins and we acknowledge our weaknesses ; even though we acknowledge our betrayals of Jesus Christ, still we have a Lord who loves us, a Lord who cares for us. Therefore, He wants us to be honest with ourselves, and to admit that we have fallen. He wants us to say to Him : “Help me, and save me. Help me to repair the damage that I have caused”.

Here we are in this service tonight, asking these very things of the Lord. We are admitting our faults, our weaknesses, our betrayals. We are asking our Saviour to have mercy on us, to save us, to renew us in His love. The Lord cares for you and for me. He cares for us. He is always ready and waiting for us to call out to Him for help. He is always there to meet us, to help us, to heal us, to turn us about. We begin these days in anticipation of what is to come : the great joy of the celebration of our Saviour’s victory over sin and death which we will be celebrating at the Pascha of our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Let us be careful every day of our lives to be asking the Lord for His help. Right now, at the beginning of Great Lent, we are especially asking for His help. Right now, we are paying attention to this all together. However, let us not limit only to these days our calling to the Lord for help. Let us remember, with His help, to do this all the days of our lives, so that we will be able to live in the joy of His Resurrection all the days of our lives.

Our Lord, God and Saviour, Jesus Christ is with us. During Compline, we have already sung tonight : “God is with us”. Yes, He is with us in His love. Our Saviour is with us in His love. Let us take hold of this love, and rejoice in this love. Let us allow the Lord to renew us, and to heal our lives in such a way that we may be able, before the end of our lives, to be pure and holy, just as the saints, just as Adam and Eve before the Fall. In every aspect of our lives, may we be able to be ready to do God’s will in everything, and shine with the light of His love. In this way, people around us will have joy ; they will find Jesus Christ in us ; they will come to know our joy, and they will be able to participate with us, because of our witness of love — Christ’s love.

Let us care for each other in this love so that truly our Saviour will minister to others through us in this love, revealing Himself, and enabling them, together with us, to glorify our Saviour Jesus Christ, always, forever, unto the ages of ages, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today we are celebrating the memory of Saint Theodore the Recruit, and the miracle associated with him when he saved the city from being polluted by people who were trying to undermine Christians in a clandestine way. It is important for us to remember in a context like this (and also in the context of the first Saturday of Great Lent), how the Lord is with us regardless of the machinations of human beings ; how the Lord cares for us ; how the Lord is near us ; how the Lord is supporting us no matter what anyone else does ; how the Lord is caring for us no matter what anyone else says ; how the Lord is really, truly with us.

Who is this Lord ? It has to be remembered again what is repeated in the readings today : that it is He, the Lord, God the Word, who spoke everything into being, in perfect harmony with the Father and the Holy Spirit. This is the Son of God. This is not merely some creature. He is the expression of God’s love – the “enfleshment” of God’s love, we have to say. When He was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, He did take on flesh. Who is He, except God ? Who is God, except Love ? What does all creation spring from, except from God’s love ? It is important for us always to remember this, and not just remember it with the head, but to remember it with the heart – to be mindful with the heart Who is this Lord that we are serving. What does everything in our lives mean ? What is the purpose of our life ? Is it for some other purpose that I am doing whatever I am doing ? No, it is not for any other purpose except to glorify the Lord, and to give thanks to Him for His love, for His presence with us, for His continuing support, despite all the failures of human beings.

I was able to watch last week a video that was fairly recently distributed in Russia about Saint Tikhon, the Patriarch of Moscow, and it is associated with a man (whose name I cannot remember) who was a well-known inquisitor of Saint Tikhon. It was he who was the chief “punisher”, one could say, of Saint Tikhon. He was the one who interrogated him in unpleasant ways day after day after day, year after year, until Saint Tikhon finally died. He even tried to interrogate him while he was in the hospital close to death. It was a very unpleasant situation, but the irony of this situation is that the video begins and ends with the visit of Patriarch Aleksy I to this man in the hospital as he is dying. Why ? Because this man, who had been part of the real torture of Saint Tikhon, and really part of the cause of his death, at the end of his life came to repent (through the prayers of Saint Tikhon, obviously). He came to repent through the mercy and love of God. This man, at the end of his life, began to see something more about what is the Truth – and not just what is the truth, but Who is the Truth.

As we see, all sorts of people are capable of repenting. The love of the Lord manifests itself in all sorts of ways. The love of the Lord manifests itself to you and to me on a daily basis. It is important for us to give thanks for His perpetual presence with us, to give thanks to Him for His mercy towards us, for His kindness towards us despite our failures, despite our weaknesses. He is still always there, supporting us, guiding us, healing us, encouraging us, correcting us, and giving us life.

In giving thanks to our Saviour, let us ask Him to enable us in every part of our life more and more to glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, our Lord is withdrawing and praying for a brief time after He has been very busy with teaching and healing. His disciples said, as you recall : “'Everyone is looking for You'”. They were urging Him to come back because people in the area simply could not get enough of Who Jesus is (not just what He had to say), because He is Love incarnate. We know how people respond to love – it is like a magnet. They felt intensely drawn to Him ; they could not get enough of being in His presence. They wanted Him to be with them always. The felt similarly to the apostles on the occasion of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. If they could, they would have just held on to Him, and held on to Him.

However, that is not how the love of God works. You cannot hold on to anything like that. The more you hold on to something tightly, the more you do not have it. We always have to be open-handed in our attitude towards everyone and everything. Even towards the Lord, we always have to be like these various saints whom we see in icons with their arms spread out and their hands open. This is the ancient attitude of prayer. It does not hurt us to recover this attitude of prayer – with our hands stretched out – because then, with our bodies we are reminding ourselves (and our hearts in particular) that everything has to be open. We have to be free in the Lord. We have to be open, allowing the Lord to come and go as He will in us. Just stretching out our hands like that can help us to keep our hearts open. We are rather simple creatures ; we do not have to have complications. We make complications, but we do not have to have them.

Therefore, our Saviour went away because He knew this tendency to hold on. He knew why He had come. He knew He had to fulfill His commission from God the Father. One aspect of this commission is to be present with the people, and to proclaim the love of God the Father. In Himself, He would demonstrate the real meaning of “God is with us”. Everywhere He goes, He is teaching and healing, as we notice. The first thing He is doing is casting out demons. We, being fascinated with our psychological ways in the West, tend to shrink away in distaste when we hear that He is casting out demons. There is a tendency for North Americans immediately to make some sort of psychological interpretation for this. The fact is, regardless of how we want to explain away mental illness (yes, there are mental illnesses that are truly mental illnesses), there is also possession by demons.

People do get taken over by evil. They do get taken over by selfishness, and complete focus on the self. It is the function of evil to do this. People do get taken over, and they become slaves of this evil. The Lord delivers them. The fact that He is delivering people from demons in the first place is a concrete reminder to us all that He is capable, ready to do it, and always setting us free from slavery to evil, to ourselves, to sin of any sort, and especially to death. He is willing. He is capable. He is ready, and He is doing it. That is the first thing He is doing. After teaching people in the synagogues, He is delivering them, and then He is healing them of their diseases. His love wants all His creatures to be healthy. Wherever Jesus goes, people are set free : their hearts are opened ; their eyes are opened ; their ears are opened ; their bodies are made whole. They are restored to what they were created to be. Their potential to fulfill themselves is returned to them. Everywhere Jesus is in the Gospels, this is what is happening. Grace is pouring out, and His love is pouring out.

In the Epistle to the Hebrews today, we are exhorted to be careful not to do as our ancestors in the Faith did, which is to “harden our hearts” as they did in the wilderness. It says “rebellion” in the text. This rebellion took place in the wilderness in Sinai when the Israelites were wandering around, and they were impatient. They could not (or rather would not) wait for the Lord to do what He was doing, which was to deliver them, and take them to the Promised Land. They had to have their own way, right away, because the Lord was not moving fast enough to suit them. In their fears, they developed the opinion that Moses was taking too long on the mountain with the Lord. Therefore, in their fear, in their boredom, in their false nostalgia, in their impatience, in their selfishness, in their pride, they concocted a scheme based on the false memory that it was much nicer back in Egypt. They concocted the golden calf that we all know about, which they set about to appease with ugly sacrifices. They substituted the inanimate, dead work of their own hands and their own hubris for their true Creator and life-giving Father.

We also know the consequences of this particular sort of hard-hearted rebellion, this stubborn unwillingness to listen to God, to be patient, to wait for the Lord ; but instead to do it “my way”. They said, as it were : “The Lord said that He is going to do everything for us. What is taking Him so long ? Well, we can see to it ourselves, and make a substitute” ; which they did : they fashioned a cheap substitute, that being the golden calf. As a result of that impatient betrayal, they wandered for forty years in the wilderness, until the whole generation had died out that had entertained false memories of Egypt and were tempted to go back there. When the young people had grown up and they still remembered the Lord, and they were much less inclined to go back to the fleshpots of Egypt (as they are called), they were at last prepared to go into the Promised Land. We, ourselves, have to be careful in our lives that we do not get impatient with the Lord as our ancestors did. That is one of our temptations : to be impatient with Him, and to take shortcuts. However, these shortcut-takings that we are so prone to, do not take us to life. They always take us to death. They take us to our destruction.

It is important for us, therefore, to remember Who the Lord is, and what He is to us, and what He does with us. It is important to keep our hearts focussed on Him, and not on our impatience. If I am impatient, it is important for me to recognise that there is something wrong in the heart. If I am impatient about what is going on, I have fallen into the hands of the Tempter ; I have listened to a wrong suggestion that something should be happening much faster. Instead of jumping into the hole, as we often do, it would be much better if we cried out to the Lord, and say : “Lord, I messed up. I listened to the Tempter. Cleanse me. Heal me. Straighten me out. Help me to be patient, and to wait for You, and to do only Your will – what You want me to do, not what I want now”. When I want it now, right now, I am like a two-year-old, and we know what two-year-olds can be like.

I still remember the Greek theologian, Christos Yannaras, saying in his writings how difficult it is, in his opinion, for modern, especially western societies (but it is spreading everywhere) to get beyond this demand for instant gratification. He says that everything about our modern life is dragging us or compelling us to be expecting everything instantly. To turn on a light, we do not have to do anything except to flip a switch, and the lights are instantly on. With anything electrical, we do not have to do anything – it is just there. Turn the key in the car, and it is immediately running. Go to the bank machine, and plug in the plastic – out comes the loot (as long as you have any to come out). It is all instantly there. We do not have to think. We do not have to wait. We even have microwaves, and all these “super-duper” fast cookers, and “whatnot”. We do not have to do anything. Just flip a switch – it happens now. It is because of this that we have difficulty with the Lord. The Lord can move extraordinarily quickly, sometimes far faster than we can keep up with. Truly, that is how the Lord sometimes is. However, He always waits for the right time for things to happen. We almost always think that the right time is now, because I want it now. However, now is not necessarily the right time for me to have whatever it is I think I should have, or to do whatever it is I think I should do.

Perhaps I should listen a little longer to the Lord, and try to catch the drift of what He is saying to me through the Scriptures, through people, through events in my life. Perhaps what I want is not exactly good for me at all, and He is trying to suggest (as He always so humbly and peacefully suggests) that I might go in another direction for my own good. For my own health, I might go in a more life-giving direction. It is hard for us to listen like that, but it is still important for us to try to listen like that, and to notice when the heart gets a little out of focus. Then we should turn quickly to the Lord, and say : “Lord, I am ‘out to lunch’. Bring me back to my place. Bring me back into focus. Help me to know the right way, the life-giving way, the love-living way”. In everything, at all times and everywhere, let us ask our Saviour to help us to glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The Gospel reading which we heard today about the healing of the paralytic is a Gospel reading that has affected me ever since my childhood. I could not imagine (as a Canadian, of course) how they could be taking apart the roof. Why would they take apart the roof, and then let this man in that way ? Of course, our roofs are not like Palestinian roofs. Now that I am older, I understand that it could be done. It would not be such a catastrophe to open the roof in Palestine.

If you open the roof here in Canada, you are going to let in the rain and the snow, and it is going to cost a lot of money to repair. However, in Palestine and in Mediterranean parts of the world where the roofs are made out of clay tiles, those clay tiles are very moveable. All you have to do is take those tiles away, pile them up somewhere, and you have a big space. You can let a man who is paralysed down through the opening of the roof to where Jesus was sitting. (I am glad that I understand that now, and I thought that I would tell you younger ones because I am sure most of you would have the same sort of question in your minds. How could you open a roof ?)

In the Gospel reading yesterday, just before this episode of the healing of the paralytic, Jesus was going out into all the parts of the countryside, and teaching everywhere out in the country because it was hard for Him in the town (see Mark 1:38, 39). People were crowding in on Him, and pressing close to Him, trying to hold on to Him. He still had to go and preach, teach and heal elsewhere, too. Now He has come back to Capernaum, and He is in a house, just as He was before. Just as before, it is so crowded that there is no room to move inside, and there are people outside as well. This man (that four men are trying to bring to Jesus) could not be brought into the house because it is so crammed. So they let him down through the roof. Jesus says to the man : “'Son, Your sins are forgiven'”. Of course, that causes a stir. For the people who were circumcised, that was a blasphemous thing to say. Therefore, they are thinking to themselves, in effect : “How can he say such a thing ? He is only a human being”. They tried to make sense of what happened : “'Why does this Man speak blasphemies like this ? Who can forgive sins but God alone ?'” Of course, they did not know what we know about Jesus. He is not simply an average person. He is the Son of God. He also knows exactly what they are thinking.

As always, when Jesus is healing this man (or anyone that comes to Him), and when He says : “'Your sins are forgiven'”, then the person is healed. This man is told to take away with him his pallet and walk home (which he had not been able to do). Of course, paralysis for us in Canada with socialised medicine and everything, is very inconvenient and painful, but there are ways to get around it. We have social and state support. However, in Palestine in those days (and in most parts of the world still to this day), there is no such support. A person who is paralysed, like this man was, has to beg. He has no way to support himself. It is a very, very difficult situation to be in. We are really spoiled in Canada with all the support that we do have. We may not always perceive it, but we actually give to each other because we pay taxes, and the taxes are the source of most of the government support. Furthermore, we actually came to be doing all this (let the truth be known) because Canada had a Christian foundation in the first place. We are paying taxes and helping people who are in need in this way because of our Christian history. Nevertheless, in much of the world such support is not available even now.

Another thing that is important for us to remember is that when Jesus says : “'Your sins are forgiven'”, and this man gets up and walks, for you and for me there is a lesson – and that is that sin, in fact, does paralyse us. When we are living contrary to God’s life-giving will, we are inviting ourselves to be paralysed. Fear, which is one of the prime tools of the devil with us, is one of those paralysing things. We all remember, I am sure, moments in our lives when we have felt paralysed by fear of one sort or another. Fear paralyses us, and sin paralyses us. It makes us incapable of moving and doing what we need to do. It paralyses us from being able to walk in the path of the Lord.

However, our Lord, Himself, who forgave the sins of the paralytic so that he could walk, also forgives your sins and my sins so that we can be healthy. He forgives us so that we can walk and actually more than walk. He forgives us so that we can be constructive, helpful, healthy, life-giving persons. When we are healed from our sin, and from the paralysis of sin, we can begin to be able to be like the apostles and saints in their imitation of Christ. We, as they, can become like Christ.

We, by our prayers, by our example, can be life-giving, too, because our Saviour is shining through us, and He is working through us. He, Himself, is touching other people. He is straightening them out. He is putting them in good order through us (often, even without our having to say anything). This is because we love Him, and His love is active in us. The Lord acts in and through us. He acts everywhere round about us. He acts above and beneath us. Our hearts, when they are not paralysed by sin, by fear, act like this. They enable the Lord to act, and to act strongly as well, amongst those who are around us.

Let us ask the Lord this morning to renew this love in us, the love that He has for His children, the love that brought about the healing of this man today, the love that brought the deliverance of the demon-possessed yesterday (see Mark 1:39), the love that heals broken bodies, broken hearts, broken souls. Let us ask that He refresh us in this love so that He, Himself, may work through us more and more clearly and effectively in this love. In everything that we are, and in everything that we are doing, may our Saviour Jesus Christ be glorified, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

There is a saying that I remember from my childhood, and I think people still use this saying from time to time : “Still waters run deep”. This saying applies very much to the Mother of God, I believe, and by extension it really needs to apply to us, too. She is the image of the Church. She is the embodiment of the Church. She is the example for us of how to live the Christian life.

“Still waters run deep”. You do not see the Mother of God being so very vocal, so very visible in all the Gospels, or even in the time of the Acts of the Apostles. However, we know from secondary sources that she is always there. She is always present. Her way of being there is always peaceful, even when she is asking questions about what does the Lord mean about one thing or another. She is peaceful, and she is self-assured. She is loved and revered by all the apostles. She is loved by the people round about her. Ultimately, in the context of her ever-present humility, she is exalted above the highest ranks in Heaven. She is “beyond compare more glorious than the seraphim”. She is spoken of in our hymns now as a “General” over armies : armies of heavenly hosts. Her obedience, her love, exalted her to such an extent that she is above everything else (God is not a thing). This is exactly the embodiment of what the Lord is saying – “'there are last who will be first, and there are first who will be last'” (Luke 13:30).

The world in which we live promotes us all the time, every day, in every environment, to do the opposite. We are exhorted: “push yourself into the front of everything” ; “ be a squeaky wheel” ; “get your own way” ; “make sure that you drive ahead, and get what you want out of life”. The Mother of God in her life did the opposite. She listened for God’s will. She heard God’s will in her heart. She did God’s will. She did not have to drive and force anything, because the Lord, in her obedient love, accomplished everything in, with, and through her. She did not have to trumpet anything, because the Lord was accomplishing everything in her.

In this, she is, herself a reflection of Who is Jesus Christ, because He is not driving Himself into the front of everyone’s attention in the Gospels. Yes, He is very much in the front of our attention, but as people are writing quite truthfully these days (when they are trying to pooh-pooh who He is), our Lord did not write anything. Probably it is more accurate to say that our Lord did not write anything that we know of or received. People did write about Him and about what He said, however. One very significant statement was written by the Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian, who wrote : “And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25). In fact, our Lord did not say so many very original things. Rather, He summed up, in what He had to say and do and be, all the prophets that had come before Him. The Law and the Prophets are fulfilled in Him. He is not innovating ; He is fulfilling. He is in the front of the Gospels because He is the incarnate Son of God, but in the world He is scarcely noticed. He is referred to in some secondary sources, very indirectly, but we know Him because of the effects of His love, the effects of the life that flows from Him. It is the same with the Mother of God.

You and I, Orthodox Christians, need to remember this in the course of our attempt to live a life that is pleasing to the Lord. The Mother of God is our example, and I am only repeating what the Fathers tell us about her. The Mother of God is our example of how to live our lives : lives that are full of life-giving love, lives that are full of life, lives that are full of service. The Christian way is imitation of Christ who is Love and Life and Service. He is saying to you and to me : “'Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you ... For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light'” (Matthew 11:28-30). He is the One who is bearing all this weight for us. He is the One who is doing everything for us. He is the One who cares about the brokenness of our hearts, our lives, our pain and our sorrow. He is the One who continually is serving us by healing us, by consoling us, by renewing us, by giving us hope.

Our Lord never ceases serving His creatures. Seeing how perfectly the Mother of God did and does the same until this very day, we can take heart that we can, by her prayers and protection, do this too : live our lives in loving service, imitating our Saviour Jesus Christ. We see how the lives of the apostles are filled with the same life, love and service. We see how effective are their lives because they are so in harmony with our Saviour. We look at the lives of the saints, who are also looking to the Mother of God and to the apostles, and who are imitating Christ in the same way. Although some people do have to have academic degrees, we do not require them to be great in the Kingdom of Heaven. Degrees, or no degrees, we have to be loving, obedient, humble and serving persons. Then, whether we have degrees or whether we do not have degrees, the Lord uses our education, our gifts, our talents, our everything to our welfare, to the building up of the Body of Christ, to the strengthening of His Church. He makes us, just as the Mother of God, strong in our weakness, effective in our humility, and even, dare I say it, great in our smallness and our invisibility.

Here in our midst, here in n, the Lord is doing this also with us. We have not been a very big, visible or influential community in the way the world understands such things. However, the Lord has been doing much in and through this community, as He has been doing much in and through others of our communities. He has been touching lives. He has been healing people. He has been drawing broken people to Himself, and healing them, and renewing them, and making them strong. He is continuing to do this in and through us.

By the intercessions of the Mother of God, let us determine to be as faithful as we can, as obedient as we can, in accordance with her example. Let us offer our lives in service to our Saviour. In and through our lives, may someone see something of Him, and be able to find hope and consolation. Even if our whole lives are spent, and only one person is encouraged and renewed by our example, our lives are far from empty. Every single person created by God is precious to Him. However, I rather think that in the life of any one of us, it is very likely that it is not only one person who is renewed and given hope and consolation by our loving service to our Saviour. If it is only one person, however, our life is still not empty – it is still a fruitful life glorifying our Saviour.

Through the prayers of the Mother of God, let us do our best to turn our lives over to our Saviour, following her example. Let us do our best to glorify Him in everything, together with the unoriginate Father, and His all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, our Lord is calling Levi from his tax-office. We may understand that Levi is, in fact, the Evangelist Matthew. Levi immediately gets up and follows Him. Our Lord simply says to him : “Come”, and he comes. After this, as we see, our Lord is eating in a house with many such people. As I keep saying, these days we Canadians have a hard time appreciating the meaning of this. All these tax collectors were following Jesus. Then the local authorities : the lawyers, the Pharisees, and the experts in how to live life according to the Jewish customs, got upset with Him because, according to their reckoning, a Jew is not supposed to have anything to do with these people. Why ? Because they were traitors. A tax collector in the Roman Empire was collecting money from the Jewish people for the Roman Empire because the Roman emperor had conquered them, oppressed them, and people were being killed every year in that land. Therefore, under those circumstances, anyone would likely feel a similar resentment.

Here in Canada, for the most part (except when people manage to get out of hand for a time), we have a fairly safe system of tax-collecting. It is all supposed to be above-board, and they are supposed to collect only what the law says they are supposed to collect. However, in the days of the Roman Empire, the Roman emperor would spread the word to each of his provinces how much money he needed to govern the Empire that coming year, and the tax collectors had to collect it. He did not tell them how. The tax collectors were not obliged to tell the people how much was owing to the emperor, either. There was none of that. The tax collectors just had the authority to go and collect the taxes from the people, and so they did. People every year at certain times, when they knew the tax collector might be coming around, were hiding everything that they had, and, probably as I understand it, they were hiding as many of their animals as they could, too, because the tax collector could just come to your house and say : “I am taking this, this, this, this – hand it over”. It had to be liquidated for the tax.

The tax collector, of course, would keep plenty for himself. This is another reason why these people were rejected by the Jewish people. Not only were they collecting money for the oppressing emperor, but they were also stealing from their own people (and everyone knew it, too).

This is the environment, and that is why people were getting upset that Jesus would and did go to visit such people – tax collectors, and other people of disrepute — real disrepute in His day. In today’s Gospel, we are hearing that certain scribes and Pharisees are complaining that not only is He talking with those who are disreputable, but that He is also eating with them ; and then, even worse, that there are very many of them. They say to His disciples : “'How is it that He eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners ?'” Our Lord says to them : “'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick'”. He came to heal the sick and the disreputable, in other words. The ones coming to Him are sick in their hearts, and He came to heal them.

There is an important lesson for us in this, because we believers very often become very relaxed in our environment here in North America where it is so comfortable. We now seem merely to live in and for ourselves. We easily forget (or often overlook) this basic example of Christ (which you see everywhere in the New Testament) : that He is always reaching out to the people who are “outside of the box”, as you would say – people who are dispossessed, people who are poor, people who are blatant sinners, people who are even corrupt. He is bringing wholeness and life to them.

We forget that in this country, our responsibility as Orthodox Christians is to be a bright light that is shining (see Matthew 5:14), and to be live yeast that is growing bread (see Matthew 13:33). We are supposed to be like our Saviour, being a witness to people like the tax collectors we met today, people who do not know Him. We cannot bring them to Him as if we were “bringing in the sheaves”, because they are not inanimate. Not only can we not force anyone to come to Christ, but also our Saviour does not let us force anyone. If they come to Him, they must do so freely. People cannot either be forced or bought to become Christians. My grandfather always said that even though you can lead a horse to water, you cannot make him drink. We can, at least, lead the horse to water. It is up to the horse whether it wants to drink or not. Our responsibility, in our way of living, in how we are behaving, is to present Christ and His love to people around us somehow (even if we are weak about it), so that they might find some encouragement, hope, and maybe find Him in and through us.

The Apostle was talking to us earlier about the fact that the Hebrews to whom he is writing have suffered physically and otherwise for the sake of Christ. He said that they had not given up, but rather, that they had held on in Christ. It is important for us to remember that the sort of suffering that very many people have endured for the sake of Christ – physical suffering even unto death – still exists very much amongst us. There is other suffering, too, besides that. Many of us in North America are suffering in one way or another – spiritually, emotionally, and in other ways. Even though our Canada, which is such a nice country, is supposed to be a free country (and in a sort of a way it is), the trouble with Canada is that this freedom is more like license than real freedom. So-called freedom is wild, out-of-hand, irrational and unfocussed in this country nowadays, because there is no clear sense of direction for anyone. As a result of this, for people who are Christians, there is now very much the tendency to have to suffer ridicule or other sorts of negative attitudes, because people either have suffered one way or another (and they are paying back), or they just do not know anything, and they think that we are strange.

It is important for us to accept that we will doubtless suffer in one way or another in this life. As those people who suffered unto death, who suffered physical tortures, and who still are suffering, it is important for us to offer this suffering to Christ (even though it is not like that of some people, nevertheless, our suffering is real), and to learn how to pray for the person who is hurting us. This is the big way in which Orthodox Christians can show Who is Christ : by how we can forgive – and not only forgive, but bless people who are hurting us.

I always love to tell the story about Saint Juvenaly as retold by Father Michael Oleksa, who received these details from the oral tradition of the Aboriginals in Alaska. It is true enough. We all know that Saint Juvenaly was martyred in Alaska. He was killed by the Aboriginals. There are various sorts of inaccurate stories that have been told about him. The most likely story is, in fact, that Saint Juvenaly was coming with a companion to the west coast of Alaska, to the Yup’ik people. His companion was an Athabaskan man whose name has been lost. To the shaman of the Yup’iks, Father Juvenaly appeared to be an invading shaman from somewhere else, because he was wearing a chain with a Cross on his neck. Such a chain (without the Cross) happened to be, in the local area, the sign of authority of a shaman. The Yup’iks started to attack him. They told him not to come, but his boat kept approaching them. Therefore, they started shooting arrows at him. The people said that they thought at first that he was perhaps somehow a little bit “cuckoo” because it seemed to them as though he were trying to brush away the arrows as he would brush away mosquitoes. Father Michael points out that what the Yup’iks did not understand at the time (but they did understand later) is that Father Juvenaly was not “cuckoo”, and brushing those arrows away. They did not yet recognise the Sign of the Cross. Father Juvenaly was blessing the people who were killing him, while they were killing him. This is truly the authentic Christian way.

If we can find in the love of Jesus Christ the way to live in this sort of forgiveness, then we will be of some use to people around us. Then we will be a sign of hope to people around us, even though we never really do see the fruit, ourselves.

It is up to the Lord what He does with our faithfulness. It is up to us to be faithful. Let us ask the Lord to give us the Grace to be faithful, the hope to be faithful, the love in our hearts to be faithful, and to try, out of love, to glorify Him in everything that we are and do, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

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

Today, we are keeping the memory of Saint John of the Ladder, and tomorrow comes the Feast of the Annunciation (old style). It is a blessing for us that these two commemorations come close together like this. As we heard this morning, God made promises to us. These promises began when Adam and Eve fell in the Garden of Eden. They broke, by their disobedience, the perfect communion between them and their Creator. After this, we human beings could not possibly by ourselves restore this communion between ourselves and God. God promised that He would in due time provide the way.

It is important for you and for me always to remember this. When Adam and Eve were disobedient, it is not that they were breaking the Law – they broke love ; they broke trust which goes with love. They listened to the Liar below, and this is what broke communion. They turned in on themselves. If you recall, their first action after they fell was to try to hide from God because, as they admitted, they were afraid. Fear is never from the Lord God ; it comes from below. I do not need to repeat the whole story of Adam and Eve.

Today, we have a reminder that God revealed Himself to Abraham with the same love as He did at the beginning of Creation. God always reveals Himself as love. He appeared to Abraham, and He said : “'I will establish My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly'” (1 Moses [Genesis] 17:2). The multiplication of his descendants was for the purpose of communicating the Lord’s love to the whole world. However, as human beings keep doing, the descendants of Abraham began to forget what is their purpose. In the end, it seems that for the Israelites, it was enough for them to say : “'Abraham is our father'” (John 8:39). Nevertheless, even though they became weak, and even though they became forgetful, God did not forget His Promise. He sent His Only-begotten Son, about whom we have already been singing this morning. He is the One who speaks everything into being – and He did this through the Virgin Mary. She said “yes”, and her whole life was saying “yes” to the love of God. Where Adam and Eve were weak, by God’s Grace she was strong.

Because of this loving obedience, the Mother of God is still strong for us today. It is her veil that is protecting us from harm. What is the meaning of this veil? It means that she is protecting us with the love of God. In everything in her life, she always did, and she always does point to Christ. In almost every icon of the Theotokos which we see, she is pointing to her Son (there are a few of her by herself). She is always drawing our attention to her Son. She is saying to you and to me : He is the Way. He, Himself, said this in the Gospel : “'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life'” (John 14:6).

These are most important words for you and me always to remember. He is the Way. What is this way ? It is the way of self-emptying love – love which is patient above all ; love which accepts betrayal and yet still loves. Let us notice that the apostles (we will see it soon again) ran away because of fear. Our Saviour, in His love for them, goes after them and brings them back. He renews them and strengthens them. He fills them with the Holy Spirit. What He does with those apostles, He does with you and me also. We fall ; we fail ; we betray, and still our Saviour waits for us. He opens doors for us. He sends people to us to straighten us out. It is important always to remember this love.

Today, when we are talking about the ladder of divine ascent, that ladder which is described by Saint John, the Abbot of Sinai, it is very important for us to remember that we do not climb this ladder by ourselves. We do not find some secret way to take step after step after step up to the Kingdom of Heaven. When we look at the icon of the ladder, we can will see at the top, in Heaven, Christ Himself, blessing. This ladder leads to Christ ; it leads to the Kingdom of Heaven. On this ladder there are people climbing up towards Him, and the people who are climbing up the ladder have their eyes on Him. They have their eyes on Him as the Apostle Peter had his eyes on our Saviour when he walked on the water. On the side of this ladder there are little black figures that are pulling people off the ladder. These are the tempters. They try to pull people off by distracting them, and we can see in this icon that there are people falling off as a result.

It is crucial for you and for me to remember this in our lives. When we take our eyes off the Lord, when we look anywhere else except at the Lord, we will fall. It always happens. I have plenty of experience, myself. However, mercifully, because God is love, because He loves us and is patient with us, as Saint John says, himself, if I fall down to the bottom again, it is possible for me to begin again. This is the most important thing. Truly, we fall. God knows that we fall. However, He loves us, and He encourages us to go back and start up again. He wants you and me to be with Him in the Kingdom. When the Apostle Peter sank in the water because he saw the wind and the waves ; he was distracted from our Lord, and he became afraid. Nevertheless, because of his love for our Saviour, he recovered ; he remembered the Lord, and he remembered to say : “'Lord, save me'” (Matthew 14:30). Our Lord stretched His hand out, and Peter took that hand. Then the apostle was again able with confidence, with his eyes on the Lord, to stand with our Saviour on the water. We, as we are passing through our lives, are passing through all sorts of temptations and stormy waters. This is the way for every human being. However, as long as we keep the eyes of our heart focussed on Jesus Christ, our Saviour, we will stand on the water with Him, just as did the Apostle Peter.

As a reinforcement for us of Who is exactly Jesus Christ, today, in the Gospel reading, we are given the healing, the deliverance of the young boy possessed by a demon. We can tell in this Gospel that it is not just epilepsy, because what happened in the case of this little boy is the same thing that happens always when evil is in the presence of the love of God. The Evangelist Mark tells us that, when this boy comes into the presence of our Saviour, the demon sees Christ, and he immediately convulses the boy and tries to kill him in the same way that his father described had happened previously. Every time our Saviour comes into the presence of someone who is possessed by evil (we see it throughout the Gospels), the darkness cannot stand it, and there is always a violent reaction. Our Saviour always intervenes and saves. Today, we are seeing that He delivers the boy from slavery to the demon ; He restores him to perfect health ; He comforts his parents, and He gives glory to God. Yesterday, we saw our Saviour healing the deaf and dumb person (see Mark 7:31-37).

The Lord brings life and healing love wherever He is. As He has done for them, He does now for you and for me. We must look to Him. We must follow the direction of the Mother of God, and like her, run to her Son. We must allow Him to help us. We must allow Him to throw away the fear that troubles us. We must allow Him to fill our hearts with the love which accompanies His peace, so that His love permeates us entirely. Thus, as we bring within us His life, we will bring His love and His life to everyone and everything around us. In so doing, by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, everything about our lives will glorify our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, after our Saviour asks : “'Who do men say that I am?'” The Apostle Peter replies : “'You are the Christ'”. This word “Christ” comes from the Greek translation of the Hebrew word “Messiah”. “Messiah” means : the Anointed One, who is sent by the Father to be the Saviour and the Redeemer. At that time, our Saviour charges them to tell no-one about Him, because it was not the right time to talk about it. In other words, the Apostle Peter certainly made the correct confession, but no more was to be said about this until later. Then our Saviour, if we recall from the Gospel, went on to teach them what was going to happen to Him : He had to be arrested ; He had to endure suffering ; He had to die, and be crucified ; He would rise again on the third day.

I am putting all this emphasis on these words because quite soon, when we come to Holy Week, we are once again going to be living through all the Events of the Passion of our Saviour, along with the disciples and apostles. We are going to see the apostles being overcome with fear, forgetting everything that our Saviour had taught them. It is going to take a long time after the Resurrection, many weeks, before they will truly be able to accept what has happened, and to begin to live in accordance with these Events.

I am putting a great emphasis on this because we tend to live lazily in the wake of the apostolic experience. We, in the same way, will very easily confess that Jesus is the Christ. He is the Messiah. He is the Anointed One. He is the Saviour. However, we then too easily forget Who He is. We get overcome by fear because we get so distracted by the multitude of the difficulties of life. We forget to turn to our Saviour for help. We forget that we can call upon our Saviour for help, and we neglect to turn back to Him when we slip and fall. At its worst, we can even forget in our confusion that He rose from the dead. In fact, it seems that forgetfulness has become a major characteristic of how we live our lives.

The Apostle, when he was speaking to the Hebrews, said that when sacrifices in the previous ages had been offered, they had been offered by priests who, themselves, were fallen human beings. In fact, those sacrifices could not by themselves do anything or accomplish anything regarding the restoration of the broken communion between us and the Lord. It was only this great Event of the Death and Resurrection of Christ that could accomplish it. The Apostle then explains that our Saviour is not like the high priest who goes once a year into the holy place of the Temple with the blood of animals to sprinkle the blood there. Rather, He is the One who, Himself, as the Great High Priest, goes into the Holiest of Holies in Heaven in the presence of God, having offered Himself wholly and completely in a manner we cannot explain, no matter how we talk about it.

We talk about it and we write very much about it, but we cannot really explain it. We can only accept that it happened. Our Saviour is the one and only Saviour. He is the true, eternal High Priest who entered into the Holy of Holies once for all, on our behalf, offering Himself, His Blood, everything about Himself, and bringing us with Him. It is He alone, by doing what He did : dying, and rising from the dead, who re-opened the possibility of life-giving communion in love with God, because He is, Himself, God.

Only He, Himself, could bring about the restoration of full communion between human beings and God. He emptied Himself, and became a human being. He let us try to overcome Him because we are co-operators with the evil one. We are so stupid. We cannot see ; and then, when we do see, again overcome with fear, we run away. We accept to believe in all sorts of other things, counterfeit things. We accept cheap substitutes that are no substitutes at all, but only fakes – instead of remembering that Jesus Christ said : “'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life'” (John 14:6). No matter how much pain, no matter how much turmoil, no matter how much sorrow we have to experience in life, nothing is going to bear fruit without being in the context of Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life – the only One.

Therefore, when it is time in a few weeks to walk with them again on the way of the Passion, let us not be judgemental of the disciples and apostles. Instead let us give thanks to God for His love for us. Let us give thanks to God for those apostles who repented, who woke up, and who lived by the Resurrection.

Let us ask their prayers that we, too, may be able to wake up, stay awake, and not keep falling asleep. Staying awake, may we keep following our Saviour with the focus of our hearts and our whole lives on Him, and Him only, no matter what happens. Let us glorify our Saviour, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

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 really an important sign for us. I have encountered many people in the course of my days who have thought that they were horrible sinners. Their lives were so fallen, broken, twisted, corrupt and otherwise ruined, that they considered themselves to be beyond God’s ability to forgive. How many times I have heard people say : “I have been so bad that God cannot forgive me”. However, the fact is that there is no-one so bad that God cannot or will not forgive. The effectiveness of the forgiveness is actually on our side. “Will we let Him forgive ?” This is the main question.

Saint Mary of Egypt was great in repentance, but what about the repentance of the apostles ? In another week and a bit, we are going to be walking along with the apostles and our Saviour on the way to His Passion (which includes all the Events of that week). 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).

The Lord is ready to forgive, as long as the person is ready to let the Lord heal. This is what has to happen. We have to be able to accept the love of the Lord working in us. If we let the love of the Lord work in us, He will overcome all the darkness, the brokenness, the distraction, the betrayal, and whatever else we have been up to in the course of our lives. He will forgive it and He will heal it over a period of time. For most of us, this healing does not happen in thirty seconds. Occasionally it does, but not so often, because most of us would misunderstand, and we would too readily perceive such quick forgiveness as being easy. Then we would go around doing whatever we like, thinking that God would automatically forgive. We would try to take advantage of that, as we are so well known to do. We are not the most reliable creatures of the Lord. Yet, He created us in the way that He created us, and our falling away from that perfection is as it is. Nevertheless, our Saviour is waiting for us always with His hand and His heart outstretched and open towards us, waiting for us to let Him embrace us. He is waiting for us to embrace Him back, and to allow Him to give us eternal life and healing, so that, in the context of His love, we may become our real selves.

There are so many things that I could say about everything that we have heard today ; but I think the most important thing for us to remember is the example of our Saviour, Himself, and the example of the life of Saint Mary, and also the lives of the apostles. Our Saviour says : “'The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve'”. This was in answer to the question about sitting beside Him in the Kingdom in glory. This is the Christian way, and this is the example we all have to learn to follow. The way of the world is absolutely the opposite. We have to be an example, following the example of Christ. He came into the world, not to be served, but to serve.

Christians, historically, everywhere, always, moved by the love of Jesus Christ, living in imitation of Him, try to live in this manner of service. In His love, the imitation becomes almost an instinct which is never selfish. How can I help someone else ? How can I look after someone else ? How can I feed someone else (especially, in the Orthodox context) ? How can I give generous and unstinting hospitality to someone else ? How can I support someone else ? How can I, like Christ, be a servant for someone else ? How can I be the Lord’s hand stretched out and active ? How can I be a hand for Him or a foot for Him ? (I am thinking more or less of the walking part, not the other things that feet can sometimes do.)

Our Saviour is the example to us of self-emptying love. It is really important for us to remember this as we are coming to these most solemn days of the year. We are about to complete the days of Great Lent (which ends on Friday). Then begins Holy Week. Let us open our hearts to the Lord during these most solemn days. Let us walk with our Lord and with the apostles. In our hearts, let us walk with our Saviour and with the apostles through every step of the Passion. With our hearts soft with His love and open with His love, let us ask the Lord to renew His love in us, so that we will be able to live our lives faithfully for Him, in Him, with Him, glorifying Him in love in everything, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we hear the Apostle say to us that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever”. This verse is connected to one of my favourite memories. It is really important for us to remember these words always, because there are very many people who are speculating, trying to figure out Who is Jesus, based on I do not know what sort of speculative, philosophical foundation. They treat Him as some sort of an idea instead of as a Person. In fact, there are right now plenty of books and articles being written which flatly reject Jesus Christ as a Person. They treat Him only as some sort of a proposition or philosophical idea (or a nice myth, perhaps).

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever”. We, who are Christians, know Him personally. We have a personal experience of Him. Our personal experience of Him is the same personal experience that Christians have been having for 2,000 years, and not just in a particular place, but always, and everywhere. If we go to Borneo today, let us say, and talk to a Christian there about Jesus Christ and our experience of Him, we are going to find out that yes, we do know the same Person. It is the same Jesus Christ. They know Him, and we know Him. We could go to Russia, Africa, Australia – around the world wherever we like – and our experience as Christians would be that Jesus Christ is the same to them as He is to us. He is not different.

We are the ones who are different. We are the ones that are the sick persons. We are the ones who are the betrayers. We are the ones who try to put Him in a place where we can control Him instead of accepting our Saviour for Who He is. However, it does not matter what we try to do. He remains forever the same. It is essential that we remember this in the course of our life.

It is important for us, looking at and remembering what we have just encountered with the resurrection of Lazarus, that this is the case : “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever”. The Jesus Christ who raised Lazarus from the dead is the same Jesus Christ who is our hope and our resurrection, too. The resurrection of Lazarus is the foreshadowing of our Lord’s Resurrection, and also of our resurrection. They are all connected. He is “the Resurrection, and the Life”. This is a practical application of Who He is, this Jesus Christ who is “the same yesterday, today, and forever”. He is the “Resurrection and the Life”. He is our hope. He is our life.

It is interesting, too, to consider, and to remember the words of the sisters of Lazarus, which we have just heard. Usually, when we are thinking about Mary and Martha, we think only about the passages that are read at the time of a feast of the Mother of God, where Martha is working in the kitchen and Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus. There is a tendency, especially with our popular manner of comparing a woman (or a man, too, sometimes) with Martha, to say that she is just a doer and Mary is a listener. By following that sort of a proverb too closely, and making such a distinction between the two persons, we are making a mistake, as is shown very clearly today. What does Martha say when she encounters Christ ? She says : “'Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died'”. What does Mary say when she comes running up to Him in the same place ? Exactly the same words : “'Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died'”. Mary and Martha have different personalities, as sisters do. They are sisters, but they are not identical persons. Yet, their relationship with Christ is the same. They know, together, Who He is. Mary is more contemplative as a person, one could say ; Martha is more active as a person. That does not change the relationship between them and Jesus Christ. One is not lesser than the other – they are just different.

These differences that the Lord creates in us are all expressing the variety of His creation, the variety of His love. We are all very different persons. Our lives are different ; our experiences are different ; our gifts are different (even though we may sometimes look similar, like identical twins). Identical twins definitely do not have the same personality. As much as silly scientists without God think that cloning human beings would make the same person, they are “out to lunch”. If God were to give life to a human being who had been cloned by us reckless persons, it would very quickly be found that that person is not the same as the prototype. That person would still be a different, unique person with different experiences, with different gifts according to what God has given. If the Lord gives life, it is not because of some silly, human experiment. The Lord will still enable this person to proclaim His glory. I say that, because we are capable of such horrible things.

The Lord, who is the Giver of life, remains the Lord of everything. Jesus Christ, who is “the same yesterday, today, and forever” is not subject to our stupidity, our recklessness. Although we think we are so smart, He is the One who will teach us. If we were to clone a human being (and the clone had life and personality), God would, as it were, be saying : “All right ; it is I who give life to this person, and I will show you. See if you can understand : this person is not some exact replica, because a human being cannot be an exact replica of another person”. If God gives life to a person, He gives life to that person uniquely.

Every human being (and every animal, too) is created uniquely, with its own unique personality, with its own unique gifts, with its own unique responsibilities, with its own unique manner of serving. The Lord, who is the Giver of life, behaves in that way with us. His love is like that with us. His love is not limited as we are limited (although we think we are not). He is the Giver of life, the Sustainer of everything. Everything that is, is, because of His love.

Therefore, He gives life to Lazarus today, and He gives life to you and to me. He is our Hope. He is our Salvation. He is our Everything. It is extremely important for us to remember every day of our lives to turn everything over to Him, to offer everything to Him, to connect everything to, and with Him, and to glorify Him in everything, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

We celebrated yesterday the raising of Lazarus. Today, we are with our Lord as He is entering Jerusalem. We are not just remembering these Events as they were a long time ago. Although we are not really there physically, in our hearts we are there. As the Gospel is being read, we are present with our Saviour when He is entering Jerusalem. Although our presence with Christ is a liturgical presence, this does not diminish the reality of our being present with Him.

I remember a long time ago when I was young there used to be a television programme called “You were there”. It used to try to take the viewers back to events long, long ago. When we are in church, serving the Divine Liturgy, hearing the Gospel, hearing the words of life from our Saviour, Himself, we are there. We are in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, when our Saviour is entering into the Temple. That is why Orthodox Christians today are carrying their branches (or pussy willows in some parts of the world because there are no palm trees growing). Liturgically, we are with our Lord. We are hearing the words of life. We are with Him. He is with us. We are carrying our palm branches. We are with our Lord in Jerusalem.

In the Gospel for today, we hear the Apostle John say to us that the people are coming out of Jerusalem to meet our Saviour, and that they are shouting : “Hosanna! ‘Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord’”. After they put our Lord on an ass, the foal of an ass, they are putting their clothes on the ground, and so forth. They are doing this, and why ? The Apostle John says that it was because they had seen the resurrection of Lazarus. If they had not seen it, they had certainly heard about it.

In the days soon to come, we will find that the same people who were shouting “Hosanna !” will be crucifying Jesus. We are going to be there, too. In a few days, we are going to be in Jerusalem at the time of the Crucifixion. We are going to be present as Jesus is condemned to death, and as He is crucified. (Of course, we are also going to be present when He rises from the dead, but we are getting too far ahead here.)

You and I here today are also with those crowds of people in Jerusalem. The question we have to ask ourselves is a question similar to that question that people thought that they had answered then, and that is : “Who is Jesus Christ to us ?” “Who is Jesus Christ to me ?” To those who witnessed the miracle of the raising of Lazarus, Jesus must be the Messiah. He must be the Christ. He must be the Anointed One sent by God to save His people, to heal society, and to bring it back into harmony with God’s Will. To Judas, and to certain other people who were primarily politically motivated, Jesus must be the political leader and leader of armies who would release the Jewish people from their slavery to the Romans (as they had been oppressed by the Greeks, and others, before). They were certain that it was a political leader that they were going to be greeting this day, and that this leader was going to assemble an army, throw out those Romans, and establish a theocratic kingdom on the earth in Palestine.

By this time, the Jewish people seem to have forgotten what is their real purpose in the world (of which the prophet Isaiah reminded them). They had forgotten, just as we do. We are not different. They forgot that they were supposed to be a light shining in the world to draw attention to the truth of the one creating, loving God who saves everything that He creates, and who loves all that He creates. The Jewish people were supposed to be a sign that God loves them and all His creation. As so often happens with us, because of various circumstances of life, they forgot. They began to protect their faith from everyone else outside (and even from themselves).

We Orthodox Christians are not so different from that. We are the legitimate inheritors of that same faith ; we are the legitimate spiritual descendants of this people. We are participants with them in their betrayal every time we neglect Christ, every time we turn our backs on Him, every time we try to reduce Him to what He is not. Who is Jesus Christ to you and to me ? Who is He ?

Jesus Christ, as we heard the Apostle say yesterday, is “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). Jesus Christ, the Word of God, by whom everything is made, and is being made – that is Who He is. And Who is He to me ? Someone to be feared ? Just some political figure or a philosophical idea ? No. He is the Son of the living God, who directs everything in creation. He is in charge of my life because He loves me. He wants us – you, me, and us all – to love Him in return in the same way. This is the meaning of everything.

That is really why you and I are here today. If there is another reason why you and I are here today, maybe it is time to re-focus, and remember that the first priority in our lives is that Jesus Christ loves us. He loves us, and He is our reason for being. He is our everything. I would say personally that if that were not the case for me, I do not see how I could have lived through all sorts of things that I have lived through in the course of my life. I certainly do not know how I could have lived through things that I have experienced more recently if it were not for the fact that the Lord, Himself, in the course of my life convinced me that He loves me. He keeps reminding me that He loves me. It is possible for me, therefore, to carry on no matter how difficult and painful things might be.

The Lord, who is the Giver of life, is Who He is. The Lord, who loves us, and sustains us, and gives us life in His love, is Who He is. If people in other times (or even in the present time) will say : “‘Blessed is He who comes in the Name of the Lord!’ Hosanna in the highest” (Matthew 21:9) to our Saviour Jesus Christ, for another reason (even for the wrong reason), this does not change anything. He is still Who He is. It is our responsibility to live our lives according to Who He is, according to Who He continues to show Himself to be to us – our Love, our Life, our Everything.

It is true that by our failures, by our laziness, by our negligence and so forth, we do contribute to the suffering of our Saviour, to the Crucifixion. Often, we are really not better than Judas, whom we seem to like to sneer at during this week (which is not so nice). Nevertheless, it is important for us to remember that our Lord, who loves us, was ready to forgive Judas, but Judas did not open his heart and accept that forgiveness. Forgiveness was given to the Apostle Peter, and to the other apostles who ran away afraid, because they turned about, repented and said, in effect : “I am sorry”. The Lord came back for them.

Judas was too broken, somehow, and he was too out-of-focus. We cannot psychoanalyse him or the situation. Whatever it was that was wrong, was wrong enough that he could not (and would not) turn back to the Lord. This same Lord, who forgave the Apostle Peter, was ready to forgive Judas. Do not forget that it would have been possible for him to repent ; but he did not repent, because I think that he probably felt too hopeless because of how he was condemning himself. We are told that he took money from the common purse of our Saviour and His disciples. Then, he accepted from the ecclesiastical officials some reward-money for handing Christ over to them. It seems that he treated Christ as a political person and event. He did not understand that Christ was not simply a human being.

Our Lord, who loves us, who is Everything to us, who is with us at all times, in every stage of our life, in all conditions of our life, is worthy of our prayer. He is worthy of our singing “Hosanna”. He is worthy of our faithfulness, our loyalty, and also our repentance. He, who loves us, who is with us today, is about to give us Himself as food for our life. He is about to refresh us. He is about to renew us. Even if we abandon Him, and are unfaithful to Him, He is never that way to us. He is always ready to be with us, to give us what we need.

Today, as we are holding branches, as we are standing in His presence as He is entering Jerusalem and coming to the Temple, let us ask the Lord to renew our love for Him, and to renew our awareness that He is truly with us. Let us ask Him to help us to live in accordance with that love, with greater and greater confidence, allowing that love to take away from our lives the fear which paralyses us. Let us ask Him to replace this fear with strength, energy, and the light of His love so that in everything more and more and more we may truly and sincerely glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

How very alike we are to the disciples and apostles, even to this day. Just as the disciples and apostles were weak, tired, and afraid, so we still spend our lives being weak, tired, afraid, distracted, and out-of-focus. We are not necessarily paying close enough attention. We seem to be unsure about what direction we are going in. Because of distractedness, forgetfulness, and so forth, we human beings tend to live a rather foggy existence.

It is important for us to remember when we are standing here today, that as we are passing through these days of Holy Week, we are passing through these days not just here (thousands of kilometers away from Jerusalem, in 2008), but we are, also, 2,000 years ago, in the presence of our Saviour, in the presence of these disciples and apostles. We are actually, in the heart and spiritually, participants in these Saving Events.

While our Saviour is washing the feet of the apostles, we are present, there, at the same time. He is washing our feet, also. In a cathedral or in a larger monastery, the bishop or abbot is expected to be liturgically washing the feet of parishioners or monks or others, whilst the Gospel concerning this is read in the form of a narrative. I know that it is not done so often in North America. True, it is done in Jerusalem (and in many other places around the world). It is odd to me that North American people seem to be embarrassed to have their feet washed in public, and that they therefore resist this service. Although it does occur in some places on this continent, it is nevertheless not done by far in as many places as it might be done. I rather suspect that this has to do with our general lack of focus, our own weaknesses. Sometimes, maybe, we are just not worthy to be able to represent certain things like this.

Our Lord says : “'The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve'” (Mark 10:45). He demonstrates this very concretely by the washing of the feet (a task that was the work of a slave). In the context of the work of a slave, in our English translations (and our mentality, too), we often will find used the word “servant” to translate the Greek word for “slave”. However, “servant” means to us someone who is paid to do things for us. The Greek word for a slave does not mean a servant in the way we mean a servant. This word clearly means a slave, a person who is owned by another person, attached to another person, subjected to another person, under complete obedience in everything to the other person. The slave is required to do these things because the slave is the property of the owner. I underline this detail, even though the actual word for a slave is not used in today’s Gospel.

Jesus Christ, our self-emptying God, the Word of God, empties Himself and takes the form not of a servant, but of a slave. He serves us. He shows it very concretely in the washing of the feet of the apostles, and He shows it in every other way imaginable, also. Who is it that teaches ? It is He. Who is it that heals people of their diseases ? It is He. He does it for free. He does it without pay. He does it out of love. Who is it that raises people from the dead – such as the son of the widow of Nain, and like his friend Lazarus who had been dead for four days ? It is He, who out of love, serves us. Who is it that answers our prayers ? Who is it that listens to us pouring out our hearts to Him, complaining all the time about the state of our lives ? It is He. Who is it that meets us in the pain of our hearts, and assuages our pain ? It is He, our Saviour, the Word of God, who empties Himself out of love. In every way imaginable, and beyond our imagination, He serves, and He continues to serve us.

This is how parents serve their children, I suppose. We can make that parallel because that is what parenthood involves. Parents always have their ears tuned to the voices of their children, regardless of age. They hear and respond to every cry of need or distress, regardless of age. In just the same way, but even more, our Lord serves us. He cares for us. He nurtures us. He looks after our every need. He hears every cry from our heart. He protects us when we are driving on the highway and not paying attention properly. He looks after us when we are flying. He looks after us when we are sailing. He is with us in everything, protecting us, and sending Guardian Angels. He uses the prayers of saints to help us, as well. He is always with us. He is always serving us. This is our way, too, if we are truly putting on Christ in our baptism (as we are going to be singing very soon).

If we are identified with Him, then, from the same motivation, our whole life needs to reflect this way of serving. Not simply because Christ did it, am I going to try to serve in this manner. Indeed, I cannot on my own try to do it ; I cannot do it myself. I have to be filled with the same love which is His, and motivated by the same love which is His, in order to be able to do anything, to be able to survive anything, to be able to pass through every sort of test, and to be able to show in myself Christ, the Lord of the universe, the King of the universe, who, nevertheless, washes the feet of His disciples.

He not only washes the feet of His disciples (as a slave He does this), but in His self-emptying love, through bread and wine, He gives Himself, in His Body and His Blood, to all those who are baptised into Him. He is still emptying Himself. At every Divine Liturgy it is He, Himself (not the bishop, not the priest) who is feeding you and me with His own Body and Blood. Out of His love He gives us every possible resource to be able to live a life like His, not imitating Him in the way we think of imitation, but participating in Him, so that our life can be like His.

We are today participating in the Event of His Passion. Today, we must be ready to participate in Him, Himself, living in the love which is His, sharing the love which is His, and sharing Him, Himself, with each other. In so doing may we shine with His light, with His love, and glorify Him in everything, and refer to Him in everything, and to the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and the unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen !

That we use many languages during the services of Pascha has an important motivating point : the Gospel of the Death and Resurrection of our Lord, God and Saviour Jesus Christ is for everyone on God’s earth, in every language, in every place, in every age. In service books, we can often find the Holy Gospel for Pascha written out in many of these languages, so that they can be read even if the deacon or priest does not himself understand all the languages being read. This Good News is for everyone. Earlier during the Divine Liturgy, when we are singing the Trisagion or its replacement, it has become my custom to say the citations from the Psalms in more than one language. I have been trying to increase the number of languages that I am using, because it is good for people to hear the words of the Lord in their own languages from time to time in this sea of English. Because I forgot to do more than the usual three tonight, there are three other languages : Greek, Romanian, and Finnish, that I can manage, and I will repeat the Psalm in your hearing : “Lord, Lord, look down from heaven, and behold this vine which Your right hand has planted, and establish it” (Psalm 79:15). This is what the citation is from the Psalms, but it is also a prayer that the bishop says when he is serving. It is important that we are hearing this in various languages, as we have sung “Christ is risen” already in many languages. We are asking our Lord to renew us, to enliven us, to enable us to live His Resurrection more and more.

The Gospel is given to everyone, as our Saviour said. The light of Christ is shining in the darkness. The darkness does not overcome it. The Gospel is for everyone. The love of God is for everyone. Our ability to share some words of the love of God in all these languages is an expression of this. The love of God is for everyone whatever their language, whatever their colour, whatever their shape or size or anything else.

We all are created in God’s image, and the light of Christ shining in us enables us to be like Him in His love, which is patient far beyond our comprehension, far beyond our understanding. His love endures throughout all sorts of back-sliding, back-biting, back-turning from you and from me. His love still remains constant, and faithful towards us, whom He created out of His love.

The Resurrection of Christ is our hope. It is also our resurrection. Christ rose from the dead. Christ overthrew death. Christ conquered sin. Everything that we have set up as a barrier between ourselves and God, He has overcome by His life-giving, life-creating love.

It is for you and for me, celebrating this great Feast, the greatest of them all, to take the love of the Lord seriously, and to let Him take our hand, just as He is taking the hand of Adam and Eve which we see in the icon. It is for us to take His hand also, and to allow Him to pull us up out of our darkness, out of our weakness, out of our brokenness, out of our rebellion, and out of our lostness. It is for us to allow Him to draw us into His life, into His Kingdom.

Here, today, we are standing in His Kingdom. We do not just think we are standing in His Kingdom, we are standing in His Kingdom, worshipping the Lord all together. We are rejoicing in His Kingdom with all the saints, with those who have gone before us, with all our mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children, and with everyone else who has gone before us. We are here together with them all, glorifying our Saviour, together with the angels, even. We are glorifying our Saviour, worshipping Him with all our hearts, giving thanks to Him for His love.

Let us ask the prayers of all those who have gone before us, so that the Lord will renew our love in Him, and that He will give us the strength to follow Him faithfully. Like them, may we grow up in Him, so that with them, we may for eternity be ready to grow in the love of our Saviour, and glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In today’s reading from the Holy Gospel, we can hear that people are addressing the Holy Prophet and Forerunner John mistakenly, because they seem to think that he is the Christ, that he is the Saviour. He emphatically says that he is not. Not only does he say that he is not the Saviour, but he also says most importantly : “'He must increase, but I must decrease'”. This is an important word for us all to remember at all times, because the way of the world is not like this saying. Rather, in the fallen way of the world, people are more likely to insist : “I must increase, and everything else must decrease”. This fallen mentality would easily go farther, and people would dare to say : “God should be put in His place so that He does not get in my way and bother me, my life and my plans”. That is more or less how many people seem to treat the Lord.

The attitude of the Forerunner is absolutely our pattern as believers. Christ must increase in everything, and I must decrease. This decreasing does not mean that I have to disappear as a person or anything. It means that my rebellious will, my will which operates against His will, my will which is not in harmony with His will, must decrease so that, in everything in my life, Christ will be all in all. This increase of Christ means increase of love. That is what God is. That is Who He is – Love. If there is going to be “increase”, it has to be increase of love, because where love is, there, of course, is also Christ.

We can see the result of the putting into practice of this “I must decrease” in the Acts of the Apostles. In the passage in which we encounter the Apostles Peter and John today, they have just finished healing a man who was paralysed and sitting outside the temple begging. When he is asking for alms, the Apostles Peter and John come to him. “Fixing his eyes on him” the Apostle Peter says : “'Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk'” (Acts 3:4, 6). And he does. He arises and jumps up. His ankles, his feet, his legs are all instantly made whole. Up he gets, and he leaps about and praises God.

Then, in today’s passage, the apostle is telling people in effect that this means : “It is not I, the Apostle Peter, nor is it the Apostle John who does this. It is Jesus Christ who does this”. The Apostle Peter was referring everything to Jesus Christ : everything. All the apostles did the same thing. They always referred everything to Jesus Christ. The apostles knew their own weaknesses. They remembered very well (what we just experienced a week ago in Holy Week) how they were timid, afraid, ran away, and so forth. They certainly did not forget that. Even when the Grace of the all-holy Spirit filled them, and they were given Grace to do amazing things, they still remembered their own weakness. They remembered that it is only by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, and by the love of Jesus Christ, that we are able to do anything good.

It is very good for us, also, to remember this. If we do any good, it is because of the Lord working in us. It is His love at work in us. Certainly He gives us gifts, and we are responsible for exercising those gifts, and for developing those gifts, but not apart from Him. Everything does not revolve around me. I must give up the mentality of an infant. Everything is always concerned with glorifying Jesus Christ.

Let us consider, for instance, Bach. What a gift God gave that man ! Bach is not alone, for there are others of the same calibre. However, because he had 22 children, I suppose that is particularly impressive. When you have a family of 22 children, and you can still produce by hand (with a quill pen), much of the time using a candle for light, all this sublime music, you have to have not only a very strong wife, and a very orderly household, but you also have to have somehow the ability to focus yourself, and to allow the Lord to produce this through your heart. In the case of J S Bach, he was blessed to have had two strong women to support him. His first wife reposed after having given birth to the first two children. An average human being (even the most gifted human being, I think) in the atmosphere of 22 children, would not be able to do what Bach did unless he had put into practice already exactly what the Apostle Peter is talking about, and what the Forerunner is talking about. Giving glory to God in everything must come first. Then all sorts of amazing things can occur. I hope that I, myself, can learn a lesson from these examples, and from these words today.

Let us do our best to allow the Lord to increase (and our egos, separate from Him, to decrease). Let us allow ourselves to become our true selves living in harmony with Him. The way of Christ is not like the Buddhist way in which the ideal is that you disappear as a person or as a distinct creature or whatever. This is the opposite of the way of Christ. The way of Christ is simply to understand that when our wills are contrary to God’s way, then, that way is death. We kill ourselves when our way is contrary to the Lord’s love. His love is life. If we go contrary to it, we go into the way of death. The way of Christ is health. If we go in the opposite way, we go in the way of illness, sickness and other sorts of things.

Harmony in His love brings health, life, strength, hope, joy, peace, and all those fruits of the Holy Spirit. It always brings these things. It always allows each human being to become truly himself or herself, as the Lord has created us to be. That is the main purpose of our decreasing this willfulness, this scatteredness, and allowing the Lord to increase in our hearts, so that we can become our real selves.

Certain authors in the secular world are actually showing us with their stories, allegorical examples of how we become our real selves. C S Lewis, in his book, The Great Divorce, shows us through allegory an unforgettable example of what our real self can be. It is good for us to look at such stories from time to time, because they help us to understand this. It is not that we, as persons, are supposed to disappear or become nothing. Rather, we are supposed to become, in our harmony and in our unity with the Lord, far more substantial than we can imagine ourselves being. We are to become substantial like the Apostle Peter, like the Apostle John, whose prayers raised that man and who did other amazing and wonderful things to the glory of God.

Let us do the amazing things that the Lord has given us to do for His glory, for the life and salvation of His creation. Let us glorify the Lord in everything : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen

Today in the Acts of the Apostles, we heard how the apostles were teaching in the Temple. They were sharing with everyone the joy and the truth that they knew about Jesus Christ. They were for this put into prison, but an angel let them out. They went back to the Temple, and they kept on teaching and talking, and they continued to share their love of Jesus Christ. The apostles simply had to share this love and this hope. The authorities of the Temple still tried to make them stop, but they could not, because the apostles could not refrain from proclaiming the Truth. They could not stop sharing the Truth.

The truth is that God loves us. He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, who was killed by us, but He rose from the dead. This is our life. It is our life because, just like those apostles, we can have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, who loves us. It cannot be otherwise, because that is what love is about. Love is about an inter-personal relationship which is good, which is life-giving. That is what our marriages are supposed to be like. Even though they are not perfect, they can get better still. Our marriages are supposed to be characterised by self-emptying love, and the giving of oneself to the other completely (one hundred per-cent), with each serving the other.

When He was washing the feet of the apostles just a week ago, our Saviour, Himself, was giving us this example of service. He also told us : “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve” (Mark 10:45). He said, also, that we have to do the same for each other. We can only do this sort of thing for each other if we have the love of Jesus Christ alive in our hearts, if we have come to know personally His love. That is one of the reasons that you and I are here today – not only because we have encountered this love of Jesus Christ in our lives, but also because we want this love to grow, to multiply, because it is our life.

The Apostle Thomas in the Gospel today did not believe that Jesus had risen from the dead because he had not yet seen the Risen Christ. It was, of course, difficult for him. As we read the Gospels carefully, and listen carefully (especially next Sunday with the Myrrh-bearers), we will see that the other apostles were not so quick to believe either. At first, the women were confused. The tomb was empty, and the angel was telling them that Jesus is risen. Then the apostles saw an empty tomb, too. It was not until they experienced the Risen Jesus Christ, Himself, that they believed that the Resurrection had truly happened.

Thus, we can see that the Apostle Thomas was not so different in his uncertainty, even though all his brothers, the other apostles, were saying that they had encountered the Risen Christ. Nevertheless, when the Apostle Thomas did encounter the Risen Christ, his immediate response was to proclaim : “My Lord and my God”. From there, he went on to share this love of Jesus Christ in many parts of the world. It is probable that he passed through Persia and Afghanistan as he went on his way to India, both to the north and to the south. In the south of India, he established the Orthodox Church (even though it is in the oriental form now) that lasted until now. There are Indian families in the state of Kerala (and I think, also, in Madras), where people can trace in their families all the way back to the Apostle Thomas their conversion from Hinduism to Christianity. It was because of the love that the Apostle Thomas was sharing with those people. He showed them that there is not a multitude of gods that are all pretenders. There is only one God – one God who created everything, and He has revealed Himself, in His love, in Jesus Christ, who is the Motivator of the Apostle Thomas.

It is important for you and for me, here in Canada, to remember this apostolic love for Jesus Christ. It is necessary for you and for me to remember what those apostles accomplished with their love for Jesus Christ. They shared it with everyone, everywhere. It is precisely because the Apostle Andrew went to Romania, Russia, and many other places, too, in his apostolic voyages, that we are, many of us, here today as Christians. It is because of his sharing of love.

We have the same call as those apostles. We have the call to share this love. That is why you and I, Orthodox Christians, are here in Canada. We are here to share the love of Jesus Christ, and even more, to share the truth about Jesus Christ. In pluralistic Canada, people seem to believe that there are many truths. Even according to philosophy and logic, that idea is just plain silly. There can only be one Truth ; and that Truth is Jesus Christ, who said, Himself : “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6). It is our responsibility to share Jesus Christ, who is the Truth.

We share this Truth by living in His love, by behaving in His love towards our friends, our neighbours, our relatives, people we do not even know yet. We serve them, as our Saviour served the apostles, and as He serves you and me to this day because we keep crying to Him : “Help me”. “Save me”. “Give me this”. “Give me that”. He does not give us everything that we ask, certainly, because very often we do not ask for what is right. However, He gives to us what is right for us. He is always there. He restores us to health, as He did in the reading on Bright Friday through the Apostles Peter and John, when they brought His healing love to the paralysed man outside the temple. This man jumped up, ran around with joy, and praised God continually (see Acts 3:6-8). This is what we all are to be doing in this love of Christ : helping people to understand how to have life in praising God, how to have hope in praising God, how to have a real sense of being in praising God.

Brothers and sisters, while we are standing here close to the Lord today, let us ask our Lord, again, to renew our love for Him, to refresh our love for Him, and to help us to begin more closely to in His love to resemble Him in how we behave towards people around us every day. Glorifying Him in our way of life, may we also be granted to enter the Kingdom of Heaven at the end of our days, and there eternally to glorify Him, our Saviour Jesus Christ, together with His Father, who is from everlasting, and His all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen

On this day, we are present with the Myrrh-bearing Women as they come to the tomb. It is important for us to keep in mind that these women are coming, first, not suspecting anything about what they are about to find. In second place, they come prepared to exercise a diaconal service which is related to the very sort of service which we have just heard about in the Acts of the Apostles. Deacons were being ordained by the apostles under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in order to make visible what is the foundation of the Orthodox Christian way of life. This way of life is serving. Our Saviour Himself, when He was washing the feet of the apostles said, as it were : “You have to do this for each other as well. You have to wash each other’s feet”. In effect, He says (although He did not say it exactly like this) : “This is the product of love, love in Me, life in Me”.

Christian love, which is love that comes only from Christ, and is lived only in Christ, always has to express itself in serving, in caring for other people, in doing for other people. In this parish, one of the reasons that Orthodox hospitality for the Archdiocesan Council has been so fruitful is that this hospitality has truly been an expression of love. Therefore, when these women today were coming to the tomb, they were preparing to do one of these diaconal services. After the death of Christ, out of love, they were coming to the tomb to finish the proper burial of His Body by anointing it with spices, and by doing other preparations. However, when they come to the tomb, they find an empty tomb. They find an angel who says that Christ has risen from the tomb, and that He is going to Galilee. Therefore, Mary, Mary, and Salome (because we know who these women were) are absolutely flabbergasted. By this encounter with an angel, they are, as they say in French, bouleversées which means “bowled over” in English. It is true that they do go back to Jerusalem and to the apostles (although Mary Magdalene lingers there, and we see her soon having an actual encounter with our Saviour). However, they are still overwhelmed, bowled over, flabbergasted, and they do not know what to do. They do not really say very much either ; and I wonder whether we, under those circumstances, would have or could have been any different.

Nevertheless, the testimony of those women who had gone to prepare the body of our Saviour for permanent burial (because He had been hastily buried), led to a sort of service of talking. It is they who are soon bold to speak about their experience. It is important, also, I think, in our participation in this Feast of the Resurrection, and this encounter of the Myrrh-bearing Women with the fact of the Risen Christ, to remember that this can be taken as an expression of a sort of return to the original relationship between men and women. The original relationship between men and women before the Fall was rather more equal than it has been since. Although there are distinctions amongst the so-called ministries in the Church, and although there is an emphasis on the fact that men and women are not exactly the same, the difference is often turned towards making the gifts and work of women into something lesser. However, as the Apostle reminds us, there are to be no distinctions of any sort amongst Christians. Therefore, no gifts and abilities are exactly the same (in other words, human beings are all different, and the many modes of service which our Saviour gives to us all through the Grace of the Holy Spirit are all different). Nevertheless, this does not change the fact that we are equal in the eyes of our Saviour. We have to be equal in the eyes of each other in a manner such as is described by the following (there are some here present today who know about the persons to whom I will refer). There were in my experience (not so many years ago, but enough) two priests, and each was determined to be more humble than the other. They were bowing to each other lower, and lower, and finally they were both on the floor across from each other. They could not get any lower or more humble than that. They were trying to prove their humility to each other, and their lowliness to each other. In this lowest possible posture, they realised that this competition was ridiculous, and they began to laugh, and this event has remained a source of humour.

This is the way of the Christian. Yes, we are equal. Yes, we have our functions and our responsibilities that are Christ-given. Nevertheless, we are all equal because every one of our functions, and every one of our services is in the love of Christ, for the love of Christ, motivated by the love of Christ, and effective in the love of Christ. Our Lord calls each one of us to do different things in life. Not everyone can be a bishop ; not everyone can be a gourmet cook ; not everyone can offer super-excellent hospitality ; not everyone can care for the poor, because we do not all have the same gifts. Yet, our Lord, who is creating each one of us uniquely in His love, is giving us all these gifts, all these works of love and service in love as expressions of His love for us and of His life in us. We can do these things ; we can have the strength to do these things ; we can have the will to do these things because the Lord is in us. He is with us. He is giving us the strength, Himself, to do these things.

According to the way of the world, people usually think of responsibility and ability in terms of ascending degrees of power. In this view, greater responsibility means more power and more elevation and more prestige. People generally think in terms of a pyramid of responsibility. We have on the bottom, all the ordinary people. On the top, we have all the special people with a particular function and responsibility. In fact, the Christian way is the absolute inverse of this.

In the Christian mentality (when I say “mentality”, I am not talking about the head – I am talking about the heart), this pyramid is upside down. In reality, the person with the greatest responsibility has to be at the bottom. If he or she does not understand that, that person is incapable of imitating Christ, Who came to serve, not to be served (see Mark 10:45). He or she is incapable of being effective as a Christian, and is incapable of doing as Christ said. Our Saviour, Himself, said that the greatest are the least, and the last are the first (see Matthew 20:16). We all have to remember this in our lives. It does not matter if we have a huge responsibility in some way or another. It does not matter if we have lots of money. All that we are and have and do has to be undertaken and lived in the context of, and following the example of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, who “'did not come to be served, but to serve'” (Mark 10:45). These women today are living out what His example is, and how He said that we are supposed to go about life. These women are our examples. Saint Joseph of Arimathea is also our example, because he is the one who boldly goes to Pilate to claim the Body of Christ. It is not a small thing to go to the Roman authorities, and claim the body of someone who is crucified. Under those circumstances, a person could easily find oneself up on a cross. It did not take much in those days to be accused of being a traitor and being quickly condemned as a traitor to the Roman Empire.

All these persons (and the apostles also, who finally came to understand, through the testimony of these women, and with their own eye-witness experience, that Jesus Christ had, in fact, risen from the dead) — they all, ultimately, by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, exercised this service of love and care. We see them, like our Saviour, going everywhere, and bringing our Saviour’s healing love to people. It is not long ago in our reading the Acts of the Apostles (see Acts 3:1-8), that we saw Peter and John in the Temple, by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, in the Name of Jesus Christ, healing the man who had been unable to walk for all the years since his birth. He was sitting, as usual, outside the Temple. At the invocation of the Name of Christ by the Apostle Peter, he jumped up. As a result of this, and precisely because he could now walk, he was able to begin to make his own living, instead of begging. The healing had many facets. This is just one of the multitude (even beyond a writeable number) of things that the apostles did in the Name of Jesus Christ. In fact, this even is “just a drop in the bucket” compared to all the things that our Saviour has continued to be doing amongst us since those specifically apostolic times. In our own parish, we have people who have been being healed by our Saviour’s love through the prayers of each other. We have a man in the hospital right now, who is doing some unexpected things through the prayers of the faithful. Our Saviour is with us.

Knowing that our Lord is with us, as He said He would be, and experiencing His life-giving and healing love, let us keep our confidence in Him. Let us ask Him to give us the strength to serve Him single-heartedly with love, and to glorify Him all the days of our life, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen

At the very end of the Gospel reading this morning, we hear these words from the mouth of the Lord : “The time will come when people will kill you, thinking that they are doing Me service” (to paraphrase what He said). We know to whom this must refer – the very person about whom we were hearing just now in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles : the Apostle Paul. He had been persecuting people, thinking that he was serving the Lord, and doing God the right service. He was putting Christians into prison, because he thought that he was doing what was right (until our Lord appeared to him).

What is happening today to the Apostle Paul happened right after he had met our Saviour on the road to Damascus. Our Saviour encountered him, and he encountered the Saviour. He was blind for a while, then he was healed from his blindness and immediately he was baptised. Then his immediate response was to go into the synagogue and to demonstrate from the Scriptures how Jesus truly is the Messiah, the Christ. He mixed everyone up because they could not understand the sudden change in his behaviour, suddenly having become a proclaimer of Christ instead of a persecutor of Christ. He was absolutely boiling hot in one direction, and very shortly afterwards he was boiling hot in the other direction. It did not make sense to them. The Apostle Paul, in his encounter with our Saviour, never became lax about his love for Christ, never became a lukewarm person. His Christian faith was absolutely warm and boiling, you could say. He was really alive with the love of Jesus Christ.

The words of our Saviour about love are lived out by the Apostle Paul. They are supposed to be lived out by you and me, too. It is important for us to remember, in the various difficulties we face in our living out our lives, that we are supposed to be, as our Saviour says : in the world, but not of the world (see John 17:15, 16). For us, this term “the world” means that element in creation which is in rebellion against God. God created the world good, but it is in rebellion.

Where is this rebellion coming from ? It is coming from our own hearts, because we are partly of the world. When this rebellion is happening in our hearts, we are definitely participating in the spirit of this fallen world. We are, as a race, definitely in rebellion : the turmoil of the earth’s climate, and other aspects of the earth’s existence are reflecting this rebellion. We poison the creation around us, and as a result, we are living in a poisonous atmosphere. Instead of looking to the Lord, asking Him what to do right, how to be right, we do it our own way. We do not bother to consult the Lord until we are in a big mess. That is when we begin to yell at Him : “Help ! Help ! Fix the mess !”

The Lord says that once we are in the middle of this relationship of love with Him, it does become a matter of spiritual warfare. The powers of darkness, which are reflected in the term “world”, are trying to overcome the Light that is shining in us. The beginning of the Gospel according to Saint John describes the Light. What is this Light ? The Light is Jesus Christ, Himself. The Light of His love is shining in us, and the powers of darkness are trying to overcome it. That is one of the reasons, in fact, why we encounter so many obstacles in our lives : inexplicable obstacles, difficulties, pain, messed-up communication, messed-up relationships between human beings.

All sorts of things like this are happening because the darkness is trying to put out the light. In our psychologised existence, we are used to being very “me-centred”, thinking that all these things are something that is stemming from “me”, and that I am responsible to fix everything that is wrong. That is not the reality. There is not finite “me”, just by myself in isolation. Not one of us is a finite “me” in isolation. The reality of human beings is that we are all one as a race. We are all in the same boat as a race, and what affects one, affects the other for good or for bad. If I get tempted about one thing or another, those temptations do not all come from me. I can think of bad things, that is true. However, all those things, everything that goes through the mind : temptations of one sort or the other (and especially suspicious thoughts of division between one person and another), those are not necessarily dreamed up by me.

Those sorts of thoughts are in the atmosphere, part of a fallen world that invades us. They are always around, invading us – suspicious, dark thoughts, dividing thoughts, destructive thoughts ; they are always floating around waiting for an opportunity to come in. As Mother n likes to repeat : “Elder Paisios on Mount Athos described these thoughts allegorically as airplanes circling around an airport waiting to land. Our responsibility is not to let them land”.

The problem is that once those things land, they are just like mosquitoes – they immediately get to work and they insert their poison. The loads those planes are carrying around are not life-giving loads – they are poisonous loads. As soon as they can land, they unload them. They get a hook into us, and it is hard to get them out. It is difficult enough to keep them from landing, but once they land, it gets much worse. This contemporary comparison is very helpful. This Athonite elder is considered to be a saint by very many people, and he probably is.

How do we stop those thoughts from landing in the mind, in the heart ? We cannot just say : “We are holding them off ; we are holding them off …” That is not the way. As soon as we start to confront or to engage those thoughts that are circling like that, and to address them directly, then they have already got us trapped in their snares. Let us beware. When it is time to pray, that is when these invaders multiply.

Although we may recognise these thoughts for the evil that they are, as they are approaching, we must not look at these thoughts, must not listen to these thoughts, must not pay attention to these thoughts in any way whatsoever. Rather, we must turn away from them to the Lord, and say to the Lord : “Help me. Save me. Protect me”. Then, in His protection, they cannot land. Those evil, dividing, suspicious, dark thoughts cannot land when we are constantly turning our hearts towards our Lord, who is Truth. He is Truth. He is Life, Light, Love. These dark thoughts cannot stick or have any life in us as long as our life is in Him.

That is the most important thing for us to remember in our lives, and for some reason it is the hardest thing for human beings to manage to accomplish : always, in everything, to call to Him for help. Our Saviour, Himself, said that He is with us. He is sending the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is going to teach us everything we need to know, and tutor us in everything we need to know. We have the Holy Spirit. Since we have been baptised, we have the Holy Spirit. It is important for us to allow the Holy Spirit to grow and work in us : to be co-operative with the Holy Spirit, who is our life, after all. It is He who increases the presence of Jesus Christ in us.

Let us ask the Lord to help us call to Him. Let us ask the Lord to help us even to remember to call to Him. Let us ask the Lord to come and save us. Let us ask Him to fill us with His love, as He filled the Apostle Paul with His love. Let us ask Him to enable us in all things and everywhere to glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and His all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

When our Saviour is saying today that even greater works than the works that He does, we shall be doing, He is saying this not only to the apostles, but He is saying this to us, to the whole Church. Therefore, we should be doing such works. If we are not, then why not ?

Our Saviour is addressing, for instance, the very occasion concerning the Apostle Paul which we just encountered. When the Apostle was preaching, some young man fell down three stories from a window. When someone falls down three stories, that person usually dies (although some do not). We see that this particular young man was taken up dead.

However, the Apostle Paul knew the will of the Father, and this is what is really important. When he ran downstairs to the young man and picked him up, he knew that this young man was not ready to die. He was taken up alive through the prayers of the holy Apostle. At the end it is said : “and they were not a little comforted”. I love this sort of understatement (it is almost a Canadian or British way of speaking). I can imagine how the parents of that young man or his family would have felt after the shock of his being killed in the fall, and then his being restored to life. It is such a wonderful understatement.

Greater things than these will you be doing, says our Lord to us. He also says (to paraphrase) : “If you ask Me for anything in My Name, I will give it to you”. In this case, all sorts of people understand these words as meaning that God is, as it were, some sort of cosmic cow, attached to some giant, cosmic milking-machine. We seem to be under the delusion that we just have to do things the right way, and we will get from God whatever we want. There are all sorts of people on television and on the radio who seem to talk like this : they appear to think that this is how God gives things. When we dare to treat God like that – just ask for anything, and it will come, if we only know how to ask it in the right way — we usually get something much darker instead. We receive not from God, but from below, from the opposition, from the powers of darkness instead. It appears for a while that what we receive might be coming from God, but it is ultimately coming from below.

Why am I saying these things ? Well, because, for the most part, we do not know what to ask for, or how to ask for anything from the Lord. This is because what we are asking for is usually from a quite self-centred motivation. What we seem really to be saying altogether is : “Give me ; give me ; give me this, this, and that. I will be good if You give me this ; I will be good if You give me that. I will do this for You if you give me that. Just give this nice thing to me (whatever it is)”. This is not at all what the Lord is talking about when He is saying : “'Whatever you ask in My Name, that I will do'”.

If we are going to ask something from the Lord, our hearts have to be attuned to the Lord and His love, in order to know what to ask rightly. This is where we all tend to get lost, because we are so distracted in our lives. Our lives are so busy and so self-preoccupied that we do not take the time to listen to the Lord, to hear what He is saying to us about what is right, so that we can ask rightly. We do not listen to our hearts properly so that our hearts, like the hearts of Adam and Eve before the Fall, will ask instinctively for what is right.

Adam and Eve before the Fall were in complete harmony with the Lord. They knew what to ask. Their hearts instinctively asked for what is right. They knew what was good for them because the Holy Spirit, the Grace of God, was in them, and they understood. Their hearts understood. They were always asking for what was right, and getting what was right – until they got distracted, until they turned in on themselves. Since then we have been in a mess.

Some human beings actually do manage by God’s mercy and by God’s Grace to come to the place where they can truly know God’s will, and know how to ask for what is right. Then, in fact, whatever they ask, God gives because it is always what God wants to give to His people. They are asking for what they need without any self-interest, without any distraction, and in harmony with God’s will. This is the hard part for us (especially in these days) — to be able to come to the point of stillness with the Lord, knowing the Lord, putting the Lord first above everything, having Him as the sole focus and purpose of our lives, and then being able in that context to do everything in accordance with His will, in accordance with His love.

Today, when our Lord is talking about keeping His commandments, He is speaking of them in the context of His love. He is speaking about how this loving relationship with Him produces our living in accordance with His commandments. When we are talking about these commandments, we are talking really about the Ten Commandments, and the commandment of love that summarises them. The commandments are an expression of how a person who lives in love and harmony with the Lord, will live.

An expression of exactly what our Lord is talking about today in the Gospel is found in the Apostle Paul’s action in the middle of the night when he is preaching, and the young man falls out of the window, and the Apostle takes him up alive from the dead. This is because the Apostle Paul was living in accordance with those words that our Saviour gave to the apostles and to us this morning. It is for us to learn how to do this as well : to put the Lord first. The problem with this sort of learning is that it is not intellectual learning. It is learning in the heart. It is a much longer process. It is a much more difficult process. However, it is not an impossible process.

Let us ask the Lord to renew our love and confidence in Him, so that we can come at least a step or two closer to being like the Apostle Paul and the other apostles who were able to live in such harmony. Like the other saints, also, by whom we are surrounded on these walls, with our hearts in harmony with the Lord, may we be able more and more to do His will as our beloved Saint Herman of Alaska says : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”, and glorify the all-holy Trinity : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

For about twelve years now, we have been remembering in the diocese the very beginnings of Orthodox foundations in this country as one parish after another has been celebrating its 100th anniversary. We come now to this parish’s centennial celebration. I very often have wondered myself, in the context of my life, how I would have fared coming to a country where people spoke a different language from the one I had known all my life, being taken by train, and then dumped off somewhere in the forest in the wilds of – let us say, Siberia – with an axe, and a shovel, and told : “Just go make a home for yourself”. I wonder how I would have survived. However, that is just what happened to a large number of people who came here in the first years of settlement of Orthodox peoples from Ukraine and Romania.

They settled here with nothing to begin with. There were no government services, no friendly loans or any other help – just : “Go, make it yourself in the middle of the woods ; do everything yourself”. I think I would have starved to death in about three weeks. Yet, the persons who came here 100 years ago were people who were strong. Of course, they did know how to farm, and they did know how to work the land. What had to be done on the land was not completely unknown to them (even though the climate was very different). They somehow managed. These Orthodox Christian immigrants managed for these reasons : first, because they were strong ; second, because they knew that God would be there with them, and that He would bless them. The people who came here in those days were people who knew how to keep the Lord first in their lives. They did not change when they came here. They did not put the Lord into the background. They kept their priorities straight, and they kept Him in the front of their lives.

Why was this ? It is because the relationship with the Lord was not some sort of philosophical principle. It was out of the experience of a loving relationship with the Lord that they had this confidence. The Lord, after all, is not some sort of a philosophical principle. He is the Creator of everything. He it is who gives us life. They trusted Him. This trust, day by day (and actually hour by hour in many cases, I am sure), was rewarded with blessings over and over again. As a result of this perpetual trust of the people in the Lord, and their perpetual turning to the Lord, the Lord’s blessing was upon them, and they were able to do things that were not possible otherwise. Not every immigrating people coming to Canada had this exact same sort of “welcome”. There were other ways in which Canada, even 100 years ago, was helping other people to come and settle in Canada. However, as far as I can see, it seems to have been the people of Ukraine and Bukovinia who got a particularly “warm welcome”.

The people who were so “hospitably welcomed” by this country, nevertheless made homes for themselves, and made a life for themselves and their families in co-operation with the Lord. They turned very bad situations into good situations because the blessing of the Lord was with them. I keep saying all the time that it is important to remember this because this love that the ancestors who came here had for the Lord was real. This love was alive, and it was not theirs to keep, just as it was not for the apostles to keep for themselves. The love of the Lord must be shared. This love was brought here with them because the Lord knew that it was time for the Orthodox Faith to come to this continent. The Orthodox Faith is not so easily taught in books. It has to be shown by the lives of living people. This is really the only way that the Orthodox Faith is spread anywhere. It is spread by the living example of living people.

Today, the Apostle Paul is on the island of Malta, and he is bitten by a viper (a deadly, poisonous snake). He should have died quickly ; but he does not die, so the Maltese people immediately decide that he must be a god. The Apostle Paul persuades them otherwise, and he is immediately exercising his Christian life by healing people. He goes on to heal people all over the island of Malta : first, the father of Publius, and then other people on the island. When he came to Rome, again he was healing many people there. He exercised the love of Jesus Christ, which does bring healing always. It is important for us, seeing the Apostle Paul’s example, to remember that this is our way, too – exercising the love of Jesus Christ. Orthodox people do not just talk about the love of Jesus Christ. They do something about it.

Today, our Saviour says to the Apostle Peter three times : “'Do you love Me?'” Two times the Apostle Peter answers : “'Yes, Lord; You know that I love You'”. The third time the Apostle Peter is a bit exasperated, and he answers : “'Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You'”. What is our Saviour’s response ? “'Feed My lambs'”. “'Tend My sheep'”. “'Feed My sheep'”. This is how we have to live. The exercise of the love of God has to be in caring for other people. Sometimes it is physical healing that the Lord brings through us. Sometimes it is healing of the heart or healing of the emotions that He brings through us. However, it is always an exercise of bringing the light to people around us. That is the way Orthodox Christians live, and always have lived : bringing life, love, healing, hope, and strength to people around us.

That is exactly what happened 100 years ago when people came and settled here. Even in the midst of all the difficulties (and even though people around them for a long time could not comprehend anything about the Orthodox way), the Orthodox people who came here, came with the assurance that the Lord was with them and helping them. They always received this help. I was hearing a story just today about a person who was praying for rain, and the Lord gave it when it was necessary. This is a story I hear all the time from people. Our people still remember that the Lord cares about us. If we need rain, He will give it. If we need sunshine, and we ask for it, He gives it. However, we have to ask. He does not force it on us. Our ancestors knew how to ask for help all the time.

We, modern, highly “technicalogicalised” people are very often slow to remember to ask the Lord for anything. We often ask Him only when we are desperate, because we get the idea that the Lord expects us to fend for ourselves (which is not at all the case). The Lord gives us our life, and He gives His blessing to us, because everything about our life, even every breath, really, has to be offered in harmony with the Lord. He wants to be active with us in everything, always.

Even if we have all these technological aids, it is important for us to remember to call on the Name of the Lord for help in everything ; to ask Him to be with us when we are driving. How many times have I, myself, been spared from a life-threatening accident because I know that the Lord is with me, and has sent His Guardian Angels to put me on guard at the right moment. When we are driving, working, or doing anything at all, we must ask the Lord to be with us and bless us. How many of us remember (among the women in particular, because the kitchen ends up being so much their responsibility) the Orthodox habit of blessing everything. Do we remember such things as making the sign of the Cross on everything that we are doing, blessing the ingredients of bread when it is begun, blessing it when it goes into the oven, and blessing it when it is broken ? Do we remember these details about asking the Lord to bless everything as our parents and grandparents did remember ? Do we remember to ask the Lord to bless everything : our animals, our crops, even our computers ? We may not have as many animals as we used to have, but we definitely do have many modern, technological aids, and they need blessing, too – especially computers, because from the internet come so many very deadly temptations that people fall into. Bringing the Lord’s blessing to everything, exercising His love : this is what we have to remember.

It is important to remember, too, that healing people of diseases – physical, spiritual, and emotional – was not just the gift to the apostles. As we have seen so many times during the reading of the Acts of the Apostles, healing was not just their gift. It is our gift, too. The Lord heals people through our intercessory prayers. I have seen it happen many times in my 21 years of being a bishop. When people pray for each other, the Lord brings healing. He brings hope. He brings renewal.

Therefore, I am asking that we all take heart from the example of those who came here 100 years ago, whose circumstances were far more difficult than we can imagine. In the more comfortable days of our lives, as we remember their example, we remember that our love for our Saviour is the same as their love for the Saviour. Our Saviour, who never changes, but who is always the same Saviour, is still with us today. We, too, can live in the same harmony of love as they did. We can co-operate in the same atmosphere of perpetual blessing as they did. We can bear fruit in love, and have this fruit multiply a hundredfold, just as our Saviour said, just as our ancestors did.

We have to exercise this love of Jesus Christ. Let us ask Him this morning to renew our determination, our love, our commitment to living in this way, in harmony and in love with Him, glorifying Him every day of our lives. As Saint Herman, the Elder, and Wonder-worker of Alaska always said, let us also say : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”, and in doing so, glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we are singing as we do on this Feast of the Descent of the Holy Spirit : “As many as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27). When we are singing this, we are proclaiming how we are living, and what is the reality of our life as Orthodox Christians.

To be an Orthodox Christian is not just like joining a club or being a member of a club. It is a way of life. The way of the Orthodox Christian is to have “put on Christ”. So, when we are living our lives, our lives are supposed to be reflecting Christ. In order to reflect Christ, we have to know Who He is, ourselves. Our lives have to be all intertwined with the Lord, somehow. Our Lord says to us that He is the “'light of the world'”, and we who are participating in Him will have the same light and life. He means it. This is not just some sort of abstract statement. When He says that out of us “'will flow rivers of living water'”, He is not making an abstract statement.

Our Saviour does not make abstract statements. Our Saviour is very straightforward and practical in His words of life. Therefore, when He says something, He says what He means directly. You can tell that many Orthodox cultures really have understood this by the way people, themselves, speak. Orthodox people from our inherited Orthodox cultures normally will say directly what they mean. They do not usually “pussyfoot around” in the way most Canadians do. Canadians are stereotyped as pussyfooting around here, and around there, making these circular motions in-and-out, just “beating around the bush”. They say : “Well, maybe this, and maybe that”, and around and around they go. This beating around the bush, and this sort of circular motion has been pointed out to me by many Orthodox Christians as resembling the shape of a circus. This beating around the bush that we Canadians have the habit of doing, is, in fact, reflecting the behaviour of “You-know-who-down-below”, “Big Red”. The father-of-lies is what he was called by our Saviour, Himself (see John 8:44). Mr. Father-of-lies, "Big Red", goes around and says : “Maybe this, and maybe that”, but he does not go straight down the middle saying what is truly the case. Our Lord always says straightly what is the truth of things. It is good for us that we can grow into this honesty, this straightforwardness, and this truth because, of course, Jesus Christ is the Truth.

An example of the “cuckoo-ness” of the society in which we live is that our society is now saying that there are all sorts of truths. There is a truth for you and a truth for me, and a truth for someone else. Even philosophically and logically, this is “out to lunch”. When we are talking about truth, there can only be one Truth about anything. The one Truth about all of life, all of existence is Jesus Christ, Himself, who says : “'I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life'” (John 14:6).

On this Feast, the Grace of the Holy Spirit is poured out on the disciples and apostles. They are going forth, speaking all sorts of languages that they had never learned. The Holy Spirit comes down upon them like tongues of fire with the sound of rushing wind, and the disciples and apostles are filled with the Grace of the Holy Spirit. They go out onto the street, speaking these different languages, and the people who had gathered from all over the Empire hear the apostles speaking in their various languages (which the apostles had never learnt) about the greatness of God and His wonderful works.

What does this mean ? It means that the Truth of the Lord, the Truth of life, the Truth of hope, the Truth of the Kingdom of God – that Truth is for everyone. It is not just for the Jewish people. It is for everyone. Our Saviour has clearly indicated this to us by His life. The Apostle Paul proclaims this, also, at the end of the Acts of the Apostles which we read yesterday (see Acts 28:28).

The difficulty that the Jewish people had was that because they were so persecuted and oppressed one way or another, they closed in on themselves. They kept the Truth that they had learned from God (the Ten Commandments, and so forth), but they kept it inside, whereas the Lord had been telling them all along that they must shine with this Truth, and share it. However, they had difficulty sharing it. Ultimately, they were protecting it, and not sharing it. What is occurring here, today, on the Feast of Pentecost, is the breaking down of those walls. The love of God is spreading out to everyone. The Apostle Paul said that this word is flowing out to the Gentiles, because the Gentiles (that is us, non-Jewish people) are going to receive it (see Acts 28:28). We have received the truth about the love of God, and the truth about Him, who is the Truth, our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

However, it is really important that we Orthodox Christians, here, now, in Canada, remember this same lesson. We have been falling into this trap of closing in on ourselves because people outside tend not to understand us very well. When they hear about Christ (and when they might react negatively), they can sometimes be quite hard on us. They have definitely been hard on us for 100 years and more in Canada. However – were we easy on Jesus Christ Himself ? Were we, human beings, easy on Him ? Our Lord could say to us : “Cry Me a river”, but He does not, because He is merciful. Instead, He keeps leading us gently and carefully, helping us come to our senses.

Today, I said the prayer from the Psalms which the bishop always has to say at this service : “Lord, Lord, look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine which Your right hand planted, and establish it” (Psalm 79:15). This really means : Make it grow. The bishop is asking God to water this plant and make it grow. I said this prayer from the Psalms today in many languages because we are reflecting many languages and many heritages here. People have come from all sorts of different Orthodox cultures. At the same time, we cannot (and the Lord will not let us) stay closed in on ourselves. We must share this hope that is ours. We must share it with people around us. We must do, and be good to people around us. We must be joyful around people, and encourage people around us with the hope in which we have been baptised. We say that we are Orthodox Christians. People look at us, and say to themselves : “Well, you are supposed to be serious Christians – all right – I will test you, and see how serious you are”. They “give us the gears” to see how serious we are about the Orthodox Christian way, and to see why it is different from everything else around that is so disappointing and disheartening. They say : “Why should I treat you any differently or expect anything better from you since I have been disappointed by so many ?”

The response is that it is because we have been baptised into Christ : we have put on Christ, and we have received the Grace of the Holy Spirit. Thus, we are going to be able to live in the way that our Lord wants us to live. He wants us to shine with the light of His love, His joy, and His hope. We will be able to help the people who are around us just by being who we are (and not bashing them over the head with a Bible). It is best that we just be who we are – participants in Christ. When we come into the presence of other people, we spread joy. We spread life. We spread hope, even if they do not wake up and come and be part of us, Orthodox Christians. People are usually stubborn. Even if they do not wake up and come and be part of us, nevertheless our existence, living this love, this joy, and this hope, will help them. It will give encouragement to them. At least they will know that there is light shining in the world. Maybe they will, themselves, in the difficult lives all human beings have to live, be able to carry on with a little bit more determination than they would have had if they had not encountered in us the love of Jesus Christ. However, some of them will come to us by our being faithful Orthodox Christians, faithfully showing Christ and His love to them. Wherever we go, because we are baptised into Christ, because we have put on Christ, and because we have been given the Grace of the all-holy Spirit, no-one can meet us without meeting Christ, too.

People will measure Christ by us, so it is important that we Orthodox Christians be faithful. We have to keep turning to our Saviour and to His love every day, not only asking Him for the strength to continue, but also giving thanks to Him for the love that He continually pours out upon us. Brothers and sisters, on this day when we are celebrating the Descent of the Holy Spirit, let us give thanks to God sincerely from our hearts that He has poured out this same Holy Spirit upon us. Even if we are not given the gift of speaking all these languages, maybe we have been given the gift to show love. We have been made participants in Him through the Grace of the Holy Spirit. We can, in Him, by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, live a life that is productive, healthy, life-giving, joyful, bright, strong, and even powerful.

Let us ask the Lord to give us renewed Grace this morning so that we can truly be faithful to Him, truly shine with His light, and in the course of our lives glorify Him, our Saviour, Jesus Christ, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, gracious, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we are celebrating what is called the second day of the Holy Trinity. On this Feast of Pentecost, the first day of the Holy Trinity was yesterday ; the second day is today, and tomorrow is the third day of the Holy Trinity. On big feasts such as these, we have three days of clear celebration. This happens at Christmas-time, too, and there are other times. On this second day of the Holy Trinity, we are still getting lessons about how we are to live in the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.

The Holy Spirit has, in fact, been given to all of us – not in exactly the same way as it was given to the apostles with tongues of fire – but instead through baptism, and through the applying of chrism (which is that special oil that is blessed by the bishop at the head of each Church for the purpose of conferring the Holy Spirit). It is through the sacrament of chrismation that the Holy Spirit is conferred.

The Apostle Paul is telling us that we are supposed to be living in the Spirit. The way of living in the Holy Spirit is to be full of joy, as the Apostle said : “speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs”, giving thanks to God for everything. That is the life that characterises an Orthodox Christian : a life that is full of joy, thanksgiving, and songs. Now, of course, here in Canada at the beginning of the 21st century, we Orthodox Christians need to ask ourselves about the nature of our lives. A hundred years ago, when people came here from the old country, they were singing all the time. They had songs for every occasion. In Ukraine I have seen books of those songs for every occasion. Now, however, in general, Canadians do not sing much any more, even though when I was young, Canadians still would sing at home somewhat, and they would sing on special occasions. Now Canadians do not sing very much. When we are together, we are too shy to sing with each other any more. Something has come over us. It is time that we “pulled up our socks”, because we, Orthodox Christians, especially are charged with showing everyone else the right way to live. If we, ourselves, are forgetting the right way to live, I should think that we had better “pull up our socks”.

We need to remember how to sing to the Lord, to give thanks to Him, and to sing hymns of praise to the Mother of God, too. It is really important because, in the first place, these hymns give us focus. In the second place, simply singing lifts up our hearts when we are having difficult times, as we all do from time to time. Singing songs of glory, thanksgiving, and supplication to the Lord, such as our ancestors did all the time, lifts our hearts. Just the offering of song to the Lord lifts the heart. It is important for us to remember that when we are having difficult struggles, times of depression, and so forth. Even when we do not feel like it, we had better sing a little bit.

When we come to think of it, the black slaves in the southern part of the United States were characterised exactly by that. Probably few people had a worse sort of life than many of them did on this continent in the past several hundred years. What did they do in response ? Because they were Christian believers, they sang about their sorrow to the Lord. It is important for us to do this because we are Orthodox Christians, and we have this responsibility. Let us pull up our socks, and do what we are supposed to do.

Singing psalms and hymns and glorifying the Lord in everything, and about everything, we give thanks to Him for things that are difficult and for things that are easy and full of light. This singing also brings a renewal of the light of the Lord in our hearts. Our Saviour, Himself, spoke about Himself as being the Light (see John 8:12). It is the Grace of the Holy Spirit that multiplies this Light in our hearts. The Apostle Paul was talking about how this Light, shining, reveals the ways that are dark. So it is in our hearts. The Light of Christ shining in our hearts cleans out the darkness. Darkness is always associated with you-know-who-down-below, “Big Red”.

This Light shining in the darkness is operating in the Orthodox Church whether we are aware of it or not. Of course, human beings are always tempted to think that we can get away with something by hiding it, not talking about it, covering it up. We put it under the rug or in a closet somewhere. We try to do this from time to time in a sneaky way because we fall into temptation. However, the Lord, in His merciful love, does not let us get away with it. It is well known, for instance, that in the Orthodox Church there are no secrets. People try to keep secrets and confidences, and so forth, but if something has to come to light in our Church, it comes to light. (There are certain things about some people’s lives that are not edifying to know, and the Lord does not bring those things to light.)

However, what must be brought to light will be brought to light because when there are things that are out of order in our lives or out of order in the Church’s life (because people have fallen into temptation), the Lord shines His light upon it. He brings His healing love to it so that it will be healed, corrected, and straightened. That goes for us, too. If we become dark and crooked because of falling into temptation, the Lord, in His merciful love, straightens us out. He takes away the darkness from us.

The Lord, in His merciful love, is always with us. He says this again today. This passage is important for us to remember because sometimes it is misinterpreted. He says : “If two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by My Father in heaven”. Then He says : “I am there in the midst of them”. Those are two different things that are sometimes compressed together in our understanding. It is important that we do not compress them together. It is true that whenever two or three people are gathered together in the Lord’s Name, He is certainly with us. However, just being together in His Name is not the same thing as agreeing in His Name. We can be together, and we can be praising the Lord together as we are today, but sometimes there are little divisions between us. The Lord is still with us, and He is working in our hearts to heal the little divisions between us. When Christians agree together about a particular request, it means first that there can be no divisions amongst those people. In the second place, we can only agree if there is complete unity and harmony in love with the Lord. In the third place, we can only ask what the Lord will give to us when we, together, with pure hearts, know His will, and know what to ask.

The Lord is used to hearing us ask for all sorts of things, but we do not very often bother to ask Him first : “What, Lord, is the right thing to ask ?” “What is Your will, so that I can ask for the right thing ?” We usually think that we are so smart and so intelligent (although that is how He made us) that we can make independent decisions, but that is not how it is with the Lord. The Orthodox Christian is not concerned with making independent decisions. The Orthodox Christian is concerned with learning how to seek His will out of love, to be pleasing to Him in everything, and to do His will. In order to do His will, and to know His will, we have to ask Him : “What is Your will ?” My heart has to be open to accepting that His will might not be the same as what I think (or what I want). I have to be ready and willing to ask for what He wills.

Even if you do not have the details all lined up, and your “spiritual ducks all in a row”, regardless, our Lord says : “Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, I am there in the midst of them”. That is why it is always possible for us to say when we are here together in the Lord : “Christ is in our midst”. Thus, we answer : “He is, and ever shall be”. He is with us. He is in our midst. He loves us. By the Grace of the Holy Spirit, which is poured out upon us, He renews our life. He renews our hope. He renews our ability to be like Him. He is with us, because we only exist because of His love. Everything, in fact, only exists because of His love. We are often speaking about God as if He were far, far away, out there somewhere, and He is reading the paper, maybe, while we are doing whatever we are doing here. This is not at all the case. God is involved in everything, everything about our lives. He is sustaining everything that exists.

The Lord is in everything, and He is with everything, and sustaining everything. For instance, when people are talking in terms of geology, and palæontology, about mass extinctions of animals, and so forth, they have to admit that the geological record shows that life reappeared after these mass extinctions very rapidly, very abundantly, and in huge variety. The theory of Darwin, which Canadians seem to have accepted as some sort of law (but it has never yet been proven), suggests that this sort of recovery could take place over a long period of time, because you have to have slow natural selection which takes a very long period of time. If you only have a few species to begin with, how are you going to come to these vast, different numbers of species that are not apparently very connected with each other ?

In my opinion, the re-appearance of life (whether we can scientifically explain it or not) occurs precisely because God is in everything. He is doing everything. He is the Giver of life. He is the Provider of life. When something happens and there is a mass extinction, the Lord, who produces life because He is Love, produces all this life in great variety. I was just talking about the interesting things that the Lord has created in our world. We, North Americans (especially the English-speakers), generally have a very pragmatic way of speaking, and we ask : “What is the use of that ?” We only tend to think of things in terms of usefulness. However, the Lord does not create things like that. What use is a platypus, for instance ? This furry mammal has a duck bill, and it lays eggs. It is a marsupial, and it swims in Australian waters. It is a very strange creature. Of what use is it ? Of what use is a panda bear, except to look cute ? It just sits around and eats bamboo shoots. It moves around very slowly because its digestion has to work very hard on the bamboo shoots. Of what use are all sorts of creatures ? For example, the hippopotamus. It eats reeds in the Nile River and other places. Of what use are these creatures ?

The Lord, in Psalm 103, gives us a hint. In Psalm 103, the Psalmist says that the Lord made the leviathan, this huge sea monster. We do not know for certain what this leviathan is, exactly (it could be a whale), but some people are saying that it could even be a hippopotamus. What is the purpose of this leviathan ? The leviathan lives in the sea in order to play. Its purpose is simply to play. It plays in the water. The Lord does create some things like this. So maybe a platypus is there for us to look at and think it is cute. It is there just to play. Maybe a panda is there just to play in the bamboo forests, to look cute to us, and to warm our hearts because we are so easily suffering from hard hearts.

The Lord in His mercy and His love is creating all the time, renewing creation all the time by the Grace of the all-holy Spirit, who is everywhere, and fulfils all things. That is a hint of the meaning of the tropar that we sing every day (except at Pascha-time). Let us ask the Lord to pour out the Grace of the Holy Spirit afresh upon us this morning so that we will have new hope, new joy, new determination, and willingness to follow Him, and to live showing His love. Glory be to Jesus Christ. Glory be to the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

We hear today the calling of the Holy Apostles, and of course it is appropriate, this being the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul. It is also appropriate because the same call went out to those who ultimately became the saints of the Orthodox Church, particularly to those who, for our consideration, became the saints of North America. On this day, as always is the case, the second Sunday after Pentecost, we remember, in particular, the local saints. For a young Church we actually have plenty them. We have to give glory to God that we have been given such shining signs of encouragement for us. It is so easy for us to become discouraged by the difficulties of life, especially the difficulties of modern life with all the pressures that we are under.

I had a taste recently of how life used to be, when I visited the Bishop of Mexico City, Alejo. Mexico City, although it certainly is a modern city, still lives very much in the way people lived when I was a child. For instance, there are still people in a café who will speak to you and who care something about you. They remember your name if you are there more than once. They are willing to talk like human beings to you. These cafés in Mexico City that I encountered were like the ones of my childhood, where cafés were extensions of home where people were offering hospitality. We were guests in these places. In other words, the sense of hospitality and the sense of human relations that we used to have in Canada are, for the most part, lost because we are all so busy. We are all so taken up with ourselves that we have lost sight of much of the basics of just plain human life (let alone what it means to be an Orthodox Christian).

As a result of this, we get depressed ; we feel hopeless ; we feel that life is a big waste, and a huge responsibility. There is no joy left. This happens because we forget to turn to Christ for everything. It seems to me, that one of the reasons that people had joy in my childhood is that they still were remembering to turn to Christ for help, and they were involving Him in the various aspects and burdens of daily life. It is not that life was any easier in those days. I am sure it was not easier for my parents. They certainly did not have all the technology, all the money, and so forth that we have these days. They absolutely did not. Yet, they had joy. Our family had joy. Our neighbours had joy. There was a Christian sensibility about life. I suppose maybe it could very well be that what I sensed in Mexico City was a remainder of Christian awareness that is nowadays getting close to being completely lost in North America.

Our Lord addressed His disciples and apostles by saying : “'Follow Me'”. This way of being as Christians has never changed since that time. Our Lord today says to the apostles : “'Follow Me'”. Today, He still says to you and to me : “'Follow Me'”. Through you and through me, to the people we encounter in our daily lives, He is still saying : “'Follow me'”. It is our responsibility as Christians to be demonstrating what it is like to have a life filled with Christian joy. Our lives must be conveying this joy of Christ.

If we call ourselves Christians, and we do not have joy, well then, what is this ? If someone outside sees us moping around, saying : “Oh my, life is so difficult. It is so painful. It is so hard. I cannot cope with it”. What is that person hearing and seeing this going to say ? The likely response would be : “All right then, what benefit is there in being a Christian ? Why should I want to be a Christian if you, calling yourself a Christian, feel like that and talk like that ? I do not need to feel that bad, and you are not showing me how being a Christian is any better than how I am now”.

It is important for us to remember our responsibility as Orthodox Christians. We have the huge blessing today of the conjunction of the Feast of All Saints of North America and the Feast of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul. There are so many things today to talk about that I cannot address all them all. I might as well confine myself more to the Apostles Peter and Paul.

The Apostles Peter and Paul are very strong personalities. As we encounter them in the Scriptures, we can see that they are very strong persons. They are human beings, and each of them is capable of making mistakes. Nevertheless, they repent of their mistakes, and they keep following Christ as He exhorted them in the passage from the Holy Gospel for today, which we have just heard. They kept following Christ, and they have never stopped until now. Truly, they still are following Christ.

We notice in the Scriptures that these two apostles had some sharp differences. In the normal Orthodox way, they spoke about these differences quite bluntly to each other. They did not mince their words. However, the fact that they had these disagreements did not mean that there was a division. Because they talked bluntly and squarely to each other, by the Grace of God, everything became settled in due course.

How do we see the holy Apostles Peter and Paul represented in iconography to this day ? They are hugging each other. Well, obviously, the tradition of our Orthodox Church is that, from those earliest times, the Apostles Peter and Paul did live in reconciliation and forgiveness with each other, even if they had differences of opinion. If those two Holy Apostles, in the love of Jesus Christ (even if they had strongly different opinions about one thing or another), were able to find their way to reconciliation, harmony, and a concerted effort in the same direction, then we can, too. It is about time we paid attention to this in our lives : living in reconciliation. This really is the way of Christ : living in reconciliation and forgiveness.

There are many things going on in our Orthodox Church in America right now that indicate that people have a really hard time swallowing this particular, obvious command and direction of the Gospel. However, even if people are still having a hard time swallowing it, it is important for us all to remember that this is not an option for an Orthodox Christian. It is not an option that one can take or leave. No matter what anyone does, for good or for bad, no matter what the difference of opinion is, we must still live in reconciliation and forgiveness towards each other. Otherwise, why would our Lord bother to waste His time, and say that we should pray for our enemies. Why would He say : “Pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you” (Matthew 5:44) ? Why did He bother, then, to direct us so clearly to forgive people who are persecuting us, to pray for our enemies, and even to love our enemies ? Why would He do that and say that if He did not mean it, and if it were not an absolute necessity for us Orthodox Christians to follow ?

He, Himself, hanging on the Cross, with His arms outstretched, was forgiving people from the Cross. He was asking His Father to forgive those who were crucifying Him, because they did not know what they were doing. It has been said, also, that those arms outstretched on the Cross were stretched out not by violence and force. Indeed, our Saviour voluntarily stretched them out on the Cross, and He allowed His arms to be nailed to the Cross. By doing this, with His arms stretched out on the Cross, He is embracing us all, all His creatures, all His creation. This is the wonderful paradox of how our Saviour addresses everything. He is dying, but He is going to live. He is being brutally crucified, but He is embracing the crucifiers. He is blessing them and forgiving them.

This is the paradox that we have to live with, too. This is the extremity of love that we have to grow up into. In growing up into this love, it is not something that we can make ourselves do, either. There is no technique for growing up into His love. For the most part, we simply live our life ; but it is a life that is constantly referring to our Saviour, asking Him to be present in my joy, in my sorrow, in my strong moments, in my difficult moments. We are asking Him in every moment of our life to bless what is happening. We must remember to invoke Him, to call Him into our midst at all times. The more we do this, the more we allow Him to work in our hearts, the more we allow Him to heal our hearts, the more we are enabled to have a positive way of communicating as human beings.

Thus, our life will be full of all sorts of surprises, as my life has been full of surprises. In fact, in the course of my life, I can say that I never know what to expect when I wake up in the morning. I never know what sort of new thing the Lord is going to send ; what new opportunity the Lord is going to send ; who is going to phone me and offer to do this or that or ask the possibility to do this or that. The Lord is full of surprises. A life in Christ is always full of surprises because the Lord loves us. The Lord is the Giver of life, and He multiplies life in us.

It is important for us to remember the apostolic witness. It is important to remember that the apostles were ordinary human beings with ordinary human weaknesses which the Lord filled in, one could say. He healed their weaknesses, and replaced the weakness with His strength, just as He said He would. We have all these saints of North America who are on our calendar now, and who are much loved by many North Americans. Even people around the world love some of our saints because they have come to know them. These saints are ordinary human beings who, weaknesses and all, love the Lord. Their weaknesses were overcome by the Lord. Some of them were martyrs ; some of them were not ; some of them are known, and some of them are not.

Just the other day, I was visiting a women’s monastery near here, and I was hearing the story of a man who, during the course of his whole life, appeared to live an ordinary, nondescript sort of life. He was just an ordinary husband, father, and businessman. He was a little eccentric, too, because he mowed the lawn while wearing a shirt-and-tie. When he died, there was suddenly a surprisingly large number of people showing up at his funeral. There were people that his family had not met, and people that no-one knew at all in the town. They were quite surprised, and they were asking : “How do you know our father/our husband ?” They responded : “For a long time, this man gave us groceries every week” ; or instead, they volunteered : “This man met our need in one way or another”. He never said at all what he did ; however, it turns out that on his desk, they found a list of names of people he was looking after. He was checking them off in a very business-like manner. This man had lived a hidden, Christ-like life of sharing love in very practical ways. Everyone said : “We never knew that we had a saint living in our midst. We did not know”. This is, of course, how blind we can be. It is such a good example of what Christian giving is about, and what Christian service is about. This Orthodox Christian man, by doing good things in silence, was caring for other people that he encountered in his business. When he found out that they had a need of some sort, he juggled his books so that he could meet their need. He met their need, and it never touched his family. There were very many : it was not just five or six.

That a person will do something like this in a hidden way is exactly the epitome of Christian giving : giving, and no-one knows about it ; being a light shining that helps particular people but does not call attention to oneself. This behaviour emphasises the love of Christ. Without words, the behaviour states : “I do not need any medals for all these little things that are being done ; I do not need profuse thanks from anyone. I just give”. This is the ideal Christian way. We have saints that have lived in Toronto : not only this man. I have met a few, actually, but they are nameless at the moment.

We must keep in mind how important our Christian witness is, and, at the same time, the extent of the Lord’s love. The Lord’s love is immense, far beyond our understanding. How many times have I heard in my life (it is now beyond my ability to remember) : “Those Christians are just a bunch of hypocrites”. “They do not practice what they preach”. “They talk about love, but they hate each other”, and that sort of thing. There are so many people that I have met who will not go to church because of bad Christian examples or because Christians go to war with each other.

That Christians will go to war with each other is the worst example. People’s lives are always catastrophically damaged in a war. People dream that at the end of a war a person can carry on, living life as though nothing had happened. However, at the end of a war, there remain all the people who have been battered by the war in one way or another, and who are not being healed. There remain all the people who fought the war, who (because the pain is so great) are pretending in their hearts that the war never happened at all. They live with nightmares, and all sorts of other pain. They have no way to find healing because they, too, are cynical about coming to Christ and trusting Him, because Christians they have met have been so untrustworthy. We can clearly see how important is our Christian witness.

How many times I have met people who have been badly treated in a Christian context, and, nevertheless, by God’s merciful, loving Grace, still are able to live in a sort of Christian-like way, with some sort of positive attitude in life, with some sort of joy, even though they have not the faintest notion why they should be like this. It is because their hearts are still somehow open. The Lord, who loves all His creatures, is still touching them, and meeting their needs. How significant it can be for such a person to encounter an Orthodox Christian (or even any Christian), who is serious, and who is really allowing the light of Christ to shine through.

On this day of All Saints of North America, let us remember that the Lord has called us all to be saints. Saints are not specialist Christians. They are not professional Christians (just as monks are not professional Christians). Neither are priests or bishops professional Christians – they are called to particular functions. Saints are simply persons who have heard our Saviour say : “'Follow Me'” ; and they did follow Him, more and more and more, allowing Him to grow in them into full maturity.

Let us, also, take up our Cross, follow our Saviour and learn to imitate His love more and more. Let us ask Him to be with us and to multiply His love in us, so that we will be able to glorify Him, and shine with Him : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

We are celebrating the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul in this Temple dedicated to these Holy Apostles, in-between the new calendar and the old calendar feast-days, because sometimes it has to be like this. That does not mean that we are making a habit of moving feast-days around, but on certain occasions it has to be like this. For my part, I am grateful that it is possible to make this sort of bending, so that I can finally come to this place after more than twenty years of travelling around the diocese. Finally I get to Saskatchewan north. I have to apologise for the length of time that it took me to come here.

The Apostles Peter and Paul, in the course of their lives, suffered many difficulties. It was not just a matter of preaching and talking about Who is Jesus Christ, and then everyone would automatically respond, saying : “Yes, that is true”, and they would accept the truth of Jesus Christ. There were very many question marks (especially amongst the Jewish people) about how this could possibly be. Amongst the Greek philosophers, there were also perpetual questions : “How can it be that God can really take flesh and live amongst us like a human being ? How can it be ?”

Human beings are most often asking silly, unanswerable questions such as this. Those questions do get asked over and over again. By the way we behave sometimes, it appears that we think that we are God. It is the same story of incomprehension, even today, some 2,000 years later. We cannot, even now, comprehend just exactly how it can be that the Word of God, the love of God can take flesh and live as a human being, still being God, and then die. How can God die ? Nevertheless, by their life, by their witness, by the Grace of the Holy Spirit dwelling in the apostles, this Grace coming from their mouths convinced other people that even if they could not understand it, the words of the Gospel must be true.

The fact is – Christ did die, and He arose from the dead, which is something that is not known of, otherwise. It is true that resurrection does happen. The Grace of God brings it about in particular circumstances, but never in circumstances just like our Saviour’s Resurrection. In cases of human beings coming back to life in other instances in history, we would really have to call it more like resuscitation than resurrection. The Resurrection of Christ is a concrete example of what happens to us, the members of the Body of Christ, after our death. He rose from the dead, therefore, with a glorified Body, a Body which could still be recognised as His because it still has the marks of the Crucifixion. Yet, His Body is glorified. The Risen Christ appeared and disappeared. He was not impeded by walls and doors, and so forth.

When our Saviour raised Lazarus from the dead before His own Resurrection, Lazarus returned to life as a regular human being. This event is called “resurrection” by the Church, and so it is. Nevertheless, at the end of his days, Lazarus again died. At the end of his days, after he died, he would ultimately fully experience the Resurrection of Christ. This Resurrection of Christ is different – absolutely unique and different, and not in any way temporary or transient. Yet, the Resurrection of Lazarus is the living out in its own way of the words of our Saviour, Himself, who says : “'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life'” (John 14:6).

Our Saviour’s own Resurrection, and the resurrection which we, ourselves, are to experience after our end, is the playing out, the exact application of what He means when He says : “'I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life'”, especially the Life, of course. However, He is also the Way, because He is the Way for us to the Resurrection. More than that, He is the Way of Life for a person who is created in the image and growing into the likeness of God. He is the example for us of how we are supposed to live.

He is also the Truth. I say this so many times, over and over again ; but I cannot say it enough. In our Canadian society, we are being bombarded with the idea that there is a multiplicity of truths. There is a truth for one person, and another person has a different truth. When you are talking about truth, and you talk about multiple truths about the same thing, it is logically ridiculous. It is one of those Canadian-word-game-accommodations that we play, as we pretend that there might not be something wrong somewhere. Thus, we say that it really does not matter, and that it is all the same : “What I believe to be the truth may be for you a different sort of truth”. We are being too super-nice in our stereotypical Canadian way, but in so doing we are not telling the truth, ourselves. We are hiding from the Truth.

There is only one truth about anything. Only one. About any one thing, there can only be one truth. This is merely simple and basic logic. When we are talking about absolute Truth, there is only one, and that is Jesus Christ, Himself. He is the Way. He is the Truth. He is the Life. It is this Way, this Truth, this Life that is revealed in love by the Apostles Peter and Paul that converts people to Jesus Christ, that convinces them that Jesus Christ is truly the Giver of life. He is truly the Word of God who speaks into existence everything that exists. The apostles imitated this example of the love of Jesus Christ whom they knew personally. They lived this love. They were resisted by the powers of darkness, just as our Saviour, Himself, was resisted by the powers of darkness (see Luke 22:53 ; John 1:5). The apostles were resisted, but the Truth, Jesus Christ, prevailed, and prevails to this day, even though there is resistance.

Why should there not be resistance ? People have been disappointed so much. Why should they not ask questions ? People have been deceived so much. If you and I, following in the footsteps of the Apostles Peter and Paul, are going to be convincers of other people that Jesus Christ (who is the reason for our existence, the reason for our life, the only source of our hope, our joy, our love) is the true Way, it can only be done by the way we live, by how we live truly, ourselves.

Most specifically, then, how do we go about living out this selfless, life-giving love of Jesus Christ ? How do we imitate Jesus Christ as did those Apostles Peter and Paul ? How do we imitate Jesus Christ ? By this question, I am asking : How do we serve ? Our Saviour, Himself, says : “'The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve'” (Matthew 20:28). The way of Christian love is always definitely not the prideful : “You-look-after-me, I-am-number-one” sort of attitude. The Christian way concerns itself, rather, with the nurturing of the attitude expressed by the question : “How can I be of help to you ?” “How can I be of assistance ?” “How can I be of help to someone else ?” “How can I put into concrete action the love of Jesus Christ that I feel for you ?” “It is His love that I feel, so how can I share this love in a concrete way ?” Perhaps I could bring a pie for some occasion. Perhaps I could help to fix a car for free, or something similar. “How can I be good to you, as our Saviour is good to me ?” These all are the marks of the way of the Christian.

We notice, also, in reading the Acts of the Apostles, that the Apostles Peter and Paul had their differences, and they had their weaknesses. Both the Apostle Peter and the Apostle Paul had personal weaknesses. However, we see in the Acts of the Apostles that they are always calling to the Lord for help to overcome those weaknesses, and He gives them the Grace to overcome those weaknesses. They also have differing ideas about how things should be done, and who should do them. You can see several times in the Acts of the Apostles how the Apostles Peter and Paul are sharply criticising each other, especially the Apostle Paul because he is so straightforward (see Galatians 2:11-14). We cannot let ourselves get the idea that just because they had these strong differences of opinion that they were somehow divided. They were not and are not divided even though they sometimes talked bluntly and honestly to each other. This bluntness and this honesty led to the expression of the truth in Jesus Christ because both of them were ready and willing to accept what our Saviour would give to them. The holy Apostles Peter and Paul died on the same day, the 29th of June, in a different part of Rome, in the same city. They were both killed for the sake of Jesus Christ. In iconography, you often see them embracing each other. This goes to show us that even though they had differences of opinion, they still lived in harmony. They sought the harmony of the love of Jesus Christ, and they did, and do live in this harmony.

They also lived in forgiveness with each other. This is another fundamental prerequisite of the whole life of every Christian. We are to live in forgiveness with everyone, and with everything, always. We hold no poisoning and life-killing grudges. Instead, we pray for those who persecute us. We pray for those who offend us. We pray for those who hurt us, and the Lord brings forgiveness to us and to the person who has hurt us. The Lord does bring this forgiveness. The apostles are living in this forgiveness. They are living examples of this forgiveness. They show us that difficult as this forgiveness might sometimes be, it can be done, and it must be done. This is the way the love of Jesus Christ moves us. Our Saviour, upon the Cross, from this Cross forgave the people who were killing Him. He said : “'Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do'” (Luke 23:34). This same Saviour showed the apostles how to forgive. He shows you and me, also, how to forgive with love. It is the Lord God, Himself, who judges everything. We are not the judges of all right and wrong, and everything. We are not the enforcers, either. The Lord, by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, does all this.

I really want you to understand how the love of the Lord works, and how it is important that we live in the Scriptures. We should be reading the Scriptures every day – not just the two New Testament readings that are provided so that we read through the New Testament every year. We should also read the Old Testament on a regular basis. You cannot understand the New Testament unless you also understand the Old Testament to which the New Testament is constantly referring, and to which our Saviour, Himself, is also very often referring. It is important for us to know the crucial importance of the love of Jesus Christ. How important it is that this little church standing here be an example in the lives of the people. I think that I have seen evidence that this does exist already. It is important that this evidence be there of how Christians, like those Apostles Peter and Paul, must live in harmony and forgiveness, being servants of all, as our Saviour is Servant of all.

Let us ask those holy Apostles Peter and Paul to pray anew and afresh for us. Let us ask them to ask the Lord to send the Holy Spirit freshly upon us so that the Grace of the Holy Spirit will be poured out upon us, and we will be able more and more to live like Christ, in Christ, in the Grace of His love. May we shine with hope, so that people who are without hope (and there are many of them), after they have tested us and found that our love is real, will, themselves, be able to find their hope which is the same as our hope : their joy, their life, their strength, their power in Jesus Christ. He is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life”, to whom be glory in everything, always, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

When the Apostle is talking about being justified by faith, this justification has many different sorts of implications. The major one that I would like us to remember about this word “justification” is that it means being made righteous. In our western way of thinking and use of language, we are using the word “justice” as though it meant sort of tangible reality which is very specific. Sometimes, it is rather too specific, shall I say, because in the Lord’s way of dealing with us, He, Himself, is not able to be fit into some sort of tight box. He does not expect us to be fit into some tight pigeon hole, either. He does not intend to box us in in any way, because we are made in His image. We are supposed to be growing into His likeness. He is the ultimate Person of freedom. He is the ultimate Person of love. He is the ultimate Expression of love. His love is life-giving. His love shows so many different expressions or facets, that it becomes clear to us that we can neither precisely define nor enclose in any way this love.

In the same way, when we are talking about justification, it has to do more with our being turned in the right direction and on the right path, than it has to do with being something static, such as “just”. This word “just” is a dangerous word for us because, in our western thinking, it implies something quite rigid. If we see the attempt to apply justice in western society, this application is very often a cold, cut-and-dried application of some rule or other. If a person should break some rules, then that person will get this punishment, exactly like that. Maybe there is some flexibility, but there is always a punishment for breaking rules such as, for example, going through stop signs, or driving too fast. There are very specific punishments for bending the rules (even though the rules do get bent). However, when someone in authority is in a bad mood, then those rules are absolute, and they are minutely applied.

This is not the way the Lord is at all with us. The Lord is like a loving Parent with us : a loving Parent who corrects the child, and who puts the child on the right way. When the child falls down, He picks the child up, straightens him out (sometimes giving the child what my Mother used to call a “love tap” for a reminder), and then sets the child again back on the right path. That is why this “right path” is not so strictly definable as some people want to make it to be, either. The Lord, in His love, is meeting each human being according to that human being’s needs. This meeting is not like rigid justice.

When we are talking about “justification”, it has to do less with the idea of justification of books (because you do that in accounting, I think, and when you are justifying numbers you have to be very specific). However, when we are justifying things in other parts of life, we do not have to be so specific. We are going in the right direction : that is the main point of the whole thing. This “going in the right direction” is made possible by faith. This faith is made possible by love. We can have faith in Jesus Christ, and we can trust Him because we have experience of His love. This love is what propels us – you and me – through the course of the whole of our lives, in the middle of all the sorts of difficulties that we encounter, in all the ways in which our friends, our family, our relatives and other human beings will disappoint us from time to time. It is this faith in the love of Jesus Christ, and our experience of the stability of His love, which carry us through all the disappointments, pain and darkness of this life. It is the same Lord, Jesus Christ, who is only constant, who is only all-loving, who is only always there, stably, for us. He is always there for us and ready and waiting to give us life, to give us hope, to comfort us, to renew us.

It is in this context that it is important to understand today’s Gospel in which our Lord is talking precisely about the depth of His love and how much He wants to give us life. We, independent and willful human beings, most of the time, in our independent thinking, in our determination to be self-sufficient, are “do-it-yourselfers”. I can blame this on our western formation ; but it is not just that, because human beings have always been like that. When we read the Old Testament, we see that we human beings are the same, always, in our weakness. As a rule, we seldom seem to ask the Lord first and spontaneously : “What do You want me to do ?” Instead, we try to use our heads, apply a little logic, paste it together, and say : “This seems good”. We make our construction, and it all falls apart because it was only put together with some sort of “band-aid” or a piece of string. The whole thing falls apart when it gets slightly shaken. Then we come crying to the Lord, and we say to Him : “What did You do ?” This is how we are with Him. We propose something : it does not work, and then we blame Him, because we think it is His fault that it did not work. The Lord gets the blame from us nearly all the time.

This is not the right way to go about things at all. This is not thee historic way of our ancestors in the faith, the ones who have grown up strong in the faith, the ones whom we call saints. These persons knew the love of Jesus Christ sufficiently that their hearts instinctively would ask the Lord : “What do You want me to do about this-or-that, and every little thing in life ?” This is reflected in the traditional Orthodox ways of going about life : for instance, the blessing of every ingredient of food as it is being prepared, the blessing of the baking or the cooking. It is most especially seen in the care that is taken with bread. First, the ingredients (some people include a little holy water) are blessed with the Sign of the Cross. Then the Sign of the Cross may be made over the dough once it is shaped, before each rising. Sometimes, a Cross is cut into the top of the raw loaf. Sometimes, the loaf will be blessed with the baker’s hand as it is place in the oven. Once the loaf is baked, and before it is eaten, the Sign of the Cross may be made with a knife upon the loaf of bread before it is cut. However, some persons insist that bread should never be cut, but only broken (more likely amongst people who tend to make flat breads). If that is the case, it would be broken in a cruciform manner. Of course, we bless the eating, too. All these things are examples of how this understanding of communication with the Lord, involving the Lord in every detail of life, works out in the lives of traditional Orthodox believers. That is not to say that everyone always behaves like this, because that is not at all the case. In every culture, human beings can be weak, and they can fail. However, the cultures that have been baptised by the Gospel (such as those of Ukraine, Russia, Serbia, Greece, Georgia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Egypt, and other places) have similar expressions in all of them of the involvement of Christ in everything.

Thus, we bless ourselves and our vehicle when we are about to drive anywhere. We bless ourselves and our vehicle when we arrive, and we thank God that we arrived safely. However, should there have been a little mishap, we thank God that it did not kill us or anyone else. Sometimes, even though we ask God’s blessing when we are driving, we can still be inattentive ; or, someone else can be inattentive, and we can bear the brunt. Nevertheless, the Guardian Angels are always there, working with us. The Lord has always been sending us His Guardian Angels working with us, protecting us, and looking after us. The Lord is merciful to us. He is loving to us.

The Lord says to us : “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin”, yet their existence praises God, and their beauty praises God. If the Lord cares about flowers and other creatures like this, how much more will He care for you and me, who are created in His image ? He loves us. He created us to be like Him, to work with Him in His creation, and to be His agents of love for each other.

In the time of Adam and Eve, our ancestors had hearts that more than instinctively knew the will of God, and did it with joy. They grew up to be their real selves in this love : unique selves, not just clones of God (or some sort of cookie-cutter-anything). No matter what, the Lord creates every human being uniquely. He does not make repeats. Can you imagine that we now have about six billion people on the earth, and every one of those six billion human beings is unique. Every one of the billions that have gone before us is also unique, not repeatable, a unique creation of the Lord. This is the expression of His love. Add to that all the animals, all the birds, all the fish, all the trees, all the flowers, all the planets and stars, and everything else : all these are the expressions of God’s love, and they exist because God loves them into existence, into being. He takes them from non-being into being because of His love, as expressions of His love. Saint John Chrysostom uses this very terminology in the anaphora of the Divine Liturgy.

It is really important for us, for you and for me to pay attention to our relationship with the Lord, to nurture our love for the Lord. He is always there in His love for us. It is important for you and for me to be opening our hearts daily to Him, asking Him at the beginning of every day : “Lord, what do You want me to do today ?” “Help me today to do Your will, even by instinct.” “Be with me today.”

It is important to bless the beginning and the end of every day, and every moment of every day, everything that we are doing during the day, in order to grow up to be our real selves : real, joyful, co-workers, co-working with the Lord. We grow up to be ourselves in living in this love of the Lord which gives life, and makes us our real selves. It is really important that we remember this, no matter what our difficulties are, no matter what our pain is, no matter who disappoints us in one way or another – because we all experience this. It is the Lord who is constant. It is the Lord who is with us, as He always says. He is with us. He is always there.

As we continue to live in this loving relationship, He heals our wounds. He binds us up. He strengthens us. He renews us. He gives us energy. He gives us focus. He gives us determination. He enables us, most importantly of all, to reveal His love to every person around us. The people we meet every day are all people who are looking for consolation, for hope, for a sense of purpose in life, for a sense of direction. We, Orthodox Christians, who have access to all the tools necessary to help them, are responsible by the way we live to help them, and to offer consolation and hope.

That is why I keep going on and on and on about it, because this loving witness is crucially important. I also have to remind myself. This is how people who are preaching, themselves get straightened out by the Lord. When people are preaching to the faithful, the Lord is also reminding them about themselves : how they, like their people, have to keep these things in order in their lives. We all have to remember to keep the words of Saint Herman of Alaska in the front of our hearts. We have to try, if we can, to repeat them, and to live them out in our daily lives. He said to us, and he is still saying to us in his icons and in his example (he did not stop saying it 200 years ago) : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”, glorifying the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today we are celebrating together the feast-days of the holy Prophet Elias, and the holy Elder and Wonder-worker Saint Seraphim of Sarov. This is happening, of course, because we are moving the feast of Saint Seraphim one day so that we can celebrate it on Saturday.

There are people who are asking from time to time how it can be that we are suffering as we are not so much from the hands, but from the words of our Christian brothers and sisters. How can it be ? It is truly a painful thing when our own people, our brothers and sisters (who call themselves Christians), inflict on us pain one way or another. It has been said by one of our theological experts that a person cannot very well call himself a Christian unless he has suffered pain at the hands of his brothers and sisters. How can this be ? Everyone says that it is not right that it should be like this — that Christians are hurting each other, and that they are inflicting pain on each other. They are even sometimes persecuting each other.

Well, their sensibilities are absolutely correct. It is not right. Why does this sort of thing happen ? It happens because human beings are fallen. It happens because we are sinners. It happens because we decide very often in our lives to take matters into our own hands. We solve all the problems and leave God to the side, not involving Him in all our difficulties, problems, suspicions, and our fears. Instead, we transfer our anger onto our brothers and sisters. In fact, the church family is not so different from most ordinary families in which I hear (in, and outside of confession) something like : “Ah, my husband (or my wife) comes home, and I get it when he (or she) comes home. I have to hear everything that went wrong today, and sometimes I have to bear his (her) pain of the day”. Sometimes it is the other way around, and the one who is at home is telling everything that is painful that day. Perhaps the other one is acting angrily because of what has happened that day at the office or at work. They hold anger about one thing or another that has happened that day : exasperation, frustration, and then they just dump it on the family. The family says : “What did I do ? What happened ? I did not say anything. I did not even open my mouth. It was a nice day until he (or she) came home”. These things are happening all the time, and I can tell by your reaction that this is familiar. It is familiar because we are fallen, and we are doing the same thing to each other in our church life.

In our church life, we are family to each other. We try to trust each other, and we expect to be able to trust each other. Included in this is the trust that, even if we are not behaving well to each other, there likely will be forgiveness sooner or later. We are presuming on our brother or sister, just as we are presuming on the love of our family, that the brother or sister or family member has the spiritual strength to cope with this unprovoked outburst of anger or sometimes, sad to say, even violence from me. We expect that they will forgive, pretend that it did not happen, live as if it did not happen, and everything will be all right again even if I do not admit my wrong-doing. This is the reality of how we live, but it is not the way it is supposed to be.

I am saying these things about our family life because both Saint Seraphim of Sarov and the Prophet Elias were in the same condition as we. The holy Prophet Elias, for instance, was rejected by the king and queen of his country ; he was rejected by almost everyone else. Even though he was speaking for the Lord and telling the truth, he was being rejected. He was rejected even though, long ago he demonstrated beyond doubt with fire coming from heaven on a soaking-wet sacrifice that God is the Lord. He demonstrated beyond doubt that the Lord is the only One, the only one God. He had proven that all those idols are nothing because they could never bring fire from heaven. There is only one Lord. He is God. Did they accept the Prophet ? No. The queen said that she was going to kill him.

The Prophet ran away. He thought that he was alone. Finally, when he heard the voice of the Lord at Horeb, the Lord got through to him saying, as it were : “You are not at all alone. Pull yourself together. There are 7,000 people still in Israel who did not bow the knee to the idols” (see 3 Kingdoms 19:18). “Go back and be an encouragement to them, and let them be an encouragement to you”. However the point is : there were parts of the nation that were terrorised into silence, so that the Prophet Elias did not know whether there existed anyone to trust anymore, or whether there was a believer left in Israel under the circumstances. Moreover, he was persecuted by some of his own people.

Saint Seraphim of Sarov, the great, great saint whom we love, whom we respect, and to whom we are turning all the time, did not have, himself, such an easy time of it. Did his brothers in the Sarov Monastery accept him as he was — a different sort of person, a hermit, a loner, living in the forest in a strange way ? Did they ? No. They made fun of him. The same thing happened in the Optina Monastery with the brothers who were living in the desert in the “Pustin”. Did the brothers in the main monastery take seriously the people who were praying in solitude like hermits ? No. They made fun of them and thought that they were just being prideful, I suppose. In both places, the brotherhood did not understand what was God’s call to these holy persons, and they put them to the test. They thoroughly put them to the test. Nevertheless, Saint Seraphim and the saints of Optina came out of it, despite the difficulties, despite the ridicule, despite the rejection, despite feeling all alone. They knew that they had One, that is the Lord, whom they knew loved them. Each of them was loved by the Lord. They knew that, because of this love, even if their brothers did not understand, they had to persevere. They did persevere. This perseverance produced a change of heart in the main brotherhood in due time in both places. This sort of thing happened not just in these two monasteries of Sarov and Optina. It happens everywhere. It is always happening, because people still are behaving in much the same way all the time.

Saint Seraphim became a bright, shining star of the Orthodox Faith. He is still a great sign of hope for us in our lives. Shining with the love of Jesus Christ, and bringing so much consolation to so many people in his lifetime (and after his lifetime) out of love for Jesus Christ, he continues to pray for us. Saint Seraphim continues to intercede for us, and he continues to bring the Grace of the love of God to our lives now, more than 100 years after his death. We are still turning to the Prophet Elias, who has been dead now for more than 3,000 years. We are asking for his intercessions for good weather because, we remember, in the time of the Prophet Elias, there was a big drought because of the faithlessness of the people of Israel. The drought came at his prayer, and at his prayer the end of the drought and the beginning of the rain came (see 3 Kingdoms 17:1 ; 18:1, 41-45).

When we ask for rain or ask for rain to stop, we are turning to the Prophet Elias 3,000 years after his death. Because of his love for God he is still hearing us and praying for us, and bringing the weather into normal parameters, one might say. We all need to remember the Prophet Elias and our holy Father Seraphim when we, ourselves, are feeling so alone, persecuted, ridiculed, and having such difficult times one way or another. Let us remember their example, and how their love for the Lord brought them through every difficulty. People are always fallen ; people are always failing and betraying because they are weak. Even bishops fail, betray, sin, fall, and all these things because they, too, are weak. However, despite it all, the Lord is God. He is with us. He is reassuring us constantly of His love. He gives us the example of these two very holy men, the Prophet Elias and Saint Seraphim. Like us, they faced very many difficulties in their lives. We can turn to them, and by their prayers all sorts of wonders occur, as we see in our lives.

For instance, a week ago tomorrow, I was in Ukraine, in Kyiv. I was serving with Patriarch Bartholomew, Patriarch Aleksy, and also with Archbishop Anastasios of Albania, and Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens. There were four heads of Churches serving together in Kyiv last Sunday. We cannot forget Metropolitan Volodymir, also, because even though Ukraine is not officially autocephalous, they have everything except the name of an autocephalous Church. You could say that there were five heads of Churches serving together with probably close to 150 bishops. There were double that many priests, and thousands and thousands of faithful people. There was a great fear that because of the political intentions of the president of Ukraine at the time, with the visit of Patriarch Bartholomew, there would be some sort of attempt to force the union of the three broken parts of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine. However, when the patriarch came, not only did he meet the prayers of the faithful there, and the fruits of the prayers of the faithful, but he also encountered the real love of the faithful in Ukraine for Patriarch Aleksy. No-one could misunderstand the thousands of people who were (without any orchestration) chanting “Christos voskrese” (which you do not usually say at this time of year). They were also saying over and over again : “Aleksy, our Patriarch”. No-one could be so blind as to ignore what the people were saying about the situation. In this context, Patriarch Bartholomew and Patriarch Aleksy (who had had some difficulties talking to each other because of other matters), had two long, fruitful conversations with each other. They agreed that they are going to talk more with each other in order to try to bring a peaceful and God-directed resolution to the split in Ukraine.

This does not happen just because some bishops decide that this is how things will turn out. Things turned out 100 per-cent opposite to the expectations of most people. What fear-driven rumours I was hearing, even in Romania, for two weeks before I went to Kyiv ! There were plenty of fear-driven rumours about what might or might not happen. The rumours were all about catastrophe, and the sky was really going to fall. However, the God-loving people were praying. The saints of the Kyiv Caves Lavra were obviously also praying. These prayers produced the God-given solution to everything : brothers talking peacefully and with love together with each other, opening the doors for a Christian solution to the difficulties. The people’s prayers bore fruit. The prayers of the saints of the Lavra bore fruit.

Our prayers can bear fruit, also, if we, like they, turn to the Lord first, just as the Prophet Elias turned to the Lord first for everything, and truly only to the Lord. If we, like Saint Seraphim, turn only to the Lord, if we put our trust only in the Lord as these saints, and as the faithful of Ukraine have done, then the Lord will pour out great blessings. He will protect us. If we are abused by our brothers or sisters, then He will give us consolation in our hearts. So that our hearts will be healed, He will help us to pray for our brothers and sisters who are hurting us. Our prayers will help the woundedness of the brother or sister that is taking out that pain and anger on us. In other words, the Lord will resolve it all.

We must turn to Him. We must not delay turning to Him. As Saint Herman said about 200 years ago (he said it then, and he continues to say it now, and it is for us to follow) : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”, and in so doing, glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, once again, we see and hear our Lord proclaiming the Kingdom. While He is proclaiming the Kingdom, He is also revealing the Kingdom. He heals two blind men. He gives the ability to speak to a man who was unable to speak. He casts out devils in all places. He releases people from slavery to darkness. He heals wherever He goes. Our Saviour, Himself, is giving us the example of His love. Who is He ? He is Love incarnate. He is God’s love incarnate. He is God, Himself, who took on flesh, which was hard for people of those days to accept (just as it is hard for people to accept today).

Nevertheless, God emptied Himself because of His love for us. He became a human being, and He took all our brokenness and all our fallenness upon Himself so that He could reunite us to Himself, so that He could give us life, so that He could give us joy, and most importantly, eternal life in this Kingdom which He is today proclaiming. Our Saviour, wherever He is going, is always bringing joy, life, healing, health, order, correctness, and everything that is right. If there is something out of order with our own lives, or if there is something out of order with our society as a whole, then it has to do with our disconnection from Christ, either by ourselves, or as a society as a whole.

It is important for us Orthodox Christians to testify to the fact of the love of the Lord. We may notice how, in the case of these blind men being healed and the dumb man being given the gift of speech, in the first place, people immediately said that in all Israel they had never seen anything like this before. In the second place, the two blind men, who were told not to talk about it, talked about it very much. In fact, when people who are blind now suddenly see, it is very hard to hide that from the people who know them. Anyway, how could a person resist glorifying the Lord because of such a gift ? I do not think it was out-and-out disobedience on their part. It was simply the spontaneous outpouring of joy that comes with such an event in a person’s life. If I had been blind, for instance, and were given the gift of sight suddenly, how could I not express the joy, how could I not express the glory of the Lord under those circumstances ? This would be especially the case in a society like that where the only way a blind person could live would be by begging, because there was no sort of support available for people with disabilities in those days, and there also was no sort of training for helping people with disabilities to manage in society, as there is in our society. Therefore, people proclaimed everywhere the glory of God because of what they saw in the acts of Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Paul is telling us today that it is important that we bear each other’s burdens, that we work together in building up the Kingdom, that we take care of each other. He is saying this because our Lord, Himself, is showing us the example. If we are persons who are filled with the love and the joy of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, then we are going to be persons who instinctively do care about people who are around us. We do care about the welfare of people we encounter. We do care about our neighbour, as the Lord said in the commandments. The Shema, the summary of the commandments which our Lord, Himself, repeated to us in the Gospel, says that we should love God above everything, and that we should love our neighbour as ourself. We apply this love of God by being good to other people. Sometimes you cannot do things for someone else. We cannot always be such a helper in a practical way. However, being good to the other person, (whoever that is) accomplishes much. A person who prays for, and intercedes for the other can sometimes accomplish more than a practical act. It is really important that each one of us pay attention to intercessory prayer. I, myself, have seen so much fruit come from the intercessory prayers of faithful people one for the other. The Lord uses those loving, caring prayers. He accomplishes good in the lives of other people through our persevering in prayer.

Taking heart from the Lord, His promise, His love, His continual presence with us even to this day, let us ask the Lord to renew this love and refresh this love. Let us ask Him to enable us with all joy, hope, and confidence in Him to live our lives day by day, knowing that His love is always with us. He, Himself, is with us. By the Grace of the Holy Spirit, He is giving us Grace to do and to be what He has called us to do and to be in our lives. He calls us to be living examples of His love, so that in everything we may glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

One of the most important things in our Christian life is knowing who we really are. Knowing who we really are can often take most of our lives. It takes most of our lives, because knowing who we are depends on knowing who we are in Christ. We are all created by God. We are created by His love. He created us to live in a relationship of love with Him. Because of this relationship of love, and because of how distracted we are as human beings, it takes time to know who we really are.

Most people these days seem to think only of themselves. Because we are so surrounded by technology and various sorts of other advantages, we are falling into the temptation of thinking that we can do everything ourselves. We have a strong tendency to forget that we need the Lord. I would say that human beings have always been guilty of this ; but especially in our day, we seem to turn to the Lord only when we are in serious trouble. Because our relationship with the Lord is so broken, so distorted as this, we are taking an extra long time to discern who we really are in the Lord. Because we are living in such a technological time, we are tending to treat God as if He were simply a quick cure for our problems.

I remember reading a book some years ago by Christos Yannaras (and another time having a conversation with him), in which he is insisting that in the whole of human history, our day is the most difficult time to be a Christian. He says that because of so much convenience-technology, we are accustomed to having everything instantly. Nowadays, we do not have to do anything to have light in the house : we simply flip a switch, and instantly there is light. Sometimes there are automatic motion-sensors that do the job for us, so we do not even have to bother with a switch. We do not have to do anything much to cook our food except to turn a switch, and heat comes. For people who have the extra money, we have microwave ovens which cook things ten times as fast as a regular oven could cook them. If we are going to travel anywhere, we just turn a switch ; the car starts, and we go. We do this all on our own. I have to say, though, that Romania has an advantage : in Romania there still are horses actively on the roads. Those people who use these horses for daily life and work have to have a relationship with these horses in order to live. If people have to have this relationship with horses, they have an advantage because they have to do something in order to look after this animal, so that the animal will be able to help them. The animals must be fed and watered, groomed and sheltered. They require personal attention. What do we do with a car ? Do we not simply put in a little gas, and once in a while some oil ? Then it runs. We do not have to think, and we expend little effort. However, because of this, we are losing our balance. We human beings are all turned in on ourselves.

Today, we have heard the Gospel reading about the two demoniacs. The two men today came to be possessed by the devil because they were turning in on themselves. They allowed themselves to be overcome by lies because, of course, the devil is the father of lies (see John 8:44). They became paralysed by fear as well. In this condition, they became very angry and violent persons. Everyone was afraid of them. When the Lord comes into their presence, immediately, as He always does, He sets them free. He sets them free in His love. He sets you and me free in His love.

That is why it is important for us to remember this lesson of love. If we want to be free human beings, we can be free only in His love. If we want to be whole human beings, we can be whole only in His love. If we want to be alive human beings, we can be alive only in His love.

Today, we are celebrating the memory of the holy Prophet Elias. Since my childhood, the holy Prophet has been one of my favourite persons. I suppose that is because he is such a strong person. I was really impressed by his strength of character when I was little. He could stand up to a king who was weak. He could stand up to the king’s wife, Jezebel, who was an idol-worshipper, and who was rejecting God. She was trying to get rid of the worship of the true God altogether. What she wanted to worship was precisely these devils. She would not and did not understand anything about the truth in the Lord, so she was in as bad a condition as these two men whom the Saviour encountered amongst the Gadarenes today.

The Prophet Elias demonstrated who is who by overcoming those priests of the idols. This also from my childhood is one of my favourite memories. I could remember how it was that the priests of Baal and the Prophet Elias had agreed that, without lighting the fire themselves, whichever god would send down fire from heaven to consume the sacrifice would be accepted to be the real God. The priests of the idols first prepare a sacrifice with wood and animals. Then they jump and dance about, making all sorts of noise as they try to get the gods to send fire. They continue to do this for a long time until they finally become very tired. The Prophet Elias makes fun of them, and says, as it were : “Well, maybe your gods are asleep, or they are taking a walk, or they are doing something else. Perhaps you have to shout louder to catch their attention”. When they finally admit that they can see that they are not going to get anything from their god or gods, then the Prophet Elias asks people to pour plenty of water onto his altar, which had been dedicated to the one, true, and only God. Thus, they pour all this water over the sacrifice and the alter three times, so that everything is drenched and soaking on the altar. Not only are the altar and sacrifice wet, but everything round about the altar is also wet. Now, the Prophet Elias simply prays, and the fire comes. It consumes all the sacrifice, all the wood, and it evaporates all the water. The text actually says that the fire licks up the water. Now, seeing this, the people agree that God is God, and that all those idols, all those baals, are not God (see 3 Kingdoms 18:23-39).

However, the king’s very obstinate wife rejects all this. She threatens to kill the Prophet Elias. Now, at the same time that all this was happening, there had been a drought for a long time. Therefore, the Prophet Elias prays for rain at the right time, and the rain comes in a large quantity (see 3 Kingdoms 18:1, 41-45). Despite the resistance of the queen, Jezebel, in many ways the Prophet Elias is proving to the king and to the people that there is but one, true God. He is the Creator of everything.

When the Lord, through the Prophet, is blessing the land through the down-pour of rain, He is showing us an important lesson. When we are living our lives, for bad or for good, we are affecting other people round about, and we are affecting creation also. All this drought came about because the people had fallen into the trap of believing they could take shortcuts with these idols. Let us not forget that those idols are masks for evil spirits that woo everyone by fear. Because the people, along with their king and their queen had turned their backs on God, they had turned their backs on God’s blessing. How God’s blessing was rejected is shown by how it stopped raining. The people, in turning away from God, had turned away from His blessing.

It is important for us in this twenty-first century to remember this lesson, because if we treat all the things that we have as our own, and not as gifts that God is providing that must be used for His glory, then we, too, are going to be like those people at the time of the Prophet Elias. The blessing from God will dry up because God does not force Himself upon us. God in His love is always waiting for us. However, God does not grab hold of us by the neck and shake us. He does not force us. He waits. Therefore, if in our lives the blessing seems to be drying up, then it is important for us to ask ourselves : “What have I done wrong ?” “In what way have I turned my back on the Lord ?”

Going back to the Prophet Elias, the very obstinate, stubborn Queen Jezebel, who is full of hatred, is trying to pursue him ; but with God’s help he escapes to Mount Horeb (Mount Sinai). There, he complains to God that he is certain that he is the only prophet remaining, and perhaps the only one left who is faithful. However, the Lord says to him (to paraphrase) : “It is bad, but it is not as bad as you think it is, because there are still 7,000 people in Israel who did not bow the knee to the idols” (see 3 Kingdoms 19:10-18). The Lord sent the Prophet Elias back to the people of Israel, so that he would be an encouragement to those who were faithful, and so that he would remember that there are other people besides himself, who are still faithful. By supporting each other in their prayers, and in their faithfulness, as they co-operated with the Lord, they would turn things about for the Lord.

In our particular day, there are very many difficulties facing especially Orthodox Christians. One of these difficulties, apart from secularism, is that we are tending somehow to let small things separate us. Sometimes it is language ; sometimes it is some sort of customs ; sometimes it is government. There are many, many things that are possible sources for these divisions. Sometimes we are falling into the trap of believing that we are separated, and that somehow we are alone. There is very often a tendency to feel like the Prophet Elias. We are surrounded by all these other people and other things, and we think we are somehow small and alone. It is important for us to turn to the Lord, and remember that just as in the days of the Prophet Elias, we are not alone.

In North America, we have all sorts of problems with secularism and division. These problems are much greater there than they are here in Romania. Because people allow themselves to be separated from each other, Orthodox believers in North America begin to think that they are very small in numbers. The Greeks are more or less living to themselves ; they tend not to connect very much with other Orthodox Christians. The same situation is approximately the case with everyone else : Serbs, Antiochians, Romanians (to an extent), Russians, Ukrainians. There is a tendency to keep to people of one’s own language and customs. Each group, by itself, is not very large. However, the fact is, in North America, there are several million Orthodox Christians. Compared to the population of all North America, it is still small, but it is not such a small number – a few million people is not a small number. Perhaps, all together, we could begin to amount to a Bucharest.

The rest of us everywhere else in the world have to be careful to remember that there is only one Lord, Jesus Christ. There is only one Orthodox Church. The Lord has shown His love for us, His creatures, by spreading His love to all sorts of different languages and cultures. Our responsibility is not to continue the sin of the tower of Babel but instead, in the love of Jesus Christ, through the Grace of the Holy Spirit, to continue the blessing of Pentecost. Even though our one Faith is expressed in many languages and in many cultures, we are all united in the one Jesus Christ, in the one Orthodox Church, the one and the same Orthodox Faith, the one and the same love of Jesus Christ. He, alone, is our Hope. He, alone, is our Strength. He, alone, is the one Truth. He, alone, is the one Way.

It is important for us to give thanks to Him for His love, to give thanks to Him for everything, and to turn to Him in everything for help. If we do this, the Lord’s love will grow in us. The Lord’s love will increase in other people as well. The Lord will multiply us. The Orthodox Church in the whole world is not shrinking. It is, in fact, growing very fast. We have to have the eyes of the love of Jesus Christ to be able to see it.

Here I am, from North America, not at all a Romanian. However, I am an Orthodox Christian. Even if I am not Romanian, I feel that I might as well be because of how the love of Orthodox Christians in Romania receives me. You Romanian Orthodox Christians are showing exactly by your lives, by your love, how people are supposed to be in Christ. If you continue living in this sort of love, expressing this sort of love, you will become quickly spiritual adults. You will know who you truly are, because you know who you are in Christ.

Therefore, let us follow the words of one North American saint whom I like to quote very often because his words concisely express what is the Christian life. This is Saint Herman of Alaska, and he says to us : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”. All together, let us glorify our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

This morning the Apostle Peter is making an important point for us as he says : “We did not follow cunningly devised fables”. Instead, they lived in the truth of the response to the personal encounter with Him who is the Truth. The Apostle Peter is recounting again the Events of the Mount of Transfiguration which we are celebrating today, and about which we heard in the Gospel reading for the feast.

We human beings are very much interested in systems and control. You could say that human beings are, to use a colloquial expression, “control-freaks”. We cannot somehow accept that the Lord should be in charge of everything. We tend to want to run everything ourselves. We want to control things. We want to have things under our thumb. We want to know what is going to happen next and next and next. We want to know months ahead exactly what is going to happen. We try to plan everything out. Of course, I have been taught and I am always saying that there is nothing the matter with planning.

However, it is important to make sure that the Lord is in charge of the plan. If we are making plans, we allow the Lord to adjust them. Hence comes that famous English expression (which seems to be expressed somehow in every other language, too) : “Man is proposing, but God is disposing”. The Lord is always adjusting things according to what is right, especially for us who are trying to live a life which is reflecting this experience. Throughout the whole world, this experience of the one Lord, Jesus Christ, is common to Christians. It is He who “is the same yesterday, today, and unto the ages” (Hebrews 13:8). We are handing down, and living out as Orthodox Christians not a system (although our lives do have a system). We are passing on our common, personal experience of the living God.

Today, in the midst of the experience of the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, the Apostle Peter is saying (as it were) : “Let us just keep it like this. It is so wonderful. Let us build some booths here and stay here, and always be like this in the presence of the Lord”. This is not because of the shining light and the cloud, and so forth. The intensity of the experience of joy and love produces this sense of not wanting to let go of this moment when we are in the presence of the Lord.

I think we, also, ourselves, have experience of such moments in our lives. There have been many Divine Liturgies in which I have participated that have been electric with the love of the Lord. I really strongly wished that each of those Liturgies could have continued like that without coming to an end because it was so beautiful. However, each Liturgy inexorably went on to its end (as it must), just as the moment of the Transfiguration came to its end, as was necessary. The Lord, in His encountering us in His love, does not let us simply sit there and be stagnant in the experience. The experience, the encounter, has to bear fruit. Just as He, Himself, on the Mount of the Transfiguration, immediately descended and began healing people, the same thing happens with you and me. This encounter with the Lord (which we would like to stay the same) cannot be static. This dynamic encouter must go and bear fruit. We have to go and share this encounter with our Saviour, this loving relationship with our Saviour, and give joy and this sense of peace and hope to those around us in the same way as the apostles have been doing.

The Apostle Peter suggested that he would be praying for us, as well as for everyone else, because why else would he assure us that there would be reminders, which are the fruit of his loving prayers. Let us read his words again, and see what he says : “I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things [...] I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my decease”. I think we get plenty of reminders to this day that it is the Lord who is in charge. The joy is real. Our encounter is real. Our mutual encounter is real because for 2,000 years we have been inheriting the same experience of the same Lord, Jesus Christ. Through parents, through friends, through relatives, through whomever it is the Lord sends to us, He does come to us. He meets us. We know Him, and our hearts resonate together, all with the same experience. It is the same Lord, the same joy, the same peace, the same hope, the same goodness, the same loving Person with whom we wish always to be. I suppose, and I hope that there will come a time later on for all of us when that moment, that sense of being in the Lord’s presence can become a real, unending possibility (I mean at the end of our lives). God willing, we will be able to enter into His Kingdom,

When I start talking about the Lord in this particular way, it is difficult to stop talking about it. Let us simply end with the words of Saint Herman, which are the fundamental words by which we all ought to live. He says : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”, glorifying the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

On this day we are celebrating the Feast of the Mother of God, and this particular icon, the Mother of God, the Joy of All Canada. It is important for us on this day, and on all days especially when we are remembering the Mother of God to understand that she is our example of the Church. She is the example of how a Christian is supposed to live. When the Saviour has said earlier during the time of the Gospel reading that the one who is His Mother or brother or sister or a member of His family is the one who does the will of God or hears the Word of God, and keeps it, He was exactly talking about His Mother.

He is also talking about you and me. If we are going to be Christians, if we are going to be pleasing to the Lord, and if we are going to be hoping to have life in the Kingdom with Him, then our life has to be about hearing the Word of God, and keeping it. That does not mean holding on to it tightly. It means doing something with it. It means doing something about it, living our lives in accordance with the Gospel. It means forming our lives after the love, and the service of our Saviour, forming our lives under the protection of the Mother of God, who is our perfect example.

The Lord calls you and me to be like Him so that we can really become our true selves. We can only be our real selves when we are in harmony with Him, when our lives are completely found in Him, and our lives are completely lived in Him. Then we are our true selves. When we are going some other way, we are a caricature of ourselves. We are a shadow of ourselves. We are distorted, and we are dark. The only way we can be alive and bright is to be in Christ, and to be following the example of the life of the Mother of God.

Brothers and sisters, let us ask the Mother of God to intercede for us, to pray for us, to protect us under her veil, to meet us in her love for her Son, and to encourage us on our path following her Son. May our lives be pleasing to Him, and to her, therefore, and under her protection may our lives become fruitful like hers, strong like hers, joyful like hers, peaceful like hers, and in every way glorifying the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The Apostle Paul is saying this morning that we are God’s building, and that everything we are doing in our lives has to be built in Christ, built of Christ, and exist only in Christ. He says to us, in effect, that this is the only thing that really matters. He says that anything else that we are going to build, however we are going to build, is going to be tried “on that Day”. “That Day” always means the Day of Judgement. It is going to be tried with fire. It is going to be tested. It is going to be weighed. It is going to be weighed in the context not of what sort of experts we are, and how accomplished we are technologically or intellectually. It is going to be measured by our love for Him, our faithfulness to Him.

That is why it is important for us to remember the events of the Gospel today. We see our Saviour first having been alone in the hills by Himself because He had just been feeding thousands of people and looking after them. He had to retreat, to take a rest, to be at peace in the Father, and then to carry on. In the meantime, the apostles are out on the Sea of Galilee in their boat which is already being beaten by the waves. This happens all the time on the Sea of Galilee. It is a very common experience there because the winds come up very suddenly. The boat is being beaten by the waves and the apostles are afraid. They fear that they are going to sink (as they feared more than once on that sea, as we have heard elsewhere). Our Saviour comes to them, as He walks on the water in the middle of the night. The fourth watch of the night is already the darkest part of the night. They are afraid and they think that He is a ghost. But of course, He is not. When Peter sees that it is our Lord, he says : “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water”. Thus, it happens. However, in coming to the Lord and walking on the water, he notices what is happening around him, with the waves and the wind.

This is how we are, ourselves, so much of the time in our lives. Our lives are dedicated to Him. We want to have our focus on our Saviour ; but the trouble is that we let our mind take over. The mind starts to race, instead of letting the heart be in charge. The mind starts to say : “Oh ! Look at the big waves ; and there is such a big wind – what is going to happen to me ? I am standing on water : how can I possibly be standing on water ?” These are the sorts of things that are probably going through the apostle’s mind. That is what would go through my mind. The Apostle Peter, as we have seen, is very much like us with his weaknesses and fears. Still, the Lord makes up for those weaknesses and fears, over and over again. That is important for you and me to remember, too. All these thoughts are racing through his mind. His focus veers off the Lord, and on to the turmoil round about him. This is when he begins to sink down. However, he is quick enough to know what is what. Immediately, he cries out : “Lord, save me”. Immediately, our Lord takes his hand, and up comes, standing up again on the water.

It is important for us to remember this as well, because most often, in the course of our lives, when we are having difficulty and we are facing obstacles, our tendency is to engineer things ourselves. We are formed in our fallen world (and especially in the West) to do it this way. We will likely say : “There is something the matter, and I am going to fix it”. “I only go to Him and bother Him when I am absolutely desperate”. We keep the Lord definitely on the back burner. Why do we do this ? We do it because of our pride. First, we think that we can do it ourselves. The second thing is that in the western formation in the middle of which we live, there is a tendency to think that if we believe that God created the universe (because there are many of us who do not), we think of Him as having accomplished the creation, and “put it on a shelf” (so to speak). We think that He is sitting there reading a newspaper or some interesting book. Everything is going on and on by itself ; we are responsible for ourselves, and He is not particularly interested. This is the absolute opposite of what is really the truth, and what is revealed to us in the Scriptures. The Lord is not disinterested. He is involved in everything that we are and do. He wants you and me to be constantly involved with Him, referring everything to Him so that it can grow well, so that what we are building will be precious and long-lasting. It will be so because it is accomplished in, and with Him.

We should not be asking the Lord to save us at the last minute when we are almost under the water, as the Apostle Peter did today. Indeed, even before we begin to sink, and at all times, we should be saying : “Lord, help me”. “Lord, save me”. “Lord, be with me in this, and be with me in that”. “Bless what I am doing ; show me how to do it right”. Human beings who have done the greatest things in history are people who have had that sort of focus. I am not talking about building pyramids, although that is a big enough feat. I am talking about the mighty works of love. People have been healed from diseases. People have even been raised from the dead. These are much greater things, far greater things than building pyramids, skyscrapers, and architectural monuments, grand as they may be. (This is not to suggest that I am discounting architectural monuments.) However, everything is at its best when it is built in co-operation with the Lord, when we are referring everything to the Lord.

You and I face difficulties in our lives as well. Troubles afflict us. Obstacles impede us. Turmoils are sometimes our environment. How do we live in the middle of all these difficulties and the perturbations of our lives ? How do we get through it unless we turn to the Lord in the middle of it and ask Him to be with us, to help us and to save us. When the Apostle Peter did this, our Lord took his hand and raised him up. They went to the boat together, got into the boat, and immediately the storm stopped. As a rule, storms on seas do not suddenly stop. They progressively calm down ; in some hours, the waters settle down. However, the wind immediately ceased. Then the water settled, and immediately the sea was calm. Immediately the apostles confessed Who is Jesus Christ – the Son of God. Our Lord is ready to calm the waters of our lives in the same way that He calmed the waters of Galilee on this day. He is ready to calm our hearts and focus our hearts, and keep us on the right path, as He does today with the Apostle Peter.

The Lord is ready to help you and me together to build whatever we are building in this life to His glory, things that will last truly because they are built in love, and in the hearts of human beings. Let us ask the Lord to give us the Grace to take up His offer constantly, and, following the words of the holy Elder Herman of Alaska, let us “from this day, from this hour, from this minute, love God above all, and do His holy will”, and glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

We will generally discover while we are passing through life, as we gain experience in life, that things are generally not exactly as they appear to be. That is especially the case with people. The difficulty for us is that, when we pay too much attention to the fact that appearances can be deceiving, it then seems to us that our experience is in fact most often negative. By this, I mean that people will often present themselves to be very good ; but after a time, we find out details of their lives which are not so good. Perhaps the details are even rather bad. On the one hand, the difficulty lies in how people are presenting themselves. On the other hand, the difficulty lies in how we respond to the presentation and to the details which reveal variances from the presentation.

Human beings, being sensitive creatures and easily hurt, very quickly begin to assume that just because things (and especially human beings) are not as they appear, then inevitably the hidden part is not so good. This is not by any means always the case. There are many times in my life when I have encountered people who, at first appearance, I thought were sort of “questionable”, or strange. Then, after I got to know them, I found out that I was completely “out to lunch” in my assessment. In fact, these people were actually rather good people, and very faithful, God-loving and stable people. Of course, when it comes down to how other people assess us, we Orthodox people often find ourselves being in this category of strange people. Why is this the case ?

This is the case because Orthodox people, by their way of life, try to take seriously the Gospel. They try to live in accordance with the principles of the love of Jesus Christ. They try to be hospitable. Now, of course, concerning this, I have to tell you an anecdote from my recent visit to Romania. I was taught by some Romanian monks last month that there is such a thing as “Orthodox terrorism”. It may not be immediately clear what this “terrorism” is, so I will say what it is. The “terrorism” is the table. It is hospitality. When I told this story to a Lebanese bishop at a meeting in Kyiv following my visit to Romania, he responded : “Yes, that is very much so ; in Arabic there is a saying that there is a love that kills. We ‘terrorise’ each other with love, food, hospitality and kindness. It is not so bad as all that” (although sometimes it can be rather bad for the blood pressure and for excess baggage).

We are a little strange in the eyes of people in the world (and sometimes quite strange) because the way we react to situations and people is not always the way of the world. If it is not the way of the world, I, as a bishop would say : “Glory to God”. The way of the world is the way of fallenness ; it is the way of darkness, and in the end, it is the way of death. The way of Christ, the way of the Gospel is the way of light. It is the way of life. It is the way of joy. It is the way of peace. We should not really fit into the way of the world. It would be a nice surprise for people when they find out that even though we might be odd, we Orthodox Christians are not so bad, after all. I think that actually, we all have concrete experience of this, especially in today’s Feast of the Transfiguration of Christ.

People had all sorts of ideas about Who is Christ. They had all sorts of expectations (especially those who thought that He was the Messiah). Of course, they were right. He is the Messiah. However, they thought that He was going to establish a political kingdom. They thought that He was going to overthrow those nasty Romans that were oppressing them. He was going to make Judaism the religion of the whole world. Everything was going to be cleaned up — just like that. People expected that it would all be done by force, because they were translating their expectations into worldly ways, based on their previous experience. How do earthly kings act except with violence and oppression ? No matter what their good intentions are, worldly kings end up always wielding violence. It is a sad thing.

Nevertheless, the people had to understand Who is this Christ, and what the implications are about our life and all creation because of Who He is. Ultimately, the only way that they were going to understand was through the witness of the apostles, just as the Apostle Peter says today : “We were eyewitnesses of His majesty”. He, himself, and the Apostles James and John were eyewitnesses of these Events on Mount Tabor. What were these Events ? We just participated in them with those three apostles. Our Saviour stands on the top of the mountain and He allows the three apostles to see Who He is. He shines with the brightness of the sun. We get an idea of why it is that Moses, when he encountered the Lord, was shining so brightly that he had to put a veil over himself when he came down from Mount Sinai after receiving the Law. He was shining so brightly with the uncreated light of the Grace of God that people could not bear to look at him.

Thus it was that on Mount Tabor today, the apostles, encountering that same light, fell on their faces because they could not bear the intensity of it. Standing with them in the presence of Christ, were (appropriately) the Prophet Moses and the Prophet Elias, and they were speaking with each other. We hear once again the Lord’s voice coming from heaven, the voice of God, the Father, saying : “This is My beloved Son”. We have heard this previously during the Baptism of Christ in January. Standing there on the top of the mountain, our Lord reveals Who He is. He and the apostles then go down from this mountain, and they immediately apply that experience of the love of God to people who are in need. This is always the way of Christ. When we encounter the Lord in His love, He always sends us to share it.

This has been the experience of hermits in our Church for the past 2,000 years. Saint Anthony the Great in Egypt, the first great hermit that we know of, and that is written about, withdrew into the desert. He encountered the Lord and was filled with the love of the Lord. What happened ? All sorts of people came to live with him so that they could encounter the same love, and encounter the same Lord, and grow up into Christ as he had been doing. What did he do ? He tried to run away, but it did not do any good. The same thing happens with saint after saint in our history. They go off by themselves, and they hide by themselves as best they can to be with the Lord. The Lord comes to them, fills them with His love, and then He says, as it were : “All right, share it”. He sends person after person to them so that they can be His hands and His feet and His mouth to help the one in need.

This has always been the way of our Saviour. His love must act. The greatest and the most famous of the more recent saints is Saint Seraphim of Sarov, who had precisely the same experience. There are also the saints of Optina Monastery, and others. It goes on and on, saint after saint. They were filled with the love of God, and the Lord sent people to them. I still remember the stories of saints who thought they would get away from people by living in trees (thus, they were called “dendrites”). Sometimes, they lived on the top of a column or a column-like structure. They built themselves little platforms on the top of columns so people could not get close to them. They lived there on the top of these columns, and so they were called “stylites”. What happened to them ? It did not matter if they lived in a tree or on a column : people came to them, and stood at the bottom, and said : “Help us !” “Pray for us !” Because of love, the saints had to pray for them and help them.

When we are filled with the love of the Lord, the same thing happens to us as happened to them. Always the people who are in need of the fruits of this love come to you and to me, and they say something like : “Help. You know Jesus Christ. You have encountered Jesus Christ. Help me with this love. Pray for me. Bring the Grace of the Lord to me. Help me”. That is what they are saying to you and to me, Orthodox Christians, who also have encountered, along with those three apostles on Mount Tabor, the Grace of the Holy Spirit and the love of Jesus Christ. We are going to receive Him very soon, and this little baby waiting for the baptism to be completed is going to receive the Body and Blood of Christ, too, very soon. The Grace of the Holy Spirit is coming to us in the sacraments, and particularly in Holy Communion. We will then, having received this Grace and the refreshment of this love, be expected to reassure, help and strengthen each other. With our neighbours and friends, we will pray for each other, give each other hope, give each other strength, share our joy and our peace which we, along with the apostles, have received.

Let me conclude with this last little anecdote. Some people will likely remember Archbishop Nikolai (Shkrumko) of the Patriarchal Jurisdiction who was bishop in this area a long time ago. When I was visiting him one time, he told me how it was when he was an archimandrite in the Middle East a very long time ago. In those days, he always had to go to Mount Tabor to serve the Liturgy on this feast-day. Always on the Feast of the Transfiguration, at night-time, at the time of the vigil (which would have been last night for us), there are clouds already gathering around the top of Mount Tabor. (At this time of year in Palestine there are no clouds at all – just sun, sun, sun.) The people go into the church on the top of Mount Tabor, and they are praying in the middle of the night. During this time, this cloud, which is not exactly like ordinary clouds (they say it has a different quality of some sort), comes down on top of the mountain. Archbishop Nikolai says that instead of bringing all their fruit into the church, the people leave it outside. The cloud comes down, and when they come out of the church in the early morning, everything is all wet. The people understand that God, Himself, has blessed their fruit. Indeed, there are also reports that one can actually feel the special texture of the clouds that thus descend on the mountain. This happens every year. I heard about this from someone who just came back from Mount Tabor (who was there on the new calendar date). In fact, this phenomenon is happening on both the old and new calendar dates. The Lord does not seem to care too much about on which calendar the feast is observed. Rather, He cares about us, and He constantly reassures us with His love. He does many things such as this. For instance, there is the Holy Fire that comes every year at Pascha in Jerusalem. The Lord does these things in order to reassure us, to encourage us, to give us strength and determination to carry on, knowing that He is with us.

Perhaps you and I will never be on Mount Tabor on this feast. However, we know those who have had the blessing to be there, and we know that the words of today’s Gospel are true. What happened then continues to happen now. The Lord is with us. That is the point. The Lord loves us. He is ready to renew us, and to transform us. Let us do our best to follow the words of Saint Herman of Alaska, who says to us : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”, and in so doing, glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, once again, we are with our Lord ; and today, He is healing a child from demon-possession (even though it is called epilepsy). In this particular case, there were signs of epilepsy, but, in fact, it is demon-possession. We also see how the apostles admit that they cannot cast out this demon, and they ask our Lord why this is the case. He says, of course : “'Because of your unbelief'”. However, our Saviour also adds : “'This kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting'”.

The Lord, in His love, is always bringing light, life and healing wherever He goes. The apostles understand this, and they want to participate in this, obviously, but at the same time, they are still burdened down by misconceptions and misunderstandings. Thus, they seem to think that there is a technique to this exorcism. They had already tried to apply some sort of technique in casting out the demon. In other words, they “barked up the wrong tree”. It is easy for us to “bark up the wrong tree”, too, if we fall into the temptation of thinking that when our Lord says : “'This kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting'”, we will be able to do it also, if we apply certain techniques of prayer and fasting. However, prayer and fasting is not a technique.

Prayer and fasting is, rather, a way of life which enables being in deeper and greater harmony in love with the Lord so as to know His will. Then we would be able to cast out the demon. To be in harmony with the love of the Lord brings the irresistible light and love of the Lord to bear. It is not I or any apostle who is casting out any demon. It is the Lord who is doing this work. Not you, not me, not the apostles : it is the Lord who is doing this work through the apostles, and sometimes through us. However, it only happens when we have prayed, fasted, and are in harmony with the Lord. We do not pray and fast for the purpose of obtaining a special state of whatever, or some sort of power to get rid of demons. It is never, never that. When we play with power, we are playing in the devil’s playground, itself. It is the Lord’s way we have to follow, instead.

Today, the Apostle Paul is telling us about the sorts of things that can arise as a result of praying and fasting and being in harmony with the Lord. He also shares with us what sort of treatment he is getting as a teacher and as an apostle. He receives rejection, beatings, imprisonment, and almost every other sort of persecution. He is considered by some people to be completely “cuckoo”. He says to the Corinthians that he is a fool for the sake of Christ. What do we mean by saying that someone is a fool ? Usually, we mean someone who is “cuckoo”.

This is just what people thought about Saint Xenia of Saint Petersburg when she was dressing up in her husband’s military uniform after he died. This was 200 years ago, and, at that time, women did not walk around in men’s clothes (let alone a military uniform). Obviously, people thought that her “elevator had stopped going to the top floor”. However, that was not at all the case. She was doing it because of love. She was doing it because her husband had been such a drunkard, and she wanted to pray him into the Kingdom. She wore his uniform, and did all those other strange things because of her desire to be pleasing to the Lord, and to bring her fallen husband into the Kingdom. In fact, if we go today to Saint Petersburg, and we go to the Smolensk Cemetery, we will see there a really beautiful nineteenth century church, all dark blue. That church was, in fact, partly built by Saint Xenia. In the night-time during the course of its construction, Saint Xenia was secretly putting all the bricks in place for the bricklayers, so that in the morning they would face no delay in constructing the church. Saint Xenia had already put all the bricks in place on the scaffolds ahead of time, and they were able to get to work immediately. It took them a long time before they found out who did it. There is more than one face to being foolish. I will go so far as to say that probably the builders understood Saint Xenia, but the aristocracy of Saint Petersburg did not.

To return to the Apostle Paul, he was sometimes treated as though he were crazy. There is another important lesson for us all to be remembering in this, because in our culture we are so ready to judge the person by the clothes. It is by external appearances that we have the reputation of measuring people (hence the cautionary saying : “Do not judge a book by its cover”). It is important for us to remember that things very often are not as they appear. People who seem to be insignificant sorts of personalities (even ineffective personalities) are often those persons who are the best pray-ers. They are very well hidden, but they are the best at praying. They are the ones, who, in their hiddenness, are interceding on our behalf, and bringing light and life from the Lord to us. We should be very careful in measuring human beings not to measure by appearances, because it is the Lord who knows the heart. Saint Xenia and the Apostle Paul are good enough examples of this for us.

In today’s Epistle, the Apostle Paul continues, saying that we have many instructors, but we do not have many fathers. This is yet another important lesson for us to remember today. We are so system-minded in our formation here and now, that we often forget to pay attention to personal relationships. As I was complaining on the way here this morning, we are very much suffering from the negative and poisonous event of a little over 1000 years ago in the West when theology stopped being the mother of all learning and study, and it was put into second or even a lower place, below the now primary position of philosophy. Therefore, instead of theology, it has been philosophy which has been driving us in the West ever since. Because of the fundamental nature of this philosophy, we are now system-minded, and our approach towards the Lord is often system-minded, instead of being personal-relationship-minded. It is from this system-mindedness that we have the strange phenomenon in television and radio evangelical outreach. Such programmes are presented by people who are misleading other people by letting them think that we can have a certain sort of technique of prayer, or a certain technique of approaching God, by which we can get anything we want from Him. I like to say very often that people are being taught wrongly that if we learn how to milk the “cosmic cow” correctly, we can get the milk in the quantity and quality we want. Of course, anyone who has milked a cow knows that a person has to know how to milk the cow correctly, or no milk comes. It is the same thing with goats, I know, and with sheep, I am sure.

However, our relationship with God has nothing to do with technique. It has all to do with the relationship of love (“God is love” (1 John 4:16)). In this relationship of love, we know God’s love, and His will. Our hearts know His will ; and in our hearts, knowing His will, we have the hope and the possibility to be doing His will. The Apostle Paul says that he wants to be (and considers himself to be) a father to all the Corinthians — and not just the Corinthians, but all the people to whom he brought Christ. He is their father. You and I are mothers and fathers to each other in Christ in the same way. We do not show the way in terms of techniques and systems. Merely learning a set of rules and doing things in a certain prescribed manner does not ipso facto make us to be Orthodox Christians. If we are like this, we are merely robots. Rather, it must be because of the fruit of love that we follow such ways of living or of doing things. These ways of living are clearly expressions and implementations of the Gospel in our life. If we live in this way, then we might possibly be considered to be good Orthodox Christians.

Orthodox Christians, in all their different cultures, live as they live, and do what they do, because of the baptism by the Gospel of their lives and their way of life. That is one main reason why there is so much similarity amongst all the Orthodox cultures. Certainly, we speak different languages, we eat different food, and we dance in different ways. There is a slightly different flavour in the way we sing in church, but that is about all. When we go to one Orthodox church or another (whether this be in our own diocese or not, our own country or not), we do not absolutely need a service-book. Sooner or later, we find that we know exactly where we are in the Divine Liturgy (or in any other service), and we simply “fall in”, understanding the language or not. There is a famous story about a Russian lady who went one time to Greece on a pilgrimage, and she was often in church. When she came back, people were asking her how were the services there. She said : “Well, it was about like how it is here. It was very nice, and I felt very much at home, but the whole service was in Greek except, of course, ‘Eis polla eti despota’”. The joke, itself, is an expression of how things really are. The same thing has happened to me, even when I went to Georgia where the language is so different that our ears cannot get any hooks on which to hang any words. However, I could still know where I was in the Divine Liturgy. The singing is really very different there, but one can still discern the progress of the Divine Liturgy. The Divine Liturgy proceeds just as it does everywhere. Our Faith is the same. Our attitudes are the same.

Our Lord, when He is healing the epileptic, is responding in compassion to the entreaty of the father. He is responding in compassion to the captivity from which that little boy had been suffering. Our Saviour liberates the child. In the same way, out of compassion, He is liberating you and me, too, time after time. In the same way, He meets your needs and my needs time after time. The Lord, in His own way, is being like the father that He tells us about in the parable of the prodigal son (see Luke 15:11-32). The Apostle Paul is trying to be a father in the same sort of way, and he is speaking to us about this today.

It is important that we, in living our Christian lives, do our best to wean ourselves, by the Lord’s help, from all this system-thinking, and remember that, in Christ, everything in our life is based on relationships – human, personal relationships. In fact, bishops, who are usually presumed to be so high-and-mighty, have to be the opposite of high-and-mighty. I was thoroughly offended not long ago, when I was referred to as a “prelate”. I do not dare to consider myself to be in any way, shape, or form, a prince. A bishop who does consider himself to be a prince, is in extremely dangerous territory. A bishop, like Christ, has to be ready to wash the feet of others just as He said we must do. Bishops are the inheritors of the apostles. They must be washing feet. They must be serving. They must embody serving. If they do not manage to do it, they have repenting to do, because the way of Christ is self-sacrificing, loving service, caring for the other, feeding the flock, nurturing the sheep. Doing the best he can, like the apostles, the bishop must be a loving father, leading the family. If you refer to the bishop as shepherd, he must be leading the flock in Christ, to Christ, to the green pastures of everlasting life.

This is how we all must be towards each other. We must be loving fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters. We must be showing 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. Therefore, like the Apostle Peter, looking to Christ, may we be able to stand up on the turbulent waters of this life, and glorify Him in everything with joy, exalting Him, our Saviour, Jesus Christ, together with the unoriginate Father, and His all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

On this day we are celebrating the Falling Asleep of the Mother of God, and at the same time, the arrival from all the parts of the earth of the apostles (who were still alive), in order to participate in her burial. This is a significant occasion in many ways. It is not for nothing that the all apostles were brought back to Jerusalem for the burial of the Mother of God. They came back because of love. They came back out of obedience. They came back out of honour and respect.

It is important for us to remember this because there is more that happens to the Mother of God after her burial. We see on the icon of her burial that the Saviour has come to take her soul away with Him. The icon is showing this tiny child, all wrapped-up in white swaddling-bands that our Lord has in His arms. This tiny, wrapped child represents her soul, her spirit. He takes her away. When the apostles go to visit her grave afterwards, they find that the grave is empty. We are to understand from this that the Mother of God, of whom we have no bodily relics remaining, was taken into heaven right away. She is the first fruits of the Resurrection, one might say. It is true that, even today, we can still venerate some of her clothes. There is a belt left behind, and several other articles of her clothing (one of which I had the blessing to venerate when I was in Georgia a few years ago). These holy items are remaining, but there are no bodily relics left of her. This is a very significant detail, because even of most of the apostles there are some remaining bodily relics which we can venerate in certain places. That there are no bodily relics of the Mother of God underlines the fact that her body was taken away into heaven by the Lord.

The second thing to remember would be the words of the Gospel and the Epistle, of the feast, together with the hymns that we have been singing about the Mother of God, and about this feast. The Mother of God, herself, is not someone who came from nowhere. She came from a long line of people whom we know about. We know the ancestry of Joseph, too. We know where the Mother of God came from. We even know who her relatives are – for instance, Saint Elizabeth, and Saint John the Baptist. We also know from her own words in the Magnificat (the ninth Canticle of Matins) that she considered herself to be the lowliest of persons. In the course of her life, she was always very much in the background. She was always present, somehow, in the course of the labours of our Lord during the time of the three years of His ministry amongst us. In those years she was always there, too, in the background. Sometimes we hear that she is coming with His other relatives to speak to Him.

Our Lord responds : “'My mother and My brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it'” (Luke 8:21). However, His Mother is the prime example of hearing the Word of God and keeping it. By keeping it, I do not mean holding on to it tightly. I mean (and the Gospel means) keeping it by living it. This is further emphasised by our Lord. When the woman exclaims that the one who bore Him and who raised Him is blessed, He responds in effect that this is true, but He continues : “'More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it'”. Of course, these words refer directly to His mother.

The Mother of God, who gave our humanity to the Saviour in the Incarnation, considered herself to be the lowliest of the low. Humility and service are the way of the Orthodox Christian. The Mother of God, in the course of her life, is always showing us this example. She is the example to the whole Church. That is why her icon is always on the iconostasis : not only because of the Incarnation, but because of her being the example to us all of how to live the Christian life. She, in her humility, is exalted. She serves us, by interceding for us, just as her Son has always and is serving us. Her Son is always caring for us, and still, therefore, serving us and showing us the way, Himself.

Today, when our Lord is speaking to Martha, He is telling her that her difficulty is not that she is lacking love for Him, but that she lets herself be distracted by all the cares of serving, preparing meals, and so forth. She has lost sight of what comes first. Our priority is to hear our Saviour speak, as Mary, her sister, is doing. Our priority is, again, hearing our Saviour speak, and then acting on what we hear. I think, perhaps, that our Lord is saying to us all that there is always the time to do, to act ; but there is not always the moment to hear, and to listen. It is important for us to remember that, too. We have to take the time (just as we do on feast-days like this) to come together and to be in the Lord’s presence. There are always many other times to be doing things. However, when the time comes to hear the Lord, and be in His presence, this truly must come first for us. In doing so, we are following not only what our Lord says, not only the example of the Mother of God, but also the words of the Apostle.

The Apostle says to us that our responsibility is not to think too highly of ourselves, but rather to think of everyone else as being better than oneself (see Philippians 2:3). Our Lord, Himself, says that the one who is last will be first in the Kingdom. Those who are the least will be exalted to the highest (see Matthew 23:12 ; Mark 9:35 ). This has been the case with the Mother of God. As I have said, she has been almost invisible, even in the Scriptures. She is always there, but she is not talked about. Nevertheless, we see her. We get glimpses of her. She is always there, whether or not she is physically present. She is always faithful. She is present at the foot of the Cross when almost everyone else became frightened and ran away. Let us not forget this. She, and Saint Mary Magdalene, and the Apostle John, were the only ones there. Everyone else had became frightened, and they kept their distance.

The Mother of God is now exalted to the highest in the Kingdom. She is spoken of in our hymns as the General of the armies of the angels. Her intercession is extremely strong. I am going to give this following example, because this subject is now coming up from time to time. There was a book that I read a long time ago that was printed in 1907 during the time of the Russian Empire. This book talks about the death experience of a man who had led a dissolute life. He never went to church. The only recollection he had about being in church was when, as a little boy, he was there with his babushka. He had since then led a profligate life, unchurched, caring only about the world.

Then he caught pneumonia. Of course, in the days of 1907, not everyone by any means survived pneumonia, because this was long before antibiotics. In his case, he wrote that he was very, very sick. Then he suddenly noticed that he was outside himself, looking down, and the doctors were saying that there was no hope. He was definitely going, and he felt someone (he did not know what it was, but it was obviously an angel) take him by the arm and lift him up. Up they went into the darkness, and then they began to go towards this light. As they progressed towards this light, he also began to hear nasty, accusing voices, and he began to see horrible, dark, distorted figures. They were pointing at him, and accusing him of the misdeeds of his life. They were telling the angel that he had no right to take this person with him because he belonged to them because of his way of life. This man writes that he was absolutely terrified, and he did not know what to do.

Suddenly, there came to his mind (or rather to his heart) the prayer that his babushka had been saying, and that he had heard in church. That was all he remembered about church, or prayer, or anything. That prayer was : “Most holy Theotokos, save us”. So he began to say this prayer. As soon as he said it, a fog came around him. The more he said it, the thicker the fog became. This fog eventually muffled the clarity of the sound of those accusing voices, and then made them incomprehensible. He was progressing more and more, and finally there was no more sound of those voices, and no more anything. His fears subsided ; the cloud lifted, and he came close to the light. He felt very warm, and he felt very much love and joy. Suddenly, he head a voice saying : “Not ready”. Immediately he was turned back, and was taken back to his body. By this time, his body was in the morgue of the hospital. This was, of course, an Orthodox hospital in the days of the Empire. So, when he came to himself, there was a psalm-reader in the morgue who was reading the Psalms over the dead bodies of the people in the morgue. This is our Orthodox way.

He wrote that he came back to himself rather violently, and almost scared to death the psalm-reader. When he came back to himself like this, he also came back in complete repentance. He wrote this little pamphlet in order to let other people know what had happened to him, in the hope that someone who might read the pamphlet would also repent, and turn to the Lord. Then he talks about the joy of living the Christian life. His life was completely turned about. His life was turned about at the prayers of his babushka. He was turned about because when he said this prayer, the Mother of God immediately protected him. There is much more anecdotal evidence that others have similarly called for help, and it came from her immediately. She is the one who is strong enough, by her prayers and her authority, to scatter the demons because of her harmony in love with her Son. She brings to bear the love of her Son on everything. She is the one who inspired him to turn his life about to Christ, and to follow Christ.

As we see in most of the icons, the Mother of God is constantly showing us her Son. Our lives, likewise, always have to show Christ. Our love for our Saviour should be such that in everything that we are doing, in everything that we are, we are showing Who is Christ. Let us ask the Mother of God to pray for us more and more so that we will have the strength to serve her Son with the same love, and to imitate her obedience and her humility. Let us ask her to protect us so that we will not lose sight of her Son, nor lose sight of our purpose in this life, nor lose sight of our way of serving : first hearing the Word of the Lord, and then living it out. As we know very well, Saint Herman of Alaska summarises those very words of our Lord when he exhorts us : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”. In the very same way, let us glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Obviously, today’s Gospel is about forgiveness. There is no doubt about it. However, I believe that there are a few things in today’s pericope which we are not so clear about unless we read the footnotes. For instance, in order to understand the amounts of money that we are talking about in this Gospel – talents and denarii – we have to know what this means. What is a talent ?

When we are reading the Holy Scriptures, it is always important to look at the footnotes where they are available. In fact, it is best to have a good annotated version such as The Orthodox Study Bible. The footnotes help us not only to know what talents and denarii are, but they also most often tell us what other ancient authorities say about the Scripture readings that we have available to us. It just so happens that these ancient authorities are Orthodox authorities. It is important that we pay attention to what they have to tell us. Because so many of the easily available texts of the Bible are published by Protestants, the translation of the text therefore prefers words which support Protestant ideas. Therefore, we ought to be careful not always to take the printed text as it stands as the “final word”. We have to look at the footnotes in order to understand properly. Very often, there are extra verses, and different words provided there in the notes. The italics underneath are what our Orthodox Scriptures say.

After all this, let us look at the footnotes regarding today’s pericope. The footnotes tell us that a talent is more than fifteen years’ worth of income for a labourer. The bond-servant, who is in debt, owes 10,000 of those talents. Thus, we are talking about astronomical amounts of money here. As we see, the bond-servant who was forgiven his debt, is not ready to forgive the debt of his fellow-servant who owed him a paltry sum, a mere 100 denarii. The footnotes in the Gospel reading tell us that a denarius is about a day’s wage for a labourer. This can be translated into any culture proportionally. Let us say that the daily wage of a Canadian labourer nowadays is around 100 dollars. That would be a lower possible number for us. However, there are many in the world who do not even earn 1 dollar per hour.

We notice, too, that in this Gospel, the Lord is telling us that the king, the original lender of the 10,000 talents, was not asking for repayment of this money on a proportional basis with a certain amount of interest, or anything. Asking for forgiveness, the man wept before him and said : “'Have patience with me, and I will pay you all'”. We see that he was forgiven the whole debt because the king had compassion. This is an important word for us to remember. The king had compassion, and he forgave him everything – the total, incomprehensibly immense debt. He forgave him an astronomical amount of money. However, the bond-servant was such a pinch-penny person that he could not or would not do exactly the same for this other man, his fellow-servant. He put the man in the debtors’ prison (something we used to have even in Canada, but we do not have any more, thank God). We have to remember, too, that the king, when he found out what had happened, took back the forgiveness. Then he delivered the bond-servant to the prison-keeper, so that he would thoroughly learn his lesson until he should repay the 10,000 talents. Let us pay close attention, then, to this man’s impossible situation.

Our Lord then says to you and to me, in effect : “The same thing is going to happen to you if you do not, from your heart, forgive your brother”. The point of this parable is for you and for me to understand that forgiveness is not merely an option. Forgiveness is required. Let us pay attention to how many times a day we are saying the “Our Father”. This is usually many times. What are we saying to our Father in Heaven ? We are asking Him to forgive us our debts as much as we forgive our debtors. However, even more pointedly, in the Gospel according to Matthew, the exact words in Greek are “as much as we have forgiven our debtors” (see Matthew 6:12). Because in Matthew the Greek verb is in the aorist tense, we are asking God to forgive us as much as we have already forgiven. Therefore, if we do not forgive, we can by no means expect God to forgive us for anything. Forgiveness is, as goes the popular idiom, “even-steven”. Again and again, our Lord shows us in different situations in our Christian lives that forgiveness is no option. Forgiveness is the foundation and the core of our Christian life : past, present and future. So much is this so that the Evangelist Luke uses the present tense in this phrase of the “Our Father” : “for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us” (Luke 11:4). By doing so, he shows that our Lord is emphasising how important it is that, at all times, we forgive instantly and immediately. This verb means “remit”, “forgive”, “pardon”, “dismiss”, “pass over”, “send away”, with reference to the debt. If we will follow our Lord, then we will forgive. It is He who gives us the ability, the power, to do this.

When people are reading the Gospel, it is possible that they could think that forgiveness might be conditional : “I do not have to forgive until I am asked to forgive”. There are all sorts of psychologically-orientated persons who will probably say the same thing. For the Christian, however, that is absolutely not enough. In the way of Christ, we do not wait to be asked to forgive. In the way of Christ, in the compassion which comes from the love of Jesus Christ, forgiveness is already there. The father of the prodigal son, even before the son had left home, was already living in forgiveness towards his son. He was waiting for that son, praying for that son, the whole time the son was away. The father was always looking for his lost son, so that when the son was returning, the father did not need to be told. He saw him. He ran towards the son, and he heartily embraced him.

The Lord, in His love, forgiveness, and compassion for us, is like this. We must be the same, because we must be like Christ. Our love must be like Christ’s love. We have to reveal Christ. We have to show Christ. He is only shown in love and compassion, because God is love. Love is the essence of God. Saint John the Apostle says so in his Epistle : “God is love” (1 John 4:8). We have to embody this love if we are going to be authentic Orthodox Christians.

It is not for nothing that this parish is named after Saint Aidan. If we are going to be serious Orthodox Christians, and a sign of the Truth in n (there is only one Truth, and that is Jesus Christ), then Saint Aidan is the perfect intercessor for you. His whole life was an expression of compassion and love for people round about him. He gave away everything to people who were in need. He did not give away to people who were higher than he, people who had everything that they needed. However, he did give them love. He always gave to the people who were in need. It did not matter what it was. If he had something, and a person was in need, he gave it. This is a wonderful, clear expression of the love and compassion of Jesus Christ, which holds nothing back, which hides nothing.

An expression of this, also, is shown in normal, Orthodox hospitality. When I was in Romania, I was taught that hospitality is the Orthodox expression of the way of “terrorising” people. We “terrorise” each other with hospitality. That is, of course, the usual Orthodox way of hospitality. A nun once asked me this question about Orthodox hospitality : “Have you noticed that whenever we come into a house, we have to eat something ?” Indeed, no-one can escape without being fed in an Orthodox household, often even if the person has come only to do work there. Another nun commented that her spiritual father (who was a martyr under Khrushchev) had told her that a good guest has to taste a little of everything on the table (although he does not have to eat everything that is there). The principle behind all this was taught to me by the first nun. She said : “Why is this table full of everything, and it all does not necessarily match and go together ?” If we come to someone’s house, sometimes we are going to see all sorts of things there that are not connected with each other. It looks as though the host emptied the cupboards and put it all on the table. She said : “In fact, that is likely what did happen. They emptied the cupboards and put everything on the table, so at least there is hope that there is something that the guest might like and enjoy. The guest does not necessarily have to eat everything. The host is demonstrating, in the context of Christian love, that he is holding nothing back, and that nothing is hidden from the guest. He has put in front of the guest everything that he has, and he invites the guest to have what he or she likes”.

A group of us experienced this in a very poignant and touching way about fifteen years ago, the first time I went to Ukraine on a pilgrimage. We fat-cat Canadians went there, thinking that we were so great by making this pilgrimage. However, we visited Ukraine at a time when there was a famine, and when people really had nothing. Nevertheless, as we were making some visits, the people were insisting that we had to eat. What had they done ? These people, in the villages that we visited, had gathered everything that they had to eat amongst themselves, and they put everything they had on the table in front of us, who had come from so far to be amongst them. We had to be careful that we did not succumb to Canadian-style gluttony and eat everything up, because then they would have had nothing left to eat. We can see here the true expression of openness, and the real expression and meaning of Orthodox hospitality : love and compassion. It reveals itself in hiding nothing, in holding nothing back, but in offering everything. This is Orthodox hospitality with which we had better “terrorise” each other if we are going to be honest.

This is the expression of the love of Jesus Christ. It is open. It is compassionate. It cares about the other. It is always life-giving. It is always full of joy. It brings healing. It brings wholeness. It brings conviviality, one might say. Usually, on an Orthodox table, we are not just getting food as food. There is going to be liquid refreshment, also, frequently of a “spirited” sort. “Wine makes glad the heart of Man” says the Psalmist (Psalm 103:15). This is part of our life : being together, drinking a glass of wine together with the food that we are eating. This is all part of the joy of being Christians together with each other. Just being together like this is how the Lord renews His love amongst us.

Coming back to forgiveness, we must remember that it is not an option. It is born out of love. As I was saying earlier, this forgiveness must always be there. It is a big challenge for us – how to give this forgiveness when we have been grievously hurt, offended, disappointed, or whatever else. How do we do it ? We cannot just say when our heart is broken : “I will forgive”. It is not easy like that. We cannot simply will to forgive. We cannot just forget about our pain. If we try to forget about it and hide it, the pain (or memory of injury) will eat us from inside, as it does to many people. For instance, people who are alcoholics and drug addicts are very often people who are very, very hurt, and they are trying to pretend that they are not feeling pain. They are trying to hide from it. They are trying to anaesthetise their pain and deny that there is this hurt. They are hiding from it.

The only way out is the Lord’s way out. That way is to ask the Lord, Himself, to be there, and to enable the forgiveness. A person might well ask : “How do you do that ?” The only way I have ever heard or understood that this becomes possible is to follow the advice and direction of Archimandrite Sophrony, who is the spiritual son of Saint Silouan of Mount Athos. (Archimandrite Sophrony, himself, should be officially glorified.) Archimandrite Sophrony says that the best way to enable forgiveness, and to cover every need, wound and fall, is simply to start to say repeatedly for the person or situation in question : “Lord, have mercy”. He would have said, of course : “Kyrie eleison” because he really liked the Greek, which is so expressive.

“Lord, have mercy” does not actually convey the proper meaning when we are trying to understand the meaning of “Kyrie eleison”, or “Gospodi Pomilui” in Slavonic, or “Doamne milueste” in Romanian. “Lord, have mercy” is our inadequate English translation of “Kyrie eleison”, which implies the pouring out of the oil of God’s love on whomever. Greek is very subtle, which is why my mother used to say : “The Greeks have a word for it”. She was right. “Kyrie eleison” means the pouring out of the oil of God’s love, His compassion. In other words, it is bringing His whole Self, His love to bear on this person and on this situation. Let the Lord be between this person, this situation, and me. Let the Lord bring His healing love into this situation. That is what “Lord, have mercy” really means, implies, and effects when we say it over and over again to the Lord. “Lord, pour the oil of Your love upon us”. When we are doing this, the Lord brings healing, life, and light to the person we need to forgive. In time, He brings softness and warmth to our hearts. When we say this prayer enough times, praying for the other person, our hearts are themselves healed. This is how the Lord works with us.

I exhort you, please, to remember that forgiveness for an Orthodox Christian is not an option. It is a way of life. It is our way of life : living in forgiveness, praying for those who persecute us, blessing those who persecute us. This is just what our Lord in the Beatitudes and the Apostle Paul in his letters are exhorting us to do. Blessing them, we pray for those who are hurting us.

I cannot not mention Saint Juvenaly in Alaska. It is well-know that Saint Juvenaly in Alaska was martyred. He was killed by Aboriginal people who did not understand why he was coming and what he was doing. According to our modern interpreters, the descendants of the people that killed him (who subsequently became Orthodox Christians, and are so to this day) say that their ancestors saw Saint Juvenaly coming on a boat, and they tried to ward him off, but he would not go away. He kept coming, and so they began to shoot at him with arrows. They thought that he was “cuckoo” because it looked to them as though he were trying to brush the arrows away as if they were mosquitoes. Their descendants came to understand (and the modern interpreters also understand), that he was making the sign of the Cross on himself and on the people who were killing him. He was blessing the people who were killing him. They did not understand the sign of the Cross at the time. He is not, by any means, the first of martyrs who is known to have been doing this.

There are many martyrs who have blessed those who were killing them. This is the real way of the Christian. This is the way of life and forgiveness. This has to be in the front of our hearts and our minds every waking and sleeping moment of every day. We can only accomplish this if we are living in the love of Jesus Christ, to whom be glory, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Sometimes, when we hear today’s Gospel about the rich man and our Lord’s response about how hard it is for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, there will be in the homily an explanation of this verse : “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God”. The explanation will be that the “eye of the needle” has to do with a particular gate in Jerusalem which was controlling how much could go on a camel’s back to get into the city of Jerusalem. It was a sort of traffic control, I suppose, and the equivalent of limiting the size of the trucks that go into a city these days so that there are no trucks with three or four trailers behind them pretending that this is a railway.

Nevertheless, there is no point in feeling the need to know details about a particular gate in Jerusalem. What comes first ? That is the point. It is so difficult for rich people to enter the Kingdom of Heaven because all the things that they have are big burdens of care for them. We see this in the parable of the man who had such a super-abundant harvest that he had to build a bigger barn. However, in effect, the Lord said to him that night : “Time is up. Your passport has expired. What are you going to do with all the grain that you stored up ?”

Rich people have many cares because they have very many things. Often they have many irons in the fire having to do with business, and so forth. Anything that stands between any of us and Christ, is going to be a weight and a block that is going to make it questionable as to whether we will get into the Kingdom of Heaven. For the Orthodox Christian, it is absolutely important for us to remember that, above all, Christ must always come first in everything. In our life, Jesus Christ must always be first.

That is why it is our custom (and it is in our prayer books if we ever bother to use them) to get up in the morning, and, first thing, to speak to the Lord, and to ask Him to bless the day. With the help of the prayer book, we also ask Him to bless all sorts of things during the course of the day. We ask the Lord to bless the end of the day, and to forgive our sins, our shortcomings and our distractions. We ask Him to help us walk on a better path the next day, and to sleep protected from evil spirits during the night. That is why, in the Orthodox way of living, the custom is to refer everything to Christ, and to ask the Lord’s blessing on everything all through the day.

That is why it is also the custom for Orthodox Christians not to accept thanks directly for anything, because anything and everything that any of us can do that is good is coming from Jesus Christ, and is enabled by Him in us. An Orthodox Christian should be saying : “Glory to God”, or “Thanks be to God”, or something like that, every time someone will say thank-you to you or to me personally. Everything must always be referred to the Lord.

Maybe it is because I played the piano at an early age, I do not know. For some reason, in the course of my whole life, it has always been a temptation to focus on myself. I mean that when one is performing for others, then it is easy to say : “Look at me”. “Look at what I can do”. When we consider the condition of being a bishop, it seems that, in the context of the grandeur that happens during a Hierarchical Divine Liturgy, people are often thinking that this grandeur is associated with that particular person. The bishop, too, can fall into that temptation. However, everything about a bishop has to refer to Christ. Everything that people do, regarding a bishop, has to be offered to Christ because Christ is the real bishop. The bishop is standing here in the place of Christ, re-presenting Him (and often the re-presentation is less than perfect). Nevertheless, the bishop is the re-presentation of Christ amongst the flock of Christ. So things that are done to, and for the bishop are done for Christ, not for the bishop. Even if we might like the bishop, all this ceremony and grandeur is not done for the bishop himself. If we should dislike the bishop, all this is still not done for the bishop himself. Everything is for Christ, and for Him alone.

Everything that we are doing in this Divine Liturgy, also, has to do only with the worship of God, and with nothing and no-one else. If anything comes between us and Christ, that thing becomes an idol, a substitute for Christ. There cannot be any substitute for Christ in our lives. Jesus Christ must come first for all of us, always. If He is not yet at that place in our lives, then we have work to do, giving up more to allow Him to be first, backing off more so that He can become first. As the Forerunner says : “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). People should not be seeing me, me, me. Rather, they should be seeing the love of Jesus Christ, and experiencing this love in their contacts with each one of us. Indeed, it may be said that this is one of the main reasons why any one of us is an Orthodox Christian, and not something else.

Everything in and about our daily life and our worship is completely concerned with the love of Jesus Christ and His priority. If He is my priority, then it does not matter how much money I have, how much land I have or how many businesses I have. Christ comes first in everything ; everything is in the correct order, and there is hope then to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, let us not forget the words of our beloved Saint Herman, the Elder and Wonder-worker of Alaska who said (and we must live it) : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”, glorifying the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we are celebrating the Feast of the Elevation of the Life-giving Cross in memory of the time when Saint Helena, the mother of Saint Constantine, the Emperor, found the Holy Cross in Jerusalem in the fourth century. Afterwards, the Cross was exalted in the Church in Jerusalem. The raising of the Cross, and the lowering it, and the blessing of the four directions that we did at the end of Matins before the Divine Liturgy is a repetition of what happened in the fourth century in Jerusalem.

When we are raising the Cross, and blessing the four directions like this, we are repeating what we are always repeating, actually, every time there is a blessing of water, and so forth. We are blessing all the directions, the four cardinal points of the earth. We bless these directions because we are asking the Lord, through the power and protection of His Holy Cross, to bless and protect the whole world, the whole of His creation, and everyone in it. That is why we are doing this. That blessing includes ourselves.

Very often, we have a tendency (probably our compartmentalised, western thinking has affected most of the people in the world by this time) to celebrate past events without remembering that the normal, Orthodox way of celebrating every feast is to remember that we are there. In our worship, time is always compressed into the “now”. When we are saying these prayers in the Divine Liturgy, for instance, if we listen closely, we will hear the prayers towards the end of the Eucharistic Canon which show us that we are behaving as though the Second Coming already has happened. We are celebrating the Second Coming as a past event because, gathered here together as the Church, we are standing in the presence of our Saviour, at His Table, at His Throne, in His Kingdom. We are in His presence. Whenever we are in His presence (especially at His Divine Liturgy), we are standing with Him as if everything were finished already.

The Lord is the End of our lives, the Purpose of our lives. What happens besides does not matter so much. It is living in love with Him that is the whole purpose of our lives. Nothing else matters. We are celebrating and worshipping our Saviour who was crucified on the Cross. This Cross that is in our midst is standing in the place of the real, true Cross. This Cross takes us to the real Cross on which Christ was crucified. Any Cross takes us to the real Cross on which Christ was crucified, and that real Cross takes us to Christ, Himself. In the same way, all these icons take us, through the saints that are re-presented to us on the icons, to Christ, Himself. You and I also, in how we are living, can help to bring other people to Christ, Himself. We, Orthodox Christians, are expected by the Lord to be able in His love to show Jesus Christ to other people by how we live. Indeed, people “on the outside” have such an expectation of us as well, even when they do not truly understand what this means. This is the Orthodox way : living Christ.

The Apostle Paul is reminding us today about the paradox of the Cross. In the days of the Roman Empire, the cross was the most gruesome way to die. It was worse than hanging, worse than gas chambers, worse than the electric chair. It was the worst way to die because it was long. It was real torture. Normally, a person would hang on the cross and die three or four days later, all the while suffering unimaginable pain. Therefore, as the Apostle reminds us, before Christ, the cross was the sign of complete defeat, death, and hopelessness. Because of Christ, the Cross became, paradoxically, the sign of hope, the sign of life, and even the sign of love. The Apostle Paul says that people who do not understand this think that we are crazy. They think that we are silly, and that maybe we could even be checked into some sort of a special hospital (and sometimes I wish I could be).

It is too bad that other people will think that we are crazy. However, they think that our Lord is strange, too. Since they did to Him what they did to Him, we cannot expect better treatment, says the Apostle Paul. So we offer everything to our Saviour. If people do not understand us, and do not particularly like us because we are Christians, that is all right. What do we do, then ? We do not pout and sulk in a corner ; we pray for the person. We say : “Lord, have mercy” repeatedly for that person, and offer that person to the Lord. We keep on living the way we are supposed to live because there is no way at all to force people to like us. There is no way to force people to like Christ, to love Christ, to accept Christ. To be an Orthodox Christian really is a voluntary act for each one of us. It is a voluntary act because we have encountered the love of Jesus Christ, and we wish to live in that life-giving love of Jesus Christ.

This is what the Cross means to us. Yes, it means suffering. Sometimes we will suffer along with Christ, no doubt. However, it is the sign of hope for us because through this Cross comes life : life eternal (not just some sort of temporary return to life). Through the Cross comes life eternal in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ which He has offered to us all : eternal life in His Kingdom with Him, being nourished on His love, forever.

Brothers and sisters, on this feast, the Cross is being exalted here in n today, and at the same time in Jerusalem today (and this “today” is in the fourth century as well as being in the 21st century). The Cross has been blessing the whole world from the very beginning. The love of Jesus Christ continues to be spread by those who love Him. Let us ask the Lord to renew our love for Him so that our love may shine in such a way that other people around us may encounter Him. With Saint Herman, the Elder and Wonder-worker of Alaska, let us “from this day, from this hour, from this minute, love God above all, and do His holy will”, and in so doing glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

It is not so often that it happens that we are celebrating two great feasts at the same time, but this time, it is happening. There are two great feasts. The first is the Birth of the Mother of God. That is why the colour is blue. The other great feast is the Altar Feast of this parish, the Dedication of the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem, and that is why some of the colour is gold. So, we are wearing blue and gold today. Some people are joking and saying that it looks like the Ukrainian flag, but that is another story. Still, it is a special blessing to have these two particular feasts together.

The birth of the Mother of God had been prepared for many, many, many generations. Many believing families before her, accepting the promises of God, remained faithful, waiting for the coming of the Christ, the Messiah, the One who would come to save us. They were faithful, suffering every sort of difficulty, obstacle, and torture. They were waiting for the fulfilment of the Promise. The birth of the Mother of God is the first step in the visible fulfilment of these promises.

The Mother of God was prepared by her ancestors who had gone before her, to be able to be in her whole life this one word to the Lord : “Yes”. Her whole life even until now is all “Yes” to the Lord. When the Archangel Gabriel came to her, and told her that she would conceive, she said : “'How can this be?'” (Luke 1:34). She did ask the question ; but, nevertheless she said, as it were : “Let it be done to me according to God’s will” (see Luke 1:38). To be the Mother of God was not just a glorious gift and a glorious service (although there is glory involved). Everything that has to do with our life in God has to do, first, with love : God’s love, God’s open, self-emptying, self-sacrificing love. This way of life involves pain. As we know in the case of the Mother of God, great pain was hers, and most especially at the time of the Crucifixion of her Son.

At the same time, great joy was hers at the Resurrection from the dead of her Son three days later. This is an important connexion for us to remember. There may be considerable pain involved in following in the foot-steps of Christ, but there is always joy. There is always light. There is always life. There is always victory, because the Lord is the Lord, after all. The Lord is the Lord of the whole universe. The Lord is the Lord of our lives. In this morning’s Gospel reading, we hear the Apostle Peter confessing to Christ, saying : “'You are the Christ'”. Our Lord responds to him, as it were : “You did not know this by yourself, but it was given to you by God to understand it”.

It is important for us all, in the living of our lives, to remember this perpetual reference to the Lord in everything. In the life of the Mother of God, everything is pointing towards her Son. In the icons that we see of her and her Son, she is always pointing us to Him. If she is not pointing with her hand directly to Him, she is with both hands holding her Son in front and showing Him to us. Everything about her life and her love points to her Son. It is not simply by her own strength that she was able to do this during the time of her life amongst us, and even until now in our days. Let us not forget the context – she was prepared to do this, to be able to love like this by all those who went before her. She was supported in her obedience and love by all those who went before her.

We, ourselves, are able in these difficult days to live lives in North America that are something like Orthodox Christian lives should be, because of the people who have gone before us, who have brought us into a relationship with Jesus Christ, who have introduced us to His love, who have shown us the way by their faithfulness. We all have such people in our lives : people who have been faithful, people who have touched our hearts and our lives with the love of Jesus Christ. They continue (even when we are weak) to reinforce us in His love, and to remind us of His love when we are being forgetful.

The Apostle Peter, even though he had direct encounters with our Lord, periodically got distracted by one thing or another. He fell into himself, somehow, one might say, and forgot the whole complex environment of the Lord’s love. Therefore, he made mistakes, just as you and I do, too. There is a holy monk of Mount Athos, who, in answering a question, described how human beings get distracted like this. He said that very often we limit ourselves to our own thoughts, to our own minds, and we forget about our hearts. We forget that it is in the heart that we are encountering the Lord, and knowing the Lord. Our hearts are supposed to be informing our minds, and directing our minds. When the heart, which is full of the love of Christ, is not in charge and directing our mind with its conflicting thoughts, we get confused. We get muddled up. Then we become very much the prey of fear. Who is the father of confusion, and the father of fear ? It is not the Lord. It is from the opposite direction below.

Whenever we are full of fear or when we are confused, we can tell immediately that something is out of order in our own selves. In terms of our relationship with the Lord, we forget to look at Him. We forget (like the Apostle Peter, sinking in the waves) to look at our Lord, and instead, we become distracted by everything surrounding us (see Matthew 14:30). In the turmoil of our lives, and in the confusion of our thoughts, we must always turn to Christ, hold on to His hand, and allow Him to keep us firm, stable, and directed.

In the course of the Church’s life, and throughout her history, there have always, always, always been difficulties, controversies, problems. Why ? There are three reasons, I suppose. The first is because the Church is made up of human beings. The second is because human beings have differing opinions about all sorts of things. The third is because we human beings rely too much on our own reason. We start to argue with each other about one thing or another based on our reason instead of remembering to turn to the Lord, together, and to ask Him, together, to show us what is His will. We have wasted a substantial amount of time in our history arguing over things. Instead, we could have stopped, prayed, and waited in silence while listening to the Lord, until we heard our hearts speak together. We did manage, by God’s mercy, through seven Ecumenical Councils to come to agreement about Who is the Lord, and what is our life in the Church. This finally was accomplished, even though it did include a great deal of arguing and debating. It did finally include this listening to the Lord, and agreeing in the heart that all those decisions did seem good to the Holy Spirit, and to the Fathers of those Councils.

We have to learn, ourselves, that in everything we have to stop, listen to the Lord, and see how our hearts agree together in love and peace. We all know that many times, when something is being said or done in the Church’s life, our hearts immediately jump for joy. There is a very strong sense that this is absolutely correct, and that it agrees completely with my experience of the love of the Lord. This is the right thing that has happened. When we are feeling like this together, that has to be the case. Why is it so ? It is because the Lord, Jesus Christ, is One. He is “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). The Lord, Jesus Christ, whom the Mother of God knows, loves, and serves, is the same Lord, Jesus Christ, whom we know, love, and serve. He, His love, are all the same, always.

For 2,000 years now, Orthodox Christians have all known, loved, and experienced the one, same Person of the one Lord, Jesus Christ. It is not all different sorts of christs. It is one Person. It is not philosophical ideas. It is one Person – the Son of the living God who spoke all creation into being, and still speaks it into being – the Word of God. It is He. We know Him. We love Him. We experience His love. This is why it does not matter if our Church, our dioceses, our parishes, our families even, pass through difficult times, because we all know the same Lord, Jesus Christ. Because we all refer everything to Him, He leads us in the right way. This parish, itself, has had a few times when there were some difficult moments. However, the Lord in His mercy and in His love, has brought this parish into His peace and into His healing love. He has increased this parish family, and He has enabled the believers here to witness more and more effectively in this city.

Our Lord, when He is speaking to the Apostle Peter, says : “'On this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it'”. We, who are Orthodox Christians standing here today in this Temple, in this city, are in the Kingdom of Heaven now. We are now in the presence of our Lord, Jesus Christ. It is He who is now going to feed us, Himself, with His own life. When we are now receiving Holy Communion, He, Himself, is now going to feed us. He is still amongst us, now. He, who is the Creator of everything, is the Victor over all evil, over all opposition. This is happening now. No matter how much the evil one tries to bring confusion, dissension, and discord, the Lord is still the Lord of all. He overcomes all those attacks. He does this now. He overcomes them all – not by war and destruction, but by love and life. He overcomes by love and life right now, today.

Let us now remember all these promises. Let us remember how the Mother of God is still with us, now. Let us remember that she is still intervening in our lives in love in co-operation with her Son. Let us remember that she, who was so insignificant in the world, is, after all, the Leader and the General of the angelic armies. Let us remember that : “'Many who are first will be last, and the last first'” (Matthew 19:30). Let us remember that the Lord is always present with us now, saving us even when we are forgetting Him. Let us remember all this work of love. Let us follow the exhortation of our beloved Father Herman, the Elder and Wonder-worker of Alaska, who is our own example here in North America (just as Saint Seraphim of Sarov is for Russia, and for the whole world), and who says to us : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”. In living the words of Saint Herman, let us glorify the all-holy, life-giving, saving Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

On this Sunday, we are keeping the memory of the Fathers of the Seventh Œcumenical Council, which took place in 787 in the city of Nicæa. Nicæa is a very old city, which is situated near the eastern end of the Sea of Marmara on what is now called Lake Iznik. It could be said to face Constantinople from Asia Minor.

Although the Church has had only seven official Œcumenical Councils so far, there actually have been more. For us, the difficulty lies in the process of ratification of such councils. For a council to be recognised as œcumenical, an emperor is usually required, as well as a subsequent council which would approve the previous one’s work. Since 787, there have been many political troubles and messes which have blocked such ratification. Nevertheless, these councils have borne the responsibility of clarifying our Orthodox Faith. It is important for us to know about these councils for two reasons. On the one hand, it is necessary that we understand as well as possible and as truly as possible both what we believe about the Holy Trinity, abut the Incarnation, and about the Church, as well as why we believe what we believe. On the other hand, it is crucial that we understand the distortions of the truth about the Truth that arise from the fears and rebelliousness of people. The texts of the decisions made by these councils can help us to understand. To read the canons and decisions does not have to be a “dry-as-dust” exercise, but rather a prayerful exercise aimed at enlightening our hearts and minds and at keeping them in harmony with our Lord, His love, His will.

Faith is essential to the person. Faith is the result of the personal encounter with Christ which all Christians have in some measure. Faith sustains the Christian in the midst of the daily struggle to continue in love, in harmony with, and in unity with Christ. We can see that people may sometimes appear to be very sharp in their opinions (or in the expression of their opinions), as they discuss the difficulties they face as a result of the inability of many persons to accept the whole truth about Him who is the Truth.

Why were the Fathers arguing and debating ? It was for the sake of the truth of Christ, the Holy Trinity, the Church, our Faith. Indeed, we are told that at the First Council, the fervent Saint Nicholas, the Bishop of Myra in Lycia, actually struck Arius of Alexandria. This was because Arius was so obstinately stubborn in his refusal to accept that our Lord Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. Instead, he wanted to insist that Jesus was a creature of God. To say so and to believe that, makes it impossible for Jesus to save us. Saving us can only be done by God Himself. The Fathers did not meet in order to develop anything in the manner of scholastic logic about abstract principles. They were not arguing about logic or philosophies or anything of the sort. What they were arguing about was : “What, in fact, is the truth about Him, who is the Truth ?” In the course of the centuries in the context of exposure to civil society, various philosophies entered into the ways of thinking and into the attitudes of people. This exposure and influence introduced many seemingly harmless explanations of essential matters of faith, explanations which proved to be both poisonous and deadly to the faith of an Orthodox Christian. These ideas repeatedly avoided the essential and fundamental truth about the divinity of Jesus the Christ and about the Holy Trinity. These ideas often became movements and political causes, which made necessary the convening of a council in order to correct the mistakes. Also, by the time of the seventh council, in response to the conquest by the Muslims, Christian believers very often wavered in their sense of what is right. Sometimes, they actually got lost.

It is crucial for us to remember that there is only one Jesus Christ. There is only one Truth. There is only one Way (see John 14:6). It is important for us to keep the eyes of our hearts and souls firmly fixed on the one Lord Jesus Christ, who “is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). His love for us is constant and never-changing. He, only, brings us to salvation and eternal life. He, only, is our joy. He, only, is our true Shepherd. He, only, does not disappoint or fail us. He, only, is faithful to us, in contrast to the weakness of us human beings.

We are often getting into trouble because we are “putting the cart before the horse”. We put the cart before the horse when we are putting the powers of our intellect in front of obedience to the revelation of God’s love. The Lord is God. God is the Lord. He has revealed Himself to us (see Psalm 117:27). The revelation of Himself to us is Love incarnate, Jesus Christ – the Word of God incarnate, Jesus Christ. We do not tell Him Who He is. He tells us Who He is. We respond to this revelation of His Son. How does He always reveal Himself to us ? He does it by His stable, life-giving love. It is He, the real, true, risen Lord who reveals Himself to us. The only way we can have life, and have life abundantly, is to accept this love, and to be faithful to this love.

After all the debates and arguments ended, the Fathers have always counselled that we should live in love and forgiveness towards each other, and that we should live in harmony and in communion with each other. It very often happens, however, that we have honest disagreements and differences of opinion about how to live our lives as Orthodox Christians, and sometimes about the details of how and why we believe as we do. Some consider this tendency to debate as a characteristic of Orthodox Christians. Be that as it may, it is also the Orthodox way, in submission to the love of our Lord, Jesus Christ to find our way in Him, to find our heart, to find our life in Him, and to do this in the context of mutual forgiveness and harmony. No matter in how many ways we may disagree about this way, we always refer to Jesus Christ to find the truth in Him, who is the Truth, and to live in loving obedience to Him. In loving obedience to Him, we find our way in Him, who is the Way. In this Truth, and in this Way we have life in Him who is Life.

Last year, when our Canadian group of pilgrims visited the city and diocese of Vladimir in Russia, we were given an object lesson about this. Archbishop Evlogy of Vladimir gave us all a tour of the diocesan facilities, including his office. He showed us the domestic chapel which was nearby, and next to which was the room where the diocesan council would meet with him. He told us very carefully that whenever there would arise some matter about which there was a controversy, or a matter about which they could not agree, they would quickly adjourn to this chapel and pray together. It would be after praying, he said, that they would be able to understand what the Lord was asking them to do. Blessing flowed from this custom, he said.

This principle of turning to the Lord for help is central to our whole life in Christ, and it helps us to overcome healthily every sort of misunderstanding, disagreement, difference and division amongst us. If we are careful to keep the eyes of our hearts focussed on our Lord Jesus Christ, and on Him only, it will not matter to us in what way any human being is false, hurtful or failing us. It will matter only that this human being has a weakness, and is someone we should pray for. Every human being fails, somehow or other. We all, in our families, have experience of that every day – our wives, our husbands, our children, our relatives. As much as we do love each other, because we are weak, we disappoint each other.

Sometimes, we betray one another. If we are putting our trust only in this human relationship alone, we are going to get hardened, bitter, and so forth, because human beings always are weak, and always fall away, willy-nilly. Most of the time it is not voluntarily. Most people fall down, but it is not voluntarily. For example, I was all prepared to bring blessed oil from Jerusalem to anoint you all with, but where is it ? It is sitting in my suitcase. Therefore, I am going to have to send it to you, and Father n will anoint you with it. This is how it is when we are too busy, and therefore not properly focussed and concentrated on the Lord. The oil will nevertheless arrive here, and you will receive the blessing from and through it, anyway. It is important to remember that my forgetting the oil does not mean that I do not love you or care about you.

It is necessary that we all remember that there is One whose love never fails under any circumstances. Everything in our lives must be focussed on Him, and must be lived in the context of Him and His love. If we are really good at following in His foot-steps, we will disappoint each other much less often. God willing, the older we get, the less we will be falling ; the less we will be disappointing each other. We will live in harmony with each other more and more ; we will be mindful of praying for each other more and more ; we will support and encourage each other more and more in the manner in which our Lord wants us to do.

The Lord, in His mercy, has been with us, and He is giving us joy, both in this parish and in the diocese. The Lord is compassionate, merciful, and encouraging. I am grateful to God to see how quickly things have changed here in this Temple in such a short time since my visit last year. The renovations and improvements are making this Temple look more and more beautiful for the Lord, and they are making the Temple yet warmer and embracing of all who come to worship the Lord here. The Lord is protecting us, renewing us, and making us witnesses of His love.

In this context, we can more clearly see and understand that we have missionary responsibilities here. Our responsibility is first to be a shining light, to invite people to come here, to be part of us, to experience and share the love of Jesus Christ amongst us.

This present Temple has stood here for about sixty years, but the community itself is older than anyone here. During the course of the nearly one hundred years that this congregation has worshipped on this land, this community has witnessed and heard the foot-steps of people who are now saints, even though they may not yet be officially recognised as such. Through their intercessions, these holy people are still with us as a sign of the Lord’s love. Let us ask the Lord that our love be strong enough, faithful enough, and welcoming enough so that when the Lord sends those persons that He wants to send, they will feel His presence and the warmth of His love. Let us ask the Lord that when they come, they will be motivated greatly to glorify our Saviour, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In celebrating the Elevation of the Holy Cross today, we are in the very city of Jerusalem when the patriarch is elevating the Cross, which has been newly found by the Empress Helen. He is blessing the whole universe with the Cross (as we already did last night), blessing in all the directions and asking for God’s mercy on all His creation, and on all human beings, in particular.

The finding of the Holy Cross with its restoration to us is a sign of hope. This paradox is perpetually before us. The Cross, which is a sign of death for the world (we just now have been present at the Crucifixion of Christ in the reading of the Gospel), is a sign of hope for us believers who know what came after – the Resurrection of Christ. This Cross is the sign not of death, not of defeat, not of despair, but of life, and victory, and hope. In fact, this Cross on which our Saviour, Jesus Christ died, is a sign of God’s love for us.

As the Apostle Paul was telling us today, we human beings are always looking for some sort of concrete sign and demonstration of God’s love. The Lord has given a concrete sign and demonstration not just with words (which are very cheap and changeable), and not with some sort of philosophical system or other (that is also changeable and fickle). He gave us the sign of the Holy Cross. The sign of the Holy Cross is the sign of the victory of life over death, of love over fear, the victory of good over evil. This Cross is our sign of hope.

However, the Cross only means something to us because we know Him who died upon this Cross, and who rose again on the third day. It is because we know that God is love, and that He has shared His love with us in this life-giving way, that we can understand the real meaning of this Cross for us. Saint John of Damascus explains : “The Cross by itself is just a piece of wood ; but when it is in reference to Him who died upon it, this Cross in our midst today takes us to the true Cross on which Christ suffered”. That Cross takes us to Christ, Himself. The Cross is not an end in itself. Everything, for the Orthodox Christian, refers us to Jesus Christ, our Saviour.

Every time we serve Matins, we sing that “God is the Lord, and He has revealed Himself to us” (see Psalm 117:27). How has He shown Himself to us, except by what the Apostle John has written : “God is love” (1 John 4:8). When He is revealing Himself to us as Lord, and God, He is revealing Himself to us as Love. It is this love which is His nature that brought Him to the Cross, and it is this love that brought Him to the Resurrection from the dead on the third day. It is this love that brought about the Ascension into heaven. It is this love that brought about the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon all the disciples and apostles on the Day of Pentecost. It is this love that sustains you and me here, now, today. It is this love in which we live because it is the love of Jesus Christ. It is in this love that we know Jesus Christ. He has shown His love to us repeatedly. He continues to show His love to us repeatedly.

As the Apostle said this morning (I am paraphrasing), the way we go about our lives is foolishness to most people. It is incomprehensible to most people. The world does not understand us. However, that cannot deter us from being faithful to Jesus Christ. We are here because of His love. Because of His love, and the hope that we have in Him, we are able to live as we do : whole, and healed in Jesus Christ, persons who bear His life and His love in everyday situations, in everyday difficulties. Then we are showing the Way to people around us, to people who are lacking any hope at all that there is a way other than the word’s way. Jesus Christ said : “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6). We are showing them the Way – not one of many – but the one Way, The Way : the love of Jesus Christ.

When we live our lives in Jesus Christ, living His love as Orthodox Christians, our lives bring people to Jesus Christ without our having to speak a word. Just how we live – with joy, with love, with life, with power, even – this is what brings people to Christ. It opens in their hearts the possibility that Jesus Christ could be there for them, too. It opens the door of possibility for them to come and to be with us, rejoicing in the love of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. God showed us His love so much that He gave His Only-begotten Son so that He would be able to die on this Tree, and on the third day rise from the dead, victorious over evil, victorious over death, victorious over darkness. All this, He shares with us.

Brothers and sisters, taking hope from this Cross which is in our midst, let us follow the exhortation of our first, recognised North American saint, Herman the Elder and Wonder-worker of Alaska, who said : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”. In so doing, let us glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

We just heard our Saviour say to us : “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me”. So important are these words, that every time a priest or a bishop puts on his Cross, he recites what our Saviour has just said. Therefore, it is crucial that we Orthodox Christians keep these words in the forefront of our daily consciousness. Every Orthodox believer who is carrying a Cross from Baptism, when kissing this Cross every day, should be saying the same words, too. Bishops and priests are saying these words when they are putting on the Cross because they are leaders of the faithful. However, bishops and priests are not different from or separated from the faithful. In fact, the faithful of the Church are called “sheep” by our Saviour, and even if they are leaders, the bishops and the priests are still amongst the sheep. There is only one, true Shepherd, and this Shepherd is the one who is teaching the bishops and the priests how to lead the flock.

We Orthodox Christians need to understand that everything about our life concerns the relationship of love between us and our Saviour. Thus, in carrying the Cross of our Saviour every day of our life, we are living in harmony and union with Him every day of our life. The way of the Orthodox Christian is to put Jesus Christ first in life. We are involving Him in every detail of our lives. He is with us while we are gathered here together in this Temple. He is with us when we are eating. He is with us when we are sleeping. He is with us when we are working. He is with us when we are travelling. He is with us in everything. It is the Orthodox way for us to invoke His blessing upon everything that we are and everything that we are doing.

The environment in which we live in Canada certainly does not support us in this way of life, nor in the mindfulness of this way. Orthodox believers easily forget what is the normal way of life while living here in Canada. In Canada, instead of people living as close as they can to the Temple, they tend to live far away, wherever it is comfortable and cheap. It was a different story 100 years ago, it is true ; but now this is how we are living. People live far from the Temple, and because of that, they do not go very often to the Temple of the Lord. Soon, it happens that Orthodox believers in Canada become like almost everyone else. Instead, worshipping the Lord, which is the center of the Orthodox life, goes into the background, and to the bottom of life’s priorities.

Instead of coming to the Temple of the Lord very frequently to pray and to worship the Lord, people now tend to come only on Sunday morning. Even then, they are often impatient because everything seems to take a long time. Also, instead of having the Temple be open because people are always coming and going there, the doors are locked, and it is hard to get in. Then people get angry because the doors are locked, and they say : “Where is the priest ?” “Where is the starosta ?” The question is wrong. Instead, the question should be asked : “Where am I ?” It is because I am absent that those doors are locked. It can be said that we cannot simply leave the Temple open for thieves. In Canada, thieves do not have the honour that they used to have amongst them. They do not have the respect for holy things that they used to have. Meanwhile, we do not have the confidence in the Lord and His holy angels that we used to have that He is able to protect His Temple. I have realised that I no longer see people blessing their doors when they leave their homes, so we certainly forget to invoke the Lord’s blessing and protection on our spiritual homes, the Temples in which we worship. We forget. We neglect.

When the Apostle Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ, our Saviour said to him, as it were : “You did not come to this understanding on your own; you came to understand this because God showed it to you” (see Matthew 16:17). Brothers and sisters, we are in the same position as the Apostle Peter. We have weaknesses. We have doubts. However, the Saviour is still the Saviour. He comes to us in our needs because of His love. Let us follow the example of the Apostle Peter. Let us confess with our lives that Jesus is the Christ. Let us confess with our lips and our hearts that Jesus is the Christ. Let us ask Him to give us the strength to recover the normal way of living an Orthodox life.

Let us ask Him to renew our love so that our lives will be able to glorify Him as He created us to do. Finally, let us follow the words of the exhortation of Saint Herman of Alaska, North America’s first recognised saint, who says to you and to me : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”. In doing this, let us glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In the words of the Gospel today, our Lord begins with the familiar words : “And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise”. We like to hear those words because it sounds so simple and so comfortable. However, we have to pay attention to the context of these words.

These words come at the end of our Lord’s giving the Beatitudes in the Gospel according to Saint Luke. Our Lord distils the Beatitudes into these well-known words, as He exhorts us to behave towards others as we would have them behave towards us. We will find that this phrase is reflected by the Apostle Paul in the experience of his own life. After his encounter with our Saviour on the road to Damascus (see Acts 9:1-18), the Apostle’s whole life was changed, and his priorities became those of Christ. In addition to “just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise”, our Lord says to us : “Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful”. He says to us that if we are going to do good to people who are good to us, how is that different from anyone else on this earth ? All human beings behave like that. Of course, all this comes under the classification of “scratch-my-back-I-scratch-your-back”. This is how human beings are with each other. There is always some sort of condition. As I always say, there are strings attached (just like an American tea bag which characteristically has a string on it). God’s love, however, is without condition : no tit-for-tat, no return, no strings attached (like the old Canadian tea bag used to be before it became Americanised).

Our way of life as Christians has to be mirroring and living in God’s love. Everything that our Lord is talking to us about today has to do with His love, with the expression of His love, and the living out of His love. Therefore, if we are going to be followers of Christ, if we, who have been baptised into Christ truly have put on Christ (see Galatians 3:27), then our lives have to show Christ to people around us. Our love has to be like His love. We have to be prepared, as He does, to love people who cannot stand us, to love people, to pray for people, and to bless people who are mean and nasty to us. We have to bless people : which is, in fact, the opposite of how we are mostly formed (or rather, deformed) by our society. We have to be prepared to bless people who are ready to kill us.

I love to tell the story that Father Michael Oleksa tells over and over again about the martyrdom of Saint Juvenaly in Alaska. Father Oleksa, being married to a Yupik, has access to the verbal history of the peoples of Alaska, and, in particular, the Yupik people to whom he is related. It was their ancestors on the west coast of Alaska who caused the martyrdom of Saint Juvenaly. Saint Juvenaly was coming on a boat towards the shore. He was going to bring to them the love of Jesus Christ in words. Instead, he gave them the love of Jesus Christ by his death, and a witness that made sense to the people afterwards.

The descendants of the people who killed him said that he looked to them as if he were an invading shaman because he was wearing a gold Cross with a gold chain. This chain would appear to be somewhat similar to the necklace that a shaman would wear in those days. Therefore, it seemed to the shaman and his company that Father Juvenaly was invading his spiritual territory. With various signs, they tried to tell him not to come. However, he continued to approach regardless, and they started to shoot arrows at him. He kept coming in the boat. The descendants said that they thought that he must be insane because it looked to them as though he were brushing away those arrows as though they were mosquitoes. We know that oral tradition is very accurate. What they did not understand at the time was that not only was he blessing himself (as he knew what was happening to him), but he was also making the sign of the Cross on them, who were killing him. He knew what was happening, and he was blessing those who were killing him. To them, the sign of the Cross looked as though Saint Juvenaly were brushing away mosquitoes, but it was only afterwards, when they came to Christ, themselves, that they really understood what was the case.

These peoples were evangelised by the original Russian monks. Having found the Orthodox Faith, they held on tightly in their faithfulness to Jesus Christ, even when we, who were responsible for feeding them, repeatedly neglected them, and sometimes starved them. The Yupik people continued to be faithful. They continued to gather together and worship and pray in their Temples and in their homes even when there was no priest. They continued to do this even when, because of us, they would almost not see a priest at all for decades at a time.

The foundation prepared in love, the love of Jesus Christ, continued to enable abused and abandoned peoples not only to be faithful, but also to bless and give hospitality to the ones who neglected and abused them. Such is the way of Christ. To be clear, we are the ones who neglected and abused them (directly or indirectly).

We, ourselves, can only live and express this sort of love, when we determine to leave the Lord in charge of our lives, and to seek His will in everything. As the Lord has blessed the Yupik people in His love, as He has multiplied the offering of His love, so He does, and so He will do with us.

Two hundred years after the death of Saint Herman of Alaska, who was a lay-monk, not a cleric, the descendants of those brought to Christ by him, remember him as alive today. We live in the eternal present in Christ. The fruits of Saint Herman’s love for Christ continue to show themselves to this day as alive. Let us ask the Lord for the Grace to love as he loves, and to bless as he blesses, by remembering and living out his exhortation : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”, and thereby glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, our Lord goes to a region outside the traditional Jewish territory. Anyone who knows anything about the ways of Jewish culture in the time of the New Testament, would understand that Jewish people did not have anything to do with anyone else. However, even if they did not have anything to do with anyone else, they still lived in diaspora. That means that some Jewish people were living in the region of Tyre and Sidon ; they were living in various parts of North Africa ; they were living in parts of what is now Turkey, and Greece, and they were certainly living in Egypt.

Tyre and Sidon, which are now in Lebanon, were ancient non-Jewish Semitic cities which became part of the Phoenician-Greek trading region. We are not told why, but our Saviour Jesus travelled to that region in order to speak with some of the people. Now we see that a woman of the Canaanites (which relates her to the Syro-Phoenicians) comes to speak to Him. As we have just heard, our Saviour speaks rather sharply with this woman. This sort of sharp exchange, in which He speaks clearly and directly about the details of life, is similar to the exchange which (after Pascha) we observed Him having with the Samaritan woman. Today, when this woman is asking for help for her daughter, He says very clearly that they were not supposed to have anything to do with each other. The woman insistently persists. Then He responds to her : “'It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs'”. She then replies : “'Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table'”.

Our Lord is obviously making these strong statements (which imply a question) in order to reveal to everyone round about just what sort of humility this woman had. Her humility and her love truly are great. She does not ask anything at all for herself : only for her daughter. I have met many such people in my life already, too, and it gives me a great deal of hope that there are still such people amongst us. This illustrates exactly the Christian way of living, and it shows us how the love of Jesus Christ is lived.

When we, who try to follow Christ, are truly following Christ, then we are putting everyone else first in front of us. We are doing this in the same way as our Saviour, who serves us to this day. He did not come into this world to please Himself or to make a comfortable place for Himself here. He came to give life. He came to save us. The way of saving us is the way of His love. It is only His love which gives us peace and joy. It is only His love that gives eternal life.

The Apostle Paul is telling us today, in connexion with this, that we are not to be associating with the world and the ways of darkness. All around us are people who are associating with the world, trying to get comfortable in the world. They use the ways of darkness. We are living amongst them every day, and they can have a negative influence on us. It is our responsibility, therefore, to know who we are, and Whom it is we that are serving. We have to know the difference between the Way of life, light, and love, and the ways of death, darkness and fear. It is really crucially important for us to know the difference. We, like our Lord, must shine with light and life. The purpose of this light shining is to enlighten and illuminate the people who are in darkness. We do not bring people to the life and love of Jesus Christ by living in the ways of darkness. We have to live amongst people who are searching, it is true. However, in living amongst them, we need to be living examples of how there is a better way.

Right now, we are living through a terrible period. The stock markets and the economies of the world are all in turmoil. People are panicking. This is precisely the way of the world (and the way of the devil in particular). All this turmoil develops because someone initiates a rumour that spreads fear. For instance, people are afraid that they are going to lose money. They sell in panic, and the more people panic, the worse things get. These things are not happening merely by accident. As far as I can see in my experience in life, there are plenty of people who understand the weaknesses of human beings, and they play with them cynically. I can see all the tell-tale signs of this cynical exploitation happening now. Our responsibility as Orthodox Christians is not to live in this panic, which is simply fear. Where is our hope ? Where is our stability ? Where is our peace ? It is not in the size of a bank account. It is in Jesus Christ, our life. If we keep the eyes of our heart and mind on Him, then He will guide us in peace through all these dangers and turmoils.

It is important for us to ask the Lord what is His will. What are we to do ? If we listen to our hearts, the Lord speaks to us in peace. If we feel peace in our hearts about a particular direction of action, this is likely to be the way the Lord wants us to go. No matter what, everything for us Orthodox Christians has to be motivated by the love of Jesus Christ. We must always be remembering every day to ask His blessing on everything.

Today, we are serving with one bishop, one priest, and five deacons. This gives me great joy. It is a bit confusing for the deacons, because I do not think any of them is used to serving with four others, and it can be hard to know who does what. Nevertheless, there are many places in the world in which we might find ten or more deacons serving with a large number of bishops and priests. There, we would see that the services proceed very “decently and in order” (1 Corinthians 14:40) in accordance with the exhortation of the Apostle Paul. Our deacons here are doing very well. This diaconal multiplication here, today, is really a sign of our Church’s life and future. By their lives, by their service, by what they do, they are examples to the rest of us of how Christians are supposed to be behaving. The deacons are the ones who are serving. They are caring about the service, and they are caring about every other detail of life, too. In the life of a parish that truly reflects the New Testament, a deacon is in charge of social service, helping to meet the practical needs of people. That is what we are all supposed to be doing. So, I want to say “Glory to God” for this opportunity to serve with five deacons. Glory to God for everything. May this same Lord help us to be faithful to Him in love, so that our whole lives will glorify the All-Holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we are celebrating the feast of the Apostle and Evangelist Luke. It is very important for us to remember how our Saviour’s words in the Gospel according to Luke are directing us to follow Him. If we reject Him, then we are rejecting the One who sent Him. We have to be very careful. Although it is not specified, the One who sent our Saviour is our Heavenly Father.

When we are following Christ, we are not following a philosophical principle. We are following God, who is Love, who created us all. If we behave as do most western-minded people, we can easily compartmentalise our lives in such a way that the Lord can very well take a back seat in our lives. If we are serious Orthodox Christians, we have only one path, and that is the path of following and imitating Jesus Christ. We follow Him and we imitate Him because He loves us, and in response, we love Him. For the Orthodox Christian, truly and fundamentally, there is nothing more than this. The Orthodox Christian way is very simple. Our Lord says to you and to me and to everyone, as He says to the Apostle Peter : “'Do you love Me?'” Our response must always be the response of the apostle : “'Yes, Lord; You know that I love You'” (John 21:15). As a result of this response, we live every moment of every day of our lives in imitation of that love.

For the Orthodox Christian, there can be no other way than Him who is the Way. That Way is Jesus Christ, and there is none other. We imitate Him. We follow Him. We love Him. We live in Him. There is no other way – no simplifications, no side-steps, no self-justifications, no excuses. There is only one way in Him who is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6). Our lives must, therefore, express this love and this way of single-mindedness : lives that are wholly integrated, and not broken up ; lives that have only one direction in Christ ; lives that are imitating Him, serving other people just as He serves us to this day. We imitate Him because we love Him.

We will suffer, too, as He suffered. If we read the first chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John, we understand that the darkness is trying to extinguish, to overcome the Light. The darkness does not like the Light. However, the Light is not overcomeable. This Light that enlightens the whole universe is not overcomeable. The Light of Jesus Christ must, and will shine, and it will overcome the darkness. In fact, the Light has overcome the darkness, but the darkness does not want to admit it. We live in that Light. Our lives must shine from within with that same Light. Our lives as Orthodox Christians have to show light, life, love, joy, peace, longsuffering, goodness, and other virtues like these, just as the Apostle Paul said (see Galatians 5:22, 23). Our lives have to be full of these characteristics because all these characteristics are part of the promise of the love of Jesus Christ living and acting in us. If our lives do not have these characteristics or if they are lacking somehow, we can tell, ourselves, that we have turned our eyes away from the Lord, and have become distracted. Just as the Apostle Peter when he was standing on the water paid attention to the wind and the waves instead of to Christ, we sink just as he sank. Then it is important for us to say with the apostle : “'Lord, save me'” (Matthew 14:30). We have to take His hand, and allow Him to pull us up again. His hand is always there waiting for you and for me to take hold of it. We cannot live without holding on to His hand.

Today, by God’s mercy, we are ordaining a priest. It is going to be his responsibility during the whole course of his life to remember that he is re-presenting Christ. He does not have a flock of his own ; neither does the bishop. None of us has our own flock. There is truly only one Shepherd, and that is Jesus Christ. There is only one flock, and it is His. We have the responsibility to help Him to feed His flock. No-one here today belongs to any one priest or bishop. You all belong to Christ. The bishop and the priest are His servants to help you be fed so that you can live well, and keep on the right path. This is the responsibility of this priest-to-be. He is to be an example of how a Christian should live.

I have heard many times in my life (ever since I was ordained to the Holy Priesthood), people saying what I am saying now. A parishioner will say to the priest (to excuse himself from his responsibilities) : “Well, you have to say those things because that is what we pay you for”. Sometimes, just because he is a so-called professional, a priest can sometimes not be completely credible because of what he says. Nevertheless, he has to be credible for how he lives what he says. We all know that talk is cheap, especially nowadays. However, if the priest can live according to the way and example of Christ, and present the love, the life, and the joy of Christ, then he is able, truly, to feed the flock. Because of his life, the flock will be able to trust that the food he is presenting to them is not of his own creation (we are good at creating our own concoctions), but only, instead, the true food of Jesus Christ and His love. As I said, we can make our own concoctions because priests and bishops, too, can get distracted. It is a hard business to be a bishop or a priest or a deacon, because the more he is called to serve the flock, the harder the Tempter is working to get rid of him so that the sheep can be scattered.

Therefore, it is important for you, the sheep, to pray for this priest. He is not outside the flock ; he is also a sheep. The bishop is also a sheep. None of us is outside the sheepfold. We are all part of the same flock. We just have different responsibilities within Christ’s flock. All you sheep, here, need to be praying for this leading sheep whom the Lord is placing at the head of the flock in order to make sure that the flock is always directed towards Christ. You see what a big responsibility it is. He has the responsibility to present Christ and to show Christ by his life, so that everyone will be encouraged to follow in the same sort of foot-steps towards the one Saviour, Jesus Christ. There is nothing else for any of us, except Jesus Christ.

As I said before, we will all suffer because the darkness wants to extinguish the Light. However, if we always keep our hearts, souls, minds, and all our being focussed on our Saviour, He will always be there protecting us because He is our Life. He is our Protector. He is our Guardian. He will never fail us. His love alone is completely constant and completely dependable. He, alone, will bring us into His heavenly Kingdom by His love, and through the prayers, protection, and support of His most pure Mother. Let us ask her to protect Father n as he is about to be ordained, and to protect us all by her prayers, so that in the whole of our lives we may glorify our Saviour, as she does, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

When the Apostle Paul in the Epistle that we heard today is speaking about a person’s giving freely, without restraint and without any conditions, he is referring to the general way of Christian life. Yes, it is true, he is talking about a particular collection for the poor, but he is also talking about the way of the Christian life. The way of the Christian life has to be open. It has to be generous. It has to be hospitable. It has to be welcoming. It has to be respectful of the other person. In other words, it has to be expressive of the love of Jesus Christ. This is how the love of Jesus Christ operates amongst us. He operates that way with you and with me, all the time. If we are living in Him, if we move in Him, and we have our being in Him, then everything about how we live has to express Him.

This morning, in the Parable of the Sower, our Saviour is saying to us that these different categories of soil on which the seed fell, refer to different sorts of persons. It is, of course, true. In our circumstances, we are in the same boat as those various sorts of persons. We are all various. How we receive the Word of the Lord is all various. So that parable always applies to you and to me. However, if we want to focus it, particularly, I think it is useful for us to focus this parable on our hearts. What sort of heart do we have to receive the Word of the Lord ? Is our heart hard, so that the Word of God cannot grow in it, or is our heart rich so that Word of God can multiply in it ? What sort of condition is our heart in ?

Orthodox believers, for 2,000 years, have been being reminded to pay attention to their hearts. We generally have difficulty with this, because we are so easily distracted by “Big Red” in one way or another. We very often have difficulty with this. Why do you think heresies developed ? It was because people were hard-hearted, stubborn, and thought they were more intelligent than God. They were disobedient. They chose for themselves instead of choosing what the Lord said to them. If we are in Christ, we cannot choose anything but Christ, and His way.

I am going to talk a little bit about how this applies to conflict-resolution. Yes, I admit, in conflict-resolution there might, indeed, be a certain amount of process. If other human beings are anything like I am with my stubborn heart, it takes time to get through my thick head that something else might be the case, and that I might even be wrong. That is why I really like being at Holy Synod meetings with Bishop Nikon, in particular. All the other bishops are good, and we get along together quite well ; but Bishop Nikon always is exceptional, and why ? He likes to remind us that he is a widower. In fact, he is the only one amongst us just now who is a widower. He says : “I am the only one amongst you who might think that someone else has an opinion”. He is right enough in saying so.

It is true that conflict-resolution is a matter of process. However, there is something much deeper than conflict-resolution which is more important than the process. If I, myself, get tangled up in processes which are for the most part works of the mind, I find myself at some point getting hit hard by the Lord with the usual two-by-four that I require in order to get my attention. I do not particularly like those occasions when I get the two-by-four treatment. However, I definitely deserve it when I do, because I have not been listening, and I need a wake-up call from time to time. The Lord, in His love, is merciful. He does not really hit me with an actual two-by-four. He sends someone to me to say to me : “Wake up, Vladyka ; wake up. What is the truth of this or that situation ?”

Have you ever noticed when it comes to relationships with other people how divisive things enter ? Where do they come from ? Do they not start coming from thoughts of one sort or another ? Suspicious thoughts, divisive thoughts enter ; and we begin to think : “So-and-so has something against me or does not like me (or whatever)”. I might believe that someone has developed a plot against me, or there are all sorts of other variations on such themes. Just because of some action or inaction, or because some person did or did not “look cross-eyed at me” at a particular time, I get the idea that there is something going on. Then I “stew with it” for a while, and turn over in my mind what it might be. Just last week I got caught with one of those false ideas. When the person about whom I had been thinking the false thought was speaking to me, I then understood that he was telling me the exact opposite of what I had thought. Of course, I could never say this to him. It was the Tempter who was tempting me with these lies. So I interiorly had to “eat crow”. I had to admit that I had misunderstood and misjudged someone.

This is the usual course of our lives. We all suffer very much from this in our lives. I understand that I am not so unique as all that. We all suffer from these sorts of temptations at one time or another, so much so that we might feel that it is all the time. Through the experience of my now sixty-two years, I have found that when things like this start developing in my mind, as soon as I have accepted this sort of thought-process, then I can feel myself saying to myself, as it were : “Oh-oh, even though I am engaging this thought, I know where this is going to end up, and I am going to ‘come a-cropper’”. This is exactly what happened to me last week. For some stupid reason I was accepting these thoughts that were coming into my mind about this other person, and, as a result, I had to “eat crow”. All the way along, I knew that this was what was going to happen, and I still did not stop. I still did not stop because it might have been so (except it was not). The whole history of the course of my experience of this person was the opposite of what I was thinking. What an idiot I was to accept those thoughts about the person. I forgot to take into context the whole life experience of that other person. I accepted these stupid, little, dividing thoughts. However, glory to God that He is so quick to wake me up. I am grateful to God that by this time I have learned a lesson or two.

If our hearts are burning with disappointment or anger or suspicion, if our hearts are darkened and hardened towards anyone (and especially those we know well), you know what the parable said : the Word of God is not growing there. We do not want those consequences – the Word not growing in our heart. We want the Lord’s love to be growing in our hearts. We have experienced His love. We know His love. We want to live in Truth, in Him who is the Truth. There is only one Truth. We have to live in the Truth, not in suspicions, not in insinuations, not in insidious thoughts and half-truths, but in the Truth.

In the course of the various sorts of investigations that have been taking place in The Orthodox Church in America about the financial mess in which we have found ourselves, there has been a lot of speculation about one person or another. However, there has been very little direct asking of questions in a human, Christian manner. I have heard in this community that people have various sorts of ideas about what I might, or might not have done or why I did this or that. Nevertheless, I have yet to have more than two or three people address me in any way about this if they have any questions. Therefore, I would say that if anyone has such questions, then why not ask them instead of stewing about them ? Ask, but I am not going to go around defending myself about anything. I am simply who I am, doing what I have to do, under obedience. My whole life is under obedience, and I am doing what I have to do under obedience. Thus, if you trust that I really love you, and I do (but if you do not trust, then it is harder to come to me), then ask me a question, and I will answer the question as well as I can. Some questions are not very answerable, but I would do the best I could. However, I will only do it in a normal, Christian, one-to-one basis.

Brothers and sisters, if there is any division between or amongst anyone in any Orthodox community anywhere, it is because “Big Red” has gotten in, and sown his poison. We have taken the bait. The question always is : “I feel so angry about this or that ; I feel so bitter towards this or that person about whatever it is, what am I supposed to do ?” The more I pay attention to this bitterness, the bitterer I get, the angrier I get, the darker I get in my heart. There is only one way out of that. Archimandrite Sophrony, of blessed memory, whom we should be calling a saint already by this time (but we are so slow), said that the strict application of the Beatitudes is the only way out. I have to pray for the person about whom I am feeling bitter, angry or whatever, or about whom I have doubts or any negative or divisive thoughts.

“How do I do that” is the question that comes up immediately. It is simple, he said (although it is not so easy, perhaps). Many of you have heard me say this time and again. We begin to say for the person : “Lord, have mercy”. We say the “Lord, have mercy” in whichever language is the language of our heart. If a person speaks Chinese, or prays in Chinese as the language of one’s heart, that person had better pray in that language, and not in English. We pray “Lord, have mercy” in the language of our heart for the person about whom we have bad feelings – over and over and over again, day after day, month after month sometimes, depending on the situation. We pray : “Lord, have mercy” over and over again for the person who is so difficult for us. In praying “Lord, have mercy” for this person, in due course the heart begins to get warmed up, as Saint Sophrony said, and as I have experienced, and many others have also experienced. The heart begins to get warmed up, and eventually the poison of the anger dissipates, because the Lord’s presence in the heart carried by that prayer heals the wounded and poisoned heart. Eventually, we will find ourselves being able to look the other person in the eye, and feel no bubbling nastiness or whatever coming up. Instead, there is peace. When there is peace in the heart, then we know that the Lord is there, and that Christ is truly in our midst. We will very honestly and truthfully be able to say : “Christ is in our midst. He is, and ever shall be”. The Truth, Himself, is in our midst.

We, in this particular building, in this particular part of the city, have been given a huge responsibility. It is no wonder that we suffer from time to time with these sorts of divisive ideas, and, as it were, splintering that occasionally occur amongst us. However, we can never excuse it, and we can never co-operate with it and nurture it. Instead, we must engage in the real spiritual warfare, which is applying the Lord’s love, His light, and His truth to my heart – not to someone else, but to me. Everything begins with me. I cannot speak anything about anyone else or think anything about anyone else until my heart is right with the Lord, and I am at peace, and I am able to address anything about my brother or sister in the peace of the Lord’s love. The peace of the Lord and His love can sometimes correct us rather sharply ; but the correction is always with life-giving love, hope, unity, harmony, which exemplify life in the Kingdom.

Brothers and sisters, let us guard our hearts. Let us pay attention to our hearts, making sure that our hearts are always focussed on, connected to, and alive in Christ, and only in Him. There cannot be anything else for you or for me, Orthodox Christians. We stand for Him who is the Truth, and we present Him, who is the Truth, by saying that we are Orthodox Christians. That is who we are. Let us guard our hearts. Let us pay attention to our hearts. Let us ask the Lord to reign in our confused, conflicting, and foggy thoughts. Let them be ruled from the heart, where He reigns. Let us obey and live out and pray every day, too, the exhortation that Saint Herman the Elder and Wonder-worker of Alaska gives to us out of his experience of the love of Jesus Christ : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”, and glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The fact that we are today celebrating the memory of the holy Igumen Job of Pochaiv is appropriate, because today’s readings are concerned with the way of repentance, the way of following Christ. This is the centre of our Christian life. If there was a man who followed Christ, it is Saint Job of Pochaiv.

The Gospel reading today is the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. Here, we see how the rich man is attempting to bring about the salvation of his brothers by some sort of ghostly force, so to speak. He is asking that the Lord will send Lazarus to appear to his brothers in order to wake them up. Our Lord is being very clear, as He teaches us that there are no short-cuts to finding the way to life and to salvation. Therefore, in this parable, He tells us that Abraham replied to the Rich Man that even if someone should rise from the dead, then in the case of certain people, they are not going to listen : “‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead’”. This is precisely what has happened. There are people who do hear the Law and the Prophets, and they do understand and accept and live in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. However, there are many people who absolutely refuse to hear. My mother used to say very often (when she was referring to me) : “There are none so blind as those who will not see”. That is very much the way of human existence.

Because we are slaves of fear (and that is probably 99 per cent of the time), we are not likely to hear the words of the Gospel clearly and correctly, and we are therefore often willy-nilly determined to distort them, somehow. This is also because we are slaves of pride. Human beings characteristically like to be in control of everything. We like to run everything. We like to manipulate everything. It seems that if we could, we would like to control God, Himself. We are a very difficult race. It is a wonder that the Lord lets the human race continue on for so long.

I was discussing the behaviour of human beings yesterday with n, and remembering a priest who is a retired Egyptologist (and a very well-known Egyptologist). I had previously asked this priest whether, according to his studies, things were any better now than they were 5,000 years ago. He had replied that there is no improvement, but he opined that we are, in fact, worse. Therefore, it does not matter how much we deceive ourselves in terms of our skill and technological advance – our behaviour is deteriorating. How we are towards each other as human beings does not get better. It is even getting worse. I believe this man. I believe him not only because he is an Egyptologist, a wise man, an understanding person, and a God-loving priest. I also accept what he has to say because I think that I can see one or two things about what he says in human behaviour just now, with all this stock market manipulation that is going on, and the panic and fear that is driving people one way or the other. Much of it is cynically done, in my opinion, because this happens too regularly. People are making money, and they do not seem to care about anyone else.

Human beings very much like to make their own way and control things. I remember reading in my extreme youth the passage from the Apostle that we read this morning about his being caught up to the third heaven, and hearing things that cannot be spoken about, and seeing things that cannot be expressed. Because of my naïve stupidity I thought that it would be wonderful to be able to do something so I could experience this, too. I have seen many other people with the same sort of deluded idea that we can somehow do something in order to experience what the Apostle Paul experienced, and experiences.

That is not how it goes. We cannot make ourselves get there. We cannot do something to get there in terms of living by some sort of technique, by thinking that if I do this, then God will give me that. There is no such bargaining. The Apostle Paul said that the experience was given to him. He did not take it. It is because he was living his life in love and service to the Lord that the experience was given to him. The Lord poured out His love on the Apostle Paul in an inexpressible way, and He allowed him to encounter Himself, the Lord, in ways that cannot be expressed. He probably heard the singing of angels, and the glorification of God in heaven. We are not going to get there by doing something such as deep breathing or whatever else some people think you can do to get there and experience this. If we are doing all these techniques, we are inviting the devil to deceive us. However, if we are living our life in love, harmony, submission, and obedience to Him and because of love (not out of fear), then the Lord may give us this experience, or something like it.

The Apostle Paul needed something like this experience to refresh him. He was living through and enduring all sorts of beatings, imprisonments, difficulties, hunger, things that we do not even have an idea about in our fat-cat North American ways. He was experiencing all this deprivation because he wanted so much to share the love and the hope and the life of Jesus Christ. All this was for that reason only, because he wanted other people to know the Lord the way he knew Him.

Therefore, recalling the opening parable, it does not matter if someone, somehow, comes back from the dead, as our Lord is saying in this parable. If a person’s heart is hard, resistant, and focussed on self, this is not going to penetrate. However, what does penetrate is the truth of the love of Jesus Christ. When people encounter the authentic love of Jesus Christ in Christians, they respond, if they have any openness in their hearts. They respond with hope and love in the same way. The warmth of the love of Jesus Christ melts all sorts of icy hearts. For instance, I know one person who had known one of her neighbours since he was born. In his adolescence he had fallen away somehow (or at least he certainly thought he had). He was being rebellious, and he kept himself distant from the Lord. However, this person saw the potential in the other young person. She began to pray for him out of compassion. She prayed for him every day for eight years. Then after eight years, while walking her dogs, she met this person in a park. He began to ask her questions. That opened the doors for him not only to come into the Orthodox Church, but now to be one of our deacons. He admits that this is how it went. Patience, love, and prayer, motivated by the love of Jesus Christ, accomplish many things.

I would like to speak about Saint Job of Pochaiv, about whom we have been singing, because the Lord has poured out a great deal of Grace through the life, example, and prayers of this man. I want to say that there are people who have semi-scientific, sceptical, intellectual approaches to relics. However, the relics of Saint Job of Pochaiv are uncorrupt. That means that if we were to go to the monastery of Pochaiv to where his relics rest in the ante-room (as it were) to the cave where he lived, then we will see that his body after all these years is brown, but it is whole. His body has not mouldered away into bones – it is just there, brown with age. It might appear to some as though he had a good tan. All we who are Orthodox Christians know what it is like to come and kiss for the last time someone who has died. That person’s body is usually cold, like the tiles on this floor. In fact, it is very cold, and we can tell that this person has definitely gone. However, when we go and kiss Saint Job of Pochaiv, it is as though we might be now, here, kissing each other’s hand. He is warm. He is lying there, in his reliquary, where he has rested for 500 years, in a cool place – a cave. It is not heated in there. I was quite surprised, myself, when I went to kiss him for the first time, and I found that he is warm. Try and explain that scientifically. I would not even try to explain it, apart from the love of the Lord. People want to explain scientifically the fact that he is lying there incorrupt. They try to explain why his body should not have decayed by saying that it is because there is some sort of very good climatic condition there in the cave. However, not they, not you, not I can explain away the fact that his body is still at living temperature.

Through things such as this, the Lord, in His love, is trying to melt our icy hearts, our stubborn intellect, our resistance to His love and to His life. He is trying to say to you and to me : “Wake up. I love you. No-one else loves you as I love you. No-one else will love you without betraying you (because human beings always betray each other). No-one loves you with the consistency of the truth as I love you”. “'Learn from Me'”, as He says in the Gospel : “'My yoke is easy and My burden is light'” (Matthew 11:29, 30). The Lord is saying, as it were : “I love you. Come to me. Come with me. Be with me”. He does this through someone like Saint Job. Saint Job is not the only incorrupt one, but he is a very significant one who is incorrupt. The Lord does such things through people like Saint Job, because Saint Job is such a God-loving man, himself, whom people respect. We turn to him very often, and therefore, through him the Lord can and does approach us. Through Saint Job and others like him, the Lord speaks to our hearts. In fact, He can wake us up, as He certainly did with me through my visits to Saint Job, and my venerating his relics.

Brothers and sisters, let us do our best to open our hearts to the Lord, and let us allow Him to live more and more in our hearts. Let us allow the Lord to soften our hearts, to give us more of that life and joy which characterise Orthodox Christians. This is the way of hospitality, of unified, whole, undivided, unbroken lives, lives that in every part glorify Him. Let us remember and try to live by the words of our favourite first saint, Herman, the Elder and Wonder-worker of Alaska, who said (as I am sure Saint Job also would say) : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”, and in that we will glorify with Saint Job, with Saint Herman, and with all the saints, the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In today’s Epistle, the words that the Apostle Paul is giving to us are very important for us to remember. These words address his experience of the Lord, and the love of the Lord. They relate how the Lord, in His love, intervened in his life, and by revelation drew him into His one flock. The Lord not only drew him into His one flock, but ultimately made him a leader and a very great expander of that one flock. The Apostle Paul is a living expression of that yeast that our Saviour, Himself, speaks about in a parable (see Matthew 13:33). He was and is, himself, the enabler of very many other people to find Christ and to come to Him.

It is very important for us to remember this outpouring of the love of the Lord on the Apostle Paul, who, himself, admits that he had previously persecuted the Church, and had resisted this love. We see how the love of the Lord is both insistent and persistent with us. The Lord tries to do everything He can to draw us together into His one flock in unity, in love, and in life.

Keeping this in the forefront of our hearts and minds is necessary, especially today, when we are hearing this Gospel-event about the exorcism of the man possessed by a multitude of demons. This man of the city had been driven out of the city, away from unity, away from society, by the activity of the demons in his heart. Now, upon the very approach of Jesus the Christ, this man is already encountering the love of the Lord. As we well recall – we heard it – our Saviour, without even beginning a conversation with the man, is already commanding the crowd of demons to come out of the man. When our Lord comes into the presence of this man, the demons in whom are already starting to say through their slave : “'What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?'” We recall that what appears to be a singular demon is in fact a multitude. This phenomenon amongst demons is not uncommon. Our Saviour is liberating this man in the same way that He liberated the Apostle Paul from chains. The Apostle Paul’s chains were rather different from this man’s chains, but they were chains, nevertheless. The Lord sets us free. The Lord draws us into unity with Himself, and with each other.

Let us remember this as we come here every week, and stand in the presence of the Lord and His love. In fact, by His love, He Himself has drawn us to be here, in the same way that He drew the Apostle Paul to Himself. The Lord is first in our lives. He is the only purpose of our lives. His love for us, and our love for Him, are the only reasons for anything at all.

At the same time, however, when we are confronted with this man possessed by a multitude of demons, it is important for us to ask ourselves : “How am I different from that demon-possessed man ? Am I more like the Apostle Paul after he was set free ? Is my love for the Lord like the Apostle Paul’s – intense, full of life, full of joy, well focussed, and life-giving ? Or, have I allowed myself to become divided and broken like the man who was possessed by demons ?” Perhaps I fall into the trap of believing that there is no such thing as evil. Some people like to say that there is no such thing as personal evil, but that evil is some sort of a concept, or whatever. They say that evil is “just there”. They say that evil is bad people, or people that are merely out-of-focus, or misled or sick or something. These people are denying the reality of the forces of evil. Well, when we get into that department, we are prime prey to becoming like the demon-possessed man – broken, divided, paralysed, separated, and driven away.

What is the nature of our life here, amongst ourselves ? How am I when I come to this Temple ? Am I in harmony with my brothers and sisters ? Do I live in forgiveness with my brothers and sisters ? Do I pray fervently for those who are very difficult for me to be with ? Or, do I come here feeling all raw, angry, and just plain dark, and bitter ? Do I come here with these passions afflicting me – feeling anger, and so forth ? Do I come into the Temple like that ? If I come into the Temple like that, then (if I am a Christian), I have to be crying out to the Lord (who saved the Apostle Peter, and who liberated this man from the demons) : “Liberate me, O Lord, from these terrible passions. Liberate me, O Lord, from the slavery to anger, the slavery to bitterness, the slavery to anything that divides me from my brothers and sisters”.

Do I come here into this Temple while having an agenda against my brother and sister, and having no respect for my brother and sister ? Do I come into this Temple while feeling some sort of division between me and someone else ? When I have no respect for my brother and sister, I have to realise, then, that I have no respect for Christ. No matter how difficult that brother or sister is for me to get along with (because of weakness, fallenness, or illness), that person is a creature of the Lord. In that person we must be able to see Christ. In the most difficult persons that we have to encounter, we must be able to see Christ. We must be able to respect Christ in that other person, no matter how much that person’s illnesses, weaknesses, brokenness make it difficult for me to be near that person. If I am truly an Orthodox Christian, and I truly have the love of the Lord Jesus Christ alive in my heart, if there is someone who is very difficult for me to be with, then I must be offering that person to the Lord constantly in prayer, asking the Lord to heal that person, and to heal me. In fact, I need to ask the Lord to heal me first, before I can manage to ask the Lord properly to heal anyone else. Who am I, with my house all dirty, filthy, and full of refuse, to criticise someone else whose house might merely be somewhat dusty ?

Often it is the case that when we get into moods like that, and we are grumbling about this or that person’s behaviour, that person’s ideas, that person’s disposition – in fact, compared to me, that person is in very good shape. When it comes down to real analysis of life, that person is in much better shape than I am, because my heart is so full of turmoil ; my heart is so full of anger ; my heart is so full of condemnation of my brother and sister. When I have come to this state, how can I see Christ in the other ? How can I respect Christ in the other ? How can I be like Christ, then, who says : “'Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me'” (Mark 8:34). He also says : “'If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet'” (John 13:14). We have to love and serve each other like Christ. Having put on Christ, we have to demonstrate this love which serves, which gives life, which nurtures, which enriches, which lifts up, which unifies, which binds, which brings people tightly close together in the love of Jesus Christ.

We cannot let ourselves forget the love of Jesus Christ. We must remember what is its true force. This love is not warm, fuzzy, flabby, cozy, comfortable, sit-in-front-of-the-fire sort of love ; but rather, it is love which gives life, which raises from the dead, which liberates, which sets free, which delivers, which conquers death, and which conquers evil. Indeed, we would be far better off not to refer to the Lord’s love using the word “which”, but rather to use “Who”. Who is this Love ? Who accomplishes all these things ?

It is crucial for us always to remember the Lord and His love. It is extremely important for us to be continually living in the context of this love, pleading with the Lord to renew this love in our hearts, and pleading with the Lord, by His love, to heal our brokenness, to bind us up, to renew us within ourselves, and together, with each other. Where there is brokenness, division, separation, driving away, the Lord is not at work. Where there is drawing together, where there is unifying love, where there is gathering, where there is life, where there is multiplication of joy, the Lord is greatly at work. It is our responsibility, all together, to be engaging in this work of the Lord. It is our responsibility to lead into the Kingdom of Heaven, through our joy, through our life, through our liberty, people who are bound and fettered by fear. It is our responsibility to show them (through our love) where life truly is to be found, where hope truly is to be found.

Brothers and sisters, please let us make sure that our only purpose in life is to do what Saint Herman said, and says : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”, and glorify the all-holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, I want to speak about the way we are living, and about the way the love of God is revealed to us. In the words of the Apostle this morning, we hear how he wants only to glory in the Cross of Jesus Christ. He wants to be pleasing only to the Lord (in contrast to people who are very much concerned with the letter of the law). Pleasing the Lord does not imply that we forget the Law altogether. However, there are some things about the Law, itself, that are not absolutely necessary for living the Christian life. We can see this balance in the life and writings of the Apostle. However, at all times, there are people who do not seem to be able to live in the freedom of God’s love, but cling to the apparent security of the rules.

Let us consider, for instance, the Ten Commandments. Is there any one of the Ten Commandments from the Old Testament given through the Prophet Moses on Mount Sinai that is not applicable today ? I can see by your silence and by the shaking of heads that you have the correct answer. There is not one of those Ten Commandments that does not apply nowadays. What are those Ten Commandments ? They are not laws like stop signs and speed limit signs. They are not laws like those laws which legislatures and parliaments are passing. The Commandments are signs of how a person who lives in the context of the love of God lives life. A person who loves God is going to put God above everything else, and is not going to make any sort of substitute. Nothing will come between this person and God, just as the Apostle is saying to us this morning. Such a person is also going to honour parents, keep the worship of the Lord in first place in his/her life, and so forth – no stealing, no lying, no murdering, no coveting, and all those other things. None of those negative things, and all the positive things will be characteristic of the life of a person who loves God. So, the Commandments are very strong guideposts or signs of indication of the life of a believer.

If a person is truly putting the Lord’s love above everything else, one will not even have to know those Ten Commandments, because one is going to live according to God’s inspiration of love. The Grace of the Holy Spirit living in us is going to guide us in precisely those directions : putting God above everything, respecting everything that is holy, respecting our ancestors, our parents, and other human beings. We are going to be doing all these things naturally, because of love.

We Orthodox Christians use the word “canon” in a similar spirit. I mean to say that canons are like direction-signs about the correct way to go, about the correct way to behave. They tell us where we have to be cautious, where we have to be discreet, how we should watch out for one or another danger. The canons are not like traffic signs that indicate legal limits with attached punishments. They are, in their pointing-the-way, also used as medicines for heart and soul. There are suggested dosages for the spiritual father or mother to administer, in order to bring an erring person back to the way of the canon, and therefore to spiritual health. Just as with the true physician, the dosage is applied in accordance with the nature of the patient. As we all know, too much of a good thing can be deadly. Some few times in Orthodox history (during the time of the Roman Empire, for instance), certain canons were incorporated into imperial law-codes. These empires are no longer, and we need not think that these canons have the force of imperial law simply because of this history. Nevertheless, they remain as medicines to be applied with loving care and true knowledge of the patient.

Today, we hear about the rich man to whom we give the name “Dives” (which means “a rich man” in Latin). We can live our life according to the rules, or we can live our life very selfishly, concerned only about ourself, as this rich man did. He apparently did not even see Lazarus. If he did see him, he certainly did not pay attention to him, sitting and begging outside his gate all these days. By the time Dives came to being concerned about his brothers’ welfare (when Dives was already suffering torments in Hades), there was nothing more that could be done. The rich man still did not understand. He wanted some sort of miracle or big sign to be shown to his brothers – someone like Lazarus being sent from the dead – to warn them about what will happen. Our Lord said : “'If they do not hear the Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead'”. The idea that a miraculous apparition might persuade someone is a futile idea. Many saw and experienced great wonders at the hand and Presence of Christ, but not everyone believed. Many saw wonders beyond anything in usual experience during the martyrdoms of many saints, yet they refused to believe. This includes emperors.

Nevertheless, the Lord is working wonders and miracles amongst us all the time. The age of miracles is not past. Those miracles and those wonders are happening all the time. I see them all the time. We experienced it very much this last week at the General Assembly of our Church. It is not a small thing that a priest, whose heart is broken because of the big arguments and in-fighting in our Church, should die during the Assembly after having received Holy Communion, after having asked forgiveness of everyone around him. It is not a small, insignificant thing that this man should die under those circumstances. He was a faithful, God-loving priest whom our Father Gregory here knows. It is obvious that this man, after his death, was instantly praying for us, because the atmosphere at the All-American Council began to change immediately. Not everyone could see it, but some of us could see it. The atmosphere already began to change in a more positive direction. Then, this wonder happened – unplanned, and without even any sort of debate – the election of the youngest bishop to be the head of our Church. I will tell you, in case anyone has any ideas to the contrary, that there was no hesitation amongst the bishops when it was time to elect. Archbishop Job, himself, said : “It has to be Jonah”. He said so, and the rest of us understood that it had to be so.

This is the first time in our local OCA history that the bishop who has the most nominations is elected by the bishops, also, to be the head of the Church. This is the first time in our Church’s history that we have the youngest bishop being elected in this manner. It is not the first time in Church history, by any means, as it has been explained to me. It has happened many times, even recently, in other Churches. We are right in line. The Lord is with us and guiding us. Everything that has happened in this past little while (including the death of Father Stephen) has to do with this presence, with this guiding. The very difficult and painful process through which we have been passing is an indication of how the Lord is cleaning our Church, and putting things in better order. However, do we see that it is He that is doing this, or do we forget about Who is in charge, and thus think that we are doing it ourselves ? Because we are so pre-occupied with ourselves, we often think that we can repair things and situations with our own strength, with our own logic, with our own systems and own strategic policies.

We forget to ask the Lord, to involve the Lord. When we behave this way, we can very easily perpetuate what is out of order. Some people call this “rearranging the furniture on the Titanic”. If we are going to correct anything in our lives (or in our lives together in the Church), then this correction has to be completely in obedience to, and guided by the Lord. The Lord gave us a great boost towards doing this. Now, our challenge is to pay attention to the direction of the Lord. If we do not pay attention to the direction of the Lord, we are going to be like the rich man, and ignore the opportunity that is Lazarus, given to us right under our noses. The Lord is sending us many other opportunities in our daily lives besides such a big opportunity as was this election. If we hope to co-operate with the Lord, and be fruitful, it is crucial that we keep our hearts focussed on the Lord, and allow them to be afire with His love, so that we can see what or who is our daily Lazarus. Let us ask the Lord to keep the eyes of our hearts wide open in Him.

This particular community (which has been a mission for a long time) has touched the lives of many such persons, as I have seen. The context of this mission is very resistant to the Truth. Regardless, all can be won to Christ by love. Therefore, let us ask the Lord again to help us to be faithful witnesses of His love, and to glorify Him in everything : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we have a very strong lesson about the love of the Lord, and the nature of the love of the Lord. To begin with, the Apostle Paul is telling us that everything we are, in fact, is the result of the love of God (who created us in the first place), and the continuation of the love of God throughout our lives. Our tendency is to boast, as the Apostle warns us against ; and therefore, it is important that we understand that our self-proclamations, self-congratulations and so forth are out of order. Instead, we should be giving glory to God for everything.

This is emphasised today by what our Lord does amongst the Gadarenes for the demon-possessed man. The work of the devil is not related to unity and love. Rather, it is characterised by fear and division. This man (who was demon-possessed) was possessed by fear. He was separated from all who loved him, and whom he loved. We see at the beginning of the Gospel today, that this man is a man of the city. However, he had been so overtaken by fear ; he had become so violent, and so absolutely out-of-focus, that he became completely uncontrollable. We are told that he became so violent that he even broke the chains that were restraining him. There was no way to restrain him. He was driven out of the city, away from all that he loved, into the wilderness where he did not even wear any clothes, and where he was violent, nasty, and a terror to everyone around. He was driven by fear, and out of his mind. He was separated from everyone and everything that he loved.

This is how evil works. Evil works on the basis of fear. It works against unity ; it works for division, and, in fact, for destruction. Every activity of the evil one (as we encounter in today’s Gospel event), is about destruction. When our Lord released this man from the demons, we see that they go into a herd of swine. What happens immediately to the pigs ? They kill themselves. They go absolutely crazy, and they drown themselves. Let us go back to the beginning of the Gospel passage for a moment. Let us remember that God is love, and that the Lord is always acting in love with us. When our Lord is approaching him, the man is crying out : “'What have You to do with me?'” Why does he ask this ? It is because our Saviour had already started to tell the demons to come out. They were resisting. However, our Lord, in His love, without even being asked, has already begun to release this man.

This is how our Lord is with us. He is not waiting for us to beg Him for this and for that. He is already present. He is already there waiting, in His love, in your life and in my life, to release us from the power of darkness, to heal us, and to bring us back into unity and harmony. At the end of this episode today, we see the man who was healed, clothed, peaceful, all in order in the presence of our Saviour, and asking if he could go away with Him, as He was leaving the place of the Gadarenes. However, our Saviour replies : “No”. (It would have been a real blessing for this man to be constantly in the presence of the Lord, with the disciples and apostles.) Why does our Saviour say no ? It is because the whole healing of this man has to occur, and that would not happen if the physical separation from his family were to continue. Instead, the man has to go back to the city, to live amongst the people whom he loves, and who love him. He has to be a concrete, physical, living sign of God’s healing love and what this love accomplishes.

His family, his friends, the people of the city, could in no way pretend that he had not been absolutely (as the British used to say) “stark, staring bonkers”. Now, he is completely whole. He is a regular human being, a “regular chap” – a man capable of being with other people, of being in harmony with other people, in the bosom of his family, reconciled and re-united with them. No-one can deny the contrast. No-one can deny that the Lord, in His love, has acted, and has freed this man from the bond of slavery. The physical chains that were broken by the enslaved man were nothing compared to the chains of slavery and fear that had, in fact, been binding this man. He was held tightly, in a deadly grip, by the power of darkness and the power of death. Our Lord, in His love, now has released him, has set him free, and has reunited him with his family, with his friends, with himself, and most particularly with the Lord. Our Lord has put the man back together.

The Lord is always doing that for you and me, too. It is important for us to remember this. The Lord is Love. He is always present, waiting for us. He is always present, releasing us from our bonds of fear. He is also protecting us and making us whole, as He has made the Gadarene man whole, today. It is crucial that we hold on to this, that we accept this healing love, and that we not let ourselves be driven by fear. Therefore, whenever any of us perceives any hint of suspicion about anyone else (without absolutely concrete proof that there is something wrong between me and another person), it is important that none of us accept that as the truth. These suspicions and these question marks between us that arise from time to time are not from God. They are insinuations brought from below in order to divide us one from another.

How many times in my life have I been hearing one person or another speak about how he or she thinks that someone does not like them any more because of the look on that person’s face this morning. I have had it said about me, too : “What is the matter with you ? Do you not like me any more, Vladyka ?” So I say : “Why ?” They say : “Well, you are looking quite angry”. I have always been surprised at that sort of accusation. I would think to myself : “What was I doing ? All right, my mind was somewhere else, and my face must have gone slack, somehow. Maybe I was staring somewhere”. It looked like an angry look to someone but I had not the faintest notion what they were talking about. I have had much concrete experience of that, and I have heard human beings talk like that. However, sometimes people have an aching foot or hip or knee. Perhaps someone has hurt them, or perhaps someone has died. Perhaps they do not feel well ; they do not communicate normally ; their eyes are not as bright as usual for some reason. All this has nothing necessarily to with me. Rather, it has to do with their interior pain or their physical pain or their sorrow.

If you see someone not looking at you in the right way or not communicating in the usual way, then the thing to do is to pray, and to ask the Lord to protect the person from whatever is making the person look like this. Most likely, it has nothing at all to do with me. Even if it does have something to do with me, it is still not my place to say : “Oh, poor me, he or she does not like me any more”. The right thing to do is to pray, and to say : “I am sorry” (for whatever it is that I did or did not do). We do not habitually say this because we are Canadians, but rather because we are truly and sincerely sorry. We are sorry, even though we may not know specifically what is amiss.

Let us be reconciled with our brother or our sister. That is the way we have to be as Orthodox Christians, because the way of the Orthodox Christian is the way of Christ. The way of Christ is the way of love. It is the way of unity, harmony, and oneness. We here today are not all physically related to each other. However, we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. As in every family, sometimes there are occasional things that irritate, such as how a person may squeeze the toothpaste-tube, for instance, or how a person may eat. When someone gets on our nerves for one reason or another, it is important for us to let nothing negative get between us, and to make sure that only the Lord is between us. When we say to each other : “Christ is in our midst”, we actually could say : “Christ is between us”. Then we must always be able to say with our whole heart : “He is, and always shall be”. The way of the Lord is healing, uniting, life-giving love. It is important for us always to guard and protect that healing, life-giving, uniting love in our hearts, always turning to the Lord for His help and protection.

Brothers and sisters, giving thanks for the release of this demon-possessed man, let us also give thanks for the true freedom that the Lord gives to us in His love, and for the true freedom that we have with each other in His love. Let us make sure that we follow the words and exhortation of our holy Father, Elder and Wonder-worker Herman of Alaska, who said, and says always : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”. In doing that we will glorify the all-holy Trinity in every part of our lives : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Always, our Lord was being put to the test by people who did not understand Who He is, and what He does. They were always asking Him difficult questions. Even the apostles, themselves, in those days did not exactly and correctly understand just Who He is. However, when the time came for the Resurrection and the Giving of the Holy Spirit, by this time the holy apostles were beginning to understand Who is Jesus Christ.

It is the knowledge of Who is Jesus Christ that kept the Apostle Paul on a steady course in the face of every sort of difficulty, obstacle, and suffering. It is the same knowledge of Who is Jesus Christ that has kept all sorts of people on a steady course throughout their whole lives, knowing Who is their Captain, their Leader, that is to say Jesus Christ. Because they know Who He is, they know that He is Love. They know that He loves them. They also know that in Him is eternal life, as the Apostle Peter once said to the Lord : “'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life'” (John 6:68). That is how Orthodox believers have felt for the past 2,000 years.

On this particular day, we find ourselves celebrating all together at the same time the memory of some very well-known saints, who put their trust in Jesus Christ, lived for Him, trusted in Him, and became strong in Him. My own “patron” saint, whose memory is amongst them, is well-known only in some circles. However, Saint John of Damascus is one of the ones who is best known. He was a great teacher, a great writer, and a great theologian. How did he become such a great theologian ? It was by his personal experience of the Lord. He was able to speak in such a way that his words affect us even until now, 1500 years later. He was able to write like this because of his love for Jesus Christ, his relationship of love with Jesus Christ. This relationship steadied him, formed him, directed him, and made him solid. He had to be solid, because he was a civil servant in the court of an Islamic caliph. If a person were a Christian, it was not at all an easy environment in which to live, and not lose your life.

There is also the example of the great virgin-martyr, Saint Barbara. Her father had her put to death because she insisted on being faithful to Jesus Christ regardless of everything and anything. The memory of Saint Alexander Hotovitzky is also kept today. He is a new-martyr, a priest, of the communist period of the last century. At one time, he served actively in several places in North America, one such place being Montréal. He was put to death by Stalin. Saint Alexander was a strong missionary priest because of his love for Jesus Christ. He was able to survive the tortures, exile, and death that he had to endure because of his love for Jesus Christ.

The memory of Saint Seraphim, Archbishop of Phanourion, the hieromartyr, is kept also today. He was the head of the Greek-speaking people in the province of Thessaly, Greece, in the time of the Ottoman Empire. While he was the archbishop, there happened to be an uprising in that region against the Ottoman government. It was put down. However, because the Ottoman Turkish system regarded any bishop (and therefore Archbishop Seraphim) to be the civic leader of the Greek-speaking people in his territory, he was held responsible for the uprising of the people in his area. He was beheaded after horrible tortures. As a supposed deterrent to the people, his head was put on a spike on a bridge where there was plenty of traffic. What happened then is not atypical, although people in their cynicism like to think that such things do not happen. However, things like this do happen. For several days, his head always turned to face the sun. His head moved on the spike to face the sun like a sunflower. When the people saw this happening, there were Muslims that were becoming Christians right away. Because of this, the Turkish authorities threw his head and his body into the river to destroy his remains. However, this did not succeed because the Christian faithful were clever enough to rescue his remains. His body can still be venerated in Greece to this day.

The Lord is constantly with us. He is constantly showing us that despite the difficulties, the pains of life, despite the fact that Christians are even being killed for His sake, His glory is being revealed for the sake of bringing us to Him, and giving us eternal life. His desire is that we be with Him in eternity, and that we share His love eternally. In this eternity, He wants us to grow up to be our real selves. Right now, we are obscured shadows of our real selves because of our fear, our forgetfulness, our blindness, and our self-will. However, in the Kingdom we become truly ourselves, alive forever in Him. We are ever-growing in Him. (Life in the Kingdom is not static – just sitting around playing a harp, as some people seem to think.) Life in the Kingdom, life in Christ, is always full of joy, full of life, full of strength, full of energy, full of growth. In Him, life never ends. This is what He wants for us. That is why He does things like turning the head of a decapitated martyr on a bridge. He wants to show people that His love is greater than anything. His love is much greater than their fear, and His life overcomes death.

All the martyrs and saints of this day (and of every day of the Church year) are persons who have so experienced the love of Jesus Christ that they were ready to face anything for the sake of life in Him. They were ready for anything, because they have had this sort of confidence and hope in Him. Here in Canada, we have some small difficulties in life. It can be said that these days of Canadian political turmoil are not anything at all compared to what some people suffer. Regardless of the uncertainty (in our Canadian teapot-tempest), we must remember to trust the Lord that things will come out well, and that He will stabilise our government, somehow. We must trust Him to enable us to come out of this with a typical Orthodox sense of humour as well, and in everything to glorify Him.

Let us take the example of these saints, and their love. Let us put our whole trust in our Saviour who never deserts us. He never leaves us. He never abandons us, as He is continually saying : “'I am with you always'” (Matthew 28:20). Let us glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we are celebrating the memory of Saint Nicholas, the Archbishop of Myra in Lycia. The readings that come with such a feast are really appropriate for him. We hear in our encounter with the Holy Gospel today that our Lord is amongst “a great multitude of people from all Judea and Jerusalem, and from the seacoasts of Tyre and Sidon”, a multitude that had come to Him as iron to a magnet. Geographically speaking, we can see on a map that there is the whole country of Judea in the middle of Palestine surrounding Jerusalem up to the Sea of Galilee, which extends over to the sea-coast (which is called Lebanon today). People are coming all the way from Lebanon to the Sea of Galilee not only to hear our Lord speak, but also to allow His love to touch them and to heal them.

Everywhere in the Gospel, we are seeing our Saviour touching people – either physically touching them or touching their hearts, healing them in every way imaginable. Their hearts are sometimes broken, and He is mending their broken hearts. Their bodies are broken, and He is mending their broken bodies. They are sick unto death, and He is healing them so that they do not die. Sometimes, His love even raises them from the dead, which happened several times in the Gospel. All sorts of wonderful things such as these are happening.

It is important for us to remember, also, the words “Tyre” and “Sidon”. This area is outside of the Jewish territory. When we speak about Tyre and Sidon, we are speaking about Gentile people. There could have been some Jewish people living there, but probably most of the people who came from Tyre and Sidon to see our Lord were not necessarily Jewish people. Nevertheless, our Saviour Lord touched them, healed them, and gave them life.

In the Gospel today, our Lord is giving life to everyone who is coming to Him and surrounding Him. He is touching them and healing them. Moreover, He is giving them a summary of the Beatitudes (which we hear in a longer form in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew). Our Saviour is touching the hearts of the people as well.

Saint Nicholas is this sort of a person. Saint Nicholas is a person who conveys our Saviour’s love by his prayers. This is why Saint Nicholas is a good example for bishops. Why bishops in particular ? A priest could be like Saint Nicholas, too, and many have been. Why is Saint Nicholas (the Archbishop of Myra) so important in this context ? What is the bishop to the Church ?

A bishop is a person who truly is the glue of the Church. The Church is supposed to gather around him, and from the bishop come blessings from the Lord so that the Church will grow and live and multiply. This is the job of the bishop. Once, when a little girl asked Archbishop John (Garklavs) of Chicago, of blessed memory, what bishops do, he answered : “They bless”. That is what bishops do. They bless this and they bless that ; they bless people who ask to do something good. The bishop gives the blessing, but not his own blessing. People are customarily going up to the bishop, and saying : “Give me your blessing”. However, the bishop never gives his own blessing. The bishop only gives the Lord’s blessing. That is why the bishop is always answering in some sort of way : “May the Lord bless you” or “May God bless you”, and so forth. There are various ways in which the bishop may answer the request. When people come to me, I say to them : “Do not say to me : ‘Give me your blessing’. It is more to the point to say : ‘Give the blessing’”. On my own, I have zero blessing to give. It is the Lord who gives everything. I am only a conveyer-belt or pipeline, one might say. It is the Lord’s blessing that the bishop is giving, nothing else but the Lord’s blessing, and not his own.

The bishop is somehow standing in the place of Christ. All that happens to the bishop during a Hierarchical Liturgy with the greeting, the glorious entry, the vesting in the middle of the Temple, and the attention that is paid to him, is not paid to him personally. This all happens to him because he is re-presenting Christ. It is the bishop’s responsibility to make sure that he, himself, never takes any of that attention for himself. He has to refer everything to the Lord. That is why I value so much the lesson that was taught to me by an abbess many years ago (about 1979, 1980, or so). I was visiting a monastery in Boston, and the nuns were extremely hospitable. I was very impressed with their expressions of love. When I was leaving, in my “greenness” I said to the abbess : “Thank you very much, Mother”. She said : “The Lord”. I said : “Thank you, too”. She said : “No. The Lord”. I learned a very good lesson that time. Especially from the bishop’s point of view, everything has to be referred to the Lord. That is why it is tricky being a bishop, because very often people are approaching the bishop in a very deferential way. The bishop has to be very careful that he never takes this for himself, and always refers everything to the Lord. Otherwise, the bishop gets lost. You could say that it is a dangerous business being a bishop.

Saint Nicholas is the example of a bishop, because he was following the example of our Saviour as He is amongst the people we met today in the Gospel. I should not talk about him in the past tense because Saint Nicholas is, to this very day, with his prayers, helping people who are in need. He is helping people who are poor ; people who are travelling, and all sorts of people in one condition or another. He stood for the truth in the Council of Nicaea. He never wavered, and he was never distracted by Arianism, which was the big trap in those days. He followed Christ single-heartedly and single-mindedly. He is, therefore, the example for bishops because he lived Christ. Everything about him radiated the love of Jesus Christ. He instinctively cared for the poor, looked after the needy, brought healing from the Lord to those who were sick and dying, and so forth. The Lord’s love was active and present in him, and it still is to this day. That is why he is a good example for bishops, because just as the Mother of God pointed, and does point everyone to the Saviour, Jesus Christ, so does he. He lived and he lives the love of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Even though we all are not bishops, everyone can still strive to let the Lord open one’s heart and rule in the heart in such a way that people will truly see Christ. They will be coming to Him just as the throngs in the Gospel today are coming to our Saviour from as far away as Tyre and Sidon. Let us not forget that they travelled for the most part on foot. All around the world this is the case. When the truth of the love of Jesus Christ is shining, people are coming to Him. However, it cannot just be bishops and priests who are like this. I still remember from earlier on, when I was a parish priest, that I was saying some things to my parishioners. One of the parishioners brought me up short when he said : “Well, we pay you to say that”. Ever since I heard that, I have understood that the priest or the bishop can exhort and help the sheep, but, in fact, the most credible witness for Christ is not the bishop, the priest, or even the deacon. It is the ordinary, everyday Christian, who, living love, presents Christ. That is the most credible witness for Christ – the ordinary human being who is not paid for anything, but simply does everything clearly for love. That is the witness that brings people to Christ. That is the witness that enables people to find the Lord.

Through the prayers of Saint Nicolas, the Wonder-worker, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia, may the Lord enable us to reflect His love in even half the measure that Saint Nicholas has been doing so that we can glorify Him, present Him, and re-present Him, our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Gratitude is a fundamental characteristic of the Christian way. However, the ingratitude of the nine of the lepers, healed today by our Saviour, is an expression of the way that we human beings tend to behave. In this particular Gospel event today, it is the foreigner, the Samaritan, the outcast (considered by his people to be in the class of dogs or even pigs) who comes back to our Saviour, and expresses gratitude by falling down at His feet.

When our Saviour says to him : “'Your faith has made you well'”, at the same time He is showing to you and to me that gratitude has to be at the front of the Christian’s life. Our lives have to be lived in this context of gratitude. When our Saviour says to this man : “'Your faith has made you well'”, He is saying that not only the cure from leprosy has happened to him, but also that he has become a whole person — a whole person, acting and living in the way a believer ought to act and to live.

Today, the Apostle is talking to us and to the Ephesians about the importance of unity, which is a fundamental characteristic of the Christian way. It has to be so, because the Christian way is life in our Saviour, and no other way. Our Saviour draws everything into unity, and we who follow Him must collaborate with Him in this work. The Apostle Paul proclaims that the way of Christ is in unity. Then it is for us to look for signs of unity as the fruit of the presence of the activity of the Lord in our own hearts, and in our relationships with other people. We look for signs of unity not only in our relationships one-on-one with other people, but as communities amongst other communities.

When the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the Church, and people spoke in all different languages, and praised God in every sort of language under the sun at that time, this was not a sign of one more tower of Babel (which expressed and definitely emphasised the separation of beings). Instead, Pentecost reverses the division. Pentecost brings everyone into harmony and unity despite the multiplicity of languages, despite the multiplicity of cultures. For every human being, the one Way is Jesus Christ. It is He alone who gives life to everyone. It is He alone who brings us into the eternal Kingdom. It is He alone who conquers sin and death. It is He alone who establishes this unity between us and the Father ; between us and Himself ; between ourselves, and other people.

This unity in the love of Jesus Christ is the absolute centre of the Orthodox way. When human beings are breaking down, and they are having to go and visit psychiatrists, psychologists, and so forth, it is because they have lost unity. For the most part, they have become broken and separated inside themselves. The devil has managed to infiltrate them, to disturb them, and to cause interior division. Another of his favourite techniques is to turn us in on ourselves so that we think that we are the centre of the world. Much like a toddler, we believe that there is no-one else around except ourselves, and that everything revolves around ourselves. This is in stark contrast to the outward-mindedness of our Saviour. How is our Saviour responding to the Samaritan and to the other lepers ? He is open, life-giving, healing. He is concerned about glorifying God in restoring these persons to wholeness. However, in the end, it is only the Samaritan who is able to come to true wholeness, because he comes back to the Saviour, and gives glory to God directly.

The foundation of your life and my life as Orthodox Christians has to be founded on gratitude, giving glory to God, and expressing the unifying way of the love of the Lord. For thirty years, this parish has been trying to be a sign of that way, with a fair amount of success (thanks be to God). This community has been embracing everyone, regardless of where they come from or what language they speak. All the national flags that have been characteristic of this parish (expressing how many languages are spoken, and from how many different nations people come), are exactly the expression of the unity that the Lord wants us to live out. True unity in Christ. Not fabricated unity, not forced unity, but unity in love, unity in harmony with Jesus Christ, unity in following in the foot-steps of Jesus Christ, unity in showing His love concretely to each other.

Thirty years seems like a long time, and especially when it took us so many years to come to this point of having a large solea now in this Temple. It is always just big enough (and not too big) for liturgical celebrations, and it brings everything closer to you. The Altar has come closer to you, the way it is supposed to be. The whole Altar now is reaching out towards you. (I will just mention that we are so “Canadian”, so polite, and so standing-back, whereas in other parts of the world people clamour to come as close as possible to the Holy Table. However, we Canadians are so polite ; we sit here and there, and we keep our distance because someone might ask us a question or look at us or pay attention to us, somehow. We do this because we are such shy Canadians.) I hope that you are going to feel free to come closer, yourselves, to the Holy Table. This carpet running along here does not mean that it is some sort of barrier or “no-person’s-land”. In fact, it is a nice, comfortable place on which to stand. I invite you to come closer. Then, you can see and hear everything. Then, the Holy Table is near, and not far away from you.

Soon there will be an iconostas here, too. Soon this Temple will be able to be consecrated. It may seem as though it has taken a terribly long time to get to this point. However, building Christian community is not an instant process. Coming to this concrete expression of who we are as a parish does not happen overnight. It cannot happen overnight because people do not develop like that. Everything develops slowly and organically, just as this community has been growing slowly and organically. Trying to maintain this unity in the love of Jesus Christ is not an easy thing. It is very difficult for us to trust each other, and to be sure that we each love each other. It is difficult because we are so subject to the fears from below. Nevertheless, difficulties or not, these thirty years (which, in fact, is not such a long time) have culminated now in this solea, and the soon-to-be iconostas. This will be a space in which to serve our Lord decently and in order. That is what all this development is concerned with : serving the Lord beautifully and decently, and building up the Body of Christ person by person.

These thirty years have been productive in preparing a long-lasting and beautiful environment for worshipping the Lord, and productive in nurturing love between human beings of many different cultures. With the Lord’s help, maintain this way of gratitude, and this way of love as well as you can, so that this parish may live up to the multiple implications of the word “Sign” after which this parish is named. May you also live up to the loving obedience, example, and powerful witness of the Mother of God, herself, with whom we glorify our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we are celebrating the Forefathers of the Saviour. The Forefathers of the Saviour are different from the Ancestors of the Saviour. This week we are remembering all those who have gone before the Saviour in preparation for His Incarnation. Amongst them there are patriarchs, prophets, kings and others, such as the Prophet Daniel, and the Three Children in the fiery furnace, who were being faithful to the Lord and His love. In fact, last night we were singing about the fiery furnace. It is important to remember that all these people were faithful to the Lord and His love. They took the Promise of the Lord seriously. This is whom we are remembering this week.

Next week, we are going to be remembering the Ancestors of the Saviour. The terminology of these two Sundays sometimes gets a little confused. It is important to know the difference. This week it is those who are Forefathers in a spiritual sense. Next week we are remembering those who are in the direct ancestry of the Saviour, physically, all the way back to Adam and Eve. There was a lot of preparation for the Incarnation. We cannot say that it is only the physical ancestors of the Saviour that were faithful to the Promise. There were many more who were faithful to the Promise. For instance, there are the Maccabee martyrs 100 years or so before the Incarnation of Christ. These were people who were defending the truth (albeit a bit violently). They took the Promise of the Saviour seriously. As another result of this ancient faithfulness to the Promise, we have ourselves, in Christ, acquired this long series of determinedly faithful men and women as our own spiritual predecessors.

When our Lord is giving us the Parable of the Banquet today, He is making a distinction. The distinction is between people who were faithful (faithful to the Lord’s promises, confident in His promises because of their being faithful to His love), and people who did not trust the Lord’s love very much. Therefore, after the Lord gave the Covenant on Mount Sinai, with the Ten Commandments (which were guidelines as to how a person lives who loves God), the Law became instead a slave-driver, as the Apostle Paul is frequently repeating. The people began to be afraid of breaking the Law. They treated the Ten Commandments as though they were government legislation. We are afraid to jaywalk because we might get arrested. We are afraid to drive too fast because we might get arrested. When we tend to legalism, we very often treat our relationship with the Lord as one of fear ; we thus tend to behave towards Him as though He were waiting for an opportunity to give us a whack on the head, or something like that. This is not at all Who or how the Lord is. The fear of the Lord is not being terrified of Him. Rather, the fear of the Lord is being respectful and in awe of Him.

However, love remains the context. When our Lord is talking to us about the banquet and the people who are being invited by the host, it echoes for us a similar parable about the invitation by a king to a wedding-banquet (see Matthew 22:1-14). A person making such an invitation would be a wealthy man of considerable social stature. Our Saviour is speaking about people who had already disregarded the importance of the banquet, and who had put the focus on themselves. Can anyone imagine that, when an invitation to a banquet would arrive through a personal messenger from a king or a wealthy person, the response to the messenger would be : “I cannot come because I just bought a new cow and I have to try it out”. If Queen Elizabeth were to invite anyone of us to tea, would we answer like that ? Probably not. It would be similar if the mayor of the city made the invitation, or if we were to be invited by the wealthiest person in the city. However, this is how we too often are behaving towards the Lord. The Lord is far greater than any king, potentate or rich person. Indeed, the Lord God loves us more deeply than any monarch, politician or businessman ever could or would.

This is the really important thing that we have to understand regarding what our Lord is trying to tell us. He uses a rich person as an example because He knows how people are with the wealthy and with the mighty. If Queen Elizabeth invited me to dinner, I would be very happy to go to dinner with her (although I would probably be a little bit nervous about etiquette). It would be very nice to be invited by the Queen even to go to dinner, let alone to a banquet. The sort of banquet that our Lord is referring to is not just a three-hour affair. He is talking about the sort of dinner that goes on likely all day, day after day for several days. It is a banquet at which people are sitting at the table extraordinarily enjoying themselves in the presence of the king, rejoicing in his presence. I reckon that, if the Queen were to invite one of us to such a prestigious occasion, then every one of us would be very quick to respond saying : “Yes”, rather than responding : “I just got married, so I cannot go”. Would we say : “I have other things to do that are more important ?”

However, are we not, ourselves, often like this in our relationship with the Lord, as I already suggested ? For us, it seems that other things easily take precedence over our being here in the Temple with the Lord. Thus, our prayers, our communion with Him on a daily basis, can fall into the background of our life instead of being the heart. We frequently find ourselves saying : “I just cannot miss this particular episode of my favourite television serial”, or “I am addicted to my computer and cannot get away from it”, or “I have some sort of meeting (that is more important than the Lord)”. This is what we are ultimately saying by our actions. If I schedule something at a time when we are supposed to be in the presence of our Saviour, then I am actually daring to say that God can take the back seat. I am saying that our Saviour can be patient, because I have more important business to take care of just now.

Our treatment of our Lord and Saviour, our disposition towards Him, is very important in His eyes. Where is He in our lives ? Are we accepting the invitation to His banquet ? Here we are now, in this Temple, at the Divine Liturgy. This is the banquet to which the Lord is inviting us. From this Table is going to come the Bread of Life, and the Blood that washes us from our sins and gives us life. We are going to be partaking of the banquet of the eternal Kingdom. This is what our gathering today is about. Our Lord is inviting us to the eternal banquet in His glory which never ends. Where are we to be found ? Are we to be found amongst those who are trivialising the invitation ? Or are we going to take the invitation seriously ? Are we going to come to the banquet with joy, recognising Who is the Lord – the Lord of love, not of fear ? The Apostle John says to us : “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). Fear, in the way we understand fear, is always from “down below”, from the opposition, from the Adversary. That sort of fear is not from the Lord, who is Love.

In his Epistle today, the Apostle Paul adds to the seriousness of this particular passage. Because the passages are connected, the Fathers put these two readings together for this Sunday. The Apostle Paul speaks about how important it is for us to put away from us every sort of dirty and unbecoming behaviour. Those of us who are believers have to reflect Him whom we serve. In law, there is truly guilt by association. We will be held accountable as guilty by association with someone who has done something terribly wrong. We try to weasle out of it by saying : “I did not intend this or that or whatever”. However, I was there, and I was in association with and appearing to support the whole thing. Therefore, I am guilty by association. We become guilty by association, too, when we pay so much attention to certain very unpleasant and improper things that are on the internet, on television, in the movies, in magazines or in books. When we pay a lot of attention to those distorted, improper, unclean or even dirty things, we become associated with that dirt, and that dirt clings to us. It is very hard to wash out and get rid of that dirt.

Our spiritual Fathers talk about how the Tempter comes to us in our thoughts. Here again, we North Americans seem mostly to be naïve, and “out to lunch” in our self-sufficiency and psychological ideas, because we think that everything in terms of thoughts originates only in our grey-matter. That is not at all the case. Thoughts come from outside, too. They are insinuated into us. They come from the environment (even from the air, somehow). This happens because we are members of the fallen human race. Everything round about us is suggestive of something or other. Most of the things that are being suggested are things that are contrary to the Lord, contrary to Christ, contrary to His way.

In my opinion, the major characteristic of the society in which we live is fear. Almost everything seems to be propelled by fear. Why are we in an economic wreck just now ? It is because everyone in the stock market, it seems, became afraid of losing money ; and this reaction of fear made certain that they lost even more money by behaving in a panic. Almost everything is driven by fear. Cunning people manipulate that fear, because they know that we are so enslaved by it. People are driven by fear, and perhaps this contributes to the frequent repetition of economic turmoil. This has always been suggested and insinuated into us. We encounter it everywhere and we cannot escape the influence. What we can escape is becoming enslaved, ourselves.

Having been released from the bonds of slavery to fear by Christ, we do not need to become re-enslaved. Our Lord set us free. It is important for us to renew the freedom that He has given us. It is essential for us to go about our lives carefully, so that we associate ourselves with things that are in harmony with the Lord, in harmony with the Gospel, being careful not to associate ourselves with things that are fear-driven and death-giving. Fear and death are “hand in glove”, we could say.

When the devil comes, he insinuates thoughts of fear, suspicion, and division into our hearts. Do not forget that the heart is the important focus for us. We keep talking about brains in our society, and we almost completely forget all about the heart. Without the heart, the brain is all confusion. The heart, which is the residence of the Lord, has to be guiding the head so that the thoughts are in order, and not confused and conflicting.

When the devil is insinuating various sorts of negative, death-dealing, fearful thoughts into our hearts, it is important for us to be careful, to be calling upon the Lord for help and deliverance. We cannot by ourselves try to fight off the negative thoughts, because that always produces the “tar-baby” phenomenon (from the stories of Uncle Remus). When we try to push away the “tar-baby”, our hand sticks to it. The more we wrestle with the “tar-baby”, the more we are stuck to it, and the more we cannot get rid of it. It is sort of like quicksand : the more we try to struggle in quicksand, the more we get sucked down into it.

It is very similar when we are trying to struggle alone against demonic attacks and negative thoughts that come from the Tempter. We cannot struggle alone or on our own. The only successful way is to turn to the Lord, and to plead with Him to help us and to save us. This is why, in the days of the early Church (before the Jesus Prayer came into the Orthodox Church’s normal life), people were saying two phrases from the Psalms : “O God : give heed to my help. O Lord : make haste to help me” (Psalm 69). This is the crux of everything. When we say these two phrases from the Psalms, we are calling upon the Lord for help. When we are saying the Jesus Prayer, we say : “Lord, have mercy” (as Saint Silouan advised that we should be saying).

When we call out to the Lord for help in everything, then those insinuating thoughts are going to be deflected by Him, and they will not get their hooks in. Once those thoughts get their hooks in, it is very difficult for those hooks to come out. It takes awhile, because we immediately become poisoned by them. Because we are the sort of people we are, we are slow to ask for help. We try to struggle like a fish that has been caught on a hook, instead of stopping and saying : “Save me, O Lord”. I hope that you and I can remember this. Bishops are not immune to these things. Perhaps they are even more subject to these sorts of spiritual challenges than most other people, simply because of their responsibility.

Brothers and sisters, let us do our best to keep our focus on the Lord. Let us keep our sense of who we are by being careful about where are our associations. Let us be careful always to ask the Lord to help us, save us, deliver us, protect us, and the Lord will do it, as He always does. I have seen the Lord delivering, caring for, preparing, and being involved in everything so much that I have no doubt about this at all.

Just in the course of this past week, when I had to go to Moscow for the funeral of Patriarch Aleksy II, and come back, there were very many providential things that occurred in the course of that trip – meeting persons that I really ought to talk to in one way or the other, or meeting people who needed to ask a question. I know that such things could never have been arranged by planning alone. In the airport, I met a man from Vancouver who needed a blessing for something. He was probably going to wait until my next visit (maybe next year) ; but instead, there we were on the same plane where he had a chance to talk to me and ask me what he wanted. Neither he nor I could have organised it. He did not know that I would be there. That is one example of many such occurrences on this trip of obedience to the funeral of the Patriarch.

This happens all the time. I am certain that if you think about it a little bit, you also will have ample examples of how the Lord is involved in your life, of how He is organising things, and showing how He cares for each one of us personally. This is why it is important for us to have confidence that He will save us and come to our rescue every time that we need Him. The Lord shows His love for us like this all the time.

Therefore, let us remember the words of Saint Herman (the spiritual father of our whole Church) who said : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”. By doing that, we will glorify in purity and in love our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, as we are celebrating the Feast of Saint Nicholas, it is important for us to remember that Saint Nicholas is presented to us (at least to bishops and to priests in particular) as an example of how to live, because of his humility and his love. He imitated very clearly that great Shepherd of the sheep to whom reference is made in the Epistle to the Hebrews (see Hebrews 13:20). Who is that great Shepherd of the sheep, except our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ ?

In his whole life, Saint Nicholas proved that he was an Orthodox Christian because he lived very much in accordance with the Gospel. He imitated Christ. He fed the sheep. He was, himself, an example of how to live as a Christ-loving Christian. He preached the truth. He taught the truth about Him who is the Truth, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Against Arius, he defended the truth about the Truth at the Council of Nicaea. In every day of his life, he very practically lived out the way of the Saviour. What is the way of the Saviour except to meet the needs of the people ? Sometimes he looked after the poor. Sometimes he provided dowries for those who had none. Sometimes, through his prayers, he protected people at sea, and sometimes he still does that. I have heard some people speak of their having been rescued from trouble at sea or elsewhere through his intercession. Orthodox believers throughout the world will be found having an icon of Saint Nicholas in their vehicles or on their ships. Maybe (if they are properly pious) they will have them in their airplanes and spaceships.

Saint Nicholas was, and is an example of how a Christian is supposed to live, and what a Christian is supposed to look like. He lived, and lives the love of Jesus Christ with every fibre of his being. His whole soul was focussed on the love of Jesus Christ, focussed on revealing this love. Therefore, bishops and priests in particular, are challenged to live up to that example, and to walk in the foot-steps of Saint Nicholas, the Wonder-worker, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia. Ironically, the town where Saint Nicholas lived and served has not been Orthodox for a long time. Even so, in these latter days in Southern Turkey where Myra is, it is possible now to see the restoration of the Temple in which he served in the fourth century. Ironically, there are icons and monuments to Saint Nicholas in a Muslim country, in Myra, in Lycia today. It is now possible occasionally, and at least once a year (but I think a little oftener because of how things can be), to have Divine Liturgies and other services in honour of Saint Nicholas in Myra, in Lycia, in Turkey. These are wonders in their own way.

It is important for us to remember that the Lord, in His love for us, is always with us. He is always caring for us. We can expect sometimes that He will work in wonderful and unexpected ways. In fact, I have seen so much of this in my life (especially with all the travelling that I have to do), that I have come always to expect the unexpected with the Lord. There are too many things that happen for me to start enumerating them now. However, I can say that just in my recent voyage to-Moscow-and-back for the sake of participating in the funeral of the newly-departed Patriarch Aleksy (and also in my travel between Ottawa and Edmonton), many things happened. The Lord continues to underline to me (and I hope you catch the drift yourselves) how much He is with us, how much He is organising our lives, how much He cares for every detail about our lives. Many of the things that happened to me in these days do not particularly have to do with the Lord’s care for me personally, but rather for the welfare of His Church and the needs of one person or another.

For example, there was a man who was surprised to find me on the plane coming through Calgary. He had been saving up some questions about the future of his life until I should eventually show up in his parish (where I would not likely be until next September). However, God gave him the opportunity to talk to me about what I thought was good for his future plans with his family. It was blessable ; so I blessed it. He can think about what he is going to do with his life in a very particular way much sooner. This gives him much more planning time. The Lord cares about him, and He organises these things. The Lord cares about the development of His Church because this man’s plans about where he intends to move have to do with the future of our diocese’s growth, too. Where he will move will require missionary outreach for us. We will have to look after him and some others who will go with him into a remote place.

The Lord is looking after the details of your lives and my life. He is looking after the details of our lives all together. When the Lord says that He loves us, He is not just saying it. He is actually doing it. The coming Feast of the Nativity is completely wrapped up in this love, as well. The Lord really means it when He says that He loves us. In today’s Gospel reading, we see how our Saviour has been addressing so much the needs of people, that people are coming from everywhere imaginable in order to be near Him ; and, as always, He is healing them all. When the Lord is present to the people, He is not just picking and choosing. He is healing everyone and meeting their needs. They are coming to Him from Tyre and Sidon, which are areas outside the traditional Jewish-believing territory. Probably even people who are not at all Jewish are coming to Him – people like the Canaanite woman, and the Samaritan woman – and He is healing them all without discrimination, without making a distinction. This is how He always has been with us, and how He always will be with us. He cares about us. He loves us.

I will just explain here what I mean about the “without distinction” character of the Lord. In Syria, there is a women’s monastery called “Sayednaya”. In this monastery, there is a wonder-working icon of the Mother of God. Many women go to this icon because they cannot have children. Through the prayers of the Mother of God, the Lord grants them children. It turns out that it is not just Orthodox Christians who are going to this icon. In fact, ironically, many Muslim people are going to this icon also, because they know that God cares about them. I suppose that they cannot visibly become Orthodox believers. It is sort of worth your life in a Muslim country to become openly Orthodox or openly Christian. With the same compassion that the Lord had for the Samaritan woman, the Mother of God hears their prayers, cares for them, and by her prayers to the Lord, meets their needs.

This happens over and over again. There are many, many stories about this in Egypt, too. I saw with my own eyes how there are all sorts of Islamic people going to Orthodox monasteries in Egypt, and leaving with little bags of incense, holy oil, and little icons of one saint or another. The Lord is touching their lives. That does not mean that we are mixing things up and saying that there is no difference between Islam and Orthodox Christianity. There is a big difference between them and us. However, this does not mean that just because they do not completely understand, we can give ourselves the excuse to be ungrateful to God, inhospitable, unloving, or even angry towards them. The Lord, Himself, meets their needs when they call out to Him. He cares about every one of His creatures without distinction.

The Lord calls you and me to be faithful to the True Way about Him who is the Truth, just like Saint Nicholas. He calls us to be true and faithful to Him, and witnesses of what is the Right Way. When we do this, we will be opening to others through ourselves the doors of the Lord’s compassion, just as we are asking Him to do for us all the time. We will be opening the doors of compassion of the Lord to those many people all around us who are hungry and thirsty, and looking for consolation. Just as Saint Nicholas was, and is, we will be agents of the love of the Lord, enabling people to experience His love, and maybe come to Him. Here, in this country, people are not constrained by life-and-death fear most of the time. In this country, it is possible for people to come to Christ from whatever background. Many have, and many do.

Brothers and sisters, let us give thanks for the love of God that is poured out through Saint Nicholas. Let us give thanks to the Lord for the life, the witness, and the prayers of Saint Nicholas who still cares for us all in the love of Jesus Christ. He still prays for us when we ask him to, and sometimes even when we do not ask him to. He gives us the example of the Christian way to live. Let us ask our holy Father Nicholas, through his prayers, to help us to follow his example in living and doing the love of Jesus Christ, and to glorify our Lord, as he does, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Usually, people react to today’s Gospel reading by saying : “Why do we have to hear all those names every year ?” Of course, it is often one of the more difficult readings for deacons, because those names are very difficult names (especially for English-speakers). Just what are these fourteen generations of names in three instalments ? These fourteen generations of names in three instalments end with Saint Joseph the Betrothed (who was the foster-father of the Saviour, and not His biological father). In response to these details, and perceiving them as a complication, people will often ask : “What is the importance of this ?”

The importance has to do with the fact of the Promise. In the portion of the Epistle to the Hebrews which we have heard, the Apostle Paul is talking to us about all the ancestors of Christ who had lived by faith, beginning with Abraham. (Of course, the chapter does begin with Adam’s son Abel.) All these people lived in the hope of the fulfilment of the Promise of the Lord. The Promise of the Lord was a Saviour, a Redeemer. We now know that the Promise included Eternal Life. We have to say, also, that the Promise has to do with blessing. The whole Promise begins with Abraham, when the Lord God makes a covenant with the Patriarch. The Lord says to Abraham that his descendants are going to be a blessing on the earth (see 1 Moses 15 ; 17). People are generally taking the matter of descendants as purely physical descendants. However, we are counting not only physical descendancy, but also spiritual descendancy (or ancestry, depending on your perspective).

Last week, we paid attention to the spiritual ancestry of Christ. Today, a more physical ancestry is provided for us, as we are considering our whole life in the context of faith. We are speaking about life in faith, in hope and trust in God’s love. We are speaking about trust in His Promise of a Saviour, trust in His Promise of blessing. The people who are the descendants of Abraham are truly people who have lived by faith. All those persons whose names we have heard today are ancestors of Christ, spiritually speaking, and people who lived in faith in the fulfilment of the Promise, and trust in the Lord. Many of these people, just as the Apostle said, suffered a great deal for the sake of their confidence in the Lord, His love, and their hope in the fulfilment. In my opinion, it is most significant that the ancestors about whom we are hearing today are not the biological ancestors of the Saviour’s Birth, because our life in Christ is much more than just this.

It is true that we have more than one genealogy of our Saviour Jesus Christ in the Scriptures. One of them, which we have heard today, begins with Abraham. The other one begins with Adam and Eve (working backwards from Saint Joseph). The genealogies definitely demonstrate that our Saviour did not simply appear out of nowhere (physically speaking). We hear in pagan mythologies that some people appear out of nowhere in the manner of a deus ex machina, fix everything, and then disappear. This is not Who our Saviour is. Our Saviour is a Human Being (anthropos/chelovyek) who comes from an ancestry that we know. As is clearly stated in the Epistle to the Hebrews, we know that there is no direct, priestly ancestry, although such an ancestry may be recognised in some relatives of the Mother of God (such as Saint John the Forerunner and Baptist). We know where He was born. We know where He grew up. These are important details. These ancestors of Christ, these ancestors of Saint Joseph, are people who prepared the way for Christ by their love and their faithfulness. By their faithfulness, they made the time of the Incarnation possible.

We human beings have been created to be both physical (material) and spiritual. This is the Orthodox way. The Orthodox way is physical and spiritual. It really gets on my nerves over and over again, when people talk about the Orthodox Faith as being so “spiritual”. In doing so, they speak about our Faith as being disconnected from daily life, disconnected from bodies, disconnected from money, disconnected from cold weather, disconnected from everything. They seem to have the idea that human beings are some sort of bodiless spirits, somehow floating about in the ether. This is not Orthodoxy at all. This has nothing to do with our Faith. Our Faith is concerned with the love of God which has been concretely and physically manifested to us. It is concerned with God’s life-giving and saving love. If there is true spirituality amongst us, then it manifests itself in wholeness, in the unity of spiritual and physical. Actually, this was the characteristic Hebrew mentality. The spirit and the body are inseparable. They are together.

There is no-one anywhere in the Scriptures who says that at the end of our lives we are going to float off and be like angels. Our Lord never says that to us. Rather, the Apostle Paul says that when we come to the end of our lives, we will have spiritual bodies. That means for you and for me that what the Apostle says about spiritual bodies in the Resurrection will be quite similar to the post-Resurrection experiences of Christ by His apostles. Our Lord was touchable, although glorified. This is the difference. Human beings are a different order of creation from angels. Angels we will never be. (What parent does not want to compare his or her child to an angel, especially when asleep. I recently heard this expression : “A child is best when asleep, with the teeth to the wall”.) The comparison of a child (or even of an adult) with an angel is merely sentimental and affectionate. It has nothing to do with reality. The reality is that human beings are a different order of creation. We are embodied spirits as compared to angels, who are bodiless spirits. That is what distinguishes us. The Lord made us similar, but different. (When I was growing up, we used to say : “The same, only different”.)

The physical presence of our Saviour, the Incarnation that we are about to celebrate, is the most important thing that ever could have happened to us. His coming proves to us the love of the Lord. We always have to have tangible, concrete proof of everything. Another childhood saying that I remember is : “I am from Missouri. You have to show me”. Apparently, the stereotype of the inhabitants of the state of Missouri is that most of them are very skeptical, and they have to have visible, tangible proof of everything. As the saying goes : “We will believe it when we see it”. Human beings really are like that (not only the Missourians). We have to have concrete, tangible evidence of love. For instance, a man can say to his wife : “I love you”. She answers (maybe not always in so many words) : “Prove it. Show me”. That is why chocolates and flowers are so very popular. It goes in the other direction, too, because the husband has to have concrete demonstrations of his wife’s love for him, also. She does not usually do it in the same way. Stereotypically, it is through food. Still, we all need to have these concrete evidences of the love of the Lord for us, and His physical presence amongst us.

This is one of the main reasons for the Incarnation in the first place. This is why we Orthodox believers have to show to other people around us (who are nowadays usually unbelievers) concrete evidence of our hope in Jesus Christ by how we behave, by how we live, by the sorts of things we do, by the way we show that we really do love other people. No matter how much people exasperate us, no matter how much they put us to the test, we have to show them concretely that we do love them.

It is important to remember that everything that is done to the bishop in the middle of the Temple is done, as it were, to Christ, Himself. It is not done merely to dress up the bishop as if he were a Roman emperor standing in the middle of the Temple, and to inflate his pride. This has nothing to do with that man personally, because the same thing is done to every bishop everywhere in the world. The bishop could be the Patriarch of Moscow or of Georgia or of Serbia. The bishop could be any bishop in Vladivostok or Magadan. The same thing happens to every bishop everywhere in the world. Every bishop everywhere in the world is supposed to be re-presenting Christ, and he is to be bringing the blessing of Christ to the Church.

Another incarnational way in which the Lord continues to demonstrate His love for us is the Gospel, itself. The written word about the Saviour, the Lord’s Promise (and its fulfilment), those words that are spoken from the Gospel are words that are spoken as from the Saviour, Himself. Therefore, when we are responding in our hymns to what is read in the Gospel, we are responding in words such as “today” this is happening or “today” is the fulfilment of the Lord’s Promise. When the time of the Nativity will come, we will be saying : “Today, Christ is born”. When those words are proclaimed to us, it is Christ, Himself, coming to us, present with us. It is the Word giving us His words. When the deacon is standing in the middle of the Temple, in the same place where the bishop had stood earlier, we can perceive an identity between that Gospel and our Saviour, who is in our midst. The Gospel has traditionally been read always right in the middle of the Temple, in the middle of the people, in the middle of the flock of rational sheep. In the ancient architecture even from the sixth century (we have some examples that remain), the place for reading the Gospel is right in the middle, right beside where the bishop had been standing. The Gospel is proclaimed in our midst, and we know that Christ is in our midst.

All this concerns the Incarnation. The Word of God came down from heaven, took flesh, and is in our midst, in the middle of us. This has nothing to do with me (in my case, a rather eccentric person). It has all to do with Christ, not the bishop. This has to do with the Gospel of Christ, not with the deacon who proclaims it. However, we all have the responsibility to proclaim Christ, to present Christ, to re-present Christ. As the Lord put flesh on His love, it is important that we, ourselves, live out this love in concrete, tangible ways. The Orthodox way is whole. It is about unity. It is about oneness, and it is very, very material.

The Orthodox way is not detached spirituality. It is spiritual life in the body. That is why everything that we do in worshipping and in living is tangible. For example, we make the sign of the Cross on bread when we cut it. It is tangible. We bless all the ingredients of the bread before we make it. It is all tangible. To everything that we do in the Orthodox way, we bring the Lord’s blessing. It is all tangible. It is all material, and it is all to the glory of God, who created everything good.

There is much more that could be said about what we heard today. If these were the days of Saint John Chrysostom, this homily could continue for another hour-and-a-half or more. However, in the time of Saint John Chrysostom, homilies (which are sometimes called sermons — sermo in Latin means a talk) were in the form of informal dialogues. People would interrupt, debate and even argue during the sermon. This could possibly be done even now, because our Church’s tradition is alive ; but here in North America, people tend to be very silent out of habit during the homily, and no-one says “boo” about anything. Nevertheless, I am grateful to God that sometimes when I have asked a question during a homily, I have actually received an answer. Glory to God that our people can feel free in the Orthodox manner to do this.

Brothers and sisters, let us continue to remember the words of Saint Herman, the Elder and Wonder-worker of Alaska. Let us live by these words : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”, and glorify the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Christ is born.

The Incarnation is central to our lives ; and in fact, the Incarnation is central to the whole way of Orthodox living. The Incarnation of our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ is central to everything that we are. When we are considering this vitally important fact in our lives, Orthodox Christians are not concerned with philosophy, nor are we concerned with any sort of detached spiritism or spirituality. Rather, we are very much concerned with living out the consequences of the enfleshment of the Love of God. That is precisely what is the meaning of the word “Incarnation”. That is what we celebrate at this and every Feast of the Nativity.

The Word of God takes flesh. The Word of God is Love, because God is Love. This is just plain, simple logic. God reveals Himself to us as Love. He lives love in every encounter with human beings. We Orthodox Christians live in a relationship of love with God. We live out the consequences of that relationship of love for God. Always, our lives are blessed. Always, the Lord is with us. We just sang that quite a few times a little while ago in Great Compline. God is always with us. He is always with us in His love.

Sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes we do stupid things – we are human beings. However, the Lord is still always with us in His love. He is always dragging us up from our dirt, our brokenness, our mistakes, our darkness, our fears, and everything else. He is always pulling us up. The Paschal icon is a demonstration of that. The Lord is sending Guardian Angels to protect us. He is always involved in our lives in loving, protecting, life-giving, and healing ways. In exactly the same way, the Lord is involved in the lives of the people that we are encountering as we are reading the Holy Scriptures. In the reading of the Gospels, we meet people who are likewise touched by Him, even though this touching occurred many, many years ago.

In our own lives today, the Lord continues to touch us, to heal us, to renew us, and to give us life. It does not matter whether we are significant or insignificant persons (in the eyes of the world). What matters is who we are in the eyes of the Lord. Who are we in the eyes of the Lord, except His beloved children for whom He cares more deeply than we can comprehend. He is so concerned about us, and so interested in each of us that He says that He counts the hairs of our head (even though they might sometimes be not so numerous – He still knows how many there are, how many there were, and what potentially might be there). In the same way that He knows when a sparrow is falling, He knows everything about us (see Matthew 10:29, 30). He cares about absolutely every detail in our lives. It is important that we have no doubt about His care for us, His love for us, His presence with us. In celebrating this Feast, it is important that we remember all this. Since Adam and Eve, God has prepared for the taking of flesh of the Word of God. Everything that comes from the Incarnation, from the enfleshment of the Word of God, brings life and healing to the world.

Very often we can say : “We Orthodox are so insignificant here in this country. People do not see us. We are here, worshipping the Lord, but what effect do we have ? How do we affect our world and our society ?” The fact is, that very often we do not see how we affect the world and society. We do not see what effect there is from our living out love. We may not see very much of it. However, I can tell you that just in the course of my lifetime, I have seen the Orthodox Church in Canada go from complete insignificance, rejection, and ridicule to being a truly significant element in Canadian society. The Orthodox Church in n, which has somehow always been visible, is now in our days having some concrete influence in this city. In many places, people are finding examples of the Orthodox way in this city. There are big changes that have occurred. We are still only at the beginning of comprehending and beginning to do the things that the Lord has for us Orthodox believers to do.

What matters, however, is not so much what we are doing. What matters is that the Lord is doing it in us. This is one of the reasons that we do not see very often the small things that are occurring, because it is the Lord who is acting. We pray every day; we intercede for one person or another, and we offer our lives in love. The Lord, by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, is working through us and in us. He is touching the lives of people around us.

Many of you at this time of year will have seen the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, with Jimmy Stewart as the principal actor. It is a sentimental movie, of course. However, the fundamental point is that if he had not lived, everything would have been completely topsy-turvy, and it would have been very horrible for the people around him. It is the same thing for you and for me. This movie can tell us that much.

It is who we are in Christ that really makes the difference to people around us (even if they never say so). It is not so much our personal existence otherwise. I have heard many times in my life about how much the life of one person or another has affected for good the lives of many people around them in very significant ways. At the same time, this person was never particularly aware of it. Usually, we hear this when someone dies. People talk about it then. Before that, people do not really think about it. We just live with each other. However, when someone dies, and the person is gone, we suddenly feel the void, and we truly are brought up short. We notice how much this person influenced our lives, somehow. You and I have this significance and influence in the world because the Lord is with us and in us. He is working with the gifts that He has given us to help us find our way into the Kingdom of Heaven, and to help other people find their way into the Kingdom of Heaven.

The root of the life of the Orthodox Church is the Incarnation. We cannot speak about the love of God unless we do something about it. We can say that we are Orthodox Christians, but we have to do it, and be it. We have to bear Christ. We have to present Christ in the way we live – in how we do good, and how we repent when we fail. All these things are essential, because it is through repentance that healing comes. Therefore, let us daily ask the Lord to be with us, to strengthen us, to encourage us. Let us ask Him constantly to remind us that He is indeed with us, and that we should not be afraid of anything. He has told us these things. We accept these facts. However, we still need perpetual reminders, and we perpetually ask for the reminders. Therefore, knowing that the Lord, being with us, will give us all that we need, let us daily ask Him to help us to turn to Him and to live in His love and His truth.

We see this in the lives of Saint Herman and many other saints. Let us live out, with them and with Saint Herman, the actualisation of his exhortation : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”, and so glorify the All-Holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

When John the Baptiser was proclaiming repentance and the manner of life that leads in righteousness to the Lord, he gained the title of Forerunner because he was living out the words of the Prophet Isaiah : “The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord’” (Isaiah 40:3). That is precisely what he was doing : preparing the way of the Lord, speaking about repentance, speaking about changing from selfishness to life-giving love, and turning away from darkness to light. He was preparing the way of the Lord by speaking about Him in advance.

This is what you and I are also supposed to be doing with our lives. The Forerunner is an example for us. He is not merely an historical figure. He is an example for us about how we, Orthodox Christians, are supposed to be living our lives. Everything about us is supposed to be (it is not always) pointing towards Christ, referring other people to Christ, and drawing other people to Christ by how we live. How we live as Orthodox Christians includes how we love, and how we repent, also. We have to be exhibiting in our lives the sort of love that the Saviour gives to us every day. In our relationships with each other, we should be as Christ to each other. The way we repent is important, too. It is important that we admit that we do wrong things, that we make mistakes, and so forth, and that we turn about. In other words, it is essential that we have hope in the Lord’s love that He will forgive us, and that He will cleanse us from our sins.

It is crucial for us to remember these things at this particular time of the year. We have finished celebrating (if we ever really finish celebrating) the Nativity of the Lord, and we are about to celebrate the Baptism of the Lord. These two feasts used to be one feast a very long time ago. The Armenians still keep them together. These feasts are an example of the concrete, material way in which the Lord loves us. In the Incarnation, He takes on flesh. He takes on humanity. He takes on our human nature. He takes on everything about us – for better or for worse. In the Baptism that He accepts from the Foreunner, our Lord is showing us how we ought to be being baptised in the future. Our Lord Himself is baptised in obedience to the will of the Father. He is accepting baptism out of obedience as He said (see Matthew 3:15). The Prophet and Foreunner, himself, obeys the Lord who has come to be baptised. All this obedience is in the context of the fact that God is love. It is a response of love.

People from outside the Orthodox way (and some insiders, too) are very often over-emphasising the Resurrection in their perception of our way of life. That is true enough. However, the Resurrection does not mean anything without the Incarnation. The Orthodox way is very much the result of the Incarnation. Our worship is very material. Everything about our life in the Church is very material. It is not separated from the body ; it is not separated from the world. Orthodox Christians bless everything in the world, everything that is good, and we emphasise what is good. In accordance with the words of the Divine Liturgy of Saint Basil, our way is to help to make what is not good become good. This is our purpose in the world, and in this life.

Because of the incarnational element that is so much in the front of our hearts at this particular time of the year, I am going to take a few minutes now to speak about the Divine Liturgy, and the arrangement of this Temple. This Temple is also one which is a cathedral. We did not know what we were getting into when we moved into this building. However, the Lord knows what He is doing with us, and there is much prepared for us in the future in terms of our ministry to this city, to this country, and, in particular, in our case, to the diocese. Cathedral churches properly have to express things that parish churches do not necessarily have to express (although the parish churches do to some extent). There are some particular things about this current arrangement that I want to speak about because – do not forget – our worship has everything to do with Christ. Everything is referring to Christ, and not to any bishop in particular, and not to any priest in particular.

Here we have a building shaped something like a basilica. This is not the typical architecture for Orthodox worship (although many of them exist). This is not the typical construction of our Temples, but this is what the Lord gave us. In making this former Roman Catholic Temple into an Orthodox Temple (as much as possible), some modifications have had to happen. As you recall, the ambo on which I am standing right now did not exist before : everything to do with the Altar ended at that arch. Before, there was a big separation between the people, and what was going on in the Holy Place. Even though everything was open, it was still far away. When we began to rebuild this place, it was important to bring everything closer to the people, because the work in the Altar is not something that is separated from the people. The Divine Liturgy is served by the bishops, priests, deacons, and everyone else in the Altar one way or another, but they are not doing what they have to do separated from the people. The architecture of the Temple has to express the unity between the Holy Table here behind me, the service being offered, and the people who are part of the Offering, (without whom this Offering could not occur). Let us not forget that no priest or bishop can serve the Divine Liturgy by himself. Someone else always has to be present.

In most Orthodox Temples, in the middle of the solea, in front of the Royal Doors, there is a projection called the ambo of the solea. This allows the priest and the clergy to come out closer to the people when they are preaching or giving blessings or whatever else they might have to do. It is out like this, projecting into the middle, so that the people can stand around it. Except, this is Canada, and there are pews in this building. Between liking to sit down, and being too shy to come to the front (as Orthodox people do in other parts of the world), perhaps one might find the meaning of this projection to be a bit of a mystery. However, the purpose is to be close to you, and to allow you to be close to the Holy Table. If this were a Temple somewhere in Europe, people would be all packed up here before me near the iconostas, close to the Holy Table. It is the late-comers who have to stand at the back. Somehow, it is universally Canadian to start sitting at the back, working towards the front. I suppose we have a fear that someone is going to ask us to do something, or we might have to be answering a question as if we were in school. We have this strange mentality, but it is universal in Canada. There is nowhere in Canada that we do not behave like this.

Anyway, this projection on which I am standing (the ambo) is here to serve as an inviting access to you to come here to receive Holy Communion. It is the privilege of Orthodox people to come as close as possible to the Holy Table to receive Holy Communion. The traditional place for Holy Communion to be distributed to the people is in the middle of the Royal Doors. The priest or the bishop is supposed to be standing right under the arch. You are expected to be coming right up to that arch to receive Holy Communion. This is as close as it is possible for lay people to approach the Holy Table at the Royal Doors.

Everything is pointing to Christ. At the liturgical east of this building, we see the High Place, on which there is a chair, which is referred to as the bishop’s chair (as it were) or the cathedral seat. The bishop sits in that chair in the place of Christ. The High Place in any Temple is always referring us to the Kingdom of Heaven : the future resurrection, the future culmination of all things, the future end of all things. Whether the bishop is there personally or not, that chair is not representing him, himself. It is re-presenting Jesus Christ. It is Jesus Christ’s chair which the bishop is occupying. Again, let us not forget that everything (including this chair) is all focussed on the Saviour.

In recent times, we have added to this Temple this dais to be permanently in the middle. It used to be removable, and was removed as it would be in parish churches. What is it for ? The dais is another aspect of the presentation of the Incarnation. The reason that this dais is here is to demonstrate that Christ is in our midst. When a bishop is coming in and standing where I am now standing, he is re-presenting Christ in whatever limited and imperfect ways that he can do it. Who I am or who any bishop is does not matter. It matters that there is a bishop. This bishop has to present Christ to you in whatever way he is able. You should not be seeing the person himself – you should be seeing Christ. Bishops are not some sort of remote, distant potentates (even though they are all dressed up to look like that sometimes). All these things that are put on a bishop are put on him because of Christ. The bishop thus dressed is visibly re-presenting Christ as the Shepherd.

From the time of early church architecture, there has been a dais in the middle of the Temple. From this time also there has always been a perceived unity between the solea and this dais. Many times a person can see that the solea extends as a raised platform all the way to the dais. Sometimes this unity is maintained by some sort of fence either in metal or in stone. In some Temples (I have not been there, I have only seen pictures), it can be seen that there is an actual raised connexion between the two. In the Basilica of San Clemente in Rome there is a very old example of this, but in many places in Russia and Ukraine, one can see the same thing. It is all one unit ; it is all connected. However, the dais in this building is actually not far enough back. Everyone is sitting so far back already that the purpose of this dais is being lost. That purpose is to be a visible expression of Christ being in our midst. Maybe in the future we can move the dais back a little farther. However, this was the best we could do when we did it (I can feel the builders saying : “Oh no !”).

The point of the presence of this dais in the middle is that when the bishop is standing on it, it can be seen that Christ is in our midst. When the bishop is not there this dais is to remind you that Christ is in our midst. This is not the bishop’s “grandstand”.

What happens when a bishop is standing on the dais ? Well, again, we shy Canadians are not necessarily so free to do what other people might do. When a bishop is standing there, people could come and approach him, ask for a blessing, and speak to him while he is sitting or standing there during the services. For instance, during Matins, he is standing there, and anointing people. He is standing in the midst of people, and surrounded by them. This is a clear demonstration that the bishop is to be, and is, approachable. If the bishop ever thinks that he is somehow higher and mightier than anyone else (because bishops can be deluded like that, too), this dais is a reminder of the fact that he is not higher and mightier than anyone else or separated from anyone else – he is in the middle of the people. He is the people’s servant. That is the work of the bishop : to be a servant as well as he is able to be.

Besides all this, there is one last thing. It is so prevalent in liturgical services that people are frequently bowing to each other. This bowing in Orthodox communities everywhere is not limited to liturgical services. This bowing is done towards people naturally on all sorts of occasions. Why this bowing ? Again, it is directly connected with our understanding of the Incarnation. Bowing has to do with our respect for the presence of Christ in each other. It is actually a living out of some things that Saint John Chrysostom said that we should be doing. The bowing that we do to each other is a visible sign of our recognising the presence of Christ in the other person, and also our respect for that other person in Christ. People cannot be separated from Christ. The image of God cannot be separated from the human being because we are all created in His image. Moreover, all we Orthodox Christians are Christ-bearers. We are giving honour to God in our bowing and in our respecting each other. When we are bowing liturgically, we are respecting each other, and we are respecting and acknowledging the presence of Christ. We are acknowledging our gratitude to each other by bowing. These bowings are all referring to Christ, because everything in the Orthodox life should refer to Christ. Everything.

Brothers and sisters, I hope that we can take more steps, ourselves, towards improving our presentation of Christ and His love in our lives. Let us try to imitate Him more, by living the way of repentance, by turning from darkness to light, by living love. Let us put into action the words of Saint Herman of Alaska, who said : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”, and in doing so glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today we are celebrating the Baptism of the Lord. At the same time, we are celebrating also the first truly clear revelation of the mystery of the Holy Trinity. In the words of the tropar, we confess that the voice of the Father is announcing : “‘This is My beloved Son’”. We see the beloved Son standing in the waters of the Jordan. We see the Holy Spirit descending in the form of a dove upon the Saviour. The Holy Spirit is confirming the truthfulness of the word of the Father. (The “truthfulness” of His word would be better translated as “steadfastness”.) When we are hearing in the tropar of the feast about the steadfastness of the word of the Father, this has two meanings : Jesus Christ is the Word of the Father. He is the Word who speaks everything into existence, whose only purpose is to do the will of the Father. Of course, the word of the Father also means today that we hear the voice of the Father speak.

It is truly important for us to remember this. This Event today is a revelation of what it means to be a Christian. Our Saviour Himself is living in perpetual love and harmony with the Father and the Holy Spirit. This is how the Holy Trinity lives. The Apostle John says that “God is love” (1 John 4:8). What we are seeing today in the Baptism of Christ in the Jordan is a clear revelation of what this harmony of love means. The three Persons of the Holy Trinity are one, yet three. They live in the unity of love, and the harmony of love. They do everything together. There is nothing that is separating any one of the three Persons from any one of the other two Persons. All the three Persons of the Holy Trinity live in perpetual love and harmony. It is always the will of the Father that is done.

Today, our Saviour, the Word Himself, comes to the River Jordan and is baptised. He is fulfilling the words, the promises of the Father, all those expressions of love in the Old Testament to the Patriarchs as far back as Adam and Eve. When our Saviour says to John, the Forerunner : “Baptise Me”, a paraphrase of how the Forerunner responded could be : “But You are the One who is the Great One. I am nothing compared to You. How can I baptise You ?” Our Saviour says to the Forerunner, in effect : “This is the will of the Lord. We will do the will of the Lord”. Thus, the Forerunner, John, baptises the Saviour in the water. The Forerunner is living already in the harmony of this love that is expressive of Who is the Holy Trinity.

If we are Christians, and in our baptism we have truly put on Christ (as we are singing today), then our lives have to be showing how this love is effective in our lives, how this love heals our brokenness, how this love heals our fallenness, how this love brings light to our darkness. Our lives should be so much filled with this love that we express this relationship of love in everything.

Our lives should also be showing what is the true meaning of obedience. We, who grow up in the west (in North America, in particular), understand obedience to be grudging acceptance of agreeing to do what laws say, somehow. Obedience is usually understood to be that the will of one person or an authority is imposed on another (for example : stop signs, speed limit signs, or parking signs). Outside here, for instance, the parking sign says : “No stopping until 9:30”. The police come along at 28 minutes after nine to make sure that you get out of there (if you are sitting there already) or you get a ticket. There are many examples of how the will of other people is imposed in our society. The law says to drive at sixty kilometers per hour. What’s 62 ? There is not much flexibility in the laws of human beings, and the forced imposition of this sort of obedience. It is no wonder that we do not understand the true meaning of obedience in this environment.

True obedience is nothing like this. True obedience is the obedience that is shown to us today in the behaviour of our Saviour, in the behaviour of the Forerunner, in the relationship amongst the Persons of the Holy Trinity. True obedience is the fruit of love. True obedience is the desire out of love to do the will of the other. That is why, in a marriage that is properly functioning, a husband and wife are living in a sort of obedience to each other, and they always try to please each other. They are doing each other’s will because they love each other. If they are truly believing people whose hearts are in harmony with the Lord, their hearts are going to be showing the Lord’s will to each other, anyway. They correct each other, and they help each other to grow in a marriage relationship which is in the atmosphere of the love of Jesus Christ. This love is not death-dealing and oppressive, but it is love which is life-giving, and full of freedom.

There are strange ideas about freedom in North America. In North America freedom does not mean freedom, but license. It means that we can do whatever we want to do. True freedom is the exercise of love in the context of being sensitive, and understanding about the weaknesses and the strengths of everyone around. We do things that give life. We do not do things that are going to scandalise or make someone else fall (as much as we can). It is true, however, that we are all sinners and we make mistakes. The idea is that the more we grow in love, the less we are going to be scaring people, offending people, and whatever else. Instead, in our behaviour, we are going to be bringing the joy, the life, the light, and the love of Jesus Christ wherever we are.

To be an Orthodox Christian does not mean that we have to be able to give detailed examples of one thing or another in the Church’s history, or be able clearly to define what is the Holy Trinity (no-one ever did manage to do so). We do not have to pass theological exams about details. What matters for the Orthodox Christian is : Do we love Jesus Christ ? That is first. Do we know that He loves us ? I remember that when I was about eight, I had to memorise this particular verse : “We love Him because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). We experience God’s love and we respond to God’s love with the same love. We grow more and more in this life-giving love. This is the essence of being a Christian. From this love comes everything else. From this love comes the ability to live in harmony with the will of God over the course of our lives. With this love comes the desire to be more and more pleasing to the Lord instead of being self-willed. With this love comes the possibility of being a means by which the Lord touches other people and brings them consolation, joy, encouragement, strength and sometimes even healing.

Brothers and sisters, today we are standing here with the Lord at the Jordan River (even if we cannot see it, that is where we are), and we are participating in these Events : the Baptism of the Saviour, the blessing of the Jordan water, and the blessing of the universe as a result. Very soon, we are going to ask the Lord to send the blessing of the Jordan upon this water. We are standing by the Jordan with the Saviour. Let us ask the Lord to pour out the Grace of the Holy Spirit upon us, so that we will be renewed in the sort of love that has brought us here in the first place – love for the Saviour. May this love be increased and multiplied on this day. May the Lord renew our strength, and give us the ability faithfully, with love, to follow Him, and to live a life that is pleasing to Him in loving, true obedience to Him, in loving harmony with Him. May our lives glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In the beginning, Adam and Eve, our first parents, lived in complete harmony with God and His will. They were His children. He loved them, and they knew that He loved them. They loved Him. There was no break between them at all. Adam and Eve instinctively did the will of their Father because they loved their Father and they wished to be pleasing to Him. However, they fell. When they fell, fear immediately began to enter their hearts, and immediately it began to enslave them. They did not completely forget that God was their loving Father, but fear kept breaking the relationship. They continued to make mistakes, because they kept forgetting, also, to listen in their hearts so that they could perceive God’s will.

As time passed, God continued to remind their children, and their children’s children, and their children’s children’s children that He is their loving Father. Sometimes people remembered and sometimes they forgot. The more time passed, the more they forgot. By the time of Abraham, the Patriarch, God had to re-introduce Himself to Abraham and re-teach him Who He is. The descendants of Abraham had a hard time remembering about this love because fear was always there. When the Hebrew people (the descendants of Abraham) went to Egypt and lived there for a few hundred years, they became slaves in Egypt. The whole life of most slaves is based on fear. After about 200 years, the Hebrew people did not remember much about love, but they did remember a great deal about fear. They lived in the middle of a people whose worship of idols was based on fear.

When Moses came, he gave the Law on Mount Sinai because God had to re-teach people completely how a life is lived in the context of His love. He gave them the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are called the Law. However, they are not law in the manner that stop signs, red lights, and speed limits are. They are more like concrete directions. The Ten Commandments tell people very clearly that if a person loves God (which is how everything begins in the Ten Commandments) then that person will do some things, and not do other things. This Law was to show people how to live life correctly, but once again, it was not like stop signs. Because people’s habit of fear has always been so strong, in the end, the Law came between the people and God. Again, they were living in fear.

The Apostle Paul is telling us today that “when the fulness of the time had come”, the Lord God sent His Only-begotten Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ into the world. The Saviour, born of the Virgin, overcomes our fear, and He overcomes slavery. He gives us freedom and life in the context of His love. Who is Jesus Christ ? The Son of God. What is God ? The Apostle John tells us : “God is love” (1 John 4:8). The experience of believing people has always been the same experience as that of Adam and Eve – that God is truly love. Our relationship with Him, also, is to be one of love. Our Saviour, Jesus Christ, in taking on our human flesh and our whole human condition, redeemed it by His death and His Resurrection. He broke down the barriers that we had built up between ourselves and our heavenly Father. He re-united us with our heavenly Father. He opened the way because He, Himself, is the Way, as He said (see John 14:6). In Him we return in love to God, our heavenly Father, our Creator.

This feast of the Nativity of Christ celebrates the beginning of the restoration of this relationship of love and harmony between ourselves and God. It is a proclamation of God’s love for us. The confirmation of it is in what the Angel says to Joseph (as we heard in the Gospel last night at Vigil). The Child born of Mary is to be named Jesus. He us to be called Emmanuel, which means “God with us”. Who is Jesus Christ, then ? Emmanuel, God with us – that is Who He is. This also means God’s love with us. Our Saviour, Jesus Christ, restores this relationship of love.

Since His Incarnation, for 2,000 years or so, believing Christian people have encountered Him in His love, and have lived in His love. The ones who have shown the way the best are those whom we call saints – holy people. These holy people are the ones who show us best the love of God, and reveal how a Christian should be living. By what are their lives characterised ? Essentially by three things, I would say. First, they are characterised by love. Second, they are characterised by compassion. Third, they are characterised by knowing the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, and therefore they live in accordance with the Ten Commandments. They help the rest of us by their example and by their prayers to remember who we are in Jesus Christ. They help us by their prayers to be more and more like Jesus Christ. They help us by their prayers to be loving, compassionate, Christ-reflecting people, people in whom others can see Jesus Christ.

When Jesus takes flesh today, He is not only saying to you and to me : “I love you”. He is also manifesting this love in a very visible and concrete way. Likewise, you and I in our lives as Christians must put our love into concrete action. We cannot simply tell people that we love them. We cannot merely say to people : “God bless you”. We have to do something concrete about this love. In fact, I do not know of one married couple that I have ever met where it is enough for the husband to say to his wife : “I love you”, and it is enough for the wife to say to her husband : “I love you”. Saying is only saying. We have to do it. We have to live it. This is the Orthodox Christian way – the unified life. If we say that we are Orthodox Christians, and that we love Jesus Christ, then we must live our life in this love. We must do it.

God is with us. Emmanuel. Let us ask our Saviour today as we are celebrating His Birth, to give us the strength by the Grace of the Holy Spirit to live our lives concretely as true, authentic, Orthodox Christians. With our hearts, with our souls, with our bodies, with our minds, with our strength, with our whole being, may we show and do the love of Jesus Christ in the same way that He has always been showing and doing His love for us. Always He has been like that. Always He will be like that. Let us ask Him to help us to grow into this quickly so that in everything, our lives may glorify our merciful, loving, compassionate Saviour, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

What our Lord is saying to us today in these parables is very much apropos to the way we are living now. Not that human beings throughout the ages have been so different, but we are particularly obnoxious in our current behaviour, I would say. This little grain of mustard seed that our Lord is talking about today is a seed (as I have seen) that is very, very tiny indeed. I think it is even smaller than a poppy seed. However, our Saviour says that this little, tiny seed grows into a very large sort of tree so that birds come and nest in it. Then He compares the Kingdom of Heaven to yeast, the grains of which also are quite small. A little bit of yeast goes a long way. A little bit of yeast in a large amount of flour makes all the dough rise considerably, and multiply over and over again in volume.

This is the whole point. The way of Christ is and always has been a hidden way. It is not loud and brash. It is not “me, me, me : look at me, and pay attention to everything that I have been doing”. It is not “look at all my virtues, my strength, and what a good person I am”. All these ideas that we have been living in and growing up amongst are opposite to what our Lord is saying about the way of the Kingdom. The proper way for the Orthodox Christian is to be a lover of God and a doer of the Lord’s will. It is the Lord who turns our little-grain-of-mustard-seed existences into something that is beautiful, good, strong, and life-giving, to His glory, and for the good of the people around us.

Let us consider that grain of mustard seed, for instance. It is simply growing in the garden, and then it becomes a tree which is a home for birds, as our Saviour is saying. Birds come and live in this tree. They probably eat the leaves of the tree, as well. A little grain of yeast makes a big loaf of bread which is very good to eat. In fact, bread is and always has been a staple of life for most of the world (as far as human beings have been involved in it). The way of the Christian does not consist in calling all sorts of attention to oneself, but rather in knowing who we are in the Lord, knowing that the Lord loves us, and that we love Him. It is knowing that He is prepared to forgive us our iniquities, to forgive us our mistakes, to forgive us our selfishness, and to forgive the other occasions on which we (even deliberately) go astray from Him. He is there with His love to accept our repentance, to help us turn about, and to help us become productive and life-giving like this mustard seed and these little grains of yeast.

Our Lord says in a parable at the end of today’s Gospel reading that knowing about Him is not enough. In the parable, He says that that people would come late at night, and knock on the door of the master, and ask to come in. The lord of the house would answer, in effect : “I do not know who you are”. They reply : “We were listening to you teaching in our streets, and we were always around there”. The lord of the house says (as it were) : “I still do not know who you are”. It is the same thing with the Lord Himself, when we are knocking on His door. Why does He not know who they are ? It is because they did not understand what He was saying, and they could not and would not enter into a living relationship with Him. They treated Him as though He were some sort of philosopher, idea-maker, politician or whatever, instead of treating Him as the God-Man who loves the world and whose Kingdom is not of the world. His Kingdom is in, but not of, the world. The Kingdom is in our hearts, but it is not of the world, because to be of the world means to be in rebellion. There is a difference. We can be in the world and be in harmony with the Lord. However, if we become of the world, that means that we become attached to the world ; we become attached to things, instead of attached to the Lord, Himself.

In other words, everything has to be in its right order. We love the Lord, and our relationship with the Lord is first above everything else. As a consequence of this, everything else falls into place. The Lord loves us. We love Him. We turn away from darkness to His light. We turn away from the fallenness and rebellion of the world to loving harmony and obedience to Him. Life comes. Joy comes. Strength comes. Eternal life comes. By the way, when people are speaking about salvation, salvation does not simply mean being rescued or spared or delivered. Salvation has to do primarily with health (if we look at Latin etymology, and so forth). Salvation has to do with being healthy and whole. Being healthy and whole can only come in a life that is conformed to the Lord in the Kingdom.

Let us ask the Lord today to help us to live our lives like that. The Apostle Paul is saying today (as it were) : “Do not let any of these dark, evil deeds be seen amongst you”. The fact is that in our fallenness some such things do occur from time to time. However, the Lord, in His mercy, helps us to overcome these dark and evil deeds and the pressure to conform to the world, so that these dark deeds, these acts of rebellion and whatever else, do, in time, fade away. His love prevails, and this is what matters. This is what counts. Let us ask the Lord to help us to grow and to mature in this relationship of love with Him so that our lives may become completely pleasing to Him. Let us glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

I always appreciate the way in which the Apostle and Evangelist Matthew is presenting to us the work and the Person of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. He shows us how the Saviour is fulfilling everything that had been prophetically proclaimed beforehand. Today we heard several of those quotations from the Prophet Isaiah.

It is important for us to remember that our Saviour did not just drop out of nowhere with no preparation (as though He was suddenly there, and suddenly He was supposed to be understood, somehow). The Lord in His mercy and His love had been preparing for the Incarnation and the saving work of the Saviour ever since He led our first parents, Adam and Eve, to understand that there would ultimately be a resolution. Saint Irenæus of Lyon and Saint Cyprian of Carthage both refer to this. The Lord would provide as the Lord has always provided, as He did with Abraham, and the sacrifice of Isaac. The Lord provided the ram that was in the bushes, caught by the horns. The Lord provided and does provide always. We see this clearly when the people were wandering in the wilderness for forty years, and when they were hungry. Quails, manna, all sorts of things the Lord provided while the people wandered in the wilderness. When they were thirsty, the Lord provided water in the wilderness. The Lord provides. The Lord provided the way of repentance when everything was falling apart in Jerusalem, and when people were taken away into captivity to Babylon. The Lord provided the way back for them. The Lord always provides.

It is really important for us to remember this. The Lord was preparing the way for the Incarnation of His Only-begotten Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. “When the fulness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son” (Galatians 4:4). We hear today the Lord saying : “‘Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand’”, just as His cousin, the Forerunner had been saying.

What does the word “repent” mean ? We hear it often (especially amongst western evangelicals). It does not mean “boo-hooing” all the time that I am such a terrible sinner, that I am so bad – boo-hoo. Sometimes it does involve that, because we do have to bend our heads in shame and admit that we are sinners. We have to admit that we do, in fact, fail. However, this is not the essence of repentance. The word “repent” actually means to turn about. How ? To turn about from death to life, from darkness to light, from fear to love – this is repentance. Repentance is turning away from the ways of death, sin, darkness, and turning to the way of life in Him who is the Way, who is the Truth, who is the Life (see John 14:6). Repentance is this daily exercise that we all must engage in : getting up in the morning and choosing to follow the way of Jesus Christ. That is the way of repentance.

When we fall and slip because we forget (because you-know-who-down-below is so clever at helping us forget), then again we ask the Lord to help us up. We say to the Lord : “Help me, and save me”. He pulls us up ; and we start again, choosing the way of our Saviour, who is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6).

The words of the Apostle this morning are also important in this connexion because the Kingdom of Heaven is not a political entity or political creation. It is a way of life. It is within us already. What is the way of the Kingdom ? That way certainly does not ever involve selfishness. It certainly does not involve personal autonomy. The Apostle Paul is telling us that the way of the Kingdom consists of humility : forgetting ourselves, putting the Lord first, putting everyone else first in front of us, and being the sort of person that the Lord created us to be. The Lord created each of us, like Him, to be servants. He created us to serve, to care for other people, to look after other people and His creation.

The Apostle Paul is telling the Ephesians (and with them he tells us) that everyone has been given particular gifts – all sorts of gifts. No-one has all the gifts, nor every gift. Some people are given many gifts, and it is hard for them to live with so many gifts. This is between them and the Lord, anyway. The Lord gives gifts to each of us as He wills and as He pleases, because He knows how things are best ordered in His Kingdom. He gives these gifts according to His will. Some people are bishops, and some apostles, and some are teachers. There are all sorts of gifts, as the Apostle is suggesting (and his list is not a complete list). Why does the Lord give all these gifts ? He gives all these gifts so that each of us can help others in accordance with the gifts that He has given us. These gifts are for building up the Body of Christ. What is the Body of Christ ? It is us, all together, the Orthodox Church. The Lord gives all these gifts so that we can strengthen each other, lift each other up, and help each other into the Kingdom. We are all together interconnected in the Body of Christ. We are not separated from each other.

Therefore, the good things that I do in my choosing daily to follow Christ are helping other believers (and even people who want to believe). My choices are helping them to do better, themselves. When I fail, when I turn away from the Lord, when I forget, when I fall, I am dragging down my brothers and sisters, because I am no longer a healthy person. Then they need to support me and help me out of my darkness. All our choices are affecting our brothers and sisters all around us, and all creation, in fact, for good or not for good.

The Lord proclaims : “‘Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand’”. The Kingdom of Heaven is here. It is now. It is amongst us. Dear brothers and sisters, let us ask the Lord to give us the awareness of how important each of us is to every other person ; of how important is our every choice towards the Saviour, and what good comes from it because of His love. Let us ask the Lord to help us to exercise those gifts that He has given us for the good of other people, and for the good of His creation so that with us the rest of His creation will understand, and be able to live in the joy of the reality that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). He is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6). There is no other truly good reason to carry on, except for His love, His joy, His peace, His strength, His life.

Let us ask Him to give us the strength and the mindfulness every minute of our lives to call upon Him for health, and strength, and renewal of heart. Finally, let us ask the Lord to fulfil the words and exhortation of Saint Herman of Alaska : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”. In doing that we will fulfil our purpose in creation, which is to glorify in everything the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In the Gospel reading today, our Saviour is speaking directly against the way we are formed here in Canada. Our Lord is speaking about the absolute necessity for unity – for unity in our life, for unity in ourselves. He says that we cannot serve two masters. He gives examples which show how we are so divided, and the consequences of this division. We, who are living in this modern, western society, are prepared to live in a divided sort of way. We are encouraged to live in this compartmentalised and divided way (not merely two divisions, but usually multiple divisions). It can happen that we show one face when we are at work, another face when we are with our family, another face when we go to church or another face wherever else we go. We do not limit ourselves to being merely two-faced. Sometimes the face is accompanied by a somewhat different personality.

It is natural for us to behave slightly differently in one context or another, and when we are having a conversation with one person or another. However, it is not natural to be very different. Sadly, this is how people have come to behave in our society, behaving very differently in one context or another. It is almost like being a different person, sometimes. This is contrary to what the Lord is telling us to do.

It is important for us to remember those very crucial words that our Lord has said : “‘What is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God’”. This abomination is our focussing on ourselves, and putting ourselves in the place of God. Throughout history, human beings have been mostly concerned about personal power, acquisitiveness, and making themselves comfortable here on this earth. In the context of all this, they have been forgetting that God is in charge. As a consequence of this they have been determining that they are in charge. A human being will put himself in the place of God, and will say : “I am in charge of my life. I do not need anyone. I do not need anything. There is only me that counts. I am in charge of everything”. This is how bad it can be. This is how it goes, too, when we are so forgetful of who we are, and Who is the Lord, and what is our way.

As Christians, we have to remember that we are dependant. We are not God. We are indeed, dependant. We depend on the Lord for everything. He created us. He brought us into being. He is with us in the course of our whole life. He is nurturing us in everything that we do. He is protecting us in everything that we do. In the course of my life, I have been protected from a great number of consequences of absolute stupidity. I have very great confidence in how the Lord is protecting us. I still have memories from childhood when I was so reckless that I should have been dead at five. However, the Lord did not let that happen. The Lord and His Guardian Angels protected me, and spared my parents from undue sorrow. (That does not mean that they were not anxious, but they did not have undue sorrow.)

We have to remember that we are dependant on the Lord, and that we need to be calling upon Him at all times, in every place, for everything. That is partly what the Apostle is saying when he is writing about how we are supposed to be encouraging the gifts of the Holy Spirit in each other, and the attitude we need to have. There is a catch-phrase nowadays that I hear from time to time which actually works (because it also rhymes in English) : We Christians have to learn to live at all times with the attitude of gratitude. This is precisely what the Apostle is saying : our lives as Christians have to be reflecting our gratitude to God, and be lives of constant thanksgiving for everything. We have to be giving thanks to God for His protection, for His love. We have to be giving thanks that we are standing here today in the Temple of the Lord, that we are His servants, and that there are fruits of His love in our lives.

Here is this point again. Attitudes of gratitude are not going to be showing in our lives unless there is genuine love for the Lord. The characteristic response of this relationship of love with the Lord is, in fact, gratitude : giving thanks to God for getting us up in the morning, for food that we have to eat, for shelter under which we can live in this very cold climate, for protection and safe arrival on every journey that we take. Gratitude is giving thanks to the Lord for His love and His provision. I do not produce all sorts of things by my own power. It is the Lord who gives. We can have every sort of technological advance in terms of food production, and so forth. What do we do with our technological advances ? We kill weeds, and make food that is not so good for us in the end because of our great skills. However, the Lord has always provided and is always providing for us. He has always enabled the earth to provide what is good for us. Ever since the beginning He has been like this with us. We have to do our part, but we have to do our part in harmony with Him.

In order to try to live our lives more in the context that is natural and correct for a Christian (constantly living with the attitude of gratitude, constantly giving thanks for everything), let us ask the Lord to renew His love in our hearts. Let us ask Him to build up and strengthen His love in our hearts so that we will have true, spontaneous, instinctive gratitude towards Him. In that way our lives will proclaim His love, and everything about us will glorify our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The Lord’s encounter with the Canaanite woman today gives us the first sign that the Lenten Spring is coming. The renewal of everything is coming.

It is fundamental for you and for me in the course of our lives to remember this important meeting of our Lord with the Canaanite woman. This encounter underlines that the Lord is the Lord of everyone. Even though the Lord says to the Canaanite woman that He was only sent to the people of Israel, He is testing her in a sort of way. In fact, the Lord is sent to everyone. When our Lord delivers the daughter of the Canaanite woman from her slavery to evil, He is emphasising, in fact, that He loves everyone and everything that is created. The fulness of the time had not yet come for it to be understood what this ultimately means. His love is all-embracing. His love embraces every human being, every creature on this earth, and the whole universe. The Lord embraces everything and everyone in His love.

If we are in Christ, if we are Christians living our lives the way the Lord wants us to live our lives in harmony with Him, we, too, have to demonstrate the same all-embracing, all-inclusive, no-distinction-making love. We have to treat all human beings the same, no matter where they come from, no matter what they look like (and very often, no matter how they behave). We have to behave as much like Christ as possible towards them, embracing them in love, being an example of Christ’s embracing, forgiving love, and welcoming them with hospitality as the Saviour does to you and me. The Saviour welcomes us. We must welcome everyone else. The Lord embraces you and me in His love. We must embrace everyone else in His love. This is our way.

In order to help us do this, the Lord gives each of us the Grace of the Holy Spirit. He gives each of us particular gifts – gifts that are able to help other people, gifts that are good for other people (besides ourselves) to help to bring them into the Kingdom. He gives us the Grace of the Holy Spirit so that we can use these gifts. Not only does He give us the gifts, but He gives us the Grace to use the gifts, and to make them grow. Sometimes, in the course of our lives, He might even change these gifts according to the needs of the people around us. Sometimes, we might be able to say something prophetically from the Lord – for the Lord – to someone : the right word, the perfect word for that person at a particular time. We may never have that gift again, but the Lord gives it to us at this particular moment because of the need of the person. We may not become a prophet like the Prophet Isaiah, for instance, or Jeremiah, but we might be a “particular-moment” sort of prophet.

Through their prayers, some people have the ability to heal other people. Through their prayers, the Lord brings health to other people. This is a very good gift, a very useful gift, and a very appreciated gift. However, in every case of these gifts that the Lord gives us, they are not things that we can simply do as if it were magic. Yes, the Lord gives us a gift, and it is a gift that is activated by Him through us, through prayer, through love. However, it is the Lord who is in charge. It is not I, by myself, who can suddenly say : “Be healed”, and the person gets better just like that. That is not at all how it works.

Every person who has the gift of healing is a person who, of course, is asking the Lord : “Please heal this one who is in need”. The person who is asking already knows, because of love, something of what is the Lord’s will in this case. So the request is already in harmony with the Lord’s direction. This is how these gifts are from the Lord. This is the case with any gift – whether it be teaching, healing, a prophetic utterance, or any other sort of gift that the Lord gives us to use. They are more numerous than we can even imagine. They are always His work through us in the context of His love, and our prayer. All these gifts are given so that people may become healthy, especially in the heart, and grow nearer in love to the Lord.

On this day that we are remembering Saint Gregory the Theologian, it is a good opportunity to speak about his particular gifts. This theologian is perhaps the greatest of Orthodox teachers, ever. In this context, I remember extremely well when I was in seminary how Professor Verhovskoy, of blessed memory, used to say to us : “Well, my dears, not all the Fathers were 100 per-cent Orthodox. Some of them, like Saint Gregory of Nyssa, were maybe only fifty or sixty per-cent Orthodox in their teaching” (according to his assessment). However, for him, Saint Gregory the Theologian alone is to be considered as being 100 per-cent Orthodox. How vividly I remember that, thirty years later. Professor Verhovskoy was an excellent teacher. However, what does this mean, though, that Saint Gregory the Theologian is 100 per-cent Orthodox ? I think Professor Verhovskoy could very well be right, although I do believe that one of our recent scholars has detected one error. Maybe it is only 99.9 per-cent, which is actually in harmony with our way, because who is perfect, ultimately, except the Lord ?

What does it mean to be a theologian ? How did Gregory, the Patriarch of Constantinople, manage to be like this ? It is not simply because of the sort of education he had. His education certainly was classical ; it was full, and it was great. However, that is not why he is a theologian. In the Orthodox Church we have only a very few theologians. To be a theologian in the Orthodox way has not so much to do with your education (although it helps). It has to do with your heart. To be a theologian means to know God, and to be able to speak about this encounter with God well, clearly, and accurately, so that people will have a better understanding, themselves, and be able to walk on the right path.

Because Saint Gregory the Theologian was such a person, a person whose heart was full of the Holy Spirit, the Grace and the love of God, he was able from this encounter to share this love accurately and clearly with others. He is a solace, comfort and strength for you and for me today, 1500 years or so later. Because of this love, and despite the difficulties of his time, he was able to live out the actual words which our Saviour says to us today : He, Himself, is the good Shepherd, that He cares about the sheep and loves His sheep. Saint Gregory fulfilled those words in himself and in his life by how he cared for his people – not only by teaching and by writing, but by doing as well.

The good shepherd should love his people with the love of Christ. Bishops, priests and deacons have to walk in this way, caring for and loving the sheep of the Lord. These are not our sheep, they are the Lord’s sheep. Because we are fallen, we have to be behaving as much as possible like the Lord in caring for His sheep, and leading them in the right way. Notice the word “leading” – not pushing, driving or shoving – but leading them in the right way, and helping them to find their way to the Kingdom. In this flock, we are all together, the shepherds and the sheep. The shepherds in this case are still sheep. The sheep who are in the lead have the responsibility to know the Lord as well as possible, and to know the Orthodox Faith as well as possible. In this way they will be able to help bring the faithful, by example as much as possible, to the Lord in the right way. In this relationship of love and mutual care, it is important that the flock pray for, and support in love those who are in the lead, so that they do not get lost and take the flock in the wrong direction. It is for the flock to pray for the leaders, so that the whole flock will always be led in the right direction all together into the Kingdom of the Saviour. Our way is a way of mutual support : mutual working together and mutual love in Christ.

Let us remember that everything in the Orthodox life is involved with our relationship with our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Everything. Everything that we are doing here today is concerned with Jesus Christ, and Him alone. This is what we were created to do and to be : to live for Him, to worship Him, to live in Him. Let us ask the Lord to renew us in the Grace of the Holy Spirit so that we will be able more and more fully to follow Him in righteousness, on the right path to Him and in Him who is the Truth, our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Let us glorify Him in everything, always, everywhere, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

It is interesting how our Lord responds to the request of the apostles : “‘Increase our faith’”. Our Saviour says to them : “‘If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, “Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea”, and it would obey you’”. He said that, not expecting that anyone would actually do such a thing, and expect it to happen.

The point is that as Christians we absolutely do not do magic. Rather, we do God’s will as Christians. Our Lord is saying that if a sycamine tree were to move into the sea, this would be done when we asked because we already knew in our hearts that it was the Lord’s will that this would happen. However, the Lord does not usually plant sycamine trees in the middle of the sea. If He had really wanted to do that, we would have seen them there a long time ago. Some of them might exist in certain parts of the sea, but the Lord would already have put islands there on which they might grow. It is certain that they would not simply and strangely be growing there, standing in the water.

The Lord is asking us to listen with our hearts. He wants us to listen to Him with our hearts, in love, so that we will come to understand more and more what is His will, and do it. Our Lord gives us an example of a slave. Of course, there are officially no slaves in Canada, and we therefore officially do not know about this. A slave-owner, after having had his slave work in the fields all day, as our Saviour says, does not immediately say to the slave : “All right, let us eat”. The slave-owner and the slave did not eat together. They ate separately. It was the task of the slave who had been working in the fields all day to prepare the meal for the master. After the master had eaten, then the slave could eat. That is how it was, and it certainly is just like that in many parts of the world today. Our Lord is saying to us that we have to be not so much like that slave-owner, but like the slave, himself. We Canadians are so spoiled, because every time we turn around to do anything for anyone, we expect to be thanked. If anyone does anything for us, most people expect us to thank them. If we do not say thank you, we are considered to be rude, uncultured, uncivilised and barbaric. People then would look down their noses at us very quickly.

If we are truly living a life in Christ, our lives are to be full of gratitude, it is true, but to whom ? To the Lord. The Apostle says that in his words to the Thessalonians (and to us) this morning. Our lives are to be filled with thanksgiving and gratitude to the Lord. In fact, giving thanks is the characteristic of the Christian way : love combined with gratitude. If our lives do not have gratitude, but we say we have love, we do not truly have love. Love and gratitude go hand in glove. Our lives have to be characterised by giving thanks. That is why it is such a characteristic of people in Orthodox countries who have grown up in these Orthodox cultures to be giving thanks to God in everything. I always remember the very sharp lesson I learned about this, myself, a long time ago, when, being green as grass, I went to visit a monastery. I experienced the hospitality of an abbess and her nuns who were wonderfully Christian and generous. On my departure, on thanking the abbess, she said : “The Lord”. I said : “Yes, but thank you, too”. She answered : “No – thank the Lord”. I learned my lesson quickly.

All thanks has to be given to the Lord. This abbess knew exactly what her place was. What is her place ? What is my place or your place ? Our place is to offer loving hospitality because we live in Christ. Christ lives in us. If we are offering anything good, or doing anything good, it is because the Lord is working in us (as we understand in reading the Scriptures). It is He who is working this good. That is what the Lord is speaking about when He says that we should be saying, thinking and understanding that we are unworthy servants. We have only done our duty. We have only done what is natural and right for a Christian to do. If I am a Christian and I bear Christ, then because of His love I must be good, and do good for other people. It has to be in my bones and in my nature to do good, and to be good to other people. Why should I get any thanks for it ? It is, in fact, my nature to do this as a Christian. I have to do it because I love people. I have to do it primarily because I love Christ, and He loves me. This is the product of His love. Everything is referred to Christ in our lives.

Today, by God’s mercy, we are ordaining a deacon in the Church. This deacon, by what he is being ordained to today, is showing us an example of what is the meaning of service. A deacon is a servant, as all Christians are servants. Even if one is a bishop, one does not ever stop being what these deacons are. We never stop being servants if we are in Christ. Christ, Himself, has never stopped being a servant towards us. He who speaks everything into existence, the Word of God, the Lord of all, is always serving us as He washes the feet of the disciples, as He heals the diseases of those who are sick, as He raises the dead, and as He still continues every day to meet our needs. He, in His self-emptying love, continues to serve us. We, the servants, are not greater than our Master. We Orthodox Christians must always keep this mentality in our hearts that we are servants.

When we have deacons serving amongst us, they are a constant reminder to themselves, of course, and to us all (including bishops), that we are all servants. We are servants of Christ, servants like Christ as much as possible, servants in Christ in our way as Orthodox Christians. That is why we “kill” each other with hospitality. This is an expression of this servanthood. It is an expression of how we love each other by serving and caring for each other, and nurturing each other. This is the way of a deacon. Some people are asking why more than one deacon in a parish is needed. From the bishop’s point of view, one deacon is never enough, because there is so much that needs to be done in parish life, and in the life of the faithful. Deacons are the extension of all our ministries. They help to feed, nurture and teach the flock. Each deacon has particular, unique gifts. Each deacon helps the Lord to enable His Church to grow up by ministering according to his personal gifts.

Now this parish will, at least for a time, have two deacons. They will serve together at the Divine Liturgy. They will serve together in the parish in different ways. They are different men. They have different gifts and different ministries. They will do different things in our life together. However, it will all be in harmony, and all in accordance with God’s will. I hope that I will be able to see in this parish (and in other parishes, too), three, four, five, seven deacons because there is so much to do. The priest (who is always a jack-of-all-trades, like a bishop) cannot do everything, and cannot be everywhere. The priest’s responsibility is generally to feed and to teach. The deacons do all sorts of other things that the priest cannot possibly do by himself. However, all together, the flock is fed ; the people become strong in Christ, and they grow up shining with the light of Christ. The Kingdom of God is increased as people are added to its numbers.

Brothers and sisters, please pray for our new deacon because you-know-who-down-below, wolf of souls that he is, will come after him right away to try to attack him and separate him from the flock. Sometimes the tempter will arrive in the appearance of a sheep. By your prayers, and by your love, you will protect the new deacon and keep him on the right path. He will help your priest to lead you into the Kingdom. In so doing, all together, let us now continue to glorify our Saviour, Jesus Christ, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-creating Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

When we hear in the Gospel reading today about our Lord’s encounter with Zacchæus, we know that Great Lent is near, and that we have to start to get ready. Every year when we hear this Gospel, Zacchæus comes to us and tells us it is time to get ready to meet the Lord, just as he is meeting the Lord today.

What does Zacchæus show us in his meeting with our Lord today ? He is anxious to see the Lord because he had never encountered Him. Zacchæus was a tax collector in the Roman Empire, and therefore, he was a robber. In the days of the Roman Empire, every year the emperor decided, together with the senate in Rome, what his budget would be, and what he wanted to do. A decree went out to all the official tax collectors in the Roman Empire telling them to get such-and-such an amount of money out of the people, and send it to the emperor. Only the tax collectors knew what was this amount of money. The tax collectors generally took whatever they wanted from the people. It was a serious sort of game between the tax collectors and the people. The tax collectors extorted from the people as much as they could, and the people hid from the tax collectors as much as they could. When the tax collector came to the house, he could just say : “I am taking this, and this, and that, and the cows and the sheep”. He could strip the household clean if he were that sort of person. Some of them certainly did.

Zacchæus was in an even worse position amongst the Jewish people because the Jewish people were a conquered people. They resented being occupied by the Roman army. When the Roman Empire chose Jewish people to be tax collectors amongst the Jewish people, all the Jewish people considered them to be absolute traitors, which in a way they were. Certainly, as we hear in the Gospel today, they were called sinners. When Jesus encounters Zacchæus, to the great shock of Zacchæus, He says : “I am coming to your house”. (There was a song I learnt in childhood that said : “Zacchæus, come down from that tree because I am coming to your house for tea”. However, that was before they had tea in those parts.) Zacchæus encounters the Lord, and hastens to host Him in his home.

Immediately, our Saviour is severely criticised by all sorts of people because He is eating in the house of a sinner. One was not supposed to associate with such people in Jewish society. However, in our traditional Orthodox way of life, we customarily do not invite simply anyone to our home to eat. If we are going to eat with people, there is a communion established between us when we are eating at our table, because the table at home is not so different from the Holy Table here in this Temple. In Orthodox consciousness, the two things are directly connected. Therefore, we have to be careful to invite not just anyone to dinner in our home. That is the custom, although it is not always what we do. This custom does not exclude the stranger or the needy, as we see everywhere.

What happens today when Zacchæus accepts the Lord’s inviting Himself to his house ? In the first place, we have to understand that at such a dinner it was not simply our Lord and Zacchæus and his family who were present. When a dinner like this is taking place, this is going to be (even though it is sudden and unexpected) a dinner at which our Lord and His disciples would be present (which is one reason why we hear about it today in the Gospel), but also there would be friends and relatives of Zacchæus, and other people at the dinner. (It would be something like our experience in this church on Sunday after the Divine Liturgy with all sorts of people sitting down together at the table.) So, Zacchæus stands up today, and we hear him say (and in saying these words, he is doing repentance) : “‘Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor’”. This passage is preparing us for us for Great Lent because in Great Lent, giving to the poor and caring for the needy is one of the major occupations in which we should be involved.

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. Zacchæus stands up and says in repentance : “‘Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore fourfold’”.

Zacchæus still ends up not a poor man. Although he had taken so much one way or another as a tax collector, this was what he was allowed to do. He did not do anything illegal. This was all legal in the Roman Empire. Maybe it was not ethical, but it was certainly legal. No doubt, he was a very good business man, and he knew how to invest everything so that he gained even more from his investments.

That is why, under these circumstances, he ends up being not a poor man. I am quite certain that he went on to be more than that because there is a Zacchæus who is an apostle of the Seventy, who became a bishop of the Church. I rather think that Zacchæus ended up doing much more (although we are not told that in the Scriptures today).

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 am correcting everything that I did wrong insofar as I am able”. And he does it.

However, he goes much farther than that, because now he is following the Saviour. He is following the Saviour who comes to him, who encounters him, who shines the light of His love into his heart, and 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.

Besides the important example of Zacchæus, today we have also heard the important words that the Apostle Paul is speaking to Timothy. He is saying those words that are addressed always to every priest (and bishops, too) : “Be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith, in purity” so that the faithful will know what is the right path. What is not mentioned by the Apostle (but is implied, anyway) is that the clergy – bishops, priests, and deacons – are called to be an example primarily in repentance : the same repentance as that of Zacchæus. Without repentance, this goodness, purity, joy, peace, and all the other gifts of the Holy Spirit are not going to come. Repentance is the first step.

“Repentance” ? you might say to yourself. Repentance for the “bishop” ? “priest” ? “deacon” ? Well, the fact is that bishops, priests and deacons are human beings. Bishops, priests and deacons can, and do make mistakes. Bishops, priests and deacons are given extra-special attention from you-know-who-down-below because they are leaders of the faithful. This is why they can make some mistakes. Sometimes, they can make catastrophic mistakes because they get distracted, led astray, confused. Sometimes, they can trip badly because Big Red is so effective in his divisive and distracting techniques. How often have I said in my life (as I have heard other people, also, say in confession) : “I forgot myself. I forgot this or that. I forgot my sense of direction”. Where does this forgetfulness come from ? It is not only because I am lazy or careless (although I have been, and am, often enough). Forgetfulness is something that is sown into our hearts by you-know-who-down-below.

Many of you will have seen the movie, The Lord of the Rings, or read the books. (If you have not read them, you had better do so, for they are better than the movie.) In the third book, as the ring is coming closer to its destruction, the greater is the forgetfulness that falls on Frodo. The closer he comes to trying to get rid of this horrible, evil thing, the more forgetfulness, distraction, and even selfishness fall upon him and take over. He does not survive this exercise without his friend, Sam, does he ? No. Tolkien understood how evil works in people’s lives and hearts. He knew how to explain it to us so that we would understand when it is bothering us in the same way. We can see ourselves in these characters. Tolkien, being a believer, knew how to write right. Forgetfulness comes upon us because you-know-who-down-below is working on us in order to separate us and to take us away from the right path, from life, and from the Lord.

You and I, who are believers, have the responsibility of praying for, supporting, encouraging, strengthening and nurturing each other. We have the words of the Apostle to the Apostle Timothy which tell us how to do this. We encourage each other. We strengthen each other. We correct each other. As well as we can, we are to be an example for each other.

The Apostle Paul rightly reminds us that we all must pray always for our leaders. Our leaders lead us, and our prayers protect them and minimise the danger of their falling too seriously into the snares of the Tempter. The Apostle exhorts us to pray not only for the clergy, but also for the temporal leaders as well, most of whom do not even know the Lord. However, they still have to make all these decisions that affect our lives so seriously and so deeply.

Our responsibility as believers is to pray for each other, to support each other, to nurture each other, to correct each other, to be examples for each other. Let us ask the Lord to give us, all together, the Grace, the joy, the love, the strength and the sense of direction to keep doing this, so that in everything, we will glorify our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, when we are actually present with the Lord as He is presented in the Temple, we see Him with His parents, fulfilling the prescriptions of the Law. He is the first-born Son. According to the old Law, the first-born son had to be brought to the Temple, and a sacrifice had to be offered to the Lord on His behalf in the Temple. However, today, with the Lord’s Presentation in the Temple a great change is coming. People are not prepared for it yet, because many of them have apparently not been listening to the Lord properly ; they have not been paying attention to the Prophets.

Nevertheless, the Lord today provides two persons who had been prepared during their whole lives for this moment. These two highly-regarded persons are testifying about how the Lord, during their very lifetimes, is fulfilling all that has been previously prophesied in expectation of the Messiah. They were faithful persons who did understand the Law and the Prophets. Simeon (we call him the God-receiver) today takes our Saviour as a little Child into His arms, and he proclaims to the people what is the significance of this Person who is going to be the Saviour of the world. Simeon has been waiting his whole life for this moment. He had known, somehow, in his heart by the Grace of the Holy Spirit that this moment would come. He then says : “‘Lord, now You are letting Your servant depart in peace, according to Your word; for my eyes have seen Your Salvation which You have prepared before the face of all peoples’”. In effect he is saying : “O Lord, now, I can go. As this Child is brought into the Temple, I can see the beginning of the work of salvation. I can see the progress of the fulfilment of Your promises. I can see that the end of my days is now here. You are letting me go in peace”.

To confirm this understanding of Simeon, the God-receiver, the Lord gives us Anna, the Prophetess. She, also, confirmed from her life-experience of reading the Scriptures, and glorifying the Lord every day in the Temple, that this Child is for our salvation.

It is truly important for us to remember on this day how the Lord prepared for the coming of the Saviour. The Lord always prepares. He cares for you and for me in this way. He cares for all of us, His creatures, in this way, because He has always been preparing. We, who know Christ, the fulfilment of everything, we, who live in Christ, must have our hearts open always to the activity of this same love amongst us. The Lord God has not stopped being present with us ; the Lord God has not detached Himself from us after the confirmation of all the work of salvation in Christ in His Death, Resurrection, Ascension, and the Sending of the Holy Spirit. He continues to be with us to this day. He is caring for each one of us. He is preparing the way in our lives for each one of us. The Lord in His love is with us. God is with us.

In Great Compline we sing : “Understand all you people, and submit yourselves, for God is with us”. God is with you, and He is with me, His beloved children. He continues to prepare the way for you and for me in the heavenly Kingdom. With the eyes of our hearts open, let us always look for His guidance and His presence with us. Let us allow Him to bring us into the heavenly Kingdom, into the place that is being prepared for us, so that now and in eternity we may glorify our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The words that the Apostle is speaking to the Apostle Timothy today are important for us all to remember all the time because living the Christian life is not easy. The Apostle makes it clear that there is going to be opposition from the outside. However, he also says that there are people amongst the believers whose minds are led astray, whose hearts are led astray, and who allow themselves to become twisted, distracted and distorted. They perhaps actually make things worse for believers because from within the community of faith they are making confusion. They are putting clouds of fog over the eyes of people who are trying to be faithful.

The Tempter is always playing with us in this way, trying to help us forget or to think that we have a better idea. Very often it has been Christian experience that there are those who are infected by one philosophy or another or some worldly idea or another, who think that they can remake Christ into their own image, as it were. As a result, we might say that most of us, in the course of our life, tend to pass through many “heresies” because we choose “our own thing”. We do not listen to the Lord. We know better. We make a choice that is different from what is the will and the truth of the Lord. In making a choice for something else, we may try to remake Christ into some sort of holographic projection or some sort of creature or nice-guy philosopher, or something like that. We do that instead of accepting Who He is.

If we are going to be serious Orthodox Christians, we have to be prepared to live according to the psalm that we are repeating at Matins which says : “The Lord is God, and He has revealed Himself to us”. He has shown Himself to us in His fulness in the Incarnation of Christ. This revelation of Himself in love, in suffering love, is that to which we, in the course of our lives, must always respond in similar fashion. We cannot make Christ into someone other who would be more convenient and more comfortable for us.

How can we actually presume to do such a thing when we, ourselves, are always objecting when people do not understand us and do not accept us as we are. They try to make us into something different from what we are. They sometimes actually speak about us in such a way that we do not even recognise ourselves. They do not accept us for who we are or comprehend who we are. We complain all the time about this, ourselves, so how can we behave like this to our Saviour who is incomprehensibly more than we ?

It is important for us to pay attention to who we are, and Who is the Lord to us. Who is He ? Therefore, how do we live ? I am saying all this because, in my opinion, this is directly connected to the parable about the publican and the Pharisee that the Saviour is teaching us today. The Pharisee is defending himself, and also making himself out to be something that he is not. He says to the Lord : “I thank you that I am not like all these other people around here – this riff-raff, and these various sorts of sinners – especially not like that publican back there”. (A publican was a tax collector, like Zacchæus, about whom we heard last week.) We remember what sort of person he was, in terms of how he had been living his life. The Pharisee pretends that he is not like this tax collector. He says : “How much better I am”. By talking like that, he already condemns himself out of his own mouth, because he considers himself to be better than anyone else. Anyone who thinks he is better than anyone else has his eyes on himself, not on the Lord.

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 the time that He was amongst us in the flesh.

The Lord continues to serve to this day amongst us in love, caring for our needs, fixing our “boo-boos”, straightening us out, protecting us, supporting us and helping us. We have to keep the same disposition, ourselves. We are not greater than anyone else. We are the Saviour’s servants. If the Lord has given us gifts, it is our responsibility to use them for the benefit of everyone else. Those gifts are not only for me. I am not the centre of the universe. I am a co-worker with the Lord who created me.

In the Greek text of today’s Gospel reading, the publican says : “God, have mercy on me the sinner” (there is a definite article in the Greek), and not : “Have mercy on me, a sinner”. This is the way the Jesus Prayer works : Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, the sinner. If I say a sinner, I am therefore calling other people sinners by implication when I do not know anything about them. I can only speak about myself as the sinner. If I say : “I am the sinner, I am not saying anything about anyone else except me”. If I say : “a sinner”, I am saying that I am one among many ; there are greater, and lesser. I am already getting into the category of this Pharisee by saying : “a sinner”, because I am already saying that everyone else is a sinner, and I am no worse and no better than everyone else.

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. That is what his prayer is about.

It is essential that we remember the words of my grandmother, who said : “Comparisons are odious”. That means that comparisons are hateful and really awful. It is important not to compare ourselves with anyone else one way or the other, or to compare anyone else, one with another. We have to pay attention to who they are in themselves, and also to who I am. The game of comparisons is dangerous. It is dangerous to say : “I am better ; I am worse ; I am higher ; I am lower”. We, each and all, have own gifts from the Lord, and our own responsibilities to the Lord. We each have our own service in the Lord, and it is necessary that we know how we measure up to His Gospel. If we see someone who is getting off track, it is important for us not to get busy condemning, but to start supporting that person in intercessory prayer, helping that person to come out of whatever it is that is a pain, a difficulty, a distortion, a suffering, a fall. If we see someone that is obviously flourishing in the Lord, it is necessary that we give thanks to God that this person is flourishing in the Lord, and that this person is doing whatever the Lord has been calling this person to do.

However, it is important, also, that I do not start saying : “I am lower ; I am higher” or whatever other sort of inadequate comparisons, because these comparisons do not mean anything. I do not know anything about the heart of anyone else. I can only see some symptoms. It is essential that I intercede, and that I give thanks for my brothers and sisters in their strengths and weaknesses. It is necessary for me always, in every way, to be supporting and helping my brother and sister come closer to the Saviour, and grow up in the Kingdom of the Lord.

While we are singing (as we have done last night) about preparing for the Fast, we enter this week of no fasting at all. It may look like irony, but it is the Lord, in His mercy, helping us to get ready. We approach the fasting period with all sorts of hymnody saying that it is getting to be time. Then we have a week of zero fasting ; then we go back to one regular week, and then a week with no meat. Finally we get to the full abstinence of Great Lent. Fasting is not exactly the right word because fasting implies that you are not eating anything at all. Not very many of us pass through Great Lent eating nothing at all. Even in monasteries, there are very, very few such persons who have the gift to eat nothing during all the days of Great Lent up until Pascha.

However, we do abstain from all sorts of things. We offer this abstinence to the Lord. The Lord, in his mercy, gives us the blessing of having not to fast for a whole week with the easy adjustment into the fasting period because He is so merciful and so kind to us. It is important for us to remember that. It is not an irony at all that we are talking about Great Lent and the abstinence that goes with it, and now (this week) we have no fasting. It is simply the expression of the Lord’s love and His care for us. He understands that we do like our food, and that we are going to miss during the period of Great Lent all those nice things that we like to eat. So, we have a whole week in which to indulge ourselves by eating what we like to eat (if we can afford it). Then we progress seriously towards the period of abstinence, which we offer to the Lord in gratitude and love.

May the Lord grant you a good, spiritually productive, healing and integrating Great Lent. May the Lord grant that every one of you live to see the Pascha of the Lord, to be able to be in this Temple celebrating the Resurrection of Christ. May the Lord grant you the joy of the Resurrection throughout the whole period of the abstinence of Great Lent. May the Lord grant you the renewal of love for Him and for each other so that you will be able to resist every single attempt of the Deceiver to divide and conquer. Instead, in the love of Jesus Christ, may you be able to hold on to your unity with each other as a Christian family.

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. May you rejoice all throughout Great Lent when it is our privilege to hear all these wonderful readings from the Scriptures about His creation of us, and about His perpetual, saving activities amongst us. 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, all together, and personally, too, in this city, which in its own native beauty needs to shine with the beauty of Christ in order to be properly fulfilled in itself. May you glorify in your lives our Saviour, Jesus Christ, whole-heartedly, single-mindedly and brightly, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In the Epistle this morning, we heard the Apostle Paul describing the Last Days. He is saying that there are going to be expressions of selfishness. These behaviours are certainly rampant today. Every sort of evil and perversion is rampant in our world today. It is not as if we have been lacking these terrible things in the past. Yet, it might be said that, in the past, these things had some sort of brake on them, because people tended to be more believing in the past than they are now. When the Apostle Paul is speaking about certain sorts of persons that go around taking advantage of people (and he mentions women in this particular case), he is speaking of women as a class of society that generally had no education whatsoever. They were very vulnerable to what anyone would say to them.

When human beings have taken the focus of their hearts off the Lord, when they have depended upon themselves, and determined to be do-it-yourselfers, then this means that they have also decided that they are going to be comfortable in this world. The characteristics that the Apostle describes always take over. Human beings without God are fear-driven in very many inexplicable ways. The way people turn in on themselves and decide to make themselves comfortable here, apart from the Lord, these selfish behaviours described by the Apostle, cause people to go to pieces. These behaviours make society, in fact, go to pieces, as it characteristically does under these circumstances.

Not so long ago I was told that when things were in the proper order in Chinese society, the whole society prospered. This has been the case for 5,000 years or so in Chinese history. If the emperor was worshipping God correctly according to ancient history (even though he was not a Christian or a believer in the sense that we understand, but he was nevertheless monotheistic), he was responsible for keeping society in order, and for feeding the people. He, himself, was responsible for feeding the people through the character of his leadership. Therefore, when he was a believer and setting a good example, the society (which must be agrarian, fundamentally, in order for this to work) was able to produce enough food for everyone, and there was general harmony amongst the people. In the course of Chinese history, repeatedly and periodically, business has taken over the driver’s seat of life. Following the ancient mentality of China, business must be a product of the agrarian society, not in charge of it. This agrarian-business order is understood to be divinely directed. Every time the order has been inverted, war has been the product, with the usual devastation of everything, including the fall of the government of the time. The only escape from this many-times-repeated cycle would be if there were a reform. Otherwise the dynasty fell.

This is not so detached from the words of a French philosopher of the last century who wrote a book which said that in his opinion the greatest disaster that has happened to human beings was the invention of the internal combustion engine. Until the internal combustion engine and the development of automobiles, human beings had to be pulled out of themselves so they could care about their environment. They had to be responsible for animals so that the animals would serve them well enough. I have heard from my own father how the care of these very creatures was abused. Nevertheless, the basic principle remains that we humans need to be pulled out of our self-obsession by our responsibilities. Everything is able to be abused because human beings are always fallen ; they can abuse things and distort things. This French philosopher was right. I think that his philosophical idea comes from a Christian formation and a Christian heart. (I met the person, and I believe that that is where it comes from.)

The persons about whom our Lord is speaking to us today always want the attention on themselves. I mean to say persons who go parading around, making a show of being believers, of being faithful. These persons are pretenders, one could say. True worshippers of the Lord, who are doing things for the Lord, do not call attention to themselves, but rather they try to hide from attention if at all possible and recoil from having attention drawn to themselves. Our Saviour says today that the person who is a true giver in the spirit of the Law, and in the eyes of the Lord, is this widow who has just now put only two pennies into the treasury. Even though it was worth nothing monetarily, it was worth everything to her because this was all she had. Our Saviour says that it is her whole living. She is giving the Lord everything because she is trusting that the Lord is looking after her.

How many times in the course of my life have I been given examples of people who have trusted the Lord in a similar way as did this woman. This woman has complete, utter trust in the love of the Lord. She trusts in His care for her, and how He is providing for her. How many times I have seen and heard of this happening in the lives of people even today. When they are in all sorts of desperate conditions one way or another, the Lord, nevertheless, provides. The stories that I have been told in the course of my days are more than I can repeat or even remember. People who trust in the Lord have their needs met by the Lord – not according to their own labours and their own doing, but because the Lord, in His love, out of the blue, has provided for them.

For you and for me (and I suppose for bishops particularly) these words about making a show, and being a pretender and so forth, are very crucial. When one is a bishop, there is no way that one cannot have attention put on oneself. However, there are ways to try to divert this attention. It is important for us all to remember this at all times. When we are being thanked for something or when someone is saying : “What a wonderful thing”, it is always necessary that we do what Orthodox Christians characteristically have always been doing -- we refer that gratitude immediately to the Lord. Therefore, we should be saying instinctively, out of our hearts : “Glory be to God” or “Thanks be to God” for whatever it is.

We must always be referring to the Lord whatever good is happening, because we ourselves are fallen human beings. We sin. We get distracted. We do all sorts of things that we ought not to do, and think all sorts of things that we ought not to think, and so forth. The Lord loves us, and if good comes through us, it is because He does love us. He cares about all of us. He is with us. He is protecting us. He is nurturing us. Most of all, He is saving us. The Lord is with us ; He is not distant from us. He is with us, and He is involved all the time in everything that we are, and everything that we are doing.

Let us ask the Lord to give us the Grace and the trust of this woman whom we see today with Him as she throws her whole living into the treasury. She is demonstrating to anyone who has the eyes to see that she truly loves and trusts in the Lord. Let us ask the Lord to give us this love and this trust in our whole lives. Let us actively put our trust in Him because He who loves us will not desert us. He who cares for us will not forsake us. The Lord will protect us, and He will help us truly to be ourselves, so that in everything, truly, openly and honestly, we will be able to glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

How could it happen, we might ask, that a young man who has everything would do as the young man did today in the Gospel parable : leave everything, go to a different country and waste all of his inheritance completely on himself (not just on bad investments or something like that). He was merely playing. He was not playing in a nice way, either, because the way he was living was impure. How could he do such a thing ?

The Lord does not tell us how it happened that he did this. However, perhaps you have noticed in your own life that sometimes, when you know precisely what is right to do, a sort of cloud can come to you, and you forget. Perhaps some sort of unexplainable desire or drive comes over you and you feel that you have to get away, and do something completely different. These sorts of drives come from below, from the powers of darkness. These drives are intended to separate a person from the Lord. Do not forget that the Apostle is telling us this morning that we are made for the Lord. We are not made for anyone or anything else, except for the Lord. How can it be that Adam and Eve at the beginning (who had absolutely everything), could forget who they were and what is their relationship with the Lord, and agree to do what the Lord had said not to do. How could it happen ? It is because this cloud of forgetfulness, combined with suggestions from down-below were accepted by them. There is a famous English saying (which probably exists in other languages, also) : “It seemed like a good idea at the time”. Many times in my life I have said that : “It seemed like a good idea at the time. It seemed like an interesting thing to do. Why not ?”

Another famous element in all this is that we also forget to think things through. I still remember from my childhood that many times when I got into some sort of mess, my father would ask me : “Why did you do that ?” I would say : “I did not think”. He would reply : “That is the trouble. You do not think”. He was right. I did not think things through. I still have trouble with this sometimes : not thinking things through, not remembering all the details, and mostly, not remembering Who is the Lord and who I am to Him.

The powers of darkness managed to separate Adam and Eve from their Creator. Adam and Eve forgot. They fell. They immediately began to lie. They were immediately full of fear. We, ourselves, recognise that in our lives. How do we get out of these messes ? There is only one way, the same way that the prodigal son got out of his mess. The son, in his desperation, remembered his father’s house and what it was like to be a hired servant in his father’s house. He recognised, at least, that in his father’s house there could be some sort of security. What else was producing this security and this fair treatment of servants and slaves in his father’s house, except love ? A person who treats one’s family in the right way knows the Lord and therefore knows how to live with the family. One knows, also, how to treat slaves (if that is the case in the society) or how to behave towards employees – that is, with love and with generosity.

The young man returns to his home. Before he even gets home, his father (who has been watching for him all this time) sees him, and runs to meet him. He brings him back into the family not as a hired servant (as the young man tried to ask for), but as a son (even if he did not get the inheritance any more). What was it that drew him back home ? It was his father’s love and prayers that followed him to that country and into his destitution and desperation. His father’s love and prayers were with him all the time, and brought him home. That is why his father could tell that his son was coming home.

It helps us to understand about the father that, in his behaviour, he broke every custom and convention because of his love. It was not at all done to divide an inheritance while the father was alive. Even were it to be so, it could not be spent until he died. A father would not run to his son in those cultures. It is not dignified to do so. The children had first to come to the parents and/or elders. The fatted calf was part of the elder brother’s inheritance, as the father has just said to the elder brother : “All that I have is yours”. Such was the depth of this father’s love, that celebrating the return of the lost son (who might have been dead but was not) overturned the usual customs and conventions. The father would, regardless, understand that any signs of forgiveness and reconciliation given to the younger son (whatever the cost) could be replenished through the younger son’s participation in the work and maintenance of the family’s farm. Such was the confidence of this father in the Lord’s love and blessing.

It is the same with you and with me, too. It is the Lord’s love that is always with us. It is the prayers of family, friends, saints, and the Mother of God that are with us, that bring us, also, home from our messes, from our desperation and from our destitution. It is the Lord’s love. I have heard in my life many stories from various families of how this has been precisely the case when children behave as this young man did today. They go away and rebel. They fall into forgetfulness and all sorts of horrible things. Yet, through their parents’ prayers, the prayers of their friends, and the intercessions of various saints, these young persons eventually come home. They eventually come to themselves and find their way (in a healthy way). This has happened many, many times in the lives of people that I know.

There are also many stories that I have been told about people who have been serving in one army or another, who have been in a war somewhere or other, and who have somehow managed to avoid being killed when people all around were being killed. Sometimes a bullet would hit some sort of Cross on the chest, a Bible or something else which would stop it there. There are many such stories. These are people whose parents were fervently praying for them. The prayers of parents for children who are losing their way are very strong. The Lord uses these prayers and this love to help to bring the children to themselves, to bring them home, to bring them into order, and to draw them into the right path.

As long as you and I are alive, we are most likely going to suffer from these so-called “good ideas” and these periods of forgetfulness. Sometimes, these things will come upon us unexpectedly after we have received a very big blessing. In fact, it happens so often that I would say that it is an axiom that this will happen. Every time there is a big blessing in a person’s life, it is followed by some sort of weird temptation. It comes from nowhere, unexpectedly. Sometimes it is a flashback to some weakness in a person’s earlier life. Fear is usually at the root of it all. Why does this come ? It comes because the father-of-lies is always trying to take blessings away from us in the way he managed to persuade the young man to go away with his inheritance, and to waste the whole thing. The Tempter thought he could deprive the young man of his inheritance and the loving support of his family. However, the young man was restored because of love.

When these things occur (big temptations after big blessings), it is necessary that you and I be quick to call to the Lord for help, for His protection, so that when the Tempter is tempting, he will not succeed in depriving us of the blessing that the Lord has given. These things are going to keep happening throughout all our lives. As long as we live, the Tempter is going to be trying to separate us from the Lord. It is important that you and I always hold on to the Lord, and that we be quick to turn to Him for help. We must be quick to turn to the Mother of God for her intercession because she is quick to hear. It is essential that we, like the prodigal son, remember the love of our heavenly Father and always turn to Him.

Let us ask the Lord to keep the awareness of His love alive and active in our hearts at all times, so that no matter how intense the temptation, no matter how “good” the ideas may present themselves to be, we will still remember that we were created for Him and that we belong to Him. We want to please Him. We want to be with Him in His Kingdom so that we can glorify Him eternally : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The words of the Apostle this morning are very important for us to remember. He is speaking about how we are supposed to be treating both food, and each other. I still remember the anecdote about a bishop (not an actual bishop, although there are some who do have this sort of reputation) who, before he went into his office every day, would eat at least one priest for breakfast. The point of this is that we have to be very careful how we are towards each other. In terms of our behaviour towards each other, we can be eating each other up by our words, by our thoughts, by the way we speak about each other, by the way we point fingers at each other, and by all sorts of things.

Thus, the Apostle is saying, in effect : “Yes, it is true that we Christians have a great deal of freedom. It is possible, if food is offered to idols, that we could eat it. We give thanks and we ask God’s blessing on this food that has been offered to idols. God takes away anything that is poisonous (spiritually speaking or even literally speaking). He makes it good for us”. People have tried to poison Christians for one reason or another, and God has taken away the deadliness from whatever it was so that when people ate, they remained alive and well. Let us not forget that the Apostle Paul, when he was in Malta on his way to Rome for judgement and eventual death, was bitten by a deadly snake. Nothing at all happened to him ; everyone was waiting for him to swell up and die. Nothing at all happened because of God’s blessing.

We Christians have a great deal of freedom in our way of life. We give thanks for everything, says the Apostle Paul. A Christian’s life, out of love, is supposed to be characterised by giving thanks. The Apostle also says that this freedom has responsibilities. He says that if someone tells you that a particular food has been offered to idols, we have to be careful how we exercise our freedom. If a person is going to say that this food is somehow polluted, it means that that person has certain scruples and may even be afraid. The Apostle says that out of our love and our concern for the weak spots of our brothers and sisters we voluntarily limit our liberty and our freedom. We understand the weakness of our brother or sister. If our brother or sister says that this food has been offered to idols, then, out of concern for that one’s weakness, we do not eat that food.

It is essential that we do not forget to care for our brothers and sisters in the coming Lent. To pay attention very closely to what someone else is eating or not eating is a very common temptation into which Orthodox Christians fall. They may actually condemn their brother or sister for some sort of fault. If we behave like this, how are we different from the Pharisees that were accusing our Saviour all the time ? In fact, how are we different from the Apostle Paul before his conversion ? However, the Apostle Paul subsequently understood the difference very well, and that is why he is speaking to us like this today. He is saying that we have freedom, but the freedom must be exercised with responsibility. Everything must be under-girded with love – the love of Jesus Christ, and the love of Jesus Christ in our brothers and sisters. It is important that we be careful how we live our lives, and that we keep watch over the attitude of our hearts towards each other.

I am going to tell you an anecdote about this. Mother Dorofea, of blessed memory (who used to live in this skete a long time ago), told about her time in Bussy, France, when she was, of course, cooking. Mother Theodosia sent her out to buy groceries. Mother Dorofea went out, bought the groceries and went back to Mother Theodosia, the abbess. She said that she had fulfilled her obedience, but that there was one thing on the list that she had not bought. Mother Theodosia said to her : “Why did you not get it ?” She replied : “I could see that it was not completely lenten”. Mother Theodosia asked : “Well, how did you know ?” Mother Dorofea answered : “I read the label”. She was beginning to think that maybe she had done the wrong thing, so she said : “Mother, do you want me to go back and get it anyway ?” Mother Theodosia said : “Now that you have read the label, we cannot have this thing – but next year, do not read the label”. I think that this anecdote is a practical application of what the Apostle is saying to us today.

When we are hearing from our Saviour the description of the Last Judgement, it is important for us to remember His words about how people are going to respond. People who are going to be welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven are people who have fed the hungry, visited the sick, visited those in prison, looked after the needs of everyone else and cared for people. These people will not have been aware that they were doing it for Christ, who says : “‘Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me’”. Our whole way of life has to be led by, directed by, fed by, supported by, and kept in the environment of the love of Jesus Christ. Therefore, 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. In the same way, Saint John Chrysostom has written that after we have received Holy Communion, the presence of Christ is great in us, and we should, in fact, be making prostrations in front of each other because of Christ. It is not only then, of course. In every situation we, as Christians, have to remember that we who are created in the image of God and who bear His image, should be able to recognise that image in others. When we are living in the love of Jesus Christ, we, ourselves, are showing the likeness of God.

When the people are being sent away into the fire (as it were) that has been prepared, they are answering in effect : “Lord, we never saw You. How did we not look after You when we never saw You ?” That is precisely the point. They never saw Jesus Christ. The icon of the Last Judgement shows Christ at the top, and, coming from His throne there can be a river of fire in red, or a river of fire with also a river of life in blue coming from His throne (it depends upon who wrote the icon). Everything is happening in front of us in this icon. There are the people who are with Christ, and the people who are not with Christ. They are all there. It is important that we understand that the Kingdom of Heaven, and hell are not some sort of places. They are states of being. We also have to remember that there is no place away from God. There is no place anywhere where God is not. David, the Psalmist, says : “Where could I walk away from Your Spirit ? and from Your Face, where could I flee ? If I were to go up into Heaven, You are there ; if I were to go down into Hades, You are present” (Psalm 138:8-9). There is no place in which anyone can get away from God.

What is this lake of fire, and this hell ? They are actually the results of our refusal to see God. The river of fire and the river of life both come from the throne of God Himself. People experience God’s love either as Life or as extreme pain. Why this extreme pain and fire ? It is because sometimes people, in the presence of Christ’s love, still refuse to accept Him. Therefore, in their refusal and rejection, they experience God’s love as fire. However, the fire is still trying to wake them up, and bring them to the refreshing waters of His love.

We cannot hide from God. There is no place to escape from Him because He is everywhere. He is in all things. He is the Creator of everything. Nothing exists without Him. God is everywhere. I read a long time ago the book by C S Lewis called The Great Divorce. It is precisely about this difference between Heaven, and hell. He describes it very well. (Even if he was not Orthodox, he understood it correctly.) His allegorical story vividly describes for us what is the difference between Heaven and hell. Heaven is being in and with Christ, fully alive in Christ. Hell is supposedly being away from Him. However, it is not that anyone could truly be away from Him. It may seem so, but it cannot be. One turns one’s back on the Truth, and it feels like absence, emptiness, burning, and whatever else can be part of this self-deception. Even though we may deny and reject His presence, it is impossible to be apart from God, as the Psalmist says (see Psalm 138). In the Paschal Canon we jubilantly sing : “Now all is filled with light, Heaven and earth and the lower regions”.

The Lord is the Truth. Jesus Christ says : “I am the Way. I am the Truth. I am the Life” (see John 14:6). Everything is in Him. Even if we try to reject Him, we cannot get away from Him. He is still with us. He is Life-giving Love. It is important that we offer our abstinence and our prayers in the course of this Great Lent to the Saviour. Let us ask Him to do this one thing : to increase our love for Him. Let us ask Him to increase our ability to live this love in the way that He shows us.

Let us ask the Lord to increase this love in us. May our lives be more and more like His life. May we become more and more like Him. May people more and more be able to see Him in us, and with us glorify Him, our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Our Lord speaks to us today about almsgiving precisely because the character of Lent is about almsgiving as much as it is about abstaining from this or that. Almsgiving means that we are supposed to be caring for the needs of other people (especially for the poor) at this particular time of the year. Indeed, this is something that love calls us to be doing throughout the whole year. However, we should be giving alms particularly now to make sure that we have momentum for the rest of the year in caring for the poor and for those who have needs. Our Lord is very clear about how we are supposed to be going about this. He said that we are supposed to be doing this in secret. We are not supposed to be making a big show of it.

According to the Gospel, our almsgiving in Canada is, in fact, upside down. It could be said that we have gotten used to doing things in a perverted way. If we are going to give to the poor in Canada, what happens ? When we meet some person in the street, cap-in-hand, asking for money, we are taught to say : “No”. We are taught not to give money to this person because this person might drink it, or use it on drugs, or otherwise misuse this money. On the other hand, if we have a tax-deductible receipt to be received because we are giving to some charity or other, that is all right – we get a tax reduction ; we get credit. This is precisely what our Lord is saying that we are not supposed to be doing. For the whole of my life as an Orthodox Christian, I have been hearing over and over and over again from one person or another who lives in a traditional Christian manner, that how we are going about things these days does not fit Christ’s way.

Metropolitan Leonty, 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. Father Sergei Glagolev tells stories about how Metropolitan Leonty did this. He had a conversation with Metropolitan Leonty which confirmed for Father Sergei Metropolitan Leonty’s determination that this was how God was directing things. 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”. Just because he is poor and needy, I cannot assume automatically that he is going to misuse it. If I do that, I make myself the judge-and-jury of this person. This is not in character with what the Lord is speaking about today.

This is not in character with what the Apostle Paul is speaking about, either. He is saying to us today that we have to be very careful and sensitive with each other. Christians have liberty and freedom, especially those who somehow are properly understanding the Lord in their heart. Such people have particular freedom. However, there are many who are still bound by fears one way or another, and who are therefore very sensitive. Their faith is not yet mature in some ways. Therefore, if they see a person eating one thing or another (which one should not eat according to the rules), they can become scandalised, as it were, or even weakened. The Apostle Paul is saying that we are supposed to be sensitive to the frailties of our brothers and sisters so that we do not provoke them in their weaknesses. Instead, we should be holding ourselves back in our liberty. Although the Apostle does not say it explicitly, it is understood that we should be praying for and supporting the person who has such a weakness. We should be interceding for this person, and helping this person by encouragement and other means to overcome the fragility, to overcome the weakness, and ultimately to overcome the fear (because all these things do come from fear).

The Orthodox Christian way is, and always has been, a way of being hidden. It is sort of an awkward thing, because in North America, people are always complaining about the Orthodox Faith : “We cannot find it”. “It is hidden”. “You are deliberately hiding it”. The fact is that Orthodox people are not actually deliberately hiding it, and they are not being irresponsible. For those who are trying to find the Orthodox Faith, the problem is that it is difficult for them to understand what they are encountering. When Orthodox people are seriously trying to follow the words of our Saviour which we heard today – they are not trumpetting themselves and advertising themselves. They are living their Christian lives in a practical manner. This is what is important to remember about the Orthodox way. It is not about : “Blah, blah, blah, and let me tell you about everything”. It is more about : “Come, and see”. It is more about : “I love the Saviour, and I am trying to repent of my sins”. “I am trying to live in a way that is pleasing to the Lord”. “I am trying to overcome these weaknesses in my life in which I have not been pleasing to the Lord. I am trying to do this by the Lord’s Grace and by the Lord’s help, and not by my own strength”. This is what makes us hidden, and, as one could say, there is not this “in-your-faceness”.

In general, North Americans seem to expect some sort of a selling-job when we share the Gospel. However, I have learned long ago to keep “sellers” at a distance. What people advertise as being such-and-such often is not the case at all. What you see is often not what you get, and then there is a disappointment. I bought a perfectly good-looking suitcase because the other one was broken. On the first use, the new one was broken. The same thing happened to Bishop Benjamin yesterday : on the first use, a beautiful-looking suitcase broke. What we see, what we pay good money for, and what looks good, is not necessarily so. It is important that you and I understand that because of our weaknesses, our fragility (and because we are still bound by fear), we cannot present ourselves as being all that special. Despite our weaknesses, however, we can do our best in Christ to follow in the footsteps of our Saviour, and, with His help, to live in accordance with the Gospel. He will do this work through us. He will bring people to Himself through us. He, through our love and our service, will act. He will bring people to Himself when He knows the right time has come. This is how things have been, and always are going to be in our Church because it is He who is alive in us.

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. Caring for each other, let us ask the Lord to be with us in everything at all times. Let us ask Him to help us, support us, and bring us into His Kingdom so that we may glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, the Lord is emphasising to us the need to forgive. It is true that this is Forgiveness Sunday, and it is natural that we would hear about this subject from Him in the way that we have just heard. However, the Lord speaks to us about forgiveness not just today as we are formally about to enter Great Lent. He is speaking to us about forgiveness all the time. In the context of the Our Father, our Saviour is saying to us : “‘If you do not forgive men their trespasses, then neither will your Father forgive your trespasses’”. We are saying the Our Father every day, many times.

In this prayer, we are saying to the Lord precisely this over and over and over again : “Forgive us our debts or trespasses as we forgive our debtors or those who trespass against us” (depending on the translation that is being used). It all means the same, anyway. As much as we forgive those who are sinning against us or who are hurting us, we can expect God to forgive us. However, if we do not forgive, then how can we expect God to forgive us ? The way of the Christian is the way of forgiveness. This is the foundation of the Christian way.

For example, how could some martyrs (and there have been many like this) be thanking their executioners, saying witty things while they were being tortured and burned alive such as : “Turn me over now, I am done on this side”. This is exactly what one martyr did say to his executioner. The people who were being killed were blessing those who were killing them. In this context, I always like to speak about Saint Juvenaly, the Alaskan martyr, because Saint Juvenaly had precisely this experience.

Saint Juvenaly, an early missionary-priest-martyr, was one of those zealous missionaries who were competing with each other (we have this in writing) to go to this or that place to bring Christ to the people. Saint Juvenaly went to western Alaska. We were told in earlier times (by some sort of mistake) that he was killed at Lake Iliamna, in Alaska. This was not the case, in fact. If one talks to the descendants of all the peoples there (in what I like to call Yupikia, the place where the Yupik people live in western Alaska), they say, as is confirmed by Father Michael Oleksa, that he did not die at Lake Iliamna. He died on the west coast of Alaska as he was coming in a boat towards the coast. As he and his reader-helper were approaching in the boat, there was a shaman with a group of people on the coast. From the look of Father Juvenaly, they thought for certain that he was a competing shaman because of the way he was dressed with a gold Cross and chain on his neck. This looked like the insignia of a competing shaman. They tried to prevent Father Juvenaly from landing.

However, Father Juvenaly kept coming towards the shore. The descendants of the people who killed him have told Father Michael Oleksa that their ancestors thought Saint Juvenaly was out of his mind because when they started to shoot arrows at him, it looked to them that he was brushing away the arrows as if they were mosquitoes. This was not the case, of course. As the descendants understood later, he was not brushing away the arrows – he was blessing the people who were killing him. He was making the sign of the Cross on himself and on them as they were killing him. From that death came a flourishing life in the Church in western Alaska. I would go so far as to say that this happened because Saint Juvenaly was forgiving those who were killing him. He was showing the people how to live.

Bishop Benjamin, who has been serving as the Administrator in Alaska, is aware of how the Yupik people and all the other Aboriginal people in Alaska have been very badly mistreated. They have been badly mistreated even by their Orthodox white brothers. He has said a number of times that it is a miracle how these people are still Orthodox Christians after all this. They endured for many, many decades, scarcely seeing a priest until recently. Now, at last, there are getting to be enough priests in Alaska. Even during the many decades with no priest, every Sunday, every feast-day, and any time there was any need, they still gathered in the local Temples which they had built. As much as people have mistreated them, they, who have come to know Christ, have been unshakeably faithful to Christ. It was not just externalism that made them Orthodox Christians. The Orthodox Faith was and is their way of life. Moreover, they have remained faithful because of their combined, mutual love for Jesus Christ, and their knowing how to live in forgiveness on the foundation which was laid by the death of Saint Juvenaly.

Most of the things that trouble us, that eat us up, that cause us pain are directly connected with whether or not we are ready and willing to forgive. Forgiveness, for the Orthodox Christian, is not simply one of those occasional things. It is not an option. It is a fundamental. It is the foundation of our way of life. It is the foundation of our life in Christ. We must be living in forgiveness with each other every day of our lives, and every minute of our lives. If we do not forgive, and we are holding grudges and nursing bitterness towards someone else, this anger, this non-forgiveness becomes an idol for us. It becomes something between myself and the Lord.

Anything between myself and the Lord, that takes the place of the Lord, is an idol. Thus, if my anger towards someone is so precious that I hold on to it and nurse it, despite the words of our Lord, despite the example of our Lord who forgave His executioners from the Cross, it has taken the place of God in my heart and in my life. It is serious business not to forgive. If I will not forgive, then I have become an idol-worshipper without knowing it.

Today, it is important that we are formally forgiving each other. It is essential that we forgive each other everything even if we do not know each other, because the way of the Christian is to live in forgiveness with everyone always and everywhere. It does not matter if I do not know everyone before whom I am going to make a bow or a prostration, because I have to live in forgiveness with everyone. I, myself, have to ask forgiveness of everyone else even if they do not know me, because when I fall, when I sin, it affects everyone else. It affects not only everyone else, it affects the whole of creation. For good or for bad, how I live affects everyone and everything everywhere. We are not all little, separated islands or “individuals” (as we, in North America, like to say). For the Orthodox Christian, there is no such thing as an individual. An individual has no connexion with anyone or anything else. By definition, the individual is not a person but a thing, by itself. In the mentality of the individual, we actually treat each other as things, not persons. Human beings are not like that, and cannot be like that. Even a hermit in a cave who never sees anyone for years is not an individual. We are all persons who have a relationship with other persons, and with the whole of creation. So, this hermit-person, sitting in his or her cave for who knows how long, has a relationship in the heart with the whole Church, with the whole of humanity, with the whole of creation. Those prayers and the worship offered by the hermit in that cave (wherever it may be) affect everyone and everything everywhere. People who are living lives like this tell me that they do not need to be told what is going on in the world because they can feel it anyway.

We need to forgive each other. We need to be asking each other’s forgiveness (and not only today). It truly is the Orthodox way to be asking forgiveness one of another all the time. Therefore, brothers and sisters, let us get serious about this forgiving. Let us ask the Lord to renew our hearts so that we will be both able and willing to forgive (starting now, right here, this minute) everyone around us. Let us ask the Lord to help us to forgive those whom we will encounter soon in “official forgiveness”, and then to be able to live our lives in perpetual forgiveness from the heart.

Let us ask the Lord to enable this forgiveness to flow freely in our hearts starting right now. Let us ask Him that this forgiveness may have fulfilment when we approach His Table. When He is giving us Himself in His Body and Blood, may this forgiveness multiply His presence in us. It is by living in forgiveness that we will truly be able to live in love, and to demonstrate Christ in our lives. May the Lord give us the Grace to glorify Him always, everywhere, and in all things : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we are hearing the Apostle speak very, very clearly about the difference between the angels and the Son of God. He is making it very clear that there is a difference, and that the Son of God is of a different order. He is not created, whereas the angels are created. They have a particular purpose which is very different from the Son of God’s work in Creation. In other words, the Son of God Himself is the Agent of Creation. He is the Speaker of things into being at the will of God the Father. Angels are part of that creation. They are doers of the will of God, yes, but they are not God. There is a difference in the order of creation. The Son of God is not a creature, but the Creator.

It is essential that we remember this. As the old saying goes : “It is important that we read, learn, mark, and inwardly digest these words”. In our day, there are many people who are trying to think up and dream up, somehow, a cheap substitute for Who is Jesus Christ. Amongst these substitutes, we often find the idea that He might be an angel. If we hear these sorts of theories floating around, it is very important to remember the words of the Apostle to the Hebrews today. He puts his finger right on what is the matter with us all the time. As human beings, our over-riding tendency is to substitute the creature for the Creator. We have habitually done it, and I am afraid that we are going to keep doing it because of our inability to learn. The Apostle Paul helps us when he makes such a clear distinction between the Creator and the created. He gives us a whole list of Old Testament references to help us understand how it has always been so from the beginning.

Our Saviour Himself is underlining this in the Gospel reading today, as we walk with Him in the grain-fields. He gets criticised for taking grain in His hands and eating on the Sabbath Day. With His disciples, He is doing that which, according to the strict rule of Judaism, is work. Our Lord reminds them that when King David was hungry, he did precisely the same thing and even much more. King David seemingly disobeyed the Law. With the people who were accompanying him, he went into the house of God (the tabernacle in those days), and ate the showbread which only the priests were allowed to eat, because it had been offered to God. David, the King, is a prophet, but not by any means a person to be compared with the Person who is walking in the grain-fields together with His disciples.

The Sabbath Day of resting was made for human beings. Our Saviour says : ”‘The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath’” . Once again we have an example of how we are constantly turning things about. The Lord gives us a day of rest, and we turn it into an absolute slave-master, and make it compulsory. In some respects, we drive people to despair because of the rules that get associated with the observance of the Sabbath Day. I remember hearing stories from my ancestors who were brought up in a very strict manner. On Sunday (in the mentality of some Christians, the Sabbath Day is transferred to the Lord’s Day), except for going to church, people were allowed to do nothing. All the cooking was done on the Saturday before. Nothing was cooked on Sunday ; no work was done, and the children could not do anything on Sunday except read the Bible. They could not read regular books. The shades were drawn ; everything was dark and sombre on the Lord’s Day. My ancestors remembered, and commented frequently on how they felt oppressed by these rules. Because of these rules, they did not feel inclined to be in the Temple of the Lord. They would not have regarded the place of assembly as the Temple, anyway. They certainly did feel that participating in these assemblies in which they felt condemned, was oppressive. The rules were oppressive and pushing them down. This is an example in the olden days in my family of how people forgot the right order of things.

My ancestors were not right in transferring the Sabbath to Sunday because we never did give up the Sabbath. Saturday is, and always has been, the Sabbath. It is the seventh day, the last day of the week. It is still a day of rest. In Great Lent, we relax the fasting on Saturday and on Sunday. The Sabbath Day is still respected. It is a day on which we can offer the Divine Liturgy to the Lord during the Lenten period. Just as on Sunday, we can have wine and oil to refresh us. Then we return to the sharper abstinence, if we are able to do this. Saturday is still the Sabbath Day. Sunday is the Day of the Resurrection. They are two different things. Sunday is both the First Day and the Eighth Day. It is the day of the Creation, but it is also the Day of the Kingdom, the Eighth Day. It could be said that Sunday is “a different-kettle-of-fish”. It is not the Sabbath. Saturday is still the Sabbath.

If we are going to rest, we are going to rest in a positive way, and not because an axe is going to fall on our heads if we do not rest. In the coming days, we are going to offer our abstinence to the Lord as a positive offering, and not as something that we must do or our heads are going to come off. These things must be offered to the Lord in the right way.

When the Lord in the synagogue (immediately after walking through the grain-fields on the Sabbath Day) looks at a man with a withered hand, He sees a man in dire need. (A man with a withered hand was severely limited in his ability to gain a living. There was no such thing as welfare in those days.) The people who were the rule-keepers and rule-enforcers in the synagogue were watching the Lord, as we have seen, and they were waiting to see what He would do. If He healed anyone on the Sabbath, that meant that He was doing work publicly on the Sabbath, and they could accuse Him according to the Law. They were just waiting to catch Him. The Lord says to them : “‘Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?’” They would not answer, because they had hard hearts. The Lord then says to the man : “‘Stretch out your hand’”. The man’s hand was healed.

The Lord is the Lord of the Sabbath. We, in the Lord, are lords of the Sabbath, too. The Sabbath is there to be observed. It is there as an opportunity to rest. We should rest because God rested. (Not that I do rest. I should be resting on one day of the week, and taking a Sabbath in one form or another. That is for me to answer to the Lord as to why I did not follow His example and direction, and rest.) The Lord does not give us the Sabbath as an oppressor. He gives the Sabbath to us as an opportunity. It is an occasion in which we can renew ourselves. Therefore, let us ask the Lord to renew our hearts, and re-focus our hearts so that we can make an improvement in our lives. Let us learn how to make the offering in love and loving obedience to the Lord in such a way that the Sabbath can be properly observed. In this way we will be able to mature in the right understanding as Orthodox Christians.

Let us glorify the Lord, and ask Him to increase the correct focus in our lives. Let us ask Him to help us to offer our obedience to Him more lovingly, to enable us to become more like Him in every way, especially in love, and glorify the all-holy Trinity : the unoriginate Father, the Son, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In these words [John 15:1-10 had been read], our Saviour is telling us how we should be living our Christian lives. He says that we have to be conscious that we can do nothing without Him. However, in Him we can do everything. In fact, in the Lord we can do what human beings will consider very often to be impossible. It is important for us to remember that our life is in Him. We, like the branches of a vine, are part of Him. He says that He is the vine, and we are the branches.

This evening, on an occasion like this, it is always a great joy for us to be able to be together, to sing together, to worship the Lord together. With joy we see how much variety there is in the Lord’s work in His Kingdom. We see how He reaches out, and how He embraces everyone and everything, everywhere, at all times. He, who has spoken everything into being, is also uniting everything to Himself. He gives life and purpose to all things. His desire is to give everyone and everything life eternal with Him in His Kingdom.

The “downside” of our being together as we are this evening (and there is one) is what we all keep talking about – the fact that even though we all possess one Orthodox Faith, and our belief and our worship are the same, and even though our joy is great in being together, our joy is limited. This is because, in fact, in North America we are still very far from living the Orthodox life, day by day, in the way that the Lord has called us to live it. This experience that we have now is a once-a-year sort of experience. With the joy, there is sadness precisely because we are not completely one. The Lord, who calls all to unity, and who is Himself the expression of unity, is embodied in the Orthodox Church. If we, the Orthodox Church (especially in a city like this one), are going to demonstrate with any strength the truth of Jesus Christ, sooner or later we have to come to the point of being all together the one visible expression of the Orthodox Church – not divided up with six or seven bishops in the same city.

This is the “downside” that I am talking about. It is a painful part of our life, but it is not at all hopeless. It is a reality which we have to be prepared to face and embrace in prayer. It is high time that we, the faithful of the Orthodox Church in Canada, start praying and fasting seriously, and offering to the Lord our intercession for His Church here in Canada, so that the necessary unity can be achieved. As long as we are divided as we are, and as long as we are not one visibly united Orthodox Church, which looks after everyone in this country, we are, in fact, betraying Christ.

For the Orthodox Church to be herself and to reveal Christ, who is One, we have to be one. In Canada, everything about the Orthodox Church – not only the iconostas, not only the Divine Liturgy – but the whole structure of the Orthodox Church must sooner or later reveal the oneness of Christ. There is nothing invisible about the Orthodox Church. The Orthodox Church must be visible. It always has been. In our ancestral countries, the Orthodox Church is one, and it must be one here, also. When that time comes, it must be one Church that embraces everyone, and that allows all to bear fruit according to their kind. It must be an Orthodox Church in Canada which nurtures Greeks, Serbs, Romanians, Lebanese, Syrians, Russians, Ukrainians – everyone. It must enable everyone to flourish together sort of in the way that we are offering our worship to the Lord here, together, this evening. Our Lord said to us just now in the Gospel that if we ask Him in the right way, knowing what is His will, we can, in Him and with Him bring about what is His will. It cannot be the Lord’s will that the Orthodox Church in Canada continue to exist indefinitely as something looking like a Protestant grouping. People outside look at us and think of us as a group of different-language-speaking Protestants. We cannot continue to appear in that way. The Lord put us here in this country to be yeast and salt. He put us here to do something for this country : to bring the Truth of Jesus Christ to this country. We, Orthodox Christians, are the only ones who can do it.

Brothers and sisters, our challenge is to take hold of this joy in Christ that we have in being together, to offer this joy to the Lord, and to ask Him to help us not only to understand what is His will, but to have the guts to implement His will. He will show us what we must do in order to come together in due course in His time as one Orthodox Church in Canada. This must be our prayer-project for all of us together. It cannot happen simply because the bishops would like it to happen (and we would). However, we, the bishops, cannot do it. It has to be on the foundation of your prayers. I think that when you pray, and the Lord reveals the time and the way in which this will occur, the bishops will be ready to do whatever has to be done.

Dear brothers and sisters, may the Lord enable us by all your prayers to be a visible, concrete, tangible witness of the love of Jesus Christ. He, Himself, put flesh on the love of God ; He reveals Himself to us as love, and saves us. May He, our Saviour, give us the heart to be obedient in prayer and in action, so that in everything we will be able to do precisely what the first missionary to North America exhorts us to do. Saint Herman, the Elder and Wonder-worker to Alaska says to us all the time : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”. Therefore, let us glorify with him and with all the saints, the All-Holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

We live in difficult times. It is not that it is worse than it ever was, but it seems like it is to us. It is good that the Lord comes to us regularly, reminding us about Who He is – Who He is in general, and Who He is to us in particular. He is not some sort of distant idea. He is not a manufactured product of our thoughts. He is not a projection of ourselves. He is the One who created everything, sustains everything, and is involved in everything. He knows everything, and does everything on the foundation of love. He is not someone who has wound up the universe, lets it sit on a shelf to tick away until it finishes its course, and that is that (big bangs, and other assorted theories included). He is involved in everything that has been happening and will be happening in His creation from the very beginning until the very end. This is, again, because of His love.

In the Gospel reading today, we are with the Lord in His love in this house where He is surrounded by so many people that I am sure that He Himself had difficulty moving. The persons who are bringing this paralysed man could not get in. I have always marvelled at the persistence of these four men who cared enough for the paralysed man to open the roof, and let him down into the middle of the house so that the Saviour could address him directly. In other words, they opened the roof and put him down straight in front of the Saviour, between the Saviour and all the people. When I was a child, I could not imagine how this could happen. However, since then I have learned a little bit more about Middle-eastern and ancient construction techniques, so it is not quite as amazing as it was when I first heard this at the age of five. Nevertheless, how our Lord addresses the man is always amazing. Just as He always does, our Lord immediately addresses the person who is in need. He understands everything right away, and even understands the cynical thoughts of the Pharisees sitting around there criticising Him. He addresses this man and says to him : “‘Arise, take up your bed [stretcher], and go to your house’”. And he does. He gets up, takes his stretcher away with him, and goes home.

This man who was released from his paralysis certainly was grateful, although there is no sign that he said anything today. Nevertheless, he has to have been grateful. Our lives do indeed have to be lived in an attitude of gratitude – gratitude towards the Lord for His love, His care for us, His nearness to us, His presence with us, His saving us. There is much more to life than meets the eye.

In the context of the short time that I lived in New Valamo in Finland, I want to share my experience of how the Lord works with us. People tend to think of New Valamo as being merely a new monastery sitting there in the middle of Finland. This is especially the case now, in the 21st century where everything is quite new, and there are not many people from former days around. This tendency is not helped by the monastery’s name of New Valamo. However, in 1940 in central Finland, this monastery was populated by about 250 monks who had recently been exiled from the island of Valaam in Lake Ladoga. Because of the big war between the Soviet Union and Finland in 1940, they all left the holy island of Valaam and went to live in New Valamo Monastery in very cramped quarters. They had a very difficult time.

The first time I went to New Valamo (in 1980), the first lesson I learned was the importance of stability of place. By 1940, the monks at Valaam Monastery had decreased from 1,000 to 250 because the Soviet Union had closed its borders from 1918. Far fewer persons were able to enter the monastery than there had been before. Previously, people had come from all over the Russian empire to enter this monastery. Therefore, entrance was limited to people of the Finnish territory or those who lived in Estonia or Latvia or one of the Baltic states.

When those monks were exiled from Lake Ladoga to central Finland in 1940, they suffered a terrible shock. They had left the island where the brotherhood had been established for close to 1,000 years. Even though the monastery itself had been previously destroyed several times, it had been always been revived by the brotherhood (even as it has been again revived after 1989). Nevertheless, the brotherhood suffered a great deal in its exile in Finland west of the new 1940 border. They also suffered from living too closely together because they were squeezed, all 250 of them, into the still existing small buildings that used to be something like barns on what had been a rich man’s manor in central Finland. When people live that close together (as you are certainly aware), they can catch every illness that is going around. Of course, people came, and they imported all sorts of viruses, and so forth. Many of these men were rather old by the time they had arrived there. Therefore, there were many deaths after 1940.

The monks, also, were suffering in their hearts because they did not know what to do. They were in exile, and just as other exiles, they were suffering a great deal of interior pain. Stability of place plays a big factor here, spiritually speaking. When any of us moves from place to place, it is destabilising, and it causes disturbances. It is a well-known old principle that if anyone might try to escape the devil in one place and move to another place, not only does that one come with the person, but new demons present themselves also. It may be said that that happened when they moved to central Finland. They went from a generally Orthodox environment to an extremely hostile Lutheran environment in an area of Finland where they would still in those days burn down an Orthodox church from time to time in a certain sort of evangelical zeal. It was not at all friendly territory. It was a very difficult place in which to live. In this context, you can read the works of Igumen John of Valamo and others.

I want to speak about two particular personalities that I met – the remnants of the old monks. These two men taught me by their example (I could not talk to them because I did not speak any Russian in those days). They did not speak Finnish (and neither did I), and certainly they did not speak English or French. Therefore, we could only communicate in the heart. I could see their example, and hear the other young people in the monastery speaking about what they knew about these men. The first thing I learned while I was there during that short time was that the prayers of all the fathers who had gone before in this monastery were still supporting the community that was there then. Their intercessions continue to uphold the community to this day. I cannot explain it, but I could sense strongly in my heart that that is very truly the case. The practicalities show that this is the truth. The fathers of this monastery, although long departed, still carry the current brotherhood, just as the paralytic was carried by the four men. In the same way, the fathers also bring the current brothers before the Saviour.

My story is about two old monks. One was Father Akaky. Father Akaky was just a regular monk. I do not think he was even a reader. At the time of the Russian revolution, he ran away from central Russia somewhere. He rode a horse as far as the horse would carry him before it died. He walked the rest of the way, all the way to the Arctic coast to the Monastery of Pechenga. This was not a small undertaking. He lived in this monastery until 1940, when the borders shifted, and again he had to move. He moved south, and joined the brotherhood of Valamo in central Finland, serving in the monastery as a groom of horses. He cared for all the horses that were used to work the monastery farm. When he was 95, the brotherhood stopped farming with horses. There were too few monks anyway, and by then there were tractors available. When they stopped using horses, that meant that Father Akaky was retired. Then he felt useless, and did not talk to anyone for three years. Perhaps there was anger there, too. After three years, he began to talk to people again. When I encountered him, he was 107. He was saying that God had forgotten him. At the same time, he got a notice from the Finnish school system saying that it was time for him to enter grade one because he was seven according to their records. However, he did not go to school, but every day he was brought by the brotherhood to church in his wheelchair. He could walk, but not a long way. He was all bent over with age.

Father Akaky was a very interesting man. The young novices who lived in the rooms above him said that they could still set their watch by him because every night at midnight they could hear him start to sing “O heavenly King” as he began the midnight office. At that time, he was 107 years old, and he lived to be 111. As far as I know, he kept going to church right up until the end in the same way, brought by his brothers in a wheelchair.

The other person I want to speak about is Archimandrite Simforian. For most of his monastic life, Archimandrite Simforian was a regular sort of monk. He was kellenik to a long series of abbots, even before they left the old monastery in Lake Ladoga. When they left the monastery, through God’s mercy, they had time to clean out the whole place, and move it to central Finland. The Communists did not get a chance to break up much. However, there was one very big bell that they simply could not manage to transport. They left in wintertime and they drove across the ice. As all the monks were leaving for the last time, Father Simforian went into the bell-tower and rang this giant bell. (I can imagine how heart-rending that whole experience would have been.) He went with the whole brotherhood to New Valamo where he lived and served in the same capacity for a long time.

However, as the brotherhood was diminishing, the needs were increasing. So the brotherhood sought his ordination to the diaconate and to the priesthood in due course. As the brotherhood continued to diminish, Archimandrite Simforian ended up being the abbot, the last of the old abbots of this monastery. Because of the illness and weakness of the remaining brothers, he served the whole typikon every day for 25 years without stopping. He served eight hours worth of services, and sometimes more every day. According to the old typikon, it was the custom in the evening to recite 500 Jesus Prayers within Compline. Therefore, it took a little longer than usual. This addition occurred long before because on the islands there was so much hard farm labour to be done that many of the brethren could only participate in this service of Compline every day.

Archimandrite Simforian did this all those years faithfully out of love for the Lord, and it bore a great deal of fruit in his life. He became very much a source of consolation to people. I remember that when I was there, the former Metropolitan of Tallinn (who later became Patriarch Aleksy of Moscow) came to the monastery to visit Father Simforian. Patriarch Aleksy had gone as a child to the old monastery in Lake Ladoga, and he knew Archimandrite Simforian and the brothers. He still snuck into Finland from time to time when he could, to visit the monastery.

Archimandrite Simforian lived and prayed in his cell very faithfully and quietly just as a regular, God-loving monk. During the time when I was serving in the monastery, I was serving almost every day. I had to serve about 80 per-cent of the services in the course of the time that I was there because the brotherhood was small, and the other priests had other responsibilities that they had to take care of. Even then, over the course of the summer, that monastery was receiving 100,000 tourists who would arrive on buses. That was one of the reasons I was brought there to serve.

While I was serving, Archimandrite Simforian, who was 88 at the time, would come into the church in the middle of Matins. I could hear him coming in by the sound of his loose slippers (because his feet were in rather bad condition by that time). I could also hear the feet of people running to him to ask for his blessing. Coming into the Altar, he would stand at my right hand beside the Altar during the whole Divine Liturgy. Every day he came up to the Holy Table for Communion, and every day he came with tears in his eyes. Always there was such a sense of peace and joy surrounding this man. That is why I say there was great fruit from his labours and his prayers. He was full of peace, and he was full of joy. This is the characteristic of the Christian, and this is the whole point of being a monk – to be filled with Christ and His love, and to share somehow, as God blesses it to be shared, but at least to share it with the Lord.

When I was there, Archimandrite Simforian showed his mettle. At Christmas-time, they had the custom of wearing vestments that had been given to the monastery by the Empress Catherine the Great. Each phelonian weighs 25 kilograms. He was a little man, who, when he was 88, came up to my shoulders. However, he was a strong man. After the New Year, he had a stroke. It was rather severe, so they took him to the hospital. He was suffering a great deal. While he was lying there, we discovered that there was one thing that helped him. (This was an example of the four men carrying the paralytic.) We found out that if we could say the Jesus Prayer in Slavonic audibly for him, he calmed down. Then the whole brotherhood took turns sitting beside him and saying the Jesus Prayer in Slavonic audibly so that he would be able to keep his heart focussed. He was a spiritual warrior. The brotherhood helped him to continue praying for some time until he reposed. He reposed in the middle of the winter. I was serving the Divine Liturgy as usual when, in the middle of the Trisagion, they brought him into the Temple in his coffin. We stopped everything, went and dressed him (he was still warm) in his mantya and klobuk. We prepared him in the middle of the nave, and finished the Divine Liturgy as we normally would.

I could not resist sharing these little elements from Valamo with you not only because this monastery has some sort of spiritual connexion with Valaam, but also with the hope that this will help you to persevere, yourselves. This perseverance is not based only on one’s personal determination, but by asking the Lord for help all the time, and looking for the support and prayers of our brothers who are alive in the flesh as well as those who have fallen asleep. Those who have gone to the Lord, in their love for the Saviour, still love us and pray for us.

Dear brothers and sisters in our Saviour, let us do the best we can to persevere in love, and allow the Lord’s joy and peace to grow in our lives, knowing that the Lord is with us, just as He was with those Valaam monks and others. He cares for us. He will support us. It is important for us always to hold on to Him, and to glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

These words that our Saviour is saying to us this morning in the presence of those Pharisees who are criticising Him are very important for us all to be remembering always. This has always been the case, but in our day, in particular, there is a tendency to expect that people who go to church, who are amongst the believers, who say that they are Christians, are somehow supposed to be perfect. That is precisely one of the reasons why our Saviour is being criticised by the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the ones who were the keepers of the Law, and who were making sure that everything was being done correctly. Our Saviour is sitting with publicans, tax collectors (traitors to the people of Israel), and other sorts of sinful persons. The Pharisees ask, in effect : “How can someone who is a teacher of the people, a supposed leader of the people be associating with scum such as the people He is sitting with at dinner today ? How can He be sitting with such people who have even become His followers and disciples ? How can this be ?” These particular Pharisees do not allow for the possibility of repentance.

What do we see at the very beginning of this encounter with our Lord today ? We see Him 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.

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. This way of repentance is the whole point of the Christian life : hearing the voice of the Lord saying to us : “‘Follow Me’”, and following Him as Levi has done today, and as the many other persons have done that we have encountered in the past weeks. These are people (like Zacchæus) who are living lives focussed on themselves, but who, nevertheless, hear our Lord calling to them : “‘Follow Me’”, and they do follow.

May the Lord help us to continue to hear His voice, and to continue to have the desire in our hearts to turn away from our own selfishness and darkness. May we follow the Saviour, and may we find in Him healing, strength and life. In following Him, may we glorify Him in eternity, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The Lord, in His mercy, places the Cross before our eyes in the middle of Great Lent. He does this in order to help us remember who we are, Whom we are following, and where we are going. We have now passed through several weeks of Great Lent, and we may be finding it difficult to persevere. Perhaps we find that it is difficult to give alms to those in need. Nevertheless, this giving of help to the poor is one of the first directions of the Lord for our life. It is an expression of His love. If we love Jesus Christ, we will help people who need help. However, the Tempter likes to make us think that this is difficult. His main work is to discourage us and to help us to forget. He makes our vision blurry, and he also puts false visions in front of our eyes.

Perhaps we are having difficulty with fasting in Great Lent because we are determined to do this fasting by ourselves, with our own strength. Maybe we are determined to fast strictly because that is what the law says. If we are approaching fasting with this attitude, we will definitely have difficulty because we are then treating fasting as some sort of martial art. Perhaps I am treating fasting in the same way in which the Chinese actor, Jet Lee, does, so that because of his physical strength he can be leaping about from place to place, doing things that usually would seem to be impossible. These ways of doing things are all about “me”. When I am fasting because I want to show how well I can do, and how well I can obey the law, it is all about “me”.

When we are passing through the fasting period, we are supposed to be offering our abstinence and our fasting to the Lord out of love. If I am making that sort of offering to the Lord, with my heart open in the same way that you see my hand is open before you, then it is He who is enabling me to make this offering of love. In co-operation with Him, He helps me to fulfil this offering. The Lord knows that ever since the time of the Fall, we human beings have been enslaved by fear. He does not come to make us more afraid. He does not come to increase our enslavement to fear. He comes to set us free from all this. He wants to help us grow in love.

The Lord places the Cross before our eyes today and during the coming week to give us encouragement for the rest of Great Lent and to give us encouragement for the rest of our life. Our Saviour is voluntarily crucified on this Cross. He says to us today that : “‘Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his Cross, and follow Me’”. Our Lord shows us that His way is truly the way of love. However, if we are truly going to love as He does, in Him, our love will inevitably be accompanied by suffering in this world. As the Apostle John tells us in the first chapter of his Gospel : The darkness is trying to overcome the light, but the darkness cannot overcome the light (see John 1:5). In the same way, our Saviour, Jesus Christ, nailed to this Cross before our eyes, is not overcome by death. Instead, through the Cross, the Lord overcomes death. Thus this Cross, which was once the sign of the most horrible torture and death, is now the sign for us of salvation and life. This sign of the Cross, for you and for me, is the sign of how love works in our lives and overcomes all difficulties.

It is the Orthodox Christian paradox that this sign of death, the sign of the Cross, is at the same time the source of our joy. We sing at Pascha : “Through the Cross, joy has come into all the world”. Today, the Lord is saying to you and to me that He is with us, and that He will be with us always. Our Saviour will support us in everything. Let us ask our Saviour to renew our confidence in Him this morning. Let us ask Him to help us to remember that loving Him, living in love in Him is the first thing in our lives. Let us take His hand which is always stretched out to us, waiting for us, and let us let Him lift us up. Let us stand with love and joy in His presence. Let us glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Very often I get asked about this particular Divine Liturgy : “Why are we celebrating it on the twenty-fifth itself, and not last evening ?” Last evening, all the texts in Great Vespers and Matins were about this feast-day. This evening, we are already hearing about tomorrow, which is the feast-day of the Archangel Gabriel. The reason it is like this, of course, is because once the sun is setting, according to the Orthodox and ancestral Jewish way of doing things, we are starting the next day. Once we come to the “Lord, I call” we are already preparing for the next day. The question is certainly legitimate, but it is not as simple as that. Yesterday, all the texts were about today.

Where are we ? We are in the middle of Great Lent. The Feast of the Annunciation never happens except in Great Lent. What, then, does this mean ? During the week-days in Great Lent (it does not matter office we are serving, whether it is the regular Wednesday or Friday Presanctified Liturgy, or any feast-day services), we are not celebrating anything until the evening. This is because during the day-time on Lenten week-days, we are keeping a fast. If we were in a monastery and being strict (not bending the rules one way or the other), we would not be eating anything until the sun sets. Therefore, we cannot celebrate the Presanctified Liturgy until the sun sets, and we cannot celebrate the Divine Liturgy on a feast-day like this until the sun sets. However, this is where we have these confusions. Yes, liturgically, March 26 has already started, and the feast-day of the Archangel Gabriel is beginning. However, we are receiving Holy Communion for today. We have fasted all day on March 25 on this feast-day, in order to receive Holy Communion on this Feast of the Annunciation to the Mother of God.

This may not make any sense to you even yet, but this is how the Orthodox Church always approaches things. Two things are overlapping at the same time on more than one occasion during our year, and this is one of those occasions. Liturgically, the new day begins at the time of sunset, but when it comes to fasting, fasting only starts when you get up in the morning. It finishes at the end of the day. That is why we are doing it like this.

On this day we are celebrating the Annunciation to the Mother of God. Nothing on this feast-day and nothing about this Event is accidental. Everything has been prepared. This is not simply some sort of out-of-the-blue event in which we are participating. We have just participated in the announcing by the Archangel Gabriel to the Mother of God that she would conceive and bear a Child. Yet, she was only betrothed to Joseph. She was not yet married to Joseph. She had been correct about everything. In other words, she was a virgin, and remained a virgin, and her question to the Archangel Gabriel is absolutely necessary. If this is going to happen by the power of the Holy Spirit, how is it going to be ? What does all this mean ?

“‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you’”. This is how the Archangel Gabriel explained it. In fact, he said words that Our Saviour Himself will say : “‘With God nothing will be impossible’”. This Conception of the Son of God today is definitely exceptional, but with God everything is possible. The Lord is doing this today in order to show you and me the depth of His love and how He is preparing everything. Today, the Angel says to the Mother of God : “‘You shall call His name Jesus’”. This is not just any old name, because this Name carries with it the meaning of “Saviour”. A person who knows Hebrew would understand the meaning behind this name “Saviour”. When we are speaking about our Saviour, we tend to speak about Him as though the second title, “Christ”, were His family name, or something. We speak about Him as Jesus Christ and we probably seldom think about what are the implications of these words. This is understandable, because most of us do not know too much Greek. However, it is still important for us to understand.

When we are saying Jesus Christ, we should not be saying this as if it were two names. We should, correctly, be saying : “Jesus, the Christ”. The Christ means “the Anointed One”. Jesus, our Saviour, is the ultimate Anointed One. There were anointed ones before Him, such as David, the King and Prophet. In other words, there were christs before, but Jesus is The Christ. He is the ultimate Christ. He is the Anointed One, which is the English meaning of the Greek word Khristos, Christ. The Greek word Khristos is itself a translation of the Hebrew word Messiah. Jesus is the Promised One. He is the One who is going to save the world and establish God’s rule permanently. It is He who is overcoming evil. It is He who is overcoming death. He is the One who is sent, who is anointed, who is appointed, who is prepared. Underlining all these things is the fact that His cousin was conceived six months previous to this day, as we are told by the Evangelist Luke. Saint John the Forerunner was conceived under wonderful circumstances also, to parents who were barren, old, and who ordinarily could conceive a child (and yet, they did).

The Lord was preparing, and is preparing. These things that are happening are not accidental, and they are not obscure. Every Event that is happening is significant, and needs to be understood in accordance with the Lord’s love and His presence with us. That is one of the reasons why the Mother of God, who had been living her life as one of perpetual preparation to do God’s will, is able to say at the end of this encounter with the Archangel Gabriel : “‘Behold the maid-servant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word’”. The Archangel says that even though it is very strange, with God it is possible that this can be. The Mother of God instantly accepts. She accepts the words of the Archangel, and the obvious will of God in the same way which the first Eve did before the Fall. The Mother of God is called the Second Eve because the first Eve before the Fall always, instantly, and without even having to stop to think about it, said “Yes” to the Lord. (After the Fall, she started to ask too many questions, and became all confused.) The Mother of God puts everything back in order today by immediately saying “Yes” as the Second Eve.

It is important for you and for me to take heart and example from this Event that we are participating in now. Just as the Mother of God is saying “Yes” instantly to God’s will out of love, without having first to think about it, so should and can you and I, in Christ, by the support and prayers of the Mother of God. You and I can come to that point in our lives, also. Before we die, you and I can come to the point where we can say “Yes”, instantly, to God’s will expressed to us. Through the intercessions, support and example of the Mother of God, and by the Grace of the Holy Spirit that is overshadowing her now, we, also, can do it. To prove it, there have been many saints in the past 2,000 years who have come to that. There are actually very many whom we do not even know. God, in His mercy, does not tell or show us everything because we would get “too big for our britches” too fast.

The Lord loves us. He is with us. He is showing us His true, immediate, tender love for us all in this Event that we have just witnessed. Let us ask the Lord to enable us to respond to Him and to His will with love, and to shine with His love, as the Mother of the God does. Let us ask Him to enable us to become strong, powerful, mighty intercessors, as the Mother of God is for us and with us. As she does, so may we also do in everything, glorifying the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Liturgically speaking, our mentality has to be that we are with the Lord “today”. Being with the Lord, we are hearing Him speak, and we are witnesses of the healing that has just taken place. Therefore, today, now, this deaf man with a speech impediment is being brought to the Lord and they are beseeching Him to do something for this man. Our Lord is before us now saying : “‘Ephphatha'”, and healing this man. We are amongst those who are saying : “He has done all things well”. We are amongst those who, as a result of this, are proclaiming the wonders that the Lord is doing.

There is much that is apparently calcified about the way we live our lives nowadays, in North America especially. Popularly, such things as this healing tend to be automatically put into the past tense. Orthodox people, however, have never had the understanding that these things are in the past tense, but always “now”. Especially is this so when we are standing here in the Temple of the Lord and singing the praises of the Lord. The Lord is not a “has-been” that was once upon a time. The Lord IS. He is here with us, NOW. We are in His presence. When we are hearing the Holy Gospel, we are in His presence. Today, as the Lord is preparing to heal this man, He is showing His compassion for us. This compassion is revealed by his deep sigh. He continues to show His compassion for us. We are with Him. We are hearing Him sigh, as He, in His compassion is preparing to heal this man.

In a very short time we are going to be in Holy Week. It is not going to be a “memorial celebration” in the past tense of the Lord’s Passion and Suffering. In these days in particular, the texts of the services make it clear that we are there, in Jerusalem. We are liturgically there in Jerusalem, and it is all “today”. Our liturgical texts for other times of the year, also, are very frequently saying “today”. “Today is the beginning of our salvation”. “Today is the prelude of the good-will of God”. “Today the Virgin gives birth to the Transcendent One”. “Today You have appeared to the universe”. It is always today, today, today. It is NOW. We are there. We are participating in the Event. It is very important that we keep this sense of everything being in the present tense. It is essential that we remember that we are there with the Lord, NOW. Our Lord heals this man today.

Our Lord heals this man in a manner that is different from other times. Sometimes He does not do anything special. This time there are some special actions that go with the healing. The Lord does these things because He knows who we are. He knows our hearts. He knows that sometimes we need to see something extra happening (such as spitting or touching or something like that). He knows what is necessary. It is not because there is some magic formula required for the healing of a deaf and dumb person. The Lord knows our hearts, and He knows the hearts of those who were there when the man was healed.

Let us ask the Lord to renew in our hearts this sense of His eternal presence, and this sense that everything is eternally NOW. In Him there is no past, present or future. In a similar manner, in the Divine Liturgy which we are celebrating, we are even celebrating the Second Coming as if it had already taken place. It is the eternal NOW. Always, everything is here in the Lord, NOW. The Lord is eternally present, eternally with us in His love. He is never changing. He is always loving, always compassionate, always supporting us, always guiding us, always renewing us in His love. Let us glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we see our Lord casting out of the child the demon that was keeping him from speaking and that was paralysing him in other ways, too. We also see the apostles coming to Him and asking Him why they could not cast out the demon. There are many things here to which it is important to pay attention. As soon as the boy comes into the presence of the Saviour (and we have seen this many times before), immediately the devil is reacting in the possessed boy and is convulsing him in a very violent way. This is not a case of epilepsy. Our Saviour immediately begins to address the whole situation. He asks the father how long this had been going on. Our Saviour then addresses the devil and commands him to come out of the boy. Immediately the devil is gone, but not before first causing more trouble. The child is then at peace and restored to his normal, peaceful, healed self. The Saviour immediately takes his hand, lifts him up and gives him to his father.

Evil is always reacting in the presence of the Lord. Evil is always stirring up distractions and trouble in the presence of the Lord because evil feels great pain in the presence of the Lord’s love and life. Evil feels this pain because it is living in complete denial of the power of God, and Who He is. It is living in denial of the nature of His love. The Lord is love. Always there is a reaction. We can see it in the course of our own lives, I am quite sure. I have seen it in my life, and I have heard people talk about this problem many times. People are asking : “Why is it that after a deep, spiritual experience of the Lord, or a great blessing that has happened to me, suddenly there is every sort of trouble happening ?” The answer is always the same : Evil cannot stand to be in the presence of the Lord, His love and His blessing. When a blessing comes to you and to me, the devil always tries to stir up something in order to take our attention away from the Lord. He tries to take our gratitude to the Lord away, so that we will again be paralysed by some sort of fear, and be ruled by some fear instead of living in gratitude and thankfulness to the Lord for everything, acknowledging the Lord’s love, and participating in the power, the life and the light of His love. This is always the case in our lives.

The same thing happens in our parish life, too. Blessings occur. Temptations occur. Do we let the Tempter get away with the tempting ? Do we let him get away with distracting us or do we keep our eyes on the Lord ? If we keep our eyes on the Lord, we will always be all right, even if we get scratched up, somehow. We will still be all right if we keep our focus on the Lord.

This lesson is also connected with what the apostles were asking the Lord. They were still learning. They were still at the beginning of their experience of the Lord. Even though He had given them a great deal of Grace, they did not yet comprehend everything. Therefore, they asked Him : “‘Why could we not cast it out ?’” In my opinion, this was not the right question to ask, and it reveals that the apostles had yet more to learn. The fact is that none of us ever can cast out the devil. Who can ? Only the Lord, our Saviour, Jesus Christ can. Only the Lord Himself can cast out evil. Therefore, our Saviour is saying : “‘This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting’”. By prayer and fasting, we understand that everything is done and accomplished in harmony with the Lord. If a devil is to be cast out, it is the Lord who does the casting out.

Here we come to another important spiritual principle in our lives. People talk to me from time to time about how they are struggling with the devil in one way or another in their lives. That is the worst thing that they can do. If we ourselves engage in a fight with the devil, we are always going to lose. The only successful way to combat the devil, and to combat evil in our lives and in our surroundings, is to be pleading with the Lord for help. We can overcome temptation and evil not by fighting with the devil, but rather by letting the Lord, who conquered the devil, overcome the evil, Himself. How ? By a simple plea, saying to the Lord : “Help me ; save me”. Do we do this ? It seems that we do not do this very often. Why not ? Most often we do not because we forget. Why do we forget ? Because "Big Red" is the master of helping us to forget. He is the father of lies, and he is the father of forgetfulness, too. I have said so many times in my life : “I forgot”. I forgot to do what was right. I forgot to say “No” to you-know-who-down-below. I forgot to say : “Help”. I forgot to say : “Save me”. I forgot because I, like all the rest of us human beings, still have a tendency to be a do-it-yourselfer : I-can-fix-it-myself-don’t-bother-the-Lord-I’ll-do-it. However, if I do that, I am definitely going to find myself deeply humiliated and embarrassed. This has happened many times in my life. I am getting old and it still happens. I hope that the Lord will ultimately have mercy on me because of this perpetual forgetting to ask the Lord first, instead of thinking and doing things myself. I suppose that when I had those “Think-and-Do” books (which existed in my Grade One days), I learned that lesson a little too well. Nevertheless, it is true that it is too easy to forget.

Today, we are remembering Saint John of the Ladder, the abbot of Sinai. The icon here before us does not have the usual ladder of ascent into Heaven that one often sees. However, many are probably familiar with the icon where people are ascending on a ladder towards the Saviour who is at the top with His hand blessing the people who are coming up. At the same time, many people are falling off this ladder while they are distracted and pulled by little black figures on the side. Let us keep this in mind. Why are they falling off ? I remember in my childhood my father and my grandfather teaching me how to climb a ladder : “Going up the ladder, do not look down. Going up the ladder, always look up”. It is the same thing with mountain climbing. Always “look up”, as the Friendly Giant said.

A few weeks ago when I was on retreat in the monastery, the brotherhood was as usual, in Great Lent, reading The Ladder of Divine Ascent. They were on Step Six, which is very hard to bear. Step Six is all about mourning for sin. Mourning for our sins is a step which can get us into trouble if we are not keeping the right perspective. Saint John rightly says in a very extreme way that we should be mourning for our sins. Why should we be mourning for our sins ? It is because we have disappointed and failed our Lord, who has created us. It is not because we are failures, and cannot succeed at anything and will never get anywhere. That is absolutely the worst thing to think about ourselves. That sort of thing is from you-know-who-down-below who encourages the “O poor me” attitude that is bound to get us off the ladder and right back to Step One. If we are mourning our sins, the sorrow we feel for our sins has to be only because we have fallen short of the measure of the Lord’s love. At the same time, while mourning for those sins, we can never take our eyes of concentration off the Lord. This is why Step Six is so tricky. It is too easy to look in, and concentrate on, and be sorry for all the things that we have done wrong, and pay so much attention to that, that we do not look up any more. We only look at ourselves. We put ourselves between ourselves and the Lord, and down we go.

There can only be the Lord and ourselves with nothing in between. It does not matter if it is Step Six or any other step on this ladder to which Saint John Climacus is referring. If we do not keep looking at the Lord at every step but instead look at ourselves (or anything else), down we go. We have to begin again. (I suppose this is somewhat like the Twelve-step Programme which is not so different from this Ladder.)

Whether it is casting out a devil or doing anything good at all in our lives, everything has to be undertaken in the context of the Lord, His love, His supreme ability in everything, His giving us life and help to accomplish everything. He is the only end. His love is the only purpose in our life : growing in it, and sharing it.

Brothers and sisters, as we are getting close to the end of Great Lent and drawing closer to Pascha, let us ask the Lord to renew our love so that we will not take our physical eyes off Him or the eyes of our heart off Him. Let us ask our Saviour to give us the memory and the mindfulness always to say to Him : “Help me ; save me”. May we involve Him always in everything. Let us ask Him to help us to live with an attitude of gratitude, and, living in His love, to glorify Him unceasingly, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

As you know, our beloved Metropolitan Jonah expected to be here today but an emergency arose and stopped him from coming. When I was at the Holy Synod meeting last week, I told him that there was much disappointment because he was not coming to Montréal. He said : “Yes, I understand, and I also am disappointed”. He really very much wanted to come. It is a pity, too, because when he comes the next time, it will not be so relaxed and like family as this could have been. Perhaps we can pray and the Lord will provide an occasion in a year or two when we can bring him to Montréal, and we will be able to give him a good visit to this mother-city of Canada. I mean it when I say that Montréal is the mother-city of Canada because almost everything west of here comes from this city. In my opinion, Montréal is the only city in Canada that can truly call itself a “metropolis”. I say this because meter and polis are Greek words meaning “mother” and “city”.

We can see from the Metropolitan’s absence today that not even the head of the Church is able always to exercise his own will. This is because he (like all bishops) is what is called in Latin servus servorum Dei. Servus means a slave, or a servant, and servorum Dei means “of the slaves of God”. The bishop is the servant of the servants of God, and these servants of God are every Christian. In this experience, we have the application of what our Saviour is saying to us today : “Whoever of you desires to be first shall be slaves of all”. He Himself gives us His example. We will participate with Him in this in a very short time when He will wash the feet of His followers. As we heard in the Gospel reading today, the Lord is correcting the apostles who want to sit with Him on thrones in the Kingdom. The way of Christ, the way of Orthodox Christians, is the opposite of the way of the world.

In the world everything is focussed on “me”. In the way of Christ, in the Orthodox Church, everything is concerned with everyone else, and not with merely “me”. Therefore, it has always been the Orthodox Christian way to care about other people first. In the love of Jesus Christ, this is the root of our famous Orthodox hospitality. In the world, most everyone is saying : “Who is going to serve me ?” In the Orthodox Church, everyone ought to be saying : “How can I serve you ?” This is the way of Christ. This is the way of His love. It is not easy to do this. It never has been easy. This is one reason why Orthodox countries and nations are often suffering at the hands of other people. The Orthodox way may have its difficulties, but our Saviour says : “‘My yoke is easy and My burden is light’” (Matthew 11:30). If we turn to the Saviour and ask for His help in everything, He will give it. I know very many families who can recount wonderful stories about how the Saviour has met their needs. We do not have time to hear all these stories this morning, but understand that I have heard very many accounts of how the Saviour has met the needs of people who were desperate.

That is why it is important for us all to be constantly asking the Lord for help. It is not easy to be a servant, but with the Lord’s help we can do it well. If we truly want to follow in the footsteps of our Saviour, then it must be in the way of being a servant. It is possible to be a king or a queen and still to be saved, but the head that wears the crown does not sleep very well. This is because there is so much concentration on “me” in such a position. If anyone has this sort of political, secular, civil responsibility, then the focus tends to be very much on the self, the ego, the “I”. It is, therefore, death for the ruler and death for the subjects, also. On the other hand, if the ruler’s self-understanding is being a servant of the people (servant of God first, and servant of the people second), then there is life. When there is any authority at all amongst human beings, there must also be responsibility.

Let us keep our eyes on the Lord and on His love. The Lord is the Lord of Saint Mary of Egypt, too. She is a person who led a terrible, ugly, twisted life. Yet, because of His love for her, the Lord moved her heart and she did listen. She turned about, enabled by God’s love. She used to like to take people down with her into sin, and instead she became a sign of God’s love and life. Because of such a complete change in her life, Saint Mary of Egypt shows us the meaning of repentance. In the first place, she did not make the change all by herself. She made the change with God. In the second place, she turned about from darkness to light. Now, Saint Mary of Egypt is a sign of hope for you and for me, because she shows us that no matter how bad we have become, no matter how darkened our hearts have become, it is still possible to find salvation in Christ. The Lord is always with us in His love. He is always patiently waiting for us to accept His help. As in the case of Saint Mary of Egypt, He is always calling us to Himself.

When we remember Saint Mary of Egypt, let us ask her to pray for us. By her prayers may we be able to live in the Lord as she lives in the Lord. By her prayers may we be able to come to the celebration of the Lord’s Resurrection truly living a life of repentance as she did. With her and with all the saints, let us glorify the All-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The Apostle says to us this morning that the Lord is a “consuming fire”. This is true. However, this is not the sort of fire that is destroying, burning up and getting rid of everything altogether without regard like a forest fire. The Lord’s fire is the fire of His love. In this consuming fire He burns up everything that is unworthy, that is dross. He burns up everything that is impure and contrary to Him. He does the same in our lives. He cleans us. He washes us. This consuming fire is a purifying fire. It is the fire of His love. It is the fire which can make all things pure.

The Lord demonstrates this fire in a different way as He comes to Bethany today and raises Lazarus from the dead. This is an expression of the fire of His consuming love. This love and this fire are alive. No-one can ever say that fire is static. No fire is not alive, somehow. Fire is alive. It is purifying. It is cleansing. It can be live-giving, too. In the case of Lazarus, the fire is life-giving. If anyone has any doubts about life-giving fire, well, let us pay attention to certain sorts of coniferous trees such as the ponderosa pine trees, for instance (but probably a large number of the pine trees of the boreal forests of Canada, too), whose seeds do not germinate unless they have been burned. After a forest fire, there is new life always coming from the earth. The forest fire is cleaning out the dead wood, and other dead underbrush. After the forest fire has passed through, new life springs forth from the burnt-out underbrush.

Fire can give life. This consuming fire – this fire of the love of the Lord – gives life today to Lazarus. This consuming fire is love. This fire brings faith. Martha already knew, along with Mary, about the resurrection and the life of the resurrection. They believed that there would be the resurrection even before they understood what it really meant. They simply accepted the promise of it. They believed that God’s love is such that this resurrection would occur eventually. They had no idea that they were going to have a concrete experience of it on this very day. Today, our Saviour says to Lazarus : “‘Come forth’”. And Lazarus does come forth, not stinking, but full of life. He went on in his own life to be a life-giver because he became later on a bishop in Cyprus. He, himself, became a missionary, a living testimony of how God’s life-giving love operates.

We, ourselves, are not deprived of His love, His life-giving love. This life-giving love also has another face which we see very clearly today. Our Lord shows to us His humanity in a very concrete way : first, when He is groaning in His spirit, and people are hearing these groans ; secondly, when He is weeping. He is doing this because He is compassionate. The Lord’s love is not untouchable by our sorrow and our pain. He is concretely showing us and reminding us today that His love for us is not some sort of remote theory. The Lord, in His love, is not merely some sort of philosopher or demonstrator of magic tricks or something like that. The Lord is Life. The Lord is Love. The Lord is Compassion. He cares about us. He cares about the difficult pains of our lives, our sorrows, the struggles we endure, our darkness. He cares about all that. That is clearly demonstrated today as we see Him weeping and we hear Him groaning in the context of all those who had been weeping for the death of Lazarus. He was feeling compassionate sorrow for Mary and Martha, the sisters of Lazarus.

The Lord loves us. His love is capable of showing deep compassion and empathy, one could say. Empathy may seem to be a shallow word to describe how the Lord is involved with us and with our pain, with our difficulties and with our whole life. His love penetrates our whole life.

It is important for us, in the context of His life-creating love, to remember those words which are irrevocably my favourite words of Scripture from my childhood : “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever”. Our Saviour, Jesus Christ, in His love, never changes. He is always the same Person. This same Person whom we see raising Lazarus today, is the same Jesus Christ, who 2,000 years later after this life-giving Event, still loves us in the same way that He loves Lazarus, Mary, Martha, His disciples and apostles, and everyone around Him.

Let us be confident in this life-giving love on this Resurrection of Lazarus Day which is prefiguring the Resurrection of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. These Resurrections are our hope, our own hope of eternal life in the love of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, who is unchanging in His love and who is constantly with us.

Let us give thanks to Him for His love. Let us ask Him to enable us never to forget this love in the difficulties of our life, but rather daily to give thanks for it, and to participate in it willingly and openly. Let us glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

On this day, it is important for us to remember that we are not simply recalling events of the past. The very words that we sang yesterday, that we are singing today, and that we will sing throughout the coming week are telling us that we are participating in the Events of the Passion of our Saviour. We are not merely playing “let’s pretend that we are in Jerusalem”. While we are standing together today in the Temple of the Lord in the Divine Liturgy, we are in Jerusalem. We are together here with our Saviour. We, together with the people in Jerusalem and all the believers in the world today are singing : “Hosanna! Blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord! The King of Israel!” Time is telescoped. Time is no more, as it always is for us during the Divine Liturgy and during the services while we are in the Temple. There is no time. There is no passage of 2,000 years. We are here in Jerusalem.

It is important for us to pay attention to the joy of all who are welcoming our Saviour into the city of Jerusalem today. It is true that there were some people who had ulterior motives. They had some sort of political agenda. There are always some who fall into that temptation, but then there are always people who are tempted by some sort of political agenda. Nevertheless, the joy of this day in Jerusalem is not diminished at all merely because there are some people who have a political agenda. The joy is there because the prophecies are being fulfilled and the King is coming, riding on a colt. The King, the Anointed One, the Christ is coming to save us. This work of salvation is coming to a head in this week. His voluntary self-offering, the self-emptying expression of His freely-given love is being shown and worked out. The Lord does not just say things, as we human beings habitually do. We tend to say things that we think that people want to hear. The Lord does not do that. The Lord, who is Truth, speaks Truth straightly.

The Lord is entering Jerusalem for us. He is entering Jerusalem for our salvation. The joy which we are feeling, together with the jubilant crowd in Jerusalem, is that joy which is the foundation of the Christian Way. That is why the Apostle is saying to us today these very words : “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!” The Orthodox Christian Way is the way of joy. It is the way of rejoicing, no matter what happens ; no matter what sorts of difficulties we face, no matter what pain, no matter what sorrow and even no matter what betrayal. We hear today the criticism of Judas about the expenditure of all this money on the expensive ointment for anointing the Saviour. There are always betrayers, too, in our lives. However, no matter what, our way has to be the way of rejoicing in our Saviour, who loves us, who shelters us and who protects us in all things, always.

Our Saviour is going to stretch out His arms on the Cross voluntarily. When He is stretching out His arms voluntarily on the Cross, at the same time, He is embracing you and me and the whole creation as He is bringing it back into harmony with God.

“Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice”, says the Apostle to us. He also says : “Whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy – meditate on these things”. When we go home, let us open the Scriptures to chapter four of the Epistle to the Philippians and look again at this list. When we see the word “meditate”, let us remember that this word “meditate” in the bygone days meant to repeat orally over and over again. It does not mean to sit there in solemn silence, look at those words, and think about them. “Meditating” in the old days meant to repeat those words over and over again with our mouth and our voice. The Apostle is telling us to do that. Why ? It is because every word on that list applies to our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Everything that he says to us today refers to Jesus Christ and points us to Jesus Christ. If we repeat those words over and over again with the old understanding of “meditate”, and remember in our hearts that these words apply to Jesus Christ Himself, this meditation, this repetition, cannot but renew in our hearts the joy of our love for Jesus Christ. It cannot but refresh our confidence in our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

A long time ago, I went to a university whose motto is the very first phrase of that group of reflections of the Apostle Paul. In Latin, it begins : Quaecumque vera. A hundred years ago and more, when that university was founded, maybe someone still understood all the implications of this introductory phrase. However, as I have seen this alma mater university develop, they have certainly in the last part of these 100 years completely forgotten what is vera (truth), and Who is Truth. They have forgotten the meaning of “meditate” (even if they still teach Latin and Greek there). It is too bad that they have fallen into the intellectual world instead of remembering the wholeness and the unity that goes with the Christian life.

Let us ask the Lord to help us to meditate on those words and to remember our participation in the Events of the saving work of our Saviour, Jesus Christ today, and in the coming week, and in fact, every time that we are gathered here together. Let us ask the Lord to renew our love for Him, refresh our joy and multiply our confidence in Him. May the Lord enable us, with all joy and rejoicing always, to glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen

Even though it is not expected that I should do so at Pascha, I usually stop now and say something. During the course of this long night, we can begin to get tired because we are not used to being up in the middle of the night, praying and worshipping like this. It does not hurt for you to sit down for a few minutes, rest and catch your breath (especially the choir).

Human beings always have difficulties in life. Always they are facing trouble of one sort or another. That is the case with every human life. It is the case (and even more so) with Christians. I would dare to say this is more so with Orthodox Christians. In part this is because we are trying to follow Christ and to live in Christ. When we are trying to follow Christ and to live in Christ, we face many of the obstacles that came to Christ, Himself, in the course of His years of service amongst us, because we are living in the environment of our Lord.

What did we just hear in the words of the Apostle and Evangelist John the Theologian ? We heard : “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it”. However, true as that is, there is another translation that is possible : “the darkness did not overcome it”. Both of them together are important for us to understand as Orthodox Christians.

In the first place, you and I are here today by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, which is spoken of by the Evangelist in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles. By the Grace of the Holy Spirit we are here in one of those very far-flung parts of the earth (compared to 2,000 years ago). The Gospel has reached “even Canada”, one might say. There are some people who do, in fact, mean to say : “so far as back-water Canada”. We are here by the Grace of the Holy Spirit and we are here because, by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, we are being given a living and personal relationship and connexion with our Saviour, Jesus Christ. This is not a one-time occurrence. It is a perpetual state of being – we are being given this personal relationship.

If our Saviour Himself, being the Light, was opposed, we ourselves, participants in that Light, cannot expect other than to have both opposition and non-comprehension. I think that we can say that many people do not very well understand why we Christians do the things that we do, and why we behave the way we behave insofar as we behave in conformity with this Light and this Love. It is this Light in which we are participating, the love of Jesus Christ that is alive in us and active in us, that prompts us to act in ways that most people in the world would not act.

Most people in the world are geared to living according to a pattern that is opposite to our pattern. The world is about “me, me”, “I, I”, and “self, self”. The way of Christ is about service of others and forgetting about self – not putting oneself down and saying bad things about oneself – but simply being so full of the love of God that we do not worry about ourselves, because the Lord is taking care of us. He is with us. His love is with us. It does not matter if we are misunderstood or opposed. What matters is that the Lord is with us. He is giving us the ability to pass through all these difficulties and all the pains of life because we turn to Him and we accept His strength, His help, His love, His life.

I was told this past week about one serious believer’s life. He said to me that he and his wife both had had difficulty in their spiritual lives, primarily in this Holy Week. In their whole lives of going to church, they found that this last week of the preparation for Pascha was the most difficult. Very difficult things were happening in their lives ; problems were occurring ; cars were breaking down or they were having horrible dreams, and all sorts of things. He said to me that this particular past week for him was one of the most difficult in the course of his life in terms of these strange, opposing and distracting phenomena. He and his wife are an example of how we go about our lives in the context of spiritual warfare. This couple are, and have been serving the Lord their whole lives and have been trying always to be faithful. Therefore, it is no surprise at all that in the holiest time of the year they had the greatest difficulty in persevering. Such experiences are not so different for some of us (or maybe for many of us) from being with the Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane. This week we were there ; the services were long, and it was difficult.

However, being there during Holy Week was still energising, life-giving and renewing. That is the point of it all. Here we are, in the middle of the night, on this glorious Feast of the Resurrection. We are here because of the Lord, Jesus Christ. We are here because of His love. We are here because this Resurrection is our life. Therefore, let us take very seriously the words of encouragement of our Father, John Chrysostom, who spoke to us again tonight in his glorious exhortation. Let us have confidence in the love of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and persevere in His love, holding on to Him tightly, no matter how difficult anything may get. Let us, every day of our life (and not only in the Paschal season) be ready to proclaim even without words but in the whole context of our life : Christ is risen !

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

I do not know if you are aware of this, but in the Scriptures, in the Gospel, we do not hear our Saviour saying very many times : “I command you to do this or that”. Mostly He is setting an example for us to follow and telling us the direction in which we should be going. He is being like a teacher. However, today He gives us a very specific commandment. This commandment is : “‘Love one another’”. Our Saviour will usually say : “‘Love one another as I have loved you’” (John 13:34 ; 15:17). In other words, the way of those who follow Christ is the way of love. This is His commandment – that we should love. We should live a life of love. We should live a life in which we love God first above everything else, and one another as ourselves.

It might be remembered that He, Himself, says that in the summary of the Old Testament Ten Commandments. If we look at the Ten Commandments, themselves, these Ten Commandments are, as our Saviour says, all focussed on the love of God and the love of neighbour. In fact, these Ten Commandments (which anyone can look up in 2 Moses [Exodus], and 5 Moses [Deuteronomy]) are summarised by this direction from the Lord : “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength’” ( Mark 12:30, [5 Moses 6:5]). Our Saviour says, connected with this : “‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’” (Mark 12:31 and 3 Moses [Leviticus] 19:18). In other words, the whole environment of a Christian should be characterised by love : love of God. Our self-identification as Christians, should be with Christ. If we pay attention to the Gospel today, our Saviour is saying to us : “‘He who has seen Me has seen the Father’” (John 14:9). In the reading today, He is not saying this in precisely these words, which He says elsewhere, but in words to this effect. There is a complete identification in love between the Father and the Son.

In the life of the Holy Trinity, the same may be said to be true about the Holy Spirit. In the life of the Holy Trinity, the Three Persons are never absent from each other. The Three Persons all exist in love. They all have distinct Personalities. They are not detached from each other in any way. In every way, they are involved in everything each other does, says, and thinks. This is a mystery beyond any human comprehension, so let us not try to figure it out – no-one has until now. Saint Alexander of Svir, a great Karelian saint (whose relics we venerated very recently), was given a vision of the Holy Trinity and yet even he still did not figure out how the Holy Trinity lived together (I am not sure that he even tried). He simply experienced the Holy Trinity, and responded in his life to this revelation of the Holy Trinity. God reveals Himself to us as love and in love, and He invites us to respond in the same way.

Today we are with the Apostle Paul as he is in the process of responding to Christ’s self-revelation to him. I think there is very often a big misunderstanding about the Apostle Paul and his motivation. We heard that before this revelation of Christ to him, he had been breathing threats against all Christians everywhere in Jerusalem and Damascus. We heard how he was putting them in prison and was responsible for the deaths of many. Why was he doing this ? It was not because of hatred. It was because of being completely misguided. It seems to me that he was over-zealous in his love for the Lord. He suffered badly from tunnel vision, and did all sorts of strange things, just as the Lord said at the end of today’s Gospel reading : “‘The time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service’”. Because he was completely out of focus, this was the precise position of Saul of Tarsus (as he was then known) at that time. He loved God, but he was out of focus. Our Saviour knew this love, met him face-to-face and straightened him out. The Apostle Paul, being no slow learner at all, responded in love. He immediately began defending the One he had been persecuting. As a result, he, himself, received a “dose of the medicine” he had been giving before to others from people who had the same sort of tunnel vision.

As our Saviour Himself is warning us today, we, who follow Christ, have to be prepared for opposition. The world certainly does not owe us a living. I remember hearing, many years ago, a parishioner of our Cathedral complaining to Father Gregory Papazian. Father Gregory was definitely formative in Cathedral history by his personality and character (I mean that in the best sense) because of His very clear love of the Lord. This person was complaining to Father Gregory that he could not get any work. He was saying : “Should not the Lord provide me with work, somehow ?” Father Gregory said : “You are living in the world, but you are not of it. The world does not owe you a living. You have to wait for the Lord to open the doors. The world is the world, and because you are a follower of Christ, the world is going to resist you”. Eventually this person did get work, and he has been able to live until now, although he is one of those persons who does not have an easy path in life. Nevertheless, he is still with us and he is still a person who loves the Lord.

This is what is important for us, as believers : to remember that our relationship with the Lord is the way of love. This love is not like the world’s love. It is love without any sort of conditions, without strings attached. It is love that is self-emptying, in the same way that the Saviour’s love is self-emptying. It is love that looks to serve the other and not to be served, in the same way that our Saviour has taught us. It is love that helps to give life to people around us. This way is not an easy way in many respects because the darkness does not like the Light shining in it. We, who are carriers of Christ, in some way are participants in that Light. The darkness tries to hide from the Light or put out the Light, and the Light will definitely be put to the test.

However, if we keep our hearts and our minds focussed on this relationship of love with the Saviour, and if we continually try to live in accordance with it in our relationships with each other, the Lord will always be with us, no matter what. He will increase this love. He will enable us to live the lives that He has prepared for us. He will help us to grow up into the persons that He has prepared us and designed us to be (people who are like Father Gregory, whom I wish you all could know). I hope that you all will be able to grow up in your lives to have this clarity of character that such people have. The true mark of Christians is a unique character that is stable, that is at peace, and that is characterised fundamentally by the love of Jesus Christ, to whom be glory, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen

As we pass through the Paschal time, we seem often to be saying : “Christ is risen” to each other as though we were saying : “Good morning. Nice day, isn’t it ?” This exclamation : “Christ is risen” is the purpose of our being. It is our raison d’être. To be able to say : “Christ is risen”, to proclaim His Resurrection to each other, is part of our spiritual discipline. It is a reflection of the state of our hearts. The discipline is in keeping ourselves ready to proclaim the Resurrection of Christ with some true vigour every time we say it. If we are not saying it very vigourously, then it is a sign that the condition of our heart is waffly, or maybe a little bit soft because we are getting used to saying it or we are somewhat distracted by something else. Therefore, we tend to say : “Christ is risen” as we would say : “How do you do ?” We have to be careful about this. The whole purpose of our existence is rooted in the fiery love of Jesus Christ, the life-giving love of Jesus Christ. If we are going to say : “Christ is risen” to each other as we pass through the Paschal time (and then afterwards at any time), then we should be able immediately to say this exclamation with some strength, and to answer it in joy with the same sort of strength.

Such was the love of Saint Seraphim of Sarov for the Saviour and such was his experience of this love, that at the end of his life he was saying : “Christ is risen” to everyone all the time, every day of the year. He was saying it to everyone, not simply to special, chosen persons. That is a very clear expression of the depth of his experience of the love of Jesus Christ, and how intense this love was in him all the time. By the end of his days, he was never losing sight of the freshness and the power of the love of Jesus Christ.

That love is expressed today in the raising of this paralytic man who lay by the Sheep Pool for 38 years, waiting to be healed. He always had hope, but he was never able to get into the pool in time because he was paralysed. When the angel came and stirred the water, someone else always got in first, as he said to our Saviour. However, our Saviour tells him to get up, take up his pallet and walk. And he does, just like that. Such is the love of Jesus Christ. Afterwards, the man immediately goes into the Temple to give thanks (after having been rebuked by the scribes for carrying his pallet on Saturday). He puts his pallet down, and he goes straight into the Temple to give thanks to God for his healing and for his new life. He is no longer a beggar. He has to find another way to make a living. He has infinitely more possibilities now that he can walk with the strength of a person having all physical faculties intact. Therefore, he is giving thanks to the Lord in the Temple. That is where our Saviour finds him, and reminds him to be very careful not to sin so that something worse would not befall him.

These words, however, do not imply that it was because of any particular sin that he had endured living in paralysis in the first place. However, sin can bring something much worse than physical paralysis. Sin, in itself, can bring spiritual death (as we all understand) because we all have our brushes with that in one way or another in the course of our lives. Such is the love of the Saviour for this man (and also for us) that He is ready always to give us healing and life. This man, who had been a paralytic for such a long time, had nevertheless been giving glory to God in his paralysis. It is important for us to comprehend that he was not merely lying around by this Sheep Pool every day for 38 years hoping he would get healed some day (although that is certainly part of it). Indeed, he had confidence in God’s love for him that the Lord would look after him. It was in his perseverance for 38 years by the Sheep Pool that he was giving glory to God. It is essential that we remember this, ourselves, in the course of the challenges in our lives, because we all face greater and lesser difficulties in our lives. In the course of facing these difficulties, it is important that we give glory to the Lord for everything, and in everything.

To underline the immediacy of the Lord’s love for us, and the consequences of it, in the Epistle reading today, we immediately have the example of the Apostle Peter. He is raising Aeneas from paralysis (in imitation of our Saviour), and in co-operation with our Saviour’s love. To double underline this life-giving love for us, immediately afterwards this apostle is summoned to a near-by town, and in the Name of Jesus Christ, and through the Grace conveyed by the Name he raises Dorcas (Tabitha) from death.

It is necessary that we remember this, and understand that it is not only the apostles who have been given the Grace to do such things. In the past 2,000 years, in the experience of the sacramental life of our Church, we have been experiencing precisely these same things. Through the prayers of the faithful, and through the anointing with Holy Oil, people have been healed from multitudes of different sorts of diseases, and they have even been raised from the dead. It is not only the apostles who did it. This is happening in our day, even. For instance, how many times (in fact, probably every day) is it the case that people go to the icon of the Mother of God in Sayednaya Monastery in Syria asking for the blessing to have a child when they cannot have a child. Even Islamic people go to her in Sayednaya to ask for this, and God gives to them. In Moscow last week, I met a classmate of mine from a long time ago. He and his wife had been trying to have a child for a long time, and the doctor said it was not likely. He is a professor at one of the universities in Moscow. He and his wife went to the Feodorovskaya icon of the Mother of God. Now they have a seven-year-old daughter.

The Lord’s love is with us, and His intimate care for us is always with us. When I was travelling with the Metropolitan, I found it to be a very high-speed sort of travelling, and we covered a lot of territory. We managed to go to the relics of Saint Matrona of Moscow in the Pokrovsky Monastery. Everyday there is a very long line-up of people there waiting to venerate her relics. On an average day, a person has to wait at least an hour (maybe two), and on her feast-day one might as well line up all day. The nuns were saying to us that there is not a day that passes by when someone does not receive a blessing through the prayers of Saint Matrona. There is not a day passing without the Lord acting through her intercessions in the life of someone who has passed by her relics. In other words, many, many healings occur. In Moscow, the monastery where the relics of Saint Matrona are resting is not by far the only place people go. There are many places where the Lord in His mercy is pouring out His love through the intercessions of various saints, through wonder-working icons of the Mother of God or other saints. The Lord is with us.

The Lord is with us here, too, in Canada. It is true that in Canada we have a harder time of it in many ways as Orthodox Christians, and our life is often considered to be a spiritual desert in comparison with countries in eastern Europe. That is mostly because we are so few Orthodox Christians, and we are so separated by time and space in this giant country. This is the way things are. However, regardless of all this, the Lord is with us, and He is pouring out His love on us. He is healing our diseases. There are people in this parish who have been touched by the Lord in this way. The Lord is with us, and it is important that we keep His love and His faithfulness to us in the front of our consciousness at all times, so that, if possible we may be able to say with great joy at all times in our lives, just as Saint Seraphim did : “Christ is risen”.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen

Today, our Lord is saying hard things to the people who are debating with Him. They are certain that they are the children of Abraham. However, the problem with their certainty that they are the children of Abraham is that they are over-confident that this is a guarantee that everything is all right with them. To be a descendant of Abraham according to their mentality (as our Saviour is clearly pointing out) is like having a passport into Heaven. Our Lord is pointing out to them that they have their priorities out of focus. They are depending upon the fact that they are in the direct lineage of descent from the Patriarch Abraham. However, this is not the point.

What is the point that our Saviour keeps trying to get across to them ? It is that Abraham, the faithful one, lived in a living relationship with God. He spoke with God. God told him how to behave, where to go, and what to do. Abraham (because he had conversations with God and asked Him what He meant, and so forth) was able to go and do what God told him to do. God gave a Promise, and He made a Covenant. Abraham entered into and embraced the Covenant and the Promise. The relationship between Abraham and the Lord was alive.

Perhaps the relationship between our Saviour and the people who are debating with Him today is not alive. They are bound by fear. That is what our Lord is trying to say. Therefore, in fact, they are slaves of this fear, and slaves of sin, also. Fear and sin go hand-in-hand. Therefore, ultimately, what is our Saviour saying about who is their father ? When one is living in fear, and one is a slave of sin, one’s father is not God. The question then is : “Who is your father ?” Just after the end of today’s periscope, our Saviour says it very clearly. The answer is, therefore : “If not God, then the devil”.

The Lord is pointing out that the relationship between us and the Lord is supposed to be like that of sons and daughters. He says today “sons” but He really means sons and daughters (or children). He says that we have the right, as children, to live in the house forever as children. If one is an outsider, an employee or a slave, one does not live in the house. One lives in a shack some place outside. One does not have the right to live in the house of the master forever. This is what our Lord is trying to get across today to these persons of hard heart and thick head.

I am quite certain that some of these people eventually understood what our Lord is saying. It is hard not to accept what He is saying on account of Who He is (unless a person is absolutely stubborn, absolutely resistant, and absolutely deceived). It is a very strong resistance that is required to resist God’s Love and His Truth when faced with them. The Apostle Paul (as we hear earlier in the Acts of the Apostles) was one who thought he loved God, but was out of focus. When the Lord met him face-to-face, he came into focus immediately. He immediately began to serve the Lord whole-heartedly with clear heart, clear eyes, clear mind and clear vision. It depends on what is the condition of our heart. Are we slaves of fear ? Are we slaves of sin ? Or are we free, as children of the Lord ?

The event which just occurred with the Apostle Peter in today’s Epistle reading is a concrete example of this. In this reading, we understand that the Apostle Peter is chained not only to the wall, but to two soldiers. He is in prison with guards everywhere. Herod was determined that he was going to do away with this apostle Peter because it was politically expedient for him. He saw that this pleased certain people in power, and he wanted to make sure that he kept his own power base (and this was folly). For these political reasons he was ready to kill the Apostle Peter as he had already killed the Apostle James. However, as we see, the Lord had other plans. The Lord sends His angel and releases him from the prison and sets him free so that he could continue to do what He, the Lord, had prepared him to do. It could be said that the chains that are falling off the Apostle Peter today are a sign of how fear also falls off him. His understanding of his own relationship with the Lord was again reinforced. Because he was not a young man when he encountered the Lord in the first place, he had quite a fixed way of understanding life, and everything else. The saying : “You cannot teach an old dog new tricks” does apply. We can see that in the Apostle Peter’s life. He had grown up in a particular way, and he had understood life in a particular way. These habits of behaviour sometimes overcame his experience and clouded his vision. One could say that these chains falling off could be likened to the way in which fear and the limitations of vision, and limits of understanding fell off him. True freedom was given to him, and he accepted this true freedom in Christ.

Our life is built upon our relationship of love with the Lord, who loves us. That is what the Lord has always been trying to get through to us, and yet we are always so slow to understand this. We are so slow to accept this sort of relationship mostly because fear is so familiar. Nevertheless, the Lord does indeed love us. The Lord does set us free. The Lord does work with us just as He works with the Apostle Peter today, and continued to work with him and in Him right up until this apostle’s death. Right until the end, the Apostle Peter was constantly preaching Christ crucified, risen from the dead, trampling death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life.

Let us ask the Lord to renew in our hearts today this love for Him that sets us free. Let us ask Him to keep away from us those bonds of fear that so sneakily keep coming back to us, trying to tie us down, instead of allowing us in Christ to be full of life, full of joy, full of confidence, full of healing, full of reconciliation, full of the Holy Spirit. Let us ask Him to enable our lives to proclaim at all times that “Christ is risen”.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen

Today, we are witnessing the encounter between our Saviour and the Samaritan woman. It could be said that this encounter, in its own way, is bringing together the whole history of Israel, and giving a clear demonstration of the fulfilment of the Promise in “a strange land”. I am saying “a strange land” because Samaria was an area that was considered to be unclean by the Jewish people. There was no contact (or at least as little contact as possible) between the Jewish people and the Samaritans. Regardless of all this, the Samaritan woman knew very well the history of Israel. She knew who were her forefathers (including Jacob). She knew how the Lord had promised that the Messiah would come. She knew what to look for. When our Saviour is addressing her today in the ways that He does, she, being a person not lacking at all in sharp intellect, sees immediately what sort of person is confronting her.

The Samaritan woman is calling the Saviour “a prophet”. However, since the Samaritan people did not recognise any prophet since Moses, this means that she already understands that she is encountering the Messiah Himself – the Christ. She asks many questions, and the Saviour reveals her life to her. She very quickly accepts the uniqueness of this Man, and the uniqueness of this opportunity, and she immediately shares this with the whole city of Samaria. As a result, large numbers of people from Samaria now agree with her that this has to be the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Promised One of God.

We know from our Church history (although it does not say this in the Scriptures) that in due course the Samaritan Woman was baptised. Not only was she baptised, but her whole family was baptised. We know that her name is Photini, which means “enlightened”. We also know that she went to Carthage, in North Africa, and became a missionary. She also became a martyr there for the sake of Christ. This woman, together with her family, is a very significant person in our Church’s history because of the way they shared the light of Christ. In fact, she and her family are showing the consequences of what is happening today. That is the echo of what we heard at Pascha in the beginning of the Gospel according to Saint John that “the light shines in the darkness” (John 1:5). Therefore, the Saviour, who is that Light shining in the darkness, is today shining in the darkness that was burdening Photini. The Saviour shatters and scatters that darkness. He shows her the light. She accepts the light, and spreads that light.

Because the Fathers are so kind to us, by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, to give us the correct sorts of liturgical reinforcement, we have today the same thing happening as a consequence of the Apostle Peter’s encounter with Cornelius. We hear today in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles about the Gospel being spread everywhere by the Hellenists (that is, the Greek-speakers). Some of the apostles were speaking to the Jewish people only, but the Greek-speakers were taking the Gospel everywhere. As a concrete example of that, we have Barnabas going to Tarsus to find the Apostle Paul. He finds Paul and takes him to Antioch. There they are again preaching about Christ and spreading the light of Jesus Christ. We are told today directly that it is there that the followers of Christ, the participants in the Way, are first called “Christians”. The Antiochian Archdiocese enjoys very often reminding us of that. I am glad that they do, because we do need to remember that we were not at first called Christians in the homeland (that is, in Palestine). We came to be known by the Name of Christ outside, in Gentile territory, as Antioch certainly was in those days.

Today, we are encountering our Lord while He is very concretely demonstrating that His love is for everyone. For us who are living the Orthodox life here in North America, this is a very important lesson for us to mark, learn and inwardly digest. There are always tendencies to minister predominantly to our own people. We often hear the saying : “Missionary work begins at home”. Yes, it is true that missionary work begins at home, but it does not stop there. Very often people who are saying that missionary work begins at home are also saying : “That is where it belongs, too”. However, this missionary work has to be spread everywhere because the Gospel must be preached everywhere. We, Orthodox Christians here in North America, are actually the inheritors, in our own way, of what is happening in the readings today.

We, here in Canada, are by-and-large either people who have immigrated from somewhere else as Orthodox or have found Orthodoxy here in Canada. As a result, we are people who have been sent by the Lord to be like Photini and her family. We are sent by the Lord to share this light and this love wherever we are, and whatever we are doing in this country. It is our responsibility to share this light of the love of Jesus Christ, who is the Truth. Our Saviour is saying to us this morning that the Father wants us to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth. We see evidence of the Holy Trinity. God, the Father, is asking us to worship Him in Truth. Who is the Truth ? It is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Spirit is the Holy Spirit. We are participants in the Person, Jesus Christ, who is the Truth.

There is only one Truth. There are not many truths, as many philosophical Canadians might like to say. There is only one Truth : Jesus Christ. The Lord wants us to worship Him in this Truth by the Grace of the Holy Spirit. He wants us to spread His truth by the way we live, by the way we love, by the way we have joy, by the way we face adversity, and by the way we have hope in Him in everything. The Lord wants us to share this with people around us, just as Photini and her family did.

This is our responsibility here : to spread the light of the love of Jesus Christ, to share our understanding of Him, who is the Truth, by the way we live. Let us ask the Lord, through the prayers of Saint Photini and her family, through the prayers of the Apostles Barnabas and Paul, and through the prayers of all the saints of North America, to be faithful to Him, to be faithful witnesses of His love, to be faithful witnesses of His truth. Thus may we proclaim, simply by who we are : Christ is risen.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen

Today, in our encounter with our Lord and the Pharisees who are debating with Him, we are seeing the too frequent appearance of human stubbornness and human resistance to Grace. The Lord, in His love, comes to us. He shows us His love over and over and over again. Over and over and over again, we tend too often to choose our reasoning and our perception of everything, and thus we treat our reasoning and perception as being superior to His love, and to the demonstration of His love. The works that the Lord is speaking about today are precisely those demonstrations of His love. There are healings. The blind see. The deaf hear. Paralysed people are walking. Dead people are standing up.

Our Saviour is saying, in effect, to those with hard hearts and stubbornness : “All right. Maybe you do not believe the words that I say. However, at least believe the things that have happened and understand what they mean”. He is saying to you and to me, too, as it were (because we, ourselves, are receivers of many such signs, also) : “If you have difficulties with words and with human beings, at least see that the works, themselves, these signs that are accomplished, are demonstrations of the work of God’s love”. These works demonstrate in themselves that our Lord and the Father are one. Of course, that is why the Pharisees immediately took up stones to stone Him. They were going to kill Him because they considered that He, as a human being, had made Himself equal to God. They had no way of truly comprehending to Whom they were talking. They were people (as I say over and over again) who were very insistent on the observance of the Law. Their observance of the Law was on the basis of human reasoning, which always gets us into trouble.

We have an example of that happening even today with the disagreement between the Apostles Paul and Barnabas. They had a very sharp disagreement which produced a separation between the two of them. To some persons who are accustomed to the very fallen ways of human beings, the fact that the two apostles could have a sharp disagreement such as this one, and then separate and go their own ways, seems to be some sort of betrayal of the Christian way.

It is important for us to remember that the Apostle Paul and the Apostle Peter had their differences, too. Their differences are described throughout the Acts of the Apostles. There were all sorts of differences of opinion amongst the apostles and other persons. However, differences of opinion always end up being resolved, because a Christian truly cannot live with that sort of irresolution. Christians must resolve these differences through forgiveness. Thus, we see icons of the Apostles Peter and Paul embracing each other. Ultimately, this is how they were towards each other. According to reasoning, they may not have always agreed 100 per-cent, and what two human beings ever do agree 100 per-cent ? I have still to meet such human beings. Even couples who have been married for sixty, seventy years have still some differences of opinion from time to time. Human beings are simply like that. However, love and forgiveness prevail over those differences of opinion. Even though the Apostles Paul and Barnabas separate and go their own ways, the Apostle Paul chose Silas and with him he returned to strengthen and confirm the churches which had been established in Asia Minor. Now, the situation provided the opportunity for the Apostle Barnabas to go to Cyprus. What do we have in Cyprus as a result of his going there ? We have an autocephalous Orthodox Church in Cyprus to this day, and the relics of the Apostle Barnabas in Cyprus to this day. The Lord is bringing good out of a difference of opinion. He is bringing the multiplication of the preaching of the Word of Life.

At the same time, from our perspective, we must understand that this difference of opinion and this separation of ways between the Apostles Paul and Barnabas does not itself indicate that there was some sort of irreconcilable difference preventing them from forgiving each other. This is not at all the case. The apostles, above all, are known for their example of following Christ and showing His way by their lives. If there is anything fundamentally characteristic of the Christian way, it is forgiving and praying for the one who is abusing us. We pray for and bless even the one who is going to kill us. We see this in the martyrdom of Saint Juvenaly (which I also cite over and over again).

Let us ask the Lord today to renew our own hearts by the Grace of the Holy Spirit so that our lives will never flag in living out and revealing the love of Jesus Christ, and in this love, proclaiming His Resurrection in this love. In some God-given way, may people who see our lives, see also the Saviour, the work of the Saviour and the activity of His love. May they be touched by His love and find Him, and thereby with us be able to glorify Him with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is risen

It is difficult to keep the Paschal spirit and the sense of the intensity of Pascha alive in our hearts for all this length of time. However, it is important for us to pay attention to how we are responding and how we are behaving. The Resurrection of Christ, again and again, I say, is not something matter-of-fact. The proclamation of His Resurrection is the essence of our life. It is our reason for being. It is why we are here today. It is why we continue to persevere in life in the face of obstacles and difficulties, and still have joy. That is why it is so important for us to pay attention to how we are responding. If we are saying : “Indeed He is risen” in the same way that we might say : “Good morning”, “How do you do”, and that sort of thing, that is not the proper way. If I find myself answering like that myself (which has happened in my life, of course), then I have to say : “Lord have mercy” ; “Help me, and straighten me out” (which the Lord does).

Today, we have the encounter of our Saviour with a man born blind. As we have heard just now, the Lord is emphasising that He is the Light of the world. It is necessary that we all remember this. He is our Light, and we are participating in that Light. This Light is the Light of His Love. We participate in that Love. We live in that Love. We manage to survive all the difficulties of life with joy because of that Love. Very often in the course of our lives, we are taking short-cuts, trying to find ways in which we can somehow regulate God’s love because God’s love, as it acts, is always unpredictable to us. In our fallenness, we very often want to control this or that aspect of God’s activity. We try to analyse it, and we dissect it and regulate it so that we will be able to know what to expect, or even so that we will be able to be in control, ourselves. It is a constant human weakness to behave like this : to receive the outpouring of the Grace of God’s love and then try to control it, box it in, dissect it, and do things with it, ourselves, instead of saying : “Lord, I am here ; I am Your servant ; I want to do Your will ; help me to do Your will in everything”. Usually, we try to tinker. We habitually manage and we try to engineer. We can even try to find ways to control Grace as a lens controls and focusses a sunbeam. In the whole course of human history, I cannot think of one instance in which any of us has tried to engineer God’s will and received in return anything but pain and humiliation. It is like building the tower of Babel. We tried that, too. If we have not tried to rebuild the tower of Babel, itself, we have certainly tried many reasonable facsimiles even to this day.

The people of Islam consider that they have it right when they say that theirs is the way of submission. However, they were not the first to understand about it. This submission to God’s will, submission to His love, submission to His way, willing, loving submission (not slavish, forced, fear-ridden submission, but freely-given submission to God’s will) has been the way of Christians from “Day One”. It can even be said that this has been our way through the Old Covenant from the very beginning. Since the time which we have just experienced now when our Saviour opened the eyes of the man born blind, faithful Christian people have embraced God’s will in loving, co-operative submission. However, they have not submitted themselves to the Lord all by themselves. They have been able to accomplish this because the Lord asked them to do so. If we do anything by ourselves, we get into very hot water, and we do not succeed.

I am not going to go any farther with regard to the Gospel Event of today because this Gospel passage is quite self-explanatory. As we stand here with our Saviour today, and experience the healing of this man, everything is told, and I do not need to re-tell it anymore. However, I will, instead, make a tangent. The tangent for today has to do (in this context) with how we serve the Divine Liturgy. What is our attitude towards the Divine Liturgy ? What is our attitude towards our being here in this Temple, day-by-day, week-by-week, month-by-month, and year-by-year ? We are here precisely because our hearts have responded to the Saviour’s love. For some of us, this response has been going on for the whole of our lives because we were born into this community of faith. We grew up in this community of Orthodox believers. Throughout the course of our lives, our hearts have been warmed by the love of Jesus Christ. Our hearts have slowly been nurtured, and have grown by the love of Jesus Christ. The reason that we are here is because it is our life to be here, participating in the Divine Liturgy, and worshipping the Lord in love. To be here is the source of our ability to do and to be anything good in life.

At some stage or other later in life, many others have come to this Orthodox witness and Orthodox community of faith. We have been grafted on to this community of faith. However, along with everyone else, we still participate in this response of love to Jesus Christ. We have learned the same lesson : that being here in the Temple of the Lord together, worshipping the Lord, is our reason for being, and the source of our life.
However, I have been reflecting on how I, myself, as a Canadian, have been disposed about these things. I remember lectures by Father Schmemann long, long ago in which he was being very pointed in his remarks about how we modern people in particular like everything to be soft, soft, soft, soft – soft, smooth, comfortable, easy, accommodating. (This does not apply only to Canadians. However, since I am a Canadian, I have to take responsibility as a Canadian. Canadians are not exempt from this disposition.) In my younger days, I was quite accommodating to myself in that respect, and also to everyone else’s ideas of accommodation. However, after a while, I learned that these sorts of accommodations have consequences that are not so good.

A very long time ago, when other people had said it was a good idea (and when I also was uncritical), it seemed to me that it would be a reasonable idea that when there are no catechumens present in the parish, we might not use the Litany for the Catechumens. I passed through that period for a while. To my great chagrin and shame, it was pointed out to me (and I understood it to be true) that if we are not praying this Litany for the Catechumens, then we are neglecting all the places in the world where there are catechumens, and where the catechumens need prayerful support even if they are not in our presence. The Body of Christ is not limited to this particular group of people here and now. The Church is not simply this little community here. The Church is a universal organism. The Church is alive. Therefore, if I am not praying for the catechumens and we, together, are not praying for the catechumens, then why should we ever expect any catechumens to show up here ? This is perfectly true, and so I repented.

It is the same principle regarding the Dismissal of the Catechumens. People say to me : “We are telling the catechumens to go out, and no-one goes out. What does this mean ?” It can mean that the catechumens at the present time are already Christians, somehow. Catechumens in the early Church were all people who had not known Christ before. They were just beginning to know Christ. They were being brought into the Christian way completely “green”. When they went out from the assembly of the faithful (as they did go out in those days), they were educated by deacons and deaconesses. They went to another place not far away, to another room nearby, and they were taught about the Old Testament, which is the foundation of the New Testament.

We cannot understand the New Testament (or even the Divine Liturgy, or any of our services) without knowing the Old Testament. Even if the Old Testament is not read at every service, nor in its entirety throughout the year, it is important to read it at home. All our services have references to the Law and to the Prophets. Besides this, there is a multitude of references to the Psalms, as well. Our spiritual ancestors were bathed in these Scriptures which are inseparable from the Gospels and the Epistles.

Even though our Divine Liturgy has many layers in it, and the way we are serving, according to the full text, sometimes does not seem completely reasonable (according to a certain logic), we nevertheless have to treat the Divine Liturgy and our services in a spirit similar to what the Apostle Paul expresses in his letter to the Corinthian church : “For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received” (1 Corinthians 15:3). Likewise we hand on what we received. To understand what are these different layers, and what is their meaning does not therefore require us to be innovators on our own. By all this, I am trying to say that the Divine Liturgy does have layers of additions. These additions, over centuries, express the growth of the Church and her response to the guiding of the Holy Spirit. The Divine Liturgy, as we have now received it, is the expression of our corporate worship of God as the Body of Christ. This Liturgy has approximately the same core and basic structure in all parts of the world. However, there are things about the wording and the way things are done which reflect the local environment of each Orthodox Church. Our worship of God is rich in Scriptural references and local colour. As the Apostle Paul passed on to us what he himself received, it is our responsibility to pass on to others what we ourselves have received. This reception is primarily the truth about Him who is the Truth : our Saviour Jesus Christ. In continuity with this, and in the continuing response of love to Him, we also receive the Divine Liturgy, and we pass this on to others as well. It is the focus of our being. We worship Him who gives us life that never ends. We offer Him our love, our whole lives, our perpetual giving of thanks for everything.

In the Cathedral, not only do we have the responsibility to serve the service fully for the sake of our brothers and sisters in the rest of the diocese, and to offer them well to the Lord, but also, these brothers and sisters expect this of us. It is part of our service to them. Therefore, we ceremonially dismiss the catechumens. However, nowadays, they remain because our catechumens are mostly from an already Christianised background. Perpetuating this dismissal looks forward to a time when there will be many who are not already Christianised, and for whom we will have catechists prepared to take them aside and teach them as in the time of the early Church.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us keep our hearts and minds always open to the Lord and listening to His direction in everything. Let us glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The words that we are hearing today from the Apostle Paul are hard words, in some respects. He is speaking to the elders of the church in Ephesus, and to us as well, about people who are going to come amongst them and us like wolves, to try to separate people out by means of false teachings. These are hard words because this comparison to wolves is not a pleasant comparison. However, the fact is that people who fall into certain temptations end up being in harmony with the wolf-of-souls, the devil. That is why they are compared to wolves.

How does this happen ? It happens when human beings (as they have always been doing from the beginning) try to make themselves greater than God, or equal to God, somehow. They even try to understand things according to their own reason so as to become in charge, so as to manage God (or even worse, to make God do things, somehow). It is in this line that falls the person whose sad memory is kept today, Arius.

Arius was the person who taught that there was a time when the Son of God was not. In other words, Arius, because of his philosophical background and the way his thoughts worked, could not comprehend that the Only-begotten Son of God is eternally begotten of the Father, and that the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father. According to his logic, there had to be God the Father by Himself in the beginning, and then somehow God the Father would create the Son, and create the Holy Spirit. This is vaguely how his reasoning would have gone. According to his logic, there had to be some time or some point when the Son of God was not. Ultimately, the Fathers realised that this logic could not be applied to God.

This logic could not be applied to God because God is beyond our reason. The Holy Trinity has always been Three Persons. When we speak about Only-begotten regarding the Son, and the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father, these are terms which have been revealed to us. We use these terms, but we can never pretend that we understand precisely what they mean. God is beyond our reason. We can never by our own reason come to understand the inner relationship of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity unless God Himself shows this to us. Even then, we cannot fully and properly put this into words. We, as human beings, must finally come to the point of admitting that there are things we cannot understand. We have to accept these things as they are.

Nevertheless (following the same mentality as Arius), human beings have continually and repeatedly tried to get a grip on Who is God and how things work, and they have fallen into the same trap. When I was growing up (and as young as some of you are today), according to my memory, I think that amongst people that were trying to call themselves Christians, there were only Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses who fell into this Arius category. Both of these groups of people who call themselves Christians, are not Christians at all. They believe that there was a time when the Son of God was not. In other words, they believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was created and had a finite beginning. However, since the 1970s or 80s, all sorts of other people (who may call themselves Christians) have for some reason fallen into a similar trap, going even farther by trying to reduce Jesus Christ to some sort of simple “nice guy” or a “good philosopher” or a very nice social worker of some sort, instead of accepting Who He says that He is. This is always the difficulty for human beings. We want to be in control.

However, the Christian Way, in Christ the Way, cannot be that we could ever be in control of God. Instead, we accept the words that we find in Matins : The Lord is God, and He reveals Himself to us. He has revealed Himself to us, and He does reveal Himself to us. Our responsibility is to accept this revelation of God just as He says He is, and live in accordance with that revelation of Himself. It is not for us to dare to tell Him who He is. He knows very well Who He is. He reveals Himself to us, and He has always stably revealed Himself to us. From the very beginning, we can see the same revelation of Himself in the Old Testament. God reveals Himself to us as a Community of Three Persons whose fundamental nature is love. The Apostle John reminds us of that. I remember when I was about ten or eleven I had to memorise verses from his Epistle that say precisely that – “God is love” (1 John 4:16). God reveals Himself as love. He gives His Only-begotten Son (in a manner which we also cannot comprehend) to take flesh, to become a Human Being (Man) who is fully human and yet, fully God, never separated from God. At the same time, He voluntarily limited Himself so that He can be a Human Being with us, and save us from ourselves. He took on all our brokenness, lifting it up to the Father, and bringing our humanity into the Godhead with Him as members of His Body. We are all members of His Body through our baptism, our chrismation, and our receiving of Holy Communion. The Lord is God, and He reveals Himself to us. He is Love, and He loves us. We exist because of His love.

Today, in the Gospel passage, the prayer that our Saviour, Jesus Christ is offering to His Father contains words that express precisely this reality. It is important that we go home after this Divine Liturgy, read again the words that our Saviour has spoken today, and allow them to sink deeply into our hearts. Our Saviour wants us to live in imitation of the spirit of loving community and harmony which He has with the Father and the Holy Spirit. This is how we were created to be. We were created to be persons consisting of both mind and body (as distinct from the bodiless angels who have minds but not bodies). We were created in this fashion to live, nevertheless, as the angels. Like the angels, we are created to live in such a way that always, without having to stop and reason things out, we might know God’s will in our hearts because the Lord’s love is so active in our hearts and minds. We then are able to do His will instinctively, with a will that is in harmony with His will, enlivened by love, motivated by love. Jesus Christ, our Saviour, always did, always does, and always will do the will of the Father because of their mutual, selfless love. At the beginning of our creation, Adam and Eve did the will of the Father because of love until they were distracted and fell. Fear was paralysing them and poisoning them deeply.

In these days, it would be hard to find a person who is not a slave of fear. However, the Lord came to set us free from bondage to chains of fear and slavery to fear. He set us free from it all. It is up to us to accept this freedom. Do we accept this freedom or is the bondage that goes with fear so familiar and comfortable that we cannot take the risk to live in this love ? If we are choosing anything because we are still bound with this fear, we are really in a sad way because the Lord has set us free. He gave us, and is giving us every opportunity to live in this freedom, not bound by fear. If we choose fear, we are the most wretched of all creatures and the most to be pitied, because instead of life we are choosing death ; instead of light, we are choosing darkness.

Brothers and sisters, because He wants us to do this, let us ask the Lord in His merciful love to pour His Grace upon us. Let us ask Him to renew this love, this confidence and the willingness, by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, to be freed of this fear, and to live in the harmony of love in which we were created to live. Let us ask Him to give us the boldness to live in this manner. Most people seem to be living the game of “Let’s pretend” all the time. However, regardless of the game of “Let’s pretend”, human beings all around us are living miserable lives. They have no joy. They have no hope. They are living in illusions and delusions and self-deception because they have only this world and its imagined comforts to hold on to.

We, in contrast, have what is not shifting, not passing and not changing : God’s love, His joy, His peace, His strength and His hope by which to live. We are not subject to crashing stock markets, recessions, depressions, and other sorts of disasters such as war. In the Saviour, we are not subject in our hearts to all these things. Yes, they affect us, but in the midst of it all, we still have His peace, His love and the joy that is His life.

Therefore, let us ask the Lord to renew this joy and this love in us so that people around us will see this joy, this love and this hope, and might have, themselves, the inclination to come towards the Saviour by our example. May they be enabled to share with us the joy, and come into the heavenly Kingdom with as much joy and life as this little girl is revealing to us now during this Divine Liturgy. Her joy and her life have helped me, no matter how old I am getting to be. As this child is free to be just herself, full of joy and life in the presence of the Lord, let us be like that too, in the Lord, glorifying the All-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

As we are celebrating today the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples and the apostles, we are celebrating also the Descent of the Holy Spirit upon the whole Church. This gift of the Holy Spirit is not limited only to the disciples and apostles, but is given to every baptised and chrismated member of the Body of Christ.

In the Old Testament times, the Holy Spirit was given to certain prophets at a particular time, and for a particular need. However, not all the prophets always had this gift of the Holy Spirit, and they did not always have the gift of prophecy. The Lord came to them when the people needed to have the voice of the Lord spoken clearly to them. In contrast, since this Day of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, the gift of the Holy Spirit, Himself, has been given to all baptised and chrismated members of the Body of Christ. Every time a person is baptised, this person is anointed with oil, and this oil is for the receiving of the Holy Spirit. We do receive the Holy Spirit at the time of our baptism, and at the time of our chrismation. In the course of our lives, we are responsible to allow the Holy Spirit to develop in us in accordance with God’s will.

When our Saviour is speaking today in the Gospel reading about His light shining, He is also speaking about His light shining in us and through us. He is the Light of the world, and we are His agents. We have been given the Grace of the Holy Spirit so that we can bring to the world by our lives in a concrete way (much more than by our words alone) the love, joy, peace, hope and everything else that goes with the Presence of Christ for the sake of people around us. It is those people round about us, who have been sent to us, who need to receive this same gift, this same hope, this same light. The Holy Spirit is shining amongst us and in us.

Always, as in the case of any Person of the Holy Trinity, all the other Persons of the Holy Trinity are involved in every act, every thought, every deed of each other Person. For instance, in the creation of the world, the Father is the Creator ; His Only-begotten Son speaks everything into existence, and the Holy Spirit gives life to everything that is coming into existence. All Three Persons are always active together. When the Holy Spirit is poured out upon us, the Person, the Presence of Christ, Himself, is poured out upon us, also. He is present with us. The Father likewise, who loves us, is with us. The whole Holy Trinity is with us. At Pentecost, with the visible and audible Descent of the Holy Spirit, we are given another experience of all Three Persons of the Holy Trinity. It is right that this parish, named for the Holy Trinity, celebrates on this day its Temple Feast.

This feast is one of the visible moments in which we can clearly see the Holy Spirit being active. How ? First, there is the sound of a rushing, mighty wind. Second, there are tongues of fire that descend one by one on the apostles. Let us not forget that the Mother of God is there today amongst all these disciples and apostles, receiving the Holy Spirit. The Church from the very beginning of this Feast has always portrayed her as being there with the disciples and apostles.

The tongues of fire descend upon the disciples and the apostles. Then they start to speak all sorts of languages that they had not known before (and did not necessarily know afterwards). We do know clearly from the Acts of the Apostles that when the disciples and apostles go onto the street, they are proclaiming the wonders of God in all these languages. On this Feast-day of Pentecost, there were people in Jerusalem from all over the empire, and at this time they hear God being glorified in their own languages. So they say : “‘Look, are not all these who speak Galileans?’” (At that time, to say that one comes from Galilee is like saying that one comes from Manning, Alberta as compared to Edmonton or Calgary, for instance. It is so long since I have been in the north, that I suppose Manning has grown by this time). So people say, in effect : “How can it be that these Galileans (who do not have access to education and every sort of language that the empire speaks) are declaring the glory of God in these obscure languages from Iraq and North Africa, and all over the place ?”

This was because the Holy Spirit gave that particular gift to the apostles in order to declare the glory of God. He gave the gift also in order to show that God’s Grace is greater than human logic (it always is, no matter how we try to pin God down). Perhaps even most important, our purpose as Christians from the very beginning, from this Day of Pentecost, this Day of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, is to share the wonders of the glory of God with every nation on the earth, with every people on the earth and in every language on the earth. We have a three-fold purpose in this Event.

This gift of speaking in different languages still exists sometimes in the Church. Sometimes it is used correctly, and sometimes it is not. The Apostle Paul very clearly says that if anyone is given this gift of speaking different languages, if it is used in a public place, it must have an interpretation. Someone must be there who understands. It must be translated, the Apostle Paul said, because no language is given for no purpose (see 1 Corinthians 14:27, 28). Just to blather nonsensical sounds means nothing. To say : “Jesus is Lord” means something to people who understand. In fact, it means very much to people who understand. That is why the Apostle said that other Spirit-given languages must never be used unless people are able to understand them. Otherwise, people would think that one is crazy (and maybe they are right). In fact, no gift is given from the Holy Spirit just for “me”. If God gives any gift of the Holy Spirit to me, it is for me to use for the glorification of God, and for the helping, strengthening and nurturing of other members of the Body of Christ. No Orthodox Christian, indeed no Christian is alone. We are all together. The Apostle Paul says that we are all members of the Body of Christ (see 1 Corinthians 12:12).

Any gift that the Lord gives us, He gives us so that other people may be strengthened, healed, corrected, enabled to repent. Sometimes the Holy Spirit gives the ability to a person to speak another language precisely in the same way as on this feast-day today. I have heard, myself, of some occasions when there were people who were in a difficult position where they had no hope, and somehow the Lord gave the gift to be able to speak and to understand an exchange between people in a foreign language which was life-giving and saving. Afterwards, the apostles did not necessarily retain the ability to speak these languages. It was probably given for the occasion only.

The Lord is merciful. He cares for us. He loves us. He gives us everything we need in order that we may live our lives for Him, and in order that we may be healthy in doing so. He helps us to become healthy, balanced, stable – at peace in Him, glorifying Him in everything. The Holy Spirit is given to you and to me so that we will have strength to live our lives in Christ. The Holy Spirit is given to you and to me so that we will have the boldness to do and to say what must be said and done from time to time when it is necessary. The Holy Spirit gives Grace to you and to me so that we will be able to hear the Lord speak to us and that He might direct or correct us in whatever way that may be necessary. Words of encouragement come from all sorts of unexpected places because of the Grace of the Holy Spirit.

You and I have been given the Grace of the Holy Spirit. In having this gift of the Holy Spirit, we are going to be able to do what our Saviour asks us to do : to shine with His light in this world ; to proclaim His glory in this world in multiple languages and in multiple cultures ; to embrace people of every culture, of every language, and love them into the Body of Christ ; to share with them our joy, our hope, our wholeness, and give them, with us, the opportunity to glorify the all-holy Trinity always.

This congregation has been here for over 100 years. The centennial celebration today is not the celebration of the absolute beginning. This community was already here for some years before this Temple was erected and everything was established. This community has been a living witness for the glory of our Saviour all those years. I remember that when I was little, in Edmonton, I heard about this far-away parish. It is not as if this parish is just sitting here in this town “vegetating”. It is not. This community of believers, this family of Orthodox believers, has been having a steady effect for good on people all over the place. Probably, if everyone touched by the love of this community were to show up here, there would be no room in the Temple for the people of the town.

It is important that we give thanks to God for all the good that He has been doing amongst us throughout all these years, and, at the same time, to ask Him to give us the Grace and the strength to prepare for the next 100 years of work in His Kingdom that must be done here. Our work only increases. It does not decrease, because His love only increases. His love does not decrease. Let us ask the Lord to give us the heart to follow Him with the loving zeal and dedication of our forefathers and foremothers. Let us love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, putting Him first in our lives so that when we come to the end of our lives, the Lord will welcome us into His Kingdom and say : “Well done, good and faithful servants”. We will continue then, as we are now, glorifying the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

On this Sunday after Pentecost, we are keeping the memory of all the saints. I am quite certain that we are keeping this feast because there are many more saints than those written on the calendar whose names we keep. There are many, many unknown saints. For instance, amongst the 14,000 infants of Bethlehem, or the 20,000 martyrs of Nicomedia (and others in large quantities of martyrdom), we only know a few, if any, of the names of these holy persons, these martyrs. They are persons who are simply amongst tens of thousands of persons who have given their lives for the sake of Christ. These martyrs are people who have given their lives up unto death. They have given their lives up to the end in every way.

There are many other persons in the context of the Church’s life and in our history who have been saints whose names are not known at all. After all, the word “saint” simply means a holy person. However, the Lord knows who they are. Because they are all members of the Body of Christ, and we are all members of the Body of Christ, out of love we are remembering them all today. We do not know the names of most of them, but the Lord knows them.

For many years, I have been slowly working on a compilation of saints’ names. God willing, that will be made available in some form eventually. The reason that I have been doing this compilation is in order to help the faithful of the archdiocese know what are the saints’ names available. This is mainly in view of the naming of the child before baptism, but also for those being received into the Church later in life. You may ask what put me in the mood to do this, since there are many people doing such things, and we have all sorts of calendars being produced. Well, it seems to me that people have forgotten some basics. A long time ago (and it really feels like a life-time ago), at the time when I was not yet a bishop, I was visiting a babushka in Winnipeg who was lamenting, and who said : “When I was growing up, we all were given names of saints, and it was normal. However, now, my grandchildren are being given names of dogs”. It was truly distressing her. Well, we probably do not give the name “Fido” to children, but there are all sorts of names that are not part of our inherited tradition of holiness that we have tended to give to children. Very often we forget to give the names of saints. Even if we are going to give a child some sort of name for rocks or trees or rivers or brook, cedar, forest, rain, air, at the same time, we cannot forget to give as well the name of a saint.

Living in the Body of Christ involves communion with all sorts of people who must remember that Christ is their Head. We heard earlier in the Epistle reading about all the people who came before Christ, who suffered unto death in various nasty ways, in anticipation of Christ whom they had never met. Our Saviour says to us today that if we want to follow Him, we have to deny ourselves, take up our Cross and follow Him. In other words, the Lord has to be first. If we are putting Him first, then we will certainly be given the joy of eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Everything for us Christians has to be focussed on and lived out in the context of our Saviour, Jesus Christ : His love for us, and our love for Him, and nothing more. Our lives must come to the point where we are so filled with this love of Jesus Christ that we have our eyes only on Him, and we are seeking only to do His will. In every little thing of every day we are involving Him, instead of being typical Canadian, engineering “do-it-yourselfers”. We all know what do-it-yourself projects in renovation and construction usually mean. For the most part, after the do-it-yourself renovation has been completed, there is summoned to the house a professional repair-man with particular gifts to fill in or completely rebuild. I know, because I am one of those do-it-yourselfers.

In the development of missionary work in this diocese, we always have tension. We have had, have, and will have tension, because we are human beings, and that is how human beings are. We have different opinions, and sometimes we hold them very strongly. Whatever we are doing in mission work, whether it is developing plans and proposing this or that, or doing something actively, as I said before, keeping the Lord first in everything remains the first priority. It is crucially important that we be looking to Jesus Christ for His direction, and for the Grace and the ability to do what He is asking us to do. Everything, always, must be rooted in love for Him because He is our life. He is our hope. He is our joy.

Speaking of missionary work, this parish is not so different from other parishes, but it definitely has its own character. Many times I have heard people nostalgically regretting that we have become this numerous, because it was so nice years ago when everyone knew everyone else, and everything about everyone else. It felt much cozier and more intimate, somehow. It was easier, somehow. However, the Lord did not let us stay in that condition, because He calls us also to be yeast and salt. If we had stagnated in that cozy little condition, then there would have been dead yeast and tasteless salt. We would have become in the end (as such cozy, comfortable entities do) a club of crabby, unhappy people because we would have begun to step on each other’s toes and growl about it. Once we get into that sort of mentality, it goes around and around and around like that. We forget about everything. However, the Lord mercifully did not let us stay in such coziness.

This coziness was the first step of our development, enabling us to understand what it means to be a family in Christ, in the Church. This is very important because the Church, no matter what size it is, is still a family. If you think it is not a family when it is as numerous as this, perhaps you might like to experience some communities that are two or three or more times this size. Perhaps you have not yet had much experience of travelling around the world, and bumping into Orthodox Christians who know someone whom you know or who are part of your family even abroad. Living in the Orthodox Church is, itself, like living in a global village. As we travel around, we often find out that even though we think we are so small (and we are), at the same time there are spiritual and personal connexions that unite us all around the world. It is utterly amazing how the Lord has emphasised this family character to me over and over again. Our Church, in its totality, in its wholeness, and in all its component parts, is a family. Therefore, even though this parish has grown so much, it is necessary that we not lose sight of the fact that this is still our spiritual family. This is our spiritual home. There is still a father (or two) here to look after us.

No matter how numerous we are, we, ourselves, have a responsibility to remember primarily that we are brothers and sisters all together in Christ’s family. No matter what happens, Christ is the Head of this family. We are brothers and sisters together in this family. Maybe we are very numerous. Our modern society with its nuclear families is not used to such an extended family as this. However, in my own family history, my relatives used to tell me about reunions of one part of our family (which is apparently far more numerous than I thought) in which people would gather annually some place in southwestern Ontario. Every year there would be 200 or 300 members of this family. Everyone was a cousin, uncle or aunt to each other. I never had an opportunity to go to such a picnic, and I think it would be not a little unnerving having so many relatives, but at the same time, that is what we are here. This is not unnerving for me. Even if you are not flesh and blood relatives, you are all part of my family. I know you. I do not know all of you so well, but I know many of you. You know me certainly better than I know you, perhaps. We are a family in Christ.

Whenever one or another person behaves a little “off” sometimes, people will get the idea that the other person has something against them because of this ignoring distraction or coldness or whatever it is. Because we are subject to fear, we are often tempted to think that maybe so-and-so has a crooked nose with us about something. Because we are subject to fear and we might be shy, we are often reluctant to go and “beard the lion in the den”, and ask what is the matter. Therefore, the tendency is to bend our head, go away in a corner and say : “Poor me” (as we often do). Another thing that I have learned about this sort of family life is that when we see someone who is acting in an unusual manner towards us, more often than not that person does not have a crooked nose with us at all. That person may not be feeling well or was hurt by something else in life or maybe it is arthritis. It could be any sort of thing. It could also be (because I am now getting old and have more experience of these things) that there is an approaching low-pressure front which can make us feel listless, draw away all our energy, and make us feel that all we want to do is have a nice, long nap. There are many things that influence our behaviour.

It is truly necessary that we try, in the love of Jesus Christ, not to assume, ever, that a brother or sister is out-of-sorts with us until we find out for certain. If we ask the question, and find out for certain that maybe there is something, then that is the opportunity for us to say : “I am sorry” (those big, important words). I am sorry to drag out all these lessons on family life that you surely know already. However, on this day in particular, it seems important to rehearse them in case anyone is forgetting these ABCs of family life. The development of this community does not stop anywhere near here. This community has given birth to other communities already, and it will give birth to more in the future, because the Lord never stops calling you and me to be salt and yeast. He never stops sharing with us His joy and His love. We must never stop sharing with those around us this joy, this love, and our hope in Jesus Christ. Our lives must grow so that they shine (even with no words, probably) with this love of Jesus Christ.

In our communities in this archdiocese, there are holy people. They are not necessarily well recognised, but they are there. They have been there all along. This particular community has had the blessing to have had some that I have, myself, known. You probably remember some such holy persons amongst the older ones. May the Lord grant us all the ability to remember who we are and what we are doing in Christ : that we are a family, and that we are led by a father.

When one is a bishop, one gets to hear from people over and over again the one thing that they want in a priest, and it is precisely expressive of this family principle. What do people want in a priest ? They want a priest who will be a true father to them, and help them to experience more of the love of Jesus Christ. They want a priest who loves them and who helps them into the Kingdom. Sometimes priests get distracted (as bishops also do), and that is why I am always asking over and over that we pray for each other because we need mutual support. People say to me in Russian : “All we want is a batiushka – just a regular batiushka”. We do not have this word in English. We have to re-Christianise English, and find a word. A batiushka is a little higher than “daddy”, somehow. It is more than “papa”, too. In English we do not yet have this word, and I would be happy and very grateful to God for whoever it will be that would find the English way to say batiushka. The word still means “father” in Russian. People say : “We want a father who loves us, who shows us love, and who encourages us in our times of difficulties to persevere in Christ”. All that is wound up in this little word which is respectful, but extremely affectionate. The “ushka” ending in Russian (like “ouli” in Greek) brings the relationship very close. We might feel like hugging people when we use the “ushka” ending on their name. We want to give them a big kiss, because the relationship is so warm. That is what people want in their leadership in the Church. We have to have formalities, but through the formality must shine this loving, family relationship.

Brothers and sisters, may the Lord help us not to forget our family relationship, our mutual family responsibilities in Christ, and the fact that we are truly brothers and sisters in Christ, His family, His Body. Let us be truly alive in His love, living in His love, and glorifying Him together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today when we are with our Lord, following Him, we see Him calling the disciples and apostles. When He calls them, we see that as soon as He says to them : “‘Follow Me’”, they simply do. They drop everything (whatever they are in the middle of doing) and follow Him. Why would anyone do such a thing ? If a man were to walk up to you one day, look at you and say : “Follow me”. What would make you just get up and follow Him ? There are fishermen giving up their whole living, just like that. There is a tax collector with a very lucrative, money-producing, comfortable life – leaving everything on the table, getting up and following Him, just like that. That is precisely what we see happening.

Why ? There is only one reason, and that is : Who is this Man who is saying : “‘Follow Me’”. Who is He ? These men had no idea at the time. However, we know. We know that He is the incarnate Son of God. He is the Word of God who has taken flesh. However, that seems, even to us, a little abstract. When our Saviour walks up to them today, what they encounter is the same sort of experience that we remember hearing not so long ago in the sermon of Saint John Chrysostom at Pascha when he is speaking about Hades. Saint John Chrysostom says that when Christ descended into Hades, Hades thought it took a man, but it encountered God face-to-face. Thus, these men are meeting God face-to-face in Jesus Christ today.

When anyone meets God face-to-face, what does that mean ? We have to remember that it means precisely what the Apostle John tells us that it means in more than one place, and that is, love. “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). Everything that is, is the result of, and maintained by His love. When our Saviour walks up to these persons and looks them in the eye, He looks them not only in the eye. He looks them straight in the heart. He knows them, and they know that He knows them. It is instant. It is like lightning. Their hearts burn, and they know that this is the One whom they must follow, because they have already been filled with the light of love, and the light of life simply by being in His presence. His call to them : “‘Follow Me’”, is irresistible. They cannot explain it, but they do follow Him.

The whole of God’s creation is enlightened by His love. That is why the Apostle Paul is telling us today that not everyone is going to encounter the Lord personally in human history. Because of the presence of this love in every part of creation, people whose hearts are properly oriented will be able to recognise this love in a similar way, and respond to it, and live accordingly because somehow their hearts are able to accept and see the Lord’s love. The Apostle says that for people like this, there is a special relationship. Elsewhere, the Apostle says a great deal about the Law itself, and how the Law is so restrictive and binding (he has even stronger words than that). However, a person who is living in the context of the Saviour’s love is not only fulfilling every part of the Law, but also is going far beyond the Law in its fulfilment. When our Saviour begins to walk around Galilee with these men, they, drawn by His love, filled with His love, encouraged by His love, healed by His love, begin with Him to participate in His work : healing the people of their diseases and teaching them what is the right way. Wherever our Saviour is going, people are encountering His love. They are responding in the same way as these disciples are responding.

Why are you and I here today ? We, likewise, have heard our Saviour speak to us in our hearts and ask us to follow Him. We are here because He still asks us to follow Him. He looks us in the heart today (and every day), and He says to us : “‘Follow Me’”. His love speaks to us in our hearts. Because our hearts respond in love, we do follow Him. That is why we are here today. That is why we pass through every sort of imaginable and unimaginable difficulty in life, facing every sort of obstacle with hope, joy and confidence. We do this because we know that the Lord who asks us to follow Him is also with us at all times. He gives us the ability to pass through all these difficulties. He is with us, and His love motivates us. His love strengthens us. His love gives us the ability to be healed of our brokenness, our distractions, our darkness and our double-mindedness.

Today’s saints of North America, whose names we do know, are only the “tip of the iceberg”, as we say. They are the holy people who have been generally recognised, and whose memory we are officially keeping today. They are persons who responded as the disciples and apostles responded. Their lives reveal this in every way. However, not every one of the persons on this continent who has done so in the past, and not everyone who is doing so now, is going to end up necessarily on the calendar of the Church or represented in an icon. Why is this ? It is because the Lord does not reveal everything to us. He does not identify for us every holy person in Orthodox North America. He lets us see particular people because we have particular needs, and these holy persons are particular intercessors for us in our needs. When we will need to know someone else of the many saints in North America whose names are not at the present known to us, He is going to show them to us.

The nature of our relationship with the saints has to be that of friends. We North Americans (especially we who have converted from the parts of Christianity that reject images) frequently have a difficult time making friends with the saints. Nevertheless, the relationship between us and these saints can be, in the Lord, much the same as amongst us here. The saints are not a different species from us, even though they are holy and are in heaven. They are not angels (contrary to popular misunderstanding). The saints are not detached from us, and we are not detached from them. The relationship of friendship in love (which characterises human relationships in Christ) is expected to exist between us and the saints, also. I am quite certain that the Lord is giving us the opportunity to become friends with one or all of these saints, depending on who we are and how our lives are. Indeed, sometimes the saint chooses us, because God has blessed that choice. When we learn how to be friends with these known holy persons, then the Lord will show us the faces of some more saints. This is how I rather think it is going to be. We have to learn how to behave as Orthodox Christians in North America. It is a difficult environment. The Lord is not going to give us spiritual indigestion by giving us too many at once.

That is one of the reasons, I believe, that we are having such a difficult time, with so many obstacles and delays regarding the official recognition and glorification of Saint Arseny. We Canadians recognise him as a saint. Saint Arseny was called in his day the Canadian Chrysostom because he was such a fantastic preacher. He converted many people through his preaching. We see that the Lord is answering our prayers through him. However, many of us Canadians at the beginning of the 21st century still seem to be a little detached from him, somehow. It seems to me that this is so, and that is perhaps why the whole process of his glorification takes more time than many of us would like. Not enough of us have developed this sense of a real friendship with Saint Arseny.

The whole purpose of our being here, and living in this relationship of love was described to me recently by Bishop Basil of Amphipolis just yesterday morning. During a lecture, he was showing us maps of how the world looked to the classical world. He showed us that two centuries before Christ, Greek geometricians had already understood that the world was round and a sphere. He showed us how the world was imagined by them from a distance looking down from above. What he pointed out to us about these various sorts of Christian maps (that look very odd to us now) is that they are all focussed on the centre. Where is the centre ? The centre is Jerusalem. Then he showed us a modern map focussed on Jerusalem. You can see exactly how those ancient cartographers had the correct, general idea. It is amazing how the Lord inspired and the people understood even without modern techniques. He also showed how the ancient world was divided up amongst the various patriarchates. He said it was like cutting an orange across the axis of Jerusalem in four parts, as it were. He pointed out that with the focus on Jerusalem, if we try to find North America on a modern map, what do we see ? Over on the left, we see Greenland, Newfoundland, a little bit of Labrador, and that is all. All the rest of North America is invisible from that perspective. According to this schema, there is a great deal of debate about who has the territory of North and South America. To which of the patriarchates would that be extended ? Bishop Basil said : “It really does not matter how we might project the Chalcedonian perception of which territory is connected to what patriarchate because, in the end, it all belongs to Jesus Christ”. Jesus Christ has claimed the whole world. The whole world belongs to Jesus Christ, and it does not matter under which patriarchate in particular it comes, in terms of responsibility. It all belongs, in the end, to Jesus Christ, who claimed the whole world. The whole world exists as a product of His love.

Let us ask the Lord to renew this love in us as we hear Him say to us : “‘Follow Me’”. Little John here is obviously responding in the right manner as he is kissing this icon. Let us be like him, responding to the Saviour’s love openly, freely, with love. Like him, let us be ready to approach this icon with love, and to embrace the Lord and His saints in love, and glorify with the joy of John and his straightforward love : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The Apostle Paul is talking about the fact that there is no salvation through the Law, as it were. Essentially, he is reminding us that the Law is not an end in itself. Anyone who develops such an attitude, thinking that the Law is an end in itself, is badly out of focus, and needs a thorough “tune-up”, one might say. The Law is an aid, a series of signposts.

Where the Lord is, there is always order. First things always come first. In the presence of the Lord, things come into the correct focus. Thus when it comes to the Law, “first things first” is precisely what is the summary of the Law : “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength’” (Mark 12:30). Loving God is what comes first. If we love God first and foremost in our lives, and if the Lord is the purpose of our lives, then, in this very context of love (which the Prophet Moses gave to us in the first place in his summary of the Law), the Law will be lived out as “second nature”. This is because the Law expresses how we are supposed to be living if we are people who do love God.

In the Gospel reading today, we are with our Lord in the territory of the Gadarenes, as He encounters a demoniac. This man is living in complete disorder. We hear that he has been taken over by a legion of demons. No-one can hold him. Even chains cannot hold him because his strength in this disorder is so great. When our Lord comes into his presence, He does not waste any time. We see that the demoniac is already throwing himself on the ground before the Lord, calling Him Who He is : “‘What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?’” While the demoniac is doing this, our Lord has already begun to tell the demons to come out. In His mercy and compassion, our Saviour sets people free from such disorder and such slavery. Always He is doing this. Always He is setting people free. Over and over again we encounter the Lord doing this as we go with Him through the Gospel.

The Lord is setting this demoniac free. The Lord is compassionate. What would you do with these demons if you were in that place ? I am quite sure that because of the electronic games which many Canadians play these days, they would try to “zap” the demons with some sort of “super-duper ray-gun”. However, the Lord does not do anything of the sort. The demons beg to go into the herd of pigs, and our Lord says, as it were : “All right, go there, but get out of this man”. Even with evil spirits, the Lord is not interested in somehow extinguishing them, at least not yet. He is giving them some sort of opportunity (but I do not know what). In this case, He is not ready to cast them into oblivion.

The demons come out, and enter the herd of swine. It is very important for us to understand about this herd of swine. There is not supposed to be a herd of swine in any Jewish community. Even the Muslims do not have pigs. However, in this particular Jewish community there were many swine. I suppose that people were thinking that they could manage to do business with pigs in this remote place, and no-one would see. They were probably selling these animals to the occupying Roman army or the Greeks who were living there, and so forth. However, even if they were not eating the swine-flesh, it does not make any difference to the Lord. If the Lord said that there was to be no association with pigs, then no-one should even be raising them. The result of this permission is that when the pigs are occupied by this legion of demons, the demons cannot help themselves. They immediately act according to their fallen nature. They drive the pigs crazy, and they immediately drown themselves. We do not know anything more about the demons, but certainly the pig problem in the area is solved. The economy is thrown into a certain amount of chaos as a result. This is, of course, one reason why the whole multitude of the Gadarenes ask Him to depart from there.

The Gadarenes, themselves, do not catch the drift. They are more interested in their economy than in what had happened to this man in their midst. This man is begging the Lord and saying, in effect : “Please let me come with You. I want to be with You, Lord”. However, because of the Gadarenes, our Saviour says to him, as it were : “You stay here with your people, and be a living testimony of how God has worked in your life. Do not go away somewhere, but stay with your people. Give thanks to God, and remind them by your presence of how God has worked in your life”.

This is our responsibility as Orthodox Christians. We, ourselves, are set free from our various disorders by the love of God. No-one can fool me about the disorder in our lives, because I hear confessions (and I also have to go to confession). We all have some sort of disorder in our lives. Nevertheless, the Lord sets us free from them. He enables us to live a life that is life-giving, a life that has a sense of direction, despite our weaknesses, despite our confusion. More and more in the course of our lives, the Lord enables us to be who we truly are. The Lord sets us free from fear. The Lord sets us free from disorder. He enables us to be a living testimony to people around us (just as this demoniac is) about what are the fruits of living in love with Jesus Christ. In love with Jesus Christ, living in this love, we are not slaves of anything or anyone. We are not bound by metal shackles as was the demoniac who was breaking them himself. However, if we are bound by metaphysical shackles, it is the Lord who releases us from them. Indeed, our Saviour released the demoniac from much greater slavery and stronger chains than metal or metaphysical shackles. Those ones were demonic shackles.

In our communities, our places of work, wherever we are, we can be signs of the Lord’s love. We can be signs that the Lord cares for us. He cares for the people around us, too. The Lord loves us. He is enabling us to be free. Therefore, let us ask this same Lord to help us keep our focus of first things first. Let us love the Lord first above all and then those around us. Let us ask the Lord to help us to glorify Him in the whole of our lives, in everything that we do and say. In Him may we glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In his second letter to the Apostle Timothy (see 2 Timothy 3:12), the Apostle Paul tells us that there is no human being who is trying to live the Christian life who does not face adversity of some sort or another. He clarifies for us that we Christians end up facing more difficulties, more trials, more obstacles than many others do. Fundamentally, this is because we are following Him who is the Light. We will recall at the beginning of the Gospel according to Saint John that we are told that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5).

There are various ways in which we see that the darkness is attempting to overcome the light. This is the repeated experience of every last one of us who is following Christ. There are experiences day after day in our lives in which the Tempter comes to try to divide us from the Body of Christ, and to separate us away from the Body of the faithful. He inserts divisions between us one way or another, usually by insinuating suspicious thoughts in our minds or doubts or questions or anger or some other sort of passion. Our Saviour says that the Tempter is the great separator because he is the great father-of-lies.

The Apostle is making a major point when he says that all these difficulties produce the strengthening of a person, and finally through strengthening of character there comes hope. What is hope ? Again, the question is not right when we might say : “What is hope ?” This question is similar to the question that Pontius Pilate posed to our Lord : “‘What is truth?’” (John 18:38) Pontius Pilate was looking at the Truth. That is why there was no answer. If we are looking for the truth as a “what”, we are not going to find it because in this world there is not any. In the same way, if we look for justice in this world, we will not find it because there is not any in this world. If we look for hope as a “what”, again, we will not find it, because hope is a “Who”. Our hope is He who is the Truth, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. He is our Hope. That is why the Apostle says that hope is so important, so pivotal and so foundational in our lives because our Saviour, Jesus Christ, is our only Hope.

In today’s Gospel reading, our Saviour Jesus Christ reminds us once again about priorities. He says to us that we should not worry about clothes or anything at all because He says : “‘Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?’” This example may have seemed to be extreme to His hearers (and also to us), but it is a fact. In the Old Testament many people depended on the Lord in this way and were not disappointed. This experience shows how much more important to Him we humans are than birds (or anything else in creation), because we are made in His image. We are the ones that are being fashioned directly as creatures of His love for the express purpose of working together with Him in the whole creation, looking after these birds, these grasses and these flowers. He says to you and to me that we must have our priorities straight.

What comes first in our life ? What must come first in our life is the One who is the Source of our life. Everything else stems from and follows from our relationship with the Lord, the Source of our life. The birds of the air do not worry about eating because the Lord provides for them. They trust Him to provide for them. Except for those cases where we human beings make a mess of that provision (which is quite frequently, and more frequently these days), the Lord looks after His creatures. He provides for their needs. He provides for your needs and my needs also, but most of the time we do not bother to ask Him because we consider ourselves to be self-sufficient. As true Canadians, we tend to be definitely self-sufficient engineers of our own destinies, our own life-styles and everything else. “We can do it ourselves.”

In our normal life, being a “do-it-yourselfer” has some interesting consequences. The average Canadian “do-it-yourselfer” often does not know so well how to do it him- or her-self. We read a book, do research on the internet, and get some very good ideas. Then we go out shopping, go home, and construct something that we want to change at home. Maybe it goes together (although sometimes not even self-assembled furniture goes together the way it is supposed to). Usually, the result of our “home plumbing”, “home electrical work”, “home window repairs”, “home floor repairs”, “home furniture-building” implies that some sort of professional repair-man (or woman) will be showing up soon because our attempt does not work quite right or it falls in on us or something happens. As a rule, our do-it-yourself things are not very successful, whereas this building where this mission is serving has been here for 100 or more years. It was not built by amateurs, and it is standing very well even to this day. From the look of it, as long as maintenance is carried on, this building should carry on for another 200 or 300 years. This is unusual for Canada (or at least for modern Canada anyway), and it is unusual for us do-it-yourselfers.

What lasts is what is done in harmony with, in consultation with, in obedience to, and as a fruit of the love of Jesus Christ. If we want to be able to produce true beauty, true beauty can only reflect the beauty of the Source of beauty, who is Jesus Christ, who speaks everything into existence. If we want to live a life that is beautiful and as peaceful as possible, then, we can only begin to approach living by constant consultation with the will of Him who made us, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. We have to learn not to turn to the Lord as the last resort, but as the first resort. Before the Fall, Adam and Eve first consulted the Lord about everything. Their communion of love with Him was such that they instinctively knew what was right to do. The beginning of a question mark already produced the answer in their hearts because their hearts were in unblocked communion of love with their Creator.

The communion with God which we have been given in our Saviour, Jesus Christ is much deeper, much greater than that of Adam and Eve. Our responsibility as members of the Body of Christ, as members of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, is much greater even than that of Adam and Eve. We have been baptised into Christ. We have put on Christ. Our Saviour has promised that He will always be with us.

The Saviour is always with us. Let us ask Him to give us the strength unceasingly to remember this truth, this reality that He is with us. Let us ask Him to build in us that Hope, which is Himself, founded on that Love, which is Himself ; nourished by that Love, which is Himself. As we are passing through the days of our lives, with all the difficulties that we face because we are following Him, may our hearts first turn to Him. May our hearts first cry out to Him : “Help”. May our hearts first turn to Him for strength, guidance, direction, hope, and the renewal of the joy of His presence.

Let us ask Him to build a right heart within us, and fill us freshly with the Grace of the Holy Spirit so that as we come to Him today with our hearts open to Him, our hearts may truly be refreshed by the renewal of His love and His presence. Therefore, in our hearts and in our lives at all times, and in all things, may the all-holy Trinity be glorified : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Despite all the greyness that exists in our life one way or another because of our way of life, our relationships with each other, and the multitude of uncertainties in which we live, nevertheless, in the Lord there is no such thing as “grey”. When it comes down to it, in the Lord things are very clear and clear-cut. He says to us, as He says to the scribes and to the others : “‘Follow Me’”. When He says : “‘Follow Me’”, He means precisely that. He means that He must be the priority in our lives.

When the Apostle is speaking to us today, he is clearly stating that every day is a day of decision, a day of discernment for each one of us. Every day, with an act of the will, we have to decide : To whom do we belong ? Are we slaves of the Lord of life ? Are we slaves of Love (and life-giving Love at that) or are we slaves of selfishness, sin, darkness and death ? These are the two choices before us every day. We try to make our way and meander in between these two choices (which is why things are very grey for us). We make a sort of fog, as it were, between ourselves and the Lord by our indecision, our uncertainty, asking : “Which way is the right way ?” We tend to be indecisive and uncertain because by and large we have forgotten how to listen to our heart. That is, we have forgotten how to listen to the Lord in our heart. The Lord speaks to us constantly in our heart, and it is in our heart that we find Him.

People who practice the Jesus Prayer are always correctly saying that it is the Prayer of the Heart because they focus on the heart, and there they find the Saviour. The Saviour is in the heart because He is in the centre of our being. We do not find the Lord somewhere “out there” or even “somewhere over the rainbow”. We find Him right here, where I am pointing : in the heart. As the Psalmist says : “There is no place that I can run away and hide from You. It does not matter where I go : You are always there, and You are there even before me” (see Psalm 138).

The Lord is with us. He is the Creator. We cannot exist without Him. However, because of our brokenness, our self-deception, we seem to forget that He is with us always, and therefore we think that we, ourselves, are the centre of the universe, distinct from Him. There is no such thing as being distinct from Him. If we were distinct from Him, we would be extinct : we would cease to exist altogether. Therefore, as the Apostle says to us, we have to make a decision every day : “Do I will to follow Christ ? Will I follow Christ ?” When I say “I will” in English, properly speaking I am saying that I have made an act of the will to follow Christ. Thus, if I say : “I will follow Christ”, this does not mean that I shall do this in the future sometime. I am saying that it is my will to follow Christ (whether I can live up to this decision of my will is another thing). Nevertheless, it is my will that I shall make every attempt to follow Christ.

That is why it is important every day, every morning when we are getting up, to focus on the Lord first thing, make the sign of the Cross, and ask the Lord’s blessing on the day in one way or another. We are always asking Him to be with us. However, He is always with us. Rather than try to go it alone, it is better for us to ask the Lord to help us to remember that He is with us at all times, and to remember to consult Him in everything during the course of the coming day. It is better for us to ask Him not to let us forget, rather than simply trying by ourselves not to forget. Forgetfulness is from below, and it is very insidious.

What does our Lord do when He is in our midst ? Today, He is with the mother-in-law of the Apostle Peter. She has a seriously high fever and is sick in bed and cannot do a thing. Our Saviour touches her, and immediately she is well. Immediately, she gets up and does what is in her heart – as a loving, God-fearing, God-serving person, she serves them. It is not simply because she is a woman, not simply because she is a mother-in-law that she does that (although that somehow goes with the role of mothers, mothers-in-law, and grandmothers, and so forth). However, it is not only they who do this serving. It is grandfathers, fathers-in-law and husbands who do serving, also, because it is the way of all Christians to serve. We could just as easily say that if our Lord had come into this house and He had healed Peter’s father, or someone else from sickness, that person would have gotten up and done the same sort of thing : serve in one way or another. The Christian way is always the way of service.

The Lord is delivering people from bondage to the devil, bondage to sin, bondage to death. The Lord, in His love, wants us all always to be free, free in Him. Even though there are those who say to Him : “I will follow You”, our Lord replies : “The Son of Man has nowhere to put His head”. That means that we have to be prepared to have no earthly home, as it were, except in the Kingdom. It is the Kingdom that matters ; earthly homes come second. In effect, He is saying the same thing to the person in the Gospel reading today, who says to Him : “Lord, let me first go and bury my father”. Our Lord says to him what seems to be very harsh : “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead”. However, it is not so harsh as all that. Essentially, He is saying in effect : “Put first things first”. He means (as it has been interpreted) : Let those who are spiritually dead look after everything that is dead. You, follow Life. That essentially is what He is saying to this man.

Let us ask the Lord to renew today in our hearts this love for Him that allows us to put Him first always in our lives. Let us accept this freedom, His radical freedom, His radical life-giving, life-creating life. May we glorify Him every day in everything that we do, with joy, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In the Epistle reading today, the Apostle is saying to us again just about the same things He was saying to us yesterday. He is emphasising the need for us to remember to whom we belong. To whom do we belong ? Do we belong to sin and death ? Are we slaves of sin and death ? Or do we belong to the Lord, and therefore to life and love ? It is important for us every day to keep this in mind, and to be making this choice because the devil is never going to leave us alone. No matter what day of our lives, the devil will not leave us alone. We are forced to make that choice every day of our lives. Do I serve life ? Do I serve death ? Do I serve the Lord of life ? Do I serve the lord of death ? Do I serve Him, who is the Truth ? Do I serve the father-of-lies ? Whom do I serve ?

Do I live for myself, or do I live for the Lord ? If I live for myself, I have chosen the way of darkness. If I live for the Lord, I have chosen the way of light. The devil never does leave us alone in this regard, and I suppose, actually, that it is just as well for us. If everyone is anything like me, it is easy to forget, slip along sometimes, and simply take it easy. However, every time I have ever “taken it easy”, I have found myself having unwittingly made a choice, and it is a negative choice. If we are going to serve the Lord, we have to make that choice regularly, steadily, every day.

Who is this Lord whom we are serving ? It is the same Lord whom we see encountering the centurion, and healing his very much distressed, tormented and paralysed servant without ever going to see him personally. Our Lord is the Lord of compassion. He reveals His love on every occasion that we encounter Him. There is not one occasion when our Lord is not expressing this life-giving, light-bearing love. Almost every time we see Him in the Gospels, He is changing people from paralysed to free-moving, from blind to seeing, from sickness to health, from death to life. He is showing us that the Christian way is simply the way of repentance. All the time, our Lord is saying to us : “‘Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’” (Matthew 11:28). He is saying this to us all the time. He is inviting you and me all the time, every day, to take His strength for living this difficult life.

Which is better, then ? Is it better to serve the lord of darkness, who is always paralysing us with fear, and taking us down into death and eternal darkness, or is it better to serve the Lord, who loves us, who sets us free, who fills us with love and life every day ? In my estimation, this is not a hard choice to make. However, we usually do not behave so logically. Because of how we are held by fear in one way or another (there are so many little hooks of fear here and there that we are not aware of in our lives), we slip, get distracted and fall down from time to time. However, the Lord is constantly there with us. He is not outside us. He is inside us. He is constantly with us. He is there with us, waiting for us to take His strength.

On this day on which we are celebrating the two great monastic founders, Saint Athanasius of Mount Athos and Saint Sergius of Radonezh, let us ask the Lord to give us the same strength and love for Him that they demonstrated in their lives. These men were men who simply wanted to love and serve the Lord. They did it with all their heart, and all their being. That is not to say by any means that we are all called to be monks. Nevertheless, being a Christian at any level still means to serve the Lord with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, with all our strength. However, we can take their example of perpetual repentance as an encouragement, their example of being filled with love for the Lord as an encouragement. We can do as our Saviour has been saying to us day after day, and week after week to, along with those whom He has encountered : “‘Follow Me’” (Matthew 4:19). We can do it. We can do it because He is with us, and He will help us.

Let us ask Him to renew the Grace of the Holy Spirit in our hearts today. In this way we will have the strength to follow Him with joy yet one more day, yet one more week, yet one more month, yet one more year, following the exhortation of Saint Herman of Alaska, who says to us perpetually : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”, and glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today we are celebrating the centennial anniversary of this Temple that is named for the holy Apostles Peter and Paul. This dedication to the Apostles Peter and Paul is a very significant dedication because these two apostles are expressing precisely the purpose of churches such as this one here in Alberta, Canada, at this time, and also for the past 100 years (and the future). In fact, I should say for all time.

We have just heard the Apostle Peter make his confession of faith, proclaiming Who is Christ. Our Saviour is asking : “‘Who do you say that I am?’” The Apostle Peter says directly : “‘You are the Christ’”. We can see, then, that He understands Who is this Man who is healing people, teaching everywhere. This apostle knows Whom he is following. He understands that He is the Anointed One of God who has come into the world to save the world. He does not understand everything that that means, but he does understand Who it is that he is encountering, hearing and seeing every day. For certain, the Apostle Peter recognises that He is the Promised One of God.

What sort of man is Peter, this great apostle ? We know that he was probably an older man. At the time of his being called by the Lord, he was probably middle-aged, but I do not know for sure. I am not certain if the Fathers tell us precisely how old he was. However, he was old enough to be married, and have a family, and perhaps even grandchildren. He was an ordinary man, too, who had doubts, fears, and who second-guessed himself many times. On some occasions the Apostle Peter was full of bravado, very brave and strong-minded. At other times he was “chicken”. This is precisely what the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are showing us about him. He was a normal human being who could be strong sometimes, and who could be weak other times. The Apostle Peter shows us by both this strength and weakness what our life can be like, too.

As we can see in the incident of the Apostle Peter walking on the water towards our Saviour, his whole life was focussed on trusting that Jesus is the Christ and that He is able to save him. When he volunteered to walk on the water towards the Lord, and the Lord said : “‘Come’” (Matthew 14:28), he did walk on the water. As long as he looked at the Lord, he was in fine condition. However, it was a windy day, there were waves, and the Apostle Peter became distracted. As soon as he became distracted by the wind and the waves, he began to sink. As soon as he saw that he was sinking in the water, he immediately called out for help and said : “‘Lord, save me’” (Matthew 14:30). The Lord took his hand and lifted him up. He stood again on the water as long as his attention was focussed on our Saviour (see Matthew 14:22-33).

You and I, in passing through our life, have to remember this incident. It is the Saviour who is always ready to save you and me. He is always there for us as long as we reach out, take His hand and keep our eyes on Him. As long as we focus upon ourselves, we become subject to fear. Fear always takes us down. It is fear that makes us quail. It is fear that sometimes made the Apostle Peter to be “chicken”. However, this apostle always repented, and turned away from the fear that sneaked up on him from time-to-time. He turned to our Lord again and said : “‘Lord, save me’”. The Lord always rescued and forgave, right up until the Apostle Peter’s last day when he was crucified upside down, confessing his love for Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Peter is also known for his missionary work (mostly amongst the Jewish people in whose midst he grew up). Many of them became Christians because of his example, because of the wonders of God that were wrought through him, and because of his teaching. We see the wonders of God wrought through the Apostle Peter in the Acts of the Apostles after Pentecost. Even his shadow passing on people would bring the healing of the Lord to them. I think that I understand people well enough to dare to say that people would respond first to the sort of person that he is, second to how the Lord works through him, and third, through what he says. I would say this because people are not any different now. People know that talk is cheap. It is cheaper now than it has ever been. It was already cheap in the apostle’s time. People dare only to follow what is clearly an example of a person who is living in the Truth, and witnessing to the Truth. There is only one Truth, and that is Jesus Christ. Therefore, I would dare to say that it is probably the person, the witness of the wonders of Christ, and this apostle’s teaching that would give confidence in the hearts of his hearers.

It is the same with the Apostle Paul. He grew up as a Jew, and was taught by the great rabbinic teacher, Gamaliel. The Apostle Paul was a very strict enforcer of the Law. He only came to see the truth about the Truth in every way when he encountered our Saviour on the road to Damascus. Our Lord said to him : “‘Why are you persecuting Me?’” (Acts 9:4) What our Lord said to him on the road to Damascus is important for us to keep in mind because Saul of Tarsus (as he was known then) had no idea that he was persecuting Christ. He thought that he was straightening out these unruly people (that is, the Christians).

When our Saviour was asking him : “‘Why are you persecuting Me’”, He was saying, in effect : “You are persecuting My Church”. What is the Church ? It is the Body of Christ. You and I are members of that Body of Christ. When Saul was putting in jail and torturing people who had decided to follow Christ, he did not know that he was, therefore, directly persecuting Christ Himself. However, Saul’s heart (even if it was misdirected at first) was filled with the love of God. He did love God, and that was why he was so zealous to do things right, and to make things right. However, he was distracted by the details of the Law itself. He was an enforcer of the Law itself. I could almost dare to say (just as some people sometimes do) that he neglected to recall Who is the Author of this Law, and what the Law consists of. He was unable to see in these Christians the fact that, by their lives, they were really fulfilling the Law.

The Law itself is founded not on fear, but on love. If we read the Ten Commandments which are the foundation of this Law, they are all concerned with loving God first, loving other people second, and conforming our lives to the love of God. This is the substance of the Ten Commandments. In fact, this nature of divine love and human response to it is the undercurrent of the whole Old Testament. However, we sometimes get lost amidst details.

Saul encountered our Lord on the road to Damascus. After this personal encounter with Jesus Christ, the future Apostle very quickly understood in a few days that He is the Christ, the Anointed One, the Promised One. His life changed completely. This is the meaning of repentance. Repentance is a 180 degree turn. We turn away from darkness, and we turn to light. We turn away from death, and we turn to life. We turn away from sin, and we turn to righteousness. We turn away from fear, and we turn to love. That is what repentance means. The Apostle Paul is a prime example of this sort of repentance, and a dramatic repentance his was. He immediately began to bear fruit in one way or another. Being rooted in love for the Saviour, his first inclination was simply to go and be with Him. This is why he went into the desert. He had encountered Love, and he wanted only to be in the presence of that Love, and to be undistracted by anything but being in the presence of that Love, and glorifying that Love, who is Jesus Christ.

However, his work was not done. Even though he tells us today that at some time, he had an experience of the love of the Lord such that he was caught up into Heaven, and heard wonders that are not possible to talk about (because humans do not have sufficient words for it), he, nevertheless, had to go out into the world. He had to share with the rest of the world this truth about Him who is the Truth, and who speaks everything into being in His wisdom and His truth, our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God.

He went away and began to preach the Gospel not only to the Jewish people (although he always went first in every city to a synagogue). Afterwards, he went to the Gentiles, who had no idea at first what he was talking about. He showed them the love of Jesus Christ. That is why we are here today : because of that preaching of the Apostle Paul in the area that is now called Turkey, then in the area that is now called Greece, and in the area that is now called Italy. He probably also went to Spain. We are the product of that preaching, that loving, self-sacrificing labour. He sailed all over the Mediterranean. He was shipwrecked many times. He was beaten many times because of what he was saying and doing, and he almost died a number of times. He was thrown into jail many times, also, just as he said today to us in the Epistle reading.

Some of you may have seen the recent movie, The Passion of Christ, and will recall the scene where Christ is being whipped. What the Apostle Paul received was forty of those lashes, on more than one occasion. He received forty lashes with a cat-of-nine tails. A cat-of-nine tails is made of leather straps having little lead bits in them, which rip the skin right off the person. Now you understand what the Apostle endured for the sake of Christ more than one time. He received more than one time forty lashes like this, from which a person scarcely survives. The Apostle endured all this because of the love of Jesus Christ. He preached in Turkey (it is also called Asia Minor), and all over that area.

The Apostle Andrew went north to Romania, to Georgia, and to what is now Ukraine. He even spent some time in Scotland (according to some people) because he was such a traveller. He shared the Gospel of Christ everywhere he went. We are the product of these missionary journeys because the apostles sowed the seeds, and the Gospel continued to be spread abroad more and more. We, ourselves, in particular, are the result of the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that came finally into Ukraine (Kyiv in particular), and then into all the surrounding parts of what was then Rus’.

Now the same faith of those same apostles is being, has been being, and will be lived here, on the top of this hill, from which we can almost see Edmonton. It is the same faith in the same Saviour, Jesus Christ, whom we embrace with all our heart. It is the same faith in the same Jesus Christ which encompasses the whole of our life, and embraces every part of our life. The Lord blesses the lives, and every part of the lives of all who follow Him. The Lord inspired the man who built this Temple a long time ago here on this site which is the joy of all who see it and come into it. He built this big Temple all by himself. This Temple is not constructed by all sorts of people. It is the work of one believer who was uneducated (he never went to school) but who certainly knew how to build things correctly. This is a solid building built with logs, and that is another reason why it is so comfortable. This man did this by himself, not to make a name for himself, or to be famous, but because he loved (and does love in the Kingdom to this day) our Saviour, Jesus Christ. He built a Temple by himself for our benefit. This labour of love is truly a worthy reason for us to be giving thanks here and now to the Lord.

Dear brothers and sisters, our faith in Jesus Christ is not given to us genetically. Our Faith is handed down to us from grandparents to parents to children to grandchildren, and so forth, in the context of a life that is lived in the love of Jesus Christ. We encounter the love of Jesus Christ by seeing the love of Jesus Christ active in our parents, in our relatives, in our friends, in a babushka or a dedushka or in some other person whom we see all the time worshipping in the Temple. It is caught rather than taught. It is caught through personal introduction. I know that this is the case because when I was young (and still a Lutheran), and did not know about the fulness of the Faith in Orthodoxy, I knew a number of truly God-loving persons much older than I. The memories about which I am speaking are from when I was four or five years old up until I was fifteen or so. These same persons, men and women, were always in the Temple praying, praising the Lord and giving thanks. Their witness of love showed me how to love the Saviour.

What loving the Saviour does for a person ! What hope it gives ! It sowed the seeds of love in me. Even if I did not begin my life as an Orthodox Christian, I still understand from my childhood how this works. I have heard from some babushki (who were about seventy years old) stories about how their parents would take them to the Temple all the time. They remembered with joy and love how they would sit on the floor, or sometimes lie half-asleep behind their parents’ legs while the service was going on (as at Pascha, for instance). They remembered the love for the Lord that their parents demonstrated while they were worshipping the Lord. They remembered the beauty of the singing, and they grew up to inherit this same love, this same joy, this same focus and dedication for the Saviour. They lived their lives in the same way as their parents did. Because the Orthodox Church is what it is, this experience of dedicated, Christ-loving persons can be stronger by far than the experience I had as a Lutheran in my childhood.

This love is passed on by example. The example of the Apostle Peter bore fruit thousands of times over. The same thing is true of the example of the Apostle Paul. We are very dependent on the Apostle Paul’s writings. However, the Apostle Paul did not write everything he could have written. What he gave us was only an outline of what we basically need to remember as Christians. It is upon his example that we are founded. That is why it is important for us to turn to him, and ask him to continue his prayerful, loving support for us especially in these days, because there are so many temptations to fall away from Christ in these days. It will do us good to approach these two apostles frequently, asking them for their prayers, so that we will not lose our way, but rather that we will follow their example of faithfulness to Jesus Christ. God forbid that we lose our way. However, should that happen, we would be able through their prayers to repent and to continue in the example of their faithfulness.

How were they faithful ? The Apostles Peter and Paul did different sorts of work, and sometimes they held strongly differing opinions between them. However, they overcame their differences of opinion in the love of Jesus Christ. Even if they disagreed, they still forgave each other and carried on. (We Canadians have to learn about this, because when we have a disagreement, we Canadians have a tendency to think that someone is throwing us away, and we are slow to get around to forgiving). We have lessons to learn from those apostles who forgave each other. Their witness unto death is such that their deaths occurred on the same day in Rome. On the same day, they were put to death by the Emperor Nero by different methods, but with the same result. They lived together in different ways, offering their witness and service to the Lord. They died together on the same day in different ways, but still witnessing to the love of Jesus Christ, His hope, and our life in the Kingdom.

Let us ask the Apostles Peter and Paul to pray for us and support us as we continue to try to follow in their footsteps, being obedient to the love of Jesus Christ, putting the praise and service of Him above everything else in our lives. May we glorify that same Jesus Christ whom they, to this day glorify, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

We are celebrating the Feast of Saint Seraphim, the Elder and Wonder-worker of Sarov, patron of this holy Temple, and the protector of this cemetery and of this whole community. At all times, it is important that we remember him and his example. His life was a living out of the Gospel readings and the Epistle readings that we have heard today. This is just how Saint Seraphim lived out his life. Everything is centred around the primacy of the Lord, the firstness of the Lord in one’s life. He put Jesus Christ first in his life, and everything else worked out well for him even though he was beaten by robbers, and maligned by some people who did not understand him. Still, he kept putting his trust in the Saviour, and the Saviour blessed him over and over again, and through him, blessed very many people. While he was alive, Saint Seraphim blessed many people because he spoke God’s words of love and truth to them. He asked the Lord what he should say to His people, and the Lord gave him the words to say.

Things are not different to this day. There are still amongst us people who have been touched by the prayers and intercessions of Saint Seraphim. Out of his love for Jesus Christ, and his love for the children of Jesus Christ, he continues to pray for us, and to support us by his prayers. Saint Seraphim became an example of God’s love and His healing. Just as the Lord Himself showed love and healing in His service (as we saw in the Gospel reading today), so Saint Seraphim in his life shared the love and healing of the Lord with all those around him.

Thus must you and I, in the love of our Saviour, put Jesus Christ and His service first, above everything. Then, everything after that will follow in the right order. The Lord will bring a word of truth to us that pray to Him. The Lord will bring healing through our prayers.

Saint Seraphim was a rare sort of person, but not so rare that we lack the example of others who have imitated his life. Saint Seraphim was an example of how we all should be. He is not an exception. When we look at Saint Seraphim, we see what a Christian should be like. If we want to be Christians, and say that we are Christians and have life in Christ, then we should imitate Saint Seraphim, and allow the love of the Lord to work in us in the same way.

Saint Seraphim is very much in harmony with the very first saint in North America, Saint Herman, the Elder and Wonder-worker of Alaska. They were both influenced by similar monks who loved the Lord. Towards the end of his life, Saint Herman said exactly the sort of thing that Saint Seraphim would say himself : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”. This is the way of a Christian – loving God first. Since we love God first, we can know what the Lord wants us to do, and how He wants us to be. Therefore, through the prayers of Saint Seraphim, the Elder and Wonder-worker of Sarov, and through the prayers of Saint Herman of Alaska, let us follow in the way of Christ. Let us put our Saviour first in our lives, and allow Him to be glorified in our lives in everything, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Human beings have a strong tendency to lose their sense of direction. This is mostly because we are so pre-occupied with ourselves, and also because in the course of our lives we suffer pain one way or another at the hands of each other. When this happens, we try to do things to protect ourselves. This definitely does not work in our relationship with the Lord.

We cannot protect ourselves against anything. Only the Lord can protect us. It is important that we all remember this. Today, the Apostle Paul is speaking to the members of the church in Corinth, and saying to them that they had made a very big mistake. People amongst them were saying that they belonged to the Apostle Paul or that they belonged to Apollos or some other apostle who happened to baptise them. Out of their gratitude, I suppose, they thought that they were attached emotionally to one apostle or another. However, as a result of their paying too much attention to a particular apostle, and giving their love to this apostle by himself, they took their focus off Jesus Christ. They let their sense of belonging slip away from Jesus Christ to a human being. Instead of living in the unity that is the Orthodox Christian way, they made parties by saying, in effect : “I belong to this apostle or that apostle”. Their love became distorted. It became reduced to possessiveness. The focus was taken off Christ and placed on human beings. That is why it stopped being love, in fact, and became a form of fear.

Therefore, the Apostle says to them : “I thank God that I baptised none of you except Crispus and Gaius, lest anyone should say that I had baptised in my own name” (1 Corinthians 1:14-16). He did not remember for certain, but he thought that He did not baptise more than these in all of Corinth (lest people would pay more attention to him rather than to Jesus Christ). The Apostle repeated over again that it is Jesus Christ Himself who is the Beginning and the End of everything for us all. If He is not first in our lives (but someone else is first in our lives), then we are idol-worshippers. The Apostle does not say this so explicitly, but it does boil down to that. Anything or anyone that comes between us and Jesus Christ becomes a substitute for Jesus Christ. Anything that is a substitute for Jesus Christ is, in the first place, a lie ; in the second place, an idol ; and in the third place, evil. The Apostle reminds us once again how important it is for us to keep our sense of direction and balance as Orthodox Christians. Jesus Christ must come first for us above everything else in our lives. Everything else follows afterwards. Everything else is life-giving when it is in this order – Jesus Christ first, and everything else afterwards.

Who is this Jesus Christ whom we are expected to trust ? He is the One whom we were with just now in the Gospel reading. He is healing the diseases of everyone who came to Him. He loves us so much that He is healing our diseases. This healing of diseases is not limited to 2,000 years ago when our Saviour was walking amongst us. That healing from diseases in His love is with us and for us today. We have to remember to turn to Him and accept healing from him. To underline Who He is, and what His love is for us, we see our Lord having compassion on the multitudes who had come to Him. They did not think about buying or bringing any food, so much was their total focus upon Him, so much His word their food. They did not notice how the day had slipped away. Time flew. Our Lord knew how hungry they were. Even the Sisterhood would not be able quickly to feed so many people. The Sisterhood here can do many wonderful things, but even as competent as they are, they cannot feed such a multitude.

There are 5,000 men today that our Saviour feeds with five loaves and two fish. They take up twelve baskets full of the fragments that are left over from the five loaves and the two fish. The Evangelist Matthew makes sure that we understand that there were 5,000 men there, but this does not count all the women and children. If we are going to use just basic arithmetic, then we could generously say that for every man there is a woman (his wife, or maybe his mother). There are children, and in those days families were not small families. Let us assume that there are only two children per family. Therefore, there is one man and one woman in equal number, which makes 10,000 men and women. If we add only two children for every couple (which is very much underestimating the number), we can easily come up to 20,000 people. There are very many people fed with five loaves of bread and two fish.

So many people came to the Lord because they had heard about His love. They experienced His love in His healing of their diseases and in His feeding of them. We see His love today. It is important for us to remember that His love for all those people in the Gospel reading today is the same love that He has for you and for me now, here, today. His love and His care for you and for me are no different from His care and His love for all that multitude of people. Five thousand does not sound so difficult to our modern ears (even though it is a huge number), but it is still far beyond the ability of the Sisterhood of this parish (even amplified by the Brotherhood). However, if we were to count the whole number that the Evangelist is suggesting to us (remembering the complete families present there), it is beyond anyone’s imagination to be able to feed so many people on no notice and no preparation. However, our Saviour does it.

In this context, I am grateful to God that we are also celebrating today the Feast of the great Prophet Elias. The Prophet Elias is for us an extremely strong example of how to be faithful to the Lord when, just as with him, all the circumstances around are saying that it is not sensible to be faithful. He ultimately felt that things were so difficult that there was no-one left in all Israel that was faithful. That is why after his successful confrontation with the false prophets of Baal, and after having been threatened with death by Queen Jezebel, he ran away to Mount Horeb, and there encountered the Lord. He had lost any confidence in the people of Israel but he did not lose confidence in God Himself. When the Lord met him on Mount Horeb, He said to the Prophet, as it were : “There are still 7,000 people left. You do not see them, but I know who they are. There are still 7,000 people left in Israel who have not betrayed Me, and who have not gone to the false gods. Go back to them” (see 3 Kingdoms 19:9-18). Therefore, Elias did go back to them.

The Prophet Elias is remembered amongst us not only because of the rain that he brought after the drought (although we certainly are grateful to God for what he did then), but also for his prayers now when it comes to the weather. He is remembered for raising people from the dead in the love of God. He is remembered because even hundreds of years before the Birth of our Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ, the Prophet Elias knew God’s love, knew the Promise of the Saviour, and was faithful to the Lord in the Promise of the Saviour no matter what opposition, what difficulty, what threats of death he had to face.

Let us take the Prophet Elias, his faithfulness and his love as a strong example and encouragement for ourselves when we are facing so many difficulties, pain, torments, betrayals, and opposition in life. Let us ask his intercession before the Lord to support us in our attempt to be faithful to our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Let us remember the words and exhortation of our own Saint Herman of Alaska, who said : “From this day, from this hour, from this minute, let us love God above all, and do His holy will”, and in so doing glorify with all our lives the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

During last Sunday’s Gospel reading, we were with our Lord at the time of the feeding of the 5,000 (see Matthew 14:14-21). In today’s Gospel reading, we see that He is feeding a slightly smaller multitude after having been with this particular throng for three days. Before, the wonder was wrought after only one day in the wilderness. This time, the wonder is wrought after three days, during which time He was feeding them with His words, and healing their spiritual, bodily, mental, and other illnesses. Then they become hungry, and our Lord feeds them once again. The last time, it was five loaves and two fish. This time, it is seven loaves and a few little fish, as the apostles tell Him.

The Evangelist tells us today that there are 4,000 men. We can expect that each man would likely be accompanied perhaps by his mother and/or wife, or his sisters. Then there are the children. Even if we count two children per man (which is a small family in those days), it is evident that the multitude is many times more than 4,000. This immense multitude is to be fed from seven loaves of bread and a few small fish. They take up seven full baskets afterwards (and the Evangelist says that they are big baskets). There are very many leftovers. I am certain that these baskets are even bigger than a bushel basket.

This is one more sign for you and for me of Who He is that we are serving. Who is our compassionate Lord ? We have just heard from the Apostle how everything from Him is rooted in love. His love is life-giving. His life and His love are protecting us. It is important that we remember this. Even though we know that the Lord is so close to us, we are nevertheless often falling into the formation of North American mentality which is that the Lord is “out there somewhere”, and that He is an Old Man with a white beard. This is not at all our Lord and our God. Our Lord is not at all far away. He is not separated from us, and He certainly does not look like an Old Man with a white beard. He is Love. If we want to know what God looks like, we already have the icon of our Saviour to look at, because our Saviour is the love of God taken flesh. He Himself says : “‘He who has seen Me has seen the Father’” (John 14:9).

What do we see in our Saviour ? We see love. It is not that God looks like us : it is we who look like Him. That is more to the point because He made us in His image. He made us to be like Him. He is close to us, and He is so loving as to be feeding and healing people all the time. Therefore, if we are going to be like Him, then how are we supposed to change ? We have to ask ourselves, then : “How am I measuring up to this love ?” “Do I show this love of Him who created me ?” “Whom do I look like ?” “Do I show this love in my relationships with other people, with my family, with my friends, with my neighbours in how I am living my life ?” “Is my life feeding other people with joy and hope ?” If we can share joy and hope with people around us, we are already doing something that is very important for broken, hopeless, lost people. If we share with them joy and hope, and if they can even get a taste of love from us, it gives them a reason to carry on in their lives. They might even find Christ Himself in, and through us.

Let us ask the Lord to renew in us this love, this confidence in Him, and this hope in Him. May He especially renew in us this joy so that we may be enabled in everything we do to reveal Him, to show Him to our friends, our family, and help them to understand that we are not to be afraid of Him. He is to be trusted because He is totally reliable and faithful, whereas even the best-intentioned human being will usually fail sometimes. He is to be our Source of hope and our sense of direction in life. In His love, He is always with us, and not far away from us. He is always with us, and not merely near us.

Let us ask the Lord to keep this mindfulness in our hearts always, so that in everything we may glorify Him : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, we are with our Lord as He is coming, walking on the water towards His apostles. We have seen how He has dismissed the crowds after He had been feeding them and teaching them. Now His disciples are afraid. Of course, we do not regularly (or even ever) see someone walking on the water. In His characteristic way, our Lord says : “‘It is I; do not be afraid’”. The Apostle Peter then says : “‘Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water’”. Our Saviour says : “’Come’”. The Apostle Peter does walk on the water. However, he notices that the waves around him are rough and choppy, and it is because he takes his attention away from the Saviour that he begins to sink. He says immediately : “‘Lord, save me’”. The Saviour reaches out His hand and lifts him up.

This is such an important lesson for each one of us. Very often as we are passing through our lives, we encounter all sorts of difficulties, and sometimes very painful events. Very often we are saying : “O Lord, why did You do this to us ?” We are like this : we immediately blame God for everything that goes wrong. However, if we are going to grow up and be mature Christians, our attitude has to be different. We have to understand that if we are in this world with Christ, there will be opposition to us because darkness opposes the Light. If we understand that we are in such a position, that is the time to cry out to the Lord : “Help me. Save me, O Saviour”. At other times, negative spiritual pressures are arriving, not because we are so good ourselves in our lives, but because we sometimes invite this by deliberately turning our eyes away from the Lord (either because we are lazy or because we are afraid). Then it is most important to call out to the Saviour, and, in this case we have to say more than just : “Save me, O Saviour”. I think we have to say as well : “I am sorry. Save me, O Saviour”. However it is, our lives must be focussed on Jesus Christ, and Him only. This is because the Lord is love, and He loves you and me. He is the Giver of life, and the Giver of light to you and to me.

Today, we are celebrating the memory of two persons whose lives were consumed with love for Jesus Christ. These are two persons who in their lives give the example of having received freely, and of giving freely. The first is the Great Martyr and Unmercenary Physician, Panteleimon. Through his prayers, people are to this day being healed by the Saviour. I know one person who is here today who one time was called by Saint Panteleimon from his icon so that Saint Panteleimon could bring the Lord’s healing.

The other memory that we are keeping today is that of Saint Herman of Alaska. On this day is celebrated his glorification. In a few hours (because of the time difference), Metropolitan Jonah will be serving the Feast on Spruce Island, in Alaska. Earlier this week, Metropolitan Jonah was in a part of Alaska that is quite far north. In the course of this past week in the e-mail reports, I saw that His Beatitude was serving a Panikhida for Matushka Olga Michael in the village of Kwethluk, an Aboriginal village. Matushka Olga was a midwife when she was alive. As she was living as a widow (and even when her husband was living), she was caring for needy children. She was making clothes for needy children, and she was also making food for children. Particularly with the food, she was very sensitive about the dignity of the children. She was making the food, and leaving it where the children could take it and not feel that it was being given to them, somehow. She was a very compassionate woman, a spiritual descendant of Saint Herman. Since her death, many people are finding that the Lord is healing them through her prayers. This is happening not only in Alaska, but also in the United States where she has become very well known. She is helping many women who have trouble with childbirth, with children, and with their husbands, also. Matushka Olga has been very helpful with her prayers since she has gone to the Lord.

There were many hundreds of people participating in the Panikhida last week. It was written that after “Memory Eternal”, the people spontaneously began to sing many different hymns of Pascha. It was also written that during the Panihkida (which happened in the Temple), there were only three candles lit in the Altar beyond the Metropolitan, but during the Panikhida the actual light there was very, very much stronger than would be provided by only three candles. I am saying all this because I have been speaking about how the Lord loves us. In these days when we are having so many difficulties in our lives as Orthodox Christians, the Lord is showing signs such as this through simple persons like Matushka Olga so that we will remember that He does indeed love us. The Lord truly is with us. He cares about us. This is why He is healing people through the prayers of Matushka Olga. This is why he is healing people through the prayers of Saint Herman of Alaska. This is why He is healing people through the prayers of Saint Panteleimon.

With the Apostle Peter, let us reach out our hand to our Saviour, accept His love, and allow Him to heal our hearts and give us strength to stand on the stormy seas of our life. May our Saviour enable us to stand with peace and joy, and with our whole lives glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

On this day we are celebrating the Falling Asleep of the Mother of God which is the Patron Feast of this parish. When we are celebrating the Falling Asleep of the Mother of God, it shows that we do not doubt that she died. We can truly say that she is the first fruits of the Resurrection, also. After she died, the apostles came to her tomb. What happened ? Her tomb was empty.

In her life, the Mother of God was always obedient in every way to the will of God. From the very beginning of her life, her life consisted of saying “Yes” to the will of God. She was always trying to know the will of God and to do the will of God. By the Grace of the Holy Spirit, and by the mercy of God, she was able to do precisely this in her life. For the most part, her life was hidden. In fact, in the Gospels, there is not all that much written about her except for the most important details. Yet, even though her life was so hidden, she became, and is, the most influential of all the persons in human history and in Church life, apart from our Saviour.

Because of her humility, she has been exalted into Heaven. She is the victorious Champion and General of the angelic host. She is a protector of the faithful, and a protector of the Church. Because of her humility, she is in herself a sign of what the Church is supposed to be. Our Saviour said : “‘Whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant’” (Matthew 20:26). This is precisely what happened with the Mother of God. She served God by giving birth to the Only-begotten Son of God. She serves us, and continues with her Son to serve us by praying for us, and protecting us by her prayers.

This is perhaps the most important lesson we all need to learn as we are trying to live a Christian life. The Orthodox way is not the way of the world. Our way is not to be (or try to be) greatly exalted. Our way is to serve, and do the will of God, whatever that may be. It is up to the Lord to put us in a higher position if He wants to, so that we can serve Him effectively according to His perfect knowledge of us.

Let us ask the Mother of God to give us the strength to be able to live lives that are pleasing to her Son, as her life is pleasing still to her Son. May our lives be filled with love for Jesus Christ. Thus, may we be able to shine with this love as the Mother of God shines with this love. May our lives be filled with the Grace of the Holy Spirit. May our lives, through the prayers of the Mother of God, be a proclamation of Who is Jesus Christ, and glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The healing that we see today takes place just after our Lord came down from Mount Tabor at the time of the Transfiguration. We see that people are very concerned about this boy who was in such trouble. It is necessary for us to understand clearly that not by any means does every case of epilepsy involve demonic possession – not by any means. Almost all cases of epilepsy are simply short-circuiting in the brain that can be helped by medication or by the Lord’s intervention and healing.

However, what was happening to this boy was not what we understand to be ordinary epilepsy. Demonic possession manifests itself sometimes in ways that look like epilepsy. We can tell just by what is said by the father about what is going on that this is not simply a usual case of epilepsy. When did these attacks occur ? What is happening with these attacks ? The father says to our Saviour that many times his son was thrown into the water (that is, to attempt to drown him) or thrown into the fire (that is, to attempt to burn him alive). Those are primary characteristics (there are others) by which it is clear that this is not a medically understood case of epilepsy (from which many people suffer), but this is, in fact, an attack of the devil. The attacks of the devil are geared towards getting rid of us, putting out the light of Christ in us, and (as it were) putting us to death – maybe not always physically, but certainly spiritually.

Our Saviour, knowing what is necessary, delivers the boy from the chains of the devil. The boy is restored immediately. Let us recall how the apostles ask our Saviour : “‘Why could we not cast it out?’” He replies (in effect) : “You are out of focus. If you had faith even as small as a grain of mustard seed, you could move mountains”. Then He says : “‘This kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting’”. It is not prayer and fasting necessarily that expels the devil, but it is the life of prayer and fasting that enables a person to discern where the devil is at work (and where the devil is not particularly at work). This prayer and fasting enables a person to discern right from wrong, and good from evil, and produces, by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, the ability to comprehend how things really are in our lives and in the lives of others. I think that our Lord is saying essentially to the apostles that if our heart were properly attuned to the Grace of the Holy Spirit, we would understand instantly what is the will of God, and we would be able to do His will.

One of our big problems in living our Christian lives is our attempt to do things by ourselves, much as children insist to begin on doing at about the age of three. We do not very often remember to consult the Lord first to ask Him what He wants done in this or that case. In fact, our lives really need to be focussed on the Lord all the time, and not only in particular cases. All the time, every day we need to be focussed on the Lord and asking Him : “What is Your will in this or that situation ?” This is why it was difficult for the apostles to cast out the demon that was afflicting this boy, because they were not in tune in this way with the Grace of the Holy Spirit. Their hearts were not yet formed so that they would be able to know the will of God well enough, so that they would be able to act as the Saviour acts. The Saviour acts always in love, and always in accordance with the will of the Father.

If we, too, are going to be living in accordance with the will of the Father, our lives need to be more and more united in love for the Lord, more and more focussed on the Lord so that we can accomplish His will. We need to be rooted more and more deeply in the love of Jesus Christ. Accomplishing His will in our days and in our society does not seem so often to include the expulsion of evil spirits. I wonder what that means. The acts of the devil are everywhere, and his activities against the light of Christ are everywhere. Why are we not encountering exorcisms very often in our society ? I rather think that in our society people who are so afflicted are usually medicated so thoroughly that they do not manifest the symptomatology of this, and we do not recognise it. Regardless of this sort of concern with symptomatology, my main concern is not about how frequently we are exorcising.

My main concern as a bishop is how are we loving the Lord. That is our main concern. How are we loving our Saviour ? How are we conforming our lives in love to the love of our Saviour ? How are we identifying ourselves with Him in our way of life ? If we are living lives of prayer and fasting ; if we are living lives that are cultivating the love of the Lord in our hearts, and awareness of Him at all times in our hearts, we also with the apostles, in obedience to the love of the Saviour, by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, will be able to do these things that the Lord says that we should be able to do. Let us not forget that our Lord said : “‘He who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do’” (John 14:12). He said that not only to the apostles. He says that to you and to me. By our prayers, by our faithfulness to our Saviour, the Lord can accomplish wonders amongst us, around us, and through this community. By the Grace of the Holy Spirit, by our faithfulness, the love of the Lord, His peace and His joy can be felt in this city through our witness of love and joy.

We see how the Lord loves us, how He delivers us from the chains of sin and evil, as He delivers this boy today. We see how the Lord is faithful in His promise of love and His presence with us. Let us ask Him to refresh our confidence in Him. Taking the example of the Mother of God, according to the exhortation of Saint Herman of Alaska, let us “from this day, from this hour, from this minute love God above all, and do His holy will”, and in so doing glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today our Lord is giving us some very direct and hard words to hear. At the same time, in the middle of the hard words to hear, He is showing His compassion to us. This compassion has been with us all along. The hard words come in the context of marriage. Our Lord is saying very clearly that marriage is a serious business.

The man and the woman become one flesh (see 1 Moses [Genesis] 2:24). They become one body (as it were), one unit together. This oneness implies the intercommunion of their hearts and spirits. This is an extremely important detail for us to remember. It is not that something magical is happening in that when the couple marries this unity comes into being instantly. It is a process of becoming one. Even more, it is the fruit of the commitment made one to another in love. When people get married to each other, obviously they do this because they love each other. There are also arranged marriages. I have been told that in arranged marriages, although the two persons may not love each other at the beginning, after time passes they do come to love each other. In this context I always remember the famous exchange in Fiddler on the Roof between Tevye and his wife. They had never discussed love in all the 25 years they were married. After 25 years, they finally began to talk about it. They have an exchange, analysing their behaviour for the past 25 years in sacrificing for each other and in raising children. They come to the conclusion that they must love each other.

The fact is that love does grow. People make a commitment at the beginning, and the love grows. In this love (and especially when we are talking about love in Christ), this love brings unity. Not only does it bring unity, but it also brings union, as our Saviour is saying to us today. It is a sacred union which ought not to be broken for any trivial reason. It probably ought not to be broken at all if possible. However, if it is inevitable that it must be broken, it should not be broken for a trivial reason.

That is why our Saviour is answering in the way that He does in the Gospel reading today, because the adjustment in the Law of Moses had become such that a man could put away his wife on a whim. As we just heard in the reading today, the Pharisees are asking : “‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?’” We could also put it the other way, too, nowadays : “Can a woman divorce her husband for just any reason ?” Be that as it may, there is nothing trivial about marriage at all. The Lord emphasises the significance of marriage not only because of this union between a husband and wife (which is so important), but also because the union in Christ, in God is so important. Marriage, itself, is a reflection of the Trinity. There are not only two persons in a marriage. God is in this marriage, too. Christ is standing in the middle of this marriage. There are three persons involved here. The unity is made truly strong in the love of Jesus Christ. The family in itself in its interior life is demonstrating the nature and the love of the Holy Trinity.

The Holy Trinity is always life-giving, life-creating, generous, and full of hospitality. So is the Christian marriage. Let us recall the words from the marriage service which say that it is expected that God’s blessings on this family are going to be shared with those round about, and with people who are in need. We are asking for abundance for the couple who are married so that they will be able to be generous in sharing this abundance, and will help other people to share their abundance likewise. I have known many families that have had an open-door policy precisely in this spirit so that if anyone drops in at an appropriate time (and there are very many humorous stories about this), he or she would be invited to share dinner. I am referring to the fact that there are certain people who so much enjoy this hospitality that they always happen to show up at the right time frequently (and then maybe even regularly).

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.

In giving the rules for divorce (which are very few, and restricted), our Lord is also saying that even this was not always so. He emphasises again to us that when God created us, He created us to live in this unbroken and unbreakable harmony and community of love which gives life, always focussed on the Lord. He says to us that some people cannot receive this word, but for those who can receive this word, let them receive it. Our Lord is saying to us that He understands that it could be too difficult for some people. The Church has been living out this word ever since because of the weaknesses of human beings, and the need for compassion for human beings in weakness. The Church has lived out this compassionate flexibility. However, this has always been in the context of what the Lord’s saying implies, which is that love between a man and a woman in the context of marriage is sacred, and should not be broken as far as is humanly possible. Everything must be done in order to reconcile before a fracture might occur. Mutual forgiveness is far more important than waging who is right and who is wrong on each other. Mutual forgiveness (which is not at all a one-way street) is far more important than anything.

In our family, our mother spoke to us very many times about how our parents lived. (For this I have always been grateful.) They were living according to the very short saying of the Apostle Paul : “Do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26). My mother said that during all the 25 years that God gave them before our father died, they always solved any disagreement they had before they went to bed to sleep. Right at the beginning, they apparently found that if they did not resolve the disagreement at the time, and they went to bed with growliness in their heart, it was still there when they woke up in the morning (and it had become worse because it had been festering). They said that it was better to clear it up immediately even though it meant a night short of sleep. That is why I keep saying (in the context of what our Lord is saying to us) that this mutual forgiveness is more important than anything.

The apostles are saying to the Lord that these words are very difficult, and that maybe one should not get married at all. The Apostle says that there are some people who do not marry because of their love for the Lord. Single-mindedly and single-heartedly they are going to serve Him without any distraction. However, in a family, it can be so as well. What matters is the service of the Lord. If the husband and wife together are serving the Lord as one, this becomes a very, very strong community and witness which could be much stronger than the witness of the single person dedicated to the Lord. It is important for us to remember that.

Let us give thanks to the Lord for His compassionate mercy. He is showing us that, regardless of everything difficult, His maximally abundant compassion is not lacking. Glory to God for His love for us. Glory to the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

This parable on forgiveness that our Lord addresses to us today came after the question of the Apostle Peter : “‘How often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?’” (Matthew 18:21) Then our Lord tells this parable about the king who is owed an enormous amount of money. At first, the debtor is going to be sold, with his wife and his children and all that he had, and thus payment be made. However, when the debtor does not forgive a person who owes him a paltry sum of money, the king takes back his forgiveness and sends him to the prison keepers this time, until the debt should be paid. Our Lord says to us : “‘So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses’”.

It is very important for us to remember this warning that the Lord gives us about forgiveness. Forgiveness is something that we all find quite difficult to do, and yet our Saviour is saying to us that this is not an option. It is the fundamental way of life for a Christian. So much is it so, that this forgiveness is mentioned in the Our Father in precisely the same sort of terms that we heard in the parable today. The prayer says that we are asking our heavenly Father to forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. (“As we have forgiven” is the exact translation.) We are asking God to forgive us as much as we forgive everyone else. When we are praying this prayer, we are acknowledging that if we do not forgive other people, we cannot expect God to forgive us. Everything is exactly in proportion.

What about this forgiveness ? Yesterday, the Lord was speaking to us about the necessity to maintain a loving relationship in marriage. He was speaking about how essential this relationship of love in marriage is, and how important it is to avoid, if at all possible, breaking this relationship of marriage. People who are married have to have experience, then, of this forgiveness on a daily basis. When people commit themselves to each other in the relationship of marriage and they become one (as our Saviour says), they are expressing in their love, and in their union, the love of God. Christ is in the middle of that marriage. They are expressing this love. As we all know, there is a Mr-down-below whom I nickname (at the instigation of an old friend) “Big Red”, who specialises in dividing. I have not yet encountered a marriage in which the couple was not tempted in many ways by the Divider.

The commitment in love is tested over and over again. As a result of this, I have heard from experienced married couples (including my own parents), that it is very important to follow the exhortation of the Apostle Paul, and to end every day forgiving one another (see Ephesians 4:26). If there is any sort of misunderstanding, disagreement, suspicion between the husband and the wife at the end of the day, it is essential to talk it through, pray it through, and find the way to mutual forgiveness and harmony. This is more important than sleep. If anyone does not forgive before going to sleep, the bitterness of whatever it is will be there upon rising in the morning, and it will already have festered and even swollen overnight. It will poison the next day, and it will continue to fester and swell. It is crucial, says our Saviour, that we live in this state of constant forgiveness with each other, married or not.

There is more yet to be said about forgiveness. When we hear people in Canadian society generally talking about forgiveness, it seems that they may well be implying that forgiveness means merely by determination and an act of will to put aside the pain, the grudge, the resentment. (C S Lewis reports that his mentor, George MacDonald, said that it is possible even to become a grudge.) Thus, they suppose that just by sheer will power the pain and the anger and the resentment are put in a closet, hidden away, covered up, denied and forgotten. However, things that are painfully said or done are not so easily put away, forgotten or let go. Pain from very sharp and untrue things that are said lasts a long time. What do we do ? How do we cope with this ? The Lord, Himself, has given us the sense of the way, which I keep repeating over and over again, as it is the only way I know. Saint Silouan and Archimandrite Sophrony both point out that in the words of our Saviour in the Sermon on the Mount (see Matthew 5:44), the attitude of what to do is given to us. We have to bless and pray for those who hurt us and persecute us. How do we do that ? They both say that the simple way, and in fact, the effective way is to say repeatedly : “Lord, have mercy” for the person who has hurt us.

Whatever is the language of our heart is the language in which we have to say this prayer. In French it has to be : “Seigneur sois miséricordieux” (and not the shortcut “Prends pitié” or “Aie pitié”) ; in Greek : “Kyrie eleison” ; in Slavonic : “Gospodi pomilui”, and in Romanian : “Doamne milueste”. Sad to say, English does not have a very good way of saying this prayer. “Lord have mercy” in the way that we understand it popularly is not so good. We have to translate the meaning of “Lord have mercy” before we can even start praying this prayer. “Lord have mercy” does not mean that we are asking God to spare us from punishment, and to hold back on His wrath against us. Sadly, that is how most people understand this prayer.

This prayer really means that we are asking the Lord to be present in His loving-kindness to us, and to whomever we are praying for. We are asking Him to be present in His love. When we are asking Him to be present in His love, we are not asking Him to do anything in particular. We are not telling Him what to do. We are simply asking Him to be amongst, between, and in us. When I am praying for people who have hurt me, asking the Lord to address it, to be there, to be with us, and in us, the Lord’s healing does come to my irritated heart. Peace can come to my disturbed and perturbed heart. The more I feel tempted to be irritated or upset about something someone else did or said, the more I should say this prayer, asking the Lord to be present, and allowing His peace to come into my heart. When this is occurring, and the peace is arriving in my heart, the Lord is also changing the relationship between me and the person who has hurt me. This is possible for each and every one of us. This is the way the Lord has given us to achieve this forgiveness. We cannot simply forget something. However, the Lord can heal it. The Lord can change the character of the memory, and the Lord can actually bring a change to the other person, too.

I still love to repeat the example of Saint Juvenaly, the priest-martyr of Alaska, and the effects of his forgiveness of the people who were killing him. The people who were shooting arrows at him thought that he was crazy because it looked to them as though he were waving his hands as if to brush away mosquitoes. In fact, he was blessing the people with his hand. He was blessing the people who were killing him. However, the fruit of that blessing in his death is that there are people in that part of Alaska who have an oral tradition alive to this day of how their families came to Christ after the death of Saint Juvenaly. There are still Orthodox Christians there to this day (about 200 years later) because their families embraced the forgiveness that was extended by Saint Juvenaly, the priest-martyr, to them and their ancestors. This forgiveness has many fruits in the deaths of other martyrs, but this example is “close to home”, and that is why I like to talk about it so frequently.

For us, forgiveness is not an option. Forgiveness is a way of life. It is our way of life, because our way is Christ. He, Himself, forgave everyone from the Cross. He forgave His killers. He forgave those who were mocking Him. He forgave His betrayers. He forgave everyone from the Cross. It is our way as Christians to find the way to live every day in the way of forgiveness in Christ. Let us follow the example of our Saviour, involving Him in every minute in every relationship in which we are engaged, in every action, and reaction. In so doing, may we glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

On this day, we are remembering the Beheading of the Holy Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John. This martyrdom occurred partly because the Forerunner was pointing out the corruption of King Herod’s personal life in a public way, and the king felt embarrassed. Nevertheless, he respected the Prophet. However, King Herod was immorally and illegally married to his brother’s wife. This incestuous wife, Herodias, bore the Prophet a bitter grudge. A time came when King Herod was “in his cups” (as the saying goes), and he promised Salome to give her anything that she asked. However, she did not know what to ask, and asked her mother. Her mother said : “‘Give me John the Baptist’s head here on a platter’” (Matthew 14:8). Therefore, King Herod was asked by Salome to provide this. We are told in the Gospel that he was very sorry that he had to do this (he was obviously a conflicted man), but at the same time, a promise is a promise from a king, and therefore he had to order that it be so.

It seems that we do not remember the Forerunner nearly enough, even though in this country, with the arrival of the French, he has always been considered as a sort of Canadian patron saint of this country. It seems to me that many people do not remember him except for the fact that he existed, in much the same way as people who live in a town in Québec called Sainte-Jean-Chrysostome, consider it to be merely some arbitrary name. However, they have no idea who Saint John Chrysostom is. Therefore, people tend not to pay attention to the importance of the Forerunner : what he said, what he did, how he was, what is his example to us. Above all, he reveals to us the love of God. The fact that he was a cousin of our Saviour is a significant factor. His love for God is clearly manifest. Why else would one withdraw into the desert, and live on honey and beans (or insects, depending on how one chooses to interpret the word). I rather think the word is more likely to be “beans” rather than “insects” because locusts only come sometimes.

The Forerunner’s example is for us like that of Saint Mary of Egypt – living in the desert, and depending completely on God for his sustenance. He lived in the desert out of love for the Lord, and he depended on the Lord completely for everything. He told everyone around him to repent. What does this “repenting” mean of which the Prophet is telling us ? It does not mean that we are expected to be going around and beating our breast, bashing ourselves for our sins, and always being self-condemning (as many people seem to think). It means rather that we should turn about. We should make a 180 degree turn. We should turn away from our selfishness to selflessness. We should turn from self-love to selfless love. We should turn from darkness to light. We should turn from death to life. This is what the Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John is talking about. He is telling us clearly that God is calling us.

We see the example of our Saviour today, when He heals the two blind men at the side of the road, even when the crowd was pushing them away. He asks them : “‘What do you want Me to do for you?’” They ask to receive their sight. Out of compassion, He gives them their sight. What do they do ? They follow Him, having received their sight. They receive not only their physical sight, but sight in their hearts. They recognise clearly Who He is. They knew already that He is the Son of David. Now this title “Son of David” more clearly makes sense because of this sign of their healing. They understand that He is the One who is sent to redeem the world. They understand that He is the Christ. They understand that He is indeed the Saviour.

In today’s Epistle reading, the Apostle says that the Lord chooses the insignificant ones of the earth in order to confound the wise. Why does He do this ? The Forerunner is an insignificant person in terms of the world. It is understood that we cannot get anywhere in society by living in the desert, living on beans and honey, wearing some skins or old rags, walking around with a stick, and telling people to turn about. We cannot get anywhere in the world with that sort of behaviour. We cannot get anywhere in the world by living in the desert as Saint Mary of Egypt did either, because the way of the world is completely obsessed with power. It is focussed on grasping and struggling to get to the top of the pile of something.

When I was in Norway again this year, as always we go to the Frogener Park, which is a big sculpture park with all sorts of controversial (for Norwegians) sculptures by Vigeland. The sculptures are about 100 years old, but because Norwegians are who they are, they are still controversial. However, in the middle of this park there is a very significant pillar. It is a very tall granite pillar which is made up of human bodies all intertwined with each other, going to the top of this thing. We can see people struggling to get to the top, and my cousins (who are artists) pointed out to me : “What happens at the top ?” What happens at the top is that as soon as a person gets to the top, there is someone else dragging him or her down. That is what it is to get to the top, and to be on the top. There is a continual circulation on this pillar of people pulling their way to the top, and others pulling them down, and their having to go back up again. All this struggle is for nothing – this pillar does not go anywhere. It is merely a pillar standing by itself in the middle of a park. Vigeland says that this pillar stands for how our life is without the Lord : struggling to get to “the top”, pretending to be someone special and powerful. In this situation of tangled struggle, a person could ask : “Who am I ? I am simply one person who is pulled down instantly by someone who is trying to throw me out of the way. Then I have to struggle to get back up again”.

This is not the way of the Christian at all. We call ourselves “wise”, but we are not wise if we are struggling to be “somebody” or “something”, or achieve this or that without the Lord. If we really want to be who God created us to be, then it is important for us to give up ideas of grandeur, and to remember instead that our Saviour came as the Servant of all. He, as the Servant of all, does such things as heal these blind men today. He touches your heart and my heart, broken, and in pain. He comes to us in our need and He meets our need. He heals our diseases. He unites us to Himself. He gives us Life.

It is necessary for us to remember this, because if we do not make ourself into something, then the Lord will make us into the person He created us to be in the context of His love. Greatness is found in lowliness. Who is the greatest among women ? It is the Mother of God. What did she sing ? She sang : For He has looked attentively upon the humility of His bond-maiden (Luke 1:48). It is essential that we Christians remember this important lesson : I do not need to be anyone particularly significant. I need to be a servant of the Lord, and do His will. This is what greatness is, anyway – doing His will. There is life in doing His will. There is life in serving Him. There is life in helping people around us. This life is much more significant than having some sort of power, a big name in society, and so forth. Being a real human being who loves other human beings, who serves other human beings in the love of Jesus Christ – that is what is important.

That is why the Prophet and Forerunner is so great and so central for us. That is why (even if we seem to be constantly forgetting about him or neglecting his memory) he is always prominent in our iconography, always put before us by the Tradition of the Church, so that we will remember. Even if we are so forgetful, we will be prodded to remember, because the Prophet is always before us. The Lord makes him great because of his humility. He continues to intercede for people as the other saints continue to intercede for people and to bring to us the Lord’s healing power. To the all-holy Trinity be glory : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

This morning, the Apostle is saying to us in the Epistle to the Corinthians that he passed on to us what he, himself, received about the Resurrection of Christ. This handing on is not merely some sort of philosophical principle about Who is Jesus Christ. It is not some sort of intellectual proposition. What he is handing on to us is his personal encounter and experience of Jesus Christ, who rose from the dead. This is essential for us to remember. The personal encounter with the Risen Christ is of paramount importance.

The Apostle is speaking to us about all the personal difficulties that he faced in the course of his following Christ, his obeying Christ, his serving Christ, his loving relationship with Christ. Earlier this week, in this context, I was reminded (by a priest who was talking to me about something completely different) that the elder in the Wisdom of Sirach says to his son : “My son, if you draw near to serve the Lord, prepare your soul for temptation” (Wisdom of Sirach 2:1). We can see, therefore, that a long time ago it was understood what is the consequence of following the Lord. The Apostle Paul had his own personal experience of the temptations that come when a person is determined and desiring to serve the Lord because of love. It is this response of love that nurtures the desire to serve the Lord. This temptation is often expressed in adversities. The adversity does not come from the Lord. It comes from the forces of darkness : from the Opponent and his cohorts who wish to take away the blessing from us in order to impose darkness upon us, and maintain the reign of fear by which the world is enslaved until this very day. The Apostle understood that it is our relationship of love with the Lord that sets us free. It sets us free from all fear. It sets us free from all death. It sets us free from any sort of enslavement, and it gives us strength in the Lord. If we recall at the end of the Epistle reading today, the Apostle says, in effect : “It was not I that did anything anyway ; it was the Grace of God acting in me that did everything”.

It is important for you and for me to remember this, because in our North American culture, we are formed from the womb to be “do-it-yourselfers”, and very much prepared to be responsible for everything ourselves. In this context, we are formed in this mentality to such an extent that we generally turn to God for help only when we are desperate. Too much are we following a distortion of that old saying : “God helps those who help themselves”. Coming from Scottish ancestry, I heard that many times when I was growing up. However, this saying is not just as it appears at face value. God definitely helps us. He expects us to do our part, but it is not that we have to start something, and then bring God into it if we have some sort of problem. In the Orthodox way, our responsibility is to start everything with a blessing. That is why The Book of Needs has blessings for almost everything under the sun. Father Schmemann, of blessed memory, used to make a little joke about this. In his lectures, he would invent things, saying that he hoped that perhaps one day The Book of Needs would have a prayer to cover different events such as, for example, when your cow fell into a well, or something like this. The point is not that there actually is such a prayer in The Book of Needs for such an occasion, but that it should be there. There is no aspect of our life that is not covered by the Lord, and that does not interest the Lord. There is no aspect of our lives about which He does not care. He cares about everything. The Orthodox response, therefore, has always been (since the time of Christ, and of the apostles) to ask the Lord to bless everything as soon as we start it. From Orthodox cultures, there are countless examples of such things as the blessing of every ingredient before we start cooking ; blessing the food before it goes into the oven, and when it comes out ; blessing bread with the sign of the Cross before we cut it (and often cutting the bread in the sign of the Cross when we cut it) ; blessing a car when we get one (whether it is new or new to us) ; blessing the journey every time we get into the car and when we get out, and thanking God for our safe arrival. Bringing the blessing of God to absolutely everything is the way the Orthodox live out this saying : “God helps those who help themselves”.

The Lord must be first in everything, and not merely an afterthought. God is not on some shelf somewhere. He is not reading the newspaper while the clock is ticking on the shelf. He is involved in our lives intimately. That is why we have our Lord, Himself, reiterating today the continuity of all our experience of God from the beginning by His repeating the foundations of the Commandments to this rich young man. The young man asks : “‘What good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?’” Everything in the Ten Commandments is based on the response of love to God. It is not the imposition of rules. The Ten Commandments are the expression of how a person lives who loves God. The Ten Commandments begin with the love of God. The summary is : “You shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart, from your whole soul, and from your whole power” (5 Moses [Deuteronomy] 6:5). When our Lord says that “you shall love your neighbour as yourself” (3 Moses [Leviticus] 19:18), He is extending the application of all those specific things said in the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments, expressing how a person lives who loves God, are expressing the experience of God by human beings all the way back to Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden experienced God as love. God has never shown us anything about Himself apart from this love. It is the Deceiver who introduced fear to us at the very beginning. It is the Deceiver who continues to put doubts in our mind which darken the heart and which then draw us away from the Lord. Then we forget, and we get hurt. Then we wake up, and remember that the Lord loves us. Then we turn to Him, and say : “I am sorry”. The Lord, like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, embraces us because He has been waiting for us all this time. In fact, it is He who helps us to say : “I am sorry”.

All this is the context of the Orthodox Christian life which is a life lived in the environment of love for the Lord. Because of such love, it is possible for us, even after we have fallen away and forgotten, to come to our senses. Then we are able, because of this divine love, to turn about (turning 180 degrees), turning away from darkness and back to the light. We turn back to life, and away from death. This is our way. This is the way of repentance, and the way of living in the love of Jesus Christ.

Brothers and sisters, the Lord is constantly giving us much hope and much encouragement. Through the words of the Apostle, He continues to strengthen us. Myriads of saints have been and are being our examples. We have to say “10,000” in English, but the Greeks have a word for it (as the saying goes) : “myriad” is the word, which I like so much better. Myriads and myriads of saints have been and are being our examples of how to live in the love of Jesus Christ. Frankly, that is one reason why I am grateful to God that He lets me go on pilgrimages from time to time. When I am on a pilgrimage, I encounter not only the relics of many saints, but I encounter the life in Christ that is existing and going on in the Churches elsewhere in the world. I see people just like our people, living their lives through all the temptations, the struggles and adversities that Big Red throws up against us. They, like us, still are putting their trust in the Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Let us remember, brothers and sisters, that love for Jesus Christ is all that matters. Living our lives in the love of Jesus Christ is the essence of our Orthodox tradition. We are here today because of the love of Jesus Christ. We are worshipping our God, who is love, because of the love of Jesus Christ. Through the prayers of the Mother of God, and through the prayers of the holy Prophet, Forerunner and Baptist John, whose death we have just celebrated, let us ask the Lord to strengthen us in this love. May He enable us to persevere in this love, and in every aspect of our lives to glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The monks who are living here are following in the footsteps of Saint Anthony the Great. What does this mean ? It means that they are living alone with one aim, which is to find the way in their lives to be pleasing to God. They are not trying to please themselves. Rather, they are trying to put the Lord first in their lives and to allow the Lord to look after them.

That is just what Saint Anthony was doing in the Egyptian desert. In this desert people came in due course and tried to live close to Saint Anthony. He tried to move away from them. They tried to move close to him again. This was because the love of God was radiating from him, and they wanted to be near this love of God. If God were to give us someone like Saint Anthony the Great now in Canada, instead of trying to crowd closer to him to take God’s blessing from being near him, we Canadians likely would treat him as a “kook”, and consider him socially deranged. Probably we would not benefit from him at all, because of our tendency to practice amateur psychoanalysis. We could, perhaps, eventually learn, but it could well be too late.

The nature of the life of our Church in Canada as a whole has very much changed (in a good direction) in the last twenty or thirty years. About thirty years ago, people were losing hope. Things were starting to fall apart because, I think, people got distracted. However, people’s sense of direction is getting better now. People are remembering the Lord better now. It does not hurt at all that in Canada there are a number of monastic communities standing in our midst, helping us to remember what is first. It is more to the point to remember Who is first.

Monks are not some sort of experts with Ph.D.s in spirituality. They are persons who have turned to the Lord. They have decided to follow Him, as the apostles did when the Lord said to them : “‘Follow Me’” (Matthew 9:9). They are doing this because the Lord, in His love, touched their hearts and they responded in their hearts. They decided to turn away from the way of the world. They decided to turn to the Lord and allow Him to guide them. Because of their work of love and repentance (that most favourite word of mine), the Lord is touching people’s hearts. Because the monks in this country are trying to follow the Lord, many other people are gaining courage to try to follow Him as well, to follow the same path of love, the path of selflessness. This path is not the “me-myself-and-I-way” but the “What do You bless, Lord” way.

All the monks that I have encountered in Canada (and we have many) have been a source of encouragement for me as a bishop, and these monks here (who are so close to us both geographically and personally) have been just such an encouragement. I know that they are an encouragement for you as well. It is not all that easy following the Lord. The life of Saint Anthony very definitely shows what happens when anyone decides to follow the Lord. You-know-who-down-below does not like it, and does everything he can to discourage and distract us from following the Lord. He puts every possible block and obstacle in our way. In the case of Saint Anthony, he suffered physical violence from “down-below”. Not every monk receives that sort of treatment, but it is definitely not unknown even to this day. Neither does anyone know why one person gets the treatment from Big-Red-down-below that Saint Anthony got, whereas other people persevere along rather a different course (at least without physical violence). However, the point is that whatever is happening to them, they have supreme trust in the love of the Lord. Through their personal experience in love, they have supreme confidence that what the Apostle says to the Hebrews (as he says to us) is absolutely true : “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). Jesus Christ never changes. His love is always the same for us. He is always constant. He is always faithful. His love is life-giving. That is why we continue to persevere, just as these monks are continuing to persevere through every sort of difficulty. Our Saviour is with us. “God is with us” (as we sing in Great Compline so frequently and with such enthusiasm).

Brothers and sisters, we are gathered together today at the pilgrimage in honour of Saint Anthony on the anniversary of the founding of this hermitage. We are gathered together because of the love of Jesus Christ, and gathered here in the love of Jesus Christ. As we receive the holy Body and Blood of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, let us ask Him to multiply the Grace of the Holy Spirit in our hearts so that our faithfulness will not falter, and that we will persevere in His love. May we be enabled to support the monks, as the monks support us all in love, that we will bring each other all together, in the love of Jesus Christ, by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, into the Kingdom of Heaven where we will glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

When the Lord is giving this parable about the vinedressers, He is speaking to you and to me, also. When we are hearing words such as these, we have to ask ourselves : “How am I fulfilling my responsibilities in Christ’s vineyard ?” “How am I living up to Christ’s call to me according to the gifts that He gave to me to work in this vineyard ?”

In this parable today, we see that the vinedressers are deciding to take over everything, themselves. The result of their attempt to take over everything was the death of many people, and, and ultimately their own expulsion. We have to be asking ourselves what sort of stewards we are of the gifts that God has given us to work in His Kingdom, because in fact, we can behave just as those vinedressers. The Lord has given us the responsibility to tend the vines. What are these vines ? The vines are not only the Lord’s property, but they are also His living, human beings, together with all the rest of creation.

What are vinedressers supposed to be doing ? Their responsibility is to be trimming the vines and looking after the vines in order to enable them to produce the greatest amount possible of the best quality of grapes. In that way, the best eating grapes are produced as well as the best wine possible. How we behave in our lives can sometimes actually be like the vinedressers of the vineyard that we are hearing about today because they took over without asking anything of the master (who owned everything, and on whom their livelihood depended). They decided that they knew best, and that they would take over everything. In our own stewardship of the gifts that the Lord has given to us, we all have to be asking ourselves (starting with the bishops) : “How am I looking after the Lord’s vineyard ?” “Am I doing it in harmony with His will or am I usurping it, thinking that I can do better ?” “Am I doing it my way instead of doing it the Lord’s way ?” If I am doing it my way, and trying to convince the Lord to let me do it my way, then there might be still some redeeming feature there (because I am asking the Lord to bless the doing of it my way).

However, my way is usually the wrong way because I do not know enough about everything to be able to make fully informed and correct decisions about things. I need to have my heart in communion with the Lord, in harmony with the Lord, to be able to make the right decision about things, and to determine what is the right direction of things. Am I being a good steward of the responsibilities that the Lord has placed on me in the context of these particular gifts that He has given me ? I can only even partially know and understand this when I am first asking the Lord to show me. It is He, the Lord of the vineyard and the Lord of my life, who will show me whether I am on the right track or whether I need to straighten myself out. Of course, I cannot actually straighten myself out without asking Him to help me to straighten out.

It is extremely important for us to be constantly mindful of this vineyard (the Church, and our life in the Church). The whole Church and even our lives are not our own property. They are the Lord’s gifts to us, and we are the stewards of everything. Are we stewards that are going to try to take over as the stewards of this vineyard did today ? If we try to take over for ourselves, and deceive ourselves that we know better than the Lord what is supposed to be done in our lives, then the same thing will happen to us as happened to those vinedressers. In other words, the Lord will simply remove us and replace us with faithful vinedressers. We, here, have been given a responsibility towards the vine which is the life in the Church, the lives of the believers in the Church, and the lives of people who are coming into the Church. Many of us have not been born in the Church, but have been grafted into the Church in the course of our lives. How are we nurturing the vine as vinedressers ? How are we behaving according to the responsibilities that the Lord has given us ? He calls us to tend His vine. He calls us to nurture the vine – not only the bishops, the priests, and the deacons – but He has called us all to do this.

How are we taking care of these vines ? How are we bringing the best fruit from these vines ? The Lord of the vineyard is going to be asking us about how we are serving Him and about how we are bringing life as we care for the vineyard. What is to be understood is that the vines are everyone’s lives. (However, we have to remember also that our Lord, Himself, said : “‘I am the Vine, you are the branches’” (John 15:5). We are branches of the one Vine. The Lord in His love for us wants us to bear much fruit (see John 15:8). Not only are we doing what is necessary to enable the vine to bear the best and the most fruit possible, but we, ourselves, being part of that same vine, are also getting trimmed and cleaned up.

It is crucial for us to remember that we are not in control of everything, ourselves. Everything about our lives is the result of God’s gift to us. We are stewards of that gift. Everything in our lives belongs first to the Lord. How do we, then, in our lives allow the Lord to bring the best and the most fruit from us all ? How do we help each other to bring forth this fruit for the Lord’s glory ? This is an essential question for us all to be asking all the time. How am I co-operating with the Lord so that not only in my own life, but in the lives of those around me, and those who depend on me, we will be able to bear the best and the most fruit for the Lord for His glory ?

The most important thing for us to be conscious of in our lives is the danger of falling into the trap that those vinedressers in the parable today deliberately jumped into – to usurp from the Lord what is rightfully His. It is necessary therefore for us Orthodox Christians to remember that no matter what we are doing in our lives, no matter what our gifts are, no matter what our abilities are, everything in our lives comes from the Lord. It is His gift, and it is His working in us that enables us to bear fruit, and to live truly productive lives. However, we must always be giving the glory to the Lord, not to ourselves.

As we are beginning this new ecclesiastical year (according to the sanctoral commemoration), let us ask the Lord to help us to be faithful and good stewards of what He has given us to care for, whatever that is, and however much or little that may be. Let us ask Him to help us to be the best stewards possible of what He has given to us. Let us ask Him to guard our hearts from falling into the temptation to usurp what is His and take it over, and attribute it to ourselves. Instead, in everything, let us give glory to Him. Let us give thanks to Him for everything. Giving glory to God and giving thanks to God must be the constant characteristic of all Christians. We were created to be like this. If we are falling down in our giving thanks to God for everything and glorifying Him for everything, we can already smell in our hearts the stink of those vinedressers who were trying to take over the vineyard for themselves. It is only when we are caring about the Master, our Saviour, Jesus Christ, and when we are doing everything for His glory in the context of His will, and offering everything to Him, that everything will be well, grow well, and have life.

Since we have been given the responsibilities of our life in Christ and the lives of those around us, and the responsibility of testifying for Christ in our lives, let us ask the Lord to give us the ability to remember to whom the vines belong. Let us ask the Lord to give us the heart and the love to care for the vines so that they will bear the most fruit. Let us ask the Lord to renew our hearts, also, so that, usurping nothing for ourselves, our hearts may give glory to the Lord of the vineyard in everything. Let us give glory and thanksgiving for everything to the Lord only. Our Lord says : “‘I am the Vine, you are the branches’” (John 15:5). Let us ask our Saviour, who is the Vine, to enable us, the branches, to bear good fruit to His glory. Let us remember that it is only for Him that we live, and in Him that we can live. Let us give glory to the Lord of the vineyard, our heavenly Father, who loves us, cares for us, nurtures us, feeds us, and prunes us so that we will be able to bear fruit many times over, to the glory of the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The main difficulty that we human beings have faced in the course of our own history is ourselves. This is one of the main reasons that we always want to be in control of every situation. We actually put ourselves very often in the place of God. This is a very dangerous thing to do. However, we do it because we are afraid. We do not know why we are afraid, but we are afraid.

Very often we behave towards the Scriptures with a similar disposition. For instance, we have an example of this today when our Lord is showing to the Pharisees that they are doing such things. They had decided what the Scriptures say without actually reading them clearly. They were insisting that our Saviour must be the Son of David. This is half true. Our Saviour then says : “‘How then does David in the Spirit call Him “Lord,” saying: “The Lord said to my Lord, ‘Sit at My right-hand’” (Psalm 109:1). In saying this our Saviour is making it patently clear Who He is. He, Himself, is the Lord who is sitting at the right-hand of the Lord, the Father.

Very often even until this day, we, in our wilfulness, try to make Jesus Christ into something or Someone other than Who He is. How many times are we reading in English (and I am sure it is the same case in Russian) that Jesus Christ is some nice “Philosopher-Person”. This is the most common way to treat Him, but some people treat Him as some sort of magician. Even nowadays people avoid facing Who is Jesus Christ. They want to try (if they could) to tame God. However, God cannot be controlled by us, and He cannot be tamed by us. God is our Creator ; we are not His creators. We are the product of His love. God created us to be in His own image, and that image is love. This love is selfless love.

Our Saviour has shown us by His words and by His actions how this love works in our lives. Wherever He is going, He is putting things in good and right order. He is healing people from diseases. He is raising people from the dead. He is releasing people from slavery to devils. He is correcting their misunderstanding, as we see in the Gospel reading today. The Lord, in fact, is enacting His love by serving us. Therefore, when He said to His apostles at the Last Supper that we should wash each other’s feet (and in fact, the feet of everyone) if we want to follow Him, He is showing us concretely that the servant is not greater than the master (see John 15:20).

We must serve as He serves. His love is self-emptying love which empties itself for our sake. This is the true expression of humility. Those who live in this way understand that the more one gives love like this, the more God renews this love and increases this love. It is because Saint Seraphim of Sarov, and people like him, were filled to overflowing with such love that they would receive visitors hour after hour after hour. Saint Seraphim gave good words from God to hungry people. There are many true Elders alive today (in fact, I have seen them in Romania, Russia, Ukraine, and other places) who are doing the same thing. Less than 100 years ago, there was the famous Saint Silouan of Mount Athos. He was so full of God’s love that he spent all his days praying for the whole world. When people are praying in such a way, they are also suffering greatly because of love, and because the world is suffering so greatly.

Brothers and sisters, it is important that we remember what the Lord is calling us to do and to be when He says to you and to me : “‘Follow Me’” (Matthew 4:19). The Lord speaks His love to you and to me. He enacts this love for you and for me. It is our place to respond to this love, and to learn how to live in this same love. It is not for us to say to God : “I know what I want to be, and what I must be in life”. Instead, it is for us to say to the Lord : “How do You want me to walk in this life ?” “How do You want me to serve You in this life ?” The Lord will and He does show us what He wants us to do. Accomplishing His will is always done in the context of selfless love. It is life-giving. This means that if I am a plumber, and the Lord is asking me to do plumbing, this is a very good and life-giving service. To be a plumber is a very difficult and unpleasant job, but it is absolutely necessary for our life as we are living it nowadays. It is certainly an honourable trade. The same thing could be said of most trades or professions. If we are living in harmony with God’s will, and exercising the gifts that God has given us, our lives will have a clear direction. Our lives will be fruit-bearing.

Let us ask the Lord to renew our hearts today by the Grace of the Holy Spirit. Then we will be able to ask : “Lord, what do You want me to do ?” Let us ask the Lord to put our lives into the correct order, in harmony with His love, so that we will grow into being our true selves. In so doing, in every way, our lives will glorify 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In the Gospel reading today, the Lord is once again telling us what our life is to be like, and what is its character. The primary character of our life is to love other people, and even to love unlovable people ; blessing people who hurt us, and being kind to nasty people, crabby people, argumentative people. Why ? Because this is how the Lord is to us. We are so often ungrateful, crabby, and blaming Him for everything that goes wrong. Nevertheless, He is kind to us. We seem to have such a tendency to be lazy, and we are quick to make excuses for ourselves to do less rather than more in His Kingdom. We make excuses over and over again. I have heard plenty. I, myself, have made many excuses. Even so, the Lord is kind, generous, patient, loving and nurturing towards us at all times. We do not deserve a thing, and yet, He gives us everything.

This week our diocese, and our whole Orthodox Church in Canada has been given a gift beyond comprehension : the Visit, and the Progress across the country of the Wonder-working icon of the Mother of God of Pochaiv. We could never earn this gift, and we certainly did not earn it, because Canadian Orthodox Christians seem so very often to be taking everything for granted and, in general, not working hard in the Kingdom. That does not apply to everyone, but that is how we generally are across the country. We are comfortable, and that is dangerous. The Apostle Paul is asking about what God and His way have to do with the world. He says that we should not be unequally yoked ; we should live a life that is righteous, that is characteristic of Christ, His love, His way, instead of allowing ourselves to be pulled down into the quicksand of the world. In this country with all its selfish ways and all its darkness, and sometimes (actually too often these days) its outright evil ways, it is easy to get trapped in the quicksand. Our ways, as members of Christ, have to be the ways of love, light, liberty and freedom in Christ with joy and all peace, unlike the way of our country which is so absorbed with the material and with power.

Our Orthodox Christian way has to be the way of radical love, radical forgiveness, radical kindness and radical generosity, instead of locking ourselves up and protecting ourselves. Now that we understand better that the Mother of God does love us, and that she does care for us enough to come to us in such a way as this, it is important that we follow up and do our part, too, taking the assurance of her love, the assurance of her protection, and of her Son’s protection. It is essential that we live accordingly : open-armedly, open-heartedly, open-handedly and “open-doorsedly” (if one can say that). Our way has to be this radical way of love, and this radical way of kindness.

When the Mother of God came to us, she came unexpectedly. All we did was to ask if it could be possible that this icon might be able to come to us. I almost fainted when the answer came back : “yes”. Thank God that we have such good organisers in our diocesan population so that this icon could make its Progress across the country in a dignified and appropriate manner. We almost did not get the icon several times. Air Canada and Westjet (in contrast to Ukrainian Airlines) absolutely refused to allow the icon with the metal riza on it to travel in the passenger compartment. (The riza is the decorated metallic protective covering.) They also insisted that the whole thing would have to go in the baggage compartment, and we know what that implies. The brotherhood, with the archbishop who is the abbot of the monastery, said : “No way”. Then they must have prayed about it some more, and eventually it was decided that the icon would come, as it did, on Ukrainian Airlines, all intact. Then, from Ottawa to Vancouver the icon itself was to be removed from its riza, and placed in a specially constructed cloth carrying-bag. The icon was to be carried on the chest of the Hieromonk Gabriel across the country to Vancouver. The metal riza, itself, in its carrying case went in the baggage department. This Wonder-working icon of the Mother of God could certainly not go into any baggage compartment or out of the hands or out of the sight of these monks. No-one knows, it seems, when that icon was last taken out of the riza. That riza is a few hundred years old. This copy (it is not the original) is also a few hundred years old.

We have all experienced the extraordinary presence of the love of God in this icon. Through this icon, already more than one person in this country has been healed. Probably there are more that we do not know about, because Canadians tend not to be very talkative about such things. They often and characteristically merely say : “Oh !” In addition to my being disappointed with this minimal response, it really bothers me as a bishop that Canadians very often try to analyse scientifically how this healing might have happened. Being trained mistakenly to separate science from God and His creation, we Canadians tend to try to find reasons apart from God and His intervention why an unexpected healing would occur. We sometimes even blasphemously dare to say : “Oh, what a coincidence this is”. They do this instead of giving thanks to God for these expressions of His love. However, in the cases of healing that I do know of for certain, these persons did give thanks to God directly and immediately. However, I know how these temptations work. I know how our minds work because I have seen it happen too many times. We tend not to be able to accept that the Lord loves us this much, and that He could, and would really do something so significant. Therefore, we tend to think that there must be a scientific explanation for healings. This is why it is hard to live in this society, and hard to be an Orthodox Christian in this country. We do not have the sort of underpinning that Orthodox cultures do have, so that many things which for Orthodox Christians elsewhere are instinctive are a big struggle for us.

The Mother of God is making her Progress across the country. Why am I using this word “Progress” ? It is because that is the word that is used always when royalty (kings and queens) are making their progress from place to place in the country. There are all sorts of stories, for instance, about Queen Elizabeth I or King Henry VIII (or about any other king or queen of England), and how they would make their progress from manor to manor, from dukedom to earldom and so forth, paying their visits. We have to use regal language for the Mother of God – there is no alternative. In fact, regal language is not even good enough, but it is the best we have. The Mother of God is making her Progress across this country, and she is giving us consolation and encouragement, to be sure. Mostly, she is calling us to repentance : to turn away from our selfish ways, and to turn towards her Son, to whom she always refers. She is asking us to turn towards her Son, to follow Him, and to be like Him in the way that we have just encountered in today’s Gospel reading, and in the exhortations of the Apostle Paul in the Epistle reading.

Once again I will say (and I will continue to say it many times, God willing) that in the Hierarchical Liturgy, nothing of what we are doing (in terms of dressing bishops, and all sorts of other things on which the attention is focussed on the bishop) has to do with the person, himself. It has everything to do with Christ. It reveals how we would treat Christ, Himself, if He were present. However, in the real presence of Christ, we bishops would not get this far in beginning to be vested, because we all would already be flat on the floor on our faces. Nevertheless, we try to express our love for the Lord in our liturgical worship. None of it is directed to the bishop, himself. It is all directed to Christ. This Divine Liturgy has all to do with Christ : our worship of Him ; our thanksgiving to Him for everything that we are, and for everything that we do, and everything that is in us. Everything is referred to Christ. Everything in our lives must come to be referring to Him. This is what it means to repent, to put on Christ seriously, and to allow our lives in everything to refer to Christ seriously so that other people can see His love, His joy and His peace in us.

In the context of these events of this past week, which are beyond expression, how can it be explained that, without planning, we were serving in the Temple of the Annunciation dedicated to the Mother of God, on the feast of the Protection of the Mother of God, the consecration of another bishop for Canada in the presence of a Wonder-working icon of the Mother of God ? That cannot be organised. It was not organised to be like that, but it came to be like that. We, who have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to perceive, let us understand the love of the Lord for us, and the extent of the Mother of God’s tender compassion and care for us. We are continuing now to serve the Divine Liturgy, and to offer all this to the Lord out of deep, profound thanksgiving. Let us ask Him to enable our hearts to be willing to follow Him, and to imitate Him in every way, every day, all the days of our lives. Let us glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In the Gospel reading, our Lord gives us today a very direct example and experience of repentance in the conversion and sudden, complete change of heart of Levi, the tax collector (who is actually the Apostle Matthew). According to the actual words of the Gospel, we see our Saviour come today to the tax office of Levi. He looks at him, and says : “‘Follow Me’”. Immediately Levi gets up and follows Him. Not only does he follow Him, but he makes a big dinner for all his friends who are likewise tax collectors. In Jewish society, such people were the worst of the worst, because in their environment they were traitors (one could say). They were Jewish people working for the Roman government. They were taking taxes (and excess taxes) because the situation then was certainly not like that of our dear old Revenue Canada where things are somehow regulated and controlled. In those days, tax collectors had to raise a certain amount of money for the Roman emperor, and whatever they wanted to collect for themselves, they could take. These tax collectors were not only working for an occupying government, and conquerors, but they were also taking from their own people. This is why they are called sinners, and why such strong language is used against them very often.

This is why we also see the scribes and the Pharisees asking our Saviour today : “‘Why do You eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?’” The important word that the Lord has for them and for us is : “‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick’”. He came to look after those who are sick : these publicans, and people who are lost. The Pharisees knew the Law very well, and they were paying attention very carefully to the Law in their own lives. They were obeying the Law, even to an excess, sometimes. Regardless, the Lord says that if someone is on the right path, it is not a big deal. More precisely, what is His concern is these people who are completely lost. In one of the notes that I saw regarding the person of Levi, it is suggested that it is possible that Levi had already been baptised by Saint John the Forerunner. It is possible that he had been prepared for this meeting with the Lord by his previous encounters with the Forerunner. This may very well be. There might have been such preparation. For instance, just before this calling of Levi, there is the conversion of four fishermen who themselves had at least met the Forerunner. On the one hand, I think it is possible that the Forerunner had prepared Levi. On the other hand, it does not matter whether he did, or did not. What matters is that our Lord comes to him, and He looks him in the heart, not only in the eye. He looks him in the heart, and He says : “‘Follow Me’”. Immediately Levi’s heart responds to our Saviour’s words : “‘Follow Me’”. He responds to the intensity of His love.

Those of us who have been encountering and venerating the Pochaiv icon of the Mother of God as she is passing through Canada, have perhaps a taste of what this encounter is like. Encountering this icon is not like encountering anything else. When we are encountering this icon, we are definitely encountering the Mother of God. From this experience come love, healing, and change of life for many people. This is why it is no surprise for me that it could happen that Levi, sitting in his office collecting his taxes, could suddenly leave everything and follow our Saviour when He says : “‘Follow Me’”.

There is a tendency for us human beings to get confused about orders of beings, creatures, and so forth. We tend to blur everything together. For instance, there is a very old tendency amongst human beings to attribute to cats, dogs, trees, frogs, water, stones, mountains, and so forth, attributes of human beings. The Apostle is pointing out in his words to the Corinthians today that the Lord is not so limited as to have to blur everything like this. The Lord is the Lord of life. He is the Lord of all creation. From His love comes the whole of creation. It is He who clearly distinguishes amongst all the kinds of creation. “All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds. There are also celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory”. Every order has its own nature and its own relationship with the Lord. As much as we love our cats, dogs and other animals (I know of many stories about horses, and cows, and their relationships with human beings), the cows, the horses, the cats, the dogs, the canaries and the parrots are not human beings. They are other orders of creatures that the Lord has created because of His love, with their own character and their own nature. This makes it possible, and gives us the opportunity in Christ to love not only ourselves and our kind as human beings, but God’s creation in its totality. We can be very content and thankful for all these cats, dogs, various sorts of trees, flowers, even rocks, mountains and oceans. There is so much beauty in what God created. How can it be anything except beautiful ? After all, He created it through His love. He created us to be co-workers with Him in the midst of this creation.

Let us open our hearts to the Lord more and more. Let us ask Him to enable us to love even these geese (who are honking away out there), to love each other ; to love Him and His creation. Let us ask Him to enable us to be ourselves more and more, as He created us to be. Let us open our hearts so that when the Lord speaks to us (as He spoke to Levi this morning), we will respond in the same way, and our hearts will open to Him (as Levi’s heart did). May our hearts respond : “Yes, I am coming, Lord. I am following You”. In this following, let us glorify our Saviour, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

There is no doubting the generosity of the Lord and His kindness towards us. A profound example of this generosity and kindness towards us is given to us today in the Gospel reading as we see our Saviour resurrecting the only son of the widow in Nain. Nain is a small village near the base of Mount Tabor. His compassion is visible, and almost touchable (one could say) for us today because we can understand the position of this poor woman who did not have the benefit of Canadian widows’ supplements, and welfare systems. In that society, that widow, burying her only son, would, after his death, be doomed to living on the streets and begging. That is how the society generally worked, and that is how it is even today in places like China.

That is why there was such grieving after the earthquake in Szechuan, because the older people are depending on their children to look after them in their old age and to protect them, as they have protected their children while they were growing up. Those older people (actually, people only in their fifties) in Szechuan, were deprived of their one-and-only child in most cases. Therefore, they had no-one to look after them in their old age. It means for them a terrible situation.

It is precisely the same case for this poor woman in Nain. With her son dead, she has nothing, and no resources for the future. This is why our Lord, in His compassion coming to meet her today, brings her son back to life in order to look after her. This poor woman is overcome with grief not only at the loss of her son, but also at the wretchedness of her situation.

The Lord is extending His compassion to us all over and over and over again. It is important for us to understand, we Orthodox Christians in particular, that the first priority in our life is to be putting ourselves in such a position that the Lord can speak to us, and that we can encounter Him in our hearts. We are very busy. We satisfy ourselves with coming to serve Him at the Divine Liturgy (and in many cases, it is only sometimes). We satisfy ourselves with coming to serve Him at the Divine Liturgy, hearing words about His love, hearing words about Him, and saying all sorts of things about Him. However, we do not necessarily stop and let Him speak to us. Too often, we do not let Him tell us in our hearts about His love for us specifically. He loves each one of us specifically, personally and uniquely. He created each one of us personally and uniquely. He loves each one of us personally, as well as all of us generally. He cares about each one of us particularly. It is important for us to stop sometimes in our lives, to be quiet with Him, to look at Him, and to allow Him to speak to us.

The example of this loving-kindness and mercy was shown to us here in Canada, in the recent Progress through Canada of the icon of the Mother of God of Pochaiv, which is a Wonder-working icon. As far as I know, there is not anyone who came close to this icon, who did not realise that the Mother of God, herself, was present amongst us. There are many people across the country who have been healed of physical diseases, relational diseases and wreckage, also. In other words, the Mother of God, herself came in and through this icon to us, in order to encourage us, to help us to “pull up our socks”, to help us to come to her, and to her Son in particular. This little mission which has been sitting here in n, witnessing for the Lord for all these years, was blessed by the Mother of God (even though everyone was not able to be present). This came about because this mission became the first stop after her arrival in Toronto. She came here first, and there were a few people who were available right at that moment. She came and she blessed here, first. Even though all of us here today were not able to be present at that time in order to come and venerate her icon (and because of the circumstances of life many did not have the chance to venerate this icon at all), it is important for you all to understand that the Lord sent His Mother here, in particular, to bless this little mission. This mission has been working so hard and so faithfully for so long in this difficult city. She showed her love, and the love of her Son for you, here. Even if you were not able to be there, she is reassuring you all that she cares about you, and that her Son cares about you. The Lord cares about you. This blessing of the icon’s presence here is for you all. It is not only for the people who managed to venerate it on that day. This is the way that the Lord works in His love for us.

Who are we Canadians that we deserve anything ? We tend to be very quick to forget the Lord, and be busy about everything else. We often neglect the Lord, and look after ourselves first. This is our nature in Canada, it seems. However, the Lord sees some potential in us, obviously. He sent this icon to us to give us a “shot in the arm” (as we say), and to help us to have courage to persevere, to continue living for Him, and to try to deepen our relationship with Him.

The Lord is generous. The Lord cares about us. We are called to be the same as He : generous, open-hearted, open-handed, open-armed. Just as He is showing His care and His love for us, we are likewise to be caring for those around us. That is what the Apostle Paul means when he says that “‘God loves a cheerful giver’”. Very often we do not give, and are holding back. We can even be “tight-fisted” (as the saying goes) because we are afraid of what might happen. We are afraid that the Lord will not look after us, even though He said He would. We are afraid, somehow, and so we hold on. We do not truly open our hands and our hearts fully.

I know very well about these fears myself : I am not simply talking about theories. To help us to overcome these fears, I will give the example of a pilgrimage of Canadians to Ukraine. I think it was in 1994, the first time I went on a pilgrimage to Ukraine, and it was a time of famine in Ukraine. People did not have very much to eat, but everywhere we went, villagers knew that we had come from so far away, and that we were coming to visit them, their monasteries, and to venerate their icons and the relics of their saints. They received us with this sort of open-handedness and open-heartedness about which the Apostle Paul is speaking to us today. They shared all the nothing that they had so that we would have enough to eat. It was a very difficult position for this busload of “fat-cat” Canadians to be in, because on the one hand we had to eat enough to honour their generosity, and at the same time to eat little enough so that they would still have something left to eat. It is a very difficult balance we have to keep when we are trying to live as Christians and to be sensitive to the situation of people around us. The temptation for us Canadians is, of course, to say : “They are filling up that table, and they expect us to eat it, so we eat it”. We can be like locusts, sometimes.

The Lord, in His mercy, did look after those people who looked after us. It is very important for us to remember this. It is necessary that we remember that the Lord loves us. He cares about us. It does not matter what happens to us in our lives – the pains that we receive as the result of the fallenness of human beings, and all the other difficulties that we face. The Lord loves us. He cares about us. He is with us. He is in us.

Where do we look to find the Lord when we are saying the Prayer of Jesus ? We do not look for the Lord outside. Rather, we look inside, in our heart. The Lord, who created us and who is sustaining us, is at the centre of our very being. If we are saying the Prayer of Jesus in order to have the possibility of encountering the love of the Lord so that we understand it, we have to look in the centre of our being, not outside someplace. The Lord is not near or around us. Rather, He is here, in the heart. We have a strange way of speaking when we are talking about inviting the Lord in, or asking Him to come to us, somehow. We keep speaking like this, asking Him to come to us when He is there already in the heart of everyone of us. Our challenge is to open that space in our heart where the Lord already is so that He will be able to shine His love in our lives, and help us to become the true human beings that He created us to be.

Because we are so often living in fear and forgetful of His presence here, thinking that He is far away, we are often living lives that make us caricatures of ourselves. We are big distortions of ourselves instead of being our true selves that the Lord created us to be. Let us ask the Lord to renew our willingness to be co-workers with Him, co-lovers with Him of His creatures, co-nurturers with Him of His creation. Let us ask Him to help us to accept His presence in our hearts. Then, with heart-felt confidence we can sing (as we often do) that God is with us, and in us. Let us allow His love to radiate in our hearts and in our lives, so that His mercy will be shared freely and openly with everyone we encounter.

The Lord may not call us to raise a person from the dead (that does not happen so often, although it does happen), but He will ask us to care for those in need. He will ask us to speak a word of encouragement or hope to someone even if we have no idea that we are doing so. He will move our hearts to do what is right always. Let us ask the Lord to help us, through the prayers of His most pure Mother, the prayers of Saint Gregory of Nyssa, the prayers of Saint Herman of Alaska, to glorify Him in all our life : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In the Gospel reading, our Lord is speaking to us today about being merciful to others in the same way that He is merciful to us. Many times we have seen already in our experience with our Saviour, in His telling of parables, that He is merciful. Likewise, in our experience with human beings, we find that the Lord is merciful. However, we ourselves in response are too often not so merciful. In fact, not only can we not be merciful, but we can also be ungrateful. When the Lord is pouring out His Grace upon us after we have been asking for help, very often we find ourselves somehow paralysed by fear, and prevented from being the same way towards other people. Sometimes, like the unjust steward (see Matthew 18:28), after we have been forgiven, ourselves, we punish other people who owe us. We ask God to have mercy on us, but we do not necessarily have mercy on other people. It seems to me that we do not have enough trust in God that He will continue His mercy through us towards other people. How can we, nevertheless, do anything except to be compassionate, merciful and patient with people around us ?

We Canadians are living our lives mostly for ourselves, and mostly we are trying to be comfortable in the world. We come to church sometimes, but not every Sunday. We make excuses for ourselves not to be at feast-days. According to the Gospel, perhaps the worst is that we can run away from helping people who are in need. In this context in which we are living, the Lord recently showed His great mercy to us. We only asked : “Would it be possible for the icon of the Mother of God of Pochaiv to come to Canada ?” It was a natural question for us to be asking because the foundation of our Orthodox Church in Canada is from Ukraine. There was no strong expectation that the answer would be “yes”. I know from what I have been told that there were many questions asked in Ukraine about whether to bless or not to bless sending the icon to Canada. The answer could easily have been “no”, because it is understood in Ukraine that our Orthodox life in North America is very sick. Therefore, there were some difficulties.

However, the Mother of God blessed. The Mother of God was determined to come to us, and to bring healing to us, and repentance to us from her Son. Here in this city through this icon, she brought healing to some people. I have heard of some of the healing, myself. However, not everyone (because we are Canadians) will say anything about what the Lord did for them. If this encounter with the Mother of God has brought a change in your life – whether this change in your life is by physical healing or by spiritual renewal or by repentance (or by whatever means) – it is very important that you express your gratitude to God, and to the Mother of God for what she has done by her love and her prayers. If we do not at least say thank-you to her, we could lose the blessing. This is not because the Mother of God or our Saviour would take away the blessing. Instead it is because we would be letting it go or even throwing it away by our ungratefulness.

It is extremely important in our Orthodox Christian life to express our gratitude to God. Here in this Divine Liturgy we are expressing our gratitude in a general way. We are giving thanks to God for everything. How much more necessary is it then, when specific things happen as a result of God’s love, that we say thank-you to Him for those specific things, too.

As she passed through Canada, the Mother of God, in this icon from Pochaiv, brought healing in almost every place. There are many reports of how people have been healed of illnesses. One woman had been given one year to live because of cancer. After she venerated the icon, and went for a scan, there was no cancer left. In n, there was a woman who had very, very bad asthma and life-threatening allergies. For at least the past seven years, it was not possible for her to be in the Temple for more than ten minutes at any time. If it would not be flowers, it was incense that would cause her extreme pain in her lungs. She came with her mother to venerate the icon. The next day, I saw her in the Divine Liturgy, throughout the whole Liturgy, and she came to Holy Communion. Last Sunday she was singing in the choir where she used to love to sing. The Mother of God has been bringing healing to us here in Canada. She is reminding us of our responsibility as Orthodox Christians.

We, Orthodox Christians, have the responsibility to be faithful to her Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. We have the responsibility in our own lives to keep our love for Him alive in the way her love for Him is alive. We have the responsibility not to be ashamed of the fact that our way of life is different from the average Canadian way of living. The Lord put us here so that we can be different like this. Most Canadians who do not know the Orthodox way, in fact, are looking for what we have. People are hungry for the love of Jesus Christ which we know and experience.

Let us ask the Mother of God to continue to support us by her love and prayers, so that we can be faithful to her Son, and glorify Him, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

As we see and hear today, the humility of the centurion is extraordinary. A centurion in the Roman army is head over a hundred soldiers. This is not “small potatoes” in the Roman army. The Roman army had a reputation for its strictness, its order and obedience.

The centurion, himself, expresses this today : “‘I say to one, “Go,” and he goes; and to another, “Come,” and he comes’”. He, himself, is under authority because he is not by any means at the top of the ladder in the command of the Roman army. He knows how to obey. He also knows how to give orders, and to expect to be obeyed. He understands this principle of obedience in both directions. He has the humility which allows him to trust that our Lord can do something for his ailing servant who is about to die. Yet, at the same time he knows his own unworthiness. As a result of his knowledge of his unworthiness, and his confidence in God, he sends his own servant to the Saviour to ask for the healing. We notice that when the Saviour is coming to the man’s house, the man, himself, still does not come out of his house. He knows that our Lord is coming and he sends friends to our Saviour and through them he says : “‘Lord, do not trouble Yourself, for I am not worthy that You should enter under my roof. Therefore I did not even think myself worthy to come to You. But say the word, and my servant will be healed’”. Our Saviour does heal his servant. This sort of confidence in God is something that a person would expect of a nation such as Israel that has had centuries of personal contact with the Lord. The Lord had over and over again saved His people from one disaster after another. He had led them constantly. He had assured them of His love over and over again. On Mount Sinai He gave the people very personal encounters with Himself. Even so, people had their doubts.

From a certain perspective, it appears that we Orthodox Christians can have a similarly abysmal track record in terms of our own faith, obedience and response to the Lord even though our own encounter with the Lord is, and has been much more intimate than what was given to the people of Israel. Yet, we behave in just the same way. That is, we take the Lord for granted. We do not bother ourselves. We do not do too much, saying : “Well, He is always there”. In these circumstances, the Lord is like a piece of furniture for us, sometimes, which is very dangerous. When the Jewish people considered the Lord to be merely a piece of furniture, or simply part of their way of life, we see what happened to them. This can, and does happen to us, too, from time to time. When we are like this (and not like the centurion having confidence in the Lord), we are taking the Lord for granted. We think we can do everything ourselves, instead. We only come crying to the Lord when we are in trouble, instead of giving thanks to Him every day for every little thing in which He touches our hearts and our lives.

This centurion is an extraordinary person. We hear the words of the Jewish people who are pleading with the Lord to do something for him and his servant. They say : “‘He loves our nation, and has built us a synagogue’”. In encountering the Israelite people, he encountered God. That is why he does such things as building a synagogue. He is one of those persons who are not able openly to convert to Judaism because, no doubt, that would mean the end of his military career in the Roman army, and likely even the end of his life. Nevertheless, he encountered God, and he did all these things for the believers. He considered himself to be nothing, as it were. He was responding to God’s love in the right way.

There have been many cases such as this centurion when the Church was so violently persecuted in eastern Europe and the Balkans. There have been secret Christians in various places, and various levels of government and society, who could not openly show that they were believers, but who nevertheless supported the Church by secret means. They kept things alive in a time when there could have been complete extinction. Even in Albania where the persecution was the absolute worst, and the extinction was almost complete, it was nevertheless not complete. There is a story about certain Albanian women who secretly listened on radios to the services coming from Greece. In a hidden sort of way they kept their faith. They also kept their icons secretly in their homes. They were very faithful. They ended up being confessors for Christ because of their suffering. They, themselves, finished their life by seeing the restoration of the Church in Albania, and the renewal of everything, and the returning of everything to the way it was. Their love for the Lord produced good fruit. We have no way of knowing what that sort of faithfulness supported and enabled in the renewal and the restoration of the Church’s life. That sort of rock-solid faithfulness to the Lord, trust and confidence in Him brings all sorts of good fruit one way or another.

We ourselves, in our own faithfulness, in our own serving the Lord, will never truly know what is the result of our faithfulness except that there is fruit from our faithfulness. It is the Lord who accomplishes all this. It is the Lord who knows all about this. That is His business. It is not my business to know anything. Let us give thanks to the Lord first for His love and His mercy towards us, and His patience with us. Second, let us give thanks for this centurion, and for his witness of faithfulness to the Lord, for his readiness to be considered as nothing even when he was a great man in the world’s eyes, and also for his readiness to trust God.

Let us ask the Lord to renew in our hearts this sort of trust in Him that the centurion had. Let us trust that the Lord is with us, that He loves us, that He cares for us, and that He can and will look after every detail of our lives. Let us glorify Him : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

Today, when our Saviour is raising the dead son of the widow of the village of Nain, people obviously will be asking questions. The question that people will be asking is : “Who is this that has such a gift and such authority to raise the dead ?” These people would have remembered, of course, that such things happened in the times of the Prophets Elias and Elisha. However, they had not seen such a thing in their days. In fact, even in our days, to see someone raised from the dead is very rare. I do not say that it never happens in our days, because God is who He is. However, it happens seldom.

Who is this that has the ability, the gift, the authority, to raise someone from the dead ? The answer, as we now know, is simple. This is the Only-begotten Son of God. God, who reveals Himself to us always as love, is shown to us today in His Son as the enacting of love. He knows the needs of this poor widow who has lost her only son. Without her son, this woman would have to become a beggar on the streets. In those days, there was no social safety-net such as we have in Canada. Even here in Canada nowadays many people are living on the streets. Perhaps it is possible even in Canada now for a widow to come to the same desperate condition. I have to say (as I have said before in other places) that the situation of this woman was repeated just recently in China. In the country of China, it is the policy of the government that in every family there may be only one child. In China there is still not the safety-net socially that we think there is. Therefore, when the catastrophic earthquake happened in the Szechuan province, very many parents lost their only child. It was reported on the news that these people were in a desperate condition because they were depending upon their child to look after them when they would become old. Understanding this, we can very well understand the situation of this widow in Nain. He who has raised her son from the dead is the compassionate Lord, Himself. This is the same Lord who was encountered by the Apostle Paul as we heard in the Epistle reading this morning.

While he was on the road to Damascus, the Apostle Paul (who was then known as Saul of Tarsus) encountered the risen Lord Jesus Christ, who is love in the flesh. After he had encountered God who is love, the Apostle tells us that he did not go immediately to Jerusalem, but instead he went away for a long time into the desert. Why would he go to the desert ? He went to the desert in order to spend time with the Lord whom he had now encountered face-to-face. The Saul whom we see persecuting the Church in the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, is very different from the Paul that we see at the end of the Acts, who is building the Church very quickly. God, who is love, completely changed the life of this man. Thus, the Apostle went to the desert to be with the Lord, and to allow the change to take place in his whole understanding of the world. What the Apostle had to understand is that God Himself took flesh and became a human being. The proof of this is precisely shown to us today in the raising of the dead son of the widow.

Today, we are also remembering the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council. It is these Fathers who defended the existence of, and the use of icons in the Church. They understood and they taught that it is precisely because God took flesh and lived amongst us that we can make these images. These Fathers did not invent a new teaching. They only stated more clearly what the Orthodox Church believed from the beginning. Always, there have been people who are afraid of the possibility that God could empty Himself, as He did, and take flesh, as He did, and become a human being, as He did. Because there were many such people, there was a period of several hundred years when these people were destroying the icons. In my opinion, the main reason that they were resisting this fact of the Incarnation is because it did not fit their philosophy, their reason and their logic.

Living in Canada, we Orthodox Christians today encounter many such people who have this sort of opinion. However, God is not subject to our logic and our philosophies. It is not for God to obey our intellect. Instead, it is for us to accept that even if we cannot understand how or why God did it, He did empty Himself, and take flesh as a human being. Thus He has given us these beautiful icons through which to approach Him. The Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council say, and also Saint John of Damascus says that when we come to this icon of Christ, here, and we kiss this icon, we are not simply kissing this piece of wood on which Christ is presented. Our veneration goes to Christ Himself. His blessing comes to us from Him through this icon.

We had the blessing very recently of another demonstration of the love of God for us. The icon of the Mother of God of Pochaiv was sent by the Lord to us. The Mother of God, together with her Son, brought Grace to believers all across this country. In the same way that the Lord had compassion on the woman of Nain, and that the young man was raised from the dead, so our Saviour healed people through this icon in Canada and gave consolation to very many people, besides. The Mother of God came to us in this icon, and she is pointing us, as she always does, to her Son. She is reminding us of His love for us, particularly. He does not only love us generally. He loves us particularly, and personally.

By coming to us in this way, the Mother of God is asking us, and even telling us, as it were : “It is time for us to live more seriously as Orthodox Christians”. It is high-time for us to unite ourselves to the love of her Son. It is for us not to hide the Orthodox way, but to show it openly. People in this country are starving to death spiritually because they need the love of Jesus Christ, which we carry. This country needs from us what the widow of Nain needed from our Saviour.

Let us ask the Lord to give us, through the prayers and the protection of His Mother, the strength to do this, so that we will be able with trust to submit our lives to His love. May He be able to work freely through us without any interruption so that our whole life may glorify the all-holy Trinity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

In our days, and in our society, we are very much pre-occupied with ourselves. Because we are so pre-occupied with ourselves, we have mostly lost the mentality of the Gospel, and we have mostly lost the mentality of our ancestors. When it comes to the Scriptures, when it comes to our relationship with the Lord, when it comes to our liturgical worship, all of these things are all together in one reality. However, because of our self-preoccupation in North America and the West in general (which we are sharing with everyone else now), all these elements become broken up and separated.

When we speak about broken-up and separated elements, we are already straying very far from the mentality of the Gospel and from the mentality of the Church. Compartmentalisation, division, and sharp distinctions like this are not for us Orthodox Christians. Sharp distinctions and anything having to do with division come from below, not from above. From the Lord come unity and harmony, not division. The aim of the powers of darkness is to strike the shepherd and scatter the sheep (see Zechariah 13:7 ; Matthew 26:31). This is the old technique of Big Red : scatter ; divide. “Divide and conquer”, “divide and rule” as the old sayings go : this is the technique of the powers of darkness.

The way of Christ is in unity and in harmony. It is for this reason that I am always grateful to hear the words that the Apostle Paul is speaking to us today : “God forbid that I should boast except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ”. For the Apostle Paul, everything in His life is focussed on Christ. Everything that he is doing is in, and for Christ. It is not focussed on the Apostle Paul. Rather, it is focussed on Christ. The Apostle’s life is focussed on Christ. We can say that the Apostle Paul is living out the words of that psalm (which we can read quite easily and regularly, if we are obedient enough to read the Psalter : “As the eyes of bond-servants are unto the hands of their masters, as the eyes of a maid-servant are unto the hands of her mistress, so our eyes are towards the Lord our God” (Psalm 122:2). This is the way of the Apostle Paul, and this is the way of the Orthodox Christian.

Everything is focussed on Christ. In the Gospel reading this morning, we see Christ healing a woman of a flow of blood that had lasted a long time, and who was in an incurable condition. Our Lord is also raising from the dead the daughter of Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue. The Lord is in the midst of His people. The Lord is not separated from His people. Rather, in the midst of His people, He touches them and heals them.

The Saviour is in our midst. He is not far away. He is not “out there” somewhere. He is here, with us. That is why at the beginning of a Hierarchical Divine Liturgy the bishop is sitting right in the middle. Why should the bishop sit and stand right in the middle ? It is because the bishop has the responsibility of re-presenting Christ to the faithful. We have to understand that the term “Hierarchical Divine Liturgy” tells us that it is served and led by a hierarch, but it is not directed to the bishop. It has everything to do with Christ. The bishop (with his warts, or anything else that might be faulty about him), standing in the midst of the faithful, is responsible for revealing Christ. The Divine Liturgy is not served for the sake of the bishop or the priest or the deacons, but rather is directed to the all-holy Trinity. With Christ in our midst, we are all loving Him and responding to Him in love, in unity, in harmony, with one heart, with one voice. We are all glorifying our Saviour, who is here in our midst. He is here in our midst, despite our weaknesses, despite our betrayals, despite our falls, despite our selfishness. He is here for us personally. He is here for the woman with the flow of blood. He is here present for Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, as He is for the wife of the ruler of the synagogue (whose name we do not know), and as He is for the daughter of Jairus (whose name we also do not know).

Everything is directed to Christ. Why then does the bishop sit down in the middle of the Temple a few times ? It is very simple. Do you remember the Beatitudes ? It is written in the introduction to the Beatitudes, before the Lord began to speak to the multitudes, that He sat down to teach (see Matthew 5:1). If the bishop is sitting down, it is because our Saviour sat down, and this is supposed to remind us of what the Gospel says that our Saviour did. Where do the Beatitudes come from ? They come from His mouth to us. He is teaching us. The bishop cannot always be just like Christ in this respect. Therefore, when the Gospel Book comes out, the bishop stands up. He is done with reminding ; he is also a person who must worship and respect our Saviour, who is in the Gospel Book. The bishop is leading a double or triple life one could say : a bishop is a regular Orthodox human being ; he is a person with a responsibility before Christ for the flock, and it is for the bishop to re-present Christ to the flock. It is a huge responsibility. However, it is crucial that the bishop and everyone else remember that all this worship that we are offering to the Lord today is not about any one of us. Our daily lives are not about us, but about our Saviour, Jesus Christ, who loves us, who is in the midst of us, who is with us.

I cannot resist talking about the current Pope, who wrote a book about the Divine Liturgy which has very many good things said in it. However, the title is a “bust” from the Orthodox point of view. He chose to entitle this book Christ is near us. That is why it is a bust. The Divine Liturgy is not conveying that Christ is near us. Rather, our worship reveals and proclaims that God is with us. The Lord is here in our midst today. It is the Lord who is about to ordain for us a deacon who will help to nurture and build up the flock of Christ. He will help the priest in administering sacramentally to this community. It is not that this community lacks any deacons, but we can always use more. This community is always sharing its clergy with other parishes as well. In having another deacon, you also have more to share, and this is to your credit in this community. This has always been your disposition in Christ : to be caring about the other, to share with the other, and to nurture the other. In this you are very much on the right path in this community. It is my prayer that you will never lose the heart to be like this. In being like this, with the disposition of Christ-centredness, you are being like the Apostle Paul. With him, you have Christ at the heart of everything and Christ in the centre of your lives.

Dear brothers and sisters, it is because of this Christ-centredness that our Orthodox tradition has the custom of referring everything to Christ. For example : being thanked for something. The polite Canadian way is to say thank-you for everything. It is drilled into us (I think it still is, but it certainly was drilled into me when I was a child) that we must say thank-you for everything. When people give us something, we must say thank-you. This part is correct. However, if someone thanks an Orthodox Christian for doing something, that Orthodox Christian customarily and habitually refers that gratitude to the Lord, and does not accept it for himself or herself. The gratitude is referred to the Lord. We will say : “To the glory of God”, or “Glory be to God”, or “Thanks be to God” or something like that.

This makes me recall an incident of my youth about thirty years ago. As green as grass as I was, and as new in the Church as I was, I went to visit a Greek women’s monastery. The women at this monastery were very hospitable, loving and Christ-like, as is the characteristic of Orthodox communities when they are healthy. This one was a healthy community. They were so nice to us who were visiting that when we were coming to the departure, I said (in my customary Canadian way) to the abbess who was at the door saying good-bye to us : “Thank-you for your hospitality”. She said : “The Lord”. I said : “Yes, but I thank you, too”. She said : “THE LORD”. I learned my lesson.

It is for us, dear brothers and sisters, to remember that everything about our life and our worship is in, and of the Lord. The Lord is not far from us. He is with us. Our lives must be continually turned about, turned 180 degrees to Him. They must be turned away from ourselves, and turned to Him ; turned away from darkness, and turned to light ; turned away from fear, and turned to love ; turned away from death, and turned to life. The Saviour is always with us, always embracing us, always supporting us, always desiring our healing.

The Lord in His merciful, loving care for us, is always wanting to remind us of these things so that we will not be afraid of Him, but be bold to come to Him. Through the prayers of the Mother of God, the Lord sent the Wonder-working icon of the Theotokos of Pochaiv to us. He sent this icon to us : insignificant Canada, miniscule Orthodoxy in Canada. He sent this icon to us. The Mother of God, through her prayers, her love, her compassion, her intercession, touched the lives of hundreds of people. As far as I can tell at the present time from the things that I have heard, we are into the vicinity of ten reported healings from diseases. One person had been afflicted by severe allergies and extremely painful asthma so that she could not go to church for more than about ten minutes. It had been like this for more than seven years. She kissed the icon, and now she sings in the choir of the church with no difficulty. Instantly it was like this. Another woman had been diagnosed in August with an incurable cancer, and was expecting to die within a year. She is a very believing person (and some of you might actually know her). She venerated the icon, and when she was scanned later there was no cancer left.

The Lord, in His mercy, sent to us this concrete testimony of His love for us : the Mother of God’s compassionate concern and presence with us. Not only healings of the body occurred. People’s lives also were changed. People came to repentance through their contact with the Mother of God. All sorts of unexpected encounters came about while the Mother of God progressed across Canada. We were not able to make a proper reception for her because we were not prepared. We were not able to make a proper notice and a proper agenda for her crossing the country. Many places were missed that would have benefitted by her presence. We had little preparation time, but we made the best we could of it. The Lord, and the Mother of God multiplied the offering, and made much more of what we were able to offer to the glory of God, and to the nurturing and encouragement of the children of God, the flock of Christ.

This is what I mean by the Lord’s compassionate concern for us. He is with us. He loves us. He is hearing us. As we are celebrating the life, the service and the activity of the holy angels today, it is good for us to remember them, too, for encouragement because they are not very different from us. They are rational beings as we are. However, they do not have bodies as we do. That is the difference. Therefore, they are called “bodiless” powers, and we are “embodied” powers (one could say). However, the angels, as it says in the Psalms, are always looking “to the hand of the Master” (see Psalm 122:2). By their support, by their protection, and by the intercession of the Mother of God, let us also be constantly looking to the hand of our Master. Let us look for life from Him. Let us look to serve Him in every way, every day, and to glorify Him, our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America

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

The Apostle is saying to us this morning in the Epistle reading that we are created by God to do everything that is good in co-operation and in harmony with Him. We are created to be co-workers with Him in His Kingdom. We human beings, created in God’s image and growing into His likeness, have a very great responsibility. We are to be, indeed, co-workers with the Lord.

Being co-workers with the Lord requires that we pay attention to Him at all times, that we live our lives in carefully protected communion of love with Him, and that we continue in every way to use the armour of God about which the Apostle is speaking to us in the second Epistle today – especially the Word of God. We have to put on the whole armour of God, especially the Word. This is important because we can only do what God has created us to do. We can only fulfil our responsibilities (that have been outlined for us by the Apostle) if we make sure that we continually are in harmony with the Lord, living in the communion of love with God. This is because, in the first place, God is love ; in the second place, God creates us because of love ; in the third place, God shows His love for us by giving us His Only-begotten Son ; in the fourth place, we respond in love to His love, supported by His love. It is this response in love which fulfils this circle of responsibility. Right from the beginning of our creation, the Lord calls us into communion of love in harmony with Him. He created all things, everything that is, because of this love.

People wonder where everything came from in the first place. It comes from the love of God. Everything that is, anywhere in the whole universe, exists and has being because God produces it from His love. As the Psalms are saying (and other writers in the Scriptures are saying), everything that exists, by its existence, is praising God and is glorifying God (see Psalm 150:6). When we are responding to the Lord in this harmony of love, we are in harmony with the whole of creation, which was created precisely to live in this harmony of love. Thus we are glorifying God who created us, and we are rejoicing in the fact that we exist and are able to glorify God.

In this context, encountering this demon-possessed man today is a stark contrast. We see that this man is uncontrollable. He could not wear clothes, and he could not live in any place. He lived in the tombs in a graveyard. It was a horrible place. The graveyards in the Middle East are not like graveyards here. Everyone is not buried under the ground there. Very often they are buried in little houses that are specially built because the ground is so rocky. (If we went to Italy and Greece, we would see many such buildings where people are buried in chambers in special little masonry buildings constructed often out of stone.) This man was living in such a place. If we went to Cairo, Egypt we would see all sorts of people today living in such tombs because they have no place else to live. Most of the people occupying these Cairo tombs are Christians, sad to say. They are an oppressed people in Egypt. The poorest of them have no place to stay. Living in these tombs, they at least have some shelter from the hot sun, the blowing winds, the rain, and sometimes, the snow. This man is living in the graveyard because there was no place else that could hold him, and generally people are not going to graveyards all the time. Somehow he felt comforted in his torment there, and people knew where he was so that they could keep away from him. We see that he is a very violent person. If he were put in chains he would break any sort of chain, even the strongest chain restraining him. Such were the means by which the demons were controlling this man. We hear that they are legion. There are very, very many demons possessing this man.

When our Saviour comes into his presence, there is not a moment of hesitation : two things happen at once. Immediately, our Lord sees this man in his terrible condition, and He begins to tell the demons to come out of him. Immediately, at the same time the man possessed by the demons, recognises and proclaims who is Jesus Christ by saying : “‘What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?’” He recognises Him as the Saviour. The Saviour was not going to let the demons stay in the man, and the demons understood this. Therefore, the demons beg Him to allow them to enter the herd of pigs. The Saviour does not send the demons into Hades or into the abyss (which is actually worse than Hades) ; He allows them to go into the pigs. I always used to feel sorry for the pigs because the demons immediately drive the pigs into insanity, and they violently run down a steep hill into the Sea of Galilee where they all drown.

This is the work of demons. Their job is to separate us from God. If they could have done it to the man, they would have done it to him. There was some remnant of life and hope left in this man possessed by all these demons that he was not able to be killed by them. The poor little pigs have no ability to discern any difference, and when they are inhabited by the demons, immediately the demons do to the pigs what they try to do to everyone. They drive the pigs mad. They make them violent. The pigs violently run down the hill and die in the water. The man is released from slavery to those demons. He is restored to his right mind. We see him become peaceful, sitting with the Saviour.

There is an interesting reaction from the whole neighbourhood. The people of that region knew who this man was. They come and see that he is healed. He is himself. It is possible that in his whole life he had had little experience of being himself because of the way demons work in people’s lives. What do these people do ? They ask the Saviour to go away because they are afraid of Him. There are many layers here. For the Jewish people, pigs are absolutely forbidden. Therefore, what are they doing with pigs there ? These Gadarenes are probably doing business because the Roman army is occupying their land. The Romans do not mind that there are pigs in that region, because they very much like to eat them. The Gadarenes are growing the pigs illegally and against the Law of Moses in order to feed the Roman army and to make money. It seems like they are making business a priority over obedience to the Lord, who had said, in effect : “Not only must you not eat pigs, but you also must not be near them”. Raising pigs means being quite near them. Apparently the Gadarenes are more interested in the business and the financial results of raising pigs than they are in the fruit of obedience to the Lord in love.

When the Gadarenes ask our Saviour to go away (because they are afraid), two things are happening, as I understand it. One is that their hearts are very much pricked because they know that what they are doing is wrong, and they know that the Lord is displeased with their behaviour. Yet, at the same time that they are pricked in their hearts, they still are determined to go on doing the same thing. It is evident that they are determined to go and get more pigs to continue the business. The second thing is that the man, himself, liberated from the demons, wants to be with the Saviour. He behaves the way all people do when they have been freed by Him. When they have been healed by the Saviour, they want to be with Him and close to Him at all times because His love is liberating. His love is life-giving. His love is full of joy. This man is experiencing all these things, and he wants to be with the Saviour. He asks the Lord, in effect : “Please, let me go with You and be with You”. Our Saviour says : “‘Return to your own house, and tell what great things God has done for you’”. The man immediately goes into the city, and not only lives his life quietly in the midst of the people, but also he does not stop speaking about what the Lord had done for him.

Is it clear why the Saviour would send this man, all by himself, back into the city to do this in this hostile environment which I have just described – an environment of fear ? This man had lived, paralysed with fear, driven by fear, crazy with fear for years and years. We have no idea how long, but it was a very long time. This man had been driven by fear, and he knew this fear. However, he also knows what freedom there is, and what joy there is to be released from it. He instantly understands it. The Saviour sends the Grace of God to him to sustain him in his solitude in this city. The Lord sends him to the city to help convince the people to change their ways. Even though these people had encountered the Saviour face-to-face, and had seen the results of His love at work (which they could not deny), they are nevertheless determined to go their own way. However, the Lord does not throw them away. Instead, He leaves the man to be in the city so that he could be like yeast to the rest of them (see Matthew 13:33). Whoever amongst the people could respond to this yeast, they would because this man’s love is so infectious. Using our Saviour’s own words again, we could say that this man remains in the city as salt (see Matthew 5:13), so that any person who would respond to his testimony of the love of God would be able to catch the same flavour, the same life, the same vitality that salt brings to food.

The Lord is merciful to us. He is following us everywhere, no matter how stubborn we are in our selfish ways, or how often we turn our backs on Him because we are, ourselves, bound by fear. The Lord is merciful. He is always with us. He is always sending persons, like this freed man, to remind us of His love and His hope. He is always reminding us that He is waiting with His outstretched, embracing arms to give us renewed life, renewed vitality, renewed joy and renewed remembering of our freedom in Him.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, let us follow the exhortation of the Apostle. As we are coming to receive from the Lord who is present here in our midst, ready to feed us with His own life, ready to sustain us, let us allow Him to put His arms around us. Let us live in the protection of this armour of love. Living in the shelter and protection of His armour and in the shelter and protection of His life-giving love, let us, in every part of our life, glorify our 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.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America