Year 2005

Sunday before the Feast of Theophany

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Witnessing to the Love of Jesus Christ
Sunday before the Feast of Theophany
2 January, 2005
2 Timothy 4:5-8 ; Mark 1:1-8


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.

Nativity of Christ (Old-Style)

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Making visible the Love of Christ
Nativity of Christ (Old-Style)
7 January, 2005
Galatians 4:4-7 ; Matthew 2:1-12


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.

Everything is possible with God

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Everything is possible with God
23 January, 2005
Matthew 19:16-26


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.

How to observe Great Lent

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
How to observe Great Lent
Sunday of the Last Judgement
6 March, 2005
1 Corinthians 8:8-9:2 ; Matthew 25:31-46


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.

Thomas Sunday

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Complete Confidence in His Love
Thomas Sunday
8 May, 2005


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.

The feeding and the healing of the rational Sheep

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
The feeding and the healing of the rational Sheep
Saturday before the Feast of Pentecost
18 June, 2005
Acts 28:1-31 ; John 21:15-25


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.

Feast of Pentecost

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
You are our God doing Wonders
Feast of Pentecost
19 June, 2005
Acts 2:1-11 ; John 7:37-52 ; 8:12


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.

Sunday of all Saints

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Who is holy ?
Sunday of All Saints
1st Sunday after Pentecost
26 June, 2005
Hebrews 11:33-12:2 ; Matthew 10:32-33, 37-38 ; 19:27-30


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.

Opening Homily at the 14th All-American Council

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Being Salt and Yeast
Homily at the Divine Liturgy
Opening of the 14th All-American Council
Toronto, Ontario
Sunday, 17 July, 2005


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.

Learning how to trust the Saviour

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Learning how to trust the Saviour
8th Sunday after Pentecost
14 August, 2005
1 Corinthians 1:10-18 ; Matthew 14:14-22


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.

Leave-taking of the Feast of the Transfiguration

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
“Lord, it is good for us to be here”
Leave-taking of the Feast of the Transfiguration
26 August, 2005
2 Corinthians 1:12-20 ; Matthew 22:23-33


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.

Child-like Humility

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Child-like Humility
Saturday of the 10th Week after Pentecost
27 August, 2005
Romans 15:30-33 ; Matthew 17:24-18:4


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.

Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God (Old-Style)

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Being Imitators of the Mother of God
Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God (Old-Style)
28 August, 2005
Philippians 2:5-11 ; Luke 10:38-42, 11:27-28


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.

Altar Feast

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
The Lord works in and through us
Altar Feast
(Feast of the Dedication of the Temple of the Resurrection in Jerusalem)
12th Sunday after Pentecost
Transferred to 11 September, 2005
1 Corinthians 15:1-11 ; Matthew 19:16-26 ;
Hebrews 3:1-4 ; Matthew 16:13-18


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.

The Lord is in Charge of Everything

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
The Lord is in Charge of Everything
Sunday after the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross
18 September, 2005
Galatians 2:16-20 ; Mark 8:34-9:1


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.

5th Sunday in Great Lent (Memory of Saint Mary of Egypt)

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
A Beacon of Light and Hope
(Memory of Saint Mary of Egypt)
5th Sunday in Great Lent
17 April, 2005
Hebrews 9:11-14 ; Mark 10:32-45


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.

The Example of Saint Peter the Aleut

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
The Example of Saint Peter the Aleut
Temple Feast
24 September, 2005


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.

Complete Confidence in the Lord

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Complete Confidence in the Lord
25 September, 2005
Luke 5:1-11


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.

Dedication of Annunciation Cathedral, Ottawa

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Providential Protection, Evangelical Expectation
Dedication of Annunciation Cathedral, Ottawa
1 October, 2005
Hebrews 9:1-7 ; Luke 10:38-42 ; 11:27-28


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.

ABCs of the spiritual Life

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
ABCs of the Spiritual Life
15th Sunday after Pentecost
2 October, 2005


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.

The Need to express Gratitude

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
The Need to express Gratitude
16th Sunday after Pentecost
9 October, 2005
2 Corinthians 6:1-10 ; Luke 7:11-16


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.

Giving and forgiving

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Giving and forgiving
18th Sunday after Pentecost
23 October, 2005
2 Corinthians 9:6-11 ; Luke 16:19-31


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.

Our Faith is our Life

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Our Faith is our Life
6 November, 2005
Galatians 1:11-19 ; Luke 16:19-31


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.

God is with us

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
God is with us
25th Sunday after Pentecost
11 December, 2005
Ephesians 4:1-6 ; Luke 10:25-37


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.

Sunday of the Holy Ancestors of Christ

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Witnessing to the Truth of God’s Love
Sunday of the Holy Ancestors of Christ
18 December, 2005
Hebrews 11:9-10, 17-23, 32-40 ; Matthew 1:1-25


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.

Feast of the Nativity of Christ

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Everything is focussed on Jesus Christ
Feast of the Nativity of Christ
25 December, 2005
Galatians 4:4-7 ; Matthew 2:1-12


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.