Feast of the Circumcision of Christ

Bishop Seraphim : Homily
Loving the Lord is the Purpose of our Life
Feast of the Circumcision of Christ
(Memory of Saint Basil the Great)
1 January, 2006
Colossians 2:8-12 ; Luke 2:20-21, 40-52


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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