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Orthodox Sermons

Today the Church reads the history of Zacchaeus. We are now entering the threshold of the preparatory weeks before Lent. Indeed we are now only eleven weeks from Easter itself. Who then was Zacchaeus?

Zacchaeus was a tax-collector. I suppose none of us particularly likes being taxed, but at least if the tax is collected honestly and is spent on useful public services, then we can agree to paying our taxes with goodwill. Zacchaeus, however, was dishonest. At least some of the tax that he collected went straight into his own pocket. We know this from his confession in today’s Gospel where he promises to return fourfold that which he had taken dishonestly. But perhaps even worse than this, Zacchaeus was collecting tax not for a legitimate State, but for the occupying power of the Roman Empire. He was therefore not only a fraudster and a thief, but he was also a traitor to his own people.

As he collected tax, so he collected sins. In that way we too are like him, for just as children collect stamps of all colours and sizes and from all countries and stick them in albums, so we all collect sins and albums of sins of all colours and sizes and varieties. We, like Zacchaeus, are sin-collectors, and every sin is a theft of God’s grace, fraudulent and a betrayal of God.

How then was Zacchaeus saved? It is important for us to know if we too seek salvation. And we know that he was saved not only because of Our Lord’s words to him in today’s Gospel, but also because of the halo around Zacchaeus’ head in the icon that lies before us, for in the Life of St Zacchaeus we can read how he was later made a bishop by the Apostles and became a holy man.

Zacchaeus was saved because he knew he was small, and so had to climb up into the sycamore tree to see the Son of God Whom he desired to see.

Our problem, on the other hand, is that we do not know that we are small. We imagine that we are big, that we are great in stature, clever, good, righteous and, ridiculous though it may sound, we even imagine that we are important, whereas in fact we are nobodies.

Like Zacchaeus, we will not be saved until we too are small and understand that in order to see Salvation, we must first climb up into the tree of repentance, up onto the cross of humility, bringing the fourfold fruit of repentance. Only then will we hear Christ’s voice calling to us and saying: ‘Come down’, because He is calling us to eat with Him in His Eucharist.

Today we also commemorate all the New Martyrs and Confessors of the twentieth century, spread over one sixth of the Earth’s service, who were brought to salvation and holiness after the tragic events of the Russian Revolution. There is a link between them and the salvation of Zacchaus which we remember today.

Before the Revolution the Church in Russia was rich and powerful, but after the Revolution, the Church became poor and small — like Zacchaeus. Before the Revolution few are the saints of the Russian Church who have been revealed to us, but after the Revolution, God revealed to us hundreds of thousands of His saints. Here there is a lesson for us.

Do we find salvation when the Church is rich and powerful? Do we find salvation when we are big? Zacchaeus found salvation in being small, and countless Orthodox in the twentieth century found salvation in being persecuted in the Name of the Lord, Who makes us strong through our weakness. Let us be on our guard, remaining ‘small of stature’.

Holy Father Zacchaeus and all the New Martyrs and Confessors, pray to God for us!

Regarding today’s Gospel, there are many misunderstandings.

The error of the pharisee is to confuse the means with the ends. Let us be clear. Our end, or goal, is to find salvation. This means to prepare ourselves to be with God, for the inevitable destiny of every soul is to be with God in eternity, to be in the presence of Love. Those who are prepared for this will see God, will experience Divine Love, those who are not prepared for this will not see Love, but will be burnt by it. To be prepared is to be pure in heart. As it is written: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’. Those who are not pure in heart will not see God, but will experience His presence with painful regret, not with joy.

Firstly, there is the worship of God and prayer to Him. True, we can worship and pray to God everywhere, but there is one place where we can be particularly close to Him, and where it is easier to speak to Him in prayer, and that is at church. Only at church are services held in His honour and we can thank Him, worship Him and pray to Him more easily during those services and only at church can we partake of the sacraments.

Secondly, we can deepen our worship of God through reading and obeying His word, through fasting and through almsgiving.

Just as worship, prayer, reading of the Word of God and almsgiving are only means to salvation, and not salvation itself, so fasting too is only a means to drawing closer to God. And yet, as one philosopher put it many years ago: ‘We are what we eat’. Often those who eat a great deal of meat, sometimes even more than once a day, are fleshly, carnally-minded people, with little spiritual understanding. Of course this does not mean that we are to be vegaetarians and never eat meat. Again, if I may generalise, it sometimes happens that people who eat little or no meat, or constantly diet for fashion’s sake, can be faddish or eccentric, and also have little spiritual understanding. The Church therefore does not ask us to fast twelve months of the year. It asks us through Great Lent, the three other Fasts, and Wednesdays and Fridays, to fast for six months of the year. The Church’s approach is balanced. That is why this coming week, there is no fast — to remind us that although salvation is not in fasting, on the other hand, it is also true that fasting for Christ’s sake will help us draw closer to salvation.

‘We are what we eat’, said the philosopher. We can see this especially clearly in holy communion. If we come to communion regularly, we are with Christ and He is with us. But if on the other hand, we never come to communion, then we shall never be with Christ and He will never be with us: ‘We are what we eat’.

To summarise:

If we sincerely, from our hearts, worship and pray to God, read His words, fast and give alms, then we are not behaving as the pharisee, but as the publican, we are asking for mercy, and thus we find justification. Not justification because of our outward actions, but justification through the Mercy of God, which alone makes our salvation possible. In doing all these things, we are actually saying the Prayer of the Publican, which is at the root of the Jesus Prayer: ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner’. For it is only the Mercy of God, given as a gift to us for our sincerity, which brings us into His presence, bringing us salvation, for our God is merciful and He loves mankind.

God be merciful to us sinners!

On this Sunday the Church tells the parable of the Father who had two sons. Like all parables, it has a symbolic meaning. Who is the Father and who are the two sons?

The Father represents God the Father, the Father of all mankind.

The elder son represents the Jewish people. The elder son represents the Jews, for alone of all people the Jewish people had kept the memory of God, accurately, faithfully conserving the stories of Creation, the story of the Fall of Mankind and the prophecies of the Coming of a Saviour, the Messiah. The Jews, the elder son, had remained with the Father.

On the other hand, the younger son represents the Gentiles, that is the pagan world. At the time of Christ, this meant the whole world except for the Jews. Unlike the Jews, the pagans had confused their memories of God the Creator with all sorts of false stories, myths and legends. They had confused the Creator with creation, and instead of worshipping God, they worshipped stones and rivers, the sun and the moon, kings and queens, thinking that they were gods and so making them into idols. The pagans, the younger son, had journeyed into ‘a far country’ and there ‘wasted their substance’. In other words, they had distanced themselves from God, forgotten His Truth, so wasting their spiritual inheritance. As a result, they suffered from ‘a mighty famine’, in other words, from spiritual hunger, and so ate with ‘swine’, that is, ate with the illusions of the demons. However, they repented and turned back towards the Father, who welcomed them with open arms, running out towards them to embrace them.

This parable is in fact a warning to the Jews. We can see this vividly portrayed in the icon of the parable which in the middle of the church. There we see the Father showing love and forgiveness towards the repentant son, who lies at His feet, begging forgiveness. The elder son, however, is angry, full of bitterness and jealousy. In hatred he says.

Perhaps we feel some sympathy with the elder son. After all, he never wasted his substance, he did remain loyal to the Father. The problem is that the elder son’s service was a form of slavery, he did not stay with the Father out of love, but out of self-interest, in expectation of a reward. This was not love freely given, but an obligation fulfilled in the hope of the payment of the hireling.

We can compare this with the attitude of the Father. He instantly forgives all that the younger son, the pagan world, has done and says: ‘Let us make merry’. The attitude of the Father is not gloom, but joy. The elder son, on the other hand, is full of gloom and cannot bring himself to be joyful or express love, because he has no love for his brother. The Father says: ‘All that I have is thine’, and shares everything. The elder son wishes to share nothing, for he is locked up in pride and self-love. Indeed, the elder son does not want to share in all that the Father has. Yes, he wants to share in His wealth and His property, but he does not want to share in what the Father has above all else — in His merciful compassion and love.

We may have great wealth, but if we have no love, then all our wealth is worthless and our lives, like the lives of so many very wealthy people, are futile and purposeless.

We may have a wonderful job, but if we do not use it to create something positive, then it only satisfies our own vanity and has no real significance.

We may have a beautiful house or car, but if we use them only to flaunt our riches and feed our selfishness, then they serve no purpose.

Where there is no love, there there is only the emptiness of futile vanity and the gloom of selfish pride.

Therefore, let us too make merry, for Christ the King of Love makes joy even out of the most difficult problems and all we prodigals are able to return at any moment to the Father and be embraced by His love.

Rejoice, God is with us!

‘Religion is bad’. So say some very secular-minded people and they will tell you all about conflicts in, say, Northern Ireland between Catholics and Protestants, or in India between Hindus and Muslims, or in the Middle East between Jews and Muslims. Then they will go on to tell you all about ‘wars of religion’ and all the other ‘evils’ of religion.

The fact is — the Devil works very subtly. He does not openly declare his evil purpose. Rather he works his evil under the sign of the greatest good, that is, religion. He would not choose something openly bad with which to camouflage his evil. That would not be camouflage. If he were to disclose his evil aim openly, in the name of evil, he would achieve very little. The fact that he disguises evil behind the greatest good of religion means that he can achieve far more. Indeed he leads people to misuse the good of religion in all sorts of ways, and not only to grab land, power and riches. For example:

There are those who only use religion as a comfort in times of trouble. When the difficulty is passed, then people forget all about religion.

There are those who make of religion a kind of ‘niceism’, making it into a polite, wimpish convention, soft and soppy, sentimental and namby-pamby.

Then there are those who use religion as a kind of logic to justify their bad behaviour. They say: ‘It does not matter what I do, I’m a believer, therefore I’m saved and God will forgive me’.

Then there are those who use religion to be proud and superior like the Pharisee. They say: ‘Thank God that I am good and not like other people’.

Religion in reality is none of these things. In fact religion, that is our God Who is ‘an all-consuming fire’, as the Apostle Paul puts it, is the inescapable reality Who underpins the Universe. God is the one inevitable meeting in our lives, for we are made to meet Him, made to be with Him, destined to meet Him. When the world is over, whenever that will be, we shall certainly meet Him, for He made us. This meeting is called the Last Judgement.

When we think of this Last Judgement, we should not think of judges, court-rooms, juries, trials or lawyers in robes and wigs. We should think rather of being in the presence of supreme Love. It is the presence of God, that is of supreme Love, that is our Judgement.

Being in the presence of God, of Love, will warm and comfort those who have sincerely tried to follow and live by His teachings. It will utterly rejoice the hearts of those who have strived to reject evil, who have struggled to be both merciful and righteous, as is described in today’s Gospel.

But being in the presence of God, of Love, will be like a burning fire of regret to those who have lived by evil, who have lived in pride and cruelty, with hearts as hard as stone, who saw those in need and did nothing, as is described in today’s Gospel.

The presence of God for those who have tried to follow God’s Mercy and Righteousness is called Heaven.

The presence of God for those who have been neither merciful nor righteous is called Hell.

Too often, when we ourselves fall, we think of God’s Mercy and His indulgence towards us.

Too often, when we see others fall, we think of God’s Righteousness and His Judgement of them.

It would be better to think the other way round. When we fall into sin, let us rather think of God the Righteous Judge and the fate of the goats on the left-hand side. When others fall into sin, let us rather think of the Merciful God Who forgives and the fate of the sheep on the right-hand side. As it is written in the Gospels, and as we sing at every Liturgy:

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

Lord have mercy on us all.

Tomorrow is Monday. Not just any Monday, but Clean Monday, the first day of Clean Week, the beginning of Great Lent, a time of particular prayer and fasting. Great Lent will take us on a journey through forty days, or six weeks, to Lazarus Saturday, Palm Sunday and then Holy Week. At the end of that Week, God willing, we will celebrate the Resurrection of Christ on Easter Night. For we are now fifty days exactly from Easter Day.

We know from the Scriptures that the first man and the first woman lived in Paradise, in Eden. We know also that they walked with God, meaning that they lived in harmony and communion with God, suffering neither sin, nor sorrow, neither aging, nor death.

The cure for their Fall was made clear to them; it was in doing the opposite of all they had done. Instead of disobedience, they needed obedience; instead of pride, they needed humility. In other words they had to turn back on what they had done in repentance and ask forgiveness. At first they had been unable to do this. When God had first spoken to Adam and Eve after their act of disobedience, Adam had blamed Eve, and Eve had blamed the serpent. Neither had had the humility to take responsibility for his errors and ask for forgiveness. It was not that God did not know what they had done; it was simply that He wanted to give them the opportunity to ask Him, and to ask each other, for forgiveness. Instead they blamed each other and in the process blamed God their Maker. We can hear the Devil laughing.

To us, as children of Adam and Eve, God also gives opportunities to ask for forgiveness, as Adam and Eve should have done. He gives us the sacrament of Confession. Confession does not exist because God wants to know what we have done or left undone. He already knows that. Confession exists because God is giving us an opportunity to own up to our mistakes and failings. He wants us to ask for forgiveness, so that we can then take strength from Him through the prayers of the priest, so as to clean ourselves and strive not to repeat our mistakes.

However, before we ask forgiveness of God, we first have to ask forgiveness of each other.

And just at this time, on Forgiveness Sunday and all during Clean Week, it is the custom of Orthodox throughout the world to come to Confession, to ask God for forgiveness, preparing ourselves for Communion next Sunday. First, therefore, we must ask each other for forgiveness. We can ask forgiveness of those who are not here by visiting them or telephoning them. But of those who are here, we can now ask forgiveness directly, for all our errors towards them in thought, word or deed, whether conscious or unconscious.

For if we do not first ask each other for forgiveness, we cannot ask God for forgiveness. And without forgiveness, there is no way back into Paradise for any of us.

Forgive me, brothers and sisters.

Given on the Sunday of Orthodoxy 1903 in the San Francisco Cathedral during St Tikhon’s tenure as Bishop of the Aleutian Islands and North America, this sermon has been very slightly modified for use exactly one hundred years later in England on the Sunday of Orthodoxy 2003.

This Sunday, brethren, begins the week of Orthodoxy, or the week of the Triumph of Orthodoxy, because it is today that the Holy Orthodox Church solemnly recalls its victory over the Iconoclast heresy and other heresies and gratefully remembers all who fought for the Orthodox faith in word, writing, teaching, suffering, or godly living.

‘Verily, I say unto you, that there be some that stand here, which shall not taste of death till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power’.

These words are from today’s Gospel. They are addressed to us, but what do they mean? What does it mean, ‘to taste of death’? What is it, ‘to see the kingdom of God’?

To taste of death means to suffer from all that entered into the world when death entered into the world. For when Adam and Eve fell, not only did death enter, but also hard work, the pain of childbirth, anguish, depression, stress, worry, disease, old age. And all these things taste of death. Every time that we undergo them, we suffer a part of death, we have a foretaste of death. How then are we to overcome them? How can we avoid ‘the taste of death’?

And this is the whole difference between the Church which accepts the Cross and the world which rejects the Cross. The world sees all human problems with anguish, for the world is locked in to pessimism, it sees no way out of its difficulties, for it does not have an eternal perspective, the perspective of the Cross. On the other hand the Church sees all the difficulties which we naturally come up against in life as challenges, opportunities to combat evil, temporary difficulties. However long those difficulties may last, at the end, the worst thing that can happen to us is that we shall die. For the Christian, however, to die is to be with Christ and holds no sting, for Christ has overcome death. In the light of the Cross and Its fruit, the Resurrection, death holds no fear for us. The taste of death becomes the taste of life. The Cross and the Resurrection bring life more abundantly. In the light of the Cross and the Resurrection we see the Kingdom, where there is no sickness, nor sorrow, nor sighing, but life everlasting.

In the perspective of the Cross and the Resurrection, the perspective of the kingdom of God, of which we have a foretaste even now, all human life with all its problems is but a single passing moment in eternity. And if we look at our lives from this Christian perspective, then indeed, we do not taste of death, for we have already to some small extent seen the kingdom of God.

Before Thy Cross we bow down, O Master, and Thy Holy Resurrection we glorify!

Why do we fast? Why do we make sacrifices? Why do we stand at long services? Why do we pray? To those of us who are beginning to doubt and waver after only two weeks of the Fast, the Church brings us an answer today. This answer is in the person of St Gregory Palamas, the fourteenth-century Archbishop of Salonica in Greece to whom this Sunday is dedicated.

To many of you Salonica may seem far away. Not to me, because exactly twenty-five years ago I lived and worked there for a year. And as regards St Gregory Palamas, I saw two things.

Now at the same time as St Gregory was living in extreme fasting and prayer, there lived a clever philosopher, also a Greek, a Hellenist, whose name was Barlaam. He said that, logically, it was impossible to know God, indeed God was by definition unknowable and inaccessible to the human mind. On hearing and studying Barlaam’s philosophy. St Gregory recognized in the so-called logic of Barlaam a blasphemy, a heresy. He recognized that Barlaam lacked purity of heart and therefore mind and that his logic was the logic of the godless who only trusted in his own mental powers and imagination, the mental powers of the created, not of the Creator.

For if Barlaam were right, then all of Christ’s work for us, from His Conception and Birth as a man, His Circumcision, His Presentation in the Temple, His Baptism, His Crucifixion, His Resurrection, His Ascension, to His Sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, are futile, they are all in vain. Unlike Barlaam, St Gregory said that since Christ the Creator had become man and part of creation, He had made human nature potentially holy — like His own human nature. By sending down the Holy Spirit, He had given us all access in our human nature to holiness. Just as the Sun is known to us through its energies of heat and light, so God can be known to us through the uncreated energies of the Holy Spirit.

Quite simply, if we reject the teaching of St Gregory on this, we reject all the work of Christ and therefore also reject the coming of the Holy Spirit. Barlaam’s philosophy would mean that we cannot know God, that there is no purpose in fasting and prayer. In fact, Barlaam’s philosophy was a denial of God and therefore the foundation-stone of the last century’s atheism and disbelief with all its massacres and genocides with their hundreds of millions of victims. Indeed, Barlaam’s philosophy is the basis of all those recent ideas which said that there is no God, that man stands alone and lonely at the head of the Universe, for there is nothing greater than man — that he quite magically created himself in an empty and godless Universe.

It is vital for us to understand that the thoughts of St Gregory, expressed in detail in his writings, are not just thoughts, not just another philosophy like Barlaam’s, but they were based on his experience, they were divinely inspired. He was not talking about an idea, but about the reality which he had experienced as an ascetic in that cave which you can still visit today. And the fact is that it is the wonder-working relics of St Gregory which go in procession through the streets of Salonica today, not the graceless dust of the bones of Barlaam.

Holy Father Gregory, pray to God for us!

This Sunday, the fourth in Great Lent, the Church commemorates St John of the Ladder. Who was he?

On this Sunday in previous years I have chosen to read extracts from some of the early chapters of St John’s Ladder. Today I would simply like to relate to you just one saying of St John, a simple saying which I know has changed lives and saved people from their sins. Here is his saying:

St John related that monastic life was similar to a number of stones being shaken together in a jar. At first the stones were sharp and hard, with rough, cutting edges. However as the jar was shaken, so the stones became smoother and rounder, like the pebbles one can find on the seashore.

Although St John spoke of monastic life in this saying, it can be applied to any sort of community, in a family, at home, at work, at school, at the docks, in the office and also in our parish churches. By this saying St John was indicating that our salvation comes through others. In whatever position God places us, we can find salvation through the difficulties or even friction that we encounter with others. This does not mean that we should go looking for, still less creating, difficulties. God will only allow us the difficulties which we are capable of coping with through His Grace and which we encounter naturally in the course of our everyday lives.

Holy Father John, pray to God for us!

At the end of the coming week Great Lent will be over. Next Saturday is Lazarus Saturday, which is followed by Palm Sunday, the Entry of our Lord into Jerusalem, and then by Passion Week. However, today we commemorate another entry into Jerusalem, not the Entry into Jerusalem of our Lord, but the entry into Jerusalem of Mary of Egypt. Who was she and what is her significance today?

Born in Alexandria in Egypt in the middle of the fifth century, as a young girl Mary fell into the vice of prostitution. For seventeen years, from the age of 12 until the age of 29, she lived the life of a harlot. However, once finding herself in Jerusalem, out of curiosity, she went to see the Precious Cross of Christ. She found that she was unable to enter the church where St Helen had placed the Cross, for some invisible force prevented her from entering in. So frightened was she at this that she asked the Mother of God through an icon at the entrance to the church, why this was. The Mother of God replied to her that Mary first needed to repent and obey her. Only after promising to do this was Mary allowed to enter the church in Jerusalem. After then entering and venerating the Cross, Mary heard the Mother of God telling her: ‘If you cross the Jordan, you will find true peace’.

So shaken was Mary by these events that she did indeed forsake all her old life and, having taken communion, she crossed the Jordan, and went to live there in the desert. We do not know the exact details of her day-to-day life, but we do know that she dwelt there as a hermitess, eating plants, living in torments and struggle with passionate thoughts, and eventually obtaining the grace to work miracles, crossing the Jordan as if on dry land. She lived naked and became withered and emaciated, as we can see in the icon of her, but nevertheless she survived there for some forty-eight years. Then she was discovered by a pious monk, Zosimas, who is portrayed in the icon together with her. It was to him that she related her life which we have today.

The Life of St Mary teaches us many things. Perhaps the first and most obvious lesson we can learn from her is that we should never judge, never pre-judge. Who will be saved? It is impossible to answer this question, for it is never too late to repent, even for us. Humanly speaking, when we consider the life of Mary until her twenty-ninth year, we might think that salvation had become impossible for her. And yet the service to her calls her ‘the greatest of saints’. Humanly speaking, we are condemned; but by the grace of God everything, including the height of repentance, is possible. No man has the right to judge another.

The Life of St Mary of Egypt also teaches us something about human nature. In each of us there is the desire for worldly pleasures, for amusement and entertainment, for food and drink, for the pleasures of the senses. But there is also the desire for pleasures of a higher sort, pleasures that are lasting, which we may call joys. Those joys are so much higher than the fleeting pleasures of the senses that they alone constitute the path to lasting happiness. Societies which are devoted only to the satisfaction of the pleasures of the senses, pleasure-seeking societies, are societies without lasting joys, they are full of sad faces.

The Life of St Mary teaches us that the values of the Church are quite different from those of the world. She went out into the desert and had nothing, no friends, no home, no possessions, no clothes and hardly any food and drink. The world looked for pleasure, the satisfaction of the senses, money and power, but St Mary was moneyless and powerless in the world. Today’s Gospel confirms the choice of St Mary, for it says that those who wish to be great must be servants. This is upside down from all the ways of this world. But our Lord preached this and like Him St Mary lived this.

Indeed, as we have already said, the Church calls St Mary ‘the greatest of saints’. The use of this word ‘great’ may surprise. In everyday life, we use ‘great’ in other meanings. The world speaks of ‘great politicians’, ‘great soldiers’, great film-stars’, ‘great performances by sportsmen’, ‘a great holiday’, ‘a great car’, ‘a great amount of money’. But the Church calls St Mary ‘great’ and a thousand and a half years after she lived we ask for her prayers, but not for those of any politician or soldier or film-star or sportsman. Let us think more carefully before next we utter this word ‘great’.

And as this last week of Great Lent begins, let us also ponder on the words of the Mother of God, which led Mary to her salvation through repentance and her greatness: ‘If you cross the Jordan, you will find true peace’. These mysterious words are today also addressed to each of us; the interpretation of their mystery is open to the souls of each of us, but only if we ask the Mother of God and St Mary to guide us. And then we shall find our own ‘entry into Jerusalem’.

Holy Mother Mary, pray to God for us!

Today the Maker of the Universe enters Jerusalem. He is seated not on a white stallion with a 100,000 strong army to escort Him like the King of Babylon. He is seated on a young ass, the lowest of creatures, and escorted by street children like the King of Jerusalem. For He is not the King of Babylon, the King of War and Power and Pride and Riches, He is the King of Jerusalem, the King of Peace and Humility. And this is only right, for the name ‘Jerusalem’ means ‘the City of Peace’; Christ alone, the King of Peace, is therefore its rightful King.

Children greet Him with palms, the symbols of victory, and they cry ‘Hosanna’, meaning ‘Save, we pray’. Their cry and their deed are greater than they know, for in their innocence they speak and do truth, for Christ alone saves us, if we pray to Him; and the palm branches are indeed tokens of victory, for Victory comes through the Tree of the Cross.

This is not just an historic event, but an event that can be repeated at every communion. For whenever we seek peace and humility as if seated on an ass, as innocent as children crying ‘Save, we pray’, then Christ enters our souls and makes them into Jerusalems within us.

However, we know that in Jerusalem there were not only children, ‘babes and sucklings’, who greeted Him, there were also others, Scribes and Pharisees who, as the Gospels say, ‘were displeased’. They are those who wanted a worldly leader, a man of violence, a rival to the Romans, and they will lead Christ to Golgotha, preferring an unrepentant thief to the Son of God. Within a few days our Lord will suffer, because He is innocent and all the innocent suffering of the world, of which we have seen so much in our own days, is taken up in Him.

How can we not come to these services and yet still call ourselves Orthodox? How can we not follow Christ through all the events of this Great Week which changed the history of the whole world? Let us be as babes and sucklings, let us put away our worldly calculations and free ourselves from our laziness, let us be with the family of God, with the Mother of God and St John, and follow Christ to the Cross, so that then we can follow Him to His Resurrection, to Victory and Triumph, and so be resurrected in spirit together with Him.

A Homily of our Father among the Saints John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, on the Holy and Radiant Day of the Most Glorious and Saving Resurrection of Christ our God.

If any be pious and a lover of God, let him partake of this fair and radiant festival. If any be a faithful servant, let him come in rejoicing in the joy of his Lord. If any have wearied himself with fasting, let him now enjoy his reward. If any have laboured from the first hour, let him today receive his rightful due. If any have come at the third, let him feast with thankfulness. If any have arrived at the sixth, let him in no wise be in doubt, for in nothing shall he suffer loss. If any be as late as the ninth, let him draw near, let him in no wise hesitate. If any arrive only at the eleventh, let him not be fearful on account of his slowness. For the Master is bountiful and receives the last even as the first. He gives rest to him of the eleventh hour even as to him who has laboured from the first. He is merciful to the last, and provides for the first. To one He gives, and to another He shows kindness. He receives the works, and welcomes the intention. He honours the act, and commends the purpose.

The Sunday after Easter is called by Anglicans ‘Low Sunday’. There is a certain truth in this name, for no Sunday can be as high a day as Easter Sunday. On the other hand, for Orthodox Christians, no Sunday can be called low, for every Sunday is a feast of the Resurrection. This is why in Russian the word for Sunday means ‘Resurrection’; and this is why in Church English ‘Sunday’ is called the Lord’s Day, as in Greek.

In the Orthodox world, the Sunday after Easter is known as ‘Antipascha’, which means the Sunday facing Easter, in other words similar to a mirror, this Sunday reflects the light of Easter. This is the light that we felt on Easter Night and all of us who came to vespers every day this last week have also seen and experienced that light, the light of Bright Week.

But this Sunday is also known as ‘Thomas Sunday’. Today we have heard the Gospel of Thomas and how he had to feel and see Christ’s wounds and the nail marks in His body in order to believe. In the middle of the church we can see the icon of this feast. It is a copy of a very ancient icon. On it you can see Christ standing before the sealed doors of which we have read and sung. He is surrounded by his disciples, not yet enlightened by the Holy Spirit of Pentecost. And there to one side, we see the very young face of His disciple Thomas peering at Christ’s side. As a result of Thomas’ doubt, the phrase ‘doubting Thomas’ long ago entered the English language. His doubt of course is providential for us. Here we have proof of Christ’s Resurrection. One who disbelieved has come to belief. Thomas did not know how the Resurrection was possible, and yet he saw and felt it with his own eyes and therefore believed it, for it would have been perverse to disbelieve. How can anyone now still not believe in the Resurrection of Christ after the testimony of Thomas?

The Resurrection is the core of our Orthodox Christian faith. It is why we are called Orthodox Christians. No-one else in all history has risen from the dead, defeating death through death. The Hindu gods failed, the gods of Greece and Rome failed, Buddha failed, Mohammed failed, the Popes of Rome failed, Luther failed, atheists and humanists failed, even Moses and the whole Old Testament failed. Christ alone did not fail. He rose from the dead, raising the righteous with Himself. That is why we follow Him, calling ourselves Christians.

Today we may even go a stage further than Thomas and ask ourselves how it was that Christ in His risen body passed through sealed doors? Clearly, He was not a ghost - Thomas saw His wounds and the marks of the nails. Elsewhere in the Gospels, Christ eats. He had a real body and yet He passed through sealed doors, just as He passed through the rock sealing the tomb. It is clear that Christ’s risen body, though matter, material, is made of a spiritual matter or material, unlike His old body.

We cannot understand this, for fallen human knowledge or science cannot yet understand this. Although science has learnt how to split the atom, it does not know how to put atoms back together again. Worldly science is at heart destructive, whereas the science of the Gospel is constructive, creative, resurrectional.

Thomas came to belief through this event of the Resurrection. He came to belief because he touched God, because God touched him. What does that mean for us, to touch God and to be touched by Him? To touch God and be touched by Him is to have some experience that takes us beyond and outside ourselves, to something greater than our little selves, to God the Creator. He is beyond our physical needs, our physical understanding, He alone can meet our spiritual needs, vanquishing death.

There are many who touch God in some way, or rather are touched by God. For example, some, especially mothers, are brought to touch God through the innocent smile and helplessness of a new-born child. Others are touched by God through a sunrise over the sea, or a landscape, a walk in the mountains, a piece of music, a church service, a prayer. Sometimes people are touched by God inside a church building, at other times outside a church building. Whatever the situation, they are touched by God, either by His presence in the world as Creator of all things, or else through the presence in this world of His Body, the Body of Christ, the Church, the very Body Who touched Thomas and Who was touched by Thomas.

It can then safely be asserted that if we seek God, then we touch Him and are touched by Him. And in that way the dull, uncomprehending clay of our material being will be made into spiritual matter and we too shall thus pass through the sealed doors of our fallen hearts and minds and bodies towards the light of faith and understanding.

If, on the other hand, if we do not seek to touch and be touched by God, we shall continue to be dull, uncomprehending, sealed lumps of clay.

May we all seek God and be touched by the light of the Resurrection of His Body, through the prayers of the Holy Apostle Thomas.

Today we recall all those who beheld Christ’s Crucified and Risen Body: the Myrrhbearing Women; the Righteous Joseph of Arimathea and the Righteous Nicodemus.

We can only imagine how difficult it must have been for them to associate with Christ at this time and to be witnesses of His Crucifixion and Resurrection:

Thus, Nicodemus, one of the Pharisees, as the Gospel of St John tells us, spoke to Christ under cover of dark, spent a huge sum on a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes, and then was cast out of the synagogue and suffered for disclosing the Jewish plots to hide and deny the truth about Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection.

The myrrhbearers, who selflessly sacrificed all for precious myrrh with which to anoint and care for the Body of Christ, and then announced the Resurrection of the Crucified, when others hid for fear of the Jews.

This concerns us as in a sense we are all myrrhbearers. Since the Body of Christ, in the words of the Holy Apostle Paul, is the Church, therefore all members of the Church are members of the Body of Christ. Therefore we know and confess the Truth of His Crucifixion and Resurrection, and so become myrrhbearers. We too must know how difficult it is to be myrrhbearers, to care for the Body of Christ, to care for the Church, Which is crucified by the world to this day.

To do anything for the Church, for the Body of Christ, in this world, is difficult, because it requires faith. And those of little faith have little time and patience for the Church.

For instance, recently a lady came here and said: ‘You are so lucky, you have a beautiful church’. I was astonished by such an attitude. Firstly, there is no such thing as ‘luck’. Secondly, the little that we have here belongs not to us, but to God. And thirdly, anything that is here is certainly not the result of luck, but of one of two things: either it is the result of God’s undeserved blessing, which can be given to us and can be taken away from us. Or else it is the result of tears and sweat and blood, sacrifice and hard work, in other words — myrrhbearing, selfless caring for the Body of Christ. And myrrhbearing is not only participating in the sacraments, preaching the Gospel and confessing the Faith, it is also doing that myriad of things which are so difficult because they require our sacrifice. For:

Those who sing in church are myrrhbearers.

All those who work for the Body of Christ, the Church, in this world, but are not of this world, are myrrhbearers, because they show that they too selflessly love Christ.

And what is the reward of myrrhbearers?

It is to be the first to see and know the Crucified Body of Christ Risen, the first to hear the words of the Angel resplendent and whiter than snow: Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is Risen!

This is our joy, not only to feel, but also to know that the Body of Christ, the Church, is Risen, for She is the place of the Resurrection, and we are witnesses of Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection. Moreover, when we care for the Church, the Church cares for us, for we are risen with Her.

In today’s Gospel, we see clearly how Our Lord combines within His Person two natures, the human and the divine.

On the one hand, we see that as a human-being, like all of us, He is wearied, thirsty and hungry. The Gospel tells us, for example, that when midday, the sixth hour, had come, His disciples left him to obtain food in the city and that Christ, thirsty, asked the Samaritan Woman for drink.

As a man, Christ was a Jew, and His disciples are therefore astonished to find Him conversing not only with a woman, but with a Samaritan Woman. A Jew would never even have talked to a Samaritan, let alone a Samaritan Woman, for as the Apostle John says in his Gospel, ‘the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans’.

True, from the Jewish viewpoint, the Samaritans, Jews who had intermarried with pagans, were heretics; they had rejected the importance of Jerusalem and much of the Old Testament, including the Prophets; they had confused pagan idolatry with the Old Testament.

The Samaritans had rejected the letter of the Law, but some of them, at least, did not stubbornly insist on their errors but were open to its spirit, for they were open to Christ, the Word of God, the Inspirer of the Law. Whereas the Jews had rejected Christ, the Samaritans kept Him with them for two days and many believed in Him. As Our Lord said on His return from Samaria to Judea, ‘a prophet has no honour in his own country’.

Why does the Church commemorate the Samaritan Woman today?

And this is why this world still continues today, why the world has not yet ended. Until the Gospel of Christ has been preached in spirit and in truth, that is, in Orthodox manner, in all lands, throughout the world, the world cannot end. For as long as there are new Samaritans, new peoples, new tribes to hear the Truth, as long as there are people who can still potentially become Orthodox, the world must continue, for there is harvest still to be reaped.

Let us this day pray that we too like the Samaritan Woman may bring others to the Church, testifying like Her to the Divinity of Christ, becoming reapers of that which we have not sown.

Holy Mother Photini, pray to God for us!

Today’s Gospel of the healing of the paralytic raises a number of questions.

The first perhaps is:

We can see this very clearly in the cases of those who destroy their organisms through the taking of drugs, such as tobacco, alcohol or heroin. But most illnesses are not voluntary, they are involuntary. Thus anyone can catch a cold. And we all know people who have lung cancer but have never smoked a cigarette in their lives. Another example: at this very moment our prayers are with Archbishop Alipy who lies paralysed after falling from a tree that he was pruning. This was not his fault, and yet he is now an invalid, requiring healing. The fact is that the vast majority of illnesses and infirmities are involuntary, not the result of personal sin, but the result of the general sin that is in the world, the consequence of the Fall of Adam. This is part of our general human condition and this can happen to anyone.

What is the way out? What is the solution?

Today’s miracle of the healing of the paralytic is most apt for today’s world, for this world lies like a paralytic, in a spiritual and moral paralysis, seeming not to know how to overcome the problems that it has invented for itself.

Thus at this moment different countries stand on the brink of the horrors of war and catastrophe, of incalculable evil. Do they not know that peace is better than war?

Thus every single country in the world has among its leaders the criminal and the corrupt. Do they not know how to live according to good and not bad? Have they never heard the words: ‘Do as you would be done by?’

Every single country in the world, it would seem, now has a spiralling crime rate. Do we not know how to teach our children the difference between right and wrong?

Given the many problems of today’s world, some people ask: ‘But why does Christ not intervene to heal the illnesses of the world?’

Do the countries that wish to slaughter the peoples of other countries want to be healed of their passion for bloodletting, ethnic hatred and territorial conquest?

Do corrupt politicians and arms merchants want to be healed of their greed for power?

Do criminals want to be healed of their unending desire for material riches?

But rather than take the easy path of judging and blaming others for all the world’s ills, perhaps we had better take the difficult path of first looking to ourselves:

Do we, honestly, want to be healed of our own sinfulness and passions, of our indifference to God, our crucifying lack of faith in the Church of Christ?

And if the world shows no sign that it wants to be healed, then it too will continue to lie in the paralysis of its old hatreds and evil ways.

O Lord, save us from our own iniquities and idleness.

On this Sunday, that before the Feast of the Ascension of Christ, the Church recalls to our attention the Gospel of the man born blind. There are two points here that I would particularly like to remark on.

Firstly, the words of Christ about why the man was born blind. Replying to His disciples, He says that his blindness was not because the man sinned, or his parents, but so that the works of God be made manifest in him. In other words, according to our Lord Himself, illness or handicap do not always occur on account of personal sin or the sin of others, but they may be providentially allowed for the glory of God to shine forth.

We can see this in the lives of some disadvantaged people. They find their disadvantage to be a challenge, a challenge that may bring out the best in them. We can think for example of certain Downs Syndrome children who are unbelievably kind and loving, far more so than if they had been born ‘normal’. We can also think of some blind people who, having lost one sense, have refined another sense almost to perfection, and show an understanding of the inner self that the sighted do not have. We can all think of examples of incredible courage and love among disadvantaged people. Why? Because the grace of God is upon them: ‘the works of God are made manifest in them’.

On the other hand, we can also think of people with great ‘advantages’. For instance, there are extremely beautiful women or very wealthy men who are quite unable to find wedded happiness. They are rather surrounded by those who have no interest in them as people, but only wish to take base advantage of their skin-deep looks or their bank accounts. We can also think of particularly intelligent and educated people, whose intelligence has ‘gone to their heads’, and they have become extraordinarily pretentious and silly, laughing-stocks before the face of the world. Thus their advantages become their greatest handicaps, hindrances to any sort of happiness.

In the case of the man born blind, all his life had been but a preparation for his meeting with Christ. Not only was his soul pure enough, refined by his lifelong handicap, to receive healing from the Lord, but also he confessed Him as the Son of God, thus making the works of God manifest in himself.

The judgement of the man born blind was then sound. He can teach us how to judge, or rather discern, others — by their fruits. If we, or others, are of God, then we shall last and bear good fruit, for if any is not of God, he can do nothing. And if any is of God, then he will finish by bearing witness to the Divinity of Christ.

The second thing that we should notice in today’s Gospel is the way in which Christ healed. He spat on the earth and ‘made clay of the spittle’. We note this for every sacrament of the Church heals in the selfsame manner:

Clay cannot heal the blind and yet with the breath of God, it becomes the container for the healing grace of God.

Water cannot heal and yet the water of baptism heals because the blessed water bears the Holy Spirit.

Oil cannot heal and yet the oil of chrismation and unction heal because they are filled with the grace of God.

A piece of cloth cannot heal and yet a priest’s stole can heal through the grace of Christ at the sincere confession of sins and the repentant intention not to sin again.

Bread and wine cannot heal and yet bread and wine transformed into the Body and Blood of Christ heal through the Holy Spirit.

Wood and paint cannot heal and yet icons can heal by the Holy Spirit Who penetrates into their material essence and radiates grace from them.

Smoke cannot heal and yet incense burnt brings healing through the blessing of Christ.

Christ teaches us then that all things can be used for our healing and benefit and salvation, but that they must first be touched by His grace.

In this way our bodies, mere flesh and bones and blood, can become containers of Christ. Our souls activated, we can become lamps of the Holy Spirit; the eyes of our souls, the doors of perception, become seeing, and we see the whole of God’s Creation as it really is. We see that every blade of grass and every hill, every tree and every cloud, every drop of rain and every ocean, all creatures and all people, are miracles of God’s handiwork, signs of His sacramental presence among us, and we see that we live not in the banal, everyday world, but in potential Paradise, the world as it really is, as God made it first, for we see God the Creator behind all things and all people.

And then we too, together with the man born blind, can say:

‘I was blind, now I see’.

Christ came down from Heaven in order to destroy the power of Satan over mankind.

Christ was crucified and rose from the dead in order to destroy death.

Christ ascends into the skies in order to raise up fallen human nature to the heights of Heaven.

At His Birth there was, as we would say now, no media. All happened in obscurity, lowliness and poverty, as the Saviour of mankind was born in a cave by the ox and the ass.

At His Crucifixion also there was no glory: on the contrary, there was shame, thieves, reviling, mockery, bodily death, a lonely death.

At His Resurrection, nobody saw anything. The women who saw the empty tomb were not even believed. Only a few dozen believers came to believe in the first few weeks after His Resurrection.

So also at His Ascension the only witnesses were His Mother and the eleven disciples amid the obscure olives groves on the Mount outside the City.

We see that all the great events, all the victories, of the life of Christ were accompanied by humility. This is because in the Church victory is humility. Every act of humility is a victory over the pride of Satan.

And in order to grant us the opportunity for humility, at the last event of His physical presence amongst us, Christ gives us two things:

Firstly, He comforts us and the disciples with the promise of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, Who will guide us into all truth, into all humility.

Secondly, through His holy angels, He reminds us that as He ascends, so He will return, with angels and a cloud of glory. He reminds us that He will return in His Second and Glorious Coming to judge all the Earth.

Thus God is victorious in humility.

Therefore the Orthodox Church and faithful Orthodox Christians are also victorious, but only in humility.

God is the Merciful Saviour among us, granting us the Holy Spirit in order to guide us on our path to the victory of humility. As we have sung this day: ‘I am with you and no-one will be against you’.

God is the Righteous Judge among us, granting us His Coming again as the Judge of the Universe, guiding us on our path to the victory of humility: ‘I am with you and no-one will be against you’.

Glory to Thee, O God, Glory to Thee!

At the beginning of the fourth century, to be precise, in the Year 325, when persecution of Orthodox Christianity had largely ceased, was held the first Universal Council of the Church. 318 Bishops gathered together from all over the Orthodox Christian world. Together they drew up a written summary of the Orthodox Faith, which was confirmed later in the same century at the Second Universal Council of the Church.

We still sing and read that written summary of our Faith, drawn up all those years ago. It is known in English as the ‘Creed’. This word comes from the Latin for ‘I believe’. The Creed is that text which we read every morning at morning prayers and that which we sing at every Divine Liturgy, beginning: ‘I believe in One God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth…’. All over the world the Orthodox Church upholds this same Creed and has done so ever since the First Universal Council of the Church. Even Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism still retain most of that Creed, though with one significant alteration.

The different clauses of the Creed can be divided into four basic sections:

Firstly, the beginning of the Creed where we affirm our belief in ‘One God the Father…’.

Secondly, the part where we affirm our belief in ‘One Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God…’.

Thirdly, where we affirm our belief in ‘The Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father…’.

Finally, where we affirm our belief in ‘One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church’, in one baptism, in the resurrection and in the age to come.

On account of pride and delusion, certain individuals and societies in each succeeding age of human history have rejected in turn one or more of these parts of the Creed.

Thus, for the first three centuries, the Church was viciously persecuted by the forces of the world which rejected the Faith in One God the Father. They maintained that there were many gods, that the sun was a god, that the moon was a god, that there was a wind god or a rain god, that the Roman Emperor was a god and so on. These forces were defeated by the sacrificial blood of hundreds of thousands of Orthodox martyrs.

Then, during the following centuries, the Church was persecuted by those who maintained that Christ was not the Son of God, or that he was the Son of God, but had never become a real man. These groups gave themselves various names: Arians, Nestorians, Monophysites, Iconoclasts and so on. The Church was victorious too against these groups and maintained the Faith through the sacrifices of the faithful upheld by the grace of God.

Then, again for hundreds of years, the Church was persecuted by those who rejected the Fathers’ teaching on the Holy Spirit. This was when Roman Catholicism was founded, which then later fragmented into hundreds of different groups and sects, which only had one thing in common: they all reject the confession of the Holy Spirit of the Creed of the First Universal Council of the Orthodox Church.

Finally, and more recently, evil forces have rejected the Orthodox teaching on the Church, they have denied that there is only one baptism and that after the separation of the soul from the body there is resurrection and an age to come. Thus in our own times, there are many such people who deny that there is life after death.

The Fathers of the First Universal Council were then also Prophets, for they forestalled much later errors and neatly defined the Faith for all time, confirming it at the Second Universal Council. This is why, after the fourth century, no other Council of the Church ever redefined the Faith or changed or modified anything. The Creed remains ever the same. That is why for centuries no Universal Council has been called: the work was all done early on.

The Fathers of the First Council were, however, most directly concerned with the question of the Divinity of Christ. They firmly maintained that Christ is the Son of God. They were opposed by a particularly arrogant intellectual, a priest who was called Arius. We do not know the unfortunate Bishop who ordained him, but it was a very bad choice. Arius in his overweening pride asserted that Christ was not the Son of God. At one session of the Council St Nicholas, who like many other famous saints was present, stood up and slapped Arius across the face in order to stop him from blaspheming, So wicked were Arius’ words that St Nicholas, a man of great love, wanted to protect him from his own foolishness so that he would not be struck down and might come by shock to see reason.

For if Christ is not Divine, if He is not the Son of God, then the whole Faith is worthless. All stands or falls by this. He who denies the Divinity of Christ is but one step from atheism and all its horrors which so marred the last century. Yet it is this error, to say that Christ is not the Son of God, which is as widespread today as it was in the fourth century. Go into the streets and ask who Christ is. People will tell you at best: ‘Oh, a great man’. ‘A wise man’. But few will tell you that He is the Son of God. Indeed there are whole groups who call themselves Christians where the majority do not believe that Christ is the Son of God. For example, there is one group called Jehovah’s Witnesses. They do not believe that Christ is the Son of God. Ask them.

But we believe, as all the Holy Fathers believe, that Christ is True God and also a real man.

Only a sinless, perfect man, living and walking on earth among men, could show humanity that it is possible to avoid the sin and death which distract us from becoming what we were intended to be — holy unto all eternity.

Only the True God become incarnate as man could save humanity by showing him the measure of his potential — to become godlike through humility.

Only the Son of God could say to us: ‘Be ye perfect as is my Father in Heaven’.

It is for us to make use of this through leading an Orthodox Christian way of life and thus save our souls.

Holy Fathers of the First Council, Pray to God for us!

On this day, the fiftieth after Easter, we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost when the fullness of the Holy Trinity was revealed through the coming of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit.

This explains why very highly educated people are often the stupidest, responsible for terrible misfortunes and genocides. Thus, there have been many great geniuses in the history of the world and many of them have become blood-soaked dictators. It is one thing to have instruction, but it is quite another to know how to use that instruction. This is the meaning of wisdom. Wisdom is discernment, or the ability to use aright information and knowledge. On the other hand, the meaning of stupidity is to have instruction and instead of using it for good, to use it to blind oneself, to fall in love with oneself and be so full of oneself that one is blind to God and so denies the existence of God, which is so obvious to the simplest peasant. As the Scriptures say: ‘The fool has said in his heart, there is no God’.

Pride blinds but humility opens eyes.

This is why two equally educated people may read the Gospels, one will become a believer, the other will dismiss them as a myth. The first has humility and purity of heart and therefore his spiritual eyes will be opened. The other has pride and therefore he will be blinded by pride and self-opinion and puffing himself up, will make himself ridiculous. Thus, understanding is quite independent of education, but dependent on humility and purity of heart. For it is not written, ‘Blessed are the educated’, but: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’.

On account of this you will notice that wherever there is pride, there are stubbornly-held opinions and therefore divisions. For pride leads to disunity, humility to unity. This is what we sing of in another hymn today, the kontakion. We recognise that at the time when men in their pride built the Tower of Babel, there was a confusion of tongues. Indeed the very word ‘Babel’ has become a synonym for confusion. On the other hand, we recognise that among the humble the Holy Spirit brought unity and different peoples were able to understand one another despite difference of language. Why is this? It is because opinions and opinionatedness and so divisions are the fruit of impurity in the heart, the fruit of pride.

Thus there are those split away from the Church because of their nationality and language and politics: collective pride They refuse to belong to the same Church as those of another nationality and language and politics. This is true of the Monophysites in Egypt and Armenia; it is true of Roman Catholics with their Latin racial and cultural base; it is true of Anglicans who prefer to follow a specific English Protestant culture from after the Reformation instead of English Orthodox culture of their forebears of the First Millennium. Then there are those who leave the Church because they prefer to follow one man instead of God. All such groups are named after the man they prefer to follow, be they Wesleyans or Calvinists, Lutherans or Arians and so on.

That is why today faithful Orthodox Christians, members of the Church, of all ages and all over the world and of all nationalities and languages celebrate the Feast of Pentecost together. Today we concelebrate the Feast with the Apostles and the Fathers, the Martyrs and the Confessors, of all ages, of ages past and of the present age and of the age to come. Today we concelebrate going back in history, with the New Russian Martyrs and Confessors, with the Martyrs and Confessors of the Croat yoke, with the Chinese Martyrs whose feast-day it is, with the Martyrs and Confessors under the Turks, with the English Martyrs under the Danes like St Edmund, with the Martyrs and Confessors of North Africa, with the Martyrs and Confessors of Ancient Rome, with the Martyrs and Confessors of Asia Minor, with all Orthodox Christians of all the ages. And this day we concelebrate the same Faith with the faithful in our churches in Jerusalem, in Alaska, in Siberia, in Argentina, in Uganda, in France, in Athens, in Tokyo, in Lisbon, in Sydney, in Bucharest, in Ottawa, in San Francisco. For we confess the same Orthodox Faith of the Holy Spirit, ‘Who proceeds from the Father and rests on the Son’, for we confess the same Orthodox Faith of the Holy Spirit, Who brings Wisdom and Unity wherever there is humility and purity of heart.

Today, on this the last day of June, we come to the last service in a cycle of services. That cycle began over 120 days ago at the end of February with the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee. That Sunday preceded the weeks of fasting of Great Lent which led up to the central event of the whole Church Year — the Resurrection of Christ. And since then we have followed the services of Bright Week and the Sundays after it to the Ascension, Pentecost and now today, the Feast of All Saints. This whole cycle of 120 days, one third of the year is like a Church Year inside the Church Year.

Today’s Feast is the result of all that has gone before it. The purpose of all the events in Christ’s life, from His Conception to the Resurrection and the Ascension and Pentecost is to make Saints. That is the purpose of the Church, to make people holy. Today’s Feast is the Feast of the identity of the Church, of Her sacred personality. For a Church that does not make Saints is not a Church, it is merely an institution which abuses the word ‘Church’.

What is a Saint? Firstly, we should understand that Saints are not born, they are made. We are all born potentially to become Saints. The only difference between ourselves who are not Saints and the Saints, is that they are people who are continually picking themselves up after sinning, continually repenting until they attain holiness, whereas we give up.

We should also say that there are two sorts of Saints — Confessors and Martyrs. Some Martyrs led very bad lives but then, when it came to the ultimate sacrifice, they found Faith in themselves, sufficient for them to prefer to confess Christ rather than live, and so sacrificed everything for Christ. We recognise their sacrifice and honour it. However, in our time, in our land, it would seem that we are not called to be Martyrs, but Confessors. What is a Confessor, how do we recognise a Confessor?

First of all, we could ask people who live near the person whom we believe to be a Confessor. They would know that person’s way of life. But this would not be enough in itself. This would tell us only if the person were righteous or not. And holiness is more than righteousness. Holiness is that utter devotion to God, the confession of Christ before men, the taking up of one’s cross and following, to which Christ will bear witness before His Father in Heaven. It is never denying Christ. It is this devotion of which He speaks in today’s Gospel, which is above devotion to husband or wife, father or mother, brother or sister, son or daughter. And we can be even more precise than this.

The Saints are One because they are all together. We speak of the communion of the saints. And in today’s Gospel, our Lord speaks of those who have followed Him who will judge the Twelve Tribes of Israel seated on the Twelve Thrones around Him. The Saints are One, they are united.

The Saints are also obviously holy. The word Saint means holy.

The Saints are also Catholic. This word does not mean Roman Catholic. We mean ‘Catholic’ in the original sense of the word. ‘Catholic’ means the same in all places and at all times. Thus today, on this Feast of All Saints, we commemorate all the Saints of all countries and of all centuries and of all backgrounds. We recall Saints of all ages, of all nationalities, men, women and children, the poor and the rich, the old and the young, the healthy and the sick. They all confessed the same Orthodox Faith. The Saints are universal in time and space; they are ‘Catholic’.

Finally, the Saints are Apostolic, for they share in the same Faith and Tradition as the Apostles.

Today, by chance, we are also commemorating a local Saint, St Botolph, who in the seventh century was the Abbot and Founder of a monastery at Iken, which is less than thirty miles from here. In St Botolph’s life we can see that he too possessed all the characteristics of the Saints.

Thus he was One, united with others. He travelled widely, everywhere he was respected as a man of God, everywhere he met unanimity and made unanimity.

St Botolph was ‘Catholic’, for his veneration was widespread and went even as far as Kiev. Moreover, it has lasted in time, even to this day.

I would like to finish today by quoting the story of another Saint from the seventh century.

The way ahead for us is clear.

Today’s Gospel is taken from the Sermon on the Mount, the first piece of preaching in Christ’s public life.

In it Our Lord says that the light of the body is the eye. If the eye is light, so the body will be light. But if the eye is dark, so the body will be dark. By ‘eye’ is meant the soul, for the eye is the window of the soul. In these words Our Lord says that we are not to blame our bodies for our sins. Our bodies are the servants of our souls. If our souls are corrupted, then so also will be our bodies. On the other hand, if our souls are clean, then our bodies will also be clean. It is not our bodies which control our lives, or even our minds, but our souls. And it is our souls that we are called on to cleanse, cultivate and refine first of all. It is the spiritual which has primacy in our lives. Once our souls are clean, then our minds and our bodies will also be cleaned.

Neither can we serve two Masters, the master of the material world and the master of the spiritual world. One must be superior to the other. Thus we cannot serve God, the master of the spiritual, and Mammon, the master of the fallen world. The word Mammon is simply the word in the language spoken by Christ for ‘money’. This saying runs counter to the whole ideology of modernity. Our societies are called ‘capitalist’, for they are based on investments, stock exchanges, ‘capital’, in other words, money. Indeed the whole modern world is ruled by currencies, whether the dollar or some other currency dependent on the dollar. Furthermore, the philosophy which guides modern governments and much of human nature is called ‘monetarism’, in other words the belief in the primacy of money in human life and human motivation. Such a philosophy causes panic and depression both among those who have no money and also among those who have a lot, for such a philosophy excludes God from the workings of society and men, basing everything on the idolatry of paper and electronic numbers.

‘Take no thought for your life’, says Our Lord. The birds are nourished by God, the flowers grow, and they take no thought. We are told not to devote ourselves to what might or might not happen tomorrow. No-one by taking thought, can add anything to his stature. The Gospel tells us to do our best and then leave the rest to God, to trust in God. Modern life, on the other hand, tells us to constantly worry, to be stressed. Such worry only causes depression, for it excludes God and His loving providence. On the other hand, there is nothing inevitable in the life of those who believe in God and His providence. Even the most horrendous situations can evolve positively, if we let God into our lives and societies. If we include God, then we can exclude worry and depression.

We can see this in our own lives and in the lives of those around us. In the last few years we have all known apparently impossible circumstances and situations, dead ends, which have been resolved by unexpected events. Those unexpected events are solutions which have come from the providential love of God. As they say: ‘Man proposes, but God disposes’. The fact is that we do not always, if ever, know what is best, simply because we do not have a long-term view, let alone the eternal view of God which utterly changes