Priest Sergius: Because we are still in the beginning of our ascetic practice, and our prayer is still weak and imperfect, this «spiritual sieve» has big holes. It does protect us from some things, but the majority of them manage to get through, wounding our souls and hearts with the devil's arrows. Praise the Lord that we have the Sacrament of Repentance, which cleanses us. The Lord removes all dirt and stains. You feel relieved, pacified, and excited.
This is how, by teaching ourselves to pray, by
saying prayers and making prostrations, by this practice of abstinence, we
enter the Holy Forty Days of Lent. May God help us to go on with this gradual
and proper attitude, so that we could start this period in the right way? They
say that if you start something properly, if the beginning is good, then, as a
rule, you will manage to accomplish everything successfully with God's help. On
the contrary, if the beginning is poor, it sets the tune for the entire period.
That is why it is so important to enter into this period with contrition, with
a desire to improve our lives, a desire of chastity, holiness, a desire to be
with Christ and hate sin and all its manifestations — everything related to it.
We must push all this aside, like a deadly poison. We will not take poison because
we know that it is deadly.
Similarly, the sin is a spiritual poison that
does not make us happy. The world deceives us, making us believe that it
somehow contains pleasure and satisfaction, or a meaning of life. Having tried
this worldly pleasure and entertainment, very soon you understand that this is
a fake. The packaging is nice but there is bitter poison inside. That is why a
person clings to God and the Church even more. God nurtures our souls with his
grace — the source of all goodness for us; this is our life that begins here
but develops into the eternal life. One has the opportunity to experience
heaven even here; in a certain sense, a person can taste the bliss of living in
the Heavenly Kingdom before it is revealed to every soul that followed Christ
and was loyal to the Church during this life.
Sermon after the All-Night Vigil on March 5, 2016
Our road to God goes through our neighbor, i.e.,
a human being. Holy Apostle John the Theologian tells us not to fool ourselves,
thinking that we are already close enough to God. If you reject a person whom
you meet in the course of your life, that is, if you deplore him or turn him
down in a different way, you have not yet come close enough to God because you
have not taken on his image and semblance. We can learn from this that we
should learn to accept every person we meet; we should ask God and do our best
to treat everyone we meet equally.
Naturally, our sins prevent us from doing so.
They distort our behavior and make it egoistic; it turns us into people who
live according to the Old Testament, so to say — an eye for an eye, a tooth for
a tooth, you do good to me — and I do good in return, you wrong me, and I will
in turn do harm to you. We must abandon all this old stuff. The Lord and His
Holy Church are of great help in this respect.
Sermon after the Liturgy on March 6, 2016
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Priest Valery: The enemy finds in our souls the strings
he may pull, the weaknesses he may use to direct our actions, thoughts, and words. We lose our connection to God when we immerse into our desires,
weaknesses, and deliberations. If we weigh the time when we abide in God and
when we are left without him, the result will be to our own disfavor. That is,
we do not pay to him even half of the attention that He deserves — for He
sacrifices everything for us. It is so painful to see this happen, and it is so
great that there are moments when we come to God, when we see ourselves before
him, and have the opportunity to exclaim like the prodigal son, «I do not
deserve to be called your son, accept me as a slave». Everything changes. The
Lord rewards us again with the ring, the power, and the white robe. He restores
our filial rights.
These moments must be the most precious ones.
Even though they do not occupy the majority of our time, they are undoubtedly
the way and — hopefully — the gift that the Lord gives us to let us into his
family, promising that He will never lose us. «Him that cometh to me I will in
no wise cast out» (John 6:37), He says.
May this pain of leaving God lead us to
confession more often, so that we could remember the One who loves us and
respond to his love, learn to suffer for its sake, that is, patiently bear some
inconveniences, albeit minor ones rather than a cross — they are something we
can bear. It should be more than mere words, more than mere outward actions: it
must be our participation in his life, in his death, and his resurrection.
The Lent is the time for repentance and
reconsideration. I am convinced that, although we might not notice it,
something happens inside our souls, the Lord changes us every time. Even though
we do not change from the outside, even though our actions do not show the
signs of change neither in our everyday lives, nor during feasts, I still think
that the Lord invisibly changes something inside us, and it will help us at a
certain point — even if it is our last moment — to thank him for everything.
Sermon before the Confession in the Boarding Home for Children with Special
Needs on March 4, 2016
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We are in for a period when we have the chance
to do good. The Lord gives us the opportunity to change our lives again and
again. As long as we seize it and trust him, as long as we open our hearts to
the best of our abilities, He fills them with his presence. It makes our burden
less heavy; following the commandments is no longer hard work: we are happy to
accomplish them, although not without pain...
Easter will come after this period of struggle
and restraint, no matter how long it is. If we remember this, we won't be
depressed, we won't be annoyed and desperate. Easter will come no matter what.
Likewise, we will encounter God no matter what. We simply have to ask him to be
able to meet him not with fear of punishment but will the joy of the triumph of
the goodness over evil.
Sermon after the Liturgy on March 6, 2016
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Priest George: The same people who had been meeting
Christ, singing praises to God as He entered Jerusalem, soon enough turned
their backs on Christ and rejected him, because the news of love, the appeal
that the Lord had brought to this world, was hard for them to understand, were
frightening for them. He demanded such love and such alacrity that spills over
the limits of death.
For instance, Hieromartyr Polycarp of Smyrna had
to choose between being alive — preserving his life, continuing his existence
in this world by rejecting Christ — and remaining faithful to him till the end,
until his death. As Christians, we cannot help being inspired by his example,
because both he and we, the disciples of Christ, cannot think of a life without
God, without Christ who gives us salvation. It is in Jesus that we receive life
— the real Life with the capital L.
Being in communion with him through the
Sacrament of Eucharist, partaking of him, we receive a promise, a foundation of
the eternal life. Our entire life here on earth must also be the Liturgy in the
literal meaning of this word — the «common cause». The cause of salvation is
common for the entire Church and is a calling of every Christian; it is the
field of work for every one of us. Our struggle against the sin will be a way
to participate in the sacrifice of Christ on the cross because He will help us
to push this pernicious condition out of our hearts with his grace and his
presence.
We have to add our efforts mentioned in the
today's Epistle, where the Apostle encourages us to avoid doing evil (i.e. the
damnation, the illness of our soul that, as St Macarius the Great writes about
it, had alienated our ancestors from God one day), to our desire and our
openness to him. We should take part in doing things that foster not only our
spiritual advancement and salvation, but also the salvation of everyone around
us, the salvation of the entire Church. This is because all are invited to the
Kingdom of Heaven.
Sermon after a Liturgy on March 7, 2016
The Great Lent is a season of spiritual spring,
spiritual recollections, renewal of our spiritual life, and the time for us to
defeat the sins that dwell inside us. This is the most favorable time of
repentance. It is by spiritual synergy, by joining efforts with each other and
God, that we will be able to reach the Heavenly Kingdom that awaits us, and
praise Christ who rose from the dead and granted us the eternal life, while we
are still here, according to the traditions established by the Church.
Sermon after a Liturgy on March 9, 2016
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Archpriest Sergius: The ascetic practice of the Lent does not
just boil down to absence of food but is first of all marked by a change in
worship. The Lent implies changing not just our bodily diet but our spiritual
diet, too: I mean the food for the soul that we consume here in the church
during worship.
The Prayer of St Ephraim the Syrian is, of
course, a must for us: it is like a healing balm for our souls. If we cannot
make it to church services on weekdays, we recite this prayer at home in front
of the icons, with piety and prostrations, asking the Lord to take our passions
away and to grant to us the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love.
We are inspired by the saints whom we continue
to commemorate during the services according to the Lenten Triodion. God gave
all saints the courage to fight and not to be afraid because He was with them.
We need not be afraid of beginning the Lent because we are with God, too. If a
person is with God, neither turmoil, nor absence of something delicious will
feel detrimental to him. The Lenten worship and all saints will help us during
this Great Lent: the saints will pray for the Lord to strengthen us and allow
us to spend this time to the advantage of the salvation of our souls.
Sermon after the All-Night Vigil on March 9, 2016
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Love… Our encounter with love depends on our faith, our trust in God, our
internal efforts, our willingness to step over our own I's, our own
selves that stink, to be able to take a step forward and say, I'm rising up, I
have been resurrected, risen from the dead by the Lord like Saint Lazarus. He
led me out of my grave and said, «Lazarus, get out of thy grave!» Therefore, it
is not a Christian position to stink and keep lying in that tomb and hiding
from all the problems we have to solve and be responsible for.
The sin that dwells inside us makes us inert; it
freezes us up, it impedes our reasoning, making us sheer fools. Certainly, we
have to stand our turf and think for ourselves about our own souls and the
souls of the people we bear responsibility for, and in general, about all
people whom the Lord will send to meet us during our lifetime. How important it
is to support someone, to understand and accept him! One needs to have peace
inside one's soul; otherwise, this will not be possible. This is why I would
like to wish you all peace.
The season is coming when sun starts to shine
brighter and brighter every day. During the winter, it used to be dusk now but
today, the sun is still shining — the day becomes longer. Of course, spiritual
spring is also coming to bring us the most important event in every Christian's
life — the Easter. Let us struggle for the sake of this joy, this light, this life
that we have received from God and that we have to return to him, i.e., to
enter this new life that Christ has brought to us in the today's world.
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