By Fr. Dimitrius Basalygo
If any man
will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me
(cf. Matthew 16:24). Where shall we go, O Lord? The Lord replies, “I will lead
you into My Kingdom, into the eternal life, into your resurrection.” The Lord
leads us to our resurrection and into his Kingdom. We must not doubt it.
However, it always means carrying our cross, although it doesn’t always imply
extreme suffering and temptations.
The path of following the Gospel
commandments is already the path of the cross in this world that lies in
iniquity and follows a totally different set of rules. The laws of the Heaven,
the commandments of Christ are always a cross. “Let him deny himself” – that is
the beginning of our journey, the journey according to the Gospel, the journey into
God’s Kingdom. When we are born in this world, we inherit the pathology of
self-centredness, egoism, egocentricity, self-promotion and rejection of
others. We are living in the survival mode. This eat-or-be-eaten approach is
emblazoned in our minds. However, the beginning of a new life lies in
self-denial. The cross of Jesus Christ, his death and Resurrection have given
us the opportunity to live a different life, a life that adheres to different
rules – the rules and laws of the Heaven. It is hard to discard one’s own self.
Even if we come to the Church, even if we turn to Jesus, even if we find a
different way of life, we can still be infinitely centred on ourselves, on our
own spiritual issues, and fail to notice anyone else, fail to attend worship and
therefore be unable to drink from the source of Life. This focus on our own
spiritual life is also a fallen path. We are saved in the Body of Christ. It is
thanks to his wounds that we are healed. This is what we should discover. This
is what we should experience. We claim this victory every time we enter a
church. This is the victory that we partake of when we attend the Divine
Liturgy and take communion. This is what every holiday, every divine office,
every Liturgy is about – the Cross of Jesus Christ, combined with his victory
and his permission for us to enjoy the fruit of that victory.
***
You can
waste your entire life sleeping. Your rank or post doesn’t matter: you can
waste your life by walking past Christ even if you keep doing something all the
time and don’t even have a moment to spare. (Sermon
after the Divine Liturgy on April 11, 2017)
***
St John
Climacus writes in the beginning of his book The Ladder that it is not because
we didn’t make miracles or didn’t raise people from the dead or didn’t heal the
ill but because we did not repent that we will be judged on the Judgement Day.
Repentance is available to everyone but it is not like we often imagine it to
be – a formal description of our sins or circumstances of our lives. It is an
inner transformation, when we are terrified at how bad we are. It is thanks to
this realisation that our lives and thoughts are transformed. Repentance is a
change of mind, and thus, a change in our actions and relationships with God
and other people. Meanwhile, we would like to purify our souls easily just by
listing our sins. We have turned our relationship with God into a mere
formality, a mere bureaucratic procedure. It is easier this way, indeed. It is
easier for us to look for guarantees in the Sacrament of Repentance, in the
absolution prayer, instead of transforming our lives, changing our minds, and
starting to look at ourselves, our neighbours, and the entire world
differently. We may never do anything great but repentance is something every
one of us can do. (Sermon after the All-Night Vigil on March 25,
2017)
***
Christians
nowadays are afraid of the Second Coming of Christ, the Last Judgement, and the
end of the world. The very things that used to bring us joy and hope, the
things that made people excited, are perceived very differently. Yes, Lord, we
believe and anticipate the Kingdom of Heaven, of course, but not here and now.
We don’t want to experience everything that precedes it – the sorrows, the suffering,
and the agony of this fallen world. This can be attributed to the fact that we
Christians have lost the sensation that the Kingdom of God is coming, and that
it has already come into this world, and it is in our midst, as we become its
members each time we partake of the Sacraments of the Church. The Church is the
Kingdom of God that comes with power and might. The Good News is that the
Kingdom of God is not just anticipated but that it is the meaning and the main
value of our Christian life. The Kingdom of God is already in our midst. (Sermon
after Vespers on April 10, 2017)
By Fr. George Glinsky
Metropolitan
Anthony of Sourozh told his audience about a conversation that he had had with
a young army officer in Moscow in Soviet times. The young man asked him,
possibly not fully aware of what he was saying, “Please tell me: you believe in
God but who does God believe in?” Metropolitan Anthony replied, “We believe in
God; and He with all his omnipotence believes in us. He believes that we will
become the kind of people that we must become, that we will really be his
children, that we who carry his image will also grow into his likeness, like
children who grow and gradually take after their parents both in their
appearance and behaviour.” Similarly, we who call ourselves Christians should
also become like God in our life one day.
We should learn to become merciful
and compassionate. If one can show compassion; if one is not afraid to admit
his weaknesses; if one supports the rejected and those who are in extreme life
situations, those who are oppressed; if one risks
becoming unpopular by helping such people – in so doing he demonstrates great
power and wisdom. This is the wisdom of Christ. Suffering for the sake of the
rejected is a great feat for God’s sake. If we alleviate the suffering of the
people around us just a little, we will accomplish something that is greater
than all fasts, prayers, and everything else. This is because our Christian
asceticism is entirely rooted in our neighbour whom we are to see in spite of
the obstacles of our daily routines, our own personalities and everything that
blocks our eyes and prevents us from seeing God. (Sermon
after the Divine Liturgy on March 29, 2017)
***
If you
read the Gospel attentively, you will see that the Lord tells us that we should
do our best to lay our souls for the sake of our neighbours. It means that we
should devote our lives to serving people around us. The Lord says that
whatever we do for one of these small people, we do for his sake. If we devote
our entire lives to helping the light of the Resurrection of Christ to shine in
the people who are around us, at least those who are especially close and
precious to us, we will do it for the sake of Christ Himself, who died for our
sins, rose from the dead, and granted us the Heavenly Kingdom and the eternal
life. (Sermon after the All-Night Vigil on March 28,
2017)
***
The
Church reminds that the purpose in the life of a Christian is to strive for
inner changes. It is impossible to live in the past. Sure, you may and should
remember the past. You should remember who you used to be, or, more precisely,
who you used to turn yourself into when you disfigured yourself with sin.
However, you must realise what God calls you up for, go forward and trust God
without doubt or fear. There must not be any obstacle on this path. (Sermon after
the All-Night Vigil on February 9, 2017)
By Fr. Valery Zakharov
Why is
despondency such a terrible sin? It is because it amounts to not trusting God.
***
We repent
but remain unsure if the Lord forgives us or not. We call upon God but we still
doubt whether God can hear us. The miracle is not that the Lord is capable of
everything. Regardless of how much we doubt his love and question his actions,
He keeps showing his mercy, his trust, and his boundless patience to us time
and time again. Having endowed us with the right to choose, He expects us to
start using it properly and to lay our cares upon him at last; He wants us to
submit our lives into His hands, and, seeing his attitude towards us, feeling
his love, to try and respond to it with gratitude. The road to God has to be
more than just an effort but also give us an opportunity to enjoy meeting him
even here, on Earth. (Sermon after the Divine Liturgy in the
Boarding Home for Children with Special Needs on April 8, 2017)
***
Suffering
makes our road to God shorter.(Sermon after the Divine Liturgy on March 21,
2017)
By Fr. Andrew Lemeshonok
We should
build our lives on love but what do we build it on? We build our lives on human
knowledge and experience, which cannot be used for building our innermost
temple and the eternal life. Our knowledge and skill is not enough to defeat
the devil and to be free. This is why of course, we need Christ. Yes, He is
always with us but we are not always with him. He is always waiting for us and
is always calling, “Come to Me.” Unfortunately, we do not always want him to be
so close and we hide from him. This is because we want to justify our sins, we
want to insist on our own way of doing things, even though the love of Christ
admonishes us, and we understand that if we accept him, then we will have to
deny our own opinion, our own desires, our own plans, and to say, “Lord, my
life is in your hands, instead of mere chance or luck. It isn’t in my plans
that I make, especially given that I make them totally wrong.” Therefore, my
dear parishioners, we learn to live this new life, and the Lord gives us this new
life in abundance. We must accept it and tend to it with care, keeping it deep
inside our hearts.
***
A human
being is just a creature but it is God’s creature. It is in the Creator, in
God, that we find the new life, the fullness of life. It is thanks to him that
we realise that all our problems can be attributed to the fact that we lack
peace, we do not trust God and we doubt and hesitate.
***
We often
tell God, “We’ve got no time, we are tired, we have so much to do in our lives.
See you later.” God keeps waiting and waiting for months and years. He waits
for the time when a person eventually says, “Lord, save me, help me, make me
wise, teach me.” This is when his life certainly changes.
***
The
Convent is not a brick and mortar building. Neither is it the gold on the domes
and crosses. The Convent is love, which we must experience. Unfortunately, we
do not experience it today, and this is our problem. However, we’ve got some
time for repentance, for correcting ourselves and changing our lives. We have a
lot to change, rebuild, and refurbish in our current life. The Lord will always
help us. (Sermon after the All-Night Vigil on April 8,
2017)
May 18, 2017
St.
Elisabeth Convent
CONVERSATION