By Fr. Demetrius Basalygo
From now
on, a human being does not only have the opportunity to know the true God, to
love him, and talk to him in prayer. From now on, he can be united with him,
too. Our Lord Jesus Christ is the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity but He
connected us to himself when He became the Son of Man. You cannot imagine
Christ the Son of God without the Father and the Holy Spirit; likewise you
cannot imagine the Lord without his Body, without the Church, without you and
me.
We are
one in Christ, and therefore are able to aspire for the Kingdom of God. It has
come in power, albeit in a concealed form, because its goal is to ensure unity
of all in God. Apostle Paul expressed it brilliantly when he wrote, "that
God may be all in all" (1 Cor. 15: 28). This Kingdom of God is called The
Church. It is a new way of being where God and human are together, where He
embraces us and gives us a life beyond limits. Neither time nor distance nor
death can prevail against us any longer. By the grace of the Holy Spirit, we
are one in Christ. (Sermon after the Divine Liturgy on June 4,
2017)
By Fr. Andrew
Lemeshonok
We should
believe that God and the Mother of God are with us. If God is with us, who can
be against us? We must not act like everyone else. Our prayer and our life
today must be a testimony of Christ, so that many people who watch us closely
right now would come to church, so that young people do not fall for the
insanity of sin but instead cling to the Holy Chalice of Christ. This is what
the future of our earthly homeland and our nation depends on. (Sermon
Before The Monastic Tonsure on March 15, 2017)
The Lord
has called us to life. Our physical birth and the paths that we tread today are
temporary. Sooner or later, it shall pass. This is why we follow Christ into
the Heavenly Kingdom. This is why we keep saying that the most important
mission for a person is not becoming a general, not doing something great in
order to achieve fame but rather defeating death and living forever. The
victory over death is the key. Death is caused by our fall. Our nature is
infected by sin and is therefore unfit for the Kingdom of Heaven. This is why
we mortals struggle with the sin that dwells inside us and around us. The whole
world lieth in wickedness (1 John 5: 19). We see that people are going insane,
indeed. What are they doing? They chase pieces of paper, bling, cars, and fail
to think about their immortal souls. This is why our goal is to let God dwell
inside us. If there is God inside us, our souls will part with our bodies when
we die and go to the paradise. Some people in the know have said that it's very
good to be in the paradise.
One needs
to learn to live with God in order to get into the paradise. This isn't hard to
do. Our young students should obey their teachers and be honest and reliable.
They shouldn't be cunning or deceitful. Our dear sisters and brothers who have
families should love other people and sacrifice their time and efforts to them.
We all should help those people who need our help and whom the Lord sends to us
on our life journey.
***
A true
life is where God is, where love is, where light is. It is where people really
understand and love each other. An individual who lives with God is satisfied
with everything and thanks God for all things. Death is when a person lives
alone, when he is sullen and resentful, and when he does not love anyone. (Sermon
after the Divine Liturgy on March 3, 2017)
By Fr. Andrew
Malakhovsky
We can
hurt someone when we don't pity them. We can hurt someone when we are
indifferent. We can hurt someone when we put our own interests above the
troubles of another person. We can take up the cudgels for them, making their
pain more bearable. When we ignore the pain of our neighbours, it is the Cross
of our Lord that we ignore. (Sermon after the Passion Service on March 19,
2017)
By Fr. Valery
Zakharov
When one
schemamonk was yet a boy, he would pull out weeds on a beetroot field. He was
chopping the weeds under the blazing sun; and when he looked up, he saw that
the field's edge was far away, close to the horizon, near the woods. He was
exhausted and ready to give up. Someone advised him to work without looking up.
He kept on working, and when he looked up again some time later, he saw that
the forest was much closer. We also need to move forward in spite of what we
observe in our hearts. It will allow us to get to our destination fast enough. (Sermon
before the Confession in the Boarding Home for Children with Special Needs on
March 3, 2017)
We should
be aware of the fact that this penitential mood, which is natural for the Lent,
must not evolve into depression or despair. The Lord came into the world to
save sinners (1 Timothy 1:15; cf. Luke 19:10). We must put our trust in him. Of
course, the effort that we use to stand up against temptations or rise up after
a fall (each person has his own amount of effort required to do so) is not
enough but God's love spreads over everything, and it is this love that we must
acquire. Learning to forgive, thank, and never give up; learning to look at God
instead of ourselves, and stepping towards him — this is our chief aim, I
believe. (Sermon after the All-Night Vigil on March 11,
2017)
The Lord
allows us breaks in the days of hard work, prayer, and fasting. He feeds us
with his bread and the ever-shining light. He gives us who stay in the sinful
darkness the light that can lead us out of all dead-ends. The Lord can do
anything. It's us humans who run into dead-ends. This is why we come here
asking him to help us. We must do our best to see our sins to the extent that
the Lord lets us see them, without adding or inventing anything. We must open
our hearts to him.
***
We must
meet God here on earth. Those who haven't met him here, will hardly meet him
there. I would like us not to lose sight of God after we met him. With this in
mind, we should work hard to keep this vigil lamp of faith burning inside us
and to fill it up with holy oil. To do so, we have to have the oil at hand, and
that's exactly what the Lenten season is for. (Sermon
after the Divine Liturgy on March 10, 2017)
The Lord
can do everything. Our prayer can rise people from the dead and heal the sick
not by our own power but by the power of God who dwells inside us. We must not
forget it. We are called by God to be holy:
ye shall be holy; for I am holy (cf. Leviticus 11:44). We must remember
it and live accordingly. (Sermon after the Divine Liturgy in the
Boarding Home for Children with Special Needs on March 11, 2017)
By Fr. George
Glinsky
Our lives
must be in opposition to sin, and regardless of how hard it might be for us, we
should strive to keep going and not to give up. We should seek help from Him
who is the Source of healing, who is the Source of Life, and who feeds us with
his Body and Blood, and leads us towards the eternal life and the Heavenly
Kingdom.
***
The Lord
calls us to put God's truth into practice. We must demonstrate by our own
example that the Lord has changed us, that the grace of God transforms us when
we approach Christ who wants to save us. We must share with other people this
Good News about Christ and his Resurrection that changed the entire world. We
can have this opportunity when we partake of the Sacraments of the Church.
Naturally, we claim that the Lord has saved us by his Resurrection. He has
given us this chance but it is up to our free will and our reasoning to come to
accept this chance. Like a loving father, God expects us to take after him, to
carry his image. He expects our spiritual growth to cause further expansion of
this image into his full semblance, and, as Holy Fathers put it, to make us
into gods by grace when in our lives and in our spiritual beauty we start to
resemble him who created us and gave us this life, who gave us the opportunity
to be happy and comforted by his love, and who did not abandon us when our
forefathers made a mistake, who saved us from our sins, and who is leading us
into the blissful life here in the Church of God. We can already feel what the
Kingdom of Heaven is like right here through sacramental grace, because this
Kingdom is born inside us, as the Lord says. (Sermon
after the All-Night Vigil on June 5, 2017)
The
mystery of Christian living is caused by a combination of human efforts and the
action of Divine grace. This is what we call collaboration, synergy,
cooperation with God for the cause of our salvation. We trust God completely.
We believe that if we do our best, the Lord will support and help us; the seed
of God's grace that was planted in our hearts on the day of our baptism will
grow into the spiritual tree that we heard about in the Lord's parables — a
tree, which will feed people around us with its fruit, and which will provide a
shelter to birds, i. e., everyone we meet. (Sermon
after the Divine Liturgy on June 6, 2017)
December 8, 2017
St.
Elisabeth Convent
CONVERSATION