Sermons & Homilies
Continuing the theme of the Saints who have been persecuted and martyred through the rise of the Bolsheviks and the Russian Revolution, today’s homily will focus on the Confessor Elder Sebastian of Optina.
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I remember the first time I saw a portrait of Tsar Nicholas II in a church. As a recent American convert to Orthodoxy, it seemed strange to me, and something within me bristled. Not surprisingly, most Americans are uneasy with the concept of monarchy. Our nation was born in casting off the rule of a monarch and the founding a democratic republic.
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We must call upon Christ Who has gone before us, showing us that He descended in humility, from beyond the heights of heaven, down to earth, and further than the earth, into its depths, into hades, seeking out His lost sheep, bringing them gladness and light, taking them by the hand and raising them up out of darkness into Paradise again.
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Why have these stories been recorded? To grant us hope amidst our physical and spiritual struggles, weaknesses, passions, and sins. If our Merciful Lord sought out those who were afflicted without being directly asked, how much more will He come, in His own time, to us who seek Him out!
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We hear in today’s Gospel passage an account of two people coming to the Lord in desperation, each begging for His help in a totally hopeless situation. And it is this fact which is of the greatest importance: despite all evidence, and even in absolute defiance of simple common sense, neither of these two people despaired of the power of God to heal what no earthly skill or craft or knowledge could possibly heal.
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