Sermons & Homilies
In today’s Gospel lesson, we heard how Christ comes to save a man tormented by the thousands of demons inside him. This possessed man was driven out of human society. The other Gospels report two such men, but really, there is no communion in evil. Two wicked men together are not a company. In separating themselves from God, they truly are separated from each other as well, despite seeming evidence to the contrary. In the description of the man possessed by a legion of demons, the Gospel portrays so vividly the effects of sin on man. Sin leaves a man insane, naked, and alone, a walking corpse living amongst the tombs.
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"And what is a merciful heart? It is the heart burning for the sake of all creation, for men, for birds, for animals, for demons, and for every created thing…" The heart of a merciful man "burns without measure in the likeness of God." Thus St. Isaac expands upon the mercy that today’s Gospel is exhorting us to have.
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What is the essence of Orthodoxy? Orthodoxy has a lot of rituals. Rituals are important but the essence is not about rituals. Orthodoxy has a lot of rules—liturgical rules, fasting rules, prayer rules. The rules are important, but the essence is not in rules. Orthodoxy has a lot of theology—dogmatic, ascetical, mystical. Theology is important, but the essence is not theology. Orthodoxy is about that great mystery that our forefather Adam prophesied at the beginning.
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Today we celebrate a great synaxis of Holy Elders, Elders who are, with the Optina Elders, spiritual children of the great St. Paisy Velichkovsky. I want to focus on one word of one of these Elders. Of course, it comes from my patron saint, St. Makary of Glinsk. It is the only direct piece of advice you hear from him in the short life contained within the Glinsk Patericon. There are many more in the longer version of his life.
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Truly, the “whole mystery of… salvation” today begins to be revealed. Every promise that God ever made — from Adam to Noah, from Abraham to David, from the patriarchs to the prophets — now finally begins to be fulfilled, in the person of the Most Holy Theotokos. St. Andrew of Crete declares that She is the “clear fulfillment of the whole of prophecy, of the truth of Scriptures inspired by God, the living and most pure book of God and the Word in which, without voice or writing, the Writer Himself, God and Word, is everyday read.”