Sermons & Homilies
We see fulfilled today the end of Christ’s work, its perfection and crown: the Mother of God is glorified, and according to our Tradition, she is now—not only beyond death, but also—beyond the general Resurrection.
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The whole world is undergoing a great trial, and COVID has turned the world upside down, and somehow having a vaccine, in many ways, has eased this trial very little. However, this is the cross that has come – to the world, to the Church, to Her Metropolitans, Bishops, and Priests, to the parishes and to the monasteries, and in short, this is the cross that has come to us.
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After several weeks of almost unprecedented temptations of both soul and body here at the monastery, we have just heard these beautiful and inspiring words from St. Paul in today’s Epistle lesson: “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” (Romans 15:4). And in today’s Gospel reading we are being given an earnest of this comfort and this hope, as we behold Christ healing the physical afflictions of the blind men and the spiritual afflictions of the demoniac.
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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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