Sermons & Homilies
There is no great event which is not proceeded with great longing and expectation. This Great Feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God is no exception. This first of Feasts, celebrated on the eighth day of the New Church Year, was certainly preceded by great longing and expectation. First, we have the longing of the blessed parents of the Blessed Ever-Virgin, Joachim and Anna. Finding themselves childless even in old age and thus ashamed in front of Jewish society, they pleaded with God to relieve them of the curse of childlessness, a shame which even caused Joachim to be rejected from his service at the Temple and which sent him into the wilderness to plead with the Lord. Joachim and Anna did not lose their faith or cease their prayers even when it seemed that all the law of nature was set against them because of their age. Rather, they lived and prayed with longing and the expectation of deliverance. Secondly, we have the longing and travail of the human race itself, which was until the dawn of Grace laboring under the yoke of the old law, the condemnation of the sin of our first ancestors, and the corruption of death. The people of the world had descended to such a state of moral degradation that it hardly seemed possible to redeem mankind. Indeed, it would take the very entry of God Himself, incarnate, into human history in order to save mankind inasmuch as the law was powerless to save it. Mankind, like Anna, was barren, not bringing forth fruit. The whole world was in longing, and the righteous, such as Joachim and Anna and Symeon the God-Receiver, were filled with expectation.
St. Ephraim the Syrian says that to honor the Mother of God is to “unlock the gates of the heavenly Jerusalem”.
“Today is the crown of our salvation and the revelation of the mystery which is from eternity: the Son of God becometh the Son of the Virgin, and Gabriel proclaimeth good tidings of grace.”
Today’s feast is called the Meeting of the Lord because it refers to the meeting between the Righteous Simeon and Our Saviour.
Today we celebrate the feast of Pokrov, the Protection of the Mother of God. This feast, though not widely celebrated outside the Russian Church, is very dear to the hearts of the Russian people. It is on this feast that we celebrate the love that the Mother of God has for us. It is a celebration of the protection and great care that the Mother of God shows us. A motherly love, with warmth and affection, yet a love with great power – and the Mother of God proves this to us time and time again.