Sermons & Homilies
For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). Beloved, we have spent the first couple weeks of the new year celebrating the beginning of Christ’s march against the devil and his works. The Church offers us these bright feasts now to start the new year off in triumph.
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The Feast of Pentecost, also called “Trinity Sunday,” is a Feast which affirms the role of the Trinity in the creation of the material world and the role of the Trinity in the recreation of humanity who at one time only looked down towards the earth and towards earthly delights, but now is able to look up to the heavens and the delights that come from the heavenly world.
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I’m struck every year at how different Theophany is from the feast of Nativity. These two feast used to be one, and the services for both share many structural similarities, yet for all that, the spiritual character, the flavor, the personality of each is completely different.
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My brothers and sisters, we have just heard one of the most important Gospel parables which the Lord ever spoke. At the heart of the Christian religion is forgiveness — and how our hearts yearn for such forgiveness! For who among us does not know — at least somewhere in the depths of our heart — that we too owe just such an immeasurable debt as did the servant in today’s Gospel? Who among us does not feel — at least from time to time — the same sense of complete desperation, the sense that it is utterly beyond our power to set aright all the countless mistakes we have made in our lives, to mend all that we have broken, to heal all the harm that we have done? Who among us does not realize — at least in moments of honest sobriety — that there is nothing left for us to do than to fall down before God and beg for mercy?
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Today is the Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas, whereon we commemorate St. Gregory as the defender of the Christian’s experience of God. He affirmed that this is how the Orthodox Church’s theology came to be - by direct revelation from God to holy men and women in the Church whom the grace of God had transformed.
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