Sermons & Homilies
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 is the fortieth day since we celebrated the Nativity of Christ, and so today, we celebrate the Meeting of the Lord, a Feast of the Lord having its roots in the book of Exodus wherein the Lord gave the command to Moses: “Consecrate to me every firstborn male. The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether human or animal.” (13.1-2, cf. Luke 2.23). We celebrate this event today because Christ is the firstborn male, and the first offspring, and, therefore, was brought into the Temple by his parents, confirming their obedience to the Law.
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God is always providing a means to grant us humility. But humility cannot be acquired without humiliation. Humiliation comes about either through our interior passions and falls into sin, or from painful circumstances of body or soul, or from our brother, or by the feeling of God’s grace having withdrawn from our soul, or from all of these together, or a combination of some of them.
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Our brother is our life. We’ve all heard this saying before. But have we really grasped it yet? Have we actually started to live it ourselves? Does it bear any relation to how we experience each day of our monastic life? Even in the monastery—or we might say, especially in the monastery—the force of this saying can be lost on us. Instead, we see our brethren as obstacles to be overcome, as burdens to be endured, as competitors to be defeated, or nuisances to be ignored.
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The Cross is the ultimate answer to all of mankind’s greatest questions. Who is God? What is love? What is the meaning and purpose of our life in this world, and how are we to come to terms with the inevitability of our death?
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