Turn Everything into Prayer - Sermon for the Feast of the Conception of the Theotokos (2024)

Today we commemorate the conception of the Most Holy Mother of God. This Feast is a little forefeast of the Great Feast of the Nativity of Our God, set amidst the struggles of the Nativity Fast to impart hope and consolation to those worn down, suffering spiritual barrenness, just as the Feast of the Cross is set amidst the struggles of Great Lent when we journey towards the Salvific Crucifixion and Transforming Resurrection of Christ.

This Feast announces the fruit of many tears and prayers. The Feast of Nativity deifies us by a miraculous wonder which no human nor angelic mind could have even begun to conceptualize, hope for, or ask of God. Today we do not simply remember a historical event experienced by just two people, but we celebrate the root of salvation history, the earthly dispensation of God incarnate, and universal deification open to every willing heart.

Two parents, long ago, Joachim and Anna, desired just one child. They prayed. They fasted. They gave alms. They were righteous, blameless, loving, humble, pure, and glorified God in their entire lives.

They prayed and prayed and prayed. They labored. They hoped. They cried to God. They begged and pleaded with Him. “Just one little fruit of my loins, that is all, Lord,” prayed St. Joachim. “Just one little fruit of my womb, that is all, Lord,” prayed St. Anna. Such should be the way all children are conceived and born. Yet, for all this, nothing. No child. They again prayed and hoped. Again, no child.

How did they react? Did they blame God? Did they complain? Did they get angry? Did they despair? Did they blaspheme? Were they suspicious that God actually cared for them? Did they fall into doubt of His existence?

None of this! They were humble of heart. They became yet more humble by all their spiritual efforts, just as trees continually bend more towards the earth as they become more laden with fruit. They were humbled by barrenness and childlessness. They became yet more humble. Christ, as pre-incarnate Son of God, was perfecting them from heaven—Christ, who would later become incarnate from their blessed little daughter.

Sts. Joachim and Anna did not blame God, nor get angry, nor despair. They blamed themselves. They considered themselves unworthy of earthly as well as heavenly things. They were reproached and mocked by men for their barrenness. So, first, they manifested their faith in God through humility. Then, when insulted by men, they became yet more humble. Invisible humility before God can often prove to be sham humility until it is made manifest through the visible trials from those of flesh and blood.

How did they react blamelessly to other human beings? The same way they reacted to the prayers unanswered by God. They turned again to prayer. Prayer with all one’s mind, heart, soul, and strength cannot be born without afflictions. How can it be? No one feels the extent of their weakness, fragility, powerlessness, frailty, unworthiness, and uselessness until they are tried by affliction and worn down by confusing painful trials.

Trial and affliction come in many forms, too numerous to name now. None are imparted haphazardly, but by God the All-Knowing, All-Loving, All-Healing Physician of souls and bodies. Let the thought which devilishly slithers into our mind, saying otherwise, perish with its source, the devil.

Let us cease giving in to, and never again give into, despair of this kind. Let us not give in to faithlessness. But why distinguish despair from faithlessness? Despair is lack of faith that God’s power incomprehensibly transcends that of our soul-killing passions and sins. The Fathers teach us that although our sins are innumerable as the grains of sand on the seacoast, yet our Merciful God is a vast ocean of love into which we must cast, by prayer, the innumerable sand grains of our sins that they be dissolved.

What did Sts. Joachim and Anna do? They turned everything into prayer. God allows trials to make us recognize our weakness. Recognition of our powerlessness to do anything fruitful leads to humility. Humility is self-despair yet strong hope in God. Self-despair must kiss heartfelt prayer to God. Despair must end with ourselves, never transgressing its lawful boundary. And since we are not the be-all and end-all, despair is not the end. God exists from before all time. He is the Beginning and the End.

Despair in your own wisdom, strength, and righteousness, but never despair in God Who created all things from nothing—even nameless, wondrous, and unknown angelic beings, the names and characteristics of which are not even handed down by Church tradition but only hinted at. Never despair in God Who made a virgin a mother, turned death into life, and transforms corruption into ever-burgeoning beauty.

We must turn everything into prayer. How? It is not complicated. It is the art of simple children speaking to their Father. A child gets hurt. He runs and grabs his parents and cries into their bosom. A child gets scared. He frantically looks for his protectors. A child is hungry. He tugs on the garments of his nurturers. A child is happy. He shares it with his parents, smiling and giggling, imparting joy to their hearts also. A child is in need, yet he does not quite know for what nor how to express it. In inarticulate babbles he mutters to his experienced guardians. When he is thankful, he imparts his whole being to them and solidifies a greater love in them.

Such is prayer. Such is the state of soul which is child-like with God. God prefers the cooing of infants to the mounds of paper and ink filled with the vain philosophizing of the most renowned thinkers. God loves the unintelligible mutterings of souls fully fixed on Him as Giver of all more than the man who theologizes from book-knowledge rather than his heart.

God cherishes the mind which constantly revolves within it His all-sweet name more than the mind of the most accomplished scholar. God honors more than the famous of this world the noble heart which with honesty fully unravels all its knots, secrets, stains, shame, weakness, guilt, depression, passion, sins, and pours them out before Him. And when it does not know how to express something, it stands with bowed head in silence, trusting that He sees all and is present and is far more able to understand and help than we or others are.

God loves the body which falls down before Him. God loves the mouth which confesses everything the heart experiences. God loves the man who comes to Him with every need, sorrow, fear, worry, joy, gratitude, accomplishment, and affliction. God loves those who are not afraid to confess their brokenness to Him. Humility makes them invincible in Christ.

The Son of God and God hears all our prayers, gathers all our tears, is ready to aid us, but in His own time, when He sees fit and knows that it is the best time. This God is coming to once again become incarnate, coming to overfill the barrenness of human nature on the Feast of Nativity. Today He is preparing us to meet such a fullness by proving to us that barrenness is not a mistake or a punishment, but a precursor and most necessary element to receiving the fullness of His grace and truth with the utmost awareness, thankfulness, and carefulness.

Sts. Joachim and Anna suffered for 20 years before the joyous news of their conception was announced by an angel. That paralytic sat by a pool for 38 years before Christ healed him. The long-suffering Symeon waited hundreds of years to see and hold Christ. The prophets before him waited their whole lives and then also waited in hades until Christ the Light appeared to them, announcing the Resurrection. Adam and others waited in hades for nearly 5000 years. And how long does even just one minute in hades feel like compared to this life?

Let us take heart from this Feast given by God to everyone who finds themselves barren, worn down, downcast, awaiting a tangible sense of God’s salvific power within themselves. And for those of us who rather feel strong and consoled by hope, this Feast teaches us that there are always greater blessings which can fill our souls. They come with more training— painful and in need of much patience—but bring unspeakable things.

God is good and beyond good. He has created us out of His goodness, for good things—good things which are tasted even now, foretastes of that which we cannot yet taste nor imagine but will taste by the grace of God at the Resurrection, by a grace which is given to the humble.

Let us therefore be humble in our prayers, not looking too high. Sts. Joachim and Anna asked only for a child. They received the Mother of God. This child vowed life-long virginity, forever giving up the hope so sought after by every Jewish woman of her time, to be the mother of the Messiah. She became, beyond nature, that very thing she denied herself. The thief asked only to be remembered. He inherited Paradise. Let us ask the same for ourselves from Christ our God, to Whom with His Father and the Most Holy Spirit be glory and worship now and forever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.