Sermons & Homilies

There is a quote by Elder Aimilianos that I think is so appropriate for this Feast of the Nativity. The quote is this:

“That which we lack is precisely faith, not in the existence of God, but in the fact that He can do anything and does indeed do everything!”

This quote strikes right at the heart of our modern post Christian society and raises all sorts of questions:

Is God really involved in our daily lives? Can God really heal diseases? Does God care about my sufferings? Can God reverse the elements of nature?

The Holy Scriptures teach that, in the beginning, the curse of Adam would be overturned and that Adam’s heel would crush the head of the serpent. We have already begun to hear the echoes of this: the Virgin shall be with child. This will only become more thunderous as we draw closer to that august day when we celebrate the Nativity of God in the flesh, the second person of the Holy Trinity, our Lord Jesus Christ.

But today, today we recall the path which the fulfillment of this promise took and the people through which this miracle came to pass – the Forefathers, that is, the ancestry of Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

In today’s Gospel, we see a certain rich man completely bereft of humility and prayer to God; one who relies completely upon his own understanding and power. Seeing his earthly prosperity, he first asks himself—and not God—a question: “what shall I do?” Then, answering himself, he says: “this will I do…” And he continues in this self-reliance, even telling himself what he will counsel his own self in the future, saying, “And I will say to my soul.” The rich man is seen comforting his own soul with temporal comfort, prosperity, vanity and self-deception. No thought of God or the next life enters within his thinking.