Sermons & Homilies
Today we celebrate the Triumph of Orthodoxy. The Holy Fathers explain that Orthodoxy is the unerring vision, and understanding, of the Holy Trinity and the entire Incarnate Dispensation of Christ, One of the Trinity; the correct teaching about created things; and the practice of the commandments which instill within us the purifying virtues, above all, humility and love.
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My brothers and sisters, we have reached today the threshold of Great Lent; tomorrow the “gates of repentance” will once again be opened to us, in answer to our solemn prayers during the Sunday Matins services of the past month....
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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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Today we celebrate the memory of the Venerable Herman of Alaska, the patron saint of North America. There is so much that is praiseworthy in the life of this man of God that one hardly knows where to begin. He was an ascetic who dwelt as an anchorite in the forests from the time of his early childhood. He was a zealous missionary who, like the righteous Abraham, left his home and his fatherland for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, not for himself only but for all of us who have received the precious gift of Orthodoxy on this continent. Though a hermit and a lover of solitude, he nevertheless joyfully took care of his orphans and fearlessly defended the native Aleuts from exploitation by his own people. He was a monk who, out of his deep humility, refused ordination to the priesthood, and so was sent an angel from heaven on the day of the Lord’s Theophany to bless holy water for him. He was a man who lived so wholly in the Kingdom of Heaven even during this earthly life that, when asked whether he ever grew lonely living by himself in his island hermitage, he could not even comprehend how such a thing could be possible, surrounded as he was by such a countless host of angels.
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The Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy has everything to do with Great Lent, it has everything to do with repentance, and it by all means must come first out of all the Sundays – because without it all the other Sundays become impossible. This Sunday we celebrate the absolutely necessary foundation of all asceticism, of all repentance, and of all Christianity: humble and trusting obedience to our fathers in Christ.
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