Sermons & Homilies
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into sin, or from painful circumstances of body or soul, or from our brother, or by the feeling of God’s grace having withdrawn from our soul, or from all of these together, or a combination of some of them.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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Although we live in a world of icons throughout our secular society, whether as apps on our phones and computers or company logos and brand names, nonetheless, we remain in a predominantly iconoclastic world. Moreover, when it comes to the religious sphere, many may be more apt to talk and philosophize about spiritual realities. The Orthodox Church, however, not only speaks about these realities, it demonstrates them through icons, relics, the Divine Services, and most significantly, the Holy Mysteries.
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