Love Is Stronger than Death - Sermon for the Feast of Pentecost (2025)

It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.

John 16:7

Today, these words of our Lord are fulfilled. The Holy Spirit is poured out upon all flesh. The life of heaven and earth becomes one, because the same Holy Spirit is present everywhere and filling all things. The primal in-breathing of the Spirit is restored to fallen man, and we become partakers of the divine nature. In the Holy Spirit, we become deified persons, wholly who we are as humans and yet wholly united to God in the Spirit.

This is why Christ assures the Apostles that His departure is expedient, that it is ultimately to their benefit and advantage. The trees in the understory of the forest never attain their full stature until a canopy tree falls and allows the sunlight to shine directly on those below. In the same way, the Apostles could not reach their full spiritual stature until they were deprived of Christ’s physical presence. In His absence, He sends the Holy Spirit to earth and the Apostles grow up towards heaven like saplings straining for the light. Through the Spirit they become little Christs, just as we too can become little Christs by acquiring the Holy Spirit. By sending us the Spirit, Christ becomes the firstborn among many brethren (Romans 8:29).

But the benefit of Christ’s departure is not only the mission of the Spirit. For the Spirit receives the things of Christ and shows them unto us (cf. John 16:14); the Spirit unites us to Christ. And so in His physical absence, the Apostles discovered that Christ was now ever-present with them. Now Christ is closer to them than ever before. He is always accessible, always ready to be called upon, He is united to them in a new and ineffable way through the Spirit. Their life is now one. The inner life of the Trinity, the eternal communion of love between the three divine Persons, is now communicated to redeemed humanity, which is to say, deified humanity. All of this is only possible through Christ’s Ascension and His sitting down at the right hand of the Father, which, in Christ’s incarnate Person, fully incorporates human nature into the life of God. All of this is open to us only because Christ first cleared the way for us. And so we see the truth of the Lord’s words, It is expedient for you that I go away.

In this connection, I cannot help but think of the loss of our Fr. Seraphim. Throughout the course of his final illness and his blessed repose, I have been consistently struck by the many correspondences to the great liturgical cycle of the Lenten Triodion and Pentecostarion, when we relive our Lord’s Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. Of course, it’s no accident that the final days of Fr. Seraphim’s life coincided with the holiest season of the year. This was God’s gift to Fr. Seraphim, but it was God’s gift to us as well. Because everything he went through, and everything we’ve been through together as a result of his departure, has shed new light on the events of Christ’s life that we commemorate each year.

When we were gathered together in his kellia as he imparted to all of us his final spiritual testament, I felt something of what the Apostles must have felt at the Last Supper, as Christ bid them farewell and gave them His parting instruction. When I had the chance to spend time alone with him during those final weeks, I understood something of what St. John the Beloved must have felt when he reclined upon the Lord’s breast. When we gathered around him in his final moments, as his breathing became more and more labored and his very life was draining out of him, I felt something of what those closest to the Lord must have felt as they watched Him hang from the Cross, bow His head, and give up the ghost (cf. John 19:30).

The Spirit receives the things of Christ and shows them to us. All of these experiences that I had, and those that we all shared, were the work of the Spirit. No one who encountered Fr. Seraphim during the last two months of his life can doubt just how clearly and powerfully the Spirit was upon him and working through him, showing us the love of Christ and illuminating for us the true meaning of our faith and all our spiritual struggle. I feel that I was an eyewitness to things that I will never encounter again, a unique event in my life, one that will forever leave its imprint on me hereafter. All of us who were here and who knew him and loved him are eyewitnesses, and we should always thank God for it; especially the novices, because you are the last members of this community who will have known Fr. Seraphim personally. God granted you and all of us this gift—to see the meaning and purpose of everything we strive and hope for fulfilled in the life of a flesh and blood person, whom we have heard, [whom] we have seen with our eyes, [whom] we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, as St. John says of our Lord (1 Jn. 1:1).

In his beautiful eulogy for Fr. Seraphim’s 40th day, Fr. Macarius stopped just short of saying that he was a saint. Now that Father has been allotted his final place of rest to await the Last Judgment, and as we celebrate today the descent of the Holy Spirit, I think before making any definitive proclamations, we should ask ourselves, “What is a saint anyway?”

In a certain sense, we are all “saints” by virtue of our baptism and chrismation, the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit. Through this gift, we are likewise called to be saints (Romans 1:7), as St. Paul says, called to live a life of holiness and attain the full potential of our deified humanity. In the words of Elder Aimilianos of Simonopetra,

… although the Church is a human organism, each of its members is united with the Holy Spirit personally, which means that every one of us now become a deified human being.[1]

Any person possessing the Holy Spirit becomes a revelation of the divinity, a revelation of the Holy Spirit, which is to say a mystery. What does mystery mean? Through tangible means we have the revelation of the existence of unseen grace, of unseen energy, and of the presence of God. I then become a visible sign which reveals the unseen divinity that exists within me. It follows that the mission and purpose of my life are twofold: for myself, it is the experience of the Kingdom of heaven through deification or theosis in the Holy Spirit; for others, it is the revelation and arrival of the Kingdom of heaven. In other words, I become a witness of the Kingdom of God and of God Himself.[2]

Can anyone who encountered Fr. Seraphim in the final days of his life doubt that he was such a witness to the kingdom of God and of God Himself? that in the final analysis, this witness, this martyrdom, was the whole meaning and purpose of his time on earth? No there can be no doubt about that.

Does that mean, then, that he was a saint? Surely in some sense, the answer is “Yes,” though I don’t propose we start painting icons and writing his church service. To seek a formal canonization misses the point, and distracts us from the reality that confronts us. Like many of you, no doubt, I have had difficulty in adjusting to this new reality. Our dear father is no longer with us in the flesh. He’s no longer just a knock on the door away; he’s no longer a text, or a phone call, or an email, or a radio page away. I can’t run to his cell and unload all of my problems, and find myself unaccountably better after simply spending time with him. But as I’ve run across all of his portrait cards lying around the monastery or sitting in the altar these past few weeks, I’ve had the jolting and uncanny and unmistakable sense that his face is looking right back at me, that his eyes are still fixed upon me, that he is still interested in me, that he sees and hears me and is concerned about me—in short, that he still loves me. I’m sure the same is true for all of his children.

This shouldn’t surprise us in the least. This too is the work of the Holy Spirit, and in the Church it’s the most natural thing in the world; for the Holy Spirit is the life of the Church. St. Silouan of Mt. Athos puts it beautifully and simply:

In heaven all things live and move in the Holy Spirit. But this same Holy Spirit is one earth, too. The Holy Spirit dwells in our Church; in the sacraments; in the Holy Scriptures; in the souls of the faithful. The Holy Spirit unites all men, and so the Saints are close to us; and when we pray to them they hear our prayers in the Holy Spirit, and our souls feel that they are praying to us.

The Saints live in another world, and there through the Holy Spirit they behold the glory of God and the beauty of the Lord’s countenance. But in the same Holy Spirit they see our lives, too, and our deeds. They know our sorrows and hear our ardent prayers. In their lives they learned the love of God from the Holy Spirit; and he who knows love on earth takes it with him into eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven, where love grows and becomes perfect. And if love makes one unable to forget a brother here, how much more do the Saints remember and pray for us![3]

As we celebrate today the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, let us also rejoice in the assurance that that same Holy Spirit has received our dear father into the life of heaven, and that through that same Holy Spirit, we are ever united with him and with Christ. The Holy Spirit bears witness to my spirit that the love wherewith Fr. Seraphim loved me and each one of us, individually and collectively—that love is stronger than death (cf. Song of Solomon 8:6). It continues even now and it will continue for all eternity. It’s no exaggeration to say that his ministry of spiritual fatherhood to this community has just begun. May we have his prayers, and may we always walk in the steps he set out for us, so that we in our turn might take our place with him at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. Amen.