Sermons & Homilies
How should we live? The question is presented today, on Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week, because despite how we have spent the whole of Lent, despite how we have lived our life up until now; knowing what we do about the world’s situation, and seeing the ease by which our whole country and the entire world can simply come undone - how should we live?
What is the gate of repentance which leads to divine and eternal life in God? The awareness of our sinfulness before Him. Such an awareness of sin came to St. Mary whom all Orthodox Christians commemorate today as a lofty standard of true, life-transforming repentance. However, as we see from her life, an awareness of our sins is often brought about by a seeming misfortune, or impasse, or perplexity in our life.
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Even as we are falling into sin, cutting ourselves off from God, slaying ourselves with spiritual death; even amidst this, God speaks hope into our heart, reassuring us that there is a Savior for those who repent. This is proved to us by our Fore-Parents, Adam and Eve. For, after they sinned, they heard the Lord’s words of condemnation of the serpent-devil, but mixed with this there was the first prophecy of the coming Messiah, Christ, the Savior of the world.
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Today we celebrate the memory of just such a saint — the holy Equal to the Apostles and Enlightener of All Russia, Saint Vladimir the Grand Prince of Kiev. And although, as we have just heard, many among the saints once lived very sinful lives, I might dare to say that few ever lived such lives of exceeding filth and depravity as did St. Vladimir before his conversion to Christianity.
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In today’s epistle, we hear the Apostle Paul establishing the basis of a Christian’s salvation: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10.9). The opposite is that if you do not confess the Lord Jesus, or if you do not believe in your heart, you are not a Christian, you will not be saved. However, is salvation so simple, effortless, and undemanding as this would sound? Does the Apostle mean to imply that there is no gradation of belief or allowance for doubt or periods of disbelief or struggle so that one can say with the father of the demon-possessed son, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24)? Is the Apostle Paul implying that confessing and believing are all that is needed to be a Christian? Or is he directing his statement that “let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10.12) to those who believe Christianity to be so simplistic?
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