Sermons & Homilies
“God is the infinite fulfillment of our desire, both in this life and in eternity,” thus writes St. Ignaty Brianchaninov. Unlike Buddhism, Christianity does not see desire as the root of all suffering but rather sin is. God created us to desire Him and implanted in our hearts an infinite desiring capacity to be able to contain Him insofar as we are able. But in the Fall, man turned away from God and chose to satisfy his desires not for spiritual delights, but for fleshly ones. In our own sinfulness we see our desire for the temporal trump the eternal.
Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends, but there remains a gradient of lesser loves, such as feeding the poor or clothing the naked, but are we not often loveless and complacent? Similarly, even if a man has such extremely small faith as the size of a mustard seed, he will be able to move mountains, and yet greater faith will accomplish greater deeds, but at times, are we not so faithless and numb? As we make our way down the road to the Kingdom of Heaven, our virtues and vices collide and vacillate within ourselves, making us confused about the state of our own soul and causing us to misunderstand others.
We can’t love someone we don’t know. This is why the Church always fights against heresy, against false beliefs about God. How meaningful and deep can our relationship be with someone when we think of him as something he is not? This is why the Church fights heresy and triumphs in her victories several times throughout the year.
