Sermons & Homilies

Selling Our Rights - Homily on the Rich Young Ruler (2024)
When the future Elder, Arsenie Papacioc, was asked as a soldier in his 20s what he would do if he were a general to train soldiers, he replied, “I would teach them to die, if they didn’t fear death, they wouldn’t be so cowardly. They would fight better, and win”. “I would teach them to die”. This lesson from a soldier is pertinent for us today. It is no surprise that analogies between the spiritual life and physical combat are as old as Christianity itself. Just as courage in the face of death is necessary on the front line of war, so too, is it necessary for each one of us as we engage in spiritual warfare. And it’s this unwillingness to die that we see is the ultimate downfall of the rich man in today’s Gospel.
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A Sermon for the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ (2020)
         The carnal and Jewish-minded man, says St. John of the Ladder, prepares for Feasts by arranging what foods he can enjoy on them; but the spiritual Israelite, the true Christian, seeks the spiritual recompenses which are bestowed on the Feast Days. The Jewish-minded man paints within his mind with great expectation all the dishes he can glut himself with and all the dainties he can gulp down; but the spiritual man seeks how he can slake his spiritual thirst and sate his spiritual starvation.
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Of Vikings and Paralytics: A Sermon for the Feast of St. Vladimir and the 6th Sunday after Pentecost
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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