Sermons & Homilies
Christ is risen! After five weeks of Pascha-tide, the light of Christ’s resurrection has perhaps diminished for most of us at this point. It is hard to maintain that joy for so long, to hold onto that light. Thus, it feels appropriate that today we remember the healing of the man born blind.
Today is the Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas, whereon we commemorate St. Gregory as the defender of the Christian’s experience of God. St. Gregory became involved in a confrontation wherein his opponent claimed that Christians (specifically, hesychast monks) did not experience God directly. St. Gregory defended the opposite position and affirmed that this is how the Orthodox Church’s theology came to be - by direct revelation from God to holy men and women in the Church, whom the grace of God had transformed.
Today, we commemorate all the Saints who have ever existed. The reason for this is not because we might have missed some throughout the year, but to show that this is God’s desired end for all of humanity, not just the American land, not just the Russian land, not just the Serbian land, but for all lands and for all time. The net of holiness encircles the multitudinous variations of our human race. From the peasant to the prodigy, the idiot to the intelligent, the homeless to the hierarch, the monogamous to the monk; from the Patriarch Moses to Lazarus whose sores the dogs licked, the grace of God reaches out to all people, making sinners into saints.
Who was, who is, Schema-Archimandrite Panteleimon, known for so long to so many as Fr. Seraphim? Although I spent over a decade at his side as his unworthy cell-attendant, I still do not fully comprehend who he was and who he is. I took him for granted. I did not truly know him.
We’ve received much grace with all these events taking place and many may have had some spiritual exaltation. This is all very good and God gives it to us because He loves us and wants to console us. However, it is a common mistake to think that what we’ve received is permanent and now life will be different. To think that whatever spiritual fervor that has been engendered is us will now carry us along.
