Sermons & Homilies

Today is the fortieth day since we celebrated the Nativity of Christ, and so today, we celebrate the Meeting of the Lord, a Feast of the Lord having its roots in the book of Exodus wherein the Lord gave the command to Moses: “Consecrate to me every firstborn male. The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether human or animal.” (13.1-2, cf. Luke 2.23). We celebrate this event today because Christ is the firstborn male, and the first offspring, and, therefore, was brought into the Temple by his parents, confirming their obedience to the Law.

Today is the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God, the “summer Pascha,” one of the greatest of all the Great Feasts, and a day of surpassing spiritual consolation and joy. It is called the “summer Pascha” not only because the height of its glory and the radiant splendor of its joy, but also precisely because on this day, all the divine promises of Pascha have now been fulfilled — not only in the theanthropic person of Christ, but also in the quintessentially human person of Mary, the Mother of God. Today the Queen of Heaven proves to us — beyond any shadow of doubt — that death has truly been put to death, that heaven has truly been opened to the whole human race, and that Christ our God has truly come to make even us lowly sinners into nothing less than “partakers of the divine nature” (2. Pet. 1:4), destined to come — just as she has — “unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). Today, all the gifts and promises of Christ shine forth in the person of His Mother, as a pledge and a foretaste of the day on which they shall shine forth in us all.