Sermons & Homilies
Who knows the inner meaning of this Feast? They alone who have experienced barrenness and deadness of soul and now feel pulsing within their very veins the life-giving energy of God Who dwells within them. To taste life, we must experience death. To be thankful for sweetness, we must endure bitterness.
Christ is risen! My brothers and sisters, what a blessed and glorious thing is the gift of light! At the beginning of the creation of the world, the very first words spoken by the Lord God were precisely: “Let there...
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Christianity is a religion of sacrifice. And on this day, we commemorate one of the greatest sacrifices ever made in the history of our holy faith — a sacrifice which echoes the Patriarch Abraham’s incredible sacrifice of his beloved son Isaac, and which prefigures God the Father’s even more awesome sacrifice of His only-begotten son: our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ.
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So let us always remember that for us too, our resurrection — both bodily and spiritual — is not given to us for our own sake, but for the sake of those around us: those who love us, those who pray for us, and even for the sake of those who hate us and do us wrong. Above all, our resurrection is given to us for the sake of our own mother, the Holy Church of Christ, so that we can truly become Her faithful children.
My brothers and sisters, we arrive today at one of the most joyful feasts of the entire Church year. Amidst the desert of Great Lent, the Annunciation comes as a true oasis for our parched and thirsty souls. As the troparion of the feast exultantly exclaims: “Today is the fountainhead of our salvation, and the revelation of the mystery which is before the ages!”
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