Sermons & Homilies
Our life brims and overflows with a constant awareness of the interpenetration of the spiritual and material world but also of the created and uncreated world, and this is most true when we step into the church. We arise in the morning and pray, thanking God for a new day, and we use our hands to feed ourselves. We enter the church, and the created spiritual world is present in the form of angels and saints; and the uncreated grace of God transforms the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, through which, Christ tells us, the life of God comes to abide in us and animate us (John 6.35).
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Although we live in a world of icons throughout our secular society, whether as apps on our phones and computers or company logos and brand names, nonetheless, we remain in a predominantly iconoclastic world. Moreover, when it comes to the religious sphere, many may be more apt to talk and philosophize about spiritual realities. The Orthodox Church, however, not only speaks about these realities, it demonstrates them through icons, relics, the Divine Services, and most significantly, the Holy Mysteries.
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If we utter these words to ourselves and to God in prayer at all times, forcing ourselves to endure that which He knows is best for us, for our salvation and deification, then we will gradually lay down our lives for God’s sake.
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During the Dormition Lent we deprived ourselves of certain foods, we starve our physical senses and nourish our spiritual senses so that we may more readily comprehend and enter into the Feast of the Dormition.
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The miraculous event we commemorate today—the mystery hidden before the ages and unknown even to the angels—has its origins even outside of time, and so it had been at work already for millennia. Today is fulfilled God’s promise to faithful Abraham that in his seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.
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