Sermons & Homilies
Lent is the recalling to Paradise of those who have been cast out; it proclaims the truth to those deceived by the devil; and it announces sight to the blind, guidance to the lost, a haven for the storm-tossed; it is the announcement of life in Christ to those dead in sin, a life in a world that kills the soul.
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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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Perseverance is not just waiting. Waiting and thinking. Waiting anxiously. Waiting and despairing. It is not biding time until the problem (or worse, the person) goes away. Perseverance is a positive action. It is turning away from ourselves and our problems and our failures and looking toward Christ.
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All of us are born into this world with a deep and insatiable longing for Paradise. Perhaps we are not even aware of it. Most of us bury it beneath the mire of our passions; we try to satisfy this pure and holy desire with the trinkets and amusements of this fallen world. We become as ships tossed to and fro, as wanderers amid the wasteland of this life, consumed by a gnawing hunger for we know not what. But no matter how we might try to slake our endless, unquenchable desire, we all — like the Prodigal Sons that we are — always end up finding ourselves enslaved to our passions, perishing with hunger, and very, very far away from home.
We celebrate today the Great Feast of the Triumphal Entry of the Lord into Jerusalem. Today Christ enters openly and boldly into the holy city, no longer in secret, no longer hiding Himself to forestall the fury of the Jews, for He knows that His hour to be glorified is now at hand. And so on this day He makes his entry into Jerusalem with glory — at least, in a certain sense with glory.
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