Sermons & Homilies
The feast of St. Gregory Palamas this Sunday is a second Triumph of Orthodoxy. It was first instituted less than 10 years after St. Gregory reposed in the Lord. This is a remarkable fact. This ought to tell us something. It says, our Fathers recognized something so important and essential in the life and teaching of St. Gregory that they did not hesitate to accord it public veneration and to praise it with sacred hymns, even while he was within living memory.
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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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Throughout this work, particular themes are woven, such as the role of the spiritual father, the memory of death, or how experience corresponds to knowledge, but the theme we will focus on today is the role of love for God, because it is present on the first rung and on the last and contributes in various ways to many of the steps along the way. Love for God is the motivating force of the Christian life, the ascetic life, the monastic life (and these are not exclusive).
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If we find ourselves in such a state, or if we see that we’re in danger of slipping into it, or if we simply wish to avoid it altogether, the solution is simple—put prayer first. The hours in the day are few, and our time in this life is fleeting. We have to make the time for prayer.
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It is the serpent of anger and wrathful condemnation that St. Joseph the Hesychast counsels us, in one of his letters, to suffocate through silence. When irritation and anger flare up in the soul, he says to shut the mouth of both body and soul in order that this serpent might suffocate and die.
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