Sermons & Homilies
Some say that there are three paths to salvation for a Christian: marriage, monasticism, and martyrdom. But perhaps it is not too bold for me to say that really, there is only one path. Every Christian must become a martyr. There is no other path to Heaven than the path of the Cross.
The way of Christ-like humility is the way of the Cross, which is foolishness to the world and deeply repugnant to our fallen ego. For the ego considers its own rights to be non-negotiable, its own life and activity essential.
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The whole world is undergoing a great trial, and COVID has turned the world upside down, and somehow having a vaccine, in many ways, has eased this trial very little. However, this is the cross that has come – to the world, to the Church, to Her Metropolitans, Bishops, and Priests, to the parishes and to the monasteries, and in short, this is the cross that has come to us.
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After several weeks of almost unprecedented temptations of both soul and body here at the monastery, we have just heard these beautiful and inspiring words from St. Paul in today’s Epistle lesson: “For whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” (Romans 15:4). And in today’s Gospel reading we are being given an earnest of this comfort and this hope, as we behold Christ healing the physical afflictions of the blind men and the spiritual afflictions of the demoniac.
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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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