Sermons & Homilies
The life of an Orthodox Christian is not like the life of any other person. The life of an Orthodox Christian is lived within the cycle of the Divine Services of the Church which revolve around Pascha, the feast of feasts. The forty days which follow Pascha are termed the Paschal season. Traditionally, converts were received into the Church through Baptism on Pascha.
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One week ago we celebrated the Feast of All Saints on the first Sunday after Pentecost, noetically beholding the sanctification of mankind that has been continuously underway for two thousand years through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Now, on...
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There are two important truths we ought to remember on this feast day. The first is that there is no Christianity without the full, unequivocal divinity of Jesus, the God-man. The second is that the truth is only manifest when we come together in a communion of love.
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The Ascension of the Lord into Heaven is the culmination of Christ’s life, that life in which our deification is found. The Ascension of the Lord into Heaven is the crown to every other activity within the life of our Saviour because it is the clearest and final revelation of God’s love wherein the second person of the Trinity united Himself to humanity, redeemed that humanity through the Cross and Resurrection, and then raised it up to sit at the right hand of the Father in Heaven.
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We have reached today the Third Sunday after Pentecost, the third Sunday after the feast on which the Holy Spirit was first poured out upon the apostles of Christ, and the great missionary work of the Church was begun. On the first Sunday after Pentecost we celebrate all the saints who have shown forth throughout the entire world, while the second Sunday is set aside for each local church to keep the festival of its own saints — in our case it is the Sunday of All Saints of the Church of Russia, the church which first brought Holy Orthodoxy to our land, and which still to this day leads and guides us [in the Russian Church Abroad] toward the Kingdom of Heaven as our loving mother. And today, on the third Sunday, we honor the saints who have spiritually labored right here, in our rough American soil, so that the same grace of the Most Holy Spirit which transfigured their own lives would also transfigure the lives of you and I and each and every person around us.
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