Sermons & Homilies

Abba Isaac says:

At a time of darkness, kneeling is more helpful than anything else. … Even if our thoughts are cold and murky, we ought to persist long in kneeling. And although our hearts should be dead at those times and we should not even have a prayer or know what we ought to say, since no words or supplication come to us, nor even a petition, still we ought to remain continually prostrate upon our faces, though we keep silence.

The Scriptures, and especially the Gospels, are full of stories like those which we have just heard: stories of the miraculous power and the mercy and compassion of our God. As Christ said to the disciples of the Forerunner: “Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” The first three Gospel books are dedicated almost entirely to telling of the healing miracles which the Saviour performed for the countless multitudes which came to Him.