Sermons & Homilies
In today’s epistle, we hear the Apostle Paul establishing the basis of a Christian’s salvation: “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom. 10.9). The opposite is that if you do not confess the Lord Jesus, or if you do not believe in your heart, you are not a Christian, you will not be saved. However, is salvation so simple, effortless, and undemanding as this would sound? Does the Apostle mean to imply that there is no gradation of belief or allowance for doubt or periods of disbelief or struggle so that one can say with the father of the demon-possessed son, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24)? Is the Apostle Paul implying that confessing and believing are all that is needed to be a Christian? Or is he directing his statement that “let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10.12) to those who believe Christianity to be so simplistic?
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Our hearts are filled today with godly joy and pious glorying. What Christian soul can fail to be so moved at the commemoration of the two spiritual giants set before us? —the princes of the Church, the pillars of the Faith, the preachers of the truth, the crowns of the Hebrew race, the beloved friends and apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. Peter and Paul stand conspicuously at the head of the assembly of Apostles, amidst the Church triumphant, in ceaseless worship of the crucified Lord to whom they devoted their whole lives, sealing this gift with their own blood; and we on earth join in the heavenly chorus today, exulting in our God who is so wondrous in his saints. Since we already know of their glorious end, we ought to consider as well their inglorious beginnings, and how they attained such unspeakable glory.
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Our gathering today is a peculiar one. In the backwoods of West Virginia, a group of men and women from all over America are assembled here to celebrate the great multitude of saints who have shone forth in the land of Russia. Most of us are adult converts to Orthodoxy who speak scarcely a word of Russian. As such, we might understandably ask ourselves—what significance does this feast hold for us, who do not share the ties of blood, language or kinship with the saints set before us?
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Today we commemorate all the Saints who have ever existed. The reason for this is not because we might have missed some throughout the year but to show that this is God’s desired end for all of humanity. The net of godliness encompasses the abundant variations of our human race. From the peasant to the prodigy, the homeless to the hierarch, the monogamous to the monk; from the Patriarch Moses to Lazarus whose sores the dogs licked, the grace of God reaches out to all people and makes sinners saints.
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“‘In the last days,’ saith God,’ I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh.’”
Upon all flesh. Not longer upon a select few only, no longer only upon those who have attained to the absolute heights of purity and righteousness, but now even upon us ordinary sinners also — provided only that we, through the Mysteries of Baptism and Chrismation, are numbered among the people of God.