Sermons & Homilies
Today is the first Sunday of Great Lent on which is celebrated two events. The first is the victory of those who venerate images of Christ, His Mother and the Saints (i.e., iconophiles) over those who were suspicious of any Christian art and, therefore, tried to destroy them (i.e., iconoclasts). The second event is the triumph of orthodoxy (i.e., the true, correct faith and the true glorification of God) over heresy.
Today we enter into the period of the Lenten Triodion, which includes the three weeks before Lent begins and continues up to Holy and Great Saturday. The purpose of everything that takes place during this period is to “recollect the entire work of God’s benevolence towards us.”[1] These first three weeks instruct us and prepare us spiritually for the time of the Fast. On each of the Sundays before Lent begins, we are taught about a certain aspect of the spiritual life. Today we learn about humility and repentance. Starting today, until the fifth week of Lent after the hymn, “Having beheld the Resurrection of Christ…”, penitential troparia are sung to instruct us about humility which is the beginning of the Christian life and also, the beginning of Lent.[2] Repentance is the doorway to the Fast and humility is the foundation on which repentance is built. As Abba Dorotheos teaches us, we need humility more than anything else; no other virtue can be achieved without humility.[3] This is demonstrated through the services as we prepare ourselves for the Fast by looking to the Publican as an example of how we are to advance.
Today’s feast has many meanings, many aspects, and even many names. It is sometimes called the Meeting of the Lord, sometimes the Purification of the Virgin, sometimes the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and finally, especially in the West, it is known as Candlemas – the Feast of the Light that shown upon St. Symeon and which we remember by blessing candles on this day. This multiplicity of names and meanings is an indication that today’s feast is situated at a crossroads: between the Law and the Prophets, between the infancy and the adulthood of Christ, between the Old and the New Covenant. Today, for the first time in history, God Himself enters bodily into the Temple which was made for Him, carried in the arms of Her who is Herself the true Holy of Holies, the Tabernacle more spacious than the heavens. He enters not in a cloud of glory, but in humble poverty, in meekness fulfilling the Law which He Himself gave. And She enters to be purified, She who alone is spotless and undefiled. Here the Righteous Symeon prophecies over Him who is the fulfillment of all the Prophets.
Today, as we stand at the threshold of Great Lent, the Holy Church gives to us in the Gospel story of Zaccheus an icon of the Lenten journey which lies ahead. It is precisely an icon, because everything happens as it were in a flash, in one single image passing before our eyes. We hear nothing of Zaccheus’ past, and after these few short verses he never again appears on the pages of the New Testament. In fact, it is only in St. Luke’s Gospel that we hear of him at all. Yet for all its brevity, this Gospel passage contains within itself the entire narrative of salvation.
Today we celebrate the memory of the Holy New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian land. These are all the multitude of bishops, priests, monks, nuns, laymen, laywomen, and children who were killed or suffered gravely because of their faith and their refusal to compromise their faith, to cooperate with the new revolutionary government, or to renounce their faith in Christ.