Sermons & Homilies
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.
In the Gospel reading today, on this Sunday after Theophany, we hear the very first sermon that Christ ever gave in his public ministry: “Repent! For the Kingdom of God is at hand!”
The Feast of the Nativity of Christ is about God, the invisible, the undepictable, becoming visible, becoming incarnate and walking among us. But there is another side to this feast that we often forget.
Today’s Gospel is, simply put, about gratitude. We can sum up the message of today’s Gospel rather easily: Gratitude is a rare quality, but it is praised by Christ and gratitude for all that we have received from God leads to a deeper relationship with Him and to new and better good things.
