Date: 2026-08-15T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Asceticism & Spirituality; John of Kronstadt; Orthodox Great Lent; Lenten sermons; repentance and confession; the Cross and the Resurrection; eucharistic realism; Russian Orthodox preaching; Religion & Spirituality; Christianity / Orthodox; Christian Living / Spiritual Growth
Description: Some forty sermons that walk the Lenten road from the first call to the fast to the dawn of Pascha. Saint John of Kronstadt preaches repentance, confession, and the Cross as the preparation that clears the soul for the Chalice — and when he turns to the altar his eucharistic faith flares: the living and life-giving Blood of Christ, he cries, steams upon it still. A daily celebrant's companion for the Church's great season of return.

Great Lent

John of Kronstadt

Royal Archives

2026

Copyright

The modern English translation and the cover design are © 2026 Royal Archives. All rights reserved.

The underlying source text is in the public domain.

Published by Royal Archives

First published 2026

Translated by Royal Archives

Source: Великий пост (azbyka.ru; from the pre-revolutionary Russian edition of St John of Kronstadt’s Lenten sermons)

Cover: The Church of St Basil the Blessed (1916–17) by Nikolay Dubovskoy (Russian, 1859–1918), Wikimedia Commons, which is in the public domain.

Edition identifier: urn:royalarchives:velikiy_post:en:1

Introduction

The Author

Ivan Ilyich Sergiev—remembered by the world as Saint John of Kronstadt—was born on the nineteenth of October, 1829, in the remote northern village of Sura, in the Archangel province, far up toward the White Sea. His parents were poor and pious, and the boy who would one day be sought out by an emperor was named for Saint John of Rila, the great hermit of the Bulgarian mountains. Poverty and the long, hard winters of the Russian North left their mark on him early: he learned in childhood what it was to go without, and he never forgot it. Neighbors, it was said, already asked the young John to pray for them, sensing in him a gift they could not quite name.

He made his way through the church schools of Archangel and then to the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy, from which he graduated in 1855. As a student he dreamed for a time of the foreign missions—of carrying the Gospel to distant China—but he came to see that the harvest was great enough at home, among his own people, and that the office of a faithful parish priest was itself a full apostolate. In the year of his graduation he was ordained and appointed to Saint Andrew’s Cathedral in the naval town of Kronstadt, the island fortress guarding the sea approach to the imperial capital. He would serve there for more than half a century, until his death, and the town’s name became inseparable from his own.

Kronstadt in those years was not a comfortable posting. The government used it as a place of exile for criminals and the destitute, and the priest found around his cathedral a population living in dugouts and hovels, sunk in drink and despair. Father John did not treat these people as a problem to be managed. He went into their shacks and stayed for hours—talking, weeping, rejoicing with them, treating each as, in his own phrase, a priceless soul. He spent his own money on food and medicine for them, and more than once came home barefoot, having given his shoes away; his wife grew used to parishioners returning his cast-off things. Out of this pastoral care grew works of remarkable scale. In 1882 he founded in Kronstadt a House of Industry—a complex that offered the poor honest work in its workshops, together with a canteen, a school, a shelter, a hospital, and a library—turning almsgiving into a system that could restore dignity as well as relieve hunger.

Two features of his priesthood pressed most deeply on his contemporaries, and both stand behind the present book. The first was the Liturgy. Father John strove to celebrate the Divine Liturgy every single day, and to stand at the altar was for him the center and the fire of his whole existence. The second followed from the first: he labored to draw ordinary Christians back to frequent Communion, condemning without softness the lukewarm habit that had reduced the Eucharist to a once-a-year formality. So many came to him seeking confession before the Chalice that individual confession became physically impossible, and he adopted a general confession—the whole church confessing aloud together, a scene that eyewitnesses described as overwhelming in its intensity. His reputation as a man of prayer spread across the empire and beyond it; the sick were brought to him and healings were reported in such number that he came to be spoken of as a wonderworker on a scale few saints have matched. In 1894, when Tsar Alexander III lay dying at the Livadia palace in the Crimea, it was John of Kronstadt who was summoned to his side.

His written legacy is considerable, but its heart is the spiritual diary published as My Life in Christ — a book of luminous fragments on prayer, the sacraments, and the presence of God that has been read far outside the Russian Church. He reposed on the twentieth of December, 1908 (the second of January, 1909, by the Western calendar), and was buried in the convent he had founded on the Karpovka in Saint Petersburg, where pilgrims came at once in great numbers. The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad numbered him among the saints in 1964, and the Russian Orthodox Church did so on the eighth of June, 1990; he is commemorated on the day of his repose, the twentieth of December, and on the nineteenth of October. A married parish priest rather than a monk or a bishop, he remains one of the most widely loved figures of modern Christianity, honored well beyond the borders of his own communion as a witness to what an ordinary pastorate, wholly given over to God, can become.

The Work: Occasion & Purpose

Great Lent (Velikiy post) gathers the Lenten preaching of a priest who preached constantly and who took the Church’s calendar as the natural shape of the Christian year. It is not a treatise composed at a desk, nor a single sermon-cycle delivered across one spring. It is a compiled anthology—nearly forty sermons and discourses drawn from Father John’s parochial ministry and arranged to follow the liturgical road of the fast from beginning to end. The internal evidence is plain: for several of the great Sundays the book carries not one homily but several—two on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, more than one for Forgiveness Sunday, a whole cluster for the Veneration of the Cross—sermons plainly preached in different years and then set side by side because they belong to the same station on the journey. The book is therefore a preacher’s Lenten companion assembled from the accumulated harvest of many seasons at Saint Andrew’s altar.

The occasion of the collection is the great fast itself, the most solemn stretch of the Orthodox year. In the tradition in which Father John served, Lent is preceded by a series of preparatory Sundays that ease the faithful into the discipline—the Publican and the Pharisee, the Prodigal Son, the remembrance of the Last Judgment (Meatfare), and the expulsion from Paradise (Cheesefare, or Forgiveness Sunday)—and it runs through weeks named for their Sunday themes toward Holy Week, the commemoration of Christ’s Passion, and Pascha. The sermons here are keyed to exactly those days. They were spoken aloud to a living congregation, and the page still carries the heat of the spoken word: the sudden turn to the conscience, the cry of woe over sin, the direct address—“Brethren and sisters!”—the paschal greeting flung out at the end.

The purpose that governs every page is pastoral and singular. Father John preaches Lent not as an end in itself but as a preparation—a season whose whole point is to clear and empty the soul so that it can receive. Fasting, self-examination, the sorrow of repentance, the confession of sin: all of these he presents as the road to the Chalice and, through it, to the risen Christ. He is not interested in the fast as a feat of endurance or a matter of dietary rule; he is interested in what it opens the soul to. This gives the collection its urgency. He is a physician who has seen the disease at close range in the exiles of Kronstadt and in himself, and who knows exactly what the cure is and where it is to be found. Within his own corpus the book sits alongside his eucharistic diary and his other pastoral writings as the seasonal, calendar-bound expression of the single conviction that animated his whole priesthood: that the ordinary Christian is called to genuine, frequent, life-changing communion with God, and that the Church’s appointed means—the fast, confession, the altar—are given precisely so that this can happen.

Argument & Structure

The book’s structure is the structure of Lent, and to read it in order is to walk the season from its first summons to its far horizon. It opens in the preparatory weeks, before the fast has even begun, with the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee. Here Father John lays the foundation stone of everything that follows: humility. Setting the two men of the parable against each other, he anatomizes pride as the root sickness of fallen humanity—the passion by which Adam wished to make himself equal to God—and holds up the publican’s broken and contrite heart as the only disposition in which prayer is heard. Whatever good we have, he insists, is God’s gift and not our achievement; the moment we count and display our virtues we have lost them. The theme is not incidental. It is the doorway to the whole fast, because a soul that will not humble itself cannot repent, and a soul that cannot repent cannot be filled.

From humility the collection turns to return. The Sundays of the Prodigal Son give Father John the parable he loves best, and he reads it as a mirror in which every hearer sees himself: the far country of sin, the husks that do not satisfy, the coming to oneself, and above all the Father who is already running down the road. His pastoral genius shows here in a single insight he presses again and again—that repentance is not hard but easy, that God is “not far from any one of us,” and that the very first inward movement of the heart back toward Him is met at once with mercy. He maps the passions one by one—unbelief, pride, envy, wrath, gluttony—and shows that for each there is a path home. The preparatory arc then closes with the Sundays of Meatfare and Cheesefare and with Forgiveness Sunday, which stand at the threshold of the fast and turn the soul toward the mutual forgiveness without which the discipline is empty.

With the first week of Lent the sermons enter the fast proper, and their center of gravity shifts to repentance and the sacraments. Here stand the discourses on repentance and on receiving the Holy Mysteries—the pastoral heart of the book. Father John examines the fruit of a well-kept fast with searching honesty: after confession and Communion, has anything actually changed? Have we grown gentler, freer, more merciful, more heavenly-minded, or have we merely performed a rite? The Sunday of Orthodoxy, which crowns the first week, draws him to the truth of the faith and the guilelessness of the true Israelite. Through the middle Sundays the road climbs toward the Cross. The Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross, at the midpoint of the fast, draws the largest gathering of homilies in the book, and here the preaching darkens and deepens: the Cross is set at the very center of the season as the instrument of our redemption, the tree by which the debt of sin was paid and, in his own striking phrase, our own acquittal secured.

The last movement follows Holy Week. The fourth and fifth Sundays give way to the great images of the approaching Passion—the song “Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight,” the sermons of Great Monday, and then the homilies for Great and Holy Friday, several of them preached before the Epitaphios, the winding-sheet that bears the image of the crucified Lord to the center of the church. The tone at the tomb is hushed and grief-stricken. And then, at the very end, the book breaks the calendar open: its closing homily is spoken after Pascha has come and gone, with the paschal cry “Christ is risen!” on the preacher’s lips—but it is a sermon of holy anger and grief, a lament that so many received the feast of the Resurrection with drunkenness and dissipation, trampling underfoot the repentance and Communion the fast had won for them. It is a fitting close, and a characteristic one. Father John will not let the reader mistake the season for a performance that ends when the fast is broken. The whole point of Lent, he insists to the last, is a life actually changed—a soul that has itself risen from dead works to living ones.

Theological & Spiritual Significance

The abiding significance of Great Lent lies in the way it fuses a rigorous doctrine of repentance with an incandescent eucharistic faith, and refuses to let either stand without the other. Father John is, first, a great physician of the conscience. His analysis of sin is neither vague nor sentimental. Pride, for him, is a diagnosable sickness with a known origin in the fall, a known progress through the soul, and a known cure; the passions are mapped like symptoms; the self-deceptions by which we launder our motives and admire our own virtue are exposed with a precision that can still make a reader wince. This is the ascetic realism of the Christian East applied not to monks in the desert but to ordinary townspeople—sailors, laborers, the exiled and the comfortable alike—and offered to them as something within their reach.

But repentance in this book is never an end. It is always preparation for the Chalice, and it is at the altar that Father John’s preaching catches fire. His eucharistic realism is total and unembarrassed. To this day, he cries, the living and life-giving Blood of Christ steams upon the altars—the Eucharist is not a symbol or a memorial but the true Body and Blood of the Lord, received for the cleansing and renewal of the faithful. Around this center he lays out the whole ladder of the Mysteries—Baptism, Chrismation, the Liturgy, repentance, the priesthood, and the rest—as the appointed channels of grace by which heaven is opened to the soul. His constant refrain, that the doors of heaven shut by our sins are opened again by repentance and Communion, gives the fast its stakes: this is not religious housekeeping but the difference between a soul locked out and a soul let in.

The theological weight of the collection rests, finally, on the Cross. Father John sets the crucified and risen Christ at the center of the whole Lenten enterprise. The Cross is the ground of the mercy he keeps promising the penitent; it is because the Lamb of God has taken the sins of the world upon Himself that the blows of divine justice do not fall, that the sinner’s cry is heard, that the far country can be left behind. Redemption, in his preaching, is not an abstraction but the living engine of pastoral hope—the reason a priest can look at the worst of Kronstadt’s exiles and address a priceless soul. It is worth adding that this is preaching, not system-building. The book’s theology is delivered at the pitch of exhortation, aimed at the will and the heart rather than the speculative intellect, and its power is inseparable from that homiletic urgency. What it engages is less a controversy than a crisis Father John saw all around him—the reduction of a living faith to custom and routine—and against that reduction the whole book is a sustained, passionate protest.

Reception & Influence

Few modern pastors have been so widely venerated in their own lifetimes. Father John was known across the Russian empire and beyond it as a man whose prayers healed the sick and turned sinners around, and the pilgrimage to Kronstadt became a phenomenon of the age; correspondence and requests for his prayers reached him from every quarter, and his summons to the deathbed of Alexander III set the seal on a fame that was already immense. His example did lasting work in the wider Church’s sacramental life. The recovery of frequent Communion, against the entrenched habit of the once-a-year obligation, owes an enormous debt to his preaching and his practice, and the very shape of the general confession he adopted at Kronstadt has continued to be discussed and, in places, adapted as a pastoral response to the same needs he faced. His diary My Life in Christ passed early into other languages and has been read by Christians of many traditions as a modern spiritual classic. Numbered among the saints by the Russian Church Abroad in 1964 and by the Church in Russia in 1990, he is today commemorated liturgically, has churches dedicated in his name on several continents, and is honored—as a witness to prayer, charity, and the sacraments—well beyond the boundaries of the communion in which he served. The Lenten sermons gathered here belong to that living reception: they are among the texts through which his voice still reaches the ordinary Christian for whom he spent his life.

The Text & This Edition

This edition presents Great Lent in a fresh, modern English translation made directly from the Russian. The source is the public-domain Russian text of Father John’s Lenten sermons as preserved in the pre-revolutionary edition and served in digital form by the Orthodox library azbyka.ru; the underlying work has long been in the public domain, its author having reposed in 1908. The nearly forty sermons are arranged, as in the source, to follow the order of the Lenten calendar, from the preparatory Sundays through Holy Week to the far side of Pascha.

The aim throughout has been a readable, contemporary English that keeps faith with the preacher’s own voice—direct, urgent, and made to be heard aloud—without smoothing away its fervor or modernizing its convictions. The translation follows the house conventions of this series. Saint John of Kronstadt is named as the Church has always received him, and is credited as the author of his own sermons; the translators appear as translators and never as authors. Scripture is rendered as Father John himself quotes it—from the Slavonic and Russian of his own Bible, in the register of his preaching—rather than being conformed to any standard English version, so that the citations read as he meant them. Biblical references are given in a plain modern citation style (for example, Lk 18:11, Rom. 6:22) with Arabic numerals for chapters and verses. Where the working drafts had at any point abridged or garbled the Russian, those passages were collated afresh against the source and restored in full—including the great eucharistic loci, so central to this preacher, in which the living and life-giving Blood is said to steam upon the altar and the whole enumeration of the Mysteries is set out. The result is an English-language edition intended for study and for devotional reading across the weeks of the fast—a companion, as its author meant it to be, for the Church’s great season of return.

Suggestions for Reading

The natural way to read this book is the way it was preached: in step with the season. A reader keeping Lent can take the sermons as the weeks turn—the Publican and the Pharisee first, then the Prodigal Son, and so on toward the Cross and the tomb—letting each homily mark the distance still to be walked. Read this way, the collection becomes what its author intended, a weekly companion rather than a volume to be finished at a sitting.

The newcomer to this tradition should not be put off by the intensity of the tone or the vividness of the sacramental language. Father John preaches at full voice because he believes the stakes are real, and his repeated theme is not condemnation but mercy: the Father already running to meet the returning son, the door of heaven that repentance reopens. It helps to remember that these are spoken sermons, and to hear them as such—to let the direct address, the sudden questions to the conscience, and the closing cries of “Amen” and “Christ is risen!” do their work. Those who come to the book from outside the Orthodox world will find much that is particular to it—the calendar of preparatory Sundays, the Veneration of the Cross at Lent’s midpoint, the Epitaphios on Great Friday—but they will also find, beneath the particulars, a plainly Christian summons that reaches across every division: humble yourself, turn back, and be filled.

Great Lent

“The Pharisee stood and prayed thus within himself,God, I give You thanks that I am not like other men—extortioners, the unjust, adulterers,or even like this publican.” (Lk 18:11)

The Pharisees were teachers of the faith among the Jewish people; they boasted of their knowledge of the Law, and yet they dishonored God more than all others by breaking the Law and through their extreme hypocrisy. The Savior judged them rightly, saying that they love the chief seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces. This wretched passion of pride arose in them from a false exaggeration of their own merits; for while they were public teachers of the faith, they knew the Law of Moses well, which many of the Jews did not know. The publicans, on the other hand, were tax collectors, and by their station often resorted to unlawful means in their extortions. In the Gospel we see a wonderful example of humility and self-denial in one publican—Zacchaeus, the chief of publicans. When the Savior came to his house, Zacchaeus, in deep repentance, said to the Lord: “Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have wronged anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.” (Lk 19:8)

The Pharisees and publicans exist not just by name but by their deeds even today. The passion of pride and self-glorification rules even now among the sons of fallen Adam. Let us heed the call of our mother the Church and speak about how destructive this passion is and what calls us to humility. From where comes in us the passion of pride and self-glorification? From the same source from which all our sins have come: from the first sin of our ancestors. Man was created so that he should love God as the author of his being above all things, that he should gaze upon His perfections and imitate them, keeping His will holy. Yet he loved himself more than God; he desired to appropriate God’s perfections for himself; he wanted to be as great as God; he wanted to be his own lawgiver; he surrendered to self-love and pride, and he fell. In this way, pride or arrogance is a soul-destroying passion of man that makes him hostile to God and contemptuous toward his neighbor. Can God look with favor upon a creature that puffs itself up with some supposed perfections and finds no equal to them, as though we have something of our own? This is the beginning of our passion for self-exaltation. As a passion, it is naturally a sickness of our soul, infected in the hour of the fall of our first ancestors. As a false opinion of our perfections, as an unlawful movement of the will, it is also the fruit of the suggestions of the evil spirit, who, having fallen through pride and envy, drew mankind to fall through the same sins. We know that people did not fall by themselves, but through temptation from the devil. Need I elaborate on the fact that pride or self-glorification, joined with the diminishment of others, is a sickness of our soul? To assure ourselves of this, we need only look upon a proud man with the eyes of holy faith. What is man in his present state? Man fallen, broken, wholly wounded. Does this comparison seem exaggerated to you? Recall the parable of the Samaritan and the man who fell among robbers (Lk 10:30-37). Whom does this man who fell among robbers—beaten and wounded—represent? Whom, if not us, tormented by passions, the world, and the devil? If such a man were to claim that he is perfectly healthy and feels no pain, what would we say about him? Would we not say that he is very sick and near death, because there is no sensitivity in his body that shows the presence of life’s vital forces? This is precisely what we must say about the proud man.

Pride, moreover, is the fruit of suggestions from the evil spirit. Is it difficult to be convinced of this? Pride is a false, exaggerated opinion of one’s perfections, whether real or imaginary, joined with insulting disparagement of others. A false opinion—but from where comes falsehood in the world? God is truth. Holy Scripture points to one source, one father of lies: “You are of your father the devil,” the Savior says to the Jews, “and the desires of your father you wish to do. He was a murderer from the beginning and did not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (Jn 8:44) He whispers to man, occupied with himself and his good deeds, that he is a most perfect being whom all others ought to admire; that all others are contemptible creatures who uselessly live on earth and do nothing but sin. But how false this is, judge for yourselves. Is this impudent self-praiser truly the most perfect being, and is the neighbor whom he so boldly insults really as he describes? Perhaps at the very moment when he condemned him, the neighbor repented, wept over his sins before “Him who searches the hearts,” (Apok 2:23) all-seeing God, and received forgiveness. Meanwhile, the perfections of the self-exalting man are suspect precisely because he proclaims them, trumpets them about before God either only in the temple or to everyone. True perfection, true virtue is humble: it loves to hide in secret and would never dare to attribute its perfections to itself, much less to diminish others. You say of yourself that you are good, merciful to all, zealous for the faith and the holy Church, and that you mortify your flesh with fasting. Fine. But who gave you the right to call yourself by the names of these honorable virtues? Who has proclaimed you good, merciful, zealous for the Church and its holy ordinances? God? An angel? Or have you yourself judged your own virtue? But how can we judge our own deeds? How shall we weigh them? What measure shall we use? Do we truly know our unclean heart, which always—or at least for the most part—takes a large part in the performance of good deeds? Do calculations of self-love or other dishonorable motives not enter into our virtues? How easily an evil intention, which was the cause of our good deed, can hide from our own consciousness. The poison of sin has deeply penetrated our soul, and it insidiously taints almost all our virtues. Is it not better to look into ourselves more often and attentively, to notice the shortcomings in the depths of our soul so as to correct them, rather than to display our perfections? And why display them, why judge them ourselves, when there is the most impartial judge of them in heaven—the Lord God, who, since He “will render to each one according to his deeds,” (Apok 22:12; Jer 17:10) certainly knows how to evaluate our deeds. Let us entrust to Him the judgment of our virtues, and ourselves, “in the fear” of God, without pride, “work out our salvation.” (Phil 2:12)

We ought not to exalt ourselves before others, but to humble ourselves. And how many reasons for humility there are for each of us! Man has nothing of his own: all he has is God’s—his soul, his body, and everything he possesses, except for sin. Every good deed is also from God. What then can he boast of? “What have you,” O man, “that you did not receive? But if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” (1Cor 4:7) If he boasts of his virtues, then he wickedly appropriates the glory that belongs to God alone. Furthermore, every man is more or less in a state of sinful weakness, and certainly many are in a state of sinful insensibility. How unbearable in them is this painful, false confidence that they are perfectly healthy and have no need of a physician. What a reason this gives us not to value highly our good deeds, which may be nothing but the delusions of our soul. The heavenly, all-knowing Judge Himself undertook and will evaluate our deeds and will reward each in his time. How necessary it is, therefore, that we perform each good deed in the eyes of God and entrust its judgment to Him alone, not daring to touch it with our own fallible judgment. But it must be noted that good deeds are very few among us, far fewer than evil ones. A new and even stronger reason for humility: I am a sinner, and God is just. How can we not keep the judgment of God before us, which may be ready to be executed upon us this very day, and how can we forget, perhaps, the very insignificant good deeds which, compared to the multitude of our sins, mean nothing, because we necessarily sin every day, every hour—in word and deed, in thought and feeling. O, grant us, God, to always keep before our eyes our complete dependence upon You, our weakness, our sinfulness, so that we might constantly humble ourselves before You and before our neighbors.

Brethren and sisters! You cannot help but be pleased with the example of the publican’s humility presented in today’s Gospel, since it depicts us sinners who repent; and we readily recognize and love our own image when it is drawn for us in Scripture, particularly pleased because you see how he was pitied by God for his humility, and though he was a great sinner—for publicans in general lived by oppression and bribery—yet he “went down to his house justified.” (Lk 18:14) Let us strive to imitate this example of humility. Surely no one will say that he is not a sinful man who has no need, like the publican, to grieve over his sins, to strike himself on the chest, and humbly to ask forgiveness: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” (Lk 18:13)

We all, all are sinners and need God’s mercy. If the blood of the Lamb of God, who took upon Himself the sins of the world, did not intercede for us, then every day and every hour the blows of heavenly justice would thunder down upon us; we would daily suffer and our sinful souls would die, and we would never taste peace or joy forever. But the Son of God intercedes for us, and because of His merits our sins do not cry out so loudly for vengeance upon us. God forgives us our sins, only if we acknowledge them ourselves and repent of them. Yes, God forgives us our sins. We only need to grieve over them and ask from all our heart for forgiveness from the Lord Jesus, and through His servant He will forgive us all our sins by His grace and mercies, burdening our conscience. Following the publican in his humility, let us by all means flee from the self-exaltation of the Pharisee.

What an unpleasant character the Pharisee spoken of in the Gospel is portrayed with—one who took pleasure in viewing his own virtues! He says, I am such and such; I am not like other men, or like this publican. I thank You, he says. It is well that you thank God for your good deeds; they are not from us but from God. But why boast? Why exalt yourself with them before the face of God Himself, as though He does not know their worth? Why do you demean your brother? Are you not the same condemned and sinful man as the publican? Have your virtues suddenly made you a pure and sinless angel? Have you yourself by your own strength fulfilled them? How suddenly have you forgotten your weaknesses and see only perfections, thinking not at all of the humility necessary for you! Why do you think yourself a distinguished, virtuous man? Why should you not, even with your virtues, think that you have only done what is required and remain that unprofitable servant, according to the Savior’s commandment: “When you have done all that was commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have only done what we were obliged to do.” (Lk 17:10)

Lord! without You “we can do nothing.” (Jn 15:5) Give us this humility of the publican and drive out from us every thought of Pharisaic pride. Let us always remember that we are all Yours together with all that we have and all that we see around us, and we have absolutely nothing to boast of. Amen.

A Sermon on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican

The present Sunday in the Church’s order is called the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican. It is named thus because today the Gospel reads the Lord’s parable about the Pharisee and the publican. In the parable, using the example of the publican and the Pharisee, the Lord teaches us what disposition of spirit we must have when we pray in the Church, or wherever we may be. Let us listen to how the Pharisee prayed and how the publican prayed; which of them pleased God with his prayer and which did not; how one pleased and how the other did not, so that we too may learn to always pray in a way pleasing to God, and not to our own condemnation. Prayer is a great work: through prayer man communicates with God, receives from Him various gifts of grace; he thanks Him as the Benefactor for His ceaseless mercies, or glorifies Him as the all-perfect Creator.

The Pharisee and the publican prayed in the temple. Two men went up into the temple to pray: one was a Pharisee and the other a publican. The Pharisee prayed thus: God, I thank You that I am not as other men, robbers, cheaters, adulterers, or like this publican. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all that I get. The publican did not pray like that at all. He said not much, but grieved greatly over his sins; he did not raise his head before others, but with face bowed to the earth, from strong sorrow he struck himself on the chest and said only: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” (Lk 18:13) Whose prayer was pleasing to the Lord and whose was not, everyone knows: the publican went from the temple to his home more justified (Lk 18:14) though he was a sinner, while the Pharisee did not, though he was performing works of legal righteousness.

What then made the publican’s prayer pleasing to God? The fact that he was humble and had a contrite heart in his prayer; and long ago the holy prophet and king David said that “a broken and humble heart God will not despise.” (Ps 50:19)

But why did the Pharisee’s prayer prove displeasing to God? Ah! little discernment is needed to answer this correctly. “Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight,” (Is 5:21) says God through the prophet. The Pharisee in blind conceit and pride forgot who he was and with whom he was speaking: the sinner imagined himself righteous; the sinner forgot that he was speaking with the All-seeing and the All-just.

My God! what do our good deeds mean, which we sometimes dare to boast of before men and before Your face? Every good deed of ours is of little account, because, passing through an unclean heart, it borrows from it for the most part some uncleanness—uncleanness of little faith, unbelief, self-love, pretense, vanity, pride, impatience, irritability, and so on. And further, a good deed is done by us with God’s help as it is; without the Lord, according to His word, we “cannot do anything.” (Jn 15:5) It is certain that each of us has incomparably more sins than good deeds. How then shall I remember on my knees my few good deeds even if they were done with God’s help, when I have incomparably more evil deeds? No, I will rather shed a tear of repentance over my sins. I will pour out a warm prayer to the Lord and tell Him my sorrows, for my soul is full of grief and my life draws near to the grave (Canticle of Supplication to the Mother of God, Song 6, Heirmos). As for my good deeds, if I have done any, I will say nothing about them or forget them completely before God’s face, so that I might not imagine myself righteous and deserving of reward from Him for my virtues. I must remember the words of the Lord, which I must say after performing every good deed: “When you have done all that was commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have only done what we were obliged to do.” (Lk 17:10) How shall I recount others’ sins when I have sins without number? No, I will not act so foolishly; I will not be so greatly deceived by self-love and see in myself only what is good while neglecting what is bad. Otherwise the passion of self-love and pride will easily take hold of me, and I will indeed see in myself only good, as the Pharisee did, and forget much that is evil. No, it is better that I often say to the Lord: Grant me to see my transgressions and not to judge my brother (Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian). In such a disposition of spirit, brethren, let us all pray, and our prayer will be pleasing to the Lord and will serve us to salvation. In prayer, whether in the church or at home, humility before God and before men is absolutely necessary. Should not a sinner humble himself? The Lord has mercy on the humble and saves them. “When I humbled myself, He saved me,” (Ps 114:6) says David. God, be merciful to us sinners. Amen.

A Discourse on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican

“I will arise and go to my father.” (Lk 15:18)

(Words of the prodigal son from the Gospel parable that is now being read)

Brethren! The parable of the prodigal son should occupy all our attention. In it, as in a mirror, we see ourselves. The All-knowing Lord shows us, in a few words and in the person of one man, how the deceptive sweetness of sin separates us from the truly sweet life lived according to God, and how the heaviness of sin that we have experienced for the soul and body impels us, by the action of God’s grace, to turn back, and actually turns many of us again to God, to a life of virtue. Let us recall it and speak about how necessary and how easy it is for a sinner to turn to God.

A certain man had two sons. When they came of age, the younger said to his father, give me the portion of the estate that falls to me. And the father divided his estate. The elder son did not take his portion and remained with his father—a sign that he loved his father with a pure heart, found pleasure in fulfilling his will (“I have never transgressed your commandment” (Lk 15:29)) and considered it foolish to leave him. But the younger, a few days after this, having gathered all his possessions, went away from his father’s house to a distant land and there squandered his estate, living dissolutely. From this we see that he had neither a good nor a pure heart, was not wholeheartedly disposed toward his good father, was burdened by his oversight, and dreamed of living instead by the will of his depraved heart. But hear what happened to him in his separation from his father’s house. When he had spent all in this foreign land in a manner not becoming: a great famine came upon that country, and he began to be in want. He went and attached himself to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed swine. And he was glad to fill his belly with the pods (acorns and husks) that the swine ate; but no one gave him anything. Coming to himself, he said, How many of my father’s hired servants have food in abundance, while I am perishing here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father and will say to him: Father! I have sinned against heaven and before you, and I am no longer worthy to be called your son; receive me as one of your hired servants. He arose and went to his father. And while he was still far away, his father saw him, and was moved with compassion, and ran and fell upon his neck and kissed him. He forgave his transgression, brought him into his house, clothed him in the finest garments, and made a feast on the occasion of his return (Lk 15:11-32). Thus the lost son entered again into his father’s love.

Brethren! So does our Heavenly Father deal with us. He does not hold us to Himself by force if we, having a depraved and ungrateful heart, do not wish to live according to His commandments; rather, He permits us to go from Him and to learn from experience how dangerous it is to live according to the will of our heart, what a tormented sense of the lack of peace and quiet the soul experiences when given over to passions, and what shameful food sustains it—for what can be more shameful than the food of passions? But may God not allow anyone to remain forever in this separation from God: far from God is sure and eternal destruction. “All who separate themselves from You shall perish,” (Ps 72:27) says the holy king and prophet David. It is absolutely necessary to turn from the destructive path of sin to God with all one’s heart; and let everyone be assured that God will see his sincere turning, will meet him with love, and will once again receive him into the number of His children.

Have you sinned? Say with full resolve in your heart: “I will arise and go to my Father,” (Lk 15:18) and go to Him in deed. And as soon as you begin to utter these words in your heart; as soon as you resolve firmly to live according to His will: He will immediately see that you are returning to Him. He is always “not far from any one of us.” (Act 17:27) Right away He will pour peace into your heart: it will suddenly seem to you so easy and pleasant—as, for instance, it is pleasant to an insolvent debtor when his debt is forgiven, or as it is pleasant to a beggar when he is suddenly clothed in fine garments or seated at a rich table.

But note this, brethren: for as many kinds of sins or passions as there are, so many are the paths back to our Heavenly Father. Each sin or passion is a path to a land far from God. Did you go by the way of unbelief? Turn back and recognize its complete senselessness; feel in your heart all its weight, emptiness, and destructiveness, and stand firmly on the path of the soothing, sweet, and life-giving faith, and hold to it with all your heart. Did you go by the way of pride? Turn back and stand on the path of humility, and hate pride, knowing that God resists the proud. Did you go by the way of envy? Turn back from this hellish road and be content with what God has sent, and remember whose offspring it is: the first envious one was the devil, and “through envy of the devil, sin entered the world.” (Solom 2:24) Be well-wishing toward all. If you went by the way of enmity and wrath: turn back and stand on the path of meekness and love. Remember that “whoever hates his brother is a murderer.” (1Jn 3:15) Or have you departed from God through gluttony and debauchery? Turn back and stand on the path of temperance and chastity, and always remember, for guidance in life, the words of the Savior: “Take heed to yourselves, that your hearts may not be made heavy with gluttony and drunkenness and the anxieties of life,” (Lk 21:34) and the words of the repentant prodigal son: we have sinned before You and are no longer worthy to be called Your sons; receive us, even as servants; and He will surely receive us as children. Amen.

A Discourse on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son

“And he went and joined himself to one of the citizens of that country,and he sent him into his fields to feed swine.And he wished to fill his belly with thepods that the swine were eating,and no one gave him anything.” (Lk 15:15-16)

See to what the younger prodigal son, mentioned in the Gospel parable, came at last—the one who, from inexplicable willfulness, would not remain in his father’s house where, as he himself later acknowledged, even “the hired servants have food in abundance.” (Lk 15:17) Instead of genuine, truly friendly communion with his elder, wise, and well-behaved brother, he now attaches himself to one cruel inhabitant of that wretched region into which he had gone away from his father, and in which he had squandered his inheritance, living dissolutely. The cruel inhabitant sends him “into his fields to feed swine.” (Lk 15:15) Instead of complete contentment and abundance, which he had found before in his father’s house, he now suffers extreme and shameful poverty—the fruit of his dissolute life—so that he craves “to fill his belly with pods,” or acorns, “which the swine ate.” (Lk 15:16) Thus wretched was it, brethren, for the prodigal son to depart from his father’s house with his portion of the inheritance in a far and foreign land!

Need I say that the prodigal son spoken of in the holy Gospel represents us sinners? Indeed, our abilities—our mind, our will, our heart; our body with its health, its wonderfully wise and beautiful structure; our station to which each is called; our wealth; all our wellbeing; even the little plot of earth upon which we live—all this is our portion of the inheritance assigned to us by our Heavenly Father, who solely by His goodness, undeserved on our part, has apportioned to each of us a share of good things from His rich treasury and given us the freedom to go in all directions. Few of us remain with our inheritance under our father’s roof; many, taking their portion, as it were go away from our most-good Father to a distant land—into the sinful world—and there live dissolutely, captive to passions, until, finally, the cruelty and evident destructiveness of these passions convince them to return to their Father. Yes, our passions, our sins are absolute tyrants for us. Let us speak about this. Our Lord God is a most perfect being, so that our thought can never rise to a complete understanding of His perfections. Since He is all-perfect, He is therefore entirely self-sufficient and eternally blessed. The all-perfect and eternally blessed God created us not so that someone would torment and tyrannize us, but so that we would be eternally well, eternally blissful; but since only he who strives to be perfect and holy like God can be blessed, the Creator endowed us with free will and commanded us to be holy as He is holy. “You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.” (Lev 19:2; 1Pet 1:16) Strive to imitate Him in holiness with your mind, will, and feeling; know His perfections, love Him and in Him all people; do God’s works, and you will be holy, and you will be blessed. If you do not strive to know Him, to love Him, and to do what He has commanded, you will be a wretched sinner, an eternal prisoner and slave to passions. For blessedness is in God and from God; outside Him there can be no blessedness; there is only the tyrannical dominion of passions. What seems to be the burden of man to know and love God with all his soul and with all his heart? Let his soul be a creation foreign to him, but it is His creation, the breath of His mouth, His image. How could he not love his Creator, his Benefactor constant and eternal with all his being! Our body is a work of His wise mind and creating hands; our station, our wealth, all that we have except sin—it is His property; how could we not know and love with all our soul such a Benefactor, who gives us “life and breath and all things,” who “by Him we live and move and have our being” (Act 17:25,28)! How should we not, together with Him, love as brothers and sisters, as children of one and the same Father, our neighbors! It would seem, by justice, that we should wonder how we can know and love anything other than Him! How can we turn away from Him—the Source of life and blessedness? How can we rebel against His law and ordinances? How can we do anything displeasing to Him? Yet we do love much else besides Him; we do what He does not will and we turn away from Him. As a result, look at what happens to us; what we become like sometimes.

Here is a bold free-thinker who speaks not in his heart but proclaims aloud: “There is no God,” (Ps 13:1) or: there is no God-man Redeemer; there is no Church and no gifts of heaven bestowed in the mysteries for our spiritual life, perfection, and salvation! What then? Have you rejected everything spiritual, sacred, and heavenly? Then you are flesh, earth; there is no soul in you; you will not know heaven; hell is your eternal lot. Where is your soul, tell me? Every soul is from God and knows Him and yearns for Him; your soul knows no God; it is rather to say there is no soul in you than that there is no God, the Creator of all that exists. O, I see how pitiable is what you call your soul. In some unknown distance from the Father of spirits and of all flesh, it languishes, poor thing, in the realm of flesh, darkness, and destruction with an ineffable anguish for some loss, for something akin. What emptiness and darkness does it feel within itself! How comfortless does it find its condition! To be a spirit, to have spiritual needs and yearnings, and to find no satisfaction for them—what torment for the soul! To see how others flee to the temples of God with earnest prayers to God, how they receive gifts of heavenly grace there, and at the same time to feel within yourself the struggle of a proud reason that does not submit to holy truth with the natural yearnings of your own soul—how deadly this is for the soul! Turn back home, prodigal son; where have you gone? Why are you squandering your Heavenly Father’s inheritance far from Him, living dissolutely? Your mind is not your own: it is God’s gift. Why do you use it for evil? God gave it to you so that you would know Him and strive to become like Him; and yet you make it an instrument of destruction—to go farther from Him, to forget and not to know Him. Turn back to your Father, you wretched one; you have gone far; in that distance there is nothing but eternal death.

Here is an ambitious man for whom earthly honors are the goal of life. Instead of yearning for the eternal honor of your calling in Christ Jesus, he exhausts all his efforts to gain as much honor from men as he can. But on the way to his goal he meets many rivals who snatch away the dignities that, he thinks, belong to him! What frustration, how heavy is it not to receive what you so eagerly seek and what you sometimes think is already your own! How many nights does the ambitious man sometimes spend sleepless! And you, turn back; do you not see that you are going to a far land; farther and farther from your Heavenly Father? “Love of this world” love of its honors and distinctions, “is enmity toward God.” (Jac 4:4) Why do you wish to be above others? Do you not know that “the glory of man is like the flower of grass; the grass withered, and its flower faded away” (1Pet 1:24; Is 40:6-7) and that we are promised eternal glory in heaven with Christ? Your heart has been given a love of good repute—not so that you would eternally seek fleeting honors, but so that you would love spiritual ascent from glory to glory, turning away from sin as the greatest obstacle to your spiritual perfection. Return then to your Father’s house; abandon this petty ambition.

Here is a money-lover into whose hands has already passed many bright earthly sparkles whom he wishes to accumulate as much as he can. Silver and gold are his idol. And he has gone from God to a far land; the exhausting cares of acquiring and keeping his treasure pursue him day and night; he hears the word of God sometimes, but thoughts of wealth overwhelm it; about God, about his own soul, about its fate beyond the grave, he has no time to think: and he lives dissolutely. How many and what means does he sometimes not use to gather to himself so much of this beautiful, brilliant earth as his boundless desires can hold! Where is all this silver and gold for you? Why do you need so much? For a rainy day, to secure your family? But in the life of a true Christian there ought to be no rainy days—days of misfortune, according to worldly understanding—except those days when we greatly sin and anger our most-good Master of our lives. We live in the kingdom of a loving and care-taking Father, the eternal Advocate Son of God, and the Comforter Holy Spirit—our God, the Trinity of one essence. What dark days are there in such a kingdom? To secure your family? Very well. But for your family you need far less than what you have accumulated. And you want yourself alone to secure your family for the future! Why do you not entrust to God to arrange the future wellbeing of your children, entrusting them almost entirely to soulless metal? And if that shining metal falls into the hands of wasteful and dissolute children; if it corrupts them? Then you have a double misery: from gathering and not using your wealth as you should, and from ruining your children. Return also to your Father’s house. It seems to you that you are increasing your inheritance, the portion given to you by your Heavenly Father. No, you are squandering it, living dissolutely. To increase one’s inheritance means to multiply it through use according to God’s intention. How does one multiply through use? When you use something, you do not multiply but squander, you say. In this world that is indeed how it is; but not so with God. Yet you are not using it as you should, consequently you are squandering it, surely squandering it—whether willingly or unwillingly, sometimes invisibly to yourself. Return also to your Heavenly Father’s house; learn here that all earthly wealth is His possession, that we are stewards and distributors of this inheritance; be convinced that by distributing from your wealth to the poor as you are able, you do not squander it, but acquire it.

But here is a slave of indulgence and sensuality. What of him? Does he think to turn back to his Heavenly Father? Or have not yet the soul’s torments and bodily sufferings reached their final limit? But why wait for that time when already his soul has become completely weakened from shameful deeds, from sensuality, and his body is exhausted by constant, body-killing exertion? You have forgotten, dear brother, that your soul and body are not your own, but God’s, because they belong wholly to God as works of His hands, and moreover we are redeemed from sin by the price of the blood of God’s Son; you have forgotten that we must “glorify God in your bodies and in your souls, which are God’s.” (1Cor 6:20) You have gone far from God; you rarely enter the Church; you are ashamed to appear before the all-holy God with your uncleanness. Cleanse yourself and turn back to your Heavenly Father; it is ill for you on the distant shore under the cruel master of your shameful passion. Come to Me, your Heavenly Father and His beloved Son say to you: it is good for Me. “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest, for My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Mt 11:28,30) It is true that your passion gives you nothing to eat but “the pods that swine eat”; your pleasure is sickly, illusory; come to Me: I have everything in abundance; I have “the hired servants have food in abundance.” (Lk 15:17) And here is the pitiful victim of an insatiable belly—a man sick in soul and body from excessive love of intoxicating drinks and tasty foods consumed to excess. Go you as well. The Heavenly Father has long been seeking you. He does not want you to perish utterly, but to be saved, to come to your senses, and to become instead of a fleshly, God-opposing man, a spiritual, God-pleasing man. Hate the service to the belly, love golden temperance; be spiritual and do not squander your Heavenly Father’s inheritance, your soul’s and body’s powers, living dissolutely. Let His infinite goodness be for you an incentive to return to your Father’s embrace. Look at yourself: you do almost nothing but eat and drink; you are constantly immersed in sensual pleasures, while your Heavenly Father bears with you on His earth; all His sun shines upon you; He has not yet taken away your goods. Long ago you, like an unfruitful fig tree, should have been cut down and thrown into the fire; yet you still stand. Turn back; and the holy Church awaits you. You have long forgotten her, your mother. Yet she suffers for you as for her own child, laboring to save you, the disobedient one. The Lord calls all of us now with the voice of His holy Church into the embrace of His fatherly love, desires to save all of us. Soon the days of fasting and repentance will come; let us all hurry to cleanse ourselves from our sins and passions so that we may become new and spiritual people. Almost all of us live dissolutely—in a far land—on this sinful earth, forgetting altogether our desired and true homeland in heaven. O holy faith! Come to our aid, we who have gone astray; tell us that there is certainly another life for us beyond the grave, an infinite, blessed or tormented life—depending on how each person lives here: whether as a faithful son of the Heavenly Father—in constant communion with God, in purity, holiness, and love—or as a prodigal son far from God, in lusts and uncleanness? Tell us that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” (1Cor 15:50) “Brethren, consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, whether of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness?” (Rom 6:11-14) “Let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” (Rom 13:12-14) Amen.

A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son

“Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.” (Lk 15:18)

Beloved brethren! Who among us has not served sin and does not serve sin every day, willingly or unwillingly, consciously or unconsciously, in reason or in folly? Who has not angered the Lord, infinite Truth and Love? Who has not been wounded by the blade of sin and has not felt the sharpness and acuteness of sin—the heavy confusion of conscience, sorrow and anguish, these usual companions of sin? All of us, both small and great, are sinners before God and by this are liable to punishment and separation from God; and if the Lord, in His infinite love and mercy for fallen man, had not given him repentance and forgiveness of sins for the sake of the cross-sacrifice of His only-begotten Son, all people would have descended into hell, into a place of eternal torment. But glory to the all-good and wise God who has given repentance to sinners to eternal life. Countless multitudes of sinners have been washed clean with tears of repentance, have been justified and sanctified by the most pure blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, who took upon Himself our sins and bore all the punishments appointed for us—and they now rejoice with the angels in the dwellings of the holy. All of you who stand here, sinners like myself, do you treasure this priceless gift of the Lord, the gift of repentance? Do you sigh like the publican? Do you weep like the sinful woman? Do you water your bed with tears like David the patriarch? Do you return to your Heavenly Father with sincere, deep repentance like the prodigal son whose story you heard in the Gospel just read?

Sinners have no other path to life and to recover the grace and mercy of their Heavenly Father except through the path of sincere, true repentance, with the fruits of repentance. And the holy Church, the bearer and interpreter of the Spirit of Christ, of His infinite love and mercy, summons us all to repentance every day; and in these days, in view of the approaching great days of fasting and repentance, calls us specially, having established that we read on this Sunday the moving parable of the Savior about the prodigal son and sing touching, penitential hymns. How shall we, as good children, respond to the tender, love-full voice of our holy mother the Church! Let us awake from the sleep of sin, “let us walk properly as in daytime” (Rom 13:13); let us cast off the sensuality of the flesh; let us care for our immortal soul; let us do the works of God; and then we shall taste the peace of soul and the consolations of a pure conscience. O, how merciful and swift to hear is our Father, Master and Judge—God! He rushes at once with rich mercy to every sincerely repentant sinner, delivers him from ills, sorrows, and troubles that befall him for his sins, gives peace and breadth to the heart, transforms sorrow into joy. Every truly repentant sinner has experienced this in himself; the Gospel read today about the prodigal, repentant son shows this.

As soon as he firmly resolved to return with repentance to his father’s house and set out, his father saw him and was moved with compassion; running to him, he fell on his neck and kissed him. The son said to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you and am no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servants: Bring the finest garment and clothe him, put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet, bring the fattened calf and slaughter it. Let us eat and celebrate, for this son of mine was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found. And they began to celebrate (Lk 15:21-24). A moving picture of paternal love on the one hand and sincere repentance on the other! This is a parable in which an ordinary father—though kind and merciful—is described, and a dissolute son who has repented. But look into the deep, inner meaning of this parable; imagine instead of an ordinary father God, the common Father of all men, and His boundless love for the world perishing in sin. What a feast has He prepared for sinners whom He has adopted as His children through faith and baptism? Did He slay a calf? Rather, He gave His only-begotten Son to willing sacrifice; did He prepare the flesh of a calf for a feast? Rather, He has given and continues to give us His own flesh and blood as food and drink, for the forgiveness of sins and for eternal life. Behold the spiritual, life-giving, saving, wondrous feast of faith and salvation! Behold the boundless paternal love toward us sinners! Do you feel, O sinner, this love? Do you answer love with love? Do you sincerely repent of your lawlessness so that you too may be worthy of such a spiritual feast to your salvation and may taste the love of your Heavenly Father, His only-begotten Son, and the Holy Spirit the Comforter? And without repentance this mystery will not be to salvation. And what is the finest garment in which the father clothed the prodigal son? It means the garment of righteousness in which Jesus Christ clothes us, or it is Christ Himself, as it is written: “You who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” (Gal 3:27) This means we ought to live in all righteousness and truth. What is the ring on the hand? This is the sealing of the Holy Spirit given in the hearts of believers. “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1Cor 3:16) And God’s temple should be sanctified in all days; let us live holy lives. Shoes on the feet—this is the grace to walk straight on the path of Christ’s commandments: “Guide my steps according to Your word and let no iniquity have dominion over me,” (Ps 118:133) as it is said, for without the grace-filled shod feet, we cannot walk the straight paths of God’s commandments. “Turn each of you from your evil ways and from your evil thoughts,” (Jer 25:5; Jer 18:11) says God’s word. So in spiritual shoes, in spiritual zeal, let us hasten to God, having cast off sinful sleep, laziness, and carelessness. Soon the great fast will begin—a time of fasting, confession of sins, and communion in the holy, life-giving mysteries: let us cleanse our souls and bodies by fasting, prayer, and sincere repentance and prepare ourselves as a temple for the Lord, who desires to dwell and live in us. See how those who wish to meet a king or a high-ranking person prepare for his coming. They level and cleanse all the roads by which he is to pass, decorate houses with colorful flags or lights and show every sign of zeal and joy; they all strive to see him and to feast their eyes upon him; and if anyone were fortunate enough to receive the king in his house, such a person would be beside himself with joy. If those who wish to meet an earthly king, a man like themselves, so prepare, so welcome and receive him, then we who are preparing to meet the heavenly King, the Creator and God, with what zeal and diligence should we prepare to receive Him! Since the heavenly King is infinitely higher than any earthly king, and the heavenly King is infinitely more righteous than any earthly king, all the greater and more careful must be our preparation, and all the more distinct from the preparation for meeting an earthly king! For the heavenly King requires our souls and bodies, clean and adorned with virtues; not magnificently decorated houses, not colorful flags, but a variety of virtues according to the ability and state of each; not brightly burning lights, but our souls brightly burning with faith and love. Let us offer such a welcome and preparation to the heavenly King, so that we may be worthy to receive Him in joy in the spiritual dwellings of our souls, in our hearts. Amen.

A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (7)

I believe in Lord Jesus Christ—
coming with glory to judge
both the living and the dead.(Article 7 of the Creed)

Thus speaks every Christian. But if every Christian, then certainly I and each one of you. So, brethren and sisters, do you truly believe that Jesus Christ, the righteous Judge of all mankind, will come to judge all people, living and dead, all of whom will come to life either for eternal blessedness or for eternal condemnation? Are you prepared to meet the universal Judge and to give an account at Christ’s fearful judgment in every deed and word? Do you have good deeds with you? Why ask further? From the life and conduct of Christians it is clear that they have forgotten the righteous Judge, the fearful judgment, and eternal life, and with each day rush headlong toward eternal ruin, which they do not even imagine. They hasten to receive their comfort on earth so that they might lose it forever in heaven. Their care is how to kill this precious time, how to pass it pleasantly; but the care of spending it profitably for the soul, of preparing for “the end of their deeds,” (Prov 24:27) no one is concerned about.

He who desires eternal joys tastes little of earthly ones, says St. Gennady, Patriarch of Constantinople, but for us earthly joys are almost continuous. Many of us live as though we will never die and never have to give account of our lives. What does this mean? Does it perhaps come from the thought that we need only repent on our deathbed and receive complete forgiveness? Certainly, God does not reject even those who come to Him at the eleventh hour—that is, those who turn to Him with all their heart. But if your heart was far from God for the greater part of your life, do you think it will be easy to move it toward God, to awaken feelings of repentance within it before death? O brethren! Then it will resist you to your ruin. I have often seen how difficult it is to hear a word about repentance and how many who did not think about their correction and did not know how to repent in their lifetime lose themselves at confession before their death. No, brethren! A Christian death is a reward for true Christians. Repent as much as you can throughout your life, and a peaceful death with sincere repentance will meet you.

Therefore, prepare for judgment, for the fearful judgment, for the righteous judgment, for the sole and final judgment, after which will come either eternal bliss or unending torment. Do not be amazed that I speak so decisively: truth is royal; it has the right to speak thus. Moreover, there is the greatest necessity to speak decidedly about preparation for judgment. When evident eternal ruin threatens souls from carelessness and negligence, then it is necessary to speak decisively; then more than at any other time it is necessary to speak the truth. When people see that a man is threatened with evident danger of perishing in flame or drowning in water, do they not then act with all decisiveness? Yes, because if those wishing to save him perishing from death were to act indecisively, he could perish right away. So we too must save many through decisiveness and fear of the coming judgment, snatching them from fire: for we are very near the eternal fire, and many perhaps are but one step away from it. Brother! think—perhaps “your soul will be required of you this night:” (Lk 12:20) and you will be in hell, in torment, in that flame. Therefore prepare for judgment, prepare from this very day; “do” good deeds “while it is day: the night” of death “is coming, when no one can work.” (Jn 9:4) We have labored enough in vanity. It is time to look at our poor soul with eyes of inquiry. Attend the Church; sigh over your sins; await with Her the fear-filled great day of judgment. The Church is always mindful of judgment: morning and noon and evening; every day, early and late, it reminds its children of this great day that determines the fate of all mankind, while the minds of its children are occupied with things that for a few moments pleasantly spin their heads, gladden their passionate hearts, eager for earthly joys. The Lord, Truth, Life, thunders with His voice about the judgment that must surely come, commands “to watch and pray in all seasons with the spirit” (Mk 13:33; Lk 21:36) so that we may be worthy to escape the terrible fate of the condemned; the Apostles assure us that “the Judge is at the door” (Jac 5:9) and we, as if we do not wish to hear about this. Some think and even say: what a terrible judgment! The Lord is merciful; He will have pity; after all, we sin more from weakness than from malice, not from hardening. But do not think that only “the merciful will be shown mercy,” (Mt 5:7) that “judgment will be without mercy to the one who has not shown mercy?” (Jac 2:13) Where are your works of mercy when it is clear that you care only for yourselves?

Brethren! God forbid anyone to appear where the rich man appeared, who feasted sumptuously every day. If we should appear there: then it will be too late to ask from there for a drop of water to cool the tip of one’s tongue; it will be too late to send from there to one’s relatives so that they may not come to that place also (Lk 16:19-31)

A Discourse on the Meatfare Sunday

“Watch, because you do not knowon what day your Lord will come.” (Mt 25:13) Amen.

Brethren and sisters, beloved in the Lord! Today there were read from the Gospel of Matthew the very words of our Lord Jesus Christ about His second, glorious, and fearful coming to earth: how He will sit on the throne of His glory to judge the world, and all the peoples that have ever lived, as well as those who now exist, and who will yet exist, all without exception will be gathered before Him. “Then He will separate them one from another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and He will place the sheep on His right hand, and the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on His right hand: Come, blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me. Then the righteous will answer Him, saying: Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You? Or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in? Or naked and clothe You? When did we see You sick or in prison and come to You? And the King will answer and say to them: Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me. Then He will also say to those on the left hand: Depart from Me, cursed ones, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you did not give Me food; I was thirsty and you did not give Me drink; I was a stranger and you did not take Me in; I was naked and you did not clothe Me; I was sick and in prison, and you did not visit Me. Then they also will answer Him, saying: Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You? Then He will answer them, saying: Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me. And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Mt 25:32-46) Thus the Lord concluded His words about the fearful final judgment over mankind! How sweet and how full of all joy is the utterance the righteous shall hear, and how bitter and terrible, unchanging forever, is the utterance the hard-hearted sinners shall hear! Thus “the merciful will be shown mercy.” (Mt 5:7) Those who have been supplied with plenty of the oil of good deeds will enter the marriage feast, while for the unmerciful there will be “judgment without mercy.” (Jac 2:13) Now, brethren and sisters, it is good for us to ask ourselves and to think: to which side will we belong on that day—to the right or to the left, to sheep or goats, to the blessed or to the cursed? You will say: who can know this except the Lord, “who examines the hearts and minds,” (Ps 7:10) and has the most true scales of justice? Yes, to the Lord alone belongs perfect knowledge of every man. He alone knows who from us will stand on the right side and who on the left; He alone knows which righteous person will endure here in his righteousness and which will not; He alone knows which sinner will sincerely turn around and repent, and from a goat become a sheep, and which will harden himself finally in sin. But to us, brethren, it is given at least now to know concerning ourselves: who we are—sheep or goats; our conscience, the impartial judge and witness of our thoughts, words, and deeds, shows us whether we are humble and meek sheep of the rational flock, whether we readily yield our goods to others in need, or whether we are proud, self-loving, evil, vengeful, unmerciful, stinking like goats with our uncleanness, sinners? We can know this about ourselves even here, in the course of our earthly life, and therefore can judge on what side we might appear on the fearful judgment; that is, we might appear on the left side if we remain unrepentant, uncorrected sinners, with pride and malice in our hearts, with sinful uncleanness in body and soul; but we can hope to stand on the right side with faith, repentance, and good deeds. The choice of sides depends on us. Time is given to each of us by the merciful Savior to come to his senses, to repent, to be corrected, to provide abundantly the oil of mercy and all virtue, so as not to be ashamed at judgment. Let us therefore be concerned to acquire the gentleness and meekness of a lamb and harmlessness, love and mercy, patience and long-suffering, humility and obedience, temperance and purity, and let us flee those qualities opposed to these virtues. These virtues will bless us in this life as well, and in the future will place us on the right side.

And so, I say again, it depends on us to be worthy to stand at the fearful judgment on the right side and to avoid the left; to hear the all-blessed voice of the Savior calling us into His heavenly kingdom, and to avoid the fearful voice sending us into the eternal fire.

We ourselves write, as it were, through our deeds, eternal justification or eternal condemnation for ourselves at the fearful judgment; and in this sense, among other things, the future judgment is called written: “to execute judgment written,” (Ps 149:9) as it is said. The books of our conscience will either justify us or condemn us, and all that remains is to hear the righteous, eternal sentence of the universal Judge. Let us therefore all the sooner erase by zealous repentance and mercy our sins, voluntary or involuntary, from our conscience, and inscribe in it all good deeds. “Their deeds follow with them,” (Apok 14:13) says Scripture. Amen.

A Sermon on the Meatfare Sunday

“When you fast, do not be as thehypocrites, looking sad,for they disfigure their facesso that they may be seen by menfasting.” (Mt 6:16)

At present there are very few people who from hypocrisy would wish to appear to others as great fasters during the fast—in order to earn glory from men. Rather, today we will find people who neither wish to be nor to appear as fasters, because they regard fasting as useless and unnecessary for themselves, and appearing to others as fasters as foolish and ridiculous. But alongside these extremes, there are certainly among Christians those who hold to the golden mean and, deviating neither right nor left, walk the path of fasting straight and evenly, as true fasters, fasting with a fast that is pleasing, acceptable to the Lord.

From tomorrow begins the great forty-day fast or Great Lent—a time truly precious for those who know how to fast as they ought in the Christian spirit. So that this time might serve us for spiritual profit and salvation, let us now speak about the necessity and benefit of fasting.

Is fasting necessary—that is, abstinence not only from certain foods eaten during non-fasting times, but also abstinence from consuming them in great quantity? Is fasting necessary as abstinence from the pleasures of gross sensuality? Is fasting necessary as abstinence from disorderly thoughts and movements of the heart and improper deeds? And do you, beloved, desire to inherit the blissful eternity or the kingdom of heaven, which exists as certainly as we live now on earth, because the God-Word made flesh Himself, His prophets, apostles, and all His saints assure us of this? Of course you do! There, according to the faithful and infallible Word of God, there dwells forever “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,” (Rom 14:17) there God dwells, there blessed spirits, there righteous men; but on earth—for little more than seventy years—you see almost nothing but sins, upheavals, and miseries everywhere. If you wish: then you must necessarily fast, because “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” (1Cor 15:50) because “the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking,” (Rom 14:17) Flesh and blood, food and drink, as gross, elemental, earthly things, must remain on earth and suffer the common lot of earthly bodies—decay. In heaven there cannot and will not be a place for gross flesh and blood precisely because it is heaven, not earth; because the beings of that world have properties completely different from those of people living in the desires of the world; they have spiritual, luminous properties. Should I tell you about God Himself, the Father of the blessed inhabitants of heaven? He is the purest Spirit, who abhors as something foul the deeds of the flesh going beyond the boundaries of law, moderation, and propriety. “My Spirit will not dwell in these men forever,” He said of people who offended Him by their attachment to sensual pleasures. Why? “Because” He says, “they are flesh,” (Gen 6:3) because they are gross flesh, a piece of earth, in which there is nothing spiritual, akin to Me. So also He speaks now of us: My Spirit cannot dwell in such men, because they are dull flesh, in which My Spirit cannot rest, for sin and uncleanness dwell in it, and I am righteous and holy. What if He speaks of created spirits? These are the second holiness beside God; being free of all materiality, they are pure and holy and can receive into their blessed communion only those who cast off the yoke of bodily slavery, and while living on earth, think of heaven, do not serve the whims of their flesh, knowing that it will decay in time in the earth. What if He speaks of God’s holy men who have passed from corruptible earth to the eternal dwellings of heaven? These are earthly angels who by fasting and vigil, by the labors of martyrdom and various virtues, rose above their flesh and made their nature so worthy that the bodies of many of them, having partaken of divine grace, became superior to the common fate of all material things—decay. They knew that our body is a house built by the hand of a skillful craftsman, in which dwells only for a time a being of heavenly origin, which after a short time must leave its earthly hut and soar to its place; and therefore they lived not for the body but for the soul. Yes, to make our existence most blissful, it pleased the Lord to place us in this world. Only for a short time—so that, enjoying on earth and from earth the contemplation of material creations of God, heavenly and earthly, their beauty, orderliness, harmony, and infinite, numberless variety, we would love their Creator, yearn for union with Him—the original source of all beauty—and through deeds of holiness and love earn here this eternal union.

He speaks to each person living here and contemplating His creations as it were: Look at how My creations are boundless, yet orderly and beautiful at the same time. Look at yourself—how small and insignificant you are in My creation—and I promise you, insignificant one, heaven with its infinity, with its eternity, as your inheritance. I promise it to you on certain conditions, and you know that I am truth and cannot lie. Why then do you not strive to fulfill these conditions? Why do you cling to the earth so tightly that you cannot be torn from it? Do you not wish to come to Me in order to receive eternal pleasure in union with Me—the Creator of all that you see—from the knowledge and contemplation of My countless creations, and even more, to be blessed in Me, the source of blessedness for all rational beings? How can you not make your soul soar to heaven? How can you not “abstain from fleshly desires that wage war against your soul,” (1Pet 2:11) not gain victory over your sinful flesh that pulls you to the earth and in time will surely lie in it as a lump of earth? What profit is there for you from tasty food and drink? Is it not shameful for you to burden yourself with them? Why do you surrender yourself to the power of sensuality? Do you find this pleasant? Look: the seeming sweetness of your pleasures is a dangerous bait for the flesh, through which it easily gains dominion over your soul and prevents you from thinking of heaven and yearning to go there. Fear this bait. Like a fly in honey, you will become stuck in it and will remain—to death.

Is fasting necessary as abstinence from disorderly thoughts and movements of the heart and improper deeds? If you agree that God is your Lawgiver and righteous Judge, who knows how to punish violators of His laws; if your conscience tells you that your soul has more than once violated the order of moral life and gone beyond obedience to the laws of the Creator: then you must necessarily agree that you need to restore the order of your moral life, to bring your thoughts from their disorderly confusion into right order, to compel your heart to turn away from the unworthy objects to which it has, through your carelessness and negligence, become so attached that it has forgotten its first object of love—God; to conduct yourself so that your deeds would not be ashamed to be displayed before the judgment of your conscience, before men, and before God. You know that an unjust thought is abominable to the Lord, that God requires your heart, which you have surrendered to the will of passions; that “no one who does wrong will enter before Him,” (Ps 5:5) and that unclean. If you wish to be with God, if you wish to be eternally fortunate: then you must agree that you need to fast with your soul, to gather your mind, to correct your thoughts, to cleanse your thoughts, and instead of the rags of unjust deeds to adorn yourself with the precious garment of good deeds. Bodily fasting is established so that it is easier for the soul to fast.

Should we still speak of the benefit of fasting after saying this about its necessity? For, having spoken of its necessity, we have partly indicated its benefit as well. It subdues our sinful, capricious flesh, frees the soul from its oppression, giving it, as it were, wings for free flight to heaven; it makes room for the action of God’s grace. Whoever fasts freely and rightly knows how light and bright the soul becomes during fasting; then good thoughts easily come to mind, and the heart becomes cleaner, more tender, more compassionate—we feel the urge to do good deeds; sorrow for sins arises, the soul begins to feel the ruinousness of its condition and begins to grieve over its sins. But when we do not fast, when thoughts are in confusion, feeling is unrestrained, and the will permits itself everything—then we rarely see a saving change in a person; then he is dead in his soul: all its powers work in a wrong direction; the chief purpose of action—the purpose of life—slips from sight; numerous partial purposes appear, almost as many as there are passions or whims in each person. A strange work happens in the soul as a result of which there seems to be some building: you see materials for the construction, beginning, middle, and end of the work, yet in fact the end of everything is—nothing. The soul works against itself, against its own salvation with all its might: with mind and will and feeling. Whoever fasts as a Christian, rationally, freely, receives according to the unfailing promise of the Lord the reward for his labor from the Heavenly Father. “Your Father, seeing what is done in secret, will reward you openly,” (Mt 6:4) the Savior said of the true faster. And this reward is undoubtedly always generous, truly paternal, serving our most essential benefit.

Brethren! Let us recognize that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, that we are not our own, but God’s, because we were bought with the price of the blood of the Son of God. “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own, for you have been bought with a price?” (1Cor 6:19,20) Let us respect our nature, elevated to the sharing of divine nature; let us eat and drink as much as is necessary for the support of life and for the strength of our powers; let us not surrender it to the power of unclean passions; let us make it a sanctuary, of which even we ourselves would not be ashamed to look upon, and in which God would recognize the work of His hands. So far we have sinned and surrendered ourselves to the pleasures of gross sensuality. Let us live now, at least, chastely and holily; we have so far been far from God in our fleshly deeds; let us at least now draw near to Him; let us know how good He is. Look—He gives us His own flesh and blood to eat. If you are convinced that in yourself, without God, you are nothing but unclean decay, dust, a sinner, foreign to the life of grace, then you will understand how great is the blessing of the Lord who nourishes us with His flesh and blood. He is the source of life of all creatures and wishes to place in you, through union with Him in the mystery of Communion, His life, His perfections, His peace, His blessedness, and to make you eternally alive. Let us always keep in mind that our soul must strive toward godlike perfection, toward precious freedom of spirit, and that it cannot attain this perfection if we ground it in fleshly deeds, if we bind it in the tight and heavy chains of matter.

May the Lord help us to meet the fast with joy. Amen.

A Discourse on the Cheese Fare Sunday

“If you will forgive men theirtrespasses, your Heavenly Fatherwill also forgive you.” (Mt 6:14)

This Sunday is called Forgiveness Sunday by the Orthodox Russian people because of the good and pious custom of saying goodbye to each other—that is, of asking forgiveness from one another before the Great Fast and the Church’s fasting. And this custom entered by virtue of the Savior’s commandment in today’s Gospel, commanding us to forgive each other’s sins if we wish the Heavenly Father to forgive us our sins, which we grieve and anger without number every day and hour.

Let us repeat the Gospel, which was read today: The Lord says: If you will forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you; and if you will not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses. Moreover, when you fast, do not be gloomy like the hypocrites, for they make their faces sad to show men that they are fasting. Truly I say to you that they have already received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you will appear to be fasting not before men but before your Father who is in secret, and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. Do not accumulate treasures for yourselves on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but accumulate treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Mt 6:14-21) Thus ends the Gospel reading of this Sunday.

Since from tomorrow the Great Lent begins, and we all, according to Christian custom, are preparing to cast off ourselves the heavy burden of sins, and since this throwing off of the sinful burden requires on our part some self-denial and some skill, the Lord teaches us what exactly is required from us so that our sins be forgiven us completely, without remainder—or what we must sacrifice on our part, since the Lord God on His part is always ready to have mercy on and to save repentant sinners. Namely, He says that what is required from us is simplicity and unforgiveness, absence of anger, forgetting of injuries, friendliness, love for enemies. Your salvation is in your own hands, in your own power, O man. If you will forgive your neighbor’s wrongs, shortcomings, annoyances, and requests; then your sins will be forgiven you, and you, with your annoyances and frequent requests before God, will never depart from Him and will be deemed worthy of receiving from Him great and abundant mercies. You will forgive not many sins of your neighbor, compared with your sins before God, and God will forgive you countless transgressions; you will forgive a hundred denarii, and the Lord will forgive you ten thousand talents. But what malice often takes hold of people! Whereas the Lord requires from us little—forgiveness and forgetting of the wrongs of neighbors—which, as drops in the sea, compared with our sins before God, and which the Lord requires for our own benefit, desiring to train us in meekness, harmlessness, patience, humility, brotherhood, forbearance, peacefulness—and yet we fly into a rage, assert our rights violated by neighbors, kindle flames of enmity in ourselves and our neighbors, and thus foolishly and audaciously push away from ourselves the saving hand of God, add sins to sins, and headlong throw ourselves into ruin. Great good, great virtue is harmlessness before God and men: it covers a multitude of sins. In the Old Testament it was especially loved and glorified by God: Abel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David the God-ancestor, king and prophet, and many others; and in the New Testament countless righteous ones who imitated the meek and humble Lord and God and Savior of ours Jesus Christ, saying in the Gospel to all of us: “Learn from Me, for I am meek and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Mt 11:29) Let us therefore not heed the devil who teaches us to harbor evil toward our neighbor, but let us forgive wrongs caused by neighbors, also at the instigation of the enemy. Let no one think evil of another; let no one be carried away by evil suspicion concerning one’s neighbor, for this is a delusion of our enemy of salvation, striving in every way to destroy in us the bond of love and brotherhood and to plant demonic enmity and hostility. Let us remember the Savior’s commandment: “A new command I give you: love one another.” (Jn 13:34) and the words of Apostle Paul: “whoever loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law.” Thus “love is the fulfillment of the law.” (Rom 13:8,10)

Furthermore, the Lord teaches us non-hypocritical fasting and says that we should enter the field of fasting not with sad but with good faces, as true and faithful soldiers of Christ, who went out to battle with sin and their many-passioned flesh, with the help and cooperation of the all-powerful grace of Christ, and before the face of the Heavenly Father, who has a reward ready for all who truly labor against the deception of sinfulness. “Anoint your head,” says the Savior, “and wash your face”; anoint your head—that is, with the oil of mercy anoint your soul, and with the oil of purity wash the face of your soul, and “your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you openly.” (Mt 6:17,18)

Furthermore, the Lord teaches us to free our hearts from earthly treasures and earthly attachments, and urges us to desire and to seek treasures in heaven. First, because our souls are of heavenly origin and immortal, and earthly goods, as gross, corruptible, and passing, are not worthy of us, created and redeemed by the blood of God’s Son for the enjoyment of spiritual and eternal blessings. Second, because, cleaving to earthly treasures with our hearts, we make them earthly, gross, low, passionate, and make ourselves incapable of loving God and our neighbor—whereas love is the chief aim and duty of our life. “Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but store up treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Mt 6:19-21) St. John Chrysostom speaks thus about this: great is your harm if you cling to the earthly; you will be a slave instead of free; you will fall away from the heavenly; you will be unable to think of the high; you will think only of money, of interest, of debts, of profit, and of vile exploitation. What could be more wretched? Such a person falls into the slavery of a slavery more terrible than any slave’s, and, most ruinous of all, voluntarily rejects the nobility and freedom natural to man. No matter how much you talk to him, if his mind is nailed to riches, he cannot hear anything useful and necessary for him, “for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Lk 12:34) But if through mercy you place your treasure in heaven, you will not only be deemed worthy of heavenly honors for this, but will receive a reward even here, ascending to heaven, thinking and caring about the heavenly. For clearly you will transfer your mind to that place where you place your treasure; and you will experience the very opposite when you place your treasure on earth. (Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew)

Therefore, let us take to heart the teaching of our Savior, set forth in today’s Gospel, concerning forgiveness of wrongs, concerning fasting pleasing to God, and concerning freeing our hearts from earthly treasures and love of heavenly, incorruptible goods. Let us apply, I will say in the words of Chrysostom, to prepare ourselves for departure from here. For though the day of universal death has not yet come, yet the end of each person—of both old and young—is already at the door…

Therefore, while we have time, let us prepare boldness before God; let us provide ourselves with plenty of oil; let us carry everything to heaven so that we might in our time, and especially when we especially have need, enjoy all this through the grace and love for mankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and power now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

A Sermon on the Cheese Fare Sunday

“If you forgive people their trespasses,then your heavenly Father willforgive you also, but if you do notforgive people their trespasses, neitherwill your Father forgive your trespasses”

“yours,” says the Lord (Mt 6:14,15)

Today’s Sunday is called Forgiveness Sunday in common speech, because today we are appointed to read the Gospel commanding us to forgive the trespasses of our brothers against us, so that our Father might also forgive us our countless trespasses. As a result of this, from ancient times among devout Christians there has been the custom on this day and throughout the Cheese Week to ask one another for forgiveness for anything in which one has wronged another. A beautiful custom, truly Christian, because who among us has not sinned against our neighbor, whether in word or deed or thought; and asking forgiveness from another proves our faith in the Gospel, our humility, freedom from malice, and peaceableness; on the other hand, unwillingness to ask forgiveness from those against whom we are truly guilty shows in the unwilling one a lack of faith, pride, conceit, malice, disobedience to the Gospel, resistance to God, and agreement with the devil. And we are all children of our heavenly Father by grace, members of Christ God, members of one body of the Church which is His body, and members of one another; “God is love” (1Jn 4:8): and more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices He requires of us mutual love—love which “is patient, is kind, does not envy, does not boast, is not arrogant, is not rude, does not seek its own way, is not easily angered, does not think evil, does not rejoice in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, and never fails” (1Cor 13:4-8). The entire law of God consists in two words: love God and your neighbor. Meanwhile the human heart is exceedingly self-centered, impatient, willful, wicked, and malicious: it is ready to be angry at our neighbor not only for direct harm but also for imagined wrongs, not only for offensive words but even for unpleasant or harsh truthful words—even at a glance that seemed unkind, ambiguous, crafty, or proud; it scarcely refrains from anger even at the very thoughts of our neighbor which it imagines in him. The Knower of Hearts, the Lord, thus speaks of the human heart: “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, acts of adultery, acts of fornication, murders, thefts, greed, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, and foolishness” (Mk 7:21,22).

But against such a grave affliction, powerful remedies must be brought to bear; against the great malice of mankind is set the infinite goodness and almighty grace of God: with its aid we can easily overcome all evil in ourselves and in others—through gentleness, freedom from malice, yielding, patience, and long-suffering. “I say to you,” declares the Savior, “do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other to him as well; and if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well” (Mt 5:39,40): For forgiving the sins of our brothers we are promised forgiveness of our sins by our heavenly Father, mercy at the dread judgment—eternal blessedness: “The merciful will be shown mercy” (Mt 5:7). But unforgiving malice is threatened with the righteous judgment of God and eternal torment. Hear one account from which we see how God punishes malicious and unreconciled people even here. In the Kiev-Pecherskaya Lavra, in ancient times there were two monks—that is, monks—a priest named Titus and a deacon named Evagrius. After living together in friendship for some years, they then became embittered toward each other because of something, and harbored hatred for one another; the mutual enmity continued for a very long time; and they, not reconciling with each other, dared to offer the bloodless sacrifice to God. However much the brothers counseled them to put aside their anger and live together in peace and harmony, it was all in vain. Once Priest Titus fell gravely ill. Despairing of life, he began to weep bitterly over his sin and sent to his enemy asking for forgiveness; but Evagrius would not hear of it and began to curse him harshly. The brothers, grieving over such a grave delusion, forcibly brought him to the dying man. Titus, seeing his enemy, with the help of others raised himself from the sickbed and fell before him, tearfully begging him to forgive him; but Evagrius was so inhuman that he turned away from him and in fury cried out: neither in this life nor in the life to come do I wish to be reconciled with him! He tore himself from the brothers’ hands and fell to the ground. The monks wanted to raise him, but what was their amazement when they saw him dead and grown so cold, as if he had died long before this! Their amazement increased even more when Priest Titus, at that very same moment, rose from his sickbed healthy, as if he had never been ill at all. Terrified by such an extraordinary event, they surrounded Titus and one by one asked him: what does this mean? He answered: While I was gravely ill, as long as I, a sinner, was angry at my brother, I saw the Angels departing from me and weeping over the perdition of my soul, and the unclean spirits rejoicing—this is why I desired more than anything else to be reconciled with him. But as soon as they brought him here and I bowed to him, and he began to curse me: I saw that a terrible Angel struck him with a flaming spear, and the wretched man fell dead to the ground; and to me that same Angel held out his hand and raised me up from my sickbed. The monks wept bitterly for Evagrius’s cruel death, and from that time forth began more than ever before to be watchful that the sun would never set on their anger.

Brothers and sisters! Malice is a most terrible vice, and to the extent it is abominable before God, so too is it pernicious in society. We are created in the image and likeness of God: meekness and freedom from malice should be our unchanging characteristics; for God Himself always deals with us according to His own meekness; He is patient with us and forgives us without number. And we must forgive. But the malicious person does not have the image and likeness of God within him: he is more beast than man. Amen.

Homily for Forgiveness Sunday

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures onearth, where moths and vermin destroy,and where thieves break in and steal.But store up for yourselves treasures inheaven, where moths and vermin do notdestroy, and where thieves do not breakin and steal. For where your treasure is,there your heart will be also” (Mt 6:19-21)

(Words from today’s Gospel reading)

This is a saving commandment to all of us from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Who among men has not sinned against this testament of our most loving Lord? Whose heart is not more or less attached to the earthly, to earthly treasures, whatever kind they may be? Who, for example, is not attached to his flesh, to earthly honor and glory, to earthly wealth, to earthly beauty, to earthly pleasures of all kinds, sometimes even to the forgetting of God and His holy commandments and His saving intentions toward us, to the forgetting of the heavenly nature of his soul, its image and likeness of God, its calling to eternal life in God and with God, its profound fall and the necessity of its rising through sincere, deep, and final repentance, its correction, purification, and sanctification by grace? Who has his treasure—God alone and His holy laws—holy virtue, and the flesh with its passions and lusts in contempt and humiliation, as passing and constantly enslaving its mistress—the soul, and only to the extent that it serves the higher, spiritual purposes of the soul? Who has no various idols of the heart, set up in this holy place, which should always be the throne of God Almighty? So, we in this must all acknowledge, brothers and sisters beloved in the Lord—that we gather treasures on earth, in this temporary refuge of ours, which must pass away and disappear—and where moths and rust of self-love and passions, sins, destroy these treasures, as perishable and unclean, and where thieves—demons, and perhaps men—undermine and steal both the heart itself and its treasure. Here, for example, your treasure is money, or fleshly pleasures, or personal persons, whom your bestial passions have made impersonal and turned into the object of gross enjoyment, and have also made you yourself an immoral and impersonal being; or—your treasure is only earthly knowledge, arts, industry, crafts? What then, for how long will these treasures belong to you? Not today—tomorrow, or soon after, your earthly temple—body—will be destroyed and your treasures, and with your body they will abandon you; what then will remain to you from them, to your soul? Nothing. But she is eternal and will need in that age eternal treasures suited to her, such as: trust in Christ and love for God and neighbor, mercy, humility, purity, righteousness, freedom from malice, in general, the deeds of virtue. Where are they in you? Have you stored up spiritual oil? Have you stored up spiritual treasures? O, store up quickly, while there is still time. “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal”; as I will add, there the kingdom of incorruptibility, the kingdom of righteousness, there is no devil. “For”, says the Lord, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Mt 6:20-21). Here is a great truth, which we often forget, and some always: where our treasure is, there is our heart. And since our treasures are on earth, so our hearts are there too—at earthly treasures, pleasures, for the most part crude and unclean, they passionately clung to them, and therefore they are not in heaven, not with God, not with His holy commandments, counsels, promises, comforts. Here the priest during the liturgy on behalf of the Church exclaims before the performance of the supersensory mystery: Lift up your hearts!, that is, let us raise them to God—let us detach ourselves from all earthly: and who is able to definitely rise up, even in these: terrible and all-saving minutes, if our thoughts and hearts are so occupied by earthly treasures and pleasures, worries, objects of our worldly attachments? How often even in these minutes spiritual thieves undermine our heart and steal our attention, our faith and love for God and our reverence for the saving mystery, for this universal sacrifice—intercessory, propitiatory, and grateful? Why? Because where our treasures are, there our hearts are. Because, going to the church, to witness the performance of the heavenly mystery, we did not prepare our souls for worthy standing in the church, did not lay aside all worldly cares and concerns, did not purify our hearts from vicious passions, did not leave every sin at the threshold of the temple; forgot that, standing in the temple, we should stand as in heaven; for here—the throne of God and the heavenly, terrible, and saving sacrifice; here invisibly the heavenly powers serve with us, and with them the Queen most holy of heaven and earth—the Most Holy Mother of God and all the saints, who are commemorated secretly at the liturgy—both before the consecration and after the consecration of the holy Gifts; for the grateful sacrifice from the Church to God is offered for them. Here, the days of fasting and repentance are coming, in which we must know our sins, bring them to memory, grieve over them, crush our heart, repent, and correct ourselves. What will our fasting be! What will our repentance be? If God is our treasure, His holy will, His righteousness and eternal life with its infinite blessings, then our fasting will be sincere, not hypocritical, and repentance will be sincere, fervent, firm, unchanging; for only such repentance restores to us our lost precious treasure—the Lord God and His grace; but if our treasure, our idol as before, will be our many-passionate flesh, the adulterous and sinful world with its seductive, tempting, though soon disappearing blessings, then our fasting will not be sincere, or there will be no fasting at all, and repentance will be only superficial, and, therefore, insincere, irresolute, ordinary, fruitless, from which may God protect each of us; for such repentance is sinful insensitivity, ingratitude before God, who has given by infinite mercy the gift of repentance to sinners for eternal life, is the trampling of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, purifying our sins for the merits of Christ and sanctifying our souls and bodies.

And so, be watchful and careful, all of you, as to where your treasure is: on earth or in heaven! “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Mt 6:21).

Homily for Forgiveness Sunday (13)

Behold, beloved, we have been fasting now for four days and four days we have been going to the divine services. Is there benefit for our soul from fasting? Each of us must ask himself this question and thus turn our attention to our heart: is there a holy change in it, does it cease to love and do sin. Furthermore, we must give ourselves an account: does the divine service have any effect upon me, do I leave the Church with a devout disposition, or does it pass for me as something foreign, so that I stand in the Church with cold indifference, pray only out of habit, make earthly prostrations without heartfelt sorrow for my sins. And so, beloved brothers and sisters, we must surely give ourselves an accounting in this holy matter of fasting: is it progressing successfully, is the labor not being wasted? We do give ourselves an accounting in worldly, often trivial matters; why then not look with a discerning eye upon this holy work? Simply remember, beloved, what you are preparing for. You are preparing to approach the heavenly, most pure, life-giving, and awesome Mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ our God; you are preparing to unite yourself with the very most pure God himself. Ah! how then could we not turn all our attention to fasting! And so, beloved, let us look with a stern gaze upon our fasting and take care to turn it with all our strength to the benefit of our soul. How are we to turn it to our benefit? Chiefly we should do this: let each one take his own heart into his power: the greatest attention should be directed to the heart: all of a man’s evil is there; or rather—it is the sinful, godless man himself, it is the working hovel of sin. Our heart, beloved, has turned completely away from God our Creator and turned entirely toward the world and its delusions; in it are all our desires, all our passions, everything opposed to God. As you see, a great change is needed within us; from love of the world, of its pleasures, of sin, we must turn ourselves to love of God, whom we must above all else love; and this is not an easy thing, especially for one who greatly loves the world: but “the love of this world,” according to the apostle’s word, “is” direct “enmity toward God” (Jac 4:4). But let us not fear the difficulty: what is difficult and impossible for us is easy and possible for God: “All things are possible with God” (Mt 19:26). And so, in your holy work of turning from the world to God, first of all the divine service will help you: only stand and listen to everything with attention and with a humble spirit; and holy thoughts and feelings will surely come to you; it cannot be that a humble and attentive person desiring to unite himself with God would not be visited by a spirit of sorrow and compunction of heart. But you do not understand many things; but you do understand something, and surely you understand much; and so what you do understand, drink it into your heart, reflect upon it; from the holy words of the Church produce your own holy thoughts and feelings—and the matter, with God’s help, will progress successfully. After all, our soul is not completely barren ground for good. How could it be, when it has drunk again and again the rain of God’s grace that has come down upon it? Furthermore, reflect that many of you may be fasting now for the last time, and perhaps death will soon overtake you suddenly and you will not have the chance to confess and receive the holy Mysteries before death. And indeed: “The axe is already laid at the root of the tree,” and the tree—that is us; “Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit”, that is, people not bearing good deeds, “will be cut down and cast into the fire” (Mt 3:10). With what attention to himself must each one perform his fasting, to be sure to cleanse himself of his sins, perhaps for the last time. Furthermore, imagine more often that after fasting and confession you will approach the most pure Mysteries. But if you approach with an unrepentant heart, unworthily, then you will receive Communion unto judgment and condemnation and “you will be guilty toward the Body and Blood of the Lord” (1Cor 11:27), and after Communion you will not be any better, but on the contrary will become even worse. With these and similar reflections strengthen yourself in your effort of fasting and pray in the Church as sincerely as possible, from your whole heart; speak as sincerely as you can, more often, to the Lord who listens to you: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” O God, cleanse me, a sinner! Without number have I sinned, Lord, forgive! Remember that these words alone: “God, be merciful to me, a sinner” (Lk 18:13), justified the publican. And why? Because they were spoken without any deception, from the depths of the heart, from complete acknowledgment of one’s guilt before God and determination to certainly amend. And we all, beloved, are so sinful that we have nothing to answer to God in excuse, we are not worthy even to lift our eyes to heaven. How then can we not say from our whole soul: God, be merciful to us sinners! God, cleanse us sinners! Without number have we sinned, Lord, forgive! Amen.

Homily for Wednesday of the First Week of Great Lent

“If anyone sins, we have an Advocatewith the Father, Jesus Christthe Righteous One: and He is thepropitiation for our sins” (1Jn 2:1-2)

Today, beloved brothers and sisters, you will go to confess. I desire, in my duty as a shepherd, to impress upon you what is required from one who approaches confession, so that his confession might be true, pleasing to God, and salvation-giving for the soul. Namely, from one who repents is required sorrow for his sins, the intention to amend his life, faith in Christ, and hope in His mercy.

And so, first and foremost, sorrow for one’s sins is required. But this, very often, we spiritual fathers do not see in our spiritual children.

Very many come to confession with complete indifference and if one were to ask them nothing, they would say either nothing or only in general that, they say, Father, I am sinful in all my sins. And if they were even to say this with a heartfelt acknowledgment of their guilt: no, but woe, they say it without acknowledgment of their sins, only to get the confession over with quickly. Beloved! let us not turn the work of God’s utmost mercy toward us sinners into an occasion for God’s wrath. What insensitivity is ours! Is there nothing for us to grieve over in confession! How many sins do we have: if we were to spend our entire life weeping over our sins, we would still not do anything excessive but only what is owed. Ah! if any of us were to say that he has no sin, he would be deceiving himself, and in such a person one would search in vain for truth.

Do you not see your sins? Pray to God that He will give you to see them; it is not for nothing that you have often said in Church after the priest: “Lord! Grant me to see my transgressions!” (Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian) Let us strive now, together with all our strength, to see our sins, so that afterward at confession we might acknowledge them with heartfelt sorrow. And here is our first very serious sin: that we, being great sinners, do not feel that we are sinners deserving not mercy but God’s punishment! Let us first condemn ourselves in this very insensitivity and say to the Lord from our whole soul: behold I, Lord and Master of my life, am an insensitive sinner, I am the greatest of sinners, and yet I do not feel my sins; it must be because my sins have multiplied more than the sands of the sea, and I am entirely—in sins, like someone sick with smallpox—in pox. I repent to You, Lord my God, from my whole heart for my insensitivity, and I beseech You: grant me Yourself to feel with my whole heart how greatly I have angered and do anger You. O! this false, pharisaical righteousness of ours, how much it has destroyed and destroys people! And against our will it wounds our heart precisely during fasting, during the very mystery of repentance and before the mystery of holy Communion.

But let us look further—with what sins have we sinned most against God? Well, if we are people of little faith, living on earth not for heaven, not for God and the salvation of our soul, but—for earth and all that is pleasant on earth, in other words—living for the flesh, for its pleasures, and not for our immortal soul, not for its future life—is this not a great sin? Have we forgotten the sufferings for us of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, His most pure Blood shed for us on the Cross, His glorious resurrection! Was it not for us—that is, to lead us to heaven, we who had been separated from heaven by sin—that His descent to earth, His divine teaching, His miracles, His prophecies, for example about the future dread judgment, about the resurrection of the dead on the last day of the world, about the blessedness of the righteous and the eternal torments of sinners? Finally, His sufferings, His resurrection from the dead and His ascension to heaven? And so, if it is true that we must live here for the life of the future age, is it not a sin—not to live for that life, but with all our thoughts and our whole heart to live on earth and for earth? And how much sin comes from the fact that we wish to live only well on earth and do not believe with our whole heart in the future blessed life? How much enmity, hatred, love of money, envy, stinginess, and deception comes from this? From here come all vices: all fleshly lusts, all passions of the soul. Let us repent of this then, that is, let us repent that we are people of little faith, if not of no faith, and that for God and for the salvation of our soul, we either do not live here or live very little; also that there is little hope in our hearts, if there is hope at all—for the future life. We also suffer from the very greatest sin of ingratitude toward God, of not loving Him for His countless, unspeakable mercies. This, I think, everyone consciously or at least at times recognizes in themselves. Look at all of you, who move on your own feet, all healthy in body and soul, honored with reason by God the Creator, with free will, but what were you not so long ago? Nothing; but behold, the Lord has brought you all from non-being into being and from that time has given you everything: He has given you a soul with its faculties, a body with its wise and beautiful structure, He has given you and continually gives you food for nourishing your body, clothing to cover it, given you a corner on His earth and shelter—in your dwelling; He feeds you with the priceless, life-giving food of His Body and Blood; He delights and comforts you with it; He gladdens you with listening to His word, forgives you without number your sins, constantly preserves your life—like a mother preserves the life of her infant, He grants us His future kingdom, and is there not much else He does not do out of His love for us sinners and the ungrateful? It is impossible to enumerate. And what then? How do we respond to His love for us—a love that has no number and measure? Only with lawlessness, only with wickedness, only with ingratitude. And so with tears let us repent of our ingratitude before God, of our not loving Him, and also with tears let us ask from Him the gift of love. O! “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits” (Ps 102:2).

Furthermore, one who repents is also required to have the intention to amend his life: and pay attention to this. Going to confession, say to yourself: after confession I will strive with all my strength to amend my life from those sins for which I now wish to repent. I will no longer deceive myself; I will not lie to God; I will no longer offend the mystery of repentance. Help me, Lord, strengthen my spiritual powers, O Lord! What benefit is there from repentance after which one again without shame returns to the same sins for which one has repented? On such people is fulfilled the proverb: “A dog returns to its own vomit, and a washed pig, returns” to its mud (2Pet 2:22)

Finally, one who repents is also required to have faith in Christ and hope in His mercy. Everyone who approaches confession must believe that at the time of the mystery Christ Himself stands invisibly and receives his confession; that Christ alone can forgive sins, because by His sufferings, by His precious Blood shed, and by His death He has obtained for Himself the right from the heavenly Father to forgive us all our lawlessness, without offending divine justice, and that He, in His mercy, is always ready to forgive us all sins if only we acknowledge them with heartfelt sorrow; if only we have the intention henceforth to live better, if only faith in Him is in our heart. “Your faith has saved you: go in peace” (Mk 5:34). Thus He speaks inwardly to every one after absolution by the priest, to one who repents as is proper.

Let us therefore repent all with pure heart; let us all take care about amending our life; let us bring to God the fruits of repentance. Amen.

Discourse on Repentance

Receive the Body of Christ, Taste of the Source
of immortality (Communion Hymn)

Before you, Christ-named flock, in this Chalice is the divine body and the divine blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and you have prepared yourselves through fasting and confession to receive these holy, immortal, and life-giving Mysteries. In order to receive them worthily, each of you is required: First, childlike simple faith, that you are receiving under the form of bread and wine the very most pure body and the very most pure blood of the Savior, that you are receiving the Savior Himself through your lips into your heart, you become one flesh and blood with Him, one spirit, as it is said: “We are members of His body, from His flesh and from His bones” (Eph 5:30); “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him” (Jn 6:56); and “He who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with the Lord” (1Cor 6:17); because in this particle of the body and blood of Christ God which you receive is found all Jesus Christ, as the soul is in the body. Second, it is required from you absolute, unshakeable trust in the mercy of the Savior, that He, as with divine fire will consume and with His blood cleanse all your sins; therefore each of you, knowing your unworthiness to receive the divine Mysteries, entrust yourself completely to the mercy of the Lord, so that He Himself by His grace will make you worthy of receiving His holy Mysteries; let each one be full of good hope; let no one waver, let no one lose heart, let no one despair, considering your wretchedness, your worthlessness; from the Chalice are given to all the mercy of the Master and great forgiveness and cleansing of sins. Only believe and trust. Third, great, fervent, angelic love is required of those who receive the Savior; to the love of the Lord each of you must respond with love: for tell me, what love of God for us sinners has been shown in the fact that God Himself, having become incarnate for us, having suffered, died, and risen, has given to us as food and drink His divine body and blood, and through this united Himself with us by the closest bond, mingled and mixed Himself with us, making us sharers of His divine nature! What mother, what father has ever loved their children as the Lord has loved us? And why does the Lord unite Himself with us in the holy Mysteries? In order to cleanse us from the filth of sins, from filth than which there is nothing more abominable and deadly, to communicate to us His holiness, His divine life, peace, solace, joy, ease, sweetness, freedom, than which there is nothing more precious or desired in the world; in order to take us, cleansed from sins, changed, renewed, to Himself in the heavens, to eternal life, to eternal blessedness: for with sins, with passions no one can be in paradise: “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life”, says the Lord, “and I will raise him up on the last day” (Jn 6:54).

And so, you who are about to receive the divine Mysteries, inflame your hearts with love for the Savior. Holy Spirit, Comforter, Treasure of good things, pour out Your love in our hearts!

Fourth, a change of heart is required from you. Until now many of you have loved sin, have in any case willingly or unwillingly given yourselves to sin; now strive with all your might to hate it: for sin is the offspring of the devil, resistance to God; strive to change yourselves in the very depths of your soul. You are about to taste the body and blood of the divine Lamb, the meek and gentle Lord Jesus Christ: be yourselves also meek lambs, gentle, patient, submissive to the will of God, the Church, to the will of parents, leaders, and elders. You will receive the body and blood of the Savior, and He is all love, and He is opposed to enmity and malice: let us strive to live in mutual love; forgive offenses, do not repay evil for evil or annoyance for annoyance. You approach the Lord, the King of heaven, to heaven guiding us all; strive to think about heavenly things; strive to acquire heavenly dispositions; abandon attachment to earthly things which are corruptible and enslave and destroy souls; love the heavenly homeland, the heavenly city of Jerusalem, where are the Mother of God and the saints, and to which we all must strive; abandon all uncleanness and sinful passions; let each show change for the better, let each show amendment; let each bring some good fruit of good deeds to the Master; let each produce fruits worthy of repentance. Lord! You Yourself change us, You Yourself renew us!

Finally, for us to preserve this heavenly gift—the most pure body and blood of Christ—fifth, attentiveness to yourself, to your thoughts, to your heart, to all its feelings and inclinations, restraint of its sinful desires and strivings, also temperance in food and drink; abstinence from idle speech, foul language, swearing, and every falsehood; in a word: let each guard yourself from everything that is opposed to Christ, the Savior of our souls; remember that through Communion the Lord deifies you, making you divine; strive to live divinely in all holiness, righteousness, and truth. You are children of God and of Christ: what kind of life is befitting for the children of God?

May the Lord grant all of you to receive the divine Mysteries worthily and fruitfully. “Whoever eats and drinks” the divine Body and divine Blood “in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment upon themselves” (1Cor 11:29), says the holy apostle Paul. And so, with faith and love let us approach, so that we might become partakers of eternal life. Amen.

Discourse on Receiving the Holy Mysteries

“From here you will see heaven opened” (Jn 1:51)

Both myself and many of you, beloved brothers and sisters, I congratulate on the unspeakable mercy of God, on the spiritual renewal received through the effort of fasting, prayer, abstinence, and repentance, and especially through receiving the most pure and life-giving Mysteries of the Body and Blood of the Lord. And in this short time we have been able to know in ourselves the benefit of fasting and prayer, not to mention the benefit of fasting, confession, and Communion; if, of course, we have sincerely taken advantage of this time for our salvation and sincerely fulfilled the conditions of fasting; if we refrained from excess in food and drink, prayed sincerely, humbled ourselves before God and our neighbors, showed mercy, came to know many of our wrongdoings and lawlessness and grieved greatly over them, having taken firm resolve not to do them again, and, finally, confessed them sincerely and received absolution and forgiveness of them, and were deemed worthy to taste the life-giving Food. But have all of us received real benefit from the past week? Have our hearts become closer to God, to the Most Pure Mother of Life, to the Church, to our Holy Guardian Angel and to God’s Saints; have we sincerely come to love righteousness and virtue, and have we come to hate all wrongdoing and lawlessness; do we love God and our neighbors more sincerely; do we feel greater spiritual kinship with one another, as members of one body of Christ, as members of Christ, because “there is one bread” of the mystery, “and many of us are one body: for we all partake of the one bread” (1Cor 10:17)? Do we feel in our hearts that the currents of lawlessness do not flow toward our soul with such boldness and violence as before fasting and Communion, and have they considerably lessened in us, and have we become cleaner, freer, more peaceful, more dispassionate, kinder, more tender-hearted, more inclined to all that is good and useful? Has greed for fleshly pleasures and gain diminished in us? Have we become gentler, more patient, more forbearing toward our neighbors? Have we begun to look more often at heaven, at our true and eternal homeland, and with less attachment turn our gaze to all that is earthly, as temporary, fleeting, transitory? For see how many people from our midst have been taken by death in a short time, and death constantly carries away its victims. If this is so, if we have become better and wiser, then I congratulate myself and you again on God’s great mercy, and at the same time pray that the Lord will strengthen this good disposition and heart’s attitude in me and in you; but let no evil thought deceive any of us, that now, thank God, we have cast off the burden of sins and can again live as we did and sin as we did before, for who, we would say, is without sin! True, brothers and sisters, no one is without sin, but to live as we did and sin as we did before after renewal through repentance and Communion is not right, not fitting, not befitting a Christian. The Holy Church through the spiritual father gives such instruction to every penitent: “From all these sins henceforth you must guard yourself, for you are being baptized with a second baptism, according to the mystery of Christianity, and you must make a good beginning, with God’s help, and moreover, do not mock at the same thing, returning to it, lest you make yourself a laughingstock to people, for these things are not fitting for Christians: may God help you to live honorably, rightly, and reverently by His grace” (Rite of Confession). This is what the Church teaches the repentant. And sound reason also teaches us; for who, having washed himself, would wish again deliberately to soil himself? Only a “swine,” having washed itself, again “goes to wallow in the mud;” only a “dog” is accustomed to “return to its own vomit” (2Pet 2:22). “Behold, you are well: sin no more, lest something worse befall you” (Jn 5:14), says the Lord to the healed paralytic. And something very bad might happen to us too if we neglect virtue after repentance; then God’s grace will leave us for our inattentiveness and neglect of ourselves. Repentance and Communion opens heaven to us and the heavenly kingdom, for the Lord says, “He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life—and abides in Me, and I in him” (Jn 6:54,56).

How then could we not treasure the gift we have received—eternal life and the abiding of Christ in us, and our abiding in Him! Heaven has been opened to us through repentance and Communion according to Scripture: “From here you will see heaven opened” (Jn 1:51)—what wonderful mercy! By our sins it had been shut, as with the strongest locks and bars, but by repentance it has been opened—let us take advantage of this mercy of God while it is not shut again for us: for God knows whether it will be opened again for us when we once more shut it by deliberate sins. For many it has been shut forever. The foolish virgins knocked at the locked doors, saying: “Lord! Lord! open for us”, and they were told: “Amen I say to you, I do not know you;” and we are all told: “Watch therefore, for you do not know the day nor the hour when the Son of Man will come” (Mt 25:11-13). Amen.

Discourse in the First Week of Great Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy

“Behold, truly an Israelite,in whom there is no deceit” (Jn 1:47)

Our Lord Jesus Christ spoke these words just now about one Israelite, a resident of the city of Cana of Galilee, Nathanael, when he, on the advice of his acquaintance Philip, was going to meet Jesus Christ to assure himself whether He was indeed the promised Messiah to Israel. Philip said to Nathanael: “We have found Him of whom Moses wrote in the law and the prophets, Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth. But Nathanael said to him, Can anything good come from Nazareth? Philip said to him, Come and see. Jesus, seeing Nathanael coming to Him, says of him: Behold, truly an Israelite, in whom there is no deceit. Nathanael says to Him, How do You know me? Jesus answered him, Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you” (Jn 1:45-48), that is, I knew all your thoughts, your faith, your expectations of the Messiah, your future service. The Heart-Knower, the Lord, as we see, touched the most vital string of Nathanael’s heart, his most sincere thought, his deepest desire, expectation, showing him openly His divine omniscience; and thus Nathanael was captured into faith in Christ. He cries out: “Rabbi! You are the Son of God, You are the King of Israel” (Jn 1:49), and then becomes His disciple, under the name of Bartholomew, that is—one of the twelve.

But why, on this Sunday called the Sunday of Orthodoxy, has the Church appointed the reading of this Gospel in which is recounted the conversation of the Lord with Nathanael? Because in the words of the Lord to Nathanael is shown the character of a true or Orthodox Christian and the character in general of the true Orthodox Church of Christ. Behold, truly an Israelite, said the Lord of Nathanael, in whom there is no deceit—that is, here is a man who thinks, reasons, believes, hopes, speaks and acts rightly, directly and steadfastly—just as Nathanael immediately, at once believed in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and never afterwards wavered in his faith and hope, never changed his thoughts regarding His divine Person. Should not the true Christian be such; should not all the God-ordained society of Orthodox Christians be such; should not the Orthodox Church be such, as it indeed is? What a high commendation to Nathanael from the Heart-Examiner in the words: Behold, truly an Israelite, in whom there is no deceit! What a high commendation to that Christian of whom the Lord would say: Behold, a true Christian, in whom there is no deceit; and to that Church of which the Lord would say: Behold a Church in which there is no deceit, or in which there are no vain human inventions; that is, which is wholly—true in all her teaching, mysteries, worship, administration, in all her structure. And such are precisely—all our holy saints; such is the entire Orthodox Church from her beginning until now, as the impartial history of the Church testifies and God Himself testifies by various signs and miracles wrought in the Church. She is, according to the Apostle, “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1Tim 3:15); she is “a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Eph 5:27). And by what bloody struggles, what warfare with the enemies of truth, what and how many deaths of zealots for the purity, holiness, and Orthodoxy of faith and the Church, has the Orthodoxy of our faith been purchased for us, brothers, which is our guide to eternal life! Just as rivers of blood have been shed by our ancestors—Russian warriors and leaders, fighting both with pagans and with Mohammedans and with Christians foreign to the Orthodox Church—for the preservation and integrity of our homeland and the Orthodox faith in it, so rivers of apostolic, prophetic, and martyr’s blood have been shed for the preservation of the Orthodox faith; much suffering has been borne by the holy fathers and other defenders of the faith.

But what of us, children of the Orthodox Church? Do we preserve this most precious inheritance—the Orthodox faith, do we follow its teaching, commandments, rules, statutes, and counsels? Do we love to offer service to God, “the fruit of lips confessing His name” (Hebr 13:15)? Are we renewed by it; are we sanctified every day, do we correct ourselves, do we attain the perfection which the saints attained? Do we advance in love toward God and our neighbors; do we value our faith; do we consider it the greatest mercy of God, the greatest and first good of life, that we have the happiness to belong to the Orthodox Church, which is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic? What will we answer to these questions if we wish to answer according to conscience? To our shame we must confess that in many, many of Orthodox Christians there is not only no Orthodox faith in heart and in life, but there is not even on the tongue, and it has completely evaporated in them, or has turned into complete indifference as to any faith whatsoever: Catholic, Lutheran, Jewish, Mohammedan, even pagan. We hear from many that in any faith one can please God, that is, as if any faith were pleasing to God, and as if lie and truth, right and wrong were indifferent to God. This is what many have come to through ignorance of their faith, ignorance of the spirit and history of their Church, estrangement from its life and worship, the notion of Orthodoxy, non-Orthodoxy, and heterodoxy has become so obscured! The chronicle of contemporary events recounts a case where somewhere in Russia a certain official, in examining students, called absurd the story of the offering of Isaac as a sacrifice. This is darkness, chaos, ruinous ignorance! A Christian, as a member of the Church, should know his faith and strive to live according to the faith, to be saved by his faith, because the enemies of our salvation do not slumber and seek our destruction every hour—and not cast aside his faith as some specialty of only certain people, or as an unnecessary toy suited only to childhood, or as the possession of only the uneducated masses. Those who dream thus would do well to remember the venerable antiquity of our faith, contemporary with the beginning of the human race and its direct origin from God, and the fact that in this faith have lived and been saved people of every kind, station, condition, and sex: and glorious and wise kings and philosophers, and legislators and the greatest orators, the noble and the simple, the rich and the poor, male and female, the beauty and glory of mankind. It should also be said to the glory of the Orthodox faith that no religion except the Orthodox faith can bring a man to moral perfection or holiness and complete pleasing of God, which both the history of the Church shows and the incorrupt, miracle-working relics of God’s holy saints and the marvelous deeds of the saints of the Orthodox Church show, by which they pleased God completely, being even during life prophets and workers of miracles. And so it should be by sound reason: only a perfect faith with all divine powers, with all the spiritual armor of God against the passionate flesh, the world, and the devil can bring to perfection. And if now many Orthodox Christians themselves live worse than Mohammedans and pagans, so that the head of the Mohammedans in Russia publicly and for all to hear recently in St. Petersburg proclaimed praise to his coreligionists for the fact that among them there are no such impious people as among Christians who attempt the life of rulers, then such truly impious life of Christians should not at all, of course, be put as a reproach to the Orthodox faith, which is unshakeable in its principles of truth and holiness by the promise of the Savior Himself and by the testimony of history. Such people, although they have come from us, were not ours in essence, only in name.

Yes, my brothers, only the Orthodox faith cleanses and sanctifies human nature defiled by sin, renews what has been corrupted, especially through the mysteries of baptism, repentance, and Communion; enlightens what has been darkened; heals what has been wounded by sins; warms what has turned to ice; makes what reeks of passions fragrant through the grace of the Holy Spirit; gives life to what has died; reunites what has turned away from God, makes what has been estranged from Him His own; strengthens what has become weak; restores to form and adorns what has been disfigured; restores what has fallen; makes what is enslaved free; fills what is hostile with love, like the apostle Paul and many others; makes what is blasphemous full of constant praise to God; fills what is desperate with hope; comforts what is sorrowful; rescues what is guilty from condemnation and punishment in Gehenna; makes peaceful what is troubled; strengthens what is exhausted; expands what is constrained; enriches what is unrighteous with righteousness; makes what is crafty simple; what is evil—good; corrects what is corrupt; makes what is greedy continent; what is lustful—chaste; what is stingy—generous; makes what is foolish wise; makes what has become earthly heavenly; refines what is crude; makes what is fleshly spiritual; makes what is materialistic God-loving; what is selfish—self-sacrificing and loving toward all; makes what is demonic—godlike and—O wonder!—divine! What marvelous works the Orthodox faith performs in man! Do you wish to be convinced of this? Read the histories of the lives of the saints, the history of the Church: and you will see with your own eyes all these miracles in the lives of the saints. You will see wolves transformed into lambs, fornicators and harlots into the righteous and those equal to the angels; lovers of money—into the merciful, those fond of pleasure into the continent, people of authority and earthly greatness and luxury you will see in the humble garb of a monk. These were true Christians; here were angels in the flesh; on earth—citizens of heaven, and at the same time faithful servants of their earthly homeland, like the forty martyrs of Sebaste whom we commemorate today! This is what our Orthodox faith can do with those people who sincerely hold it and follow its guidance! Why then does it not produce such a saving change in us? Because of our little faith or unbelief, because of our frivolousness, because of the corruption and impenitence of our heart; because of the passions that have grown strong in us and taken possession of us, because of our separation from the Church, because many do not at all be permeated by the spirit and life of the Church, and many—only weakly and more formally, insincerely, hold to it. From this same source have arisen all the contemporary social vices among us: murders, suicides, regicides, arson, theft of public property, excessive luxury, debauchery, profligacy, pursuit of every carnal pleasure.

In order for us to be true Orthodox Christians, we need above all to have lively, continuous communion with the Orthodox Church, or participation in her prayers, teaching, mysteries; to diligently study our faith and be permeated with and live by her spirit, be guided by her rules, commandments, statutes, and primarily—to restore in ourselves by true and profound repentance the image of a true Orthodox Christian in the image of the ancient and modern saints, or better—in the image of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who says: “I have set you an example, that just as I have done, so you must do also” (Jn 13:15), so that the Lord may also say of us, as He once said of Nathanael: “Behold truly” a new “Israelite in whom there is no deceit” (Jn 1:47). Amen.

Word for the Sunday of Orthodoxy

“Son, your sins are forgiven you” (Mk 2:5)

The paralytic was brought to Jesus Christ evidently for healing from the disease of paralysis that had gripped him. But Jesus Christ first healed his soul from sins, and then his body from disease. “Son,” He says to the paralytic, “your sins are forgiven you,” and after forgiving his sins He said to him: “Rise, take up your bed, and go home” (Mk 2:5,11). What does such a method of healing mean? It means that the diseases that overtake us are the consequence of our sins and that it is impossible to be completely freed from diseases without first being cleansed from sins, just as it is impossible to eliminate consequences without eliminating causes. Since even now there are often many sick among us who seek remedies for their diseases, let us discuss now for common edification and benefit the close connection between our sins and bodily diseases.

Is there really such a close connection between sins and bodily diseases and sufferings that bodily diseases, more or less severe and prolonged, are the consequences of our sins? Truly, there is such a connection between diseases and sins: sin is destructive to the soul and at the same time destructive to the body. The holy apostle speaks of sin: “The wages of sin are death” (Rom 6:23), that is, sin, like a cruel tyrant, collects tribute from people who serve it, and all serve it. This tribute is death. And so death is a necessary tribute we owe to sin, and almost always diseases, more or less prolonged, precede death. From this it is evident that there exists the closest connection between sin and diseases. When there is no sin, there will be no diseases and death. That is why in the future age there are no diseases. “There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Apok 21:4), testifies the visionary John in divine revelation. Often for human sins God Himself directly sends diseases, for example, “delivers to Satan for the destruction of the flesh” (1Cor 5:5), as it was with the one guilty of sexual immorality mentioned in the epistle of the apostle Paul to the Corinthians, or deprives of the use of certain senses and members, or subjects to various other diseases. In this case diseases are a work of the goodness of the Lord, who “does not desire the death of the sinner, but that the wicked turn from his way and live” (Ezek 33:11). People are greatly deceived by the temporary sweetness of sin and perish, but God in His goodness does not wish our eternal perdition but desires to make all partakers of blessedness. But how can this be done when a person does not wish even to pay attention to future blessedness or eternal torments, and when he is wholly given over to earthly amusements and pleasures? He feels his full strength within himself and thinks that he should live here as he wishes while life lasts. How to make him think about God, about the eternal life for which he was created, how to make him turn to faith and virtue so that they become the life of his heart? Diseases and sufferings in this case are the best remedy. One need only look at the sick or those subjected to some other misfortune to be convinced that diseases and misfortunes are sometimes very beneficial for us here. A man comes to his senses at this visitation of God, turns in upon himself, sees that he is insignificant and fleeting, “like grass, like a flower of the field” (Is 40:6), that all that is earthly is dust and vanity, that only God and virtue are eternal, that man must in this life serve God in spirit and truth and store up good deeds for eternal life.

Brothers! We are all sick or unhappy in some way, and all desire, by the natural law of self-preservation, to be healthy and well. Let us remember that our diseases, being often the fruit of our own lawlessness, our own carelessness or intemperate living by their nature, very often are the punishment of God for our sins in their force and duration. If we wish to be free from diseases, we must first destroy the internal cause of them—our sins: then external misfortune will pass away by itself. Let us remember that disease and death would not exist in the human race if sin had not entered the world through the first man. Let others put forward whatever causes they wish for diseases; but if they look more deeply into the nature of the matter, in their explanation they will come to that same principal cause of them, namely—that human bodily nature was once severely damaged and is now damaged by some internal, hostile force, and that is why it is so sensitive to the slightest elemental changes, why it has become so weak and easily destroyed.

Now is the time for spiritual healing. Let us therefore turn away from the sins by which the soul suffers painfully, and “our healing will quickly appear” (Is 58:8). Amen.

Word for the Second Week of Great Lent

“Jesus entered Capernaum: and it was heardthat He was in the house, and immediatelymany gathered, so that there was nomore room, not even outside the door:and He spoke the word to them. And theycame to Him, bringing one who wasparalyzed, carried by four men” (Mk 2:1-3)

If an earthly king or a king’s son were to visit some city or village and stop in some house, then enormous crowds would gather about that house, because everyone would wish to see those bright royal eyes, carefully turned toward all the extensive kingdom and all subject peoples; everyone would wish to hear the merciful royal word. So high is the rank of a king, so important is his service on earth to God and men, that every one feels involuntary reverence toward his person; and not rarely his mere appearance brings people to delight. But there was a time when the very King of Heaven, the King of the whole world, the beginningless God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the King of kings on earth appeared on earth and lived with men, traveling from city to city, from village to village. O, what happiness, what blessedness it was to see the very King of Heaven; those most radiant, never-sleeping eyes, looking upon the whole universe; that gaze which gladdens the Angels and is terrible for demons, and to hear from His most sweet lips words that give life, peace, comfort, and joy to every sincere and upright soul! You envy those happy people who lived during the time of Jesus Christ’s sojourn on earth. Do not envy. He is even now with us inseparably by His Godhead, by His grace, by His life-giving Mysteries, by His divine body and most pure blood: we are not at all disadvantaged in this respect compared with the contemporaries of Jesus Christ; we are not deprived of anything, and even received more than they: because they did not have the blessedness of tasting His life-giving body and blood, but we taste them and are deified. The Liturgy, during which this mystery is celebrated, depicts before us the whole life of Jesus Christ from His cradle to His ascension to heaven; and the holy Mysteries manifest His personal presence, the boundless love of the Lord for His rational creation; and the sublime manifestation of God in the flesh and in the form of man shows, my brothers, the dignity of human nature, created in the image of God, but humiliated, disfigured, weakened, and mortified by sin. It assures us that if a man lives righteously and holily on earth, he will be equal to the Angels and will live with them and rejoice eternally for endless ages; that with God, after the Mother of God and the holy Angels, there is no one greater or more precious than man; man, to whom He became like, for whom He suffered, died, and rose again; that all heaven and the kingdom of heaven is the inheritance of man and besides him there are no other heirs to whom it would be said: “Come, you who are blessed by My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Mt 25:34). But let us turn to what is said in the Gospel. “Jesus entered Capernaum… and it was heard that He was in the house, and immediately many gathered, so that there was no more room, not even outside the door” (Mk 2:1-2). The Hebrew city of Capernaum was situated at the Sea of Gennesaret not far from where the Jordan River emptied into it and was one of the flourishing and populous cities of Galilee in the time of Jesus Christ. The Lord during His three-year public ministry for the salvation of mankind more than once made His sojourn in Capernaum, preached in the Jewish synagogues, and performed many miracles. Among others, the paralytic was healed here, who had no ability to walk, about whom was read in today’s Gospel. Here were healed: the servant of a Roman centurion, the mother-in-law of the Apostle Peter with many others; a woman with the issue of blood; two blind men; a demoniac; and the daughter of Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, was raised. Blessed, thrice blessed, you would say, are the inhabitants of this city in which Jesus Christ frequently made His sojourn. But I will not say this. No, I cannot call the inhabitants of Capernaum blessed simply because the Son of God often stayed with them; I cannot, because the inhabitants of Capernaum, having seen His miracles many times, His benefactions to their fellow citizens, remained ungrateful to their Benefactor and Miracle-Worker, unbelieving, impenitent sinners. The Lord Himself rebuked this city, saying to it: “And you, Capernaum, which are raised up to heaven, will be brought down to Hades; for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day”, that is, it would have repented; “but I say to you that it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for you” (Mt 11:23-24). Now you see that the inhabitants of Capernaum—are unhappy people, because, seeing often the miracles of the Lord and hearing His teaching, they remained impenitent sinners and are condemned to Hades.

My brothers! let us think about ourselves: are we less blessed by the Lord than the inhabitants of Capernaum? Are we less blessed by the Lord than the inhabitants of Capernaum? We are born in baptism by water and the Holy Spirit and adopted by God; in chrismation we are sanctified by the Holy Spirit; in Communion we are deemed worthy to taste the very most pure body and the very most pure blood of the Lord; in repentance we are given the forgiveness of sins after sincere repentance in them; in the priesthood we have always teachers of faith and Christian life, performers of saving mysteries and guides to God and eternal life; in anointing for healing we have a remedy from bodily diseases through repentance of sins. What then do we render to the Lord for all His mercies toward us, for all the miracles of His long-suffering toward us? Ingratitude, wickedness, hardness of heart, unbelief, distraction, delay, and impenitence in sins. But will it always be so? Will not the measure of God’s long-suffering toward us soon be filled? Is not the sword of God already hanging over our heads? Is not the axe of death already stretched out to the root of the tree, to our heart? Has not the utter darkness of Hades not yet opened its jaws to swallow us? Let us come to our senses, wake up, repent from our soul while we still have time for repentance. Let us study the Word of God by earnestly visiting the House of God and engage in charity and almsgiving. True, during Great Lent our churches are sometimes filled with those praying, like that house in which Jesus Christ was, and people barely fit in them. Glory to God! Oh, if only it were filled more often with Christians! But still the theater is filled much more often.

“And He spoke the word to them” (Mk 2:2). Everywhere the Lord appeared with the word, and this word was sweeter than honey from the honeycomb; it healed souls and bodies; it inclined and transformed hearts, as with Saul; it gave life to the dead, drove out demons, cast down the bold, commanded all the elements: and they obeyed the voice of the Almighty; in an instant it transformed creation; this word resounds in the church even now. Why then are there few who listen and obey? From our distraction, from our love of the world and its vain goods and pleasures. “You cannot serve God and money” (Mt 6:24), said the Lord once and for all, that is, the world. But remember: this word will judge us on the last day. Let us therefore “pay closer attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away” (Hebr 2:1) inwardly from God. It is for this reason that the holy Church demands our attention when the Gospel is read.

“And they came to Him, bringing one who was paralyzed, carried by four men: and when they could not get near Him because of the crowd, they removed the roof above Him; and when they had broken through, they lowered the bed on which the paralyzed man lay” (Mk 2:3-4). How pitiable is a man when he, being in full consciousness, cannot walk himself because of extreme weakness and must constantly make use of the services of others: he is a burden both to himself and to others. Such was the paralytic mentioned in today’s Gospel; such are those afflicted with paralysis and some other diseases among us. But there is spiritual paralysis from sins, from passions, incomparably more dangerous and more worthy of lament than paralysis of the body, because it often leads to eternal death. In this respect every sinner is a paralytic. Every sin is accompanied by paralysis of the soul, as a consequence of falling away from God, in whom our life and strength consist, as a fall into death. And since we all sin, we are all paralyzed. How to be healed of this paralysis, of this beginning of eternal death? Through sincere, deep, complete repentance of sins. That is why, of course, the reading of the Gospel about the paralytic is appointed now, so that his condition, which was the result of his sins, would touch our hearts and dispose us also to zealous repentance. That is why Jesus Christ healed the paralytic by granting him first the forgiveness of his sins. “And when Jesus saw their faith,” that is, of the bearers, “He said to the paralyzed man: Son, your sins are forgiven” (Mk 2:5). From this it is evident that the sick man suffered for his sins.

My brothers! when you are ill, first of all bring repentance to God for your sins, turn to the Almighty Physician—taste His life-giving body and life-giving blood. There is a secret and close connection between sin and disease. “And some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, Why does this man speak thus? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” (Mk 2:6-7) The wicked, envious, and ambitious scribes, that is, the learned teachers of the Jews, found the benefaction of Jesus Christ blasphemous and it troubled them. So now, brothers, a wicked person is scandalized even by good deeds: if you go to church to pray to God, read sacred books, withdraw from amusements and entertainments and spectacles and gatherings; they say: here is a hypocrite. You give alms; they say: he is multiplying idlers. But would it not be better for these wicked people to look at themselves and see what they themselves are like, than to judge and condemn others? One must remember the words of the righteous Judge: “Do not judge, so that you may not be judged” (Mt 7:1). Jesus Christ, as the Knower of Hearts, rebuked the wicked thoughts of His opponents: He said to them: “Why do you question in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralyzed man, Your sins are forgiven; or to say, Rise, take up your bed and walk?” (Mk 2:8-9) Indeed: is it not equally impossible for an ordinary man both to forgive sins against God of a man like himself, and to heal diseases by a word? It stands to reason that it is impossible. For whom then is this possible? For God alone; consequently, if the word of Jesus Christ was a deed, that is, if it destroyed sins and healed every disease, as all people saw this, and the scribes among them, then how could they reproach the Lord with blasphemy? Looking at the deed plainly, they should have believed that Jesus Christ is God, because He forgives sins and heals every disease with a word: but they say: “He is blaspheming” (Mk 2:7). What then did the Lord answer them? “But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—He said to the paralyzed man—“I say to you: Rise, take up your bed, and go home.” And he rose, and immediately took up the bed and went out before them all; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We have never seen anything like this.” (Mk 2:10-12) See, the word became a deed: sins are forgiven, paralysis has passed, the man is completely healthy and strong: and the forgiveness of sins and the healing of disease—both show that Jesus Christ is Judge, Life-Giver, and God, not a blasphemer as the scribes thought. My brothers! the authority to forgive people’s sins belongs to God alone, as Creator and Lawgiver, and who among you has not experienced that Jesus Christ forgives and absolves us from every sin? O, how light and peaceful and joyful the soul becomes when you repent from your whole heart of your sins before the Lord and hear the word of forgiveness: “Son, your sins are forgiven you” (Mk 2:5). How joyful the soul becomes when with faith and love you taste His divine Food—His most pure body and blood! And now often the sick are healed soon after they repent before the face of the priest and receive Holy Communion of the Mysteries of Christ! We have all experienced without number that Jesus Christ is our Judge, our Savior, our Life-Giver, and our God: let us therefore always eagerly turn to Him with faith, so that we may receive from His constant and proven mercy the forgiveness of our sins, peace of soul, and at the same time health to our body. The treasury of mercy is always open for everyone: draw from it anyone as many as a thousand times a day; our numberless sins will not overcome the infinite mercy of the Master if only we—sinners—repent sincerely. May glory be to Your mercy, O Lord, forever and ever! But let us also, brothers, be merciful to our neighbors. I turn again to your love with a word about almsgiving to the poor of our parish. Please do this in the name of God: “He who gives to the poor”, by God’s mercy, “will not go without” (Prov 28:27). Amen.

Discourse for the Second Week of Great Lent

“And when Jesus saw their faith, He saidto the paralyzed man, Son, your sinsare forgiven you” (Mk 2:5)

Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, traveling from city to city and from village to village with His preaching about the kingdom of heaven, once entered the house of one of the inhabitants of the city of Capernaum, and, as was His custom, spoke the word here. A multitude of people gathered so that it was impossible even to reach the doors of the house. Four men bring to this house a sick man paralyzed in the sinews on a bed for the purpose of laying him before the eyes of Him who healed “every disease and every sickness among the people” (Mt 9:35). But since there was no way to push through the crowd and reach Christ: they went up with the sick man onto the roof of the house, broke through the tile roof, and, making an opening large enough for lowering the sick man, let him down on his bed onto the floor before the Lord Himself. The Lord, seeing their faith, said to the paralyzed man: “Son, your sins are forgiven you” (Mk 2:5), and then, so that by an open miracle of healing He might show the unbelieving scribes that He is God-man, having authority on earth to forgive sins, said to him: “I say to you: Rise, take up your bed, and go home. And he rose, and taking” his “bed went out in front of everyone” (Mk 2:11-12). All the people, witnesses of this miracle, were amazed, and, praising God, testified that they had never seen anything like it. This is the reward from God-man for the faith of those who brought the paralyzed man!

If this paralyzed man had been brought to an earthly physician, he would undoubtedly have considered it unnecessary to pay attention to his sins and would have treated him for bodily paralysis with material, not spiritual, means. But the divine Miracle-Worker does otherwise: the bodily paralysis He heals by means of the forgiveness of sins: “Son, your sins are forgiven you” (Mk 2:5). Why so? Because, of course, paralysis of the soul, that is, sins, were the cause of paralysis of the body. And indeed, all diseases and death began from the sinful paralysis of the human soul. And for already many thousands of years sin produces all diseases of soul and body.

But why has the holy Church appointed the reading of the Gospel account of the paralyzed man? Surely because it sees all of us sick with paralysis, namely spiritual paralysis, that is, with sins, and wishes for all of us to hasten to Jesus Christ for healing. And indeed, we are paralyzed. Every sin we have is a kind of paralysis. And that sin is truly spiritual paralysis, everyone has experienced in themselves. From every sin our heart grows weak, our mind becomes dull to all things spiritual, our will weakens toward good, so to speak, all the foundations of our life become paralyzed, because when the heart, the main force of our life, grows weak—then the whole man becomes weak. That is why the holy Church, knowing how important it is for man to have a steadfast and immovable heart upon the rock of faith and God’s commandments, sings before us: “Establish, O Lord, upon the rock of Your commandments my heart, which has been shaken” (Irmos, Canon of Andrew of Crete, Song 3).

And so, we are paralyzed. And some of us, prompted by conscience, ourselves recognize our sickness and go to Christ to be healed from our sinful paralysis, but others—alas!—need outside, earnest help so that they might sincerely realize their sickness and from their whole heart desire to be healed by Jesus Christ. Ah! if only there were those who would bring these people, like that paralyzed man, by the strength of their faith and by sincerely spoken counsel before the Lord our Jesus Christ in heartfelt contrition, bearing the sins and infirmities that He took upon Himself. He would do these people the greatest Christian service. And there are many among us such as are paralyzed in spirit, for whom there is truly a need for the sincere help of others. They themselves are so weak in faith, have so paralyzed their heart with various attachments, that by their own strength they are incapable of taking even one step in faith and in Christian life.

What then? Is there not among you, beloved, such people who would help the weak, those weak in faith, their brothers? Is there not among you those truly believing who would help the unbelieving with their living faith? Is there not among you such as would instruct the ignorant or the dissolute brother and counsel him with sincere repentance and faith to turn to Christ? You who are weak in faith and live wildly and recklessly, brothers, tell me: do you not wish to be freed from your wretched spiritual paralysis, whose end is eternal torment in the fire of Gehenna? Do you wish to fall before Jesus Christ Himself and be healed by Him? This is very easy. Here Jesus Christ in this holy church every Friday, and if needed on other days as well, receives all those sick with sin and heals them according to their faith through the priest. Every time a sinner sincerely repents of his sins, the Lord Himself speaks to him inwardly: “Son, your sins are forgiven you” (Mk 2:5). What then hinders you from approaching Jesus Christ with faith and receiving healing from Him? Come, be healed: the clinic is announced now for all—throughout the whole holy forty-day fast. It is Christ Himself who receives all. The priests are only witnesses before Him, mediators between Him and you. Only do not forget that you must come to Jesus Christ with a living awareness that you are sinners, that you are powerless and dead without Him in soul, and believe from your whole heart that He is your Creator and Judge, and only He alone “has authority on earth” “to forgive sins” (Mk 2:10). Also do not forget that after healing from sinful paralysis it is foolish and dangerous to deliberately fall into new paralysis. “Behold, you are well”, says the Lord, “sin no more, lest something worse befall you” (Jn 5:14). Amen.

Homily for the Second Week of Great Lent

“Son, your sins are forgiven you” (Mt 9:2)

Today, beloved children and brothers in Christ, there was read the Gospel about the forgiveness of sins by our Savior of a man paralyzed in body and soul, whom four bearers lowered through the roof of the house onto the floor at the feet of Jesus Christ. “Son, your sins are forgiven you” (Mt 9:2), said to him the Lord, ocean of mercy. Here, in this house, certain of the scribes sat and thought in their hearts: how does He speak thus blasphemously? Who can forgive sins except God alone? Wretched and senseless, they, despite the great and self-evident miracles of the Savior, did not believe, in their pride and malice, that He is God-man and had unworthy thoughts of Him. “And Jesus, immediately knowing in His spirit that they so reason within themselves, said to them: Why do you reason thus in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralyzed man, Your sins are forgiven; or to say, Rise, and take up your bed and walk? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins, He said to the paralyzed man: I say to you, rise, take up your bed, and go to your home. And immediately he rose, and, taking up his bed, went out before them all; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying: We have never seen anything like this” (Mk 2:8-12). With these words ends today’s Gospel.

The holy Church has wisely and most beneficially ordained the reading of this Gospel on the second Sunday of Great Lent, after very many of us have been deemed worthy to hear after confession that same sweetest voice of the Lord in our souls: “Son, your sins are forgiven you” (Mt 9:2), for it is that same Lord, standing invisibly now at confession, who then forgave the sick man, who absolves the truly penitent sinners, those confessing their sins before the priest. I wish here to turn your attention, brothers and sisters, to the greatness and triumph of God’s mercy toward us penitent sinners, and to the hardened insensitivity of many sinners to this marvelous mercy of God, sinners among whom I myself am the first, who continue even after confession and Communion of the body and blood of Christ to commit the same, and sometimes even greater, sins. Great and incomprehensible, boundless is God’s mercy toward penitent sinners. That we might see more clearly the whole boundlessness of this mercy, let us think: what is sin? Sin is rebellion, uprising of the creature against the Creator, disobedience to the Creator, betrayal of Him, an appropriation to oneself of divine honor, or—self-deification; “You shall be like gods,” (Gen 3:5) whispered the serpent in Eve’s ears, as even now it whispers to the sinner;—a perversion of one’s nature, willful madness, ugly absurdity, voluntary falling away from goodness into malice, from truth into untruth; from simplicity into craftiness; from light into darkness; from strength into weakness; from spaciousness into constriction; from peace into turmoil; from life into death; sin is a detestable filth, an abomination to God, a poison that destroys the soul. Sin has produced all the calamities in the world and all diseases, as in the paralytic mentioned today—famines, plagues or epidemic diseases, wars, fires, earthquakes and temporal and eternal death. The sin of the highest angel made him the devil, made Lucifer into Satan, and all the spirits who rebelled against God, who were angels of light and indescribable beauty—into dark and most repugnant demons. Sin has produced and produces terrible evil, terrible calamities, terrible upheavals in the world, in mankind; because of sin all nature is in turmoil. It cannot be described, it cannot adequately be lamented, tears of the whole human race would not suffice to lament the terrible consequences of sin in the world. If the mercy of the Son of God, by the good pleasure of God the Father and by the intercession of the Holy Spirit had not sought out perishing sinners, what would have happened to all of us, to all men? And it is terrible even to think, let alone to experience even for a moment, even for a second, the misery, the torment, that would overtake the rejected sinners: the terrible, eternally seething, unquenchable flame of Hades would swallow them forever. But the Son of Man, the Son of God “came to seek and save” “the lost.” (Mt 18:11) And so we have been sought out and—are being saved: the doors of mercy are opened to us. Let each come with their soul, burdened by sins, to the servant of God; repent sincerely, grieve heartfully for your sins, abhor them, hate them with all your soul, for they are worthy of it, hold fast to the firm intention of amendment, believe in Christ, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world—and you will hear the longed-for voice of the Lord: “Son, your sins are forgiven you” (Mt 9:2). And together with the forgiveness of sins you will be freed from condemnation for sins and from eternal torment prepared for impenitent sinners, only “do not sin again” (Jn 8:11). However, if you sin again through weakness and evil habit—for everyone is subject to “the inclination to evil from youth” (Gen 8:21)—and still repent sincerely, then again you will receive forgiveness, according to the word of the apostle: “If anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous One: He is the propitiation for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world” (1Jn 2:1-2). Seventy times seven times did the Lord command to forgive those who fall into sin: for, as His greatness is incomparable, immeasurable, unparalleled, so too is His mercy immeasurable.

But do we use with gratitude such a greatest mercy of God? Do we amend ourselves; do we become day by day or year by year better? Do we strive for perfection, as the Lord commands us: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). Do we strive to see sin in all its ugly nakedness; do we strip away the mask with which it always tries to cover itself so as not to frighten and repel us from itself? No, brothers, to our shame we must confess that we abuse day after day the mercy of our God, and after repentance we again add sins to sins—we do “not pay attention to how perilously we walk” (Eph 5:15); often without fear we go to meet sin, and often we fall into even graver sins. Where then is our reason? Where is our faith? Where is our repentance? It has all gone as dust. So Satan laughs at us and applauds us. But surely a time will come when our perfidy ends, and we, having tried the mercy of God so many times, will at last experience His terrible justice. “It is impossible,” says the holy apostle Paul, “for those who were once enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and who have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance; for they are crucifying the Son of God all over again to their own harm and subjecting Him to public disgrace. For land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned” (Hebr 6:4-6,8).

“If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth”, says the same Apostle, “no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said:” “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” and again, “The Lord will judge His people.” (Hebr 10:26-30)

And so, my brothers, let us make use of God’s boundless mercy for our salvation and let us fear to abuse it, lest we be lost forever. Amen.

Word for the Second Week of Great Lent (22)

To ease the struggle of fasting, the holy Church has appointed that in the very middle of the fast the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord be carried out. Whoever truly fasts must necessarily endure the anguish of the flesh, the stubborn struggle of the spirit against it, and to crown it all—the snares of the devil, acting on our soul through various thoughts that bring great sorrow, especially to those who are still not steadfast and imperfect in Christian life. May the Life-Giving Cross of the Lord, now carried out for veneration and for heartfelt gazing upon and kissing, comfort such fasters and ease their struggle. May all who do not fast with true fasting and those who do not fast at all not be deprived of its consolations; let everyone draw near with faith and love and kiss the Savior upon it. Let the divine Sufferer teach all from His Cross the important duty of the Christian—fasting and the mortification of our flesh that loves sin. Because the Cross itself calls forth a word about love, we will now speak of the greatness of God’s love toward us, made manifest on the cross, so that we might kindle love for God and for a life worthy of a Christian in the cold hearts of Christians. Indeed, what an abyss of love of God the Creator is expressed on the cross toward His creation, man. The Creator of heaven and earth; of all visible and invisible things, He who set the sun in the heavens, the moon and countless stars; He who spread the air for the breathing of all living things, He who spread the waters over the face of the earth, He who covers the earth with vegetation and brings forth, nourishes, and sustains all living creatures—the only begotten Son of God has deigned to become man for the salvation of man, who had fallen by his own will from life to death; He endures for him the most agonizing sufferings on the cross and the most shameful death—so that His sufferings might be reckoned by the righteous heavenly Father as if they were the sufferings of all mankind of all times and places, and so that, thus, mankind entrusted to Him in faith and love might be freed from unimaginable eternal torments in Hades and from the second death. A man with unpained eyes of the heart, seeing such infinite love of the great, almighty God for sinful man, cannot but weep from the feeling of God’s boundless love and sheds tears of love and gratitude, having nothing greater to offer to Him for whom our tears of love are precious. But with what does most of us respond to such love of God? With insensitivity, with readiness to crucify the Son of God a second time with every possible vice, with compliance with our sinful flesh the most intensely so that most of us, as if forgetting the sufferings on the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, live entirely not for heaven and not for our soul, but for earth and for our body, and scarcely, by the institution of the church, agrees to deny our flesh unnecessary food and drink only a few days. And so by every means we ourselves turn away from our salvation; the Savior suffered for us on the cross, but we do not wish even to know of these sufferings; He has commanded us for our salvation to take up each his own cross and follow Him to heavenly glory, but we do not wish even to listen; it has been shown to us, as a medicine, the mortification of our flesh with its passions and lusts, but we strive all the more strongly to satisfy our passions, to fulfill our lusts. What then? So will the end be also. And we will be consumed by eternal fire, and we will not receive even a drop of cooling in the flame of Gehenna—for the reason that here we had every possible cooling, every possible pleasure for our sinful flesh. May the Lord not allow it! Rather—for the cross, while the Crucified One on the cross continues to show us His mercies. Amen.

Homily for the Third Week of Great Lent

Today, beloved brothers and sisters, I offer you by God’s help a discourse upon the apostolic reading of this day. In it the Apostle Paul speaks of the great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, and exhorts us to hold fast to the confession of our faith—that is, not to faint in trials, sorrows, and persecutions for the faith, for we have not a High Priest who cannot sympathize with us in our weaknesses, but One who, like us, has been tempted in all things except sin; and as “He Himself has suffered” unto the cross and on the cross, “having been tempted, He is able to help those who are tempted” (Hebr 2:18); then the Apostle urges us to draw near with boldness to the throne of grace—that is, to the Lord Jesus Christ seated upon the throne—that we may obtain mercy and find grace for timely help. What else are you doing, beloved brothers and sisters, when you gather often in this temple for communal prayer, or when you draw near in repentance for your sins and to the reception of the holy Mysteries, if not precisely what this day’s apostolic reading urges upon us? You with faith and hope draw near to the throne of grace to obtain mercy from the Lord, forgiveness of sins through repentance and the reception of the divine Mysteries of the body and blood of the Lord, sanctification, strengthening for the life that lies ahead, or for the struggles to come, and—deification of the soul. Draw near then, draw near, brothers and sisters, ever more often to the throne of grace, that you may be deemed worthy of the great and abundant mercy from Him who sits upon the throne, the all-good and almighty eternal King and High Priest, our Lord Jesus Christ. But draw near to God especially through earthly priests chosen from among men for your ministry to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins; have recourse to their prayer that stands as mediator between you and God, and to the sacrifice they accomplish; for they bear upon themselves the dignity of the eternal High Priesthood of Jesus Christ and accomplish His work for you; oh, may God grant only that they always accomplish it sincerely, with diligence and reverence; and they do not themselves take the honor of the priesthood, but through a calling from God, as once in the Old Covenant the high priest Aaron. Honor them and love them for their dignity, for their great, most high ministry, transcending all earthly services, for the salvific, intercessory, deifying ministry that leads souls, created in the image of God, to God and to eternal life. The Lord has not made the holy, radiant, terrible angels, strong with divine power, your mediators and accomplishers of heavenly mysteries, but men like yourselves, burdened also as you are with weaknesses and sins, and therefore compassionate toward your common, shared weaknesses and errors. Of this the Apostle speaks, among other things, in this day’s reading. “Every high priest taken from among men is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins, being able to have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness; and because of this he is required as for the people, so also for himself, to offer sacrifices for sins. And no one takes this honor to himself, but he who is called by God, just as Aaron also was called. So also Christ did not glorify Himself to become High Priest, but it was He who said to Him: You are My Son, today I have begotten You. As He also says in another place: You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek; He, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him, called by God as High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebr 5:1-10). Here is the content of the apostle’s reading with his interpretation, teaching, and edifying application to us. In it, I repeat, we hear of the one and eternal High Priest, our Lord Jesus Christ, who before the foundation of the world was determined to perform priestly acts, offering Himself on the cross’s altar as a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, of all mankind. And He did offer Himself as a sacrifice to God the Father, according to His will, for us sinners, in propitiation for us, who are endlessly sinning every day and hour; and we, earthly priests, burdened with weakness, bear the rank of Christ and continue by the grace of the Holy Spirit His great, awesome, and saving work of reconciling ourselves and you to God; and He Himself through us offers in propitiation the awesome and life-giving sacrifice of His body and blood upon the altar. Revere always this sacrifice and the Lord who offers it; pray also for us, His servants and your intercessors and advocates; remember His cross, His tomb, His three-day resurrection, and His ascension into heaven, His second and fearful coming; and let each one take up his cross and follow Him, crucifying his flesh with its passions and desires. Amen.

A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross

Since before our eyes lies the Cross of the Lord for reverent veneration and kissing, whose power is often proclaimed in the church’s prayers and hymns, I wish to say to you, beloved, a few words concerning its power, or concerning its miracles. In attempting to speak of this, on the one hand I see everywhere the wonder-working power of it, and I do not know where to fix my attention, which instance to take as an example of the life-giving power of the Cross; and I see also the great reverence with which people of old honored the life-giving Cross; on the other hand—alas!—I see very few examples of its power in the people of our time—and thereupon I see immediately the reason why it shows so little of its wonder-working power: namely, for the same reason that the Lord worked few miracles in His own country—from ignorance, from ungodly, unchristian life among Christians. So, beloved brothers, the history of the Christian Church presents very many examples of the wonder-working power of the Cross—because there was then greater faith in people, more true Christians; the life-giving Cross is glorified even now, but now we see far fewer examples of its wonder-working, namely only in those few people who live by faith.

The holy ascetics of Christ marveled at the constant life-giving power of the Cross of the Lord, working in their lives, and in the humility of their hearts, fearing that such power would not abandon them, wretched and sinful as they were, surrounded always by invisible enemies, and often by visible ones as well, they prayed alone: O unconquerable, incomprehensible, divine power of the honored and life-giving cross, do not abandon us sinners. With full assurance in its wonder-working and in amazement at its power to drive away invisible enemies, rejoicing in heart they cried out to the cross: Rejoice, O precious and life-giving cross of the Lord, driving away demons by the power of Him crucified upon you, our Lord Jesus Christ, and bestowing upon us your honored cross for the expulsion of every enemy, and without any doubt they spoke to it as to one living: O precious and life-giving cross of the Lord, help me with the most holy Lady, the Mother of God, and with all the saints forever.

One cannot but be moved in heart when reading the praises with which they magnified the life-giving cross; they called it the four-pointed power, the all-powerful cross, the glory of apostles, the strength of martyrs, the fortress of righteous men, for the infirm—healing, for the dead—resurrection, for the fallen—restoration, for the passions—mortification, for unclean thoughts—expulsion, the foundation of piety, the destroyer of demons, the ruin of the ungodly, the shame of enemies on the terrible day of judgment. As to one living they spoke to it: O cross! be for me power, strength and dominion, deliverer and foremost warrior against my warring enemies, shield and guardian, victory and my fortress, ever guarding and covering me.

In general they called the image of the cross indescribable in its power, the sanctification of waters, the purification of the air, the sanctification and illumination for every faithful Christian, the sign of courage and Christ’s scepter, treading down the adversaries to the earth. Not knowing how worthily to glorify its power, they cried out: Who could recount all your deeds, O cross beloved by the world—the powers and miracles and the raising of the dead by your power? You drew up with yourself all the world, that is, the chosen Christians, as You Yourself ascended to God.

Do you find, beloved, the Cross of the Lord to be for you as it was for those holy men? No, I answer for the majority of you. The cross does not work miracles in your life. Why? Through our unbelief. The cross itself is always wondrous and life-giving. For Christians faithful to it, even now through their faith and reverence, it is faithful too, as the truest and most steadfast friend. O, who would give me the zeal of God and the power of word to awaken in the Christians of our time a living faith and proper reverence for the cross and for Him crucified upon it! I know that many are negligent toward the cross and the sign of the cross. Sometimes negligence and disrespect for the cross extends so far that they do not receive one who comes to their house bearing the cross, speaking in the name of the cross and the servant of Christ; others refuse to make, as is proper, the sign of the cross on their sinful body, or they neglect priestly blessing; sometimes this is done from carelessness, but sometimes—O horror!—from false, accursed shame. Are you ashamed of the cross, beloved, which is our praise and glory? I warn you in time: and “the Son of Man will be ashamed of you when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels” (Mk 8:38).

Beloved! Let us always honor the Cross of the Lord with faith and love; and it will be our friend, our savior—not through itself, but by the power of Him crucified upon it. Amen.

A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (25)

“For me to boast is good only in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal 6:14)

Last time, beloved, we heard with what praises the holy servants of God spoke of the cross. Now together with the Apostle and with them I too, though very sinful, wish to boast of the power of the life-giving cross; for how could it be otherwise than that a priest, who accomplishes all services and all mysteries by the power of the cross and with the participation of the cross, does not himself experience the saving power of it? “For the power of God is the cross, salvation to all who believe” (Rom 1:16). And I would be very ungrateful before my Savior and Lord if I kept silence before this church gathering about the wondrous power of His cross, so often appearing and continually appearing upon me: “To guard the secret of the king well, but to declare the works of God gloriously” (Tov 12:11). In truth, by what do I live and am I preserved, sinful and weak as I am? By the power of the cross. Who protects me from the invisible enemies warring against me? The cross. Who is my helper in the struggle against the passions? “From my youth many have warred against me” (Antiphon 4). The Cross of the Lord. The cross protects me from enemies. The Christian, beloved, who desires to live piously in Christ Jesus, if not openly, then inwardly, and often both outwardly and inwardly is always persecuted. But it would be strange and terrible to hear from the lips of a priest, and for the priest himself to say, that he does not wish to live piously; for if anyone, then the priest should strive above all others to live a godly life. Therefore, “those who desire to live piously in Christ Jesus are persecuted”—according to Scripture—“by all” (2Tim 3:12). I do not speak of external enemies. They are easier to overcome precisely because they are visible; when they persecute, remember only with faith what Christ suffered for us, and then easily shall you bear their persecution. We cannot pass over in silence the internal enemies—demons: “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12); their persecution is always extremely malicious, precise, venomous, deadly. Meanwhile it is accomplished within—in the heart. What is a Christian to do? How to drive away invisible evildoers who have seized the very heart? No material weapon will help drive them out; meanwhile the torments they cause are extremely painful for the soul: it is fire mercilessly devouring one’s inner being. What then is the remedy—to drive them out and instantly destroy the torments they cause? The Cross of the Lord, or the sign of the life-giving cross with living faith in Him crucified upon it, made upon the breast or the belly. How with a hand one wipes it away: suddenly the inner torments vanish, the demons flee. Then, it is, that one cannot but cry out with joy: Rejoice, O precious and life-giving cross of the Lord, driving away demons by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ crucified upon you (Prayer to the honored cross). And many times I, humble and sinful, have driven away invisible evildoers in this way. If some passion assails my heart, I instantly turn my mental gaze to Christ and with living faith make the sign of the cross upon myself: the passion instantly vanishes and the inner fire, inseparable companion of every passion, also vanishes. But sometimes, alas! passions carry me away for a time, and only the torments suffered within force me to turn sincerely to Christ and to His life-giving cross. Thus the cross, beloved, is my victory—over invisible enemies. Where I cannot reach to drive them away, there my Christ penetrates in the image of His cross and for me accomplishes the desired victory. Wonderful is the Lord in me, wonderful His life-giving cross! “God’s power is made perfect in my weakness” (2Cor 12:9). Invisible enemies, invisibly and mercilessly striking my soul with burning arrows, killing my spirit with sorrow and anguish, flee from the awesome name of Jesus Christ and the sign of the cross: it burns them as they burn me, and the Lord repays them equally for me in equal measure. Suddenly my soul becomes light, and it grows clear as after threatening dark clouds.

Therefore, beloved, let us make the sign of the cross upon ourselves with great faith; and it will always be our shield and guardian. Amen.

A Discourse on Friday of the Middle Week of the Veneration of the Cross

We worship Your cross,

“Master, and we glorify Your holy resurrection”(Troparion to the honored cross)

The holy Church, bringing out from the depths of the altar, from the altar table, the life-giving cross of the Lord and offering it for the veneration and kissing of the faithful—what thought does it have? The thought that the true children of the Church, passing through the season of fasting and struggling against their multi-passionate flesh and with the devil, who during the fast especially kindles his arrows upon them, looking upon the cross and vividly picturing to themselves the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ, endured by Him for our salvation in His most pure flesh—might be strengthened thereby in the struggle against their own flesh, its passions and desires, and that they not hesitate to crucify it in its passions and courageously struggle with the opponent attacking us with manifold temptations. Look, as it were, how the Lord speaks to us from the cross: I have endured for you with My most pure flesh, My most immaculate flesh, which was never touched by any sin—will you then refuse to crucify in your own flesh the various passions and desires? Will you not endure the bitterness of fasting? Will you not bear for a time the deprivation of delicacies to subdue the flesh, which the more you gratify and satisfy, the more it rages? Will you not bear the burning arrows of the enemy, when I have allowed him to pierce My divine flesh with every kind of arrow? Here, with such thoughts, the cross is brought out for veneration and kissing. Therefore, do not be discouraged by fasting and the struggle against passions and the devil; but courageously struggle, calling upon the One who suffered for us and conquered enemies with the cross—and be victorious. Amen.

A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (27)

“If anyone wishes to come after Me, let himdeny himself, and take up his crossand follow Me” (Mk 8:34)

This Sunday of the great fast is called the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross—from venerating the Cross and the sufferings of Him crucified upon it for us, the Lord of glory, and also because the Church appointed to read on this day the Gospel concerning each of us bearing our own cross, or the sufferings and sorrows inseparable in this world from following Christ. “If anyone wishes to come after Me”, said Jesus Christ to the multitude with His disciples, “let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me”. “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life”, that is, his very existence, that is, mortifies all his passions and desires, “for My sake and the Gospel’s will save it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels” (Mk 8:34-38). The Lord Jesus Christ commands us to utterly deny ourselves, that is, to deny Satan working in us and all his works, and all his service, and all his pride, and to take up our cross, that is, to bear the unavoidable heavy deprivations, diseases, sufferings and sorrows sent to us for our purification, instruction, and strengthening in virtue, and trials caused to us by demons and men. We are extremely attached to the life of the flesh; we have grown accustomed to sins, have clung to them, and fear to declare absolute war upon them, breaking all alliance with them; we offer them only half-measures, as if sparing ourselves with them, because they have become as it were our natural members, and therefore we always remain with them, and they take ever deeper root in us, the struggle against them becomes harder and more stubborn, we often lose ourselves to God and become daily prey and possession of the enemy. The words of the Lord: “whoever wishes to save his life will lose it” (Mk 8:35), are fulfilled upon us every day. We daily sell ourselves to our enemy through every kind of sin living and working in us; daily we die spiritually, and oh, if we would only as daily arise and come alive to God through tearful repentance! For “our sins separate us” temporarily “from the Lord” (Is 59:2). They can separate us eternally, infinitely, if we do not turn and repent with all our heart. But look at the examples of many sinners who became saints: Peter the publican, Mary of Egypt, Eudoxia and others; look in general at the examples of the saints, how they resolved decisively and irrevocably to engage in struggle against sin, against passions, against the devil; how sincerely they loved God and His righteousness, and, renouncing the life of the flesh for Christ and the Gospel, preserved their souls for all eternity. Why then do we not have decisive struggle against sin? We love temporal life very much; we fear to grieve the flesh; we fear strong temptations; we love the world and its goods extremely, forgetting the inevitability of death and the transition to a new life; we reckon on living many years in constant well-being; in pursuit of sensual pleasures we forget the divine nobility of our soul, its predestination to immortality and eternal bliss; we forget that it is infinitely more precious than the whole world with all its treasures, which, like a shadow, will pass. Condemning such foolish conduct of ours, the Lord says: “What profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Mk 8:36-37). There is yet another reason why we do not decisively abandon our sinful way of life and remain slaves of the world and its habits, customs, and the whole structure of worldly, vain life. Because many of us secretly are ashamed of our faith, ashamed to confess the Lord, to live according to His commandments, according to His Gospel, to follow Him, lest we lose the respect of the world, the honor in an adulterous and sinful world—and so they allow themselves to be carried away by the stream of worldly, sinful, vain, often very foolish and harmful life. They are aware that it is irrational, harmful to themselves, to spend time so precious; they know also the higher purpose of human life on earth, they know about the sacrifice of redemption offered for them on the cross, but the established way of life, the notions of society, the peculiar, perverted views of one’s companions on life, on faith, on the Church do not allow them to depart from the crossroads upon which they have placed themselves, and do not give them the opportunity to recollect themselves and come to themselves, to reflect on their fate. They are pitiful slaves of their environment, slaves of the sinful world, in which evil dwells. But if you wish, Christian, to follow Christ and enter into His glory, then you must by all means follow Him, fulfill His commandments, humble yourself, pray, love Him, suffer and endure. “By your endurance save your souls” (Lk 21:19). A terrible requital awaits unfaithful Christians for rejecting God’s great care for them and the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ offered for them on the cross. They were ashamed of Him, of His Gospel, of life according to the Gospel. And He also will be ashamed of them when He comes to judge the world in the glory of His Father, will not acknowledge them as His and will cast them out forever from His face. “For whoever is ashamed of Me”, says the Lord, “in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels” (Mk 8:38). A terrible fate! Therefore, while we have time, let us reject passions, the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, and the pride of life, not fear the cross leading to eternal glory, and irrevocably follow Christ, wherever He commands: “For where I am, there also My servant will be” (Jn 12:26). Amen.

A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (28)

Today, beloved brothers and sisters, we heard an evangelical narrative from Mark about the healing by Jesus Christ of a demon-possessed deaf and mute boy, for whom his father asked, through the expulsion of the most evil unclean spirit causing the wretched boy deafness and muteness. “You dumb and deaf spirit”, said the Lord to the unclean one, “I command you, come out of him, and enter him no more. And crying out, and convulsing him greatly, the unclean spirit came out of him. And he became as one dead, so that many said, He is dead. But Jesus, taking him by the hand, lifted him up; and he arose” (Mk 9:25-27). But listen, how evil was the demon tormenting the boy. The father of this boy said to the Lord, “that the demon, wherever it seized him, threw him down, and the wretched one foamed at the mouth, gnashed his teeth, and became rigid” (Mk 9:18). This also happened when the father brought him to the Savior. And when the Lord asked the father, as if not knowing, although, as God, He knew all things: “How long has this been happening to him? He said, since childhood, and added that the demon had often thrown him both into fire and into water to destroy him” (Mk 9:21-22); and he asked the Lord to take pity on him and his son and help if He could. Jesus said to him: “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes” (Mk 9:23). And the wretched man of little faith cried out with tears: “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mk 9:24). See what power the Lord attributes to faith and to those who believe: “All things are possible to him who believes”, He says. One who believes can even cast out demons and heal all kinds of diseases. But how powerless and pitiful is the unbeliever! He cannot even master himself, cannot overcome his own sins, but, like a slave, serves them and is tormented by them. Since the wretched father first brought his demon-possessed son to the apostles, and they could not cast out this demon, they asked the Lord in private: Why were we unable to cast it out? The Lord said to them: “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting” (Mk 9:29). Here is praise from the Lord for fasting and prayer. Here is the evangelical foundation of fasting. Why then do those calling themselves followers of the Gospel expel fasting from the community as if it were unnecessary! Is it not because now passions and iniquities have multiplied among us, and demons of various kinds, because some Christians have broken their covenant with the Church and rejected, as a superfluous work, prayer and fasting? And they live like irrational beasts, being led only by various lusts, while others, in their malice, with foam at their mouths, like true demon-possessed persons, have rushed to every evil: to murders, suicides, arson, mine-laying, explosions, and the like. Yes, beloved brothers and sisters, such people have reached such terrible madness precisely from unbelief, intemperance, impurity, and all the destructive consequences of this unbelief. The gentle evangelical faith does not preach murders, regicide, mine-laying, and explosions—it says: “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God”, and that we must obey them “not only for wrath but also for conscience’ sake” (Rom 13:1,5), and commands us to “pray for the king and for all who are in authority”, “that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence” (1Tim 2:2). Lord, enlighten the eyes of the hearts blinded by malice of these wretched demon-possessed ones of our unfortunate time, rising up against divinely established authorities, that they may know into what terrible abyss they are digging for themselves, into what terrible hellish chasm they are ready to plunge themselves. In ancient, pre-Christian times, some unfortunate ones among the Jews rose up against the established authorities, against Moses and Aaron, reproaching them with alleged tyranny, merely murmured: and what befell them, what punishment of God? The earth opened under them, and alive they descended into hell with their families; and others, less guilty, were consumed by fire issuing from the temple (Num 16:1-35). Behold how grave a sin is rebellion against authority. What then awaits our nihilists, what judgment of God? All the more terrible, the greater the gifts of God they have spurned. For who are our nihilists and terrorists? Baptized people, Christians, reach such madness, such murders and suicides, such satanic crimes! O, why were they born? Why did they not perish in the womb of their mother? It would have been better for them not to be born. So ungratefully, so wickedly, so foolishly to trample the gifts of God: the grace of baptism, of chrismation, of communion with the body and blood of the Lord—this is truly terrible! O, unfortunate parents of such children! What shame must they endure!

Brothers and sisters! Let us with all our heart hold fast to the faith and the Church of God, this only saving ark, saving from the universal fire of the future, which will befall in its time all the lawless. Let us hold fast to the sacred institutions of the Church, leading us to salvation, let us keep the fasts and prayers inviolably, and be diligent in the service of God. The Devil, our enemy’s salvation, does not sleep, but “as a roaring lion walks about” us, “seeking whom he may devour” (1Pet 5:8), and how many he has devoured! Fasting and prayer with diligence, with humility, with faith and love—a powerful weapon against the devil and against all passions warring within us. Amen.

A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (29)

Beloved brothers and sisters! Today I want to tell you about, and somewhat explain, today’s readings from the Epistle and the Gospel. From the Epistle there was read a portion of the letter of the holy Apostle Paul to the Hebrews, about the cleansing power of the blood of Christ the Savior, who offered Himself as a sacrifice to God the Father for the sins of the whole world (Hebr 9:11-14); and from the Gospel there was read the account of the Evangelist Mark, telling how the Lord Jesus Christ foretold in advance to His twelve apostles—among them Judas the betrayer—that He, our Lord, “will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes of the Jews, and they will condemn Him to death, and hand Him over to the Gentiles; and they will mock Him, and beat Him, and spit upon Him, and kill Him; and on the third day He will rise again” (Mk 10:33-34). Further, in the Gospel there was read about the unfitting request of two disciples, the brothers James and John, that they might occupy the first places when Jesus Christ should be glorified, and about how the Lord gently reproved them, saying “that the path to His glory is the path of the cross, of sufferings, and of death”; about the indignation of the other disciples at the pretensions of James and John, and about the instruction the Lord gave them all on this occasion—namely, that “whoever wished to be greater than the others should be servant of all, and whoever wants to be first should be slave of all”, just as He Himself “came not to be served, but to serve and to give His soul for the redemption of many” (Mk 10:43-45). Now let us return to the Epistle. So, the holy Apostle Paul in his letter to the Hebrews says of Christ that “He is the High Priest of the good things to come”—“with His own blood He entered once into the sanctuary, and obtained eternal redemption” (for all who believe in Him); “and if” in the Old Testament “the blood of bulls and goats”, offered in sacrifice, “and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkled upon the defiled, sanctified them so that the body was made clean, then how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the Holy Spirit offered Himself, spotless, to God, cleanse our conscience from dead works—that is, from sins, whose wages is death—for the service of the living and true God” (Hebr 9:11-14). And so the meaning of the apostolic reading is this: if the prefiguring blood of the Old Testament, the blood of sacrificial animals, sanctified the defiled so that the body was made clean, then how much more will the blood of Christ cleanse our conscience, our soul, and our body from every sin. And the Apostle John the Theologian says that “the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, cleanses us from every sin” (1Jn 1:7). Therefore let no sinner despair, however sinful he may be, but let him hope to receive forgiveness and cleansing of all his sins; for we have a Savior who by grace is always present with us in His Church, and especially in the Holy Mysteries—who came down to cleanse us from every sin, if only we would believe in Him, repent sincerely and irrevocably, and commune with faith and love of His most pure Body and Blood. Thus Saint Mary of Egypt, commemorated today, was at first plunged into an abyss of evils, into the depths of debauchery; but repentance, faith, and love, the labors of fasting and prayer, and the communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ cleansed her and made her holy and equal to the angels. Let us too imitate her faith, her zeal in repentance and prayer and in love for God, her thirst to commune of the Body and Blood of Christ, and the Lord will cleanse us from every sin: “for with the Lord there is mercy, and with Him is abundant redemption, and He will deliver” us “from all iniquities” of ours (Ps 129:7,8). In today’s Gospel our Lord Jesus Christ gives us this instruction: that we should not seek preeminence and superiority over others out of ambition and self-love, but should seek the one honor pleasing to God—to serve others unto salvation, just as Christ God Himself “came not so that He might be served, but that He” Himself might “serve and give His soul for the redemption of many. Whoever wants to be great among you, let him be your servant; and whoever wants to be first among you, let him be slave of all” (Mk 10:43-45). “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2). Amen.

A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of the Great Fast

“The Son of Man came notto be served, butto serve and to give His soulas a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45)

Soon the memorable days of the world-saving sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ will arrive, and on this present Sunday the Church has appointed to read the Gospel in which the Lord foretold His coming sufferings as though they were already present. Namely, He said: “behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes; and they will condemn Him to death, and hand Him over to the Gentiles; and they will mock Him, and beat Him, and spit upon Him, and kill Him; and on the third day He will rise again” (Mk 10:33-34) Thus the Lord knew beforehand all that would happen to Him in Jerusalem, every detail of His humiliation, His sufferings, and His death, and He did not turn away from them, but went cheerfully and gladly to drink the bitter cup of sufferings for the world—and even for the ungrateful Jews who crucified Him—in order to serve the salvation common to all. O boundless love! O boundless condescension! O wondrous longsuffering!

The whole life of Jesus Christ, from infancy to His death on the cross and His resurrection, is His wondrous and most love-filled service to the salvation of the human race. But even from His ascension into the heavens, when He sat down at the right hand of God the Father, until now, the Lord who reigns over all nations serves the salvation of the human race, and especially of the Christian race, as He Himself said: “behold, I am with you all the days until the end of the age” (Mt 28:20), or, in the Gospel read today: “the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give His soul as a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45). To this day He cleanses, regenerates, and renews us in holy Baptism; He sanctifies and confirms us by the grace of the Holy Spirit in Chrismation; He performs the sacred rite in the Liturgy, as the eternal High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, and gives us His most pure Body and Blood under the form of bread and wine; in repentance He Himself heeds our repentance and absolves the sins of those who repent sincerely; in the priesthood, the hierarchy, or the pastorate, He Himself enlightens, shepherds, guides, judges, and disciplines His rational sheep spiritually; in marriage He blesses the wedded union of husband and wife for the blessed bearing and rearing of children; in the Anointing of the Sick, as the Physician of souls and bodies, He heals infirmities both spiritual and bodily. At every service He is present with us invisibly, according to His own promise: “where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in their midst” (Mt 18:20), and He accepts our service, and He Himself, wondrously, effectually, and perceptibly, serves our salvation, working within us marvelous, divine powers that shatter the iron bonds and fetters of sin and of spiritual death, healing infirmities, redeeming us every day, in return for repentance and faith, from measureless transgressions, and sweetly quickening souls that have been sated with the bitterness of sin. We now have the Great Fast, which lasts forty days. What is this Great Fast? It is a precious gift to us from our Savior, who Himself fasted forty days and forty nights, neither eating nor drinking—a gift truly precious for all who seek salvation, as the slayer of the soul’s passions. By His word and His example the Lord established it as a law for His followers. And with what love, with what divine and grace-filled powers the Lord serves all who truly fast! He enlightens them, cleanses them, renews them, and strengthens them in the struggle with the passions and with the invisible enemies, with “the principalities and powers and rulers of the darkness of this age” (Eph 6:12); He teaches them every virtue and raises them to perfection, to incorruption, and to the blessedness on high. All who truly fast have experienced this, and experience it still, in themselves. Fasting with prayer is a sure weapon against the devil and the passion-filled flesh. So let no one argue cleverly that fasting is unnecessary. But now the days of the sufferings of our most sweet Savior are drawing near. What are the sufferings, the Passion, of the Lord? This is the last, consummating sacrifice of our Savior for the sins of the world, brought to completion by His death on the cross, before which He cried out: “it is finished” (Jn 19:30)! This is His last, final service on earth to our salvation, that through His sufferings and death we might be delivered from the righteous, eternal torment due for our sins, that He might give us as food and drink His most pure, much-suffering Body and His most pure Blood, poured out for us—for our cleansing, sanctification, quickening, and renewal—so as to clothe us in His righteousness, in His merits, and to deify us and make us blessed forever. Oh, if only it were so! If only everyone always looked upon His sufferings in this way and made them their own by faith and love! If only they were crucified together with Him, crucifying themselves to the world and to the passions! Or again—the Liturgy is celebrated nearly the whole year round. What is the Liturgy? It is the daily service of the Lord to our salvation and to the salvation of the world—on behalf of all and for all. He Himself serves for us and with us in the Liturgy, celebrating the Mystery of His Body and Blood. To this day He is slain for us, while Himself remaining unslain in His incorrupt, deified flesh; He pours out His Blood, breaks His Body, and gives them to us for the remission of sins, for sanctification, and for eternal life; to this day His living and life-giving Blood steams upon the altars of Orthodox Christian churches! O wondrous, divine gift of love! O blessedness of true Christians! Thus the Lord to this day serves our salvation in manifold and life-giving ways.

But He left us an image, an example, that we too might serve one another with love. He said: “whoever wants to be great among you, let him be your servant; and whoever wants to be first among you, let him be your slave” (Mk 10:43-44). So each of us, my brothers, must serve one another with his talents, his abilities, his powers, his official position, his property, his education, and not please himself alone. Thus the Tsar and the government serve the people, caring for their enlightenment, for the direction of their moral and physical powers, and for their agricultural and economic life. Pastors serve their flocks—or ought to serve them—by a good example of Christian virtues, by the word of teaching and edification, by the reverent celebration of the Mysteries, and by the saving guidance of the flock toward a virtuous life and toward salvation in God; educated people, officials and instructors, authors, writers, and the press in general ought to serve for the glory of God and for the good of the people, or of those entrusted to their guidance, by their enlightening influence grounded on the principles of the Orthodox Christian Church. The rich ought to serve the poor—not, of course, the idlers who do not want to work but want to eat bread for nothing; for, “if anyone does not want to work, neither let him eat” (2Thes 3:10), says the Apostle, but rather those poor who would gladly work but cannot, or whose labor gives no results at all, being exhausting and thankless, or those who can find work nowhere. In Christ we are all members of one another, and by faith, by duty, and by the conviction of mind and heart we must serve one another with whatever each is able; yes, brothers, to serve our neighbors, and not to live for ourselves alone, not for our own pleasures alone, not to gather for ourselves alone, not to pass our time in idleness and sloth, not to regard life as a plaything, or merely as a chain of games and enjoyments. That would be not Christianity, but paganism. We “who are strong must bear the infirmities of the weak, and not please ourselves. Each of us must please his neighbor for his good, unto edification” (Rom 15:1-2). Service to our neighbors, of course, cannot be without self-denial and a cross, and sometimes the greater and higher the good we bring to our neighbors, the harder the cross often is—for example, the cross of ingratitude and malice from those we have benefited. Such is the cross borne by our good and beloved Sovereign. But because of this one must not despair, grieve beyond measure, and abandon the work of service. For whose cross was heavier than the cross of Christ, endured for us? May the example of the Lord Jesus Christ, who emptied Himself so terribly for us, serve us as a strong incentive not to fear and not to flee self-denial for the common good. And this self-denial, and this good, is so needed especially now, in view of the many and great hardships and misfortunes of our people—a people believing and good, yet uneducated, at times superstitious, dissolute, careless, often shortsighted, free, yet not yet having learned to understand and value the gift of true freedom. But in order to serve our neighbors sincerely, one must without fail cease serving one’s own passions; self-denial is needed; for the passions do not allow us to serve our neighbors sincerely and zealously, but teach us to please ourselves alone. Amen.

A Homily for the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast

You have just heard, beloved, the touching hymn: “Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight,” which is sung at Matins during the first three days of Passion Week. That it may be understood by all and bring to all the benefit desired, allow me to offer to your love an explanation of it. The hymn “Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight” reminds us of the Savior’s parable in which He likens the kingdom of heaven to ten virgins who, according to the ancient custom, took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. The composer of the hymn had precisely this parable in mind. Let us set it forth here and explain it briefly. “The kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins”, says the Savior, “who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were wise, and five foolish. The foolish, taking their lamps, took no oil with them. But the wise took oil in their vessels along with their lamps. And as the bridegroom delayed, they all dozed and fell asleep. But at midnight a cry rang out: behold, the bridegroom comes, go out to meet him. Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise: give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out. But the wise answered, saying: lest there not be enough for us and for you, go rather to those who sell and buy for yourselves. And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding feast, and the doors were shut. Afterward the other virgins also came, and said: Lord! Lord! open to us. But he answered them: truly I say to you, I do not know you. Therefore keep watch; for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man will come” (Mt 25:1-13).

The explanation of the parable: the ten virgins—five wise and five foolish—signify us Christians; some of us are wise by our faith, our virtuous life, and our readiness for death; others are foolish through their little faith or cold indifference to faith, through their vicious, carnal life, through their unpreparedness for death and for the judgment that immediately follows it. For “it is appointed for men to die once, and after this the judgment” (Hebr 9:27). The foolish, it is said, taking their lamps, took no oil with them. What, then, are these lamps, and what does the oil for these lamps mean? The lamps are our souls, according to the word of the Savior: “the lamp of the body is the eye” (Mt 6:22); by the eye He means the human heart, or the soul; the oil is almsgiving, according to the explanation of Saint Chrysostom, or good works in general. And so the foolish Christians, having gone out to meet the bridegroom, did not prepare for their souls the good works that might sustain their spiritual life. But the wise, it is said, took oil in their vessels along with their lamps—that is, they laid up a store of good works, in order to meet the bridegroom worthily. And who is the bridegroom? Jesus Christ. And when and how do we go out to meet Him? Our whole life must be a preparation, first for our private meeting with Him, because every soul after its death must appear before Him to give account, as before the Author of life; and therefore throughout our whole life we must take care to acquire and preserve in our hearts a living faith and fervent love for the Lord, so that after our death we may stand without shame and without condemnation before the dread throne of the Lord of glory; but for our common meeting with Him we shall go out after our resurrection from the dead, “when all who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God and will come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life; but those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment” (Jn 5:28-29). The bridegroom tarries—that is, Jesus Christ delays to cut short our life by death, “not willing that anyone should perish” in sins, “but that all should come to repentance” (2Pet 3:9), and He likewise delays His second, glorious, and dread coming, so that the sons of the kingdom of heaven may be multiplied more and more; meanwhile people, seduced by the temporary sweetness of sin and its going unpunished, and seeing that the world stands firm, thinking that it will go on standing so endlessly, and themselves enjoying sound health and other material goods, sink into a drowsiness of soul, take no care for their amendment, and sleep the sleep of sin. But behold, at the very midnight of the sleep of sin, when none of the sinners so much as thinks of his terrible danger, a loud voice rings out: behold, the bridegroom comes, go out to meet him. Then all start up and light their lamps—that is, they strain the attention of their souls. At that time it will be well for the wise Christians: their souls will burn with the fire of the sweetest love for the Lord; but ill for the foolish: the souls of these last, like lamps without oil, will go out—that is, they will grow dark and cold from the lack of love for God, the source of love, and will begin to taste beforehand the torments of hell. They will ask for oil—that is, for good works—from the wise Christians, but these will not give it, lest they too fall short; they will go to buy from those who sell—that is, they will suddenly bethink themselves to do good works, and will go seeking an occasion for it; but at that very moment the bridegroom will come—that is, at the very time when they want to do good works, death will overtake them and set them before the heavenly Judge without any virtues, stinking with their own iniquities. They will want to enter the bridal chamber of the heavenly kingdom, for which we are all destined from our very birth, and for which we live—but the Lord will not let them in, and will say to them: I do not know you. And so “keep watch”, the Lord concludes the parable, “for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man will come”. Now the church hymn will be understandable to us all: “Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant”—that is, every Christian—“whom He finds watching; but unworthy again is the one whom He finds in despondency (sleeping the sleep of sin); watch, then, O my soul: be not weighed down with sleep” (that is, do not let yourself be weighed down with the soul’s sleep of sin), “lest you be given over to (eternal) death, and be shut out from the kingdom; but rouse yourself, crying: Holy, Holy, Holy are You, O God, through the Theotokos have mercy on us.” Amen.

A Homily on the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast

Today, beloved brothers, at the morning service three parables were read: the first, about the barren fig tree; the second, about a father who had two sons—one of whom, to the father’s request, ‘Child, go and work today in my vineyard,’ answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward thought better of it and went; while the other, to the same request, said, ‘I go,’ and did not go; and, finally, the third parable—about a householder who, having a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, built a tower, let it out to husbandmen, and went away; and afterward, when the time for gathering the fruit came, he sent his servants to the husbandmen of the vineyard to receive the fruit. The husbandmen in their hardness beat some of the servants, killed others, and at last killed even His Only-begotten Son (Mt 21:18-43). Let us this time speak about the first parable. “Having spent the night in the village of Bethany, in the morning the Lord”, says the Evangelist Matthew, “returning to the city” of Jerusalem, “was hungry. And seeing a lone fig tree by the road, He came to it, and finding nothing on it but leaves only, He said to it: let there be no fruit from you ever again. And the fig tree withered at once. Seeing this, the disciples marveled and said: how did the fig tree wither so suddenly? But Jesus answered them: truly I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but if you say even to this mountain, be lifted up and cast into the sea, it will be. And whatever you ask in prayer with faith, you will receive” (Mt 21:17-22).

The barren fig tree by the road, with leaves only, is I—and you, brother and sister, beloved. Often, early and late, there comes to us the Planter of our life, the Lord Jesus Christ, hungering for our salvation; He comes to satisfy the hunger of our soul, to become for it the bread of life. And, alas, almost always He finds in us only cares about earthly things—leaves only; but of the fruits of faith, of an all-earnest concern for the salvation of our souls, there are none at all. Yet each of us has been planted on the earth precisely in order to bear spiritual fruit. And what, in particular, are these fruits that every person, and especially a Christian, must bear? To this the holy Apostle answers thus: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, mercy, faith” (Gal 5:22). See, brother and sister, what fruits we must unfailingly bear each day to the Planter of our life, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now let each one look at himself: are you a fruitful fig tree or a barren one? If fruitful, good—press onward; bring the Master more and more fruits, that with them He may nourish you yourself in eternity; if barren—tremble; you are threatened by the curse of the Master of your life, and perhaps very soon He will say to you also: “let there be no fruit from you ever again”. And you will wither at once; all your spiritual powers will be stifled; faith, hope, and love will utterly dry up in you, and “every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and cast into the” eternal “fire” (Mt 3:10). These words are true and clear as day. They will be fulfilled unfailingly: “for heaven and earth will pass away”, as the days, months, and years pass by, “but the words of the Lord will not pass away” (Mk 13:31). So then, brother and sister, ask yourself: do you daily bring to the Master of your life the fruits of good works, and above all, do you have the queen of virtues—love, fervent love for your Creator and love for your neighbor as for yourself? Do you want to know by what deeds love shows itself? The holy Apostle Paul will answer you for me: “love is longsuffering, is kind; love does not envy, love does not exalt itself, is not proud, does not behave disgracefully, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in unrighteousness but rejoices together with the truth. It covers all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails” (1Cor 13:4-8). Love is so necessary for a Christian that “if he speaks in all the tongues of men and of angels, but has not love, then he is like sounding brass, for all his eloquence and abundance of words, or like a clanging cymbal. If he has the gift of prophecy and knows all mysteries and the meaning of all the Scriptures, and even—what is most astonishing of all—if he has all faith, so that at his words mountains would move from place to place, but has not love, then he is nothing;” vain are all his knowledge and all his labors without love (1Cor 13:1-3). Why is love so necessary for us? Because “God” Himself “is love” (1Jn 4:8), and we are created in His image, and in the Christian person God dwells. “Or do you not know that Christ is in you, unless indeed you are somehow reprobate?” (2Cor 13:5)? “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (1Cor 3:16)? Whoever has fervent love for God and neighbor also has in his soul the other fruits enumerated by the Apostle—joy in the Holy Spirit, peace, longsuffering, goodness, mercy, faith; for in love, as in a seed, all the virtues are contained; for where love is, there is God, the all-perfect Perfection, the fountainhead of goodness, infinite goodness, infinite omnipotence. Whoever has fervent love for God also has such faith as can move mountains, as the Lord said: “and whatever he asks in prayer with faith, he will receive” (Mt 21:22). And so, if we do not want to wither like the fig tree cursed by the Lord, or like grass, and to be cast into the eternal fire, let us strive, beloved brothers, to bring to the Planter of our life the fruits of good works while we have the time, the strength, the means, the occasion. Perhaps a time will come when we would want to do good, but it will be impossible. “While we have time, let us do good to all, and especially to those who are of the household of faith” (Gal 6:10). Amen.

A Homily on the Song Behold, the Bridegroom Comes at Midnight

Brothers! Today is the day of the betrayal to suffering and death of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Souls faithful, able to value and feel the greatest self-sacrifice for our salvation, O common Lord and friend of us all! Guard from this day forward your heart most carefully for Him alone, and do not let anything worldly, corruptible, or any passion take hold of you. Prove that you too know how to answer love with love, that you are true Christians, and out of love for Christ can watch with Him, that is, keep vigil over your own heart, at least a few hours in which He alone drank for us the cup of heavenly wrath. Bring into your hearts by faith Christ the Lord suffering for us, suffer there in your own heart together with Him; bring to remembrance your sins, be penitent, and if you can, weep for them. “Weep for yourselves” (Lk 23:28), says the Lord. Send your sighs and tears to Christ: and this will be the most pleasant sacrifice to the suffering Lord for us. You will soon feel in your heart the favor of God toward you for your sincere gift. “Peace” in the soul, “surpassing all understanding” (Phil 4:7), and heavenly, quiet joy will announce to you that your sacrifice of a contrite and humble heart is not despised but accepted by the Lord on His most high and spiritual altar. Having cleansed yourselves in the sacrament of repentance this evening if you have not done so before, tomorrow you will be deemed worthy to partake of His body and blood: may this supper of love unite you with Him who commanded to celebrate it in His remembrance, may it ever remind you of His boundless love for us, and may it grant you strength to spend the coming great days holily, in a spirit of fervent love toward the Lord, who laid down His life for us. Amen.

A Homily on Great Monday

“Behold the man!” (Jn 19:5)

See how mocked, wounded, and tormented is our sinless and most holy Lord Jesus Christ! What need was there for the passionless God to suffer so terribly from men in His flesh? What need was there for the God-Man Himself to endure these all-but-hellish torments on earth? There was, brothers, no need at all for God to subject Himself to such dishonor and such sufferings on earth: His self-sacrifice was entirely voluntary, and He could have not become incarnate, not suffered, and not died. Only then all of us, as sinners and as enemies of God, would have been forever captives and slaves of the devil, and would all have perished eternally; then there would have been none of these two sides, the right and the left; it would not have been said, the righteous will go into eternal life and the sinners into eternal torment, but there would have been one dread sentence for all—eternal torment. It is dreadful even to think of it! But the Lord, in His infinite mercy, unable to bear the sight of the human race tormented by the devil, came to free us from bondage to him and from eternal torments. And in order to free us from servitude to the enemy, to whom we gave ourselves and still give ourselves, He willed, for our sake and in His humanity, to become the most obedient servant to His heavenly Father—to whom we have become, and to this day continually are, disobedient—and in human flesh and with a human soul, by human powers strengthened by the Godhead, to conquer the devil-tempter, to whom we so easily surrendered ourselves as captives and still surrender ourselves through our sins; further, in order to free us from the eternal torments of hell, to which our immortal souls, captured by the devil, would in justice have had to be subjected, He, the pre-eternal God, willed Himself, in His human being, to bear upon Himself our eternal torments. And behold, as you see, as you hear from the Gospel, He endured these torments for us. He endured all the shame and all the fierceness of torment from men and from demons, in order to draw us out of hell, where without a Savior we would have had to be tormented eternally. But Christ drew us out of hell, and we go into hell of ourselves: we go fearlessly, with eyes shut so as not to see the light, and so as to hurl ourselves into it the sooner. Many of us fearlessly give ourselves over to every sin and do not think of amending, as though Christ were a minister of sin, and would bring into paradise even all the unrepentant sinners, those unchanged in heart and deeds. An incomprehensible hardness of heart and insensibility possesses many of us. At the sufferings and death of Christ the Savior all creation shuddered with fear—the earth quaked, the rocks split apart, the dead rose—yet our souls do not shudder with fear at the sight of the sufferings and death of the God-Man, at the remembrance of the eternal and fierce torments to which we would have been subjected had the Lord not suffered and died for us. Our hearts do not split apart, do not soften, and do not part with little faith, unbelief, hardness of heart, pride, malice toward our neighbor, envy of his well-being, condemnation, gluttony, overeating and drunkenness, stinginess, love of money, and carnal impurity. How many people stand here—before this holy shroud—who even in this sacred and dreadful time do not cease to serve the devil and to nurse malice toward their neighbor; who envy one another; who dwell in thought on pieces of silver, on theft, on drunkenness, on impurity. How many are there who, the moment the feast arrives, at once get drunk and give themselves over to revelry, and defile the temple of their own body, which had been a temple of the Lord after receiving and partaking of the Holy Mysteries of the Body and Blood of the Lord? But why do I speak of the feast? Do we not see, even before the feast, even now, when we are commemorating the sufferings of Christ for us, people who are drunk and given over to debauchery? They are a lawless people, who today with their lips bless Christ, but tomorrow, or even today, will blaspheme Him by their deeds. O ungrateful, insensible, senseless, stony-hearted people, who today seem to suffer along with Christ and to be crucified together with Him, but tomorrow or the day after will crucify Him! But how long will this be with us, brothers? How long will we play the hypocrite? How long will we serve the devil and offend the Lord in the most grievous way? Here is the thing, brothers: if our stony hearts do not split apart, with their manifold malices, their attachments, their impurities; if we do not remove from them little faith, unbelief, coldness, overeating and drunkenness, lewdness, malice, pride, envy, sloth and idleness, and the other passions, then one day we shall be condemned by those very rocks that split apart at the time of Christ’s death. If we do not repent and turn to God with all our heart, then we shall hurl ourselves into that hell from which the Son of God came to deliver us. Yes, brothers, it is true! “Unless you repent, you will all perish” (Lk 13:3). “How much worse a punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled on the Son of God, and counted as unclean the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said: Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebr 10:29-31). Amen.

A Homily on Great and Holy Friday Before the Epitaphios

“Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” (Jn 1:29)

Behold, my brothers, the Lamb of God, who has taken upon Himself our sins, my sins, the sins of each of you. Behold the incarnate Only-begotten Son of God, torn to pieces by human envy and malice! What is humanity, then! O how dark, how repulsive is the picture of human malice! Let us fall down before Him in confession and weep before the Lord who created us and who, at the end of the ages, suffered and died for us. With fear and love let us fall, in heart and with our lips, upon these wounds—with fear, for to this day our sins stink before Him and cry out for our punishment; with love, for these wounds and His death were taken upon Himself out of His unspeakable love for us, and naturally call us to love! “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world”. How consoling these words are for the believing soul! In them is contained our firm hope in the infinite mercy of the heavenly Father, who has been reconciled with us transgressors through the sacrifice of righteousness offered on the cross for our sins—that is, the infinite sacrifice of His Son. How many times have we sinned in a single day and hour, to say nothing of the sins of our whole wretched life. How our sins tormented us! But we repented with faith and heartfelt hope, we looked to the Savior, we sighed, we shed tears over our sins—and behold, they are cleansed, washed away, forgiven; we have found peace, freedom, joy. What does this mean? It means that the Lamb of God, every day, every hour, throughout all the days of our life, takes away our sins, removes them, cleanses them, forgets them, delivering us from eternal condemnation for them. Who has not experienced this in himself? And this is why, before so bloody a spectacle, one that shakes the soul, we stand in good hope, and, though in sorrow, yet in a sorrow pervaded by compunction, by joy, and by a certain solemnity: for we are assured that in this dead One is contained the life of all the living, reconciliation with God, the forgiveness of sins, and the hope of eternal life. Throughout all the world Christians now venerate the wounds of the Savior with the most reverent compunction, and tenderly kiss them, and everywhere, by all believing hearts, the life-giving power of the saving sufferings and death of the Lord is felt: for unceasingly and everywhere He takes away the sins of all repentant sinners, has mercy on them, cleanses, renews, and saves them. O our Savior! From how many spiritual deaths have You saved me too, and each of us. I confess today, in this hour, before this devout assembly, O my Savior, Your mercies shown to me, a sinner beyond all men—that You have saved me from countless spiritual deaths, have saved and still save me from all sorrows, from all falls into sin. And it is only by Your mercy that I am not to this day in the pit of perdition, for I will say with the prophet David: “the pangs of death compassed me, and the torrents of iniquity troubled me; the pangs of hell surrounded me, the snares of death confronted me. And in my affliction I called upon the Lord, and cried out to my God” (Ps 17:5-7): and He always inclined mercifully to the cry of my heart, showed me His wondrous salvation, forgave my sins, dispelled my sorrows, and led me out of terrible straits into a broad place. Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away my sins! Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away your sins too! Come, then, with tears of repentance and with love let us kiss the wounds of this Lamb, who has taken upon Himself the sins of the world. And You, O immeasurable Goodness, Lord of heaven and earth—send down yet more of Your blessing upon us, stir up in us sincere repentance and unfeigned love; bear yet a while longer with the world that is perishing in its sins, and by Your shaking signs awaken it from the heavy sleep of sin. Amen.

A Homily Before the Epitaphios on Great Friday

“If I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all to Myself” (Jn 12:32)—that is, if I am lifted up on the cross, then by My sufferings on the cross I will redeem the whole world, and by the power of My cross I will draw to Myself a multitude of the chosen. This, among other things, is what our Lord Jesus Christ said not long before His sufferings for us. O Christ, our love, and I will say again: O Christ, our love! To what has Your love for us brought You! You were spat upon, struck on the cheek, wounded, and You died in inexpressible sufferings on the cross. O Christ, our love! How strongly You have loved us!

Beyond measure great are Your sufferings for the world, but beyond measure great also are the fruits of Your sufferings: “by Your wound we have all been healed” (1Pet 2:24; Is 53:5). You endure sufferings in order to free us from the passions; You accepted the crown of thorns so that our hearts might not be torn cheerlessly, like prickling and burning needles, by the thorns of sins; You accepted wounds so that repentant sinners might hide in Your wounds from the arrows of heavenly wrath; You endured the cross in order to grant us in it a mighty weapon against our invisible enemies, who fight fiercely against us, and, I will say finally, You endure the fierce torments of the cross in order to deliver Your faithful followers from the still fiercer, unceasing torments of hell—and the end of all this is one: to draw us to Yourself and to unite us with Yourself forever.

Thus, beloved, our Head—Christ—suffers so that His whole body, that is, we, might be at ease; our Head is consumed by the fire of the torments of the cross in order to deliver His members from sins and from the eternal fire of Gehenna. Who can grasp with his mind, or feel with his heart, the whole worth of this benefaction? He alone knows fully how great is His sacrifice for us: for He alone knew and saw, as though present, the eternal torments of sinners and all the fierceness of the eternal torments, when He said of sinners: “these will go away into eternal torment” (Mt 25:46), which will unfailingly, in very deed, overtake the unrepentant sinners. But we—“we scarcely understand the things that are on earth, and the things in our own hands we find with difficulty”, and very often we do not understand the whole calamity of our present condition—“but the things that are in the heavens”, that is, what will be after death, “who has searched them out?” (Solom 9:16)? O our most precious Savior! What shall we bring You in return for Your infinitely great sacrifice for us? Faith and love. So, beloved, believe with all your heart, without the least doubt, that the Only-begotten, incarnate Son of God suffered for you also—yes, for you also—in order to deliver you from the eternal torments to which we were bound to be subjected by the justice of the heavenly Father, and to which we shall now be subjected if we do not believe with all our heart in His Son, who took upon Himself the sins of the world, and keep His commandments; bring His torments close to your heart, value them as far as you can with your weak minds, and let each of you bear magnanimously, without murmuring, with thanksgiving to God, his own sorrows, illnesses, and sufferings in his own life, and let the fire of love blaze in your hearts toward Him who out of love for you endures the tormenting fire of sufferings both bodily and of the soul. Let each of you flee from lovelessness, hatred, and discord among yourselves: because our mutual lovelessness and hatred pierces, as with arrows, the heart of the Lord, who loved us even to the cross and death, and excludes us from the number of His followers; let no one attach his heart to the world, to its pleasures: our place is not in this world; no, our place is in heaven: “where I am, there they also will be with Me” (Jn 17:24), said the Savior of His followers. “Our citizenship is in the heavens” (Phil 3:20), says the Apostle. The world with its goods is not worthy of us: heaven must be in our thoughts and in our heart. Let us more often be carried there by our thoughts and desires.

O Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, who suffered willingly for our sake, You said, as You went to Your sufferings: “if I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all to Myself” (Jn 12:32). Draw us, then, to Yourself, into Your kingdom, by Your grace. Amen.

A Homily on Great Friday Before the Epitaphios

I see a man tormented, slain, wrapped in linen and laid in the tomb. But who is this? Who is this victim of malice and vengeance? Not a man only, but the God-Man, the Son of the living God, Jesus Christ. For what was the innocent, sinless, righteous, and immeasurably loving God-Man slain? By whom was He slain, and where are the murderers? He was slain because He loved people as no one ever has; and those who ought to have understood this love did not want to understand it; because He did them many—countless many—benefactions such as no one else has done; and yet these benefactions were interpreted perversely; because He worked many of the greatest, most beneficial miracles, such as no one else has worked, and yet people looked upon these miracles with cunning malice; because He called Himself, when it was needful, that which He is—namely, the Son of God, come to save those who are perishing; because He exposed crying injustices; because the whole world went after Him, the whole people—witnesses of His miracles and partakers of His benefactions, who nevertheless soon forgot these benefactions and miracles: this is why the God-Man was slain. By whom was He slain? By the Jews, those who had also killed the prophets who exposed their injustice and iniquities before the coming of the Savior; by the Jews, God’s chosen people, to whom God had shown a countless multitude of benefactions, of astonishing miracles, sung to this day daily by the Orthodox Church. But here, however, is the greatest mystery, into which we all now especially need to look deeply: the tormentors and murderers of the Son of God were not the Jews and pagan Romans alone; in these torments and in this murder all of us too are very, very much to blame. Why? Because the Son of God, Jesus Christ, as the Savior of the world, was the victim of our sins; suffering and dying, He received from the all-righteous heavenly Father, in His humanity, the punishment for the sins of us all. The Jews did to the God-Man what perhaps we too would have done with our passions, had we been in their place—and indeed, to tell the truth, what we do even now, only on a smaller scale and in a different form, to certain of our neighbors. So then, look more intently upon this divine Sufferer, this three-days’ dead One. This is the victim of our sins. This is the victim of God’s infinite love for the world that is perishing in its sins, and consequently for me and for you, beloved brother. The Son of God took upon Himself, in place of me and in place of you, the horrors of eternal justice, of the eternal punishment that lay before me and before you; He drank the cup of the righteous wrath and fury of God the Almighty, which I and you ought to have drunk; He took upon Himself all the burning, sharp arrows from God’s quiver, prepared for sinners, which should have struck and scorched me and you eternally—the ungrateful and evil-natured sinner. The eternal righteousness and wisdom of God, through men themselves, punished the God-Man on behalf of men. In terror and reverence I bow before the justice of God, before the holiness of the Tri-hypostatic Godhead, which—for the casting away of the injustice of sin and for the sanctification of the sinful man created in the image and likeness of God—in the Person of the Father was pleased to punish, on behalf of men, the most holy God-Man; in the Person of the Son was pleased to become incarnate and to take upon Himself the punishment for all human injustices; and in the Person of the Holy Spirit was pleased to sanctify repentant sinners, to renew them, and to pour Himself out in tenderest and holiest love into their hearts. Brothers! Attend to the mystery. Consider how dreadful, how repulsive, how hateful to God is the sin that has entered into men, how dreadful is the punishment for sin, when the all-holy and righteous Lord did not spare His beloved Son, but gave Him up for us to such sufferings and death. If God’s righteousness dealt thus with the green tree—that is, with the God-Man—then what will become of the dry, barren tree, such as we sinners are? So then, fellow sinners! Be afraid to keep adding sins to sins, iniquities to iniquities. Looking upon this divine Sufferer, learn to hate and loathe, from now on and forever, every sin, and to love righteousness and virtue. But if we keep adding sins to sins deliberately and knowingly, and in this way crucify the Son of God within ourselves often and repeatedly; if we repent hypocritically and commune of the divine Mysteries unworthily; if, having confessed and partaken of the Holy Mysteries unto cleansing and sanctification, we live fearlessly, according to the whims of a corrupt heart, then these very wounds in the hands and the feet and the side of our Savior will be to us not unto salvation but unto condemnation, and then no one, forever and ever, will deliver us from the torments of Gehenna.

My brothers! Let us bring to the Lord, who suffered and died for us, tears of sincere repentance and compunction, and let us live in unceasing repentance and well-doing. Amen.

A Homily Before the Holy Epitaphios on Great Friday

O Life, how do You die? (Sticheron for Great Saturday)

Come, all creation: let us bring the funeral hymns to the Creator. O countless hosts of the heavenly powers! All you rational dwellers born of earth! Come, let us bring the funeral hymns to our common Creator, who after the fiercest sufferings rests peacefully in the tomb! Let us draw near to Him and begin to ask Him: “Why are You numbered among the dead, You who live in the highest and are uncontainable by the heavens, and are received as a stranger into a little tomb?” How is it that You, the immortal Author of life, have Yourself tasted death, and like a mortal are laid in the tomb? How did it come to pass that Your weak but malicious creatures, men, brought You to the tomb? Clearly You willingly consented to ascend the cross in the flesh: otherwise, who would have dared to touch You, O Almighty? Clearly there is here a great mystery, which Your evildoers, and the prince of darkness himself, did not know. And indeed, people did not know what they were doing to Jesus. Clearly, from this extreme condescension of Yours toward men much good will come to them: for You do all things only for the increase of the good and the blessedness of Your creatures. You must have suffered out of great necessity, with a most gracious and most wise purpose: You “have made all things in wisdom” (Ps 103:24), and You “are good to all” (Ps 144:9): can it be that Your sufferings and Your death were not the work of Your infinite wisdom and goodness? Hear, brothers, the answer to this from the Lord Himself, who suffered for us: “unless a grain of wheat, falling into the ground, dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (Jn 12:24). And so here, brothers, is the mystery of the death of Jesus Christ, God and man: as a grain of wheat, if it does not die when it falls into the ground, remains alone, but if it dies, brings forth much fruit; so also the Savior died in order to bring by His death the greatest benefit to men, as indeed He did. Christ the Savior, the Son of God, took upon Himself the great work—to redeem and to justify us sinners by His sufferings and death before the heavenly Father: this is “our justification” (Rom 4:25), says the Apostle, and therefore His death for us, with the sufferings that preceded it, is the work of God’s greatest love and wisdom toward us, which no created mind can value at its true worth; and since this death is the work of God’s wisdom, it is also the greatest mystery. What a comforting truth! The death of the Savior is the cleansing sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. “He is the propitiation”, says the holy Apostle John the Theologian, “for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world” (1Jn 2:2). He died, and His death on the cross destroyed our curse, which we had earned from the heavenly Father by our sins. He died: and eternal death, which without a Redeemer must inevitably have overtaken us, now no longer holds sway over us. He is our righteousness in the midst of our unrighteousness; our deliverance in the time of our despair; our sanctification in the midst of our impurities; He is our light in our darkness; our life in our death. Does the righteous judgment of God frighten you when you picture your unrighteous deeds? And “there is no peace in the bones” of yours “because of the sins” of yours (Ps 37:4): the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ will justify you before the heavenly Father. “It is God who justifies; who is he who condemns? It is Christ Jesus who died, and rather is risen again, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us” (Rom 8:34). Do you despair of obtaining the kingdom of heaven, finding yourself unworthy of it? Truly, none of men is worthy of it. But Christ, our Lord, is worthy; by His priceless Blood He has earned it for us. On His worthiness our worthiness too depends. By His worthiness He has made even us unworthy ones worthy: and it is by His grace that the good and man-loving heavenly Father, in His matchless mercy, accounts men worthy of the kingdom of heaven. You will say: I am a great sinner. But Christ the Savior “came into the world” “to save sinners” (1Tim 1:15). Only do not sin deliberately and with malice for the time to come. You say: how can I be and rejoice with the saints, who shone on earth with such virtues? But the saints too were saved by the grace of Christ. If it seems too much for you to be together with the saints, then pray to be at least together with the thief, crying out: “remember me, O Lord, in Your kingdom” (Lk 23:42), and strive to live as a Christian ought.

We are all sinners, brothers; but if we believe in Christ our Lord, crucified for us, and strive to live according to His teaching, if we resist sin, or, though we fall, yet rise again, then the death of the Savior, His wounds, are our defense (Rom 3:25): we shall escape the torments of hell and be accounted worthy of the heavenly kingdom. If we magnanimously bear the sorrows, illnesses, deprivations, and various misfortunes of life, and account them a due recompense to ourselves for our own sins, remembering with faith and love the dread Passion of the Savior endured for our sake, then blessed are we: the crucified Lord will save us. But woe to those who are Christians in name only, and who trample on His saving teaching by their contempt for Him, or by their insolent speculations about Him (Rom 2:8), who live according to the will of their own heart in unrighteousness, in impurity, in forgetfulness of God: they ought to be horrified at their dreadful condition: “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebr 10:31). God “will miserably destroy the wicked” (Mt 21:41). Unrepentant sinners will not be saved by the death of the Giver of life, but condemned; but sinners who repent sincerely of their falls, who have heartfelt faith in the Lord and hope in Him, and who cleanse themselves from their sins, will be saved by Him: by His sufferings on the cross the Savior will cover over their sins, committed through human weakness. O Christ God, who was crucified and by death trampled down death—save us! Amen.

A Homily on Holy and Great Friday

“My God, My God, why haveYou forsaken Me?” (Mt 27:46)

Thus cried out the Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus, nailed to the cross for the sins of the world—and therefore for yours and mine as well, brothers and sisters. “My God, My God! why have You forsaken Me?” He cried out according to His human nature, which had infirmities but not sins. But how could God the Father, who had sent Him into the world for the salvation of the world, forsake His Only-begotten, His beloved Son? The Godhead was inseparable, and for endless ages will remain inseparable, from the human nature of Jesus Christ. This forsaking means, then, beloved brothers, that the human nature in Jesus Christ was given over to all the torment, to all the horror of the sufferings of the cross, to all that dreadful, mortal grief which He experienced even in the garden of Gethsemane before He was seized by the band of evildoers led by Judas Iscariot. Even then He began to be horrified and to be anguished, and He said to the disciples: “My soul is sorrowful unto death; stay here, and keep watch with Me” (Mt 26:38). Imagine, then, what the bodily torments were, what was the grief of the all-righteous and all-loving, sensitive soul of the God-Man, who endured execution for all human sins—for the sins of Adam and Eve and of all their descendants without exception, and therefore for yours and mine as well! And you and I, brothers, are greater sinners, and are liable to countless punishments for our countless iniquities. Judge, I say, judge what was the sharpness, the bitterness, and the burning of the torments of the cross, what was the grief of soul of the Lamb of God, who took upon Himself the sins of the world, how heavy was His forsaking by God—that is, the giving over of His humanity to all the burning of the sufferings, and of His soul to all the crushing, boundless, dreadful grief. After this you will understand in what state was the soul of the God-Man hanging on the cross, when He cried out: “My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Yes, it was, together with His most pure body, in a state of dreadful sufferings, unimaginable and beyond depiction. Learn, then, from this, O man, whoever you may be, the bitterness, the absurdity, the ugliness, the abomination, the madness, the repulsiveness, the tormenting and death-dealing power of sin; learn how contrary to nature it is for us, how alien to our divine nature, created in the image of God, and how the all-holy, all-perfect, all-good Godhead abhors it, and after this let all of you judge how we ought to deal with sin, which seduces us and defiles and perverts our nature, corrupting it, casting it into eternal dishonor, into eternal grief, into eternal torment—if we do not hate it, that is, sin, with all our soul, if we do not repent of our iniquities, if we do not turn away from sin completely. Picture, imagine what would become of us if the Only-begotten Son of God had not suffered for our sins and satisfied the righteousness of God, and if God had forsaken us forever, withdrawing His grace! Oh, the mere imagining, the mere faint picturing of it freezes the blood and casts the soul into trembling. Oh, if only I and all sinners always remembered this forsaking of unrepentant sinners by God, especially when sin tempts us, and all fled from sin more than from a serpent, than from a bloodthirsty beast, than from a cruel enemy. Oh, then there would be far more who are saved; then the earth would not be smitten with terrible calamities for the sins of man: with crop failures, floods, destructive earthquakes that strike down thousands of human lives, sweeping epidemics, the spoiling of the fruits, devastating fires. Then it would be a paradise of God, abounding in righteousness and in every natural gift of God. Then there would be peace and safety on the earth; there would be none of these terrible crimes, among which we recently saw the most dreadful of the dreadful—the brazen and malicious murder, in broad daylight, of a peace-loving and loving, meek Tsar. Oh, how the world is now overflowing with transgressors and transgressions! But how much longer is it to exist—this sinful world, this earth, the dwelling place of sin, stained with the blood of guiltless and innocent victims, this gathering of every abomination? Is not the time of the universal purification by fire already drawing near? Yes, it is surely near at hand now. If the Apostles in their time spoke of its nearness, then all the more decisively can we speak of the nearness of the end of the age.

Brothers and sisters! While there is still time for us, let us draw near with fervent repentance to the Savior of the world, and with love and tears kiss His wounds, endured for us. Let us love righteousness, let us love mercy, that we may obtain mercy. Amen.

A Homily on Holy and Great Friday (40)

Christ is risen!

Beloved brothers, here the bright Sunday has passed and carried away our deeds to the throne of the heavenly Master and Judge: there, brothers, there now our deeds are. I say this to frighten with fear of heavenly judgment those who have unworthily, not Christianly, spent the feast of the Bright Resurrection of Christ, and to comfort those who spent it in abstinence and spiritual joy.

How did very many receive and spend the feast of the Bright Resurrection? I would not wish to recall in memory the vile deeds of men, but one must remember them and condemn them in the name of God together with those who committed them. The all-bright feast was received after the bright paschal service with dark deeds: with intemperance and drunkenness, with fights, with foul language and every kind of sin. You would think we fasted before the feast only so that we could with greater greed rush to all fleshly sinful deeds. Alas! Woe, woe to us!

All those who met the feast with intemperance and drunkenness, with adultery, with foul language, and other like deeds of the flesh have lost all the benefit they had received (if indeed they received any) from the fast, have lost the benefit of repentance and of the communion of the holy Mysteries, and have trampled them underfoot like unreasoning beasts; they have lost the time favorable for salvation that was given us by the mercy of the Lord, and they will never bring that time back. “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2Cor 6:2)—so it was fitting to say to you during the holy fast, for it was then that you were drawing near to the saving bath of repentance and to the Mysteries of the body and blood of the Lord that cleanse the faithful. From now on your confession and communion are put off until the next fast, and who knows whether or not the Lord will grant you to confess and commune again? Who knows whether you may not die in the very same iniquities with which, after the bath of repentance, you have defiled yourselves once more? How painful, how pitiful it is, beloved brothers, that so soon you have shown yourselves traitors to Christ and have gone over to the side of the devil, to serve him, the murderer of man from the beginning, the author and teacher of every sin! You—and I say this to you in the words of the Savior, and to myself, a great sinner, as well—“you are of your father the devil, and you want to carry out the desires of your father” (Jn 8:44).

What then remains for us to do, beloved brothers? To pray and to weep over our sins. To weep that so many of us met the feast in a way that was not Christian and not even human, but like vile idolaters and like wild beasts that have long been kept from food, that have long gone unfed with their favorite fare; to weep that we have trampled the greatest, soul-saving mysteries of Christ—repentance and communion—and have counted them as nothing; to weep that we have senselessly lost the time given us for salvation. Let us weep and beseech the Lord that He “be not angry with us to the uttermost, and destroy us not with our iniquities” (Prayer before sleep, troparion, “Glory”), but rather turn us to the path of repentance and make us skillful doers of His commandments. Let us resolve firmly from now on not to give ourselves over to intemperance and drunkenness and all the sins that arise from them, and with tears let us ask the Lord to strengthen us by the grace of the Holy Spirit in our resolve and our doing of good.

Brothers! Let us all shed tears; for all of us unworthily received the greatest feast of the Lord and all of us angered our Lord: not so, not so in truth should we all receive the feasts of the Lord. We should receive them with spiritual joy about the Lord, about our deliverance from sins and about eternal salvation through Christ, the Son of God, by works of mercy, by abstaining from passions, by visiting the temple of God in spirit and truth, and by simplicity in food and dress.

O, you adorned with gold and multitude of precious fabrics, women and maidens! To you from the name of the Lord I turn my speech! What multitude of poor you could have gladdened on the most bright day of the Resurrection of Christ, and thus worthily received this greatest feast, if by generosity and Christian love you had turned at least some of your ornaments into money and given this money to the poor, of whom there are so many in our city? How prudent you would have been according to Christ if you had fewer precious garments! Yes, truly Christianly you would have received the feast of Christ’s Resurrection. But now what? You are adorned like idols, but the members of Christ are without clothes; you are satiated, but the members of Christ are in hunger. We do not have Christian love: we do not have for us the true feast of the Resurrection of Christ: for truly feasts the resurrection he who himself has risen from the dead of deeds for deeds of virtue, for faith and Christian love, who has trampled intemperance, luxury, and all passions. Brothers! Let us celebrate the feasts of the Lord as Christians, not as pagans! Amen.

Scripture Index

Every Scripture reference identified in this book, sorted in canonical Bible order. Tap a reference to jump to the verse where it appears.

Genesis

Genesis 3:521. Homily for the Second Week of Great Lent (21.3)

Genesis 6:39. A Sermon on the Meatfare Sunday (9.7)

Genesis 8:2121. Homily for the Second Week of Great Lent (21.3)

Leviticus

Leviticus 19:25. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (5.6)

Numbers

Numbers 16:1–3528. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (28) (28.1)

Psalms

Psalms 5:59. A Sermon on the Meatfare Sunday (9.9)

Psalms 7:108. A Discourse on the Meatfare Sunday (8.3)

Psalms 13:15. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (5.7)

Psalms 17:5–735. A Homily on Great and Holy Friday Before the Epitaphios (35.2)

Psalms 37:438. A Homily Before the Holy Epitaphios on Great Friday (38.2)

Psalms 50:193. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican (3.3)

Psalms 72:274. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican (4.5)

Psalms 102:214. Homily for Wednesday of the First Week of Great Lent (14.9)

Psalms 103:2438. A Homily Before the Holy Epitaphios on Great Friday (38.2)

Psalms 114:63. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican (3.5)

Psalms 118:1336. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (6.4)

Psalms 144:938. A Homily Before the Holy Epitaphios on Great Friday (38.2)

Psalms 149:98. A Discourse on the Meatfare Sunday (8.5)

Proverbs

Proverbs 24:277. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (7) (7.4)

Proverbs 28:2719. Word for the Second Week of Great Lent (19.11)

Isaiah

Isaiah 5:213. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican (3.4)

Isaiah 40:618. Word for the Sunday of Orthodoxy (18.3)

Isaiah 40:6–75. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (5.8)

Isaiah 53:536. A Homily Before the Epitaphios on Great Friday (36.2)

Isaiah 58:818. Word for the Sunday of Orthodoxy (18.5)

Isaiah 59:227. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (27) (27.4)

Jeremiah

Jeremiah 17:102. Great Lent (2.7)

Jeremiah 18:116. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (6.4)

Jeremiah 25:56. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (6.4)

Ezekiel

Ezekiel 33:1118. Word for the Sunday of Orthodoxy (18.3)

Tobit

Tobit 12:1125. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (25) (25.4)

Wisdom

Wisdom 2:244. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican (4.7)

Wisdom 9:1636. A Homily Before the Epitaphios on Great Friday (36.3)

Matthew

Matthew 3:1013. Homily for Forgiveness Sunday (13) (13.1); 32. A Homily on the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast (32.2)

Matthew 5:77. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (7) (7.6); 8. A Discourse on the Meatfare Sunday (8.3); 11. A Sermon on the Cheese Fare Sunday (11.8)

Matthew 5:4821. Homily for the Second Week of Great Lent (21.4)

Matthew 6:49. A Sermon on the Meatfare Sunday (9.10)

Matthew 6:14–2110. A Discourse on the Cheese Fare Sunday (10.5)

Matthew 6:19–2110. A Discourse on the Cheese Fare Sunday (10.8)

Matthew 6:20–2112. Homily for Forgiveness Sunday (12.10)

Matthew 6:2112. Homily for Forgiveness Sunday (12.11)

Matthew 6:2231. A Homily for the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast (31.2)

Matthew 6:2419. Word for the Second Week of Great Lent (19.9)

Matthew 7:119. Word for the Second Week of Great Lent (19.11)

Matthew 9:221. Homily for the Second Week of Great Lent (21.2, 21.3)

Matthew 9:3520. Discourse for the Second Week of Great Lent (20.4)

Matthew 11:23–2419. Word for the Second Week of Great Lent (19.7)

Matthew 11:2910. A Discourse on the Cheese Fare Sunday (10.6)

Matthew 18:1121. Homily for the Second Week of Great Lent (21.3)

Matthew 18:2030. A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of the Great Fast (30.6)

Matthew 19:2613. Homily for Forgiveness Sunday (13) (13.1)

Matthew 21:17–2232. A Homily on the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast (32.1)

Matthew 21:18–4332. A Homily on the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast (32.1)

Matthew 21:2232. A Homily on the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast (32.2)

Matthew 21:4138. A Homily Before the Holy Epitaphios on Great Friday (38.3)

Matthew 25:1–1331. A Homily for the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast (31.1)

Matthew 25:11–1316. Discourse on Receiving the Holy Mysteries (16.3)

Matthew 25:32–468. A Discourse on the Meatfare Sunday (8.3)

Matthew 25:3419. Word for the Second Week of Great Lent (19.7)

Matthew 25:4636. A Homily Before the Epitaphios on Great Friday (36.3)

Matthew 26:3839. A Homily on Holy and Great Friday (39.3)

Matthew 28:2030. A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of the Great Fast (30.6)

Mark

Mark 2:1–219. Word for the Second Week of Great Lent (19.7)

Mark 2:219. Word for the Second Week of Great Lent (19.9)

Mark 2:3–419. Word for the Second Week of Great Lent (19.10)

Mark 2:519. Word for the Second Week of Great Lent (19.10, 19.11); 20. Discourse for the Second Week of Great Lent (20.4, 20.5, 20.8)

Mark 2:6–719. Word for the Second Week of Great Lent (19.11)

Mark 2:719. Word for the Second Week of Great Lent (19.11)

Mark 2:8–1221. Homily for the Second Week of Great Lent (21.2)

Mark 2:8–919. Word for the Second Week of Great Lent (19.11)

Mark 2:1020. Discourse for the Second Week of Great Lent (20.8)

Mark 2:10–1219. Word for the Second Week of Great Lent (19.11)

Mark 2:11–1220. Discourse for the Second Week of Great Lent (20.4)

Mark 5:3414. Homily for Wednesday of the First Week of Great Lent (14.11)

Mark 8:34–3827. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (27) (27.4)

Mark 8:3527. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (27) (27.4)

Mark 8:36–3727. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (27) (27.4)

Mark 8:3824. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (24.5); 27. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (27) (27.4)

Mark 9:1828. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (28) (28.1)

Mark 9:21–2228. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (28) (28.1)

Mark 9:2328. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (28) (28.1)

Mark 9:2428. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (28) (28.1)

Mark 9:25–2728. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (28) (28.1)

Mark 9:2928. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (28) (28.1)

Mark 10:33–3429. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (29) (29.1); 30. A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of the Great Fast (30.5)

Mark 10:43–4430. A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of the Great Fast (30.7)

Mark 10:43–4529. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (29) (29.1)

Mark 10:4530. A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of the Great Fast (30.6)

Mark 13:3132. A Homily on the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast (32.2)

Mark 13:337. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (7) (7.6)

Luke

Luke 10:30–372. Great Lent (2.6)

Luke 12:207. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (7) (7.6)

Luke 12:3410. A Discourse on the Cheese Fare Sunday (10.8)

Luke 13:334. A Homily on Great Monday (34.2)

Luke 15:11–324. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican (4.4)

Luke 15:155. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (5.5)

Luke 15:165. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (5.5)

Luke 15:175. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (5.5, 5.10)

Luke 15:184. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican (4.6)

Luke 15:21–246. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (6.4)

Luke 15:294. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican (4.4)

Luke 16:19–317. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (7) (7.7)

Luke 17:102. Great Lent (2.11); 3. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican (3.5)

Luke 18:132. Great Lent (2.9); 3. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican (3.2); 13. Homily for Forgiveness Sunday (13) (13.1)

Luke 18:142. Great Lent (2.9); 3. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican (3.2)

Luke 19:82. Great Lent (2.5)

Luke 21:1927. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (27) (27.4)

Luke 21:344. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican (4.7)

Luke 21:367. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (7) (7.6)

Luke 23:2833. A Homily on the Song Behold, the Bridegroom Comes at Midnight (33.2)

Luke 23:4238. A Homily Before the Holy Epitaphios on Great Friday (38.2)

John

John 1:45–4817. Discourse in the First Week of Great Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy (17.3)

John 1:4717. Discourse in the First Week of Great Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy (17.7)

John 1:4917. Discourse in the First Week of Great Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy (17.3)

John 1:5116. Discourse on Receiving the Holy Mysteries (16.3)

John 5:1416. Discourse on Receiving the Holy Mysteries (16.2); 20. Discourse for the Second Week of Great Lent (20.8)

John 5:28–2931. A Homily for the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast (31.2)

John 6:5415. Discourse on Repentance (15.3)

John 6:5615. Discourse on Repentance (15.3)

John 8:1121. Homily for the Second Week of Great Lent (21.3)

John 8:442. Great Lent (2.7); 40. A Homily on Holy and Great Friday (40) (40.4)

John 9:47. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (7) (7.6)

John 12:2438. A Homily Before the Holy Epitaphios on Great Friday (38.2)

John 12:2627. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (27) (27.4)

John 12:3236. A Homily Before the Epitaphios on Great Friday (36.1, 36.4)

John 13:1517. Discourse in the First Week of Great Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy (17.7)

John 13:3410. A Discourse on the Cheese Fare Sunday (10.6)

John 15:52. Great Lent (2.12); 3. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican (3.5)

John 17:2436. A Homily Before the Epitaphios on Great Friday (36.3)

John 19:3030. A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of the Great Fast (30.6)

Acts

Acts 17:274. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican (4.6)

Romans

Romans 1:1625. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (25) (25.4)

Romans 2:838. A Homily Before the Holy Epitaphios on Great Friday (38.3)

Romans 3:2538. A Homily Before the Holy Epitaphios on Great Friday (38.3)

Romans 4:2538. A Homily Before the Holy Epitaphios on Great Friday (38.2)

Romans 6:11–145. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (5.10)

Romans 6:2318. Word for the Sunday of Orthodoxy (18.3)

Romans 8:3438. A Homily Before the Holy Epitaphios on Great Friday (38.2)

Romans 13:12–145. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (5.10)

Romans 13:136. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (6.3)

Romans 14:179. A Sermon on the Meatfare Sunday (9.7)

Romans 15:1–230. A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of the Great Fast (30.7)

1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians 3:166. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (6.4); 32. A Homily on the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast (32.2)

1 Corinthians 4:72. Great Lent (2.8)

1 Corinthians 5:518. Word for the Sunday of Orthodoxy (18.3)

1 Corinthians 6:1715. Discourse on Repentance (15.3)

1 Corinthians 6:205. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (5.10)

1 Corinthians 10:1716. Discourse on Receiving the Holy Mysteries (16.2)

1 Corinthians 11:2713. Homily for Forgiveness Sunday (13) (13.1)

1 Corinthians 11:2915. Discourse on Repentance (15.7)

1 Corinthians 13:1–332. A Homily on the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast (32.2)

1 Corinthians 13:4–811. A Sermon on the Cheese Fare Sunday (11.7); 32. A Homily on the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast (32.2)

1 Corinthians 15:505. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (5.10); 9. A Sermon on the Meatfare Sunday (9.7)

2 Corinthians

2 Corinthians 6:240. A Homily on Holy and Great Friday (40) (40.4)

2 Corinthians 12:925. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (25) (25.4)

2 Corinthians 13:532. A Homily on the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast (32.2)

Galatians

Galatians 3:276. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (6.4)

Galatians 5:2232. A Homily on the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast (32.2)

Galatians 6:229. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (29) (29.1)

Galatians 6:1032. A Homily on the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast (32.2)

Ephesians

Ephesians 5:1521. Homily for the Second Week of Great Lent (21.4)

Ephesians 5:2717. Discourse in the First Week of Great Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy (17.4)

Ephesians 5:3015. Discourse on Repentance (15.3)

Ephesians 6:1225. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (25) (25.4); 30. A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of the Great Fast (30.6)

Philippians

Philippians 2:122. Great Lent (2.7)

Philippians 3:2036. A Homily Before the Epitaphios on Great Friday (36.3)

Philippians 4:733. A Homily on the Song Behold, the Bridegroom Comes at Midnight (33.2)

2 Thessalonians

2 Thessalonians 3:1030. A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of the Great Fast (30.7)

1 Timothy

1 Timothy 1:1538. A Homily Before the Holy Epitaphios on Great Friday (38.2)

1 Timothy 2:228. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (28) (28.1)

1 Timothy 3:1517. Discourse in the First Week of Great Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy (17.4)

2 Timothy

2 Timothy 3:1225. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (25) (25.4)

Hebrews

Hebrews 2:119. Word for the Second Week of Great Lent (19.9)

Hebrews 2:1823. Homily for the Third Week of Great Lent (23.1)

Hebrews 5:1–1023. Homily for the Third Week of Great Lent (23.1)

Hebrews 9:11–1429. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (29) (29.1)

Hebrews 9:2731. A Homily for the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast (31.2)

Hebrews 10:26–3021. Homily for the Second Week of Great Lent (21.5)

Hebrews 10:29–3134. A Homily on Great Monday (34.2)

Hebrews 10:3138. A Homily Before the Holy Epitaphios on Great Friday (38.3)

Hebrews 13:1517. Discourse in the First Week of Great Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy (17.5)

James

James 2:137. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (7) (7.6); 8. A Discourse on the Meatfare Sunday (8.3)

James 4:45. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (5.8); 13. Homily for Forgiveness Sunday (13) (13.1)

James 5:97. A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (7) (7.6)

1 Peter

1 Peter 1:165. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (5.6)

1 Peter 1:245. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (5.8)

1 Peter 2:119. A Sermon on the Meatfare Sunday (9.8)

1 Peter 2:2436. A Homily Before the Epitaphios on Great Friday (36.2)

1 Peter 5:828. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (28) (28.2)

2 Peter

2 Peter 2:2214. Homily for Wednesday of the First Week of Great Lent (14.10); 16. Discourse on Receiving the Holy Mysteries (16.2)

2 Peter 3:931. A Homily for the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast (31.2)

1 John

1 John 1:729. A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (29) (29.1)

1 John 2:1–221. Homily for the Second Week of Great Lent (21.3)

1 John 2:238. A Homily Before the Holy Epitaphios on Great Friday (38.2)

1 John 3:154. A Discourse on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican (4.7)

1 John 4:811. A Sermon on the Cheese Fare Sunday (11.7); 32. A Homily on the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast (32.2)

Revelation

Revelation 2:232. Great Lent (2.7)

Revelation 14:138. A Discourse on the Meatfare Sunday (8.5)

Revelation 21:418. Word for the Sunday of Orthodoxy (18.3)

Revelation 22:122. Great Lent (2.7)

The Author: Saint John of Kronstadt

Saint John of Kronstadt (1829–1908) was a Russian Orthodox archpriest, pastor, and spiritual writer, and one of the most beloved and influential figures of the late Russian Church. A married parish priest rather than a monk or a bishop, he became renowned across the whole empire for his fervent celebration of the Divine Liturgy, his ministry of prayer and healing, and his tireless charity among the poor of Kronstadt.

He was born Ioann Ilyich Sergiev to a poor clerical family in the far north of Russia, in the village of Sura in the Arkhangelsk province. He was educated at the Saint Petersburg Theological Academy, and in 1855 was ordained to serve at Saint Andrew’s Cathedral in Kronstadt, the naval town near the capital, where he would remain for more than half a century. He gave himself to the destitute of the town, founding the House of Diligence to give work and dignity to the poor, and thousands sought him out for confession, counsel, and prayer.

He is best remembered for his spiritual masterwork My Life in Christ, a collection of reflections drawn from his diaries on prayer, repentance, and the Eucharist, marked throughout by a vivid sense of the reality of God and of the Church’s Mysteries. His many sermons, catechetical talks, and later diaries—among them A Living Ear of Wheat and his Lenten preaching—extend the same ardent, experiential piety, and everywhere his eucharistic realism is stated without reserve.

He reposed in 1908 and was mourned throughout Russia. He was glorified by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia in 1964 and by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1990, and is commemorated on 20 December and on 1 June, the day of his glorification. His writings remain a standard of modern Orthodox spiritual life.

Colophon

Great Lent
by John of Kronstadt.

This edition was produced by
Royal Archives.

The cover features
The Church of St Basil the Blessed (1916–17)
by Nikolay Dubovskoy (Russian, 1859–1918), Wikimedia Commons, which is in the public domain.

The text is set in Palatino and Georgia.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
August 16, 2026.

Table of Contents

- Title Page
- Copyright
- Introduction
- Great Lent

- A Sermon on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican

- A Discourse on the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican

- A Discourse on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son

- A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son

- A Sermon on the Sunday of the Prodigal Son (7)

- A Discourse on the Meatfare Sunday
- A Sermon on the Meatfare Sunday
- A Discourse on the Cheese Fare Sunday
- A Sermon on the Cheese Fare Sunday
- Homily for Forgiveness Sunday
- Homily for Forgiveness Sunday (13)

- Homily for Wednesday of the First Week of Great Lent

- Discourse on Repentance

- Discourse on Receiving the Holy Mysteries

- Discourse in the First Week of Great Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy

- Word for the Sunday of Orthodoxy
- Word for the Second Week of Great Lent
- Discourse for the Second Week of Great Lent
- Homily for the Second Week of Great Lent
- Word for the Second Week of Great Lent (22)
- Homily for the Third Week of Great Lent

- A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross

- A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (25)

- A Discourse on Friday of the Middle Week of the Veneration of the Cross

- A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (27)

- A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (28)

- A Homily for the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross (29)

- A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of the Great Fast

- A Homily for the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast

- A Homily on the Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast

- A Homily on the Song Behold, the Bridegroom Comes at Midnight

- A Homily on Great Monday

- A Homily on Great and Holy Friday Before the Epitaphios

- A Homily Before the Epitaphios on Great Friday

- A Homily on Great Friday Before the Epitaphios

- A Homily Before the Holy Epitaphios on Great Friday

- A Homily on Holy and Great Friday
- A Homily on Holy and Great Friday (40)
- Scripture Index
- The Author: Saint John of Kronstadt
- Colophon