SERMON ON THE SUNDAY OF ALL SAINTS (2012) |
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Just
seven days have passed my dear Christians, since the great feast day of
Pentecost and we find ourselves again today celebrating another Feast Day,
the Feast of All Saints. In this Feast Day we celebrate, not just one, or
two or ten saints, but hundreds, thousands and millions of saints, who are
too many to even count. When we refer to All the Saints, we must
firstly think of the All Holy Mother of God, the Theotokos Maria, secondly
the Holy Prophet and Forerunner John the Baptist who is ranked as the
highest among the Saints after the Theotokos of course, then the Holy
Apostles, the Holy Prophets, the Holy God bearing Fathers, the Hierarchs and
Teachers of the Church, the Holy Hiero-Martyrs, Great-Martyrs both men
and women, the holy ascetics and finally all the righteous. If
one was to describe the saints as angels of God they would not be wrong
because they have reached the heights of the heavens and some saints will be
higher than the angels due to their efforts here on earth and the struggles
they overcame. It is said by the Fathers, that not even the stars in the sky
shine as much as the martyrs who gave their lives for Christ, and this
because their love for Christ, was strong and exceeded the love for
everything and everyone in this world. Today we heard Saint Paul say to the
Ephesians that Christ’s followers underwent great temptations and
persecutions, they; had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea,
moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn
asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in
sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom
the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and
in dens and caves of the earth. In
today’s Gospel, we heard our Lord say: Whosoever therefore shall
confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in
heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before
my Father which is in heaven. Many of us however, are unfortunately
afraid to confess Christ and His Church before friends, relatives, and
colleagues, simply because people may think less of us or they may even
think of us as fanatics or crazy. We must understand that we have nothing at
all to be ashamed of, because, we are only doing what is normal to our
Christian nature, which is none other, than to confess and keep the Faith of
our Fathers, the Faith which Christ gave to man for his salvation, the Faith
which can only be of Christ’s true Church the Ark of salvation. So many of
us are embarrassed to be open about our Faith because, we do not want to
risk becoming isolated by people and mocked by them; therefore we prefer to
maintain a good relationship and reputation with the world, rather than with
God. What profit is it to us however; if we gain the liking of people, to
the expense of losing our relationship and reputation with God? By
confessing our faith, we ultimately express our love for our fellow people,
because as the word of God becomes exposed to them through us; this allows
them to see the Truth, thus giving them a path to salvation, through
Christ’s One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, and there is no greater
act of love than this. Whoever confesses Christ as the One, True God and
Saviour and Creator of all, will too be confessed by Christ before His
Heavenly Father, yet those who deny Him, He will also deny before His Father
in Heaven. This is the message that the Church is giving us all today, but
it is not by chance at all that the Holy Fathers chose these verses of the
Gospel to be read today; they are perfectly fitting, because all saints were
confessors of the Faith in one way or another, either by mouth, or by
action. Let us also, therefore, imitate their love for Christ, Whom they
confessed and refused to deny Him, even as they were tortured and killed. Christ
then says: Think not that I am come to
send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. He that loveth
father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me: and he that loveth son or
daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. This
may seem like a very odd thing to hear from the Gospel; especially from
Christ Himself. When we think of Christ, the last thing we think about is
that He came to bring a sword to humanity, because we all know Him as the
bringer of peace, however, He specifically uses these words to capture our
attention, and to let us know that, as children of God, we must learn to
love our God and Creator above all. We must realize my dear Christians that
our relatives like everything else; are temporary in this life, and mere
creations of God, just as we are, and that our relationship to them, will
last for [only] as long as we live in this temporary life. From the
moment we die, our relationship with people ceases to exist, because our
soul will no longer be clothed with the flesh it wore while on earth. There
are those people however, [who] choose not to follow Christ, because their relatives refuse to, in fact,
there are so many people from various so called Christian churches, who
choose to remain in ignorance, rather than follow the True Church and
confess the True Faith, simply because they do not want to disappoint or
offend their relatives, despite the fact that they know what is right. At
the end of the day, by doing so, they choose not to confess Christ, but
people, therefore on that fearful Day of Judgment, Christ will not count
them worthy of Him, this was also said by Christ Himself in Matthew 7; Not
every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of
heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven. Many
will say to Me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Thy name?
and in Thy name have cast out devils? and in Thy name done many wonderful
works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from Me,
ye that work iniquity. By
putting our relatives and people before God, we show that we do not truly
believe in the One True Living God, because if we did we would have complete
trust in Him, in other words, we would look to keep His commandments and
would also look to the next life and not this present temporary and material
life. On this note, a lot of us think that our parents are our creators,
when in fact they are co-creators; it is God Who allows for people to give
birth. People tend to think differently today, however, this is a result in
humanity’s lack of Faith and apostasy from God, it is a display of their
disbelief in God. If people truly believed, they would let God’s will be
done in their lives; they would literally let Him govern their lives as He
knows to be right for them and their salvation. This is what all the saints
have done throughout their lives, they let God’s Holy Will be done and as
a result they were Blessed and honoured by God, Who not only exhonerated
them from their fallen sinful nature, but made them also inheritors of His
Holy Kingdom, which is the greatest honour of all. This is why we celebrate
all our saints on the day which they died and not on the day they were born,
because as Christians we are supposed to celebrate our birth into
everlasting life, rather than our birth into this life. I
will now touch on a subject of Birthdays and Christianity. The views I will
share with you will be regarded by many as extreme, however, as a priest, I
feel that I must say what is right before God, and not what is regarded as
“acceptable” for today’s modern society. What many people and
Christians don’t know is that celebrating birthdays is a great deception
of Satan; But why? As we know, the hour of our death is unknown to us. The
Church tells us to pray and remain vigilant and repentant, so that we may
become inheritors of the Kingdom of Heaven by the hour of our physical
death. Of course, these things are better understood as we become wiser and
spiritually mature, however, Satan, has come up with a device, which changes
the Christian way of thinking, this is birthday celebrations. Society, has
made it perfectly normal for us to celebrate birthdays. Man can no longer
see the big picture, because his heart is taken by the materialistic world,
and for such a man, seeing into eternity is impossible, because his spirit
is blind. By celebrating our birthday, we focus less on our Name Day, which
is the day we are supposed to honour our patron saint; after all,
theoretically, we were given his or her name by our parents in honour of
them. Not only do we focus less on our Name Day, but, like I am witnessing
amongst you, many of you do not even know who your patron saint is, or, when
he or she is commemorated, or why we even honour their memory. We must try
to understand my dear Christians, that we honour our saints because they
lived their lives according to God’s Will and they became living examples
for us to see that our Faith is alive and real, they are beacons of light
which help us see through the darkness of this life. By
celebrating our birthdays, or taking our children to birthday parties, we
not only put ourselves and others, above all the saints, but also we become
foolish, and why do I say this? We are basically celebrating our birth into
a life which will come to an end, and we do this every year. Is there
something great about that? Is celebrating a birth which leads to death, a
cause for celebration? If anything, we should make that day, a day for
prayer to God to have mercy on us, and we should offer God an offering of
thanksgiving, as we pray that we live the remaining time of our life in
peace and repentance, because, if we do not live according to God’s Will,
it would have been better for us, to not have been born. Through birthday
celebrations, Satan deceives us into celebrating our fallen nature, the
nature which he corrupted in the Garden of Eden, the nature which brought
death to man. On the other hand, by celebrating our Name Day, we celebrate
our liberated nature, the one for which Christ sacrificed Himself, to give
us everlasting life. The Orthodox Church celebrates only three births. The
birth of Christ, because it is the day in which people and angels physically
saw God and that because Christ became the Redeemer of mankind; the birth of
the Holy birth-giver of God, the Virgin Maria, who became the vessel in
which God became the Son of man, and the Holy prophet John the Baptist, who
prepared the way for Christ. He preached repentance and prepared people to
accept the true Messiah. Of course, in the Gospel, Christ Himself ensures us
that there has never been nor will there ever be a greater man than John the
Baptist, because he lived according to God’s Will, but to a whole new
level. He gave up all the pleasures of this life, in order to inherit the
next life. It is also worthy to note that Saint John’s beheading was
decided at the birthday celebration of King Herod. Quite often birthday
celebrations become an excuse for us to sin, and what I mean by that is,
people stop fasting if it is a fasting day, they over indulge in food,
drink, sweets and alcohol, and before you know it, people start losing
control of themselves, acting foolishly and very un-Christian like. Very
often in birthday parties people take narcotics, they sing and dance to
music which is completely Satanic, young men and women provoke each other
with indecent clothing, and deadly sins such as fornication and adultery are
committed, as well as other things. For the sake of a birthday party, people
will fall into so many sins in just one night. It starts with pride and
vanity, people dressing up to impress their egos and other people. Most of
the time people purposely dress to provoke others of the opposite gender. At
the party, gluttony, overindulgence of food and drink lead to lack of
self-control, which leads to the use of narcotics, fornication, adultery,
indecent acts, sodomy etc… After the party, the next day, those people
fall into slothfulness, which is another great sin. Now imagine, Christ
takes us at that very hour, what then? He did say to us in the Gospel: Where
I find you, I will Judge you. My
dear Christians, let us start reading the lives of our [patron] saints, because we will then begin to understand the Holy Scriptures
better, because through their actions they analyzed and translated the
Gospel, simplifying it even more for us. The
next verse of the Gospel which we heard today was: And he that taketh
not his cross, and followeth after Me, is not worthy of Me. Here our
Lord tells clearly that unless we learn to bear our cross with piety and
patience, we will not be worthy of Him. We must understand that our cross is
our gift from God, it is the means of continually remembering our end goal,
and it becomes a cleansing of our sins. As Christians, we should never ask
God to redeem us from our cross, but we should ask Him to give us the
strength and courage to bear the weight of it, until the end of our lives,
doing exactly what the Holy Martyrs did, as they remained strong in their
Faith until their last breath. Furthermore
we also heard our Lord say: And every one that hath forsaken houses,
or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or
lands, for My name’s sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit
everlasting life. In this passage Christ is clearly telling us that
the more we give up in this life, we shall receive a hundred times more in
the next life. Again, one can read in the lives of our saints, that many of
them did exactly what that passage says, in fact, if you could also take
monks and nuns for example, they too abide by these words, because they
chose to sacrifice their own pleasure, satisfaction, joy, and will, for
everlasting happiness. Our Lord then goes on saying the following edifying
words: But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be
first. If we choose to become last, meaning, if we become servants
to our brethren, and become humble in our ways, we will surely be first in
the life to come. Unfortunately, today we strive to become first in society,
and great amongst men, and if we can’t achieve these things, we look up to
people who are. From the time we are young, we develop dreams to become
rich, famous, well known, and powerful. Our parents expect us to become
successful in this life, to make a name for ourselves; they enroll us in the
finest schools, they want us to become doctors and lawyers, however, not
many parents want their children to serve God or even to become God fearing
people. In the Old Testament, one child of every family was dedicated to
God, such was God’s Law, and it’s not that God’s Law has changed,
rather humanity has changed and drifted far from God. My dear Christians, to
truly honour the All Saints, we must try to imitate them, we must [look] to them for their intercessions, we must see them as
our ambassadors in Heaven. Although
we honour saints, honour must never be confused with worship, because we
certainly do not worship Saints; they, like us are servants of God.
Unlike honour, worship applies to God alone; therefore we honour and
venerate the saints. What is most unfortunate today is that most people
honour and venerate and sometimes even worship actors, singers, football
players and other sports stars. I often ask myself, why do people love
the so called stars and celebrities so much? What have they ever done for
us? What is so important about these people, that we should keep their
pictures on our walls? Have they helped us in anyway? We sadly turn
these poor creatures of God into idols, we become excited seeing and hearing
them, and we support everything they do. In a way, their spiritual
destruction is partly our fault, because if we didn’t support them in what
they were doing, then they wouldn’t do it. They are just
pleasing themselves, chasing their greed and lusts, doing exactly what
Christians shouldn’t do, therefore pleasing Satan, and we applaud them for
doing these things. Would any of these people give their lives up for God?
No, absolutely none of these people would, because their God is Money, and
Fame. If only the younger generation was to hear or read what our saints
underwent, the tortures, the mockery, the abuse, all for the
love of Christ, then they would be putting them up on their walls and
would strive to become like them, because it is they, who are the true
heroes. The
celebrities are also known as stars, but it is the different type of stars
which shine with divine light, they are all of God’s saints. It is that
they who listen to our prayers and pray for our salvation, as they are in a
position to do so, for they are in Heaven. Celebrities become tools of
Satan, and I say this because, they become distractions to people. If only
they used their fame to bring people back to God. Let us then, turn to the
real stars and follow their footsteps into eternity. And
so my dear faithful, keeping in mind the obedience, the dedication, the
confession, the love and the Faith that all the Saints of the Church had for
God, let us too, become as they were, imitators of
Christ and living examples for the generations to come, so that we will also
become inheritors of the kingdom of God which is everlasting. So, through
the prayers of our holy fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy and
save us. Amen. Hieromonk Sozómenos |
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