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All Saints Day OCALA 2004
Today
our Holy Orthodox Church throughout the world pays homage to the thousands of
known and unknown martyrs, laboring to establish the Church founded by the Lord
Himself. Both the Epistle reading and the Gospel excerpt are replete with
profound teachings. The Epistle reading taken
from the Epistle of St. Paul to the Hebrews, describes vividly the sacrifices
and the martyrdom of the Prophets and Teachers of the Old Testament. In mentioning the Prophets
of days gone by, He continues by saying:
""some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they may rise
again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and scourging, and bound in
chains were imprisoned. They were stoned, --- they were sawn in two, --- they
were killed with the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats,
destitute --- afflicted, --- ill treated,--- of whom the world was not
worthy." The Christian Church owes
the first Christian martyrs the very edification of our I think, that in a small, or
comparable measure, these words of It is truly contemporary in
every age. Thus, Sainthood by no means is an experience of only the first
centuries. It is an ongoing process. There would be no Christian
Church today, if the Martyrs and Teachers of the New Faith had not sacrificed
themselves, so that others could benefit and enjoy. Their prime example of
course was the Lord Himself, Whose sacrifice is without parallel One of humanity's greatest
failings is to take things for granted. If we stop to seriously think we'll find
that in some measure we are guilty of this. We seem to take for granted so many
things. How many of us ever stopped to think, that because of others
sacrificing, we enjoy what we have, without having contributing anything! So many take for granted our
Religion, our Country, our health, our blessings, --- our very life, --- and a
host of so many other things. So many are unfamiliar with
the word "sacrifice!" And yet it is this very attribute, which we call
sacrifice, and which totally enriches the Christian life, because of the
pleasure one senses, when he or she give of themselves. We were created by God to
give. He gave us the breath of life, our soul, truly a part of Himself, if we
could put it that way. How true the Lord's words, "For it is in giving that
you receive!" How many Christians think in this vein? I don't think that I have to
mention here the pleasure that one receives when he or she makes someone else
happy, --- through
a kind word,--- through a helping hand, through some act of kindness, through
some gift and the like. We all have known this experience because of our
selfless love, which is rooted in God. In three
words St. Matthew in his Gospel Chapter 5: verse 48, describes the fulness of
God. He states: "God is Love!" Love is synonymous with self sacrifice.
The Lord says it so beautifully: "Greater love hath no man than this; than
to lay down his life for his friends." And as
with all instances the Lord gave substance to His teaching when he declared:
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only Begotten Son, so that
whosoever would believe in Him should not perish, but have life
everlasting" John 3:16 Our Lord
made the Supreme Sacrifice, so that we all could have the opportunity to gain
Eternal Life! Through His Crucifixion we gained the symbol of our salvation, the
Holy Cross. That is why He repeatedly called upon all followers to deny
themselves, to pick up their cross and follow after Him. In
today's Gospel lesson the Lord specified that "whoever doesn't take up his
cross and follow after Him is not worthy of Him." Only by bearing the cross
we are expected to carry, can we really possess the key that opens the Golden
Doors of the spiritual pantheon of the Christian Martyrs. That is, the heroes,
who for their faith in Christ, their faith in the spiritual light, their faith
in the enlightenment of humankind sacrificed their very life on the large or
small cross, which they were called upon to carry Some
were burned as human torches after having been rolled in tar,--- others were
thrown in the blood-soaked Arenas to be devoured by starving lions for the
pleasure of the pagans, --- and still others, were subjected to untold inhuman
tortures until they gave up the spirit. All these Martyrs sacrificed
because they loved. They loved deeply, and unreservedly. Their sacrifices gave
substance to another difficult to understand phrase in today's Gospel lesson,
when the Lord said: "He who loses his life for my sake, will find
it."" Still further these Martyrs gave meaning to the other phrase of
the Lord: "He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me;
and he who loves son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me." I truly wonder my beloved,
if our love was put to a test, how many of us would survive it? How often in my
lengthy ministry, I have seen people professing their love for God, only until
the time that this love was tested; they failed the test, because they chose to
love the creature more than the Creator. We rarely, if ever, remember
the reality, that nothing belongs to us. No' matter how vast our
possessions, we take nothing with us. All gifts and all power come from Above.
Our talents are given to us to be exercised for benefit beyond ourselves. The
abundance of our worldly possessions are given so that we do not use selfishly,
but rather as God's Stewards; to use them for the alleviation of needy brothers
and sisters. If this troubled world of
ours is ever to see better days, it will only come about, if each person chooses
to make a sacrifice in some measure. And when we say sacrifice, we should not
only think in terms of giving up something, but rather to give of ourselves in
words, deeds and thoughts. We must make the welfare of others our concern by
graduating from the erosiveness of our egocentric lives of false pride, of
greed, of vanity, of envy, of lust, and so many other evils that plague
humankind. So often we read of
pollution in our air and what can be done to offset it. Seldom though, do we
read or hear about moral pollution, which is taking a heavy toll rapidly and
destructively. All people must seek to
regain the lost, or forgotten eternal values, which have been substituted by the
geniuses on Madison Avenue. The road back is not an easy one to be sure. But
people must come to the realization, that they must reroute themselves to return
to the road that they had left, to cruise along the super-highways of modern
times and technological progress they had envisioned, with the promise of
complete happiness. In a sense people have become entrapped. People must come to believe
that there is no true happiness apart from God and His Commandments. It spite of
the seemingly heavy cross, we are oftentimes called to bear, we must never
forget that God gives us the analogous strength to carry it. He tells us in the
last verses of the 11th chapter of St. Matthew: "Come unto me all you who
labor, and are heavily laden, and I shall give you rest. Take my yoke upon you
and learn of me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest for
your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Let us never forget dear
Friends, that our Saints were Christians, like any one of us; and further, let
us not forget, that Sainthood is not an ideal of days gone by, but indeed a very
vivid experience in the present world, and will be for all ages to come. We owe
it to ourselves to become more familiar with this aspect in the life of the
Christian Church. back to sermons |
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