Below is a transcription of a sermon that was given at St Silouan Orthodox Mission Parish in Downtown Toronto on June 10, 2012. Though it was given for the Feast of All Saints (in the Byzantine Orthodox Liturgical Cycle), it is also very applicable to the Holy Feast of Pentecost.
Transcription of June 10, 2012 All Saints Feast Sermon
Fr Roberto Ubertino
Transcription of June 10, 2012 All Saints Feast Sermon
Fr Roberto Ubertino
Doxa Patri ke eyo ke Agio epnevmati, Amen.
Today is the feast of All Saints, Happy Feast.
God is not a liar, He keeps His promises.
Today we see that Lent in the Church is a fruitful time, that repentance leads us here.
That repentance, with God's help, truly turns us around, today we are confirmed in our belief that Christ is Risen.
That in Church we find the Life, we find the Resurrection, that this life and fire of the Resurrection is visible, it shines in the faces of the saints.
Today we see that Pentecost is not something that happened 2000 years ago to the Apostles, we see that Pentecost is a fervent reality of the Church, that Pentecost is what you would call the Ordinary time of the Church.
Today we see that the labours of the great lent, the joy of Pascha and the Pentecost, didn't produce a code, a new book, or even a new mission.
Lent, Pascha, Pentecost, bring about Holy People.
In the Church of Christ only Holiness matters.
Only holiness counts.
You are not great in the Church of Christ, the True God, because you are a monk, or a bishop, or a great theologian.
You are great if you are a saint. Only holiness comes with true greatness, only being a saint matters. And everything in the Church exists so that each of us can become saints.
The Church continues through all the ages not because of money or political alliances or because of power, but rather the Church continues throughout the ages because in the Church the Holy Spirit makes poor sinners into saints.
St Isaac the Syrian says that the Church is not the assembly of the Righteous, but rather the Church is the crowd of repenting sinners. "The Church is the laboratory of holiness" as Metropolitan Anthony Bloom once said, "because the Church is both profoundly sick and yet healing and life giving."
This call to become saints is not for someone else, it's not for some person who lived in some remote land with a name we can't pronounce, or someone who's life was perfect, or somebody who had everything he needed to become a saint. It's the call for all who have been baptized, it's the call that is living and moving in all our being. We're all like, as CS Lewis likes to use this image: like stone statues. With Pentecost, the Spirit is given so that these stone statues can start moving. We become alive, we are able to dance.
The call to "be holy as I am Holy" that we hear in Scripture is for all, all mankind is called to participate in this, all our sinfulness, our imperfections, our weaknesses, perhaps our quirky personality, and yes even mental handicaps, all these realities are not to keep us from becoming saints...from sharing in the very life of the Divine.
"Holy things for the Holy" we hear just before we receive communion. What keeps us from holiness is our ignorance, our forgetfulness and our laziness. We ignore the God who is in front of our noses, we forget that since our conception He loves us, and cares for us in countless ways, and we're too lazy, we just give up in this cold and spiritual paralysis that is sometimes described as an easygoing indifference. A laziness to a God who is in love with each of us, a God who wants to dance with you, but I am too lazy to get up.
But a saint is a person who knows to be poor, made useless, fragile, sinful, and yet is ultimately open to be holy. And it is precisely because of this openness, an openness in his or her poverty and imperfection, it is precisely because of that, that one becomes a temple, a holy place, where God dwells, where God is Lord.
You are the temple of God, and God's grace is perfected in weakness, the apostle Paul reminds us. And that is why those who are perfected in holiness, the saints who we celebrate throughout the year, the big saints, the small saints, they attract us, they are attracted to us, they don't exclude us, or reject us, or condemn us, adjusting on us.
Their holiness draws us to God, to Christ. These men and women have through their cooperation with the Holy Spirit, been enlarged, they have become big...Large. They are 'open up' creatures. There is room in their heart for all, for all of us.
The Theotokos, who is often referred to as the Hodegetria, she who is larger than the heavens, than the universe. In her we don't see a super creature, we don't see someone else but human nature, but in her we see the potential for human nature to be large, so large, that it's larger than the heavens, that in her the potential is full and perfected.
Lent, Pascha and Pentecost, point us to this enlargement of the heart, in which God can truly dwell and make in each of us a temple. The heart of a saint embraces all, excludes no one, it even prays, St. Isaac the Syrian says, "it even prays for the demons and boasts of the salvation of the damned."
But holiness is not once and for all, kind of a done deal, there is no end, no limit for the enlargement of our hearts. The Holy Spirit is also not limited to one place, "we know where the Spirit is," the fathers teach, "but we do not know where He is not."
I have been privileged and humbled to see the holiness of people who come to this parish, I've also been surprised and humbled to see the real holiness in some of the people who come here to the mission during the week. Such holiness may not always be perfected, it may not always come with long hair, white beard and a cross around its neck, it often comes with long hair, white beard and other things.
But holiness exists even today on the streets of Toronto with people who carry not a visible cross but an interior cross.
I think of a refugee who has been separated now for many years from his family, with an uncertain future, who come here everyday to serve, I have never seen him angry, or impatient. You can never tell by the way he greets and deals with people with such kindness, you can never tell the sorry that he carries in his heart.
I think of a person who was really dear to me, Peter. He died a few years ago, he was a man who had no education, but prayed alot. After he died I felt the emptiness of the loss of him, his friendship, that paternal help and I often did pray to God to let me know if Peter was ok. I remember one night I had this dream of Peter because of the procession of the Cross, and we were carrying the Cross, and we were all going up this very steep hill carrying the Cross, and we weren't very sure how we would get up, and out of nowhere Peter came and put his arms around me and all together we were walking up carrying the Cross.
This image of continuing to carry the Cross with us here, has stuck with me every time I remember Peter. And he reminds me of a quote by St Maximos the Confessor when he speaks of the friends of Christ. He says "the friends of Christ carry the Cross, and among them you will find love itself because the friends of Christ have true love as Love's teaching"
And also some of the very young people of our parish, who have a love for the Liturgy, the prayer, who serve here, in so many ways, who struggle in school to stand up for others when it costs them.
I think back to the many confessions that I've heard. Yes, holiness is not of the past, it's not something that's somewhere else, it is among us.
Why not start then looking for size of holiness around you? I implore each one of us, inspired with our weaknesses, with our sinfulness, our fragility, with our messed-up-ness, if that's English, they're all mixed in the burdens of Christ. Do not let that keep you denying, from really desiring, to let God deliver His Spirit in each of us, to become saints, attained by God, a place where God dwells, in whom God is Priest, to Him be Glory, now and forever and to the ages of ages. Amen.
St Silouan the Anthonite Mission Parish
155 Broadview Avenue
Toronto, Ontario, M4M 2E9
"Prayer, people think, is about words, but prayer is entering the silence of one word unceasingly spoken in our hearts - love." + Fr Roberto Ubertino
