In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Spirit. Amen. My dear brothers and
sisters and children in Christ. The epistle ended
with those words about how we're surrounded by
a great cloud of witnesses. I think the witnesses
are more than the congregation today. We're small.
That's okay. Each heart, each one, is precious
to God. So let's celebrate this feast day with
all the joy. and the enthusiasm we can. I congratulate
you first on this feast day. I congratulate you
for two reasons. First, because we've completed
clean week. We started with forgiveness, and
then we began our fast, and we had services.
It's not easy being hungry when you have to work,
and your schedule doesn't change to make things
easier. It's not easy standing for long times
in services. And even if you did not have the
opportunity to come to many services this week,
I have a hunch that your life was probably a
little more difficult this week. God gave each
of us a hurdle to overcome, a podvig, if you
will, a spiritual contest that we had to overcome.
Show our fidelity to him to stay constant in
prayer. This is clean week. It's our spiritual
therapy. And now we're ready for the rest of
Lent. So I congratulate you and I hope you feel
encouraged. We have a feast day because we have
been fasting. And now having fasted, which puts
our appetites to the back burner a little bit.
And we have a lot of appetites. For a lot of
different things. Not just food. We gave alms
and we will continue so we can show our love
for those who are less fortunate and find some
humility to put our self -love on the back burner.
And perhaps we found a little silence during
clean week so we can get away from the stream,
the television show of our thoughts. Constantly.
Directing us this way and that. And then we're
open to God's will. And this is the beautiful
thing about Clean Week. We receive so many blessings.
And that God can speak to us in our conscience.
And we can follow him more clearly. And he's
more dear to us. I congratulate you also because
this feast is about that cleansing of the heart.
You know, in a few years, we're going to have
to clean these frescoes probably. They'll get
smoky. It's just what happens. We've got all
that stuff going on all the time. But Clean Week
and Lent is where we, not just by confession
where we do that, but Clean Week we make an intense
effort and Lent we make the intense effort to
clean the image of God in the soul and the heart.
You and I are created in the image and likeness.
We heard on Wednesday in the Old Testament reading
the story of the creation. And after the sixth
day, God created male and female. He created
them in his image. And on Friday at the pre -sanctified,
we heard the story of the fall. Eve and Adam.
Ignoring God's command. One command. Just one.
You remember what God, kids, what God told Adam
and Eve not to do? What? It had to do with their
mouth, right? Not to eat. Right, to fast. But
one thing. And they failed. So the image of God,
as Luke tells us, is not what it's supposed to
be. I saw a statistic the other day. Every single
day, 75 million photos are uploaded just to Instagram.
One application for social media. 75 million.
This tells us that we love our pictures. The
image we want to retain, we want to remember,
we want to somehow... Relive it. Well the true
image. That we have to be concerned about. Is
not the 75 million. But the one right here. I
was preparing remarks for today. Preparing my
sermon. And. It just wasn't going anywhere. I
was about to call Father John. And say you preach
today Father. It's not working here. And then.
I picked up this book of the sermons of Archimandrite
Elder Emilianos of Mount Athos. He just died
in May. And I read these few pages and I thought,
that's what I want to say. And so I'm going to
share what he said to his congregation when he
was outside of the monastery and went to a church.
Because we are in his image. God does not abandon
us, even when we sin. Although we are prideful,
he is always humble. Although we often forget
him, his thoughts are always about us. If we
reject him, he never ceases to love us, in the
same way that a mother loves her children, for
they are a part of her. A mother loves her little
children, and God... Loves his little gods. And
when the little gods sinned, God wept. God wept.
But Adam ran off and hid. What did God do then?
He humbled himself. He acted like nothing was
wrong. He approached quietly, feigning ignorance,
hoping gradually to come around to the subject
of what happened. Adam, he calls out, where are
you? No answer. Just a trembling behind the trees.
But God finds him and says, why didn't you come
out to meet me? Why didn't you come running to
see me as you always do? What is the matter?
What is that that you are wearing? By this time,
however, Adam had thought up an excuse and blurted
out, the woman you gave me, she deceived me.
It's as if he had said, this is all your fault,
oh God. This happened because the woman you gave
me. No humility here. And it was Adam's utter
lack of humility that sealed the verdict of death
against him. This is a story we read about Wednesday
and Friday at Pre -Sanctified. And then the elder
goes on. To all this, God said something like,
the woman that I gave you? Do you mean Eve? But
you and Eve are one person. Aren't you? How then
can you blame this on her and say that you had
nothing to do with it? How can you divide yourself,
your nature, in this way? How did Eve become
a separate person to you? Wasn't it you who said
she was bone of your bones and flesh of your
flesh? Didn't you call her by your own name?
When did the two of you, when did the one become
two? Despite the fall of man, God did not and
never will abandon the human race. Unlike the
woman in pain in the story in the newspaper who
forgot her baby at the dentist's office, God
will never abandon us. Through his prophet, he
tells us, even if a mother forgets her child,
I shall not forget you because you are a God
I have made. So this is our God, he says to the
prophet Isaiah. I have stretched out my hand
all the day long to a disobedient and contrary
people. We have no time for God. We have no time
for God. We're too busy. We don't think about
him because we're tired. All the day long, he
stretches out his hands and entreats us. All
the day long, Christ, the great high priest.
stands with his hands outstretched on the cross
on which the little gods have nailed him. And
from that lofty vantage point, he supplicates
his Heavenly Father on our behalf. Though we
crucify him every day through our sins, God prays
for us. That, my beloved, is humility. We've
seen what God is. He is the Holy One. And I am
his image and likeness. I am a little God called
to be so. And after centuries of stretching his
helping hand down to us from heaven, God himself
came down, became man, dwelt among us. God entered
the mud to find his precious pearl and to raise
him and her up and grant him knowledge of God.
The Son of God does not come in symbols. or in
the clouds, or in the still breezes. Instead,
he removed his garments of light and clothed
himself in the garments of human nature. Long
ago, God made man a little god. Now, God himself
becomes man. And this is beyond anything that
man could ever have imagined or hoped for. Until
now God built bridges so that he might cross
over to us and we to him. Now he abolishes all
distances, removes all boundaries, comes to dwell
with us forever. Unable to endure the loss of
his creation, he sets aside his unspeakable glory
and humbles himself, definitively taking on our
condition. And his whole life was an ongoing
self -abasement. an unending self -emptying from
the moment of his conception until his death
and burial and beyond. In the extreme humility
of his descent, God did not stop at the clouds,
neither did his journey end on the earth. He
went all the way to death into Hades. In light
of God's descent, everything has changed. When
the highest entered the lowest, when God entered
the realm of Hades and death, everything there
was turned upside down. The devil was defeated.
Death yielded to life. Darkness was swallowed
up by light. Fallen man ascended into heaven.
In union with Christ, human nature now sits on
the throne of God, being filled with the Holy
Spirit. God has descended. and reduced himself
for our sake. While redeemed, humanity has become
a great assembly, exalted so high as to surpass
heaven itself. In his sermon on humility, St.
Basil the Great says, from a state of nothingness,
man has expanded into the heavens. And all of
this can be ours, if only we humble ourselves.
Having completed his work, Christ has returned
to the heavens, but he remains inseparably united
to us and has given us his spirit of power and
sanctity. He has also given us Holy Communion,
which is the continuation of his presence on
the earth, though in a humble form. Can anything
sick, any disease, pass through? That glorious
body and blood? No. He has given us holy communion.
Being united to the flesh. God communicates with
the flesh. And we, receiving God, are raised
to the heights of heaven. But, to truly commune
with the humble God, we must be humble. This
is our Lenten journey. This is why Christ says,
He who humbles himself will be exalted. What
does exalted here mean? It means that such a
person will attain to the knowledge of God. It
doesn't mean being glorified in some abstract
way or being established in a comfortable place
in heaven. Still less does it mean that people
will honor and praise us. It means that the Holy
Spirit will reveal all things to our hearts.
as long as we humble ourselves and bow our heads
to God. God decreases, but we increase. In humility,
we ascend to God. We come to know him and his
ways. To our Lord be glory and honor, now and
ever, to ages of ages.