In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Spirit. Amen. We're still celebrating
this profoundly beautiful, sweet, quiet feast
of the entrance of the Theotokos into the temple.
The icon is in the middle of the church. This
feast is about her dedication at the age of three.
dedication by her parents to God in fulfillment
of a promise. As parents, we make lots of promises
to God, but we don't often fulfill them. But
in this case, glory to God, and an amazing sacrifice
on their part as well. I won't say more about
this feast because we had it on Thursday, and
we sang wonderful hymns last night, and we have
a few more today. I want to spend a few moments
now, rather, and briefly, I hope, Remembering
one of the great saints of our church, I want
to congratulate all those that bear the name,
all the women in the parish that bear the name
Catherine. After the great martyr Catherine,
her fresco is over in the north aisle next to
St. Irene, and there's a lovely icon here next
to the Lord. Saints, our saints, are those whose
lives are so transformed. Their hearts are so
captivated with love of God and burning with
love of God and for their neighbor that they
are like God. A saint is not merely a kind or
compassionate or churchly person. A saint is
holy, and holiness comes from God. participation
in holiness of God. They share that, they bear
God. There's an old saying about the saints,
so we don't get frustrated or discouraged when
we read their lives, thinking that, well, that's
them. The old saying is this, I think it's St.
John Klimako said, everything in the life of
a saint is worthy of admiration. But not all
things are proper for emulation. We should keep
those words in mind, especially today when we
think about St. Catherine the Great Martyr. In
our everyday lives, in our society, in our times,
we have very little in common with the way she
lived. Hardly anything, probably. She lived in
the early 4th century. She was of noble lineage.
Her father was a patrician. He had a place in
the government, the imperial government. He was
a pagan. Her mother was a secret Christian. She
received the best possible education. You heard
last night, I read part of it last night, so
I won't go into all that again today. But the
best possible education, philosophy and rhetoric
and poetry and medicine and languages and mathematics,
she was stunningly beautiful. She was virtuous.
She was constantly courted for marriage, but
had no desire for that. And when her mother tried
to arrange something, she says, okay, but. this
person has to be of equal education, equal social
status, and equal wisdom and beauty to me. I'll
mention something later about that, because that's
an important thing to remember about how she
became a Christian, how she met Christ. And it
was only at the age of 18. And she was brought
before the authorities. So I'm skipping a whole
section here. She was brought before the authorities
when she confessed that she believed in the Lord
Jesus Christ as the Savior. You know, imperial
rhetoric, not rhetoric, imperial language about
the emperor was that he was the Son of God, and
he is the Savior, and he brings the gospel. These
are all technical names. she would not possibly
say the emperor is the savior and the son of
God. She was brought before the emperor Maximinos,
maybe it was Maximian, not 100 % sure about the
name, who flattered her. He was taken by her
beauty and by her wisdom, by her eloquence. He
promised her wonderful things. Just make a sacrifice.
of some incense, and that's it. She spoke to
the emperor so boldly and so decisively and so
eloquently about God, using language that he
would know of the philosophers, the ancient philosophers,
that he was speechless, it says. He was speechless.
He was captivated by that brilliance and her
beauty and her courage, and he thought, OK, I
can still win her for myself. She could be mine.
And so he arranged that a debate would take place.
And he was sure she would lose and bow her head
and accept the philosophy and the paganism. So
this is what it says in The Life of the Saint.
It says, deciding it was below him to argue with
a woman. The emperor announced that he would
seek to convert Catherine back to paganism by
means of 50 of the wisest, most cunning pagan
philosophers and rhetoricians in the land. He
summoned these learned men to Alexandria, where
they assembled in the arena and prepared to defeat
the maiden in a debate, addressing them using
examples of their own philosophers, their own
intellectual tradition. all 50 became silent.
And somehow their hearts were touched and they
were open to the Spirit of God. And as St. Paul
says, the preaching of the cross has made foolish
the wisdom of this world. And they all. All of
them, all 50, confessed their faith in Jesus
Christ. Sorry, Richard Dawkins and Christopher
Hitchens. All courageous 50 men whose hearts
somehow became alight with the love of God then
endured martyrdom before her. Still unable to
persuade the saint to change her mind, to renounce
Jesus Christ, the emperor tried to entice her
with the promise of riches and fame. Of course,
he had all these at his disposal, and she categorically
refused. What is that to me when the Lord who
has made heaven and earth and all things, visible
and invisible, will give me his kingdom? So she
refused, and so began terrible tortures. and
imprisonment. The story about the, is it called
the Catherine Wheel with the spikes? Well, it
fell apart before she ever was tortured by it.
And as these tortures and imprisonment continued,
more and more and more people seen her courage
and her faith and her love for God and her patience
and her fortitude were converted and she was
eventually beheaded. Again, St. Paul, if we are
children, then heirs, says St. Paul, heirs of
God, joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer
with him, that we also may be glorified together.
For I consider that the sufferings of this present
time are not worthy to be compared with the glory
which shall be revealed in us. Our own Catherine
de Carlo. in a wonderful essay, wrote this. She
said, St. Catherine always pointed the way to
Christ. As a result, her faith and courage bore
fruit, not only in her sanctity, her sainthood,
but also in the sainthood of hundreds of others,
perhaps thousands, yes, around her, as she inspired
the Empress. the emperor's wife, the military
gentle Porphyrius, who came with 200 guards,
the 50 philosophers, and numerous other onlookers
to her martyrdom to embrace Christ, paying the
ultimate price as testimony with their lives
to the resurrection. What does this have to do
with us? The times are so different. She was
so different. Everything is different. The lives
of the saints, however, are a reality check on
our own faith, especially the martyrs, our own
assumptions, our culture, our way of living as
Christians, whom it is we seek first and what
it is we seek first in our life. It's a reality
check. From the viewpoint of the lives... Of
the normal modern person, whatever normal is.
What Catherine did was insane. She had youth.
She had beauty. She had education. She had career.
She enjoyed life. She had happiness. She had
money. All gone. She gave it up. What kind of
power motivates a martyr, a person to do that?
No strength of conviction is going to help. Because
all conviction disappears in the face of severe
physical pain. You simply give in. St. Catherine
acted in this way, not on strength of her conviction,
the purity of her theological thought, but because
she had had a deep... Real experience of communion
with Jesus Christ. Christ was for her the only
and the supreme value. He gave her, and she experienced
this, peace, joy, happiness above all human well
-being. Nothing would convince her to renounce
Christ, the way, the truth, the life, and the
resurrection. A martyr is the one who bears testimony
to that resurrection. So what else have we learned
for ourselves in this brief account? Well, something
about the power of repentance. Because Catherine,
when she met a holy elder, taken to see that
elder by her mother, was introduced to Christ
and given an icon. She went home and prayed.
And she had this dream. Which the Theotokos holding
Christ. Comes and says. Oh my son. Look at this
beautiful woman. Educated. Lovely. Virtuous.
And in the dream she hears. Remember this is
a dream. She hears. She's ugly. I can't look
upon her. She has sin and pride. And she wakes
up and she has tears and she prays and she prays
all night long. She goes back to the holy elder,
Porphyrios. She's praying to God. This is her
repentance and she has another vision, another
dream in which the Theotokos says, she is beautiful,
my son. And he says, yes, she is beautiful. This
is her repentance. We can learn from that. that
we should not give up in our repentance. We should
not give up whatever happens to us. We also learned
that even Catherine, in her beauty and virtue
and pride and social connections, learned in
that vision that all those things would not save
her, and she needed Christ. We should certainly
emulate her in that repentance. And we can emulate
her in that fervent prayer all night long in
any way we can, desiring to meet Christ, to have
such an experience of the Lord that in the face
of resistance, we would stand firm because we
know God's love personally. We should... Finally,
emulate her to not be enticed or captivated or
distracted by the offers of riches or beauties
or wealth or anything else in this fallen world.
She placed all her hope on Christ who is risen
from the dead. We can be inspired by this saint
and indeed emulate her in so many ways. Through
her prayers, may our Lord grant us this vision.
His love and salvation and firmness in our faith.
Amen.