May: Day 25: Teaching 3: On the Birthday of Her Imperial Majesty, the Most Pious Sovereign Empress Alexandra Feodorovna

May: Day 25: Teaching 3:
On the Birthday of Her Imperial Majesty, the Most Pious Sovereign Empress Alexandra Feodorovna
 
(How Should the Gift of Life Be Used?)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. Today our national Church gratefully commemorates and celebrates the birth of our Most Pious Sovereign Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and prays to the Lord that He may grant her many years in health and unchanging prosperity. The gift of life, beloved brethren, is immeasurably great for every individual person, as the gift of rational and free life, to which immortality has been promised, as a gift accompanied throughout a man’s life by countless sweet blessings from the Creator, especially in the life of a Christian. But the gift of the life of the Empress, the Mother of the Russian people, who lightens the heavy burden of rule borne by her sovereign husband the Emperor — the gift, I say, of life, precious for her, is also precious for the whole people, because her life has brought and continues to bring many blessings to the entire nation. Therefore it would be great ingratitude on our part before God and before the sacred person of the Empress not to celebrate this day with hymns of thanksgiving and praises to the Lord flowing from the grateful hearts of the great Russian people.

II. Yet the gift of existence, the gift of life, is so great that besides gratitude and praise to the Lord — that verbal sacrifice offered to God by rational man — it requires a greater and higher sacrifice: the sacrifice of good deeds, without which our praise and thanksgiving are displeasing to God. For, according to the word of the wise man, “Praise is not fitting in the mouth of a sinner” (Sirach 15:9). Man was created precisely for good works — that is, for works of holiness, faithfulness, righteousness, love, and mercy; for works of self-denial, courage, temperance, broad and varied learning; for service to the many needs of Church and fatherland. Man was not created for himself alone, but for service to society, just as society in turn serves him.

Each of us is, on the one hand, a member of the Church and of the gracious Kingdom of God on earth, whose members must continually grow in faith, righteousness, and piety; and, on the other hand, a member of civil society, or of the great political body called the state. To both societies, ecclesiastical and civil, each of us is obliged faithfully to serve and in all things to obey its authorities within the bounds of truth and law; to prefer the common good to personal interest; and, if necessary, not to spare for it our health, strength, peace, property, or even life itself.

“We who are strong,” writes the Holy Apostle Paul, “ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves; for even Christ did not please Himself” (Romans 15:1–3). Elsewhere, speaking of the multitude of believers as the one Body of Christ, he says: “For as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of that one body, though many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. God composed the body, giving greater honor to the part which lacked it, that there should be no division in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now you are the Body of Christ, and individually members of it” (1 Corinthians 12:12–27).

Such a use of the gift of life for the benefit of others, in accordance with the will of God, is the best sacrifice to God for the gift of life, the best thanksgiving to Him — not shown merely in words, but in deeds themselves. And who among the sons of Russia does not know that our Most Pious Sovereign Empress uses the great gift of life given her by the Lord in precisely this way — that is, for works of charity toward her people? She is the Mother and Protectress of many charitable and women’s educational institutions in Russia; she takes the liveliest interest in the sorrowful condition of the suffering and the needy.

III. Here then, dear brethren, is the lofty example of the Empress for us — how we should use the gift of life for the glory of God, how we should bear the infirmities of the weak and not please ourselves. Let each of us follow this example according to our own measure and ability, and let us raise to the Lord a prayerful voice, that He may grant her, for the good of her people, health and salvation, success in all good things, and many years in this earthly life; and in the future life — which is not measured by hours, days, months, or years, but is one endless day — unending blessedness. Amen.

(Compiled from the Complete Collected Works of Archpriest John Sergiev [of Kronstadt], Vol. III, 1892 edition.)

 

Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.