Homily One on the Ascension of the Lord (St. Sergius Mechev)

Homily One on the Ascension of the Lord 

By Holy Hieromartyr Sergius Mechev

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit!

For many of us, the Ascension is only a feast standing between Pascha and Pentecost, and it seems as though it does not possess the same inner content as the other feasts of the Holy Church. It may appear that the Lord ascended only in order to send the Teacher — the Holy Spirit. This feast seems to give nothing to man; indeed, it even appears to deprive man of the Lord’s presence here on earth. For in the past days you felt His presence in His appearances, as the Apostles once did, but now He has departed from us.

One would think that for the Apostles the Ascension of the Lord would have been a loss. Yet the Holy Fathers say that it is a great feast, for today it is not merely that “the Word became flesh,” but that flesh became divine. The New Adam does not descend, but ascends with the flesh into heaven.

Venerable Michael the Confessor and Bishop of Synnada in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

1. This angelic-named Michael, having purified himself through a perfect life and having been dedicated to God from his mother’s embrace, became a priest of the Most High God. By His power he extinguished all the madness of the God-fighters, silencing the godless mouths of the heretics who dared to speak against the depiction of Christ in icons. And because the accursed beast could not endure the divine speech of his tongue (for he neither feared nor trembled before his threats, but cried aloud with a free voice: ‘I honor and venerate the immaculate and divine image of our Savior Jesus Christ and of His holy Mother, while I spit upon your doctrine and regard it as nothing at all’), because the tyrant was thus put to shame and overflowed with rage, he condemned him to distant exile. But Michael, preserving pure and undefiled the image according to which he had been made, and being driven from place to place, reached the spacious breadth of Paradise. Thus he completed the good course and was adorned with double crowns: he was added to the hierarchs as a hierarch, and to the martyrs as a martyr.

Prologue in Sermons: May 23

Do the Unrepentant Sinners Speak Truly When They Say That There Will Be Neither Eternal Blessedness for the Righteous Nor Eternal Torments For Sinners?

May 23

(A discourse of Gregory the Dialogist.)
 
By Archpriest Victor Guryev

Unrepentant sinners say that there will be neither eternal blessedness for the righteous nor eternal torments for sinners. Do they speak the truth?

“A certain soldier,” says Gregory the Dialogist, “perished in a storm at sea, and his body lay lifeless upon the shore. But soon, by the almighty command of God, his soul returned to the body, and he came back to life. What had happened to him while his soul was separated from his body, he related as follows:

THE SIXTH SUNDAY AFTER PASCHA - SUNDAY OF THE BLIND MAN

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

The Healing of the Man Born Blind

Once, when Jesus was in Jerusalem, performing miracles and preaching His teaching, His enemies became so enraged that they wanted to stone Him. But He departed from them and, as He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth.

His disciples asked Him: “Teacher, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Jesus answered: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be revealed in him.”

The Lord had compassion on the unfortunate blind man. Spitting on the ground, He made clay, anointed the blind man’s eyes with it, and said to him: “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.” This was a spring at the foot of Mount Zion. The blind man went, washed, and received his sight. This miracle filled everyone with amazement. Some said, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?”

Others said, “It is he.” Others said, “He only resembles him.” But he himself said, “I am the one.”

They began asking the man born blind how he had received his sight. He answered: “The Man called Jesus made clay, anointed my eyes, and told me to wash in the pool of Siloam. I washed, and now I see.” They brought him to the Pharisees, and it should be noted that this miracle had been performed on the Sabbath day. In response to the Pharisees’ questions, the healed young man again recounted the story of his miraculous healing. Then a dispute arose among the Pharisees concerning Jesus. Some said: “This Man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath.” Others objected: “How can a sinful man perform such miracles?” They asked the healed man: “What do you say about Him?” “I think He is a prophet,” he answered.

Homily for the Sunday of the Blind Man (St. Cleopa of Sihastria)

Homily for the Sunday of the Blind Man

On Spiritual Blindness

By St. Cleopa of Sihastria

“For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind” (John 9:39).

Christ is Risen!

Beloved faithful,

We can draw many teachings of every kind from today’s Holy Gospel if we examine its text carefully. One of these teachings concerns the spiritual blindness of the man enslaved by sins.

How much spiritual blindness there was in the minds of the scribes and Pharisees, who not only did not believe in the miracles beyond nature performed by Christ the Lord, but even greatly blasphemed Him, saying that “by Beelzebul, the ruler of demons, He casts out demons” (Mark 3:22). Such blindness filled their minds that though they had eyes, they did not see, and though they had ears, they did not hear. Therefore the Lord calls them “blind Pharisees” (Matthew 23:26).

Concerning this spiritual blindness of the scribes and Pharisees, the chief priests and teachers of the Jews, and the punishment awaiting them for it, the Prophet David says through the Holy Spirit: “Let their eyes be darkened so that they may not see, and bend their backs forever” (Psalm 69:23). And the great Prophet Isaiah prophesied concerning the spiritual blindness of the people of Israel, saying: “God has given them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see and ears that they should not hear, to this very day” (Isaiah 29:10). And again: “The heart of this people has grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and return to Me and I should heal them” (Isaiah 6:10).

Homily One on the Day of the Ascension (St. Justin Popovich)

Homily One on the Sunday of the Samaritan Woman 

By St. Justin Popovich

(Delivered in 1966 in the Ćelije Monastery, transcribed from a recording.)

Today is the Feast of the Ascension of the Lord, the Feast of the Lord’s Ascension with His body into Heaven.

With today’s Feast, the Nativity is brought to completion: it both completes and explains what the Lord Christ intended when He became man, what He desired, what He purposed, why He was born on the Nativity as man, He Who is God, why He took a body upon Himself. Today’s Feast tells us this great and holy mystery and explains why the Lord became man, why He took upon Himself the mocked, humiliated, sinful, and mortal human body. What was the purpose of this? Today’s Great and Holy Day explains it to us. The Lord became incarnate, the Lord took a body upon Himself and became man in order to raise the human body above all the heavens, to glorify the human body with inexpressible glory, to lift it above all Angels and Archangels and seat it at the right hand of God the Father.¹ Thus, this is why the Lord took a body upon Himself: the whole path has been completed. The human body, once disgraced in sins, in death, in horrors and terrors — that human body the Lord took upon Himself and ascended with it into Heaven.

First Homily on the Day of the Ascension of the Lord (St. Innocent of Kherson)

First Homily on the Day of the Ascension of the Lord

St. Innocent of Kherson

“Then He led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up His hands He blessed them. And it came to pass, while He blessed them, that He departed from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped Him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy” (Luke 24:50–52).

Thus ended the earthly course of our Savior and Lord. Much did He suffer, and greatly was He glorified. There has never been sorrow like His sorrow, nor is there glory like His glory. “He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the Name which is above every name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2:8–11).

Shall we ever behold this glory of our Lord? Not only shall we behold it, brethren, but each of us, according to his measure, shall also partake of this glory, if only we do not make ourselves unworthy of it. We shall behold it, because in His final great prayer the Lord Himself asked His Father for this very thing: “that they may behold My glory which You have given Me” (John 17:24). And the angels who appeared to the Apostles after the Ascension testified that the Lord would come again to all of us on the last day in the same manner as the Apostles saw Him ascending into heaven (Acts 1:11).

Holy Martyr Basiliskos in the Hymnography of the Orthodox Church

By Fr. George Dorbarakis

1. Saint Basiliskos lived during the reign of Emperor Maximian (3rd century) and came from the village of Choumalia in Amaseia of Pontus. He was the nephew of the Holy Great Martyr Theodore the Recruit. Although at first he was tortured together with the fellow soldiers of Saint Theodore, Eutropios and Kleonikos, those two were perfected through martyrdom for Christ, while Basiliskos himself was left in prison. But because he had a great desire to complete the course of martyrdom himself, he prayed to God for this, and he was granted a vision of the Lord, Who commanded him to go and bid farewell to his family, and then, when he arrived at Comana, he would receive the martyr’s crown.

The Saint was therefore released from prison by the soldiers, and together with them he went to his home. After bidding farewell to his mother and brothers, exhorting them to remain steadfast in the faith of Christ, he stayed with them for a short time. But the governor Agrippas, having learned of his release, sent other soldiers, who arrested him. They bound him and put sandals on his feet that had nails driven through them, and thus they led him by force along the road to Comana — the place where his martyrdom awaited him. Arriving at the village of the Daknoi, they were hosted in the house of a woman named Traiane, while the Saint was tied to a dry plane tree with his hands bound behind him. The Saint prayed, and the plane tree sprouted and put forth many leaves. Moreover, a spring of water burst forth from its roots, at the very place where the Saint had been tied. When the soldiers and the woman saw this miracle, they declared that they believed in Christ and loosed the Saint from his bonds.

Prologue in Sermons: May 22

  

Why We Often See That the Wicked Seem Untouched by the Devil in This Life, While the Godly Suffer From Him

May 22

(From the Paterikon.)
 
By Archpriest Victor Guryev

Why is it, brethren, that in this life we often see wicked people as though they experience no temptations from the devil, while the godly suffer from him? Why is this so?

A monk once asked an elder: “Why is it that wicked people abandon fasting and prayer, give themselves over to gluttony, deceive and rob one another, do whatever they wish, often break their oaths, and pay no attention to the fact that they sin grievously? They even receive the Holy Mysteries calmly, and all this seems to mean nothing to them, as though everything were perfectly normal. And why is it that the godly exhaust themselves with fasting, vigils, prayers, and dry eating, deprive themselves of bodily comfort, weep and lament, and say that they are great sinners and deserving of the fires of Gehenna?”

Hearing this from his disciple, the elder replied with a sigh: “You spoke rightly when you said that for sinners everything seems to mean nothing. They have fallen so deeply that they are no longer even aware of it. Yes, because of their lack of repentance, they cannot rise again. Think about it: why should the devil struggle against them when they themselves already lie prostrate before him and cannot get up? He does not fight such people. But the godly, though sometimes defeated, also overcome; though they fall, they quickly rise again and in the end will completely conquer the enemy of their salvation.”