Sermon of our Father in Christ, Metropolitan Silouan
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I am very glad to be among you, and I see that there are new faces in the Church.
Now we reach the end of Lent, it’s the last Sunday before Palm Sunday, which is next week. Until Saturday we complete the forty days of Lent, and after that we have Holy Week, this is also a fast for us.
A guy came to me asking, “Why are we fasting? I want to fast,” he said, and I thought in myself and I’m telling you, the goal for our spiritual life is not fasting, prayer and confession: our goal in our lives is to unite ourselves with God. Our goal in this life is to become one with the resurrected Jesus Christ.
So, in two weeks, Jesus Christ will rise from the dead, are you ready to be risen with Him? So, we are using tools to change, a little bit, our lives: by prayer, by fasting, by coming to the Church, by Communion: these are tools to be holy, to unite ourselves with God, are you ready to do this? Are you ready to unite yourself with God? Look, you cannot unite yourself with God if you are not trying to be good! If you don’t have love, how you can unite yourself with the Spring of Love—the Source of Love? He is the Spring and Source of everything. You have a little bit of love? Yes, please try your best, I know that we cannot have completely big love towards everyone, we are human, but we have to try. Try; maybe we have a little bit of love, but we are trying to make it bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, we have our whole life to make our love for everyone bigger and bigger.
I give you an example of love. So, you have to purify yourself from any sin: you and I, we have sin, we are human, we do—daily!—sins. We go to confession, to purify ourselves—we are purified, a little bit, we are pure, a little bit—but in our life we have to try our best to make this purity bigger and bigger and bigger.
Now, you are children, but God loves you, loves all of us also, please come to Him, purify yourself, increase your love, increase your purity, increase your goodness, anything from the Gospel is good, please, do your best to make it bigger and bigger. But, as I’ve told you at the beginning, we are using tools—like fasting—in this time. Do you fast? I don’t know but, myself, I don’t know if I am fasting in the way God accepts it. But I can try my best: please, try your best, and not to follow your own rule.
One time I saw a girl and she invited me to her house with her family, I went to visit them. Because the Arab people love to give food, to be hospitable—maybe all peoples do—when someone is coming to visit you, you just want to give him everything, not just coffee or tea: you will give him sweets, you will give him fruit, whatever, and I saw her in Lent eating meat. I asked her, “Do you fast?” She replied, “Of course!” I didn’t understand, I said to her, “How can you fast and keep Lent and eat meat?” And she said, “No, I’m fasting from something I like: I don’t drink Coca-Cola, I don’t eat chocolates; so, I like chocolate, I like Coca-Cola, and I don’t have them in fasting times.” I told her, “You don’t eat chocolate and you don’t drink Coca-Cola, and you eat chicken and meat and cheese, whatever!” She said, “Yes, yes, yes, I’m doing it.” No! This is not good. The Fathers of the Church told us, “Go back to the image of Adam before his fall. Before God removed Adam from Paradise, he was in peace with all the animals, so he does not eat them, he eats just the fruits of the earth. So, in fasting—this is our theology—in fasting we return back to the situation of Adam; we refuse, in this way, sin: we are going back to Paradise, we are going to be holy.
So, using tools like fasting, as the Fathers remind us to do—please do!—pray as much as you can, come to the Church and take confession and take Communion to unite yourselves with God. With this way, love, prayer, fasting and confession, you are trying to do your best to make as much as you can bigger and bigger and your goodness will become better and bigger.
So, by what method? By using these tools. Prepare yourself for Holy Week. Prepare yourself for the Resurrection Day. Christ will rise, are you ready to be risen with Him? Please be ready! Please be ready, unite yourself with Him. By prayer, by fasting, by everything good in the Church, by anything the Gospel tells us to do, He wants us to be in the Heaven: you don’t want it too? It’s up to you. But to go to Heaven, you cannot go by your foot or by your car, it’s a trip but it needs a tool, a vehicle: you cannot go to Heaven without fasting. You cannot go to Heaven without love. You cannot go to Heaven without the Church. You need them. Because inside the Church you will make your Confession, inside the Church you will take Communion; outside the Church I don’t know if there are these, please if you find them tell me, because I don’t know—if you find them tell me, please, but I don’t know. Inside the Church, always the Church tells us: follow the Gospel, and it will show you the way. Use the tools to be ready for the Resurrection Day, be ready for that Day. Unite yourself with the risen Jesus Christ, He will resurrect His body from this earth to heaven: are you willing to go with Him? If you think about the tools, you need them.
Do your best. To fast as much as you can. I know the body asks you not to do that. But, with our spiritual fathers in the Church, we let it bring us to heaven: are you willing to go? You need the Church: outside the Church I don’t know if there are these. Please, if you find anything outside the Church—Communion, Confession, Liturgy … maybe—if you find these, tell me. I cannot find them out of the Church.
God bless you all.
Brethren, when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
— Hebrews 9:11–14
At that time, Jesus took his twelve disciples, and he began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and deliver him to the Gentiles; and they will mock him, and spit upon him, and scourge him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise.” And James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him, and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” And he said to them, “What do you want me to do for you?” And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?” And they said to him, “We are able.” And Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” And when the ten heard it, they began to be indignant of James and John. And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of man also came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
— Mark 10:32–45