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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Today we celebrate the day of all saints. Each of us, at baptism, is named after one of the saints, in whom the glory of God, His splendor, His beauty has shone forth; each of us is dedicated to his memory, each of us is placed under his personal, loving, and strict patronage.
Strict — because the path of the Lord is not wide and easy; the path of the Lord is narrow and strict. And each saint who has walked this path calls us to follow, to walk this trail, this path. And before each of us is the task: to follow Christ, following the example of that saint whose name we bear. This does not mean trying to live exactly the life he lived, but it means learning from him how those who want to follow Christ live, each in their own way, each in a unique, singular manner, because each of us is unique.
The path of the Lord is the path of self-denial for the sake of something greater than ourselves, but not such self-denial that we cease to be ourselves. It is the recognition that our nature, our calling is higher than ourselves, and that we must outgrow ourselves, from being small and petty to becoming great. We are called to grow into the full measure of what the Lord has intended for each of us, just as those saints did who deeply accepted the Gospel of the Lord into their hearts and lived according to it.
Here is the call addressed to us through the words of Saint John Chrysostom: “Do not praise us, do not sing our praises, but become like us.” Saint John is saying that we vainly sing praises and glorify the saints if we do not strive to be Christians like them with our whole life, with our mind, heart, will, and body — with our entire being.
If we want to give glory to the saints, to glorify our saint, to justify that we have been entrusted with this name — we must learn to live as he lived, as Christ lived, as we are called to live. Otherwise, every praise we utter to the saint will one day be a reproach to us: you knew — and did not act…
Let us avoid this! Let us be inspired by the inexpressible beauty of the Gospel, by the wondrous beauty of the image of Christ the Savior, by the reflected divine beauty that we see in the saints, and let us outgrow ourselves. Let us become worthy of our calling as human beings, as Christians, worthy of the name that has been given to us, that has been entrusted to us. Amen.
Митрополит Антоній Сурожський
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