Why do people – all of us and countless others – come to the Church, join the Church of Christ? Is it not because this is a place where everyone can come with confidence, knowing they are loved, that they will be accepted as brothers and sisters, as children or as parents: with tenderness, with reverence, with care… We are loved by God, and the Church is that place where God meets us with His love and tenderness, His saving care; a place where no one is superfluous, where everyone is desired, where there are no strangers, where all, as the Apostle says, are our own – to God and to people.
People come in different ways. Speaking figuratively, some of us come in full strength, in the full glory of spiritual maturity and health; others come like children, untouched, unstained by evil and sin, only sometimes wounded. But there are also people who come, as probably most of us do, who have gone through life and been wounded by it: the blind, who no longer see the light of God shining, sparkling on everything, shining on every person and from every person; the blind, for whom the visible has closed off the sight of the invisible, for whom the world has become narrow and dark like a prison, and who come to the Church because in it space, depth, breadth are revealed, in it there is light, in it there is life.
People come whom life has crippled, people come who have withered in the outer world, who are already bending toward the earth, in whom eternal life seems to barely flicker. And we all meet in the Church, because each of us has heard that here there is life, here there is hope, here God’s love triumphs. Each of us is loved, and therefore each of us is saved: because God’s love is stronger than death, stronger than sin, stronger than evil.
God’s love is life for us; and each of us has heard that this love of God is known by people too, and that, though imperfectly, not always with all our heart (because we are all wounded, all sick, all crippled), yet we too know how to love one another, to pity, to endure, to forgive. We have come here because we heard that there is life and that here beats the source of life…
And now we are going in a new way toward another, more glorious, more wondrous goal. From the Evangelists, the Apostles, the saints, from the Church, from one another, we have heard that the day of God’s glory is approaching, the day of Resurrection is approaching, the day that will have no night… And we are all now ready to board the ship that will carry us to the eternal shores…
The Church is compared both in Scripture, and in the writings of the Fathers, and in church hymns to a ship that carries us into eternity. On the ship it will be crowded, there will be many of us; some will delight everyone with their innocence and purity, others – the innocent, the pure – will wound our hearts at the sight of what foreign sin, human cruelty, madness has done to them…
Still others will stand like giants of the spirit, inspiring us on this path; these are those saints whose memory we will commemorate week after week on Sundays and every day; saints who show us how to live, reveal to us the greatness of the feat, open to us how we can open ourselves to Divine grace and what we can become: what beauty, what greatness can shine in us for the glory of God, for the salvation of our neighbor, for the eternal joy of the Angels…
Others enter this path sinful, not yet cleansed, still sick with sin, still wounded. With what pity, with what tenderness, with what trembling we must treat them!.. And others board this ship already withered, having lost as if hope in their own strength, hoping only on the support of another, on care, on tenderness, on pity.
Of them the Apostle Paul said: You who are strong, bear the infirmities of the weak. – And in another place: Bear one another’s burdens, carry the mutual heaviness, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ… We all belong to one category or another, and we all need one another on this path.
Now, from the penitential weeks of self-examination, confession, self-condemnation, and repentance, we enter into weeks when the power of God is revealed before us, when the Church opens before us the ways of God, when we see how God acts, how His grace can transform a person, make a new creation…
At what price is this accomplished by God? By the Cross, the horror of the Garden of Gethsemane, the crucifixion, God-forsakenness, the descent into hell: this is the measure of Divine love and God’s triumph… Let us accept one another with tenderness, with love, let us forgive everything to one another!
We will sing this evening the Sunday canon: Let us love one another, let us say to one another “Brethren” and forgive all things to all by the Resurrection… For not to forgive is to remain in darkness when we strive toward the light, not to forgive is to remain a slave to sin when we seek freedom, not to forgive is to keep by free will in ourselves the seed of death and the sting of death, when we seek, desire resurrection, pray for it, strive toward it…
Let us forgive one another everything, everything by which we have annoyed one another, by which we have offended, humiliated one another, everything that we have done, committed madly, in the darkening of the mind, in the madness of the heart, in the unsteady wavering of the will, in the rebellion of the flesh – let us forgive all to one another and begin this path.
This path is not easy, on this path we will be unfaithful to our heart’s desire, to our own aspiration, we will not be faithful either to God or to the very best that is in us; but let us remember the words of Seraphim of Sarov, that the beginning and the end of the path are important.
The beginning is our present repentance, it is our openness to one another, it is our readiness to be our own to one another, not strangers, to bear one another’s burdens, to love one another at the cost of suffering, pain, the cross; the end is the joy of meeting the Lord’s Pascha, the meeting of the Resurrection, entry into the Kingdom of God, into eternity, into triumph and victory.
And on the path – let us support one another; those who are stronger, support the weak, but all, all, all without remainder endure one another, bear one another, as the Israelites bore, supported one another when they came out of Egypt into the promised land – when they carried the old, supported the sick, strengthened the wounded, carried children in their arms, called the strong to help.
In this way let us go week by week to Christ’s Pascha, and then with what joy we will be able to embrace one another, kiss not with the deceitful kiss of Judas, but with the joyful Paschal kiss, and say that Christ is risen, that death is conquered, that night has come to an end, that a new day has dawned, eternal now for us.
And what joy there will be in this meeting!
And now I want to ask all – both you who are present here, and through you – those who are not here because of infirmity, because of laziness, because of forgetfulness, because of old age, to forgive me, that I, to whom the Lord has entrusted to care for you day and night with prayer, with love, and with every power of soul and body, do so little of it, am so unfaithful to my calling!
FORGIVE me, and through this open to me also the path to God’s forgiveness, and if strength suffices, if I manage to repent, to be cleansed, to be renewed – then I too will serve you with the faithfulness to which the Lord has called me and which I constantly so sinfully, so evilly, so irresponsibly violate… Forgive me, and let us forgive one another, and open to one another the embraces of the heart, call one another brothers and sisters and enter this path to the Resurrection, to new life, when we become a living force.
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