In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

It’s really important for us as we are struggling to live our Orthodox Christian lives day by day in this difficult environment, to keep our hearts, and minds in the Gospel. If we are Orthodox Christians, everything in our lives has to be related to, and referred to Christ. If we are going to try to do this, we have to keep remembering WHO HE IS. I remember not long ago being reminded about a particular river of Greek mythology, a principal river of Hades, called Lethe. If you drink of the water of this river, you forget everything. There’s much about the world in which we are living right now which is like drinking from this river of forgetfulness. There are so many distractions in everyday life, so many pressing needs of one sort or another (or shall we say “apparent” pressing needs), that it is very easy for us quickly to let the Lord drift into the background of our lives. It’s a very dangerous thing for us to do. When the Lord drifts into the background of our lives, then we become prey to Big Red’s temptations more than ever. Then we are in greater risk of being pulled away from the Body of Christ. We are in greater risk of being separated from the flock, and being eaten up by the wolf. These are real metaphors that the Lord gave us: flocks of sheep, shepherds.

For our sake it’s important every day to ask the Lord to help us have the strength to remember to read a little bit from the Scriptures. The readings for every day, which we find in all sorts of calendars, are not very long, actually. If you read those readings for every day, in the course of a whole year you’ll have read almost the whole New Testament. It’s not that hard. A year to read these little bits is not all that hard. However, You-know-who-down-below makes us think that it’s such a difficult thing to open the Bible, and read six or even ten verses. If it’s a whole chapter, it seems that it’s going to take so much time, and it becomes an obstacle. Actually, it takes three or four minutes. But he helps us to think that it is so much to read that it feels like wading through porridge to open the Bible. That’s how it feels. That’s the way the Deceiver deceives us. That’s how he plays with us.

However, when you manage actually to open the Scriptures, you encounter Christ in those Scriptures. He makes you realise that even though it felt like wading through porridge to get to opening the Scriptures, once you start to read, it’s refreshing. It’s refreshing because you remember Who is Christ to you, and Who is He to the world, and to the Church. You are renewed in your hope of being able to survive. That’s why it is important to try to read the Scriptures at the beginning of the day, not at the end of the day (because at the end of the day you are tending to fall asleep even after a couple of verses, especially if you have a big dinner).

Once having opened the Scriptures, once having encountered Christ, you are refreshed. You are renewed. You are given the ability to survive the rest of the day by beginning the day reading the Scriptures. You have food to remember, and a correct perspective of life for the rest of the day. It only takes a few minutes to read those Scriptures. If you want to get into reading a Kathisma of Psalms, that’s a more serious chunk of time – a whole ten minutes. However, even just a few minutes like that with the Lord, and a couple of prayers will give you focus, and help you to keep going for the rest of the day.

Who is Jesus Christ to us? Jesus Christ to us is like He is to the Apostles Peter, Andrew, James, and John, and all the rest (especially the ones today who are encountering Him by the Sea of Galilee). The Lord borrows the Apostle Peter’s boat to sit in it, and teach people from it. That sounds rather strange from an average Canadian perspective, because it’s not so obvious how it’s easier to teach from a boat a crowd of people on the shore. I’ll tell you how it’s easier.

In the first place, there were a lot of people. There always were a lot of people around Jesus Christ when He was teaching. How to be heard? When you are sitting on a boat on the water, already the voice carries better. Just the acoustics of being on the water makes the voice carry better. On top of that, the Sea of Galilee is surrounded by fairly steep hills. It’s not some place where the land just slopes gently into the water. By the Sea of Galilee there’s a fairly steep rise, and it almost gives the effect of an amphitheatre. There is the water, and the rise, and the people being able to see the speaker (in this case, Christ) in the boat. There is a possibility of being able to concentrate on who is talking, and being able to hear who is talking. This is sort of an ideal place, and way to teach. In the Gospels on more than one occasion we see the Saviour standing or sitting in a boat doing exactly the same thing. He knows His creation. He knows His creatures.

The Lord shows how He knows His creation, and knows His creatures by telling the Apostle Peter: “Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a catch”. The Apostle says: “Master, we toiled all night and took nothing; but at your word I will let down the nets”. They go out, they fish; and as we heard, they get so many fish they have to fill several boats with these fish. Now they know WHO HE IS. Now they know what would be necessary to do when they would come to shore, and He says: “Follow Me" (Matthew 4:19). They leave everything, and they follow Him because they have complete confidence in Him.

St Euphrosyne of Suzdal, and St Sergius of Radonezh whose memory we keep today, also have complete confidence in the Lord. They were both contemporaries, more or less, at the time of the Mongol invasion in the fourteenth century. They withdrew for different reasons: he, because God called him into the wilderness; she, because she was widowed on her wedding day. St Euphrosyne withdrew to pray. St Sergius withdrew into the forest to pray. Both of them depended on the Lord to look after them, and He did. As we heard last night, the brethren were grumbling sometimes. I’m sure that happened in St Euphrosyne’s community as well. Sometimes food gets scarce or very repetitive with preserved apples, buckwheat, and sauerkraut – that’s the likely diet, exactly because there’s an old Russian proverb that says: “Cabbage soup, and buckwheat – that’s our food”. The brethren will get rather irritable when there is no variety in the diet for a long period of time. Sometimes monastic communities have had to live like that, but the Lord does always provide. Many times in these monastic communities, they have seen as concrete evidence of the Lord's providing, that when there’s nothing left (and they think that they are going to begin starving, someone sends money so that they can buy food, or someone brings food to them, and the day is saved just in the nick of time. Why is this? Because the brethren of those monastic communities, who have withdrawn to serve the Lord, and the Lord only, and above all in their lives, have to be reminded that it is Jesus Christ who is feeding them. He is feeding them in the same way as He feeds the birds of the air. as the parable of Christ says. This is exactly as it says in the parable of Christ.

There have been many people whom I have known who have been in exactly this boat: lay people, Christian families, who have often been in a very precarious position. Out of nowhere the Lord provides from some unexpected place. Some person sends money saying: I was thinking of you. The Lord helped the other person to remember this person three weeks before so that that person would write a check, mail it, and the mail would get there on the right day. The Lord knows what He is doing. The Lord is in charge of His creation. The Lord is in charge of us in this community as well. He is leading this community. He is leading all of us personally, and all together. He is leading us in the direction of life, and health, and salvation.

To underline this again, St Euphrosyne in Suzdal was told ahead of time that her father would be a martyr, and he was. This is because the Mongols came, and levelled Suzdal, except for her monastery. Her monastery was the only thing left in Suzdal against the Mongols at that time. That was because she, and her sisters were praying, and trusting completely in Christ, and the Lord wanted them to be a witness. The martyrs were witnesses in their own way, but the Lord wanted that community of St Euphrosyne in Suzdal to be a witness of how the Lord is with us. Other people had similar confidence in Him in various other places. For example, there is the wonder-working icon of the Theotokos of Tikhvin (which we took back to Russia last year). In the old days, when the icon was first in its monastery in Tikhvin outside of St Petersburg, the Swedes were attacking (as the Swedes did like to attack Russia in those days). They were going to destroy Tikhvin, except that the brethren of that monastery went in a procession with the icon around the monastery, and without a fight the Swedes just went home.

These sorts of things have happened time and again in Christian history. Who is in charge of the universe? It’s Jesus Christ. He created us all. Who is in charge of my life? It’s Jesus Christ. He created me. He gives me life. Who is in charge of the details of our life together? It’s Jesus Christ. He is our Saviour. He is our loving Pastor. He is our loving Shepherd. He will not betray us. Every human being, willingly or unwillingly, sometimes betrays other human beings even if we don’t want to, just because we are fallen. We make mistakes, and we have to repent of our mistakes. Jesus Christ is the only One who is ever faithful, ever trustworthy. You can see Him in failing human beings, but don’t compare Him to failing human beings. He alone is faithful, and He alone will sustain us in every difficulty, every trial, every disappointment, every pain, every obstacle. He will sustain us, and He will teach us how to survive, how to live positively, healthily, and with strength.

St Sergius of Radonezh, and St Euphrosyne are very good, positive, and strong examples of what are the fruits of trusting Jesus Christ. Let us, ourselves, do our best to trust that Jesus Christ knows well what He is doing with us, and to allow Him to lead us. Let us not put blocks in His way, but ask Him what is His will for us. Let us ask Him: What do You want us to do? We’ll do it. Just show us the way. I’m saying this especially for two reasons: this community is being tested a little bit just at this time. It’s not too bad, and it will work out all right. However, another challenge will come in the near future probably, and that is: where will be the final permanent place for this parish. Is it going to be a variation on this theme, or is it going to be in a different place? This will be what has to be discerned in Christ. As I said before, I hope it’s a place down the block, but we can’t count that chicken before it would hatch. Count that chicken before it hatches, I can tell you, and it won’t hatch. We can hope, and the Lord knows that we hope, but we cannot say it must be. Maybe the Lord wants, and will give us the ability to re-arrange this temple for some reason. He will show us, and it will be understood by people, together.

Keep your hearts open to the Lord, and attuned to the Lord, so that you will know what He is saying to you. Keep your eyes on Jesus Christ every day. He will not disappoint you or desert you. He will always feed you, guide you, support you, sustain you, and enable you to glorify Him, together with His Father, who is from everlasting, and His all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America