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

We are celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of this parish here in N, and its witness in the town of N. The people who have been living, and serving here from its foundation fifty years ago have been doing so, following the example of St Seraphim, for whom the parish is named. They have been doing this to the best of their ability. That does not imply that every parishioner here is automatically a saint. But it is to imply that people in this parish have been doing their best to live a Christian life.

St Seraphim was living very much according to the Gospel in his life. The one thing that is needful in living our life is to live according to, and in the love of Jesus Christ. It is our way, and our call from Christ to follow Him. He is the Way for us, and He is the Truth. St Seraphim recognised this, and that is why he gave himself completely to the Lord in this way, to Him who is the Truth. It was not so different in the nineteenth century from now in secular society. In those days, too, there were all sorts of people led by philosophical ideas who thought that there is more than one sort of truth, who thought that there are alternative truths, and that they could come up with different sorts of truths. But God revealed Himself to us, showing that there is really only one Truth, and that is Himself. Jesus Christ, the Word of God, and the Son of God, said to us: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" (John 14:6). So, if we are following in the way, we are following Jesus Christ. We will encounter the Truth, and nothing but the Truth because it is Jesus Christ who is the Truth. In Him we will have Life, and Life in its fullness. That’s exactly what St Seraphim in the course of his life came to experience – Life in its fullness, in the love of Jesus Christ, and he was able, therefore, himself, to live according to the Truth.

St Seraphim was not some sort of specialist. He was an ordinary human being like everyone else. St Seraphim was able to live the fullness of human life in the way God created us to be. He showed us that, like him, other human beings can do the same. There have been many saints before St Seraphim, and there will be saints after him who will teach us the lesson that the Lord is always trying to teach us: that He is with us, that He cares for us, and no matter how difficult life might be for us, He is there for us, and He will help us overcome everything. He will put everything right in the end.

St Seraphim lived in a monastic community. People who don’t live in monastic communities have the idea that in monastic communities people are all perfect, somehow, that they are all Grace-filled, and that they are not fallen people any longer. They are supposed to be (in the popular mind) “professional Christians”, and experts in how to live the Christian life. Then, when monks, and nuns are found to be making mistakes, or arguing with each other, and sometimes not even liking each other so well, people outside this monastic community think there is something wrong. But there is nothing at all wrong. Monks, and nuns are human beings like everyone else, and they live in a Christian family like everyone else. They suffer from temptations just like everyone else. If in your family, and mine we sometimes have disagreements, why should you expect that among monks, and nuns it would be any different – except that in good monastic communities, people following the Gospel as well as they can, learn quickly how to forgive quickly. They learn how to reconcile quickly as my parents said (following the Apostle Paul): "Do not let the sun go down on your anger" (Ephesians 4:26). That’s why in good monastic communities every day ends with mutual forgiveness. They don’t just say: I’m sorry. They actually make a prostration in front of each other, and ask each other’s forgiveness. Sometimes they even get blessed with holy water to make sure that they have strength to forgive.

St Seraphim lived in such a community. The way he was following Christ, single-heartedly, even though he was under complete obedience to a spiritual father, made some of his brethren irritated. He got a lot of criticism, and sometimes ridicule. In a Christian family we are not necessarily living in a perfectly supportive atmosphere, and the same thing is in monastic communities, too. It’s not always just roses. There are thorns there, too, sometimes. But God is merciful. In the end, St Seraphim withdrew into the desert of the forest, and he became so filled with the love of Jesus Christ that in some cases we understand that he was shining like the sun. The Grace of God was radiating from him in a similar way that the Grace of God was radiating from the face of Moses after he was on Mount Sinai. This is because of God’s love. This is because God was reassuring people of His love, and how it is in the Kingdom – how it can be. He was giving us hope. St Seraphim is an example of this hope that Jesus Christ wants all of us to hold on to, to live in, to grasp, to make our own.

If you read the life of St Seraphim, you understand that as a result of his love, he was given Grace to help a lot of people who were facing all sorts of difficulties in their lives. When people become holy, they don’t become holy just for themselves, so that they can sit on some rock somewhere, and just be holy by themselves with Christ. Nothing of the sort. When people become full of the love of Jesus Christ, more is asked of them. The Lord gives them Grace to do more and more. They become examples of what the Saviour said that Christians are supposed to be – salt, and yeast. We are supposed to be salt, and yeast (neither of which by themselves is anything), but each, mixed with the environment (let’s say flour, for the sake of bread), does something very important. The yeast makes the flour rise, and transforms it into bread, and the salt gives flavour which makes the bread really good, and makes us want to eat it all.

This is how Christians are supposed to be in the world. Filled with the love of Jesus Christ, we are supposed to be able, and willing, competent in Christ by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, to help people in the way that bread is helped by yeast, and salt. Yes, it is true that we will get opposition. Yes, it is true that we will not be understood. Yes, it is true that we might be rejected, and treated as foolish. However, the fact is that our Saviour, Himself, was not treated any differently. Saints in every age have been treated in a similar way – not understood, nor appreciated, until the Lord makes it clear to some people that this person is needed for the Church’s welfare. There are plenty of saints that are not on the calendar, and never will be. And there are plenty of saints that are not even known.

In fact, because I know some of the people who are resting here in this cemetery, I think that I can say that some of those unknown saints are resting here, too, because I encountered them in their lives, and I know what sort of people some of them were (among them founders of this temple). I believe that this is the case. These persons are holy, were holy, and the Lord used them for a great deal of good even though they faced a lot of difficulty, a lot of misunderstanding, and even, sometimes, rejection. But their faithfulness bore fruit, and that is what is important for you, and for me today.

We must remember the example of St Seraphim of Sarov, his faithfulness to Jesus Christ, and the fruits that came from it, not only in his lifetime when people were healed, and their sorrows were assuaged, but even until this day. By his intercessions, people are helped, and strengthened. Throughout your life, and my life also, the Saviour calls us in obedience to Him, in His love, to help other people find Him as in St Seraphim’s life, and in the lives of all the saints, we see that they never pointed to themselves or called attention to themselves, saying: Look at me! I made it: I am holy. None of them would ever admit that he or she was holy. The most that you could get out of them, I am sure, is that they loved Jesus Christ to some extent (but not nearly enough), and that they were unworthy. That they would all say, I am quite sure, because I have heard so many of them say so to me. But they did love Jesus Christ, and longed to love Him much more. This is what the Kingdom of Heaven is going to be about – loving Jesus Christ more and more – endlessly, being more and more and more alive in Him – endlessly.

Through you, and me, even with difficulties, other people can see Christ. That is the point of these saints. We can see Jesus Christ in them. Even with all the distortions of our fallenness, and our inability to be obedient to Christ’s love, even with our sometimes stubborn willfulness, despite all of that, it must become our hope, and our prayer that people around will still, anyway, see something of Jesus Christ in us, and find consolation, hope, and courage to continue in whatever He has called them to do. In the life of a Christian, nothing else really matters. When we love Jesus Christ, and when we are living His love to the best of our ability, no matter what the difficulties are, everything works out because it is He that is leading us. Things do work out (although sometimes we think that they will never work out because of the perpetual, repeated difficulties that we face). However, things do, in fact, in the end work out, for His glory, even if it means that I have to die.

We all have to die, anyway. I was told yesterday, and I believe that it is right, that when it comes to dying, it is not something that we have to accept grudgingly as a reality. In the love of Jesus Christ, it is something that we should be able to give as an offering to the Saviour. When the time comes, and we become more aware of it, somehow, we can be prepared in love, and trust of Jesus Christ, to offer our own death to Him as an offering of love for Him to take up whenever He is ready, whenever the time is right. He knows when the time is right.

There is the story of one monk I used to know long ago, who was one hundred and seven when I first met him. He was saying then that God had forgotten him (he had a sense of humour to some extent). Everyone, and everything that he had ever known was already gone, and all these young people of seventy or eighty (even strange ones in their thirties like myself) were around him. It turned out that he lived to a hundred and eleven. At the time of the Revolution, this monk fled from the monastery where he was living in central Russia, rode a horse until it died, and then walked all the way to the Arctic coast, to Pechenga in northern Finland, further north than Murmansk, and further north than Arkhangelsk.

That’s where he ended up, and he lived there until the 1940 war in which the borders between the Soviet Union, and Finland were adjusted again. Then he had to leave that monastery on the Arctic coast, and go south into central Finland, and live in a completely strange monastic community again. When you are living as a monk, the idea is to go there, and stay there for the rest of your life. Transplanting is not in the picture. However, for some reason in his life, it was God’s will that he should be transplanted twice. So there he was in Valamo Monastery, living in a little room. When I met him, he had been there for about thirty-eight years in his cell by himself, with a cell attendant. At one hundred and seven he could stand up for his prayers, but couldn’t really walk all that far.

The most important thing about Fr Akaky was just his regular, faithful, living out of his life. Every night at midnight, the novices, who were living above him, said they could set their watches by him. Exactly at midnight, you could hear him start to sing: “O heavenly King”, the prayer that starts all of our services. His reading the midnight hours at twelve o’clock gave us a lesson in faithfulness. Every time I was in church, I saw him in church, too, in his wheel chair. He wanted to be there. He loved to be there. That was his life. By just giving this example, by doing what was his calling to do, praising the Lord at all hours of the day, and night, he was strengthening, and encouraging the young men who were wondering whether they should continue or not.

Sometimes we feel our lives are limited, and not necessarily accomplishing all that much. We are not the deciders of what our lives are accomplishing or what our lives are about. It is the Lord, Himself, who decides what our lives are about, and what persons are touched by our lives. We have no say in the matter. We have the responsibility to respond to His love, and to live according to His love. The Lord, as with St Seraphim, and many others, will multiply our offering, and He will draw to Himself those who are looking for Him.

Brothers, and sisters, may God bless you, protect you, and save you. May the Lord give you strength, and courage to persevere in your life in Christ, and in all difficulties to hold on to Him, like the Apostle Peter on the water. He will keep your head above the waves, and you will end up glorifying Him, as you were created to do, together with the Father, who is from everlasting, with His all-holy, good, and life-creating Spirit, now, and ever, and from the ages to ages. Amen.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America