Feast of the Conception of the Theotokos
(Old-Style)
God is with us

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

We live in an environment that is very skeptical, very doubting, very separated from God, in fact. There has been in the West a long history of misunderstanding of where is God in our relationship to Him. I was reading a book by the current Pope which is good in itself. It is about the Divine Liturgy, and is mostly all right, but he shows in the title exactly what is the difference between them, and us. In the title he says, “God is near us”. However, we always say “God is with us”. Especially when we are talking about the Divine Liturgy, and receiving Holy Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, we have to be saying “with”, and not “near”. God, in the West, is thought of as "out there" somewhere, looking at us from a distance, He is disconnected from us. Some people don’t even think that He is looking at us.

We, on the other hand, understand that He is with us. He is in us. He is everywhere, and nothing exists apart from Him. There is no separation between Him, and what He created because, if there were, it wouldn’t exist. His love sustains everything that exists. Everything that exists is held together by His love. It comes out of His love in the first place. It continues in His love.

I find it important, every time we hear this Gospel reading, to say: Pay attention. The Lord is being told that His Mother, brothers, and sisters are outside waiting. (First cousins are considered brothers, and even second cousins are considered brothers, and sisters in many cultures.) The Lord is saying: “My Mother, and my brothers are those who hear the Word of God and do it”. That is not to say, in other words, that the Mother of God, and His relatives did not hear the Word of God, and keep it (especially the Mother of God). In fact, that is why she is who she is to us, and to the whole world. She hears the Word of God, and she keeps it.

In this way we are enabled to be brothers, and sisters of the Lord, ourselves, in that we hear the Word of God, and keep it. Our kinship with the Lord is not based on blood, which is the whole point of the Epistle. It’s not based on blood, inheritance, and genes. It is based on our loving relationship with God, our heavenly Father. Everything is based on, and rooted in our relationship of love. As the Apostle was saying, rules, and laws tend to produce an attitude of slavery in us, and we do things because there is a rule that says we have to do it. However, doing it because we have to do it, even if we do it, does not bear the same Grace as doing it because we love to do it.

Being in the temple of the Lord on Sundays or on feast-days because I have to do it, as an Orthodox Christian, because it is a rule: there is a blessing that comes with it, yes. However, the blessing goes far deeper in our hearts, and has much more effectiveness in our lives if we come to the temple every week, and every feast-day, and even oftener if possible, because we love to be here in the temple of the Lord, with the Lord, worshipping Him. It is out of love that we are here. We are here because we are free to be here. We freely choose to be here. We freely want to be here. This being here produces much deeper roots in our hearts, and in our lives than being here because I must be here. Still, that is not to say that the Lord is confined to what I just said. There have been many people who have come to the temple of the Lord because they were told they must. After being in the temple of the Lord, and worshipping the Lord over a period of time, the fire of God’s love is struck in their hearts. They no longer come because they must; they come because they want to, out of love.

When we are living in the environment of the Grace of the Holy Spirit, rules (which are not always the best things to live by because of a tendency to slavery) nevertheless, become life-giving, because of the Lord, who is the Giver of life. The Lord is not confined by what a bishop is going to say about rules, regulations, his preference for other ways, and his various sorts of prejudices. The Lord knows the hearts of His children, and the Lord comes to the hearts of His children, and turns their hearts softly into love. He brings them to life. He puts them on fire, and He enables these burning hearts, full of love for Jesus Christ, to bear much fruit.

It is not for nothing that there has been, even up to the present day, the example of women who were unable to bear children for one reason or another. When it became impossible according to normal human behaviour to have children, then they did. Sarah was the first, and greatest example, I suppose, but there have been many since then. The Lord does this not only to give consolation to the parents who are childless, but also to show everyone that the Lord is the Lord of all creation. He does what He wills in creation in order to give us hope, in order to give us confidence, in order to remind us that He does love us, and that He can overcome all our limitations.

The Lord prepares the way for the birth of His Only-begotten Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ. Underlining this preparation by these various sorts of events, He shows His love for us ultimately in the Yes of the Mother of God, when the Archangel Gabriel came to her, and in the continuing Yes of the Mother of God throughout the course of her life. It is this which enables her to be to us the sign even to this day of what it is to be a Christian, the sign of what is the Church. He shows His great love in sending to us His Only-begotten Son, so that we may be able to be united with Him, and live in Him.

We celebrate today His love, His tender care for us, and for all of our spiritual ancestors. Let us ask the Lord to freshen up the fire of our own love for Him in our hearts today, and ask Him to help us with lightness, with the same sort of joy that the Mother of God had, and does have, to serve our Saviour, Jesus Christ, and glorify Him together with His Father, who is from everlasting, and His all-holy, good, and life-creating Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America