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

We hear today the calling of the Apostles, and of course it’s appropriate, this being the Feast of the Apostles Peter and Paul. It’s also appropriate because the same call went out to those who ended up becoming all of the saints of the Orthodox Church, particularly to those who, for our consideration, became the saints of North America. On this day, as always is the case, the second Sunday after Pentecost, we remember, in particular, the local saints. For a young Church we actually have a lot of them. We have to give glory to God that we have been given such shining signs of encouragement for us. It’s so easy for us to be discouraged by the difficulties of life, especially the difficulties of modern life with all of the pressures that we are under.

I had a taste recently of how life used to be, when I visited the Bishop of Mexico City. Mexico City, although it certainly is a modern city, still lives very much in the way people lived when I was a child. For instance, there are still people in a café who will speak to you, and who care something about you. They remember your name if you are there more than once. They are willing to talk like human beings to you. These cafés in Mexico City that I encountered were like the ones of my childhood, where cafés were extensions of home where people were offering hospitality. We were guests in these places. The sense of hospitality, in other words, and the sense of human relations that we used to have in Canada arelost, for the most part because we are all so busy. We are all so taken up with ourselves that we have lost sight of much of the basics of just plain human life (let alone what it means to be an Orthodox Christian).

As a result of this, we get depressed; we feel hopeless; we feel that life is a big waste, and a huge responsibility. There is no joy left. This happens because we forget to turn to Christ for everything. One of the reasons that people had joy in my childhood, it seems to me, is that they still were remembering to turn to Christ for help, and they were involving Him in the various aspects, and burdens of daily life. It’s not that life was any easier in those days. I’m sure it was not easier for my parents. They certainly did not have all the technology, all the money, and so forth that we have these days. They absolutely didn’t. And yet, they had joy. Our family had joy. Our neighbours had joy. There was a Christian kind of sensibility about life. I suppose maybe it could very well be that what I sensed in Mexico City was a remainder of Christian awareness that is close to getting completely lost in North America.

The Lord addressed His Disciples, and Apostles by saying: “Follow Me”. This way of being as Christians has never changed since that time. The Lord today says to the Apostles: “Follow Me”. And today He still says to you, and to me: “Follow Me”. Through you, and me to the people we encounter in our daily lives, He is still saying: “Follow me”. It’s our responsibility as Christians to be demonstrating what it’s like to have a life with Christian joy. Our lives must be conveying this joy of Christ.

If we call ourselves Christians, and we don’t have joy, well then, what is this? If someone outside sees us moping around, saying: Oh my, life is so difficult. It’s so painful. It’s so hard. I can’t deal with it. What is that person going to say? He is going to say: So what benefit is there in being a Christian? Why should I want to be a Christian if you’re going to be like that? I don’t need to feel that bad.

It’s important for us to remember our responsibility as Orthodox Christians. We have the huge blessing today of the conjunction of the Feast of All Saints of North America, and the Feast of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul. There are so many things today to talk about that I can’t address all of them. I might as well confine myself more to the Apostles Peter and Paul.

The Apostles Peter and Paul are very strong personalities. As we encounter them in the Scriptures, we can see that they are very strong persons, each of them capable of making mistakes. They are human beings. Nevertheless, they repent of their mistakes, and they keep following Christ as He exhorted them on this day. They kept following Christ, and they never stopped until now. They still are following Christ.

We notice in the Scriptures that these two Apostles had some sharp differences. In the normal Orthodox way, they spoke about it quite bluntly to each other. They didn’t mince their words. However, the fact that they had these disagreements did not mean that there was a division. Because they talked bluntly, and squarely to each other, by the Grace of God, everything became settled in due course.

So how do you see the holy Apostles Peter and Paul represented in iconography to this day? They are hugging each other. Well, obviously, the tradition of our Orthodox Church is that from those earliest times the Apostles Peter and Paul did live in reconciliation and forgiveness with each other, even if they had differences of opinion. If those two holy Apostles, in the love of Jesus Christ (even if they had strongly different opinions about one thing or another), were able to find their way to reconciliation, harmony, and a concerted effort in the same direction, then we can, too. It’s about time we paid attention to this in our lives: living in reconciliation. This really is the way of Christ: living in reconciliation, and forgiveness.

There are many things going on in our Orthodox Church in America right now that indicate that people have a really hard time swallowing this particular, obvious command, and direction of the Gospel. However, even if people are still having a hard time swallowing it, it’s important for all of us to remember that it is not an option for an Orthodox Christian. It is not an option that you can take or leave. No matter what anyone does, for good or for bad, no matter what the difference of opinion is, we must still live in reconciliation, and forgiveness for each other. Otherwise why would the Lord bother to waste His time, and say: “Pray for your enemies”. Why did He bother, then, to direct us, for instance, to forgive people who are persecuting us, to pray for our enemies, even to love our enemies? Why would He do that and say that if He didn’t mean it, and if it were not an absolute necessity for us Orthodox Christians to follow?

He, Himself, hanging on the Cross, with His arms outstretched, was forgiving people from the Cross. He was asking His Father to forgive those who were crucifying Him because they didn’t know what they were doing. It has been said, also, that with those arms outstretched on the Cross, they were stretched out not by violence, and force. He voluntarily stretched them out on the Cross, and allowed His arms to be nailed to the Cross. By doing this, with His arms stretched out on the Cross, He is embracing all of us, all of His creatures, all of His creation. It is the wonderful paradox of how our Saviour addresses everything. He is dying, but He is going to live. He is being brutally crucified, but He is embracing the crucifiers. He is blessing them, and forgiving them.

This is the paradox that we have to live with, too. This is the extremity of love that we have to grow up into. In growing up into this love, it’s not something that we can make ourselves do, either. There’s no technique for growing up into His love. For the most part, it’s just life, but it’s a life that is constantly referring to the Saviour, asking Him to be present in my joy, in my sorrow, in my strong moments, in my difficult moments. We’re asking Him in every moment of our life to bless what is happening. We must remember to invoke Him, to call Him into our midst at all times. The more we do this, the more we allow Him to work in our hearts, the more we allow Him to heal our hearts, the more we are enabled to have a positive way of communicating as human beings.

And so our life will be full of all kinds of surprises, as my life has been full of surprises. In fact, in the course of my life, I never know what to expect when I wake up in the morning: what kind of new thing the Lord is going to send; what new opportunity the Lord is going to send; who is going to phone me, and offer to do this or that or ask the possibility to do this or that. The Lord is full of surprises. A life in Christ is always full of surprises because the Lord loves us. The Lord is the Giver of life, and He multiplies life in us.

It’s important for us to remember the Apostolic witness. It’s important to remember that the Apostles were ordinary human beings with ordinary human weaknesses which the Lord filled in, you could say. He healed their weaknesses, and replaced the weakness with His strength, just as He said He would. We have all these saints of North America who are on our calendar now, and who are much loved by many North Americans. Even people around the world love some of our saints because they have come to know them. These saints are ordinary human beings who, weaknesses and all, love the Lord. Their weaknesses were overcome by the Lord. Some of them were martyrs; some of them were not; some of them were known, and some of them are not.

Just the other day, I was visiting a women’s monastery near here, and I was hearing the story of a man who, during the course of his whole life, appeared to live an ordinary, non-descript kind of a life. He was just an ordinary husband, father, and businessman. He was a little eccentric, too, because he mowed the lawn in a tie. When he died, there was suddenly a surprisingly large number of people showing up at his funeral. There were people that his family had not met, and people that no-one knew at all in the town. They were quite surprised, and they were asking: How do you know our father/our husband? They said: This man every week gave us groceries for a long time, or they said: This man met our need in one way or another. He never said at all what he did, but it turns out that on his desk, they found a list of names of people he was looking after. He was checking them off in a very business-like manner. This man had lived a hidden, Christ-like life of sharing love in very practical ways. Everyone said: We never knew that we had a saint living in our midst. We didn’t know. This is, of course, how blind we can be. It is such a good example of what Christian giving is about, and what Christian service is about. This Orthodox Christian man, by doing good things in silence, was caring for other people that he encountered in his business. When he found out that they had a need of some sort, he juggled his books so that he could meet their need. He met their need, and it never touched his family. There were very many: it was not just five or six.

That a person will do something like this in a hidden way is exactly the epitome of Christian giving: giving, and no-one knows about it; being a light shining that helps particular people but doesn’t call attention to yourself. This emphasises the love of Christ. I don’t need any medals for all these little things that are being done; I don’t need profuse thanks from anyone. I just give. This is the ideal Christian way. We have saints that have lived in Toronto: not just this man. I have met a few, actually, but they are nameless at the moment.

We must keep in mind how important our Christian witness is, and, at the same time, the extent of the Lord’s love. The Lord’s love is immense, far beyond our understanding. How many times have I heard in my life (it’s now beyond my ability to remember): Those Christians are just a bunch of hypocrites. They don’t practice what they preach. They talk about love, but they hate each other, and that kind of thing. There are so many people that I have met who will not go to church because of bad Christian examples or because Christians go to war with each other.

That Christians will go to war with each other is the worst example. People’s lives are always catastrophically damaged in a war. People dream that at the end of a war you can carry on living life as if nothing had happened, whereas you have all the people that have been battered by the war one way or another not being healed; you have all the people who fought the war pretending in their hearts that the war never happened at all because the pain is so great. They live with nightmares, and all kinds of other pain. They have no way to find healing because they, too, are cynical about coming to Christ, and trusting Him, because Christians they have met have been so untrustworthy. You see how important is our Christian witness.

How many times have I met people who have been badly treated in a Christian context, and, nevertheless, by God’s merciful, loving Grace, still are able to live in a kind of Christian-like way, with some kind of positive attitude in life, with some kind of joy, even though they haven’t the faintest notion why they should be like this. It’s because their hearts are still somehow open. The Lord, who loves all of His creatures, is still touching them, and meeting their needs. How significant it can be for such a person to encounter an Orthodox Christian, or even any Christian, who is serious, and really allowing the light of Christ to shine through.

On this day of All Saints of North America, let us remember that the Lord has called all of us to be saints. Saints are not specialist Christians. They are not professional Christians, just as monks are not professional Christians. Neither are priests or bishops professional Christians – they are called to particular functions. A saint is just a person who heard the Saviour say: “Follow Me”, and did follow Him, more and more and more, allowing Him to grow in them into full maturity.

Let us, also, take up our Cross, follow the Saviour, and learn more to imitate His love. Let us ask Him to be with us, and multiply His love in us so that we will be able to glorify Him, and shine with Him: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America