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Today is the Sunday of Orthodoxy, but we should remember that it isn’t the triumph of the Orthodox over other confessions and other people, but the feast of God’s victory, the victory of truth, the victory of Christ over all weakness of human mind. Because which of us can say that he believes in God as it is described in the Holy Scripture? The Holy Gospel of Saint Mark says that all miracles will be opened to the believer, he will speak new languages, heal diseases, raise the dead, if he drinks any poison, and it will do him no harm. Which of us can tell that he has similar faith?
The Apostle Paul says that we carry the Kingdom of God as if in clay vessels, that is we are clay vessels. And indeed, the Church overwhelms us, but we don’t overwhelm the Church, it is immense and we are small. The Church is not only community of people who came to Christ. The Church is a miracle; it is the presence of the whole mystery of the Holy Trinity among us and our communion by the grace of God, mercy of God to this miracle.
The first member of Church is the Saviour Christ in whom all fullness of God lives in bodily form. And together with Him His gift, the holy Spirit, pours out on all creature, not only on believers but on the whole world because He opened the doors through which the mystery of eternity enters.
In another place the Apostle Paul says that God’s power works in sickness. We are unworthy of the wealth which the Lord has given us and gives every day, every hour during all our life. We are sick but God’s power works in us. And so we celebrate this today. Therefore, we’ll rejoice today that God overcomes in us, opens the truth and life, love and joy, makes us new creature, but let’s not extol ourselves over others.
Let’s show our faith in our work and see what work is being done by the heterodox who don’t share our Orthodox faith and we’ll see that many of them bring the fruit of their faith richer and more perfect than many of us, their life is more Christlike despite the unfulness of their confession than the life of many and many of us. So, we who confess the Orthodox faith, who has been given such purity and fullness of faith, must keep it with reverence and fear and live according with it, and only then we’ll be able to say that we are the disciples of Christ in the full sense of this word.
So, let’s repent that we, from the fullness of the Orthodox faith, can’t often create a community or society worthy of Christ and the faith which we confess. Amen.
By Rev. George Sergeev