Save as PDFSermon on Trinity Sunday (at Wostok; June 12th 2011)
"O Heavenly King, Comforter, Spirit of Truth... Come and abide in us, and cleanse us from every impurity, and save our souls, O Good One!"
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Dear brothes and sisters!
On this day, the fiftieth after Easter, we celebrate the Feast of Pentecost when the fullness of the Holy Trinity was revealed through the coming of the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, the Holy Spirit.
On this day we sing that Christ ‘made the fishermen most wise’. How did Christ do this?
Did he sit them on a school bench and proceed to teach them?
Did he give them advanced courses in Greek Philosophy?
Did he set them a translation from Hebrew into Latin?
Did he ask them to learn off by heart an Encyclopedia of Theology?
No, of course not. Instead He taught them humility and purity of heart, and then when they were ready, He sent down from His Father the Holy Spirit. This humility and purity of heart, crowned by the Holy Spirit, is the key to understanding, it is Wisdom.
This explains why very highly educated people are often the most stupid, responsible for terrible misfortunes and genocides. Thus, there have been many great geniuses in the history of the world, and many of them have become blood-soaked dictators. It is one thing to have instruction, but it is quite another to know how to use that instruction. This is the meaning of wisdom. Wisdom is discernment, or the ability to use aright information and knowledge. On the other hand, the meaning of stupidity is to have instruction and instead of using it for good, to use it to blind oneself, to fall in love with oneself, and be so full of oneself, that one is blind to God and so denies the existence of God, which is so obvious to the simplest peasant. As the Scriptures say: ‘The fool has said in his heart, there is no God’.
Pride blinds, but humility opens eyes.
Pride makes the Holy Spirit to flee, but humility draws the Holy Spirit like a magnet.
This is why two equally educated people may read the Gospels, one will become a believer, the other will dismiss them as a myth. The first has humility and purity of heart and therefore his spiritual eyes will be opened. The other has pride, and therefore he will be blinded by pride and self-opinion, and puffing himself up, will make himself ridiculous. Thus, understanding is quite independent of education, but dependent on humility and purity of heart. For it is not written, ‘Blessed are the educated’, but: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God’.
On account of this, you will notice that wherever there is pride, there are stubbornly-held opinions and therefore divisions. For pride leads to disunity, humility to unity. This is what we sang of in another hymn today, the kontakion. We recognise that at the time when men in their pride built the Tower of Babel, there was a confusion of tongues. Indeed the very word ‘Babel’ has become a synonym for confusion. On the other hand, we recognise that among the humble, the Holy Spirit brought unity, and different peoples were able to understand one another despite difference of language. Why is this? It is because opinions and opinionatedness and so divisions are the fruit of impurity in the heart, the fruit of pride.
For example, many people say of the Church: ‘Ah yes, that is a good idea, but I do not go to Church because there are so many divisions and splits’. But no divisions exist in the Church, they exist only among those who break away from the Church and Her Spirit, the Holy Spirit. All divisions, from the most ancient to the most modern, exist because of pride. If we look at every single split from the Church, we find pride, either personal or collective.
Thus, there are those split away from the Church because of their nationality and language and politics: collective pride. They refuse to belong to the same Church as those of another nationality and language and politics. Then there are those who leave the Church because they prefer to follow one man instead of God. All such groups are named after the man they prefer to follow, be they Arians, Calvinists and so on.
All these groups, whether they follow a political or a national or a personal ideology, end up leaving the Church. Why? Because they put the things of this world first and the Spirit second. Where there is the Holy Spirit, there is unity. Where the Holy Spirit is not, there is an ideology of whatever sort, and thus division. ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’.
That is why today, faithful Orthodox Christians, members of the Church, of all ages, and all over the world, and of all nationalities and languages celebrate the Feast of Pentecost together. Today we concelebrate the Feast with the Apostles and the Fathers, the Martyrs and the Confessors, of all ages, of ages past, and of the present age, and of the age to come. Today we concelebrate going back in history, with the New Russian Martyrs and Confessors, with the Martyrs and Confessors of Ancient Rome and Asia Minor, with all Orthodox Christians of all the ages. And this day we concelebrate the same Faith with the faithful in our churches in Jerusalem, in Athens, in Ukraine and Russia, in Alaska, in San Francisco, in Ottawa and in Edmonton. For we confess the same Orthodox Faith of the Holy Spirit, ‘Who proceeds from the Father and rests on the Son’, the same Orthodox Faith of the Holy Spirit, Who brings Wisdom and Unity wherever there is humility and purity of heart. Amen.