In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
In the Epistle to the Hebrews today, we heard about all the things that were suffered by so many people long before Christ came to us. They endured everything that they did suffer because they loved God. They trusted God. They were waiting for the fulfilment of His Promise of a Saviour. In due time, the Saviour did come. He fulfilled all their hopes, all their desires and all their concerns. Our Saviour began the new life in the Kingdom. In the Gospel reading today, we heard about the beginning of the call of the disciples, starting with Philip. It was Philip who found Nathaniel. This is what the Lord brought us into, along with Philip, Nathaniel, all the other apostles, and all the followers of Christ – the relationship of love with the living God.
Human beings have always had a difficult time accepting the depth and the extent of the love of God for us. Human beings have always fallen into temptations and resistance. So, in the course of many centuries, there has been one heresy after another, invented by people who could not understand and accept that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). Instead, they tried to turn Jesus Christ into a “nice guy”, or a very interesting and great philosopher, or maybe even a prophet greater than John the Baptist. For them, perhaps they will even admit that He was the greatest prophet of all times, but they will not accept to say that He is the Son of God. That He is, in fact, the Son of God is difficult for some people to accept.
Such people say : “How could God do such a thing ? It is too much for me to accept”. The fact is, however, that God is God. As we are singing in our hymns all the time, God is God, and God is Love, and because of the way His love operates, God can do whatever He wants. During this last week, we were singing this very thing in the Great Canon of Saint Andrew. God does whatever He wants. This does not mean that God is impetuous or frivolous. God, the Lord, always does things for a purpose. Therefore, when it suits Him for the salvation and the good of human beings and the world, He overturns the usual order of nature. For instance, there is the miracle that occurred in Cana of Galilee (see John 2:1-11). When our Lord told the servants to fill up the giant vessels with water, and then to take some out and to give it to the master of the feast, it was found, upon being tasted, to be the very best wine. The Lord bypassed the years of the fermentation and maturing process, and He took the water straight from being water to being wine (with no grapes in between) because the people had a need. They had run out of wine, and the Lord knew that this wedding feast required wine. His most pure mother made certain that He was aware of the situation, and she knew that He could meet the need. Therefore, out of love, the Lord short-circuited nature (as it were). He does many other things like that, and not only in the Gospels. He still does things like that for human beings today, for those who love Him and who pray to Him. Even in our days (sometimes, but not very often), there are some people who have died and have been returned to life by the prayers of the faithful. I have heard of some cases in my own lifetime. It does sometimes still happen (although not every day), because the Lord knows what is necessary in people’s lives and in particular situations, for building up the faith of the people and reassuring them of His love.
Let us take as an example the famous stories about the priest-monk, Father Arseny (Streltsov). There are two books about him now translated into English from the Russian. This priest-monk spent more than twenty years in a prison-camp in Siberia. There is the story about him when he was sent for punishment in the middle of a particularly cold period of the winter, into an unheated, uninsulated storage shed, along with a young man, another prisoner. This was done in order to kill them because they were Christian believers, and because they were doing good. The young man was very afraid that he was going to die. Then he suddenly realised that he was not cold. He further realised that Father Arseny was shining with uncreated light. When the guards came to check on them more than a day later, they found that Father Arseny and the young man were just fine, well rested and warm (at minus fifty degrees Celsius !). It did not completely impress the prison authorities, so as to convert them. They only admitted that they could not understand it – some people are very stubborn. However, other people in the camp very much understood, and they came to Christ because of this. The Lord is with us, and He loves us. He cares about the small things and the big things of our lives. The Lord is with us in His love.
Today, we are celebrating the memory of the Seventh Ecumenical Council and what we call the “Triumph of Orthodoxy”. It is the triumph of the truth about Jesus Christ, who is the Truth. This commemoration is not only about the icons, themselves, but it is also primarily about Jesus Christ Himself. The icons are a gateway to Him ; and they are given to us by God, so that we can easily communicate with Christ. We like to call them our windows to heaven, and that is truly what they are. This is because of the truth about the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). This is what the Seventh Council is concerned with. Icons are an expression of the Love of God which became visible and tangible as the Only-begotten Son of the Father, in accordance with the will of the Father, took flesh through the Ever-Virgin Mary, the Mother of God and the Theotokos, in order that we might be saved. The Son took up into Himself all our sinfulness, all our brokenness, all our fallenness, all our rebellion, all our darkness, all our despair, all our depression, all our hopelessness. He took it all up into Himself. He cleaned it ; He repaired it, and He is still doing that for you and for me out of His love. This is what we are celebrating today : the triumph of the Love of God, and the truth about Him who is the Truth.
The Seventh Ecumenical Council was the last ecumenical council to solve such problems, and it was a long time ago, in 787. There have been other local councils since then that have solved smaller problems. Probably we need an ecumenical council nowadays in order to clean up some of the big messes that afflict us these days, although the Church cannot very well afford such a council (we do not have a rich emperor to pay the bills). I think that it will still be a little while yet before we will manage to have such a council. Nevertheless, the Church is carefully preparing for such a council ; and even in the preparation for this council, some problems are beginning to get cleaned up. Any council is concerned with cleaning up the messes that are created by our sins, by our limitations, and in particular, by our fears. These councils resolve the fears, straighten out the messes, and reassure the faithful, because they meet in the Grace of the Holy Spirit. The Grace of the Holy Spirit brings about the corrections that are necessary, and this Grace maintains the whole truth, only the truth about Him, who is the Truth, Jesus Christ, our Saviour, Lord and Redeemer.
Remembering this love, let us today pay attention to our Lord’s care for us. He sees us in the same way as He saw Nathaniel under the fig tree. He knows about our sorrows ; He knows about our depression ; He knows about our difficulties ; He knows about our sicknesses. He knows, and He cares about them. Let us run to Him through the intercessions of the Mother of God, and through the prayers of many saints, as we plead for His help. Let us allow Him to give that help to us, because He is the Hope of the hopeless, the Saviour of the bestormed, the Physician of the sick, the good Shepherd who cares for us, loves us, and is with us. Let us open our hearts more to Him, so that we may realise that He is truly with us. Let us allow Him to work more and more in and with us, so that we can work more in and with Him to His glory : the glory of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.