In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Rejoicing today in the triumph of Orthodoxy on this first Sunday of
Lent, we joyfully commemorate three events: one event belonging to the
past; one event to the present; and one event which still belongs to the
future.
Whenever we have any feast or joy in the Church, we Orthodox first of
all look back — for in our present life we depend on what happened in
the past. We depend first of all, of course, on the first and the ultimate
triumph -- that of Christ Himself. Our faith is rooted in that strange
defeat which became the most glorious victory — the defeat of a man
nailed to the cross, who rose again from the dead, who is the Lord and the
Master of the world. This is the first triumph of Orthodoxy. This is the
content of all our commemorations and of all our joy. This man selected and
chose twelve men, gave them power to preach about that defeat and that
victory, and sent them to the whole world saying preach and baptize, build
up the Church, announce the Kingdom of God. And you know, my brothers and
sisters, how those twelve men — very simple men indeed, simple
fishermen — went out and preached. The world hated them, the Roman
Empire persecuted them, and they were covered with blood. But that blood
was another victory. The Church grew, the Church covered the universe with
the true faith. After 300 years of the most unequal conflict between the
powerful Roman Empire and the powerless Christian Church, the Roman Empire
accepted Christ as Lord and Master. That was the second triumph of
Orthodoxy. The Roman Empire recognized the one whom it crucified and those
whom it persecuted as the bearers of truth, and their teaching as the
teaching of life eternal. The Church triumphed. But then the second period
of troubles began.
The following centuries saw many attempts to distort the faith, to
adjust it to human needs, to fill it with human content. In each generation
there were those who could not accept that message of the cross and
resurrection and life eternal. They tried to change it, and those changes
we call heresies. Again there were persecutions. Again, Orthodox bishops,
monks and laymen defended their faith and were condemned and went into
exile and were covered with blood. And after five centuries of those
conflicts and persecutions and discussions, the day came which we
commemorate today, the day of the final victory of Orthodoxy as the true
faith over all the heresies. It happened on the first Sunday of Lent in the
year 843 in Constantinople. After almost 100 years of persecution directed
against the worship of the holy icons, the Church finally proclaimed that
the truth had been defined, that the truth was fully in the possession of
the Church. And since then all Orthodox people, wherever they live, have
gathered on this Sunday to proclaim before the world their faith in that
truth, their belief that their Church is truly apostolic, truly Orthodox,
truly universal. This is the event of the past that we commemorate
today.
But let us ask ourselves one question: Do all the triumphs of Orthodoxy,
all the victories, belong to the past? Looking at the present today, we
sometimes feel that our only consolation is to remember the past.
Then Orthodoxy was glorious, then the Orthodox Church was
powerful, then it dominated. But what about the present? My dear
friends, if the triumph of Orthodoxy belongs to the past only, if there is
nothing else for us to do but commemorate, to repeat to ourselves how
glorious was the past, then Orthodoxy is dead. But we are here tonight to
witness to the fact that Orthodoxy not only is not dead but also that it is
once more and forever celebrating its own triumph — the triumph of
Orthodoxy. We don’t have to fight heresies among ourselves, but we
have other things that once more challenge our Orthodox faith.
Today, gathered here together, Orthodox of various national backgrounds,
we proclaim and we glorify first of all our unity in Orthodoxy. This is the
triumph of Orthodoxy in the present. This is a most wonderful event: that
all of us, with all our differences, with all our limitations, with all our
weaknesses, can come together and say we belong to that Orthodox faith,
that we are one in Christ and in Orthodoxy. We are living very far from the
traditional centers of Orthodoxy. We call ourselves Eastern Orthodox, and
yet we are here in the West, so far from those glorious cities which were
centers of the Orthodox faith for centuries — Constantinople,
Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Moscow. How far are those cities. And yet,
don’t we have the feeling that something of a miracle has happened,
that God has sent us here, far into the West, not just in order to settle
here, to increase our income, to build up a community. He also has sent us
as apostles of Orthodoxy, so that this faith, which historically was
limited to the East, now is becoming a faith which is truly and completely
universal.
This is a thrilling moment in the history of Orthodoxy. That is why it
is so important for us to be here tonight and to understand, to realize, to
have that vision of what is going on. People were crossing the ocean,
coming here, not thinking so much about their faith as about themselves,
about their lives, about their future. They were usually poor people, they
had a difficult life, and they built those little Orthodox churches
everywhere in America not for other people but for themselves, just to
remember their homes, to perpetuate their tradition. They didn’t think
of the future. And yet this is what happened: the Orthodox Church was sent
here through and with those poor men. The truth itself, the fullness of the
apostolic faith -- all this came here, and here we are now, filling this
hall and proclaiming this apostolic faith — the faith that has
strengthened the universe. And this leads us to the event which still
belongs to the future.
If today we can only proclaim, if we can only pray for that coming
triumph of Orthodoxy in this country and in the world, our Orthodox faith
forces us to believe that it is not by accident but by divine providence
that the Orthodox faith today has reached all countries, all cities, all
continents of the universe. After that historic weakness of our religion,
after the persecutions by the Roman Empire, by the Turks, by the godless
atheists, after all the troubles that we had to go through, today a new day
begins. Something new is going to happen. And it is this future of
Orthodoxy that we have to rejoice about today.
We can already have a vision of that future when, in the West, a strong
American Orthodox Church comes into existence. We can see how this faith,
which for such a long time was an alien faith here, will become truly and
completely universal in the sense that we will answer the questions of all
men, and also all their questions. For if we believe in that word:
"Orthodoxy," "the true faith"; if for one moment we try to understand what
it means: the true, the full Christianity, as it has been proclaimed by
Christ and His disciples; if our Church has preserved for all ages the
message of the apostles and of the fathers and of the saints in its purest
form, then, my dear friends, here is the answer to the questions and to the
problems and to the sufferings of our world. You know that our world today
is so complex. It is changing all the time. And the more it changes, the
more people fear, the more they are frightened by the future, the morethey
are preoccupied by what will happen to them. And this is where Orthodoxy
must answer their problem; this is where Orthodoxy must accept the
challenge of modern civilization and reveal to men of all nations, to all
men in the whole world, that it has remained the force of God left in
history for the transformation, for the deification, for the
transfiguration of human life.
The past, the present, the future: At the beginning, one lonely man on
the cross — the complete defeat. And if at that time we had been there
with all our human calculations, we probably would have said: "That’s
the end. Nothing else will happen." The twelve left Him. There was no one,
no one to hope. The world was in darkness. Everything seemed finished. And
you know what happened three days later. Three days later He appeared. He
appeared to His disciples, and their hearts were burning within them
because they knew that He was the risen Lord. And since then, in every
generation, there have been people with burning hearts, people who have
felt that this victory of Christ had to be carried again and again into
this world, to be proclaimed in order to win new human souls and to be the
transforming force in history.
Today this responsibility belongs to us. We feel that we are weak. We
feel that we are limited, we are divided, we are still separated in so many
groups, we have so many obstacles to overcome. But today, on the Sunday of
Orthodoxy, we close our eyes for a second and we rejoice in that unity
which is already here: priests of various national churches praying
together, people of all backgrounds uniting in prayer for the triumph of
Orthodoxy. We are already in a triumph, and may God help us keep that
triumph in our hearts, so that we never give up hope in that future event
in the history of orthodoxy when Orthodoxy will become the victory which
eternally overcomes all the obstacles, because that victory is the victory
of Christ Himself.
As we approach the most important moment of the Eucharist, the priest
says, "Let us love one another, that with one mind we may confess...." What
is the condition of the real triumph of Orthodoxy? What is the way leading
to the real, the final, the ultimate victory of our faith? The answer comes
from the Gospel. The answer comes from Christ Himself and from the whole
tradition of Orthodoxy. It is love. Let us love one another, that
with one mind we may confess . . . confess our faith, our Orthodoxy. Let
us, from now on, feel responsible for each other. Let us understand that
even if we are divided in small parishes, in small dioceses, we first of
all belong to one another. We belong together, to Christ, to His Body, to
the Church. Let us feel responsible for each other, and let us love one
another. Let us put above everything else the interests of Orthodoxy in
this country. Let us understand that each one of us today has to be the
apostle of Orthodoxy in a country which is not yet Orthodox, in a society
which is asking us: "What do you believe?" "What is your faith?" And let
us, above everything else, keep the memory, keep the experience, keep the
taste of that unity which we are anticipating tonight.
At the end of the first century — when the Church was still a very
small group, a very small minority, in a society which was definitely
anti-Christian when the persecution was beginning — St. John the
Divine, the beloved disciple of Christ, wrote these words: "And this is the
victory, our faith, this is the victory." There was no victory at that
time, and yet he knew that in his faith he had the victory that can be
applied to us today. We have the promise of Christ, that the gates of hell
will never prevail against the Church. We have the promise of Christ
that if we have faith, all things are possible. We have the promise of the
Holy Spirit, that He will fill all that which is weak, that He will help us
at the moment when we need help. In other words, we have all the
possibilities, we have everything that we need, and therefore the victory
is ours. It is not a human victory which can be defined in terms of money,
of human success, of human achievements. What we are preaching tonight,
what we are proclaiming tonight, what we are praying for tonight, is the
victory of Christ in me, in us, in all of you in the Orthodox Church in
America. And that victory of Christ in us, of the one who for us was
crucified and rose again from the dead, that victory will be the victory of
His Church.
Today is the triumph of Orthodoxy, and a hymn sung today states solemnly
and simply: "This is the Apostolic faith, this is the Orthodox faith, this
is the faith of the Fathers, this is the faith that is the foundation of
the world." My dear brothers and sisters, this is also our own faith. We
are chosen. We are elected. We are the happy few that can say of our faith,
"apostolic," "universal," "the faith of our fathers," "Orthodoxy," "the
truth." Having this wonderful treasure, let us preserve it, let us keep it,
and let us also use it in such a way that this treasure becomes the victory
of Christ in us and in His Church. Amen.
Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann
To Love Is To Remember. Father Alexander Schmemann Endowment
— Chair of Liturgical Theology. NY, St. Vladimir’s Orthodox
Theological Seminary, March 1985.
An abridged version was reprinted in the Orthodox Church,
December 1988.
