My beloved spiritual children in Christ Our Only True God and Our Only True Savior,
CHRIST IS IN OUR MIDST! HE WAS, IS, AND EVER SHALL BE.
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ON SUNDAY MAY 31st OUR HOLY ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN CHURCH COMMEMORATES THE HOLY FATHERS OF THE FIRST ECUMENICAL COUNCIL
On this Sunday our Holy Church celebrates the memory of just one small group of His disciples and followers. The Holy Orthodox Church brings before you only 318 of His sweet, fragrant, and undecaying fruits. A small but chosen group. These are the 318 Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Synod, which was held in Nicaea in 325 A.D., in the time of the Emperor Constantine the Great, for the defense, clarification, and confirmation of the Orthodox Christian Faith. There had, at that time, appeared "grievous wolves" (Acts 20:29) under the guise of shepherds of the Church, who because of their dissolute lives, were unable to find a place for Christ's truth within themselves, but led the faithful astray, teaching them as dissolutely as they lived. The Holy Spirit, therefore, brought these Saints, the Holy Fathers, of God together at a Synod (Council), so that Christ's true teachers should be seen, as against the false, and that the might of those who fight for Christ should be seen over those who fight against Him; that the true, sweet fruit of the good Tree of which is Christ should be seen in contrast to the rotting and bitter fruits of the tree of evil. Like stars that shine in the sky, receiving light from the sun, so the Holy Fathers shone at Nicaea, receiving Light from Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit. They were Christ-bearing men, for Christ lived and shone forth in each of them. They were citizens of heaven rather than of earth, more like Angels then men. They were, in very truth, "the temple of the living God; as God hath said: "I will dwell in them, and walk in them" (2 Corinthians 6:16). Is it not sufficient to mention just three of them, the best known in you, for you to have an idea of what the other three hundred and fifteen were like: our Holy Father Nicholas, Saint Spyridon, and Saint Athanasius the Great? Many of them came to the Synod bearing on their bodies wounds incurred for Christ's sake: Saint Paphnutius, for example, had lost an eye to his torturers. All of them shone with an interior Light that came from God, and in which the Truth was seen and known. As followers of Him Who was Crucified, they regarded their sufferings as nothing, because of which their fearlessness in defense of the Truth was boundless and inexpressible. By their God-given knowledge of the Truth and their fearlessness in defense of the Truth, these Holy Fathers disproved and stamped out the heresy of evil Arius the heretic, and established the Creed that we today hold and confess as God's saving truth.
Today's Gospel does not speak of this Synod, but of our Lord Jesus Christ's last prayer to His Heavenly Father. Why is it this prayer that we read in today's Gospel? Because it showed its effect on the First Ecumenical Council. Through the power of this prayer, God made the Holy Fathers at this Council devoted and fearless defenders of the Truth, and victors over questionings and malice by men and demons. This is that great prayer.
At that time, "Jesus lifted up His eyes into heaven, and said: 'Father the hour is come; glorify Thy Son, that Thy Son also may glorify Thee." All that the Lord taught men to do, He did Himself. He had taught men to pray to God thus: "Our Father, which art in heaven..." (St. Matthew 6:9). And he raised His eyes to heaven, where the Father dwells and said: "Father!" He does not say "our Father," as we do, but simply "Father!" He alone could say "My Father"; He and no other, in heaven or on earth, for He is the only begotten Son of the heavenly Father - while we are only adopted sons by God's mercy and grace. "He lifted up His eyes" - not only His bodily eyes also His spiritual ones - and firstly these latter. The Publican "would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven" (St. Luke 18:13), for he, felt his sinfulness. The Lord, though, freely "lifted up His eyes unto heaven." for He clearly saw this hour, the most terrible from the beginning to the end of time. He alone saw it clearly from the very beginning, and from the beginning, He foretold it and spoke about it to His disciples. But His disciples did not grasp it, nor did their hearts make it their own, right up to the time that the hour was no longer days, but minutes, away.
"Glorify Thy Son!" Glorify Him in this terrible hour as Thou hast glorified Him up to now. Glorify Him in death as Thou hast glorified Him in life. Glorify Him in humiliation and torment, as Thou hast glorified Him in mighty words and deeds. Glorify Him among men, as Thou hast down from the beginning glorified Him among the Angels. Glorify Thy Son, "that Thy Son also may glorify Thee." If it seems the first part of the sentence that the Son is lesser than the Father, we see clearly from this second part Their Equality and mutual activity in Their equal power. The Father glorifies the Son, and the Son glorifies the Father, with undivided power and undivided love. As the Seer saw and expressed it: "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father; but he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also" (I John 2:23). The Father sent the Son into the world, the Son revealed the Father to the world. Nothing would be known of the Son without the Father, nor of the Father without the Son, as light would not be known, were it not to come from the sun; nor the sun, without the light revealing it. And the Apostle uses this comparison, calling Christ "the brightness of His (the Father's) Glory" (Hebrews 1:3). But the Lord does not seek this glorifying of Himself from the Father for his own sake, but for the sake of men. (Source: Homilies by Saint Nikolai Velimirovic)
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"Glory Be To GOD For All Things!" -- Saint John Chrysostom
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With sincere agape in His Holy Diakonia,
The sinner and unworthy servant of God
+Father George