LIVING ORTHODOX

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Brothers and sisters, this Sunday we remember the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council. Many great saints are found among these fathers: St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, St. Spyridon, and many more. These great leaders were given to us to lead the Church out of the darkness and errors of their time, the greatest heresy being that of Arianism, which denies our Lord as being co-eternal with the Father. Lord have mercy.

Now we of the Russian Orthodox Church find ourselves in a modern and western diaspora, one in which many sects, all of the heretical, exist in the same space. Many of us meet these people, who ask us if we are saved or if we’ve read the Bible, to which many of us have failed to answer in a way that is concise. 

Just as, as adults we can recall the lessons of childhood from our parents and elders, so too should we look to the Holy Fathers. Too many of us are ignorant of the ecumenical councils, these councils which are led by the Holy Spirit and which produced the Symbol of our Faith, in which they, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit wrote: “one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.” Jesus in the gospel prayed that we would be one as the Father and He are one. Which is to say that we should not be divided and not let ourselves be divide by that which is not Orthodox—that is to say, heretical. To choose that which is outside the body of Christ is to choose that which is outside God. Therefore brothers and sisters, let us learn from our Holy Fathers and from the ecumenical councils, for you have many teachers in Christ but not many fathers, and it is in following our fathers that we may attain to unity and to put aside our pride and give ourselves in obedience to the Holy Spirit by adhering to the wisdom of the councils. 

Let us put aside our pride and self-will, so that we may, in the unity of faith, adhere to the oneness of the Church as commanded by our Lord. 

Amen. 

Fr. Mikhail