In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.
Amen. Joyous Feast. Zi Spraznikom. S'vyatom.
Today we commemorate all the saints that have shown forth in the Church, both those known and unknown, and these are certainly people, in some instances, that are just like the Lord described in the Gospels.
He said, "You receive without pay, give without pay." And so many of the saints, their lives are like that.
There's actually a whole category of saints called unmercenary saints that healed the sick and sought to minister to those who were ill but without charge, expecting nothing in return. And they spent their whole lives doing that.
Holiness is ultimately man's supreme destiny. There's actually a book by this title, by Constantine Cavarnos, who is a very pious Greek man, a philosopher, and he wrote this wonderful book called Holiness, Man's Supreme Destiny.
It's important for us to know what holiness is. Sometimes we can think about it solely in ethical terms. So we would think about it, so a holy person is a really, really good person.
But that's not what we find in the lives of the saints. We find some that are like that, that we would actually look at and say, "They are so virtuous." And it makes us want to... St. Gregory of Nice describes how you see the lives of the saints as like a beautiful portrait, and he says you want to take the colors and the form from this portrait and paint it in your own life.
And so some of the saints are like that, others are not. Others like the thief on the cross who lived an entire life that no one, no one should ever seek to emulate. And yet the Lord says to him, "Today you will be with me in paradise," and he's received in. And that makes him holy.
So what is it that makes him holy? All of his good deeds, which the Scriptures tell us are like filthy rags before the righteousness of God? Or is it his relationship with the living God? And that's the only thing that matters.
St. Gregory of Nice, in his book, The Life of Moses, he concludes the book by saying, which is a whole treatise written about the ascetical life, the virtuous life, what does it mean to genuinely repent and to seek purity of heart before God? And at the end of the book he says, ultimately, the whole reason that we're doing this is summed up in what is said of Moses, that he was the friend of God.
And so holiness means communion with the living God and nothing less. And that communion is something that is extended to us at every moment. And so it could be ours. It could be ours in a single moment of making a decision.
It's not something that's far away or that's impossible to grasp. Holiness is man's supreme destiny, and that holiness is knowing and being known by God.
Another example of what it means to be holy and of what it looks like. You remember, you may remember reading in the book of Revelation, where the Lord says, "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it."
And so what does this mean? He says, "I will give you a new name that is between me and you." So it is utterly unique. It is not something that can be compared amongst the names of men.
You know how we happen to have in our church a lot of Georges? And that's no accident. And I remember when I was first assigned here years ago and I was distributing Holy Communion, and it was like, "George, George, George."
But this name, this new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it, is known between the person and God alone. It's utterly unique. It's incomparable.
And so this is another thing. When you think about the good things that you can do, like you volunteer at a soup kitchen, you know, those are things, those are virtues that can be compared to other people. There are other people who volunteer at soup kitchens, and maybe they volunteer more than you do. Maybe they volunteer in places that are more desperate than you do.
And so all of those things are comparable. You can compare one person with another based on what they do. It's the type of things that, and… the same thing with blameworthy actions, these are the type of things that a court of law in the United States would be able to judge, decide, whether you've been naughty or nice.
Holiness has nothing to do with this. Holiness has to do with genuine personal relationship with the living God. And that's it. That's why the people of Israel are holy, just because they were selected. Just because they came into relationship with the living God. That's it. It's not because of anything they did.
And that's why when each of us is baptized and we are brought into the death and the resurrection of Christ, and we are anointed with the Holy Chrism, and we say the seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit, God is making us holy. He is setting us apart as His own impersonal and unique and unrepeatable relationship with Him.
And all of the other things that we think of to compare ourselves, to make ourselves stand out, to make ourselves different, don't really amount to anything. What matters is that relationship with God and the name that He desires to give us, which He alone knows.
Another example from the lives of the disciples that I was thinking about this morning, you remember after the resurrection, the Lord is walking and Peter is having a conversation with him that is very difficult. Because the Lord keeps asking Peter, "Do you love me?" And Peter says, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." And he's essentially saying in Greek, he's essentially saying, "You know that I'm your friend." And the Lord isn't asking him that, though.
He's asking him, "Do you love me in the sense of the way that we should love every human being, not necessarily those that we're really intimate with?" And so the Lord asks him, "Do you have the same love for me that you should have even for your enemies?"
And Peter says, "Yes, Lord, you know that I'm your friend." And the Lord asks him again. Peter says, "Yes, you know I'm your friend." And then he asks him a third time, and he says, "Peter, are you my friend?" And then Peter responds, "Yes, Lord, you know everything." But he doesn't say friend again. He says, "You know that I love you. That I love you in the same way that I love my enemies."
And so there's this thing that goes on there where there's almost a gentle reproach from the Lord. "Are you my friend?" So there's this unique relationship there.
And what does Peter do after that? He asks about John, the beloved disciple. He says, "Lord, what about him?" Because the Lord tells him, says to Peter, "When you were younger, you stretched out your hands. When you were younger, you walked where you would, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and they will lead you to a place you do not wish to go." And he says this, he said, in order to show by what kind of death Peter was to glorify God. And then Peter though looks at John, and he says, "Well, what about him?" And the Lord says, "If it's my will that you remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me."
So I want you to think about this, that Peter is asking this question and what struck me about the passage is that Peter is asking this question, and there's something about it where he's making a comparison. If I'm going to be martyred, what about him? And the Lord says, "That's none of your business. You, Peter, follow me." It doesn't matter what's going on with John. Your responsibility is just to follow me as Peter, as the one that I know.
And this can often happen when we read the lives of the saints. What can often happen is that if they're a monk, we think, how can I be a monk? Or how can I be more monkish in my behavior? If there's somebody that's a great intellect, like St. Gregory the Theologian or St. Maximus the Confessor, we berate ourselves for not having that quality or that character, that elucidation, that illumined mind that's able to express the faith in such a way that's so deep and profound.
Or we look at the ascetical exploits of different saints, St. Mary of Egypt or St. Moses the Ethiopian or these different fathers and mothers, and we think, I can't do that. And so we start to compare.
And I think the Lord's word to us is the same thing that he said to Peter. "Whatever my will was for them, what is that to you? You follow me." Do you see what I'm saying? We look at the lives of the saints, and we're inspired by them. But it doesn't mean that we're trying to copy them. There is no copying in the Kingdom of God. Each person, each saint, each one is unique and unrepeatable.
And this is in large part what holiness genuinely means, is being unique and unrepeatable and in communion with the living God.
That's why somebody like, and forgive me, I struggle every year with the Feast of Constantine the Great, but that's why someone like Constantine that avoids baptism for his entire life because he's afraid of the sins that he might commit and may even have had leanings in his mind and his thinking that weren't entirely orthodox. That's why this man is received, and the Church recognizes him as a great saint because of where he ended up.
And so we say at the funeral service, "The choir of saints has found the fountain of life and the door of paradise. They found the way in." All of their life before that isn't what counts. What counts is where they ended up. What counts is that they found the fountain of life and the door of paradise, and they walked through it, even if it was at the very last minute.
And so when we read the lives of the saints, we're not looking to find always didactic, just kind of bland moral instruction. You see what I'm saying? We're not looking at their lives to think about it in terms of Sunday school-ish type of behavior, like how can we tell people how to behave. And so we hold up the saints and shame them for not behaving appropriately or something like that.
Look at Saint Nectarios. I remember somebody from our parish years ago, one of our parishioners, he moved away, but he read the life of Saint Nectarios that's in, it's called the Saint of Our Century, I think. Is that the book, George? And so he read it and he came to me and he said, "Father, I don't even think I'm a Christian." And after reading Saint Nectarios' life, he's like, "I can't even understand that sort of embodiment of the commandments of the gospel. I don't get it. It doesn't make any sense to me. I don't know how to be that way."
And so we can do that with the lives of the saints, but that's not the point. The point is that they found the door. And I was thinking this morning, you know that there's, well, it turned into a terrible meme online, but there's that painting of Jesus knocking on the door of your heart, and somebody wrote on it an inscription that said, "Open up, let me in." And the person says, "Why?" He says, "Because of what I'm going to do to you if you don't let me in." Which is a horrible way of looking at things and not true.
But if you think about that painting, and it's another verse from Revelation, the Lord says, "Lo, I stand at the door of knock." The door of paradise and the encounter with Christ, there are as many doors as there are people. There are as many doors as there are people. Because the Lord is knocking on each door, each heart, each person, and inviting them to come into communion with Him.
And so be encouraged. The Lord calls all of us to give us a new name, and to see us with Him in the kingdom of God, but also to see us with Him even now, as He is in our midst and ever shall be. Amen.