32nd Sunday after Pentecost; Sunday after Theophany

In the name of the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit, Amen. So we have had many blessings throughout the last few days. And we celebrate, of course, the baptism of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. And seeing this remarkable troparion, “When thou wast baptized in the Jordan, O Lord, the worship of the Trinity made its appearance. The voice of the Father bore witness to thee, calling thee his beloved Son. And the Spirit in the form of a dove confirmed the certainty of the Word, O Christ our God, who hast appeared and hast enlightened the world. Glory be to thee.”

So what’s proclaimed is that God, the Eternal God on high, came down and entered through the miraculous conception of the Virgin Mary, but entered into the form of flesh. So God became flesh and dwelt among us. And I think this is a very difficult concept to grasp in any kind of rational way. It’s an amazing and remarkable statement. And yet, we as children of God, and I think it’s important for us to think of ourselves as children of God, hear the words of the Holy Gospel, we see the icon of the theophany, the appearance of God in the flesh. And we embrace this for our salvation.

And yet we are like little children, because while we embrace it on the one hand, I do not think that any of us fully comprehend what we are embracing. And it’s a mystery, of course. And it’s a mystery that we accept, and once again we embrace, and a mystery that we try to live within.

And so as we received this remarkable blessing, and we had the remarkable blessing also yesterday of baptism. John was baptized yesterday. And so we witnessed a new birth, that is a person entering into the waters of Jordan, and going down in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit down into the waters, and dying to this world and being born again into the Holy Spirit and life in Christ. And again, unfathomable concepts. How can we grasp these things, except by participation in the life of the Holy Church? And it’s in the church that these realities manifest themselves, and we come to a realization of our lives, in that on the one hand, it’s here we are in the flesh, and on the other hand, we have a life in the Holy Spirit.

And I was thinking about what we must do in the face of such a great mystery. And we are children. I think this is within us, we’re children. And so we naturally know as parents what is good for our children. We provide them warmth. We provide them love. The little child is nursed and fed with foods appropriate to the child, and the child grows, and its needs continue to expand, and we try to meet these needs, once again, with kindness and love and patience and guidance along the path. And so this is what we do for our children.

And I think that if we are going to enter into the reality of the baptism of Christ and enter into the renewal of our baptism, we need to treat our inner life as though it’s a child, and that we need to prepare, as it were, special food. And so our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ allows us to prepare ourselves for Holy Communion, so that we can participate in this ineffable mystery of the body and blood of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, feeding, as it were, upon the divinity of God, who made Himself manifest through our Lord. And so we feed upon Him, and even as a child feeds upon the breast, so we feed upon the reality of the mystery of salvation.

And so in addition to which, the child within us needs to be comforted, and we have our prayers. God gives us prayers to pray and to read and to think about and to enter into, and so that our mind can literally commune with God through His Word, and that we, through our prayers, can enter into the mind of Christ. The understanding that when we pray to Him, He comes to us, and He comes to us and enlightens us and enlightens our minds and gives us comfort and guidance.

And so even as the child grows, we need to protect it from many dangers, and there are so many dangers in the world that afflict children. And we as adults and Orthodox Christians need to look at our lives and look at the things that we’re involved in, and what are those things that we’re exposed to, and to protect our hearts and our minds from the fallenness of this world. And I think we understand, getting into detail, that the world is profoundly fallen, and it’s continuously opening portals to us of profanity and of debauchery and of darkness and of evil. And so we need to, as it were, turn away from these portals and turn our minds toward the Word of God, and toward both within our own homes and our own prayers, but also through the divine services where God becomes remarkably and miraculously present.

And so very simply on this day, it seems to me that what we try to do in this feast is regain the purity of our infancy, to regain it, and to, as it were, start again caring for our inner life, even as we would care for a little child that was given to us as parents or as grandparents.

And so very simply, brothers and sisters in Christ our God, let us turn our hearts and minds to those things that are pure and holy. And the beauty of our Orthodox faith is, there are many things that are beautiful about it, but one remarkable and beautiful thing is a path is given to us. The fact is a path is given to us, and it’s an ancient path. It’s not something new that was invented or revised. It’s a path that begins with the holy apostles. And this path was traveled by saints and by the apostles themselves. And as they traveled this path, they came to know more and more clearly the presence of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ.

It’s one thing to hear about salvation and to hear the Word of God. And it is another thing really to know with certainty in our hearts that our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ is our Savior, and He is the Savior of mankind.

So in the spirit of this feast, we’re going to bless waters one more time for those who were not able to be here during the week. And we’re going to partake of the waters and renew our baptism and drink from the fount of salvation. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.