3rd Sunday of Pascha; Myrrhbearing Women

Christ is risen! Christos anesti! Christos voskrese! In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today I'd like to address, as much as possible, the whole question of beauty, beauty in our lives, and how it affects us.

In 1869, the great Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote a novel called "The Idiot," and in this novel, he proclaimed that "beauty will save the world." In 1970, over 100 years after Dostoevsky made this proclamation, the Russian Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, during his lecture upon receiving the Nobel Prize, remembered Fyodor Dostoevsky and again stated, "Beauty will save the world."

It's amazing because both Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn suffered tremendously. At one point, Fyodor Dostoevsky was literally at the very moment of being executed, and just minutes before his execution, he was pardoned. We know that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spent many years in the gulags suffering tremendously. And yet, both of them came out of these remarkable experiences of degradation and difficulty proclaiming that beauty will save the world. I think this is a very profound thing.

For the many years since this was said, the statement that "beauty will save the world" has been thought about and analyzed and applied in many different ways. I would like to apply this beautiful concept to our church and to our life in Christ here in the church.

First, I'm going to go through a few passages of Scripture. In Genesis 1:3-5, it says, "Then God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night." So the evening and the morning were the first day. In ancient Greek, the word for good is kalon, and it also means beautiful. Here we have goodness being united to the concept of beauty. So, what is good is beautiful, and what is beautiful is truly good.

Then again, in Genesis, it says, "Then God said, 'Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear'; and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was beautiful and good."

In Exodus, we have, "Now take Aaron your brother and his sons... that he may minister to Me as priest... And you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty." What an amazing thing: for glory and for beauty.

Then again in Chronicles, it says, "Give to the Lord, O families of the peoples, give to the Lord glory and strength. Give to the Lord the glory due His name; bring an offering, and come before Him. Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness! And tremble before Him, all the earth." Now we have beauty associated with holiness.

Again in Chronicles, "And when he had consulted with the people, he appointed those who should sing to the Lord, and who should praise the beauty of holiness, as they went out before the army and were saying: 'Praise the Lord, for His mercy endures forever.'"

In the book of Job, we have, "Have you an arm like God? Or can you thunder with a voice like His? Then adorn yourself with majesty and splendor, and array yourself with glory and beauty." This intertwining of the good, of glory, and of beauty is throughout Holy Scripture.

In Psalm 27:4, "One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple."

Again in Psalm 29, "Give unto the Lord the glory due to His name; worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness." And in Psalm 90, "And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands for us; yes, establish the work of our hands." Again, proclaiming the beauty of the Lord and the beauty of worshiping Him.

In Isaiah, he says, "In that day the Lord of hosts will be for a crown of glory and a diadem of beauty to the remnant of His people, for a spirit of justice to him who sits in judgment, and for strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate." And again in Isaiah, "Your eyes will see the King in His beauty; they will see the land that is very far off."

St. Peter says, "Do not let your adornment be merely outward—arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel. Rather, let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God." Here, in the Epistle of St. Peter, this concept of beauty is internalized in the sanctification of the beauty of the heart that beholds God.

St. John Chrysostom writes, "There is therefore a light which made the light of the sun. Let us love this light... let us thirst for the same that with itself for our guide, we may at length come to it, and that we may so live in it, that we may never die."

So, as we see, we have this long, ancient tradition of proclaiming beauty. We are not just talking about natural beauty—although natural beauty reflects the beauty of God—we are talking about spiritual beauty, the transformation of the inner life, so that the beauty of a sanctified soul shines forth.

We live in difficult times, and I thought that mentioning Fyodor Dostoevsky and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was important because they suffered greatly, and they lived in very difficult times. The question is, what is the response? Because we know that the difficulties of our times are greatly harming our children, ourselves, our society, and our culture. There's this remarkable deterioration where the concept of truth is vilified and abandoned, and where people who abandon the truth then serve their own interests in accord with the devil himself, trying to destroy what we have.

While we were doing the divine services, particularly during the Lamentations and then Pascha itself, I had this thought that the beauty of the Church—its chanting and its visual imagery—has the power to transform us. We know that if a person suffers trauma, whether it be physical trauma or trauma that comes from the brutal unkindness and evil of another person, it not only affects them in the moment, but it actually resides and lives in them, sometimes for a whole lifetime, so that this trauma continues to appear and, in many cases, really destroy one's relationship with others and with the world. It's a tremendous burden.

What seems to me is that the beauty of the Church—the beauty of the chanting, the beauty of the words of God that were spoken and sung, the beauty of the people who were here holding candles and worshiping God—this beauty has the ability to literally transform our minds. Even as a cruel injury can affect the organics of the mind and the heart, so beauty can heal these wounds and raise us up out of the darkness into the light of Christ.

We are very blessed. We have been given by God a temple. We see a glorious space filled with light and the full spectrum of color which God created. We see a space that reveals the inner, mystical, and natural structure of classical architecture, which has its roots in geometry and mathematics, strength, stability, and tranquility. We see the apse from which the Son of God shines with radiant and divine energy, while the Mother of God, enthroned below, proclaims her everlasting virginity as she intercedes for us. We see the iconostasis which opens into the heavenly realm, from which we feed upon the very Body and Blood of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. Throughout the temple, we gaze upon holy icons which reveal the faces and likenesses of the holy saints with whom we physically and mystically commune. Supporting the whole edifice, we behold walls on the outside and two rows of pillars crowned with arches on the inside, standing upright at attention, adorned with holy icons like soldiers of Christ. Again, the images of Christ and the Most Holy Mother of God shine down upon us with a light that heals the wounded soul. The joyful and sublime chanting of the choir, reverberating with the angelic hosts, proclaims the mysteries of salvation in one harmonic voice. The Word of God, the voice of our Savior, speaks to us in the power of the Holy Spirit as we worship Him. The aroma of holiness envelops us as a mist, purifying our senses.

What do we experience when all of our thoughts, feelings, and senses are united into one profound, holy experience? We experience the transfiguration of our inner life, the transcendence that lifts our hearts and minds out of the fallen world into the world of the divine, and heals and sanctifies our inner soul.

The beauty of a sanctified heart, yes, the beauty of a sanctified heart and mind and soul will save the world.

Christ is risen! Christos anesti! Christos voskrese!