Sunday of the Holy Fathers

INTRODUCTION: This is the Sunday of the Holy Fathers. Today we commemorate the Holy Bishops who gathered together in Nicea (in present day Turkey) in 325 A.D. at the First Ecumenical Council. It was at this Council that God inspired the writing of our Creed, which is why it is called the Nicene Creed. Our Scripture readings today highlight for us the great importance of Christian truth and the absolute necessity to defend it at all costs against heresy. The Epistle lesson found in Acts 20 records for us the last address St. Paul gave to the priests of the Church in Ephesus. There on the beach St. Paul charged the clergy to, "Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which he purchased with his own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things,...therefore be on the alert" (vv.28-32). Such is the solemn responsibility of the clergy to protect the flock from heresy and error. It is this responsibility which our holy fathers so valiantly fulfilled at great personal cost at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicea. Rather than expounding upon the most important truths affirmed and defended at this glorious Council concerning our Lord's full and complete divinity in contradiction to Arius' impious heresy, I simply wish to make two general observations which I believe to be of great importance to us all today.

The first observation is simply that we have holy fathers. We Orthodox are not "Johnny come latelys." We didn't come into existence a few years ago. We are part of a glorious and ancient lineage. We have a rich inheritance of faith. We have received the true faith from our God-loving fathers, and we accept their inspiration. We sing today of "our God-mantled fathers, trumpets of the Spirit." We believe in holy tradition. We believe that our holy fathers were correct when since the time of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 the preamble of a council's decrees read, "It has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us that the following be believed...." (Ac. 15:28). Our history is holy. It is guided by the Holy Spirit. God has been with us, and is with us today through his divine grace and love toward mankind. Our history and our fathers aren't perfect for we are fallen humans, but we are more than fallen humans. We are being divinized. We are the Body of Christ. We are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. And we believe that our Ecumenical Councils are infallible. And so we reject the arrogance of those who judge the fathers. It is vogue today to bash tradition, to mock the beliefs and way of life of our holy fathers. Let us not fall into this pride. Let us not be so deceived as to believe that we are special and know better. This would be the very proof of our ignorance.

About a year ago I was extensively interviewed by a Protestant religion scholar who is in the process of writing a book about evangelical Protestants who have left evangelicalism and converted to some other religion. She was doing several chapters on the major faiths and movements to which evangelicals were converting. One of the chapters was on Orthodoxy, and so that is why I was interviewed. In the middle of the interview we came to a most telling moment. She asked me, "What significant theological contribution will you and converts like you make to the Orthodox Church?" That was a very easy question for me to answer. My answer was, "Nothing. Absolutely nothing." I became Orthodox because I wanted to embrace the apostolic faith, not some hybrid always changing according to the latest scholarly "discoveries" of the theologians. My task as an Orthodox priest is not to be a "creative theologian". That description is ichabod to us. Our task in life is to preserve what has been entrusted to us by Christ himself and what has been valiantly defended by our holy fathers against the popular "creative theologians" of history like Arius the heretic. We are to guard the faith "once for all entrusted to the saints" according to St. Jude (v.4). To this end we all pray in our Divine Services, "Preserve O God the holy Orthodox Faith and Orthodox Christians, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen." Notice we don't pray, "Create or Remake O God the Holy Orthodox Faith". Our task is to preserve the holy faith, and then to live it to the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ!

I just want to add one thing before leaving this observation about the reality of our having holy fathers. As we grow in our Orthodox Faith and study our faith we will regularly come face to face with beliefs and practices/customs of our holy fathers which appear crazy to American culture and perhaps, as products of that culture, to us. Let us not be surprised by such cultural conflict, but thank God that there is truly an Orthodox alternative, an Orthodox culture, and let us give our holy fathers the benefit of the doubt in every instance of disagreement instead of giving it to our secular American culture which by every measurable moral standard is seeking to lead us all to perdition.

The second observation I wish to make on this Sunday of the Holy Fathers is: Truth matters! This emphasis is apparent in the Gospel text for today which is our Lord's high-priestly prayer found in St. John 17. Our Lord's words are, "This is eternal life, that they may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent" (v.3), and shortly thereafter Jesus prays for the disciples saying, "...for I have given them the words which thou gavest me, and they received them and know in truth that I came from thee...They are not of the world even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; thy word is truth" (vv.8,17). Here what characterizes those who are our Lord's sheep and are not of the world is that they know the only true God, they know in truth that Jesus is from God, and they are sanctified in the truth. We are people of truth.

To many in this age of relativism and rejection of absolute truth our celebration this morning is ridiculous. How foolish, we appear, to rejoice in a bunch of men, bishops or not, who thought they had a corner on the truth to the point where they even had the nerve to proclaim that there dogma was inspired by God and intended to be believed by the whole world! To this we Orthodox reply, "To reject absolute truth is to absolutely reject Jesus who is the truth" (St. Jn. 14:6). The truth has been powerfully revealed by God to all the world through the incarnation of his only-begotten Son. We know the truth, and we know that embracing error and heresy will lead us from God, from salvation, from sanctification.

One iota of heresy matters to us, and that is exactly what our Bishops were disputing at the First Ecumencial Council: one iota. An iota is the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet, and yet at this time the entire Christian faith rested upon this iota. The heretics wanted the Church to believe that Jesus was "homoiousion" with God the Father and not "homoousion". Homoousios is the word in the Creed translated in English "essence" or "substance". We say each Sunday we believe in Jesus Christ, "Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, of one essence with the Father". In confessing this we are confessing that Jesus is fully God. He is as much God as the Father is. Homoiousios did not safeguard Jesus' divinity as homoousios did, but only his likeness to God's substance. Over the truth behind this iota our holy fathers were willing to give their life. In defense of the truth behind this iota many of our bishops came to the Council without arms or eyes. Our own holy patron, Athanasius, endured numerous exiles and sufferings over this very issue.

Why is this iota such a big deal? Why couldn't our bishops simply "agree to disagree without being disagreeable"? Why couldn't they simply unite with those individuals who didn't have any other disagreement with them but this truth behind the iota in "homoiousion"? The answer to this question is that our holy fathers believed that TRUTH MATTERS and that they were the God appointed guardians of the truth. This is what Bishops are called to do. St. Paul writes to Bishop Timothy in the Scriptures and calls him to "Guard the truth which has been entrusted by you by the Holy Spirit who dwells in you" (2St.Tim. 1:14). This has been the commitment of our holy bishops for two thousand years, and this is their commitment today.

Four days ago was May 31, Bishop Basil's third anniversary in the Holy Episcopate. While reflecting upon him on his day I reviewed his profession on the day of his consecration. Listen to what he wrote with his own hand, and professed before all with a loud voice. After reciting the Nicene Creed he confesses, "I accept the decisions of the Seven Holy and Oecumencial Councils which were convened for the protection and safeguarding of all the Orthodox dogmas of the Church. I confess, accept and defend all of the canons which have been promulgated and agreed upon, and every discipline which the Holy Fathers have prescribed in various places and times. I accept all they have accepted, and I reject all they have rejected. I commit myself to the preservation of the peace of the Church; for the remainder of my life I will never teach anything which in any way is contrary to the teachings of the Church, but will rightly divide the word of truth to the glory of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, the Trinity one is essence and undivided, the one and only True God, and for the salvation of the faithful"...and then he concluded several pages later, "But those who believe contrariwise I reject as people of strange opinion. I anathematize Arios and his followers and those who share with him in his wicked belief. I anathematize Macedonios and his followers who are called "fighters against the Spirit." I also anathematize Nestorios and all propounders of heresies, and I reject and anathematize all who are like-minded. I publicly proclaim in a great voice: Each and every heretic is anathema! All heretics are anathema! But I confess and preach that our Lady, Mary the Theotokos, has truly and properly given birth in the flesh to One of the Trinity, even Christ our God. May she be my helper, my shelter and my strength all the days of my life. Amen." Such were the words of our Bishop BASIL on the day of his consecration.

We are people of the truth because we are followers of him who is truth itself. To cast away a part of truth and embrace error is to cast away a part of Jesus himself. Therefore we will not open our chalice to anyone who says they are a Christian no matter what they believe, for communion in the chalice is a witness to the unity of faith already shared and not a means to unity apart from truth. Neither will we change our name "Orthodox" which means "right belief" as well as "right worship". If our holy fathers proclaim anything to us today it is just this: truth matters!

So let us today rejoice in our holy fathers. Rejoice that we have such a precious inheritance and covering. Rejoice that our fathers are holy, and rejoice that we have been given the truth. May we Orthodox of 1995 embrace the teachings of our holy fathers, and live in their humility and holiness to the glory of the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.