Sermon at the Second Sunday after Easter [2014]

My beloved,

Christ is risen!

And with all that He is alive and sanctifying in our life, the Church, for all her children, has dedicated three consecutive sundays for their entrustment. That of today is the second of these. For that, today, we have the entrustment of Thomas that the Lord is risen.

Into the second singing from the Small Vespers, we find that the unbelief of Thomas has touched the wounds of the Lord, for that he to be entrusted about the resurrection of the Lord [Penticostarion, ed. BOR 1999, p. 55].

He had needed of evidences for that to believe. But he was not an unbeliever, a nihilist, a contempter of the resurrection of the Lord. He was not a negationist. But he was a lover of God, an Apostle of the Lord, who needed of entrustment.

And the day service does not tell us that the entrustment is a bad thing but, contrariwise, that this entrustment of Saint Thomas is the demonstration of resurrection of the Lord [Ibidem]. For that the Church has received from Saint Thomas a real testimony, veridical, which is added to other apostolic testimonies.

Saint Thomas urged Him on the true Messiah. He did not want a substitute of Christ. Therefore, neither we do not have to desire a false Christ, a heretic Christ but on the Christ of Church, the One who preaches to the Church right God and man.

Thomas this said: „My Lord and my God”! That after what he has been entrusted. Because he confessed on Jesus Christ as God and man, as one who touched the coast of fire of the Lord [Idem, p. 58].

But about what fire is the word?

About the fire of His deity. For that the glory of the risen Christ is the glory of His deity. His deified body is touched by Saint Thomas, the Apostle of the Lord, the thing on which no longer have done the other Apostles. The others had seen Him but did not touch Him. But Saint Thomas has been entrusted through the touching of His resurrected body, just therefore his faith became ardent. For that he had, of now, a faith through experience.

But the Orthodoxy is an experiential faith. We do not believe without evidences but our evidences are traditional and personal. The whole Tradition of the Orthodox Church is full of experiential evidences. For that every believer in part was entrusted, by God, about His own existence.

Every miracle, every understanding of faith, every experience of the divine grace, every divine sight are divine entrustments. For God teaches us how He exists, how He looks in comparison with the whole existence.

Yes, we need, with all, of the entrustments of God! In every prayer and service of ours we need of the presence of God in ourselves. For if the Church is communion of God with men, how to pray to God without to live His presence? We need to experience of God’s presence more than of air, more than of the pulse of heart, for that He is the foundation of our life.

But if we have a relation with God, a real relation, a ghostual relation, then we have a faith and we are not prisoners of ideology. Because a particular ideology or philosophy is a package of ideas and not a relation with a personal God.

Saint Thomas did not want a story about Christ but a certitude. Because only for a certainty you can die. The true preaching you can do it just if you really know what is the truth. If you have doubts, if you do not have a real entrustment, you cannot convince with true.

In december 1989, the crowd which manifested on the streets of Bucharest, its enthusiasm, gave me to understand that it is headed by Someone beyond it. People have learned that they are not alone! And, with true, we are not alone but taught by God what to do.

And if I started my religious experience from books and not from humans, with assuredness that I would have understood very little humans. For exists this danger, from full: to put the books beyond people.

But the Lord has drawn attention to the jews and attracts us the attention, that the religious experience lies not in the books but in people. The holy books must be embodied, must become one with us. Just therefore, when the books become we ourselves, we are not interested of the letter of book, but of the ghost of book.

For that the grace of God or the ghost of book is our true life, is our quotidian joy and…we do not like the pharisees of books. Those who phariseized the orthodox life do not have, of fact, a real faith in God, for that they have had not part of a real entrustment from His part.

The bondsman of books are, of fact, those without a real experience of God. For that, in the true sense of the word, the book is a window to the experience. The Scripture is a window. The miracle is a window. The men are windows to God. Only if you are blind with the soul do not see all this.

For that all are the fingerprints of God. Only that, for to see them all like God, you must have part of the revelation of God in your life. I mean is needed of entrustment. All we need to do as Saint Thomas: to entrust us of the goodness and the infinite love of God.

Therefore, let us ask the Lord to entrust and us! Let us entrust that He is full of glory and of sanctity. And thus, He will lead us, through the Ghost, to the Father, for that to rejoice forever. Amen!