Sermon at the 5th Sunday after Easter [2014]
My beloved,
Christ is risen!
And in this sunday, as in the precedent, we have part of Evangel which emphasizes to us the fact that Jesus Christ was and is God and man. For that, at John 4, 5-42, we have the meeting of the Lord with Saint Photini.
And to her, like to the paralytic healed and which, then, He retrieved him in the temple, the Lord reveals Himself unexpectedly.
The Lord spoke to her directly and striking: „I am, the One that talk to you” [Jn. 4, 26, GNT]. Ie who? Messias or Hristos [Jn. 4, 25, Ibidem], the One which she was waiting, for that „to announce her all” [Ibidem].
Just therefore, when the Lord spoke to her and to those from Sychar, with all believed that He is „the Savior of the world” [Jn. 4, 42, GNT]. In GOC, at Jn. 4, 42, we have: „The Christ, the Savior of the world”, after how is and in romanian synodal edition, for that the true Christ is the only Saviour of the world.
Only that, of here, we observe that to talk with people means to entrust them.
To talk with someone means to reach at his heart.
And when I say heart I mean at the whole man. For that, through all that we do and we say, we convince someone.
The sermon does not mean just word…but the speaker in his integrality.
Therefore, the Lord talks to people with all that He is. He yesterday, today and forever, speaks to us like God and man, with absolute authority and this means that, the same as those from Sychar, and we hear from Him all that saves us.
Just therefore each of us can to call Him the Christ, because we hear Him how He speaks to us in ourselves. For we do not relive the Evangel at the level of imagination, seeming to us that we are then, in the first century of the Church, but at ontological level. Through the fact that we are in Church and we live ecclesial, in the grace of God, in the rhythm of Holy Tradition, Christ speaks to us through all the things of the Church and of the world.
The Christ of Church is, for me, a living presence, personal, with Which I live and trough Which I think. And Christ, the Son of the Father and of one being with us after humanity, is full of the Holy Ghost and of the Father, because He cohabits with the Father and with the Ghost.
Therefore, I and every orthodox in part, we know Him not only the Messiah, that is the Christ, but the whole Trinity. For that the Christ spoke to us about His Father and about the Holy Ghost, spoke to us about the Most Holy Trinity…and everything He told us means our real life and our salvation.
That being so, now we understand why is important the discussion about „the spring of water, which flows into eternal life” [Jn. 4, 14, GNT]. Because the water of grace, which flows in us when we are living members of the Church of Christ, fills us of the immortality of Trinity, ie makes us convivial with the trinitarian God.
And in this situation, to hear on Christ means to be with Christ in yourself.
But why do we have need of this interiorization of Christ in ourselves, if He was made flesh? Why do we need of a depth meeting with Christ, in ourselves, and not of an externalization of relation with Him?
Because the ghostual meeting with Christ, in ourselves, is the beginning of true knowledge of Him. We know on the Christ of Scripture, of the dogmas, of the Church, of all creation in ourselves, through prayer and purification from passions, and He is identic, in us, with the iconic Christ. For that the true Christ gives us, in His all eclesial manifestations, same certainty and wealth of divine life.
He speaks to us fully and definitively.
For that He, the living One, God and man, with His humanity deified and exalted at the right hand of the Father, is revealed to us into the purity of heart. Therefore we know [Jn. 4, 42, GNT] on Christ, we know what makes Christ in man, how He changes on man.
The interiorization of Christ means, of fact, an interiorization of the grace of Trinity. A ghostualization of us, a continuous pnevmatization of our being, because our encounter with God is a ghostual one. And the water of grace, from us, is the life of God and the life of the Church, for that the Church is planted in the grace of Trinity.
So that we have no motive to be sad when we know that God is with us in all our days. We cannot permit to be sad! The resurrection days of the Lord are filled with divine joy for that are filled of confirmations of His presence with us. For His ascension at heaven does not mean our forsaking but His ghostual descent in our interior.
Therefore, the great problem of every orthodox sits in his inward. There, in ourselves, we must have the eternal joy of God, ie His grace. And any theological discussion and any problem of salvation begins with this: with the grace of God felt in ourselves. Without the grace of Trinity in us the salvation does not exist.
And all the tautness and our run after God’s forgiveness leads to the grace of God. At its feeling in us.
Thus, God gives us all to feel His grace as the spring of eternal life which flows in us! God fills us with His grace forever, for that it is our eternal wealth. For of His is the Kingdom and the power and the glory, of Father and of Son and of Holy Ghost, now and ever and forever. Amen!
