Sermon about the Holy Relics
My beloved,
Christ is risen!
He is alive and works wonders through His Saints, for that they are alive and full of God’s life.
The present sermon gone from the drawing out of the Holy Relics of Saint Constantin Brâncoveanu from tomb. More photos are here…but this is the most eloquent:
For that it represents an inventory of his Holy Relics.
So shows the Holy Relics of the romanian ruler on which the muslims have beheaded and which we honor on August 16!
But the principal thing is this: that all Holy Relics of Orthodox Church are similar, for that all Holy Relics are the result of the presence of God’s grace in them.
The same grace of the Trinity, unseen and divine but lived, of Saints, in interior mode, produces the similar Holy Relics. However not of few years but from the beginning of world, all Saints of God have the similar Holy Relics.
And must not be faithful to observe that the Holy Relics are similar…but is need to be orthodox, the real member of the Church, for to live and you same grace sanctifying and deifying.
For that you can observe that they are the same…but do not know how to achieve at this result. The experience is factual, is real, is existential and we can, starting now, this deifying experience.
How, something unseen, produces such a thing in the bones of a Saint? And when it produces the holiness: now or after death?
If the holiness would begin after death and would not have the link with what I do now…means that now I can do any. But not so sits the tings!
For that, starting now, I can live in the grace of God, because the grace of God is the air of Church. All the orthodox must reach Saints! Just therefore, not to be Saint means a man fell from grace, a man unfulfilled ontological.
For those who prefer to believe in the lie of evolutionism, after that the man stem from monkey, the Holy Relics tell them that the man was created by God as being dressed in grace. For the man has become a corpse only when he was separated from God. But if, through the iconomia of Christ, we reconcile with the triune God through Baptism, in the Orthodox Church, we can live the grace of God in ourselves.
Thus that the real ontology of man is the life in grace, the holiness, and this growth in holiness is eternal. Therefore, the Holy Relics are not postmortem appearances of Saints but they are the irrefutable proof of the fact that the Saints were full of grace yet from this life.
From this motive, the Church venerates on Saints as some dwellings of Trinity’s glory but which have been preserved clean through many ascetic efforts. The real and many struggles with the passions and demons are seen here: in the existence of the Holy Relics. If, after death, we do not leave behind us Holy Relics means that we were formal orthodox. In appearance.
Only that the Saints are Saints with true. The Saints are Saints in ontological mode and not formal.
And we are truly orthodox if we feel the movements of the grace in ourselves. For that, from here, from the movements of the grace in ourselves comes all the theological understanding of our life.
For what means divine lightenment, if not the presence of divine grace in our mind? What means the cleaning of passions, if not the purifying presence of the grace? The divine grace, uncreated and unseen but felt interior, is the real life of men, his real connection with God, through which the man can show his origin and the destination.
The sermons are empty without the grace of God. The people are naked without His grace. We are earth without shine if we are deprived of God’s grace. Only the grace is our divine radiance. Without it does not exist shade of happiness. Because the grace of God is the cloud that enlightens us, is the joy that rejuvenates us, is the beautiful freshness and eternal of holiness.
The Holy Relics explain the ontology of humanity of the risen Christ. The risen Christ is full of divine light. Just therefore and we are filled with grace from His humanity.
The Holy Mysteries are the sacramental channels of the person of Christ in the Church. Through them we fill with grace and we live in grace, in this grace that, after death, shows us that we lived well, divinely.
All the consecrations of Church are for us and for our deification. For that the Church is holy, is full of the holiness of the Trinity and we cannot love than the holiness of God.
All this tell us why we cannot live at random. For that our life is ecclesial, is in God, is hidden in God, ie is filled with the glory of God all the time. We cannot live in postmodernity than ecclesial, than in holy mode, together with God, Who fills us with His holiness.
The identity of faith gives us the identity of holiness. Those who are sanctified in the orthodox faith are the Saints of Church. And the orthodox faith is the true faith of the single Church of Christ. Just therefore, the orthodox faith is, for us, more precious than the life and than the daylight.
We rejoice with those who come from death to life and from sorrow to joy. We rejoice, in the Lord, of all those which christianly live. Therefore, praised be the Most Holy Trinity, Who fills us of all the good! Amen!