Christ is Ascended! From earth to heaven!
The Apostle Paul wrote that faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God: “But I say, Have they not heard? Yes verily, their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world.”
The words of God went unto the ends of the earth by the commandment of our Lord Jesus Christ into the great commission. They went out through the Ecumenical Councils, as at the First Council we commemorate today. And the words of God also went out to the ends of the earth through the Apostles and saints. This weekend we commemorate also such evangelists directly related to the heritage behind our humble mission parish.
Yesterday, Saturday, was the feast of St. Symeon Zealotes, or Simon the Zealot. One of the twelve apostles, he was half-brother to Jesus from the Righteous Joseph’s earlier family, and was the bridegroom at the Wedding of Cana blessed by our Lord. He also became the Apostle to Britain, beginning the Christianization of the British Isles from which would come the founding of America and the living heritage of Orthodoxy in the English-speaking world, including Appalachia where we live and worship today.
Today the day after we commemorate the Apostles to the Slavs Saints Methodius and Cyril, who laid the groundwork for Orthodox Christianity coming to Russia.
Those two great apostolic works helped lay the groundwork for our current Orthodox missionary effort to America, including our humble mission. They represent the hidden Orthodox background of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and the Orthodox saints of their origins, which were highlighted by the work of our patron St. John. And the origins of what became the Russian mission to America, of which we are descendants spiritually.
The Ostrog Bible in Slavonic in 1581 was one fruit of the labors of Saints Cyril and Methodius long before, just as the King James Bible in 1611 was a partial fruit, albeit heterodox, of the ancient work of the Apostle Symeon and other Orthodox saints in Britain and Ireland long before. But as much as we may respect the history and poetic majesty of the King James Bible, we know it as heterodox because it does not fully follow the true and ancient Septuagint Christian text of the Old Testament. For that, today we have the Orthodox Study Bible, translated into New King James style, a fruit ultimately of the Orthodox mission to both Britain and America.
Crowning all these efforts that we commemorate this weekend in the Church, related to the gift of Orthodoxy that we share as a Church family locally here in Northern Appalachia, is the legacy of the First Ecumenical Council. It marked the defeat of Arianism, the false view that Jesus Christ is not divine, a heresy that haunts to this day the world outside the Church,and has corrupted in spirit many so-called Christian denominations and lands in the modern world into a religion of the Anti-Christ. From the First Council came the core of the Creed, the Symbol of Faith, that unites us and protects us, and which we recite at every Divine Liturgy and pass on to our children.
Appropriately this Seventh Sunday of Pascha and this weekend’s commemorations come in the Ascension season leading up to Pentecost next Sunday. They prepare us for that by reminding us of how the Ascension inspires us to look up to Jesus Christ in heaven as our model for our earthly lives, even as we open our hearts toward the full coming of the Holy Spirit sent down from heaven in His Church. The First Ecumenical Council and the Apostles Methodius and Cyril, and yesterday Symeon the Zealot, remind us both to safeguard our faith and to reach out to others with God’s uncreated light.
In this spiritually rich in-between season on the Church calendar, as during Pascha we still have no prostrations in Church, we still do not say the prayer to the Holy Spirit “O heaven King” in Church, and now we still sing the hymns of the Ascension. But with God’s grace however unworthily we should spiritually be on fire with the uncreated light of God awaiting Pentecost, and engaging in missionary work with our families, friends, co-workers and neighbors, starting with our own hearts.
Brothers and sisters, in this short but meaningful season from the Ascension to Pentecost, let us await with the Apostles at Jerusalem, which signifies inner peace, remembering the missionary zeal of St. Seraphim of Sarov from his woodland hermitage, who said, “acquire a spirit of peace and thousands around you will be saved.”
Like the Apostles Symeon and Methodius and Cyril, let us consider what we can do today, tomorrow, and the next day, to spread the Gospel of Orthodox Christianity, untainted by Arianism and other heresies thanks to the work of the Fathers of the Ecumenical Councils.
This work involves the salvation of persons and families but also our country. Consider how in the coming weeks, we move toward the 250th anniversary of America. Last weekend marked the 250th anniversary of a national day of prayer in America called by the Continental Congress as a day of “humiliation, fasting, and prayer.” The Congress urged the American people then to confess their sins, seek God’s forgiveness, and ask Him to guide their leaders. The delegates prayed that God preserve their liberties and advance “that kingdom which consisteth in righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”
Sadly, many or most or all of those there were heterodox Christians or even non-believers, some being Deists or Unitarians or Masons also tainted by Arianism, Sabellianism, and other ancient heresies.
But help was on the way, brothers and sisters. The Holy Spirit was and is at work. There was the Ludwell family in Virginia, associates of George Washington, which is the first known Orthodox Christian family in America. They were not at the Congress, but they had been converted to Orthodoxy in the Russian Embassy’s church in London in that era. There, the spiritual legacies of Saints Methodius and Cyril and the Apostle to Britain Symeon came together in an unexpected way. And not two decades later, the Russian mission to North America would land in Alaska, featuring the work of Saint Herman and other saints, reaching down to California, while in the 19th century Greek and Slavic immigrants began founding Orthodox churches in the South and in Pennsylvania among other places.
Little more than a century ago, Tsar-Martyr Nicholas was assisting with the construction of Orthodox Churches nearby in Mount Carmel and elsewhere in America. The truth could not be stanched. The great Communist persecution of the Church pushed more Orthodox exiles and immigrants and refugees, including our patron St. John, to America, for God’s glory. The One Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church of the First Council — and of the missionary travels of the Apostles Symeon, Methodius, and Cyrcil — could not be stopped, thank God, her sails filled with the breath of the Holy Spirit from Pentecost, across centuries and millennia, eyes on Jesus Christ having brought our human form to the right hand of God the Father in heaven. For while as it is said the wheels of God may grind slowly, a day with the Lord is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
Brothers and sisters, we are part of this living story, of the road between the Ascension and Pascha, and the apostolic mission to America today. Let us remember the lonely Orthodox Ludwell family amid the great planters and founders of Virginia, the holy Herman wading ashore on Spruce Island in Alaska in uncertain and potentially hostile lands, the coal-mining and steel-working families that saved their pennies to build Orthodox Churches in our commonwealth.
Then let us examine our own lives and warm our hearts in the uncreated light of God. What have I done to advance the missionary work in America of the Orthodox Church today, or this week? Whom have I invited to Church? Whom have I reached out to touch with the Gospel? Have I visited the imprisoned and the sick by volunteering for our parish ministries for prisoners and shut-ins? How have I sacrificed, put my own skin in the gain, to attend Vigil or other Church services during the week, and to find time to pray each day? Because with each such sacrifice or podvig, we fulfill our Lord’s great Commandment “to love one another as I have loved you.” To love our neighbor more than ourself. For, as He said, “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” This is the healing Christian way, and the Way, the Truth, and the Life is our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. Christ is Ascended! To the heavens!