The Uprightness and Truth of the Orthodox Faith
A sermon for the day of the memory of the holy, glorious Wonderworker Nicholas, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia, and for the Name Day of the most pious Sovereign Emperor Nicholas Alexandrovich
As a rule of faith and an image of meekness, a teacher of abstinence, the truth of things has shown you to your flock… (Troparion)
Today Russia and the Orthodox Greco-Eastern Church celebrate a twofold triumph: the glorious memory of the great Wonderworker, Hierarch Nicholas of Myra in Lycia, and the Name Day of the most pious Sovereign Emperor Nicholas Alexandrovich.
With great praises the holy Church honors this Hierarch and man of God as the defender and champion of the Church of Christ and the denouncer of pernicious heresies, who together with the other holy Fathers preserved for us holy Orthodoxy from the wiles of the heretics, and who showed in his own person both a pattern of the faith and an example of pastoral meekness and humility and of firm abstinence from all the passions that agitate the life of man. From the very essence of things, from his very life and deeds, St Nicholas appeared to the whole world and to all the ages as a rule of the holy and saving faith of Christ and as a pattern of every virtue. Through his humility he attained great glory, and by his love for the poor and his non-acquisitiveness he gained the wealth of God’s grace, so great that he filled the whole universe and all the ages with his miracles, on land and on the seas.
St Nicholas lived at the beginning of the fourth century, at the close of the persecutions of the Christian faith by the pagan emperors and at the beginning of its triumph under the Equal-to-the-Apostles Emperor Constantine, at the very height of the pernicious heresy (of the heretic) Arius, who rejected the Divinity of Christ. He was present at the First Ecumenical Council as a defender of the true Faith, and displayed a special zeal in the defense of the Divine dignity of the Son of God.
As the need made itself felt then, so now all of us need, for the salvation of our soul, to confess firmly before everyone the following mystery of godliness: God appeared in the flesh, justified Himself in the Spirit, showed Himself to the angels, was preached among the nations, was received in faith in the world, was taken up in glory[1]. Or: the word is faithful and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners[2]. This is the great and saving mystery of the faith of Christ that St Nicholas firmly and zealously confessed before everyone throughout his whole life, and for which he suffered bloodlessly in the last persecution. It is precisely this great Mystery of godliness—the appearance of God in the flesh on earth and His founding of the holy Orthodox Church, in which He always abides and will abide to the end of the age (I am with you all the days, to the end of the age[3])—that we in our time also must hold firmly and confess before everyone, since now even among us in Russia there has appeared and is being boldly preached a blasphemous teaching that rejects the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ—the author and preacher of which proved to be the new Julian and new Arius, Count Leo Tolstoy, who boldly raised his gray head against Christ and the Church and carried after himself many of his admirers.
Holy Father Nicholas, come down from the heights of heaven and by your awesome appearing expose this madman, who dares to preach not only in his own heart but openly and loudly, as though Christ were not God. Come to us from the heights of heaven and expose today’s apostates—they do not want to listen to us, nor to the Gospel itself, nor to the Church of Christ—they have set themselves above Christ Himself and His Church. It would seem that the time has come for people to cease wandering in faith or unbelief and to accept with simple hearts the saving light of the Faith of Christ, which has illumined all the ends of the universe—for them to be enlightened, made alive, saved, and to attain the perfection for which we are destined. For it is said in the word of God: be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect[4]. What faith is more vital, more effective, holier, wiser than the Faith of Christ? If the learned sons of this age, in their elemental wisdom, have blinded their own eyes, like the ancient Pharisees, and do not wish today to see the truth and the life-giving power of the faith of Christ, then let them turn to the glorious history of the Church from its beginning to the present day: it was not invented by idle people, after all; it was taken from eyewitnesses and from the journals or chronicles of the Church.
Read the truthful, exact account of the persecutions of Christians in the first three centuries—this living depiction, in countless forms, of the most bloody and inhuman tortures endured by the holy martyrs; see with what courage and adamantine endurance, and with joy, they bore the most terrible torments and went to them as to a feast, as to a wedding banquet—and then render a sound judgment on this supernatural phenomenon in the life and struggles of the passion-bearers of Christ. Was it not the supernatural power of God that strengthened them in these awful torments? Was it not a firm conviction of the truth and the life-giving power of the faith they confessed that strengthened them in their endurance? Was it not the uprightness of their conscience before God and men, and their firm, unbending love for the Creator and their hope of eternal blessed life in God in heaven?
Yes, you will find no other reasons for such a wondrous, supernatural conduct of the martyrs; or if you do, they will be causeless and groundless. And it was not hundreds, not thousands of these witnesses to the rightness of the Faith of Christ who suffered at the hands of the enemies of the faith, the pagans and the Jews, but millions and tens of millions. Here are unlying, steadfast witnesses to the truth of our Faith and Church; that is why they are called by the Greek word martyr—witness. It is they who will be the accusers of all today’s godless men—the Tolstoyans, the Pashkovites, the Stundists, and every kind of unbeliever—at the Dread Judgment of Christ. And have you read the history of Christian monasticism in the East? How it shone forth with the light of a heavenly, holy life; with what an equal-to-the-angels life of its venerable men and women; how it triumphantly vindicated the whole truth and saving power of the Gospel teaching; and was a support for the whole Christian world; their divinely wise writings served, and still serve today, as a source of consolation and edification for all the faithful.
And has our Orthodox Russia really run short of her saints? Do not the incorrupt, wonderworking relics of her holy ascetics rest in all her far corners? Go to Kiev, to Moscow and beyond Moscow—to the Trinity Lavra, to Solovki, to Nil of Stolbensk, to Nil of Sora, to Joseph of Volokolamsk, to Anthony of the Siya, to the wonderworkers of Novgorod, of Nizhny Novgorod, of Rostov, of Smolensk, and to others beyond number. Do not all of them bear witness, by their very lives and by their miracles, to the saving power of our faith in its Divine Founder? — but—enough. The Orthodox Christian faith has been vindicated to overflowing, beyond all measure, by its countless children. What remains for us to do, with such a multitude of truthful witnesses? — To believe steadfastly, to hold fast to our faith and to the Church with all our strength, and to save our sinful souls.
Let us then, dear brothers, hold firmly to our holy faith, whose truth is sealed by countless testimonies—those of apostles, martyrs, hierarchs, venerable monks, and all the saints, who studied and passed through in deed and by experience the whole truth and life-giving power of the faith of Christ, and who were renewed through it in their whole being and attained the eternal, quiet harbor and the blessed life in heaven; it is time for us to cease erring in the faith. For well over five thousand years before Christ the world went astray and worshipped created things instead of the Creator. In the person of the Savior, God Himself brought true Faith to the earth and planted it in the world through His Apostles. Let us prize our divinely revealed Faith as we ought, and be saved by it, looking to its example and rule in the person of St Nicholas and of all the saints who shone forth and were glorified in the faith and in the Christian life. Let us imitate the Hierarch in his faith, in holiness, meekness, humility, abstinence, mercy, love for the poor, and in firm confession.
Today is the name day of our Most Pious Sovereign Emperor Nicholas Alexandrovich, who shines with the true Faith and piety. May the Lord preserve him in unshaken health and well-being for many, many years. Amen.