Discourse in the First Week of Great Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy

“Behold, truly an Israelite,in whom there is no deceit” (Jn 1:47)

Our Lord Jesus Christ spoke these words just now about one Israelite, a resident of the city of Cana of Galilee, Nathanael, when he, on the advice of his acquaintance Philip, was going to meet Jesus Christ to assure himself whether He was indeed the promised Messiah to Israel. Philip said to Nathanael: “We have found Him of whom Moses wrote in the law and the prophets, Jesus, son of Joseph, from Nazareth. But Nathanael said to him, Can anything good come from Nazareth? Philip said to him, Come and see. Jesus, seeing Nathanael coming to Him, says of him: Behold, truly an Israelite, in whom there is no deceit. Nathanael says to Him, How do You know me? Jesus answered him, Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you” (Jn 1:45-48), that is, I knew all your thoughts, your faith, your expectations of the Messiah, your future service. The Heart-Knower, the Lord, as we see, touched the most vital string of Nathanael’s heart, his most sincere thought, his deepest desire, expectation, showing him openly His divine omniscience; and thus Nathanael was captured into faith in Christ. He cries out: “Rabbi! You are the Son of God, You are the King of Israel” (Jn 1:49), and then becomes His disciple, under the name of Bartholomew, that is—one of the twelve.

But why, on this Sunday called the Sunday of Orthodoxy, has the Church appointed the reading of this Gospel in which is recounted the conversation of the Lord with Nathanael? Because in the words of the Lord to Nathanael is shown the character of a true or Orthodox Christian and the character in general of the true Orthodox Church of Christ. Behold, truly an Israelite, said the Lord of Nathanael, in whom there is no deceit—that is, here is a man who thinks, reasons, believes, hopes, speaks and acts rightly, directly and steadfastly—just as Nathanael immediately, at once believed in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and never afterwards wavered in his faith and hope, never changed his thoughts regarding His divine Person. Should not the true Christian be such; should not all the God-ordained society of Orthodox Christians be such; should not the Orthodox Church be such, as it indeed is? What a high commendation to Nathanael from the Heart-Examiner in the words: Behold, truly an Israelite, in whom there is no deceit! What a high commendation to that Christian of whom the Lord would say: Behold, a true Christian, in whom there is no deceit; and to that Church of which the Lord would say: Behold a Church in which there is no deceit, or in which there are no vain human inventions; that is, which is wholly—true in all her teaching, mysteries, worship, administration, in all her structure. And such are precisely—all our holy saints; such is the entire Orthodox Church from her beginning until now, as the impartial history of the Church testifies and God Himself testifies by various signs and miracles wrought in the Church. She is, according to the Apostle, “the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1Tim 3:15); she is “a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Eph 5:27). And by what bloody struggles, what warfare with the enemies of truth, what and how many deaths of zealots for the purity, holiness, and Orthodoxy of faith and the Church, has the Orthodoxy of our faith been purchased for us, brothers, which is our guide to eternal life! Just as rivers of blood have been shed by our ancestors—Russian warriors and leaders, fighting both with pagans and with Mohammedans and with Christians foreign to the Orthodox Church—for the preservation and integrity of our homeland and the Orthodox faith in it, so rivers of apostolic, prophetic, and martyr’s blood have been shed for the preservation of the Orthodox faith; much suffering has been borne by the holy fathers and other defenders of the faith.

But what of us, children of the Orthodox Church? Do we preserve this most precious inheritance—the Orthodox faith, do we follow its teaching, commandments, rules, statutes, and counsels? Do we love to offer service to God, “the fruit of lips confessing His name” (Hebr 13:15)? Are we renewed by it; are we sanctified every day, do we correct ourselves, do we attain the perfection which the saints attained? Do we advance in love toward God and our neighbors; do we value our faith; do we consider it the greatest mercy of God, the greatest and first good of life, that we have the happiness to belong to the Orthodox Church, which is one, holy, catholic, and apostolic? What will we answer to these questions if we wish to answer according to conscience? To our shame we must confess that in many, many of Orthodox Christians there is not only no Orthodox faith in heart and in life, but there is not even on the tongue, and it has completely evaporated in them, or has turned into complete indifference as to any faith whatsoever: Catholic, Lutheran, Jewish, Mohammedan, even pagan. We hear from many that in any faith one can please God, that is, as if any faith were pleasing to God, and as if lie and truth, right and wrong were indifferent to God. This is what many have come to through ignorance of their faith, ignorance of the spirit and history of their Church, estrangement from its life and worship, the notion of Orthodoxy, non-Orthodoxy, and heterodoxy has become so obscured! The chronicle of contemporary events recounts a case where somewhere in Russia a certain official, in examining students, called absurd the story of the offering of Isaac as a sacrifice. This is darkness, chaos, ruinous ignorance! A Christian, as a member of the Church, should know his faith and strive to live according to the faith, to be saved by his faith, because the enemies of our salvation do not slumber and seek our destruction every hour—and not cast aside his faith as some specialty of only certain people, or as an unnecessary toy suited only to childhood, or as the possession of only the uneducated masses. Those who dream thus would do well to remember the venerable antiquity of our faith, contemporary with the beginning of the human race and its direct origin from God, and the fact that in this faith have lived and been saved people of every kind, station, condition, and sex: and glorious and wise kings and philosophers, and legislators and the greatest orators, the noble and the simple, the rich and the poor, male and female, the beauty and glory of mankind. It should also be said to the glory of the Orthodox faith that no religion except the Orthodox faith can bring a man to moral perfection or holiness and complete pleasing of God, which both the history of the Church shows and the incorrupt, miracle-working relics of God’s holy saints and the marvelous deeds of the saints of the Orthodox Church show, by which they pleased God completely, being even during life prophets and workers of miracles. And so it should be by sound reason: only a perfect faith with all divine powers, with all the spiritual armor of God against the passionate flesh, the world, and the devil can bring to perfection. And if now many Orthodox Christians themselves live worse than Mohammedans and pagans, so that the head of the Mohammedans in Russia publicly and for all to hear recently in St. Petersburg proclaimed praise to his coreligionists for the fact that among them there are no such impious people as among Christians who attempt the life of rulers, then such truly impious life of Christians should not at all, of course, be put as a reproach to the Orthodox faith, which is unshakeable in its principles of truth and holiness by the promise of the Savior Himself and by the testimony of history. Such people, although they have come from us, were not ours in essence, only in name.

Yes, my brothers, only the Orthodox faith cleanses and sanctifies human nature defiled by sin, renews what has been corrupted, especially through the mysteries of baptism, repentance, and Communion; enlightens what has been darkened; heals what has been wounded by sins; warms what has turned to ice; makes what reeks of passions fragrant through the grace of the Holy Spirit; gives life to what has died; reunites what has turned away from God, makes what has been estranged from Him His own; strengthens what has become weak; restores to form and adorns what has been disfigured; restores what has fallen; makes what is enslaved free; fills what is hostile with love, like the apostle Paul and many others; makes what is blasphemous full of constant praise to God; fills what is desperate with hope; comforts what is sorrowful; rescues what is guilty from condemnation and punishment in Gehenna; makes peaceful what is troubled; strengthens what is exhausted; expands what is constrained; enriches what is unrighteous with righteousness; makes what is crafty simple; what is evil—good; corrects what is corrupt; makes what is greedy continent; what is lustful—chaste; what is stingy—generous; makes what is foolish wise; makes what has become earthly heavenly; refines what is crude; makes what is fleshly spiritual; makes what is materialistic God-loving; what is selfish—self-sacrificing and loving toward all; makes what is demonic—godlike and—O wonder!—divine! What marvelous works the Orthodox faith performs in man! Do you wish to be convinced of this? Read the histories of the lives of the saints, the history of the Church: and you will see with your own eyes all these miracles in the lives of the saints. You will see wolves transformed into lambs, fornicators and harlots into the righteous and those equal to the angels; lovers of money—into the merciful, those fond of pleasure into the continent, people of authority and earthly greatness and luxury you will see in the humble garb of a monk. These were true Christians; here were angels in the flesh; on earth—citizens of heaven, and at the same time faithful servants of their earthly homeland, like the forty martyrs of Sebaste whom we commemorate today! This is what our Orthodox faith can do with those people who sincerely hold it and follow its guidance! Why then does it not produce such a saving change in us? Because of our little faith or unbelief, because of our frivolousness, because of the corruption and impenitence of our heart; because of the passions that have grown strong in us and taken possession of us, because of our separation from the Church, because many do not at all be permeated by the spirit and life of the Church, and many—only weakly and more formally, insincerely, hold to it. From this same source have arisen all the contemporary social vices among us: murders, suicides, regicides, arson, theft of public property, excessive luxury, debauchery, profligacy, pursuit of every carnal pleasure.

In order for us to be true Orthodox Christians, we need above all to have lively, continuous communion with the Orthodox Church, or participation in her prayers, teaching, mysteries; to diligently study our faith and be permeated with and live by her spirit, be guided by her rules, commandments, statutes, and primarily—to restore in ourselves by true and profound repentance the image of a true Orthodox Christian in the image of the ancient and modern saints, or better—in the image of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, who says: “I have set you an example, that just as I have done, so you must do also” (Jn 13:15), so that the Lord may also say of us, as He once said of Nathanael: “Behold truly” a new “Israelite in whom there is no deceit” (Jn 1:47). Amen.