4/13/2020
Bishop Silouan (Nikitin)
We offer our veneration to him today as a gift, but still our heart is filled with fear at the very reading of the book that speaks of the works of this great man—the Third Book of Kings.
We know, dear brothers and sisters, how unpleasant and hard it is when in a holy place—in the Lord’s church—instead of love and mutual respect, magnanimity and reverence for sanctity, we see audacity and brusqueness, people pushing forward with the desire to be first to the Holy Chalice or to venerate the cross.
Orthodox Christianity is a difficult, uncomfortable and incomprehensible faith. It is difficult for the ignorant, inconvenient for the indolent and the conformists, and simply put, incomprehensible to those who do not want to understand it.
A pleiade of approximately 1500 men—archpastors and pastors who were upstanding, sober, chaste, pious, honest, hospitable, instructive—over the course of three centuries formulated and clothed in verbal expressions what every person who calls himself a Christian should know.
That we might be accounted worthy of the appearance of God and the quenching of our spiritual thirst, we must be pure, cleansed of the bodily and spiritual contamination of sin and bad habits.
Very little time remains until the Wedding feast to which we are invited, and we must soon give an answer for our use of our talents. The virgins are you and I, that is, the Church; the sleep while awaiting the Bridegroom is death; the oil in the lamps is the virtues; and those who sell are all those who are in need of our help.
