Fragments of the homily delivered at St. Elisabeth Convent in Minsk on June 13, 2024.
Love is the greatest gift of God that man can receive in this temporary world… Burdened with all kinds of problems that, in general, are worthless, we torment ourselves and others. But when you’re standing at the grave of a loved one, nothing that happened matters anymore. And when you’re lying in the ICU, not knowing if you’re going to survive, you longer have any problems with arguments about “mine or yours,” because it all becomes unnecessary. If we live before God, then what difference does it make what people said about you, what people thought about you, what you gained and what you lost?... The most important thing is not to lose eternity. And if we’re in God, we won’t lose it.
Sobering up and coming to our senses, we realize that here, in this world today, we’re in exile. We’ve been sent here in exile. Man, left without God, has turned his life into hard labor. He suffers by the sweat of his brow, laboring for his bread, yet he still lacks everything. He tries to find some special doctors, special medicine, health improvement systems (everyone wants to improve their health now), but he’ll still die—that’s the thing. No matter how much you recover, soon or later you’ll die. Those are our prospects without God. But when man begins to live spiritually and pulls himself up, crawls out of these swamps he’s stuck in, there are completely different prospects. If we’re truly religious people, God gives us everything we need. However, we lose a lot due to our stupidity and sins.
No need to fantasize and build yourself castles in the sky—they won’t stand. Appreciate what you have today. Here we are in church today. And everyone who received Communion—what else do you want, what else do you need? Chocolate, candy, lemonade? Yes, we have everything! We’ve already received everything that’s possible to receive in this temporary life—we’ve received the Body and Blood of Christ. We’re richer than any billionaire, the mighty of this age, because Christ is in us. We have to not lose Christ. Otherwise, we won’t pull ourselves away from the dead, stinking corpse that we will turn into sooner or later after death. Of course, it’s not beautiful, not very romantic, and aesthetically pleasing, but our body will be eaten by worms. We can’t get away from this, no matter how much we want to; no matter what kind of coffin we order for ourselves—oak or some other wood—it will rot.
The Lord called to Lazarus, the Four-Days Dead: “Come forth from this tomb! Follow Me!” (cf. Jn. 11:43, Mt. 8:22), and he came out of the grave and became a bishop and martyr. The Lord leads us in the same way, realizing that, under the weight of life’s problems, we can’t break away from what will happen tomorrow. We think about how to spend vacation, how to improve our health with vitamins, berries, and fruits. But in fact, Christ heals us with His love. And if we’re healed by Christ’s love, then we’ll live eternally. And the rest will follow.
We’re in church today, and we know that it’s a school and hospital and ambulance when the priest hears our confession—and even, perhaps, intensive care. And most importantly—it’s food for our souls, the immortal soul of man. Just imagine if there were no church… What would we do? Once upon a time, in the 70s, Schemanun Seraphima, who led the cathedral choir, told me that in 1937, when all the churches were closed in Minsk, people would come to the closed church, get down on their knees, and kiss the bricks of the church. Do you understand what it was like then? Frightening! Therefore, we should appreciate that the Lord has given us the chance to be in church today, to commune of the Body and Blood of Christ, and to be absolved of all our misunderstandings, all our doubts in Holy Communion (and they are truly absolved); and then go forward not with the sense of doom that sooner or later we’ll be buried, but to prepare for our ascent.
We can be compared to astronauts getting ready for a flight. But, this flight, you know, isn’t easy. You have to overcome the earth’s gravity, lighten your soul, your body, your thoughts and feelings in order to break away from your dead body and fly to the Lord; to the place where, apart from the love of God, there will be nothing else, and we won’t argue about whether something is yours or mine, who loves whom more, who owes whom more. There, God’s love will be in everything. Get ready for this flight! We don’t know when we’ll take off. But at some point, we’ll hear: “That’s it! Get ready!” What will you take with you? Nothing! Only your immortal soul.
Joyous feast, dear ones!
