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Select Sermons

St Philaret of Moscow, anonymous tr., 1873

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The interest which has for some years been manifested by Englishmen and Americans concerning the Orthodox Church, has induced us to translate some chosen Sermons of our best contemporary Divine, and the most eloquent preacher of the Russian Church.

The spiritual meditations here offered to the English reader are from the pen of the late Metropolitan of Moscow, Philaret. He has left, besides many other spiritual writings, a voluminous collection of Sermons, interpreting the significance of the solemnities of the Church, her rites and her customs; teaching her doctrine, and expounding various texts of the Scriptures. These Sermons, treating of all the most important questions of Christian doctrine, may be justly styled a complete and practical course of dogmatic and moral theology. We know not what most to admire in this treasury of spiritual lore,—the extensive knowledge of the Scriptures and profoundness of understanding, the clearness of mind with which he solves the most difficult questions, rendering them accessible to all by his simple and lucid exposition; or the beauty of the language, glowing with poetical images.

His sermons could be more fitly called meditations, being better appreciated by quietly pondering over them, than by listening to them at church. They stir not the feelings, nor do they rouse the imagination, but they deeply convince the mind, and work upon the very soul of the reader.

In our choice of the present Sermons, we have been guided by the desire to acquaint the English reader with the questions, in which our respective Churches mostly differ,—as, for instance, the reverence paid by us to the Most Blessed Virgin and to the Saints. In rendering her the honour due to her as to the pure Virgin, who was chosen to become the Mother of our Saviour, the English Church fears to lower the Majesty of God, and, so to say, to divide the devotion which it behoves a Christian to yield to his Redeemer and Lord alone. Whereas our Church, faithful to sacred tradition, firmly believes the holy Virgin Mary to be not an ordinary woman, but the elect and blessed instrument of God in the work of our redemption: the Church believes that she, who bore in her womb the God-Man, who wept tears of motherly love and woe at the foot of the Cross in the solemn hour of the Atonement for the sins of mankind, and in these sacred moments received from the very lips of the divine Sufferer Himself the words of filial love and care, entrusting her to the guardianship of His beloved Disciple, and in his person confiding us all to her motherly love; the Church believes that she, the Mother of our Lord, is sacred to us above all women, and holds in the kingdom of her divine Son a place high above all others. She believes firmly both in the willingness and power of the holy and blessed spirit of Mary to pray for us and with us,—she, in the resplendent glory of her heavenly abode before the eternal throne of her Son and

God, for us who, by our faith alone, belong to His immortal Church. We will quote here a few lines from the following Sermons: “If the Virgin Mary is honoured with the highest election by divine grace, then she is equally so by divine justice. She is raised high above all by election, because above all she appeared worthy of election by the qualities and inclinations of her soul, and among other qualities by the purest virginity by which she has ascended like a sun, high above all the ancient, and certainly above all the future world.” Therefore also is the Virgin-Mother of God unto the Church the exalted type of virginity. For virginity was unknown, nay even despised among the Jews, anxiously awaiting through the birth of the Messiah the redemption of humankind. It was first understood and desired by the pure soul of her, who resolved to embrace life bereft of every earthly tie, that she might the more freely give her whole heart to heavenly things, and whose virginity was crowned by a divine maternity. The pure Virgin, full of faith and love to the invisible God, became the chosen Mother of the God-Man. Her virgin-soul, free from earthly affections, was found worthy to become the tabernacle of God Incarnate. She stands on the brink of the old and of the new world, as the glorious tree of the Old Testament which bore unto heaven the fruit of salvation, which is the New Covenant of God with man.

The aspiration to attain the highest degree of perfection, by imitating the life of angels, through chastity both in soul and body, that aspiration which “all men cannot receive, save they to whom it is given,”¹ as is proclaimed by our Lord, has created a whole sphere of thoughts and feelings, a whole world of inward life, which has attained its highest development in the Eastern Church. The religious reform of the sixteenth century, so entirely obliterated this side of Christian life from Protestantism, that we do not even find in the English language words in which to render some very expressive and precise definitions of various spiritual conditions, feelings and workings, which abound in the present Sermons, and this has been one of the chief difficulties of our translation. Yet, notwithstanding Protestant or English prejudices, originating in a rightful reaction against the abuses of monasticism in the West, it cannot be denied that asceticism has added to the sum of human experience in spiritual matters, a precious insight which clears and brightly illumines the path leading to the heavenly Jerusalem.

In like manner as the Church acknowledges the honour due to the Mother of the Lord, she believes in the intercession of the Saints and ordains reverence towards them.

As God is not the God of the dead but of the living, as the Church, in her divine universality belongs neither to some peculiar place nor time, but unites in her bosom all the faithful,—those who still live upon earth, and those who dwell already beyond the limits of this life,—therefore, does the communion of love and prayer exist between the Church upon earth and the Church of heaven. How could saintly spirits who during this life have kept the commandment of our Divine Master, to love one another, how could they, once freed from their earthly bonds and from the struggle against human weakness, forget, or rather lose that divine love which has begotten in them life eternal? How could they cease to love men, and loving them, to pray for those who are weak in the spirit and tempted, for those who sin

and for those who repent, for those who are sorely tried and for those who weep, for those even, and perhaps more than all, who ignorant of their own needs, are gliding down unconsciously the dark and silent river of perdition? This is simply impossible. For love is a fire of heaven, which being once kindled, shall grow and be made perfect to all eternity, in the souls of those who die in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Prayer addressed by us to the Saints to obtain their intercession, or rather the communion of their prayers, proceeds in no wise from a feeling of doubt in divine mercy, or in the saving nearness of God. But as we know that prayer ought to be fervent, persevering and pure, and feel our own weakness, we call upon the Saints of heaven, upon our brethren in Jesus Christ, that they may lift up on the strong wing of their pure and ardent prayer, our own imperfect and cold ones. And this feeling impairs not in the least the just and firm belief of the Church, that holy, in the absolute sense of the word, is God alone, and that the holiness of the Saints is but a gift of His grace.

Another natural consequence of our faith in the communion of love and prayer between the Church upon earth and that of heaven, is our hopeful prayer for the souls of the departed. We firmly believe that prayers offered by the Church and by us her unworthy members, may obtain divine mercy for the souls of the dead; that the Church in her eternal reign has been empowered by her Lord to intercede for the souls of those who have died in the communion of love with her; for she is the one Church of Christ our Saviour, Who reigns over life and death throughout all eternity.

As the best proof that the reverence offered to the Mother

of God and to the Saints has not weakened in the orthodox Church that bond which ought to exist between the Church and her divine Chief, between the Christian and his Redeemer, we may point to the rite of the holy liturgy, which is the highest type of divine worship,—for all other services are but an introduction to, or a complement of it. It is impossible to find a more truly Christian prayer, more full of warmth, universal love, and breathing in its every part a most absolute hope in the merits of the divine Victim of Golgotha alone, than this most perfect liturgy presents to us.

The order of its ritual shadows out mystically before us the principal events of the earthly life of our Lord, crowned by His redeeming holocaust of love on the cross, and revives or realizes it in the divinely instituted Sacrament of the Eucharist, in which every Christian is called to participate.

Standing before the sacred Altar, on which are offered the mystical Bread and Wine, in the midst of the temple, typifying the upper room in Jerusalem, the Priest,—speaking in the name of the assembly of the faithful,—commemorates the just men abiding already in heaven,—the Apostles, Prophets, Confessors, Saints, and at last the most blessed Virgin Mary, and blending his own prayer along with those of the whole assembly, with their heavenly prayers, he unites by this commemoration the Church in heaven and the Church on earth. After this, the Priest lifts up to the throne of God the Father, in the Name of the merits of His divine Son, prayers and supplications for the whole world, for the Universal Church, for all sorts and conditions of men; he prays, for the faithful to be strengthened, for the wicked to be converted and purified. All needs, all sorrows, all infirmities are enumerated here before the throne of mercy; for, partaking of

the divine Food, we are filled with the gifts of grace, and, in the words of the Apostle, “we show the Lord’s death till He come.”²

At this solemn instant the Church forgets not her departed children, but prays for them in offering up the mysterious holocaust, making them thereby to participate in the holy Sacrament which unites heaven and earth, and at the same time unites also the praying assembly to the whole body of the Universal Church. For in the name of the Church, and not in that only of the present assembly, she offers unto the Lord God His own gracious gift in the words, “In all, and for all, we offer Thee Thine own of Thine own.”³

We may truly say that if all the canonical books of the Orthodox Church were to disappear, and there should remain only the rite of the holy Liturgy, it would be sufficient to prove how faithfully the Church has preserved the true spirit of Christian prayer, without weakening in the least that gracious bond which ought to exist between the Church and Christ. More clearly and precisely than from any explanation and reasoning, from the very character of the divine Liturgy, one may derive a true notion of the significance in the Church of the invocation to the Mother of God and to the Saints, as well as of the prayers for the dead. This sacred and hopeful communion between the visible and the invisible Church, appears in the rites of the divine Liturgy in such an exalted, touching, Christian character, that contemplating it, we find it even impossible to accuse the Church of differing in the least from the true spirit of Christ our Lord.

The orthodox Christian believes the Sacraments to be two-fold; on his part, an act of faith and free obedience; on the part of the Church, an anointment of grace, the seal of the Holy Ghost, Who dwelleth in her, through Jesus Christ her Lord. He believes that in baptism, confessing the Holy Trinity, he is purified from sin, through Jesus Christ, and born unto a new life, a life of grace in Christ his Redeemer. Through baptism the Christian is made a member of that Body whose Head is Christ, and thereby he is admitted to the Holy Supper, not in virtue of his own merits, but out of the infinite mercy and love of Him Who has died for man on the cross, and with Whom he is become one by baptism. Faithful to this humble and hopeful belief, the Church grants the holy Eucharist to little children without waiting the time when they may understand or merit the Mystery of Grace, before which the Angels of heaven prostrate themselves and adore, without comprehending.

The orthodox Christian believes that in the Eucharist he partakes of the true Body and Blood of Christ, in order to be united with Him in the spirit and in the flesh; for he knows that the grace, dwelling in the Church as a gift of her Lord, is powerful and efficacious to accomplish miraculous works, far beyond our limited powers of comprehension. Let us quote here some lines from the Metropolitan: “The Lord said at the Holy Supper, and He repeats it at every renewal of the sacred Act, ‘This is My Body, this is My Blood.’⁴ And wherever dwells the Body and the Blood of the Lord, Who was crucified, but Who is also risen up, there, doubtlessly, dwells His Spirit also, and His Divinity; there He Himself is present, there we are near unto Him, before Whom the Angels quake.”

In the Sacrament of Ordination, we confess the true origin of priesthood, and preserve in an uninterrupted line the grace bestowed by our Saviour on His Apostles. The Bishop or the Priest is the Minister of Christ, and not the delegate of the community; he owes his allegiance to Christ alone, and high above his human weakness we behold his perfect type in Him Who is “a Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.”⁵

The Sermons of the Metropolitan treating of Sacraments will be translated in a future volume.

Let us add a few words on the pious custom of honouring the relics of Saints. Without being a dogma or command of our Church, this custom is not merely tolerated, but even furthered by her, as a sign of devotion and reverence towards the memory of holy men, our brethren in Jesus Christ our Lord. The honour paid to the blessed remains of Saints is but a natural consequence of our faith in the resurrection of the body. It is a kindred feeling to that which moves us to frequent the resting-place of those whom we have loved, to adorn their graves, and to feel ourselves there nearer to them. To this natural feeling the Christian adds the belief that the relics of Saints are sanctified, for their very bodies have been during life, in the words of S. Paul, “the temple of God,” and “the Spirit of God hath dwelled in them;”⁶ he knows also that by means of these sacred relics divine grace has worked, and works still miracles of mercy.

The icons, or sacred images, are of a significance which has been so often explained, that we find it useless to mention it here. Every one knows that according to our Catechism, “icons are leaves, written with the forms of persons and things instead of letters,” and that “whilst we look on them with our eyes, we should mentally look to God and to the Saints represented on them.”

Those who will study the doctrine of the Church, not in the errors and weaknesses of human superstitions and failings, but in her own divinely inspired rites and institutions, will appreciate the matchless purity of our beloved Church. Let us not be misunderstood. We do not assume to ourselves any prerogative of goodness; on the contrary, woe unto us who have so little profited by the perfect holiness of our Mother Church! We are daily showing that we know her not by the narrowness of mind with which we cling to her outward form, ignoring or disregarding the divine, quickening Spirit which is her very soul, and without which that form is but a lifeless corpse. The best among us fall grievously short of the ideal of the Church, which towers high above us, bearing aloft the standard of the cross.

Truly glorious and divine is the plan of our Church; but beware of judging her by the failures and errors of her unworthy children.

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