August Sermons 2025

Sunday August 3, 2025
by Fr Nicholas Karipoff

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
Today we have three things to think about.  First, the gospel reading from Matthew 14: 14 - 22, the story of the loaves and the fishes. Secondly, what proceeded was a wonderful passage from first Corinthians, chapter 1:10 -18. And I would also like to tell you a couple of little stories from  the life of one of today’s saints, St Symeon the fool for Christ and his co-faster, John. 
The gospel passage is the story of God’s love, feeding the thousands of people out there in the wilderness, the morning after that He spoke about himself as the heavenly bread. It is an image of the Eucharist, which is feeding us with the Lamb of God, with Christ’s love.
‘The church is a meal’, says a modern theologian. We cannot have the strength of love, without this meal. Love is selfless unity. The opposite of love is life according to the ego - that destroys unity and creates parties, religious parties, divisions in the community, all sorts of things. That is what St Paul is talking about in today’s passage, ‘Now I plead with you brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you. Each of you says ‘I am of Paul or I am of Apollos or I am of Cephas or I am of Christ’. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you or were you baptised in the name of Paul?’
Religion can tolerate parties because it is built on the ego, but Christianity cannot tolerate parties within community because Christianity is love.  Alas, while we cherish our ego we are constantly tempted in subtle and not so subtle ways to make a religion out of Christianity.
Religion is many things but very importantly, it is a quest to find the minimum of what I can do for God to feel decent, good and even righteous. What is the minimum? What can I do for God so that I can feel good, so that I am a good man or a good woman? It is not Christianity. This explains the unusual, even insane life of a large group of saints called Fools for Christ. They took upon themselves the incredible goal to destroy their own ego completely and to teach people to give up selfish religion, religion that ticks boxes and creates impressions for the benefit of other people and start living the life of love in Christ.
When I was at Seminary at Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, during our lunch and dinner times we heard readings from lives of saints, from the book of St Demetrius of Rostov, 12 volumes. In the handwriting of Archbishop Averky on top of the first page of the life of Saint Symeon the Fool for Christ and his co-faster John was written, ‘Do not read this in the refectory!’. It made us all very curious. Vladika Averky did not want to scandalise the women because the women were hearing this in the adjacent women’s refectory. Here are some of the things that St Symeon did which were quite amazing. 
St Symeon and his fellow ascetic, John, spent twenty-eight years together struggling as ascetics at the Dead Sea, one of them, Symeon, took upon himself a life of a Fool For Christ, he went up North to the city which used to be called Edessa, now it is a city in Syria called Homs, north of Lebanon. He spent the rest of his days there and died there. Some of the things that he did were so insane! For instance, he would take a large piece of meat on Good Friday, sit in the middle of the town square and eat it, to illicit a response of judgement, and criticism. People would say ‘He’s mad!’. He would dance provocatively with groups of prostitutes in the town, and he would turn to various people in the crowd and whisper their secret sins into their ears at the same time. He would sometimes accumulate large sums of money, and he would give these prostitutes money to stop the things that they were doing. They loved and respected him. 
There is a particularly  funny story, where Saint Symeon hid behind a column in the workshop of a Jewish man who was a glass blower. Each time the man  blowed the glass, the saint would make the sign of the cross and the glass broke. Then the man noticed Saint Symeon, and rushed out and beat him up badly. Saint Symeon said ‘Now that you’ve done not that not a single attempt will work’. The next day the man came to him, fell on his knees and said, ‘Forgive me, I want to be a Christian!’. That’s the power of the saints.
You might ask, what’s the point of this, why did fools for Christ act this way? They wanted to teach people not to live this sanitised bourgeois Christianity. That is not Christianity – showing off, ticking boxes. That is religion, not Christianity, and we must understand the difference. These people made their brothers and sisters think seriously about the soul and about salvation, not just creating impressions. 
Let us learn from St Paul and today’s great saint, St Symeon of Edessa, Fool for Christ. They are teaching us to live the real life in Christ through repentance and working on our egos until we destroy this ego or at last forget about it.  Otherwise we cannot live a Christian life. Let us forget about groupings and parties if we want to be serious about being led by Christ and not by demigods and gurus of all shades. Let us sit humbly at the feet of Christ as today’s thousands of people in the gospel sat down and they were fed with the love of Christ our God.

Sunday 10 August 2025
by Fr Nicholas Karipoff

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
The scripture readings today speak of the processes of purification in the church as a whole and also within us individually as members of the living body of Christ. The gospel from Matthew (14:22-24) that we just heard, presents a powerful story of the storm at sea. This is the second story about a storm, and it is scarier and deeper in meaning than the first storm. In the language of the Holy Fathers, “stormy waters” is an image of the world of passions whipped up by the adversary. 
In the first gospel story about a storm, Christ is present in the boat, sleeping. The disciples become so scared of the storm that they wake Him up and He stops the storm. In this second story today, Christ is not in the boat. He seems to be absent from them until He comes walking on water. This occurs in the early hours of the morning, in the dark. Before it happens, the disciples are driven into a frenzy of terror and desperation. When Peter sees Christ walking on water, his response is excessively and unrealistically self-confident.  This experience of sin and pride is part of a delusional sense of our autonomy from God; it is part of fallen human nature. It is an illusion. It is not only Peter who has fallen for this delusion, the other disciples also did, and we do as well. As the Holy Fathers teach, starting from the scriptures, this is what is called our pride, our ego.
Christ gradually teaches his disciples, by using first a storm in His presence and then one in His absence. First, He lets Peter begin to drown because of Peter’s unrealistic self-confidence. Further, on Great Thursday night, speaking liturgically, the self-confidence of the disciples receives a crushing blow, and Peter denies His Lord three times and with an oath ‘I do not know this man’. 
Today’s Epistle (ICor. 3:9-17) connects with this theme of building the church from individual members. St Pauls writes, ‘That we can only build on the foundation of Christ’. We build from different materials, and they are tested by fire. Combustible materials are aspects of our life and work that come from the ego, just like in the story of St Peter and his self-confidence. The ego at work cannot survive the test of fire because this fire is the love of God that will burn.  
What is the meaning of all this for us? What material are we using ourselves to build with? If we see hay and straw within ourselves it must go, we must get rid of it. It is easier to do it now than later. It will burn to expose the beauty of God that is indestructible. 
Through experiencing storms and tribulations, the Apostles were taught to understand the words of Christ, ‘Without me you can do nothing’. When they came to that knowledge, they were able to defeat the world in themselves and in other people. Christ encouraged them by saying at the mystical supper, ‘In the world you will have tribulations but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world’. Amen
 
Sunday 17 August 2025
by Fr Nicholas Karipoff

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
This coming Tuesday the church will celebrate the feast of the Holy Transfiguration. Today’s gospel reading from Matthew (17:14 – 23) is a story that tells us what happened when the Lord came down from the mountain after this glorious theophany on the mountain with his three disciples, Peter, James and John.
This story is not only covered by Matthew but by the other two synoptics, Mark and Luke. Mark describes that a group of pharisees were arguing with the nine disciples that remained at the foot of the mountain. We hear from the father of the sick boy that the apostles could not help him in the absence of the Lord, even though they had successfully done exorcisms and healings before. What a picture of chaos and helplessness here at the foot of the mountain!  The Lord teaches them, and us, that this kind is expelled only through prayer and fasting. 
To get up to the top of the mountain with Christ is an effort of prayer and fasting. St Isaac the Syrian, among several other holy fathers, teaches that our efforts in prayer and fasting are all about reaching a state or measure of humility.  This liberates us from the proud demons because they control us through our pride. Humility then opens us to the grace of God and in the story of Transfiguration, Christ shows us our potential transfiguration by grace. 
The chaos and helplessness at the foot of the mountain figuratively describes the world which is full of these two things. Chaos enters our consciousness especially with anxious thoughts. How does it feel when we have anxious thoughts and we cannot fall asleep at night? This is a visitation from chaos, a temptation to turn our gaze to these thoughts and to deal with them “logically”. Logic rarely works against anxiety. It is like saying, ‘don’t worry about it’; it is easier said than done.
Then what else could we do? We could go to the cupboard and try something there, to soothe the soul but that does not solve problems; typically, it introduces other problems. Prayer and fasting as unseen warfare are more powerful. We can deflect intrusive thoughts and fill that space in our mind and heart with the Jesus prayer. The holy fathers say ‘Hit the worries with the name of Jesus’! When anxious thoughts are strong, we will fail at first, but that is not bad because that will humble us and open us more to the help that we really need, instead of still wanting to do things ourselves. When we open up to that help,  our situation will change and we will start going up the mountain. We will feel better. When we are in church, we are at the summit,  and we can say with Peter, ‘Lord how wonderful it is to be here’. Yet every time we are on the mountain, we have to come down to a different reality. But we are not alone, we are fortified with the Grace that we have acquired.
 
Tuesday 19 August 2025
by Fr Nicholas Karipoff

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
Holy Transfiguration is a mysterious event in many ways. It belongs to a group of other mysterious events in the Gospel that also happened in the middle of the night. The Nativity of the Lord, which begins his earthly journey, is in the dark silent night, with just a burst of light from the angels of heaven. Christ’s prayer in Gethsemane, that he prays in agony accepts His cup of death and resurrection, is during the night.  And the Resurrection itself happens in the middle of the night.
The night at Mount Tabor speaks of the personal journey of each one of us, up the mountain to hear that quiet conversation of Christ with the prophets Moses and Elijah. The conversation is about His looming cross but also about our own personal cross, about our personal transfiguration. At the same time, Holy Transfiguration is a theophany, a trinitarian event where the Son shines through the Spirit, and the Father repeats the words that he said at the Son’s baptism: ‘Hear him’. Christ speaks to us, even when He is silent. He speaks to us in a personal way , and in a collective way to the church. 
Holy Transfiguration is loved by monastics especially, because they spend much more time than we do focused on personal prayer in the dark of the night. The creation in Genesis begins when the darkness of nonbeing ceases with the words, ‘Let there be light’.
Holy Transfiguration and its theology is about that uncreated light that comes directly from God, and is part of God Himself. It is a timeless moment on the mountain for us as well, and we want to cry out with Peter: how good it is to be here! Because with God’s help we have succeeded, perhaps, to put aside those earthly cares, at least for a little timeless moment where nothing else matters. Peter, James and John were not just observers of this mysterious event when Christ shone with uncreated light. The light of Christ enlightens all,as we hear in the liturgy of pre-sanctified gifts during Great Lent. And in the troparion of today’s feast, we hear that Christ enabled the disciples to be partakers of this light, as much as they were able in their state to experience heaven. 
We too become participants in the light of Christ, when in the Eucharist, we pray, ‘Send down thy Holy Spirit upon us and upon these gifts set forth’. The feast of Holy Transfiguration is a powerful reminder of what the goal of Christian life is, so let us flee from the darkness of death and nonbeing that is relentlessly offered by fallen angels, the tempters, and flee from that to the light of Christ. God became one of us to make us God’s through his light, divinised by Grace. 

Sunday August 24, 2025
by Fr Nicholas Karipoff

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
We have heard, and we know that the Gospel of Christ is about love. We may even know that love in the Christian sense means to abandon our ego, our selfishness, and to let God in. Today’s parable of God’s forgiveness of the debtor (Matt. 18: 23-35) speaks about God’s infinite readiness to express His love and forgiveness. The parable, however, contrasts God’s love and forgiveness with our  own lack of love and forgiveness, when the  ego rules in our  heart. 
On the one hand we easily accept God’s forgiveness.  We take it for granted. While on the other hand, we find it difficult to forgive our neighbour.  The answer is simple: we do not know ourselves. We are deluded about who we are.  This is serious! For that reason, it appears to us that the sins of our neighbour against us are far greater than our sins against God.  Delusion.  For this reason, we cannot seriously accept today’s parable.  Surely, we say to ourselves, it is an exaggeration. We hear the message about forgiveness not only in this parable but in many other parts of the Gospel and the New Testament, for example, The Lord’s Prayer: Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.  And the most powerful image of forgiveness is, as Christ is being crucified He prays for His enemies and says: Father, forgive them.  
Salvation is so easy, so straightforward.  Forgive and you will be forgiven. It is as simple as that. The measure that you will use will determine whether you have Heaven or Hell in your heart.  Supposing I say to myself:  I understand that I have a great debt before God, and I am ready to forgive my neighbour, even though  he steps on my toes, he offends me and he makes life difficult for me. But what if I am faced with a situation when I would be ready to initiate something, but I know that it will only provoke the other person.  St Paul teaches in Galatians that if a person falls into sin, those who are more spiritually mature should correct such a person. That is very hard. It is so easy to project this “holier-than-thou” ethos. So this attempt will fail. Only a contrite prayer with recognition of our own failures before God will help us to defeat that dragon of animosity and hatred, which lives in the heart but has lost the ability to love and to forgive.  That is hell! The good thing is that Christ is in hell until the person is ready to come out of their own hell. 

Thursday August 28, 2025.  Feast of the Dormition of the Mother of God.
by Fr Peter Sheko
 
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. 
As Orthodox Christians, today we celebrate one of the most beautiful feasts of the Church, the Dormition of the Mother of God. The word “Dormition” means falling asleep. But for Mary, the Mother of God, this sleep was not death, with its decay, but a passage into eternal life, where She was resurrected and glorified by Her Son. 
In the icon of this feast, we see Christ Himself receiving His Mother’s soul, shown as a small child, wrapped in white cloth, a sign of Her new birth into eternal life with Him. St Germanus of Constantinople says of her Dormition: “your falling asleep is an entry into life”.
St John of Shanghai and San Francisco’s book “The Orthodox Veneration of Mary the Birthgiver of God” writes “the Virgin Mary during Her earthly life avoided the glory which belonged to Her Son as the Mother of the Lord. She preferred to live in quiet and prepare Herself for the departure into eternal life … she prayed that He might deliver her soul from the malicious spirits that meet human souls on the way to heaven … The Lord fulfilled the prayer of his Mother and in the hour of her death Himself came from heaven with a multitude of angels to receive her soul.” 
He continues, When the Apostles opened her tomb on the third day to “once more venerate the remains of the Mother of God together with the Apostle Thomas, who had arrived then in Jerusalem … they did not find the body in the tomb and in perplexity they returned to their own place; and then, during their meal, the Mother of God Herself appeared to them in the air, shining with heavenly light, and informed them that Her Son had glorified her boy also, and She, resurrected, stood before His Throne. At the same time, She promised to be with them always.”
St John of Damascus echoes this “… just as the All-Holy Body of God’s Son … rose from the dead on the third day, it followed that she should be snatched from the tomb, that the Mother should be united to her Son; and as He had come down to her, so She should be raised up to Him, into the more perfect dwelling-place, heaven itself. She is taken up into glory, showing us, the destiny prepared for all who love God.” 
St Gregory Palamas says “Today the spotless Virgin, untouched by earthly affections, and all heavenly in her thoughts, was not dissolved in earth, but truly entering heaven, dwells in the heavenly tabernacles. She embraces peace and a meek spirit, and love, mercy, and humility as her children.” 
The Dormition is not a day of sorrow, but of joy. St John of Kronstadt reminds us that Mother of God was translated from earth to heaven, “… she died without serious illness, peacefully. Her soul is taken up in the divine hands of Her Son and carried up into the heavenly abode, accompanied by the sweet singing of angels.” Her death shows us the importance of preparing for death, “washing clean everything that defiles the body and spirit, … adorned with every virtue: repentance, meekness, humility, gentleness, simplicity, chastity, mercifulness, abstention, spiritual contemplation, and burning love for God and neighbour.”
Again, St John of Shanghai also says “The end of the earthly life of the Most Holy Mother of God was the beginning of Her greatness … at the right hand of the throne of Her Son … has boldness towards Him … as One who performed the will of God and instructed others (Matt 5:19). Merciful and full of love towards her son and our God in love for the human race. She intercedes before the Merciful One” to help us. 
In the prayer service to the Mother of God, we hear the words, “guardian of orphans, intercessor for strangers, joy of the sorrowful, protectress of the wronged: Thou seest our misfortune, Thou seest our affliction; help us, for we are infirm; feed us, for we are strangers. Thou knowest our offence:  absolve it as Thou wilt, for we have no other help beside Thee, no other intercessor, nor good consoler, except Thee…” 
Let us rejoice! The Mother of God has fallen asleep, but she has not abandoned us. She is alive in Christ, and she prays for us unceasingly. May her Dormition strengthen our faith, comfort us in our sorrows, and remind us of the eternal life that awaits all who love her Son.
 
Sunday August 31, 2025
by Fr Nicholas Karipoff

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
Today’s question of the young rich pharisee and Christ’s answer to him (Matt. 19:16-26) give us a good understanding of the difference between Christianity and religion, which I have been speaking about lately.  The Lord gives maximalist advice to this young man, to sell everything and give all the proceeds to the poor and follow Him.  Why does He say that? Christ wanted to give this man a dose of reality.  The young man thought that he had almost arrived at perfection, but he was being completely unrealistic. All Christ’s words to us in the Gospel amount to a direction. He points to God as the goal of our journey.  What we can do today depends on our level of commitment and maturity. The point of Christ’s answer is not a literal understanding of His words to the young man.  It is a warning which says, use things but be wary of turning them into idols. An idol is something that blocks out God.
Here is an example.  In old Russia, whenever the merchants were doing some sort of shady deal, they would draw a curtain over the icon corner; riches were their idol, and they did not want God to enter their space. Another example is of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts chap. 5) during the time of the first church of Jerusalem. We see a great sense of commitment to Christ when many people, of their own free will, did literally sell their possessions to give to the poor.  Ananias and Sapphira also brought the proceeds of the goods they sold and placed them at the feet of the apostles for the benefit of their poor brethren.  However, they pretended that they had sold everything but in reality, they were unable to part with everything and secretly kept a portion aside. 
The example of how religion is different. The religion of the pharisees took an actual quotation from Leviticus in the Old Testament, (chap 19): Love your neighbour as yourself.  But then they added their own interpretation:  And hate your enemy.  Religion  prefers to keep God at a safe distance. It is quite normal to think that hating our enemy is not only justifiable but also necessary. That appeals to fallen humanity.  But Christ has come to defeat evil and then to teach us how to do it. Hate cannot defeat evil. It only makes it worse. Love, even towards bad people, our enemies, defeats evil. Ultimately each person has to make a choice.  Today’s rich young man was not ready to allow God to enter into every aspect of his life. Only with maturity we can grow from religion to the life in Christ. 

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