July Sermons 2026

Sunday July 5, 2026
Fr Nicholas Karipoff
The gospel story that we just heard (Matt 10:37 – 11:1) speaks of two demoniacs. It speaks of the terrible and great power of the devil but also about the infinitely greater power of God. It is easy to think that this story has little to do with us. Such demonic possession seems to us to be such a rare phenomenon. If that is the case, what has it got to do with me? Why listen to this story? We hear it on two Sundays during the year. This attitude is shared by the Gergesenes or Gadarenes (the region has two different names) who decided to simply expel these unfortunate sufferers from their midst, leaving them to stay in their own hell. Occasionally these two men would attack anyone who was unfortunate enough to come close to them. 
It is a normal human reaction to want to keep away from others who could cause us pain and grief, and these two demoniacs were very scary.  Let us acknowledge the spiritual reality that is all around us and is within us as well, that we human beings we are not in our normal state. We are tormented by the demonic world through the passions. What are these passions? Let me remind you: gluttony, fornication, love of money, anger, sinful sorrow, despondency (depression), vainglory and pride, and there are many incarnations of these passions, many variations.
We human beings determine who we can put up with when we consider their passions - their demons- are at an acceptable level to us. Once people become too hard to bear we, as a rule, want to stay away from them. But let us remember who we are. We are Christians! We are called upon to fight our passions and to realign them in such as a way that they cannot be used by the demons to provoke us. These passions were originally meant to be helpful drives and energies. Take for instance, anger. Anger is bad, and yet Christ became angry on quite a few occasions. However, in His anger He kept loving. Can we do that? That is the proper way to get angry:  get angry and do not sin, as we hear in the psalms. 
Secondly, we are called to bear each other’s burdens and that means to understand that when people provoke us through their passions, we should thank God for sending these people to us because they show us what is inside of us. Otherwise, we would not know what sort of work we need to do. Because of this we should not turn away from people who are challenging for us. The problem with sinful humanity is that it is always easier to see the problem in the other person, rather than in ourselves, and for that reason we always want to change the other person. Consider modern Western philosophers and revolutionaries who always want to change the other person or change society.  But we can change only ourselves. We cannot change anybody else. When we begin to understand our problems, then start to work on them and connect with Christ, our inner life will start changing and we will approach the other person, whoever they might be, with patience firstly, and then ultimately with love. When we drive out our own demons, with Christ’s help, we will be able to drive out demons in other people the way that the Lord did today. The way to change other people is by changing ourselves first and ridding ourselves of our demons.  
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Sunday July 12, 2026. Feast of the Apostles
Fr Peter Sheko
Today the Holy Church celebrates the memory of the holy great apostles Peter and Paul. On this day I usually speak about one or other. This year my focus is on St Paul and on an aspect of human behaviour where we do the opposite of what we know to be right. In the epistle to the Romans, 7:19, St Paul says: For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. In his homily on these verses, St John Chrysostom explains that Apostle Paul is emphasising the overwhelming power that sin has acquired over a person who has not been fully liberated by Christ. This highlights the inner struggle that everyone experiences. Even the saints were not exempt from this as we see in this passage. We know the basic principles of how we should behave and interact with one another.  And yet something different often happens and we end up saying or doing the opposite of what we know is right. Our previous position to sin causes this.  For example, our pride interferes with our ability to accept constructive criticism, our jealousy prevents us from rejoicing when someone else is rewarded or acknowledged for an achievement instead of us, our anger is stirred when someone says something hurtful and we feel the urge to retaliate. Does this mean we should give up trying to live according to Christian principles? It is understandable that we may feel disheartened because of our constant trouble with sinful habits. However, there is a way to turn this around and transform our sense of helplessness into something more positive. In Romans Chapter 5, St Paul says: and not only so, but we glory in tribulations also. Knowing that tribulation worketh patience and patience experience and experience hope.
St John Chryostomos explains that suffering confirms, rather than weakens, Christian hope. Trials are not evidence that God’s promises have failed. Instead, they test and strengthen our faith as believers. Practising patience builds character and endurance. Those who persevere faithfully through trials learn to face greater confidence in God’s promises and come to realise that the struggle is not in vain. This is easier said than done. Accepting the trials and difficulties that come throughout our lives is extremely challenging. We naturally resist them as much as we can. In times of desperation, we may pray to God to spare us just as St Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12 that we heard today: “for this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me and He that is Christ said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee, my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in mine infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon you”. We need to keep in mind Christ replied to St Paul that My grace is sufficient for you, My strength is made perfect in weakness. God’s love for us together with his respect for our free will does not compel Him to interfere in our lives, it is only when we acknowledge our weakness and recognise our need for His help in working through life’s difficulties that God extends His helping hand to us. 
May St Paul together with St Peter intercede for us in our struggles so that we may not be overwhelmed by them but instead accept that difficulties are a part of life.  And may we remember that God’s strength is made perfect in weakness. 

Sunday July 19 2026
Fr Nicholas Karipoff
The gospel reading today (Matt. 9:27-35) contrasts the goodness and love of Christ with the envy and prejudice of the Pharisees. The people rejoiced seeing the two blind men and the dumb demoniac healed but the Pharisees could not overcome their negative bias towards the Lord. They said that He performed the exorcism through demonic power. On many occasions, the Lord was direct in telling them about their inner spiritual problems while at the same time showing great patience with them.  As a result, many of the Pharisees came to Christ and joined the church after Pentecost.
Today’s story shows typical human relations. A preconceived notion and a negative attitude caused by a passion such as envy, as illustrated in this case, makes it difficult for people to see anything good in the other person. It is difficult to accept that anything good is possible from a person whom we dislike intensely. This passionate, biassed attitude covers our whole perception of the other person. And it can also work the other way around. We may wear rose coloured glasses and fail to see the person objectively, fail to see any of their harmful behaviour and so we fail to help them by correcting them in love and meekness. The life in Christ demands that we hear what we heard in the epistle today (Rom. 15:1-7), before the Gospel, because it speaks of the responsibility of the stronger members of the church to carry the weaknesses of the weak. We are called to be like-minded to one another and to glorify God with one mind and one heart. That unity of faith and life is impossible without a lot of work on the inside against our passions with the demons working through them. 
We hear the Lord quoting: Physician heal thyself ! This was a saying in His day in the Middle East, and it tells us to not fantasise about being able to help people spiritually before we have attained a measure of health ourselves from Christ. Christ is the good Samaritan who heals. We must heal ourselves first before we can heal anybody else.  So often we are completely blind to ourselves. How do we begin to heal ourselves? First, by praying along the lines of the prayer we use during Great Lent, the prayer of St Ephraim: “Lord, enable me to see MY failings and not to condemn my brother”. This is the correct spirit, but we must really want this to happen and not just recite the line.  
Prayer must come from a bleeding heart. Then Christ will come and give us vision of our inner world, to help us be free of that demonic manipulation that we are constantly affected by.  Then we will be able to speak the words from Christ. 
 
Sunday July 26, 2026
Fr Nicholas Karipoff
This Sunday  (Matt.14:14-22) is about both the feeding of the five thousand and the memory of the Holy Fathers of the Sixth Council; the focus is on the church as  “a meal”, to use an expression of one of the modern Orthodox theologians. The image of the hungry five thousand families sitting on the green grass is an image of the church being fed by Christ in the mystery of the Eucharist. This multitude of people had chosen to be hungry all day rather than leave Christ, and for that they were rewarded with His great miracle. That is something for us to contemplate. How do we prepare for the miracle that is even greater than the miracle that happened then? 
We have come for this miracle today. Recently I spoke to a catechumen and also an inquirer about the faith and I mentioned the three great miracles that happen in the Holy Land; the Holy Fire at Pascha, the water of the Jordan River that goes backwards during the blessing of the water of Theophany, and also the night of Transfiguration as the shining cloud comes over the mountain. These are all great miracles, and they happen regularly, yet a lot of people do not know about them. My late mother had a Jewish friend who lived in the kibbutz underneath Mount Tabor, who was amazed to hear about it from her.  I have never been present at the Holy Fire because for a priest it is just impossible to get away during Easter, but I know many people who have. Imagine being present at such a miracle!
Every Sunday, every feast day, every time we come to a liturgy and a Eucharist, it is a greater miracle. It is a greater miracle because the Holy Fire is God’s energy, but here is Christ Himself and it is also the Pentecost. The Holy Spirit comes on us and, on these gifts.  The priest or bishop prays: Send down Your Holy Spirit.  Can you imagine how prepared and how focused we need to be to properly participate in this, and to behold it!
People make a big effort to go on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and for that they are rewarded. Some people see things that others do not see during the coming down of the fire, like lightning flashes all over the church and many other things. I am not focusing on that; I am focusing on our presence here today and every time we come on this. 
The bodily hunger of the five thousand people opened them to the love of Christ. We prepare ourselves for the meeting of Christ with the liturgical fast. No breakfast until after the Eucharist is a small thing to do. We are preparing for Holy Communion. We will say some prayers before communion, but the main thing is to do is what we are told in the Cherubic hymn: let us put aside all earthly cares. This is the sort of focus we need to have. 
The miracle of the Eucharist will not happen for us if we are not properly focused and not prepared. Our presence in Church will just be some sort of profanation and that would be awful. Imagine a person who is in present amongst those thousands of people during the Holy Fire and is not focused but still expects it to happen. Yet we come we for something greater and we do not always focus ourselves well enough. 
This is the contemplation that we need to carry away from today’s reading about this great miracle and about the holy fathers who have done so much for the church.
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