June Sermons, 2026

​Sunday June 7, 2026. All Saints’ Day
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
Happy Namesday to Everyone, today! The church celebrates All Saints the week after Pentecost. Pentecost completes the panoramic picture of God’s plan of salvation to humanity which begins in November each year with Advent leading to Christmas, the Feast of Christ’s Nativity, then His Baptism, Theophany, followed by the feasts of the Meeting of the Lord, Great Lent, Annunciation, Palm Sunday, Pascha, Ascension, then Pentecost. This Sunday, a week after Pentecost, focusses on mankind’s response to God’s love and His invitation to participate in the life in Christ. 
 
The saints, thousands of whom we know by name, as well as the millions whose names we do not know, are the crop of God’s salvific planting. Wonderful is God in His saints, says King David. In venerating the saints, we recognise them as God’s co-workers who did everything “not from themselves but from Christ”, as St Seraphim explains, through the Holy Spirit. Each one of them is a gem that shines with the light of God. Christ gives them the glory that the Father gave Him. 
 
The saints are normal healthy people! Learning about them helps us to achieve a progression towards our spiritual and psychological health; we are much closer to neuroses and psychoses than we are to the normal health of the saints! Saints teach us through their life stories of repentance how to overcome the slavery of sin which is the addiction of the passions.  They have also left us many writings where they teach us about God and our journey to Him in Christ and the Holy Spirit. The saints are not only our teachers but also our friends who can and do help us when we call out to them. Christ wants the saints to help us because they are His friends; as He Said to His apostles: You are my friends. The saints, beginning with the Good Thief, understood the love of God. Their hearts were lit up by that love. 
 
I would like to read you a few beautiful words from St Isaac the Syrian about this: “Why was Christ nailed, hung on the cross for us sinners? It was for no other reason than to show the world His love so that when we understand this, our love would grow and we would be captivated by His love. He partook of death in the horrific suffering of the cross. Why the need for the offensive mockery, spitting, beatings, scourging? His death without the torture, by itself, would suffice for our redemption…  O Wisdom of God filled with love”! And so, the saints teach us that a Christian is not a sanitised keeper of the law, but a repentant sinner, full of love for Christ and his brothers and sisters. 

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