​Sunday 2 February 2025: Zacchaeus Sunday            
Father Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
Before today’s Gospel, we heard the words of St Paul to Timothy, in the Epistle:  Be an example to the believers in word, in conduct, in love, in spirit, in faith and in purity. Timothy was ordained by St Paul as a presbyter, a pastor, who helps Christ to lead His flock, but the church has always had many people from among the laity as well who lead by their example and now today, we hear of such an example, Zacchaeus. The name Zakkay in Hebrew alludes to fairness and righteousness. As a chief tax collector in the rich city of Jericho, Zacchaeus had ample opportunity to be tempted and to act unfairly and unrighteously. But he had not completely lost his conscience, and this causes his great inner tension, to the point of becoming unbearable. When Zacchaeus hears that Jesus is passing through the streets of Jericho, he runs and climbs into a sycamore tree to see Him. Christ sees not just Zacchaeus, but also Zacchaeus’ heart. He sees that his heart is right for repentance and tell Zacchaeus that He is coming to see him at his home. The joy of Zacchaeus has no bounds. He gives his heart to Christ, just as we hear as far back as the Old Testament ‘Son, give me your heart’. In a short moment, he becomes worthy of his name, Zakkay. His speech shows not only his fairness according to the law, but the righteousness of love beyond the law. He promises that he will give half of his property and his wealth to the poor and then according to the law, he says – ‘If I have hurt anyone by false accusations, I will restore to that person four-fold’. If a thief was caught, his punishment would be that he had to pay a fine four times of the value of what he stole. Zacchaeus acknowledged himself as a thief, but more than that, his words show love.
 
What is the critical moment of the story? It comes when Zacchaeus is in a conflict, forgets his station in life and courageously climbs a tree to see Christ. He ignores people’s ridicule, and he runs to climb that tree like a boy. Now he cares more about his relationship with God much more than his high position and prestige as a rich man. 
 
During the weeks preceding Great Lent, the church selects Gospel readings that illustrate this transformation, which is termed repentance. Repentance is a change of heart and mind, metanoia. If we give ourselves a proper chance to think about our life, our failures before God, if we stop worrying about what other people will think about us and start worrying about what God may think about us, we can get to a moment where we begin to live in harmony with our baptismal name. Ultimately our name is Christian, just like Zacchaeus – Zakkay. 

Sunday February 9: Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
We have started the Lenten Triodion, which is the material in preparation and during Great Lent. We are beginning our warmup before Lent. Today’s topic is the juxtaposition of pride and humility, as we heard in the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee. Today’s epistle, St Paul’s 2nd letter to Timothy, chap 3, talks about the persecutions and afflictions that St Paul had endured. He writes what persecutions I endured. But out of them all, the Lord delivered me.  And yes, all who desire to live in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. Today the church also celebrates the thousands upon thousands of new martyrs and confessors of Rus. How is this relevant to today’s gospel parable about pride and humility? In the gospel, the evangelist Luke writes, He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. This parable may or may not describe actual historical people; we are not certain.  But it was more important for the Lord, of course, to show the typical behaviour of the proud person and the humble one.  If the parable is inspired by actual persons, it would have been interesting to see how the pharisee’s contempt might have grown into hatred and persecution of the tax collector and others like him. Look at what happened at the dawn of humanity in Genesis; Cain slays his brother Abel who was more pleasing to God, which made Cain envious and murder him.  The same contempt, envy and   hatred moved the pharisees, who saw themselves as the most righteous, to crucify Christ.  The Lord mentions the spilling of innocent blood from Abel’s day until His day, alluding to their murderous designs.  I am not saying that persecution always means shedding of blood.  We need to understand the dynamics of pride meeting humility. If, God forbid, we cannot see ourselves properly, we might share in that spirit of pride which leads to contempt and irritability towards people who, to us, seem to be worse than us.  Just like the pharisee who thanks that he is not like other people, whom he considers to be inferior to him.  If we pick up on any hint of this pharisaical spirit within ourselves, let us punish ourselves with contrition, like in the parable of the Publican and of the Tax-collector.  On the other hand, we are often on the receiving end of people’s contempt and irritability, or subtle forms of persecution or bullying. According to the saints we must do two things in this situation; Firstly, we must thank God for teaching us to have more patience with all people. And secondly, we must pray for our persecutors and ask God to give us patience and love. We might be pleasantly surprised by the results of such a prayer. Even if there are no pleasant surprises, we will agonise less and feel more peaceful within ourselves. 

​Saturday February 15: The Meeting of the Lord
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
The Feast of Christ’s presentation in the temple on the fortieth day after Nativity is called the Meeting of the Lord.  This meeting is primarily with Simeon, an elderly man who had been humbled over a long lifetime.  Church tradition says that his longevity was given to him because he had a doubt about a verse in the book of Isaiah prophesying that a Virgin shall give birth. He was promised that he would not die until he saw the Lord’s Christ, as we just heard in the Gospel.  The words he spoke as he held the baby Jesus have become a doxology used by the church at vespers for over two thousand years, as well as some other occasions:  Lord, now lettest thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation which thou hast prepared before the face of all people. A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel. (Luke 2:29-32) This is a prophetic prayer that is spoken by the Holy Spirit. In the creed we say that the Holy Spirit spoke through the prophets. 
This feast gives an image of Elder Simeon holding baby Jesus in his arms. It is an image of our own meeting with the Lord.  Simeon prays over a long lifetime for the Messiah to come.  When Simeon achieves the necessary measure of humility, the Son of God shows an infinitely greater humility. He is born as a vulnerable baby.  He allows Himself to be held in the elderly arms of this old man.  Same with us. When we stop doubting God and trying to prove something to Him, to ourselves and to other people, the same thing will happen with us.  God will tangibly meet with us in His humility. Then we will not resist this process of our own growth in becoming humble and seeing the things of God. 
 
This feast is always close to the beginning of Great Lent.  The feast tells us to not waste time but to grow in humility and in God’s wisdom.  Then we will be like St Simeon and all the saints who saw the slow approach of their physical death as a joyous meeting with the Lord. 

Sunday February 16: Sunday of the Prodigal Son
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
The parable of the Prodigal Son, which we just heard, is one of the most moving images of the love of God. For that reason, it has inspired many works of European literature and art.  The first part of the story can be summed up in the words of the great Syrian ascetic, St Isaac:  There is no unforgiveable sin except the sin of unrepentance. In the parable the youngest son, who represents every human being, comes to his senses and realises his abysmal rock-bottom spiritual state.  The prodigal son prepares a speech for his father after this realisation, saying he is no longer worthy to be called his son. He planned to ask his father to accept him as a hired servant.  This is possibly the origin of the expression that traditional Christianity uses: Servant of God. But as we hear, the father does not allow the son to finish his speech.  Instead, he showers him with signs of glory and honour that are appropriate for a true child of God who carries the image and likeness of God. 
 
This is the second Sunday when the Holy Church gives us this encouragement in our weakness and failings so that we can mobilize ourselves and ask the loving and compassionate God for mercy and salvation. The epistle today which has been chosen by the church lectionary - the yearly programme of readings – expands on the ideas of the parable. The passage of 1Cor:6 begins with the words of St Paul:  All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful.  With these words St Paul intended to address some aspects of Mosaic restrictions.   But these words were misrepresented by the Corinthians who stretched them to infer that everything is allowed, even sexual immorality.  In preparing for this sermon, I investigated the different meanings of this word prodigal. In English, the word comes from the Latin prodigus which means “wasteful”. The prodigal son wastes his father’s money.  In Slavonic, the term is ‘блудный” and the meaning here aligns with the Greek word asotos meaning both “lost” and “debauched’. Further, St Paul writes that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.  Sexual immorality desecrates the temple.
 
During Lent, people are aware that we are asked to limit ourselves in terms of food.  But there is a lot more to it.  We need to restrain ourselves in quality and quantity in food, but we also need to be self-restrained in many other things, including guarding our eyes.  There is unseen warfare. There is so much visual material everywhere that causes temptations, especially content on the internet, and everything is so accessible.  People see things that they should not see because it affects them badly.  It brings their psycho- physical life to the level of that rock-bottom condition that the prodigal son experienced. Everything is allowable in the sense that we can repent but not everything is beneficial. God forgives instantly, but healing the wounds takes time. There are so many detrimental things to our spiritual life and we need to realise this. This is something to think about in the coming weeks of Lent. 

​Sunday February 23 
by Fr Nicholas Karipoff
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
Today is Meatfare Sunday so we say goodbye to meat today, the last time until Pascha (Easter). The coming week is Cheese fare week, from tomorrow morning. For this reason, the Church offers a reading from St Paul 1st Corinthians Chapter 8. St Paul says that meat in itself is nothing, yet if eating it will cause a scandal then he will abstain from it. Causing scandal is something that is judged severely by the Lord, as we read in the Gospel. Why? Because it is one of the worst sins against our neighbour. 
Today we have just heard the reading about the Last Judgement. We know from the fathers that the Gospel is entirely and solely about love, including this reading. Anyone who is familiar with the writings of the early fathers will know that their teaching on the Last Judgement is very different to the culture of fear and terror that developed in Western Europe in the Middle Ages. Everything that comes from God, beginning with the creation of the whole universe, is only from love and nothing else. 
The image of the Last Judgement is that Jesus Christ, our Saviour, is our judge. He speaks of the sheep on His right hand as those people who fed him, gave him to drink and cared for Him in various ways; in other words they showed compassion and love for their neighbour, and therefore to Him. But the goats, on the left-hand side, as He explains, are genuinely surprised that they did not love God. They ought to have been aware of the words of the Evangelist John in his first letter when he writes, ‘He who does not love his brother whom he has he seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen’
Over the last two Sundays we heard about God’s love towards repentant sinners. Today’s reading gives the other side of God’s love. It is still love, but it is tough love which we also need, to make us move from that laziness and passive attitude. Christ wants to teach us that we should not get complacent because He cannot save us without our involvement in our salvation.
We must take that responsibility for our life and not say ‘Doesn’t matter, God is so loving, God will save me anyway’. He cannot save us without our agreement, we must agree to be saved. So, then we must take the responsibility of carrying the cross of our salvation ungrudgingly. Acceptance of Christ’s challenge to love our neighbour is crucial before we can claim that we love God.
St Anthony the Great said, in his elderly years, ‘I no longer fear God, but I love him’. Let us not fantasise that we already love God. We do not. We want to love Him. Lord, I want to love you, but I do not yet. That is the reality. We must learn to love Him by loving our neighbour, putting up with our neighbour, having patience with our neighbour. That is how we learn to love God. That is our cross. That cross will change us from being self-absorbed narcissists to being beloved children of God who truly love God as well. 

​Sunday January 5, 2025
By Fr Peter Sheko
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Today we heard the beginning of St Matthew’s gospel giving the genealogy of Christ (Matthew 1:1-25).  At the first glance it seems like just a list of names, but in reality, it tells a powerful story of God’s love and His plan to save us.  St Matthew starts with these words:  the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.  By mentioning David and Abraham, St Matthew reminds us of God’s promises.  God told Abraham that through his descendants all nations would be blessed (Gen ch12).  God told David that his kingdom would last forever (2Samuel ch7).  These promises come true in our Lord Jesus Christ who brings blessings to everyone and opens the way to God’s eternal kingdom.  
What is interesting in this genealogy is the mention of women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba, although Bathsheba is not mentioned directly by name, but as the wife of Uriah. She was the woman who King David took as his wife after he sent her husband off to die in battle.  These stories show us how God works through unexpected people and situations.  Tamar faced injustice but found a way to preserve her family. The story shows that God can bring justice and hope, even in the toughest situations.  Rahab, a former prostitute, from Canaan, saved her family through her faith.  She hid a couple of Joshua ‘s spies and asked them in return to spare her family.  This reminds us that God accepts everyone who seeks Him, no matter their past. Ruth, a widow, became part of God’s plan through her loyalty and faith.  Her story shows that God’s love extends to all people, even foreigners.  And Bathsheba is connected to David’s sin, as he married her and sent her husband off to battle to be killed. Her life is part of the story of restoration and covenant.  She became the mother of Solomon and part of the lineage of the Messiah. These women remind us that God worked through all kinds of people, no matter their background or past.  No one is beyond His love or grace.  
St Athanasios the Great said, “God became man so that man might become God”.  Jesus Christ, being fully God and fully human came to bring us closer to God.  He did not stay distant but entered our world to save us.  The genealogy of Jesus Christ always reminds us that God’s plan is always at work, even when we fail to see it.  It leads us to the birth of Jesus, Emmanuel, which means God is with us.  Here is the important part:  God’s story does not end here.  It continues through each of us.  In Baptism we become part of his family.  We are called to share His love and light in our daily life. St Athanasios teaches us that we are called to draw closer to God, to share His love, peace and. Holiness.  This is the true purpose and joy of life.  As we prepare for Christmas let us be inspired by this message.  Trust in God’s love, rejoice in His promises and take steps to grow closer to Him every day.  No matter who we are or what our past looks like, God has called each of us to bring His light to the world. May the Lord who came to live among us, fill our hearts with joy. Amen. 

​Tuesday January 7, 2025
by Fr Nicholas Karipoff
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Christmas, the Nativity of Christ! This is the beginning of the greatest thirty-three years of the history of the world!  Emmanuel, God with us, is here. The Bible is all about God’s providence for us before time.  God foresees the hundreds, even the thousands of events in sacred and secular world history all geared towards His coming.  God the Saviour comes in the humility of a baby born in Bethlehem, as we have just heard. (Mathew 2:1 – 12). When we look at the simple stories of His birth in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, we can see that there is connection there with the events in Rome, other places in the world and in Israel.  Many nations and tribes are unified for the first time under Rome.  The Church sees this as an image of the coming unity in the Holy Spirit.  It is reflected in our Christmas service.  When the Roman Emperor, Octavian Augustus, commands that a census is to be conducted of everyone in the Roman Empire, he unknowingly facilitates the fulfilment of Micah’s prophecy that Jesus Christ, the Heavenly Bread, is born in Bethlehem.  Bethlehem means “the house of bread” in Hebrew.  Persian Astronomers, saw a bright new star in the constellation of Pisces. Pisces was a sign of Israel in the ancient world because all those constellations were attributed to different nations.  The Magi knew that they had to come to Jerusalem.  They tell King Herod and his court that the King of Kings is born and ask where to find Him. They are informed by the scribes that Christ must be born in Bethlehem. It seems strange that the visitation by the Magi and their explanation of the star seen in Israel is forgotten thirty years later, as well as the excitement that the shepherds shared to everyone that the angels were singing about the birth of Christ.  All these incredible events were forgotten!  Christ is referred to as Jesus of Nazareth, and Israel was still waiting for the Messiah who was to come from Bethlehem. But He is Jesus of Bethlehem! They somehow forgot, but that was part of God’s plan, too. He wants people to recognise Him with their hearts. 
The events of secular history can be used by God for His purposes.  The world remains ignorant, of course, and continues to behave like Herod, trying often enough to kill the newborn king. We live in times when Christ seems to have been driven out of the world, almost completely, but two thousand years ago He also did not find a place anywhere for Himself to be born.  The King of Kings was born in a cave, used as a barn.  The world did not want Him.  He then had to flee from Herod who wanted to kill Him. 
God has a way of turning any adversity into victory and triumph.  It begins thirty-three years later in the biggest way, with the Cross and the Resurrection just when everything seemed like it was finished.  Christ even said, “It is finished”, but in a good way.  It is completed and the world did not notice.  Not long ago we saw the churches almost completely close when we experienced the lockdowns.  Then people had a chance to stop and think about themselves and their life, maybe for the first time. Many people found Christ and Orthodoxy.  
Christmas is a festive promise that God is truly with us.  Emmanuel – God with us.  In His providence He directs the life of the church and the life of the world and the life of each one of us. Even with the worst challenges that can come our way, let us never be discouraged by anything that happens, either in the world, in the church or in our life, because Christ is with us. 

Sunday January 12 
By Archbishop George Shaefer

And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and seeing this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us. And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the Babe lying in the manger. And when they had seen Him, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this Child. And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds. But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. (Luke 2: 15-20)

Beloved in the Lord, Clergy and Faithful of the Australian and New Zealand Diocese!
As we celebrate the Blessed Nativity of Our Saviour each year, we are always drawn to this miraculous scene when the invisible spiritual world was revealed to men. Hosts of angels appeared to simple shepherds in the fields outside of Bethlehem, glorifying our Creator, singing praises to Him, and proclaiming His incarnation. They announced to the shepherds, and through them to all of mankind, the birth of the Saviour, Christ the Lord, telling them how they would find Him wrapped in swaddling clothes. The shepherds then hastened to see the Lord and worship Him and went away glorifying God and spreading the good news about what they had seen and heard. We likewise are all called not only to come and see the Lord and worship Him, but also to go forth and proclaim the good news of the Saviour’s birth. We should be proclaiming the good news of the Gospel not only in word, but also in deed, by living the Gospel. Just as the star led the Magi to Bethlehem (according to St. John Chrysostom the star was actually an angel), our good works should lead people to the Truth, as our Saviour Himself
instructs us: Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matt 5: 16). We must not be swallowed up by the world lying in darkness but make every effort to be in the world but not of the world, consciously rejecting the mindset of today’s society. Like good and faithful servants, we should increase the talents bestowed on us from the Lord, using them to spread the Gospel. May we not bury our talents in the ground, as we wait for our Lord to appear. May we not be the fulfillment to the words of our Saviour: “when the Son of man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8). I ask all of the faithful to make an effort to extend a helping hand to all those in need, giving alms to the poor, donations to the churches, helping them to bring the Word of God and grace to the world, helping others in whatever way you can, thereby showing love to your fellow man and fulfilling the commandment of God. A new commandment I give unto you. That you love one another; as I have loved you, that you love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” (John 13: 34-35)
I greet you all, brothers and sisters, with the Feast of the Nativity of Christ our Saviour!  Amen.

​Sunday 19 January 2025 The Feast of Theophany
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
Today’s feast of Holy Theophany is connected on many different many levels with the feast of Christmas which we just celebrated not long ago. The early church celebrated the two events on one occasion, it was called the Theophany, meaning the appearance or manifestation of God, celebrating both the birth of Jesus and His proclamation as the Christ by John the Baptist and by the Father and the Holy Spirit. Perhaps the deepest connection of Bethlehem with the Jordan River is at the level of Christ’s humility. St John the Baptist said that he did not know Jesus Christ before he came to the Jordan. He may have thought that the Messiah would appear in glory immediately. Like the apostles, he was part of that culture, which visualised the messiah as a glorious king, who would make himself apparent in a powerful way. St John himself projected an image of great spiritual power and was accepted by the vast majority of Israel as a powerful prophet. Some even wondered if maybe he was the messiah.  There is a tradition in the church that he had such a booming voice that he could be heard a long distance away. Thousands of people came and trembled as they heard him. Yet St John, in all this power, speaks of himself as the lowest servant of the coming messiah. 
 
When St John sees Jesus coming and recognises him as the lamb of God, he tries, as we heard in today’s gospel, to refuse to baptise him because he said, ‘I need to be baptised by you’. John spoke out of a deep sense of humility, but the humility of God is greater than the humility of any human being. Christ tells St John that all righteousness must be fulfilled. This is the beginning of purification and forgiveness and salvation of humanity. This happens through God’s humanity in Christ. We hear from St Paul’s letter to Titus, which preceded the gospel today, that God, ‘Saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit’.  The icon of Jesus Christ in the waters of Jordan is an image of our entry of our life in Christ through water and the spirit and the essential character of this life is meekness and humility as Christ said. We learn from Him. Opposite to this is pride, which is the source of all sin. It makes us aggressive towards one another as we attempt to assert our sinful will on other people. Only humility can make us meek, ready to sacrifice our ego for the other person rather than be aggressive. We sacrifice our egos the sake of Christ’s peace and for the grace of God that brings salvation to all men, as we hear in St Pauls letter to Titus.
 
Today is Theophany, the appearance of Christ and the manifestation of one God in the Trinity. May we always be ready to make the first step towards our neighbour in humility to overcome all temptations, all hurts. To come to that trinitarian unity of love brought to our earth by our Saviour. 

​Sunday 26 January 2025
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
On Sunday after Theophany every year we hear the words of the Lord like the peal of a large bell, ‘Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’. The Kingdom of Heaven is a way of life that is radically different in spirit. To access this life, to enter the Kingdom of Heaven – Christ’s church - we have to repent. St John the Baptist spoke of the need to bring fruits of repentance. Words are not enough. Action is needed to prove our resolve to seek this spirit of Christ. The holy fathers and holy mothers speak of doing the opposite things to the passions within us to limit bodily drives: instead of curiosity guard your eyes; instead of blaming the other person, blame yourself and it goes on and on. Passions are God-given drives, but they have become distorted through the fall and are the weeds which suppress God’s good wheat. 
 
The passions are expressions of our false self, our selfish ego. In the words of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘The other (person) is hell’ and that is how our selfish ego sees things. But for Christ, it is the opposite. Our salvation is in our neighbour. St Paul in his letter to the Ephesians, chapter 4, which we heard before the Gospel, speaks of unity of spirit and the bond of peace. The life of the ego as expressed in the passions is fragmentation and alienation. That is the essence of the effect of the fall. There is a kind of schizophrenia inside of us and between us. There can be superficial unity that can only be constructed by force and through fear. It is superficial. The moment that the fear disappears it all falls apart.  Real unity can be achieved through humility, gentleness and patience in putting up with one another in love. 
 
This is an impossible task without the strength that is given in Christ’s kingdom of heaven, the Church, the life in Christ. So let us hear that bell today. Repent, change your heart by redirecting your heart to things that are very different from what people normally love to love.  We soon begin our annual course in our spiritual life, Great Lent, and we begin learning that this change of the spirit in our real life happens in secret. Nobody can see it. We do not condemn people who live the life of the world.  We continue showing them our love. We need to learn how to blame and condemn only ourselves. The good thief judged himself and was forgiven by the merciful judge. The fathers teach if you judge yourself God will not judge you. This is the teaching of the Gospel. This is the teaching of the holy fathers.

​Sunday December 1 
Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
We just heard the Lord’s parable (Luke 12:16-21) about the rich man who rejoiced that he had gathered an abundant harvest.  The parable illustrates the words of the Lord, , ‘So is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God’.  The Epistle today was from St Paul’s letter to Ephesians where he writes about a different kind of richness: God who is rich in mercy … and the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-10). St Paul talks about a new mode of life, which opened with the coming of Christ. 
 
The rich man represents that meaningless life of people who put all their trust in material wealth which can disappear any minute. How? When physical life stops, wealth comes to an end.  What is the point of that wealth? The apostle talks about that lifestyle as death. We were dead in trespasses and God made us alive together with Christ, as He says in Ephesians. This is the powerful revelation which is echoed in many places of the New Testament. Through faith in Christ and life according to this faith we are connected to the death and resurrection of Christ.  Why else would we feel such joy at Easter? It is not just because of some remembrance of an event that happened 2000 years ago and not because we are so happy to be breaking the fast!  We are happy because we are connected to Christ’s resurrection. We feel it. The more work we do during Lent to prepare for this event, the more we will feel that connectiveness to Christ’s resurrection. 
 
The resurrection is a fact. It was witnessed by hundreds of people, and thus it became an empirical fact. These witnesses were willing to die for their faith in Christ. It just proves how serious and real all of this was. The saints tell us that Great Lent is our yearly tithe to God. That is roughly about 10% of the year, but our whole life should really be an ongoing journey with Christ, not just during Lent . It is useless to make an effort during Lent and then during the rest of the time to behave like the rich man in the parable. In this journey with Christ, we learn to train our heart to become indifferent to material and external riches of this world. We need these things because we live in the body, but the difference is between the person who puts all his love and trust in those things and the person who merely uses them and is not enslaved by them, like this rich man was. In accepting a different attitude to the world, to people around us, and to our ourselves, we begin to discover different riches. We discover the riches that St Paul describes; the riches of God’s mercy and great love towards us. 
 
I mentioned Great Lent, but now we have just begun the Advent in preparation for the Nativity of Christ.  It is a challenging time in the Southern Hemisphere, with all the end-of-year celebrations and BBQs! Let us do what we can to limit these worldly passions within us, at least temporarily, because we are in Advent. This way we can grow richer in Christ, in God.

Sunday December 8
Explanation of the Liturgy
 
The recent English Liturgy was a teaching Liturgy where the altar table was brought out to the centre of the church so that parishioners could see what happens in the altar and learn more about each aspect of the Liturgy. The following is a short explanation of the parts of the service by Fr Nicholas Karipoff. 
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
Today the church celebrates the last day of the Feast of the Presentation of the Theotokos in the Temple. As I mentioned on the day of the feast last Wednesday, the temple is about sacrifice and learning. The Liturgy also has these two aspects – education first, and then sacrifice.  We’re going to talk about this today.  It will have to be superficial otherwise I will be speaking for far too long! 
 
As you know, the Liturgy has three parts. The first is the proskomidi or preparation of the elements, of the bread and the wine, and importantly it is the time of commemoration when the clergy take out particles from the prosphora bread for the living and the dead. Then comes the Liturgy of the Catechumens.  In the ancient church catechumens were allowed to stay only for the first part of the Eucharistic liturgy and then they were told to leave.  We still hear the words in our service today: “Catechumens depart…”.  They had to leave because they were not baptised and could not receive Holy Communion.  The final and main of the Liturgy, the Liturgy of the faithful, begins from the time the choir starts singing the Cherubic Hymn. 
 
The educational part of the Liturgy is the Liturgy of the Catechumens.  Initially there is an exclamation “Blessed is the Kingdom...” followed by the Litany of Peace. Then the choir sings antiphons, texts from scripture or the psalms set to music, followed by more litanies. After this is the small entry when the clergy process from the altar with the Gospel. This will look a bit different today because we have moved the altar into the centre of the church.  The Liturgy is basically unchangeable except for a few parts in the liturgy of the catechumens and these changeable parts happen next. The choir sings the troparia, short hymns to the patronal feast or saint, then saint or feast of the day. Then after the choir sings the Thrice Holy – Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal have mercy on us – there is the prokeimenon of the day - a short refrain sung to introduce the scripture reading - and the reading of the Epistle, followed by the reading of the Gospel.  The readings are set out for the whole year. Traditionally the homily follows the reading of the Gospel.  The Liturgy of the Catechumens ends with the litany of the catechumens and some other small petitions.  The educational part of the liturgy has finished, and the Liturgy of the Faithful begins. 
 
The Liturgy of the Faithful is the sacrificial part, no longer the learning part. The Cherubic Hymn starts this section.  This hymn brings the attention of the faithful to the necessity of absolute focus during this part of the service.  We now put aside all earthly cares. The hymn is broken up into two parts by the Great Entry.  At the Great Entry we transfer the Holy Gifts which have been prepared, from the table of preparation to the altar.  After some more litanies there is the “kiss of peace”.  Now this is done just by the clergy but in the early church all people in church would exchange this kiss.  The creed follows - I believe in one God… - and after that we begin the Eucharistic Canon. This is a long prayer, parts of which are sung by the choir, while the leading bishop or priest continually reads it quietly.  In the early church every part of the prayer was heard aloud by the congregation.  The Eucharistic prayer has four parts based on the themes of the Passover prayers. What is the connection?  Our eucharist is the entry into the one and only Mystical Supper, which is outside of time. The Mystical Supper itself followed the Passover celebration which the Lord Jesus Christ celebrated with His disciples.  This is why the church preserves those themes.  Then we have communion of the clergy and preparation of communion for the faithful. After Holy Communion, the Holy Gifts are transferred back to the table of preparation.  This is a symbolic action to show the Ascension of the Lord.  The whole Liturgy is a celebration of Christ’s life, beginning with the proskomidi.  We remember Christ’s birth and His death. Time is limited to speak now about all the symbolism and theology, but we will cover it in the future. 

​December 19, 2024 St Nicholas Day
 by Fr Nicholas Karipoff

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
We hear in the psalms,  Wonderful is God in His saints, the God of Israel. Israel, of course, refers to the people of God in the Old Testament and the New Testament. The church is the new Israel.  Saints really are  wonderful and God is wonderful in them because He shows His infinite truth and beauty and love and every other virtue possible that we can think of , through the saints. Today we celebrate St Nicholas who is one of the most popular saints in the Orthodox world, and also in Southern Italy.  The expression Santa Claus comes from Germany showing he had been popular in the West as well as the East. In our diocese of about forty  parishes, four are dedicated to Nicholas.
 
We hear from the troparian of the saint that he is a rule of faith and an image of meekness.  Meekness is one of the Christ-like characteristics. St Nicholas is also known for his great compassion to the needy; he saved a destitute family by throwing small bags of money into their windows at night, which became the inspiration for Santa Claus.
 
There are countless miracles of St Nicholas.  He is a true friend of humanity.  There was a well-known miracle in the city of Xarbin, China,  where I was born.  As St Nicholas is the patron saint of travellers there was a large icon of the saint at the railway station, built in 1888 by the Russian imperial government.  Travellers would put up candles and pray before they boarded the train.  He was well known not just to the Russian population there, but also to the Chinese. There was a case when a Chinese man was drowning in the river there and he remembered about St Nicholas who he had heard about, although he did not even know his name.  So he called out and said, "The old man at the station, help me!" As he was drowning, he saw an elderly man running on top of the water who grabbed him by the hand.  Then the man lost consciousness and came to on a sand bank.  This man became Orthodox afterwards.  The saints are God’s missionaries as well. In the Far East St Nicholas is very prominent.  He speaks a lot to the eastern Asians.  The main Japanese Orthodox church in Tokyo is dedicated to St Nicholas. 
 
St Nicholas is remembered every week.  Every Thursday he is commemorated along with the apostles. He represents the hierarchs who are the apostles of every generation. The other days are dedicated:  Sunday to the Resurrection, Monday to the angels, Tuesday to St John the Baptist, Wednesday  and Friday to the Cross and to the Mother of God.  And Saturday is the day of All Saints and the departed. 
 
It is wonderful to be here in church today, to celebrate such a great saint!

​Sunday 22 December
Fr Nicholas Karipoff
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
In today’s gospel reading about the ten healed lepers (Luke 17:11- 19), the Lord responded to them crying out to Him by telling them to go and show themselves to the priests. The miracle of healing did not happen immediately, but they knew what Christ’s words meant. According to the law they had to go to the priest to be certified to show they had no leprosy. In their excitement and expectation of the healing (that happened along the way), they were all absorbed in their own selfish thoughts, except for only one man, a Samaritan, came back to thank the Lord.
In the passage from the St Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, chapter 5, which preceded the gospel reading, we hear a snippet of what sounds like an ancient Christ hymn of the Apostolic period: ‘Awake you who sleep, arise from the dead and Christ will give you light’. These words were likely part of the baptismal service, and they speak of several things.  First, repentance, awakening from a life of sin which means a life without God. Secondly, rising from the dead to a participation with Christ in the life of resurrection and, as I’ve said countless times, resurrection begins now, not later. Thirdly, illumination to see and understand things very differently to the way the world sees them. Illumination is obtaining the mind of Christ
In the story of the ten healed lepers, only one of them wakes up from his sleep of self-centred life. The others do not. One might ask, why is it so important to thank God, does He need it? Of course not, He does not need it. He does not need anything at all. Nothing. He is completely self-sufficient. We need it. We need it to have a relationship with God otherwise we have nothing to give Him. 
The healed leper, the Samaritan, feels with all his being that he needs to come back and to thank God. His way back is repentance, just like in the parable of the prodigal son. The prodigal son comes to his senses and journeys back to the father.
Further in St Pauls passage today he tells us, paraphrased, to not waste our lives. We have entered this life in Christ in repentance, and as they say in America, ‘Walk the walk, don’t just talk the talk’! St Paul talks about a characteristic expression of pagan life, being drunk with wine. The Christian is called to be filled with the spirit, not wine, and in verses following today’s reading Paul explains this happens in psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. The repentant and grateful heart of the healed leper sings this song of praise to the Lord. This is what the angels do, they sing all the time. This is what the life in Christ is about is - to sing in your heart to the Lord, rising joyously from the dead, from the meaningless pagan existence. Seeing the hand of God in even the smallest things of our life is far better than constantly stressing out about things we cannot control or change, and then getting depressed and seeking solace in going to the fridge in eating and drinking, trying to drown our sorrows that way.

Sunday, December 29
Father Nicholas Karipoff
​
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
Today the Church celebrates the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers, the second last Sunday before the feast of Christmas. The forefathers were the Old Testament righteous, people who responded to the call of Christ, to participate in His supper. This supper opens fully in the New Testament, and it is the life in Christ which focuses on the mystical supper that we participate in, like today.
We hear in today’s parable (Luke 14:16 – 24) that many of the people who were invited declined the invitation citing seemingly valid reasons for why they were unable to attend. All these excuses reflect their worldly and materialistic focus - new land, oxen and marriage in its psycho physical level. 
The passage from St Paul’s letter to the Colossians chapter 3, which we heard before the gospel, talks about the need to put off the old man with his deeds of anger, wroth, malice, blasphemy and filthy language. This is the life that comes through in the old man, which St Paul talks about. He explains that these symptoms of sinful life come from the passions, that are characteristic of pagan behaviour, and he lists two especially; sexual immorality and materialistic greed which he calls idolatry. The old man and his deeds cannot be overcome simply by trying to keep some set of moral rules. From our baptism, or at least from a mature adult acceptance, we have to commit to dying to sin and rising with Christ. The Lord himself gives us Christ’s heavenly bread. This is the food for the new man in Christ, not the old man that we were just talking about.
I was asked recently, by a Western Christian, about how Orthodoxy sees Holy Communion. This is certainly something we need to understand properly in a theological sense, because correct theology translates into correct and practical spiritual life. As St Gregory the Theologian writes, “We are sanctified by the humanity of God”. We fight our sinful man by fighting our desires, and we show that we are serious that we want to rise with Christ. His life then becomes our life and Christ lives within us. The Lord calls us continually to participate in His supper and His life. Every day we are faced with these choices. We choose spiritual life or psycho physical life, symbolised by the excuses given in today’s parable.  These choices happen in small things. The Lord says elsewhere, “Be faithful in small things”, What are these small things? Our thoughts. These small things add up to dictate how our life is lived. 
Let us be attentive to our thoughts, to what passes through our consciousness, because very often we do not know what has gone through our consciousness and only realise later. But if we remain attentive, we will notice the thoughts and feelings and we will be able to choose how we respond. Then we can begin building this life with Christ which He terms as his supper, just as we heard in today’s reading. ​

Sunday November 3
Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
In today’s parable we hear of the rich man and Lazarus which teaches us that material wealth and strength are often a hindrance to spiritual life. If I have limitless opportunities to express my proud and sinful will, then I will not leave much space inside my heart and my life for God. Lazarus, the sufferer, on the contrary shows an image of patience, humility, and growth in love for God that leads him to the bosom of Abraham.
 
Before the gospel today we heard from St Pauls’ second letter to the Corinthians. There he talks about the most amazing revelations that he had had including being transported to the third heaven; whether it was in the body or whether it was an out of body experience, he wasn’t sure. Yet God guarded the spiritual sobriety of His chosen man, His apostle. We have so many stories in the lives of the saints how not a few of them were tempted terribly. It would have been so easy for them to be filled with a false perception of themselves. When we receive God’s gifts, and blessings it is easy to forget where they had come from and instead, we begin to contribute these achievements, facilitated by God’s grace, to ourselves.
 
Moreover, we can forget that we Christians are followers of Christ, and that His method is different to the methods of the world of fallen man. He works through the cross. He is not the God of power, as I have said on countless occasions, not the God of might who will do anything to achieve His ends. He does not work in this way.  The great Paul, as we heard in today’s reading, had to endure a steep learning curve. He had to understand that God does not want to overwhelm or subdue anyone by force. He does it through love, through the cross. His cross and our cross. St Paul was given a cross of which he speaks as a ‘thorn in the flesh’, a messenger of Satan. There are different opinions of what this ‘thorn in the flesh’ was. Some people think it could have been some chronic illness that hindered his work. Others think that he might be referring in a hidden way (so as not to offend people), that he was hindered by people in the church and people outside of the church who were preventing him from projecting the energies of God to spread the word of God triumphantly. It took Paul a lot of blood, sweat and tears, it did not come easy. Paul says that he prayed three times to be relieved of this ‘thorn in the flesh’ and then God told him, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, my strength is made perfect in weakness’.
 
We need to understand these words, they are so important. We need to understand that Christian spirit is not about force. Brothers and Sisters, let us be patient with God and with each other, even though it is so hard. Permanent results can only be achieved if we humble ourselves and give space to God. We can have short term results through the fist, through force but it is not permanent. Let us enable God to enable us. We often want quick results that are supposed to come from these coercive methods, we should not forget the principle expressed in a wonderful book which used to be given as an “ABC to spiritual life” to every novice – “Abba Dorotheus of Gaza”. He expresses a rule, that in every endeavour, to achieve the intended result, is worth 1/8ths of the whole, but to retain peace is (and that means love) the remaining 7/8ths.  We cannot just ignore that; it is a fact of spiritual life. We often throw out the 7/8ths and we want that 1/8th at any cost that the end will justify the means.  No, it does not, not in Christian life. The end does not justify the means. The means are love and the cross. 

​November 10
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
The level of possession that we see in the Gospel story about the Gadarene demoniac is extreme. This is an illustration of the destructive power of the unseen spirits - the fallen angels. It is an important warning for us. This type of possession, (which did not only happen in the past), shows the real face of the demon. However, the devil does not like showing his real face. His favourite trick is to hide and to promote the idea that he does not exist at all. As a corollary to this, who else doesn’t exist? God of course doesn’t exist! How convenient for those people who want to be atheists. 
For the people who cannot live without the faith, however, he promotes another idea. He appears as “an angel of light” according to St Paul in second Corinthians. He attempts to delude and to trick those people who think they are serving God but in fact  are full of themselves. 
The letter to the Galatians (a passage of which we heard before the Gospel), was written as St Paul’s defence for his validity as an apostle of Christ and the validity of those things he had taught the people before. In his absence a group of Christian zealots of the Old Testament law came and began to undermine St Paul’s authority and his teaching. In addition to the apologetic side to this letter (epistle), St Paul adds instructions about Christian life. A truly magnificent passage from Galatians can be found after the passage that we heard before the Gospel and it is read for the ascetics. We celebrate a great ascetic today, a missionary - St Job of Pochaev. 
Here is this passage: ‘… fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering (i.e., patience), kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live in the Spirit let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. Brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you be tempted also. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ’. (Gal.5:22-6:2)
What beautiful words, how much instruction is there for our life! Any person who seriously takes heed of these instructions will not be overwhelmed by the fake ‘angels of light’. These ‘angels’ seek to enslave us individually and collectively by brining chaos into our family life, into our church life and into our community (secular) life. Take especially the last instruction. If we see that someone is misbehaving, we are taught to correct such a person in the spirit of gentleness. We should watch ourselves, as the apostle says. Any one of us can be tempted, there is no guarantee that we will not be tempted. Temptations affect everyone, and if we yield to temptation, we will bring demonic chaos and tensions into our relationships with other people.
Let us indeed make a start by fighting our conceited vainglorious thoughts. Oh, if we could only see how full of ourselves we are! Then we would be more successful in not provoking one another and envying one another as the Apostle writes. Then we would understand that the peace of Christ that comes from that is heaven, while tension and drama is the waiting room of hell. 

​Sunday November 17                                                  
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
Today’s Sunday gospel (Luke 8:41-56) has two miracles. Christ proceeds through a slow-moving crowd, a throng of people pressing him from all sides, and he is heading towards the house of Jairus, the chief of the synagogue, where Jairus’ daughter is on the verge of death. The progress towards the home of Jairus is delayed by an incident with the woman who had the issue of blood for twelve years. Interestingly, the dying girl was twelve years old as well. Twelve is a significant age; remember the story about Christ teaching in the temple at the age of twelve? Twelve is the age when Jewish boys and girls become a member of the law - bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah. The woman and the girl became daughters of the law of the Spirit on that day.
 
In the old ancient church, an Old Testament passage was first read, followed by the gospel and then the epistle. The epistle reading today, Galatians 2:16-20, complements the gospel story.  St Paul writes I have been crucified with Christ it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. The twelve-year-old girl and her parents, went through a crucifixion with Christ, in a manner of speaking.  She was sick and physically died. The parents went through a kind of death themselves, losing their young child. When she was raised, we can only assume that she and her parents lived on with Christ, in Christ.  The woman who was healed shows boldness of faith that transcends the legalism of the pharisees and rabbis. She is ritually unclean and yet she dares to touch Jesus, the Christ, the son of God. The miracle could have happened silently, but the Lord wants people to know what has happened, He asks, ‘Who touched me?’, and He does not give up until she admits it was her.  She is trembling because she is ritually polluted, in the eyes of the law.  Her bold faith is an example of St Paul’s words in the Galatians passage: We are not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ. 
 
 
Brother and sisters, if our righteousness does not excel the level of righteousness of the pharisees and it stays at that level, we are in trouble. As Christ says at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew chapter 5, the pharisaic spirit constantly creates idols out of the things of God. For them the sabbath and the law became idols. This is awful! Christ performed so many miracles on the sabbath intentionally to teach against superficial religion which is so full of idols. Many things in the church can be turned into an idol - the music and drama of our service, the beauty of our temples and the rules of the church. We can even turn private prayers and fasting into idols and yet all these things that I just mentioned are beautiful and necessary to help us reach the greater beauty and truth of Christ’s salvation.
 
Today we were given two very important notes from the melody of heaven. Firstly, the image of boldness of faith that is not afraid of ridicule and censure by people, as given in example by the woman with an issue of blood. And secondly, the image of dying and rising with Christ like the young girl, of dying to sin and coming alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

​Sunday November 24
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
The lawyer in today’s gospel story (Luke 10:25-37) asks a very important question: Teacher, what must I do to have eternal life? In response, The Lord Jesus Christ asks him: What does the law say?  This pharisee had heard Christ’s teaching before.  He knew the importance in Christ’s teaching of love for God and for our neighbour and answers Christ correctly.  But the lawyer then asks:  who is my neighbour? That is a great question, Brothers and Sisters! What the lawyer is really asking is how is it possible to love someone dispassionately, possessively and without expecting anything in return?  The Lord answers him with the moving parable of the Good Samaritan.  The parable answers this question in two ways.  Firstly, by answering “no”, because the law and justice cannot enable us to have compassionate love.  The priest and the Levite, who represent the law, pass by on the other side from the injured and dying man because the law is helpless and can do nothing.  The second answer is “yes”, the Good Samaritan, who is Christ Himself, gives an example to us of what we should do. But we can only do it when we ourselves are healed.  The Good Samaritan takes the wounded man to the inn, which represents the church.  The church is a hospital for all of us.  The wounded man represents all of humanity beaten up by the demonic powers when humanity departs from God in sin.  After the Lord finished the parable, he told the lawyer to go and do likewise, do what the good Samaritan did. 
 
Today’s epistle in Galatians, chapter 6, fortifies the message of the gospel.  St Paul speaks of the impotence of those who think that externals of the law can save us. They cannot. St Paul writes:  But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of the Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.  What does that mean? It means that when we truly accept the cross, as a gradual dying to this sinful person within us, we will rise with Christ to a life when it does become possible to love people dispassionately, unpossessively and in a non-mercantile way, expecting nothing in return. The life in Christ is a challenge, Brothers and Sisters! It is a challenge to defeat the demons of animosity and hatred that beat all of us up through other people, just as we beat up other people when we are energised by these destructive passions.  We hear St Paul say today in Galatians:  I bear in my body the marks of Lord Jesus.  I remind you that St Paul was stoned and left for dead, and five times he received 39 lashes.  As I have previously mentioned, in filming The Passion of the Christ, Jim Caviezel accidentally received just one lash, and he lost consciousness.  For St Paul to receive 39 lashes five times is beyond belief! St Paul saw so much animosity and hatred towards himself, but he won with love, with Christ’s love.  He was healed body and soul by Christ to carry on with his amazing work. Should we not also look towards the saints to learn to have some patience with God and with our neighbour, with each other? 

​October 6, 2024
Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
We human beings are slow in learning God’s language. His language is that of silence, stillness, humility and love. He knows that He is the poet of heaven and earth, the Creator. His power of the word is great, and He knows our language like no human being can know human language. And so, in today’s gospel (Luke 5:1-11) we see how He does it with the miraculous catch of fish, speaking this language to the fishermen. 
Peter, a mature man, an experienced fisherman, understood that it was absolutely impossible for the nets to be filled. When that miracle happens, in awe and astonishment he falls down on his knees and he says, ‘Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord”.
 
We see how quickly the seed of God’s word brings down an abundant harvest in the good soil. Peter’s reaction is one of contrition. He is filled with awe by the realisation of whose presence he was in. How often are people’s reactions and expectations to the things of God so inadequate. We often feel this sense of entitlement, so common in today’s culture, when people have been pampered by the good life. ‘I deserve it, I am entitled’. When we pray, we expect an immediate response to our prayer, immediate results, either some profound spiritual experience when we are praying or fulfillment of our wishes. This is expected from people who pray in a hurried and in a distracted way, usually often forgetting about the existence of God during the day completely, ‘But now God, can’t you see, that I’m seriously addressing you, I am talking to you, surely you should be happy that I’m doing this and I want you to immediately give me what I’m asking for’. This is the attitude. We cannot behave with God like a dissatisfied customer in a department store. There the customer is always right but here in spiritual life, the customer is always wrong!
 
Peter shows the proper attitude, unworthiness. ‘Get away from me Lord, I am a sinful man’. We live in a democratic culture, it is good when this culture focuses on respecting our fellow beings, but even then, liberal democracy is based on the eighteenth-century concept of enlightened selfishness and egotism. Much has been said has about the revolutionary slogans of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. This slogan is inspired by Christian values. Sadly, when the Christian content is leached from these principles expressed in these slogans, they become ghastly newspeak of Orwell’s 1984. Fraternity becomes familiarity which is another word for what the holy fathers called ‘audacity’. The reaction of a modern-day Peter in this situation, in the context of this miracle, would have been something like this “Thanks Jesus, you are a real pal”!
 
The gospel constantly calls us to attune ourselves to the melody of heaven. God himself in Christ is the absolute image of humility. However, His humility never comes as familiarity. His humility is majestic, and Christ sets the example.  He teaches us how to become a true example of God’s beauty, how to become truly noble in the context of heavenly and earthly things.

October 13, 2024
Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
The Lord’s Sermon on the Mount is His spiritual interpretation of the law, and in today’s passage from the sermon (Luke 6:31-36) we see that Christ points to a life that is only possible in grace. It is supernatural, it is beyond the possibilities of law. Nobody can love enemies simply by saying ‘The law says we have to love our enemies’. It is not going to work like that. We can only do it, as St Seraphim says, ‘From Christ, not from ourselves’.
The key to the passage that we just heard is in the last couple of sentences which explain that only if we have an intention and the commitment to attempt what Christ expects from us will we become Children of God. Children of God are born from above, they are born from water and the spirit as we hear from the Lord himself. They desire to enter the life in Christ, which means to follow the Lord and do what He does. It is important to know His crowning words, which explains what His teaching. These words are what He said from the cross: ‘Father forgive them’.  He prayed for forgiveness of His enemies, or rather those who thought He was their enemy, because He loved His enemies. 
 
At the same time, we can see that throughout the gospel Christ speaks out forcefully against evil, hypocrisy and sin. He does not say: ‘It will be alright’! This dichotomy is expressed beautifully by the holy fathers who transmit the essence of Christ’s teaching to us with their maxim to ‘hate the sin but love the sinner’. Now this is a great challenge for us. When someone hits us on the cheek, we typically react with anger, animosity, aggression, if not outright hatred against the culprit. We find it hard to delineate and to make the distinction between the sin and the sinner, (the person who we are told to love) and this is something that real Christians have always done with real such ease and even joy. They rejoiced in this.  But this is us, this is how we speak within ourselves ‘Oh so you don’t like me, huh, well then I don’t like you either!’ and ‘if I don’t like you, you are bad’!
 
Are we going to ever take notice of what the Lord says? Today he plainly calls us to be the Children of God, and we hear that God is kind to the unthankful and evil. We have got to be serious about that. The pagan and the godless word lives in a constant never-ending story of limitless vengeance; even the law of Moses has said ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’, although this law calls for a limitation of vengeance, for more balance. Many people think that if they limit their vengeance, they are, at least to some extent, acting in a Christian way. Wrong! That is the Old Testament law. Moreover, is it easy to quantify what is just when obviously I am much more important than the other person! How do I quantify the limit of my vengeance if he has slapped me on the face? I feel offended.
 
It is so sad to see when Christians do not make any attempt to take Christ’s words seriously. It is even more sad when we seem to agree with His words wholeheartedly, but we apply it only to the other people, ‘it doesn’t apply to me, it’s the other person’, failing to see that each one of us holds the key to forgiveness, peace and love. 

​

​October 14, 2024          
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
Today’s feast of Holy Protection of the Mother of God is based on an inspirational story. St Andrew, a fool for Christ (he is represented in the lower right-hand corner of the icon), had a vision with his disciple Epiphanius, on this day in October 911AD during an all-night vigil in the church of the Mother of God at Laharna in Constantinople. The city was in the middle of being besieged at 4am when they saw the Mother of God coming over the top of the congregation in the tall church with a large retinue of apostles and many other saints following her. She stopped over the sanctuary, she knelt, and she prayed with great intensity and then, facing the congregation, she took the large veil off her head, and she held it over her outstretched hands, covering and protecting all the people.  The congregation, though, did not see this happening.  Only St Andrew and his disciple Epiphanius saw it. 
 
This is such a powerful image between the connection of the church in heaven and the struggling church here on earth. The heavenly church is symbolised by the Queen of Heaven and she and the whole heavenly brotherhood and sisterhood of Christ are always ready to come to our aid. The prayer of the packed church was pleasing to God and for that reason God gave this vision to St Andrew and Epiphanius.  It is an edifying story for us to learn that we also must be diligent in our prayer. We Christians in the new world, in the affluent West, have had it too good for too long, as I have said quite a few times in the past. This environment is not conducive to prayer, and this is how we have been robbed,  Brothers and Sisters. We have the idea: ‘Why should I pray and how can I pray when everything is so good…. life is a constant ball’! We are selling our spiritual birth right for a pottage of lentils just the same way as Esau, the older twin brother of Jacob, sold his birthright for a pottage of lentils. Esau had no care at all for his birthright.
 
There is a Russian saying, ‘Until the thunder claps the peasant won’t cross himself’!  In these last three decades the global thunderstorm has been intensifying with louder and louder thunderclaps and they are getting closer and closer to us. This should be helping us to think about prayer. Sometimes I hear despondent voices, even from church people, saying, ‘Oh what is the use, nothing changes anyway’. It is awful to think like that. It is not true because we have so many historical examples of God’s protection and mercy through the prayers of the Queen of Heaven, together with the angels and the saints. This can be found not only in the bible and in the Christian chronicles of the past, such as the story of today’s feast, but also in the lives of individuals and communities. 
I suggest you read our “Pokrov Chronical” that has just been published a couple of weeks ago and you will see and feel that the hand of God has been leading our parish over the last 75 years.  It has really happened, Brothers and Sisters, and is not a figment of our imagination!  
 
St Andrew the fool for Christ and Epiphanius saw the Mother of God take her large veil off her head and in the story we hear that it was like purple, and flashing and flickering like lightning flashes. Let this picture of intense energy, of the prayer of our Heavenly Mother, be an inspiration to us, at least when the thunder claps let our prayer come up from the earth, like lightening connecting heaven and earth. That is what prayer should be like.

​October 20
By Archbishop Gabriel of Canada
 
I greet everyone today with the Lord’s day, and the Feast of the Protection of the Mother of God, and with the 75th anniversary of this parish in Melbourne, dedicated to the Protection of the Mother of God.  Yesterday I became acquainted with the book of the parish’s history; it is a wonderful, beautiful book and gives a very good and thorough examination of the parish.  We know from the parish’s history that Russians and Slavs came to this country well before the Second World War.  Russians, Ukrainians and Byelorussians were coming to the Syrian church in Melbourne in the 1930s and 1940s until it became quite evident that the Slavs needed a church of their own.  They began, from 1949, to lease different buildings from the Anglicans.  But they understood that this was only temporary, and a church would need to be purchased or built where they could have their own services and not have to pack up each week.  In those days they would have to erect a make-shift iconostasis for each service and then take it down at the end. The church in Collingwood was bought in 1954 and services were conducted there for many years.  Finally, this beautiful church came into existence around 20 years ago.  It is beautiful inside and out and can safely be called a landmark of this city, and also of the whole Russian diaspora here.
 
All those forefathers who came to Australia understood the importance and need of having one’s own church to provide for future generations. This is indeed the case in many of our cities.  Just a month ago I was in the city of Washington DC, at the parish of St John the Baptist which was also founded in 1949 by our hierarch St John Maximovitch. We have a convent in New York which has the largest Russian Orthodox cemetery in the whole US which also is celebrating its 75th anniversary.  Next week, God willing, I will be back in Toronto where we have the largest parish in Canada and possibly in all the whole of the church abroad. Every Sunday there are 300 to 400 parishioners that come to church.  It should be noted that most of these parishioners are newcomers from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.  Not many of the old-timers are left.  The new emigres are now filling our churches.  That church in Toronto will also be celebrating its 75th anniversary. Throughout all the diaspora we can see the need for providing for new generations. 
 
We are blessed to see that this church has so many children.  We know if there are children then there is a future for the church.  
​May God bless you on this wonderful day. 

​October 27
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
Today’s parable of the Sower has connection with the story of the fall. Adam and Eve were expelled from paradise because they did not repent. God addressed them individually and spoke to them about the life that they would lead outside of paradise.
To Adam who represents the whole of humanity, the Lord God said, ‘In the sweat of your brow shall you eat your bread’. God spoke about the weeds that would compete with the good seed and the hard work needed to control them. The ascetics point out that this Genesis story speaks about the need to struggle internally with the passions that are represented by the weeds. 
 
The parable of the Sower is a more detailed look at the necessary work that each one of us must do. We have inherited not just a generalised sinfulness from our forefathers, but also certain specific genetic predispositions, our upbringing and the models that our parents have given us. In other words, we are talking about nature and nurture. The parable seems to imply static conditions describing various people as some sort of predestination that we hear from the Protestant world, where some people are like this, others are like that. But this is not the case. No, the entire Bible and especially the New Testament speak of the great gift of free will which presupposes responsibility to work, just like God told Adam. 
 
Each of the described conditions of the soil – and soil is a reference to our heart - except for the good soil, speak of the need to work. The good soil comes very rarely from the beginning, from our early years. It must be made into good soil, into receptive soil. The compacted ground of the roadway cannot enable the seed to hide and to germinate, it is destroyed by the birds which represent demons. How do they take away the seed? They turn our attention away from God.  How does this happen in modern life? How about the traffic of these foreign ideas and images that we are being bombarded with? All sorts of electronic media, there is too much watching, too much listening, too much responding to all sorts of stimuli and messages, superficial ones, rubbish. It turns our hearts into that compacted roadway, it cannot receive the seed because the seed of God’s word is gentle, and it is annihilated by these birds.
 
The rocky soil is the next stage. That is more treacherous than the roadway because it seems like the seed has begun to grow and then it withers away because there is hardness of rock underneath. The layer of soil is shallow, it stops the seed from growing further. The rocky soil is the person who understands that some effort must be made, to turn that compacted roadway into something more receptive, but alas their effort is not enough. This is the person who easily gets turned off, who stops when it seems to him that it is too hard, and puts it in the ‘too hard’ basket. 
As the holy fathers interpret this story, the weeds are the passions, our desires that compete with the divine messages, by entering our consciousness and into our conscience. Our conscience is overwhelmed by these goliaths; the weeds are strong and big. 
 
So where do we begin? How do we begin to work towards making the soil of the heart receptive to God’s seeding? The beginning is limitation of these external stimuli, visual, verbal, and mental. These are the things that are making our heart unreceptive and turning it into a roadway. Without these external stimuli, we can create a path for God’s word. Then the work continues with the fight against our own sinful thoughts, desires, words and actions. That is the path of liberation, the path of salvation through the Sower,  our Lord Jesus Christ.

September 1
Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Last Sunday we heard about the storm at sea and what we need to learn about coping with storms whether they are private or public. Today the gospel (Matt. 17:14-23) reminds us about the energy of chaos that provokes and escalates the destructive power of these storms. We heard about the story of the Lord walking down Mt Tabor with three of his disciples, Peter, James and John, who were there with Him during the Transfiguration. They witnessed this chaotic situation at the foot of the mountain and saw Christ calm a very different kind of storm than the one at sea. 
 
Nine of the twelve disciples were at the foot of the mountain and were helpless in trying to cope with the storm and so we hear how the Lord cries out, ‘Oh faithless and perverse generation’. These words apply to everyone at the scene – the disciples, the pharisees (who were taunting them), the father of the sick boy who wants to believe and yet is overcome with unbelief and finally the crowd of people who were watching this whole scene and were being tempted as well. 
 
Only the Maker of heaven and earth can overcome chaos. He begins in this case by humbling everyone, when He says, ’O faithless and perverse generation, how long am I going to put up with you’. He humbles everyone, including his disciples, and the poor father and then he expels the chaos from the boy. The storm is calmed.
 
The Bible in the Old Testament and especially in the New Testament is dead serious about the reality of chaotic and destructive power of demons and yet many people probably shrug it off because they do not have any direct knowledge of this, and it seems fantastic. Secular culture, over the last couple of hundred years, has made demons at best comical and at worst, from our point of view, romantic. We observe tensions, provocations and fights between people, and we forget and disregard what the New Testament teaches. As St Pauls’ Letter to the Ephesians, (chap 6:12) states– ‘We do not wrestle (fight) against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” He is talking about the ranks of demons.
 
When the great twentieth century Saint, Archbishop John of St Francisco, was cleared of all charges against him in the civil court he was asked, ‘Vladika, who is responsible for all of this trouble?’, he looked at that person very seriously and said ‘The devil is’. 
While we understand Christianity as a morality, as a religion, we are unable to see and understand the way the chaotic power of the fallen spirits can energise our passions. We do not see it; we think that it is people doing it. We think that it is our neighbour that is causing us grief and we respond in kind because we are provoked. 
Meanwhile the demons are laughing at all of us because they see that we have failed, we have been provoked, we have sinned, we have fallen, and we are dancing to their fiddle. When we get serious about living the life in Christ, we will see and understand that we can survive storms only with the Lord, by understanding who the real enemies are. They are not human beings, they are not our neighbours, they are not flesh and blood whom we are called to love even if they are sinners. If they are our enemies, we are obliged to love our enemies, but it does not mean we have to like them, especially like the things they are doing. But we must wish them well and to wish them salvation rather than be provoked by them, because it is not them; it is these demonic winds of chaos that are blowing and causing them to behave that way. If we do not have that attitude to our enemies, then we are going to be provoked into fighting each other. The great modern saint of the holy mountain, St Silouan said ‘If you don’t love enemies, you are not quite Christian yet’. I don’t mean ideological enemies or enemies of Christ, I mean personal enemies, people who do unpleasant things to us, they might cause havoc in the church. You still must have patience with them and defeat the demon with love and patience and humility. This is the only way we can live. We are not going to win by fighting against flesh and blood, only against the unseen enemies.

​September 15                  
Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Patristic writers agree that the rich young man in today’s gospel story (Matt. 19:16-26) was sincere in his desire to please God and to attain eternal life. The story is covered by the first three synoptic gospels. In Mark’s version we read that Jesus looking at him loved him, showing that the rich man had goodness in him. God’s love wants all of us to be saved and the young man sincerely wanted to be saved. Jesus Christ gives him advice to enable him to see what he did not see before - his addiction to money, which later Saint Paul in first Timothy would call “the root of all evil”.
 
Any addiction is an idol which enslaves us. The Lord wanted to show this to the young man and to every one of us. We cannot serve two masters, as the Lord says elsewhere, God and mammon, the idol of wealth. Why is the love of money the root of all evil? Why is it such a dominant idol? Because it feeds and builds up and enables an even greater idol that is within all of us. If we did not have that idol, we would be sinless. The Great Canon of St Andrew that we hear in the first and the fifth week of Lent gives us these words, “I have become my own idol”. If I am my own idol, I want MY will to be done. This is expressed in the desire to supress and coerce the other person to do my will. Let my will be done. 
 
All of God’s commandments beginning from Moses were intended to teach us self-limitation as a path to God. The Lord Jesus Christ comes and shows what moral law is on a deeper level. He gives us the teaching about sacrificial love. Christ’s cross among many other things is an illustration of what he means by sacrificial love. We want to follow Christ not only in word but deed, so we must pick up our cross and follow Him. That means I must allow my neighbour to crucify my ego –wow, that is hard!
 
Recently I quoted to you the words of the holy fathers – “Your salvation is in your neighbour”. We cannot worship God properly if we are secretly serving that idol of self-the ego. In Galatians Chapter 6 St Paul writes “God forbid should I boast except in the cross of our lord of our Jesus Christ by whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world”. By the world means passions, as the holy fathers explain. St Paul talks about crucifying the flesh, which is the old fallen person, the sinful humanity within us. 
 
Last Thursday we had the feast of St Alexander Nevsky.  I spoke about the wonderful words he spoke, “God is not in power but in righteousness”. Power is what the ego seeks because fallen humanity imagines God as power, it projects, it creates God in its own image. God sends His only begotten Son to show that He is humility, He is not power. If we are not ready to learn about ourselves and about God, we are wasting time. 
Brothers and sisters let us get serious about Christian life!

​September 21.  The Nativity of the Mother of God.
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
There are parallels in the Holy Scriptures with today’s story of Joachim and Anna, a childless couple who give birth to a child. We have Abraham and Sarah, prophetess Anna, mother of Samuel, and in the New Testament, in the Gospel of Luke, the story of Priest Zachariah and Elizabeth. The ancient tradition of the church sees several Old Testament prophecies and prototypes indicating this event.  Our service uses Old Testament readings from Genesis about the Jacob’s vision of the ladder, Ezekiel’s prophesy about the shut gate of the temple, used by the Lord to enter, and the reading from Proverbs about Wisdom which is spoken of in the feminine gender. 
 
The first mention in history of the Feast of the Nativity of the Theotokos is by Proclus, who was the archbishop of Constantinople, three or four decades after St John Chrysostom. The story of Joachim and Anna comes from church tradition preserved in an apocryphal book, the Gospel of James.  While the apocryphal books were never accepted into the canon of scripture of New Testament books, this story has been lovingly preserved by the church and has found its way into one of the twelve major fests.  The feast speaks of God’s plan of salvation prepared before time. As we learn from the story of Annunciation, God’s plan does not take away a person’ s exercise of free will.  The Theotokos, born today, grows up to express her free will in the acceptance of God’s plan. God’s foreknowledge does not restrict our free will, that is something that needs some thinking about to really understand.  There is a lot of confusion in people’s minds, even historically, about what God’s foreknowledge really means.  
 
The story of Joachim and Anna is in harmony with the ethos of Old Testament scripture, and it makes more sense in the New Testament culture through the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Joachim and Anna’s prayer of many years transforms them into pillars of fire, or into the burning bush that Moses saw which itself is an image of the Theotokos who facilitates the incarnation of the Word.  
 
There is an image of prayer given by the holy ascetic mother Sinklitike which I really like. When we first seek to burn with the spirit there is much smoke and tears.  Why? Because the firewood is wet and green from our passions.  Through our efforts in prayer and self-limitation, podvig, we prepare our nature to accept the fire of God.  When the transformation progresses, the fire burns brightly. This is the moment when people say the Lord has heard my prayer. We hear this in the Bible too. It is not to say that He fails to hear our prayer before this.   It means that we had to be transformed through our prayer before it can be answered.  This takes time. Today’s feast is a joyful inspiration for us.  We too can be like Joachim and Anna.  We too can become fertile in the spirit and then anything is possible with Christ! 

​September 22
Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Yesterday we had the feast of the Nativity of the Mother of God.  We are now in the after-feast, the second day being the remembrance of her parents, Joachim and Anna.  It is also the Sunday before the great feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, celebrated on the fourteenth day of the church calendar (27th in the new calendar).  Yesterday we contemplated the transformational cross of Joachim and Anna and how it enabled them, a childless couple, to become parents of the one who became higher than the cherubim and the seraphim.  
 
The reading for today’s saints (Matt 12: 46 – 50) is an opportunity to think about the gospel story depicted in one of our frescoes.  Surrounded by a large crowd of people, Jesus Christ is told that His mother and brothers are wanting to see Him. He replies: My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.  Christ’s answer may appear to be harsh and dismissive, especially if we consider that the traditional societies treated their relatives with so much loyalty.  But Christ knows that His mother was at the forefront of those people who hear the word of God and do it, and His brothers, children of Joseph from his first marriage, would soon become His followers too. In His short reply, the Lord is saying that in His kingdom there are very different values to the values of the world, even when worldly values like family loyalty seem good. 
 
Familial loyalty, however, is not abolished but now there is something higher.  Even the Lord’s own mother had to transform her love for her Son.  Imagine that! Her love and relationship with Him had to become sacrificial and non-possessive.  Normally maternal love is very possessive. Only in Christ’s spirit of humility can we really love anyone properly.  Love, in the Christian sense, is only possible when our pride is crucified. But when the ego is dominant, pride with all its passions like jealousy, envy, vainglory and possessiveness cause suffering and tensions among people. The church, the people of God, are called upon to make Christ’s kingdom of love a reality. This is not easy! Anyone who has tried will know that it is not easy! It is only easy if we fantasize and pretend that we already have this love.  But we do not!  We are only on the way there.  The best we can say is:  I want to have faith, I want to have love. As we attempt to keep that dual commandment that Christ talks about, to love God and our neighbour, we are going to fail in thought, word or deed every day.  We will fail every day! But we must not get discouraged or despondent by it.  These are symptoms of hurt pride. We should understand that a peaceful acceptance of our failures is going to shrink our pride, the cause of all human pain and suffering.  Then the grace of God can enable us to relate to God and our neighbour in an unselfish way. 
 

​Friday September 27.  Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Today we fall down before the Holy Cross.  We remember how Queen Helen found the precious cross in the early 4th century, and by remembering we enter into the mystery of our salvation.  
 
Many years ago, when I was a young man, I happened to read a sectarian brochure which argued that traditional Christians are deluded in having a loving attitude towards the cross. A rhetorical question was asked in this brochure:  Would you love a weapon that killed your loved one? That naïve question shows a complete lack of understanding who Christ is and what he did for our salvation.  Christ is not a passive victim as you can see from the large icon in the centre of the triptych called “Christ’s Ascent to the Cross”.  Christ desired the cross, even though it is preceded by the agony of prayer in the Garden of Gesthemane.  The cross is humility and love. Christ defeats Lucifer with the cross, with His humility and love. Satan had captured the human race with the promise of prideful glory.  Christ’s glory, on the other hand, is the cross. Its divine wisdom is perceived as foolishness by those who think they know everything. To the moralistic and proud pharisee it is scandalous. How on earth could God do such a thing?  God is power, almighty!  How can He do this?  But Christ tells Paul that His strength is made perfect in weakness. 
 
In every Liturgy we sing the words: Only One is holy, only One is Lord Jesus Christ.  We are all sinners. The root of sin is always pride. It is in all of us. What is our cross?  Our cross is the meeting of our sinfulness, our pride, with the humble love of Christ. Elder Ambrose of Optina explains that God does not create our cross, but rather it grows on the soil of our heart.  
 
We have so much to learn about the cross but very often we do not want to learn.  Instead, we want justice for ourselves, and to enjoy this life. One thought that arises not infrequently in the heart of the Christian is: How come all these people who don’t know about God are enjoying their life and I’m not?  Why do I have to put up with all the difficulties in my life?    We need to remember the example of the holy ones who would prayerfully complain, “Lord, why have you forgotten me” when they experienced a long stretch of time in their lives withoutsorrows or suffering!  They knew from experience that only the cross purifies the heart from pride, and that is it pride that makes us block out God.  I have told you the story about Archbishop Nikolai Velimirovich, the great Serbian hierarch, who experienced hell in a Nazi death camp. That experience, though, opened up to him the power of prayer.  Prayer brings heaven into our hearts. He said, I would give the rest of my life for half an hour at Dachau because I have never prayed like I prayed there!
 
Today’s feast is about sorrow and joy.  It is about being born again. No pain, no birth, no gain!

September 29
Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Today, this Sunday after the Feast of the Holy Cross, we hear readings concerning the carrying of our own personal cross (Mark 8:34-9:1) and the parable of the wedding feast of the King’s son. (Matt. 22:2-14).  These two readings complement each other. 
In the first passage from Mark’s gospel, we hear: whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me. 
 
The central icon in our triptych is Christ’s Ascent to the Cross.  In March 2018 I showed and explained this icon to Jordan Peterson who was touring here and gave him the written explanation of the icon penned by the iconographer. (see A.Rudakov, Pokrov Chronicle 1949-2024, p197) Dr Peterson was deeply moved by the icon and mentioned it in his subsequent talk in Sydney. He gave one of the best short formulations, in my opinion, of the difference between Orthodoxy and Western Christianity on his blog a few weeks later after returning to Canada.  He surmised that being an Orthodox Christian is indeed an existential experience of carrying the cross and not, in Peterson’s words, “subscribing to a cognitive theory of the world”.  By these words, Dr Peterson is explaining a view where Christ has already done all the hard work for us, and all we must do is just accept Him and His salvation. But we hear today that the Lord is talking about denying oneself.  Wow!   Do you know what it means to deny yourself?  It means you say to yourself, “I reject you!  You are my false self! You are a tenacious octopus of passions, feeding on my real self!
 
A declaration of this nature is only the beginning.  It is like the declaration that any Christian makes in accepting Christ as our Saviour. But it is only then that the real work of our transformation – our transfiguration – begins.  We need to destroy the “octopus” of the eight passions, which creates the false façade, the false ego.  By destroying these passions our true self is revealed.  This is our journey with Christ up Mt Tabor to the divine light. 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Following Christ means trying (to the best of my abilities) to keep the commandment of love for God and my neighbour. I will fail miserably. Acceptance of the cross and my failures will teach me about myself. I am nothing without Christ, nothing… 
 
In his God-inspired psalm of repentance, King David says, “A broken, and contrite heart God will not despise”. He describes in those words the pre-requisite for obtaining the wedding garment of which we heard in the second reading. The wedding garment is the robe of righteousness given to us in baptism. It is like a force field of God’s grace that can only be sustained by carrying our cross.  The cross is our salvation. The cross reveals to us the difference between our real self and our false self.  Let us commit to a serious fight together with Christ.  Only with His help can we fight for our liberation from the deadly octopus of our passions. 

 25 August 2024                                          
Father Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
The whole Gospel is full of meaning even in the small details, as the holy fathers teach us. Some of the stories will speak to us in a personal and powerful way. Today’s story of the storm at sea is one such story. This is the second storm, a scarier one than the first one. It happens after the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, in the early hours of the morning called the fourth watch, as we hear in the holy gospel.  It is followed by the long talk by Christ about heavenly bread, the eucharist, which takes place in the Capernaum  synagogue. 
 
The story of the storm at night is a lesson about the historical journey of the church, and of each church community, each family and ultimately about each one of us, because we cannot avoid these storms when they happen. They are our challenges in life. In this story, the Lord allowed the disciples to experience the storm so that they are trained and are enabled to face the difficulties in the spreading of the word of the gospel throughout the world. Why is it that the Lord did not organise things in a way that the path of the Gospel would be unopposed? Surely, He could do that? He is almighty! 
 
The answer is that the Christ’s “strength is made perfect in weakness.” (2Cor.12:9) Even the great Paul sorrowed about the difficulties that came his way, that constant presence of the thorn in the flesh. There is a lot to think about what that means. In other words, we individually or collectively in the church can only win through meekness and humility. Any remnant of pride causes us to lose in these storms, to drown, like Peter began to drown, when we face the difficulties and challenges of life. Christ allows Peter to learn about His weak faith when he wanted to demonstrate to the other disciples that he had more love for Christ than they had. That is not a humble attitude, is it? Christ teaches him (and us): if you want to do it come and learn what happens when you approach the storms of life with that attitude. The final dose of humility came to all the disciples at the time after the mystical supper when Christ is bound and taken away to the tribunal of the high priest; the disciples all ran away in fear. What a dose of reality, what a dose of humility!
 
There are many lessons that we can take out of this story of the storm. First, Christ is always near, even if He seems to be invisible, even if He seems to disappear, He is still there. Secondly, it is safer to stay in the boat; that means within the guidelines and traditions of the church within the community of love, of the family of the church. Thirdly, we should not be overconfident about our own strength.  And fourthly, prayerful focus on Christ helps us to build our trust in Him. It helps us to build real faith that He will always help us, both individually and collectively, that He will not abandon us. Peter starts drowning and Christ saves him. 
We live in a time of great storms happening in many different parts of the world and in many different aspects of life. Fierce winds are blowing in the world. Listen to the news. We cannot pretend this does not and will not affect us. We cannot say that is somewhere else – Ukraine, Gaza, America and Russia- or that it has to do with somebody else. It will come to us, we will have to deal with it, so it is up to us to learn how to handle ourselves, how to deal with these storms. Christ is our teacher but even more importantly He is our strength. He is stronger than any storm.
 
 
Sunday August 18
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  
The four Gospels complement each other to give a complete picture of Christ. The interesting thing is that there are very few stories that are covered by all four of them. These few stories are the baptism of Christ (Theophany), Transfiguration which is the second theophany on the mountain, and of course, the events of Christ’s death and resurrection. Today’s story about feeding the five thousand (Matt. 14:14-22) is also covered by all four Gospels. It shows how important this story is. It speaks about the church and the Eucharist.  
 
The Eucharist is the central axis of church life.  The modern Greek theologian Christos Yannaras writes: The church is a meal. Five thousand people were hungry.  Christ lifts up His eyes to the Father to teach us where our meal comes from. As He also teaches in the Lord’s Prayer.  Give us this day our daily bread. Our daily bread, our bodily food comes from God. But the next morning, as we see only in the Gospel of John chapter 6, Christ teaches in the synagogue in Capernaum about another level of food. And that is God Himself, Who is food in Christ.  He is our Heavenly bread. The Lord’s Prayer points to this heavenly bread.  The apostles wrote the prayer in Greek, and “daily bread” (in the English text) is better translated as “essential bread”, something that is above practicality. It points of course to the Eucharist. You are what you eat, as the saying goes. 
 
Christ is born, He lives, He dies and He rises from the dead so that we can be sanctified by the humanity of God. That is how St Gregory the Theologian puts it. In today’s story, the disciples came to the Lord, overwhelmed by the mass of people, and asked what they should do. The Lord answers:  You feed them!  In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Samaritan takes the wounded man to the inn, and entrusts him to the innkeeper.  The inn represents the church with God’s helpers there, for the healing of soul and body, sustained through two denarii, the price the Samaritan gives to the innkeeper.  The Holy Fathers say that these two denarii are the body and blood of Christ. We must overcome the tendency to think of the church in moralistic terms. It is not some sort of religious club.  The church is something existential. It is a family, it is healing like in the parable.  It is the meal that sustains life above mere psycho-physiological level.  The church is an existential invitation to rise above being just an intellectual animal. 
 
 
Sunday August 11
By Fr Gennady Baksheev
 
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 
Brothers and sisters, we are temporary pilgrims on earth. We have been placed here to work out the salvation of our souls in fear and trembling with the help of Christ. Today’s Gospel reading (Matt. 9:27-35 Jesus heals the blind and the mute) is a stark reminder for all of us to continue in our spiritual battle against sin, our passions, the world and the evil one. To use the words of St Paul in his letter to Timothy: ‘Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life to which you were also called (1 Tim 6.12).’ This is the disposition of a Christian soul; as we say in the Creed  ‘I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.’ 
 
Today’s gospel reading (or pericope, as known in theological terminology), is a short passage from St Matthew. It begins with the words ‘When Jesus departed from there.’ This refers to a preceding section in St Matthew’s Gospel, where Christ raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead. And so, these two blind men followed Christ as He left Jairus’ house. The blind men cried out to Him, acknowledging Him as the Son of David, that is, the Messiah. But Christ keeps walking. He does not stop to heal them on the road amidst a multitude of people. It is as though he is testing their resolve, their faith and desire. 
 
Christ takes them privately into a house and talks with them. He poses a question to them: ‘Do you believe that I am able to do this?’ They answer Him very succinctly with ‘Yes, Lord.’ And so, these two physically blind men were able to discern with their spiritual eyes, that standing before them was the Lord over all creation. 
 
This belief in Jesus as Lord was based on proof. There were no newspapers during those days, no social media. Rather, there was the spoken word, and people would need to go out and see what was taking place. These blind men would have heard of the numerous miracles of Christ: the cleansing of a leper, healing of a paralysed servant, the calming of a storm at sea, the healing of a woman who had bled for 12 years and the raising of Jairus’ daughter from the dead. 
 
Let us imitate these two blind men. They had no doubt struggled in their lives as blind men. However, this struggle is so important for each and every one of us if we desire to grow spiritually. Christ says that in this world we will have tribulation, but to be of good cheer, as He has overcome the world (John 16:33). These should be comforting words for us. In the original Greek, the term ‘be of good cheer’ is expressed as ‘thar-seh’-o.’ This means to have courage. When the woman who had haemorrhaged for 12 years touched the hem of Christ’s garment, he turned around and said ‘Daughter, have courage.’ In last week’s Gospel reading we heard about the healing of the paralytic man who was lowered by his friends through the roof of a house. Having seen the faith of the paralytic’s friends, Christ said to the paralytic man ‘Son, take courage.’ 
 
As Christians, we are required to develop courage. The Holy Fathers teach us that courage is a foundational virtue. Let us learn what this means from the lives of the saint, especially the martyrs. Do not be defeated or be crushed by the trials and tribulations of life. Let us take courage and walk in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
 
Во имя Отца, и Сына, и Святого Духа. Аминь.
Братья и сестры, мы - временные паломники на земле. Нам нужно в страхе и трепете трудиться для спасения наших душ с помощью Христа. Сегодняшнее Евангельское чтение является суровым напоминанием для всех нас о необходимости продолжать нашу духовную борьбу с грехом, нашими страстями, и с миром. Апостол Павел пишет: "Подвизайся добрым подвигом веры, держись вечной жизни, к которой ты и призван’ (1 Тim 6.12). 
 
Сегодняшнее евангельское чтение - это короткий отрывок из Евангелия от Матфея. Сегодняшний отрывок из Евангелия начинается словами "Когда Иисус ушел оттуда’. Это относится к предыдущему отрывку из Евангелия от Матфея, где Христос исцелил женщину, страдавшую кровотечением в течение двенадцати лет, и воскресил дочь Иаира из мертвых. Когда Христос уходил от этого место, за Ним последовали двое слепцов. Они взывали к Нему, признавая Его Сыном Давидовым, то есть Мессией. Но Христос продолжает идти. Он не останавливается, чтобы исцелить их по дороге среди множества людей. Он как будто испытывает их решимость, их веру и желание.
 
Христос уединяется с ними в доме и беседует с ними. Он задает им вопрос: "Верите ли вы, что Я способен это сделать?" Они отвечают Ему очень кратко: "Да, Господи ‘. И вот, эти два физически слепых человека смогли увидеть своими духовными глазами, что перед ними стоит Господь всего творения.
 
Мы также должны подражать этим двум слепцам. Они, без сомнения, боролись в своей жизни, будучи слепыми. Эта борьба очень важна для каждого из нас, если мы хотим духовно расти. Христос говорит, что в этом мире нас ждут скорби, но мы должны мужаться, потому что Он победил мир (Иоанна 16:33). Эти слова должны быть для нас утешительными. 
 
Как христиане, мы должны развивать в себе мужество. Мы можем научиться об этом из жития святых, особенно от мучеников. Будем развивать мужество и ходить в вере в Господа нашего Иисуса Христа. Аминь.
 
 
Sunday August 4
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
For several hundred years since the beginning of the Reformation in the early 16th century, Western Christianity debated whether we are saved by works or by our faith.  Today’s Gospel story about Christ forgiving the paralysed man (Matt. 9:1-8 ) gives a clear answer. Similarly, the words of St James, the Brother of the Lord, who writes in his epistle that faith without works is dead. Faith has to be externalised in our life.  To use a modern American expression, it is not enough to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk!
 
Christian faith is just that.  It is an existential event.  The story of the paralytic shows several aspects of faith and life.  We have heard Matthew’s shorter version of this story, but Mark and Luke give longer versions in which they described how the paralysed man’s friends uncover the roof to lower him down as they could not get through the crowds.  What an incredible effort of love ! No wonder we hear Jesus say to the paralytic when He saw their faith: Son, be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven. Jesus Christ as God, of course, saw their faith even before they got there. Their faith, hope and love were made manifest for all the other people.  The image of these four men carrying their paralysed friend is a powerful image of the church.  It is an active connectedness with the Lord in faith, hope and love. 
 
Our sinful nature is a heavy weight that is not easy to move.  Have you noticed how ingrained this culture of ticking the box has become in modern life? To be children of God we cannot get away with just creating appearances.  There is a good expression of that in 18th century Russian history:  Potemkin villages.  It comes from the story about how Grigory Potemkin, the governor-general, wanted to impress Empress Catherine so he prepared fake facades of towns and dressed peasants in nice costumes for the Empress’ tour of the Black Sea region, recently secured by him from Turkish rule.  She probably understood that it was fake but she played along with it. That is not good enough! Let us be honest with ourselves, with God and with our neighbour. What if our faith and Christian life are  feeble to the point that we are not unlike this paralysed man in today’s story. The church here and in heaven is carrying us, each one of us when we need it in different times of our life.  As we get stronger in connection with Christ, we then can also carry others, as we heard in today’s Gospel. 

Sermon July 14
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Today the church celebrates All Saints of Rus.  This is another opportunity to look at the saints.  Who are they?  After the Lord Jesus Christ had recapitulated (as St Irenaeus says) the human race with himself as the head, as the new Adam, he then sent from the Father the Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, on the day of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit enables the unity of the church around Christ.  But there is something else that the Holy Spirit gives:  the gift of true hypostatic personhood in the likeness of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  The term hypostatic is a spiritual term which can be explained like this: the member of Christ’s kingdom acquires and grows in unique personhood instead of being an individual part, an atom of human nature fragmented by sin. The saints are such persons.  
We only know a few thousand by name, but they are just the visible part of the iceberg. Saints enable us to see in their lives the quality of human nature healed by Christ. These are the qualities of virtue mentioned by St Paul in Galatians which he calls the fruits of the spirit; love, joy, peace, long-suffering (which means patience), kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. The saints are those people who are Christ’s, and as the great Paul continues, they have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Each saint is a gem, polished by voluntary and involuntary suffering. How this happens depends on the unique person in question and the collective personhood of each national spiritual culture. A good example is in St Nectarios, who was the subject of a film which our youth watched last Friday night, called “The Man of God”.  It was a well-attended, successful night and the film was powerful.  St Nectarios at the deepest level of course is Christ-like, so in spirit he is neither Jew not Greek, as the apostle writes, but in his culture he is Greek.  He is also a unique person through whom we learn about Christ our image.  In each life of a saint, we see the light of Christ that shines in a unique way through the prism of that gem
Recently I have come across words of the British writer, Robert Louis Stevenson who, after working his way through Dostoevsky’s first Christian novel, “Crime and Punishment”, said, I didn’t finish the book, but it almost finished me! I thought that was quite a cute turn of phrase!  The culture of Rus is resignation to the impermanence of civilisation. The experience of Rus was living in the steppes constantly attacked by waves of nomads, thus the acceptance of suffering. In that sense I think that the Nobel prize physicist Andrei Sacharov’s wife, Elena Bonner, said correctly that there are similarities in the histories of Israel – she was Jewish herself – and the Eastern Slavs, Rus.  Nevertheless saints – the Jew, the Greek, the Syrian, the Egyptian, the Persian, the Celt, the Germanic, Anglo-Germanic, the Southern Slavs and finally the Eastern Slavs of today’s celebration teach us about Christ as the perfect image.  The image is in flesh and blood, it is concrete in the uniqueness of person and culture.  The saints, through us, are the builders of Orthodox Christianity here in the new world. 
 
Sermon July 12, St Peter and Paul
By 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 the other of them; this year my focus is on St Paul.  Before I read an excerpt from his epistles to the Romans, I would like to remind you of something that Christ said in his Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7: 1-2:  Judge not that ye be not judged, for with what judgement ye judge ye shall be judged.  And with what measure ye mete it will be measured to you again. 
St Paul continues this theme in the second chapter of his epistle to the Romans.  You therefore have no excuse.  You who pass judgement on someone else for at whatever point you judge another you are condemning yourself because you who pass judgement do the same things. Now we know about God’s judgement against those who do such things is based on truth.  In judging others, we take upon the sins of the other person that we judge them for.   We are adding to our own sinful burden.  We have enough already that we are carrying without taking on other people’s sins by judging them! Judgement is so detrimental to our salvation because when we judge we are not capable of seeing ourselves.  We want to shift the focus onto someone else without the need to do any work on ourselves.  In Great Lent we hear the beautiful words of St Ephraim the Syrian: Grant me to see my own transgressions and not judge my brother. How powerful are these words!  God is the only judge, but we are trying to take his place.  
Let us not finish on such a difficult aspect. I would like to bring something more positive from St Paul, Ephesians 4: 32:  Be kind and compassionate to one another forgiving each other just as Christ God forgave you.  And Romans 12:18:  If it is possible as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everybody. We can only be at peace with everyone else if we are not judging.  Judging puts up a barrier that separates us from God and from the people around us. Let us take counsel from something that Abba Dorotheos in his chapter on not judging others:  God, through the prayers of the person I’m judging, help me not to judge.  This is a very powerful prayer.  Whenever we feel that judgement is getting the better of us, let us try and remember this, that we are asking for God’s help and considering the prayer of the person we are judging to be more worthy than our own.  It has a double supportive effect for us.  Let us turn to the holy apostles Peter and Paul and ask for their help in our struggles with judgement so that we can be living in peace with one another. 
Sermon July 7
by Fr Nicholas Karipoff
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
It is a well-known saying of the Holy Fathers that obedience is above prayer and fasting. The first Gospel reading today was about the calling of the first apostles, the fishermen Peter, Andrew, James, and John who left everything, simply dropped their nets, and followed Jesus Christ.  Christ told them he would make them fishers of men. And today we celebrate the nativity of St John the Baptist. He was born to accept an extraordinary obedience from God, to prepare all of Israel for the coming of the Christ. He becomes the greatest of the prophets.  Prophets spoke and acted in the name of God, in total obedience to God. St John becomes the forerunner of the One Who took upon Himself the greatest obedience from the Father, before the creation of the world.
What is obedience? The modern world no longer understands that word.  Firstly, it is not like in the army or in bootcamp where a soldier receives a command, and he does it mechanically out of fear of punishment if he disobeys.  In the church however, obedience is an expression of the spiritual culture.  It is an expression of love. There is always someone who is the initiator of an obedience and one who accepts the obedience.  If it is a proper and loving understanding of what obedience is, the one who is given the obedience must have the ability to be able to carry it and to not be destroyed spiritually. I remember back in the early 90s when Metropolitan Vitaly came to Australia, he had a great meeting with the youth. He told them, you are going to grow up and have children yourselves.  Know this, that all obedience comes from above, from God.  If you are obedient now to your parents, your children will be obedient to you.  But if you are not, your children will not be obedient to you!
Obedience in the church family and in the family at home is an expression of what theologians call Trinitarian life. There is total equality but at the same time there is initiative that comes from the Father though the Son to the Holy Spirit. When you read the writings of the holy fathers you become aware that they were intensely conscious that sin was and always is caused by disobedience. The podvig, or ascetic effort, of prayer and fasting is meaningless without obedience. It becomes individualism, self-delusion or prelest’ in Slavonic. In the secular world there is plenty of individualism which is even encouraged.  At the same time there is always authoritarianism in the secular world.  While individualism is encouraged, it is always suppressed by someone powerful.  The world is crazy! You are encouraged to be “free” but at the same time there is huge coercion to do what someone wants you to do.  
We Christians should be aware that in the church there is also Catholicity – sobornost’ – which is a mode of life where there are relationships of love in a horizontal manner, adult to adult, but also vertical -parent to child. And it works! It works in the church, but it cannot work in the world. It works because the motivation is different. In the world there are two motives: fear and profit, or reward. Negative and positive reinforcement are the terms that psychologists use.  We must grow sufficiently to understand that while we do need those two motivations, they are temporary. Ultimately, we are called to live the life of love which is mutual obedience, both horizontal and vertical, and which comes from God. 
 
Sermon 30 June 2024
Father Nicholas Karipoff
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
Last Sunday at the great feast of Pentecost the church completed the first part of the liturgical year in which we learn about what God did for us. We learn about God’s plan of salvation for us. We went through a whole series of feasts and fasts which begin with the preparation for the feast of Christmas, the Advent and then the whole series of other feasts, after Christmas, including the baptism of Christ, the Theophany, the Meeting of the Lord, Annunciation; then Great Lent begins; Palm Sunday, Easter itself; the paschal period and then the Ascension and finally Pentecost which we had last Sunday. This is a massive picture of God’s plan of salvation. Each of these feasts, and the learning period during Lent, speak to us about this. 
Today the Church celebrates the memory of all saints. All saints are humanity’s response to God’s calling to accept His plan for our salvation. Each one of us when we enter the life of the Kingdom, the life of the Church, receives a heavenly friend and a protector, a Saint. We become temples of the holy spirit as we hear in the New Testament. Our temple is dedicated to a saint. Think of it this way, he or she is not only our helper, protector and intercessor but also should be an inspiration for our Christian life.  
In services for the saints, we often hear the phrase ‘your life was according to your name’. Names have a meaning, they are not just nice sounds, so that’s at the level of the saints. For us these names of the saints are filled with much more meaning because each is filled with the wonderful life of that saint. The content of their prayer and ascetic efforts here on earth. Today is a joyous day when we all, as it were, celebrate our names days together. This is an occasion for the contemplation of the phenomenon of the church. 
The bible begins with the words, ‘In the beginning God created heaven and earth’. Today heaven and earth come together, in this joy to praise God. To praise God who is wonderful in his Saints as we hear in the psalms. The saints, our heavenly brothers and sisters, have completed their earthly course, their education, their struggle. We are on our journey to join them. One of the causes of our earthly neuroses is people’s constant vacillation between different goals in life. People do not know what they want. They are not sure what to dedicate their energies to. ‘What should I do tomorrow?’ that is the question that makes people very nervous. The saints through their lives on earth and in heaven radiate peace. The peace that is the opposite of that neurosis, and that peace only Christ can give. As He told his disciples at the mystical super, ‘My peace I give unto you’. That peace comes from aligning our life with Christ’s words, when He says, in the Sermon on the Mount, ‘seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness’. When we make that our goal, everything else will fall into place.  Life will become peaceful, harmonious and without that neurosis about tomorrow. 
Let us maintain that connection with the saints, they are our brothers and sisters, and they are the spiritual nobility of the King of kings. Our connection with them is maintained through private prayer and effort, but especially through the mystical supper. There the holy spirit calls us, as we heard last Sunday, into a unity with Christ. Heaven and earth come together in the kingdom of God, the mystical life of the Church.
Sermon June 23 Pentecost
by Fr Nicholas Karipoff
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
John the Baptist, Forerunner of the Lord Jesus Christ, said to the hundreds of people who came to listen to him, I baptize you with water but One Who is mightier than I is coming. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and Fire.  Today at Pentecost Christ sends the Holy Spirit from the Father in tongues of fire. God spoke to Moses from the burning bush. Elijah brough the same fire down from heaven to burn his sacrifice. Now it is given to the church, to the people of God, forever. It is mostly invisible, but if you want to see it, go to Jerusalem on Great Saturday in any year and you will see it. God’s uncreated energies can be seen as fire and light.  They make a huge difference to human life, as we hear in the festal troparion, Blessed are thou, O Christ our God, Who has shown the fisherman as supremely wise by sending down upon them the Holy Spirit… Who are these fishermen?  Simple, naïve people.  We read in the Book of Acts that the Sanhedrin, the supreme council of the Jews, having brought Peter and John to their tribunal quickly realised that these people were uneducated and yet they spoke with such clarity and force.  This obviously came from the Holy Spirit. The apostles and their words could not be resisted. 
All saints, whom the church celebrates next Sunday, the Sunday after Pentecost, understood empirically, experientially, the difference between life in the Holy Spirit and life without Him.  The saints put all their efforts into acquiring the Holy Spirit, that fire of God, and then keeping the Holy Spirit.  They were human beings with limitations and had to struggle to keep their focus on acquiring this fire. 
The kontakion of the feast juxtaposes the building of the Tower of Babel with Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit calling all to unity in God. To build a tower of Babel has been a dream of humanistic civilizations or empires since those ancient times in Genesis. Look at the name of the most famous skyscraper in New York City – Empire State Building! We are living in times where many people are confidently working towards the new tower of Babel. There are now tools that earlier generations could not even dream of to help in building this.  At the same time, there are greater and greater problems appearing in the fabric of world politics, economics, physical and mental health, just to name the obvious areas.  More and more people are beginning to understand that humanity cannot solve its problems without God.  Life without the Spirit is a sleepwalk of zombies. There is no meaning, no direction. Those questions are not asked and are not encouraged. But Pentecost to us is a reminder of eternity and purposeful life in the world. Acquire the peaceful spirit and thousands around you shall be saved.  These words of St Seraphim refer to the Holy Spirit given at Pentecost. He lives in the Church; He lives with the people of God. 
 
Sermon June 16 
by Fr Nicholas Karipoff
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 
The gospel passage that we just heard begins with the ‘Golden Rule’ except the Lord Jesus Christ turns it around. The Golden Rule says ‘do not do unto others as you would not have do unto you’ but Christ says ‘Do those things’, He puts it in the positive, he says it’s not about not about doing bad things but about doing good things; about being an initiator of goodness and love in the world. And this is the beginning of this passage; the key to today’s reading because it is the key to all real Christianity. We should remind ourselves of these words, as often as possible. 
Now, take for instance the life of St Paul, the great Apostle. He was stoned and left for dead. He received 39 lashes 5 times. Can you even imagine what that would be like? Jim Caviezel who during the filming of the ‘Passion of the Christ’, was accidently hit once and he lost consciousness. 
St Paul was shipwrecked and yet his letters are full of joy because a real Christian gives, a real Christian is a shining star that gives with joy from the heart. A real Christian doesn’t moan and groan and whine and whinge and a real Christian begins prayer with praise to the Lord, praising God, thanking God and then, only then, thinking about and asking forgiveness for our sins and then last of all asking for things from God.
Now we often work the other way. When we think of prayer, we think prayer is about asking for things, but a Christian is not a black hole that sucks everything in. A Christian is not a consumer of everything. A Christian is not an emotional vampire, but we often behave like that. Now we want to suck blood out of our neighbours. Christians are children of God; this is what this passage is saying to us. He is our Father and so shouldn’t children behave like the father does. So, this is what the Lord is trying to teach us to give and not to expect anything in return because God gives - He gives to the good, to the bad and to the ugly. 
 The Eucharist teaches us this attitude to life. Think about what this word means: thanksgiving. We’ve come to thank God. This is what we come for but more than that it’s not just about learning. That’s the first part of the liturgy which is coming to an end now with the sermon. The second part of the liturgy/the Eucharist is about receiving the energy from God to be like him. The grace of God so that we give, and we don’t even notice that we give. This is the response of those, the righteous, the sheep in Christ’s picture of the last judgement. They are terribly surprised when he tells them that you’ve done this and done that, ‘What have we done ‘we’ve done nothing, we’ve just been behaving normally’. So that’s Eucharistic life, this is what we absorb here in this holy temple of God, His grace, to become transformed so that we can go out into the world, into our families and not to behave like the people who don’t know Christ.
Brothers and sisters, as St Paul says to Thessalonians ‘Rejoice always, pray without ceasing and in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Jesus Christ for you’.

By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
Christ is Risen!
Beginning with His first miracle at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee, the Lord taught for three and a half years and performed countless miracles to confirm the certainty of His word. Today we are observers of His conversation with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well.  She cannot see us, but we can see and hear her. The Lord, of course, sees us. He speaks to the woman about living water, the life in grace, and invites her to bring her husband, showing her that He sees everything, He is God. Following their conversation, a great miracle ensues. But while we hear the conversation between them, Only Christ can see the whole picture. Often Christ’s miracles are bodily healings which are followed by a great transformation of the spirit, like we will see next Sunday with the man who was born blind and healed by Christ. In today’s story, Christ resurrects the soul of the Samaritan woman, rather than healing her physically.  In church tradition she is known as Photini; the Slavic translation is “Svetlana”.  Following her conversation with Christ, she immediately becomes an apostle to her own people, the Samaritans. 
 
A week ago, we had the presence of a miracle in our church here, the myrrh-streaming icon of the Mother of God from the church dedicated to her in Hawaii. Christ often speaks to us through His mother, through her miraculous icons.  If you open the church calendar, there is hardly a day without a mention of a miraculous icon of the Mother of God. What are her words to us when she speaks to us through her icons?  They are the same words that she spoke to the servants at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee:  whatever He says to you, do it.  This is the purpose of the grace-filled icons that sometimes visit us, and God willing, we will have another in July, the Kursk icon.  [scheduled to be at our parish on July 21, with the visit of Metropolitan Nikolai]. Christ wants us to believe His words, to accept them and to live by them. Moses told the Old Testament Church, Israel, Man shall not live by bread alone but by the word of God. (I’ve simplified the words with this paraphrase.) Jesus Christ quoted these words to reject the temptation of Satan in the desert. 
Are we fortified by last week’s miracle to follow Christ by rejecting this and other temptations? The enemy wants to enslave us spiritually.  Look at the joyous spirit of Photini.  She walks away liberated by Christ, by His words. May we too not ignore the life-giving words of Christ. May we not treat them as something abstract and general, as though they do not apply to us individually. Let us open a contrite and humble heart to Him, the personal and specific liberation. 
 
Sunday May 26, 2024
By Fr Nicholas Karipoff
 
Christ is Risen!
Brothers and Sisters, today we are witnesses to an extraordinary event, a tangible presence of the grace of God and a stronger than usual sense of presence of our Protectress through her holy icon, the Iveron icon of Hawaii.  We are indeed blessed today.  Nevertheless, we are obliged to speak first of Christ God and the Gospel story of the paralytic at Bethesda healed by the Lord.  We are all, in some measure, spiritual paralytics who need the loving kindness of the Saviour to raise us up from the paralysis, visible or invisible, which comes from the root of all sins - human pride.  Christ’s love is masculine in its powerful sacrifice and maximalism about sin.  As we heard just now, he offers a stern warning to the healed paralytic, to not sin any more or worse things could happen. 
 
But the Lord’s love is infinite.  He finds ways to communicate more gentle aspects of his love to us, who are not only paralytics but who are infantile in our lack of spiritual maturity.  The church knows this love through the image of our heavenly Mother.  The image of the mother speaks to all of us. And that explains the great number of historical holy miracle-working icons in all the nations, including the recent ones from Montreal and from Hawaii, which is here today. The best illustration of these two aspects of love is presented in the story of Christ’s first miracle at the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee.   That occasion is also a touching illustration of the almost wordless communication between Mother and Son which really communicates so much beyond words. She whispers that the wedding hosts have no wine, expressing a concern for people’s seemingly mundane needs.  The Lord meekly pretends to resist her request, saying My hour has not yet come. Her request for wine reminds Him of His coming shedding of blood on the cross, in about three years’ time. She reminds Him of the sacrificial love but for now her request fits in with His own desire to bring joy back to the wedding feast. 
 
And here we are today too, Brothers and Sisters, at the Wedding Feast! We are at the feast of the King’s Son, which is the Eucharist. We are weak, easily discouraged by life’s challenges and anxious about the future because of our fragile faith.  Yet, here she is, just like at Cana of Galilee, whispering to Him: Fortify them. Give them joy and strength. Maybe they will understand why You are doing it, maybe they will want to get up, take up their bed and walk.  Maybe they will want to grow up!