St. Nicholas Orthodox Church
Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese
9100 Youree Drive, Shreveport, LA 71115

In the Orthodox Church life is a series of feasts. Of course, there are fasts in between. But every fast is the anticipation of a feast. And it’s the feast that is the fulfillment and completion of the fast. The Church’s cycle of feasts and commemorations, of fasts and celebrations, is what regulates the rhythm of our lives. In them, the Holy Spirit breathes new life into us.

We’ve just begun a new year in the Church. This past week we celebrated our New Year’s day - September 1 - and we’re now anticipating all the feasts of the coming year, beginning with the the Birth of the Theotokos, which is tomorrow. Her nativity, like her Son’s nativity, holds something precious and delightful for us, if we can recognize it, and this is what we anticipate with each great Feast day. That precious something is the love of God made tangible. This, and this alone, is what makes life worth living. Not all the attractions and entertainments and diversions in the world can compare with the simple reality of God’s love for us.

We say that “God is love,” but if we’re alive to His presence, then we’re continually amazed by this reality. We’re like children who are enthralled again and again by the same story, as if it were something new each time. “Really? God loves me? In spite of everything?” Each feast day is a celebration of this love, and our participation is our response, and is our “amen” and our “thank you.”

So we live in anticipation, awaiting the next festival of God’s love, like children waiting for Christmas. There was a story I heard during seminary about Fr. John Meyendorff, a former dean of the seminary - may his memory be eternal. He was standing at the holy table during a feast-day Liturgy, and he turned to another priest who was serving with him, and said, “Anticipation - all is anticipation.” In other words, our whole life is an anticipation of coming of our Lord and our meeting with Him. It is an anticipation of Heaven. As we say in the Creed, we anticipate the Lord’s coming again to judge the living and the dead; we anticipate - or “look for” - the “resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

This anticipation contains both fear and love, and this is how we stand before God as Christians. The sacrifice of Christ on the Cross is an act of such unimaginable and undeserved love, that it should fill us with awe. “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son…” Before such love, what words can we say? The best response is to fall on our faces before such a God, Whose power is infinite, but Whose love is also infinite. St. John the Theologian says “perfect love casts out fear,” but who among us can claim to have perfect love? So until we do, fear of God is necessary. But true God-fearing is compatible with love, and leads to perfect love. It is knowing before Whom we stand, and knowing that though we are totally unworthy, He loves us anyway.

As it says in Proverbs, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” This godly fear and this wisdom are what inspire the Apostle Paul to say, “God forbid that I should boast, except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…” What do we have to boast of, that is not a gift from God? How ungrateful are we when we boast about the things He’s given us, as if He were not even in the picture? We try to impress other people with how great we are, and all the while Christ is standing in the room with us and we’re totally ignoring Him. God forbid! That’s foolishness of the worst kind, because when we boast as if we have anything that doesn’t come from God, we are like the fool in the Psalms, about whom it says, “the fool says in his heart that there is no God.” If we don’t give Him credit, in effect, we’re denying His existence and His love.

But, even when we do that, His love never waivers, and that’s what absolutely crushes us and terrifies us - or it should. Not that He sends thunderbolts to destroy us when we deny His love, but that He doesn’t; that He loves us anyway. But that love is fire; “God is a consuming fire,” and in His love for us He desires that we be purified by fire. Everything that is false in us has to be burned away so that only what is true and lasting and worthy of God’s love remains.

Elder Vasilios of Iveron Monastery on Mt. Athos expresses the wonder of this fiery, crucified love, which surpasses all our hopes. I’d like to end with a passage from a talk he gave, offering it to you as a word of inspiration for living this coming year from Feast to Feast, in anticipation of Divine blessings, even as we continue to walk through “the valley of the shadow of death”:

Fr. Vasilios says, “Everything that is false and deceitful will be revealed within the fiery furnace of the truth; it will vanish and disappear. It will abandon us so that we are left alone, isolated and hungry - strangers in a foreign land where everything is spent without being replenished.

“We stand guilty and condemned before the abundance of God’s love; through His love we experience our own unworthiness. We are drawn to the role of servants because it suits us; it satisfies us; we are comfortable in this role. But it does not satisfy God, who loves us so exceedingly and forgives so completely that we are crushed and melted by His boundless and immeasurable love. Before such a miracle, we weep for joy; our tears reveal the overflowing of our joy.

“For this reason the Saints, who are the children of God, call themselves the servants of Christ, since they feel that such a title [children of God] surpasses their worth and showers them with honor. To consider themselves otherwise, as children of God by grace, as honored persons in the celebration where the fatted calf is slaughtered, surpasses all human hopes, dreams, and expectations This could only be initiated and fulfilled by the inconceivable and ineffable love of God the Father.”

With fear of God, faith and love, may we draw near and receive the gift of this love now, and forever. Amen.

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