In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Christ is risen. Amen. Christ is risen.
Amen. Christ is risen. Amen. Christ is risen.
Amen. Christ is risen. Amen. Christ is risen.
Amen. Christ is risen. Amen. Christ is risen.
Amen. Christ is risen. Amen. Christ is risen.
Christ and the Samaritan woman. He says to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. If you knew the gift of God, our Lord and Savior has given us many gifts that allow us to drink of that living water, many gifts that allow us to draw closer to him. The gift of prayer, the gift of fasting, the gift of confession, the gift of forgiveness, the gift of Holy Communion, these gifts allow us to drink of Christ, to commune with him in a very intimate way.
So that as the scripture says, “Out of our belly will flow living water.” This morning, I’d like to speak about a gift that is given to us by Christ that we often overlook or altogether ignore, and that is the gift of the lives of the saints. A gift that if we take advantage of it, it will become for us the living water of Jesus Christ. How often do you read the lives of the saints? How often do you celebrate their memories by attending their liturgy, their feast day?
How often do you read their writings? Do you know who your own patron saint is when you were baptized, you were given a saint to be your intercessor, to be your protector? Do you attend their feast day liturgy? Do you know the saints?
Are you involved with them? Are you connected to them? As Orthodox Christians, this is of utmost importance. The lives of the saints are central to the life of the church, and you can see this when you walk into any Orthodox church.
The walls are covered in icons, and if you walk into the home of a pious Orthodox Christian, the walls of their homes will also be covered with holy icons. Can you be Orthodox and ignore the saints? Absolutely not. Brothers and sisters, the saints aren’t just a decorative aspect of the church.
They don’t just make our churches look pretty. They are the substance of the faith. They are the proof of Jesus Christ. They are the proof that he indeed conquered sin and death, when the martyrs were being led to their death and their faces radiated with joy and they had no fear in them, that is the proof of the resurrection of Jesus Christ that he has destroyed the power of death.
Christ took on our humanity in order to clothe us with his divinity. He descended so that we might ascend. Now I want you to think about something for a moment, what do we say in the Creed about Christ every Sunday, that he is seated at the right hand of God. Think about that.
Someone with flesh and blood like us is seated at the right hand of God in glory, raining with the Father. Someone like us with flesh and blood. This is the level of sanctity to which Christ has elevated our humanity. That there is a human being on the throne of God.
That’s why Saint Athanasius the Great says, “God became man, that man might become God.” And that’s why the Apostle Peter in his second epistle says that we have become partakers of the divine nature. We share in the life and holiness of God the saints make the life of Christ a concrete reality for us here and now. They are an extension of Christ. So when we learn about them we are learning about Christ himself.
The saints transfer the life of Christ to us. They communicate it by their example to us. And that’s why Saint Paul in the 11th chapter of his first epistle to the Corinthians, he says, “imitate me as I imitate Christ.” He didn’t just say, “imitate Christ.” He said, “imitate me.” And how often does Saint Paul and his epistles refer to the righteous and the holy ones of the Old Testament giving them to us as an example and as a model of faith. Saint Paul is using the lives of the saints, communicating it to us to make the reality of God relevant here and now.
We are called to imitate Saint Paul because he gave us an example. We are called to imitate the saints because they lived lives while pleasing to God. We are called to learn from them, but how can we imitate their lives if we don’t read about them, if we don’t know them, if we don’t communicate with them. My beloved family, when we read the lives of the saints it inspires us to a higher ideal and at the same time it humbles us.
It humbles us because we see the great level of holiness that they have achieved and now we look at our own lives and we see how wretched and sinful we are. And then we begin to question, “Have I even begun to follow Jesus Christ? Am I on the path? Look at their lives and look at my life.
Look at their humility and look at my pride. Look at how they suffered with patience and look at my impatience and how I run away from suffering and I run away from the cause. In fact, I want nothing to do with it. We see their lives, how they denied themselves, took up their cross and followed Christ and they put us to shame.
But we have hope in God that the same Holy Spirit that was given to them is given to us, that same flame that was lit at their baptism was lit at our baptism. We just have to kindle that fire, we have to make it stronger and brighter. We have the potential to be saints. That’s why St.
Paul says, “You were called to be saints and his epistles to the communities that he wrote to.” Again when we read their lives and consider that this is what a Christian must be like, we have to question our own Christianity and that is not out of the lack of faith, but that is humility. Have I begun? That it’s all been talked until now. Remember, what do our Lord say?
Not all who say Lord, Lord, will be saved. We must imitate the lives of the saints, imitate St. Paul and all those who have gone before us and I want you to listen to this. If we put aside reading the lives of the saints, it’s as if we are putting aside reading the life of Jesus Christ.
It’s putting aside the work of the Holy Spirit and the life of the church for 2,000 years. It’s saying that Pentecost never happened, that the Holy Spirit was never sent, that it all ended with Christ and there is no more holiness. But we know that that’s not true. The saints are witnesses to that.
The lives they live, their holiness, their miracles are witnesses to that, that Christ is alive and well and present here now in the world through his saints, through his church, through all of us. The fruit of their lives, the lives of the saints, is the evidence and the proof of Jesus Christ. If only we knew the gift of God, as St. as Christ said to the Samaritan woman, St.
Fortini, if only we knew the gift of God. If we read the lives of the saints, if we begin to live with them, it will transform our lives like nothing else. Christ will inspire us to be more and more like Christ, giving glory to God who is wondrous in his saints. When we see their humility, when we see their obedience, when we see their ascitical efforts, their fasting and their prayer, when we see their patience in the face of suffering, their willingness to give their lives for the sake of Christ and their neighbor, when we see all of this and we imitate it, it will cause rivers of living water to gush forth from us.
This week expect this week an email to come out from the church with resources. Resources that you can use to read the lives of the saints and also audio resources where you can hear the lives of the saints read to you as you’re driving in your car. We’ll send out those resources this week. Let me conclude by saying a word about how we choose names for our children when they are born.
This is really important, how we choose names for our children when they are born. As Orthodox Christians, we are only to name our children after the saints of the church, after the saints of the church. Arab Christians, for many generations, use non-Christian Arab names for their children, not saint names. For example, in my own family, my father and his siblings, we have names like Nabil, Munir, Samir, Waji, Nabil, with all due respect to my own family, some of them are here.
These are not saint names, they are not saint names, sorry, Dad. And for many people, they did this out of fear. They wanted to assimilate with Arabic culture. They wanted their child to have a chance to do well in school, to get a good job, to advance in the military.
If they had a name like Boule, for Butro, for Julius, they would know they were Christian and they would be dismissed and not given that chance. We didn’t want to send out as Christians for the purpose of personal advancement and fitting in. Can I remind you of something Christ said? This is from the Gospel of Luke, “Whoever is ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of him when I come in the glory of my father and with the angels.” There’s also the tradition of naming our children after our parents.
And many times, parents put unnecessary pressure on their children to name their child after the father. This is vain glory and this is pride. We are called to deny ourselves and to die to ourselves. We must die so that Christ is born, so that the saints are born.
That’s why we name our children after the saints. Not for us to make sure that our name lives forever. This is not part of our Orthodox Christian culture. This is another culture, not ours.
And that is pride and vain glory. And we need to break this cycle. If your child chooses to name their child after you, let that be their choice. Don’t pressure them and I pray your name is a saint’s name.
But if you don’t have a saint’s name, you yourself as a parent should encourage your child to name their child after a saint. Let the names of the great saints of the church, let those names fill our homes and rain throughout our houses for all generations. And I’ll end with a quote from Saint John Chrysostom. He says, and this is about naming our children.
So let the names of the saints enter our homes through the naming of our children. To train not only the child but the father when he reflects, that he is the father of John or Elijah or James, Yohanna, Elia, Yaku. For if the name be given with forethought, to pay honor to those that have departed and we grasp at our kinship with the righteous rather than with our forebears, meaning our immediate ancestors’ parents and grandparents, this too will greatly help us and our children. Do not because it is a small thing regarded as small, it’s purpose is to support us.
By naming your child, my beloved family, after a saint, you give them an intercessor that they will remember every time they are called a feast in the church to celebrate prayers and troparians to say a life to read, to learn, to emulate so that they can become more and more like Christ by imitating the saints. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen, Christ is risen. Messierchtham, Christos sinestive.