25th SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST — Tone 8. Sunday of the Forefathers.
Tone 8 Troparion (Resurrection)
You descended from on high, O Merciful One! You accepted the three day burial to free us from our sufferings!// O Lord, our Life and Resurrection, glory to You!
Tone 2 (Forefathers)
Through faith You justified the Forefathers, betrothing through them the Church of the gentiles. These saints exult in glory, for from their seed came forth a glorious fruit: she who bore You without seed.// So by their prayers, O Christ God, have mercy on us!
Tone 6 Kontakion (Forefathers)
You did not worship the graven image, O thrice-blessed ones, but armed with the immaterial Essence of God, you were glorified in a trial by fire. From the midst of unbearable flames you called on God, crying: “Hasten, O compassionate One! Speedily come to our aid,// for You are merciful and able to do as You will!”
Tone 4 Prokeimenon (Forefathers)
Blessed are You, O Lord God of our fathers, / and praised and glorified is Your Name forever! (Song of the Three Holy Children, v. 3)
V. For You are just in all that You have done for us! (v. 4)
Colossians 3:4-11 (Epistle)
When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Because of these things the wrath of God is coming upon the sons of disobedience, in which you yourselves once walked when you lived in them. But now you yourselves are to put off all these: anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.
Tone 4
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!
V. Moses and Aaron were among His priests; Samuel also was among those who called on His Name. (Ps. 98:6)
V. They called to the Lord and He answered them. (Ps. 98:6)
Luke 14:16-24 (Gospel)
Then He said to him, “A certain man gave a great supper and invited many,and sent his servant at supper time to say to those who were invited, ‘Come, for all things are now ready.’ But they all with one accord began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of ground, and I must go and see it. I ask you to have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to test them. I ask you to have me excused.’ Still another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ So that servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.’ And the servant said, ‘Master, it is done as you commanded, and still there is room.’ Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. ’For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper.’”
Sunday of the Forefathers
The Sunday that falls between December 11-17 is known as the Sunday of the Holy Forefathers. These are the ancestors of Christ according to the flesh, who lived before the Law and under the Law, especially the Patriarch Abraham, to whom God said, “In thy seed shall all of the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen. 12:3, 22:18).
Hieromartyr Hilarion, Archbishop of Verey
The holy New Martyr Archbishop Hilarion (Vladimir Alexievich Troitsky in the world), an outstanding theologian, an eloquent preacher, and a fearless defender of Christ’s holy Church, was born around 1885.
Vladika Hilarion wrote many books and articles on various topics, including “The Unity of the Church.” His Master’s thesis, “An Outline of the History of the Church’s Dogma,” was over five hundred pages long, and was a well-documented analysis of the subject.
During the Council of 1917 he delivered a brilliant address calling for the restoration of the Moscow Patriarchate, which had been dissolved by Tsar Peter I in the eighteenth century. When Saint Tikhon (April 7) was chosen as Patriarch, Saint Hilarion became his fervent supporter.
Saint Hilarion was consecrated as bishop on May 20, 1920, and so the great luminary was placed upon the lampstand (Luke 11:33). From that time, he was to know less than two years of freedom. He spent only six months working with Patriarch Tikhon.
Vladika was arrested and exiled in Archangelsk for a year, then he spent six years (1923-1929) in a labor camp seven versts from Solovki. There at the Filomonov Wharf he and at least two other bishops were employed in catching fish and mending nets. Paraphrasing the hymns of Pentecost, Archbishop Hilarion remarked, “Formerly, the fishermen became theologians. Now the theologians have become fishermen.”
Archbishop Hilarion was one of the most popular inmates of the labor camp. He is remembered as tall, robust, and with brownish hair. Personal possessions meant nothing to him, so he always gave his things away to anyone who asked for them. He never showed annoyance when people disturbed him or insulted him, but remained cheerful.
In the summer of 1925, Vladika was taken from the camp and placed in the Yaroslav prison. There he was treated more leniently, and received certain privileges. For example, he was allowed to receive religious books, and he had pleasant conversations with the warden in his office. Saint Hilarion regarded his time at the Yaroslav Isolated Detention Center as the best part of his imprisonment. The following spring he was back at Solovki.
In 1929 the Communists decided to exile Archbishop Hilarion to Alma-Atu in central Asia. During his trip southward from the far north, Saint Hilarion was robbed and endured many privations. When he arrived in Petrograd, he was ill with typhus, infested with parasites and dressed in rags. When informed that he would have to be shaved, he replied, “You may now do with me whatever you wish.” He wrote from the prison hospital, “My fate will be decided on Saturday, December 15. I doubt I will survive.”
Saint Hilarion died at the age of forty-four in the hospital of a Petrograd prison on December 15, 1929. His body was placed in a coffin hastily made from some boards, and then was released to his family. The once tall and robust Archbishop Hilarion had been transformed by his sufferings into a pitiful white-haired old man. One female relative fainted when she saw the body.
Metropolitan Seraphim (Chichagov) provided a set of white vestments for the late Archbishop. He was also placed in a better coffin.
Metropolitan Seraphim presided at the funeral of Saint Hilarion, assisted by six bishops and several priests. The saint was buried at Novodevichii Monastery.
Saint Hilarion is commemorated on December 15 (his repose in 1929); May 10 (his glorification in 1999); the Third Sunday after Pentecost (All Saints of St. Petersburg); July 11 (The Finding of his relics in 1998); and on the Sunday nearest to August 26 (All Saints of Moscow).
The Beauty That Saves and the Beauty That Destroys
If man hears the call of divine beauty, he becomes a partaker in the blessed life of the Holy Trinity. If he resists and does not obey, he creates the hell of non-communion, the curse of ugliness contrary to nature, which does not save but rather destroys man and creation. We should also not forget that besides the true beauty which calls and saves, there is also another, counterfeit beauty which provokes and destroys, because it is not a manifestation of goodness but a veneer of beauty and functions as a lure. It dazzles people and traps them and leads them to ultimate subjugation and destruction, promising an effortless, magical salvation. It is through this struggle and test of choosing some sort of beauty that the history of the human being, and humanity as a whole, unfolds: which beauty will draw us more strongly? To which will we submit ourselves?
Participation in the Original Beauty
God the Word did not simply present Himself with an outward appearance of being human, but combined the totality of our nature “with the divine beauty.” Human salvation is understood and lived as participation in the original beauty and rehabilitation into that beauty. The divine beauty does not save man magically, without his knowledge, or from outside, by force. If it did, it would demean man. On the contrary, man is saved in a way that honors him, by becoming himself a fine artist, a fount of beauty and salvation for many: “A spring of water welling up to eternal life” (Jn 4:14). He is saved by having a song of praise to God spring up from his entire being, as a eucharist, an offering of thanks.
We Are Hagia Sophia
The City (Constantinople) may have fallen, the mosaics in the Monastery of Chora may have been torn apart, the holy places may have been violated, the Great Church may have become a mosque, a museum. But there is something that does not fall, is not torn apart, is not violated. Hagia Sophia still celebrates. The Church lives. Every chapel, every liturgy, every Christian believer is Hagia Sophia. This church does not simply belong to one nation, but saves the whole world. It is not a feat of technology, but a theological achievement and a gift from above; tangible evidence of the love of God, who “bowed the heavens and came down.”
Entering into the Life of the Saints
You venerate the icons of the Saints, their holy relics. You study their writings. And the study becomes prayer. And the prayer becomes communion of life. You enter into their world. They enter into your cell and into your heart. You learn their language. You receive their blessing. You remember their phrases, their sayings, out of a divine passion for them. You acquire a different sense of who is contemporary and who belongs to the past.
You see that what is true is eternal, sober, and all-powerful. It shatters the bars of Hades and of time; it passes through, “the doors being shut” (cf. John 20:19); it finds you in a thousand ways and keeps you company. And it raises you up into a life that conquers death. It brings you out into movement, searching, struggle, sacrifice, extension, transcendence of all things, finding everything in a different way, in truth, in reality.
We Are Defined by Love
If strangers are not your own family, you lose both your own family and yourself. If you do not see Christ in the person of the stranger, the sick, the suffering and the imprisoned, then you do not know Him at all. His own people, His friends, His family, His mother, and His brothers, are defined in a different way. They are not defined by blood relationship or by sharing the same human opinions or temporal objectives, but by the love which brought all things out of non-being into being and regenerates fallen man: “Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Mk 3:35). “Those who say, Lord, Lord,” are not my own people, nor will they enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but rather “those who do the will of my Father who is in heaven” (Mt 7:21).
Vasileios of Iveron, Archimandrite. The Thunderbolt of Ever-Living Fire: “American” Conversation with an Athonite Elder (Contemporary Christian Thought Series, number 24 Book 1). Sebastian Press Publishing House.
Sunday Bulletin December 8, 2024