Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Congratulations with the feast of the Resurrection of the Lord, the feastday of the Holy Forefathers, that is all the righteous men and women of the Old Testament, as well as the feastday of the five martyrs of Sebaste.

Today we heard an excerpt from the Epistle of the Holy Apostle Paul to the Colossians, which is always read on the penultimate Sunday of Advent. We heard that Christ is our life and that when He will appear (when we meet Him after our earthly life or when He returns to our world) we, His faithful followers, members of the Church, the body of Christ, will also appear in a glorious state. To truly participate in the glory of Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul exhorts all of us to abstain from sin. He lists various sins, separating them into two categories. The first category includes sins which come about from an excessive desire to participate in physical pleasures from everything earthly. The second – sins that come about from anger. Finally, the Apostle emphasizes that we should put off our old sinful life and put on our new enlightened life, where all the faithful are united one to another in Christ.

The Old Testament saints, who lived before the birth of Christ our Saviour, could only dream of that communion with God that we, the faithful, have today (We, i. e. humanity, have seen Christ on earth, have heard His message, up until our own time we commune of His Body and Blood, read His words in the Gospels, etc.). Although, as we have read in Holy Scripture, many of the Old Testament saints communicated with God very closely, even talking with Him as if face to face, this was all quite vague. They thirsted for a more personal relationship with Him. They wanted to see Him, hear Him, and feel Him for real. They wished to be joined to His glory. They therefore strived to live righteously and not to fall into those sins that the Holy Apostle Paul lists in his Letter to the Colossians. This strong desire to be joined with God came to be when He was incarnate and became a man. On that day, all of the Old Testament saints, already long dead, in truth were joined to the glory of Christ. Therefore we venerate them today.

Through the prayers of these saints, may our Lord God give us the strength to reject a sinful life, so that when we find ourselves before Him we can in reality become participants in His glory.

priest Alexis