In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Your Eminence Archbishop Irénée,
Your Grace Bishop Alexei,
My beloved brothers and concelebrants in the Lord’s Mysteries;
And also reverend clergy, honored delegates, all attendees of this Archdiocesan Assembly of the Archdiocese of Canada, my beloved children in the Lord:
Christ is in our midst!
The person, the family, the Church—the Body of Christ. The theme of this archdiocesan assembly is both profound and timely.
Contemporary Western culture is fixated almost exclusively on the first of these categories, that of the person. And here, the human person is understood not as the true self hidden in Christ with God, and not even as a unique hypostasis of our common nature, created by God in harmony with that nature, made in his image. Instead, the person is understood as a blank slate devoid of inherent meaning, a self-fashioning subject, a mere persona, a mask with nothing underneath. The human person for many of our neighbors is not a symbol, not a microcosm, not a mystery, not a participant in that which is Greater, but an end unto itself, a sign with no referent.
And to the extent that our culture indulges the notion of family, it does so in an analogous way. The family is a customizable and arbitrary arrangement, pointing to nothing beyond itself, arranged at the will of its participants for no purpose beyond fleeting desire.
Of course, for us, the person is not self-made; the family is neither an accident of nature nor an arbitrary personal-social arrangement. The origin and end of both the person and the family are found in the Church, the Body of Christ. This Body is not fashioned of itself, but made by God, the one who is himself beyond all creation, beyond all that is made, beyond all that is fashioned. In the words of St. Paul, “when Christ came into the world, he said … a Body hast thou prepared for me.”
That we should be members of that Body, the Church, in harmony with the other members, is the will of God. For it is his will that the Body should have many members, hands and feet and arms and legs and the rest all working under the direction of the head, which is Jesus Christ himself.
In other words, if the person is ultimately understood as part of a whole, as part of the Church, nevertheless the person still has his own unique role to fulfill, a role not of his own making, but a role to which he is called. And this is the mystery of Christian vocation: it is both personal and universal.
Our personal distinctions are not obliterated in Christ, but rather they are harmonized. Just as God made the Body as a whole, so does he call each of us to our role in the Body—for a calling, a vocation, always implies someone who calls, and that someone is the Lord himself. In so doing, he arranges for the universal without doing away with the unique and the personal.
Ultimately, the answer to the existential questions posed by the times and their mores is found in the concept of Christian vocation. Vocation is the means by which we each accomplish self-realization—which is to say, finding our true selves, not in our own shortsighted, perishing, temporal passions, but in Christ, who is from everlasting to everlasting—and do so in harmony with God and man, who are united in the Church.
And a primary location where vocations are nurtured and practiced and brought to maturity is the family. The family is a place of cooperation, where biological life is conceived and born and nurtured. It is also a place where, ideally, biological life—the life of parents and their children, indeed, the life of all the members, each with his own role—is offered up to God. Family should be a place where the life of the Church is realized on a small scale, where βιος, mundane life, is transformed by grace and the Spirit and becomes ζωη, authentic and unquenchable life. A family is thus both made and called to be an icon of the Church, which is itself the great family of God and the ultimate locus of the eternal life-giving power of the Trinity.
Therefore, as we reflect on this theme of “person, family, and Church” during the present assembly, and as we bring the work of this assembly back to our parishes and missions and monastic communities, I suggest that we do so while pondering our own vocations and the question of vocation more broadly.
As an individual, what is my vocation, my calling, especially as understood within the context of my parish, mission, or monastic community? As a community, what is our calling, especially as understood with respect to our role within the archdiocese? As an archdiocese, what is our calling within the context of the Orthodox Church in America? And as the Orthodox Church in America, what is our vocation, understood within the context of global Orthodox Christianity, the communion of local Churches of which we are a part, and also understood vis-à-vis our non-Orthodox Christian neighbors? So many of them remain ignorant of God’s call, and to them we are bound to announce the Gospel in its full saving power and in the spirit of holiness.
At this point, it may seem that I am leaving you with more questions than answers, but this is not the case. The precise nature of our vocation may be open, but we know that vocation is harmonious, across time and space and unto eternity, with the vocation of the Body as a whole. As we seek to discern God’s will, we do not rely primarily on the signs of the times, and even less so do we reason based on our own inclinations and intuitions. Rather, we rely foremost on the revelation of God’s will as revealed in the holy Scriptures, the apostolic deposit, the patristic witness, the lives and writings of the saints.
If we knock, it will be opened; if we seek, we will find. If we devote ourselves to discerning our vocation, on every level, with faith in God in Trinity, who is revealed to us in the Church, we will not fail to receive illumination. For though vocation is unique, it is also universal, and across the ages God calls his people first and foremost to holiness, to a loving and pure relationship with him, the Lord and Creator and Redeemer and Benefactor.
And to him, the Author of our calling, the Head of the Body, the Bridegroom of the Church, be all glory, dominion, and adoration, unto ages of ages. Amen.