Saint Tikhon’s Seminary
September 8, 2024
Greetings to one and all, and especially to you seminarians who have just begun your school year.
Each new school year starts full of excitement and promise, and it is a blessed coincidence, a gift of providence, that the start of the school year here in the United States corresponds, more or less, with the start of the Church year. Everything is new: a week ago we marked the start of a new year, and today the Theotokos is newly born. On September 23rd, the Forerunner will be conceived: in accordance with the angel’s word, new life will sprout from another aged womb. Everything is promised and promising, everything is potential and fulfilling, everything is grace.
I exhort you seminarians, as your semester wears on, as your time at seminary continues, as you graduate and enter, God willing, into careers of service in Church: keep always with you this sense of newness and potential. “Behold, I make all things new,” says the Lord. In the Akathist “Glory to God for All Things,” we sing that the Lord can restore even a conscience turned to ashes.
Hours in the classroom, seasons of study, years of service: we can be tempted to let the grind of life sap our strength and make us old, especially in the intense environment of the seminary. But in the Shepherd of Hermas, the Church appears as an old woman who grows younger with time, until she appears as a beautiful young bride in eternity.
Likewise, we must fix the eyes of our hearts on things above, things to come, so that we are always receptive to the grace and gifts of God, every minute of our lives. Then, even as we age in the body, we are constantly renewed in soul. “Thy youth shall be renewed as the eagle’s,” as the Psalmist sings.
As it is in the new year, so it is always, if we have but the eyes to see and the ears to hear: there is always potential for holiness. There is always an abundance of grace. Truly, God is with us.
With that, I wish all of you a successful semester and many blessed years. May the God of our hearts always sustain you and refresh you throughout the days of your life.