May 26, 2023
“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God; believe also in me.”
These words, from the Lord’s farewell discourse, were read at Divine Liturgy this morning. On the one hand, these words seem simple, even obvious, almost a spiritual bromide: don’t worry, just trust Jesus.
And yet these words also contain perhaps one of the most difficult lessons in the Christian life: namely, that we really should not worry, and that we really should place our firm trust in the goodwill, providence, and saving power of our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ.
Of course, no Christian would claim otherwise, and that’s why these words, were they not the words of the God-man himself, might sound almost trite.
Yet there is a great difference between paying lip-service to these words of untroubled trust in the Savior and truly living in accordance with them. Particularly for those who are called to serve the church in positions of leadership, especially as clergy, these words can be a challenge, and even a rebuke.
The truth is, it is all too easy for us to substitute our own goals for God’s will, to substitute our own agenda for God’s plan, to substitute our own priorities for the work of building God’s kingdom.
And when we make these substitutions, we are we trading our birthright as sons of the light for a pottage of lentils worthy only of servants of the world.
More than this, we are ensuring that our hearts will be constantly troubled, since we are striving to establish our own will rather than resting on the everlasting arms of one whose will is established from eternity.
How much parish conflict, how much burnout among clergy and lay leadership, how much strife between bishops and the flocks they oversee, is due to one or more parties losing sight of the search for God’s will and replacing that search with the false certainty of a human proposition or project?
And so, both to those seminarians who graduate today and to those seminarians who will return for another semester or more, I offer these words of the Lord Jesus Christ as an encouragement, even as a suitable motto for Church leadership:
“Let not your hearts be troubled, but find rest in the will of God; believe in God the Father, his Son Christ the Lord, and the All-holy Spirit.”
This trust in the will of God should be made all the easier by the fact that God’s will is, in many cases, explicitly revealed to us. He has given us the commandments and the Old and New Covenants, the teachings of the Fathers, the writings of the ascetics, the sacred words of the divine services. Through them, we can understand that tenets of moral and ethical behavior, we can comprehend the foundations of wisdom, we can grasp the outlines of Orthodox doctrine, we can be trained in the ways of right worship, we can know the path of obedience to and union with God. We learn the primacy of faith, hope, and love, the greatest of all.
Those of us who are or will be pastors of the Church can also learn how shepherds should conduct themselves: They should feed the sheep, strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bind up the cripple, bring back the stray, seek the lost, rule with gentleness, with neither force nor harshness (Ezek. 34:2–4).
And of course, all these things—right behavior, complete wisdom, true doctrine, unblemished worship of the Father, unwavering obedience to the Father, uninterrupted union with the Father, the perfection of faith and hope and love, and the conduct of the true shepherd—all of these things are found in and derive from Christ himself.
To believe in Christ is to strive to be like Christ; to strive toward Christ-likeness is to enter into an ever-deeper union with Christ, and through Christ, with the Father. And where there are the Father and the Son, there also is the Holy Spirit: one God in Trinity.
And so, I urge you all, both you who are commencing and you who will stay a little longer, guard your hearts against worldly troubles by placing your trust in the Lord. Never let a single goal you have in mind for the Church replace the goal of attaining to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Do not replace your lofty calling with something small and short-sighted.
Do not let your own will or ideas govern your ministry of leadership, whatever exact form that ministry takes. Rather, let the image and person of Christ be all in all.
Seek the royal way, the way of moderation and balance, not for its own sake, but for the sake of Jesus Christ, who urges us to stray neither right nor left. Maintain fidelity to the tradition in its fullness; strive toward virtue in every sphere; be gentle with others; aim for wisdom; let faith, hope, and love be supreme.
You have also heard such exhortations this evening from Archimandrite Peter, and we offer our sincere gratitude for his words and for his visit with our friend, Archimandrite Zacharias, bringing to our sacred monastery and seminary the spirit and grace of the monastery of Saint John the Baptist in Essex. I recall that, during one of my visits there, I was told by one of the sisters that, on the day that she was clothed in the monastic schema, Saint Sophrony called her to himself and said to her: “Now you are a true person.” He then explained to her the reason for these words: it was not because she was now a tonsured nun but rather because, as a tonsured nun, her entire body was covered, save for her face. And it is in the human face, he reminded her, that one sees most clearly the image of Christ.
With this in mind, I say to you: do not let your hearts be troubled by the world’s conflicts and categories but always seek the peace of Christ’s image, an image revealed in the faces of the men, women, and children to whom you minister, whom you are called to work alongside and serve. Do not let your hearts be swayed by your own passions and projects: believe in God the Father, and also in Christ Jesus whom he sent, our true God and Savior, ascended into to heaven and seated at the right hand, together with the Spirit, the promised Paraclete to come: to whom be all dominion, majesty, and adoration, unto never-ending ages. Amen.