Midlothian, Virginia
August 31, 2014
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today this holy temple celebrates its patronal feast in honor of that great Father of the Church, Cyprian of Carthage. Perhaps above all Saint Cyprian is known as a defender of the unity of the Church. He proclaimed that unity to be both in this world and in eternity, and he defended that unity both in theory and in practice.
And our source of unity in the Church, as Saint Cyprian teaches, together with the entire apostolic and patristic tradition, is Christ himself, through whom we are adopted unto the one Father. As the saint teaches in his treatise on the Lord’s Prayer, “the Teacher of peace and the Master of unity” taught us to pray as one because “he himself bore us all in one,” such that, “restored by the nativity of spiritual grace, [we] have begun to be sons of God.”
We are one Church, one Bride, because we have one Savior and Bridegroom, Christ, and one Father in heaven, and we are animated by one Spirit. Thus, unity is more than proper to the Church.
Consider today’s Gospel, and the story of the tax and fish. The Lord commands Peter to catch a fish and take a coin from its belly, and to use that to pay the temple for both of them. The Lord is declaring to Peter that they are both sons of the kingdom, and that Peter’s debts are covered, and his freedom paid for. By whom? By Christ himself, who is so often represented as a fish in early Christian symbolism, and whose precious Blood, coming forth like a priceless coin, paid the price of our redemption.
Thus, we are all united in him who paid the price for our common salvation, and in whom we are presented to our heavenly Fathers as adopted sons.
Though unity is proper to the Church, part of its origin and present and final destiny, this does not mean that unity in this life is somehow automatic, any more than abiding in the Church during this life is automatic. We can fall away from unity, and we can fall away from the Church. We recall those words of Saint Cyprian, that in this life we have “begun to be sons of God.” Simply to be sons of God is something proper to the next world, to the life to come.
Thus, to be sons of the heavenly Father, we must labor to maintain the unity of the Church. Here I am not referring to the lofty matters of relationships between Sees and Patriarchs and the like. Instead, I am referring to the unity of mind and heart within our immediate community, within our parish, our worshipping community, our particular assembly, our local manifestation of the fullness of the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Eastern Orthodox Church.
This unity for which we strive begins with a common profession of the Orthodox faith in its fullness. When we cling to private opinion over the consensus of the Church—or when we make private opinion into a criterion of the faith even in the absence of consensus—we sin against unity.
We also sin against unity when we absent ourselves from the gathering of the Church without good reason. To be united to the Church is to participate in her common worship, as Saint Cyprian again underscores, saying, “Our prayer is public and common; and when we pray, we pray not for one, but for the whole people, because we the whole people are one.”
But we also sin against unity every time we fail to bear one another’s burdens. If we unite for prayer on weekends and feast days but otherwise live entirely separately and atomistically, are we truly one people, truly united in an everlasting bond? Unity dictates that we help one another, show concern for one another, lift up one another in prayer both in the temple and in our closets. We use our gifts and talents for the good of all, starting with our families, but extending through our parish and into the surrounding community and, indeed, into the world.
Our unity does not and must not consist merely in words, but in deeds: it is the unity of a living Body, filled with the Breath of the Spirit, doing the works of the Head, which is Christ. And we know, as Christ himself says in Saint John’s Gospel, that his works are also the works of the Father. Thus, as Orthodox Christians, as members of the Orthodox Church, everything we do should ultimately originate from and express, insofar as possible, unity bound by faith and love, in the image of the loving unity of the Trinity itself.
When we strive towards this unity, when we aim to do the works of our Father—not, as Saint Cyprian says, “my Father,” but our Father—then we also work towards the fulfillment of the rest of the most sacred of prayers. “Hallowed be thy Name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.” All of these petitions, the saint teaches, refer not so much to the Lord, but to us.
Of course his Name is holy—but is it made holy in us? Of course he always reigns—but do we reign with him? Of course his will is and ever shall be done—but do we cooperate with that will, or do we resist it?
In baptism we died with Christ and thus we were united with him. Now, as baptized Orthodox Christians, anointed with the Spirit that proceeds from the Father and rests eternally in the Son, we are called to continue to die daily so that we might be united with him daily, cutting off our will for the sake of the will of our heavenly Father, for the benefit and unity of the Church and the upbuilding of the kingdom: the kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, the pre-eternal Unity in Trinity, to whom are due all glory and adoration, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.
Holy hieromartyr Cyprian, pray to God for us!