In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!
This Sunday coincides with the feast of St. Elias, the Holy Prophet of God. Prophet Elias was a great and awesome visionary of the God’s will and God’s truth, he made it aim of his life to protect his people from the pagan attraction and fought with the false pagan artificial faith by the power of his prayer, by the power of his word and his wonder-working power.
Today, on Sunday a passage from the first chapter of the 1st Epistle to Corinthians is to be read. Aposlte Paul addresses the residents of the ancient Corinth and says: Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you. (1 Corinthians 1. 10). The Apostle calls them to be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment (cf. 1 Corinthians 1. 10). And his words are not occasional, because the young Church of Corinth divided in itself: for many preached in this famous city – one of the centers of the Greek and Roman world of that time, and each wanted to follow one’s own preacher – some wanted to follow Paul, others – Peter and others - Apollos. And Apostle Paul exclaimed: Is Christ divided? (1 Corinthians 1. 13) and called, and besought the Corinthian Church to be one Church in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Celebrating this Sunday, the commemoration day of the Holy Prophet Elias, the festive Divine Liturgy in the ancient Chersonese, near the place of Baptism of the Holy and Right-believing Prince Vladimir, we certainly recall this event. In the place we are standing now the Great Prince entered the baptismal font and coming out from it cast off the spiritual blindness together with physical one. He became a new man - he accepted the truth of Christ and dedicated his life to the same objective as St. Prophet Elias did – to the struggle with paganism.
How wonderful it is that both events coincided in this festive divine service of today: both the commemoration of St. Prophet Elias, and of St.Prince Vladimir, and the wonderful epistle reading on the church unity - all these thoughts combine and supplement one another
It might seem that the struggle with paganism is no longer topical. The Church of Christ has existed for two thousand years, for two thousand years it has called the people to the high divine ideal of life, indicated by Christ Himself. It might seem that there is nothing simpler than that: just follow this ideal, try to embody it in the life and to receive from God what he promised everyone who loved and heard His word. And the Lord promised “they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly” (cf. John 10. 10) – the fullness of human being, which started here, in this earthy human reality, and transcends to eternity, to never-fading Kingdom of God. The Lord promised us breathtaking perspective of life, which is not limited to 70 or 80 years of human life. What other false Gods and idols can there be, what power can obscure this perspective of the eternal life?
But we know that the idols are still alive and they obscure this perspective. Not long ago such an idol was the human idea combined with political practice. Such a combination of an idea with political practice is called ideology. That ideology has formed its values, created its idols. The idol is a man-made god, physically made by human hands, and then molten images appear unto which the poor blinded people bow. But the idol may appear as a result of the other human activity – of the mental one, and then the false values and ideologies arise, shielding the way of man to God. Like the veneration of the idols in times of prince Vladimir was connected with blood, being accompanied with human sacrifices and diabolic licentious feasts, the same way the human ideologies bring human victims to the altar of the idols – the lives lost for the earthy life and for the Kingdom of God.
It might seem all that remained in the past, and there is no danger of idolatry now. This is a most profound delusion, since even now the people are making idols with their hands, the hand-made gods, big and small: it is a new psychology of being and the new philosophy of life, connected with obligatory wealth, success, power and money, appealing not to the mind, but to the stomach and purse of a man, which connects the fullness of life with satisfaction of these very passions. In modern man’s notion life with abundance is when one eats up to the chin what he wants, when one satisfies all the instinctive needs without limitations, when one acquires all one wants to, when one gets as much power as one may hold. In order to venerate these idols it is not only the power of people, but of communities and states get mobilized.
And what happens to the community of men when people venerate idols instead of God? The idols liberate the instincts and passions. The people obeying the laws of passions cannot live together. They can exploit one another – materially, physically and spiritually; they can also exploit their instincts and to squeeze power and money out of it, but the idolatry is unable to unite people, because the basis for unification is always the desire of people to be together. It can be done when the people are united by the same ideal, common values. The Church of Christ provides these common values and ideals.
We pray at the walls of the church built in 900 years after the baptism of Prince Vladimir and which has been beautifully restored recently. It is our joint national shrine, the shrine of our whole nation. The Church, proclaiming the highest ideals, calls people to keep at the same time the sanctity of life as well as the symbols, relating to manifestations of this sanctity.
The people should get united around that. And if they try to unify, obeying the law of passion and venerating the false gods, the dangerous ideas are laid in the foundation of this union, which not so much unite as divide people.
All of us kwon well from life experience and our everyday life, when sometimes, gathering at home with friends we start slag our other friends off, and feel a kind of solidarity being encouraged. If someone says “that one is bad”, and you agree with him, you get a kind of closer to him. There is even a notion – to be friends against somebody. Very often they try to unite people opposing them to some enemy, defining as enemy the one who is not. Every union of people against someone is a diabolic union. It does not bear the test of time, it destroys the healthy tissue of social relations, as a cancerous growth it penetrates in the life of a nation and then blows up with a bloody eruption. It is a fearful union, and turning to history is enough to see the price of all those unions, built on lie and hatred, on the search for enemies and on indoctrination in people’s consciousness of the idea that there is a common enemy and we have to unite. All of that is idolatry.
And here, at the sacred walls of the church, standing in the place of baptism of the Holy Prince Vladimir, one unwillingly recollects the example of his life. Having come out of the baptismal font, he began to join people, not by the sword and fire, but by the word of love and truth – and created Great Motherland from one sea to another, which had no equals in Europe. Having taken in the basics of the Christian culture and faith, he was able to embody this precious gift in the life of his nation, having laid foundation of the great eastern Christian civilization, to which we are all lucky to belong, the unity and integrity of which one feels especially strong here, in the land of ancient Chersonese.
“I beseech you, brethren, in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ” – what amazing words of apostle these are! He pleaded to be united, have common judgment, not to fall in idolatry, not to build their lives proceeding from the false and dangerous ideas, leading to confrontations, divisions, sufferings and bloodsheds. We believe that it is not by chance that on the commemoration of St. Prophet Elias, on the Sunday when these ardent words of Apostle Paul are recalled, we met with you and unified in prayer in the place o baptism of the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir. Let’s pray that God granted our people the power to overcome temptations of idolatry, to preserve spiritual unity commanded by Apostle Paul, to preserve orthodox faith, the seeds of which were sowed by the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir, to preserve spiritual treasures and values upheld in our land.
And we believe that the Lord will send down His mercy on us. We believe that in response to our faith, to the desire to live in accordance with His laws he will strengthen all of us, help us overcome conflicts and divisions, born by human sin and historical circumstances, and will help us to keep this great spiritual unity. Only bearing on this unity we can successfully follow the way that the Lord Himself opened before us, by which God, having shown it to the Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir, gave all of us a possibility to move forward to His Divine and unfading Kingdom. Amen.
