ANTHONY OF SOUROZH

ON HEARING AND DOING

en Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh calibre 0.7.53, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6 2.4.2011 8e8fb6fd-4da2-41f6-a43b-d5be75cce725 1.0

Internet Edition of the Electronic Library "Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh" (mitras.ru/).

  I. SERMONS

On the Holy Scriptures

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

The Gospel is read in church at almost every service; at every service we stand before the word of God and think that by doing so we become the people of God. But much more is required of us if we want to be the people of God, the people who can say that the Divine word belongs to them.

The Bible was born in a human community; The Gospel was born in the Church; both the Israeli community and the Church of God existed before the Holy Scriptures appeared. It was from within this community that the knowledge of God, the love of God, the vision of His ineffable beauty, as well as the state and destiny, the formation and calling of man, was born. The people of God are a community that bears witness to something that it knows for certain, which is its life, the object of its love, its joy. The people of the Bible are not the people who read the Bible, faithfully preserve it, and proclaim it; the true people of God, the true people of the Bible, the true people of the Gospel must be a community that can write the Holy Scriptures themselves, preach them from their own experience, give them a beginning, give birth to them. If we are not such a community, we truly do not belong to the Gospel or to the people of God.

Often we console ourselves with the fact that we are a community of prayer, where the word of God is proclaimed, where it is preached; a community that in one way or another strives to live by the word. And yet, if we look around, everything we see testifies to just the opposite; if we were a community from within which, from the depths of experience of which the divine word was born, then to those who hear us repeat it, proclaim it, and preach it, it would be a twofold revelation: a revelation of what is proclaimed, and a revelation that what is proclaimed has become flesh and blood, has become a reality of human life; a community that preaches the Divine word would be a proof of the truth of that Divine word.

Do we see this? Can we say that the community that we are, large or small, is the embodiment of the message we carry, the Good News that Christ has brought to the world? Is it not still true, perhaps more now than in earlier times, that the word of God is blasphemed and ridiculed because of us?