**Nativity** Archpriest Vsevolod Dutikow: Two Spiritually Nourishing Sermons

Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2015
Subject: **Nativity** Archpriest Vsevolod Dutikow: Two Spiritually Nourishing Sermons
From: Sbn. Ilarion Marr
To: 

Sermon on the Sunday of the Holy Fathers Archpriest Vsevolod Dutikow, Rector, Holy Trinity Church, Astoria, NY

[which was on the Sunday before the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ] 

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

          I enter the church and hear the hymns of the Church.  Their meaning, their words I repeat as if they were my own.  I am as one with them and share their meaning, as the sacred writer of these prayers expresses thoughts and feelings that I recognize as my own thoughts and feelings.  His writings, though his own, have been accepted as the fabric of Christ’s Church, that is confirmed by Christ.

          Christ accepted them as His own.  Therefore, when I live my life according to the hymns of the Church, I live a life in Christ.  I take joy in the coming feast days.  The Church calls me to this, the Church desires that we rejoice in its feast days. 

          For what reason?  Simply to provide us with pleasure?  No.  That is not enough, it would have no value and not be worthy of the Church.  Our pleasures are transient and ordinary, while the Church is devoted to the eternal and actual.  All the feast days of the Church are filled with one joy or another; complete, sincere, edifying and soul-nurturing.  The joys experienced in one or another historic moment by the more worthy of us.  Those who have joined with Christ and become one with Him, and in so doing, laid the path to Christ for us. 

          In that way the Church desires that we in our commemorations of the feast days experience that which they lived through and join them in what they endured and in that way become one with Christ.  The regimen of the Church is dedicated to that purpose.  A person bound by his body cannot experience that which is experienced by the heavenly angels.  We must try in any way we can to be like them.  That is the purpose of the high moral standards of Christianity, as only the pure in heart will come to see God.  Amen

Nativity Epistle Archpriest Vsevolod Dutikow Rector, Holy Trinity Church, Astoria, NY       

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

Dear brothers and sisters!

Our Lord was born on this day, let us rejoice and be glad.  No one may be sad on this day, no matter what sorrow, what loss they may be suffering, for this day is a feast of life for everyone.  Fear of death is no more, because in the love that was revealed to us by Christ there is no fear and He bestows upon us all the joy of eternal life.  Everyone will partake of this joy, for the reason for this joy is shared by all.  May all the saints rejoice today, for this is their day of celebration.  May sinners rejoice, for they are called to receive absolution.  May those who do not know God cease their despair, for they are called to life.  May the angels in their joy become even more joyful and intone “Glory be to God in the highest” and bestow peace on earth to those who love God.

            The love of God, our Savior was revealed to us on this day.  If this had not happened, we would not know of God’s ways in this world and His intentions for mankind.  What is left to us as we stand in this church bright as the sky and in this world dark as hell?  We must confess that the Nativity of Christ is that of God.  We may not separate ourselves from the world, as God sent His Son to save this world.  No matter how disfigured this world is by sin, we may not despise nor avoid it.  No matter what may happen in this world, it is still the world which He created and which He loves so much that He came to save it.  We must be a part of it and toil and pray and confess that God is present in it.

            May we never forget that to be a Christian means to be with Christ and to go with Him to the poor and bear their joys and pains.  May we learn to pray such a prayer so that the prayer may reveal to us the sufferings of mankind and that these sufferings, when we share them, be illuminated by the light of the Nativity night and the dawn of the Resurrection.  The Nativity of Christ is called the Pascha of the Lord by the Holy Church.  We understand God as we have never understood Him before and we understand mankind as we could never have even imagined.

            The miracle of the Nativity of this Child, whom the Mother of God holds in Her embrace, is that God and man became one.

            Amen.