ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

Bishop Basil of Amphipolis

Sermon preached  at the Moleben on the final day of the Vicariate Conference, May 28, 2007

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

In the Gospel passage that we have just heard we are told to ‘bring forth fruit’. All of us have probably had this experience of ‘bringing forth fruit’ in one way or another. It is part of our experience. And we know that when we bring forth the fruit of which Christ is speaking in the Gospel, it is in some sense a miracle. It is a wonder. It is something that is exceeds our own powers. And when we reflect on this, we realise that the Church itself and all its life is a continuous miracle, something which calls forth in us wonder. This miracle is something that is known essentially from within. We know it in our hearts. It cannot really be seen from outside but only experienced from within.

These miracles are signs that speak to us of Christ, that speak to us of God. There is a passage in the Gospel where Christ is confronting the Jews, and he says to them: ‘An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of the prophet Jonah.’ Here Christ is talking of his own Resurrection, of course, but we can go further. We too can be given such a sign, the sign of Jonah, in a form that can be recognised from within. We too can see the Resurrection of Christ take shape within our own lives.

There is an arrow, a line that runs from the Crucifixion to the Resurrection and to Pentecost, joining them together. No one of them can be understood apart from the others. For the gift of the Spirit, which Christ receives in its fullness at his Resurrection, is ‘the promise of the Father’ to us all, something that we, as heirs of the Apostles, are given in the life of the Church. And yet it is also something into which we must enter more and more deeply as time goes on, because the world as whole is itself moving towards its own final Pentecost and renewal: ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ Christ is working in this world, working in our own hearts, in such a way that in the end he will be victorious over all that is dark in this world, all that is dark in us, and will be surrounded by those who know him, who love him, and who are his Church, his Body, his members. We have in Psalm 143:5, which we read every day in Matins, that marvellous phrase: ‘O Lord … I muse upon all thy works.’ These ‘works’ are not just the works of Creation. They are also God’s works of re-creation, which take place in ourselves. We should not forget what we experience, what we live in the life of the Church, because it is this that keeps us alive, keeps us going. So let us include this Conference among those works of the Lord on which we muse; let us take from it a sense of oneness and commitment; may it be a true source of strength, something we can carry with us. We don’t have to leave it behind. We can carry it with us and in that way be constantly in touch with that continuing miracle which is the life of the Church. Amen.