A Sermon for the New Year, by Father Leonidas Contos
The Israelites, frequently in doubt, sometimes in despair, gradually learned to perceive the guiding presence of the Lord even in calamity. God’s Providence becomes quite real to us when we learn to see His mighty hand in all things. It is not right for us to look for signs; but it is essential for us to recognize them when they are given. The difference is enormous. In our own lives there are not likely to be such dramatic signals; nevertheless, if we will strive to be trustful and sensitive, we will not be without assurances that God is watching, and caring.
Equally difficult to perceive is the guidance given us by the Spirit of God that indwells in us, provided we …have not forgotten that “God’s Spirit dwells in (us)” (I Cor. 3:16 RSV). Our soul is not a silent region. Like towering Sinai it is the place where God speaks to us and makes known His will, but also His love. I am sure you will not miss the allegory here: that while Moses listened in the upper reaches of Sinai to the voice of the Living God, in the plain below the people let themselves be seduced by the shrill voices of temptation. Amid such clamor in our lives God is silent.
It is the fashion to envy earlier generations their sense of peace and certainty, so much in contrast to our own tense and anxious times. Surely it is not simply because our age is more complex, for it is also richer in comforts and conveniences. May we not suppose that another age knew greater spiritual ease because it also knew better the comfort and assurance of the Bible? Unhappily for us, this was a gift refined far more in the West than in the East. How sadly we Orthodox have so long neglected the Scriptures. It is a good time, this “beginning of months,” for us to make this admission, and resolve to correct it, for we “have not passed this way before,” and, like the Israelites, have greater need than ever to keep visible the Ark of God’s Covenant with man. It is well to remember that this admonition was not spoken to the people by their commanders at the word of Joshua. It was spoken first by God and then communicated to the people. So it is not a human suggestion, but divine. It is God’s way of renewing His pledges and keeping visible His conditions of the Covenant. Nothing is above God’s law—except God’s love. The ark is the symbol of both.
There is a legend that a Roman conqueror once stormed into the Temple at Jerusalem and demanded from the High Priest the treasure of the Jews. The priest led the general to the Holy of Holies, the room containing the ark, and told him the treasure was inside. Greedily the Roman flung open the doors, expecting to find precious jewels and a hoard of gold. Instead he found some faded scrolls, nothing more. When he realized that the Jews regarded a spiritual possession as their most precious treasure, he was so moved that he left the Temple and the city in peace.
God’s Word, which is not only a set of laws and prohibitions, but above all a constant disclosure of His love, is our most priceless possession. However well provisioned we may think ourselves, however self-reliant and self-possessed, we would be unwise to move into this New Year, itself a gift of grace from God, without a sense of dependence on His guiding and loving presence, for we “have not passed this way before.” Let us accept the gift of the New Year with open and trusting hearts; accept its duties, perform its labors, welcome its mercies, meet its trials, confront its challenges, advancing over the untried ground with courage and good cheer and constant mind. Let neither sorrow nor joy, weakness or flush of success, separate us from our God.
~Adapted from Father Leonidas Contos, In Season and Out of Season: Sermons by Father Leonidas Contos
