Sermon on 10th Sunday of Pentecost
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
“I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you” (Matthew 17:20), says our Lord Jesus Christ in today’s Gospel reading, thus showing us the power of faith.
Faith is the link that connects man with God, and with God all things are possible.
A miracle is an event that takes place contrary to the ordinary laws of nature. But what are the laws of nature? The world is upheld by God’s hand, from the tiniest particles of matter to the galaxies. God’s Spirit gives everything life and motion, preserves everything in order and harmony.
The laws of nature should not be understood as dead forces; they are a living manifestation of God’s providence in the world. God established these laws, and through them He sustains the order of the universe.
But God Himself is not subject to any laws. “Wherever God wills, the order of nature is overthrown,” as the Church hymn says. Of course, such a change in the natural order happens very rarely; and this is what we call a “miracle.”
It is natural for creation to obey its Creator. Miracles are natural to a believer, because he sees God everywhere and in everything; and where God is, everything is miraculous. “Thou art the God Who does wonders” (Psalm 77).
A believer sees God everywhere: in visible nature, in the circumstances of his own life and in the lives of others, and in human history. A believer sees God also in his inner world, in his soul. As the invisible soul lives and acts in the body, so the invisible God is present in the material world, acts within it, preserves it, and gives it life.
Faith can be called spiritual vision. Just as we see material objects with our physical eyes, so we see the spiritual world with the eyes of faith. But for the unbelieving person, there is nothing beyond material things. The lack of faith is a kind of blindness.
Unbelieving people do not accept miracles; they always search for a natural explanation for everything. The very idea of a miracle, as something beyond the ordinary order of nature, seems to them absurd and impossible.
St John of Kronstadt says in his book My Life in Christ:
“The more a man leads a spiritual life, the more he begins to see God in everything; he sees himself always and everywhere abiding in God and depending on God even in the smallest matters. But the more a man leads a fleshly mode of life, the more fleshly he becomes: he doesn’t see God in anything, not even in the most wonderful manifestations of His divine powers. He sees flesh and matter in everything; and nowhere, nor at any time, ‘is God before his eyes.’” (Psalm 36)
The Saints lived every day in an atmosphere of miracles. A witness described how St Seraphim of Sarov once planted vegetables in his garden, and by the evening of the same day he had already harvested the crop. While he was still alive, St Seraphim appeared, not merely in a vision but bodily, to people in distant places, while remaining in his cell at the Sarov Monastery.
How can we strengthen our faith? The Holy Apostle Paul answers this question: “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). Thus, our faith will become stronger if we listen to or read the Holy Scriptures and other spiritual books, and ponder what we read.
Can we learn anything if we never study a subject? It is impossible. The same is true of the Christian life: the more we pay attention to the spiritual world, the more it becomes real and close to us.
Spiritual reality is opposed to the visible world. If we concentrate our attention on the spiritual, our faith becomes more vivid. On the contrary, when we concentrate exclusively on the visible and material world, the spiritual world becomes, for us, as though it does not exist, and our faith weakens.
Finally, we should often pray to God to strengthen our faith, as the Apostles asked the Lord: “Increase our faith” (Luke 17:5), because faith is God’s gift.
Amen.
