December: Day 5: Teaching 1: Venerable Savvas the Sanctified

 

December: Day 5: Teaching 1:
Venerable Savvas the Sanctified
 
(Are We Good Children of the Church?)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. Venerable Savvas, known as "the Sanctified," whose memory is celebrated today, was working one day in a vineyard, cleaning the vines, digging around their roots and watering them with water, which he himself carried from afar with great difficulty. Exhausted by the hot rays of the eastern sun, drenched in his own sweat, he, like a youth, felt great hunger and thirst, leaned against the shade of a nearby tree and raised his heated forehead to heaven. At the top of the tree Savvas saw a beautiful ripe apple, which was now very useful to him for strengthening his strength and for quenching his thirst and hunger. The young gardener plucked the apple and wanted to taste it, but suddenly the thought occurred to him that the time determined for eating the fruit had not yet come. "Temptation!" Savvas said to himself, examining the fruit. "Behold, the apple of paradise was also beautiful and good; but it destroyed my forefathers: they tasted it and thereby transgressed the commandment of God. Do I not now want to do the same thing that our forefathers did in paradise? After all, I too am forbidden by the Holy Church to taste this fruit now... No, as long as I live until my death I will not eat apples because this apple tempted me and almost made me disobedient!" And despite the agonizing hunger and thirst, the wise youth threw the tempting fruit to the ground and led a most restrained and cautious life, subjecting every thought, every feeling and deed to strict analysis and self-condemnation. Of course, he knew that it is not a sin to eat apples; he even remembered the apostolic word that a laboring worker must first taste the fruits of his labor: but he preferred obedience to both hunger and thirst, and to the beauty of a ripe apple.

II. We do not sin at all, my beloved brethren in Christ, if we call Venerable Savvas a good, obedient son of the Mother Church.

Let us ask ourselves: are we good children of our Mother the Church?

We call the Church our "Mother", but do we love and honor her as children? Are we faithful and obedient to her, as children? Do we fulfill her laws and statutes, as good children fulfill the commands of their parents? Do we keep her rules, as obedient children in a pious family keep them? Our life, our deeds, our morals and customs - are they morals and customs bequeathed to us by our Holy Mother - the Church? What shall we answer to these and similar questions? ... Alas, beloved brethren, the touching complaint of the Lord about ancient Israel can just as truly apply to us: "I have begotten children and exalted them; but they have rejected Me!" (Isaiah 1:2-4).

a) Thus, the Church has regenerated us in the Mystery of Baptism; has sealed us with the gift of the Holy Spirit in the Mystery of Chrismation; has received us from the font pure and immaculate, like angels: and we have given an oath - from the day of rebirth until our last breath to remain immaculate, like angels. Where are these angels among us? Where is the purity and immaculateness promised to God and the Church? What is left within us of the sanctity of Baptism, of the grace of Chrismation? ... What more, except the name of Christians? How can we not grieve, and not say with Saint Dimitri of Rostov: “Our hearts have to grieve that many of us are Christians only in name, but our deeds are worse than those of unbelievers; they bear the name of Christians, but their life is bestial. We protect ourselves with the cross of Christ, but we crucify Christ a second time as deicides – we crucify Him with vile, filthy and unclean deeds. In the name of Christ we rejoice, and this holy name, by which we call ourselves, we blaspheme; being Christians, we do not live according to Christianity." In the Mystery of Repentance – how many times have we heard from the lips of the Church the motherly word: “Child, your many sins are forgiven you; go, and sin no more!” But where were we going, and where do we go most often, if not to sin? Where do we hurry from the doors of repentance, if not to the former paths of unrighteousness!”

b) They teach children; but where are those children who, with childish zeal and simplicity, would like to learn from the Mother Church? There are Christians who do not want to know or learn anything pertaining to Christian knowledge. “They have turned grey,” complains one of the great teachers of our Church, the Moscow Metropolitan Platon, “from decrepitude they do not own anything, one foot on the ground, the other in the grave: and what do they know? They should be taught in the same way as infants. But how can we teach those who do not want to learn, who, being Christians, run away from Christian teaching? ... Tell me please: how many now (when we teach the teaching of the Church) - how many people are there now wandering in the streets, drinking in the marketplace, or cheating, or uselessly wandering? Innumerable; and to sit at the foot of Jesus, and listen to His word, then either Mary alone, or very few others with her.” – There are people who call themselves Christians, who, knowing nothing, learning nothing from the Church, themselves want to teach the Church and its children. “Oh, our wretched times!” laments Saint Dimitri of Rostov, “Now the true Church suffers many sorrows from both external and internal enemies, who torment the Church – their mother, blaspheme it and tear themselves away from it, and draw many others along with them into error and destruction... In every city, some other special faith is invented, and already simple, semi-literate people reason about faith and teach according to their own understanding, and in their stubbornness they stand, despising and rejecting the true teachers of the Church.” There are even such Christians who know a lot, willingly learn everything, only one teaching about the salvation of the soul – the teaching of the Church seems superfluous to them: “I have begotten sons and exalted them, but they have rejected Me.

c) And what about churches and divine services? They are either not visited, or visited rarely, or, when visited, they bring there all the vanity and turmoil of worldly, everyday life! What do we hear most often, if not the complaints of the teachers of the Church, who at all times have lamented against lazy or disorderly standing in the churches of God during divine services? “O miracle,” cried Saint Chrysostom of old to his contemporaries, “O miracle! When the secret meal is prepared; when the cherubim stand before it, the seraphim fly around, covering their faces with six-wings, when all the bodiless powers together with the priest pray for you: are you not afraid, are you not ashamed to spend such a terrible hour in conversations and idle talk? Of the one hundred and sixty-eight hours in a week, God has set aside only one hour for Himself: and do you spend that on worldly affairs, and laughter, and conversations?"

d) What can be said about the statutes, laws, and rituals of the Church? If anywhere, then here especially the Church can and has every right to cry out against us: “Hear, O heaven, and hearken, O earth, I have begotten and exalted the sons, but they have rejected Me!” They reject Me in My statutes, which they often mock, they do not heed either the voice of God the Judge, or the voice of their Mother Church. – The Lord once complained about the sons of the Old Testament Church because they disdained all His cares. Woe to us, Christian brethren, if the Lord looks upon us, the sons of the New Testament Church, with His righteous eye, and says to our Holy Mother: leave them alone; why do you cry to Me about these people, about these wild and disobedient children of yours? Let them be to you like pagans and publicans!... Where then will we find refuge? Where shall we find peace for our troubled souls? Who will pray and intercede for us before the terrible and righteous judgment of God?

III. Let us spare our souls, beloved brethren; let us spare our time before the grave and our eternity beyond the grave. If we do not wish to listen to the teachings of the Church, at least let us not despise what we do not know. If we do not keep the statutes of the Church, at least let us admit that we sin gravely. If we do not honor the rites, at least let us not mock them. In deep contrition and repentance let us beseech the Lord for mercy, and in the motherly voice of the Church: We have sinned, we have transgressed, we have forgotten Your commandments, and we have followed our evil thoughts, and we have lived unworthy of the calling and the gospel of Your Christ, as we have become a reproach to the Christian name and the Church. Therefore we have shut up Your mercies, and Your love for mankind... But forgive us, O Lord, have mercy, O Lord, and do not give us up completely, because of our iniquities: for Your mercy is ineffable, and Your love for mankind is invincible!

Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.