Homily One for the Reception of the Lord
By St. John of Kronstadt
By St. John of Kronstadt
"Now let Your servant depart in peace, Master, according to Your word" (Luke 2:29).
The present feast of the Reception of the Lord is so called because the Righteous Elder Symeon, who lived in Jerusalem, received the forty-day-old Infant, the Lord Jesus Christ, with His most pure Mother in the Jerusalem Temple, took Him in his arms and said: "Now let Your servant depart in peace, Master, according to Your word, for my eyes have seen Your salvation which You have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel” (Luke 2:29–32). This Elder was wondrous in his holiness, for the Holy Spirit always dwelt in him, in his enlightenment, and in his old age – he was three hundred and sixty years old. It can be said that, beyond the law of nature, the grace of God miraculously preserved him for so long.
This is what Church history tells about this Holy Elder. When Ptolemy, the King of Egypt, who lived almost 300 years before Christ, the founder of the famous Alexandrian library, wanted to translate the Bible from Hebrew into Greek, he sent a request to the Jewish high priest. The high priest chose seventy men from among the Israelites, wise and skilled in both languages. Among them we find the Righteous Symeon. While translating the book of the Prophet Isaiah, when Symeon reached the prophecy: "Behold, the Virgin will conceive in the womb and bear a Son" (Is. 7:14), he doubted, and stopping, reasoned with himself - how can a virgin give birth to a child? Then he took a knife and wanted to erase the prophecy in his manuscript. Suddenly an Angel of the Lord appeared to him and, holding his hand, says to him: "Believe what is written. You yourself will see the event of the greatest mystery, for you will not see death until you see Christ the Lord, who is to be born of the most pure Virgin." Having been confirmed in the words of the Angel and the Prophet, from that time Symeon with ardent desire awaited the coming of Christ: he lived righteously and blamelessly and constantly prayed to God. When the newborn Savior after forty days was brought to the Temple by the Mother of God, then Symeon, knowing from above that this infant is the promised Savior and His Mother is the Holy Virgin, in whom the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled, with reverence and joy he took the Lord into his arms and uttered the words spoken. Then, having thanked God, who gave consolation to Israel, he gave up his spirit. This is why the Lord so extraordinarily prolonged his days, i.e., so that he could live until that year in which the timeless, beginningless God was born in the flesh. We have happiness and blessedness no less than Symeon, and even more; for with our lips and hearts we receive the Lord Jesus Christ when we partake of His Mysteries.
On what occasion was the feast of the Reception of the Lord established? For it was not established soon after the Lord's ascension into heaven and the descent of the Holy Spirit, like some other feasts: Pascha, Nativity, Theophany, Ascension and Pentecost, but almost 500 years after the Nativity of Christ. Here is the occasion: during the unfortunate year of the reign of Justinian, in the last days of October, a plague broke out in Constantinople and the surrounding countries and raged so severely that at least ten thousand people died daily, and in some places there was such desolation that there was no one to bury the dead. And in Antioch, in addition to this plague, terrible earthquakes continued, repeated several times, destroying houses and churches, and many people perished under their ruins. Among other things, the building of the temple collapsed when Euphrasios, Bishop of Antioch, was offering a bloodless sacrifice in it. The city of Pompeiopolis was half destroyed, and the other half was swallowed up by the earth with thousands of inhabitants. To avert this wrath of the Lord, by a special revelation to a certain holy man, a solemn feast of the Reception of the Lord was established. And on February 2, as soon as they began the all-night vigil with the procession of the cross, at that hour the plague passed, the pestilence ceased, the earthquake subsided. This is the kind of wrath of God that our iniquities, our unbelief, our negligence about salvation, our ingratitude, our wickedness and our cruelty bring upon us and upon the earth itself.
O terrible monster - sin! O all-destructive monster – sin! Let us flee in every possible way from this hundred-headed hydra, snake. Let us kill the sins in ourselves! Let us repent incessantly. beloved, and without fasting, repentance and prayer, like a warrior without weapons, a Christian cannot defeat the sin living in him. Amen.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
