Hey, everyone, I'm glad that you're tuning in. I'd like to say a word to you about this icon and death. This is one of my favorite icons. It's called the Plundering of Hades. It has a picture of Our Savior. This is great and holy Saturday, the day after the Crucifixion, an icon of our Savior descending with great speed and force into the lower regions of the earth into Hades. You can see his clothing just blowing in the back.
He has his hand out. Bless him because these are all the righteous who have been waiting for the coming of Christ to deliver them from death. And over here is this nasty demon who's holding a collection of our record of our sins. And notice Christ is tearing it in half, the Certificate of Cancelation. Saint Paul describes this in his Epistle to the color Aussians, that Jesus tore it up atoning for our sins on the cross and erasing our debt. He's coming to knock down the doors
of hell and to pull everyone up and out. He is our champion. He's the only one who has gotten into the ring with death, and one he crushed it. This day is that I'm giving you this reflection. This is the day we call the Saturday of Souls. It's the Saturday before the Sunday of Pentecost, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the Saturday of Souls takes place two days in the year, one before the Great Judgment
Sunday and then one before Pentecost. On this day, we gathered together this morning for the liturgy, and we made a universal commemoration for all our forefathers in the faith, for righteous and pious kings, patriarchs, bishops, priests, hiro monks, deaconshirodeacons, monks, nuns, forbears, parents, grandparents, great grandparents, godparents, and all the faithful from the beginning
unto the end of time. Orthodox Christians all over the world turn in the names of their loved ones, their friends who have gone to the next life, and they give these papers to the priests full of names, and the priests spend hours making commemorations by name of all of our departed. Death and facing death is something that the Church insists that her children do. We don't do it except in the context of the conqueror of death. I remembered this morning, as I was coming into the
church to celebrate the service. I was stopped by one of our elders in the church, a beautiful woman of our parish, dearly loved, and she had tears pouring down her face because her beloved sister in law had fallen asleep just this morning. We came into the church and we liturgized and drew near to the throne of God, making commemoration of all our departed loved ones. This is our honest Christian life. We follow a principle, a central principle, and the principle is this, the way up is down.
Jesus was very clear, if you want to be great, become small. If you want to be exalted, humble yourself. This is our principle, and of course he modeled it. No one is more humble than the Lord Christ, who, being in the form of God, did not consider his divine stature to be held onto, but humbled himself, taking the form of a man and becoming obedient even to
the death on the cross. He saved us by his great descent, his humble descent to save us, and God highly exalted him and gave him the name that's above every name, that at his name, every niece should bow, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father forever. This is the future. This is the exaltation He was given by the Father for his incredible humility. And that's the pattern for us as Christians. The way up is down. If
you want glory, embrace humility. This is also the case with regards to physical life. If you want to inherit the kingdom of God. If you want to go up in the resurrection, which we believers do and we're confident of doing it by being attached to Christ, the conqueror of death, first we have to dissolve. This is the Christian attitude towards death. Death for us is not what it was before the coming of Christ. Death is a conquered folk. Death has been dissolved. Death now has become
a door for us. Every move that we make towards death and the providence of God should not be resisted. It should be interpreted, it should be understood. Saint John Chrososten puts it this way. He says, every new gray hair, I can pull one on, every new gray hair that you see, receive it. Dance for joy and leap because it is a witness that you are one step closer to the resurrection from the dead. Dear ones, Spiritually we
go up by going down. Salvation is the same way the resurrectional body is given to us when we embrace its dissolution, when we cooperate with God in the medicine of decomposition and death. We don't resist it. We trust God about it. We embrace God's will, knowing that we first must be dissolved so that we can be remade
gloriously resurrected in what's coming. And keeping this in your mind, keeping the reality of death, instead of being a typical person of the secular falling West that tries to run from death, pretend it doesn't exist, spend a fortune on trying to keep your skin from getting wrinkled or your hair from turning gray. Give it up. Die to that nonsense, all born of the fear of death, with no gospel in it at all. Instead, we believers, We trust God.
We trust God. Embrace humility as the path of glorification. Embrace God's providence in your life. He's numbered your days. You don't have to fear. Death has been conquered. We can live in the light of the Resurrection. This last week, a dear friend of mine and a dear friend to many believers and unbelievers all over America passed away. He was an incredible person and a devoted Orthodox Christian who
helped so many people become Orthodox Christians. I was very touched to read a number of eulogies and articles written about his life. And in one of the articles it had a touching word in which his son, who was speaking to him about whether he was ready to die and what did he think about dying. He had received a diagnosis is only about a week previous, a very serious diagnosis, and his son wanted to know what his
father thought about dying. And he said to him, son, I have lived my whole life in the light of the Resurrection, for the Resurrection, and I'm not going to stop now. This is the Christian mentality. This is why if you read the Ladder of Divine Ascent, you'll see that the very seventh step is the remembrance of death. It's impossible to live the Christian life a single day if you don't consider that it may be your last.
This is the teaching of the church. This is the teaching of Saint John of Sinai in the ladder of divin ascent. This is how we live, dear ones, So don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Instead, trust God with your life. Recognize that the way up is the way down. Live by the principle of your faith. I'll end with just the word about the epistle Lesson today Today in the church was the last reading from the Acts of the Apostles, all through Poscletide from Pasca until today, the
Saturday of Souls before Pentecost. For fifty days we've been reading lesson after lesson from the Acts of the Apostles, because the Acts of the Apostles show us the impact that Jesus's death and resurrection had on the community of believers. His disciples were completely changed by his death and his resurrection, and you see the life of the Christian Church laid out very clearly, and it's very potent the witness of
the Christians towards death. The reading today was Saint Paul on his way in a boat to Rome, where he would stand trial and ultimately give his life. The boat ran aground. Everyone was frightened because they thought they were all going to die by shipwreck, but Paul was very calm and he prayed, and God sent an angel to tell him that they were going to be completely fine.
Paul was untraumatized by death. When they got out on the island, Paul was making a fire and a serpent came and bit his hand, wrapped itself around his hand, and everyone thought that he was a murderer, that he was going to die, and he just shook off the serpent. And then people who were on the edge of death brought their sick and dying people, and Paul laid his hands on them and cured them. God was using an apostle to proclaim the reality of a new relationship to
death in the church. And then the account ends with Paul fearlessly in prison awaiting his trial in Rome, and we know how it ended with his own martyrdom and beheading. He wrote just before he died, he wrote from prison to his spiritual son, and he said that the time had come and that there was laid up for him by the Lord a crown of righteousness which he was going to award him. He had no fear. He trusted in the Lord God. This is the way up, dear ones,
the way up is now. God be with you. Hey everyone, I hope you've downloaded the Patristic Nectar app on your phone. It is a treasure trove of soul nourishing content, and I hope you'll consider becoming a regular donor to patristic Nectar today