12-04-2020
Sermon and Gospel reading.
Dear brothers and sisters!
I congratulate you all with the great Feast- The Entrance of the Lord in Jerusalem!
The Great Lent is over, and for the complete period of it the Holy Church kept on inviting us to exercise spiritual and physical abstinence. The purpose of these exercises is neither to train our will forces nor exhaust ourselves, but only to help each of us to have a true image of our personalities the way we are, without any illusions and exaggerations.
So, if I exercised myself in a correct way I should have come to the following conclusion:"I cannot do anything myself" rather than "Yes, I'm strong enough to be able to stop eating dairy and meat products, I can endure it". So this period should have revealed how weak I am, and broken my illusions regarding my imaginable forces. I should have discovered that the smallest sin, a passion which I managed to identify and tried to fight appeared to be stronger than I am. I try to fight envy, judgement, malicious thoughts, and with the help of prayer and lent start noticing some positive dynamic - and at the certain moment it suddenly comes out of control demonstrating that it still exists in my soul. And if I truly accept my weakness I need Someone Who could heal my soul and lead it to the correct path. And God hears my cry and my sincere wish to change myself - and He answers "I am your Saviour and your Doctor, and I shall come and heal your soul, that is why I came to this fallen world ". Therefore today together with other people suffering from their sins as much as I do, I take the palm (or willow) branches and cry to the Lord : "Hosanna! Blessed is he cometh in the name of the Lord!". I welcome my Lord, my Doctor, my Saviour-I have been waiting for You. And the Lord answers:"Yes, I am on my way to you, but please wait, and think, and see what sufferings I had to go through so the whole humanity (and personally you) can get rid of sin and death ".
Today it's a great Feast, but it's a sad Feast at the same time as by welcoming Jesus I see Him off for His cross. I'm aware that He is going through sufferings, tortures, insults which were inevitable in order to restore our sick and fallen human nature.
There I congratulate you all with today's Feast as we meet our Saviour and I invite you to spend following passion week in peace, silence and meditation-we have perfect circumstances for that. We have Gospel, movies, music - it's up to you what to choose. And try to realise and feel what exactly the Lord did for all of us, and for you particularly.
Happy Feast, dear brothers and sisters!
Osanna in the highest to our Lord and Saviour!