Speaker 1: Welcome to Hill Country Homilies Weekly Homilies the Holy Anunciation
Speaker 1: Orthodox Church in Liberty Hill, Texas. Holy Annunciation is an
Speaker 1: old calendar Orthodox church sharing the faith of the Apostles
Speaker 1: and the love of Christ with all who seek His truth. Now,
Speaker 1: let's listen to this week's homily.
Speaker 2: I'm the father and Son of the.
Speaker 3: Holy Spirit, Lord of Jesus Christ, Brothers and sisters in Christ.
Speaker 2: I've spoken a couple of times during this Great Lent about.
Speaker 3: The differences in the literary things of Saint jo and
Speaker 3: Christ is done in Saint Basil with grades, and in
Speaker 3: particular the extensive prayers that the priest makes during the
Speaker 3: liturgy of Saint Basery Great and last night as I
Speaker 3: talk about Saint Mary of Egypt, and it's always good
Speaker 3: to talk about Saint Mary. But today, instead of talking
Speaker 3: about Saint Mary of Egypt, I want us to talk
Speaker 3: about the Anaphora prayer of Saint Basil, the break, which I.
Speaker 2: Say mostly to myself.
Speaker 3: Sometimes when the music ends, I'll say it what's left
Speaker 3: of it for you to hear. But I want to
Speaker 3: talk about what is being said as we are preparing
Speaker 3: the gifts for the concentration into the body and Black
Speaker 3: of Christ. Because this is truly the most marvelous prayer
Speaker 3: that I read at the altar, because in a few
Speaker 3: lines about page of the service book, the Naphora prayer
Speaker 3: of Saint Basil proclaims the whole story of our salvation,
Speaker 3: from creation to the fall, to God's patience, guidance through
Speaker 3: the Law and the prophets, and they ultimately the fulfillment
Speaker 3: of all things in Christ.
Speaker 2: And for those who.
Speaker 3: Are preparing for reception to the Church, this prayer is
Speaker 3: a clear teacher. It shows us what went wrong, It
Speaker 3: shows us what God has done to heal it, and
Speaker 3: how we participate in that human even in our divine liturgy.
Speaker 3: A simple way to hear the antha An, AfterAll, is
Speaker 3: just to notice its movement. It begins with who God is,
Speaker 3: then what God has done, and finding how we as
Speaker 3: a fallible humans respond. Is theology, but is also pastoral
Speaker 3: because it teaches us how to pray and how to
Speaker 3: repent and where we put our hope. I'm going to
Speaker 3: breathe through the whole prayer as we go through this
Speaker 3: peace of peace. The prayer starts with this invocation with
Speaker 3: these blessed powers, O Master who loves mankind, we sinners
Speaker 3: also cry aloud and say, Holy art Thou truly most holy,
Speaker 3: And there are no bounds to the magnificence of Thy holiness.
Speaker 3: So Saint Basil begins this prayer with the awe of God.
Speaker 3: God alone truly is. He is eternally, he is holy.
Speaker 3: He is the source of all life, And as the
Speaker 3: scriptures tells, the angels sing before him, Holy, Holy, Holy,
Speaker 3: confessing the earth and heaven to be full of his glory.
Speaker 3: We begin that same prayer in that same manner, himming
Speaker 3: his holiness three times. Prayer continues that are gracious in
Speaker 3: all thy DEAs, for with righteousness and true judgment, thou
Speaker 3: hast ordered all things for us.
Speaker 2: The point is simple.
Speaker 3: God did not create because he lacked anything. He created,
Speaker 3: and then he later redeemed us because of who he is,
Speaker 3: because he is love, because he desires communion with his creatures.
Speaker 2: And this matters in our daily life.
Speaker 3: For if God truly is the one who is, then
Speaker 3: everything else success failure of proved anxiety stops being our
Speaker 3: ultimate end, and that end becomes God. Worship doesn't become
Speaker 3: an escape from reality. It becomes a return to the
Speaker 3: true reality. When we say Holy, Holy, Holy. We're running humility.
Speaker 3: We're creatures, and God is God. And when we proclaim
Speaker 3: the providence of his care for us, that he has
Speaker 3: ordered all things, we acknowledge our opinions on He who
Speaker 3: is our source.
Speaker 2: And precisely there.
Speaker 3: We find humility, and humili enables us to find peace.
Speaker 3: The prayer continues, When thou didst create man by taking
Speaker 3: dust from the earth, and did honor him with thine
Speaker 3: own image of God, Thou didst set him in a
Speaker 3: paradise of delight, promising him eternal life and enjoyment of ever,
Speaker 3: asking blessings in the observance of Thy commandments. That is
Speaker 3: the creation story. Into paradise. God arashion humanity from the dust.
Speaker 3: He honored us with his image and with his likeness,
Speaker 3: and he placed Adam and Eve in paradise, asking them
Speaker 3: to give him the trusting obedience. Our vocation from the
Speaker 3: beginning was life with God, creation and creator in an
Speaker 3: eternal growing from the union of love. Being made in
Speaker 3: God's image is not a compliment that we have earned
Speaker 3: or achieved. It is a gift we received from the beginning.
Speaker 3: It means that we are made for communion with Him.
Speaker 3: We are made capable of love, capable of capable of truth,
Speaker 3: of self offering, but not perfect, which is found in God.
Speaker 3: Com Paradise is not just a place for the past.
Speaker 3: It is for us a sign of God's intention for
Speaker 3: all of humanity. If ever we wonder what our relationship
Speaker 3: to God is intended to be like, we don't need
Speaker 3: to look anywhere beyond the scripture account of the Garden,
Speaker 3: because that is what God entered for humanity, a life
Speaker 3: where grace is normal, where thanksgiving is our first language,
Speaker 3: and where obedience is not based on fear, but based
Speaker 3: on trust and on love.
Speaker 2: But what happened of prayer tells us. But when man.
Speaker 3: Disobeyed me the true God, who had created him, and
Speaker 3: was deceived by the guile of the serpent, becoming subject
Speaker 3: to death through.
Speaker 2: His own transgressions, Thou, o God, and thy.
Speaker 3: Righteous judgment, did send him forth from Paradise into this world,
Speaker 3: returning him to the earth from which he was taken,
Speaker 3: yet providing for him the salvation of regeneration in thy
Speaker 3: Christ himself. When humanity disobeyed and was deceived by the serpent,
Speaker 3: death entered.
Speaker 2: Our life by our actions, and we were exiled from Paradise.
Speaker 3: Yet even In this judgment, God revealed his mercy for
Speaker 3: mankind because he did not abandon his creation.
Speaker 2: He promised a reverth He promised a.
Speaker 3: Savior of Christ and Anah who would crush the serpent
Speaker 3: and restore us to this rightful communion with our creator.
Speaker 2: And notice what the fall looks like. It's not just
Speaker 2: breaking a rule, but it was.
Speaker 3: A turning of the heart of mistrust of God's goodness
Speaker 3: and a grasping for life apart from him. Because what
Speaker 3: happened when God returned? They hit, they hid, They knew
Speaker 3: the sham, and the result is always the same relationships fracture,
Speaker 3: shame increases, death, titans his great. But Saint Basil does
Speaker 3: not let the story in there, because the first word
Speaker 3: after sin is not abandonment, but it is mercy.
Speaker 2: The prayer continues, for Thou did not turn away forever.
Speaker 3: From thy creature, and thou it made or a good one,
Speaker 3: Nor did thou forget the work of thy hands. Through
Speaker 3: the tender compassion of thy mercy. Thou did visit him
Speaker 3: in various ways. Thous did sins prophets that didst perform
Speaker 3: mighty acts by the saints, who every.
Speaker 2: Generation were well pleasing to thee.
Speaker 3: Thou didst speak to us by the mouth of thy
Speaker 3: servants the prophets for telling to us the salvation which
Speaker 3: was to come. Thou didst give us the laws and
Speaker 3: help thou disappoint angels as guardians. Saint Basil emphasizes here
Speaker 3: God's long suffering with its re imbellious creation. He did
Speaker 3: not turn away from your creation because across the generations.
Speaker 3: This prayer tells us, as the Old Testament account does,
Speaker 3: that God visited his people in many ways, through covenants,
Speaker 3: through confets, through saints, through miracles.
Speaker 2: He gave us the law as.
Speaker 3: A guide as a creations a means to tamp and
Speaker 3: down our prideful hearts.
Speaker 2: And he sent angels to be our guardian.
Speaker 3: All this that the hope of the union between man
Speaker 3: and his Creator would remain alive, and that the world
Speaker 3: would be prepared to recognize and receive their savior. Think
Speaker 3: how God educates his people. He preserves Noah through the flood.
Speaker 3: He calls Abraham out of idolatry. He delivers Israel through Moses.
Speaker 3: He raises up kings and judges. He sends prophets to
Speaker 3: heal a nation's memory. When forgets it again and again.
Speaker 3: When people wonder, God pursues them not to win their
Speaker 3: arcu not to win an argument with them, but to
Speaker 3: save them, to call them back. That's why the Church
Speaker 3: reads the Old testing not as background material, not for
Speaker 3: expanding our knowledge of history, and not simply for the
Speaker 3: transmission of the wisdom of God, but rather as a
Speaker 3: record of God's faithful love for humanity. God's patience is
Speaker 3: the thread that holds the whole Old Testament together. Sounds strange,
Speaker 3: and we think of all the times that God has
Speaker 3: come down in judgment, But that entire record of the
Speaker 3: Old Conament is bound together with the threat of patience
Speaker 3: and wrong suffering as God prepares his people for the.
Speaker 2: Coming of the Siah, which is what the prayer turns
Speaker 2: to next.
Speaker 3: And when the fullness of time had come, Thou didst
Speaker 3: speak to us through thy son himself, by whom thou
Speaker 3: didst also make the ages, grooving the rays of thy
Speaker 3: glory and the image of thy person, upholding all friends
Speaker 3: by his word. And Tawn thought it not robbery to
Speaker 3: be equal to thee, the God and faith.
Speaker 2: He was God before the age, as yet he appeared.
Speaker 3: On earth and lived among men, becoming incarnate of a
Speaker 3: holy virgin.
Speaker 2: He emptied himself, taking the form of the servant.
Speaker 3: Being likened to the body of our lowliness, that he
Speaker 3: might like us to the image of His glory. When
Speaker 3: the fullness of time had come. This is the key
Speaker 3: to our salvation. When the fullness of time had come,
Speaker 3: God no longer spoke full prophets.
Speaker 2: God no longer.
Speaker 3: Said the law is not the wisdom, literagy, or liturgy
Speaker 3: that would preserve.
Speaker 2: And redeem anybody. Rather, it was God himself.
Speaker 3: God spoke to us in his son, the eternal Word,
Speaker 3: the True God born the Virgin Mary, and empties himself
Speaker 3: to take on our humanity in its fullness, without ceasing
Speaker 3: to be divined. He became what we are so that
Speaker 3: he could heal what we are, so that he could
Speaker 3: restore the image of God in us that we had darkened,
Speaker 3: and could raise us into community with his Father. When
Speaker 3: the prayer says he emptied himself, it doesn't mean he
Speaker 3: stopped being God. It means that the Son accepted everything
Speaker 3: in our weak without resistance, hunger, fatigued, tears, temptation, suffering
Speaker 3: up to death in your father. Why, Saint Athanasius said
Speaker 3: what is not assumed is not healed. God does not
Speaker 3: redeem us from a distance, and comes close enough to
Speaker 3: carry our very nature, food, death.
Speaker 2: And out the other side.
Speaker 3: His nativity in the flesh is the turning point of
Speaker 3: our history. The Creator enters creation, heaven and earthly united
Speaker 3: him the body of man. This is God's left for
Speaker 3: man coming made visit, and this now Saint Basil gives
Speaker 3: us the promise.
Speaker 2: Where as by.
Speaker 3: Man and sin entered into the world, and by sin death,
Speaker 3: So it please, I'm only begotten son, who.
Speaker 2: Is in the bosom of be the God and.
Speaker 3: Father, who was born of a woman, the holy Faetopus
Speaker 3: and ever virgin Mary, who was born under the law
Speaker 3: to condemn sin in his flesh, so that those who
Speaker 3: are dead and adam might be made alive in my
Speaker 3: Christ himself. He lived in this world.
Speaker 2: And gave us commandments of salvation, releasing us from the
Speaker 2: delusions of idolatry.
Speaker 3: He brought us to knowledge of the the true God
Speaker 3: and Father. He obtained for us his own chosen people,
Speaker 3: a royal priestoot a holy nation. Having cleansed us in
Speaker 3: war and sanctified us with the Holy Spirit, he gave
Speaker 3: himself to the ansom to death, and which were health
Speaker 3: captives sold understand descending and through the cross into hades,
Speaker 3: that he might fill all things with himself, he loosed.
Speaker 2: The pains of death.
Speaker 3: He arose on the third day, having made for all
Speaker 3: flesh the path with the resurrection from the dead. Since
Speaker 3: it was not possible for the author of life to
Speaker 3: be a victim of corruption, so he became the first
Speaker 3: groups of those who have fallen asleep, the first born
Speaker 3: of the dead, that he might be made, that he
Speaker 3: might be himself truly the first in all things.
Speaker 2: Ascending to heaving. He sat down the right.
Speaker 3: Hand of the thought of that Majesty on high, and
Speaker 3: he will kind of render to every man. According to
Speaker 3: his deeds. Christ taught us the way of salvation. He
Speaker 3: formed a new covenant people. He cleansed us through baptism
Speaker 3: and the gift of the spirit. And then freely, out
Speaker 3: of love, he gave himself to death on the cross.
Speaker 2: He descended in the realm of the dead.
Speaker 3: He opened the path of resurrection to us all, and finally,
Speaker 3: ascending glories of that our human flesh now dwells with
Speaker 3: the heavening, and he will come again to judge the.
Speaker 2: Living and the dead.
Speaker 3: The Christ, brothers and sisters is not a tragedy that
Speaker 3: happened to Jesus.
Speaker 2: It is the love of God made concrete.
Speaker 3: Christ offers himself for the life of the world. He
Speaker 3: enters death freely so that death, when it meets the
Speaker 3: true life, would be undone. And the resurrection is not
Speaker 3: a spiritual metaphor, but it is a proclamation the last
Speaker 3: enemy has been broken, and that our sorrows, our funerals,
Speaker 3: our fears do not provile. And this is why the
Speaker 3: Church calls us to repentance, not to shame us, but
Speaker 3: to free us, to repent us, to come out of
Speaker 3: hiding and to re enter it around their light and
Speaker 3: for the newly illumined and soon to be newly illumined Baptism.
Speaker 3: Baptism is the personal passage that we make through the cross.
Speaker 2: Of the Resurrection. For the baptize, every confession, every act
Speaker 2: of forgiveness, is a return to that same grace.
Speaker 3: And the prayer concludes with the introductions of the gifts
Speaker 3: as memorials of his saving passion.
Speaker 2: He has reached us these things which you have set.
Speaker 3: Forth according to his command, For when he was about
Speaker 3: to go forth to his voluntary every memory of life,
Speaker 3: creating that and the night.
Speaker 2: In wishes, in which gave himself up from.
Speaker 3: The life of the world, which took brad holy in
Speaker 3: that good hands, and having shown it to be the
Speaker 3: God and Father, having given thanks and how and blessed
Speaker 3: it and broken it, he gave it to his holy.
Speaker 2: Disciples and apostles.
Speaker 3: This remembrance, that's not a recollection, but it is the
Speaker 3: Holy Spirit accomplishing the saving work of Christ. Present with us.
Speaker 3: We proclaim as death, he confesses our resurrection. And we
Speaker 3: gather as one body not to be spectators of holy
Speaker 3: history of these participants in the life of the risen Lord.
Speaker 3: So let us hear Saint Basil's anaphora as the Church
Speaker 3: intends it to be her. Here we see the Church's
Speaker 3: rule of faith encompass in our rule of prayer. We
Speaker 3: don't invent doctrine and then pray val it. We pray
Speaker 3: the truth, and by that prayer we are told to
Speaker 3: believe in it. This is what Saint Basil's anaphora is
Speaker 3: intended to do. Lets around les gredined the law of prayers,
Speaker 3: the law of the week. What we have prayed is
Speaker 3: what we confessed one God in trinity, the creation, the
Speaker 3: fall or salvation through the true incarnation of the Sun,
Speaker 3: his saving cross, his life giving to him, and soon.
Speaker 2: His glorious resurrection on the.
Speaker 3: Third Day, and then his ascension and his great and
Speaker 3: final com The Anathe of Saint Basil teaches the history
Speaker 3: of God and Man in our.
Speaker 2: Coming salvation rit small.
Speaker 3: But not as an abstract summary, as a living concession
Speaker 3: of what we believe. And in these prayers we proclaim
Speaker 3: the entire econom of our salvation. So, having pray this faith,
Speaker 3: let us hold it fast to us rejoice them with
Speaker 3: one heart and with one voice.
Speaker 2: We confess that the Church everywhere and always at Christ
Speaker 2: has risen, that He is.
Speaker 3: Truly present, that He hasn't worked with us, and that
Speaker 3: the Holy Spirit gatherer says in to this morning the
Speaker 3: Holy cap and apisolture. So may we, though we may
Speaker 3: only pray this and there for ten domes a year,
Speaker 3: that we should confess us we believe every single day
Speaker 3: to Christy the glory of the minute fallbout Holy Spirit
Speaker 3: now and after the age of the agents. I'll have I'm.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to Hill Country Homilies. For more information,
Speaker 1: visit Holy Nunciation, Orthodox church at www dot Denunciation, tx
Speaker 1: dot com and please join us again next week