Put a Face on Joy
Sermon preached by Fr. Antony Hughes on Sunday, January 5, 2025
I am thinking of the repose of a very great man, President Jimmy Carter. Now that this exemplary man is gone, I have one request of God. Please don't let us forget what decency and true Christianity look like. Memory Eternal, Mr. President.
Do we have to wait for Holy Pascha to express our joy? Of course not. The teachings of Jesus open the door to inexhaustible joy at every moment and in every situation. “I have learned,” writes St. Paul, “to be content in all things.”
God's loving and compassionate omnipresence makes it ridiculous to be downcast. The Lord Jesus has become one of us and he has made us one with him. Where he is, there is his kingdom. His kingdom is within us, over us, under us, among us and all around us. We celebrate this truth today through the Blessing of Water.
Theophany, like Christmas and the Entrance of the Lord into the Temple are Feasts of Light set in the dead of Winter. Each is a theophany, a revelation of an eternal truth, that God is with us, He always has been here and always will be. Before Christ was born and after. Because he is everywhere and in everything it is possible to find him even in the smallest subatomic particles. The Incarnation of the Son as he takes into himself human nature and flesh reveals the purpose of creation itself. Al things, including human nature and flesh, were created to be means of communion with God.
Even if we can't see him, he is here. The Church in her sacramental life shows us how to look, how to listen, how to perceive through every sense the presence of God. All of life then becomes a sacrament and each of us becomes the celebrant of the great Mystery: Life itself is holy because it is saturated with Grace.
Today the Church reveals the innate blessedness of Water. We will not add a magic potion to change the water. We do not have a magic wand to wave over it. St. John of Damascus wrote that Jesus is the end of magic. All water is blessed so our prayers and rituals have a different purpose. The prayers are meant to bless our perception of water.
Remember: we do not pray to change God. We pray so that we may be changed. With the perception of water as filled with grace our way of seeing everything changes. All of a sudden God appears to us everywhere. Everything that exists is blessed by God directly. Illumination is a very great gift.
To gain a Christian perception one thing is necessary. We have to get out of our own way. It is our shadow that veils our senses. That heavy curtain over our senses is Selfishness, Self-centeredness. If we make everything about me, myself, and I, we will miss the theophany which is all around us. We are swimming in it like fish and yet we remain thirsty.
Bede Griffiths, to my mind a very holy man, put it this way, "When we are no longer the center of our own lives, we will be able to see God in everything." This perspective allowed Bede to live in India with love and respect for all, Hindu and Muslim. He adopted the same idea as the Holy Romanian priest Dumitru Staniloe which he called "Open Sobornicity". We can explore that at another time if you like, but I am convinced that their belief was founded on their deep faith in the Incarnation.
But the majority of the human race (the only race there is BTW) does not know this Gospel. It is our job and our joy to make it known, first through our lives and then, if necessary, with our words. Let everything we do, think, and say be filled with joy. That is precisely what we proclaim today in the Prayers of Theophany. All of creation rejoices!
How can we possibly be despondent with such a glorious Gospel? Let us put a face on joy, let us put a face on love, let us put a face on hope, and let that face be ours.