The Church is Our Home. A Sermon by Priest Konstantin Korepanov
🔻Text transcript of the sermon (expand)🔻
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Today, July 2, Metropolitan Evgeny of Yekaterinburg and Verkhoturye celebrated the Divine Liturgy at the Church of the Holy Simeon School in Yekaterinburg https://vk.com/wall-107929533_66826 .
Praying during the service were teachers and students of the Orthodox school. Priest Konstantin Korepanov, spiritual director of the Yekaterinburg Theological Seminary and teacher at the Holy Simeon Orthodox School, addressed the participants with a sermon based on the communion verse.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
A person begins their life in a family. This is wonderful; it is not only touching, but also very profound. While a person is growing up, the family is the only person on earth who ensures that the child is safe, in every sense of the word: emotional safety, spiritual safety, and, above all, physical safety. They protect them, they cherish them, they help them grow into a self-aware, mature being. But then they must let them go. They have protected them for a long time, but they protected them so that they would survive, be able to live independently, and be able to start their own family. This is a crucial moment in the life of a family and in the life of a growing adult. They peer over the fence of the house, over the fence that separates them from the vast world; they are curious, inquisitive: what's out there? They strive there, not yet realizing that they want to escape from the only place where they felt good. And whether they find another place where they will feel good or not depends only on them, on no one else. They are in a great hurry, waiting for the moment when they will leave the house and go live the way they want. But parents love them, and the normal expression of parental love is to let their grown child go. Sometimes they want to hold on to them, but it's not out of love. They let them go, but they keep an eye on them from afar, making sure nothing happens to them: "They'll definitely get into trouble, they're sure to, that's the way things are in life!" Why?
Have you ever seen a flock of sheep? (Well, you certainly haven't.) But you've seen cats and dogs. So, we meet an unfamiliar animal and want to somehow warm up to it. We then pretend to know it, show it we have something sweet or tasty in our pocket, show it we wish it well: "Come here, kitty-kitty!" or somehow entice it. A stray dog or cat comes almost willingly, because what difference does it make to them who gives them food? But a dog with an owner, and a cat with an owner and a home, wouldn't do that. We try to entice them, but who knows what to expect from a stranger?
And so, today's Gospel paints this story: around every person on earth, there are many who want to profit at their expense, and they lure them, tempt them—with sugar or sausage, or a sandwich like Matroskin's, or something else entirely: some with gold, some with Lego sets, some with candy, some with other bait; but their only goal is to wheedle and destroy. And all these people who want to profit at our expense especially attack those who have just left home, just emerged from the protection of their parents, because they know nothing, they don't know how to distinguish between people, they don't know how to distinguish good from evil, they can't discern all the complexities of this world. And there's no escape: parents send their child out into the world, knowing that those same tempters and seducers await them there—wolves in sheep's clothing, pretending and flirting, promising mountains of gold, but with only one goal: to destroy, to kill, to make suffer and torment. That's why they lie in wait in droves, like jackals, for the child to leave the parental shelter.
There's a wonderful story. Chances are, as an Orthodox schoolgirl, you're not familiar with it. There's a novel by an English writer called "Harry Potter," and in it, this parentless boy was protected by his parents' grace until he turned eighteen. Then the magic of their parents' protection ended. While he was protected by this grace, no evil could enter his home, no one in that house could harm him. Everyone was waiting outside, and when he emerged, he was attacked by many different villains. The same awaits every person; but one cannot leave one's parents' home. This wonderful time called "childhood" cannot but end; one cannot remain a child forever. One can and should become a child who will enter the Kingdom of God, but one cannot remain a human child forever...
The end of the sermon transcript is in the first comment on this video.
The video was published on the "Ekaterinburg Diocese" Telegram channel: https://t.me/eparhia96/35289
Text transcript: Elena Plotnikova.