Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
In the Name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Remember those who have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the Word of God. Follow their faith, considering the outcome of their manner of living. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines.
Today, the Church commemorates all the holy Fathers of the first six Ecumenical Councils: Nicaea I (325 A.D.), Constantinople I (381 A.D.), Ephesus (431 A.D.), Chalcedon (451 A.D.), Constantinople II (553 A.D.), and Constantinople III (680 A.D.). The Seventh, Nicaea II (787 A.D.), will be commemorated at another time. In all, the Church commemorates the Fathers of these Councils and their non-negotiable determinations that have given form and substance to our Faith several times during the liturgical year. Each Council was called by the Church to address the “various and strange doctrines,” that is, those “many colored and varied foreign teachings” disrupting the unity of the Church. Had there been no “sparkling” (cf. Sparkle Creed) teachings threatening the Church and infecting her Faith, the Councils would not have been necessary. At the core of each Council was an attack on our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ in one form or another which, of course, has implications for other aspects or teachings of the Faith such as the Holy Spirit, the Most Holy Theotokos, and icons. There have been other councils convened, but these are more localized addressing regional issues on a local level. The seven Councils we commemorate are ecumenical in scope, addressed to the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, not just for a time, but for eternity! We can be confident that the Faith espoused here in the Church militant is the Faith glorified in the Church triumphant.
Perhaps the most notorious heresy dealt with by the Church in her 2000 plus years is that of Arianism, which is still alive and well in such sectarian offshoots like the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Remember, heresy only becomes heresy when personal opinion goes awry and is put forth as the truth over and against what the Church has “believed everywhere, always, and by all” (Vincentian Canon). Arius was a presbyter, a priest, who caused strife by asserting that our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ was created, that there was a time when He was not, which is to say, he taught that our Lord was not the eternally begotten Son of God, one in essence with the Father. So powerful was his teaching that it was dividing both the Church and the Empire at that time. It was promulgated and perpetuated by catchy little ditties that the common man and woman could be found singing in the market, in the tavern, and in other places. The Church convened at Nicaea, weighed Arianism in the balances, and found it woefully wanting. Arius refused to recant and was excommunicated. He has been branded ever since as the arch-heretic and enemy of the Church. The Nicene Creed, in part, then, is the result of this Council.
There is a story told of St. John the Theologian and Evangelist. One day he entered a public bathhouse, a not uncommon thing to do, and spying the heretic, Cerinthus, bathing, immediately raced out of the building, crying out, “Let us fly, lest even the bathhouse fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the Truth, is within!” Cerinthus, you see, “the enemy of the Truth,” denied the Virgin Birth of our Lord, he denied that our Lord was Christ His whole life, and he believed Christians were required to follow the Mosaic Law.
Beloved, doctrine – what we believe – is absolutely critical. Why? Because what we believe affects morals; what we believe influences and directs our actions. What we believe ultimately leads us to salvation or away from it. Case in point: Marcion is another arch-heretic. He could not reconcile the God of the Old Testament with the God of the New Testament. He believed, and thus taught, they were two totally different Gods: the God of the Old Testament was mean and nasty, an angry and wrathful ogre, if ever there were one, full of judgment, while the God of the New Testament was loving, compassionate, and merciful. (Does any of this sound vaguely familiar?) This led him – and others like him – to jettison the entire Old Testament, thus putting asunder what God Himself had united. He and those who hold his heretical teachings have a severely warped understanding of God and are extremely lopsided, which is exactly the case in all heresies: over emphasis of one aspect of a balanced truth! Like Arianism, Marcionism is alive and well and is currently in theaters near you playing out in today’s cultural and moral upheaval.
Beloved, the Church has always believed the divine revelation she has received from God through His Prophets and Apostles (Mt. 16:13-19; Ga. 1:11, 12; Ep. 2:19-22), and, ultimately, through His Son, Jesus Christ Who came to reveal the Father (Jn. 17:1-13). It is this divine revelation, once and for all received, that has been handed on to us by our Fathers in the Faith, that is, those who spoke the Word of God to us, and that which we now hand over to others, and on and on (Ju. 1:3). Doctrine is important. It is the “form of doctrine” delivered to us and “obeyed from the heart” by us, St. Paul says in Romans, that shattered the shackles of sin (Rm. 6:17; 2 Tm. 1:13)! St. Paul has spent considerable time and energy and ink on driving home this point in his Epistles to Timothy and Titus. He tells us in Ephesians that we need to grow up and mature in Jesus Christ and stop being kids in the Faith. “[W]e should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind [faddishness] of doctrine, . . .” (Ep. 4:11-16). Paul laments this childish state in other of his letters (1 Cr. 3:1-4; Hb. 5:12-14). Divine revelation, beloved, has substance and form, it is the truth made manifest by God and is not a product of rational and logical thinking. If it were, Arius and Marcion might, in fact, be right! What’s scary, though, is the thought that if we had to deal with Arius and Marcion in today’s world infected with the spirit of ecumenism and political correctness, they would have been welcomed as just another “sparkling” variation on the Creed whose perspective is necessary for our complete understanding and should be tolerated as but one truth among many.
Beloved, the Faith that saves us from sin, death, and the devil does not change because it is linked inextricably to the God-Man, Jesus Christ, Who cannot and does not change, but is “the same yesterday, today, and forever.” We cannot move the boundaries in order to be accommodating or neighborly. Sacred Scripture counsels against moving or removing the ancient landmarks placed by the fathers (Pr. 22:28; 23:10). They serve a purpose: They act as guides; they show us the way; they direct our steps aright; they establish boundaries just as surely as God in His wisdom at the creation of the world established boundaries, saying to the waters, “’Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed’” (Gn. 1:1-31; Jb. 38:4-11). Landmarks and boundaries allow freedom and they keep at bay other things that could be harmful to us. Let us hear the Word of the Lord and let us obey His Word. “Thus says the Lord, ‘Stand you in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths of the Lord; and see what is the good way, and walk in it, and you shall find purification for your souls’” (Jr. 6:16).
Beloved, we are the Church of the Fathers. We believe them to be inspired by God, especially when they sat in Council together. All the Councils and Fathers bear witness to realities beyond the camp of this world whose reproach they were willing to endure because they looked for a city – the city to come, the New and heavenly Jerusalem, just like the Fathers before them, and the Fathers before them (Hb. 11:13-16; Rv. 21:2). It seemed to them that in comparison to the Glory about to be revealed that the reproach of this world is nothing. With them, “we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cr. 4:17-18). They bid us to look beyond the horizons of this worldly existence to the world to come, to the New Jerusalem wherein is our true and everlasting home, while at the same time they encourage us to live out in the midst of this world our everlasting faith, hope, and love in Jesus Christ, “not [forgetting] to do good and to share,” offering up such sacrifices that are well pleasing to God, especially the bloodless Sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist. With Adam and Eve, we are exiles here in this land, sons and daughters of Paradise, corrupted by the powers of sin, death, and the devil. But, Christ our true God is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world “for us men and for our salvation” (Nicene Creed; Jn. 1:29; 1 Pe. 1:17-21; Rv. 13:8). By His Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection from the dead He has conquered once and for all these powers and by His Ascension into Heaven He has lifted us up with Himself into those heavenly places (Co. 3:1-3).
Beloved, the Faith of our Fathers then is the Faith of the Church now. It is the one and same Faith of Sts. Peter and Paul and all the other holy Apostles – the holy Twelve and the holy 70. This is our Faith, 20 plus centuries later. We believe and receive their handing on of the Faith – and morals – as true and inviolable.
Today, then, we gladly and joyfully do what the Apostle has instructed us to do: we remember, we commemorate our venerable and God-bearing Fathers of the first six Ecumenical Councils who have spoken the Word of God to us faithfully and whose lives of faith, hope, and love are most worthy to be pondered and replicated in our lives. By their confession of the Faith, by their pastoral guidance, by their devotion to the Truth, by their endurance of the world’s reproaches, and some, by their martyrdom for the Faith of their Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, faithfully and obediently testify that this Jesus, Who is “’the Way, the Truth, and the Life’” (Jn. 14:6), is “the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
Through the prayers of our holy Fathers, O Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us. Amen.
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
VIGIL PROPERS: PROPERS:
Gn. 14:14-20 Hb. 13:7-16
Dt. 1:8-11, 15-17 Jn. 17:1-13
Dt. 10:14-21