“Where I Am, There You May Be Also”
Sunday of All Saints
Hebrews 11:33-40; 12:1-2 Matthew 10:32-33;37-39; 19:27-30
On this Sunday, we commemorate all the saints of Christ's Church, especially those whose names are not recorded in our church calendar, not recorded in our history.
Why do we make this commemoration?
From the very beginning of the development of the Church of Christ, and the concomitant beginning of the persecution of the confessors of Christ, the true God, through all the ages, and especially in times of mass persecution of Christians (both in the first centuries of the Christian era and in our time), there were and are Christians who suffered, were tortured, killed for the confession of the Christian faith, who showed great love, loyalty to God, Christ, giving their most precious life.
There were Christians who, by the example of their lives, contributed to the spread and establishment of the faith among other people, but their names have not been or are not recorded in the official archives of the Church of Christ.
Just as in military campaigns there are many people who, in the defence of their homeland, have shown utmost heroism, self-sacrifice, and suffered, yet their names remain unlisted, are not recorded in the honour rolls of their people. For centuries, for example, the Zaporizhian Cossacks defended the southern borders of their homeland from the Tatars and Turks, liberated slaves; but, apart from the names of several glorious, chief ottomans and hetmans (Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachnyj, Ivan Sirko, Samoil Kishka), and the names of a couple dozen other leaders, many thousands of glorious names of our national champions are not recorded, although their merits are probably greater than those whose names we know.
Similarly, in the Church of Christ, the names of all the saints are unknown. But no one is forgotten by the All-Seeing and All-Knowing God. It is said through the prophet that a mother would rather forget her child than God His people (Isaiah 49:15). So, the souls of all the saints are in the mansions of the saints, glorified by God, although they are not recorded by name in our calendars.
"Where I am, there you may be also" (John 14:3),
Christ testified. Therefore, on the first Sunday after the Feastday of The Holy Trinity, the Church of Christ, realizing the incompleteness of the records of its saints, appointed the commemoration of all the saints who pleased God and are glorified by Him.
Therefore, when we ask a saint, our guardian saint, to pray to God for us sinners, it is good to add:
"All saints, pray to God for us!"
The Lord Jesus Christ, as we have read in The Gospel today, promised that
“…whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 10:32)
Christ, as recorded in many places in The Gospel, promises eternal life to those who believe in Him and follow His instructions and commandments in their lives. But it reveals a sinful attitude when a Christian does good, follows God's instructions only with the thought of receiving a reward from God, from Christ, as something due, as some kind of payment.
We must not forget that what God gives or will give us is not some kind of payment, but a gift-- not a reward, but the mercy of God. And this grace is given to us not for our special, personal merits, but for the merits of Christ, who took our sins and forgave them.
For if we were to imagine the scales of justice and put our sins, our failure to obey God's instructions, on one platter and our good deeds towards our neighbours, for the glory of God, on the other, we would probably receive punishment rather than reward.
One of the theologians of the Orthodox Church conditionally defines three types of Christians:
The first are those who fulfill the will of God because they fear hell and punishment. He calls them slaves who do good, live in accordance with the norms of morality, and maintain good relations between people only out of fear of the Lord.
The second type of Christians has the consciousness of mercenaries. People think: when I do something for someone, work for them, they pay me. God should do the same: if I do some good deed, let God reward me. Because, they say, I am doing it not for myself, but for God, so God should pay...
(There is a catch here: If you have done something bad, evil, then God must forgive you... For God has to forgive everything...)
Such people also seek to be praised for all their positive, good deeds, to be remembered for their services to people. But the Lord Jesus Christ said:
"Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward." (Matthew 6:2).
Such persons receive accolades from people and, therefore, cannot expect to be rewarded by God.
The third type of Christians -- possessing the highest virtue, being the most worthy -- are those who do good to people out of a sense of love for people, out of love for God, not out of fear of punishment, not with the thought of reward.
And, regarding such a truth was the testimony of the Apostle Paul, who enlightened newly converted Christians so that they could feel their dignity in God:
"Therefore you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ." (Galatians 4:7).
Amen.
Very Rev. Fr. Taras Slavchenko
Taras Slavchenko was born on March 8, 1918 in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine. After graduating from school and the Pedagogical College, he entered the language and literature faculty of the Scientific Pedagogical Institute. Having successfully completed it in 1938, he served as a teacher in a secondary school.
