July 5, 2026
In the early days of the 4th century AD, the persecution of Christians under Emperor Maximian was in full swing. More than a decade before St. Constantine would see the image of the Life Giving Cross in the sky over the Milvian Bridge over the Tiber in Rome (by which Sign he did indeed Conquer, winning the crucial battle over Maximian’s son) a Roman army officer named Zeno was stationed in Anatolia, the land we now call Turkey, subject to the control of the governor Maximus. When the Emperor Maximian ordered Maximus to crack down on Christians, Zeno refused to renounce Christ and was thrown into prison and tortured, along with his own servant Zenas. Both of these martyrs who stood up for a new idea in which they really believed are commemorated every July 5th.
That city in which St. Zeno and St. Zenas were martyred is now called Alasehir, just south of Istanbul, formerly Constantinople the new capital, a New Rome, that St. Constantine founded after his victory on the Tiber of the Old Rome. But at the time of their martyrdom Alasehir was known as Philadelphia, translated from the Greek, as we know well, City of Brotherly Love. So each year at this time in July we remember Philadelphians, both Greek and British, who stood up for ideas about God in which they had complete faith and were willing to die rather than concede to the powerful. The later Philadelphians of course were the 56 Englishmen who met just down the street from this very church 250 years ago. Those men were willing to die for the words written by one of their own, Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” By their creator, rights that are bestowed by God on each person created in His own image and likeness. Jefferson’s writing was endorsed by all 56, using the free will that God has given to them and to all of us, relying on rights that they believed could not be taken away from them, even by the most powerful military force then in the world that controlled a world wide empire headed by an all powerful monarch. Just as Zeno and Zenas faced the most powerful military, imperial, monarchial force in their world and stood up to it. Jefferson called it Liberty, but the Fathers of the Church had a different way of describing what it means to be a human being; they called it free will. God created the universe out of nothing, ex nihilo, why? Because He wanted to. He exercised His free will that He then passed on to His Creations, Adam and Eve, who exercised that free will to sin, changing the path of human history in one fell swoop. The 20th century Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky wrote: “The decadence of human nature is the direct consequence of the free decision of man.” As we know, through man sin came into the world and through sin death, and as Lossky continued: “The reason for this is not only that human freedom has created a new state, a new mode of existence in evil, but also that God has placed a limit on sin, allowing it to end in death.” Then Lossky quotes St. Paul, from the Epistle to the Romans that we heard last Sunday: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Christ’s sacrifice on the Life Giving Cross was an act of His free will, trampling down death by death and giving each of us the chance to use our own free will as we make our way toward our own salvation, toward eternal life. Christ exercised His free will in a direct challenge to the Roman Empire and changed the course of history in doing so. Our Founding Fathers changed the course of history of this nation, using those inalienable rights, that is, their free will to challenge the British Empire. They created a new secular state, reflecting the words of Lossky: “human freedom has created a new state, a new mode of existence.” But a secular state steeped in belief in God and the sanctity of rights given by God.
Jefferson closed with these words: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.” Like Zeno and Zenas, these 56 were ready to die for what they believed. Reliance on God built this Nation. Reliance on the Holy Trinity, the pledge that we repeat over and over again in the Creed, can build our path to salvation. The true pursuit of happiness.
As I said last Sunday, the second Sunday after Pentecost each year, is dedicated to a commemoration of local saints, in our case All Saints of Russia and All Saints of America. Perhaps no Saint more closely exemplifies a combination of the two as St. Tikhon, Patriarch of Russia and Archbishop of All America, who as we know fell asleep in the Lord just over 100 years ago and about whom the lecture on the recent book The People’s Patriarch was conducted here in our church recently.
Also recently published was this book, a compilation of the sermons of then Archbishop Tikhon while in America from 1898 through 1907 when he was called back to Russia. These sermons, delivered in Russian, were transcribed and published by then Father Alexander Hotovitzky, or as we know him St. Alexander who helped to found this very church, a constant companion and helper to St. Tikhon and then rector of St. Nicholas Cathedral in NYC. Fr. Alexander was also the editor of a journal The Russian American Messenger that came out every two weeks, in Russian of course, during this time period that included many of the sermons. The sermons have recently been translated into English, a true blessing for us, especially here in Philadelphia because one is a 1902 sermon giving by St. Tikhon in consecrating the chapel of the battleship Retvizan (a Swedish word for justice) on the Delaware River that was built by the Russian naval officers who founded St. Andrew Cathedral, our sister parish, and another sermon preached in St. Andrew in 1907 just before the saint returned to Russia. In the consecration of the St. Nicholas Chapel, named of course for the patron saint of all sailors, on the battleship St. Tikhon said “It is not without reason that the folk wisdom says whoever has not gone out to sea does not pray. And what would be a better place to pray if not in the temple of God. And how useful, therefore, is the temple on a sea faring vessel.” Having served as a US naval officer myself, I could not agree more.
But as Professor Kenworthy the author who gave us the lecture on St. Tikhon’s life has said, perhaps the most poignant and important sermon recorded in America is the first one St. Tikhon gave, in SF on Dec 23 1898. St. Tikhon first addressed his new flock saying: “I ask for assistance and cooperation with me not only from the pastors but also from all of my beloved flock…then quoting St. Paul he reminded his listeners that in the church each member of the church is necessary and cannot do without the other. They all care for one another and there is no discord in the body.” Then the Saint quoted St. John Chrysostom: “Do not shift everything off on clergy; you can do much yourselves, you know each other better than we do.” Then he finished: “Therefore brethren edify each other warn those who are unruly comfort the feeble minded and be patient toward all.”
Of course, these are not new concepts; here’s a old book that apparently used to be distributed in this very church titled: The Duties of Church Members to the Church. Interestingly, it begins with the analogy of life at sea: “A sunny deck and a steamer chair and nothing to do but lie in it, with the sea to watch and the throb of distant engines lulling you to sleep, and every comfort cared for—that is well enough for a week or two. But would you be willing to said the seas all of your life long as nothing but a passenger? The boredom would prove intolerable. There are thousands of men who spend their lives in sailing the seas, but they are members of the crews of the ships that bear them, alert with interest in their work and proud of their skills. The officer on duty on the bridge, the steersman, the engineer, each knows he is helping to make the great ship go. The trouble with many church members is that they remain mere passenger, year in and year out. They never find any way to help make the ship go. They are mere baggage and sooner or later they find themselves bored by the journey.” Chapter 7 of this little book is entitled: Stand by the Pastor of the Church” and it provides right off the bat this important teaching: “The parish should be ‘not only the priest’s field but also his force. Its members are ‘not sheep to be tended but soldiers enlisted for a desperate warfare.’ The priest is a divinely appointed commissioned officer who leads in the battle against sin and evil and attempts to lead his army to the to the final victory of salvation.”
People first in the Russian Empire, then in here in America, and then finally in the Soviet Union, stood by St. Tikhon. In those latter days, many died because they stood with him against the Bolsheviks. That’s what makes the very last paragraph of Professor Kenworthy’s book such a perfect summary of St. Tikhon’s life and work, as he would have agreed work grounded in repentance: “In the context of the most profound social and political divisions, Patriarch Tikhon consistently offered on pathway forward: repentance and reconciliation. Repentance followed an authentic self-examination in humility, acknowledging one’s own faults and contribution to the problems at hand rather than blaming others, whether those others were other individuals, categories of people, or political parties and ideologies. Only from that basis could reconciliation follow—seeing one’s own faults and response should generate forgiveness for the failings of others, rather than judgment against them. Perhaps in this message of repentance and reconciliation is Patriarch Tikhon’s most enduring legacy in an ever-divided world.”
Clearly, Brothers and Sisters that authentic self-examination in humility comes only within the province of the sacred sacrament of confession followed by true repentance. That’s why the sacrament of confession is so critically important to underlie The Duties of Church Members to the Church.
Fr. Gregory
November 30, 2025
As we approach the New Year, the year of the 250th Anniversary of the Founding of this God protected land of liberty, it may be hard to grasp the enormity of such a long time and all of the history that has unfolded in those two and one half centuries. Contrast that long time with an epoch almost 7 times as long that we celebrate this year: one thousand and seven hundred years since the first ecumenical council was held in the city of Nicea, not too far from Constantinople, in 325 AD. The council was called by St. Constantine, 12 years after his Edict of Milan legalized Christianity within the Roman Empire as we know, after his vision of the Cross at the Milvian Bridge one year earlier. Constantine called a council of over 200 hierarchs of the church after he became the sole emperor and because of raging controversies in the early church, mainly over the theories of Arius an Alexandrian priest who taught that Jesus was not coeternal with God the Father. Arianism was rejected by the Council, an august group that included St. Athanasius of Alexandria, St. Nicholas of Myra in Lycia, and St. Spiridon of Cyprus. These Fathers are so important that they as a group are commemorated each year on the Seventh Sunday of Pascha. Below is the icon for the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council. At the bottom of the icon is shown the disgraced Arius.
Recently, the 1700th anniversary of the Council has received some publicity in the secular press and, while the breadth of years is important, one must say that the longevity of the unchangeable substance of what is called the Nicean Creed that was initially declared at that meeting is what is critically important. Some say that the Creed should be called the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed since it was drawn up at the first ecumenical council in Nicea (325) and then finalized at the second ecumenical council in Constantinople (381).
The word creed comes from the Latin credo which means “I believe.” In the Orthodox Church the creed is usually called The Symbol of Faith which means literally a confession of the faith.
In the early Church there were many different creeds used originally in relation to baptism. Before being baptized an adult person would confess his or her belief in Christ and then would be baptized as Our Lord directed in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. One early creed was developed by the Saint Gregory the Wonderworker of whom we celebrate today about whom you will hear more at the end of Liturgy.
The council called by St.Constantine that met in the city of Nicea (now called Iznik in Turkey) in the year 325 wrote out this Symbol of Faith.
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten, begotten of the Father before all ages. Light of Light; true God of true God; begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father, by whom all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man. And He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried. And the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead; whose Kingdom shall have no end.
Note well that the inclusion of the undisputable fact that Christ was crucified under a known historical figure Pontius Pilate put an aura of authenticity within the Creed. But after the first council and the death of St. Constantine, another controversy erupted in the Church, this time about the Holy Spirit. A second council was called by the new Emperor Theodosius to be held in the Eastern capital Constantinople in 381, led by St. Gregory of Nazianzus, the Theologian, and the council added this to the Nicene statement:
And [we believe] in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets. In one Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
This whole Symbol of Faith was ultimately adopted throughout the entire Church; however, we know that that yet another controversy over the Holy Spirit came 600 years later when the Roman church added what is called the filioque (and the Son) to the Constantinople addition. The creed used by the Roman church states that the Holy Spirit proceeds “from the Father and the Son” and that addition was one of the reasons for the split between the Eastern and Western churches known as the Great Schism in 1054 AD.
We should focus on the fact that the Creed was put into the first person form “I believe” and used for the formal and official confession of faith made by a person (or his sponsor-godparent) at his baptism. The Creed is used as the formal statement of faith by a non-Orthodox Christian entering the communion of the Orthodox Church in the service of conversion. The Creed has is an essential component of the Orthodox way of life just as it is an essential element of the Divine Liturgy. Note well that the Creed and the prayer before Communion (that is said before the Communions of both the clergy and the people and about which more is provided in an earlier sermon reproduced hereunder) are stated in the first person. All other songs and prayers of the liturgy are plural, beginning with “we”. Only the Creed and the Prayer before Communion begins with “I.” We should understand well that the Creed and the Prayer before Communion are personal, what each of us believe, but they are personal prayers said within the context of the Liturgy, a corporate form of worship in which we all pray together, led by the priest, stated out loud in order to approach the Mystery of the Holy and Pure Body and Blood of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, without judgment or condemnation.
A copy of the icon of the Creed that dates back to the late 1800s that was brought into our Church by our Subdeacon Michael on this Sunday is provided as a graphic below:
