Seventh Sunday after Pascha. Sunday of the Holy Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, Tone 6; Our Venerable Father Simeon of the Mountain of Wonders (596)
Read
Acts 20:16-18, 28-36; John 17:1-13
They say that one of the worst things that a society can do is to forget its own story. How did we get here? What did we sacrifice for it and why? There is that famous expression: “Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it.”
On his departure from the church of Ephesus, where he laboured for three years, Paul warns his fellow Christians not to forget who they are, that they were obtained through the blood of the Lord and that being commended to God and His grace, they would be inheritors of his promise of sanctification. You see, the problem was not that Paul was going away, but that others would be coming, fierce wolves, false teachers who would try to lead them astray.
The Church puts this reading before us brothers and sisters because today we remember the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council who upheld the teaching the Christ was both God and man. In response to the false teacher Arias who taught that Christ was only a perfect man, the Church affirms that if Christ was not God, we are not saved. The Church could not afford to forget her story in 325 AD, and we cannot afford to lose that story now. Christ is a great moral teacher, an amazing philosopher, but He is so much more: the God-Man become flesh for our salvation. Paul, on leaving the Ephesians reminded them of how he showed them this truth by the example of his life. This Sunday, let us also examine how we introduce others to Christ through the way we act.