Saint Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary
January 30, 2022
I offer my paternal congratulations to you, Father Chad, and also to all the faculty, staff, students, and other members of the seminary community, on this patronal feast day of the seminary Chapel. These two years, and counting, of COVID-inflected studies have been trying for our seminarians, their families, and for faculty members and their families. As another variant rumbles through the world, I want specially to assure you of my prayers for the seminary community, and to express my gratitude to each of you for your perseverance in your calling amid these trials. Each of us has our challenges, and our own vocation, but we rely on the Lord, and on each other, for the strength to endure and to triumph.
This brings to mind a hymn we sang last night at Vespers: “Today let us praise the mystical trumpets of the Spirit, the God-bearing Fathers, who stand in the midst of the Church, singing true theology, and praise the one changeless Trinity.”
“Singing true theology”—in Greek this is something more like “singing a harmonious song of theology.” The image is one of different singers, or different instruments, coming together and contributing different parts in order to make something beautiful. And, indeed, throughout the service to the Three Hierarchs, these great teachers of the Church are compared to instruments: to panpipes or flutes, to lyres or harps.
The image that Saint John Mavropous gives us, in his service to the Three Hierarchs, is one of a diversity of gifts, but one and the same Spirit. The three saints we celebrate today contribute different, but harmonious, sounds to the music of theology. And this image of theology, and of Christian life, as harmonious music is an image of perennial—and indeed, eternal—significance.
The service of the three saints teaches us that we Christians, across space and time, have no higher purpose than to contribute our harmonious notes to the great music of God. The Christian who desires to imitate these three great saints must allow himself to be played by the Spirit as a supple, obedient instrument, in harmony with all the music of past ages, and in harmony with his fellow-faithful in his own time.
God is able to raise up stones as sons of Abraham, but instead He has chosen each of us to make a humble but irreplicable contribution to His great music.
Part of attuning ourselves to this great harmony—part of tuning ourselves as instruments of the Spirit—is to become familiar with, love, and live out the dogmas and traditions of the saints who have gone before us.
But perhaps the more challenging part is harmonizing with all our fellow-believers in our own day and age. For this, there is no easy formula.
But we do know that, if we desire to be a part of this great work, we must strive to put on the humble mind of Christ, the mind of the Suffering Servant. In this great music, that humble and suffering Servant is the composer and the conductor, the line of the melody and the texture of the harmonies.
So we look not to do great things, but to contribute some small part to an age-spanning symphony, a symphony that, indeed, shall resound through eternity. And, in a sense, no part in this great and divine opus is small, for God calls us all to share in the same joy of Christ’s Resurrection—and through the Resurrection, in the endlessly surging joy of the divine life.
Through the prayers of the Three Hierarchs, may we all persevere in our humble calling and take our place in the orchestra of the Spirit, the choirs of the saved, and delight in the divine melody of the one God in Trinity, singing true theology unto ages of ages. Amen.
Once more, I extend my paternal congratulations on your altar feast, and I wish you a joyous celebration in the Lord.