Since Christ’s birth – within a span of millennia – major historical events have taken place. Great men have come and gone: philosophers, rhetoricians, kings, and emperors, each of which made waves during his own time. They captured our attention for ten, twenty, forty, fifty years, and then what? They fizzled out like fireworks! Heraclitus was indeed correct when he said, “Everything changes.” Everything in this world changes just as the river runs; everything changes; everything passes away. Within the context of this continual, incessant change, everything is forgotten. Who was the president of Greece a hundred years ago? Where would one even go to find out, to open the book of history and see? No one knows. He that will be president one hundred years from now, he too will be forgotten. One person alone will remain unto the ages despite the demons and all those who war against him: our Lord Jesus Christ, “…whose Kingdom shall have no end.” The Lord is the unsetting star.
Just as the sun in the sky is sometimes hidden by the clouds, so there are times in the history of the Church when faithlessness and atheism make it seem as if the faith has been wiped out and that darkness has prevailed. But how long does this darkness last? In short order the sun reappears, shining brightly. The sun will conquer the clouds here too, and not the other way around! Do you understand me?
Would you like proof? In the great country of the Russians it seemed as if the atheist had carried the day. Dostoyevsky said, “They will open a tomb, Christ, and they will bury you a thousand meters below the earth and they will claim that you have disappeared.” This indeed happened in 1917, but eighty years have now passed. Not only did faith in Christ survive, but it has been rejuvenated! And tonight the Russians too will go to church and sing, “Rejoice, Mother of the Unsetting Star”.
Our religion is living; it is alive! Let us therefore be faithful; all of us in the Church! Let us show that above all else there is but one unsetting star for us – our Lord Jesus Christ! O children, praise ye the Lord and supremely exalt him unto the ages of ages! Amen.
Metropolitan Avgoustinos (Kantiotes) of Florina
Translated by fr. John Palmer
Christ: the never-setting noetic Sun
