In the reading today from the book of the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul warns us that there will be times of trouble for the Church, with attacks that will come from without and from within. The attackers will be, as he calls them, “savage wolves.” As the Church grew, and people’s lives were transformed, so that they no longer lived according to the ways of the world, but rather according to the way of life in the kingdom, those who ruled on Earth perceived the Christians as a threat to their own power and authority. They tried to suppress the Church, to silence the proclamation of the Gospel of our salvation in Jesus Christ – and when they felt it was necessary to accomplish these things, they did not hesitate to imprison, torture and even kill those who by word and by deed proclaimed their loyalty to Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.
St. Paul also warns that there is another source of danger, another form of attack from these “wolves in human form.” He says that there will come people from within the Church herself who will proclaim perverse doctrines, and will seek followers for themselves, whom they will lead away from the true Faith in schism and heresy and even paganism.
One such teacher and leader was a priest named Arius. He didn’t necessarily start out with the intention of deceiving the faithful in his care; and it is possible that his start down the road to heresy began with the best of intentions: to glorify God. But the teaching he proclaimed began to make it seem as if the second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Son of God Who took on our nature and came to save us, was not quite God. The controversy this stirred up among the faithful led to a decision by his bishop to stop teaching this about the Son of God. Arius responded by fleeing from that bishop, going to another diocese, where he continued teaching as he had before. It wasn’t long before this was causing trouble again; and as others spread his teaching throughout the Church, the turmoil was spreading. The Church was in danger of being torn apart by the struggle between those who sided with Arius and those who opposed him.
At the time this problem was developing, the Emperor Constantine, who, upon becoming the Emperor, ended the persecutions of the Church with the issuance of the Edict of Milan in 313 A.D. He was laboring to unify an Empire that had been divided, and he looked to the Church to be the nucleus around which everyone could be brought together. The last thing he wanted was a division in the body to which he looked to bring unity to the realm; and so, in the year 325 A.D. he summoned the bishops of the Church to his vacation city of Nicaea, not far from his new capital in Constantinople. When they opened their deliberations, he charged them, among things, with resolving the controversy that was the result of what Arius had been teaching.
When this meeting – the first Ecumenical Council – completed its work, they had, by a unanimous vote, declared that what Arius had been teaching was a heresy. They also declared what is the true Faith in a summary form. That summary, with a small addition that was added at the Second Ecumenical Council, is used in every Divine Liturgy of the Church, and in our private prayers as well. We call it the Nicene Creed; and it teaches us about God, the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and about the Church. This is why we mark today as the celebration of the holy Fathers of the First Council.
The warning that St. Paul gave to the Church leaders with whom he met in Ephesus is a warning that we should heed today. The attacks upon the Church have been many – there is certainly no need to explain this to those of us in the Russian Church! Other false teachers have come from within the Church; and there are some today, and there will certainly be more in the future. What, then, are we supposed to do? How do we respond to the warning St. Paul has given to us?
What we must do, brothers and sisters, is to become so familiar with the Orthodox faith, and the Orthodox way of life, that we will immediately recognize when we hear something contrary to the faith being taught or discussed. To do this, we must be reading and learning from the holy Bible, the teachings of the Fathers, and the lives of the saints. We must pray and fast; we must give from what God has given to us; we must attend the worship services of the Church as often as possible; and we must live in such a way that the life of Christ will be seen in everything that we say or do. If doing these things, if living the life of our Lord given to us when we were baptized is seen by the world as a threat – and it is being seen as a threat in many ways in this land, in this city, today – so be it. We do not seek power in this world; and we will obey the powers of this world, except when doing so will cause us to depart from being the servants of God and the disciples of Christ. We do not seek power in this world, but we do desire the overthrow of the rule of the prince of this world, the enemy of our salvation.
May God grant us the grace and wisdom and strength to grow knowledgeable in the Orthodox faith and to live the life of His kingdom in this world, to the glory of God, and the salvation of our souls!
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