In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit!

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

In today’s Gospel reading we have heard that God, our Lord, designates the strength of our faith as the main weapon that is able to bring the victory over evil. Our faith is not like a lifeless stone, not a precious diamond, which, though beautiful and very expensive, is still dead and insensible… Christ teaches us that our faith must be similar to a grain: though it is primarily tiny, it is alive. And, as this minute grain will eventually grow and become a big beautiful tree, our faith must also always grow and develop, and never freeze or stop in one place. Christ tells us that if even we have had faith of the size of a mustard seed, the mountains would have retreated in front of us, and we would have been able to move them from place to place…

The Lord tells His disciples about a prayer and fasting as about the most powerful means to strengthen our faith. What hidden meaning is there in the words of God that by our faith we would be able to move mountains from one place to another? Why do we need to do this? Will it help to save our souls?

Let us consider for a moment that Jesus was talking not about the physical mountains of earth and stones, but about those mountains, which rise in our hearts, the mountains of sins, accumulated during our lives? These are the very mountains that separate us from God… Them we should move away and (or, even better) make them topple into the deep sea… Only with the help of God’s grace that we receive at every Church service, we are able to break down these cold and dark, lifeless rocky mountains of sin and pride.

The apostles proved to be able to overthrow these mountains of their personal sins, and then to turn the whole existing at that time human world over. Under the influence of their preaching about Jesus Christ and after their personal example demonstrating the strength of their faith (which they were ready to confess in spite of multiple and various prosecutions to the very death), many peoples were set in motion, declined the previous false beliefs and become Christians. As a result, the entire ancient world was changed and a new Christian civilization, to which we all belong, was built! The devil wants to destroy this new world of God-believers that our Heavenly Father created. We can preserve it only by prayers and fasting. Our faith must constantly increase. If our faith does not grow, it will decline and eventually die. The true fast – is not when one gives up eating meat, but when one denies oneself, gives up one’s sins. Real prayer – is such state of mind, when the soul every minute is turned towards God, as a radio set is tuned to the radio station. Only in this way we will be stronger than the devil, than atheism, than any other false aggressive religion! Amen!

September 1st, 2013. Chipman.