The Gates of Death

A Sermon on the Meeting of the Lord

Today’s feast has many meanings, many aspects, and even many names. It is sometimes called the Meeting of the Lord, sometimes the Purification of the Virgin, sometimes the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, and finally — especially in the West — it is known as Candlemas: the Feast of the Light that shown upon St. Symeon, and which we commemorate by blessing candles on this day. This multiplicity of names and meanings reveals that today’s feast is situated at a crossroads between the Law and the Prophets, between the Old and the New Covenants of God with man. Today — for the first time in history — God Himself enters bodily into the Temple which man made for Him, carried in the arms of Her who is Herself the true Holy of Holies, the Tabernacle more spacious than the heavens. He enters not in a cloud of glory but in humble poverty, in meekness and lowliness fulfilling the Law which He Himself gave. The All-Holy Virgin enters to be purified, who alone among women is spotless and undefiled. The Righteous Symeon prophesies over Him who is both the giver and the fulfillment of all prophecies.

It is no accident that the Holy Church has ordained that this feast be celebrated very near the beginning of Great Lent, because this feast is also the first feast of the Resurrection. In this feast we are given a foretaste of the Lord’s Pascha, seeing — for the very first time — death no longer as an enemy to be feared, but rather as a doorway which opens unto the salvation of God, which was “prepared before the face of all people.” In this feast, the death of St. Symeon the God-Receiver has begun to be touched by the life of Christ. He lived on this earth for 360 years, miraculously preserved by the grace of God in order to behold the coming of the Anointed One; and though after meeting Christ he still descended into Sheol, the hymns of the Holy Church tell us that he preceded St. John the Forerunner in preaching the coming of salvation and life eternal to the souls imprisoned there.

This feast is also one especially monastic in its character. It is a Feast of the Lord, Whose life and words all monastics strive to imitate insofar as possible. It is a Feast of the Mother of God, the Heavenly Mother and Protectress of all monks and nuns. And it is a feast of the holy Elder Symeon and the Prophetess Anna, two saints who lived a life dedicated to prayer and fasting, continually abiding in the Temple and awaiting the coming of their Lord. But above all, for monastics this feast is the feast of the remembrance of death.

The remembrance of death — though it may seem morbid and joyless to those who love only the fleeting pleasures of this dying life — is shown today to be the only source of true joy, life, and happiness. The life of St. Symeon stands in such stark contrast to the modern world, which seeks hide and cover over — by every means possible — the looming reality of death. Those deluded by this world’s deceits imagine that long life is the highest possible good. We today are absolutely obsessed with this delusion and seek to prolong earthly life at any cost, inventing grotesque and humiliating medical techniques to add even a few days or weeks to a person’s life — days and weeks which are often filled with suffering and pain, unless numbed into oblivion by powerful narcotics.

St. Symeon lived on this earth for 360 years, and by the reasoning of our contemporaries such a lifespan is to be greatly envied. Yet what must it have actually been like for him? To see his family, his relatives, and his friends one by one grow old and die? To see his nation enslaved, his people humiliated; to see the slow decay of all those places which he had known and loved as a youth? To endure his own body as it grew ever more weak and feeble with each passing year? Truly, this vain and corruptible world holds no lasting pleasure or happiness. Man was indeed made for eternal life — but clearly he was not made for eternal life in this world.

Yet to recognize the vanity of this world and its pleasures is not enough. This knowledge is shared by the Hindus and Buddhists, and even by our contemporary existentialists and nihilists. St. Symeon’s remembrance of death was something far greater than the longing of Eastern mysticism to escape into oblivion, into a nothingness beyond the reach of all life’s suffering. St. Symeon’s remembrance of death was nothing other than an eager and joyful anticipation of the apocalypse — that is to say, the unveiling of Christ Himself in all His gladsome and glorious light.

For St. Symeon, for monastics, and for every Christian, the miracle of Christ’s Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection lies precisely in that He filled all things — even and especially death — with Himself. In the words of the Psalmist: “If I go up into heaven, Thou art there: if I descend into Hades, Thou art present there, if I take up my wings toward the dawn and make mine abode in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall Thy hand guide me and Thy right hand shall hold me.” And so it turns out the prophecy that St. Symeon “should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ” (Luke 2:26) was in fact a double prophecy. It was a prophecy about St. Symeon, but it was also a prophecy about the life of every Christian: to see death and to behold Christ are now one and the same.

This prophecy ultimately led St. Symeon to depart this life in peace and gladsome joy — but only because he had lived all his life in the remembrance of the prophecy, and had shaped his entire life around it. By the time he met Christ, he had already died to everything transient and everything sinful — for St. Symeon, there was no longer anything left to live for except the light of Christ which finally shone on him in the Temple on this great and holy day. As it is written above the gates of a certain monastery: “If you die before you die, when you die, you shall not die.”

For although to see death and to behold Christ have now become one and the same, this truth is joyful only to those who love Christ; it is exceedingly bitter to those who do not. Resurrection will come at the last day to all men, but the Scriptures warn that only for some will it be a resurrection unto life, while for others it will be a resurrection unto damnation. And so we see once more why the Holy Church has placed this feast near to the beginning of the Great Fast. It is a feast of joy, life, light and resurrection… but it is a feast that can only be entered into through the gates of suffering, repentance, bright sorrow, and ultimately — death.

We all have a choice before us: will we willingly accept suffering and death for the sake of the love of God, and so behold those very things being transformed into joy and blessedness and life eternal? Or will we run and hide from suffering and death — only to find, at the end of all things, that we cannot run and hide any longer, and that having refused to meet Christ in them, we are left with suffering and death alone, forever stripped of Christ and of all meaning? To suffer and to die are inevitable. Our only choice is for what we will suffer, and to what we will die.

Through the prayers of the Holy Righteous Symeon the God-Receiver and the Holy Prophetess Anna, through the intercessions of the Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, and through the grace and mercy of the only Lover of Mankind, may we all be enlightened by the Gladsome Light of this holy feast, so that we may each make our choice wisely. Amen.