Dear Brothers and Sisters,

We wish to remind you that today is the beginning of the Holy Christmas Fast. Over the forthcoming days and weeks, by fasting we will prepare ourselves in the most dignified way, as Orthodox Christians, for the blessed joy of Christmas, and will make our hearts a cradle for the Newborn Child, Christ. The first of God's commandments, given to our ancestors in Paradise, which they should have followed out of their love for the Creator and each other, was the commandment to refrain from eating the forbidden fruit, which freed human beings from the temptations of the flesh.

Today, dear brethren, we celebrate the glorious feast of the lightning-like Archangel Michael and all the heavenly bodiless powers. On this day let us talk of the boundless world of the angels; of their nature, of their hierarchy, and of the infinite mercy of God which has added us, Orthodox Christians, to this angelic host and has a formed a single Church made of angels and men; and subsequently of our responsibility to venerate them in a worthy manner and try to emulate them as our future compatriots in the celestial homeland; for which we earnestly pray to God, our common Creator.

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

Today's Gospel concerns two miracles, one the healing of an illness and the other the overcoming of death. These two miracles are closely linked, for both illness and death have the same origin, the same cause, they are both the result of sin, both entered the world as a result of the sin of Adam. As the Apostle Paul says in his letter to the Orthodox Christians in Rome, 'the wages of sin are death'.

On June 28th 1916, now Sainted Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović addressed a congregation gathered at St. Paul's Cathedral in London at the invitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Gentlemen and friends,

I am coming from Serbia, from European "midnight". There is no ray of light, not a single trace. All the light went from the ground to the sky and the sky is the only place where the light is coming from. Nevertheless, we that are weak in everything are strong in faith and hope that dawn will soon arrive. I am grateful to Lord Archbishop, Randall Cantuar, that allowed me, on this holy day, Vidovdan, year of Our Lord 1916, in this beautiful church of Saint Paul, to address his majesty, King George V and the most prominent Englishmen.

The cross is the heart and soul of the Christian faith. It has been the source of devotion in life and comfort in death. The sign of the cross has been, since the earliest times, the act that has preceded, attended and closed the actions and thoughts of faithful Christians.

Yet despite the theological and salvific basis of the cross and our Savior's sacrifice upon it, the origins of the great Orthodox feast we celebrate, Sunday the Elevation — or Exaltation — of the Precious Cross, has a distinctly historical flavor to it.

(2 Cor. 11 : 31–12 : 9)

In above apostolic reading we touch upon an unpleasant subject for many of us: illness.