Blessed are You, O Lord, the God of our Fathers, and praised and glorified is Your name unto the ages. Amen.
In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets.
Hebrews 1:1
We have heard with our ears, O God, our fathers have told us, what deeds Thou didst perform in their days, in the days of old.
Psalm 44:1
History is a very powerful thing. When a company advertises “proudly serving our customers since 1923” that’s a lot more compelling than advertising “proudly serving our customers since 2023.” Christianity is not a new thing. It’s 2,000 years old. And the roots of Christianity are 2,000 years older than that. Many of our Traditions and practices have their genesis well before the Incarnation of Christ.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ has been preached for 2,000 years. It is not a new fad or a popular trend. Rather, it has been a stable anchor, as well as a guiding light for two millennia. The Orthodox expression of Christianity goes back to the time of the Apostles and the establishment of the Church. This is why there has been such an influx of people into our church recently. Because the Christian world, and the world in general, is shape-shifting Christianity to conform with contemporary thoughts, people are looking back in history and discovering that the church of the first few centuries after Christ is represented mostly closely in the theology and practice of the Orthodox Church.
The Doxology is a powerful hymn for so many reasons, and one of them is the line we are examining today, a nod to history. Because the world is so spread out, and we have become so mobile, we don’t give much thought to our ancestors, “our fathers,” where we come from. We might know the names of our great-grandparents, but most of us don’t go beyond them in knowing where we come from. We don’t speak of our “fathers” of centuries ago.
Back in the time of Christ, and in the generations before Him, people spoke of their fathers. While they might not know every person in the line of the Jewish Patriarchs, every Jewish person knew they were a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Jacob had twelve sons, who were the patriarch of twelve tribes. And everyone who was Jewish descended from one of those tribes. While there was a diversity in terms of which tribe someone came from, people knew that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were the names that unified everyone.
Jesus called all people to Him. Jews from the various tribes, and Gentiles from the various nations, are all united as Christians under Jesus Christ. From the time of the Apostles, the church has spread throughout the world. Today’s Bishops have Apostolic succession, an unbroken line to the time of the Apostles. In this line, there are great saints in every century. Somewhere in the line between the Apostles and the Bishops of today are great saints like St. Nicholas, St. Spyridon and St. Athanasios, all of whom lived in the fourth century and were defenders and shapers of the faith in the First Ecumenical Council in 325 A.D.
There are plenty of saints who were never priests or bishops, men and women who gave incredible witness for Christ, often resulting in their martyrdom. There are two thousand years of history of people who have lived and died for their faith. Our Christian faith rests not on a contemporary fad but on a solid two thousand years of history. And our Orthodox faith stands on nearly two thousand years of Traditions that we are still practicing today.
Faith is believing in what we cannot fully see or fully comprehend. And faith is a struggle for everyone at times. Faith in God is based on experience. It is based on our own experience, and it is based on the experience of others. Many of us are introduced to the faith by our parents. Our introduction to Christianity is based on their experience. Eventually, faith must become personal, it must be based on our own choice, our own experience. In our faith experience, when our faith is tested, sometimes we have to look not only to our personal experience, or even the experience of our family to bolster what we believe. Sometimes it is helpful to look at the global experience of faith—the totality of two thousand years of people living and dying for Christ. The overwhelming number of people, stories, sacrifices, miracles, etc. help strengthen faith in moments of doubt. This is why we are encouraged to read stories of the saints and why we celebrate their memories throughout the year on feastdays. This is why it is important that the church declares people of modern times as saints, that it recognizes and shares the most compelling witnesses to Christ with us, so that we know this sacrificial and joyful fervor for the Gospel is not limited to things that happened centuries ago, but that this kind of witness is still happening in the world today.
Thank You Lord, for laying out a plan for salvation that unites us today to Your Apostles of two thousand years ago, which unites us to Abraham two thousand years before that. Thank You for everyone who has carried the banner of faith, who has lived and died for You, and who has shown to us the powerful witness that are our Lord and Savior. Thank You for those who introduced me to the Faith and to You. In my moments of doubt, help me to lean on the history of those who have gone before me. And in my moments of faith, help me to leave a witness that will strengthen the faith of others. Blessed are You, O Lord, the God of our Fathers, and may Your name be praised and glorified unto the ages. Amen.
History provides a compelling testimony for the Christian faith, and a good place to go when we are struggling in faith.
