Sermon preached on the occasion of the Ordination of Deacon Maxim Nikolsky to the Priesthood.

Oxford, 7 April, 1990

God brings us step by step ever deeper to the knowledge of, and to participation in His mystery. First He has willed to call Maxim into being; He has given him life, a life that is sustained by the Divine Breath; He has revealed Himself to him and made him a partaker of His death and of His Resurrection through baptism. He has nurtured him in the Church, year after year, from early childhood to mature years, and then called him, step after step to be a witness. When he was made a Reader and a Server it was his dread privilege to walk with a candle before the Holy Gospel which is Christ, and before the Holy Gifts which represent the way of the Cross. He was then proclaiming to us, as did in his time St. John the Baptist, the Forerunner, that the Light had come into the world; that however deep the darkness, Light was there, dispelling it, and however much the darkness of the world tried to quench the Light, it was powerless to do so, because this Light was God Himself come into the world, born of the Virgin to save us.

Then Maxim was called to become a deacon: one step further into the mystery of God, and by a name which defines the position of everyone who is sent by God to be a servant, to serve not only the Lord, but all those for whom God became man, lived, spoke and died before He rose again. Then a privilege was given to Maxim; earlier he had been allowed to read the Psalms and other passages of the Old Testament, to read to us the words of the Apostles, but now he was granted the awesome grace to read the very words of Christ; not to speak about Him, but to stand and to say to us: «This is what God says to you!». And this he could do only if he was receiving the message which he was delivering; it is only if we are wounded to the heart by the words which we proclaim that these words will find an echo in the hearts of others, will come as truth, as light, as new life into other people's hearts and minds and wills.

Now he has been brought up to the sanctuary to become a priest. As a deacon he brought forth to God the prayers of the Church, reciting the litanies it was our prayers that he held before the Face of God, the prayers of the saints, so that we could join the prayers of those who truly had lived according to the Gospel. But now he has crossed a new threshold; he will now, in the name of all of us call upon God to come down to us; it is no longer the ascending movement of our prayers – it is the humble descent of the Holy Spirit he will invoke.

No apostolic succession, no ordination can give a man power to transmute bread into the Body of Christ, to transmute wine into the Blood of Christ, to transfigure the world before the day when all things will be fulfilled and God will be all in all. The only Celebrant of every sacrament is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, the High Priest of Creation; but the priest stands in an awesome position, because he says words that only Christ can say, he does things in the sanctuary which only the Incarnate Son of God become Son of Man can do. Indeed it is Christ Who does, but the priest is the word and the gesture of Christ.

We must always pray that a priest should never become accustomed to celebrating, never come to the delusion that he is the celebrant, and that what happens depends upon him; he stands before God as each of us stands, as the lost sheep, but a lost sheep whom God has commanded to do what He alone can do. He will fulfil the deed but the gesture and the word is ours.

It is not only the celebration of the Liturgy, it is also in all his pastoral work that Maxim will be the mediator of salvation. He will have to reveal the truth and the teaching of Christ by his preaching, and he will have to reveal it even more by his life, and by the revelation which his family can give of what the Church is: that when two or three are gathered together, Christ is in their midst. Together with his ordination, his whole family has become a sign, an eschatological sign that the end, the glorious end, and goal has been attained.

He will also grant Baptism to those whom he will have prepared, make them, not only symbollicaly, but mysteriously, mystically die the death of Christ in order to rise together with Him. He will anoint them with the Holy Chrism, thereby sealing them as vessels of the Holy Spirit. He will give them communion to the Body and Blood of Christ, making them partakers, step by step, but ever deeper in a dreadfully responsible way, partakers of the Divine Nature, according to the daring word of Peter the Apostle. And when those whom he will serve will fall away from the path of salvation, it will be given to him to stand by them in confession, praying to God with them for repentance, for liberation, for newness of life. He will have to fulfil St. Paul's words «Carry one another's burdens because it is thus that you will fulfil the law of Christ».

We have singled him out, we have all sent him along the way of the Cross, knowing that Christ is risen and that the way of the Cross is not the way of defeat, but the way of Victory; but we must pray with all our heart, with all our mind and faithfulness, all our love for him, for Use, for the children, that the burden should not be too heavy, and not load him with the burden which we should carry ourselves.

Let us sing for him at the end of the service 'Mnogaya Leta!’ – 'Many years', many years of faithful service, of an ever increasing dedication, of a growing integration to the mystery of Christ the Saviour – many years to be a witness of life and of light in a world of mortality and death, in a world at times so dark.

Let us thank God that Maxim has found in himself the devotion, and the courage to hand his life and the life of his family to God, for them to be witnesses, and to be witnesses is the same thing as to be martyrs. They have now given their life for each of you, each of us, each of those who will come to them for salvation, protect them, love them, defend them, surround them with prayer and with true care, and then, the day will come when he will stand before God together with all of us, and say to the Lord: «Here am I, O Lord, and here are the children which Thou has given me».

Amen.