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 On Harmony of Thunder Orthodox podcast: In the final sermon from St. Basil's Hexaemeron, the great preacher addresses the pinnacle of Creation - Man. Join us on Harmony of Thunder as we learn the wonderful lessons St. Basil offers us through this ultimate act of the first six days of Creation.
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Harmony of Thunder, program fifteen, St Basil the Great Hexaemeron, Homily 9
In the eighth sermon from the Hexaemeron, St. Basil the Great spoke about the things his hearers might do after they left the church that day. In the ninth sermon, the one we'll look at today, St. Basil says something similar - that many of his hearers will go home to eat dinner (it seems this sermon was originally preached in the evening). He gives them this suggestion: “Retire, then, I beg you, with joy, O Christ-loving congregation, and instead of sumptuous dishes of various delicacies, adorn and sanctify your tables with remembrance of my words.”
Hi, welcome to Harmony of Thunder, where we explore and enjoy the rich tradition of Orthodox preaching. I’m your host, Fr. David Smith. Each week, Harmony of Thunder chooses a sermon from scripture or from the works of a saint and we spend our time together looking at the style, the illustrations, and the spiritual message of the preacher. Over the past few weeks we've been looking at the nine sermons of St. Basil's Hexaemeron, and today we conclude our exploration.
Lord Jesus Christ, through the prayers of Your Most Pure Mother and of all the saints, bless your Holy Orthodox Church with great preachers and people who want to hear them. Amen.
What came to my mind when I read those words of St. Basil was that I would like to go home and have both the good food and the good memory, or even better, good discussion about the soul-enriching words he had offered. I can imagine that many of his listeners thought the same thing. I mean, the words of St. Basil are obviously more valuable than any food, but how many times would I want to sacrifice eating in order to only spend time in recollection of his splendid preaching? I'm not sure of the answer to that one.
St. Basil uses the ninth sermon to sum up the creation of the animals, and specifically, he takes the opportunity to show the ways in which we should use our meditation upon the creation of the animals as a help to our spiritual lives: “Let the earth bring forth the living creatures. Behold the word of God pervading creation, beginning even then the efficacy which is seen displayed today, and will be displayed to the end of the world!” The preacher is speaking here about the way in which we can actually see the first day of creation in every day that we are alive, because God made the first day of creation so that it would occur over and over again, in order to fulfill the needs of time and history: “As a ball, which one pushes, if it meet a declivity, descends, carried by its form and the nature of the ground and does not stop until it has reached a level surface; so nature, once put in motion by the Divine command, traverses creation with an equal step, through birth and death, and keeps up the succession of kinds through resemblance, to the last.”
So we find that God has given the process of creating itself to us as an indication of His Divine character. But in addition, as with the other sermons in the Hexaemeron, St. Basil looks to particular creatures for instruction: “Cattle are terrestrial and bent toward the earth. Man, a celestial growth, rises superior to them as much by the mould of his bodily conformation as by the dignity of his soul. What is the form of quadrupeds? Their head is bent towards the earth and looks towards their belly, and only pursues their belly's good. Thy head, O Man is turned towards heaven; thy eyes look up. When therefore thou degradest thyself by the passions of the flesh, slave of thy belly, and thy lower parts, thou approachest animals without reason and becomest like one of them. Thou are called to more noble cares; seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth. Raise thy soul above the earth; draw from its natural conformation the rule of thy conduct; fix thy conversation in heaven. Thy true country is the heavenly Jerusalem; thy fellow citizens and thy compatriots are the first born which are written in heaven.”
What remarkable advice – and St. Basil draws all of that simply from the fact that we stand upright and other animals – or most other animals – don't.
And as before, St. Basil also urges us to learn industry from the example of the animals: “The ant during summer collects treasures for winter. For from giving itself up to idleness, before this season has made it feel its severity, it hastens to work with an invincible zeal until it has abundantly filled its storehouses. Here again, how far it is from being negligent! With what wise foresight it manages so as to keep its provisions as long as possible. With its pincers it cuts the grains in half, for fear lest they should germinate and not serve for its food. If they are damp it dries them; and it does not spread them out in all weathers, but when it feels that the air will keep of a mild temperature. Be sure that you will never see rain fall from the clouds so long as the ant has left the grain out.”
I'd never heard that before. You can almost hear grandpa saying to grandma, “Looks like rain, ma, the ants are taking the grain in.” Actually if you've got some time, enter the words “ants predicting weather” on your search engine and look at all the interesting stuff that comes up. St. Basil most certainly knew what he was talking about.
Now these are the things that St. Basil has said before, that he says again in this sermon – look to the animals for indications of God character and look to their good conduct as a model for yourself. But what does St. Basil say that's unique to this sermon? He addresses the creation of man.
The preacher has waited until this time to address the creation of man because God also waited until the end to create man. When you think about the creation of the sun, which we spoke of previously, how light, day, and night were all created before the sun, you can see that the very order of creation itself contains an important lesson for us. Notice that all the other parts of creation come into begin by the formula that begins, “let there be,” as in, “let there be light.” But with the creation of man, different words are used: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” This is a significant difference.
First of all, we see for the first time that God speaks in the plural, and St Basil, as many preachers have since his time, sees this as an indication of the Trinity in scripture: “Does not the light of theology shine in these words, as through windows; and does not the second person show Himself in a mystical way, without yet manifesting Himself until the great day?” God speaks, dear listener, in the plural because God is plural, three in one and one in three.
And what image is it that God speaks of? For certainly, we have been created in the image of both the Father and the Son, because God, in saying, “Let us make man in our image” certainly was speaking to the Son, and thus the image that he spoke of must necessarily be shared by the Father and the Son, as St. Basil says, “Father and Son have by absolute necessity the same form, but the form is here understood as becomes the divine, not in bodily shape, but in the proper qualities of Godhead.” God did not say, let us make man in your image, but in our image, and so we know that the image that God created us in is the same image of Himself.
It's complicated, right? But St. Basil says, “In truth the most difficult of sciences is to know one's self.” That is definitely our quote of the day, let me say it again and continue with what comes after it: “In truth the most difficult of sciences is to know one's self. Not only our eye, from which nothing outside us escapes, cannot see itself, but our mind, so piercing to discover the sins of others, is slow to recognize its own faults.”
True. After all that we've studied in the last eight programs of Harmony of Thunder, the real issue is still left unexplored: who are you? Who am I?
That, dear listener, is something we'll have to explore in another program, while meditating upon the sermons of another preacher.
Oh Lord God, Creator of Heaven and earth, of the plants and animals and all the earth contains, and of man himself, the pinnacle of your creative design, help us to know ourselves, that we might glorify you with our faith and lives, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God, Amen.
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