Consider, brethren, how dear to the Apostle Thomas the truth of the Resurrection was, how dear to him the truth of the righteousness of the Holy Gospel!  But, behold, our times, which are distinguished by the fact that, for the most part, it is precisely indifference to Divine truth which possesses people.  Many beautiful words are spoken, but in fact nowadays people have a complete indifference to the truth.  An indifference just like that Pilate showed when the Lord stood before him at the judgment.  Before Pilate stood Truth Himself,  yet he declared, “What is Truth?”  - that, is: Does it exist?  If it really is, then it is far from us, and maybe there is no such thing.  And with complete indifference he turned his back on the One, Who proclaimed the truth to him, the One Who was Truth Himself.  People become indifferent now in exactly the same way.  Without a doubt you have many times heard how nowadays many speak high-blown, beautiful and apparently Christian things about the unification of everyone in one faith, in one religion.  But bear in mind, that what lies under this is precisely indifference to the truth.  If that had been the way for mankind, then he would never have not travelled along it.  It is just because the truth does not greatly interest everyone, and they simply want leave aside those things which conduce to edifying themselves with regard to faith, that they say, “We must all be united!”  This means that everyone must recognize that his faith is not true, and only when all these untrue faiths are melded into one, will the one truth be manifested.

 

Brethren, let us be fearful of such indifference to the truth.  In the Apocalypse, our Lord Jesus Christ clearly shows us how dreadful indifference to the truth is.  There He addressed the angel, who represents the Church of Laodicea, and says: “I know thy works.  Thou art neither cold nor hot.  O, if only thou hadst been hot or cold!  So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth”  (Rev. 3:15-16).  It is said even more sharply and strongly in the Slavonic text, “I will vomit thee out of my mouth,” - in exactly the way any organism resolutely rejects anything inimical or harmful to itself.

 

We should remember that indifference to the truth is one of the greatest calamities of our age of apostacy.  Value the truth, o man!  Be a struggler for the truth.  Recall how the Apostle Thomas loved the truth of the resurrection of Christ, the divine evangelical truth.  This love of the Apostle for the truth and for the Preceptor of the truth is an example for us, of how a man must value the truth, and love the One, Who is the Way and the Truth and the Life (cf Jn 14:6), our Lord Jesus Christ.  Truth stands higher than all else in life, O man, - so never allow yourself to stray from the path of truth.  Of course, we are all sinful, we all fail because of our infirmities, but it is one thing to fall through infirmity, and another to be indifferent to the truth and consciously to depart from her.  May this never happen with us!  Let each of our church parishes, like a comradely  spiritual family, stand firmly in the truth, and be faithful to the corps of our holy Russian Orthodox Church Abroad.*  Not one Church conducts itself in this way now.  And the ministers of the other Churches do not conduct themselves as do the ministers of the Church Abroad.  What does this signify?  It is a very sure sign that our Church stands in the truth, and because of this in a bellicose manner every lie and every falsehood is directed against her.  If our Church did not stand in the truth, no one would attack her.  Everything would be peaceful and quiet.  But in that she stands in the truth and confesses that truth, proclaims it and defends it, all these attacks come upon her.

 

Let us then bear in mind, and value, that you and I belong to the Holy Church, which does sin against the truth in any way, but rather holds it fast, as our Lord Jesus Christ commanded and the Holy Apostles. Amen.

 

* Compiler’s footnote:  This homily is undated, but St Philaret died in 1985, and so it was clearly written a generation before the volte-face made by the Church Abroad’s hierarchy in 2007 when, by being subsumed into the Moscow Patriarchate, they left the Traditonalist Confessors in Orthodoxy and joined themselves to “World Orthodoxy.”  Lamentably, how different their stand now from that of St Philaret.  Then the Church Abroad stood firm; now the official ROCOR website fails signally to give any spiritual edification, but rejoices in recording instances of its leaders serving with ecumenists, renovators and those compromised by political affiliations, and even with those in communion with Monophysites.