Fools For Christ

Introduction: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, One
God. Amen. Christ, Who is wondrous in the Council of His Saints, has inspired many
and various types of saints. Together, all the saints share in common one holiness, one
love for God and obedience to His Commandments, and one faith. But saint differs from
saint in glory and type. The saints are like the stellar bodies. “There is one glory of the
sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from
star in glory” (1 Cor. 15: 41). Indeed, in the Divine Liturgy we are taught to remember
“forefathers, fathers, patriarchs, prophets, apostles, preachers, evangelists, martyrs,
confessors, ascetics and every righteous spirit which has completed this life in faith:
Especially our all-holy, immaculate, most blessed and glorious Lady Theotokos and ever-
virgin Mary” (Liturgikon, pp. 289-90).
This morning we celebrate the life of St. Basil, the Fool for Christ and Wonder-worker of
Moscow. “His father was called Jacob and his mother Anna. At the age of sixteen, he
gave himself to the ascesis of folly for Christ, and persevered in that hard asceticism for
seventy-two years, living to the age of eighty-eight. He went barefoot, bareheaded and
in tatters, and had no settled shelter. He set sinners on the right way, reprimanded the
nobles and had true insight into distant events. Suffering greatly from hunger, from cold
and from the insults of men, Blessed Basil gave his holy soul to God. Tsar Ivan was at
his funeral, with the Metropolitan. He was buried in the Moscow church of the Most
Holy Mother of God, later re-named for him” (St. Nicolai of Zica, Prologue, Vol. 3, p.
146). St. Basil was a star of the Church of Christ shining with a distinctive glory which is
that of Fools for Christ. What is a Fool for Christ? And how could a person who
voluntarily lived in tatters and apparent insanity be considered really human let alone a
saint?!! This morning I want to join our hearts and head together in holy contemplation
of those saints who are Fools for Christ, and I would like us to find ourselves in just a few
minutes prostrate together before their sanctified and triumphant feet.