Homily of His Grace, Bishop Parthenius of Antania, delivered on Bright Friday, following the reading of the Holy Gospel during the Divine Liturgy at the Monastery of the Most Holy Mother of God, Kičevo, on April 21, 2023
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit!
Beloved, we find ourselves in the most joyful liturgical period in the life of the Church and in our personal spiritual journey. This is the Bright Week, the Week of the Resurrection of Christ, which the Holy Fathers also call the Eighth Day. It serves as a foretaste, an image of the Kingdom of God, the day of eschaton, of eternal joy, when we shall cease to count the hours, days, months, and years; when there will be no more time, no more sorrow, no more pain, and no more death, but only the eternal reign of our Savior, Christ God. For the very purpose of His coming into the world—His sufferings, crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension—was to reopen the gates of paradise for each of us.
Today, on this Bright Friday, we celebrate the very cause of our joy, the one through whom all of this became possible. Without her—the Chosen One, the most blessed among women, the Mother of God—the Savior Christ could not have taken on flesh. It was necessary for such a divine purity to exist, for a perfectly sinless soul to willingly accept the Word of God within her womb. Today’s feast is dedicated to our Most Blessed Lady, the Theotokos, and to the commemoration of her renowned and venerable shrine in Constantinople, the Church of the Life-Giving Spring—a miraculous source of water that existed outside the walls of the city, near the so-called Golden Gate, during the Byzantine era.
The first church above the Theotokos’ spring was built by Emperor Leo I in the 5th century. According to tradition, a small forest with a spring, once known for its miracles but later forgotten and overgrown with bushes, stood at that location. One day, Leo, a soldier and future emperor, a man of deep faith and piety, encountered a blind man—a helpless traveler—who had lost his way. Leo assisted the blind man, helping him find his path and resting him under the shade of the trees, then went in search of water to refresh the traveler. Suddenly, he heard a voice: “Leo! Do not search far; the water is near.”
Startled by the wondrous voice, Leo searched for the water but could not find it. Puzzled and amazed, he stood still, when the voice spoke again: “Emperor Leo! Go into the forest and draw water from the spring you find there, and give it to the thirsty man. Then take some of the mud from the spring and place it upon the eyes of the blind man. You will then know who I am, the one who sanctifies this place.”
Leo did as he was instructed, and a great miracle occurred: the blind man immediately regained his sight and, without a guide, returned to Constantinople, praising the Most Pure Theotokos. A few years later, according to the blessing of the Queen of Heaven, the soldier Leo became the Roman emperor. In gratitude, he built a stone church over the miraculous spring in honor of the Mother of God. The spring was called the “Life-Giving Spring” because the miraculous grace of the Mother of Grace was abundantly manifested through it.
Later, in the 6th century, the famous and devout Byzantine Emperor Justinian, a faithful servant of the Orthodox faith, suffered from dropsy, a condition that often led him into despair. For a long time, he endured this illness. One night, while praying, he heard a voice saying: “You cannot regain your health unless you drink from My spring.” The emperor, not knowing which spring the voice referred to, grew sorrowful. Then the Most Holy Theotokos appeared to him again in a vision, saying: “Arise, emperor, go to My spring, drink from it, and you will be restored to health as before.”
The sick emperor obeyed the will of the Lady of the Angels and soon recovered. In gratitude for his miraculous healing, he built a new magnificent church near the one that Leo had erected, and the site eventually grew into a large and beautiful monastery.
Sadly, with the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks, the church and monastery built by Emperor Justinian were completely destroyed, and their materials repurposed for the construction of Sultan Bayezid’s mosque. The place fell into ruin, but the Christians never forgot the spring. In the 19th century, when reforms in the Ottoman Empire granted Christians certain freedoms, they requested permission from Sultan Mahmud to rebuild the church. Thus, on the site known as Balaikli—which in Turkish means fish due to the unusual fish that constantly swim in the miraculous spring—the current church and monastery were built. Some of you may have visited this sacred site personally.
The significance of the venerable Church of the Life-Giving Spring in Constantinople for us lies in a historic event: on June 9th of last year, our local Orthodox Church received the official document of restoration of liturgical and canonical unity from the First Throne, the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Through this act, our Holy Church was officially recognized by its ancient name, the Archdiocese of Ohrid, reflecting the millennia-long continuity of organized ecclesiastical life in our lands.
Beloved, today we celebrate with psalms and hymns the miraculous spring of the Most Holy Theotokos, that holy water from which countless miracles and healings flow. However, we must not forget that the true source of living and life-giving water is Christ God Himself, who nourishes us with divine strength and grace. Remember what He says in the Gospel about His body: “Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day” (John 6:54). It is His body that gives us life and elevates us into eternal life. Frequent communion with the Holy Mysteries is our pledge for eternity, for Christ has conquered death on behalf of us all. And He did so through His most pure body, which He, of course, received from the Most Pure Virgin Mary. From her, He took human flesh, and with it, He embraced the whole world from the Cross in divine love, and ultimately triumphed through the empty tomb for all of us, granting us an unfading victory.
The ultimate destination of our life, therefore, is eternity—the eternal day of God’s Kingdom. Of course, there is a path to this eternal life, along with certain preparations and conditions. The most important principles are undoubtedly the divine commandments of love. Today, we honor the Most Holy Theotokos. In most iconographic depictions, she is shown embracing the Christ Child. Through her, God embraced humanity, and humanity embraced God. It is indeed true—we can embrace God, and He desires that we do so and that we be with Him. But in order to do so, we must first embrace our brother with the love of Christ. As the Apostle of Love, St. John the Theologian, tells us: “He who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” (1 John 4:20).
Sadly, we Christians often forget this truth today. We see how the world drifts further and further away from God’s love, and as a result, people become increasingly alienated from one another. We are growing colder toward each other. We live in an era of rapid alienation. The warm embrace with which God embraced humanity is fading. The motherly embrace of the Most Holy Theotokos is disappearing. Instead of being filled with God’s warmth and love, our souls are increasingly preoccupied with the technological devices we carry with us everywhere. What matters is no longer the moment we are living in, but what we can capture in photos and videos to post on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms. Artificial intelligence is taking the place of natural empathy between people. Insensitivity is becoming the new norm for modern man. This is a frightening reality! We must be especially vigilant and discerning so that love within us does not grow cold. One of the signs of the end times—and we see today how many Christians, influenced by Protestant theology, speak only about the end times, the apocalypse, and the Antichrist—is precisely the cooling of love. “Because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12), the Lord Himself warns.
When we focus solely on the Antichrist, when we judge and condemn everything—priests, monks, bishops, entire synods, and even the Church itself—we become apocalyptic. We become precursors of the Antichrist rather than followers of Christ. As one well-known 19th-century philosopher once said, “He who fights with monsters must take care lest he become a monster himself.”
The task of Christians, worthy of praise, is to love and hope in Christ alone—nothing else. We must place Him above all things in our lives. Only then will we truly belong to Him until the end of the world, and He will return for us who await Him. Remember how we profess daily in the Creed: “And He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, and His Kingdom shall have no end.” Therefore, do not become entangled in false apocalyptic theologies about the end times, the Antichrist, and similar things. What good will it do if Christ returns even now, at the end of this service, if I am not prepared or repentant? If I have not loved, if I came to this Liturgy without reconciling with my neighbors, my brothers, and sisters; if I am full of judgment and anger, if I have gossiped, condemned, or
even publicly written against my brothers? We all bear a tremendous responsibility now before the angelic hosts, as each of us has the power to publish something publicly that can be read by hundreds or thousands of people. And look at how, without any sense of responsibility or fear of God, some write judgments, slanders, and scandals, calling themselves Christians! Let us not even speak of others—let us only consider ourselves, the Christians, those who are supposed to be fountains of living water, sources of comfort and forgiveness.
We know what Christ said to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well: “Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14). Therefore, if we are nourished by Christ—by His pure and life-giving body and blood—then we are obligated to water those around us with the living water of His teaching. We must become witnesses of His light and love, not gloomy, deluded, self-absorbed judges and haters.
We just heard what the Apostle Paul tells us in today’s reading: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). Let us ask ourselves: Do we have the mind of Christ? Do we live according to Christ? Do we live with self-sacrificing love? For what kind of love is Christ’s love? It is sacrificial. He was crucified for us, proving His love through His deeds. Though He is God, He humbled Himself to become man. And yet, we find it hard to humble ourselves, to seek forgiveness, or to love with actions. We struggle to make sacrifices for others, but we still wish to be called Christians. This cannot be. That way, we will only be Christians in name, unworthy of our Teacher. God desires that we be Christians through our deeds. Only then will we be bearers of eternity, living it even now. For this life is fleeting. You see how we pass through life with sufferings, with pain, with sickness, and with many difficulties, and before you know it—life is over.
Therefore, beloved, the most important and only thing that matters is that while we are still within time, we must use it to gain eternity. We can achieve this only if we strive to follow the commandments of Christ. First, we must love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our strength, and with all our thoughts, and love our neighbor as ourselves. This is the calling that the Queen Mother, who is always ready to help us with her humility and maternal love, especially urges us to follow. She desires to lead us all to Christ. Never forget that she continually intercedes for us, praying tirelessly for our salvation. Her miracles and blessings are countless—not only at the spring in Constantinople but everywhere her name is honored. Even here, at the spring in this revered monastery, where her wonderworking icon resides, her miraculous acts of healing grace are many. This is why we celebrate Bright Friday and the Feast of the Life-Giving Spring. The Theotokos works miracles daily on our behalf, tenderly and motherly waiting for us to become true Christians.
Beloved, do not forget that embrace of hers, in which and through which God met humanity, and humanity met God. We are all called to live within that embrace. God continuously embraces us, but for that embrace to be truly meaningful, we must also strive—through our acts of love—to embrace Him in return. May the Queen and Mother of God help us in this endeavor. Amen!
Christ is Risen!
