(Abbreviated and adapted for the Website)​

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What is it that we commemorate this day? It is the great and wondrous generosity of God, Dearly Beloved, which surpasses the power of human understanding, and is worthy only of Him from Whom it proceeds. For this day all mankind was restored to God. This day the long warfare, the prolonged estrangement (from God), was ended. This day a wondrous peace returned to us: a peace we had not expected. For who could have hoped that God would be reconciled to man? Not that the Lord is unmerciful, but because we were slothful and indifferent, not that the Lord was cruel and vindictive, but because we were ungrateful and unrepentant.

 

So badly did our race conduct itself in the past that it was in danger of being destroyed from the face of the earth. And now, we who before were deemed unfit to dwell upon the earth are raised up to heaven; we who were unworthy of earthly dignity now ascend to a heavenly kingdom and take our place upon a royal throne; and this nature of ours, because of which the Cherubim guarded the gates of Paradise, this day sits high above the Cherubim.

 

And why has this great and wondrous event come to pass? We who had fallen from all primacy and honor, for what reason have we been raised to so sublime a dignity? For this it is that is wondrous: that peace was made, not by those who provoked without cause the anger of God, but that He Himself, though justly angered, calls us and invites us to peace: …Who can fathom it? It is indeed so; for He is God; and because He is, as a loving Father He invites us to come to Him, and that is why all this has come to pass.

 

And who is it that ascends? It is Christ Jesus, the very Son of Him Who invites us. He ascends this day as our mediator. And what did this Mediator do? He put an end to enmity, and made him who was an enemy into a friend, and pleasing to God; but not before He had paid in full all that was owing, and fulfilled all that was to be done and to be suffered. And the proof of all these good things is the festival of this day. For as He took upon Himself the first-fruits of our nature, so likewise did He take them up to the Lord. He offered tothe Father the first-fruits of our nature, and because of the dignity of the Offeror, and the perfection of What was offered, the Father found the Gift so acceptable that He received It with His own Hands, and placed it close to Himself, saying: Sit thou at my right hand (Ps. 110:1).

 

But to what nature did He say, sit thou at my right hand? It was to that nature which had once heard the words: Dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return. But now He has raised it above the heavens. Was not this honor without measure? Our nature ascended above the heavens, it ascended above the angels, it passed upwards beyond the archangels and above the Cherubim. It soared above the Seraphim, higher than all the Powers of heaven, and came to rest only before the Throne of the Lord. 

 

It was not possible to descend lower than man had descended, or to go higher than Christ has now raised us. Gladly shall I dwell upon the unworthiness of our race, that I may comprehend the honor that has come to us through the loving mercy of the Lord. This day the archangels behold that which they had so long desired to see. This day they behold our nature upon the royal throne, shining in immortal beauty and glory. (And the fullness of this reality, this dignity, shall soon be ours. For as the angels said,) Ye men of Galilee, why stand you looking up to heaven. This Jesus, who is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come, as you have seen him going into heaven (Acts 1:9-10).

 

Let us then, Beloved Brethren, arise and uplift the eyes of our soul towards that return (for our true life is not here; it is hidden with Christ in God). Though we are fearful and anxious, and conscious within us of manifold offenses, let us turn to that which is better, so that arriving at that confidence those who have gone before us already possess, we may all together live in that splendid dignity to which we have been raised. And now let us press on to receive with fitting glory the King of angels, Jesus Christ our Lord, who will indeed come to us again; that we may share in that blessed joy which is ours in Him, to Whom, with the Father and the Holy Ghost be glory and dominion for ever and ever.