05/30/2026
Submit Yourselves
We celebrate the Fathers of the First Ecumenical Council, the holy fathers who gathered together in the City of Nicaea in the year 325 to address the crisis that was the A***n heresy. Before we can understand what an ecumenical council is or a council, first we need to understand the Church’s understanding of authority.
Within Christianity, who wields authority? The Lord Jesus Christ offers His highly priestly prayer, and He says about the apostles, “I pray for them. I pray not for the world but for them which Thou hast given Me for they are Thine and all Mine are Thine and Thine are Mine, and I am glorified in them. And now, I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to Thee Holy Father, keep through Thine own name those who Thou hast given Me that they may be one as We are” (John 17:9-11). This special prayer which the Lord Jesus Christ offers not for the world but for His apostles shows us things to come. That if this is a prayer which Christ is offering to the Father, the Father is not going to turn Christ away empty-handed. What He is asking will indeed be granted, and these men, these apostles, will be preserved. Christ says earlier, “All authority is given to Me in Heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18). And He imparts His authority which He has to His apostles. He says, “Whoever’s sins you forgive, they are forgiven. Whoever’s sin are retained, they are retained” (John 20:23). This statement of Christ makes a lot of people awfully nervous. “Sounds like you’re saying confession is a thing, Father.” Yes, I am saying just that.
The authority of binding and loosing includes confession; it includes forgiving sins or not forgiving sins, but it is wider than this, taller than this, deeper than this. For the apostles are given authority to make rulings. Regarding faithfulness to God, what should a person who is following the Lord Jesus Christ do in certain circumstances? The apostles were given authority to make rulings. The apostles extended this authority to the bishops they ordained, to the presbyters they ordained to make rulings regarding a thing, indeed, to teach, to preach, and to make dogmatic statements regarding the faith. So, who has the authority within the Church which Christ established? That is the bishops. The apostles, the bishops, the presbyters wield the authority. And when questions or crises come about, the priest or the bishop makes a ruling. For problems that are large enough, the bishops gather together, and indeed, the bishops gather together twice a year to make necessary pastoral rulings on certain matters.
The very first controversy within the life of the Church, the very first pastoral question is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. What is the Church to do with all of these pagans who are coming to be baptized into Christ? What must the Church do about the gentiles because in the first generation and indeed for the first several generations of the Church, the Church is overwhelmingly Jewish. And so, the question comes up, well, what should we require of the gentiles? Do they need to be circumcised? Do they need to keep Torah? Surely, this is what we should do. But others are saying, “No, no, we shouldn’t expect them to do this.” So, how was the controversy resolved? The apostles, the bishops of the Church, gathered together in the city of Jerusalem. The Church of Jerusalem was presided over by James the brother of the Lord. He is the archbishop of Jerusalem. The apostles gather. They pray. They discuss the matter, and then they make a ruling. “It seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us that the gentiles abstain from blood, from fornication, from things strangled, from idols, from sexual immorality” (15:28-29). What the apostles did was actually go back to the holiness code regarding the gentiles who live in the land of Israel, and how they are to live (Leviticus 17-27). This is what the apostles did. This is the ruling they made, and that ruling carries over to this day. Christians do not eat blood because the blood is the life of a creature, and we are not to be predators. Christians are not to practice sexual immorality because the body is the temple of the Spirit of Yahweh, and to defile the body through sexual immorality is to defile the temple of God. These rulings endure.
And today we commemorate the rulings at the Ecumenical Council of Nicaea. So, we saw the first council, the gathering of the apostles, and you notice they didn’t go to Peter and just ask him, “So, what do you say, Peter?” Peter was at the council. He was there. They didn’t ask him and say, “Well, you’re the only one who can say anything about this, so what do you say?” Nope, they prayed together. They made this ruling together, and it was St. James who proclaimed the ruling.
Early in the 4th century, a heresy arises in the Church which proclaims that Jesus is merely human. That He is not God. He is not what the Father is. This teaching gathers some traction particularly in Egypt. It was a crisis within the life of the Church because the Church had proclaimed from the beginning the divinity of Christ. Indeed, actually, the first Christological heresy in the Church in the first generation of the Church was denying Christ’s humanity saying, “He’s God. He’s just not human. He appears to be human.” And while that particular group of heretics was correct about His divinity, they were incorrect about His humanity. Here, Arius proclaims only the humanity of Christ and denies His divinity. The Church with the guidance of the Holy Spirit Who is the Promise of the Father, Who Christ said would guide the Church into all truth the things concerning Him, proclaimed the truth of Christ’s divinity. And the first half of the creed which we recite every Liturgy, was written.
Now, some might ask, does it really matter what you say about Christ? So, this guy says that Christ is only human. What’s the big deal with that? The big deal with that is if Christ is only human, we are not saved. We are still in our sins. We are still suffering to death. Demons still have authority over us. But because Christ is the eternal Son of God, because He is what the Father is although not Who, but He is what the Father is, it is He Who takes the authority away from the old gods. It is He Who destroys the power of death. It is He Who abolishes the poison of sin, and so, the Church made this ruling, this proclamation, this dogmatic statement: that the Lord Jesus Christ is consubstantial with the Father. That is, having the same substance of the Father, the same essence. We don’t know what the essence is. That would be impossible for us to ever know. But what the Father is the Son is also.
And this saving proclamation, dear ones, has been preserved through the centuries inviolate. To this day within the Church we proclaim the full divinity and humanity of Christ united in One single Person. And indeed, there are other Christian bodies which proclaim the divinity of Christ. How is it that they proclaim the divinity of Christ? It is because of the Council of Nicaea in 325. Many western Christian have no idea the depth of gratitude they owe to the proclamation of the seven ecumenical councils. So, the Church has this authority to preach and to proclaim, to bind and to loose, to make rulings. What does this mean for us? What it means for us is significant because if we believe that this is the case, that the Church which has this authority given to Her by Christ, that we can’t continue to live our lives as individuals. What do I mean by that? The modern concept of individual is that of a person who is his or her own ultimate authority. If I wind up doing something it is because I have decided to do it. If I submit myself to anyone or anything it is because I have decided to do it. And the moment I decide I don’t want to do something that I don’t like or that I don’t want to hear or I don’t want to do, guess what? I’m not doing it! This is the way modern man lives, and modern man wonders why he is so completely miserable.
The Church makes rulings, dear ones. Let us follow them even in something as simple as confession, and your father confessor asks you to do something so that you can heal from a particular kind of sin, certainly you are free not to do that. Absolutely you are free not to do that, but if you want to be healed, if you want to be made whole, do what he puts before you. Do that thing. This will be a step in the right direction for you, a step in the direction of healing. You must understand, dear ones, that this authority which Christ gives to the Church is not the lordship of the gentiles for when they come to power, lord it over everyone. The Lord says that he who would be great among you must be the servant of all (Matthew 20:25-26; Mark 10:42-45). This authority has given specifically for the purpose of service, specifically for the purpose of bringing men, women, and children to salvation, to healing in Christ Jesus our Lord. That is the nature, that is the purpose for which the authority is given.
And so dear ones, be aware of this, and indeed, submit yourselves to that authority. You will find blessing. You will find healing in that authority. You’ll find you have the ability to put your own life in proper order, but so long as we remain on the throne, dear ones, so long as we are the shot-callers, so long as we continue to decided what is best for us without consulting God, we will never know peace, and we will never know healing. God strengthen you to this task, dear ones as we await the coming of the Holy Spirit to Whom is due all glory, honor, and worship together with the Father and the Son unto the ages of ages, Amen.
https://stsavaoca.org/2026/05/24/submit-yourselves-fr-photius-avant/
