Sermon on the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (August 30, 2026)
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen.
Venerable Fantinus of Calabria.
In a world of constant noise, we need to learn to disassociate, at least for some time. Noise and distractions and temptations are nothing new; we are not experiencing anything that our predecessors did not experience. We may be surrounded by more of it, and we may submit to it more readily than those before us, but none of it is new.
In His public ministry, Jesus often withdrew into a quiet and isolated place to pray. After healing and preaching to the crowds in Capernaum, He rose before dawn, went out to a solitary place and prayed (Mark 1:35). Having fed a crowd of more than five thousand, Jesus went up on the mountain by Himself to pray (Matthew 14:23). As crowds gathered around the Lord, and His fame spread, He would repeatedly depart to desolate places to pray (Luke 5:16), to refocus, to recalibrate.
Even the Incarnate Son of God needed to step away from the noise sometimes to spend time in silence with His Father.
Throughout the year we are offered times of withdrawals for prayer, for solitude. We call these times fasting periods. But the more we are surrounded by noise, especially from the dark demons in our pockets, the more we need to consciously retreat from it all and reconnect with the Source of our life, refocus on the One Who is present in the low and gentle whisper (1 Kings 19:12).
Saint Fantinus was born in 902 to devout Christian parents in Calabria, Italy. From very early age, he was seeking that gentle whisper of God. He was not interested in the things his peers were interested in; he was not chasing after wind; and he really did not like to be surrounded by noise.
His parents, noticing these things about their son, placed him in the care of a holy monk, at just 8 years old! At 13, Fantinus was already a monk himself. For the next 20 years Fantinus fulfilled monastic obediences, driving away all desire of pleasure from his soul and purifying his heart to bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
It was after the death of his spiritual father, the holy monk Elias the Cave-Dweller, that Fantinus decided to withdraw to a deserted mountain. Even life in the monastery can be too noisy. Unlike the Lord, Who withdrew for a night to pray, Fantinus spent years living alone, partaking of what the nature offered him, communing with God’s creation, and growing closer to God by struggling against his own passions, and fighting demons that took the form of various people in his life.
As flowers draw the bees by their sweetness, so that deserted mountain attracted men and women wearied by the noise of the world, who came thirsting for a taste of holiness. And soon, that mountain was no longer deserted.
A monastery, and a true spiritual center, was established there. Through the struggle with his passions, Fantinus was granted the power to cast out demons and heal people’s physical and spiritual ailments. People flocked around him, and he shared the gifts that God gave him to share.
Yet, Fantinus continued seeking the whisper of God. It was getting too noisy for him at the monastery, so one day he ran away naked to the mountain (Fantinus, perhaps, had a bit of foolishness-for-Christ in him), and lived there alone for four years. Eventually he returned to his monastery and continued sharing God’s gifts with all who came to visit him.
But from time to time, he would leave everything behind and spend time in solitude to make sure that he can still hear God Who does not appear in strong wind or in the earthquake or in the fire, but in a low and gentle whisper.
To hear this whisper, we need to disassociate from the noise of our life, at least for some time, and learn to listen. We don’t have to run away to the mountain naked and spend years there. If we follow the seasons of shutting down the noise and the distractions, we’ll hear God speaking and working in our lives.
Through the prayers of Saint Fantinus, may we learn to stay away from distractions long enough to find God in the low and gentle whisper of His voice.
Amen.
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