St Peters Orthodox Church

The word ontological, when used regarding theology, has everything to do with the nature of God Himself. For us, that word encapsulates all that has been revealed by God to His Church regarding Who He is and how we understand Him. Since we are created in His image to grow in His likeness, we also use the word ontological to understand the truly created human person by God; in other words, how we see our most true selves. Today we consider the truth revealed to us that the only way that we become ontologically our more true person is to receive the very revelation of God. For it is that revelation that transforms us entirely healing our lives.

In our Gospel reading from St. Luke 8, Jesus tells the Parable of the Sower/Parable of the Soils. In this parable, our Lord lists three reasons for the unhealthy soil in our soul in which the seed of our new life given through Him cannot grow. While we all have each type of unhealthy soil within our souls, today we focus on the first type that our Lord mentions; the hard and unyielding soil. Lent is a season in which we yoke ourselves to Christ so that the hard and fallow ground may be churned up. Underneath the hard ground, the rocks, and the thorns we discover that which is most natural to the human creation; the very real and pure hunger and thirst for God.

Today is Septuagesima Sunday, the beginning of our three-week preparation for Lent. We are asked today to consider a question. What is the true priority, the true degree of urgency, that we place on the care and healing of our souls? In truth, throughout this life, our urgency waxes and wanes. We simply allow ourselves to be derailed by distractions. Today, by a few parables told by our Lord as well as the words of St. Paul, we are reminded of the sense of urgency with which to open our hearts to Christ; that He may heal, mend, and transform our lives. This is the season to refocus and to be re-centered regarding things most important.

Charismata is a word that means gift. It is easier to see repentance and humility as as gifts from God when seen correctly. But despair, a gift from God? Yes! Anyone who follows Christ will go through a season or seasons in their lives when it feels like God is no longer present or anywhere near to us. But where can God go if He is in all things at all times? This despair is better understood as our awareness of the presence of God diminishing. But it is in those times, as a gift from God, that our faith can most grow very strong. Today we look at this gift of despair and how we should walk with God in those times.

Three words that Jesus utters in St. Matthew 11 give us the framework for our salvation. He says, "Come to me." Come to me you who are wearied with the sufferings of the daily round of life. Come to me you who are beaten down trying to be righteous in your own strength. He says, "Take my yoke upon you...and you will find rest for your souls." Take a yoke upon yourself and find rest? Once again, the wisdom of Christ in the Kingdom of God confounds the wise. Today we consider what it means to take up His yoke and come to Him that He may exchange our heavy burdens for His rest and refreshment for our soul.

Tonight we celebrate Mass for the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter at Antioch. The life and testimony of this blessed Apostle should give us great hope. St. Peter failed and fell many times including his denial of the Lord He loved dearly. He would fall, weep tears of repentance, cry out to the Lord to help him, and the Lord in His great love and mercy would stretch out His arm and lift the Apostle up again. This is the life of repentance unto salvation. And through his blessed vessel, the Lord Jesus Christ would continue His ministry to the salvation of many.

It is important to know ourselves and our current spiritual limitations. If we do not know these limitations, we fail to understand our clear starting place. Not knowing our measure, in this way, can cause us to either strive to do too much spiritually which results in perceived failures; or, it leads us to never make attempts at spiritual growth and healing. When we know precisely our limitations, we can be encouraged that we truly have a starting place. The spiritual journey is step by step rather than great leap by great leap. When we know our measure, we can begin a journey with Christ that will avail to true spiritual growth and healing by the experience of our Lord.

In our Gospel reading from St. Matthew 18, St. Peter asks Jesus, "How many times must I forgive my brother?" Jesus answer was seventy times seven. Today we look find that the meaning of the number our Lord gives equates to the full extent of the mercy of God. The more we consider the mercy that God is, the more we should be in wonder and awe knowing that this profound mercy is constantly directed at our lives. If we will just open a part of our soul, it will flood in. Those who experience the mercy and forgiveness of Christ in their own lives find it much easier to give mercy to their offenders and be freed from harboring unforgiveness to those who have offended us.

God, in all His saving power and wonder is always moving toward each individual soul He has created. In this way, we are each the target of God. The question is never God's disposition toward each one of us. The question is will we open, even in the smallest way, an avenue to our soul for God to flood in and show the wonder of His salvation within us as He shares all He is and all He has with us? In this session, we look at ways we can live that attract God. In other words, God is always looking for an opening. When He finds it, out of His great love, He moves immediately in to help us and save us.

The way to true personhood is through communion with the One Who gave us life. In this introduction, Fr. James sets the table with concepts to be used throughout this series. The emphasis here is on true personhood and true becoming as we encounter God and respond to such a Divine encounter.

St. John the Apostle in 1 John 3 tells us that he is in wonder at God's love for all of us. That we, who were once slaves to the Fall of Mankind and to a cruel oppressor, have had our identity completely changed. We were once slaves to the father of lies. We are now children to a Heavenly Father, rich in goodness and mercy. The Apostle also shares with us how we should live as God's children. We are to spend time with our Father like children to their daddy. As we spend time with Him, we become like Him as He reveals Himself to us more and more over the course of our lives. The Apostle also says that God's children, when they behold God, see also what they are not. We see how we are not like our Heavenly Father. As these revelations come to us, they come for the sake of healing and redemption. We are to live a life of time with our Father which includes offering to Him the ways we are not like Him; so that He may heal and redeem relieving the burden that these disfigurements have caused in our lives

St. Paul, many times in his Epistles, exhorts the faithful in Christ to a life of putting off that which has been put to death in Christ and putting on Christ Himself. This is the active life of relational cooperating with Christ, by the grace that He has given us, of becoming. It is a command of God that flows from His heart of love desiring us to become all that He has created us to be; which is like Him. Today we particularly focus on the fact that this putting off and putting on work closely together at all times. In order to put on something of Christ, we must work with the help of Christ to put off that which is distracting us from the greater good.

Tonight our Lord Jesus Christ is brought to the Temple by St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin Mary. There He is placed in the arms of blessed St. Simeon. It is through the life of St. Simeon that we learn something very important about our life in Christ. In the Gospel of St. Luke chapter 2, we are told that the Holy Spirit had communicated to St. Simeon that he would not die until he had seen the Lord's Christ. And it says that St. Simeon, then, waited for the consolation of Israel to come to him. Jesus Christ, the Word of God, is the consolation of the souls of mankind. Tonight we look at what it means that He the consolation of our soul. We also look at a life, like that of St. Simeon, that eagerly and actively awaits Christ to be our consolation.

Today we hear in the Gospel of St. Matthew 8 the testimony of the healing of the leper and the healing of the centurion's servant. The leper brings his own suffering before Christ. The centurion brings the suffering of another to Jesus. As we are going through pains and tribulations, or when one we love is going through them, we tend to pray out of an imperfect love seeing through a glass darkly. How can we learn from the leper and the centurion how best to pray in times like these? Today we seek to learn the most appropriate way to bring our sufferings and those of others before the goodness of Christ our God.

From Christmas moving forward, we are now in the season where God is made manifest in Jesus Christ for the salvation of all souls. The shepherds were led by the angelic to witness God born in the flesh. By that experience, they were forever changed. The Magi were led by a star to the Savior as a child. Just by beholding Him, they worshipped Him and gave Him gifts. Their lives would forever be changed. And today, the servants at the wedding in Cana are led to Christ by the Blessed Virgin Mary because there was no more wine at the wedding. Jesus transforms the nature and substance of the water into wine manifesting His glory. Those who witnessed this would never be the same. We are like the water transformed into wine. We are always being led to the manifestation of Christ. And, at His manifestation, our lives a transformed like water into wine.

What is with all the singing? The Scriptures are sung, the prayers are sung, the Psalms are sung...why? As long as God has had a people so much was sung in the prayers and worship within the Tabernacle, Temple, and Synagogues. Today we hear the wisdom of our Lord as to why singing has been such a critical piece to prayer and the worship of God.

The Church teaches us that Jesus did not need the waters of Baptism, the waters needed the Word of God. At Jesus' Baptism, may types are revealed to be fulfilled in Him. As Joshua led God's people into the Promised Land through the Jordan Rivers, so Yeshua (the name given to Jesus which is Aramaic for Joshua) enters the waters of the Jordan that we may follow and be granted the Promised Land, Paradise. And when Jesus is Baptized God the Father declares His identity to all. So, when we are Baptized, our identity of fallenness and shame is put to death in the death of Christ and we are raised to a new identity; children of the Father and children of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

St. Paul writes to us in Philippians 2 that we are to have the same mind of Christ; that is, His nature to lower Himself to raise the souls of all upward. This is Christ's virtue of self-emptying humility. We see this in our Gospel reading today from St. Luke 2 as a 12-year-old Jesus is in the Temple. Today we consider Christ our Passover obediently keeping the Feast of Passover. We see the humility of Christ when He sat with the teachers in the Temple. And we see the self-emptying nature of Christ Who created Joseph and the Blessed Virgin Mary subjecting Himself to those He has created. It is a challenging wonder when we consider the self-emptying love and nature of Christ our God; a virtue to which we are graced to become.

Today is the Feast of Epiphany, a word meaning the manifestation or revelation of God to man of Himself. Today Magi, priests and philosophers from the East, are led by a star to worship Christ our God as a child. God knew precisely how to capture their attention that they might come and experience Jesus, to the end that they might be saved. As we celebrate God offering salvation to the Gentiles, we focus today on the reality that all evangelism begins and ends with the God Who manifests Himself. Today we consider our part in the Great Commission.

Jesus had no need to be circumcised any more than He needed to be baptized. So why is the Feast of the Circumcision of our Lord Jesus one of the Twelve Major Feasts of the Church? At His Circumcision He receives His Name, brings a close to the Old Covenant, and now lives on to inaugurate the New Covenant, the final Covenant that will bring mankind salvation.