St Peters Orthodox Church

Up to this point in the series, we have been looking at the strategies our enemy commonly uses all too successfully against us all. Today, we turn the tide to focus on truths that will help us join ourselves to Christ and His victory over the enemy who constantly tempts us.

As we begin our three-week preparation for Lent, we are given the Gospel reading from St. Matthew chapter 20 about the laborers in the vineyard. The laborers hired later in the day are paid the same wage as those who had worked all day. They complain to the lord of the vineyard that this seems unjust and are envious of what the later laborers earned in light of their lack of time working. When we look at the extent of envy, we are usually surprised at the various ways it manifests itself in our lives.

How does Satan bait that which is within us? What are his strategies to take the common weaknesses in all of our humanity, and use those weaknesses to separate us from God and from one another? Today we explore the most typical ways our enemy seeks to separate us from the saving experience of God in our lives.

In Colossians 3, St. Paul urges his spiritual children to set their affections only on things eternal. How often our affections are directed to things that are fallen and non-eternal. And when we set our affections on the things of this world, we are so easily ushered into a life of unsettledness, disquietude, angst, and anxieties. Where we choose to direct the eyes of our soul is critical. St. Paul is teaching us that if we will cast our eyes upon Christ and the wonder of His Kingdom, the peace of Christ will reign in our lives.

Today, from the Gospel of St. Matthew 8, we receive the testimony of Christ our God healing the leper. The leper comes to Jesus with incredible faith and the appropriate disposition. He says to our Lord, "If you will, you can make me clean." His faith was that Jesus had both the authority and the ability to cleanse him and free him from both his great suffering and shame. But, like us, there was certainly room for his faith to continue to grow to know more about Him. When we see the healing of the leper, we see the work of salvation daily in the lives of every soul in Christ. Today we ask our Lord to grant us the same disposition of the leper, the faith as well as the acknowledgment our need for Christ's merciful healing of our soul. May we come to Christ saying, "If you will, you can make me whole." To which He will answer, "Of course, I will. Be healed."

Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana. By the Word of God, Jesus Christ, the nature of the water was entirely transformed into a completely different nature when it became wine. That which was colorless, fairly odorless, and fairly tasteless became a beautiful color, sweet aroma, and gained a pleasant taste. It was now useful to be a blessing that, as the Psalmist says in Psalm 104, would gladden the heart of men. When we look at our Lord's first miracle, we see the very reason Christ came to us in the first place. He came to transform our fallen nature into His Divine nature. By the Word of God, we become the aroma of Christ to be the blessing of His salvation to this world.

As the wise men came from the East and beheld God in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, a response was provoked. At the experience of the presence of God in their midst they fell down, worshipped Him, and offered them the most precious of gifts. They were invited to come and behold Him, and we see their response. We, just like them, have been invited to come and behold Jesus Christ our Savior. But what is the most precious gift we can offer Him as we behold Him? We offer Him ourselves which is our reasonable act of worship.

There is wonder to be embraced in the Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ. His Baptism was certainly not for Him. His Baptism was entirely for us. Today we look at the early Church Fathers to see what Christ accomplished for us in His Baptism. And everything we see God accomplish as Christ enters those waters, He accomplishes for everyone of us who have entered therein.

At Christmas, the shepherds were invited and led to come and behold God in the body of the infant; our Lord Jesus Christ. At Epiphany, the wise men were given the same invitation; to come and experience the Word made flesh. When both the shepherds and wise men encountered our Lord Jesus Christ, they would leave forever changed and proclaiming with joy what they had experienced. We are no different that the shepherds and wise men. We are invited and led to come and behold Christ every time we worship Him and receive from Him in the liturgy. Tonight we celebrate the Light Who came into our darkness to reveal Himself to us and place His light within us. The shepherds and wise men came to behold Christ with great anticipation and longing. They were granted what their hearts had grown to desire. Will we come to Him with the same anticipation and longing? If we do, our lives will become a daily Epiphany as we receive light and become it.

The title of this sermon is the summary of the Incarnation and of our salvation. In this revelation, we see the relationship between God and the crown of His creation, mankind. God's movement toward man, literally becoming One of us and dwelling with us to save us. And, man being given the opportunity by grace to ascend to our most true identity of being; that is, like our Creator. This is the true celebration and meaning of Christmas.

At the birth of Christ our God, the angels came and stood before the shepherds proclaiming God's peace and His goodwill toward men. In that instance, the veil opened up and revealed how close the Kingdom of God is to mankind. How? Unto us a child was born. Today we remember the wonder of God's Kingdom brought near to us through the Word of God made flesh.

The Prophet Isaiah prophesied of the ministry of St. John the Forerunner as "The voice crying out in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord." The very ministry of St. John was that all should "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Repentance is the tool we are given to make straight the way of the Lord. But we often fail to see repentance rightly. Today we examine true Christian repentance and how it removes all obstacles and barriers to our authentic experience of Christ our God and His Kingdom now brought very near to us.

We should be very encouraged that the great characters in the Scriptures all struggled at times as we struggle. In our Gospel reading from St. Matthew 18, St. John the Forerunner has been imprisoned. In His suffering, He is in need of the revelation of Christ to strengthen and assist him as his struggle is causing a weak point in his faith. Today we look at how our Lord reveals himself to blessed St. John in the way that St. John most needed to receive it. Our Lord will do the same if we cry out for Him, and He will lift us out of the depths of even the weakest moments of our faith and cause our soul to be strengthened and rejoice again.

God took away the shame of the barren Saints Joachim & Anna by healing them of their inability to have a child in their old age. Not only did God show mercy to them, He blessed them beyond what they could have every asked for or imagined. He granted them not only a child, but a child who would be chosen by God to bring Christ our salvation into the world. The Blessed Virgin was conceived in the same manner that all had been conceived since creation. And, she bore within her the same condition as a result of the Fall that all of us suffer as a result of the Fall. And this reality is critical. For as Christ is miraculously conceived in her womb, the Lord God of Israel would fully take our fallen humanity at that moment and join it to His Divinity and for all eternity. It is only by this act that we can be saved through Him. When we look at the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Christ is revealed to us and, because of this, we see ourselves very clearly.

Understanding the progression of our thoughts and temptations that lead us to sin (to fall short of our truly created person) is important for us to grasp. For if we can grasp the stages of sin, we can begin to reverse the process making it easier for us to overcome by the grace of God in our lives every temptation. Even the most besetting sins in our lives can be overcome in Christ. The four stages of sin are as follows: First motion (the beginning of the thoughts of temptation), Entertainment (we entertain those thoughts giving them strength), Consent (coming into agreement with those thoughts, joining ourselves to them), Action (we make the choice to depart the order of God and act on our temptations). Today Fr. James Rooney walks us through these with various common sins and how they go through each of these steps with the goal to arrest our thoughts and temptations at the First Motion stage. If we will do this, we can experience Christ's victory over sin in our lives.

Jesus taught in St. John 14, "He who has My commandments and keeps them it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him." Jesus, the Word of God Who is God and is love, defines for us what it is to love God with our whole being. And note the promises offered to the one who loves God by way of loving obedience to Him. Jesus says My Father will love Him, I will love Him, and I will show myself to Him. So many of us in the Church voice our desire for a greater experience of Christ in our lives. So many times we fail to receive the experience we desire. Perhaps it is because of our failure to love Him by following His instructions that are given to us that would lead us and others to the salvation He offers all.

St. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, "Owe no man anything but to love one another." How we truly need to learn love from God's perspective. In Advent, we prepare ourselves to receive God who will condescend to lower Himself and become man that we might become like Him. There is no greater way to begin to understand love from God's perspective than to hear the words of Christ our God defining love. This homily explores His words so that we might put into practice love as God is love to us.

An antinomy is a contradiction in our own knowledge system, within reason itself. The Christian Faith is filled with antinomies. For example, Christ is the judge of every soul with perfect justice. Christ at the same time is infinite mercy. We go into error when these two attributes of the Nature of God are not held in tension that could lead us away from the true knowledge of God. In this teaching, Fr. James Rooney explores a number of these antinomies and how keeping them in perfect tension pays great dividends in knowing God and being transformed by Him.

Advent means the coming of someone, one who was expected. What is the nature of God towards us; this One Who heard our cry and came to deliver us? Today we look at the words of God through the Prophet Jeremiah to hear the heart and thoughts of our Deliverer. "For I know the thoughts I think towards you, thoughts of peace and not affliction: you shall call upon me and I will bring you out of captivity." - Jeremiah 29. Advent is a season in which God gives us grace that stirs up within us the cry for His deliverance in our lives. Come, Lord, Advent here and delivered us.

An integral part of seeing clearly the despondency in us that is keeping us from the greatest fellowship with Christ our God in the moments of our lives is coming to an understanding of the human experience in Paradise compared to the human experience after the Fall of Man. Today we explore these human experiences asking Christ to show us the reasons for the restlessness within us and the great hope we have to regain that which has been lost.