St Peters Orthodox Church

The Nicene Creed being said, we now turn our attention to the Offertory. This is the part of the Mass where God’s people offer up to Him the stuff of earth: bread, wine, tithes, and alms. Here we have the picture of God’s people raising their offerings to God as God returns in kind with the offering of Himself to us. In this session we also see how all of the Old Covenant offerings and sacrifices are summed up and fulfilled in the New Covenant worship of God through our Lord, Jesus Christ.

After revisiting the Gospel Procession from last week, we move first in this session to discuss the homily which concludes the portion of Mass known as the Liturgy of the Word. After the Liturgy of the Word we say together the Nicene Creed. A look at the history behind the Church’s long-standing statement of faith and an examination of the four parts of the Creed are given to assist us in our experience of God as we voice this Creed together.

Having cried out for mercy from God in the Kyrie and having received the very mercy our Lord longs give, we now move in the Mass to the great praise of God as we sing the Gloria “Glory be to God on High.” In this session we examine four parts of the liturgy: We delve into the three sections of the Gloria seeking to understand that which we sing to God in praise for all the benefits He has done on our behalf. We join together in the collect prayers of the day. After the collect prayers, we discuss how to actively listen to the voice of God through the reading of Holy Scripture. Finally, we conclude with a teaching on the Gospel Procession. Christ has come from His Altar in Heaven to dwell among us. Then, having finished His work among us, He ascends back to Heaven to be our Great High Priest.

As the Priest and those assisting in Mass ascend to the altar to take their place, we hear the Introit sung. In this session we come to understand the purpose of the Introit, the Collect for Purity, the Summary of the Law, and the Kyrie (Lord Have Mercy). We approach each of these portions of the Mass in such a way that we might grow towards a greater experience of God as we seek to offer ourselves to Him, worship Him, and receive from Him.

Having begun the Mass with a hymn of praise and joined ourselves to the procession, we now turn our attention to the Confiteor Prayers (The Prayers at the Foot of the Altar) and the Asperges. In this session, we take an in depth look at the profound meaning of the Confiteor Prayers as prayers of consecration. We also look at both Asperges and Vidi Aquam to gain an understanding of where they come from in Holy Scripture, why we sing these words while experiencing the sprinkling of Holy Water upon us, and the activity of God on our behalf in these precious moments of the Mass.

Now that we are at the beginning of the Mass, this session focuses on the first two events that we encounter: the hymn and the procession. In this teaching, we first look at the prayers of preparation done by the clergy as they prepare to serve God and the people before the altar. Here we are also encouraged regarding how to best approach the singing of the hymn by making the words of the hymn our own offering of praise to God. Finally, we discuss the procession, its history, and how we can encounter God by grace through all that is included in the procession as it passes us by in route to the altar.

Part 4: Fasting, Praying, & Entering the Church by St. Peter Orthodox Church

In the stage we are referring to as our preparation before Mass, we must understand the concept of consecration. In this lesson, we explore God’s calling upon His people in the Old Testament to consecrate themselves before they meet with God at the mountain or to worship Him in the Temple. In the Mass, where the Body of Christ in heaven and earth meet together with God, we must also consecrate ourselves through prayerful preparation readying our body, mind, and soul to encounter the Living God so that we might worship Him in Spirit and truth while also preparing ourselves to receive from the God who longs to share Himself with us.

Before we can delve into the specific teachings regarding the liturgy of the Church, it is essential that we gain an understanding of the pattern or shape of the liturgy. The image of man ascending the mountain to meet with God and God descending upon the mountain to reveal Himself to man is a consistent theme throughout both the Old and New Covenants. In this teaching we discuss how the Mass, the liturgy, is the fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah’s words as recording in Isaiah 2: Now it shall come to pass in the latter days…that many people will come and say, “Come let us go to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths.”

Father Michael Keiser sets the stage for this series by teaching us essential truths regarding the central focus of Christian worship. In the liturgy of the Church, heaven and earth are joined together and Christ is in our midst in no different way than when He was with His disciples in the upper room that very night. Fr. Michael also shares with us the historical development of Christian worship as the Church continued to expand throughout the world.

Every time an angel appears to humanity, humanity falls down in fear and wonder at the angelic being. But when the Archangel Gabriel appears to the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Annunciation, it is he who is in wonder at this precious human vessel chosen by God to bear God within her and deliver Him to the human race for the salvation of the world. Tonight we explore the honor and reverence given by the Archangel to the Mother of God that we, too, might grow to love and honor her as her Son loves and honors her.

The greatest struggle of the Christian is not fighting against the fallenness within the soul or the enemy whose playground is our brokenness. The greatest struggle of the Christian is to remain in Christ and the battlefield on which the Christian must fight is the battlefield of the mind; the battlefield of the thoughts. Today we reflect on how we can bring Christ our God into the moments of temptations and all thoughts that seek to distract us from keeping the eyes of our soul upon Him.

St. John Kronstadt is an Orthodox Saint of the 19th Century. He is the Orthodox Patron Saint for all clergy in the Orthodox Church. He is so because of the way he lived out his own Priesthood while on the earth. St. John has so much wisdom that he communicated regarding fulfilling the calling of the ordained Priesthood. But the wisdom he shares shows us so much about what it means to live out the vocation of the priesthood of all believers. Today we receive an introduction to the life of St. John Kronstadt.

March 13, 2022 - Jesus being led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to fast for 40 days, then be tempted by Satan afterward, and ultimately casting Satan and his temptations and distractions away sanctified for all the 40 days of Lent where we fast and pray. The end result of our fasting and prayer is great growth in the Fruit of the Holy Spirit self-control. Through fasting touched by grace we put on the armor of our warfare, walk in the power of abstinence, and grow to fight manfully against our flesh and our enemy. In other words, the end result of our prayer and fasting by grace is the victory and authority of Christ over sin realized in our lives.

The Priests in the Old Covenant had a very defined role in their ministry to God and to His people. This session explores how their place under God in creation reveals to us many truths as to our vocation as the Priesthood of all believers.

By virtue of our Baptism, we are all called and ordained to be a Kingdom of Priests by our Lord Jesus Christ. But what is our vocation as this Royal and Holy Priesthood? How do we live out faithfully that which we have been ordained to fulfill in creation? Today we look at the three priesthoods: The Priesthood of Christ our Great High Priest, the Priesthood of the Clergy in the Church, and the Priesthood of the Faithful in Christ's Holy Church.

Ash Wednesday 2022 - Tonight the blessed ashes are placed on our foreheads that the gift of our mortality might remain at the forefront of our minds. We tend to live each day as if we have a promised tomorrow. What if we lived in the reality that this is never promised. Our mortality each day would be the gift that would move us toward Christ and His mercy; as those truly dependent on Him for life and salvation.

March 6, 2022 - How we need to grow in our understanding that the very nature of God is mercy. And how we tend to limit our understanding of mercy to be mainly in the realm of justice and acquittal; the release from the guilt of our sins that Christ offers by His great forgiveness. That is certainly a part of the mercy that God is. But His mercy goes beyond just forgiveness and acquittal. Today we look at Christ's healing of the blind man near Jericho that the Lord may reveal so much more about His nature of profound mercy. If we truly knew God as mercy, there would not be a day that we would not rush to Him in all of our brokenness to receive and experience the Divine mercy of God.

February 27, 2022 -In the Gospel of St. Luke 8, our Lord tells the Parable of the Sower. This parable is as much if not more about the importance of the condition of the soil as it is the seeds that have been scattered. God, through His prophet Hosea, calls His people to break up their fallow ground for it is time to seek the Lord. The reason their hearts had become hard is that they had given themselves over to idolatry? Idolatry can be far more than the worship of other gods. For the Christian, idolatry is anything we are consumed by and love more than God. Today we consider the idolatry that may exist in our soul that causes hardness in our hearts. And we see how our Lord so desires to help us break up the fallow ground of the soil of our soul so that the seed of Christ within us can produce a harvest of the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

February 20, 2022 - Today begins our three-week preparation to enter into the Season of Great Lent. We are given the words of St. Paul from 1 Corinthians 9 where he exhorts all of us to run the race with great self-control and effort to obtain the prize. But we must understand the reason for our spiritual laboring and efforts. For we do not fast, pray, and give alms to the needy to earn anything from Christ. Rather, we engage these spiritual disciplines to run to the healer of our souls, our Lord Jesus Christ.