St Peters Orthodox Church

June 10, 2021 - The Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ is the ascension of every Christian in Him. Jesus took our humanity wrapped within Himself into Paradise, and in doing so enabled us all to have a way to be in Paradise with Him forever. Tonight we remember the significance of our Lord's Ascension to our salvation in Him.

June 6, 2021 - Mankind has struggled with an identity crisis since the Fall of Man resulting in our separation from God. Because of this, there is a restlessness and unsettledness in our every soul until it finds its most true self. The only way we can know our true self is to know God Who created us in His image, and from actual fellowship with Him where He reveals Himself to us, we finally see and settle into who we truly were created to be. When this happens, God exchanges the restlessness of our identity crisis for the calm and stillness that comes from the deep knowing of Him and thus knowing ourselves.

May 30, 2021 - In the Gospel of St. John chapter 16, Jesus begins to prepare His disciples for His departure from them at His glorious Ascension telling them that it is to their advantage that He leaves; for if He departs He will then send God the Holy Spirit to dwell within them. There are many blessings to us in the gift of the Holy Spirit. Today we focus on His role of sharing the mind of Jesus Christ with each one of us so that we can clearly see that within our soul in need of healing and restoration. We also look into the reality that the Holy Spirit is present to assist us in our thought life; to help us filter out the cares, patterns, and influences that Satan and this fallen world would use to distract us to the end that our faith, peace, and joy would diminish.

May 23, 2021 - In the Gospel of St. John 16, our Lord Jesus Christ gives great encouragement to His disciples regarding the joy promised to those who remain in Christ. He offers them this encouragement because He knew that His disciples would endure hardship, suffering, and mourning in this present world. What our Lord spoke to them then, He speaks to us today. We live in a culture that is moving further and further away from the order and virtues of God and His Kingdom. The strength, stability, peace, and joy of the Christian can be experienced when we set the gaze of our soul away from the chaos of this present fallen culture and on to Christ and His Kingdom alone.

May 16, 2021 - Jesus describes Himself as our Good Shepherd in the Gospel of St. John 10. The words He uses are words that describe that there is a profound experience of relationship that He offers us as our Shepherd. He tells us that His sheep know Him as He knows the Father. He mentions that His sheep hear His voice. These are words of experience and very real relationship. Today we discuss the experience we are granted with our Lord towards great faith and the healing of our soul.

May 9, 2021 - On the first Sunday after Easter, we hear the account of the disciples' first experience with the Resurrected Jesus Christ. We first see the disciples, without Thomas and in the midst of a crisis of faith, experience their Risen Lord as they were hiding in a locked room. Then blessed Thomas, who also was in the midst of doubt and a crisis of faith, encounters the Lord. What we see in both situations is a group of men struggling in their faith encounter Christ. Their experience grants them His gift of great faith. The results of this gift of faith is that they would follow Him all of their days and the world would never be the same. You see, true faith only comes by the experience of Jesus Christ.

May 1, 2021 - On this Paschal Vigil, the first Mass of our Lord's Resurrection, we reflect on all that has been revealed to us in Holy Week. Having seen all that Christ did on our behalf, how can we walk any further in the deception that anything at all could possibly separate us from the Love that God has for us; not our fallen nature, our sins, Hades, nor death can separate us from the love of God. What we see in Holy Week is the greatest invitation by our Lord to come to Him with all of our fallenness and sinfulness that He might exchange it for His mercy, light, and life.

April 30, 2021 - St. Paul writes in Galatians that his glory, his boast is in the Cross of Christ. Why should the Christian glory and boast always and only in the Cross of Christ? On this Good Friday, we reflect on three reasons we should do so. When we really consider our Lord upon the Holy and Life-Giving Cross, the question become, "How can we not glory in His Cross?

April 29, 2021 - Just before our Lord Jesus Christ's arrest, He did two ministries that made manifest the profound love of God to His disciples. The Word of God, once arrayed in glory, now would condescend to put on the garments of a common servant and wash the feet of His disciples. That same evening, our Lord would institute the Lord's Supper; Holy Eucharist, the table of fellowship, grace, mercy, and eternal life.

April 28, 2021 - Tonight, on Holy Wednesday, we have the Mass of Holy Unction and the Blessing of the Oils. God has always used oil for the benefit of mankind. With oil prophets, priests, and kings were ordained to their vocation and given the Holy Spirit. With oil God healed. And with oil the Holy Spirit is conveyed to mankind. Tonight we all of this fulfilled in Christ who is the healer and mender of our souls.

April 26, 2021 - In the Collect prayer from the Mass of Holy Monday we pray, "Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first He suffered pain, and entered not into glory before He was crucified; Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace." The self-emptying love of God in Christ is fully on display in the Incarnation and certainly at His Passion. Everything we see in Christ is so completely opposite of what Satan and this world preaches as truth regarding how we should live to be truly human. This homily compares and contrasts the philosophies of this world and the Nature of God in Christ. Our only way to life and peace is what we see in Christ at His Passion and walk the way of the Cross.

April 25, 2021 - Palm Sunday marks our entrance into the most sacred week of Holy Week. Today we set ourselves to journey with Christ to and through His Passion that we might experience the power of His Resurrection. Fr. James exhorts us to press in and finish Lent well. No matter what our failures or successes during Lent have been, today marks an opportunity to set ourselves to begin Lent anew and finish well that we might experience Christ's Divine healing in our lives. We are encouraged today to see the Cross clearly. For it has become the life-giving tree, indeed the Tree of Life, because Christ our God hung upon it.

April 18, 2021 - Today is Passion Sunday. It is the day that both sets the tone and gives a framework of true meaning that helps us prepare to journey with our Lord to and through His Passion and to His Resurrection throughout Holy Week. Today we look at two truths. The first is that no one but Christ Himself had the power and authority to lay down His life so that we could be with Him eternally. The second truth we see before us this day is the result of the finished work of Jesus Christ. He, as our Great High Priest, now stands in the tabernacle eternal offering the blood He chose to shed that our sins may be covered, our consciences freed, and our lives restored and made whole again. Our journey with Christ to His Passion is truly a journey of joyful sorrow.

April 11, 2021 - Every year on the Fourth Sunday of Lent, we are given a Mass reminding us that we are a people that have much to rejoice about in Christ. In this Mass, we hear the Gospel of St. John 6; the narrative of Jesus taking bread, giving thanks, and feeding the 5000. Today we are reminded that what we really see is the Liturgy unfold before us in this very story. Today is a reminder that Jesus Christ is the Bread of Life! And every time we gather with Him, our Lord takes bread, gives thanks, blesses it; and through that bread He gives us His strength to follow Him in this wilderness, His Divine mercy, and bestows upon us the life of His Resurrection.

In the Gospel of St. Luke 11, Jesus says that "a house divided against itself shall not stand." Within our soul, is our house divided? Do we live differently at work, at home, socially, and at Church? If so, these divisions come from the brokenness that causes such tension and division within our very soul. Our Lord Jesus Christ came to bring a holy unity within us; a means by which these tensions can settle into an abslute peace.

March 25, 2021 - The Archangel Gabriel is sent by God to the Blessed Virgin stating His intentions that the Salvation Himself be born through her. In the Old Testament man fell facedown at the sight and splendor of this Archangel. When the Archangel Gabriel comes to Mary, it is he who is astounded. Tonight, on the Feast of the Ascension, we look at this profound truth. We also look at the humility of the Blessed Virgin who, when God speaks His desire, responds with the posture of self-offering that His will alone might be done.

March 21, 2021 - Why do we fast for 40 days during Lent? Why is it that our Lord has had His people fast for periods of time both the Old Covenant and the New Covenant? In this sermon we look at our Lord modeling this 40-day fast. More importantly we see the results of His fast; the results every Christian can experience now in their own lives. Through fasting and prayer we are strengthened by the grace of God to walk in Christ's victory over every temptation Satan can bring our way. We also hear the words of God through the great Prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 58 regarding the true fast that God desires of us all and the blessings that come from that very fast.

Have you ever felt like God was distant from you in times of suffering; you pray and ask for help, but nothing happens? Where is God in those times and why does He not seem to hear you and come to you and relieve you of your suffering? Today from St. Matthew 15, we look at our Lord's encounter with the Canaanite woman. The way our Lord brings her soul to the place where she can finally receive Him and the healing for both her and her daughter helps us understand that God is infinitely with us even in His profound silence.

March 17, 2021 - Every Ash Wednesday we hear the calling of God to His people through the Prophet Joel, resounding as an alarm, to "return to the Lord your God." The alarm sounded to God's people every Ash Wednesday is the blessedness of our mortality. Many question, "How is our mortality blessed?" Tonight we look at two of the teachings of the Church for over 2000 years regarding the great gift our mortality is to those in Christ. For if we make use of this great gift daily, it will drive us into the arms of our merciful healer daily. And from that experience, we will know the joy, peace, and contentment of our salvation.

March 14, 2021 - On the last day of our three-week preparation for Lent, our Lord in His wisdom desires to reveal the love that He is to us. Why? Because at the revelation of Who God is to us, we clearly see Him. And, in seeing Him, we see the ways we are not yet like Him. Our Lord brings these things to the surface not to bring us to shame and despair, but to move us toward Him so that we can experience His merciful healing and be made whole. Today we look at the love of God; a love that we have been given grace to offer back to Him and become for one another.