St Peters Orthodox Church

St. James teaches us that the tongue is the rudder that has great strength in determining the direction of the soul. It both blesses and curses. When the tongue is not controlled and allowed to speak evil and negatively, the soul is darkened in the process. Equally, when the tongue speaks praises, prayers, and blessings, the soul is enlivened by the grace of God. Today we consider the importance of taming the tongue for the health of our soul and the blessing of God.

In the Gospel of St. Luke 6, our Lord commands us, "Be merciful as your Father is merciful. Judge not and you will not be judged. Condemn not and you will not be condemned." He also teaches us that as you forgive and give mercy, in the same way God will forgive and grant His great mercy to you. Today we consider how to live as vessels of His Divine mercy toward one another and to this world. And as we do, we consider the Jesus Prayer; the great gift and weapon of God's grace given to us to protect us from having a spirit of condemnation toward others, a blessed gift that opens our soul to experience the mercy of Christ our God. For only those who experience His mercy can become mercy toward others.

In the Gospel of St. Luke 15, the religious leaders of the day are accusatory of Jesus for receiving sinners to Himself and dining with them. Our Lord answers their charges by teaching the parables of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost son. In doing so, Jesus is revealing the very disposition and heart of God towards the lost; the very lost He took on our flesh to save. Today, we hope to see the revelation Jesus is giving of the heart of God towards sinners. In doing so, we pray that He shares His Nature with us; for the Great Commission will only be filled by a people that are being transformed in His likeness, sharing in His love, mercy, and compassion toward the lost.

Today is the Feast Day of Sts. Peter & Paul, two prominent holy Apostles. In the Icon of this blessed Feast Day, we see the Church filled with Christ in the middle and the two Apostles are pillars upholding it. Sts. Peter & Paul were so very different in their weaknesses, upbringing, personalities, and gifts. And yet, by their repentance at the experience of Christ, they were made so profoundly useful to Christ for the revelation of His salvation and the building up of the Church. We look at their lives and ministries today to gain great hope and confidence that Christ takes each one of us, His living stones, and places us all together in a beautiful order for our salvation and that of those outside the Ark of Salvation; Christ's Holy Church.

By virtue of our creation by God in Paradise, we were created to be expressors; expressors of the nature and likeness of God to all creation. Therefore, at any given moment, we are always expressing something to the world. We are either expressing our fallenness and brokenness or we are expressing the nature of God Who brings healing to the nations. Today, the Apostle John in his Epistle 1 John, reveals the nature of God. God is love. On this day we examine the love that we are to become and the results of becoming love as God is love.

Today is Trinity Sunday. This day marks the very foundation of the entire Christian liturgical year. Everything begins with the knowledge of God as He has been revealed to His Church. And our God has been revealed to us as Trinity: Three Divine and equal Persons, yet one God. Today Fr. Rooney reminds us all of some of the basic tenets that have been revealed to us about God, the Holy Trinity.

The Day of Pentecost was one of the many feasts prescribed by God in the Old Covenant for His people to remember His mighty works on their behalf. All of the Old Covenant feasts were types that always pointed to something Christ would later fulfill. Today, we consider the fulfillment of Pentecost on the day of the birth of Christ's Church, His manifest Kingdom on earth as it is in Heaven. At Pentecost, we have been granted the opportunity to live a life as Moses who ascended the mountain, fellowshipped with God, and descended radiating from the glory of the God He has beheld in that blessed fellowship. We have had the fellowship with God restored to us that we lost at the fall of mankind.

When Christ Ascended to the Father, he brought humanity within Himself before the Father. The writer of Hebrews tells us that, there, He becomes our Great High Priest eternally. To understand Christ as our Great High Priest, we must understand the role of the High Priest in the Old Covenant once a year on the prescribed feast of the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16. Christ our God eternally stands before the Father with the sacrifice of His own blood shed pleading with the Father that we receive the mercy of God and the covering of our sins.

How wondrous is the Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. His disciples witnessed Christ's flesh and blood ascend into Heaven. The angels were amazed as they saw the Word of God with humanity joined to Himself ascend through them and beyond them. And, as Christ ascends, in Himself all humanity is brought directly before the Father. In His Ascension, our Lord Jesus Christ is revealed to be the door to paradise, the ladder of our own ascension, and our Great High Priest eternally standing before the Father on our behalf that we might be saved.

In the Gospel of St. John 16, Jesus prepares His disciples for His Ascension, saying that He is returning to the Father. Knowing that they had sorrow over what He had said, our Lord encourages them by telling them that it is to their advantage that He leave them. For if He leaves them, He will send the Paraclete to them. That word Paraclete describing the Holy Spirit means comforter, helper, and advocate. It is the Holy Spirit that takes what is Christ's and gives it to us. God the Holy Spirit is such a source of illumination that shines into our souls. That illumination transforms our whole being giving us great comfort and bringing rest to our soul.

In John 16, our Lord Jesus Christ tells prepares His disciples for the time He will be betrayed and taken from them. He gives them hope of the joy that they will experience when they see Him again. At the same time, He is speaking to them and us of the last days between His Ascension and His second and final coming; we will call it today the age of the in between. What encouragement can we draw from our Lord's words in this passage? Our Lord teaches us in this reading how we should live in and from Him in the midst of the sufferings of this age.

The second Sunday after Pascha is the Sunday of Christ the Good Shepherd. In the Gospel of St. John 10, Jesus says "I am the Good Shepherd. I am the door of my sheep. I know my own and my own know me, as the Father knows me and I know the Father." Today we look at two aspects of the Nature of Christ our Good Shepherd. His Nature is to bind us up and heal us through Himself within Himself. And His Nature is that of a gatherer Who gives life as opposed to our enemy whose nature is to scatter and destroy.

Today on the first day after Pascha, we have the testimony of the faith of Thomas. Thomas, one who would be an Apostle and later a Saint, is given too often a bad wrap in some circles being referred to as "doubting Thomas." If Thomas was "doubting Thomas" then all of Christ's disciples were "doubting disciples." And we, His adopted sons and daughters must be labeled the same. The Christian journey is one from unbelief to belief every day. The key to our faith maturing and our believing is by placing ourselves in a position of encountering our risen Savior daily. For it is only the very real experience of the Living Christ that grants faith and heals the human soul.

As is tradition each year in the Orthodox Church, on this day we hear the blessed Paschal homily once preached by St. John Chrysostom.

As the Paschal Candle is first lit from the first fire struck of the Resurrection, we pray "May the light of Christ gloriously rising scatter the darkness of heart and mind." When Christ our God willingly gave up His ghost on the Cross, He immediately descended into the dark prison of Hades where every soul from Adam and Eve to that moment were held captive. He broke the gates of Hades open and bound Satan, crushing the serpent's head as prophesied in Genesis. There He revealed Himself in all of His glory and preached to all of those souls. The light dispelled the darkness. When light meets darkness, light always wins. If the light of Christ our God did this in Hades, do we not see what He can do in each and every soul He created? His light has descended into our Hades so that we may see Him and ascend with Him as well.

The death of our Lord Jesus Christ preceded His Resurrection. As Christ our God said in the Gospels, "Only when a grain of wheat falls in the ground and dies does it produce many seeds." Our fallenness must die with Christ and by His grace upon the Cross we have been commanded to take up as we live a life to follow Jesus. Only through that life of blessed repentance do we experience the wonder of the healing power of Christ that comes through the Cross granting us the experience of the Resurrection.

At the Mass of Maundy Thursday, two critical events done very intentionally by Christ our God are set before us to behold: Jesus' institution of the Eucharist with His disciples and His washing of their feet. In both, Jesus reveals to us His very Nature; a nature that by His grace we can now ascend to become. Tonight we gaze upon the love of God that we will eternally grow to comprehend, that we might be transformed into what we see in Christ our God.

The Orthodox Faith has a word describing the Incarnation that saves us all. That word is kenosis which is the self-lowering of the Word of God, by His own will entirely, that we may be raised up again. As we once again set the eyes of our soul to see Him in His Passion tonight, we consider many of the wondrous revelations from the prayer service of the Stations of the Cross showing forth just how far Christ our God lowered himself so that we might Ascend.

In the Orthodox Faith, we are taught that when we see the Cross we see our Deliverer and the instrument of our deliverance. Yes, our Lord suffered and was in agony upon the Cross. His suffering shows forth His unfathomable love for every soul. But, as St. Paul says, the Christian is to glory in the Cross of our Lord, Jesus Christ. It is the wood of Aaron's rod that budded with life. It is the tree that made the bitter and harmful waters of Marah sweet and life-giving. As the Introit of this Mass reveals, "But as for us, it behoveth us to glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is our salvation, our life, and resurrection; by whom we were saved and obtained our freedom."

On Palm Sunday, God's people rejoiced in the coming of their Savior with palm branches and crying out, "Hosanna," which means Lord save! These same people days later would reject Him shouting "Crucify Him!" While we might see them with great disdain, we should consider the ways in our lives we tend to reject Christ without even knowing we are doing so; the ways we separate ourselves from Him and turn away from Him. Today these ways are examined along with helpful guidance as to how we might grow out of these patterns in our lives.