St Peters Orthodox Church

Our Epistle reading today is from Acts 5. We find a description of the life of the newborn Church in Jerusalem as they would meet at Solomon's Porch in the Temple. The description is simple. His people gathered with the Apostles. And through the Apostles, Jesus continued the same ministry for the benefit and salvation of all that He did as He walked the earth. Jesus taught His disciples to pray by giving them the Our Father. In that prayer, He has us pray His will that "His Kingdom would come and His will would be done on earth as it is in heaven." It was always in the mind and desire of Christ our God that His Kingdom be experienced by all who are Baptized into Him. Today we explore this wondrous reality.

St. Paul remind us in 1 Corinthians 10 of the Israelites consistent idolatry while following God in the wilderness journey. God had released them from their bondage and delivered them to Himself. There in the wilderness He shepherded them providing all they need for the journey to the Promised Land. But their restless hearts kept wanting more, departing the Lord their God, and pursuing something other than God to find their contentment. How often we do the same. It is time that we learn to find our rest in Christ and Christ alone who has delivered us from our oppressor and provided us with everything we need for life and salvation in Himself.

When Christ was born, the Blessed Virgin held Salvation Himself in her arms wrapped in swaddling clothes. In the Icon of the Dormition/Assumption we see the reverse. It is our Lord embracing His mother as He receives her into Paradise. Tonight we look to the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary to see how she lived a life embracing her Son our Savior. For as Fr. Alexander Schmemann taught, "She is, in every aspect of her life, not the great exception among us, but rather the great example of us all.”

Today we celebrate the Feast Day of St. Laurence, Deacon and Martyr for Christ. When the Roman emperor demanded the God's of Rome be worshipped by all, St. Laurence and the Christians in Rome refused to bow to idolatry. There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for a friend. Today we look at the testimony of the life of St. Laurence; a testimony of love for His Lord as he would sacrifice his life for the love of His Savior.

It is quite the wonder that a Holy Savior invites all of us, imperfect and frail as we are, to cooperate with Him in His Holy and good works of salvation on behalf of mankind. But that is just what He does. Today we look at examples of this from the Gospels of St. Luke & St. Mark, which were foretastes of what He desires to do through all who are in Him from Pentecost until He comes again. By Christ's design and in His great wisdom, as we open ourselves to cooperate with Christ in His good works, we are the ones blessed by encountering Him as He ministers to others through us.

In our Gospel reading from St. Matthew 5, our Lord teaches us how we are to live towards those we have offended. To forgive those who have offended us is one thing, but what is our relational responsibility toward those we have offended. Our Lord is very clear. He teaches us to put our offering to Him down, go and be reconciled first, then come and bring our offering to Him. To go to one we have offended and plead for their forgiveness is an act of great mercy. And, as we considered a few weeks ago, Christ our God calls us to be merciful as our Father is merciful.

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.