St Peters Orthodox Church

St. Paul, many times in his Epistles, exhorts the faithful in Christ to a life of putting off that which has been put to death in Christ and putting on Christ Himself. This is the active life of relational cooperating with Christ, by the grace that He has given us, of becoming. It is a command of God that flows from His heart of love desiring us to become all that He has created us to be; which is like Him. Today we particularly focus on the fact that this putting off and putting on work closely together at all times. In order to put on something of Christ, we must work with the help of Christ to put off that which is distracting us from the greater good.

Tonight our Lord Jesus Christ is brought to the Temple by St. Joseph and the Blessed Virgin Mary. There He is placed in the arms of blessed St. Simeon. It is through the life of St. Simeon that we learn something very important about our life in Christ. In the Gospel of St. Luke chapter 2, we are told that the Holy Spirit had communicated to St. Simeon that he would not die until he had seen the Lord's Christ. And it says that St. Simeon, then, waited for the consolation of Israel to come to him. Jesus Christ, the Word of God, is the consolation of the souls of mankind. Tonight we look at what it means that He the consolation of our soul. We also look at a life, like that of St. Simeon, that eagerly and actively awaits Christ to be our consolation.

Today we hear in the Gospel of St. Matthew 8 the testimony of the healing of the leper and the healing of the centurion's servant. The leper brings his own suffering before Christ. The centurion brings the suffering of another to Jesus. As we are going through pains and tribulations, or when one we love is going through them, we tend to pray out of an imperfect love seeing through a glass darkly. How can we learn from the leper and the centurion how best to pray in times like these? Today we seek to learn the most appropriate way to bring our sufferings and those of others before the goodness of Christ our God.

From Christmas moving forward, we are now in the season where God is made manifest in Jesus Christ for the salvation of all souls. The shepherds were led by the angelic to witness God born in the flesh. By that experience, they were forever changed. The Magi were led by a star to the Savior as a child. Just by beholding Him, they worshipped Him and gave Him gifts. Their lives would forever be changed. And today, the servants at the wedding in Cana are led to Christ by the Blessed Virgin Mary because there was no more wine at the wedding. Jesus transforms the nature and substance of the water into wine manifesting His glory. Those who witnessed this would never be the same. We are like the water transformed into wine. We are always being led to the manifestation of Christ. And, at His manifestation, our lives a transformed like water into wine.

What is with all the singing? The Scriptures are sung, the prayers are sung, the Psalms are sung...why? As long as God has had a people so much was sung in the prayers and worship within the Tabernacle, Temple, and Synagogues. Today we hear the wisdom of our Lord as to why singing has been such a critical piece to prayer and the worship of God.

The Church teaches us that Jesus did not need the waters of Baptism, the waters needed the Word of God. At Jesus' Baptism, may types are revealed to be fulfilled in Him. As Joshua led God's people into the Promised Land through the Jordan Rivers, so Yeshua (the name given to Jesus which is Aramaic for Joshua) enters the waters of the Jordan that we may follow and be granted the Promised Land, Paradise. And when Jesus is Baptized God the Father declares His identity to all. So, when we are Baptized, our identity of fallenness and shame is put to death in the death of Christ and we are raised to a new identity; children of the Father and children of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

St. Paul writes to us in Philippians 2 that we are to have the same mind of Christ; that is, His nature to lower Himself to raise the souls of all upward. This is Christ's virtue of self-emptying humility. We see this in our Gospel reading today from St. Luke 2 as a 12-year-old Jesus is in the Temple. Today we consider Christ our Passover obediently keeping the Feast of Passover. We see the humility of Christ when He sat with the teachers in the Temple. And we see the self-emptying nature of Christ Who created Joseph and the Blessed Virgin Mary subjecting Himself to those He has created. It is a challenging wonder when we consider the self-emptying love and nature of Christ our God; a virtue to which we are graced to become.

Today is the Feast of Epiphany, a word meaning the manifestation or revelation of God to man of Himself. Today Magi, priests and philosophers from the East, are led by a star to worship Christ our God as a child. God knew precisely how to capture their attention that they might come and experience Jesus, to the end that they might be saved. As we celebrate God offering salvation to the Gentiles, we focus today on the reality that all evangelism begins and ends with the God Who manifests Himself. Today we consider our part in the Great Commission.

Jesus had no need to be circumcised any more than He needed to be baptized. So why is the Feast of the Circumcision of our Lord Jesus one of the Twelve Major Feasts of the Church? At His Circumcision He receives His Name, brings a close to the Old Covenant, and now lives on to inaugurate the New Covenant, the final Covenant that will bring mankind salvation.

When Christ our God was born, "He bowed the heavens and came down." As our Lord took on flesh, He bent heaven to earth so that fallen man may experience Him and His Kingdom and be elevated toward heaven. Therefore, He would be called Emmanuel which means "God with us." But do we live our lives as Christians in the reality that God is with us every moment of every day? Today we are challenged to ponder the wonder of God coming to earth and dwelling among us and within us. We would live so differently and be filled with such greater joy if we embraced the truth that God is ever-present with us and we are the same with Him.

The home is the continuation of the Church. In the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, God takes two living stones and unites them together with Himself; each living stone a gift and vessel used by Christ to heal and transform the other. As these living stones journey through this life with Christ in their midst, our Lord is reshaping and refashioning them in the likeness of Himself; they are becoming love as He is love.

Throughout Advent, we have entered by grace into the longing of all creation to be redeemed. And, throughout Advent, we have cried to God for mercy and deliverance. Tonight, our cry and the cry of all creation has been heard. Our Lord comes to earth so that we might be raised up to heaven. This night is a night of peace, joy, and great hope.

The Mass for the Vigil of the Nativity signals a pivot, a change of focus and direction away from Advent where we prepare for the manifestation of God coming to man in Jesus Christ. We now move in this Mass to set our souls to the experience of His manifestation on earth; a manifestation not only at His birth but through His ministry upon the earth for our salvation. Today we set ourselves to experience His ministry to us, as He did for all, from now through Trinity Sunday.

On the third Sunday of Advent, we are given a command by our Lord to "Rejoice!" It is a command rooted in the love of Christ for His people. It is a prescription by our Great Physician Who knows the result this medication will have on the human person. We were designed to glorify God in thanksgiving and praise. Today we seek to understand the benefits to body, mind, and soul that rejoicing in God will produce in our lives.

In this session, Fr. James Rooney teaches the history and development of the Sacrament of Confession & Absolution, a practice that has always existed in the Church. This Sacrament that is a gift from Christ to His people is for the easing of their conscience and the healing of their souls. There is a great deal of misunderstanding about this Sacrament and this teaching is offered in hopes of helping all understand the heart and wisdom of Christ in giving to us the opportunity to encounter is mercy and salvation.

What comes from our soul and out of our mouth will have an impact not only on our own soul, but the souls of others around us. St. Paul in Ephesians 4 tells us "let no corrupt word come out of our mouth, but rather what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers." In the Didache we find these words, "Where the Lord's nature is discussed, there the Lord is. Every day you should seek the company of the saints to enjoy their refreshing conversation." Today in Advent, we ask the Lord to inspect what comes out of our mouths when we are in fellowship together. Do our words drain us and others, robbing one another of the peace of Christ that is there to be experienced? Or, is our conversation filled with Christ Himself, uplifting the souls of one another; ministering joy, His peace, and contentment to all?

Have you ever been in a season of suffering or great need, prayed for mercy and relief, and felt that God was not hearing your prayer or was very distant from you? At some point in our lives, we will all face times like these. How shall we live when God seems to be silent? Tonight we look at Saints Joachim & Anna, the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for answers to that question. They lived their whole marriage to an old age barren, unable to conceive a child. They prayed to God for mercy and relief faithfully all of those years. In their old age, God granted them great mercy as they would become the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Why is the worship of the Orthodox Church liturgical, fixed, and repetitive? This is a common question asked about our faith. Today we examine the historical worship of God's people reaching back to Judaism. It is God Who instructs His people as to how He is to be worshipped, for He is worshipped eternally. The worship of the Church manifests the eternal worship of God here on the earth. And the way in which God's people worship Him on earth is the created role and purpose of the priesthood of all believers.

Every human being knows when they are ill. Many say that pain is an unwanted gift, but it is a gift. Our physical pain tells us something is wrong with us. And when we are suffering we go to our trusted physician so that he might, in his wisdom, give us a path to healing. And when our bodies are healing from those prescriptions, our sufferings are diminishing. Christ is our Great Physician and He invites us to come to Him with our symptoms and our sufferings. He is perfect in judgment and wisdom. And He is the only one Who knows how to heal and restore order to the soul that He has created. And as He heals, our sufferings rooted in the illness within the soul begin to go away.

Today's Mass is called the Sunday Next Before Advent. it is a week given to prepare for this blessed liturgical season. We turn a corner from the long season of Trinitytide where we have reflected on how we should live from the finished work of Jesus Christ. Advent is the Season where we begin again preparing both for His coming and His Second Coming. St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 11 that "If we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged." Today we understand this to mean if we would come into agreement with God each day on how He sees us, we would be in agreement over our sin and our fallenness. If we live in that way now, we encounter the Divine mercy of God on a daily basis and find great healing and transformation in our lives. We see that if let God judge us and give us His mercy now, we shall surely have it on the last day.