St Peters Orthodox Church

The Prophet Isaiah prophesied of the ministry of St. John the Forerunner as "The voice crying out in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord." The very ministry of St. John was that all should "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Repentance is the tool we are given to make straight the way of the Lord. But we often fail to see repentance rightly. Today we examine true Christian repentance and how it removes all obstacles and barriers to our authentic experience of Christ our God and His Kingdom now brought very near to us.

We should be very encouraged that the great characters in the Scriptures all struggled at times as we struggle. In our Gospel reading from St. Matthew 18, St. John the Forerunner has been imprisoned. In His suffering, He is in need of the revelation of Christ to strengthen and assist him as his struggle is causing a weak point in his faith. Today we look at how our Lord reveals himself to blessed St. John in the way that St. John most needed to receive it. Our Lord will do the same if we cry out for Him, and He will lift us out of the depths of even the weakest moments of our faith and cause our soul to be strengthened and rejoice again.

God took away the shame of the barren Saints Joachim & Anna by healing them of their inability to have a child in their old age. Not only did God show mercy to them, He blessed them beyond what they could have every asked for or imagined. He granted them not only a child, but a child who would be chosen by God to bring Christ our salvation into the world. The Blessed Virgin was conceived in the same manner that all had been conceived since creation. And, she bore within her the same condition as a result of the Fall that all of us suffer as a result of the Fall. And this reality is critical. For as Christ is miraculously conceived in her womb, the Lord God of Israel would fully take our fallen humanity at that moment and join it to His Divinity and for all eternity. It is only by this act that we can be saved through Him. When we look at the Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Christ is revealed to us and, because of this, we see ourselves very clearly.

Understanding the progression of our thoughts and temptations that lead us to sin (to fall short of our truly created person) is important for us to grasp. For if we can grasp the stages of sin, we can begin to reverse the process making it easier for us to overcome by the grace of God in our lives every temptation. Even the most besetting sins in our lives can be overcome in Christ. The four stages of sin are as follows: First motion (the beginning of the thoughts of temptation), Entertainment (we entertain those thoughts giving them strength), Consent (coming into agreement with those thoughts, joining ourselves to them), Action (we make the choice to depart the order of God and act on our temptations). Today Fr. James Rooney walks us through these with various common sins and how they go through each of these steps with the goal to arrest our thoughts and temptations at the First Motion stage. If we will do this, we can experience Christ's victory over sin in our lives.

Jesus taught in St. John 14, "He who has My commandments and keeps them it is he who loves Me. And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him." Jesus, the Word of God Who is God and is love, defines for us what it is to love God with our whole being. And note the promises offered to the one who loves God by way of loving obedience to Him. Jesus says My Father will love Him, I will love Him, and I will show myself to Him. So many of us in the Church voice our desire for a greater experience of Christ in our lives. So many times we fail to receive the experience we desire. Perhaps it is because of our failure to love Him by following His instructions that are given to us that would lead us and others to the salvation He offers all.

St. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, "Owe no man anything but to love one another." How we truly need to learn love from God's perspective. In Advent, we prepare ourselves to receive God who will condescend to lower Himself and become man that we might become like Him. There is no greater way to begin to understand love from God's perspective than to hear the words of Christ our God defining love. This homily explores His words so that we might put into practice love as God is love to us.

An antinomy is a contradiction in our own knowledge system, within reason itself. The Christian Faith is filled with antinomies. For example, Christ is the judge of every soul with perfect justice. Christ at the same time is infinite mercy. We go into error when these two attributes of the Nature of God are not held in tension that could lead us away from the true knowledge of God. In this teaching, Fr. James Rooney explores a number of these antinomies and how keeping them in perfect tension pays great dividends in knowing God and being transformed by Him.

Advent means the coming of someone, one who was expected. What is the nature of God towards us; this One Who heard our cry and came to deliver us? Today we look at the words of God through the Prophet Jeremiah to hear the heart and thoughts of our Deliverer. "For I know the thoughts I think towards you, thoughts of peace and not affliction: you shall call upon me and I will bring you out of captivity." - Jeremiah 29. Advent is a season in which God gives us grace that stirs up within us the cry for His deliverance in our lives. Come, Lord, Advent here and delivered us.

An integral part of seeing clearly the despondency in us that is keeping us from the greatest fellowship with Christ our God in the moments of our lives is coming to an understanding of the human experience in Paradise compared to the human experience after the Fall of Man. Today we explore these human experiences asking Christ to show us the reasons for the restlessness within us and the great hope we have to regain that which has been lost.

Christ our God, by His presence in the waters of the Jordan River at His baptism, redeemed those waters. His presence in those waters made that water that He had created useful for the washing away of sins, putting to death fallen man in His death, and granting us resurrection to new life in His resurrection. What Christ did by His presence in the waters, He has also done at the Incarnation by His presence in time. Today we seek to gain Christ's perspective on time. Because of Christ, time has become the fabric through which our Lord heals and saves our soul by granting us the experience of Him in the brief moments, hours, and days that we are given.

At the Feast of All Saints we were given the gift of the revelation of Paradise to press us toward Christ our God, the healer of our souls. Tonight we are given another gift from our Lord. On the Feast Day of All Souls, the Day of the Lord is set right before us. We remember tonight that in the twinkling of an eye the trumpet will sound and all souls, the living and those who are dead, will ascend to be before Christ our King and the Judge of all souls. And we remember that no none knows the day or hour that this trumpet blast will sound. Our mortality is a gift to us if we will just see it from the mind of Christ our God. It is a gift that helps us with our thoughts imprisoned to our past and our thoughts all too focused on the future. If we lived every day as if it were the Day of the Lord, we would encounter the blessing of living and dwelling in Christ in the only time that we are guaranteed to have; the eternal now, this present moment with Christ our salvation.

Because of so many false teachings in many areas of Christianity, the term spiritual effort sometimes leaves a bad impression in the mind of many. Some may think of having to earn their salvation by spiritual effort. Some may think of other "works" oriented theologies putting the pressure of being saved in the hands of the individual. We must see spiritual effort in terms of relationship. No relationship can exist without the mutual sharing of selves between two people. Today our focus is on our relational spiritual effort towards Christ. Christ our God is always moving toward us with a desire to share all that He is with us that we might be made whole. It is when we press through by grace all of our distractions and many deceptions that we are met with Christ Who has been awaiting us. There, in that blessed fellowship, we find healing through illumination. And where the illumination of Christ is experience, darkness and despondency do not have a chance.

On the Feast Day of Christ the King we hear the resounding words from Revelation 5: Worthy is the Lamb Who was slain. So much about the Kingship of our Lord Jesus Christ confounds the wise and is foolishness to the world; for Jesus Christ's elevation as King was forged in humility, lowliness, and suffering by His self-offering. Today we explore this paradox to see the wonder that His Kingship is the fruit of His love for mankind.

Today we examine our typical thought life throughout the day. Most of us will find that we are constantly being pulled by thoughts that either direct our attention to the past or thrust our thinking into the future; both of which we have absolutely no control over. These thoughts are always at the expense of the sacred and eternal now. In considering this, we focus on recognizing the deceptive thoughts that move us toward escaping the present moment physically, mentally/emotionally, and spiritually. The important truth for us is this, neither the past nor the future grants us healing to our soul and a clear understanding of our true identity. Only by experiencing God in the present moment can we be made whole and know our most true identity.

Today the Parable of the Prodigal Son is the center of the reflection. It is one of the greatest scenes presenting the mercy of God given when one comes with the humble authentic need for this great gift of God. All too often we struggle within ourselves to go to God when we are in need of mercy. We also struggle to receive mercy when it is offered. May we all be encouraged to become receivers of the mercy of God for the healing and salvation of our souls.

The Hebrew word that describes the mercy of God is "hesed." In short, it means this: We who deserve nothing and could never earn anything from God, when we approach Him in our fallenness, deficiency, and need; God turns everything around on us and gives us absolutely every good thing. Today we not only seek to see more clearly the mercy of God, but we also look to Christ's words to us calling us to "Be merciful as your Father is merciful." St. Paul, in Ephesians 4, gives us steppingstones on the path to becoming the mercy of God to others.

St. Paul writes in Ephesians 5 that we are to live in such a way as to redeem the time. Spiritual despondency would have us throw time away blind to the very healing and redemptive presence of God in the precious gifts of the moments of our lives that He has given us. Redeeming the time is to make wise and sacred use of time. We often think of and understand the concept of sacred space. But time itself becomes sacred again when our awareness grows of God's presence in the most minute moments of our lives and we present ourselves to Him in those moments. That is when time becomes sacred. That is when the God Who eternally loves each of us manifests that love to us in the fabric time. We are healed and redeemed by a Living God Who is absolutely present in each moment of our existence when we live in that sacredness of time.

In Ephesians chapter 3, the blessed Apostle St. Paul bows his knees in intercession before Christ. He intercedes that all of us might truly come to know the height, depth, width, and length of the love of God toward each one of us. It is interesting that, on the one hand, St. Paul describes the love of God as immeasurable; that which is immeasurable. On the other hand, he uses physical measurements to describe that very love. The early Church Fathers tell us that the measurements St. Paul is using point us to the Cross; the very prism through which the love of God for every soul brilliantly shines forth. To behold the Cross is to behold the love of the One Who hung upon it; a love we will eternally grow to understand and experience.

How does God view time? What is His perspective on it? Today we look further at what He has shared with His Church for 2,000 years as to the gift that time truly is for all of us. Time is the fabric in which the God Who is love grants us the experience of His love for us. Today we focus on the reality that, to the Christian, time should be a beautiful and wondrous gift to us from God. A gift through which God fills with Himself so that we might fellowship and experience Him in this life. In light of the wonder of this gift, today we consider what we are doing with such an offering from God.

In the Gospel of St. Matthew chapter 6, Jesus tells us, "Do not worry about your life." So many of us struggle to trust God to provide us with the things we need for life and for our salvation. With the words Jesus speaks from this passage of Scripture, He is giving us the antidote to our worries and anxieties over financial needs. That antidote is to behold Him; to consider Him. In doing so He will show us how eternally faithful He is as the God Who provides.