St Peters Orthodox Church

Today is the Feast Day of the Holy Innocents, those first martyrs at the hand of Herod for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. The presence of Christ in the world illumines the darkness, we say. It causes light to shine in our darkness, which raises to the surface all hidden darkness. It rises to the surface that Christ might heal. The love of God is a refiner's fire, as the prophet Malachi said. It brings the impurities to the surface by its heat, so that the refiner scrapes it away and the precious metal is purified. The fire of the love of God either consumes or it purifies. It consumed Herod. It purified Isaiah (from Isaiah 6). Whether it consumes or purifies us is utterly dependent on how we respond to what Christ reveals to us out of His great love for us.

Our Lord Jesus Christ lowered Himself to be born in a cave, the place where animals were kept. He was not born in a palace or a Temple. He was born in a lowly, dark, and smelly cave. And there, the Light of the World illumined that dark place. This was the first Bethlehem. The only reason He was born in the first Bethlehem is that He might be born in the second Bethlehem. The second Bethlehem is the soul of any who would invite Him in. He does not looking for a clean place to enter. He is looking for those who would say to Him, "God, come to my ruin and make yourself a home there."

On the Third Sunday of Advent, we are reminded of such an integral aspect of our relational experience with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The name of this Mass in Latin is Gaudete, a word that means "rejoice." St. Paul, in Philippians 4, teaches us to rejoice and that we are to rejoice even in times of anxiousness and troubling times and events. Our intercessions and cries in our times of suffering are to be interlaced with praise to God. Today we talk about keeping a living remembrance of the loving works of God on our behalf. For it is rejoicing that gives birth to hope and protects us from despair.

In Advent we remember the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. We remember His coming at the Incarnation. And, we keep before us a living remembrance of His Second and final coming when all souls will go before Him. In the Gospel of St. Luke 21, Jesus teaches His paramount teaching on both the signs to watch for regarding His Second Coming and how to prepare for that day. Today, we heed His teaching and seek to live the life of His bride who prepares herself for the coming of the Bridegroom.

The prayer in Mass for the First Sunday of Advent sets the stage for how we should orient ourselves toward Christ in this blessed Season. The prayer asks for the grace of God to be given that we might cast off works of darkness and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time that Christ has come to us in great humility; for He will come again in majesty to judge the quick and the dead. In Advent, we orient ourselves toward Christ, yoked to Him; that by His grace we may repent (cast off darkness and put on light and life); for we are in the age of Christ's salvation. At the same time, we keep before us His second coming when every soul will go before Christ our God on the last day. His second coming drives us into His healing arms now, that we may be transformed from glory to glory.

This sermon reflects on “Stir Up Sunday,” the Church’s intentional beginning to Advent preparation, marked by the repeated call of excita—“stir up”—found in the season’s collects. Just as the body must warm up before exertion, Christians must spiritually awaken before encountering the mystery of Christ’s Nativity, a coming both comforting and fearsome. The Gospel’s feeding of the five thousand becomes a symbol of Christ’s humble first arrival: unnoticed by most, yet able to multiply grace beyond measure from the simplest offering, like the boy’s barley loaves. Yet the other readings remind us that Christ’s second coming will be markedly different—He will arrive as King and Judge who separates sheep from goats according to their works. Advent, therefore, is a call to spiritual readiness: to prayer, fasting, self-examination, and concrete acts of mercy. Amid the noise of commercial celebration, the Church teaches that true preparation for Christ comes not through material excess but through embodying His love i

Today the Blessed Virgin Mary is presented to the Temple in Jerusalem. Her parents, Saints Joachim & Anna, offer this precious life God provided for them that removed their shame back to the God who showed mercy on them. And the Blessed Virgin would grow up in the Temple in prayer and the service of others. At the message from God through the Archangel Gabriel, this most blessed woman continued in a life of self-offering, responding to God, "Be it unto me as You will." We see the results of the self-offering life we see in the Blessed Virgin & her parents. When we offer ourselves back to God in loving response for what we have received from Him, salvation comes to us and through us for the life of the world.

In order to truly participate in the Nature of God and become merciful and our Father is merciful, we must live from our life in Christ in two ways. We must truly be receivers of God's mercy, allowing our Lord to cover us again and again with the mercy He longs to give to us. Secondly, we must be the very mercy we have received from God to those who have offended or wronged us. As we both receive mercy and give mercy, we experience in a wondrous way the mercy of God towards us always. And it is only the experience of the Divine mercy of God that can transform us to become that mercy to others.

In his letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul exhorts us to "be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might...and put on the whole armor of God." Spiritual warfare is a part of every Christian's ascension on the ladder of Divine ascent to Christ and Paradise. There is a war for our souls and every soul ever created. The Apostle teaches us the true nature of this spiritual warfare as he teaches us the identity of our real enemy, as well as how we are to battle in this spiritual warfare so that we might share in Christ's victory.

Christ has forever taught through His Holy Church that the Christian life is one lived always preparing for the day the soul will be separated from the body. The secularization of death is deeply rooted in the Satan lie that we should abhor death, don't look at death, it is too painful and too final; live for the pleasures in this life as distractions to this morbid reality. In reality, the Christian has been given one of the most powerful gifts and weapons so useful to our experience of the salvation of Christ our God, our mortality. Our mortality, living in this one blessed day, which is the only day we are guaranteed, thrusts us so dependently upon the mercy and grace of God. For those who live preparing daily for their falling asleep in this way, death becomes the very gateway to the experience of the eternal joys and bliss of Paradise through Christ our God.

Christ our God tells the parable of the Marriage Feast in the Gospel of St. Matthew 22. All are gathered for the Marriage, and the King discovers one who did not have a wedding garment. That man was then ordered to be cast out into the darkness. How important is the wedding garment and what is the wedding garment according to the unending tradition of our Faith. It is no less that the white garment of our Baptism. In our Baptism Christ dislodges us from the curse of the fallen condition we inherited and clothes us with Himself; His Nature that He has lovingly and mercifully shared with us. And we are charged to keep our wedding garment clean, undefiled, and holy. Today, we consider how we may live a life where we may be found to be clothed with the wedding garment on the last day, the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

This All Saints’ Day sermon presents the idea that beyond the four canonical Gospels, there exists a “fifth Gospel” — the Gospel written in the lives of the saints. These holy men and women, diverse in background, vocation, and temperament, reveal Christ’s transforming grace made manifest in human variety. From emperors to hermits, scholars to the simple, their sanctity demonstrates that holiness does not erase individuality but perfects it — making each person more fully themselves in the image of God. The preacher connects this vision to the Beatitudes, emphasizing that true godliness flows not from mere virtue or moralism but from love and union with God. All Saints’ Day, then, celebrates not distant perfection but the invitation for every believer to become holy — to join the great multitude of God’s friends, known and unknown, who point us ever closer to Christ.

Christ our God was exalted to be King of Kings & Lord of Lords through His loving kenosis; the lowering of Himself and offering Himself even unto death. He opened the gates of paradise by such a paradox. His eternal Kingdom of love, mercy, joy, power, and majesty was established by the King dying at the hands of those for whom He had come to establish it and offer it. He lowered Himself. How do we live as citizens of this King? By our own kenosis. We lower ourselves to simply be His children, His disciples. We lower ourselves offering ourselves back to Him and following Him all of our days.

So many passages in Holy Scripture exhort us to "wait upon the Lord." And so many of those verses come with promises of God. Waiting on the Lord is such a vital and integral part of our daily relationship with Him. We must learn to wait upon the Lord in the mere moments of our temptations. We must wait upon the Lord in seasons of suffering and grief. Regarding Christ's healing work in our lives, mending the brokenness within us from which come our sinful actions, we must wait upon the Lord. But what does it mean to wait upon the Lord? Today we consider what Christ, through His Churc,h has revealed to us; for waiting upon the Lord is an active movement toward Him, knowing that we are always in need and He is the only One we need for deliverance, true life, and our salvation.

Christ’s healing of the man with dropsy is a vivid image of the soul swollen with pride and thirsting for self-glory. Drawing on St. Ambrose, the sermon contrasts the Pharisees’ obsession with religious prestige against the humility Christ commands—“sit in the lowest place.” The warning is that pride distorts the image of God within us, leaving us spiritually parched, while humility restores us to wholeness and communion with the Holy Spirit. Quoting St. Silouan of Mt. Athos, the message concludes that humility is not social posturing but the true descent into the presence of Christ Himself, where divine knowledge and peace are found.

In the Gospel of St. Luke 7, we have the testimony of Christ our God raising the widow's son from the dead at the gate of the city of Nain. Here we find two great processions that collide at the gate of the city. One is the procession of the Lord of Life and His multitude of followers. The other is the funeral process of those mourning the death of this widow's son. When Jesus sees the widow, the Scripture tells us that "He had compassion on her." Today, we have the compassionate nature of Christ our God revealed to us. For it is His compassion that comes to our gate of Nain where our sufferings and fallenness may encounter the procession of Life Himself. There, we encounter Christ. And where Life meets death, Life always wins.

In Matthew 6, Christ our God says, "Do not worry about your life." Jesus tells us to consider the birds of the air and the lilies of the field and how God cares for them all. How much more does He care for us? What our Lord is really saying is, "Do not worry or be anxious, consider Me. Keep your eyes set on Me so that you can know Me better." The Lord Jesus Christ is our rest and the answer to all of our anxiousness.

This sermon on St. Matthew the Apostle reflects on Christ’s call to sinners, showing how Matthew’s response at the tax booth reveals the Lord’s mercy and transformative power. It highlights the Pharisees’ failure to couple law-keeping with compassion, reminds us that God does not call the worthy but makes worthy the called, and encourages us to openly confess our sins so that Christ may heal us. Through St. Matthew’s example, we are invited to follow Christ as we are—trusting that He will refashion us into His likeness.

Today is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Today, we remember the discovery of the Holy & Life-Giving Cross by St. Helen, the mother of St. Constantine. St. Paul says in Galatians 6 that we are to boast or glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. In this reflection, we consider three "types" of the Holy Cross in the Old Testament that reveal so much of all that Christ accomplished for us by His Passion. We also look at how we can continually encounter and experience the fullness of what Christ did for us on the Cross. Every day can be a finding, a discovery of the Holy Cross.

Today we have the Parable of the Pharisee & the Tax Collector. The Pharisee trusted in himself. The tax collector threw himself at the feet of God and cried out to God that he might receive mercy. Jesus said it is the tax collector who went home justified; a word that communicates sins being covered, being made right in the eyes of God, and the blessed experience of the return of innocence to the soul. In the telling of this parable, Jesus gives us the very framework for a life lived in the constant experience of God's mercy and healing.