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March for Life

Posted on by Fr. Peter

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Today in Washington, DC people are gathering from all walks of life to support life.  I choose not to use the term to protest because that is not what they are doing.  The March for life is just that and not a protest against anything but a support for something.

As Orthodox Christians we support life all along the spectrum of that life.  Yes there is some disagreement between ethicists and theologians as to when life actually begins, but we all agree that it must be protected.  Those in the world will argue that the law states that a child in the womb is not a human until a certain point.  Well, I guess the law can define it that way, but God’s law says something different and choose to follow the law of God rather than the law of man.

But, with that said, we also need to be concerned about life once it is born.  We need to be concerned about poverty, education, economics, health care, housing, food, etc.  We need to be concerned with all of those things that are a threat to life today.  Yes, we need to protect the vulnerable and those that cannot protect themselves and by that I mean the unborn, but we also need to be concerned about the growing number of homeless and hungry in our country, many of who are under 18 or over 65.  If we are going to say we are prolife than we have to mean that and be concerned about all life.

At their most recent meeting, the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and South America took up this call for life to be respected all along its spectrum.  The statement released after the meeting included this position;

We must strive to eliminate the violence proliferated against innocents of every kind, particularly of women and the unborn. We call for responsibility by individuals, institutions and governments to ensure the welfare of every citizen.

Ensuring the welfare of all citizens is a tremendous responsibility but is one that needs to be actively worked on at all levels and the Church needs to be part of that solution.

In the bishops statement released prior to Sanctity of Life Sunday the bishops reiterated the long stand of the Orthodox Church regarding life;

The Church has consistently held that children developing in the womb should be afforded every protection given to those outside the womb. There is no moral, religious or scientific rationale which can justify making a distinction between the humanity of the newly-conceived and that of the newly-born.

They also called upon all Orthodox Christians to help support pregnant women, not just with our words but with our actions.  It is not enough to just use rhetoric in the fight to protect life, we have to be moved to action to protect life.  If we are going to call women to bring their children to term and deliver them, then we as a Church need to be willing to support these women and their children.  We need to be willing to do whatever is necessary to aid and support them, not only during the pregnancy, but after and through that child’s life.

The bishops had this to say;

The Orthodox Church calls on her children, and indeed all of society, to provide help to pregnant mothers who need assistance brining their children safely into the world and providing these children loving homes.

The hierarchs of our Holy Church are calling us to action, they are calling us to live the message of the Gospel in a very real way.  We are being challenged to let our “Orthopraxy attend our Orthodoxy.”  It is time we stepped up as a church and did just that!

On this day when so many will gather on the Mall in Washington, I pray for them and for the 54 million innocents that have been sacrifice these last 40 years to the sin of abortion.  I pray for the safety of those who will be traveling to DC and home.  I pray for those who are working to end this sinful behavior and those who work to change hearts and minds one at a time.  But I also pray for those who work with the homeless, the hungry, the immigrant, the prisoner, and those who need a voice.  I pray for all of those who are working to make life better for someone.

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Orthodox Assembly of Bishops Remembers the 54 Million Innocent Dead

Posted on by Fr. Peter

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(AOB) – Forty years ago the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a decision, known as Roe v. Wade, granting a “right” for women of the United States to terminate the lives of their children in the womb. This decision has resulted in some 54 million children’s lives ending almost before they began.

The Holy Orthodox Christian Faith is unabashedly pro-life. The Lord Jesus Christ was recognized and worshipped in His mother’s womb while yet unborn by the Holy Forerunner who was also still in his mother’s womb (Luke 1:44); St. Basil the Great (4th Century), one of the universal teachers of the faith, dared to call murderers those who terminate the life of the fetus. The Church has consistently held that children developing in the womb should be afforded every protection given to those outside the womb. There is no moral, religious or scientific rationale which can justify making a distinction between the humanity of the newly-conceived and that of the newly-born.

Abortion on demand not only ends the life of a child, but also injures the mother of that child, often resulting in spiritual, psychological and physical harm. Christians should bring the comfort of the Gospel to women who have had abortions, that our loving God may heal them. The Orthodox Church calls on her children, and indeed all of society, to provide help to pregnant mothers who need assistance brining their children safely into the world and providing these children loving homes.

On the occasion of this sorrowful anniversary, and as we mourn the violence we all too often visit upon one another, as exemplified by the recent mass killings in Aurora, Colorado and Newtown, Connecticut, we pray for an end to the violence of abortion. Surely the many ways in which we as a people diminish the reverence and respect for human life underlie much of this violence. The disrespect for human life in the womb is no small part of this. Let us offer to Almighty God our repentance for the evil of abortion on demand and extend our hearts and hands to embrace life.

On the occasion of this 40th Anniversary of “Roe v. Wade,” we republish the following “Agreed Statement” issued in 1974 by the Orthodox-Roman Catholic Bilateral Consultation in the United States (composed of representatives from the former SCOBA and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops) a statement as timely now as it was then:

AN AGREED STATEMENT ON RESPECT FOR LIFE

We, the members of the Orthodox-Roman Catholic Bilateral Consultation in the United States, after extensive discussions on the sanctity of marriage, feel compelled to make a statement concerning the inviolability of human life in all its forms.

We recognize that human life is a gift of God entrusted to mankind and so feel the necessity of expressing our shared conviction about its sacred character in concrete and active ways. It is true that the Christian community’s concern has recently seemed to be selective and disproportionate in this regard, e.g., in the anti-abortion campaign. Too often human life has been threatened or even destroyed, especially during times of war, internal strife, and violence, with little or no protestation from the Christian leadership. Unfortunately, the impression has frequently been given that churchmen are more concerned with establishing the legitimacy of war or capital punishment than with the preservation of human life. We know that this has been a scandal for many, both believers and unbelievers.

We feel constrained at this point in history to affirm that the “right to life” implies a right to a decent life and to full human development, not merely to a marginal existence.

We affirm that the furthering of this goal for the unborn, the mentally handicapped, the aging, and the underprivileged is our duty on a global as well as a domestic scale.

We deplore in particular the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision failing to recognize the rights of the unborn–a decision which has led to widespread indiscriminate early abortion.

We affirm our common Christian tradition with regard to the right of the unborn to life.

We acknowledge our responsibility to mediate the love of Christ, especially to the troubled expectant mother, and thus make possible the transmission and nurturing of new life and its fully human development.

We urge our churches and all believers to take a concrete stand on this matter at this time and to exemplify this evangelical imperative in their personal lives and professional decisions.

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Bloom Where You’re Planted

Posted on by Fr. Peter

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When I first came to Southbridge, I listen to the stories that the parishioners told me about the founding and building of this church.  The history of a parish is more about the people and the mission than about buildings and grounds and it is good to listen to their stories.  I learned many things about this place that I have called home for almost nine years now, it started small, the first church was built almost by hand by the parishioners themselves, and they struggled to keep the doors open for almost 90 years.  But the story that sticks in my mind the most is the one that almost all of them told, they believe that God made it possible for them to purchase the land the Church now sits on.

In 1923, Macedonian/Romanian immigrants decided that they wanted their own Church.  They had been here in Southbridge for more than a decade and had been worshipping in people’s homes and other places and it was time to put down permanent roots.  They looked for property close to where they all lived and worked and this 5 acres of land became available.  They raised funds and purchased this land, made possible, they believe, by prayer.

This little Church has done some wonderful work all of these years not only for the parishioners but for the community at large.  Our newest ministry is the Community Meal program that we began almost 4 years ago.  Last year we served more than 1700 meals from our Parish Hall to our friends and neighbors.  We are striving to be the hands and feet of Christ in our Community.

But Southbridge has its problems and the Church is located in a neighborhood tucked behind houses on a dead end street.  We have no “drive by” appeal and for the most part, the people in this Town do not even know we exist.  Oh sure they have heard about us, but do they really know us.  Someone said that the way you know if you have had an impact on the Community would be if your doors were to close tomorrow, would any know you were gone?  These are all important issues to think about, or are they?

Orthodox Christians believe that we are the Church of Jesus Christ.  Our theology is the same as that that was handed on by the Apostles in an unbroken tradition or worship and prayer.  Our theology has been tested by the Communists and others who wished to exterminate the Church from the face of the earth and survived.  We are different than any other Church, we have a difficult time assimilating into new cultures, but there are not many places where the Orthodox Church is not.

We do not go out on the street and shout at the top of our lungs that the end is near, we do not hold tent meetings on the Town Common, not that these are wrong, they are just not what we do.  We evangelize the world by how we live, Orthodox is not a religion, a set of morals, or a denomination, Orthodoxy is a life style, we are Orthodox 24/7.  The light that comes from us is our Evangelical witness and simply say to people who inquire about Orthodoxy, come and see.

Churches, like mine here, who have been given a place to minister by God should not simply abandon that place.  Yes the neighborhood around us has changed.  When the Church was first built on this spot, the houses around it were owned, for the most part, by parishioners.  They have moved and new people have moved in.  New immigrants looking for a new life, have purchased those homes and now call the “Holy Hill” home.  But this is where God placed this Church to minister.

I am familiar with all of literature on where you should build a church.  I know all about the “windshield survey” of the neighborhood when church planters come to town.  Every few months a new “storefront” church will open in Southbridge and within a few months they are gone, but Orthodoxy has been in this Town for more than 100 years!  Why, I believe, it is because we have not abandoned our mission.

Yes our church is located on a back street tucked away behind houses of a neighborhood that has long forgotten about us, but this is where God has placed us, this is our promised land and how can we simply walk away from it?  When is the last time someone came to a church because they were driving by and thought, “hmmmm let’s go there on Sunday?”  It has never happened since I have been here.

People come to Holy Orthodoxy not because they saw the Church, they come to Holy Orthodoxy because God has sent them, they were invited by someone they know, or they saw the work of the Church in the Community.  We are not a supermarket or strip mall, we do not need “drive by” appeal to bring people to the Church.  We need holiness and fidelity to the mission and spirituality of the Church.  We need to pray for those who God has already chosen to come here and we need to live our lives in a way that people will want to know more about this Church that we belong too.

I told my parishioners in my sermon at the Vigil Service on Great and Holy Pascha that we are the light that has come into the darkened world.  We are the ones that need to be that light in the midst of the storm, the light that is not fazed by this or that popular theology. We need to be like the lighthouse, standing tall in the storm guiding the way home.  If we do all of that, and we are faithful to our mission, then God will continue to send people to this place that God granted to us so many years ago.

Bloom where you are planted because it is where God placed you!

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Where are the Nine?

Posted on by Fr. Peter

lepersThe Gospel of Luke 17:12-19

At that time, as Jesus entered a village, He was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices and said: “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” When He saw them He said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus’s feet, giving Him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then said Jesus: “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” And He said to him: “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well.”

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This is an interesting story that we are faced with.  We see the Ten Lepers standing at a distance and asking Jesus for Mercy upon them.  They obviously have heard about Jesus, or they see something in His that the recognize as holiness, either way they call out to him for mercy.

We do the same.  In each Liturgy that we celebrate we ask for mercy after each line of the litanies that we say.  More than 100 times we sing, Lord Have Mercy, as we are asking for the mercy of God in all situations.  When we pray, we pray that what is in God’s will is what is granted.  It may not always be what we want, but if we are walking in God’s will it should be.

Notice also, that they call to Him from a distance.  They have leprosy and because of that illness they are not allowed to mingle with people.  They have to stay away in order to keep the illness from spreading, they are cut off, just like we are when we sin.  We are cut off from God and from the community.

When they call to Him, He simply tells them to go and show themselves to the Priest.  This was how a person was to become ritually cleaned from their illness.  Notice, he does not heal them, touch them, or anything, just tells them to obey the law.  On the way they realize they have been healed.  Imagine, they have suffered with this illness for a long time, we guess anyway, and as they are walking to the priest, they are healed.  This amazing thing takes place that restores them, not only physically, but spiritually and returns them to the community.  Do they all go back to say thank you, no, only one returns, and Scripture tells us he is a Samaritan.

It is the same with us and our spiritual illness.  We all need the healing power that come from God through the Sacramental life of the His Church.  We come to confession, and ask God to have mercy on us.  The priest, acting on behalf of God and the community, pronounces the absolution and restores us to spiritual health and back to the community.  But are we thankful?

Christ has come to heal a fallen humanity.  He has come to restore us to our former glory but only a small portion will recognize Him and return to Him.  In our secular world we have lost sight of what is really important.  Are we like the nine who have been healed but do not turn back to worship the God that has healed us?

The man who returns “fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks” but he was the only one.  Jesus asks, “Were not ten cleansed?”  Then He says to the man, “arise, go your way, Your faith has made you well.”  It is at the point of the man’s worship that his healing actually takes place.  It is the same with us.

Worship, or thanksgiving, is a corporate activity and through the prayers that we say, and the Sacramental life of the Church we find the healing that need, the spiritual healing, and perhaps the physical healing as well.  The Church is the hospital for the soul and should be the first priority of the Orthodox Christian to come to worship and to give thanks to God for the many blessings that have been bestowed upon us.

We come to worship, and ask for God’s mercy, do we take them time each day to turn back, fall on our face, and thank Him for the mercy that He shows us?  Are we the one, or are we the nine?

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Sermon ~ What Are Your Gifts?

Posted on by Fr. Peter

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We all have gifts.  Some of the are physical gifts like the ability to throw a baseball at 90 mph, and some of them are mental, like curing some rare illness.  But what of our spiritual gifts?  The greatest sports figures spend hours honing their craft so they can be the best at whatever it is.  Some of us spend hours on the golf course working on our drive or on out putt, some of us need to spend more time doing that!  The great thinkers of the world, and yes they still exists, spend hours upon hours just thinking about things and trying to find out how things work.  So again I ask, what of our spiritual gifts?

In his first Epistle, St. Peter writes, “… you also, living stones, are being built upon a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”  He is speaking about all of us; we are all priests and take part in the Royal Priesthood of Jesus Christ.  Our job is to offer up spiritual sacrifices that will become acceptable to God.  We all have a part to play in the ministry of the Church the task before us is to find what the role is.

In today’s Epistle to the Ephesians, St. Paul writes that, “He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers.”  He lays out the roles in the Church, for leaders in the Church, and for the regular folk as well.  He goes on to say that this is done for the, “equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.”  Just as St. Peter pointed out, so now St. Paul points out.

On the day of our Chrismation, when the Holy spirit came upon us, and confirmed our call to be a child of God, we were given gifts.  We all have them we just need to find what they are.  This can be a most difficult task, to discern what gifts we have and what our place should be in the Church.  We have to actively seek out what these gifts are.  We seek these gifts through prayer and direction from those who have come before us.  We are charged with “equipping the saints” and in order to do that we need to be equipped ourselves.

In the Church we often speak of the three T’s; Time, Talent, and Treasure, well we often speak of the treasure one more than the others, and that is something we need to change.  We cannot focus all of our time and energy on money, we cannot continue to build larger barns to store our treasure in if we have no one to share it with!

We have not often spoken about the Biblical concept of tithing.  This is the concept that Jesus often speaks of, and the Apostles take it up from Him, where we are commanded to give 10 percent, off the top, of our time, talent, and treasure to God.  Again this gets skewed toward the treasure part and we forget about the others.

Time, time is something that most people do not seem to have enough of.  In the olden days it seemed there was much more time to things.  The founders of this Church, for example, would work long hard days and then come there and build the Church.  They would spend hours here physically building the Church after working very physically demanding jobs.  When the Church was open, they would be here.  Many of you have told me stories of being dragged here for some service or another.  They made time for what was important.

Are there less hours in the day today then there were when the founders were here?  Did the calendar somehow change and make less than 24 hours in the day or 365 days in the year?  There must be since we seem to run out of time.  They concentrated on what was important.

A recent survey showed that people who attend church on a regular basis spend less than one percent of their time engaged in some sort of spiritual matters.  I am not just talking about coming to church, but on any spiritual matters.  In the course of the seven days of the week, there are 168 hours.  If we come to church each Sunday, then we spend approximately 2 of those 168 hours in Church.  Now I am not that great at math but that would seem like less than ten percent.  We spend more time eating then we do on spiritual matters!

Are you giving 10 percent of your time to God?

Talent, talent can be looked at the same way as time.  What talents do you have and are you giving ten percent of them to God?  Not just paying them lip service, but really and truly giving them to God.  The basic talent that all Christians have is the ability to pray, this ties in with time by the way.  If we spent ten percent of the day in prayer imagine what this world, and our lives, would be like.  Each week I put names in the bulletin of people who are on our prayer list.  Not a day goes by that I do not get asked to pray for someone, either by one of you, a friend of mine, or on the email.  Part of our daily prayer time, and I hope we all have a daily prayer time, should be spent praying for people by name.  Praying for people is something we call can do, it requires no special skills at all.  But what of other talents that we might have, are we using them to build the kingdom of God?

Are you giving 10 percent of your talent to God?

Treasure, we have spoken of this many times before.  We all give, what we can, out of what we have, to God through the Church.  The reality is we need money to keep the doors open and it is not getting any cheaper to do so.  But we cannot simply focus on this aspect of the 3 T’s we need a balance approach to our spiritual lives.  Remember, it is not “well I give 10% of my income to the church so I am good.”  No, we are required to give ten percent of the 3 T’s not just one or two but all three.

The goal of our spiritual life is to enable us to uncover and unlock our potential.  On the day of our Chrismation we were placed on the road that should enable us to do just that, discover our potential and then chart the course to unlock that and put it into action.  What good is something if we never use it for what it is intended to be used for?

God has given us all gifts, God has given us all talents, and God has given us all treasure.  The time has come that we all unlock the potential that we all have and put it to use for the building of the kingdom.  The founders left us a physical home of brick and mortar, now we have to build the spiritual home or prayer and worship.

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Sermon ~ Feast of Theophany

Posted on by Fr. Peter

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The Gospel of Matthew 3:13-17

At that time, Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and alighting on him; and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

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Today we celebrate one of the 12 great feats of the Church year, the feast of the Holy Theophany.

We read in the Tradition of the Church the about His 30th year Jesus came to the Jordan to meet his cousin John the Baptist to be Baptized by John in the Jordan.  At first John objects to baptizing Jesus by telling him that he needed to be baptized by John.  But in the end John did baptize Jesus.

Jesus did not need purification in the waters of the Jordan but by doing this he made the purification of humanity His own.  In the action of His baptism He would wash away our sin, grant us regeneration and He would reveal the mystery of the Holy Trinity.  Jesus needed to be baptized, not in the same way that we need to be baptized, but to fulfill the righteous plan of salvation.

We heard in the reading from Genesis, at the Vespers service last night, that when God created the world the world was formless and covered in water.  Water is the first or primal element.  We humans are made up mostly of water and we need water, more than food, to survive.  When Jesus steps into the water He not only sanctifies the waters of the Jordan but he sanctifies all water and thus all of creation.  In the prayers that we will read when we bless this water, this will become all the more clear to us.

In that same reading last night we heard the story of creation and how the Spirit hovered over the water.  Now we see the Spirit come in the form of a Dove to anoint the one chosen by God, the Messiah, at the beginning of the New Creation.  Jesus does not become the Son of God on this day rather He is revealed to all as the Son of God, the Spirit has always rested on Him but on this day, the Holy Trinity is made manifest to the world.

At the Vespers service we read from Exodus, the story of the release of captivity of Israelites from the captivity of the Egyptians.  We read how they fled into the wilderness and were pursued by Pharaoh and his great army.  They were back up against the Red Sea with no escape, and God spoke to Moses and told him to raise his staff and the waters would part.  He did as God directed and the Israelites were able to walk “dry shod” through the sea to safety, but those who pursued them, those who were mired in their sins, did not make it as the water came back to engulf them.

The waters of the Red Sea saved those whom God had chosen, had freed them from their sins and their human captivity, their sin, or their captives, were left behind in that water and the people rose out of that water as a new people, a Holy Nation, freed from the captivity.  In the same way when we were lowered into the water of Baptism we were freed from what hold us to the earth.  Jesus sanctified the waters of the filthy world, as St. Gregory of Nyssa writes, and rose out purifying the entire creation.  As we rise from the waters of baptism, we rise as new creations.

This purification is foretold in the Prophet Isaiah, “Come now, let us set things right, says the Lord: Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow; though they become crimson red, they may become white as wool!”

Through the ministry of Jesus we see the opening of the gates of heaven. Christ standing in the Jordan is Christ standing before the gates of paradise and Hades. In the icons of Christ’s Baptism, the gates of Hades lie beneath His feet we hear in the hymns of Vespers:

When You bowed Your head to the Forerunner, You crushed the heads of dragons; and when you stood in the midst of the stream, You let Your light shine upon all creatures, that they might glorify You!

Today the creator of all things comes to the earth and comes to be baptized in the Jordan.  Jesus who is free from all sin consents to be baptized in order to cleanse all of humanity from the error of the enemy.  The Creator of all is baptized by the hand of a servant so that he may grant all of humanity the cleansing through water and the spirit.  Today, the one who created all things, begins His ministry that will ultimately end in His death and resurrection that will complete what is begun today.

You have sanctified the streams of the Jordan and crushed the power of sin, O Christ our God!  You have bowed down Your head beneath the hand of the Forerunner and have delivered mankind from error.  Therefore we pray to You: Save Your word!

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Repost ~ Twelfth Night

Posted on by Fr. Peter
Twelfth Night is a festival in some branches of Christianity marking the coming of the Epiphany and concluding the Twelve Days of Christmas.
It is defined by the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as “the evening of the fifth of January, preceding Twelfth Day, the eve of the Epiphany, formerly the last day of the Christmas festivities and observed as a time of merrymaking”. However, there is currently some confusion as to which night is Twelfth Night: some count the night of Epiphany itself (sixth of January) to be Twelfth Night. One source of this confusion is the Medieval custom of starting each new day at sunset, so that Twelfth Night precedes Twelfth Day.
A recent tradition in some English-speaking countries holds that it is unlucky to leave Christmas decorations hanging after Twelfth Night, a belief originally attached to the festival of Candlemas (2 February).In medieval and Tudor England[citation needed], the Twelfth Night marked the end of a winter festival that started on All Hallows Eve — now more commonly known as Halloween. The Lord of Misrule symbolizes the world turning upside down. On this day the King and all those who were high would become the peasants and vice versa. At the beginning of the Twelfth Night festival, a cake that contained a bean was eaten. The person who found the bean would rule the feast. Midnight signaled the end of his rule and the world would return to normal. The common theme was that the normal order of things was reversed. This Lord of Misrule tradition date back to pre-Christian European festivals such as the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia.
Food and drink are the center of the celebrations in modern times, and all of the most traditional ones go back many centuries. The punch called wassail is consumed especially on Twelfth Night, but throughout Christmas time, especially in the UK. Around the world, special pastries, such as the tortell and king cake are baked on Twelfth Night, and eaten the following day for the Feast of the Epiphany celebrations. In English and French custom, the Twelfth-cake was baked to contain a bean and a pea, so that those who received the slices containing them should be designated king and queen of the night’s festivities.
In colonial America, a Christmas wreath was always left up on the front door of each home, and when taken down at the end of the Twelve Days of Christmas, any edible portions would be consumed with the other foods of the feast. The same held true in the 19th-20th centuries with fruits adorning Christmas trees. Fresh fruits were hard to come by, and were therefore considered fine and proper gifts and decorations for the tree, wreaths, and home. Again, the tree would be taken down on Twelfth Night, and such fruits, along with nuts and other local produce used, would then be consumed.
In the eastern Alps, a tradition called Perchtenlaufen exists. Two to three hundred masked young men rush about the streets with whips and bells driving out evil spirits. In Nuremberg until 1616, children frightened spirits away by running through the streets and knocking loudly at doors. In some countries, and in the Catholic religion worldwide, the Twelfth Night and Epiphany marks the start of the Carnival season, which lasts through Mardi Gras Day. Modern American Carnival traditions shine most brightly in New Orleans, where friends gather for weekly King Cake parties. Whoever gets the slice with the “king”, usually in the form of a miniature baby doll (symbolic of the Christ Child, “Christ the King”), hosts next week’s party.
From Here
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10 Spiritual New Year’s Resolutions for Orthodox Christians

Posted on by Fr. Peter

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– By Fr. Stephen Lourie

1) Arrive for Church Services on time!  We take for granted the Divine Liturgy at the best of times. Often we believe that as long as we are there for the Gospel, Sermon and Communion we have had “a good enough dose of God for the week.”   Partaking of the Matins or Orthros service and the full Divine Liturgy will prepare you fully for stepping up to the precious and life giving Chalice of Christ. This will in turn fortify your spiritual journey into the world for the coming week. Our responsibility to Our Lord is to respect the schedule laid out for us, at least once a week.

2) Ask for forgiveness from our family, friends and Christian brothers and sisters in our parish. Forgiveness is a difficult virtue to put into practice and even more difficult to use regularly. Let us therefore use the virtue of forgiveness as a basis for our continued commitment to theosis and by regarding our earthly relationships with one another as truly important. Let us practice forgiveness, as it is the first step in preparing for Holy Confession and Holy Communion each and every Sunday.

3) Learn about praying and prayers. We tend to use the prayers we were taught as children. There are many prayers available for parishioners to use: check the prayer book and ask your Priest, he can assist by providing prayers that pertain to your specific situation(s). Pray often, more than once a day. If you do not have a prayer corner set up in your home, ask your Parish Priest to assist you in setting one up.

4) Become a steward in your parish and community. Become an active, involved, caring Orthodox Christian. Donate to your Parish, become, if not already, involved in keeping our environment clean (God placed us on this earth to care for His creations!!!), donate to food banks, school lunch programs, etc.  Create an organized community outreach for the less fortunate residents of your area. As stewards of humanity, it is incumbent upon us, as Orthodox Christians to lead by example.

5) Attend more than one (1) Church Service per Month. Don’t be a “C ” &”E “(Christmas & Easter) Parishioner.  Place prayer, worship and Church Services on your list of priorities, above all other recreational activities. The benefit of a fulfilling spiritual life will lead you to many rewards in the future.

6) Put your God-given Talents to use. We all have hidden talents, or talents not used to their full potential. Recognize them, ask for guidance from Our Lord and put them to use for the benefit of God’s Holy Church.

7) Invite your children, grandchildren, siblings and friends to Church Services.Become a host to your own family. Guide them and explain to them that the One Holy Universal and Apostolic Church is the One True Church. Explain that Orthodoxy offers all to its faithful. Bring one guest to Church per year at least and allow God to do His work.

8) Contact your family members that have stepped away from your family; or if you have stepped away, call your family. Practice patience, understanding and forgiveness. We are on this earth but once. We have one opportunity to practice forgiveness and ask for it as well. It is never wrong to come back home, even after a lengthy absence. We should never be embarrassed to admit our faults to our families and our desire to renew our relationships. We must remember, we are not perfect, we all have faults and we never know when we may be called by God to return home.

9) Experience the life of the Church and her many gifts to heal you. Attend Church services; come to Confession and Communion on a regular basis. We were born unto this earth dependent upon our Lord. Use Confession to unburden your sins and Communion to heal you. Rely on your Parish Priest to be your Father Confessor and Spiritual Guide.

10) Recognize that we are tested by Our Lord and tempted by the devil himself, daily. We are put to the test daily, as in school, so in life. Pray frequently, ask for guidance, see beyond the test, look for the good only in all situations. Avoid temptations that are “too good to be true.” Recognize that we are accountable for all of our thoughts, actions and deeds.

h/t Simply Orthodox

General

Obedience and the Holy Family

Posted on by Fr. Peter

Holy Family

The Gospel of Matthew 2:13-23

When the wise men departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there till I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.” And he rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt have I called my son.”

Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah: “A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more.” But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, “Rise, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead.” And he rose and took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaos reigned over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there, and being warned in a dream he withdrew to the district of Galilee. And he went and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”

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Obedience is not a word we like to think about in our 21st century life.  We don’t really like to be obedient to anything but ourselves but in essence we are all obedient to one thing or another.

When I was entering the monastery we had classes on various monastic topics.  We spent time discussing and meditating on the monastic vows; poverty, chastity, obedience, stability these are the vows that all monastics take.  I found that the most difficult of all of these was the vow of obedience.  I was not concerned about obedience to the rule of the monastery or to the abbot it was the bell that I had an issue with.

Several times a day, the monastery bell would ring to call us to prayer.  Not matter what you were doing, when the bell rang you dropped it and set out for the chapel for prayer.  I had a very difficult time with this.  I would be right in the middle of something and the bell would ring.  Not matter what time of the day; it always seemed I was in the middle of something.  Obedience to the bell was a big part of the life of a monk and a difficult lesson for me to learn.

In the Gospel for the Sunday after the Nativity there are several lessons of obedience to God and His call on us.  Joseph the Betrothed is several times called to obedience.  We read earlier in the Gospel that when he finds out that Mary is pregnant he wants to divorce her quietly.  The Angel comes to him is a dream and tells him that all will be well.  He is obedient to God’s will and takes Mary as his wife and raises Jesus as his own son.  Latter we read of flight from Egypt.  Again the Angel comes to Joseph and tells him to take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt to protect Jesus.  He does this without question, once again obeying God’s will.

The Wise Men are also obedient to the will of God.  Herod wants them to return to him to give him information on the new child so he can worship him.  The Angel comes to them and warns them to go another route home and they follow the will of God and do so.

The Theotokos is also an example of obedience.  She agrees to be the mother of God without question and walks in His will for the rest of her life.  And the perfect example of obedience is Jesus Himself.  In the Garden, the night before his crucifixion, he pleads with God the let this cup pass from Him.  In the end He prays that it be God’s will and not His that is done that night.

Walking in the will of God is not an easy thing, if you are life me you want to be in control of everything, and we quickly learn that if we want to be in God’s will be have to obey Him and His Church.

Obedience is not an easy thing but it is something that we have to do and that all of us are called too.

Blog

A Blessing for the New Year

Posted on by Fr. Peter

God, bless to me the new day,
never vouchsafed to me before;
it is to bless your own presence
you have given me this time, O God.

Bless to my eye,
may my eye bless all it sees;
I will bless my neighbor,
may my neighbor bless me.

God, give me a clean heart,
let me not from sight of your eye;
bless to me my family,
and bless to me my means.

Ancient Celtic Prayers collected by Alexander Carmichael (1832-1912), published in Carmina Gadelica (Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1992). These are prayers, hymns, and incantations collected in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland in the 18th century.

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