St Peters Orthodox Church

November 15, 2020 -St. Peter comes to Jesus and asks, "How many times must I forgive those who sin against me?" Jesus' answer to St. Peter is that he must forgive in the same way he has been forgiven; in the limitless inexhaustible mercy and forgiveness of God. He then tells the parable of the Unforgiving Servant to strongly exhort us to become such mercy to others and show the very real destructi...

November 8, 2020 - Throughout the election season this year and even now we see how divided, anxious, fearful, worried, and opinionated we are as a people in this nation. Today we attempt to recenter ourselves based upon the most comforting and stabling truth. Jesus Christ is enthroned over the Kingdom of God; the Kingdom of our true and most important citizenship. St. Paul writes to us in Ephesia...

Nov. 2, 2020 - Today is the Feast of All Souls. In this Liturgy we are given the grace of God to take up our mantle as the royal and holy priesthood of all believers lifting up to Christ the souls we loved here on earth who have fallen asleep in Christ. We are also given the grace to let our mortality be the gift God intends it to be in our lives. That we recenter ourselves to live as though this...

Nov. 1, 2020 - Today is the blessed Feast of All Saints. In this Liturgy we hear the reading from the Revelation given to St. John and chapter 7 where St. John is granted a view of what lies behind the veil of this temporary life. Using that passage and the Icon of All Saints, we let the Lord show us Paradise today. There we see the perfected eternal fellowship of God's people with one another and...

October 25, 2020 - Today is the Feast of Christ the King. On this day we look to the great paradox of our faith that confounded those at the time of Jesus' earthly ministry and continues to confound the wise and learned today. We have a King who condescended to become the lowest of us in order that we might ascend and become all that we were created to be. It is for this love and humility that He...

October 18, 2020- Today is the Feast Day of St. Luke the Evangelist. It seemed right to best honor St. Luke by remembering how the Gospel spread throughout the known world during his lifetime which is the same way it must spread today. The love and power of Christ was revealed through those who followed Him daily in their lives as true disciples. And, Christ our God revealed Himself through those...

October 11, 2020 - Today is the Feast of the Motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Today our focus is on something vastly misunderstood in may Christian circles; that is, the idea of the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Queen Mother. The Church's understanding of her as Queen Mother reaches back to antiquity beginning with Holy Scripture and truly comes clear when we understand that our Lord Jesus Chri...

Oct. 4, 2020 - In the Gospel of St. Luke and Chapter 7 we have the testimony of Christ our God raising the widow's only son from the dead at the gate of Nain. We find a multitude following Christ heading into the gate of Nain. At the same time we have the funeral procession for the widow's son heading out of the gate of the town. The Church Fathers tell us that in that moment death encountered the...

September 27, 2020 - In the Gospel of St. Matthew Chapter 6, Christ our God tells us not to worry about our life because of how greatly God cares for us and knows what we need. Rather, seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness. The antidote to worry and anxiousness over our lives is to truly know God as our provider. Using the beginning of Psalm 23 and this blessed Gospel passage, we seek to gr...

September 20, 2020 - In Galatians 5 St. Paul exhorts the Church to "Walk in the Spirit." But what does it mean to walk in the Holy Spirit? What does St. Paul mean by this? Today as we reflect on the words of St. Paul, we discover that to walk in the Holy Spirit is so essential to our Christian existence and our salvation. As we surrender our lives to the governance of the Holy Spirit, we find the...

September 17, 2020 - Today we look at the Parable of the Good Samaritan as well as the events that led up to our Lord's telling of this great parable. In this parable we see the nature of Christ our God, the One full of compassion and mercy desiring the healing and restoration of all the souls He so lovingly created. But we also see in this parable one of the great purposes of Christ's Holy Church...

September 6, 2020 - As our Lord Jesus Christ notoriety grew in his earthly ministry, masses would bring the sick to the marketplaces with all sorts of illnesses, dysfunctions, and spiritual oppression. We are told that those who came to Him were healed. The ill new they were sick and they were very mindful of their suffering. And they had the mustard seed of faith that if they came to Jesus, they...

Aug. 30, 2020 - Today we hear both the Parable of the Persistent Widow and the Parable of the Pharisee & the Publican. These two parables are told back to back by our Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospel of St. Luke Chapter 18. One parable teaches the heart of God towards mankind that desires for us to bring our brokenness, sinfulness, and dysfunctions to Him; and to do so persistently. In the Parable...

August 23, 2020 - In our the Holy Gospel of St. Luke 19, Christ our God approaches Jerusalem to make His Triumphal Entrance. As Jesus approaches Jerusalem we are told that He wept over the city. This revelation of Christ mourning over His people is given to us as a revelation of God's heart and disposition to all mankind. God mourned because they denied the unspeakable benefits He had come to best...

Aug. 2, 2020 - We are not roughly five months into the COVID pandemic. The longer we suffer we tend to get rather thin and the worst of our humanity can begin to surface. But there is an antidote, a prescription for this that stabilizes joy and contentment in the life of the Christian. That antidote is to remember God throughout each day for Who He truly is and all that He has done, is doing, and...

July 26, 2020 - On the Feast Day of St. Anne, the mother of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we remember the narrative of one that God releases from shame. Shame is such a common struggle for most Christians. We have a very real adversary and accusor that constantly wants to write on our soul such a lack of worth that we dare not approach God with our brokenness. Today we look at Sts. Joachim & Anne to se...

July 19, 2020 - Do you doubt that the Word of God, Jesus Christ, can transform a culture through His Church; that is, all of us who are earthen vessels? Are you struggling with a sense of hopelessness as we watch our culture in this great country spin further down into darkness and chaos? My friends, this ought not be. Today we have the Gospel reading from St. Luke Chapter 5 where we hear the mira...

July 12, 2020 - Today our God sets His limitless mercy right before us all. We come before God constantly in need of His mercy and forgiveness over all of our shortcomings and failures. We ask for a gift we could never earn nor deserve. And, rather than giving us what we do deserve He grants us just the opposite. He takes us to Himself, forgives us, heals us, and gives us power to be transformed....

July 5, 2020 - The enemy of the Body of Christ is constantly seeking to divide all of the beloved in the Body of Christ from one another and their God. For this reason, from our Matins Scripture reading, St. Paul writes in Philippians 1 that the Church should let their conduct be worthy of the Gospel by being one mind and one spirit in all things. And, from our Epistle reading, St. Peter in 1 Pete...

June 29, 2020 - In the Gospel of St. Luke chapter 14 Jesus tells the parable of the Invitation to the Great Supper. The Great Supper that all are invited into is life in the Kingdom of God where He feeds us His mercy, His healing, and His power unto the salvation of our souls. We also come to understand that we, Christ's Body in the earth, bear within us the imprint of this invitation to all who d...

June 21, 2020 - Today is the first Sunday in the longest liturgical season of the year, Trinitytide. Having remembered by grace the conception, birth, life, death, Resurrection, and Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ; and, having celebrated the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all of those in Christ at Pentecost we turn our attention throughout this blessed season to learn how shall we now live...

June 7, 2020 - We celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, a day that would absolutely change everything. On this day our Lord fulfilled His promise to endue His disciples with power from on high as He would send them the promised Holy Spirit giving them this power, this grace, for their salvation. And, they were given power to become the continuing ministry of Jesus Christ upon the earth. The result on...

June 1, 2020 - Today is the only Sunday in the Season of Ascensiontide, that Season between the Ascension and Pentecost. On this day we are reminded that as Christ Ascended keeping fully our humanity joined to His Divinity, He did so that we might become participators in His Divine nature all of our days. He ascended so that we could ascend from every result of the Fall of man and into the experie...

May 28, 2020 - We are told in Scripture as well as through the teachings of the Church Fathers that when Jesus Ascended the angelic hosts were amazed. They were amazed as they saw Christ ascend through the heavens leading a train of souls into Paradise. And they were amazed how far the Word of God, Jesus Christ, had gone to save His most precious creation out of His immeasurable love for mankind....

May 17, 2020 - What are you experiencing in this life right now? Because of the COVID-19 virus are you experiencing fear, anxiety, anxiousness, restlessness? Or, are you experiencing contentment, peace, and even joy? Perhaps like most you are ebbing and flowing between all of these. In today's Liturgy we are reminded that the Christian should always sing a new song of praise to God for the salvati...