St Peters Orthodox Church

As the Church commemorates the Chair of St. Peter at Antioch, we remember not the greatness of a man, but the greatness of God’s mercy. Peter, who once denied Christ in fear and wept bitterly, became the shepherd of the Church because he chose repentance instead of despair. In contrast to Judas, whose sorrow led to hopelessness, Peter’s tears became the seed of restoration and mission. As Lent app...

We see in the Luke 18 Jesus, with the multitude of His followers, drawing near to Jericho. There a blindman hears the noise and finds out that Jesus is coming. He cries out, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me." Some of Christ's followers tell him to "be quiet." So the blindman cries out all the louder, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" Jesus restores his sight and tells him that his faith made...

As we are in our three-week preparation for Great Lent, we are reminded that, in Orthodoxy, Lent is known as the Springtime of the Soul. For one, Lent occurs as Winter passes and we enter into Spring. But it is also known as the Springtime of the soul because everything that we see happen in nature, as it comes out of its lesser existence of being dormant and begins to live and bloom, is precisely...

Septuagesima is the Church’s merciful call to begin preparing for the Lenten journey, reminding believers that earthly life is a temporary exile and a pilgrimage back to the heavenly Jerusalem. Drawing on biblical symbolism of the number seventy and St. Gregory the Great’s interpretation of the laborers in the vineyard, the message emphasizes that we live in the “eleventh hour,” yet are promised t...

Stations 4 & 5 sung by a Cantor and choir

In the Gospel of St. Luke 2, the Blessed Virgin Mary and Joseph present Christ our God to blessed St. Simeon in the Temple. There, the Messiah is revealed to both the aged Priest Simeon and the aged prophetess Anna, both of whom had been eagerly waiting for the Consolation of Israel to come. Christ our God was revealed to them, which brought them great joy and welled up great praise from within th...

In the Gospel of St. Matthew chapter 8, we are given the testimonies of Christ our God healing the leper and the servant of the centurion. The leper comes before Christ to intercede for his own sufferings. The centurion comes before Christ to intercede for the sufferings of someone else, other than himself. Both of these men come before Christ with two very important virtues. Both the leper and th...

The Magi were drawn by the light of the star to experience the Light of the World. Epiphany means the manifestation or showing forth of God in the person of Jesus Christ so that we may experience and know our God. How do we live a life for the ongoing Epiphany experience of God for the healing and transformation of our souls? In Romans 12, the St. Paul gives us the words we say in every Mass: "And...

This sermon reflects on the Feast of the Three Magi, tracing their Persian origins, their roots in Zoroastrian priesthood, and their remarkable response to a Messianic hope only dimly perceived through their own tradition. Drawn by the sign of the star, the Magi journey in humility toward a Messiah they do not yet fully understand, offering gifts that prophetically reveal Christ’s identity as King...

The Name of Jesus is His essence, His character, and His authority. God's desire, from the beginning of creation, was for mankind to represent God; to represent His Name to all of creation. Christ our God became incarnate, He took on a body and all of our fallenness. After His Ascension, the Holy Spirit was poured out, and He took on a body again; all of us, the Body of Christ. Those who live in p...

One of the great and important Feasts of the Christian Faith is the Feast of the Circumcision of our Lord. A great question is, "Why is our Lord's Circumcision such an important event?" All of the Feasts that center around something specific that our Lord accomplished (His conception, birth, crucifixion, Resurrection, etc.) reveal to us something that Christ our God accomplished, so very necessary...

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. I...

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 t...

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 suff...

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 a...

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 Adve...

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 bec...

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...

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...

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...

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 Christ...

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 garmen...

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...

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...

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, m...