Worship, prayer, and fellowship is the celebration of the Gospel. Worship is when we enshrine the Gospel in our hearts, minds, homes, and churches. Remember, the Gospel is God’s message of his love for us.

The Gospel teaches many things but at the heart of it is that LIFE isn’t simply biological, it’s not just about bodies being born and maturing into adults., LIFE is biological, yes, but it is spiritual too, and the Gospel teaches that that we don’t find life in possessions or wealth, through hard work and ingenuity, but rather, LIFE is a gift that comes to us only by Divine Grace, by God’s Grace. Life is a gift of God, and it is something we get only from God, it is a product of the Holy Trinity.

We come to Liturgy to appreciate this gift of LIFE and to offer our theia efxaristia, our thanks to God. As humans we are in a unique position to bring goodness and blessing and sanctity into this world because heaven has been put into us! So, we remember God and offer him our gratitude and our rational [reasonable] worship. In other words, we offer the Divine Liturgy.

To celebrate the Divine Liturgy is our first great calling, something we do together. Divine liturgy fulfils us, brings us clarity and healing.

Today we here a story about a rich fool. The man WAS RICH BECAUSE he had many possessions. But he WAS A FOOL BECAUSE he thought his wealth guaranteed his life ‘’for many years to come’’. When his life ended, so did his control of his possessions. Jesus here contrasts the idea of life as true ‘existence’ and the idea of life as ‘possessions’.

The Lord really wants to turn our gaze in a different direction, he wants us to look toward heaven, to our homeland, to God first, to the remembrance of God, and to forget our idols. Our Lord Jesus Christ wants us to find our balance, by offering our thanksgiving to God first, offering our best back to God, offering our very hearts and minds to him. Jesus is calling us to be true worshippers of God, worshiping in Spirit and Truth, as he once said.

The original human vocation is a priestly one, to offer the world back to God with gratitude and thanks. We’re called to be worshippers of the true God, not worshipers of ourselves or others or of things. The Lord, the Gospel, and the Church call us -not to fill our lives with idols- but to be filled instead with faith and light, to be true worshipers and children of God. Jesus came to restore balance, the balance in our own personal lives first, and then through us balance and health to the world.

And so, the Gospel teaches about true WEALTH, true riches, that it is to be rich in faith and to be rich in works. To have a life of close communion with God, a life centered in the worship of God, is to be rich in faith; to use my time and my skills and abilities, to use my possessions & wealth in accordance with faith (this means sharing with others & generosity toward others) is to be rich in works.

This is a life of love! Love for God and love for neighbor and remember who your neighbor is: everybody that is not you!

Jesus Christ and His saints have this kind of love; and it made them strong. It gave them the type of strength that defeats death, because nothing can overcome God’s love. And this kind of love respects the ‘other’ as oneself. It is a love that is so close to Christ that each person feels valued. Real wealth and value are found in Christ, not in possessions, wealth, or accomplishments.

We cultivate our spiritual lives by choosing first, to worship together, to pray together and to pray for each other. Second, we can cultivate our spiritual lives by choosing to work together; to struggle together; to laugh, to shed tears, even to suffer with one another as the stewards, friends, and servants of God. Not as self-serving, but as servants of God, building up the body and the parish.

Let us use our time wisely so that WHEN this biological life comes to an end, God doesn’t call us a fool like the man in the gospel but instead says, “Well done good and faithful steward. You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your Master.”

Accumulate spiritual wealth, be rich in faith and rich in works. Become worshipers of the True God and good stewards of everything you possess!

Today the Church enters a new season. Starting today all Christians are called upon to begin the fast for the Great Feast of our Lord’s Nativity.

Do you remember why this fast was set by the Holy Fathers? In the O.T., Moses fasted for forty days in the desert of Egypt with no food or water in order to receive the Law, the Ten Commandments. We, on the other hand, now fast for forty days, not like Moses who did so without food and drink, we just abstain from certain food on certain days, but we do this not simply to receive the Law like Moses, but to receive the Lawgiver Himself: Christ our Almighty God. Think about that! During this season we combine our fasting with prayer, repentance & confession, receiving the Holy Gifts (communing), with helping people in need, and feeding the poor. With God’s help, we can make a good beginning and see how much these disciplines and the focus they bring can positively affect our lives. Remember we don’t do this in a mechanical way, but believing in what we’re doing, asking God to help, relying on His help and great mercy so that our hearts can become like that cave in which our Lord Jesus Christ was born.

By His Eminence  Metropolitan Panteleimon of Antinoes

Faith in Christ is the power which saves and gives life to man. Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is man’s only certain hope and salvation. No one can overcome death but only the Saviour of the world, Who through His death on the cross overcame the power of death and offered life to all those who will believe in His Name. Jesus Christ, the Son and Word of God, is the Lord of Life and death.

Man’s life many times I described as the sea. The problems of life rise as enormous waves, which struggle to take us down into the ocean’s depths, into despair and hopelessness. The abyss opens its mouth to swallow us. But, when one is armed with the faith in Christ, then in his most difficult moments, man finds the power to face and to confront these difficult moments, which as great waves they break out upon the ship of life in the multiform of tribulations, illnesses, temptations and deaths.

Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Son of God, invited Ja’iros to stand well in his faith in Him. Believe and do not despair. Do not lose your hope. The fruit of faith in Christ is the victory of the faithful against death himself. For this reason the holy Martyrs of our Holy Orthodox Church were able to gain victory over death, because they were steadfast in their faith into Christ.

Man who does not have faith is like a ship without a compass. Faith is the victorious power, which leads man into the virtuous way of life. If one is without faith, he cannot achieve any virtue. If man is without faith, then he cannot only overcome the smallest problems of life, but, neither can he will be able to face the frightful hour of death and everything which follows death!

When the hour of death arrives, no one can help us, neither the best and skilled doctors, nor our friends, nor the powerful and rich, nor our relatives, nor scientists, nor those in authorities, nor those who have money and riches. Only Christ can save and comfort us. And the Lord saves all those who turn to Him, as He saved Ja’iros’s daughter. And this was the result of his solid faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Our faith must be solid and truthful, we must stand in steadfastness avoiding any form of doubt. We must never bend before the problems of life, no matter how great they might be. The faith in Christ is a strong alliance, which will never disappoint anyone who believes. This is the reason why during the Holy Sacrament of Baptism, the Priest asks the God-parents to confess faith in Christ, by asking them: “Do you join Christ”? And they respond saying: “I do join Him”!

Man’s life intermingles between joy and sadness.  The joyful moments are exchanged with sad moments. For this reason St Paul teaches us saying, that one should be joyful with those who are happy, and sad with those who are misfortune, for our life is like the field of lilies, which today they flourish and tomorrow the wither and die.

Everything around us witnesses the vanity and the mortality of all earthly pleasures. The problems of life will never end. Christ is offering the only solution. Let us strengthen within us our faith in Christ. Only, when we have been armed with the spiritual armor of God, which is offered to us by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, in other words faith, hope and love, and we practice these virtues in our daily life, then we shall be able to overcome all adversity powers and finally death itself.

Alexander S Karcher

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. The blood of the Martyrs is the seed of the Church.

This is a saying attributed originally to the early Christian writer Tertullian in the 2nd century AD, not even two hundred years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Tertullian spoke of what he knew and saw with his own eyes. Christians were martyred regularly by an empire which was unable or as yet unwilling to tolerate such a radical difference in lifestyle…yes, not so much a religion per se, the empire knew how to incorporate all manner of religions into the pervading culture, but a radically different lifestyle which promoted among its devoted adherents an unquenchable love for God and neighbor, a burning love which remained unquenched even in the face of persecution and torture and execution.

The only love which the Roman empire recognized was that patriotic fervor for empire and the civic religion which helped ensure the supposed integrity and unity of the empire. Put simply, worship the emperor and the machine of state as expressed the pagan deities and live in relative peace. For a person devoted to Jesus Christ, the peace offered by Rome and her emperors was obviously transient, the kingdom to which he or she belonged not of this world.

And so they died upon the sands of arenas across the empire, as bloody spectacles, entertainment for the masses, crushed beneath the machine of empire…but their blood soaking the dry earth was watering a burgeoning new spiritual reality that would shake and continues to shake the very foundations of the world.

The term “Martyr” has been in use for thousands of years by now, and many of us have forgotten its original meaning. When we hear the word martyr we think of someone dying for a noble cause and becoming essentially a symbol for that cause. We associate death and higher callings with the word, associations which ring true but they do not grasp the basic definition of the term.

The word in Greek, μάρτυρας from which we derive the word martyr by way of Latin, literally means “a witness”. These men and women and children who were martyred for their faith, were not
simply dying for a good and noble cause, they were witnessing a new reality, a reality where human beings were no longer afraid of death for the strength of their hope in Jesus Christ the conqueror of death. That is, fear of death no longer pulled the strings of human motivation and behavior for a sizable portion of the population, rather the nobler truths of faith and hope
and love stirred the hearts of so many to a God-given courage that would see them step beyond the boundaries of corruptible mortality into the Kingdom itself, the realm of immortality of grace and love, in light of which all earthly fear is banished.

And the Church, my dear brothers and sisters is this kingdom in its becoming. We are able to see it in glimpses during the divine liturgy, but very few of us as yet see it in its fullness, the in-breaking of the Heavenly Kingdom into our fallen world, the casting off of this present darkness for the light of Christ. And so we look to the martyrs as witnesses of this reality, and today, on October the 26th, we look to one in particular, Saint Demetrios the Great Martyr, the Myrrh Streamer, the Wonder-Worker of Thessaloniki and indeed, as the toparion says, the whole world.

About 1700 years ago, during the tumultuous period of the roman tetrarchy, a virtuous young man rose to prominence in the city of Thessaloniki. Born of the senatorial class, this young man established his reputation in the military and by the age of 23, according to sources, was made the proconsul or duke of the region, a high honor in the eyes of men. This young man was Demetrius, and he was a Christian at a time when Christians living openly as such were condemned to death. As a follower of Christ, the Risen Lord, Demetrios had no fear of death, and though he served the empire faithfully as a soldier and administrator, the empire had no lasting claim on his soul. When Galerius Maximianus, Caesar at the time with an axe to grind against Christians, began his persecutions in earnest, Demetrios took this as a sign.

Whereas before he was known for his virtuous living and his charity, now he professed his Christian faith publicly and what is more, began to teach and preach Jesus Christ in the public square, and the eloquence of the grace of the Holy Spirit was with him. Another great saint of Thessaloniki, Gregory Palamas, speaking of this soldier of Christ a thousand years later said, St. Demetrios was graced with splendid prophetic power and was counted worthy of “the apostolic and teaching diaconate and a high position”.

We do not have exact records of what Demetrios said, but whatever it was sufficiently enraged Galerius, the emperor, who left his military campaign in the north against the Sarmatian peoples and descended to the city of Thessaloniki, and had Demetrios imprisoned in an old roman bath, locked away from his beloved people, and then to distract the confused populace he ordered that games be held in the arena, gladiator games…and he named his own champion, Lyaios, a hulking and blood-thirsty barbarian from Germania who was undefeated on the sands, and who, at the emperor’s
request, openly mocked the God of the Christians as he slew his opponents.

We know God raises up his own champions. It wasn’t long before a disciple of Demetrios, a young soldier and Christian named Nestor, with the saint’s blessing, challenged the blood-crazed gladiator, and by proxy, the emperor himself. The two fought, according to sources, on a platform raised up on a thicket of spears, so that anyone who fell off would meet their end on the spear-points. Before combat Nestor prayed out loud for victory “from the God of Demetrios” ensuring that the emperor, but particularly the people of the city, understood why he fought and for whom.

By the grace of God and the prayers of Demetrios, Nestor would throw his enormous opponent from the platform. The emperor’s chosen was suddenly and surprisingly dead, the god-mocker humbled in a very public manner. Galerius flew into a rage and ordered Nestor be taken out of the city and beheaded, the martyr’s laurel crown would be his trophy. The emperor then sent soldiers down to the baths, where in the darkness of the makeshift prison, away from the eyes of the people, they slew the long-suffering saint with spears. Clearly, Galerius did not want either soldier of Christ to become martyr, a witness to the power of Christ and the weakness of tyrants. His intent was to obliterate their witness, to nullify the power of their shed blood by killing them in secret.

Before the providence of God however, the machinations of knifing men are all in vain. Scripture says through the mouth of the patriarch Joseph, “Fear not, for I am God’s. You took counsel against me for evil but God took counsel for me for good.” And so it was, God’s counsel survives even death. Demetrios had a servant, Lupus, who buried the body and took the saint’s signet ring and blood-stained cloak, and for the next few days worked amazing miracles of healing with these tokens of martyric power before being slain himself. Despite the emperor’s attempts, Demetrios’ blood would cry out from the earth, a witness to the power of God, and like a seed planted would grow into a mighty testament of the presence of the Kingdom among us.

He is called the Myrrh-Streamer, or Myrrh-Gusher for good reason, his sanctified body has been producing a powerfully fragrant myrrh for centuries, that is a beautifully aromatic substance that literally streams from him, which cannot be explained away. There is no scientific answer as to where it comes from and how. Ask anyone who has been, and they will tell you, the church where his relics are kept is absolutely enveloped in the holy scent.

A spectacular thing occurred sometime in the 1980’s on his feast-day, when every single icon and mosaic, the very walls of the ancient church began to gush myrrh as his relics had been doing for so long, while the case in which his sanctified bones were kept filled with the myrrh so that the clergy present were overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of the stuff. And this gushing myrrh heals countless people every year, it is a source of many miracles, a conduit of the grace given to Demetrios by God.

The God-Man Jesus Christ conquered death, and death could inspire no fear in his champions while they lived, and since their martyrdoms they are still capable of witnessing to the fact that death is not the end, God’s Kingdom extends beyond the gates of death, God’s life permeates all. Demetrios is also called the wonder-worker for good reason as well. Since his martyrdom 1700 years ago, the city of Thessaloniki has experienced invasions, fires, earthquakes, all manner of cataclysm, and accounts of the saint’s intervention abound. People have witnessed him upon the walls of the city, riding a [brown] steed, or elsewhere standing upon the roof of his church. Invading enemies have experienced him sallying out of the city, leading a regiment of riders in white. In fact the Byzantines had records of captured enemies claiming the fiery-haired warrior clad in white had seemed impervious to their weapons and spewed fire at them. There have been instances of women abducted by brigands retrieved miraculously by the saint as well as merchants and traders redirected in dreams and visions to the city, saving it from starvation. The city gratefully celebrates
his memory and patronage for an entire week surrounding October 26th.

His wonder-working activity does not stop at the walls of Thessaloniki however. Slavic peoples hold him in great honor. The Russians attribute the victory at the battle of Kulikov against the overwhelming Mongol hordes to Demetrius, and they have dedicated the entire expanse of Siberia to his protection. Every Saturday before his feast-day they celebrate “Demetrios Saturday” and remember the souls of those who have died nobly in battle. My own patron Saint, the Grand Prince Alexander Nevsky considered Saint Demetrios to be the patron of his family. We are all
connected. All Orthodox Christians of whatever ethnicity or nationality, pray to St Demetrios at the sacrament of Holy Unction usually during Holy Week, calling upon the grace of healing which he is known for. It seems that people the world over have been humbled by this valiant soldier of Christ, this constant and steadfast aid and protection, this mighty intercessor before the glorious throne of God. His short life was marked by virtue and boldness and yet his earthly accomplishments pale in comparison to the unimaginable grace manifest in his markedly active afterlife.

This, my brothers and sister, this is the reality of the Kingdom of God, this divine super-reality that is the Kingdom in-breaking into our fallen world, the grace of our Lord permeating this earthly materiality, so that the very air we breathe is fragrant with his grace, and catastrophes and all sort of evil is overcome and suddenly turned back, and death itself seems to have no effect. This is what the martyrs witness to, this is what they proclaim. This is what the devil and all petty tyrants fear trembling, the perfect love of Christ and his Saints that casts out all fear. This is the transformed world the Church presents to us, if we have the eyes to see.

My brothers and sisters, on this day, make our beloved saint Demetrios your friend and by his prayer we will all grow closer to Christ, and become ourselves in so many ways witnesses to and God willing, even conduits of his blessed Kingdom. God is truly wonderful among his saints! Now and forever and to the ages. Amen.

A healthy perspective on God is discovered in our worship and how we approach God. Our perspective of ourselves is this: we are made in God’s image. The image of God is who and what we are.  Nothing can take that away. Nothing can change it. We are made in God’s image. We are mirrors that reflect God’s glory. His glory shines in us all the time. Yes, the mirror is dirty, but it is there. It needs to be cleaned and polished!

At the core of every human being, writes St. Gregory Nazaianzus, is this amazing spark of divinity, created by God, put there by God which nothing, not even sin and death and the devil, can take away.  Yes, sin obscures our vision of this truth, AND fear distracts us from seeing it. The traumas and pains of life keep us from touching it.  All this negative stuff makes us believe wrongly that we are NOT the image of God, that we are separate from God, that he is far away from us and we are far away from him.  BUT THIS IS NOT TRUE.  It is impossible.  It is like a seed that cannot be destroyed, and it is growing and will grow forever until it reaches full fruition over and over again because there is no end to growing.

The answer is this: you must clear away everything that keeps you separate from God -BELIEVE- and nurture this belief. Clear it all away through spiritual effort, through love, through compassion, through worship, the sacraments, you have in the Church all manners of support:  your fellow Christians, your godparents, monks, priests, and the Saints so you can walk those difficult paths and go to those places in your hearts and minds and souls where you’re afraid to go.  You have confession, as long as you’re willing to be as honest as you can be about who you really are. You have Holy Communion and the reading of the Word of God that brings the light of Christ into the dark places of your lives. You need to be using every tool available to awaken yourself from the delusion that God is NOT closer to you than your heartbeat, the delusion that he is NOT closer to you than your breath.

The demons would have us believe in such illusions.  Jesus calls Satan the “father of lies” and the greatest of these lies is that God does not love us, is not in us and around us, caring for us all the time, that there is nothing luminous inside of us, no image of God in us.  To be in our “right minds” means to know Him, that He exists and that we are here by his grace and love. The Lord invites us to leave our fears behind and come to him as we are.  Just like it happens in today’s Gospel, when we meet with Christ, speak and relate with Him, then we depart from the desert of sin, we become free from the bondage of hatred and discover spiritual peace and calmness. Let us approach Christ then, because the Truth will liberate us from everything that drags us into those barren desert places in the first place. Remember how the Lord has taught us saying: “Learn from Me, that I am meek and humble in heart and you will find peace in your souls”.